Monday 2 July 2007

Pic of the day: Not quite wholly Scripture, but better than most attempts you see to mix and match science and religion. Perhaps I should review it in more detail later? But today we return to the blog, since that has become part of my life lately.

One Cosmos revisited

My interest always expands to fill all available time. Like cats, they abhor a vacuum. One that has been eating up steadily more of my days over the last months is the blog One Cosmos, by Robert W. Godwin, who also wrote the book "One Cosmos Under God".

The name implies a reference to the famous "One nation under God", in the pledge that American school children recite regularly, to the consternation of atheists, Witches and Pagans. If you think this is an ironic reference, however, you are going to be disappointed. Godwin is serious unto death. He means every word. To make sense of the gap between materialist science and the deep experience of meaning that real people really have, he introduces a fifth dimension, the spiritual vertical. At the top of the vertical is O, the absolute, that which cannot not exist. This, he implies, is what we westerners call "God". People in other cultures perceive it differently, but no civilization can get anywhere without respect for spiritual hierarchy - the view that some principles are simply higher than others. And if there is a hierarchy, there must be a top, a Highest of High.

This focus on hierarchy of principles and absolute values brings Godwin into a head to head conflict with the postmodernist philosophers, and thereby the political left in USA (and Europe, although he knows a lot less about European politics). Very simplified, the postmodernist view is that the only absolute truth is that there is no absolute truth. Our view of the world is just a story, chosen for coherence and comfort rather than for factual truth. We all create our own meaning, according to this school of thought, and none of them is inherently better than another. Some cultures are just better at surviving and reproducing, just like some animals are, but that is all. Godwin, like any right-thinking man, discards this as nihilism. Evidently some left-thinking men think it is cool, though. I wouldn't know about that, not having been educated at an American college. Thank O for that.

The price of confronting the leftist materialism is, of course, that you tend to end up defending the opposite side. This is not an unfamiliar dilemma to me: I have made a habit out of mocking socialists on May 1st, their holy day which in a distant past was set aside to demonstrate for the 48-hour week. Anyway, I live in Norway, so taking on socialists does not really endorse anything extreme on the other side. We're a pretty consensus-oriented people, after all. The USA, on the other hand, has become frighteningly polarized. As Godwin puts it, "we have a choice between the evil party and the stupid party". And he's with stupid. I guess it can't be helped, although when it gets too detailed into American politics I just hide in a corner.

I certainly have a lower opinion of Bush than Godwin and seemingly most of his friends too. This is based not on his personality but on my observation of the American economy, which is headed for a crash that will resound like a gong through the ages to come. There is no avoiding that now. But it may still come after the 2008 election, so the two parties can play the blame game.

Unsurprisingly, Godwin thinks the USA is the best thing since Pentecost. This is not too far off, actually, although I would rate the printing press with movable type higher. The printing press made possible public education, without which we would still largely be in the Middle Ages, where few other than priests and tax collectors could read and write. But the beneficial influence of America since its founding is easily overlooked. The truth is that if we imagine a world without America, it would not be a pleasant place to live. It is doubtful that democracy would be considered much more than an idle philosophical speculation. And people would be too poor and their lives too short to care much one way or the other. America was the shining beacon that showed what could be done if people were given freedom. This is also why their coming downfall saddens me so much. The last time America retreated from the world stage, after the stock market crash of 1929, we got the Great Depression, followed by Nazism and Fascism. I'd rather not see it happen again.

Anyway, the fact that I disagree with Godwin on some things and just withhold my judgment on others does not change the fact that he is a man who spends time with God. Or O, if you prefer. His O is certainly not the racist, narrow-minded sadist you find in some interpretations of the Bible. His love for the Upanishads (early Hindu texts) would probably brand him a heretic in any case. But you can sense that he is a very earnest man, who has experienced and continues to experience something higher than the animal life, and tries to drag some of it down to earth each day.

Let us take this again, because it is important. I don't need to agree with someone to sense when they have a spiritual function. And Godwin's function is what he calls "O->k", to bring some part of the Great Unknown back to everyday knowledge. On a large scale, such a person would be called a prophet, in Judeo-Christian context. I certainly don't imply that the guy is up there with Isaiah and Jeremiah, simply that there is a glimmer of the same light. Perhaps more comparable to Jonah, who had some pretty obvious flaws, but still is portrayed as an instrument to help many people change their lives. And even then on a smaller scale, I'm afraid, unless San Francisco repents unto the Lord or something after reading One Cosmos. Somehow I don't hold my breath.

But for the small flock of virtual raccoons who have gathered at the watering hole of One Cosmos, there is certainly enough to make them come back. And lately there is a porcupine among them too.