In Other Words

I had another teaching dream last night. I was working on a chemistry lesson plan that started off with activation energy and wound up with the energy-entropy dynamic that underlies all life on earth. I awoke from a suffocation episode to find my face pressed into the pillow. Right! You have to breathe or entropy will get you. There may be some truth in dreams.

Writing is a waking dream,
groping through preconscious fog,
making sense of nonsense,
finding meaning,
choosing words in solitude.
And then the same idea surprises
as it all appears elsewhere
in other words.
Maybe that strange thought was true.

*****************

Liminal Spaces, Your Brain's Secret Laboratory: Anne-Laure Le Cunff, Big Think

Make Meaning

You may have noticed me
going on about meaning:
The Meaning of Meaning
The Meaning of Life
To Look at Dust
and so on.

Life emerges from the void.
Meaning emerges from life.
Life goes on
sustained and changed by meaning.
We who make meaning
may avoid the dreaded tipping points...

But then perhaps it's all a waste of time.
Click the X,
leave meaning as what it meant,
say what's been said,
live as we lived
ignoring forest fires, floods and famine,
denying chaos while the planet dies...

Or find new words that work.

Make meaning.
Have a say.
Keep it all alive.

The Greatest Con Job: CNN Politics

Where Do We Come From? Ethan Siegel, Youtube 

Absurdist or Existentialist: Jonny Thomson

Malthusianism: Wikipedia

Current World Population: Worldometer

Ocean Acidification: CBC News, Sept 24, 2025

Extinction: Wikipedia

Arctic Sea Ice: Just Have A Think, Sept 21, 2025

Carbon Capture: Just Have A Think, Sept 28, 2025

Cutting Emissions: CBC News, Sept 28, 2025

The Next Question

Who are your friends?

Nothing new here. Just stuff we forgot. 

Friends are the people you invite in for a coffee. You share their joys when things are going well, their pain when they are suffering, and lend a hand when they are in need, and they do the same for you. You depend on and trust each other. Right? Remember?

But it's more than that. The complete answer begs another question. Who are not your friends?

The negative question is easier to answer because our noisy, aggressive, competitive not-friends demand more attention than our warm fuzzy considerate friends. Fear, distrust, anger, and aggression trump affection. Watch out for your not-friends who will help themselves at your expense if they get the chance. 

Donald says he doesn't need anything from Canada. Then he shuts down international industry and poisons trade with tariffs, and calls Canada nasty when we stop buying American booze and visiting Disneyland. Ambassador Pete complains that Canadians are no longer passionate about their relationship with Americans. What's a Canuck supposed to think?  Are Americans friends or not?

Just to be clear, the Trumpian way is life as a game. To win, first learn the rules, and then play it better than anyone else. By the way, there are no rules except the ones Donald makes up because he's smarter than anyone else and popular, and if he's falling behind he will change the rules. He's going to win. The people most likely to lose are the ones who think Donald is their friend. Actually he doesn't have friends. He has marks, sycophants and enemies and they are interchangeable on a whim.

Personally, I think most Americans are our friends. Collectively, since they may have put a psychopath in charge, they aren't gonna geta cupa coffee from us without some serious negotiations. 

Meanwhile the other psychopaths are trying to hide their amusement over Donald's random moves, unfriending friends and befriending enemies so nobody knows where they stand. Everyone is grabbing what they can amidst the chaos. Meanwhile, he-who-thinks-he-is-the-smartest is actually the easiest mark. Flattery works. Isn't life fun?

When the smoke clears, and the psychopaths are done, in some mellow future we may rediscover the meaning of friendship. 

Who are your friends?
They are the ones
with whom you mutually honour
this ancient rule.
Treat others the way you want to be treated.

It's golden.
It's not a game. 
Everybody wins.

Dorothy tuned in to the Paikin Podcast yesterday. As we listened to Janice Stein and Michael Ignatieff discuss toxic politics in the USA and in Canada, I was reminded that there are always more questions to explore. Trump's presumption of entitlement has parallels at other levels of the holarchy. 

For sure, there are humans who are friends of the natural world; but collectively we worship GDP (one of the thousand names of god), and the first commandment is GROWTH. Since we are the smartest species around, and we make the rules, we are deluded that we can win with mines, concrete and steel, highways, fossil fuels, nets, glyphosate and neonics, pleasing ourselves, careless of the climate, whales, forests and butterflies. 

If nature loses,
we all lose.

It's not a game.

Let's be friends.

****************

Sea Ice Melt: Just Have a Think, Sept 21, 2025.

