I'm obsessed with a pen

Really, I'm obsessed with a pen.  A few years back a coworker showed me the Pilot Varsity, a disposable fountain pen. Only now did I finally splurge and buy myself a set of three--black, blue, and purple, for $8. It writes differently than a ballpoint, obviously, but not much unlike some modern ballpoint alternatives. And it is clean. There is no leaky splatter I might have expected with a cheap fountain pen. The biggest downside for me is that it bleeds just enough through the page that it might not work for me if I want to write on both sides.

This is a really fun toy for me. I find myself writing pages and pages of gibberish and writing completely random and unnecessary lists, such as all the addresses where I have lived and every school I've attended. I even started thinking about whether to take some time to improve my truly terrible handwriting.

I've been and on-again and off-again journaler throughout my life. I might like to journal with a fountain pen because I enjoy using it so much. But I really don't need to have a paper journal again. All my journaling in recent years has been on a computer. But before I went exclusively digital, I filled a few composition books that are in a closet downstairs, some loose notebook pages that might be in a folder in the bookcase behind me, and some Word files and emails saved as drafts. I don't know if it is good that my journals since 2008 or so have all been in Microsoft OneNote, a very useful program, but one that I don't think has been updated since. (Strike that. There is a new version that I probably wouldn't pay for.)

The fountain pen is a pleasure to write with. It produces a lovely swoosh as it slides along the page and it has an inky smell that modern pens lack. I'm wondering if I should go ahead and write with a dip pen by candlelight to get a more complete retro experience.

Maybe there is a parallel to eating with plastic utensils versus fine silver. A better pen makes writing more enjoyable and makes the experience seem more important.

Spirituality for Skeptics

Unitarian Universalist minister Kendyl Gibbons has some affirming words relevant to my quest.

So many of our inherited religious traditions want to put the cart before the horse. They want to start with the vocabulary of ritual and the structures of belief before we have a chance to reflect on what it is that actually calls forth the experience of reverence in our bodies and minds, and hearts and conscience. Without that primal experience, all the rest is hearsay; it’s all rote and drudgery and guilt. No wonder we resist it, reject it, find it full of hypocrisy and arbitrary, meaningless rules. No wonder the skeptical mind and contorted conscience rebel, and contend that it must all be nonsense. Good for the mind and the conscience. Good for the heart that will not embrace merciless virtue or saccharine piety; good for the body that will not deny its hunger, or kneel to authority, or dance for the sake of a rumor. It seems to me – it has always seemed to me – that skepticism is actually the most reverent posture there is; the longing to know for ourselves for sure, not to be misled; the willingness to take responsibility for discovering what, if anything, might be actually worthy of our worship, and to give our reverence to nothing less.

An abridged version of the sermon was published in UU World. The full text and audio is available on the First Unitarian Society of Minneapolis website.

Spiritual Atheism

I think I remember losing my belief in god at a young age and concluding that my nonbelief forever separated me from the world of traditional Western spirituality. Chris Stedman in Faitheist: How An Atheist Found Common Ground with the Religious shows by example that nonbelievers can be part of the interfaith brotherhood and live morally-driven lives. This cracks open a metaphorical window that had been painted shut since my early adolescence. His story is a persuasive argument that there can me much more that unites believers and nonbelievers than separates them. This helped me feel a little less marginalized as a nonbeliever.

This was a jolt to my way of thinking that gave me a big psychological boost. I had been thinking and reading a little about the question of whether an atheist can be spiritual, and if so, what that would look like. And now, after Faitheist, I am stunned at how open to new thinking I feel at this stage in my adulthood. I had honestly felt that my mind had been made up about these things years ago. So before this window slams firmly shut again, I'm trying to cram in a fair amount of new thinking and reflection.

I started with a book whose title sounded right on target for my quest. But Spiritual Atheism by Steve Antinoff is a dud. Its provocative title belies its theme of straight-up Zen Buddhism. I don't think life is inherently miserable or that we are overrun with deep contradictions that can only be transcended by meditating several hours per day. I just can't see that as my path to a godless spirituality.

Tom Owen-Towle, in Wresting with God: A Unitarian Universalist Guide for Skeptics and Believers, argues richly that atheists are not a monolith. There are several atheist "postures", from dogmatic atheism, to those who are indifferent to a god concept, to enlightened nonbelievers--who Clark Wells notes reject human idols and seek truth beyond them.

French philosopher Andre Comte-Sponville's The Little Book of Atheist Spirituality is the most sophisticated exploration of the concept of spirituality for nonbelievers that I've looked at so far. Sharing Christ Stedman's brotherly attitude toward those he doesn't agree with, he states that he wrote the book not out of hatred of religion, but out of love of philosophy. And he believes atheism doesn't preclude spirituality: "Not believing in God does not prevent me from having a spirit, nor does it exempt me from having to use it....Being an atheist by no means implies that I should castrate my soul....Renouncing religion by no means implies renouncing spiritual life."

He describes his own spiritual experiences in which he feels a sudden serene and delightful sense of oneness with the world. These rare experiences, he says, have been the most joyous moments in his life. I don't know if this is what I am looking for, or what spirituality could look like in my life. I haven't had the kind of experience he describes, and frankly, it seems foreign and out of reach to me.

