Reading George Fox

Incarnating the Immaterial

By Bruce Steinberg 2013-08-12 Design and Art

"Light is not the bearer of revelation—it is the revelation."[1]

James Turrell’s Aten Reign, currently at the Guggenheim[2], embodies light’s power, such that even the most insensitive observer can’t help but be moved. As a lighting designer, I’ve devoted over half my life to studying light’s ability to connect and separate, to enliven and to deaden, to reveal and to conceal. Like all our senses, sight operates in potent unconscious ways: certain colors provoke specific emotions; bright and changing sources command our attention[3]; without contrast, intense hues fade over time and alter the color of differing hues[4]; we all have two blind spots corresponding to our optic nerves—our brain automatically fills them in so we experience a continuous visual field[5]. My career involves taking these physiological and psychological facts and using them to manipulate audience members. As Jennifer Tipton[6] said, “1% of the audience notices the lighting; 100% are effected by it.”

The genius of Turrell’s work is the enabling a lay person to perceive this force. Even if visitors do not know how Turrell accomplishes this, they feel consciously compelled to lie there and experience the event. They are moved and held. In the insanity of New York City, they stop, witness, and reflect[7].

Light has five properties that can be manipulated—Angle, Color, Intensity, Specularity[8], and Change Over Time. Aten Reign employs all of them to create its magic. Every observer immediately notices the continually changing color—it grabs our attention. Yet the other properties are equally potent. As Turrell manipulates angle and contrast, the scrims[9] alternatively expand and contract the space—we experience the light oscillating between solidity and incorporeality. Moreover, the placement of the lights outside of our sight lines turns the entire rotunda into a giant reflective surface[10]. The shadows fade to imperceptibility under the softness of the light. We are surrounded by it; there are no places the light does not reach. We are all equally touched and our gaze is drawn upwards to the enveloping and intangible source. At certain times, the colors become dissonant[11], evoking tension within our chests, yet these moments pass quickly—peace returns as a gift. During another, the light is pulled upwards, withdrawing into the central, highest source. We are left practically alone in the dark; our eyes not having the time to adjust to the few photons still emitted. A long pause—and the illumination returns, blossoming into a warm radiance.

As I’m sure all have noticed, I could easily substitute spiritual terms in the above description and produce a religious pamphlet. Turrell is a Quaker after all, and the Inner Light is central to his faith[12]. This installation is an aid for us to consecrate the rotunda into a spiritual space The dichotomy of solidity and incorporeality evokes how the divine[13] can be viscerally present in our hearts at the same time as it is impossible to grasp. In a world without shadows, we are drawn together in contemplation. Yet Turrell wisely provides moments of discord and darkness—we all undergo dark nights of the soul and must find the courage and strength to tolerate them until the outer light returns. Perhaps it is within these moments we learn the most about ourselves, as our inner light exposes our festering wounds.

I’m not claiming that every visitor undergoes this transfermation. There’s plenty of flash photography[14], loud conversation, and children wresting on the central mat. Yet there is far less of this distraction than we would expect at a New York “must-see” exhibit. Many people lose track of time gazing upwards; the room often descends into a hush[15]; the security guard directing the admission line told me that my mind was about to be blown. Moreover, unlike many recent “unmissable” installations[16], Aten Reign is a communal experience: there are no long waits[17] to be the only person in the room, hoping to cram the soul’s movement into a bare 60 seconds[18]. No time limit is imposed; we could lay there from 10am to 5:30pm[19]. And we do so together—even the tumbling children can be an opportunity to cultivate peace and presence in a chaotic world. Turrell has give us a chance to grow closer to ourselves; if you can make it to New York before September 25, I urge you to do so. Such an opportunity is a rare gift.

