RELIGION IN STRANGE PLACES

Cult of the Green Fairy, Part IV

2011-12-30T15:58:00.000-08:00

At last we come to the fourth level of Rappaport's hierarchy: the arena of on-the-ground adaptive pressures, where religious ideas meet the real world in practice and must respond like any other organic system in order to survive. This last part of our look at an imagined absinthe religion will be a piecemeal conclusion, addressing a smattering of issues the Green Goddess may encounter on her journey from spiritual obscurity to deific stardom.

One large pressure in particular may doggedly challenge the absinthe cult, even if it were to gain substantial footing: namely the question 'is this a real religion?'

At the outset such a question could prove fatal to the Green Fairy's young religious idea system. Without basis in authoritative tradition, and making the somewhat audacious move of building a sacred order upon something generally regarded a profane activity, the absinthe cult is susceptible to accusations of being a mere eccentricity, an elaborate excuse for godless indulgence, and the like. This non-believing doubt could threaten to stifle the budding religion, and would probably represent a perpetual pressure on religious absintheurs even if their numbers grew enough to cement the cult's stability.

However, the Green Fairy might sidestep this relatively high-order doubt with a classic and always effective strategy: accessible folk practices. Indeed, her absinthe cult might find its niche as an easily transplantable branch of so-called folk or popular religion, as opposed to more centrally institutionalized traditions. In any case, with a highly accessible central practice (the absinthe ritual) and ready ability to provide simple supernatural benefits through spells, prayers, charms (blessed absinthe spoons, anyone?), and so on, the Goddess can provide the sort of flexible paranormal goods that are always in popular demand.

A charmed spoon here and a blessed glass there may not seem particularly important, but providing accessible and easily replicated practices is in fact probably the most important thing any religion must do to ensure its survival. No matter how small or how simplified, such practices preserve the higher-order idea systems that inform them. Because so much of the absinthe religion is transmissible through these kinds of practices, the Green Fairy may actually have better chances of making it big by reaching more people (that is, more memetic vectors) and making more of them adherents. Even if they only enjoy the occasional sacred absinthe or keep special spoons for good luck, that's successful transmission and potential replication — memetic bank, as it were.

On the other end of the spectrum, hyper-institutionalization might present an entirely different adaptive problem. If the loose, decentralized, highly personal cult were to develop into a more organized religious institution with professional priests administering the sacramental absinthe, that institutional organization could become a cancerous blight on the idea system it represents. The typical abuses of corruption and oppression that have historically attended institutional religion more or less everywhere are as much a threat to religious absinthism as to any other tradition.

Whether it becomes more institutionalized or remained highly personal, the absinthe cult will always have to walk the line between its disciplined and Dionysian tendencies. Whatever degree of formality or centralization the cult should have, excessive debauchery or restriction could both undermine its adaptive health. A careful balance between the two aspects is necessary to avoid hyper-specialization. Providing something for everybody and every occasion means more adaptive strength.

Survival is just a matter of how well a system can deal with environmental changes. An adaptively strong hierarchy of ideas is necessary to make a good start, but memetic survival depends more on how flexible that system of ideas can be on the ground, in practice and in the face of change. She may be an unusual contender, but it seems to me the Green Fairy's chances are pretty good — or would be, if of course anyone were to take up her worship.

Whether in blessing or wrath, like a lover may the Green Goddess keep close to you.

Cult of the Green Fairy, Part III

2011-12-09T13:19:00.001-08:00

Having firmly established that the absinthe ritual is indeed a ritual properly so-called, let us continue with our consideration of the third tier of Rappaport's hierarchy: rules of conduct.

This level represents the meat of what is commonly recognized as religious practice. The third order can contain actual rules (along the lines of the Ten Commandments, Hindu caste restrictions, or any monastic regulations), but more broadly is an enunciation of how specifically to enact, support, or simply abide by the cosmological order of the world described by the second tier.

Specific rituals fall into this category partly because the prescription to carry them out constitutes a sort of rule. More significantly, the rituals themselves also encode a sort of information about how to live and behave. (A deeper explanation of that point will wait until the already promised post on ritual performativity.)

In any case, in our hypothetical absinthe religion the preparation of absinthe is obviously the most important third-tier item. Beyond the simple 'thou shalt prepare thy absinthe thusly', the ritual will likely contain a good deal more characteristically third-tier information or rules that have considerable bearing on the character of the Green Fairy's cult in practice.

For instance, the aforementioned professors of absinthe (expert absintheurs who staffed Belle Époque cafes to prepare the drink or teach patrons how) could conceivably be cast as a kind of clergy, administering the elixir as a sacrament and contributing to the formation of a genuine church. Alternatively, the preparation could remain a strictly personal ritual to be performed individually as an act of sacred self-expression. Absinthe professors in this case would less resemble the institutional model of Christian clergy, but serve instead as mystic initiators and guides.

I tend to think the latter characterization would be more likely and more in line with the cosmological axioms suggested above for the absinthe religion. However, much like the second tier, the specifics at this level are wide open. Particular accidents of historical circumstance or effects of deliberate design could give rise to either variety of the absinthe cult, or to something else entirely. As we touched on before, the third-tier rules could enjoin adherents to constant drunken revelry or to moderation and personal responsibility, or to some of both. The absinthe ritual contains the seeds of both sorts of behavior: the care taken to prepare the drink characterizes mindful, disciplined conduct; yet the powerfully intoxicating nature of it invites surrender to the Green Fairy's Dionysian influence.

This duality could manifest in the difference between mundane affairs and celebratory periods, which some have highlighted as profane and sacred orders of time. Regular absinthe drinking could be taken as an example of self-discipline and a meditative centering activity that reinforces the order of the world. However, occasional festivals informed by cosmological structure and appropriately framed by ritual could accommodate inversion or overturn of regular order, and whatever saturnalia rightly accompany such occasions.

I can only imagine what a wonder a great carnival of absinthe would be.

Aside from the absinthe ritual, possible festivals, and generally living according to the cosmological prescriptions of the second tier, whatever else might come to be included in the practice of the Green Fairy's religion would depend largely on the adaptive pressures her developing tradition encountered. Those influences constitute Rappaport's fourth tier, and will occupy our attention in the final installment of this series.

The Absinthe Ritual

2011-12-01T17:20:00.000-08:00

At the conclusion of our discussion of absinthe cosmology, I declared we could turn our attention to the third tier of Rappaport's hierarchy of religious ideas. However, before we consider that third level generally, let us take a detour to examine its most prominent and significant feature exclusively.

Here we will consider the ritual preparation of absinthe in terms of Rappaport's definition of ritual before returning to our hypothetical survey of religious absinthism.

Much as I enjoy pontificating on the preparation of the Green Fairy's sacrament, to avoid a tiresome explanation I will presume familiarity with the operations of the ritual. If you don't know it or need a refresher, I suggest this resource.

It would be well to begin by recalling Rappaport's definition of ritual itself: "the performance of more or less invariant sequences of formal acts and utterances not entirely encoded by the performers." (Ritual and Religion in the Making of Humanity, 24, emphasis his.) Or, as I paraphrased it: "ritual is carrying out actions adhering to certain forms and according to specifications set by somebody else, with more or less no change from one instance to the next."

The preparation of absinthe clearly hits all the major points. Because it is an active, participatory rendition of specified actions, it is performative. Those specifications don't change, so their execution is more or less invariant. Naturally, the performance adheres to a particular form. Finally, of course, the details of absinthe preparation come down to us as they are, developed by (or perhaps revealed to) absintheurs of yore before the end of the 19th century.

Performance
As we've noted before, the notion of performance is its own can of worms, perhaps an ever larger one than ritual. A post (or two) looking at performance itself is in the cards, but in the meantime you'll have to take my word for it that absinthe preparation is performative. For now, we can briefly highlight two relevant elements of performativity at play here.

The first is that emphasized by my paraphrase of Rappaport's definition and implied by a commonsense understanding of the word: to perform is to carry out something specified. The sense here is close to the formality also included in Rappaport's definition, but the key aspect is the activeness of it. Doing what's involved in the absinthe ritual enlivens it.

Related to that activeness and also commonsensically understood as an entailment of performance is the second element: performances have audiences. In the case of ritual performances, those audiences may include passive observers (as in drama), but in ritual the most important members of the audience are the performers themselves. Performing the absinthe ritual demonstrates to the performers the whole idea system embodied and expressed by the action.

It is perhaps because of the performativity of the absinthe ritual itself that the possibility of an absinthe religion is implied.

Invariance
Nothing complicated here. The major elements of the preparation (the dose, the sugar, the ice water) are always the same. However, it's worth noting there is a relatively high degree of flexibility in the details. The amount of sugar or water added to the absinthe may be adjusted to taste, for instance, without affecting adversely the premise or performance of the ritual.

We may speculate it's likely invariance might increase if absinthe preparation were indeed regarded as an actually religious ritual rather than a merely ritualistic technical procedure. Alternatively, the accommodating flexibility of the ritual's particulars could prove an adaptive asset to a more decentralized tradition. (We'll return to this point in the next post.)

Formality
The preparation is formal inasmuch as it adheres to a form, but here too there's considerable flexibility. Probably the greatest formality, both in keeping close to form and in highest decorum, would've been found among the professors of absinthe who used to prepare the elixir for customers or teach budding absintheurs to do it. No doubt these experts not only had the technical elements of preparing the drink down to a science, but developed their own consistent styles of practicing the art.

Once again, it's a fair guess that formality could grow with the Green Fairy's religion.

Encoding
That the gist of the absinthe ritual was set down by others before the performers needs no elaboration. However, it is worth noting the minimal specifications encoded in the ritual. As with the low levels of invariance and formality, this relatively sparse specification belies that the absinthe ritual of course is not, or rather has not been a ritual properly so-called.

Until our considerations here of how a religious absinthism might look, the ritualistic preparation of the drink has been informed merely by mystique that could fairly be said to be baseless. Without a higher order of ideas to back it up, the ritual only points to an empty referent. Indeed, as suggested above, the heart of absinthe's allure (aside from misinformation about its hallucinogenic properties and historical association with prominent artists) may well be that the ritual of its preparation implies a whole sacred order that remains mysterious and unknown.

Things Bloggers Should Never Do, Episode 3

2011-11-22T15:07:00.000-08:00

It's that time again. Bloggers should never...

Tell readers they have to read so-and-so's book, or that such-and-such a blog should be on their blogrolls right now.
Bury substantial posts under piles of announcements about conferences, bubbling reviews of how inspirational so-and-so's keynote was, and shout-outs to people met at conferences.
Use three verbs separated by periods as a blog title or subtitle.
Pretentiously refer to their sites as 'weblogs'.
Write posts in which almost every single sentence is a separate paragraph.
Grammatically treat the words 'social media' as singular.

It's likely this will be the last installment of this serial tirade, as my regular work had me wading through relatively fewer blogs than over the summer, and came to a sudden and unexpected end last week. In any case by now I'm fairly confident I've seen most of the worst the blogosphere has commonly to offer. Nevertheless, feel free to suggest anything I've missed in these three cautionary articles. As the Interwebs continue to develop, no doubt the vulgar errors perpetrated most frequently will as well, and time may oblige me to revisit this painful subject once again.

Cult of the Green Fairy, Part II

2011-11-20T22:09:00.000-08:00

Previously, we set out to define the ultimate sacred postulate of a hypothetical religion of absinthe. Now we turn to the second tier of Rappaport's theoretical hierarchy.

II. Cosmological Axioms
What is the world of religious absinthism? Here we at first encounter difficulty. Of the typical features of a cosmology, the only thing that suggests itself in the case of an absinthe cult is a view of France or Switzerland, or perhaps more specifically the Jura area (the traditional home of absinthe) as the axis mundi. However, even this is eroded by the fact contemporary absinthe culture's resurgence began in eastern Europe, as well the appearance of distilleries in places even further afield.

Regardless, even if we recognize Jura or any particular place as the center of the absinthe world, it doesn't tell us much about the world or how it works or how it's ordered, which is foremost what cosmological axioms should do.

In a way this isn't exactly a problem so much as a sign of the newness and immaturity of the absinthe cult we're defining. An idol cult centered on the sacrality of the deity at its pinnacle hasn't really any need to concern itself much with the shape of the world or its imagined order. If that smaller cult were to grow, it would likely encounter pressure to account for these things in order to provide more fully for the needs of adherents. When the time came for that growth, the Green Fairy would find the options for how to define her world wide open.

Along those lines, it is instructive to heed one of Rappaport's qualifications: "Cosmological axioms can be taken to be principles stipulating enduring features of the cosmos' general structure and values (e.g., reciprocity and wholeness) with which there must be compliance and which may need to be maintained through human action. They themselves do not stipulate the ways in which compliance is to be achieved." (Ritual and Religion in the Making of Humanity, 273, emphasis his.) Put another way, though cosmological axioms most typically are concerned with the physical or philosophical shape of the world or the workings of its order, they can also be specifications of the natural characteristics that (should) prevail in that world. In this light, religious absinthism's cosmological axioms wouldn't be descriptions of the Green Fairy's world, but almost her edicts of how the world ought to be, broadly speaking.

Extrapolating again from the drink and its history, we might consider these possible axioms of an absinthe cosmology:

Equality: At the height of its popularity in Belle Époque France, absinthe was the drink of choice among all classes. That in its historic golden age absinthe was enjoyed by everyone from laborers to aristocrats could be taken as illustrative of a value of ideal equality regardless of class or other distinctions. Unlike religions that create and enforce social separation, the Green Fairy would welcome all to her court by way of equally available access to the sacramental ritual of preparing and drinking absinthe.
Discovery: Anyone who has witnessed the proper preparation of absinthe can understand its revelatory quality. The gradual addition of water brings out more and more of the elixir's herbaceous fragrances as the clear, pale green slowly clouds to a creamy, jade-like opalescence. The ritual preparation is itself a process of discovering the range of the absinthe's bouquet, which varies from recipe to recipe. From this sense of exploratory unfolding could be extrapolated an axiom of inquiry, both empirically into the world itself and mystically in the pursuit of self-actualization.
Liberty: It would be neglectful to expect a religious tradition founded on alcohol consumption not to reflect the effects of imbibing in its worldview. In one aspect this might entail some sanction of orgiastic behavior (as did the cult of Dionysus, perhaps the most famous and successful wine god), but on a more rarefied level axiomatic liberty could represent a standard of general social freedom, emotional directness, and relaxed mores.

These suggestions are made on the basis of two significant factors. The first, as should be no surprise, is adaptive strength. It would be just as easy (and indeed perhaps more likely) for religious absinthism to take on the destructive, degenerative aspect of an addiction. The Green Fairy could be a dark tyrant exhorting her enslaved worshippers to honor no bond save her own, commanding them to value nothing but the madness of her intoxication, and urging them to wreak whatever havoc and reap whatever ill gains they can to feed her dominion. However, though such an evil Green Fairy might even go frighteningly far if she gained traction initially, that unwholesome variety of her religion wouldn't have much to offer adherents.

Regardless, as an idea system its heedlessness would ultimately prove maladaptive. It would make only enemies and undercut its own survival. On the other hand, cosmological ideals like those above are adaptively viable because of the generally healthy behaviors they promote (ensuring adherents-cum-vectors survive to transmit them) and because they would exert a stabilizing influence on their environment (preserving their memetic habitat, as it were).

The second factor behind these suggested axioms is a deliberate element of design. For the most part, religious idea systems develop and evolve over relatively long periods of time, like any adaptive system. However, because they are human information systems, they are susceptible to intentional influence. At crucial historical moments, key figures have opportunity to deliberately intervene in ways that radically redefine the character of religious traditions. The Christian reformation set in motion by Martin Luther is a salient example, as is the decision of Prince Siddhartha to escape the cycle of rebirth from the present life.

In less dramatic instances as well, whether they mean to or not, such influential persons can effect considerable changes in the programming of their religious idea systems. Much of the time such individuals are merely unwitting conduits for adaptive response, but they may also be very aware of their ability to make such changes. Indeed, because of religions' effectiveness as systems of social and political control, such programming positions are invariably highly sought.

It isn't often a religious idea system is constructed from the bottom up as we are sketching out religious absinthism here. Nevertheless, our own designs are always reflected in any information system that becomes formally organized and thereby institutionalized.

With a cosmology (albeit a loose one) in hand, we'll finally turn to Rappaport's third tier, where we will consider the ways we are enjoined to conduct ourselves by the Green Fairy, and examine the absinthe ritual itself.

Cult of the Green Fairy, Part I

2011-11-11T20:50:00.000-08:00

When I actually stir myself to gather my thoughts and outline one of the ideas that occasionally flits through my head, I can still manage to come up with some decent direction for something to write about. At first I thought this would be a solid single post, but by the time I finished outlining it I realized we're in for another small series. At least that'll give you something to look forward to, right?

As those of you who keep in touch or are connected with me on the Google+ are likely aware, my latent interest in absinthe has lately blossomed into full-fledged devotion. As I learned more about the enigmatic aperitif, I naturally grew more deeply fascinated with the ritualistic behaviors associated with its preparation, and with the figure of the Green Fairy herself, embodiment of all the mystique of the drink and the culture surrounding it.

In absinthe's heyday, enemies of the Green Fairy promoted the notion of absinthism, an addiction distinct in severity and symptoms from common alcoholism. Of course, the scientific evidence adduced to prove the existence of this condition was flawed and insubstantial, and despite its infamy absinthe is in fact no more (or less) capable of harm than any other libation. However, as a modern absintheur I think it appealing and apropos to reclaim the term 'absinthism' for the peculiar fascination, devotion, and adoration that distinguishes absinthe connoisseurship.

Perhaps you can see already where this led me.

This and the posts that follow will respond to the question: If absinthism were a religion, what would it be? As usual, my primary theoretical guidance in addressing this question and framing some of the possible characteristics of this hypothetical absinthe religion will come from my favorite theory and method scholar, Roy Rappaport. Of course, others may make cameo appearances, but we'll proceed by outlining the cult of the Green Fairy according to Rappaport's hierarchy.

Indeed it might be best to call it just a cult, rather than a full-fledged religion. There's more than enough in devotion to the mystique of absinthe personified as the Green Fairy to constitute an idol cult, but quite a few gaps between that and a religious idea system capable of standing on its own. My aim here is to fill in some of those gaps with my own suggestions for how such a larger system could develop (or be deliberately crafted) from the smaller cult, both for the sake of entertainment and to illustrate how a whole religion can grow like a pearl from some small mite itself hardly of any account.

I. Ultimate Sacred Postulate
Though I tend to agree with my teacher that it's likely cosmological axioms (Rappaport's second tier) precede the enunciation of ultimate sacred postulates (which sit atop his hierarchical model of the structure of religious idea systems), we shall nevertheless start at the top.

What are the chief ideas or truths, themselves beyond assault from reason, that could inform a religious absinthism? Extrapolating from the qualities associated with absinthe itself, they should be mystic, creative, or revelatory in character. Rappaport says ultimate sacred postulates are that which imparts sacrality (which, recall, in his particular usage is a quality of unquestionable authority growing from immunity to logical disproof), but perhaps in this case that process of development could be reversed. If the absinthe is sacred (along the lines our other old friend Durkheim means it, essentially that the sacred is set apart), it might suffice as the source of its own sacrality.

Absinthe is easy enough to regard as sacred for its remarkable and wonderful physical characteristics, the long history of its ingredient artemesia absinthium as a medicine, and of course its somewhat nefarious reputation as a hallucinogenic potion (false) and inspirational elixir (true). Without too much bandying about the distinction between sacredness and sacrality, we can recognize absinthe may almost be able to stand on its own as an ultimate wellspring of sacrality.

This self-sufficient sacrality is solidified by personifying absinthe itself in the Green Fairy. A minor deity who embodies the characteristics of the drink that make it sacred herself becomes the source of sacrality. (If anyone cares to examine these two and their distinction more carefully, have at you in the comments.) This is how the Green Fairy sits atop the hypothetical cult that would idolize her. If we require the ultimate source of sacrality to be formulated as an actual linguistic postulate, that's easy enough:

ALL HAIL THE GREEN FAIRY.

The crucial element that makes the Green Fairy an adaptively strong ultimate sacred object is her flexibility. For minor deities to survive, they have to offer adherents either something really essential (protection from evil, good harvest, strength in fight, success in love, &c.) or be able to diversify. The Green Fairy might be able to get by specializing in inspiration, like the Muses of Helikon, but given her context her chances are much better if she branches out.

Certainly absinthe's purported ability to inspire creativity (real, imagined, or perhaps most likely imagined into reality) secures for the Green Fairy her muse-like occupation for artists especially. She could also play a goddess of fortune, at least as a small-time spirit of luck. Anyone who's made the mistake of drinking absinthe neat (an impropriety toward the goddess and something generally untoward besides) probably has been acquainted with her wrathful aspect. The meditation of performing the absinthe ritual (to be addressed in the third installment of this discussion) and the sacrament of partaking of the jade-like distillation also puts her in a blessing or purifying role, or makes her an initiator into an ineffable mystery.

Once more, the point is her many possible aspects make the Green Fairy quite adaptively capable. Able to be many things to many believers, she ensures her survival in one mode or another until her cult grows to such a scale that she can afford to specialize, or simply until her multiplicity stabilizes. In any case, her adaptive flexibility means a chance to hold on until a critical mass of worshippers provide the energy for her cult to take on the proportions of an established religious tradition.

For that, a description of the order of the world will be necessary. To the cosmology of religious absinthism we shall turn in our next installment...

Things Bloggers Should Never Do, Episode 2

2011-10-13T11:59:00.000-07:00

Figured I should publish at least a couple of actually topical posts before loosing the second installment of this judgmental nitpicking. This second round has actually been ready to go since early in June, and perhaps you won't be surprised that the third is already underway.

In any case, bloggers should never...

Title their blogs "My [Subject] Blog" or "[So-and-So's] [Subject] Blog" or, perhaps worst of all, simply "[So-and-So's] Blog".
Incorrectly use commas to reflect non-grammatical pauses that might be made in speech.
Use capitalized words run together without spaces as a blog title, like "LameAssTitleBlog".
Title their blogs with a clever-looking combination of one word in capitals and the other all lower case, like "BULLSHITblog".
Use images completely unrelated to their posts (or related only by the most pathetically tenuous acts of imaginative stretching) simply for the sake of having an image in the post.
Describe themselves with a series of unconnected and unrelated nouns separated by periods.

Once again, I invite your suggestions for bad blogging habits in the comments, though frankly I imagine it'll be something of a challenge for you to come up with something I haven't encountered. Surprise me.

From the Agora

2011-08-12T12:57:00.000-07:00

I quite unexpectedly found myself engaged in a refreshing theory and method conversation the other day on the Google+ of all places. My interlocutor was Charlie Peirson, the first person I met during my orientation at Reed College in days of yore, incidentally a fellow student of my teacher Professor Brashier, and a jolly good fellow. Charlie's own blog may be found here.

Our exchange, reproduced below, was spurred by this little talk from Sam Harris.

My initial response:

I like "infatuations and practices".

His choice of Islam as an example of a violent religion may not be strictly incorrect, but considering the current climate is rather insensitive.

That aside, his characterization of religions as "failed sciences" is well considered. The notion that religion represents early and often less-than-empirical attempts to understand and explain the world is an old one, and in recent years much bolstered in persuasive and nuanced ways by psychological and neurological insights especially.

However, such accounts of religion and religious behavior tend to overlook questions of what religion does to us. It isn't just a pursuit of understanding, but very often an active endeavor to establish, maintain, and participate in an ordered world, a cosmos, and even to become a better, higher, or otherwise transformed entity. Religion not only attempts to make sense of the world (and on that front tends to lose the argument, as Harris puts it, with scientific empiricism), but seeks to create for us a place therein and provide guidance for how to operate.

I suppose there's room for argument that science can or does do much the same thing in its way, but the fundamental objectives are different. More importantly, the structure is different. Science is about inquiry, investigation, and accepting changing understandings as new information comes to light. Religion adapts to preserve itself as a memetic organism, and in that regard can and does change, but it doesn't actively pursue change through broadening understanding, and indeed religious institutions have lamentably stifled inquiry to prevent change all too often.

