I agree that it's all play, but "discipline" doesn't necessarily mean "physical labor."

Discipline encompasses how we think (it takes some mental discipline to stay upbeat and focussed), talk (it's easier to gossip and be negative sometimes than to be kind to people or to see their point of view), eat, exercise, and all the other branches of self-care.

People often think that more convenience is what they want/need, when that often has a corrosive effect on a person's mental/physical health.
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Paula - 2007-04-20 10:01:08
Oh, and as for the "2-month" thing, my point was "it's good to get to know someone before you bonk them." I just threw an arbitrary time period on there for effect.
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Erich Kuersten - 2007-04-20 10:18:44
To me, athiesm is the most extreme form of fundamentalism... if it lies beyond my ability to understand it, it can't exist -- this is the same thinking that used to burn people for saying the world wasn't flat. There are so many things science cannot yet explain, but some dork is sure there can be no unifying intelligence behind such crazy things as chaos theory's strange attractor and DNA coding. It's like a dog not believing in math because he can't eat it. Or as the Taoists say, "fish don't believe there's such a thing as water." Hell, I don't believe in math, either.
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Erich K - 2007-04-20 10:22:59
sorry, dork was too strong a word. And apparently I dont believe in good grammar neither. And 2 months is way too long. If the sex aint off the chain the first time after that long a wait--and how can it be?--the disapointment will kill everything right there and then. Also, after two months, for me, the initial attraction will have died out and we'll just be friends, probably. I know too many AA people who avoided sex and relationships in their first year of sobriety and now they can't get back... they're too judgmental and their barriers are too rigid, so they are doomed to walk alone until the PERFECT person comes along, in which case they have to instantly get married, have children, and divorce.
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Greg - 2007-04-20 10:31:16
The only thing more annoying than the LDS at your door at 9 o'clock in the morning is an atheist in your parlor at any time of day or night... except for maybe someone who listens ONLY to classic rock andor the Beatles.
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chris - 2007-04-20 10:46:16
Paula: Such a prude!!!! Well I knew my wife many months before I "bonked" her and we have been married 20 years, so I agree.
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chris - 2007-04-20 10:50:30
Slide them athiest a break. I mean they are taking one hell of a gamble for no money upfront.
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Erich K - 2007-04-20 10:56:23
Speaking of great zen parables, check out this hilarious list:Zen Parable or Just People Being Cruel?
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Greg - 2007-04-20 11:15:12
Holding their willful disbelief before them like a crucifix, they walk bravely out into the throngs of zealots...
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grigorss - 2007-04-20 11:39:58
I can't believe you folks have managed to put up 40 posts on this -- all of which have ignored the creamy, polar bear-y goodness which is KNUTELLA!
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Paula - 2007-04-20 11:48:54
There are now officially too many good points here to respond to, and good quips to say "haw" at, so I will just say: Grigorss, I'm with ya on the KNUTELLA! and the Knut-worst.
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Dave W. - 2007-04-20 12:04:47
I suppose my dangerous idea is "Being happy isn't a particularly interesting or worthy goal in life." I have nothing against happiness per se but I think the happy=good, sad=bad feeds into our consumer culture in a very unhealthy way and has kind of hijacked the mental health of the nation. Mental health is, in general, much better at a certain level of crappiness. During WWII, people seeking psychiatric help in this nation dipped way down. (Not to be confused with actually being in combat, which is bound to screw with yer head.)
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Paula - 2007-04-20 12:25:47
I know where you're coming from, but I actually think it's the other way around: our society rewards and fetishizes depression, sadness, dissatisfaction, etc. We've discussed this on this very forum before.

