The Power of Story

An interesting question:

Isn't the answer that the non-conservative media will simply blindly follow whatever conservative media decides to gun up? Don't media types privilege conservative mini-controversies and hissy fits? Isn't there literally no way they could lay off something like this? Isn't that the problem?

Why, yes, yes it is:

Some school districts in Texas, Illinois, Virginia, Wisconsin, Missouri and Minnesota are even refusing to show the president's address.

I wonder what's really going on. After all, the context of that ABC report is that people are "upset" that the President will be pushing a political agenda on school children (like they'd pay attention!). So I went looking, and this is what I found:

At least three Central Texas school districts — Georgetown, Wimberley and Leander — say they will not show a live webcast by President Barack Obama planned for next week.

And why not?

The Leander district late Wednesday announced that its schools will not show the webcast "due to the logistics of making a webcast available during that time of the school day."

But Leander Trustee Lisa Mallory in Web posts, to her Web site and on Twitter, wrote: "Leander ISD will NOT participate in the Obama broadcast to school children! Texans support LOCAL control of education!"

District spokesman Dick Ellis, when asked whether Leander was not showing the webcast because of political reasons, said, "Of course not." Ellis said he didn't know whether the speech would ever be shown in Leander classrooms.

In a statement, Georgetown district officials said that to preserve teaching time, the district wouldn't air the speech. "If parents would like their children to view the president's remarks, we would encourage families to record the speech and watch the event as a family," they said.

Logistics, not politics. I suspect those school districts, like the one I know locally, got no small number of phone calls about this, but I also doubt any school district is requiring teachers to re-jigger their lesson plans to require students to watch. Indeed, the 11:00 a.m. schedule means some students will already be going to lunch at my local schools, which guarantees not all of them could sit in rapt attention. Unless, of course, the school was willing to restructure its entire day for this "event."

There are various articles on the speech now. School districts in North Texas, for example, have varied responses, as this article notes toward the end. At my local school district, they didn't even know the speech was planned until parents started calling in to complain about it. That might seem to make Gov. Perry's question seem reasonable:

"Nobody seems to know what he's going to be talking about ... why didn't he spend more time talking to the local districts, superintendents?" he said.

Until you consider there are 1289 school districts in Texas alone. And, of course, the speech is VOLUNTARY! The President has no more power to compel the schools of America to carry his speech in classrooms than he has the power to compel networks and cable channels to carry his speeches. Which is where the matter becomes truly absurd, because most of the complaints are about the compulsory nature of the situation. Maybe we should use this as a "teachable moment" to consider how we educate our children?

Naaahhh!

I'd venture to guess that the school districts who have announced they won't show it, are doing so to quiet parents, not because they've decided it should be banned. Most of them probably had no district policy on it at all, but had to say something due to the brouhaha, not due to their feelings about the President. But in the context of the narrative now established by the "media"....

"I announce with trembling pleasure...."

Well, no, not quite that bad. But I have read a good book recently. And it's moral seems to be: Mommas, don't let your babies grow up reading Narnia.

Which is part of the conscious antecedent of this novel. The other part is Harry Potter. Start with the premise of the story: Quentin, the protagonist, is "invited" to enter Brakebills, an exclusive school for magicians in upstate New York. Not wizards, witches, sorcerers, or warlocks, but magicians, because there the comparisons to Hogwarts start to wane. The root in "magus" is intentional. Entering Brakebills is not as easy as getting into Hogwarts; one must pass a rigorous test, because magic itself, while real, is a product of knowledge and training as much as ability and talent; and like but unlike Harry Potter, Quentin's ability and failure to grasp this important point is one of the driving forces of the story.

But this novel is less about story than it is about characters, which is its greatest virtue. That's not a slight on J.K. Rowling; but The Magicians is not focussed on a complex plot that has to unravel over 7 volumes; it is centered on a set of characters who are at once more adult and more American than the children of Harry Potter. But there's a reason for that, and it's not built on diminishing Rowling's achievement; indeed, it's impossible to imagine this novel without Rowling's work, and it's even easier to understand this novel if you know the story of the boy who lived.

First, let's set out the premises of this novel. Magic is real (except it really isn't; more on that in a moment), but it is a matter of manipulation of forces no one really understands (students are, in fact, warned against pursuing the question "How is this possible?" That way, they are assured, lies madness. There are more than a few dark areas of this "world" where maps are clearly marked "There by Tygers"; it is part of the pleasure of the plot that the characters are drawn into exploring so many of them. They are, indeed, places that lead to madness, in ways J.K. Rowling's childrens books could never contemplate.). Magic "works" by knowledge: knowledge of spells, which function only in their original tongues, so students must learn Old Norse or Arabic, Estonian and Middle English, etc., etc. One of the wonders of Grossman's world is how international it is, and how dependent magicians are on learning arcana (without pursuing scholarship, the attempt to understand arcana), as well as learning just how to wiggle their fingers (there's no easier way to describe it) in order to create the spell they are looking for. No one knows how it works, they only know that it must be done in a certain way in order to achieve the result desired. They also know that one mistake, one dropped syllable, say, in a spell in Old Dutch, can have disastrous consequences.

Which is one of the key parts of the plot, and it illustrates a central theme of the book: peril lurks everywhere. But one of the pleasures of the plot is that those perils have a source, and that source doesn't lie in the mysterious nature of the magical forces being invoked. Indeed, magic plays a supporting role here (as in Harry Potter) but not a dominant one. What dominates here are the characters. The evil that men do comes from, well...men. And women. But not just randomly from the universe.

The children of Adam, as C.S. Lewis quaintly called them in Narnia, are not just the source of law and order, but the cause of disorder, too. Quentin is, like Harry Potter, a talented magician who knows nothing of the world of magicians. But he does know the fantasy world of Fillory, a clear literary descendant of Narnia. There are 6 volumes in the Fillory series, each set in a magical land of mythical creatures, but watched over by two magical sheep, not a Christ-figure lion. Each volume, we are told, involves children, but children of different generations (as they grow older, they stop visiting). The first of the children to visit Fillory finds it through the back of a grandfather clock (and why he was hiding there becomes another important character point, again lifting this book above the "won't somebody think of the children?" level of most children's books, and into the land where adults, sometimes unfortunately, live). Ironically (again, post-modern irony), the last volume of the series, "The Magicians," is lost. No fan of the series (and all of Quentin's friends at Brakebill's are fans of the series) has seen it. More's the pity when Quentin finally does.

The first half of the novel is seeing the world of Brakebills through Quentin's eyes. In this, he's a Harry Potter figure, introducing the reader to a world as strange to him as it is to us. But in a sort of reverse of Harry, Quentin is a "geek" in his own world, only to find at Brakebills that every student is as smart as he is, if not smarter, so his achievements in magic are no more remarkable than Harry's, and he lacks Harry's distinction of being "the boy who lived." One of the themes of the novel is evident in life at Brakebills, (and a sharp contrast to Hogwarts) and that is: what does a magician do after life at Brakebills? Like any modern university (in contrast to say, art schools which pride themselves on placing their students after graduation; most US universities give you a degree and don't want to see you again, or care what you do), Brakebills sends their graduates on their way with a single answer to the question "What now"?: "Whatever you want to do." And this is where the dissipation, that most modern of American afflictions for those who can afford it, sets in.

It's also where the character development truly sets in. Unlike either Narnia or Harry Potter, there is no evil menace to battle after Brakebills, and Quentin and his friends all feel that lack keenly. What is available to them is sex, drugs, and alcohol, which they consume with abandon, and with consequences. Sex, especially, is not pursued with affecting other people, and the relationships of the characters is often more interesting than the premise of this "alternate" world, which, like Rowling's story, raises this novel above the usual fantasy fare. Far, far above; and not least of which because it so artfully uses the fantasy fare of our childhood, even if we are Baby Boomers and not recently graduated from Hogwarts ourselves.