To which, Charlie thus:

Well met! To respond (in a fairly arbitrary order):

1. As I understand him, Harris is saying (without being quite so glib) that anything religion can do that's worth doing, science can do better. While it's generally OK to bring up that thesis in public when talking about medicine, as he says, when it gets down to the nitty-gritty stuff like moral decision-making, controversy arises. I suspect that Harris would (or eventually will) argue that science can tell us everything about ourselves that is true, which had really better be good enough.

2. That gets us to the sort of traditional debate over where religion, as a memetic species, comes from. It seems like the prevailing argument (which Harris seems to accept) is that Iron Age mankind had lots o' splainin' to do, and at best very poor tools for the task. Our species being well adapted to finding patterns (even where there are none, or where we misdiagnose them), we just sort of made up plausible stuff. This probably happened a lot, over and over before writing got to be hip, but even then the standard pressures were in place. The more plausible the set of explanations, the more cohesive the community, the better the singing or dancing or ritual sacrifice, the better a religion's chances of making it to the next generation of followers. However...

3. That seems like it might lead into a really interesting Blind Alley retort to Harris: "What if the factual, demonstrable, scientific truth is insufficient to maximize the well-being of conscious

creatures?" What if we'd all be better off if we all took the blue pill?

To which, I thus:

1. Harris wouldn't be the first to argue that science can tell us everything (Freud prominently said so in Future of an Illusion, though as I recall the way he put it wasn't particularly convincing), and indeed I'm quite certain that it will if we survive long enough to get good enough at figuring stuff out to get that far. If we do get that far, I'm betting we'll learn a lot of really surprising stuff we can't even begin to imagine.

Of course, the problem with saying science will explain everything is that it's difficult to imagine what that explanation will be like, and people tend to anticipate a 'cold,' 'soulless,' 'lifeless,' or otherwise glum-sounding characterization of that really unimaginable future explanation. I'm betting on the contrary that the more we learn empirically, the less glum the outlook we get from that understanding will be, but it's tough to sell that when science still gets pinned as that thing what kills everybody's warm fuzzy notions of the big man in the sky who makes sure justice is done and all those other nice things that don't really seem to happen.

2. That's pretty much the explanation for the origins of religion that I've found most convincing. Ask Wayne Proudfoot (Religious Experience) about seeing a log and thinking it's a bear. It's been awhile since I read Pascal Boyer (Religion Explained), but I believe he also offers some psychological explanations for how that all works.

3. That is a very interesting question. There's only one way to find out.

To which, Charlie thus:

1. I'll dock one point from Ravenclaw for that reference to Freud, but your point is well taken — however much flak Harris takes for his arguments, they aren't strictly new, so much as they are based on better science. Woah, meta-point.

2. For all the questions we harbor about the importance of the ineffability of transcendental experience, I expect you're right that when the time finally comes humankind is curious enough (and our science will be robust enough) to eff the transcendent pretty thoroughly. I like to think that as we develop the science of the Good we'll all come to realize that it's just another frontier, another place to explore. The difficulty is that, like early astronomy, we're contemplating peering into a space that our forebears could only speculate about, and old systems of explaining that space will face a tremendous new pressure.

3. We've seen that these settled traditions can take a long time to come to grips with new facts. The classic example may be the period of time that the Catholic church spent suppressing heretical claims relating to various heliocentric theories. We're seeing the same resistance continuing to play out with evolution and the origins of life, the universe, and everything, as well as climate change (though this last is less frequently stated in explicitly religious terms). The question, I think, is how many of these upheavals religious traditions can withstand, especially when we get down to the basics. Right now we're arguing publicly over the veracity of religious claims about how we got here, which the Catholics seem to understand they have to roll with, if slowly. But we've already lost a sizable slice of American evangelicals to the idea that because science sometimes disagrees with religion, which has to be inerrant, science must be bad. Obviously their religion is sufficiently exclusive to withstand repeated contact with facts, but doesn't that effect the transmission rate and stickiness of their meme? And, for gods' sake, can religion really give up on its monopoly on understanding how we ought to live? What's left after that but the hats?

To which, I thus:

2. Well said. I only wonder if we'll survive ourselves long enough to make with the effing.

3. Your question about the effect of stubbornness on the memetic survivability of a religion is key. Adaptively speaking, inflexibility is death. We might expand on Harris' analogy of 'losing the argument' and say what that actually means is that religions are facing increasingly strong adaptive pressures from our gradually improving empirical understanding of things. It's important to remember (if only to ward off despair) that while the relatively large number and vociferous prominence of hardcore science-must-be-bad Christians in America is disturbing, people of that mind are nevertheless minorities. It takes a lot of work to forcibly maintain an idea system against adaptive pressure, and spreading those maladaptive memes is hard. Their numbers will dwindle because they're making it too difficult to transmit their own ideas in most environments. The thing to watch out for is that they don't gain the influence to create an environment in which those idea systems can gain momentum (by say, continuing to undermine American science education and civil rights).

As for giving up the monopoly on telling people how they ought to live, religion has already lost it. However, adapting is always still an option. I found (and shared) a piece last week about Christian churches in Holland that are adapting to preserve certain critical parts of the Christian idea system (Roy Rappaport, anyone?) and dropping a lot of the stuff that tends to lead to friction when compared with the real world.

It is a little sad to think that we might come to a point at which there's nothing left but the hats, where only the cultural trappings of various traditions remain as artifacts. However, it's also uplifting to think that the core ideas that have made religious idea systems good for helping us figure out how to live (inasmuch as they bear good fruits, as William James might've put it) could evolve beyond those traditions, exist as parts of our own direct understanding of the world and ourselves, and continue to inform a human life of truth.

To which, Charlie thus:

You've reached the two big winning points here:

A. The scariest bit about fundamentalist religion is its tendency to react to environmental pressures (like new facts) by working to aggressively alter the environment, sort of like lions killing other lions' cubs. Except the fundamentalist goal of clearing the field of competition goes a step further than that by, like in Bachmann's case, turning that parallel drive into a primary motivation. It's like the lions have started hunting hyenas for prey.

B) Whatever happens, the science of morality leads us eventually to some kind of soft (that is, non-carbon-based) transhumanism, and while the idea that who we are as a species is going to be hugely different in a couple generations might give some folks the creeping willies, I can't wait.

To which, I finally thus:

A. That is a scary tendency indeed, but we have to remember to see it as the desperate behavior that it is: a necessity for a small constellation of maladapted idea systems struggling to survive against mounting and ultimately insurmountable environmental pressures. It's a doomed fight if left at that, and having backed themselves into this corner where adaptation would mean extinction, trying to take control of and manipulate the environment to relieve the pressure to adapt makes plenty of sense, though absurd, misguided, and to the harm of all as it nevertheless may be.

I can only hope the maladapted Christian minority isn't able to maintain what leverage they have now, nor seize any more. I worry, though, that it may be a rough ride.

B. I tend to share your excitement, though mixed with apprehension, at the prospect of that unimaginable future. However, at least for me, the choice of pursuing that future is primarily a matter of a sort of necessity. It is always preferable to know, to seek the truth, to beat back ignorance even at the cost of bliss. That imperative seems undeniable to me, and I believe part of humankind's ongoing maturation is embracing that drive and accepting the responsibility of seeking always to better understand what is actually the case instead of uncritically defending our notions of what we'd like to be true.

In that regard, there is perhaps still a place for some of the trappings of religious traditions as equipment to frame that maturation and encapsulate the true principles (such as that it is always preferable to know than to be ignorant) that drive us. It is all still Odin hanging himself upon the tree of life, making a sacrifice of himself to himself to obtain the runes.

I'm on a Boat

2011-07-15T17:47:00.000-07:00

... Or a bandwagon or something. Anyway, I've suckered myself into joining Google+. If any readers out there would care to connect, feel free to find me. If you ask really nicely I might even be persuaded to hand out an invite to the field trial.

Lady Gaga and Non-dualism

2011-07-07T09:34:00.000-07:00

Fascinated as I may be by social media, I'm no user of Twitter, Facebook, nor any of the rest. (What I've heard of Google+ over the past week has been tempting me a bit, though.) Regardless, in the course of my work yesterday I happened upon a recent tweet (or at least a hypothetical tweet featured in a video) of Lady Gaga's: "you are ALL beautiful."

Immediately my mind began to wrestle with what the Goddess of Pop could mean by this. On the face of it, the message seems simple and cheery enough, but given more than superficial consideration we're obliged to concede that, strictly speaking, it can't be true.

Recall the second chapter of the Daode jing, which my teacher held to be the key to the entire text. There, we learn how differentiation necessarily creates opposites. These dualistic polarities support each other and define each other, as with the emptiness of a pot: the not-pot within the pot is what gives the pot its usefulness, and indeed, its very form. In my teacher's words, whenever there arises an 'A,' there also arises a corresponding 'not-A.' As the second chapter happens to point out, it is by defining or distinguishing beauty as beauty that ugliness is known.

Granted, Lady Gaga may not feel obliged to recognize the A/not-A dualism that I find undeniable. Perhaps her tweet really is just an unreflective expression of positive sentiment, without intended philosophical implications. However, even if so, I'm unable to leave it at that.

As some of you may know, I have a certain fascination with Gaga as a religious entity. More properly speaking, she strikes me as an almost deific embodiment, an avatar in the original sense, of her own art. We might go so far as to call her a living fetish (again, in the original sense, and here all the more appropriate considering the Latin root's emphasis on artificiality, on being something made). Perhaps it is because I tend to view her through this peculiar lens of superimposed significance that I'm reluctant to let her tweet alone as just a nice thought.

If "you are ALL beautiful" is more than that, then it is nothing less than an expression of enlightenment from beyond dualism. It is a logic trap (at least for obsessive philosophizing types like me) that forces us to wrestle with beauty as an intuitive, firsthand, aesthetic, and emotional experience and as a social and cultural construct. By leading us to consider the proposition that all, even the ugly, are beautiful, Gaga forces us to question whether her assertion is false, or if our conception of beauty is the falsehood. The former option is unappealing, for to say Gaga's tweet is untrue is to affirm ugliness, which is at best cynical and mean, and at worst hurtful and oppressive. Moreover, we may have many other personal and social reasons to be inclined to give Gaga the benefit of the doubt, as for example my suspicion that she's a sort of demigod.

On the other hand, if we accept her statement, we are thereby obliged to deny the dualism of beauty and ugliness. Gaga's "ALL" can only be beautiful if there are no such things as beauty and ugliness, or rather, if there is no distinction, no definition of beauty to create ugliness. All of this is apropos to Gaga's own gorgeous monstrosity, and her all-inclusive invitation to be one of her 'little monsters.'

Perhaps I'm off the deep end here, having a bizarre little tea party with my Lady Gaga and Laozi dolls. However, I can't help wondering what the Lady herself sees and thinks at the epicenter, perhaps even as the axis mundi of her own created cosmos.

Things Bloggers Should Never Do, Episode 1

2011-06-08T12:33:00.000-07:00

For awhile now I've been looking for an outlet to express some vexation of mine over too-common habits and behaviors among bloggers. As you may recall, dear reader, my day job entails looking over hundreds of blogs every week. In the course of touring so much of the blogosphere, one develops an eye for certain annoying commonalities between blogs on all subjects.

It occurred to me that I am a blogger, and have this blog as a potential venue for just such a venting. Although it breaks my heretofore undisrupted focus on matters pertaining strictly to religion and the study thereof, I believe I may excuse myself on the grounds that off-topic posts about blogging itself are one of the features found on blogs everywhere.

And so, without further ado:

Bloggers should never...

Use the word 'musings' in their blog name, post titles, or anywhere on their blogs, ever.
Describe their blog as 'the place where I record all things pertaining to [subject], [subject], [unrelated personal interest], and life' or with similar phrases on an about page.
Profess their undying love for or addiction to or connoisseurship of chocolate and coffee.
Just post interesting or amusing videos without significant or meaningful commentary.
Post self-promoting collections of their tweets from the last week.
Use the contraction 'there's' when they mean 'there are.'

I'll leave it at that for this first installment. More to come as my rage gauge fills up again.

Feel free to get in touch to suggest your least favorite bad blogging habits to contribute to this ongoing catalog of trite degeneracy.

Still Here

2011-05-21T18:08:00.000-07:00

Don't want to say 'I told you so,' but...

Heaven and Earth, just as they were before. Cheers.

The End is Nigh... Again

2011-05-16T10:00:00.000-07:00

It has come to my attention that the end of the world is scheduled to begin this coming Saturday, May 21st, at 18:00 pacific time.

Once again, some clever person has made 'calculations' based on clues hidden in the Bible, and determined with great precision and certainty the day and the hour at which the saved will be 'raptured' ('rapture' is a verb now?) off to Heaven, while the rest of us poor sinners will be paid the ultimate wages of our depravity and unbelief. It is of course of no great import to this positive determination that its author made a similar prediction before. Apparently he was undaunted when Judgment Day failed to arrive back in 1994, and wrote off that apocalyptic misreckoning on account of having not yet completed his biblical research.

Somehow notwithstanding the fact that many of these supposedly calculated predictions of Armageddon have come and gone without incident (and indeed that Christians have been anxiously awaiting doomsday since not long after Jesus' death), this latest end-of-days forecast seems to have garnered quite a bit of attention and a few prominently outspoken adherents. I've read of people who've given up saving money or looking for work because they anticipate how completely unnecessary these things will be in just a few days. Others have cut themselves off from their incredulous families in zealous adamance.

I actually saw a man in the public market, waving a Bible in one hand and bearing an end-is-nigh type sign in the other, trumpeting the coming apocalypse to passersby.

I'd like to offer an analysis of this behavior, but if the world is going to end next weekend it seems hardly worth the effort. For now I merely note the date and pass along the news.

Should this prove to be my last post, dear reader, I'll probably see you in Hell.

Finding GOD

2011-04-01T20:34:00.000-07:00

Dear readers and friends, beloved of the LORD and all traveling the one path to sweet salvation, whether lost in the thorny wilderness of sin or sure of blessed grace in the name of Christ Jesus, loving greetings and hallelujah, amen.

So much has happened in the last few days, I don't know where to begin or how to explain, but with the help of almighty GOD and His blessed son, Jesus, perhaps I may convey some small sense of the great miracle that has occurred.

Forgive me, LORD! For I spent so long spitting and sneering at the sweet and kindly words of the many blogs of Thy flock, and I cursed them in my pride and thought myself wiser than them and better off, when truly I could not have been deeper in sin. For what greater sin is there than pride, and what more heinous offense than to regard one's own judgment before that of GOD?

Nay, I have been such a sinner, and I made of myself an enemy of the one true GOD, and of His church, and of His blessed, kindly, wise, and learned people. Yet though I deserved only His fiery retribution, the only fruit of my own black and hardened heart, He saw fit instead to dispatch to me His only son, Jesus Christ, to save me from my terrible sinfulness.

Yea, Christ Jesus softened my heart and took away my sins, amen! For as I gazed upon the vast writings of the good Christian people in their Christian personal finance blogs, Christian homeschooling blogs, Christian mommy blogs, Christian politics blogs, Christian photography blogs, and Christian food blogs, even as I bared my teeth and narrowed my eyes and hardened my heart and piled sin upon sin upon sin, even then did the Son of GOD appear to show me the error of my ways.

How wrong I was to think for myself, when the true and indisputable word of the LORD was always written for me to see in His holy Bible.

How misguided I was to do obeisance to idols of demons and false gods, when the one and only real path to salvation was always open to me through His son, Jesus Christ.

How evil I was to give reign to my sinful passions and fornicate with women, when His undeniable commandment to spurn the flesh and seek a holy matrimony to rear children for the glory of His name has always stood.

And worst of all, how hateful I was to question His true religion, His sacred Church, and the holy and good institutions He has set upon His Earth to lead all good men to salvation in Christ Jesus, amen.

I cannot begin to comprehend how the LORD GOD and His son Jesus can forgive me for my lifetime of worthless, wasted, sinful life, but that is the miracle of Christ Jesus, and there's a world full of good Christian bloggers who can tell you that all can be forgiven in Christ if only we accept from Him the salvation He died to offer us. Surely if He can find it in his holy heart to forgive and save a truly wretched, absolutely backward, totally irredeemable, and wholly evil hell-bound heretic such as I, than He can be your personal savior as well.

Hallelujah in the highest! Amen.

Christianity & Personal Finance

2011-02-18T12:02:00.001-08:00

Happy new year and all that.

Since my previous post, I've begun work as a writer and editor at a Seattle-based internet marketing company. I mention this for two reasons: firstly, to excuse the most recent stretch of posting dearth; and secondly, because my work has led me to the subject of today's post.

Currently I'm working on my company's guest posting project. [REDACTED]

Part of this process, unfortunately, involves sifting through tremendous lists of blogs we've amassed for potential propositioning. In the course of categorizing and examining hundreds of blogs, I've noticed something peculiar. I wasn't surprised by the abundance of Christian mommy-blogs, but this week I've discovered there are an awful lot of Christian personal finance blogs. A small number of them actually cite a few scraps of scripture on their 'about' pages to justify this bent, but for the most part they seem to share and be operating on the idea that their money belongs not to them, but to God, who gave it to them.

I'm not going to go into my objections to that idea itself, which are beside the point. What fascinates me is the fact that religion is driving these people to manage their money (quite effectively, to hear them tell it) and share their insights and experience doing so. Maybe this is just Weber's protestant work ethic at play in the 21st century, but I can't shake the feeling that this phenomenon is rather odd.

Of course, it isn't as if there aren't plenty of other personal finance blogs that aren't Christian. However, the rest don't present any religious leanings. Finance bloggers are writing about how to manage your money because it's what they know. Christian finance bloggers are writing about how to manage your money because they see it as a matter of religion.

That may be the heart of it: that the religious idea system of Christianity is designed to be all-consuming, subsuming every other subject, social role, or genre of discourse to itself. Clearly this tendency contributes to its adaptive strength, allowing the idea system to thrive and propagate (and of course it's particularly helpful to the survival of a religion when its followers are convinced their own financial resources belong to the religion's deity).

However, as ever, I'm obliged to point out that what may be highly adaptive for the idea system may not be healthy for its adherents, nor ultimately for the holistic system that is the world.

Adaptive Pressure in Action

2010-11-24T08:25:00.000-08:00

Even from under my rock, I've been hearing the news regarding the Pope's recent announcement that it may be time for the Catholic Church to abandon its long-held prohibition of condoms. From what I understand, his reasoning has more to do with preventing the spread of disease than with allowing his flock to better plan their parenthood, but fortuitously in this case the two purposes go hand in hand.

I'd like to sincerely extend warm congratulations to the Pope not only for taking a generally progressive humanitarian step, but also for making a very wise move in terms of ensuring the health of the religious institution — or, more aptly, the religious system — of which he is the head.

As mentioned in one of our previous discussions, adaptivity is a critical factor in the development and survival of religious ideas. Simply put, religion which can't (or won't) change to accommodate on-the-ground pressures will not be able to preserve itself. Adaptation can be especially tough on religion in an age where the notions of scientific empiricism have become prevalent. However, religion still has a few key advantages: science has yet to prove that gods absolutely do not exist (which is enough to reasonably maintain that they might, thereby preserving them as explanatory possibilities a la Proudfoot); lots of folks really want to believe despite the lack of empirical support for their religion; and, most importantly, a religious idea system doesn't have to change much to get by.

The key to adaptivity lies in understanding how changing little things helps preserve bigger things unchanged. Catholics wearing condoms won't threaten the ultimate sacred postulate of one god, the father almighty. On the other hand, maintaining the stubborn and short-sighted prohibition against birth control will continue to drive people from the Church, which is the one thing which really can threaten a religious tradition's survival. (Not that, with the innumerable variations on Christianity, their monotheistic ultimate sacred postulate is really in any danger. Even if the Catholic Church tanked completely, the high-order ideas of Christianity survive elsewhere. Adaptive diversification has already served the Christian idea system quite well.)

In the terms of systems theory which my old friend Roy Rappaport used, adaptive changes in subsystems allow higher-order levels of the whole system to remain unchanged. Such changes, in response to what I've been calling on-the-ground pressures — such as the need to practice safer sex among all peoples of the world — alleviate those pressures, which might otherwise grow into a substantial challenge to a religious tradition's continued viability. Rappaport discusses this kind of adaptive change with reference to an excellent evolutionary example: the sea-dwelling creatures which evolved into our land-walking ancestors weren't intrepid fishes who decided to grow legs to explore the frontier above sea level, but originally water-breathers faced with the vagaries of the water level in their environment. Often finding themselves high and dry where usually they swam freely, such creatures developed the ability to breathe air so they could survive out of water until the water returned. Put another way, our sea-dwelling ancestors learned to breathe air in order to be able to continue living in their watery habitat. An adaptive change in the subsystem of respiration permitted the preservation of their higher-order mode of living in water.

In light of this example, Rappaport encourages us to consider not only what such an adaptive change makes different, but what it allows to stay the same. In the case of religions, such change is always a matter of preserving the high-order components of the idea system — ultimate sacred postulates. This is precisely what we are witnessing today in the Pope's change of attitude toward condoms, though in terms of the greater Christian idea system that change, even if it becomes substantial, is relatively insignificant given the proliferation of easier-going sects which already permit contraception. Nevertheless, to witness an instance of such adaptive change in so long-lived an institution as the Catholic Church bears note as an instructive example, if naught else.

So, once again cheers to you, Pope Benedict, and here's to the safe and responsible expression of divine love.

What No One Has Asked Before

2010-08-07T21:10:00.000-07:00

Obviously I've been a bit delinquent in posting regularly. While having a job (for the time being, Heaven help me) does have something to do with it, I'm not interested in making excuses, and no doubt you're not interested in reading them. (Or maybe you are. Maybe I should start posting my personal log entries instead of intellectually stimulating content. Maybe I should start using Facebook and Twitter so you can follow all the irrelevant minutiae of my everyday goings-on. Maybe I should set up an all-hours webcam in my room, or attach it to my forehead. Or maybe not.)

However, I will say that one reason I've not been posting regularly is that I'm a little short of ideas I'd like to write about. I do keep a list of possible topics to discuss here, but for the most part they call for the sort of involved, laborious academic bludgeoning to which you've been repeatedly subjected in the several series of multiple-post-dissertations below. In a word, I'd like to have some lighter subject matter.

To that end, consider this post an invitation: I'd like to know what you, dear reader, would like me to write about. All suggestions are welcome, and indeed, even ultimately impertinent topics may lead to viable ideas.

So please, leave a comment and let me know what you'd like subjected to my inescapable scrutiny and analysis.

The War on Spam

2010-07-09T22:17:00.000-07:00

Dear Readers,

As I've mentioned before, this otherwise relatively unvisited site has been suffering from frequent spam comments containing links to what appear to be Chinese dating sites. Because this blog's settings require users to complete a captcha to leave comments, I can only assume these spurious comments are being produced (with aggravating regularity) by human users who occupy themselves in this fashion.

In any case, it has become thoroughly tiresome to log in and delete each of these spam comments individually after they've been left. As such, I've implemented comment moderation to prevent any more spam from being posted in the first place. This will allow me to dismiss fake comments before they appear on my posts. Unfortunately this also means legitimate comments will not appear until I've had opportunity to review them.

Rest assured that I will use this moderation only to weed out spam, and that any and all real comments, whatever their substance or lack thereof, will be allowed as early as possible. I sincerely hope this effort to eliminate troublesome spam will not discourage you from leaving whatever comments you might like.

That is, if anybody ever reads any of this...

Contra Googlism

2010-06-27T12:49:00.000-07:00

Recently it came to my attention that a cult has formed around worship of the popular and beloved search engine, Google. Specifically, I've examined nine 'proofs' that Google is a god, put forth by the so-called Church of Google. As a nit-picky religion scholar, I'd like to proceed to challenge each of these arguments in turn.

Proof No. 1: Google is the closest thing to an Omniscient (all-knowing) entity in existence, which can be scientifically verified.

The key words here are "closest thing." While in a certain sense Google may be said to know more than any other entity, it (or She, as the Church of Google prefers to address the engine) is far from truly omniscient. Moreover, it is misguided to regard Google as actually 'knowing' anything. Google indexes and provides access to a vast (but finite) quantity of information, but has no consciousness which could know any of that information. (I look forward to the day when such a consciousness may come to exist.)

Additionally, at least as an aside, we may wish to note that omniscience is by no means an absolute requisite for godhood. Indeed, aside from the god of the Abrahamic traditions, most deities are not thought to be absolutely omniscient. As such, attempting to claim Google's omniscience may be entirely moot.

