Luminous Beings are we.

Not this crude matter…

I did the meditation thing in my youth and, honestly, nothing ever came of it. In the end it was time spent doing nothing that was too much like work to be enjoyed for its own uselessness.

It’s an interesting viewpoint even if I don’t buy into it. If it works for you then more power to you. At least it’s less obnoxious than religious fundamentalism.

Star Wars was a good movie, but its ‘spirituality’ is silly nonsense at best.

Hello, Les!

LOL. I didn’t expect a comment that quickly!

I must disagree concerning the spirituality of Star Wars being ‘silly nonsense’.

Actually, most of the ideas behind the concept of Jedi or the Force come straight from Eastern Philosophies such as Taoism and Buddhism, and these are certainly not nonsense, your unenlightening experience with meditation notwithstanding.

Are you familiar with Joseph Campbell? The Power of Myth?

Ha!  Spirituality.  Religion lite.  It can’t be any good unless you get to kill in its name.

(Which does not exclude the Buddhists, by the way; they can be a violent lot too.)

You caught me just before I was headed to bed.

Lucas did take some inspiration from various Eastern philosophies when he came up with The Force for his movies, but then he turned around and explained it all as being the result of “midi-chlorians” which pretty much supports my assertion that it’s silly nonsense all by itself.

As for Taoism and Buddhism, I have about as much use for them as I do Christianity, Islam, or any other mystical belief system. Which is to say, little to none. In my experience, meditating on the inter-connectedness of things is as useless as praying to God(s). Peace is not achieved by sitting around doing nothing in hopes of enlightenment suddenly springing upon you from the ether. It takes real effort and real work by people serious about bringing about change. If more people spent less time praying/meditating and more time trying to get along with their fellow man then perhaps there’d be real peace before too long.

As for The Power of Myth, I’m familiar with the book, but I’ve never given it a proper reading.

Hmmm.

Geekmom:

Religion lite. I’ve heard that description used before, usually by Christian writers. It’s a poor, inaccurate, and very misleading description of spirituality. There are fundamental differences in religion and spirituality (see above).

Buddhism is a religion. (and I am not a Buddhist).

Les:

I couldn’t agree more that the idea of midiclorians is a bunch of crap. It certainly is. In fact, I think the prequels in general are crap. However, the fact that GL lost his mind after the original trilogy does not in any way alter their metaphorical significance.

In my experience, meditating on the inter-connectedness of things is as useless as praying to God(s).

Then I suggest you begin with this article in Psychology Today.

http://www.findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m1175/is_3_34/ai_73537494

Peace is not achieved by sitting around doing nothing in hopes of enlightenment suddenly springing upon you from the ether.

Good example of a ‘straw man’ fallacy. This is a caricature of the meditative process. There is a BIG difference between doing ‘nothing’ and ‘doing Nothing’.

It takes real effort and real work by people serious about bringing about change.

It certainly does. It’s a real task to come to see the world as it is. (And doing meditation correctly is one of the most arduous things there is).

If more people spent less time praying/meditating and more time trying to get along with their fellow man then perhaps there’d be real peace before too long.

Meditation is about ‘cleansing the doors of perception’ (I love William Blake). It’s about seeing the world as it really is. It’s about unlearning all the lies and preconceived notions that prevent us from ‘getting along’ with others. Now, since most of the conflict in the world and in our personal lives can be traced back to someone believing a lie, something ‘not true’, then anything which helps us to overcome our false beliefs will be of tremendous value in achieving ‘peace’. In addition, I am not suggesting that meditatation ALONE is sufficient. I place equal value on the scientific method, left brain ‘reason’ and logic. Of course, those alone are insufficient as well.

My point to posting this was not so much to discuss Star Wars, although I am perfectly willing to do so, but rather to hopefully incite a discussion on spirituality as opposed to religion. Especially seeing as how modern mainstream science seems more and more likely everyday to explode into a spiritual viewpoint. This is what I would like to discuss. I really appreciated finding this site, because I will be the first to admit of some rather unusual ideas, and I think bouncing some of them off all the hard-core skeptics here will help me to shed light on fallacies in my thinking. Understand that the farthest thought from my mind is to ‘convert’ anyone. I am not yet advanced enough in my understanding to be so presumptuous, for one thing, for another, I think people must come to understanding themselves, it cannot be forced on them.

