Fraught with Naught

So I watched the debate. Lehrer pointedly asks John Kerry for “specifics” on his plan for Iraq and Kerry says all this vague stuff like “change the dynamic on the ground.” What the does that mean? Then after the debate they get all these Democrats saying that Kerry has finally come out and provided a solid plan for Iraq. Huh? Did I miss something?

Kerry wants to have a summit to talk about Iraq with world leaders. Isn’t that basically what the UN did for a dozen years before the invasion? How long can the world talk? This, unfortunately, is where the enemy has the Western world by the balls. While we sit around in committees and summits and congresses discussing things, they’re out planning and carrying out their attacks. They don’t worry about unilateralism versus multilateralism; they’re nimble. If they want to blow up children in Iraq, they blow up children in Iraq. If they want to destroy the tallest buildings in New York and kill thousands of civilians, they destroy the tallest buildings in New York and kill thousands of civilians. If they want to kidnap and behead a journalist or a contractor or a soldier, they kidnap and behead a journalist or a contractor or a soldier. Meanwhile, we go over there, get a whole bunch of them cornered in a nice, centralized location and flat refuse to drop a bomb on them because they’re in a Muslim shrine. Yeah, that’s the way to win.

The Western world has triumphed and survived because it has been able to invert its value system on the battlefield and the frontier. We are peaceful and tolerant in the center, but vicious around the edges. Except now American troops are in Iraq and elsewhere trying to fight some kind of sensitive war because we don’t want to offend anyone. Well, hey, guess what. War is offensive. No way around it. And if we’re not willing to fight an offensive war (and both meanings of the word apply), then we’re not going to win. We worry about killing women, children, and innocent civilians. We refuse to attack when our enemies hide in religious buildings. Terrorists have no such qualms.

So John Kerry wants to hold a summit meeting and somehow “change the dynamic on the ground.” Way to go, John. That’ll do the trick. You find yourself in an asymmetrical war so you decide to become even more sluggish and overgrown. Good thinking.

Killing Embryos?

I am here today to go on the record with my bewilderment with opponents of embryonic stem cell research.

Here’s how I understand stem cell research: Fertilize an egg and let it divide a few times. Take the resulting clump of cells and use them to see what kinds of tissues you can grow on command. Repeat until you get something useful. Put cotton in your ears while Christians scream at you for being a genocidal maniac.

Broad strokes, I know. (Don’t get me started about generalizations.)

Maybe the religious folks have a halfway decent point about destroying a potential human being. But then I have seen way too many full-fledged human beings who don’t deserve to exist. For instance, why are we so quick to execute murderers? Why are Americans in general more concerned about a thousand dead American soldiers than about many thousands killed in Iraq who were not Americans? Or why people keep going on about the 58,000 American soldiers killed in Vietnam while conveniently ignoring all the dead Vietnamese–especially the ones who died after we pulled out? Or why do we always hear about the six million victims of the Nazis, but never about how many German soldiers were killed in the Second World War? Why are dead friends and neighbors a source of grief, but dead victims of a typhoon in India merely statistics? On and on it goes. Unequal valuation of human beings happens all the time, so naturally that it easily slips our notice.

Now we are told that it is unethical and immoral to extract fertilized eggs, develop them into embryos (which, honestly, are just clumps of cells not recognizably human), and then use the stem cells in those embryos to explore new methods to enhance and prolong the lives of those already here. This bewilders me.

Perhaps I would understand better if fertility rates were low and every last embryo was needed to ensure the continuation of the species. But here in the modern West, it is easier to reproduce successfully than in any other historical milieu. Thanks to advanced medicine, government funding, and social safety nets, people who have no discernible parenting skills are able to reproduce at higher rates than their more conscientious neighbors. Fertility rates are so high that anyone who wants to have a baby can have one. Where I live, the well-fed children of thugs and criminals and drug-addicts abound. (Then, when they get older, we nurse them along with special education programs, school psychologists, free lunch programs, and later welfare, prisons, and the same social safety nets that allowed their parents to bring them into the world.) It’s harder to get a driver’s license than it is to reproduce. So why are we worried about destroying embryos? We clearly have resources–both biological and economical–to spare.

But the opponents of embryonic stem cell research will surely object that they defend embryos not because we need them but because they are potential human beings. So what? If killing a pregnant woman were a double homicide and relatives of dead victims of terrorists can be awarded financial compensation for lost decades of earning power, maybe the murder of a married couple should be considered a quadruple murder because the murderer has destroyed the potential for the average birthrate of two more children. If you don’t understand why that “relatives of dead victims of terrorists” thing is in there, it’s about viewing murder as the destruction not just of the victim, but of the victim’s potential. How far can you go with that? I can produce millions of sperm which, passed along to enough women, could result in innumerable offspring. Is that part of my potential? What is potential anyway?

Ultimately, again, opponents of embryonic stem cell research bewilder me. Human life is not nearly so clear cut as they seem to wish it were.

Smarter than God

Check it out. Didn’t know I wrote in an “I’m smarter than God” style. Didn’t know that was a style.

