Get an evangelist thinking

15 Sunday Jun 2014

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What better advice can I provide this father’s day than spiritual guidance? Yet instead of telling my grown children what to believe by way of doctrine, I would rather provide some tips on how to avoid what I call the ‘scripture thumpers’. These are the folks who come armed with an authoritative book they use to justify their conclusions and/or hit you over the head with if logic isn’t prevailing. They are friendly enough, usually, and they know they are right. How they look at you depends on whether you’re a ‘saint’ or an ‘ain’t’ from the perspective of their sacred scriptures.

I was a Bible thumper in my twenties, so I know the pattern. I went door to door, preached in churches, in malls, in the streets – basically anywhere there was a relatively captive audience to frighten with notions of not being saved, of going to hell. Gratefully, I came out of that praxis. I learned a few things along the way I’d like to share with you. If you come across an bible thumping evangelist, here are some issues to bring up that can put them on their heels, and hopefully get them thinking about the positions they so confidently assert:

  • Did the resurrected Jesus have blood? You see, blood atonement is the whole crux of the matter – if blood doesn’t atone for sin, then the crucifixion – and Christianity – has no basis. Blood atonement is actually a pagan concept that goes back to before the time of Abraham. It’s the idea that killing one creature can buy the life of another, in front of God. What kind of God needs blood to forgive sins? Does that make any sense? As if life is a zero-sum game. If the blood of Jesus was so precious that it could buy the life of all present, past and future believers, how could it be spontaneously regenerated at the resurrection? And if the resurrected Christ didn’t have blood, how did his body even function? If it was no longer human, then the resurrected Christ was by definition a radical discontinuity from the carnal human who died – i.e. a whole other being – in which case the question about whether it was the same body – with our without blood – is irrelevant. His new body is a fabrication, even if it was a close facsimile. If it can be fabricated like the Fed prints money, how is it so precious? The notion of corporeal continuity breaks down – you might as well believe in reincarnation.
  • What kind of God would create people able to suffer eternally? This is an age old rebuttal that doesn’t lose cogency. Hypothetically, one can understand God permanently annihilating souls that didn’t make the cut – but keeping souls around just to torment them sounds like the conclusion of medieval theology and doesn’t pass the sniff test. A good God would not do that; and if God does that, he’s not worth believing in.
  • A single book serves a single state – whether it is Constantine’s council of Nicea early in the fourth century, or King James’ Bible council early in the 17th century, any time there has been a single book created to prescribe the bounds of belief, it has been in the service of political hegemony. Plurality of beliefs is seen as divisive. In fact, cultures change, and so do their values and the mythical stories required to support those shifting values. Locking on an old book of explanations in the face of new and more differentiated understanding of the world makes the faithful archaic in their superstitions, narrow and intolerant. Rather, we should have a system that allows for the evolution of spiritual understanding, which necessarily means new sacred stories to support them.
  • Why spend so much energy explaining conundrums? The Bible is full of them – free will vs. predestination; the role of women, of slaves; our posture towards government; teaching on divorce; polygamy, stoning and genocide. At some point the scriptures endorse, contradict or do both to these tendencies. Those who hold that the entire Holy Book (from end to end) is the Word of God have a lot of explaining to do, and it’s not entirely believable. The faithful need full time theologians to reconcile the points of view, have to continuously convince themselves about how these contradictions hang together, and have lots of meetings to drill in the teaching. That’s a huge amount of unproductive energy expended just to appease a conscience and provide a foundation for doing good works. Why not start from a position of peace and goodness, and nullify the need to reconcile conundrums?
  • All intractable wars over the millennia can be traced back, for the most part, to one or more sides holding on to beliefs about an exclusive way to God. Think about it – if Christians, Jews and Muslims weren’t exclusive about how to get to God, we wouldn’t have religious wars. In an ever more crowded planet, holding on the exclusive beliefs that only alienate others and keep them from learning about other cultures is not morally justifiable. We have to genuinely not only tolerate, but find reason to share humanity with those who believe differently. The exclusive scripture mentality necessarily works against that and is, in my mind, a root of evil behavior.
  • Creationists see themselves as ‘other’ than creation. The idea that nature is there for our benefit, to be exploited and exhausted because we’re entitled to it, and that God will anyway come back with a new earth, has led to abuse of the planet. The whole notion of Manifest Destiny that drove early American expansionism is an example of this. Buffalo herds decimated for sport. The attitudes continue today with our exploitation of forests and the hunting of species to extinction for vain reasons. On the other hand, if we see ourselves as being related to and directly dependent on a healthy ecosystem, we will act differently. Indefinite growth on a finite planet will not be assumed.
  • Take the religious language out of the religious narratives and see if the stories are believable. For example, instead of saying that ‘the Christ was crucified, died, preached to the underworld, was then resurrected on the third day, and ascended to heaven, as witnessed by the saints, to be seated at the right hand of God the Father . . . ‘ try a narrative like this: ‘A middle aged blue collar carpenter turned street preacher who broke the law was tortured and killed as an object lesson to his followers. It is alleged that he came back to life by a handful of followers, without evidence. They say he was able to appear and disappear at will, and was eventually elevated into the upper atmosphere without a vehicle or space suit, where he sat down next to his dad on a platform in the sky. . . ‘ How does this story scan? It’s essentially the same narrative without the religious jargon. Did you find it barely suitable for a tabloid? If it sounds absurd, perhaps it is. If Jesus really did sit down in outer space, and he has a human body, how does he breathe? Where exactly is he? Why is he just sitting there for thousands of years?
  • As a preacher you are asking people to make the most important decision they could possibly make, namely to commit their lives to a religious purpose, based on what? Something you can’t verify, which has no evidence beyond hearsay. For example, it was just a handful of grief-stricken witnesses who saw the empty tomb. If they had colluded or had been deluded, and somehow lied about that one event, the entire Christian believe system falls apart. Think about it – millennia of institution building with millions placing their faith in a religion and fervently believing in a resurrection that never happened! Our courts would not send a man to death row based on hearsay – how can you ask everyone to give their lives to a cause based on the narrative of those who had most to gain? 
  • Every culture experiences miracles – what makes the Bible’s miracles from God and the others’ from the devil? Read, for example, ‘the Autobiography of a Yogi’ and you’ll see India’s stories about people teleporting and being in two places at once. There are many mythologies out there that narrate miracles – how can your miracles be evidence that your way is the only way to God? If that were true, then their miracles would validate their way to God. So either both are true, or their miracles are from the devil. Great way to make friends! Miracles, even if true, cannot be seen as definitive evidence because they are by definition subject to interpretation.
  • The ‘N-Level’ problem – even if Jesus and the disciples were not lying and colluding to create a cult, even if they did hear voices and experience spiritual beings and faithfully obeyed and reported what they said – there’s no absolute proof that those beings one level above them weren’t deceiving the prophets and their disciples. The same can be said for any number of levels above. For example, even if Jesus and the disciples are truthful, and the layer of beings above them were also truthful, we can’t prove that the next level up was not being deceptive. If our flawed society of finite people with conflicting and even questionable motivations can create scams, form groups of hackers who steal identities; if our own government can spy on us without congressional oversight and criticize foreign entities for putting ‘back doors’ in our computer hardware all the while they are intercepting hardware orders to do exactly that; if our own elected representatives and the government whom we finance with our taxes can so deceive us, what makes us think that more powerful beings one or two levels up in the ontology are any less corrupt?

So my friends, this is the advice of a father who has graduated – don’t let a scripture Evangelist tell you what to believe. Ultimately you know in your heart and being what you must believe. My advice is to be still, know yourself, think for yourself and be open to experiencing God. I left the scriptures behind that I had spent years memorizing. Yet during my missionary stint I did have spiritual experiences, and met men and women of God who exuded goodness in a way that cannot be justified by reasoning about doctrine. Godliness does not validate doctrine; it validates the human connection to God. There is goodness, there is a spiritual realm and humans are capable of living in harmony with each other and the planet. Find those values, create sacred stories around them, and share them in a community. This is true organic and agile religion.

— copyright © 2014 Roy Zuniga 

Values Spawn Religion  

06 Sunday Apr 2014

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We often think of religion as the source of our values. We can’t leave Christianity (or Buddhism, or Islam, or Judaism) because we’d cast adrift into a morass of values, not all of which are good. We think of religions as a safe place, where we can come back to – a place where the pastors and leaders can set us straight if we wander, just as they themselves can be set straight if they wander. All of this is based on the values and principles in the Holy Book of whatever religion we follow.

Yet as many of us grow old in religion, we come to realize that we tend to filter, interpret and otherwise mold ‘religious’ and ‘righteous’ practices to conform with how we want to behave. We do largely what we want and pay lip service to a religion. At some point we are living our own interpretation – and if the particular denomination doesn’t suit our taste, we move on to find one that does. In fact, you can become more conservative or liberal at will by joining a church that gives it legitimacy. We fool ourselves into thinking we are obeying God by conforming to the church, forgetting all too quickly that we chose that church. It conformed to us – or our parents we inherited it from – before we conformed to it.

Given this reality, what have we to fear leaving a religion? Do we really lose values if in fact our values have driven the choice of church? Do values and principles in fact go deeper than religion? I suspect they do, and that religions are a way of codifying values and behaviors for a society. Religion is a way of aligning a group of individuals towards the same shared behaviors.

It only follows then, that we can and should come together with kindred spirits and likewise create our own structures and norms to codify the desired behaviors. Creating a religion is not playing God; on the contrary, it is very human. The values that drive it, however, should aspire toward a positive greater good. Where do these noble values come from ultimately? Whether instilled by a divine breath or simply the evolution based on the benefits they deliver, their well spring is the human heart.

The dynamics of religion, then, is about the dynamics of shared values and their manifestation into a socially sacred culture.

— copyright Roy Zuniga 2014

Creating the Greatest Art

16 Sunday Feb 2014

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by Roy Zuniga

Art has an impact. Without someone actually being touched by the work, who can say a painting is art? If it’s not perceived then it is just another object reflecting light. Any item can be seen; beauty is perceived. Art’s essential meaning does not register on a light sensor. Neither does everyone who views a work of art actually perceive its artistic import. The presence we think of being ‘in’ the work is actually only in the viewer’s mind – there is no objective presence in the paint and canvass. Of course, without a work there’s nothing to respond to. Light may reflect from the unobserved art like the sounds of the proverbial unwatched tree falling. Perception of the work as art is everything, which makes judging great art very subjective.

