The Christmas Spirit

For some reason this year, I am all about Christmas. I bought a wreath and candles about two weeks before Thanksgiving, and that was it. I held off as long as I could, but I had already listened to Mannheim Steamroller and watched Scrooge before the Season had officially begun.

Perhaps I got into it early because in England they don't have Thanksgiving for a buffer. As early as October, shelves are stocked with Christmas crackers (not for eating) and mince pies, and by November the German Christmas Market is up. Sure, there's nothing particularly Christmas-y about a bratwurst to Americans (though it's a tradition I could get behind!), but there was something about it - the little fake cabins with the fake holly - that put me in the Christmas Spirit.

So what the hell is the Christmas Spirit?

Like all good questions, this has many answers. Anyone who celebrates, or lives in a country that celebrates, Christmas could give you their own answer, and these are all fine by me. I could go on about the things I enjoy... dark red and green together, lighting candles, decorating the mantle in just exactly the right way, cuddling by the fire with hot chocolate, listening to Mannheim Steamroller wrapped in the Christmas blanket, smelling the tree... it's about being warm in the middle of the cold, and feeling good for absolutely no reason.

I'm an atheist and I love Christmas. There I said it. And it doesn't bother me one bit that I'm ostensibly supposed to be worshiping the Sun God. (Do you ever use a word without being certain that you're using it in the right way? Ostensibly that's what I just did.) I don't blog about religion as much as I thought I would. Partly because people can get easily offended, but mostly because I don't care what people believe. For questions of spirituality and faith and love, there are no right answers; for questions that deal with the physical world, such as the age of the Earth and biological evolution, we have science.

But these are complicated philosophical issues, and I digress. I've become more interested not in what people believe, but why. Religions weren't created in a vacuum... there are psychological and sociological reasons for why humans believe what they do and behave they way they do, and that shit is fascinating.

It's no coincidence that the primary holiday of the Northern hemisphere is during their winter, the same as it's no coincidence the Christian church eventually chose December the 25th as the birthday of their savior. Yule, Saturnalia, Solstice... of course Jesus is born when the sun is at it's lowest in the sky, for Jesus is the Son and the Sun. The pagan traditions that Christmas adopted, like bringing a pine tree into your house, are a celebration of life in the midst of death. There is no need to celebrate life in Summer when it is all around you; but Winter is the time for endings. The evergreen tree, the birth of Christ, remind us that life will begin again.

Winter, Spring, Summer, Fall.... let's break the seasons down. You might be thinking that no, Spring is the real time to celebrate life. And you'd be right, too; Easter with its eggs, bunnies, and resurrection celebrates the renewal of life: Spring is the season of Beginnings. Summer follows as the season of Being, and Autumn/Fall as the season of Ending: the trees lose their leaves, and we treasure the last bounty of the harvest.

So where does that leave Winter? What is left after Beginning, Being, and Ending, can only be Non-being. Winter is the season of the Spirit.

The spirit, like the Sun, is constant. The moon symbolizes the cycles of time by its monthly cycle of birth and death, but the sun symbolizes the eternal, which is outside of time. (I will admit that this is from Joseph Campbell, like most of my deep thoughts on symbolism and mythology.) Symbolized by the evergreen tree and the birth of the Sun God, Winter, then, is outside of time; between death and birth; the silence between the sound. Christmas is the time to settle, regroup, reflect, and prepare for the New Year. And eat lots of chocolate.

So that, in a very large nutshell, is what I think about the Christmas Spirit. I didn't even mention how I love the icon and imagery of Santa Clause, with a twinkle in his eye and a deep laugh. To me he is not the fat man in the bright red with white trim, but more of a Mithrandir archetype of the wanderer, doing good where he can, eternally wise and eternally eternal. (Mithrandir is Gandalf, btw. It means the Grey Pilgrim in Sindarin. Do I have to explain everything to you?)

Happy Christmas!

The Philosophy of Cosmology, or: What I Didn't Spend Three Weeks Doing This Summer

Sit a while, and let me tell you a story. About hopes. About fears. About an epic battle between science and philosophy, and a lone blogger caught in the crossfire...

