Cobb

Silas, AL

And why take ye thought for raiment? Consider the lilies of the field, how they grow; they toil not, neither do they spin.
-- Matthew 6:28

Willie got straight A's, was a Jehovah's Witness and wore a hearing aide, and so even though they were archrival footballers, the boys in Silas accepted him whereas his homefolks in Butler rejected him. Willie has twenty seven stories, at least, about life two feet above ditch level, where sanity is only accepted on faith. Willie relates to the kind of situation where it's about taking all of the bullets out of the gun but one and hoping that's a mitigating circumstance when you're looking for the man who beatdown your cousin. He never had to shoot because they couldn't find him. He was hoping they wouldn't find him, but it was that close. Willie tells the tale of that redbone college girl who invited him to study in the dorm but turned out to be wearing daisy dukes and a halter top that Friday afternoon.  He's not ready for a brew yet, so the Mountain Dew was on me. 

It took 87 minutes for the chicken wings to thaw and get cooked up and so it was past midnight and the Iggles loss before I hiked back to the Marriott. I never expected to wait that long for some hot food, and I didn't expect anybody to walk up to me for any either. But I know the feeling of walking around downtown Cleveland pissed off and looking for something to eat, except Willie wasn't pissed off.

As usual, some folks will size me up to be a Que dog or an Alpha, depending on my attitude. Willie said I fit the Alpha profile when we got around to that part of the long conversation. But it took a long time for him to get past the immediate past which for my man was a hard knock life. I'm happy to fit my profile, but I get the feeling that it's hard for Willie to get other folks to deal with the fact that he's something other than an ex-crackhead. He just turned 33 and hasn't had a taste in two years. He has been a dental assistant and an auto mechanic, 'strictly blue collar' and tells tales of legendary BBQs and his fool friend Chuck who didn't realize what a good woman he had before they eventually got married and moved out West. 

Willie's a peasant of the better sort. One who doesn't pretend to be anything more and yet knows the transformative power of God. I asked him how old his father was, knowing I was ready to say something pithy about how young 33 actually is. He has three he says. the one we all have, the Heavenly Father, his biological father and the man who raised him. The man who raised him is 83. The man who keeps him putting one foot in front of the other is infinite and Willie is full of acknowledgement. The third man is available via Facebook and things are getting better, step by step. Willie is figuring a way to share his story of redemption with the knuckleheads he's accustomed to being around, especially the younger ones. It's easy to see him as that kind of counselor, just as soon as he can turn his inner conviction into inner strength, and his outer expression into one of evident socially redeeming purpose. But today Willie is a man whose good times are tainted - too tainted for funding by my interpretation of the eyes that fund. But I know something about American men that I don't think too many men bother to find out.

Unemployment is going to 13%, according to the latest experts on Bloomberg Surveillance this morning, and as Tom Keene puts it, there's something wrong with the term 'small business'. Officially, small business means less than 500 employees, and those are all the companies that are getting no bank loans these days. So there's a class of financiers in America that can't even be bothered with 'small business', so what are the chances for peasants like me and Willie? 

Take a look when you have a moment, because even the Google VW has been to Silas, Alabama. Right in the middle of town, there's not much of a town. And good kids come to big cities like Cleveland, where the regional banks are failing left and right, and sometimes it gets down to taking crack, or taking down scores, or as in the case of the Imperial Murders, just taking other people's lives and dignity. There's still not enough bandwidth to get all those stories out. They are born on the tongues of men like Willie. There are some towns that reject you for your differences, even if those differences are character strengths. There are some towns that accept you, and there are others that ignore you altogether.

Where do you go when all the things that are too big to fail actually fail? You go where things are too small to succeed but actually succeed. 

My mother is sending me Bible verses, and I know a third of the famous ones. So I'm thinking of King James, the only version I remember. This is the story of Christianity that stands when other institutions fail. This is the story of faith in mankind that transcends market fluctuations. This is a story of the power of redemption - of something that works for the peasants even when the royalty stands wealthy, illiquid and clueless. I can give it a Deist name or not, but it is the divine that resides in our souls - that thing that tells us right from wrong in all circumstances - that thing we try to suppress intellectually or self-deprecatingly. 

There's a lot of small business around this land. 

Faith vs Articles of Faith

I'm reading Christopher Hitchens' reflections on his various debates with religious authorities et al, and I think it is very tempting to confuse faithfulness with adherence to doctrine. He says:

Usually, when I ask some Calvinist whether he is really a Calvinist (in the sense, say, of believing that I will end up in hell), there is a slight reluctance to say yes, and a slight wince from his congregation. I have come to the conclusion that this has something to do with the justly famed tradition of Southern hospitality: You can't very easily invite somebody to your church and then to supper and inform him that he's marked for perdition. More to the point, though, you soon discover that many of those attending are not so sure about all the doctrines, either, just as you very swiftly find out that a vast number of Catholics don't truly believe more than about half of what their church instructs them to think.

Hitchens reminds me of the tendency for pedants to believe that everybody who is not has ample time to make philosophical sense of their world and adhere to inconsistencies because of mental lapses, incapacities or worse. And when it comes to religion, secular foes are particularly prone to this sort of error - the assumption that people buy into a coherent slate of beliefs and behaviors. It's a particularly annoying thing to do, especially if one is divorced. 

I always recall that there are social implications to Goedel's Incompleteness Theorem and that the mind rationalizes so that it doesn't halt. Human behavior isn't provable, especially not by cynics.

The Peasant Principle

Only peasants care about America. Those who are wealthy find it merely convenient. But there is a slice somewhere in the connection between that make this place extraordinary. Long live the Slice.

Something I learned late in life is that rights are the gift of the strong. That is to say the only restraint that keeps the powerful from overpowering everything is their fear of God and their willingness to abide by the law. I reconcile these to the classic motivations of honor, fear and greed by suggesting that the powerful keep those true motivations hidden and attribute their restraint to piety and legality. But we still must pay attention to those particular restraints.

The law is restrained by its own reasonableness and the competence of law enforcement. The problem is that law enforcement is always made up of us peasants, some of whom might want to become truly powerful or wealthy. The same applies to the church. The effectiveness of the church in restraint depends upon its ability to provide succor, blessing, understanding, community - all things the powerful need in common with the common man. The clergy too is made up of peasants.

American exceptionalism depends uniquely on the persistence of the Slice, those capable of and desirous of maintaining a highly competent meritocracy. The rest of us are peasants. What I'm suggesting here is that American class distinctions are overwrought and that we are over sensitive to them. A great deal of meaning is attached in our society to meaningless efforts and great distinction given to trivial differences. There are the powerful, there is the Slice, and there is the peasantry. The Slice is smaller, much smaller than the middle class. I believe it to be smaller than the upper middle class. Indeed it is a small subset of the rich and near rich. They are the people who work because they know how and because they want to, but most importantly, they enable the institutions of power.

When I speak of power, I mean the power to get you killed. I mean the power of life or death. I mean the power to make or break. I don't mean influence. The Slice has influence - the Slice are the avatars of power. The Man says 'make it so' and the Slice pushes the button. Or perhaps The Man pushes the button, but the Slice built it and explained how it works. Either way, they are the instruments, not the motivating force. And in this understanding lies something very valuable - I see it as a tool for simplicity.

Explaining what I mean by peasantry should be easy. But it's not because it is the water we swim in. They are the rules for the game we call life - it's every career path you can imagine - it's every character in every TV show we've ever watched. I have come to recognize it in facing elements of the Slice and those beyond. I get to feel the dimensions of peasantry when I think about war and when I think about life and death decisions. It is a difficult and frightening revelation to know.

I have this duality in most of the areas of my life. As a black man outsider I have engineered a place for myself in society as an insider. It was relatively easy to do, but there was no roadmap and not much friendly assistance along the way. The same thing I say about work and can say about relationships and church. I am essentially an individual, an island entire of myself, yet I volunteer and discipline myself to be a piece of the continent, a part of the mainstream. 

I don't mention this in detail to suggest that I am unique in this regard. In fact, I am saying that without question I am a peasant. But I am a questioning and articulating peasant very much aware of the feudal arrangement by which I have my liberty. I illustrate the ways I have come to recognize my position, a position I share with millions of Americans, the overwhelming majority of us. I think that somewhere in the story of The Count of Monte Cristo is an appropriate analogy. But it is on the question of the arrangements of liberty and the role of that thin Slice that I wish to direct my attention. This is my lesson going forward and captures the theme of my current writing.

Andrew Hacker wrote in his classic 'Money' that most Americans, no matter what their position in society, would be satisfied completely with a 20% raise. If you have ever played that videogame 'The Sims' you understand this implicitly. You buy a cheap chair to sleep in, you save money, study, work and spend most of your time in self-improvement to get a fluffier bed. But does the quality of your sleep improve? You eat a better brand of steak, but does your body digest its proteins any better? You buy a better car, but can you get to work any faster? Moreover can you drive a fast car, more than 175 MPH? All of our self-improvement goes to what end? It doesn't generally make us a different type of individual, it puts us in contact with a different class of peasantry. But where are the ends? Where are the borders, and exactly whom is on the other side?

As inveterate readers of Cobb know, several years ago I was involved with a venture in China. It didn't work out, but for me personally it represented touching the brass ring. It was a consummation of my life's preparation and gave me an opportunity to see myself rich. I allowed myself to think that I was on the verge of being all that I ever wanted to be - or more properly said, I would finally be rewarded for being who I am and then finally the world could see me unfettered. I didn't have to grow any longer. I would have F You Money and now the world would come to me instead. But even at that level, there are always bigger fish, there are always more significant arrangements, there are always kings over kings. After all, the deal collapsed in a firestorm of lawsuits, and when elephants fight, smaller animals get trampled.

The question peasants must ask is where is their Liege and what happens when they fight? How are we really connected to the individuals who are the ultimate expression of our values? Do we even know where to find them? Or do we just skip humanity altogether and say it's God? Presumptuous that.
Who designed your sandbox?

--

I hope to come back to this framework again and again. It is my intent to place American society in a global and historical context and separate those things that serve peasants and those that serve free men. I believe we have the opportunity to be free men. I believe that within the American meritocracy, such as it is - even in the potential absence of American world dominating power, a path can be found that leads to freedom.

Down to the Fingernails

Catholics are great. They try so hard to be righteous. They pore so deeply over their eternal souls. They obsess over sin so constantly. They attempt to be completely clean, down to the fingernails.

It's the fear. It's not the superstition of religious mystery. It is the disciplined hand of the inspired man that swings high in threat over the child's upturned eyes. There are, according to the ancients, three primary motivators of men. They are greed, glory and fear. And while there are many who pretend that their motivations are more realistic than those of the God fearing, men and women of the cloth put it plainly into the same human terms.

So I have seen Doubt, the film, at long last.

In some youthful imagining of mine there was something of Arthur Miller in every play, and so in every highbrow entertainment I expected moral edification. I expected it from LeRoi Jones. I expected it from Eugene O'Neill. I expected it from Chekov and from Achebe. I thought it was all of the stuff that educated people did in their spare time. And so I was disappointed, not in them, but in everyone else. Because if anyone dared to suggest that following God's will through the institution of the Church and at the hands of the priesthood, then certainly they must have had a better idea. So perhaps The Crucible got me on a tangent of doubt, or clouded up the firmament blocking the divine stars navigating my youth's journey. Either way there is doubt. Doubt which strengthens faith. Doubt which requires our attention and introspection, meditation and prayer. You simply can't get it from the Theatre. You simply can't get it from the Church.

You must internalize the discipline, down to your fingernails.

--

I also saw Layer Cake, the film, at long last.

Seeing it reminded me of the old men I have met, especially the ones that make me afraid. They are the capable ones. I used to think once upon a time that I could belly up to the brass rail and strike up a conversation that would lead to my edification. And I forget that most of the time I ambled home reminded of my weaknesses. There are two such men I have in mind at this very moment whose good regard I believe I have. But I am afraid to engage with them at length for fear they would hand me an assignment for which I am deadly unprepared.

Such men are only men though, and perhaps they are like stone soup. Doing nothing and being there, they make me through in the proper ingredients. Yeah. It's the fear.

--

I am drawn to conflict of the close combative style. The kind that makes you answer for yourself. It's how I was raised. Yes sir. And I grew to watch myself closely because I was watched closely. And I came to outdiscipline my own parental taskmasters, and those of my parochial school, and so on through life. In my thinking, and in my spirit. And I know that God is out there, infinite.

So the thing is to watch your soul. And wash your hands.

Karajan & Perfection

Part of the difficulty of dealing with death, and I suppose this applies particularly to Americans, is that if you haven't faced your own mortality you might come away less inclined to live. As I write this, I cannot remember the last moment I felt as if I should discipline myself to perfection. To discipline oneself to perfection is the proper attitude to life because there is such joy and inspiration in being a vessel of the perfection that is available to us. It is to submit to the highest will and thus gain orientation over one's own life and destiny. But I happened upon a biography on PBS this evening on Karajan, and it is music that is bringing me over to that kind of appreciation I once had for my own perfection.

Small perfections.

That was how I used to run my life. And I think of the short years after having read Ayn Rand and a moment in time when I was watching Jeopardy and calculating my own score as a fourth player while adjusting the others down and distinguishing Monk songs in my head, broiling New York strips and reading Moliere and falling asleep to CBS Mystery Radio. lt was the start of a new life for me in 1987, but I'd have to check my diary to be precise. I was looking to perfect myself because the order of things became apparent - I realized that I had wasted time trying to help others to do things that cannot be helped.

And I'm rather there again, because I've been saying "It's not about me", for several years.

The phrase in my head was "Civilization is where you put it." And for a young man with a vision of the digital future and quite enough nerve to assume a role in its creation, I was putting myself always up to the task. I discounted my surroundings and dedicated myself, and I was called arrogant and I liked being called arrogant. I only wanted to be clear-eyed and unafraid.

Karajan reminds me of what it must be like to be that vessel. To have such dedication to clear one's mind of clutter and to master, over all things to attain mastery and reach the point at which the answer is clear. He memorized concertos and operas and symphonies. He exerted his will to create. He dominated in order to perfect, to create a powerful harmony, to achieve an excellence. His is an expression of will I've not perceived since my appreciation of Yukio Mishima. It was Mishima who set me free to perfect in those mid 80s.

How one lives a life of compromise is a matter of inattention. It is by not having a vision that demands your perfection that you slip, human-like into your own smell. If you stay in bed long enough, you breathe less oxygen. 

Life is too long, and it is too short, not to believe in self-perfection. We are fortunate that in youth it is done for us by the simplest unsullied application to our pure and genuine ambitions. But as life becomes long and we forget it becomes longer still to reapply without world-weary cynicism. That is why there is great God-given asymmetry in the ability to perceive and to produce. For all of Karajan's great dedication and perfection to his craft it only takes us an hour to hear and appreciate. For all many years of practice and discipline any man exerts, we have only to recognize it to be made rightly inspired. And greatest yet we have only to have faith in God to build a religious perfection in ourselves. To do otherwise is to self-destruct.

I am realizing the necessity of my discipline and my aim towards perfection. From God through Beethoven through Karajan to me.

The Godless Problem

The other day I watched a science video about the surprising findings of the Hubble Telescope. It showed that there were thousands of galaxies in a corner of the sky that seemed to be empty. With 10 days concentrated focus, leaving the lens open to something that appeared dark, tiny specks of light finally appeared. These lights were further than any object previously seen by mankind's most powerful instrument for observing the universe.

I have a theory about the physicality of God which goes along a parallel a short story by Martin Amis called 'The Janitor on Mars'. My theory (which I don't actually believe) is that God is a being that lives at the center of the Sun and communicates with other gods in other stars through incalculably fast digital pulses which we read as the electromagnetic spectrum of the Sun itself. Our revelations come from the way in which some small fraction of that communication affects our brains. Every way in which we experience sunlight is spiritual and real, we really just don't know how to interpret it - yet we know it's there.

The problem with the godless is that they must experience the numinous but don't raise the implications high enough. Which is to say that they are morally ambiguous because even though they accept the premises of the ecology of physics, they don't bother to interpret any of that to be morally transcendent. So while they can accept the premise of a universe larger than ever imagined over the course of 10 days of patience, they cannot accept that expanding their concept of a god in moral significance.

