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.

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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.

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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.

Suicidal tendencies

"I think this shows that the problem is primarily emotional, not intellectual. People just don't like the idea of a God who might send them to hell, and so they choose not to believe in Him. But that kind of attitude is just suicidal. Imagine you're standing in the middle of the street, and suddenly a friend on the curb says, "Look out! Here comes a car!" Now what do you do? Do you stand there and close your eyes real tight and say, "anybody who would run over me can't be a very nice person! If I don't believe in him, then it won't affect me! I just won't believe that he exists!" And then it is too late. A lot of people look at God that way. They think that just because they don't like the idea of God sending them to hell, if they close their eyes real tight and pretend that He doesn't exist, then it doesn't affect them. And that kind of attitude is just fatal."

This paragraph comes near the end of William Lane Craig's closing statements in a debate with an atheist, the whole of which is transcribed and published online, as are many such debates. Craig is one of the leading apologists for the Reformed Christian worldview, and he is obviously extremely smart and educated. No statement I make should be regarded as an attempt to cast doubt on the man's intelligence. I make this dislcaimer because I want to be clear on the fact that I believe most theist/atheist disagreements are the result of political, and therefore moral and ethical, differences, rather than merely intellectual ones. Certainly, there are stupid atheists and stupid theists, just as there are geniuses on both sides of the theological fence. Craig could well be a genius, though it's certain that I am not.

What bothers me most about Craig's analogy of God as the Reckless Driver (besides the fact that his description of an atheist's attitude toward god-belief is actually precisely that of the theist's denial of the reality of death) is the fact that he compares God, who is in no way whatsoever available for empirical analysis, with an obviously visible speeding car and its obviously dangerous operator. The non-believer, who can in no manner at all sense God as a metaphysical reality, is nonetheless portrayed as someone whose primary fault is the ability to ignore certain data he receives through his senses, for the sake of emotional security. The analogy is completely backwards and inept, and fails absolutely. Craig might have said something like this:

Imagine you're standing in the middle of the street and suddenly a friend on the curb shouts:

"Hey, you better move. I read somewhere that any second now a car is going to come thundering around that corner, and if you're standing there you'll be turned into road-pizza!"

Imagine that you look up ahead and see nothing. You hear nothing, you feel nothing. It's just an empty street. Sure, a car could come along at any time, but at the moment you see no point in scrambling over to the curb like an idiot just because your friend read somewhere that a car would come thundering and blundering along on this very street at any time. After all, your friend has been saying this for years, every day in fact since you and he started to walk down this street together on your way to work. But the car never comes.

"Besides," you point out, "wouldn't the driver have time to see me and put on the brakes? Is he drunk? Or is he just a reckless driver and a menace to the road?"

Your friend says, "No, you don't understand. The driver is extremely powerful, wise and merciful, and in fact loves you very much; but if you don't move out of the way, he'll run you right over. And not only that, you won't die. You'll actually have to experience the pain of being run over by someone who loves you forever and ever, for the simple fact that you played chicken with him and refused to get out of the way."

At this point you look hard at your friend and say, "Well, that doesn't sound very loving and merciful to me. But that's beside the point, because if I really did see a car coming, naturally I would get out of the way. I have no desire to play chicken with reckless drivers, no matter how much they love me. The reason I'm standing here is to let you know that your fear-mongering isn't going to work on me. The more you warn me about the possibility of becoming eternal road-pizza because I pissed off some reckless driver, the more I'm going to stand here, just to let you know that you can't manipulate your fellow men through this kind of psychological intimidation. If the car comes, I'll do the wise thing and get out of the way. But I don't see a car."

"That's just suicidal!" your friend shouts, teetering on the curb, not daring to step foot into the street. "Maybe the car will be coming so fast and furiously you won't have time to move! Isn't it much safer just to stay off the street? Why take chances?"

"Well, for two reasons." you say, "First, as I mentioned, I'm gonna stay here as a constant reminder to you that I will not be motivated by irrational fear. I will not take your word, or the word of someone who wrote something about this mysterious car and driver. Second, if this driver is truly loving and merciful, as you say, then I have nothing to worry about. No wise and merciful person would run down someone they loved. Your story makes no sense."

"It makes no sense to you because you don't understand the nature of the driver. He is very wise and powerful, and he is indeed very loving; but he doesn't demonstrate those attributes in the way that a normal person would. He lets all of us know that he is coming, at any time, without warning, and leaves it up to us whether to stand in the street like suicidal fools or to stay out of the way. If we believe in him and stay off the street, he will recognize our faith and reward us with incomprehensible bliss forever and ever; but if we doubt him and remain standing in the street, he will run us over as surely as the sun shines, because we dared to trust ourselves rather than the word of his messengers."

"And how do we know we can trust these messengers?"

"Because the driver tells us their words are true."

"And where does the driver tell us this?"

"In the words of the messengers!"

"Farewell, friend. Have a nice journey down the safe and comfortable curb of life..."

Reformed morons

The more I read stuff from these reformed apologists, the more suspicious of them I become. For instance, when they ask questions like, "why is it immoral or wrong to hurt someone," or, "how do you know that it's immoral or wrong to hurt someone else for no reason," or questions to that effect, could it be that they are truly, genuinely in the dark on this? Could it be that these people are actually lacking in sympathy, empathy, or what we call a "conscience"?

Based on a passage from his "Professional Morons" (which is in a pdf document and I couldn't figure out how to quote from it, but I can link to it), I gather that Mr. Vincent Cheung really doesn't have any idea why a non-believer might consider it to be morally wrong to hurt another person for no reason. Cheung, and people like him, cannot seem to fathom why an atheist would be compelled to treat his fellow human being with decency and care, because the atheist isn't getting anything out of the deal, at least nothing that the religious fanatic can see or understand.

