Post by Admin on Jun 17, 2014 15:49:03 GMT
I used to listen to a podcast in 2008-2010 that dealt among other things with idol worship. I can't do as good a job explaining this here, since I have neither immediate access to this man's sources, nor am I willing to devote as much time to the topic as he had been. Here is the gist of it, as far as my understanding since then has developed.
Any time a human devotes a significant part of his life to anything other than what will help him and his family to survive and to thrive can be considered a form of idol worship, be this something "real" or "invented".
Dirt is real. Celery is real.
A chair is invented.
A light bulb is even more invented.
Any pictures, statues or symbols are invented.
Let's see: A smile is real.
But if I only take the time to smile and to make funny gestures at my friends through the excuse of playing a board game, then it is less real. Any time I artificially create the context for a smile to take place -- yes, it promotes my thriving -- but it also acknowledges that the natural context has been removed from us -- the natural context being to work, hunt, scavenge, invent, play* and share together in the effort to survive. (*I will argue later, if necessary, that naturally occurring play is different from playing a board game, whose method and rules have been determined by an external person.)
The danger of idol worship seems to be to grow in inverse proportion to whether an object actually exists (within my day to day reality). The more "real" an object, plant or animal is, the less likely it is to become the object of devotion. It is quite easy to use celery only for eating; and to leave celery well enough alone when I am not thinking of food. The farther detached from creational reality an object is, the easier it seems to ascribe to it magical properties; and to cause people to submit their power to it.
The next up on my scale of reality above is a light bulb. If I look at a light and let it determine my action, that is idol worhsip. If I cede my own power to make a clear decision about what to do to a light, which has no intelligence of its own, that is worship of an idol. Yet one of the most basic codes of conduct in modern society is to give up the power of decision to traffic lights. Anyone not doing so may either endanger his life, get held up by the clergy of modern-day society (in this case a police officer), or both. Similarly, if I condition myself to respond to a certain sequence of bell rings to go and come to particular classes or to perform a certain drill -- if what I am responding to is the bell and not the natural convention and adjournment of meetings -- that is idol worship. If I bow down to a flag. If I accept "expert opinion" as fact. If I cede my own intelligence to a living, breathing doctor, lawyer, police officer, government official, professor, or other professional -- that is also a form of idol worship.
Here it is that I begin to examine electronic games. No element of an electronic game actually exists. I train my mind to perform a certain set of actions by which to manipulate pixels on a screen to react in a certain way. One set of responses from the pixels is called "winning"; another "losing". I am conditioned to associate positive feelings with "winning" and negative ones with "losing". In this case, I am ascribing to a hunk of toxic waste called a "phone" the properties of keeping me entertained through methodic spewing out of code written by people unkonwn to me, which causes certain light patterns on the screen to let me know whether I am "winning" or "losing". That is all that is actually happening.
The characters in the game do not exist; nor are they meant to be a realistic representation of the animals whose names are used in the game; the reward of playing exists only in the form of code existing only on the device used to play the game; the net result of playing no more and no less time gone by which I have methodically devoted to anything other than promoting my own needs or those of my family and friends. This seems to be innocuous (I have hopefully taken the measures necessary to protect my posture and my eyesight while playing); but in a very real sense has taken my power and my life resources away from what I was meant to be doing.
This is how idol worship happens, in my eyes. Rather than requiring a particular set of beliefs, it renders my only real resources useless by squandering them on nonexistent things. I suppose that a smart person would in turn use the games to his benefit after all, by harnessing a seeming passion for games into a career as a game developer. At this stage, I have neither figured out how to do this; nor do I find it desirable to aspire to a career in sitting in front of screens in a city environment, with my work intended to entrap ever more people in the same trap in which I have placed my own mind.
Any time a human devotes a significant part of his life to anything other than what will help him and his family to survive and to thrive can be considered a form of idol worship, be this something "real" or "invented".
Dirt is real. Celery is real.
A chair is invented.
A light bulb is even more invented.
Any pictures, statues or symbols are invented.
Let's see: A smile is real.
But if I only take the time to smile and to make funny gestures at my friends through the excuse of playing a board game, then it is less real. Any time I artificially create the context for a smile to take place -- yes, it promotes my thriving -- but it also acknowledges that the natural context has been removed from us -- the natural context being to work, hunt, scavenge, invent, play* and share together in the effort to survive. (*I will argue later, if necessary, that naturally occurring play is different from playing a board game, whose method and rules have been determined by an external person.)
The danger of idol worship seems to be to grow in inverse proportion to whether an object actually exists (within my day to day reality). The more "real" an object, plant or animal is, the less likely it is to become the object of devotion. It is quite easy to use celery only for eating; and to leave celery well enough alone when I am not thinking of food. The farther detached from creational reality an object is, the easier it seems to ascribe to it magical properties; and to cause people to submit their power to it.
The next up on my scale of reality above is a light bulb. If I look at a light and let it determine my action, that is idol worhsip. If I cede my own power to make a clear decision about what to do to a light, which has no intelligence of its own, that is worship of an idol. Yet one of the most basic codes of conduct in modern society is to give up the power of decision to traffic lights. Anyone not doing so may either endanger his life, get held up by the clergy of modern-day society (in this case a police officer), or both. Similarly, if I condition myself to respond to a certain sequence of bell rings to go and come to particular classes or to perform a certain drill -- if what I am responding to is the bell and not the natural convention and adjournment of meetings -- that is idol worship. If I bow down to a flag. If I accept "expert opinion" as fact. If I cede my own intelligence to a living, breathing doctor, lawyer, police officer, government official, professor, or other professional -- that is also a form of idol worship.
Here it is that I begin to examine electronic games. No element of an electronic game actually exists. I train my mind to perform a certain set of actions by which to manipulate pixels on a screen to react in a certain way. One set of responses from the pixels is called "winning"; another "losing". I am conditioned to associate positive feelings with "winning" and negative ones with "losing". In this case, I am ascribing to a hunk of toxic waste called a "phone" the properties of keeping me entertained through methodic spewing out of code written by people unkonwn to me, which causes certain light patterns on the screen to let me know whether I am "winning" or "losing". That is all that is actually happening.
The characters in the game do not exist; nor are they meant to be a realistic representation of the animals whose names are used in the game; the reward of playing exists only in the form of code existing only on the device used to play the game; the net result of playing no more and no less time gone by which I have methodically devoted to anything other than promoting my own needs or those of my family and friends. This seems to be innocuous (I have hopefully taken the measures necessary to protect my posture and my eyesight while playing); but in a very real sense has taken my power and my life resources away from what I was meant to be doing.
This is how idol worship happens, in my eyes. Rather than requiring a particular set of beliefs, it renders my only real resources useless by squandering them on nonexistent things. I suppose that a smart person would in turn use the games to his benefit after all, by harnessing a seeming passion for games into a career as a game developer. At this stage, I have neither figured out how to do this; nor do I find it desirable to aspire to a career in sitting in front of screens in a city environment, with my work intended to entrap ever more people in the same trap in which I have placed my own mind.