The laws of nature should not allow us to think the unthinkable. Yet we do. The unthinkable might be signal or it might be noise. To assume it is only noise is to assume that the ultimate receiver has been built. That cannot be the case. Think of it this way. If you broadcast a television signal in 1850, it would only be considered noise. We know it would be imperceptible to the people of the time. How can we know with any certainty that our God is not in the Sun or perhaps beyond even the most patient scanning of the heavens?

The godless must at the very least reserve a transcendent morality as a philosophical placeholder for God, or live and die as if God were beyond the edge of the universe and His power was finite and subject to the inverse square rule.

Man's Inhumanity to Shrimp

District 9 is the best movie I've seen all year, and not one that I thought would make me cry. It didn't but it put me right on the verge of tears. 

Law is a manipulation of conscience. It is the contrivance of third parties to do your just thinking for you. It never appears as such a contrivance so clearly as when it is abused or inept. This is not the central premise of District 9, but it is clearly indicated. 

District 9 does a very good job of leaving the parallels intact as well as taking this South African story beyond the context of Apartheid. It is the story of Wikes Van Der Merwe a bureaucrat of the fictional MNU, the NGO which is charged with the care of the alien species that has descended into Johannesburg. For 20 years, the film tells us, all human social work, diplomacy and alien rights management has failed to do anything for the 'Prawn' alien race now numbering about 2 million who occupy District 9. This district itself is a slum, filmed in one of the current or former townships of Apartheid South Africa. Wikes, a young do-gooder has been selected by one of the hierarchs of MNU to be in charge of the biggest program in their history of administering the aliens, which is to evict them from their current lodgings to a relocation camp further outside of the city of Johannesburg. But he's in for the surprise of his life.

The movie describes the aliens to be disorganized, like worker bees without a queen. As such they are singularly unable to organize any resistance and do little but scavenge. They are exploited in all the typical ways by Nigerians who are the only humans who live inside District 9, but also and obviously by MNU, as Wikes clearly demonstrates as he follows the law. This law allows MNU to destroy the alien nests - to basically abort fetal aliens that grow like maggots, external to the alien bodies, in cow carcasses. Wikes describes the popping sounds of the eggs as he orders the torching of such a nest. 

In the course of his bureaucratic duty, dressed in a flack jacket and under military escort, Wikes directs his doucmentary cameraman (from whose POV we are watching), to capture this activity. He finds weapons, a strange chemistry set, young aliens, and all other sorts of illegal activity and contraband. On such a journey he is spritzed with a strange liquid as seen in the widely available previews of the movie. 

The largest secret, even unknown to Van der Merwe but not to his father in law who gave him the relocation assignment, is that there has been an MNU program to genetically experiment on the aliens and humans so that humans can operate the alien weapons which require the alien DNA. Through a series of accidents and collusions Wikes winds up being the first ever human to grow an alien arm. He is forced to use this arm to fire the alien weapons to great success, and before his body is to be dissected and donated to science (and billons of dollar of corporate and government research) he escapes. And, as you might expect, he must now survive within District 9 amongst the aliens whom only yesterday were wards of his state apparatus. 

It is altogether too easy to shoot the barrelfish of the liberal bureaucracy of the MNU which stands as an apt metaphor for the UN and its humanitarian efforts. It is rather for we the living to recognize exactly how liberty must translate for a sentient species which is incoherently disorganized and in our midst. I find myself driven to understand the conditions under which the alien ship was sent to Earth. And while the film didn't speculate, it was clear to me that these were exiles and outcasts, prisoners perhaps. For any civilization that could accomplish interstellar travel would clearly not send their best and brightest to live in a township in South Africa, which was obviously selected for its cultural and legal ability to have a strict bipolar society. 

District 10 has to be made. It simply must. The story is far too compelling for the implications not to be taken up. The difficulty presents itself in regard to the origins of this film. The collaboration between Peter Jackson and South African director Neill Blomkamp began as the combination who would make the Halo movie. As anyone with half a wit could tell you, the Halo franchise has elephantine legs, but also enough legal brambles to trip a herd. Blompkamp has an extraordinary gift for directing the sort of chaotic action of battle, but he has also created and mastered the human / alien / technology interaction in live action heretofore only achievable in videogames. Blomkamp is the director who now owns the neorealism of this emergent genre of sci-fi. And surely this is why Jackson has taken him under his wing and is now going in a different direction. The old master of the Lord of the Rings is stepping down to do Tin Tin, which is great and cool and whatnot, but Blomkamp is now the shortlisted dOOd for pwnage movies. 

Except. 

Except that Spielberg is rumored to have an interest in Halo, which could be a shame. Because Blomkamp has made the most emotionally resonant battle robot in the history of film. The alien robot suit in District 9 was so fluid and responsive that you could feel the man inside it dying through the increasingly pathetic stumbling of the machine itself. And it is not coincidental that it was a kickass battle droid only for the moments that it was controlled exteriorly by the kid alien. So yeah I want Blomkamp to be involved with the Halo movies because I know he has the right eye for the action, but we all need Spielberg to do this and wrest control of the franchise from the legal sharks at Microsoft. 

In the meantime, District 9 is an extraordinarily good and morally resonant story and a kewl movie to boot. Bravo to Blomkamp. We want more.

Islam Demystified

It occurs to me, watching this video, that there aren't many complications to Islam, and I think perhaps many who have argued against our Western culture as if it were incompatible with the nature of Islam are being simpletons. The reason I say so is that immediately I recognize a very easy parallel between the combination of postures and prayer in Islam to various positions in Asian martial arts.

My generation has taken a shine to a number of Asian cultural traditions in ways our parents have not. And it seems trivially easy for me, having grown up in California beginning adulthood in what we used to call The Pacific Rim, to have some appreciation for those traditions without any sense of alienation or threat. I consider it odd to not have a very concrete understanding of the differences between Japanese, Chinese, Korean, Vietnamese and Phillipino. (Even though everybody fails at alllooksame.com)

It is my opinion that we are so unfamiliar with Arab culture that we don't have a safe place to put its religion. Of course I don't conflate the two, but I think an appreciation for the Middle Eastern is a necessary precondition to the sort of diplomatic comfort we have with many things Asian. I think it is our difficulty with the expression of the devout which confuses things. Speaking for myself I want another way to approach an Arab Muslim, and without the smallest cultural vocabulary, not even food, I am at a loss.

I thought about it yesterday walking my daughters on the pier, and I said out loud the same thing I always think when I see a large tank full of crabs. How hungry did the first man have to be when he pulled one of those hideous looking creatures off the bottom of the sea, to crack it open an eat the insides? The very idea is forbidden to the Halal diet, but here "it's considered a delicacy". When the Spousal Unit worked the Atlanta Olympics and went to a crash course in International Manners, she learned that showing the bottom of your feet is very insulting in the Middle East. If I remember correctly no Arab man worth a dime would ever let a dog lick his face, and quite frankly I'm down with that sentiment. If you use the 'OK' sign with your thumb and forefinger, you're calling an Arab an asshole. I can see how that makes sense too.

But looking at these simple prayers, I get it. I understand the discipline.

One cannot forget that most people on earth are tribal and feudal, and very many Muslims are, outside of the Koran, illiterate. I think of Islam, perhaps falsely, as a desert island religion, one whose central clerics have not reconciled its practices with modernity. I suggest that as a criticism not only because Catholic scholars have convinced me that Christianity has been reconciled, but also in the Information Theory sense of the scalability of a system of knowledge. Islam seems to capture more of human attention than God's grace demands. It suggests to me and overproduction of religion, which is an intrusion in modern life, but probably very useful in a tribal or feudal arrangement.

In a certain way, my daily devotions on this infernal machine take the place of the pedestrian entertainments of television and sports. I sympathize with Albert Murray's sentiment 'Literature is my religion'. I too am devoted to a lifelong pursuit of moral wisdom. But if I were not to have the collection of minds with whom I interact along this medium, I would certainly do more quiet reflection, prayer and temporal discipline. But so long as there is a world here, I will attend to its linkages, be they weak or strong. I know that the connection I feel to this online world brings out my best.

I would like to know Arabs and other Semitics as well as I know Asians, which is enough to feel at complete ease and somewhat conversant culturally. Not to prove what a cosmopolite I am, or to counter some bigotry I harbor - but for the sake of knowing something I think we will all eventually have to know in our global world, an appreciation for their themes

Paragraph 56

56. The Christian religion and other religions can offer their contribution to development only if God has a place in the public realm, specifically in regard to its cultural, social, economic, and particularly its political dimensions. The Church's social doctrine came into being in order to claim “citizenship status” for the Christian religion. Denying the right to profess one's religion in public and the right to bring the truths of faith to bear upon public life has negative consequences for true development. The exclusion of religion from the public square — and, at the other extreme, religious fundamentalism — hinders an encounter between persons and their collaboration for the progress of humanity. Public life is sapped of its motivation and politics takes on a domineering and aggressive character. Human rights risk being ignored either because they are robbed of their transcendent foundation or because personal freedom is not acknowledged. Secularism and fundamentalism exclude the possibility of fruitful dialogue and effective cooperation between reason and religious faith. Reason always stands in need of being purified by faith: this also holds true for political reason, which must not consider itself omnipotent. For its part, religion always needs to be purified by reason in order to show its authentically human face. Any breach in this dialogue comes only at an enormous price to human development.

-- Benedict XVI

This is why I am Catholic. The Church speaks to me and offers me the whole of its knowledge, embracing all of human experience, directed by the unifying voice of the Pope. It works to unite me with God recognizing that as a full human being I require more than blind acceptance and unconsidered submission. The Church intrinsically defends my freedom by recognizing all of my capacities and needs and points my way to human self-realization on it's only path - towards God.

Owen Brown & My Piece of America

There is an outside chance, perhaps 30%, that I have already accomplished my greatest contribution on this planet. Perhaps there is something about being an American that makes us believe such things deep into our 40s, and thusly I am deluded. Whatever the figure, I recognize the inclination I have to elide a number of things I know when speaking. I know more that I say and I don't mind it so long as I say the most important things to say, which are often more humble and encouraging than anything else. There aren't many occasions when I wish to impress people, and my passions are my own.

It is in recognition of such things that I approach my 48th birthday with another sense of generosity - that of curating some aspect of my experience I think ought to be worth something. So I've been thinking that we all ought to know something extraordinarily well. Not that that something needs to be important, but just that we stay close to it for a long enough time to know it gets translated well into the next generation. I don't know how long ago it was when I first thought of this, but the fact that Tantalum is element 73 and the Iranians have been purchasing it for making capacitors with military applications reminded me. How many times do we know the periodic table without really knowing something extraordinary about one of the elements. What are there 210? 210 people could make that their life - to know all there is to know about their element. 67 is one of my favorite numbers, that would make me the curator of Holmium, I guess. Like the old woman from Airplane who pops up and says 'I speak jive', there might come a moment when we have something to say.

If I might take a detour to be the critic while I'm at the humble task, I would jab my neighbors in their intemollectual ambitions. There's something wrong about the shotgun morality of Considering All Things that has as its terminus the adopted program... I mean you have to be convinced that there is something essentially wrong with the world to become a moral crusader, but you have to be convinced that most things are wrong with the world to be generally supportive of moral crusaders. And that is the question begged by someone to takes an abstract approach to knowing moral things, which is the opposite of knowing a few or one thing very well and waiting for your turn to pop up and speak your perfectly inflected jive. Anyway enough of that.

The thing that hits me today is before I created it, there was no Wikipedia entry for Owen Brown, the third son of John Brown who died here in Southern California. It was 10 years ago last month when I visited his gravesite in Altadena on a spot called Little Rountop. At the time, I was fairly deep into my anti-racist activism and made the rather cornball decision to hang with whichever homies showed up for John Brown Day. It was one of those moments when I felt old, but not quite old enough. Which is to say a lot of things, none of them well. I'll explain it better later. The bottom line is that I feel drawn to preserve various arcana about Owen Brown due to that trip which meant quite a bit to me at the time, and now again in retrospect.

You see the big deal was that I had read Cloudsplitter and that book, like few others before, rocked my world. Reading about the life of John Brown from the perspective of author Russell Banks using the voice of Owen Brown forever altered my presentism on the issue of race. As you are probably well aware, there is a theory that people in today's America are better judges of matters of race than were those of our earlier history, and without the input of any number of non-whites, whites were inherently incapable of understanding the depth of their own racial depravity. It is this particular fiction that keeps any number of Americans in thrall to the sorts of declarations that roll off the chin of anyone a hair darker than George Hamilton. Because minorities have empathy. As if the very word originated in the original Ibo and didn't have an English equivalent until the importation of slaves to Virginia. 

At any rate beside the bohemian dingbat quality of Postfun's fetish of Race Treason, which at the time I thought profound, I did have an excellent and transcendent moment at Owen Brown's grave. How could I know Tim Wise would go so..tangential? And while I no longer live in Altadena nor subscribe to ideas for the improvement of either black or white races, I have a special fondness for the place feeling some responsibility as an archivist of that moment, and of the disposition of the memorial. So it comes as something of a surprise to me, now that I am one of the GPS class, that some various legal battles regarding access to Little Roundtop have scored one for the good guys.

As a consequence, I will make it my business to curate some fraction of Owen Brown's life and keep some Google Bots trolling the news for any mention of his name. Further, I will make available some collection of digital artifacts.

Download Owen Brown Package

Dunhill Blue

There are lots of things I used to do before I got married and had kids that I don't do any longer. But I do smoke about three packs a year.

I found myself lying awake at 5:30 this morning which is odd considering how out of it I was last night. The fitted sheet is coming off one corner of the bed and when that happens, the shock of raw mattress intrudes on my slumber. So I decided I may as well go to 8 o'clock services.

The two way fan that fits in the window sill would be a joke in Brooklyn, but here in Southern California it is just right for the oncoming summer. I installed it after some struggle with sliding the window up the other day. I brushed aside some cobwebs and turned it so that it blows cool air in and set it on high. By 6pm I was putting on long sleeves and had cured the oxygen deficit that had me feeling faint. This morning that fan and the other that sits on my dresser were both quiet and the early morning low clouds and fog along the coast had still not raised their dreary blankets from the neighborhood. It's May and I put on a mock turtleneck, my new style to go with my new hair.

This morning's service was about friendship. According to scripture, the New Commandment says that we are friends with Jesus and he no longer calls us his servants because servants do no know what their master is thinking. But Jesus is sharing the love of the Father with us and so we are all commanded to share love with our neighbors. Father Joseph reminded us two things. One, that we don't have to agree when we love our neighbor and Two, that it is not a suggestion that we love our neighbor, but a commandment. You *must* agree to disagree and live in love because God has decided to be your friend. And if God has condescended to love us miserable human beings, who are we to be intransigent?

I have had my post called 'A Christian Mob' in park for the past few days. I can't figure a way to complete it. In fact I can't find a way to complete much of anything these days. I am preternaturally lazy. My back still hurts and I'm feeling completely sympathetic with characters who are broken down and tired. Like Jean Paul Sarti in Grand Prix. Like Randy the Ram in The Wrestler. Like Paul Volker must feel. There are evolutionary dead ends all of us must face. Sometimes we come to grips with our irrelevance other times we come to grips with our apathy. They are both very hard to accept, especially if you've been a success. In the end, I gather you have to die trying. Some ambitions are like that. The alternative is that you start from scratch halfway through your life. I'll check out Shakespeare, I'm sure he had something to say about that, or perhaps he didn't. After all, he didn't make it much past 50.

The Christian Mob is about some great fraction of us coming to consciousness about Mark Steyn's predictions. It's going to be hard on a lot of people who don't agree to disagree. Muslims, I mean.

After services I went to my trunk to put away my jacket. On the little shelf opposite the GPS drive, I had stashed away a pack of cigarettes. Dunhill Blue. They were part of my few remaining deceptions. I bought them on the Friday afternoon that I snuck away to see Star Trek without the family. I stuck an unlit fag between my lips and trolled around View Park having stopped to closely observe some of the more fabulous houses on Angeles Vista. I was on my way to the richest black Starbucks in America, but I didn't have my lighter. I wondered if anyone does that - walks around with an unlit square in their mouth. Oral fixation. Indecision. Chalkline walking.

