miracles

Let us talk a bit about miracles. We are all looking for miracles. In this day and age, perhaps one miracle will do. But what is a miracle? Some dictionaries list it as “an event or effect in the physical world beyond or out of the ordinary course of things, deviating from the known laws of nature, or transcending our knowledge of these laws; an event which cannot be accounted for as produced by any of the known forces of nature and which is therefore attributed to supernatural force; an extraordinary, anomalous, or abnormal event brought about by superhuman agency as a manifestation of its power, or for the purpose of revealing or manifesting spiritual force. . . .” So, let us use this as the basis of our examination of miracles.
Prophets are miraculous because they see things in the future that normal people do not see. They are seers. Also, they are the voices of the gods, though most often in retrospect–or because, as with the Delphic Oracles, they were incomprehensible in their mouthings.
Saints are given miraculous powers. Whether they really did these things is still up for debate but since the very human Cardinals in the Catholic Church decide who can be a saint, the entire edifice of sainthood crumbles. These dogmatized, political humans in positions of extreme power will only enshrine those who do not call into question any of the Church’s teachings. Although sainthood has taken on a more human aspect in the proletarian world, let us stick with this assessment; otherwise my entire argument about miracles becomes meaningless, or rather “transcending our knowledge” of the task at hand becomes meaningless. There are no saints for Protestants.
When natural catastrophes occur and they miss people, it is a miracle. When these natural catastrophes bypass objects, not only is it a miracle but we tend to endow the object with some unheard of, unfathomable, unnamable power. For instance, the statue dedicated by Lotta Crabtree in San Francisco that has withstood both fire and earthquake or the crack in the Liberty Bell which should, by all rights, have rent the bell in two. It is also a miracle when two manic-depressive parents beget four children, only one of whom is manic-depressive. But, then, even mutations are somewhat of a miracle.
We also talk of miracles in everyday life. The miracle of the disability movement. The miracle of birth. The miracle recovery from debilitating or terminal disease. The idea that miracles can be created in personal life, like getting happiness or success. The family who rises above extreme poverty, overcoming insurmountable barriers (by some other means than sports). We never stop to think that obviously the barriers were not insurmountable. Even in such stories–all of the above–when the reasons are well-established and explained, we prefer to call them miracles. We prefer to lay back and play the odds, like a lottery: it happened to her, it will surely one day happen to me. It’s everyday miracles that keep hope alive. Hope is the end result of those who have given up. Boethius tells us that
If first you rid yourself of hope and fear
You have disarmed the tyrant’s wrath:
But whosoever quakes in fear or hope,
Drifting and losing mastery,
Has cast away his shield, has left his place,
And binds the chain with which he will be bound.”
(The Consolation of Philosophy, Book One, IV)
Hope is so closely associated with fear that they cannot be divided without killing both, as Dr. Jekyll, in wishing to kill Mr. Hyde, killed himself; as cutting off your head inevitably kills you; as severing a tree from its roots kills both roots and tree. Hope is forever linked to the fervid desire to escape some fearful situation, often seen as an “end.” At this point, people have given up: there is nothing more I can do. It’s in God’s hands (another miracle). But what or who is the tyrant?
The tyrant is us, our minds. The tyrant is our belief, our fervent, obsessive belief in our weakness and inability to do anything about anything. . .in the long run. It is our belief, fostered by centuries of philosophy, religion and science, that we are incapable of doing anything. Life is life and that’s the way it is. So said Shakespeare. So said Voltaire’s Dr. Pangloss. This is, after all, the best of all possible lives, for it is all we’ve got. How, then, can it be the best? We’ve not sampled any of the other possibilities. Indeed, quantum theory tells us that life is all possibility, even after we make a decision and create concrete things, there are still possibilities, new possibilities. If there are possibilities, there are no insurmountable barriers–other than ourselves. Systems theory teaches us that the world as we know it, society and culture, is man made. If it is man made, we can unmake it, make another version. Anything’s possible.
Surely we cannot hope. . .
It’ll take a miracle!
The disability movement is no miracle. It took people banding together and working hard, for many years, to achieve their goal. It took people going to jail, people being beaten, people dying. But people changed the world.
Birth is no miracle. It is everyday. It is destined, given the originating circumstances.
We may not know the cause for the remarkable recovery from debilitating or terminal illness, but it is no miracle. Something happened. Somebody did something. Instead of casting this off as a miracle, we should be studying the situation to see if we can come to some kind of understanding. And then help others.
Happiness and success in personal life are not miracles. Whoever has attained these states has worked hard–even those who have lied and cheated and bought their way to one or the other.
What is the one element that remains constant in all of these supposed miracles? People. People worked. People suffered. People believed they could accomplish something. People would not give up. People would not give in to despair and fear and hope. People made their worlds. People can make this world anew would seem to be the conclusion drawn. And, indeed, this is so.
The Aronsons, in the 1970’s, attempted to show how meditation had a positive, enhancing effect on society via the Maharishi Effect, named after the Eastern mystic Maharishi Mahesh Yogi and his transcendental meditation techniques. If this really does work–it is based on quantum theory’s Non-locale proposition–one wonders why these meditators stopped meditating in crisis communities. Why are they not out meditating for good all over the world? Why do they sit in virtual isolation bettering themselves? What about everyone else? Where’s their ethics? Dogma says. . .cleanse thyself first. Well, Christ said the same thing but he didn’t isolate himself. Indeed, “you” do not exist, even ego-less you, in isolation: you exist in relation to people, to everyone else. Meditating Hindis and Buddhists take heed: practice what you preach. Go out and do. Now is the time, not some ambiguous, malformed future. Walt Whitman tells us that all we have is now: now is all life, all the life there is. Now makes the future. The future is not some miracle to hope for. People make it. People make it now. Pay attention to life. It’s all you’ve got.
