Inspiration, Imagination, and the Deep Well of Human Impulses

                                                                                            A publication by Dr. Tiffany B. Twain  

                                                                                                                     November 10, 2009

Writers have manifested, since the very advent of the written word, a wide range of fascinating and mysterious motivations for their impulses.  For the sake of simplicity, imagine these impulses categorized into Angelic motives and Demonic motives.  Personally, I love the sublime inspirations of Angelic motivations, as opposed to the very wide variety of darker drives.  Foremost amongst these Angelic impulses is the inspiration by a Muse. 

  Oh, Muses of divine Inspiration, your evocative powers are summonsed

 Nine daughters of the supreme ruler of the Greek heavens, all-powerful Zeus

  And of fair and reasonable Mnemosyne, the graceful Titan goddess of Memory

   Please provide us with clear insights, and all the best understandings we can deduce.

                   ‘Introductory Ode’ to Comprehensive Global Perspective: An Illuminating Worldview

Jack London and Mark Twain, two of America’s greatest writers, were both poignantly inspired by feminine Muses.  London was a bold and very masculine writer who invented a fictional character named Martin Eden for one of his most self-revelatory novels.  Martin was, in many respects, a reflection of London’s own life.  Martin, like Jack, worked like a dog to make a living from the time he was twelve years old.  At the age of twenty, he had already become a seasoned sailor on schooners crossing the Pacific.  He had experienced vivid adventures and endured many hardships and soaked in the sights and sounds and smells and thrills of many exotic ports of call.  Before becoming a seaman, he had gotten only the rudiments of an education.  His hardscrabble years and lack of opportunities had given him a rough-and-tumble character, so he spoke with a crude vocabulary and he had a rugged and unambitious outlook. 

“And then it happened.”

          --- Refrain from Jack London’s greatest short story, To Build a Fire.

Then Martin met Ruth.  She was a young woman whose presence struck him with fervent inspiration like a hurricane-force epiphany.  She had an alluring femininity that made his keen sensibilities quiver.  She caused him to feel a wistful but powerful yearning for a more noble and respectable life.  Ruth was a student at the University of California in Berkeley at the time, early in the twentieth Century.  She was unpretentious and well-educated and she lived what seemed to him to be a nobly refined life.  She read poetry and played the piano and conversed with a compelling intelligence.  To him, her speaking voice was beautiful and her laughter was the most musical sound in the world.  Martin passionately appreciated Ruth’s ethereal and seemingly divine beauty, and her sublime spiritual blue eyes, and her wealth of golden hair.  Deeply inspired by his budding friendship and love for Ruth, and motivated by his embarrassed mortification at his comparatively rough and uncouth ways, he resolved to get a better education and to read as many books as possible, and to learn etiquette and better manners, and to improve his grammar, and to find ways to make himself worthy of this lovely Muse.

And then it happened.  Ruth had lent wings to his imagination.  It was as if a sequence of great luminous canvases appeared before his eyes with titanic figures of love and romance and passion looming up to accomplish heroic and noble deeds.  In a moment of ‘instantaneous lucidification’, a startling epiphany came to him:

“And then, in splendor and glory, came the great idea. He would write. He would be one of the eyes through which the world saw, one of the ears through which it heard, one of the hearts through which it felt.”

“He wanted to glorify the leaders of forlorn hopes, the mad lovers, the giants that fought under stress and strain, amid terror and tragedy, making life crackle with the strength of their endeavor.”

Martin was Jack London’s semi-autobiographical protagonist in the compelling novel, Martin Eden.  Ruth was the fictional embodiment of the real life Mabel Applegarth, a young woman who intensely inspired Jack during his formative years in Oakland, California.  London’s life makes a fascinating story of its own, which Irving Stone captured well in his biographic novel of Jack London, Sailor on Horseback. 

Jack London was a contemporary of the great writer Mark Twain.  Born in 1876, London lived a hard, strenuous and adventurous life and then he died young at the age of 40 on his Beauty Ranch above Sonoma’s Valley of the Moon in 1916.  Jack London expressed his “credo” as follows:

  “I would rather be a superb meteor, every atom of me in magnificent glow,

    than a sleepy and permanent planet.  The function of man is to live, not to exist.

      I shall not waste my days trying to prolong them.  I shall use my time.”

And use his time he did.  He lived in the San Francisco Bay Area and he traveled widely, including an adventure to Alaska during the Klondike Gold Rush and a later two-year voyage around the South Pacific on a beautiful 45-foot sailboat named the Snark.   He wrote great adventure stories like The Call of the Wild and The Sea Wolf.  My favorite book of Jack London’s is Martin Eden, because of the dramatic parallels in the novel to his own life. 

Jack London sympathized with political socialism because of his identification with the causes that stoked social unrest during the Gilded Age, and due to his hard-knocks personal experiences during the Muckraking and Progressive eras.  He also had a contrasting affinity for rugged and virile individualism, and for hard work and personal achievement.  These sensibilities were oddly inconsistent with the collectivist aspects of socialism, so they created significant contradictions in his thinking and feeling.  But nonetheless, his philosophic open-mindedness was admirable and his struggles to advance socially just and egalitarian causes deserve considerable respect.

And Then There Was Mark Twain

Jack London’s infatuation with Mabel Appelgarth is reminiscent of Mark Twain’s feelings for Laura Wright, a female who fired the imagination of another iconic American writer.  Mark Twain -- still Sam Clemens, and 22-years-old at the time -- was so enamored when he met 14-year-old Laura Wright that his passion could have been a character study for cartoonist Charles Schulz in imagining Charlie Brown’s infatuation with the intriguing ‘little red-haired girl’ in his famous Peanuts comic strip.  Sam was working as an apprentice steamboat pilot on the Mississippi River when he met Laura, the niece of a fellow pilot.  Sam met Ms. Wright in New Orleans in May of 1858, and he fell hard for her.  She was a gentle, enthusiastic and down-to-earth girl with a compelling authenticity and alacrity of being.

Fred Kaplan describes Laura in his biography, The Singular Mark Twain:

She was both child and woman with a purity that appealed to him.  So too did her emerging womanhood, the charm and innocence of the Victorian archetype of the perfect wife.  Not yet fifteen, Twain remarked years later that “she was a very little girl, with a very large spirit, a long memory, a wise head, a great appetite for books.”  Her innate wisdom transcended the limits of her experience.  Her very nature was goodness;  she was the kind of woman Sam Clemens hoped he would one day marry, but at twenty-two and with so little to offer, he was not in a marriageable position. 

Sam had spent only a day or two with Laura in the Crescent City on that fateful occasion in May 1858.  Then Laura steamed off on her uncle’s river-going ship, the John J. Roe, and returned from her holiday trip to her hometown in Warsaw, Missouri.  Sam would have apparently rowed or waded anywhere to see her again, and he visited her at least once in Warsaw, “attempting to woo Laura and convince her parents that he was a desirable son-in-law, but he had no success.  She remained, though, for a long time in his feelings and in his imagination as the object of his erotic longings.”  Ooh, la la! Sam, she was so young!  Fourteen!!  A good Muse is a wonderful thing, however, so I salute Sam’s inspiration.

Author’s Invitation

These words are written as an exploration of the underlying motivations in our human experience.  They delve into our human goals and purposes and drives and intentions and impulses and desires.  As it turns out, all Earth Manifesto essays have been written partially in hopes that young people in high schools and colleges will study their wide-ranging understandings.  The importance of deeper perspectives and clearer ways of seeing the world is crucial in motivating people to become agents of positive change in a world seemingly going awry.  Chapter #31 of the opus Comprehensive Global Perspective – An Illuminating Worldview provides a fuller explanation of my perspective on students and young people.  In summary, an exposure to the rich world of ideas is a valuable and life-affirming experience, and a vital preparation for a wholesome and rewarding life and good citizenship and enervated awareness and positivity of understanding.

  “You can't depend on your judgment when your imagination is out of focus.”

                                                                                                        --- Mark Twain

The primary themes of all Earth Manifesto writings are Golden Rule fairness principles, win/win solutions to problems, the well-being of our communities, strategies for peace, the advancement of personal freedoms, social responsibility, and the need for ecologically sane policies.  Far-sighted points of view have been assembled from an extensive and diverse range of sources in order to explore ideas aimed at helping us to collectively achieve a rational and epoch-defining transition to an indefinitely sustainable human existence.  My goal in setting forth these thoughts is to broaden understandings with the hope that this undertaking will contribute to a more propitious collective destiny.

Quixotic Imaginings

Imagine yourself on a journey to South America.  You find yourself spending the night near the inexpressibly exquisite and mysterious Inca ruins of the secret ceremonial city of Machu Picchu, two thousand feet above the rumbling Urubamba River.  The sun has just set, and a luminous full moon is rising.  You bribe the guards to allow you into the extensive evocative ruins at night, and as you walk around the silent structures in their ancient and striking natural setting, you experience a feeling of awe and mystery.  You realize, in an epiphany of wonder, that both the transcendent beauty of the place and the extraordinary Incan rock architecture are inexplicable.  A tangible oceanic sensation washes over you in these environs, and you feel a sensation of eternity.  These feelings confirm a cogent and inarticulate sense of the lovely potentialities of experience and living well.  You ponder the original purpose of what is today in ruins.  You wonder if the sacred Incan astronomical ‘Intiheatana Stone’ that is found there can really do what shamanic legends say:  to open one’s vision to the spirit world.

Imagine traveling ‘Across Asia on the Cheap’ on a year-long journey around the world.  You recognize that travel is one of the best ways to achieve a change of perspective, and to broaden the mind, and to cultivate better understandings.  Imagine arriving in Nepal, and spending three weeks trekking in the Himalayas.  Your ultimate destination is Kala Patar, an 18,000 foot prominence on a ridge that looks east across a valley toward the Everest Base Camp and the world’s highest mountain.  On the day you finally ascend to Kala Patar, it is spectacularly clear.  The views of Mt. Everest and Lhotse and Nuptse and beautiful Ama Dablang are all framed in a deep purplish blue sky.  The strenuous exercise of the long trek in such foreign environs, together with the intense sunlight, have given you a compelling feeling of fitness and well-being, and the high altitude has made you giddy.  For the moment all seems well in the world.  There, you are reminded of the old Chinese proverb:  “Teachers open the door;  you enter by yourself.”

Imagine spending a month on a tropical beach located on the southwest coast of the island of Sri Lanka in the Indian Ocean.  The ocean swells approach the shore perpendicularly there and enter a sandy palm-lined cove that is a half of a mile wide.  As the swells approach the beach, they form into waves that crash across the entire width of the cove simultaneously.  Imagine bodysurfing in these perfect waves.  The warm tropical waters stimulate your senses and yet are reminiscent of the calm perfection of the womb before that startling birth event that so rudely slapped you into being.  A full moon rises above the coconut palms on the shore as the twilight gathers.  You easily catch a wave, and one after another;  each wave crests and crashes, enveloping you, and you are propelled along by the powerful impulse of the waves in vividly thrilling and exuberant illumination.  What is that?!  Phosphorescent bioluminescence sparkles like magic in the turbulent white water as you ride the wave all the way in to the white sandy beach where it gently peters out.  No gods or goddesses appear on the shore, unless they inhabit some of the fit and tanned and shapely bodies of the few fortunate travelers that visit this place.

  “Imagination, n.  A warehouse of facts, with poet and liar in joint ownership.”

          --- Ambrose Bierce, The Devil’s Dictionary

Dark Forces in the Imagination

Musician and vocalist Don Henley, beating the drums as the rest of the rock band The Eagles play along, croons out a soulful rendition of Hotel California in the background.  “This could be Heaven or this could be Hell.”

The imagination does not always conjure up images that are sanguine, sublime, positive or enlightening.  Vividly dark forces also operate in the vast subterranean landscape of our subconscious minds.  This is the lair of the nightmare.  This is where a part of our inner selves lurks which keeps horror movies and thrillers thriving.  But even the highly image-sensitive emotive centers of our consciousness are not fully up to the task of imagining reality in all of its potentially terrible and impersonal proportions.

Let’s go on a little epic journey.  Imagine being a young traveler who spends a month living on the cliffs of the dramatic island of Santorini in Greece.  You rent one of those impossibly scenic whitewashed Greek houses with bright blue doors that are perched on the precipitous edge of the island’s old volcanic caldera.  The Mediterranean light falls on the world around you with a beauty so supreme that when it touches you it feels almost hostile.  John Fowles:  “…in Greece, landscape and light are so beautiful, so all-present, so intense, so wild, that the relationship is immediately love-hatred, one of passion.”  The light is enchanting and alluring, yet sinister, like the sorceress Circe in Greek mythology. 

So there you are, living simply, observing the cultural phenomenon that is tourism on the modern day Greek islands with their deep subtext of a timeless and authentic community.  You read one of the thousands of books that have been written about the lost civilization of Atlantis, and then, that night, you have a startling dream of being an inhabitant on the old island of Thera, which had a thriving civilization before about 1650 B.C.  Things had been going swimmingly in this Minoan outpost, but then a series of earth tremors seemed to presage the awakening of some terrible giant. 

Suddenly, in one of the most violent volcanic eruptions in the history of civilization, the island blew sky high.  Most of the island vanished in a towering explosion of rock and lava and pumice and ash.  A tsunami generated by the cataclysm threw waves 300 feet high against the north coast of Crete, which is some seventy miles to the south, and large waves inundated coastal areas all around the Mediterranean basin.  The Minoan civilization on Crete, which worshipped nature goddesses, was devastated.  Rivers ran red with the deep fallout of volcanic ash in Egypt and the Holy Land, long before it was wholly holy.  Agriculture was disrupted for years by the falling of volcanic ash and the global climatic cooling that occurred in the years following the epic eruption.  The trauma was shocking enough in the ancient world to inspire tales of Biblical proportion for unending generations.

You awake from your dream with a sensation of falling, as if you were at the apex of the 12-mile high volcanic plume generated by the eruption.  You realize that you are still alive, and still percipient, but you are dazed and confused.  You viscerally understand how the ancient peoples in Egypt and Canaan might have felt, having witnessed the terrible wake of the eruption, but not having had CNN or MSNBC or Fox News to fill them in on what had actually happened far across the waters.  You visualize the truth:  many of those superstitious ancients would have imagined that some sort of angry deity had smitten them, perhaps for whatever handy sins they may have felt guilty about, like perhaps having enslaved the Israelites and having refused, with hardened hearts, to let them go.  Who’s to say? 

The Advantages of a Passionate Interest in Reading

The Harry Potter books by author J.K. Rowling and the films they have inspired have had a remarkable stimulative effect on the imagination and interest of young people.  It is possible that this enthusiasm will fortuitously carry many of them into the marvelous world of more important literature and independent films.  Maybe it will someday even lead to the Earth Manifesto, intertwined as everything is … who knows! 