But there is a kind of thinking that Owen-Towle notes which I find promising for nonbelievers. He quotes Unitarian Universalist minister Stephan Papa, who says:

I call myself a mystical agnostic because even though we cannot know about a creator or sustainer, we do know, I believe, that the proper response to the miracle of existence is wonder, awe, worship, allegiance. So I append the word mystical. On the intellectual level, I am an agnostic; on the emotional, a mystic. Will I ever be whole? Will I ever know? Probably not?

Comte-Sponville rejects the existence of god but recognizes that the question of why there is something rather than nothing cannot be answered. To me that points toward the existence of one, for lack of a better term, miracle. I don't believe in religious miracles in our world. But I agree with Comte-Sponville that the existence of the world as a whole is unexplainable. Deep reflection on that fact brings me the closest I can get to a sense of spirituality without any belief in the supernatural.

Does this mean that all of the existence is--again, for a lack of a better term--divine? That would be pantheism, which Owen-Towle includes in his broad definition of theism.

I find a certain beauty in this journey driven by both intellectual curiosity and deep spiritual hunger. I feel a strong sense of humility in how very apparent it is that I don't have all the answers to the mysteries of existence.

I recently splurged on a Unitarian Universalist chalice necklace. I see the flaming chalice as a concrete symbol of what Unitarian Universalism is to me these days: an honest and humble commitment to introspection and deep reflection--a process rather than a conclusion. I find solace in the chalice.

Must Christmas happen every year?

Christmas is hard for me because I have a particularly difficult, mentally ill relative who has ruined several recent family gatherings. I am also an atheist opposed to consumerism.

I'm beginning to see myself as a cultural Christian. I never hear people use that term, but I think it applies widely. There seem to be many people raised Christian who later drop some or most of their beliefs and rarely or never attend church. But the major major holidays they observe still have an obvious Christian element. And Christian churches are where these people attend big life events--weddings and funerals.

I hear the term cultural or secular Jew more often. But Jewishness is different, since one can be ethnically Jewish. I suppose then I need to think about whether we can call people who are of European decent ethnically Christian.

At any rate, Christmas for me is pain. Last year I attended a Unitarian Universalist service Christmas Sunday not to celebrate the holiday, but to have a venue among my peers to reflect on my sadness. Incidentally, the service included an uplifting Jesus story. But I was there for the same reason I went to a service on the tenth anniversary of 9/11--to get through it by being around people.

But I am a perfectly clumsy contradiction. I am listening to a Christmas album as I type this. It is not a conventional Christmas album. It is Mary Chapin Carpenter's Come Darkness, Come Light: Twelve Songs of Christmas. Many of the songs are originals and overall the album isn't very Christmassy, but rather Carpenter's typical mellow and thoughtful folk.

And this isn't even the first Christmas album I've been spinning even before Thanksgiving. Atheist-Interfaith guru Chris Stedman (author of the book I blogged recently about) reminded me in a tweet that Sufjan Stevens had a new album out. Sufjan once announced that he would release an album for every state in the USA. He completed two state albums (Illinoise is mesmerizing) and took a break to record a five-volume Christmas album. That was 2006. Now, in 2012, this nut has released Volumes 6-10.

Sufjan's Christmas music is extremely unconventional, and hearing it drove me to revisit Mary Chapin Carpenter's 2008 holiday release, whose music is more conventional, though not very conventional for a Christmas album, since its Chistmassiness is for the most part subtle.

I'm an atheist trying to understand my Christian cultural identity, and my appreciation for Christmas music, however nontraditional, is a piece of that puzzle.

Faitheism

Faitheist: How an Atheist Found Common Ground with the Religious by Chris Stedman is a book that had to be written. Raised in a largely nonreligious household, Stedman became a born again Christian in his early adolescence by his own initiative. He then agonized over the Bible's condemnation of homosexuality as he began to discover his own gayness. He distanced himself from Christianity and eventually stopped believing in god. He became a militant atheist, happy to offend believers, and once in a drunken rage, vandalizing church property.

Yet he happened to be studying religion in college and learned through a series of transformative interpersonal experiences that he wanted to build bridges between the religious and nonreligious. He had a natural drive to serve people in need and felt at home with faith-driven individuals who shared this drive. Moreover, only by sharing his story as a queer atheist did he form deep and rewarding relationships within the interfaith community. He concluded that it was fruitless to define himself by his atheism, since atheism is about what one doesn't believe. He writes:

I am far more concerned about whether people are pluralistic in their worldview--if they oppose totalitarianism and believe those of different religious and nonreligious identities should be free to live as they choose and cooperate around shared values--than I am about whether someone believes in God or not.

He argues that the "New Atheist" movement, led by such writers as Richard Dawkins, Sam Harris, and the late Christopher Hitchens, are too confrontational and give atheists a bad name. I happen to appreciate the image of Christopher Hitchens touring the world and sharply criticizing theism as he is dying of cancer, and Richard Dawkin's pressing Muslims to reveal that they believe death should be the penalty for infidelity.

