Test

I keep reading blogs where the blogger pretends to be astonished that the birthers are still birthing. They expect them to believe that Barack Hussein Obama is an American just because he produced a birth certificate. That is no evidence at all. I am not even sure why he wasted his time. There is real business in need of attention: we need to cut social programs as a means of having the poorest of Americans cover the deficit; we need to stop gays trying to violate the sanctity of marriage and fairy up the military; we need to curtail the bargaining ability of anyone who is not rich enough to bargain. This birth certificate distraction is likely nothing more than a liberal political scam to make the birthers look foolish. Of course, the plot failed because the birthers know that the document isn’t worth the paper it’s printed on. It is true that they incessantly begged for the worthless document, but they did so only under the assumption that Obama would not produce it. Waving his birth certificate around like an American flag is nothing more than poor sportsmanship and patent hypocrisy. He is going to have to come up with a real way to actually prove who he is. I suspect he will never do this, however, because no one wants to admit to being an Arab.

Obama was not born in America! He is half Hawaiian, half Kenyan and half Arabic! He is a member of the Islamic race as sure as he is black. By the way, our first Black American president is not really black. He is blackish. Part black, so far as we know. He is not an American. He was born half in Kenya and half in the Hawaiian Nation and probably also in Arabia. His name is Barack Hussein Obama, which is clearly indicative of the Islamic culture in which he was raised. If he had adopted the main religion of Kenya, of course, he probably would have been a Christian, like the majority of Kenyans are. However, we can tell by his name, that it is a lie that he grew up in Kenya and only moved to America to become president. He probably grew up in Iraq and was born there, for all we know. Why else would he have been named after Saddam? If he grew up in Kenya, as he would have us believe, then how did he become an Arab?

So, Obama is not black, but Islamic. He is not American, but Kenyan and Hawaiian, and he is Arabic. Since the Constitution does not allow Arabs to become president because they were not born in this country, he is not the president, though I do realize he is acting as if he were. Voltaire said that the Holy Roman Empire was “neither holy, nor Roman, nor an empire.” Remind you of anyone we know? The first black American president is neither black, nor American, nor the president.

Some people reading this may think I am all confused. I think not! I am no more confused than any other birthers. We are all equally intelligent.

Let There Be Light

In recent years, much to my surprise, I have become a strong advocate of the theory of Creationism over Evolution. God’s words resonate, despite my will to overlook them.

After waking my wife this morning, I hit the light switch and commanded: “Ah, let there be light.” Noticing that two of four light bulbs disobeyed the instruction, and wondering how long they had been burnt out, I remembered God. Like a dead light bulb, He often goes unnoticed; and yet He is everything: the beginning and the end, the alpha and the omega, and all other characters ever devised by man.

The Gentleman's Victory

My two favorite bloggers have a few things in common. They are literary and profound thinkers and I would say this is what defines their writings. Still I am irked by the same annoying quality in each of them: their unwillingness to stand up and fight.  

They will freely give their opinions, but they seldom move down into the trenches to defend them. One, whom I will call Burr in order to preserve his anonymity, is a far left, very out-spoken liberal, who virtually never answers a challenge to his position. His silence is not symptomatic of cowardice, as one who does not know him may erroneously conclude. It is something else. The other, whom I will call Vincent, appears more willing to give a slight rebuttal; but he also seems sanctimoniously intolerant of back and forth arguments.

I have had no problem filling the void they leave behind, a fact I will attempt to clarify after I tell you about my affection for chess.

It is considered a gentlemen’s game, and I suppose it is, in the same way that a duel is a gentlemanly way to settle a dispute. Chess is a noble battlefield, peopled with royalty, the King, the Queen, the sacrificial pawns and the majesty of its middle class. It all implies sophistication. In chess the winner knows it was he that won, and no one can attribute his victory to a random event; and the loser cannot console himself as the victim of a chance occurrence that worked against him.  If his ego is squashed, it is crushed purely, leaving no room for denial in the remains. No dice are rolled, no cards drawn, no fortune dealt. One person proves that in this instance and in this game, he is simply better than another one.

When I was younger, I loved to debate, but later in life the fire fizzled out. I appreciated the same virtue in debating that I saw in chess. You strategically outwit your opponent, and nothing is left to fate. I misused the debate, just as I misused chess. Passionate debates often seemed to result in hurt feelings and never accomplished anything. As I recall, I always won my debates and I fear that I alone own those memories. As I matured, I articulated the idea that a desire to debate is really a desire to conquer and this realization slowly dampened the fire inside me.

After years of rhetorical silence, I discovered the joy of blogging. There you could debate and withdraw on your own timeline. So long as you are respectful, no harm done. Philosophical and political bloggers often claim a search for clarification of truth as a motivation for their hobby. Don’t believe it. Bloggers blog because they enjoy blogging. Debaters debate because they enjoy debating.

I love reading the sites of opinionated people with unique thoughts or creative expressions. It is an educational pastime, a playground where intellectual discourse and lively discussion abide. I typically comment on conservative-minded blogs more often than I do on liberal ones, as I often find little to contribute to an article when I  largely agree with its conclusions.

A liberal response given on a conservative blog is really just a rebuttal. It seems OK. The conservative author expects it, probably welcomes it. Just ask him. But what am I really trying to do? I find an article written as a form of art or expression or sharing of an intellectual idea by a well-intentioned writer and I attempt to refute it, to invalidate its worth and to defeat its author’s ideas; to what end? Blog articles express opinions that are the natural result of other, more fundamental, deep-seated philosophies. Nothing anyone can say about the subject of a blogger’s article will typically change his mind or his thinking. To argue that I am trying to engage in discovery or mutually beneficial intellectual exchange of ideas seems a bit hypocritical. If this is the motivation of a blog commenter, his efforts are sorely misplaced, as it rarely works, and he would do better reading a book or donating his time to a soup kitchen.