Sure enough there was a cream colored Silver Cloud convertible in the prime parking spot at Starbucks Ladera. I parked the Transporter 40 paces away and headed to the door giving a once over to the crowd of men outside. Grande mocha whip. Apple fritter warm. Six bucks. I sat alone, made one trip back to the car for my reading glasses, registered with the free AT&T wifi and caught up on my email while sitting alone amongst the groups of affluent middle aged black men. There were three conversations, and two of them were about basketball and one about real estate. I figure that the guy who dresses very much like T.D. Jakes, the commercial real-estate guy from Jersey, had a good chance of being the owner of the Rolls Royce. Or else it was the Caribbean gent who sat alone like me with a similar appearance of oblivion the the too-loud conversations about Jordan's retirement, Kobe's personality and Trump's craftiness. Meanwhile, I texted a friend to see if he were in California. No, still at the Cape. Rocket science.

On the way to church there were five motorcyclists in the fast lane. Three of the five were on red Ducatis, the other two were equally red, but I couldn't tell what kind of bike. I wish I were in a motorcycle gang. Five Ducatis are enough. Stand apart together. There were half a dozen black men at the alumni golf tournament last week, half of them were in our foursome, except there were only three of us. There were only four guys from our entire class of 78 in attendance and I was the only one not an officer of some sort with one of the many alumni associations. D is my connection to that holy land of my own history, all the black Catholics in LA with which I am connected in my exuberant youth. I have traveled too much in my life to have kept all of my roots close enough, and so on this cloudy morning I am thinking about the fleeting camaraderie of semi-private events. Two weeks ago it was the funeral of a gamer whose voice brought joy but whose face I never knew. Four years ago this Starbucks was a regular hangout.

I am a writer. Which is why I am writing this to you. I am overly perceptive. I am overly articulate. If it wasn't for the internet, I'd be in a library right now and these words would be going into a diary.

The apple fritter was much better than the Dunhill I never ignited. But that means I shouldn't eat again until 3pm. The Spousal Unit called and I headed home. And since we all go to different churches at different times, agreeing to disagree but one in love, I dropped my eldest daughter down at the contemporary Baptist's joint on Pacific Coast Highway. She noticed the pack of Dunhill Blue and asked what they were doing in my car. I told her that they were here for no good reason, but I didn't tell her that I hadn't smoked one.

She needs to know that I cleaned up my act to have a family. That there are a lot of things I used to do but no longer do. I'll figure out some way to communicate that, because like most teenage girls who are 'only' 3.2 GPA students, she figures somehow that she's not good enough. I'm trying to figure out how women negotiate as the weaker sex through a civilized form of quid pro quo that doesn't seem to exist in the swamp of our contemporary society where the Gospel is spread through Powerpoints. There are far too many lines instantly available through Google and nobody seems to have the patience to read between them. Every movie has a rating, every query has an answer, and almost nobody is trying to speak to the entire world. It's all rude niche marketing.

I'm an outsider. I possess alien observation mode. I know that none of it is prefab for my consumption, so I've got the critical thinking skills. None of the world makes sense to me, not in an easily expressible manner. Nor do I trust it much, which is why I process it all independently and spew it out here. I try not to be so flavorful or artistic as I once was on The Well or at Cafe Utne. It's good enough to have subscribers in the UK. I've got the English standards figured out. No need to try and be so awfully clever. The kind of writer I want to be is not niche. That would be for my motorcycle club, or my guys in Beef Alcohol & Tobacco, whenever they show up.

This is why I need my friends so much. Which is why I need the church. Which is why today's lesson is so important. It's a lonely world. I could not invent an invisible friend as complicated as Jesus, and even if I could, I could never expect that such a friend might haunt the dreams of so many millions asleep or abruptly awake at the crack of dawn on Sunday. We can all agree to disagree. That's easy for guys like me who may not say it, but am thinking, 'fuck you' to all those insipid personal questions. A person who can tell people to fuck off but is not a total asshole recognizes that we all belong together at a higher level. That's a bit complicated to explain but I'm not going to do it right now - I just know the type. Gregory House, for example.

So there's an emphasis on do instead of be. Yeah I did smoke Dunhills, that's what I did, not who I am. Now I don't - I just was remembering.

Lumen Gentium

“This is the one Church of Christ which in the Creed is professed as one, holy, catholic, and apostolic, which our Savior, after his Resurrection, commissioned Peter to shepherd, and him and the other apostles to extend and direct with authority, which he erected for all ages as ‘the pillar and mainstay of the truth.’ This Church, constituted and organized in the world as a society, subsists in the Catholic Church, which is governed by the successor of Peter and by the Bishops in communion with him, although many elements of sanctification and of truth are found outside of its visible structure. These elements, as gifts belonging to the Church of Christ, are forces impelling toward catholic unity.”

Catholic unity.

Catholic unity around the pillar and mainstay of the truth. That's pretty heavy. I like it.

As Vermont Goes...

I've found a new interesting blog called Mirror of Justice concerned with Catholic legal theory. The author Berg, underscores a point I've been making which is point three (emphasis mine).

The primary religious-liberty concern is not the one dealt with in the Vermont statute: that objecting clergy or houses of worship would have to perform or host same-sex marriages.  That prospect seems extremely unlikely anyway.  Attacks on the tax-exempt status of traditionalist churches are more likely, but still doubtful.  But recognition of gay marriage will definitely make it more likely that religious schools and social services, even those with religious content throughout their programs, will be punished if they refuse to hire openly gay people as teachers or counselors or to pay benefits to their partners.  It may do this in several ways:  (1) Most obviously, directly triggering the obligation to pay spousal benefits.  (2) Depriving religious organizations of the (sometimes successful) argument that they discriminate against all extramarital sex and not on the basis of sexual orientation.  See CLS v. Walker, 453 F.3d 853, 860 (7th Cir. 2006).  (3) Strengthening the gay-rights argument that there is a compelling governmental interest against sexual-orientation discrimination, overriding a constitutional religious freedom claim, in virtually every context -- not just marriage but also hiring and other associational decisions by private religious organizations.  See, e.g., Bob Jones Univ. v. U.S. (allowing stripping of tax exemption on ground that prohibition of race discrimination in numerous other contexts shows a "firm national policy" and a compelling, overriding interest).

It may be time for defenders of traditional opposite-sex marriage to shift some attention from trying to stop gay marriage to trying to secure religious liberty protections, at least in states where there is a significant prospect that the courts or the legislature will recognize gay marriage.  Once that decision of recognition has happened, the traditionalist religious organization is on much weaker strategic ground in seeking protection to continue to pursue its vision of marriage in its employment and other decisions.  As Doug Laycock suggests in the conclusion to the excellent book of essays Same-Sex Marriage and Religious Liberty, there is opportunity at the front end to secure legislative compromises in which any recognition of same-sex marriage is accompanied by significant exemptions.  The exemptions should cover not just churches refusing to perform ceremonies -- symbolically important, in practice not a live issue -- but also religious schools and social services in their employment, leadership, and membership decisions.  But if traditionalists fight all the way to the mat on stopping gay marriage altogether, they may lose opportunities to secure such protection.

Boy can I be tedious.

Advent Rising

I'm working my way into my penultimate discipline, and I expect it to be the font of my best living. Before I hunker down into my last house and write books into the twilight of life, I will be getting down to my retirement weight, comprehending Western Civ, getting through Knuth and attending services. As to that last measure of devotion, there is a surprising contender: The Church of the Advent.

I should be on my way there by all rights for today is Sunday and the 8am service is the one I like. But my discipline is not complete and I have other priorities for the day. Still, 'the one I like' is a large part of this decision. I am drawn to God for reasons I can identify, reasons I can prioritize or change. I take the idea that doubt increases the value of faith when I'm into explaining, but I also take it on faith that I may not deserve God's grace. The two combine to make it an absolute necessity to find the proper way to deal with God, and that is why I seek Church.

I'm having a cheeky bit of row with someone named Olga over on Facebook, and it appears that way because we are limited to two tiny paragraphs in their interface. I hope to get her over here, as well as another surprise guest. But it is that little spark that reminds me of how weak secular humanism is in the face of Christianity. Secular humanism doesn't have a church. They have dorm room commons, they have seminars and soap boxes. They have sections of the blogosphere and newsletters. They have think tanks and university departments, they have essays and reading lists, and there might even be an edited multivolume compliation. But in the end they are awfully distributed and woefully disheveled as compared to Church. How can they stand it?

Albert Murray famously for me said that literature was his religion. OK, so where's the dogma, Al? Where's the aesthetic, where are the rules? Or is it all about what I like?

I am faced with the reality that the Christian faith is not, and can never be, left behind technologically. Obama is not a Muslim and today his hand is on the Button. He stands in the shoes of the Leader of the Free World and though I think him undisciplined as I am in matters of Christian faith, I know he wouldn't deny the Cross. But secular humanism has only its ability, sporadic and arbitrary, to push back the 'shadow' of religion. It is in fact always overshadowed and all it has most of the time is pluck and luck. As Olga says, most atheists are not vocal. Well of course not, they don't have a hymnal. We Christians have hundred year old Hymnals with 300 year old songs passed around in 500 year old churches in capital cities that are 700 years old that were never not Christian. One wise aphorism I always remember is to never doubt the intelligence of people in power. I could punch holes in CS Lewis and take potshots at the Pope. That doesn't make me Lewis, which I'll never be - and I should never even dream of taking the Pope's place. These men inherit something very, very large, something that keeps abreast of every development the world has, and has done so for 1000 years.

Science will inevitably understand the brain. It will inevitably yeild up its discoveries, first to academia, then to the marketplace and finally to the public at large.  But there is no Church of Science and it will never control its understanding of the brain. And in this world (obviously the only one scientists care about), humans will control all of the rewards of science, and the most powerful of them will be Christians. The scientific leadership will never defeat the Christian leadership and the Christian leadership will always have the larger set of weapons, the advantage of organization and the bigger army. In the realm of human achievement and knowledge, science will always be an integrated cult.

But for the moment, the universities own the libraries, and they charge exhorbitant fees for the use of their magical materials. Today as we witness the finale of March Madness and the Michigan State team challenges the North Carolina team, we have plenty evidence that there is loyalty in the secular arena. Millions of American families spend fortunes and decades preparing their offspring for the rites of SAT and it can certainly be argued that it is more difficult for a camel to pass through the eye of a needle than for anyone to get through the gates of Oxford. We're not doubting the intelligence of the powerful. Hell, Larry Summers somehow made 5.2 million bucks last year and nobody knows how. I don't mean to suggest that the secular institution is non-existent or has no ritual. But it still doesn't compare to Church.

As my great evidence of this, I offer a rather rascally piece of evidence which is Mark Steyn's book America Alone. I do so because it raises the, for me unanswerable if not imponderable question: whither Europe. How does the West lose faith in the West? Europe is the example. If America is the evolution, and I think it is, then America's solution to the European problem is the answer. There's no doubt that Obama has the right seductive charm for the symbolic task. I could elaborate on this, but that's for another moment.

Besides, for me the question is unanswerable. I have a lot of studying to do and I'll do it largely on my own - although having this blog helps a lot. It might help more if Olga would show up. But as for my other devotions, I know that getting my church on will replenish my spirit. There is no question of how Holy Communion does that for me, and I have found in the Church of the Advent over on Adams Boulevard, the oldest little brick building in the neighborhood I grew up in, something that works very deeply in my own personal soul. I have to do a good job of it, and I think that I can.

The Banality of Slavery

I probably don't give enough credit where credit is due to Dan Carlin whose history podcasts are not only interesting to me but to my kids as well. You should know that if you are still one of those folks who listens to the radio during your commute and at your lunch break, that's how you fall behind those of us who remain fascinated by the world. There is so much better stuff on podcasts.

In his most recent history program, he touched on the ubiquity of human trafficking and the particulars of chattel slavery. Full of the requisite apology, because after all Carlin is political as well, he outlined the world's second oldest profession. His angle on slavery and forced labor was very interesting. He asked the basic rhetorical question is slavery essentially evil? But I think he was getting at something more revealing since he talked about 'debt slavery' as well. As his program progressed, it began to be very clear from my interpretation that he was getting at something fairly deep, which is the extent to which we draw meaning from our relationships to each other and to technology.

As Carlin said, there are two ways to have leisure. You can either have a machine cook your breakfast or you can have people do it for you. For a long time, even being a technologist, I have always been more on the organic side. Why have some expensive machine smooth the sand in the long jump pit at the Olympics when you could have some kids with rakes? I considered this when I was in Sydney - about the mechanisms in society that would allow an engineer to be educated, for the farming out and funding of such a project, for the fabrication of the actual machine and training of the personnel who would move and operate it. Obviously the technological avenues are more fragile and expensive, but are they better? Why not save all the hassle and expense and just hire some local kids - why deal with machines instead of people?

Where the heart of the matter gets interesting are those implications of 'less than slavery' relationships of a human centric world. If we extend the continuum of the humanistic value of human labor down the skill or pay chain, eventually you end up at slavery.

There used to be a chap who visited Cobb with some disgust when we talked about immigration issues, and he would call me a 'cheap labor conservative' because I oppose the minimum wage. I've always seen the possibilities in allowing a class of businesses to operate without certain regulations that would solve the homelessness problem, and I've always had sympathy for America's ability to accommodate an internal Third World. After all, an economy that tolerates slavery, or near-slavery is a full employment economy. I think it is reasonable to assert as an axiom of human society, the more you seek to give meaning to people who, for whatever reason cannot compete, the more accommodating you are of slavery.

Now the way to read this is not with regard to the deprivation of human rights and dignity that is implicit in chattel slavery. A person who doesn't own his own labor is not a person in any social way, but a mere human being and way less than a citizen. But it is in that gray area that some inspection is useful. Still I am more interested in the matter with regard the economics we can afford. After all, as Carlin mentioned, Marx understood that the Industrial Revolution changed our ideas about human dignity and labor. It was this fundamental abstraction that he took to the extremes in a historicist way. Marx and his followers looked at somebody whose life and dignity were clearly understood in the pre-industrial world - Joe Chandler, for example. Joe made candles and lamps for the sailing ships, lived near the docks and got tallow from cow fat he bought at market. Joe bought his wagon from Wayne Wright who built it with materials from John Woods, etc. All of those were the relationships and social standing from pre-industrial society Until they were all disintermediated by Sears & Roebuck's lamp section of the catalog, and the ship company could buy lamps from the factory and put Joe, Wayne and John out of business. Instead they put Sam Widget on the assembly line in the lamp factory.

So where does Sam's value as a human being come from? He just looks at an assembly line all day. Where in fact does Cobb's value as a human being come from? I just type at a computer terminal all day. A new kind of society has to have new humanizing values for new kinds of work. This is what Marx understood. In a moral way, he enables us to get away from slavery which is a more natural relationship in a pre-industrial world. But Marx' great mistake was that he figured that all humanizing values must come from work and thus put labor at that center of his universe and the locus of power, he placed around the state's (and revolution's) control of those definitions. This usurped the value of other vital humanizing factors like spirituality. But Marx must have understood how building a framework for humanizing the industrial revolution took us towards a new, modern world.

Sex is the Opiate of the Masses

Not religion.

Today I am reflecting on a few Black Eyed Peas songs that I have not bothered to skip through on my iTunes this morning, and that phrase got stuck in my head. I will add one more old quote of mine from Aldous Huxley. "An intellectual is someone who has found something more fascinating thatn sex."

Thoughts?

Belonging

I've been reading about Atomic John, the man who reverse-engineered Little Boy with fascination. One of the interesting quirks about his journey is that through it he discovered the conceit of secrecy in the tight-lipped attitudes of most of the men he queried about the Bomb.

This morning I found over on Facebook the continuance of the Me Meme and discovered an interesting tale of discovery as people I knew and sorta knew tell things about themselves that we don't generally know. Being Americans, it's meritocratic. We have developed a social market and we are finding, through this type of revelation and confession, a new way to be appreciated.