World on Edge: Paikin's Podcast, Jeff Kopstein and Janice Stein, Sept 8, 2025

The Question

To be or ought to be.
That is the question.

The answer is 
we ought to be friends. 

We ought to balance our appetites and ambitions out of regard for each other, because we do better with mutual respect, restraint and reciprocity. Otherwise there is law, judgment and retribution.

For example, if we agree to obey the speed limit, there are fewer accidents, which keeps kids safe on the way to school. Then in a safer world, we pay less for insurance. Nice. However, some commuters want to get to work more quickly, and don't like reduced speed limits in school zones enforced by cameras and fines. 

One commuter is the premier of Ontario who doesn't approve of a "tax" on speeding because, according to him, Ontario is all about BUSINESS (one of the thousand names for god)... unless it interferes with summer recess, June 9 to October 16. Tough job being premier. Maybe we should let him get to the cottage without speed limits. 

While Doug is at the new cottage, the old one rents for $750 per night, BYOS (bring your own smoke detector). So Doug can make about 120 x $750 = $90,000 during his four months off from parliament without providing a functioning smoke alarm to his tenants. Maybe there should be a law.

OK, that's a little wacky. But you know what I mean. Doug thinks we shouldn't cumber people with regulations. He's just TAKING CARE OF BUSINESS, which, in his book, is the first commandment. He has a point: laws can be oppressive. LAW is a name for another ontologically untenable god. But it seems like we let business get control of law regulating society in the interest of business.  Business within the law, both motivated by regard for the common good would better.

You may have noticed a few other regulatory issues in the world news: climate change, zero emission vehicles, censorship, foreign workers, school boards, the fossil carbon economy, free trade, crime, fast-tracking development, immigration, almost everything else.

There is more to say, no surprise. 

The next question is
who are your friends?

**********************

Renewable American Energy: Just Have a Think, Sept 14, 2025

Ford to Ban Speed Cameras: CBC News, Sept 25, 2025

Enough

In case you missed it, here are links for the previous two notes in this series.

>> About Oug
>> Something More

*************************

Enough is enough. This will be my last gasp of oug.

Here I will explain why the incompleteness-of-belief premise is itself incomplete. I mean, incompleteness is not just one thing. Beliefs can be more incomplete or less incomplete. If we can draw on beliefs from different traditions and perspectives, we might discover some existential principles that are more complete.

Theology is full of dichotomies, polar opposites that are quite incomplete by themselves. I won't bore you with seventy chapters of opposing Ontologically Untenable Gods (OUGs). Here is just one such pair. You can think on the rest yourself.

Consider a remote god as opposed to an immanent god.

Ancient gods were typically remote and inattentive to human concerns. It took ritual, sacrifice, submission, obedience, fasting, praise, song and dance, incense, meditation, strenuous ordeals, prayer, incantations, mushrooms: all of that and more to get the attention of a god who might grant what you want if you used the right magic. I suspect that none of that works by changing a god's mind, supposing it has a mind. It might, however, change the mind of believers who notice when their pious devotion seems to work and ignore when it doesn't. To my mind, confirmation bias cannot validate an Ontologically Untenable God.

Then came Abraham who, according to legend, was willing to butcher and roast his son, Isaac, to prove his devotion to his god, but was spared that psychotic task by sacrificing a ram in his place. As a son myself, that feels like progress. Good for Abraham. His belief became a bit less incomplete. Still, there is the ram.

A step further along, believers imagined themselves part of the divine family as children of the father god. That's even less incomplete. But if you aren't in the family, look out. Outsiders get smitten.

Next there's the man-god born to be exemplar of goodness. Some people who prefered coercion, put him to death as a rebel because he challenged their authority. Then some believers imagined that this violent death was a sacrifice that satisfied a debt. That notion has an appealing symmetry, a psychopath god who demands a sacrifice evolving into an altruistic god who is the sacrifice. But why sacrifice? As an existential principle, that is still, I think, untenable and incomplete.

At the other pole of this dichotomy, the Breath of God is an immanent, immediately accessible God-in-us. Because reality is at times arbitrary and dangerous, and we want something better, we may be inspired to make good things happen. Yet rain falls on the just and unjust. There's disaster, disease, and death, and something will get you. We can't fix it all even with inspired effort; and fixing one thing may damage others. So we continue to explore the mystery in the liminal space between beliefs looking for answers to our existential questions.

Then if we look ahead, and dimly see
a peaceful all-inclusive family;
and if the path to get there seems too rough,
a more complete belief might be enough.

What fills the space between the O U Gs
is wonder, thought and love. Equipped with these 
let's try, and if we fail, transcend the pain;
then wondering still more, just try again.