Maybe it doesn't bother the religious fanatic to observe a fellow human being in pain, causes him no unease whatsoever? This would go a long way in explaining why some of the extremely zealous theists, such as the Dominionists or Christian Reconstructionists, have no problem whatsoever with biblical atrocities. It doesn't bother them to think of millions of people being drowned in a flood, or of God's armies ruthlessly slaughtering their enemies, or of babies' heads being dashed against the stones, or of people having excrement spread on their faces, or of millions of people being damned for eternity; and it could also explain why some of these extremists would have no problem with executing people for various infractions, or why a few of them even advocate stonings.

What rational person with a healthy conscience could condone lobbing rocks at human beings until they die? For whatever reason? I wouldn't be able to kill someone by throwing rocks at them even if they had murdered my wife and children. I might want them to die, but not that way. I wouldn't even kill a toad that way, let alone a human being.

I think that maybe we need to come to terms with what we might be dealing with: intelligent people with no conscience, people who do not intuitively or instinctively know right from wrong, but whose idea of right and wrong, or moral and immoral, comes purely from a book. Maybe for this kind of religious zealot, killing an innocent person isn't wrong because it's repugnant to his conscience, to his basic sensitivities as a human being, it's wrong because it's an offense to God, and that's the only reason he needs; moreover, it's the only reason he feels entitled to have.

It's really no wonder, in light of this, that religious fanatics through out the ages have been capable of such brutality and cruelty. Perhaps because, in large part, they have no moral sense, they have no conscience? Because all they understand is obedience and force? And perhaps all of of their arguments are essentially grounded in one simple, scriptural premise: that everyone else is just as morally bankrupt as they are?

Requiescat in pace

I never thought I'd hear myself say this to myself, but I'm actually glad to see that there are so many Catholics in the world, for these vast droves of people will eventually prove to be instrumental in stemming the tide of Theonomy which at present is not a tsunami in force, rather a creepy little wavelet, which will grow.

And I therefore hereby this electronic digital transcription whereby I stand hereabouts do solemnly proclaim this thing verily, even a prophecy, which have come forth from my mouth, even from my tongue on this day: the God-botherers will grow mightier, yea, but not unto mightiness wherein they shall wreak their rigid Rightness upon us,

but unto forthwith and sooth a large body of sycophantic psychopathic mules or fowls of the air that droppeth stuff nor cheweth their cud, or them from which we reap our share of wool sheared, the sheep; and this body of some but not nigh unto mighty might shall fuck with freedom at every turn.

So let us be pleased that the old church is still kicking, and I think apologetic in a good way, and sincere, in the main. The heavier pots that are damaged lurk on the other side. Reformation my ask you this: as a rebellion it was wonderful, for like what, five minutes? Luther and Calvin were both knucking phuts.

I wish the Pope a very restful sleep, and peace, sincerely.

Ex-Christian.net

Last night as I was doing my usual reading online, occupied as I very often am in looking up information regarding the Christian Reconstructionist movement, or Dominionism, or Theonomy (these labels are commonly used interchangeably, but there are distinctions between them which I haven't quite worked out), and I wound up at a site called Ex-Christian net.

The site is run by an Ex-Christian named Dave Van Allen. It started small, but has grown considerably. Being inspired by Mr. Allen's testimony regarding his deconversion from the Christian faith, I wrote him a small letter of appreciation. Mr. Allen graciously responded, and quite promptly I might add, given the high rate of traffic at his website, and given that he must receive quite a large volume of personal messages and email. He thanked me for my message and asked to post it on his site in a letters-to-webmaster section, which he says consists predominantly of negative messages from Christians seeking to re-convert him. I was happy to ask him to go ahead and post my letter.

I also responded to a letter from a Christian posted recently at ExChristian.net, which prompted a rather lengthy thread. This person had coyly introduced the TAG into one of his posts. This argument will rear its ugly head everywhere, and it won't only be used by Christians arguing from a Reformed perspective. The best refutation I've read so far is this one, by Objectivist Anton Thorn. I know that many people, probably even most people, think of Objectivists as secular cultists, no better, and in fact similar in many ways, to fundamentalist theists. I will say that Objectivism has indeed generated a certain number of block-headed sycophants and "fundies". I encountered a few at more than one Objectivist forum, and I even met one Objectivist author via email whose responses to me were such that I immediately discontinued correspondence with him; but there are also those who are extremely bright and fiercely independent, and I believe that Anton Thorn is one of those.

One should consider that the biggest gun in the TAGist's arsenal is the fact that modern philosophy offers precious little by way of any firmly grounded epistemological standpoint, with Objectivism being one of the few, and certainly the most noticeable, exception. TAGists love to pick on people like Bertrand Russell, for example, first for his famous book on why he was not a Christian (guess the title?), and second, because his epistemological views changed through-out his career. Now, most people would say that that was a good thing, because, and I'm paraphrasing Nietzsche here, 'convictions are a no-no.'

Just don't be too sure of that.

waiting for echoes, archy

Was it Don Marquis, the journalist slash poet who said something like:

"Publishing a book of poetry is like dropping a [??] into the Grand Canyon and waiting for the echo." ?

It was either him or someone else, of that I'm sure. As for what goes between the brackets, it could be a feather, or a penny. I don't remember. I could look it up, but I don't feel like it, and neither will anyone else. I've been saying that a lot in this blog, haven't I, he asked himself. And no one was watching, and no one pointed his finger and laughed.

And it was all the same to him, he thought, examining the underside of the left side of his chin as he faced himself. I was reminded today of a line from a poem I've always liked: which went something like, "his carnation preceded him like a small explosion...". Does one need a full stop (period, he said, adjusting his glasses) after an ellipsis? Are there two ells in ellipsis? Well naturally there were two that time.

Well, archy, having looked through a sickeningly narrow yet noisy slice of Blogdom, I see that Andy Warhol was dead wrong. We cannot possibly all have fifteen minutes, each. And that wouldn't make us happy anyway. So God has rendered unto us all an infinity for the splatterings of our vanity. He has given every fool, including myself, his own mountain, her own village square, her own shiny and dazzling printing press of many-colors. We will hoist ourselves up and over our own petards, show ourselves naked (some of us quite literally) in front of the entire world, free of charge.