That fantasy intrudes when reality overlaps the fantasy of Fillory. Fillory, it seems exists; it can be traveled to, though even the journey there is not a simple one, or overseen by benevolent (or even interested) forces. Some mysteries of the plot are answered by the end, as they should be; plot points you weren't sure were plot points explained and tied up. Others, though, like the "way station" between Quentin's world and Fillory, are not explained; nor should they be. At one point Alice, Quentin's lover, mocks him because he alone of the students they know believes magic is "real." "It isn't?", he asks, confused. No, she tells him it isn't. We end up believing her because, like Hermione, she knows so much more than Quention/Harry does. But we also end up like Quentin, wondering what she means; sure she is right, but not so sure we like that answer. Like the theory, and even in the end the practice, of magic, some things are better left unexplored. That way, we learn, truly does lay madness.

Because Fillory never lives up to the stories the characters have all read about it. They never quite shake the conviction that Fillory is a place where the desires of their childhood will be fulfilled, where they will be the heroes of fiction who always prevail no matter how dire the circumstances, no matter how little they know about what they have stumbled into. And only when it is much, much too late, do they find they haven't stumbled into it at all. Which is another point where the plot takes up an element from one of the Harry Potter novels, and puts it in a very, very different perspective. Oh, and did I mention the centaurs, who seem drawn as much from Harry Potter as from Gulliver's Travels? And the evil? Well, let's just say there is more evil than just one person is responsible for. And yet the lessons on power and powerlessness are almost equal to those Rowling had to teach.

I am trying, if you hadn't guessed by now, not to reveal too many spoilers. But to come back to the characters and do them justice, first: when Quentin is invited to Brakebills, he's already facing the end of high school and the question of what to do next, and mooning over his girl friend (but not "girlfriend") Julia, and living in the shadow of his friend James; whom Julia loves. Brakebills brings an abrupt end to that life long friendship, one that was going to end with college anyway, but Quentin abandons his life at home once he's accepted to the school of magic. Only later does he learn more about Julia and James; but that would be telling.

Quentin makes friends at Brakebills, including one enigmatic but powerfully talented girl who is almost a reverse Hermione: her parents are magicians, but she wasn't invited to Brakebills; and she is neither talkative nor bossy, but she is also the superior magician, as it turns out. By the time they graduate, she and Quentin are lovers, but it is clear she is the adult, he is still the immature man. That is shown both in their relationship (which he almost destroys, in an alcohol-induced haze), and in the end of the book. They live with a group of friends both at school and afterwards, in a sort of "St. Elmo's Fire/Friends" situation, an an ennui that leads them to dare journey to Fillory (they have been warned not to seek such places in school, after an object lesson in the dangerous power of magic). That they don't learn that lesson is both necessary to the plot and a logical outcome of their characters. It is the character that rules here, as it should in any good story.

The lesson in power comes at the novel's climax, and to say too much about it would give too much away. It recalls, in some ways, the best of the climactic scenes of the later Harry Potter novels, especially The Order of the Phoenix and The Deathly Hallows. But it is quite different from either of them, and if anything underlines Lord Acton's aphorism, first addressed to the Pope who formulated the doctrine of papal infallibility: "Power tends to corrupt, and absolute power tends to corrupt absolutely." The novel takes up that idea in the dissipation and moral corruption of the characters, and then takes up the question of absolute, or near absolute, power, especially the power of death. Rowling and Grossman teach much the same lesson about that, but with radically different results, and not necessarily from the same perspectives. Still, the almost unavoidable contrast between the two, set up by Grossman's premise and the plot he employes, yield revealing insights into the question. Grossman does not preach the powerlessness that allows Harry to prevail in the end, and which is key to Voldemort's defeat; but he does examine, rather fully, the dangerous nature of power, and the evils that result, even unintentionally, from wielding near-absolute power.

In the end, consequences in a children's novel are not quite the same as they are in adult novels. Childrens novels ultimately teach that, despite whatever happens, the consequences can be overcome, can even be controlled. No death in Harry Potter is as shattering to the characters (not even Dumbledore's, because Harry sees him again, and Dumbledore explains it was all part of a plan, and therefore even death works for the good) as the deaths in The Magicians, and where Voldemort only thinks he is controlling events, he is a piker compared to what happens to who, it turns out, is manipulating Quentin and his friends. Evil, too, is the result of more terrible, and more human, things than even patricide and envy. It is a consequence of that world adults find themselves living in, and the one they try so valiantly to shield children from knowing about, until they have to. Consequences in The Magicians are not, finally, teaching moments, or even epiphanies. They simply are, the way the shattering of a falling glass on a stone floor is what happens when you knock a glass off in your carelessness. This is what distinguishes Grossman's world from Rowling's, but the distinction does not make one superior to the other. It is simply a difference, and in a reading world where Narnia and Harry Potter already exist, it is a tour de force to pull off the conceits of The Magicians without ever once denigrating your predecessors.

Where this novel goes, in the end, is back to where it begins, and that is neither Narnia nor Harry Potter's England, but the teachings of Ecclesiastes:

Futility, utter futility, says the Speaker, everything is futile. What does anyone profit from all his labor and toil here under the sun? Generations come and generations go, while the earth endures for ever. Ecclesiastes 1:2-4, REB)

That is not an idle or passing reference. When the novel begins, Quentin is on his way to an interview pursuant to an application to Princeton, but he's mostly pursuing the college degree because that's what "nerds" do. He is diverted to Brakebills instead, through a circuitous (and not, it turns out, serendipitous) route. But it is also the motto of Alice's parents, both magicians; and of the students Quentin lives with and among, when they all leave Brakebills; and even to the "trust fund" that sustains their lifestyle of comfortable ennui, a gift from previous generations of magicians. Those few verses are the warp and woof of this novel, and another few provide its denoument:

One futher warning, my son: there is no end to the writing of books, and much study is wearisome. (Ecclesiastes 12: 12, REB)

By the end of the story, all the knowledge of magic they have accrued has endangered them, saved them, ruined them, and cost them a price they can never repay; and it has all been in the service of still another power, which they too belatedly discover. If this sounds like a dreary and almost existential theme, it almost is; but Grossman's writing redeems it, and pulls it back from falling over the edge of the abyss. I would tell you more and explain how Ecclesiastes fits into the long denoument), because I would really like to explore both the premise of this novel, and the consequences of the characters' actions (and talk about Brakeills South, and all the related stories about people who affect the story and the characters, that I haven't mentioned), but I would give too much away. It's a fascinating read. Mine was a borrowed copy, but I intend to put one on my shelves and have it to read again. The only pity is I'd have so much trouble getting the British version, which is the jacket above. For some reason, British publishers have cooler dust jackets than American publishers. The American one is below.

Good-bye, Dr. Hawking?

I hear something like this:

Goldhill says the problem is that health care costs are hidden from us. He says that over the course of your lifetime, you and your employer spend $1.7 million on your family's health care.

"Let's take all the money we're spending on insurance, give it to the patients and have the patients spend much of it directly," he says. "Let's have catastrophic insurance for the worst cases — the truly rare, major, unpredictable events. And the rest, let's rely on the consumer. The key is that the patient is actually getting the bill."

Goldhill's proposal is what many economists call a consumer-driven model. Individuals would be required to buy some sort of catastrophic plan. Only expenses over, say, $50,000 would be covered. That's a high deductible, but you would have $1.7 million over your lifetime that you currently do not see. That amount would be built up slowly in what is often called a health savings account.

And immediately I think of someone like "a wheelchair-bound woman with 'two incurable auto-immune diseases'".

How long would $1.7 million last for her? And what if she never gets the chance to build it up? She has to come up with $50,000.00 first? And additionally, another $1.7 million? And this is better than the current system how? How would this magic number build up slowly, if the disease takes you early, and persistently? Good-bye, Dr. Hawking? Sorry, but the irony is, your health care is too expensive?

