Burden Of Proof: On Acceptable Evidence for God

This post is a response to a post on Generation Atheist called Are Proofs Or Evidence For Deities Even Hypothetically Possible and while I highly recommend reading that article, it will not be necessary to understand what I am talking about here.
The entire article is based on two ideas, Occams Razor and Clarke's Third Law
OR: All other things being equal, the simplest explanation tends to be the correct one, or more accurately, that when discussing hypotheses that are equal in other regards, it is right to select the one that requires you to make the least number of unwarranted assumptions.
CL: Any technology sufficiently advanced would be indistinguishable from magic.

We use OR in our life every day - we assume when we find a suicide note and a guy hanging from the ceiling, we assume that he killed himself. We would not assume that someone forced him to write the note in his own handwriting and then hung the guy for some reason. Unless there is evidence (for example, he was really rich, and then after he died suddenly it was revealed that his will was changed last week to put all of his money into a nameless bank account) of course, we will assume that the simplest answer is correct. This is the reason for the word "unwarranted" because if there were such evidence, the assumption would be completely warranted.

Clarke's Law is less prevalent in our society in an obvious way, but think about A Connecticut Yankee In King Arthur's Court. A moden man is sent back in time to the middle ages, and with his knowledge of history and electricity, manages to make firearms and an electric fence to defend himself from those who would wish to destroy him. And what is the first word they use for him? Wizard. He was using a concept of electricity to run his camp, charged invisible particles moving energy around - this was so far above the understanding of the people of that time that they couldn't understand it at all, and so it was magic. But we are smarter now, we have this law to reference. So if an alien race ever showed up and shot energy weapons and were capable of moving things large distances in a single instant, we would assume (based on CL and OR) that they were simply very technologically advanced, not magical.

And really - magic is simply the manipulation of the world using techniques unknown to the observer. If I can make a bosy float, and people do not understand it, it is called magic. But I did it using techniques possible and following from the given rules of the universe. If someone were to do something that we perceived as impossible, we would be wrong - it is not impossible, because we just saw it. Then there are two conclusions we can reach: either our understanding of the rules of the universe were incomplete in this regard, or our understanding of what we just saw was incomplete. This is why I say there is no such thing as magic. Because magic is to do the impossible (or at least the illusion of the impossible) which by its definition is not possible. If it is done, it is possible, and therefore there are rules governing its possibility, which puts us back at the two possible conclusions of incorrect knowledge or faulty perception.

So the question this author poses to us is this: hypothetically if someone showed up claiming to be God and showed up amazing things that we were incapable of doing (water into wine, walking on water, etc.) we, the rationalists, would assume that it was simply advanced technology and not magic - so how would a deity prove itself? This is a very good question. I had to think about it for a while, and had to back to the base of the creation myth to answer it.

I am going to assume for the sake of argument that God exists, created the world with natural laws (gravity, radioactive decay, stuff like that) and that we as members of its existence are forced to obey, and that these laws cannot be broken. They can be manipulated - Jesus can walk on water, the sea can part, stuff like that. These are improbable, but do not go against the laws of nature. It is conceivable that the act is a trick based in technology and science. For example, we have invented a vehicle that can travel on land and water without touching either of them directly - we call it a hovercraft. It is simple, a parachute holds the air in place and the force exerted upwards by the air held under the craft is equal to the force of gravity on the craft. But imagine trying to explain that to someone who didn't understand forces or gravity or even air. There was a time when birds were not understood.

So how would a Deity prove itself to exist to us? For me, it would have to violate a rule of this universe that is not violable. For me there, is only one rule that comes to mind - the conservation of matter. Unfortunately, this would be again, very difficult to do even for a Deity, because us skeptics are very skeptical.

So I was thinking how a Deity could prove itself to me beyond all reasonable doubt. Because humans do magic tricks, so a Deity doing something that even remotely looks like a magic trick would merit a response much like the lolcat above. We would raise an eyebrow and say "how did you do that" and God would respond "I am God, I can do what I want - I am master of all creation!" to which we would respond "that was a cool magic trick - now how did you do it?"