  1. New Light Fixture for a Famous Rotunda, Roberta Smith, New York Times, 2013–06–20  ↩

  2. And probably only ever there; I don’t know of any other spiral rotundas in which to install it.  ↩

  3. During a graduate school lighting critique, a set designer disputed this claim, saying, “We can look where we want to.” While we certainly can make a conscious effort to direct our gaze away from such sources, it is indeed an effort. We end up with both mental fatigue and eye strain. Sometimes we might want to provoke that in an audience, but it certainly won’t make them comfortable, and, if they cease that effort, their gaze will return to the bright, moving source.  ↩

  4. If I bath a stage in only shades of pink, a regular home light bulb will appear intensely green.a. Our brains add the complimentary color to our vision to normalize the light to neutral grey.
    a The primary colors of light are not the same as the primaries for pigment, taught in most art classes. They are Red, Blue, and Green, and the secondaries are Magenta, Cyan, and Amber.  ↩

  5. And if these phenomena aren’t convincing enough, consider Blind Sighta,. There are two neural pathways connecting the optic nerve to the cortex, and only one of them produces conscious sight. In multiple experiments on patients who have had only that pathway damaged, researchers would shine a light at the wall and ask where it was. The patients would claim not to know and then would be asked to just try. They would point directly at the spot. Often they could also “guess” color and orientation. These patients can see things they cannot see.
    a As described in V.S. Ramachandran’s excellent The Tell-Tale Brain.  ↩

  6. Who has trained or whose students have trained a huge percentage of American lighting designers.  ↩

  7. This is not an original observation, Morgan Meis has an excellent review, well worth reading.  ↩

  8. How “hard” or “soft” the light is. Hard light comes from a specific source and creates well defined shadows. Think of the sun in late afternoon: we are aware of exactly where the light is coming from and the shadows behind us are dark and sharp. Soft light, on the other hand, comes from diffuse, broad sources—on a cloudy day, light comes from the entire sky, and the few shadows that do exist are much lighter and have fuzzed edges.  ↩

  9. Loosely woven fabric stretched tight across the space on each floor. When light hits them at a perpendicular angle, they become practically invisible; when the angle is closer to parallel they suddenly become apparent (visible, but transparent).  ↩

  10. In film terms, a big ass bounce.  ↩

  11. My favorite is when the underside of the rotunda becomes an intense chartreuse.  ↩

  12. The first that enters into the place of your meeting…turn in thy mind to the light, and wait upon God singly, as if none were present but the Lord; and here thou art strong. Then the next that comes in, let them in simplicity of heart sit down and turn in to the same light, and wait in the spirit; and so all the rest coming in, in the fear of the Lord, sit down in pure stillness and silence of all flesh, and wait in the light…. Those who are brought to a pure still waiting upon God in the spirit, are come nearer to the Lord than words are; for God is a spirit, and in the spirit is he worshiped…. In such a meeting there will be an unwillingness to part asunder, being ready to say in yourselves, it is good to be here; and this is the end of all words and writings—to bring people to the eternal living Word.
    Alexander Parker, 1660  ↩

  13. However one defines it.  ↩

  14. Especially amusing here as photographers attempt to capture the absence of light.  ↩

  15. Such seemingly unmotivated moments of silent always remind me of how social humans are. As an audience chats before a performance, all it takes is for a few individuals to expect the show to start, stop speaking, and focus on the stage—suddenly there are barely any whispers in the room. This even happens when those first individuals are mistaken and the performance won’t begin for several more minutes. We are always paying intense unconscious attention to the behavior of those around us.  ↩

  16. Random International’s Rain Room and Yayoi Kusama’s Fireflies on the Water, among others.  ↩

  17. According to the Guggenheim’s website, the longesta wait is 30 minutes. I went on a Thursday afternoon and walked right in.
    a There is a longer wait for Turrell’s earlier pieces on display in the 5th floor annex, but, while amazing, they are not the central draw.  ↩

  18. Fireflies… was a powerful experience, but there is only so much one can get out of a minute.  ↩

  19. Which I’m planning to do this coming Tuesday, August 13.  ↩

A Little Snippet for the Day

By Bruce Steinberg 2013-08-06 Design and Art

At first there was naught, yet after an age, the sky copulated with the ocean. From the seas’ tumescence, heat, rock, life exploded forth, building, bubbling, boiling—excreting rich earth. Once found, we tended to it, each of us with our own garden, discovering and sharing our abundance.