Because, you know, some health problems are not "events," but simply: "life." Do we have no more sense of moral obligation, no more sense of communal responsibility, than did the crowd who booed this woman at a town-hall meeting? Is that what we want to be: a country, a people, a culture, a nation, concerned only with our money, and wholly unconcerned about our humanity? There is an obvious religious appeal I could make here, but do I really have to? Isn't it obvious, even to the most militant atheist, that Goldhill's concept is not only ethically bankrupt, but fiscally bizarre?

I'll retire to Bedlam....

Ignorance is Strength

I've long known that what bugs me most about Richard Dawkins on God, or Robert Wright on theology, is that they clearly know nothing about the subject on which they write, and this blissful ignorance is what makes them experts! Clearly it is so, because they are not blinded by the "conventional thinking" that hinders trained theologians and philosophers from seeing what is obvious to the ignorant and unlearned. And since most people have no training in philosophy or theology, clearly someone completely out of their depth, like Dawkins when he strays away from biology, is more knowledgeable on the subject his audience is equally ignorant of, than those trained in the subject. They, after all, have given up reason for indoctrination, and can't hope to see the "big picture" that only those who are completely ignorant can see.

Which, if that assessment sounds harsh, need only be turned around. The greatest complaint wielded against "Creationists" and those who oppose any talk of evolution on religious grounds, is that they know nothing about biology, geology, paleontology, or even science. And it's a fair criticism, and a valid one. But apparently it isn't a valid criticism when those scientists turn their critiques on theology or philosophy. Because, after all, nobody else understands that stuff either, so it must be full of whatever straw men Dawkins and company construct and then set ablaze.

This complaint would all be so much grousing and maybe sour grapes (longing for the days when theology was the "mother of all sciences," perhaps) except that it has application to matters other than why Richard Dawkins is clueless on the subject that has brought him so much recent fame. The real heart of the complaint is the issue presented by Dawkins and Sam Harris and even Robert Wright: it is that expertise is now measured, not by knowledge, but by ignorance. Witness the ongoing debate about the efficacy of torture.

There is clear and compelling evidence, presented before the Congress, that torture does not work. There is clear and compelling evidence from FBI interrogators, experts in getting information from prisoners, that torture is counter-productive and cuts off a flow of information that might be obtained from something as simple and humane as a plate of sugar-free cookies. Indeed, ask any trial lawyer, and the best ones will tell you that cross-examination is an art, not a brutal frontal assault. No one is more reluctant to reveal information than a witness in a civil trial, especially when that witness is the opposing party. Cross-examination is the art of eliciting that information, and the best lawyers at it are the most gentle, the most subtle, the most careful in what they ask and how they ask it. They build a relationship with the witness. What they don't do is engage in an authoritarian smackdown. We all know you get more flies with honey than with vinegar; and yet we are all "experts" on how "torture works" because....well, because we want to believe it. Ignorance is strength, and we want to be strong.

Or perhaps we think torture works because we let Dick Cheney repeat that absurd notion ad nauseum, with no real-time challenge to his lies and base ignorance. But ignorance is strength, because the less expertise we have in the field, the less knowledge we have, the more we can be sure we are right and that the "experts" are blinded by the strictures of the discipline they've devoted their lives to.

I run into this a lot, if only because a little knowledge is a dangerous thing. It is easy to find people who have read, or more likely heard of, Hyam Maccoby's The Mythmaker: Paul and the Invention of Christianity, which is, to put it bluntly, crap. No Biblical scholar takes it seriously, but that is, of course, because they have all "drunk the Kool-Aid" and so can't see what people with no background in Biblical studies can. And the people who haven't read Maccoby's book, or heard of it, know that Paul hated women (he didn't; he treated them as equals. It was later Christians who tried to destroy that relationship and lower women's status) because, again, they heard it somewhere, or read one of the pseudo-Pauline letters, or something, and anyway it's what most people think so it might as well be true, and it's easier to blame the Paul of our imaginations than to study church history, so "expertise" is a waste of time, and besides it's dull, and, well, you know.....

Which is not a brief for relying on "experts" because they proclaim their expertise, but it is a call for reason and learning, something most people on and off the Web seem to stop doing just as soon as they've settled on what political or social or religious position they want to take. And frankly, it's tiresome as hell. Not because everyone should know what I know; the more I learn, the more I realize I know almost nothing that is worthwhile. No, my standard is Aquinas, one of the greatest minds of human history, a man whose works Thomistic scholars spend lifetimes studying and never fully understanding. But near the end of his life, Aquinas had a mystical vision, after which, he said, everything he'd written seemed like so much straw. And he never wrote another word.

I aspire toward that level of insight. But I also understand the importance of knowledge, and the weakness of ignorance. The more I learn, the more ignorant I realize I am. Which is why the people who don't realize their own ignorance, really piss me off.

I know, I know; I'm working on it.

All the News that Fits

I'm not much for news bashing, but this story on "Countdown" last night intrigued me because it was from Texas (and nearby), so I went looking for it. What I didn't find was the most interesting part about it.

Here's the story I first saw:

Visit msnbc.com for Breaking News, World News, and News about the Economy

I looked up "Pete Olson town hall" to find more. And all I found about this was on blogs or websites. Through Think Progress I found this article from "The Daily News of Galveston County", which is remarkable for two things. One is this:

Even a group of Girl Scouts found themselves part of the debate. Cali Brown, 9, of Clear Lake, was joined by some Galveston County Scouts to hand out different colored ribbons that served as code for how those attending felt about health care reform.

Brown, who said she was inspired to get into the health care debate after watching her mother struggle to find insurance to cover the family, plans to send the ribbons to Congress as an informal poll of what people expect from the government when it comes to reform.

She said most of those who pulled ribbons for her project chose the aqua marine-colored piece of cloth that represented a desire for improving the system.

The other remarkable part of this article is the dog that didn't bark. There is absolutely no reference to the events in the video "Countdown" had. So either this encounter wasn't newsworthy, or this article is about a different town meeting. Rep. Olson did hold a town meeting in Sugar Land on August 22nd, but The Daily News article is dated August 30, so it probably reports on a meeting on August 29th. I found one news report on the August 22nd meeting, and one blog post. Think Progress and Raw Story only refer to "a recent townhall meeting," but the Crooks and Liars post seems to indicate the meeting was on the 29th (the post was put up late on the afternoon of August 30th). Let me close this tedious loop: the YouTube video was put up on August 29th. And it's even better than what "Countdown" broadcast:



So this happened on August 29th, was reported by the local news (which didn't deem this contretemps newsworthy), and hasn't been reported by anyone else since. This is what I got searching the Houston Chronicle through Google. Nothing more than a schedule of meetings; no report on this at all.

Now, granted, a town hall meeting by a freshman GOP representative in a small community south of Houston is not earth-shaking news for which you could expect more reporters than participants. But this kind of reaction, especially in Texas, is interesting. I wouldn't call Lamarque a hot bed of Texas liberalism:

La Marque, also known as Highlands and as Buttermilk Station, is an incorporated residential community on Interstate Highway 45, State Highway 3, and Farm roads 519, 1765, and 2004, some twelve miles northwest of Galveston in northwestern Galveston County. The community was originally known as Highlands, probably for its location near Highland Creek, and was renamed in the 1890s when residents learned of another mainland community of the same name. Madam St. Ambrose, postmistress, chose the new name, which in French means "the mark."

So apparently even in south Texas there isn't universal support for the "deathers" and disruptors of town hall meetings who grabbed all the headlines in August, or a universal belief that government is what's wrong with American healthcare.

Wonder if this will get any more headlines than it already hasn't?

Do You Know What It Means?

New Orleans is much in the news now. Something about anniversaries makes us pay a bit of attention; but not so much that anything gets done about it.

So it goes.

I'm no expert on the city, I have no special insight into the situation, other than having made a brief stop there a few weeks ago. It was the end of a long car trip, returning from Brooklyn, in fact, and we were all tired and anxious to be home. If I hadn't paid for the room already, I think we'd have all gladly added the extra hours to the day just to sleep in our own beds that night. So maybe that colored my impressions of the city. That, and I hadn't been there in more than 20 years. My last visit was long before my daughter was born, and I was younger and more feckless and my memories of the visit are both hazy and rose-colored. But the city seemed infinitely sad to me, broken in a way that almost couldn't be repaired, and certainly wasn't being mended.

