Beliefs

"The worst of this group of saints, martyrs, angels, archangels, and other imaginary creatures seems to be an individual named Jesus Christ, who never existed but in spite of this fact did many things he should not have. He said:"Render unto Caesar the things that are Caesar's," in other words, he was in favor of man's exploitation of man. He was in favor of adultery ("that means your daddies leave their wives and run around like idiots after other women"), since he didn't do anything about the loose woman who was caught committing adultery. They say he was born of a virgin, that means a pure woman, you see, but that is what shows Jesus Christ is a myth, the opiate of the people, because other false saints and gods appeared to be born from virgins. "In fact, children, let me tell you what happened, what a professor of philosophy taught us during training: Jesus's mom got into trouble with one Pantera, a Roman soldier, and when she ended up pregnant, she had to get married quickly, and to someone dumb enough to take her like that, so she got Joseph, the village carpenter." Still, they must remember — in spite of all these stories — that none of those people ever existed, not Mary or Joseph or their kid born in a feed trough, no more than Father Christmas (only Father Frost existed, who came to school every year with a bag of cookies and moldy oranges), or Muma of the Forrest of fairies. Yuri Gagarin had been to space, that is, to heaven, and he didn't see any gods or saints of any kind."

Mircea Cărtărescu, in Solenoid

Werner Herzog interview

Werner Herzog on Philosophy of his Films, Cancel Culture, Consumerism & More | Full Video Episode

Nos ombros dos gigantes

Talking about evolution with Richard Dawkins (1996) | THINK TANK

a rose is a rose is a rose

A prática da religião católica tem permitido aos seus mais fervorosos devotos e aficionados, ao longo dos tempos, elaborar sobre aquilo que seria o Inferno, esse ‘todo-devorador lago de chamas’.

Contra todas as leis da física e da biologia, a infinita capacidade imaginativa humana descreve, por linhas vis, a dimensão da culpa. Arma para contrariar, ou resfriar a, toda-poderosa, pulsão do prazer.

"Master and Margarita", de Viktor Lazarev

Knowledge vs belief and joking

Ricky Gervais and Richard Dawkins in Conversation


"If you could meet your 200 million great grande father, you would eat him with a slice of lemon and tartar sauce."
Richard Dawkins

"Particularly in comedy, most offense is taken when people mistake the subject of the joke, with the target".

Ricky Gervais [49:28]

Post truths / legitimizing reality through discourse / Narratives

Martin Luther

Thomas Aquinas

"The practicing of legitimizing economic paradigms by creating grand cosmological narratives to accompany them is an age-old practice. Contemporary historians point to St. Thomas Aquinas's description of creation as a Great Chain of Being during the feudal era as a good example of the process of framing a cosmology that legitimizes the existing social order. Aquinas argued that the proper workings of nature depend on a labyrinth of obligations among God's creatures. While each creature differs in intellect and cpabilities, the diversity and equality is essential to the orderly functioning of the overall system. If all creatures were equal, St. Thomas reasoned, then they could not act for the advantage of others. By making each creature different, God established a hierarchy of obligations in nature that, if faithfully carried out, allowed the creation to flourish.

St. Thomas's description of God's creation bears a striking resemblance to the way feudal society was set up: everyone's individual survival depended on them faithfully performing their duties within a rigidly defined social hierarchy. Serfs, knights, lords, and the pope were all unequal in degree and kind but obligated to serve others by the feudal bonds of fealty.

[...] The cosmology of the Protestant Reformation that accompanied the soft proto-industrial revolution of the late medieval era performed a similar legitimizing role. Martin Luther launched a frontal attack on the church's notion of the Great Chain of Being, arguing that it legitimized the corrupt hierarchal rule of the pope and the papal administration over the lives of the faithful. The Protestant theologian replaced the church's feudal cosmology with a worldview centered on the personal relationship of each believer with Christ. The democratization of worship fit well with the new communication/energy/transportation matrix that was empowering the new burgher class."

