The First Edition of The Lyth of Lemmings
Current mood: adventurous

I have finished the first edition of the

Lyth of Lemmings   

I am looking for people to review it and make comments. I am also still looking for co-authors to author books on my Book Sales Site. I know I have not had much time to devote to this project because I have been teaching so much. Please forgive me. If I have not gotten back to you in a timely manner please overlook it.

Here is the site where you can preview the book:

http://stores.lulu.com/store.php?fAcctID=872472

Currently listening : Oh Happy Day By Edwin Hawkins Singers Release date: 18 November, 1997

Critical Reasoning

 The ability to separate our logos or critical reasoning from our mythos or those things we do not understand, cannot prove, and believe without question is what I was referring to when I said: ----"This allows the crowd to remain independent, and decentralized."  Reasoning skills and the ability to reason is a global or universal phenomenon. The problem arises when one attributes faulty logical deductions as reasoning. This is a common denominator in terrorist belief systems.

The term "collective wisdom" that I use is used in the sense that James Surowiecki used when he wrote the book, "The Wisdom of Crowds." This talks of the ability that groups of humans have in figuring things out when given the proper opportunity.

The collective intelligence of crowd’s often mirrors what is known as the "global mind" that Howard Bloom spoke of or what Carl Gustav Jung labeled the "collective unconscious." These shared attributes make up our species as a whole.

The problems that arise when we apply or observe order in the human condition is that we often superimpose our belief system onto what we observe. This is normal when one person is making observations or when a tight group suffering from "groupthink" as Irving Janis called it imposes a hidden political agenda. We have a tendency as humans to judge the infinite through using finite tools, e.g. the unexplainable with the already accepted explanations.

The ideas that  "human life starts at conception, everyone needs someone to be happy,  drugs  kill, god is benevolent, there is only one true god, children don't know anything, people are different." represent what can be called memetic structures as used by Richard Dawkins that hold cultural information that is transferred to progeny to maintain societal norms. The idea of memetics could in itself if held as a belief system without question become memetic.

For more on memes check out http://www.memecentral.com/ and read the online book “Virus of the Mind” by Richard Brodie.

 

Are Religions Like Gossip Changing on a Whim?

 

We have around 10,000 years of recorded history. Unlike the Indigenous Religions whose religious beliefs were handed down by word of mouth. Written recorded history has a higher probability of holding the information accurately. For example if I tell you a story verbally and ask you to do the same to a line of 20 people and the last one will tell it to me...it will probably not be the same story. The Apostles were not the only people who recorded what is in the Scriptures; there were historians, clerks, trader’s journals, councils of law, birth records and a large variety of other sources used to validate what was in the scriptures.

 

    However, "the variety of interpretation" does follow along the lines of the process of gossip in an abstract way. Gossip is used at the level of moral development of the "power seeking" and the "legalist." (I view three primary moral developments (1) stage one egocentric or power seeking. This is where one believes the world itself is an evil place and everyone lies, cheats and steals so it is OK for them to do so as well. The next stage is (2) ethnocentric or the legalist, this is where people start to barter for position in society through following laws, customs, social norms. For some the final stage is (3) autonomous interdependence. (These people live for a "cause" that involves caring for others.)

 

    Now if instead of telling a story verbally I hand a published story written on a piece of paper that is handed from one person to the next and it comes from the twentieth person to me it will probably still be the same story, especially since everyone there knows it is published.

Frank Mueller

 

Are Religions Like Gossip Changing on a Whim?

The Flat Earth Grew Hair on It’s Knuckles

It appears that few new religions or many old ones will stand the test of time...most have not down through history. It is somewhat like a business. Most businesses fail within the first two years of the startup. Most "new" religions starting as sects or cults fail when the charismatic leader that started them dies. (New religions are labeled sect and cults by the dominant religion of whatever society the sect or cult starts in.) If there are, a group of charismatic leaders who have strong ties to the people involved it lives longer.

 

Most religions that have lasted for a long time are syncretic, in that over time, they take on the flavor, the technological advancements in both hardware and in processes of the society, which holds them. “In Cuba, for instance, the dominant religion is Santeria, a syncretic mix of Roman Catholicism and Yoruba deities.”( Fainaru, 2003) I believe a new religion will take hold or an old religion will remain if it has "principles" underlying it, rather than values. This is what brought the strength of Islam. It based the majority of their beliefs on the principles Judaism held, adding Muhammad as the last Prophet.

 

Principles do not change; they change people who adhere to them. Principles are discovered rather than invented. Principles appear to us as objective and values appear as subjective. They are the observed natural order of phenomenon. The problems that can arise are mistaking a principle or what is considered fact as in perceptual stasis. When we discover that a principle is no longer valid, we use the one that replaced it. There are concrete principles and abstract principles. A concrete principle for example is "gravity pulling objects, fire igniting, and water flowing..." Abstract principles are a little harder to understand, they often are based on logic or reflective insight. Values are sometimes based on principles. When values are based on principles, it gives them longevity.