To excel as artists, we need to know what makes truly great art. This actually depends on what we value as individuals, which correlates to what we have learned to value as a culture. Cultural values can go sideways and degenerate. The question should really be ‘what great values should art embody well?’ These question forces us to think about what we need to value going forward as a population, and what stories are we going to develop to ingrain them in our psyche.

Myths, which carry a peoples fundamental beliefs, are manifested through art. Great art in turn has impact by embedding those cultural values and behaviors in our being. In other words, there is cycle that perpetuates certain values, with each generation spinning old myths in a new format. Think of how many incarnations of American superheroes have manifested themselves over the years.

We all participate in this cycle but many of us are not aware of how it’s working on us. Art is central. Impact art and you impact culture and ultimately civilization. Art can be an entry point for change to impact more suitable economic, technical or political decisions. Make people aware of values driving culture, and we have a wedge into this cycle of myth that allows us to adjust the direction of observer’s future choices.

Thus answering the question of what art is, and what great art should be, starts with identifying subjective values that are great. For me, having a sense of connectedness is a supremely good value to have. As do most people, I value a connection with other human beings and creation. This is the foundation for co-existence and long term sustainability. Of course as humans we connect best with our own kind. In my mind, the greatest art has to be the great portraits and figurative works that connect us with the personalities portrayed. So to me, a great work is:

Figurative art that makes us feel we are facing a personality.

To understand this higher calling for the artist, it will help to sort out some of the dimensions that make art excellent, and understand which dimension specifically takes art to that higher level:

  1. Historical import: art valued for its historical role and impact, not just for the merits of the work as art. Like classic cars, the value of the work increase because of scarcity and historical context.
  2. Technical mastery of the artist: the work astonishes us with innovation, competence, skill, execution of the paint and materials.
  3. Subject matter expertise: the work demonstrates deep knowledge of anatomy, perspective, foliage, topography, engineering, etc.
  4. Formal interest: The composition, how the eye is directed by shapes and teased by color, texture, perspective, golden proportions, balance, dynamism, etc. all work together for maximum impact in relation to the concept of the image.
  5. Narrative curiosity: the subject matter makes us think about events and a story. For example, it betrays the artist’s struggle, a fairy tale plot line or someone’s success. Something in the work’s subject or how it’s rendered elicits an involuntary response brings us into the context of the work emotionally. The rendering of a beggar boy, or little girl with a bird for example.
  6. Personal presence:  the most elusive quality – the work of art instigates the perception of a personal presence. Think master portrait. We come to respect and even empathize with the subject. That’s part of the beauty of portraits; the only sensitivity required is the ability to recognize other people!

It’s the last one – personal presence – which I’m most interested in. The others can be acquired through study and practice. Rendering personal presence, however, is a sort of alchemy that enables all kinds of mystical scenarios and raises questions about existence. Before we get into that, however, let’s review some of the dimensions of art that no matter how great don’t add up to great art on their own.

1. A dimension that I don’t think is a defining characteristic of the greatest art is historical import. The analogy is of course classic cars. Rare cars are more valuable because of how much of the original car is actually there, not by how well they function. Knock-offs made today my look just as good and be lighter, more efficient, safer, quieter, etc. and still not be worth what a fragile original is. Same for art – the perceptive impact of a medieval painting could be lesser than the work of a modern master, but because of its historical import, the medieval work could be worth more. It may have been the first painting to show two point perspective, for example.  

2. Neither is the differentiator having absolute mastery of the illusion. A pencil, a fruit, a hat, a bowl may seem to pop off the surface. We admire what a skilled craftsman can do and may be tempted to try the technique ourselves; after all, if it’s rational, it can be learned. We marvel at these works in the same way we marvel at fine woodworking or precise engineering. Aesthetic delight is in acknowledging the elevated actions of other humans, which somehow projects back on us. Ultimately a heroic effort on a ten foot hyper-realistic portrait is only that unless it also connects with our souls.

3. Medical text books have amazing art that illustrate anatomy in detail. Artistic anatomy books display a mastery of surface anatomy. Yet neither of these in and of themselves translate into us feeling a human connection with the subject matter, although the greatest masters demonstrate knowledge of human anatomy. The reverse is of course true. We may feel a presence in the work – a real empathy and connection at an emotional level. However, if the anatomy is off, we take points off.

4. The key differentiator is not the work’s ability to fool the mind into reacting as if it were encountering something. The mind assesses warm and cool greys and evaluates one to be ‘in front’, for example. The same for colors that are said to be acidic, hot, cool, airy, peaceful, etc.  Invoking these associations are an important tool in the artist’s kit. However, in and of themselves these stimulated associations are not the key differentiator. Advertisers use similar techniques to sell products and vacations. And a great work might be devoid of strong visual stimulation.

Neither do formal techniques differentiate great art. As artists we use all sort of gimmicks to trigger involuntary responses, like embedding primal geometry and the golden mean in the composition. Our mind can’t help but perceive the underlying structure, and this creates interest. It’s a way to hold attention on a work that otherwise might not have real depth of content we can connect to. In this category are letters in the background that we can’t help reading any more than a billboard when we’re stopped at a red light. Puzzles that work our sub-conscious can be delightful, and certainly a master portrait that also works in this dimension will be even more fascinating.

5. In a similar vein, an artist might leave marks in paint that are a testament to struggle, which is interesting as a biographical note, and fascinate us, pulling us into the drama. This pricks our curiosity about the plight of the artist and what he was thinking about and struggling with. The wrestled work provides an opportunity for empathy for the audience to be sure.

Aesthetic delight can also come from interpreting symbols in works, like detectives deciphering a Da Vinci code. We want to look for meaning in shapes, animals, coats of arms, etc. Investigative delights can certainly augment the aesthetic experience, as in for example, van Eyck’s ‘The Arnolfini Marriage’ painted in 1434. We can respond at many levels – the wedding narrative invokes our curiosity about the commitment; the symbolism of the dog, the slippers, etc.; the discovery of reflections in the mirror; the sublime execution and richness of contrasting red and green colors all provide us with entertainment. However, do we really feel we know the souls people represented? Or just that we know about them via the symbols?

6. I also don’t believe the greatest art can be achieved without a human component we can empathize with. Sure there are amazingly intimate still life painting like those of Richard Schmidt or Daniel Keys. However, the best still life painting dims when compared to an encounter with a portrait by Rembrandt or Velazquez because we, as humans, value an encounter with a real person above the encounter with a real fruit bowl.

The experience I’m referring to is not instigated empathy, i.e. like the feelings elicited by someone who is tugging your heart strings to get attention. That is not the highest calling for art because it is no more an encounter with a personality than passing by someone on the street whom we might feel for, but don’t deeply engage with. That’s not to say you can’t have a deep engagement through a great portrait of a beggar. That would happen despite the trappings of the subject’s circumstances.

So we’ve seen what can make for great art, but not what I’m really after with understanding the greatest art – art that you can connect with in your soul. When I encounter a Rembrandt or Velazquez portrait I feel a connection the person depicted. This experience is repeatable, although it will vary from observer to observer. What are we connecting to? There is no breathing person there. Here’s where it gets mysterious. If the significance in the recognition, then is the perception of an art work a kind of soul revival? Does it matter if the original subject doesn’t really get any benefit from our adulation of a work about the person? Does art truly immortalize?

Great art has a type of spirit that comes to life when you observe it. If you’ve ever stood mesmerized in front of a Sargent, then you know something is there you can relate to as a person. It would be creepy if it wasn’t so wonderful. Reflected light doesn’t make art; our perception of an entity does. A full experience of art is somewhat mystical, and thus hard to define.

Figurative art that betrays a presence that cannot be explained by a scientific language that only understands paints and canvass as objects, pigments and chemicals. We need a more metaphorical language. The great paintings function as a unit, with a spirit that comes to life as it is observed and internalized. Your attention is what animates it; but the work must first hook you, and it does so with one or more of the visual techniques described above. Look away and it lives not. Look back and it is there engaging you with the intensity only you can throttle. Great art will give to you as long as you let it.

If people are not sensitized to understand and interpret what is before them, art is ineffective, diminished. Thus, paradoxically, the greatest art can only be created in partnership with an audience. No matter how good the work, it won’t be great with an audience of one. When one takes art history, learns the vocabulary of art and visit museums, you are in fact sustaining the art. When the public ceases to participate, the works have no beauty. They revert to being a collection of colorful molecules. As values change, old masterpieces may just fade away. Does that matter? If they were masterpieces to a past generation, does it diminish the works if they are not so to today’s viewers? What value is there in being a historical footnote saying that at some point in time, art we ignore was once valued?

Those who can educate the faithful about what counts in art are very powerful, like the priests of old who educated the religious on what god is and how to worship his attributes. We tend to think of masterworks as having a fixed value. In reality, they are more like stock options, but instead of price fluctuating by demand, the true impact of art fluctuates by the number of people who can perceive them, and the quality they assign to that perception. Perhaps this explains why modern art works can exact such high prices – there is a group that nurtures the appreciation of the works and thus makes them more valuable. However, our institutions have it all wrong if they think a small elite can determine worthiness and masterworks.

There’s a certain protective entitlement of artifacts in museums that, rightly or wrongly, is not tied to any broader audience-impact index. There are many who consider contemporary artists as great as, or even greater than, the pantheon of the ancients. If display space in publicly funded art facilities went to work being appreciated, I suspect we would still see Rembrandts and Sargents, as people still connect to them. But alongside these we would likely see the work of modern masters like Kassan, Assael, Shanks and Liberace.

To appreciate the art, the audience itself must hone its ability to perceive. Wherever you live, you don’t have to go far to enhance your sensibilities. Visit the local farmers market and take time to see the colors, the textures, the smells, the sounds. Pick up objects and feel them. Say hi to the soapmaker and wonder at the materials used. Take it to the next level and open a paint box, look at subject matter and start responding. Study the color transitions on a peach, discern the violet shades in an evening shadow crossing the way, and reveal the warm tones on a blushing cheek, and use highlights and edge to describe where bones meet flesh. A shadow may look grey to you at first, but with every differentiated thought you open up your ability to perceive and translate that insight into paint so that others can perceive as well.

Taken to its highest calling, perception must go beyond invoking the deliciousness of a peach or the sensuousness of a nymph. As in real life, deeper satisfaction comes from establishing a relationship. The ability to discover a person and generate the same response in others through paint is the highest level of art. It goes without saying that to be able to invoke the perception of a personality, the artist himself has to be able to perceive the subject. There are of course varying degrees of perception; not all people can empathize with others or develop deep friendships.