No one seriously comments on blogs to change his own opinion, as he knows himself to be right and would not post a refuting comment in order to get a rebuttal that would convince him of something wrong. If he makes a long argument, he does so not to discover data, but because he believes he has the right data already. So, the commenter must comment either to change the opinion of someone else, someone who is statistically as likely to be right as the commenter himself, or to get his own opinion challenged, to sharpen his blades, and prepare him to outwit his next victim.  Whenever a blog commenter tells himself that he is merely trying to strengthen his grasp of truth, he is probably trying to fool you, but he may have fooled himself. Self-perception and debating motivation do not tend to get along. Blogging is not an educational chore, but a hobby. When a blogger maintains an internet presence as a debater, he does so for the love of the game.

I tried to justify my dissenting comments, and sometimes satirical ridicule, as part of a mutually agreed upon game, like chess. If those involved all enjoy it, then what is the harm, and why shouldn’t I play? To paraphrase, why shouldn’t I find a writer’s virtual home and attempt to burn it down? The effort is divisive and ultimately fruitless. If you cannot possibly change anyone’s mind in a substantive way, then why would you go to their site and attack their articles? To invalidate a person’s creation is to invalidate a part of the person.

It reminds me of the atheist who tries to disprove that Jesus is the Son of God because he resents the fact that the theist is wrong in the matter. Something compels him to go after the theist, to catch him in his mistaken notion. The more data you use to challenge him, the harder he will fight and the more aggressive he will become. A mountain lion, once trapped, becomes angrier, and less open to reason. Why would I want to trap him? How well I succeed is not relevant. The meaningful question is why would I feel the need to try to refute logic just because I think it is erroneous? Knowing that our beliefs on philosophical issues usually stem from more fundamental principles, making productive debate on specifics pointless, why should I want to engage him? The best I could hope for is to prove my intended victim wrong about the specifics we are debating. He would still walk away with the same fundamentals that took him there, and so his overall politics would not change.

It is a sophist’s game, to try to out maneuver those with different philosophical foundations than I by challenging them on specifics. If a person is proud to win a game, then regardless of what he tells you, it would probably shame him to lose one, even if only a little. If he tries to win and fails, the loss in not a neutral outcome, but an invalidating failure, even if he tells you it is not, and even if he outwardly perceives that no harm is done. A recent study showed that those who play and win computer games against other players have more confidence in other areas of life for the rest of the day.

Benighted as they may be in their gentleness, both Burr and Vincent seem to have learned something long ago that I am just beginning to appreciate: it is not true that in order for me to win, someone else must lose. It is hard to walk away when you see the weak spot and your sword is drawn. It is hard to resist trying to slay those who have opinions other than our own.

In the liberal vs. conservative debates, nobody wins and everyone claims victory. It’s easy to see the phenomenon when you watch it from a distance, but not when you are emotionally invested. A debate is like a chess match, but it is not chess. Victory is subjective. After a liberal attacks a conservative site through blog comments, the conservatives feel their castle walls withstood the test, that the olive oil they poured over the turrets boiled the flesh off the invading force; that their boulders crushed the invader’s skull. The liberal remembers Ozymandias as he eyes the broken statue where the castle once stood and marvels at the smirk on the face in the ruins. It would all be good were it not for the overshadowing fog of resentment emanating from the debris. As charges of incivility betray a sense of umbrage left in the aftermath of an aggressive opponent’s passion, everyone claims no offense is taken. And even if the conservatives are mistaken about the outcome, so too the liberal suffers his own illusions, as illustrated in the fact that he can dream up a reality where besieging a castle in “good-humored” rebuttal is harmless. He tells himself that it is really just a philosophical exercise, a game each side enjoys: all in good fun.

Except no minds are changed and each side’s proclamations of victory echo over bruised egos half buried in stacks of smoking rubble; each side marvels at how the other could be so foolish as to keep trying to stand under the gargantuan force of their wisdom; and the liberal does not emerge as unscathed as he perceives himself to be, a perception he holds probably because he must, more than for any other reason. He did not convince anyone of anything, anymore than his opponents did. The only person who sensed the powerful blow of any proof he introduced, was the liberal himself, who needed no convincing. His only success was in offending a bunch of conservatives who were minding their own business before he moved in and tried to convince them of the error of not thinking like him; and he failed. His opponents’ most fundamental assumptions differ from his; he sees nonsense where they see obvious truth; so his liberal arguments are foolish and easily refutable with conservative logic.

Since annoying his philosophical adversaries was not a part of his conscious plan, regardless of the power or weakness of his arguments and regardless of the condition of the conservatives after the battle, there is no denying that the liberal was utterly defeated; none of his objectives were met.

So if the conservatives lost and the liberals lost, then who won? Burr and Vincent.

Grandpa's Coins

When I was five years old I thought I understood coins and I was convinced that Grandpa did not. He once gave my sister two dimes and a nickel, and to be fair, he gave me a quarter. My protest, as one might expect, was immediate.

Rather than admit to the crooked transaction, he made up a story about how it was the same amount of money and I was not cheated out of my implied fair share. I am a little embarrassed to admit it, but the little boy I was believed him on faith, despite the troubling coin count, and I never questioned it again until yesterday. Because of my conniving Grandpa, I have misunderstood coins for decades.

Yesterday’s breakthrough in my understanding came in the form of new conservative connection. Conservatives are good to have around, as they understand all fiscal matters better than liberals, and even better than Grandpa, who solved simple puzzles of coinage, but never cracked more complex issues, like the tax code. Liberals like me think with compassion, forsaking reason. Our sense of fairness is skewed by our belief that people are entitled to republicans’ money, just because they need it. Conservatives realize that fairness is a question of equality, not who needs someone else’s stuff. I will call my conservative mentor Dooh Nibor, which is an alias I use to deny him the honorable mention that is his due.

As a liberal, the tax code confuses me. Mr. Nibor taught me that liberals like myself believe that 70% of a portion of a republican’s wealth should be purloined by the government through taxation. I had never articulated this idea, and because it is so non-intuitive, I didn’t even realize I championed it. When he put that way, it seemed quite an absurd revelation that embarrassed me to no end.

