Conscious Volition

The following is a reaction to a number of threads on free will which are currently taking place on a secular forum to which I occasionally contribute. Since I don't believe that most of the overwhelmingly anti- free-will arguments there are the result of a desire for philosophical clarity or understanding, but as a means of furthering a blatantly socialistic political agenda, I don't see any point in posting this there. I took part in a few of those threads, to the tune of some two dozen or so lengthy posts, but I'm too fucking block-headed to join the elite. So fuck it.


***
I'd be willing to dispense with the term "freewill" for two reasons. First, because of its associations with religion and the mind-numbingly stupid concept of Original Sin; and second because as long as people take the term in a totally literal sense it's obvious to anyone that no living organism can be "free": no living thing is exempt from physically binding natural laws, no living thing exists without limitations of any kind. We are all subject to eventual decay, death, and a return to oblivion, not to mention all the normal boundaries, obstacles, and constraints we continuously face along the way.

This reality may be depressing to some, and some will fight tooth and nail against it by latching on to some religious or quasi-religious belief system which ignores nature and assures them that they will exist forever; still others may find reality depressing but accept it completely, though not without the feeling that it somehow renders life pointless and meaningless. I would never begrudge either type their right to believe whatever the hell they want to believe, so long as they recognize the fact that they don't have the right to try and shove their beliefs down the throats of the unwilling. If you're a theist and don't like the fact that I refuse to pay tribute to your personal god-figment, tough darts. Not tough darts for God, mind you, if She really exists; just for you. If you happen to be an atheist like me, but one who tries to convince me that my life is meaningless and pointless: Well, go piss up a tree. It's as simple as that. If you believe your life means nothing without God, or that it just means nothing plain and simple, then you're almost certainly correct. Just don't visit your self-contempt or your self-pity on me, because I don't give a damn. I'm not interested, and I'm not buying.

In case no one's noticed, what we have here isn't simply a healthy, open-minded contempt for an over-used and simplistic philosophical/theological term, it's a contempt for some crucial and important things which "free-will" is necessarily related to: the concepts of freedom and autonomy, the concept of the individual, or the "self", and the concept of "thinking" in general. We've seen a conscious, intelligent human being compared to a tree, to a rock, to a fucking toaster. We've seen the faculty of reason reduced to a purely emotional, and even a chemical, level. People aren't governed by thoughts, but by desires. And these desires are further reduced to merely mechanical drives and impulses. We don't plan and act, we respond and react to all sorts of biological and/or subconscious triggers and "motivators". We don't live, we function. We've seen "self-awareness" described like some sort of virus which threatens the collective unity and integrity of the human species. We've seen ostensibly rational people proudly claim that they don't recognize themselves as individual entities. "There is no 'I', there is no 'self'". This has been said explicitly and implicitly throughout all of these free will threads. It's been intimated that true "enlightenment" consists of sitting on the ground like a turnip (like the great Bubba). People who claim to think, to reason, to choose, to act, are simply deluded.

To insist that there is no self, that people are automata---and not significantly less so than rats or sheep---, that self-awareness is delusional and potentially hazardous, is the mark of a rational person, while those who insist on their individuality and claim to be self-motivated are called "mysterians". All this despite the fact that history has shown that tyranny depends on valuing the collective over the individual, and that religious fanatics and zealots of every stripe were, and still are, infatuated with and totally dependent upon the "mysterious" nature of God.

Automata

What does the "free" part of the term "free will" really mean? I think that's the crucial question. To me "free" will always meant freedom from Original Sin: freedom from being constantly at the mercy of any number of internal or external gods, angels, demons, chimeras, irrational lusts, drives and desires. It meant the ability to use the faculties of reason and rational thought as a means of establishing long term goals, of over-coming the merely sensual or emotional influence of short term whims and desires, and of doing this in a consistent fashion thereby bringing about positive results: mental and physical well-being, enrichment, and even pleasure in one's life.

But I've heard people say something to the effect that we are essentially enslaved to our desires whether we're productive, creative, well-adjusted people, or criminals. The criminal is acting according to his desires, and the entrepreneur is acting according to her desires, and that neither of these types of people are free in any sense. Furthermore, the entrepreneur hasn't exercised any greater degree of control or choice: her genetic make-up, her environment, her experiences and memories, all contributed to her living a life of achievement and success, and she had virtually no hand in the matter herself. Some would even go a step beyond that and say that there is no "herself", that "she" is just another deluded bundle of neurons and synapses walking along on auto-pilot, a bystander who doesn't make things happen, but to whom things happen.

What I've observed is that there seems to be a strong aversion to the concept of freedom in general, from hardline theists as well as certain types of determinists. The best way to abolish the concept of freedom entirely is to abolish the concept of the individual, which many people who argue for determinism seem dead-set on doing, in no uncertain terms. Observe how many people claim that there is no self, there is no "I". We are machines, automata, bystanders. Well, as anyone knows, machines don't need freedom. All they require is to be programmed and/or maintained so that they can carry out their function. Machines are never an end in themselves, they're only means to some further end. Machines don't need freedom, so eradicate the idea completely.

Teach people that they have no actual decision-making power, that reason is just another type of desire, that we are all at the mercy of our desires, that our bodies make decisions and our conscious minds find out about it later, that notions of freedom and autonomy are delusions, that to disassociate one's self from these antiquated terms with all due smugness and contempt will assure one's inclusion in the new enlightened "elite", that to entertain illusions of freedom and self-determination (or the concept of "self" entirely) is to espouse mysticism and irrationality, even though we can all look into the ancient story of Genesis and see that, in reality, notions of freedom and autonomy have been thorns in mysticism's side since the beginning.

The message in Genesis is pretty straightforward, and hardcore atheists who argue so adamantly for determinism like to believe that they are all about exposing hoaxes and hucksters, fables and myths, irrational beliefs of all kinds which hold humanity in chains, while in reality what they are doing is forging newer, stronger chains. Political ideas spring from philosophical ideas. Political ideas are philosophical ideas. Kill the concept of freedom in the Ivory Tower and eventually you will succeed in killing the concept down at street level. Kill the concept of the "self" in the halls of academia and eventually the concept will be wiped out altogether. It's only a matter of time.

Beauty and the beastly

Just two questions (lots of sub-questions, though):

First, Why Do People Do This? Who Started It? And Why? Is It Possible To Type Quickly This Way? I Say Not. It's Even More Irritating To Do Than It Is To Read. Why Do People Insist On Doing This Kind Of Thing? And Why Is It That These People Are The Ones With The High Profile Jobs And The Brand Spanking New Hummers With "Support Our Troops" Ribbons Stuck All Over Them And Those New-Fangled Fish With Nothing Inside Them? I Just Know Those Are Jesus Fish.

When Will The Gaia Fish Come Out? What Kind Of Vehicles Will The Gaia Fish Be Appended To? Old Veedoubleyou Busses? Nah. I Bet You'll See Most Gaia Fish Attached To Those Battery Operated Things That Sort Of Look Like Something Fred Flintstone Would Drive While He And His Kiss-Ass Side-Kick Schemed On How To Get Something Over On Their Wives Who Are Much Too Smart And Good-Looking (Not To Mention Tall) For Their Sorry Neanderthal Asses Anyway.

(AnD LetZ NoT EveN GeT inTO ThiS. ThiS Is SilliNEsS aNd oBnoXiCiTY TaKEn 2 uH WhoLe nUThr LeVeL.....)

My second question is, what the hell happened to all the ugly people in the world? Seriously?

Maybe it's just me, but the young people of today are just too damn pretty. Has there been some sort of trend going on, that only the pretty people have been reproducing? Have the ugly folks decided to do the right thing and keep their ugly genes out of the pool? For myself, well, I fathered two boys, but I promise never to do it again. It's too damn chancy. My first son Jared is pretty. He looks more and more like his Mom everyday, with his high cheekbones and dark-ish, half-latino skin. My second son, Jordan, well, he looks more and more like me, and it's got everyone in the family worried. So we decided I'd just keep the pony in the shed from here on in.

Whenever I go out I am simply dismayed by all the flat-out, drop-dead gorgeous people in the world. I guess it's a Western thing. I grew up in New York, the capital of ugly people. Actually that's upstate New York, which is lush and beautiful landscape-wise but apologizes for it by being the birthplace of lots of ugly folks. It's different out here in Arizona. People are taller for one thing. I'm one of the only male dwarfs I know of. Back in New York five-foot-seven is respectable for a man. Out here most of the high school girls are taller than that. Hell, just one of their legs is taller than that. I can hear them giggling as they breeze by me at K-mart, dissing me with their secret dope gangsta hand-symbols. But they are so beautiful that I actually feel honored at having the opportunity to be ridiculed mercilessly by them.

As for their male counterparts. It's just disgusting. During Spring Break you will see them stepping out of their Ford F-350s with those oversized baggy shorts that only look silly on ugly people, sandals, and shades heading into the local Safeway for their next nineteen cases of Bud Light. They have this strange caramel color to their well-sculpted bodies. A kind of orangy-caramel brownness which is the result of tanning salons, constant exposure to the sun, and good California genes. Their hair is amazing. The wind is blowing it all over, but when they get indoors they do this sudden, bird-like flicking motion and it falls perfectly back into place. It has this strange shine which is exotic and unearthly. In New York, sure, lots of guys had shiny hair, but it was only because their mothers forgot to save the water in the tub for them the night before which meant they couldn't wash their hair that month.

