Last night while listening to an eclectic group of recordings by William Shatner and Leonard Nimoy (including straight-to-campy covers of various songs, a few original novelty songs, and oddly enough Shatner reciting Shakespeare with GREAT! enthusiasm!), I heard a piece I'd always somehow missed: Leonard Nimoy reading a collection of aphorisms that sounded as thought they were pulled from Seneca's letters. I found out this morning that Nimoy read from a poem called "Desiderata", originally published in 1927 by Max Ehrmann.
Go placidly amid the noise and haste,
and remember what peace there may be in silence.
As far as possible without surrender
be on good terms with all persons.
Speak your truth quietly and clearly;
and listen to others,
even the dull and the ignorant;
they too have their story.
Avoid loud and aggressive persons,
they are vexatious to the spirit.
If you compare yourself with others,
you may become vain or bitter;
for always there will be greater and lesser persons than yourself.
Enjoy your achievements as well as your plans.
Keep interested in your own career, however humble;
it is a real possession in the changing fortunes of time.
Exercise caution in your business affairs;
for the world is full of trickery.
But let this not blind you to what virtue there is;
many Small textInsert non-formatted text herepersons strive for high ideals;
and everywhere life is full of heroism.
Be yourself.
Especially, do not feign affection.
Neither be cynical about love;
for in the face of all aridity and disenchantment
it is as perennial as the grass.
Take kindly the counsel of the years,
gracefully surrendering the things of youth.
Nurture strength of spirit to shield you in sudden misfortune.
But do not distress yourself with dark imaginings.
Many fears are born of fatigue and loneliness.
Beyond a wholesome discipline,
be gentle with yourself.
You are a child of the universe,
no less than the trees and the stars;
you have a right to be here.
And whether or not it is clear to you,
no doubt the universe is unfolding as it should.
Therefore be at peace with God,
whatever you conceive Him to be,
and whatever your labors and aspirations,
in the noisy confusion of life keep peace with your soul.
Usually I share a quotation regarding skepticism, 'the good life', or other such things...but tonight a bit of societal observation from "A Lay Sermon" caught my eye.
And now there is another trouble. Just as life becomes complex and as everyone is trying to accomplish certain objects, all the ingenuity of the brain is at work to get there by a shorter way, and, in consequence, this has become an age of invention. Myriads of machines have been invented -- every one of them to save labor. If these machines helped the laborer, what a blessing they would be! But the laborer does not own the machine; the machine owns him. That is the trouble. In the olden time, when I was a boy, even, you know how it was in the little towns. There was a shoemaker -- two of them -- a tailor or two, a blacksmith, a wheelwright. I remember just how the shops used to look. I used to go to the blacksmith shop at night, get up on the forge, and hear them talk about turning horse-shoes. Many a night have I seen the sparks fly and heard the stories that were told. There was a great deal of human nature in those days! Everybody was known. If times got hard, the poor little shoemakers made a living mending, half-soling, straightening up the heels. The same with the blacksmith; the same with the tailor. They could get credit -- they did not have to pay till the next January, and if they could not pay then, they took another year, and they were happy enough. Now one man is not a shoemaker. There is a great building -- several hundred thousand dollars' worth of machinery, three or four thousand people -- not a single mechanic in the whole building. One sews on straps, another greases the machines, cuts out soles, waxes threads. And what is the result? When the machines stop, three thousand men are out of employment, credit goes. Then come want and famine, and if they happen to have a little child die, it would take them years to save enough of their earnings to pay the expense of putting away that little sacred piece of flesh. And yet, by this machinery we can produce enough to flood the world. By the inventions in agricultural machinery the United States can feed all the mouths upon the earth. There is not a thing that man uses that can not instantly be over-produced to such an extent as to become almost worthless; and yet, with all this production, with all this power to create, there are millions and millions in abject want. Granaries bursting, and famine looking into the doors of the poor! Millions of everything, and yet millions wanting everything and having substantially nothing!
Now, there is something wrong there. We have got into that contest between machines and men, and if extravagance does not keep pace with ingenuity, it is going to be the most terrible question that man has ever settled. I tell you, to-night, that these things are worth thinking about. Nothing that touches the future of our race, nothing that touches the happiness of ourselves or our children, should be beneath our notice. We should think of these things -- must think of them -- and we should endeavor to see that justice is finally done between man and man.
If you read the 'sermon' in full, you'll see Ingersoll condemn strikes and attempts at collectivization: I don't know if I've used the description before, but he's a man living in the 19th century and who tries to realize the "24th century" through 18th century means. Though a raging liberal for his time, Ingersoll was cut from the same clothe as Thomas Jefferson and so on -- he believed the Republic was best served by a nation of family farmers and small business owners, curious given that much of his living came from drawing documents for corporations -- including the railroads that took advantage of all those family farmers and led to the Grange movement. He seems to want people to behave and accomplish change in an orderly manner, through the ballot box....but even in his era machine politics had already taken over.
I never fail to feel heartened when this group of young Buddhist monks*, marching solemnly through the countryside in their habits, suddenly breaks forth into a silly, lovable English song.
*According to a documentary I watched recently, it is not uncommon for poorer people in places like Tibet to offer children they cannot afford to feed to the monastery. I think that happened in Europe, as well...