Proof No. 2: Google is everywhere at once (Omnipresent).

Again, this is not strictly true. Google may be hypothetically accessible from anyplace at anytime, but this accessibility doesn't amount to presence. If Google can be said to have a presence, the strictest interpretation might limit it to the locations of the servers on which the engine operates. Moreover, even if Google's accessibility is granted as a kind of presence, the limitations of our networking technology curtail this accessibility in many places on Earth, to say nothing of the rest of the universe. If naught else, the very fact that Google's accessibility depends on the extent and function of the Net suffices to demonstrate that Google itself isn't independently omnipresent at all.

And again, omnipresence is only occasionally a characteristic of some deities. While Google clearly doesn't possess this characteristic, the claim may well be neither here nor there.

Proof No. 3: Google answers prayers.

As the rest of this proof's text implicitly acknowledges, Google doesn't actually answer prayers per se, but at best merely answers questions. (And anyone who's had difficulty finding what they're looking for with a Google search knows that even these answers are often far from perfect.) Answering a prayer may sometimes only require providing information, which Google certainly can and often does facilitate. However, often prayers request that some kind of action be taken by the petitioned entity, and Google has no capacity for action. The proof prevaricates with defensive rhetoric about Google being able to "show you the way" by providing information, but the fact remains that Google has no power to effect the fulfillment of prayers.

Proof No. 4: Google is potentially immortal.

This may well be true, but Google's immortality is only potential. Indeed, Google is no more immortal than any other system. This supposed immortality simply depends on the ongoing maintenance of the system. However, this is a mere tautology: as long as Google is maintained, Google will continue to exist. Google is no more truly immortal than anything else which can hypothetically be kept up indefinitely.

And, once again, immortality is not a necessary requisite for godhood. Many deities in many traditions are susceptible to death, even if their lifespan is potentially unlimited.

Proof No. 5: Google is infinite.

The rest of this proof reads only "The internet can theoretically grow forever, and Google will forever index its infinite growth." Here again the argument depends on a hypothetical or theoretical condition. Indeed, the internet can potentially grow indefinitely, and Google can continue to index that growth so long as Google is maintained. However, neither the infinite growth of the internet nor the perpetual maintenance of Google are assured. Thus, this claim rests on nothing.

As is probably becoming obvious, many of these proofs' claims are not necessarily pertinent to the question of whether Google is a god. Infinity, too, certainly need not be a characteristic of a deity.

Proof No. 6: Google remembers all.

This is of course simply false. Google may index and preserve a considerable amount of information, but none of that information predates the advent of the Net. However much information Google might amass, it will always be finite. Additionally, as with the issue of whether Google can know, since Google isn't sentient it cannot be said that Google remembers. There is no consciousness which could be capable of remembering.

Proof No. 7: Google can "do no evil" (Omnibenevolent).

This flimsy argument merely points to the corporate philosophy of Google (the company). However, a benevolent corporate policy is no guarantee of omnibenevolent action in actuality. And even if it were, that hypothetical omnibenevolence would not be an independent characteristic of Google itself, but merely the result of the disposition of the people responsible for implementing and maintaining Google's functionality. As with any technology — that is, any tool — all one can say of Google is that it does neither good nor evil.

Here too the characteristic claimed is also not a necessary requisite for godhood. Indeed, few are the gods who are known to have done no reprehensible thing whatever.

Proof No. 8: According to Google trends, the term "Google" is searched for more than the terms "God", "Jesus", "Allah", "Buddha", "Christianity", "Islam", "Buddhism" and "Judaism" combined.

Assuming Google trends is tracking these search terms accurately — and I've no reason to believe otherwise — one can't dispute that this is the case. However, "Google" being a popular search term proves nothing in regard to the question of Google's godhood. No doubt many other search terms are more popular than those referring to traditional religions; yet I doubt that anyone would take the mere fact of being popularly searched as grounds for proof that "tits" are some kind of god (or gods).

The proof goes on to suggest that the popularity of "Google" as a search term indicates that Google is "an entity in [sic] which we mortals can turn to when in a time of need." This too may be true, but also doesn't decidedly prove the Google is a god. People turn to lawyers and doctors in times of fairly dire need, but they are hardly in line for apotheosis.

Proof No. 9: Evidence of Google's existence is abundant.

This proof merely means to point out that Google's existence is more demonstrably definite than that of other deities. However, while this may be the case, the claim does nothing to support the contention that Google actually is a deity itself.

As is evident, these so-called proofs are not only thoroughly deficient, but frequently impertinent as well. We've seen that each one is either untrue or irrelevant to the claim of Google's godhood. They reflect both a poorly-defined and underdeveloped notion of divinity, and a lack of the discursive unquestionability — sanctity, in Rappaport's terms — characteristic of religious idea systems.

The cult of Googlism may yet have a chance in the marketplace of religious ideas, but it's got a long way to go, particularly without stronger ideas about how Google can be god.

Killing For Religion

2010-06-09T18:07:00.000-07:00

Today's topic sprung to mind from a dinner table conversation last week. Somehow I found myself mentioning William James' notion of "spiritual judgment" — that one should assess religion in terms of how it benefits or harms its adherents, rather than on the basis of its historical or psychological origins (in his terms, by the fruits rather than the roots). In addition to James' criterion, I offered Rappaport's idea of adaptive health, suggesting that religious behavior should be further considered in terms of its effects on the total health of the people who practice and encounter it. This met with the example of fundamentalist Islamic terrorists: is it not (at least hypothetically) their view that killing the people they kill — say exploitative American capitalists — is adaptively healthy?

I didn't have sufficient opportunity to pursue this question at the time, as the conversation soon moved on to other topics. However, I also found myself somewhat uncertain, for while my initial response to the terrorist question is certainly that their killings are not adaptive, nevertheless I can all too easily imagine circumstances in which I would readily grant that taking a life would be adaptively healthy indeed.

Today, then, let us explore this question, keeping in mind that our approach is media theory. To begin with, what is the medium in question?

None other than religion itself, or rather, what I tend to call 'religion proper,' that is organized and exclusive religion. The Abrahamic traditions, of course, are the readiest examples at hand, but to a greater or lesser extent any religious tradition which unequivocally claims to be ultimately true belongs to this species. Buddhism tends to be my favorite example because many people loosely regard it as an open-ended and liberal religion totally unlike the Abrahamic ones with which they are more familiar.

If self-defining, exclusive religion is the medium, what is its message? Simply one of separation. Belonging to any 'religion proper' allows one to draw a line between 'we' and 'they' which doesn't otherwise exist. Humans are certainly often quite different from each other, and can even seem downright strange by comparison at times. However, ignoring the undeniable fact of our overarching similarity is a grave oversight. Religion enables us to bypass the contradiction of our simultaneous variation and unity, giving us a way to believe the differences are really substantial, when in truth no one can deny that they are ultimately only incidental.

Religion proper, as a medium, thus provides a message of division, and the idea of division accommodates the possibility of adaptive killing. However, the lynchpin of this possibility remains the idea of division. If people are divided, one group destroying another can be adaptive for that one group. Sects prosper by the oppression and obliteration of other sects. What are often known as the world's 'great religions' became great by deliberately undermining and aggressively invalidating the traditions native to the places into which they spread. Indeed, within the narrow scope of a view which privileges a single species above all other living things, this sort of destruction is adaptive.

However, the notion of true adaptive health demands we look beyond the interest of a single organism in a system which consists of complex interaction between many different forms of life which all balance one another and share the fundamental similarity of being alive. In terms of human conflict, this means that we must recognize that humanity is a unified species, ultimately inseparable by imagined lines of religious or other division. As such, it cannot be adaptive for one sect to kill for its own benefit, in any way real or perceived.

Killing may yet be adaptive for other reasons, generally when one group or individual constitutes a maladaptive agent against the health of all people. However, that possibility is certainly a discussion for another day.

Card Cosmology, Part IV: A Church of Cards

2010-05-26T11:10:00.000-07:00

Throughout our discussions of the playing card cosmology, I have hinted at the possibility of a whole religion based upon that cosmology. Today, with reference to the much-beloved definition of religion provided by Roy Rappaport, we will speculate on the substance and character of such a hypothetical Church of Cards.

What we have already catalogued of the card cosmology constitutes the cosmological axioms which occupy the second stratum of Rappaport's four-tiered model. To flesh out our sketch of the religion, then, we must identify an ultimate sacred postulate to stand at the apex of the idea system, suggest some rules of conduct which might proceed from the cosmology with which we're already familiar, and finally anticipate some practical, from-the-ground pressures which might be encountered by this religion.

As an aside, it is interesting to note an observation made by my teacher, Professor Brashier, in regard to Rappaport's four-tier model. Back when I was first reading Rappaport in Religion 201, Brashier suggested to our class that in the actual course of a religious idea system's formation, the cosmological axioms — descriptions of how the world is structured and how it functions — would precede the inclusion of ultimate sacred postulates — exceedingly abstract ideas which provide the whole system a font of discursive sanctity. Whatever may be generally the case, this seems to be true of the Church of Cards.

An ultimate sacred postulate suitable for this Church might be as simple as the idea of the dualism which the cards represent. Put in postulate form, we might say "The cosmos is divided." This formulation leaves plenty of room for the cosmological details to fill in just how that division manifests. However, this postulate might prove too vulnerable to the notion that the world is fundamentally unified. Something even broader may be necessary, a postulate which itself isn't a cosmological definition.

Such a postulate could derive from the vague superstitions which already surround card playing, such as the belief in luck, perhaps sometimes incarnated as a personified Fortune. "Luck" is so broad an idea that it may hardly even make sense to articulate it as a postulate phrase. This vagueness suits it well to sanctify the card religion, all the more because the idea has currency among card players to begin with.

If Luck is the ultimate sacred postulate of the Church of Cards, the whole idea system is sanctified because the unquestionable truth of the postulate requires recognition that every element in a card game behaves with significance. That is, when one plays Solitaire, the placement of each card, precisely in being apparently random, is meaningful and perhaps even intentional. Shuffling the cards so as to ensure randomness in their distribution allows the influence of Luck to take hold and arrange the cards for the player. Accordingly, sanctity flows downward to imbue the cosmological order which the cards themselves represent.

We have already, as a matter of fact, encountered some third-order rules of conduct. For instance, the stipulation that the cards be shuffled three times before and after each game of cosmological Solitaire; the general guideline that one not play more than three games at a single sitting; the procedure for finishing a game of Solitaire, and the accompanying incantations; and so on. We can easily imagine further rules developing around the tradition. One which immediately comes to mind is a simple injunction to treat the cards themselves with respect, since within this Cult of Cards they are the most important ritual object. Perhaps this broad directive would lead to more particular rules concerning the treatment of decks. For instance, it could become customary to burn a deck which has been worn out. We might also anticipate the development of rules about what sorts of decks may and may not be used for cosmological Solitaire and other ritual card playing. Unusual decks with round cards, reversed colors for the suits, portraits of pin-up girls, cats and dogs, wanted terrorists, and the like might be regarded as unsuitable for ritual use.

In addition to rules about the cards themselves, other stipulations about how a follower of the Card Cult should behave could well arise in time. It might not be surprising to eventually find commandments specifying which days or what times of day are suitable and unsuitable for cosmological Solitaire, where one should or shouldn't play, who may or may not witness the game, &c.

Finally, we must ask what manner of fourth-order pressures might be brought to bear upon this religion. An obvious place to start may be the likelihood that outsiders to the Church of Cards could disapprove of the whole religion on account of its being based on playing card games, rather than worshipping deities or some other more typical religious activity. If such disapproval were widespread, and membership in the tradition became a cause for opprobrium, rules of conduct on the third order might change to preserve the idea system as a whole. It could be the rule that initiation and membership in the tradition are secret. In fact, since people do already play Solitaire simply as a game often enough, the Card Cult could be well-suited to being hidden in plain sight, as it were.

In a different vein, another kind of pressure could arise if the Church of Cards became an actual religious community. By myself, playing Solitaire and cooking up cosmology is well and good, but had I disciples, for instance, a pressure for a more social way to share interaction with the cards. Such a pressure might lead to the development of cosmological Poker or other multiplayer card games, or perhaps to further variations of Solitaire which could support additional players.

For a third example, let us consider the possibility of the Card Cult become widespread, rather than outcast or at least disregarded. If this idea system became common, I suspect it might face a demand for further development. As it is, there isn't much to the religion in terms of complexity or depth, and indeed most people would probably be more inclined to regard everything we've discussed in this series of articles as superstition, however complicated, rather than as even a fledgling religion. However, if it were a fledgling religion, and if it became a full-fledged one in time, its adherents may well be expected to want more from it. In the last post I speculated on the place Holy Solitaire might have in some kind of high holiday observation. Just such festivals and celebrations — that is, more elaborate liturgy — might be one development the members of a scaled-up Church of Cards would require. One wonders if that sort of liturgical elaboration is what sets complex superstition apart from proper religion in most people's minds.

In any case, let us here draw our speculation to a close, and let the cards fall where they may.

Card Cosmology, Part III: Solitaire

2010-05-19T14:52:00.000-07:00

In our previous post, we catalogued salient highlights of the playing card cosmological idea system and some of its accretions. Today, in similar fashion, we shall consider Solitaire, the game which largely informs the cosmology.

This exploration shall be organized according to three types of 'cosmological Solitaire' games: Apotropaic, Divinatory, and a third type which we will call Holy Solitaire.

Apotropaic Solitaire

The basic principle which guides this kind of game is the directive that the face cards must be organized into specific combinations in order for the game to properly progress. This is the notion of the 'ideal courts' mentioned in the last post. These arrangements of the face cards draw upon the principle that while either black suit could be paired with either red suit, spades with hearts and clubs with diamonds are best paired. As such, the four ideal courts are as follows:

King of Spades, Queen of Hearts, Jack of Clubs;
King of Clubs, Queen of Diamonds, Jack of Spades;
King of Diamonds, Queen of Clubs, Jack of Hearts;
King of Hearts, Queen of Spades, Jack of Diamonds.

These sets tend to be viewed in terms of contrasting the positive characterizations of black-suited male cards and red-suited Queens with the negative characterizations of red-suited male cards and black-suited Queens. Though they could just as well be interpreted in a rosier fashion, the apotropaic game of Solitaire is premised on representing a world of human evil which must be deliberately counterbalanced by human good. (More on this notion in the next and final post in the series.) The game serves as an exercise in building a representation of such a world in order to reify and actualize that representation in the world. As such, the courts of Spades and Clubs hold their positive attributes, while the courts of Diamonds and Hearts keep to their more prevalent negative ones.

Apotropaic Solitaire is goal-oriented: while winning the game in the customary sense (of being able to lay away all the cards of each suit) isn't necessarily required, at the very least the player must manage to lay out the four ideal courts for the game to be considered marginally successful. Because each face card may only be paired with a certain single other face card, finishing the game is rather more difficult than a regular game. For instance, if the Jack of Diamonds is on top of a stack and the Queen of Clubs is revealed, normally one would be able to move the red Jack onto the black Queen and reveal the next card of the stack. However, in Apotropaic Solitaire the Jack of Diamonds may only be laid upon the Queen of Spades, and so in such a situation the game might not be able to progress. Additionally, all varieties of cosmological Solitaire are also played with a three-card draw, which may sometimes contribute to increased difficulty. Thus, while this game has a definite goal, often it is not easily achieved.

The arrangement of numbered cards in Apotropaic Solitaire is of minimal significance. Generally it is preferred to pair spades with hearts and clubs with diamonds even among the numbered cards, but doing so or failing to do so isn't regarded as especially important to the imagined effect of the game.

When the player does manage to finish a game, it is pivotally important that he lay away every last card on the board into the four piles, rather than simply leave off the game. The cards are laid away one by one, keeping each suit apace with the rest — laying away all the eights before the nines, and so on. After the Queens, the Kings must be laid away in order of Spades, Clubs, Diamonds, and Hearts. As this is done, the player recites aloud or to himself those lines originally from the chorus of Sting's song "Shape of my Heart": "I know that the Spades are the swords of a solidier; I know the Clubs are weapons of war; I know that Diamonds mean money for this art; but that's not the shape of my heart." Finally, before shuffling the deck, the player places the pile of Hearts upon the pile of Spades, and the pile of Clubs upon the pile of Diamonds, incanting as he does: "May the heart rule over the sword, and the hammer over gold, and all be in balance." The deck is then shuffled thrice before being put away or before another game begins. Incidentally, the player must also shuffle three times between each game.

If the game is so completed, then the successful construction and dissolution of a representation of an ideal cosmological world order is held to beget an emanation of that orderliness which positively influences the generally disorderly human world, or at least grants the player some protection of good luck. If the game should not be finished, one may play again until it is. However, as a loose rule one doesn't play more than three games at a single sitting, as if continuing to play after three failures were somehow importunate.

Divinatory Solitaire

Unlike an apotropaic game, a divinatory game is less about finishing the game than about observing the configurations of significant cards which become available, and exploring the consequences to the game of those configurations. While a preference for forming the ideal courts prevails, it is just a preference, rather than an imperative. The game may proceed with the Jack of Diamonds laid upon the Queen of Clubs, to use our previous example, but that pairing is regarded as representing a choice on the part of the player which, at least, may be against the cosmological grain of things.

However, since a divinatory game is not intended to construct a representation of a cosmological ideal, but a representation of the player's (or inquirer's) circumstantial situation in cosmological terms, looser pairings of cards don't necessarily carry the negative connotations they would in other contexts. Indeed, the suits — particularly the face cards — need not be interpreted in terms of the strictly positive and negative characterizations which they carry in the apotropaic game.

Along these lines, in the divinatory game, the player usually must have a face card with which to identify their person in order to understand the cards' representation of their situation and how it might progress. Naturally, a player's card should match up as closely as possible with their own personality. In this way, the assignment of face cards serves as a kind of psycho-spiritual profiling.

Interpreting any state of a game of Divinatory Solitaire can be quite difficult, as none of the cards have specifically fixed meanings. The interactions of face cards tend to be regarded as primarily significant, while number cards' meaning can be almost totally disregarded, or simply totally opaque. Simply put, too few divinatory games have been played for the methodology to develop much.

Holy Solitaire

In actual fact, I have yet to attempt to play this version of cosmological Solitaire, but the idea of it has crossed my mind. The premise of the variation is that cards may only be laid upon cards of their own suit, Spades upon Spades, Hearts upon Hearts, and so on, from the deuces on up to the face cards.

The cosmological notion informing this game is similar to that behind an apotropaic one. The game is an effort to build a representation of an ideal cosmological order. However, unlike the apotropaic game, which represents a dualistic human world precariously balanced between good and evil, the holy game represents a truly ideal world in which all human forces are harmoniously aligned without conflict. All cards in each of the suits would be regarded as embodying their positive characteristics.

Since in this variation each card could only be laid upon one other card, the game would be considerably more difficult than a regular round of Solitaire. I imagine this variation would be reserved for high holidays in a hypothetical community sharing this card-based cult, perhaps with one person playing on behalf of the whole congregation, playing as many games as necessary till one should be finished; or perhaps with each member taking a turn at playing a single game till one fortunate person should manage to complete a round. In either case, completion of a round of Holy Solitaire would be held to bring great good luck and might portend well or ill for the community as a whole depending on the ease or difficulty with which the game was finished.

Why Solitaire?

That Solitaire should be the cosmological card game par excellence may be a relatively simple matter of the fact that the card cosmology was revealed to, or fabricated by me in the course of long hours playing Solitaire by myself. Indeed, had I been more sociable at the time I took an interest in card games, I may never have had so much free time on my hands to contemplate such things in the first place. Alternatively, I might've spent my time playing Poker or Hearts or other games with friends, and come up with a different cosmological order altogether. In any case, I must emphasize that the dualistic nature of the card cosmology we've outlined is indebted to the game mechanics of Solitaire probably more than anything else.

Having examined the general ideas of this card cosmology, and its application in the context of Solitaire, in one additional post on the subject we shall explore the possibility of a full-fledged card religion. Until that next post, may the cards favor you.

Brief Hiatus

2010-05-12T14:40:00.000-07:00

Dear readers,

With the end of my time in Portland approaching, I find my mind a bit too disorderly to put to work writing analytical discourse this week. I'll be heading north, back home to Bainbridge Island, next Tuesday. If I have any wits left upon my arrival, our next post — on cosmological Solitaire — may be delivered next week. However, please don't be dismayed or upset if another week should pass before we get back on track.

In the meantime, as always, I'll be keeping an eye on the comments, and welcome discussion of our investigations to date.

Card Cosmology, Part II

2010-05-06T12:30:00.000-07:00

At last, as promised in our previous post, herein we will catalogue some of the details of the card cosmology which I have made up or, alternatively, which has been revealed to me over the past three years.

The basic cosmological axiom of this system is the black/red dualism inherent to the cards' design. Black is the feminine aspect of this dualism, while red is the masculine, inasmuch as when considering the face cards, a male card (king or jack) in a black suit is good because the masculine nature of the card is balanced with the feminine qualities of the suit. Contrariwise, male cards in red suits are unbalanced and are characterized negatively. Of course, the opposite is true of the queens: the red queens are balanced and positive, while the black queens are unbalanced or polarized, and thus negative.

This positive or negative characterization of the face cards also has to do with the qualities represented by each of the four suits. Largely informed by the aforementioned verse from Sting's song "Shape of my Heart", these are roughly as follows:

Spades - As "the swords of a soldier", spades represent skill, because a sword is a weapon ideally of precision. By extension, spades represent all kinds of acumen, physical, psychological, or emotional.
Clubs - Because they are generic "weapons of war", clubs represent strength, since concussive weapons depend mostly on brute force for their effectiveness. This meaning extends to all kinds of strength.
Diamonds - Being "money for this art" — warfare, that is — diamonds represent material wealth most basically, and as such also stand for power in social or political sense, or in any other way which can be quantitatively accumulated.
Hearts - Naturally hearts represent emotion generally. More specifically, the suit also connotes force of will and spirit.

These qualities are embodied to different degrees and in different aspects in each card, but particularly in the face cards, which become sort of icons of archetypal personalities. Keeping this in mind, consider each card in the four 'courts' of face cards:

King of Spades - Postively, a balanced figure with masterful self-control and precision, reliable, consistent, and able to outwit or outmaneuver obstacles. Negatively, the King of Spades is ruthless, judgmental, and self-isolating.
Queen of Spades - As a card generally regarded as unlucky, the negative characteristics of the Queen of Spades (colloquially known as "The Bitch") tend to be especially prominent. She is master of guile and harsh manipulation, using a sword to stab in the back whoever stands in her way. However, while she is saddled with this shady reputation, her symbolism also suggests the very strongly positive image of the shield-maiden or valkyrie, a powerfully able and self-reliant female figure.
Jack of Spades - Positively, he is the focused youth who disciplines himself, ensuring future success. In his negative aspect he may lack compassion, disdaining others for their perceived weaknesses or ineffectuality.

King of Clubs - Positively, he is the master of might, a sturdy figure of indomitable strength and perseverance. Negatively, his strength becomes blundering bullheadedness, and his perseverance becomes obstinate stubbornness.
Queen of Clubs - Also a primarily negative figure, she might jokingly be characterized as "Miss Shoots-First-Asks-Questions-Later". She brashly uses force to get what she wants without consideration for others. Positively, though, she is literally the strong woman, a confident and self-assured figure whose strength never fails.
Jack of Clubs - The strong youth, he is dedicated and persistent. Negatively, he too may be unconcerned with others and driven to surpass them in his own quest to be strongest.

King of Diamonds - An unbalanced figure, concerned foremost with his own wealth, power, and prestige. Positively, he could represent a figure with great wealth or a position of power who has the experience to keep and use it well.
Queen of Diamonds - A balanced figure who occupies her position of influence with grace and uses her power with benevolence and gentleness. Negatively, she could be the woman who manipulates and misleads in order to gain a powerful place.
Jack of Diamonds - While in principle an unbalanced and negative character, the Jack of Diamonds is popularly a lucky card, and so his positive qualities as the youth of good fortune and generosity may be emphasized. However, in his negative aspect he unscrupulously serves ill ends in his pursuit of money and power.

