A Fun Little Soul-Theory

Well, it's a bit long, so here goes.
What if you had a soul? Say you're a new soul, maybe just a baby soul. Now what if your soul didn't grow because of things you DID, but because of things that happened TO YOU. Like being born. You don't birth yourself, you get birthed. So that's the first experience that shapes your soul. Say you're going through life, stuff happens to you that you can't control. Happens all the time. So you react to those things as best you can, which sort of affects what sorts of things happen to you. Say you have a bad home life. You can't control that, it happens to you, so it affects your soul. You choose to react by running away from home (or something). This does not affect the growth of your soul, because you (and by extension, your soul) chose it yourself. But, this action does affect what things will happen to you because of it. You're a runaway, now you have to find a place to sleep; say you have to spend the night in the woods for a week or something. It happened to you, it affects you. Basically, your situation molds your soul, and you mold your situations. So it's like growing yourself by proxy, if that makes any sense. 

Where heaven fits into all of this is here. Say you're old now. You've lived a long, full life, and you believe in Christianity. For instance. Say you die, still believing in God. Now, your soul creates this sort of pocket dimension bubble around itself, where it manifests its own afterlife. This is created by mixing what your soul expects, wants, and deserves. Since you were a Christian, you expect a Christian afterlife. You don't want to go to hell. You were a good person, so you deserve good things. So, you would get heaven as a sort of projection around yourself, as if you were playing a virtual reality video game about heaven, only it was designed by your subconscious (so to speak) to fit what you would expect there. However, since a soul is just a soul, there is no inherent deceitfulness in it. So you can't lie to yourself like you can in life. This is where the deserve part comes into play. Say you "go" to heaven and you like it and you percieve it as perfect, but it's not quite as good as it could be. Somewhere deep down inside, you would know that, but you could choose to ignore it for the time being and continue existing in the heaven you created. There could be anything in this heaven, including other people and even God, but they would all be just projections of what you wanted and expected. Of course, you would always know that everything you perceive isn't real, in the back of your mind. In the video game metaphor above, this would be like being able to play forever if you wanted and never having to stop for anything, but knowing you could if you chose to. 




Now what, you ask, is outside of that pocket dimension? What happens if you choose to stop "playing the game" and decide to end that afterlife? Well it's like this. Say that, for whatever reason, your soul feels like it has been satisfied with this afterlife and "pops the bubble." Outside of this afterlife bubble is sort of a collective conscious of souls (think Karl Jung's collective unconscious here). This "soul soup" is an alternate dimension that runs parallel to our own dimension. This is a place where souls mingle and become one with each other, but do not lose their identity. It is a place of zen, where experiences are shared with every other soul, and there is no judgement. There is no such thing as a bad soul, even if you did bad things in life (things you do don't make your soul grow, remember?). Even if you did bad things in life, when you got to the river of souls, you would be able to reflect on that from every single different perspective of every other soul in that river. Since every soul is connected here, it doesn't make judgements. This is a place where everything is laid bare, and you can go, "Oh, I see where I thought that was justified before, and I see that it turned out badly, or could have gone better. I think I won't do that again." The feelings here are of peace, harmony, and contentment, since the connection between a soul and every other soul is strong, but not so strong that you lose all sense of individuality. Think of it as a place where every person is your friend, and you're happy just to enjoy their company, and when you talk to someone, everybody involved (being every soul) expresses empathy, kindness, curiosity, interest, and soothing approval for your actions, thoughts, or words, and you feel so good you pass it on to everyone else, and the cycle continues.