********************

The Early Heretics: Martin Thielen, Doubter's Parish

Heal the World: Michael Jackson, Youtube

The Task of Religion: John Shelby Spong

The Neuroscience of Extremes: Abigail Marsh, Big Think

Something More

You believed I was done with oug. Didn't you? But no. 

Thought generates ideas to explain the unknown. Some ideas are so plausible or useful or pleasant or popular that we believe them and stop thinking. Everyone does this, even scientists who trade in their theories for "facts" (one of the names of god). However, an idea expressed in words cannot be the complete story. Beliefs are necessarily fallible and incomplete, offering us at best an Ontologically Untenable God (OUG). 

You thought I was done with OUG, but there was something more. So we return to the mystery and keep thinking because there is always something more. To be consistent, even this idea, the incompleteness of belief, must be incomplete. 

Don't disbelieve in incompleteness just yet. Consider the evidence.

Consider the many -isms lending diverse meaning to the thousand names of god: theism, pantheism, panentheism, polytheism, monotheism, henotheism, kathenotheism, monolatrism, deism, pandeism, polydeism, egotheism, eutheism, dystheism, maltheism, misotheism, humanism, naturalism, materialism, atheism, non-theism, agnosticism, alterity theism, apeirotheism, and we've just got started. Follow the links.

God is variously endowed with every imaginable attribute: caring, indifferent, remote, present, tribal, universal, archaic, eternal, unchanging, evolvimg, male, female, genderless, immanent, creative, judgmental, rational, passionate, vengeful, forgiving, powerful, demanding, jealous, angry, encouraging, loving, merciful, compassionate, active, passive, personal, impersonal, intentional, arbitrary, spiteful, gracious, selfish, self-sacrificing, existing, pre-existing, non-existing: fill up your god with whatever attributes you want; call it whatever name you want; or trust some prophet to do it for you. What you get is always an Ontologically Untenable God, a mystery that raises questions and gets you thinking. 

God is
something more
than what you think.

About Oug

Oug ?

I assume you are reading this note because you are curious about the word 'oug' in the title. As far as I can tell, 'oug' is not yet a word in the English language. I claim it as my own and will tell you what it means. It is the mid section of a word that begins with 'th' and ends in 'ht.

This bit of wordplay demonstrates that the heart of thought is something unknown that leaves you looking for an explanation. Conversely, when you are sure you know, thinking stops and you can get busy with important things. I presume you are no longer thinking about 'oug' because I told you what it means and you trust me to tell the truth. 

Now some theology. Don't stop reading. This is one of the important things. The linguists tell us that the word god (theos in Greek, other names elsewhere) has two aspects.

1. God is a name for a collection of attributes which we deem true without much thinking because somebody we trust already has it figured out and told us about it. Now that we don't have to think, we can get on with business and pleasure. Furthermore, if others in our group share the same beliefs, we spend less time discussing and more time taking care of business and having fun. That has a dark side: we believers  assure each other that we already know the truth and therefore never improve our understanding. Darker still, we may disrespect those who don't share our beliefs, stop listening to them, exclude them as adversaries, even go to war and sacrifice our children and theirs in battle just because we know the truth and the unbelievers don't. Confident that we are right, we get busy doing wrong. 

2. Alternatively, God is a Mystery. That gets us thinking and keeps us humble. Then our beliefs are up for discussion. As for our neighbours, whatever they believe, we are all wondering about the same mystery, wiser together, enriched by a variety of perspectives. On the negative side, we thoughtful people don't get much done unless we trust some of our thoughts enough to act on them. However, if we are wise, we do not defend the creed in the face of contrary evidence. We pay attention to consequences and adjust our thinking as we go.

So we have these two gods: (1) our trusted understanding and (2) the mystery forever beckoning beyond what we know.

Early on, a younger version of myself assumed that theology was somebody else's job. I was too busy to worry about it. If I were doing things over again, I would listen to the many voices speaking their version of truth from a thousand traditions. I would be curious about the Mystery at the heart of things, and probably get fired because I spent too much time thinking and didn't get the job done... or more likely I would do an internet search and have my opinions reinforced by the Google echo algorithm. 

How Curiosity Rewires Your Brain For Change: Big Think Business

Reading the Heretics: Martin Thielen, August 2025

Names of God: Wikipedia

ReligionsGeek: Brian Carwana
Safeguard Your Mind: Big Think,Yuval Noah Harari

Yes
there's the Internet,
its gods affirming what we think,
while clickbait deacons collect our offerings
before the sacrament of holy consumerism;
but
don't forget the Mystery
and thought.