Inspired by the prompts: “my garden,” anyone who grows my food,“ and ”underwater volcanos". Via South Pacific mythology—thanks to the awesome J.Z. Smith, who not only looks like Gandalf and with his gnarled staff, but also taught me all about tuber myths. Oh, how sexual root vegetables can become!

Re: Mac Power Users 148: Security Audit

By Bruce Steinberg 2013-08-02 Tech

Passwords, Email, Security, Oh My!

This post originated as a reply to Ben Brooks’ excellent Encrypting Stuff Against Starbucks Hacker Bob.

The Short Version

I will be getting into the weeds a bit, so here’s the executive summary:

  • You absolutely should be using a password manager. I recommend 1Password as it has great native apps, gives you the most control over where your database is stored, and has a worst-case scenario backstop, 1Password Anywhere.

  • A select few essential passwords—your master password, your main email account, Dropbox—should be generated with Diceware instead. These memorable passphrases can easily be as strong as a random gibberish one and will easily stick around in your head.

  • LuxSci provides an expensive, but extremely flexible[0] email solution. Their Escrow Messages are a significantly more secure replacement for David’s encrypted PDFs.

The Long Version

The Problem

In their Security Audit, Katie and David provide a comprehensive overview of securing your Mac today; however, their discussion of passwords falls short in a few significant ways. Perhaps the most important is under-weighing the dilemma of losing access to your password store needs a robust solution. As Ben Brooks argues, if you lose access to your physical devices and your Dropbox account is compromised, “then you are hosed.” Moreover, our brains have not evolved to generate and remember strong passwords; as xkcd explains, the typical methods of substituting symbols and numerals does not create enough entropy. Today that method is even less useful as commonly available cracking tools have evolved to make guesses assuming those substitutions. Lastly, your main password store is only as secure as your master password makes it. While 1Password[1] provides strong encryption, it can only do so much with the entropy you provide it. With computers getting faster every year, the aforementioned cracking tools becoming more and more efficient, and social hacking emerging, we need an easy-to-use and potent foundation for our password management.

A Recommended Solution[2]

Thankfully, the Internets also giveth as they taketh away: Diceware was developed as a method to create memorable, highly entropic passphrases. A phrase such as lift 99th pagan your bald has 65[3] bits of entropy, while a password such as Tr0ub4dor&3 has only 28 bits. Instead of a failable and complicated heuristic, we can use a friendly 7776-word list[4] and five cool casino-style dice. Two articles explain the math behind exponentially increasing security with each added word. According to Agile Bits’ blog, a five-word phrase results in a database that would require over a million years to crack[5]. While its possible that the NSA either has significantly more horsepower or a backdoor[6], if you really are a person of interest, they can always resort to rubber hose cryptography. In the linked post, Jeff Shirer also offers a more creative generation option, but I still recommend the dice, as they do not require nearly as much brain power. Also, you won’t inadvertently personal information, which is easily gleaned via Facebook[7]

Diceware can also provide a solution to the social hacking problem. We’re all far too used to the various security questions, most of which are easily guessable for a mildly determined hacker who does a bit of research[8]. While password manager gibberish will work for online use, if you have to talk to a human being, it becomes useless. Good luck reciting 3@qGGhssdf88&-~45 over the telephone. On the other hand, a nonsense Diceware phrase is simple to communicate; I doubt operators will care that the answer to your dog’s name is Woah 75 bathe 4 quarks.

However, Diceware does not help avoid the danger of losing physical access to your devices at the same time as having your Dropbox account compromised[9]. The attacker will probably not be able to break into your password store, but you are still locked out of almost all your services. While this may be an unlikely scenario, it is catastrophic if it occurs. Having a memorable passphrase for your email will allow you to reset everything, but you’ll probably need a bottle of bourbon after dealing with all your accounts. Luckily, 1Password Anywhere provides a mitigation strategy. Within any Agile Keychain backup (as well as the live version on Dropbox), there is a 1Password.html file. If you keeps a copy of said Keychain on a thumb drive, you can securely access your passwords using a browser on any computer[10]. The html file is just a front end, so your database is just as secure as it is when accessed using a native app. There are a few niggling potential problems, but they seem to be relatively easy to work around.