I haven't gone to any of the beaches here at Havasu during Spring Break since the early ninetees. My sensitive soul was simply overwhelmed with all the sheer beauty I saw unleashed around me: the pristine skin, the hair, the limbs that looked as if they had been hewn out of some rare dusky marble by Michaelangelo, the ubiquitous and unbearable presence of the human female breast. You have to realize, when I was going to school in upstate New York a girl's breast was something one saw in a magazine or on HBO when everyone, including us trailer-park folk, got a free week of unscambled mayhem and the chance to learn the entire screenplay of Porky's by heart. Also bear in mind that our idea of eye-candy, at least insofar as the female posterior was concerned, was getting the chance to see one of the cuter girls in a snug pair of Jordache jeans. A thong was something one wore on one's feet on those rare sunny days when everyone hunkered around the rusty sprinkler and laughed loudly enough to drown out the sound of Mr. and Mrs. Tallerico screaming death-threats at one another in a drunken stupor up the road.

Like Reynolds pointed out in a poem I posted recently: Americans are strange folks and like to turn things upside down or inside out. One example is that they now hang around (at least in swinging resort towns like Lake Havasu) with their eyes covered up and their asses hanging out. Just watdaphugizzubwiddat?

Yo.

Outstanding poems, and Jarrell's gunner

Having been involved with a few online poetry workshops for the past four years, I can think of exactly one poem posted online which I would venture to say was a truly outstanding poem. That isn't to say there aren't others, or that I haven't read others, it's only to say that I can think of only one at this point in time. Every once in a great while someone posts a poem to one of these forums which receives a great amount of praise; but in almost every case the excitement does down, the poem crawls down the board and slips quietly into oblivion.

I think it's possible that a poem which strikes a chord in readers almost immediately will end up going the way of the dodo bird when all the fanfare quiets down. It could be that a poem that is rewarding at first sight is at risk of not being revisited over and over by a great number of readers. I think the poems that truly become a part of us, as any outstanding poem will inevitably do, are those that take their sweet time unfolding themselves to us. They may have even looked awkward and ugly when we first read them. I wonder how Stevens' "The Emperor of Ice Cream" would fare if it appeared in a poetry forum today? I sincerely doubt that it would be met with a barage of flattery. That particular poem became a part of me for two reasons: one, because not understanding it forced me to read it a hundred plus times over the course of the years; and two, because Stevens had a great ear and such a coy, seductive style.

That isn't to say an outstanding poem has to be mysterious. Take Robinson's "Richard Cory", for instance. I probably read that poem fifty times before I realized just how good it was. I probably "got" it early on. I mean, it's about as subtle as a punch in the throat; but some things you just don't really "get" when you're eighteen or nineteen. Robinson's poem can be appreciated at first reading but in a certain sense it can't be fully taken in until one has lived long enough. I love how the ideas are set against eachother in Robinson's poem: that we ought to appreciate what we have, a simple and ordinary plaitude which is suddenly rendered flimsy and trite when followed by the somewhat existential and fearsome thought that we might not ever be happy with what we have.

It's obvious that poems about death will have more impact than poems about, say, fishing or sex. Louise Gluck finishes one of her poems with the line: "The love of form is a love of endings." This line has more and more meaning for me the older I get. Someone once said, "everyone is either a Platonist or an Aristotelian". Absolutism of any kind is anathema nowadays and saying this kind of thing wouldn't go over very well with most people, but I believe it's essentially true. I think Gluck's line rests pretty squarely in the Aristotelian camp, in that it's a nod to the theory of art in the Western tradition. There has been, of course, a huge shift away from this time-honored tradition to the point that art no longer requires any formal structure whatsoever, need not be linear or coherent in any way, and in some cases doesn't even have to make sense or mean anything at all.

As much as I flirt with the exciting possibilities that modernism and/or post modernism seems to offer, I think I'm strongly rooted in the Aristotelian camp myself, in that I think poems ought to have a point to make, a view to share, an experience to offer. To however remote a degree, most poetry, if it can be called that, will have some association with death and dying, and it will have this association due to it's having a beginning, a middle, and an end. We can bypass this by beginning nowhere and ending nowhere, after a journey through nowhere, but we only do so at the risk of wasting our own time and the reader's time as well.

I think Jarrell's "The Death of the Ball Turret Gunner" is a good example of an outstanding poem. Certainly this seems to be the common view. But I wonder now if I haven't been taking it all wrong? As usual with me, I seem to approach the poem as I do most everything else: ass backwards. What I mean is, I never come away from the poem without thinking that its subject is deserving of the utmost respect. I am simply unable to view the gunner as a helpless victim of the State who somehow inadvertently and tragically wound up manning the guns in a ball-turret on a bomber plane. To take this view, in my humble opinion, would be a concession to everything that is rotten and misleading about determinism. But when I examine Jarrell's poem and read some of the noteworthy commentary about it online, I see that this view could very well be the one which Jarrell actually intended for the reader to take.

The gunner falls from his mother into the State, as if his entire life in between his birth and becoming a combat fighter is irrelevant. In fact, the poem erases this entire period, and so what we have is a person with virtually no name, no real identity; a person who made no choices at all and is merely a marionette being played upon by external forces, primarily, in this case, the big evil force of the State. Actually, I always had trouble with that word for this poem. It blanks out the very crucial and relevant fact that the Allied forces during WWII were at war against what was arguably the most powerful and dangerous manifestations of collectivism ever known. They were at war against Statism itself (I don't mean to sound like a flag-waver and I'm certainly not trying to stir up any kind of nationalistic fervor in my fellow Americans. For the record I think our current war is an absurdity and our current President a theocratic, crusading jack-ass. I do have respect for the U.S. soldiers themselves, however).

By depicting his gunner as a helpless pawn of the State Jarrell is guilty of a huge historical and philosophical error; but nonetheless his poem forced me, over time, to come to terms with exactly what a ball turret is and with the brute fact that human beings who were sometimes not even out their teens had the sheer balls to crawl into one of those things and stay there, in combat, for as long as nine hours at a time, in sometimes below freezing temperatures, cramped into a fetal position and skillfully operating equipment, and all the time risking death and very often meeting their deaths. Nothing I have ever done in my life up to this point has been anywhere near as dignified and honorable as cramming into a ball turret of a bomber plane and flying into combat in defense of human rights and political freedom. At this point in time I would no sooner be able to do that than to loose a flock of geese from my rear-end. Perhaps when I was younger, and if circumstances were drastically different... I don't know. I'll flatter myself with that thought for a while, even though I know it won't last.

And what of that whopping final line? To me it has always pointed to the ultimate tragedy of war, and to what seems at first glance as a complete waste of a human life. But isn't it shamefully ungrateful, at least for some of us, to regard Jarrell's dead gunner as a faceless pawn of a military machine who served no greater purpose than to be washed out of a ball turret with a hose? I think it is. Doesn't that final line trivialize the debt a great many of us owe to people like him, and to the fact that millions of people honor his memory to this day? I think maybe it does.

I can't say that I wish the poem had never been written, though I do wish it had been written differently. The poem is certainly outstanding, but maybe it's outstanding for the wrong reasons?

Ball turret gunner

" 'It's hard to imagine a worse place to go to war in then the ball turret position of the B-17 Flying Fortress,' begins one history. 'Isolated from the rest of the ten-man crew, the ball turret was extremely cramped quarters and required a man with a slight build. In almost every case, there was not enough room for the ball turret gunner to wear a parachute.'

Colonel Budd J. Peaslee, a noted Group commander, remarked, 'It is a hellish, stinking position in battle. The gunner must hunch his body, draw up his knees, and work into a half ball to meet the curving lines of the turret. The guns are to each side of his head, and they stab from the turret eyeball like two long splinters.'

The Sperry ball turret was designed not for comfort, but for the defense of the underside of an aircraft. It hung from the bottom of the belly of the B-17, a tiny, self-contained, womb-like aluminum ball, bristling with two 50-caliber machine guns. On most missions, the ball turret gunner remained cramped in the fetal position for as many as nine hours. Functions as simple as eating, drinking or going to the bathroom became impossible. Temperatures plunged to more than fifty degrees below zero.

If the plane were hit, the gunner was completely dependent on someone up in the main fuselage to open the ball and help him out. If those above were too busy or incapacitated, he rode the ball to his death." from "Untold Valor" by Rob Morris

Aiming for plain speech

I've been sort of fixated lately on a period when I was mainly imitating the voices of other poets rather than trying to find my own. What I was doing at this time, which was roughly 1999-2001, was trying to incorporate my worldview into my poems in a way that I never had before. In this period I was heavily influenced by Ayn Rand's philosophy of Objectivism; and I obviously felt that the content of my poems was of far greater importance than the form or style, since the poetry itself, if it can be called that, which came from this period in my life was obviously nothing more than blatant imitations of Shakespeare and Milton, though I'm not sure I recognized that at the time of composition.

With the poem "Wallace", however, I was definitely trying to imitate Stevens, who I believe perfected IP to the point that he represented the logical progression of Shakespeare and Milton (and, to slightly lesser degrees, Tennyson and Keats) into the modern age. My ultimate goal I think was to arrive at some kind of stately formal style which was an amalgam of Shakespeare, Milton, and a dash of Stevens, with which I intended to pontificate and moralize in high-style. A modern day didactic poet with a mission.