People who hope for miracles are members of the Do Nothing Strategy Group so well-documented in the writings of Karyn Strickler (cf. “The Do Nothing Strategy” at http://www.utne.com). It is fallacious to believe that changes occur from the top down, though there are a few who want us to believe this; it is beneficial to them to say, “You can’t fight City Hall” and “The good that happens to us finds its way down to you all.” It is fallacious to believe that you must have an organization before you can begin to change things. True, organizations have more power because they have more voices; but all organizations begin with one individual. This is how grassroots organization works: one individual, two individuals, three. . . . This is why grassroots organizing is deemed so dangerous by the people in power: people are hard to stop unless you brow beat them and/or kill them. So far, not many Americans have been killed. But do not doubt that some have and more will follow. Why? Because they believe in something. They believe in themselves. They believe in change. After all, change is the only constant in the universe.
In the end, when there are enough people believing something, a massive change occurs and “everyone” suddenly believes. This is the 100th Monkey Syndrome. A saturation point is reached. It is the Non-locale Theory. Physics–and Systems Theory–are applicable to life situations, not just the big picture. After all, what is the big picture except a multiplicity of everyday life situations? Take away everyday life, us, the people, and you have no big picture.
In the present world situation, it is foolish to hope for miracles. If we want peace, if we want an end to global abuse, environmental, racial and financial, we must make it happen. We, the people, must do something. This could happen overnight, at least the first step could occur in one fell swoop: stop George W. Bush. Do not let him be elected god. The people in power have no power without you, the people. Make these people–for they are “only” people, as we are–uncomfortable so they will create change from their stasis-oriented policies. It doesn’t take a miracle.
I placed “only” in quotes because we are not only people, we are not insignificant. We made this world, whether we did something about it or simply succumbed. Systems Theory is noted for its emphasis on groups and organizations within society and discounts the basic element to all its theories and conclusions: people. Without people none of these things would exist. Without people there is no world to make, to be made. As important as the organization is, without all of the structural elements (people) there is less than one leg to stand on. In the present world order, the people have been forgotten. Because they have forgotten themselves. Is this not a deformity rather than a miracle?
What are you going to do about it?
Only when we, the people, take our lives in hand can we live. If we hope and fear and wait for miracles we only bind ourselves with the chains that bind us to begin with; that is, we wrap ourselves tighter and tighter in exactly the same hellish shackles that we suffer with to begin with: our minds. . .our mindless fear. . .our hope for.
We, indeed, make our own world. . .or mindlessly sit back and hopelessly wait for a miracle to change it.
Do something.
In today’s world, that would be a miracle.

Hey–if he can do it, so can I!

Michael Johnson set records in both the 100 and the 200 meter races at the same Olympic Games. This is pretty amazing. But nobody thinks twice about it. After all, “I couldn’t do it.”
Billie Jean King is so fine a tennis player that she can play men. Absolutely stupendous. But not all that extraordinary. Well, “I couldn’t do it.”
Michael Jordan soars through the air and averages 40 points per game during his basketball career. This is pretty exceptional. Only, “I couldn’t do it.”
So why is it, when a disabled individual manages to succeed, we shiver at the battle against the odds and say, “Hey–if he can do it, so can I!” What are these odds to be overcome? Why does the disabled person’s accomplishments make me feel better about myself? Why is it that I, a non-disabled person, can overcome these unnamed, unimaginable odds?
The barrier, the odds to overcome, are our own attitudes: disabled people can’t do things. Those people aren’t as good as we are. And, I think, we’re afraid of them, for if they’re around and succeed, what kind of failure are we when we don’t succeed? And then, there is the fear that maybe “that” will happen to us. The world’s vicissitudes frighten us and so we push them away.
Are we so afraid of life? For, to be sure, life is 100% in-your-face and conscious for the disabled. Maybe we feel that energized presence and it’s frightening because we don’t have it. Not being disabled, we take life for granted and don’t give it another thought. With a disabled person around, life is in our faces. And that’s uncomfortable.
It is amazing that the disabled community can succeed against such overwhelming negativity. And we are cruel to feel good about their success. We were not, after all, very Christian to begin with. Our judgment of them was colored by our eye’s plank. Jesus asks how we can help others if our own hearts are not already clean. Perhaps, as we are bid, we should go into our secret closets and see what lurks there. If we don’t confront our fears, our horrors, our devils and our illusions, the disabled, for one, will forever be marginalized. For one? We marginalize ourselves! We push them away and deny ourselves a learning opportunity.
What do the disabled have to offer us?
Where did the umpire’s ball and strike signals come from?
Why is there a huddle in football?
Why are mothers able to walk downtown with their strollers and not miss a beat or run into a curb?
Where did golf carts come from?
So, what we need to help our brothers and sisters with disabilities is a change of mind, a change of attitude. Until we surmount this barrier, we not only will not free our disabled flock, we will not be able to free ourselves and rise to the ideal we profess. We must cease defining people by what they can’t do and see them in a positive, pro-active light: What can you do?
When we give, we tend to expect something back. We want to feel good. We want to be thanked. This is not giving. This is self-satisfaction. When we give, we tend to give from above down. When we give, we tend to obligate the receiver to need it. It was described this way by a post-stroke individual: the act of helping is psychologically invasive. “A helper is trying to appear good, okay? So somehow, I become somebody that needs to have good done to him.” People are fixated on a specific image of themselves and, therefore, require the person being helped to fall into the necessary complimentary role.