I think that Stedman's outlook is going to broaden the atheist movement. There is no grand council of atheists who set an agenda. His approach of building bridges rather than walls and working across religious lines to fight suffering, injustice, and extremism can become part of the atheist movement. His conviction that the interfaith movement must welcome not only those of diverse religions but also the nonreligious (and should in fact name itself something that doesn't include faith) is gaining traction.

Stedman notes the folly of writing a memoir in his mid twenties. But his story needs to be shared. There are many nonreligious people out there who don't believe in the supernatural, but respect--or heck, are even drawn to--religious traditions. There are nonbelievers whose cultural identity is still Christian, Jewish, or Muslim, and that is simply a part of who they are.

Stedman's openness and respect of for religious people has impacted my thinking. I find myself feeling for the Catholics I know who are non-practicing, but still have some of their Catholic beliefs, leaving them conflicted and guilt laden. For Pete's sake, I don't respect Catholicism, but I'd prefer that these people find peace in their faith.

And I don't share Stedmen's distaste of the New Atheist movement. I think that in a pluralistic society, nothing is so sacred as to be free from public criticism. But I think he is changing the atheist movement by inserting his style into it, broadening it into a more robust movement that welcomes freethinkers and can ally with moderate religious individuals.

Is the world enough?

Does spirituality require the existence of the supernatural? I've always thought it would be easier to feel spiritual if you believe in God, miracles, witchcraft, or psychics.

But if any of the above are real, would they be supernatural? Wouldn't they then be simply natural? They would be part of all that verifiably exists in the world. They would be within the boundaries of the actual world.

Could people draw a sense of spirituality from these things if any of them were real? Or if the existence of any of these things were certain, would many people still long for something more and believe in things beyond the boundaries of what is verifiably real?

I'm a skeptic who has not been convinced of the existence of the supernatural. So I believe there is a pretty clear boundary between the real and the unreal. Everything that actually exists is inside that boundary. I reject the supernatural. I don't believe in ghosts, god, miracles, witchcraft, or the like. Can I be spiritual with what remains?

The mere fact of existence--something rather than nothing exists--is profound and awe-inspiring. And reflecting on my own existence is enough to snap be out of the most tedious daily routine. Not only does the world exist, but I am able to observe and reflect on it. On top of that, I am not alone in my consciousness. All other human beings are conscious. New conscious people come into the world and others leave it. I came into the world and I will leave it. I have a body and I can't leave it. I feel pleasure and pain. When my body dies, I am gone. I interact with the world around me, both natural and manmade. I can feel great pleasure in the ocean or in great cities.

Is none of this enough? Is the world not enough?

Spiritual but not religious

There's an interesting opinion piece on CNN, critical of the seemingly increasing number of young people identifying as "spiritual but not religious". I'm in a mood just to take some nips at the article.

The author Alan Miller notes:

Christianity has been interwoven and seminal in Western history and culture. As Harold Bloom pointed out in his book on the King James Bible, everything from the visual arts, to Bach and our canon of literature generally would not be possible without this enormously important work.

I submit that the huge influence of the bible on art does not make any of its supernatural claims true. It is not a contradiction, as with Christopher Hitchens, to be an atheist who appreciates the bible as an important work. But I get Miller's point: the influence of the bible is pervasive in our culture, probably making even non-believers secular, cultural christians, the same was there are many people who identify as secular/cultural jews. Miller continues:

Indeed, it was through the desire to know and read the Bible that reading became a reality for the masses - an entirely radical moment that had enormous consequences for humanity.

Indeed, yes. But I have a hard time seeing this as more than an accident of history. Half a millennium ago, some Christians--namely protestants--believed that all people should be able to directly experience the divine through scripture. The purpose was not emancipating and empowering individuals and creating a liberal, democratic world fueled by an emphasis on education. Those were unintended consequences of a movement to equip people with the ability to read one (or two, depending on how you slice it) book. (See this article for a stimulating discussion about what the protestants' purpose of education was>)

I am however quite grateful for this. Intentional or not, it left my culture with a long tradition of education that should be celebrated.

Miller closes the article with a fair point:

Theirs is a world of fence-sitting, not-knowingess, but not-trying-ness either. Take a stand, I say. Which one is it? A belief in God and Scripture or a commitment to the Enlightenment ideal of human-based knowledge, reason and action? Being spiritual but not religious avoids having to think too hard about having to decide.

I think there is a choice and that sincere thoughtfulness leads to the latter option. The hilarious Stuff White People Like pokes fun at these hipsters from (I strongly suspect) the other site of the political spectrum. The blog contends that upper-middle-class liberal kids tend to dabble in "religions their parents don't belong to",  excluding islam because it requires too much of a commitment. The skeptic looks at this in wonder, as these hipsters reject one mythology only to embrace another. Perhaps it is a normal and even healthy part of a young person's evolution.

My interest is in what possibilities there are to be spiritual but not mystical. Some skeptics make an attempt to explore this, but it doesn't satisfy me. Sam Harris thinks there is some possibility for an atheist to experience transcendence, for example. I need to search for more thought on spiritual atheism.

Muslim or Liberal Democrat?