Email Security

David also mentions that he’s mostly moved away from PGP (via GPG) to sending encrypted PDFs and out-of-band passwords for secure email communication. While the encryption is not nearly as strong, it by far trumps PGP in terms of user-friendliness[11]. I’ve recently been searching for a Gmail replacement[12], and LuxSci has a plethora of security options. While it is certainly one of the most expensive services[13], it also is the most configurable to your exact needs. For example, their SecureLine service offers three options: Guaranteed TLS Delivery, Escrow Messages, and PKI[14]. The Escrow option seems the most interesting. Your message sits encrypted on their servers and can be configured to unlock with an out-of-band password (like David’s method) or by requiring the recipient to sign up for a free SecureLine account. While the latter option does present a usability hurdle, it is not nearly as difficult as PGP and within the realm of possibility for moderately savvy users. Moreover, assuming the recipient chooses a robust password for the service, it is far more secure than an encrypted PDF.

LuxSci also offers two factor authentication, either via SMS message or via DuoSecurity. The latter provides a plethora of authentication options, including an intriguing push method. When you attempt to login, they push a message to their mobile app[15] and all you have to do is click a button to authorize it. Their service is free[16] for accounts with under 10 users, so it’s pretty much a no-brainer addition.

Fin

Thanks again to David and Katie for their awesome security audit. I hope the above helps refine their suggestions.

[0]: They can scale all the way up to HIPPA compliance for you medical professionals and have archiving options that satisfy various financial regulations.

  1. Though LastPass and Keepass seem equally as secure, I will focus on 1Password as it is what I use.  ↩

  2. For those looking for other options, arstechnica has a good article on How Elite Security Ninjas Choose and Safeguard Their Passwords.  ↩

  3. Actually 64.6 bits for you pendants sitting at home. The math:  ↩

    If a password is selected from a universe of N possiblities, where each possibility is equally likely to be chosen, the entropy is log2N. For example if you make a passphrase by choosing 10 letters at random, the entropy is 10 × log2(26) = 47.0 bits. —From the Diceware FAQ

  4. Available in a multitude of languages, including English.  ↩

  5. This is longer than the times listed on the Diceware site because Agile Bits uses robust tools to hash your master password. For other passwords (email, Dropbox), one may want to use 6 or 7 word passphrases.  ↩

  6. Actually fairly unlikely as Agile Bits uses an open source algorithm.  ↩

  7. I recommend turning on Facebook’s two factor authentication and using a Diceware password. While it may seem a little silly to include it in the essential sites category, it contains so much personal information, you should guard it as closely as your email.  ↩

  8. Do you have your high school on your Facebook page? Or the town you were born in? Are you friends with uncles who share your mother’s maiden name?  ↩

  9. The Mat Honan scenario.  ↩

  10. I wouldn’t recommend a public terminal, but going over to a friend’s house or into work are both simple options.  ↩

  11. PGP requires recipients to install a public key that you generate. Needless to say, for the majority of users, this is almost an impossible technical task.  ↩

  12. While I agree with Max Masnicka that it is not worth it to worry about the privacy implications of Gmail, I also agree with Marco Arment about the danger of Google sunsetting features in favor of Google+. Though it’s not very likely, I want to be ready to migrate in case they disable (their already non-standard) IMAP interface. Also, my email is still @gmail.com, so I am planning to move to a @domainb that I control.

    a Who also has an excellent write up on switching from Gmail to Fastmail.
    b My professional lighting design site, for those who are interested.
     ↩

  13. The cheapest package is $120/year compared to $40/year at FastMaila, but you do get 30GB of storage and additional users can be added for $12/year. For an extremely detailed comparison of all the options, check out this discussion at Email Discussions.

    a You can get an account with 100MB of storage for $5/year or 1GB for $10/year, but I’m assuming if you’re considering a paid service, you probably have more email than that. I’m approaching 9GB in my gmail account.

