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I am undecided about the whole business of life after death. However, it is interesting how the voices of our dead loved ones speak to us beyond the grave. I distinctly heard my father’s voice this morning as I was reviewing recent posts on my blog.
“This is weird shit kid.”
“This is the garbage can of my mind,” I told him and not for the first time.
“I always had dreams of you becoming a writer.”
“I am in my own little way.”
“Yeah…but, what the hell is this?”
Have you ever wondered how many times you have to say something to a reasonably intelligent person before the light comes on?
“If I don’t take out the trash on daily basis it tends to pile up cluttering my mind,” I told him. “Untended it leaves no room for me to do any real work.”
“Well then,” said dad, “Where is this real work you keep talking about?”
Apparently he has been listening. I guess being dead doesn’t cure a father from busting his son in the balls from time to time, especially if he sees his life veering off course. On the other hand my life has been veering off course for years now. You would think I would have finally bumped into something and reset course.
“I am working on it.”
“You’re always working on it.”
*sigh*
“Son, I love you…”
Here it comes.
I am pretty sure he was about to start the litany of unfinished projects followed by the ones I had been planning for years but hadn’t bothered to start.
“Do you remember when you graduated high school and I told you that I wasn’t sure you had the temperament to work in a corporate environment?” Dad asked.
“Yes,” I replied. I remember that conversation rather well. I had never been what you might call a math genius, but I discovered an aptitude for accounting and by the time I had graduated high school I had taken all of the accounting courses, business math and basic business classes that were offered. Unlike many of the other classes I took I got mostly A’s and B’s. My father, who always had a kind word about my accomplishments and was quick to encourage me to do whatever I wanted to try, cautioned me against going to business school. This was the mid 1980’s personal computers were just coming on the scene and no one had even heard of the internet yet. An undergraduate degree in liberal arts was still considered a valuable tool for future career planning. In college your undergraduate years were for getting a well rounded education. Then, after you spent some years in the work force you went back to graduate school to specialize in something more apropos to what you were doing.
I chose philosophy with a minor in American literature. I frequently was asked what my major was and pretty much always getting the same response.
“Philosophy? What the hell you going to do with a degree in philosophy.”
My response was always the same.
“A philosophy degree teaches you how to think subjectively and analytically. It encompasses imagination, creativity and logic. It also includes ethics which is a valuable subject for anyone going into business.”
My mother was among my chief detractors. When I had finally stopped messing around at the community college level (Earning two, two year degrees in the process) and applied to the Evergreen State College in Lacey Washington my mother nearly flew off the handle referring to the school as a place for burn outs and unwashed hippie types.
I had chosen the school because I had been exposed at North Seattle Community College to a coordinated studies program that had been modeled after the teaching style at Evergreen. At the time it was also rated among the top teaching colleges in the state. Several of my favorite instructors in high school had attended and it was understood that given my temperament and aptitudes I was to become a teacher. The teaching was to support me while I struggled to become a writer.
I also went to high school journalism conference in the summer before my senior year and had fallen in love with the bucolic campus. Unfortunately, at 23 I was emotionally something of a late bloomer and still living with my parents and two youngest siblings. My mother’s unhealthy influence on my life undermined any opportunity and so that become a road not taken. Finishing my college education would be an enterprise left for later years.
The real reason for the philosophy major was existential angst. Life seemed absurd and often pointless at times. My Roman Catholic faith was no longer cutting it or providing any kind of solace. I was looking for answers, although I was careful to keep my questions to myself as well as my various opinions. Those who have met me in recent years would hardly recognize that in me as I tend to not hold back on either these days.
So I quietly maintained the ruse that my father had provided me regarding the value of a liberal arts education. Fortunately around that time AT&T had published the findings of an internal study they had been conducting. They had followed the careers of several of their top executives for several years and had learned that the executives with liberal arts degrees went farther up the ladder and made larger incomes than those with other types of degrees or who had no college at all. My philosophy professor at the time even handed out a list of 100 careers for people with liberal arts degrees. I had made copies of it and handed it out rather than defending my choice in majors. It was a way of quietly telling others, “In your face.”
Back then you could still attend college in pursuit of the truth or for the pure delight of learning and still garner a certain amount of reluctant respect even though you were still likely to be labeled a professional student. I hate that term – professional student. It completely devalues academic skills and inquiry. But, our commerce driven culture rarely values anything it can’t market and sell for a profit. Even God is bought and sold as a commodity and some people make a decent living at it.
“Well, son I take back what I said,” Dad replied, “You have planning to plan down to an art form. You should be capable of being successful at a corporate level, although your lack of profit accountability would make you more suitable for a state or federal job.”
My dad was a man of practicality in some ways. A job was how you paid the bills. It was what you did to build a life so that you could pursue other interests, such as writing. He also had vision. When it came to matters of business and economics his advice rarely stirred me wrong. In 1980 he came home with a Texas Instruments home computer. A tiny little affair that we hooked up to an old black and white television for a monitor and in order to program with it a cartridge with the basic language had to be plugged in. An old cassette recorder served as a tape drive and we covered over hours of music with the beeps, screeches and blips that was computer data.
“You both need to learn all you can about computers,” He told my brother and I, “This is the way of the future. Learn it or step aside.”
My brother Cory learned it and learned it well.
I stepped aside.
Partly due to my lack of math prowess and to the fact that my brother, who early on showed real brilliance and genius for the cyber arts, spent so much time at the tiny keyboard that that I gave up waiting for my turn. But, even then my interests in the areas of philosophy, religion and the occult were taking me down a different road.
“So is there a point to this dad?” I asked, “Or did you show up just to bust me in the balls today?”
“There is point. You are 42. You need to start living your life.”
I rolled my eyes.
“Seriously son,” he said, “Didn’t you tell me the last time I stopped by that I was too busy trying not to be my own father that I forget to live my life?”
“Yes. But, I am not busy not trying to be you.”
“We are more alike than you sometimes realize.”
That was true.
“You have a lot of unrealized dreams. Don’t die before you attempt at least a couple of them.”
My therapist recently told me that I was like a car with a powerful engine and drive train except that I was stuck in the mud and no matter how hard I stepped on the gas I was just spinning my wheels splattering mud everywhere. Reading between the lines: You are making a mess out of your life.
“You have a lot of ambition, energy and drive,” Dad said, “But you don’t have a direction for it. That’s why you always feel so tired. You waste all your energy and it tends to diminish into depression and anxiety.”
That was exactly what I was thinking. The dead have an astounding ability to read our minds. But, then human minds are simpler then we care to admit, at least the part of our minds that we identify with.
“You keep saying you can’t write because you have nothing to say, yes?”
“Yes.”
“Well how you are you ever going to have something to say if you don’t start living your life. Now why don’t you grab your laptop, your notebooks and hop in that land yacht you got parked outside and go get yourself a life.”
“That belongs to the devil. I am supposed to be working for him this summer.”
“That’s kind of weird,” Dad said.
I nodded.
Dad seemed lost in thought for a moment. Than his eyes blinked and he shuddered violently arms flailing as if he had been woken from a dead sleep by a sudden loud noise.
“Still, it’s an opportunity. Does he pay well?”
“I may actually get to keep my own soul if I don’t fail.”
“That’s good. Does he offer dental?”
I nodded.
“Well shit, you can’t turn your nose up at that. Do you know how hard it is to get a good dental plan these days?
“I am aware,” I said.
“Well there you are. Dental and your Soul that is way better then most corporate employees can hope for. It’s usually one or the other, often neither.”
How do you argue with that?
“I am hungry,” dad announced, “Lets get some lunch. I am really craving Chinese.”
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I have weird sex dreams. At least I think they are sex dreams. I would love to have them interpreted sometime, but I always stop short because I am afraid of what these dreams might actually say about me and my inner life. I get enough vitriol and spit in the face from Christians as it is. One dreamtime I spent copulating with a dwarf woman. Not a dwarf as in the Lord of the Rings, but as in a human being afflicted with dwarfism. Her face was that proto-typical standard of post modern beauty. She was super model beautiful but in miniature. She bore an uncanny resemble to former adult film actress, Bridget (a.ka. The Midget) Powers. I once attended a bachelor party where she was featured in one of the obligatory pornos shown that evening. It was very surreal watching this tiny, attractive woman get lanced by a very large and muscular man with an above average cock in both length and width. It makes you wonder how that is even possible, which may account for how she appeared in my dream. Generally dreams involving sexual penetration for me seem to take place in public. There is always people around which seems odd to me because in my waking life I am loathe to even be naked when I am home alone. My girlfriend likes it when I sleep naked next to her, but I don’t often accommodate her unless I am extremely hot. I usually compromise by staying in shorts but being bare-chested. Oddly, when I was younger I didn’t have this problem. Now, I can’t even look at myself in the mirror when I get out of the shower and I prefer to towel and dress in my darkened bedroom. But, during my dreamtime sexual encounters I am quite free except the sex is not about love or pleasure; rather, it is about needing to accomplish an important task in order to save myself or someone else. It’s about responding to a threat of danger. Sometimes unseen as in the case of my dwarf partner or, as last night, a seemingly real and observable threat such as the crystallization of the surrounding country side, but needed as it is, I enter into the act mindlessly and unwillingly. I would rather be doing something else. My encounter with dream Bridget was quite unique in that it felt quite tactile and I remember remarking on how “normal” her vagina felt as if I expected it to feel some other way. I remember Bridget laughing at me as well as an unknown woman who seemed to be my constant companion at the time. It is also interesting to note that the dreams end well before orgasm. Sometimes this is quite disappointing. If you are going to spend your sleeping hours traveling the inner universe having sex with multiple partners it would be nice to finish the job once in awhile. Interestingly my girlfriend was recently describing a sex dream she had and admitted that she was afraid to have sex in her dreams because it felt like she was cheating on me. How totally fucked up are the both of us? I tried telling her it’s just a dream and she should just enjoy the hell out of it. Last night I found myself in a broken down old school bus in the middle of some forest. The surrounding trees were becoming entrapped in giant ice and those of us on the bus were in danger of being trapped in ice as well. The next thing I know a bearded man removed his pants and revealed a vagina. But his vagina was made of ice or it was being blocked by a barrier of ice. I immediately mounted the ice mangina and started pushing myself through the ice. It was a bit uncomfortable, but I was able to break through and enter the vagina. During the act neither I nor the owner of the ice mangina could make eye contact. After Ice Mangina I went on to a woman sitting next to us and had to repeat the same act, except this time I could make eye contact. Perhaps the most disturbing sexual imagery that has ever appeared in my dreams happened in my early twenties. I found myself peering in through the kitchen window of my childhood home. It was deep night and I could feel the scratching of the fir trees that shielded the window from the late afternoon sun against my skin. The pine needles poking through my thin tee shirt like sewing needles. Sitting at the old Formica table was myself and across from me was the notorious Anton Le Vey, high priest of the Church of Satan. Le Vey was dressed in his typical costume. I could not hear what he was saying to me as I watched us from the window. But, I could see that I was listening intently and Le Vey was smiling warmly his teeth big and white surrounded by his goatee. I assumed he was expounding his spiritual philosophy. I felt quite comfortable with the infernal disciple of hell and that scared me. Suddenly my vision blurred and I found myself outside a building in downtown Seattle. It had been raining and the ground and air were damp. Jesus rounded the corner from seemingly nowhere wearing what I believed were the typical cloak and sandals of his era. He nodded at me and then proceeded to get into the back seat of a parked Buick or Oldsmobile to have sex with the woman who had been with him. She was dressed in modern attire. I remember seeing them going at it from the corner of my eye and I screamed in terror trying to erase the blasphemous imagery from my mind. I woke up at that point my sheets saturated with my sour sweat. I remember shivering violently in the dark terrified of what had occurred. At this point in my life I was still a marginal Roman Catholic and although I seldom prayed or attended mass the indoctrination of a vengeful God seeking to banish blasphemers to the agony of eternal damnation had me cowering alone in the dark. “You humans put way to much stock in your dreams,” Satan said to me after I had told him about the dream. “Let’s assume for a moment that God, as you understand him does exist, you have no control over the content of your dreams. It’s all subconscious. So whatever happens is not your fault” “Unfortunately, even if we are unaware of it we can still sin,” I replied, “There are the sins that we consciously commit. Think of those as acts of human will. Then there are sins we commit simply because of our fallen nature. Our dream content may be included.” “Bahhh,” said the Devil, “Theology is a waste of fucking time. Theology is a work of human imagination masquerading as a legitimate academic discipline. Give it up.” “I am not so sure that is true.” “Sure it is if you stop and think about it. Picture this. You create an imaginary friend…” “What’s his name?” “What?” “What is my friend’s name?” The Devil sighed deeply. “Let’s call him Bob,” he said, “So you make up this imaginary friend Bob. You can’t see Bob or really talk to him. But you talk to him anyway as if he was right there. But since you can’t see him you have to imagine his responses. So, even though Bob seems real to you no one else can experience him and they doubt your sanity. So what do you do?” “Theology?” “Exactly,” replied the Devil, “Or in this case its Bobology. You attempt to prove the existence of this non existent thing. But since you can’t take something from Bob to prove he existed you have to draw on the things around you and infer his existence from that. It’s abusrd. The whole concept of Bob is subjective. It’s only in your mind.” This reminds me of a quip from Clarence Darrow. “I don’t believe in God because I don’t believe in Mother Goose.” “Hey Rocky watch me pull a rabbit out of my hat,” The Devil said, his imitation of Bullwinkle perfect. “Again?” I replied chuckling, my Rocky the flying squirrel imitation less than perfect. “Nothing up my sleeves…” It seems to me to not be all that disturbed about the content of my dreams. There are no portents of change or mystical things to necessarily be learned. It’s the brain busy at work rewiring itself while you sleep. It shuts down certain neural pathways and strengthens others. It’s an amazing thing, the brain. We still understand so little of its amazing capabilities. There may be some truth to the archetypal wonders that many see in dream imagery, but I am not so sure.