I understand that a significant minority of conservative Americans tell pollsters they believe that President Obama is a Muslim. I had assumed that this is perfectly contradictory, since a Muslim surely wouldn't endorse gay marriage. But it is a mistake to assume all Muslims are fundamentalists.

It turns out that American Muslims may be divided over gay rights. I'm impressed.

I don't think Obama is a Muslim. But I am inclined to doubt he is even Christian. I understand my own bias here. I want to believe that all intelligent, thoughtful people are atheists and that he is Christian for political purposes.

Death, Class, and Sesame Street

In a 1982 episode of Sesame Street, cast members explained to Big Bird that shopkeeper Mr. Hooper had died and wasn't coming back. They dealt with death head on and avoided using any euphemisms. They told Big Bird Mr. Hooper had died--not "passed away" or "passed on".

Paul Fussell, in his book Class: A Guide Through the American Status System, notes that speaking euphemistically about death is a quirk of the American middle class. They will say that their loved one passed on or passed away, while the upper class won't have any of it. Like the humans on Sesame Street, they speak directly about death.

This was a bold and respected move by Sesame Street. They avoided coy language about death that is bound to confuse children. And as a public program with a diverse audience, they left religious interpretation to parents, who could discuss the episode afterwards with their kids.

I speculate that this was a moment of exchanging values across class lines. Sesame Street's upper class writers and producers offered middle class parents an example of their alternate approach to the world.

Alternate Histories

If you happen upon a time machine, the first thing you are supposed to do is kill Hitler before he unleashes his terror on the world. This is done with the very best of intentions in Stephen Fry's Making History, but the outcome is not what the protagonist hoped it would be.

Without Hitler, an equally charismatic but far more clever and patient German leader emerges. This man, Rudolph Gloder, privately assures the country's Jewish scientists that they are safe in Germany despite his public posturing against them. The country develops the atomic bomb and uses it to destroy Moscow and Leningrad. All of Europe capitulate as Nazi Germany invades the Soviet Union and swiftly relocates the continent's Jews to Czechoslovakia where it fully implements the Final Solution. The United States develops nuclear weapons soon after and threatens war when word of Nazi atrocities spreads across the Atlantic. But Germany reveals its superior weaponry and forces America to back down as a cold war ensues. America in the 1990s is a segregated, socially conservative, police state. Nazi Europe, however, thrives economically and is home to the world's leading high-tech industry.

There is no time machine in Christopher Priest's The Separation, only a well-crafted mix of fantasy and history. In it, Britain reaches a truce with Nazi Germany in 1941 under the condition that the Nazi's leave Western Europe and the British Empire alone, but have a free hand in the east. Britain is left responsible for relocating Jews in Nazi territory to Madagascar.

The novel gives only limited details of the course of world history from 1941 to modern day. Britain remains a thriving world power. The United States and Germany stagnate as they drain their resources in an endless war over former Soviet territory. Jews are in constant violent conflict with the natives of Madagascar.

I found Making History chilling. The Nazis had a real chance of succeeding and only Hitler himself stood in their way. And The Separation is mind-expanding. It presents an alternate balance of power in Europe. Germany, rather than the United States, keeps the Soviets out of Western Europe. I think this is Pat Buchanan's thesis that nobody seems to give a fair chance: that Germany and the Soviet Union could have been left alone to destroy each other.

I would have liked The Separation to have painted a more detailed picture of the contemporary world resulting from its divergent history. Does the British Empire remain intact? Does the whole of it thrive as much as the mother country?

Crossing the Nation

So this young guy carried a big cross form Texas to DC, on foot. One end of the cross has wheels, but it didn't look comfortable.

Local News Story

Two thoughts:

1) Did he notice how fucking ugly much of the country is as he walked Wal-Mart to McDonald's to Home Depot, to Wal-Mart?

2) The TV station couldn't find any articulate members of the cross carrier's church to interview.

Apocalypse How

As a kid I was terrified of nuclear war. I had nightmares and couldn't stop thinking about it while awake. I don't know how the adults in my life let me watch Threads, a frighteningly gruesome portrayal of the aftermath of an all-out nuclear exchange. The film's imagery probably planted the seeds of the paranoia I felt for years.

I gradually replaced these fears with more mundane anxieties. But I still have an interest in apocalyptic fiction. So when Newt Gingrich made a splash recently on Twitter, I took the bait:

Friend and coauthor bill forstchen notes washington-baltimore blackout mild taste of what an emp (electromagnetic pulse) attack would do

Forstchen's novel "one second after" is an amazingly vivid story of small town's struggles after all electricity has been destroyed by emp  

The novel's scenario is the detonation of three nuclear weapons high over the continental US. There is no blast damage, but the electromagnetic pulse destroys all microcircuitry, knocking out our power grid and all modern electronic devices. Civilization breaks down with the abrupt end to transportation of food and medical supplies. The small town at the center of the story, even with its strong and thoughtful leadership responding to the crisis as good as anyone might, loses upwards of 80% of its population in the year following the attack.