     ↩

  14. PGP and S/MIME Certificates  ↩

  15. Their app also implements the same system as Google Authenticator, for times when mobile data is not available.  ↩

  16. There is a 1¢ for using their SMS or landline call features, and you have to purchase the credits in $10 increments.  ↩

Some Rough Thoughts on Anti-Racism

By Bruce Steinberg 2013-08-02 Politics

From a Letter to Jeff Hitchock

My own leanings towards anti-racism started to crystallize last winter during my term at Pendle Hill: I took a Facilitating Group Learning course and was paired with an African American member of Cambridge Meeting, Michelle Brimage. It took much work and sitting together in the fire to come to trust one another: it was worth it. We both learned and grew.

People of color have played a significant role in my life. My African American nanny took me on play dates in her neighborhood; I was given the loving nickname “Jamal” in high school for sitting at the Black kids lunch table; Artists of color have been important collaborators (I’m a lighting designer). I considered myself pretty racially enlightened.

Through the work at Pendle Hill, I realized that it is impossible to be White in America and not be racist. The most personal aspect of my own racism is, from a young age (I remember it from 5), I have never been attracted to a Black woman. My dearest friend is a beautiful woman; we connect on a deeply spiritual level; I can truly say I love her. The buds of a romantic relationship, no? I have never felt the slightest physical attraction because she is Black.

I don’t say this to condemn myself. I am not a bad person. But this bit of racism (among others) is an intrinsic part of me: to know myself, I must recognize it. As Willa said, being White is like being a fish in water. It is so easy to not feel one’s privilege and be oblivious to how others might feel uncomfortable wet.

Returning to last year at Pendle Hill, Michelle and I ran a small workshop; I found a letter from a freed slave to his former master (through Ta-Nehisi Coates). The letter moved Michelle, and we wanted to share it. Without telling people about the letter, we invited the community to a Quaker-Theatre experiment. After a brief container building exercise, I taught the participants the Gibberish Game. Two pairs hold a conversation, each person having one of two roles. One begins by speaking in gibberish (“Gobbly Gook? Hog, nog, blubberbus?”). Her partner translates into English. One of the other pair responds in gibberish, followed by his partner translating. No one person is in charge: the four have to create and navigate the event together. Much laughter was had as we explored romance, Work Morning fights, and Quaker Singing.

After the group got a hand of it, we pause as I handed out the letter. Michelle read it aloud and we sat in silence to give everyone a chance to read. The pairs were re-juggled[1] and they were tasked with creating a conversation between the former master and slave, using the game. It was difficult, perhaps especially for the master pair. Especially as Michelle was the only African American or person of color in the room. But it was powerful work. Afterwards we held a worship sharing and, I believe, went deeper than we would have without the performance.

Whew. That’s a lot and sorry to overburden your inbox. I’ve got a bit more for you yet, though.

The Name: EAQWER. I’m actually more comfortable with the out of date title from the NYYM website: White Friends Working to End Racism. Though my family is originally from Eastern Europe, as a Jew, I don’t identify with “European” culture. Particularly as Jews only became “White” in my parents’ lifetime. While not comparable to Black segregation, my parents were members of Jewish pools and social clubs, as they were not welcome at White ones. On the other hand, I am undeniably White.

It’s important to remember that White and Black are fluid categories, essential to America, but only tangentially related to ethnicity and culture. Kenyans, African Americans, and Afro-Caribbeans are all Black in this country, erasing their important differences. Greek-, Jewish-, and English-Americans are all White, erasing their important differences while imparting privilege.

As life is so often serendipitous, I arrived home this evening to read a New York Review of Books’ article[2] on Jews and Catholics. A couple passages:

Some Catholics at the Second Vatican Council said the charge of decide against the Jews was so silly it should not be dignified with a refutation. John Connelly in his book From Enemy to Brother writes that the American Jesuit John Courtney Murray actually claimed that he had not heard the charge until he was forty. In the same way, deniers of anti-black prejudice in America forget that there was slavery, or say it was ended without aftereffects, or it wasn’t really so bad (no worst than, say, “wage slavery”[3] up north—slaves, after all, could not be fired from their jobs. The prejudiced cannot recognize their own prejudice—as one cannot taste one’s own saliva.

