Schopenhauer on Religion: Let's not throw the baby out with the bathwater just yet

Krishna teaching Arjuna, from Bhagavata Gita.
House decoration in Bishnupur, West Bengal, India. By Arnab Dutta (2011) CC BY-SA 3.0

The Horrors and Absurdities of Religion by Arthur Schopenhauer

My rating: 4 of 5 stars

I have second-hand knowledge of Schopenhauer's "the will to live is consecrated in the act of procreation" thesis, and while it makes a brief appearance, much of this collection is focused on religion. The "On Various Subjects" section reads a little like La Rochefoucauld's Maxims, and makes some interesting assertions about genius (it is OK to make mistakes, just your masterpiece ought to be inimitable); on the farcical nature of higher education (perception must precede concept, not the other way around); an early statement concerning animal rights (p. 77); and that great works have to wait until enough idiots agree that it is great - such insight is possessed by the majority in the same way that a "castrate possesses of the power to beget children". Now to religion. Some of my favourites:

All religion is antagonistic towards culture; 

The absurdities of dogma... arise from the need to link together two heterogeneous doctrines as those of the Old and the New Testaments; 

Hatred and contempt are decidedly antagonistic to one another and mutually exclusive (p. 52);

The more prudent rulers enter into an alliance with [priests]; and

Faith and knowledge are totally different.

The latter explains the dialogue On Religion, which, although I understand Schopenhauer was atheistic, appeared on the surface to be bombastic, but might otherwise resonate with court judges who have been confronted with decisions concerning the existence of God, and have deferred on the grounds that, in effect, "faith and knowledge" are different. Nevertheless, there is in this work the attitude (of The Enlightenment) that rational individuals cannot possibly believe in God. I have heard this sentiment expressed by senior academics, in addition to the buffoons who drool over the Facebook echo-chamber "I F***ing Love Science" which confirms empirically that God does not exist because it has 25 million "likes" (see quote above about "castrates"). That said, there is little to surprise the modern reader, but Schopenhauer was one of the few Western students of India, Hinduism, and Buddhism, and his insights demonstrate that the glory days Conservatives dream about did not really exist in the nineteenth century, the counterfactuals were simply hidden from majority view. But to disclose the real gem in this work, I found another piece to the riddle of Benjamin Franklin. One of his "virtues" is "moderation". This is not a riddle in itself, but when "temperance" is also one of the virtues, what is so special about moderation that it should stand alone? Schopenhauer explains in the essay On Ethics by setting out some of the differences between Eastern and Western virtues and vices. For Schopenhauer, "virtues are qualities of will", which means that cowardice cannot be a vice if we have the "will to live"! The Platonic virtues closely align with Franklin's,one of which Cicero translated as temperantia, which is"in English moderation". Schopenhauer states:

[Moderation] is a very vague and ambiguous expression under which many different things can be subsumed, such as prudence, sobriety, keeping one's head.

Prudence. Cautious. To Franklin, "avoiding extremes". "Sobriety", therefore, belongs with "temperance". But "prudence" and "keeping one's head", then, belong to moderation. Whether "keeping one's head" is the same thing as to "forbear resenting injuries so much as one is able" remains to be seen, but I daresay Schopenhauer and Franklin were conversant in the literature on virtues, and eventually I will solve the riddle. But what of Schopenhauer? Religion is something we believe because we are indoctrinated as children, but as humanity "grows up", religion must inevitably die because it doesn't make sense (irrational). Yet the final paragraph tells the story of adolescents throwing out the baby with the bathwater - Aesop's fables are too childish because everybody knows foxes, wolves, and ravens can't talk! Thus, Schopenhauer ends with a real noodle-baker (about the boy who was too grown up to read Aesop):

Who cannot see in this hopeful lad the future enlightened Rationalist?