 

Principles are like a compass, and values are like a map. The longevity and efficacy of a myth is based on the same criteria as a religion.  The myths that we still love to hear, read, research and tell to our children even though we know they are myths convey both principles and values. The principles cover that fact that we are born, we live, we interact, we procreate, and we die. The values give explanations for the questions of who, what, why, where, when and how.

 

With the advent of "mass education," democracies became needed because we could interpret everything written for ourselves. As education grew, the need to share power and authority also grew. The “pecking order” as observed in nature then failed to capture and describe all of our species potential.

 

When the world found out about bacteria, we no longer ascribed demonic possession to sickness.

 

When we found out the world was not flat we then could venture out on our own beyond the geographical control of our political realm. (see notes below)

 

When we found out the earth was not in the center of the universe and the sun did not revolve around it, we lost our perception of ourselves being the "center" focus of all that exists including the perception of God. It takes from the theory, and the belief that the entire universe was made just for us and all of it is ours. The proof being was that we were at the center of all of it, the hub, and the control point. However, we also gained insight into the resolve of the clerics, ministers, shamans, priests and all others who wanted to keep their political positions.

 

Mythology during ancient times was the equivalent of the science and psychology of today. We are all still mythmakers. We imagine, we have a curiosity that spills out in every direction, we wonder and we love that sense of awe, which inspires us. There are many things we cannot prove true or false. We cannot easily prove or disprove that aliens did not abduct us long ago and that we are not connected to their machines so that story of “The Matrix” appealed to our inner yearning to explain, to know, to wonder. We cannot even prove that “Santa Claus” does not exist, and so we have Tim Allen starring in a movie of the story telling our children to be good or else they will get no gifts.

 

The problem is that proving something does not exist is not feasible. It is the problem of context: of comparing apples to apples and oranges to oranges. Using the infinite, (a reference to what can be) to make judgments of fact about the finite (a reference to what is) makes for poor science and for poorer psychology. It also turns a religion into a relic, a myth, fable or at best a legend.” When we proved the earth was not at the center of the universe. We negated the assumption or lyth that we were the hub, the center, and the natural “destined to be controllers” of the universe. It then became clearer that we were in a symbiotic relationship with the universe.

 

Our myths remain intact around the facts that we are born, we live, we interact, we procreate, and we die. They have syncretically changed with the advances of our technologies. Although the patterns that Carl Gustav Jung called archetypes have evolved, the patterns or the principles remain for us to keep discovering.

 

The concept of the “flat earth” existed all the way up to the 1970’s and was held by enough people that we did not dismiss their ideas until then as quackery, or absurdity. What changed for us here in America in the 70’s? It was April 1961 that Yuri Gagarin, a Russian became the first man in space. Alan Shephard an American followed in the “space race” in May of 1961.  Why did it take us ten years to admit the absurdity of a Flat Earth?

 

Consider this: Here is something Howard Bloom points out in his book called “The Lucipher Principle.” When any animal or group feels defeated; they lower their eyes around the dominant one that defeated them. They avert their gaze; their testosterone level drops as well. With the drop in testosterone their ability to think with clarity also drops. They do not remember nor notice as much of their surroundings. They are also more prone at that time to accept fallacy over fact. It took America about ten years to accept the absurdity of a flat earth. America, according to the media of that time period felt defeated by the Russians because they were not the first to send a man into space. They were placed in fear when they found that before they sent a man into space Russia had also launched a satellite. This satellite proved their capability to launch weapons of mass destruction and to guide them accurately onto the cities of America. The satellite was named Sputnik.

 

James Surowiecki postulated that when a group has even a small percentage of known facts they have the ability usually to uncover with a high degree of accuracy a probable answer for any question that “can be answered” with respect to our present state of development. The group needs to have a diversity of opinion and each person in the group needs a high degree of independence of thought, they need decentralization to draw on different sources of knowledge and then a mechanism for aggregation to allow “private judgments to become collective decisions.”

 

I am going to present to you some questions as a group for you to answer. Choose the ones you think are most appropriate or make up new questions as you see fit.

 

What needs to be "found" for us to inoculate people from succumbing to violence, greed and hatred and then turning to acts of terrorism? Will discovering the “lyths” (lyths=societal lies based on myths) help us to accomplish this task?

 

Do you feel there may someday be a way that we can educate people to “inoculate” them from weakened mental states? If so what year do you predict that will occur?