We drove in from the east, and I was too busy paying attention to traffic to pay attention to the surroundings. I don't know that area from before Katrina, so I couldn't say that it had changed. I-10 doesn't exactly take you through the 9th Ward, either, so I didn't get an up-close view of the devastation. We drove into the French Quarter, and stayed the night there at a lovely hotel just off the square where the St. Louis Cathedral is, and walked around the block to Tujaques for dinner that night. Maybe it was because it was August; maybe it was because of Katrina; but even the Quarter seemed devastated, lost, broken, discarded. It's always been a fabulous invalid, a squalid and wonderful Grande Dame, as only Tennessee Williams could capture it. I remember it from decades ago, my last adult trip there, and even then, while it was seamy, it still seemed like an adult Disneyland. This time, it seemed like a Disneyland for adults that the owners had abandoned. The restaurants, the tourist attractions, were still trying to put a brave face on it, but it was like everyone knew: if this place isn't dead, it's dying.

The Quarter, from what I understand, was relatively untouched by the flooding of New Orleans. It was on higher ground; when the waters rose, they didn't rise that high, because much of the rest of the city was below sea level, but the Quarter wasn't. But the rest of the city fed the Quarter, fed it in ways both real and substantial, and without the rest of the city, the Quarter is very much an invalid, but no longer so fabulous. It was like a bell jar had been dropped over it, in an attempt to preserve what was no longer there. Before, it had seemed vital if decaying, alive if left behind, dazzling if seamy. Now, it just seemed sad; infinitely, terribly broken, and sad.



There were a lot of variations on this theme in the shops: on T-shirts, especially. But it was almost like no one was listening. There were people in one shop wearing UCC T-shirts advertising a clean up they'd helped in, a storm recovery. I don't know if it was current or ancient history, and they were back to see how things were, or in the Quarter taking a break from their labors. Either way, 4 years later, and still handfuls of volunteers doing what they could, or remembering what they did: what could be sadder, while at the same time so hopeful? That's how New Orleans struck me, the last time: an admixture of sorrow and hope, of memories of the glory days of the 19th century, and anticipation of what could still come. The anticipation is still there; but it's also still cleaning up the mud. 4 years later.

What have we learned? When will we ever learn? What have we become?

I still don't know.

"My death, is it possible?"

Apparently the mere contemplation of that question with regard to healthcare is enough to send some people over the edge into gibbering madness. Or, at least, the opponents of any change to the American health care system hope so. "Death panels" fizzled out and has now been replaced with a VA "Death Book." The real issue, however, is not death; it's living wills; it's health care directives.

I noticed this when watching the televised version of Jon Stewart's interview with Betsy McCaughey. She really didn't coin the term "death panels" (that was Sarah Palin), and she really seemed less worried with government cutting off funding for the elderly at the end of their lives (though she insisted that was part of the law). Her fundamental, but unspoken, concern, was with the entire concept of a 'living will.' And really, that's not an insignificant issue.

We all imagine, when we are hale and healthy, that a lingering death would be the last thing we would choose. We also all imagine, when we are imagining our end of days, that we will be in complete control of the situation, and the end of life, like the end of a movie, will be clear, and we'll both know it is coming, and know when it will come. We imagine, in other words, that we will be in control until the end, and that we will "pull the plug" without fear or concern about what comes 'after.' If anything comes after. What we don't imagine, of course, is "after." Or we do, but we imagine it to be simply a continuation of what we've known since we became self-aware. Perhaps we imagine a bright light, or a long tunnel, or some kind of gauzy body lifting up out of this all too-material, all-too fleshy, one. Perhaps we imagine nothing at all, but what we don't imagine, is our annihilation. We imagine our pain, our suffering, and we imagine ending it. What we don't imagine is how permanent that ending is. We think a "living will" means control over our suffering, which we fear when we are healthy. We never imagine it means the end of all sensation, permanently. We don't imagine it because we can't imagine it.

I know many people who talk about what they want for their funerals. It's funny, and I seldom remind them, but they won't be there to care. We imagine our death, but we imagine observing our death, even observing our own funeral. But you won't be there; not so far as we know, anyway. We can't imagine death as just a transition to another state of being. We have to imagine death as it really is: the cessation of life. We have to face that squarely, even those of us who consider ourselves Christians, who think we have souls which are immortal. If death is not real, then the crucifixion is not real, and Christ never died, and the resurrection was just a puppet trick. No matter the theology, we have to face the reality. Death is the end. Death is when we leave, never to return. So an advanced directive, a "living will," should, ideally, be approached soberly and seriously. Because how you feel about death when you are healthy, may not at all be how you feel about death when you are dying.

I understand in medieval Europe death was often greeted as a friend, because death could bring relief from suffering. It's understandable, with modern medicine, that we've changed our thinking about that. But we still fear chronic pain, and rightly so. I know people living in pain today which modern science cannot alleviate. It is not pain enough to make them welcome death. But I've seen people die of cancer, where the only alleviation of pain was morphine, which is as close to the embrace of Morpheus as we can get on this side of the line between living and dead. I am not arguing against living wills here; but they are curious documents we examine all too lightly, that we sometimes don't consider at all. We just assume they will put us in control, and we move on.

But when it comes down to it, what if we aren't ready to die? What if we are not prepared? Ironically, that's the purpose of all the language in the law about counseling and consultation; it's a regard, a reverence, a protection of life. The real perversion of the discussion is not the fear that the living will want to discard the dying as an inconvenience; it is that we will do it in order to save money. It is, in other words, a perfectly American obsession, where "obsession" is a euphemism for "fear."

That fear has a root, and it's not entirely an irrational one. The root is in the very nature of our healthcare system:

Alone among advanced countries, we treat health care like a market commodity to be distributed according to the ability to pay, not like a social service to be distributed according to medical need.

Ay, there's the rub: we've reduced health care to a market commodity. Why not reduce patients to commodities, too? Why, we do!

For nearly two-thirds of Americans, we rely on hundreds of private insurance companies to set prices and benefits and pay providers. They profit by refusing to cover the sickest patients and limiting services to others. In fact, we have the only health system in the world based on avoiding sick people. Insurers cream 15 to 25 percent off the top of the premium dollar for profits and overhead (mainly underwriting) before paying providers.

And now, of course, we are afraid; we are very afraid. We are afraid that if we wake up and face the monster we have created, it will devour us. We are afraid that if we challenge the system that is killing us, it will abandon us. We are afraid that if we don't sacrifice the sick in order to save the healthy, we will all perish. And that is precisely what we fear most of all: that we will perish. Our death is not really possible; and yet we fear, we know, that it is. But it isn't death we fear; it is the living death. It is death-in-life; like suffering; or having to to go the emergency room, because you have no health insurance. And being hounded, ever after, by hospital bill collectors; because we all know emergency room care is not free. But where did we get the idea that money is more important than people? I can't imagine. Maybe Neil Cavuto could explain it:

He [Obama] has a moral obligation to protect our financial dignity. He has a moral obligation to protect our currency and our system. He has a moral obligation to protect our financial way of life.

I imagine Mr. Cavuto also complains about "death panels" and "death books," with no hint of irony or contradiction. But applied to the rest of us, I'm not being caustic when I say these things. I'm serious. We fear suffering, and we fear humiliation; and we fear being out of control. But, of course, we aren't in control now; the health insurers are. They tell us who go see, what to get treated for, what drugs we can take. And if we live long enough, we all hope to get on Medicare; as long as it promises not to kill us.

Or maybe we aren't that afraid. FoxNews and conservative pundits certainly think we are; but the polling doesn't support it. Charles Grassley has already started walking back his comments about "killing grandma," claiming the audience at the town hall meeting made him talk about it, and President Obama put the objectionable words in his mouth. "Death panels" didn't last long enough to start a prairie fire in a dry month, so it's already been replaced with a "death book." Yes, our discourse is stupid, but largely because cable TV needs something to fill 24 hours with when Congress is not in session. There's precious little evidence any of this is gaining any traction in the larger public debate, or is changing the votes of any Democrats (the votes of Republicans seems to be a foregone conclusion; all signs of change there have been false ones).

