wpainterw

In a week or so I’ll be 89. Of the male attendants present at our wedding 61 years ago only one is alive today. All of my wife’s sisters have passed away. Her maid of honor passed away back in 1984. From cancer. Two of her closest friends also from cancer. The list goes on and on. My wife fears that earlier breast cancer may have spread but there is no sign of that yet. As for me, if it were not for three heart operations, several others, such as prostate and hernias, as well as superb medical treatment (roughly twenty medications a day) and nearly 28 years of sobriety, I would have been “six feet under” as they used to say, long ago.
Increasingly, I wonder whether all this is just a result of modern medical technology or something else. I don’t really fit in with all the doctrine of conventional AA, its dwelling on “God” as the “Higher Power”, which one surrenders to and has his or her “faults” removed. But I’m not a card carrying agnostic, much less an atheist, either. Increasingly I seem to sense that there’s something there, something in the room, watching me and that it may have been doing that for years, helping me get through some of the horrible scrapes I’ve managed to get into. Or am I simply doing Pascal’s Wager, lurching toward a rather cowardly death bed conversion? Eventually I’ll find out the answer.
One thing I’ve learned. Aristotle was right. There is a happy medium.Too much of anything, or too little may lead to unhappiness. And happiness can come from trying to help others but having the humility not to try to “fix” them. Finally, compulsively seeking perfection is unwise. For we can learn from mistakes, even from failure, where we have to begin again, maybe with "worn out tools".
Am I repeating what I said about old age in another thread? Where I expressed some thoughts about loneliness and the temptation to drink, particularly for men, it seems, who may isolate themselves more than women.
If I do repeat myself I’m certainly doing just what old geezers do. I’m thankful to be able to remember the name of my doctor and I do recognize my wife, at least after I’ve had my first cup of morning coffee.
So, all you geezers out there, have you anything to add, or subtract? We’ve long passed the age when we can multiply and marriages sometimes fail and then we have to divide.

MythOfSisyphus

At 46 I may not qualify as a geezer yet, but I don't think you repeat yourself (at least no more than the rest of us do). Many of our posts contain variations on a few themes.

I guess I'm an atheist in practical terms but I'm not so arrogant as to think I can know the mind of the Universe. We are such frail and temporary creatures; it would be no stretch to think there are beings beyond us. Do they guide us or watch over us? I really don't know and I can't find fault with others if they think there are. The Universe is almost certainly not just stranger than we know but stranger than we can know. Processes in our minds seem to take place on a quantum level or at some layer beyond the mere physical.

All I can really do is to live my life as well as I can. We all will find out soon enough!

I wish you a Happy Birthday, W!

IvanMike

I look around and I don't see a lot of old addicts or alcoholics. We tend to do a lot of damage. Just turning 48 my girlfriend thinks I'm old, but she's only 41, so blame her perspective on youthful foolishness.

I'm not one to see survival of our addiction and other maladies as proof of god or that he loves us, far too many other people never make it. It would be more hubris than I am capable of, (and I am capable of plenty!) to conclude that I am somehow special or worth more in the eyes of a god. Then again, I'm what Dawkins would call a category 6 de facto atheist. Nevertheless, I found that in NA I was able to come to believe in a power of my understanding and I am able to apply the steps in my life. - Talk to me in 41 years and I may be mulling around Blaise's Bet.

Thanks for your continued insight and thoughts W. They help me and many others. The facets of the power of my understanding are legion, but the shared experience of others is one of the brightest sides of the gem.

Itchy

Hey bud,
It's all about the motivation for Pascal to propose the wager. We must wager for God or against God. It is an amoral imperative. You've got me by 26 years, but the question of what peace I make with myself, my life, and any God, gods, and/or goddesses. I'm with Spinoza's concept of God.
Spinoza's God

So I'm less inclined to a personal God, that requires believing in survival of personality. My higher does not comfort me, but better does not discomfort me. Remove discomfort, fear, and you're left with comfort. It is indeed not abstract and becomes less abstract with every passing year. We all find out, or wink out, in the end. No exceptions. Thinking our belief makes any difference if there is a God, presumes God? No, but it presumes a God that thinks feels and needs adulation like a human. Some start with that premise. Others don't. I like Spinoza.

Que Sera, sera. It is the final adventure. I'm closer to a pantheist than atheist.