Back in 2006, I checked out Groundhog Day from the local Blockbuster and enjoyed it so much I decided to buy it from the store. I've since watched it a half-dozen times and never fail to be amused and touched. It's a fantasy comedy of sorts, in which an egotistic, crotchety middle-aged weatherman (Phil Conners, played by Bill Murray) is forced to drive to Punxustawney, Pennyslyvania with his annoyingly perky boss and their cameraman to do their news station's annual Groundhog Day segment. Conners is a generally unpleasant fellow whose primary occupations are complaining and ridiculing others. After spending the night in Punxustawney, the crew do their segment, but are trapped in town by a blizzard. The next morning, Phil wakes up to find it's Groundhog Day -- again. The same events which transpired the day before occur here: Phil hears the same jokes, the same banal comments, crosses through the same traffic, and is stranded by the same blizzard. Only when his behavior forces alterations do they occur.
Phil is stuck in Groundhog Day -- again and again. He has no idea what is causing this time loop, and his elation at being able to get away with anything (in a world of no consequences) quickly turns to despair when he realizes nothing he does or says will ever matter. No money stolen or friendships earned will endure. He tries to kill himself, only to wake up again and again at 6:00 a.m, Groundhog Day. His greatest disappointment, though, is his inability to win the affections of his boss, Rita. Though seemingly annoyed by her relentless cheerfulness, Phil is attracted to her and genuinely wants to be seen as something other than who he is: a jerk. He tries to become the kind of man she could love, but finds in the process that virtue and self-improvement are their own rewards. He comes to see the endless winter of Groundhog Day as a kind of gift, and uses it to learn to play the piano, to speak French, to create art. He makes the most of every moment and devotes himself to the people of Punxustawney, delighting in ordinary little kindnesses. In the process, he learns how to love something other than himself, and finally wakes up on February 3rd.
Groundhog Day is a genuinely funny movie, but I respond so favorably to because it has a philosophical point -- particularly to naturalistic sorts like humanists. While religions tend to make people participants in great psycho-dramas in which their actions play parts in a vast struggle between good and evil, to the naturalistic mind our actions have no real consequences in the long term. Hitler and Gandhi go to the same end, and oblivion will claim us all one day. Humanity may survive to expand throughout the galaxy, but eventually our clock will be punched for the last time. Like Phil, we are in an ultimately meaningless situation, but there is no reason to be miserable about it. We are alive, whereas billions of others are not. We can breathe in sweet oxygen, stare at the stars in wonder, enjoy the many pleasures of life. Reality may be Puxustawney, P.A., and not the glitzy dramatic metropolis we think we'd prefer, but there's plenty to enjoy. We can improve ourselves, find meaning in art and science, glory in little accomplishments, and find solace and joy in the company of friends and loved ones.
I know this from personal experience, for I was once a Pentecostal who believed in a great drama. That drama still excites Christians, Muslims, and Jews around the world, but as I aged that drama depressed and angered me. I felt damned, and in my darkest hours decided to spite "God" and his twisted universe. I declared that I was going to enjoy life and do something with mine to help others. I took possession of my life and infused it with meaning and purpose of my own making. I pushed myself to be sociable, and made friends. I determined what I wanted a meaningful occupation, and left the factory for the university. I matured as a human being, and my self-empowerment has lasted for five years so far. When I read my old journals from that pre-humanist period -- with titles like "Jetsam's Course" -- I cannot identify with the person who I once was. I have found the joys of spring in the depths of winter, just as Phil did, and just as anyone can. Life is too short not to enjoy .
In the western mythos, 'Judas' is synonymous with 'traitor'. This comes from the Christian gospels, in which a man named Judas Iscariot betrays Jesus after being his student and servant for three years of ministry. According to the gospels, Judas led soldiers into the garden in which Jesus was praying and distinguished him among his followers by kissing Jesus on the cheek -- betraying his friend for thirty shekels of currency. Jesus was then taken by the Romans, interrogated, beaten, and condemned to death. Judas later expressed shame for his actions and died, either by hanging himself or by tripping and disemboweling himself in a field of broken pottery.
There have been various attempts to redeem Judas' name. Since most Christians believe that Jesus's essential task on Earth was to die, Judas' role in arranging that death seems necessary. Indeed, when The Gospel of Judas began attracting attention in the media, he was represented as Jesus' dearest friend, specially chosen for the task of leading Jesus to his death. Yesterday, I discovered a song called "Stand Up For Judas", which paints the story of Jesus and Judas in a different story, rooting itself in one of the Christian text's more questionable stories.
In the story, Jesus and his disciples are resting at a supporters' home at the end of a long journey. A woman named Mary enters, carrying an 'alabaster box' full of valuable ointment. Breaking the box, she proceeds to wash Jesus' feet -- presumably dirt-caked from a day of walking -- with it, using her hair to scrub his feet clean. Some of the disciples -- Judas is named explicitly in the other gospels -- objects to this on the grounds that her actions were wasteful. That ointment could have been sold, he says, and the proceeds given to the poor. Jesus' reply was that the poor will always be around but he would not, so it was better that she was able to appreciate him with this sacrifice. Disgusted, Judas leaves and proceeds directly to sell Jesus out. With that in mind, the song.
Essentially, it portrays Judas as a populist revolutionary who feels betrayed by Jesus turning himself into a religious icon rather than leading the people to freedom.Transcribed lyrics follow underneath the video.
The Romans were the Masters, when Jesus walked the land
In Judea, and in Galilee, they ruled with an iron hand
And the poor were sick with hunger, and the rich were clothed in splendor --
And the rebels, whipped and crucified, hung rotting as a warning.
'Not sheep and goats', said Judas, but 'together we may dare!'