Still, there is an interesting revelation in the idea that the government would urge people to die (especially veterans; apparently if the gov't didn't kill them in battle, it wants to get rid of them in the VA health care system) simply to save money. This would be the same government that is wildly spendthrift when it comes to social programs (and never when the money is spent buying weapons systems). One can point out the inane inconsistencies all day. It is the common thread that is interesting: what most disturbs these critics is the fear that their worship of money will fully take hold, and devour them and their world; that we will all finally know the cost of everything and the value of nothing. That may not be the fear that drives them to go on TV or write blog posts, but it seems to have been the fear that sparked Betsy McCaughey; and certainly the fear you feel is easier to promote than the one you don't.

The enemy of my enemy....

The interesting thing about Pagels' thesis is that Satan is not the enemy who threatens us from without (a la Milton's Satan, in particular), but the enemy who threatens us from within. From within the community, that is, not within the psyche. Satan, in Pagels' explanation, is not some division of the soul into light and dark, but the fear that those closest to us are the ones capable of doing us the greatest harm, of being the gravest threat because they will betray us. In Pagels' account Satan is not the tempter (that's Milton), but the traitor, the one we trust when we shouldn't. It is this intimacy of the enemy that makes the idea of Satan particularly relevant just now.

First, let me step back and put this discussion in context. In seminary one doesn't really learn much about Satan; unless you study the book of Job, there really isn't much reason to pay attention to the character at all. Satan makes his longest "appearance" in the Gospel of Luke, and even there one could argue over a distinction between the tempter in the wilderness and the "powers of darkness" which Luke mentions later (Pagels easily conflates the two, and insists the latter is merely a metaphor for the former; I disagree). Most of the mentions of Satan in Matthew and Mark are also limited to the temptation in the wilderness. John makes no mention of Satan at all, (nor of the temptation sequence), but refers repeatedly to what is clearly a cosmic battle between Good and Evil, and also clearly identifies "evil" with "the Jews" (though whether he means dwellers in Judea, as the Romans did by the Greek word John uses, or the children of Abraham, is a bit harder to pin down). But there aren't that many refernces to Satan in the New Testament (most of the writings about Satan are non-canonical and more developed in the Middle Ages literature), so it's not a prime topic of seminary study.

Which means what I learned in seminary was pretty much what I'd heard before seminary, including the notion that Satan was brought into Christianity through contact with Zoroastrianism by some vague route at some indefinite time. Turns out that isn't true at all, though I know that more by Pagels' silence than by her treatment of the topic. Satan, that argument went, was a concept that violated the radical monotheism of Judaism. But that argument assumes the radical monotheism of Judaism dates back to the days of Moses, if not Abraham, and was strictly adhered to from the beginning. Nothing, of course, could be further from the truth, especially since it was the Essenes who contributed the idea of an enemy to God and to God's people (i.e., the Essenes; the "enemy" were the Jews who were not Essenes; more on that in a moment), an enemy they called "satan," to the religious vocabulary eventually adopted by Christians. Which is not to say the Essenes were the sole source of ideas about Satan, but they were very observant Jews who conceived of a cosmic struggle between Good and Evil, a struggle in which they were foot-soldiers. Today we might insist, with Job, that if we accept good from God we must accept evil, too (a basic principle of radical monotheism; otherwise "God" does get split into dueling powers, even if one is not quite rival to the other [again, see Milton. Lucifer is powerful, but there's never any question who has the real power in Milton's cosmos]). But the Essenes declared God good, and those who followed God's requirements as strictly as they did, good; and that made other children of Abraham apostate, or "evil." It also meant the real enemy was not the Romans, or the Gentiles more generally; it was the members of the community whose beliefs and practices didn't measure up to Essene standards. The enemy was an intimate one, and that made the danger all the worse, because only those intimate to you, can betray you.

You can see almost immediately how Satan becomes, from this, the tempter, the seducer, the one who persuades you to act against your own best interests. Your enemy can't do that; but your friend can. Your enemy is opposed to you; your friend wants what's best for you. Until it turns out your friend is Iago, who declares in the opening of "Othello": "I am not what I am." A better reversal of the statement of identity to Moses by the Burning Bush is hard to imagine. And, of course, the relationship of Creator to created is (or should be) an intimate one; so the perversion of that relationship is equally so. And it is the one you trust who can lead you to your destruction; or to your salvation: "I am God Almighty. Live always in my presence and be blameless, so that I may make my covenant with you and give you many descendants." (Genesis 17:1b, REB). The covenant promises blessing, but requires righteousness. No one can lead Abraham astray (he is a patriarch!), and as Krister Stendahl would argue, before Augustine's confessions no one can really imagine themselves pitted against themselves. The temptation that betrays you, then, that leads you astray from the righteousness the covenant commands, must come from another source, and not necessarily a powerful source; simply a destructive one, an intimate one; an internal one. Internal to the group, if not to the individual.

Mmmmmm.....Satan?

It's telling that Satan is never personal in the Hebrew Scriptures. It is Abram who is afraid, on his travels, and always presents Sarai as his sister, not his wife. It is David who lust after Bathsheba, not she who lures him (or a demon out to beset David's throne). Satan never appears, anxious to undo what looks like a good thing. In Job Satan merely acts as a questioner, a challenger; an adversary in the sense of someone who merely raises questions, not one seeking to upset God's order and sew chaos in Creation (again, that's the Satan of Paradise Lost). That Satan merely asks the same question Ecclesiastes asks after the uplifting and almsot-bourgeois sentiments of Proverbs: but what about pain and suffering, and the role they play? People are the source of their problems in the Hebrew stories (even in Job; at least, according to his friends); just as they are in the Greek tragedies. "Othello" violates the most basic rule of Aristotle's theory of tragedy, because it employs an antagonist, an enemy, a person bent on the destruction of the title character, and that aim is the plot and purpose of the entire play. But it is the intimacy of the antagonist that marks the enemy from the "satan." It is the personal interest Satan takes in the Gospel stories, the temptation in the wilderness, that marks the change in the understanding of who the "tempter" is, and who is tempted. But, as Pagels shows, that change pre-dates the Gospel writers, and even Paul.

I say "even Paul" because we too easily forget that, without Paul, there might well be no Gospels. Without Paul, there might have been no gospels to collect, no communities of believers to produce them, no preservation of a record of the life of Jesus of Nazareth, because if the Christian church had not developed as primarily a Gentile organization, it might not have developed at all. And yet that development, as exemplified in the youngest of the Gospels, the Gospel of John, depended in part on demonizing the Jews by those Jews who converted to Christianity, much as the Essenes demonized their brothers in order to preserve their purity (and justify their belief system). As Pagels implies in her study of the social implications of creating an intimate enemy, there wasn't a great deal of support for a "Christian" church among Jews, and Paul was the great apostle to the Gentiles, so despite the shoes of the fisherman, it is more to the Pharisee that we owe the records of the life of Jesus of Nazareth. And it is to those records, as Dom Crossan pointed out a few years after Pagels' book, that we owe much of the anti-Semitism that has plagued Western civilization. But, as Pagels points out, that animosity burned because of the "intimate enemy" perceived to be present at the birth of what became the Christian church as it separated from the children of Abraham.

