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Part 57

6/27/2016

Between Stockholm Syndrome and Lima Syndrome
Part 57: The Courage to Accept Outside Influence with Grace and Gratitude

Even in my previous life as a Catholic, I had never been mesmerized by any hymn. Now that I'm a religious skeptic or agnostic or infidel or whatever label is stuck on my forehead, I'm spellbound by Domine Fili unigenite. Composed by Italian composer, violinist, and priest Antonio Vivaldi (1678-1741), it's sung by yogini Mercedes Bahleda who utilized yoga breathing techniques and lyrical Buddhist chants. The result: a smooth synergy between Catholicism, Hinduism, and Buddhism.

One may not like how Mercedes Bahleda interpreted Domine Fili unigenite, but that's not the point. The point is that this version of Domine Fili unigenite exemplifies how we should believe in what we believe. In other words, how we should become a better and open-minded believer who welcome outside influence and other religions and belief systems.

With grace, gratitude and humility.

To put everything into context and perspective, just last week on June 15, 2016, a famous Sufi singer Amjad Sabri was assassinated by Taliban gunmen in Karachi. Amjad Sabri is known for his qawwalis, which is a form of Sufi devotional music popular in South Asia. It was reported that a splinter faction of the Sunni Pakistani Taliban claimed responsibility for this targeted killing, claiming that Sabri's qawwalis were "blasphemous."

How Mercedes Bahleda sang Domine Fili unigenite is an example of how people should use religion. On the other hand, how the Sunni Talibans gunned down a fellow Pakistani Sufi singer—due to idiocy, insecurity and holier-than-thou inferiority complex—is an example of how people are being used by religion.

Judge for yourself.

[To be continued.]

Johannes Tan, Indonesian Translator & Conference Interpreter

Part 56

6/20/2016

Between Stockholm Syndrome and Lima Syndrome
Part 56: Religions' Resistance to Change

Our wretched species is so made that those who walk on the well-trodden path always throw stones at those who are showing a new road.
-VOLTAIRE (1694-1778)

It’s so hard for humans to accept change. As expressed by French critic and journalist Jean-Baptiste Karr (1808-1890): the more things change, the more they stay the same (plus ça change, plus c'est la même chose).

In essence, even seemingly radical changes do not structurally affect reality other than to cement the status quo. For sure, change interferes with authority—divine or otherwise. Even worse, it challenges authority for it affects control of the establishment over their subjects and weaken the status quo. "If you want to make enemies," Woodrow Wilson (1856-1924) once said, "try to change something." Never mind that those who resist change at all costs are usually the beneficiaries of change themselves.

In religion—which derives from the word religare (Latin) and means 'to bind'—the resistance to change happens all the time. As stated in Part 34 (An Unexamined Belief is not Worth Believing), Buddha, Jesus, and Muhammad (to name just a few agents of change), were converts themselves and were at once condemned as 'infidels' by the status quo of their times.

Literally and figuratively, stones after stones had been thrown at these religious leaders. The Buddha rebelled against Hinduism and ran away from his father, who was so disappointed by his son's departure and search for enlightenment, that he sent 10,000 messengers to persuade his son's return. Jesus' parents, uncle and aunt were Torah-observant Jews, yet he rebelled against Judaism for which he was eventually crucified. Muhammad rebelled against the tyranny of Meccan tribes who worshiped pagan idols, and was forced to escape from Mecca to Medina in 622 to avoid persecution.

That said, change is clearly inevitable, for the universe, as well as our place in it constantly changes. Contrary to the Church's Middle Ages geocentric tenet in which the Earth is regarded as the center of all celestial bodies, the universe is anything but. To paraphrase Guy Murchie in The Seven Mysteries of Life (1999), planet Earth is orbiting the sun at 18.5 miles per second, while the sun and virtually all visible stars are swinging at 150 miles per second around the Milky Way galaxy, which with a diameter of 100,000 light years, is speeding from other galaxies at thousands of miles per second in an inflating universe..

Yet if we look around there are billions of believers who faithfully cling to every single literal word of their Torahs, Bibles or Korans. An article in The Huffington Post of April 26, 2016 ("Life-Sized Noah’s Ark Replica To Hit The High Seas This Summer") by Nina Golgowski reported that Johan Huibers, a Dutch carpenter, completed the biblical boat in 2012. He planned to move the massive vessel from its port in the Netherlands to Brazil as part of a multi-country 6,000-mile journey to South, Central and North America "to spread the message of the Bible."

Very soon a full-size Noah’s Ark will be featured in the Ark Encounter in Williamstown, Kentucky. According to its website, the ark was "built according to the dimensions given in the Bible. Spanning 510 feet long, 85 feet wide, and 51 feet high, this modern engineering marvel will amaze visitors young and old." Prospective visitors are promised to "experience the pages of the Bible like never before."

