Greeting today, a Spanish guy said “I’ll hopefully see you Monday!” I was curious, and dug into the “hopefully”. What was meant by that? Any uncertain plans? Nope, turns out, it’s more a reference to us not knowing the future. Which means it sounds really pessimistic, from an English-speaking perspective. A “something might just get in the way that would make us unable to both come to work” idea… pessimistic, eh? In English, we pretty much just state it as happening, with the rest implied: “See you Monday!”, and if I don’t, it’s not a broken promise, it’s just a “something went wrong…”

Apparently there is a pretty standard phrase in Spanish that you can add onto a greeting, resulting in something similar to: “See you Monday! If God permits it…” Some discussion later, we concluded an English equivalent might be “God-willing, I’ll see you Monday!” Which sounds really old, suggested another eaves-dropper. English really seems to have lost this element?

Can anyone come up with another way to phrase this uncertainty-about-the-future, with reference to anything from fate to providence to clean lack-of-knowledge? What would be the most common way we’d greet like this in English?

What has me more curious, is how a country’s language influences the scope of its culture’s understanding of the “God” concept. I’d think certain languages and cultures would be more open to the poetic understanding than others. On the other hand, while English seems to have lost it in greetings, it is still present does have phrases like “for God’s sake”, or “O God help us”, a phrase even Dawkins uses (according to a link I’ve shared before). Hmmm…

Still pending, I’ve been meaning to write a post or two on Shalom, As-Salamu Alaykum and Aloha ever since I saw Bustin’ Down the Door. It seems a weird mix, I know, because it contains only three examples. I should maybe add the Swiss Greutzi, I hear. Can anyone find more examples of standard cultural greetings with a connection to the culture’s religion?

There are so many things wrong with this theory, but if I point them all out now, I’ll be going against my stated purpose of trotting out my theory. So bear with me… keep in mind I’m talking rubbish, and do point out all the problems of my theory in the comments. (Like one person I met this weekend, that argued German, French, Italian, Dutch, Spanish… are all the same language. *grin*)

In this little world in my head, the effort of translating from one language to another brings people to a greater understanding of how cultural context guides communication. This is especially the case with mind-shifting differences, like word order on the lower impact side of things, or on the higher impact side of things: different words that are related in one language but not in another, guiding realisation that associations can differ tremendously, but that the other associations also do make so much sense. And then there’s the idiomatic expressions… those things that remain ever-elusive to a “non-native speaker”. (Anyone to whom they don’t remain elusive, I’m therefore calling native. )

South Africa has many languages, and dramatically different ones at that (European and African), but typically not enough communication happens, or happened, between the cultures. At least from a conservative Afrikaans speaking culture perspective. Many Afrikaans people also speak English, but to some degree, it is too easy. They know it too well, it’s a second language, not a foreign language. And it is still much the same culture.

America has the problem that they had the rail road before they settled the content, so it became a single invasion of a single language, and now everyone speaks English. (And I’m discounting the native Americans, on the grounds that the invaders so thoroughly wiped out local culture. I’m talking about the current status quo, rather than the sad history.)

Then there’s Germany. (Hmm, and how about Italy?) What’s wrong with Germany? Well, a few years ago on a ski trip, we decided that the problem is dubbing. We decided that the root of all evil in Europe comes from using the same voice actors to dub all movies and TV programs into the same language. I mean, everyone knows that foreign language films with subtitles are a great source of World Peace, don’t they? Don’t they? How might we cure this dubbing blight?

In any case, moving on… I’m in the position where I struggle to communicate with the local culture. Or with foreign non-English speaking culture as well. It has brought a number of interesting realisations, but more on that on some other day. When it comes to bilingual cultures, having more than one language is the first step. I suggest the second step should be to force people to translate pieces of high-level writing from their “second” language into their “first” — giving them the advantage of greater prowess with the sentences and paragraphs they’re creating, so that that isn’t the hurdle.

Enough nonsense from me for now. This is a light-hearted post, so fire away. The next one to be published will most likely be the translation of a friend’s Afrikaans post (spot one of the sources of inspiration for this post ), much more serious. Be like fire with light-hearted posts, be like water with the serious.

Evolution occurs when you have some complex kind of replicator of which replications (copies) are created by a slightly imperfect copying mechanism. The replication process needs to have sufficient fidelity (accuracy) that descendants significantly share characteristics with their immediate ancestors, but the process must not have perfect fidelity.

Imperfections in the copying procedure cause mutations, which result in new traits or characteristics in descendants. Perfect copies would be clones in the case of single-parent replication, or mere permutations in the case of recombinations of traits of parents in multiple-parent descendants. Without imperfection in the copying process, there will be no mutations, and hence no evolution of interesting new traits or characteristics.

In any instance where such a replicator exists in an environment with limited available resources, some replicators will necessarily be more successful at replicating than others. Such environmental pressure brings about selection. Due to this selection, the traits or characteristics that prove “beneficial” are selected for, and the replicators evolve better “fitness” through the interaction between imperfect replication (and therefore mutation) and selection (survival of the fittest).

