THE TRAGEDY OF MOST HUMAN WORLDVIEWS versus the HOPE of other ones

Nihilism of major LIFE STANCES versus Opposing Views

1. Hinduism: ALL that comes about in the cosmos was and is and will be is CAUSED by Brahman.

2. Buddhism: Many different views, some totally deterministic, some emphasizing human creativity and hopeful choice.

2. Greek and some Middle-eastern religions: FATE causes all that happens.

That’s why Oedipus must murder his father even though he doesn’t want to, tries to avoid doing so.

3. Orthodox Judaism: Divided views, depending which version of Judaism is asked.

“The Pharisees held that not all things are divinely predestined, but that some are dependent on the will of man; the Sadducees denied any interference of God in human affairs; while the Essenes ascribed everything to divine predestination ("B. J." ii. 8, § 14; "Ant." xiii. 5, § 9).”
https://www.jewishencyclopedia.com/.../12338-predestination.

“In an essay entitled "Iggeret ha-Gezerah," Abner of Burgos propounds the Ash'ariya doctrine of predestination, according to which every human act, both in the material and the spiritual life, is predestined. This doctrine, however, was combated by all Jewish thinkers, and especially by Maimonides, who pointed out all the absurdities to which the Ash'ariya were compelled to have recourse in order to sustain their views ("Moreh Nebukim," iii., ch. xvii.).”
“Talmud…asked…God how long he would suffer from his poverty.” [God[ answers “Eleazar's poverty could not be helped, he having been predestined to be poor.”

“…saying of Ḥanina's is, "A man does not hurt his finger in this world unless it has been decreed above" (Ḥul. 7b). https://www.jewishencyclopedia.com/.../12338-predestination

4. Islam: Allah causes all /wills all—predestines all (Qadar).

(Like some versions of Judaism, and most versions of creedal Christianity, IF SOMETHING HAPPENS and EVERYTHING THAT HUMANS DO—all is predetermined by God.

However, there are a minority of Muslim leaders such as in some Shia branches of Islam in history and now who reject this total determinism.

“Naser Makarem Shirazi gives a similar example: They say, “Does God know that so and so at such and such an hour on such and such a day will kill someone or will drink an alcoholic beverage?” If we say, “He does not know,” we have denied God's knowledge. And if we say, “Yes, that person must do this, otherwise God's knowledge will be imperfect,” then, in order to preserve God's knowledge, a person is obliged to sin and obey God!” Shirazi, Naser Makarem (12 May 2015). "The Issue of Predestination and Free Will. God's Knowledge". The Justice of God. Al-Islam.org.

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5. Augustinian Roman Catholicism, Reformed, Lutheran, Calvinistic, etc. (most creedal Christians):
They claim as a central doctrine of the Creeds and most theologians based in Augustine/Calvin/Luther that the Trinity predestined/foreordained/willed/caused all that happens.

For example,this is extremely claimed in Luther’s The Bondage of the Will. Luther had first been an Augustinian monk.

6. In contrast, Wesleyan, Quaker, Anabaptist, etc., and Eastern Orthodox Christianity take a very different view: They OPPOSE the hard DETERMINISM of the Augustinian West (Roman Catholic, Reformed, Lutheran, etc.)

Eastern Orthodox-- “…these two principles can be at odds one with another. God may always will the salvation of man, but man may not always accept it. Such was the case in the Gospels, when it was said of the Pharisees and the lawyers that “they rejected the will of God for themselves.”
https://saintgeorgekearney.com/load.php?pageid=55

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7. Most of Atheism-Naturalism-Materialism very strangely strongly agrees with creedal Western Christianity such as famous leader R.C. Sproul who claimed that Not a single molecule moves in the cosmos but that God planned/willed/ caused it.

The HUGE difference, of course
is atheists claim, NOT that any god caused all of history going back over 14 billion years, But Nature-Cosmos COMPLETELY DETERMINED ALL at the beginning of the Cosmos,
determined at the microsecond of the Big Bang or the Laws of Physics.


For instance, the famous scientist and atheist Sam Harris claims that all actions of all humans, etc. even if the universe repeats a “trillion” times will happen exactly the same.

All humans are “puppets”--our sense of "I" is an illusion--according to Harris, that Reality is like gigantic “tumors all the way down” that force everything to happen in the past, present, and future, at least until the cosmos ceases to exist. Harris states that just like a guy in Texas was forced to commit mass murder from a university tower, so ALL humans are forced by the Cosmos/Big Bang to do what happens.

