There is nothing like a long three-week convalescence to focus your mind on the impermanence of all things. Our bodies are infinitely complex biological machines. They work with freaky regularity and excellence until one day when, of course, they do not. In my case, it stopped on January 14th when I had tarsal tunnel surgery on my right foot and nerve release surgery on the right leg.
For the first week, I spent a lot of time hobbling from place to place either in crutches or gingerly on my right leg, wrapped in multiple layers of cotton and ace bandages. Since then, the crutches have been unnecessary. I walk where I need to go slowly but mostly stay indoors. The layers of cotton surrounding my leg and foot are gone. They were replaced with two layers of ace bandages on the foot, and now just a single layer. As I end this convalescence, my final accommodations are to keep an ace bandage on the foot and not to drive.
Thanks to the charity of friends and family, I have been fortunate enough to get to the office twice. Mostly I work from my dining room table using my employer provided laptop computer. Getting through our firewall at work remotely now means inserting my smart card into a USB smart card reader and authenticating myself using a PIN, although it hardly seems any more secure than using an ID and password. Conference calls are also more restful. I can hold the receiver in one hand while lying on the couch. Dagwood Bumstead would love working from home. Yet, despite its creature comforts, I still prefer the familiarity of the office.
As regular readers know, it is my belief that I have a soul, there likely is an afterlife of some sort and I am probably stuck in some circle of life, death and rebirth. Billions would probably agree with me. Millions would not. The latter believe that life is a highly improbable cosmic accident and the consequence of billions of years of evolution. When death arrives, all the lights go out. My friend Wendy, as well as one of my brothers, are in this group. For those of us who find life worth living, nonexistence is a depressing thought. However, because of my surgery, I am thinking maybe death (or non-existence) is not such a big deal. Maybe it means nothing at all. Instead, maybe we may choose to give it a status far larger than it deserves.
Life and death are interwoven into the universe whether we like it or not. As the Buddhists and others have long asserted, the only constant in the universe is change, so you might as well accept it. There are larger forces at work that can be lumped into one world: reality. Time is real, or is at least an aspect of living that cannot be denied. Even stars are born, age and die. Sometimes when they die, they throw their detritus out into the universe in the form of more complex matter. We are all literally the product of this star stuff. Moreover, we are destined to return to star stuff. Some part of our matter and energy was once in a star somewhere. Our matter and energy will once again be part of a star someday. In that sense, we are immortal and have been since the universe was created.
We have all already traversed the universe. Should mankind make it to another solar system someday, we will simply be retracing our inorganic roots. We are not just tied to our planet and solar system; we are tied to the universe. If some day we warp around space like they do in Star Trek, we are not exploring strange new worlds, we are returning home.
During my surgery, I was under general anesthesia for about two hours. Clearly, I did not die in those two hours. Whatever anesthesia I was given had the property of shutting down my consciousness for those two hours (or gave me the inability to recall any of it). I remember being on the surgical table and then, just as in death, the lights went out. Two hours later I was in another room, I was awake and the lights went on. During those two hours, I assume I was alive, but I might as well have been dead. Those two hours of non-existence, which might be more accurately described as an inability to remember anything or to act in any manner whatsoever, perhaps prove a point made by my atheist friends and siblings: death really does not matter.
While fear of death seems to be a human characteristic, perhaps it is all wasted energy. Not that it is easy to do, but perhaps we would all be much happier if we spent our time alive concentrating on living and forgetting all about death. After all, you cannot change the fabric of the universe or its rules. We are all caught in this incredibly complex space-time matrix. If being unconscious during my surgery is any guide, death, which for us humans seems to equate to non-consciousness, really does not matter.
Being infirmed of course matters, as I discovered. Dying matters as well as it is a progressively worse state of being infirmed. In either case, you are losing your tether to your known reality. Our species takes comfort in the known, safe and predictable. In my case, I missed the comfortable ritual of driving to and from the office, and inhabiting an office with a nice view of the Shenandoah Mountains five floors up. Working from home with one foot propped up was convenient and facilitated my recovery, but was awkward and different. Hobbling around in crutches for a week was also difficult, inconvenient and at times painful. It is understandable that I would have some petty grievances over my convalescence. However, when it ends on Friday, I should be back to better health than I was before the surgery. I hope that my life will become more comfortable and less painful.
I take some comfort in this expectation. I also take some comfort in the experience of being unconscious during my surgery, because the universe is also teaching me a lesson: neither my lack of consciousness during surgery nor death in itself are worth worrying about. Hopefully I will fully absorb these lessons and live my remaining life to its fullest in the time ahead of me.
January 31st, 2010 at 01:25pm
Posted by
Mark |
Philosophy |
no comments
Tags: Death
Polls indicate that a majority of Americans believe the word “marriage” should be reserved for a legal covenant between two people of opposite sexes only. Curiously, polls also show a majority of Americans are comfortable with two same sex partners having all the privileges of marriage as long as they don’t call it marriage. What is the difference anyhow?
As best I can figure out, same sex couples figure the difference is like having “separate but equal” schools for blacks and whites. Calling a legal relationship a different name when it is the same in every other way but the sex of the participants in their eyes suggests that their relationship is not as worthy of sanction as those between two people of opposite sexes. It’s like getting a silver medal when you earned the gold. For many heterosexuals, I think what really makes “marriage” a special word is that traditional marriages come with the potential of parenthood and this is special enough to make the distinction unique.
Not any more, obviously. My wife is a friend of a lesbian couple and one of the wives is pregnant. Naturally, she did not invite a male to have intercourse with her; a willing donor provided semen, which she obtained from her local sperm bank. Most kids get only one mother. This one will have two, which is twice as much of a blessing, I guess. What is noticeably absent though is the father. Does the absence of a father deprive the child of something important? For that matter, does the absence of a mother also deprive the child of something important? Do two mothers equal one mother and one father? Do two fathers equal one mother and one father?
These were questions I didn’t know I was struggling with until last night. After our traditional Thanksgiving Dinner featuring a potpourri of friends and family, the topic of two same sex parents came up. At our table were many of my wife’s friends from the gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender community. I was washing dishes and minding my own business but listening to their conversation. As it turns out, I am perfectly okay with gay marriage. I think any two people of legal age who want to get married should have the privilege. They can have “I’m married” stamped on their foreheads if they want to and I would have no problem calling them Mrs. and Mrs. Jones or Mr. And Mr. Smith. Where I have some hesitation is when it comes to two people of the same sex raising their own children together. Is it a good or a bad idea?
Before I knew it, I had joined the conversation and stated an opinion that for me seemed almost right wing. Since the topic was in the context of two women, I said I thought the presence of a strong father figure was important for raising a healthy child. The same is true with a mother, of course. As proof, I pointed to the District of Columbia where black fathers living at home are almost an extinct species. Single mothers are raising the vast majority of black children in D.C., sometimes with the assistance of their grandmothers because the fathers long ago abandoned the mother. In D.C., a black child is lucky to see his real father on occasion, and even luckier if he is actually providing child support. Many of these youth have no idea who their father is, or if they do, their only memory of him is a distant one.