So after some thinking, and likely more thinking to come, the only thing that would prove to me that God existed is to do the one thing that it is said that God can do. There is only one thing that God could do to prove his existence to me: destroy the universe. And I don't mean make it all crunch back together - I mean make it disappear. But that would not be enough - because it is conceivable that an alien race with sufficient technology could do that. No, I want God to destroy the universe. Then I want him to take my immortal soul to the afterlife. Then I want to watch him recreate the universe.

In summary, the only thing that would really prove beyond all doubt for me personally that God existed was to watch him do the one thing that God is certainly credited with - the creation of the universe.

End of the Year

So my lease is up in two days, and I am almost moved out. Just a desk, a few boxes, and a few bags remain to move until my room is a shell again. On the upside, I traded with Braedon so that I don't have to move my couch to the new house (also, I have no place for it there) so he gave me his CamelBak! So, I've got that taken care of, no more couch, one less thing on the list of "things I need for special fire stuffs." Very exciting there. Additionally, Braedon is getting much better at firebreathing, he took his first blast off of his own hand last night, and we didn't stop there. He took a blast off of my hand (when my hand serves as the pilot light) and closed with a blast off of my dragon breath, which is fire that hovers less than three inches from my face. It was very impressive, I was a proud teacher.

So with move-out so close, I am left with time to reflect on the year.
At the beginning of this year, I was moving into the first space that was to be my own. I was moving in with Evan, my roommate from the dorms and Braedon joined us as a third, because we needed a third, and he needed a house. Evan and I drifted apart as he picked up a second job and was never really home, and Braedon and I grew closer. We declared ourselves "domestic partners" on facebook, which nobody really seemed to get. We decided that being roomies was not enough; we wanted to share more. We shared food, we spent more time together, we relied on each other for emotional support, and talked about our issues. It was basically a relationship without a physical aspect. And we are not living together next year - our partnership will end. It will open the door for new friendships and new partnerships and a whole new year of experiences.

I took a lot of classes this year: Morphology and Syntax, Elementary Analysis, Cultural Diversity, Neurolinguistics, Logic and Argumentation, Love and Sex, Differential Geometry, Modern Dance, Tap Dance, African Dance, Dance Improvisation, and Contact Improvisation.
Next year, I plan on taking Differential Equations and Fourier Analysis, Phonetics, Phonology, Syntax, Human Nature and many other classes as well. Additionally, it has been hinted at that I will be participating in the Spring Show as a tapper!

Coming up on senior year - then the plan is over. Then I have to start making a new plan. So far the plan is this: keep teaching circus, keep choreographing my own works, and audition for every single company I can get my hands on (Cirque, Velocity, Neil Goldberg, 7 Doigts, and a few others) until something takes.

In the meantime, back to Tucson I go - in August, just as my lease is running up.
There are two things wrong with this plan.
1. Packing for a trip when you are packing to move = bad plan
2. Tucson IN AUGUST!!! WHAT THE HELL WAS I THINKING!
Oh well, I will have fun, eat a lot of Eegees, spend a lot of time at the Epic Cafe, visit The Dojang, Zuzi, and anything else I can think of because I will not be home for Christmas - it will be a whole year before I am home again.

I think that accounts for all the updates to my life for now - see some of you in Tucson, see some of you in two weeks when I get back to the Eug!
Love for all!

Just a Blog

It's 6AM ladies and gentlemen, and I am enjoying the glory of summer - where I have the sleep schedule from HELL!!! Because it is simply way more fun just to sleep when you want, and be awake when you want, and lets be honest - the wee hours of the morn are just way awesome to be awake for. It is just so quiet and peaceful - totally conducive to creative thought. Most of us have the problem though that the only ways to get to the early hours of the morn are when we stay up all night, but then we are exhausted and can't get anything done, or we get up early, but then we are exhausted and can't get anything done.
But during the summer - I sleep from 9 to midnight, maybe stay up till 4am, go to sleep, wake up at 6, stay up till 8, and just basically do my entire day based on 2-5 hour naps. And every few days, I do a 12 hour sleep session.