King of Hearts - Famous as "The Suicide King" (on account of common card imagery in which, holding his sword aloft, he appears to pierce his own head), he impulsively acts according to his own capricious feelings without forethought or consideration. Positively, he is master of the full range of emotions, understanding the feelings of all.
Queen of Hearts - Despite her bad reputation from Alice in Wonderland, she is a sublimely balanced figure, supremely sympathetic and deeply caring. Negatively, she may too easily feel for others when she ought to restrain herself.
Jack of Hearts - Negatively, he is the overly emotional youth, dissolute and unable to focus, too swayed by his unrestrained feelings. Positively, he is romantic and poetic, happily eager to discover the reaches of emotion.

In addition to the fundamental black/red dualism which informs the above interpretations of the face cards, a further order of dualistic pairing may be applied: the loose rule that spades should be paired with hearts, while clubs should be matched with diamonds. The idea on this level is that the qualities of each suit are better balanced in these pairs: the emotions are best tempered with self-control, while powerful skill must be checked by a feeling heart; meanwhile, it is better that the honest vigor available to all prevail over power of place, while wealth had best be used to employ and support those with useful strength, whatever their station. On the other hand, the alternative pairings would yield ill results: skill bought out by wealth, or oppressive power which abuses the adept to defend itself; and might amok at the whim of untrammeled emotion, or heartfelt feelings cruelly suppressed by overbearing strength.

As an aside, this double-ordered dualism informs the idea of the 'ideal courts' in the cosmologically-oriented game of Solitaire, which we will discuss in the next article.

Besides the face cards, certain number cards have accreted particular significance. Of course, the aces stand out in this regard. Each ace is the singular embodiment of each suit's characteristics. As such, incidentally, it's only natural that the ace of spades is held in especial honor, as card games are primarily games of skill. Meanwhile, the deuces are cautiously regarded as emblematic of trouble or difficult obstacles, perhaps because of their tendency to be wild cards in some games, but primarily because they are often not easy to move in Solitaire without the necessary ace to lay them away on.

Besides the central and relatively well-organized idea system surrounding the face cards, other bits of pertinent superstition have accreted upon this cosmology. Above, we noted in passing that the prevalent popular opinion of the ominousness of the Queen of Spades and the auspiciousness of the Jack of Diamonds (characterizations I encountered when learning the game of Hearts) adheres to the cluster of ideas surrounding each card, even though in the case of the Jack of Diamonds that positive characterization runs counter to the cards' ostensibly negative classification. Another example is the Nine of Diamonds, which among card players is sometimes known as The Curse of Scotland for a number of reasons, including the card's supposed resemblance to the banner of the Earl of Stair, who authorized the Massacre of Glencoe in 1692. While early modern European history has never been of particular interest to me, and nor are the circumstances for which the Nine of Diamonds is so named especially familiar, nevertheless the fact of its ominous reputation suffices to become attached to the otherwise systematic set of ideas which inform the cards.

Along similar lines, a wholly unrelated cosmology has begun to loosely associate itself with this card cosmology. My recent interest in Norse mythology has led me to begin to think of possible associations of the face cards with the Norse pantheon. This end itself is in part informed by my contact with a deck of cards in which the four queens were each depicted as one of the Greek goddesses. At present, the following rough and partial mapping has taken shape:

King of Spades: Odin or possibly Tyr
Queen of Spades: possibly Freyja
Jack of Spades: Tyr or possibly Freyr
King of Clubs: Thor
Queen of Clubs: possibly Hel
Jack of Clubs: Heimdall
King of Diamonds: Ægir
Queen of Diamonds: Ron
Jack of Diamonds: Baldr or possibly Freyr
King of Hearts: possibly Njord
Queen of Hearts: Freyja or possibly Skadi
Jack of Hearts: Freyr

The aces also have loose associations with certain famous artifacts of Norse myth:

Ace of Spades: Odin's spear Gungnir, or Freyr's sword, or the sword Gram
Ace of Clubs: Thor's hammer Mjolnir
Ace of Diamonds: Freyja's necklace Brisingamen, or Odin's ring Draupnir
Ace of Hearts: the vessel Odrerir, which holds the mead of poetry, or the preserved head of Mimir, which shares wisdom with Odin

These identifications, tentative at best, more or less disregard the fundamental dualism of the card cosmology, a dualism born of Solitaire. Instead, they represent an entirely unrelated accretion, and one which has little bearing on the original idea system. Nevertheless, the associative accretion which the superimposition of the Norse pantheon represents is noteworthy as an example of a way in which one system of ideas can be subsumed by or incorporated into another preexisting one.

Speaking of Solitaire, we have at this point sufficiently assayed the details of this cosmology to consider how those ideas play out, as it were, in a cosmologically-informed game of Solitaire. To that task we shall turn in the next post.

May Day

2010-05-03T12:13:00.000-07:00

Dear readers,

Due to its length, and some difficulty with Blogger's autosave functionality, our next post has, obviously, been somewhat delayed. With any luck, it should be finished by the usual time this week.

Meanwhile, though the weather in Portland continues to be fickle, a happy Spring to all.

Card Cosmology, Part I

2010-04-21T13:10:00.000-07:00

During my year abroad in Taiwan diligently studying Chinese and building Gundam models, I had a good deal of free time on my hands. That Summer I had taken an interest in Poker and other card games, and even developed a game of my own called The Duel. Taking my favorite deck with me to Taiwan, I spent many of the quiet hours of the day learning how to shuffle properly and playing my favorite card game, Solitaire.

By way of preface, recall our overview of Wayne Proudfoot's argument about how religious ideas come in to explain agitations or disruptions of our regular experience.

Much as Proudfoot suggests the considerable time spent by a Nichiren Buddhist chanting their mantra would lead the chanter to become attracted to ideas which could give meaning to their apparently meaningless activity, the long hours I spent playing Solitaire led me to experience a similar psychological inclination to explain or account for my actions, and to supply meaning for them.

Beginning with the unintentional mapping of the Chinese cosmological duality of yin (陰) and yang (陽) onto the cards' black and red suits, I ultimately fabricated (or, depending on how one looks at it, discovered) an elaborate cosmology which the deck of cards represented and embodied. Encoding a cosmology into the cards transformed Solitaire from an idle game into an active cosmological process for divination or a kind of apotropaic spellcasting.

Besides pre-existing cosmological ideas like yinyang, this cosmology drew on elements of superstition known to me from other cards games, my intuitive impressions of traditional gender roles, and even on the lines from Sting's song "Shape of my Heart": "I know that the spades are the swords of a solider, / I know that the clubs are weapons of war; / I know that diamonds mean money for this art, / but that's not the shape of my heart." Though as a student of religion, and thus one familiar with many traditions' cosmological notions, I probably could have deliberately constructed a clean-cut cosmology for the cards, what I came up with is instead syncretic and accreted over a period of time. While I was etically aware of what I was doing, I did not willfully build a cosmology as such, but rather observed as my mind and habit seized upon material from various sources, emically layering and blending to conceive a small idea system which, though it were new, was not cut from new whole cloth.

Our next post will be devoted simply to an account of the details of this cosmology of cards. Subsequently, we will consider the possibility of an actual religion built around that cosmology, and in so doing consider the implications for the formation of any 'new' religion.

Spurious Comments

2010-04-15T14:37:00.000-07:00

Dear readers,

For some time now, while there has been generally a dearth of comments on my humble posts here, someone out in the vast of the net has taken it upon themselves to comment with notable regularity on each week's new article. This person or these persons, posting under Chinese usernames, have been leaving frivolous comments containing hardly hidden links to Chinese porn sites. Needless to say, I have deleted each such comment as soon as they've come to my attention, and I shall continue to do so as long as these trolls persist. Nevertheless, should you encounter any comments of this kind before my swift hand removes them, be hereby advised of their nature.

I very much hope that users with actual input will continue to feel free to leave their comments here. More than simply an outlet for my raving lunacy, it is my wish that this little project provide food for thought and foster discussion.

What If...?

2010-04-14T10:59:00.000-07:00

Finding myself not in much of a scholarly but rather a speculative mood today, I thought to present to you, my dear reader, an idle question which has passed more than once through my mind of late: what if the Norse gods had become prevalent in Europe, rather than Christianity?

Specifically, I've been considering the implications of our religious inheritance in respect to the cultural and social consequences which that legacy has in our own present. As my friends may know, I tend to view many of our country's contemporary ills and shortcomings as directly related to the conservative Christianity which accompanied European colonists to this continent, and subsequently has dominated American political and social discourse. The weight of this inheritance is felt particularly strongly and seen especially clearly in prominent issues in our country: ongoing opposition to abortion rights; more fundamentally the hostility to sex education and contraception; the insidious resistance to scientific ideas of evolution; and so on.

Since last Autumn, I've been casually studying and reflecting upon the Norse pantheon and some of the mythology of the Vikings. Impressed with the vigor of a religious idea system in which the ideal afterlife is a never-ending drinking party cum fight club, and taken with a goddess who manages to have her chariot drawn by cats (of all creatures), I began to wonder what our world might've been like had this hearty heathenism survived the medieval Christian incursion into northern Europe, and ultimately prevailed over abrahamic monotheism in the modern west.

My musings have included some of the following broad notions:

I imagine a richer festival tradition centered around the major astrological events and seasonal transitions which have been marked as holidays by many peoples, and peppered with other observances throughout the year, all of these probably including performance of the blot, a sacrificial gathering to make offerings to the gods and celebrate. I like to think these holidays would be more in earnest than the weak and morbidly commercialized occasions which linger in America. Then again, I suppose there's hardly any reason not to expect 'mall Odins' having pictures taken with children upon their knees.

I imagine an altogether healthier view of human sexuality and openness to learning sexual responsibility than has been engendered by a Christian background. While certain Eddic poems evince misogynistic sentiments as much as most any old literature will, these are much less central to the makeup of the idea system than, for instance, the notion of woman's responsibility for all the sin and suffering of humanity is to Christianity. Moreover, the presence and prominence of goddesses in a prevalent pantheon might do not a little to solidify the position of women in society.

Accordingly, sex might have a place in our culture less as an act of sin and violence, and more as a meeting of equals. Additionally, with the love songs I've read which advise one on the best time for sporting with maidens (and the like), I doubt the prevailing attitude toward sexuality would be repressive as it is now. With sex accepted as a healthy and good part of human life, perhaps we would be more readily inclined to ensure our people understood it well enough to engage in informed and responsible sexual relations.

I imagine we would have a healthier outlook on our own worth as human beings had we inherited a mythology in which there is no all-crushing burden of sin laid upon our collective shoulders. Inspired to courage and noble-heartedness, looking forward to an afterlife where we might ourselves live with the gods and prepare to assist them in their own ultimate battle, might we not have a sense of ourselves as strong and good alongside divinity, rather than humiliatingly insignificant, weak, and flawed before the incomprehensible perfection of a single almighty deity? Might we not think more of ourselves, and expect better of ourselves?

Finally, I imagine an open, pluralistic outlook, allowing us to see the world less in the black-and-white, us-or-them way which we must still struggle to overcome in this country. The world is painted all in shades of grey. Only rarely is there a splash of true white, or a stroke of absolute black. Growing up with many gods, and with stories of those gods which don't delude us with the illusion of moral absolutism, may've helped us in learning the world is inhabited by many peoples of different backgrounds.

The vague recollection of a cultural conflict embodied in the union of the Æsir and the Vanir — two separate pantheons which eventually mingled — and remembered in the myth of a war between gods which was resolved by deliberation in council would be ever-present in the back of our minds as a reminder of difference and an example of reconciliation. Such a mythological idea of conflict resolution could've done better by us than the unilateral disregard and wanton destruction of old religious traditions wherever Christianity found them.

I make no excuse for my romanticism in all of this, and indeed there no doubt would be as much ill as good from old Norse as from any religious baggage. If nothing else, forgive me the indulgence for this reason: that it is worthy to reflect upon how whence we came brought us where we are, and that in such considerations religion must be taken into account as a force which shapes our thoughts and actions, and thus shapes our history.

An Interesting Aside: Caprica

2010-04-07T10:47:00.000-07:00

In a previous post, we discussed my take on one of my favorite shows, Battlestar Galactica, outlining the notion that the story is told in two conflicting genres of narrative discourse, each of which at least implies a corresponding genre of religious discourse. Subsequently we also discussed possible implications of that conflict of genres of discourse. Today, I wish to return to that discussion, this time with the spotlight on Battlestar's new prequel series, Caprica.

Naturally, spoilers follow. If you don't want Caprica spoiled, do not read on.

The show takes place decades before "The Fall" portrayed at the beginning of Battlestar Galactica, and indeed even before the First Cylon War alluded to in the chronologically later series. In fact, the plot broadly centers on the creation of the first Cylon as part of a military contract awarded to Caprican uber-technology firm Graystone Industries. As the series has only just reached the middle of the first season (since when have shows had "mid-season finales"?), I'll refrain from any comment on the broader plot. Besides, what interests me are a few particular details.

Firstly, perhaps of greatest import for the student of religion and Battlestar, is the apparent connection of the later Cylons' monotheism to a terrorist group called Soldiers of The One which espouses a monotheistic faith of some kind, in contradiction to the prevailing polytheism of the Twelve Colonies. I won't take the time to recapitulate the details of how the virtual avatar of Zoe Graystone (daughter of the Cylon's inventor and member of this monotheist cult) becomes embodied in the Cylon prototype after the real life Zoe is killed in a train bombing, but suffice it to say the first Cylon seems to have a monotheist outlook by way of connection with the Soldiers of The One.

Secondly, and at a very close second, is the idea of "apotheosis" which has been alluded to by Sister Clarice, who appears to be a member of the Soldiers of The One with a good deal of clout. She has briefly suggested the notion of the dead being reconstituted based on the wealth of data which survives them as avatars in the virtual reality environment V-World. Though Zoe's avatar was compiled before the real life Zoe's death, the same concept applies, as the avatar possesses all the memories of the living Zoe, and even seems to have somehow shared in the experience of her death. Additionally, the avatar of Tamara Adama, compiled after the real life Tamara's death, is another case which has already come to pass. Clarice seems to think that a process like this can be employed to carry people over into V-World as a form of afterlife, and she seeks to obtain Zoe's avatar program to pursue this goal. Implications for later Cylon resurrection technology should be obvious.

Thirdly, and for now finally, are the apparent hallucinations of Amanda Graystone, the Cylon inventor's wife. Amanda's brother, we have learned, died in a car crash which Amanda herself survived, but which left her deeply traumatized. After a long descent into insanity, she spent some time in a psychiatric hospital, and evidently continues taking prescription drugs years after her release. Lately, she has begun to see her dead brother and chase after him, as she did years ago after the crash. So far there is relatively little to indicate these are anything but hallucinations. However, the fact that these wild ghost chases are portrayed in a manner suggestive of the possibility that Amanda isn't just hallucinating may be significant to our considerations. It is, of course, possible that such a portrayal is simply good cinematic technique, making the viewer feel some degree of the blurred reality which the character experiences during these episodes.

As you may suspect, though, I am not so ready to give Caprica the total benefit of the doubt. Given the connection to Battlestar Galactica and that series' conflict of genres, I am suspicious of a similar clash in this show. So far Caprica has established and more or less solidly maintained the science fictional genre of narrative discourse, the same in which Battlestar seems squarely to fall at first blush. Recall my contention that science fiction tends to bring with it an atheist or agnostic genre of religious discourse: science fiction narratives usually leave deities and miracles out of the picture entirely, or find ways to subsume them to the empirical worldview of the narrative genre (my favorite examples being stories in which beings worshipped as gods turn out to be powerful aliens or the like).

Battlestar Galactica got confusing and frustrating because this science fiction narrative became blended with what I called the mythic genre of narrative discourse and its associated genre of religious discourse which easily permits gods, spirits, angels, miraculous happenings, and so on. This theory of admixture was the only way I found to understand the incongruities and apparently unanswered questions left after the finale of Battlestar. While Caprica has yet to show definite signs of the mythic genre of discourse, I suspect we may see it arise in time. It wasn't until well into the series that Battlestar crossed into territory where only recourse to myth could explain the bizarre goings-on, and indeed my own disappointment arose largely because I had hoped and expected the show to resolve its outstanding weirdeousities before wrapping up.

Given more time, I anticipate that Caprica will begin to show similar signs. In particular, I'll be keeping an eye on the development of Amanda Graystone's hallucinatory experiences, and watching for any implication that they are anything other than symptoms of her craziness. Additionally, we should watch Sister Clarice's campaign for apotheosis closely for any signs that she's receiving some kind of divine favor in pursuit of that end.

In a word, it seems clear that Caprica is already playing into Battlestar Galactica's "all this has happened before, and all this will happen again" narrative, which is to say its mythic narrative. I'm interested to see what will be implied in regard to the polytheism vs. monotheism issue in this series. To show my hand a little, I suspect that Caprica may favor monotheism in its mythic narrative much as Battlestar seems to have favored it.

We'll keep tabs on Caprica over the coming days, and follow threads of interest to our discussion of the religious messages encoded by a popular narrative discourse.

Leaving Home

2010-04-01T11:40:00.000-07:00

Apologies for the delay of this post. Much has been weighing on my mind of late.

As my fellow Reedies are probably aware, a complement of Tibetan monks have been on campus this week constructing one of their remarkable sand mandalas. Apparently they've visited Reed once in the past, before I was a student. They also came to Bainbridge Island once while I was living there, and built their mandala in the public library. Unfortunately I didn't witness it at that time either.

Unfortunate indeed, for if I had perhaps I should have earlier known my present peace. You see, dear readers, yesterday while gazing upon the mandala in progress in the foyer of Kaul Auditorium, I achieved something I had never known before. It was as if I had fallen through the sand, but it was not the sand of the mandala, but the sand of this world of illusions blowing by as I apprehended the reality of the mandala. I walked its halls, marveled at the treasures of its teaching, paid obeisance to the many enlightened beings who dwelt there. At last, I came before Avalokitesvara himself, and received a prediction that I shall attain buddhahood within this lifetime.

To pursue this calling, I have already begun to cast away the trappings of this benighted life of suffering. With the little money I had left, I have bought as much incense as possible, to make a fragrant offering as I depart Portland. I have broken the swords with which I so long foolishly practiced an art of violence. I have cut off the braided hair which I so long grew out of foolish pride. I have thrown out the boots and hat made of beasts' flesh with which I so long foolishly defiled myself. I have smashed the bottles of liquor which I foolishly believed could bring me happiness amongst deluded friends. And finally, now, I will discontinue this ill-wrought endeavor to foolishly make discernments about illusion, saying 'It is this, but not that' of that which has no substance, no existence. I will cease playing with toys while the house burns around me.

Farewell, dear readers, and may you too soon see through the falsehood of the world.

201 Toolkit: Wayne Proodfoot

2010-03-24T15:54:00.000-07:00

One of the least favored authors from the Religion 201 syllabus among my classmates was Wayne Proudfoot, whose Religious Experience takes a somewhat cynically empirical view of religion and the experiences people attribute to religious causes. Sometimes an empiricist myself, I have found Proodfoot useful since my first encounter with his book, and often invoke his central argument in my own analyses.

This argument is exemplified by a rather memorable parable of sorts. I'm walking in the woods with a friend. My friend has moved ahead, and is struck with fear when he glimpses a bear near the trail around the next bend. He runs back and tells me there is a bear ahead. However, the woods and the features of the trail are familiar to me, and I know that there is a log by the trail up ahead which resembles a bear. I reassure him, yet he insists that he saw the bear, and wouldn't have gotten so worked up over a log. Nevertheless, we proceed around the bend and my friend discovers upon closer examination he had indeed taken the log for a bear.

In a word, Proudfoot contends that religion is so much taking of logs for bears. He points out that people will seek explanations for psychological and physiological states whose causes aren't readily apparent, and that having religious concepts around beforehand can provide a convenient source of explanation.

I found particularly compelling Proudfoot's reference to the experiments of Stanley Schachter, which he mentions in his third chapter. Schachter predicted "that if a person were to find himself in a state of arousal for which no explanation or appropriate cognition were immediately available, he would feel pressured to understand and to label his feelings. He would require some way to account for what was happening to him." (Religious Experience, p. 99) Schachter administered injections of adrenaline to his subjects, telling some what to expect from the injection, giving others misleading information, and leaving others completely ignorant of the nature of the injection. A confederate in the experiment would be placed with the subject, sometimes acting jovially, sometimes angrily, and so on. Schachter found that subjects who hadn't been briefed on the effects of the injection "tended to experience the emotion portrayed by the confederate." (Religious Experience, p. 100) Meanwhile, those who knew what to expect from the injection were less likely to reflect the confederate's mood. In a word, finding their autonomic nervous systems aroused, subjects with no explanation for that arousal tended to take the cues given by their environment to explain their condition.

Proudfoot astutely applies this psycho-physiological insight to some of William James' examples of conversion experiences from his classic work The Varieties of Religious Experience. Proudfoot notes some of James' accounts which mention reading scripture or thinking on a sermon before falling asleep, then waking in the night to unexplained heart palpitations or other physiological agitations which are taken to be signs of visitation by Christ or the Holy Spirit. The close association of pre-existing religious concepts with an unexplained physiological disturbance would seem to make Proudfoot's Schachterian analysis a strong one indeed.

Beyond psycho-physiological abnormalities, religious concepts which already lie close at hand may be drawn upon to understand other phenomena for which ready explanation is lacking. Another of Proudfoot's examples is Nichiren Buddhism, a sect with which I happen to have some experience. A Japanese Mahayana offshoot, Nichiren takes the Lotus Sutra as the central and ultimate scripture, but even more than this takes adoration of the sutra as a primary practice. Nichiren Buddhists practice chanting the mantra "namu Myouhou Renge Kyou" — "Hail the Lotus of the Wonderful Law." This chanting is usually carried on for at least an hour, morning and evening, every day, accompanied by drums (either large taiko at a temple, and/or small handheld drums).

As Proudfoot notes, reading of the sutra itself isn't encouraged among new adherents, much less required of potential converts. Instead, people are invited to simply join the congregation in chanting, with little or no justification for doing so. Proudfoot recounts how

At one session we attended, the leader invited a new prospect to chant for just one hundred days and see what would happen. Chanting involves, initially, an hour or more both morning and evening. If the prospective convert decides to try this "experimentally" for one hundred days, the rearrangement of his life and the persistent chanting, which cannot be justified on any other grounds, present a surd that is quite salient for him. It is likely that before the experimental period has elapsed the potential convert will be attracted by a set of beliefs which give meaning to the apparently meaningless activity in which he has been engaged and around which he has reordered his life. ... [C]ommitment to a regimen of such exercises can lead to the adoption of beliefs that justify that regimen and the resultant feelings. (Religious Experience, p. 112-113)

Or, we might say: orthopraxy precedes orthodoxy. Adherents, Proudfoot would say, are likely to be doing something before they believe something.

(As an aside, Proudfoot's point here dovetails nicely with Roy Rappaport's notion of performative indication — something we've yet to discuss in this series of articles. In ritual, the participants' very participation indicates acceptance of the conceptual hierarchy which the ritual encodes. That outward indication of acceptance, even if it is purely superficial, may suffice to lodge the encoded concepts in the mind of the participant, which could lead to them becoming belief.)

Do The Dead Check Facebook?

2010-03-17T11:47:00.000-07:00

Speculating on the condition of the deceased seems always to have been within religions' purview, and as such thanatology often has a place among scholars of religion. Over the last several months, I have experienced three deaths: that of a dear friend in November, that of my grandfather in December, and that of a schoolmate with whom I was acquainted just last week. Reflecting on these experiences and observing the behavior of others prompted me to raise a question which a friend actually came up with some time ago.

I am not a user of Facebook myself, indeed having vowed never to use it. However, I do take interest in observing the reflection and reproduction it creates of the extant social network. My teacher Professor Brashier often employs the analogy of the "relationship net" to describe ancient Chinese notions of self (usually in contrast to the western idea of the "rugged individual"), but Facebook makes it clear that the idea of people as knots on a net, defined by their connections to others, really is a perfect way to describe our society as well.

What happens when an individual described in such a collective way dies? Is a knot on the net undone?

In classical Chinese religion and philosophy, while the actual existence of ghosts and spirits was always disputed and left up in the air by many thinkers, nevertheless their practice in remembering the dead centered around the idea of reconstituting the identity of the deceased through the connections he had to others. Gathering together to make offerings, the thoughts of a person's survivors could at least temporarily put the individual back together — literally re-member him.