For extensive ideas about valuable books to read, see Recommended Reading for a Broader Understanding and Appreciation of the World.  It can be found in Part Five on the Home Page of the Earth Manifesto.

Reading groups abound around our great nation.  The last one I was involved in was quite social.  It revolved around sharing a nice dinner together, replete with conversations and catching up, and then having a discussion about the book we had chosen to read that month.  Some book clubs read Bestseller List books, some tend toward interpersonal relationship topics and spiritual growth, some read Oprah’s recommendations, some read strictly fiction, and all are unique and generally provide rich experiences.

Part of the motivation that has sustained by creation of the Earth Manifesto is a nebulous imagining of people reading various parts of it and gleaning valuable insights and engaging in spirited discussions about the wide-ranging topics included.  Being a believer in open-mindedness, I encourage debate about economic, social and political issues.  Some times people just have to “agree to disagree”, but to accomplish positive changes in our societies, it seems like it would be a good idea for people to come together and compromise and collaborate.

Here are two provocative quotes from Jack London’s Martin Eden:

   “… the more he knew, the more passionately he admired the Universe,

       and life, and his own life in the midst of it all.” 

           “What he sought was an impassioned realism, shot through with human

                aspiration and faith.”

As an aside, I urge readers to check out Twelve Delicious Recipes for Good Health and Gourmet Appreciation in Part Five of the Earth Manifesto.  It contains some tasty and healthy recipes that would be good for any book group or dinner party, and could provide an excellent introduction to a Cooking Club.  I am a gourmet cook, and could provide readers Five Star menu suggestions for great dinner parties!

In any case, it would be personally gratifying to me if the above observations about young love and intriguing females in literature were to lead to a resurgence of interest in reading.  On the off-chance that it does, one of the books that I heartily recommend and have greatly enjoyed is the excellent Brazilian author Jorge Amado’s Gabriela, Clove and Cinnamon.  The character Gabriela is one of the most beautiful souls in all of literature.  She is a simple and tender-hearted woman, free-spirited, enthusiastic and happy.  She laughs easily and loves to go barefoot.  She has a delightful character, and becomes a sexy muse in the small coastal town in the state of Bahia where the novel takes place.  Yay! for Gabriela.

In seeking inspiration, some people imagine themselves emulating the knight-errant Don Quixote in his chivalrous quest in the name of the idealized woman Dulcinea.  Ah, Dulcinea!  “To dream the impossible dream”;  “to fight for the right, without question or pause”.  Bravo for noble sentiments!  Bravo! -- even if they are delusional -- for at least they are noble delusions!

Some actions and intentions and aspects of human nature are distinctly noble, while others are decidedly ignoble.  We should encourage young people as they grow up to seek purpose in nobler involvements, and to refrain from ignoble ones, and to believe in honest things and true things in which appearances and perceptions correspond closely with reality.  One of the secrets of life may be to embrace purposes that are personally inspirational;  not ones of unthinking duty and subservience and self-abnegation and orthodoxy, but ones that are sensibly beneficial to one’s own self AND to society as a whole.

It is positive and vital for one’s life to be driven by a good purpose.  To me, it seems so much more desirable to be inspired by a lovely Muse or high-minded civic dedication than by darker impulses.  But a study of the biographies of those who have accomplished great deeds, or created important works, shows that there have been many motivations that have driven men and women throughout history.  Yes, there have!  Some of the less noble drives include materialistic impulses, vanity-driven needs for approval or belonging, status seeking, religious delusions, guilt, profound insecurities, dysfunctional anger at traumatic early circumstances, terror-filled hallucinations, alcohol abuse, drug use, and a multitude of other dark forces that sometimes compel people to do the things they do. 

The great novel Don Quixote, incidentally, was a farcical satire published by Miguel Cervantes in 1604.  In this fanciful story, a delusional character persistently engaged in the futile activity of “tilting at windmills” in La Mancha, a high plateau region of central Spain.  It is a grand and pleasant irony of history that Spain today has become the third biggest producer of wind power in the world, and a figurative beacon of hope for success in beginning to replace the use of damaging fossil fuel resources in powering our societies.  This leads me to speculate that the renewable-energy revolution in Spain may have been facilitated through a kind of serendipitous poetic justice in which the errant and quixotic imaginings of this early seventeenth century author is leading to more salubrious outcomes!  Ah, Home, sweet Home!

Lights, Camera, Action!

I believe that the richly evocative imagery of film is having a powerful and positive affect on our societies.  The comprehensive perspectives of independent films, in particular, may be valuably “feminizing” our cultures in important ways, contributing to a trend that is re-establishing respect for important values and liberties in our cultures.  Independent documentaries investigate issues thoroughly and they vividly portray the complexities of our world, providing compelling insights and illumination by speaking cogently to our emotional/spiritual selves, as well as to our rational/practical selves. 

This evolving medium may symbolize a larger and more important synthesis that is taking place in our societies -- one which could help us to more fully realize the ideals of our Founders:  to wit, to establish justice, insure domestic tranquility, promote the general welfare, and ensure democratic fairness and equality of opportunity and the unalienable rights of life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.  Fairness should apply to men and women regardless of race or gender or sexual orientation or creed or religion or age.

The two most indelible images of the twentieth century were (1) the mushroom cloud that ended the Second World War, and (2) the vision of the whole Earth as seen from space.  The polymath Dr. Leonard Shlain points out that “The arms race, consuming much of the left brain’s talent for thousands of years, had reached an absurd zero-sum stalemate: to ‘win’ all-out war meant to make the planet uninhabitable for all humans, as well as for most other species.”  Dr. Shlain also noted that:  “The first photograph of Earth taken from space flashed around the world in 1968, celebrating the interconnectedness of all life.”  The photo “began to instill in everyone who saw it an understanding that the Earth must be honored, protected, and loved.”  The visions of these images resonate deeply with the natural-world-honoring Earth Manifesto sensibilities of our souls.

Imagery is the province of the right brain.  It stimulates the intuitive, the visual, the synthesizing, and the feeling.  Communication through imagery and symbolism are effective because they appeal to the insightfulness and wisdom of our right-brain.  This makes such communications elementally persuasive.  Imagery touches us at a profound level where our ancestors dwelled in prehistory for scores of millennia before left-brained dominance asserted its ascendancy.  People who love films and attend film festivals revealingly tend to be empathetic and liberal-minded and open to broader perspectives.

Subsequent to the time I first wrote these words, I attended a screening of a film that may be the most important film ever produced.  The name of it is Home, a film with stunning images by the aerial photographer and ecologist Yann Arthus-Bertrand.  I highly encourage everyone to watch this film.  It can be viewed at YouTube.com/homeproject.  The message that this film conveys is vitally important to the future well-being of humanity.

Another film that is rich with beautiful images is Ken Burns’ latest, The National Parks: America’s Best Idea.  This film was eight years in the making, and was first shown on PBS beginning on September 27, 2009.  It “celebrates the beauty of these parks and the vision and foresight of the men and women who made sure that this land would be preserved.”  Perspectives like this are affiliated with progressive big picture attitudes that are sorely needed in our societies today.  The rest of this essay provides some of the reasons that I believe this to be true.

For the Love of Boats

Kenneth Grahame wrote a wonderful book titled The Wind in the Willows.  Wikipedia calls it a classic of children’s literature, first published in 1908.  It is much more than for kids, in an arcane way, like Alice in Wonderland was, though the latter is more jabberwocky and literary nonsense.  The characters in The Wind in the Willows are animals that are simply delightful.  This story is excellent to read aloud to children, and it is also a great ‘read’ for adults.  It provides a highly entertaining allegory of folly, recklessness, sensibility, wisdom, and the positivity of faithful, caring friendships.  Its main character, Toad, is a clever but conceited fellow who commits an astonishing succession of compulsive follies.  His friends, the Mole, the Water Rat, and the Badger are also fabulous characters;  I recommend the pleasure of reading about them! 

The Wind in the Willows begins with the Mole feeling the imperious call of the Spring above his little subterranean home.  Working busily with his little paws, he ascended toward the surface, until at last, pop! -- his snout came out into the sunlight, and he found himself rolling in the warm grass of a great meadow.  “This is fine!” he said to himself.  He “jumped off all his four legs at once, in the joy of living and the delight of spring without its cleaning, and pursued his way across the meadow till he reached the hedge on the further side”.  After a flustered and imperious exchange with the local rabbits, he found himself thinking that “he somehow could only feel how jolly it was to be the only idle dog among all the busy citizens.” 

The Mole “thought his happiness was complete when, as he meandered aimlessly along, suddenly he stood by the edge of a full-fed river.  Never in his life had he seen a river before -- this sleek, sinuous, full-bodied animal, chasing and chuckling, gripping things with a gurgle and leaving them with a laugh, to fling itself on fresh playmates that shook themselves free, and were caught and held again.  All was a-shake and a-shiver -- glints and gleams and sparkles, rustle and swirl, chatter and bubble.  The Mole was bewitched, entranced, fascinated.”

Here’s the part I’m trying to tell.  The Mole soon meets the Water Rat, who he finds has a little boat that is painted blue outside and white within, “and was just the size for two animals;  and the Mole’s whole heart went out to it at once, even though he did not yet fully understand it uses.”  The Rat sculled smartly across the river from the far bank, and helped the Mole into the boat.  The Mole admits to the Rat that he has never been in a boat before in all of his life. 

“What?” cried the Rat, open-mouthed.  “Never been in a – you never – well I – what have you been doing, then?”

“Is it so nice as all that?” asked the Mole shyly, though he was quite prepared to believe it as he leant back in his seat and surveyed the cushions, the oars, the rowlocks, and all the fascinating fittings, and felt the boat sway lightly under him.

“Nice?  It’s the only thing,” said the Water Rat solemnly, as he leant forward for his stroke.  “Believe me, my young friend, there is nothing – absolutely nothing – half so much worth doing as simply messing about in boats.  Simply messing,” he went on dreamily: “messing – about – in – boats; … or with boats,” the Rat went on …”In or out of ‘em, it doesn’t matter.  Nothing seems really to matter, that’s the charm of it.  Whether you get away, or whether you don’t;  whether you arrive at your destination or whether you reach somewhere else, or whether you never get anywhere at all, you are always busy, and you never do anything in particular;  and when you’ve done it there’s always something else to do, and you can do it if you like, but you’d much better not.”  Ah, a perfect idyll …

A far different appreciation for boats is expressed in the opening paragraph of Herman Melville’s towering 1853 classic, Moby Dick:

“Call me Ishmael.  Some years ago … having little or no money in my purse, and nothing particular to interest me on shore, I thought I would sail about a little and see the watery part of the world.”  Ishmael indicated that he was wont to do this, “whenever it is a damp, drizzly November in my soul.”  “With a philosophical flourish”, he said, “Cato throws himself upon his sword;  I quietly take to the ship.”

The poem on the Earth Manifesto Home Page, with its nautical symbolism, provocatively epitomizes my sentiments with regard to our human motivations and the impacts we are having in aggregate on our beautiful home planet:

           "Sail forth --- Steer for the deep water only,
              Reckless O Soul, exploring, I with thee, and thou with me,
               For we are bound where mariner has not yet dared to go,
                And we will risk the ship, ourselves, and all."
                                                                                               --- Walt Whitman

The Elevating Power of Philosophy

  There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio,
    Than are dreamt of in your philosophy.

                            --- William Shakespeare, Hamlet, Act 1, Scene 5

The best aspects of philosophy are those that are a synthesis of all experience, and not just a compendium of analytical knowledge or a concatenation of speculative ideas about metaphysical abstractions.  As Will Durant puts it in his Introduction to The Story of Philosophy, “We want to seize the value and perspective of passing things, and so pull ourselves up out of the maelstrom of daily circumstances.  We want to know that the little things are little, and the big things big, before it is too late.  We want to learn to laugh in the face of the inevitable, to smile even at the looming of death.  We want to be whole, to coordinate our energies by criticizing and harmonizing our desires; …” 

When philosophy allows us to see everything in light of the whole, it gives us a 'total perspective’ in which we can integrate and synthesize all of the parts and puzzles of existence into deeper understandings.  The study of philosophy necessarily deals with the technicalities of logic and the conundrums of epistemology (the nature of knowledge and knowing).  But more importantly for the average person, philosophy delves into meaningful questions of the material universe and of our human perceptions and thoughts and beliefs and feelings.  Philosophers explore the intricacies of ethics, morality, meaning, value, happiness, and the freedom of will, and they also provide insights into the proper nature of education, history, art, esthetics, politics and progress.

“Doubtless some philosophers have had all sorts of wisdom except common sense;   

   and many a philosophic flight has been due to the elevating power of thin air.”

                                             --- Will Durant, Introduction to The Story of Philosophy

Some of the most surprising, provocative and enlightening perspectives in the history of human thought are coming together today in the wake of the revolutionary ideas of biologists like Charles Darwin and psychologists like Sigmund Freud and physicists like Albert Einstein and smart people like Dr. Leonard Shlain.  Percolating in the interstices and synapses of the human brain, these ideas are culminating in a wide variety of insightful understandings.  Brilliant holistic thinkers and brain scientists and truly spiritual people and many others are developing these illuminating understandings.  They are integrating the evolving knowledge of how our brains conceive of things with the most modern and accurate ways of comprehending reality.

Joseph Campbell, the late professor of the realm of mythic imagination, felt that “we are at this moment participating in one of the very greatest leaps of the human spirit to a knowledge not only of outside nature but also of our own deep inward mystery.”  The great journalist Bill Moyers later asked Joseph Campbell, not long before Campbell’s death, if he still believed this to be true.  “The very greatest,” he confirmed. 

Let us honor Joseph Campbell’s memory by being alert and awake to the extraordinary ways of seeing and understanding our lives and experiences!  It is valuable to clearly analyze and understand situations, and to simultaneously develop a comprehensive and holistic big-picture synthesis of the most valid ways of seeing them.  By knowing the best that is thought and felt in the world, we can help create a current of true and fresh new ideas.

We are all together on this threshold of the greatest understandings ever.  Each of us can embrace this awe-inspiring perspective of being alive at this particular moment in an unfathomably vast unfolding of existence.  Each of us can develop a deeper awareness of the outer world than has ever been available before, as well as of the inner world of our psyches.  Yet few people seem to appreciate this marvel with the reverence that it deserves.  This failure is due to the exigencies of the moment and the infinite minutiae of details in our lives, as well as to specialized intricacies of knowledge and a multitude of distractions and a plethora of profound insecurities and the impediments of simplistic belief systems and other such things.