So yeah, that's why I am awake at six in the morning. And I thought, since I don't have anything else I want to do, because I am a procrastinator and don't particularly want to write a poem about growing up and losing your childs view of the world and settling into reality, because that would be challenging, I am going to write a little bit.

So this summer, I planned on working on two projects, a human recreation of Thought Of You, and progress in the form of two new pieces for my Human Identity project, which I think I wrote about before, but to give you a reminder, I am going to explore human self identity through movement and spoken word (including dance, object manipulation, and aerial performance). I have finished the writing for "Passion" as well as most of the choreography, although I finished it just before my injury, so I may have to do it again - we'll see once I find a place to hang my aerial trapeze. I have also finished the writing for the Opening, which is about differentiation - the journey from a blank slate to a human being, which usually happens around when you are born. Babies have personalities, and this is a piece about how I view that working. Anyway, that one is mostly just a spoken word piece, I just need a very large pillowcase to sit in for it to work. So those are done, there are four more to write/choreograph (although the closing piece is just spoken word). I planned on writing the growing up piece (a corde lisse/rope piece set either to Björk or Puff The Magic Dragon, I am not sure yet) and the Cog In The Wheel (about getting a job and having it define your place in the world) which is a juggling/object manipulation piece.
Lots of writing to do, lots of choreography and exploration and object/personal research to do.
That was supposed to be my summer - mostly so far I have been enjoying myself. I figure I have a month and a half once I get back from Tucson, and I will be more than capable of getting all of this done in that time. I will probably get half of it done, and I am OK with that.

Oh, and in other performance art news, I am thinking of ways to step up my performance. I was confronted with a problem recently - I started researching fans (I don't say training, because I am not training - I am not learning tricks or technique, I am exploring the range of a particular object, in this case, fire fans) and realized they lend themselves so perfectly to be a companion of fire breathing. However, fire fans present a somewhat unique problem, unlike with fire torches, which can be manipulated together with one hand, one has to stand still while drinking fuel when using fire fans. There is no way to pass that off and be smooth about it. So I started thinking - how can I solve this problem. Solution: camelbak. Yeah - wear a camelbak full of fire breathing fuel, attach it to my shoulder, and all I have to do to blast flame in the air is take a drag from my little mouthpiece. All it has to do is be small enough to conceal under a robe without being too bulky, have a large enough bag (anything over 10oz is enough, which is all of them) and be easy to clean.

Also, I am working on a method for producing and extinguishing fire in my hand multiple times within a performance. I plan on doing this with a combination of Zip Poi and either Finger Flame or Fire From Palms. I'll give them both a look, since they are sold by a Tucson based company. With the combination of all three of these, I can conceivably produce fire from nothing, and then breath fire without taking a drink using my hands. IMAGINE THE POSSIBILITIES PEOPLE!!!

So - that is where my performance journey is at - choreographing the largest piece in my life to date, and special effects/hands free fire performance. Should be a good time. Also, hints for birthday presents can be found in the links above - just sayin.

On that note: my birthday is coming up in a few months here. Most people don't start thinking about that so far in advance, but it is the big two-one for me. Yep, I will no longer have to scour every show flyer for "21+ only" or tell my juggling friends "yeah, I know you want to go grab a beer and talk about awesome juggling and circus stuff, but I can't I have to go home and drink orange juice instead" or stay at home to watch Ducks Football - CUZ I WILL BE ABLE TO GO TO BARS! I am excited about the whole alcohol thing too - I like alcohol, it makes my brain fuzzy and makes me walk silly. It makes me more open about my emotions, and it temporarily makes me care less about the shit it my life (or, on rare occasions, it makes me care more - those are not fun days). But alcohol is not going to be the coolest part of being 21 - it will be the ability to go out with my friends to the Oak Street Speakeasy for Karaoke, or perhaps take a mosey over to 80s Night and have some fun there. Being 21 will open up a whole new aspect of society and interaction. Plus, drunk people are hilarious to analyze linguistically.