Having said that, understand also that I have a background in science and engineering, love Carl Sagan (can pull out my baloney detection kit at a moments notice) and James Randi, Penn and Teller, and so on, and LOVE to debate.

I have had quite a number of different worldviews at one point or another; I’ve been Christian, Buddhist, Agnostic, Atheist, and New Ager.

The changes in what I believe come in cycles as I became more educated in the sciences and philosophies and more experienced in life. (I proportion my belief to the evidence and the experience).

I started off Christian. That lasted till just past puberty when I began really learning about science and really beginning to understand it. The arguments I had been taught in response to ‘nonbelievers’ just fell apart and I understood that there was no real doubt that we evolved, and that much, even most, of what I had been taught was baloney.

After that I went through a brief atheistic phase, experienced three very significant events which can only be termed ‘miracles’ as there is no other expression I can think of to convey their import and significance to me, followed by a very long period of trying to figure out just what the hell I did believe. The more answers I found, the more questions I had.

The real beginning to understanding, for me, was when I approached meditation seriously. I had practiced off and on, different approaches, for years, but not in any kind of dedicated way. Then I began getting into neuroscience, became an independent researcher in the mind machine field, and was brought back to considering mediation from a more scientific viewpoint.

It wasn’t long after this that I began practicing meditation in a disciplined way and not long after this, everything fell together in my mind. This is not to say that I understood reality, per se, but that I had found a starting point. I began to see what threads to follow, what areas to explore, and I found that I wasn’t the only one who was seeing the universe in the manner I was.

It wasn’t just meditation, of course. Modern science has a great deal to say about our perception of Reality, if we remember to keep the marriage of skepticism and wonder intact.

It says: “Hey bud, this world is a lot different than you think. In fact, nothing is really what it seems.” (Coincidentally, this sounds a lot like Maya...) Many of today’s leading physicists are starting to sound like mystics, and like the shamans of certain “primitive” societies. (and I’m not just referring to Fritzjof Capras work).

Finally, as I constantly remind the Christians, be careful to not cling quite so tightly to what you think you ‘know’. I think Carl would agree with me there…

I meditate frequently. Do I do it because I think it is going to bring about cosmic change in the world or in myself? No. I do tend to believe in the interconnectedness of all things, but I don’t necessarily believe that it’s something to meditate over. The reason I love to meditate is because it brings me a feeling of inner peace and harmony. It feels good. And if it feels good, then do it, I say.

Its not so much that one meditates on the interconnectedness of all things, I think, so much as that meditation can confer an awareness of the interconnectedness of all things…

Its not so much that one meditates on the interconnectedness of all things, I think, so much as that meditation can confer an awareness of the interconnectedness of all things…

True. My personal meditations tend more to focus either on myself or they are practices in mindfulness. The times that I am most blissfully aware of the interconnectedness of everything is when I am high (or often after I’ve dropped acid). The very first time I smoked marijuana I experienced this. It was amazing.

I find mescaline to be quite a handy little tool…

DMT and Ayahuasca are high on my list of things to explore, as well, although I have tried neither.

Check this link:

http://www.breakingopenthehead.com

I find mescaline to be quite a handy little tool…

Right on! ‘Shrooms also worked well at the time (John and I gave them a whirl seven years ago), but the next morning I puked up half my stomach…

Groovy site by the way, Bodi. I see the author’s going to be in San Fran on the 30th. Maybe I’ll have to take a jaunt over to City Lights.

To me, meditating on something means to get in a quiet, calm place, clear your thoughts(stopping all “motion”, to speak), and think as objectively as possible about the subject. 

As far as some kind of clearing your mind exercise, riding my motorcycle on open road (not worrying about the other drivers) is great.  Conversely, riding in Dallas rush hour on the Interstate has an almost opposite effect.

My personal preference is a dim room with white noise(air cleaners are great).

Thats a kind of meditation, I suppose, Ragman, but its not what I mean by meditation. The meditation I am talking about is traditional zazen, and the objective is to empty the mind of ALL thought, and enter the state known as samadhi.

BTW Sadie, if you are interested in meditation and the transpersonal effects of psychedelics, are you familiar with mind machines?

Meditation is about ‘cleansing the doors of perception’…

I haven’t the slightest idea wtf this means. 