During WWII, people seeking psychiatric help in this nation dipped way down

This doesn't tell us much. People also stopped wearing nylons. And back then, you had to be fairly bonkers to seek psychiatric help. Now psychologists are just part of the average team of care-takers: you got your dentist, your shrink, your car mechanic.
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Greg - 2007-04-20 12:37:20
Dave--I may be misunderstanding what you're saying. Are you talking about happiness as a goal or pleasure as a goal? Many people do equate pleasure and gratification, particularly the instant sort, with happiness. There is nothing worthy about that sort of goal at all. Happiness though, isn't synonomous with pleasure and gratification. I don't know though... depends on what you mean by happiness.
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iwombat - 2007-04-20 12:41:18
There's an interesting theory, maybe it's a dangerous idea !? that the depths of our intelligence comes more from the depths of sadness than from happiness, happy people don't need to figure out, to make sense of, to understand and explain the world, they can just be...
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Greg - 2007-04-20 12:43:14
Paula--totally agreed, along with cynicism, bitterness, jealousy and general hard-assed-ness. (This has been one of those exchanges where I wish every single person was sitting around a big table.)
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Greg - 2007-04-20 12:57:39
>>>if you think it's cool and smart to be sad, of course that's what you're going to gravitate toward<<< I call this the Bukowski Syndrome, but any other writer or artist name might apply. The fetishism of grief is really huge amongst patrons of the arts, particularly surrounding novelists and poets.
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Philip - 2007-04-20 12:59:38
Hmmm....I think contemporary corporate/consumer culture now clinicizes and "treats" (for profit, of course) emotional states (sadness, dissatisfaction) that are the actually the sane and natural responses of our nervous systems to the dehumanizing effects of corporate/consumer culture itself. (Marilynne Robinson likens it to gulping morphine so you can sleep on a bed of nails.) I don't know where sadness is fetishized (not a word, Paula!) outside of youngish artist's enclaves, but it sure isn't the mainstream American way.
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Greg - 2007-04-20 13:13:56
I've got a dangerous idea related to all this: Humans haven't yet biologically adapted to our lifestyle and it causes physical, mental and emotional stress that we then have to treat the symptoms of with science and medicine.
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Bina - 2007-04-20 14:02:23
we're doing a lot better today than we were fifty thousand years ago when we lived only until 30 and then were eaten by cave lions or whatever. A lot of the illnesses we see is a result of humans living a lot longer than they were originally meant to do. A doctor once told me that many people eventually end up with cancer if they live long enough just as a result of getting old and the body degenerating. Don't quote me on that - I could be remembering it wrong - but I think that humans come born fully equipped with the potential to handle everything that life throws our way - physical, mental, and emotional. It's just a matter of being dilligent enough to search out those resources and actively - and with DISCIPLINE - pursue a kind of lifestyle which makes the quality of your life as good as it can be.
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iwombat - 2007-04-20 14:06:44
I don't really mean it as a type (happy person/sad person) and many of the most talented creative people I've known have seemed full of joy, especially when engaged in their talent and creativity, I just think there might be benifits from our darker moments... I am also in the camp that feels that our culture, and this is the comercial, mainstream culture, not the artistic subculture, does promote a questionable positivism, "an optimistic consumer is a ready consumer"
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grigorss - 2007-04-20 14:22:36
Paula: I know what you mean by saying that our society fetishises sadness; the real shame of it is, that it does so in a dead-end kind of way; without putting it in the context of of some larger, necessary experience that leads to: acceptance, carthesis, wisdom even. So, (and undoubtedly I am now damned in your eyes) count me in as a proponent of sadness; hopefully not in a fetishistic way, though.

Why, oh why can't society fetishize something really worthwhile -- like KNUTELLA!
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Greg - 2007-04-20 14:25:41
Grigorss--If it's any consolation, all my fetishes are fairly old fashioned and conventional... you know, leather, priest costumes and power tools.
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Greg - 2007-04-20 14:26:42
Liquid latex is really cool also.
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Bebe Fete - 2007-04-20 14:46:21
Perhaps we need a dictionary, Paula, because I think we're talking about different things entirely. I was talking about the range of human endeavor, in a very general way (laundry, singing, pumping gas, cooking). To me, leisure, especially when contrasted with work, does not mean being indolent. It refers to any activity that is not necessary for survival. I agree that discipline is a necessary part of a happy (or at least, more or less satisfying) life. On the other hand, discipline alone won't always keep one upbeat and focused. I like to eat food that is good for me, it tastes good, it feels good, it can't be merely a chore.

wombat, an otherwise annoying boss once said to me, "The bigger the brain, the greater the pain." I tend to agree.
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Philip - 2007-04-20 14:47:16
Or imagine a world without nylons!
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Greg - 2007-04-20 14:51:31
My dad wouldn't have made it through the 70s without double knits! But seriously... you just nearly made me cry.
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iwombat - 2007-04-20 14:58:56
Now I'm probably a pretty disiplined person, but at a certian point, in my musical life, after a decade or more of extremely disiplined effort, I decided that disipline, was not enough, more, that it's not quite the ideal thing at all, I decided that what is needed, is desire, intrinsic, true desire. Not will, but love, at every moment, for every note, perhaps one can be disiplined in the search for the sources of this desire.
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Bebe Fete - 2007-04-20 15:00:55
Wow, I posted that without reloading, so I feel like my response is behind the discussion.