Also in the cards for me: I am moving! The lease on my house is almost up, and as much as this house has been a great place to live, I simply cannot deal with this noise anymore - when the girls upstairs walk around in heels, it sounds like gunshots - when they move a chair, it sounds like they are dragging their refrigerator. I love the floor heating, and the neighborhood, and the lovely park, and I love my room mates - but if I have to deal with one more year of skipping, one more year of drunken parties, one more year of girls upstairs talking where I can hear them, one more year of ceiling pounding "we just got engaged" sex (ok, that one is kind of over, but soon it will become "we are newlyweds" sex*), I will either put a bullet in my ear, or in the ceiling above my pillow. Srsly.
But yeah - I'm moving to an awesome house with a new friend of mine, gonna be a great place. It's halfway in between work and school and I'm very excited for that, pics to come once we get it set up (perhaps another foray into vlogging is in my future, should I decide to do a video tour again).

*Congratulations to Whitney, my upstairs neighbor, for her engagement to her boyfriend, Ben, who I get along with great - he is a fantastic guy, they are perfect for each other, and I wish them the best of luck.

On a related note, WHY ARE SO MANY YOUNG PEOPLE GETTING MARRIED! I mean, I know you are young and in love (I am not talking about Whitney here) but really? Getting married at 19 in this day and age is just asking for trouble. Sure, 80 years ago, when marriage (and the world) was a much different place, you could get away with that - just ask my grandparents, they have been married since... well, I'm not sure, but it was a long time... and have never been with anyone other than each other, and they are still together. And they never let me forget it. But really - 19 and you met the man/woman who you are going to spend the rest of your life with, and you have a part time job, so you decide that you can follow your heart and marry him/her and live together and be alright? Honestly, if you decide to do this - the best of luck to you both, I would never wish ill on you. But really - back in my grandparents day, back in the WWII times, things were different. You got a job at 20 (assuming you were not enlisted) and that is what you did. There was a greater sense of permanence and stick-with-it back then. Now we have colleges that encourage you to explore and see what you want to do, and once you graduate, they tell us that we have the rest of our lives to figure out what we want to do. That is not how it was. Back then, a 19 year old marriage was a not insane thing to do, because at 19, you actually were expected to be making decisions (or have them made for you) that would stick with you for the rest of your life. But now, we are expected to be making mistakes and "learning about me" for at least another 5 years. Why do we think, in this day and age, that it is acceptable to make decisions about a life partner (note - "life," because it is supposed to be till death do you part) when we know that we are not making decisions about job, lifestyle or anything else. It seems that we are lagging a little bit in this department. We have changed our society (with the advancement of medical technology so that our lives are longer) proportionally so that we take longer to get to an age where what we do is what we do forever, why has marriage not caught up?*

*Note: this was inspired by my Grandpa Bill, with whom I have had discussions about marriage and love and stuff like that, and I was trying to explain how my world is different from the world he grew up in, and while there is nothing wrong with what he and my grandmother did, that what happened there would be next to impossible in my world. However, I could not describe how the world was so different so as to explain why what I do, and what he did, are both reasonable things to do in their respective worlds. This is that explanation at is seems to me, as to why I should not be expected to do what he did in terms of a life partner or life career. I love you Grandpa.

This wasn't supposed to be a blog of little mini-rants, but that is how it is turning out, isn't it?
There are plenty more things I could update you on. I could talk about Faerieworlds, I could talk about my relationships, I could talk about my Blues Dancing adventures (not dancing to blues music, mind you, it is something different - google it), I could talk about... well, that's all I got, actually. However, I feel that this blog has gone on long enough, and I got enough of the "what's going on in my life" and the "what's going on in my head" to satisfy all of my readers, so I'm gonna call this one quits.