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IN CONTRAST, some life stances OPPOSE DETERMINISM; INSTEAD they STATE that the Cosmos is OPEN to Hope, Creativity, etc.

While there are givens in the Cosmos, in nature and history, such as the Laws of Physics, and that one human can’t be everywhere at once, so is finite and limited, YET
Individual humans can creatively (and hopefully reasonably) make one choice out of many possible ones.

All humans do have moral responsibility and by their moral choices and discoveries can give new creative directions to themselves, and to a finite extent, even nature!

NO GOD, NO FATE, NO COSMOS HAS DERTERMINED EVERYTHING.

Despite all of the suffering, havoc, disasters, diseases, and destruction in the Cosmos, and many immoral and unjust choices of humans,
There is YET HOPE to counter the horrific tragedies.


--Dan Wilcox
6/4/23

For FB and Blog

How Our Generation Got Lost

"There’s the known. And there’s the unknown. And what separates the two is the door, and that’s what I wanna be."*
Jim Morrison of The Doors

After their Celtic Pagan wedding in June 1970 in which she and Jim Morrison wed in the summer of 1970,
Patricia explained, [It] "is a blending of souls on a karmic and cosmic plane that has an effect on future incarnations of the two involved: death does not part, and the vow taken is "forever in the Goddess’s sight."

They stood inside a circle during which a little of their blood was drawn and it was mixed with wine and then drunk by them.
However, they never filed for a legal marriage license.

A few months before, Patricia had told Jim she really loved him. And he told her he loved her.

Except for the false and superstitious Paganism, this ethical emphasis upon monogamy and permanence sounds so positive, so loving...

But it wasn't.

Like so many actions and events in the 1960's to the present, talk is cheap, actions speak much louder than words.

--

Kennealy wrote that she became pregnant from Morrison after he pulled out her diaphragm.

Jim was most cordial as they drank at the hotel bar, but whenever Patricia tried to direct the conversation toward her pregnancy, he skated away.

Again he dodged Patricia, telling her twice on the phone that he would see her but never did, spending time with another friend instead.

In August 1970, Patricia talked with him during a break in his trial, "I know it’s not exactly the best time and place to ask you to deal with this, with the trial and all but the fact remains, it happened and now—"

Jim smiled awkwardly and said, "We’ll manage."

"Listen, I’m not exactly thrilled by the idea either, you know. But you happen to be the only man I ever considered good enough to father a child of mine, and now it’s come to pass and I don’t know what to do. I do think you owe me a bit more than your checkbook."

Jim glanced at her, then away. "If you have that baby, it’ll ruin our friendship. A baby isn’t going to change my life at all, but it would alter yours tremendously, forever."

"I could take it to court."

"And I would deny the charges..."

"I can't believe you said that." By now, tears were streaming down her face.

"Well, what did you expect me to say?"

"I don't know, goddamn you! I suppose it makes no difference that it's our baby, yours and mine not yours and Pamela's."

[Jim was sleeping with both at the same time, plus carrying on one-night-stands with groupies and brief affairs with other girls he met. One night he ripped rings off from the hands of a girl he had taken back to his motel room.
When Pamela, suddenly, showed up at his door demanding to know who he was with, he told Pamela, "Look, these are for you."
And he handed the other girl's ring to Pamela.]

"I--no, no difference. I won't support a kid. Any kid. I can't afford it and I don't want the responsibility."

"The only way you can't afford it is emotionally," she shot back at him.

"Well now, wouldn't it be better to have a kid with somebody who wanted to be its father?
It's really up to you. If you have the kid, it'll be your kid. If you want the abortion, I'll pay for it and I'll come to New York to be with you when you have it. I promise I'll come."

[He also had at least 20 other paternity suits against him. But he said] "You know, this subject has never come up with me before."

Patricia exploded. "Don't give me that bullshit! I know it has. I've been told..."

"No, no it's not true, none of it--it's never happened before."
--

The first week of November Patricia Kennely entered a hospital in New York and Jim's child was aborted in the 20th week of fetal development.

Contrary to his promises, "Jim was not present and he did not call."

"Well, I just got into town about and hour ago
Took a look around , see which way the winds blow
Where the little girls in their Hollywood bungalows

Are you a lucky lady in the City of the Night?"