It is a phenomenon I now observe in the breach. Who would we be if we could not express such things? What indeed impels us to express them at all? I am one of those people who is particularly hard-pressed to determine what my value is. I hate talking about what it means, it's very difficult and consequently very important for me to negotiate some deal on my worth. It is why I am attracted to the sciences and to economics and to theology. I need frameworks, dogma, metrics, laws. I am singularly convinced that I cannot sell myself, so I am doing it all the time and not at all. It makes me responsive in an insecure sort of way.

And so what I admire in people is their steadfastness and their faith in being a vessel of spirit for a cause or idea greater than themselves. I like it when musicians interpret the very same song. I like religious rites that find the same God the same way. Without that, it seems to me that people are grasping, grasping in desperation.

We Americans, especially those of us with some gall and/or ability are always keen to note the fete manque, the lost opportunity, the narrative that might have been if we had only. But what if we belonged? What if we only had 15% of ourselves as personality? It was the first thing I noticed upon arriving in New York from Los Angeles. Here in LA we are allowed to invent personnas and have the nerve to believe our story could be made into a movie. In New York, you're a New Yorker, meaning very specific things - you don't have the luxury of determining what your apartment means if it is on the Upper East Side. It's an Upper East Side apartment, period. You wear shoes appropriate to your occupation - whether or not you do, everybody judges you by your shoes. If you need to get from point A to point B, in your relationship, in the city, in your personal development - so what? So do 200,000 other people, right here, right now, exactly like you. A successful New Yorker knows these things and doesn't try to make believe that in another life it might be some other way. There is not an alternative marketplace - in NY even the alternative is institutionalized.

So it is, I think, with the world, and the history of the world as it relates to people. Either you are attached and belong - you recognize and conform, or you are constantly contingent and on the market selling yourself.

The question is, which is more fulfilling? The answer is that the grass is greener on the other side.

Loury & Franklin on Symbols

A thoughtful reader passed on this discussion of note about the role of Rick Warren in the Obama oevre and other matters of some political and religious significance. This is the kind of debate I hope to be hearing less of as time goes by. My pendulum, while quite interested in the way in which the Catholic Church deals with the natural world, has swung towards the natural world itself. I am finding myself less and less drawn to matters of interpretation, especially of symbols, and most especially of symbols coming from politicians. 

Firstly, I find much of the controversy over the selection of Rick Warren to be a great deal of smoke and mirrors, and I think that it is overplayed precisely because of the recent passage of Proposition Eight. At the outset, Loury went in a significantly excellent direction which was to get some response about what to do with dissent from the progressive agenda, and I think once that question was left out there unanswered, it gave both parties license to sidle up to the particular issues that bother them most. The particular thing that worried Franklin the most was that of the Vatican closing debate. 

As the sort of conservative I am, I find something extraordinarily wise about the decision to close debate, and I wonder how it is that any religious leader finds otherwise. I think perhaps it is, now that I reflect on Franklin, because he is part and parcel of the Ecumenical Movement which energizes this desire. I see it as perfectly logical for the sort of Christian who finds some threat in the obiter dicta of Sarah Palin to have the propensity to keep debate open indefinitely. Because sooner or later there will be some value in this eternal debate for the inclusion and sanctity of his every constituent. At that point, debate can close, right? He will keep arguing for the ordination of women until such time as it becomes 'common sense' that women should be ordained, and from that point forth debate shall close, as it is surely presumed today.

So it comes as no surprise that the vector of this Ecumenical Movement, dedicated as it seems to a program of enforced diversity must seek to find some very special meaning and moment in the inauguration of this man, Barack Obama, as the first black president of the US. Loury was correct to note how thin this skin must be and how foolish it might be to notice the skin color of the pilot on the bridge of the first ship behind which is the entire fleet of American power. The steering wheel was not built for black hands, but for human hands - there are only so many degrees of freedom that fleet can be steered - but then again we are only talking symbolically. It allows them to make the non-point but Loury's use of the word 'patina' was altogether correct. 

It seems to me that the two gentlemen are, perhaps unwittingly, contributing to the raising of political expectation in all areas of life and are thus making enemies of religious dogma of the sort which they also unwittingly lament. For it is conformity that they resent and resist. And it seems to me that it is only confession and creed that can establish the kind of unity of purpose they both desire. Unless they are willing to pay that price for establishing harmony, they are going to keep debating in circles, fruitlessly ad infinitum.  

Being of This World

I find various interpretations of the meaning of Jesus to be disturbing. What I find most disturbing is the idea of a 'personal savior'. And so in the Trinity I find most comfort in the Father. I guess that I think that people need the example of Jesus - Jesus spells everything out, makes it plain. But Jesus the comforter in times of trouble... eww. It seems to be a substitute for a disciplined virtue, or for courage. When I say that I just want to do God's will, that's the thing that makes my faith strong. For me to know God's will, and to do the right thing in times of trouble seems so much more of what I think is actually Christlike, than to fail in the world and seek the solace of Jesus. I feel that so many Christians are only Christlike in the one aspect of being forever at Gethsemane and that this is how ministers are telling people to approach God, from the point of view of someone whom life has defeated. It gives people just enough Jesus to make it through the day. And in that, their faith becomes like a payday loan, an advance from heaven they get and pay back (almost) via weekly journeys to church. I haven't read Augustine, but I feel destined to and others like him as well which is why I ask for your recommendations. It was Neuhaus who began thusly in giving me great inspiration:

That religion and particularly Christianity presents itself on the basis of reasonable truth claims that are to be engaged and to be presented as persuasively as possible in a reasonable manner. His lecture at the Regensberg University was directed chiefly against ideological secularists on the one hand who want to radically divide faith and reason and directed against Christian thinkers who want to assert a kind of pure Biblical Christianity against the great achievement which is the synthesis of Greek philosophy and revealed truth.

This great achievement is what I'm on about. The intimacy, the very co-dependence of faith and reason is the very proposition that I have always believed was that which bound the Jesuits to education, worldly works and intellectual distinction. It is something missing in almost all of my past. I have been mystified by the lack of Christian virtue in most of the intelligent people I have known and confounded by the lack of refined intellect is most of the spiritual people I have known. It's as if nobody knows that anyone like Augustine ever existed - I've never heard his name in any sermon. And so we are parceled out like indentured servants to a world of usefulness completely disjoint to that of the human spirit because so few recognize the unity of heart and mind in the active synthesis the Church has provided. And so many walk around proud to be 'not of this world' as if God created the entire thing as a joke and our lives as an exercise in denial of our sensory gifts. And so my displeasure at the testimony of the world-weary sufferer who brings his burdens to the feet of Jesus - who can assert (falsely) that in Jesus forgiveness he can dismiss the concerns of a world that is all bad. It was greatly said that the corrupt regime knows no innocents. And those who are faithless in reason always misinterpret Original Sin as the corrupter of all Earthly institutions and thus feel no sin in rejecting their righteous authority. This is the great sin which is at the core of the abuse of the name of God in the affairs of men. We say that 'for God so loved the world', so who are we to hate the world? Who are we to assume its corruption? Who are we to deny our responsibility to it? Some would say that we are vessels of spirit only... ah but the Holy Spirit directs our minds as well.

I think too many people take the grace of God for granted. They fail to realize their duty to reason, they fail to recognize that good works are necessary, that implicit in the command of loving your neighbor is the maintenance of society. They try to make their faith all about their own soul and believe that if they can send a telegram to Jesus that his reply will be specific to their salvation, like a phonecall from Morpheus or The Operator to get them out of one jam or another in the phony Matrix.
We are of this world, it is our world, and there is no escape.

Vatican Three?

This is what I was looking to find when I asked this question.

For decades, the Catholic left has called for a Vatican Council III to “complete” the work of Vatican II. Others on the left, such as Garry Wills, dissent from that call, claiming that Vatican II put the teaching Magisterium out of business once and for all, “diffusing” ecclesial authority throughout the Spirit-guided private opinions of the People of God. This move is implausibly presented as what is meant by the sensus fidelium. The burden of Steinfels’ argument is that liberal Catholicism made a great mistake since the Council in not distinguishing itself and, when necessary, separating itself, from its “dubious allies” of the Catholic left. Turning from its intellectual and theological tasks, liberalism got bogged down in the canonical litany of leftist complaints about contraception, homosexuality, women’s ordination, and clerical celibacy, along with endless agitations aimed at “power sharing” in church government—and all of these linked to the larger question of papal teaching authority. Moreover, sectors of the Catholic left became increasingly part of a political and cultural left that is increasingly secularist and post-Christian, and even explicitly anti-Christian. Liberal Catholics, says Steinfels, should have made it clear that, in very important respects, these dubious allies of the Catholic left were not allies at all.

The association with the Catholic left created, he wrote, a crisis of irony, a crisis of intellect, and a crisis of inclusiveness. The absence of irony and historical perspective led to fanaticism and a sectarian spirit. The refusal to make serious arguments nurtured anti-intellectualism and an emphasis on an ever-expanding inclusiveness which emphatically excluded those not of like mind and resulted in a loss of Catholic identity. The Catholic left, he says, has no patience with liberalism’s devotion to “compromise, incrementalism, or extended analysis and debate.” “The Catholic left,” he writes, “is an offspring of liberal Catholicism, but is rooted in the dramatic appeals and confrontations of the 1960s” rather than the liberal, and mainly European, tradition of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. But so smugly triumphalistic were liberals following the Council, while at the same time—and somewhat contradictorily—so fearful of their powerful enemies on the right, that few were, and few are, prepared to challenge the dubious alliance with the Catholic left. The old maxim applied: the enemy of my enemies . . .

Now we're getting somewhere.

My First Gay Dream

Back in 91, sometime after the summer but before I broke up with my girl, she wanted to test me. The fact of the matter included some evidence that she was attracted to the girl next door, so she wanted to know if I might be attracted to the dude next door, or dudes in general. She gave what I consider to be as good an argument as any that we are all parts omnisexual and that it is society that shapes whether or not we can be comfortable with out particular predilections. Intellectually it makes perfect sense, but I think she was trying to make a dollar out of fifteen cents.

Since then it has occurred to me in regarding the phrase 'latent homosexuality' that a certain type A personality at some age might consider taking the omnisexual argument to heart. That a certain hardening of self-regard would give one license to take pleasure in whatever flavor desired, critics be damned. Since I myself am something of that sort, I always consider that possibility given various attempts by male friends over the years to test me in other ways. What can I say, I've got the hotness, boys and girls can see it. Except that I'm indifferent to 99% of the boys and girls, I'm married, and I do dig my current position in society. Besides. I'm one of those guys who digs a pastrami sandwich, no matter what other kinds of french dips are on the menu. I know what I like and I'm happy when I get it. No need for experimentation or making any proofs.

It was that kind of attitude made forwardly that has made me the sort of cat who doesn't really have any 'provincial' fetters about talking about whether or not a dude looks good or those 'if I was gay' jocular conversations. In fact, I think that the way I think about men's looks is directly parallel to the way women think about women's looks. Basically I get mad and jealous when I see somebody who looks as good as I think I should look. For what it's worth, at this moment in time that person is Ron Pitts, the TV host of Destroyed in Seconds. Funny, I think he played football with a dude I grew up with.

Anyway, I did have a gay dream last night, but interestingly enough I drew the line in my dream.

As Cobb readers know, I am blessed with the good fortune of waking up every day with a song in my head. This morning it was Spiral by John Coltrane. I didn't know the title until this very moment, never really thought about it. Anyway I also have extraordinarily vivid dreams that put me in bizarre situations. I remember 75 percent of them by morning, but I almost never reflect on them. I take my dreams for granted and I enjoy the hell out of them while I'm in them but pretty much ignore them during the day. For a while when I was deep into Borges, back in 87 or so, I did a bit more with the dream work, but now the boundaries are set.

My favorite kind of dream is the kind in which I compose and perform music. If a machine is ever invented to capture dreams then I will be an even better composer than I am writer. The music in my dreams is really fabulous - you'll just have to take my word for it. I've made some pretty good raps too. My second favorite dream is athletic. Yesterday I had a surpassingly fine dream in which I was playing a kind of sport which was a combination of soccer and basketball in which the players on a grass court about 1.5 times the size of a regular basketball court competed in garb that resembled field hockey. The ball was in this case something about the size of those aerobic two pound dumbbells - it looked like a giant tootsie roll, you kicked it on the ground but you had to slam dunk it to score, but you had to juggle it into the air with your feet under the hoop before you could put your hands on it. My third favorite kind of dream is the sort I usually can only have if I'm not facing down, if you catch my drift.

The gay dream had an odd context. I was part of a military training exercise of some sort, but it had immediately dovetailed onto the end of a daring escape I had made. In other words the guys who were sent to rescue me immediately drafted me into a six man team in which we went through various gauntlets the ultimate one of which was a scuba swim of about 200 yards.  Just before we all stripped down to get into the pipe that led underwater, I noticed that two guys in our party were making out over in a corner. They came back rather apologetically and then the jokes started. Apparently everybody knew that they had a thing for each other and that they were cool with it and wouldn't mind being part of the fun. So I pretended like I was too, but then went overboard into the entire deal. So the two broke out with some penis shaped regulators for the scuba gear. I was just about to go ahead with it and then decided not to.

Now this is not exactly how the dream went, but I can't remember many more details. Aside from the fact that we made a hell of a lot of ass jokes and went seriously into evaluations of each other's asses which in my dream were all shaped exactly like lunchboxes. So I said so and everybody laughed at the joke - except, as such things happen in dreams, I was actually seeing aluminum lunchboxes. As well, the whole regulator thing has been edited somehow - because I can't actually remember the context of how it was suggested that we all walk around with dildoes in our mouths. I simply remember that I was game and then I changed my mind at the last minute.

I woke up from the dream because I had held my breath too long. I actually do have apnea and somehow I managed to only have a snorkel whereas the other guys had the full apparatus. Rebreathers I think because there was enemy shooting above the water and we were supposed to be undetected. No bubbles allowed. That's why I held my breath for all that time. I woke up from the dream suddenly and dozed back into sleep until Coltrane woke me up for good.

As it happens, I wasn't turned on by the gay thing. Or maybe I was and that's why I decided to remember and write this. But I did remark through my dream signal apparatus to my higher consciousness that the acceptance of the dildo was a first. It was in the end a kind of gay liberal gesture - something I could do to prove that I could do it.

I'm particularly aware this week of indulgences. As my correspondence with Fr. Rude continues and I get my Bible assignments, I'm trying to narrow in on the sorts of sacrifices that do and do not count. In a way it is a followup to Magnificent Obsession - how mere manners do and do not contribute to the Christlike behavior we should strive to achieve, how grand gestures of magnanimity do or do not make any difference in the eyes of God. The soundbite angle on it is whether or not Bernie Madoff was doing good. We all know the charities that are suffering because he pulled the rug out from under would-be philanthropists, but for many years it was all going smoothly. Now what. Don't the lives he saved outweigh the fortunes he ruined?

We all make gestures to show we understand, we want to belong, we want to be inclusive. It's very difficult sometimes to know which are self-serving and which are genuine.

The Love of Zero Tolerance

I am in regular communication with the Catholics of my youth, one of whom is Father James Rude, a loving affable character who was the bearded priest at my Jesuit prep school during the late 70s. Fr. Rude ran the soup kitchen in downtown LA and taught social justice as one of his courses. By the time I was a senior, his social justice course ran afoul of what I expected it to be - I was horrendously upset and performed an intellectual boycott, refusing to do the work. The details escape me, but I do remember my great disappointment now that I think of him, something I haven't done in over 30 years.

At any rate, we may or may not have begun a correspondence about social justice of the sort I would have liked to have had here in the context of that as a plank for Mr. Obama. He has assigned me to read Matthew 25 which I am about to. I posed the following question:

Given that we understand great differences in the circumstances of people, how does loving one as yourself not become gratuitous charity when one has very exacting standards it is not reasonable for the object of one's love to achieve. If I never smoked a day in my life, wouldn't the love of zero tolerance be onerous to a smoker?

