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At breakfast my mother was eating off one of my commemorative plates — and she apologized quietly to the Queen Mum for putting bread on her face.
Over breakfast mom began to reminisce about a woman’s place in Scotland when she was growing up.
It was pre-war. There was (maybe still is) a test called the 11-plus that you would take when you were 11, and if you passed you were allowed to got to a high school that prepped you for college, and if you didn’t they taught you home ec and typing. There was no choice in the matter. Anyway, Glasgow didn’t have enough universities even if more folks were available to go. My mom passed, the only one in her class of 30, so she went to the high school, but eventually she was pressured by her family to drop out and get a job as they figured she’d only get married anyway, so why finish? Besides, they sort of claimed higher education might have been getting above her station, as her dad was a sign painter. Most women weren’t allowed into universities at that time anyway. So she was expressing some exasperation and regret — though later, when I was in high school, she went to night school at the local university in Baltimore and earned a teaching degree. She got a job teaching special ed kids and felt pretty fulfilled and stimulated for a while, even though fighting the school administration was always an uphill battle.
Then there was some talk of the war. Her younger sister was sent to the country, as were all children under 15 — to live with relatives if they had any or strangers if they didn’t. Air raids and getting up in the middle of the night with a pre-packed suitcase and hiding in a shelter or a sister-in-law’s basement.
At Malu's graduation dinner I sat next to Michael Daube, who has been building small clinics and hospitals in India and elsewhere. (He said the best place to have a suit made is now Nepal). [Link to Citta, Michael's organization.]
We were talking about fundamentalist Christians, I think — someone at the table had mentioned how the right made abortion the pivotal decisive issue in many elections. I mentioned the talk I’d heard by Jonathan Haidt at the New Yorker conference in which he attempted to briefly delineate the 2 kinds of morality at work in the world. (There’s a good interview with him in The Believer as well.)
Anyway, Haidt says something like this: in a cosmopolitan society like New York, San Francisco, London or many other contemporary cities in which various people and cultures must coexist, personal morality adjusts itself to accommodate the multiple moral codes of the surrounding people. The tendency is for people in multicultural places to adopt a live-and-let-live moral philosophy — what others do is OK as long as it does harm anyone else. This, however, is vastly different than the traditional set of moral codes that most societies live by. In most societies, where most people are more or less culturally the same, there exists a network of moral codes based on family, loyalty, respect for authority, justice, fairness and purity. Haidt claims that “liberal” societies have abandoned many of these moral codes — purity, for example — as being a personal matter for each individual and not something to be imposed by society. You can have religious laws inside your temple or house, the liberals would say, but don’t try to impose them on the whole society. In traditional societies — and, one might argue, also according to our genetic predisposition — the larger network of values holds sway. The two moralities, by nature, are mutually exclusive.
To me it seems that the ideas of the enlightenment have resonated out and are now tearing the world apart as they come into contact with traditional cultures, whether in Colorado or Lahore.
Here’s a paragraph from Haidt and his collaborators: Moral foundations theory proposes that five innate psychological systems form the foundation of “intuitive ethics.” Each culture constructs its particular morality as a set of virtues, values, and ideas based on or related to these five foundations (as well as to many other non-moral aspects of the evolved mind). The current American culture war can be seen as arising from the fact that liberals try to create a morality using only the Harm/Care and Fairness/Reciprocity foundations; conservatives, especially religious conservatives, use all five foundations, including In-group/Loyalty, Authority/Respect, and Purity/Sanctity. The theory is an extension of Richard Shweder's theory of the "three ethics" commonly used around the world when people talk about morality: the ethics of Autonomy, Community, and Divinity.
So…apropos all of this, Michael mentioned he’d recently been to a town in Pakistan near the Afghan border where they practice a rather extreme form of self-punishment. Even little kids whip themselves with blades imbedded in the whips leaving steams of blood running down their backs. Some Western journalists were on hand to view the spectacle, and along with Michael they were rounded up and taken to a “safe” viewing area. I’d seen a similar spectacle in Malaysia, a Hindu ceremony called Taipusam, in which the adepts stick metal rods through their cheeks and hang limes from hooks stuck into their chests. Significantly, no blood gushes forth during the Taipusam ceremonies — there’s a mind-over-body control at work.
[Source]
Michael got to talking with some Pashtun lads who were asking him questions about the United States. At some point he could tell they had more burning questions but were hesitant in asking. He said they could ask him anything, no problem, anything they wanted to ask they could ask.
So they asked him, “Why do Americans have sex with animals?” This was, it seemed, not a question about some freakish subculture of zoophiles; the assumption was that it’s quite common in America. This is what Americans do. These boys have limited access to TV or any media — they may have seen some Hollywood movies — and apparently at sometime or other they viewed an American porno featuring animal sex. (My guess is those pornos are paraded and distributed as examples of the decadence of the West. Michael confirms this — “The lads were shown the film by the Wahabi religious leaders in the area! Its a direct way of controlling and rallying the culture against the west.”) These boys also made no distinction between what they saw in movies and what might be reality….movies which would include the decedent sexy behavior of the parade of tarts and slutty women featured in most Western films.
To these lads, whose morality is of the first, traditional, type, there is no question this is ungodly satanic behavior — which should be stamped out for the good of mankind. By any means necessary. And it is proof that the West, whose representatives are surrounding them in increasing numbers, is certainly Satan’s republic.
For members of the Christian Right I suspect the same viewpoint holds sway, at least amongst the churchgoers. I suspect a good number of the ministers, like Ted Haggart, Jimmy Swaggart and the others, are natural-born hypocrites who have become addicted to the power they have over their flocks. But for the congregation an issue like abortion, as Haidt implies, is not an isolated issue — it is a sign that the godless hoards are at the gates and must be stopped before the moral chains that hold us together as human beings are torn asunder.
It all seems pretty hopeless. Reconciliation, I mean. The worlds and viewpoints are mutually exclusive. There is no middle ground. Maybe understanding and empathy is possible, and that is a start, but from across a great divide.
I seem to remember Haidt might have quoted a study that claimed believers are, in general, happier — which makes intuitive sense to me. If a system of believe answers your most profound questions and supports your moral network then you will feel pretty secure and content. But another study (see previous posting) says exactly the opposite — that believers are less happy than one might expect. In fact that study says they’re less happy than atheists! Yale (Luaka Bop) and I had a related talk the other day. He spoke about Tim Maia, the Brazilian RnB singer and how Maia had joined a religious cult in Brazil that believes that the righteous will be taken aboard a spaceship when the time comes. (The spaceship will take them to a better place; this is not about aliens engaged in sexual probes.) He cited Sun Ra and Elijah Mohammed of the Chicago Black Muslims as believers in alien saviors and wondered if there was a reason African-American millennials seem to have a tendency to incorporate spaceships into their beliefs. I said I didn’t know, but the spaceship image seems simply, as Jung would put it, an update of the Christian rapture concept. It’s something millions of fundamentalist Christians, Mormons and others believe in: that when the end days come, when the signs appear, then the baptized, the righteous and the saved will be “lifted up” to heaven and the rest of us will be destroyed along with the decadent earth we inhabited. It’s a really common Christian concept, so, to me, adding a spaceship to facilitate the “lifting up” part is no big deal.