Now, you've probably met people who have been described as "Old Souls." These are souls who, for whatever reason, have decided to leave the river of souls and try again at life on Earth (or wherever else they choose. I mean, who's to say Earth is the only place life--and souls--exist?). They would go through the process of soul growth again, except that the soul would still remember its past life. You might not, but your soul would. It would add the experiences in this second life to the ones in its first life and do the afterlife all over again. Maybe in this life, the person is a Buddhist, so they create a pocket dimension that's a second Earth where they've been reincarnated into another thing. Maybe they believe something completely off the beaten path and they are the leader of a race of werewolves. It could literally be anything, and in each situation, the soul could decide when to leave that afterlife bubble and return to the river and share every experience they've had, again. This can go on as long as the soul feels like, until the soul gets very, very old. When this happens, a soul might choose to stop its existence altogether, if it felt like. This is a completely voluntary process, and completely painless. The river of souls retains that soul's experiences after it leaves. When a soul "dies," it's not really dead and gone forever, it's more like hitting a reset button. The soul that has chosen to end itself dissapates into pure energy, which is all around everything, everywhere (this type of energy being the scientific kind of energy, that makes things hot or move or whatever), and may coagulate back into a new soul after a while. So souls power everything: electricity, heat, however you have energy, a dissapated soul is doing that. However, a dissapated soul retains no experiences of its own, since it has dissolved its own consciousness (which is now being used in other ways). A soul can coagulate out of the ambient energy (maybe dark matter, wouldn't that be an odd way to tie this weird theory to science), but without any experiences. A "baby soul," if you will, that now goes through the entire process as a completely new individual soul all over again. The discovery of the soul river, the creation of its first afterlife, are all new to this soul. And it happens over and over.

YHWH = Tyrant

God is a tyrant in the OT. Think back to Genesis. The first two people, Adam and Lilith (if you're going by the Apocrypha, which is actually a part of the Bible but in a separate book). Lilith got banished to being a demon queen of succubi ONLY because she would not be submissive to Adam. That's where Eve comes in. She was made of Adam's rib instead of the dust of the Earth like Lilith was. So she was supposed to be lesser than him, and not have a mind of her own. (This is all pretense for the actual point here)

Eden. Adam and Eve. They're out there being all pure and junk, just talking to God all day. He tells them not to eat the forbidden fruit. Now I want you to take note of the name of the tree: The Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil. Without that fruit, think about what A&E's minds were like. They had NO IDEA what evil even WAS, let alone what GOOD was! They had no one else to talk to other than God, so when Satan showed up and tricked Eve, it wasn't her fault. She didn't know he was evil. She didn't know God was good. Her mind literally could not know, because God hadn't given them the CAPACITY to know the difference! So it's no wonder she took it, she might have even thought the serpent WAS God just taking a different form (because he can do that).

If that seems a little off topic, reason me this: Why didn't God want A&E to know the difference between good and evil? Why didn't he want them to think about that? Without the knowledge of right and wrong, you would just do things that you're told to do. God wanted slaves like angels, not free-thinking people! He never wanted humans to HAVE critical thinking, and he was PISSED that Satan had given it to them. So he punishes Satan AND THE ENTIRETY OF THE REST OF THE HUMAN RACE FOREVER by making them bear the worst consequences of the most innocent mistake ever made by humans, ever.

The implications of this action are also damning. The "free will" God has claimed to have given us is a lie. Satan gave us free will and God hates that. That's why, even though we have "free will," if we choose WRONG, we will be punished FOREVER in a WORLD OF UNENDING HORRORTERROR with no chance to leave, ever. That's not free will, that's holding a gun to your head!

The Warped Definition of "Liberal"

Protests in college campuses crash like waves against pitiable rocks. Riots roil political forces and demand free speech, which the rioters graciously receive. These revolutions were led by people who felt like they were being oppressed by the government and other higher powers that be. Unfortunately, now the equilibrium has tilted too far in the opposite direction, and balance is lost. The activists are just as passionate about their beliefs as ever, but if their attitude continues on, what will be left but a country full of people being offended at every word said, yet still pushing for the freedom to shred their opposition to ribbons with their biting comments, people afraid to go to war and fight for the freedom they crave, and people who believe that our beautiful country deserves every attack she gets and does not merit a counterattack in turn. These people who fought so hard for the enforcement of the First Amendment are called liberals. Liberals are still fighting to defend the rights of free speech, but now it’s the other extreme that really needs those rights. In college campuses around America, liberals are still brandishing their big mouths and crying selfishly for their own rights, while the rights of others considered beneath them because they are a minority are stomped down for favor of the opinion of the majority. These are liberals who have unconsciously become exactly what they were fighting against. These liberals are the basest kind of hypocrite.

