I am really excited to read this, Mills, and I totally dig the way you mention the broken brain, the death of your mother, but "not quite as serious as it sounds, though." That's pure Mills Baker, and pure satori.
Writing this in the Target parking lot and will update later with more on the serious stuff, but laughed out loud that both you and David were also bullied for being gay without actually being gay.
Only my dad ever thought I was gay. (He typed at 3:19am)
On the problem of evil, man thatβs a tough one. The best I can up with, after my weird experience, is βIf we were different, we wouldnβt be us anymore.β All the things that make us, us, are imbedded in the universe too. You inherit the consequences of the speed of light, the permittivity of free space, and every other feature of the universe. Change those and you donβt exist. Except I think from Godβs perspective, the higher perspective outside of time and space, itβs backwards. All of those things are the way they are, so that *we* could be the way we are. God chose us, warts and all. Love us, flaws and all. The evil is part of us, too, and from our naive perspective it is something that comes into us from the outside. But in the higher perspective, since we wouldnβt be us without the outside being what it is, the evil goes from inside out. Why would God choose to make that *be*? Well, we are His children. To wash that away would be to forsake us.
My sense is that He holds himself back for lots of reasons, the primary one being that if He intervened to the maximal extent then we wouldnβt be us anymore, either. Weβd be puppets, little more than shadow puppets for his amusement. We wouldnβt have the chance to do things like He can do, to be good because we choose it, because we choose to make that our nature. To be brave, because we *canβt* see ahead far enough to know what the consequences will be from our actions. To love, through fear and vulnerability, because we donβt get to know first if someone will love us back or abuse us for that love. Yet we do all of that anyway. We *couldnβt* do them if we had perfect knowledge or perfect power. He gave us the one thing He doesnβt have: limitation.
Think about what it says about you that you get tired, and worn down, and I imagine you probably feel like a waitress at Hooters sometimes where being nice to people also feels like this drag thatβs your job you canβt escape (you donβt ever have to do this for me, by the way, I am half-writer and half-corporate drone) but you choose to do it anyway. What are you, ultimately, if not that choice? And what would the strength of that choice be if there was not strain to push through it? Your limits and your adversity bring something out in you like a self-producing good, a flame fueled by its own brightness, something liken to the Flame Imperishable that is Godβs alone.
My best guess is that everything *is* somewhere out there. That was my sense anyway. For God to know a thing, to imagine it perfectly, is for that thing to become real. Every life you could have lived, every possible circumstance. Infinite rolls of the dice for you to get it right while still being you. We too often make science and religion enemies of one another, but think about why that wasnβt the first religious response to the many worlds theory. So often people will spit on God because not everyone gets an equal chance, but what if everyone gets every chance? What if thatβs built right in to the fabric of being? Same with evolution. People took that as an abdication of God because they could explain something. But did people think God was putting on some leather gloves and going into a workshop? Isnβt it weird, just by the way things are, that loving and connecting to another of your kind produces all the variety in the world we know? At a certain level, even propagating yourself through time does that same thing, hones you and brings you into harmony with your present moment. And that is supposed to be bleak?
We were broken at the start in our potential, but we are still loved for all of that. The apple was the way our minds were built and our exile from the garden was the beginning of the universe. If by some Cosmic scale this was not worth it, I donβt think God would have let it *be* from His vantage outside of time and space. He sees the end and the beginning together, all in one shining, perfect instance.
Anyway, I think Iβm largely preaching to the converted. And if it helps, I try to think of every shitty propensity within myself at least a few times a day and accept theyβre part of me even as I have to work against them, and frequently fail. It is all so beautiful, though, and we couldnβt possibly deserve it all except by grace.
I vibed with Davidβs comment about the two streams of Buddhism almost being two religions. Because that was my experience floating between Christian sects. One brand of theology says βyouβre just a dirty, totally depraved piece of garbage with an absolute moral imperative to grovel and seek perfectionβ and the other is like βoh man youβre quite literally the pinnacle of creation and are perfectly able to turn everything around you into a nicer garden if you just deeply accept that you are loved, and itβs normal if that takes a whileβ. Both versions see us as fallen and require us to see that weβre fallen to make moral progress. But oh man is that emphasis different in the psychosocial result it produces!