Let us shake ourselves awake while we are still alive, and imagine this moment for its epic significance.  Let us envision the mystery of existence with an open-eyed enthusiasm that transcends optimism and pessimism and all other ‘isms’.  Let us embrace the extraordinary understandings available here in the twenty-first century with open-mindedness and an eager interest in visionary knowledge.  Let us reject narrow-minded blind certitudes that are like pit bulls resolutely latched onto the legs of hapless dogmatists.  Let us see our lives like a drama in which the music is swelling and the perplexing plot feels like it is intensifying toward a startling crescendo.  Read on for expansive illumination!

Wisdom and the Hero’s Journey

“By three methods we may learn wisdom: First, by reflection, which is noblest; Second,

   by imitation, which is easiest; and third by experience, which is the bitterest.”

                                                                                                            --- Confucius

The search for meaning, for true self, is what mythologist Joseph Campbell referred to as the hero’s journey.  Campbell believed in the importance of a feminine muse that leads the mythic hero toward his poetic destiny.  In this mythic dimension, the hero makes a spiritual quest toward self-realization, and pushes the horizons of his vision to ever larger vistas, often propelled by the inspiration of feminine muses.  The classical Muses themselves, of Greek mythological fame, are the nine daughters of Zeus, the supreme ruler of the Greek heavens, and Mnemosyne, the Titan goddess of Memory.  These Muses represent inspiration for men and women alike, and each of us could undertake our own hero’s journey of creativity and self-expression.

We each seek to find a form of wisdom that is suited to our own lives, one that is best for each of us personally in the culture in which we live.  Some say that it is best to embrace stoic asceticism and to abandon earthly drives and ambitions, and to effectively give up passionate participation in the world.  But I personally think we should all look more widely for wisdom, not more narrowly.  History shows that it can be socially detrimental to have millions of people give up their lives to believe in Jesus Christ or Allah or any deity in obedience to the dictates of demagogues who often manipulatively exploit vulnerable people to enhance their own power or glory or profit.  Each person, it seems to me, must find the best balance for themselves between stoic self-denial and epicurean indulgence, between conformity and rebellion, and between classic Apollonian rationality and Dionysian emotionality.

I believe that we can act to make this world a better one for ourselves and others.  This should, in fact, be one of our main responsibilities in society.  We should work together to change our political system and our social institutions so that they are more in accord with the common good and the long-term well-being of all.  I recommend reading the book by Tony Schwartz, What Really Matters – Searching for Wisdom in America for some comprehensive understandings of the various philosophical perspectives of life as seen by a wide range of perceptive people, including psychologists, scientists, artists, teachers, philosophers, mystics, gurus and spiritual leaders.

All of our lives could be filled with higher potentialities and deeper purposes.  Most people evolve throughout their lives in the degree of self-awareness and self-knowledge, as well as in the range and depths of their abilities.  We could all achieve richer, more authentic, more complete, and more meaningful lives.  To do this optimally, we must find ways to connect more honestly with our bodies and our feelings, and to be more open-minded, and even to integrate the wisdom of Eastern contemplative traditions like Taoism and Buddhism.  In doing this we can vanquish unthinking acceptance of the powerful but flimsy seductions of materialism, and the narrow doctrines of religious fundamentalism.

The world might be a far better place if most people spent more time reading books or walking in nature than watching television.  Instead, in most nations around the globe, people spend much more time watching TV than reading.  There is some valuable programming on television, like the National Geographic Channel and the Discovery Channel.  But television can also numb the mind with the passively hypnotic nature of the medium.  It is also full of time-wasting trash and seductive subliminal messaging. 

New-fangled electronic contraptions keep popping up with great regularity, so hundreds of millions of people are also spending much more time Net-surfing or Social Networking or Twittering or watching YouTube videos or listening to iTunes.  There are positive aspects of these things, but also negative ones, and attentive discipline is required! 

What would happen if young people spent less time playing violent computer games, or did less shopping at the mall?  Must people drink excessive amounts of alcohol, or do hard drugs, or hang out in gangs?  Must we feed our mindless compulsions for things like gambling in casinos in gaudy places like Las Vegas?  What would happen if people did not rush around burning up gasoline for so many unnecessary purposes?  Do we actually need 161 games to be played between April and October by every professional baseball team in order to figure out which teams gets in the playoffs?  Are these ridiculous questions?

“Many lives are so empty of interest that their subject must first perform some feat like  

  sailing alone around the world, or climbing a hazardous peak, in order to elevate himself

   above mere existence, and then, having created a life, to write about it.”

                  --- William Gass, The Art of Self: Autobiography in the Age of Narcissism

I laugh at this quote!  Literacy and reading and writing are widely heralded as amongst the most valuable of commonly learned skills.  But there are ‘downsides’ to everything.  The perspectives of Dr. Leonard Shlain, discussed below, assert that left-brain dominance and male authoritarianism are strongly correlated with the advent of the written word and the spread of literacy.  To the extent that this is true, we should cultivate a cautionary attitude toward our thoughts, and even refrain from actually believing everything we think.  Ha!  Let us remain open-minded to other points of view, and strive to more fully understand ourselves and other people and our societies.  And let us think about what exactly our innermost motivations may be.

The palpable intent of human purpose is evocatively exposed in the wondrous monuments and ruins found in far-flung places around our home planet.  Think of the chiseled volcanic statues of Easter Island and the stone monuments of Stonehenge in England.  Picture the imposing pyramids erected by the Egyptians.  Consider the amazing stone masonry of the Incas in Peru.  Visit in your mind’s eye the jungle-reclaimed cities of the civilizations of the Mayas and the ruins of the Aztecs.  Visualize the mausoleum that the first emperor of China had built at an enormous cost in Xian, together with its thousands of terra cotta warriors.  Ponder the enigmatic purposes of the structures that are now ancient ruins of Mycenaean and Carthaginian and Greek and Roman civilizations scattered around the Mediterranean Basin.  Imagine the impetus that inspired the building of the temples at Angkor Wat in Cambodia, and those that are found along the banks of the Irrawaddy River at Pagan in Burma (or Myanmar, as its military rulers now call it).  Contemplate the Buddhist temples of Kathmandu, the Hindu temples of India, the Moslem temples of Java, and the vaulting Gothic cathedrals of Europe.  View the lovely online aerial photo of the Taj Mahal that was taken by Yann Arthus-Bertrand, and consider that this tomb was erected by the Mughal emperor Shah Jahan as a memorial to his wife, who died giving birth to their fourteenth child. 

History is writ large in these places.  Such sites are mute but provocative testaments to the soaring human spirit, and to elemental needs and drives and motives.  In this context, read on!

The Law of Three Stages

All human beings try at least occasionally to make sense of the world in which we live.  In the ideas presented throughout the rest of this essay, keep in mind the concept that the French thinker Auguste Comte conceived, which is known as The Law of Three Stages.  This ‘law’ states that each field of thought can be observed by historians of ideas as developing through three stages:  (1) the theocratic stage, in which all phenomena are explained by the will of some personified deity;  (2) the metaphysical stage, in which things are explained by impersonal forces and abstractions;  and (3) the positive science stage, in which things are explained through reason and the regularities of natural cause and effect, and in which the ‘scientific method’ is used to make precise observations and plausible hypotheses and experiments that are objective and repeatable.  

The “Bet Situation” is discussed below in specific situations wherein people place their symbolic bets on what the most accurate explanations are for our world.  Philosophical optimism, philosophical pessimism, and “meliorism” are also examined.  Pay attention!

Insights from John Fowles

In The Aristos, the British author John Fowles stated that the “universal situation” in our existence is dominated by two opposing principles:  Law, or the physical organizing principle, and Chaos, the disintegrating principle.  Both of these principles are indifferent to individuals, according to Fowles.  He suggests that humanity drifts on a raft, afloat on an endless ocean.  “From his present dissatisfaction, man reasons that there was some catastrophic wreck in the past, before which he was happy;  some golden age, some Garden of Eden.  He also reasons that somewhere ahead lies a promised land, a land without conflict.  Meanwhile, he is miserably en passage;  this myth lies deeper than religious faith.”

Seven kinds of men inhabit the raft:  the optimist, the pessimist, the observer, the ego-centric epicurean, the altruist, the stoic, and the innocent child.  “Man is a seeker of the agent.  We seek an agent for this being in a blind wind, this being on a raft;  this mysterious power, the causator, the god, the face behind the mysterious mask of being and not being.  Some make an active god of their own better natures;  a benevolent father, a gentle mother, a wise brother, a charming sister.  Some make an active god from positive human attributes like mercy, concern and justice.  Some make an active god of their own worst natures;  a god who is sadistically cruel and profoundly absurd;  a god who absconds;  a black exploiter of the defenseless individual;  the venomous tyrant of Genesis 3:16-17.”

“Between these tribes, the firm believers in an active good god and the firm believers in an active bad one, the great majority shift and surge, a milling herd caught between Pangloss and Job.  They pay lip service to an empty image;  or believe in nothing.  In this century (the twentieth), they have drifted toward Job.  If there is an active good god he has, since 1914, paid very poor wages.” …  “The old myth that his raft, his world, is especially favored and protected now seems ridiculous.”

This is an abbreviated summary of just the first four pages of The Aristos.  This book has been important in the evolution of my own personal ideas and worldviews.  One of John Fowles’ purposes in writing The Aristos was “to suggest that the main reason dissatisfaction haunts our century, as optimism haunted the eighteenth and complacency the nineteenth, is precisely because we are losing sight of our most fundamental human birthright:  to have a self-made opinion on all that concerns us.”   Feel and think!

Thinking about Early Literature and the Vicissitudes of Circumstance

Much classic literature reminds me of the classic paintings found in great European museums like the Louvre in Paris and the Prado in Madrid.  The subjects in these medieval paintings were often religious, with many images of Christ and Mother Mary and Biblical themes.  No wonder the Mona Lisa smiles so ambiguously.  Today, evangelical impulses are strong in the United States due to the powerful influence of the Religious Right, but the artists in our modern culture embrace topics and ideas that are far wider and more diverse and more relevant and more broadminded and more impressionistic.

Classic literature is likewise dominated by religious themes.  Dante Aleghieri was an early fourteenth century Italian writer whose Divine Comedy is one of the most famous works in world literature.  It was a “comedy” in the classic medieval sense:  it begins in confusion and ends in happiness.  The Divine Comedy consists of three parts, the Inferno, Purgatorio and Paradiso.  Dante dreams in this story of journeying through literal versions of the great mythological concepts of Hell and Purgatory and Heaven.  These and related concepts like Good and Evil and Guilt and Sin and Empathy and Forgiveness represent colossal quandaries for humanity. 

At the time Dante wrote this book, the author personally felt lost and nearly mad.  He had visions of being assailed by beasts, and he desperately sought, but was unable to find, the ‘right way’ to salvation.  So in the Divine Comedy, he used Virgil, the ancient Roman epic poet, as the embodiment of both rationality and poetic insight in his quest for understanding.  Dante enlisted Virgil as a guide in a dream-inspired account of his personal journey through Hell and Purgatory.  Then, since the highly-esteemed Virgil lived before Christ and was consequently considered to be a ‘pagan’, he could not be allowed to accompany and guide Dante once the author ascended to Heaven.  So Dante enlisted Beatrice to guide him through Heaven.  Beatrice was Dante’s inspirational and idealized woman, a real woman who he had admired from afar in Florence. 

Ah, enthralling Beatrice!  It is quite wonderful that such kinds of “courtly love” once existed!  This was a platonic kind of love that involved a secret, highly respectful, and generally unrequited form of admiration and affection.  Being smitten with unrequited feelings like this can provide powerful motivation to an artist, and the inspiration of all such Muses should be celebrated!

In the Inferno, the first part of the Divine Comedy, a kind of poetic justice is served as punishment for each of the three main types of sins:  those allegedly dastardly sins of desire and self-indulgence, and far worse, those violent sins and those malicious sins.  In contrast, in Paradiso, Dante commemorates the four cardinal virtues (Prudence and Temperance and Fortitude and Justice) and the three theological virtues (Faith and Loving-Kindness and Hope).  Virtues are almost always, in theory if not in practice, distinctly preferable to vices!

Voltaire and Philosophic Optimism and Pessimism

Another towering historical figure who was inspired by a female muse was François-Marie Arouet, known by his pen name Voltaire.  He was one of the most famous and prolific writers and philosophers of the Enlightenment period.  He had a great aptitude for witty and perceptive observations, and he often made scathing criticisms of human behavior and the religious establishment and the government.  This earned him imprisonment and exile from France on several occasions.  He was inspired by Émilie du Châtelet, a woman whose intelligence and scientific acumen earned her considerable fame in her own right.  She and Voltaire had an affair and lived at a château owned by her husband, the Marquis du Châtelet, during the 15 years of their relationship, before she died in childbirth. 

Voltaire’s amusing story Candide is a philosophic tale that is one of the most famous short stories ever written.  Published in 1759, Candide is an attack on ‘philosophical optimism’, which characterized much philosophical thinking of the time.  Candide is about an innocent young man named Candide and his tutor Pangloss, who “taught metaphysico-theolog-cosmolonigology.  He proved admirably that there is no effect without a cause, and that this is the best of all possible worlds.”  Candide falls in love with Cunégonde, the young daughter of a Baron;  when Candide is caught kissing her, the Baron expels Candide from his home, an effect that is a subsequent cause of an astonishing series of terrible calamities.

Candide was written as a satire on the ‘philosophic optimism’ expressed by Gottfried Leibniz, a famous German philosopher and mathematician (1646 – 1716).  Herr Leibniz tried to justify the apparent imperfections of the world by arguing that physical reality is almost miraculously optimal for human existence for a simple reason:  it was created by a perfect and benevolent God.  Voltaire scoffed at the theory that our universe is the best of all possible worlds that God could have made.  He was incensed about philosophical optimism in the wake of the terrible ‘Lisbon Earthquake’ of 1755, which killed tens of thousands of people in Portugal, many of whom were in churches that ironically collapsed on the pious at the height of Catholic services on All Saints’ Day.  Nice timing, God!

The Lisbon Earthquake was followed by a destructive tsunami and fires that raged for five days after the severe quake.  The tsunami, known today to have been generated by sudden slippage along the Azores-Gibraltar Transform Fault, also damaged many coastal cities in Portugal.  Voltaire wrote Candide in response to his disillusionment related to natural disasters like earthquakes and diseases and shipwrecks in storms, and also to the grave inhumanities of human beings to others which have taken place throughout history since the dawn of time, including reprehensible acts of rape, pillage, thievery, murder, massacres, hangings, torture, slavery, burnings at the stake, and religious persecutions.

Voltaire concludes Candide with a fitting irony, despite all the adversities the characters have suffered:  “Pangloss would say to Candide, all events form a chain in this best of all possible worlds;  for in the end, had you not been given a good kick in the backside and been chased out of a beautiful castle for the love of Miss Cunégonde, and if you hadn’t been subjected to the Inquisition, and if you hadn’t wandered about South America on foot, and if you hadn’t dealt the Baron a good blow with your sword, and if you hadn’t lost all your sheep from that fine country of Eldorado, you wouldn’t be here now eating candied citron and pistachio nuts."  "That is well put," replied Candide; "but we must cultivate our garden."