It’s a weird comment, though. If you don’t like what I say, just disagree. Preferably with substance. What’s the point of saying I think I’m “smarter than God”? I run into those things and I can’t help but make a funny face and think, “Okay, if I’m so misguided, why won’t you point out some specifics?” Who cares how smart I am or think I am? The substance of my comments is what matters.

Furthermore, I am curious about the specific rhetorical devices that indicate my “smarter than God” quotient. Is it a crime to be confident in my opinions? Should I pretend to be dumber? Should I weaken all my remarks by prefacing them with the words “I think” or “I believe,” as though it weren’t already obvious from what I had written that I think or believe it? What exactly makes me sound “smarter than God”?

In my opinion, too many people mistake straightforward declarations of opinion for arrogance. So I have a strong writing style. Get over it. Fight back with something real and lose the ad hominem stuff.

Lee Strobel Strikes Again!

Chuck Colson has been blabbering on (and on, and on) about Lee Strobel’s latest book, The Case for a Creator. (Huh? The case for a creator? Not The Creator? For somebody so assertive and one-sided as Strobel, I am a bit shocked that he chose the indefinite article for his title.) For the sake of full disclosure, I should say that I have not read this book yet. But I have read two others of his “Case for…” books, including The Case for Christ and The Case for Faith, so I know how his system works: Find people who will support his case, interview them, write it up in a book and make it look like the “case” is ironclad. Why doesn’t he have the balls to interview people who will disagree? (Note to Lee Strobel: If you are reading this, feel free to answer via the comment section.)

On Lee Strobel in general: I have no problem with people who want to believe. I have no problem with people who do believe. I have no problem with people trying to rationalize reasons for why they believe. I don’t even have a problem with people who write books to that effect. But I do get annoyed when those books make it sound like people who don’t believe as Strobel does (conservative evangelical Christian) are just ignorant, uninformed, or defiant. If Lee Strobel wanted to say why he believes what he does despite alternative viewpoints, that would be great. But his books don’t really work that way because he never encounters any alternative viewpoints. He stays securely in the midst of people who support his views while he supports theirs. There is no debate, no argument, no conciliation, and no explanation of why there is a disagreement in the first place. There are just people who can think well enough to be Christians (his interviewees) and people who can’t (“Sir Not-Appearing-in-this-Book”). In that respect, he has a little in common with Michael Moore. (Although Moore interviews people who disagree with him, he still manages to make them look as stupid as possible.) Overall, I have not been impressed by Lee Strobel. Not even a little. (Well, he is a decent writer, at least in the sense that he manages to make all his interviews sound like those smarmy, self-assured educational filmstrips they used to show in school. It’s a triumph of tone at the expense of content.)

At any rate, before I get off track, let me dive straight into Colson’s latest plug for his pal Strobel.

In this BreakPoint commentary, Colson remarks on an article in the journal Resuscitation that “described a year-long British study that offered evidence that consciousness continues after a person’s brain has stopped functioning, and he has been declared clinically dead.” That sounds really interesting, and I wish I was a subscriber to that journal so I could read the whole article, but unfortunately I can only get to the abstract here. Here is the most important section of the abstract:

Recent studies in cardiac arrest survivors have indicated that although the majority of cardiac arrest survivors have no memory recall from the event, nevertheless approximately 10% develop memories that are consistent with typical near death experiences. These include an ability to ‘see’ and recall specific detailed descriptions of the resuscitation, as verified by resuscitation staff

Fascinating. I love these kinds of studies, because they reveal phenomena that are still lacking in theoretical explanation. These are the kind of facts that drive science forward. Without unexplained phenomena, scientists would have no reason to search for explanations. (Fortunately for scientists, every explanation seems to lead to more unexplained phenomena. Talk about job security.)

But how does Lee Strobel report this? He says that Sam Parnia and Peter Fenwick, the authors of this article, are “candid in admitting that they currently have no explanation for how the brain might spawn consciousness.” In other words, they are honest. No big deal. Lots of things “currently have no explanation.” But then, according to Colson, the illustrious interviewer Strobel starts jumping to conclusions, even as he denies doing so!

But other scientists are determined to follow the evidence wherever it leads. As the late neurophysicist Sir John Eccles put it, “I am driven by data, not theory . . . There are solid, concrete data that suggest that our consciousness, our mind, may surpass the boundaries of the brain.”

Huh? Wait a minute. Following the evidence wherever it leads is great. That is the scientific method par excellence! But how could Sir John Eccles claim that “there are solid, concrete data that suggest that our consciousness, our mind, may surpass the boundaries of the brain” when the “concrete data” suggest no such thing? As Parnia and Fenwick admitted, the “concrete data” have left them without a theoretical framework. All they have are facts: 10% of cardiac arrest survivors in their study formed lucid memories of the resuscitation process, even though they were considered dead at the time. Does that mean the mind “may surpass the boundaries of the brain”? No! The evidence in this case does not answer any questions; it only raises them, as Parnia and Fenwick were careful to note. And as Strobel and Colson were careful to ignore. After further research, it may turn out that our definition of “dead” is faulty, and the continued brain activity past the point of our declaration will lose some of its mystery. Or it may turn out the way Eccles, Strobel, and Colson would like. (Unfortunately for the latter, though, no matter what happens, there will always be scientists and skeptics there to press and probe and question the validity of the conclusion. This does not bode well for trying to find theology in science: Science is always changing, theology is always trying not to change. Tough to keep in step that way.)