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“Delicious.”
The Devil rattled the ice in his empty tumbler and stretched his long legs.
“I love a good Scotch in the morning,” He grinned snapping his fingers loudly. A short red demon in a tux came and refilled his glass.
“Are you sure you don’t want a snoot?”
“No,” I replied, “Recovering alcoholic. I will take a cup of coffee if you have any.”
“Of course we do. It would be truly hell on earth if we didn’t have any coffee.”
I nodded in agreement. The little red demon came back with a silver tray loaded with a carafe of coffee, delicate little china cup and a bowl of sugar. He set it down on the table beside my leather recliner.
“You know since you have given up drinking you are not nearly as fun as you used to be,” said the Devil.
I took the cup proffered by the demon and settled back into my chair.
“You need some vices. Vices are the spice of life, or is it spices are the vices of life? You’ve been around as long as I have you tend to forget some of the smaller details. Well…except vices are my stock in trade. I probably should look that up. But damn if I still don’t look good.”
That’s true. The Devil looked good. That was part of the attraction of the Prince of Lies. Most people have an image of a red skinned maniacal yellow eyed humanoid replete with horns, yellow eyes, cloven hoofs and a goatee. The goat-demon was a lie perpetrated by the medieval church looking to discredit Pan and / or several of his relatives depending on where you lived. The Devil found it amusing and used it to his advantage.
He has owned a small production company since the 1950’s and played a role in the creation of many B-horror movies. Hammer Studios even cast him as Dracula when Christopher Lee had to back out at the last minute due to a severe case of food poisoning. The food poisoning was less than accidental and Lee and the Devil had fought bitterly for years over the incident, but a contract with Hell is often iron clad and it sometimes requires you to endure minor inconveniences such as food poisoning. A Hammer Studio exec once had to endure an embarrassing case of the hiccups that occurred every time he tried to bed his girlfriend. Satan had his eye on her as well.
The Devil’s favorite movie by far was The Exorcist, a wholly exaggerated and hysterical treatment of the subject of demon possession in his opinion. But, it was quite the cash cow for him in the 70’s and 80’s and it did perpetuate the fear of hell, which almost always worked to his advantage.
Pan, for his part, has given up trying to undue the damage to his reputation. The Devil just saw it as the cost of doing business.
“The church was having attendance problems. People aren’t really likely to get up early on Sunday morning after a night of drinking, whoring and dancing by starlight. So I made a deal with the Vatican,” He had told me once.
“What kind of a deal?” I asked.
“I get the souls of 1/10th of their priests.”
“Wow! Tithing to the devil. That is kind of devious.”
“Guilty as charged,” The devil said as he bowed in mock humility. “The deal actually is working out to be quite a bit more than a 10th of their clergy. I manipulated the governments of the world to make pederasty illegal. Once that happened the number of clerical souls tripled. Then along came the Protestant reformation.”
Pope Leo X had reportedly been outraged. He had been infamous for his lavish parties that always culminated in little naked boys leaping from a cake prancing and cavorting about the dining hall to the amusement of the papal court. This seems distasteful and evil to post modern sensibilities but what can you really expect of a mind that conceived of selling indulgences to fill the empty church treasuries. Forgiveness of sin for money was big business and it allowed people to do what ever amoral and indecent thing they could imagine, including fornicating with the Virgin Mary (were it possible) and still be forgiven for it. It was a guaranteed passport to the New Jerusalem.
“Religion is a vehicle for commerce,” The Devil always likes to remind me. “It also lays waste to more souls than I could ever do, even with all the minions at my disposal.”
So you may be asking yourself, what is he doing talking with the Devil? That is a good question. Over the years he and I had enjoyed many long conversations about the meaning of life, the nature of God and the universe. Oddly after all these years I am an atheist. So do I believe in the devil? No! I don’t have to. I can see the devil. Its god that seems to be hiding from me and regardless of what you want to believe about the Prince of Darkness he is a created being just like you and me. He has no magical or supernatural powers. Satan is salesman. His only power is his ability to persuade. So the real question is whether or not he arises out of nature, as we do, or was created by some divine intelligence. I am siding with arising out of nature these days.
My relationship with Satan began while I was studying philosophy at Seattle University in the mid 1980’s. My neighbor, Jerry the Evangelist, whom you have met previously believes that my pursuit of philosophy while attending college twisted my mind to the truth. I disagree. I see it as the time of my liberation where I tossed off the fetters of my Roman Catholic mind and wandered naked into the forest of truth.
During this time my eyes were open to possibilities usually kept hidden from mortal eyes. When I wasn’t in class I could be found sipping pungent Turkish coffees outside my favorite coffee shop waxing philosophic with the likes of Albert Camus and Jean Paul Sartre. Occasionally Franz Kafka would stop by, but his insect phobia often forced him indoors even on the hottest and most stifling of days.
We would sit for long hours often until closing or an impatient Simone de Beauvoir, looking for attention, would smother my face between her Parisian Breasts. You wouldn’t think that the women who penned the seminal text on modern feminism would resort to such cheap stripper tactics. But, the French have a more cosmopolitan attitude toward sex and I was in my early twenties. Besides Jean, the hipster French intellectual that he was didn’t mind sharing. These were the years when the innocent boy became the man.
The Devil soon noticed our nearly daily meetings and invited himself to join us. He took an immediate liking to me and we became fast friends following the untimely death of my three compatriots. Sartre – self inflicted gunshot, Camus – car wreck and Kafka…well, Kafka one morning awoke to find that he had been transformed during the night into a giant cockroach. Unfortunately, that same morning his apartment had been scheduled for a routine fumigation. Looking back, I can see that my friend’s deaths seem suspicious. But, at the time bereft of their companionship I ate up the attention Satan lavished on me.
As to what I was doing in the Devil’s parlor this morning? I was not sure. He often called clandestine breakfast meetings. Usually something related to his “master plan.” I supposed today was not to be any different.
“Whatever happened to that first blog you used to write? What was it called? Pope on a Rope.”
He was referring to the very first blog I had several years ago titled Pope-On-A-Rope. It had started out as a tirade against the then, newly elected Joseph Ratzinger to the Holy See. It turned into a chronicle of the misadventures of my rather unique friend Br. Ezra P. Miracle and his associates.
“I had to delete it,” I replied. In a moment of pique I had ranted against the company who had taken over the firm I worked for and had once again screwed up my payroll. Several months later that little indiscretion came to the attention of the big boss who liked to Google™ the company name from time to time. Fortunately, for me big boss has ADD and I was able to delete the incriminating evidence without much further ado. My relationship to the company has improved over the ensuing years.
“That’s too bad. That was truly interesting stuff. I don’t know if you read your current blog, but blah, blah, blah, blahddee, blah blah,” said the Devil.
“So what is exactly is your point?”
“I want you to revive your old blog. Instead of writing about shit no one cares about, I want you to tell my story. You can call it Son of Pope-On-A-Rope.”
“What do you mean your story?”
“My life…my biography.”
“You want me to write a biography about you – the Devil – and you want me to call it Son of Pope-On-A-Rope?” I asked somewhat incredulously.
“Think of the title as a throwback to my Hammer Studio days.”
“Is that all?”
Experience taught me that there are no small favors with the Devil.
“I also want you to spread the news about my master plan as well.”
There it was.
“Yeah, I am sure the world wants to hear all about your ‘master plan’ to save the world.”
“The Christians get their plan and the atheists have theirs. I think it is only fair that I get to promote my ‘gospel’ as it were.”
“I am pretty sure the Christians aren’t going to be too happy with the Gospel According to Satan,” I said.
“Don’t worry about them. Those guys are always bitching about something it seems.”