For example, John Singer Sargent’s letters a full of anecdotes about his sitters personalities and lives. Taking a class with David Kassan, one of the things that struck me was the conversation he has with his models. It’s prodding, playful, getting them to respond, to reveal character. It’s no co-incidence that many of his masterful portraits are in fact of people he knows really well, like relatives. You can tell when an artist views his models as mere subject matter, interesting and human for sure, but without a personal connection the end result is a depiction only, without that presence we recognize in the greats. This is the mystery of viewing great master works – there’s a transcendent dimension that creates a presence of character. Perhaps this is why the great portraitist John Singer Sargent was said to require many sittings with his subjects and reportedly scrapped of his canvasses as many as 25 times. It’s not that he couldn’t render a convincing likeness; it’s that he was capturing the ineffable personality of the sitter.

There is a direct correlation between the artist’s capacity for empathy and the ability to create great portraits. The key qualification of an artist is the ability to both perceive the person in the subject, and also stimulate a similar perception in others. A personal encounter is a pre-requisite to rendering a personality. How many introverted artists are capable of this? Do we have to be emotionally maturity to create great art? Certainly we find the time to master techniques. But to encounter a person, we ourselves have to be present, in the moment, and open to understanding the other person. Thus the requirement to perceive first and foremost brings us face to face with the issue many of us avoid by being isolated and absorbed in our own creative process. How we can we socialize? You have to take a genuine interest in other people to be a great portraitist.

By way of negative example, let’s look at those who had trouble connecting, like a Gauguin or Van Gogh. Yes they painted portraits, but more often than not it’s a rendition of modern alienation. You feel a presence, but not necessarily one you can connect to. Van Gogh is better remembered for his landscapes.

Having a relationship with the subject is not as easy as it might sound. Artists study objects. Some instructors tell us to put emotion aside and focus on perceiving the color, form and light. When we get into execution mode, we are responding to things and visual phenomena. We are not thinking about perceiving a soul necessarily. And while we have to get proficient with the machinery of creation, at some point we have get beyond the create-observe dynamic and actually understand the subject and the essential soul/spirit quality we want to instigate in the work. This takes a relationship, which is controlled emotional effort.

When subject friends are not available, the artist may turn to herself in the mirror. When the artist does a portrait, there are really three personalities in the room:

  1. The artist/creator/discoverer – which requires perception
  2. The responder observer – the artist as he steps back to experience the work and judge it to make adjustments
  3. The subject – the person being discovered, i.e. the perceived one

Amazing art has been made just with the first two. Going beyond critical execution to cultivating and understanding the third role is required for making a painting all it can be.

The idea that self-awareness impacts our ability to relate to others and thereby also create great art puts the self-portrait in a new light. When you look at a Rembrandt self-portrait, you are almost gazing into the looking glass that he saw. In his eyes, a depth of understanding and realization that is ineffable, that can only be realized with a gaze eye to eye with a knowing person. The subject is looking at us – or more specifically, looking at me (or you individually). Yet we see the record of the Creator in the room.

Rembrandt the painter has left a stamp on Rembrandt the subject with all the expressive texture on his countenance. The act of painting, secondary in importance yet so very evident, is catching our attention as it catches the light as we look into soulful eyes looking back at us. We understand subconsciously those painted eyes have been looking back at others for centuries. Hundreds, maybe thousands of others. This is a humane moment because, after all, it is the vulnerable Rembrandt we are understanding intuitively, face to face. The 16th century man ‘lives’ making eye contact with us.

To instigate this presence of personality we have to put energy into the material itself. There’s a certain transference of our perception into the material itself that renders it for others. The modern scientific mind can’t explain this.

Medieval alchemists had a special way of looking at the stuff they mixed. They observed properties and behaviors of things and made associations accordingly. They assumed inaccurately that things that behave similarly are made of the same primal stuff. They didn’t have the science to know, for example, that lead is not an immature form of gold because they are both heavy and relatively soft. Alchemists didn’t have the periodic chart, but they did have a systematic approach to their studies, which included gaining insights by observation. They imputed meaning to chemical reactions and interpreted them, trying to gain insight into creation that would allow them to tinker with it.

Likewise, artists view colors in less of a scientific sense, but more in terms of meaning. Artists look for the message of the visual sensations caused by the brush tracks in the paint. Certainly the closer the medium of representation aligns with the thing represented – like brush strokes that mimic skin texture as in a Rembrandt portrait, or a flowery field in a Monet – the more coherent the presentation is and the less the formal aspects get in the way of perception of an illusion.

The continuity of presentation from texture to a human presence is mystical. To the artistic mind there is magic in painting because the medium presents itself simultaneously with the ‘spirit’ in the work in a synchronous duality. The artist is putting mystery into the work by invoking a ‘spirit’ in the work. This is not rational. The artist is able to conjure beings and their new essences at will, placing her on the same side of creativity as God.

‘In the beginning . . .
the earth was formless and void,
and darkness was over the surface of the deep . . .
and God said, ‘Let there be light,’
and there was light.’

— Genesis

To create the universe God, it seems, just needed light before starting to push things around on a surface to make the rest of creation. White light is and has been the energy that makes art possible. Without it we have no images; the surface is ‘formless and void’, it cannot be perceived. With light, the pigments we push around come to life with color, form, symbol and even a spirited presence. Light is energy. We are energy workers manipulating base materials like paint, wax, clay, marble and bronze that reflect and refract the light. Art is not religion: it is creation. With great portraiture, the artist imposes her will on White Light, crafting a personality on the surface of the deep. 

 

copyright 2014 roy zuniga – all rights reserved 

A Dance of Minds

27 Saturday Apr 2013

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The Mona Lisa’s enigmatic smile has long intrigued onlookers. It’s no secret that Da Vinci had features conform to geometry. The attraction therefore probably has something to do with the automatic response within our brain that can’t help but to recognize familiar shapes like letters and basic geometric shapes like circles and squares. Psychologists like Daniel Kahneman have long recognized this type of behavior in the ‘fast thinking system’ of our mind. There’s also a more control-oriented slow thinking system.

We all know how much the Renaissance artists like to put the human body within circles, squares and special rectangles like ones based on the golden mean. This applied to features of the face as much as it did to the entire human figure, as illustrated by Da Vinci’ Vitruvian man. The work of art becomes more intriguing because our minds can read it on two levels at once: geometric shapes that our minds just recognize involuntarily, and the human features which are also of special interest to other humans. The Mona Lisa is enigmatic because she’s both geometry and a human likeness, and these play into each other seamlessly. The flawless execution does also appeal to our slow mind’s appreciation of technique. Thus our fascination is due in part to our brain’s involuntary recognition of geometry. This recognition is effortless because those patterns do not have to be ‘checked’ by the slow thinking system that serves as a control function on our impulses.

Snapping your artistic compositions to well-liked geometry is a gimmick that will help your work become more intriguing. I call it a gimmick because it plays on the involuntary recognition system in our fast brain. Today, master Atelier programs and their literature go on extensively about geometry in master works. Several of the masters I’ve observed painting do in fact create the underlying geometry as a structure for their art. Our minds like order and recognizable shapes of manageable sizes (why else do we artificially break the surface of large window panes into a smaller grid in homes?). Music likewise has cadence and rhythm that adds a natural structure to the work. Like a person with wooden heels walking near you on a hard floor – you can’t help but listen to the ‘tac tac tac tac’ rhythm of the person walking. Like it or not you have to listen. Isn’t that annoying sometimes?

This is of course stagecraft designed to spell bind us. There’s a sense of power achieved when our involuntary attention is commanded. At this level, however, it is all very superficial and of no lasting consequence. It’s just a gimmick to get our attention. Part of the allusive power of art, I think, is the reference to the instantly recognizable. At this level, however, it is a ‘brainless’ allusion because we don’t really have to think to recognize it. A passage of music will remind us of a bird song, or running herd, or impending tempest, or a deep sentiment or sweet emotion. The appeal of art in part is this unavoidable reference to something that is both familiar and also presented in a new cultured, civilized form. Like wild cat strutting in a circus ring, we can safely observe without being at risk. Art takes references – whether it is a benign circle conforming a face, or the deep pathos in the eyes – and presents them in a cultured, safe and civilized form.

The great artist is a ringmaster who has taken forms ‘out in the wild’ that we can’t help but respond to and ‘tamed’ them for us to view. Disconnected from their natural context, the works are an affirmation of our ability to control, to civilize and subordinate. As such they appeal to the ego because our intent as individuals and a society is to rule and subdue, to culture and civilize. Art, like technology, is an affirmation of our ability to tame the wild, to re-order it to our liking. Powerful art preys on our fast thinking brain’s commitment to recognition. It is also an affirmation of our ability to subordinate both the subject matter in the painting, and the captive viewers. We celebrate great art. How do we direct this compulsive behavior into channels that are sustainable? Since we’ve mis-ordered out world with economies that are not sustainable for the long term, new art can help us change the content of our liking and hopefully influence our civilizing choices going forward. Can art, which is arguably sustainable, play a role channeling humanity’s unquenchable passion for subordination?

In any case, our fast and slow thinking minds are in a constant dance in daily life. The fast system responds intuitively, and the slow system checks judgments against statistics and evidence. The slow mind serves as a correcting and control function, and if it has to work too hard, depletes our ego, our energy. Incidentally, because our mind requires more calories when it’s working hard, eating glucose can restore some of the energy. Alternatively, getting drunk will shut down the corrective function for those who want to forget about reality for a while.

My hunch is that art also shuts down the corrective function in our mind and thus gives us an escape, albeit healthier one than alcohol. Slow thinking usually checks our behavior for reasons of survival. If we are in a safe environment, like a theater, a museum or a church, we know our existence is not at risk. If the content before us is art, be it dance, opera, a play, an orchestra or works of art, our slow thinking system can ‘kick off its shoes’ and relax without being shut down completely. That’s the wonder of great art: we can be fully engaged cognitively, but not depleting our egos through a conflict with an over-active control function. The self-preservation imperative is suspended.

With art, as with religion, you step into a fantasy world where the thunder never has lightning that can strike you, wild animals can’t eat you and the villains won’t kill you. Observing art, both fast and slow systems are active. The slow system is examining the technique, the media, the color scheme, and the flawless execution without having to worry about interrupting the fast thinking mind with existence threatening alerts. The fast mind is reading familiar shapes and coming to quick conclusions about what the art work is really saying. The allusive nature of art means that the ego can project its own interpretation of the meaning of the subject matter, or reject it outright. In either case, we are in control in a way that affirms the ego. Part of the delight of art, it seems, is both the celebration of those who civilized forms and presented them to us within a silver frame, and at the same time the choice to interpret and even outright reject it. Art snobbery indicates a healthy ego.

