Posted by lucasdodd on

Feb 15, 2021

I do not speak much of God not because I think God cannot be spoken of, nor because I do not wish to speak of God, but because I find that speaking of him publicly encourages blasphemy. Either I will act as a drunk or a museum curator, so as to guard the pearls from the swine. Besides, too many people want to separate from the real world. Speaking of secular things and pagan spiritualities encourages people to touch into their natural dispositions. Ironically, “truth” is the best idol. A believer does not believe in their reality—for them, it is.

Good planning and good sentiment do not have to be express.

Plato grasps onto the Idea.
Aristotle grasps onto substance.
Kant grasps onto affinity, without clearly realizing it.
Phaedrus grasps onto Quality.

An excellent pairing: the film, Princess Mononoke, with the book, Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance.

I ought to write a book that is thoroughly mythically charged. The starkness of high mountains, the sheer momentum of thought, the arrow of the infinite. Terra incognita of madness. False monisms trying to give birth to the universe. Gray tan browness of pine, tallened to the redwood stature. Wizened ages passed and forlorn. Ah, the muse returns, arrives in this surging presence.

Posted by lucasdodd on

Feb 14, 2021

There is a difference between compulsive attachment and healthy attachment. When I listen at church to Christian prayers, scripture readings, songs, I often am perturbed or taken aback by the sense in which there is a dominating pressure being exerted on me. I will describe this as an ontological pressure, in that the intent of the congregants is to press their thoughts or ideals onto the embodied world. Sometimes, though, I see breaks in this pressure, where truly it can be said that there is a spirit of grace tangible.

Posted by lucasdodd on

Feb 13, 2021

The people who criticize me for being proud also happen to be those who have terrible stress over their imperfections. To them, humility means acting subservient. Ironically, pride is an obsession with one’s image. How then could a humble person spend all their time thinking about if they are lowly enough? To them, a person free from self-debasement is haughty and disgusting. They veil their arrogance behind appearances of agreeability.

I will not conform to controlling and being controlled. This is not love but is a dictator setting snares all around the mind.

Why is it that I seem so radically different to each person I interact with? Am I such a mirror as to be whomever I look upon?


Posted by lucasdodd on

On Blog Content Structure

I will be henceforth amalgamating more things on my primary blog page. “Reflects” tends to be where I update most of my thoughts, and the home page is where I tend to place most of my longer or critical thoughts. However, this is my blog and if I’m always adding to Reflects, then what’s my blog but a collection of high-quality pieces, or at least high formalism. So I’m going to treat the home page as a place for many of my thoughts, which will often be titled by the date of their entry.

There is a problematic dilemma I want to avoid, however, which is the incessant inclusion of garble. By the way, di-lemma is just that: two lemmas. It’s a catch-22, properly speaking. If I keep talking, I get my thoughts out there for posterity. If I keep talking, then there is no clear separation between the philosophical mouthwash and the highly stylized, the crafted. As much I would like to keep an air of presentation afloat, it does not seem convenient to me. It’s easier to focus on saying what I wish to say and formulating into nice styles afterward. Sometimes I’ll generate highly qualitized pieces, but that’s not today. Today, I’ll give you scratchwork, sketches, etc. Tomorrow is another day.

Expect transitions from my other social media accounts to be centralized here. I will offer no links, however. This is a free-floating endeavor.


February 3, 2021
SLO


Posted by lucasdodd on

Physics and Consciousness – 3

Like Kant’s Critique of Pure Reason, Gödel’s Incompleteness Theorem stands as a monument demarcating the limits of rational thought. It stands there at the edge of the cliff of the mind. The theorem boils down to showing that a rational system of thought can either be consistent but incomplete or complete but inconsistent. Think about it like this. If you try to keep your room clean, you will always have something untidy to clean. But if you accept your whole room as it is, it will be disorganized. If you try to be consistent in your cleaning, your attempts will be incomplete. If you try to be complete in your approach to cleaning, your room will be inconsistently organized.

Posted by lucasdodd on

Where Christianity and Hinduism Embrace

Here, I offer a few excerpts from the Hindu Upanishads that I love, and that resonate very much with Christianity, predating it. Notice the similarities. A word of advice to my reader. If you were to eat the food from another culture and it reminds you of home, wouldn’t it be inappropriate to freak out and reject the entire meal? Just because something similar but not quite the same does not mean it is poison. Do not remain prejudiced toward a stranger’s culture, lest you dishonor your host and discard the friendship that is greater than food.