Good to hear from you. My bad as I stay in One year and over. I don't feel I have a lot to offer the newly sober these days. Life is good sober. That's enough for now.

kinzoku

I think there is nothing wrong with evolving spiritually at any point. I'm an atheist but beauty and literature sway me into shades of God. Bit by bit I enjoy a more mystical life.

Dee74

I keep cheating death with monotonous regularity

whatever the reason, I'll take each new day gladly, Bill

D

wpainterw

Hey Itchy! Glad to hear from you! I should know but you've caught me off base. Could you refresh what's left of my recollection about Spinoza's God?
Best wishes.

Bill

wpainterw

Dee: Your saying you cheat death with monotonous regularity is rather Oscar Wildean and reminds me of Lady Bracknell in "The Importance of Being Ernest" who replied to a man who sought her daughter's hand who, when asked about his parents, said that he had "lost" both his parents. The old geezer, Lady Bracknell, replied, "To lose one parent is a misfortune. To lose both parents sounds like carelessness!" Humorously sardonic. Wilde, satirizing the Church of England, has a Bishop saying "Whatever made you think that being Bishop had anything to do with religion".
Apparently, Dee, you live somewhere in Australia or New Zealand. Thus you must contain some English genes from way back. Were any of your ancestors sent from England to Botany Bay? If so, for what offense?

W

aasharon90

It's folks like you wpainterw along with
those before, during and after addiction
living a recovery life, that keep me inspired
to remain focused, grounded, to remain
sober, healthy, happy and honest for many
more one days at a time down the road.

I need you and your ESH - experiences,
strengths and hopes for continued inspiration.

You are here for a wonderful obvious reason
and I appreciate you..!!!!!

FreeOwl

You're using the wrong word.... it's 'elder', not 'geezer'....

And we no longer hear enough from - nor listen to - the elders in this flashy dlfast paced world.

Thank you for your post.....

LBrain

Happy Birthday William.
I hope that I am able to think clearly and ponder reflectively if/when I reach the age of 'geezer'. But I believe that 'geezer' is a state of being that reflects not on the age in numbers of a person but rather on the demeanor of the person as he ages.
When one can think clearly and reasonably such as you, you have become what has been already mentioned, a wise elder.

Now for your entertainment:
Pascal's wager... Pascal lived over 350 years ago. If Pascal were alive today, what would he think now? Most of his references if not all were concerning the Christian God and that belief system. So much has been discovered and scrutinized, scientifically, historically and etc.
I believe Pascal would have a different view point today.

Spinoza's God, a form of Pantheism, is a better bet. However, I believe that Spinoza's God is an adaptation of Occam's Razor. I'll give my own twist on Occam's Razor, "Just go with the simplist explanation."
Since the existence of a god cannot be proven or disproved, everything is god.

When asked my religious beliefs, I say that I don't believe in anything. When pressed with, "You have to believe in something." MY response is, "I believe I AM."

We all ARE.

wpainterw

O.K. You be the elder. I'll be the geezer!

I see that LBrain joins you in disliking "geezer". As you see I sort of like being one. I'd rather live in a "geezerhut" than an "elder hostel". Diogenes lived in a geezerhut, specifically a barrel. He is said to have stalked the streets with a lantern looking for an honest man. He failed to see that he was one himself.

W. (Massachusettsgeezer and Proud of It!)

thomas11

Bill, I really enjoy your stimulating input. Puts me into a mad scramble to find out some of the references. Very enjoyable.

I like geezer. In proper decorum, I'll say elder, but when talking with friends, geezer just sounds right. Enjoy your birthday.

wpainterw

Thomas: I really do appreciate your kind words. It's certainly true that in this day we live in where P.C. reigns, "geezer" has perhaps justifiably been replaced by "elder". But I have grown tired of euphemisms. When screaming with pain as a "patient" (I have always hated the demeaning word) one is now said to be suffering "discomfort". If the "patient" dies, she has "passed on", an event which is "celebrated". During her life, an irascible bank teller might have snarled at her to "have a nice day". If she was an artist she would not exhibit her paintings but "showcase" them. I am one of those old timers who refer to "bushes" and not to "shrubs", who have "curtains" and not "window treatments". "Fat" sounds better than "obese". It is the age of "Newspeak". Was that used to cover up the horror in the book "1984"?.
As to Geezer perhaps a compromise might be available by saying "Eldergeezer", and sing "Eine Kleine Eldergeezermusik"

W."

least

Happy Birthday William!

graced333

What a terrific thread!!!! Happy Birthday!