But once again there is a separation between the chosen people, i.e. those to be rescued, and the rest of us infidels. George Bush believes this — that this lifting up will take place — which to me implies a mythical confirmation of what will happen if one breaks the traditional moral chains. Not only are certain behaviors morally wrong, but if George can’t stop the behavior with guns and ammo, then God will deal with it come the apocalypse. So, one way or another, the righteous will prevail. Both George and the Pashtun boys believe the same things…they’ll meet on the same spaceship. It should be an interesting flight.
Thoughts while watching Fernando Trueba’s documentary El Milagro de Candeal on the Candeal neighborhood in Salvador, Bahia, where Carlinhos Brown led a transformation effort. It’s the neighborhood and Afro-Bahian culture viewed through the eyes of a Trueba favorite — Bebo Valdés, the Cuban pianist who won numerous awards for his recent recordings on Trueba’s Spanish record label.
The links between Afro-Cuban music and culture and Afro-Brazilian culture are many. The religious roots are similar — Shango, Oxum, Oxala, Yemanja are all worshipped in both countries, with some variation. Musically, rhythmically, the son and the samba are, for example, quite different, but the way the music is organized is very similar, so there is a lot of jamming together in the film.
John Cage goes Funky
Here (above) either Bebo or Brown comments on the rhythmic clickety-clack and thrum as they cross a bridge in the rural town of Cachoeira.
Carnival and musical groups are seen filling the streets. There are connections here with the “saints”, too — the Afro-Atlantic gods and goddesses. One senses, just watching a street procession, a kind of openness, a generosity, an embrace of the universe.
When I was there shooting my own little documentary I felt this non-judgmental religion and ethos, which is maybe something many have sensed in Buddhism and other eastern philosophies, but here it is funky, sexy…and loud!
Maybe here is a god (or Gods) without God. A prayer to that which is greater than ourselves.
O mia Pae (oh, my father) sings a vocal group in a church built by slaves. But it’s not necessarily the Christian God they are singing to — though he’s welcome to join in as well.
A song to the mystery, to that which is beyond out comprehension, and biologically will ever be thus — I suspect that our brains are not built for understanding everything, evolutionarily it’s not necessary.
And there is acceptance that there are things we will never understand. Many call it God, but I prefer Mystery. It could be called “father”, in the sense that nameless ethereal whirligigs made us, begat us, formed us and the world, but that is a metaphor — it is certainly not necessarily a literal male, a man with a long white beard. Another common metaphor is Mother, and often Africa is invoked as the mother of us all — our evolutionary mother and spiritual mother. That’s where we all came from and that’s where what we are was established.
Musically, here is Africa in Spain, in Brasil, in North America, in Cuba — the roots of RnB, samba, rhumba, son, funk, rock and roll, swing, hip hop, humor, language, cool, digital culture — improvisation and innovation.
Here is Brown’s Mae de Santo (mother of the saints) and mentor, Dona Angelina, as she goes into a trance following Brown testifying to what she and the saints have done for him and the community.
The mysterious may be things we suss the mechanism of, the parts and the mechanics, but which still remain marvelous in their existence.
The awesome power of the sea, of the air, wind, of the earth below us, of ourselves — even of those psychological forces we acknowledge, whose mechanics we sort of think we understand, but whose manifestations are, and remain, like water and air, like a bird or a tiger — somehow still beyond our deep comprehension….and certainly beyond our control. Drugs, therapy and surgery may throw up roadblocks and signposts — but we’re never really in control, like the Gnarls Barkley song says.
Here are Brown, Bebo and Marisa Monte singing together. What does this have to do with the rebirth of a neighborhood? Maybe everything.
Sam D. and I had a talk over dinner last night. He recently attended a Council on Foreign Relations meeting meeting with Clinton Initiative folks where the International Energy Agency delivered their report. They are part of the OECD (Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development, which includes Japan and Russia as well as the United States.) These are high-level folks — World Bank, major investment companies, etc. — who are now very interested in going “green”. That’s Sam’s business interest as well — ethanol, wind power, etc.
Tied to the urge for going green might be a realization of the obvious. Climate change, yes, that’s coming for sure. But before that really kicks in there are lots of political and economic facts that will play out very very soon. If one lays the facts on the table the scenarios that might become reality become glaringly clear.
As China’s economy (and others — India) expands and booms their need for energy will too. They have no large reserves — so they are building huge dams (as has India) for hydropower, and are gearing up for coal consumption. I guess they have coal reserves and will soon be the great smoky continent. (I remember visiting my granny in Glasgow in the late 50s and early 60s — the city was black from soot and coal dust covering everything and the air smelled, always, of burning coal.) The great Asian dams seem to be short range thinking too — they will eventually eliminate the arable farmland downstream; the source of food production will have been plugged up. What will then feed these billions? Do they expect to purchase their food with their new industrial products as western nations have done?
China also has no hesitation or compunction about dealing with warlords, dictators and lunatics if they have the goods that China needs. One senses some possible run-ins from this policy in the near future.
Combined with the above, the only really massive oil reserves are, this study claims, where they are now known to be — Iraq, Iran and Saudi Arabia. He who controls this resource flow can maintain his economy and lifestyle (and world power) — for now. He who doesn’t, will either get lucky with alternative power, will turn to nukes, to burning coal or trees or will shrivel up. I asked — “Aren’t there large reserves in Kazakhstan etc.?” Yes, but not like in the Middle East…out there they are mostly gas reserves.
O.K., so one can easily see why Iraq was of such intense interest. We all now know, if it wasn’t obvious before, that the pretenses for the invasion were just that — pretenses to control the flow of vital oil. From a generous POV one could say the U.S. (and the UK, so believes wee Tony) are just looking after their own interests, securing their political and economic future — something any being would do, who can blame them? (But at least admit that is what is going on.) Poor Tony Blair — does he really think Bush and Halliburton and Co. will divvy up the spoils and allow the UK to survive the coming shortages along with the U.S.? “Help me now gather wood and you can share my burrow when the snow comes? Be on my side now and I’ll throw you a bone when times are tough?” Is that what he was thinking? Have these guys, the Neo Con team, ever shown any generosity in the past?
Now, what if China, or Russia, decides that they too are entitled to these reserves that are being tapped, which are more or less on their doorsteps? What if they ask themselves, “Why should the U.S., the most energy inefficient and wasteful country on earth, be entitled to control OUR futures?”
Russia may not be able to do much about this inequity, being an exhausted giant, but China — China holds the U.S. debt (a debt the Republicans and corporate America ran up SO quickly) and has, so far, needed the U.S. as a trading partner, so they have been reluctant to play this debt card — to call in all the trillions that the U.S. owes. But threatened with lack or energy and stifled growth they surely will use that power if they have to. They can effectively bring the U.S. to its knees almost instantly — all they have to do is decide to call in these debts (they can also simply stop buying the Treasury notes and the U.S. will not be able to finance its economy via debt) and the American Century stops. Talk about looking after national security — the Republicans and the corporate lobbyists have practically given it away — we’re completely at the mercy of the Chinese. SUV and air con now for, well, groveling and certain urban unrest down the road. The U.S. is now a hollow trading partner, allowed to live as long as it serves China’s need (and that of the oil producing countries.) A consumer who buys the goods that China produces and racks up more debt. Of course, China wouldn’t want the U.S. to collapse — then its holdings of debt and assets would be devalued. It wants a flourishing U.S., but we will see how far that present practical consideration can be pushed when the oil gets tighter. History shows that when the going gets rough the behavior gets dicey.