Defining “Fitness”

In an evolutionary scenario, “fitness” is defined solely in terms of a replicator’s success at replication. As the evolutionary environment changes, some traits that used to be beneficial can become detrimental, and vice versa. As such, any qualitative comparison between two entities that attempts to determine which is “better”, is meaningless in terms of evolution, except when discussed with reference to its survival potential in the context of a particular evolutionary environment. (There are of course other ways of measuring “good” and “bad”, but such qualitative measures would be unrelated to the evolutionary process.)

If there is some way to quantify fitness, we could, in principle, find or define a “fitness function”. This function would conceptually return the quantified fitness of a particular replicator. The evolutionary process is effectively one that attempts to maximise this function in the process of developing the descendent replicators. The result would be replicators that appeared “designed” for that particular function. As such, this “fitness function” serves as a representation of the evolutionary environment and its implications for the replicator.

To recap, for evolution to occur, we need some kind of replicator with traits that can mutate, and some form of selection that occurs. This selection occurs as a result of the evolutionary environment, or conceptually according to some fitness function.

Evolution Within Computer Science

The simplest environments are the mathematical and artificial ones. One technique sometimes used in computer science for finding a decent solution to a particular problem (typically a number of parameters that need to be tuned) is the “genetic algorithm”. In short, a structure is programmed that has a significant number of parameters (“genes”) that need to be tuned. A particular instance of this structure, with a particular set of parameters/genes, could be considered the “organism” (the replicator) that must evolve. An initial population might only have one organism, or it may have a number of organisms with random parameters.

Also defined by the programmer, is an explicit fitness function that provides a measure of how good any particular solution is — where any particular “organism” is a potential solution, i.e. a particular set of parameters. Using the fitness function, “organisms” can be compared and the better organisms can be selected. Based on a set or population of the best organisms, a new generation of “offspring” organisms are evolved by making a number of copies of a parent, and randomly twiddling a couple of parameters to provide for mutation. Optionally, multiple parents can be selected and parameters chosen randomly between them, in order to implement “genetic recombination” (effectively sex), before adding a couple of mutations to produce new offspring.

By letting an algorithm like this run for thousands of generations, you “evolve” a decent solution to a particular problem, as defined and measured by your fitness function. (The disadvantages of genetic algorithms is not relevant to this post, but they would be computational complexity and local optimums.)

Purpose in Evolution

The above example (genetic algorithms) involved a designed fitness function in order for the result of the evolution of the “organisms” to be useful to its designer. Despite that fact, the fitness of the “organisms” is still purely their reproductive success within the context of their evolutionary environment. The connection of this reproductive success to the will of the designer occurs due to the fact that their evolutionary environment (represented by the fitness function) was designed to coax it out of them. Personified, the abstract “genes” of these organisms still only “care” about their own reproductive fitness, irrespective of the reasons behind a particular fitness function or evolutionary environment.

Computer Worms and Viruses, and Artificial Life

Computer worms and viruses are replicators. They produce offspring. However, typically the copies are perfect, and the worms or viruses do not mutate. As such, they cannot evolve. If taking a bigger picture view, and including mutations by external agents (evil computer programmers), a virus or worm could be incrementally “improved”. In a sense, this could represent an “evolution” of the harmful computer code, but the selection criteria (“fitness function”) is rather a human choice. As such, this is rather a part of human cultural and technological evolution than it is a good example of evolution in its own right.

The “reality” in which computer code lives is determined by the instructions available on the machine that is running the code. The nature of those instructions is such that a randomly mutating program (worm or virus) isn’t a very practical technique. Artificial life simulations (implementing evolution of artificial organisms in computer code) typically define a new environment, programming language or virtual machine, specifically designed for such simulations.

Biological Evolution

The study of biological evolution deals with the science behind how living organisms changed (and change) over time, within their evolutionary environment. The fundamental replicator in the case of biology as we know it is the gene, found in the DNA. (Note that there is no reason why the earliest life, the earliest replicators, necessarily had to have DNA as we know it. DNA could have been a later development.) Mutation occurs due to copying mistakes or environmental effects (e.g. radiation), recombination occurs through a variety of ways (not just sex). (For example, “E. coli swaps lots of genes with other species”, to take a particularly minor piece of information from a very interesting post.) The selection that occurs is known as “natural selection”.

In terms of the genetic algorithm mentioned above, the scientific study of biological evolution would study the functioning of the interaction of the organisms with their artificial evolutionary environment (the fitness function), and how that impacts the evolution of the “organisms”. Such science does not deal with any purpose behind the evolutionary environment or the fitness function: it would not deal with what the programmer is trying to achieve with the algorithm. (If you’re looking for discussions on meaning or purpose, that would be the realm of philosophy, or maybe religion or theology.) Limited to the realm of that artificial world, that world’s empirical science would probably be unable to produce any empirically testable claims about the computer programmer that created that artificial environment.

Domesticated Animals and Plants

Domesticated animals share our biology and environment, but there is an interesting twist to the selection process: as domesticated animals, their survival and selection are influenced by us humans. Through our interference with artificial selection, their evolutionary landscape is modified such that their fitness function is determined according to their usefulness to humans. Through generations of breeding, their replicators (genes) have evolved qualities beneficial to us. (This goes for the modern banana as well.)