What is the impact of being nurtured without a strong father figure? Arguably, at least in D.C., it is devastating. How many of these youths who are currently doing drugs and getting involved in gangs would be doing so if they had a father in the household? It is hard to say for sure because I doubt there is much clinical research. I do think it is reasonable to assume that the incidence would be much lower.
I have not had the privilege of having a son, but I do have a daughter. I do know there are plenty of studies that suggest the presence of a strong father figure is a critical factor among those girls who grow into leadership roles as adults. I am not entirely sure how much of my daughter was shaped by my presence and nurturing these last twenty years, but it must be a large amount. How could it not? How would my daughter be different if my wife had been a lesbian instead, had been in a gay marriage, had been artificially inseminated and raised her with her loving partner of the same sex? Would something important be missing from my daughter as a result? Perhaps I overvalue my role as a father, but my guts says yes: a good father is necessary in raising happy and healthy children of any gender, as just as it is important for a child to also have a nurturing mother.
Obviously there are many bad marriages out there. There is no guarantee when two people get married and have babies that they will have the right stuff to raise their children into healthy, sane and productive adults. My suspicion is that children raised in dysfunctional marriages are probably healthier without that stress. With roughly half of marriages dissolving, one would have to assume the odds for children in traditional marriages are at best 50/50. Many, many factors influence children throughout childhood and adolescence, but it would seem obvious that parents are their primary influences. The health of the marital relationship should correlate closely to the likelihood of raising mentally healthy and fully functional children. That seems to be true on my block, where I spent the last sixteen years. The adult children who are now doing best tend to be from families with strong and nurturing parents. The struggling children seem to be from those that were rife with marital discord.
Like it or not, children will inculcate behavior modeled by their parents. My question: is there is something critical about having parents of the opposite sex to raising healthy children? Today, gay and lesbian couples no longer have to feel like parenting is off limits to them. What we do not really understand yet is what the long-term effects of children being raised by same sex couples will be. A correlation is made harder because there are so many bad traditional marriages out there too. It appears that even though I have some concerns that children raised by same sex couples may be missing something important (although I am not entirely sure what it is) it is happening nonetheless, and social scientists over the coming decades will have an opportunity to study its effects.
It could be that a child is raised by two people of the same sex will do just fine if both are positive and nurturing influences in their lives. They may grow up to be more tolerant people than they otherwise would be, which sounds like a good thing. Sons though may need to observe and pick up crucial male bonding behaviors from their fathers. It may be that the absence of this factor makes them less functional in society compared with others raised in traditional marriages. The problem is less acute for girls, since the number of men in gay marriages raising girls is much smaller.
I do know that in the District of Columbia, we seem to be raising an angry and dysfunctional generation of young men and women. There may be many factors causing this horrendous outcome, and poverty is certainly one factor, but the lack of strong and healthy male authority figures in these households is obvious. The problems in these communities were not nearly as bad when there were more intact marriages among African Americans. To me it seems reasonable to infer that if this can happen among African Americans, it can happen within any ethnic community.
The example in D.C. suggests to me that when it comes to parenting, we should proceed with caution. Our children should not necessarily become victims of a vast social experiment because newly liberated gay and lesbian couples also want to raise their own biological children. We do not fully understand the nature of nurturing, but I strongly suspect is not solely a feminine or a masculine thing. The masculine element exhibited in the role of a father seems to also be critical, for both boys and girls.
The cry to save the word “marriage” may at its root be nothing more than an inchoate feeling among many of us that we are playing with dynamite. The lessons in D.C. and many inner city communities ought to be red flags for us to think through the consequences of our actions before plunging headlong into them.
November 27th, 2009 at 09:54pm
Posted by
Mark |
Philosophy, Sociology |
no comments
Tags: Gay Marriage, Parenting
Over the years, I have sporadically tried to explain my theology or lack thereof. It has resulted in arguably weird posts like this one. Last night I tried again at the occasion of another monthly meeting of my covenant group. The topic of the month was big questions. We started with one that will usually draw a different answer from every one of my fellow Unitarian Universalists: Do you believe in God?
My bet is that most Americans can answer that easily. Ninety percent or so will say yes and the other 10% will say no. Many of the ninety percent though will put asterisks next to their answer. The whole question though is very hard to answer because you first have to ask: what kind of God are you asking about? Paternal? Maternal? Non-sex specific? Singular or polytheistic? One that listens and responds to your prayers or one that is absent? A God that cares about you in particular? Or a very removed God who has hosts of angels, archangels, sub-archangels and other intercessors that handle prayers from relatively meaningless people like me?
My forebrain may be too developed because I could not give a definitive answer. I remain sort of the agnostic I decided I was some thirty plus years ago. I neither believe nor disbelieve in the paternalistic God that I was introduced to by my Catholic parents. I can say that I never particularly felt the personal presence of God. For me, attempts at prayer are like radio waves; they bounce off the clouds and come back to me. When the Magic 8-Ball replies, to the extent it replies at all, it says “Reply hazy, try again.” I do feel spiritual at times, for example, when nature reveals itself in all its majesty. The experience is very mystical when it happens, but doesn’t feel like God is tapping me on the shoulder saying, “See, here’s all the proof you need that I exist.”
No doubt to some I am being unforgivably ambivalent, but I have developed a certain comfort in my murkiness. I know many people feel the presence of God and I think that’s fine. I don’t mean to say they are deluding themselves, but at the same time I cannot take their testimony with whole cloth when it is not my experience nor the experience of millions of others, including Mother Teresa. I take some comfort in physics, which is slowly peeling away God’s mask.
I suspect God’s existence or non-existence is just one of these questions that is impossible to satisfactorily answer. I do not think there is any definitive answer because we can only perceive what we can experience through our very limited senses. Moreover, our lives are relatively short.
I have read enough about quantum physics to feel strongly about a few things. What I believe is eternal is consciousness: mine and yours. I think consciousness is eternal and like energy itself cannot be created or destroyed. So I very much believe in the soul. I see my soul much like a driver and my body like a car. My body’s brain is like a steering wheel, accelerator and brake pedal. I use them to move my body through life. At some point in the future the car will refuse to start. At that point my body dies. However, my soul, the driver, is still around. Perhaps at that point I exit the car and look around the car lot. I pick out another car and use it (the new body) to continue to experience the universe.
This is really not as crazy as it sounds. String theory may be a theory, but it is a very well developed theory with lots of sound empirical evidence. What science does teach us is that energy is never destroyed. It is merely transformed. If string theory is correct then we also know that everything is irrevocably connected to everything else. Buddha understood this 2500 years ago. It also essentially means that individuality is an illusion.
So who or what are we then? I think what we are is a singularity: a point in space-time (or perhaps more accurately, a time-series in space-time) where an infinite matrix of superstrings intersect and it is different from some other point. So you might say we are both individuals and we are all part of the same thing. What is unique about living is that it provides the illusionary experience of individuality. We may prefer this illusion, similar to the way that some people prefer chocolate.