Bukowski didn't think it was cool and smart to be sad. He was a genuinely miserable guy (horribly abused by his father ). His work explores depression and degradation and failure, and it's wonderfully, inspiringly human, because you see the gentle, honest, funny, hopeful person under all that, and not because he had some transformative experience that turned him into a happier person.

I think our culture pushes happiness as a goal, and maybe what some perceive as an emphasis on depression is just the flipside of that, or the result of it, or a reaction to it, or an actual product of our emphasis on attaining a happy life. You can't be working on being happy if you're not not happy in some way, and you sposed to be working on yourself...
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Greg - 2007-04-20 15:01:01
Jesus... I looked back on my last post and thought I wrote double-knuts. Damn you and your Knutella, grigorss!!!!
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Greg - 2007-04-20 15:05:31
Bebe--I was really referring to his fans. They fall into 2 camps, I believe--those who love his work (real admirers) and then then those that love his image... the tortured artist thing... the fetishism and romanticizing of his sorrow.
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grigorss - 2007-04-20 15:10:15
Greg; please do kn�t take the name of our blessed KNUTELLA in vain. Thank you.
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�The Jestaplero! - 2007-04-20 15:20:00
For some reason I thought the discussion was moving over to Paula's most recent post, but now I see I was mistaken. I posted this response to Greg: I've got a dangerous idea related to all this: Humans haven't yet biologically adapted to our lifestyle and it causes physical, mental and emotional stress that we then have to treat the symptoms of with science and medicine. I wouldn't rate that a "dangerous idea" so much as an observations "so unquestionably true as to be painfully obvious." Then I saw my comment, and added this: My comment, now posted, seems unintentionally snide. I don't think your point, Greg, is obvious as in trite, it's really quite different: I find it undoubtedly so and yet for some reason, apparently not universally grasped and acknowledged. I think that's what I meant.
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Greg - 2007-04-20 15:23:39
Cool blog you've got there Jestaplero! Yeah, I've been thinking a lot lately about being a farmer, and I'll avoid the obvious joke about fertilizer.
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Greg - 2007-04-20 15:35:26
Jestaplero--I believe children are still being born with innate traits and talents that are incompatible with our lifestyle, whether ahead or behind. Children whom we now label as being afflicted with some syndrome or condition, might very well be dominant and superior were the circumstances different.
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Paula - 2007-04-20 16:13:20
"The bigger the brain, the greater the pain." I tend to agree

No one gets through life without a good dose of pain, no matter what their intelligence level. Look at Anna Nicole Smith.
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�The Jestaplero! - 2007-04-20 16:51:10
Thanks, Greg! I'm a little lacking in commentors these days, so please feel free to opine forth! A rather mundane example of your observation is the theory put forth by Dr Barry Sears, author of the "Zone" diet and inventor of AZT. His theory is that our digestive systems evolved in the time before agriculture, and that if you eat "like a caveman" - lean proteins, vegetables, fruit, nuts and berries - you won't just shed weight but your system will operate at top efficiency. He says the reason obesity is on the rise despite our national obssession with "low fat" foods and weight loss is that our bodies simply can't process all the factory foods and processed grains that came after the advent of agriculture and after our digestive systems had pretty much stopped evolving and were fully-formed. That's why the "low carb"/Atkins fad diets work at least at first, but Atkins is a reckless bastardization of the Zone. The Zone works great, if you can manage to follow it.
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Greg - 2007-04-20 17:07:50
I would argue with Dr. Sears that the system is still evolving but not up to date, and that different biologies are inherent to different regions of origin. But yeah, I think that's the key and it goes beyond diet. Perhaps the kids labelled as ADHD and this and that will be the Alpha breeders of the post-nuclear scene? Perhaps our huge brains will become a liability?
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Greg - 2007-04-20 19:03:19
Cool, I've got your blog bookmarked Senor (sans tilde because I can't remember my foreign language key strokes).
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Bob - 2007-04-21 01:24:52
Erich, that's one of the, well, stupidest criticisms of atheism I've ever seen. People believe what they are inclined to believe... and there's not much point in being self-righteous, or making quasi-logical generalizations, about that. Criticizing the results of what people believe, there can be a point to.... (But, one camp does have a stake in what you believe being the more important thing... and, I'm inclined to be suspicious of that.)
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Greg - 2007-04-21 06:20:04
Bob--not that Erich can't speak for himself, but it seems a valid criticism to me, even from a scientific standpoint. It's one thing to not believe specific religious tracts based on scientific evidence, but to use science as a basis for not believing in the possibility of a God or Gods makes no sense at all, and not only exhibits blind faith approximating any or every religious belief, but discredits science as well. Just look at what the best minds of science believed wholeheartedly just a generation ago that has been disproved in our lifetime. I'm inclined to be suspicious of anybody who believes in any "inarguable truth." Being agnostic is reasonable when considering any religious "truth" but atheism and atheists defy reason.
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Jon der Neathica - 2007-04-21 06:43:11
A few words in defense of atheism... The most common argument against atheism is that it is presumptuous to assert that there is no God. However, if there are a hundred creation stories and deities in human history (more of the latter than the former, I know), then it is equally presumptuous to say that one of these is true and 99 are false. As a person of faith, you're making the same gamble that I am (unless you are a Unitarian, in which case you've covered all bets). To extend the metaphor, an agnostic is just someone who says, "I fold."
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chris - 2007-04-21 09:54:16
Well said Jon.
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Dave W. - 2007-04-21 10:12:37
I'm back. Had a rehearsal with a new bassist last night. Went well! Anyway, what I think I was getting at yesterday with the whole pursuit of happiness thing is a more general railing against the untouchable status of emotions. It's generally assumed that if you feel something, anything!, then whatever feeling you're experiencing is important. And it's turned into a general culture of dissatisfaction because whenever people are not at that moment feeling happy they assume something is terribly wrong that they have to fix.