God has seen Andy's bluff and raised him a trillionfold, archy. The greatest libraries in the world pale to this blinking box next to my socks. The poet Kenneth Patchen once wrote, with a pen, presumably: "The impatient explorer invents a box in which all journeys may be kept."

That box is this box. Windows are boxes. Morrison was right, too, we're all voyeurs. The really sickening thing is, though, the person whose private parts we peer at through our little windows on the world is us, is you, is me, he said.

But no one was listening.

Some thoughts on Objectivism

Yes, I did at one time, for a few years, consider myself a student of Objectivism. I didn't feel comfortable calling myself one, simply because I never felt I had enough of an understanding of some of its finer philosophical points. And no, I did not become interested in Rand as a teenager. My father gave me one of Rand's philosophical books to read when I was in High School, and I hated it. I was extremely liberal in my "thinking", and saw nothing but coldness in her writing. It wasn't any naive idealism that attracted me to Rand's work as a youngster. Her ideas only made sense to me as an adult.

I developed an interest in Objectivism when I was thirty-two, a short while after a few years of heavy drinking and hanging around with the dregs of society. Think Steinbeck's Tortilla Flat, and you'll get an idea of how my life was during my early to late twenties. I learned that some people are down & out and dirt-poor because they will do virtually nothing to help themselves, and I resolved to have no sympathy for those types of people. They are users and abusers, they cheat, lie, and steal; their hearts are black, they have no conscience, and they focus on nothing but the present. I was constantly being used, as I was one of the only people among my group of cronies to be able to keep a job. Despite the fact that I drank habitually, I was still able to figure out that I needed to work in order to be able to purchase alcohol. Most of those happy-go-lucky rogues I hung around with and lived with were actually unable to make this simple connection. Or maybe they thought they were too clever to work, since they could simply beg, borrow, or steal their hooch from one working schmuck or another. I grew very tired of coming home to see my apartment in shambles, my cigarettes stolen, my beer gone, my CDs lying out all over the floor. Mind you, I am not saying that this kind of crap describes the poor, generally speaking. I am only speaking about the people I was involved with at a particular time. There were a lot of them, they were dirt poor, like me, and they were assholes.

Eventually I was able to afford a place of my own. The cronies still came a' begging from time to time, with compliments aplenty, their transparent cordiality in full swing, almost exactly like the characters in Steinbeck's novel, but eventually they gave up on me. During this time I was involved with an older woman I worked with who was separated from an alcoholic husband and was sincerely worried for me. I was in my late twenties, drank almost daily. I kept telling her not to worry about me. I wasn't going down the path that she seemed certain I was destined to take. I was totally aware that most of the limitations I had were self-imposed, and I tried not to make any excuses for the fact that I had a lousy job and drank too much; but I was also convinced that life was full of possibilities, that I was in charge of my life and that I would dictate the direction my life took. There was no way I was going to start missing work, lose my job, and become like those drifters I had hung around with. I always went to work, I always did a good job, and I was valued by my employer. My friend insisted that I was kidding myself, that it was unwise to think I had control over my life.

At the same time, it had always bothered me to talk with religious people, because of what was essentially the same thing: the notion that our lives are guided by powerful forces over which we have precious little control, whether those forces be external or internal. I spoke with some members of AA that I worked with, and heard still more of the same from them. My faith in myself was angering God, I was told. My life was determined by the cravings of my body, and my mind was my own worst enemy. It was just a matter of time before I started to act like those old friends of mine of whom I'd grown sick and tired. Unless I surrendered my heart and mind to some misty, undefined Higher Power and admitted my complete depravity to that Higher Power, and also myself, I was doomed. I said bunk to that and quit drinking when I got married, in 1996. This coincided with my interest in Ayn Rand. I hope that the reasons why are obvious.

Though I've always had dreams of being a musician and a writer, I don't think I ever truly desired to be wealthy. My interest in Rand's philosophy had nothing to do with rationalizing some sort of unsavory ambition or bigotry. Last year I earned a hair over 25K, which, being that I am the sole wage-earner in a family of four, puts me squarely in poverty-ville, at least here in AZ. Even though I'm technically poor, I don't feel poor. I don't feel like anybody's victim. I don't want for much. Sure, life is a bit precarious. I could be in trouble if I miss a few paychecks. But I'm very careful with my money, and I have good credit. I have medical insurance because I am employed full-time and I'm a low-risk, so my employers pay most of the premium. I'm doing better than some people who earn more than I do, simply because they don't know how to live within their means, and they don't know to handle their finances. But that's another subject. I think.

I associate Objectivism with a respect for reality (yes, I am aware of the problem that some people have with that word) and reason, as opposed to mysticism. I associate it with having complete responsibility for one's life, with respect for the lives of others, with a belief in free-will as opposed to determinism, with a lack of responsibility or pity for every sad-sack who stumbles drunkenly across my path, with a belief that charity ought to be given not as a moral duty but as a willing response to a person's virtues, and with a belief that there is nothing wrong with ambitiously pursuing rational goals, and that there is nothing wrong with regarding happiness and yes, even prosperity, as the rewards of a life lived sensibly, legally, and morally. I reject any notion that the happiness of one person must result in the misery of another. I reject the notion that people who work hard and manage their money wisely should feel guilty over the existence of people who refuse to work and/or have no idea how to handle the money that they do have; I reject the notion of attributing the bulk of human failure to any number of diseases, addictions, compulsions, or disorders. I reject the notion of attributing success to selfish desires, bigotry, or chauvinism.