To the extent that I can formulate a belief in God, it is just the suspicion that I am not separate from God, but intrinsically a part of God and God is a part of me. It’s not a question about being separated from God. How can I be separate from something I am already a part of? I am irretrievably part of everything and plugged into the universe as are you.
I am consciousness. You might say I am a thought racing around the mind of God. Each of us is a thought of this larger collective being. A thought is both permanent and transient. We may only think a particular thought in one moment, but the thought is stored in collective memory. It is always retained. That thought is my consciousness and is what I call the eternal me.
Where we came from, I don’t know. I don’t see the point in speculating. As Bertrand Russell once pointed out, if everything is caused by something else, then something caused God, which begs the question and points to the fallacy in the argument. Consciousness exists because I experience it. I think it continues after death and I choose to call this eternal part of me my soul. I suspect I live multiple lives and inside this consciousness I call myself time simply does not matter. It does not matter how many lives I have experienced or will experience. However, I do think that it is this experience that feeds the consciousness. Perhaps over many lives we do grow in understanding and maturity.
I believe in consciousness because I feel it and ultimately I can only trust what I feel. I can look at science like string theory to support parts of my beliefs, but I also recognize that because the universe is immensely complex so our understanding of reality is going to be poor at best too. If “I think, therefore I am” then “I feel there is an immortal part of me, therefore it exists” is also valid. At this point in my life, it not only feels right, but it need be no more complex than this.
November 10th, 2009 at 08:59pm
Posted by
Mark |
Best of Occam's Razor, Metaphysics, Philosophy |
2 comments
Tags: Consciousness, God, Religion
As you may have noticed, one consequence of being born is that you eventually must die. It may seem unfair, but that’s just the way it is. We are all prisoners in our own unique time stream. We step onto our time stream (we assume) at birth, although some part of it begins at conception.
Yes, our life is undoubtedly a time stream. It is like one of those very long movable walkways that you find in large airports that carry you inside or between concourses. Its speed is constant. During the time you stand on the walkway, you stay in one place while things move around you. Eventually the walkway ends and the journey stops. We get off the walkway when we die but while we are on the walkway, we are its prisoner.
Unlike the movable walkway, we are not entirely sure how we got on it in the first place. The walkway behind us is quickly shrouded in mist and the walkway ahead, except for the first couple of feet, remains a dense fog. However, we can look to our left and our right and enjoy our limited view.
Unlike walkways in airports, this walkway is very wide. In fact, we cannot see either of its sides. Yet we know we are on the walkway because things are happening all around us. Suns rise and set. Seasons pass and return. Things that looked shiny and new last year lose their luster this year and in a dozen years are often dysfunctional or obsolete. Trying to find the edges of the walkway is as futile as trying to sail off the edge of the world. Space and time curve all around us. We cannot see the curve but we sense it is there. We feel its truth: that we are a singularity in a matrix called space-time. Ephemeral things, some alive and some not surround us. They are often beautiful. At its best life resembles a magnificent kaleidoscope. We often feel like we are sitting in a theater and our life is unfolding on the screen.
It is natural to wonder what happens when the movie that is our life ends. Are there credits? Were we really its producer and director, or just the unknowing actors? These may be impenetrable questions, but sages and common people have pondered them for time immemorial. The atheist believes that when our movie comes to and end, the lights go out and we are simply nothingness. The theist believes there is a producer. Some believe there is a producer and director. The producer is called God. The Christians call the director Jesus. The Muslims call him Muhammad. The Hindus believe there are many producers and directors and they often slip between their roles. Some of these directors coach us more than they coach others. The Buddhists think that like the Great and Powerful Wizard of Oz, when you pull back the curtain you find another human like yourself (perhaps yourself) at the control directing the special effects. The agnostic doesn’t know if there are producers or directors. He does not exclude them but has a hard time trusting what he cannot see. The humanists are unconcerned about how we got on the walkway or where it will end, but is only concerned about the state of the walkway right now and how we can all live more happily in the present
In general, the longer you stay on the walkway the more you feel the past fade. You see the collection of things you have surrounded yourself with disintegrate before your eyes. You watch people, many of them loved ones, mysteriously drop off the walkway altogether, particularly as they age. The more you witness these events, the more certain you become that your walkway will end for you too at some murky time in the future. A relative handful finds the walkway very annoying. They take their own lives, figuring wherever they end up, if anywhere, is less painful than the present.
How should you spend your time while you remain on the walkway? This too is a topic of great concern for the people on the walkway. Some people are much more concerned about the next walkway. They advise that we should spend much of our time on this walkway preparing the next one. For theists there are generally two walkways that occur after death: one toward heaven, glory and salvation and the other toward hell and misery. To the Buddhist, our walkways sort of cycle backs on itself. They are confident that after death we are quickly deposited into another walkway. While our memories of our last life will be erased, we will carry our personalities and predispositions into the next life. Nirvana is the act of getting off the time stream altogether. Meditation and living simply are the keys. Enlightenment is the goal. You reach nirvana when you have achieved full enlightenment. Then they assert the carousel finally stops, you can dismount, exit and see what, if anything, is real.
Sometime in my early 20s, I remember being profoundly shaken that I was aging. Before entering adulthood, old age was so far enough away that it was abstract and hence nothing to worry about. Grabbing the reins of adulthood made me feel that life was in reality fleeting. Now in my 50s, I still feel the steady passage of the years. It feels like I am at the bow of a ship heading into the wind. The wind tears across my face but the infinite sea ahead is as mysterious and impenetrable as ever.
Strangely at age 52, while I remain leery of death, it no longer seems as fearful while at the same time it feels more tangible. I now accept that I am born to die and that’s just the way it is. It is natural to be inquisitive about dying and death, but to be obsessive about it the way I was in my twenties now seems a great waste of my life’s energies. Whatever movie I am in, it is not a bad movie and it gets more engrossing as the years pass.
Today, it feels more natural to be in the moment than to peer into an impenetrable far future. I see progress in myself and in my life. Some part of me longs for the immortal feeling of youth again, but some other part of me is also glad it is in my far past. I am more comfortable, more ordered and find more meaning now than I did thirty or forty years in my past. I feel grounded, but not rooted. My feelings will probably continue to change as I age, but right now, I accept life for what it is. I accept that it must end and feel that embracing the present is the healthiest thing for me. The movable walkway is my home, so I had better enjoy it and take care of it as best my limited skills will allow.
July 25th, 2009 at 11:16am
Posted by
Mark |
Best of Occam's Razor, Life 2009, Philosophy |
no comments
Tags: Death, Life, Space-Time
Some definitions for “faith”, from merriam-webster.com:
a (1): belief and trust in and loyalty to God (2): belief in the traditional doctrines of a religion b (1): firm belief in something for which there is no proof (2): complete trust
America is rife with people of faith, and in my own strange way I consider myself one of them. America is particularly rife with Christians, particularly Christians who believe The Bible is a holy book, many of who sincerely believe that it is the inerrant and wholly consistent word of God. This faith in the accuracy of the Bible and for many that it is literally the word of God, forms the building blocks around which they orient their lives.