Let’s figuratively tend our gardens, and remain alert as we do so.  In contrast to those who are philosophic optimists, there are many who have been so discouraged by calamity and hardship and religious superstition and religious intolerance and vile oppressions and despotic infamy that they espouse the opposite idea:  ‘philosophic pessimism’.  Pessimism as a personal attitude can become a self-fulfilling prophecy, so its value is questionable, whether or not pessimism is justified.  Seeing the glass as half full may be more valuable than seeing it as half empty, if only because optimism is healthier for our frame of mind.

From my point of view, I find the idea of “meliorism” to be the most sensible and best way of looking at the world.  This perspective recognizes that the world has its flaws and terrible hardships and ‘evils’, as well as its marvelous aspects, and that we can reduce negative outcomes in aggregate by planning more intelligently, and by restructuring our societies so that they are fairer and more long-term oriented and more ecologically sound.  Positive progress is a real possibility, and we can improve the world for ourselves with proper understandings and actions.  Democracy and human rights must prevail, not corruption, autocracy and despotic domination!

Why So Little Good?

  “The more I see of men, the better I like my dog.”         

                                                         --- Pascal     (Ha!)

Christian dogma holds that God gave human beings free will, which is considered a great good.  By its nature, however, free will inherently entails the possibilities of ‘sin’.  In the Genesis myth of the Bible, Adam violated God’s edict not to eat the forbidden fruit of ‘the tree of the knowledge of good and evil’.  Adam thereby committed original sin in the Garden of Eden.  In patriarchal predictability, the authors of the Bible blamed this turn of events on a woman, Eve, and an insidiously sinuous and slithery serpent. 

In any case, Christians believe that satanic forces operate which are inimical to God.  But this idea poses a serious contradiction:  if God is benevolent and omnipotent, why does ‘He’ allow evil forces to prevail so often?  If God, on the other hand, can’t prevent evil and misfortune, then he is not all-powerful.  This hole in Christian logic gave rise to Manichean ideas in the third century after Christ.  These concepts posit that the universe is ruled by two equally powerful forces:  absolute Good and absolute Evil.  Honest people recognize that absolutist dogmas like these are fallacious;  all is subjective and relatively relative, after all, and many things that are good for some are bad for others.

This dogma of ‘moral absolutism’ has been used to strengthen right-wing political positions in the United States.  This dualistic dogma holds that there are moral absolutes of good and evil.  This doctrine is similar to the millennia-old religion of Manichaeism.  It has been used to paint a false dichotomy between us, the good guys, and others, the evil ones.  I have traveled extensively, and found that there are good people everywhere.  And so are there ‘bad’ ones.  Every person has both positive and negative impulses.  The line between good and evil does not run between us and “them”, or between our country and other countries;  in truth, this line runs right through each and every one of us.

Manichaeism was imagined by Mani, a prophet who lived in the third century.  He resided in Babylon, which was then a province of the Persian Empire.  He claimed to have received a revelation as a youth from a spirit that he later called his Twin or 'Divine Self'.  The spirit taught him truths which he astutely developed into a religion.  His 'divine' Twin brought him to self-realization, so that he supposedly had divine knowledge and liberating insight.  He claimed to be the ‘Paraclete of the Truth', the Holy Spirit or Comforter promised in the Gospel According to Saint John in the Bible (John 14:16).  Mani said he was the last prophet in a succession of figures including Zoroaster and Buddha and Jesus.  

Manichaeism presented an elaborate description of the conflict between the spiritual world of light and the material world of darkness.  It is distinguished by its elaborate cosmology in which the struggle between a good, spiritual world of light was described as combating an evil, material world of darkness.  Mani said that the province of human beings represents a battleground arena for these powers:  the good part is the soul, which is composed of light, and the bad part is the body, composed of dark earth.  The soul defines the person and is incorruptible, but it is dominated by a ‘foreign power’.  This depiction addressed the practical part of the problem of the existence of evil.  Human beings, Mani said, can be saved from this dark power if they come to know who they are, and if they are able to worthily and nobly identify themselves with their soul.

Manichaeism thrived for many centuries.  At its height in the seventh century it was one of the most widespread religions in the world.  Manichaean churches and scriptures existed as far east as China and as far west as the Roman Empire.  The spread and success of Manichaeism was seen as a threat to other religions, so it was widely persecuted in Christian and Zoroastrian and Islamic and even Buddhist cultures. 

Simplistic dogmas are often contrary to comprehensive understandings.  This is why we must choose to believe in more nuanced and accurate ways of seeing the world.  Life is filled with complexity and paradox and contradiction.  As Lewis Carroll has Alice exclaim in Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland, we human beings sometimes think and act in ways that are “Curious and curiouser!”

Behaviors, Motivations, and the Pyramid of Needs

The famous behavioral psychologist Abraham Maslow recognized the immense complexity of human motivations and the vast capacity for personal growth.  He was passionately and relentlessly optimistic about the possibilities for people to transform themselves and the societies in which they live.  Maslow wrote a paper titled A Theory of Motivation in which he first set forth the now-famous idea that people operate out of “an inborn hierarchy of needs.”  He noted that once people have their basic physiological needs satisfied, like the needs for food and water and shelter, then ‘belongingness needs’ for approval and acceptance emerge.  If a person is fortunate enough to be able to satisfy these needs, then they have a sense of security and serenity that allows them to move to a higher level of “self-actualizing” needs.  These ‘outer-directed needs’ include the expression of deeper values that give depth and meaning to life, such as empathy and compassion and generosity and public-spiritedness. 

It seems apparent to me that if we were to collectively encourage better education and more grounded forms of social well-being, we might be able to create a society in which more people were able to feel a grounding sense of mission and to achieve higher forms of self-actualization like creative endeavors and socially valuable service to others.

Darker Sides of Human Inspiration

   “Originality is nothing but judicious imitation.  The most original writers borrowed

        one from another.”                                                           --- Voltaire

Much artistic inspiration springs not from a Muse or religious fervor, but from a darker and more shadowy fount.  Sometimes creativity issues from a torment of the soul like that of someone half-mad, similar but of a different nature than persecuted disciples who revel in imagined sacrificial glories of beatified martyrdom.  Think of Vincent van Gogh, who cut off the lobe of his left ear, or Francisco Goya, whose most notable painting is Saturn Devouring His Son, which depicts a crude male god eating a child.

“The more one sees of human fate and the more one examines its secret springs of

   action, the more one is impressed by the strength of unconscious motives and by

    the limitations of free choice.”                    --- Swiss psychologist Carl Jung

Herman Melville’s character Ishmael chillingly observes that there is an “invisible police officer of the Fates, who has the constant surveillance of me, and secretly dogs me, and influences me in some unaccountable way.”  Ishmael says:  “And, doubtless, my going on this whaling voyage formed part of the grand programme of Providence that was drawn up a long time ago. … Though I cannot tell why it was exactly that those stage managers, the Fates, put me down for this shabby part of a whaling voyage, when others were set down for magnificent parts in high tragedies, and short and easy parts in genteel comedies, and jolly parts in farces -- though I cannot tell why this was exactly;  yet, now that I recall all the circumstances, I think I can see a little into the springs and motives which being cunningly presented to me under various disguises, induced me to set about performing the part I did, besides cajoling me into the delusion that it was a choice resulting from my own unbiased freewill and discriminating judgment.”

Chill out, Mr. Melville!  Take a breath, think clearly, and succinctly express what you want to say.  Okay, Ishmael, continue.  “Chief among these motives was the overwhelming idea of the great whale himself.  Such a portentous and mysterious monster roused all my curiosity.  Then the wild and distant seas where he rolled his island bulk;  the nameless, undeliverable perils of the whale;  these, with all the attending marvels of a thousand Patagonian sights and sounds, helped to sway me to my wish.  With other men, perhaps, such things would not have been inducements;  but as for me, I am tormented with an everlasting itch for things remote.  I love to sail forbidden seas, and land on barbarous coasts.  Not ignoring what is good, I am quick to perceive a horror, and could still be social with it -- would they let me -- since it is but well to be on friendly terms with all the inmates of the place one lodges in.  By reason of these things, then, the whaling voyage was welcome;  the great flood-gates of the wonder-world swung open, and in the wild conceits that swayed me to my purpose, two and two there floated into my inmost soul, endless processions of the whale, and, mid-most of them all, one grand hooded phantom, like a snow hill in the air.”

These words make your head spin.  And yet, it makes one wonder if it could be that there really is a ‘stage manager of the Fates’?  Could it be that this stage manager determines if each of us is to play a shabby role in life, or if instead we are to be given a fabulous part in a high tragedy or an easy part in a genteel comedy or a jolly role in a farce?  If so, this would be in accord with the Yiddish word beshert, which means something that was ‘meant to be’, almost as if there is some sort of predestined divine plan.  In this view of life, there is no such thing as coincidence, and serendipity is actually a well-constructed plan that is unfolding. 

In retrospect, we may all be able to roughly trace the curious springs of happenstance that have transpired in our lives, and the motives that have swayed us to our wishes and that have influenced our choices under various disguises.  We could even speculate as to what has cajoled us into the delusion that our choices result from our unbiased free will and seemingly discriminating judgment.  One may wonder why an author would dwell on such oddities, insufficiencies and generalities, and create such tormented particularities as found in Moby Dick.  But surely it’s not a bad idea to be on friendly terms with such things, for they otherwise unduly frighten us.  This may be why philosophers like to ponder them!

The eighteenth century philosopher David Hume called the question of whether or not we truly have free will “the most contentious question of metaphysics.”  My freedom of action and yours, in other words, may be distinctly limited.  My freedom of action seems clear:  I can go for a long walk starting ten minutes from now, or I can take a short nap, or I can do any of a dozen other habitual or spontaneous activities.  Yet the choices that we make every day are distinctly influenced by a complex web of influences.  These include our basic human drives and our upbringing and personal experiences and social attitudes and circumstances and obligations and peer pressures and role models and moods, as well as advertising-stimulated desires and the enticement of incentives and such influences as television and talk radio. 

For all practical purposes, however, it is important for us to act as if each individual has free will.  Of course we all crave the right to do as we like --- Yay for freedom!  We like to do what we want without restrictions or inconveniences or limitations or discipline.  But there are overarching issues, including the need for our actions to take place in a context of Golden Rule fairness, and reasonable moderation, and wider social responsibility. 

An Aside Concerning Serendipity and Synchronicity

Serendipity was the favorite word in Britain, according to a poll taken in the year 2000.  This is "the faculty of making happy and unexpected discoveries by accident."  Eureka!  The history of scientific discoveries is replete with serendipitous occurrences.  Some say that there is an ‘accidental sagacity’ that is facilitated by having a prepared and open mind, so that when accidental events reveal important information, such information is recognized for what it means and what it is worth.  Serendipity has come to be a concept that is popularly used as a happy coincidence in relationships or events that lead to positive outcomes. 

There is a folk-wisdom adage that says that “everything happens for a reason.”  This is not a comment on the obvious fact that we live in a cause-and-effect world, but rather it is generally a kind of optimistic fatalism that expresses the feeling that whatever happens in life can have a positive outcome which will lead to better things.  This saying is used as a convenient explanation for fortuitous circumstances.  It is also used as a rationalization for all-too-common negative circumstances.  People who believe that everything happens for a purpose are not necessarily religious people who believe that God has a mysterious but predestined plan for every person.  Sometimes they are inspired by rationalizations of hope that the circumstances that buffet us while we are making other plans will turn out just fine.

Clearly, happenstance and chance play roles in the events that affect our lives.  Some circumstances have random impacts, so that one person may be in the right place at the right time, while another may be in the wrong place at the wrong time.  Fickle is the finger of fate!  Bad things often happen to good people, and good things often happen to bad people.  Life is not fair.  Some people poise and prepare themselves for the positive.  This somewhat increases the probabilities of positive outcomes.  Others seem to set themselves up for negative outcomes, and are thus more likely to be smitten by a fusillade of adversities.  In any case, rationalizations by religious people that God makes things happen in accordance with a divine plan for every individual seem to me a bit daft, and improbable, and influenced by a slightly crazy gullibility.

When anyone attempts to trace the concatenation of events that led them right to where they are now in their life, salient turning points always are revealed.  In retrospect, these are generally regarded as having been either miraculous twists of fate, or alternatively calamitous ones.  What, we wonder, if such circumstances had been different, or had not occurred?  What if we failed to recognize a serendipitous opportunity, instead of having taken good advantage of it?  What, for that matter, if our attitude toward those events had been different?  What if we had forgiven a slight, instead of having gotten angry?  What if some ‘sliding doors’ twist of happenstance had made us miss an encounter with someone who has instead had a profound affect on our lives?  Things would be different!

‘Synchronicity’ is another kind of circumstantial occurrence that springs from propitious coincidences.  The psychoanalyst Carl Jung coined this word.  It is a kind of folk wisdom concept that signifies a ‘meaningful coincidence’.  Most people can relate to this, because in our lives we occasionally see such occurrences.  Mystics like those in James Redfield’s book, the Celestine Prophecy, say that when we pay attention to such coincidences, we will see them more often, and have a better ability to understand the meanings in them.  Skeptics say that an infinite number of things happen in life, so it is not surprising that some of them are oddly coincidental, and that some of these coincidences turn out to be propitious, rather than calamitous.  Our minds are good at creating meanings and drawing inferences and projecting our biases and hopes and fears onto things;  this is the nature of how our minds work.

Actualities lie behind Appearances.  There is a physical Objective Reality, isn’t there?  In our attempts to fully comprehend this reality, we find a deep subjectivity and profound relativity to our perceptions, and an unknowable ultimate nature of the universe.  These uncertainties are parallel to the quantum uncertainties described by modern physicists.  It is interesting to ponder such things, in any case, and to explore the nature of how we think of things, even if our concepts are silly or superstitious. 

James Redfield’s book The Celestine Prophecy is very weak literature, but it contains an interesting ‘New Age’ perspective of the potentials and desirability of transforming our world.  In its own take on the ‘Law of Three Stages’, the book essentially says that the Church dominated ‘thought’ in Western cultures for 1,000 years during the Middle Ages, but then its credibility fell apart as it became apparent that the Earth and humanity are not the center of the universe, and that Church doctrines were errant and inflexible and dogmatic and intolerant.  As a result, this Church-driven ‘spirituality’ was discredited, and people’s natural spiritual natures yielded to a preoccupation with comfort and material things, and greater economic security, and more secular activities.  Now we are realizing that materialistic indulgence is not a fully adequate way to live in the world, and that we need to better understand spiritual questions and the manipulative nature of human character.  The Celestine Prophecy then proposes some curious insights into how we can consciously evolve and gain a “common world vision”.  These ideas have some merits.