I've hated bigotry ever since I was a small child in New York. I didn't understand, even then, how it was possible to judge a person's character by virtue of their ethnic origin. I grew up with pig-headed racism all around me, and so it delights me to no end that I am now one half of an interracial marriage, and that my children are of mixed heritage. They get to grow up learning two languages, while all I had was one. They get to interact with people from two very different cultures, while all I had was one. It's also been a pleasure for me to try and change my wife's mind insofar as how she feels about herself. She grew up believing that women were naturally subordinate to men: wives to their husbands, even sisters to brothers. I speak passionately about my regard for the ideas of freedom, and rights, and all that. I tell her that she can do anything she puts her mind to, and that the only thing stopping her is her irrational fears. She is currently trying to begin her own business, and I have every faith in her ability to succeed. If her business works out, and she starts working again after three years of down-time, she'll probably wind up earning a great deal more than I do, and I have absolutely no problem with that. I am proud of her and want only the best for her.

So it bothers me to see Objectivism associated with racism and sexism, though I can understand it slightly. After all, one of Rand's worst mistakes, I believe, was making that comment that women shouldn't aspire to be President. I think that idea flatly contradicts the primary tenets of her own philosophy, and quite frankly I was shocked to find out that she believed it. That was one of the straws that finally broke this camel's back, as well as some of her other views on sex and the sexes, and some of her views on esthetics.

Finally, I didn't develop an interest in Objectivism out of some teeny-bopperish idol-worship, or hero-worship, or because I thought it rationalized some immoral trait I possessed, or made excuses for the absence of some moral trait I didn't possess. I became interested in it because it made a great deal of sense to me at the time. I've had some trouble with its essentials, after reading the more complex arguments around the net; but not that much trouble, to be honest. Still, I'm no genius. I learn as I go.



Happy Birthday, Mom!

Feeling the Paine

Some people are either liars, or just plain stupid.

This whole argument over whether or not America is a Christian nation, or one which is "founded on Judeo-Christian values" is indicative enough for me that the United States is at risk for eventual destruction. No theocracy has ever, nor will ever, make any formal recognition of human rights, nor will in any way take measures to protect even the notion of rights, which is the bedrock of modern civil society, the only hindrance to the natural law of "might makes right", which, though fine for the larger part of the animal kingdom, is a disastrously ineffectual code for humanity, as history has demonstrated.

The Judeo-Christian God is not interested in our freedom. He is one of the most corrupt characters ever imagined in the mind of man: a jealous, wrathful, vengeful, petty, violent, emotionally-driven tyrant who desires nothing but to hear himself praised without end for all eternity, and who has promised nothing but perpetual pain and torment for any and all who will not make it their single purpose to appease that desire. The Bible is not a moral book. It is at times a good book, in the sense that Paradise Lost is a good book: it has a definite poetic beauty, occasional glimmers of wisdom, and some sound moral advice; but on the whole it is a heap of ancient superstition and ignorance, no better or worse than the mythological or sacred writings of other various origins. 

**edit 2/25/2011 not going to go through all these and modify them to my new way of thinking; I'm just gonna let them stand so anyone who might read in this little tiny nook tucked away in a fold of a cranny here in netville can see how my thinking has come along, backwards forwards up & down, over the years** WAB

It is a fact that most Americans claim to be Christians, but even if, at some time in the future, every single citizen of the United States is a devout Christian except one single non-Christian, the Constitution will still protect the rights of that single non-Christian to worship any God he pleases, without interference from any other citizen, or his government; and it will also protect that person's right to worship no god at all. The majority, however this body be comprised, has no rights, as a body. Only individuals have rights. So, conversely, if at some time in the future every single United States citizen is an atheist except one Christian, that single Christian will still have the right to practice his faith without interference from any other citizen, or his government. This is what it means to have freedom, what it means to have rights. Rights protect individuals, not groups.

Idiocy comes just as much from the left as from the right. Talk of gay-rights is just as nonsensical as talk of Christian-rights. Rights are not privileges. If a gay man is beaten in the streets by a gang of imbecilic thugs, it's not his rights as a gay man which have been violated, but his rights as a man. If two gay men are left alone to enjoy a loving relationship and are protected from harassment by individuals, by society at large, or by the government, it's not their gay-rights, or privileges, which are being recognized, but their rights as individual citizens. If Christian Americans go to church as they please, worship God as they please, baptize their children and raise them according to the tenets of their faith, do all of this in a civil and law-abiding manner, and are safeguarded from obstruction or intervention by other members of society or by the government, it isn't their Christian rights, or privileges, which are being recognized and protected, but their rights as citizens. The same goes for Jewish Americans, Muslim Americans, Hindu Americans, and Buddhist Americans. The same also goes for Wiccans, Scientologists, Subgeniuses, and atheists.

I am an atheist, but I do not suggest that my rights as an atheist are in jeopardy by our nation's current religious mania. It's my rights, period, which are in jeopardy. I do not recognize the authority of the Bible, nor do I see any reason to suppose that my government's constitution is in any way connected to the Bible, or owes anything whatsoever to the Bible in regard to its nature and origin. The God of the Bible is a specific deity with a name, a definite character, and a definite will and desire insofar as what he expects from the people who serve him. The God mentioned in the Declaration Of Independence is a noun which in fact references any number of deities, to account for any number of deities which the prospective citizens of the United States might choose to recognize and worship. We are granted the freedom to worship any God whom we choose to recognize as our Creator. For many of the founding fathers, this was the God of Deism, the passive and benevolent Aristotelian Prime Mover, a magnificent and incomprehensible entity which would never be so human as to set up an infantile system of eternal punishment and reward and hold that over the heads of humanity like some petulant supernatural schoolmaster.

Most importantly, the name of Jesus Christ is not mentioned in either the Declaration of Independence or the Constitution, and so it boggles the mind to consider how some people continue to insist that America is a "Christian" nation. The absence of the name of Jesus can be nothing if not deliberate. If the founding fathers had truly thought that this country was "founded on Judeo-Christian" ideals or values, could the name of Jesus fail to appear in the very documents which were intended to create and establish said country, accidentally? Certainly not. These were highly intelligent and serious gentlemen. They intentionally left that name out, and with very good reason.