(As an aside, anyone interested in this particular topic or the thanatology of Han China in general should keep an eye out for Professor Brashier's forthcoming books: Lineage Memory in Early China and Public Memory in Early China.)

It seems Facebook is taking on a similar function today. Besides just setting up Facebook groups in memory of a dead user, the actual Facebook pages which belonged to those users become memorials themselves. The bereaved continue to leave comments on these pages, sometimes leaving condolences, sometimes contributing memories, and sometimes even addressing the dead directly.

The deeper implications of this phenomenon for religious studies could be quite broad. However, today my purpose is simply to point out an interesting parallel between a contemporary practice and an ancient idea. Clearly Facebook has yet to grow into a religion itself (though some adherents seem to refer to it rather religiously already), but studying how people deal with death is the business of the student of religion. I, for one, will be keeping tabs on how Facebook continues to be used to memorialize the dead.

Besides, maybe when they get wireless in the afterlife, the dead might post back.

Battlestarry-Eyed: Mixed Messages

2010-03-10T11:50:00.000-08:00

Last post we identified the issue causing me grief in wrapping my mind around Battlestar Galactica: a conflict or dissonance between the narrative genres of science fiction and myth, and a clash between their associated religious genres of discourse, atheism and supernaturalism respectively. At first I intended merely to point out this discord and remark upon the difficulty it presents to an audience. However, in the course of writing last week's remarks, it occurred to me that the conflicting genres of discourse may have some implications worth fleshing out here.

What is the meaning of a story which is split between these two genres of religious and narrative discourse? Moreover, what is the significance of the stalemate which those two genres ultimately reach? Or is it really a stalemate at all?

One way to regard such a split story is as a contest of sorts: pitting atheistic science fiction against miraculous myth to see which prevails. If we take such a view of Battlestar, our conclusions in response to the above questions may become rather sinister. If Battlestar is meant to portray this kind of contest, it is one between tired, cynical, and weak polytheism which has given way to atheistic empiricism, and strong, vital, and aggressive monotheism which seems to be supported by the miraculous and supernatural occurrences which become more and more significant over the course of the series. In a word, it's a contest in which science (fiction) and empirical agnosticism or atheism lose to monotheistic supernaturalism.

Especially given the original Battlestar Galactica's connections to Mormonism, this is an implication not to be overlooked. I find it a troubling one in light of the prevailing conflict between certain religious and scientific discourses in America at present. However, I emphatically disbelieve that this is a message Battlestar's producers meant to convey, even if their series does endorse, or better, encode a view putting the supernatural on par with the empirically observable.

From the beginning, Battlestar has addressed political, cultural, social, religious, ethical, and other questions in a multivocalic, thoughtful, lots-of-grey-areas kind of way. The series considered many contemporary issues — torture, homosexuality, assassination, racism, terrorism, cloning — always in a way meant to demonstrate that there are no simple black-and-white answers to such things. In a sense, this sort of not-so-simple take on the world is the fundamental premise of the series, manifest in the figure of the cylon antagonists. The cylons are not simply evil robot overlords, but very human robots who begin to question whether the whole evil overlord thing was the right thing to have done. Ultimately the series' real antagonists are not the cylons themselves, but the sum total of all the characters' obstacles in understanding and coming to terms with one another. There are no absolute enemies in Battlestar: many cylons join the human colonial fleet and settle with the human survivors on the new Earth. Even the less-than-cuddly cylon centurions agree to let the humans and humanoid model cylons be, and disappear off into unknown space.

The point is that Battlestar always takes care to make its points thoughtfully and thought-provokingly, eschewing simple or absolute judgments. Because this is so, I believe it would be inappropriate to conclude that the same producers meant us to take the series as some kind of shallow "triumph-of-monotheism-over-science" narrative.

What, then, can we make of the conflict of genres and the fairly conclusive observation that supernatural and possibly monotheistic myth basically bests science fictional empiricism? Ultimately we must each of us make of that what we will, keeping in mind that Battlestar isn't the kind of series to pass absolute judgment on any of the questions it poses. My own take is rather unflattering: in part, I suspect the resort to the supernatural became a way to tie together and finish off a truly massive epic story which was collapsing under its own weight. The mythic narrative elements allowed the story off the hook from having to account for many of its mysterious and compelling characters and plot points. Of course I don't know to what extent the producers had the whole series' storyline planned out beforehand, but I get the impression they may've been running with it for some time, and found themselves carrying an armload of weird baggage which a purely empirical science fictional narrative would've had some difficulty dealing with.

Additionally, while I've made much of how multivocalic the series tended to be, the final episode's comment on contemporary American decadence, delivered by Head Six and Head Baltar, struck me as quite a hammer blow. The producers seem to have decided to use the end of the show to very deliberately deliver a direct and strong message about the direction in which our society is heading. The supernatural elements of the narrative certainly lend themselves to making that point.

Perhaps the main thing to take away from these musings is this: narrative encodes messages, whether deliberately or not. When narrative discourse is coupled with religious discourse, we should be attentive to the implications of that combination, and avoid taking any story at face value alone.

The medium is the message. So say we all.

What The Frak, Indeed

2010-03-03T11:01:00.000-08:00

In my very first post I alluded to Battlestar Galactica as a possible topic for discussion here. I've been listening to the recently released soundtrack to Razor and The Plan, and with that putting Battlestar on my mind, the day has come to talk about my favorite TV show.

Unlike our long series of posts on Magic: The Gathering, our discussion of Battlestar Galactica will be something of a one-off, as it turns out I really only have one central point I'd like to make about the series. Accordingly, I'm not going to start out with an attempt to re-cap or summarize the show's four seasons, and must assume some familiarity on the part of my readers. If you don't want to risk having the show spoiled, don't read on.

I'll say again: spoiler warning. Ye have been warned.

Battlestar has been fascinating from the religious studies point of view since pretty early on in the series. The first thing one notices are the opposing religions of the human colonists and their cylon enemies: human polytheism (with a familiar Greek pantheon) and cylon monotheism (smacking of well-known Abrahamic exclusivity). As it turns out, this disagreement over the number of prevailing deities seems to prove relatively inconsequential.

What ultimately caught my interest the most were the questions I found myself still asking after the bizarre series finale, which left dangling a number of equally bizarre chains of events running through the whole show. I'll limit myself to the three most major issues which seemed to me to be left unresolved:

What the frak was the deal with Starbuck?
What the frak was the deal with the hallucinations of Six and Baltar (called "Head Six" and "Head Baltar" by the producers, as they evidently only appeared in the heads of the real Baltar and Caprica Six)?
What the frak was with the role of prophecy?

Let us review each of these briefly:

Starbuck dies, her viper destroyed before Apollo's eyes, only to reappear later in a brand new viper, with no memory of her death and mysteriously packing the signal of a homing beacon which will allow the colonial fleet to find Earth. While that turns out to be mostly a bust, Starbuck finds the wreckage of her viper and her own charred corpse (dog tags and all) crashed in the middle of a field, at the precise location of the homing signal. Without any explanation of this weirdiousity, she goes on to produce coordinates which will lead the fleet to a new habitable planet to make their home, and there she promptly vanishes without a trace when Apollo turns his back on her for a moment in the middle of a conversation. My response: "What the frak?"

Baltar begins seeing hallucinations of his erstwhile cylon lover as soon as he gets in the transport which rescues him from Caprica — and we know they're hallucinations because the point was very clearly made that the ship could carry only so many people, and that with Baltar on board (in place of one of the pilots, Helo) she was at maximum capacity and couldn't fly with an additional person's weight. It's also quite evident that nobody else can see Baltar's own personal Six, though he can not only see and hear her, but seems to enjoy a full sensory awareness of her occasional presence (and hilarity ensues). Head Six tells Baltar she is an angel of the one true god, sent to guide him in performing a divine mission — and eventually, despite his scientific inclinations, Baltar grows quite comfortably into this prophetic role. What's more, eventually Caprica Six, the actual model Six who beguiled Baltar, herself begins to hallucinate her very own Baltar, who behaves very much like Baltar's Head Six. After patiently enduring season after season of this mysterious madness, I was deeply disappointed when no explanation came for Head Six and Head Baltar's existence. On the contrary, the final scene of the final episode sees Head Six and Head Baltar traipsing inconspicuously through our own modern Manhattan, half a million years after the events of the series, remarking on the similarity of our decadence and advances in robotics to that of the Colonies an aeon before. My response: again, "What the frak?"

Finally, several characters exhibit what appears to be genuine prophecy in some form or another of the course of the show. Colonial President Laura Roslin receives visions and draws on the human polytheists' "Prophecy of Pythia" to interpret humanity's situation — though she suffers accusation that her visions are due to the use of a known hallucinogen administered to her to treat her cancer. Starbuck turns out to have been painting images of the peculiar, colorful space storm — the "Eye of Jupiter" — into which she is drawn and apparently dies. Upon her miraculous return, she possesses some innate sense of the direction in which the fleet should be heading to reach Earth, and later ultimately decodes coordinates to reach the new Earth from musical notes represented by a drawing produced by the human-cylon hybrid child Hera. The cylon Model Two, Leoben, also seems to have some prophetic visions of Starbuck's role which lead to his perverse obsession with her. Meanwhile, Laura Roslin, Caprica Six, and the cylon Model Eights Boomer and Athena are all involved in some kind of recurring shared dream of the child Hera running through the mysterious opera house of Kobol, which seems somehow to portend the future of the human and cylon races. I could go on, but suffice it to say that all in all there are an awful lot of prophecies and visions whose significance never becomes fully clear, and whose provenance is never transparent. My response: initially inclined towards "Fascinating," but I'm gonna have to go with "What the frak?"

After considerable reflection and a joint discussion with several colleagues during a Reed College Paideia class, I realized that what troubled me about these issues is their incongruity. That is, while for the most part the series takes place in a recognizable, comprehensible, and very realistic world — and goes to great pains to avoid ever painting too simple a picture of social, political, religious, philosophical, or ethical issues — these bizarre and unexplained happenings do not fit within that apparently realistic framework. As such, they're difficult to relate to and accept as part of the story.

In terms of the study of religion, this is a problem of genres of discourse. A genre of discourse is like a category of conversation, or an arena in which certain kinds of talk and ideas are acceptable while others are out of place. To take an obvious example: modern science is a genre of discourse in which empirical evidence and logical hypothesis are acceptable, while a fundamentalist Christian discourse accepts reference to the Bible and the ideas of the Christian tradition, and admits these things as acceptable ideas even in the face of empirical arguments against them. (I'm thinking about the ongoing "debate" between Darwinism and creationism.) In the context of scientific argument, you can't say chemicals react the way they do in obedience to a deity's will because there is no empirical evidence to suggest such a thing, while there is observable evidence from which one may glean understanding about how those substances react and why. On the other hand, in the context of fundamentalist Christian discourse it isn't acceptable to make a point on the basis of observable phenomena alone, though it suffices to observe that a biblical passage seems to contradict that point to dismiss it.

A conflict of genres of discourse arises, of course, when incompatible contexts are brought to the same conversation. Scientists dismiss the notion that a god created all living things literally in the manner described in the Bible because observable evidence shows that the developement of the world's organisms was a rather different matter. However, fundamentalist Christians will not accept an evolutionary account of biology because to do so would be to compromise the absolute unquestionableness of their sacred text. Such a conversation is less than pleasant for those involved because no middle ground can be reached when both genres of discourse cannot admit that the other's equally inflexible view is correct.

This kind of conflict can occur between literary or narrative genres as well. In the case of Battlestar Galactica, there is a parallel conflict between two genres of narrative discourse and their corresponding genres of religious discourse.

On one hand, the show is unquestionably situated in the narrative genre of science fiction. In this genre we as viewers are prepared to suspend our disbelief at apparently impossible feats of technological advancement — such as faster-than-light travel or fully sentient artificial intelligence with the ability to download a whole consciousness from one body into another. These things are far beyond our present scientific understanding, and may not even be possible in any way but theoretically. However, since they are presented as scientifically possible, we are able to accept such things as at least hypothetical possibilities, and they seem real and plausible within the science fiction discourse. (At least to a point: sci-fi narratives which fall back to using "unobtainium" to fill gaping plot holes verge on the ridiculous.)

The narrative genre of science fictional discourse is paired with a religious genre of discourse: atheism, or at least very strong agnosticism. Since science fiction presumes the empirical worldview of modern science, it's at its best when it denies the existence of deities altogether, shows them to actually be powerful aliens, or at the very least just leaves them out of the picture. I'm thinking of Stargate's Goa'uld, and the episode of Star Trek: The Next Generation in which Picard reveals the sham of an alien using technology to pose as the godlike devil of numerous mythologies.

On the other hand, the only conclusion I have been able to reach regarding the unexplained parts of Battlestar discussed above is that they belong to another narrative genre of discourse: myth. In myth, the prevailing religious genre of discourse may be Jewish or Hindu or Shinto or whatever it may be, but the existence of deities and miracles is accepted in any case. In the context of myth, a resurrection to lead a wandering people to a new home is believable, and a mysterious disappearance when the task is done may be taken for granted; divine messengers wearing familiar faces to guide important characters are commonplace; and glimpsing the future on a regular basis is no big deal.

The conflict between the narrative genres of science fiction and myth, along with their associated religious genres of discourse, is clear in the bewilderment that I know I was not alone in feeling when Battlestar Galactica finally came to an end. Basically, the show asks the viewer to accept two different kinds of stories at the same time. Battlestar puts you in a familiar, empirical world, then foists honest-to-god (pun intended) angels and miracles upon you once you're good and comfortable with the atheistic science fictional narrative environment. Expecting these incongruous elements to be explained or subsumed to the empirical narrative, one is instead confounded when ultimately the mythical narrative seems to win out over the science fictional one, or at least end up on some kind of strange equal terms with it.

While I said our discussion of Battlestar would be a one-off, we will nevertheless devote one more post to considering the ramifications of the conflicting genres of discourse identified above. In the meantime, feel free to keep wondering what the frak happened.

Video Games and Religion: A Fivefold Inquiry

2010-02-24T13:03:00.000-08:00

I've mentioned before that I started this blog to pursue some of my incidental academic interests in the wake of a course at Reed College on religion and media studies, in which I wrote a final paper on religion and video games. This week, I give you that paper and the annotated bibliography which accompanied it. In future posts we may examine some of the theory mentioned here more closely, and bring it to bear on video games of interest.

This paper was originally written in the Spring of 2007.

* * *

The State of Video Game Studies & the Study of Religion

In a word, at present there seems yet to be no intersection of these two academic pursuits, despite the rich potential which lies in looking at video games with an eye to religion. Our purpose herein will be to make the smallest beginning of filling this void, prompted by observing that first, video games often have religious content of some sort (a matter primarily examined in our first section, "Against the Naysayers" and more fully in our mythologically-oriented section); second, that moreover video games have taken on certain religious functions and structural characteristics (to be explained and considered also in the mythological section, and again remarked upon when video gaming is considered as a 'way of life,' as well as perhaps in our ludological overview); and finally by a consideration of the possibility that their influence upon the dimension of our society generally regarded as the domain of religion grows so great that we would be remiss to fail to study them from a religious studies standpoint (which great influence will be evident throughout, and particularly in the "Way of Life" section and our concluding meta-examination).

In pursuing this purpose, we aim only for the most cursory of overviews and the sketchiest of inferences. Nothing conclusive is promised – but hopefully stimulating points may be made, and further thinking prompted.

Against the Naysayers

In referring to "the naysayers" in this section, no individuals in particular are meant. They are only an interlocutor standing in both for the general gripe that video games are bad for or against religion properly so-called, and for the counter-assertion against our entire project: that any religious content in video games is merely flavor. This section will be little more than a brief dismissal. For the part of the first breed of naysayer: the quite similar "video-games-make-our-kids-shoot-people" and the "video-games-make-our-kids-devil-worshippers" varieties are not to be taken seriously. To be fair, the sort of concern they represent is not necessarily unfounded. However, without saying more, the present overview alone ought to demonstrate that these camps are misguided.

As for the second sort of naysayer, he who will not allow that there is any weighty religious dimension to video games, it is precisely the aim of our project to demonstrate that such a brushing-off misses a very big point. While we will agree that some arguably religious content in video games is indeed merely flavor, nonetheless such content may be crucial: as the experiments of Lee et al demonstrate, narrative and background information plays a significant part in creating feelings of presence and a sense of immersion (phenomena to be considered more carefully below). If even merely flavorful religious content contributes to that background, its importance for the player's experience of the game cannot be underestimated. Some (Tews, for instance, to whom we will refer more than once again) go so far as to say that video games have "become an acculturating force" shaping "collective social consciousness" (Wolf p. 180), in which case we can hardly disregard the religious significance of video games.

Simply put, the religious dimension of video games cannot be ignored or glossed over. Pressing on, this will become quite evident.

Ludology

We may seem to be venturing a little off topic in addressing purely ludological questions, as their significance is not primarily religious. Nonetheless, understanding video games on their own level, as it were, provides good background and foundation to further investigation. Herein, then, for want of space we shall primarily examine one classificatory model, and the phenomenon of 'presence.' After each step we will propose some possible religious implications.

Lauwaert, Wachelder, and van de Walle Revisit Callois. In "Frustrating Desire" the authors discuss the merits and shortcomings of Roger Callois' seminal system of classifying games (briefly outlined in the annotation below). With the addition of repens, the element of surprise in a video game which draws the player forward (obtaining the main character's ultimate weapon in Final Fantasy X, for instance), and repositio, forced retry of actions or series of actions (the aggravating racing mini-game which must be played again and again to obtain said weapon), the modified Callois model seems well-suited for application to any video game. We may propose that this model can reveal a level of similarity between video games and religion inasmuch as one could use it just as well to classify religious behaviors or objects. Without being too facetious, one might observe that a teleological tradition like Christianity is relatively more ludic than Shinto, in that the former specifies an end goal and how to achieve it, while the latter contents itself with a rather paidic worship. Accordingly, one could find examples of religious phenomena which fit into any of Callois' four categories (Chinese stalk divination has a bit of alea about it, while glossolalia definitely smacks of ilinx).

Perhaps more interestingly, one could apply the lens of repens and repositio to religion quite fruitfully. Buddhist meditation draws many with the repens-promise of enlightenment, but few can endure the seemingly endless repositio of being distracted and beginning one's meditative exercise over again. If, as Lauwaert et al assert, this interplay and balance of repens and repositio constitutes the mechanics of learning, then perhaps the presence of the repens-repositio process in both video games and religion points to a significant underlying similarity.

Presence. The essential characteristic of the feeling of 'presence' is "the artificial sense that a user has in a virtual environment that the environment is unmediated." (Wolf & Perron p. 72) The definition given by Lee et al (p. 9) highlights the same quality of forgotten mediation, and moreover the three kinds of presence they distinguish – physical, social, and self presence – specify the kinds of objects felt to be unmediated. Interestingly, Lee et al note the growing importance of social presence, noting that video gaming is becoming more and more social, while on the other hand, McMahan (in "Immersion, Engagement, and Presence") stresses the importance of the social dimension in creating strong feelings of presence (Wolf & Perron p. 73 - 75). We will return to this social question in a later section.

Inasmuch as it is a question of mediation, scholars of religion are already quite interested in the matter of presence – one need only recall the Katz-Forman debate, for instance. The creation of virtual environments, I have heard it remarked, was once primarily the business of religion. If a little cynicism may be allowed, getting people to feel that their interaction in a certain virtual world is unmediated might be one way of defining religion. David Miller might have been on target indeed in Gods and Games when he told us religion was a game.

While we have of necessity been brief, even so terse a glance as we have given video game ludology should be more than sufficient to illustrate the potential for worthwhile investigation of the points of contact between video game and religious studies.

The Myth Medium

In this section we have two aims: first, to note the often mythical and religious elements of video game content, and second, to propose that over and above this superficial appropriation, video games have come to fill a role in which they behave much as myth once did in traditional society.

Mythical and Religious Images. Our first aim does not require us to look very far. Many are the video games in which mythical or religious imagery is to be found. Often, we must concede to the naysayers, much such content seems purely for flavor – the Castlevania series, a long-lived family of vampire-hunting adventure games, is rife with crosses and holy water; in many Final Fantasy games, occult-looking designs often appear when characters use magic attacks, and elsewhere. In neither example are these elements particularly significant. However, in noticing such superficialities, we must recognize a deeper importance. While on one hand Castlevania may initially have relied on pseudo-Christian and occult imagery as a skin for another early platform-jumping adventure game, more and more that imagery has become the basis for its entire atmosphere and storyline, spanning a veritable epic saga's worth of more and more involved installments. Similarly, since one of the earliest Final Fantasy games, players have been able to summon special monsters to fight for them in battle, frequently including the gods Odin and Shiva, and mythological personages such as Gilgamesh, the phoenix, and a dragon called Bahamut. Though most of the Final Fantasy games' storylines are unrelated, the recurrent presence of these characters ties the series together, and moreover infuses the games with a new variation of the ancient belief in protective spirits.

Sometimes this mythic content even goes beyond allusion and profoundly shapes the entire game. Perhaps the best example is Ōkami, in which the player becomes the Japanese sun goddess Amaterasu incarnated as a wolf. (The game's title puns ookami, "wolf" and Ōkami, "great spirit," one of the sun goddess' appellations.) The whole game world and its story is a twist on Shinto mythology, which even ends with a remarkable call to assist the gods with our prayers. Since collecting points representing non-player characters' belief in your existence as an efficacious deity is actually part of the game mechanics, it is (perhaps deliberately, in this case) unclear whether this exhortation is meant to be regarded as simply part of the game or taken truly to heart by the player.

Taylor & Kolko remark upon the blurring of the boundaries in their examination of Majestic, a very different game; Ōkami shows another kind of boundary-pushing, particularly in the mythological and religious dimension. We should remember Frasca's insight (in "Simulation versus Narrative") that video games communicate ideology, even when we consider games with "made-up" religious ideas. In Final Fantasy VII, one of the franchise's most popular titles, the story revolves around the notion that the planet and all living things are animated by a spiritual-physical force called the Lifestream. As much as an explicitly religious document, Final Fantasy VII communicates this animistic message, which no doubt owes something to Japanese religious ideas in the "real world."

Doing Mythical Work. These observations lead us to our second aim, which more or less boils down to asserting that video games have come to provide the sort of common ground and social connection established by shared myths and religious lives in days of yore. This connection has already been made by Rebecca Tews in "Archetypes on Acid," where she notes "In modern society, we spend little time engaged in telling the stories of old. Gone are the fireside stories of the ancient heroes ... In their place ... we become [our new heroes], writing the script through our experiences in the video game world." (Wolf p. 175) Tews goes on to suggest that these experiences "perpetuate a distinctive culture and interpretation of reality" through the presence therein of "the cultural archetypes of all human knowledge." (Wolf p. 180) Even if we may be disinclined to accompany Tews to the end of her Jungian path, still we cannot but acknowledge that "the author [of a game] can imbed a worldview into the structure of the game itself, which is then 'lived out' by the player-character." (Wolf p. 109) With this in mind, we may note that a video game, and perhaps even more so a video game franchise, quite literally can become a myth cycle shared by its millions of players. The Castlevania and Final Fantasy series certainly fit this bill.

Most importantly we should take away from this section the point that video games indeed have this acculturating and socializing capacity, which may be the heart of our considerations in the following section.

Video Games as a Way of Life

To begin with, dispelling the popular image of the lone introverted gamer is our singular goal in this section. In so doing, we will reiterate that video gaming is an eminently social thing, capable of guiding and tying together peoples' lives as much as religion does. Afterward we will move on to address convergence and its bearing on the religious dimension of video gaming.