So there it was. The Devil wanted to use our friendship to have me write his biography and share his plan to save the world. Friends though we were I just didn’t want to be his chief apostle. Unfortunately, Old Scratch seemed to read my mind and he pulled out the contract that I had been persuaded to sign all those years ago.
“There are options of course,” The Devil said, “There is always the hiccups or food poisoning.”
I just stared unblinkingly at him.
“No,” He continued, “How about coming down with compulsive masturbation syndrome.”
That would have been like high school all over again. No thank you very much.
“No. I’ll write your story.”
The Devil smiled his warmest politician cum Republican smile.
“That’s what I love about you. You are so reasonable. If everyone was like you then there would be no need for my master plan.”
“I am not sure the world needs more people like me.”
“Maybe not,” he said, “But look at it this way you get to drive my land yacht. That reminds me. There is one more thing…”
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I have noticed that the emerging political philosophy we are attempting to formulate in this essay has some serious flaws. These flaws are the result of two basic and conflicting attitudes I have about the role of government in the lives of the citizenry. The first attitude is that the government that governs best governs least. The second attitude is that the purpose of government is to protect the powerless from the powerful. The first is my ideal; my preference. The later is my reality.
I have always told my friends that I embrace a libertarian philosophy in life and politics. But, my distrust of human nature prevents me from wholeheartedly being a card caring libertarian. I concede a need for a certain level of social insurance. Perhaps, it is not my distrust of human nature, but my trust in it its self-interested outlook that pushes me to question the overall ethics of libertarianism.
I loathe capitalism. This prevents me from being a true libertarian as far as the Libertarian political party. Laissez Faire Capitalism leads to the abuse of the powerless by the owners of capital. However, when I talk of my hatred of capitalism I understand it to be that malignant mega-corporate capitalism of today and the ugly post industrial revolution capitalism that gave rise to the labor movement, Karl Marx and communism. I respect and appreciate the possibilities of free enterprise and its ability to free humanity from the bondage to subsistence living.
Recently we opined that Karl Marx is an example of how a revolutionary thinker can be brilliant and at the same time get it all wrong. Marx was an angry product of the abuses of his time. Marx was deluded. He also distrusted human nature to a certain degree and saw that the proletariat would need to engage in bloody revolution in order to overthrow the oppressors. But, he placed too much faith in human nature that the working class could establish a classless society of equality.
It seems that I have put the clichéd cart before the horse. Before we can discuss the art and practice of enlightened self-interest we need to look more closely at the ideal of society toward which we are working even as we may never realize it. Before we can discuss enlightened self-interest we need to formulate what this enlightenment will look like. We can’t practice something we can’t comprehend.
It is important that this does not make me a socialist although some will fear that it does. Socialism is tyranny through bureaucracy. It is to be avoided at all costs. But, if we are to reduce the role of government then we need to consider the moral zeitgeist under which we are operating. An enlightened person understands that true liberty doesn’t mean that I can do whatever I want, whenever I want. I have a moral obligation to consider the consequences of my use of liberty. I appreciate the need for revolution. But, violence often leads to collective psychosis and inhumanity.
Right livelihood or the meaning of work needs to figure into our inquiries. I believe we are already starting to see this happening in the United States. The recent economic crisis has turned up the heat. Since the 1950’s our economy was based on consumption. Today people are starting to think more in terms of sustainability. We are not talking just about resources and environment but something even more fundamental. The questions that these people are asking is what do I need to sustain my life and my family’s life and how shall I spend my day doing this? What do we truly need in terms of material comforts and how much time shall we spend securing them? And finally what is the good life?
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Part Two: Creating an Ethically Responsible Compassionate Society Using Libertarian Principals
The Problem of Human Nature & Ideologies
How do we change the world? I am addressing liberals and progressives. How do we change the world for the better? The real question may be who asked us to change the world? Not that the world couldn’t use some changing, but often it seems that our progressive meddling is filled with the hubris of the naïve. I am reminded of Reinhold Niebuhr, one of the great voices of 20th century progressivism, who late in his life criticized fellow progressives saying it was time for liberalism to grow up. Niebuhr believed that we were often unrealistic.
Those of us who identify as liberal, progressive or even green tend to view the world in terms of social justice and economic equality. We look out and see what is unfair and launch our derision toward the establishment and conservative voices often mistaking vitriol for passion. Yet, I wonder just how effective we really are. We preach to the choir but, seldom, it seems, make allies of those whose opinions differ. It is these relationships that we need if we are ever going to successfully achieve our agenda.
We often abdicate personal accountability and freedom of choice laying the mantle of guilt at the feet of the state and the wealthy. Not that there isn’t some guilt there. We also recognize that not everyone has the same freedom of choice that we enjoy in the United States. Post modern liberalism in its most extreme form tends toward the idea that the state should control the economy and distribution of resources and still afford us the highest level of civil liberty. It seems to mistake this as liberty. In many ways this extreme liberalism is as authoritarian as the neo-conservative movement we oppose and is equally as dangerous. The danger is in having government direct lives in any capacity. The more responsibility placed at their feet the more restrictions that will be placed on us as individuals. That may not be the intent, but it is often the reality. Bureaucracies are restrictive and controlling. It is in their very nature. They are also very difficult to change. Change is something that takes years and decades of frustrating work.
I have for many years now been convinced that we cannot change the world through politics or religion. These two great machines of human interaction create more division, more anger, more violence then they often ever resolve. The challenge to peace and social equality is human nature. Unless human nature changes, unless we somehow become collectively more enlightened we are going to still be waving our weenies at each other and having pissing contests against the wind.
Human beings are creatures of self-interest. Everything you think is true about morality and fairness has been taught to you through the religious and social zeitgeist of our particular culture. What you believe to be right or wrong are part of your indoctrination and as much as the religious authority protests to the opposite, is not necessarily universal across cultural lines. Religious morals are human laws stamped with divine authority to give them more credibility among the credulous.
We become what we learn. Each of us is a complicated mix of genetic destiny, environmental circumstances and social indoctrination. Then there is our individual temperament, which is more the result of these elements than something that appears on the tabula rasa of our psyches. We are not born defective or tainted. We arise out of nature and to nature we return. In the meantime we look to fulfill our self interest, avoid pain and increase our pleasure within the moral and ethical boundaries approved by the society we live in. Some live constrained lives within these boundaries to a greater or lesser degree of contentment. Others reach out beyond them. Some actually make things better, but many choose to live according to their self interest without regard to others.
Human nature is also gregarious. We tend to gather together in clumps of social units. From this concept we get the root word polis from which we derive such words as politics and metropolis. Aristotle’s famous observation that man is a political animal speaks to this very thing. We are a social animal. As self interested as we are we also need each other. Natural selection might well have favored those human ancestors who were able to override part of their self interest in order to collaborate with others for survival.
This aspect of human nature almost guarantees that unmindful of our condition we will approach the world at large with an us vs. them mentality. The Jew will continue to be God’s handpicked chosen ones, Christians will pit themselves against the non-believer and Muslim will wage jihad against the infidel. Republicans and Democrats, Liberals and Conservatives, and Socialist and Capitalist will butt heads adding their voices to the inescapable din of suffering and toiling humanity. The political landscape in our country is a cacophony of special interests each wanting their agenda to figure somewhere on the list of highest priorities.
This is the problem with ideologies and special agendas. They clash with other ideologies and other agendas. This is perhaps the greatest weakness of any democratic experiment. The larger and more diverse your population the larger and more diverse the agendas will be making it nearly impossible to reach a consensus. Even when a consensus is reached the opposition still attempts to overturn things and force things to their liking, in fact it may even be legitimate to ask if we ever actually reach a true consensus at all. I am not a big fan of democracy. But, then I am not a big fan of authority either and therefore democracy seems the best possible political system conceived of in an attempt to ensure liberty and justice for everyone. Paraphrasing Winston Churchill, the best argument against democracy is a five minute conversation with your typical voter…unfortunately every other form of government has been tried.
I am not suggesting that there shouldn’t be ideologies. I am just saying that we can’t put too much trust in their wisdom or efficacy. Ideologies allow us to hope. They allow us to conceive of better ways to live and better ways of doing things. They give us noble goals. But they don’t exist in a vacuum. They must change as new information presents itself.
The founders of our countries conceived of “liberty and justice for all.” They spoke and wrote beautifully that “all men are created equal” yet in the early days of our republic we still had a slave industry and women could not vote or sit on a jury. The ideal was laid out. But, we still had not achieved it. In order to get the Declaration of Independence signed a compromise with the Southern colonies had to be reached. As much as it galled John Adams and Benjamin Franklin to remove the anti-slavery language it was done to keep the South from walking out. We must pick and choose battles appropriately or we will never have a chance of winning the war. It took a civil war and the civil rights movements to help create equality for blacks. It took bold women who were willing to fight and protest for their right of suffrage. Even with all of these progressive steps forward the fight for equality and justice is still not won. The labor movement had similar struggles. But, they had all one thing in common. It took violence to create change. Even if they were not committing acts of violence it was still visited upon them.
This is what makes politics such a tricky game. This is why Obama’s rhetoric of ending “business as usual” in Washington has to be taken with a grain of salt no matter who passionately he may feel. Every career politician becomes seduced by the game and falls prey to this peculiar addiction. I call this the addiction of the will to power. Regardless of how sincere their intentions or how brilliant they are they will have to sleep with the enemy occasionally if they hope to get anything done. Even the most ethical politician becomes corrupted by the game even if they never take a bribe, cover something up or commit adultery. They have to be corrupted or they would never survive it. The will to power can be something as simple as the desire to change and influence the lives of other or the imperial dreams of an Alexander the Great. Human nature will always ensure that the end result stays the same.
It is interesting to read the rhetoric that comes across my desk in the form of emails and newsletters from the various progressive and liberal organizations that I follow. From the outset of the last presidential election I opined that Obama was not the darling of the progressive political element in this country. Judging from what I have been reading the past couple of months it would seem that I am correct.
Progressives see him as a sell out on issues such as health care or see him not doing enough to promote rights for gays. Still other progressive voices (and conservative ones for that matter) criticize his relative silence on the social unrest in Iran (We’ll have more to say on this at a later time). This is the downside to ideologies. The unrelenting gadfly nature of the morally outraged that cannot see past their limited vision of things whose constant haranguing undermines as much as it benefits.
This is that old bugaboo of self-interest coming in to play. On one hand these voices keep us aware of the deficiencies of society and its injustice. They are the clarion call forward for positive change and moral advancement. These voices raise our conscious awareness. But, in their self-interest they often are uncompromising. It’s all or nothing and they are often unwilling and even unable to build bridges.
A great example today is the struggle in the gay community to be given the legal rights and benefits of civil unions and the Christian conservative groups that vehemently oppose it often to the point of passing legislation banning same sex unions. The Evangelicals see homosexuality as a grave sin. Indeed it is recorded in their bible which they take as the inerrant word of God. Therefore it is as if God was speaking to them directly. Their fear of hell and God’s wrath makes it impossible for the gay community and their supporters to erect any bridges.