I see more wars ahead — and larger ones — as the oil and other resources (like clean water) get tighter. The claimed justifications for these wars will be just as spurious and fleeting, as they are now, but the real reason will be, as always, survival. Immediate and massive reallocation of research and money away from oil and a debt economy are a way out — maybe — and things are not hopeless or inevitable. But if steps are not taken, then they surely are inevitable, it seems to me.
This all seems painfully obvious once one looks at the plain simple facts — and if one can ignore the fog of intentionally confusing and obscuring rhetoric and wordplay. But the obvious is always easy to deny and ignore, and we have a born genetic capacity to do so. Don’t we? We must! Sometimes it seems like the smarter a person is the better they are at deluding themselves…and deluding others, of course. Intelligence, combined with will, gives one the ability to analyze and reason — but simultaneously confers an equal ability to lie and deny, to ignore and deceive. Combine with a little charisma and dinner is served.
This is why intelligent people can be religious. That’s an arrogant statement — it presumes that religion and intelligence are incompatible, that anyone with any sense wouldn’t believe in unproven supernatural faith-based scenarios. But of course that is not the case. I personally might believe (believe!) that many religious beliefs are irrational and verge on lunacy — but I can both see their efficacy — their attraction and usefulness — and sense their beauty. One does not have to be a Catholic to stand in awe of the Sistine Chapel ceiling; be Muslim to hear the lure of the soulful cry of the muezzin and sense the power of the mass dance of the faithful in prayer; be Hindu or Jewish to read and enjoy a text that is often chock full of amazing and surprising metaphors and analogies. These dances, music, images, metaphors are, I sense, deep-rooted — they are like the neural propensities for grammatical structures that Chomsky goes on about — and are therefore similarly genetically inheritable. The dance that is religion has evolved within us, to be released and expressed in a thousand different forms, none of which make logical sense, and all of which, if looked at literally, require a large helping of denial. God is in the wiring, bequeathed by the genes.
To me, this is why the current (tiny) wave of atheism — the recent books by Dawkins, Dennett and Harris, for example — are also in denial. They deny that this propensity for people to believe is innate. Yes, they admit that religion offers many comforts and assurances, security and community — very attractive and seductive — but they stop short at admitting that we are genetically predisposed to believe, that it is in our very nature, a part of what it means to be human. Maybe an illogical part, but that all our innate evolved characteristics are not practical forever (context changes, the world changes) or even rational, from some points of view (does the peacock’s tail have to be THAT big? Isn’t all that just a wee bit of a wasteful allocation of resources?)
Rationalism can never win on pure sense and logic alone. Granted, religions are regularly used to justify horrors and despicable behavior, throughout history and this will never change — and rational thinking tells us these kinds of beliefs need to be wiped out — judged from the POV of the society or world at large at least these religiously justified behaviors are simply evil, counter to the survival of the species and commonly accepted morals — and in those cases maybe yes, religion needs to be smacked down. But what if the benign effects of religion are intimately tied to the dark side? What if you can’t have the good without the bad? What if the shared sense of community, for example, is tied to the belief that God has given this community a personal mandate, a moral rightness above all others? Is it even possible to mold and deconstruct the religious impulse so that only the socially and personally beneficial effects result?
I just finished reading the Jon Krakauer’s book Under The Banner Of Heaven, about a murder of a women and her baby (and others) by fundamentalist Mormons. The murders were ordered by God, it was claimed. The book also traces the history and origins of Mormonism — truly amazing stuff. Anyway, near the end the killer is on trial and the defense suggests an insanity plea as the only way to avoid the death penalty. However, as psychologists testified, the killer’s beliefs, while irrational, are no more irrational than the religious beliefs of other Mormons, or of those of almost any other religion. Mere irrational belief does not — in our current world — imply insanity. If it did, then half the U.S., at least, would be deemed mentally unfit. (Judging by the last presidential election I would tend to agree.) But that, pragmatically, is not going to happen, so the killer cannot be crazy.
(In a possible answer to the previous question — can religion be molded to fit a larger society? — the Mormon official LDS church capitulated over the years on some of their less acceptable — to the U.S. — beliefs. Polygamy was outlawed and blacks were allowed to into the priesthood. However, like a tube of toothpaste that got squeezed too much with the cap on, the pressure to had to find a vent — and radical and fundamentalist spin-off cults emerged, as they have with other religions that have attempted to conform.)
I think these crazy illogical leanings — faith, denial, belief — are not neurosis (unless one is the only one in town to have such feelings) but are survival mechanisms that have evolved within us. They may have outlived their practical use — like an appendix they may be “organs” whose use is questionable and marginal, but that are still with us, still used by us and using us. 
Although I quoted from some article a week or two ago that claimed that believers — the faithful — live longer, happier lives (which wouldn’t be surprising) here are some excerpts from a recent paper that claims pretty much the opposite. If G. Paul is on the right track, then a lot of what I say above might want revising — because there would be, if this article is right, clear and practical incentives to abandon religion — besides the fact that it is fiction. According to this not only is religion disruptive, it is as dangerous as a burst appendix.
Thanks to 3quarks daily for the link to this. Gregory Paul's article in The Journal of Religion and Society
Introduction
Two centuries ago there was relatively little dispute over the existence of God, or the societally beneficial effect of popular belief in a creator. In the twentieth century extensive secularization occurred in western nations, the United States being the only significant exception. If religion has receded in some western nations, what is the impact of this unprecedented transformation upon their populations? Theists often assert that popular belief in a creator is instrumental towards providing the moral, ethical and other foundations necessary for a healthy, cohesive society. Many also contend that widespread acceptance of evolution, and/or denial of a creator, is contrary to these goals. But a cross-national study verifying these claims has yet to be published.
Further on: In general, higher rates of belief in and worship of a creator correlate with higher rates of homicide, juvenile and early adult mortality, STD infection rates, teen pregnancy, and abortion in the prosperous democracies. The most theistic prosperous democracy, the U.S., is exceptional, but not in the manner [Benjamin] Franklin predicted. The United States is almost always the most dysfunctional of the developed democracies, sometimes spectacularly so, and almost always scores poorly. The view of the U.S. as a “shining city on the hill” to the rest of the world is falsified when it comes to basic measures of societal health. Youth suicide is an exception to the general trend because there is not a significant relationship between it and religious or secular factors. No democracy is known to have combined strong religiosity and popular denial of evolution with high rates of societal health. Higher rates of non-theism and acceptance of human evolution usually correlate with lower rates of dysfunction, and the least theistic nations are usually the least dysfunctional. None of the strongly secularized, pro-evolution democracies is experiencing high levels of measurable dysfunction.