Itchy

Hey Bill!
L brain gave the short version however nothing short of reading Ethics can give the flavor of an honest man credibility but time enjoying the fresh air of his thought.

Here is an excerpt from the Wiki that is a few pages more than this, but ever so much the gist of him.

"The attraction of Spinoza's philosophy to late 18th-century Europeans was that it provided an alternative to materialism, atheism, and deism. Three of Spinoza's ideas strongly appealed to them:
the unity of all that exists;
the regularity of all that happens;
the identity of spirit and nature.[107]

By 1879, Spinoza’s pantheism was praised by many, but was considered by some to be alarming and dangerously inimical.[108]

Spinoza's "God or Nature" (Deus sive Natura) provided a living, natural God, in contrast to the Newtonian mechanical "First Cause" or the dead mechanism of the French "Man Machine". Coleridge and Shelley saw in Spinoza's philosophy a religion of nature.[3] Novalis called him the "God-intoxicated man".[82][109] Spinoza inspired the poet Shelley to write his essay "The Necessity of Atheism".[82]

Spinoza was considered to be an atheist because he used the word "God" (Deus) to signify a concept that was different from that of traditional Judeo–Christian monotheism. "Spinoza expressly denies personality and consciousness to God; he has neither intelligence, feeling, nor will; he does not act according to purpose, but everything follows necessarily from his nature, according to law...."[110] Thus, Spinoza's cool, indifferent God[111] is the antithesis to the concept of an anthropomorphic, fatherly God who cares about humanity.

According to the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy: Spinoza's God is an “infinite intellect”, (Ethics 2p11c) all knowing, (2p3) and capable of loving both himself—and us, insofar as we are part of his perfection. (5p35c) And if the mark of a personal being is that it is one towards which we can entertain personal attitudes, then we should note too that Spinoza recommends amor intellectualis dei (the intellectual love of God) as the supreme good for man. (5p33) However, the matter is complex. Spinoza's God does not have free will (1p32c1), he does not have purposes or intentions (1apendix), and Spinoza insists that “neither intellect nor will pertain to the nature of God” (1p17s1). Moreover, while we may love God, we need to remember that God is really not the kind of being who could ever love us back. “He who loves God cannot strive that God should love him in return,” says Spinoza (5p19).[112]

Steven Nadler suggests that settling the question of Spinoza's atheism or pantheism depends on an analysis of attitudes. If pantheism is associated with religiosity, then Spinoza is not a pantheist, since Spinoza believes that the proper stance to take towards God is not one of reverence or religious awe, but instead one of objective study and reason, since taking the religious stance would leave one open to the possibility of error and superstition.[113]

Comparison to Eastern philosophies[edit]

Similarities between Spinoza's philosophy and Eastern philosophical traditions have been discussed by many authors. The 19th-century German Sanskritist Theodore Goldstücker was one of the early figures to notice the similarities between Spinoza's religious conceptions and the Vedanta tradition of India, writing that Spinoza's thought was


... a western system of philosophy which occupies a foremost rank amongst the philosophies of all nations and ages, and which is so exact a representation of the ideas of the Vedanta, that we might have suspected its founder to have borrowed the fundamental principles of his system from the Hindus, did his biography not satisfy us that he was wholly unacquainted with their doctrines... We mean the philosophy of Spinoza, a man whose very life is a picture of that moral purity and intellectual indifference to the transitory charms of this world, which is the constant longing of the true Vedanta philosopher... comparing the fundamental ideas of both we should have no difficulty in proving that, had Spinoza been a Hindu, his system would in all probability mark a last phase of the Vedanta philosophy.[114][115]

Max Muller, in his lectures, noted the striking similarities between Vedanta and the system of Spinoza, saying "the Brahman, as conceived in the Upanishads and defined by Sankara, is clearly the same as Spinoza's 'Substantia'."[116] Helena Blavatsky, a founder of the Theosophical Society also compared Spinoza's religious thought to Vedanta, writing in an unfinished essay "As to Spinoza's Deity—natura naturans—conceived in his attributes simply and alone; and the same Deity—as natura naturata or as conceived in the endless series of modifications or correlations, the direct out-flowing results from the properties of these attributes, it is the Vedantic Deity pure and simple."[117]
That article in full is here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Baruch_Spinoza

What appealed to me was the lack of an archaic vengeful megalomaniacal god. If god (that which is) is, what would that which is care what, according to Judeo/Christian beliefs, his created Smurfs thought? If he wanted to be adulated he'd just make em that way.