I find mescaline to be quite a handy little tool…

Been there done that.  I already unlocked the secret of the Flinstones.  If you’re hoping for more, my money says you’ll be disappointed.

Now, since most of the conflict in the world and in our personal lives can be traced back to someone believing a lie, something ‘not true’, then anything which helps us to overcome our false beliefs will be of tremendous value in achieving ‘peace’.

Bodi- while I’m the last person who would contest the value of meditation, or the appropriate use of entheogens, to achieve insights about oneself, I have to take issue with this statement.  Of course, many conflicts, inter- and intrapersonal, have to do with believing lies, and meditation can have a role to play for some in understanding these lies.

But the conflicts that are tearing the world apart- war between peoples, our destruction of the biosphere- have little to do with “lies” as such, and are not amenable to cure by means of meditation.  There is no a priori reason to believe that peace is our “natural” state: this is the “Golden Age” fallacy.

Evolution has equipped us well for living in small roving bands of hunter-gatherers: support kin and tribe, fight strangers, eat everything you can.  This works as long as technology is primitive, and our numbers are low enough to leave a small footprint.

But the growth of culture has put deadly weapons in the hands of children.  Memes evolve far more quickly than genes, and are far more volatile, depending as they do on continuity of cultures, abstract concepts such as “truth”, “goodness”, and “godliness”.  To build peaceful cultures takes work, and recognition that they are not “natural"- they are social constructs which are fragile and which require constant maintainance.

What Zilch said.

Bodi, with all due respect, if it takes psychotropic drugs to get to the “truth” then I’d question whatever truth you think you’re getting from the experience. Whatever it is I’m skeptical that it has much to do with reality.

I’ve had experience with mushrooms, san pedro, ayahuasca, 5-meo-dmt, lsd, lsa, marijuana, and dxm.

Yet, I’m still an avid atheist.  In fact, these drugs have strengthed my atheism by revealing the physicalism of it all.  I have undoubtedly experienced what everyone calls “God” with the help of a couple grams of mushrooms.

But a recent “bad” trip made me very skeptical.  Its appearant I’m only a human with a brain, and these drugs are affecting my brain.  This God everyone talks about is only a byproduct of the brain.  We’re all robots, and these mushrooms produce a chemical to deter predators from eating them.  They really can fuck you up.

Hallucinogens are often very interesting and “spiritual” and ecstatic and all that, but their use seems self-defeating in some way.  I’m still learning…

Agreed.  Hallucinogens are interesting, and can throw light on how thoughts are patterned. They are “self-defeating” in the sense that they can’t give you any answers, just questions.  Ultimately, if you want answers, you have to work for them.

At this point I’m really interested in more “natural” altered states.

People always talk about experiencing God either spontaneously or through a near-death experience.  Their experience reads just like a drug induced trip.  The presence of strong hallucinogens in our brains such as DMT and 5-meo-DMT could give a mechanism of action.

I have a hunch that a lot of people join Christianity as a life-long attempt to integrate these experiences.  They see it as the ultimate proof of God nobody can argue with, because they felt it.  Little do they know shamen have known about these states for millennia.

The experiences are intensely personal.  I’ve read something like 15 million Britons have experienced an ecstatically spiritual feeling.  80% of them attributed it to God.  That’s a huge percentage!  Nobody is willing to admit its “just” their brain - its just that intense.

It doesn’t help that these experiences are never talked about.  I think the best way to deal with theists is to study these experiences, because it always boils down to them.  Atheists need to be aware of this.

Hallucinogens are interesting, and can throw light on how thoughts are patterned.

Yeah. For me, psychedelics are mostly for fun (and fascinating entertainment). Drugs do give many people glimpses of alternative worlds (as do other methods of attaining altered consciousness), but for me occasionally using them is pretty much just for the pleasure of viewing said alternative worlds (although philosophizing about them can be just as fun).

(Rubs hands together briskly)
This is going to be fun!!

Very few beings really seek knowledge in this world. Few really ask. On the contrary, they try to wring from the unknown the answers they have already shaped in their own minds - justifications, confirmations, forms of consolation without which they cannot go on. To really ask is to open the door to the whirlwind. - Ann Rice

To begin with, lets look at the statement ‘cleansing the doors of perception’. What do I mean by this? Perhaps an analogy will help. When driving a car, it behooves one to keep the windshield clean. When the windshield becomes dirty, covered with bugs, dirt, what not, it becomes difficult to see what is in front of the car. If one cannot see the obstacles and road conditions clearly, then the data needed to make correct choices in maneuvering the car is incomplete and flawed. This means that the choices the driver makes will be much more likely to be inappropriate, and s/he is much more likely to end up in the ditch.