Jeremy Rifkin, Zero Marginal Cost Society [pa 70, 71]

D. Quixote e os moinhos / narrativas

"Viver com a fantasia é muito mais fácil porque esta dá sentido ao sofrimento.
Os sacerdotes descobriram este princípio há milhares de anos, que subjaz a inúmeras cerimónias e mandamentos religiosos. Se quer que as pessoas acreditem em entidades imaginárias como os deuses e as nações, deve fazer com que elas sacrifiquem algo que lhes seja valioso. Quanto mais doloroso for o sacrifício, mais acreditarão na existência real do recetor imaginário. Umcamponês pobre que sacrifique um boi valioso a Júpiter ficará convencido de que Júpiter existe mesmo porque, de outra forma, como é que poderia justificar tamanha estupidez? O camponês continuará a sacrificar mais bois apenas para não ter de admitir que todos os outros bois foram sacrificados em vão. É precisamente pela mesma razão que, se eu sacrifiquei um filho para a glória da nação italiana ou as minhas pernas em nome da revolução comunista, isso é geralmente o quanto baste para me tornar um fanático nacionalista italiano [Batalha de Caporetto] ou um comunista fervoroso. Porque, se os mitos nacionais italianos e a propaganda comunista não passarem de mentiras, serei obrigado a reconhecer que a morte do meu filho ou a minha amputação foram completamente inúteis. Poucas pessoas têm essa coragem."
Yuval Noah Harari, Homo Deus


Sting, Russians

Ver, também, o conto de Jorge Luís Borges, "Um Problema":

Um problema

Imaginemos que em Toledo é encontrado um papel com um texto arábico e que paleógrafos o declaram um de punho e letra daquele Cide Hamete Benengeli de quem Cervantes derivou o Dom Quixote. No texto lemos que o herói (que, como se sabe, percorria os caminhos da Espanha, armado de espada e lança, e desafiava qualquer um por qualquer motivo) descobre, no final de um e seus muitos combates, que deu morte a um homem. Neste ponto cessa o fragmento; o problema é adivinhar, ou conjeturar, como reage Dom Quixote. Que eu saiba, há três respostas possíveis. A primeira é de índole negativa; nada especial acontece, porque no mundo alucinatório de Dom Quixote a morte não é menos comum que a magia e ter matado um homem não tem por que abalar quem se bate, ou acredita bater-se, com endríagos e encantadores. A segunda é patética. Dom Quixote jamais conseguiu esquecer que era uma projeção de Alonso Quijano, leitor de histórias fabulosas; ver a morte, compreender que um sonho o levou á culpa de Caim, desperta-o de sua consentida loucura talvez para sempre. A terceira talvez seja a mais verossímil. Morto aquele homem, Dom Quixote não pode admitir que o ato tremendo é obra de um delírio; a realidade do efeito o faz pressupor uma igual realidade da causa e Dom Quixote não sairá nunca de sua loucura. Resta outra conjetura, que é alheia ao orbe espanhol e mesmo ao orbe do Ocidente e requer um âmbito mais antigo, mais complexo mais fatigado. Dom Quixote \u2014 que já não é Dom Quixote, mas um rei dos ciclos do Industão \u2014 intui diante do cadáver do inimigo que matar e gerar são atos divinos ou mágicos que notoriamente transcendem a condição humana. Sabe que o morto é ilusório, como também são a espada sangrenta que lhe pesa na mão e ele mesmo e toda sua vida pretérita e os vastos deuses e o universo.

Jorge Luís Borges

Moises and technology

GOD: A SKETCH IDEA

Subject: Good evening.

God: You're welcome, my son.

S: I beg your pardon?

G: You said, 'Good evening,' and I said, 'You're welcome.' I do the best I can.

S: Excuse me – you're God?

G: Bloody right, my son, the Holy Gaffer Himself. What's the matter with you, my son?

S: Nothing, it's just that…

G: Spit it out, mate. I can't liege around here indefinably, you know. My eyE is on flaming sparrow, my son. Do you realize I got to keep my minces peeled on a billion five hundred and thirty-three sparrows? Even they come in a hundred and fifty-odd varieties, that's not to mention all the hippos, badgers, parrots, water voles, et cetera, et cetera, what I created in my infinite wisdom and all. What's on your mind, son?