He also corrected my definitions of flat vs. progressive taxation. It would seem that some of us on the left think flat tax means that Larry David gets taxed 100.00 per paycheck and so do we impoverished liberals. Nope, not right. Flat tax means that everyone gets taxed 10 percent, for example. A progressive tax means that Larry David may get taxed 10.1 percent on a portion of his earnings while I am only taxed 10 percent on all of mine, since I do not earn the portion that would be taxed higher. As you can see, this is quite unfair. The injustice is hidden from the liberal by his misunderstanding of the terms.

He not only corrected my definition of flat tax, but he also explained that I am mistaken about my idea that some of Larry David’s income should be taxed at a higher percentage than I and my impoverished liberal band of idiots have to pay. I didn’t really grasp what a flat tax was and I also disagreed with what it really is. I am becoming a fiscal conservative precisely to avoid this lack of clarity in my thinking.

Mr. Nibor explained that just taxation, which means flat taxation, does not have to be controversial. It is the only fair system and the controversy would end if liberals would stop creating it by disagreeing with Mr. Nibor.

Dooh Nibor asked a very astute question: “when did affordability become a measure of fairness?” The question is proof of his position that it is not the tax burden that should be distributed equally, but the tax itself. I think in an effort to make me look foolish, he failed to recant his previous argument in support of flat taxation, meaning everyone pays 10 percent, which means that the wealthy pay more, which he just implied was unfair. He well knew that this approach would further befuddle my little mind, and yet, he used it anyway.

Like Grandpa, Mr. Nibor clearly understands the basic principles of equality. I and my sister did not shop when we were five years old. We just liked money. We played with it. We collected it. I don’t remember what happened to our coins, but the coins were the thing that mattered to us, not what we could buy with them. We had the same philosophy that Mr. Nibor has. Poor folk like Grandpa, however, use currency only to acquire something else. They have no inherent use for dollars, 6.1 x 2.6 inch paper with ones printed on them, or for coins.

To explain this point, I will use the example of a single mother working as a waitress who has a young boy to support. Let us assume she earns 400.00 per week and uses all of it on necessities. It could be that she suddenly has a large payment due. I will use tax as my example of the payment, since we are talking about taxes. Because she has to pay her taxes, perhaps she will be unable to buy the beans she intended to feed her son on Friday. In other words, she does not give up coins to pay her taxes. With or without the tax invoice, she would have ended up with no coins. She gives up beans.

If you are a liberal, and so instinctively confused in fiscal matters, I know what you are thinking: “Why would the government tax her in beans?” Liberals don’t understand transactions. In tax transactions, there is a payer and a recipient. So far as she knows, the government actually receives 6.1 x 2.6 inch pieces of paper with ones printed on them. It is just paper, but can serve as currency for the purchase of beans. Unlike the five year old boy I was, the waitress has no affinity for coins or for paper currency. She wants beans because her son requires them. She forfeits his beans so the government can receive payment.

That the government deprives her of beans through taxation is observable. Look what happens when she does not pay her taxes. She still has no currency, but she does have beans. However, Mr. Nibor already has all the beans his children can eat. When the government takes a 6.1 x 2.6 inch paper with a one printed on it from him, he has one fewer pieces of such paper. The paper itself is as inherently useless to him as it was to the waitress, but he has need of nothing to exchange for it, so the paper itself is the thing the government denies him. The waitress pays taxes in the form of her son’s dinner and Mr. Nibor pays taxes in paper. Paper and beans are not the same thing, so they do not seem equal to the childish liberal observer.

The mistake in the liberal’s thinking is clear now that Mr. Nibor explained things. Previously, I thought if the task was for us to move a 500 pound rock, we should divide the work each person does based on his ability to do it. Mr. Nibor teaches that this perspective violates our constitutional concept of equality, and is akin to racism, in that it makes the same mistake in assuming inequality where none exists. Dividing contributions based on the ability to lift or based on the ability to pay is discriminatory. In reality, if there were two people tasked with moving the rock, one a 20 year old body builder and the other a frail 95 year old elderly woman, each should be required to lift 250 pounds. It takes a true socialist’s mind to blind itself to this obvious formula.

With flat taxes, the waitress and Mr. Nibor are technically taxed equal percentages at the moment the tax is levied; but in reality, what each has to give up in tax, is not equal. This fact can trick the liberal into thinking nonsense. If the waitress has to give the 20,000.00 per year she earns to the government and Mr. Nibor also gives 20,000.00, nothing could be more equal, as a simple calculation will reveal. Flat taxes based on percentages are supposed to solve any objection the waitress may have, as the generous republicans are now offering to pay even more than she pays; yet, she is still not satisfied because the same issue remains: her ten percent is far more valuable and needed than the ten percent Mr. Nibor pays.

Some liberals say the waitress gave up all she had and Mr. Nibor gave up relatively little. They lack basic math skills. Remember the value of the thing the citizen gives up in payment is irrelevant. It is the value of the thing the government receives as payment that matters. We defend the republican’s right to not pay more by showing that the government receives the same percentage whether it comes from the republican or the impoverished liberal. We cannot look at the value of the payment to Mr. Nibor vs. the value to the waitress, even though it is Mr. Nibor vs. the waitress’ rights we are discussing. If we think of things that way, it breaks an equation that is pivotal in our quest for the specific truth we seek.

Mr. Nibor informs me that my idea that those who “win life’s lottery” must pay their fair share is mistaken. Before he educated me, I would have foolishly considered that the winner of life’s muscle, the body builder, should also have to lift his fair share. That notion is equally silly. It is not Mr. Nibor’s fault granny is puny and poor and he should not be penalized for it. The question of who must bear the burden of taxation and rock-lifting is all about Mr. Nibor’s rights. Since when did granny’s deficiencies have anything to do with Mr. Nibor? She must carry 250 pounds of rock and pay her fair share in taxes, which is whatever percent Mr. Nibor feels he can spare.

