David Brooks has an intersting op-ed in the NY Times about religion, brain-science, and the ways we perceive of ourselves and our place in the universe. His opinion is that science won't trump a belief in God, but will rather provide a strong challenge to the belief in the Bible as the word of God. Perhaps along somewhat similar lines, 'Lis sent a really great link to Bri with a short talk about a neurologist's enlightened Stroke of Insight. How does all of this relate? What do you guys think about all this?
Also, I've been wondering about the Christian "mystery of faith" as a means of explaning several"'why?'s" of the world. Admitedly and maybe a bit ironically, faith in Christianity has become a bit of a mystery for me. But I still cling to a spiritual notion of what I would call God (energy, the universe, something bigger than us, etc.) I can't explain why. It's just something I feel and think. I suppose that's the mystery of faith. But, why must the constant mystery that is the universe as I experience it include a God? Can't the mystery also be that God doesn't exist? After all, if God caused the Big Bang, what caused God? Can't the answer just be that its the mystery of existence without an answer? Very mysterious.
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Yeah...I'm mixed on that speech. Basically, she ends by suggesting we all should strive to live in this blissful right-brain state of mind, and that the world would be so much better if we did. But it took it a massive stroke, caused by a blood clot the size of a golf ball, to allow her to do this. She doesn't offer any "tips" on how we all can feel this nirvana she talks about. I like the idea of it all, of course, but the lack of actual practical ways to apply her proposal leaves me feeling like the whole thing's a bit hippy-dippy.
I also liked that her story and desires fit perfectly with Freud's "Civilization and Its Discontents," which says that people's drive for religion stems from the experience of an "oceanic feeling," a feeling of connectedness with all things. This feeling, in turn, arrives via our experience as an infant before we realized where our bodies and identities stopped and started. We long for that feeling again, and so we construct religions that look surprisingly like this state: a "father figure" and/or "mother figure" protects us, looks down on us from on high, and responds to our requests for help, making us feel like the most important person in the universe. The fact that she experiences this all as the result of biology gone bad nicely supports Freud's hypotheses.
i'd like to add...i didn't send that video to bri and my mom because of the message, it was more about the human physiology. after all the moms is a CNRN (Certified Neuroscience RN).
I don't think she felt like she was being protected or looked down on high or felt like the most important person in the world. in fact the complete opposite..we are all connected..we are all one...more like gandhi than freud.
Maybe it wasn't her job to give pratical ways to apply her proposal, maybe it was just her job to tell her story.
i agree it was a bit hippy-dippy
I loved the physiological stuff--especially the explanation about how the right brain is all "now" and the left brain is about relating the now to the past to decide how to act in the future. Wild.
By "more like Gandhi," I assume you're not referring to the rabidly racist side of Gandhi.
When you say that maybe her job was just to tell her story, I'd agree except she seems so adamant about making a discovery and suggesting a new way to live and experience living. Don't you think her ending, with all its drama and histrionics, is an impassioned plea for us to strive for this transcendent experience she glorifies?
I also have a problem with the actual sentiment that "we're all connected," espoused by her and so many others. What does it mean? Is it metaphorical, as in "we're all in this together," the way survivors are in a lifeboat? If so, I agree.
However, she seems to mean, and most people supporting this ideal seem to mean, something else, something more literal. Like there's some connective tissue between us all. This is of course not true, though, obviously...Myanmar, more than 100,000 dead. China, more than 34,000 dead. Despite Meditation XVII, my existence doesn't feel any smaller or lost in the face of these numbers. I'm sad for the devastation; I grieve in small ways. But if we were truly "all connected," wouldn't all of us be shattered to our core, or wouldn't we at least have stumbled the way Ben Kenobi did when Alderann got wiped out? Once again, the problem of evil, for lack of a more exact and nuanced phrase, complicates my outlook on all this.
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