The notion of vicarious enjoyment of timeless memories is the subject of a mini-mythology I wrote called ‘The Land of Serene.’ There, people’s packaged troubles plunge on rafts over the waterfall of Utter Darkens, where deprived of time in the light-less depths, their memories have risen again weightlessly in the mist to the forests and fields above to intoxicate the wandering Feathermen. These people have lost touch with their current reality, inhaling the timeless memories, vicariously participating without any personal risk or involvement. They are immersed and fascinated by actual memories, but not afflicted by any context or consequence.  The behavior of the Feathermen is a metaphor for our obsessive need to escape. One way we do this is by participating in the conflicts of others without getting hurt, through so many soap operas and dramatic programming.

Museums and churches are both safe places to just ‘be’ and contemplate. Art has a place in both as a catalyst for vicarious enjoyment. In the case of the Catholic Church it is the troubles of the saints, the innocence of the Virgin and the resurrection of the Savior. Like the Feathermen, overly religious worshippers never step out of the intoxicating effect of those stories, and they completely take over their judgments. Somehow the control function is overridden or re-programmed, and every spontaneous reaction has a religious filter. The same can be said for anyone who has been ‘brainwashed’ into an alternative worldview. In some the manifestation is good works; for others the manifestation is destructive violence. Art taken to this level should be a controlled substance.

Every religious person is a Featherman to some extent, as is anyone who cannot step out of a mythology. Joy in Eternal Life is the realization that the disconnect from current reality afforded by the religious experience will persist forever! In that sense, a mythic experience is a taste of eternity. The mythic mind is incredibly powerful, able to override slow thinking’s control functions.

The Serene narrative is a story used to explain the experience of the mythic mind. It is a recursive art-about-art allusion intended to help the overly religious recognize their state. It has little chance of success if those with a mythic mind can’t step into a new myth. It is almost as if we have a limited capability for overriding the control functions, although some of us have managed to rewire that programming through self-conversion (as discussed in my previous article). The Feathermen story should be a mirror for us to recognize that we can leave reality with all its existence threatening situations in favor of an alternative one. The proper behavior, however, is not to leave permanently, but rather use the mechanism of myth to program new controls into our slow thinking. Our will has to let in new facts and statistics that support the right behaviors. These data points are woven together with a narrative that abides ready at hand whenever our fast mind requires them to support a judgment. The narrative serves as an indexing function to identify the instance in the story arch we find ourselves, and pull up the appropriate response based on the prior mythic programming.

It takes an extraordinary act of the will to replace a deeply engrained narrative with a new one. This is especially true the more life decisions we have tied to the old narrative. The techniques of community mythology are designed to facilitate change as a group, where it’s safer and there’s a support structure. Art plays the crucial role because it isolates us from the survival pattern that can forbid consideration of alternate control functions. Through art we can safely explore the new narrative and its emotions and behaviors until we accept and internalize it. Then later we can sort out the implications for survival decisions. There’s more than one way to make a living.

The artistic process is an incubation space for newborn mythologies that will provide a new backbone from which we can hang reality facing facts later. Yet, instead of having an ideologue indoctrinate us with a new narrative and supporting facts, however, with community mythology we do it to ourselves. Artists are particularly adept at this because they frequently start with a blank canvass and create a world. We should all learn to have the will of an artist and create a safe normative narrative. Hollywood does this all the time, however, their output is usually not suitable for programming behaviors that lead to a sustainable existence for all.

Transformation can happen on an individual level based on shared values. In other words, the conscientious individual who knows what the sustainable life is can create great art that supports those values. However, without a shared narrative that is adopted as a community myth, the impact is good but limited. Star status of an individual can help spread the message further, and ironically several Hollywood celebrities who starred in mindless movies have taken on good causes outside of their art. It should be the other way around – the ‘mindless’ movies should support the good causes.

How do you create art that has a sustainment agenda without making it didactic? All art has an agenda, and good art is allusive, leaving room for interpretation. The trick is to steer the user’s consciousness in a general direction, baking in some assumptions as part of the framework of the work of art.  For example, making holy people appear skinny and in rags or fat and well-dressed betrays an assumption about the nature of holy work. The first one presupposes a vow to poverty; the other hints at divine responsibility of the powerful to do good works. In other words, the scope of interpretation is in fact bounded.

If we subordinate our will to one world view or the other, we will enjoy the work and go along with it. If we reject it, we reject the work. In either case, viewing art is a safe experience, and we have time to consider both without any existential threat, and make our decision. The community mythology process is about picking and affirming the underlying world view assumptions explicit for artists. They can and must still be allusive and create aesthetically rich works, complete with geometric gimmicks if needed. But they do it within bounds, and the saturation afforded by all these works when presented in a safe environment will help viewers consider the message and internalize a new normative narrative, which ultimately results in new control points that impact our daily choices for a sustainable future.

 

— Roy Zuniga
    Kirkland, WA
    April 2013

Copyright 2013 Roy Zuniga

The Will to Change

19 Friday Apr 2013

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What is the psychology of conversion? How does a military officer mentally justify actions when he follows orders to obediently hurt innocent people? What was the mental state of the good Germans who became evil Nazis? How is an innately humane spirit subordinated in favor heinous actions? Nazi’s thought they were terminating Jews for God and fatherland. Likewise, what is the serial rapist telling himself? How does violence and exploitation become a normative practice? How is a community of terrorists created? Are they not telling stories to themselves that reinterpret reality?

Somehow, stories have penetrated their psychology to the point where they live in a different world and can withstand bribes and riches to support the cause. The Taliban are really hard to convert. How are corporate workers any different? How do workers at Monsanto or a fracking operation or tar sands mine justify their daily contribution to violence on mother earth? What are the dynamics of getting a new belief system in so deep that it stands up to any adversity?

These very negative examples illustrate a dynamic that has to happen in our minds for good. We are all compromised in our thinking to some extent because we are collaborating on the slow destruction of our world. We have to flip for the positive. Ideas have to penetrate our psyche until we are sold out for humanity and the environment. Why not? People sell out for all kinds of things. Let’s sell out for goodness and health. But enough people have to convert to make a difference.

Mass conversions are composed of individual conversions. Each person has to arrive a point where he or she takes an oath. To attain a disciples’ level of commitment to a good cause will require a deep inner conversion. In our model, however, the driving narrative does not come from heaven above on tablets, or from a prophet or a charismatic leader. It comes from within us and our like-minded friends, who by the way we chose. We are responsible agents: we should drive ourselves to conversion.

Self-conversion has two steps:

  1. Establish the values to convert to
  2. Facilitate the conversion

Establishing Values

In the first case you are essentially stepping into a new mythical world while in living in the old. Now we do this type of thing all the time for limited durations (when we attend church or watch a movie, for example). This step is preferably done with a group, although of course you must do some preparation – unless you just want to consume the results of the group’s work. Once you participate in a group discussion on values, I think you’ll find participation irresistible. We are wired to contribute to ideas that impact what we believe in.

At whatever level you participate at this stage, the engagement is limited and safe. It is an envisioning exercise; a non-threatening idealistic ‘what if’ session. The pre-cursor is completing mythic awareness workshops, which are also safe and non-threatening. During mythic awareness, the participants de-construct one or more myths to determine the story arch, character types and their underlying drivers. This is not unlike an exercise in literary or movie criticism with a focus on the underlying worldview and corresponding values. The user can participate and then go their current world view ‘home’. Both the mythic awareness and the community values sessions can be fun and easy going, and non-threatening.

In the first phase, the user gets and answer to ‘what do we believe?’ In the second phase, which follows logically from the first, answers the question ‘what should I believe?’, can be a wrenching transformation. It’s even tougher if the user is going the route of individual self-conversion. Doing it as a group is easier, but in some cases where the group is just not forming or the person is isolated, self-conversion is the only route. It’s the route I took because Community Mythology was not a methodology at that time!

Facilitate the Conversion

The second transforming phase essentially reverses the flow of ‘stepping’ into and out of myth. You establish your new world view, stepping in and out of your old until you’re ready to leave it. Think of it as a migration that starts even as your new world view is under construction. The home-purchase analogy is appropriate here. You’re not out shopping for a 200 year old home with all the design decisions made by generations who are long dead. Rather, you are designing a new home. Now you can chose to build it yourself or have the experts build it. Let me explain.

Building a community mythology is not just about writing down values and thinking about behaviors. It’s about holistic programming of our human psyche, which involves all the senses and especially our artistic receptors. So the framework and walls of this new worldview includes narratives, poetry, art, plays and other activities in which you participate. Now if you are artistically inclined, you can get hands-on in this construction phase. If not, there is a mechanism in the process to charter a creative team, analogous to having a contractor build your home. And there’s room in between for you to do some of the work. In fact, because it is a community effort, this is more like a group barn raising. 

Whichever way your new world view ‘home’ is built, you will have to move in, which means leaving the old behind. The good news is that you can bring along the best principles and values from the old. However, I don’t recommend that you bring old characters and stories with you because those tend to drag you into old behaviors. Even if you want to keep some attributes of the old, give the character a new name and some fresh clothes.

Realizing our current world view is a fabrication is hard enough – you have to admit that you vested a huge amount of trust and personal equity in a world view that, it turns out, was not handed down from God himself. Humans shaped it over centuries. For the faithful, converting to a brand new mythology is severe cognitive dissonance. We’re used to people converting to an established religion. The notions that 1) a substitute can be created by humans; 2) I have a role in creating that new myth, and; 3) I should crawl into the nest I just created, just doesn’t fit with our current way of thinking. We’re essentially handing God tablets with Holy Writ. Is that blasphemy?

Actually, I don’t think it is. My hunch is that God doesn’t oppose the plurality of religions on this planet precisely because we are created to imagine. This doesn’t mean goodness is arbitrary. We have a God-given conscience that develops in the context of a community and its troubles and lessons. When we ‘give tablets to God’ with a story, the content – if it we have deemed it to be Sacred Content – is founded on goodness that originated with God in the first place. We are the voice in the burning bush.

