Is virtue its own reward? And if not, what are the prizes?
The Interfaithless
Atheists often say, essentially, There is no inherent meaning in the world, but each person can make their own meaning. To me this skips an important step between the world and the individual, to wit, other people. Meaning exists in abundance in society and we are born into a sea of meanings. It is wrong to imagine us as a man alone on a hill deciding something, and better to imagine us as born on a web so dense with crisscrossing meaning that it has become cloth. Now the web of meaning can keep you warm, but it can seem impenetrable.
Okay, enough of that metaphor. Atheist individuals often manage the great questions on their own, but that can leave them psychologically and philosophically isolated, lonely. Even though there are millions of us.
I made up the term the Interfaithless when I was trying to come up with a name for atheists that wasn’t a negative. In that I obviously failed, but once I thought of Interfaithless it made me laugh and took me over. Why? Because of the “inter.” It is about how we are connected through ideas and feelings. We already meet up. Among the many in the audience in rapture to the music, there are certainly other people who find a nonreligious sublime here. I’m just suggesting we let our hearts in on that. Atheists need only train ourselves to imagine what is already the reality.
A gel plate print with image of Virginia Woolf, 2024.
Angry Girl Atheist or Nice Girl Atheist?
I’ve met atheists who get sputtery with rage in response to all religion. I’ve met other atheists who work in the local church’s coat drive; they tend to feel conflicted about it, but the winters get cold.
Me? I look like the coat drive, nice guy kind of atheist, and I am, but let anyone try to argue for the supernatural or God around me and a NO GODzilla monster rises up in me and has its fun. If they’re in an audience, costing time, I can stomp them and sign the remains with my tail like a lizard king Zorro the Great. If we meet more face to face, and I’m in the mood, I take their beliefs apart with more care and they leave me reborn, to reason, huggingly happy with me for supporting their own secret doubts.
I can be either. Even here, it would be delicious to be a little vicious but instead I’m all about the love side of things. Which wolf do I feed? (Both right?) (How am I gonna feel feeding one of my wolves and not the other?)
Gel print from two auction catalogue pages of bronze statuary, 2024.
Poetic Realist, Poetic Atheist
I like to call myself a poetic realist and a poetic atheist, but which is best? I find people immediately understand poetic atheist, whereas I have to explain poetic realist. It’s almost the only thing I like better about atheist over realist, but it’s a big one.
The best thing about poetic realism is that says what we value, reality. I think that it has a whiff of science to it. We want to know what’s real.
The negatives of atheist are
that it mentions God.
that it scares and upsets people.
that it sounds provincial in its denial of our local god instead of a denial of all the world’s supernaturalisms.
And yet. The terrific name recognition of atheism—and therefore poetic atheism— demands that we keep it around for now, in order to be understood easily, but I hope poetic realist might grow alongside it. Both mean basically the same thing as Interfaithless and each other, they just emphasize different things.
What I still believe in is you, as you are, and as you are at your best. It isn’t always easy but at least you’re real. I hope you enjoy the upper animated image of Freud, Darwin, and Marx with color added to their already extraordinary beards. Everyone needs an image freshen now and again.
***
I’m glad we made it to this sky covered Wednesday, the wind in the leaves, dapple on the streets. Love saves the day. So does having something interesting to think about. Stay alive and I shall return to encourage you again.
love,
Jennifer
I like Alan Moore's concept of Ideaspace- he came up with it when trying to work out where Gods live. The only possible answer is 'in the human mind', and Ideaspace is his term for the landscape of the collective consciousness. Religions, he says, because they are ideas shared by many people, are something like continents in Ideaspace. (But like, so is Doctor Who, or Lady Gaga.) Weird things happen though, like people stumbling upon the same creatures in Ideaspace, independently: https://johnhiggs.com/silence-slenderman-alan-moores-ideaspace/