Agnostic Lent

“Even now,” declares the Lord,
  “return to me with all your heart,
  with fasting and weeping and mourning.”
Rend your heart
  and not your garments.
--Joel 2:12-13

I am not a very religious person. This probably isn't much of a surprise to those who know me, but in case there was any doubt, there is it. Most of my spiritual life has been spent in the agnostic/deist/rationalist school of thought, thanks in no small part to my secular parents and a wide range of reading materials.

Since my grandmother died, however, Mom and Dad have started attending church again regularly. Naturally I've been towed along to a few services over the months, which for the most part haven't impressed me. Without the promise of eternal life, true altruism breaks down as a moral system.

(I may have to do a post on that sometime.)

So naturally, I wasn't expecting very much when we piled in the car for my first ever Ash Wednesday service. Lent, after all, is traditionally presented as a time of penance and self-denial. We give up something we like to grow closer to God (and each other). Not exactly an egoist nonbeliever's cup of tea.

But that wasn't the path our pastor took. Many people give things up for Lent, she said, things like junk food or alcohol or cigarettes. For the most part, they give up things they should be giving up anyway, because they're self-destroying. She asked us to abstract that into the intellectual sphere. She asked us to try--for 40 days--to give up self-destructive mindsets and behaviors, like blame, procrastination, and greed.

I disagreed on some of her particulars (thought it might've been a case of the definitions), I still think that's a very good message. Lent makes a good Schelling point for changing one's behavior. So does the New Year--yes, making resolutions does have value, if you know what you're doing, and are willing to stick with it.

I'm not giving up anything in particular this Lent, in part because I need to figure out what behaviors to modify. Thanks to our pastor, though, I have a better notion of how to approach this.

Oh, and I got one of those dorky ash crosses:

Updates

I'm way overdue to update this blog but not-finishing-drafts is a bad habit inherited from tumblr. Instead of something meaningful I'm going to do an internal affairs and links post.

Internal affairs first. After many grueling months, I finally finished Leonard Peikoff's Objectivism: The Philosophy of Ayn Rand. I didn't find it terribly rewarding, but at least I can move onto other things. I plan to start writing book reviews, but may keep those off this blog. My reading list here on out goes like this:

1. The Martian, Andy Weir
2. An Astronaut's Guide to Life On Earth, Chris Hadfield
3. Thinking, Fast and Slow, Daniel Kahneman
4. The Foundations of Morality, Henry Hazlitt
5. Introduction to Logic and Critical Thinking, Merrilee Salmon

That last is an optional textbook for my Logic and Critical Thinking class (the textbook titles in this subject are really uncreative). It's a rental, so that gives me a time limit, but I'm reading a lot faster now that OPAR is over.

What's concerning is how simple and straightforward the class' material is. This should be cultural common knowledge, but it isn't. I may go ahead and do a series of blog posts on basic logic topics.

However, I'm not very good at planning blog posts. Remember last fall when I was all worked up about post-scarcity, and only wrote about it twice? Possible solution: list out the topics in advance, with deadlines. Might be effective, might just clutter up the blog even more.

On the subject of clutter, I've got too many bookmarks, which perhaps I'll start archiving here. Alright, enough whining. Time for the links!

One of my friends made a post on status systems in social justice, which goes a long way toward dissecting the Oppression Olympics. And it reminded me I never update my blog.

I read a kinda old article last week on the topic of left versus right libertarians. Once again, it seems I don't fall into any particular political category comfortably. Maybe "radical libertarian centrist" would do? But I also read Paul Graham's essay Keep Your Identity Small, so slapping labels on everything doesn't seem like a good idea.

(I found that through LessWrong's Rationality Materials page. Lots of interesting stuff, but overwhelming when you get started. Someone should write it up in book form someday.)

The Allusionist Podcast discusses what it means to go viral, why podcasts don't, and confirms my disgust for Buzzfeed. Related: Wired Magazine interview Roman Mars.

On a more technological note, the Lunar Escape System was a contingency vehicle for the proposed long-duration Apollo missions. In the event the Lunar Ascent Stage failed, astronauts could essentially climb into a rocket-propelled chair and rendezvous with the Command Module. Somehow, I'm glad these never flew.

The University of Nebraska-Lincoln's Astronomy Department has a number of online astronomy tools, for those who want a better intuition of star and planet motions.

That about does it for now. I'll plan on making a links post on a monthly basis from here on out.