Goodnight(morning?) and as usual, if you have any comments (or questions about which brand of camelbak would be the best for my purposes *hint hint*) feel free to leave them in the box or in an e-mail, I always love to hear from people.
Love for you all,
Fenix

An update on the blog: Family, please read

So some of my readers are my family, and most of them are fairy un-tech savvy, so I made their jobs easier by putting them on the e-mail list, meaning that whenever I publish a blog, it gets sent to their inbox. This has led to some confusion in the past - they think that I wrote the blog for them and anger is usually the result of this miscommunication. SO! I wanted to remind all of my readers for whom this is the case that I am not writing these blogs for you. They are not targeting you. These blogs are about my life and my thoughts on my experiences. I know how this blog began - as a way to keep my family informed on what I was doing in school, my classes, my friends, my relationships whathaveyou. It has morphed into a forum for me to put my philosophical internal debates into words and then share them with all of you. I have found it incredibly therapeudic to put my thoughts in words and present them to my friends and family. I am going to make an effort to balance my philosophy blogs with actual updates as to the physical, rather than the mental, "Wandering" that I am doing in my life, I know some of you have missed that.

However, philosophy and all of that self-discovery crap that people my age go through is not going to go away. I am a very well put together person, but I still have issues, I still have questions, and I still have unresolved emotions. Those will all get put into this blog as they have, and will continue to be, alongside the re-addition of the updates to my life.

So that is the direction this blog is going. The philosophical posts will still be just as controversial, they will be centered around gender, sexuality, society and its effect on me and other people like me, and other things of that nature. There will still be posts like Cracked Glass and the post about the burning piece of paper. I personally think those were two of the most important things I have written since I started this thing, and posts like that are not going to go away. I want to make that perfectly clear.

I am aware that some people in my family are not ready to hear what I have to say. I accept that - it is your choice, and I can't change your mind. If you want me to take you off the "send to" list, I will be happy to do so, and you can always request to be put back on it later if you change your mind - you are always allowed to change your mind. I am going to try to be better about tagging my posts with labels, and say whether it is a philosophy or a life related post, so if you want, you can stay on the list, and ignore the posts you don't want to read. I know my family loves me, and wants to be involved in my life, and to know what is going on, but I know that I have said some pretty out there things that clash with their world view, and that is OK. I will completely understand if you want to stop receiving my posts.

SO! I head back to Tucson in 17 days (AAAHHHH!) and move out of my house. This is terrifying. I am going to be leaving two people who have been significant pieces of my life, and the first space that I really had the liberty to make my own, and I have to leave it behind. But I suppose that's life - I get to move on to a new space and make it my own now. I've been working hard on my circus stuff, more updates on that a little later, and honestly, I am excited for my senior year of college - it seems so recent that I started - but I am ready to get on with my life and start spending my days creating the things I want to create.

I love you all, and thank you for listening to what I have to say.
~Fenix Thomas Cobbledick

A Linguistic View on Sexuality

So I just read an amazing post by a transman (although he is much more than that, believe me) on what queerness means to him, and several words popped up that made me think.
The first is the word queer itself, the second is the word pansexual. I want to talk about both of these words, and why I only use one of them to talk about myself.


Queer, according to dictionary.com means "strange or odd from a conventional viewpoint; unusually different; singular" or "Slang: Disparaging and Offensive . a homosexual, especially a male homosexual."


There are many more definitions than these, but these are the two significant ones. The word queer comes from Scottish, and originally from the Proto-Indo European word twerk* meaning "to turn, twist, wind" related to the modern english word "thwart." And yes, I realize that nobody cares about that but me, but it is relevant.