For instance, the Fourth Insight is that a struggle for power takes place between people:  “To gain energy, we tend to manipulate or force others to give us attention, and thus energy.  When we successfully dominate others in this way, we feel more powerful, but they are left weakened, and often fight back.  Competition for scarce human energy is the cause of all conflict between people.”  It’s a veritable battle of wills out there!

The philosopher Herbert Spencer, in his book First Principles, noted that there is generally a soul of truth even in erroneous thinking.  Some philosophers, like Rousseau, exalted instinct and feeling above intellect and reason.  Let us therefore entertain ideas and feelings that are expressed in hopes and superstitions and fears, and see if we can’t make valuable use of them.  Yay!, by the way, for spontaneity!!

To comprehend the universe and our existence in the most accurate light, we must be willing to use reason and analysis, as well as intuition and emotion.  When we do, we can synthesize our experiences and perceptions and interpretations into a more holistic worldview that allows us to see things in the most sensible and salubrious ways.

Speculations on Nature, Purpose, and Cause and Effect

Big ideas intrigue me.  The philosophical speculations of spiritual savants like Deepak Chopra are compelling, though not particularly convincing;  love, they contend, has a central place in God’s plan.  God is love, they say, as if love exists as a central organizing principle in the Creation of the universe.  This, methinks, is suspiciously anthropocentric and most probably preposterous.  Gipsy Rose Lee once said, “God is love -- but get it in writing.”  (Good call.)

Assuming that a God does exist, like the anthropocentric one hypothesized in the Bible, for instance, it seems to me to be an error of logic to think that this God causes everything, and that ‘He’ has a purpose for everything that happens.  As noted earlier, really smart people like the German philosopher Leibniz supposed that a benevolent and perfect God exists, and this led him to speculate that our world must be “the best of all possible worlds”.  It was natural that Voltaire, half a century later, satirically attacked such philosophical optimism, after having seen the dreadful effects of the Lisbon Earthquake and the horrors of a million people being killed in the Seven Years’ War in Europe.

As with many kinds of disputes, the entire fabric of such disagreements is woven from misunderstanding.  Nature is a relentlessly impersonal force.  Nature is indifferent to its effects on individual living things.  Violent storms and deadly volcanic eruptions and destructive earthquakes and devastating deluges are natural events;  they are not the expression of an angry God.  If such events have detrimental impacts on some people, they cannot be accurately attributed to God’s malevolent will.  Likewise, when events occur that turn out to be beneficent, they are not due to God’s good will.  Such a supposition is mere superstition, and is often preposterously presumptuous. 

It is a mistake of misunderstanding to suppose that any kind of galactic or geophysical change is guided, or that it takes place by design to reward or harm any individual or group.  Cause and effect are random with regard to which beings may or may not be in the right place, or the wrong place, at the right time.  Physical events generally have a supreme indifference to living beings.  In contrast, human actions that help or harm people can be seen as being malevolent or ill–willed, even though most of them are driven by greed or selfishness or hubris rather than purely harmful or wicked intention. 

Back Again to Considerations of Salvation

Another book that, like Dante’s Divine Comedy, concerned the search for ‘salvation’ is John Bunyan’s 1678 book The Pilgrim’s Progress from This World to That Which Is To Come.  It is striking to know that the author in his own life had become burdened by terrible woes and menacing visions, and as a consequence, he had experienced a severe religious crisis in the year 1648.  His readings of the supposedly holy Scriptures had made him “crazed in the wits”, and he had become convinced that all men are destined to eternal damnation unless they pursue a straight and narrow path to salvation.  He trembled, and lamented, and became obsessed with the question, “What shall I do to be saved?”  So, years later, while in prison for preaching teachings that differed from the orthodox views of the Church of England, he created the mythical character Christian in this allegorical story. 

The character Christian in The Pilgrim’s Progress was an anguished, delusional simpleton who was frightened by visions of fire and brimstone and Judgment and Hell.  Actually, Christian was a thin caricature of a character that Bunyan dreamed up as a transparent allegory to represent a man mentally burdened by literal beliefs in the terrible teachings of sin and eternal damnation in the Bible.  Evangelist, another seeker and thin caricature of a character, advised Christian to forsake his wife and children and possessions and home, and to make a pilgrimage in search of salvation and celestial glory and eternal life.  Abandon your family in a gamble for eternal life?  What a mad delusion this is!

Christian feared God’s wrath and fiery indignation, so he tried to follow a straight and narrow path through the Slough of Despond, the Valley of the Shadow of Death, and Vanity Fair.  He sought to reject personal sins and the woes of life and attachment, and to bet that better is yet to come in some sort of life “in the hereafter”.  What obtuse vainglory and self-abnegation!  Religious fanatics might as well physically flagellate their flesh while they’re at it!  (And they do, in some places around the globe.)

John Bunyan did not seem to consider that such beliefs involve pliable and gullibly foolish obedience to men who proclaim ‘the Truth’.  The fact that these supposed truths are proclaimed by religious authorities who gain power and profit from their version of ‘the Truth’ is suspicious.  Many of these truths are completely contrary to the noble moral sentiments of the ‘Holy Bible’ itself.  John Bunyan, in his fear and despondency and desperation, did not seem to recognize that clerics are often manipulative control freaks and hypocritical ideologues who demand faith to behaviors that can distort true justice and violate peaceful coexistence and harm Golden Rule civility and cause hatred and discrimination and violence and war.

   “Ye blind guides, which strain at a gnat, and swallow a camel.”    --- Matthew 23:24

Christian raises my personal ire by having denigrated the sometimes exquisite virtue of taking a healthy nap during his travels en route to the glory of salvation.  It may well prove to be true that the journey in life is the most important thing, and not the illusive destination! 

The Bet Situation

It is worthwhile to note that every one of us is in a “Bet Situation” in this dilemma regarding the gamble whether or not to believe in eternal life.  The Bet Situation was first postulated by Blaise Pascal, a seventeenth-century French scientist who defined it as a philosophical bet which has a profound practical implication regarding probabilities and the future.  He asserted that we are all confronted with Bet Situations in our lives because (1) there are uncertainties, and (2) we are inextricably involved in ‘the game’. 

Pascal was essentially saying that everyone should bet on their being an afterlife, and so dedicate their lives to doing good, so that they will go to Heaven for eternity, rather than to Hell.  I believe that we should strive to do good as much as possible, but that our motives should be more honorable in so doing.  We should try to maximize our well-being and make the best of the positive and salubrious and spiritually uplifting things that we do when we are not so obsessed with pathetic vices or conformist devotional virtues.  There can be a tragic pathos in squandering the only life we will ever know to devote it to desperately futile hopes and wrong-headed delusions. 

The entire question of motivation is related to feelings concerning our perceptions of purpose in life.  We human animals love to feel a sense of purpose -- so much so, in fact, that the evangelical pastor Rick Warren has sold an astonishing 25 million copies of his book, The Purpose Driven Life.  The slick message of this book is simple: devote yourself to God, not to yourself.  Praise God’s glory, and live for ‘His’ glory, and worship ‘Him’ because “The Lord taketh pleasure in them that fear him, in those that hope in his mercy”.  Really?!  God also allegedly loves weak people and vulnerable people and those who are obedient to him.  Yow!  The God that Rick Warren writes about seems to be the God of the Old Testament, a jealous God that will hold a grudge for three or four generations against those who worship any God other than ‘Him’.  This God further will supposedly damn for all of eternity those who do not believe in ‘Him’.  Ha!  Nice guy, ‘Father’!

We can either bet that this life is the only one we will ever have, or we can bet along with Rick Warren that this life is just a test to determine if we can get into Heaven instead of being condemned to everlasting Hell.  Let’s be clear about one thing:  for all the good Rick Warren has dedicated himself to doing, he essentially says that we should all commit ourselves not to our own lives or those of our loved ones, or to living our lives well while we are on Earth, or to the greater good of our descendents, but to sacrificing ourselves to the belief that getting into a mythological Heaven is the purpose of this life. 

What an enormous gamble!  It is somewhat insane to gamble away this life, and squander many of its wonderful potentials, if it may turn out, as is most probable, that this belief is an epic and manipulative myth and that we will have squandered our only chance in all of eternity of enjoying and appreciating being alive, and of making the best of whatever comes our way.

A British child development psychologist wrote the following about what he called attachment behaviors:  “All of us, from the cradle to the grave, are happiest when life offers us a series of excursions, long or short, from a secure base.”  Well, I believe!  We all seek personal, financial and emotional security, and by extension national security;  but what we really desire most deeply is a personal sense of safety, a feeling that allows us to relax, to relate more confidently, to accept ourselves, to make adventurous excursions into the world, to travel, to expand our perspectives, to take safe but thrilling risks, to experience ooh-la-la titillating sensations, and to open ourselves up to our own unique forms of creative self-expression. 

Rather than embracing God in the submissive and surrendering ways that Rick Warren recommends for a personal sense of security in The Purpose Driven Life, I feel that we should all be more bold and sensible, and make responsible commitments that are more congruent with justice and honor and sustainability and peaceable coexistence!

Life, Death, and One of Aesop’s Fables

It seems likely to me that, in bets placed on there actually being a life after death, we are somewhat like the dog in the fable that had a nourishing hunk of meat in his mouth.  Upon seeing his reflection in the water of a clear stream, and mistaking it for another dog with another piece of meat, he lunged greedily for the sustenance he saw in the reflection.  By doing so, he lost the real nourishment that he had already possessed.  This story comes from one of Aesop’s Fables, The Dog and the Shadow.  Its actual ‘application’, or proverbial ‘moral of the story’, is this:  “Grasp at the shadow and lose the substance.”  Shall we grasp at a good afterlife, and lose pleasure, equanimity, genuine connectedness, spiritual enlightenment and other vital human potentialities?

In the prehistoric days before alphabets and written language, storytelling was a mainly oral tradition that was passed down from generation to generation.  Some of the oldest stories were fables and legends.  Aesop was a humble Greek slave who won renown and eventually his freedom by entertaining the nobles in the court of the powerful Greek King Croesus with clever tales of animals who could talk like human beings.  Aesop’s fables were not only amusing, but instructive as well, and King Croesus and his court allegedly learned more ‘home truths’ from Aesop’s narrative skill than from all of the teachings and writings of royal philosophers.  Stories definitely have value, but we must see them not as literal truth, but as metaphorical ideas.

In any case, with regards to life after death, every organism that I know of is dead after it dies.  The probability that human beings are different in this regard from all other species of life on Earth is not substantial.  There is no biological life after death, despite the myths of anthropocentric religions.  These establishments have propagated such myths to scare people, to gain power over them, and to seduce them into hoping, desperately, that there will be some sort of glorious afterlife offering compensatory solace for the indignities, pain, disappointments, suffering and humiliations in this life. 

The certainty that each of us will one day die should train our attention to meaning and purpose and passion in this life that we have.  It should focus us on the quality of our lives while we are living.  We should not pursue desperate gambits to sacrifice all pleasure and good will to our fears.  We should not embrace a rigorously narrow and oppressively self-righteous path in hopes of a better life after we are dead.  We should not justify misery in this one certain life we have, for ourselves or for others, on the off-chance that this strategy will be rewarded by a hypothetical stay in ‘Heaven’ for us after death. 

It seems almost certain to me that there will be no misery for anyone after our individual deaths, for there will be no body to suffer, and no mind to perceive.  If a belief in Heaven after death brings some solace in this life, then fine:  believe!  But when such beliefs are used to rationalize a waste of time and energy and life, or to justify misguided actions or outright harm to others, or to irreversibly damage the environment that supports us and all future generations, then it is unconscionable.

What Would Goethe Have to Say?

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe was a German polymath and the author of Faust, the most important version of a classic German legend about an unsatisfied scholar who makes a deal with the Devil to exchange his soul for unlimited knowledge and worldly pleasures.  This is right up there with bad bets made the world over, and not unlike many of them!

Goethe visited the city of Marienbad in 1821 when he was 72 years old, and fell in love with a 17-year old girl named Ulrike von Levetzow.  She was so enthralling to him that when his aspiration to marry her two years later was rejected, he penned a very sad and distraught poem, The Marienbad Elegy.  It was one of his most personal poems, and he considered it one of his finest works.  It is a paean to the potential for chagrin and disappointment to serve as a catalyst for artistic expression.  Goethe had an emotionally hectic youth, and was recognized as a leading figure in the emotional expression movement known as Sturm und Drang, which is said to have “celebrated the energetic Promethean restlessness of spirit as opposed to the ideal of calm rationalism of the Enlightenment.”  Goethe's poem 'Prometheus' insisted that man must believe not in gods but in himself, which might be one of the more rational perspectives of the times. 

Doubt, Certainty, the Bible, and Wisdom

Plato, in the fourth century before Christ, recognized that human behavior flows from three main sources:  desire, emotion, and knowledge.  He held that effective individual action would be characterized by desire that is warmed and banked with emotion and is guided by knowledge.  Not a bad approach, when you think about it!  And far better than allowing immoderate indulgences to be married to emotional hijackings and to have cerebral rationalizations that justify awful outcomes.

“Time is a royal man-eating tiger.  He is not satisfied with men;  he also devours cities,

   kingdoms and (forgive me, God) even gods.”                           --- Nikos Kazantzakis

Voltaire observed in the eighteenth century:  “Doubt is not a pleasant condition, but certainty is an absurd one.”  Poverty, destitution, pain, failure, calamity, exile or loss can lead to harsh anguish.  At such times, the frightening burden of severe uncertainties and bewildering insecurity and profound anxieties can make a person feel an agony of doubt.  A spiritual crisis can occur during such an unsettling interregnum.  Such a crisis can lead to mental turmoil in which one’s actions, motives and purposes can appear to be suddenly hollow or meaningless.  At such times of existential crises of thought and emotion, one becomes more vulnerable to a startling religious conversion.  “Born again!”  Doctrines of ‘original sin’ which assert that every person will either be eternally damned or saved through proper believing, can apparently seize control of one’s consciousness and subconscious mind at such moments.

Being ‘born again’ has its distinct ‘downsides’ as well as ‘upsides’.  Millions of people, especially in the South, use the Bible as the source of their succor and counsel.  Yet the Bible has a multitude of faults and errors.  Believing fervently in fundamentalist ideas has profound social problems associated with it.  Mark Twain adduced the defects of the Bible thusly:  “It has … a wealth of obscenity; and upwards of a thousand lies.” 

The Bible is also filled with serious contradictions.  Take the question of whether or not it is actually a folly to be wise.