'Shake off the chains of misery we share!'
So stand up, stand up for Judas!
And the cause that Judas served --
It was Jesus who betrayed the poor with his words.
Jesus stood upon the mountain with the distance in his eyes
"I am the Way, the Light," he cried, "the Life that never dies!
"So renounce all earthly treasures, and pray to your heavenly father."
And he pacified the hopeless with the hope of life eternal.
Said Jesus, "I am the answer, and you who hunger, only remember --
".. your reward's in heaven"
So Jesus preached the other world,
but Judas wanted This -- and he betrayed his master with a kiss.
So stand up, stand up for Judas!
And the cause that Judas served --
It was Jesus who betrayed the poor with his words.
By sword, and gun, and crucifix, Christ's gospel has been spread!
And two thousand cruel years have shown the Way that Jesus led
The Heretic burned and tortured, and the butchering, bloody Crusaders
The bombs and rockets sanctified, that rain down death from heaven
They followed Jesus! -- they knew the Answer.
All nonbelievers must be believers -- or else be Broken.
"So place no trust in Saviours,"
Judas said, "for everyone
Must be to his or her own self...a Sun."
It's an interesting song, I think. While I've never seen Jesus as a Saviour, for time I dearly wished to regard him well. I wanted to see him the same way I see Siddhartha Gautama, as a teacher of wisdom. In part I still do, if only to find common ground with Christians, but since he never wrote a thing we cannot say with certainty who he was -- or who he thought he was. The song leaves me with mixed feelings, for I hate injustice and applaud anyone who fights against it with swords or through nonviolent means. I despise the Platonic-Christian contempt for the natural world, and have no use for those who want to be worshiped. I rather like this song's Judas, and would indeed stand up for him -- though I don't know if any uprising could defeat the Romans in the time of Augustus. When the Jews did revolt in 70 CE, they were broken fairly quickly.
References:
I had to look at three different accounts of the alabaster box stories, since every author had different details.Relevant chapters are Luke 7, Matthew 26, and Mark 14.
The principle of brotherhood expounded by the agitator of Nazareth preserved the germ of life, of truth and justice, as long as it was the beacon light of the few. The moment the majority seized upon it, that great principle became a shibboleth and harbinger of blood and fire, spreading suffering and disaster. The attack on the omnipotence of Rome, led by the colossal figures of Huss, Calvin, and Luther, was like a sunrise amid the darkness of the night. But so soon as Luther and Calvin turned politicians and began catering to the small potentates, the nobility, and the mob spirit, they jeopardized the great possibilities of the Reformation., They won success and the majority, but that majority proved no less cruel and bloodthirsty in the persecution of thought and reason that was the Catholic monster. Woe to the heretics, to the minority, who would not bow to its dicta. After infinite zeal, endurance, and sacrifice, the human mind is at last free from the religious phantom; the minority has gone in pursuit of new conquests, and the majority is lagging behind, handicapped by truth grown false with age.
Source: Red Emma Speaks: An Emma Goldman Reader. Compiled and edited by Alix Kates Shulman.
From "Spirituality", which I would recommend reading -- it pained me to post only part of Ingersoll's description of what he or I might call authentically human spirituality. The full text is rather short in comparison to the longer speeches and essays.
It may be well enough to ask: What is it to be really spiritual?
The spiritual man lives to his ideal. He endeavors to make others happy. He does not despise the passions that have filled the world with art and glory. He loves his wife and children -- home and fireside. He cultivates the amenities and refinements of life. He is the friend and champion of the oppressed. His sympathies are with the poor and the suffering. He attacks what he believes to be wrong, though defended by the many, and he is willing to stand for the right against the world. He enjoys the beautiful. In the presence of the highest creations of Art his eyes are suffused with tears. When he listens to the great melodies, the divine harmonies,he feels the sorrows and the raptures of death and love. He is intensely human*. He carries in his heart the burdens of the world. He searches for the deeper meanings. He appreciates the harmonies of conduct, the melody of a perfect life.
He loves his wife and children better than any god. He cares more for the world he lives in than for any other. He tries to discharge the duties of this life, to help those that he can reach. He believes in being useful -- in making money to feed and clothe and educate the ones he loves -- to assist the deserving and to support himself. He does not wish to be a burden on others. He is just, generous and sincere.
Spirituality is all of this world. It is a child of this earth, born and cradled here. It comes from no heaven, but it makes a heaven where it is.
I have shared music from Playing for Change before, not so much for the exquisite music as the beautiful dream it represents by bringing people from all over the world to make music together. Instruments from varied cultures join in harmony together, and the result...is astonishing. This particular song shares that same vision, uniting humanity -- abandoning narrow dreams and fruitless obsessions for a cosmopolitan spirit.
I created this blog a bit over four years ago to store some philosophical essays and musings of mine that I created while attempting to sort out my worldview following my exit from Pentecostalism and my discovery of humanism, freethought, and naturalism. I've since maintained the same essential look, though the sites and blogs I link to have continued to change. I've wanted to change the background look for a while now, so I finally decided to take the leap and upgrade to the new template. Most of my links and blogs from the old look have carried over, though I did finally get around to updating their names and links instead of relying on redirects to do that for me. I also added a blog I've been enjoying for a few weeks now, "The Little Book of Humanity".
