11:25 a.m. - Saturday, Jul. 20, 2002
Ms Leslie Takes the Easy Way
Oh geez, I feel lazy today. I�m going to cop out and post this morning�s letter to Lio here and call it a diary entry. It�s some of my demented views of the universe, given in response to her brief (and invited) introduction to wicca.

Hi Lio

Sorry for the delayed response. Yesterday was a busy day by my standards, culminating in an evening spent with two of my best friends and a pile of blue crabs.

The wiccan way sounds very similar to my own way of thinking. Once I made the conscious decision to reject mormonism, the faith of my childhood, I quickly found Christianity and then all prophet-based religion in general to be subject to the same flaws and as vulnerable to questioning as mormonism. I found that I was leading myself rather unwillingly to atheism. It's not that I object to the conclusion that nothing exists outside the laws of nature (e.g. there is no god), it's just that I find most atheists to be even more obnoxious than Christians on a mission. For some reason, many... maybe most... atheists feel some kind of obligation to prosletize in reverse. They think it's their job to show every Christian the error of his ways. In truth, if the atheistic view is correct, then the human condition and human beliefs are insignificant anyway. If we are all headed for oblivion, what does it matter what we do or beleive for the itty-bitty instant that we do exist?

I began referring to myself, only half-jokingly, with a term I invented. From the Latin "cogit ergo sum" I coined the term 'cogitarian' to mean someone who uses their head. From what you've told me, this would describe... up to a point... the wiccan philosophy. It seems like a very rational approach to life and it seems like a gentle and comforting system of beliefs. I hope it serves you well.

Without question, everything in the universe is changed and recycled. I used to love to listen to Carl Sagan state in the most emotional terms possible that we are all children of the stars.... that we are made of 'star stuff'. He was referring, of course, to the fact that all of the complex elements, including carbon, the basis of life on earth, are formed from simpler atoms during the life cycles of long deceased stars. So in a very real way, as I sit here today sipping cold coffee (ick!... hey wait a minute!... be right back), I am, at an atomic level, billions of years old. Nearly as old, possibly, as the known universe itself.

I think the only point where we would part philosophical ways comes from the assumption that "lifeforce is a thing". In the first place, assumptions can sometimes (but not always) be dangerous. I don't like assumptions very much at all. In this case, however, it seems very illogical to assume that lifeforce is a thing. Forces and things are just not the same. Things, of course, can be observed, measured, and by and large, kept in jars. There's no doubt that forces exist alongside things. While we can't put forces in a jar, we can observe and measure their effects and usually can predict their behavior. When we talk about forces and things, we are really talking about matter and energy. These two natural phenomena are related, as described by Eintsein's famous equation 'e=m(c*c)' but remain seperate. Nothing can be described as both matter and energy at the same time, except perhaps light, which sometimes acts as particles and other times acts as waves. Science is still scratching it's head over that one.

In my opinion, lifeforce is a term useful in describing not a force, but a process. It took something special for me to recognize that my coffee was cold, experience an emotion of dissatisfaction about it, and expend the energy to obtain hot coffee and ingest it into my body. There's a big teddy bear on the futon next to my computer desk. He has a head, two arms, two legs, etc., and yet he's never once gone to get me coffee. So yes, there's something special thatmakes me different from most of the matter in the universe. But, while the interaction of my neurons can be observed and measured, my emotional state checked and recorded through measurements of my pulse, blood pressure, perspiration, etc., there's just no way to observe the force (or thing) that makes me 'alive'. I am in fact, not much different from a gasoline engine. I convert potential energy (fuel) into kinetic energy (movement) and heat. We like to say an engine 'roars into life' to describe the smoke, noise, heat and motion of an engine in operation. As long as I produce waste, noise, heat and motion, I can be said to be alive too. But on the most basic level, I'm just another, more complex machine. My noise is only more important than the noise of an engine because I consider it so. In reality, my noise is just another note in the cosmic symphony.

I'd like to think my awareness of myself and my surroundings will survive. It's tempting to accept the observation of cycles in nature and draw the conclusion that my self awareness is such a fundamental thing that it must survive like a diamond survives. I, however, look to a different assumption for my answer to survivabillity. We love to ask two questions..... 'Where did I come from?' and 'Where am I going?'. Both are unknowable questions... the most frustrating kind for our species, but if I insist on considering them, then I see no reason to think that my destination is any different than my point of origin. In other words, I am headed back to wherever I came from. If I want to know where I'll go when I die, all I have to do is think of where I was before I was born. Not speaking here of the material from which I'm made... we know where it came from and whence it will go. But where was my life force, my self awareness before I was born? Answer that, and we'll know to where I will return.

Well... as you can see, I love to talk about this stuff too. I can get carried away big time. It occurs to me that I need to explain my view on one more thing... the utility of beliefs. Are they useful? When is belief in an unproven process valuable? If you care to know, just let me know. I have to give you a little breathing room once in a while so you can hit the panic bar on the nearest exit and escape this unprovoked seminar. At any rate, even after having said that all our beliefs are futile and meaningless, there IS a reason I consider the wiccan approach you described to be far superior and possibly more useful than say, the mormon view. If you ask me why, rest assured... I will tell you.

Coffee's cold again!

Leslie

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