If we were to turn our domesticated animals loose, they might not survive in the wild. Or they might, and their genes would then gradually evolve to a state of fitness relative to natural selection. I.e. they would evolve an improved ability to survive, simply for survival’s sake, rather than the characteristics that help them survive by being beneficial to the people that take care of them. They would thus become less useful to humans.

Again, the genes only care about survival. Any “purpose” with regards to what humans need from their domesticated animals impact the evolutionary environment, the “fitness function” if you will, but does not change the “pure survival and propagation instinct” (“instinct” due to personification) of the genes. Survival and propagation is all the genes care about.

Evolution of Language

Language is also a replicator. It might be more abstract, but it propagates from one person to another. These days humans need it in order to function in society, so it becomes a symbiotic relationship, a little bit like domesticated animals. The “evolutionary landscape” of language is human minds and human interactions. Language evolves because language also develops and mutates, as new generations pronounces things differently from another or create new words. Recombination takes place when different “tribes” with different languages meet, and exchange words and concepts.

Through the development and evolution of language, we can determine a lot about the evolutionary landscape that shaped it. For example, based on how words were incorporated from one language into another, we can determine who traded with whom. The fitness of the language is determined by who else can understand what you are trying to communicate. So Afrikaans is not very “fit” in the context of China, but has some fitness in The Netherlands. Of course, Dutch is still more fit than Afrikaans, and if you are living in The Netherlands amongst Dutch people, Dutch language skills, or “Dutch memes”, would find a new mind to colonise: yours. (I’m taking the “language’s-eye view”.) The language’s survival or opportunity to colonise your mind is determined by what you find useful or attach value to.

It remains a very symbiotic relationship though: language continues to exist for the purpose of human communication. There isn’t much danger of language finding a way to propagate independently of its usefulness to humans. However, language also isn’t completely limited to direct communications usefulness: some language developments propagate through exploitation of other unique traits of human psychology, like humour or tribal identity. Take for example l33tspeak, or even the “lolcat language”, or the development and spread of the Klingon language. Any memes (ideas, cultural units) that can find a mechanism by which they can be propagated, by which they can “procreate” by colonising more minds, can develop and evolve to some extent.

Evolution of Technology and Culture

Culture and technology also evolves. Technological progress is made in small steps, small mutations from one idea or invention to another. Giant leaps in scientific and technological developments and progress are in fact not very common: people make small contributions (small mutations), and some bright spark pulls together a large number of these contributions recombining them into what looks like a huge leap forward.

The evolutionary environment is again determined by human minds, selection occurs according to what is supposedly “useful”. However, lately the “usefulness” of developments are in fact not the real fitness measure. Through contemporary marketing techniques, the developments that survive are in fact not necessary beneficial to their hosts (us humans), but rather just an example of an evolved, co-adapted meme complex, or set of ideas, exploiting our psychology to get us to buy whatever is the latest craze.

Manipulation of our subconscious desires is rife in the marketing industry, with the most successful ideas being propagated through economic mechanisms in free market capitalism. It becomes a question of what best attaches to human desires, what can make the most money, rather than what is truly useful. It results in materialism, which does not bring happiness, does not bring “benefit” to the hosts.

For one extreme example, one could argue that the native Americans “had it good”. I’m speaking under correction due to lack of knowledge of the topic, but conceptually they may have had a really good life: a sustainable economy, in symbiosis with nature, a tribal culture that avoids a huge disparity between the have’s and the have-nots, a way of life that was good. However, Western civilisation, technology and culture was the more successful replicator. The desire for more land, the desire for greater knowledge: such ideas necessarily propagate better. The colonialist, with memes that makes him think he and his culture is better than those of the people whose land they are colonising (“stealing”?), as well as memes that provided him with the technology to overpower the “savages” that lived there, ends up spreading his ideas, irrespective of whether they are “good” or not. (Don’t get me wrong, I like our technology. I like space exploration, I like mountain biking and skiing, I like computers. But I am, among other things, the product of my genes and memes. How can I objectively claim I am “better off”?)

Nuclear weapons might not be a good idea, but the idea continues spreading, because once some people have them, they possess the competitive advantage: the other people also need to have them to maintain balance, to defend their genes and memes. Without possession of that particular idea or meme or piece of technology, a culture comes under threat. So the culture must absorb the “bad ideas” for survival purposes. The cultures that don’t, may die out in competition with those that do.

And so ideas and technology is ever so slightly out of our control, with regards to a healthy symbiotic relationship.

Evolution in Religion

Unsurprisingly, I end up at religion. Religion is yet another replicator, by nature of it being passed on from one generation to another. Some religions include instructions to spread laterally as well, by bringing in new converts. Religions also evolve as a result of the mutations of new understandings, irrespective of whether these mutations come from divine inspiration when a prophet believes he hears God’s voice, or whether these mutations come from philosophical thought or from scholarly study and the development of systematic theology, or from adapting religious understandings based on the progress of scientific understanding.

The Bible shows a particularly interesting evolution of the understanding of God. The understanding develops during the Old Testament, but the Christian Bible sees a large and significant mutation occurring due to Jesus. The New Testament understanding is particularly different from the Old Testament understanding.

