I had a really good experience with the meetup I went to today. Went to the Ethical Culture Society platform on current ethical issues. It was mildly like a church service, which was interesting, as I haven't been to anything like that of my own accord in years. I enjoyed it though, as campy as parts of it were. They had secular live music that everyone sang the chorus to, and there was something like a lecture, but group participation in the form of comments and questions was encouraged.

The lecture was about religion and its function, how it works and what it does right and wrong. It wasn't about slamming religion in general-- although one of the two speakers did ask the audience at the start what some of the things they didn't like about religion were. Mainly it was about what religion provides that people value and need, and how to find those aspects without the blind faith, dogma, and demanded conformity that so often plagues organized religions. Interestingly, they pointed out that when religions start, they're headed by people who are distinctly non-conformist-- freethinkers who attract a crowd with their different ideas. Once those leaders die, though, religions tend to become more dogmatic and rigid, as the successors try to codify the teachings of the prophets to preserve them. Then, some new freethinker comes along and shakes up the system, and the cycle repeats. The proposition set forth by the speakers was that religions serve as a survival tool, and that science is actually something of a spiritual successor to religion, in that it gives us a way to organize our world and understand it. There is a pretty big difference of course, in that science, despite having certain rules and basic assumptions, encourages flexibility and open-mindedness and doesn't advocate unquestioning allegiance.

There ARE people who treat science like a religion (scientism), but science is not a religion per se. People who play by the rules, conduct rigorous research, and come up with conclusions that seem counter to what "should be" scientific have made observations about this. It's not scientific to definitively declare that ghosts don't exist, for example, unless you can conclusively prove that ghosts don't exist. Until then you just have to remain in an agnostic position about it. Yet there are scientists who will fight tooth and nail against an idea like that, claiming it's too woowoo and supernatural to be scientific. Science is a tool for discovering truth, not a truth in itself. I think this is something that many people don't understand, and so you get people who fight against science because they think it's just a bunch of people in white lab coats being smug jerks who say "god doesn't exist because SCIENCE." Meanwhile there are plenty of scientists who are also religious, because science doesn't actually conflict with religious beliefs unless your religion says you're not allowed to question anything in it or investigate the world.

Partway through the talk, this shirtless guy started rummaging through the refreshments in the back of the room, and someone went to go talk to him. A bit later, he started messing with the camera that they were using to record the talk, and the speakers paused while the situation was dealt with. There wasn't too much commotion-- a man asked the shirtless guy if he needed help, and they asked him not to be disruptive-- but it quickly became evident that the shirtless guy was not going to stop (he seemed like he might be mentally ill), so they asked him to leave, though not before offering to give him some food to take with him. It was handled pretty calmly and respectfully, I think, although there definitely was some tension because of this random shirtless old guy making a bunch of noise in the back and interrupting the talk. Someone took him outside and talked to him, and the speakers discussed what had just happened and how the room had reacted to the disruption, as well as what we could take away from the incident. Since it was my first time, I had no idea if that guy was a regular attendee of the meetings or what was going on, but when I asked the people around me, it seemed that nobody had ever seen him before or knew who he was. I found out afterwards that he was just some dude who lived in his car and that in addition to coming to our meeting and going through the food, he had left the radio in his car playing so loudly that it disrupted a meeting in a nearby community center as well. Apparently the police were called to help him. (The police in that area tend to be friendly and helpful rather than aggressive and callous, a fact which my seat neighbor noted when she was recommending that we call the police to help the shirtless guy).

So, yeah, I enjoyed the meetup a lot, and they have other types of meetups as well for this group, so I'm thinking I'll try to go to the book club they're holding next week. The book is Amusing Ourselves to Death by Neil Postman, and I got the audiobook from the library online. It's pretty interesting so far, but I don't like audiobooks much and I wish I had a physical copy instead. This book is only ~200 pages but the audiobook is almost five hours long. >_> I don't think it would take me nearly that long to just read it on my own... And I'd probably process it better too... Ah well.

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Had a talk with my friend today about where we stand and possible ways to work things out. It doesn't seem like there's a way we can compromise, at least not in our current life situations, but I feel better having had the conversation. I feel... more able to accept things, I guess. Like, it sucks, but now I have a better sense of it all, and I'm okay with that. It's sad but I feel at peace.

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I stumbled upon the artist Jesus Leguizamo tonight and I like his stuff. I think this one is called "Gypsy Head".

Ah, glad meetup went well. Sounds like a community that means well and believes in humanity.. always nice. Sometimes I feel like I need spiritual nourishment... religion, at least the one I knew, sort of fed that hunger. It's kinda weird trying to make my own spiritual nourishment now.
» watermelon on 2017-08-23 02:05:53

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