Given the high personal threshold of mental anguish required to leave a belief system we took for truth, what would motivate a person to change? It’s not impossible. I was a devout Christian missionary and a believer for decades. For me the drivers were threefold: 1) ridding my mind of an entrenched cognitive dissonance caused by the attempt to reconcile religious conundrums (like free will and predestination); 2) as well as the dissonance caused by not acknowledging the religion as myth, and; 3) also trying to make myself and others believe it was somehow objective truth that if not accepted would damn people to hell, and; 4) the conviction coming from having had very real mystical experiences with God that we can in fact experience God. There is true goodness and there is a right way to live on this planet. Finally, 5) survival! I awakened to the fact that our decisions are fast depleting this planet.

For example, soon the jungle elephant will be extinct! And the acidic content of the ocean will dissolve all coral reefs in my lifetime, etc. It’s really sad to know my great grandchildren will not get to dive in coral reefs out in the wild. These and so many other indicators show that if we don’t change drastically, we will have an irreversible dissonance of far greater impact: our future generations will be living on a wasted planet!

The best motivator for the adoption of change is not going to be an academic explanation of a new method for self-conversion. The driver for change will be a demonstration of our dire situation. In other words, awareness will incent change. Community Mythology as a methodology has to be available to the motivated participant when he or she is ready for it!

Some have greater awareness than others. Both the poor and the rich are somewhat insular in their thinking due to their economic circumstances: one preoccupied with survival, the other with attaining and maintaining wealth. At risk of over-generalizing, the rich are nevertheless the ones who can have the greatest impact for change, even if it means a loss of net wealth in the process. It is easier for a camel to go through the eye of the proverbial needle.

Short of external coercion, which tends to impact behavior in the short term and not necessarily shift the subject’s worldview, what would motivate a rich person to change? He or she might have worked hard to get where they are (or their parents did). They learned the game and invested a lot in attaining and protecting their wealth. We already mentioned awareness of the peril our planet is in. What else can truly motivate them to change? Let’s look at additional factors:

  • The happiness factor – does wealth bring happiness, or are there other ways of attaining it truly satisfying happiness? True happiness will lower stress levels, a point brought home by the movie ‘The Economics of Happiness’.
  • Empathy – get close to the poor and suffering
  • A common humanity – when it comes right down to it, the rich are flesh and bones like the rest of us
  • Immersion – experience nature, you will come to love it
  • The common environment – a nuclear disaster or mining pollution doesn’t just affect the local community – it can have repercussions far from the source
  • The future – get a clear picture of where all this is leading us. You can buy yourself a new condo, and even a luxurious survival bunker, but you can’t buy a new environment
  • Negative examples from the old world view, like:
    • a corrupt and inefficient church hierarchy
    • the deception of a story that is advocated as ‘truth’ should annoy if not anger the deceived
    • The goodbye list – we should put together a web site that lists all the things we should experience before they kick the bucket. For example, a pristine ocean or endangered species.
    • The positive opportunities:
      • We still have time to build a beautiful future
      • The opportunity to create new world views that are compatible with the ecosystem
      • The spiritual dimensions:
        • Do good, it is good karma – it comes around. Pay it forward.
        • Integrity – avoid dichotomies and contradictory beliefs
        • The artistic dimension:
          • Conversion is not towards some impoverish aesthetic experience. Great art isn’t the privilege of the monetarily rich; it’s the right of every one to be aesthetically enriched by art.
          • Making art a habit can reduce the dependency on environmentally expensive technology.
          • Great music is like hearing the voice of God

Part of the program then, has to be a series of awareness sessions on the various topics relating to humanity and the environment.

The Will to Change

The intent is to increase the will to change among those who can impact change the most. Of course, we also have to impact those who would take their place. Ultimately significant change will be a mass conversion.

What we’re advocating here, by the way, is not an ascetic separation from the corrupt world into a commune in the woods. That’s fine if that’s your thing. However, separation into self-sufficiency will not halt the progress towards wasteland. We’re also not in favor of using violence to stop a corporation from pursuing a reckless and short sighted development plan. We’re also not looking to migrate from one ruined area to a pristine one (which will eventually also get ruined). We have to be agents for change everywhere; we have to recycle old cities. The bottom line is that ‘we the People’ have to find the will to change, and collective change ultimately can only happen with a great number of individual conversions.

Re-programming ourselves starts with the will, then. For me it’s not even the stories I tell myself because after you gain mythic awareness you realize they are fabrications that can and should change. Ultimately community mythology is a means, not a beginning in itself. The true source is your will. After you have softened for change you must harden your resolve towards a good direction. The key is to take control of belief itself and redirect it.

Incidentally you can have good behaviors without full conversion away from a false mythology (i.e. a myth that is purported to be objectively true). You can be a nominal Baptist and live in harmony with people and the planet. You can be a nominal Pope and be corrupt. In the end, the strain of sustaining believe in a false mythology and the conundrums some of these religions brings will keep you from achieving full integrity and happiness. Once you understand the dynamics of myth you will be more at peace converting.

Obviously it helps to understand the process, and the dynamics of myth serve to bake in and harden the direction we choose. Once we are established, stories and art can be used as needed. In a sense growing up to spiritual maturity will leave us with sustainable riches to enjoy but we will not be dependent on them. There’s a deep satisfaction and inner happiness that arrives when we are in harmony with an environment that is in balance. There’s also a humble independence knowing that because our shared stories can be changed, we can step into a new one if it will help others on the same journey.

— Roy Zuniga
    Kirkland, WA
    April 2013

Self-directed Conversion

15 Monday Apr 2013

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We need to get together and canonize a set of values (that are aligned with goodness) we believe are the universal way forward. There should be a process to ratify them around the world and have them be the holy foundation upon which each culture can create their own stories. In other words, a peace pack of good intent.

What would that look like? Let’s use our imaginations and fast forward to a possible future. Obviously timing of the creation and ratification would be centrally managed, and there would be central guidance on how to do it. We want to avoid creating another hierarchical organization, of course. Execution is naturally de-centralized, starting probably with house groups all around the country (and the world). Outcomes would need to be clearly defined, and there would be a certification process because the values selected would become binding in some way, and normative. A federated set of web sites can help communicate these values to other groups around the world so we all can learn from each other.

The stories that flow from these value sets can and will vary tremendously in content and quality. Regional clusters of cultural traditions will spring up, depending on the local talent, written and visual traditions, etc. Cultural exchanges will happen across communities on a new set of Holidays established for this purpose. There will be a cadence to the year, and even an alignment of sub-set of values and/or themes for the cultural productions depending on the calendar. Thanksgiving, the various solstices, etc. Real heroes will be praised based upon the values they espouse and consciously be made into archetypes for countless stories. As a normal unfolding of mythology, the actual and the fictional will blend into each other. This will not be seen as ‘lying’, i.e. distorting the truth, by others who have different stories. At the same time we want to influence the creation of each other’s value sets in a comparative dialog, so that we can still cohere as a country. Otherwise, some groups would devolve into a hedonistic, sadistic and/or cultic negative spiral of hate. On the contrary, to guarantee a positive spiral of the imagination, those who participate must adhere to the First Principle, i.e. an aspiration toward the good god.

It all starts with value awareness. The only way to want to change is if we see the need for each of us to change individually. And especially those on Wall Street who are driven by cynicism, indifference and greed. They, like the rest of us, need to understand and acknowledge what they believe in. Then they need to see the logical consequences of their decisions. Is top thinking always corrupt? Does absolute power always have to result in absolute corruption? It can’t, or we’re doomed as a civilization and a race. Why did George Washington and the founding fathers accept slavery and South America’s liberator, Simon Bolivar, did not?

Ultimately the self-regulated values-based approach espoused here only makes sense if there is enough to go around for all, and enough room for everyone. Our American Constitution gave protects our right to self-regulation but gives us tools for choosing the direction of our decisions. If planet earth becomes like a lifeboat, i.e. some have to get left behind, then survival does become an exercise in values all right – in favor of those values that ‘preserve the race’ (even if some number of individuals are lost); more likely it will boil down to influence and blood lines rather than skills, abilities or a pristine genetic pool as the criteria for selection. The whole dynamics of myth will be invoked for evil, as it was by Hitler’s propaganda machine. The masses will be programmed to accept their fate for ‘the good of all’, to sacrifice ‘for the homeland’ (or some such story).

Luckily we’re not there yet; at the same time, it’s too easy to imagine that scenario, as is evidenced by recent movies like 2012. It might be another 40-70 years before The Preservation of the Few becomes the primal imperative to sustain civilization, probably after we’ve severely depleted the natural resources of the planet. By the way, don’t get your hopes up about manned missions to space colonies on earth-like planets. We’re not anywhere near being able to colonize any rock in the sun to the scale that it would make an ultimate difference. Earth might end up being just another scorched rock in the sun at the rate we’re going. Anyway, the planet is big enough to sustain us well into the future, if and only if we make the right choices.

How do we make this shift to truly sustainable living? How do we shift the thinking of the rich if not the masses? Can you have a propaganda machine that brain washes the powerful? Isn’t that an oxymoron? It is contradictory if the rich necessarily are on the side of exploitation and selfish preservation. Would it take an act of coercion to change them? Isn’t that how the French aristocracy finally turned (or lost) their heads in favor of democracy? Isn’t revolution and blood-letting the hard earned wisdom of history if you want to change who’s in charge? Maybe. But doesn’t history also teach us that one of the next generations will end up being as bad or worse? How do you permanently change the thinking at the top?

Perhaps a little water-boarding torture will help. Doesn’t that change the decisions of torture victims? Maybe. But does it really change their world view? How do you change someone’s world view without destroying their person as torture does? It took a civil war in America to eventually change the South’s thinking about slavery. That was a lot of blood-letting. What happened in the losers’ mind set in the conversion-by-torture scenario? A voluntary change of will is always better than coercion. We have to understand the psychology of defeat. We have to splice out the violence and replace it with a positive realization. We need a more positive analogy for a change of mind. What happens when a person is willingly ‘sold out’? How does one give up old values and at the same time manage the destruction of former behavior associated with their core sense of being?

How about religious conversion? I was converted to Evangelical Christianity in the distant past. Then I shifted my worldview again, the second time by myself, towards a belief in the power of community mythology. It may be that my first worldview shift at conversion, which was an assisted one, enabled me to shift it again on my own.

My first conversion was leveraged with no small amount of passive threat. The ‘Four Spiritual Laws’ preached to me indicated that: 1) God created all things and created them good; 2) Sin corrupted all things; 3) Christ died to redeem all things, and; 4) therefore I’d better accept Christ (or be corrupt and suitable for Hell). It was a loving humiliation, which unlike torture, co-opted my will without physical pain. The mental logic at conversion, once you accept the premises, is to accept the need for change. This proves, to me at least, that we are capable of willful change that goes against our programming. If I can convert, why can’t a Wall Street baron?