I for one am grateful that so many people have found divine wisdom in the Bible. While the Bible and Christianity have often been used for perverse ends, overall I think The Bible is a civilizing force. Regardless of whether you think it is divinely inspired or not, there is much wisdom in the Bible. Even though I have lived over half a century, I still cannot read The Sermon on the Mount without feeling profoundly moved and humbled by the power of Jesus’ words. And here I am, not even a Christian, but a Unitarian Universalist, which is a religion bereft of both a creed and a holy book.
I recently finished the book Misquoting Jesus, The Story Behind Who Changed the Bible and Why by Bart D. Ehrman. For the most part the revelations in the book, which concentrates on The New Testament and its evolution over the years, did not surprise me. Those who truly have faith that The Bible is the inerrant word of God, in the unlikely event they choose to read this book, will probably be unmoved by the revelations in this book (and I am not talking about The Book of Revelations). An absolute faith is impermeable to minor things like overwhelming evidence to the contrary.
Underpinning this book is the wistfulness of its author, a recognized Biblical scholar and a premier “textual critic” of The New Testament. As Ehrman states in his introduction, he began his study of the Bible also believing that it was the inerrant word of God. He began his professional study of the Bible at The Moody Bible Institute, where to teach the professors had to sign in writing that the Bible was the inerrant word of God. After three years at the Moody Bible Institute, Ehrman moved on to Wheaton College, where he learned to translate ancient Greek, which is the original source language for much of The New Testament. This gave him the tool to examine many of the old Biblical books, scrolls and associated papers. Eventually the topic consumed him. He continued his education at the Princeton Theological Seminary. Today he teaches at Duke University in Durham, North Carolina. Reading his book it is hard to miss a note of melancholy from Ehrman as his once solid faith in the Bible simply could not hold as he examined and compared the ancient manuscripts that comprise The New Testament.
The book is a survey into why The New Testament is a testament to the failings of man. The failings were many. Mistranslations were common. In the days before the printing press, one had to depend on the accuracy of scribes who would attempt to copy previous generations of the work. For the first few hundred years, these scribes were not professionals, and their errors showed. Often they mistranslated in part because in ancient Greek words simply ran together, which meant their meanings were open to interpretation. There are numerous examples of scribes literally changing the meaning of the source they were copying. Our modern Bible is much like that childish game we used to play where we would whisper something quickly in the ear of one child, who would repeat it to another. The result is that the last message often suffered some major translation errors. As Ehrman shows repeatedly, the same is absolutely true of The New Testament.
For Jesus had the audacity to be born at a time when there were no microphones. If anyone was taking notes when he was wandering around Judea and Galilee they did not survive. In fact, not even a fragment of the original source material of any of the gospels or epistles exist. It all turned to dust millenniums ago. There are small sections of books of The New Testament in Greek from 200 to 300 A.D., but much of what survived is much more modern, as in generated from 1000 A.D. onward. There is simply no way to know how faithful the New Testament is to whatever its original authors wrote. What scholars like Ehrman can do is suggest that portions that are more likely to be closer to the original source than others.
If there is an accurate portrayal of Jesus, the closest would be the Gospel according to Mark, which scholars agree was written first. Indeed, as Ehrman points out it is clear that the other gospels rely heavily on Mark. Even so, Mark never met Jesus, so he was simply writing down the teachings that he heard or happened to believe personally. Mark’s perspective of Jesus, more than anything else, shapes the Jesus that Christians believe they know and revere.
However, I did find the book fascinating. In a way, it is amazing how much textual critics have been able to discern about the authenticity of various parts of The New Testament by comparing so many copies of copies of various translations and meticulously working their way backwards. Critics like Ehrman cannot reveal what is authentic, but they can say with some certainty which portions of The New Testament are not authentic. For example, the story of Jesus forgiving a woman caught in adultery (John 8:3-11) is almost certainly incorrect. This is not to say it may not have actually happened, but by comparing older versions of documents with newer versions, the story mysteriously appears in newer versions.
Any honest critic of The New Testament simply must acknowledge parts that are inconsistent with other parts. This is a relatively straightforward process. You simply take each gospel, line up the story lines and compare the inconsistencies. The average reader of the Gospels of course does not take the time to do this. However, to assert that the Bible is the inerrant word of God is only possible if it unfolded in highly parallel universes that the authors conveniently traveled between. In that case, God does work in very mysterious ways indeed!
Perhaps one can judge The New Testament’s veracity on its impact, rather than the consistency of its story. One can certainly make a case for the Bible and The New Testament in particular as a civilizing and humanizing force, not to mention a source of great moral teaching. Of course, by being translated by fallible men, it was often used for evil purposes. What scholars like Erhman can assert is that based on scholarly study, the New Testament in particular is rife with errors, both inadvertent and deliberate. In addition, the Bible we revere today exists because over two millennium fallible humans have decided on which parts of it are holy and which were not.
Critics like Erhman challenge us, as the late advice columnist Ann Landers put it, to “Wake up and smell the coffee.” Perhaps those who assert that The Bible is the inerrant word of God should arise from their self-inflicted stupor and smell this coffee. They may find, like most of the rest of us, that while coffee has a bitter taste, is at least smells good.
July 11th, 2009 at 09:50pm
Posted by
Mark |
Philosophy, Sociology |
no comments
Tags: Bart D. Ehrman, Bible, New Testament
(I am in Salt Lake City attending the General Assembly of the Unitarian Universalist Association. I have attended a lot of seminars and worship services and heard a lot of sermons. Although not an ordained minister, in the spirit of this extraordinary week of learning, I offer my own sermon for your consideration.)
Death and infidelity are in the news. Michael Jackson’s death (whose cause is at this time unknown) has had the effect of directing more traffic to my site, principally to this 2005 post where I said I believed he was a pedophile. A jury subsequently disagreed with me but no one would dispute that Jackson was one odd bird. I am not too surprised he died early. Bizarre people like Jackson often do. Mick Jagger and Keith Richards may be exceptions to the rule. Even I cannot deny Jackson’s talent. He was more of a rubber dancer than Fred Astaire and he oozed talent and creativity.
Also entering immortality is the actress Farrah Fawcett, who burned an indelible impression in the minds of forty or fifty somethings like me. Her swimsuit poster with her toothy grin and cascading blonde tresses was ubiquitous in teenage bedrooms and college dorm rooms in the late 1970s and early 1980s. Fawcett though was something of a surprise, eventually shedding her bimbo image and proving herself an excellent actress in made for TV movies like The Burning Bed (1984). General box office success unfortunately proved more elusive.
Both Jackson and Fawcett are my peers, so their untimely deaths make me wonder if I will draw the short straw from life too. There is no way to know. I have done much to lower the odds of dying in middle age and there is much more I could do. I get enough Buddhism from my wife to know that death is in our nature. At best it can be postponed. We all ultimately return to the stardust from which we came. It is our destiny. We are impermanent. In fact there is nothing permanent except change.
Perhaps the stars are aligning strangely because in the news we have both untimely celebrity deaths and newly revealed cases of infidelity among prominent politicians. Is it just circumstance or could there be a link between these prominent deaths and all the recent episodes of infidelity in the news? I think there is a relationship.