If there are some people in this country who truly do wish to stomp out a person's right to practice their religious faith, then shame on them for their stupidity and arrogance. I honestly do not know anyone like that, though I know that such idiots have existed. The separation of church and state is intended to work for the benefit of everyone, not just the secularists. After all, of every Christian crying over the fact that creationism is not taught in school, it has to be asked: if the Biblical creation myth is to be taught in school, alongside scientific theories, then why stop there? What is to stop a Buddhist teacher from teaching his religion in class, or the Hindu teacher, or the Muslim teacher? Or better yet, how would Presbyterian parents feel about their child being taught the finer points of Mormonism in a public classroom?

And finally, a religious story and a scientific theory are not on equal footing, despite wishful thinking. One is traditional, passed down as ritual, and accepted on faith, while the other is the result of objective research and study, an accumulative body of certain knowledge and conjecture, ruthlessly tested and re-tested. Why it can be seen as decent to lie to a child and try to convince her that the flimsy and contradictory (not to mention bloody and even kinky) nonsense in Genesis represents the absolute truth is a mystery to me; but please feel free to do this in the privacy of your own home, if you feel so compelled. You have that right, and may you forever keep it; but your right to bring your child up in your own faith at home or in church is equal to my right to allow my child the liberty of some day being able to recognize bullshit when he sees it, a skill which he will no doubt need to cultivate in the future of these United States.

Creator and creation: part 2

In a past blog I mentioned that I wanted to talk about four stories (book or film versions, or both) which I thought contained some extraordinary insights into the concept of morality. One of those stories is Mary Shelley's Frankenstein, of which I'm only concerned with the original novel. I'm familiar with the classic Boris Karloff monster of course, since he's graduated from the oftentimes ephemeral world of film and taken his place in the canon of mythological entities alongside the likes of Dracula, Sherlock Homes, and Tarzan. I'm not interested in that guy, however; he's not what Mary Shelley had in mind, but rather what some early film-maker had in mind. Kenneth Branagh's modern version with Robert De Niro is more faithful to the novel. Unless a great deal of sympathy for the monster is generated, the story loses its point. The Frankenstein monster is a tragic hero turned reluctant villain, a gentle spirit trapped in a repulsive form who winds up behaving the way in which the prejudices and fears of others seem dead-set and determined for him to act. Rather (but not quite) like Shakespeare's Richard III, who explains the precise reasons for his villainy in some of the most memorable iambic pentameter ever penned:


But I, that am not shaped for sportive tricks,
Nor made to court an amorous looking-glass;
I, that am rudely stamp'd, and want love's majesty
To strut before a wanton ambling nymph;
I, that am curtail'd of this fair proportion,
Cheated of feature by dissembling nature,
Deformed, unfinish'd, sent before my time
Into this breathing world, scarce half made up,
And that so lamely and unfashionable
That dogs bark at me as I halt by them;
Why, I, in this weak piping time of peace,
Have no delight to pass away the time,
Unless to spy my shadow in the sun
And descant on mine own deformity:
And therefore, since I cannot prove a lover,
To entertain these fair well-spoken days,
I am determined to prove a villain
And hate the idle pleasures of these days.


Of course, it could be that tricky Dick is just making excuses, but I think there is a great deal more to it. Now, I have no desire to make excuses for criminal behavior. No matter what pressures a person might be under, due to the idiocy of others or the fickle hand of chance, one must still be held responsible for one's actions in a civil society. I suppose some provision ought to be made for people with certain types of mental disorders, who literally cannot help what they say or do; but generally speaking, if you willfully interfere with the rights of another person, you should fully expect to have your rights interfered with as well. With Shakespeare's Richard, we don't see the gradual transformation of what was, presumably, a sound and decent character into that of a villain. We get the straightforward, but poetically gorgeous, rationalizations of a criminal right from the start. With Frankenstein, Mary Shelley masterfully develops the monster's character, largely in the form of an extended first-person narrative, from the innocence of his first awakening all the way through to his inevitable fall.

There are actually two massive themes at work in her novel (three really, but I doubt I'll be able to touch on the third one in this blog), though these themes are related to one another. First there is a study into the possible constitution and manifestation of a criminal mentality (or at least one type in particular): a completely innocent and well-meaning individual who can have no place in society because of his horrifying physical appearance, who discovers no way to act apart from re-acting, who becomes possessed with feelings of self-loathing and dread, because he seems to engender nothing apart from loathing and dread in others. His only friend is a blind man, a man who makes value judgments without the benefit of sight. I might be disposed to consider this a rather shallow and even cliched theme, were it not for the fact that my own experiences in life recently have made it a great deal more interesting to me than it was when I first read the book; but more on that later.

The second theme, which is related to the first, is the relationship between creator and creation. This is especially important, since many religiously-minded people seem unable to grasp the crudity of a religion which effectively makes a criminal out every person ever born, people who revel in this universal fault and upon which they seem insatiably fixated. I believe there is a lesson for religiously-minded people in Mary Shelley's novel. After-all, the good doctor regrets his creation almost instantly, because he's smart enough to know that his creation will know nothing but torment, an existential fear, anger, and disgust. He is repulsed by this thing he brought into being, calls it a "wretch", a "filthy demon", just as God is repulsed by his creatures. The doctor is also smart enough to take moral responsibility for his monster's actions, just as God does, who sacrifices himself to himself, in the most poignant display of guilt ever recorded in the annals of literature.

There is a parallel of sorts between the two stories which justifies, or tries to justify, the reason for the creator in both tales to punish his creation. In the novel, the monster strangles Frankenstein's brother William, thereby sealing the doctor's commitment to destroying the thing he has made. He knows that he has a primary part in the murder and sets about seeing justice done, of bringing to rest something which ought never to have been commenced, an abomination which is the result of his own pride and vanity. In the old Hebrew scriptures, Man (meaning the man and the woman) disobeys God by eating the forbidden fruit, a crime for which man and woman, as well as each and every one of their ancestors until the end of time, bid farewell to innocence forever. Because of one act of disobedience, humanity is forever guilty. And God will destroy his creation, just as Frankenstein wills to do, or at least the greater majority of humankind. Some few he saves, on the condition that they recognize the sacrifice made by Christ and are abundantly grateful because of it, and on the condition that they dedicate their lives to the Father who made them, the loving creator who designed them with two broken legs and holds them at fault for falling down, the merciful Lord who offers a beautiful pair of crutches to all, but gives them only to those who shamefully admit that they really deserve no better than to crawl along the ground.