Your mind, in a way, is much like this. We all have a sort of ‘windshield’ through which we see the world. This mental windshield is our worldview, our preconceived notions about ‘what and how the world is’.

Every one of us always acts, feels, and behaves in a way that is consistent with our worldview - regardless of the reality of that image. Once an idea or belief about reality goes into this picture, once we accept it, it becomes ‘true’, as far as we personally are concerned. We do not question its validity, but proceed to act just as if it is true.

Men in general judge more from appearances than from reality. All men have eyes, but few have the gift of penetration. - Machiavelli

All data coming in from the senses is, under normal circumstances, filtered through this mental structure. If you ‘KNOW’ that God exists, then anything and everything you see will be ‘adjusted’ to fit into this belief. Is this not obvious? If something comes in that contradicts our worldview, we rationalize. We make excuses. We find loopholes. (Some do a better job than others). The mind tends to make the data fit the ideas we already hold, rather than the other way around, and this is true no matter what your worldview happens to be. We tend to look for what supports our belief structure and reject that which does not.

Every man takes the limits of his own field of vision for the limits of the world. - Schopenhauer

This process is complex and happens on different levels simultaneously. Science itself is a form of this happening on a collective/exterior level. On that level we usually call it a paradigm, rather than a worldview. I would also like to point out that while it’s necessary and unavoidable to have a worldview, (being human and all), there are certain problems that arise because of the nature of how it operates. Most of these problems are what I would term the Aristotelian flaw – thinking that if we can label, define and name something, then we understand it. Unfortunately, words, labels and symbols are very limited. (Ref the orange example below).

Sit down before fact like a little child, be prepared to give up every preconceived notion, follow humbly to wherever and to whatever abysses nature leads or you shall learn nothing. - Thomas Huxley

Meditation is a process whereby we may learn to see into reality directly, without the screen. (Zen would call this seeing Buddha Nature with your naked eyes…) Its not that we see in this way WHILE meditating. It’s that we are conditioning the mind to cease all the preconceptive chatter so that when we come out of meditation, the world is fresh, vibrant and alive.

This experience cannot be conveyed through words, I’m afraid, anymore than I could make you understand what an orange tastes like through explanation. You have to taste it for yourself…

Meditation is, in one sense, the mental equivalent of getting out and wiping the windshield off. It could also be said that in a certain sense it’s about regaining the child’s way of seeing the world. Meditation is also about training the intuition as opposed to training the logic.

(A revealing perspective on intuition, although some of the reasoning I have problems with -

http://www.intuition.org/sorokin.htm )

True observation begins when devoid of set patterns; freedom of expression occurs when one is beyond system. - Bruce Lee

Psychedelics are tools. Nothing more, nothing less. They are NOT ‘enlightenment in a pill’; they do not reveal ‘truth’. They CAN be used to ‘help’ stretch the mind, to help clean the windshield. They can be (and more frequently are) misused and misunderstood. They certainly are not ‘necessary’.  And I never used the word Truth. Furthermore, the benefit one gets from them depends a great deal on many different factors, such as how evolved your worldview is, what kind of development you have reached, physiological factors, environment, how you approach using them, etc. I certainly do not recommend that just anyone take them, nor do I claim that they will, in and of themselves, provide any kind of enlightenment. Once again, they are merely tools. Nothing more, nothing less. A hammer can be used to help build a house, or to knock oneself silly…

But the conflicts that are tearing the world apart- war between peoples, our destruction of the biosphere- have little to do with “lies” as such… - Zilch

The conflicts and problems that are tearing the world apart have everything to do with the lies (false, incorrect ideas) that people believe, in my opinion (of course, that might be a lie that I just believe, lol).

Some examples (out of almost infinite varieties and levels) –

“The world belongs to man, it ours by divine right, so we can do whatever the hell we want to with it. Besides, why should I worry that we are destroying the planet? God will either give us a new one or take us to heaven, so there’s no problem. This is the Divine Plan, it’s the way it supposed to be!”