Even when contact with the wider world is reestablished, no one knows who is responsible for the attack. Texas and its neighbors break from the US and Chinese aid workers enter the west US with no indication that they ever plan to leave. I would love to have seen even a little more speculation about what is happening in hotspots through the world as a result of a collapsed America. In the story, North Korea, Iran, and Saudi Arabia are nuked, but I want to know more. What happens to Israel when its main ally is neutralized? What are China's moves other than its massive, ostensible aid effort?

There are other apocalyptic books of much higher quality than One Second After. Pat Frank's Alas, Babylon is a memorizing and probably realistic chronicle of the effects of a nuclear war on a small community that is not directly hit. The facts of the story are similar to those of One Second After, but the storyteller is plainly better.

I'm also in love with James Howard Kunstler's World Made by Hand series. Kunstler is a peak oil doomer, but you don't have to accept peak oil for the story to be plausible, since his apocalypse depends also on terrorists nuking Los Angeles and Washington. And in his story, the collapse of our civilization is a vague background that seems barely relevant. In fact, any number of scenarios, including Pat Frank's or William Forstchen's could be that background.

Kunstler tells tales of Union Grove, New York existing as a subsistence farming community some time after the apocalypse. Kunstler paints a very well thought out picture, down to vivid descriptions of his characters' post-apocalypse diet.

In a nutshell, residents of Union Grove live in a world truly made by hand. There are no modern machines and everything is built and maintained using local materials. There is a general sense that technology failed humanity and thus a growing return to mysticism.

I suppose you could pick apart any genre and separate the crap from the quality. Kunstler's contributions are the quality part in this case.

Why Atheists Come to Church

Part I: http://youtu.be/XJv8HcK0awY
Part II: http://youtu.be/e2CgZWq2XvU
Part III: http://youtu.be/oIpXirbzz-0

Food Chain

I remember my first Chipotle burrito. The chicken tasted pre-cooked. What I read here makes sense to me. The national chain pre-cooks all its meat in a central location from which it ships all over the continent to be reheated at local restaurants.

Chain restaurants should be avoided even merely as an act of support for your local economy. But in this case, if you want fresh meat, skip Chipotle and try your local burrito joint.

UPDATE (6/9/13): I've since seen meat being cooked at Chipotle.

Carz

I used to think a lot more about cars. As a teen, I could spot any car half a mile away and name its make and model. I resented how my family didn't own a luxury car. I was a very materialistic teenager. I'm not sure where that came from. I think I was rebelling against the extreme frugality my family practiced.

It is funny how people change. Now I'm a frugal Y_____ all around. There are some comical examples in my family of aversion to spending money on cars. And this is different from the upper middle class drivers of old Volvos and Saabs, since, heck, these are still higher end cars. My uncle, a P__________, surely could have afforded fancy car. But instead he drove a Y____, one of the smallest and least expensive cars at the time. My father never owned a car.

I started my adult life owning a car and then went a few years without driving. Now my job requires that I own a car and I resent it.

Conan O'Brien Can't Stop

When I first heard that Conan O'Brien was to take over the Tonight Show, I thought our culture was having one of its better moments. The highest quality entertainment isn't always the most popular. This is ok, especially with technology easing access to even the most obscure movie, song, or novel. But I still thought it was nifty that Conan would be given the top late night spot after so many years of the popular, yet tragically unfunny Leno.

I finally got around to watching the Conan O'Brien Can't Stop, the documentary about Conan's comedy tour shortly after he left the Tonight Show. Through candid interviews and fly-on-the-wall filming, we see a fuller picture of Conan than I've ever seen before. Even in a previous hour long interview, he almost only was in comedy mode. In the documentary we see someone struggling with anger and a sense of loss. He often uses comedy to deal with it, but he is just as often simply despondent.

I was fascinated to see him get sick of greeting all his fans. He tries his best to be pleasant, but he is clearly exhausted and eventually instructs his people to limit access. In another scene, we see a real test of his personality. A fan asks for special help in ensuring that he can get into the show. The problem is that the fan very casually uses an antisemitic slur when making the request. Conan is shocked and flustered, and points out that they will need his Jewish producer's help. He asks them to promise to never use the slur again. Yet, I wonder if he should half helped them at all. But I can imagine who terrible it would be if Conan didn't flinch.

Nature

I understand finding a certain closeness with nature is important to a lot of people. There is a sense of peace and purity available in nature and people seem to manage to derive all sorts of spiritual feelings from this. Connectedness with nature seems to fit with whatever spiritual system at hand, even if it is an awkward christian admiration of god's alleged creations. I like to come at it with a forced ignorance of established religious thinking and appreciate the basic connection I have to the natural world, being an animal composed of basic elements. I realize that I've caught some Emersonianism here as I find meaning in my personal experience with nature.

But I've also grown skeptical of many people's actual exercise of connecting with nature. I feel like a large minority of nature lovers in my region either have Lyme Disease or are at serious risk of it. There is no alternative to thoroughly examining your whole body for ticks after being in the woods and it is a hassle. The risk and all the effort required to avoid infection take a fair amount of pleasure out of going into the woods.

And I never feel more connected with the natural world than when my cat is sitting on my lap purring. No matter how much one loves nature, almost every species' survival depends on its instinct to flee when a human gets anywhere near it. I find it hard to feel deeply connected to nature when no animal wants to be anywhere near me. A bond with a pet is a very real connection with nature where a human can develop a closeness with another species.