Gay marriage and transgender rights are seen by the Evangelical community as an assault on the culture and a threat to the nature of gender and procreation. It is an unassailable position of which there is no way to breach the wall erected by conservatives. Even the findings of medical science and psychology cannot override what they hear as the voice of God speaking to them. We see it as ignorance. But they see it as truth. Evangelicals mistake themselves as guardians of morality and decency. But, if you believe that your god will punish you for the sins of someone else, which is what they are saying whether they realize it or not, you will not reach them.
This is a great example of the downside of ideology. This example illustrates how closely held notions of right and wrong and good vs. evil actually create animosity, hatred and often times violence. While I would acknowledge the right of evangelicals to believe as they do, I also see that those who would run afoul of their moral machinations should have some basic protections against them. Here is another drawback to democracy. The consensus opinion is not always just (not that Evangelicals have a consensus necessarily). It is possible even in a democratic republic to use the legislative process to oppress others who may not be in the majority.
So in wrapping up this section of our essay we have really raised question and pointed out problems. The question that remains to be answered is can we, despite human nature and our differing ideological opinions, create a morally competent society that is just and compassionate? At the outset we mentioned that politics and religions create more harm and that they are often barriers to change.
Knowing what we do about human nature it is unlikely that we can overcome our need to gather in clumps and express ourselves through ideologies. So we must attempt to change human nature. Can it be done? If so can it be done ethically? Is it even possible to change human nature? Not in en masse. This change is going to require the vision and commitment of brave individuals.
The history of human civilization is the history of empire. It is the history of the strong and powerful exerting their will over the weak. It is also the history of the weak attempting to resist and throw off the yoke of oppression. If human nature doesn’t change then this situation will not change either. This is where we will turn our focus to.
To be continued…
Part Two: Creating an Ethically Responsible Compassionate Society Using Libertarian Principals
The Art and Practice of Enlightened Self Interest
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Libertarians are the True Liberals
Libertarians are the classic liberals. They may be fiscally conservative but they are socially liberal. Both attitudes bespeak of keeping the government out of our lives as much as possible. I am of the opinion that the majority of the voting public espouses these two attitudes – socially liberal and fiscally conservative. We want to live our lives without the interference of other people. Live and let live is the best way to describe us. You don’t bother or hurt me and I will respect you likewise.
The minority on the right and on the left are just louder than we are. That’s why many are fooled into thinking that they have more influence than they do. But, unlike the majority of us the political extremes aren’t just content to sit in their arm chairs waxing political with friends and families. They are out working and working hard. Both sides are fighting for the souls of the American public. This is where their power comes from.
Don’t be fooled. We are in the middle of a cultural revolution in the United States. Perhaps we have always been. In the 60’s it was about civil rights. Today it is about separation of church and state, civil liberties and issues of moral independence. It’s also about economic equality. Reforming forces to the left and the right do have good ideas to be sure. But it is important that those of us in the middle – the live and let lives – keep the extremes accountable.
The Need to Embrace an Ethos of Accountability to Ensure Liberty
Accountability! There is a bugaboo for you. Both sides fling it at each other like monkey’s flinging pooh. The Conservatives say the individual must be accountable. The left says its government and corporations. Both simplify it. But both are correct. However, you can’t have communal accountability. You can’t have corporate or government accountability without individual accountability. The two go hand in hand. Every community is made up of individuals.
My conservative friends and family always cry that the biggest problem in our country today is the lack of personal accountability. Everyone seems to blame everyone else for their problems or societies problems at large. We call each other stupid, misguided and even evil. Yet we seldom look at our own stupidity or evil. We can justify anything in the name of our cause. No one is really listening to anyone else. We preach to the choir, but we seldom persuade those who oppose us of the merits of our arguments. We just keep fighting. Voices get shrill and our once well intentioned passion becomes vitriol. Vitriol leads to violence. Our problems become worse.
Individual accountability is indeed a libertarian or liberal value. There can be no honest discussion of liberty without it. Conservatives need to put the “conserve” back into conservative. They need to show more responsibility with resources and a willingness to be better stewards or our economy and environment. Liberals need to stop expecting the government to provide for everyone. There are no guarantees in life and it is not necessarily empathetic or wise to rely on governments to fill in the gaps. Beaurocratic charity always dehumanizes. It never, or rarely ever, empowers anyone to do better.
A certain amount of social insurance is a good idea. Medicare, social security, even some form of universal health care. I embrace these as good ideas, at least theoretically, and they should be strengthened, improved and even reformed if necessary. But, these should be safety nets not catch alls. In many ways Europe is slowly trying to move away from its socialist leanings. Although, it is a long hard struggle and the EU is making it next to impossible. Unemployment is generally high in the EU, some countries like France is a little higher and in Denmark it can be below the norm. To understand this trending you need to look at the last 15-20 years to appreciate it. The inclusion of many former Eastern bloc nations is only increasing the problems.
We need to ensure that the authoritarian voices to the left and the right do not usurp our liberty. This is going to require personal accountability and a commitment to living ethically by the libertarian principals of our forefathers who knew only to well the pain of living under the boot heels of the powerful.
Is America perfect? No? Do we cause our share of the world’s problems? Sometimes. But, we need to get off this “It’s all America’s fault” soap box. That doesn’t mean we shouldn’t criticize our government. We are here to keep it accountable and to stump for change when needed. The nations of the world are sovereign from us and are most often the cause of their own problems. It’s foolish to think we can export democracy or force change. Many of the worlds sovereign states are failed sates. Many of them just south of the United States.
This is one of the central issues of the so-called illegal immigration problem. Incidentally Libertarians are opposed to much in the way of immigration controls. If America is to be a free and open republic then all who are willing to come and embrace our ideals must continue to be welcome. Libertarians generally have no problem with amnesty. But, welfare for immigrants is another issue. This is where the left gets a little queasy. Libertarians and most conservatives, view welfare as handouts that should be dispensed with and giving aid to illegal immigrants is, in a way, akin to supporting the failure of other states, such as Mexico by making it possible for the least educated and skilled to come across our border to get aid.
Personally, I feel the issue is a little more complex than this, at least morally. I have no issue with people escaping bad situations and striving for something better. In fact I want to encourage it. But, only as part of a well oiled machine in which all are striving for better and are contributors to the society as a whole. I am not sure we should punish those whose only real crime is to be in this country without legal sanction. If larger crimes are being committed, then yes, for those crimes they must be held accountable as any of us would. But, I am not willing to allow poverty to be an excuse. This brings us back to accountability and living with the understanding that there are no guarantees. Poverty may fore others to commit criminal acts of desperation. But, nonetheless they cannot be excused.
My Ethical Dilemma
The question many might ask for me is if not the government then who? My answer might differ depending on the day. I am not always sure if I am a libertarian minded person or a left leaning socialist type. Most of the time I am libertarian though and I would mostly likely respond with a question of my own. Why should the government be responsible for providing for others?
I started this piece with left handed praise for Karl Marx. That is because in my late teens and early 20’s I was something of a devotee, although it is questionable if I truly understood his ideas properly. However, I can look around the world and see the fall out.
But in my youth and in my distrust of human nature and its unrelenting greed made it seem to me that social justice and economic equality could only be achieved through the implementation of socialist principals. But, the current events of the day demonstrated that socialist regimes were far less concerned with human rights an individual liberty then our own country. Socialism speaks of equality, but it’s a forced equality. It kills opportunity as it attempts it to create it. In the most extreme cases it forces those who are more capable to pick up the slack for those who are less able or willing. That is, at least, the argument that many conservative apologists have used.
But, what is wrong with a society that takes care of its own? What’s wrong with making sure that everyone has the basic necessities and that the weakest and least capable among us are protected and cared for? The unequivocal moral answer is nothing at all. The question remains is who’s responsible.
I would say the answer lies in all of us, but not at the government level.
To Be Continued…
Creating an ethically responsible and compassionate society under Libertarian Principals.
