On Finding God (Part 3)

[rrneck]

Part 1
Part 2
Part 3
Part 4


Contrary to popular belief, conceptions of God through religion are not the only game in town. People that follow various religions are referring to something in their skulls as God, but that doesn’t mean their description of his Almighty Marketshare is necessarily better or worse than anybody else’s. There are any number of ways to express one’s narrative in the real world that don’t involve a lot of baroque architecture and stilted music. And in fact, there are lots ways to measure the quality of somebody’s God narrative, and they don’t involve a Bunsen burner.

The arts and religion have been at odds for quite a while because the truth is they are both in the same business. Art and religion are both designed to create a narrative to provide context for our experience in the world. That narrative is, by necessity, fiction. Since it depends on all that squishy stuff that goes on inside people’s heads that cannot be verified empirically, it cannot in any way, shape or form be considered science. It cannot be used to prove anything except the presence of the squishy stuff in our heads.

Every work of art ever made has two basic components: form and content. Form is anything you can point at – line, shape, color, edge, surface etc. Content is what it means or why it is made. Each of those parts informs and defines the other. The measure of the quality of the work is the measure of the relationship between form and content.

Look this painting over:


Wassily Kandinsky
Improvisation #28
Guggenheim
1912

Now think back. As you examined the painting, what path did your eyes take when you were doing so? If you’re like everyone else (and you actually examined it), your gaze wandered from here to there to take in the image. So while the image is presented in a gestalt, you still had to follow a sort of path between the various parts to try to make sense of it. That movement was not an accident – it’s 2D design 101. The artist has led your eyes through the image. The movement of the viewer’s focus of attention is just one of a whole boatload of devices used to make a painting. And as far as I know all of the arts use some variation of conceptual or physical mobility to carry you along. It don’t mean a thing if it ain’t got that swing.

Now, you’re obviously free to look at it any way you want, but if you want to understand what the artist is trying to say, you will have to suspend disbelief to cooperate with her at least a little bit. And your cooperation will be much easier to solicit if the image is interesting to begin with. That interest is an offer of somewhere to go and a way to get there. And if she can inspire you follow her, it will become a shared experience between you and the artist and you will find within yourself some relationship to whatever prompted her to produce the work.

There’s not much difference between an artist and a shaman. Some don’t think there is difference any at all.

So the relationship between that thing that some people call God, the kind of narrative they create to illuminate and focus their response to that thing, and the actions that are prompted and defined by that narrative are not exclusive to any established religion. Nor are they confined to the arts. Hell, they aren’t confined anywhere. Each one of us creates (or acquires) a narrative and uses it in our own way. You know, self awareness. And the vast majority of us live our lives somewhere between the navel gazing contemplation of our own curiosity and the projection of our ego into the void.

[Thats my opinion]

1. rrneck, Having carefully read your three posts

I am fascinated with how your mind works. You begin in a search to define God. Probably an impossible task as long as you are hung up on God being a being, an it, or substance. But that is where you are, and your reasoning, given that perimeter, is honestly put.

In the second piece you try to understand your depression in relation to your search. What goes on in your head may shed some light on your quest, but it also may fixate you on psychological issues.

The third piece on art I find to be the most fascinating. As a amateur water color artist, I am taken by your analysis. Since most ancients tended to be illiterate, they confronted reality through stories, art, drama, music--not through the written word. What we have in all ancient efforts to reduce mystery to writing, are later efforts to detail what are essentially ways pre-literate attempts to define what has always been beyond description. When we read the Bible, for instance, we are not confronting a history book. It only talks about things that never happened but may always be true. There was no Adam and Eve historically, but that great Hebrew myth tells a true story of the human plight and the human hope. So we sit beside a keyhole listening to how people in a very different culture(s) tried to make sense of their world.

I have no critique of your point of view.I just wanted to listen in on your struggle appreciatively

[rrneck]

2. Thanks.

It's true that defining God is no simple task. Certainly on an internet forum.

I think there is a difference between defining god as a chemical process and wrapping a narrative around our understanding of a deity. God as a simulacrum for a process we cannot perceive is a useful tool for the creation of a narrative to make sense of our experience in the world. If you refer to God, sooner or later someone is going to want to know what you think God is, and the answer will invariably be a fictional narrative. It seems to me that a narrative that includes a concept of a deity not only is unnecessary but probably counter productive.

I percieved something in my head and compared it to the descriptions of God by others. Using that information I built a narrative and associated it with scientific and cultural data at my disposal. I might use the interaction of serotonin, cortisol and various peptides as a physical location people's inspiration of God, but the deity itself is the simulacrum.

And that's why artists are so screwy. The idea is to pull all that squishy stuff in our heads together with something that can be empirically proven to exist in the world. The closer we get to erasing the space between them, the better the art and the more magical it becomes. Didn't you ever look at a watercolor you've done and thought, "Damn, did I do that?" Magic.

[Thats my opinion]

3. The trouble with those of us who are process theologians

is that we are so blasted Cartesian we forget that the story, the word myth-- properly understood not as a fairy tale but as an effort to face what what may be indefinable-- must always precede scientific analysis.

[rrneck]

4. Baby and bathwater.

If we throw out religion we have to throw out fiction. If we give up faith we give up a sense of wonder.