Meanwhile, a Quran (9:5) verse states to "(s)lay the idolaters wherever ye find them."

Seriously? In the Voltarian context, when Muhammad was chased away from Mecca to Medina in 622 to avoid persecution by the pagan tribes—those who walk on the well-trodden path—, was he himself not considered as one who showed a new road? It seems that self introspection is a rare commodity.

Thus, can humans for once transcend literal interpretations on whatever is expressed in the Torah, Bible or Quran and search for higher spiritual meanings of what is implied? Can we adapt our worn-out dogmas, creeds, and scriptures to real-world realities? The ability to adapt is critical to our survival. "It is not the strongest of the species that survives, nor the most intelligent," Charles Darwin wrote, "it is the one most adaptable to change."

[To be continued.]

Johannes Tan, Indonesian Translator & Conference Interpreter

Part 55

6/13/2016

Between Stockholm Syndrome and Lima Syndrome
Part 55: On Mass Delusion

Science flies you to the moon.
Religion flies you into buildings.
-Victor J. Stenger

Upon exploring the psychological, sociological, biological and geographical reasons on why do we believe in what we believe—as discussed in Parts 6 through 54—the time has come for us to explore on how should we believe.

Of course the answer is entirely up to us; whether we want to have useful and constructive beliefs, or a counter-productive and destructive ones. Whether we want to experience a liberating Lima syndrome or an enslaving Stockholm syndrome. And knowing how self-destructive human beings can be, the answer is not necessarily obvious. This realization itself should be used to analyze our beliefs mercilessly.

For even 'rational' beliefs themselves can actually be nothing more of irrational self-justifications. As once put by English biologist Thomas Henry Huxley (1825-1895), "what we call rational grounds for our beliefs are often extremely irrational attempts to justify our instincts." Surely Huxley knew a thing or two about opposition from irrational believers. In the 19th century, he was known as 'the Darwin's Bulldog' for his advocacy of Charles Darwin's theory of evolution that was fiercely opposed by the religious establishment.

In retrospect, it was not merely that Darwin's evolutionary theory sounded outrageous. It was Darwin's intellectual fearlessness—to explore scientific truth wherever logic and empirical evidence took him—that made the religious establishment trembled in fear and rage.

And tremble they still do. As discussed in Part 53 ("Big Father is Watching Us"), and in spite of compelling empirical evidence proving Darwin's evolutionary theory that all species of life have descended over time from common ancestors, certain school districts in the states of Texas, Louisiana and Tennessee still allow teachers the freedom to question scientific theories including evolution. Creationism is alive and well. Of course this pigheaded recalcitrance—to defy scientific facts and to firmly believe in delusions—is nothing new.

"Knowledge is something which you can use," a Sufi proverb states; "Belief is something which uses you." Thus, thanks to scientific knowledge, Neil Armstrong became the first man to land on the moon (1969). Long before that, elevators were invented (1853), then airplanes (1913), and the Internet (1960s).

On the other hand, because of religion, almost 3,000 people died in the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks, tragically only made possible due to the very same inventions of elevators, airplanes, and the Internet. In fact, as I was ready to schedule this post, news broke out about the June 2016 mass shooting in Orlando, Florida.

Oxford Dictionary defines 'delusion' as "an idiosyncratic belief or impression that is firmly maintained despite being contradicted by what is generally accepted as reality or rational argument, typically a symptom of mental disorder." In Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance: An Inquiry Into Values (1974), Robert M. Pirsig offered a more illuminating definition: "When one person suffers from a delusion, it is called insanity. When many people suffer from a delusion, it is called a Religion."

[To be continued.]

Johannes Tan, Indonesian Translator & Conference Interpreter

Part 54

6/6/2016

Between Stockholm Syndrome and Lima Syndrome
Part 54: Denying Death at All Costs

In Part 53 ("Big Father is Watching Us"), we touched on the curious phenomenon that believers tend to act as accessories to a crime; i.e. the crime of not thinking critically, the crime to let others (translation: prophets) to "think" for themselves. That's probably the reason why religion and democracy do not mix well.

The big giants in liberal democracy--Jefferson, Voltaire, Paine, Franklin, Madison, Lincoln, Gandhi—can be categorized as non-theists, atheists, or at least religious skeptics. The big giants in religion, on the other hand, can be categorized as, well, do I need to say more? Just look at the Middle East, the cradle of the great organized religions, which has been torn by raw tribalism, barbaric persecution, totalitarianism, religious wars and sectarian violence. Still, in spite of everything, why have religions appeal so much to billions of believers?

It's death.