This might be OK if emotions weren't such blunt instruments to figure out what's really going on in our heads. If you think of the range of thoughts and experiences people have and then the range of emotions we recognize, there's a huge discrepancy. I think this results in a disconnect between our ability to produce emotions and our ability to interpret emotions, even the emotion we just produced! There's a lot that feeds into our emotional state but emotions are usually interpreted very simply.

Our culture seems to place heavy importance on every person's individual emotional state and encourages quick fixes to any negative emotional state. (Whenever I feel bad I just look at Knut pictures!) The downside is a kind of selfishness where every person takes their own emotional state very seriously and thinks that it's of paramount importance to express every passing emotion. In general this just leads to people behaving badly but occasionally leads to someone who thinks it's totally justified to go and gun down a bunch of classmates.
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chris - 2007-04-21 10:20:57
Greg: As a scientist and an Atheist I would like to defend both. I am not sure what your definition of God is, but if its the standard notion of an active force that is omnipotent and eternal then science is very well positioned to tackle the question of existence. Science is not about absolutes; truth is a probability distribution. Given this its not unreasonable to come down on the side of being an Atheist. There is simply no evidence of an active and omnipotent agent, despite 2,000 years of trying to find one. What does exist is a pretty good sense that the Universe is a self evolving closed system; and that life as we know its is a result of that. There is no internal inconsistency that requires an outside agent.
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Paula - 2007-04-21 11:38:15
In general this just leads to people behaving badly but occasionally leads to someone who thinks it's totally justified to go and gun down a bunch of classmates.

My disagreement of this observation leads me to my next dangerous idea: there is almost nothing we can learn from things like the Va Tech shootings. They just happen, we grieve, and we move on.
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grigorss - 2007-04-21 13:44:22
While there is certainly no evidence of the existence of God, and the lack of said evidence makes it quite reasonable to say "this phenomenon certainly doesn't seem to provide any examples", that doesn't lead to proof of non-existence. A curious fact of scientific truths (in addition to the fact that they are not absolute) is that they can only address, with any reasonable assurance, clearly definable, clearly observable phenomena, something we can see, or see the effects of (as in gravity); the problem w/ the application of science towards this investigation is the lack of the above; a clear definition that seems agreeable upon general consensus, and a resultant phenomenon that the scientific community can agree is the product thereof. Further complicating this is the fact that, if 'God is everything' (as some definitions suggest) than we are not in a very good position to observe it.
We do not 'see' everything; despite all the advances of science, far from it, I'm afraid to say.
Another complication, if God is omnipotent (as some definitions suggest), than it can choose not to be observed.
Why would 'God' do this? If 'God' is everything is it even possible to observe it? If that's the case, why were we created with such a limited ability to appreciate 'God'?

Don't know...
Not enough information...