Damn, what a cool conversation to sit in on. In addition to feeling a lot smarter than I was before I watched, I also feel like I'd like to experience that wild weed balloon with Mills one of these days. Beautiful conversation. Thanks for sharing it with us
Itβs on the way, for real; Iβm just juggling a lot! On the one side, my whole life as Chris; on the other, this sham of an existence I call βMillsβ; and Iβve got a few other life paths cooking too. Iβm sorry for the delay!!!
The video podcast this Degenerate Age really needs right now!
Heidegger's idea of fallenness would be another fun lens to apply here, especially given the role he thinks it plays in the construction of time. Not even going to attempt to summarize, so will just copy and paste relevant bits from this good essay (https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/heidegger/):
Thrownness and projection provide two of the three dimensions of care. The third is fallen-ness. βDasein has, in the first instance, fallen away from itself as an authentic potentiality for Being its Self, and has fallen into the worldβ (Being and Time 38: 220). Such fallen-ness into the world is manifested in idle talk (roughly, conversing in a critically unexamined and unexamining way about facts and information while failing to use language to reveal their relevance), curiosity (a search for novelty and endless stimulation rather than belonging or dwelling), and ambiguity (a loss of any sensitivity to the distinction between genuine understanding and superficial chatter). Each of these aspects of fallen-ness involves a closing off or covering up of the world (more precisely, of any real understanding of the world) through a fascination with it. What is crucial here is that this world-obscuring process of fallen-ness/fascination, as manifested in idle talk, curiosity and ambiguity, is to be understood as Dasein's everyday mode of Being-with. In its everyday form, Being-with exhibits what Heidegger calls levelling or averagenessβa βBeing-lost in the publicness of the βtheyβββ (Being and Time 38: 220).
(I hear Kierkegaard made similar points, and if he did, I'm sure he did so way more clearly.)
A fascinating conversation. The concept of 'fallen' is so oppressive isn't it? I always think of it as someone has pushed me over, but maybe that's me not taking responsibility!
Iβm not sure! I donβt feel any less responsible for my conduct given variable initial conditions; it may be that the world is anything at all, with any story behind it, and the matter of what I do with it and in it remains for me to determine (and to feel the weight of). I do think βfallennessβ is somewhat related to βcomplication,β and I have the sense that a lot of people are disappointed with the complexity of the world: its resistance to simple solutions and convergences. But for most anyone religious enough to take this metaphor βfor real,β itβs simultaneously the case that weβre expected to do βgoodβ in this world, as it is, fallen or not, so I think the responsibility issue can cut a few ways!
Fascinating discussion. Thank you both. Just a small thing but you mentioned that in the past Christianity had a suspicion of music. As an atheist I'm so glad that this no longer prevails. I find the following hugely uplifting!
I am really excited to read this, Mills, and I totally dig the way you mention the broken brain, the death of your mother, but "not quite as serious as it sounds, though." That's pure Mills Baker, and pure satori.
Hold onβdoes the camera AUTO-TRACK as you move around? Is that what i just witnessed on a LOW-PRODUCTION HOMEBREW PODCAST???
Thatβs just the iPhone and an Apple TV!!! It does all that stuff automatically!
That's awesome
Writing this in the Target parking lot and will update later with more on the serious stuff, but laughed out loud that both you and David were also bullied for being gay without actually being gay.
wasnβt that like close to 75% of boys from uhβ¦ well whenever to whenever?!
Only my dad ever thought I was gay. (He typed at 3:19am)
On the problem of evil, man thatβs a tough one. The best I can up with, after my weird experience, is βIf we were different, we wouldnβt be us anymore.β All the things that make us, us, are imbedded in the universe too. You inherit the consequences of the speed of light, the permittivity of free space, and every other feature of the universe. Change those and you donβt exist. Except I think from Godβs perspective, the higher perspective outside of time and space, itβs backwards. All of those things are the way they are, so that *we* could be the way we are. God chose us, warts and all. Love us, flaws and all. The evil is part of us, too, and from our naive perspective it is something that comes into us from the outside. But in the higher perspective, since we wouldnβt be us without the outside being what it is, the evil goes from inside out. Why would God choose to make that *be*? Well, we are His children. To wash that away would be to forsake us.