The American Jesuit John LaFarge was an outspoken critic of America’s anti-black racism. When Pope Pius XI learned of his work, he asked LaFarge to draft and encyclical on racism. But again the Jesuit general, Ledóchowski, intervened. He assigned a racist German Jesuit to be LaFarge’s coauthor. Thus, as Connelly write, when LaFarge turned from “advocating the rights of African Americans victimized by discrimination…to Catholic writings on the Jews, [he] drew upon the same anti-Judaic tradition” as his racist coauthor. The encyclical was never released, since it said that Jews, “blinded by a vision of material domination and gain,” were an “unhappy people, destroyers of their own nation,” who had “called down upon their own heads a divine malediction.”

  1. There were only four, other than Michelle and myself. If there were more, we would have asked for volunteers.  ↩

  2. Garry Wills, Catholics and Jews: The Great Change, NYRB, March 21, 2013. Unfortunately behind their pay wall.  ↩

  3. A claim I heard at Pendle Hill. I could have been more temperate in my response to it. On the other hand, my anger provoked the rest of the table to defend the proposition.  ↩

Brooklyn Monthly Meeting Survey, Fall 2012

By Bruce Steinberg 2013-08-02 Spirituality

The following is my response to last fall’s Ministry and Counsel survey.

  • What is it you need to know to connect to the collected recordings of valued spiritual revelations from Quaker history and to enhance your openness to spiritual revelation today?

I spent a rather intense two week sabbatical at Pendle Hill last fall, during which I was led to read a fair amount of Quaker history and early testimonies. I found myself especially drawn to the writings of Isaac Pennington. Perhaps the Meeting could offer a reading group that met monthly to explore more Quaker writings, from early works to Pendle Hill Pamphletes and other contemporary writings (Benjamin Pink Dandelion would seem especially useful).

  • What committee or group activities within the meeting or service outside the meeting foster or strengthen your sense of the spirit?

I often struggle to wake up on time, but the worship sharings on the first and second First Days foster explorations. I’d also like to make it to more of the worship sharings proceeding the Young Adult Friends potlucks. I struggle with volunteering for the Community Dinners: I feel I ought to want to, but I’m often tired and don’t feel led. I do volunteer twice monthly at 15th Street’s Shelter and find the service important to my spiritual life.

  • Have you discovered within yourself gifts that you perceive the meeting may benefit from or has a member of the meeting suggested that you possess such gifts?

I think I may be feeling the beginnings of a leading to become more involved in Adult Education. I’ve volunteered to bring in material for next months worship sharing on spiritual texts and am very excited to share material far from Quaker tradition (a memoir by an Russian atheist and film maker) that I feel truly resonate with Quaker beliefs.

I’ve also tried to bring as many friends as possible to Meeting for Worship. I think Quakerism, especially the tradition of unprogramed worship, speaks to the modern condition. We are so suspicious of authority that we are often at a lost of where to turn. We’ve left many of the faiths we grew up in, unable to reconcile ourselves to the emphasis on tradition, or hierarchy, or absolute truth. Quakerism offers us a practice to find a personal way to reconcile ourselves to the universe. It is a hard practice, with no easy answers, but it also offers a supportive community along the journey.

  • How does the meeting and/or your personal inclinations encourage you to continue to worship at Brooklyn Monthly Meeting?

I find social hour and the monthly Young Adult Friends potluck foster a sense of community. I’m also struggling in my personal life and Meeting for Worship is an powerful support.


Personal APIs & Health

By Bruce Steinberg 2013-07-17 Tech

During In Beta #52: Schrödinger's FitBit, Kevin and Gina discuss personal APIs and, while they are intriguing, how it's hard to imagine a common use for them. One possibility down the road could be that personal apis1 would send data to health, especially mental health, professionals. There are already DBT (Dialectical Behavioral Therapy) apps for patients to track their actions and emotional states. Moreover, physical exercise and getting out of the house are important elements of getting better. Perhaps even music selection could turn out to informative (one use of aggregate data would be to find out).

Especially for patients in intensive outpatient therapy, it could end up helping therapists and facilitators a lot. Of course, there's still the problem of users entering the data, but the more automatable it is (FitBit, etc), the easier it would be.