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Weather Update: Keswick Station Lessons Learnt & Improvements

Increasing the height of the temperature gauge to prevent interference from the rooftop

Last evening, my weather station recorded the temperature at a peak of 37.1° C at 6:28pm. There was no way it was that hot. I even climbed onto the roof of the dunny to check the temperature. It was not that hot.

I checked the documentation for the station, and mine was only 1' off the roof - the recommended height is 5' - this explains why the temperature yesterday had peaked at around 34.4° C at 4pm -  which I suspect was about right - only to drop and then suddenly increase as the sun dropped in the sky. I suspect the angle of the sunlight and the reflection off the roof at this time of day was the culprit.

As soon as Gunning Ag & Water Solutions opened this morning, I obtained a solid poly stake and some hose clamps and set to work. Of course, I had originally set up the station before I had put the wire over the top of the chook pen. (I knew this would happen, but at the time I shrugged it off.) But thankfully my "Mission Impossible" ladder allowed me to get around the obstacle I had created for myself.

I did not turn off the station before moving it, and this caused another issue. Apparently, the rain gauge functions with a drop-flap (a bit like the old aircraft toilets). This meant that at 9:30am, I recorded 5.7mm of "rain" due to the motion of the station while I added the stake. As you can see from the picture above, there was no actual rain this morning!

The temperature as I write is 34.4° C. The nearest Weather Underground station is at Jerrawa (just up the road), and I am within 1° C of the reading there. It is a useful benchmark, as the Jerrawa Station uses a more expensive Vantage Pro2 weather station. This was certainly useful yesterday when I was recording 37° C while everywhere else was recording around 30° C.

I believe the weather station is now setup with the recommended specifications, and, within the capability of my system, the temperature information is accurate.

The issues now are: (1) Is the radiation guard sufficient to keep direct sunlight off the sensor? and (2) Will the poly stake hold when the westerly blast-furnace winds begin again? Time will tell.

Socialism with Chinese Characteristics Begins Here

Chairman Mao is the red sun in our hearts, September 1968

Quotations from Chairman Mao Tse-tung by Mao Zedong

My rating: 4 of 5 stars

This copy I purchased from the markets on Antique Road, Hong Kong, some time ago. I decided on a cover to cover reading. I soon found that the quality of my copy was not the best, and I had to look up the punchline of the Chinese myth "The Foolish Old Man Who Removed the Mountains". As it turns out, Mao used the myth in relation to the two mountains - imperialism and feudalism - that could be chipped away by the generations. My knowledge of China's modern history is limited, and my reading on Mao's influence has been limited to Mao's On Guerrilla Warfare, Sun Shuyun's The Long March, and the "beautiful yet sinister" Chinese Propaganda Posters (published by Taschen in 2015 - I purchased my copy at the Hong Kong Museum of Modern Art bookstore, a favourite haunt). My favourite quote (p. 337):

...in the year 2001, or the beginning of the 21st century, China... will have become a powerful socialist industrial country.

I learnt a bit more about Norman Bethune, the Canadian physician who worked with Mao after serving as a doctor during the Spanish Civil War, and discovered interesting viewpoints on "democratic centralism". Mao discusses political theory, education policy, "contradictions" and ways to overcome these, such as that that exists between classes, officers and men, comrades, and in terms of patriotism versus internationalism. Mao's quotes are all after The Long March (the Red Army's retreat in 1934 that left only 1/5 of the Army remaining, but ultimately led to the Red Army's victory and was to become a major pillar of Communist Party propaganda). Following on from The Long March, this collection of quotations is an intense lesson in the modern history of China. Many of the quotes are drawn from the "Selected Works". It is difficult to buy English translations of the less popular works by Mao, and I would like to read more of this in future, as, for all his other not insignificant digressions, he was certainly an important scholar, poet, and political theorist. Like anything that is not of "us", Mao's works have largely been ignored, yet he, and later, Deng Xiaoping, were the driving forces behind the Chinese powerhouse that has emerged in my own lifetime. "Socialism with Chinese characteristics" is something that we should all be studying at this point in history, and this "little red book" is a good place to start.

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