Even though my worldview was destroyed, unlike torture or gunpoint, my personhood and sense of self-worth was not. This is partly because I was not humiliated by a fellow human. At least I thought it I was humbling myself before God. Of course, His proxy the church was standing right there between us facilitating the whole transaction, making me feel good about the decision. Which would explain why I was subsequently inducted into the rank of church missionaries. In any case, religious conversion is an example of a person changing deeply held convictions and behavior patterns over time voluntarily. Immediate change of all behaviors was not required, which helped soften the blow. Thus with hindsight, humility and grace take on new meaning.

In any event, my second conversion was voluntary and self-directed. It required no small amount of separation from the old. The dynamics of self-directed conversion are absolutely critical for us to understand if we are to succeed in non-violent change. Stay tuned. . .

— Roy Zuniga
Kirkland, WA
April 2013

Copyright 2013 Roy Zuniga

The Sacred Myth

14 Sunday Apr 2013

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Myths may be filled with the irrational and fantastic, but neither the process of creating them or of assimilating them is irrational. In fact the orchestration of myth creation can be detected repeated with new content.

Recently I had an engaging dinner with friends who were very concerned about world events and global conspiracies. All kinds of wild and disjoined assertions were flying out – bits of truth projected like so many pellets from a shotgun, each capable of doing some damage to a naïve believer. The only commonality among those hard balls of truth was their source in the voice of a dear friend, and their negative nature. Everything from the meaning of a president’s name to the Federal Reserve to the Catholic Church to the Illuminati to homeland security barbed wire pens to Beyoncé’s satanic signs and symbols during her performance at the super bowl was allegedly hard evidence of a centuries old conspiracy by a corporation that controls all others. All real power in all the world is controlled by a few at the ‘capstone’ of the corporate pyramid. And there were plenty of freakish and well produced videos on YouTube to ‘prove’ it.

As I sought to untangle the reasonable concerns from the irrelevant or downright zany assertions that would pollute any solid understanding of the real situation, my friends got defensive. It seems that you either buy into the general angst, or you get put in the bucket labeled ‘non-believer’. One friend in particular kept bringing up points of religion in defense of certain orthodox positions on Christ. ‘He is the Lamb of God’, ‘He died for our sins’, ‘He was resurrected’. ‘Why would someone die for the sin of others if He wasn’t God?’ she asked.

In my usual fashion I was countering the assertions with non-standard viewpoints. For example, why would God need someone’s blood be shed in order to forgive? Blood atonement has its origins in ancient pagan rituals of animal and human sacrifice to appease the gods. Also, how do we know he was raised from the dead? Only the testimony of a handful of people stand between the universal traditions of the Christian church at Easter and what really happened. And so on.

I was actually less interested the particulars and or winning a theological argument than I was in the phenomenon. Like me in the past, she was programmed and it was coming out. What struck me was the way many of these ‘facts’ of myth were spewed out from some inner repository with no logical connection. In their import those facts were as real as first hand events, and more meaningful. The resurrection is as true as the last presidential election or even the half empty glasses of wine in front of us.

As I listened and bantered tenderly with her, in my mind the only real truth was the phenomenon of how mythical stories were used by her brain to both explain and defend doctrines she had absorbed in religious training in the past. She was also in the process of training herself in the new dogma of world domination by a similar mechanism. Using the media of the internet, she was streaming videos and filing the new ‘facts’ away with those old ones.

Whether true or not, the doctrines of Christianity are highly systematic. It has taken theologians millennia to streamline the thinking and give a defense of their faith. Any good second year seminary student could have countered my bantering with talking points about God’s justice and evidence that demands a verdict about Christ’s divinity. The world conspiracy allegations, however, were new and somewhat disjointed in her mind, even though a richly produced ‘leaked’ video about Illuminati induction talk does a fairly nice job of typing everything together into a one world power narrative worthy of a Hollywood production.

A barrage of facts from both of these more or less systematic streams of thought came gushing forth at the same time in what could be taken by some as a nutty jumble of incoherent thoughts. The religious mind, it seems, needs to have a coherent narrative for history with a greater meaning. Here, right before my ears, I was confronted with both the all-powerful Christ and the all-powerful evil world power. (This brings up an interesting point for another day: the indoctrination of those who do not think systematically results in piecemeal understanding and a sporadic, spotty defense of the faith.) It was interesting to see the dynamics of myth at play, both on the input of new doctrine and the use of that in defense of a world view. She brought up every snowball in her arsenal to lovingly throw back at me, even as she was legitimately concerned and wanted another opinion on the matter.

My view on the matter, for what it’s worth, is that there are nuggets of truth in these urban myths. There is also a lot of fear being fostered by these ‘leaked’ disclosures about what is really going on. If they are so powerful, why would they allow such propaganda to be released? We always have to think about who stands to benefit from fear and the negative imagination. Remember the arms race in the cold war and the MAD (mutual assured destruction) doctrine? Russia and the US kept building up their nuclear stockpiles an industries based on fear, and greatly expanded the great military complex. The same can be said for the exponential growth of Homeland Security in response to 911. Now the dynamic is shifting from external to internal threats. The more the rednecks arm themselves to the teeth to defend themselves against the one world government, the more Homeland Security has to be prepared to deal with them. Fear and rumor are sadly fueling an internal arms race in America.

There is another way, one of positive imagination and local thought. Not that we ignore world events, but the focus of community movements like Transition US is to un-plug from dependency on the global economy and monetary systems that will fail and or dominate us. We can come together and form resilient communities. Transition communities farm, barter, trade services and seeds and generally take very healthy positive steps towards a sustainable lifestyle.

Of course that only works while there is law and order in the land. If everything really unravels, a half million starving city dwellers will overwhelm a transition community like a pestilence of locusts eating everything in their wake. If it comes to that, God help us because not even medieval-like walled cities would stop those with modern tanks and missiles. Only the few with enough wealth and forethought to build bunkers and fund defensive forces can survive. We can’t let it come to that, and the only way to avoid that is if everyone collectively calms down and starts making the right choices driven by a faith in universal goodness.

The bottom line for me is choice: we can’t prove or disprove the Illuminati conspiracy any more than we can disprove Christ’s divinity or alien visitation of the ancient Aztecs. Our fundamental choice then is about the direction of our beliefs: do we take the negative fear driven arm-yourself-to-the teeth view? Or do we tie back to our first principle for life, that fundamental human aspiration toward God, and the genuine assertions of individuals achieving a personal, recurring, momentary connection with a God? It is the human experience of the Divine that keeps the aspiration going, along with an inner good-god awareness.

This aspiration towards God has been present across time and civilizations. Call it the God-principle, good vs. evil, Christ against Lucifer, good / bad karma or whatever. All cultures have similar notions, some with personalities in the metaphors for good and evil, others impersonal energies. Our fundamental choice is whether we are going to believe the aspiration can be realized. That is the only source of hope and positive energy.

Personally I have to believe God is there because I actually had a mystical experience, an exorcism and a ‘baptism in the spirit’ in my early twenties. I can connect with God and have faith in the progress of goodness, as have many in other faiths. The Biblical statement about the Spirit of God that ‘He is near you, He is in you’ rings very true for me personally. My assertion of that can’t be denied, as neither can yours. No do we need to deny each other’s experiences of faith. The new normal has to be tolerance for good behavior, regardless its sources.

In other words, the spiritual consciousness, which is full of metaphor and story, is necessary for us to make good choices. That is Enlightenment to me. Not the melting away into a state where you are not aware of temporal concerns and understand that all is illusion. That doesn’t bring forth proactive good choices. We have to avoid world views that result in passivity and inaction; our problems need attention! Solid focus and mass-decision making for a positive direction in our only salvation. The mechanism for this choice is to unplug for the media and take ownership of the myths and mental ‘proof-points’ we will us to defend those choices. Each community has to make its choices locally.

The ruling elite do have a choice – and they can only make it themselves, i.e. it has to be a local re-programming, and it has to happen soon. We can’t wait a generation. This makes documenting and disseminating the process for community mythology urgent. Those in the inner circle have to diffuse their own negative tendencies. Whatever it is about capitalism that isn’t working has to be changed, and not necessarily swapped out for an equally bankrupt version of socialism. There is another way that is sustainable. We can plan it; some are living it.

There is no proof in an appeal to mythical facts beyond the deep knowledge that these new local beliefs are part of a social contract. This is The New Sacred, as I have called it elsewhere. They are not ‘true’ because the miracle making characters in our myths are actually historical figures with ‘real’ supernatural powers. They are true because we created them together in a solemn process of collective sacred myth making based on shared values we hold Holy in the deepest sense of the word.

— Roy Zuniga
Kirkland, WA
April 2013

A Common Deity

09 Tuesday Apr 2013

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What we’re developing here is a universally applicable praxis of spirituality that focuses on the phenomenon and dynamics of faith, and not the specific trappings and content of a canned religion. In other words, we seek to establish universal practices that result in bonding with God and people. How do we know we are successful? At least three criteria must be met:

  1. A personal connection with God that is undeniable, i.e. an experience
  2. The so-called ‘fruit of the spirit’, i.e. a manifestation of a godly personality in inter-personal relationships
  3. Scalable choices, i.e. those decisions that can be applied broadly without detrimental effect on the environment and fellow humans

Have you ever met a holy person, a preacher or guru or prayer warrior or missionary who exudes the presence of God? I have and so have many people across the globe. A connection is undeniable. It’s not so much how they say they connected that is interesting. Instead, for me it is the love and spirit presence they emanate that convinced me a connection is possible, and I experienced the Spirit rushing through me like a fresh waterfall from above. They all spend time establishing that connection and use Scriptures in the context of life experiences as a catalyst for prayer and meditation. In other words, they make the effort, come with good intentions and an open heart. Yes, it’s possible they are duped by spiritual beings (because of the n-level problem described elsewhere). However, with these ‘saints’ we get the sense that they are connected straight to the source. The smell of scammers is more often on the hierarchy in the religious organizations than it is in these saints. So the possibility of a personal connection with God is pillar of faith.

Another other pillar is choice, or put another way: human agency. Nothing happens in this world apart from the actions of people. These two pillars are of course related. If you see a person acting selfishly and not for the greater good, then we know by their fruits that they are not connected to God.