And further…. the more secular, pro-evolution democracies have, for the first time in history, come closest to achieving practical “cultures of life” that feature low rates of lethal crime, juvenile-adult mortality, sex related dysfunction, and even abortion. The least theistic secular developed democracies such as Japan, France, and Scandinavia have been most successful in these regards. The non-religious, pro-evolution democracies contradict the dictum that a society cannot enjoy good conditions unless most citizens ardently believe in a moral creator. The widely held fear that a Godless citizenry must experience societal disaster is therefore refuted.
Conclusion
The United States’ deep social problems are all the more disturbing because the nation enjoys exceptional per capita wealth among the major western nations Spending on health care is much higher as a portion of the GDP and per capita, by a factor of a third to two or more, than in any other developed democracy (UN Development Programme, 2000, 2004). The U.S. is therefore the least efficient western nation in terms of converting wealth into cultural and physical health. Understanding the reasons for this failure is urgent, and doing so requires considering the degree to which cause versus effect is responsible for the observed correlations between social conditions and religiosity versus secularism. It is therefore hoped that this initial look at a subject of pressing importance will inspire more extensive research on the subject. Pressing questions include the reasons, whether theistic or non-theistic, that the exceptionally wealthy U.S. is so inefficient that it is experiencing a much higher degree of societal distress than are less religious, less wealthy prosperous democracies. Conversely, how do the latter achieve superior societal health while having little in the way of the religious values or institutions? There is evidence that within the U.S. strong disparities in religious belief versus acceptance of evolution are correlated with similarly varying rates of societal dysfunction, the strongly theistic, anti-evolution south and mid-west having markedly worse homicide, mortality, STD, youth pregnancy, marital and related problems than the northeast where societal conditions, secularization, and acceptance of evolution approach European It is the responsibility of the research community to address controversial issues and provide the information that the citizens of democracies need to chart their future courses.
Went to an NYIH lunch organized by Ren Weschler. Writer Marina Warner talked about fairies.
Warner has written about mythology many times. This new book focuses on the “fairie faith” as it is called in Scotland and Ireland — the belief in tiny creatures, little people who are linked to the wild and evocative landscape. Sometimes these beings or spirits are benevolent, and at other times they cause mischief, steal souls or children.
I read a book some years ago called The Fairie Faith in Celtic Countries which was a kind of massive oral history of sightings, beliefs and suspicious goings-on. Evans-Wentz, who brought the Tibetan Book Of The Dead to a Western audience, was the author or presenter — Tibetan-Celtic — a somewhat similar enterprise of revealing a whole spiritual world.
There was a fair amount of laughter among the academics as instances of sightings and empty graves were mentioned; it all seems a bit like implying that some folk believe that the stories of childhood are real. We tend to view the Grimm’s tales and others as potent and psychologically powerful narratives passed on from generation to generation maybe because they are such good stories. But the truth is they were told because many of the events were believed to have actually occurred.
These beliefs are no stranger than that a man parted the entire Red Sea or that a man walked on water or that the creator of the entire universe wrote a book (or two).
Warner showed one of the famous 1917 Coddingley Fairie photos — a faked image of a Fairie and a Fairie cocoon taken by some young girls (who worked in a photo lab) and made by placing cut-out illustrations in a woodland landscape.
The girls, Warner said, never claimed these to be true photos of fairies — they created the images after all — but soon enough many others who saw the photos did. Grownups. Learned men and women. “Expert testimony”. Most famously, Scottish author Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, the creator of Sherlock Holmes — the detective who needed only his rigid foolproof rationality to solve any crime — testified that the photos were obviously NOT fakes and that here was proof that fairies were real. Other learned men and women came forward and all agreed the photos were not fakes — they were proof positive of the existence of the little creatures.
What surprises me now is how Conan Doyle and others could not see how fake the photos look — when to me and most contemporary people it is as plain as day. Anyone can see that they are cut-out illustrations, can’t they? It’s laughable, but also baffling how learned men and women could convince themselves to see things in a way that contradicts reality.
But maybe it shouldn’t be baffling. We tend to believe that it is the eye that sees, and the ear that hears. But those organs are merely the input devices — it is the brain that “sees” and “hears”. The brain can, in this case, choose to ignore obvious imperfections and evidence and see only what it wants to see. I don’t mean this in a metaphorical way — I mean it in an absolutely literal way — the brain only sees what it wants to see and disregards the rest. One can stare right at something and simply not see it. The contradictory information is simply not acknowledged. I don’t mean “seen and later denied”, but simply not seen at all. Denial is a built-in ability we have, it is essential for our survival, but sometimes, when applied to faked photos of fairies it seems pretty damn goofy. We do not all see or hear exactly the same things — key objects have been censored in the perceptions of some individuals…one wonders if objects could likewise be added to the world in other individuals. (See Happy Idiots, below.)
Anyway, Conan Doyle was maybe at the tail end of what is sometimes referred to as the Scottish enlightenment, a clumping of scientists and engineers in the mid 19th century to early 20th. This group had an extraordinary influence in the second industrial revolution. Here is Thompson’s (later known as Lord Kelvin) machine for predicting tides. He is most well knows for the Kelvin scale of temperature — absolute zero, entropy, etc. James Watt, inventor of the steam engine, was one of this crowd. Etc. etc. 
Well, Warner threw out a zinger in passing that there might be a link between the belief in the uncanny and this scientific enlightenment. A kind of secret union of opposites.
Yeats claimed that the Irish were better writers than the English because of their belief in Fairie culture — that these irrational roots left the imagination less fettered. Whether or not he’s right about the 2 nations’ respective writing abilities, he might have a point re: the imagination. I could imagine that somewhere in the unconscious of Thompson, Watt, Doyle and others lay a buried belief, or non-denial, of sprits, forces and entities lurking in the barren misty glens to the north. Could these irrational suspicions have allowed the leaps of faith that are required in a scientific and engineering revolution? To imagine a concept like entropy or absolute zero must surely have seemed just as far fetched as the existence of wee folk. (I’m not saying these guys were literally Fairie believers, but that the deep cultural marinating soaks all parts.) (See Arboretum.)
Happy Idiots
If religious people do indeed live longer and are indeed happier, as some studies claim to show, then the evolutionary basis and reason for the continued existence of religion in the face of rationality and common sense is self-evident. Humans would have evolved a propensity to become religious because it helps their survival.
The truth may set you free, but you might not be as carefree and happy. It will eat away at you — what hurts you does not necessarily make you stronger.
I would maintain that a healthy (i.e. substantial) amount of denial is therefore genetically heritable, that it allows us to blithely go on (despite reading Beckett) and to ignore the basic sadness and desperation of life. We can live in an illusion — in fact we are genetically predisposed to do so. These illusions can be small — I am just as good at catching game as Bob, my rival, for example — or they can be very large — that death is not the end and that I will be rewarded for my faith and Bob, the apostate, will rot in Hell.
Either way, they allow me to go on, to persevere in the face of unlikely odds or limited chance of success. We have evolved to be less rational that one might think, and to be slightly more delusional and even stupid.
Weimar Reality shows
This was in the 20s. Erwin Lowinsky’s Weisse Maus was a cabaret night that encouraged hopelessly amateur performers to get on stage — dreamy housewives, deluded bank clerks. They were encouraged to make fools of themselves. Sounds familiar.
The Black Cat Cabaret featured theme nights — nude girls in imaginary sacrificial Mayan ceremonies, mock bullfights, and naked novices being humiliated by lesbian nuns — with rituals involving silver crucifixes.