Religions also develop from one another. Judaism likely finalised their scripture, their Canon, in response to the threat of the heretical Jesus movement/sect. Jesus was a Jew, and yet Christianity split from Judaism. Such is effectively a speciation event. Later, under the teachings of Mohammed, middle eastern monotheism saw another significant speciation event, leaving us with the “three great monotheistic religions”. (Note that none of this is saying anything about which is right and which is wrong, this is more of a higher-level overview.)

Getting back to Christianity, there is much that can be studied with regards to the development of various denominations. Wikipedia has some interesting diagrams of the “speciation events” within Christianity that can be seen in the Christian denomination article. The fact that the same text is used and does not change, does not mean that the way these texts are interpreted cannot evolve. Some cultural insight into the way certain words, concepts or ideas were understood, can result in a rather different understanding of certain texts than is typical of contemporary Christianity. Some of the fads in contemporary Christianity are really very recent developments.

Now the selection process of religion is rather interesting. I will not get into details, because I only want to focus on one particular thought. Religion is supposedly looking for “Truth” (let’s say, the “right” way to live, or the best way to live). In the case of Christianity, this Truth was found in Jesus, two thousand years ago. What he taught, what he demonstrated, his way of life and teachings, these are to be considered “the way, the truth, and the life” by a Christian. This was where it started.

Much of Jesus’ teachings were about helping the poor and about redressing social imbalance. He radically and unrelentingly challenged purity codes and institutionalised oppression, what he considered to be immorality within the “religious” structures and organisations of his time. He taught a value-based existence, moving beyond a law-based one. He taught compassion. The way I see it, it could be considered a call to humanist values. (There are many forms of humanism, including Christian Humanism.)

Whatever it was, is also not quite the point I want to make. It was a radical tradition-breaking “earth-shattering” change in the culture of the times. Some argue he did not teach anything new, but uncovered the truth that was there all along, bringing together pre-existing ideas in new, better ways. Memetic recombination. It might have been a mutation event, or it might not, but what was most significant, was the selection event that took place. It was a selection event designed by Jesus, demonstrated by Jesus, and followed by the early church. Assume this is the “Truth” we are talking about.

Now fast forward a couple of thousand years. Religion is still a replicator, remember. It is still passed from generation to generation. It still evolves. And two thousand years is a significant time for cultural and religious evolution. Christianity evolved and still evolves in various Christian traditions. Among other places, it evolves in America, which is arguably far removed from the socio-political and economic situations at the time of Jesus. There are poor people, yes, but the difference between the beggars and the “impure”, the socially downtrodden, the oppressed, much of it is missing in America, at least in easily recognisable forms. What is also missing is the socially outcast prophets, that tore their clothes, married prostitutes, and protested the status quo. What is missing is the selection process that selects for the real truth and value of and in religion.

What remains, when the guided selection process goes missing? Pure unadulterated natural selection.

What emerges is a religion that is particularly successful at propagating, but starts serving no real purpose other than that. Yes, it needs to appear beneficial to the individual in order to successfully propagate into his mind, and to encourage further propagation. The results we would expect from this kind of natural selection in religion, would be a religion that is obsessed solely with how many people are reached, how many people are “saved” (how many minds the replicator can find into which to replicate, producing the maximum number of offspring). We would expect it would evolve a tendency to target the rich, and convince them to give significant amounts of money, to find the funds necessary to further increase the offspring of this meme complex.

What goes missing is the call to help the poor, the call to go out there and actually make a difference. People don’t like to be pushed beyond the borders of their comfort zones. Instead of going out to help the poor, the natural-selection evolved religion encourages people to sit at home and pray that God will take care of the poor, helping them believe they are making a difference to help them feel good. Go read Jesus’ prayer, Matthew 6. Notice that the prayer is a personal one. Jesus commanded his followers to take care of the poor, not to sit back and ask for divine intervention that all the world’s problems may be solved.

I don’t know how prevalent such degenerate religion has become, but I know that examples of such degenerate “American Fundamentalism” is being imported into South Africa. The evidence is all over the place. They count the number of people that get “saved”, rather than getting their hands dirty and making a real and lasting difference. They care about their fellow man only while they are “on a path to getting saved”. Once a person is saved, they no longer care. Cha-ching, another deposit in the heavenly bank-account. On to the next potential convert, the next recruitment commission supposedly paid out in the afterlife. A remarkably effective replicator…

The best and clearest example I have of this kind of behaviour so far, is Jarrod Davidoff’s sermon at Shofar in December. I wrote about it in Jarrod Davidoff, an “Evangelist”, at Shofar. No, I don’t know whether he really makes a difference in people’s lives or not. No, I don’t know whether this represents what Shofar is standing for or not. All I know is that I really didn’t like what I saw, because it really looks like a degenerate faith that serves only one purpose: getting itself propagated to as many people as possible. And serving the people that adopt it only enough to convince them and help them to continue propagating it. Cha-ching. And challenging them only so far as to keep them coming back. Cha-ching.