The background image is the Stoa of Attalos. This is not the porch from which Zeno taught, but it conveys to me a sense of serenity and peace all the same. The pillars of the Stoa have stood tall in my life for several years now, both literally and philosophically: I used this same image as my personal desktop wallpaper for nearly two years. Stoicism has made me more mindful and free, though I think I may have overdone it at one point. Its focus on the individual as sovereign over his or her own mind has influenced other parts of my worldview, including my growing interest in anarchism. I've been working on an essay called "From Freethought to Anarchism" that will explore the transition more.
I cannot predict what this blog will look like in the next four years, though I intend to continue philosophical musings and celebrate life and the human spirit. I may continue to explore blogger's template customizer.
The Apprentice Philosopher recently sent me a video recently and after three viewings I realized I had to share it. At the beginning of the video, its author recounts an experience he had encountering the Milky Way -- stepping out into the night, struck by the grandeur and majesty of the Cosmos but being able to appreciate it all the more because of his understanding of modern cosmology. He then compares this moment of soul-stirring clarity to the feelings religions attempt to reproduce and gain a monopoly on. As he talks, beautiful imagery and subtle, but effective music plays in the background. It's in the spirit of Carl Sagan's Cosmos and Richard Dawkins' Unweaving the Rainbow. Selected quotations are below.
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The Milky way itself contains 200 billion stars, give or take. These numbers are essential to understanding what a galaxy is, but when contemplating them some part of the human mind protests that 'it cannot be so'. Yet an examination of the evidence brings you to the conclusion that it is, and if you take that conclusion out on a clear dark night and look up, you might see something that will change your life. This is what a galaxy looks like from the inside -- from the surburbs of our sun. Through binoculars, for every star you can see with your naked eye, you can see a hundred around it, all suspended in a grey-blue mist. But through a modest telescope, if you wait for your eyes to adjust to the dark, and get the focus just right, you will see that mist for what it really is -- more stars, like dust, fading into what tastes like infinity. But you've got to have the knowledge -- seeing is only half of it.
That night, three years ago, I knew a small part of what's out there -- the kinds of things, the scale of things, the age of things. The violence and destruction, appalling energy, hopeless gravity, and the despair of distance -- but I feel safe, because I know my world is protected by the very distance that others fear. It's like the universe screams in your face: Do you know what I am? How grand I am? How old I am? Can you even comprehend what I am? What are you, compared to me? And when you know enough science, you can just smile up at the universe and reply, "Dude -- I am you."
When I looked at the galaxy that night, I knew the faintest twinkle of starlight was a real connection between my comprehending eye along a narrow beam of light to the surface of another sun. The photons my eyes detect, the light I see, the energy with which my nerves interact came frm that star. I thought I could never touch it, yet something from it crosses the void and touches me. I might never have known. My eyes saw only a tiny point of light, but my mind saw so much more.
There's no word for such experiences that come through scientific and not mystical revelation. The reason for that is that every time someone has such a mind-gasm, religion steals it -- simply by saying, "Ah, you've had a religious experience."
To even partially comprehend the scale of a single galaxy is to almost disappear -- and when you remember all the other galaxies, you shrink one hundred billion times smaller still. But then you realize what you are -- the same facts that made you feel so insignificant also tell you how you got here. It's like you become more real, or maybe the universe becomes more real. You suddenly fit. You suddenly belong. You do not have to bow down -- you do not have to look away. In such moments, all you have to do is remember to keep breathing.
The body of a newborn baby is as old as the Cosmos. The form is new and unique, but the materials are 13.7 billion years old -- processed by nuclear fusion in stars, fashioned by electromagnetism. Cold words for amazing processes -- and that baby was you, is you. You're amazing -- not only alive, but with a mind. What fool would exchange this for every winning lottery ticket ever drawn?
When I compare what scientific knowledge has done for me, and what religion tried to do to me, I sometimes literally shiver. Religions tell children they might go to hell and they must believe -- while science tells children that they came from the stars and presents reasoning they can believe. I've told plenty of young kids about stars, atoms, galaxies and the Big Bang, and I have never seen fear in their eyes -- only amazement and curiosity. They want more. Why do kids swim in it, and adults drown in it? What happens to reality between our youngest years and adulthood? Could it be that someone promised us something so beautiful that our universe seems dull, empty, even frightening by comparison? It might still be made by a creator of some kind, but religion has made it look ugly -- religion paints everything not of itself as unholy, and sinful, while it beautifies and dignifies its errors, lies, and bigotry like a pig wearing the finest robes. In its efforts to stop us facing reality, religion has become the reality we cannot face.
Look at what religion has made us to -- to ourselves, and to each other. Religion stole our love and our loyalty and gave it to a book, to a telepathic father who tells his children that love means kneeling before him.
There might yet be a heaven -- but it isn't going to be perfect, and we're going to have to build it ourselves.
Back in 2006 I titled this blog 'Let Me Be Frank' in part because I wanted to speak my mind earnestly, but also as a tip of the hat to an inspiration of mine, Frank Sinatra. I started listening to Sinatra in the summer of 2004 after picking up a CD of his ("The Very Good Years"), and he immediately rose to become one of my favorite artists. I liked Sinatra not for politics or philanthropy, but because he embodied traits I wanted to posses. Religious-wise, I was already in a downhill spiral. With every passing week, I felt more depressed, angry, and helpless. That dissipated when I listened to Frank. When I hear him sing, I heard courage, bravado, exulting joy, and strength. I read numerous biographies and found myself wanting to emulate him. When I listened to Frank Sinatra, I walked a little taller, was a little happier.
