Well Bottom Blues

This is going to get deep.

Reading about modern philosophy and neurobiology considering consciousness, it seems to be moving toward a consensus that meaning is something our brain imposes on a superficially mechanistic universe. If this is true, the the various ruling deities and their code of ethics spring from our forehead fully formed like Athena from the head of Zeus. Altruism is rooted in tribal survival instinct, not some superior moral reservoir gifted by the Buddha or the Christ. Caring for those around us enhances our own survivability. This impulse is more difficult to sustain as we organize ourselves into larger and larger societies, so our projected deities serve to formulate an ethical code of conduct to follow in our societies.

Which I guess takes us back to Nietzsche and God is Dead. I’m okay with that. Much of what I’ve stated above I have come to in my own thinking and it just sort of fell into the shape of that long first paragraph after reading a long article about consciousness, self and meaning. This is why I’m philosophically an anarchist because most of human social organization prior to the last few millenia has been cooperative, until the miasma of state and religion swallowed the world by conquest,  putting the self-elect above the many A cooperative, moral society can organize itself out of mutual self interest once we break the shackles of Kings and priests and governments.Its. den done and prospered where it was crushed by empire. The eco-anarchists defeated ISIS in Syria, not the US. If you need a code to live by I suggest you read the Zapatista Principles,

I think this is why I find the Scandinavian / Germanic Pantheon interesting. They have all of our human foibles as do the gods and goddesses of the Mediterranean, but they are not immortal. They are just a more powerful form of ourselves, walking through Wyrd toward their inevitable end. And Wyrd itself resembleds most modern attempts to fit self-determination into a possibly mechanistic. brain and external world.  Free Will is seen as creation of the brain using probability. The coin flip will even out over time, but your next choice could be heads or tails or miss the catch and look for it under the couch but it’s under the chair.  None of which touches on the school of thought that some parts of the brain my be subject to quantum influences.

And I prefer to imagine gods who don’t demand worship but demand we do better with the hand we’re dealt, that walk with you not stand above you in judgement. We don’t have profits. We have poets. If you need a set of imaginary stone tablets from three millenia ago to guide your moral choices, you are intrinsically a weak, morally-adrift  person.

None of us will ever see the end of these debates except by extinction level catastrophe. We all just need to make our own way in the world. I chose to do so free of the influence of cosmic puppeteers. Where Wyrd and Theory meet is the path I follow through a hostile world barreling toward it’s one Ragnarok, trying to help those around me with a mix of Thor’s hammer and Odin’s hard-won wisdom.