Two people rather close to me died recently, and in the course of mourning their passing, I find myself encountering the difficult questions once again. For example, "What happens when we die?" and "what do you believe?" Especially since one of these people was a retired Episcopal priest, and God and spiritual matters was never far from the center of our conversations.
To get to answering these questions satisfactorily, I find that I have to back up a bit. Not that I want to avoid the questions and the answers, but there is a context that needs to be expressed. The stage needs to be set before the actors can come on and move us with their story.
First of all, I have never felt there to be incompatibility between science and religion. When I was nine years old, a classmate who I also knew from church questioned me on how I could believe in evolution when the bible tells us about Adam and Eve. Her question annoyed me - I simply told her "it's not the same thing." I still feel that way. I'm sure we will talk more about this later.
Second, I don't believe that God has much use for religion, or religions. Those are human institutions, that we have established for our own comfort, to suit our needs. They reflect all that is good and bad in us. They can be vehicles for great progress and profound good. They can also be weapons of horrific destruction and ignorance. How we use our religions, how we use all our man-made institutions, shows us where we are as a species, whether we are small-minded barbarians or truly evolved creatures using our power for progress and compassion.
But before I can talk about how I feel about religion, about what I believe, I have to talk about how I feel about my position as a member of the human race. Our race exhibits many kinds of behavior that distinguish us from other species. And while other species may behave in similar ways, when you put the whole set of behaviors we exhibit together, we are fairly unique.
Three things about us that I find noteworthy are that we are social creatures with a great capacity for imagination and curiosity. I will elaborate on this last point in my next post.
Monday, November 30, 2009
Monday, November 9, 2009
Adulthood? Who needs it!
Growing up in the late 1960s definitely had its good points for me. For one thing, it felt like we were on the verge of a major do-over. As in, scrap all the bullshit that has collected in American culture over the last so many decades and start from scratch with something true, alive, and worth living for.
There was also the sense that for once the focus was on the youth of the country. Instead of everything being built for the convenience of, and giving all the credit to, people middle-aged and older, the importance of all that those of us on the way up have to offer - energy, imagination, lack of pre-conceptions, passion - was clearly evident. The shoe was finally, for at least a few moments, on the other foot.
Now, it's hard to sustain the kind of excitement and sweeping the closet clean feeling that existed then. And we didn't. In the last 30 years especially, the status quo has reasserted itself with furious indignation. But I personally retained a lot of what I found so valuable way back then. And foremost, I think I have continued to hold a strong suspicion of adulthood. A resistance against all the hurry people are in to grow up.
I'm not trying to be some kind of Peter Pan. I'm not trying to hide from *shudder* responsibility, or pass my burdens onto someone else's shoulders. But for as long as I inhabit this earth, I will continue to be skeptical of the truths that I am fed by men and women who talk in hushed tones, eventually escalating to shrill grating diatribes. And among those things about which I will be, about which I am, skeptical the most has to be the importance of becoming an adult.
There is nothing more dull, slovenly, false, pretentious, self-satisfied... need I go on? than an adult desparately asserting that everyone around them needs to become as mature as them, which really means just as dull, slovenly, etc.
I saw my fellow college students - bright, eager, humorous, full of wonder at life - graduate, and within a couple of years, most of them were paying car loans and mortgages, wearing navy blue and muddy brown, losing their hair, pushing baby strollers, telling jokes they heard on "the Tonight Show". Their lives were over before they had hardly begun. They'd gone from 21 to 51 overnight. They had been more than happy to give up the precarious and exciting position of being on the verge of adulthood, for the security and comfort of imitating their parent's version of adulthood.
How can we avoid it, anyway? How can we not become our parents? How can we not give up our morals, our ambitions, our resistance against settling for less, and become everything we have always hated? Well, to the extent that I am able to resist settling for the dull and drab, a key is having an unremitting awe for everything that is NOT adulthood.
Therapy helps. Also staying free of debt. And watching as little television (or at least commercial television) as possible. The most prevalent media through which the evil world of the oldsters programs the rest of us to want to join their lot is, yes, the media.
Oh, I'm not saying there aren't some wonderful things about being, let's say, over 25. I personally enjoy more than a few creature comforts. I have access to more amazing things - artistic, cultural stuff - than anyone ever has thus far in the history or prehistory of this planet. I have friends who live all over the United States and in countries around the world, many of whom I've met through this glorious invention, the Internet.
And I have a free will and the gumption to use it. Which tells me that not everything that everyone tells me I should be doing is so damned wonderful. You want an example? OK. iPods. Wait a minute, you say, lots of kids have iPods and live through the things. How can you say that the iPod is a poison inflicted on the population by the mature?
I will tell you. And I will try not to sound like a crank as I do. Which is not easy.