At the back of my mind is the question about whether or not a society of laws serves social justice and where charity and philanthropy meet morals, laws and religious dogma. It goes to the core of an exceptionalism and an expansive foreign policy - on what basis can one society judge another and on what basis in law are the 'conquered' bound to obey given that most of us can't read the law.

Estemard's Distance

Anathem is a great intellectual entertainment, and as I read it, I am reminded that some time ago, many of my distant peers in the computer science field had presumed that Douglas R. Hofstadter was going to write this book.

In 'The Minds I' DRH introduced us to Prelude Ant Fugue a simplified retelling of a theory of Fermat. It was a delightful kind of Alice in Wonderland dialog. Fans of DRH awaited his vague promise to reintroduce us to his characters in a longer form. It never happened.

Although Anathem has taken a different sort of turn since I began writing out this fragment, I still think of it as something of a Rowlingesque primer on metaphysics. That doesn't change the fact that there are exquisite gems scattered throughout. There is a character Estemard whose spiritual dilemma resembles my own.

--

"You feel the truth but don't know it," Cord repeated. "Your service the other day, in Samble - we could hear your singing. It was very emotional."

Gnel nodded, "That's why Estemard attends -- though he doesn't believe."

"He's not intellectually convinced of your arguments," Cord translated, "but he feels some of what you feel."

Estemard was a monk who had left his cloister and found himself among pagans. He attends their services which are rollicking, and yet he does not convert. Estemard's distance is not born of skepticism of the ultimate truth but of his awareness of a more disciplined understanding. He is presented the essence of the Great Spirit arising out of a poverty of logic. He cannot accept these sacraments on their own terms.

My sympathy for Estemard is complete.

 

Christian Liberals vs Christian Conservatives

Leaving atheists to the side for a moment, why is it that some Christians are liberals and some conservatives? Isn't Christianity singular enough philosophically to rule against being both? What of the overlap between them - how do Christians view those on the other side of the secular political fence?

Faith in Atheism

Imagine if God existed but was sufficiently advanced such that we couldn't identify him for another 1000 years. Where does that leave the scientific atheist? I know that CS Lewis has already gone through this exercise, but it would be interesting to discuss. That is what is the basis of the premise of atheist evangelism?

Christopher Hitchens went through this with Al Sharpton and others early this year or late last year, I can't remember which. Hitchens found a great deal to admire in Sharpton's apologetics. I wonder if most atheists measure up.

Question.
Does the atheist take the non-existence of God on faith?

Question.
Where does the non-existence of God place the locus of moral discernment? IE what human mental process is short-circuited when a faith-based morality is argued?

Question.
Do you see the problem here?

Communities of Strength

I haven't wearied of the rhetorical battle that has engaged me over the past several days. I feel that I have come close to expressing the full sentiment and logic of my position, but I find that each exchange brings out more nuance and that in each challenge to my position or assumptions about my position yields even further insight. And so I offer, in the spirit of understanding, a excerpt from a brief private correspondence begun earlier this year.

In the context of America, I have come to the conclusion that there is some good and equilibrium to be found in keeping such struggles at a low roar - to keep them from becoming lethal. To the extent that we must suffer a lack of perfect understanding and domestic tranquility, it seems we are bound to thicken our skins and take hits for our tribes. It can be a rough trade even in a robust society such as ours. But we also have the fortunate option of relative solitude. We can carve some space in this great and free country where we might have peace from the great social machinations of the day and satisfy ourselves with our own ability to find comfort and strength in our families, neighbors and communities of faith.

Yet some communities of faith gain strength from pure hatred and bigotry. The franchise of those who are incapable of empathy of any sort cannot be revoked. It seems to me that we ought to find a way to reverse their strengths in the larger society by setting a better example and as you say, constantly pressing our cases against intolerance and injustice. The line between intolerance and injustice is one I am trying to brighten because the law is the most powerful and compelling tool we possess. The better part of my dog in the fight over gay marriage is precisely over where that line ought to be drawn. You see I think we should fight immorality such as bigotry and intolerance in our private lives with all the social power and conviction we possess. I think we should fight injustice with the full strengths of legal and government powers at the disposal of the state. These fights exist along a continuum of severity - not all immorality leads to injustice but all injustice is certainly immoral. As I see the law, it does not respect the differences we do in our communities of faith. And so we must be extremely careful not to give it license to suppress them based upon various definitions of immorality, especially those that don't constitute injustice.

As you may have concluded, I do not consider the discriminations of marriage of the traditional sort to comprise immorality or injustice. But it certainly is more than an inconvenience for many homosexuals to stand unrecognized in their exclusive and devoted loving relationships, and so I support civil unions to grant and defend all rights, privileges and immunities of marriage on an equivalent basis for same-sex couples. I am convinced that there is a component of the advocates in support of gay marriage that are less interested in those actual injustices inflicted upon same-sex couples to to be legally proscribed than they are in attempting to use the law to destroy intolerance. This not only goes against my political principles, but I think any reasonable person can see that it is impractical if not impossible. Beaten over the head with the law, certain extremist opponents will only retire to their own families, neighbors and communities of faith where their intolerance and even their immoral hatreds will find comfort and strength. How many of these people and institutions should be destroyed for the sake of that particular activist dream of destroying intolerance?

At any rate I have rambled on without a satisfactory close. I suppose this indicates that I don't find the matter resolved to either of our satisfactions. And yet I trust that we, as defenders of morality, justice and domestic tranquility will maintain what we must to see our ways through this. I sincerely hope that we find a way of securing blessings and standing for our same-sex fellows without doing injury to all communities of faith through the sorts of laws that seek to impose a specific consciousness upon the public. It remains our duty as members of society to see that all due respect is afforded such upstanding couples who would declare their undying love and commitment, one to the other, before God and man. Perhaps conversations such as ours may be a small beginning.

I hope I don't offend my correspondent by publishing this piece of our private conversation here, but I think it illustrative of the sort of thinking that can go on when the right tone of mutual respect is struck, something I often struggle with as a blogger and on-air personality. There is so much we in the demanding public want delivered to us conveniently. I am coming to recognize how little our abbreviated exchanges communicate.

Love Thy Gay Neighbor

A Return To Faith

It is not thy task to complete the work, neither art thou a free man that thou canst withdraw thyself; if thou hast learned much, great shall be thy reward, for He that doth hire thee will surely repay thee for thy toil; yet the requital of the pious is in the future.
-- Rabbi Tarfon

This morning's dreams were of me as Jack Lemmon having become something of a star in a live broadcast of a commercial in which my Felix Unger-like behavior running off script had the audience in stitches. The producer then embraced this spontaneous success and paired me with Dan Rowan, and somehow I became Dick Martin, except that I was still Jack Lemmon. The pair of us wandered around, found a bridge and began spontaneously composing songs, which is something I do quite well in my best dreams. As we danced on the cables high above the roadway, somehow a briefcase shared between us fell to the roadway and exploded destroying several automobiles and causing a pileup. We laughed it off as nobody was hurt. In the next scene I found myself singing another song in a neighborhood of Craftsmen homes with large front lawns, and on one of these lawns, surrounded by people of all ages, I began singing a new song about the struggle of blackfolks in America. It was finally a song of triumph. As the penultimate song of my dream I can still remember a few words of it, but not enough to write here and do them justice.

So at the close of my dream all were gathered around with joined hands and I began my final song whose words and melody were simple and powerful. I led the gathered in prayer.

Glory Glory Glory God Glory Glory Glory God Glory Glory Glory God Father, Spirit and Son

Halleluja Halleluja Halleluja God
Halleluja Halleluja Halleluja God
Halleluja Halleluja Halleluja God
Father, Spirit and Son

We Love You, Love You, Love You God
We Love You, Love You, Love You God
We Love You, Love You, Love You God
Father, Spirit and Son

And then as the chorus began to hum, in that old Negro tradition, I preached over the choir. I said something that went like this:

People of God, children of God, we are gathered together here today for simple reasons. We are simple creatures. Each and every heart in each and every one of us has the love of God, and so we may be vessels of his spirit. But our hearts are our own. I ask you to look into your hearts this morning, because sometimes we let them have too much pain, too much anger, too much sin. Sometimes we have a little fear, uncertainty or doubt in our hearts. Sometimes we have a little envy or jealousy or spite in our hearts. Sometimes it's arrogance, pride or vanity. Sometimes we have a little lying, a little cheating, or even stealing in our hearts. And we know it. And so we come here and allow the presence of God roll that away. It's that simple. I want you to raise your hands today like an antenna on a mountaintop and let God in. All you need to do is receive Him and you will be filled with God's spirit, and not only will you be filled, but you will radiate His love and purpose. It is that simple.

We Receive You, Receive You, Receive You God
We Receive You, Receive You, Receive You God
We Receive You, Receive You, Receive You God
Father, Spirit and Son

We Radiate You, Radiate You, Radiate You God
We Radiate You, Radiate You, Radiate You God
We Radiate You, Radiate You, Radiate You God
Father, Spirit and Son

By the time I got to the last verse, I was in tears, as I am now, and waking on this Sunday morning, touched in my sleep by the blessing of dreams. It was 6:16am.

The family movie for the Saturday night was of course, Jack Lemmon & Walter Matthau in Neil Simon's classic production. It's coming to be our new tradition. The last one was Arthur with Dudley Moore. This morning I checked my email and the last comments on the blog as well as a few stories and I discovered not only the change in tone but the synchronicity of all that turn, especially in Bardo's last comment. And now I remember that I should put in the word of Rabbi Tarfon from Dennis Prager's last happiness hour. Because I remember now how he, more than any other in Right Radio shares my temperament, although the other Dennis, Miller makes me laugh more often.

So it is after all the pursuit of happiness that binds us and it is the joy of morality that compels us. To have a clean conscience and a heart filled with the spirit of God and a mind brimming with the curiosity to appreciate the natural world, these are great forces and fulfilling passions which are capable of deflecting all fear of sin and destruction we are heir to on life's journey. Sing a new song unto the Lord.

The NYT article seems to be genuinely shocked that the burdens of the election have rolled away, and must report the recriminations against Joe Lieberman. American Thinker admonishes Obama's pro-choice stand and suggests it may be too late for him to heed Henry VII's advice to his son to keep the Church on his side. And we are back to matters of faith in the blog and, it seems, everywhere else. It is only natural that in defeat one must look back and fall back and get back. This is where I see people going, it is where I must go. I have been happy for the happiness of others but now I see an opportunity for deeper renewal. What indeed have I let into my heart for the sake of making noise on behalf of my contingent?

And so it comes to Tarfon and in the religious context we settle our accounts, we adjust our attitude, we receive and radiate, we rededicate. We rest. We march. We dream. We sing. I continue to write, and the sun is coming up this morning.

The Size of the Soul

A rather interesting thought crossed my mind the other day, and it is consequential to my reading of Iain Banks' science fiction. The idea is that the soul is actually a variable part of the human, and that perhaps in me, a smaller part than I had considered. Consequently maintenance of it is proportional to the size of one's soul. A soul is like a mind. Some people abuse their minds, others expand their minds. Some have not much regard for the cultivation of their mind and yet are plenty smart for what they are called to do.

As a related aside, folks are considering the relative happiness of conservatives and liberals.  Here's a basic outline of what I think. Conservatives are happy because they are skeptical that mankind can be perfected, and therefore don't seek utopia. Conservatives are amazed that anything works but knows no prescription for success. In fact, religious conservatives place ultimate happiness beyond the bounds of human life. Which is to say they find fulfillment through duty. It is through duty that one sacrifices. Conservatives order themselves by fidelity to maintaining bans on proscribed behavior. A minimum set of 'thou shalt nots' directs duty, and duty is to maintain that minimum negative ruleset at all costs. To violate those are to invite evil.

It seems to me that the liberal seeks an ever asymptotic approach to ultimate truth, which they know at some point might come to a clearer understanding. And it is that hope to know the ultimate truth that will cause them to overturn any established order, and so they question any duty not on the same path. The liberal path is scientific and requires experimentation. It requires a willingness to toss out conventions, like duty to maintain prohibitive rulesets. The assumption of course is that the greater truth will liberate one from suffering, that mankind will always find a way to convert greater understanding into greater happiness, that most of mankind's suffering comes from ignorance, and a presumption that those not on the asymptotic path are relatively ignorant and thus cannot be happy enough. A tempting assumption that has dangerous implications.

One who seeks an ultimate truth in the world must inevitably re-order the world to accomodate that truth, and defines suffering as the distance from the possibility of perfection.  They cannot accept that those without possession of the truth and the means to approach it are not self-deluded.

But how can anyone who lived without knowing what we know possibly have been happy? I think there is a conceit that life of the mind delivers happiness divorced from the act of discovery. I think people misjudge the size of the soul and of the mind and presume that one can satisfy one or the other by living completely in them. But the mind and the soul are hungry and become jaded and self-serving. Happiness is found in balance. Balance requires discipline. To live entirely in the mind, or the soul, or the body are conceits.

The size of the soul, the spirit is under human control. I can decide to feel or to feel deeply. To merely empathize or to empathize deeply. To be patient with the sufferings of my fellow man or to make alleviation of that suffering my life's calling. Or I could shrink my soul, and to not feel, to reject empathy and to ignore suffering. I could instead decide to live the life of the mind, or the life of the body. In all of our choices, we require compensation. To be a great mind, we must sacrifice the other two, and if through some assistance we manage that, we might find balance. For one's own needs, one requires only so much mind, so much soul, so much body. As we are endowed and seek to improve on our endowments, we can exchange our surpluses to rewards from society. The athlete or soldier is rewarded for their physical feats. The great thinker thinks for others than himself. The woman possessed of extraordinary empathy is sought for her healing insights.

That humans are endowed with different amounts of brain, soul and body power is self-evident. But I observe that once upon a path to expand and perfect one's natural endowments there is a certain inevitable dissatisfaction. Surely a farmer who understands enough math to get a good price at market would not suffer himself to understand advanced calculus. Surely the mother who has given birth would not trouble herself to love another's child equally. But the mathematician is unsatisfied with farmer's arithmetic. A priest is unsatisfied with a parent's selfish love. A courtesan is unsatisfied with mere kissing.

I have only a passing understanding of the differences between the philosophers, but I can recognize there must be some distinction in their approach to the best way to live. One might say that life is best lived in pursuit of a robust disposition, one that is not particularly excellent but recovers best from life's inevitable slings and arrows. Another might say that life is best lived in pursuit of an ultimate achievement, one that evades all things which would compromise attainment of an excellence or perfection.

For what it is worth, I think the former to be a conservative disposition and the latter to be a liberal one with the presumption that once empowered, the achiever of excellence can share that knowledge and thereby improve the lot of every man. The farmer can be schooled, finally in advanced calculus, the mother can learn to love all children, and the farmer can too become a great soul as the mother a calculating mind. Surely all religious leaders would have their flocks expand the size of their soul in their lives and fill it with more godlike attributes.

Liberalism would have us all live like kings in our time, and would educate us to do so. And the imposition of institutions of education upon us is a boost to what we would naturally come to know from our own households and experiences. Liberalism would have us expand our minds, our bodies, our souls, and have us sacrifice so that more people might experience life in greater abundance. But I don't think liberalism affords us much guidance in disciplining our balance in this regard, nor in finding appropriate ways to distribute all of the surplus edifications of our minds, bodies and souls. And thus the modern problem is what to do with all that humanity has learned.

I think in the end, it is a matter of sustainability. And in that regard, unless and until we become a post-scarcity, space-faring species, that conservatives have the upper hand. Because liberals must always fight convenient or inconvenient memory loss. When the old man dies with the recipe for rayon and we have to go back to wool and cotton is that necessarily suffering? Whenever knowledge is destroyed the size of our minds must accordingly shrink, and accordingly fewer social structures are required to inculcate things for the general public. Is that dystopia? Only relatively. It depends upon how close we are to that absolute truth. 

The world will always have a need for great men, but their greatness will always be determined by how well they manage the balance of the size of their mental, spiritual and physical development, in what they need for themselves and what they share with the people.