Eventually I told religion to get lost and determined that gods or no, I was going to live my life, enjoy it, and do something with it to help other people. I made this declaration and defended it with nothing but will. Certainly part of that came from Sinatra's willfulness rubbing off on me. In the years that have passed, I've become far happier. In seeking peace, though, I've...wandered too deep into the monastery of contemplation. Studying Stoicism has given me much to be thankful for -- mindfulness, for instance -- but I've been too much self-absorbed, too focused on being 'right' instead of LIVING. This was brought to a head when I started reading Augustine's Confessions and a biography of Sinatra in the same week and realized whose spirit I'd rather mine be more kin to. When it comes to looking for the balance between Stoic serenity and humanist passion, I will err on the side of exhultive pleasure. Life's too short to wear a monk's habit.
Anyway, being as this is Frank Sinatra's birthday, here's one of my favorite 'brassy' numbers. Transcribed lyrics are below.
I'm gonna live -- until I die!
I'm gonna laugh, instead of cry!
I'm gonna take the town and turn it upside town,
I'm gonna live, live, live until I die.
They're gonna say, "What a guy!"
I'm gonna play for the sky
Ain't gonna miss a thing,
I'm gonna have my fling,
I'm gonna live, live, live until I die.
The blues I lay low, I make `em stay low
They'll never let `em trail over my head.
I'll be a devil 'til I'm an angel, but until then --
HALLELUJAH! Gonna dance! Gonna fly!
I'll take a chance, ridin' high
Before my number's up, I'm gonna fill my cup
I'm gonna live, live, live! until I die.
The blues I lay low, I'll make `em stay low --
They'll never trail over my head.
I'll be a devil 'til I'm an angel, but until then --
Abraham Lincoln: What a charming Negress! Oh, forgive me, my dear. I know in my time some used that term as a description of property." Uhura: But why should I object to that term, sir? You see, in our century we've learned not to fear words.
(Star Trek, "The Savage Curtain")
What is political correctness?
In middle school I thought it was the practice of altering one's language or remaining quiet about some beliefs to avoid engendering offense. In seventh grade I remember kids making a game of inventing 'politically correct' descriptions: essentially, we attempted to find the most convoluted way of describing people and things we could. "Short" became "vertically challenged", and "fat", "horizontally enhanced". In a less juvenile context, the motivation to avoid being offensive is why accepted terminologies for minorities change through time: 'cripple' has become 'disabled' or 'handicapped', and "Negro" has eventually developed into African-American, though "colored" and "black" were intermediaries.
While it is understandable that people would resist changing the way they speak to please someone else, there are also reasons why certain words and phrases have become 'n-words', and why we perhaps ought to rethink our use of them. Language is constantly changing: as time passes, words are separated from their original meanings and intents. "Retarded" may have once been a clinical description indicating that a patient's mental abilities were impaired or inhibited, but people now use it to attack those who they believe are acting foolishly, or simply to demean those whom they disagree with or dislike. They thus corrupt the word: their base intention has turned a once objective description into a mean and contemptuous term. Those who prefer their language to be civil are right to to avoid such vulgarity. Politically correct terms also sometimes make more sense than those which they replace: 'native American' may be lengthsome, but 'Indian' is ignorant.
Political correctness in language has its shortcomings as well: politically correct descriptions tend toward the ungainly (it being much harder to shout "Hey, person with a higher-than-normal body-mass index!" than "Hey, fatty!"), and some phrases simply do not work. "Differently-abled" is an example of this: it says nothing, for we all have 'different' abilities. The full use of arms and legs is considered a normal, typical ability of human beings, (thus the appropriateness of 'disabled') but it is not an insult to be abnormal despite the fact that there are those who take pleasure in mocking others for being different. I understand why people who are sensitive about being different in some way would prefer that people didn't draw attention to their difference, but insisting that others use ungainly phrases will attract more hostility than the proposed phrase deflects.
I believe political correctness exists more as an imagined object of hostility than as a monolithic force in itself. There is no language commission in the United States which ruthlessly seeks out every indecorous word and sends it to a speech-gulag somewhere. Instead, people attack particular words linked to particular minorities as the minorities, the people themselves, begin asserting themselves. The titular "n-word" has been sent to a speech-gulag by people who stood up for themselves and forced the majority to consider: why are you using that word to attack us? Why are you keeping us segregated, denied equal rights and opportunities?
The reactionary mentality does not like being forced to consider its actions and beliefs. It does not want to consider that it was in the wrong, that it remains in the wrong by protesting instead of admitting to having acted poorly or having been ignorant. They thus invent the phrase 'politically correct' as an insult to approve their own actions. Suddenly, they are not the oppressors: they are the victims. Behold, the great white majority are being persecuted because they can no longer call a wop a wop and a chink a chink! Politically correct language doesn't allow them to justify their distrust or contempt of others with a blow-rendering label.
Imperial Christians are especially bad about this during Christmas. Christmas in the United States is only partly Christian: it carries the Catholic title "Christ's Mass" in its name, but I daresay most people don't darken the door of a church on Christmas Eve or Christmas day. They certainly don't hear a mass. Many of the practices stem from sources other than Paulinism: Christmas trees and yule logs are German, caroling and reveling Roman, and shameless consumerism oh-so-very modern. The date of the holiday itself comes from the winter solstice, acknowledged by most cultures in the northern hemisphere -- and yet Christians will claim the holiday is all theirs, that every thing about it is the exclusive property of Jesus Christ Incorporated. If anyone dares acknowledge that the Roman church's mass isn't the only religious or festive ceremony held in late December, this is a source of great umbrage to the Christians, who construe "Happy Holidays" as an insult to their beliefs and every utterance of "Solstice" is an assault on the body of Christ.