We often think of choice as consumer choices. We have to also consider spiritual choices. In other words, it is not just about a shopping choice, or choice of career and good social behavior. It is also about what spirits we let into our lives to listen to. We often act based on muses we summon. We can pick our influence; we can exorcise undesirable spirits from our dwelling places. Music we listen to, movies we watch, angry talk radio, etc. All of these influences predispose and open our imaginations to being fed. It’s like tossing bread crusts to the sea gulls – put it out there and they will show up. I don’t know the dynamics of spiritual beings, but one thing is for certain, they are hungry for action; and the way they act is through human agency.

So how do we get rid of them? In whose name do we exorcise the foul demons? Since it is our choice, why do we need a name? Can’t they just go because we said so? Or do we need the name of Jesus or some other spiritual bouncer? In the first degree, it is in our own name that we can do wondrous things, because we have the choice. We are not the source of life and goodness. However, we channel it.

Nevertheless, we as humans seem to need a personification of that source. ‘In the name of Jesus’ is what Evangelicals say. Other cultures invoke deities with different names. Some are facts of God. Some embody the quintessential behavior of a holy man, i.e. they a proto-faithful, like Jesus. That is to say, they embody the pattern for our faithful behavior. How do you fill in the blank?

‘In the name of ____________.’

Jesus was said to be God because he could give commands and miracles would happen (wither the fig tree; convert water to wine; heal the sick; raise the dead, etc.). Assuming those acts happened as reported (which is never really the case when humans are involved), let’s flip it around and take the reported proto-faithful-behavior not as evidence, but as a pattern. For the criteria enumerated above, we don’t actually need tricks like turning water into wine. Because of the n-level problem and the factional will applied to the interpretation of those events, we don’t really know they came from God. They don’t really catalyze a personal connection because they result in awe of the performer, and veneration of the Other, which doesn’t further the cause of scalable decisions unless it’s under an organizational control framework. Yes we can use organizations, but they should be intentional by and for the community, and not driven by miracle evidence and a class of intermediaries.

We should remove the exclusive thinking in the Scriptures, for example the ‘I am The Way’ credentials for inter-personal mediation, and rather view what conforms to the criteria above as proto-behavior, i.e. the normative pattern of behavior. Ironically, in Scripture what was interpreted by the mediator class as evidence of God was reportedly touted by Jesus Himself as phenomenon possible by anyone with the ‘faith of a mustard seed’. Jesus himself diminished the miracles as tricks compared with the fruit of personal behavior and decisions. You can move mountains, he said metaphorically.

Thus what makes me suspect some of the Scripture is true are empowering assertions like that. ‘Oh ye of little faith. . . ‘ or ‘He is near you; He is in you’, etc. Despite the controlling intermediary class, these precious insights made it into the Holy Book. Generally they are obfuscated by the exegesis that interprets His ‘miracle’ acts as evidence of deity. In fact, I feel confident to say, those acts were prototype for us to emulate, and likewise not take them as evidence of our deity as some who have figured this out actually do. The only thing they attest to is the ability to manipulate nature; the source of that ability cannot be known, good or bad.

What we have to watch out for are those who exercise a religious pattern of interpretation, i.e. who take the normal miracle-practices and interpret that as evidence of deity and therefore requiring veneration of the intermediary class by the faithful. Give glory to the ‘Father in heaven’, or ‘Gaia’ as some now call her. God has aspects, not a gender; however, our minds require a name.

We should all manifest the fruit of a connected relationship and as such be common deity. Evidence of connection is normative behavior and the agent cannot be mistaken for an intermediary. Rather he or she are demonstrating what must be our ‘new normal’. This is not to say that every person will provide wine from the water faucet at parties. No, miracles have their own logic, and God doesn’t always make an exception to the laws of nature and mortality.

What should be common practice among mortals who are ‘common deity’ is healing and the fruit of the spirit. In the end, the only name that really counts is your own. After all, we God-fashion Him in our image, like so many 16th century capitalists commissioning portraits of religious subjects in the pious garb of their own times. We can paint our own mental icons if we want, if that helps. Or we can flush them out as spiritual crutches and in the end act in our own name. It is time we own up to ourselves as common deities. Believer or not, the only name counts is your own. So then, why not make it a good name? That’s your choice; it’s your decision.

— Roy Zuniga
    April 2013
    Kirkland, WA 

 

copyright 2013 Roy Zuniga 

The Choice of Easter

31 Sunday Mar 2013

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[Note this post was edited since first published]

Choices come in many forms:

– Passive Choices:

– Consumer reactions – we chose one product over another; we hit one of several local restaurants for Friday happy hour; we order a new toaster online

– Conformist choices, which come in several flavors:

– Cultural habits – I celebrate national holidays and participate in certain rituals because it’s part of being a citizen in this country; I have a predilection for certain foods and I avoid certain colors; I do or do not do certain things while in public, etc.

– Peer-driven choices – my buddies are all going hunting, so I’ll follow along; I support the local sports clubs

– Implicit choices – I don’t do anything, but because my company is into technology, I am an implicit accomplice to its actions in the market. I didn’t create the policy, but because my church supports a certain stance, so do I; my family has been of a certain denomination, and that’s what I am

– Choices driven by ideology – the pastor presented a dilemma and possible solutions, and described the best choice and I agree; militants from the enemy are evil, and I agree; shedding their blood to defend the homeland is necessary

– Conscious choices:

– Life events – we want to have a baby; we decide I need a new job; or a divorce is inevitable

– World-view shifts – the current paradigms and thinking are not working; I need to think ad live differently

These choices are typically undergirded by one or both of these motivators:

1. Fear – I perceive (rightly or wrongly) that my existence or prosperity is at risk, and therefore I support certain policies or actions

2. Happiness – I am entitled to a certain life style and defend my choices to support it

Think about the hold the passive choices have on our lives. Governments the world over will use nation or origin and other profiling to asses security risks. They have learned that to some extent human behavior is deterministic when it comes to loyalty, especially when people are confronted with decisions that threaten their deeply ingrained religious and ideological assumptions.

Regardless of its driving motivation, each of these more or less active choices we make result in behaviors that in the aggregate determine the course of civilization. ‘We’re all in this together’ is the often heard cliché. If we agree that this planet is well on its way to being exhausted, and the human race along with it, we only have one positive choice to make as a collective. We have to behave in ways that result in a sustainable civilization. This ultimately comes down to individual choices.

Sustainability and scalability have to be new constraints on our choices. Sustainable practices are those that can be repeatedly applied over years and decades without detrimental effect on the environment. Scalable practices are those that can be applied everywhere without detriment to one party. Of course, we need both. For simplicity, when we talk about the Sustainability Constraint, we’re referring to both these concepts. There are of course regenerative practices that go beyond this and heal our environment, and to some extent for a sustainable behavior to be applied everywhere on this injured planet, regeneration will have to be applied first.

The Sustainability Constraint has to be a filter on all our choices, which means that passive choices have to become active for until we form new habits. ‘Is this sustainable behavior?’ has to be the question we ask ourselves in all our decisions, especially consumer choices. This is hard, very hard. Instead of dealing with hard choices, some take refuge in the promise of a resurrection and a new heaven and new earth, as we are reminded this Easter Sunday.

If a pattern of behaviors is not sustainable, how can a good God be behind it? For the faithful, there is no denying the experience of God. Does that mean that religious patterns of behaviors that are not sustainable and scalable are not subject to the constraint because they came from God and His holy intermediaries (the angels, prophets and priests)? On the contrary, we have to apply this litmus test to everything you’re spoon fed by a religious or ideological leader of any level before you passively swallow it:

What behaviors is this affirmation driving, and if done in the by all, are they sustainable in the aggregate?

If the answer is ever ‘no!’, then you have to differentiate between the religion and the connection with God that you so cherish and aspire to. Just because a religious organization helped you get in touch with a spiritual dimension, doesn’t mean that God supports it as it stands today. Reformation or wholesale replacement of beliefs and practices may be in order. For the faithful, this is a bitter pill to swallow. To get your mind ready for change, you must acknowledge and internalize three personal truths that cannot be denied:

  • First, a personal connection with the good God is possible. Whether we’ve experienced it personally, or heard about it, the phenomenon is universal. Those who have it, know it on a very personal subjective level.
  • Second, nothing humanity does happens without personal choice. Humans are the agents of action. It is our decision. We are the drivers.
  • Third, we have a collective conscience. Strip all doctrine and dogma aside, apply the sustainability constraint, and what you have is a set of values and principles that a community can agree on.

The joy of Easter is of course resurrection, a symbol promise that we also will transcend the earthly divisions and come together as one heavenly people. Each culture has its own Easter, so to speak, based on that fundamental human belief in a connection with God. I never really understood those who categorically deny the possibility of that connection. God cannot be proven or disproven (because of the n-level problem described below). An agnostic stance is the best stance for all who have lost hope of achieving a connection with God.

You can and must stand on these pillars (God-connection, effective human agency and community conscience) if you are going to revamp your current thinking. They will provide good footing as we face the realization that what we’ve become accustomed to, what our leaders have spoon fed us, is not sustainable and is in fact harmful.

For example, say we come to the realization that we need to change some of the narratives that drive our life choices, but these narratives are ‘from above’, i.e. from our religion. Whether it’s exclusive and divisive thinking, justification for war, racism, intolerance of gays, a belief in manifest destiny and continual economic growth, subordination of women, or whatever. If the beliefs do not pass the sustainability test, they have to be on the chopping block. How can we cut them if we believe with all our heart in what the prophets said, the miracles that were experienced, and Scripture written by inspired men of God?

We must realize there is no guarantee that God inspired the prophets or scriptures at issue. This is because of what I call the ‘n-level problem’ (described in my book, Dynamics of Myth on Amazon Kindle). Stated simply, the n-level problem is that even if a prophet was visited by angels, and a people experienced miracles, and demonic forces were exorcised, and nobody distorted the facts when they wrote about it, there is no guarantee that the level of beings above them, i.e. the ‘angels’ or ‘demons’ who played out the action, were not in fact themselves manipulated. If there can be one level of spiritual beings above us, there can be one to n-levels above them. If humans can be deceitful scammers, what makes us think other beings cannot be? Corruption in the ‘heavenly realms’ cannot be proven or disproven.

Two or three levels up, all kinds of things might be happening:

  • There may be devious aliens playing tricks with us
  • There may be an indifferent stand-offish God who only works through intermediaries, and these are so selfish that they convince humans in their territory that their self-interest is good, and the other beings’ are evil
  • The Devil may have taken over after creation and is orchestrating an elaborate good vs. evil theater to watch us annihilate each other for spite

We have no way of knowing for certain if there are spiritual beings or aliens for that matter who can manipulate us.