So, if we want to be uplifted, face life and show a little respect: give the disabled a life. Then you can feel good about their accomplishments because you will have overcome your own barriers, the very same barriers (odds) that you gave the disabled to begin with.
[James L. Secor]

nightmare scenario

As we are living in a nighmare world concocted by many Gothic horror-thinking people, it is appropriate to offer up one way of waking up from a nightmare, one that many have chosen to undertake. . .especially the massive majority of Americans living in the US. So. . .

Babes in Dreamland

We are lost in a dream world, people often say. But. . .don’t we control that dream world–which is only too real to us, the dreamers? And don’t we rule others out of it–and back into it again when it serves our purposes?
I used to have dreams. I don’t any more. I made sure of that. I take drugs to keep me awake at night. And during the day. For if I’m not sleeping at night I will fall asleep during the day. Right? So now, I don’t have any dreams. I mosey along doing my daily everyday routine without much notice of the world around me. A not-so-unpleasant side effect of the drug. That is, I move through reality as if it were a pleasant, dissociative. . .dream. As if I am not really in it as I watch it pass on. That is the only way I can keep my sanity.
Lest you think me insane. Lest you think me out of touch with things. Let me tell you of my dreams. The dreams that brought me to this reality state. They were recurrent dreams. Very vivid. Very frightening. Not only in Technicolor but in Techni-odor and Techni-touch. I often couldn’t get back to sleep, sitting staring into the darkness, a rabbit alert for the lurking predator. Panting. Heart racing. Always they were the same. Always the same plot and story line. Like a peddler of popular fiction, my dreams were made-to-order formula-written dramas. For years, I had my own little shop of horrors right in my head. Right in my bed. Lying beneath my pillow to bushwhack me at the first sign of inattention. Whenever I closed my eyes.
The worst thing about these dreams was that they began to impose themselves on the real world. The daylight world. I would feel disoriented at those times. Breathless. Frantic. I was told this was only anxiety and given some medication. But the variant occurrences continued to occur in a vast amalgamating array of ways. Without warning, like a jack-in-the-box with a fiend’s head. And, of course, at night I’d dream. Not every night, you understand, but repeatedly nonetheless.
So I stopped taking those drugs. I stopped believing there was something wrong with me, thinking I was insane because I couldn’t stop dreaming and seeing the same fearful unreality in the cold, clear light of day. Which, of course, put me right smack-dab in the middle of a conundrum: only the insane say they are sane so to maintain my sanity, my belief in what I’m seeing, experiencing in the world is to admit I am insane but since these dreams-in-reality are insane. . . .
“There are reasons for their being there. Let’s look at them. They are your dreams. You are projecting your irrational fears on a rational world. Now. . . .”
So. To maintain that the insanity that I see is insanity when in fact it can’t be because it’s reality is to prove my insanity. That is, I’m not seeing what it is I’m seeing. I’m not experiencing my experience. I’m not living what I’m living. This was more unsettling than the reality of the dream.
As I say, I stopped the legal drugs. I found other, more effective drugs to solve the problem. In my frenzy I found how accessible illegal drugs were. Here was another case of invisibility–or visibility–when advantageous. Drugs were only menacingly underground when it was necessary for them to be so. That is, they were no problem until they were needed to be. Now, the appearance of my dream-like reality in reality does not bother me. Not in the least. If it bothers others, I wonder why they don’t invest in drugs to kill the pain. Shopping and extreme sports and sensual stimulation pall. Eventually. There is only so much you can take before numbness sets in. It’s irrational to put up with irrationality, so be rational and make the irrationality disappear. Take drugs! Make tolerance.
If you can’t see your dreams, you’re not having them, are you? If you’re not experiencing pain, you’re not having it, are you? And, of course, drugs produce an alternative reality state and that’s not real, right?
At first, the dreams were only a part of what they became. They were only the chase scene. I was being chased. I was frantic. Eyes darting here and there. Behind me. These people were after me for. . .for. . . for what I’d done. They were hunting me. In the coarsest, most obvious way. No attempt to hide themselves, to follow me secretly. So sure of themselves. Their prey. Frightening, this kind of stalking. It makes you do things, believe things–I was something they had to have. This kind of hunting forces you into making incriminatory behavior. The simple attempt to escape is a sign of guilt. And, yet, I had to get away. There would be a loss of. . .of. . .of. . .what had I done.
What had I done?!
I remember there was a priest in the first dream. A church, really, because I never saw another person. Just a form, the smooth concrete blocks of the building, the Doric columns out of an old movie. I’m not sure I heard a voice. A calm, assuring voice. Half whispering, “This way.” And showing me around the side of the building. Helping in my escape. A man who would lie for a just cause. A follower of God, a god of jealous vengeance–and, some said, love. Tough love under Gothic eaves. Were those monsters up there watching and passing judgment?
I was never inside the church. I was always running around the church, around the side and down into the. . .street? alley? It was dark. I could not tell. But I think it ran along the side of the stark, Gothic-Art Deco structure. In this stark black-and-white movie set world so much was unseen, unknown. I could not tell where the raw light originated from. I look for it but. . .I just saw black shadows and highlights. I couldn’t tell where I was. I couldn’t see the end of the. . .alley? I couldn’t tell who I was. I was running. Why? I didn’t know where I was going. But I was going–
And then I’d wake up.