I believe this reactionary mentality is why those who take pride in being politically incorrect tend to be aggressively rude and insufferably opinionated: they like being jackasses, by god, and how dare you judge them for acting like a jackass? Being proud of being politically incorrect is tantamount to seeking a license to be a jackass, and doing it in the name of free speech, yet. There's irony here, it seems: people rail against their actions being judged as rude or uninformed, even though their actions themselves were judgment of other people.
For my own part, I don't think the labels themselves are the problem: they are merely a symptom of the tendecy of people to attack and demean others. Judge the intent of language: once that is known, the expression is mostly garnish.
If you want to be happy yourself, if you are truly civilized, you want others to be happy. Every man ought, to the extent of his ability, to increase the happiness of mankind, for the reason that that will increase his own. No one can be really prosperous unless those with whom he lives share the sunshine and the joy.
The first thing a man wants to know and be sure of is when he has got enough. Most people imagine that the rich are in heaven, but, as a rule, it is only a gilded hell. There is not a man in the city of New York with genius enough, with brains enough, to own five millions of dollars. Why? The money will own him. He becomes the key to a safe. That money will get him up at daylight; that money will separate him from his friends; that money will fill his heart with fear; that money will rob his days of sunshine and his nights of pleasant dreams. He cannot own it. He becomes the property of that money. And he goes right on making more. What for? He does not know. It becomes a kind of insanity. No one is happier in a palace than in a cabin. I love to see a log house. It is associated in my mind always with pure, unalloyed happiness. It is the only house in the world that looks as though it had no mortgage on it. It looks as if you could spend there long, tranquil autumn days; the air filled with serenity; no trouble, no thoughts about notes, about interest -- nothing of the kind; just breathing free air, watching the hollyhocks, listening to the birds and to the music of the spring that comes like a poem from the earth.
It is an insanity to get more than you want. Imagine a man in this city, an intelligent man, say with two or three millions of coats, eight or ten millions of hats, vast warehouses full of shoes, billions of neckties, and imagine that man getting up at four o'clock in the morning, in the rain and snow and sleet, working like a dog all day to get another necktie! Is not that exactly what the man of twenty or thirty millions, or of five millions, does to-day? Wearing his life out that somebody may say, "How rich he is!" What can he do with the surplus? Nothing. Can he eat it? No. Make friends? No. Purchase flattery and lies? Yes. Make all his poor relations hate him? Yes. And then, what worry! Annoyed, nervous, tormented, until his poor little brain becomes inflamed, and you see in the morning paper, "Died of apoplexy." This man finally began to worry for fear he would not have enough neckties to last him through.
So we ought to teach our children that great wealth is a curse.
I asked [Hippocrates] why it was then that the future was often correctly foretold by means of astrology. He gave me the only possible answer, that it was all due to the power of chance, a force that must always be reckoned with in the natural order. He said that people sometimes opened a book of poetry at random, and although the poet had been thinking, as he wrote, of some quite different manner, if often happened that the reader placed his finger on a verse which had a remarkable bearing on his problem. It was not surprising then, that the mind of man, quite unconsciously, through some instinct not within under his own control, should hit upon some thing that answered to his circumstances and the facts of a particular question. If so, it would be due to chance not to skill.
Book four of The Confessions, Augustine of Hippo. Section three. This amusingly follows a section in which Augustine claimed his mother's dreams were a sign to her from God that he would seek salvation in Christianity. Superstition is always another person's sin, isn't it?
Spotted this at the Buddhist blog. The map doesn't just portray exchanges of territory, but territory seized by moving armies. Because there's no date given, this video is particularly enjoyable for students of history. I thought I was witnessing the unification of Germany under Bismarck until France invaded Spain, at which point I realized that was Napoleon's 'Confederation of the Rhine' earlier.
Special thanks to Neurovore of N^4 for letting me know the first video was taken down by the money-whoring powers that be.
Back in January, a police cruiser and I passed each other going separate directions on a deserted highway winding through a small town. I checked the rear-view mirror as he passed me, ever-wary of being pulled over. An Alabama State Trooper pulled me over once in my first year of driving because I neglected to notice a headlight out, but I'd avoided catching any police officer's attention -- until then. His lights came on, and I automatically switched lanes and pulled into a quiet residential street. I am always wary of being pulled over by the police because I rarely remember to put the state-mandated insurance card in my car. This week I had it in my leather jacket, though, and considered myself fortunate indeed.
Were this just a routine traffic stop, it wouldn't be particularly memorable -- but it ended up in my being frisked. I have never cared much for authority, but neither have I ever been a troublemaker. Throughout my life people remarked at how well-behaved and nice I was. I followed the rules -- my rules -- for behaving decently, in part to keep authority away from me. When authority targeted me, I feel anger and indignation. Little wonder I found Stoicism, with its emphasis on individuals following principled rules for themselves and not depending in outside authorities, or anarchism with its ever-defiant contempt for outside authority, so likable. Because I do not trust authority, and because I so seldom cross its path, when the officer came to my window I was nervous. I handed him my library card before realizing that wasn't what he wanted, and when I tried to hand him my insurance card he also got the car's title and various other papers.
