Where did the 'kosmos' come from?

The name kosmøs came from trying to find a band name that sounded ok and fit the band. I found a definition somewhere, and part of it said cosmos- the universe as a harmonious whole.

At the time I was in the last stages of leaving behind a certain type of belief system that was based on a lot of social conditioning and pressuring. Basically I was leaving behind "organized" religion. But leaving that behind temporarily left a bit of a void in my worldview.

The idea of kosmøs was that even if you don't have this constructed reality built on some kind of systematic theology, it doesn't mean you are a nihilist, believing in nothing. It means that you've entered the domain of dialogue, debate, discovery, and growth. And in this realm, it's ok to not know the answer, yet continue to believe that there is at least some order to the way things are, and continue to live with "hope."

Hope seems like a human requisite of existence. What turns me off about a lot of religions is a certain amount of hope deferred to what happens after life, ie people's conceptions of heaven or even reincarnation. That's not to say that I don't believe in an afterlife, it just means that I think that hope in (or the threat of) the afterlife can be used to paralyze people.

So to come back to the point a little, I guess the name kosmøs is about having the strength to believe that "good" exists, and that this "good" is reflected in certain actions, morals, beliefs, systems, etc. Yet also recognizing the paradox that limited periods of chaos (the opposite of cosmos) are the agents of positive change, that they are a way of breaking the current order of things in order to build a better one. This is the concept of the Hindu god Shiva. The mythology of Shiva is really interesting to me because Shiva is sort of the devine destroyer, yet Shiva destroys so that something new can be built.

It is said that Shiva's incarnations destroy Maya, who represents the illusion of reality. Maya was created by Brahma, who existed before all things. Being somewhat bored, Brahma created Maya in order to have a companion and play. At the request of Maya, Brahma created what we call reality, and created humans as the ultimate appreciators of this reality. Then, Brahma asked Maya when the game they would play would begin. Maya agreed to begin the game by chopping Brahma into many many pieces and putting a piece of Brahma in every human, telling him that he would win the game when he became whole again by uniting all of the pieces and finally remembering who he was.

That's not to say that I have any kind of enlightened lifestyle. A lot of our songs are just about breaking up with a girl. (But there is Shiva operating even in that) It's just to say that if I was going to describe what the name kosmøs is about, that's the medium-length version.