What I wound up with, or course, was some unbelievably bad poems. Luckily for me, I didn't have a computer at this time. I did send a few of the poems out to magazines but none were taken, and no wonder. In July of 2001 I discovered PFFA and the following was the second poem I posted there. The first was a little piece which was ignored in General C&C; this poem was posted to High Critique, in the days of yore when the forum which is now called Advanced C&C was split into two fora: High and Merciless:



ODYSSEUS (FROM THE HORSE'S MOUTH)

Hell take the ships that were exalted shapes
On the canvas of your mind's eye, heroic vessels
That crested mountainous waves, that flew
With sails full blown in wind and rain:
All finery of a poet's vision, a blind
Fireside singer who, by immaculate singing,
Held my name from oblivion and turned
My deeds to legend. Now to the ash pit alarums
And clash of shields, the brazen shouts of war,
To Acheron the blood, the bristling of swords,
The heap of bodies in the languor of death,
For here is the matter in plain speech: I sailed
And battled with man and beast, redoubtable
In valor, braved the ire of jealous gods
On land and sea, knocked pell-mell like a doll;
But this is merely prop and scenery,
Superfluous adornment, artifice.
Pray, when you speak of me say this: he was
A soldier and seafaring gentleman.
Forget the empyrean lineage, forget
All talk of body's prowess, strength of sinew,
All incidental by-the-ways that gild
A common story. When you speak of me,
Recall I had a wife, a son. Say this:
He was a simple and self-centered man
Who strove for nothing but his hearth and home.

?/99


The poem was critiqued by Dunc and Bela, and the comments were accurate. Dunc suggested I find a voice rather than borrowing someone else's, and Bela smartly advised: "Dump the superfluous adornment, aim for the plain speech." I took the advice and have been working on writing poems ever since.

Because I have something of a masochistic streak running in me lately, I want to show you three other pieces written from this time period. After getting the advice from Bela and Dunc, and after taking the time to examine what I was doing and seeing how artificial and contrived some of my poems were, I quickly took these three pieces out of my main body of work and put them somewhere dark and secure. I forgot about them for a while but when I was going through my things recently I found them, along with "Lorca" and "Wallace", and I thought it would be neat to put them up here.

I am trying to be humble, despite that by my own definition of that word any attempt at humility has its source in that which is the opposite of humility; but whatever. I no longer think of myself as an Objectivist, although in terms of metaphysics and epistmology there is very little I find disagreeable in that system of thought. I am still an atheist but one who talks with God almost every day: which means I address the only concept of God which I find is deserving of worship: which means my concept of God in all Her supreme beauty, benevolence, and love (I don't use the feminine pronoun as a concession to political correctness at all. It's just that when I was composing a fictional story which delineated my personal concept of God ["Embers of Servetus"], I discovered that my concept of God was overwhelmingly female. I also discovered that the narrator of my story was female during the process of writing it, which wasn't what I initially intended, what with the title and all).

What I didn't know back when I was writing these poems was that there were quite a few Objectivist poets around (refering not to the old "objectivist" school of poets but to Randian Objectivists). I believe that Mike Farmer is one and I spoke of the issue of being an Objectivist poet with him via email. Unfortunately, most of the stuff I've seen from them is pretty lousy. Not nearly as lousy as the three following pieces, but pretty dang lousy.

***


TO ONE WITH ADAM'S CURSE
(They understood that wisdom comes of beggary. - Yeats)

To speak so well of beggars, to applaud
the practice of beggary, albeit Christian,
dilutes the freshets of Pieria, refutes
at once all Apollonian testimony.
That wisdom comes of beggary? Better say
that knowledge is born of ignorance, that light
is born of darkness; let us claim, moreover,
that poetry, rather than an act of making,
is the inactive issue of idleness,
the insipid progeny of indolence.
We would placate the haters of poetry
thereby: irreverent men, the word be-mockers,
and do injustice to what monuments
our kindred made on hallowed Helicon.
That mendicants exist is true; yet though
they are accorded a type of blessedness,
an impotence that ravishes the heart
and frailty akin to piety,
we need not take them as a sign or blessing,
for little or nothing comes of beggary.

4/99


TESTAMENT FOR A DEATH-BED

I would with devils in Abaddon dwell
than hymn forever on green hills in Heaven,
inhabit darkness and, in adamant chains
transfixed, in contemplation think for aeons;
albeit time become irrelevant,
eyes obsolete, and flesh inured to torment,
accosted in bleak perpetuity
by hideous and unconscionable furies,---
and yet a grave were better, or such fire
as turns the sinew to inanimate dust
and makes a paltry powder of the bone.
Better the mercy of oblivion
than be mere parcel of a throng that trills
in sycophantic everlasting. Come,
sweet consummating flames, finish by fire
days lived in joy, untrammeled by hosannas.

4/99



THAT OLD SAW
(And there shall be beautiful things made new... - Keats)

Beautiful things made new? Furnish a sty
with cleanlier muck where swill recidivous swine,
wallowing, slothful, unrepentent beasts?
Better to ford them over Acheron
A succulent fodder for the tines of furies
or supple fat for talons fain to rend.
Our house is built upon a clasping loam
that draws us ever deeper into mire.
Knock the house down, or suffocate in flame
the flagging timber, dress the walls with fire
that they may dance into oblivion
as bright as high-born women at a dance,
resplendent in annihilation. Build
(again, with trowel and sword in either hand:
that old saw. Though you've heard it often enough
it bears repeating) over solid ground.

4/99




I warned ya.....

Second scene from "Flatus"

The following fragment of the play, which is generally thought to have been a work in progress by William Shakespeare, The Passing of Flatus, appeared only yesterday in the Camelot Omelet. In this scene, Slappy is trying to make Flatus interested in love and romance, but why he is doing this cannot be determined by the material that has surfaced so far. The dialogue is interesting in that obviously they are both talking mostly to themselves. What a Clever-Dick that Shakespeare was!

As for the objections over the name "Slappy", Matthew Ferherdermer, of Cambridge University, has published an interesting article in the Hamlet Amulet which brings to light the fact that Slappy was actually a popular name in Rome around the time of Christ, a familiar form of Slaphicus, as well as in Medieval England, where it was an extremely common nickname for Euoweyr or Bertrand. It was also commonplace for people in both time periods to refer to their subordinates as "Slappy", because of the instant and stinging humiliation that appellation caused.

***

Act two. Scene three. A field.


SLAPPY:
In sober celebration of the flesh,
In frequent venting of conscupiscence,
Make sportive tricks, lascivious caperings;
To truncate suffering, to kill desire,
To turn the cold valves of hard chastity,
To flush the chilled-fast vein with amorous fever,
Fill eyes with ardor, lips with wantonness;
To linger kissing at the coronet
That crowns with pink the sweet unsettled fat
Soft-covered in white silk: to lift, to weigh
The supple globes, to bring an agitation,
To set them dancing, pendulously bellied;
To brace the rider as she sits a' saddle
Rocking moist in fever, eyes full-lustered
As if made bright with wine: but ne'er have spirits
Kindled those orbs to blaze with such wild fire,
Nay, but thy johnson, Flatus, doth the trick,
That tickler of a lady's nether parts,
That prickling rogue, that bold up-popping jack,
That meddling serpent: he it is that maketh
Etnas of those soft-tufted mounds of Venus.


FLATUS:
Of all the fancies which a god constructs
And plants within the gardens of men's brains
Can any be less sensible than love?
Pernicious little elf! No viler cherub
Did from Olympus like foul weather come!


SLAPPY:
Equestrienne, she vaunts her cloven haunches
And ruts upon the rigid post: she slides
And tugs and urges with her slippery cleft.
Her lips she bites, and through hard-clenched teeth
Makes a licentious and unsyllabled moan.
A moment's pause: her opulent rump she rests,
Now richly radiant with damp scented musk.
Anon she chomps the bit, is fain to ride.
Cry "tally-ho!" and beat the bushes, liege; but whither
Goest Raynard? He hast hied him to that furrow,
That steeped cravase, that gorge of living blood,
And butts his nose in darkness, like a mole,
And tunnels further in the teeming trench.


FLATUS:
Of all the mad dreams which a man invents
And sows among the pastures of his heart
There can be none of greater detriment
Than that obnoxious malady called 'Love'.
'Tis a disease which thrives upon his blood
And rages in his veins like potent drink.
It makes a man a fool with tongue unloosed
Who in the street cries nightly like an owl,
"Tu-whit! To-whoo!", who in full wretchedness
Leans under ladies' windows, eyes uprolled,
His hands upon a full wide-bottomed lute,
Who with rude breath, wrought of the stench of love,
Sings some cracked tune to win him but a kiss!


SLAPPY:
Our rider, perched high in her wonted seat,
She gallops on apace, now all unkempt
And covered with a sheen of salty sweats;
Her breasts, like fruits grown soft and over-ripe,
Tumescent, turgid with excess of juice,
Depend and sway. Now in thy fetching fingers
Gather good harvest, hold, palpate, and press;
Stretch toes to the horizon. Hot purgation
Cleanseth the vein: froth of the seeded spate,
Spat foam of expiation, pulsed expulsion
Of lecherous lust. From such brief violence
Is wrung a season of tranquility,
Of tender-taken breath, of mellowed blood,
That tempers now the chambers of the heart.
Now johnson nods his head; he curleth up
And slips into the coverlet of sleep.


FLATUS:
I say love doth engender silliness
And drives a man to ponder strange designs;
Makes him to lie supine upon a hill
And then discern wild creatures in the clouds.
Love makes a man a coward: he will leave
His sword upon his hip and bends him low
To pluck a rose, and there he stands and grins,
Comparing leaves to lips, and dreams a sonnet!


SLAPPY:
Nay, but thou wilt not hear me, liege. Wilt hear?
Nay, but thou wilt not. Liege, if it so please thee,
I'll take my leave. There is some trouble yonder,
Some noise or other.


FLATUS:
I hear nothing. Wither?