Lee Strobel has a problem with his defense of God. He looks for unexplained phenomena and then puts his God in there. This is sometimes called “the God of the gaps.” It’s problematic because whenever you fill a gap with an explanation (and create a few more gaps with new questions), the sovereignty of your God will change. But Lee Strobel writes that “atheists are pinning their hopes on some as-yet-undetermined scientific discovery to justify their faith in physicalism” [emphasis added]! Huh? I am not waiting for any such thing. Nor do I have any “faith” in physicalism. Faith has always meant something like “the acceptance of something unseen.” Yes, nitpickers, naysayers, and self-appointed gadflies, that is a broad approximation of a (mostly meaningless) concept whose hairs can be split nearly infinitely by philosophers who have nothing better to do with their lives. But this is only one of the many bizarre inversions modern apologists like Strobel have created to defend themselves. (E.g., irreligion = religion, atheism = theism, etc.) Then they stand around patting each other on the back and claiming their arguments and defenses are better than ever before. Except who wants to worship a God that needs defending by bestselling books? Who wants to worship a God that only becomes evident when you redefine words? (To quote Jar-Jar Binks, “This iz nutsen!”)

If religious people would just believe and have their faith, I wouldn’t mind. But when they have to go around trying to prove that they believe for reasons that can be observed objectively, I start to wonder whether they really believe it themselves. If your God is so real, why do you keep trying to prove it? Nobody tries to prove that the sun shines every day. Nobody tries to prove that gravity pulls us down. People may try to prove how the sun shines, or how gravity works, but nobody tries to prove that these phenomena exist at all. Not so for God. People are constantly trying to prove that God exists, mainly by claiming that anyone who disagrees with them is blind to this allegedly obvious God.

I don’t think religious believers are stupid. Lots of them are very smart people. Nor do I doubt their faith, or at least their desire to believe. (I am quite sure there exist plenty of “believers” who are afraid their belief is misplaced, though. My father used to be one of them, until he finally quit trying to fake it. He was quite relieved–and still is–to find that life can be lived very well without believing in God.) I am perfectly content to let people believe in God, so long as they don’t go around trying to twist up the rest of the world to fit their belief. For instance, this study about cardiac arrest survivors certainly reveals our lack of understanding about the brain and consciousness, but it is not proof of anything except for the fact that 10% of the people in this study exhibited a behavior not predicted by current theoretical models. Claiming otherwise is dishonest and a disservice to honest scientific research. Nor do I like when Christians come to me and try to tell me that I’m just defiant or ignorant or uninformed and that is why I am atheist. I don’t understand why Christians believe what they do and Christians don’t understand why I don’t believe what they do. What’s so hard about that?

This is starting to get random and unfocused, but I want to mention one more thing: If these cardiac arrest survivors are evidence of Christian-style mind-body dualism, why did only 10% of them exhibit this behavior?

At any rate, when Lee Strobel’s book comes out in paperback, I plan on snagging a copy and reading it, even though his books always annoy me. I read The Case for Faith in my atheist book group and when we met to discuss it, we decided that our most common feeling while reading was the desire to throw the book across the room. However, most of us managed to read the whole thing without any such displays. At the same time, some of our group also mentioned devout relatives who have flat refused to even try to read a book that challenges their faith. Just about every Christian I know would probably say “That’s not me!” but I still haven’t found too many Christians who actively and consistently read against their assumptions. I think it would be interesting to have a Christian reading partner, and we would alternate books from different perspectives–one religious book followed by one non-religious book, and so on–and then discuss them openly and honestly. Don’t know if it would be possible, though.

Philosophy

After a long discussion with somebody named Jerry over at Ales Rarus, Jerry has dropped a few comments on my doorstep:

“Purging oneself of philosophies would require a metaphilosophy that dictates that philosophies are bad. . . . Yours may be a spare, minimalistic philosophy, but a denial of philosophy seems bizarre.”

First, bizarre is a matter of context. Maybe a denial of philosophy seems bizarre, but that seeming says nothing about the nature of the denial and everything about the person to whom it seems.

Second, philosophies are unique to humans. This may seem painfully obvious and silly, but for all we can tell the world would exist perfectly well without us (and in fact did so for millions of years). That is, the world operates independently from our thoughts about it. You may object, “Well, perhaps the world does not need a philosophy, but we certainly do! In fact, we cannot function without one!” That may be true, but am I not allowed to doubt everything, including this? And is that doubt itself philosophical doubt, or something else?

Philosophies can certainly be “just a set of heuristics for organizing and explaining the world around you,” but my experience has always been that no philosophy can explain more than just a small portion of the world. That is, no philosophy has ever been successful at its goal, which is to “organize and explain the world.” Otherwise, we should see one or another philosophy taking hold and triumphing over all the others based on its consistent success at doing what it claims. But we have not seen that. Why not? I suspect (though of course I cannot be sure) that it is because the world is fundamentally inexplicable.