Then came Hitler.
Went to my first Bat Mitzvah. Upper East side synagogue. The cantor, Lori Corsin, has an incredibly beautiful voice. Wow. The congregation was led in some readings and heard some music and then came the ritual. The Rabbi turned and faced the elaborate bronze wall relief behind him. Slowly he walked towards it and, placing his hands on it, he slid it open — it was a little magical, as if a secret chamber were being revealed to us (though one could have seen that it probably opened.)
Inside were 3 huge Torahs, and behind them a brightly colored painted chamber. Two lions faced a crown, vines crept up underneath. Stylized flames flickered here and there. Huge images of classical columns ran up and down the sides.
Up above there was a stained glass image of a landscape with a half hidden temple on the top of a dirt hill. In the foreground were cypress and olive trees. Low green hills undulated in the background.
The Rabbi clutched the giant “book”, the torah scroll, as the ceremony proceeded. As if the book were watching the ritual, bearing witness, officiating — as if it was the book that made the ceremony real. The prayers and incantations were the usual Levantine injunctions against worshipping other Gods and the hope that this “true” God would eventually overcome the unbelievers. Oh jeez. Lori sang again, it was beautiful.
I walked home, through midtown. I stopped at the ICP museum on my way and caught their new show “Ecotopia” which I guess is some conflation of ecology and utopia/dystopia — as many of the works are about nature and the environmental wreckage around us. The similar world ectopia, which means a bodily organ in the wrong place, would have worked as well. It’s a large and powerful show, and some cool installation ideas — video monitors nestled in huge biomorphic shapes that looked like giant rubber versions of tree growths. Catherine Chalmers’s nature doc in one growth follows a cockroach (and many other critters) up close and personal, and it rivals the Attenborough BBC docs I love — her cinematography is that good. But does that mean that the BBC docs are “art” as well? Certain sequences in them — the slug-mating dance, the fish balls, the predator wasps — make a good case for it. And who is doing the foley work on these films? Both Chalmers and the BBC films have lots of crunchy and squishy sounds when appropriate. These sounds make a huge difference.
Other photographers — Mitch Epstein (Biloxi, post Katrina) 
Robert Adams (clear cutting) 
Adam Broomberg and Oliver Chanarin (sites of “removed” Palestinian villages, now planted over as pine forests) 
Simon Norfolk (evidence of the effects of war around Baghdad — there’s a missile in the woods): 
and Sophie Ristenhueber (Iraq landscapes in ruins) 
Pretty much all of the above images are beautiful. I find them arresting not because they make some didactic point about humans destroying the environment (though they may be trying to do that) but because they show us a strange and unexpected universe — our own.
In fact, if they are simply trying to make us aware of the damage we are doing to the landscape, of injurious policies and projects and then move us to action — they fail. Well, they do bring home some information that might be less moving merely as statistics — but the fact that they are beautiful subverts, for me, this possibly didactic intention. The images are simply gorgeous — you’d be happy and proud to hang them on your wall — pictures of devastation and destruction. How can anything so beautiful be simple agit prop? The two seem to contradict one another.
Somehow I think maybe the artists know this. I think in some cases (but not all) this contradiction, this cognitive dissonance, is what their images are about. They are about the fact that they can be beautiful and “ugly” and the same time — as many things can — and what does that mean? How do we deal with that? Does the beauty obscure, or are all these things partly beautiful and we have trouble reconciling the two?
In some cases, for some people, it seems to be a big problem. The well-known photographer Joel Meyerowitz took pictures of the aftermath of 9/11, near where he lives. He can’t help himself, I guess — the pictures are gorgeous, like images from a Spielberg epic that was never made. They’re romantic, like Caspar David Freidrich’s paintings — paintings that, in Germany, are seen as romantic kitsch, a precursor to the Wagnerian romanticism that some say led to (but cannot be said to have caused?) much Nazi propaganda and the mess that followed. Many admire Meyerowitz’s pictures, many others find them disgusting. 
For many people these pictures cross the line — they beautify and possibly romanticize a tragedy that people see as different, closer maybe, than the Iraq landscapes or the clear-cut forests. Is it? I don’t know. I saw the very same thing as Meyerowitz, above (relief efforts were located there) but couldn’t take pictures. Maybe I was shy, maybe overwhelmed. Maybe it seemed wrong to be making “art” at that moment. How do photojournalists do it? (Well, they don’t say they’re making art, for starters — they’re letting the world see what is happening in far-flung places.) But I too was awe-struck and thought quietly to myself — wow, that is cool looking.
I remember a friend having come up to 12th St., where I lived then, from downtown on that morning. She was in tears, shaking, a wreck, and she kept saying over and over “It…it…it was beautiful.” She didn’t mean the former trade towers were beautiful — not many would claim that — but that the massive destruction was awe-inspiring, overpowering…and in a horrible way, beautiful.
Terry Allen (the Lubbock-born artist and musician) and I have been friends for a long time. I wrote to him about a lecture I went to:
Hey
Went to hear Sam Harris (The End of Faith — YOUR recommendation, remember?) at the 42nd St. library. I expected some demonstrators, hecklers...but I guess NYorkers are pretty Godless already — they cheered him on.
He was “in discussion” with an Oliver McTernan, “author and the director of Forward Thinking, an NGO involved in conflict resolution in the U.K. and Middle East, [he] is also a broadcaster for the BBC, and a former priest. He will challenge the claims set forth in Harris’s new book, Letter to A Christian Nation. Is Harris a secular fundamentalist reflecting the mindset he rejects? Does his American perspective have relevance elsewhere in the world? Like the religious right, is he an anti-pluralist?"
Oliver was a sweet as could be — like a gentle Father O’Malley from some old movie. Lilting Irish accent. Spends his time in Somalia and Gaza trying to get folks to get along, so he made an awfully “nice” counterpoint to Harris’s blunt suggestions that that all religious peoples of the Book are basically dangerous lunatics, and that nice guys like Oliver are just a mask for the nastiness that lies behind. One look at Oliver and his work and you wonder, how can this guy possibly be bad? (But I remember Irish Catholics sold girls into slavery within recent memory, prohibited birth control of all types, sent missionaries to destroy foreign cultures in the name of Jesus — probably still do — etc. etc. …so, all the nice Father O’Malleys in the world have a lot to answer for, if you ask me.)
McTernan’s retort to Harris was that yes, all Muslims, for example, are not the violent women-oppressing devils that Harris points at. No, many, in Gaza, Somalia and elsewhere, where he struggles daily, are probably just like the gentle little old Irish ladies who simply go to mass on Sundays and observe Xmas, Easter, etc...and apparently wouldn’t hurt a fly. (I made the Irish connection, not him.) And for them their religion is a source of strength and continuity with the past. A grounding and maybe even something spiritual. But Harris rightly (I thought) pointed out that though these individuals might be benign, all the books — the Koran, the Torah and the Bible — are intolerant, and are filled with violence and hatred. If these people are “good”, it is no reflection or credit to their religion — maybe their local culture and community have more influence on their behavior than their religions. I tried to read the so-called good book some years ago and found it a litany of suffering, hatred, honor killings, scores settled and general nastiness — with the rare edict to be good thrown in — couldn’t finish it — if I want horror I’ll stick with Cormack, who at least is a better writer. (Better than God! — now there’s a press blurb!)