SLAPPY:
(points distractedly) Thither. (runs off, rubbing hands together)

The Passing of Flatus

In England recently, fragments of an Elizabethan-period drama have been discovered which many scholars believe to be the work of William Shakespeare. I would say that this is a fair guess, though no one can possibly be sure at this point. Some scholars have scoffed at the suggestion that the work could possibly have been authored by Stratford-on-Avon's beloved Bard, pointing to the many anacronisms and glaring mix-ups which appear in the fragments, such as the co-existence of Roman soldiers and a feudal king, the mention of Valhalla, etc.

Most accredited scholars have pooh-poohed these pooh-poohers, reminding them that Shakespeare's works often contain inaccurate historical or geographical references. Only a handful of pages have turned up so far and since there are no markings other than neatly written text these fragments are thought to be by the hand of a copyist; and the pages themselves were found among documents which are known to be copied texts.

These fragments have been tentatively titled The Passing Of Flatus. So far only the following fragment has been released for public perusal. It appeared in the Oxford Oxcart January, 2005. Spelling has been modernized and pasteurized.


****

Act one. Scene one. A field.

TREMENS:
He is most foul. Behind our noxious general
Have I in battle marched, in discipline
Unmatched, in loyalty uncompromised;
Most honored of our Roman soldiery;
Yet would I spill my blood upon a sword hilt
Than stand as his lieutenant in Valhalla.

SLAPPY:
We like two paddles wielded by an oarsmen
In sweet concordance jointly wend one way.
Here in these shadows let us like two thieves
Concur in means by which to dispossess
Our legion of this windy general.
Tremens, we must incite some mutiny,
And it be lawless and unmilitant:
Some crafty and satanic subterfuge
Wherewith to weaken Flatus and to change
Him from his armor to the less applauded
Costume of a rude civilian.
Let's have a blacksmith's apron round his paunch,
Or sullied vestment of a scullery knave.
He is too noisome and malodorous
To don the raiment of a general.

TREMENS:
Your words have weight to make the burden light
That like a stone hath lain upon my heart
Since first these machinations of revolt
Were whispered here betwixt thy lips and mine.
Slappy, let none have wisdom of our words
Lest our ignoble and unkind designs
Bring disarray or disrepute to Rome.
For we are Rome. Our lips and tongues are Rome;
Our hearts flush with the civil blood of Rome;
Our swords are honed upon the plinths of Rome.
Flatus, albeit of prolific scents,
Of sickly smells and sour obnoxious stinks,
I say, this fuming, this effusive Flatus,
Is also Rome; his bairns, his wife, are Rome.
Therefore let Caution join us. We are Roman...

SLAPPY:
Tremens, the horse you beat unmercifully
Now runs upon the sunny plains of Heaven.
Drive not thy boot against the dormant flesh
That lifeless draws the fly into the ditch.
Caution shall be our sole conspirator.
Upon this point we stand in such accord
As needs no poetry to give it strength.
In darkness like two devils in Abaddon
We whisper, making shadows lisp demonic.
The night has sympathy and brings soft winds
To mute our sibilant serpentine connivings. (Rubs hands together)


****


I will post more fragments when and if they become available.

Denial

Do atheists actually deny God?

It's difficult to imagine being able to deny something which has never been sufficiently defined with any degree of consistency, especially when the multitudes of widely varying definitions up for offer are all clearly lacking in any connection to reality as it is perceived and experienced by human beings.

In regard to atheism, many religionists are motivated by one simple prejudice, which is that the non-believer is actually acting against his deeper conscience, that he is guilty of some sort of insidious self-deception. But only according to the believer's views is non-belief an outright denial of God. Such a term only makes sense to him and his particular beliefs. I would suggest that the atheist should in no way whatsoever feel compelled to consider the proposition that he is denying God: he is only denying particular beliefs which have precious little acquaintance with the world around him or life as it is lived from day to day.

No Christian would admit to denying Brahma, hating Brahma, wanting to be Brahma, or claiming to be greater than Brahma. He would simply say that Brahma is not the definition of God which he accepts. To say that he denies Brahma would be giving credit to the idea that Brahma is in a position to be denied or accepted, when he obviously doesn't believe that to be the case; and yet the same Christian can't seem to grasp that when an atheist claims that he doesn't believe in the Biblical Jehovah he is not therefore denying Jehovah any more than the Christian is denying Brahma; the atheist doesn't hate Jehovah any more than the Christian hates Brahma; the atheist doesn't want to be Jehovah anymore than the Christian wants to be Brahma, and so on.

In regard to the god-concept, a good deal of atheists, myself included, are merely stating a lack of belief in any definition of God up for offer. Should one be presented that seems plausible, I am perfectly willing to consider altering my views.** This is why I call myself a weak atheist. Some would prefer the term agnostic, but I choose atheist because I know how offensive it is to certain Christians, or radical theists of all stripes, who quite frankly deserve to be offended.

What really bothers the Christian isn't that the atheist denies Jehovah, it's that he denies any and all god-concepts. The Christian disbelieves 99% of all proposed gods, but because he accepts one God out of thousands he is relieved of having to feel any guilt over waving away all the others, even though the theist holds the atheist in suspicion for rejecting those other 99% as well as the one in which the theist has faith. To believe in a god of any kind is the priority, not believing in the right one.


****


I was inspired to write this, as usual, as a response to a particular poster at Internet Infidels who is a member of AA and who admits that his conception of God merely borrows what it finds acceptable from the Christian belief system and rejects the rest, so that he winds up with a God he can live with. He readily admits to finding fundamentalism unacceptable, and wishes atheists wouldn't focus so much on the Old Testament. He claims that naturally a person will formulate a concept of a tyrannical, oppressive God if they focus on the OT. Meanwhile he visits thread after thread and essentially treats everyone as if they were sitting in a chair across the room from him having a cup of coffee and a donut. He offers nothing but the AA party line, as if atheism were a disease itself and not just a common characteristic among practicing alcoholics. It isn't the rejection of any particular God which this person finds offensive, it's the rejection of the god-idea itself.

This is fairly common with religious people in general, from what I've observed. The simple and rational rejection of the god-idea is seen as some extreme form of egotism. Rather than simply being the absence of belief in a supernatural god-like entity, atheism is regarded as an effort to hold one's self as God, or at the very least an obstinate refusal to acknowledge a "higher power" than one's self. This view is absurdly incorrect and does not follow at all from atheism in and of itself. Atheism is, by definition, passive and negative, in that it merely rejects a positive claim made by someone else. The actual beliefs that atheists hold are widely varied and sometimes vastly disparate: take for instance the difference between an Objectivist and a nihilist. Both are (usually) atheistic and yet their worldviews are polar opposites.

I think it's fair to say (though it won't seem so at all) that in general the arguments that take place between atheists and theists are abortive from the start due to prejudice on the part of the theist in regard to the atheist. For instance, theists seem to think that any argument against materialism, Darwinism, Objectivism, naturalism, or communism is equal to an argument against atheism. For instance: If you can find holes in the theory of evolution, you have found holes in atheism; if you can undermine the epistemological and metaphysical foundations of Objectivism, you have undermined atheism; if you can point to the atrocities of Stalin and Soviet Russia, you have dealt a deathblow to the credibility of atheism.

Religionists either forget or don't realize that one can be an atheist without subscribing to any of those abovementioned systems of thought. One might agree with certain aspects of each of them without embracing any of them, or one might simply reject all of them and feel more closely aligned to something like deep ecology, utilitarianism, pragmatism, or libertarianism; or something else entirely with no "ism" attached and with no formal or systematic structure.

But isn't the atheist prejudiced against the theist? Sure, sometimes, but not nearly as often. Taking just Christians, since they are the only religionists I typically engage with, it's never in doubt as to what positive beliefs these people hold since their beliefs are the subject of the debate and as such are right on the table. The only thing the atheist brings to the table necessarily is his absence of belief in what the theist is proposing. What the atheist's beliefs, his worldview, his philosophical orientations actually are need not be disclosed in order for the discussion to get underway.

I don't need my own concept of God to compete with the theist's concept, and this "if you don't believe in God it's because you want to become God" is the result of the refusal to accept this fact. "It isn't that you don't believe in God, it's that you want to be God!" is a statement of pure stupidity, and I'm tired of hearing it. A corollary to this is the common accusation that the atheist hates God. People are standing up in the audience at academic debates and asking atheists why they hate God so much. And these are college students.

Apologists, mainly the hardcore Calvinistic presuppositionalists, make the same ludicrous claim: It isn't that the atheist doesn't believe God exists, it's just that he refuses to acknowledge it because of his inherently sinful, defiant nature. The atheist ignores the truth of God written on his heart out of pride and self-love, and he is not much more than a liar. Other presuppers have taken a slightly different tack: they just say that if a person can't see the truth of Scripture when it's so damned obvious then that person must be a moron.

What I love about this is how these two approaches to atheism contradict one another, even though they come from the same ultra-fundy Calvinist cuckoo-clutch. On one hand they claim the atheist knows that the Bible is true and that Jehovah is real but refuses to acknowledge it due to his insolent nature as a sinner, and on the other hand he's an atheist simply because he's a moron.

Notice these crackpots don't call orthodox Jews morons, or Hindus morons, or Muslims morons, even though these people must obviously be dense since they can't see the blatantly obvious truth of the Christian faith. It's only the atheist who gets labeled a moron, because, again, it isn't the rejection of any particular God which is offensive, it's the rejection of the god-idea itself.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~


** I'm thinking about coining a new term: Waitheist, being someone who is waiting for a believable concept of God to be brought to the table, a concept which might actually do some sort of justice to such a magnificent Entity.