By contrast there is the possibility that there are no shenanigans going on in the heavens (which none of the world religions actually asserts), and that the humans just interpreted it sideways and developed corrupted religious institutions because, well, they were selfish manipulative humans. In this view, the Major Prophets didn’t really get the revelations, but having understood the psychology of the religious masses, decided to create a cult following for themselves. We know for a fact this has happened in some instances – why not in all?

The n-level problem tells us that whatever the personal connections with God may be, in aggregate, as a whole, we cannot be certain someone up the angel chain is deceiving and being deceived. You may ask, if this is the case, wouldn’t your first pillar above (the personal connection with God) be subject to the n-level problem? The short answer is ‘yes, but’. Let me explain.

The connection an individual is having with God cannot be denied by that person. Those who have it say it is deep and spiritual; they know it in their being. These individuals feel extremely passionate about it, and their willingness to not deny it under torture indicates how real it is to them. This is the first pillar, a personal connection and cannot be taken away. Any system of thought that seeks to reform human behavior has to not only account for it, but also make it a foundational pillar because fundamentally that is the aspiration of humanity across eons of time. The personal connection passes the sustainability constraint.

The n-level problem manifests itself in religious schemes and organizations that seek to bend the will of the faithful to some organizational interest, or to the detriment of humanity. Unsustainable behaviors are their fruit. What the n-level problem reveals to us is that we have to be willing to re-write religious and spiritual stories.

We’re talking about fundamental changes here not possible by reformation alone. Reformation will cling to certain core doctrines, and can only go so far. Standing on our core pillars, let go of all doctrines and do that sanity check: what is the minimum I have to have to have a connection with God, make sustainable decisions in line with my community’s conscience? Based on this we can create new narratives to help us in our day to day rapid and slow decision making.

A process for shifting our world view to something sustainable is called Community Mythology (about which I’ve written about elsewhere). This involves communities understanding the core values that are sustainable, and embedding them in richly embellished stories that are assimilated into our psyche and effectively reprogram us, thereby displacing the old unsustainable practices.

The choice of Easter is ours: it is about the death of the old paradigms and the resurrection of a connection with God through a new spirituality that results in sustainable behaviors.

— Roy Zuniga

Easter 2013
Kirkland, WA

In the Name of ________ ?

25 Monday Mar 2013

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The key to a mythology working in the minds of believers is of course the ‘belief factor’. Without it, you’re not a believer. This sounds obvious, you have to believe for a myth to have effect. How do we make that happen if we created the myth? Can we believe in it? Especially if we’re the skeptical kind who doesn’t believe in anything, not even myths we didn’t create. 

We often use phrases like ‘he’s a believer’, ‘he’s acting in good faith’, ‘she’s committed to the cause’, ‘he’s willing to die for it,’ etc. There’s an inextricable connection between belief and behavior. On the flip side, we berate people for not having integrity if they go against their beliefs. ‘We have been betrayed’, ‘he sold out’, ‘he has no moral bearing’, ‘she’s been compromised’, ‘she drank the cool aide’, etc. If you act according to your beliefs, you are praiseworthy; do the opposite, or act according enemy’s beliefs, then you’re reprehensible, even guilty in some measure.

Everything we do pretty much revolves around these two poles: we reward those who commit extraordinary acts for their faith; we punish those who betray it. We’re rewarding or punishing, ourselves and others. Of course we’re more inclined to reward those of our own faith. We don’t generally reward the extraordinary acts of people in foreign faiths. That thought doesn’t even compute in our minds. It’s not our faith. Why would we reward anyone for dying for another’s faith?

So we get to the crux of the problem. We should be rewarding those who act in the name of a praiseworthy faith. This is the conundrum – how do you recognize a praiseworthy faith that on the surface doesn’t look anything like ours? Also, how do we know our faith is praiseworthy?

We actually have to learn to look deeper at the underlying value systems in both others’ and our own faith, and come to some conclusions. First, we have to recognize what is not good in our own and filter. Second, we have to be able to de-construct the stories and beliefs in an foreign faith to understand the underlying values – the good ones (they might also have negative elements that need to be filtered out). In this way we find shared values.

Affirming shared values in different faiths. If we can achieve this, then we have a common basis in humanity to tolerate and support each other in our shared purpose, i.e. a peaceful and sustainable co-habitation of the same planet. Does this resonate with you (even if it sounds idealistic)?

We know deep down that people need to have something to believe in. Without a cause, we’re floating aimlessly through life. With a purpose, we’re motivated. I dare say most believers have had a purpose, a faith handed down. Even though many reject the faith of their parents and find another – they are still acting in faith. Some find faith in what is not generally recognized to be a faith. It could be a system of thought, a movement, etc. By contrast, those who have ‘lost all faith’ are the downtrodden, the apathetic losers, the bland couch potatoes who watch television without really perceiving anything.

In other words, the believing act is what makes this world go around. Change what a person or community believes, and you can change the world. Sounds like a cliché, but it’s true. Question is how?

What do we do if we have succumbed to an unhealthy belief system? Whatever our religious beliefs may be, layered over and around them is also a faith in consumerism which is driving us to pollute our planet to our collective detriment. How do you convert away from a bad faith? We need a new faith, or faiths, that are sustainable. How do you convert people away from consumerism if it’s such a pervasive self-sustaining eco-system?

We brag about how we get deals and spend money. We demand to drive late model cars. We judge people who don’t wear the current fashions and colors. We throw away perfectly good gadgets just so we have the latest smart phone. We complain about how slow the internet is, of how heavy a laptop is when our grandparents did fine without both. We shop to feel good, and glitzy malls make us willing to pay more. We delight in tearing open the boxes at Christmas. When we get bored with our toys, we buy new, and look down on used goods. We perpetuate consumerism because we’ve been programmed to do so. We’ve been programmed through the media and peer pressure. We’ve also built our economy on consumerism. There has to be constant growth, year over year, for us to prosper.

How on earth do you sustain continual growth on a planet with finite resources? We don’t think much about that. The fact is, both our programming and the system destroying us, and we continue to support it! To wake up from this collective blunder we’re going to have to think differently. And to paraphrase the famous quote, the thinking that got us into this mess is not the thinking that will get us out.

That’s both true and false. It is true that we have to change the thoughts that drive behavior. However, the dynamics of programming ourselves can prove useful. We have to step outside of ourselves and determine how both to program ourselves, and what the new programming content should be. This is really hard, and most of use can’t do the mental gymnastics to make it happen. After all, who created their own faith? Don’t we by definition have to believe in something greater than ourselves? The short answer is, no, we shouldn’t. We very much should believe in something as great as ourselves, together.

The big leap is creating our own faith, and the dynamics of this are crucial to success. We have to do something that hasn’t been done before so systematically and explicitly. Sure, we’ve had more than our fair share of prophets coming down from the mountain with holy words received from God or angels. But they represented a received faith, not a created faith. It’s easier to accept authorship from an authority (real or perceived), than to accept a faith that was hatched in our local community house.

We have to define a faith and then believe in it. No one really knows how to do that explicitly, even though it’s been done for millennia implicitly with all the cults and world religions. The first step is recognizing it’s a human-driven process, and then taking control of it. But how? A couple of thoughts come to mind:

– First, the fact that it is a human driven process does not mean it is individual faith. We have developed a shared conscience based on our shared experiences. While it’s personal, it’s also a collective process and value set.

– Second, it’s a collaborative effort. We have to articulate our top priorities together and go about identifying the positive scalable behaviors that will perpetuate the goodness.

– Third, the new programming won’t create itself – we have to lean in and be proactive to make it happen.

– Fourth, making it happen will require a variety of talents, from the organization project management, to the facilitation, to the story making, to the embellishing, publishing, disseminating and teaching.

– Fifth, the process is local, not centralized. This may seem contradictory, but it’s not. We share a common humanity with common ideals that will manifest themselves very distinctly in each locale. This cannot and should not be centrally controlled.

– Sixth, the delivery of the programming is not what we’re used to. Decentralized production means that all kinds of delivery mechanisms will be created. Some will be with new technology, some with very old. We should, in any case, strive for high quality in the artifacts created.

– Seventh, we have to resist the temptation to codify new beliefs into ideology and doctrine. If we do that, organizational interests will take over. You don’t need to spell everything out as a rule for people to get the message. Allusive art can be more powerful than dry doctrine.

– Eighth, as we create and live our new faiths, we should maintain open hearts and homes towards those of other faiths, or we’ll fall back into sectarian tribalism. The only way to both have local faith and global tolerance is by recognizing that our faith is human-driven, that we have created it ourselves.

– Ninth, recognize that the stories will evolve, the priorities will change, lessons will be learned and the process improved. Don’t be offended if the next generation is more interested in creating their own stories than in perpetuating yours.

– Tenth is defensive: we have to stand together against exclusivist thinking. All religious wars have this in common: one side or both is intolerant or has exclusive claims that offends, alienates and even tries to coerce the other. We have to defend the right for communities to create their own stories, and band together if a toxic ‘cancer cell’ manifests itself that seeks to nullify these principles. Let’s face it, there will be hateful bigoted people out there who will try to ridicule, oppose and otherwise annihilate this work. In the face of a questionable faith, ask yourself these questions:

– What are their underlying values?
– How do these values manifest themselves in behavior?
– Is the behavior consistent with their values?
– What is their posture towards other faiths?
– Is it a scalable faith, i.e. can be applied everywhere with good outcome?
– What kind of energy do they have? What does my gut check say? Are they loving or spiteful, hateful?
– What is purpose do we share?
– What can we do to reach out to them and create a dialog and share lessons learned and align on pressing issues?

While we have to be open, we also have to defend our faith against those who would destroy it (and the faith of others). America was founded on the principle of freedom of religion, and we’ve defended that notion our entire history. However, it’s become a one-sided interpretation of what is worth defending. We have to defend not only our core beliefs, but along with it the right of others to ‘make believe’, so to speak.

We have to realize we can step in and out of a believing moment, like we did as kids when we role played heroes in a different world, or as adults when we tune into a movie. Make-believe has to be a grown-up process so we can re-program ourselves and shift our worldviews and collectively stop the mad rush to exhaust our lovely planet. We all know in our hearts we have the power to extinguish quality of life on this planet, and even drive ourselves and many species to miserable near-extinction. We have to do a collective mental reset and get on that plane of higher-consciousness that act here and now in the name of our good belief.

— Roy Zuniga

March 2013

Kirkland, WA