  1. A more user friendly and very secure version. ↩

Re: The Christianists’ Terms of Surrender

By Bruce Steinberg 2013-07-17 Politics

On June 27, 2013, Sullivan wrote: “There is no way to resolve the deep cultural conflict in this kind of area; but there is a way to manage it. With civility, generosity and toleration – on both sides.” But this is problematic, how does one treat bigotry “civilly”?

Certainly the Christianists can continue to denounce LGBT folk in their churches. As is proper, there's no law against hateful speech. But as private citizens, we should treat that attitude the same way we treat Anti-Semitism, Racism, etc—replying forcefully with the truth of equality. Such hatred is morally wrong and there's no reason we should tolerate it in our lives. As long as their actions are confined to the religious sphere, they can be left alone. But when it comes to the public realm, even in the midst of transactions between two private citizens, the law must forbid discrimination.

This is what the fight around “religious liberty” is going to be about: the “right” to not sell flowers for a marriage between same sex couples; to not recognize said marriages in hospitals run by religious institutions; to not rent a hall to host a celebration.

We do not tolerate florists turning Jewish couples away, Catholic Hospitals keeping Muslim couples apart, halls refusing to rent to black couples. What makes hateful beliefs about sexual identity so special that we should confer the right to discrimination upon their believers?

What I mean by “God”

By Bruce Steinberg 2011-09-27 Spirituality

A Work in Progress

I’ve taken a rather roundabout way of getting to my point, but I do eventually get there. I’ve tried to structure this essay to chart the development of my thoughts. Also, I’m not claiming any of this as radically new. Many have trod this path before me. Rather this is an attempt to clarify my beliefs for myself.

Humans have been shaped by milenia of both biological and social evolution. There is perhaps a valid sense to the definition of “Humanity” itself as the “expression of our genes and memes.” Both are so enmeshed in our being, our modes of thought, our upbringing, our environment, etc that, in some sense, there is no way for us to achieve an objective viewpoint outside of them. I don’t know if we could even imagine what such a viewpoint would entail. [1]

Human beings are also story-telling creatures, and I mean this in a deep sense. Stories are one of our primary tools for understanding the world. Given any set of experiences, we naturally create a story to explain them. This impulse manifests itself in everything from conspiracy theories to the scientific method. After all, what is a scientific theory but a story attempting to explain a set of phenomena. [2] This mode of approaching the world is so instinctual that it takes a massive effort of will to do otherwise. Take the classic bettor’s fallacy for example. Even those who know probability theory may find it easy to slip into thinking that red is more likely to come up after a run of black or that a long series of heads implies that tails should be coming up next. The probability remains the same for each spin or flip, but we have to remind ourselves of that. [3]

Given our propensity towards storytelling and the sheer variety of religious stories we have told to explain the world, faith in a literal God as revealed by such stories is hard to hold for me. Moreover, a scientific, materialistic [4], deterministic [5] approach has such a better track record at explaining the physical world, that it’s hard not to view the development of religion thru that lens. Religions arising as a way to explain and structure the world, both in terms of our relationship to the natural environment and our relationships to each other [6] seems much more believable to me than it being divinely inspired. Moreover, attempts to base a belief in God off of gaps in scientific understanding seems brittle. Yes, there is uncertainty in quantum mechanics, but the probability functions of electron states seems an odd place to ground one’s religious convictions. And science, while by no means perfectly or without detour, does a good job of slowly filling in the gaps. What does one do if evolving scientific understanding of the world negates the particular mystery one was relying on?

It seems to me that the existence of God is not a matter of empirical facts, not a matter subject to rational belief. One can either have the faith or not. It does not come from the bible, from study, from reason, but from within. [7] And I simply do not have that faith. Moreover, it’s not something I lost, rather I cannot remember ever actually believing in God.

So what do I mean when I use the word? It comes down to a question I’ve been wrestling with since at least college [8]: How does one justify and define a good, virtuous life in the absence of the divine? I believe that it is possible, contra Ivan Karamazov’s claim that without God all is permitted. Considering human social evolution, a variety of ethical teachings , examples of human behavior [9], I believe there is a way to justify/ define virtue as enlightened self-interest. [10] Caring for others, doing good works truly makes one happier and more at peace. This is not to say that it is easy to act in such a way. It takes great effort to see clearly enough to act in the light of these long term self-goods rather than short term considerations. [11]

Thus, “God” is the socially and biologically evolved aspect of our consciousness that enables us to take such a long view, that helps us place things in perspective. This is one of the beauties and powers of Quaker practice: it is designed to support and aid this facility within ourselves.