A long long time ago, but not in a far away galaxy, tribalism was the order of the day, and it was good. Some insist that tribalism is the natural state for humanity. Borrowing a paragraph from Wikipedia’s article on Tribalism:

According to a study by Robin Dunbar at the University of Liverpool, primate brain size is determined by social group size. Dunbar’s conclusion was that the human brain can only really understand a maximum of 150 individuals as fully developed, complex people (see Dunbar’s number). Malcolm Gladwell expanded on this conclusion sociologically in his book, The Tipping Point. According to these studies, then, “tribalism” is in some sense an inescapable fact of human neurology, simply because the human brain is not adapted to working with large populations. Beyond 150, the human brain must resort to some combination of hierarchical schemes, stereotypes, and other simplified models in order to understand so many people.

This combination of “hierarchical schemes, stereotypes and other simplified models” is the root of much evil. Such unavoidably impersonal societies bring many challenges, and necessitates that other big evil, politics. But I digress.

Tribal Stories

Humans are story-telling creatures. Most “moderns” have lost an appreciation for how the oral tradition worked, having been replaced by writing and “modern western culture”. If you have gone camping with a large group at a young age, you likely have memories of stories told around the camp fire. Nowadays we often tell ghost stories or horror stories. Education takes place in schools, after all, camp fire stories are there for entertainment. Picture an illiterate culture, prior to the development of a writing system though. In such societies, tribal stories become your education.

In pre-modern times, people looked up at the stars, played connect-the-dot, constructing pictures of creatures and men, populating the sky with images that were then connected to stories of creation and seasons and human nature. The sun took part in these stories, as did the moon, the wind, the sea, everything man saw was permeated with meaning. Man “named” the creatures and the elements, the stars and the rocks. This happened numerous times in numerous cultures, creating different stories and different pictures.

Some stories described the origins of everything, for example “the wonderful creation stories of the people of the high Andes and the frozen north”. Other stories describe the tribe’s past, retold over generations, defining the character of the people and shaping their future. I.e. the stories do contain elements of history, but in a pre-modern era, the real value of these stories to their tribal hosts were not in “factual history”, but rather as narratives to shape their present and their future. These stories were told and retold and developed to the point where they provided identity and meaning, and some understanding or acceptance of the human condition.

The narratives included lessons on ethics and morality, about how we should relate to nature, they contained foreign policy guidelines on how to relate to neighbouring tribes. These stories defined the tribe’s identity, their world view, their values. These stories are, in my opinion, some of the most remarkable and beautiful things in human culture, and should be cherished. I look forward to the days when I can share diverse cultures’ stories with my children, in part an excuse to discover their beauty for myself.

I don’t know how much exposure most people have to diverse cultures and mythologies. I was in the fortunate position to have spent five years in a British school in The Netherlands (called, aptly, “The British School in The Netherlands”, or BSN). I remember learning about ancient Egyptian mythology there, and I have had some exposure to Greek mythology, but I cannot even remember how much or from where. What mythologies are South Africans exposed to? Do South Africans learn about diverse cultures, or is that not as common in a strongly religious country with shared and cherished religious narratives?

The stories and narratives I am most familiar with, are indeed those absorbed into the Judeo-Christian culture, and partly into western culture. For one example, the primary narrative of the Israelites, the founding story of their tribe (which was a state-level society, thus technically no longer a “tribe”, but you’ll notice I’m not going with academic definitions here), is the Exodus story: the story of their journey out of Egypt, a narrative about the return from exile. This narrative was repeated via the Babylonian exile and return, and is foundational to the Israelite or Judean culture. It echoes throughout their scripture.

An Aside: Zombie Religion

I believe the emerging church conversation is bringing the flesh back, that many there understand the nature and value of narratives and oral traditions, and that this could restore the tradition to a “living, breathing” organism again. Yes, many mainline traditions have managed to keep the flesh, by good training of its leaders, but I suspect modernism and “fact fundamentalism” have still atrophied or mortified some of the tissue. I hope that there too, some stretching and some exercise will restore the organism to a more glorious state. May it again become a symbiotic partner amongst our diverse cultures.

Cue: God

In theistic traditions, these stories are about “the gods”, or about “God”. As the subject of these stories, God becomes the shared central idea of a tribe with regards to how they relate to one another, the environment around them, and towards that which is bigger than them and outside of their control (“in the hands of God”).

In polytheistic traditions, the stories are about a whole pantheon of gods. The god a particular person chooses to be loyal to, reflects something of that person’s character. This ties in with the idea of a culture and its values being defined by its stories and its God.

In eastern traditions, trying to identify a “central concept” or named entity or idea is more tricky. In Taoism, the stories are about the Tao, or the path or the way. (Remarkable similarity with the early Christians considering themselves people of the way, no?) Buddhism is tricky to cast into this mold I’ve sketched out. I suppose we could talk about “awakening” (enlightenment, or maybe attainment of “nirvana”), but that doesn’t quite work. What would be a unifying factor amongst a “tribe of Buddhists”? Again, they’d be unified in their way of life, or their search? Meh… moving on…

Some traditions have “nature” as their “God concept”, focusing directly on how they relate to their environment. Other traditions revere their ancestors. All can be considered an attempt to connect to that “something greater”, that “thing beyond themselves”. From a monotheistic perspective, all would be considered an attempt at connecting to “God”, while from a non-theistic humanist perspective, all could be considered an attempt of connecting to, and understanding, that “transcendent” thing: the human experience. (With the human experience being subjective. I’m defining the word “transcendent” in such a way that I can use it to refer to it: the experience of the various forms love, for example, I’d like to describe as “transcendent”. A reductionist understanding or description would have you babbling about things like serotonin or somesuch, but doesn’t really talk about what the experience is like, to be a part of the whole, consisting of all the reductionistic parts, with the whole being somehow “more” than “just the sum of the parts”.)