S: Nothing, it's just that I expected God to be something like… well, you know, like the illustrations in the Bible.

G: You expect me to go pouncing around with whiskers and a white frock, then? You think I'm hippie pooftah, mate?

S: No, it's just…

G: Only you don't want to get leery, son. I could smite you, if I so chose. I could give you a right smiting, son, plague of bleeding locusts… frogs and whatnots… In my infinite wisdom I could smite you with leprosy… so watch it.

S: No, it's just I imagined God would be…

G: More upper class, then? Well, I'm a working-class God, my son, built the bloody world in six days, I did, hand-built and all, put in every star with my own hands, craftsmanship. You don't get that kind of work these days… Now, be on your way before whatnots show up, my son.

Marty Feldman, in eyE Marty

Egocasting

“egocasting” — a world where we exercise an unparalleled degree of control over what we watch and what we hear.

"By giving us the illusion of perfect control, these technologies risk making us incapable of ever being surprised. They encourage not the cultivation of taste, but the numbing repetition of fetish. And they contribute to what might be called “egocasting,” the thoroughly personalized and extremely narrow pursuit of one’s personal taste. In thrall to our own little technologically constructed worlds, we are, ironically, finding it increasingly difficult to appreciate genuine individuality."

"The more control we can exercise over what we see and hear, the less prepared we are to be surprised."

"We are turning into a nation of instant but uninformed critics and we are developing a keen impatience for what art demands of us."

"What we don’t seem to realize is that ritual thoroughly personalized is no longer religion or art. It is fetish. And unlike religion and art, which encourage us to transcend our own experience, fetish urges us to return obsessively to the sounds and images of an arrested stage of development."

Mais, aqui.

do êxtase

Aparição de São Miguel Arcanjo a Santa Joana d'Arc

"O sistema nervoso é mais vulnerável do que os outros tecidos do corpo; consequentemente, as deficiências vitamínicas têm tendência a afectar o estado de espírito antes de afectarem, pelo menos de modo particularmente óbvio, a pele, os ossos, as mucosas, os músculos e as vísceras. O primeiro resultado de uma dieta desadequada é a redução da eficiência do cérebro enquanto instrumento para a sobrevivência biológica. A pessoa mal nutrida tem tendência a sofrer de ansiedade, depressão, hipocondria e sentimentos de inquietação. Também está sujeita a ter visões; pois quando a eficiência da válvula redutora cerebral se atenua, muitos materiais inúteis (do ponto de vista biológico) afluem à consciência vindos 'lá de fora', da Mente sem Limites. [...] No que toca a vitaminas, todos os invernos medievais eram um longo jejum involuntário, e a este jejum involuntário seguiam-se, durante a Quaresma, quarenta dias de abstinência voluntária. A Semana Santa encontrava os fiéis magnificamente preparados, no que à química corporal dizia respeito, para os seus tremendos incentivos à dor e ao júbilo, para o remorso sazonal da consciência e para uma identificação, capaz de transcender o eu, com o Cristo ressuscitado. Nesta temporada de fervor religioso elevado ao máximo e de consumo mínimo de vitaminas, os êxtases e as visões eram quase banais. Outra coisa não seria de esperar naquelas circunstâncias."
Aldous Huxley, As Portas da Percepção

The God gene

Pensamentos fugazes

Em nome da alteridade.
Nós, o arrogante, narcísico e liberal Ocidente, berço do Peace and Love, do Naturismo, e do 'Bom Selvagem', herdeiro de grandes civilizações reflexivas do antigo Oriente, ainda infectado pelo lado obscuro, pudico, manipulador e prepotente patriarcado Cristão. Nós, o arrogantes, narcísicos e liberais Ocidententais, defensores do individualismo e do respeito pelo próximo, paradoxalmente, incapazes de vergar a cabeça enquanto seres que se desejam humildes mas, igualmente, incapazes de a levantar desviando o olhar do seu umbigo… Nós, portugueses, tementes, ainda na sombra de 48 anos de palmatória purista. É isso que queremos? Dar tiros nos pés?