We humans are very good at responding to challenges. We can recognize patterns, solve puzzles, and reason both inductively and deductively. But we are only really good at these things in defined situations; widen the parameters of a problem and we are soon bogged down. Sure, most people can understand simple economic rules of thumb like spending more money than they earn will cause problems, but extend your economic sphere to the level of nations and suddenly understanding drops precipitously. We have moved from solving a specific problem (the personal budget) where solutions are easy to working at a systemic problem (the national economy) where “solutions” come mostly from theoretical speculation. Hence economists can be optimistic or pessimistic without losing their jobs. My point is that there is a continuum of problems faced by human beings and some of them require more speculative philosophy than others. Moving from one end (say, keeping the national economy running smoothly) to the other end (say, dodging a rock thrown toward your head) of the range of problems, the difference is clear. The further out you go, the more complicated things get, and the harder it is to explain them. Why?

More importantly, is it even possible to explain the more complicated things? For several days last week people expected hurricane Ivan to plow into New Orleans. Computer models predicted this with varying levels of (un)certainty. Some folks in New Orleans were worried. No one really knew what would happen because hurricanes are complex weather systems whose predictability are still beyond our meteorologists (and are likely to remain that way for a long time, perhaps forever). It turned out that Ivan veered away from New Orleans and went to Alabama. Relief in New Orleans, disaster in Alabama. Sometimes hurricanes even dissipate before they make landfall at all.

Hurricanes are a “natural” problem. There are social and historical problems, too. For instance, why did the United States break in two and fight a war during the 1860s? This is a particularly vexing problem, and one to which historians have returned in every generation since. There has never been a definitive consensus even though there is a wealth of data and many great minds have attacked the problem. Was it a war about culture? Politics? Economics? Was it inevitable? Was it the result of a “blundering generation”? Was it all of these things? We might develop a set of heuristics to organize and explain this problem–and many have tried–but no one has yet succeeded at squeezing all of the available data into a singular philosophical framework, even after 145 years of trying. This leads me to believe that the problem is insoluble if by a “solution” we are looking for a comprehensive narrative that organizes and explains all of the data. In varying degrees, this hurdle lies before every historical problem.

Why did the Reformation occur when, where, and how it did? How did the West come to dominate “the rest”? Why did the Roman Empire fall when and how it did? Why did the Muslim world fall behind the Western world a few centuries ago, where once it was far more advanced? What does it mean to be “advanced” anyway? Why did such a powerful nation as China remain isolated for so many centuries? Or did it? Did the Bantu people of Africa spread their language and culture by conquest or peaceful migration? What happened to the Mayan civilization? Did the birth of Christianity happen as portrayed in the New Testament, or some other way?

Those are all historical questions. There are other questions regarding the nature of human beings, too. What is consciousness? Are we really conscious, or is it an illusion? What is thinking? Are humans fundamentally rational, fundamentally social, fundamentally both, or fundamentally something else? What exactly do our genes do and how to they do it? How did life begin? Why are humans so different from all other forms of life on earth? Why do we have such big brains? Why do we walk upright? Why do we have so little hair? How long has our species existed? Where did it originate? How many other species of hominid were there before Homo sapiens triumphed? How did Homo sapiens triumph?

Then there are the Big questions. Why are we here? Is there a God? What is God anyway? How did the universe come into being? What does it mean to exist? Can there be such a thing as nonexistence? Why do we ask questions? Why are we curious? Why do we want to know? Can we know anything at all?

Most of these questions in all of these categories (natural, historical, species-ontological, existential) are probably fundamentally unanswerable. Even if we could answer them, we would want those answers to fit together. But we have different ways of expecting that, too. Some people feel that should the answer to “Is there a God?” be “Yes,” then the answer to “Did the birth of Christianity happen as portrayed in the New Testament?” would also be “Yes.” Other people disagree. This creates another question: Why do they disagree?

I chose that example for a reason: It actually exists. There are in fact people who think according to both of those possibilities. This is not a generalization or a straw man or anything else, but a simple recognition that there people in the world who disagree on this very specific metaphysical or philosophical difference. It is, if you will, a set of facts that demand a theory. But what if there is no theory? What if there is no singular explanation? Even more dauntingly, what if an explanation is posited that simply leads to more questions?

In my experience, the questions never stop. It is impossible to make a statement that is both a definitive explanation and unquestionable. Even apparently straightforward things are like this: Gravity pulls you toward the ground. Why? Because larger masses attract smaller masses? Why? Because larger masses curve space and create gravity. Why? Keep going. Eventually you get out in that territory where it’s like a huge, open plain and there are physicists wandering around scratching their heads and trying to figure out where they are. Nobody knows.

Because the questions never stop, I am wary of anyone who claims to have a definitive answer. Certainly, some answers are better than others–if someone comes and says that Americans fought their Civil War because Abraham Lincoln was a transvestite, anyone with a slight knowledge of U.S. history will know to discard this answer because it is implausible. But no answers are unquestionable.