We are being taught with increasing stridency to fill every moment with something, to never be idle. This means, among other things, to have some noise, some sound blaring at you every second. What is the constructive purpose for doing this? Do we really derive that much pleasure from being able to listen to, say, Prince's Purple Rain on a train from New York to Baltimore?
Well, one thing that comes of never having a moment of silence is that it is hard for us to think. To really think. Not "what's for dinner?" or "where are Sheila and I going on our next vacation?" but "what is really important?" and "where is my life going?" Now I know many people would rather not think those things. They've been bombarded ceaselessly since they left the womb with messages telling them not to think those things. So they gave up wanting to think those things, and were rewarded with pats on the head, extra helpings of ice cream, admission to Ivy League universities and late model sports cars. But some of us nevertheless persevere in putting our brains to some use now and then. And some of the rest of us would like to have that chance as well. Our best chance to do that lies in stepping away from altar of adulthood now and then, recovering our aimlessness, passion, open-eyedness and respect for being just a tiny bit like a kid.
There was also the sense that for once the focus was on the youth of the country. Instead of everything being built for the convenience of, and giving all the credit to, people middle-aged and older, the importance of all that those of us on the way up have to offer - energy, imagination, lack of pre-conceptions, passion - was clearly evident. The shoe was finally, for at least a few moments, on the other foot.
Now, it's hard to sustain the kind of excitement and sweeping the closet clean feeling that existed then. And we didn't. In the last 30 years especially, the status quo has reasserted itself with furious indignation. But I personally retained a lot of what I found so valuable way back then. And foremost, I think I have continued to hold a strong suspicion of adulthood. A resistance against all the hurry people are in to grow up.
I'm not trying to be some kind of Peter Pan. I'm not trying to hide from *shudder* responsibility, or pass my burdens onto someone else's shoulders. But for as long as I inhabit this earth, I will continue to be skeptical of the truths that I am fed by men and women who talk in hushed tones, eventually escalating to shrill grating diatribes. And among those things about which I will be, about which I am, skeptical the most has to be the importance of becoming an adult.
There is nothing more dull, slovenly, false, pretentious, self-satisfied... need I go on? than an adult desparately asserting that everyone around them needs to become as mature as them, which really means just as dull, slovenly, etc.
I saw my fellow college students - bright, eager, humorous, full of wonder at life - graduate, and within a couple of years, most of them were paying car loans and mortgages, wearing navy blue and muddy brown, losing their hair, pushing baby strollers, telling jokes they heard on "the Tonight Show". Their lives were over before they had hardly begun. They'd gone from 21 to 51 overnight. They had been more than happy to give up the precarious and exciting position of being on the verge of adulthood, for the security and comfort of imitating their parent's version of adulthood.
How can we avoid it, anyway? How can we not become our parents? How can we not give up our morals, our ambitions, our resistance against settling for less, and become everything we have always hated? Well, to the extent that I am able to resist settling for the dull and drab, a key is having an unremitting awe for everything that is NOT adulthood.
Therapy helps. Also staying free of debt. And watching as little television (or at least commercial television) as possible. The most prevalent media through which the evil world of the oldsters programs the rest of us to want to join their lot is, yes, the media.
Oh, I'm not saying there aren't some wonderful things about being, let's say, over 25. I personally enjoy more than a few creature comforts. I have access to more amazing things - artistic, cultural stuff - than anyone ever has thus far in the history or prehistory of this planet. I have friends who live all over the United States and in countries around the world, many of whom I've met through this glorious invention, the Internet.
And I have a free will and the gumption to use it. Which tells me that not everything that everyone tells me I should be doing is so damned wonderful. You want an example? OK. iPods. Wait a minute, you say, lots of kids have iPods and live through the things. How can you say that the iPod is a poison inflicted on the population by the mature?
I will tell you. And I will try not to sound like a crank as I do. Which is not easy.
We are being taught with increasing stridency to fill every moment with something, to never be idle. This means, among other things, to have some noise, some sound blaring at you every second. What is the constructive purpose for doing this? Do we really derive that much pleasure from being able to listen to, say, Prince's Purple Rain on a train from New York to Baltimore?
Well, one thing that comes of never having a moment of silence is that it is hard for us to think. To really think. Not "what's for dinner?" or "where are Sheila and I going on our next vacation?" but "what is really important?" and "where is my life going?" Now I know many people would rather not think those things. They've been bombarded ceaselessly since they left the womb with messages telling them not to think those things. So they gave up wanting to think those things, and were rewarded with pats on the head, extra helpings of ice cream, admission to Ivy League universities and late model sports cars. But some of us nevertheless persevere in putting our brains to some use now and then. And some of the rest of us would like to have that chance as well. Our best chance to do that lies in stepping away from altar of adulthood now and then, recovering our aimlessness, passion, open-eyedness and respect for being just a tiny bit like a kid.
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