I don't pretend tolerance to be a stealth proselytute. I am tolerant as I demand to be treated in turn. I invented the word proselytute as a combining of the word prostitute and proselytize.

When proselytutes come to my door trying to save me I tell them I am so glad they came to my door so I could show them the true faith. Please come in and let me save you! They get a frightened look and blush crimson and get away as fast as they can.

What's good for the goose . . . .

I would love to discuss the council called by Constantine in Nicea in 325 and discuss why the bishops voted one way rather than the other, and look more closely at the Dead Sea Scrolls for the rationale behind the books chosen and those rejected for inclusion in the bible. I am actually quite well versed in the historical religions rather than the smoke and mirrors we see today. I am amazed at how protestants don't know that there were none before King Henry, Martin Luther, and his Buddy in Swiss exile Calvin.

Voltaire said it best:
"“Those who can make you believe absurdities, can make you commit atrocities.”

Bill,
As one geezer to another, the older I get, the less tolerance I have for haters. And the more I appreciate the counsel of folks with the same lack of surety in what the hell is going on, coupled with the same enthusiasm I have in looking behind the curtain.


And they continue.

Aellyce

Not a geezer but a middle-aged (42) gal generally considered quite eccentric, currently in rehab, emerging from a bit less than 2 month-long relapse following 2 years of sobriety.

Don't think I've interacted with you before but I have read many of your posts and especially with the recent ones, I can't help but remember my father who passed away last year at 84. I had a couple threads here on SR describing some of my struggles around his decline and eventual passing. He was definitely one of the persons I'd loved most dearly, and vice versa...we had a strong relationship. A weird relationship over the years with many conflicts, twists and turns, ups and downs, but he and our memories continue to influence me in many ways, some that can still be unexpected at times as they surface.

Also, your philosophical wanderings strike me as I have been interested in philosophy as far as I remember, actually sort of "infected" my father with it also but obviously he had an interest going back to his own childhood and even more obviously his love of books that I probably inherited (or just developed myself, who will know?). I am not going to make a comment on that or suggest anything "wise" as I don't feel entitled, except that based on your posts here you clearly show a spiritual maturity and intellectual/emotional insight that, I feel, will guide you through whatever challenges may come. My dad chose not to take advantage of modern medical technology, he refused pretty much any professional care until the end. This choice clearly demonstrated that he had great default health (also never any addiction), but according to his doctors, he could have lived quite a bit more accepting medical assistance earlier. Was his choice a good one or a bad one, or for whom actually? Who could tell, really?

I want to thank you for sharing your thoughts and feelings with all of us, I find ongoing inspiration in your words!

wpainterw

Itchy and Allyce: Those look like very interesting posts. I am rather tired and blurry so I will dream about the pleasures of reading them tomorrow.Thanks again,

Bill.

wpainterw

Aellyce: What a very fine post you send me! Sorry to hear of your relapse and that you are in the rehab but relapses happen in recovery and a rehab is an excellent way to get things back on the track. Sorry to hear about your dad. Mine died at the age of 63 back in 1956 when they did not have as much technical stuff to help with the heart.
I'm sure that this must be a troublesome time for you but remember, you don't have to go back to "day 1". Just pick up where you left off and continue up the path. We seem to have a common interest in philosophy.. I see you quote Einstein in your album. As I mentioned I once shook hands with him during my graduate year of studying philosophy at Princeton. Since retiring from law teaching in 1997 I've more or less gone back to pick up where I left off with philosophy and theology, cosmology, etc. And, being 89 and likely to die in a few years I wonder increasingly on what comes next, if anything. And what is there, in reality. Some speculate that the cosmos consists only of mathematics, a sort of Platonic perspective. And there have been interesting discoveries or speculations that particles communicate with one another from incredibly distant portions of the universe, such as 26 billion light years, and that such communication happens within a very short period of time, all of this being of course inconsistent with Einstein's theory that no data can be transferred faster than the speed of light. Does this suggest that the cosmos is somehow folded back upon itself and that data goes from one part to another through "wormholes"? No one knows. If I die, will I know? I certainly don't know now what I may know then (a sort of cosmic wisecrack).
Do stay in touch, send me a Private Message if you want and maybe we can chat about the universe. The 19th Century Philosopher, Margaret Fuller, said, in a fit of enthusiasm, "I accept the Universe" and the cynic, Carlyle, commented, "By God! She'd bette!".

W.