Enjoy the Chaos (more from the mailbag)

The Sunday morning post has arrived, readers writing emails from their ethereal locations, connecting to us and, so we can share and share alike, now with you.

One came to us from Andrew with the subject line, “Finally.” He writes::

Greetings KtB, You probably receive hundreds of thousands of these emails. Probably all starting with the the same lead sentence and subject line.

In any case, thank you for this sight.

We think he meant site, but maybe not. Maybe he meant exactly what he wrote.

And, making the suggestion that we are perhaps a pot, making suggestions about a kettle, Jon Lutz writes:

From THE APOCALYPSE IS ALWAYS NOW: “The new atheism is a movement built on rock-hard reason, throbbing with a weird mix of contempt for and attraction to soft superstition.” Well, isn’t KtB founded on a similar “contempt for and attraction to…” religion in general? This is the heart of our (non-believers and believers who won’t deny the importance of religion and spirituality) fascination and struggle with the topic.

I don’t need to defend Hitchens or Dawkins b/c I’m sure they’d make a viscious tag-team: half brawny misanthrope, half diabolical nerd. But let’s take them for the enlightened viewpoint they represent, up against insane odds. I don’t think the world is doomed by religion, but I am dumbfounded by mega-church rock concerts, prosperity gospel, and entreaties to “have a blessed day” (as passive-aggressive a statement as “don’t let the door hit you…”), and I’ll only tentatively mention Islamic or Hasidic fundamentalism. So, please, don’t throw the “new atheists” in the fire. Someone like Ayaan Hirsi Ali needs a champion like Hitchens in particular.

Hopefully Jon, and you, have already gone out to buy Believer, Beware so you can read all the good stuff that follows this introduction and you can decide for yourself where we fall on the contempt-attraction continuum.

Robert Wolff (wildwolff.com) writes:

I always thought Buddhism is not a religion, it does not have a god. It’s all about chaos. Nature, the planetary ecology, is chaos. And for some reason we, humans, are scared of chaos so we control. We control everything, including, of course, ourselves. Humans being what they are they keep inventing new ways to control. Democracy (now just about meaningless because there are so many kinds of it). Capitalism. The pope, the various ayatollahs, archbishops, congress, leaders, dictators, endless varieties of control. We think we can control the planet, and we already have a thousand ways to do that.

Nothing wrong with chaos. It just is. It’s the womb of all potential.

Kill the Buddha? Which one?

My only question now at the end of a long, long life, is who are we? Homo sapiens sapiens, aware that we are aware. So? Does that make us special? We think we are no longer part of what is. We are above it somehow, we are so smart that we manage this planet. Grossly mismanage is what we do. Children playing with the fires of the atom. Frantically rushing to destroy life in the name of control. And we think we’re so smart!

The divine? Spiritual? First Man’s god was a praying mantis, a mouse, a spider—never a “creator.” What we think divine has always been the wonder of chaos. Chaos is what cannot be controlled. Why try?

Enjoy the chaos.

We couldn’t say it better, Robert. Thanks for writing, everyone. Got something to add? Make your comment below.