I used to think that currency was worth nothing more than the value of the things you could buy with it. If you need 100.00 worth of medicine to save your life, your 100.00 is worth a human life. If Mr. Nibor needs 100.00 to buy a gourmet pizza, his 100.00 is worth an edible treat.  Before Mr. Nibor corrected my thinking, I actually believed that the waitress’ 20,000.00 was somehow more relevant since it would be traded for far more relevant things, than Mr. Nibor’s 20,000.00. My thinking was backwards. Never, never, never forget that it’s the value to the recipient of a payment, not the value to the payer, that determines its worth. We cannot say that both values are real and both should be considered because that unjustly penalizes long suffering republicans. It is only fair to ignore this mismatched perception and look only at the side of the transaction that we need to be equal: in both cases the government receives 20,000.00. Have we learned nothing from the civil rights movement?

Twenty thousand dollars paid is equal to twenty thousand dollars received, regardless of who pays it or how the recipient spends it. It is a simple concept for those indoctrinated with the core conservative values we all should have. For me it wasn’t easy. I keep returning to the mistake of my childhood when I invented a relationship between the value of something and the potential use of it. It is a false correlation.

My lying grandpa was not the scoundrel I perceived him to be. He did pay my sister three coins and me only one, and I still resent it, because the coins were toys we never intended to spend, so I ended up with only one toy to her three; but things have intrinsic value, regardless of how they could be used. A dollar is worth a dollar, no matter who gets it or where, no matter who spends it or how. A dollar given to a dolphin in the ocean is the same gift as a dollar given to a child, or a dollar a waitress was allowed to keep. It is confusing for a liberal, but as Mr. Nibor, Grandpa, and any dolphin will tell you, it is really quite simple and there is no need to for us to complicate the math with real life: a dollar is a dollar, ten percent is ten percent and two dimes and a nickel are the same thing as a quarter.

Choosing Dearth

With the economy such as it is, I am approached with much greater frequency than before by a man with a story of his family, just in from Alabama in search of work, who only lacks 13.00 needed to keep from being booted out of Motel Six. I am slowly learning more about this man than he ever intended for me to know.

I will call this grimy fellow, and all like him, Cain.

Cain is not the minority: the people who had good jobs and lost them. I am talking about career paupers. Despite their chicanery, I know some things about them. For instance, they are liars.

I know they are probably lazy, most likely alcohol and drug addicted, and definitely unmotivated. I know they would be doing much better if they had only the smallest smidgeon of an industrious spirit. I know they have abandoned the American dream, and now they are pleading with me to give up mine, one small scene at a time. They are undeniably dirty, unquestionably disruptive to my routine: a complete nuisance. They have the freedom to become anything they could imagine and they turn their backs on this American feature in favor of pan handling.

Oh, did I mention that I was one of them? I was never homeless, but I could have been. I was in debt, earned a low wage, and lived paycheck to paycheck, which by the grace of God, kept trickling in. If I had been laid off, which could have easily happened, I would have been destroyed by next week. If I had lost my apartment, I would have quickly become dirty, smelly and unable to function well enough to satisfy most critics. I was just like them, only employed. I did not see any way out of my circumstance and was convinced by the combined forces of reason and faith that no salvation was forthcoming and there was no way for me to save myself. I suffered a severe case of spiritual insomnia. I knew about the American dream, but I did not know how to dream it. I accepted the fact that I would never be happy or successful. That I was destined to die a miserable pauper was a painful truth that made perfect sense.

How could I do any more than I was doing already? I had scored an irreplaceable job: low pay, overtime allowed. I worked 70 hours per week at a fast food establishment, alongside a bitter middle aged shift manager named Brenda-lee. I told Brenda-lee I wanted more. She informed me that I would be right there beside her ten years from now and to get used to it. I did get used to it. I accepted it. I knew it instinctively. Though I didn’t mind the tasks of the job, and even found them delightfully challenging around lunch time, I despised the idea that this was it: my future.

From that view, I could not see any way out. The idea that I could become a doctor or a lawyer, a businessman, or even a courier, seemed unthinkable. I did not know how to do it. Without a miracle I could never get through college and if I did, I would exit with a useless degree because I did not have it in me to put forth the effort needed to go after more, when I knew that my reward lived in the distant future if it existed at all, and that I was destined to suffer for years, grasping at the hope of this faraway blessing. Keep this in mind: years of suffering was the best case scenario. On the bad end of my prospects was failure or the possibility that my efforts would fizzle out for whatever reason or that they would be obstructed by some pernicious force I had yet to identify. Even if I could overcome all of this, I probably could not really make it happen. Finances, time, my level of intelligence: something would be in the way. The possibility was just not real to me.

I equated success with money at the time; not because that is how I saw life, but because a total lack of financial freedom enslaved me. I would tell people that I didn’t know how to do anything about my situation, that I didn’t know how to make money, that I was doing all I could. This was the absolute truth. If I had taken my rightful place among the homeless, I would have been no more capable than they of finding my way out.

The surface of my head is an infertile garden. Kim, a Vietnamese stylist, is responsible for maintaining my memory of this once magnificent head of hair. Her job gets no easier as the yard grows smaller. I am constantly demanding that she do something to keep it alive. Brimming with optimism she tells me about implants and ointments and assures me that I only need a little more personal discipline to solve my own problem. She charges me a handsome sum for this advice and the landscaping services she provides. From a studio attached to her upscale residence, she caters mostly to upper class clientele. I am a rare exception who happened upon her in a time when there was still hope for the garden. She came highly recommended, and I yielded to extravagance in this one all-important area.

Kim once told me that she could not understand how anyone is unable to succeed in America. She noted how easy it is. Her parents fronted her money for her studio and, in a fit of entrepreneurial courage, she abandoned her career in finance, put out her shingle and the rest is history. When I was impoverished and hopeless, I remember well that I did not know how to cut hair, nor was a career in finance an option for me, nor do I remember having any other marketable skills to substitute for these. I also don’t remember believing that I could become marketable if I just applied myself. It is easy, if you are Kim. She cuts hair and collects an exorbitant fee. See? How hard is that? I would like to explain this to her: I do not now, nor have I ever known, how to cut hair; but I doubt that I could make her understand. I fear she would pick up a pair of scissors and say: Like this, as she sliced away a lock I cannot risk sacrificing at the alter of her demonstration.