I never got anywhere and they never got me. They were uniformed police, military police. No. Nazis. They were dutiful Nazis hunting down traitors to the cause. Like wild dogs. Clubs and knuckles and guns for claws. Black leather-gowned hands. Insistent in their starched shirt duty. And beating them up. And torturing them. That’s what Nazis do. Tyrants. People who have a right to be right. And I was wrong. So. . . they could even kill me. Dying for a purpose. The Inquisition.
A movie of myself. Being chased. Over and over again. Across the portico. Alongside this church. Down around the side into the shadowed passageway. Always helped by this unknown, unseen priest. “Come this way.” Always chased by Nazis. Wild dogs running their dinner to ground. Steady. Remorseless. Never tiring. Because they don’t go too fast. They’ve got all day. All night.
They got closer with each dream. I saw them clearer and clearer. Definitely Nazis. Brown uniforms. Sam Brown belts. Stiff high-crowned and steep beaked hats. Shadowy fox faces without features and red glowing eyes. No definition. Yet stark. When they came out of the shadows. Well-defined art deco men-machines skulking quick-step, eyes glaring out of their darkness. Perpetual motion machine-men.
And always I would wake up in the same place. Caught in that side street or alleyway. Frozen in naked light. Ready for flight. Fear and anxiety mounting and filling up my eyes, making my breathing come faster and harder. My nostrils flared. Caught in the act of going. . .where? Where was I going?
When I started awake I was panting. Sweating. My nostrils flared.
In the streets outside, during the day, in the evenings before I went to sleep, I began seeing more and more uniformed police. Military-looking sorts in brownish clothing. They wore Sam Brown belts with mace canisters and guns and nightsticks and radios hanging off of them. Making it difficult for them to move quickly. They had come out of their cars and back on the streets. The cars were still there. They circled and circled around the block, watching. . .following. Looking for trouble. But now there were forces on the ground. And like their car-in-pursuit buddies circling, circling they knew nobody. Except he whom they were running to ground.
Where had they all come from? Ubiquitous.
Was I dreaming? No matter where I went, there they were. Watching. Walking easily along. Too easily. Looking for something. Stern faces. Glaring eyes. Knowing they’d find it. They always get their man.
If you look hard enough long enough, it is said, you’ll find what you are looking for; that is, you see what you want to see. Which is making it happen. Did these crisp-shirted policemen make things happen? That’s not rational. Dispose of that thought. They are only peacekeepers. So was the Colt .45. Lots of people had them. Colt .45’s.
Then the dreams would stop for awhile. Months. But the inversion into the real world kept moving on. Inevitably. Like amoebae eating. Slow and methodical. Fingers oozing to swallow up the intended. The marked. Every once in awhile I’d see riot-geared and plastic-shielded and space-helmeted policemen chasing people down blind alleys. Down streets toward other riot-geared and plastic-shielded and space-helmeted policemen. Nightsticks flashed brilliant black in the harsh light. Daylight. At night on television. On the News. Would they soon be chasing them across the rooftops? The Scarlet Pimpernel and Robin Hood flushed out into the open–I tried to laugh but it caught in my throat and gagged me. Sweating. Panting. Flared nostrils. I could not believe what I was watching. My dreams come true. Heaven help me, Mr. Disney!
And then the dreams would start up again. More intensely. Two men became three became four. Always running me into the black-and-white night gangland movie set. The outlaw cornered. Along the church portico and down into the shadows and highlights. Caught in the spotlight.
I was always running down a blind alley. A dead end street. Maybe it wasn’t but that’s the way I felt. I never saw the end. I could have projected my fear, my paranoia. That I couldn’t escape. Just what they wanted me to believe. If I believe I’m lost. If I believe I’ll fail. I will. Right?
I’d wake up before I got caught. Before I got anywhere.
Why am I being chased? What is it these Gestapo-like troops are wanting? What’s their story? What have I got? Is there no release from this manifested paranoia? It’s not mine. It’s imposed from outside. To what purpose?
I don’t know. I stand sweating and wondering. I grow dizzy with the pressure. The pressure of not knowing. The pressure of always being run to ground. . .and never getting there. Stuck at the mouth of the trap. Neither they nor I get to the far end. They do not catch me. I do not get caught. But I don’t get anywhere either. I wake up.
Why am I being chased? What is it I have that they want? Who are they, these costumed hunters?
So shaken. So shaken. Shaky and disoriented. Eyes wide expecting. . .
Were they hiding here in the room? Would they be waiting for me outside my door? I’d get up and look about the house. Look out the windows into the blackness.
What happens next? What will happen in the next dream? I became afraid of the night. Of closing my eyes. What if I blinked? And missed it.
And then I see on the news night-flying helicopters with bright piercing eyes scanning the ground, the streets, the buildings for. . .people? For runaways? For problem children? For trouble. Lighting up pieces of the night, pieces of the city like underworld crime movies, like slices-of-life-pie. Paranoid conspiracy theory mania. Art’s constructed worlds become life. And I fear for myself, for I have the same sensations as with my dreams. But the newscasters calmly announce they are out, these black night-flying helicopters, to make the city safer. These cyclopean machines appearing out of nowhere despite the thwack-thwack of their rotors.
In my dreams, the Nazis appear out of nowhere despite the bone-chilling studying of their boots on the pavement. Always somewhere else. And always right here. I’m already running. Seeking a haven. When they come into the picture. They’ve been waiting just off camera. Waiting for their cue. They’re never late.
