Identified Female Object

I saw this woman driving down the street yesterday in a handsome, black Mazda, the kind that looks like it tried to "sex up" a late-70's model Corvette. What first caught my eye was her license plate: VIXEN, followed by what looked like two SCA-related stickers on either side of the plate. As I got closer, I saw they were authentic Autobahn pass stickers instead.

At first, Omaha thought "she" might be a drag queen because she was wearing a tiara while driving. But, no, sadly the geek fantasy of a cute furry, SCA, drag queen driving a hot car gave way to the sadder reality of a hard-working, hard-up-for-work model and actress trying to maintain her image. An image torn by the hand-written "FOR SALE BY OWNER" sign in the passenger-side window.

Being Good without God.

Daniel Dennet, as old-timers to my blog know, is one of my favorite philosophers. Relentlessly materialistic and naturalistic, he nonetheless spells out a lot of excellent details regarding why human beings are the way they are. Dennet has a really good podcast on why it is possible to be good without God on meaningoflive.tv:

"Let's talk about "transcendent" and "morality". One of the things that we have evolved to discover on this planet is arithmetic. We didn't invent it, we didn't make it: we found it. It is eternal, a priori, true: it's just great stuff. And it's true everywhere in the universe; it's true everywhere in any universe. There's only one arithmetic. Now, is that transcendent? I would say, Yeah.

"If we discovered another civilization somewhere in the galaxy that was intelligent, what would it share with us? Well, it would certainly share arithmetic. Maybe not base-10 arithmetic -- that's anybody's guess. It might be base 12 or base 16 or base 8. Who knows? That's an accident. But it would still be arithmetic. Now, we can say: "And would it share ethical principles with us?" And I think, in some regards, "Yes, it would." Now, does that make those principles transcendent? Yeah."

Dennet here states clearly what has been a staple argument of the science fiction community for years, and why such silly things as Klingons and the aliens from V are more or less nonsense: in order to be a spacefaring civilization, one must first be civilized. The economics of scale needed to fund a "get off your planet" program require that people get along, that they understand the Golden (or at the very least Brass, "Do not do unto others as they have not done unto you") Rule, and that they comprehend reciprocity.

They certainly will not share any concept of God with those we have on our planet; it's even reasonable to believe that a majority of them may not believe in God at all. But given that we have evolved to have reciprocity as a measure of civilization, it is reasonable to assume that every civilization will have reciprocity (as well as arithmetic) as a sheer measure of civilization in the first place.

"Goodness" is part of the superstructure of the universe as surely as the physics that underlies evolution in the first place; this is evident in that we humans get along. Does that make it "transcendental," as Dennet argues? I believe it does. Does that necessarily make it theistic in orgin? I do not believe so.

In fact, I'll make the counter-claim: "goodness" is a much an accident of the way our universe is organized as we are ourselves. There is no reason to believe otherwise. More importantly, given what we know of the way various religions have independently discovered, codified, and implemented the Brass and Golden rules, it is reasonable to assume that one does not need any particular God or any god at all to know of them.

Yet, since religion is clearly a commonplace organizing instutition for civilizations, let's change things around: it is not that one must believe in a god in order to be good, but that one (and one's neighbors) must be good to begin with, in order to found a common belief in god. Without being good, all is chaos. Without god, all is still capable of good.

A strange dream. Might have TMI

So, in order to find out if my back problems are caused by an overactive bladder, or vice versa, my doctor has me peeing into a graduated bottle for the next few days.

Last night, like usual, I awoke somewhere between 3:45 and 4:15 and went to the bathroom and did my business, measuring it out and writing the volume down in a little journal via flashlight, then went to bed.

Shortly thereafter, I got up and went again. I was a little confused about why I was wandering into the bathroom when I had just gone. I fumbled a little with the flashlight and the bottle, and then I felt a wetness on my hand as if I'd missed the bottle (ick-- told you it was TMI), but that was impossible, I'd just gone so I had nothing to give and I didn't feel like I was giving anyway. I pushed down the button on the flashlight and saw that the stream was coming out of the flashlight!

I've never had a lucid dream before, but I instantly realized that any situation this surreal had to be one. I turned my head towards the door and tried to say, "Omaha, wake me up!"

And then I learned that there are different levels of volition: one for what I was doing in the dreamworld, and one for what I wanted to do in the real world. I couldn't get the words out! "OooohhhhMMmmmmmm." My mouth was trying to form the words, but it was if my face had hardened like Play-Doh left out too long. "Mmmmmmaaaaaahaaaaaa...." It's like that scene in The Matrix when Smith says "How will you call your lawyer when you can't even speak?" only not as freaky. And then, with a transition so smooth it will be the envy of television programmers everywhere, I was transported to my bed, conscious and mostly puzzled, and intrigued about the whole incident.

Fortunately, I hadn't actually made a sound or moved at all, and Omaha never noticed. I went back to bed, undisturbed either by back pain or strange dreams.

There must be something in that dream, some insight into the nature of volition, that I can use in a Journal Entry. Into the hopper with it!

An Incident On Occidental Street

I was driving up the road that leads into my subdivision (cue Rush song) when I saw something in the road ahead, about half a block. It looked to be a rug that had fallen out of someone's truck. As I got closer, however, I saw that it was a man lying face up spreadeagled in the middle of the road.

I pulled up next to him and said, "Are you okay?" He didn't say anything, so I pulled to the side and got out, taking out my cellphone and dialing 911 on the pad. "Sir? Are you okay?"

"No, I'm not."

"Do you want an ambulance, sir?" I said.

"I don't care," he mumbled. "I'm fucked up."

By this time, another car had pulled up with a couple behind the wheel, one man and one woman. He got out and she slid over to the driver's seat. He walked over and started talking to the man as well. "You okay, man?"

"I'm fucked up."

"Well, he's going to call an ambulance." He pointed to me. "Is that okay?"

"I don't care." He was mumbling, his voice slurred. I pushed DIAL. While I talked to the operator, he started to get up and walked south. Then, he turned about and started heading the other way. He walked back and forth saying, "I'm fucked up," over and over. The other man who was helping me tried to convince him to sit down, but he just wandered about the street aimlessly, finally walking into Bud's yard (Bud is this nice old guy who has this huge garage sale every year, and the incident was right in front of his house). Bud came out a few minutes later and said he'd told that man to stop walking through his yard. "Healthy people just don't lie down in the middle of the road like that."

A minute later the EMTs arrived. We told him the story, and they wandered into Bud's yard and into the subdivision behind it. While they were gone, the sheriff showed up. We told him the story, described the young man. The civilians were convinced he was stoned out of his mind, but the EMTs kept telling us that without a test or a confession that would just be hearsay, "But, y'know..." We nodded.

The sheriff said that he thought he knew who we were describing. He didn't need any further statements. The EMTs and the sheriff both drove off, leaving the witnesses, and Bud, standing there a little puzzled. Eventually, I got in my car and drove home.