I also understand that many feel an affection for the natural world because much of the man-made world is unpleasant. My response to the hideousness of much of the built environment is to be drawn to a better built environment. In that sense, I appreciate quality places, natural and man made, with an open preference for the man made. And my favorite natural environment is the ocean. Perhaps this is because the edge between a man-made environment and the naturalness of the ocean is always clear. Encroachment into the woods is inevitable, but the coastal city must end at the ocean.

Dancing the funeral dance

Funerals are supposed to be sad? I suppose if someone dies prematurely, yes. But when the deceased has lived a full life into old age, it is different.

I just attended such a funeral. Rather than everyone crying their faces off, it was an uplifting celebration of a life. And more than that, it was an intimate gathering of family and friends who might not see each other as often as they'd like.

I know a funeral for the 35 year-old cancer victim would be all mourning. No one wants to experience that. But the pain in this funeral was minimal.

I've been dying to see the HBO movie Game Change, adapted from the Sarah Palin chapters of the John Heilemann and Mark Halperin chronicle of the 2008 presidential campaign. I don't have HBO and I'm not splurging just for the movie, so I picked up the book. I figured that if the screenwriter can focus exclusively on the Palin part, I don't have to read beyond that section either.

The book describes Palin as just plain stupid. She can memorize lines and read a teleprompter as good as anyone, and she has no trouble appearing confident before a huge crowd. So perhaps with a little more prep, she could have come across as competent. But otherwise she's an incurious fool who thinks Saddam Hussein orchestrated 9/11 and had to refer Obama's running mate as Joe because no matter how many times her McCain's staff reminded her, she couldn't help but call him O'Biden.

I couldn't help but also read the parts about John Edwards' bizarre self-destruction. Now here is a guy who is by all accounts intelligent. Pre-politics, he was an extremely successful trial lawyer. But he acted extremely stupidly. I never liked the guy in the first place. I remember people talking about his good looks and nice hair, while I thought he looked like a young boy whose mother cut his hair for him. And how many times did he tell us his father worked in a mill? Anyway, he imploded personally and professionally and won't be running for office again.

I'll still watch the movie when I can because I have a guilty addiction to political theater.

I should have started here

One hour interview with the author.

http://www.c-spanvideo.org/program/66144-1

Ralph Waldo Emerson: A Huge Bore

I made it about halfway through Richardson's Emerson: A Mind on Fire before giving up and reading Emerson's Wikipedia article. I suppose I chose the wrong book. I didn't need over 500 pages chronicling every month of the man's life and every book he read and when. My goal was to learn about some of the intellectual heritage of Unitarian Universalism. The actual result is a need to take a long break from reading. Perhaps it is time to pick up a novel or two.

Emerson quickly outgrew the confines of what was still in the 19th century a quite christian Unitarian church.. He produced all sorts of stimulating thoughts. He thought historical religious revelation was unimportant in the face of the direct religious experience we can have ourselves in the present day. He thought god was in all of nature. He shocked believers and never apologized for saying Jesus was just a man.

That's literally it. I should have started with the Wikipedia article. Among every tiring detail of Emerson's life, I learned that though he was as avid a reader as one could possibly be, he advocated reading only what excites and interests you. If a chapter doesn't stimulate you, skip it. If a book is a bore, read something else. I took his advice a couple hundred pages too late.

An entertainment complex in the middle of a sewage plant

I'm high on Neil deGrasse Tyson this weekend.

In criticizing intelligent design, he points some obvious flaws in the human body. For example, unlike dolphins and whales, we use the same hole to eat, breath, and speak--so inevitably a certain number of people die every year of choking. And no engineer would have created what we have between our legs, which he calls "an entertainment complex in the middle of a sewage plant".

An audience member at an appearance asked him what he, lacking belief in god, would do with the knowledge that he is about to be executed. His answer:

I would request that my body, in death, be buried, not cremated, so that the energy content contained within it gets returned to the earth, so that flora and fauna can dine upon it, just as I have dined upon flora and fauna throughout my life.

When he speaks he takes command of the subject. He rolls fluently through any thought, often in ten-minute pieces. He is that special kind of mind that produces spontaneous speech as clear and refined as a piece of writing that has been drafted, revised and rewritten.

I'm still mourning the loss of Christopher Hitchens. It hurts to know that there will never be any new material from him. So it is all the more delightful that Neil deGrasse Tyson is among the living.

Meanwhile, I am schlepping through a biography of Ralph Waldo Emerson. I can only report so far that he was smart and said an inspiring thing or two by the time he hit his mid thirties. Otherwise, he is a snooze fest.

(NASA photo via Wikipedia)

Lottofest

Everyone is talking about the huge lottery jackpot and what they would do if they won it.

I'm not rich. I have challenges in my life, but none of them are the result of lacking wealth. In fact, I think the discipline required to earn a living keeps my idiosyncrasies in check.