And I do believe (speaking in the context of the story) that the sacrifice of Christ is compelled more by guilt than by mercy, or love. God knows that the fall of Man is his fault. He has created Man with a plethora of fundamental weaknesses which render him unable to redeem himself. Sure, he gives Man a choice, but he already knows what choice Man will make. Man is helpless. Guilt leads God to his sacrifice, but only by gratefully acknowledging the magnanimous nature and degree of this sacrifice can man be redeemed. The story is interesting and does have some virtues, in that it defines the responsibilities of a creator in regard to his creation, but those virtues are overshadowed due to the natural feelings of fealty and loyalty on the part of the child for the parent, feelings which have effectively removed culpability from God and placed it firmly onto the shoulders of humanity.

Gratitude is fine, but not at the expense of reason and decency. The most powerful force in theology and apologetics at the present time seems to be Calvinist in nature, and Calvinism has completely removed any and all traces of culpability and responsibility from God. How any entity which is refered to as a father figure can somehow manage to be spared even the tiniest shred of responsibility for the actions and destinies of his children escapes me altogether. If you are elected for salvation, it is entirely because of God's intercession on your behalf; if you are damned for eternity, it's your fault, absolutely and utterly. The Calvinists have presented a nightmarish universe for your enlightenment and edification. No matter how gallantly you struggle to obtain some sense of autonomous self-worth and independence, you will either be saved or damned, purely at the whim of God, and you will not even be granted the option of extinction. Doctor Frankenstein is not nearly so malign a father as to will an unfathomably painful and interminable existence for his creation. No fictional character of any kind ever descended to such moral bankruptcy.

In Shelley's novel, there is some wonderful dialogue between the creature and his creator; there is a fine line drawn between love and contempt, between fealty and rebellion, between guilt and blame; but I don't suppose very much is resolved in the end. At one point, the monster asks his creator, "How dare you sport thus with life?" Good question, that. He goes on, after his maker tries to kill him:

"Be calm! I entreat you to hear me before you give vent to your hatred on my devoted head. Have I not suffered enough, that you seek to increase my misery? Life, although it may only be an accumulation of anguish, is dear to me, and I will defend it....Oh, Frankenstein, be not equitable to every other and trample upon me alone, to whom thy justice, and even thy clemency and affection, is most due. Remember that I am thy creature; I ought to be thy Adam, but I am rather the fallen angel, whom thou drivest from joy for no misdeed. Everywhere I see bliss, from which I alone am irrevocably excluded. I was benevolent and good; misery made me a fiend..." (Emphasis mine.)

When the monster tells his story, a great deal of his narrative draws parallels between himself and the Biblical creation story. So it's not too terribly surprising to discover that the creature has but one request of his maker: a mate. A companion, just as hideous as he is (for any more than that and she would not tolerate him), with whom he might be allowed to spend the rest of his unnaturally allotted days: another parallel, but skewed of course, between himself and Adam. The interesting thing is that Eve was created as a gift from God, seen by the latter as necessary for Adam's complete well-being and happiness (never mind how absurd it is to think that an omniscient God would not have the concept of gender clearly worked out already); in the novel, the doctor (at first) reluctantly agrees to the monster's request, one one hand to prevent any further killings, and also, perhaps, because despite his revulsion at the idea of placating his murderous creation, his rational mind tells him that he owes this one debt to him? The creator owes the creation, and is obliged to do his bidding, because he knows he has wrongfully given him existence in a world to which he can never accustom himself, through no fault of his own; but eventually Frankenstein realizes that he cannot go through with his promise. His creature takes revenge again, this time on his maker's new bride, and once again the doctor seeks to end what should never have begun, but ultimately fails. God creates Man for an idyllic life of innocence and communion with him, but he is smart enough to know that Man will not be able to function for long in this simplistic utopia, by virtue (and it is a virtue) of Man's nature as a curious, venturing, seeking, probing, disobedient, valuing, enterprising, proud, and ambitious being.


***********

To return to something I mentioned above: my life's experiences quite recently have made the story of Frankenstein a bit more poignant. There is a great deal of tension between myself and certain people I work with, due to the fact that my sometimes deplorable and pathetic lack of social skills has made it difficult for my true and benevolent character to show itself. I wish absolutely no one any harm whatsoever. I have never harmed anyone, never hit anyone: except my older brother, at which point he hit me back, harder. I despise people who can harm others without remorse. Apparently there was some talk around the workplace that I am mean to my children. One impertinent and obnoxious person actually brought this to my attention, as if it might be something I was proud of. I quickly set her straight, and was not immoderately indignant and hurt. Maybe the bald head has something to do with it? Or the squint that I have sometimes because I refuse to wear my glasses at work and can't stand the idea of contact lenses? Or because I work mostly with women and am horribly shy around them, out of profound reverence and regard, if only they knew it?

The act of nonchalance is something I've perfected after forty years, but it's merely one of my self-defense mechanisms. I was once terribly hurt for allowing myself to be deluded by the innocent flirting of a woman, and resolved never again to allow that to happen. I think what I project, at least to people I do not know well, which is most of the women at work with whom I do not directly interact, is a callous and unfriendly lack of interest, an aloofness which is not some kind of sexy mystique but simply an annoyance. I offend some people, I think, by the very act of not wanting to offend them. I've been told many times that I look too stern and serious; I've been told that I am intimidating, that sometimes I scare people. I am sometimes quick to anger (and what makes me angry is almost always my own clumsy and disorganized self), and I bark; but my bark is far, far worse than my bite, which is non-existent. There is no bite. I'm harmless.