Now, I believe this view is compatible with a literal God. The story would go: He has chosen to speak to us through brain chemicals, electrical impulses, patterns of thought. In His omnipotence, He created such a pathway through setting the universe in motion. In his omniscience, he knew that we would be the result.

But, I find it more wondrous, more awe-inspiring to think of it as the outcome of random chance. [12] From a giant explosion; to the life and death of stars, to the formation of our solar system; to life’s emergence; to the circumstances that led to a group of social primates developing consciousness, intelligence, and morality; nothing was foreordained. Not that this is the best of all possible worlds, but we should be thankful for the world we do have. We should not take it for granted: it did not have to be this way. We did not have the even imperfect moral impulses that we do have. So, if listening to a bunch of neurons firing can bring us and others more peace, I say we ought to do it. It’s much less of a mouthful to name that faculty the inner light or God. And, in a sense, I believe appropriately reverent as well.

  1. This is somewhat analogous to Thomas Nagel’s point in What is it like to be a bat?. While I’m not sure I agree with his overall point that consciousness is not reducible to material facts about the brain, his discussion of our inability to conceive of what it is like to be a bat is useful. What would the experience of perceiving the world through echolocation be like? We may be able to imagine analogies (primarily visual, I’d think), but it does not seem as if we can grasp that actual experiential quality of such perception. Similarly, we may posit by analogy what a truly objective viewpoint might be, but there’s no way to get at the experience of that viewpoint. The very mental tools we’d use to do so preclude it.  ↩

  2. Apologies to any trained scientists reading this if I’m mangling the definition. And I certainly do not mean to suggest that conspiracy theories and scientific theories have equal expletive power. Rather that something like the theory of gravity is a detailed and sophisticate story explaining why a ball drops when you let go of it (among many, many other things).  ↩

  3. Another example is from Graduate School (I’m a lighting designer for performance as a “day” job). One of the most important lessons is that one must consciously consider anything and everything that an audience sees and hears. Nothing should be taken as a given. Each audience member is going to attempt to fit everything into a coherent story, so make sure it’s a choice. Strive to not see your idea on stage, but see what’s actually there.  ↩

  4. In the philosophical sense.  ↩

  5. Give or take Quantum Mechanics.  ↩

  6. To be precise about it, the latter is a subset of the former. Humans do not exist outside of the natural world; we are a part of it. However, the dichotomya seems useful for this discussion.  ↩

  7. And, if I’m understanding things right, this is pretty orthodox Quaker view as well. From the Journal of George Fox: “This I saw in the pure openings of the Light without the help of any man, neither did I then know where to find it in the Scriptures; though afterwards, searching the Scriptures, I found it.” (page 33).  ↩

  8. And, the University of Chicago, being the wonderful place that it is, actually had a program that allowed me to get my degree in thinking about said question.  ↩

  9. ie: The way in which we have to convince ourselves that we are victims in order to exploit others. This past March, I read a Glenn Greenwald article about the Koch brothers, and the story they have told themselves about our radical muslim, socialist president. Not to wade too deep into contemporary policial waters, but, in the context of western democracies, it’s pretty hard to identify Obama as any more left than a liberal centrist (and even that is a stretch). For the Koch brothers to pursue their policy goals, they have to warp their view of the worldb such that their benefits are justified by injuries done to them. Otherwise, they could not believe that lowering taxes, etc would be fair.  ↩

  10. Again, no claim to originality here.  ↩

  11. I don’t mean to denigrate the short term here; often there will be valid considerations. However, this topic is much bigger than my topic here, and this explanation is only a rough sketch of my still evolving thoughts.  ↩

  12. Yes, the concept of random chance in a deterministic universe needs some fleshing out. I do have thoughts on that topic, but I’m running rather long as it is.  ↩