Asking questions leads to philosophies. A person may ask why some people are virtuous and others are not. This may lead to a philosophy of virtue. But another person may ask what virtue is, exactly. This may lead to another philosophy. Someone else may ask why these other people are so concerned with virtue. Again, this may lead to another philosophy. Finally, someone may come along and ask why people formulate philosophies. Depending on how you see the problem, this may lead to yet another philosophy or it may lead to the collapse of philosophy. But because questions can always be asked, philosophies can always be broken. That is why I put so little stock in philosophies. They may seem to be explanatory, but because they can only exist as responses to questions they are no more definitive than the questions themselves.

Sets of heuristics for organizing and explaining are limited by space, time, and human subjectivity. The universe allegedly organized and explained by these heuristics is not so limited. But the smaller the problem, the greater the limitation and the more likely that your particular set of heuristics will be useful. Put another way, the more you try to explain, the greater your margin of error. Why did John F. Kennedy die? Because a bullet tore into his head. Simple enough. But try to answer how and why that bullet got there and you’ll have a much tougher time. Why am I alive? Because my mother gave birth to me and my biological needs for survival have been met ever since. Why did she give birth to me? Because one day a sperm got into an egg and started the process that resulted in me. Go back much further than that and you begin to run into problems, controversy, and conflicting ideas. The world beyond our limited range of understanding is unfortunately quite incomprehensible. (A good next question to ask is, “Is the world incomprehensible because we cannot understand it, or can we not understand it because it is incomprehensible?” Unfortunately, it is an unanswerable question, too.)

“If you are just trying to ‘be,’ why are you so passionate about religion (in the negative sense)? Does it help you find food or meet some other bodily necessity that you may ‘be’?”

I don’t know why I am so interested in religion (in the negative sense). But neither do I know why you are interested in religion (in the positive sense). And I suspect that you do not, either. Some people would like to take that question (“Why are we interested in religion?”) and find an intrinsic answer in it (“Because religion is true”), but there is no reason to do that. Usually, when I think about this question, I decide that I am interested in religion for the same reason I am interested in the weather: because it is all around me. Religion has simple effects in my life and more complicated ones, too. An example of a simple effect is that I rather like riding my bike on Sunday mornings because Christians have historically established Sundays as a day of rest, so even people who aren’t in church are not out doing their usual things and there are fewer cars on the road. An example of a complicated effect is that religion affects the way people see their world; I am a part of their world, so religion affects the way other people see me. These are not basic problems like finding food, shelter, water, or oxygen, but they are existential problems and puzzles whose solutions enhance my well-being. (For instance, if I can understand better how religious people see me, I can understand better how to interact with them without too many negative or unwanted effects.)

Finally, I should say that my philosophical (or anti-philosophical, or whatever) views are not chiseled in stone. My views have changed constantly and steadily for at least ten years now and I don’t intend on forcing them to stay put just for the sake of staying put. I like to pursue chains of questions and answers as far as I can. From my perspective, along this intellectual journey that is my life there is a long continuity between my days as a Christian fundamentalist to wherever I am now. Sure, I can tell you the date, the place, and the approximate time of day when I stopped believing in God (September 1, 2000, 9:30 AM), but looking back on the process that sudden shift meant a lot less than it seemed at the time. Perhaps when I am old I shall become some kind of theist again, though I cannot imagine that. However, there are still causes and events and experiences that are yet to shape my life.

Philosophies, in my opinion, are best when temporary and easily tossed aside if the need arises. Some people prefer to build themselves a philosophical house, hunker down, and defend their right to settle until the day they die. Fine. But I don’t think that choice is necessitated by philosophical reflection. And it is that kind of “settled” philosophy to which I object. With every day my knowledge and understanding changes. Sometimes it seems as though I am constantly rebuilding my “set of heuristics.” Sometimes it seems as though I am rebuilding so fast that there is no real structure there at all. It seems silly to me to adhere to a particular philosophy or ideology just because I like it, even though my knowledge is changing. For years I did that within Christianity–adhered to the belief system because I liked it, even though my knowledge was changing. Eventually that method broke down and I had to unhitch myself. Now I would rather follow the chaotic, if incomprehensible, flow of the universe than try to impose some narrative upon it. That is why you might say I am “anti-philosophy.” Split your hairs and terminology however you like, but that is where I am and attempts to tether me or fence me in do not usually go well.

Elitist Rant

Is it okay to loathe my customers? When they come in reeking of stale cigarette smoke and asking only for books about NASCAR or World War II airplanes (“Not the pilots or the history, just the planes!”) am I allowed to think, “Go back to your trailer, but first let me have some of your money”?

Yes, I know that NASCAR has supposedly expanded beyond poor white trash. But it’s still the P.W.T.s who come in my store looking for books about one of the circle-driving Dales, usually identified by their racing numbers as if knowing this minutiae is as obvious and normal as knowing that the Pope is Catholic. “Not number three,” a customer once chided me. “Number eight!” Confronted with my blank look she added, “That’s Dale Earnhardt junior.” (In case you are wondering, I had to Google the Earnhardts in order to make sure I am recounting the facts correctly.)

Then there was the NASCAR advertisement I recently saw before a movie in the theater. How come NASCAR drivers are all a bunch of skinny white hicks? After the ad, I leaned over to my brother and said, “Watch NASCAR! See white guys drive in circles! Wahoo!”