They didn't invent this enemy, however, so much as bring it with them. Pagels goes into greater detail than I can here, relating the pressures and stresses and communities among the Hebrews ("Jews" is a later appelation, and at the time of Jesus of Nazareth down to the writer of the Gospel of John (ca. 90-100 C.E.), was still a term more applicable to "dwellers in Judea" than to a people ("race" is an even later anachronism)) that led to group being pitted against group, much as Protestant denominations are to this day (some against other Protestants, some against the Roman Catholic church, some against everybody else at once!). The intimate enemy had deep roots by the time Christians began writing their gospels under Roman rule, and Roman rule played a large role in how those stories were told, especially the passion narratives. By and large they defer responsibility away from Pilate, or by Luke and John (the youngest gospels), put it almost entirely on the Jewish leadership, making Pilate what he most decidedly was not in reality: a helpless pawn. In fact, Pilate was finally removed from his governorship for ruling too harshly, for being too willing to use power over the populace, for executing with too free a hand. Unlike the picture painted by Luke, Pilate would have crucified Jesus of Nazareth without a second thought. But when you are a community caught between the established religious power of the Pharisees (after the Temple had been destroyed) and the Roman empire, it's wiser to blame the Pharisees for your problems, rather than the Romans. As the crucifixion of Jesus shows, Rome treated any complaints about its power with a rather heavy hand.

So once again, the enemy is intimate, since any knowledge of the teachings of Jesus would not only necessarily come from Hebrews, but also require knowledge of Hebrew history and religious practice to fully understand. To this day Christians don't have to practice circumcision or keep kosher to understand Christian doctrines, but they do need to be aware of what most call "the Old Testament." It was no different when all that existed were house churches, and people were just beginning to piece together a coherent narrative of this Nazarene in whose name they worshipped. But where Paul's starting point was the crucifixion, that had to be the ending point for the narratives; which meant that crucifixion had to be put into context, and it had to be explained as something more than a theological matter. There also had to be an explanation as to why Jesus taught solely the children of Abraham, while Gentiles seemed to be the ones most interested in adopting his teachings. Differences and divisions must be explained, and when the explanation involves concepts like "holiness", it's easy to see how the discussion quickly turns to "pure" and "impure." And when the distinction between you and me comes down only to a matter of doctrine, to a distinction between who we call "holy," and why, it's much easier to make that distinction stick if one choice is good, and the other choice is....bad.

It didn't have to go that way, of course, but it did go that way; and assessing fault is another game we have neither the space nor the expertise for. Suffice to say there was enough blame to go around (and the Christians, as I say, learned this kind of demonizing from the Essenes and other Judean groups; this as an intimate enemy, not a Persian one), and when the Christians finally got a chance to wield it as a club, to their discredit they did so willingly. Like Pagels, I'm more interested in the social issue here: it is the intimate enemy, the traitor in the group, the satan, who represents the most powerful force, the darkness that is always present even in the midst of the light, the danger that is the worst because it is the one you have let in, and the danger that is greatest not because it endangers you, but because it endangers the group as a whole.

Even in the gospels, when Satan enters into Judas to tempt him personally to betray Jesus, it is a betrayal that strikes at the heart of the community of believers: not just the twelve disciples, but all the followers of Jesus of Nazareth (the women were never deemed disciples, yet they are present at the tomb in all four narratives). When believers are tempted in the early chapters of Acts, it is the community that is threatened, not their individual souls. Satan is still not about leading invidual souls to hell; Satan is about danger to the group, to the community; danger from the most vulnerable place of all: within. It is the intimacy of the enemy that always makes the "satan" the greatest risk.

Which brings us, with a jerk, to the present. The Japanese were demonized in World War II on the fear they would be an intimate enemy. German speakers in America were demonized in World War I. But our enemies in the 20th century were almost always from outside, from across the oceans that had made "Fortress America." And then, in the Cold War, the enemy was within: within the State Department, within Hollywood, within our TV sets. After 9/11, we had an enemy again, and the enemy within was such a threat we rounded up thousands on no basis at all other than sheer fear. But today, what drives the "birthers" and the "deathers" and the "Obama is a Nazi!" screamers, is the same fear of the intimate enemy, the one within our borders, the one in the very seat of power. Because he is black? Probably. But certainly because he is other; and the other we fear most, is the one closest to us, and the one who endangers the largest number of "us." That one, that "other," we label: "satan."

It's why racism is so virulent in America, to this day. Long ago, we kidnapped and forced people to come to this country, and immediately became dependent on their labor. Without them, the South was nothing. We depended on them, just as we depended on wave up on wave of immigrants to continue to furnish the raw material for the "American experiment," the "American dream." And so we've always had a love/hate relationship with strangers, and with change. We have to let them in, we tell ourselves, so we can flourish. We cannot let them in, because they mean change. Today we simultaneously depend on "illegal aliens," even as we despise them. And when we crank the fear up high enough, we demonize them. It is the "intimate enemy" who is the most dangerous; the one you most depend on, who presents the greatest danger to you; and that great danger, is betrayal. But betrayal not of me, or you; betrayal of the society. The risk the "satan" presents is not personal; it is on the order of Greek tragedy. It is the risk to the society. Which is why demonization works best with an angry mob.

What we are talking about here is the heilige, the holy (somehow Derrida's use of the German word always seems more appropriate to me), though nobody quite wants to put it that way. But how else do you understand this, for example?

In this tradition there is no interest at all in the unity of the institutional church. What is of interest is the exact opposite: to clarify the distinction between true Christians and everybody else, and to ensure that one's own church is entirely governed by true Christians. It is this ecclesiology which responds to the fact that one of Anglicanism's 800 bishops is an open homosexual by treating it as urgent crisis needing to be resolved immediately.

Appropriate language in a discussion of ecclesiology, to be sure, although dangerous as nitroglycerin. In secular circles, we get comments like: "I want my country back!" Which is an almost peculiarly American plaint, given the current circumstances (i.e., we hardly verge on the collapse of government or civil order). America is an idea, not really a country. If we find we don't all agree about how, politically, America should be handled, then we are perpetually on the verge of "tearing the country apart." And if we are always about to tear the country apart, or take away someone's constitutional (it's never civil) rights, then the society is done for. And the threat that will do this is always: the intimate enemy. It's the people in power, in true power: Congress, the White House. And the distinction which must always be drawn is between "true Americans" and "everybody else," and only the "true Americans" can govern. So Obama was born in Kenya; or he was born in Hawaii, but 6% of Americans aren't sure Hawaii is a state in America. The enemy must never be one of us; he must only seem to be one of us; and the more so, the more dangerous he is, the more "other" he must remain.

Transferring this "argument" to the political realm raises the question: how, then, should we respond? Obama's much maligned response has been to seek reconciliation even as his offers are rebuffed. For this he has been much derided, much despised. But it's an interesting response to demonization and vilification, and it raises the question: what is the better response? To react to the demonizers with a show of raw power? To do all within your ability to squash them, prove to them you are an enemy not to be f*cked with? Or do you prove to them, over and over again, even as they don't evidently learn the lesson, or even recognize the lesson, that you are not an enemy, not a "satan"?

I'm not sure, but it's an interesting response; and equally interesting has been the response to the response, and not just from Obama's political enemies.

Alas, poor Yorick!

So, I read this, and my first thought was to wonder why C.S. Lewis and his ilk were/are so determined to find God's fingerprints somewhere in the world, to find some evidence of the "works" of the "god" which will, once and for all, establish the "god's" existence. We've been down this road once or twice before, right? And I thought I might be inspired to beat that dead horse one more time.

But I read further, and Wright continues to beat his tin drum for the idea that evolution=progress, and progress=improvement, and improvement=people with Really Big Brains or who are capable of Pure Reason or who otherwise fit one of the cliches of 1960's science fiction in which we finally evolve into pure, almost indifferent energy, like the Organians from Star Trek, or something. Anyway, the arc of the universe is long but it bends toward justice because of evolutionary pressures; or some such twaddle. ("Justice," as Mr. Wright would know if he bothered to spend any time reading the Hebrew prophets, is not just an issue of rightly ordered human social systems, or even of communications technology rendering us a "global village." Indeed, I can only imagine what Jacques Derrida would make of Mr. Wright's hegemonic and Anglo-centric assumptions about the virtues of such a village. One wonders what planet Mr. Wright has been living on since 2001.)