Death's finality makes us truly uncomfortable. Just consider the existence of 101 euphemisms for dead, death and dying in the English language: from "angels carried him/her away" to "awakened to eternal life" to "climbing the stairway to heaven" to "entering the Pearly Gates" to "kicking the bucket" to "meeting his/her maker" to "going to the Happy Hunting Grounds" and of course the most popular one, "passing away." Whether our language shapes the way we think, or our thought process shapes the language we speak, death's finality makes us quite uncomfortable. Hence we resolve the problem by denying death at all costs.

African-American novelist and social critic James Baldwin (1924-1987) described this ultimate Stockholm Syndrome best: "Perhaps the whole root of our trouble, the human trouble, is that we will sacrifice all the beauty of our lives, will imprison ourselves in totems, taboos, crosses, blood sacrifices, steeples, mosques, races, armies, flags, nations, in order to deny the fact of death, the only fact we have."

With the exception of Buddhism, Taoism and Confucianism, almost all organized religions have been quite adept in sugarcoating our mortality. Religions have made death, the most dreadful event in a human's life, more palatable, and to a certain extent even desirable. That's why organized religions tend to glorify and fetishize their martyrs, sometimes even much more so than their prophets. "Men do not accept their prophets and slay them," Russian novelist and philosopher Fyodor Dostoevsky (1821-1881) famously wrote, "but they love their martyrs and worship those whom they have tortured to death."

Is this glorification merely a manifestation of escapism? Oxford Dictionary defines escapism as "the tendency to seek distraction and relief from unpleasant realities, especially by seeking entertainment or engaging in fantasy." The unpleasant reality that has been sugarcoated so well by organized religions is nothing else but death.

We, sentient human beings, justifiably fear death. I do. That's exactly why most organized religions exploit this feeling and promise afterlife in various forms of heaven and paradise. Too many prophets and messiahs have promised to save us from eternal damnation, as long as we follow them, and pay our dues or tithes. Therefore, we heartily embrace religion and become addicted to it in a desperate act of escapism.

We think we can cheat death by bribing God and professing our belief in an afterlife. Yet, as described by Roman emperor philosopher Marcus Aurelius (121-180) in Book 2 of his timeless Meditations, death is nothing but "a process of nature, which only children should be afraid of." In Book 3, Aurelius emphatically compared death to a disembarkation process, in which nobody—not even physicians, rulers, conquerors, philosophers—is immune to it:

"Hippocrates cured many illness—and then fell ill and died. The Chaldaeans predicted the deaths of many others; in due course their own hour arrived. Alexander, Pompey, Caesar—who utterly destroyed so many cities, cut down so many thousand foot and horse in battle—they too departed this life. Heraclitus often told us the world would end in fire. But it was moisture that carried him off; he died smeared with cow shit. Democritus was killed by ordinary vermin, Socrates by the human kind.

You boarded, you set sail, you have made the passage. Time to disembark. If it's for another life, well, there's nowhere without gods on that other side. If to nothingness, then you no longer have to put up with pain and pleasure, or go on dancing attendance on this battered crate, your body—so much inferior to that which serves it. One is mind and spirit, the other earth and garbage."

[To be continued.]

Johannes Tan, Indonesian Translator & Conference Interpreter

Part 57

Between Stockholm Syndrome and Lima Syndrome
Part 57: The Courage to Accept Outside Influence with Grace and Gratitude

Part 56

Between Stockholm Syndrome and Lima Syndrome
Part 56: Religions' Resistance to Change

Part 55

Between Stockholm Syndrome and Lima Syndrome
Part 55: On Mass Delusion

Part 54

Between Stockholm Syndrome and Lima Syndrome
Part 54: Denying Death at All Costs

Continuously exploring literal, semantic, idiomatic, contextual, metaphorical, symptomatic, conceptual and metaphysical meanings of everything worth thinking about.

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Part 57

Between Stockholm Syndrome and Lima Syndrome Part 57: The Courage to Accept Outside Influence with Grace and Gratitude

Part 56

Between Stockholm Syndrome and Lima SyndromePart 56: Religions' Resistance to Change

Part 55

Between Stockholm Syndrome and Lima SyndromePart 55: On Mass Delusion

Part 54

Between Stockholm Syndrome and Lima SyndromePart 54: Denying Death at All Costs

Continuously exploring literal, semantic, idiomatic, contextual, metaphorical, symptomatic, conceptual and metaphysical meanings of everything worth thinking about.

Archives

Categories

Between Stockholm Syndrome and Lima Syndrome
Part 57: The Courage to Accept Outside Influence with Grace and Gratitude

Between Stockholm Syndrome and Lima Syndrome
Part 56: Religions' Resistance to Change

Between Stockholm Syndrome and Lima Syndrome
Part 55: On Mass Delusion

Between Stockholm Syndrome and Lima Syndrome
Part 54: Denying Death at All Costs