What are Gods? (Part 2): Where Do They Take Us?

Gods are reflections -- and projections -- of self and group (community)-ideals.

Have you ever heard of an 'imperfect' God? A 'weak' God? An 'insecure' or 'inferior' God? I have never heard of such a God. It is an exercise in self-contradiction. Gods are meant to be 'worshiped' and you don't worship something and/or someone that/who is imperfect, weak, insecure, inferior...

So why do we worship Gods? Is it our drive to be perfect? And/or our wish or need or drive to be 'vicariously perfect' by associating ourselves with -- and worshiping --someone or something who we perceive to being greater -- and more perfect (or 'perfectly perfect') -- than ourselves?

It is important that we clear up some points and make some distinctions before I delve seriously into this issue.

Firstly, we must distinguish between 'Gods' (who and/or what we are worshiping) and 'religion' (the individual and/or group symbolic, ritual process whereby we do our 'worshiping').

Secondly, you have to know who you are dealing with here: you are dealing with me, DGB -- a philosopher, a humanist, a strong supporter of The Enlightenment-Romantic Philosophical Period, and a supporter of Spinozean Pantheist-Deist Spiritual-Romantic Values.

What does this mean? It means that I would sooner 'worship the glory of God and Creation and Life' driving in the mountains of Alberta, or driving on the mountain shores of Cape Breton Island or Lake Superior, or walking in the fields and forests of Ontario, or feeding my birds in the back of my townhouse, or watching my amazing little Beta fish who I think has been with me for over a year now, or talking to my parents on their small farm in the middle of Prince Edward Island where I have never been, or spending a weekend in Niagara Falls with my girlfriend -- all of these, I would sooner do than I would celebrate 'the glory of God' in a ritualized Church.

This is not to say that I haven't heard some fantastic sermons in my life, by some very passionate preachers who have chosen to celebrate 'God' and Life along a totally different path than me. Different people have different ways of expressing their passion -- both good and bad -- for life (and sometimes, most unfortunately, through rage, hate, violence, destruction, and the worshiping of pain, revenge, and death).

People choose similar and different Gods to worship. And then sometimes, they can get very passionate in terms of righteously and narcissistically protecting the particular God they have chosen to both worship -- and follow. Different Gods can take us to different places -- some to 'Heaven on Earth'; others to 'Hell on Earth'.

Thus, we have to be very careful about who and what we are worshipping. To say it again, our Gods -- and/or our 'Idols' (human renditions of Gods or humans with perceived 'God-like' qualities) -- are reflections or projections of our own individual and/or group idealism. But if our own self-idealism and/or the idealism of the group that we belong to -- is 'pathological' -- then we may be chasing our 'idealistic dream' to all sorts of related 'dehumanized and dehumanizing' places -- domination and submission, sadism and masochism, pain, rage, hate, divisionism, destruction, self-destruction, and ultimately -- an untimely and/or miserable death.

'Human Gods', 'human idols', 'human leaders' -- to the extent that they are able to 'sell' or 'intimidate' mass followers and mass followings, disguising pain as pleasure, sophism as truth, poison as candy, in effect turning the world and the world's humanistic-ethical value systems upside down and being able to convince their followers that everything is still 'right side up' (or intimidate and coerce them into at least pretending to believe this to be true) -- can easily create mass havoc, pain, grief, sickness, death, and dying, in effect, and Hell on Earth.

We can talk about many of the most powerful dictators in the world, past and present, in this light -- Saddam Hussein, Osama Bin Laden, Genghis Khan, Alexander The Great, Napoleon, Lenin, Hitler, Stalin, Mao tse Tung...some mixing elements of 'humanism' and 'cultural explosion' with their mass killings (Alexander The Great, Napoleon) and others just being bad, bad, bad on some greater or lesser political and/or religious dimension...Charles Manson...


Going back to ancient, mythological times, we have 'Gods of Love' -- both the altruistic, nurturing type (Jesus Christ) and Gods of Romantic Love (Aphrodite, Cupid, Eros...) We have Gods of Power, Fairness, Justice, Truth (Zeus, Apollo, God)... We have Gods of The Earth (Gaea), Gods of Marriage and Family (Hera)...