On my continuum of ridiculousness in the wide world of sports, NASCAR is pretty close to the extreme end of absurdity. Here we are with guys who make a living driving cars in circles faster than other guys driving cars in circles. This in a society where we drive everywhere and become astonishingly fat for lack of exercise. And we call NASCAR a sport? Oh, wait, “motorsport.” And this is in the society where everyone is worried about the end of oil and the clock is ticking for internal combustion engines, which, incidentally, spew hydrocarbons into the atmosphere at an alarming rate and contribute to all kinds of environmental havoc. (I feel the same way about the motocross track that’s a few hundred yards from my place of residence, where manly men encourage their little boys to burn up petroleum products, produce greenhouse gases, make an awful noise, and throw dirt across the bicycle trail where I ride. All so they can zip around in circles and get some kind of bizarre enjoyment. Why not enroll your kids in martial arts or Little League something? Your sick obsession with internal combustion engines and their noxious byproducts is disgusting.)

Back to my reeking customers, though. I did manage to sell them the one NASCAR biography we have and was glad to see it go. It annoys me to no end, however, that we live in a time and place where the vast history of human writing is readily and inexpensively available and most people, if they read books at all, are more interested in junk like NASCAR biographies or the journals of Kurt Cobain. (Face it, the guy was a depressed high school boy who never outgrew his adolescence.) Meanwhile there is more good literature available than ever before. Nobody has time to read, though. They’re too busy watching reality TV or renting Hellboy on DVD (talk about a lame flick). Books? What are those?

However, I have work to do so this elitist rant must come to an end.

Dogville: Hip Xenophobia

Lars von Trier must think he is a pretty clever guy. His film Dogville is nearly as clever as he thinks it is. That is, until the credits roll and all his cleverness collapses into laughable xenophobia. And when I say “xenophobia,” I mean anti-Americanism of the worst and most ridiculous kind. We’re talking Michael Moore territory, where Americans are all a bunch of nasty, vindictive, gun-toting, victimizing, victimized, selfish, materialistic, whores. Except the ones who call Americans these things, because hurling nasty epithets at Americans is the best way to ennoble oneself in the world today. (Although I recall my time in elementary school when we learned that calling names and tattling, even when you’re accurate, is just as petty and wrong as the people you’re accusing. Oddly enough, silly me, I still believe that. Must be these awful, brainwashing, industrial American schools, right?)

See, von Trier made this movie Dogville as a kind of allegory. Cutting the sets and scenery to their bare minimum he abstracted the story from reality and tried to cast it as something blatantly and explicitly universal. This contradicts with good storytelling technique, where specificity of time and place done right have the odd quality of making a story seem even more universal. Splicing your characters and their self-consciously philosophical dialogue into the bare structure of a narrative does not make a good story; it makes your audience feel like they’re being force-fed ideology under the guise of entertainment, because otherwise they would not be able to handle your medicine. (Sort of like Plato’s method of writing philosophy as dialogues. Good philosophy writing, bad dramatic writing.) At least, that’s how Dogville made me feel.

That would not be so bad if the medicine in question weren’t so utterly stupid. It’s that xenophobia thing. Which, unfortunately, does not explicitly rear its head until the credits roll, as I mentioned above. Until that moment, even though the execution of this particular film was annoying, von Trier had me nodding and thinking, “Yes, we human beings can sure be despicable sometimes!” During the last section of the film, two characters discuss arrogance and forgiveness. One of them points out that excessive forgiveness is only arrogance masquerading as goodwill. It means putting yourself on a higher ethical plane and then assuming that no one else will ever be able to reach so high. So you offer mercy and forgiveness as a way of saying, “No, you’ll never be as good as I am, but I will let your existence continue.” At that moment, I thought, “Yes! He’s onto something!” Little did I know what would happen when the credits rolled.

After nearly three hours of wallowing in the depths of what I thought was the potential depravity of human nature, suddenly I was confronted with a montage of real, historical photographs, all of which were intended to be disturbing. Their common theme? Down and out Americans. Poor people. Drug addicts. Homeless people. What looked like a murder victim. Some of the most sad and wretched Americans who ever lived. But wait, there’s more! Across the top of this depressing sea of photos skipped a bouncy little song by David Bowie: “Young Americans.” Well, the lyrics aren’t so bouncy. But the total package of music and images came together in a way that made me want to hurl this DVD into a dumpster. Americans don’t live up to their ideals. Suddenly I remembered that Dogville is the first in a trilogy of films by Lars von Trier, and his title for this trilogy is “USA – Land of Opportunities.” Oh, he’s being sarcastic. Now I get it. We’re bad because we set the bar high and still end up as low as everyone else.

Lars von Trier, by the way, has never been to the United States of America. The great Dane is too afraid of airplanes.

