Ishmael

I just finished this book and though I have found its intricate arguments which take one outside of oneself and give a new view from which to perceive the world appealing, there are many points represented with which I do not agree.

One major revelation that I had with this book revolves around the idea of religion and its association with agriculture and technology. For us humans to become 'takers' we create agriculture, enabling individuals to stockpile more food/goods than they need. This action of assuring ourselves and family food and taking more land than necessary, was a way of stating that we didn't trust the 'god(s)' to provide for us. Thus, we took the role of producer into our own hands. This symbolic movement of humanity from a 'leaver' culture to a 'taker' culture can be assimilated to eating the fruit from the tree of knowledge. In this single movement we refuted trust in 'god' and assumed the ability/position to decide for ourselves what is good and evil. Through this, taking godly decisions into our own hands, we take an act or position which denies the power of god, making god obsolete.

It is certainly strange that the most crippling wars have been fought in defense of religion..religion which does not focus on relinquishing power to the god(s), but focuses on ourselves and our power. "We must stop thinking we know who should live and who should die on this planet". (p.248

Another qualm I have with the story told through ishmael, is the way that mother culture/nature contradicts herself. We want to fight hunger, so we send out food. We need to stop overpopulation, but do we send out contraceptives? no! The world has been corrupted by people taking more than they need. This began with agriculture taking up more land than necessary and generating profits for the growers. We cannot begin to call any of this earth ours. Many problems have sprung from this. Obesity, overproduction, obscenely rich people, obscenely poor people, alcoholics..along with whole world of individuals living in consumption cultures where over-consumption is the norm.

Another topic that was broached in Ishmael that I wish to discuss is life support. I do not believe in life support. I think that a lot of money is wasted on keeping vegetables alive. I understand that if this someone is close to you, your opinions on keeping them alive than if you are not connected. However, I believe that we should not play God in certain situations. We should not be able to decide who lives and who dies, this simple factor, along with others is preventing the continuation of evolution. Human's existed on this earth for 3 million years before agriculture began. In living a hunter-gatherer type of lifestyle, human's got the food they needed by hunting/gathering on an average of 2-3 hours per day, living quite leisurely lives. This type of life allowed for survival of the fittest to ensue and helped humans evolve into homo-sapiens sapiens. If we hadn't taken the reigns when we did, the next strand of humanoids could have super powers by now. We could all be flying or have the capacity to move things with our thoughts. We only use 8.5% of our brains. The homo sapien sapien strand of humanoid is flawed. We will never knew what was meant to follow our brand of human. We are destroying the world bit by bit.

On another note. I drift off to alien life forms. Imagine if their smartest creature realized the flaw of pretending to be a god and evolved further than us? I believe this is highly likely.

UGH there are so many topics to chew on from this book. It truly was a pleasure to read and left me with a altered/pro-animalistic view of reality.

Apple.

Isn't it ironic that the apple icon represents humankind's first biblical sin? Could this be likened to the idea that information and knowledge transmitted through computers is detrimental to our religious vitality? I think so. (I should really study semiotics. This is so fucking intriguing to me.)

More on Australia.

Ok, So I just found out that I read a whole 30 pages that I didn't have to read. oops. It was a really interesting chapter, however; something worth sharing.

This chapter was about the Piacular rites of Australian religious cults. These rituals are mainly used when one of the members of the cult passes on. When someone is said to be dying in a cult, the men and women start wailing and cutting themselves. The father of the deceased slices huge gashes into his thighs that prohibit him from standing or walking. The mother heats a stick in a fire and burns marks into all of her appendages while crying out in horror. Other members hit themselves in the head with machetes and cut their arms and legs, afterward burning their cuts with sticks to aggravate the wounds. The whole cult wails and cries and holds each other.

They believe that if you don't act in such a manner after the death of a cult member, their soul will come back and kill you. They are such actors.

Australia.

The native tribes of central / northern Australia have peculiar religious cults. For one particular tribe, the Witchetty Grub initiation rights are tremendously scary. Whereas the Christian religion requires dousing an infant in a font, and Judaism requires circumcision; this tribe leads the inductee naked in complete silence into the middle of the wilderness. Here he is left to lie still for days. A chant is sung to allow for proliferative kangaroo reproductivity. Next, the leader strikes a rock, the pieces of rock that flake off are said to become seeds. Then bloodletting ensues from the inductee until the sacred quartzite rock is covered with blood. The inductee is then left in the wilderness for days to lie still with minimal food and water, naked and alone.

The ceremony continues, with increasingly obscure rituals; one of which being the gathering, frying and eating of caterpillars.

Who thinks up this stuff?

I understand the concept of suffering, making one bond more strongly to the concepts and ideals brought fourth through religion. However, I think this sort of influence can be brought to the surface in different ways that are less physically abrasive.

Another concept brought to mind in my reading which I had never considered before, is the use of eating as religious rites. I always took communion in church, but didn't ever realize the immortality it produces theoretically. I always thought communion was offered because Christ died for our sins. That was the answer given to all questions in the pastoral ideology. I never really questioned it. The fact that we eat Christ, it makes him alive in us. Just like how worms eat our bodies after we pass away, they become a part of us as well. Then from there, other animals eat them and then we eat those animals somewhere along the line. So essentially, to refer to the Buddhist religion, we are all interconnected. Brahman is in everything and everything is Brahman.

Regardless if we want to believe it or not, we have all eaten our ancestors or ancestor bi-product through the consumption of vegetation, and especially meat. YUM!

I am coming closer and closer to becoming a full fledged Buddhist. The only guidelines are to abide by the 4 holy truths.

1. Life as we know it ultimately is or leads to suffering in one way or the other.
2. The cause of this suffering is attachment to, or craving for worldly pleasures of all kinds and clinging to this very existence, our self and the things or people we deem the cause of our respective happiness or unhappiness.
3. The suffering ends when the craving ends, or one is freed from all desires by eliminating the delusions, reaches Enlightenment.
4. The way to reach that liberated state is by following the the path Buddha has laid out.

This religion seems capable of comprehension. However, I can't let go of the belief that everything happens for a reason. In order for me to believe that, I must believe there is a God. Therefore, I cannot be Buddhist. I will exist simply as a spiritual being. That is all.