What Kim fails to realize is that all people are not created equal. Individuals: That is what we are. We are not all Kim. She is blessed with virtues that scatter invisible seeds of serendipity and opportunity all around her. There are other individuals, the lower class, as we call them. These outcasts may lack any of the following tools for success that Kim takes for granted:

1. Kim has faith that with hard work and dedication, she can make a difference.
2. Kim comprehends that what happens in four years or more matters today (if your life is easy, it is easy to see, but if you struggle, future relief seems less real).
3. Kim was socialized to honor education and thirst for knowledge and to assume success.
4. Kim believes that others see her as useful.
5. Kim has confidence that she can excel in whatever she undertakes: college, seeking a job, carving out a suitable place in this world for her to exist.

Problems Kim never had to overcome that Cain takes for granted:

1. Cain is extremely bored by things that could lead to success, such as academics.
2. Cain intimately knows of the relationship between how daunting a task is, and how confront-able it is. If Kim sees a task as doable, she will confront it. If Cain thinks a task is virtually impossible for him, then mustering the energy to commit to it is equally impossible.  
3. Cain has faith that he is not intelligent enough to become truly educated.
4. Cain’s belief that change is not possible denies him enough motivation to act.

“Life is just what you make it,” my mom used to say; and then follow up with “blaaaaaa.” There was bitterness in that “blaaaaaa.” It was guttural and angry and really said it all. One does not make life. We call this container in which our spirit lives, our life. As we bounce around inside it, we are both cause and effect. We create it, reshape it. It is doing the same thing to us. Some people are fortunate and frequently visited by serendipity; others are graced with strong facilities of intelligence, social acumen, and talent. These attributes are not present in all of us, and certainly are not distributed evenly to any of us. They are the tools we use to shape our container, and to defend against it, as it tries to reshape us. Kim certainly had more tools that I did and I did not even know about the ones I had. We see those with fewer mental and physical resources all around us and we can hardly contain our disdain for them. We blame them for their lacking. They choose dearth.

I grew up without a father. Though I am sure he knew me at some early time in my life, I have never met the man. My mom was an extraordinarily hard worker who always went beyond the call of motherhood to tend to my needs and the needs of the rest of her family. She was mother and father and best friend. Forfeiting any joy she could have conjured up, she gave every waking moment to the cause. Still, she could not rise above who she was. All her diligence sought to maintain, to survive, never to grow. In her mind, this was the contribution she could make and anything beyond it was not real. She did not believe change was possible. The necessary ingredients were not there and being an American citizen with the American dream dangling above her was not enough.

I am often more capable than Cain. It’s wrong to judge him by the same standards used to judge me. From his depressed state, he does not have the same tools for success.

1. Cain does not study well.
2. Cain does communicate well.
3. Cain does not understand what he reads the way I do. He finds most things too boring to follow.
4. Cain does not believe his efforts will ever result in a relevant difference in his life.
5. Cain cannot imagine a way to even start trying to fix things.
6. Cain is not analytical.
7. Cain is depressed.
8. Cain is despondent.

Do I pity Cain? Do I merely sympathize with him from a safe emotional distance?

I regard Cain loathingly: “Get off the streets and go to school.” It is easy to say, with my attributes and my talents and the roots of my education behind me. It was not always easy, though, back before I was homeless, when I was made of the same fabric as he is; before our fates were sealed, when fortune dispatched me in one direction and him in another. It’s natural to feel scorn for those in need. They want what is ours and they don’t seem to want to work for it, the way we did. That is how I see Cain. I strive for excellence and he covets it in grossly explicit ways. I am not inclined to share the fruits of my labor. I would rather it rot on the vine than reach his decaying lips. He threatens me with his wanting, his needs, his destitution, his desperation. He not only wants what is mine, but he reminds me that if you were to take away the serendipitous virtues and happenstance that separated the two of us, what would be left: One homeless man’s contempt for another.

Gateway to Heaven

Today is not one my best of days. I just found out that I am to be burned at the stake. As if that were not depressing enough, this is a special kind of indestructible stake, and anything that is bound to it is also indestructible, so it would seem I have eternal agony in my near future. My conservative friend informed me that this is the penalty for not believing Jesus is my savoir. There is good news:  if I choose to believe, and if I do not otherwise annoy his deity, I can live eternally in a place he calls heaven. That doesn’t sound too bad!

He had a very thick book that was supposed to help me earn heaven. He quickly realized that I would require some assistance when I explained to him that I cannot choose to believe something I do not believe. You cannot decide that you will convince yourself of something just because you wished you could. If humans had that power, most of us would believe we were truly happy, that work is not work, but a pleasure, that our vices are unpleasant, that sugar and grease tasted like dust and motor oil, that spinach and spirulina were a pleasing as pizza and ice cream. He informed me that the reason I had not committed to his God was because I didn’t understand Him well enough. Always open to a challenge, I embraced his book, and with it the promise of Christian Faith and eternal life.

Now this book rivaled War and Peace in size and entertainment. I will not go into the graphic details of its author’s insanity, but I will try to summarize it. He represented the God I am supposed to accept, as an angry Being, jealous and aggressive, and very defensive. This God made a list of Ten Commandments (I think they used a decimal system in this book and ten was a nice round number. In order to come up with exactly ten, the Author had to get creative, but He made it work). The technique he used was a not a new one. The Greek Procrustes (q.v.) invented it, as I understand things (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Procrustes).  Apparently God’s commandments are directed primarily toward people. I think this is because we could never make anything less than a person understand Jesus, which means that nothing other than a person can get into Heaven. Now, God himself, is not a person and He is already there, which is the loophole He used to get in, as he routinely violates these Ten Commandments Himself.  They are so important to understanding how He wants us to live, that I feel I should go over each one. I can use context clues to figure out what they really mean, as it is often unclear. My friend tells me that ignorance of the law is no excuse for violating it. I thought it was about as good of an excuse as one could ever have, but I guess not. While trying to comprehend this legal code, I used a translation. However, if you want to read it in the Original Elizabethan and not just rely on a translation, start with Exodus 20, where God spake. He actually spake the commandments twice, perhaps to make sure they were heard. I don’t know of other passages in the book merited reiteration. More on that later.