His reason for pulling me over was that he thought my seatbelt was undone. It was not. I suppose ordinarily he would have bid me good-day, but my nervousness piqued his curiosity. He explained to me that when he spotted nervous behavior from people he detained, he assumed they were nervous for having something to hide. My autonomous nervous system was in full gear, my face sweaty, my hands shaking, and my arms visibly vibrating. The officer, who I'll refer to as Officer Friendly, suggested that someone carrying a few kilos of drugs might be nervous.
I chortled at the prospect of my being a drug courier, at which point he asked me if I minded stepping out of the car -- at which point he frisked me. By this time my fear was ebbing away, quickly, replaced by astonishment and amusement that I was being frisked. We talk for a while, and he's still concerned about my being nervous. He wants to know why. Though I let him frisk me and even search my car, I wasn't so foolish enough to explain to Officer Friendly that I was wary of abusive policemen and of authority in general. Instead, I told him that I hadn't been pulled over in many years and was not expecting it. He wanted to know why I didn't bump into police officers much, and as valiantly as I tried to tell him that I was a simple fellow who didn't clash with anyone, I think he got the feeling that I was some survivalist character who only came down from my mountain to fetch supplies. I suppose my leather jacket, scruffy face, and car interior didn't help: on this day, it contained my laundry bag, an overstuffed bookpack, perhaps a dozen books, and odds and ends resulting from a week of commuting. He searched the car, repeatedly inquiring if I was sure I wasn't hiding anything -- if I was sure there were no drugs or concealed weapons in the car. "I'm a man of peace," I felt like saying as I stood in front of his cruiser's camera and resisted the urge to wave at it.
Officer Friendly and I chatted as he searched my car -- with my permission. I'd given it unthinkingly, not realizing he had to ask, and that I had the right to resist him. But he was such a friendly fellow, so likable, that I readily agreed to everything he asked and came away from the situation very amused. I have no use for drugs, and my only use for a gun would be euthanasia in the event of terminal cancer or such, so I had no objections to him searching. I had a copy of Red Emma Speaks in my backpack, but I could just say that was for research purposes on the off-chance he recognized the book as being a collection of anarchist Emma Goldman's writings. In retrospect, though I should have been more cautious, I still think he was justified by my behavior at the start. That has not stopped me from trying to correct my ignorance, which I did in part tonight when I watched this documentary from the American Civil Liberties Union, called "BUSTED: The Citizen's Guide to Surviving Police Encounters".
The movie consists of three skits in which police officers confront people on the road, on the sidewalks, and in their homes. Each skit has two parts: in the first, the confronted citizens respond as I did and wind up in jail when the police officers seize all the opportunities naivete has given them. In the second, as the ACLU spokesperson narrates, the people 'flex their rights'. The acting only seemed wooden in the third skit, the video itself should prove helpful to Americans who do not know how to respond in police situations.
"I will come to a time in my backwards trip when November eleventh, accidentally my birthday, was a sacred day called Armistice Day. When I was a boy, and when Dwayne Hoover was a boy, all the people of all the nations which had fought in the First World War were silent during the eleventh minute of the eleventh hour of Armistice Day, which was the eleventh day of the eleventh month. It was during that minute in nineteen hundred and eighteen, that millions upon millions of human beings stopped butchering one another. I have talked to old men who were on battlefields during that minute. They have told me in one way or another that the sudden silence was the Voice of God. So we still have among us some men who can remember when God spoke clearly to mankind. Armistice Day has become Veterans' Day. Armistice Day was sacred. Veterans' Day is not. So I will throw Veterans' Day over my shoulder. Armistice Day I will keep. I don't want to throw away any sacred things."
(Kurt Vonnegut, Breakfast of Champions)
Well, how do you do, Private William McBride,
Do you mind if I sit down here by your graveside?
And rest for awhile in the warm summer sun,
I've been walking all day, and I'm nearly done.
And I see by your gravestone you were only 19
When you joined the glorious fallen in 1916,
Well, I hope you died quick and I hope you died clean
Or, Willie McBride, was it slow and obscene?
Did they Beat the drum slowly, did the play the pipes lowly?
Did the rifles fir o'er you as they lowered you down?
Did the bugles sound The Last Post in chorus?
Did the pipes play the Flowers of the Forest?
And did you leave a wife or a sweetheart behind
In some loyal heart is your memory enshrined?
And, though you died back in 1916,
To that loyal heart are you forever 19?
Or are you a stranger without even a name,
Forever enshrined behind some glass pane,
In an old photograph, torn and tattered and stained,
And fading to yellow in a brown leather frame?
The sun's shining down on these green fields of France;
The warm wind blows gently, and the red poppies dance.
The trenches have vanished long under the plow;
No gas and no barbed wire, no guns firing now.
But here in this graveyard that's still No Man's Land
The countless white crosses in mute witness stand
To man's blind indifference to his fellow man.
And a whole generation who were butchered and damned.
And I can't help but wonder, now Willie McBride,
Do all those who lie here know why they died?
Did you really believe them when they told you "The Cause?"
Did you really believe that this war would end wars?
Well the suffering, the sorrow, the glory, the shame
(Though I transcribed this for those who can't watch larger videos, it is worth experiencing if you can. Sagan's voice is set against a very complementary piano piece and beautiful imagery.)
We were hunters and foragers; the frontier was everywhere. We were bounded only by the earth, and the ocean, and the sky. The open road still softly calls; our little terraqueous globe is the madhouse of those hundred thousand, millions of worlds. We, who cannot even put our own planetary home in order -- riven with rivalries and hatreds -- are we to venture out into space?