This is the definition of liberal: Open to new behavior or opinions/respectful of individual rights and freedoms.  By their own description, 72 percent of those teaching at American universities and colleges are liberal and 15 percent are conservative. This imbalance is shocking even if you are biased, with 50 percent of those surveyed proclaiming to be Democrats and 11 percent Republicans. At elite schools, the difference is even bigger, with 87 percent of faculty being liberal, and 13 percent conservative (www.washingtonpost.com).This alone is not enough to condemn the liberals in universities, however. We must also ask the professors themselves how they view politics. There have been many conservative complaints about “liberal homogeneity in academia” and its disproportion. The conductors of the survey also concluded that there has been “a substantial shift to the left” since the mid-1980s, and is still increasing (www.washingtonpost.com). These are not diverse places; they are contrary to the very definition of liberal. They are one-party monopolies, and cannot produce well-rounded beings without the balance that having more conservatives and more real equality would provide. “Colleges like to characterize themselves as wide-open places where every thought can be thought, where any opinion can be held, where all ideals and principles may be pursued freely. The demonstrable reality, however, is that you will find a much wider-and-freer-cross-section of human reasoning and conviction in the aisles of a grocery store or city bus” (www.academia.org).

In the early 1960s, a protest rose called the Campus Free Speech Movement, in which students and faculty alike fought for the right to voice a dissenting opinion without fear of punishment. Now, people are being discriminated against—by the liberals who fought for the movement—because they have an opinion in the minority. “Today, protestors are fighting to shut down other people’s free speech. This happens frequently whenever someone happens to disagree with the dominant campus thinking. Policies that are supposed to be ensuring tolerance and diversity are instead being used to silence people with alternative views. Race, class, and gender issues are being used as ammunition in an all-out political war” (Indoctrinate U). This is evidenced in a case at Cal Poly University. A student at Cal Poly, Steve Hinkle, got into a lot of trouble merely for putting up flyers that informed other students about a meeting among the Republicans on campus. They were going to have African-American conservative author, Mason Weaver, speak on campus, but the posters and flyers were ordered to be taken down because the liberal community of the college found the material “offensive.” If campuses are advocating African-Americans as much as they can with affirmative action and other benefits, why would they shut down an African-American speaker? Because he was conservative; he was against their views. “It’s clear that the college was trying to charge him with something; they just had a hard time figuring out what” (Greg Lukianoff, Foundation for Individual Rights in Education, Indoctrinate U). When the people claiming to advocate African-Americans turn their back on one just because he has a different viewpoint, the world is in a sorry state indeed.

            Another extreme case of discrimination of conservatives in college also concerns people of smaller minorities. Sukhmani Khalsa is a conservative student at the University of Tennessee. He commented in an editorial in the college paper about the bias in the Issues Committee, which is charged with bringing in speakers of interest and diversity. However, all of the speakers had been liberal, so he spoke as a conservative to give some variety to the newspaper. When Sukhmani wrote on his views, there were many threatening and hateful emails sent towards him and his group, the most offensive of which said this: “The next time you see one of these ragheads, shoot them right in the f***ing face.” The student who sent this email was brought in by the dean of students, who, after talking with the student, declared that he had NOT violated the school’s code of conduct. There was no punishment, and nothing was done about the hate mail. Another of the students said this: “I believe the reason that no action was taken was because Sukhmani is an outspoken conservative” (Indoctrinate U). A further situation that seems a little severe actually does not concern a minority at all. This particular group has millions of followers worldwide. This group is the Christians. At Indian River Community College, a Christian group of students wanted to show “Passion of the Christ” at an outreach meeting. The administrators denied their request, on the justification that the movie was R-rated, and “younger students” would not be able to watch. In the same semester, the administrators then allowed a play called “F***ing For Jesus,” in which the main character masturbated to pictures of Jesus Christ (Indoctrinate U). This appears more than R-rated to me. The difference is this: the movie “Passion of the Christ” is a traditional, conventional look at how Jesus Christ lived and died, while “F***ing For Jesus” is more open-minded. The liberals have done it again: they have denied the minority of conservatives because of their dissenting views.