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Conservative voices are becoming shrill. They are becoming louder and more hysterical. Ann Coulter is convinced there is a conspiracy to silence Christian voices. Coulter sees a homosexual cabal working with a consortium of liberal humanists and politicians who are threatening the religious freedom of Christian conservatives. Watch out! The whump-whump-whump you hear is the rotor blades of the mysterious black helicopters that will soon rain down the swine flu vaccine in a fine, inescapable mist upon the hapless U.S. citizenry. Yes, Rush Limbaugh actually intimated that the swine flu pandemic is a conspiracy. It’s really a conspiracy to turn our upstanding young Christian men and women gay. But those of us who are humanists don’t want you to know that. Please get your vaccine when it becomes available. The most disturbing rhetoric coming from the far right is their blatant and inaccurate depiction of a homosexual agenda and the forced silence of Christian pastors everywhere. Simpleton Pat Boone has added his voice to clarion call of the righteous. Boone’s recent article Christians Here Come the Lions for WorldNetDaily suggests a harkening back to the persecution of the early Christians with a metaphorical tossing of believers to the lions. The lions being the secular humanists, homosexual activists and Fortune 500 companies who are all doing the bidding of the ACLU. The ACLU, those evil bastards who ensure that civil liberties are protected for all Americans, including right wing Christians too, how dare they. Coulter and Boone both state that liberals and secularists are trying to silence Christian voices. That may be true. I know quite a few militant atheists who would like to see that happen. However, most secularists and atheists I know actually believe in upholding a Christian’s right to believe and say what they wish. Christians have been trying to silence the voice of humanists and nonbelievers since the Church took power. The Scopes Monkey Trial comes to mind. So they really have no cause to bet the first to cast stones. First of all there is no homosexual cabal. There is no secret homosexual agenda. The only agenda is a demand for equal treatment under the law – the same rights that heterosexuals enjoy in respect to marital unions and raising of families. There are no queer death squads looking to hit your children with a magic fag stick turning them into raving queens or bull dykes. Homosexuality just doesn’t work that way. You are or you aren’t. The fight over California’s ban on gay marriage is a fight over equal rights not special rights. Pat Boone’s allegations that this new liberal trend is a threat to all Christian’s constitutionally guaranteed separation of church and state is erroneous. In fact it is generally the religious right in this country that threatens the first amendment. Senator Forbes and company have recently created resolutions to turn 2010 into the year of the bible and others to designate May as a month commemorating what they see as the spiritual heritage of this country. It makes you wonder how they might respond if a group of Muslims wanted 2011 to be the year of the Koran. How about a month to celebrate the principals of humanism or the Vedic scriptures, you can bet that there would be massive squawking from the Christian right and much obscurantist quoting of the bible in condemnation. Here is the crux of the problem for Boone and Coulter. They are homophobes and they are afraid that if we allow gays to have rights they will no longer be allowed to preach out against them. They are afraid that jackbooted government thugs will kick in their church doors and drag righteous pastors off to jail just for speaking the word of God. Interestingly no one would dare suggest you preach out against blacks or any other ethnic minority from a pulpit. No one seems afraid that protecting the civil rights of others would cause a pastor to be jailed. Christians rail against so-called hate crime legislation. If you are loving Christians then you have nothing to worry about. First of all hate crimes are pretty specific. Acts of violence against a person because of gender, ethnicity, religion or sexual orientation are hate crimes. In fact, I would go so far as to say any act of violence directed at another individual without provocation is a hate crime. A civilized society should have sanctions against these. They should protect those who are vulnerable against those who would harm them. Here is where it gets murky. There is no law that says I have to like someone or that I can’t be a racist or a bigot. My free speech guarantee even permits me to speak and write as I choose. However, if my words incite someone to violence against a minority then a larger question must be asked and answered. Did my words incite hate? Did someone else use the words I spoke or wrote as justification to harm another? When James Madison penned the 1st amendment he did not see it as existing in a vacuum. Common sense and decency still apply. My freedom of speech and religion does not protect me from others who might criticize my actions or speak against me. It gets down to personal accountability. Something that our conservative Christian friends say they appreciate. Yes, the person committing the act of violence is accountable for their deed. They should be in every way. But, so am I for what I said or wrote. With rights come responsibilities. I may have the right to speak and believe as I choose, but that does not make me immune to the consequences of my actions. Christians who act responsibly (and most do) have nothing to worry about. The challenge that the gay community faces is that speaking about equal rights for them, which should not even be questioned, hits a brick wall when talking to Evangelical Christians. We are dealing with a group who sees the bible as the inerrant word of God. The bible is God’s voice to humanity. If God says that homosexuals are an abomination then they are and that is the beginning and end of the argument. There is no way for those of us with more moderate or liberal voices to get around that. We are having two different conversations using two different languages. It doesn’t matter that Jesus is not reported offering an opinion on gays, although given the company he kept I would venture to say he would have befriended them. Paul offered his opinion in his epistle to the Romans. Paul was Jewish and was drawing on his knowledge of the Torah which forbids homosexuality. Saying that anti-homosexuality has few or scant references in the bible is like saying free speech is only mentioned in the first amendment and therefore isn’t to be taken seriously. The evangelicals take it seriously. Christianity is first and foremost an evangelical religion. It is about taking the good news to every corner of the earth. Jesus and Paul both exhorted that the Word of God gets preached everywhere at all times. Most evangelical Christians don’t really hate gays so much as they really believe they are doing the right thing. They believe they are being directed by God to act in this way. Religious belief is an unassailable tower. Rational thought and medical science will not convince a person fully convicted in their faith otherwise. Evangelical Christians see the issue of gay rights and the rights of transgender and transsexual people as an assault on our culture and on decency. They base their beliefs on an ancient piece of writing that does not have the benefits of modern medical science and psychology to enlighten it. They are anti intellectual, but then a religion that claims god gave them a rational mind and proceeds to chide everything we learn as the foolishness of the world cannot expected to be anything other. Pat Boone needs to rethink his position. Indeed all Christians do. How can a group who routinely lobbies against another group of people, discriminating against them and introducing legislation that denies them rights and marginalizes them even dare to cry when they imagine their rights being taken from them? It’s absurd. Enforcing the separation of Church and State is not the same as introducing legislation banning Christianity. Perhaps, its time we do.
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The Roots of Liberty
This is my dilemma. I am a Libertarian trapped in a Socialist’s body. It’s interesting that to be a libertarian today is to be considered to be far right. Yet, in my mind the far right is the more authoritarian side of the conservative spectrum. It’s filled with Neo-cons, religious conservatives and, in extreme cases, fascists. Those who espouse a more libertarian political philosophy have a distrust of authority. They want the government to be small and exercise little influence over their lives.
Libertarian ideals were the guiding light of our nation’s founders. These ideals informed the writing of the constitution and the creation of our three branched federal government. As flawed as the U.S. government is, I am still awed by how brilliant it is and how well it works despite its flaws.
The opening line of the Declaration of Independence could not have been formulated except by men that espoused libertarian concepts. The second paragraph where it is stated by the undersigned, “that we hold these truths to be self-evident that all men are created equal” (et al) could have only been envisioned by men who were libertarians in every sense of the word and is proof of what our founders wanted to create in a democratic republic. Even though they left out women’s suffrage and the abolition of slavery, but morality is always a progression. First we have the ideal then we struggle to reach it. But the ideal has to exist first.
Liberty is the root of the word Libertarian. Liberty was what the founders of our nation were all about. Despite their association with the far right Libertarians were the original liberals. Unfortunately, Karl Marx irrevocably altered how we view liberal vs. conservative. Since the 19th century we have been struggling with socialist ideals masquerading as liberal.
The fiscally conservative nature of right leaning libertarians such as the Libertarian Party is what lends to this view of libertarians as being far right. But, in truth, to be fiscal conservative is to be liberal. True liberalism embraces a distrust of government authority this includes the collection of taxes and regulation of free enterprise. Our nation’s founders wanted to keep the role of government small – provide for the common defense and keep the wheels of commerce rolling. Everything else becomes problematic.
Every time we ask or expect the government to step in it comes at a great price. It comes with taxes and restrictions. That is what a regulation is. Each time someone on the left cries, “There ought to be a law” they are asking for a restriction to be placed on you and me. That is not necessarily a bad thing. But let’s not call it liberal. It is no more liberal than Rush Limbaugh or Ann Coulter is a liberal. Regulations are authoritarian regardless of what side of the spectrum they come from – left or right.
Sometimes laws do need to be passed. Sometimes we do need regulations and restrictions. The insurance and banking industries are good examples. So is anything related to the securities, investments and the stock exchange as the temptation to abuse and take advantage is almost too overwhelming for so many. The civil liberties act of 1964 is another example. But, generally laws such as these engender liberty. They are about ensuring freedom and equality for all people. They are as important as the bill of rights attached to our constitution.
Laws seeking to ban the rights of same sex couples in marriage or the right of survivorship are the antithesis of liberty. Republicans, who once upon a time led the call to equality for ethnic minorities over their Democratic brethren, should be ashamed of themselves for continuing to support such heinous laws. It was the working class whites of the Democratic Party who saw equality for minorities as a threat. Things have changes in the past 40-50 years as we can all see.
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Part 1: Exploring the Roots of Liberty, Personal Accountability and Other Business
Karl Marx is proof that you can be a brilliant thinker and a brilliant theorist but still get it all wrong. Well, maybe not all wrong, but his economic theory doesn’t bear up under the burdens that a society places on it. I am not sure how many more colossal failures the world has to give as example before Western born leftists get a clue. That is the problem with the intelligentsia. Theories sound great, often grand, on paper but they don’t always pan out in their execution. Any construction foreman can you tell you that. Sometimes the architect’s plans don’t work and have to be adjusted.
The former Soviet Union is a prime example. They were once the epitome of the Socialist world. The quality of life of a Soviet citizen (i.e. party member) was much better then anywhere else in the Eastern bloc nations or China. Forget Cuba. Cuba has been a shithole under the rule of Castro and will continue to be so. Yet the Soviet Union collapsed. When the Iron Curtain fell the world peered into a broken down empire that was little more than a rusty bucket of bolts. The Chinese are much smarter than the Soviets. They are learning from their failures and are now experimenting with free enterprise even while trying to stay true to the socialist revolution.
The Soviets, in many ways, were smarter than we were here in the west except in one way – economics. Governments are poor stewards of resources. They cannot be trusted to use capital in wise and useful ways. Central or planned economies will always fail because of the restrictions placed on them. Those restrictions make growth difficult.
In the back of my mind I can hear the voice of my inner socialist sneering at me. He is quick to point out the recent failures of our own economic system here in the United States. I agree. Our present corporate capitalist system is broken. It has turned our free enterprise based free market system into an oligarchy. The few have all the resources and the rest of get table scraps. I am not convinced that this diseased system of ours can be reformed adequately. I appreciate and respect free enterprise and free markets. Unfortunately, I have a distrust of the capitalists that come along with it.
