rambler scrambler. (god. part 2: what is it with - us?)

When we look at the relation between the process of human civilization and the developmental or educative process of individual human beings, we shall conclude without much hesitation that the two are very similar in nature, if not the very same process applied to different kinds of object.
-freud, the valley of the dolls

t long last, a follow-up to the groundbreaking treatise, god. part 1: what is it with that - guy?.

so what if that post was over a year ago? this is a timeless subject. there is no statute of limitations for ruminating on the big landlord; just ask zimmerman.

in part 1, i proffered an interpretation of god: god the artist. i passed it off as the interpretation, but thats just cuz i like to take a hard stand on things. that was only one possible iteration of god; there are infinite others. this is important to note because in this here part im gonna explain why i believe in god, generally speaking, and i dont want anyone to take these posts in tandem and disavow this general belief on the grounds that it led to that one specific interpretation. it opened the door for that interpretation, is all.

here's my deal, in a nutshell.

when i was a child, i believed in god. i dont know if i believed in god before i learned of the judeo-christian idea of god (ie, i dont know if my belief was 100% innate). and i dont remember whether or not i believed in the judeo-christian image of god (ie, the-old-dude-with-white-beard-who-watches-over-us). but i remember believing in something. maybe it wasnt something that necessarily 'watches over us,' but perhaps it was something that could watch over us, if it so wanted.

bottom line - as a youngen, i believed there was something extra in the world - something i couldnt see, but that i could feel. this was god. this let me feel like i was really tapping into a higher power when i was bar mitzvahed, even if, again, it wasnt the exact higher power who gets all those hits in the torah.

then, prolly sometime after entering high school, i started fancying myself something of an 'intellectual' (ok, it was definitely after entering high school). i was growin up, readin up, studyin up, debatin up, new people meetin up, and i started to assign weight to things i could see, and to siphon off significance from things i 'felt.' believing in god all of a sudden seemed hackneyed and quaint and similar adjectives, and - in my misguided precociousness, i felt this - chickenish. only people who rejected the transcendent correctness of science, or who lacked a decent education, believed in god. only religious fools believed in god. so what if i had felt it as a kid; that was like believing in santa claus. you couldnt get girls at stuy by believing in god (unless you were asian and belonged to seekers).

this abated a bit in college (it abitted. [take it easy, secret service.]) basically, i learned the difference btwn atheist and agnostic, and i decided that the more erudite, thoughtful position was to be nostic. being certain that there was no god, i reasoned, was just as naive as being certain that there was. allowing for the possibility of both, being agnostic was more than a nice place to hide; it was a place wherein i felt i could settle down, build a home.

then, sometime in the past few years, i went back to my youthful belief in god. my belief in something. b.c when i take my cognitive thought out of the equation, i still feel something.

i have come to look at my believe-dont believe-maybe believe curve as out/overthinking myself. i think we possess intuition and emotion for reasons, and completely disavowing those things when it comes to god is just as naive as putting all your eggs in those baskets. suffice it to say, thinking about the issue of god has now led me to come around and let myself feel things about god. ironically, this seems to be the more 'thoughtful' approach.

now, the other day i was talking with gregor mendelpsychotic about all this, and he posited that while a belief in god is not a symptom of naivety, it nevertheless might well be an evolutionary/biological mechanism. ie, it might be our highly evolved brains' way of surreptitiously making us feel safe, or making us want to form groups (safety in numbers).

this might be true. it's one of those things that could never be disproved. and to be fair, and i just thought of this, maybe nick's death played a role in my return to 'god.'

regardless, im back.

this brings me to my final pt, which ties in to the freudian quote at the top.

i remember reading, or hearing, somewhere, that throughout history, you could tell which was the most powerful institution in a society by who was erecting the tallest buildings. think about it: first, the tallest building in a town was the church; then, later, the tallest building was the statehouse, the capitol. finally, now, the tallest buildings are commercial buildings.

spiritual-governmental-commercial.

if what freud said is true - that 'the relation between the process of human civilization and the developmental or educative process of individual human beings...are very similar' - and i think it is true, then my little god curve is gonna play out for society as a whole.

im not saying were gonna return to a world where the pope runs the whole show and the bible outsells harry potter, but we are gonna get/return to being more spiritual. you can see it already. notice: ten years ago, how many people did you know who practiced yoga? how many do you know now?

joan of arcadia. eli stone.

ten years ago, these shows would have been laughable. maybe they still are, but you get my pt.

take holistic medicine; it used to carry a stigma. it still does, but its smaller.

there are other examples, but this post is already too long, and more importantly, i cant think of them right now. the pt is, we humans, as a whole, have bound ourselves up in a sepulchre of empiricism and analysis, and it's getting a little stuffy in there. its unnatural - for a reason.

theres gonna be a rebound. its already started.