So, the short answer is, "I fold".
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chris - 2007-04-21 16:26:22
Grigorss Yes, it is about definition (and that is why I defined God in the prior post) The crucial issue in the definition is if God is active ongoing force. If your definition ( mine does) includes God being active then Science is a correct tool to study. By that definition I am an atheist. If your definition does not include the God being active then most thought on the matter is waisted. Even more waisted is faith in that sort of deity, which amounts to intolerance to new information.
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Jon der Neathica - 2007-04-21 20:35:12
A famous person (I can't remember who) pointed out the fallacy of the argument used by Grigorss: that the lack of evidence of God's existence doesn't prove that there is no God. I think it's called the cosmic teapot argument. There is no evidence that a teapot orbits the universe, but you can't prove that there isn't one.
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Philip - 2007-04-21 21:48:48
Advances in science are usually the result of profound paradigm shifts (yes, Kuhn) in which our entire perspective is raised a degrees higher, and sound older theories are not discarded but encompassed by the increase in perspective, like Russian dolls. It seems parochial to believe that the feelings and consciousness embodied on this planet along a continuum of living creatures is the discrete outcome of some glorious accident. Nested hierarchies, from galaxies down to atoms, and respectable mainstream science, albiet at its outer edge, seem to point toward total continuity of all matter, and the existence of strong, anti-entropic forces organizing matter into ever higher states across the entire cosmos. If we are conscious, if we feel, then the cosmos must think and feel, almost by definition. I think maybe the spiritual impulse felt across all known human cultures is an intuitive grasp of and connection to this vast unfolding purpose. That this impulse has been corrupteed into the institutions of organized religions, institutions prey to all the weakness and venality of mankind, should not in any way (necessarily) lead to an out of hand dismissal of the instinctual understanding that underlies it. Though it might make one wary of people with money, power and a nasty knack for exploiting this inherent bit of moral leverage.
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2fs - 2007-04-22 00:42:24
The burden is always on those seeking to prove "X exists" rather than "X does not exist." The problem I have with some of these arguments above is the presumption assumed that when "X" equals "God," more weight ought to be given; that there's some reason to logically assume that particular X exists, rather than in any other case where the question is "Does X exist?" So all the discussion about the "arrogance" of those who assume God does not exist is, well, arrogant...in that it for some reason assumes the burden of proof is on those who do not accept an unproven statement about the existence of this particular X. The argument that we should, because the existence of X when X equals God makes X more important than when X equals, say, a particular quantity of jelly beans in a jar, itself assumes the existence. Once you've established existence, then you can assess importance. You can't assume it beforehand. (Note that religious belief, the cultural significance of religion, etc., are not the issue: those things clearly exist, regardless of whether God does.)
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chris - 2007-04-22 06:47:36
Now that we routed them God people lets go rough up on them Dog lovers....
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Bob - 2007-04-22 16:46:26
What's the word for don't care (as opposed to don't know) if God exists, out beyond my understanding? After all, if God's all that, I can't imagine God's insecure. It just seems that "God" is just a lot less inconceivable to consciousness than no longer having consciousness is.
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Bob - 2007-04-22 20:07:02
Oh, and Paula, I agree that the greater the brain, the greater the pain isn't necessarily so, but I don't think Anna Nicole exemplifies that, cuz she was capable of a sly (albeit sloppy) sense of the absurd, that indicated some intelligence. ...As opposed to her mother, who appears to be a true dingbat, though less manic.
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Paula - 2007-04-22 20:44:24
Wow, I go to Throgs Neck, Bronx for a day, and suddenly no one's believin' in God or emotions or nothin'.

I do believe in God, but I have no desire to explain why or how, or to argue the case. I'm ok, you're ok.
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Bob - 2007-04-23 15:02:52
C'mon, I went out on a limb and admitted to believing that Anna Nicole had some intelligence... which some would say is quite a leap of faith... and you say we're believin' in nothin'? In what definitely will, if it happens, fall into the "That's just wrong" (no matter Which side you're on) department, though, I predict that within a decade, a cult will have formed around baby Danielle, or whatever Anna Nicole's daughter's name is.
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Greg - 2007-04-30 15:29:18
>>>There is no internal inconsistency that requires an outside agent. ------------------------------- Chris, I don't know if you'll ever scroll back to this--but--the inconsistency exists not in the concept of the Earth as an evolving and self-sustaining system, but in science and the history of science. Given what we know now that was considered heretical in a scienctific sense (and not a religious sense) just a couple generations ago, it's just way too soon to say that there can be no God... and I don't mean God in a Judeao-Christian sense per se, but at least some kind of "collective spirit" beyond corporeal being. Certainly the Biblical timeline has been proven ludicrous, BUT... Just seems to me that too much focus has been put on disproving rather than finding what might be. Thomas Kuhn would be pissed.
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