The Devil made me do it

My father and I agree on a lot more things now than we did twenty years ago, but sometimes we still disagree. Since he and my Mom currently live only a half-mile or so away from me I get to talk with him at least once a week. Our main topics of discussion always seem to center on computers or religion. Even though we are both atheists we have a strong difference of opinion as to the current role religion plays in peoples' lives, in politics, and in the world in general.

Dad doesn't participate in discussion forums online as far as I know, or even lurk in them. I suppose my take on the world around me is colored by these forums, particularly Internet Infidels, a website which caters to non-believers of every stripe, but which also welcomes people of faith and does so with such a catholic generosity that a very good percentage of veteran members there, and even at least one moderator I know of, are theists. I believe this is a good thing and speaks well of the secular humanist mindset which, in general, is much more tolerant than the religious or fundamentalist mindset to which it stands in opposition, and whose own discussion forums, while ostensibly allowing non-theists to participate, will only tolerate a modicum of dissent and are prone to delete posts or ban certain members at the drop of a hat, or a gauntlet, as it happens.

My father is of the opinion that religious faith is dying out and nothing any religious fruitcake says or does bothers him to any great extent. It isn't that the sheer stupidity doesn't irritate him, he just doesn't think it's anything to worry about in the long run. I don't imagine he thinks that there are any less people percentage-wise who claim to be believers, because clearly that isn't the case; what he thinks perhaps is that among people who claim to believe there is an ever-larger portion of those who, deep down, really don't believe at all. While I'm sure it's true that a good deal of people who claim to believe actually don't, I fear that this number is actually decreasing, at least nationwide. One of the reasons for this is clearly the silly holy war we're currently involved in and the even sillier crusader who currently presides in the White House; but another reason, and a much more dangerous reason in fact, is because of the increasing unwillingness on the part of those who defend reason and good sense to speak with any kind of conviction at all.

I understand the necessity of being disciplined and cautious in regard to what we regard as certain knowledge, and I understand the need for a healthy distinction between theory and fact, particularly in regard to complex philosophical and scientific issues, but if the people at Internet Infidels are fairly representative of the current secular/humanist worldview in general, I would venture to say that an imprudent infatuation with doubt and uncertainty is the most obvious aspect of that worldview, and that what is intended to come across as an educated respect for reason and rational thought is actually coming across as precisely the opposite, and especially to people who are desperately looking for ways to avoid having to come to terms with that worldview. If intelligent, educated people insist on claiming that the only thing they know is that they don't know anything, which seems more than ever to be the fashionable position to hold, then this gives the average person all the more reason to join with the religious fundies in denouncing science and skepticism altogether, which apparently offers nothing but a wishy-washy and groundless ambivalence in regard to just about everything.

When it comes to skeptics, it's usually easy to see what they are speaking against but often very difficult to determine why they even bother to do so, since some of them don't seem to believe in much of anything at all. For instance, most of the non-theists at Internet Infidels are determinists, and are as rabidly opposed to the notion of free-will as they are to any religious notions. These people will talk of human behavior with constant references to "synapses" and "neurons firing", as if a human being were little more than a machine with virtually no control over its own actions. In my opinion there is nothing more appealing or convincing in this view than in the idea of Original Sin. In fact, I believe that the two views amount to the same thing: that a human being is not truly an active agent but a passive entity who merely reacts to forces and influences beyond his control.

Oddly enough, the skeptical determinist and the bible-thumping fundamentalist both believe that people are to be held morally accountable for their actions despite their similar belief that people do not make free choices or act freely. The fundies actually reconcile the concept of free will with Original Sin, which is ludicrous but which is done as a way of keeping their god-figment blameless for all the evil in the world. Exactly why the determinists should hold a person morally accountable for his actions when he has almost no real control of his actions is a bit of a mystery, but I suspect it's because they know that no alternative to holding individuals accountable for their actions is possible in any civil society.

I think that sometimes people oppose the idea of free-will because they don't really understand what it means. I have seen more than one person at Internet Infidels, for example, claim that free will cannot be possible because if it were then that would mean people could do whatever the hell they wished: that they would be able to fly or sleep with Salma Hayek, for example. Obviously that's not what free will means. Free-will doesn't mean a will that transcends ordinary boundaries or natural limitations, it just means one which is governed autonomously, one which acts on the ability to distinguish between various options and in light of the variety of consequences that such actions might incur, and under the wildly unpredictable auspices of human whims and desires.

There seems to be a major disagreement as far as the distinction between an action being influenced and an action being determined. No free-willer believes that his actions are uncaused, or uninfluenced, either from without or from within. No free-willer believes that his actions or decisions come about in a vacuum; but because our actions are caused by prior states of affairs, and influenced by them, this doesn't mean that our actions are therefore "determined".

Determinism seems credible to some mainly because of 20-20 hindsight. At any point in time we can look back and see a chain of events, a causal chain wherein each action is caused by the one prior to it, and decide that the chain of events that did take place is the only one that could have taken place, or that it somehow had to take place; but at any point in time the state of affairs that exists is only one of a multitude of states-of-affairs that were possible at some prior point in time. The fact that the world is as it is currently is no reason to believe that it had to be so. At various points in the past, any number of possibilities and potentialities were in play, and if different people had chosen different actions, we might now have a drastically different state of affairs than that which we actually have.

What I'm getting at is that our political freedom is what is at stake here. The fundamentalist strain of American religious belief is dead set on wiping out the very idea of political freedom itself. Talk to a fundy and ask him his opinion on the concepts of freedom and autonomy. These are essentially evil concepts to the mind of a fundy, particularly one of the Calvinistic variety who firmly believes that our eternal fate was decided by God eons before we were even born. There are some fundies who believe that our concepts of freedom and autonomy apply only to man and his relationship to his fellow man, that God wills us to grant these things to our brothers but with the understanding that He is under no obligation to do the same. With these people I have no quarrel whatsoever. I'm only concerned with those who wish to undermine my political freedom, not with those who would merely advise me to fear God's judgment but prefer to leave that judgment to God.

There are people active in the world today who believe that it is their responsibility to establish "God's kingdom on earth". In other words, they do not believe that the eventual torment of sinners in Hell is adequate. They want to make sure that these sinners suffer accordingly in this life as well as in the one that is to come. They refuse to acknowledge any ideas of political freedom or autonomy in regard to civil relationships among men. It isn't enough for them that a homosexual will endure an eternity of punishment for his offense to God. These particular fanatics want a hand in causing some pain and torment themselves, and are not content in their belief that God will eventually get around to it.

It's these people who need to be confronted in no uncertain terms whatsoever. We cannot afford to remain infatuated with the blithe Socratic notion that the only thing we know is that we know nothing. Now isn't the time to play semantic games or to treat philosophical issues as if they were relevant only in the austere and antiseptic halls of the Ivory Tower. This allergy to convictions of any kind is fine and dandy in the abstract world of academic debate, where intellectual integrity is measured according to how noncommittal a person can be while still presumably supporting a position; but unless we hold the conviction that human liberty is something worth fighting for we will lose our liberty by default. And how the concept of liberty can be shown to be something worth fighting for in the context of a human mind being a mechanical mass of "synapses" and "firing neurons" is beyond me.

It seems to me that if determinism is true, the concept of political freedom becomes irrelevant. In fact, I can't even imagine how freedom would be possible given the absence of free will.

I got more than a little side-tracked with that free-will versus determinism thing, but I think it's an extremely relevant argument in today's world. The bottom line is, if the radical right sees that the secular/humanist left is by and large a group of people who aren't sure of anything, have no sound epistemological foundation for their ideas, and can't even grant to their fellow man that he is an active, self-motivated, self-reliant, autonomous free agent who is competely responsible and therefore completely accountable for his actions, these crusading mystics will gain more confidence, will be more aggressive and cocksure than they already are, and will increase in number. I think it's already happening.

William Henry and Karl Wilhelm Baurle

I love this picture of my father's father (photo on the right), taken just before going off to fight for Germany, the country of his birth, in 1915. He was all of fifteen himself, and yet he looks much older to me in the photograph. He was fourty-three when my father was born in January of 1944.

My latest memories of my grandfather are of him telling stories of his experiences in the war. Like when he arrived somewhere in Europe by train and immediately had to jump underneath it with his mates because as soon as they had disembarked they fell under fire. I remember Grandpa laughing when he described the sound of bullets whizzing by and the sound they made against the side of the train. When he got home after his service in the war his mother wouldn't let him in the house because he had lice.

I have only the most pleasant memories of my grandfather. We used to go and visit him and my grandmother on Long Island where they owned a tiny house and a small piece of property. The grass was always neatly kept. There were several fruit trees in front, and a few tall spruce trees as well. In the back was a garden where they both spent a good deal of their time. My grandfather also spent a good deal of time working on his paintings, some of which now grace the halls of several Baurle-family homes. My grandpa died in 1980.

I also like this picture of my Dad (photo on the left), William Henry Baurle, taken when he was a strapping young lad in the United States Air Force. He's 61 now.

What I can't understand is: how in the hell did I wind up so damn ugly?

The checks are in the mail

A few days ago a friend of mine from PFFA informed me that there was a poll going on which was intended to determine the better-known internet poets: or, people who are better known because of their presence on the net rather than in print (or web) publications. Of course, there are scads of people posting poems online, people who have poetry blogs, or personal web-pages. I suppose there must be something on the order of several thousand. Colin Ward, from firesides.net, initiated the poll. 133 people voted, and nominated 162 candidates.