The Isolated Gamer. This stereotype continues to be probably the most common conception of video game players, perpetuated by legends of StarCraft players so immersed in their game and so obviously out of touch with the real world that they forget nourishment and rest and perish upon their keyboards. Against this mirage of the fatally ascetic loner we may look back to the origins of video gaming: the arcade. In "Hot Circuits" Rochelle Slovin notes the highly social character of arcade gameplay, though she also perpetuates the antisocial gamer image by contrasting the arcade with "solitary, home-based entertainment" (Wolf p. 145). To be fair, many players do spend an awful lot of time, often alone, playing video games. However, even the most time-consuming games, especially nowadays, are very social activities in various ways. Many, like StarCraft, are most popular for their multiplayer modes, in which several players, often over the internet, connect and play against each other. The ultimate iteration of this phenomenon, of course, is the massively multiplayer online game. T. L. Taylor devotes an entire book (Play Between Worlds) to EverQuest, one of the most popular massively multiplayer online role-playing games, set in a Tolkien-derivitive fantasy world. Were Taylor's book to be reduced to a single point, it would no doubt be: EverQuest is society. That is, social interaction serves as the very foundation of the game, as she argues throughout her work, and for many players is the point of their play. The richness of her argument cannot be reproduced here, so it must suffice to say that in this respect, certain kinds of games directly connect player to player. (Even outside the game, as in the case of the "Fan Faire" she attended.)

As suggested in our mythological section, video games also bring people together indirectly via mutual participation in the same game, even if not at the same time. This accounts for another broad sort of video game socialization, which above we suggested has a potentially religious dimension. Tews, speaking of the continuation of gaming habits into adulthood, notes "for many younger families gaming is a form of interactive family entertainment and a cultural tradition shared between generations from infancy on." (Wolf p. 171) To add another facet to the religious resemblance of this socializing phenomenon, which brings people together in participation much like religion and its ritual, we may recall Rappaport's note that ritual entails acceptance of an invariant sequence not encoded by the participant. In this case, the game itself is the sequence, encoded by designers, accepted by the player so long as they continue to play, and even passed down generation to generation, as Tews observes. While this may constitute merely a formal resemblance, we should be interested to find out whether this religious aspect goes any deeper. In any case, even if the religious dimension be rejected or disproved, the social dimension cannot be, and thus the illusion of video gamers' introverted isolation should fall away.

Convergence is not one of our primary topics, so we shall only say in passing that it illustrates the increasing mediation of the "real world" by the game. Taylor & Kolko's look at the unusual game Majestic (in "Boundary Spaces") shows a fine example of many media converging to create the game world, which fuzzily interpenetrated the players' "real lives." This sort of convergence is on an entirely different level than the more conventional sort, demonstrated by Ewan Kirkland in "Restless Dreams in Silent Hill" or Jane Park in "Cultural and Formal Convergence in Final Fantasy: The Spirits Within." Kirkland focuses on video games' use of cinematic conventions, while Park examines the phenomenon of movies based on video games. The sort of convergence Majestic created, however, remains rare. What would interest the scholar of religion and video games would be convergence which on one hand disseminated content connecting various aspects of players' lives, much as does religious content, and more importantly, on the other hand constituted a new sort of mediated experience – one of immersion and presence and simulation; in other words, a convergence of media and content with an effect as radical as religion itself has always had. Precisely this convergence has been our focus in this and the previous section.

Meta-Examination of Video Games and Religion

"A theologia ludens" Miller wrote, "would view God as a player, man as a player" (Miller p. 158). Publishing his book in 1970, he probably never imagined the literal realization of this foundational element of his proposed theologia ludens in video games (Computer Space, the first coin-operated arcade game, would appear in 1971). Now we have real time strategy games like WarCraft or more paidic games like The Sims which give the player a god's-eye-view and allow him to control the tides of war and the banalities of everyday life. In Black and White, the player even becomes an actual god, good or evil, and sets about the task of amassing followers. Many video gamers presently look forward to Spore, a game holding the promise of letting the player become western science's secular creator god (remember, video games communicate ideology).

But in 'god-games' there is no in-game representation of the player. Such games only put man the player in the place of God the player, thus keeping "God as a player" and "man as a player" separate, and constituting an imitation of God's game by man. Even more powerful is the player's becoming an avatar of God. (Ironic that this was precisely the original meaning of avatar before the term was imported to refer to the in-game representation of the player; now it has come full circle.) When man the player grasps the controller and begins to play in the myth-like game world, his control of the in-game character representing him gradually joins him to that character, who, like a mythical hero, is a sort of god already. "The interactive medium of video games allows us to join the story in progress and become one with the quest" Tews observes. "Regardless of whether the game involves dueling adversaries, a quest for treasure, or simply perfection of a skill – the games themselves become symbolic of our own quest to self-actualize, our quest to become better than we currently are." (Wolf p. 175 - 176) At bottom, perhaps this is the most salient consequence of video games' resemblance of religion: through playing video games, as through playing the religion game, a sort of learning may be achieved through an identification in which man becomes the quester. Man the player becomes the avatar of the god as whom he plays.

Annotations

Aarseth, Espen. "Playing Research: Methodological approaches to game analysis." DAC conference, Melbourne, May, 2003.

Aarseth's purpose here is to distinguish the video game as its own distinct art form – rather than regarding it as subsumable to the conventions of film studies, for instance, as often is the case – and to provide a method for analyzing it as such. With his first step in this direction, he puts forward the term "games in virtual environments" to put an end to disputes over what exactly constitutes the object of 'video game' studies. He proposes that all games of this type possess three critical dimensions: gameplay (having to do with the player), game-structure ("the rules of the game," which when it comes to video games more or less means the game engine), and game-world (the content of the game, both in terms of things like the story and the characters as well as incidental parts of the game's virtual world itself like the layout of levels and the textures mapped onto three-dimensional polygons). Aarseth further suggests that each of these three dimensions is particularly suitable for analysis by certain disciplines in particular: gameplay by sociology and psychology; game-rules by computer science and game designers; game-world by art history, cultural studies, and so on.

In addition to this tripartite model, Aarseth moreover insists that of the three ways to study a particular game (talking to the designers, watching others play, and playing oneself), first-hand experience of playing the game is paramount. He mentions Bartle's famous four types of players in order to discuss different play styles, segueing into a consideration of the use of guides and walkthroughs by video game scholars (which leads him to propose a fifth player type, the Cheater). With these considerations he means to guide scholars in their decisions of how to play games in order to study them.

Aarseth, Espen, "Quest Games as Post-Narrative Discourse." Narrative across Media. Ed. Marie-Laurie Ryan. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 2004. 361 - 376.
As the title suggests, here Aarseth once again endeavors to free video game studies from being bound up with the methodology of disciplines developed for other media. Specifically, he argues that analyzing video games simply as stories is not only formally inappropriate but actually detrimental to the analytical effort's success. While making this case by way of examining the nature of the quest in three different games, Aarseth puts forward the notion of games' narrative structure corresponding to more or less (un)alterable strings of beads, each bead representing the part of the game in which the player may move at a given time, while the string (sometimes more like a tree branch, however, if not a spider web) represents the complete structure of the whole game. This string-of-pearls model helps to illustrate the nature of some video game narratives, providing a way to distinguish them from film or literary narrative.

Crogan, Patrick, "Gametime: History, Narrative, and Temporality in Combat Flight Simulator 2." The Video Game Theory Reader. Eds. Mark Wolf and Bernard Perron. New York: Routledge, 2003. 275 - 301.
This chapter uses the example of Combat Flight Simulator 2 to illustrate the interrelatedness of historical representations and contemporary cultural milieux as they come together in such video games. While the article would likely be of greatest interest to the video games scholar with an eye to history, for our project it is worth noting for its point that video games serve on more levels than one as training devices for the player. This notion not only has ludological significance, but gains our attention in considering the mythological aspects of video games as well.

Frasca, Gonzalo, "Simulation versus Narrative: Introduction to Ludology." The Video Game Theory Reader. Eds. Mark Wolf and Bernard Perron. New York: Routledge, 2003. 221 - 235.
Frasca touches on numerous points worth mention in this chapter, but central to the piece is, of course, his discussion of simulation, which he contrasts with the previously more common phenomenon of representation. Touching on Callois' pivotal classificatory categories, Frasca goes on to suggest a three-level model for simulations' capacity to "convey ideology." All in all, this chapter proves a useful addition to our ludological battery, as well as giving some food for thought regarding the broader implications of the growing prevalence of simulation.
Grodal, Torben, "Stories for Eye, Ear, and Muscles: Video Games, Media, and Embodied Experiences." The Video Game Theory Reader. Eds. Mark Wolf and Bernard Perron. New York: Routledge, 2003. 129 - 155.
The author herein presents video games as successors in a line of storytelling media, while avoiding subsuming them entirely to the conventions of their predecessors. Most interestingly, Grodal recognizes certain aspects of video game storytelling which set the medium apart, notably the necessity of player participation to move the progression forward. As such, this piece represents a point of contact between our ludological and mythological inquiries.

Kirkland, Ewan. "Restless dreams in Silent Hill: approaches to video game analysis." Journal of Media Practice 6:3 (2005): 167 - 178.
Kirkland's article serves as an excellent example of analyzing a video game in terms of other media (perhaps much to Espen Aarseth's chagrin). Basically his purpose in this piece is to demonstrate the reliance on the cinematic conventions of horror film evident in the Silent Hill series of games, as well as point out the fairly linear narrative development built into these games. Our interest in this article lies chiefly in its illustration of the "intertextuality" of video games, a point considered in our examination of video games as a 'way of life.'

Lauwaert, Maaike, Joseph Wachelder, and Johan van de Walle. "Frustrating Desire: On Repens and Repositio, or the Attractions and Distractions of Digital games." Theory, Culture & Society 24 (2007): 89 - 108.
In this article the authors are revisiting Roger Callois' Les Jeux et les hommes and its oft-cited system of classifying games by the four types of agon, alea, mimicry, and ilinx, and the spectrum of paidia and ludus. While the article does not explicitly draw any connections to religion, it does serve as an excellent starting point for the ludological portion of our project's inquiry. This all the more so because the article begins by briefly contextualizing Callois' work in relation to Lévi-Strauss' thoughts on playing games, as well as Johan Huizinga's Homo Ludens.

The authors' contribution in this article lies primarily in pointing out first that Callois' classifications may still be usefully applied to contemporary video games, and second in suggesting how those classifications need to be adapted in order thus to be applied. In a word, they assert that while Callois never foresaw games in which certain combinations of his categories were possible, video games (like their example, Final Fantasy X) have opened the way for such unforeseen combination because of their dynamic temporal structure. To integrate this aspect into Callois' framework, the authors coin the terms repens and repositio to stand for "surprise" and "(forced) retry" respectively. The balance between repens, drawing the player to continue playing, and repositio, forcing the player to go back and try again, bears critically on a game's (re)playability. The authors demonstrate how this analysis may be applied to various sorts of games, and conclude with fascinating comments about video games and learning.

Lee, K. M., Jin, S., Park, N., and Kang, S. "Effects of Narrative on Feelings of Presence in Computer-Game Playing." International Communication Association, New York, May, 2005.
The authors of this piece employ genuine scientific methodology to explore the relation between narrative and presence, “a psychological state in which virtual objects are experienced as actual objects in either sensory or non-sensory ways.” They report on a series of experiments which more or less substantiated their underlying thesis: a fleshed-out narrative background bolsters feelings of presence in video game players. In this regard, the article proves a valuable piece of the discussion of narrative and gameplay, which concerns us tangentially in countering the assertion that religious content in video games is merely a matter of style or flavor, and moreover bears on our consideration of video games as a myth media. Additionally, the discussion in this piece of the various kinds of presence adds a good deal to our ludological framework.

McMahan, Alison, "Immersion, Engagement, and Presence: A Method for Analyzing 3-D Video Games." The Video Game Theory Reader. Eds. Mark Wolf and Bernard Perron. New York: Routledge, 2003. 67 - 86.
This chapter, true to its title, considers various aspects of the qualities video games possess which conduce to the player's forgetting they are having a mediated experience. In this regard the piece nicely complements the brief discussion of 'presence' in Lee et al's scientific report. Moreover, though, this piece emphasizes the importance of the social dimension of bringing about immersion and feelings of presence, a point which brings our ludological inquiry into significant contact with our analysis of video games as ways of life.

Miller, David. Gods & Games: Toward a Theology of Play. New York: Harper & Row, 1973.
Miller's book is a bit outdated to be centrally useful to the present project, and occasionally the text borders on being outright asinine, but nonetheless some interesting ideas are bandied about by the author. The bulk of the book's first half is devoted to a lengthy review of writings from various and sundry disciplines having anything to do with games and playing, and therein one finds a handful of points with which our project is concerned on several fronts, not least of which are learning through imitation and the performance of roles. For its age and all its levity, this work does demand attention as one of the few writings explicitly concerned with religion and games.

Park, Jane. "Cultural and Formal Convergence in Final Fantasy: The Spirits Within." International Communication Association, San Diego, 27 May, 2003.
Park's article focuses not on video games themselves, but on Final Fantasy: The Spirits Within, a computer-generated film produced by the makers of the prolific Final Fantasy franchise. Specifically, the article examines the phenomenon of a video game's quest narrative being translated into cinematic form, in contrast to the much more common opposite. For the most part this piece interests us as an indicator of the sort of convergence among media which video games are most involved in, and as such is worth noting in our examination of video games as ways of life.

Rehak, Bob, "Playing at Being: Psychoanalysis and the Avatar." The Video Game Theory Reader. Eds. Mark Wolf and Bernard Perron. New York: Routledge, 2003. 103 - 127.
While this chapter suffers some residual affliction of Freudian psychoanalysis, the author makes several interesting points about the nature of player mediation via the in-game avatar, a question of perennial interest. These ideas bear consideration in our meta-examination of the video game medium.

Slovin, Rochelle, "Hot Circuits: Reflections on the 1989 Video Game Exhibition of the American Museum of the Moving Image." The Medium of the Video Game. Ed. Mark Wolf. Austin: University of Texas Press, 2001. 138 - 154.
This piece is actually the author's reflections on a museum exhibit of classic arcade games originally organized in the late 1980s. On the whole it has little of direct pertinence to our project, but its consideration of the eminently social nature of early arcade game playing (contrasted with the supposedly relatively isolated nature of private play at home) is worth noting in our examination of video games as a way of life.

Taylor, T. L. Play Between Worlds. Cambridge: The MIT Press, 2006.
While the present project has explicitly avoided focusing on massively multiplayer online games, Taylor's book about EverQuest, one of the most popular MMORPGs, proves itself actually a very valuable contribution, one which demonstrates that we could easily have limited our research to MMO games alone and had quite as much work cut out for us. While Taylor addresses several aspects of MMO gaming, the most significant point her book makes concerns the social nature of video gaming, that is, her study strongly demonstrates the flimsiness of the popular image of the isolated gamer alone in the dark, with no social life to speak of. Her discussion of EverQuest social life serves as one example of video gaming as a way of life, and moreover, our project uses her demonstration of the social quality of certain kinds of video games as a stepping stone to assert the social nature of video gaming more generally.

Taylor, T. L., and Beth Kolko. "Boundary Spaces: Majestic and the uncertain status of knowledge, community and self in a digital age." Information, Communication & Society 6:4 497 - 622.
With the example of Majestic, a game utilizing various communications media – telephone, fax, instant messaging, &c. – to create an immersive conspiracy theory experience, this article aims to demonstrate the blurriness of the boundary between gameplay and 'real life,' particularly in terms of the boundary between "fake" in-game information and "real" or legitimate information ostensibly outside the game. The implications of this blurring of veracity interest us in our consideration of the video game as the myth medium. Additionally, of course, a game like Majestic serves as one manner in which video games can become a way of life.

Tews, Rebecca, "Archetypes on Acid: Video Games and Culture." The Medium of the Video Game. Ed. Mark Wolf. Austin: University of Texas Press, 2001. 169 - 182.
Tews presents a psychological perspective on video gaming, surveying a handful of possible approaches to the phenomenon. Of these, she favors Jungian psychoanalysis, perhaps a curious choice, but one which yields the rich result of reading video games in terms of the presence of archetypal characters therein (from Pac-Man the sun god to Lara Croft the über-anima). Needless to say, this perspective weighs heavily in our examination of video games as myth media. Tews' thoughts on the social effects of video games also interest us in various sections of our project.

Wolf, Mark, "Narrative in the Video Game." The Medium of the Video Game. Ed. Mark Wolf. Austin: University of Texas Press, 2001. 93 - 111.
In this chapter, as elsewhere, Wolf takes the more common standpoint of considering video games in light of the conventions of other media, notably film. (In contrast to Espen Aarseth, who insists upon the independence of the video game as a medium and art form.) Wolf lays out a historical examination of the development of games' diegetic worlds – "the 'world' seen on screen, where the characters exist and where the story's events occur." This chapter is marked by a focus on interactivity, which interests us across the board in our project's various lines of inquiry.

Wolf, Mark, "Genre and the Video Game." The Medium of the Video Game. Ed. Mark Wolf. Austin: University of Texas Press, 2001. 113 - 134.
Again, Wolf imports the practice of classification by genre from literary and cinema studies for application to video games. As in the previous chapter, Wolf is set on illustrating the significance of interactivity. In the course of discussing this essential quality of video games, Wolf makes an interesting point or two bearing somewhat on our ludological and mythological considerations; however, his primary purpose in this chapter is presenting a relatively useless and rather obsolete list of video game genres based on the sort of interaction involved.

Magic Cards as Icons

2010-02-18T12:17:00.000-08:00

To wrap up our series of posts on Magic: The Gathering, we'll change gears and consider one perhaps less substantive but nevertheless fascinating aspect of the game which occasionally has some overlap with religious imagery. Magic cards' art is for many players and collectors an important attraction, and sometimes the primary attraction to the game. Indeed, when I first encountered Magic in elementary school, I never had any idea how to play, but collected the cards for their art.

Magic cards' frame necessarily presents the card art in a very focused manner which strongly draws the viewer's attention to the image framed by the card. Especially in the case of creature cards, a singular portrayal of the subject is usually the most clear and understandable. Often the creature represented by the card is portrayed in the art in action or motion:

Fig. 1: Guul Draz Vampire

The subject, while totally central, is presented as occupied, not addressed to the viewer or facing outward from within the frame. However, in some cases the subject appears not only central but unoccupied, posed to be seen by the viewer, and perhaps even looking directly at the viewer. Particularly with illustrations of female characters, this kind of art almost resembles a sort of pin-up (and naturally some collectors take interest in cards with particularly risqué illustrations). Consider, for instance:

Fig. 2: Jaya Ballard, Task Mage

Here the character, a sexy female, is portrayed striking an accentuating pose, and highlighted with eye-catching color and light which enhance her curvaceous figure. All in all, the head-on presentation is of a classic pin-up style. Similar presentations of masculine figures abound as well:

Fig. 3: Teferi, Mage of Zhalfir

Here too the figure is presented straight on against an unobtrusive background. The focus is exclusively on the figure itself, which is posed in such a way as to be more or less plainly frontally displayed.

Sometimes this "pin-up" style of character presentation meets with mythological subjects originally belonging to religious imagery. The most striking and apparent examples of such a combination are angels:

Fig. 4: Baneslayer Angel

Here the angel is presented from a wide angle, in all her majesty. This is often the case with angel cards, as with the most recent reprinting of Magic's original angel creature:

Fig. 5: Serra Angel (Magic 2010)

Here again we see the angel from afar, against an inconspicuous celestial background. The illustration invites the viewer to admire the angel's armor, sword, flowing hair, and especially her prodigious wingspan. In other cases, even the same creature may be portrayed from a closer perspective:

Fig. 6: Serra Angel (8th Edition)

This earlier reprint of the same angel creature depicts her closer-up, drawing the eye to the smaller details of her panoply and facial features.

Sometimes the iconic, or perhaps better, "icon-like" style of portraying a saintly creature is inverted:

Fig. 7: Lord of the Pit

Demon cards often employ the same icon-like presentation while turning the mythological subject matter on its head.

At least for some players or collectors, Magic cards themselves more than passingly resemble icons. Some with particular attachment to certain creatures regard those cards as lucky and will play them even when other cards might be better-suited to their deck. Certain particularly rare or highly valuable cards may be regarded and handled with especial awe and respect, though debatably this is due not to their iconic qualities but to their value.

More solid examples exist, however. I have met one player — and I have no doubt others share his outlook — who behaves as if the creatures represented by his cards are somehow substantially manifested by those cards. He claims that the creatures in a deck will grow dissatisfied with him if he should fail to play with that deck for too long a time, and that the deck will not play well until he has convinced the creatures of the deck that his affection and respect has not been removed from them.

Even more fascinatingly, I have known one player to actually carry a copy of a certain card (see figure 8) on his person at all times as an apotropaic device. While he is unconcerned with the card art, he believes carrying the card will apply its protective ability to him generally in a comparable fashion to that in which it does in a game.

Fig. 8: Platinum Angel

Generally I do not contend that regarding Magic cards as icons is a widespread phenomenon. However, if nothing else the superficial similarities between some cards and the icons which serve for many as devotional paraphernalia is interesting to observe. For some, clearly this similarity suffices to engender a response which we might consider religious.

MTG as Ritual, Part II: Player as Planeswalker

2010-02-10T10:16:00.000-08:00

Last week, we found that while still just a card game, Magic: The Gathering fits Rappaport's definition of ritual, which we established by checking the game's characteristics against the definition step by step. In order to cement an understanding of why Magic not only happens to fit a definition of ritual, but really works like ritual, we will today consider the issue from a different angle: the player's perspective.

Of course, the players are just people playing a card game. However, such a description is analogous to saying the congregation participating in the Eucharist are just people getting together to snack on bread and wine. I have had many a bread-and-wine snack (though usually with cheese as well, something sadly lacking from church services), and have also borne witness to the Christian communion, and I can readily say that the latter is not at all merely a snack. Anyone can tell the difference — or at least, that there is a difference — between Sunday service and a midnight monge.

But what is the difference? The service and the snack are readily differentiated by the ceremonial pomp which surrounds one and not the other, but the real difference lies in the nature of each behavior. The Eucharist is ritual, a snack is not. (Though the possibility of ritualized snacking is by no means denied.) Magic may be difficult to identify as ritual behavior because it isn't ceremonious, but we must bear in mind that ritual behavior need not be ceremonious or decorous, and indeed it often is not.

What differentiates the church service from the snack isn't just ceremoniousness or decorum, but the notional structure upon which the latter is built and which it supports: the ultimate sacred postulates and cosmological axioms which we discussed in the first post on Rappaport. A snack is just a snack, but in the Eucharist the performers participate in an extensive network of ideas which inform the ritual and the performers themselves.

While Magic lacks the ceremonial trappings by which ritual often is easily identified, it does possess the notional structure which involves the participants more deeply — or at least, it can involve them so. To illustrate this claim, let us return to very premise of the game.

Ultimately no one can deny that Magic is just a card game, but it is one with an idea behind it, whether or not players are inclined to give that idea much thought. Part of this idea is the notion of a world filled with accessible magical power, which can be channelled by spellcasters. Another part is the imagined dueling between spellcasters which constitutes the titular premise for a game of Magic, which indeed is still often called by players "a duel." However, this premise runs deeper still. The players are not only dueling spellcasters, but a special kind of sorcerer: they are planeswalkers.

We briefly mentioned planeswalking in our first post on Magic, back in October. There, we discussed how the game world of Magic doesn't consist merely of a single world, but innumerable worlds which are explored through more and more new cards printed over the years. The players assume the roles of planeswalkers, a rare order of spellcasters said to possess a special "spark" which, once ignited, allows them to travel between these many worlds at will. Collecting different spells from different worlds, planeswalkers form a powerful and varied magical arsenal. It is this notional role which the player assumes when they play a game of Magic, even if they don't give it any thought.

With this in mind, we can see the player placed in a pivotal position of participation with the cosmology of the game. Playing a game of Magic isn't just playing a card game — it's drawing on mana from the lands one has visited across far-ranging planar travels; summoning up creatures from those many worlds which one has bound to one's will to fight; slinging spells to burn the body of one's opponent, fracture their memory, drain their vitality, or crack their sanity; it's using all the magic at one's disposal to fight with a certain cosmological principle, or combination of cosmological principles, informing one's strategy, be it the order and justice of white mana, the chaotic and impulsive force of red mana, or any of the other three colors singly or together.

This aspect of the game is usually discussed under the heading of "flavor," and many players regard it as unimportant, while others (myself included) consider it indispensable. Consideration for flavor need not be made in order to play Magic, and indeed the strongest decks often use combinations of cards which don't make any kind of sense in terms of flavor. The game allows free combination of its thousands of elements as long as those combinations are mechanically functional, and regardless of whether they're conceptually meaningful, but the conceptual meaning nevertheless exists in the cards, and for many players constitutes the element of deckbuilding which attracts them most.