1.   In the first commandment, He announces who He is and informs me that He brought me out of Egypt. I did not realize this, but I do appreciate it, as I like America much better.  He then asserts himself as top God: “You shall have no other God’s before me.” I have since learned that God speaks Elizabethan English, but I mostly intend to stick with a more modern dialect, as I think God will understand that I only have history in Egypt and America, so it does not make sense to force me into a foreign way of speaking while trying to get my wits around the odd thing that He is. A simple survey of the commandments alone suggests that He is supposed to be the highest god in my god chain. It would seem, at least based on this reading, that other gods are OK, so long as I queue them up behind Him. I assume he can override any ruling they make, and may be willing to do so if I appeal a mandate of a lower god as unjust or not in accordance with His commandments. I must confess that at this point in time, I am little disturbed by these Ten Commandments, as I know His book contains other laws also. I think He thought up more, but only after the original ten were already engraved (and probably circulated too), so He never officially amended the original ten to be twenty.

2.   The second commandment says something like this:  “Do not make sculptures. If you violate this piece of the commandment, then do not worship the sculpture I instructed you not to make.” That seems like two commandments, but I admit they are related. I decided that compound commandments were OK, since I know about the ten limit, I am spared the danger of thinking He made a mistake so early in the composition. He would not like me thinking He makes mistakes. I don’t think the passage makes it clear if paintings are OK, so some other artists may also be out of compliance. It seemed confusing, the second piece of this commandment. After much research, I resorted to translations of the original King James text (instead of the text itself) to resolve the issue. The King James Version said not to construct a “graven image,” which is just a clunky way of saying “sculpture.”  However some editions translated that to this: “Do not make an idol.” By combining the meaning of the original Elizabethan with its translation, I came to realize that building a god and creating a sculpture for artistic purposes is really the same thing. If you sculpt something for the beauty of the art, you never know when some rapscallion is going to happen upon it and worship it.

If you are faint-hearted, stop reading here, because the next thing may seem quite barbaric and may make it difficult for you to believe in the loving kindness of my friend’s God. Remember, if you do not accept Him, you will be eternally tortured. It is possible that “accept,” does not mean “submit to His will,” but perhaps means, accept that He is what my friend thinks He is. My friend has not explicitly stated that these are the real conditions, but there is subtext that seems to point in that direction. This may mean that you must accept that He is omnipotent, omniscient, and yes, all good and all loving, with infinite mercy and kindness. If you are having any trouble with this at all, then DO NOT read any further. What am I going to tell you next, will make that level of acceptance impossible.

The next thing God did: He threatened me! He not only threatened me, but he threatened my son, whom I have not conceived yet, Preston, and he also threatened my great grandson! God explained how He feels intimidated by other gods (and I think he meant sculptures in this case). God is not stupid. I am sure He realized that artworks are inanimate objects, but they were modeled after REAL living fish, calves, donkeys, Lions, etc. He announced that he, the Lord my God, is a jealous God! I already knew that. I saw Him act out on a number of occasions before I unearthed the text of the Ten Commandments from its hiding place. Surprisingly, Commandments are buried deep inside His book. You do not encounter a single one until you may have already violated a good many of them. It would have been better if he had started with the Ten, and then used a literary strategy, like: “To tell you why these commandments exist, we must go back in time, so here is how it all began.”

Anyway, if I made sculptures in direct opposition to the commandment, then God warned me: “Thou shalt not bow down thyself to them, nor serve them.” Well, there is really not much one can do to service a sculpture other than to dust it occasionally. I can leave them dusty if it will earn me heaven. If I do worship one of my sculptures, He will visit my iniquity upon my children “unto the third and fourth generation of them that hate me.” I am not sure if He means that only my children that hate Him will get punished for my action or all of them. And, if He means that only the hating children get punished, it further implies that if I don’t make sculptures, then perhaps the rest my children can hate Him without consequence, otherwise, no point in saying they will get punished for my act if they are already queued up for punishment for their emotions of hate. So, maybe only the non-hating children get punished, but that is not what He said. Neither of these choices makes sense, so I must conclude that He really means that if I make a sculpture and then bow down before it, all of my children could be punished, regardless of their feelings about the Punisher. I must also conclude that he only said: “Of those who hate me” out of bitterness, and that this is just His emotions running amuck, which he just warned me about with His jealousy clause. I will pray tonight that he learns to reign in His emotional outbursts before I get to heaven.

3.   The third commandment is not to take the name of the Lord your God in vain. I am pretty sure that He means His name, and that if you are worshiping a sculpture, you can use the sculpture’s name with impunity. I am not sure exactly what it means to take a name in vain. I think it may mean do not use it unless you need it to reference Him, and definitely do not use it to reference a sculpture. I think I have broken this commandment several times since I started reading my friend’s book, but I am sure He will recognize the extenuating fact of the inaccessibility of the commandments to a searching novice who reads His book sequentially, lest he miss any important detail. He should have placed the more relevant stuff at the front.

4.   The fourth commandment is pretty simple. Remember the Sabbath Day to keep it holy. He has not said how many people can forget it and it still remain holy. I know much of the world does not even know about it, though, so I am willing and able to do my part. I remember that it is Friday or Sunday. I hope that is good enough. I think it may start Friday evening and go through Saturday day sometimes, so I am not sure it is even a day, technically. It is probably 24 hours. I think one group of people thought it was Saturday and another Sunday, as I recall. I know it is near the weekend. With all this confusion, I suspect humans are keeping three days holy. I hope that’s ok. The wicked days still outnumber the holy ones, which must be pleasing to my friend’s God, even if He had hoped for a greater spread. (I know it’s confusing, but I have to work it out. It is very important. God may execute me, as He did that poor fellow mentioned in Numbers if I forget about the Sabbath: Numbers 15:32-36).

