Blasphemy

I was thinking the other day that blasphemy is one of the most powerful and empowering things imaginable.

Think about it. Blasphemy is, for lack of a better word, "thoughtcrime". One is forbidden to think, say or express something that is offensive about a "sacred" item or concept.

To do so is to needle the ultimate powers of the universe.

Or so we are told by other people. If something is "sacred" it is sacred to someone. If I don't find it sacred I am not beholden to respecting it or worrying that saying sacrilegious things about it.

I am an atheist (now) and a ong-time sufferer of OCD. During my days as a believer I often feared that I might think or say something blasphemous. Offend God, whatever.

But it was an imaginary fear. I had no evidence that God existed, but I was told by other people not to say or think blasphemous stuff. It was quite scary to imagine the possible bad that could befall one who broke this mandate.

One of the ways I try to deal with OCD is to push through the fear, to habituate to those stimuli that are particularly painful. Of course it's not always possible. When it comes to religion the hardest part for me was to suggest that there may not even be a God. Surely a blasphemous thought. Certainly an "evil" thought!

Still, even today, years after my "deconversion" I still find blasphemous thoughts hard to get through. So well-ingrained is the opprobrium of that. I have a tough time saying anything particularly harsh about religion to my religious friends for fear of hurting them. And to what end? To make myself feel "strong" that I can say blasphemous things knowing no lightning will come strike me?

The worst part of religious thought for me is that so many of the "best" threats religion carries is the "unknown distant future". Teach a child that they can do something horrible that will not result in any known punishment until some secret time and secret place that no one will ever see (after death).

Maybe training children up to have these kinds of fears is the ultimate blasphemy. If nothing is sacred there would be no blasphemy, but aren't "thoughts" sacred things that no one else should be able to stall or halt or control in you? Isn't that the ultimate desecration of the most holy we have? Our own thoughts controlled by others?

Wilco and the End of the World

Recently I have been listening to the new Wilco album (Wilco (The Album)), note here my expert use of nested parentheses.

I like Wilco, but I'm not fan of "poetry" qua poetry. I do love a turn of phrase or moving lyric. And while I recognize that Jeff Tweedy is a new poet laureate of alt rock, I try not to get too bogged down in the "poetry" of Wilco. They are a great band and put out some excellent music.

And Tweedy does have a gift with the lyric.

In one of the songs on the new album there's the lyric

"Come on children
you're acting like children.
Every generation
Thinks it's the end of the world"
-You Never Know

It's a great lyric because it just sort of comes out at you and makes you think. Especially since it's surrounded by some great music (Nels Cline is still on guitar on this album, so you know it's got some great guitar parts).

What I love about this lyric is that it does make me think. I think it is part of our human nature to think we are the ones who will be around when the party is finally over, when the lights go out.

I think back to my grandma who was born in 1901 and lived to the age of 94. Throughout much of the time I knew her she was convinced that the end times were upon us. But she was never morose about it. She was never a "downer" on the topic, it just was what it was. She seemed to be one of the more psychologically stable people in my family! Certainly the one everyone could get along with.

But I realized she spent a great portion of her life thinking she was among the last people. I think, in a sense, we all are prone to that. Hence the nice long list of apocalyptic thoughts from across the span of human history (A Brief History of the Apocalypse).

We are either prone to some sickened wishful thinking that we are the ultimate humans (in the sense of "last", not greatest necessarily) or some fear that we are somehow responsible for the last act. We are paying the bill set aside during our forebears time or we are the ones who "finally screwed it all up".

But possibly moreso, that we are going to see some fundamental change because everything has gotten so abhorrent.

Who knows what our collective consciousness is on this?

I know I'm prone to occasional bouts of "eschatology". I believe in global climate change and recognize there's a possibility we may be acting too slowly to make the necessary changes to save ourselves. I believe that we are at or near peak oil and may soon see our economic structures start to decay as we lose access to ever-increasing volumes of this cheap energy source. And I wonder if, indeed, we are seeing a massive turning point in how we will live, or at least how future generations will live.

I also recognize in myself this need for near constant "change". I grow bored with what is around. Wouldn't it be amazing if there was a "hard reset" to reality and we all had to start over or had to survive some new way? A great leveling of the playing field as the world is overturned for everyone?

In summation:

It's great when a lyric makes you think. And a well-crafted lyric in a great musical surround is thing of beauty. And this is a lyric that provides near endless opportunities for me think.

Science F

Well, apparently the folks at SciFi networks wanted a brand all their own so they are changing their name (CNN Linky):

But the funniest part of the article, IMHO, was this quote:

"The last thing we want to do is alienate our core audience," he added. With the
new name, shows such as "Galactica" can be exposed to a wider audience, one not
scared away by all that "Sci Fi" connotes ("space and aliens and the future," in
Howe's words).

Uhhhhh, isn't that PRECISELY what "Galactica" IS?

Personally I lost interest in the SciFi channel when they dropped MST3K years ago and stopped showing real sci fi movies in preference to their own "Sci Fi Originals" which appear to be made specifically to be mocked on "The Soup".

Doomed to the "Long Tail"

Powerlaw distribution of blog popularity explained!

http://shirky.com/writings/powerlaw_weblog.html

Simply phenomenal.

Sad, but wonderful.