Ah…the vicissitudes of life, my grandmother used to say with a chuckle. She borrowed this from a much beloved friend from her youth who had her share of ups and downs to deal with. Each time life overwhelms me I remember my tiny little, cotton haired Irish Catholic grandmother. I remember her laughing and hugging me. She barely cleared my belly button in stocking feet. It’s amazing the power that grandmothers have. The world seems to be going to hell in a hand basket. But don’t get my sainted Irish Grandmother started on hell or hand baskets. She has seen plenty of both in her 97 years on earth. I suppose that is how she learned to chuckle at the vicissitudes. After all nothing lasts for ever. Where are all these clichés coming from? I suppose it’s a feeling of nostalgia…a longing for better times and better situations that find me sitting out on my deck with a delicious cup of Peet’s coffee watching a lone bee industriously flit about the flowers of my tiny deck garden. Somehow sitting out here among my flower pots and hanging trellises the world seems okay. However, the minute I go back inside and sit down in my home office the chill reality of 2009 will blast me in the face like the fires of hell. Fire and Ice. Both are tremendous powers that bend the material world to its will. The sunflowers are coming in nicely. This past weekend I threatened to run down the hill into Nebraska to start a sunflower farm where I could plunge my hands in the dirt and reconnect with something more solid and real. The ephemeral world of politics, economics and religion gone awry that is beamed into my home via cable and internet left far behind. I even did something unheard of. I turned off my computer. I didn’t watch television. I had a real weekend for a change. Let the dead bury their own so said the master. Frankly, the world isn’t any worse a place now then it was during my grandmother’s lifetime or even in the life of the master Jesus. Human nature hasn’t really changed. We are still creatures of self interest. Our self interest colliding into the self-interest of others until animosity turns to hatred, hatred turns to violence and violence to all out war. Nations rise and fall. Empires are built and crumble. Prophets are born, preach and die – many murdered because they dare speak against the status quo. But the tribe of humanity persists. We are still here warping nature and each other to our own self-interest. The only thing that has changed is that there are more of us these days. We are crowding on top of each other and sticking each other in the ribs with our elbows at an alarming rate. We procreate without thought of consequence. In this way we are like rabbits. But at least the rabbit has natural predators that will help keep their population down. That is unless humanity kills the predators. Our only natural predator is the virus, which we fight without compunction using the arsenals of science, and each other, who we exploit through economics and technology. Technology, that also has changed, my grandmother grew up riding in a horse and buggy and lived to see not only men land on the moon, but the creation of an international space station. Both my grandparents talked in awe about the wonders they had seen. Wonders that each succeeding generation takes more for granted. The youngest among us take cell phones, internet and portable computing devices as a fact of life. Sadly, man’s greatest technological achievements seem to outpace our moral capacity to cope with them. The Military seeks to weaponize it, and Capitalists seek to turn into profits - something that can be consumed by a diverse market place. Sexual predators hunt chat rooms looking for children to exploit and teenagers send naked pictures of themselves to their friends via their cell phones not thinking of the humiliating consequences until it is too late. Sexting they are calling it these days. But, how are children going to know any better when the adults supposedly supervising and protecting them don’t seem to? The media falsely portrays their peers as if they were 40 year old sociopaths in these damnable teen soaps. I don’t believe in the ancient predictions of apocalypse. The only angry God is the ego of humanity that may just succeed some day in wiping us off the face of the planet. If the battle of Armageddon happens it will be because humanity has willed it. Then again it might happen tomorrow if some multinational conglomerate finds a way to exploit it for profits. I guess you get what you pay for. There is another cliché for you. But sitting here on my deck among my flowers I believe it doesn’t have to be this way. It’s a deep down belief in the core of what some might call a soul. Its knowledge of a better way – a better way that I can’t articulate easily into words, it always seems just barely out of grasp. I brush it with the tip of my mental fingers. I am no prophet. This is no special knowledge. Many people seem to have this understanding. That may be why so many turn to religion, philosophy or politics. They are looking for a way to bring this universal truth out into the open. Unfortunately, this only creates ideology and that leads to disagreement. Even non-violent protestors are violent. You don’t have to fire a gun to be violent. Violence is a disorder of the heart. Then again you can’t win a revolution if you don’t point a gun. I like revolution. I like every bloody, violent moment of it. Gandhi was a pussy and had very little to do with Indian independence. The Brits left after it was no longer economically viable to maintain an empire. Colonial systems faded into history at the end of World War I. By the end of World War II Great Britain had other priorities. Gandhi was a catalyst. Al Capone sagely observed that you could do more with a kind word and a gun, then a kind word alone. Words of wisdom for the wouldbe revolutionary to contemplate. I am an anarchist, at least in theory, but I don’t trust human nature enough to take that final step. I am a confirmed bachelor. True anarchism requires a highly developed sense of ethics and an enlightened self interest. Most of us are too selfish to pursue our lives while considering the impact our actions may have on planet and fellow human. Unfortunately, at least for now, we need some form of government - but, not too much government. I find myself in the middle of the old argument is human nature basically good or evil? I find the liberals rather naïve in their refusal to acknowledge evil of any kind. It’s the worst sort of wishful thinking to believe that people are basically good and given the right circumstances will do the right thing. People who know better, do better. The gospel according to Oprah Winfrey… Unfortunately, plenty of people who know better are the worst among us. I also find the conservative notion that everything is split along epic lines of good vs. evil to be cynical and incorrect. They see human nature as corrupt and weak. We are prone to evil and need God, scriptures and the establishment to keep our nature in check. Human nature is self interest. We are equipped to survive. Morality comes from our ability to override some of our self-interest for a common goal or set of goals. Natural selection favors the gregarious human – the person who is able to live and play well with others. Together we thrive and as individuals we flounder except for the most rugged and resourceful of us. Maybe God has something to do with morality. Maybe he doesn’t. I am suspicious of all ideologies – secular or sacred. They tend to erode into political agendas and partisan bickering. Ideologies divide the world. The true believer is a scary motherfucker. The true believer imposes his or her sick dream onto unwilling participants. Their ideologies interfere with my inherent need to pursue life, liberty and happiness. This is the anarchist’s dilemma. Rejecting ideologies is an ideology of its own. It’s also the most foolish of ideologies. It is the quintessential libertarian position. Humanity unencumbered. Given, the present state of human nature it’s also chaos. Ideologies are for meaning seekers not meaning makers. Let that be the basis of your ideology. Ideologies are for those who can’t stare into the abyss. It’s for those who have not yet grown out of their fear of the dark. The meaning seekers see the challenges and pitfalls of life. They shout “there ought to be a law.” They want laws They accept restrictions – mostly restrictions placed on other people. They want to banish fear. But to banish fear is to quit living altogether. Laws bring order to be certain, but they don’t abolish fear. They serve fear. I prefer the meaning maker. I prefer the person who faces their fear and creates a life of personal meaning at the behest of no one but themselves, but can still consider the needs of others with empathy. These people often know what it means to be of service. These meaning makers know that meaning changes from moment to moment. Meaning isn’t static because life is not static. Meaning can be larger than life at times or as simple as watching a bee flit industriously from flower to flower in a small deck garden.
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Do you know the difference between a martyr and an idiot? A martyr never chooses to be ostracized. A martyr does not deliberately choose suffering or death. He or she simply stays true to their convictions despite the current worldview. When the naysayers and the guardians of the status quo persecute them they attempt to stay true to their faith the best they can. They stay true to their inner voice, their convictions because to do otherwise would be to betray them. If imprisonment, torture or death result then so be it as long as it works toward the greater good and benefits another. The Martyr is a quiet, consistent voice against the evils that we inflict upon each other. They witness for change. The idiot is a loud and contentious fool steeped in naïveté and is a prisoner to their own ego and delusions of grandeur. They choose the conflict. They choose the beatings with night sticks and being bombed with tear gas. They stand in front of tanks and antagonize the “evil empire” mistaking their actions as being a tool of change. They chant tired slogans and couch their language in pseudo spiritual jargon as they are dragged off to jail and stand before judges. They misunderstand the true purpose of civil disobedience. The fool gladly gives up their life for no good reason. The fool, heart filled with liberal outrage, dying anonymously with bullet wounds or a slit throat floating face down in a South American river is no different then the most ardent jihadist who straps bombs to himself and walks into a crown of unsuspecting people. Both have violence in their heart. Neither will change the world because their own hearts remain unchanged at the moment of their death. A martyr has integrity. A fool has none. A martyr allows his or her beliefs and convictions to be informed by sound rational thought and the facts even as their inner heart is straining to hear the voice of God. A fool mistakes the voice of their ego as the voice of God. A martyr prays listening for the small still voice of God. A fool prays in lip service using long litanies of platitudes. A martyr’s life changes the world, sometimes slowly, but always because their witness connects us to our common humanity and focuses an intense light on our cruelty and injustice. A fool causes those who would seek change to turn their backs on the cause and people will harden their hearts. The evil empire will always quiet their voices. A martyr’s voice is the thunder of silence. A fool is an incessant and irritating buzzing like a mosquito that won’t leave you alone. A martyr is a true witness, as the name implies, and that voice will only be ignored for so long.
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Arius vs. Augustine: The Birth of a Shame Based Theology.
Part One: The Divinity of Jesus and a God of Love.
Christianity is a shame based religion. Theologically this is one of its principal failings. It posits a relationship with a god that is ultimately the very definition of co-dependence and therefore very unhealthy. But, what else can you expect of a religion that teaches that every human life is born under a death sentence due to the indelible stain of original sin?
I have a difficult time reconciling the statement that “God is love” with a God that requires the blood sacrifice of animals to quench the fires of his immense rage. But, as Moses tells the Israelites, “Our God is a consuming fire.” (Deut 4:24) This is a very chilling image and one that is as far from love as one can get. Because this fire of god consumes everything in its path and it doesn’t make distinctions.
During Passover the Israelites had to sprinkle blood over the thresholds of their homes so that the fire of God would pass over their homes and not kill their first born. In its rage it seems unable or even unwilling to distinguish between them and us; Egyptian and Israelite. This is not the god of love and mercy. This is a blind rage. This is also the power that created the universe and everything in it. We should expect nothing less than raw, brutal power. We rightly tremble before it.
In ancient Judaism the blood of an innocent lamb or ram had to be sacrificed in order to obtain a pardon of one’s offenses against God – a god who would later require that his only begotten son be murdered in cold blood for all humanity to gain salvation and eternal life. This is a very disturbing notion to say the least. First of all mercy can only be obtained through the suffering of an innocent person not guilty of any crime, and secondly it is human sacrifice – a practice forbidden by the same god requiring it.
This concept belies any image of a just or merciful God. If God was just he would not have punished his only son. If God was merciful he would have pardoned the offenses of his creation and moved on. Mercy in this sense is the willing override of serving justice. Justice demands that every iota of the law be carried out to the letter – that every crime be punished. But, mercy understands that this is often way too burdensome for a frail human being to fulfill. Mercy allows for redemption. Redemption serves love.
My suspicion is that the story of Jesus’ divinity is a myth. If such a teacher existed then he was a mortal man who was an irascible revolutionary with an intense dislike of authority and a man with tremendous compassion for the outcast. His execution was the result of his rebelling against the religious authority and their fear that it would bring the wrath of the Roman Empire down upon them. Societies often sanction such people and these people often lose their lives. Change is slow and difficult in the course of human affairs. Fairness and justice a dream – a dream our founding fathers articulated on paper, but one we are still working on achieving. Think slavery and women’s suffrage and go from there.
The history of Christianity is the history of a quasi historical person of whom we have no direct evidence of, and the archetype of the resurrected Christ, which is an expression of humanities deepest spiritual longing. We fear the end of mortal existence and we long for our lives to have some meaning no matter how paltry it may seem. We are really talking about two different Jesus’, perhaps even more when you consider the innumerable theological disagreements that existed in the first few centuries of the Churches history.
Biblical prophecies are always interpreted after the fact. Jesus did not meet the standard litmus test for a messiah and therefore we can picture the faithful pouring through the religious texts of their time trying to find a way to fit their beloved teacher into the messiah mold. Jesus had to be divine in order for it to work. Even Paul acknowledged this stating that if the story of Jesus’ resurrection was not true then the apostles were foolishly laboring under a lie.
But not everyone saw Jesus in this light. Arius was one such unlucky soul who questioned the divinity story of Jesus. Arius was a Christian priest who lived between 250 -336 C.E. He was denounced as a heretic by the First Council of Nicea and then exonerated. After his death he was condemned once again as a heretic.
The implications of a strictly human Jesus make him easier to understand and much more relevant to the human condition. A man, who is human in all ways but in capable of sin, as I was taught as a young Catholic, is not accessible nor does he truly understand the frailty of the flesh even though Satan supposedly tempted him. If he was sinless then his victory over the deceiver is a foregone conclusion.
If we remove divinity from Jesus and allow our selves the luxury of interpreting him under a more humanist light we have a more sympathetic character. We also have a god, not requiring his only son to become a blood sacrifice, thereby making him more merciful and loving. Interpreting Jesus is tricky. We have only the gospels to rely on and there sometimes contradictory images of the man. It is impossible to understand if we can truly hear anything remotely close to his authentic voice.
I tend to see him as a revolutionary and a person who sought to free people from the slavery of law and the burden of tradition. Yet this does not withstand in the light of his statement that he did not come to abolish the law, but to fulfill it. In fact, every “jot” of the law would be observed. The pacifist insistence that Jesus was a man of peace does not withstand the contradictory statement that he, in his own words, did not come to bring peace but a sword…fire and such. Jesuit priest John Dear’s interpretation of Jesus as a pacifist and nonviolent resistor is difficult to imagine along side the imagery of sword and fire. Then again the Sermon on the Mount could very easily reinforce Fr. Dear’s position.