By the time we're ready to settle even the nearest other planetary system, we will have changed. The simple passage of so many generations will have changed us. Necessity will have changed us. We're...an adaptable species. It will not be we who reach Alpha Centauri and the other nearby stars --it will be a species very like us, but with more of our strengths and fewer of our weaknesses: more confident, far-seeing, capable, and prudent.
For all our failings, despite our limitations and fallibilities, we humans are capable of greatness. What new wonders, undreamt of in our time, will we have wrought in another generation? And another? How far will our nomadic species have wandered by the end of the next century, and the next millennium? Our remote descendants, safely arrayed on many worlds through the solar system and beyond, will be unified -- by their common heritage, by their regard for their home planet, and by the knowledge that whatever life may be, the only humans in all the universe come from Earth.
They will gaze up and strain to find the blue dot in their skies. They will marvel at how vulnerable the repository of all our potential once was -- how perilous our infancy, how humble our beginnings...how many rivers we had to cross before we found our way.
Last spring I wrote a biographical essay on Robert Ingersoll for a Gilded Age class. Though initially a five to seven page paper, near the end of the semester we were instructed to distill our work down to 700 words. A year before writing this short biographical article, I wrote an essay in tribute to him, but 'The Life of Ingersoll' is intentionally more neutral. It focuses on him as a man in his times, working as a lawyer and political booster.
Lawyer, politician, and orator Robert Green Ingersoll (1833 - 1899) lived in an America still growing into its own identity. No longer a fledgling Republic, the United States of the Gilded Age could boast of a century of history and tumultuous social change. Ingersoll's gifts as an orator and a disciplined approach to his work enabled him to play a prominent role in the political and social world of his day, rubbing shoulders with presidents, industrialists, poets, and scholars. He died with his name a household word despite his humble beginnings as the son of an itinerant preacher.
Ingersoll’s career began in Peoria, Illinois, where he and his brother, Clark, established a law firm in 1858. Ingersoll’s oratorical strengths developed in part from his practice, building on his father’s legacy as a fiery abolitionist preacher. He initially practiced criminal and civil law in and around Peoria, although later legal successes allowed him to settle in the lucrative field of corporate law. The Munn (1876) and Star Route (1882-1883) trials in particular established his national reputation as a powerful attorney. In both politically charged affairs, Ingersoll defended individuals accused of defrauding the government against popular bias.
Ingersoll’s triumph in these cases owed much to his rhetorical talents, to his exhaustive research, and to a gift for near-perfect recall that allowed him to put that research to use. Although not above the use of surgically-used emotional appeals, Ingersoll preferred to rely on an effective display of facts and unassailable logic. Demand for his talents never waned in either law or politics. Ingersoll’s abolitionist sentiments and repugnance for secession made a loyal Republican of the former Democrat, and he campaigned tirelessly for his party during the Reconstruction years. Only his hatred for the Democrats, the party of "rebellion and murder", rivaled his love for the Republican Party, which he believed represented the best of the American spirit. Ingersoll regarded Reconstruction as vital in preventing the triumphs of the Civil War from becoming moot. If the Republican party did not stay the course, he feared that “the Confederate army with ballots instead of bayonets, with Gen’l Andy Johnson at the head, will conquer at last.”
The Republican Party’s post-war history did not prove to Ingersoll’s liking. The period’s corruption and graft disappointed a man who believed so fervently in the need for, and the possibility of, honest government. He nearly retired from politics during the Hayes administration, disturbed by the President’s increasingly conciliatory attitude toward southern Democrats. Even so, he seized any opportunity to champion politicians with integrity: his “Plumed Knight” speech endorsing James Blaine swept the newspapers and kept his services in demand by Republicans seeking office. Ingersoll never held elected office, enjoying only an appointment as the Illinois Attorney General. His political focus tended to be broader than that of the organized parties: in championing American ideals, he sought to expand them further and took up the banners of women’s suffrage, Civil Rights, and labor. While progressive in social matters, he viewed himself as a conservative promoting and defending America’s promise of human equality.
His eagerness to embrace these causes owed much to Ingersoll's humanist sympathies. He advocated American expansion to advance the cause of human progress, for he saw the Enlightenment principles embedded in the US Constitution as humanity's best hope for a better future. The works of Thomas Paine, Voltaire, and others whom he read as a child engendered his faith in democracy as well as his freethinking belief in personal responsibility in matters of morality and seeking the truth. Ingersoll promoted his worldview and religious devotion for liberty and progress in public lectures, capitalizing on his broad education to speak on philosophy, history, science, politics, and religion. His passion and approach earned him praise from progressives, but scathing criticism from orthodox clergymen who objected to his attacks upon organized religion. Attracting large audiences (as many as 50,000 in a given night), "Impious Pope Bob" rose to national prominence while advancing the cause of freethought in its golden age.
Ingersoll’s life of political and cultural contributions are inseparable from the context of the Gilded Age. Caught between the Enlightenment and modernity, Ingersoll attempted to draw upon those older ideals to meet the challenges of a rapidly changing world, drawing attention to the abuses of the day while advocating human progress.
Additional Resources:
Anderson, David. Robert Ingersoll. New York: Twayne Publishers, 1972.
Larson, Orvin. American Infidel: Robert G. Ingersoll. New York: Citadel Press, 1962.
Greely, Rogert E. The Best of Robert Ingersoll. Amherst, NY: Prometheus Books, 1977.
