My Role

26 September 2024

I've been thinking about jobs for myself, related to my writing project. One obvious job is to make sure that the most important things that I promote are actually true. This job might never end. I feel like I have to be the one to do it. If no one else does it, certainly; and even if other people contribute, I have to keep up with what they're doing.

But other than that, what other roles should I take on?

I have been curious about the relationship between MSL and the various non-Christian religions. For instance, in Indonesia, there are five official religions, the religions of Pancasila (Islam, Christianity, Hinduism, Buddhism, and Confucianism). A project I thought of doing was to learn about those five religions and how they related to Indonesians, and thus I would know how to relate MSL to them. There are two dimensions to MSL, the surface layer of doctrines, and then the deeper layers of the implications of the doctrines. The surface layer is finite, and is possibly something I could pull off with a lot of effort, despite not having grown up with Islam, Hinduism, Buddhism, or Confucianism, nor Indonesian language or culture. The deeper layer requires deeper expertise that I will probably never have. It makes a lot more sense for someone of, say, Muslim background who finds MSL interesting to do the work of relating it to Islam, than for me to. This is also basically true of the surface layer. (With the number of readers I have, I am not too optimistic that anyone is that into MSL and is looking for an intellectual project, but I might as well suggest this one to any who by chance might read this post, now, or later.)

That accounts for non-Christian religions. But what about relating MSL to Christianity, particularly in America? Here I feel like I'm a "native speaker" and could potentially do something some day. I've done some of this in things I've posted already, and started a more organized project that furthers this, but have put it on hold for now. (This project would be more than I could complete, and also it makes sense to offer it in case someone wants an intellectual project.)

What about interfacing with secular culture (and secular concerns) in America? I've done a fair amount of this in Formulalessness and other writing and may pursue it further someday, but probably wouldn't as much if I saw someone else doing it.

If MSL proves too false to promote, maybe it doesn't make sense to promote it in the various religious and national cultures. But, speaking as a Christian, it seems Christians are happy to consider teachers of moderately false doctrines to be OK Christians who are basically leading people to God (i.e., members of denominations that teach substantially different doctrines, like about soteriology). This points to a kind of pragmatism about truth. I don't like this, but if MSL fails, I'm not sure what truth there is. Maybe someone can suggest one? If not, all that is left is pragmatism, in which case I think MSL (or the New Wine System), as foundations for VMH, deserve their place at the table of Christian denominations, due to the pragmatic value of VMH. Maybe some would find this a good enough reason to try to promote it now. (Maybe if MSL fails, what I would be left with is truth, but a truth so vague that it permits a lot of different possible doctrinal approaches, including VMH, or MSL taken as "mental software" rather than as what's actually true.)

I could do various activities that from the perspective of my writing project are "self-promotion". The only one I can think of right now is to pursue music more. I may continue to write songs and maybe make demos, but I don't feel like it's a great idea to promote myself a lot before I get my philosophy figured out. I can't prevent others from promoting me and I guess I would be fine if they did, but I'm not going to push for that right now.

For myself, again, I think what is most critical is to examine the details of MSL to make sure that it is solid, and that is what I am focusing on for the next part of my life.