In the end we all have no choice but to interpret the meaning of Jesus from scant material written years after the events it purports to report. Fr. Dear, like the rest of us, is simply working out his own wish fulfillment about who he wants Jesus to be. Ultimately, as admirable as Fr. Dear’s life and work is it is hard to seem him as any thing more than a naïve religious progressive that while laboring under a false concept of original sin completely misunderstands human nature. Before we get there we have a few more preliminary things to consider.
Next: The Confessions of Augustine of Hippo
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Theists of the conservative Christian persuasion often challenge non-theists to prove that God does not exist. However, this is due to their inability to positively prove that God does exist. This “Christianist” challenge also completely misunderstands the non-theist stance to proof of deity.
Non-believers generally assert that god is an unproven hypothesis and not disproved. There is a difference. On this side we have atheism, which is to say that “I have no belief in god” and, agnosticism, which is to say, “I have no knowledge of God.” To say that I do not know or believe in God is not the same thing as saying we have proof that god does not exist, although some non-believers will make that leap. As Dan Barker, author of Godless, writes it is possible to be both atheistic and agnostic simultaneously.
Since the non-believer asserts god is unproven we have nothing to prove in this sense. The burden lies on those that assert the positive – that god exists – as they are the ones making the assertion. The problem is that most of the proofs of God’s existence don’t withstand scrutiny as they logically make no sense. It is possible to construct logically positive statements that are inherently false.
Todd is ruggedly handsome
Todd is a man.
Therefore all men named Todd are ruggedly handsome.
While I am, indeed, quite ruggedly handsome I have known plenty of other Todd’s who are seriously butt ugly.
God is love
Love is blind
My dog is blind
Therefore my dog is God.
We all know that dog spelled backwards is god after all.
The most popular argument for God’s existence is that of design. Simply stated creation, which we are apart of is so complex that it must have a designer. Design requires a designer. By this reasoning if everything needs a designer god also needs to be designed. Then God’s designer will need a designer and so forth. It falsely tries to prove god’s existence simply by assuming what it wishes to prove.
It is woefully inadequate to assume that everything needs a designer but god. To solve the question of god’s existence in this matter is to heap more complexity upon complexity and it proves nothing at all. Intelligent design theorists simply get tripped up by their misunderstanding of functional complexity.
My neighbor accused me the other day of trying to undermine his faith. I pointed out to him that would be impossible. Faith is considered a grace in Christian theology. If his faith is undermined that he needs to go to the source of his faith, God. God, and not I, can give or take faith away. If anything I say or do causes him to question his faith then he would be better served to quit blaming me and determine what it is about his “faith” that is so shaky. Perhaps, he has as many serious questions as I do and he is afraid to come out of the god closet and admit it.
Additionally I reminded him that he is generally the one who brings up the topic of God and religion and he may want to stop doing that if he doesn’t care for the responses that I am giving him.
What my religious friends and acquaintances don’t seem to understand is that I am not bent on disproving the existence of God. What I am simply trying to understand is whether believing in deity is sensible. My rational mind and my conscience say probably not. The bible does not appear to be a reliable collection of texts historically and, frankly, morally.
Even if the bible was reliable who is to say that the Islamic or Hindu understanding of deity is not the correct one? The problem with discussing any concept of God in the western tradition is that the term God itself is problematic. Theologically we start out with the premise that God is ineffable. How does one discuss an ineffable being? You end up anthropomorphizing God and that is to miss the point altogether. Then there is the issue of God being a “being” in the first place. A being exists in empirical reality otherwise it is not a being. Referring to God in this way is a further distortion of the truth.
It seems that logically we need to stop relying on outdated biblical tales that provide conflicting and contradictory concepts of God. Religion is so divisive that as long as people in power use it as a tool there is danger that we may never find a way to live well with our neighbors.
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"I'm a Christian first, and a mean-spirited, bigoted conservative second, and don't you ever forget it. You know who else was kind of "divisive" in terms of challenging the status quo and the powers-that-be of his day? Jesus Christ." — Ann Coulter (If Democrats had Any Brains, They'd be Republicans)
Even though I never agree with Ann Coulter I used to at least think she was intelligent. She passed the bar exam right? But, after reading Godless: the Church of Liberalism I take that back. This is the worst book I have ever read. And I mean ever. Coulter’s book is an assault on truth. It is a slap in the face to every conservative whose integrity is constantly being undermined and challenged because they constantly get lumped in with the likes of Coulter and her tubby loud mouthed counterpart Rush Limbaugh, the de facto gas bag of the Republican Party. The problem with Coulter is that she is so far to the right that everyone, including moderate conservatives are leftists. Last week I heard Glenn Beck tell Rush Limbaugh that the Bush era’s notion of “compassionate conservativism” needs to die a violent death. Coulter’s book is helping them achieve the end of anything remotely close to compassion and empathy in modern Neo-Conservative thinking. Let’s use the word thinking dubiously here. First of all not all liberals are atheists. There are Christian and Jewish liberals whom would take offense if they were dumb enough, or drunk enough, to read Coulter’s book. Certainly, atheists and free thinkers are among the ranks of the American liberal movement. But they dwell in the right as well. However, the lunacy of the Christian right forces them to keep their mouth shut – at the very least – or make a hypocritical nod to religion in order to protect their careers. John McCain once referred to Jerry Falwell as an agent of intolerance. During his bid for the presidency in 1999 a reporter asked him what he would do if his then teenaged daughter Meghan became pregnant. He shocked the conservatives by asserting it would his daughter’s decision. Some credit this as one of the main reasons his party chose George W. Bush over him. This last time around McCain couldn’t smooch their large white asses fast enough. That brings us to the issue of abortion. Liberals do not treat abortion like a sacrament. Roe v. Wade is not holy writ. Comparing a Supreme Court decision that protects an individual’s legal right to make decisions regarding their body is not the same thing as the New Testament or the Koran. One of the main differences between Post Modern Liberalism and Neo-Conservativism is who wears the mantle of moral authority. For most liberals it is the individual and not the state. For neo-conservatives it is the state. The state decides what is right and wrong in all areas such as who you eat with, sleep with and ultimately marry. Conservatives who once represented minimal government influence in the lives of its private citizens now seemingly want to dictate. It confuses murder and stealing with a woman’s right to make decisions regarding her body and it paints liberals as satanic goons gleefully sacrificing unborn babies to Moloch. Coulter’s book demonstrates the lack of regard for the separation of church and state that is so prevalent in neo-con thinking. Neo-cons become incensed and outraged when liberals challenge prayer in schools and even the Ten Commandments posted in courthouses across the country. They accuse liberalism of pushing a secular religion when in fact it is the conservatives who are always making religion the issue. Their version of the Christian religion is the very heart and soul of their agenda. This includes recent initiatives to create a national “spiritual heritage week” and declaring 2010 the year of the bible. Coulter demonstrates that religious conservatives fear true learning and open inquiry. She refers to the theory of Evolution as a creation myth and bogus science forgetting all along that the first few chapters of Genesis are the actual myth. Coulter takes up the conservative battle standard and charges forth attacking good scientific reasoning at the gaps in knowledge and declaring evolution as completely unsubstantiated. After all given that the earth is millions of years old we should have figured it all out after 150 years of poking around the fossil record. Coulter asserts that conservatives are attacked as religious heretics because they dismiss evolution and that liberals are preventing students from learning about real science. God help us she is probably referring to Intelligent Design. Evolution is still a theory in progress. The last word hasn’t been written on it and good scientists are continuing to add to our knowledge and understanding. Conservatives are pissed because liberals are so far quite successful in preventing them from passing off pseudo-scientific nonsense as legitimate. The true heretics are the neo-conservatives who fail to recognize that our nation’s founders created a secular democratic republic and sought to keep Christianity, or any religion for that matter, from rising to theocratic supremacy. Religion was intended to remain a private matter yet conservatives continue to undermine the intent of the 1st amendment.. Coulter’s book is the worst sort of propaganda. Rather than instigating a thoughtful dialogue between conservatives and liberals it keeps the flames of bitterness, suspicion and hatred fanned between us. Coulter continues the grand tradition of painting all liberals as atheists and all atheists as immoral and corrupt people. But, the liberal and the atheist are as concerned with issues of right and wrong – let’s call it ethics – as any conservative. Yes liberals have their own complete worldview. We have our own beliefs. Some of us even maintain supernatural enthusiasms and attend church or synagogue. Intelligent people have these things. So what – so we have our own worldview? That is the dumbest criticism that I have ever come across. The problem with Coulter is that she obscures anything intelligent that conservatives have to offer. While most liberals I know seem to shudder at the notion that conservatives have something to offer, I don’t. There are intelligent, thoughtful and caring people on both sides of the room. The likes of Coulter, Limbaugh and Beck keep the abyss deep and wide between us in an attempt to prevent meaningful dialogue that could really change the face of our nation for the better from taking place. I am sorry I read this book. There are several hours of my life that I won’t be getting back. This book was so much mental masturbation that I might as well have been actually masturbating. The end result would have been more enjoyable.
Do not mistake your belief for truth. Belief is not absolute truth it is merely your opinion about what is true. Perhaps, you are close to the mark. But faith, which is akin to truth, requires no rantional basis in order to be accepted. It requires no objective, quantifiable evidence to back it up and most often are beliefs are what we accept on faith without too much careful consideration.
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Words such as liberal, conservative, left, right or believer and nonbeliever have no meaning for the person who lives in grace and loves with a true understanding of agape. Labels often seem true and valuable. They give positive affirmation to one, but disenfranchise another. Division, oppression and violence are the result of labels.