 

Da pertinência, ou não, da nudez. Do tapamento, ou não, do corpo. Do voyeurismo disfarçado de bons costumes. Joana Amaral Dias, é esse o caminho! Subscrevo. Deixemo-nos de merdas (pardon my french). Todos os nossos gestos, todos os dias, são políticos. Riam-se, rir faz bem, mas não me venham falar de burcas!

Freedom does not exist. It's either determinism or randomness.

The Rise of the Data Religion



"The word 'freedom' simply has no meaning in the life sciences of today."

"If an organism is just a collection of algorithms, and these algorithms are not free in any sense, this means that, at least potentially, an external system, an external entity, can understand me perfectly. It just needs to understand all the algorithms that come together to build this machine, this structure."

"Feelings are just biochemical algorithms calculating, either of two things: probabilities of survival and probabilities of reproduction. That's it."

"Sexual feelings are biochemical algorithms."

"The algorithms of your feelings have succeeded, for millions of years, to pass the most rigorous tests of natural selection."

"Liberalism is listening to your feelings. Going with your heart. It was a practical guidance. It was not just a theory. Now, we move to the next stage, where people say, 'don't listen to your feelings, what do they know?' Listen to Google, listen to Amazon or to Facebook or whatever. They understand how you feel, better than you know how you feel, because they have much more information and they have much better algorithms than what natural selection gave you. They have information, not only about your emails and your books and so forth."

"Does life really mean nothing more than just information processing? What about consciousness?"

"Maybe the life sciences have got it wrong. Maybe the humans and other animals are not reducible to algorithms. however, in historical terms it's not as important as you might think, because a religion or ideology does not have to be correct in what it says, in order to take over the world. We have many cases, previously in history, where religions and ideologies, which said, what we think today, to be completely erroneous things about the world, nevertheless managed to take it over. In scientific terms the story, for example, that Christianity tells about the world [...] it's not true. It's simply not true. At least according to science. But this did not prevent Christianity from taking over most of the world. So you don't need the truth to take over the world. Similarly with these new data religions, maybe, they're based on a misunderstanding of life, but this will not necessarily prevent them from taking over the world."

"For me, the most beautiful tension and connection is between biology and computer science. Very often, when people think about the ideas I raised in the last part of the lecture, they give all the importance to the advances in computer science, to our ability to create better and better algorithms and computer programs. But in my eyes the real revolution is actually from the life sciences. The really big revolution is when the life sciences are telling us that animals are basically biochemical algorithms. If they didn't tell us this, then you can have all the advances you want in computer science, it won't impinge on humanity. You will still have humans which is something completely different and all the advances in robotics and computers... ok, we'll have better computers, we'll have better robots, but it won't really make much of a difference to us. When it becomes really amazing and really frightening is, that once you realize (and this is a contribution of the life sciences) that humans actually work in the same way, then you can make the connections and this is the really frightening stuff. This is also why I think, more and more companies like Google, that started simply in the computer business, are moving more and more to the biotechnology business, and then the two industries are merging into one. The most fundamental idea in this respect comes from the life sciences, which says: organisms are algorithms. This is the most important insight of our age, and also the most important question, because we don't have any proof of it. Currently it's just dogma. We don't have any explanation of how any kind of algorithm can create subjective experiences. Indeed in the field of computers, we're not even close to creating subjective experiences in computers. It's just the dogma, the people say: yes, it's the same. To give another historical reference, back in the 19th Century, when they tried to understand humans and the human mind and the human soul or whatever you like to call it, one of the main theories was that humans were not algorithms, humans were steam engines. This is the basic metaphor that standed (?) the basis of Freudian psychology. Humans usually tried to explain themselves in terms of the most sophisticated technology of the day. In 1900 the most sophisticated machine, the most sophisticated technology which was the basis for all economy, was the steam engine. Even today, when we want to unload our angst, we pick up the telephone and we release some steam. The idea is that the human being is built like a steam engine, it has all these pressures inside, and if you block it here it goes there. And much of Freudian psychology is built on this. [...] Now we say human beings are not like steam engines, they are like computers. But at present, at least, this is just a dogma. We don't have the hard facts to actually prove it."