I don’t mind if a filmmaker wants to say that human beings are cruel, violent, and selfish creatures. We are. If you have a high opinion of your species, read some history. It will cure your delusion lickety-split. Human beings can be pretty darned awful. Unfortunately, we have lived down to that potential more often than most of us are comfortable admitting. So, like I say, I don’t mind if a filmmaker wants to confront us with that reality. But I do mind when a filmmaker tries to make Americans look like a particularly loathsome brand of human. (Especially when the filmmaker in question has never even visited our country. Hey Lars–you have an open invitation to my place. Come on down. Take a boat if you need to. I’ll show you around. Bring Nicole Kidman if you can.)

But von Trier’s brand of xenophobia sure is hip these days, isn’t it? Yep, we Americans are the most despicable people on the planet. If only we could be so noble as those Europeans who only stopped killing each other wholesale about sixty freaking years ago and that was after centuries of nearly constant bloodshed. Because yes, look at the immigration rates at American borders. Look at all the people fleeing this horrid, despicable place! No, Lars von Trier may think the U.S.A. is a horrible place, but the rest of the world sure is beating down our door to get in here. Maybe that’s because in the midst of all our violence and abject poverty, we’re still better off than a lot of other places. (Note to Michael Moore: Ditto this memo to you, fat boy.)

So people have a beef with us, with our power, our polices, our whatever. Maybe they just plain don’t like that the United States is top dog in the world. But for some reason they can’t just say that straight out. No, they have to find a way to undermine our whole society. So how do they beat on us? They take advantage of the discrepancy between our high ideals and the fact that we have yet to make every American as healthy and wealthy as the next one. Oh, what a crime! From what I have gathered in my reading, Europe would much prefer it if Americans were more self-deprecating, if we stopped trying to think that our lives and indeed the whole world can and should be better. We should all sit around like a bunch of cynics and say, “Well, human nature being what it is, we cannot expect to rise above.” But Americans believe in hope and we believe in the world getting better and we believe in getting that job done for ourselves because no one else will do it for us. Do we fail a lot? Yes! But does that stop us from trying? No! Does that quash the American Dream that says through thick and thin it is still good to be here in the land of opportunity? No! Nor does it mean that everyone here will succeed. Not everyone will.

What is the land of opportunity, anyway? Maybe once upon a time it was a resource-rich geographical region, but those days are gone if they ever existed. The “land of opportunity” in the 21st century has more to do with the American attitude than anything else. This is a land of opportunity because we make it so. Not because we have been endowed with some kind of Manifest Destiny. Not because God is on our side. No, because we are determined. We fail when we lose our determination. Should we condemn all of our people because some of them have not succeeded, or should we applaud the fact that so many have?

I can own up to the hideous history of humanity. I can own up to the hideous deeds of my own fellow Americans throughout our four centuries of history. But I will not stand by silently as Lars von Trier slaps our nation in the face by assuming some kind of higher moral dignity for himself and the rest of the world. He is just as human as we are, and we are all just as human as each other. That is our great tragedy and our great comfort. Americans are no exception.

Taking a Personal Day

I have decided to stay home today. I am not taking any phone calls or watching any television or listening to the radio. I just need a day to slow down, relax, and mentally detox. So here I am, looking out my window and watching the orange world of sunrise giving way to the harsh and dusty yellow of a late summer midday in central California, waiting for my teapot to whistle, and glad I have no obligations for the rest of the day. As Bob & Doug MacKenzie would say, “Beauty, eh?”

Already in the relaxation my thoughts are starting to clear out. For instance, a few minutes ago I suddenly recalled an interesting moment the other night when I visited my grandmother for dinner. Before she served her magnificent(ly unhealthy) home cooked food, we caught a little of the NBC Nightly News with Tom Brokaw. (Watching news on television at the end of the day always seems quaint to me. I get my news throughout the day in snippets from the NPR hourly news updates, or from Google News.) There were two stories back to back: First, people preparing for hurricane Ivan along the Gulf coast; second, people killing each other in Iraq. As we sat down to eat, grandma picked up the remote control, clicked off the TV, and bowed her head to pray. I may be an atheist, but I’m also respectful of other people’s beliefs and practices when I happen to be in the same room with them, so I bowed my head, too. What proceeded from her mouth after that was interesting.

First, of course, she expressed gratitude for yet another day. That goes almost without saying, but when you pray, I suppose nothing is allowed to go without saying. Then she called down a blessing on the food, which seems to me about as quaint as getting your news from Tom Brokaw, especially after you’ve prepared the food yourself. After that came the obligatory nod to some of the frightful world events that had just unfolded on the TV screen a moment before.

This in itself is interesting to me: Expose a Christian to horrors in the news and his or her next prayer will likely include a petition on behalf of those involved. Rare, however, are those Christians who actively seek out depressing events just so they can pray about them. Why? Things happen every day that my grandma never hears about and hence never prays about. But once she knows about them, the prayer becomes necessary. Will her prayer make a difference? If so, that puts God in an awkward position of needing people like Mr. Brokaw to spread the news so Christians will know what to pray for. Just think about it for a while. It’s bizarre.