I don't think there were any restrictions as far as who could be nominated, but I presumed it to be implied that anyone with a considerable degree of publishing success ought to be excluded. Still, there were some notables who made the list. Robert Sward and Frank Bidart were there, probably as someone's idea of a joke. Both are very widely published and famous in the poetry-world. Oswald LeWinter was on the list, who is also very widely published and acclaimed. Someone apparently nominated A.E. Stallings under the moniker A.R. Stallings. Also appearing was David Anthony, who is beginning to attain some serious stature outside the electric fantasyland of the net.

To my astonishment, I turned up 75th, with three votes. If my name was William Zaurle instead of Baurle, I would have been 96th. Someone with a big heart must have nominated me, and I have a pretty good idea who it was. As for the other two votes, I have no idea, but bless their kind souls. Naturally, I know that polls like this don't amount to much more than a popularity contest. The prominent poetry boards did well: Gazebo, Eratosphere, PFFA, QED, as did Usenet, and a few other boards made a showing. There are hundreds of boards across the net, and most likely only a small percentage of these boards knew of the poll; but in fairness, the far greater majority of these boards are completely useless as far as critique or any serious dedication to craft. They function as showcases for people in dire need of ego gratification and ill-deserved boosts of self-esteem.

Due to the vast number of people who post poems for review, in the serious poetry forums alone, obviously the key to making a showing in such a poll is simply being thought of at just the right time. There are many poets at PFFA, for instance, which is where I post, who are much better at writing poetry than I am but who didn't make the list. The reason is just that their names weren't called to mind at precisely the right moment. As an example of what I mean: I nominated two people from PFFA who were not on the list when I first checked. I just happened to notice their absence because they have been more active on the board recently than others I might have thought of. After making my two nominations, I went and used the rest of my ten votes on people who were already on the list, mostly PFFAers but also a few others, notably Richard Epstein, who posts prolifically at QED. I voted for him not only because I think he's a good poet, but because I had a brief email exchange with him a while back and shocked him out of his shoes by recalling that he had published a few poems in some journals back in the late eightees/early ninetees: journals where I had also placed some poems, which, as it happens, is the only reason I remembered his name. I also voted for Mike Farmer because I think his poem "Brownseed", which was panned in short order when he posted it at PFFA, really kicks ass.

Later on I realized that there were a few people who I would have voted for over the ones I actually did vote for if only their names had been there already or if I had remembered them at the time and nominated them. These people are all fine poets and quite significantly better than me, some ridiculously better than me: James Flick, Nanphi, Debi Zathan (who recently passed away and who will eventually be very well known for her excellent work), Rob Yateman, Monique, Howard Miller, Donner, Toklas......

And here's where my memory fails me again. These are people who either haven't posted in a long while, post very rarely, or are known more by their user names, which apparently presented a problem in the nomination process. Luckily for me I have been very active at PFFA recently, though I've posted only one poem there in the last two to three years; but that one poem happened to go on the boards only last month. I am lucky also that the kind soul who nominated me knew my real name. This person also included my username, which is Urizen.

I'm not just trying to be humble. I know that my nomination was an act of kindness, and that even appearing on such a poll is due to my long association and sometimes ubiquitous involvement with a popular (though frequently maligned) and highly trafficked board, not to mention good old fashioned luck. I do believe, though, that for the people who garnered a significantly larger number of votes it's probably a fair indication that their work is of finer quality than that of the average bear. And I do hope people were by and large honest enough to keep some personal prejudices out of the picture. I voted for someone I don't like all that much on a personal level but whose work is definitely quite a few notches above average. By the same token, even though I have been frequenting poetry boards for upwards of four years, most of the names on the list are complete strangers to me. That has to mean something.

Still, as silly as it all is, you gotta take what you can get. Especially when you're a numbnuts.

Lemminghood: the art of fashionable self-contempt

First, check out these people.

I think the group is silly for a number of reasons: first, it's easy to join a group like this when you know that the ultimate objective, even if it were possible, is hundreds if not thousands of years off. All you're really doing is electing to not have offspring, which is a pretty good idea and which a number of people choose without actually wanting to let the species become extinct. Second, it comes off as a selfless act when it's actually sort of cruel. Being the forerunners of the group, they don't have to worry about what living conditions would be like for people as the human race dwindles. Governments die out, civilization in general dies out, animal populations increase. What is life like for these last remnants of the human species? Do they have electricity, medicine? Will they be farmers? Will they be able to protect themselves and their food from predators? How much suffering will these last traces of people have to endure because of this silly dream their comfortable ancestors concocted?

What sort of societies are they going to have? Will they be able to maintain some semblance of order as their numbers decrease? What do you do with criminals? What do you do about the inevitable insurrections, the occasional hotshot who will pop up here and there and let them know in no uncertain terms that he thinks they're out of their minds? I know they say they will never enforce their ideals on anyone, that any person involved in the movement would be so strictly on a voluntary basis. But how exactly does that happen, I mean when human population reaches lower and lower levels worldwide? At some point, even if they were to succeed for a good while, they will be forced either to give up or defend their ideal against opposition, and maybe not only of the verbal kind. The smaller the population gets, the easier it will be for various factions to rise up and take their little dream away from them. And those factions will always exist. And they'll be stronger, because the will to survive is stronger than the will to run like lemmings off the cliff of good conscience. I'm not saying they will be superior, or better people, just stronger. And I don't admire strength in and of itself, or a cut-throat mentality, or sheer brute self-interest, like that of a wild animal. I'm just throwing out possible concerns, concerns for people who are only distant and vague abstractions at these cozy little voluntary-extinction meet-ups.

But it won't work anyway, which they know, because it flies in the face of that which they pretend to love more than anything: Nature. All the good will and altruistic dreams in the world won't change how nature works. Even all the widespread indoctrination and brainwashing that would be necessary to make their vision succeed won't amount to a pile of compost against the brute fact that living things are ingrained with the will to survive and propogate. Not only that, surviving happens to be something which humans have excelled at since they made their appearance millions of years ago. And very often the way they've done it has been ugly and bloody and violent. You'll get no argument from me on that. One thing I know is this: I'm not a tough guy. Put my ass in a cave somewhere and I'm bear-meat. But that doesn't stop me from acknowledging facts. And it doesn't stop me from becoming as indignant as hell at the suggestion that I should agree to letting the human race die out. I'm a human, and it's my natural right to want my species to survive, no matter how fucked up they are, and no matter how much they fuck things up. More than that, I'm not responsible for every nasty thing any human ever did or will do. I'm not going to feel ashamed of myself for being a human being. I despise the idea of Original Sin in every single one of its nasty little guises.

The environmentalist extremists remind me of religious extremists, and I sometimes can't decide which group is more dangerous or just more downright silly. Your religious loonies think we're all born in sin and can't do a damn thing right of our own accord, and the only answer is a total surrender to God, to whom we must apologize and confess our unworthiness before we can get His help and guidance; and the religious loonies are committed to visiting their shame and hostility towards humanity on everyone else, by making us all live one day according to a set of tribal laws suited for nomadic sheep herders, a moral code all tied up in bizarre rituals and superstitious claptrap.

The environmentalist loonies think humanity is a mistake also, an aberration that does nothing good of its own accord, but merely infects and destroys everything in its path, like an alien parasite that just dropped out of the clouds onto the planet, guns blazing, steamrollers rolling, smokestacks billowing. The only answer is a total surrender to Nature, to whom we must kneel and confess our unworthiness as a species. But instead of Nature saving a few: her own ecologically-conscious, humanity-hating "elect", She won't settle for anything but wholesale extinction. And these fruitcakes get just as excited over the idea of a world without people as religious loonies do when they ecstatically contemplate a Heaven without sin.

I know I'm exaggerating, and by religious loonies I am refering to a small percentage of people of faith, the greater majority of whom are loving and decent people with excellent values. I'm refering to the kind of nutball who advocates public stonings, who wants to execute homosexuals and blasphemers, or the less extreme nutball who doesn't say he advocates those things but waxes all doe-eyed and romantic over the idea of people burning in Hellfire for all of eternity. I don't believe that it's in anyone's interest to be polite to such views anymore. I think we have a President here in the U.S. who is far more to the loony side than he is to the average decent person-of-faith side, and we have people who believe that atheism is actually a negation of everything the U.S. is supposed to stand for, who want to rewrite history and change laws so that atheists are not treated as full-blown American citizens. I believe that some people are pushing to make it so atheists can't give testimony in court. I might seem like I'm getting off course, but all this scary garbage comes from the same thing: a fashionable, deeply-ingrained contempt for humanity itself. Read some apologetics, particularly any from the Reformed Theology school. It's people-hating at it's most revolting.

What I think we need to do is remind ourselves constantly of all the good that we've done. Take a look around where you're sitting. I'm sure everyone appreciates their creature comforts. We all like that our silly race managed to figure out how to make a house, how to make it cool or warm; I'm sure we all like clean running water, electricity, medicine, language; not to mention legal and moral systems which let us live in relative safety, because big Joe over there and his buddies can't get away with knocking us over the head and raping our wives and eating all our food. Well, at least not most of the time, though shit can always happen.

I like civilization, and I'm glad I was born in the technological age. But that doesn't mean I'm not conscientious or that I necessarily don't care about what happens to the Andalusian Hoppy Frog or the Great Nubian Black Beetle. And it doesn't mean that I don't feel terrible for poor and starving children around the world, to whom I am more than happy to occasionally send money, when I am able. I say when I'm able, because according to Arizona State, I am officially poor. My total wages for last year still put me at about three thousand dollars below the poverty level as a single wage earner in a family of four. And now things are considerably worse because I recently lost my job of seven years and am currently working in a shithole until I can find another job in my "field", which is so mundane I don't even want to mention it. I was happy to give money for the Tsunami relief fund in my area, because I realize how good I have it compared to millions around the world. I care about the environment, as well as the many non-human species that dwell therein. It just so happens that I care more for human beings than I do for alligators and frogs. And one of the reasons I care more for humans is because of their capacity to care for alligators and frogs. Show me one Bolivian Zebra-striped Marmoset who gives a damn about the plight of the Burmese Flying Purplegilled Moosefish.