I mean, really. This is why scientists and linguists (yes, I'm including Stephen Pinker now; he gets an honorable mention in Wright's column) shouldn't "do" philosophy or theology. They think science is a speculation free zone, and then when they escape it they think they have a "solid" foundation upon which to speculate, so....wheee!!!!!!!!

Please.

Mr. Pinker’s atheism shows that thinking in these cosmic terms doesn’t lead you inexorably to God. Indeed, the theo-biological scenario outlined above — God initiating natural selection with some confidence that it would lead to a morally rich and reflective species — has some pretty speculative links in its chain.

First, and please everyone say it with me: there is no thinking that leads you inexorably to "God." I put it in quotes, because Mr. Wright obviously means some version of the Abrahamic God when he uses the term, but he has no real idea what he means, nor does he really care, since he considers the subject "speculative." Buddhism, Hinduism, Janeism and Zoroastrianism, and all the other world religions, have no application here. The only explanation for humanity by humanity is the narrative approved by Anglo-American culture; no other need apply.

Aside from the obvious candidates like Huston Smith, I can think of half a dozen French anthropologists and structuralists, not to mention more than a few deconstructionists and simply Continental philosophers, who would take Mr. Wright's Western-centric assumptions apart like the set of intellectual Tinker-Toys they are. "Speculative links," indeed!

Mr. Wright does reach a better conclusion than this, but he does so by reinventing the wheel and proclaiming himself its discoverer. He outlines, briefly and weakly, a reconciliation of science and theology, one that was worked out several hundred years ago. This, however, is news to Mr. Wright, who rediscovers it and declares himself a pioneer. It's a moment akin to the first European standing on land in the Americas and seeing the Pacific Ocean, thinking he'd found something no one else knew about. Except, of course, the only people who didn't know about it where the people he lived with; which, in reality, made those people remarkably ignorant and uninformed, rather than brilliant and prescient. But then, it's all a matter of perspective, isn't it, and who gets to tell the story.

Today the story is told by either "fundamentalists" who are proud of their ignorance, or "atheists" who are equally proud of theirs (Wright gently points out that even Richard Dawkins misunderstands Paley's 18th century metaphor of the "blind watchmaker.")*. As we should learn (but won't) from the town hall meetings this August, those who scream loudest are not always those in front of the parade, or speaking from the heart of the community. But the truly spiritual among us know there are more things in heaven and earth than are dreamt of in Mr. Wright's philosophy; just as there are more human experiences of existence than are contained or even imagined in the history of Western culture (which is, after all, only a small part of a greater whole of human history). Some understand, from experience which follows upon reason (Mr. Wright still seems to assume reason leads the way for experience), that spirituality is more than a sense of justice or fairness or even simple kindness to others; that those are simply manifestations of a much, much deeper reality which Mr. Wright's speculations don't even begin to touch on.


*Speaking of story, Wright begins his essay assuming all those who don't think science and religion are at war with each other until the end of time, simply don't care that much about the discussion. He posits that this groupe, both "religious" and "scientists" alike (the classification system leaves more than a little to be desired; apparently "religious scientists" are like "jumbo shrimp" or "square circles" in Mr. Wright's world, I'd like to introduce him to Georges Lemaitre, the Jesuit priest responsible for the Big Bang theory), have simply chosen to "sit this one out" from tolerance or indifference. But again Mr. Wright conveniently ignores that fact that other people think, too, and may have reconciled the claims of science and religion long before the Vatican decided to apologize to Galileo (which, indeed, is what happened). Mr. Wright's ignorance of the subject he professes to know something about, far outweighs whatever knowledge he brings to the debate.

The handwriting on the wall?

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Well, no, not really.

What the linked document will tell you (it's a PDF summary of the law in Texas, and opinions by the Attorney General of Texas regarding that law), is that schools now have to offer a course on the Bible as part of a curriculum, with a focus on the cultural influence/impact of the Hebrew and Christian scriptures. Which would be extremely interesting if taught from a Jewish perspective, especially; or a Muslim one. Although, as the law recognizes, it would also be controversial. I can't think of a school district in Texas where I wouldn't arouse controversy simply for teaching the Bible as Literature (which I've done, in college courses), instead of as sacred text. The latter, of course, is verboten, and the law and the Texas AG recognize that, so it can't be done. But this is not the indoctrination plan Keith takes it for. Maybe it was meant to be; but I don't think it will work out that way.

I can tell you, as a teacher of high school as well as college level students, that I've encountered students every year with no background in Judaeo-Christian stories; the kind of thing I grew up taking for granted as part of the culture as much as Mother Goose and Looney Tunes. I've taught students who'd never heard of Noah, Moses, Abraham, Isaac, David, Goliath, Jonah, the whale, the Good Samaritan, much less Paul on the road to Damascus or even Balaam's ass. Try teaching English literature before 1960 to students who have no common touchpoint with those stories. It's rather surprising how many references there are to stories once common currency but now as dead as the Dodo because the common lore is now what was on TV when they were children. Students who don't know the Creation stories from Genesis, for whom Sodom and Gomorrah mean nothing (not even opprobrium), for whom "Lot's wife" is an empty phrase. These ideas are shot through English literature down to the near-present, but if you don't know them, you don't hear them. So teaching the Bible as literature is simply teaching it alongside Greek stories of Olympus, or the epic of Gilgamesh. It's hard enough teaching "The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock" without having to stop and explain what John the Baptist's head is doing on a platter, or who Lazarus is and why he's returning from the dead. But I have to do it every time I teach that poem.

So I'm not shot through with dread at this news, even though I am staunchly in favor of the separation of church and state, even though I know the Texas State Board of Education, which has to approve any curriculum for teaching under this new law that any school may come up with, is full of religious zealots. They are constrained by the U.S Constitution, and they are constrained by Texas law. It may well be more religion slips into some classrooms than should, but if it does, it's there anyway. If any student learns anything that contributes to their knowledge of Western culture, then it won't be an entirely bad thing. Maybe it's not what Texas schools need (and lorry nose, Texas schools need a lot they aren't getting), but it's not the first shot fired in a war for theocracy, either.

Who mourns for language games?

No, I don't get frustrated by claims that Obama wants to establish "death panels" to rid us of costly seniors (whose real concern is that they live for decades after retirement, and fear they are useless and unwanted), or of claims Obama is not an American citizen (where did that one go, anyway? Buried under it's own incredibility, I suppose). As Rick Perlstein points out, crazy has always been with us, at least in American politics. Rather, I get frustrated by the reigning question of religious belief, the one that has been imposed on us since at least the 19th century:

One of the five leaders is Archbishop of Canterbury Rowan Williams. Of his belief in God he says:

“I think I’d prefer to talk about being confident that God exists, or trusting that God exists.

“It’s not knowing as you know a state of affairs in the world, it’s much more of a sense that you’re in the presence of something greater than you can conceive. I suppose from my teens I have just been aware of that something greater than I can put words to in whose presence I live.”

It's actually a good answer, because faith is nothing more than trust. "Faith" is another term that has been warped into something akin to blind credulity or, as Williams James described it, "Believin' what ain't so" (although, as James tried to point out, that is not the only definition of "faith" at all). The assumption behind the question put to the Archbishop is that existence is a thing that can be known, just as any object can be known. But even David Hume had trouble with that claim. His analysis of the self taking in all the sensory input which, he claimed, is all we know and all we can know, was that there was no self, since he (himself!) couldn't observe one. So all those observations just--"and then a miracle occurs!"--added up to an illusion of a self. Which doesn't go very far to explain how those stimuli add up to perceptions, much less how those perceptions add up to the illusion of selfhood. But since existence itself is not subject to empirical analysis, it's generally not deemed worthy of empirical study, either.

After all, what is the science of being? Indeed, Western philosophy has split on this very issue. Anglo-American philosophers by and large eschew the subjects of interest to "Continental" philosophers, and continue their pursuit of empiricism and pragmatism (empiricism's cousin). Continental philosophy is much more interested in questions of phenomenology, which have to do with the almost undecidable (and sometimes indecipherable) questions of "being." While the question "Does God exist?" assumes a simple definition for the word "exist," Martin Heidegger spent a lifetime trying to define the word and explain just what "being" is.