I believe that the animus of infidelity, at least in middle age, are not so much character flaws but aging. As our date with death becomes more real with every passing year, inevitably you have to examine your life and the choices you made and wonder if the fit is still good. I am certainly not the same person at age 52 that I was at age 28 when I married, nor is my wife. Unlike South Carolina Governor Mark Sanford and his wife, my wife and I exchanged no traditional pledge of sexual and emotional exclusivity on our wedding day. I was perhaps a bit prescient even then that if I made such a pledge I would eventually prove myself a liar. Perhaps Mark Sanford and his wife would have been smart to do the same thing. It is hard to say for sure but in my case I suspect by not excluding sexual relationships that fooling around lost much of its allure. Of course it is also far easier to avoid infidelity when mindful of the consequences of doing so in this modern age, which could easily be disease and which could potentially be deadly. In my case fear of death helps triumph over the seven year itch.
My wife and I are clearly the exception. For most married people, the idea of keeping the fidelity door even slightly ajar is a ghastly idea. It is not so much an issue among Unitarian Universalists like me. My suspicion is that vows of sexual fidelity are more likely written out of marriages performed in Unitarian Universalist churches than expressly stated. I did promise to love my wife with all the energy I could muster. Based on my experience this may be much harder than traditional vows of sexual and emotional exclusivity. Paying close attention to her feelings and listening to her with an open heart day in and day out for twenty plus years have been at once both a joy and a burden. No fleeting sexual liaison could or should mean as much as this enormous effort of sustained time, attention, caring and concern, which continues nearly twenty four years later.
Most infidelity though is not really about the sex, but about the heart. Affairs that are strictly sexual but lack emotional depth are generally forgivable. Those where cares and concerns move from the spouse to another generally result in divorce. It is clear that Mark Sanford’s affair fell into the latter category, given by his own admission that he spent five days in Argentina crying. Why did he do it? Why did Senator John Ensign, Former New York Governor Eliot Spitzer or Former Senator John Edwards? I have seen pictures of their wives and in each case I think it cannot be because their spouses are ugly hags. Most are exceptionally attractive and personable women. I suspect the infidelity is due to the anxiety of watching sand drop through the hourglass of their lives and wondering, Is this it? I suspect that in most cases they found their relationships with their wives enriching, but not enriching or exciting enough to wholly fill their emotional and sexual needs or to close the gap of anxiety created by their aging.
The honorable thing of course is not to have an affair, but first divorce your spouse and then put yourself on the market. This is nice in theory, but hard to do in practice, particularly if you have children and especially if you are a politician. Politicians rise by selling an image of themselves, and you believe that voters must buy into the image of a superman in order to trust you with their vote. You must be smart, personable, persuasive, a terrific husband, a wonderful father as well as a man of faith, character and deep convictions. This is fine but of course it is almost always an illusion. Almost no one possesses all these gifts. Even if they do for a time, sustaining it for a lifetime is often very hard to do. We have our nature and our mortality working against us.
I hate to break this to all the heartbroken wives (and husbands) out there, but at some point fidelity in a marriage is almost always self delusion. You are most likely to find fidelity in someone who is simpleminded or whose emotional needs are easily satisfied. If you find someone like this, it helps if you are the same way yourself. However, if you marry someone who is ambitious like any politician of stature and they never fall off the wagon, consider yourself exceptionally fortunate.
Men buy into fidelity because it is the price they have to pay to live with a woman. A wife gives a man not only steady sex (a very hard thing for a man to get) but also a social stature and connections that cannot be acquired as a bachelor. Many pledge fidelity with the highest intentions only to discover that they did not know what they were pledging. How could they really, since they had not experienced the reality of a long term marital relationship? In a way, marriage is like giving a new driver the keys to a new and shiny Camaro that he lusted after but requiring them to never drive another car.
Fidelity will always be tentative. It will always be a daily decision by each spouse to continue to be faithful. In reality philanderers like Mark Sanford emotionally left their marriage long before trading furtive emails with distant romantic prospects. Fidelity can perhaps be realized through the application of sufficient doses of societal guilt, but this is a technical fidelity, not fidelity of the heart. Fidelity of the heart, when it is achieved, is realized only through the sustained commitment by both partners to invest enormous amounts of emotional energy (time) in the relationship. It requires daily mindfulness, daily intimate communications and it often gets harder the longer the marriage lasts. Even then there is no guarantee that with the application of regular high dosages of emotional energy that it will succeed. Every day in a marriage offers the potential for infidelity.
Why is this? It is because time changes all things, including people. We buy into marriage and the notion of fidelity because we want to believe that at least one aspect of our life can be unbreakable and unchangeable and endure even beyond death. This is the promise and illusion of love. While love itself is real, it can be realized only through the flawed talents of ordinary people. The nature of the universe of course is just the opposite. Nothing is permanent. Nothing endures forever. The participants in a marriage are going to find that who they are will change over time. Hopefully both will change in ways that will keep the relationship flourishing and engaging. But there are no guarantees and as time progresses the odds are stacked against the spouses.
Perhaps it is better to be like the Buddhists and live in the moment, appreciating the richness of each day with your spouse. When infidelity comes knocking on your door, it is going to pierce your soul like a knife through the heart. What is really dying though is the illusion that you can remake the ways of nature. The pain of infidelity though does not have to last forever. People can and do move beyond its pain all the time. Something will come along to replace the feeling that will be hopeful and more healing. This too is a part of life. Hope, loss, suffering and the rebirth of the spirit come with the territory of being a human.
All souls are adrift on an endless sea. Seas may be calm or stormy but the sea cannot be calm forever. It must churn itself up into a frothy white at some point. So too must souls.
June 28th, 2009 at 11:05am
Posted by
Mark |
Best of Occam's Razor, Philosophy, Sociology |
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Tags: Infidelity
Well, this is cool! I am blogging from 35,000 feet. Granted, the first 10,000 feet are still not Wifi accessible, but perhaps that will change too. For $12.95 I can buy myself about three hours of high speed Internet access, at least on selected Delta flights. Other carriers are probably offering similar services, or will be soon. Moreover, the quality of the service is as good, if not better, than what I get at home via our Cox cable service. The times, they are a changing, and not always for the worse.
I am on my way to Salt Lake City to attend the General Assembly of the Unitarian Universalist Association. Having been a Unitarian Universalist since 1997 or so (and in spirit much longer, I just didn’t go to services) I figured it was about time to attend a General Assembly. This is an annual meeting where UUs from across the country come together and discuss denominational business. It is supposed to be a lot of fun and very interesting. Look for posts on the GA during the week. I will not exactly be alone since other members of our congregation will be in attendance too. When you are surrounded by thousands of UUs, you are never really alone. Of course most will be strangers to each other, but we are all the same in spirit. I am hoping it will feel a bit like coming home to the home you never quite had. I figure that if Muslims are expected to make one pilgrimage to Mecca, perhaps UUs should make at least one trip to a General Assembly too. I hope to learn a lot, but also to clarify for myself just how down the UU rabbit hole that I want to go. Thus far my association has been more tangential than dedicated and has consisted of participating in a covenant group and teaching religious education.