The NYorkers were much more familiar with Harris than Oliver, so it was a bit of an unfair fight — Oliver didn’t have his cheering section to back him up.
That said, it was a good talk to witness. I enjoyed The End Of Faith, though he did go down some roads that I thought he should have avoided. The justification of torture, for one. At least that’s how I read it. He quotes Dershowitz’s thought experiment that if a bomber in custody had information that could save 1000s and if torturing him could get that information, then wouldn’t torture be justified? My response is, yes, it would be — but sadly that situation never ever occurs. I would be willing to bet that none of the valuable information obtained that has saved any lives has been through torture. Torture, it has been proved time and time again, produces unreliable and pretty much useless information, therefore no information at all, therefore no saved lives — so the thought experiment has no relevance in the real world. Sadly, the fact that 90% of the people being tortured are innocent can’t be used to counter the thought experiment, but that fact sure has an effect in the world — as predicted many times, the U.S. behavior has been the perfect recruiting tool for terrorists and has alienated what friends we had left. The torture, even if it as save a few lives, has put millions at risk. [The U.S. congress just voted to continue torture as a policy — many democrats voted for this, too.]
Terry Allen’s reply:
All this torture talk in the news makes me crazy...the waterboarding thing is the same Khmer Rouge murder shit. & “We only do it to get information”...oh, right. I don't think anyone ever tortured anybody for any reason other than revenge or pure sadistic pleasure...which is probably the same thing. Everything else is just an excuse. Harris is smart enough to know that...maybe he's got a Buddhist mean-streak running through his karma alarma bama-lama ding dong? Whatever...I agree. The “torture one to save a thousand” theory is deep and dumb with fantasy.
You're lucky to get to hear such a discussion though...the only thing they've had here [Santa Fe] lately is a workshop dissecting the music of Yawni...that and a lecture on the use of spinach leaves as a massage rub so you don't have to throw it out because of the deadly echo-lie. Not particularly riveting. I wonder why Bill Mahr hasn't had Harris on? Or the Simpsons?
The good book was a force-read for me...vacation bible and Sunday school tribulation. We weren't supposed to chew gum in the sacred glow of the class...no smacking around Jehovah. Had one teacher, banker by day...prick by Sunday, who reached right in my mouth, pulled out the gum and put it behind my ear then pushed my ear, gum and all, into the side of my hair. Bless the little children.
Saw Lenine, the Brazilian “rocker” last night at Joe’s. In a way I enjoyed it better than Manu Chau a couple of nights ago — probably because this show was more intimate. I could see up close that the band was having a great time, and there were almost no arena rock gestures or urgings to sing along, jump or pump fists — all of which I snobbishly recoil from. What’s the matter? Don’t I want to join in? Well, I did dance and sing along at the Manu Chau Brooklyn show, but whenever I am urged to do so I get suspicious.
With Lenine “rocker” is in quotes because although the first impression might be that Lenine and band are playing straight rock, beneath it is a foundation of maracatu and forró rhythms from the Northeast of Brasil that informs every song. They swing in a way that most rock doesn’t.
I had only seen Lenine in a sort of folkloric setting before — singing with percussionist Marcos Suzano and Banda de Pifanos — a traditional group focused around some cane flute players.
He’s named after Lenin, the Russian revolutionary, and he looks like Wild Bill Hickok, the western gunfighter who was later a showman with Buffalo Bill Cody’s Wild West show.
From Wikipedia: Hickok was level-headed even while fighting, as evidenced by a legendary exchange of words with Phil Coe. Supposedly, Coe stated that he could "kill a crow on the wing" (i.e. flying), and Hickok replied, "Did the crow have a pistol? Was he shooting back? I will be."
Speaking of gunfighters and show business, the connection might not be as silly as it seems — there were two songs (at least) that distinctly mentioned Lampião, the legendary Brazilian outlaw. He was a figure from an era of vicious landowners, desperate poverty and slavery — and the exploits of Lampião and his men became Robin Hood like examples to the people and songwriters of that region. When he was captured his head and those of his henchmen were displayed in a box that toured the countryside.
Chechen rebels also displayed the heads of captured Russians on sticks. (No picture). U.S. military displayed this picture of Abu Musab al-Zarqawi after he was killed in an explosion. The picture ran in the NY Post and other newspapers as proof of the elimination of a baddie.
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Further thoughts re: PL's lawsuit with the man he photographed. From Time Out NY:
A Korean artist becomes the Leonardo of the rabbinical set
Never put a rabbi’s image on the floor. That’s one lesson learned by Ki Yong Sung — a portrait painter who runs a small shop in the arcade at the Fulton Street subway station — when a troop of Jewish schoolgirls accosted him and demanded that he move a likeness of their rabbi up onto the wall. Another useful tidbit gleaned from limning more than 50 rabbinical portraits over the past three years: Honor the Sabbath. “Friday evening, I never paint Jewish picture,” says the 69-year-old Seoul native, whose Jewish clients are so observant, they don’t want him to work on their commissions during holy days.
Sandwiched between a barbershop and a tie store, Sung paints from photographs of his subjects, which include not only hoary rebbes, but blushing brides, pooches and deceased parents. (He charges $200 for a 12 x 16 canvas.) He painted his first rabbi in 2003, after a fellow Korean artist told him about a framing shop in Midwood, Brooklyn, that needed artwork to sell to the local Orthodox community. Sung and the owner worked out an arrangement to produce portraits of religious leaders at a bulk rate. Like the tablets Moses brought down from Mt. Sinai, word of Sung’s skills soon spread, and today, orders arrive from as far away as California and Florida. Still, he remains puzzled by his customers. “Not his wife’s picture, not his parents’ — he only wants the rabbi’s picture,” he muses of his typical Orthodox client.
What about the injunction against idols and graven images?
Saw a screening of a documentary called Jesus Camp. It focuses on a woman preacher (Becky Fischer) who indoctrinates children in a summer camp in North Dakota. Right wing political agendas and slogans are mixed with born again rituals that end with most of the kids in tears.  Tears of release and joy, they would claim — the children are not physically abused. The kids are around 9 or 10 years old, recruited from various churches, and are pliant willing receptacles. They are instructed that evolution is being forced upon us by evil Godless secular humanists, that abortion must be stopped at all costs, that we must form an “army” to defeat the Godless influences, that we must band together to insure that the right judges and politicians get into the courts and office and that global warming is a lie. (This last one is a puzzle — how did accepting the evidence for climate change and global warming become anti-Jesus? Did someone simply conflate all corporate agendas with Jesus and God and these folks accept that? Would Jesus drive an SUV? Is every conclusion responsible scientists make now suspect?)
Awareness of the rest of the world is curtailed — one can only view or read that which agrees with the agenda.
Naturally, the kids being so young, there is no questioning of any kind — they simply accept what grownups Fischer and the others say — they get pumped up, agitated, they memorize right wing and Jesus slogans and shout them back obediently. They become part of a support group — a warm, safe, comfortable feeling for anyone, for any social animal, for you and me. No one strays or gets out of line even the slightest bit. (More on peer pressure later.)