Here, let me waste no more time citing Gods that could number in the hundreds if I went at the task with any precision...Here is a link giving you a larger sample:


http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Greek_mythological_figures
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And that is not even beginning to list the great number of 'mortal' Gods or ''Human Idols'...from ancient Greek mythology to present day 'pop-culture'...

Now you could say that we are through with all those Gods -- that we no longer worship them -- and that we have very much simplified the process today bringing everything down to the worshiping of 'one God' -- or 'monotheism'.

But does anyone really believe that we have stopped the process of 'God or Idol-Making' and the associated act of 'God or Idol-worshiping'?

So I ask the philosophical question again: What is this 'fixation' and/or 'obsessive-compulsion' with 'God and Idol-Making' and at the same time, the dialectic polarity of this act -- 'God and Idol Worshiping'?

In the next section, we will explore the relationship between Gods, Archetypes, Ego-States, Transference-Figures -- and Core Nuclear Personality Conflicts.

-- DGBN, Jan. 26th, 2009

-- David Gordon Bain

-- Democracy Goes Beyond Narcissism

-- Dialectic Gap-Bridging Negotiations...are still in process....

Gods, Myths, Idols, Humans -- and The Shifting Dialectic -- Meeting on The Shores of Personality Theory (and Interpersonal Conflict)

The dialectic is nice when people are on the same page, have good will, respect, empathy, and/or chemistry together...Lennon/McCartney at their best.......Dylan/Mike Bloomfield/Al Kooper on Highway 67 Revisted...

However, times change and the dialectic does not always work smoothly.

The dialectic does not usually work as smoothly when people lose their good will, respect, empathy, and/or chemistry towards each other -- and struggle coming to terms with whatever the dialectic problem or conflict is...

Overt and/or covert strife often results, including small or large wars, hot and/or cold tempers, impasses, alienation, aggression, coercion, manipulation, force, intimidation, provocation, retaliation, and so on...

The dialectic process has changed from a smooth, creative one, to a hostile destructive one.

The same husband and wife can work beautifully together when everything is going well together...especially in the earlier stages of their relationship... But can they sustain their good will for each other, their mutual respect and empathy after they have come to know each other's flaws, 'dialectic extremes' and 'dialectic avoidances'...

That is the 50 million dollar dialectic and existential question -- and the mark of whether a long term relationship stays together and can sustain itself in healthy fashion or not...

Same with business partners, co-workers, or employers and employees at work who may or may not be on the same page with each other depending on the context and the history of the situation.

Introduce people's ambitions, greed, selfishness, anal retentiveness, and the opposite...no ethics, no boundaries, no respect -- and the smooth-sailing dialectic starts to falls apart, and with it, the ability to problem solve, conflict-resolve, and worst of all, even the wish and the will to be together to try to sovle and/or resolve things.

Which brings us back to a fundamental question:

Which God(s)/Idol(s)/Archetype(s)/values....does each person most prioritize and/or worship...

Which 'ego-state' is running -- or at least dominating -- each person's individual ship?

Are the different Gods/Values/Priorities compatible?

Or is there a 'core nuclear conflict' in the relationship,

That is just buried under the surface, perculating, waiting to boil to the top --

And then boil over,

To become a huge, dramatic soap opera?

Greek soap operas from ancient days gone by...

Spilling over in the sky and on the ground...

As described in Greek myths like The Iliad and The Odyssey...

Are all too human...too human...

Pointing to only one, two, or three conclusions,

God made man in his/her own image,

Or, man made God in his/her own image,

Or, Gods are human and humans are Gods...

And they both meet on the shores of Personality Theory...


-- DGBN, Dec. 28th-29th, 2008.

-- David Gordon Bain

What are Gods? (Part 1)

Gods are metaphysical, mythological ideals, probably projected, or mainly projected, possibly not entirely, that are capable of being used for happy, healthy purposes, and/or abused for extremist, righteous, pathological purposes. Indeed, 'Gods' can be used for as many different abstract and/or concrete purposes as there are people out there who believe in them because every person is different, every person's abstract and concrete interpetation of 'God' is different, and every person's motivation, intent, and purpose is different, and can be woven around his or her ideal of God -- and/or visa versa -- to be used narcissistically and/or altruistically, constructively and/or destructively, healthily and/or pathologically, just as anything and everything else within man's field of awareness, epistemology, and ethics.

-- DGBN, Jan. 2nd, 2008.

-- David Gordon Bain