"Sacred"

[Licity]

Sacred. Sacredsacredsacred. I've been hearing that word tossed around a lot lately. We have sacred texts, sacred places, sacred words, sacred arts, sacred ideas. The word most commonly appears in connection with religion, which I hope to avoid because this could easily fall into another theist vs. atheist debate. Let's look at the definition, shall we? sa⋅cred   /ˈseɪkrɪd/ –adjective 1. devoted or dedicated to a deity or to some religious purpose; consecrated. 2. entitled to veneration or religious respect by association with divinity or divine things; holy. 3. pertaining to or connected with religion (opposed to secular or profane ): sacred music; sacred books. 4. reverently dedicated to some person, purpose, or object: a morning hour sacred to study. 5. regarded with reverence: the sacred memory of a dead hero. 6. secured against violation, infringement, etc., as by reverence or sense of right: sacred oaths; sacred rights. 7. properly immune from violence, interference, etc., as a person or office. I'm more focused on options 4 through 7. Pushing 1 to 3 to the wayside for the time being, "sacred" can be summed up as this: Something sacred is something that should be admired and should never be disturbed. I'm not necessarily interested in semantics here. The question that I keep hitting the wall on is not "What do humans need to keep sacred?" The puzzler is "Why do we need anything to be sacred?" What possible reason, psychological or otherwise, is there for upholding something immune to revision or change? Virtually all of human discovery has been around trying to make things better, trying to take what we once saw as untouchable and trying to harness it, trying to make our lives just a little bit easier at the end of the day. I'm beginning to think that there is no reason any concept should be considered above our involvement - after all, deciding that something should not be disturbed or disrespected is a form of involvement. Things should be kept in the state they are until they are no longer useful, then pushed out to make room for the new, sort of an "If it ain't broken, don't fix it" point of view. I was curious: What are all of your opinions on it?

[ExoByte]

The ground underneath my house is sacred. If it changes, the foundation will fail and my house will collapse.

[DrunkenArse]

4. reverently dedicated to some person, purpose, or object: a morning hour sacred to study. 5. regarded with reverence: the sacred memory of a dead hero. 6. secured against violation, infringement, etc., as by reverence or sense of right: sacred oaths; sacred rights. The search for objective truth in whatever form it may exist is sacred to me.

[Alric]

Well if you take the religious side of it, you can easily convert that to a nonreligious view. Which is that many of them have cultural meaning. Regardless of where you stand on a specific religion, understanding ones culture is a very important thing. If something is no longer useful in a practical sense, it can often still be useful in a historical or culture way, and preserves ideas and thoughts.

[Invader]

My freedom is sacred. My freedom cannot be changed.

[Licity]

The ground underneath my house is sacred. If it changes, the foundation will fail and my house will collapse. I can't tell is this is sarcasm or not... but it actually applies either way. The search for objective truth in whatever form it may exist is sacred to me. My freedom is sacred. My freedom cannot be changed. So, we have the search for truth and freedom as things that should held sacred. Well if you take the religious side of it, you can easily convert that to a nonreligious view. Which is that many of them have cultural meaning. Regardless of where you stand on a specific religion, understanding ones culture is a very important thing. If something is no longer useful in a practical sense, it can often still be useful in a historical or culture way, and preserves ideas and thoughts. I agree that the majority of cultures are blended so fully with religion that you can't ignore one without eviscerating the other. If something is not useful in a practical sense, then the ideas and thoughts become useless too. If we write down the ideas to preserve for history, then they are obviously unalterable because they no longer really exist in practice.

[Kromoh]

"Sacred" originally comes from "sacrament", which has to do with christian rituals. That is enough to keep that word off my lexicon.

[Dreams4free]

The search for objective truth in whatever form it may exist is sacred to me. hopefully it exists in a form we can percieve intellectually.

[DrunkenArse]

Of course it does. p = mv in the classical limit is a great example. Darwinian evolution is another. The earth is round and is the third planet out from the sun. The sun is on the edge of our galaxy. George bush was the last president and obama is our current one. Theres all sorts of examples of objective truth. None of that is really deep truth other then the evolution and p = mv but we're getting there. The uncertainty principle seems to be deep. String theory adds an extra term which would make it even more powerful then in quantum mechanics. We'll see.