What is it I’ve done to be running from? What evil looms and billows like dark gathering clouds in the night over my head? Where am I going? Where am I going to go? I don’t know where it is I’m going. Where I’m trying to get to. Just away. Just–safety is away from my pursuers. A place for me to catch my breath. I’ve got to catch my breath. There’s a stone in my diaphragm stealing my breath away. My lungs fill and there is no air there. It seeps back out leaving a hollow empty place. I can’t hold my breath. My head feels thick. I need a place to think clearly. Look at things and see what is happening. Where I’m going. What is in all this? But I’m alone and out of breath and running away from Nazis that suddenly appear out of the darkness to chase me through the black and white patchwork streets.
If they suddenly appear, they had to already be running after me, right? That part’s already established, right? Or have I manufactured them in order to give me a reason to be running? In the dream I hunt for rationality, a Frankenstein monster: there has to be reason, no?
Then I am being shown around the church building, half open large door off to one side, to an alleyway. A means of escape. And. . .caught! In the act. End of movie still shot, head turned, eyes wide. I’ll be back.
Then I began seeing pictures in the papers. Bad reprints of the movie set in my dreams. People being run down. Frightened rabbit eyes bulging for the camera. Taut faces. White teeth beneath stretched lips. Hands and arms extended in warding off gestures. The wild dogs are upon them. I read episodes of people being run to ground. Captured. Manhandled. And then never heard or seen again. A neat Las Vegas disappearing act. Clearasil® and pimples: here today, gone tomorrow.
Notices were posted on walls and telephone poles and announced on the radio, on the television in stentorian voices of authority. Notices about a threat to our safety, to our way of life, to. . .us. Stories of why new military-style police. Everywhere. At the airport to greet everyone who disembarks, armed with semi-automatics. On the streets. In the buildings. At the shopping malls. In the bus/train/subway stations. In the hotels. On the elevators. Following us on the streets. Protecting us without smiling. The Great Freedom.
When I saw them following me, I went to the doctor. The paranoid codswallop of my dreams becoming reality in reality. Is something wrong with me? Only anxiety, he said. Don’t worry. Projection of my fears on outside others. I’m being irrational. These things are not there. Here. Take these. You’ll feel better in a few days. We’ll talk about it when you’re normalized.
No effect–other than more frequent dreaming. More furious running. Chasing. I could almost see those Nazi faces. Looming into my light. But always severely shadowed. Fox-like and piercing. Grimacing grins of glistening teeth. If I could see them maybe I’d know–but. . .always umbraed. I just couldn’t quite get a fix. When I was highlighted they were in the shadows. When I was in the shadows they were in the shadows’ edges. So close. So close. I almost knew why. What was up. But I couldn’t stop to see. That would be the end.
Increased tension. My ability to function at work, doing mundane everyday things, was affected adversely. I would forget things. Or do them in reverse. I’d lie about what I’d done. Find excuses. It was never my fault. I was threatened with termination. Ha!–I was threatened without termination. What was I to do?
So. . .I found these other drugs. These drugs that keep me from sleeping. These drugs that keep me from dreaming. Day or night. And now, when I see what was once in my dreams out in the streets and on the TV I am unperturbed. Yes. . .it’s happening. But out there. Beyond me. Outside of me. I’m not included. I do not now see the dream inversion into the outside world, my world of the everyday, as real. Reality. Because there is no perception. Drugged, I go merrily along. Nothing affects me now.
I feel better not seeing the dream-reality. The dream-reality is invisible. I control it.
I must keep it that way or else. . .

a shriek in the wilderness

I ran across a website with an intriguing name, A Voice Out of the Wilderness, and went to investigate. This is a site of the Creationists and bills itself as a scientific website. Indeed, it is full of information, though one would hardly call it science. On this site I discovered the world is 4000 years old. That is an absolute certainty. Four thousand years. Now. . .the Creationists (even though they are Christians) base their pseudo-science on the Old Testament. The Old Testament is the written record of the Jews written long after the Exodus from Egypt, led by a typical hero (cf. Otto Rank, The Myth of the Birth of the Hero and Joseph Campbell, The Hero with a Thousand Faces) who eventually got lost in the desert. Christ didn’t get lost in the desert; the Buddha did not get lost in the woods; but Moses got lost but good. However, here the Creationists have a problem: their conception of the genesis of the world is that it is only 4000 years old, yet they base their science on the Old Testament of the Jews and, in the Jewish calendar, this year (2005) is the year 5765. Not only is this discrepancy not explained, it is not even considered. Nowhere is there mention of the Jews and the length of time they consider their nation (which is not the same as the world) to have been in existence. Nor is there anything but total disregard for the written record of the Shang Dynasty in China, considered the first “nation” of China, which dates from around 5000 years ago. There were little isolated kingdoms before the Shang and they, too, left written records–not to mention the Sumerian culture of 6000 years ago. But, you know, it is only fair that their doctrine be taught in schools as science, alongside mainstream accepted science, all things being equal.
A great many mainstream science-believing people give out a hue and cry about Creationism and its belief that it is a science and must, must, MUST be taught in the science curriculum in schools because of fairness. As they should. Creationism could be taught within the Creationists’ religious milieu except for one thing: Christianity is evangelical and believes, like Mohammed, that all the world must believe like them. No threat of “or else.” But no thought of allowing freedom, either. Freedom is multilateral, pluralistic. It is not formed of great generalizations, for any generalization breaks down the more intimate and precise and detailed the application. For example, all black people have broad, flattened noses. Not so but if the general observation is held to, Asians and Australian Aborigines are black. This holds both for Christianity and Creationism: not all Christians are Creationists. The Creation Christians believe, it seems, in a conceptually consistent, coherent universe, yet the world of immediate daily experience is not identical (consistent, coherent) with the world of the biologist, the chemist or the physicist. Each of these worlds is a construction relative to human interests. Human interests are not all the same. These various views of the world exist simultaneously and yet do not disturb the whole, do not impose themselves on the others. Indeed, without them, the whole would be a different thing. With imposition of one view over another there would be the tyranny of only looking out of one window in a multi-windows room, all others being boarded up.