In Focus: The Monotheistic Tribal God

Bringing all of this back into focus for this blog: in monotheistic traditions then, “The Tribal God” aspect of “God”, is the central subject of the narratives of monotheistic culture, the pivotal point or focus point for that culture. In effect thus, a particular monotheistic tribe is defined by its God.

The “God concept” then permeates all aspects of that culture, from discussions on how people relate to one another (described in terms of the concept of “living out God’s love” towards one another), to thinking about what is “right” and “wrong”, what it means to be thankful and appreciative for existence, what creativity is, and how to relate to — and accept things — that are out of your control. While I’m touching on the “personal God” idea here, that was the topic of the previous post. The most important idea I’m trying to convey in this post, is the concept of shared narrative, of communication and relation within the tribe.

Your connection to and solidarity with the tribe depends on this shared concept, the common corpus of stories to which you can refer when dealing with fellow tribesmen. This ties in with what I have suggested in the past, that these traditions are a “language”. It is the language of the tribe, a language with which to describe the world and the human experience.

I have been talking about “Walking the Streets of Athens” in a number of places. This idea applies to anyone wanting to make a difference in other people’s lives. You need to walk their streets, understand their culture, understand their needs, and figure out whether you have something to offer that would make a positive contribution to their lives, and what that would be.

For example, if you are serious about dealing with “the problems in the middle east” in the most effective way possible, and are prepared to give your life to the cause, the first step is to become one of them, in the sense of walking among them, immersing yourself in their culture, to experience and understand it. You need to understand the reasons for their culture, the benefits of their culture, the source of their culture… If you cannot recognise the good, be careful, because you run the risk of doing more harm than good. You run the risk of being the typical colonialist. Rather support the people that are prepared to go the distance.

This idea seems like common sense, but time and again I see people not heeding it. By all means, criticise elements that need criticism, point out the problems. Have discussions. Inspire other people to become more involved. To revisit the topic that I’ve been beating to death and back to life again many times over, Dawkins’ The God Delusion: the good contribution this book makes, is to make people more aware of the important issues. It provides those that lacked self-confidence with a naturalistic worldview with more confidence and faith in their lack of belief in the supernatural. It also inspires action. Unfortunately, I disagree with the kind of action it all too often inspires. /me bites my tongue to avoid criticising the bad yet again.

Anyway, the “Walking the Streets of Athens” idea was presented in a “sermon” (ugh, find another word?) presented by Erwin McManus at Stellenbosch Gemeente on 11 June 2007. While Stellenbosch Gemeente is mostly Afrikaans, Erwin is a visitor from far away (Los Angeles). His “sermons” are in English. The “Walking the Streets of Athens” sermon was given in the morning, titled Street Walker. (If you are interested, you can find an mp3 of the sermon by following that link then clicking on the image on the right that says “Luister”.)

The first time I used the Street Walker idea on my blog, was in my How To Convert An Atheist post. I wrote that series of three posts while embracing the “secular humanist” label, effectively considering myself an atheist at the time. That means that series was written while pondering “How To Convert Myself“. (Quite surprising how well that actually worked… ) The key idea behind the series was “You need to learn to think, like an atheist does”. It was intending to educate Christians, rather than to convert atheists.

In the “Street Walker” sermon Erwin also mentions a person he invited to attend his congregation, who only realised it was a “church” after three weeks. (This was the inspiration for the You Have Been Tricked post.) And then he took his first steps into following Jesus…

This being a sermon delivered at a church full of people that speak Christianese, it should come as no surprise that Erwin speaks Christianese in this sermon. If you’re an atheist, you likely don’t understand Christianese, and you likely have a very specific set of connotations attached to the idea of “giving your life to Jesus”, and the alarm bells will likely ring in your head when you read this post or listen to the sermon. And you will be wrong. Most likely. Chances are, you’ve been brainwashed by fundamentalists, brainwashed into thinking that all Christians are fundamentalists, brainwashed into thinking that “Christianity” is about rejecting science and obsessing about the afterlife, brainwashed into thinking that following Jesus means what they want you to think it means. So be careful. Don’t be too quick to jump to conclusions when you listen to a language you don’t understand. (I should drop my silly brainwashing rhetoric. Rather, the point is this: consider the early Christian movement, even before it was called “Christianity”, especially before it got wedded to government and became a state-sponsored authoritarian religion. There is a lot of baggage from the last few hundred years which I/we assert is hiding the original meaning. We’re trying to get back at that meaning.)