You have to wonder what Michael Jackson would have been like without fame and fortune. He might have been unhappy with his appearance, like a lot of people are, but he would never have had cosmetic surgery. Maybe he'd have trouble sleeping, like many people do, but he would be taking Ambien; he wouldn't have a personal doctor injecting him with Propofol. Sure, he would probably be a weird and unhappy guy, but with the pressure of having to make ends meet and lack of riches, there's a good chance his weirdness wouldn't balloon like it did in the actual course his life took.

I have a lot of wealth in my life, earned and otherwise, that cannot be measured in dollars. And I think work is good for my soul.

Santorum on college

Funny how Dick Santorum calls Obama a snob for wanting everyone to go to college, where they'll be indoctrinated by liberal professors.

I agree that not everyone should go to college. There are reports of a struggle to fill mid-skill jobs even with our high unemployment. There is demand for machinists and nurses, who can get work with less than a bachelor's degree, but not so much for folks with a bachelor's in comparative literature, art history, or psychology. On the other hand, there there are traditional college paths that still lead to a career. But there is still a dead zone of undergraduate education that leads to jobs that don't require a degree or serve no measurable purpose but admission into graduate school.

And yes, college professors are almost always very liberal. But fear of liberal indoctrination is a sad reason to avoid college if college is otherwise an key part of your path forward. If this fear is real for someone, my suggestion would be to choose a very large school where the chance of ideological diversity is high. In that atmosphere, a student can be enlightened by exposure to many worldviews without being suffocated by any single one.

Hitchens on Jefferson

I don't know why Christopher Hitchens wrote a biography of Thomas Jefferson (Thomas Jefferson: Author of America). Hitchens is a piercing, irreverent thinker, and the book is a rather short and conventional chronicle of the founder.

The book is well written; I've come to appreciate Hitchens' skilled prose. And in its survey of Jefferson's life, it thoughtfully addresses those things I'd expect to be most relevant to Hitchens: Jefferson's role in putting revolutionary ideas into action and his dismissal of religion. But wouldn't it have been more worthwhile to expand those sections and eliminate the remaining chronology that has surely been covered many times over?

I happen to still be interested in Jefferson and might read on. Jefferson is a very powerful figure, especially for a Unitarian Universalist of sorts like myself. He wrote the "Jefferson Bible" by removing mystical references from the Gospels to reveal what he considered the unadulterated moral teachings of Jesus. It pleases me greatly that Jefferson is considered the "author of America" when religious folks assert that America's founding was unquestioningly Christian.

Unitarian Universalists consider Jefferson a Unitarian of sorts. They note his deism and continue to circulate the Jefferson Bible. And they certainly respect his guiding role in codifying our civil and religious liberties. But it recently became too much for the Unitarian Universalist Association of Congregations to continue to have their Southeast District named after a slave owner. (Now it is simply the Southeast District.) UUists are good enough not to see Jefferson purely in black and white, and their interest in him remains. But through careful deliberation and a vote, they determined that even though Jefferson had taken some steps to fight the institution of slavery, even going as far as proposing abolition in a draft of the Declaration of Independence, had remained an owner of human beings and there had to be some punishment for that.



Jefferson also founded and designed what is now the original core of the University of Virginia. His ideal of orienting higher education around a familial relationship between student and teacher is one we can revisit as the quickly rising cost of college leads to inevitable crisis and reform. Students and parents will increasingly be asking themselves what makes college worthwhile. It is my hope that colleges respond by competing to craft clearly worthwhile programs. Jefferson's Academical Village will be an honorable source of inspiration.

Bachmann versus Stern

Howard Stern criticized Michele Bachmann's position on gays, and Bachmann replied that Stern is a corrupter of our youth.


Howard Stern is brilliantly funny and terribly offensive. He spawned dozens of much less talented "shock jocks" around the country who haphazardly apply what they think is his formula for success: simply be outrageous. But that's not enough. Stern is brilliant and original and surrounds himself with other brilliant and original people. He's outrageously honest about himself and expects the same of others. There is no better interviewer than Howard Stern because he cuts straight to what people want to know.

There's a major misconception about Howard Stern. People think that because his humor is lewd and irreverent, he is therefore an immoral and indecent person. There's an illogical leap there. Stern is an entertainer who brings joy to his listeners' lives. And he just happens to be morally driven. At a time when leaders are still kicking gays for political gain--or worse, because their value system calls them to do so--Stern has been a solid supporter of equal rights.

I think Howard Stern is morally superior to Michele Bachmann. While she kicks a minority, he speaks up for them.

Method versus message

I'm concerned that the occupy movement has clouded its message by sparking a debate over whether it is legal, or even morally acceptable, to take up residence in a public park.

I think there is a very clear difference between this protest method and thoughtfully carried out civil disobedience. When staging a sit-in at a whites-only lunch counter, protestors didn't think they had the right to remain there indefinitely. They expected to be arrested. Getting arrested was one way to draw attention to the protest.

The occupy protestors, on the other hand, seem to believe they have a right to take over a public park. When they are forcibly removed, they feel that a terrible injustice has occurred. Even worse, they take this as an attack on their message and they fight for their claim to public parkland as tenaciously as they protest for equality.