But the hue and cry of more rigorous intellectuals–that Creationism is unfounded, poor science–misses the point of Creationism and the extremities of religious intolerance: why is it being propounded? why is it being forced, by law, onto the rest of the American world (to begin with)? Their agenda has been made quite plain: dominate and destroy. But there is more to it than this.
What is it, then, that these Creationist Christians are doing? Quite simply, they are running away. They are running away from a world they perceive as being chaotic, from a world they maintain is in apocalypse. There are innumerable changes occurring within society and within the environment–in the entire world–and these people are unable to cope. They find this to be an attack on their world, their conception of the world, their religion. This chaotic world–which may not be chaotic to some–runs counter to their idea of what should be and, more importantly, what should not be. Instead of becoming more flexible, they become more rigid, damning all that they find disagreeable. Piece by piece. Especially science. Because science is responsible for the mess we are in. The mess they are in. And, most important, God did not create evolution. All heterodoxies must be eliminated as abominable of God. If everybody doesn’t see the light, believe as the Creationist Christians do, the world and its evil ways is still a threat. So, like the Medieval Church and witch hunts, the Creation Christians are on a crusade to rid the world of evil believing that evil lurks outside and once the outside has been purged all will be well. The changes in the world, the chaos and instability that creates confusion must be apprehended. Like a criminal.
The first thing to do, then, is become intolerant, rigid and demanding. All in an attempt to keep their world intact. No further encroachment of the tolerance of heterodoxies must be allowed. All–all is outlaw. There is no such a thing as Robin Hood, that is, a good outlaw, an outlaw with morals and ethics and a good heart. This is a stance of selective ignorance in the name of protectionism: only this exists, not that. Ignore it. Simply preach that it doesn’t exist. Over and over until the cows come home or the crows alight. Indeed, ignore it long enough and it will go away. The Qing Dynasty believed in this doctrine in the 19th century when the British gunboat diplomacy burst upon their shores. The Qing lost, big time. The Japanese Bakufu of the Tokugawa Shogunate practiced this in the face of US gunboat diplomacy too. They lost big time. But people in denial are one-eyed in a world of blind men. You know how it is. . .if you ignore that volcano long enough it will not erupt any more. I know it because I believe it. I have faith. And I’m a Houyhnhnm. Although in slightly perverted form, this is a form of mind over matter which, in itself, is a highly perverted form of a factor in the Quantum Mechanical theory of consciousness; however, to some extent this can be found in the philosophers of the 17th and 18th and 19th centuries who considered reality, the world, to be no more than humanity’s conception of it. Just an idea. That is, nothing is really real. Even our senses lie. This of necessity leads to: we cannot prove that our bodies, and thus the world, exist; we must believe that it does. This is faith too. Because of this state of affairs, we are necessarily ignorant or the world because we can only allow certain kinds of knowledge into our system. We do not exist beyond our sensual-experiencing bodies. Since we create the world we live in, since we create ourselves, as it were, why not create the world we want when we want it? Thus, Creationism: it creates a needed world, a needed belief. . .and it feels it must impose it on everyone else because of an inner fear that they are wrong–and fear is what motivates this type of thinking. If everyone adheres to their doctrine, then they cannot be wrong, right? Fear and anxiety will be eliminated. . .but only if you eliminate all of the knowledge and thinking–heterodoxies–that offer up alternatives to the word (and the world) of God. These things are impurities.
This step in intellectualism seems to me to be an attempt to return to the noble (ignorant) savage stage, a Romantic idea if ever there was one, perpetrated by Jean-Jacques Rousseau. This ignorant (noble) savage is supposedly happy and morally uncorrupted–because civilization corrupts. Knowledge, too, it seems, according to the Creationists, corrupts. Better to be ignorant. Look at what happened to Adam and Eve when they ate of the Tree of Knowledge? Mein Gott! We must return to the pristine pure reality of ignorance that God in his infinite wisdom gave us in order to save ourselves. That is, we must destroy all that we are in order to save ourselves. . .which sounds eerily similar to the practices of the military in Vietnam and Iraq. When you have destroyed everything, you have nothing, not even yourself. But the Creationist Christians believe they are better than everyone else, that they know better, and so it is necessary to return everyone to a state of ignorant savageness in order to put the world back on the right track. Is this not a kind of megalomania? Is this not fascism? It is exactly what one would expect to find at a time when the State is in crisis, according to Ernst Cassirer (The Myth of the State). At such times of chaos and instability, of change there is an increase in myths and fantastic beliefs in order that order be somehow mystically restored. Often a demand for rigid state control is passed off as the only means to salvation. Thus, the Creationists are right on time. All they are doing is trying to save themselves. Politically and religiously. And in their great magnanimity, they are willing to extend their saving grace to all humankind. They are doing so progressively, through education (and legalization). Take this, it’s good for you. Bitter medicine is good medicine.