We've progressed so rapidly over the last half-century that we got ahead of ourselves, and I have no doubt that we're screwing some things up that ought not to be messed with. But I also know that some really bright people are on the case, working hard at finding solutions to all of these environmental and ecological problems. Conservation seems to be ligitimately at the forefront of our public concerns as a race, and maybe some good things will start happening to turn things around a bit. Or maybe not. But I'm not heading for the cliff any time soon.

Once upon a time....

I wrote a long response to a statement made by a Christian on a discussion forum I frequent. I decided not to post my response in that forum, since it contains a great deal of speculation and theorizing, and I'm no philosopher. I'll post my reply here, though, mostly just because I can. I owe a debt to Carl Sagan for some of the ideas on the genesis of the God-concept presented herein, and to Ayn Rand for a great deal of the other stuff. I know that there are some rough spots, which I hope to iron out in time.

********


A Christian says, refering to the Fall of Man: "The tree was put there for one reason. To allow Adam and Eve to have the ability to follow their own will instead of God's. By giving a commandment against eating that tree, God allowed Adam and Eve to choose whether to obey Him or not. This would be the creation of free will."



True, the tree was put there for a reason: because the story of creation in Genesis is a story, the story of Man's fall, the tree, the fruit, the snake, the first man and woman, are all parts of a story. They are literary devices, metaphors, symbols. In a poem you might hear mention of a rose. Since you are reading a poem you already know that it's probably not just a rose. You know that the rose is more than likely a symbol for something greater, something more abstract, like beauty, fidelity, romance, love. You know that in a poem a dove might symbolize peace, that an eagle might symbolize freedom, and so on.

You also know that in a work of fiction, particularly poems, fables, or myths, frequently things don't operate the way they do in the real world. Animals often have human characteristics, they think, talk, feel, wear clothing, even walk upright. Sometimes plants and inanimate objects are personified to achieve a desired effect. Anything is possible in a work of fiction. If the author wishes he can draw from his imagination and invent his own creatures, even his own worlds for them to inhabit. He can invent monsters, extra-terrestrial beings, even gods, to suit his purposes. Or he can take real animals and real people and invest them will any type of supernatural ability or power. Anything goes.

When we encounter a narrative which contains behaviors and actions which do not correspond in any way with what we know of reality: when we encounter a being who creates a universe from nothing, who creates another living being from the dust, and still another being from the rib of the first being, who can invest trees with magical properties, who can make fruit which is able to impart the capacity for greater wisdom and understanding---we know that we are in a made-up world, a world which is fabricated with the intent of telling a story with a message that pertains to reality, a message which may, or may not, have some lesson for real people in a real world.

When we encounter in any narrative a snake that can speak, we know that we are in a made-up world; when we hear that two of every animal species on earth can be contained in an ark constructed by human hands, we know that we are in a made-up world; when we hear of a woman being turned to a pillar of salt, when we hear a fanciful and poetic reason for the appearance of rainbows, particularly in this modern age when we have discovered the real reasons rainbows appear, we know that we are in a made-up world, a world where all things are possible, where any explanation for any sort of phenomena whatsoever is acceptable, even expected: the world of imaginative fiction, the world of fable, of allegory, of myth.

When we read a story we willingly suspend our disbelief (Coleridge) and accept the story on its own terms in order to enjoy it and take meaning from it. If I were to read the Genesis story today for the first time, and if I had no idea that millions of people actually regard it as a factual account of real events, I would probably enjoy it somewhat and take various meanings away from it, though I would certainly disagree with what I presumed to be the author's intentions. I understand the theme of Genesis, which essentially boils down to Might makes Right. People cannot be trusted to govern themselves. Knowledge is power. An ignorant people are a governable people. The common man's only necessary virtue is obedience.

But while I understand this as the intended theme, I have the advantage of being born into the modern age and am able to determine the actual meaning, or purpose, behind that theme. History has demonstrated that such political ideas cannot work on a large scale. Human beings are a thinking, rational, deductive species. They will not be kept in the dark for long. They will discover the hidden agendas of their leaders and set about exposing them. The climax of Genesis--- the Fall of Man, his expulsion from Paradise, his supposedly corrupt nature--- is a literary device, a fictional contraption which attempts to make irrational and immoral ideas seem plausible by fabricating imaginary punishments for wrongdoings which in reality are nothing less than virtues: the desire for freedom and autonomy, the desire for knowledge, the desire for strength and self-reliance.

In a very definite sense, however, given the time when Genesis was composed, there is a certain degree of practicality in the creation/fall of Man myth. The author(s) of Genesis were of a tribal people, and the security of any tribe depends on maintaining and increasing its numbers, and, more importantly, on strong leadership. The problem I have today is why on earth people would feel that the same sort of fear-mongering, self-mistrust, self-contempt, the same sort of backwards reverence for an invisible deity who has never been observed by any of the five senses in the last two thousand years (and who has probably never been observed, period), is necessary for the continued welfare of the human species? Why do we persist in cultivating this us-versus-them mentality? Why do we continue to labor under the fear of being punished by an ancient tribal deity for our actions? Why do we persist in our futile hope that this mystical being will save us from the inevitability of death and oblivion? Why do we continue to wage war with one another over the various ways we choose to recognize and pay tribute to our imaginary supernatural benefactors and saviors? What has religion ever done except to cause division and hatred among people? Do religious people possess a greater moral character than those who are non-religious? History and day-to-day experience tells us that the answer is No.

But be that as it may. As I was saying, the prosperity of any tribe is largely dependent upon strong leadership; but there are always the proud and ambitious upstarts, the young bucks who are naturally driven to challenge their leaders. The best way to keep this constant threat in check is to make the leader seem invincible. He's immeasurably strong as well as being a paragon of virtue. He has only your best interests at heart. Then it naturally follows that any opposition to this incarnation of the Good must necessarily spring from Evil. Convince the Sheep that any suspicion or mistrust toward their leader is either the result of external influence (enter Talking Snakes, demons), or an internal fault or sickness (enter Sin). To ensure that the sheep will accept this as the truth, make certain that wrongdoers are punished, rebellions crushed, subversive murmurs and seditious whispers silenced (enter Standard Issued, Black Booted, Iron Fisted Force).

Let me indulge in some pure speculation for a moment. Let's say the Tribal Leader suddenly dies, and his successor has not yet established any depth of trust in the members of the Tribe. Anarchy and disorder seems inevitable. The leader's wife or mate, let us imagine, has a clever idea, since she's having a difficult time keeping the young bucks in line: Your leader is dead, but he isn't gone. In fact, he came to me last night in a dream and told me that he is living in the sky, invisible, yet a thousand times stronger (enter god, or gods). He is watching us. He is watching You. He sees everything. He can even see into your mind, into your thoughts. Stay in line. Obey the new leader (enter Divine Right of Kings) as you would obey Him. Keep the tribe together and increase. You can't run from Him. If you resist His will He will punish you. He will punish you with certain death. If you obey Him, you will go and live in the skies with Him forever and always.

The crux of the problem, however, for Authority, is how to ensure that the flock will remain ignorant enough to accept this pack of lies and hence be content to remain sheep. People are a curious lot. They want to learn things, find out how things work, gain knowledge; and eventually they could conceivably gain enough knowledge to instruct themselves that the lies they hear from the Authorities (enter priests, clergy) are just that: lies. Solution? That's simple: just lie to them some more, and not only that, tell them such grand and rotten lies that they will eventually hold themselves in such contempt they won't care about seeking knowledge or understanding things. All they will want to do is survive, obey the rules of the game, and go to the sky when it's all over.

Teach them that their virtues are sins. If they feel pride in themselves, tell them that pride comes from Evil. If they wish to grow, learn, attain a higher understanding of the world around them,---fill that world with demons first, and if the demons don't keep them in check, tell them that they don't have to go out in the world to encounter a demon. A demon has come to them and saved them the effort. A demon who turns everything upside down: pride, ambition, desire, curiosity, enterprise, all of man's essential virtues, are in fact manifestations of the evil planted inside him by a meddling demon, a gremlin, a chimera. If a man feels good about himself, about his life, this is a sure sign that he is infested with evil. Demon, or Original Sin: they amount to the same thing.

It's an unforgivable psychological trick that worked then and continues to work now, a mind game that makes perfectly decent human beings proudly confess to an inner corruption, a corruption that is complete and absolute. It's a vulgar lie that needs to be strangled, killed, and forgotten.

********

God is a metaphor for Authority. Adam and Eve, for Sheep. Authority wants to stay in charge, enjoys the power and prestige, the acclamations, the praise, the glory. Knowledge is power. Deny access to knowledge, deny access to power. The Talking Snake is portrayed as a liar, but in reality (meaning, how the Snake's words pertain to and/or reflect real circumstances in the real world) he is telling the truth; or at the very least, a truth, which is: the Big Kahuna fears you and wants to keep you down. He is actually working for God (not from the God character's perspective in the context of the story, but from Authority's POV in reality): In the story, God wants A&E to make the right choice so that they may live with him forever and always in blissful ignorance; in reality, the Authority needs for the Sheep (A&E) to make the wrong choice, so that Authority is spared any guilt over keeping the Sheep under his heel.