Queer is a word that is usually used for homosexual males, but that is a very narrow definition. Queer means strange or odd from a conventional viewpoint, and it was applied to sexuality in 1922 back before questions of gender were significant topics of conversation. But let's go back to the meaning of the word - it basically means "other." Let's apply it to gender, sexuality, love and sex (the verbs), and anything else we can think of. Let's make queer a word to describe something that is outside of conventional structure.
As Asher says, "Queer doesn’t mean 'don’t label me,' it means 'I am naming myself.'" Queer is the space one exists in if one is anything other than conventional. If you think that being gay is being non-conventional, then you might identify as queer. If you think that being a woman in a man's body is unconventional, you might identify as queer. But if you do not identify as queer, then nobody has the right to tell you otherwise (though it might be a little bit confusing for them). The word "queer" to me is about establishing a non-conformity of identity, and does not mean any one thing.
I think that is all I want to talk about there.


On to the more important (to this entry) word: pansexual.
I am not going to use the dictionary or etymology on this one because they are wrong. The definition of pansexual actually has nothing to do with the way that pansexual is used in reference to sexual identity.
Pansexuality essentially means that sexual identity is not restricted by sex, gender, or pretty much anything else you can think of. If you were to apply this definition to me, you would see that it fits. But I do not identify as pansexual - I identify as bisexual. But the queer community says "but why, Fenix? Bisexuality enforces the gender binary, which is something as a genderqueer that you by your very existence and identity defy!"
And they are partially right - very partially.


I know what I am and who I like, and I can point to the people I am sexually attracted to, the people I am emotionally attracted to, and the people I am romantically attracted to. I could make a list - and that list is not restricted by sex or gender or anything.


The reason for my identification goes back to my root belief about language. Language is meant for communication - it is meant to convey a meaning from one person to another so that they may understand my meaning.
I would venture a guess that nobody outside of the queer community knows what pansexual means.
I feel no need to define myself by a word, but we have a word for "blue" because it identifies a class of wavelengths that appear to us in a certain way, and we have a word for it so that we may communicate about it. A word is no good unless it is understood by both parties.
True, I could say I am pansexual, and then explain it every.single.time. And then I would have to explain the concept of a gender spectrum, rather than a gender binary. And let's be honest - at a party with a really hot man or woman or whatever, explaining gender theory is not what you want to do. The word "bisexual" allows me to communicate quickly and efficiently (which is the purpose of language in my worldview) that I am attracted to both men and women, to any particular man or woman I might meet.


I identify as bisexual, and for the nitpickers out there, I will define it for myself - because we are allowed to define our own identity.


The gender spectrum exists, I move around on it. But there are clear points on that spectrum when I feel more male or more female (and don't give me that "society defines where these points are" crap - I know what I am, and if I am allowed to define myself, then don't be a hypocrite), and so while it is a spectrum, and not a binary, there are two halves.


There is the male half, where the majority of the male population resides, there are more hypermasculine men, and there are feminine men, but they are still men. They are on that side of the spectrum, and the inverse is true of women. But there are two halves, and of course, there is a midpoint known as androgyny (translated from the greek "man woman" which is inaccurate, but we all understand it). So, when I say that I am bisexual, I am saying that I am attracted to both sides of the spectrum. Because nobody (well, I don't want to say nobody, but very few) is attracted to a single point. Heterosexual women are attracted to men, all kinds of men. True, they may have a "type" but different men have differing gender on the spectrum - some are more masculine than others.


That is what hetero, homo, and bisexual mean to me - which side of the spectrum you are attracted to.
Basically, I assume a gender binary, and then define sexuality based on that.


Yeah, I know this was confusing, and I think this was meant more for me than for you - but I needed to get it out. And of course, as usual, questions and comments are welcome.

A Non-patriotic Denouncement of Anti-patriotic Declarations

So, as every year, because I am involved in something other than completely bible-thumping, God-praising, war-supporting, and blind patriotism America, it is understandably inevitable that on the fourth of July, there are going to be comments made on my social networking sites from people also involved in my culture - and some of them are going to have some pretty negative things to say about our country.
Interesting definition for you guys, though I am not going to write about it:
Patriot (2) a person who regards himself or herself as a defender, especially of individual rights, against presumed interference from the federal government.
So that's interesting for all the people that hate the government and get pissed off when you call them patriotic. Ignorance is not bliss, people.

