Limits of Reason

In his new book, Reinventing the Sacred, the renowned biologist and complexity theorist Stuart A. Kauffman repeatedly speaks to the limitations of rationality in the face of an evolving, creative cosmos:

One view of God is that God is our chosen name for the ceaseless creativity in the natural universe, biosphere, and human cultures. Because of this ceaseless creativity, we typically do not and cannot know what will happen. We live our lives forward, as Kierkegaard said. We live as if we knew, as Nietzsche said. We live our lives forward into mystery, and do so with faith and courage, for that is the mandate of life itself. But the fact that we must live our lives forward into a ceaseless creativity that we cannot fully understand means that reason alone is an insufficient guide to living our lives. Reason, the center of the Enlightenment, is but one of the evolved, fully human means we use to live our lives. Reason itself has finally led us to see the inadequacy of reason. We must therefore reunite our full humanity. We must see ourselves whole, living in a creative world we can never fully know.

----------------------

Well said, I say. It is good to see the scientists begining to admit the limits of their philosophy.

Let's see if we can get the religionists to admit the limits of faith and belief.

Then maybe we can start to have a useful conversation and a better, fuller description of what we know and don't know as human beings in this huge universe.

What Do We Know?

Honorable Mention

Don’t be sad about us
Take your cue from sly
Leave your clues for gus
Proto-ethno-post-avant guy

When you are engulfed
Don’t feed the flame
The astro-inspired-elctromulched
Describe nature as "so lame"

Give your life a beat at a time
Heavily-layered breakdowns
Salt on the bongo rim with lime
The end results so downtown

A delicious moment of silence
Over-driven-unrelenting tension
Golden melt down never lent
Warbling techno extension

Uptown
Justice
Honorable
Mention

Effecting Cause

I saw Daniel Boone
Well, his ring-tailed cap
Twisted on the side of the road
The famous frontiersman
Had not been squashed like a toad
But it could plainly be seen and said
That the unfortunate raccoon
Had lost the brains
That once had been in his head

When does a tree become wood?
When does wood become ash?
And is the flame to blame,
For transformations past?
Would you tell me if you could?

I imagine the raccoon
Was not chicken
When he crossed the road
But I think he would have preferred
The driver had tapped on the brake
Instead of breaking his skull
And old Daniel Boone
Wouldn’t know what to make
Of our cars or the trails they take

When did the woods become asphalt?
Why do the cars go so fast?
And is the flame of liberty to blame,
For transformations past?
Can we ever know who’s at fault?

I wasn’t the cause
Of the raccoon’s demise
But my stomach felt the effects
His head was all smashed
And I am ashamed and abashed
To admit what my private thoughts where
As I publicly viewed the remains:
“I wish the critter could’ve avoided the crash
But I’m glad the speeding car didn’t tap that ass
Daniel Boone would agree without fail
That that there raccoon
Despite a head shaped like a spoon
Has a mighty, mighty fine tail.”

--------------------------

Credits: Words by Jay Larsen

Roadster by Phileas Fogg

Target by Airhog

"Let the dilemma be your way!" by Hisamatsu

Moth Or May Eye

Voice brings focus
Cuts through the hocus pocus
Tells us but doesn’t show us
Voice brings focus

We are the Good Guys
We make only the Best Buys
Targets against the Wal
We are the Good Guys

Eat what they tell you
Don’t ask what’s in the stew
Corn syrup, caffeine, Mt. Dew
Eat what they tell you

Crazy Week, Great Graduation

Congratulations to my oldest daughter, Siona! She just graduated from high school.

She graduated in the top ten percent of the entire State of Washington! She's a smart kid and looks great in a cap and gown. We are very proud of her.

We had tons of friends and family over for a big party. Thanks to everyone who came. Thanks to those who didn't, but sent cards or phoned. It was a crazy week, full of family activities (and that explains why I haven't been online lately).

Take a bow Siona. You did good!

Shine A Little Light

Moral courage is a rarer commodity than bravery in battle or great intelligence. Yet it is the one essential, vital quality of those who seek to change a world which yields most painfully to change.
- Robert F. Kennedy, in a speech in Capetown, South Africa, June 6, 1966.

Ye are the light of the world. A city that is set on an hill cannot be hid. Neither do men light a candle, and put it under a bushel, but on a candlestick, and it giveth light unto all that are in the house.

- Jesus, the sermon on the mount where he introduced his new vision of morality.

Be a light unto yourself, betake yourselves to no external refuge. Hold fast to the Truth. Look not for refuge to anyone but yourselves.

-The Buddha upon his deathbed

You may say that I'm a dreamer

But I'm not the only one

I hope someday you'll join us

And the world will be as one

- John Lennon, Imagine

I Want To Believe...

Alrighty then, Obama is most likely the Democratic Candidate for President.

I want to believe that he and we can change this country.

I want to believe that he is different from other politicians.

I want to believe.

But I am prepared by experience to be disappointed.

But I am pretty damn sure that Hilary and McCain will disappoint.

They have sold out to the corporate oligarchs quite publicly in the past.

Barack might sell out.

He might have sold out already and just be putting on a good show.

But I want to believe.

But if voting were all it took to make real changes, it would be illegal.

We will have to do more than just vote to change this country.

But I will vote.

And I will vote for the Constitutional Law Professor, Barack Obama.

Because I want to believe.

------------------------------

Also, read this speech by Chris Hedges: http://www.alternet.org/democracy/86973/?page=entire

It is long and dense and depressing, but well worth the effort. Here is a quote:

Read Antigone, when the king imposes his will without listening to those he rules or Thucydides' history. Read how Athens' expanding empire saw it become a tyrant abroad and then a tyrant at home. How the tyranny the Athenian leadership imposed on others it finally imposed on itself. This, Thucydides wrote, is what doomed Athenian democracy; Athens destroyed itself. For the primary instrument of tyranny and empire is war and war is a poison, a poison which at times we must ingest just as a cancer patient must ingest a poison to survive. But if we do not understand the poison of war -- if we do not understand how deadly that poison is -- it can kill us just as surely as the disease.
Hope, St. Augustine wrote, has two beautiful daughters. They are anger and courage. Anger at the way things are and the courage to see they do not remain the way they are.

Perilous Parallels

Found this old CAKE video of “Love You Madly” on YouTube.

You have to click on the link to see it. LINK -- Click It or the jokes make no sense
I love the song, in fact I love it madly.
The video strikes me as silly, a short rip off of Iron Chef.
But the panel of judges reminds me of our Presidential Candidates.
I’ll let you figure out who is who. (Although it is spooky that only the female judge is still alive.)
So as we wait for the final Democratic Primaries to wind down.
And as we wait for the super-freaks, I mean super delegates to cast their votes.
And as we wait to see which way the candidates align and powder their Whigs.
I find myself nervously wanting to avoid the creepy old man on the right.

Congrats to the Democrats for making history.
Hilary has nothing to be ashamed of, she nearly won this thing.
But Barak ran a tighter campaign and focused on basic on the ground politics.
He attracted new voters and has a good chance of beating McCain this fall.
My real fear is that despite the hype of the contest, all the cooks are basically serving us the same ingredients.
Cake please!