This trip is also unique in that it is something I am doing by myself. I travel quite a bit by myself, but so far it has all been business related. My wife, a Buddhist, had no particular interest in attending. Here I am age 52 and this is the first vacation that I have ever done on my own. It is sort of like being single again, at least for a week. There is no family to visit on the other end. There is also no spouse and/or child to drag along. If I get overwhelmed by the intensity of it all, my hotel is a few blocks away. I can distress by computing from my hotel room or hanging out at the pool. I strongly suspect that I will have no problem finding ways to fill my time. The typical problem at these General Assemblies, I have been told, is trying to do too much. There is simply too much going on.
I mentioned to a colleague where I was going and she said “what is Unitarianism?” I am amazed that in 21st century America so many people have not heard about Unitarians or Universalists. There is often at least one UU church in any community of a significant size. There have even been Unitarian presidents of the United States, although at the time they were not known as UUs, but stuck usually said they were deists. Thomas Jefferson was a Unitarian, at least in spirit. If you are curious to learn more about Unitarian Universalism, feel free to check out the association’s web site, or my tag archive on the subject, or just keep reading. To the extent I have time to blog this week, I will be posting my thoughts on the General Assembly.
Unitarian Universalists are basically religious liberals, without a professed creed, with their roots in Christianity but who are for all practical purposes not Christian. Some UUs consider themselves Christian and a UU service definitely has a church-like feeling to it. Most UUs would consider Jesus to be a great teacher, but only a few think he was divine. It is a sort of “none of the above” religion, where no creed is required for membership, where you simply come as you are, hang out in fellowship, try to do good things, and work toward tolerance and social justice. Perhaps a majority of UUs are like me: officially atheist or agnostic. We also have pagans, wiccans, Buddhists, gays, bisexuals, transgendered, the polyamorous and pretty much any type of odd non-denominational faith you can think of. In general UUs are a tolerant bunch.
We are also overwhelmingly Caucasian. If there is one deficiency in my religion, this may be it. I expect the General Assembly to resemble a Republican convention. My wife rightly points out that her Buddhist temple is very multicultural. In some ways I am jealous. I am also hopeful that over time UUs will become more culturally diverse too. Our current president is African American, but that will probably change this week as we elect a new association president. Unfortunately, I am not one of the delegates, since each congregation only gets four votes. I am sure whoever we pick will be someone of a similar vein to Rev. Sinkford.
However, I don’t give myself too much grief about being part of a “white” denomination. The congregation is so white, not because it tries to exclude people of different colors, but because its roots are European, and Europe is predominantly white. It was imported into the United States where it flourished and where mostly white people lived. Just as certain southern Baptist associations are overwhelmingly African American and it is okay, it is okay that UUs are overwhelmingly white. We do have two African Americans in our congregation, so we are not exactly pure white, and a few Hispanics and Asians too. Those of color whom we attract tend to be comfortable among whites. UUs also tend to be intelligent and overeducated. This can be daunting to some.
So I look forward to a week of fellowship, learning and song. While I do not particularly enjoy being away from family, it is not a bad thing to have a week to myself to do things that interest me far away from home. It helps me figure out who I am and where I want to go as a person in this next phase of my life.
The last time I spent any time in Salt Lake City was in 1996. Back then I remarked how Wonder Bread the city was. Perhaps in the thirteen years since it has become more culturally diverse. In any event, given that Utah is overwhelmingly white I suspect that most UUs will feel at home there. Given our religious and political liberalism, we may give the local Mormon population something of a shock. I hope I am there to witness any fireworks.
June 23rd, 2009 at 07:25pm
Posted by
Mark |
Life 2009, Philosophy, Travel |
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Tags: Blogging, Unitarian Universalism
In my last post, I discussed what I learned from a Naikan workshop where we focused on just three questions. The first question was: What have I received in the last twenty-four hours? I learned that for me, as well as most of us, blessings are abundant. Life is not the bed of nails that many of us perceive it to be, but more like a comfortable mattress. If my life were a mattress, it might have a few lumps in it but they should be easy to ignore. It takes work for many of us to perceive that we receive much more than we give. Periodically contemplating your blessings, as I did last week, helps put your life in perspective.
Having realized that I was blessed in so many ways, the teacher gave us a second question: What have I given in the last twenty-four hours? Here are some of my gifts that I scribbled down on paper:
- I gave my seasoned guidance to my employees. I hope that it was actually good guidance but there is no way to tell for sure.
- The notes I recorded during a conference call
- The thought and creativity I applied to my job
- My labor in general, which hopefully made the world a bit better place and for which I was well compensated
- My cat, as usual, received a belly rub on our bed before I retired. From his purring, he was obviously grateful.
- I shut the blinds to our bedroom windows so we could have some privacy
- I turned up the heat because we were getting a bit chill
- My wife got my companionship watching TV
- I dished out more than a few I love yous to immediate members of my family, including the feline
- I spent about an hour in the morning doing the family bookkeeping
- I put my daughter’s dishes in the dishwasher
- I took out the trash
- I listened well (I hope) to my wife as she expressed her thoughts and feelings
- Not to be too crass, but I contributed my salary. I am by far the family’s major breadwinner. Without my income, my family would have fewer modern amenities to enjoy.
We had the same amount of time to write down what we gave others but when we were done, we quickly noticed that that our list of gifts was far smaller than our list of items that we had received. Few things on my list amounted to much. Yet, in spite of my limited contributions I received far more than I got.
The last question was the hardest: What trouble or difficulty have I caused in the last twenty-four hours? I found it hard because I do not like to dwell on my failings and imperfections. The instructor asked us to record any small inconveniences we caused on our list. If we cut into line ahead of someone, that inconvenienced someone. If we dodged our way through traffic in order to make it home a minute sooner, we likely caused other drivers to check their driving. When I contemplated my own failings, I found some I was uncomfortable even putting down on paper.
I know I can be perceived as domineering or arrogant even though, of course, I rarely perceive myself to be this way. To the extent that I am, I certainly regret any hurt feelings I might have caused. Fortunately, since the period was limited to twenty-four hours, there were few egregious things on my list. My minor transgressions included:
- I spurned letting the cat on my lap because I was deeply into the middle of doing something on the computer. At the time, I thought that was more important than my poor feline’s impulsive desire for my companionship.
- My daughter had rearranged her bedroom and was anxious to show it to me. Rather than rush up the stairs to see it when I got home, I made her wait several minutes while I unpacked myself and sorted the mail. I could have been more sensitive to her feelings.