Na fase das perguntas e respostas, é muito interessante a reflexão que YH faz acerca de quando se terá iniciado o patriarcado [+/- ao minuto 1:00:00]. Apesar de fisicamente inferiores aos homens, as mulheres sempre tiveram melhores competências sociais. Não se compreende, então, por que razão o patriarcado se impôs. Isto fez-me lembrar uma das histórias do livro SUM, de David Eagleman, acerca de uma deusa, tão compassiva, tão compassiva, que não se conseguia decidir sobre quem enviar para o inferno.

E a propósito de questões levantadas na parte final das Q&A, lembrei-me desta palestra.

Muito, muito interessante

A — What you are saying offends common sense.
B — So does relativity and quantum mechanics. That's the way nature works.
A — But your story doesn't fit into nature as we know it.
B — But we know so little. How many of you know geniuses in your field who you disagree with?

Este filme é fantástico!
(e está legendado em pt!)

dos mitos e dascivilizações

"You get a totally different civilization, a totally different way of living, according to your myth as to whether Nature is fallen or as to whether Nature is itself the manifestation of your divinity and the spirit being the revelation of the divinity that's inherent to Nature."
Joseph Campbell

LOL

ao novo ano!

foto do filme, Asas do Desejo, de Wim Wenders

"A nova perspectiva fez-me pensar sobre o nosso propósito de vida, se a reencarnação e o próprio tempo seriam mesmo como aquilo que nos ensinaram. O que aconteceria se todos os nossos objectivos estivessem trocados? E se o Céu ou o nirvana, na verdade, existissem na 'Terra', através da forma física, e não 'além', na vida depois da morte?
Sinto que optamos por reencarnar sobre a forma física a fim de podermos exprimir o amor, a paixão e toda a gama de emoções humanas que não nos são facultadas no estado de consciência pura e de União. Imagine o que aconteceria se a vida que vivemos neste planeta representasse o espectáculo principal, onde decorre a acção, e onde queremos estar?"
Anita Moorjani, Nascer de Novo

The Human mind frame / Playing God

Diz Rosalind Picard (que afirma ter sido ateia, agnóstica e agora diz ser cristã):

"I build computers, software agents and I collaborate on building robots. If I were to build some robots, that were like my children, and they would go off to another planet and be autonomous and have agency and have a little bit of experience, so that they don't hurt themselves, right? So you would want them to experience pain so that they don't get injured. I think I would want them to know that they were made by humans. I would think I might want to put something inside them so that, even though they maybe didn't need to communicate with us, they might actually want to communicate with us. I think I might put inside them, maybe, some little program that causes them to want to show an acknowledgement toward what we did into bringing them into being. Why would I want that? I don't know, It's just part of the pleasure of making them and, in a sense, we've kind of made them in our image. So there's an interesting role reversal here. And we think as if why we have this in us. Is this a feeling we can't trust? It is not real. Or maybe it's real, actually, maybe there's something there... And just because we can't explain it with material stuff now, it doesn't mean that there isn't going to be a future explanation that is completely satisfactory as is our scientific explanation now."

Espinosa

E então, um judeu pequeno de nariz grande e pele pálida,
Pobre mas satisfeito, ensimesmado e reservado,
Um espírito subtil mas vazio, menos lido do que celebrado,
Escondido sob o manto de Descartes, o seu professor,
Aproxima-se do grande Ser com passos cuidadosos:
Desculpe-me, diz ele, falando num sussuro,
Mas penso, aqui entre nós, que Vossa Excelência não existe.

Voltaire - sobre Espinosa

"É triste notar que poucos filósofos de qualidade, velhos ou novos prestaram homenagem pública a Espinosa no século que se seguiu à sua morte, e que nenhum assumiu o papel de discípulo ou continuador. Nem sequer Leibniz, que leu e parece ter apreciado os escritos de Espinosa antes da sua publicação, e que teria sido a mente mais qualificada da época para explicar o seu significado. Mas não o fez. Escondeu-se como todos os outros e adotou uma posição de crítica circunspecta. Os grandes cérebros das Luzes fizeram o mesmo. Em privado, diziam-se iluminados por Espinosa; publicamente, atacavam-no."

António Damásio, Ao Encontro de Espinosa