This is where their method clouds their message. Their concerns about inequality resonate widely. But it is hard to see their claim to parkland as some kind of fundamental right. I'm obviously no lawyer, but if a public park is a public resource, it makes sense that access is unlimited as long as a group doesn't limit access to others. (I can't even begin to wrap my small mind around how to figure out who has what right to that one park overtaken in Manhattan that is "Privately Owned Public Space".)

Now having said this, that the occupy movement's method clouds is message, I am not impressed with the way public officials have responded to the movement. I think the protesters should in most cases be permitted to remain, simply because it is just against the spirit of a robust democracy to forcefully end a generally peaceful protest. It is especially troubling that the US has dropped down to 47th in the Reporters Without Borders press freedom index, partly because of all the members of the press who have been scooped up in mass arrests at occupy protests.

Hitchens memoir

It was cruel irony for Christopher Hitchens to be diagnosed with what would ultimately be terminal cancer while on tour promoting his memoir. Or maybe it was dumb luck that he happened to pen his autobiography just barely before his premature and unforeseeable death. I am taking it as the latter, a random and wonderful gift.

Most of the biographies or autobiographies I've read are by or about modern politicians--usually presidents or wannabe presidents. And these aren't all that good. The plot is already well known, and any surprises are discussed right away in the media. My fascination with the subject personalities only happened to far outweighed the shortcomings of the genre.

Hitchens' memoir, on the other hand, is a treat. I didn't know much about his life, so his story is fresh to me. If this were the memoir of a high profile politician, these spoilers might be covered pre-release on the evening news:

• Hitchens was bisexual, even if he never identified as such. His first romance, involving exchange of poetry and almost sex, was with a classmate at his all-male boarding school. He went on to sleep with a number of men up through at least young adulthood. He notes that later on, his looks declined so much that only women would sleep with him.
• His mother's early death was part of a bizarre double suicide. After Hitchens and his brother grew up and moved out, his mother left his father and took a lover. Eventually mother and lover killed themselves together. Hitchens never knew precisely why they did this.
• He didn't discover he was Jewish until his late 30s. His mother kept it secret from the family, in part so that she could raise her firstborn to be a proper Englishman.

But these are barely a page of tidbits from a lengthy autobiography. The theme I experience is the recollections and self-reflection of a great mind. He looks at the complex world of paradoxical people, himself included (hence the title), and makes some sense of it. Quite telling is his explanation of his first visit to America as a young man. He was a radical socialist at the time and the Vietnam war was raging. Yet he fell in love with America, with all its vastness and diversity. He appreciated the philosophy stated in the founding documents and was later impressed that the free press and the rule of law brought Nixon down.

Hitchens' positions on a couple big issues seemed to define him in his final years. One, through which I was introduced to him, is his very public atheism. However, he writes only briefly about this in his bio. He instead dedicates a lengthy chapter to Iraq and his unfashionable support for the American invasion. Perhaps his atheism doesn't need much of an explanation. Serious people tend to be familiar with the case for it and are often sympathetic to it. But the Iraq stance may have caught people by surprise. A British-born intellectual with a lifelong history as a radical socialist wasn't expected to support the invasion. Heck, he had even opposed the first Iraq war. It only makes sense then that his final chapter address how one changes their mind. He ultimately became an advocate of democracy and pluralism with less, if any, remaining concern for socialism.

His tales of lifelong friendships are moving. He writes of deep and enduring intellectual and emotional intimacy with a small circle of writers. His children and two wives, oddly, get barely a mention. Perhaps this is not the part of his life he thinks will interest people. On the other hand, he reports over many pages the results of his deep search through his newfound Jewish ancestry.

I have some lingering questions: I'd like to know more about his immediate family life. I don't feel that he ever adequately explains why he had to become a radical socialist. And I don't think his explanation of his position on Iraq is adequate. But I am damn thankful he wrote his memoir just in the nick of time.

College Websites

I don't really appreciate college websites that are professionally crafted advertisements for undergraduate enrollment, especially for low quality schools with low graduation rates. Too many students are enrolling already in these colleges already. I'm not a prospective student. I'm either looking at a college website as an alumnus, neighbor, or just with random curiosity about an institution. Perhaps these schools don't depend much on alumni donations, expect good town-gown relations, or care to expand their profile among just anyone who happens to be interested. But these all seem like important thing so me, someone who sees colleges as something much more than their freshman class.

These lower tier schools also seem packed with fiction. And not merely in slight exaggeration of their qualities, but rather in something closer to claiming the opposite of reality. Schools with open admissions and low graduation rates claim a quality academic experience and highlight student achievement. Lifeless commuter colleges tout a rich campus life. The worst offenders of course are the for-profits. They present themselves as something other than a scam to collect financial aid cash. (The oddest misrepresentation is the very existence of a private, for-profit called "American Public University".)

But the lower tier schools with dubious website content are much more serious institutions than the for-profit schools. Despite their open enrollment and low graduation rates, they usually graduate a plurality of their students and enrich their communities. And although they are not elite research machines, they typically do produce some research and even have noteworthy institutions on campus, such as small business services, arts programs, and policy institutes. But I would like to see their websites provide honest information about the schools, rather than try to convey their amazingness to potential undergraduates.