            It’s not just the students being discriminated against, either. Laura Freberg, a teacher at Cal Poly University, was questioned by her colleagues on her political standpoint. Another faculty member said to her, “Well, we never would have hired you if we had known you were a Republican.” She stated that she remained “cautiously neutral” before this in order to remain employed. She was removed as the Head of the Psychology Department, and isolated from the department in an attempt to coerce her to quit, just because the rest of the university was liberal and she was conservative. She eventually got frustrated with this treatment and the case went all the way to the federal court. The court ruled in Freberg’s favor, and the rest of the staff was ordered to stop harassing her (Indoctrinate U). My choice of wording here is ironic, since liberal administrators have classified anything offensive, anything contributing to low self-esteem, and anything even slightly unwanted or unwarranted as harassment (Indoctrinate U), and do not tolerate it by the students. Harassment rationales are used to shut down people with unusual opinions (often the socially conservative, the un-PC, or the merely unlucky) far too often (www.latimes.com), and yet the administrators and the party in the majority get to use this tactic to their advantage when it suits them. “What most faculty want is for students to validate their own pathetic life experiences. If we were securer, we would have different jobs, but, we’re faculty; and so we want people to agree with us, to nod, to write stuff down, as if it were important.” (Michael Munger, Professor, Duke, Indoctrinate U). This says that the bias in the faculty is not just made of closed-mindedness, but also insecurity on the professors’ parts; that they don’t want to be challenged by someone who they feel they should have authority over.

            There has been another phenomenon where these “free-thinkers” have over-used their “fair-headedness” and opened their mouths wider than their (apparently not-so-wide) minds. Around the country, a minority of students has begun to protest against the military of any branch being in or on school campus. These people are shouting out to the world about the blood on the U.S’s shoulders, and how America is the root of all evil in the world. They roar that America, since it is evil, deserves to be wiped off the face of the planet; and since the military is the arm of America; that it should be cut off first. They say that the U.S. military is a large part of the evil in the country, that any force America uses against other countries is wrong (Indoctrinate U). What they don’t realize is without the military, these idiots would not be able to shoot their mouths off at all.

            To reiterate the definition of liberalism: open to new behavior or opinions and respectful of individual rights and freedoms. What I have just described does not seem in the least “open to new behavior or opinions.” It appears to be the opposite; full of intolerance and hatred for those who do not share their beliefs. The liberals have become what they fought against hardest back in the 60s: oppressors who crush the minorities underfoot just because they do not like those particular minorities. The liberals in universities and colleges are so focused on having ethnical, racial, and gender diversity, that they have ignored the diversity that matters: diversity of the mind. They have twisted the meaning of liberal; they have warped the definition.

Sources

Evan Maloney, On the Fence Films, Indoctrinate U

http://www.academia.org/campus_reports/2002/october_5.html

           

http//www.latimes.com/news/opinion/la-o-shermer-lukianoff14apr14,0,170548.story

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A8427-2005Mar28.html

Moral Parsimony--Good Or Bad?

One's morality can be measured in terms of parsimony. One's moral framework can be either more parsimonious or less parsimonious. The variation in parsimony measures how much consideration one would take in making a moral judgement on situations rather than making a broad judgement for everyone, regardless of situation.

Since that was pretty wordy, here's a for instance: Alice steals a loaf of bread from Bob. She gets caught and is brought before a judge. A very parsimonious judge would hear the case's facts: Alice stole from Bob, then sentence her to do two months in jail for "minor theft." Any small or relatively worthless item stolen would also fall under the "minor theft" category, regardless of personal value, and the theft of such would merit the same exact sentence.

And another, from the opposite side of the spectrum: Alice steals a loaf of bread from Bob. She gets caught and brought before a different judge. This judge is not parsimonious, and his decision goes like this: he hears the facts, just like the last judge. This time, however, other factors come into play. Alice is very poor and only stole from Bob because he is a baker and has many loaves to spare. She only needed the one loaf to hold her over, and since it was an act of simple desperation, it isn't likely to happen again. The judge sentences her to spend a week in jail, after having her show him proof that she is getting on her feet soon.

So basically, rigidity versus flexibility. There are arguments for both sides. I found a neat place where you can see where you measure up on this sliding scale:

http://www.philosophersnet.com/games/morality_play.php

I thought it would be neat to see where people fell, so feel free to post your results. My Moral Parsimony Score was 41%; I'm more flexible than most.