“For in much wisdom is much grief:  and he that increaseth knowledge increaseth

    sorrow.”   --- Ecclesiastes 1:18

"For it is written, I will destroy the wisdom of the wise, and will bring to nothing

   the understanding of the prudent."   --- I Corinthians 1:19

“Wisdom is the principal thing; therefore get wisdom: and with all thy getting  

    get understanding.”   --- Proverbs 4:7

I believe that knowledge and understanding are of the utmost importance to humanity, whether or not preachers say God is in favor of them.  A wise friend who has two children recently told me that the only saving grace of humanity will be an effective use of our awareness and wisdom and intellect to advance civic concerns.  I find a strong resonance in this idea.  The hopes of our children will not be found in the desperate casting of hopes to the heavens for salvation.  We will have to act more sensibly rather than giving in to temptations and indulging in tendencies to get material things and clinging to ethnocentric impulses and imperiling our communities and the planet’s ecosystems. 

Our societies are unquestionably suffering pathological pains that are associated with family and intergenerational tensions and stimulated economic growth and technological changes.  These things are compounded by a rapid increase in the number of needy and greedy people alive.  Terrible conflicts between jealously protective privileged people and envious underprivileged people contribute to this malaise.  Neo-Gilded-Age inequalities, poverty, economic insecurity, crime and anti-social behaviors that are related to these pathologies complicate our societal challenges.  These problems are exacerbated by powerful human desires for more variety and greater liberty and more materialistic possessions and expanded freedoms to choose. 

In light of these existential challenges, there is some merit in the preachings of those who believe in a straight and narrow path, and in the value of conformity to the proverbial Procrustean bed.  It’s just too bad that this disciplined conformity would necessarily be a conformity -- SURPRISE! -- to the strictures of those who are so eager to impose their control and their narrow-minded ways of seeing the world upon everyone else.  Besides, conformity to expectations can be troubling to our most authentic selves.  There are definite respects in which it is a healthy attitude to accept one’s innate predispositions. 

There might be some positive aspects of social control through the dominance of religious authorities in government -- but only if those self-anointed authorities actually acted in ways that were truly benevolent.  But they rarely act in the best interests of all of society.  In any case, it is quite contrary to our American ideals and rules of law and Constitution to let religions have overarching influences in government.  Such gambits are much more consistent with the governments in strict theocracies, like those of Saudi Arabia and Iran.  The common people in those countries are certainly not happy with the repressive aspects of the regimes that rule their societies.  Liberty-loving Americans would surely revolt against any efforts to impose such strict dictates as Islamic law. 

One of the themes that Jonathan Swift explores in Gulliver’s Travels is whether might is right, or in contrast, whether moral correctness is best.  Which should be the governing factor in our societies?  History shows that claims of moral superiority that are used to dominate others can have outcomes that are as ruthless as more secular justifications for the use of violent physical force to control societies.  Jesus said morality is kindness to the weak;  Nietzsche said morality is the bravery of the strong.  Plato, in contrast, said morality is the effective harmonizing of the whole.  An eighteenth century sage named Helvetius pointed out a sensible way of seeing this:  Morality should be founded on sociology, not theology, and on the ever-changing needs of society, not on any unchanging revelation or dogma.

As a strong believer in human rights and human dignity and individual freedom and equal rights for women, I state unequivocally that our system is better for us Americans than anything that the Religious Right offers to impose upon our society through all those God-fearing right-wing religion-pandering southern politicians.  The domineering influence of social conservatives on churches, and on Fox News and the Republican Party, seem to have obscured the fact that Jesus was what would be considered today to be an outright liberal.  He championed the poor, and chastised the greed of the rich.  He opposed the oppressive powers-that-be.  He taught compassion, forgiveness, inclusion, tolerance, peace, equality, and love.

  "It is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle, than for a rich man

      to enter into the kingdom of God."   --- Matthew 19:24        (Oh, is that so?)

A Curious Disclaimer

A nexus of ideas germinates in the interstices of my mind, brewing in my subconscious and spilling over into my conscious thoughts.  I see a vision of fairness and kindness amongst people in every nation.  This includes greater fairness to women.  None of the perspectives expressed in the hundreds of pages of Earth Manifesto writings should be construed to mean that I believe women should be accorded a status ‘more equal’ than men on our evolving Animal Farm.  Innumerable injustices, biases, patriarchal dominance tactics and sexual outrages have been perpetrated against women throughout recorded history in nations worldwide.  These unfair and deplorable conditions are epitomized by the violent suppression of female deities in mythology and established religions, AND they are expressed in associated social attitudes that are embodied in discriminatory laws, exploitive role limitations, long-established restrictions on women’s rights, unfair pay for the same work, and the like.  Any honest person could think of many such inequities. 

Affirmative action programs are designed to right the injustices represented by a long history of social inequities.  As such, they may be somewhat unfair to current individuals in an effort to create more equal overall opportunities.  Affirmative action is not an ideal solution, but it is a good step in the right direction.  The rationale behind affirmative action programs is to create a fairer society by providing minorities and underprivileged people with fairer opportunities.  Defenders of the status quo adduce arguments that affirmative action programs unfairly discriminate against dominant groups in the effort to more fairly and equally distribute opportunities to those who have been historically denied.  While there is a kernel of truth in this, it is only fair to address the overarching trend of unfairness. 

For instance, it can be argued that it has been unjust and discriminatory to have chosen men to be 108 of the 110 Justices that have served on the U.S. Supreme Court.  It is high time now for us to appoint more women.  There are plenty that are qualified.  The status quo of under-representing women in Congress and on the Supreme Court has larger unfair implications on the nature of how laws are made and interpreted in our society.

The Facts Concerning How the Bible Ends

My favorite number is 12.  It just happens that numbers have played a curious range of symbolic roles in various cultures and religions and other systems of human thought throughout history.  The number 12 is strongly associated with the heavens, as in the 12 months of the Earth’s orbit around the Sun, and the 12 constellations of the zodiac, and the 12 animals of the 12-year cycle of the Chinese Zodiac.  Twelve is said to represent completion, wholeness, harmony, or perfect governance.  In ancient civilizations like the Oriental and Judaic, the number 12 corresponds to plenitude and integrality.

Despite my affiliation with the number 12, I cannot in any way believe the final pages of the Bible as set forth in the weighty Revelation 21, 22.  Here is how the Bible ends:

“A new holy city will come down from God out of heaven” … “and there shall be no more death, neither sorrow, nor crying, neither shall there be any more pain”.  And this city will have 12 gates made of 12 pearls and guarded by 12 angels with the names of the 12 tribes of the children of Israel inscribed upon them.  The streets of the city will be pure gold, yet somehow like “transparent glass.”  The city will rest on 12 foundations with the names of the 12 apostles on them.  The city will measure 12,000 furlongs, with the length and the breadth and the height of it being equal (one can easily visualize this big square cube floating down from … well, from wherever). 

The great wall around this holy heavenly city will measure 144 cubits, and it will have “a pure river of water of life, clear as crystal, proceeding out of the throne of God”.  On either side of the river will be a tree of life which will bear “twelve manner of fruits” and will yield these 12 fruits all 12 months of the year.  The foundations of the walls of the city will be “garnished with all manner of precious stones”, 12 in number:  (1) jasper, (2) sapphire, (3) chalcedony, (4) emerald, (5) sardonyx, (6) sardius, (7) chrysolyte, (8) beryl, (9) topaz, (10) chrysoprasus, (11) jacinth, and (12) amethyst.  Brilliant!!

It is noteworthy that even the fanciful tales of opulent palaces like the one that Aladdin had his genie build overnight in The Story of Aladdin; Or, the Wonderful Lamp  cannot measure up to the amazing proportions and décor of this holy city that God will send down out of heaven.  Aladdin’s genie in the story was able to instantaneously transport Aladdin’s posh palace to Africa from the capital of one of the rich provinces of the kingdom of China.  The genie did this after the perfidious African magician had by deception gotten hold of the wonderful lamp.  So perhaps it should not be all that surprising that our presumably much more powerful God will be able to judge all the dead, and cast most of these sinners into a lake of fire burning with brimstone, and then in a frenzied Cubist crescendo, send down such a 12-plex holy city to the region of the holy land.  SHEZAAM!!!

The disciple John wrote these things about the astonishing holy city in the Bible, and to make sure that readers didn’t imagine that he had made the story up or something, he repeatedly said that the Lord Jesus had sent his angel to testify to the truth of these things.  “He which testifieth these things saith, Surely I come quickly.  Amen.  Even so, come, Lord Jesus.  The grace of our Lord Jesus Christ be with you all.  Amen.”  THE END.

Come already, Jesus!  Or else people may begin to become disillusioned in their religious convictions and doubt the veracity of all the stories asserted in the Bible.  The faithful, who hope for everlasting life merely by virtue of believing biblical stories to be true and acting to glorify God, may eventually begin to wonder if all these myths are true in any way.  The Bible is one of the most influential books every published;  it is a monumental work of fiction, but its impacts on civilization have had not only positive aspects but also highly negative ones.  (The same can be said for the much more recent Koran and the Book of Mormon, for better or for worse!)

Revelation 20:10 says that false prophets are to be “tormented day and night forever and ever.”  There were apparently lots of false prophets back in the days the Bible was written.  Lots of people, in other words, professed ‘pagan’ ideas.  It is no wonder that the author of revelations in the Bible’s Revelation kept swearing that these words are true and faithful, and that, indeed, ‘The Word of God’ rode in on a white horse, with armies in heaven all clothed in clean fine white linen, and that they followed him upon white horses, and that ‘he’ that sat upon the white horse “was called Faithful and True, and in righteousness he doth judge and make war.”  (Revelation 19:11) 

O come, all ye faithful, joyful and triumphant!  If war need be, incidentally, can’t we at least ask for ‘just’ wars to be fought over honorable issues?

There is an unfortunate ‘Catch-22’ to the Revelation stories:  they assert that no one may enter the biblical holy city who “maketh a lie”.  Thus, even the people who created this concluding vision of the Bible may not be allowed in on ‘Judgment Day’!  Oh, well, C’est la vie! 

Holy Books, the Supernatural, and Progressive Perspective

Scriptures, n.  The sacred books of our holy religion, as distinguished from the false  

  and profane writings on which all other faiths are based.

                                                           --- Ambrose Bierce, The Devil’s Dictionary

People who do not believe in Mormonism chuckle ruefully in recognizing the opening claims of the Book of Mormon, first published in 1830 by Joseph Smith.  This supposedly ‘sacred text’ starts out with the not-all-that-convincing testimony of a number of witnesses who claim to have seen the Golden Plates that Joseph Smith says contained ‘the words’ of ancient prophets that he translated into the Book of Mormon. 

In Roughing It, Mark Twain makes fun of this Book of Mormon “Testimony”:

“Some people have to have a world of evidence before they can come anywhere in the neighborhood of believing anything;  but for me, when a man tells me that he has "seen the engravings which are upon the plates," and not only that, but an angel was there at the time, and saw him see them, and probably took his receipt for it, I am very far on the road to conviction, no matter whether I ever heard of that man before or not, and even if I do not know the name of the angel, or his nationality either.”

Honest to God!  Joseph Smith also heard the voice of God giving him commandments.  If he had spent a few more years imagining and creating history (the authors of various parts of the Bible, after all, had spent a thousand years at it, from about 600 B.C. to 400 A.D.), then Joseph Smith might even have ridden in on his own white horse and called the whole kit and caboodle “Faithful and True”.      

All of this Holy Scripture stuff smacks of official sanction to a grand version of the formerly ‘pagan’ superstitions of the SUPERNATURAL.  Whereas lightening and thunder are impressive natural phenomena, and they may be deserving of the deification that was embodied in all-powerful Zeus in archaic mythology, it is rather absurd and potentially dangerous to attribute them to the “will of God” and to ignore better and more accurate natural understandings of them.  Maybe it’s a shame in one sense to reduce lightening to a mere occurrence of meteorological phenomena and electrical impulses, and yes, metaphorical interpretations of events can be richly evocative, but let’s ‘get real’!

Times change. Knowledge advances. Cultures shift.  But established religions stubbornly resist change.  They oppose change well past the time that it becomes overwhelmingly necessary to adapt.  They act like a sea anchor that brakes the movement of a boat sailing deep waters in a storm far from shore.  Jared Diamond, the professor who wrote the book Collapse, How Societies Choose to Fail or Succeed, says that the human race must pay particular attention to long-term thinking and anticipatory long-term planning in order to survive and prosper.  He says we must be willing to reconsider things that once served society well, especially when those things become outmoded and detrimental due to increasing conflicts, changing circumstances or deteriorating environmental conditions. 

Now is the time for humanity to embrace more resilient thinking;  it is not the time to continue to bury our heads in the sand, or to redouble our commitments to rigid religious dogmas, or to cling ever more stubbornly to primitive beliefs that obstruct progress and keep us from collaborating together to honestly solve our growing problems.  Now is the time for more honest commitments to social responsibility.  Now is the time for us to make the world a better place.

A small and unsophisticated sect in southern Slobovia has reportedly canonized the tales of the Arabian Nights, and clings to the belief that the stories in this ancient text are genuine fact.  They know as sure as words written on papyrus that a “hideous genie of gigantic size” would appear when Aladdin’s magic lamp was rubbed, and that the genie would always say, “What wouldst thou have?  I am ready to obey thee as thy slave, and the slave of all those who have that lamp in their hands.” 

Aladdin, at least, set a positive role model in his zeal for the public good, and as a result, Slobovia has just laws and a balanced budget and freedom of religion and common good goals that are ensconced at the highest level of governance.  These things are held far above the rights and privileges of unscrupulous profiteers and power-abusing rich people and cost-externalizing corporations.  A society ostensibly need not be utopian to be made better than it currently is!

The Existential Problems Associated with Religious Fundamentalism

“We shall not cease from exploration

  And the end of all our exploring

   Will be to arrive where we started

    And know the place for the first time.”

                                                         --- T.S. Eliot

The intellectually stern philosopher Krishnamurti urged listeners to examine their beliefs closely and scrupulously.  Good call.  The essential and profound human problem with dogmatic religious convictions is that, in the sublime spiritual quest for certainty and exalted behavior and righteousness and virtue, believers sometimes reject the fair-mindedness of the Golden Rule.  They judge other people harshly.  They condemn others for not believing the way they do.  They disparage live-and-let-live attitudes.  They also sometimes severely repress the expression of their own true souls, and their passion for living life, and their creative impulses, and their enjoyment of worldly pleasures.  And they too often fail to demonstrate loving ‘christian behaviors’ towards others.  In particular, they use the self-righteousness of their beliefs to scorn people of other faiths and to denounce as heretics and infidels those who believe differently than them.  Peace, brother! 

The noble aspiration for a virtuous spiritual purity can thus become an ignoble, bigoted, mean-spirited, divisive, prudish, self-abnegating, soul-denying, progress opposing, woman oppressing, homosexual hating, and dangerously violence-prone vice.  Écrasez l'infâme!