It starts way back in February. There I am, checking Sean Carroll's blog (a cosmologist who regularly blogs about philosophy, i.e. me if I had fame and tenure and was better at blogging), when what do you know, there is a call for applications for a Summer Institute on the Philosophy of Cosmology! My hobby and my day job all rolled up into one!

My first instinct is that I need to apply because Believe in Your Dreams. (Uncertainty Phase 1: Excitement.)

Then after a bit of research, I decide I do not trust the motives of the Templeton Foundation, and I'm not going to get in anyway, so why bother? (Uncertainty Phase 2: Insecurity.)

Uncertainty Phase 3 then slips into cold hard reality...

In tandem with researching the people involved with the Philosophy of Cosmology institute, I watched the Moving Naturalism Forward videos, which seemed the natural thing to do once I was in a philosophical mood. One of the speakers, who was a physicist and is now a philosopher, talks about the practical differences of the two academic fields to emphasize that as a scientist, you just don't have the luxury of taking a broader view and reading literature in related fields - at least not until you go on sabbatical or get old and philosophical! There are teaching duties, overseeing graduate students, solving practical problems in the lab, and writing a ton of grant proposals to occupy your time, and there is only so much time in the day.

The cold hard reality of the situation is that perhaps I don't have the luxury to spend a day thinking about philosophical issues, much less three weeks, because it's normal - even expected - for postdocs to work on weekends. Sure, not all do, and sure, mostly this is my guilt and insecurity about not working enough, but I don't hear faculty talking about how much they slacked off as postdocs. I hear them talk about how much sleep they didn't get. It turns out I love sleep. I also like to pretend to be profound and pretend to be philosophical, but that's not something I should have the time to do as a serious scientist. Crap.

Despite all that, I convince myself (and let friends convince me) to apply anyway. (Uncertainty Phase 4: Action. slash Believe in Your Dreams and Figure Out Later Whether They Are Your Actual Dreams.)

Cut to April, when the most annoying thing happens.

I get in.

Uncertainty Phases 1 through 3 kick in all at once! Of course I'm super excited about getting in, but actually going would mean keeping up with philosophers for three weeks (and actually talking to them! Ahh!)... and then there's the added annoyance that a very relevant conference overlaps with the philosophy institute, and because time only moves in one direction, I can't do both. (WTF, time?)

I almost resolve myself to do it despite my misgivings. Abandon Certainty and Follow Your Bliss and all that. But there's that nagging question of the actually-relevant-to-my-job conference. If you are aware enough to notice things like blog post titles, perhaps you can see where this is going. I get the word from the higher-ups: "if you want a job in astrophysics, go to the science conference. you will be able to do this interdisciplinary stuff once you have a permanent position (if you have time! because no one has time to do anything as a professor, haha!)." I may have paraphrased just a little bit, but the message is clear: scientists are interested in science and nothing else.

Believe in Your Dreams... Later.

This signaled to me that the paranoia behind why I don't have my full name on here or link here from my actual website turned out to be justified. Perhaps I didn't intentionally plan it that way, but at some point I realized that I definitely don't want potential employers to read this blog. First, some would see it as indicating that I'm not serious about science, or think that blogging takes away from time better spent doing research. If this blog were only about science, that would probably be okay - but most of the time I would rather talk about "somethingness" and "nothingness" and "wait what does that even mean?"

Which brings me to my second point: I sometimes write about personal shit and sometimes write about Chakras and sometimes mention how time is an illusion or discuss the unity of duality. Who would hire a scientist who doesn't believe in time? (Of course, I do, really, insofar as "believing in time" is even a useful concept... and of course I don't literally think that chakras are pools of energy in the body that we can open by meditation and yoga... but metaphors are useful and logic can be boring!) Not only am I philosophical, but I have weird ideas...

In hindsight, the science conference did turn out to be very worth it and good for my research/career. Also, as a bonus, the philosophy of cosmology lectures were all put online and seem to be mostly on topics in which I'm not particularly interested... not that it wouldn't have been awesome, but the actual awesomeness level of counterfactuals is impossible to determine. (Again, unidirectional time. What a let-down.) Anyway, another philosophy of cosmology opportunity may come again, and meanwhile maybe I will write about the Copernican vs. Cosmological Principles and how no one understands them because cosmologists are bad at philosophy.

I guess the moral of the story is: Believe in Your Dreams Even If You Don't Necessarily Follow Them All the Time.