Instead of advancing the state of humanity, though, Creationism prefers to take us backwards in time to a time when the world was a mystical, unknown place, a place populated by a single God and a whole bunch of ignorant people. There is a problem here, though, in that there was not a single God until quite late in the order of the world, about 5760 years ago. There was pantheism long before the single God–who is actually three identities. Long before the Judeo-Christian monad (that is three) the world was a mysterious, unknown place and every thing had a god in it that made it do things to those early humans. Even the Judeo-Christian God is a god that does things to humans and, though He gives humanity the panacea of free will, there is only determinism, also an older philosophical tendency in the intellectual history of humanity, though it is a major tenet of Christianity. Better to be determined–fated–that running wildly about in chaos not knowing what it is you’re doing or what it is that’s happening or where it is you’re going. The ancient Greeks, those heathens, believed in fate. So that the Creationist God is only a subsumation of the pantheistic god system because, like the pantheistic system, the world (God’s will) is still acting on humanity, humanity is not doing anything of its own accord. It is passive. Doing what you’re told is so much easier and bereft of responsibility than making up your own mind. And, of course, God said so.
While the Creationists are running after their ideas, spewing their fear everywhere like a broken water main, the world is still moving on toward its unknown, unknowable end. Delving into the romantic past will not change this. Forcing a doxy on the majority of the people is an idea reminiscent of Inquisition hysteria and Savonarola’s burning books he’d never read. But he’d heard about them. Increase Mather first brought this brand of systematic justice to the New World.
However, there is another point to consider: the Creation Scientists base their science on the first few paragraphs of the first book of the Old Testament, Genesis. But, more to the point, they are Christians so they believe that “in the beginning was the Word.” And that word is said to be God. Literal exacerbation of a metaphor creates an ever blossoming ulcer that oozes the life out of itself. In mythological times, the power of the word was all embracing and without bounds. The word, first spoken by humans, was magical; it appeared that words could do things, make things happen, make the world accord with the wishes of humanity. To know your true name was to have power over you. You can neither utter the name of God nor use His name in vain–bad things will happen to you. (If they don’t right away that’s because God’s waiting for a more opportune moment to smack you down. Which is giving unto God human characteristics.) The word is all-powerful. The word is God. God, then, is not an anthropomorphological Being but a concept, an attempt to give voice to experience, to the consciousness of the world outside, external to the self of those early humans (ignorant savages). If we follow this line of reasoning and couple with it the regressionism of Creationism to invoke to the ignorant savage state once again, we discover that the end result will be that of no-speech; a time of consciousness of nothing, not even ourselves; a time of just us existing, like the animals. There would be no idea of nothing. And, of course, everybody would be happy. Happy, happy, happy scrabbling for a living, hunting for food and hoping (if that is the right word for the fear and anxiety attending the hunt) that there will be food. (Agriculture was a scientific technological addition and, therefore, not in God’s plan.) Happy, happy ignorance. Thrust on us by a feudal, fascist God in his Leibnizean benevolence, perhaps a moment when he (?) forgot himself. The best of all possible worlds. With no understanding of the world, with this outcry against and ignoring of the findings of science and philosophy that have given humanity its comfort and complacency, there will be no understanding of the world we live in. We will be back to relying on a god to tell us what to do because we are not free though we are willful. We will be moving back to sacrifices in order to make the world do right by us. A time when the world is out of control–and so too humanity. Right back to where we are now. In the beginning, religion was the mind’s searching for a meaning to the world, to life because life in its totality was chaotic, without sensible meaning to people. Animals have no problem coping. Since the beginning of human life, there have been innumerable meanings. Some have died, some have changed, some have continued on; all existed side-by-side, though sometimes not pleasantly. Religion has been there all along because it is the meaning of a different world, a different entity; science is interested solely in the immediate physical world and does not attempt to deal with the inner workings of the mind (except those Harvard scientists who believe they can deduce the workings of insanity from dissecting dead brains). Religion is a philosophy of life meaning.
Why is the Creationist Christian doctrine in denial? And it is in denial. It denies science (and the knowledge and technology) that has brought comfort and complacency, that has brought the ability to communicate to very many more people than would have been possible without such technology. Would they have been able to do this without these additions to language (lots of “the words”)? Would the Creationists give up these advancements as they so cavalierly give up science and knowledge? I doubt it very seriously. Take away, for instance, electricity and what have you got? No way to communicate other than by word of mouth and Ben Franklin’s postal service. No modern auto-transportation. No heat, light or means to cook. No protection during thunderstorms or lightning storms, because Ben Franklin’s science brought about lightning rods and they were the work of the devil. No. No way, Jose. They’ll keep the advancements and conveniences while throwing away the means. Thus, the Creationist Christians are similar to those environmentalists who will not wear leather because it’s cow murder but will eat beef.
They are in denial, too, because they believe all of the science and knowledge will erode–nay, destroy their religion (if not their faith). Their argument is familiar and repetitive, like the ubiquitous broken record. The Church said it about Aristotelian systems, Arabian medicine, Copernicus’ discoveries, Galileo’s discoveries, Newton’s discoveries, Luther’s thinking. . .and these new-fangled ideas have had no effect at all on the Judeo-Christian ethicomoral climate. None. Darwin and Spenser, too, were damned. Of course, Darwin still is–erroneously. Darwin was not an evolutionist, he was a transformist; Spencer was the evolutionist. He wasn’t the first, either. Evolution was propounded by 17th and 18th century philosophers, all devout believers in God. Nevertheless, the ethicomoral system of Christianity has not been affected at all.