But I digress. People post angry things about America, people denounce independence day, and that is to be expected. And let's be honest about some things - America has done some shitty things in its time. We did the whole slavery thing, we completely annihilated the Native American culture in these lands, we have started wars for little or no reason at all other than political gain, and we continually think that it is our responsibility to police the world, especially the non-christian world. I say this because I don't want you to think that I have illusions about America being the perfect country.

But did you know - independence day celebrates our independence? I know - weird right. Believe it or not, the fourth of july is not "American Awesomeness Day," it is not the day when we celebrate how cool our country is (of course Thanksgiving isn't the day when we celebrate our ability to consume massive amounts of food either, but it ends up happening as well), it is the day when we celebrate the fact that we are not a colony. This is the day that we think about England, and how much imperialism hurt the people of this country before it was a country, and how awesome it is to be in a sovereign nation, with the freedom, if nothing more, to choose our own destiny as a nation. It may be a crap destiny, it may be an awesome destiny that we are treating like crap and running in the opposite direction from. But it is our destiny to choose. I don't know about you guys, but that is the definition of freedom for me: the right to choose your own destiny. You may criticize our freedoms and say that we are not as free as we think we are, and I would agree with that. I don't think that we as people are as free as we think we are, but I think that we as The People are free. This is macro-freedom here, people - we The People, in order to create a more perfect union. Our declaration of independence was not "we hate you england" or "we are awesome in america, so piss off" it was "to throw off such government, and provide new guards for their future security."

And another thing. Let's just go with it, for the sake of argument, that our celebration is misplaced. Let's look at england. Where was england during the slavery thing? Oh - right, I remember - backing the south. What else - oh right, they are the kings of imperialism. They took over india for goodness sake. England is not the beacon of pristine political conditions or historical mistakes either. All I celebrate on The Fourth Of July is the fact that we are an independent nation, that we The People no longer submit to a foreign authority (if you want to see the specific grievances, go read this) and want to be able to provide new guards for our future security.

So you can say "fuck america. may it burn" all you want, and this is "happy imperialism day" but you are missing it. Say fuck america on flag day to make your point. Say happy imperialism day on columbus day and you are right on the money. But when you say those things on the fourth of july, you are missing the point of what we, as people who are grateful for not being stuck under the thumb of a foreign government, are celebrating.

Over-analyzation and Harry Potter

Trust me, they are related. Kind of.

So I was watching some HP movies this week in my extremely successful attempt to get pumped up for the release of the final installment of the eight movie franchise, starting with Half-Blood Prince, following it up with Order of the Phoenix, and I plan to watch Deathly Hallows pt.1 this afternoon.
But I started to notice some things, or more like think about some things about HP and some of the implications that were drawn from it. I noticed that the two main houses are male (Godric/Salazar) while the two houses that nobody really cares about are female (Rowena/Helga) and thought about the message that this sends to our youth. The obvious one, I suppose, is that while it is great to be a woman, and you will do just fine, the battle for good and evil, the battles that really matter, are fought by the male side of the equation. But then I thought about it some more - clearly HP is not a misogynistic series, there are powerful women all over the place, and the fact that Dumbledore was supposedly gay leads me to doubt that the whole construction of the houses is sexist.
So I looked at it some more and posed a hypothetical to myself - what if it were switched, what if the houses were Glinda, Rowan, Harold, and Stephanie? What would the message be there - again, the obvious one is that women are the real power in the world, and that men pretend to matter, but when it comes down to the nitty gritty end, it is the women who power through and fight the final battle. But again, this isn't really a "girl power" series.
What if they were mixed? What if Gryffindor were male and Slytherin female? Oh the horror! Courageous men triumphing over the snake-like women, trying to corrupt them (cite your misogynistic bible verse of choice for this one, and you'll see where this is going) just like it was said to be, that women are corruptors, and more easily corrupted by the forces of evil (see Salem Witch Trials). Or you could take that one the other way, and that women are simply inferior, and men triumph over them. More obvious, but less interesting.
And the other way around? That the red and gold belong to the female and the green and black to the male, that men are insidious and evil and women are moral and pure and need to put them in their place.