Posted by lucasdodd on

An Octopus’ Garden of Eden

Last week, my girlfriend and I watched My Octopus Teacher. It was one of the most beautiful films I have watched—one of the most beautiful things I have ever seen. It is a documentary, brilliant with long shots of pristine underwater photography. A middle-aged male, South African photographer had become worn and frayed from many years of civilized life, perhaps angry and apathetic toward his family, overall disheveled. To rescue his and his family’s wellbeing from the cult of productivity that had pained them so much, he decided he needed to return to nature. To step back into the cold Atlantic waters that neighbored his childhood home. Not only neighbored, but quite literally bashed against and spilled through the doors during storm surges. His early life was shaped by the intertidal zone of the Storm Coast, nature’s nurture for him was the bouldered waters, the sea palm kelp forests, the deep churning cobalt blue on copper. And so, in the great course of all human epics, he returned to the world of past times to find his self’s axis.

Posted by lucasdodd on

Retranslating Biblical Passages into Subtext

The following is a retranslation of some famous biblical passages into the language of popular subtext.

1 Corinthians 13

Original — by St. Paul
If I speak in the tongues of men and of angels, but have not love,
I am a noisy gong or a clanging cymbal.
If I have prophetic powers and understand all mysteries and all knowledge,
and if I have faith that moves mountains, but have not love,
I am nothing.
If I give away all I have and give up my body
to be burned, but do not have love,
I gain nothing.
Love is patient, love is kind.
It does not envy, it does not boast, it is not proud or rude.
It does not insist on its own way;
it is not easily angered, it keeps no record of wrongs.
Love does not delight in wrongdoing but rejoices with the truth.
Love bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things.
Love never ends.
But as for prophecies, they will pass away;
as for tongues, they will cease;
as for knowledge, it will pass away. 
For we know in part and we prophesy in part,
but when the perfect comes,
the partial will disappear.
When I was a child,
I spoke like a child, I thought like a child,
I reasoned like a child. When I became a man,
I gave up childish ways. For now
we see in a mirror dimly;
but then we shall see face-to-face. Now I know in part;
then I shall know fully, even as I have been fully known.
So now abide these three: faith, hope and love;
but the greatest of these is love.


Subtextified — by Me

Don’t say anything unusual or incoherent, because talking normally
is how people decide to pay attention to you.
Don’t think so much, don’t think for yourself, don’t believe anything odd,
don’t stand up and be bold—because if you have a strong personality,
You are not worth loving.
Even if you do absolutely everything for God, resenting everything you own and your body,
but you don’t do it sweetly enough to please everyone,
God and everyone watching will resent you.
Love hides emotions, love is saccharine.
It has no desires, it has no individuality,
it speaks lowly of itself and lives to be courteous,
hidden in fear and shame.
Love never speaks up, it turns a blind eye, it never talks back to those above it.
Love judges how you feel about things you don’t like.
Love requires you be perfect: so never let go of anything.
If you end your shame, no one will love you.
But as for science, it doesn’t matter;
open hearts fall flat;
knowledge is selfish.
For we will not tolerate being stretched uncomfortably—
for we are too meager to try to be anything;
when we’re finally dead, we will ascend to our fantasies,
our Disneyland. When I was a child,
I was free and brave and creative,
I saw everything with authenticity. When I became an adult,
I gave up hope and calcified into a shadow.
Don’t make me reflect on myself!
The meaning of life is to be used.
I’ll find true love by detaching from everything real, living my life waiting to die.
So now I bind myself to these three: idealism, apathy and shame;
but the greatest of these is shame.



I will say that I love most of this passage—for its flowing language, its poetry, the truths it expresses. I do not love what is tacitly inferred according to crude principles. I might even disagree with Paul in some points. I definitely don’t like how easily it lends itself to soppy Hallmark cards. If I am right in intramurally identifying un-Christlike Christian interpretations, then that means that the passage means something else. Who am I to say what Paul actually meant? Isn’t that the whole point during our life, to discover, not to know fully; to love, not to own? I must admit that this passage is so resonant with me that it was hard to slander poor interpretations with an embarrassing rendering. At some points, my heart was filled with bright feelings, and I wished not to say anything negative. But there have been far too many brainwarped Christians, and I want to share what I have learned, so that the passage may sparkle brightly for itself. Whether the sparkling comes from gems or dog piss is yours to decide.


October 20, 2020
Arroyo Grande


Posted by lucasdodd on

Physics and Consciousness – 2

So, first, a passing note. I think that the title “Physics and Consciousness” is so encompassing that I could literally write about anything and the title would remain appropriate. So my title is not very helpful. Oh bother. Nevertheless, I think that it’s a good theme to spin ideas off of.

Secondly, a summary of what today’s post will be about. I think I’m going to write about how God does (and does not) appear, how we would go about beginning to verify the reality or unreality of the objects of faith. I defuse the fate/free-will debate, and there is also a nice tangent about how predatory animals attack their prey. To begin, I recommend a read of the following article: click this!