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Part Three
So ultimately where do we find ourselves at the end of this rant? We started out wondering if we could know anything of absolute truth. Given our definition we may be forced to decide that based on present human consciousness and the boundaries of knowledge that we can’t. Perhaps, we could say that if any concept of absolute truth is subjective, as in the case of religious truth, then the answer is a definite no. Subjective truth cannot be experienced objectively. We cannot be certain that it can be experienced cohesively from person to person. Therefore we run into the problem of multiple interpretations and even delusion in some cases. When this happens how do we sift the delusion from reality? In the case of multiple interpretations, whose version do we use? Those who would “test the spirits” using the word of God should remember how many different sects and denominations exist within Christianity alone. Each uses the same set of scriptures to arrive at what they see as the truth. If God is ultimately ineffable then regardless of how much our human knowledge grows it can never exceed the boundary that is god and therefore cannot know the thing itself. To know god in this fashion would necessitate being able to observe. In other words can a fish swimming in the ocean know anything about the ocean? Attempting to know God through his word – Christianity- or his attributes – Islam – is equally problematic. The god who commands that no images be made of him can only be dealt with in human terms, yet he is ultimately beyond human understanding. This hardly makes for a good relationship. In the god we know is an anthropomorphized interpretation of a formless concept, which is not a concept at all. We conceive or imagine the possibility of absolute truth, but in the end unless it is quantifiable we have nothing but conjecture. We hold on to – need even, absolute truth because without it life would seem absurd and pointless. Mythologies and theologies help us deal with this pain. It is much easier to believe in something, no matter how improbable, than it is to move forward and make meaning in life without the constraints placed upon us by religion. It is like a special blanket or teddy bear that a child sleeps with to help soothe against the fear of the dark. So what can we know? We should disregard absolute truth as a pointless metaphysical speculation. Unless such time comes in which our knowledge grows to such capacity that we can see it without the aid of imaginative disciplines such as theology. Otherwise it is a waste of time. Rather we need to learn to accept that in our quest to know and understand the world we live in whatever we learn can be easily superseded or changed when discovery grants us new information that changes or replaces the old. In other words our knowledge, our truth is relative to our present knowledge and our capacity to comprehend it. Instead of worrying about phantasmagorical apocalypses and such we need to contemplate the boundaries that our technologies and sciences are pushing and engage in moral dialogue in order that our capacity to cope with it catches up to what we have discovered. I am not satisfied with the way this series ended. I am looking at revising. Any dialouge or challenging questions would be greatly appreciated in order to test what has been written and to revise accordingly.
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Part Two
As a child I believed in Santa Claus and the magical and amazing abilities that this jolly old toy maker who apparently lives forever possessed. When my mother finally admitted that there was no such being as Santa it seemed to follow in my young mind that God might not be real as well. Despite my mother’s protestations that God was real it seemed to me that the stories about his powers were even more amazing than that of the eternal and jolly Santa. More importantly God was really, really frightening to my young imagination. If I was bad the worst Santa would do is leave a lump of coal in my stocking. God, on the other hand, had purgatory and the fires of hell at his disposal. Every week I would be dragged off to mass – when my mother felt motivated to attend – and I sat through an hour of ritual reenactment where the body of Christ was sacrificed upon the church altar and his blood shed for the benefit of all. I was an extremely squeamish child and this weekly symbolic blood letting was very uncomfortable for me. The priests always talked about the joy of being “in Christ.” But, mass was always somber and joyless even at Christmas and Easter. None of this made any sense to me, although I did believe it for many years. I have been chided over the years from my childish and immature Santa Claus example of which I am willing to concede. Ironically, those who often make this accusation seem to ignore the possibility that the same could be said of them in their beliefs that God is real. The only truth that I am certain of is that I don’t know. I am almost equally certain that my opponents don’t know either. Granted I am a man of average intelligence – perhaps, less given my former years as a “social drinker” – but, so are most of the people I converse with. I can reasonably conclude that those who face me in debate have no special faculties that make them privy to knowledge that I don’t also have access to. The problem with claiming religious truth as absolute is that we live in a world of relative truth. We are limited by the boundaries of our knowledge and by our experiences. So much of the claims of religion are beyond this realm of relative truth. In order to get “there” from “here” we have to make grand leaps of faith. Faith is akin to belief in that it is an opinion held about truth. Furthermore, faith requires no objective or demonstrable proof. Religious thinkers hate the concept of relative truth. Relative truth suggests that what we know of the truth fluctuates and it can vary from culture to culture. The church hangs its authority on being the sole proprietors of the unchanging permanence of absolute truth. Relative truth leads us potentially to relative morality. This scares the church because rather than being in a position to exact judgment upon various lists of human behavior the individual gets thrust into the world as an independent moral agent. A person may seek the churches guidance on a particular matter, but ultimately in the end the individual is free to act according to his or her interpretation of the correctness or incorrectness of that choice. Such an individual is, as Sartre penned, condemned to be free. They have neither the motivation of eternal reward nor the threat of eternal punishment informing their decision. They simply discern the best possible choice to make based on a rational thought process Relative truth suggests that truth is a subjective experience and it is relative to time, place, culture and individual beliefs. It means that you cannot make grand ultimate pronouncements regarding homosexual behavior and abortion. Relative truth also takes into account that as human knowledge increases what we assume is truth will change according to that new information. So often the problem with religious thinking is that it often represses scientific discovery in order to preserve its conception of the truth. We all know of the trials of Galileo. During the middle Ages medical texts had to be smuggled in from Arabian countries because the church placed severe restrictions on the pursuits of medical science. Today the pseudo science of intelligent design attempts to reinterpret scientific data in order to squeeze its concept into its small box. Rather than respecting the limits of human knowledge and encourage the spirit of free and open inquiry it attacks scientific theory such as Evolution at the gaps in our knowledge. Conservative religious thinkers try to compete with scientific reasoning yet one is subjective and the other is objective and the two do not often meet. Just because the laws of aerodynamics that keep planes aloft are absolute or that water boils at 212°f, unless you are at high altitude, does not mean that you can take these objective absolutes and cross over into the subjective. These do not prove God’s existence nor can they. Yet I have been on several Christian apologetics websites where they attempt to do this very thing. We can only know a little of what may seem like absolute truth because we are able to observe, inspect, experiment and record. But, we also need to be aware that as our knowledge increases or new information uncovered what once seemed like an absolute may be less so or, part of a larger truth not previously conceived of. I understand the churches concerns about relative morality. However, most of their arguments are puerile. Humanity long ago discovered that it thrives best in cooperation with other individuals. We are gregarious in nature and tend to clump together in social units, call them tribes, cities or nations. In order to live together and maintain order and ensure relative success we develop rules of behavior or morality. Morality is a natural occurring event that is the by product of human interaction. It stands to reason that stealing and murder, as well as adultery is counterproductive to human society. That may be why certain “universal” morals seem to occur. This is the result because some basic things are common to all humans. However, sometimes environmental conditions or societal pressures create situations that may exceed the black and white structure of so-called universal morality. The Inuit nation comes to mind. Given the harsh climate conditions and the nomadic nature of life, once upon time these First Nations people practiced geronticide and infanticide. Sometimes the elderly would be left behind or go off on their own to die when their survival threatened the survival and wellbeing of the group at large. If an infant was born at time when it could not be cared for it was often left to die in the cold. This seems cold and heartless to us. However, given the intemperate nature of the climate in which they lived this was simply a fact of survival. In the case of the infant it was believed that its spirit would return to the spirit realm where it would await to be reborn at a more opportune time. Christians, no doubt, would be horrified by these practices as indeed the early missionaries that came into contact with the Inuit where. Given the more temperate climates of Western Europe and the United States practices such as these never developed. There was no need for them to ensure the survival of the group at large. The Ten Commandments of the Judeo-Christian tradition with its admonition to honor thy mother and thy father give us a different ethic. But, this is largely due to environmental conditions and the mandates of group survival. Ironically, the Old Testament laws command that a disobedient child be stoned to death. Judaism gives us the eye for an eye ethic of justice and retribution. Certain forms of Christianity still seem to abide by it or at least promote it. The United States is the only western nation to still use the death penalty. The Ten Commandments are a product of a specific culture and a specific time. However, many of the prohibitions on murder and stealing seem to hold true across societies giving them the illusion of being universal and therefore causing some to make that erroneous leap in reason that they must be divinely decreed. Religious minds confuse moral relativism with chaos and permissiveness. If gays are allowed to be married what is going to prevent people from trying to marry their dogs or their goats? As silly as that sounds I have heard this question seriously posed. Given that collectively human nature seems prone to creating order when relating to each other in social groups there is very little to be feared from moral relativity, especially if an open moral dialogue is routinely engaged. Generally there is more to fear by the restrictive nature of religious or secular mindsets that seek to dictate rather than facilitate.
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Part One
What is absolute truth and does it exist? If such a thing as absolute truth exists can it be undeniably known by human beings with certainty? If so then how can we know what absolute truth really is? My mere opinion is that absolute truth does exist, although I am skeptical about the certainty by which we can lay claim to the knowledge. After all our understanding of anything is limited by the boundaries of human knowledge, experience and personal intelligence – let’s face it there are plenty of people more intelligent then us. What is absolute truth? I suppose there are several ways in which we can define this depending on the parameters of our inquiry. However, I find it convenient to think of absolute truth as that quality of “truth” that cannot be exceeded. In other words we presume it to be unvarying and permanent. In the case of theology God is absolute truth because, at least in the Christian tradition, he is eternal and unchanging. God is also ultimately ineffable which makes claims of absolute truth suspect, at least in the religious sense. Furthermore religious belief isn’t so much truth as it is an opinion about the truth. That isn’t to say that an individuals personal beliefs does not touch upon the truth, but to be so rigid in one’s assessment of things is not wise nor is it really the “foolishness” that God supposedly sees as wisdom among his believers. When it comes to knowledge of God or the supernatural Christianity is only one of many variant positions or possible explanations despite its arrogant assertion that it is the suppository of all universal truth. Christians do not know this with any certainty. They believe it; they have faith in it, but as we assert, that is a mere opinion of the truth which may or may not come anywhere near the actual mark. We also have to come to terms with the supernatural elements of religion that are often seemingly superstitious legends and hearsay recorded by ancient people in more primitive times. A desert nomad claiming to be a prophet did not have the benefit of modern science nor did those who chose to listen to him. I know many Christians who laugh at other people’s beliefs in the tarot, astrology and other occult pseudo sciences. They often see these things exactly for what they are – superstitious nonsense with no actual basis in fact or objective reality. However, at the same time they have no trouble believing that Jesus was born of a virgin and that he walked on water or turned water into wine. Even more peculiar is the mainstream Christian belief that Jesus was of divine parentage and actually died on the cross as the ultimate blood sacrifice for humanities sins. I am always reminded of a friend who once asked me why I though my beliefs were any less preposterous than his. I could not honestly answer his question. But, when I attempted to objectively look at what I believed as a Roman Catholic I could see how many might consider what I took to be the truth as absurd or superstitious make believe. It was an eye opening moment for me. I admit that I am a skeptic. I am probably leaning more heavily toward non-belief than belief these days and may some day openly declare my atheism. However, in my quest to understand the truth I am keenly aware that non-believers are discomfited by religious belief because of our inability to quantify its assertions objectively. Not being able to provide proof of God’s existence does not mean he or it does not exist. It also doesn’t mean nor does it follow that God exists. Belief – that odd opinion that many of us hold about the truth – is a choice and nothing more. There are many choices. Given that I am endowed with a rational mind and the ability to think – regardless of how limited that ability may be – it seems common sense to try and determine the nature of truth through the exercise of that rational mind. The first thing any rational seeker of religious truth must be willing to consider is the potential absurdity of our own deeply held and cherished beliefs. Simply wishing something to be does not make it so, although there are long held belief systems that make this astounding claim. If we assume that psychic powers, the occult, tarot, astrology or a belief in spirits is mere superstition we need to be willing to see our beliefs in that same light. Otherwise we are not being honest.
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