I have been thinking this way about the size of my soul in recognition of the fact that it is not nearly as large as that of my mother's. And I am humbled and impressed by the way in which it works for her. And I am constantly reminded of the alienation created between humans of different capacities and talents and how we need society to reward us according to our imbalancing talents and overproductions.  And I am pleased to see how all of it can work. But related to the amount of happiness or suffering we can stand, I think it's a little greedy, ambitious and certainly troublesome to believe that we can all have great minds, souls and bodies.

The Atheist Soldier

I found a YouTuber whose video was attached to mine, a young man who was in the midst of questioning his faith -- getting out to the origins of the universe and all that. He's on the verge of giving up religion entirely - he sees it as a crutch.

I can recall the gripe of youth, and I still gripe about the fact that lots of people pray instead of act. But fortunately my ego was big enough for me to explain such people away. Everyone prays at the end of their personal ability. First people get uncomfortable and then try to avoid the problem, and then if they can't avoid it, they try to get somebody to handle it for them. That's whining. Then when they realize they can't get help, they start cursing. I take cursing to be the leading indicator of a man at his limit. Then comes rage, then comes prayer.

In watching the final episode of John Adams, I kept thinking about how painful it must have been for the man whose lifetime of sacrifices and excruciatingly high standards met with so few rewards, and how he lost his children. To Providence he cast his fate. He had every reason to complain, but did not. Very New England that, I recognize it in my father and in myself. Adams was a man of great faith in himself and also a man of God. I recognize also in him something my father never taught me which is how to extract the right amount of backbone from the words of the Bible.

You see in matters of faith, man seeks to defy death. Faith enables courage, and a wise man's faith gives rise to courage which is neither arrogant nor foolish and yet just as defiant of mortality. To recognize one's value in death as in life is to make the most of one's humanity. It is the essence of honor.

So what I wished to express to the young man losing faith through the skepticism of his fellows' shallow faith is to ask exactly how far the faithless might go, and how much a strong man of faith might go. I asked him to consider the Atheist Soldier. The man who believes in no God, no afterlife. What must he believe in if he were to put his life on the line? He must certainly believe in the works of his life. We speculate in the abstract, but there are surely people of reflection who nevertheless steel themselves for mortal combat - who can face the bullet. That is the power of faith, it makes us vessels of spirit. And which spirit would you be a vessel for? How are you called to duty? Who do you serve?

One who dies so that others might live... I don't need to go on about such heroism. We recognize how it echoes across human time and space.  The faith of great men is expressed in their works and in these works they transcend death and might live in spite of temptations. In men of great ability, great faith is required. For the rest of us, yes, faith is little more than a crutch, the last whimpering of a coward who finds no way out.

Science + Religion

Dennett has always been an intellectual hero of mine, but I haven't followed up on him for a while. I found an interesting bunch of YouTubes, which I'll be commenting on...

The Lapse

I wrote to Ron Howell Thursday:

I often fancy myself a lapsed Catholic. There are few things that seem so intellectually appealing than the stories of naifs who throw their faith out with the bathwater of youth. Coming of age, I imagine especially at an Ivy League school seems so dramatic and complete. And yet it is also consistent that the apostates and prodigals must all inevitably stand in awe of the majesty of the True Church, ever afraid to handle a wrenching pennance that must await them upon their ever delayed but often considered return.

I say that I like that romance because I had all the trappings and few of the privileges of Catholicism, I attended Columban and Jesuit schools but missed my Catechism. I was a spy in the house of God and eventually confirmed Episcopalian. But I have been looking at the liberation of my Church with the same skepticism of African Anglicans and wonder if it was a good idea. And here with the monumental intellect of B16, hooo boy, sometimes I wonder if I'm right at all.

There's something easy about Protestantism and I must confess that I've had my fill of Jesus freaks, megachurches and jacklegs of all sorts. The Baptist Church around the corner from me changed their name to reflect a beachy lifestyle, and they get their liturgy from a company in Indiana that comes complete with Karaoke and Powerpoint presentations. It's all a little flaky to me. Why? Because I've seen the discipline of the rite. I've prayed the Stations of the Cross, I've known the calendar of Epiphany and wondered where the bells went in the Episcopal church after the Mystery of Faith. I understand, recognize and respect the discipline of the Catholic Church. It was LOGICAL. And that logic was not a post-hoc rationalization of this or that oddment, it was real theology practiced by very intelligent men, who by the way taught me computer programming, biology and physics too. You don't often think of that in any other religion do you?

I don't know if or how I will get back to Catholicism, but I have a feeling it may be inevitable. The more time I spend with other sorts of Christians, the less I believe they really understand the nature of Christ. That's the most frightening idea I have to occasionally contemplate. Why? Because I know that there is a Catholic priest somewhere with a very intelligent and logical answer that could also be one that satisfies my soul. And that is the fear I think every lapsed Catholic must face; I hear it in your voice brother, because I know it in my own.

B16

I'm doing more reading than writing. Time is short these days. But what's on my mind are those thinkers who are transcending politics and yet philosophically oriented towards the principles which our politics ought to enable and energize. Benedict XVI continues to speak directly to me, as The Anchoress relates:

Looking again at the text of Pope Benedict’s White House address, I was struck by how serious were his remarks within the context of such a short speech given amid such pomp, particularly here:

Historically, not only Catholics, but all believers have found [in America] the freedom to worship God in accordance with the dictates of their conscience, while at the same time being accepted as part of a commonwealth in which each individual and group can make its voice heard. As the nation faces the increasingly complex political and ethical issues of our time, I am confident that the American people will find in their religious beliefs a precious source of insight and an inspiration to pursue reasoned, responsible and respectful dialogue in the effort to build a more humane and free society.

This is a very interesting paragraph in light of the fact that Europe is slowly losing its ability to dialogue about faith (or about much of anything) in the face of its own laws — which suppress free speech in the name of “tolerance” — and its intimidated response to an aggressive strain of Islamic fundamentalism that continually preaches blood over brotherhood. Europe, which twice in the 20th century needed rescuing from totalitarian jackboots, is rather quickly becoming subjugated again; it is a place where Bridget Bardot can be legally prosecuted for daring to express her own thoughts and filmmakers, writers and artists must quell their own voices or submit to a life in hiding, where Shari’a law is making inroads because western law - and lawmakers - are standing aside for it and hoping to stay out of the crosshairs.

Like his predecessor John Paul II, who lived as a slave under the Nazi’s and then had to preach and teach in the sight of the restrictive communists, Benedict knows what it is to live under tyranny. As a 14 year old seminarian he was forcibly conscripted into the Hitler Youth, from which he deserted, hiding until he was found by Americans and taken as a prisoner of war. Benedict is likely the last 20th Century man standing in a position of world power, and his voice is one of experience and personal knowledge. He has been a witness to the power of hope and faithfulness over tyrants and terrorists, and he is telling us something very important, very serious:

The preservation of freedom calls for the cultivation of virtue, self-discipline, sacrifice for the common good and a sense of responsibility towards the less fortunate. It also demands the courage to engage in civic life and to bring one’s deepest beliefs and values to reasoned public debate. In a word, freedom is ever new. It is a challenge held out to each generation, and it must constantly be won over for the cause of good (cf. Spe Salvi, 24).
[…]
[The Church] is convinced that faith sheds new light on all things, and that the Gospel reveals the noble vocation and sublime destiny of every man and woman (cf. Gaudium et Spes, 10). Faith also gives us the strength to respond to our high calling, and the hope that inspires us to work for an ever more just and fraternal society.

I know certain of the waitstaff around here don't often recognize where I'm coming from, as they serve their distasteful brick-tasting sandwiches. But here is a clue.

Cone Speaks

And more.

Comments to come..

Obama, Wright, The Black Church & America

Points of Light

As regular readers of Cobb know, it is my great desire someday to become the KFSC. That would be the Kung Fu Santa Claus who travels the world alternately giving gifts and kicking ass. And so it turns out that last evening was something of an introduction to the world of philanthropy.

My good friends, the Jonses, were feted last evening for their many years of contribution to an organization here in Southern California. So down in Long Beach we had the awards dinner and auction. It was interesting to be among the youngest of the penguins there. There were various old heads bobbing around the joint. Everything got off to a slow start but by 6:30 when they finally closed the silent auction, the place was jumping - that is as jumping as 300 folks with a median age of 55 can jump.

I'm really actually rather upset that my budget is tight right now, because of the two or three silent auctions I've been to, this one actually had some really great stuff. There was a great photograph of Sandy Koufax pitching a shutout that I could have had for less than 200 bucks. But the real prize of all the stuff there, in my opinion, was a signed jersey for number 44 of the Atlanta Braves - Hank Aaron. The silent auction had, as one would expect, the usual number of gift baskets, some jewelry, art for the home and tour, spa, restaurant and vacation packages. But the real excitement was at the live auction.

The celebrity of note at the evening's event was Bill Sharman, who is basketball royalty. He's done well for himself, and he and his wife actually auctioned off dinner for eight at their award-winning home. Nicely done. A Kobe Bryant signed basketball went for 2100 bucks, as did a nice vacation cruise.  Dinner was actually pretty damned good. Generally for 125 a plate you get Chicken Kiev, but we had steak and salmon with the longest stringbeans I've ever eaten. They literally tied it into loops.

Of course this was all about contributions to a Settlement House in LA County for which there was remarkable testimony. I know something about settlement houses, having interviewed extensively to put together a technical program for one in NYC under Maxine Rockoff back in the 90s.  This particular one, Toberman Settlement House , is a mission of the United Methodist Church serving thousands of individuals and hundreds of families and due to the contributions of many has a legacy of success. Here are some of the entries from the program.

• United Way: We were awarded a three year grand, Pathways Out of Poverty, to give middle school youth the necessary tools to stay in school and to prepare for college or trade school.
• Capital Campaign: We have raised $7.3 million , held our grand opening for the new campus, and we will soon occupy the structure once our final permit is granted.
• The Martin Family Learning Center: 100% of the students ah perfect homework records; 95% increased their grade point average and 20 students experienced camping, exposing them to a greater appreciation fro other environments beyond their neighborhoods.
• Licensed Child Care Center: Children ages 5-10 years old, continued to develop academic skills and learn at an early age, multi-ethnic acceptance and understanding.
• Family Resource Center. 80% of the clients completed domestic violence abandoning violent and often lethal behavior , which resulted in safer communities for all.
• A. 80% of the anger management clients transitions from abusive behavior to adapting techniques to manage anger.
• B. Weekly Classes: We are seeing an increase in the attendance of classes like Back in Control for parents, youth at risk project, drug counseling and Money Smart.
• LA Bridges I Gang Prevention: 100% of the youth, ages 10-14 years old, remained uninvolved with gangs and street life by active participation in the homework club, group sessionas and recreational activities. LA Bridges II Gang Intervention: Gang Intervention counselors have been working closely with various sects to re-establish the peace agreement made in 199.; efforts include mediation, mentoring, group work and case management for yout, ages 15-24 years old.
• Family Welfare.: Over 15000 requests came for individuals and families for emergency food assistance and information and referrals to help stabilize lives.
• Barton Hill Neighborhood Organization: The focus this year was on mobilizing the community around eviction issues, job training, and conducting workshops on Community Emergency Preparedness
• Volunteerism: We now have a very strong volunteer program with people serving in various areas, including the daily hot meal program, math and reading labs food pantry and special events.

The most riveting moment of the evening was the testimony of the Toberman kids themselves. Three generations were represented. One, in his sixties wound up being an officer of Coast Federal Savings, another was just a tagger headed towards trouble, but he has been rescued from the ravages of Sherwood Forest by the knights of Toberman and their noble humanitarian crusade. The standout was Major Johnny Torres.

Major Torres made the connection in a way so simple and profound, one wonders why there aren't more stories like his making news. His own words were the words of rescue. He testified as to how Toberman provides more than just support, but sanctuary from gang life. He took sanctuary there as a youth and it enabled him to escape gang life and have his own. His decision was to join the armed services and climb the ranks. He completed five tours of duty and found himself doing the exact same work of rescue in Iraq. Working with children and protecting them from gang violence of the worst kind. He returned to the States and found all other endeavors lacking and so now he aims to be a doctor so that he can continue a life of service.

It comes as no surprise that the Joneses were involved in such an endeavor as this, but it was my pleasant surprise to find the business of private philanthropy so much to my liking so early in my life. As it stands, my fortune is yet to be made, and so I'm hardly prepared to engage as I would like. But it is this very kind of work that I think actually can be flexible and responsive and do what government bureaucracies cannot do and settlement houses are, in my opinion, the finest model.

It continues to be my hope and expectation that Old School values provide the context for noblesse. With those & Christian values we are bound to establish and maintain the environment which insures the continued strength of our nation leaving no one in doubt about the path towards righteousness. There is no way to guarantee that what is compelled from us through the politics of taxation can and will be properly used and effectively distributed. That is why noblesse is often the singular and critical path. It has not been my good fortune to get such grants, but through private education I certainly recognize how such values and disciplines can be shared amongst all who can see and are willing to sacrifice for upward mobility. As awkward as it seems, the teenage ruffian gets his moment to speak to the gray benefactor and the common bond and mutual edification is made. This is what makes Americans extraordinary because we still believe in making that extra effort, and we are the most generous nation. It's a good thing.

The Morality of War

I'm really going to have to turn to CS Lewis on this matter. He and Chesterton as well as Tolkien are the most accessible writers on matters of Christian ethics and war. But here is briefly where I am.

I look at religion in the same way I look at philosophy. I am of the considered opinion that Christianity is reconciled with human morality and philosophy by dint of its rational works. I am thinking specifically of the way with which Christianity is continually rationalized, that it evolves its theology towards a Deist minimalism as human knowledge advances. The axioms of faith remain - the only serious question Christianity has to answer is whether or not Christ himself were Socialist. Another time perhaps...

I cannot imagine that Christianity's theological locus can be morally wrong, it can merely make errors of interpretation. That is because within and without I am satisfied with the essential axiom that the morality of God and man are identical - ie, we human beings do fundamentally have the same capacity of God to discern good and evil in the world. We can merely say that God is always right and we are mostly right, and only our own failings make us wrong.

If it is our duty to protect our own souls, and indeed we have the capacity to understand good and evil, then it is certainly our duty to protect the souls of others and we can be right about it. It follows then, from this that we should meet evil with superior force if good is to triumph. We are thus morally obligated to defend Christendom itself, rather in the way that the Pope assisted Poland against the godless commies.

I think that it is inevitable in a democracy, even with the separation of Church and State, that religious moral impulses to combat evil will operate through the apparatus of state armies, but they will be unable to make such actions pure. These will be deals with the polis but not with the devil. Wars have, of course, their own logic and their own rules and rationales, but you cannot separate the moral impulse to support a war (or to withdraw support from a war) from the inevitable duty of religious injunctions.

Therefore Christians and people of all beliefs are faced with the inevitable choice of fighting (or proxy fighting) and their own destruction at the hands of the enemy. A church is wise to make alliances with a state, and it ever has been such, if only for the most expedient understanding that so many will be faced with profound questions of the meaning of life during wartime. War is good for religion in that crass way.

It seems to me that a pacifist religion may be equally effective in matters of war and peace. War could be good for pacifist as well as bellicose faiths. The message to submit to one's mortal enemy in order to transcend them in martyrdom, it is one that is well understood in all societies - all the way to Obi Wan Kenobi.

Let us discuss this.

I Just Want to Do God's Will

Black Racial Self-Interest

Nobody knows the trouble I've seen. Nobody knows my sorrow.
-- Traditional

EC suggests that a member of the class of 'successful US blacks'  should be on the hook for their moral obligation to African-Americans who are less fortunate. Given the example of a rich (not wealthy though) successful surgeon 'Clarence' who is dedicated to his profession, he responds:

However, I’d not make up my mind about whether I thought Clarence were a successful U.S. Black unless I learned more about how he used his wealth, power, and prestige for the direct political, economic, and cultural uplift of Black Americans.

This is the 'black man's burden', but what it more plainly denotes is special consideration for black racial self-interest. And so I have to wag my finger from a Christian perspective, not so fast there buddy.