I'm actually quite a gentle person, with an enormous love and respect for the value of human life and liberty. So imagine how it strikes me to find that some people think of me as mean and bitter, a father who frightens his children? It's offensive. It hurts me and it makes me angry. The same way it makes me angry to think of Percy Shelley's children being taken away from him (the great and famous poet, husband of Mary Shelley), for no other reason than that he was an atheist. It's disgusting to think that less than three centuries ago people were so steeped in superstition that they could regard a man as incapable of being a decent father simply because he lacked belief in some ancient tribal deity. I've wondered if some of the prejudices directed towards me are the result of the fact that I am an atheist. I don't go about announcing it, but I don't hold it as some filthy secret either. I'm proud of it. I regard it as an indication of sanity. The United States is on the verge of another religious revival, I believe, due to the fear of terrorism, the deliberate razing of the wall between church and state by our current President, the deliberate polarization of Us and Them, Us being the fortunate Christian Americans with our God-given freedom (now there's an oxymoron), and Them being the evil and degenerate Terrorist demons, who just happen to be primarily Islamic.

With the power of the Internet as a tool for dissemination, and with the seemingly inexhaustible capacity of Americans to jump on one media-driven cause after another (war on drugs to war on terror, easy jump), I don't think it's too far-fetched to worry about what might be in store for the rest of this century. I say worry because I feel that our civil rights will be threatened if enough people here become convinced that we are involved in a Holy War. A great many of God's people aren't as concerned about preserving the concept of rights as we godless folk are, because they are sincerely convinced that Jesus will come trampling through the clouds any day now to whisk all the good lambs off to Heaven and sweep the nasty little goats into a great big hole in the ground, kicking and screaming, gnashing their teeth (not the Christian Reconstructionists, however, who believe that Christ's return will be far in the future. They had to postpone Judgment Day, since they are smart enough to know that it would take quite a good deal of time for them to establish the loony theocracy they envision).

At any rate, this all ties in to my feelings of increasing alienation, and to the story of Frankenstein, and to the old Hebrew scriptures, in some way or another. I realize my take on the novel is in some aspects similar to others and in other aspects very dissimilar. The third theme I mentioned earlier will have to be delved into in another blog, since it seems like the one which receives the most attention, probably because it's the most obvious: that of man playing God and suffering the consequences, or the dangers of reckless scientific, or technological, experimentation.

Emperor, partially dressed

Quite a while back, maybe two years ago, I made some negative comments about John Ashbery at the Poetry Free-For-All. I called him "a sham", regardless of what Harold Bloom might say about him to the contrary. A few months after that I wrote a sort of apologetic post about Ashbery, which was both quite literally an apology for those comments as well as an attempt at a literary (insert laughter here) apologetic for his work, though in no sense did I lose the strong reservations I had, and still have, in regard to his esthetic approach to the craft of poem-making. I still think Ashbery's main body of work is, in an obvious sense, to literature what water is to scotch tape. If communication is the main purpose of any type of literature, and I suppose it ought to be, then Ashbery's poems don't function well in a literary sense, and, in some cases, do not function at all.

But there is an undeniable art to his poems, which are frequently lyrical and often beautiful, at least in a concrete sense, in that the words themselves have a pleasing sound and feel to them. Without that I suppose he wouldn't have achieved much. I remember reading that Auden, who picked Ashbery's first book for a literary prize of some distinction*, later claimed to have comprehended virtually nothing in the poems. Not surprising, because at first glance, and even after a few run-throughs, the poems seem highly competent, and they certainly appear to be fine works. It's only after repeated readings that one begins to get that creeping feeling of having been suckered.

After that initial feeling, some readers either give up or keep reading him anyway, out of some sort of nagging jealousy maybe, wondering what in the hell everyone else is discovering in those ornate fakes. Why the hell is this man famous? Why the hell is this man championed by one of the most powerful critics in academia? What the fuck?

I can't speak for others, but for me there was a third phase. I had reached a point at which I was convinced that Ashbery was a sham, that his poems were nonsense served up as an elite type of modern poetry, not blatant nonsense, like some of the work of a fellow "New York School" poet Kenneth Koch, but a tricky and deceptive nonsense. I believed that he represented everything that was rotten esthetically (and more broadly philosophically) in modern art and literature. He was the enemy of Reason. He was the Great Satan, the Naked Emperor who purposefully destroyed lines of communication, purposefully frustrated the passing down of ideas and ideals, and who was wrongly glorified because of it. He was the Laureate of Doubt and Uncertainty. The perfect and fitting literary icon for a thoroughly fucked-up age.

Then I made some public comments about Ashbery (though this was that very minor-leaguey, arm-chair-quarterbacky, back-seat-drivery, Internety public we're talking about. Yes, this one here.)

After that I went back to Ashbery's poems to make sure I couldn't get anything out of them, at which time, of course, I began to get something out of them. You see, that's the trick with Ashbery. You have to go into his poems with both barrells, ready to shoot them down for their incomprehensibility. It's exactly through a kind of "negative capability" that the poems begin to reveal themselves, and you have to realize that two years ago I would have shot myself for typing the first part of this sentence. I won't claim, though, that the poems necessarily succeed, at least not in the way that a Frost poem, or a Tennyson poem, succeeds, though a handful do come close; rather, they work, they have a kind of utility to them, in at least two ways: first, they force the reader to pay attention, and they are on extremely intimate terms with that reader, each and every one of them, in a way that not even Billy Collins can manage; and they also create images, sometimes in a vivid and traditional sense, but more often in a kind of surrealistic, psychadelic sense, in that they cause a definite mental disintegration which is on one hand extremely frustrating and on the other hand a valid and powerful imitation of certain actual day-to-day conscious states and dream-states.