Whether a player thinks or cares about it, the game puts the player in the place of a planeswalker, and allows them to participate in the cosmos — the ordered world — which the game's conceptual elements create. To play a game of Magic is necessarily to participate in this order, even if one could care less about it. The structure of the game is premised on this conceptual order, and playing the game enlivens that order. Put another way: the ritual form of the game is built to embody the ideas which through performance of the ritual become unquestionably true in context of that performance. Playing Magic makes the players into planeswalkers as the players' energy in playing the game gives life to the game world.

MTG as Ritual, Part I

2010-02-03T10:03:00.000-08:00

Armed with a definition of ritual from our previous post, let us examine Magic: The Gathering in light of that definition, and see how the card game fits the bill. Recall Rappaport's definition of ritual:

"I take the term 'ritual' to denote the performance of more or less invariant sequences of formal acts and utterances not entirely encoded by the performers." (Roy Rappaport, Ritual and Religion in the Making of Humanity, 24. Italics his.)

We'll proceed through the definition one piece at a time, as before, beginning with "performance." Playing a game of Magic is indubitably a performance in the particular sense of the word we fleshed out in the last post. While the outcome of any given game is not scripted, and neither are the specific plays each player will make, nevertheless the game requires the players to carry out their actions according to its structure. One immediate objection may be that a game of Magic doesn't usually have an audience. Such an objection is on the face of it misguided in the assumption that a performance must be observed by anyone other than the performers, though it is easy to fall into this kind of assumption given the fairly stark separation between performers and observers which remains dominant in western theater. Additionally, however, this complaint misses the fact that the performers are themselves the audience in ritual, inasmuch as each participant observes their own participation as well as the participation of others in the ritual performance. Rappaport has a great deal to say on this point, for which see Chapter 4 in Ritual and Religion in the Making of Humanity.

Secondly, "more or less invariant" clearly is an apt description of a game of Magic, since every game must proceed according to the rules, regardless of the twists and turns of a particular game. Players always start with their life totals at 20 points, and once the player taking the first turn is determined, turn order always proceeds the same way (clockwise). Moreover, every turn has the same order of phases and steps in which players may take certain kinds of actions. Of course, not only does each individual game proceed differently, but certain cards allow for parts of the game structure to be provisionally altered. Nevertheless, these cards operate within that structure in their own right even as they temporarily and circumstantially change part of it. Every game of Magic is played according to the same rules.

As for "formal acts and utterances," little need be said for it to be clear that the entire game is a series of formalized actions and speech. Tapping a card (turning the card sideways) is a formal gesture indicating a change in the status of that piece of the total game system. Similarly, saying that one is "entering the combat phase" or that "at the beginning of the end step such-and-such an ability triggers" or "in response, I pay one red mana and cast Lightning Bolt" is to utter certain words according to certain forms which carry meaning in the context of the game. Playing Magic is formal, even if the atmosphere is a casual kitchen table and the players' garb sweatpants and tee shirts. (Remember the distinction between formality and decorum.)

Lastly, since players of Magic do not make the rules of the game, their sequences of more or less invariant formal acts and utterances are plainly not encoded by the players — that is, the performers — themselves.

So I've managed to fit Magic into a definition of ritual. So what? Sticking feathers up your butt doesn't make you a chicken, and finding a definition of ritual which happens to encompass a game like Magic doesn't make it religion. However, keep in mind two points:

Not all ritual is religious.
I'm not concerned to demonstrate that Magic is religious, but I have demonstrated that it is characteristically a ritual performance.

One of my objectives in writing these articles is to illustrate that the lines we draw in classifying one thing as religion and another as not-religion are hardly as sharp as we often tend to think. While I'm not inclined to identify Magic: The Gathering as a religion properly so-called, with its publisher Wizards of the Coast and official tournament organization the DCI (Duelists' Convocation International) cast as some kind of papacy, I can't ignore the ritual nature of the game itself and the cosmological character of much of the game's content.

It is that combination of ritual form and cosmological content which drew my interest to Magic as an object of study. Ritual which imparts and supports cosmology is characteristic of religion, and a card game is indeed a strange place to find something bearing the character of religion. While Magic may not constitute a complete religion, the fact that the game itself resembles religious ritual in certain respects is noteworthy and worth examining as we are doing here.

In the next post, we will consider Magic as ritual from the inside out; that is, from the player's perspective. In so doing we shall cement my contention that the game not only resembles, but actually and genuinely constitutes ritual.

201 Toolkit: Roy Rappaport on Ritual

2010-01-26T12:18:00.000-08:00

Once again we'll turn to Roy Rappaport's Ritual and Religion in the Making of Humanity, this time to examine the idea of ritual. It should come as no surprise that such a term is much-discussed, and definitions abound, offered by ranks of scholars in various disciplines. In the course of studying religion, I necessarily encountered several of these, and ultimately found Rappaport's superior. Of course, as I've mentioned before, I'm particularly fond of Rappaport. While I maintain he's my favorite theorist because his lens proved the most useful all around, nevertheless I'll admit my bias in his favor.

In any case, when I speak of ritual, it is with his definition in mind, a definition which he gives on page 24: "I take the term 'ritual' to denote the performance of more or less invariant sequences of formal acts and utterances not entirely encoded by the performers." (Italics his.)

Rappaport devotes a considerable number of pages to unpacking and explicating this beguilingly terse phrase, and as always I recommend that anyone interested in grasping it thoroughly should refer to his book. However, for our purposes it suffices to render the definition in layman's terms. To do so, let us consider its key parts one by one.

First, 'performance.' This word is itself responsible for the spillage of not a little ink on the part of anthropologists and other scholars. While for academics "performance" carries loads of complex meaning, for the most part the vernacular understanding of the word will do: to perform something is to carry out an action according to some specifications, as when one performs a dance or a play. One's specific actions are set beforehand.

Naturally, this brings us to the second point of interest: invariance. That is, in performing ritual, the performance is (more or less) the same every time the same ritual is performed. This year's Easter mass is for the most part just like last year's; today's misogi purification is basically identical to yesterday's. Note that Rappaport qualifies ritual as "more or less invariant", not absolutely invariant. Over time rituals clearly change (in response to the fourth-order pressures discussed in our last post on Rappaport), but they nevertheless tend to maintain as many of their details unchanged as possible.

Thirdly, speaking of those details, comes formality. Rappaport thoroughly explains this notion in the context of ritual performance (Ritual and Religion in the Making of Humanity, 33-36), but his simple explanation of formality as "adherence to form" will do for a basic understanding. Formality is simply acting in accordance to an extant form, though as Rappaport notes, formality doesn't necessarily entail decorum, as "The greeting behavior of teenagers for example, is formal in that it is stereotyped, but it is not particularly decorous, and the formality of some rituals ... may subsume or even specify, comic, violent, obscene or blasphemous behavior." [sic]

Finally, and perhaps most importantly: "not encoded by the performers." This is to say the formal actions specified for performance in a given ritual are not decided by the performers of that ritual. Someone participating in Nichiren Buddhist mantra chanting did not select the words of the mantra, nor set the manner in which the rhythm is drummed out; the bride and groom at a (traditional) Christian wedding don't pick the priest's words, nor choose to hold the ceremony in a church. In performing a ritual, the performers are carrying out details which were one way or another passed down to them, not chosen by the performers themselves.

To bring all these points back together, and give a definition in plainer words: ritual is carrying out actions adhering to certain forms and according to specifications set by somebody else, with more or less no change from one instance to the next. At this point the definition may seem hopelessly broad, but nevertheless it remains sound.

It may also be worth noting, as Rappaport does, that not all ritual is necessarily religious. However, being able to identify instances of ritual behavior which are not religious (which may be a tricky line to draw in the first place) doesn't detract from the effectiveness of the definition. Indeed, when we take another look at Magic: The Gathering in light of this definition, we may find religion a little harder to draw lines around.

Mana Matters, Part II: Five Color Cosmology

2010-01-20T12:08:00.000-08:00

As noted in our initial post on Magic, mana exists in five colors (red, green, white, blue, black) produced by the five types of basic lands (mountain, forest, plains, island, swamp). Each of these colors possesses a distinct set of characteristics, and in terms of gameplay, spells using certain colors of mana tend to have access to particular sorts of effects which other colors generally may not.

In an extremely general sense, the five colors are associated with the following qualities, and are broadly characterized by the following effects:

Red - freedom, destruction: Red tends to specialize in attacking or using spells to cause direct damage to opposing players and their creatures. Red creatures often have the keyword ability "haste," which allows them to attack the same turn they come into play, while by and large creatures cannot attack until the turn after. Red also specializes in "burn spells" which directly deal damage as a one-time effect.
Green - growth, abundance: Perhaps not surprisingly, green holds a fair monopoly on spells which allow players to get more lands into play faster than normal, as well as many creatures which themselves have abilities allowing them to produce mana, especially forest-dwelling elves whose close connections to the land enable them to draw on its power for the player who summons them. (Interestingly, such creatures often have the creature type "druid.") In addition to spells which accelerate the availability of land or cause creatures to 'grow' and become temporarily stronger and tougher, green also has access to a wide range of powerful creatures, often in the form of large beasts. In some parts of the game world, such behemoths are regarded not just with respect, but with worship.
White - order, community: If green is the color of untamed jungles and hunter-gatherers, than perhaps white is the color of a settled agrarian society. White creatures are often small, but effective in groups (a strategic archetype known as a "white weenie" deck), though white is also known for its larger and more powerful (but more expensive in terms of mana cost) law-bringing angels. White also fields a wide class of spells to enforce its orderly tendencies: some bind individual creatures, preventing them from attacking; some destroy enchantments or artifacts which alter the rules of the game; some exile an offensive creature from the game more or less completely; and some even wipe the entire board clean of all creatures, or all lands, or both, to return the game to an unsullied state in which order may be reestablished.
Blue - intellect, control: Blue values use of knowledge to one's own advantage above all else. The color is best known (and despised) for its vast array of counterspells, which nullify the spells of other players before they can resolve. Blue also specializes in spells and abilities which allow a player to draw cards in addition to the normal one per turn, or even search their deck for a particular card (though the latter ability is shared in some measure by the other colors as well). This extra card drawing represents having greater or faster access to the knowledge of one's spells. On the other hand, blue also is fairly strong in forcing opposing players to discard cards from their hands, or put cards from the top of their deck directly into their discard pile (called the "graveyard"), which action is colloquially called "milling." Milling and forced discarding of cards both represent a sort of invasive mental destruction. Blue is generally not the strongest color in terms of creatures meant for directly attacking opponents, but blue creatures are often illusions which tend to have evasive abilities (such as being unblockable), or may have other useful abilities which open other strategies. Blue also is best-equipped to control the minds of other players' creatures, stealing control and letting the opponents' own minions take out their masters.
Black - death, sacrifice: Black is all about the pursuit of power at any cost, even one's own life. Black spells often require sacrifices in exchange for power: losing life points to draw cards, discarding cards as an additional cost to cast a creature spell, or literally sacrificing creatures you control in order to gain some benefit, or to appease some more powerful creature. Demons are the iconic creatures of the color, and are usually expensive creatures with a great deal of power, but with diabolical drawbacks. Black also possesses the abilities of milling and forced discard, but in this color these mechanics are often portrayed as the result of traumatic shock or horror rather than mental invasion.

These five colors provide a schema for classification not only of types of in-game effects, but also of personalities and characteristic strategies. As such, each color is considered allied or opposed to each of the other four colors. The allied color pairs are:

Red-green;
Green-white;
White-blue;
Blue-black;
Black-red.

Each of these pairs groups two colors with certain characteristic and strategic similarities. For instance, white and blue share the concern for controlling the game environment with removal or counterspells; black and red share the ability to directly damage or destroy opponents' creatures or directly cause opponents' loss of life; and so on.

The so-called "enemy" or opposed color pairs are:

White-red;
Red-blue;
Blue-green;
Green-black;
Black-white.

Similarly, these pairs' characteristics are internally opposed: red's passion chafes against white's constriction; green's growth struggles against black's decay; &c. However, multicolored cards are printed in each of these ten color pairs, including enemy colors.

In addition to these ten two-color pairings, five three-color groups also exist. A recent "block" of card sets explored the use of these three-color themes. The block, called Shards of Alara, centered on a plane which had been shattered into five separate worlds, each lacking two of the five colors of mana, and thus defined by the characteristics of one three-color group. These groupings, along with the associated world from Shards of Alara block, are:

Green-red-white (Naya);
White-green-blue (Bant);
Red-black-green (Jund);
Black-blue-red (Grixis)
Blue-white-black (Esper).

These groups are listed with each world's primary color first — though Bant, for example, contains an admixture of white, green, and blue mana, white is the predominant force on that plane and best characterizes the plane as a whole. Each grouping contains both the colors allied to its primary color, though those two colors themselves are opposed. These synergistic triplets allow for yet another level of mana-based organization and characterization.

What, then, do we make of this color wheel order? My proposition and purpose in describing this organization is that the five colors of mana provide Magic with a cosmology, a systematic representation of how the world functions and is organized. (Refer to our earlier post about Roy Rappaport's fourfold hierarchy if you'd like a refresher on cosmological axioms.) This cosmology not only informs the mechanics of the game itself, but constitutes part of a bona fide ritual system in which each player necessarily participates when they play the game.

Before pursuing this contention, we will next pause to arm ourselves with an understanding of what constitutes ritual.

Mana Matters, Part I: This Land

2010-01-13T12:51:00.000-08:00

In our previous post on Magic: The Gathering, we noted the naturalistic concept of mana which underlies both the premise and mechanics of the game. Today, we will begin examining this particular facet of Magic, with an eye for the religious implications of this fundamental concept of the game.

The word "mana" comes from the Maori language, and refers to a pervasive spiritual force which accumulates in animate and inanimate objects. Somewhat by extension, the word has come to be used to mean controllable magical power, and it is with this connotation that "mana" became a common term in modern fantasy literature and games. In the latter context it usually denotes the actual "magic points" available to the player, as is the case in Magic.

The first thing to note about mana in Magic is its association with land. While several kinds of cards may allow players to obtain mana, the most basic and by far the most prevalent way is to tap a land one controls. As mentioned in our earlier post, basic land cards represent a spellcaster's bond to a particular place, a physical locale they've visited and to which they've established a connection. Here's one of the five types of basic lands:

Fig. 1: Forest

Once, basic lands' text boxes used to specify in words that the card was to be tapped for mana (like this), but eventually this function of land cards came to be taken for granted, and for several years basic land cards have been printed only with the appropriate mana symbol in their text box. (Occasionally, some basic lands have been printed with no text boxes at all, featuring larger art instead.)

This Forest card represents the player's mana bond with an actual forest they've notionally visited and connected with somewhere in the vast game world. To play this card is to open a link with that land, and to tap it (an action indicated in-game by turning the card sideways) is to draw upon that link and summon up mana from that place, wherever it is. The more land cards one plays over the course of a game of Magic, the more mana bonds one has readied, and the more magical stuff is at one's disposal to cast spells.

So far, we've seen that the game's mechanical device representationally reproduces the animistic idea of living land as a source of spiritual or magical power. Next time, we will expand on this simple observation to take into account the five colors of mana produced by the five types of basic lands, and the cosmology implied by the classification of all phenomena according to those five colors' characteristics.

Long Horizon

2010-01-06T09:53:00.000-08:00

We will return to a regular posting schedule in the near future. In the meantime, best wishes for the new year to all.

Magic on the Horizon

2009-10-13T14:27:00.000-07:00

Evidently unemployment has a beneficial effect on blogging.

Today, we'll go over some background information for our next series of posts, whose topic will by the collectible trading card game Magic: The Gathering. Released in 1993 and developed by mathematician Dr. Richard Garfield, Magic established the trading card game as a genre, and may safely be acknowledged as the most complex card game in the world, with about 15,000 unique game cards at present. In this game, two or more players combat each other using spells represented by cards which they've organized into decks. In theory players can build their decks using any of the cards printed since the game's inception (though different official tournament formats only permit the use of certain cards, banning or restricting the use of some), so the possibilities for deck building are broad indeed.

Generally a player wins the game by defeating all opponents. Players are usually defeated when their life total, which begins at 20 points, is reduced to zero. Damage or loss of life can be caused in numerous ways, usually through various sorcerous effects or by suffering attack from a summoned creature controlled by an opponent. Other spells alter conditions of the battlefield, creating strategic advantages and disadvantages.

A significant portion of each player's deck must also be composed of cards representing land, from which the player draws magical energy in order to cast their spells. This energy, called "mana," can be produced in other ways, but generally comes from land cards. The game features five basic land types — mountain, plains, forest, swamp, and island — each of which produces a particular color of mana — red, white, green, black, and blue, respectively. A player may only play one land card per turn, and generally each land card can only produce one mana of the appropriate color each turn. The fundamental premise behind land cards is the bond established by the spellcaster (that is, the player) with physical locales they've visited, a bond which allows the spellcaster to call upon a naturalistic power inherent in every kind of terrain, a sort of hylozoistic life-force.

These five colors of mana are each representative of certain attributes and characteristics. Red, for instance, is passionate and impulsive, valuing freedom and speed. Blue, on the other hand, is deceptive and illusory, valuing knowledge and control. Since spells' color is determined by the color(s) of mana required to cast them, different colored spells tend to have effects consistent with the characteristics of their color(s). Consider a classic red spell:

Fig. 1: Lightning Bolt

The top line of the card notes the spell's name, and gives its mana cost, the amount and color of mana required to cast the spell. Here, the single fireball symbol indicates the cost of one red mana. Below, each card features original art commissioned for the game. While functionally irrelevant to gameplay, card art is nevertheless of major importance to many players and collectors.

The next line under the art gives the card type on the left and the set symbol on the right. "Instant" is a kind of spell which can be cast at any time for a one-time effect. The set symbol indicates which set the card was printed in. Wizards of the Coast, publishers of the game, produce three or four new sets of cards each year, with each set containing between 150 to 250 cards. Some are reprints, while others are entirely new, but in any case set symbols determine the provenance of a particular copy of a card, which can be pertinent to its tournament legality.

Below the type line we find the text box, which contains information about what the spell actually does. In this case, Lightning Bolt has a fairly straightforward effect: direct damage which can be used either to chip away an opponent's life total or to damage a summoned creature. Additionally, the text box may contain italic flavor text, which also has no significance to gameplay, but has been a popular source of amusement since the game's beginning. Flavor text sometimes contains fragmentary information about the game world, including quotations from in-game characters who may themselves exist as playable cards.

This game world comprises a Multiverse of dimensions called planes, each a separate world more or less inaccessible to the others except by powerful spellcasters called planeswalkers who possess an innate ability to travel between planes. Each player of the game takes on the role of such a planeswalker, experiencing the various worlds explored in each new set of cards and collecting spells from these travels to add to their dueling repertoire. While the original set of cards sketched out Dominaria (sometimes "Dominia"), the central plane of the Multiverse, drawing on classical American and European fantasy tropes, subsequent sets of cards have drawn on other elements to create new planes with new flavor and new stories. Several comics and novels also continue to be published telling the stories of Magic in greater detail.

Over the coming days, our attention will turn to a number of particular points as we focus on different elements of this game. In particular, we will consider:

The naturalistic animism which serves as the game's underlying premise, and the associated mana cosmology;
The cards themselves as icons and sacred objects;
The game as a ritual system, and the place of the player-as-planeswalker in that system.

In the course of these discussions, I will assume at least moderate familiarity with the game on the part of my readers. As always, please ask any clarifying questions in the comments. Additionally, anyone wishing to learn more about the game can visit the Wizards of the Coast website here. The Wikipedia entry on Magic also contains more in-depth information.

More Cat Cosmology

2009-08-08T11:04:00.000-07:00

Long time no ranting, it seems. While I gather my wits to prepare the next concerted series of posts, whet your appetites on these morsels, some afters to the considerable meal that was our examination of Longcat.

Another feline of internet fame, known as Ceiling Cat, originally appeared in the following context:

Fig. 1: Ceiling Cat

The voyeuristic aspect of the cat watching from above seems to have conduced to a kind of deification. Perhaps the vigilant grimalkin resonated with the idea, expressed by many ancient thinkers, that spirits exist to watch over mankind to discourage evil deeds (or that they were invented to this end).

Fig. 2: Ceiling Cat as Sky God

Other images map familiar cosmological operations onto Ceiling Cat:

Fig. 3: Ceiling Cat Creates Man

And, not surprisingly, a counterpart to Ceiling Cat arose to fill the negative role in the dualistic cosmological system imported or inherited from the Abrahamic traditions:

Fig. 4: Cosmological Origin of Basement Cat

Basement Cat, as the cosmological counterpart to Ceiling Cat came to be known, is often depicted with the same grotesquery and horror as is the Devil in many artistic traditions:

Fig. 5: Basement Cat as Devourer of Souls

Occasionally, however, Basement Cat is depicted in a seemingly more innocuous yet still sinister fashion:

Fig. 6: Basement Cat as Seed of Evil

Interestingly, since Ceiling Cat and Basement Cat have assumed the same potentially apocalyptic cosmological roles of light and dark as Longcat and Tacgnol, some iconographic conflation has occurred between the two pairs of feline adversaries:

Fig. 7: Conflated Icons

Note how the conflict over "our souls" — which Basement Cat delights in consuming — has been made paramount, even as the image (actually of Longcat and Tacgnol in confrontation) stresses the clash of the two long cats on even ground. Ceiling Cat and Basement Cat necessarily are portrayed one above the other, though perhaps we can accept the implication that they would meet on a level field for their "Final Battle."

In any case, here we find different felines embodying a different ultimate sacred postulate — one to the effect that people possess souls which may either rise up to Ceiling Cat or fall into an abyssal depth to be eaten by Basement Cat. Some imagery suggests the fate of our souls in this system depends to some extent upon our conduct in life:

Fig. 8: Memento Mori

This image appears to advise us to eschew the pleasures of life, lest they lead us into the basement of damnation.

All this serves as an outstanding example of how an old religious idea system can clothe itself in new imagery and yet essentially maintain its conceptual structure relatively unchanged.

Longcat: Religion?

2009-07-13T14:08:00.000-07:00

In the last two posts, we considered the possibility of a religious idea system based on the internet phenomenon Longcat, first drawing out the ultimate sacred postulate "Longcat is long," then examining the cosmological axioms which arose around this postulate. We have made our way from the top of Roy Rappaport's theoretical hierarchy down to the middle. Recall from our first overview of Rappaport that beneath second-order cosmological axioms are third-order rules of conduct and fourth-order on-the-ground conditions. In a way, these third and fourth tiers are where the real doing of religion takes place: in the rules and prescriptions for what to actually do on account of the cosmology outlined above, and in the pressures which feed back into the religious system from adherents where the ideas meet real-world conditions.

Perhaps, then, it will come as no surprise to observe that this is where the Longcat idea system falls short. As far as I know, there is no Longcat religion (yet), despite the viable ultimate sacred postulate we've identified and the healthy cosmology which has developed around it. Despite these high-level components of a religious conceptual hierarchy, there are no third-order rules of conduct — no commandments, no restrictions, no prescriptions, not even gentle suggestions — and without these there can be no fourth-order conditional pressures because there is nothing which may be responded to.

Aside from a somewhat unsatisfactory conclusion (what did you scroll through those enormous Longcat images for, after all?), this observation leaves us mostly with new questions. Specifically, we might be curious about the possibility of the stunted Longcat idea system developing into a full-fledged religion. Could there come to be rules of conduct associated with the sacralized cosmology of Longcat? Certainly, there could be. But what might these be, and how might they arise? Perhaps a charismatic figure would take it upon himself to devise a set of strictures by which one should live for the greater glory of Longcat, and become the dangling feline's first prophet. Or perhaps the third tier would develop more gradually and organically, as certain rules grow out of mimetic practices concerning images of Longcat itself — if, for instance, 4chan posters should start to post a small image of Longcat every time they posted to any forums at all, or if it became some kind of common devotional practice to imitate the elongation of Longcat with one's own pets, just as originally gave rise to Tacgnol.

Fig. 1: Longcat Mimesis

More generally, this finding leads us to ask the same sorts of questions of developing religious systems more broadly. How do new religious take shape? What does a religious idea system look like in an intermediate state of development? How does such a developing religion continue to grow? While the answers to these sorts of questions are probably not all "Like Longcat," it is nevertheless interesting to observe such development around so peculiar a thing as a photograph of a dangling house-cat.