There were some perfect sound bites — at one point Pastor Fischer instructs the little ones that they should be willing to die for Christ, and the little ones obediently agree. She may even use the word martyr, which has a shocking echo in the Middle East. I can see future suicide bombers for Jesus — the next step will be learning to fly planes into buildings. Of course, the grownups would say, “Oh no, we’re not like them” — but they admit that the principal difference is simply that “We’re right.”
In another scene a cardboard cutout of George W. Bush, with his trademark smirking smile, is brought out and the children are urged to identify — many of the little ones come forward and reverently touch his cardboard hands.
I kept saying to myself, “O.K., these are the Christian version of the Madrassas (those Islamic religious instructional schools in Pakistan and elsewhere, often financed by Saudi oil money)...so both sides are pretty much equally sick, there’s a balance." (Although it must be said the Madrassas provide some regular education and literacy where no other option is available, they do community work that is non-religious...and they take in aimless troubled youth.)
They want to turn the U.S. into the "Christian" version of Iran or Saudi Arabia. A theocracy. The separation between church and state, already shaky with Bush in charge, is under full frontal assault by this bunch — and they are well organized, too. The megachurches tell their parishioners who to vote for, what judges to support, letters to write, and where they should stand on the issues. Well, we all do this to some extent — even in casual chats with friends we attempt to deduce and arrive at a consensus of opinion; a sloppy democratic give-and-take on any number of subjects often gives way to agreement. But this is top-down messaging — no discussion allowed. There’s a scene in the Colorado Springs megachurch run by the Preacher who talks with Bush once a week — same deal as with the kids, only most of the attendees are pliant adults.
What is it about Colorado Springs? Littleton is right next door to these megachurches. I think they are 2 sides to the same coin. One breeds the other. The dissatisfaction and alienation that leads folks to join this weird non-“Christian” Christianity (much the same has been said about fundamentalist Islamic groups, that they are a perversion of the Islam of the Prophet) leads down a road to both Littleton and Colorado Springs — and in the sense that they allow the mind to be pleasantly emptied, they are identical.
The documentary juxtaposes scenes of an Air America radio call-in guy, a former preacher himself — who rants against this version of Christianity. These scenes seemed almost unnecessary, as to many of us in the audience Becky was pretty much indicting herself, though she wouldn’t see it that way. But they did give some relief from the scary view of the heartland as harboring an army in formation. Zombies from the wheat fields.
Sad, as the heartland and areas untouched by the big city sicknesses are also the home of much practical down-to-earth wisdom. Wisdom borne of the land and of experience, unsullied by the trendy political and ethical philosophies that periodically sweep the urban jungles.
When one sees religion perverted — in the U.S. or in Israel, Pakistan, Afghanistan or India, one wonders if the spiritual seeds, planted by visionaries and enlightened prophets like Jesus, Mohammed, Marx and others, are just too volatile for large societies to deal with. One asks if religious visions are better off kept as a personal thing, or at least confined to a small group — otherwise the death and destruction sown by and in the name of religions more or less balances out their moral and personal virtues (which are many.)
Richard Dawkins (The Selfish Gene) hosts a Channel 4 (UK) two-part series on religion called “The Root Of All Evil?” Doubt it will ever get shown in the U.S., which has now become a fundamentalist country. Or is on the fast track to that destination. Wish they’d show this 2-part series in exchange for “teaching” creationism or adding, “in God we Trust” into the Pledge of Allegiance. Not that Dawkins is level-headed either. But at least he presents the opposite extreme, which doesn’t get much airing, for fear of loss of job, sponsorship or death. He doesn’t pull any punches, which is shocking for someone who lives in the U.S. to hear. Maybe there is so much self-censorship in the U.S. (we who wag fingers at China) that Dawkins’ statements seem shockingly radical.
In my opinion, science, his “religion”, proceeds as much from faith as much conventional religion does. It’s now a scientific fact (pun intended) that one simply doesn’t see what one doesn’t want to see. It doesn’t register. It isn’t noted or remembered, either. Do scientists think they are immune to this? You lot in the lab coats think you really are completely objective? I can think of many instances, as one preacher claims, of science teaching now considered ridiculous. OK, the temperature at which water boils is pretty undisputed, but when we get close to ourselves — to medicine, health, psychology, sociology, and religion — things start to break down. I believe the 21st century will be the century of biology as the last one was of physics and chemistry — but we’re not there yet. The hubris of policies backed by “rational” scientific research and the “testimony of experts” has probably done as much harm in the world as any religion. Both science and religion have a lot to answer for.
That said, he’s right about a lot of it and it needs to be said. Religions are indeed intolerant, exclusionary and sometimes downright loony (“barking mad” was his phrase) — but as a student of Darwin he should expect that something or other in human social and psychological systems, some inherited behavior, must respond to these needs that humans seem to seek answers to or relief from. Religion fulfils so many psychological, social and cultural requirements that its continued existence — it sprouts up again and again — shouldn’t be surprising. It probably can’t be squashed or eliminated.
It justifies invasions, social and personal ostracisms, clannish behavior, community giving, accepted morality — all at the same time. What else can make wanton slaughter of foreigners seem like a morally good thing yet murder of one’s own group seem like a bad thing? And aren’t those common evolutionary-based human impulses? Impulses that only need some mental and emotional justifications? Isn’t it obvious that there is a gene for religion that provides exactly those justifications?
The ministers, rabbi and imams interviewed all seems to believe that without the big stick of religion humans would run amok. I agree with Dawkins that they wouldn’t — animals have morality, too — it’s something we do for our own good — though some small percentage will try to find a work around. Religion doesn’t seem to have “solved” that problem. In fact we can see it often seems to encourage the aggressive dog-eat-dog tendencies that they claim they try to suppress.
What Dawkins sadly ignores is the attractiveness and beauty of religion. And that faith can indeed ease pain and suffering — in which case is not the lie of religion better than the ugly bitter truth? Doesn’t faith often help people recover from illnesses? Aren’t believers often happier? Aren’t religious precessions fun and aren’t mosques and churches usually magnificent? (Maybe a little overly awesome, belittling, but still.)
In such cases, why not accept the lie? What harm would it do?
Granted, seeing all the “practically” useless temples and churches, impeccable and grand in the midst of squalor and poverty, sets one’s teeth on edge. But, if one can see the processions and mumbo jumbo, the miracles and murmurings, as metaphors rather than as literal fact then it might be easier to view religion as the greatest artistic expression of humankind — or much of it, anyway.
Sadly, most believers don’t view their faiths as metaphorical — they believe Jesus actually rose from the dead, that Mary was a virgin and that visiting a stone in Mecca will make you a better person. Sadly, you don’t often get the nice benefits of faith — the happiness and the hope — without the superiority, closed-mindedness and hatred. Can’t these two sides of a coin be separated? Is there something in this (possible) gene that always entangles these two? Fix us, please.
Dawkins should be able to answer that one, that’s his area of study.
Sorry Judas, we didn’t mean it, really.