Like most blackfolks who grew up in the city, more specifically the 'hood, I grew up around mostly other blackfolks who lived in the same place primarily because we didn't have much choice. When we first moved to 90016 in 1964 there were still white families on the block. A few split around 67, and only one remained thereafter. She was the lady who never came out of the house. Some families were from Louisiana, several from Texas, but nobody was originally from LA. We had Japanese families in the neighborhood and a few Chinese too. No Mexicans or Koreans until the 80s.

It was a black neighborhood but the blacks were from different parts, went to different churches, had different class backgrounds. One was a childless couple, a minister and his wife. I never saw Reverend Robinson drive anything but a new Lincoln Continental, and I never saw him wear anything but a suit. Ever. Mr. Haney was the divorced drunk who ran a barbershop on his front porch. Punishment was getting a haircut from him instead of the Magnificent Brothers on Crenshaw. Mrs Myers raised four boys by herself. The Arnolds had 8 rowdy kids who went from bad to worse when Mr. Arnold, an ex Sea-Bee and truck driver from Texas died. Mother Sadie always had the polling place at her house. But I'm waxing nostalgic and painting more good than bad. There was plenty bad too. My point is that the brotherhood we established as neighbors was only marginally thicker than that in any suburb. Parents didn't stop by for drinks or party together. We never had so much as one block party. We knew we were black but we weren't that close.

The politics of black nationalism brought us closer in political aim and established brotherhood, but it had its limits. They are the limits inherent in the false reciprocity of a racial standard.

If you ask me the greatest fault with black nationalism, I would say that it's transcendence is limited, and in the absence of a disciplined institutional backbone it has slipped down to a few simple-minded imperatives. EC echoes the primary one. From blacks to which much is given, much is expected to be given back, to blacks.

This is a racial game which assumes that it is the natural duty of races to behave this way. Birds do it, bees do it, Whites do it, Jews do it.. While it is just a short step from this to a general expectation of mutual antagonism, a lot of well-meaning progressives in the racial uplift game don't go there. But their disdain for how the rest of the world operates on a non-racial basis is self-evident. "I don't care what white people think about..." is a common preface of many rants.

There is a certain self-righteousness implicit in the race raising game. The assumption is that there is always some moral benefit in giving to those nobody else gives to, so long as they are black. There could be no clearer evidence of this than the support given for black criminals, deadbeat dads, and other social misfits deemed victims of Cosby-style opprobrium.

But I think the most egregious sin of black nationalist race-raising is the extent to which it reinscribes racial caste into people who are otherwise thoughtful and considerate. It was whiteness that made us black, and now we are doing whiteness the favor of continuing the reactionary identity of blackness. If the next mass-murderer on the tube is about to be revealed, we cross our fingers and hope that he's not "one of us". Whenever we hear the Urban League tell its annual tale of woe, about how many African Americans are in prison, we hang our heads in special shame. We don't weep for American society, but only for blacks. Public education, public health, whatever the issue, black nationalist politics makes us single out the African American component and spend our entire moral power dealing with the 'black' part.

What is so striking is how easily this attitude becomes paramount and how it trivializes other problems in America, how it trails media and decries a similar fixation on black problems as yet another species of white supremacy. What it simply cannot face is that that old spiritual ain't exclusively Negro. All the trouble in the world isn't blackfolks' trouble, but the nationalists assure you that it's all the 'successful' blacks ought to concern themselves with. Healing white people's pain is verboten. Making whitefolks feel good and comfortable is traitorous. Anything done at the expense of a 'black' soul for the benefit of a 'white' soul, is an unforgivable crime. You're familiar with the ostracism. "Uncle Tom".

A true Christian, or anyone who sees true equality of souls without regard to race is incapable of being consistent in racial uplift. I can see no moral imperative against racial discrimination that matches the moral imperative of healing the sick. I recall the Book of Common Prayer:

For all people in their daily life and work;
For our families, friends, and neighbors, and for those who are alone.
For this community, the nation, and the world;
For all who work for justice, freedom, and peace.
For the just and proper use of your creation;
For the victims of hunger, fear, injustice, and oppression.
For all who are in danger, sorrow, or any kind of trouble;
For those who minister to the sick, the friendless, and the needy.
For the peace and unity of the Church of God;
For all who proclaim the Gospel, and all who seek the truth.

We are all limited, and we can only do so much in our limited ways. We must, all of us, have our priorities and our special talents to guide us. I'm sure there are those who can only see the world in black and white and know only the special oppressions that fall on those closest to them. And for them, the special emphasis of black nationalism's race raising cures what ails them. But for those of us with wider vision, let us remember that in the ways I have outlined, the cure is worse than the disease.

Dunbar's Number Again

I have been deleting people from my Outlook. I'm down to about 8700. Most of them were duplicates, but some of them were people I don't really remember, nor did I have a good reason to want to try and remember. I've been thinking about an ROI on positive karma, and part of me doesn't give a rat's.

Like many sorta smart people, I am blessed and cursed with an unusually dense memory. I remember people I have no business remembering - people who probably don't remember me and probably have nothing to say about me if they do. Why am I such a nice guy?

I'm thinking about this in regards to the odd thing about modern society - how it puts you in contact with so many hundreds of people - enough that you get their name and phone number or email addresss, but little else. I could do this a thousand times.

Georgina Kelly. Oh she's the rep I spoke to who sold me the Mortice Kern Toolkit way back in 96 or 97. I was going to get MKS into my company so that we could do better scripting. It never happened.

Charles Lane. Oh he's the guy who knows everything about construction. He was going to hook me up with the County of LA. it never happened.

Marilyn Parker. Oh she's the guidance counselor that got me into Claremont, and later worked for Drake Beame. Nothing much came of that relationship either. And I had a crush on her.

Hestia Sander. Oh she's the babe who had a brand new Toyota Celica and a friend who lived in Malibu. She was going to get us invited to Hollywood Parties. Never happened.

Dunbar's Number is about 150. That is the limit of people with whom anybody can retain good solid human relationships at any one time. I have 8000 others in reserve. For what? I have no idea. I have no idea.

On this tangent, I am thinking about the 'socialist' ethos of Christianity. Christ asks us to love our neighbors as ourselves. And he must truly have understood, being God and all, how this would work in the world of the future before his second coming. It must have meant everything to him to ask this of us as his primary commandment. And yet we know that human beings are so very different that only on the most intimate level does this injunction mean anything at all. We can't love everyone. We can't even keep track of everyone. Where is the power in that? Where is the wisdom in that? it only makes sense if you give into it absolutely, one must be an apologist for Christianity in order for it to be comprehensible.

It leaves us with a series of smudgemarks we make on people, like bumpercars in the eternal human circus. It is an absolute reason to be charitable but to no end other than the belief that you become a better person for doing so. If you tell everyone in life to have a Coke and a smile it's good enough. The net effect is positive. It scales wide, but not deep. None of those thousands will do so much as call you back on the phone. All you merit is a pleasant memory, a few calories worth of effort to put the name with the face and say a sentence or two. This is how we exist in the margins of other people's lives.

I am feeling ill today, and finally it makes me write something I'm actually feeling. I haven't been feeling much for a while.

A Pleasant Sociopath

Part of being Bowen is being philosophical. Deet is no exception, and so last night in Pasadena he expounded on the spiritual ramifications of the journey of self-discovery in Krakauer's story of Chris McCandless. I haven't read the story but my take on this dude was that he was a pleasant sociopath.

We have a number of physical journeys in our contemporary life that substitute for moral journeys. So whenever I hear stories about people who are bound and determined to discover the world and go adventuring in any sort of extreme or 'authentic' way, I am always drawn to the conclusion that it is some part of rejection. It is a trope in the modern West we have seen. Unfortunately, I'm not aware of which of the classics in our literature stands as the best accounting of this impulse although I suspect Rudyard Kipling is close to that mark. Whether it was Brad Pitt in Seven Years in Tibet or Forrest Gump jogging  across America or W. Somerset Maugham's character, someone is always searching to live on the razor's edge and thus prove that they are more alive than their slugwort contemporaries. I imagine myself in younger days attracted to that selfsame social rejection, seeking a higher moral order than seems accessible or even possible despite our privileged upbringing. However self-serving, it is a journey better taken than ignored.

The pleasant sociopath is a personal revolutionary. He has the good sense to understand that his reconciliation with society must begin with himself. Sometimes a physical journey can initiate the purification, but it is the idea that isolation in extremity from society is the sine qua non of spiritual purification that gives me a headache. That is why I suggest such an adventurer is sociopathic. There is an implicit cynicism that suggests that this can only be done without assistance. It implies that nobody else has similar desires. Ultimately is is a rejection of one's one social circle which is an admission that one has lived too close to home. Inevitably, those sojourners, having found Truth or Enlightenment or whatever golden epiphany they were chasing returns home to find in the very people he rejected some true measure of humanity. Suddenly, he is more sure of those things he only had a vague sense of propriety about and he becomes in deed the man he thought should have been there in his own youth. In the end, such journeys are about a crisis of faith, not an absence of truth. It would be more noble to resolve one's crisis of faith in community with one's fellows rather than in splendid isolation from them.

For much of my younger days, I lamented the absence of the 'noble arena'. I too, wanted men to be men and women to be women instead of dudes and babes. I have always sensed an imbalance in myself as I strove to exemplify what I desired to see in others. I have always feared becoming completely isolated within society as the last moral man left on earth, doomed to obscurity for following my conscience to spite the ignoble throngs around me. But I have somehow regained my faith in mankind and have found in simple ways and manners the means by which I can believe the best about my neighbors while being prepared for the worst. Perhaps this is a lesson sunk into my head subconsciously from 'A Man for All Seasons', because this is the essence of the Law. Let me find the quote:

Roper:

"So now you'd give the devil the benefit of law?"

More:

"Yes. What would you do? Cut a great road through the law to get after the devil?"

Roper:

"I'd cut down every law in England to do that."

More:

"Oh, and when the last law was down, and the devil turned on you, where would you hide, Roper, all the laws being flat? This country is planted thick with laws from coast to coast, man's laws not God's, and if you cut them down -- and you're just the man to do it -- do you really think that you could stand upright in the winds that would blow then?

"Yes, I'd give the devil the benefit of the law, for my own safety's sake."

In this regard, should we disregard every man and be faithless in our fellows in order to make some journey to perfection, how will we be to them upon our return? We have cut them all down in turning our backs to them.

Butterfield 8

For the first time in a while, I tried something new, which was to watch a film I've only vaguely known to be good. It was free from the In Demand network in my corporate apartment, and I enjoyed it thoroughly.

Butterfield 8 is a morality tale. It is the story about the value of sex and marriage and self-worth of honesty, passion and abuse. It is the story about living with lies and what it does to the psyche, of the difference between friendship, lust and love. It's about class and money, control and freedom. It's an awful fabulous lot in an old movie, and it's the sort of movie they don't seem to make any longer. Perhaps today's directors and screenwriters know better than to tread in this territory.

The film is not very well edited and there's not much panache in the direction, but the acting is good - done for the sake of dialog and not empty emoting or beauty shots. it's the kind of film that begins like something cheesy, develops interestingly and ends perfectly. It is a modern tragedy of timeless values and therefore a classic. In some ways, I cannot imagine not having my soon to be teenaged children watch it. It's the right caution.

Some days ago, I happened to be listening to a late night radio talk show. it was the night that Halo 3 was to be sold at midnight. I missed the sale but I caught the radio talk show. The host was talking about how we make an enemy of our conscience when we indulge ourselves. We do wrong and we begin to despise the part of us that makes us feel bad about it and instead we welcome the kinds of people into our lives that want to share in our badness. We call the drug dealer our friend and we get angry at our true friends - we can't wait for good people to abandon us so that we can abandon ourselves into the arms of abuse.

But at some point in our lives, because most of us live long enough to regret, we realize how we have done ourselves wrong and have undone others in the course of it. We wonder if we can ever make good, if we ever deserve the sunshine on our faces, if we can ever pay the price for our betrayal. That is our moment of humanity, and there is always an opportunity for that moment to come. I say that is the very shape of our minds that does it, the nature of God in us. It's as true and simple as pain. Pain is our way of knowing that we are in trouble and it is only human to want the pain to go away.

At this moment I think of Alter Call. The proper minister always knows an Alter Call is always necessary. We always need to be reminded that we can make the pain go away, that we can return to conscience and that we might someday deserve the sunshine.

Butterfield 8 was an answering service in the film. A cutout conduit between two people unable to face the truth about themselves. So long as they used that underground channel of communication, they could enjoy their complicit deceit. It wasn't until they were ready to deal with their own true feelings, their own real consciences, their own reputations and psyches that they could ditch the conduit. And yet it stood, always something there to remind them, an indelible memory.

One day, we'll have real-time translation of all the voice messages and films and literature of today's recorded digital world. We could InDemand it and watch it at our leisure. But I think all that diversity of information won't matter - it will be the shape of the stories like this one that count. They will be few, but they will be evocative of the real truth about our souls. We can only hope to be watching the right channel.

Bearing No Cross

This weekend I needed to go to church and I needed to save time. I managed to do both and neither.

I went to a local Episcopal church near the beach. It took me about 20 minutes to find a parking space. When I finally arrived, after a 4 block walk, I found an empty pew near the back. I looked all around. The place was filled with young people and I was in the pre-school section. I've been observing the demographics and liturgical conventions of churches I have visited this year. So far, this one was the most light and airy.

Just as was getting used to the crowd, the rector announced the blessing of the backpacks. Two dozen children emerged from all over the congregation with their backpacks and brought them to the alter. One man was late as the priest asked that they raise them into the air. He literally sprinted down the aisle to get his child's backpack into the circle. I have never seen a grown man run through church before. It was as if he were trying to catch the last ferry to Cancun. He made a joke and people laughed.

There was no organ music. There were bongos and tambourines. I'm not sure I heard a piano, nor an acoustic guitar. I'm not sure exactly what kind of music was coming to me, except that it was happy music. Like summer camp.

My burden requires a great deal from my priest, and I know that I cannot get it here. I'm not even sure that I can say that I should be happy for the parishioners. It was only one service, it might not be representative. But I know enough for myself. Still I continue to read murder mysteries and stories from the front in Iraq. I need the kind of faith for the people who bear the cross, not for people who dance around it. At least that was what I needed Sunday, and expect to need again.

It was odd being there - odd being in that particular portion of the body of Christ. I wonder how I will reconcile myself to it.

A Talk With Pops

Now is the time, on the occasion of my father's final retirement, to give props to pops. In every little way. He is an extraordinary, ordinary man, whose abstractions continue to amaze and delight me. He dropped by last night and as is more or less usual, we got to jawjacking about life. The Spousal Unit piped up towards the end, and although I kept insisting on raising my points, you can tell why I love and need her so much.

Download a_talk_with_pops.mp3

A New South African Friend

Deacon Lester McKenzie doesn't know it yet, but I think we are going to be good friends. I hope we are at any rate. He's the new priest at St. John's Church, my church of old that I've attended three weeks in a row, this week at the church retreat at Big Bear Lake.

As usual with my attractions to people, there is an ulterior motive which can be traced to a question I am uncomfortable theorizing in complete confidence by myself. I need the experience of other people to give weight or devastate my preliminary conclusions. Through this weekend's convergence of events my question is about the matter of moral reckoning. So first let me tell you the story that gives this priority.

On the way to the lake, I listened to Offramp on NPR. The story "Dad's in Jail" began about the School of the Americas, and how it was complicit in the murder of several clergy in a South American (or Central American) nation. The vague parameters of this story is familiar to all of us from the 80s. It is why we made so much noise over the Contras. The School of the Americas is where our military advisors train allies in special forces operations and such, and gave us people like Manuel Noriega. As I have said at least a dozen times here, and now once more to underscore the point, all of the horrors we were indirectly responsible for including, if applicable, the murder of those nuns, has been repudiated by GWBush. Never send a proxy to do an American military job.

So the Dad of this story full of moral outrage about these murders decided to cross the line and stand to be arrested trying to close down the School of the Americas. This Dad was about 70, he was, I believe, a teacher and obviously his son a professional journalist. And, convicted of a misdemeanor for tresspassing, was sentenced to serve 2 months in a minimum security Federal prison here in LA County.