(I highly recommend that you read Ishmael by Daniel Quinn).

“God (Allah, Jehovah, or Whomever) exists and is on OUR side! We are His chosen ones and He wants us to destroy/enslave/drive out/convert all the unbelievers.”

“Might makes Right.”

“Money is the only, and/or most important measure of success. (Money is God).”

“It doesn’t matter whether the whole world has to suffer so that I can maintain my standard of living. That doesn’t affect me.”

“Since the religious quacks are obviously full of shit, then the universe is random, purposeless, and there is no higher meaning, the only meaning is what we subjectively decide there should be. (Or - there is no spiritual reality to any of this).”

“I am not part of the food chain.”

“My way of thinking is the only correct way.”

Etc. Etc…

There is no a priori reason to believe that peace is our “natural” state - Zilch

I never claimed that it was. Nor that it isn’t our natural state. Also, it depends a great deal on how you define ‘peace’. Based on what I think you mean by it, I will say that I think it is possible to achieve it, if we go about it correctly, but it won’t be easy, and it comes down to the individual in the end. There is, of course, every chance that we will end up destroying ourselves.

Memes evolve far more quickly than genes, and are far more volatile, depending as they do on continuity of cultures, abstract concepts such as “truth”, “goodness”, and “godliness”. - Zilch

Are you familiar then, with the work of Beck and Graves? Spiral Dynamics? Ken Wilbur? Integral?  These are some of the foundations of my own studies.

http://www.spiraldynamics.com/book/Chapter1.html

While I do not agree completely with all of Kens ideas, I find that I do resonate with many of them -

http://www.khandro.com/kenwilber/

Everyone thinks of changing Humanity, and nobody thinks of changing himself. - Leo Tolstoy

When we have learned to control our thoughts, our sympathies, and our emotions, it will be an easy matter to control our circumstances. – Unknown

We all have a sort of ‘windshield’ through which we see the world. This mental windshield is our worldview, our preconceived notions about ‘what and how the world is’.
[...]
Meditation is a process whereby we may learn to see into reality directly, without the screen.

To believe that, Bodi, one must embrace dualism: that there is a trueself, a soul, a homunculus, who is watching the real world go by, filtered through imperfect senses and through a dirty worldview-windshield.  Meditation, or “true” religion, or drugs, or whatever, serve to remove, or at least clean up, this windshield, so we can perceive reality directly, or at least more directly.  Is this more or less your standpoint?

While I find this position much more congenial than, say, frothing-at-the-mouth biblehumping, I still don’t buy it.  Being myself a humorless materialist, I believe that we are only “luminous beings” when we’re, say, trying to launch bottle rockets from our butts.  While meditation, religion, and science can give us different windshields, and thus enlarge our perspectives, they cannot “clean” or do away with the windshield, because we are the windshield.  That is, there is no soulpearl or little guy watching the show- we are the show.

And while some worldviews are more consonant with reality than others- that is, they allow us to make more successful predictions, be happier, etc., there is no understanding without a “windshield”.  Rocks have no worldview, no lies, no religion.  And no life.

And Bodi- while I agree that the “lies” you listed play a role in our woes, they are not the whole story, and many of them are not lies: greed is not a “lie”, for instance.  And one of your “lies"…

“Since the religious quacks are obviously full of shit, then the universe is random, purposeless, and there is no higher meaning, the only meaning is what we subjectively decide there should be. (Or - there is no spiritual reality to any of this).�

...is something I more or less wholeheartedly agree with.  Of course, the randomness of the universe doesn’t obtain because religious quacks are full of shit, but because that’s simply the way it is, as dispassionate science informs us.  The universe as a whole is indeed purposeless.  But there are now, at least on the Earth, pockets of purpose, in the form of life and culture.  A universe devoid of life can have no meaning or purpose.  Meaning and purpose, along with love, hate, good, and bad, have evolved along with life.

Some people think that life is meaningless if meaning is “merely” subjective, evolved from the bottom up- they want meaning to be primary, top down, proceeding from a skydaddy, or a new age “oneness” or somesuch.  For me, though, the purpose and meaning of life is especially precious, not despite the fact, but precisely because it is so new and fragile.