One of the Ten Commandments in the Old Testament says, “Thou shalt not commit adultery”.  According to the law that God gave to the Israelites through Moses, both the man and the woman who commit adultery shall be punished by death.  The Bible would thus have hundreds of millions of people stoned to death today because of this antiquated morality, as professed in Deuteronomy 22:22.  At least Jesus said, “He that is without sin among you, let him cast the first stone ….”

What of forgiveness?  The disciple Peter said to Jesus in Matthew 18:21, “Lord, how oft shall my brother sin against me, and I forgive him?  Jesus answered him, "I tell you, not just seven times, but seventy times seven.”  All this forgiveness for a man that wrongs thee, and yet this same God in his Ten Commandments cautions the faithful not to worship any graven images or idols, for “I the Lord your God am a jealous God, punishing children for the iniquity of parents, to the third and the fourth generation of those who reject me.”  What a lack of proportional justice!  This is a severe, wrathful, intimidating, terrible vengeance, not justice.  Can anyone think this is actually ‘right’? 

Lest one think that adultery should actually be punished by death, consider an even more egregious example of injustice in the Bible.  In Deuteronomy 22:21, it says that a damsel who is not married and who is not a virgin shall be stoned to death for the “evil” and “folly she hath wrought”.  How many of our daughters shall we stone to death?  Should the men of Wasilla, Alaska have stoned Sarah Palin’s pregnant daughter Bristol to death for having had sex without getting married?

If we were to stone to death the one million unwed teenagers that get pregnant in the U.S. every year, the little hussies, wouldn’t that be a supreme injustice to a million unborn children?  Wouldn’t it?  And how about those testosterone-driven boys and men who get these teenage girls pregnant, don’t they have a significant responsibility for the events that lead up to the loss of the damsel’s virginity?  In my experience, it is boys and men who are generally the most eager to have sex, and to want “to score”, and to take advantage of girls.  So why should we blame and punish females so severely?  Our societies must become more enlightened with regard to this absurd double-standard! 

And the freedom of choice must be guaranteed through a new Amendment to the Constitution, so that we once and for all assure those who get pregnant that they can decide their own fates, without any man telling them what they must do.

Many people seek transcendent insights, upon occasion, and try to achieve what the poet Rainer Maria Rilke called a “conflagration of clarity”.  Such certainty is difficult to come by, and it is generally a product of open-mindedness, not a kaleidoscopic conforming capitulation to dogma and doctrine.  The late author and surgeon Dr. Leonard Shlain made note in his book Art and Physics that intuitions and evocative metaphors and synthetic thinking are the province of the brain’s right hemisphere, and that they are very valuable in achieving a healthy and balanced worldview.  He also noted that precise left-brained logic, reason, analysis and abstract thinking are crucial to scientific understandings and a sensible way of comprehending reality.  Dr. Shlain sensibly argued that it would be best to integrate both of these complementary approaches in our thinking!

The English philosopher Alfred North Whitehead noted that “Truth is the conformation of Appearance to Reality.”  He further observed:  "There are no whole truths;  all truths are half-truths.  It is trying to treat them as whole truths that plays the devil."  I am going to meditate on the meaning of these statements for awhile, and evaluate both the perspectives of those who agree with them and those who play the ‘devil’s advocate’.

A Digression on Soteriology

In theology, the study of salvation is called ‘soteriology’.  There are various kinds of salvation doctrines in all nine of the major religions of the world -- Christianity, Islam, Judaism, Buddhism, Hinduism, Sikhism, Confucianism, Jainism, and Shintoism.  Christian salvation and redemption are studied by Christian religious people in much the same way that geology is studied by Biblical literalists:  they start with premises and conclusions that exclude full perspectives, and work from there.  A more honest study of salvation would cast the doctrines of study in full context;  it would study the validity of the entire ‘sublapsarian’ concept that sets up a narrative of absolute good and evil, and original sin, and damnation and redemption, and it would investigate the motives behind suppression of sexual impulses and male authoritarianism and commanded obedience and blind belief in biblical certitudes.  And it would make a more comprehensive study of the complex issues related to human behaviors.

In Christian soteriology, debate concerns a narrower set of questions, including exactly how an individual can be saved, and whether God is completely sovereign or human beings have free will, and whether there are absolute moral laws.  To me it seems preposterous to suppose, like the theologian Martin Luther did, that salvation can be achieved merely by believing in the Biblical story, and not necessarily by acting in virtuous ways. 

I believe that the only way for humanity to achieve salvation will be in a more secular manner in which we choose to collectively transform our societies into fairer ones that are more committed to global problem-solving and peaceful coexistence and sustainable existence.  Belief in God alone will prove to be inadequate, especially if such beliefs are divisive and exclusionary, and if they do not embrace a responsible stewardship of nature.

Different forms of salvation are found in secular understandings than in religious dogmas.  John Muir felt fervently that salvation can be found through immersion in awe-inspiring and beautiful places in the natural world.  I find deep resonance in this conviction.  It seems to me that the wisest path for us to choose would be to save ourselves from courses of action that are socially dysfunctional and environmentally calamitous!

Psychoanalysis of Those who are Crazy for God

I intend to read Frank Schaeffer’s new book, Crazy for God, to see what one of the founders of the Religious Right - and one of those who helped marry it to the GOP - has to say today about the dysfunction of evangelical Christianity and the disgust that the author now feels for both the conservative leaders of the Religious Right and the radical social conservatives of the Republican Party.  Crazy for God is Schaeffer’s confession, and he seems to be seeking redemption through an introspective rejection of what he formerly espoused.  Frank Schaeffer apparently embodies the ancient religious virtue of humility:  “He is unafraid to say that he was wrong on important matters.”

I believe in the value of maintaining an open-mind and seeking clarity and being idealistic, but at the same time being smart and pragmatic and striving to cultivate good common sense.  The profile of those who are most vulnerable to intense born-again ‘religious conversion experiences’ and manipulative religious organizations and cults are generally young people who are open-minded seekers of clarity and meaningful understanding and idealistic goals.  Often these people have recently undergone personal crises, and are at weak and vulnerable points in their lives.  Those who seek simplistic understandings are often susceptible to embracing ideologically programmed and totalistic belief systems.  They are often far too willing to depend on controlling individuals who demand obedience and conformity and unquestioning subservience.

A guy named Todd Harvey, who had spent years involved with the Unification Church of the Korean religious leader Sun Myung Moon, wrote a long article about his experiences with this religious cult.  He explored the simplistic, distorted, black-and-white worldviews of religious extremists, and the entire doctrine of the “fall of man” in the Garden of Eden.  He analyzed how such doctrines exert their influence.  He gave consideration to the psychological nature of mind-control techniques that rely on demands of purity and the needs to confess sins and unworthiness.  He wrote about the insidious nature of using slogans instead of critical thinking, and about the risks related to holding beliefs that are sacred and above question or scrutiny.

“You start with the idealistic vision of a world without pain, suffering, or loneliness, a virtual Kingdom of Heaven on Earth.  You point out that our real world is obviously not the ideal, that something is terribly wrong.  Something is wrong with our love.  You persuade people that their love is imperfect, and their natural biological urges for pleasure and love are self-centered, evil, Satanic.  You show that people have four ‘fallen natures’, which in essence all boil down to disbelief and disobedience.  You burden people with the guilt of four kinds of sin:  original sin, collective sin, inherited sin and individual sin.  You create deep feelings of unworthiness and a need for salvation, and a sense that there is no hope without a ‘messiah’.  You tell people of a suffering, broken-hearted God who has been disappointed for thousands of years of providential history at mankind's repeated failures.  Then, you offer a way, a new truth, a new hope for mankind.  You show how this is the greatest moment in history, this is the time of fulfillment.  You say that all you have to do, to comfort God's heart and solve your deep sin and restore Heaven on Earth, is to unite with the new messiah.  Offer your life to him.  Attend him.  This time has cosmic significance.  Nothing else you could be doing with your life is as important as this.  Expect to suffer and sacrifice everything that is that is important to you.  Follow your Abel figure with absolute obedience.  This is the course of the saints.  This is the course of glory.”

“Start with a doctrine like this.  Combine religious insights and inspirations that resonate strongly with our deepest spiritual longings for Truth, Love, God.  Present it in an environment that is engineered to break down barriers of resistance and faculties of critical evaluation, to someone who is searching for answers, trusting, and vulnerable.” 

“You can begin to see how … someone can give everything they possibly could - their mind, body and soul, their past present and future, their family and friends, their sincere hard work for seven days a week for years on end - all the while lavishing love and praise on the revered leader, all the while being told it isn't enough, that they aren't accomplishing what God expects, that they aren't worthy of the blessings the leader is bestowing on them, all the while believing in their heart that it is true, repenting with tears.” 

In a similar manner, this is how the tragedy of Jonestown came about, an event where a demagogic leader caused more than 900 people to commit cyanide suicide in 1978.

Such gambits are manipulations of people by making them feel insecure and guilty and asserting that there are no ambiguities or shades of grey, and that everything is either good or evil.  This point-of-view frames morality in terms of sexual abstinence, and in the denial of earthly pleasures.  It portrays natural drives as shameful, and sows confusion and self-doubt and inhibition and a sense of sinfulness.  It makes individualism seem self-centered and completely irresponsible.  It sets the stage for convictions in a need for salvation, sacrifice, and dependence on leaders for guidance.  It makes pious attitudes seem proper, even when they are absurd, as if flattery of God is a legitimate way to get into Heaven.  It convinces people that natural biological urges for love and pleasure and sexual fulfillment are bad.  It is congruent with the ideas of a “chastity patrol” in George Orwell’s 1984, and with the fulminations of the Religious Right.  Boo hiss!

A Related Digression Concerning Jonathan Swift

Jonathan Swift (1667 – 1745) was an Anglo-Irish satirist, essayist, poet, cleric and writer whose most famous book was Gulliver’s Travels.  He had a Doctor of Divinity degree from Trinity College in Dublin, and he became politically quite active, including involvements in the inner circle of the Tory government in England from 1710 to 1714. 

Gulliver’s Travels is a great and sophisticated satire on human nature and societies.  The book was based on the author’s extensive experiences of his times.  He satirizes practical knowledge that does not produce good results when he writes about the fictitious academy of ‘Balnibarbi’, where experiments for ‘extracting sunbeams from cucumbers’ somehow amount to nothing.  Swift depicted rational societies in ‘Brobdingnag’ and ‘Houyhnhnmland’, as the best kind because their peoples were happy and able to live their lives in wise and well-ordered ways.  He made fun of using knowledge or understanding of abstract ideas.  Swift was apparently a skeptic of science, and a cultural conservative.

The tiny Lilliputians of Gulliver’s Travels symbolize humankind's wildly excessive pride in “its own puny existence”.  Lilliputians regarded fraud, breach of trust, and ingratitude as amongst the worst of crimes, and their approach to justice laudably offered rewards for consistent good behaviors, not merely harsh punishments for inconsistent bad behaviors.

In this book, a long and obstinate war took place between the empire of ‘Lilliput’ and the empire of ‘Blefuscu’ over whether to break eggs on the larger end or the smaller end.  This difference in ‘doctrine’ was ridiculous, yet it was responsible for causing the deaths of thousands of citizens in the two empires.  This war was absurd, springing more from wounded vanity than modern material concerns like disputed territory or greedy desires for the resources of another nation.  On reflection, maybe most wars spring from absurdities.  This sure would imply that we should strive with greater commitment to resolve conflicts!  In every satire on our human foibles and vices and absurdities, neither the writer nor the readers are above these propensities.  “The bell tolls for us, as it does for Gulliver and his creator.”

Some of Swift’s satire was directed against the spiritual pride and naive self-love of ‘mankind’, which he felt was expressed by the rationalist optimism of philosophers of his era.  In this regard, his satire is similar to religious criticism of the follies of humankind because they pursue materialistic goals rather than spiritual ones.  Such perspectives do have considerable merit, for materialism is ultimately not filled with fulfillment.  Swift did not ‘optimistically’ view human beings as existing in harmonious and rational societies with well-integrated purposes;  instead he asserted the traditional Christian view which says that people are profoundly divided between their rational souls and their carnal bodies.  Swift’s satirical intentions in creating excrement-loving ‘Yahoos’ can be attributed to an imagin­ative representation of our supposedly sinful bodies.  Swift thus presented ‘unregenerate man’ in much the same way as St. Augustine and countless other proponents of traditional doctrines of Original Sin portrayed him:  as a pride-smitten lump of deformity and disease, both in body and mind.  Yuck-o!

The Yahoos are por­trayed not only as smelly and unclean, but as driven by hate, greed, intemperance, laziness, lewdness and cunning maliciousness.  The implicit moral of Swift’s religious satire is that human beings can be saved from their own destructive and naive self-love only by accepting the supposed hideousness of their animality, and the depth of their carnal sinfulness.  Once they have done this, then they will be more aware of their desperate need for redemption, which just happens to be offered through a belief in the absolute truth of a Christian God.  Yada, yada, yada.  Pass the collection plate! 

In order to put believers in their places and make them feel unworthy, and thus in need of redemption, images of small loathsome creatures are used over and over again in the writings of religious tracts.  New England Presbyterian Jonathan Edwards wrote Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God,  in which he imagines God as a giant holding the body of a tiny and diminutive sinner over the abyss of eternal punishment:

“The God that holds you over the pit of hell, much as one holds a spider, or some loathsome insect over the fire, abhors you and is dreadfully provoked:  his wrath towards you burns like fire;  he looks upon you as worthy of nothing else, but to be cast into the fire;  he is of purer eyes than to bear to have you in his sight;  you are ten thousand times more abominable in his eyes than the most hateful serpent is in ours.”

In an explicit reference to the doctrine of Original Sin, the author and religionist John Bunyan, in taking account of his own personal ‘original and inward pollution’, compares himself to a toad:

“I was more loathsome in mine own eyes than a toad, and I thought I was so in God’s eyes too.  Sin and corruption, I said, would as naturally bubble out of my heart as water would bubble out of a fountain … I thought none but the devil himself could equal me for inward wickedness and pollution of mind.  I fell, therefore, at the sight of my own vileness, deeply into despair…”

The most common of all religious images of self-contempt is that of the worm. 'But I am a worm and no man’, writes the author of Psalm 22 as he seeks to answer the question as to why God has forsaken him.  In a similar manner, the unworthiness of mankind is lamented by Bildad in the Book of Job:

How then can man be justified with God?

Or how can he be clean that is born of a woman?        (Excuse me?)

Behold even to the moon, and it shineth not;

Yea, the stars are not pure in his sight.

How much less man, that is a worm?

And the son of man, which is a worm?       (Job 25:4-6)

Thanks, guys, for the degradation.  It’s a real clever and duplicitous gimmick.  You may be able to collect a few extra converts with this disgusting imagery, but I condemn it.  In fact, I frankly prefer chipper attitudes, and people who exist as exemplifications of the wonderful qualities of positivity and enthusiasm.  I agree that we need a kind of salvation, but one that protects us from the greed and clever Machiavellian machinations of those who seek to manipulate and exploit others and all in future generations by their gambits.