"L.A. Woman" by J.M./Doors

At a concert in Florida, he had yelled, "...ain't nobody gonna love my ass?...you're all a bunch of fuckin' idiots! you're all a bunch of slaves...I'm talkin' about love...I wanna change the world..."

One of his defenders at his obscenity trial in Florida said, "...I mean for all the obscenity, he was really telling the audience,
"Fuck" meant love...and to love each other."

Jim told reporters, "This trial and its outcome won't change my style, because I maintain that I did not do anything wrong."

"And then he fought so bitterly with Pamela that she left him--flew off to Paris to be reunited with her rich French count."

Days past "spent in bars and the nights were passed in the Strip hotel, where he told a buddy, ...look at this!"

"Jim was hanging from the balcony railing outside his room in the Hyatt House Hotel, ten stories above the Sunset Strip. He had been drinking and snorting coke."

He worried about LA cops who "...are almost fanatical about in believing in the rightness of their cause. They have a whole philosophy behind their tyranny."

Excerpts from No One Here Gets Out Alive, by Jerry Hopkins and Danny Sugerman

Jim "devoured Friedrich Nietzsche," who wrote of Dionysian excess, the uber-man, and going "beyond good and evil." Morrison would often speak of Nietzsche and include his ideas in his writings and poems.

A young Frenchman, Gilles Yepremian, came across Morrison being evicted from a Parisian hotel...

“He was totally drunk. Nobody recognized him...Jim saw some policemen and he rolled down the window and shouted, ‘Fuck the pigs!’, so the driver kicked us out."

"It was no secret that Paris was awash with heroin, nowhere more so than in the rock clubs."

“A lot of drugs, yes, a very free time for sex, a lot of jealousy and tension. The night club scene was heavy – gangsters and very bad cops. There were a lot of fistfights inside, which wound up on the stairs and in the street. There was a gunfight outside the club. I used to carry a bayonet for protection. Crazy but necessary."
L.A. Woman and the Last Days of Jim Morrison
By Max Bell

Jim's father was a "Naval Captain—later Admiral—who participated in the Gulf of Tonkin incident in August 1964, an event which marked the beginning of large-scale US military involvement in Vietnam.

As Captain/Admiral George Steven Morrison rose in the ranks of the Navy, Jim rejected him and his mother. "In 1964, at the age of 21, he spent his last Christmas with his family...
Jim’s original bio for Elektra records indicated he had no family and his parents were dead."

Then Jim "heard that Janis Joplin was dead of an overdose. First Jimi [Hendrix] Then Janis."

Jim's repeated comment to friends was, "You're drinking with Number Three."

Soon he was dead of a heroin/alcohol overdose, and probably, cocaine abuse.

Isn't there so much in that brief vignette
from the biography which captures our generation's contradictions?

It's hypocrisies, empty political and spiritual rhetoric,
abuse of others, demeaning cruelty,
heavy drug/alcohol addiction
and refusal to accept our infants, the ones we had chosen to create,
while all at the same time,
claiming
we were rejecting the Establishment, and seeking to help everyone find peace and love and justice?

Early on in Jim's meteoric rise into rock, I was a devoted fan of The Doors' first album. I listened to it over and over. I loved the songs, especially ones like "Light My Fire," "Backdoor Man, "Break on Through (To the Other Side)."

That is until one decisive night; I actually sat down, while very alert and rational, and read the lyrics, and figured out what each of his songs meant.

They were ALL songs of abuse, adultery, drugs, immorality, and even killing and incest.

Allegedly, "The End," is a song about his own hatred for his military father. But why does Jim, in the lyrics, emphasize obscene incest for his own mother?

The latter one, a very powerful rock anthem, was so gross and obscene that it got him and the Doors thrown out of the famous Hollywood nightclub, the Whiskey a Go-Go. The owner strongly objected to Jim's screaming the last line.

One night, he kept repeating those lines over and over, like an immoral mantra. At one concert, even though he saw his mother and younger brother in the audience,
he screamed the incestuous obscenity, and refused to see them,
having his team repeatedly lie to his mother that he would see her later in the evening.

But like with his lies to Patricia in the pregnancy case, and to other friends, he never did.


How tragic was our generation,

Daniel Wilcox

*The inspiration for The Door's name was from Aldous Huxley's book on mescaline, The Doors of Perception.