{"id":2043,"date":"2015-01-31T09:27:53","date_gmt":"2015-01-31T17:27:53","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.lunabase.org\/~faber\/blog\/?p=2043"},"modified":"2015-01-31T09:27:53","modified_gmt":"2015-01-31T17:27:53","slug":"review-does-santa-exist","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.lunabase.org\/~faber\/blog\/?p=2043","title":{"rendered":"Review: Does Santa Exist"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>I picked this up based on a review of a writer I like, and I got something I wasn&#8217;t expecting.\u00a0 The blurb and the review both gave me the idea that Eric Kaplan was going to use the abstract question of how we relate to imaginary characters as a stepping stone into a general philosophical discussion. <em>Does Santa Exist<\/em> is more about how Kaplan has made peace with the questions than how society has.\u00a0 The result is a philosophical memoir.\u00a0 I admire the audacity but don&#8217;t share his positions.<\/p>\n<p>He begins with a tour of the philosophy of logic and quickly zeros in on logic&#8217;s limitations in dealing with self-reference and contradictions.\u00a0 Valid concerns, of course, and well expressed.\u00a0 He moves on to other belief systems: Buddhism and other mystic systems.\u00a0 It&#8217;s sort of an odd juxtaposition in terms of the overall shape of philosophy, but seems to trace his own metaphysical journey.\u00a0 He alludes to formal Buddhist and Zen training a few times.\u00a0 He clearly does not find what he calls the mystic approach compelling, either. From there he wends his way to <a title=\"Kabbalah\" href=\"http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Kabbalah\">Kabbalah<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p>I&#8217;ve encountered the Kabbalah system <a href=\"http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Promethea\">before<\/a>, and I don&#8217;t find it an intuitive way to organize my thoughts on reality. If <a href=\"http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Alan_Moore\">Alan Moore<\/a> (and <a href=\"http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/J._H._Williams_III\">J. H. Williams III<\/a>!) can&#8217;t sell me on a system of magical thinking, well, anyone else will have an uphill battle.<\/p>\n<p>So, I&#8217;m happy Kaplan&#8217;s found a belief system that works for him, but if the point of <em>Santa<\/em> was recruiting others &#8211; and I think it is &#8211; he didn&#8217;t manage to get me.<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>I picked this up based on a review of a writer I like, and I got something I wasn&#8217;t expecting.\u00a0 The blurb and the review both gave me the idea that Eric Kaplan was going to use the abstract question of how we relate to imaginary characters as a stepping stone into a general philosophical [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2043","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-reviews"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lunabase.org\/~faber\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2043","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lunabase.org\/~faber\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lunabase.org\/~faber\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lunabase.org\/~faber\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lunabase.org\/~faber\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=2043"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.lunabase.org\/~faber\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2043\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2044,"href":"https:\/\/www.lunabase.org\/~faber\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2043\/revisions\/2044"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lunabase.org\/~faber\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=2043"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lunabase.org\/~faber\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=2043"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lunabase.org\/~faber\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=2043"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}