[DrunkenArse]

@ Kromoh. Why does it matter where the word sacred came from?

[Lucid_boy]

I would say that the basic rights of mankind are sacred, they are things that ought not to be meddled with/disregarded, when that happens you get hitler and civil war, and such.

[WakataDreamer]

@ Kromoh. Why does it matter where the word sacred came from? He's anti-Christian as fuck, that's why it matters. I think that the pursuit for a higher purpose in life is sacred, along with the pursuits of happiness and discovery (discovery/knowledge, that is, the two are intimately intertwined, each one leads to the other directly or indirectly).

[Unelias]

@ Kromoh. Why does it matter where the word sacred came from? Actually it is always good to know the origin of the word. Etymology is a very interesting study. I don't think there is actually any need to keep anything sacred. It is pretty much matter of principles. Most people need principles, they need to make things important and "sacred" in order to make life meaningful through them. I think it is pretty much of an illusion in the end. Same is with the word tabu. Is there really anything that is tabu in the end? I think not. Just a pressure from society makes people think so.

[juroara]

I'm not necessarily interested in semantics here. The question that I keep hitting the wall on is not "What do humans need to keep sacred?" The puzzler is "Why do we need anything to be sacred?" What possible reason, psychological or otherwise, is there for upholding something immune to revision or change? the probably with the question is that it proposes that calling something sacred is an action. and your question of needing to do something becomes about an activity when people believe something is sacred, it is a belief, not a need I believe life is sacred. Not because I 'need' to believe life is sacred, I just do believe life is sacred. that which is or isn't sacred is deeply tied with your world views. the world views comes first and defines for you what is or isn't sacred. none of the definitions that you posted said anything about that which is sacred being immuned to change. it's interesting that you got that notion though.

[Licity]

the probably with the question is that it proposes that calling something sacred is an action. and your question of needing to do something becomes about an activity when people believe something is sacred, it is a belief, not a need I believe life is sacred. Not because I 'need' to believe life is sacred, I just do believe life is sacred. that which is or isn't sacred is deeply tied with your world views. the world views comes first and defines for you what is or isn't sacred. none of the definitions that you posted said anything about that which is sacred being immuned to change. it's interesting that you got that notion though. 6 and 7 would imply that a sacred something is resistant to being changed. An object, action, or quality (it can apply to any) is not automatically sacred, a human being has to make it so. World views will affect what you personally see as sacred, but the fact that there are different world views means, at least to me, that sacred things are so by choice and not be requirement.

[Siblesz]

From the ontological point of view, everything is sacred. Drinking water, eating a fruit, listening to music, smoking, excercising the body, a tree, a river, a mountain, a pile of trash, a pile of shit. Everything is part of everything else, so everything is as equally sacred as everything else. Of course, some things/people/places possess more sacred power than others, and if you are particularly keen at sensing these energies, then you will understand what this means. But if one can develop an attitude that reveres reality itself and everything that is revealed in our collective dream, then one can achieve satisfaction even in suffering. Which is what I try to do every day. But it is hard to appreciate the honk of a car, or the stupidity in some people, without getting angry and blasting the gods for the shitty sacredness that they endow us with every once in a while.

[Licity]

From the ontological point of view, everything is sacred. Drinking water, eating a fruit, listening to music, smoking, excercising the body, a tree, a river, a mountain, a pile of trash, a pile of shit. Everything is part of everything else, so everything is as equally sacred as everything else. Of course, some things/people/places possess more sacred power than others, and if you are particularly keen at sensing these energies, then you will understand what this means. But if one can develop an attitude that reveres reality itself and everything that is revealed in our collective dream, then one can achieve satisfaction even in suffering. Which is what I try to do every day. But it is hard to appreciate the honk of a car, or the stupidity in some people, without getting angry and blasting the gods for the shitty sacredness that they endow us with every once in a while. Sacred power? Energies? Collective dream?