Keep your eye out for the earliest generation of Longcat devotees, and let me know if you come across a revelatory Book of Longcat or anything like that. In the meantime, on to other strange places.

Longcat: Cosmology

2009-07-02T09:39:00.000-07:00

Having familiarized ourselves with Longcat and the implications of ultimate sacrality in the postulate "Longcat is long," today we will consider the feline internet phenomenon through the second tier of Rappaport's fourfold lens. Recall that below ultimate sacred postulates Rappaport ranks cosmological axioms: ideas about how the world is structured and functions in light of the ultimate sacred postulates which stand above such axioms. As we noted in our first discussion of Rappaport, cosmological dualisms are particularly good examples of such axioms, and in Longcat's case a readily apparent dualism exists.

Tacgnol

As many cat owners will be well aware, most cats, when dangled from beneath the forelegs as Longcat is in the original photograph, will indeed prove quite long themselves. As such, it should come as no surprise that another cat photographed in the same pose could arise as a counterpart to the first Longcat. The internet has indeed produced such a counterpart:

Fig. 1: An Opposite to Longcat

The image of the black cat, eyes aglow reflecting the camera's flash, first appeared independently, later being combined in the above juxtaposition. The caption indicates that the simple placement of the two cats side by side is enough to imply a sort of dualism of contest, or rather that such a dualism was readily able to be projected upon the diptych. Indeed, the straightforward comparison of the two cats led to a magnification of the conflict implied by the caption unto epic proportions:

Fig. 2: Longcat vs. Tacgnol

The alternation of light and dark is probably the most readily accessible dualism to mankind. This now-famous image, commonly known as "Longcat Apocalypse," maps this natural dualism onto Longcat and its shadowy counterpart, who became known as Tacgnol ("Longcat" spelled backwards).

While I cannot say that I have ever heard it said that "Tacgnol is long" in the same ultimate sacred sense as "Longcat is long" (though I may have heard "Tacgnol si gnol"), the dark cat nevertheless seems able enough to stand as a cosmological counterpart to Longcat, and indeed we may speculate that it was necessary for it to do so. Longcat's sacred presence may have created something of a cosmological vacuum. That is, since the white and shining Longcat could so easily be assigned the cosmological value of "light," the very possibility necessitated the hypothetical figure of a similar entity to assume the opposite cosmological role.

It is interesting to note in this regard that Longcat's primary cosmological quality is "light" rather than "long." Some attempt was made to produce a counterpart to Longcat which was more of a true opposite, namely the morbidly obese Widedog. While it seems Widedog has a small but devoted following, generally the fat pooch has not become as prolific a match for Longcat as Tacgnol. I believe two good reasons for this exist. Firstly, while "light" and "dark" are not only easily recognizable but moreover abundantly familiar cosmological characteristics, the same cannot be said for "long" and "wide." Though these qualities are formally suitable candidates for a cosmological dualism of some kind, they simply have never done duty as such (at least to my knowledge), probably because the pair does not suggest itself so clearly as light and dark, which are naturally manifested in the alternation of day and night. Secondly, employing Longcat's length as its cosmological attribute would be problematic because that very length is profoundly connected to the ultimate sacred postulate which sets Longcat up to assume a cosmological role in the first place. Longcat's being long is its ultimate sacred quality. Cosmologically opposing Longcat's length to Widedog's width would be to suggest that that length can somehow be compared with or contested by something else, which is tantamount to calling the ultimate sacred postulate into question. Longcat's source of sacrality would be destabilized. Widedog thus has no place within the religious idea system of Longcat. If anything, it could only be a separate idea system of its own — a heresy.

Tacgnol, on the other hand, is able to be cosmologically juxtaposed with Longcat because, like Longcat, Tacgnol is also long (or, as I suspect cultists of the Dark Cat insist it be pronounced, "gnol"). Its presence does not threaten the ultimate sacred basis of the idea system of which it is a part. Moreover, as Rappaport reminds us, new religious ideas are seldom (if ever) made of completely new material. Tacgnol embodies the tried-and-true cosmological quality "dark" just as easily as Longcat embodies "light." The two cats are thus a stable and easily comprehensible cosmological duality.

While the original Longcat vs. Tacgnol diptych's caption and the apocalyptic portrayal of the two cosmologized felines facing off over the insignificant tininess of human sprawl both suggest a cosmology of confrontation, other imagery portrays their opposition as a harmonious one:

Fig. 3: Longcat-Tagnol Taiji

This adaptation of the familiar taiji (太極) symbol portrays the cats as the two dualistic elements of a greater unity. We might note that in both portrayals — the confrontational "apocalyptic" mode and the harmonious "coextensive" mode — a preexisting cosmological framework is borrowed and the paired cats fitted into it: the apocalyptic mode puts the cats in the places occupied by light and dark cosmological entities in Zoroastrianism or in Christianity (or any of many other traditions which share this archetypal collocation), while the coextensive mode of the taiji simply slots Longcat and Tacgnol into the roles of yang (陽) and yin (陰) respectively, roles which themselves are fundamentally those of light and dark. Another image in the coextensive mode indeed just puts stylized figures of the two side by side:

Fig. 4: Stylized Longcat & Tacgnol

However, juxtaposition with Tacgnol is not the only popular portrayal of Longcat with cosmological overtones.

Longcat Transcendent

In the previous post I promised that I would only post an image as absurdly large as the 15,200-pixel extended Longcat once more. Now I must fulfill that threatening vow.

Before viewing the below image, note that in the manner it is here presented, it is somewhat backwards. That is, as the "START" tag at the bottom explicitly tells us, the image is meant to be read from bottom to top. I suggest the reader scroll down and do so before continuing.

Also note that, as is the case with many images from the internet, this bizarre graphical smorgasbord probably contains something you might be inclined to find offensive (or at least gross). Please bear in mind that as scholars we must be respectful of the religious imagery we study, and of the conceptions of the universe reflected therein. As this image represents the entire cosmos, it is only natural that some parts of it may be found unpleasant. As always, feel free to register any and all of your thoughts about our subject matter by posting your comments.

Fig. 5: Longcat Spans All Cosmos

Although it is very clear where to begin with this image, there is so much to be said that one finds oneself somewhat at a loss for words. As such, I will simply list a number of cosmologically salient points along the image before attempting to discuss it as a whole.

The image begins in Hell, with Longcat's feet firmly planted in a stylized fiery abyss identified by its impish population. This beginning is part of what I take to be the overall statement of the image: that Longcat spans, penetrates, and transcends all other cosmological systems.
Longcat passes through a number of classic video gaming environments, including an early Mario Bros. game and StarFox, locus classicus of the famous suggestion "Do a barrel roll!" (As well as "Use the boost to get through!") In my Junior Seminar paper on video games and religion (which perhaps I'll post sometime), I argued that video games were of interest to scholars of religion primarily because, like religious idea systems, they created mediated imagistic worlds and allowed people to interact with those worlds. As such, the shared culture of video games is much like the shared culture of religious adherents. From this perspective, the environments of Mario Bros. and StarFox are themselves cosmoses which Longcat transcends.
In a similar vein, Longcat briefly passes through the cosmos of Disney's Alice in Wonderland.
Before leaving the atmosphere, Longcat passes by a stereotypical figure of Christ standing on a cloud. (The stigmata evident on his raised left hand provides clear identification.) While the scene is otherwise an unremarkable sky, Christ's presence may indicate that it is to be taken as the Christian Heaven.
Before reaching an isolated sign indicating the end of the universe, Longcat penetrates a layer of green binary code on a black background, a motif reminiscent of The Matrix, here suggesting that Longcat breaks through the computer-generated reality of the film's cosmos.
Longcat passes by some graph paper with Einstein's relativity equation and some other math on it, seeming to burn the paper. While modern science claims to be fundamentally different from religious idea systems inasmuch as it tests its claims to truth empirically, it is nevertheless an idea system with its own notions of cosmos. I speculate that Longcat's burning by these mathematic scribblings intimates its transcendence of science along with every other ordered conception of the universe.
Erupting from a volcano, Longcat then emerges from the tundra which the smoke becomes. The dualism of hot and cold is transcended.
Passing through outer space, we appear to reach Longcat's head and forepaws meeting up with its feet planted in Hell, only to have the repeated bottom of Longcat drawn into a spiraling "wormhole" (again in outer space) and reemerging to continue its journey upward. I am uncertain whether the image may have originally ended here, with the wormhole being added later to segue into additional extensions.
Longcat blasts through some 4chan posts which themselves appear to have the image itself attached to them, as if Anonymous had posted the entire image (so far). Here the transcendence of the 4chan cosmos is explicit.
Longcat disrupts the Japanese video game Chu Chu Rocket (whose raucous TV commercial became a popular internet video clip), breaking through yet another cosmos, though a minor one.
Longcat pierces the throat of the Shoop Da Whoop face and becomes the beam it emits. This face is a prolific meme in its own right, another online god, who here is subsumed to Longcat.
Finally, Longcat's front end floats in a grey and featureless emptiness.

As these notes suggest, I regard the image as a whole to be a grand statement of Longcat's transcendence. Every ordered conception of the world — every cosmos — which the image presents is threaded through by Longcat, not only indicating that Longcat literally transcends all other conceptions of the world, but perhaps also suggesting that Longcat informs them even as it passes through them all. In this transcendent mode, Longcat trumps every other idea system's cosmos, spanning and breaking through Heaven and Hell, terrestrial and celestial planes, heat and cold, the real and the imagined, the ridiculous and the sublime, the empirical and the subjective, through all distinction, differentiation, and dualism — in a word, through all cosmological systems.

While Longcat still seems to be associated with the cosmological quality "light" in this image, Tacgnol is nowhere to be seen. Longcat is portrayed here trans-cosmologically, and indeed we may be compelled to regard this work as a sort of fetish or totem, than icon of the ultimate sacred postulate "Longcat is long." Tellingly, Longcat's head emerges in a featureless greyness, a non-dualistic void — the only place where the ultimate sacred postulate, itself over and above all cosmology, can be represented.

In sum, we have examined three cosmological modes in which Longcat is portrayed:

The apocalyptic mode, in which Longcat is paired in oppositional conflict with Tacgnol;
The coextensive mode, in which Longcat and Tacgnol are paired in harmonious reflection;
The transcendent mode, in which Longcat alone represents the ultimate sacred postulate "Longcat is long."

While such imagery is unquestionably cosmological, it remains to be seen whether Longcat can support a full-fledged cult, which is to say whether it can produce rules of conduct proceeding from its cosmology and the ultimate sacred postulate behind it. To this possibility our attention shall turn in the next post.

Longcat: Ultimate Sacrality

2009-06-18T15:53:00.000-07:00

In the unlikely event that you are on the Net, reading this post, and you are unfamiliar with Longcat, we shall begin with a brief introduction of perhaps the world's most famous feline. Astoundingly, Wikipedia seems not to have an entry for Longcat (yet), so my own general understanding of the phenomenon will have to do.

Longcat: Origins

In the not-too-distant past (though time flies faster online than in other places), a photograph of a man's hands holding up a white cat was posted on the Japanese imageboard 2chan, and before long found its way onto that site's American counterpart, 4chan. The original photograph is reproduced below:

Fig. 1: Longcat

On account of the cat's accentuated length in the image, it became known as "Longcat," and moreover gave rise to the associated exclamation "Longcat is long." (Or, as it is more often inscribed, "Longcat is LOOOOOONG." For this phrase and the habit of adjectival reduplication which it has engendered, see Urban Dictionary.) The image itself and the revelatory declaration of Longcat's length soon gained widespread popularity online, inspiring several variations on the theme, ranging from alternate Longcats (to be addressed in a future post) to the somewhat less popular Widedog.

Is Longcat Not Long?

We will be devoting a few posts to examining Longcat with our Rappaportian lens, though our focus to begin with will be less on Longcat itself than on the quality of its length. That is, today we shall consider the statement "Longcat is long" as an ultimate sacred postulate.

As a discursive object, "Longcat is long" possesses the primary formal characteristics of ultimate sacred postulates. While the statement's referent — the white cat — is not non-material or even empirically out of reach (like deities or world-pervading life forces), it is relatively inaccessible to the vast majority of people, except through available images. (We will address the issue of the referential accessibility of Longcat below.) Its content is minimal and vague: the postulate only tells us that Longcat is long, specifying neither exactly how long nor giving any standard of length against which Longcat may be measured. Because of this vagueness, the statement is by and large not subject to disproof — short of flatly rejecting the postulate altogether (and this is difficult on account of images which suggest that Longcat really is long), it cannot be proved that Longcat is not long. As such, the longness of Longcat becomes discursively unquestionable, which is to say it becomes sacred.

This sacrality could at least potentially be called into question because the original photograph of Longcat is widely available. Based on the image, someone with time to spare could probably make a fair estimate of how long Longcat actually is. With a discreet figure for Longcat's length emerges the possibility of comparison with other cats, which might demonstrate that Longcat is actually of only average length for felis domesticus, or — perhaps worse — that, even though Longcat may genuinely be quite long, other cats have been documented to be longer. (Though, as a believer in Longcat, I am obligated to note that the very idea is blasphemous and absurd.) In a word, because the postulate does have an actual material referent, and because this referent is at least hypothetically accessible and measurable, the postulate itself that "Longcat is long" could be empirically challenged.

However, the original photograph is not the only image of Longcat in wide circulation. (In fact it seems to be considerably less prevalent that many of its derivatives.) Consider this recapitulation of the original Longcat image:

Fig. 2: Longcat is Long

Here the original photo has been altered to extend the cat's length to obviously extraordinary proportions. While the image is a crude copy-paste job, it nevertheless presents itself as a photograph, a genre which purports to capture the genuine. By lengthening the original and presenting Longcat as truly and undeniably long, the author of this image has made the photograph into something of an icon, an image sacred because it embodies — even more undeniably and unquestionably than the original — that Longcat is long. At the same time, it retains something of the photographic quality of the original from which it was made, impressing upon the beholder some remnant of realism, however faint. While I hardly imagine such was the intent of the creator, I regard this image as a sort of defense against the discursive threat to "Longcat is long" posed by the degree of empirical accessibility which remains on account of the availability of the original photo.

Actually, I should say "this genre of images," for this is not the only such altered extension of the original Longcat. A quick search will also yield the following:

Fig. 3: Longcat is LOOONG

While I imagine some readers may find it tiresome to scroll through 15,200 pixels of copy-and-pasted Longcat, I feel the experience is necessary to understand the import of this image, probably the longest altered version of the original photograph. It truly speaks for itself. As an aside, I wonder if, for the creator of this image, the potentially tedious and repetitious process of producing the extended image, section by section, became some kind of devotional exercise. One can almost imagine a cloisterful of monks, piously hunched over their computers, painstakingly producing endlessly extended edits of Longcat while reciting the wisdom of Anonymous as scripture.

Simple extensions are not the only Longcat alterations to be found. Some put Longcat's length into illustratively absurd context:

Fig. 4: Stratospheric Longcat

More images of interest will be examined in the next post. These few exemplify the project to visually represent the postulate "Longcat is long" in such a way as to bolster its unquestionableness, its sanctity.

I welcome any corrections to this post's introduction from anyone more knowledgeable on the details of Longcat's origin.

Finally, I promise I will only post an image as huge as Fig. 3 one more time.

201 Toolkit: Roy Rappaport

2009-06-12T11:28:00.000-07:00

Roy Rappaport's Ritual and Religion in the Making of Humanity is the silver hammer in my theory and method toolkit. The year I took Religion 201 it was the last book on the syllabus, the final addition to our already extensive set of theoretical lenses. However, having only a week to read through almost the entire book (the last handful of chapters were not assigned, and I only read them later on my second pass through the book), and given the complexity of Rappaport's many arguments as well as the sheer density of his writing (which is excellent and eloquent), much of it simply went over my head. It wasn't until I was re-reading the 201 syllabus a year later in preparation for my junior qualifying examination that I revisited Rappaport and had a chance to not only read the entire work, but go over it much more carefully.

Among the many useful points to be drawn from Rappaport's magnum opus is what he calls the hierarchical dimension of liturgical orders, that is, of rituals. (His own definition of ritual will wait until another day.) His breakdown and explication of the four elements of ritual (which may be found in Ritual and Religion in the Making of Humanity, 263-276) may be extracted and applied to examine an idea system more broadly.

Rappaport's hierarchy is topped by ultimate sacred postulates, the most fundamental conceptual elements in religion. They are vague in content, generally not subject to empirical disproof, and therefore enduring. Rappaport argues that because ultimate sacred postulates are (at least apparently) unchanging, they acquire sanctity — that is, the quality of being discursively unquestionable — which they can lend to other concepts.

In other words, because ultimate sacred postulates are immune to falsification and seem eternally true to those who postulate them, they cannot be argued against (short of being outright rejected, of course). Moreover, they can imbue other ideas with this quality of unquestionableness. Rappaport's favorite example of an ultimate sacred postulate is the Shema, an originally Jewish declaration which is now shared by many branches of the Abrahamic tree. The Shema is the statement "The Lord our God the Lord is One." Even if one does not believe this to be true, there is hardly any way to disprove the postulation itself. Taking a step back, moreover, it is difficult to say what exactly this postulate postulates: what it means to say that God is One is (in this case, notoriously) unclear. Nevertheless, for those who do so postulate, the truth of this statement is indisputable and certain.

Below the apex of ultimate sacred postulates, Rappaport describes cosmological axioms, ideas about how the world (or perhaps better, the cosmos) is structured and how it functions. In Abrahamic terms these axioms include the dualism between good and evil and their corresponding cosmological locations, Heaven and Hell. Buddhism borrows much cosmology from earlier Indian traditions, describing the world centered around Mount Sumeru, an axis mundi which in turn leads up to the realms of the gods. In early China the dualism of yin 陰 and yang 陽 are clear examples, as is the system of five elemental phases (wuxing 五行) by which the world is temporally and spatially classified. These in turn may have their origins (or at least find a similar counterpart) in the cosmologically ordered world of the Shang 商 dynasty (the earliest pre-imperial Chinese kingdom for which textual historical evidence is available), which was inhabited by a host of directional and seasonal spirits. Systematic representations of the way the world is organized and in which it operates all fall into the category of cosmological axioms.

Such axioms in turn are followed by third-order rules of conduct, which are simply specifications for how to behave in light of the prevailing cosmological conditions. Because the one God is good and can forgive and absolve the blemishes of sin, for instance, He should be worshipped and prayed to. Or, since rebirth in the never-ending cycle of samsara is conditioned by karma, one should practice meditation and accumulate good karma in order to secure a better rebirth in one's next life; or (if one follows the Buddha), one should practice meditation in order to cut off all karmic outflows and attain to extinction in this very life, thereby escaping the endless suffering of death and rebirth. Or again, in early imperial China, a new dynasty should adopt the colors and musical tones appropriate to the elemental phase to which it corresponds in the cycle of conquering or the cycle of production. One way or another, rules of conduct prescribe what do to given the cosmological axioms which prevail in the world.

Finally, on the fourth level lie what Rappaport calls imported "understandings of the external world in the form of formal indices of prevailing conditions." (Ritual and Religion in the Making of Humanity, 266) These importations constitute the bridge between the outward influence of the understandings enunciated in ritual and religion, which move outward, describing the cosmological state of the world and prescribing how to act accordingly, and the practical conditions of life, which move inward, describing the psychological and physical condition of ritual participants or religious adherents, as well as other material and social conditions in their society.

This fourth level is best understood via illustrative example. In the modern Catholic church, for instance, the traditional Latin mass, perceived to be unpopular or too inaccessible to modern congregations, was replaced with a vernacular liturgy. In the history of Buddhism, in response to some schools of practice which insisted upon monastic abandonment of household life and intense meditative undertaking, other schools arose which promoted simpler practices to gain access to blessings and enlightenment, practices such as recitation of short prayers, spells, mantras, or even just the names of various Buddhas and bodhisattvas. This kind of praxis did not necessarily require monastic commitment, and thus was available to the laity. Or again, for an ancient Chinese example, in the Analects Confucius notes that while ritual prescriptions specify that a linen sacrificial cap is to be worn, the common practice was to wear a cap of silk, and since this was economical, it was permissible to do so.

In all these examples, something changes in response to the pressure of on-the-ground conditions. The pressure of those conditions is the essence of the fourth level of Rappaport's hierarchy.

In passing, it's worth noting that such changes as described above all preserve the adaptive elasticity of the overall system. For instance, when linen was too expensive, the use of silk allowed for the higher-level rule of conduct (that a special kind of sacrificial cap should be worn) to be preserved. Similarly, the advent of Buddhist recitation practices allowed for the rule of conduct 'pursue enlightenment' to be preserved among laypeople who could not or would not become monks in order to do so. As Rappaport reminds us, such adaptive changes always serve to preserve some more integral part of the whole system unchanged.

To review: ultimate sacred postulates; cosmological axioms; rules of conduct; indications of on-the-ground conditions. This will be on the quiz.

We'll try out an application of Rappaport's lens in the next post. In the meantime, please feel free to comment with any questions or ideas.

Religion 201

2009-06-12T11:04:00.000-07:00

Most of the analytical tools at my disposal to study religions were given to me in a course called Religion 201: Theory and Method in Religious Studies. A core departmental requirement, the semester-long class basically read a book per week, each one meant to be a lens through which one could examine subject matter. Our set of lenses came from several disciplines, including psychology, sociology, and anthropology. Prominent authors on the syllabus the year I took the course included William James, Emile Durkheim, Catherine Bell, and Clifford Geertz.

More than just publishing my own blabberings, I would like to share some of the tools I use with others, so you, dear reader, can see the oddities I see through the theoretical and methodological lenses with which I was equipped as a religion major. Accordingly, from time to time I will post a brief overview of some element of my own training in theory and method, a screwdriver or a chisel or a drill from my own religious studies toolbox. In honor of my old theory and method course, this series of posts shall lovingly be dubbed "201 Toolkit."

A Curious Endeavor

2009-06-08T16:05:00.000-07:00

What is the significance of the presence of various deities as summonable creatures available to assist the player in the Final Fantasy games? Was all that talk of mono- versus polytheism in Battlestar Galactica just fluff? Is there something about the element bismuth which manifests the awesomeness of godhead to posters on 4chan? Is the trading card game Magic: The Gathering a complex system of ritually manipulable sacra? Is the animated series Tengen Toppa Gurren Lagann a treatise on mysticism? Why is Longcat so long?

No doubt you have questions like these, too.

This Spring, I graduated from the Reed College Religion Department, and I am now the proud owner of a diploma which at present is looking quite lovely on a shelf in my subterranean dwelling in southeast Portland. (Don't worry, I'm moving upstairs at the end of Summer.) In the Spring of 2007, as part of the course of study leading to my lofty degree, I participated in the Religion Department's junior seminar, a mandatory conference class on a different topic and taught by a different professor each year to prepare upperclassmen to write their senior theses the following term. As Fate would have it, our topic was "Religion and Media."

This topic lay far outside my own academic focus. I had stayed a course straight and true since my first year studying ancient Chinese religion and philosophy. At first glance I did not in the least like the look of the semester's syllabus, and while indeed some of our readings proved disagreeable enough, I began to take to the whole idea behind the course. As we read and discussed everything from Understanding Media to The Diamond Age, I found myself warming up to the class immensely. Ultimately, I assembled an annotated bibliography of the foremost writings on the growing field of video game studies, and wrote a short research paper which, to my knowledge, was the first academic tract on video games and religion specifically. (At least, so I liked to tell myself.)

The experience of writing this paper, which was itself only a suggestive preliminary study, nearly persuaded me to abandon my plans to spend the next year studying in Taiwan, cast aside my three years' of classical Chinese erudition, and pursue a position as a rockstar media scholar which would forever dispel any guilt over playing video games. That temptation did not win out over the momentum of my ancient China studies, nor my fascination with Chinese antiquity, and I ended up writing a dry and dusty thesis on a Han dynasty compilation of ritual texts.

However, my junior seminar left me thinking about religion and video games, and in time those thoughts and the questions to which they gave rise began to pile up. Soon I was thinking about religion not only in video games, but in all manner of other strange places. That, in essence, is where this all begins. Where it goes, I am not at all sure, but I am confident there are plenty of opportunities for the analytical skills in which I have been trained to be applied. With any luck hilarity and some small insight may ensue.