One Ashbery line leads inexorably into the next, and he often uses enjambment, not to create an enlightening or informative surprise, but to cause still more bewilderment. It's almost as if he allows the poem to veer out of control, or into a variety of tangents, in the very same way our thoughts sometimes seem to run. Not that this is a desireable thing, mind you. I am sure that certain highly intelligent and disciplined minds experience this kind of thing only very rarely, or not at all; but in my case, I go through it all too often. Sometimes, five minutes in the life of my poor little brain is probably very similar to an Ashbery poem.

Nonetheless, I do believe that the highest function of art should be to portray things as they can be, or ought to be, and not necessarily what they are. The latter's just journalism, really, though certainly there's a place for graphic realism in art, as well as for Romanticism. I am also sure that quite often the two things mix well together. In that respect, where does Ashbery stand? As a poetic voice for various and sundry, conscious and unconscious, mental states, he's second to none; but what else can we get out of him? He seems to have virtually no political ideas to convey, and if he has, they have thus far sailed right on over this reader's melon. Philosophy in general? I wonder if Ashbery might be some type of Idealist, since his descriptions of the external world and physical objects are often ostensibly unconnected with one another, or with anything in particular; but I have no right to an opinion in that matter, really. It's just an observation, probably worth nothing.

I don't know. What does he represent? Who does he represent? Maybe everyone, maybe no one. He's not a downer, like so many modern poets. He doesn't whine, complain, campaign, or pontificate; he isn't a mouthpiece for anyone, he's never corny or angry or defiant or sentimental, he's famous, but he's never vain. What the fuck?

I might come back to this at a later date. Or, at a different time when dreams come after, in which case, for the time being at least held or disembodied, all is manipulated and remembered, although inclined, as in the cranial beam of deadlights, to a place which is where we travel and where we are.


*too lazy to look it up

"Superstition aint the way..."

You know, I was never much of a Stevie Wonder fan. I knew a few of his songs and liked them somewhat, but throughout the course of my forty years on this planet I never even pondered the idea of buying one of his albums. My tastes leaned mostly towards classic and heavy rock, or metal,---though not the spandex-n-hair flavor that proliferated during the early eightees---and prog-rock like Tull and Yes. I had a side interest in classical music, and for a brief term was into jazz and jazz/rock fusion. R&B, adult contemporary, soul, what have you, never interested me. I didn't dislike it, I just never developed an interest in that sort of stuff.

About a month ago I heard Stevie's song "Higher Ground" on the radio at work. Of course, I knew the song, could sing along with it, had heard it scores of times, but never really listened to it, never paid much attention to it. I turned up the volume on the little boom-box we have at work and it suddenly struck me that Stevie Wonder is an amazing singer. A really amazing singer. Anyway, I began to generate this intense interest in Stevie, and it seemed to just come out of the blue. I bought "The Definitive Collection" cd, mainly for "Superstition" and "Higher Ground". I didn't recognize most of the other titles.

When I sat down and listened to the cd, I was surprised to discover that I was familiar with most of the tracks, and I was blown away by how good the songs were. Most of the up-tempo tunes have this infectious joy to them that you can't help responding to, and the ballads are great, particularly "My Cherie Amour", which has some of the best singing I think I've ever heard in a "popular" song. Stevie's phrasing and timing are uncanny. I am sure that he would have made a name for himself for his singing alone. But there is so much talent in this man that it's hard to know where to begin. I had no idea Stevie was a drummer, and actually played a great deal of the percussion parts on his albums. I always associated him with the piano or Moog synth. He's also an excellent harmonica player. As for his skills as a composer, his work pretty much speaks for itself; but it's the kind of talent that won't come across in all of it's glory just by dribbling out of a radio.

I suggest getting some Stevie Wonder music, preferably from that rich middle period from the early to mid-seventies, and listening to it on a very good system, with the volume as loud as you (and your system) can tolerate. If you aren't positively MOVED by the experience, if you can listen and somehow manage NOT to smile, and if you can somehow miraculously keep your head from bobbing in time, then my advice would be to seek medical attention as soon as possible.

Stevie Wonder has been going strong since 1963. He was a professional at the age of thirteen. I think it might be fair to say that Stevie is one of the greatest recording artists of the last forty years. I am very happy to have made his acquaintance, finally, and I am glad that, whatever come, Stevie Wonder's music will enrich the remainder of my days. What a mistake it would have been to have lived my life without ever really opening my ears to appreciate such a brilliant musical mind.

Thanks, Stevie, for finally getting through to me.

Popery and wooden shoes

I took the title for this entry from Thomas Paine. I have his "Rights of Man" beside me while I sleep. I may have the actual phrase wrong, but I'll check later. I like how it sounds, at any rate.

Just some quick comments about my last blog. My thoughts on Rand and her opinions about folk music (and other types of music) was taken rather badly at the forum in which they were posted. In fact, I don't think that anything I've said online was taken as badly, except perhaps that time when I defended my country against what I construed to be stupid bigotry and paranoia from other members at PFFA, who, as it happens, were mostly Americans themselves. I say "what I construed to be" because that very discussion, which took place well over a year ago, actually served to make me take a closer look at the people around me, made the glaring hypocrisies of many "Christian" Americans way more apparent than ever before, made me see their (non-rationally) self-centered stupidities in a whole new light.

One person at the Objectivism forum merely asked that I not use his name in a "post like that." He didn't offer any arguments (at least not as of this writing) to my essay. He was just obviously repulsed by it. It gave him an unclean feeling, and his not-so-fresh feeling washed all over me in a deluge of guilt. This always happens to me. I get guilty when I see that my thoughts have been met with contempt. But in this case, I feel secure in the knowledge that my comments were reasonable, as at least one member of the Objectivism forum pointed out in my defense.

No guilt this time. Objectivists are regarded as cultists by most people. I don't see them that way. I sincerely think that a great deal of the case against Objectivism is flatly erroneous; but the people at this board are of the Peikoffian branch of O'ism. They are orthodox O'ists. They regard O'ism as a "closed system" which is "not dogma."

Well, you can't have your cake and eat it too, as a certain someone might have suggested. Orthodox O'ists are an easily offended, excitable bunch, who are lousy at accepting criticism.