The Gospel According To Judas makes the news. Some 1700-year-old papyrus scrolls — 66 pages — have been made public. Discovered in the 70s in Egypt. And they’re only seeing the light of day now? Egyptian antiquities dealers “circulated” them for a while — asking price around 3 million. Then the manuscripts went to Europe and finally rested in a safety deposit box in Hicksville, NY. Hicksville? They stayed there for 16 years. A Swiss dealer bought them and he tried to resell them. Note that none of these guys seemed to have any interest in releasing them to the academic world or to the public.
No buyers appeared, so the Swiss dealer finally “gave” it to a foundation, which, in collaboration with the National Geographic Society, has translated it — and has the TV rights.
Seems Judas says Jesus ASKED him to betray him, or so the writer of this Gospel claims. A bit like Milosevic having his day in court. The supposed bad guy, the betrayer, claims it was the others who betrayed him by twisting the story. Now, I’m not comparing Judas to a war criminal — but he is similarly despised by most Christians.
Do churches now include any of these new Gospels in The Book? — The Gospel of Thomas, Mary Magdalene, Philip — are they planned to be in future editions of the Bible? Absolutely not. The Thomas Gospel was published in 1959 — it’s authentic but has never been included — its Buddhist-like Gnosticism contradicts too much of the existing church dogma. And this new one — whew — it really gives a new twist to the narrative.
Hicksville?
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Saw Neko Case at Webster Hall last night.
Didn’t realize my lens cap had dropped off while I was there. Apparently after I left Neko found it and someone said it was mine.
Saw Beth Orton in the same room a few days later. Better sound down among the plebs.
Also saw an Iranian singer named Haale that sometime drummer Dougie Bowne is working with. A mixture of experimental downtown stuff with the vocal intensity of U2, but more intimate…and mostly in Persian.
Lots of articles everywhere about Intelligent Design these days — the latest re-working of reality to allow God a place in it. It's a bit of a waste of time, all this discussion, in my opinion. If people insist on taking the Bible literally, at face value, and reforming the evidence on the ground to fit that, then there is no reasoning with them — they've abandoned reason from the beginning.
It's not a question of reason vs. faith either, in my opinion. I believe one can have a belief, a sense of a higher force, without taking virgin births, Adam and Eve, Noah and a man who make a sea part literally. You can believe in Mystery — in something beyond us that we don't understand, without necessarily believing that the stories that point and support that belief are also all literally true.
Over and over it has been shown that these tales that make up the Torah and the Bible were cobbled together from pre-existing mythologies and assembled to form these new groups, giving a new emphasis. Twice it happened — in the Torah and later by the Christians. That doesn't denigrate the mythology described in these books in any way, or deny its metaphorical power. A metaphor as powerful as these has the power to guide lives, to inspire, to order societies and to back up moralities. And they can be beautiful and poetic at the same time. That's a tall order.
But to say that it also literally happened is, well, to miss the point. It is to mistake the finger pointing at the moon for the moon, as the Buddha once said. The myths point towards a way of living, they give social and moral foundations and provide a backbone for daily behavior — but they themselves are not those foundations and backbone. They are signposts, not the thing itself.
Intelligent design strikes me as the latest convoluted attempt to allow something patently unbelievable to remain standing. If, for example, one confronts a person who insists that the first few pages of Genesis are to be taken literally with the evidence of the world around them, they have no choice but to admit that it probably didn't happen quite that way. Pause. Ummm, so, ahh, wait a minute! How about this? God didn't actually MAKE everything, but he set it in motion! How about that?
This sounds like a 10 year old desperately figuring out an alternate story explaining where the cookies went or how the dog got in the house. It's amusing, and maybe sweet in its desperation, but not to be taken seriously as literal fact. It is psychological fact, which is different. No less real, but very different.
The U.S. is a fragmented country — split between fundamentalists and infidels. Maybe that's why these days this issue is taken seriously and given so much media space. It speaks to larger divides and deeper problems.
I think it's possible to believe in God, Gods, a higher power, or the Force, or a Vast Active Living Intelligent System without taking the myths at face value. It doesn't devalue them either to not take them literally. But it can go either way.
I think in Buddhism there are 2 paths — and one consists of literally mostly just rote behavior. Just do the rituals, chant the sutras, behave correctly, and you'll get there — or your descendants will. The other road is about achieving release through deep understanding and lots of diligent effort. Often this is the road for priests, monks, hermits and wandering seekers. It is claimed that either road leads to eventual enlightenment — it doesn't matter which way you go — you don't have to know how a car works to arrive at your destination — but one should not mistake the car for the destination. Like a simple Bible reader in the USA, a dedicated churchgoer, one can achieve the end goal simply by following directions.
How this then got twisted all over the world into intolerance (forced teaching of Intelligent Design is intolerance in my book) is slightly beyond me — unless it's basic human nature to subdue the lands around you.
When I read about the Big Bang it is hard for me to believe that it all began more or less from nothing. And it's equally hard to believe that all will either disperse into empty wastes or collapse back in and restart the process over and over again. It's hard to believe there was a beginning or that there can be an end — a cycle is easier to believe, endless repetition, but then how did the cycle get started? How could anything always be here? Why is there matter or energy to begin with? In searching for an answer here is where an infidel like myself comes close to faith.
It is said that speed of light travel is impossible — that we would become energy and would therefore no longer exist as matter. This might be true, but viewed from a higher, much much faster level, that might not make much of a difference. What we consider as “existing” and what organizing principle may still exist when one becomes pure energy may not be so different. Simply (or not so simply) they may be different forms for the same thing, or non-thing, as the case may be.
Imagine speed of light travel in which yes we do become energy and we somehow maintain our organizing principles. Forget about space ships and maybe even bodies — we've become something less. We can then not only travel very quickly and far, but maybe time begins to be somewhat flexible as well. Here is where we can indeed enter wormholes and even stars become like planets — planets of energy, rather than of mass (though there is mass there, too.)
This level of travel — and of existence, really — would be all but invisible to us. Pulses and rays and concatenations of energy — it would be pretty hard to discern their organizational forms, if such things could exist, form where we sit. It would be the equivalent of another dimension — albeit the one the touches us fairly often.
Once one is converted into a form or pure energy would there be a reason to go back to being mass? Ever? Would this be considered a form or transcendence? It literally is. And does that put it in the realm of the spiritual? I think not, but appearances are deceptive. But it does allow one to imagine that there might be levels of “being” up our out there that we find pretty hard to imagine, and they are, when viewed by us, suitably Godlike.
An image that made its way around the net almost immediately after the election:
Below, the cover of the NY Times Magazine. Jesus meets with the bankers.
"At the Riverview Community Bank in Otsego, Minn., the employees pray with customers"
I am reminded of the Chris Hedges book I read recently, War Is A Force that Gives Us Meaning. He was a reporter in Bosnia, the Middle East, Sudan, Central America. His book looks back and tries to find the patterns, the processes, by which people and nations become fevered, blinkered and deadly. It seems, to him, that the same dark path is followed again and again — mainly because, though we might hate to admit it, war makes us feel good. I’m simplifying, but that’s part of what he says.
Despite this bad news he also says that, like a bout of flu and fever, once the rationales crumble, the war peters out and the whole pack of cards falls down, the people wake up, as if from a bad dream. They are reasonable human beings once again, wishing, naturally, to move on and forget their exhortations and possible actions in the recent past.
I think the fever has not broken here yet.
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