Puppet in the Sky

Is our world a simple consistent system where rules apply? Or is it a product of magical chaoses? where rules don't exist? or they can be bent? where cheating wins?

We don't know. We can't know. We don't know enough to know. We don't know enough to find out. But my bets have long been on the former: though they started out trained to the latter. Don't observe experience, and theorize what the rules must be by some collaboration of rational processes; pray, practice magic, try to cheat.

We "know" our environment by "modeling" it. We build symbolic structures, and, insofar as we are intelligent, interested in survival, compare those models with experience, revising the symbolic structure as necessary. That's a semiotic statement of alternative one above: we live in a simple consistent system: rational processes can try to figure it out. Maybe the system is complex enough that our models won't be quite perfect the first few tries, but edition N of the model should have a good chance of being less flawed than edition M was. That's what man would believe if man were scientific: rational.

But modern man is simply edition O of man C, D, E, the failed magician. Once we wanted to control things, we tried magic. Our magic failed. So we tried specialist magicians. Their magic failed. So we imagined the perfect magician being immaterial, a spirit, and living in the sky: the meta-magician. Our magic is no good, but God's magic is perfect.

Along comes pk. I was born into a magical culture. My emotions developed around love for God, reverence for God, celebration of God, love for God, being the highest good, the highest goal; but slowly, gradually, imperfectly, I came to value reason, science, and to see that my magical society pretended to, but did it magically: as though science were a question of pronouncing Abracadabra right: or the magic wouldn't work. So what I did, what I've tried, is to blend both: believe in science, but keep the old magical vocabulary. Thus pk's semiotic universe uses ancient human vocabulary and grammar to symbolize modern human science and reason. In other words, just as Einstein substituted a rational creator for the magical creator of his Jewish ancestors, so do I, meaning natural law by "god." I define my terms, I practice at consistency: how can I help it if no one understands? when their not understanding is willful: attempts at the old magical control? Reasonable people must be sabotaged: so the priests for irrational magic can run things unopposed. Sabotage didn't work for Einstein, so he got deified. Sabotage has worked just fine for pk: pk being far more revolutionary than Einstein. Einstein merely wanted to transform Newtonian gravity; pk wants to do away with society in which the magicians have free reign to cheat: by running the churches, the state, the schools, the universities ...

Once upon a time the priests tied to make it rain. Too often it didn't rain no matter how they danced or cut themselves, no matter how many virgins they disemboweled, chanting in no matter which language. Then the priests saw the lightning hit the mistletoe way up in the oak tree. Then it rained> Ah! So it's the mistletoe that is beloved of the big magician in the sky. Now: how do we, who cannot control the rain, control the big magician in the sky? and therefore control the rain?

Through precise rituals in Hebrew! Through precise rituals in Greek! Through precise rituals in Latin! (or Sanskrit!) (How about IndoEuropean?) (It's still no good: IndoEuropean is a current (set of) language(s), not at all an ancient language.) (We don't know any truly ancient languages! the evidence is rubbed clean.)

Anyway, here we have a bunch of failed magicians, now called rabbis (translate as "priests"), convincing themselves that they have lured their creation god into the box where they keep their contract with this magician in the sky, which they call their Covenant, and the box the Covenant's "ark": the Ark of the Covenant. The Jews tell themselves, and anyone who's listening, borrowing, imitating, that the box is for the God's comfort, and protection: the people feed and care for their god. But anyone not quite buying everything they say not quite literally can suppose that they might just have lured the god into the box to hold him captive and make him behave: that is, to make the sun rise and the rain rain for the Jews: and make their enemies tremble and fall in the dust.

(French Christians followed this behavior almost exactly when they erected their Chartres Cathedral: only in the European case it was the female spirt Mary the French were trying to lure and capture: mitigating the furious judgment of her male counterpart Father, Son, and Holy Ghost.

And in the US, on Morningside Heights, across the street from Riverside Cathedral, in the 1960s was erected a limestone pile called by locals the God Box. It's Church of England (Roman Catholic with the Pope (and his wops) washed out), diluted to Anglican (the British washed out): sort of generic American Protestant (Christian with the religion washed out). It's not altogether clear what American Christians want: sort of Forgiveness: while they keep the money.)