My sense is that He holds himself back for lots of reasons, the primary one being that if He intervened to the maximal extent then we wouldnβt be us anymore, either. Weβd be puppets, little more than shadow puppets for his amusement. We wouldnβt have the chance to do things like He can do, to be good because we choose it, because we choose to make that our nature. To be brave, because we *canβt* see ahead far enough to know what the consequences will be from our actions. To love, through fear and vulnerability, because we donβt get to know first if someone will love us back or abuse us for that love. Yet we do all of that anyway. We *couldnβt* do them if we had perfect knowledge or perfect power. He gave us the one thing He doesnβt have: limitation.
Think about what it says about you that you get tired, and worn down, and I imagine you probably feel like a waitress at Hooters sometimes where being nice to people also feels like this drag thatβs your job you canβt escape (you donβt ever have to do this for me, by the way, I am half-writer and half-corporate drone) but you choose to do it anyway. What are you, ultimately, if not that choice? And what would the strength of that choice be if there was not strain to push through it? Your limits and your adversity bring something out in you like a self-producing good, a flame fueled by its own brightness, something liken to the Flame Imperishable that is Godβs alone.
My best guess is that everything *is* somewhere out there. That was my sense anyway. For God to know a thing, to imagine it perfectly, is for that thing to become real. Every life you could have lived, every possible circumstance. Infinite rolls of the dice for you to get it right while still being you. We too often make science and religion enemies of one another, but think about why that wasnβt the first religious response to the many worlds theory. So often people will spit on God because not everyone gets an equal chance, but what if everyone gets every chance? What if thatβs built right in to the fabric of being? Same with evolution. People took that as an abdication of God because they could explain something. But did people think God was putting on some leather gloves and going into a workshop? Isnβt it weird, just by the way things are, that loving and connecting to another of your kind produces all the variety in the world we know? At a certain level, even propagating yourself through time does that same thing, hones you and brings you into harmony with your present moment. And that is supposed to be bleak?
We were broken at the start in our potential, but we are still loved for all of that. The apple was the way our minds were built and our exile from the garden was the beginning of the universe. If by some Cosmic scale this was not worth it, I donβt think God would have let it *be* from His vantage outside of time and space. He sees the end and the beginning together, all in one shining, perfect instance.
Anyway, I think Iβm largely preaching to the converted. And if it helps, I try to think of every shitty propensity within myself at least a few times a day and accept theyβre part of me even as I have to work against them, and frequently fail. It is all so beautiful, though, and we couldnβt possibly deserve it all except by grace.
This is beautiful and yes: more or less where Iβm at; and I am considering changing my title to Waitress at Hooterβs!!!
I vibed with Davidβs comment about the two streams of Buddhism almost being two religions. Because that was my experience floating between Christian sects. One brand of theology says βyouβre just a dirty, totally depraved piece of garbage with an absolute moral imperative to grovel and seek perfectionβ and the other is like βoh man youβre quite literally the pinnacle of creation and are perfectly able to turn everything around you into a nicer garden if you just deeply accept that you are loved, and itβs normal if that takes a whileβ. Both versions see us as fallen and require us to see that weβre fallen to make moral progress. But oh man is that emphasis different in the psychosocial result it produces!
Awesome!
I love you guys.
πππ good lord hell yeah
Damn, what a cool conversation to sit in on. In addition to feeling a lot smarter than I was before I watched, I also feel like I'd like to experience that wild weed balloon with Mills one of these days. Beautiful conversation. Thanks for sharing it with us
If you're ever in New Orleans, come experience the wild weed balloon for sure!!! And thank you, extremely relieved!
Mills, you look like and have the mannerisms of someone I know named Chris. I refuse to believe you arenβt him.
Chris, you told me my lamp stand would be done two weeks ago. I suspect you havenβt even started. Unbelievable.
Itβs on the way, for real; Iβm just juggling a lot! On the one side, my whole life as Chris; on the other, this sham of an existence I call βMillsβ; and Iβve got a few other life paths cooking too. Iβm sorry for the delay!!!
The video podcast this Degenerate Age really needs right now!