Anyway, the most interesting part of her prayer was what she did not include: the suffering of the people in Iraq. Her pleas for the people in the path of Ivan were quite eloquent, but the Iraqis got the short shrift. I wonder why. Was she just trying to keep from praying too long? Or does she care more about Americans being whipped around by the forces of nature (or, in her cosmology, by God) than she does about Iraqis blowing each other up? I can’t answer those questions because I don’t know what was in her head, and I certainly wasn’t going to ask her, either. “Grandma, why didn’t you pray for the Iraqis?” Maybe a four-year-old could get away with that kind of question (later to become a sermon illustration about the clear-eyed faith of children), but a grown-up atheist sitting across from his grandmother at dinner would not do so well. Then it would just sound like cynicism or criticism.

Prayer is a weird thing. If you try to turn prayer into a way of asking God to do things, before long you’ll find yourself in a morass of conflicting theological precepts (e.g., God does whatever God wants versus God answers prayer). So a lot of Christians I have spoken with define prayer as little more than “communication with God.” Apparently just initiating the link at all is enough to make prayer worthwhile. But doesn’t God know all my thoughts already? Oh, but God likes when you share voluntarily. Okay, sure, whatever.

Does it matter that my grandma failed to pray for the Iraqis? From my perspective, no. But I have to wonder how that looks from within Christianity. How does a Christian know when to stop praying? After all, the world is big enough, and there is enough happening, that one could pray all day every day without running out of things to pray about. Prayerful Christians who want to live regular lives are required to pick and choose, then. So it seems to me that prayer is really more about the person praying than about God or even about the subject of the prayers.

The act of recognizing one’s subordination within the grand scheme of the universe–we are not very powerful–appears to be the main purpose of prayer. But if that’s the case, why the second party of God? Why the “communication” thing? Why the appeals for other people? I am an atheist, but I can certainly recognize my relative weakness within the universe. In fact, you might say that my taking a personal day today is like an act of prayer. Except there is no second party, there is no communication, and I am not worried about other people. This is about re-centering my own self in the scheme of circumstances that constitute my life. Everyone needs to do that periodically. Even me.

Amish in the City

An Important Person told me to watch Amish in the City tonight because it would be “interesting.” (No, I don’t know an industry insider. She knew ahead of time because she’s in a different time zone. Lucky she.) So here I am camped out with the iBook in front of the TV.

I’ve watched this show a couple times before. Gotta say, the Amish kids are way cooler than the city kids. Mose, dude, we gotta hang out! And Miriam, wow, what a hottie. (I have been told by my Important Person that Miriam is not that good looking and that Ruth is much more attractive. Whatever. Being Important does not make you right. Miriam is hot.)

Tonight the whole gang went back to Amish country. At first the city kids freaked out and refused to go. Then they realized what morons they were being. After all, if the Amish could go to L.A., the Angelinos could go to Amish country. Things are a little more balanced that way.

Right now, the crazy Vegan girl is puking in an outhouse because they barbecued a pig. “It’s sickening, it’s so barbaric,” she says. “I think being in the country does not mean roasting whole pigs and eating them like pigs.”

“The city kids are really bad complainers,” says Ruth. Right on! But then, I suspect they deliberately cast this show with people who were likely to whine and complain when confronted with real life. For instance, Nick the busboy and Reese the token gay guy refused to shovel manure. What’s the deal with that? They can’t manage to do something they don’t want to do for one day? “Oh, ya pansy,” the Amish guys tell them. Definitely.

Few things are more pathetic than people who refuse to experience different ways of living and thinking. I felt similar annoyance when I watched PBS’s Colonial House a couple months ago and the atheists refused to show up in church on Sunday.

One of the things I particularly enjoy is reenacting the Civil War. It’s great to put on old clothes, to reenact battles from a horrible war, and to try and get into an 1860s mindset–even though I prefer modern clothing, I think the Civil War was a great tragedy in our history, and I am glad I live in the 21st century. To me it is refreshing and helpful to alter my own perspective sometimes, to embrace things in fantasy that I would prefer not to embrace in reality. But that’s just me.

At any rate, this was indeed a very interesting episode of Amish in the City, and I am glad my Important Person reminded me to watch.

Posting for Posting’s Sake

Wow. I haven’t posted since Friday. What is the world coming to? I have certainly been busy. At the moment I am exhausted, sitting here in my black leather “yeah, this is the throne and I’m the king of this domain” chair, listening to Selected Shorts on NPR. René Auberjonois is reading something and all I can see is Odo from Deep Space Nine, standing at a lectern with his weird, shape-shifter face and his gray jumpsuit, hands clasped behind his back…reading a short story. Kinda bizarre. On top of that, I’m too tired to pay attention to what he’s reading. For all I know, he could be reading the Ferengi Rules of Acquisition.

Whoa. Better watch out or I’ll fall into a tailspin of Star Trek references, even though I haven’t had a meaningful relationship with that franchise since “All Good Things” came to an end, and that was ten years ago. In the ’90s. Remember those? We thought we were sobered up from the ’80s, reinforcing ourselves with drab colors and smarmy, postmodern irony. Remember when it was the ultimate faux pas to take yourself seriously? We had no idea what September 11, 2001 would do to us. Now we have to take everything seriously.

Right now, though, I am too tired to care about much of anything. I could use a little Star Trek: The Next Generation. Too bad the DVDs cost so pickin’ much. I guess I’ll have to make due with a Corona with lime and my imagination.