Oh, and I checked out your links.  Sorry, I find them to be new age claptrap.  Just my dirty windshield, I’m sure…

To believe that, Bodi, one must embrace dualism: that there is a trueself, a soul, a homunculus, who is watching the real world go by, filtered through imperfect senses and through a dirty worldview-windshield. 

I don’t think that follows, Zilch. It’s an analogy. A metaphor. A model. Not meant to be taken literally. I suppose if one wants, just about any analogy about our minds could be ‘refuted’ by that argument. Do you think the idea of a subconscious is erroneous then? How about the right brain/left brain model? How about the idea of a self-image? If someone uses the idea of a self-image as a model to study human behavior, does that make them a dualist? What about cybernetic models? Are they dualism as well?

Dualism - Most generally, the view that reality consists of two disparate parts. In philosophy of mind, the belief that the mental and physical are deeply different in kind: thus the mental is at least not identical with the physical.

I am NOT a dualist, and I don’t think there is a ‘ghost in the machine’. In fact, I am strongly anti-dualist. The mind, the body and the spirit are merely different facets of our being and its useful to look at ourselves as such in order to try to understand just what we are and how we work, but there is no division in reality. The brain is the physical manifestation of our ‘mind’, just as our ‘mind’ is the mental manifestation of the brain. We can look at it in this way to try to understand the big picture, but they are really not two different things. In short: they are the same thing looked at from two different perspectives…

Meditation, or “true” religion, or drugs, or whatever, serve to remove, or at least clean up, this windshield, so we can perceive reality directly, or at least more directly.  Is this more or less your standpoint?

Close, but I take exception to the use of the term ‘true religion’, as this has nothing to do with religion, and as I said above concerning the drugs they are merely tools, not worth much on their own. And once again, its an analogy to express a concept, not a literal truth.

I believe that we are only “luminous beings” when we’re, say, trying to launch bottle rockets from our butts. 

Heh. I like that. I laughed my luminous butt off…

Rocks have no worldview, no lies, no religion.  And no life.

I would like to address that. Please define ‘life’ for me, first, so I know where you are coming from.

And Bodi- while I agree that the “lies” you listed play a role in our woes, they are not the whole story.

I never said they were the ‘whole story’.

greed is not a “lie”, for instance

Greed is not a lie, but comes from believing a lie, or lies. (Remember, lie in this context does not mean a deliberately perpetrated falsehood, but simply something believed which is not true.)

Greed - An excessive desire to acquire or possess more than what one needs, especially with respect to material wealth.

One of the lies (there are a couple, I think) inherent in this being the idea that there is any value/reason/need to possessing more than one needs, at whatever level this is believed.

The universe as a whole is indeed purposeless. 

I don’t think it is.  What is life, again? Also, how do you define ‘purpose’?

A universe devoid of life can have no meaning or purpose.

Our universe is not devoid of life. In fact, I think its teeming with life. And to open a can of worms, I think life was here from the beginning, as I think the Universe itself is alive.

Meaning and purpose, along with love, hate, good, and bad, have evolved along with life.

As far as purpose is concerned:

That’s seems to me to be like saying that the purpose of becoming a tree evolved along with the acorn as it became (or evolved into) a tree, rather than being implicit to the acorn in the first place. In other words, life is not an accident. I realize that this may be difficult to understand, but when I say that life is no accident, this does not mean there is a God or Creator, as many believe. Look at the acorn again. Is it an accident that it becomes a tree? No, of course not. But there is also no one (no great Tree Creator) there designing and building the tree as it grows. It’s implicit from the beginning. I think the universe is the same.

Some people think that life is meaningless if meaning is “merely” subjective, evolved from the bottom up- they want meaning to be primary, top down, proceeding from a skydaddy, or a new age “oneness” or somesuch. 

What I believe really has very little to do with what I would like to believe.

Oh, and I checked out your links.  Sorry, I find them to be new age claptrap.  Just my dirty windshield, I’m sure…

I think you may have been a little hasty here. I also think that if you are going to use terms like meme, then you should be aware of how the concept has evolved since Dawkins. If you think that Spiral Dynamics is ‘new age claptrap’, then it seems to me that you haven’t done more than given it the briefest of cursory glances. If I’m wrong about this, please explain why you think SD is ‘claptrap’. (We can look at Ken Wilber and Integral or the concept of intuition being as valid as logic instead if you like. Give me some arguments why they are ‘claptrap’.)