Heidegger's idea of fallenness would be another fun lens to apply here, especially given the role he thinks it plays in the construction of time. Not even going to attempt to summarize, so will just copy and paste relevant bits from this good essay (https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/heidegger/):
Thrownness and projection provide two of the three dimensions of care. The third is fallen-ness. βDasein has, in the first instance, fallen away from itself as an authentic potentiality for Being its Self, and has fallen into the worldβ (Being and Time 38: 220). Such fallen-ness into the world is manifested in idle talk (roughly, conversing in a critically unexamined and unexamining way about facts and information while failing to use language to reveal their relevance), curiosity (a search for novelty and endless stimulation rather than belonging or dwelling), and ambiguity (a loss of any sensitivity to the distinction between genuine understanding and superficial chatter). Each of these aspects of fallen-ness involves a closing off or covering up of the world (more precisely, of any real understanding of the world) through a fascination with it. What is crucial here is that this world-obscuring process of fallen-ness/fascination, as manifested in idle talk, curiosity and ambiguity, is to be understood as Dasein's everyday mode of Being-with. In its everyday form, Being-with exhibits what Heidegger calls levelling or averagenessβa βBeing-lost in the publicness of the βtheyβββ (Being and Time 38: 220).
(I hear Kierkegaard made similar points, and if he did, I'm sure he did so way more clearly.)
I enjoyed this a lot. β€οΈ
thank you, thatβs relieving!!!
π€£
A fascinating conversation. The concept of 'fallen' is so oppressive isn't it? I always think of it as someone has pushed me over, but maybe that's me not taking responsibility!
Iβm not sure! I donβt feel any less responsible for my conduct given variable initial conditions; it may be that the world is anything at all, with any story behind it, and the matter of what I do with it and in it remains for me to determine (and to feel the weight of). I do think βfallennessβ is somewhat related to βcomplication,β and I have the sense that a lot of people are disappointed with the complexity of the world: its resistance to simple solutions and convergences. But for most anyone religious enough to take this metaphor βfor real,β itβs simultaneously the case that weβre expected to do βgoodβ in this world, as it is, fallen or not, so I think the responsibility issue can cut a few ways!
Fascinating discussion. Thank you both. Just a small thing but you mentioned that in the past Christianity had a suspicion of music. As an atheist I'm so glad that this no longer prevails. I find the following hugely uplifting!
https://youtu.be/C-yyjTu4Xuw?si=36Doa-yNZ2kidFBC
Excited for this. Saved and a looking forward to listening this weekend.
i donβt know man but good luck!!!
.xX| Jeez, this turned into - My letter to AndrΓ© |xx.
~
what dear people
great chat!
i was unable to stop my pen for some time
so generous of you
Mills in particular in this case
to run around screaming
with your hair on fire
so we all know
it's normal
David, personally also,
it is nice to see that it is possible
to be calm amid all this
~
"fallen - attention to the mechanism may be clarifying"
~
if we can answer fear's questions
in our own lives
no small task
then we can see the fallen
like we see a house or a car
because the illness that overtakes the fallen
is a very simple loop
fear feeding through
to power-seeking behaviors
that are succeeding-
it is easily detectable
when we can look upon monsters
without loosing our center
-i will be reporting from the briefly department
~
"war"
because a 'just war'
is a spiritually possible thing
it has been used to trick many generations
into the horror we see before us
around us-
to even begin to understand
what a just war looks like
we would need to ask the angels
for an entire language
in place of the word
consent-
i say let's do it
after we get our shit together
~
my 'take(tm)' on the nowish thing;
be family mobile if you can be
don't die
we might make it to a crazy good place
share the gift of mobility
with another
if you can
~
"meaning"
however you generate silence
do that-
now
stop
making
meaning
~
if you get too freaked out by a sense of horror
just forget it and go back
or forget it and keep going
it really only gets awful
if you sit right there in the middle
~
"you can do whatever you want"
~
I hear this as a ghost in the attic
it is meant to make you afraid of the dark
so the reigns of your spiritual power can be seized
~
we don't have to become moral
the state immorality is a deluded state
all we have to do
is break the illusion
the delusion of separateness
not like a weird mystical connection
through the mystical whatever
it's pure physics
go ahead right now
look down through time
~
"independent of circumstance+modify circumstance"
~
ahh at last,
the two of you
have freed me from this horror of a zen puzzle
tangling my feet-
there is a single doing
we can feel it happening in our center
we can weave with acceptance
and non-acceptance-
another trick to tie the hand
averted
~
#goteam