Kierkegaard tackled this subject head on, pointing out we can never prove the existence of Napoleon, except by establishing an historical record of events connected to someone identified as Napoleon (and S.K. fits into the Continental/phenomenological branch of Western philosophy). As Johannes Climacus puts it:

If one wanted to demonstrate Napoleon's existence from Napoleon's works, would it not be most curious, since his existence certainly explains the works but the works do not demonstrate his existence unless I have already in advance interpreted the word "his" in such a way as to have assumed he exists.

The works of Napoleon, in other words, don't establish Napoleon's existence unless I have already concluded that Napoleon does, indeed, exist. And as for the existence of God? Well, first, you have to posit that God is possible.

But then, what are the god's works? The works from which I want to demonstrate his existence do not immediately and directly exist, not at all. Or are the wisdom in nature and the goodness or wisdom in Governance right in front of our noses? Do we not encounter the most terrible spiritual trials here, and is it ever possible to be finished with all these trials? But I still do not demonstrate God's existence from such an order of things, and even if I began, I would never finish and also would be obliged continually to live in suspenso lest something so terrible happen that my fragments of demonstration would be ruined. Therefore, from what works do I demonstrate it? From the works regarded ideally--that is, as they do not appear directly and immediately. But then I do not demonstrate it from the works, after all, but only develop the ideality I have presupposed; trusting in that, I even dare to defy all objections, even those that have not yet arisen. By beginning, then, I have presupposed the ideality, have presupposed that I will succeed in accomplishing it, but what else is that but presupposing that the god exists and actually beginning with trust in him.

The question, you see, makes a category error. Does a platypus exist? Well, if you mean by that is a platypus an animal that can be identified, an object that can be classified as "animal" and sub-catetogorized down through the Linnean system, then, yes, it "exists." But if you ask "Do you (your humble host) exist?", you mean something quite different, although you've used the same word in seemingly the same way. Except you haven't, of course. When you ask "Does a platypus exist?", you are asking whether the animal identified as "platypus" is or has been alive in the world. When you ask "Do I exist?," you are asking "Do I have being?" And to ask that is to assume the answer in the question; or at least to assume a definition of "being" that includes a definition of me so that I can have being.

There are really two problems here: one is empirical, one phenomenological. Empirically, an animal identifed as a platypus can be located in the world. Phenomenologically, whether the platypus has being is a matter of definition, for both being and the platypus. As Kierkegaard explains it:

For example, I do not demonstrate that a stone exists but that something which exists is a stone. The court of law does not demonstrate that a criminal exists but that the accused, who indeed does exist, is a criminal. Whether one wants to call existence an accessorium or the eternal prius, it can never be demonstrated.

The thing in my hand can be identified (labelled, if you prefer) as a stone. That does not prove its existence, it simply gives an object a name. Neither do I prove the existence of a person; I simply identify them by name or by societal placement (a "criminal"). How do I ever demonstrate the being of the platypus, or the criminal? And how do I define "being" so that it doesn't include the stone, but also excludes a corpse? Indeed, how can you be sure I'm not simply a clever Turing test? Or that my name doesn't identify the writer of these posts? One might as validly assert that my social security card, or my diplomas, assert my existence. But all they prove is that pieces of paper with a common name are objects in the world that can be known empirically. When I die (i.e., cease to exist), they will still be objects in the world. But if they exist, how can I not exist? Easily, of course; but clearly those pieces of paper don't establish my existence.

If I am the Invisible Man of the Silverberg story, do I exist? Well, yes, and no; and what a pitiable state that would be. If I proclaim my existence and no one acknowledges it, do I cease to exist, like Apollo on Star Trek? Well, if you posit that to be the god's existence, yes. But if you don't....

The problem is not Rowan Williams' answer to the question, it's the question. The best response, actually, would be to ask the interlocuter: "Do you exist?", and when they said yes, ask them to prove it.

The result would be quite diverting.

Memento Mori

I read this book in seminary, and frankly haven't given much thought to it since. It may be that the current debate of "death panels" is going to return us to an infantile state as a nation of hiding under the covers when the thunder rumbles, although I really don't think the situation is that dire. I seem to recall only a week or so ago the "birthers" were going to undermine Obama's presidency if he didn't do something, and he didn't. I'm still not convinced the "deathers" have any more credibility, and the only response to them seems to be either to punch the tar baby (because no matter what you say, they'll say (a) you're a liar or (b) make up a new lie), or effectively ignore it, publish the truth, and wait for the opposition to collapse under its lies.

Or we can talk about death. Funny that death is a favorite subject of entertainment (the latest "Final Destination" movie is advertised everytime I turn the TV on), but we can't talk about it. Or maybe not so funny; we clearly feel the same way about sex. I remember seeing a nude model advertising suntan lotion on sidewalk kiosks in Paris 33 years ago, and this week topless pictures of Sharon Stone on the cover of Paris Match created quite a buzz. A woman nearly spilling out of her dress is okay; a woman actually spilling out of her dress, ist verboten! We like sex in America, but we like to not like it, except when we do like it. Or something. Thinking about it too hard will make your head hurt. Everyone, especially at those town meetings, where the "sleeping giant" is being awakened, would probably also agree there is too much sex and violence in movies and on TV. Funny thing, though: Hollywood keeps turning to it, and we keep pumping money into Hollywood's coffers.

So if all those people at the town meetings expressed their outrage over the sex and violence, who would they be speaking for?

We can't talk about death, but we must talk about death. Dr. Nuland meant to spark that conversation with his excellent book. Too bad that didn't happen.

AMA President J. James Rohack put it this way: "These are important discussions everyone should have so they are fully informed and can make their wishes known. That's not controversial, it's plain, old-fashioned patient-centered care."

Yup. It's pretty simple. The kind of thing people do every day. Usually when they have to, not when they need to.

It's another boundaries issue, which is one reason it is never discussed easily. Boundaries define us, especially in America. Boundaries between "us" and "the politicians in Washington," for example. Boundaries between class, race, social status; even between the living and the dead. It's no accident graveyards are no longer around churches, or that hospitals are places we only visit on special occasions, or that funeral homes are special buildings we never enter until we have to. Nobody ever put a funeral parlor or a hospital in a shopping mall. Healthcare and the end of life are not matters that we incorporate into our everyday existence anymore.

It used to be that a loved one died at home, and as kept there until the burial. This was largely a matter of economy, I suspect. Who could afford an undertaker and all those fees? But it was also a matter of respect. Who would join the deceased in the "preparation room" of a funeral home? You probably wouldn't be allowed to, and I know many people who shudder at the idea of an open casket at a funeral service. I even know people who don't want the service at the church they've attended all their life, because of the sad memories it would cause. It's a mistake to generalize about such things, but it says something about our unwillingness to make death a part of life. It was once the norm for someone to "sit up" with the deceased, until the funeral. It was indecent and unkind to leave the loved one alone. Now we can't wait for the undertaker to whisk away the "corpse," and sometimes we aren't sure we want to see it ever again. Gone are the days when family members lovingly washed the body, and dressed it, and truly paid their "last respects."

I don't know what happened. You can trace the modern attitude toward death back to Tolstoy's "Death of Ivan Ilyich," to some degree. Some of it is simply affluence, the ability to pay someone to provide services, as we pay someone to do our suburban lawns and fix our cars and repair our houses. This is not a harangue against the funeral industry, but more of a question:

What is it that so many people are so scared of? And why? Again, being a pastor, I see this as a spiritual problem, but I don't think I'm wrong to ask: what does it say about us, that we are so collectively so afraid, and so profoundly afraid of death? When and how did we convince our seniors, our elders, our friends and family, that they were so completely useless, that they should be the first to die in order to save society some money?

Are we truly that utilitarian? Are we secretly convinced the pleasures of Omelas depend on our early death? Have we devalued human life this much?