SUNDAY, 30 DECEMBER 2018
11:00
Read an article this morning that argues that God is imagination – not like imagination, but that God is in actual fact Imagination.
Any case, the part that I really liked was the author’s classification of religion with science fiction, ghost stories, and astrology: “I was expelled from the Paradise of innocence that long ago summer, but imagination never abandoned me. It sank underground throughout my teen years in a voracious appetite for reading, especially science fiction, and hooked itself tenaciously to anything in popular culture that left it room to breathe — religion, ghost stories, astrology, the New Age …”
It reminded me that people who are believers, even in the most traditional sense, have a desire for something more – something beyond this sometimes boring, sometimes monotonous, sometimes horrible, and sometimes sad life. I can even see how such a person could see someone who doesn’t believe in God as one without imagination, even narrow-minded.
This is a positive view of religion – that it is creative, characteristic of a person with a lively imagination.
My problem with religion as I know it, and as it was taught to me as a child, is the strong association with prescriptions and doctrines, which simply must be believed if you want to escape eternal damnation. This manifestation of religion is all but creative – after all, it shows a bold red, ominous “No!” to anything that crosses the line. It does require imagination. It asks you to open your head (or your “heart”) and be prepared to believe in something you can’t see. However, it requires of you to use your imagination just enough to accept what the so-called holy texts prescribe, or what the authorities in the faith community teach you to believe. If you give your imagination free rein, you’re looking for trouble. The “truth” has already been “revealed” – why wonder about things that can only cause problems?
16:11
It’s a cloudy day, with the temperature in the low twenties. I’m in Kaohsiung’s West Bay (Sizihwan) – about 25 minutes from our apartment by bicycle, at the National Sun Yat-sen Alumni House – on the quay overlooking the Taiwan Strait. Except for the sea, my view also includes the great rock with the lighthouse on the peak – in my opinion one of Kaohsiung’s best natural attractions, the mountain at the university, and a variety of people.
My snacks include small tomatoes, a banana, and a filo dough cookie with butter and sugar on the inside that a student gave me on Thursday night. I started my audio session with two Wealth & Mindset podcast episodes, and then moved on to Bruce Springsteen’s Darkness on the Edge of Town.
All in all, it’s been my best Sunday bicycle outing of the year.
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The second podcast episode I listened to spoke of value that one should deliver if you wanted to make money.
As I was listening to the first two Springsteen tracks afterward, I remembered what I had read what reviewers wrote about him when his debut album appeared in the early seventies: that his lyrics reminded them of Bob Dylan, and his singing style to that of Van Morrison. In other words, there was no Springsteen yet as people know him today, just someone who wrote songs like one well-known singer, and who sang like another famous singer.
What did he do? He kept writing songs, and he kept singing, and eventually found his own place in the sun.
But what made him a legend, not to mention millions of dollars? He created value over and over for people who paid to see him perform. He told stories. He sang his heart out. Unlike some groups or singers, he didn’t only come out on stage and sang his fifteen or twenty songs before he disappeared again. He would keep going night after night for three or four hours. And night after night, concert-goers felt they were experiencing something special.
That’s what Springsteen gave people. And that made him not only a creative and commercial success, it made him a legend.
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