A Bit of Greek Mythology

I personally find inspiration in the handsome and youthful hunter Adonis, who in Greek mythology is a god of vegetation and its annual renewal.  Adonis was loved by both two goddesses, Persephone, the Queen of the Underworld, and Aphrodite, the Goddess of Love and Beauty.  Persephone and Aphrodite competed for Adonis’ devotion, so Zeus, the ruler of the heavens, adjudicated the dispute and decided that Adonis should spend one-third of each year with Aphrodite, and one-third of each year with Persephone, and one-third of the remainder of his time to himself.  Not a bad gig for Adonis -- and a sensible sort of early trimester compromise solution!  Anyway, Adonis was killed by a wild boar, but he was permitted to return from the underworld to Aphrodite for part of every year.  The cult of Adonis honored this myth as a part of the annual Spring renewal, which represented death and resurrection.

Adonis was the son of Paphos, according to some stories, who was the son of Pygmalion.  This is an oh-so-curious legend.  Pygmalion was a king of Cyprus who carved a statue of ivory to represent his idealized woman.  The more he looked at the smooth bust, the more he fell in love with his own carved creation.  Eventually he prayed to Aphrodite, the Goddess of Love, for a wife like his statue.  When he kissed the ivory figure, the statue came alive.  Voila!  So he married her, and they had a lovely boy together who was named Paphos.  This is the founding myth of the picturesque Cypriot port town of Paphos, which was the center of the cult of Aphrodite and pre-Hellenic fertility deities.  (The port town of Paphos today has been designated by UNESCO as one of the sites of cultural and natural treasures of the world’s heritage.)

After thinking about this love for a marble statue in the context of the excessive pride of Jonathan Swift’s Lilliputians, one cannot help but think of Narcissus, a beautiful youth who spurned and cruelly disdained those who loved him.  All who fell in love with Narcissus suffered from unrequited love.  Nemesis, the spirit of divine punishment, caused Narcissus to fall in love with his reflection in a pool in the forest, and he perished there because he was not able to leave the beauty of his own reflection.  Such myths, considered symbolically, can be illuminating, and may make one fall into a reverie.

Feeling versus Knowledge

Once long ago on a hike up forested foothills, my best friend in college and I were speculatively talking about the intricate botanical details of a variety of wildflowers that grew in profusion at that time of year near towering stands of Douglas fir trees.  Some hikers trooped past, and one of them smugly remarked, “Can’t you just appreciate them as they are?”  Good call!  Yay for spontaneity and the freshness of impression!  On the other hand, one can arguably glean a greater appreciation for wildflowers if some facts are known about the flowers’ seasonal cycles, and their unique reproductive characteristics, and the ecological niches they occupy, and their biotic ranges and distribution. 

Likewise, one can appreciate great literature in and of itself alone.  And one can also develop a deeper appreciation and understanding of it by learning about the author’s life and experiences, as well as the perspectives of others who have studied the themes and motifs and symbolism and techniques of a particular work.  (The online SparkNotes, for instance, provides quite good information about many authors and prominent pieces of literature.)  Analysis and synthesis, and the left brain and the right brain, are once again seen to compete for ascendancy!  I vote for an enlightened balance!

An Aside Concerning Pandora’s Box

Dante envisioned Thomas Aquinas, the incisively logical priest and theologian of the thirteenth century, as a guide on the way to Paradise.  Thomas Aquinas twisted his brain torturously trying to reconcile philosophy and theology, and reason and faith.  I can’t figure out if he was a defender of the “infallibility” of the Church, or not, but ironically and quite unfortunately, he was a brilliant man blinded by the misogynistic and repressive prejudices of the Church of his time.  This may have been why Thomas Aquinas was known as a ‘Dumb Ox’!  Cultural conditioning definitely affects people deeply, just as intelligent Aristotle was prejudicially affected in his narrow attitudes toward women and slaves.  Church-driven biases like this eventually contributed to widespread savagery when thousands of women were burned to death for ‘witchcraft’ and heresy and such things.  The companion that God had made for man had come to be regarded as an evil temptress.  How and why had this come to be?

The Biblical story of Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden is an echo of the earlier Greek myth of Pandora.  Zeus, the supreme ruler of the Greek heavens, gave Pandora as a wife to the slow-witted Titan, Epimetheus.  Zeus had entrusted Epimetheus with a box that contained all the ills of the world.  Pandora had been given the trait of curiosity and the desire for knowledge, so she opened the box, even though her husband had told her not to open it.  When she did, she released misfortune into the world.  Zeus, from that day forward, punished every woman by giving her difficulty in childbirth and making her subservient to men.  Thus the stage was set for Bible writers to borrow this myth and blame Eve and the serpent for disobeying God, who was the new Zeus.  God gave a severe injunction for Adam and Eve not to eat from the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil, and the rest is supposedly history: suffering, death, sin, guilt, repentance, and a fate in some “afterlife” of a sublime Heaven or a horrible Hell.

Pandora’s Box!  Herein lies the beginning of the denigration and demonization and male domination of women at the dawn of history.  Dr. Leonard Shlain presented a poignant and convincingly articulated thesis in his captivating and illuminating book, The Alphabet Versus The Goddess – The Conflict Between Word and Image.  He essentially speculated that profound cultural and psychical impulses are the underpinnings of the historical overthrow of the divine feminine.  And he correlated this development with the concerted suppression of women’s prerogatives in patriarchal societies ever since. 

“The occurrence of monotheism, codified law, and the alphabet all at the same moment in history cannot have been coincidental … The abstractness of all three innovations were mutually reinforcing,” wrote Robert Logan.  The dominant ruling class often conspires with religious establishments to impose new myths on a culture to manipulate the populace in order to establish and perpetuate their own power and position and dominance.

Dr. Shlain adduced deeper implications than meet the eye to Marshall McLuhan’s observation that “the medium is the message”.  Oddly, the means of communication sometimes tends to mold cultural perceptions even more profoundly than the actual content communicated.  Dr. Shlain argued persuasively that the advent of writing and the use of easily-learned alphabets led to widespread literacy, and this had the curious side-effect of reinforcing left-brained abstract analytical masculine cultural attitudes.  Severe Draconian codes of law that treated women harshly arose soon thereafter.

Literacy undermined the synthesis-oriented right-brained feminine attributes that honor intuitive and holistic cultural attitudes.  The ‘yang’ thus triumphed over the ‘yin’, instead of being balanced and complementary.  Thereafter, written words in ‘holy books’ like the Bible and the Koran prohibited the honoring of deities through imagery and the use of idols.  These books helped patriarchal societies to repress women and deprive them of equal rights in their churches.  Our modern societies are still in the dying throes of this hegemony, particularly in women-oppressing fundamentalist Muslim countries.  This makes the need clear today for our cultures to progress beyond medieval straightjackets of the mind.  We simply must strive to create fairer and more just societies.

An Inconclusive Conclusion Looms

The sound of a knock at the door startled writer Dorothy Parker out of an introspective reverie.  “What fresh hell is this?” she exclaimed.  Chill out, for Peet’s sake, Dorothy!

In literature, as we have seen, the dark side is well represented.  Great literature has been written in many instances by tormented souls like the Biblical disciples and Dante Aleghieri and John Bunyan and Herman Melville, and Fyodor Dostoyevsky and Edgar Allen Poe and Franz Kafka and countless others, including the bizarre author of the book The Confederacy of Dunces, John Kennedy O’Toole, who committed suicide.

One of the most distinct examples of the dark side in literary motivations is that of Herman Melville in Moby Dick.   His central character, Captain Ahab, sees evil malignity and despair on a vast scale.  Melville was never at any time in his life notably happy, but at the age of thirty-two when he wrote Moby Dick, he was miserable, sick, worried and unhappily married.  He felt a metaphysical despair and an Evil lurking large in his world, an evil that he projected onto a great white whale.  “Moby Dick is not a lament, it is a vision, full of pathetic and humorless pessimism,” according to one Introduction author. 

Whereas Dante’s Divine Comedy is a product of faith, Melville’s Moby Dick is a product of unfaith.  Moby Dick is a myth of Evil and Tragedy, in contrast to the Christian epic which is more of a myth of Good and sublapsarian Salvation.  Melville’s crazy Ahab "piled upon the whale's white hump the sum of all the general rage and hate felt by his whole race from Adam down;  and then, as if his chest had been a mortar, he burst his hot heart's shell upon it."  Ahab knows that Good exists in the world, but basically he is mesmerized by the negative and disastrous.  The White Whale “swam before him as the monomaniac incarnation of all those malicious agencies which some deep men feel eating in them.”  The vision came to him as if in a “pit of blackness, the central dark mother-lode of despair which every man at times knows to be within him.”  Wow, ouch!!  (Whatever, dude!)

The Perspective of ‘Rowbear’

I have a good friend who calls himself Rowbear.  He likens himself to the original Laughing Philosopher, the widely-traveled Greek philosopher Democritus (460 B.C. to 370 B.C.), who according to Wikipedia “was cheerful, and was always ready to see the comical side of life.”  Later writers took this to mean that he always laughed at the foolishness of people;  so he was an early scoffer!  Hmmm … sort of like my hero Mark Twain!

“A sense of humor, being born of perspective, bears a near kinship to philosophy; 

   each is the soul of the other.”                          

                                 --- Will Durant, Introduction to The Story of Philosophy

Rowbear lives like a Mole in a comfortable home that is as fitting as that of a Cappadocian gnome.  Cappadocia, in central Turkey, has hundreds of houses and churches and even hotels that are carved into solid volcanic tuff rock that is fantastically eroded into hoodoos and other formations.  Google ‘Cappadocia’ for wondrous images of their awe-inspiring appearance.  This soft rock was created by deep layers of hot volcanic ash that had been spewed out by volcanoes in the region sometime in the span of the past ten million years.  As the ash cooled and settled, it consolidated into rock.  This rock has been subjected to the subsequent effects of wind and water erosion in these arid highlands.  A number of underground cities were carved out of the rock in this region by Christians long ago who hid out there to avoid persecution in the years before Christianity became a somewhat accepted religion. 

Today Cappadocia is a famous and popular tourist destination that is compelling and evocative to visit.  Ironically, almost 100% of the people that inhabit the area today are Muslims, not Christians, and it is a distinctly patriarchal society.  Women’s roles in this culture seem severely circumscribed, from a Western world point of view.  Scores of men are seen in cafes and bars by night, but not any women.

I recall a Mark Twain quote in this connection:

“We easily perceive that the peoples furthest from civilization are the ones where equality between man and woman are furthest apart --- and we consider this one of the signs of savagery.  But we are so stupid that we can’t see that we thus plainly admit that no civilization can be perfect until exact equality between man and woman is included.”

I do not mean to demean Islam.  Almost everyone I met in Cappadocia was reasonably generous-hearted, friendly, honest and fair.  Unfortunately, both Christianity (in the Vatican and in the United States) and Islam worldwide manifest the same problem:  the moderate and progressive elements of their respective religious establishments have allowed right-wing conservatives to dominate their faiths.  In nations that are governed by a theocracy, rather than a democracy or capitalist plutocracy, the control by social conservatives even more readily translates into repression. 

The right wing of every faith seems to consist of people who are fundamentally control freaks and social reactionaries, and they tend to oppress women.  The Taliban may have taken this repression of women to an extreme, but it is prevalent in almost all of the cultures of the modern world to a disturbing degree.  I believe that the empowerment of women would lead to fairer, more sustainable and more peaceful societies.  Influences that deprive women of rights are contrary to the best interests of humanity in the long run.  Equality of opportunity and fair treatment under the law are principal ideals of our American society, and it is high time we more assertively enforced them!

Violence begets violence in response.  Likewise, extremism begets extremism.  So, in the largest context, crusading strife for dominance by Christianity and Islam results in a ‘countersupporting effect’ of strengthening the right-wing opposition in the faiths and nations they oppose.  To defuse hatred and prejudice, it would be best to try harder to get along in peaceful coexistence, and to diminish the influence of religious establishments in governments everywhere.  Live and let live!

Barack Obama’s speech in Egypt on June 4, 2009 made a bold effort to repair some of the damage to our nation’s standing in the world that has been caused by the arrogant and aggressive Bush/Cheney cowboy mentality and the violations of the sovereignty of other nations through our invasions and occupations of Iraq and Afghanistan and our use of extremely harsh interrogation methods on prisoners.  Let’s hope that efforts and initiatives by President Obama fairly bear healing fruit!

History shows that godless dictators have probably killed more millions of people than have been murdered by tyrants who claim to be acting in God’s will.  But in any case the best plan would be to create strong constitutional governments and ecumenical rules of law, and a more distinct separation of church and state in nations worldwide.  Stronger checks and balances should be established between the executive, legislative and judicial branches of government.  This would create a healthier balance of power, and prevent despots from gaining control, whether in the name of God, or Allah, or megalomania, or money, or rigidity of authoritarian impulse, or whatever.

The best that a nation can do is to create an orderly and safe civil society that has an open structure in which all individuals are assured choices in how to live their lives in accord with their own individual propensities and predilections and profound positive inner motivations, all in the context of a recognition of the overarching importance of ‘common good’ values.  Let the Golden Rule flourish!  When leaders intimidate citizens through authoritarianism and the use of fear, and when they enact policies that contribute to a more pronounced economic insecurity for the vast majority, and when they manipulatively trap people into sheepish submission, then they cause perverse injustices and deplorably detrimental social dysfunction.

We are gathered here together, I alone until this moment, on the precipice of a new day, calm, not trembling, hoping that sanity will prevail in world affairs.  This sanity will be characterized by cooperation and peaceful coexistence and sustainable endeavors, and it will encompass respect, love, compassion, dogma-free faith, music, dance, eloquence, laughter and contemplation.  “I’ll drink to that!”

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Scribblin’ on the rooftop

 Scribblin’ on the trail

  Miraculous little insights materialize

   As if some piece of a magnificent holy grail.

The curiosity and enthusiasm of a youngster’s excitement

 Unhampered by jaded attitudes or voices of conformist authority

  Emerge into consciousness, proclaiming themselves insistently

   And demand attention in the here and now, as a valid expression of authenticity.

Like Beethoven envisioning in its entirety the composition of a full-fledged symphony

 Or Mark Twain driven to write with prolific and humorously incisive inspiration

  Conversations and stories and experiences and epiphanies cascade into awareness

   And cogent insights and understandings jostle for clear-sighted expression.

                Truly,              

                   Dr. Tiffany B. Twain         

                      January 31, 2008 … Revised extensively, May through November 2009

                  Contact at:  savetruffulatrees@hotmail.com