I’d love to attend his church and see how he runs things. I will have to look it up if I’m ever in the area. (I heard Erwin’s congregation also includes Buddhists and Atheists. Sweet! I want to go check out his language…)

Erwin’s evening sermon was about Beauty. The legendary snippet that I will always remember, where he talks about eating meat (I’ll not spoil any of it yet), starts at 6:10 (mins:secs) into the mp3, and continues to about 9:50. After that, he talks some more about how meat cuts are selected, before he talks about coffee. If you don’t want to hear any Christianese, you can stop listening at 11:45. Before 6:10 and after 11:45 contains Christianese. While you can read my transcript of the “eating meat” part below (from 6:10 to 9:50), a transcript really cannot do Erwin McManus any justice.

The Transcript

Is it possible to train yourself to be blind to beauty? And only enjoy the ugliness or the common? Now I love meat. (Anybody love meat?) I love red meat. I love pretty much anything that moves on four legs. And whenever I want vegetables, I just eat chicken. And in LA, people are vegetarians, and they’re very… they look down on people like me who are carnivores. And I tell them, the reason I am a carnivore and not a vegetarian, is because of ethical reasons. Cause I don’t believe you should eat anything that cannot run for its life. And fruit and vegetables don’t have a fair (?) escape, they’re just hanging there trapped in the ground hoping that no-one sees them, and (snip, dunno) I’m far too compassionate for that. It’s not my fault that cows are under-motivated to escape, and that chickens are not that bright.

But I’m also from a country called El Salvador, so whenever we ate our meat we’d always burn it. We’d have it well done, which seems like it would be the best way to do it is well done, because well done is better than poorly done, and so I would always have my meat well done, because for me, carbon was a food group, and… and I remember when I was fifteen, and we’d moved to the United States, and I was living in Miami Florida, and I found, my parents found this great restaurant, it had the best meat, and steak, and ribs, and… So I got a job there, so I could eat there, and I went ahead and begged for employment, and they gave me a job even though I was under-age and I couldn’t wait because I could eat all the meat I wanted, for free.

And my first steak, I ordered it… well done. And they came back from the kitchen and said, “The chef said no.” What do you mean, the chef said no?! “He said he would not cook it well done.” Tell him it’s my steak, I want it well done! And they went back, and they came back, and they said, “The chef said… no!” It’s my free steak, I want it, well… done…! And then the chef came out, and he was from Cuba, and he was very animated, and he said “I want to see the man that wants to ruin my meat!” Now I just want my steak well done. And he said, “No! You never cook a steak well done, you cook it medium rare, at most!” No… I don’t want medium rare, I don’t want a bloody steak, can the blood… s’everywhere, it goes into the mashed potatoes, I… I don’t want it medium rare! I want my steak well done!

And he made me a deal. He said, “I’ll cook it for you medium rare. You take one bite, and if you don’t like it, I’ll burn a steak for you.” And I thought, two steaks! That’ll work. So I said sure, and he cooked me a steak, and it was medium rare, and it came out, and it looked so terrible. It was all bloody and… undercooked, and… there was nowhere I could identify charcoal burns, and it just seemed so wrong, but, he was there, and he waited, so I cut into that steak, and I didn’t want the fact that it sliced like butter to deceive me, and… then I… I put it into my mouth. It began melting. My steak began to sing. And, I met God… that day… My life was changed forever, and after that, it was prime rib, give me it so rare, it still has the memory of being a cow. I want my meat rare! I love sashimi, you just bring me rare meat, and it’s just wonderful!

This piece was included to gratuitously offend Bertus!, who is a vegetarian. (Dave, you’re more than welcome to be offended as well, if you like.)

My suggestion is thus: if what I say does not make sense, ask me “wtf did you mean with the abuse of that word?” rather than asserting “you are wrong, because that word means blah-blah”. Quite possibly, I know what you think it means, and I don’t care. Or possibly I don’t know what other people mean by it — feel free to inform me, I would like to know, even if I don’t care. Either way, I’m not going to let my lack of knowledge of your “supposedly correct” definition of a word stop me from using what I feel is the best word to communicate a certain idea. I aim to get you thinking. You might have noticed that this is not the place for people that don’t like thinking. Um… duh?

Let me give you some more background on what’s going through my mind then, some background on where I’m coming from…

At a young age, some guy tested me and slapped on a label: I was diagnosed with something like “kognitiewe denke”. Say wha’? Cognitive thinking? What’s that supposed to be? Maybe the psych dudes can help out: did my mother remember the label correctly? Is this old psych-speak that we no longer use, or is this still meaningful? Whatevah. Let’s get to what they meant by it. (“They”…)

Supposedly I’m cursed or gifted with an ability to recognise patterns, similarities, parallels, that other people supposedly do not see. Or do not necessarily see until the parallels are illustrated more clearly. Here is what I need to learn from this: I should not expect other people to see things the way I do. I am sharing my view of the world with you. I am playing with parallels and similarities that are apparently not “common knowledge”. (Read “wrong” if you like. I don’t particularly care. If it provokes just one or two thoughts, if it “raises consciousness”, to borrow from Professor Dawkins, mission accomplished.)