 

 

 

 

Flat Earth Belief System Notes

http://www.reference.com/search?q=Flat%20Earth

(“A 19th-century organization called the Flat Earth Society advocated the even-then discredited idea that the Earth was actually disc-shaped, with the North Pole at its center and a 150 foot (50 m) high wall of ice at the outer edge. It and similar organizations continued to promote this idea, based on religious beliefs and conspiracy theories, through the 1970s. Today, the subject is more frequently treated tongue-in-cheek or with mockery.”)

• Archival documents: The Papers of the Flat Earth Society, University of Liverpool Library, Special Collections and Archives, reference GB 141 FES. The collection comprises in 31 boxes and folders the papers of the Flat Earth Society during Samuel Shenton's involvement with the society (1956-1971). The material includes incoming and outgoing correspondence, promotional material such as leaflets and posters, magazines, manuscripts, lecture material including maps and diagrams, photographs, press cuttings, notes, books on astronomy and the Earth, and various other ephemera.
• Earth Not a Globe Online text of Samuel Birley Rowbotham's 1881 treatise on Zetetic (Flat Earth) Astronomy.
• $5,000 for Proving the Earth is a Globe, Oct. 1931 article from Modern Mechanics and Inventions about Voliva and his flat earth cosmology.
• The Flat Earth Professor Donald Simanek's web page on the history of flat earth movements.
• The Flat-out Truth: Earth Orbits? Moon Landings? A Fraud! Says This Prophet by Robert J. Schadewald. Science Digest, July 1980. A very detailed look at the Society and its leader. Schadewald was president of the National Center for Science Education and an expert on alternative earth movements.
• Looking for Lighthouses by Robert J. Schadewald, Creation/Evolution #31 (1992). This article explains the use of lighthouse data by Samuel Rowbotham.
• Scientific Creationism, Geocentricity, and the Flat Earth by Robert J. Schadewald, from the Skeptical Inquirer, Winter 1981-1982. Describes the movements leading to the Flat Earth Society and discusses parallels with creationism.
• The International Flat Earth Society By Robert P. J. Day, 1993. Documents the full Flat Earth Society newsletter. Part of the Talk.Origins archive on the Evolution/Creationism archive.
• Holding, James Patrick, 2000. Is the ’erets (earth) flat? TJ 14(3):51–54.
• Russell, Jeffrey Burton, 1997. Inventing the Flat Earth : Columbus and Modern Historians ISBN 0-275-95904-X
• Russell, Jeffrey Burton, 1997. The Myth of the Flat Earth (summary of above book).
• Flat Earth Society Inc. (parody) Flat Earth Society Home Page

Flat_Earth. (n.d.). Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia. Retrieved January 16, 2007, from Reference.com website: http://www.reference.com/browse/wiki/Flat_Earth (caution on using Wikipedia as a reference source)

 

Jungian Archetypes Notes

http://www.reference.com/search?q=archetypes

The use of psychological archetypes was advanced by Carl Jung, c. 1919, and generally adopted in the social sciences. In Jung's psychological framework, archetypes are innate, universal prototypes for ideas and may be used to interpret observations. A group of memories and interpretations associated with an archetype are a complex, e.g. a mother complex associated with the mother archetype. Jung treated the archetypes as psychological organs, analogous to physical ones in that both are morphological givens that arose through evolution.

Jung listed four main forms of archetypes:

• The Self
• The Shadow
• The Anima
• The Animus

Symbols of the unconscious abound in Jungian psychology:

• The Syzygy ("Divine Couple"), e.g. Gnostic Aeons
• The Child, e.g. Linus van Pelt
• The Übermensch ("Superman", the Omnipotent) e.g. Magneto, Iago, Superman himself
• The Hero, e.g. Siegfried, Batman, Beowulf, Doc Savage, Luke Skywalker and The Matrix's Neo.
• The Great Mother, either good or terrible, e.g. Devi (MahaDevi), the Great Goddess, Glinda the Good Witch of the North
• The Wise old man, e.g. Merlin, Obi-Wan Kenobi, Gandalf, Albus Dumbledore, Mazer Rackham and Mr. Miyagi
• The Trickster or Ape, e.g. Reynard, Robin Goodfellow, Br'er Rabbit, Bart Simpson, Bugs Bunny, Ferris Bueller, and Loki
• The Puer Aeternus (Latin for "eternal boy"), e.g. Peter Pan
• The Cosmic Man, e.g. Adam, Pangu, Gayomart

Jung, C. G., (1934–1954). The Archetypes and The Collective Unconscious. (1981 2nd ed. Collected Works Vol.9 Part 1), Princeton, N.J.: Bollingen. ISBN 0-691-01833-2

Copyright © 2006 Frank Mueller

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This blog looks at "Religious Beliefs and Terrorism." It looks at the facts and assumptions. This is a reverent view of peoples beliefs and how they affect behaviors.