What do exercises like this mean? It means whatever we want to glean from it. However, I did find it useful to spend a couple hours doing nothing but engaging in focused introspection. I am definitely more mindful now of how life has showered me with so many blessings. Some I can say are the fruits of my own labors. While I am grateful for my job, it would not be possible without education, and my education did not just happen. While I had to work at it, I was also blessed with parents who provided stability and encouraged me to learn, teachers who poured out their knowledge and passions, and society that demonstrated its values by spending tax money so that I could attend school free. In 1987, I spent a week in the Philippines. There I saw children running around in the streets. Back then (and it is likely still this way today) schooling was available only to those whose parents could afford it for their children. The children I saw were impoverished and spent most of their days trying to eke out a slightly higher standard of living for their families. The boys watched cars of wealthy foreigners like me, or tried to sell cigarettes. (They also smoked them.) Too many of the girls, once they were in adolescence, worked in bars and sold their bodies for money, even though they were still minors. Fleets of horny U.S. sailors took advantage of the opportunity. What a blessing that I was spared that sort of childhood!
I also learned that while I had my transgressions, overall I am a decent human being. If I do not cause much trouble, perhaps it was because life has largely treated me kindly, so I saw little reason to cause trouble. For me, for the most part life is truly good and rewarding. I am blessed because I received much of it without asking. I learned that my problems were not so much mountains as they were molehills, that life can be a great gift, and that I am fortunate and lucky to be alive at this time and in this place.
November 20th, 2008 at 07:59pm
Posted by
Mark |
Philosophy |
one comment
Tags: Buddhism, Mindfulness
I am not a Buddhist, but lately my wife has been wading hip deep into Buddhism. For as long as I have known her (and that’s a quarter of a century) she has been proudly unchurched. She praised the Lord by sleeping in on Sundays. This summer though she did something totally unexpected. This was especially startling given that she is the most predictable and habit bound creature I have ever met. She started attending a Buddhist temple. Moreover, she liked it so much that she has become a member.
She came to the belated realization that Christianity has never temperamentally agreed with her. Even my Unitarian Universalism, which has its roots in Christianity but really cannot be considered Christian, felt too church-like for her. Yet, like all of us, she felt some spiritual tuggings. One day this summer, they reached the point where she could no longer ignore them anymore. She decided that if she was going to have a spiritual home, it would have to be something really different. At least for us Westerners, Buddhism is really different. We Westerners are conditioned to follow religions where you slavishly follow some holy book (generally The Bible) and holy man (generally Jesus) who claims to be the only path to God. While Buddhism is silent on God, it speaks many volumes about human suffering and how to alleviate it. It is an inward focused religion that concentrates on the here and now, rather than an outward focused religion such as those that predominates the Western world. I plan to write more on Buddhism when I feel a bit more informed.
Saturday though found me at the exceptionally pleasant Ekoji Buddhist Temple (the temple my wife decided to join) that sits among the trees in gloriously suburban Burke, Virginia. Just as Christianity is broken up into numerous denominations, so is Buddhism. This temple practices Jodo Sinshu Buddhism, a denomination that was born in Japan and which seems more laidback and less dogmatic than other forms of Buddhism.
I was there with my wife to attend a Naikan workshop. In the workshop, you have an opportunity to engage in some focused self-reflection. As you can imagine, Buddhists have many ways to engage in mindfulness, which to my non-Buddhist mind amounts to self-reflection. A Naikan workshop is another form of mindfulness. Fortunately, for this exercise no chanting, bell ringing, incense or contemplating of your navel was needed. All you needed was some paper and a pen, which were thoughtfully provided, along with a free lunch.
We were asked to contemplate three questions. The first was, What have I received in the last twenty four hours? For most Americans, unless they won the lottery they would probably say nothing. As I put my own list together, I realized what most Buddhists realize: that I am surrounded by a universe that provides me with bountiful blessings and gifts. The problem is that we learn to take them for granted.
In thinking of my blessings, I started with the basics. I live in a house instead of on a street corner. It is heated and cooled to within a narrow range of temperatures so that I feel continuously comfortable. Inside my house is pretty much all I need, plus the people that are most important to me. There is my wife, who loves me in spite of my eccentricities and well as my loving and affectionate daughter. We also have a five-year-old cat, which we adopted two years ago. He gives me the gift of his presence by sitting on my lap several times a day and purring contentedly.
My house though is part of an interconnected society that also provides me with many blessings. There is the newspaper that lands on my driveway and which for thirty-five cents or so provides timely and relevant information on my world. There are our toilets and the sewage system, which magically removes the disagreeable aspects of being a human being. There are our faucets, which magically provide limitless clean and potable water. There is also this iMac computer that I am using to write this post, and the high speed Internet service we enjoy.
It is true that I pay for these privileges but that they happen at all and are so routine is practically miraculous. In my fifty plus years on this planet, I remember going to sleep cold perhaps twice in my life, and that was because I was silly enough to go on a winter campout with the Boy Scouts. I have been spared so much discomfort and misery. Yet had I been born a thousand years earlier, this kind of misery would be commonplace. In fact, had I been born a thousand years ago, the mortality statistics would suggest I would already be in my grave.
Nor have I ever known hunger. Certainly, I have been hungry, but I have never suffered for a want of food because it has always been there. Moreover, the food that I consume is plentiful, abundant, cheap and easy to acquire. Buying food sometimes feels miraculous. How is it that I am able to purchase blackberries in November? As I wrote down the blessings I had received in those last twenty-four hours, the list spanned many pages. Here are some:
- Unsolicited hugs
- Sex
- At work, someone just showed up and emptied my trash can
- Someone also cleaned the restroom I used so it didn’t smell
- In fact, unlike my house, the building that I work in is virtually always clean. The windows are generally clear of grime, the floors are polished, the furniture is dusted, the elevators work flawlessly, and in the basement there is a cafeteria full of convenient, tasty and nutritious food.
- There is a lovely and bucolic view out my office window, which looks southwest over a canopy of trees. On a clear day, I can see the Shenandoah Mountains. I can also watch airplanes arrive and depart from Washington Dulles airport.
- My office, with an actual door I can close and real walls. Most of my career was spent in a cubicle. Four years later, I still appreciate and marvel at this gift.
- Watching an episode of Battlestar Gallatica on DVD with my wife (although it has to be one of the most depressing shows ever filmed!)
- I slept soundly on a comfortable mattress
- I had a nice, nutritious breakfast full of foods that I love
- I got to surf the Internet
- The temple provided a free lunch just for attending the seminar. (The black bean soup was to die for!)
- My blue jeans were so comfy
- My health, which I take for granted, but without which many of the blessings I experience would lose meaning
Why is it that despite having so many blessings showered on us on a daily basis so many of us feel so disgruntled? Why are we whining so much? Why are we so unhappy? As our instructor pointed out, for most of us the universe provides us far many more blessings than we actually give out in return. The blessings begin at birth and follow us magically through childhood. Someone gave us birth, nurtured us, changed our diapers and made sure we did not foolishly jump off a cliff. Should we not feel these constant blessings? Should we not wake up every day happy and grateful at how pleasant and ordered our lives are?
Perhaps we should but most of the time, we do not. We have been hoodwinked into a philosophy that says good is never good enough, so we must always aspire for better. The desire for better makes us inured to the numerous blessings we receive every day.
We were asked to put our thoughts down on two other questions. I will tell you about them in future posts.