So now comes language. Language is a communication tool. Language is a tool by which we share concepts. A tool by which we have memetic sex. (Yes, this blog is an orgy.) Words in language might typically be attached, in some modernistic sense, to some particular meaning. You might feel fundamentalistic about this meaning. Take this Ayn Rand fan for example:

Elke woord het ‘n bepaalde betekenis. Vanuit ‘n neurologiese perspektief kan dieselfde neuron/neuronbaan nie verskillende betekenisse aan dieselfde woord hanteer nie of twee verskillende woorde met dieselfde betekenis nie, Die brein is ‘n fisiese struktuur en gehoorsaam die wette van die fisika waarvan die eerste die behoud van energie/materie en aldus van identiteit. ‘n Ding kan nie twee verskillende goed wees op dieselfde tyd nie.

To translate (my translation):

Every word has a specific meaning. From a neurological perspective, a particular neuron or neural pathway cannot handle different meanings attached to the same word, or different words with the same meaning. The brain is a physical structure and obeys the laws of physics, of which the first is the conservation of energy/matter and thus identity. Something cannot be two different things at the same time.

This sounds a little like woo-woo horse baloney to me. It sounds like the woo-woo artists’ abuse of “quantum physics”. But I don’t know much about neuro-psychology. Is this “horse baloney” factually correct? Or is this Ayn Rand stuff? OK, in an attempt at more fairness, it seems he is arguing that knowing multiple languages is a waste of energy? Or a waste of our limited neurons or neural-pathways? To give the man some credit (he asked for it), this was Johann Enslin. Enough of an Ayn Rand fan that he translated some of Ayn Rand’s stuff into Afrikaans.

I wish he could have attended the Chris Chameleon “concert” my family and I attended on Saturday. That guy is a master at playing with language. Mix your Dutch and your Afrikaans, and you can prove that one is zero. Anyway… There are some specific mental-health benefits to being multi-lingual, I cannot remember the exact details. Just, don’t deny me my multi-linguality. You can tell me I’m wasting energy, but aren’t we all, with our very existence? I’m enjoying mine…

But I digress. You might feel fundamentalistic about the meaning you attach to your words. I clearly don’t. (And I can explain my choice with reason/philosophy.) So this is what I apparently do: I remix language, I abuse words, in ways you are possibly not used to. I challenge you to look at the concepts I’m trying to communicate. The context in which I use words is supposed to help you understand what I mean with those words.

If you want to prove me wrong, you will first need to strive to understand the concepts I’m trying to deal. You need to look past the words. To achieve this, it may help to first assume I’m correct, if only you could understand my concepts, rather than first assuming I’m incorrect, which is effectively argument by incredulity. This exercise might even help you in your relationships.

Read this blog! Chicks dig guys that read this blog. Oh, and guys dig chicks that read this blog, unless the guy sucks and is not worth your time.. Ditto for the chicks.

I don’t like the idea of forcing everyone to speak English. What is English anyway? Which dialect of English? Which accent? Sure, with time they could improve their understanding of English, but these things take time. I’m much more interested in communicating accurately, than using a particular “approved” word. Who chooses which words are “approved”, anyway?

So there are a couple of words I have maybe been abusing. Or maybe I have been using them correctly, but they are misunderstood due to abuse elsewhere. For example, I’m not always sure whether I use “modernism” and “post-modernism” correctly. However, I have a good idea what I mean, and I believe most of my audience have a good idea what I mean.

I could spend hours and hours reading philosophy and books from other relevant fields, in order to find the correct, “approved” words. To what ends though? I’m not really convinced this will help me communicate to my target audience, who have not read the same books. I’m convinced that attempting to define every word perfectly, is to attempt to build another Tower of Babel.

The other option, if people are concerned about word-abuse, is that I could coin new words (shock, horror) to describe the concepts I’d like to describe. That way those that follow the blog will have a good idea of what I’m trying to say, while those that drop in out-of-the-blue will see gobbledygook and not understand, which might be better than misunderstanding?

Take Mythos and Logos… in some conversations, I have potentially been abusing these words. A translation of Logos that most closely matches the way I have been using it in recent informal conversations, can apparently be found in Faust:

The notorious question of how to translate logos is topicalised in Goethe’s Faust, with Faust finally opting for “deed, action” (Am Anfang war die Tat).

The alternative suggested by Lousirr during early morning insomniac hours at a time of high stress, would be to coin the words “Meh” and “Lah”, with “Meh” representing the concept I’ve been using “Mythos” for, and “Lah” representing the concept I’ve been using “Logos” for. (Anyone interested in Lousirr’s Meh/Lah rant?)

Ponder, ponder…

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Uiteindelik verstaan ek hoekom Afrikaans/Nederlands daardie lomp agterstevoor manier het om van getalle te praat. Die arme Engelse kan nie praat van die jaartal nie. “Twenty-seven”, “twenty-four”. Haha, die Engelse is n00bs, hulle taal is nie “Y2K-compliant” nie!

Kan Chuck Norris hierdie jaar se jaartal op ‘n mooi manier sê? Riaan Cruywagen kan!

For the time being, I’m providing a free translation service on this website. Feel free to use it. However, my time is limited, so it may take some time before I get to your request.

Best wishes, God bless, Shalom,
Hugo