But seriously - lets think about it. There is an art form known as "dadaism" that focused on ridiculing what society thought to be meaningless. In other words, dada aimed at creating art that had no meaning - and yet society still placed heavy societal and cultural importance on the significance of the works. Yeah - have you seen the upside down urinal? That upside-down urinal was a piece by Michael Buchamp entitled Fountain and you would not believe how much fuss was made over this thing. We have this thing called numerology - the study of a link (either mathematical or mystical or both) between numbers found in the natural world and our lives. If you've seen "the number 23" that's what I'm talking about. Or if you look at the math behind the rapture, you can see a high prevalence of people taking these numbers and making them fit into their scheme of life. We as a society hate meaninglessness - we must have meaning, we must have purpose. Some would argue that our need for meaning is what caused us to invent God in the first place (of course, I have no proof that there is no God, but at most, only one religion can be right, which means that the other n-1 religions invented a God/Gods). We search for meaning within the stars in the form of horoscopes, we search for meaning within the mathematical (and beautiful, I might add) patterns and numbers given to us by the natural world (the digits of pi put on a musical scale are quite beautiful to our ears for some reason) and we ascribe meaning to art and music. Yes, it is true, some art and music is significant in it's message, and mathematics is beautiful, but it can't all be as meaningful as you want it to be. At some point, we have to look at the universe and ask ourselves "what if none of it means a damned thing?" would that be so bad? We get to live our lives, and enjoy ourselves, and give ourselves our own meaning, without it being defined by God, or the stars, or art, or anyone else. How cool would that be.

So when someone looks at a story and draws conclusions about what the book or piece of art is trying to say to you, look closer. Look at the houses of HP and realize that no matter what the combination is, someone could draw conclusions about what the author is trying to say about men and women in the grand scheme of life. And I would venture that it is possible that they are pulling meaning out of their ass - the gender of the originators of the houses is arbitrary. If you go ascribing meaning to every little thing, you are going to either drive yourself mad finding meaning everywhere, or you are going to delude yourself into believing in falsehoods (like the God/Gods thing) and unless you enjoy lying to yourself - I am going to assume that the majority of people would like to know the truth and not a lie about life - then you should take a look at how many things you unnecessarily atribute significance to. Can we not just admire the beauty of a piece of art, or awe-inspiring mathematical precision that governs the orbits of the planets and stars, or the simplicity and usefulness of integers, without changing our lives or our beliefs because someone decided that these things mean more than they do. An art piece can be beautiful, and you can take a lesson from it, but that doesn't mean that this painting "means" that thing or that an upside down urinal is culturally significant. The stars paint a wonderful picture on our night sky, and some people look at them and see that they are more alone than they thought - some look up and feel more connected than ever before. Some people (rightly) see patterns, but what they are seeing is not God or the universe speaking to them through the stars, or predictions for their lives, they are seeing Kepler's three laws, they are seeing newtonian mechanics, they are seeing large masses exerting gravitational force on them.
And in the words of Tim Minchin

"Isn't this enough? Just, this world? Just this, beautiful, complex, wonderfully unfathomable, natural world? How does it so fail to hold our attention that we have to diminish it with the invention of cheap man-made myths and monsters? But, here's what gives me a hard-on, I'm a tiny, insignificant ignorant bit of carbon. I have one life, and it is short and unimportant, but thanks to recent scientific advances... I get to live twice as long, as my great-great-great-great uncleses and auntses. Twice as long! To live this life of mine, twice as long, to love this wife of mine. Twice as many years, of friends, of wine."

Tim Minchin, excerpt (slightly edited) from Storm


So next time, instead of looking to God, or to your horoscope, or to some piece of art that you think is beautiful, just accept these things as beautiful - they don't have to have significance beyond that, because beauty should be enough for us.
"Isn't this enough?"