November 17th, 2008 at 09:08pm
Posted by
Mark |
Philosophy |
no comments
Tags: Buddhism, Mindfulness
Supposedly, the United States is one of the most religious nations in the world. Surveys tell us this is so. It is hard to traverse even a few blocks without running into a house of worship. Since most of us in this country who are religious claim to be Christian, you might expect we would be busy scrupulously following Jesus’ words and deeds. As I recall Jesus preached that possessions acted as obstacles toward knowing and serving God. Jesus told us that if we have things then we should give them away to the poor. Free of the burden of materialism we could concentrate on what matters: loving each other, improving our souls and spreading the good news of salvation. We should all live our lives like Mother Teresa’s. What good is the obsession with the number of coins in our pockets if in the process our souls are damned? The book of Timothy even tells us that “For the love of money is the root of all evil”.
For an allegedly Christian nation, we seem to have a few wires crossed. As much as recent revelations about Mother Teresa shocked me, at least she felt a genuine calling from God. At least she took the words of Jesus not as just good advice, but as a commandment. As for the rest of us, well it is not as if we do not do our share of tithing and charitable work, but it is for most of us a very part time thing. Ideally, instead of demonstrating our values in actual charitable work, we are rich enough where we can just write checks to charities. These checks are not large enough to empty our bank accounts, but measured doses of monetary kindness that allows us to help the poor a bit while making sure we still have our McMansions, SUVs and Hawaiian vacations.
Perhaps Jesus is looking down on us from heaven and saying to himself, “Tsk, tsk, tsk. Here I was busy dying for their sins and they still don’t get it!” Yet arguably, it is due to our material riches that we can lift any of the poor out of poverty. I suspect though that Jesus was not calling us to make the poor richer, but to relieve their misery. He wanted us to lead them and everyone toward beliefs and values that will enrich their souls, not our pocketbooks. I suspect he is hearing something like this from us instead:
Yo! Jesus! Get off my case, big guy! I am a bit distracted now. I am having way too much fun creating my avatar for Second Life. Spiritual rewards are all fine and everything, but heck, they are intangible buddy! I would much rather get my reward right now, while I am alive. An iPhone will do for starters.
Americans really worship at the Church of Mammon. We love money but if we cannot actually possess lots of money, having lots of stuff will suffice. Why are financial markets roiling all over the world right now? Because the American appetite for having our rewards now appears to be insatiable. If the love of money is the root of all evil, then credit cards must be the must be a beeline straight to Hell’s gates. Americans just love credit because it gives us things we want now even though in many cases we cannot really afford them. Until recently, owning our own home was out of reach for many of us who are financially challenged. This uncomfortable fact of life though could be overcome thanks to the cleverness of American capitalism. The mortgage industry invented no money down home loans and adjustable rate mortgages. This gave us the illusion that the financially challenged could become homeowners too. This worked fine until we discovered we had not read the fine print and we were way overextended. We eventually realized that a home loan was not like a charge card and adjustable rate mortgage payments could go up rather dramatically. Uh oh.
In the 21st century, we Americans measure our happiness not by how spiritual we are on the inside, but on how much we can super-size our lives. A station wagon just will not do anymore. We want a Ford Explorer. A three bedroom, one and a half bath ranch house is so 1950s. We want a McMansion, with a three car garage, with an upgraded kitchen (marble countertops please) and cathedral ceilings in the foyer. We will not be denied, even if we have to drive three hours each way to work to afford our lifestyles.
We deal with the hypocrisy between our espoused values and our actual practices by living lives effused in glorious cognitive dissonance. Rather than play lip service to our house of worship which, if we are reasonably devout we may visit once a week, we pay daily visits to our houses of capitalism. From the cup of java from the local Starbucks we grab on our way to work to the hours we spend traipsing from store to store at our local mall, there are endless ways to acquire newer and shinier stuff. Now we no longer have to be bothered to actually go out and buy many things. We can shop from the convenience of our computers. If we do not actually have enough cash on hand to buy what we want, we can plastic it. What possible virtue can there be in putting off for some nebulous future day what we can have right now?
With every passing generation, our obsession with achieving happiness via materialism becomes ever more myopic. Our spending habits are endlessly analyzed and probed by marketing wizards. Every conceivable variation of product must pondered for its potential profitability. Materialism speaks to an inner angst inside us that whispers that happiness is only a purchase away. It is the collection and variety of things in our lives that are our Feng Shui. We want to live in harmony with the environment, providing it is our environment. Living in harmony with nature is clearly a distant second.
In the end of course we die. Since our stuff does not disappear when we die, it appears we cannot take all this happiness with us after death. At least we will have lived a distracted life. Whether we achieved happiness with all our material stuff or merely received its illusion will perhaps be made clear in the afterlife, assuming there is one. If Hugh Hefner’s hedonism is too scary for us to emulate, we can at least emulate Ayn Rand. Like Ms. Rand, perhaps we should explicitly state that the pursuit of wealth and the outsized freedom it buys is our most cherished value. Perhaps like Ms. Rand we should go to our deathbeds with a dollar sign hanging above on the wall next to us. At least this way we would not by hypocritical.
Capitalism of course gives us the means to stay out of poverty. If you have been there, poverty does not so much purify your soul as give you incentive never to be impoverished again. This should be obvious. It explains why millions of Americans are not sneaking into Mexico. Beyond a certain nebulous point though, materialism appears to become a philosophy of life. In its extreme manifestations, it is tantamount to a religion. Ayn Rand appears to be one of its saints. Her religion of sorts, which she invented, was called Objectivism.
Can one be truly both spiritual and materialistic? As I understand the Christianity as it is presented in the Bible, the answer is a resounding “No!” I am not a Christian, but as I have known poverty and have no desire to experience it again, I also know that I will not give up my fundamental possessions. I see no value to a vagabond life living in boxes under highway overpasses. For me having stuff is not evil. In fact, I think we are programmed to move from misery toward comfort. Although materialism does not seem to truly make many of us happy, at least it is a tangible expression of what we imagine heaven to be: a place of comfort. The real world is a tough place. Our degree of materialism is something of a benchmark that shows us how far we have moved from our inner caveman. Somewhere in our DNA are distant ancestors that lived short, squalid lives wrapped up in fear. Materialism is a balm of sorts. It moves these distant but powerful memories further from our sight. That is its value. It is almost a form of therapy.
Yet materialism does not cure the angst so much as momentarily relieve it. This could explain why, like a junkie getting his next high, or Homer Simpson reaching for his next box of doughnuts, we eventually need a new materialistic fix. To cure it we must look deeper into each other and ourselves. Giving away our stuff, as Jesus recommended, is probably not the real cure. Human connectedness, manifested through mutual expressions of love, is likely the cure manifested by our materialistic angst.
It is my belief that anything taken to excess, be it religion or materialism, is fundamentally unhealthy. Moderation in both our materialistic needs and our spiritual demands may be the key that truly move us toward enlightenment. I suggest using materialism as a means to help you enrich your spirit and to help form mutually enriching connections with all life. When used in this way materialism can be ennobling.
August 30th, 2007 at 11:14pm
Posted by
Mark |
Philosophy |
one comment
Tags: Christianity, Materialism
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