5.   “Honor your father and mother, that your days may be long on the land which the Lord is giving you.” That reason seems a little Machiavellian. Let me paraphrase to make the commandment more clear: “Be good to your parents so I don’t have to kill you.” And, if you comply, you can boast to your parents that you treat them honorably, not because you feel it in your heart, but because you may be executed if you do not. Your parents will read the Bible and their hearts will sing: “Ah, we have a good son.”

6.   “You shall not murder.” I think this is a good commandment, which we should follow without exception. Understand that even if you are a goose, God is not a gander. Nowhere in this commandment does God say what do to do if He instructs you to violate Commandment Number Six. In Isaiah 14:21, He commands: “Prepare a place to slaughter his children for the sins of their ancestors; they are not to rise to inherit the land and cover the earth with their cities.” I am not sure what I would do. I would probably pray that He remember the commandments, but obviously, if He forgot about the sixth commandment, I would have to comply with His orders. If, hearing my prayer, He did not reconsider His orders, I would pray a second time that He forget the commandments.

There is a strong implication of guilt by association here, which may repulse your desire to accept my friend’s God, which in turn will keep you out of heaven. However, you must embrace that concept, for it has lots of precedent. Very early on we learned that this is how the universe works. From the story of Adam and Eve’s crime causing the rest of humanity to suffer, to the story of children being consumed by wild animals to punish parents in Leviticus 26, to the story of Jesus being crucified for my sins in the Gospels, it is a theme. Guilt by association is fair, a fact continually reinforced in the teachings of God. The recurring incidence of otherwise innocent children being painfully put to death by God for the acts of their fathers serves as incontrovertible proof of this non intuitive reality.

Still, since some murder is OK, a better commandment would have been: "That shalt not murder except for when it is ok, such as when a father commits a sin and I need you to murder his baby for it."

7.   In the seventh commandment, we are warned against committing adultery. My wife already will not let me commit it, so for me, it is not a current barrier to heaven. However, I would like to note how unfair it is that God would punish someone whose wife does permit adultery and not punish me. The adulterer in that case, commits adultery because he has the opportunity and desire. If I also would commit adultery given the opportunity, then am I not just as guilty of evil as my friend? Is it the willingness to act evil or the act itself that concerns my friend’s God. If it is only the act, then my friend’s God is not a fair God. It is not fair to punish one person more harshly than another because one person was able to fulfill his aspirations to commit a sin better than another. I am going to give my friend’s God the benefit of the doubt and say this command really means: “Thou shalt not be willing to commit adultery,” and for the sake of expediency, I will temporarily take on faith that this command is reasonable and that adultery is always wrong.

8.   “You shall not steal.” Ohhh, that’s a good one. Murder, which God commands frequently, is the stealing of a life. We have the same quandary with this commandment as we had with the sixth one.

9.   “You shall not bear false witness against your neighbor.” Ok, will not do. Keep in mind that your neighbor usually referred to a member of your camp. The Lord usually ordered the extermination of any camp that was in the way of His chosen camps, and to this end, false witness would have probably been OK. Remember that when God says your neighbor, He means just that. Perhaps also your neighbor’s neighbor and his neighbor’s neighbor, but probably not his neighbor’s neighbor ‘s neighbor. It is probably ok to not bear false witness against those who are so distant they could not possibly be my neighbor, so I may bear false witness when there is no doubt about the status of a victim of my lies.

10.  Commandment number ten says I cannot covet my neighbors stuff. I have a real problem with this. I cannot choose to covet or not to covet. Surely God realizes that what a person “wants” is an emotion that is beyond his control. Had he reworded the commandment to read: “Thou shalt not steal thy neighbor’s stuff, just because you covet it” He could have removed it altogether and pushed one of his compound commandments down to the number ten slot. This commandment is not fair and I do not get to decide if I follow it. I think I will pray for guidance.

After a careful reading of the Ten Commandments, I walked away with lots of thoughts running through my head.

First, there are more than ten. He lumped them together to stay faithful to His decimal system. I am going to ignore that fact because I would hate to go to Hell quibbling over an accounting issue.

Second, if I remove the commandments that are unclear, contradictory or hypocritical, there are only a few left, and I think I can commit to those going forward. Un-fortunately none of His main commandments mentioned anything about accepting Jesus as my Lord and Savior. I know the U.S. constitution was drafted with no direct mention of “taxation without representation,” as a violation of one’s rights, and yet, it is still an unfair thing to do and could easily be used as a rallying cry for cessation. I currently have no children, but I still pay independent school district tax. See what happens when we forget a commandment?

God is asking a lot. He wants me to ignore the contradictions and just plain nonsense in the commandments and accept Him and them. Unfortunately, there is a fundamental deal-breaking problem here. While considering the pros and cons of trying to accept Jesus into my heart, I suddenly realized that my friend’s God’s promise is a ruse! I cannot get into heaven, even if I comply with all His crazy demands. The problem is I love my sister. She will never accept Christ as her lord and savior. She will not discuss religion at all, so I cannot convince her with my friend’s book. She simply has no interest. I will always love her, and I could never live in a place where there is only happiness, knowing that she was in eternal agony. I cannot enjoy heaven while knowing that God has two big rooms, one he calls heaven and one hell, and the wall between them is the only thing separating misery from bliss. I would be miserable, and if I understand my friend correctly, there is no misery in heaven. I think misery breeds more misery and is probably grounds for expulsion. Heaven would not be heaven for me, unless God took my compassion, and the pain that accompanies it, away.

If God changed me thus, removed my compassion for humanity and my love for my sister, then I would no longer be me. If I were someone who could be joyous while someone I love and cherish struggles in eternal agony, then I would think nothing like the person I am now thinks. It would be a spiritual lobotomy! If you “change” enough of something, it becomes something else. Plutarch put it best when he described the destruction of the Ship of Theseus, which happened by slowly replacing every damaged plank, until the original ship had been replaced. If my friend’s God’s promise is for my soul’s pieces to be remade, plank by plank, into a different eternal creature who can merrily enjoy the condition of eternal damnation of a loved one, so long as I am safe, then I do not want to will my spiritual parts for this purpose. 