Remember: this is a story, a fable, a literary contrivance intended to cosmetize certain political, ethical and moral ideas. Adam and Eve didn't make the choice. The author(s) of the story made the choice, and naturally, since the purpose of the story is to cast blame on all of Man's (Sheep's) virtues and portray them as grievous faults so that they learn to hate and mistrust themselves and therefore become more easily duped and led by the nose, the choice made by Man (Sheep) (represented by the fictional characters, Adam and Eve) is.....you guessed it: the wrong choice . Thus they get evicted from their idyllic environment (intended to instill the fear of being ostracized by one's peers, thereby losing the security of the tribe) and lose that one-on-one, in-the-flesh relationship with God (intended to instill the fear of disappointing, and therefore being estranged from, the Leader (living or dead-but-not-quite-dead).

Knowledge is good. Knowledge is power. There is nothing evil about enjoying your life. There is nothing wrong with saving your mind for a conception of God that might actually make sense, that doesn't require you to hate and mistrust yourself; a conception of God without all those human foibles like jealousy, wrath, vengeance, or those all-too-human desires like the appetite for praise, glory, power, and Dominion.

Tom

The old Lie

Suicide bombings, on average, probably aren't acts of desperation or self-sacrifice. A good deal of these people are religious fanatics, and to willingly die in the act of taking out a few infidels is really an act of cool-headed self-promotion. I would even go so far as to call some of these bombings purely selfish acts, with nothing glorious or heroic about them, though they are no doubt tragic. I'd also say that there is probably something of the suicide bomber in any soldier who truly believes, deep down, that he is risking his life for the glory of God, and that such an act will be pleasing to his God.

I was born at West Point, raised in the area, and all my life held military people in high esteem, and in some way, I suppose, I still do, though my feelings and thoughts on the matter have changed somewhat over the past two years. To speak ill of American soldiers, or any soldiers really, still makes a part of me feel ashamed and ungrateful. I've had an easy life. But wait, saying something like that, without doing at least a little explaining, could give people a picture of me which is highly inaccurate, so here goes: I don't mean that I have been sheltered, spoiled, over-privileged, or anything remotely like that. I come from pretty humble origins and I'm a blue-collar guy straight down the line.

What I mean by "easy" is that I have never been in any serious financial difficulty, I have not had to literally struggle to survive, though like anyone else I have my share of burdens and challenges. I've had to work, and I consider that a fair deal; but I've never had more than one job at any given time. I am also good at living within my means, and maybe that's partly because I'm a bit of a homebody and don't have any expensive hobbies or interests. My most prized possessions are my books and my music collection.

By easy I also mean that I was lucky enough to be born in a country where a workingman can survive and even live in relative comfort. Despite all the assertions to the contrary, this is still possible in the US. The fact of the matter is that a great many people simply don't know how to handle money, they don't know how to live within their means. And I'm sure that a significant percentage of people who become "down and out" are either lazy or just plain irresponsible: they can't hold a job for an extended period of time, or they squander their money on any number of frivolous activities, material extravagances (like paying nearly half their monthly wages on car payments), or mind-altering amusements.

And a great many people in general need to realize that there is no obligation to reproduce. If you can barely sustain your own existence without undue stress and worry, don't have children. Or, limit the number of children you have. I find it difficult to sympathize with people who have four or five children, and in many cases a great deal more than that, and then complain that they cannot makes ends meet. Child-bearing is an enormous responsibility, and it's plain that to some people it's not only that but a largely unrewarding burden, financially and emotionally.

I also have it easy as far as a general sense of safety and security: I live in a country where war is a thing people get on planes and fly off to. I was never in the military myself, and I realize how presumptuous it is of me to judge the purpose or behavior of any person who has been in combat, or even anyone who has done military service. I'm not a mind reader. I don't know for sure what compels the average G.I. or the suicide bomber. I can only go on the information I have and come to very general conclusions.

What is almost certain is that the idea of God is a major impetus behind some acts of patriotism or nationalism. In the US it is blatantly obvious that a great many people cannot make any real distinction between their faith and their love of country, which I consider to be an extremely dangerous state of affairs. Because of the general prosperity in the US, and because most Americans are Christian, it is naturally assumed that there is an obvious connection between the two, and in my opinion this is the most dangerous and disturbing thing about the United States.

Take a President like Bush, who is routinely and shamelessly careless with the seriousness of his office, who uses religious rhetoric at every opportunity, who seems to have no understanding of and/or no respect for the separation of Church and State, you mix that with a population which is not only notoriously nationalistic but which has suddenly been awakened to the reality of being vulnerable to the rest of the world, and consider that the greater majority of these people are steeped in their religious traditions already: you've got a giant, nervous and volatile herd on your hands.

That isn't to say that religious faith is bad and atheism is good. Recent history has shown that atheists can be dangerous idealogues too, and can wreak their own brand of bloody havoc on the world; and certainly there are religious people who are not highly nationalistic or patriotic, don't act like sheep, are intelligent and civil and humane. Probably, most religious people are decent and humane and only want what's best for everyone. What bothers me about American Christians, particularly the right-leaning, church/Jesus/family oriented folks who are out in force everywhere, if an informal poll of bumper stickers is any indication, is the fact that they refuse to acknowledge that the political philosophies which influenced the founding fathers had precious little, if anything really, to do with Christianity.

We are a secular nation in that our goverment is secular. Whatever we are in private is our own business. And "secular", despite the lies perpetuated by Christian Americans, does not mean opposed to religion, it just means that the goverment will make no formal recognition of any one particular faith, nor in any way endorse or denounce any particular faith, and by formal I mean "official", not private. Nor does "secular" automatically endorse atheism, which is another lie from the Christian camp. The goverment cannot officially endorse atheism any more than it can officially endorse Christianity. Christians argue that by not officially endorsing a particular faith they are therefore endorsing atheism, which is false. Neutral is neutral. The relatively recent concessions made to the religiously-minded, such as the mention of God in the Pledge of Allegiance, or the phrase "in God we trust" incribed on American currency, still do not concede to Christianity in any way whatsoever. God is God for the Christian, the Jew, the Muslim, the Twelve-stepper, even the Sub-genius. If Christians do not wish to acknowledge that fact, that's their own problem.

I think we might progress a wee bit as a people, and by that I mean a world-people, if this invisible means of support is recognized for what it really is: a non-existent means of support. We're all we've got. And, like Frank Zappa said, maybe this really is a one-shot deal. Maybe we don't fly into the arms of our sky-daddy when we die. Maybe he doesn't pat our heads and tell us what good boys and girls we've been. Maybe there are no virgins waiting for us, or golden cities with golden streets. No rivers of milk and honey. No wings, no harps, no cloud-hopping, no angels, no happy forever and evers. I notice a lot of talk from religious folks about death, but hey, come on, the majority of Christians don't believe in death. A lot of hot air about death, but most of them don't believe it exists. On the one hand they tell me that Jesus died for me, and on the other they say that he rose up three days later. Hint: that's not death. It's a nap. And why all this talk of death when the majority of Christians believe in some form of Heaven and Hell: that all souls exist forever in some indescribable but undeniably conscious state, either in bliss or in torment?

Death is permanent. It isn't the wages of sin, it isn't what we get because of our inherently depraved natures. We don't die because we have done something wrong. Death is not a punishment, dealt out by some deathless being whose main function is to remind us of how undeserving we are of life, of happiness, of pleasure. Death is natural. It's as natural as it gets, but it's also permanent. It isn't a point of transition between life and eternal life, it isn't a dreamless sleep that is trivially short, it isn't a three day nap behind a big rock. It's oblivion, non-existence, non-consciousness. It's a permanent return to the condition we were in before we were born, which was nothingness. Death is easy to understand. All you have to do is think about what you were doing when the Pyramids were built. You weren't doing anything, you were dead. You've already been dead.

If we're going to harp on the Muslims for their willingness to go to extremes for their religion, then let's remember that a lot of American Christians are driven by the same purpose, and by beliefs which are disturbingly similar. There are certain groups of Christians, not all American but largely American, who call themselves Dominionists, or Christian Reconstructionists. The driving force behind these groups is not a respect for human rights or political freedom, but a focused and purposeful desire to turn America (and the rest of the world, if they can) toward a Christian theocracy whose sole authority would be the Bible. These groups believe that their mission is to establish God's Kingdom here on earth, and they believe that Jesus will not return until far in the future when this Kingdom has been realized. We are talking about a society under strict Mosaic Law: Old Testament law. We are talking about executions for homosexuality, blasphemy, even wayward and uncontrollable youths. Some of these warped individuals have even advocated public stonings.

I don't want to sound like an alarmist, though I suppose that's inevitable. I realize that these groups are relatively small and are considered crazy even by most mainstream Christians, but there are certain disturbing connections between the mainstream religious right in America and the core issues that drive the Dominionists/Reconstructionists: the deliberate insistence that Judeo-Christian values and/or ethics are the necessary foundation for the concepts of political freedom and human rights, which is sheer nonsense, and the equally nonsensical attempt to curtail the freedoms of American citizens by citing the supposed desires of an ancient tribal deity. The United States cannot be run by appealing to the Bible: ultimately, it will only be destroyed by such an appeal. Mosaic, or Old Testament Law, if taken literally, would be like a deadly poison if it were consistently administered in the US, or in any civilized country.

The truly scary thing is that when I talk to some Christians, they don't understand why living under Old Testament law would be a bad thing. They don't even know what would change. These dummies will deserve what they get.