Or is the real problem that science (and evolution) threatens their faith? How weak their belief! How absurd. Their God made everything on the earth. That includes cell mutation, which accounts for many diseases as well as healthful advantages. God did not create a static world in which nothing ever, ever changes. If so, how to explain the behavior of viruses and bacteria? Surely they’ve not been waiting in the wings until the right time to step forward and claim their own! Why does Creationist Christianity create a static world? Indeed, by maintaining a static world, that God created a full-blown, fully-developed unchanging world, is to maintain that they, the Creationist Christians, know God’s will/plan/mind, which they claim is unknowable. Are they, then, playing God? No. They are trying to establish stability.
This, of course, leads us right back to fear of chaos, fear of the unknown. A time when nothing made sense. . .and some idea was thought up to explain the unexplainable. Better by far to be a passive participant than an active agent. God help you if you show any initiative, any original thought! You could make a mistake that way. Mistakes are disallowed in God’s world.
What we, those of us who allow of science and knowledge–which does not include the ruling Neo-conservative clique–what we should be doing is showing these Creationist Christians a great deal of pity–and then help them discover freedom and self-determination, as well as the difference between science and theology. It is counterproductive to complain about them and damn them. That is akin to proving they are right: we are godless creatures or else we would not speak thusly. How to do this? One road is, perhaps, to discover their basic assumptions, discover what they mean by “science” (especially theirs) and proceed gently, using their methodology, to learn ‘em. And asking questions such as “If the world is only 4000 years old and you base your entire belief system and science on the Jewish text called the Old Testament, how is it that the world of the Jews out of which Christianity sprung (thought up by a Jew) is 5760 years old?”
Until then, as the Creationists sink sadly into the yawning chasm of the earth as it opens up beneath them taking us with them, they will be spouting the same doctrine that put them in their precarious position to begin with because that is all they know, they will have thrown out all knowledge but their belief, their idea, their concept. Did God invent the wheel? They will never understand why God is doing this to them, why they are being so severely punished because– they’ve been good, haven’t they? (Enter the witch hunt: there is evil among us!) In their frantic attempt to concretize the world into stasis, they will be no more effective than the passengers counting the deck chairs on the Titanic.
In attempting to hold onto a meaningful world, Creationism is squeezing the life out of it. Indeed, Creationism is squeezing the life out of itself, like that morning hand its tube of toothpaste. For it is common and vulgar and debasing to search for the truth (proof) of a religious belief. To make it a real entity, a human historical event is to rob it of its power. Religion is, after all, a metaphor. Metaphors are not concrete and, contrary to literature teachers, cannot be reduced to a meaning because metaphors express an experience, a feeling–which does not come in bits and pieces but in one great totality. The extraordinariness, the phenomenalism and supramundanity surrounding the belief is the most important element, not its actuality. Making of the belief, the metaphor, the spirit an object is to lessen it, to make it mundane. Dogma may be mundane but religious belief is not: life is more than us, more than we can conceive. By proving the literalness of the Biblical metaphor they are destroying themselves, creating a Tower of Babel.
Perhaps we should let them.

giving a helping hand

I’ve been arguing with a young upper middle class privileged man about disability issues and attitudes, particularly attitudes, stemming from a pull-the-heart-strings, puling, condescendingly pitying letter asking for donations for a new prosthesis for a full-leg amputee. Here was the standard take on disability: it’s oh, so terrible. . .what a tragedy. . .pity the disabled, they have such a hard time of it (being so much less than abled people are is, here, implied). No matter what I said, he came back with the same puke, the same attitude–just different words. I get pretty strident about these kinds of things, this kind of attitude: it is this attitude that is more limiting than being refused jobs or not gaining entrance to shops/bldgs. His final salvo was that, although he wanted to learn something about disability issues and attitudes, my attitude toward him and his insulting article made him not want to learn anything. Now. . . if that isn’t the greatest rationalization for remaining ignorant, I don’t know what is. He also threw in some insults and slurs, including something about my reputation.
I detest people like this. But businesses of every sort also offer up the same vomit in the name of concern and help and not giving jobs to the disabled.
I mean. . .I meeean. . .this guy wanted to raise several thousand signatures supporting his desire to carry the Olympic torch in China for this girl with the old, cumbersome prosthesis. As if she’s incapable of doing it herself! Who the hell does he think he is? Who appointed him to be Nurse Ratchet?
The upshot was that because he doesn’t like my attitude, he’s not going to take any donation from me. Now, if that ain’t a positive move! Really supportive of the girl. Doing her alot of good, eh?
Nah. As with all people of this attitude toward disabled folk, he’s interested in himself. He’s interested in how good he’s going to look, gathering all of this money for her new leg. She needs about $3,600 and, with his letter, he’s managed $20 in a month. I suggested that perhaps it’s the tone of the letter that’s held things up. Now, however, it’s him. But even if he doesn’t manage to meet his goal, he’ll come off looking good because he tried.
What a sad case. What a sad advocate for his friend. And, you know, she’ll never find out how he fucked her over: I’d have sent her 100 RMB a month (she’s in China) for 10 months; now, she’s got nothing. Wow! Way cool, as the youth of today might say.
Why would I give so much? Because I’ve a total hip replacement, taking away all sports activity; I know what it’s like. Because I spent a long time as a disability advocate and political activist–and got into deep trouble for it (which is why I’m in China: here, I have a job and a place to live). Because I know how expensive it is to get even the least of aids. Because I care.
As her name and contact information is being kept private, there’s no way for me to get this to her.
Why are people so blind and stupid? Why do they stand in the way of success?

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