If I am one that must follow the Ten Commandments as laid out and demonstrated by my friend’s benevolent God, which include examples of His doctrine of Guilt by Association, which He embodied in the crucifixion and torture of His innocent son to pay for the sins of others, it is impossible me to enter heaven. I cannot embrace that and at once remain who I am. The reward would go to someone else, the barbarian I would become; and God’s promise to rework me into a sociopath who can then live blissfully in His heaven seems deceitful, as I cannot experience the promise.

I am not wise enough to join the rest of the sheep in my friend’s God’s fold and close my eyes to the suffering He not only allows, but demands. Either my friend is mistaken or God cannot permit me to enter His heaven, so the whole promise is a trick. My friend’s God’s heaven seems much too much like my current venue, only eternal, with no hope of change. My friend also described Hell and if I do not embrace his Lord, he sees nothing that would stop me from getting there. He could be right. Perhaps he and I will meet, him in his heaven, and I in my hell, one a place of eternal bliss, the other, eternal agony; two names for the same location, as his heaven feels a little like hell to me.

Earl's God

“Their gods are wood and stone, but our God cannot be destroyed.” As a boy, in fifth grade Bible study, I read these words and they remain with me always as a testament that my God is the final answer. It was the first time I realized that one god could be better than another. Clearly, my God was less vulnerable than these pagan idols, which could easily be destroyed by the ravaging acts of iconoclastic armies. To execute my god, you would minimally have to exterminate everyone with a memory of His existence. A god made of nothing; it’s brilliant: a god with a surface harder than diamonds. A devoted iconoclast, of course, will always find a way.

If our God is given dimension and substance by our thoughts, then it is the thoughts themselves that the conquering armies must ravage. As a young man, I enlisted my time in support of this cause. Though I have softened my position later in life, I am not sure I was ever discharged from the army, as the call to destroy still cries from within me. I was a fool to enlist.

I once asked my brother, who was deeply religious and brighter than I even on his dimmest day, if he believed that God could do all things. “All things that are possible,” he responded. He preemptively answered my attack. I had intended to ensnare him in the philosophical trap invented by Blaise Pascal: “God is not all-powerful, as He cannot build a wall He cannot jump.” Today I would never borrow such a ruse, not even from Mr. Pascal, whom I admire immensely. While Pascal may have thought it was illogical to assume the All–Mighty’s omnipotence, his conundrum offers no evidence to support his theory. To say that a being’s power is limited because even the being himself is incapable of circumventing it is not a very good argument against his absolute power. The thing that He cannot do is nonsensical, and only impossible for that reason. It is like one kid telling another that his dad can win a fight with anyone: “Oh, yeah, what about with your dad?”

I used to exterminate regularly, but it has been awhile. I have a spider living in the corner of one of my bathrooms. He is a bit of an obstacle. I have to dust around him to avoid disturbing him and I am careful not to spray anything toxic near his ramshackle home. I think he is a daddy long legs, but I do not call him that to his face, as it somehow seems base. His more proper designation is pholcus phalangoides, and though that sounds really dignified, I just call him Earl.

If Earl were a little more aware, he would realize that there is nothing that I cannot do. From my brilliant production of written words with the mere tap of plastic keys on my laptop, to my magical extermination sprays that seem to come out of nowhere and smite his cousins when they displease me, it would seem that I am god; and an omnipotent god at that. Earl would be wrong about my powers. While I am infinitely more capable than he is, I cannot secrete silk. Moreover, no matter how hard I try, I cannot perform the simple task of thinking like a spider. I can never know what it means to be Earl, to feel what he feels, to experience the world through eight eyes, and his philosophically sleeping mind.

I was surprised to learn that in making his webs, Earl does not use a uniform silk. He is a very meticulous artisan, and far more clever than I used to think. The silk he weaves has many different textures and a variety of fibers, each with its purpose. I am not even scientific enough to distinguish one silken thread from another, a feat he makes look effortless. This spider has a horrible god. Moreover, Earl is a bit of a genius when it comes to the production and use of silk.

My God, the real God, is completely invisible to Earl. I can see Him, mostly through the lens of legend and the swash of rumors. He also co-authored some books, which once were scrolls, whose foundations started out as rocks. My God has a network of ghost-writers and has been producing literature for some time now. Unlike Earl, I see my God through the things He creates. His living creations and written words tell me of His existence. His missionaries point to the paper work He left scattered about and they show me marvelous things, like Earl, and explain that I cannot make a spider, nor can any man, so my God did it. Before I learned of God, I thought Earl was created by other daddy long legs, but it turns out that daddy long legs and their ancestors could not have always existed. I later learned that everything in the universe must have a beginning, so something must have started daddy long legs off; these spiders were caused to come into existence, which means, by definition, that they must have a Causer, and that causer is my God. My God has no causer, which seems like a violation of the rule, but it’s really OK, as He has no beginning.  

As Earl’s god, I am proud to be part of the divine chain. Earl is in there too. If moths were more aware of my spider’s exploits, and had a vocabulary sufficient to allow it, they would probably pray to him. Poseiden used water, Vulcan (Hephaestus) used Fire, Earl uses silk to maintain his divinity.  As we look up this divine chain we find creatures that are increasingly capable, until finally, all the way at the top, we find My God, the uncaused Causer of it all, who needs to pray to no one, who answers to no one. Everything is His way and there is nothing any creature in the universe can do about it.

I wonder if my God realizes His true power, or if He gets confused, and like the lower gods in the chain, prays. What if He imploringly lifts His hands to empty ether and beseeches it for greater understanding? What if this futile act makes Him sense more intimacy with the nothingness in which He imagines an ineffable life-form? How foolish that would be. I guess His spiritual life shouldn’t really concern me when all that really matters is that my God can do anything; He is indestructible; He is the final answer. One thing still bothers me, though: He is not wood, not stone, not really any other corporeal material either, and so I worry that maybe He has trouble secreting silk.