It's a quaint little story about moral outrage with a beginning, middle and end. The end being that a precious lesson about conscience was applied to us in the radio audience, me while I was driving 80 MPH in my BMW headed to a weekend campout by a lake. Of course Dad had to learn some prison etiquette, he got his shirts ironed in trade for some Snickers, and released on time and unharmed to his son, earned greater respect - his civil disobedience badge of courage, time at Club Fed.

I could not be impressed by this. I wonder if you caught that in my tone. But is this not the measure of our dissent? Have any of us sacrificed even this much over a murder? What good is my blogging, or your reading my blogging when it comes down to the quality of our dissent? Indeed of what value is our moral reckoning at all?

Needless to say, Dad would have never turned himself into the authorities of the country where nuns get shot. That Americans have the luxury of not having all of their assets confiscated and can pretty much pick up their retirement where they left off after a stint in jail, well, it doesn't get much more civilized than that does it? Let us recall the context of an Iraqi interpreter just for kicks. Or not. Let's get back to Big Bear.

It turns out that the Deacon and I have a lot in common superficially. We are both middle aged black men, he a bit younger than I, both Episcopalians. We both love Los Angeles. He says "It's just like Capetown only 10 times bigger." We both began our careers in IT, we're interested in the online presence of St. John's. We both love music by Ladysmith Black Mombazu and at various times in our lives done road biking, body surfing and capoeira.  We sat up in front of the dying fire last night revealing these things to each other one sleepy sentence after another.  I think that I will find that there are deeper similarities between us as well, at least I'm hoping so.  He spoke about the chaos of 1986 when I mentioned that was about the first time we heard LBM here in the States.  It wasn't time to go there, but inevitably I will.

And so in the context of all of the moral analysis I do at Cobb, for what it's worth (and I've been reading Hitchens on Jefferson with my daughter - the power of words can be immense), I wonder what strength our moral reckoning has. Are we exercising liberties that are meaningless in the face of the suffering that goes on in this world? Are our best efforts at making moral stands merely pithy exercises of privilege? How does one from the Apartheid era of South Africa take our moral actions? Why indeed would he come here of all places to serve as a priest?

At this morning's service I offered up a prayer in public for those who do not have heroes, for the undefended, for those who suffer anonymously or off the record. Because I know that Iraqis have defenders, the finest our nation can afford. Not military advisors working through proxies who might murder men and women of the cloth, but our own sworn officers and their dedicated charges fighting in the name of the sort of liberty we would wish upon Iraqis, ready or not. Someone ahead of me whose cousin is in that fight offered up the prayer for our soldiers.

I am looking forward to being local. I didn't know that there was a place in the Valley where I could get great South African food. I didn't think I'd find someone from halfway around the planet who would dig Unomathemba like I do. I didn't know there was a beach called Dungeons where the waves get up to 17 feet off the Cape of Good Hope. This is a good sign. It is indeed a very good sign.

Cobb on the Warren Ballentine Show

I just had a sparkling conversation with Reverend Ed Mulraine at God Talk Now on the Warren Ballentine Show. I think we may have just inspired some men to get back home to church.

It was a good 30 minute segment where we talked about the dimensions of the crisis, and what excuses are made and what we might do to turn that around. It really got going when Reverend Ed came with the hardline about gays in church. You belong. I'm glad he said that exactly the way he said it which didn't include the phrase "hate the sin, love the sinner". We have no excuses to hate and he didn't give one. We all come heavily laden and we will be relieved.

What I wanted to say, I think I said well. In all the ways we often criticize America for not loving and respecting the black man, we cannot say that about church. When you come in, you get love, not only from God but from young people, old people, the whole church. And it's deeper than just a high five or a pound, or the nod on the street. It has to be. We all need the kind of affirmation that we give each other, and we need it on a regular basis. It's not going to happen unless we are ready to make that move. Don't wait for a crisis, man up and do it.

--
I welcome all new readers to Cobb. What I'm all about here is documenting the issues and ideas of my generation from an Old School perspective. I think the best of black culture is central to the American experience and that it is not only possible but necessary to recover and retain the strength and values that sustained us from the deprivations of chattel slavery to the very peaks of American society and the world stage.  We are all about the Old School Core Values.

We get on about heady issues, but we keep it straight up too. So jump into the conversation any time.

Juneteenth & Volunteer Slavery

"The future is already here, it's just unevenly distributed."
-- William Gibson

Juneteenth is a reminder that this is the nature of reality. Some groups of people are always dealing with a smaller set of facts, and because of that, they live in a constrained reality.

African Americans are not all fully accustomed to using their freedoms. Though all of us have the right and liberty to pursue nearly infinite options in America, the fact is that most of us don't. We live in the same towns our grandparents live in, we eat the same food, we watch the same TV shows. An example I like to give is this: although all of us have been to McDonald's hundreds of times, how many times have we ordered the vanilla shake?

Jill Nelson published a book almost two decades ago called 'Volunteer Slavery'. She describes how for all of her life she was encouraged to break certain barriers and attain certain goals, for her the march up the corporate ladder. When she got there, she found that she was a prisoner of her ambitions, bound by her commitments to fulfill dreams that hadn't changed. She quit and eventually saw herself and life in general in a whole new light. But she had to take that leap of faith, that even though nobody could see what might happen, she had to believe that she could use her freedom and make it work.

How many of us are volunteering ourselves for the same old positions we have always been told are good for us? How many of us are afraid of change? How many of us have become so accustomed to answering the same doorbell that we think that is our purpose? As a black man who is a member of the Republican Party, I know how difficult it is to break old habits. I know how treacherous freedom actually can be. I understand how stepping outside of commitments to old dreams puts one in the crosshairs. I know the feeling of clumsiness when walking on unfamiliar ground. But this is the very challenge of life, to discover, to adapt, to move forward.

Here I am talking about change and yet pontificating about the Old School. How can I reconcile this apparent contradiction? It's actually pretty simple when you think about it. After all, God is older than the Old School. If you believe in some unassailable truths and you seek after them, then you'll find yourself drawn to some permanent facts about the very nature of humanity. One of them is that we were born to be free, and that we have responsibility to that freedom. It must be worked for. Everybody doesn't work at the same pace, that's why freedom and all of God's gifts are unevenly distributed. We all too often fail to acknowledge who we are as creatures of God. We submit to inferior ideas. We hide our lights under a bushel.

Michel Martin asks if we have a shared freedom:

Is Juneteenth something that speaks to shared values and experiences? And if we are celebrating...what's on the menu?

It seems to me that the answer to that is as easy as asking if you believe that we are endowed by our creator with certain inalienable rights.

Watching Scouts Walk

I think I am a fairly keen observer of human behavior. If I weren't, I probably wouldn't write as much as I do, finding nothing of interest worth commenting. Sometimes I'm in alien observer mode, other times I'm in old boy bonhomie mode. Last night, as I attended the Court of Honor for my son's Scout troop, I was in a combination of both.

There is nothing quite as telling to me about someone's character as the way they walk. It's something I simply can't avoid scrutinizing. I think I can tell a huge amount about a woman by her walk, it's how I've judged them as worthy of romantic attention all my life. But watching Boy Scouts walk as an insight to their potential as men is a relatively new angle for me.

During a Court of Honor, scouts, parents and troop leaders assemble to recognize the achievements of the boys in a formal ceremony. Our troop has these quarterly, others might have them semi-annually or only once a year. We have over 100 boys, so a lot goes on. Last night was a fairly light affair with only about 100 awards handed out. After summer camps where a lot of merit badge activity goes on, Courts of Honor can stretch out into very lengthy ordeals. These generally involve calling boys to the front for rank promotions in which they pin medals on their parents and repeated calls to please hold your applause to the end. But it wasn't that boisterous last evening and not all of the scouts to be recognized showed up, and it made for a somewhat more leisurely pace than normal. It was during this slow ambles to the stage of the United Methodist Church that I observed various boys styles of self-presentation as they were recognized for their accomplishments.

In the chatting classes, we often remark with disdain about the character of many aspects of our nation. More often than not we indict institutions: the Government, the Mainstream Media, public education, big corporations.  Just as often we blame ideas: liberalism, fundamentalism, capitalism, socialism, religion. But all of these isms are rather nothing but those things that fill the empty spaces in men's heads, the spaces left over between them and the pursuit of their desires. Nothing illustrates this quite like the faces of boys because boys are mostly oblivious to institutions and ideas but rather slaves to their passions, hopes and fears. Even as they march somewhat in step to the lofty ideals and principles, even as they recite and salute, we know that they are yet boys and lacking a full grasp of the importance of these ideas and institutions.

There were new scouts. Young kids in short pants with skinny legs and wide-eyed expressions who walked up fairly quickly and failed to assemble in anything resembling order. They stood on different steps faced at various angles and stood frozen as they were given their first red berets. None spoke or much grinned.

As they received their honors for such achievements as merit badges as 'Citizenship in the World', 'Family Life', 'Personal Fitness', 'First Aid', 'Fishing' and 'Communications', various boys ambled up to the stage. Many wore fat laced skateboard shoes and walked slowly. One thin kid in shorts with white calf length socks had a sash full of merit badges, but seemed to be the most shy and retiring type you'd ever meet. One kid in the older Venture group actually seemed to be wearing saggy pants, but it was actually the way he was built, in a bowed over shape he loped up with a smirk, receiving a fairly high honor. One of the kids I drove last summer to a fishing trip had a vacant sort of attention. I like that kid a lot, but this evening he seemed robotic - just the kind of drone reactionary lefties stereotype scouts as. One of the senior leaders of the troop had, as usual his affable casual style of leadership. Though he's a physically imposing young man, I've seen him quiet the troop by doing magic tricks with fire instead of shouting. It's the kind of thing you wouldn't even imagine when you talk about disciplining 3 dozen adolescents.

But these boys are all different. They seem curiously empty of the kind of swagger you might expect, at least during the ceremony there was very little hamming it up. There seems to be very little else in them during the ceremony except for a kind of bored and absent-minded humility and reverence. Their receipt of acknowledgment was routine. Their acceptance with the right hand of the envelope and the left-handshake was casually practiced. They looked nothing at all like the marines you see on the television commercials, and for all the time I had wondered if their dressing up in uniforms might be nothing else but a preliminary setup for military careers, there is nothing really like that here.

The BSA does not crank out robots. It creates community around simple yet meaningful values.

On my honor I will do my best

To do my duty to God and my country

and to obey the Scout Law;

To help other people at all times;

To keep myself physically strong,

mentally awake, and morally straight.

The military creed is there close at hand in defense of what a nation should bring about in its boys. But it is not explicit. It's what I see as a man in the community. It's what I know as a father. It comes down to creating this space and defending it. If the boys are empty and oblivious, they most certainly know that in this room, in this Court of Honor, it is about their works, their families, their friends and the states of being they approach as they rise in rank, age and stature.

A Scout is trustworthy, loyal, helpful, friendly, courteous, kind, obedient, cheerful, thrifty, brave, clean and reverent.

Think about the last time you could say that about anyone you know. It almost seem anachronistic in these times when we decry whatever it is that we decry in our society, that in the faces of boys, lost as they might be to the goings on of the world, that they are these very things. They have the voices of boys. They don't proclaim loudly. They don't act defensively against threats.  They are just making their way through school, football practice, Sunday School, Scouting, and family life. They're trying not to be dorks. And as tall and straight as they can be when prompted, they still walk like boys.

Fifteen minutes later when the Court of Honor is adjourned and Taps has been played and it's time for ice cream, they run like boys. The noise comes and you begin to appreciate the awkward humility of the ceremony.

There remains something pure in American boyhood which has not been lost to the destructive nature of the evils of the world. It's not the mainstream media, or big corporations or socialism that have gotten us in trouble with ourselves and our neighbors. It has been our inability to focus on some simple values we possess, but let get drowned out by the contemptible noises in our society. Exemplified in Boy Scouts, these values don't appear very powerful, they seem wobbly, thin, corny and weak. They seem out of touch with a 'greater' reality. But we have the ability to focus on them for what they are and as we recognize them in our sons, we may come to find them in our men as well. We may not recognize such values marching with vigor but ambling in silence. It's a good thing to see.

Loas, Spirits, Sprites & Fairies

Gods of the world unite.

At one time I claimed a sort of organic polytheism. It was after the fashion of Ishmael Reed in the prototypical theory of multiculturalism. The basic idea still works which is that one must have a certain amount of respect for the disciplined pedagogies embedded in the various ways religions and cultures evolved.

But of course by accepting that premise, one must of consequence reserve the greatest amount of respect for those religions and cultures which have evolved the furthest. This is where I part company with multiculturalists and polytheists who seek to promote and elevate alternatives at the express expense of that which is Christianity and American culture. As usual, they fail to dig with any specificity into a true comparitive discipline, so long as you can trash America, whatever culture or rite is vindicated.

That said, there is some value to a disciplined expression. What would English be without French idioms? It would certainly lack a certain je ne sais quoi. But I wonder what we might get from Voodoo.

Chaos, Order, Emergence, Evolution & Intelligence

Fisher and I are having a great philosophical and theological discussion and he has hit on a theme that I think requires some digging into. It's an interesting theory that I'm thinking about here which gets into a lot of interesting corners of thought. He says:

At the core of everything all matter is the same. In [fact] at one point all matter is not only identical, but becomes movement in and of itself. Thus there is no fundamental difference between a granite rock and an organic being such as a human.

Now SOMETHING has to organize these completely identical basic components into a rock on the one hand and into a human being on the other.

That something [might] be innate to these components and thus self-organizing, or it might acts upon the components from outside of the components. Whatever it is, it MUST exist.

OK now we're getting deep.

Part of this logic goes directly to the question and theory of Intelligent Design, which I consider to be an interesting if misguided and undisciplined set of arguments for the existence of God which spites the theory of evolution. Firstly, I would say that as a Christian, I disagree that the theory of evolution is heretical. I make that point of disagreement with Dr. Arnn. I don't believe that man will evolve beyond a need for those things which are fundamental to our spirituality, but I understand the fear implied in the idea that mankind might have evolved from apes who have no spirituality. All I can say to that is why did God bring Jesus into the world at that particular moment? If apes needed God in their image, who is to say there is not Jesus of the Apes? And if we evolve beyond what we think of as humanity, who is to say that Jesus' second coming wouldn't be that of some trans-human being? I am not concerned with the idea of the changing or evolving nature of the soul or of intelligence and that is because I do not believe in an anthropomorphic supreme being.

One of the things that leads me into strange waters is based upon my conceptualization of consciousness. When I was an undergrad I read The Mind's I which had a profound effect on my thinking. Indeed what is thought if not computation of some sort, and what are the physical rules of computation? I extrapolated this idea vis a vis Moore's Law once and made the conjecture that God might be the Sun.

Huh? What?

What if the nuclear vibrations of the massive fusion reactions in the Sun made patterns? Some physicist might help me out here, but if all of the nuclear activity of all the atomic particles in the Sun could be thought of as a computer, what kind of compute power would a star have? I'd say it would be infinitely more powerful than the "infinite monkeys" theory. The Sun does indeed absolutely provide for and sustain life on earth, but might it not be a super intelligence which only spends a fraction of its energy doing so?

The conjecture of God as Sun also depends upon a theory of emergent behavior. Ants don't recognize the beauty of the lines they make across the forest floor. They only smell the butt of the ant in front. Humans don't recognize the patterns they make across history, we can't even all speak the same language. (I don't mean to imply Sapir Whorf here, just accounting for dissonance across time and distance). Intelligent behavior is only intelligent when there is intelligence to perceive it. In that regard the morality of human history only makes sense to God. The fate of the city only makes sense in the context of the state. The fate of the one in context to the many.

A robot cannot be a human being because a robot is powered by electricity. It therefore can only simulate hunger, its emotions are of a different character. It needs what it needs but not things that humans need. If humans each had multiple sexual organs we would behave in completely other ways. So one has to be human to interpret human intelligence. Again, this is consistent with Christian ideas about God.