Three Books

Recently, I had the opportunity to see again the 1960 film version of H.G. Wells’ classic science fiction work, The Time Machine. The film starred Rod Taylor as the time traveler, H. George Wells, and in the final scene, after George disappears from his home and returns to an era in the distant future where he had discovered that civilization had lapsed, one of his friends who he left behind discovers that he has taken three books with him. It is unclear which books he has chosen, and the friend wonders aloud to his housekeeper which three books they would have selected, had the choice been theirs to make.

It is an interesting question, not unlike the one that I posed in my very first blog entry one year ago, when I wondered what lessons our own civilization might like to leave behind to some other civilization in the distant future – one perhaps coming out of a dark age, having either just a dim memory, or no recollection at all, of this one that preceded it.

As I watched that concluding scene of The Time Machine, I couldn’t resist wondering what three books I might have chosen, to serve as a legacy and a lesson to some people where civilization had lapsed. It brought to mind a life project that I embarked upon as a young man when, while in college, I came across a list of the two hundred greatest philosophy books ever written. I kept that list, and set for myself the goal of reading those books during the course of my remaining life, believing that if anything came close to comprising the collected wisdom of our civilization, then this must be it.

I must confess that, in the decades since setting that goal, I have fallen far short of it, having only read fifty-one of the two hundred books on that list. And I also have to confess that I don’t think that the ones that I have read have made me a better, or even a wiser, person than anyone who may have never read a philosophy book in his or her entire life. Still, the experience, at times, was an exhilarating one, and I’ve come to the conclusion that a really great work of philosophy is one that quickens the mind of the reader, enticing it to consider new and different ways of looking at the world, and existence, and of one’s role and place in the universe. Sadly, only a small number of the books that I encountered had this effect, while many had the opposite effect, with their pedantry actually dulling the mind, rather than exciting it. But the good ones made the entire venture worthwhile, and I have never regretted the time that I devoted to it.

Of the great ones that I encountered – the ones that quickened the mind, and opened entirely new vistas – I would include the following: Plato’s Republic, in which the legendary Socrates attempts to make a case for why a person should act justly, rather than otherwise, which is not based on fear of divine or human punishment. Although he was not completely successful in this attempt, the questions that he poses (in classic Socratic fashion) to his youthful audience, and the stories that he weaves, are profound and enlightening. The Republic also touched on the issue of how a society and government should be ordered, and Aristotle, in his Politics, addresses this issue as well, in a more systematic, but equally illuminating, manner. The works of Plato and Aristotle really do constitute a golden age of philosophy, and I have never come across any by these authors that is not worth reading and contemplating. It seems that, in the centuries following theirs, philosophy descended into a sort of dark ages of its own, with writers engaging in tendentious debates about inconsequential things, until its revival in the Age of Enlightenment. This renaissance began with writers like Hume and Berkeley, but to me it is the works of Rene Descartes – his Discourse on Method and Meditations on First Philosophy – that kick-started philosophy in the modern age in a very exciting and refreshing way, as he attempted to resurrect the search for ultimate truth from the ground up, relying upon first principles derived from reason and simple, direct introspection. The rebirth of philosophy in the modern age found its greatest light, however, in the German philosopher Immanuel Kant, a man who has been called – and very deservedly so, I think – the greatest philosopher since Aristotle. In the debate that had been raging in his time over whether ultimate reality rested in mind (idealism) or matter (materialism), Kant’s unique and revolutionary insight – in his Critique of Pure Reason – was that while there might be an ultimate “something” out there, we can never know what that “something” is, since our minds play an active role in mediating how external reality is presented to us and becomes a part of our perceived awareness. Reading Kant’s Critique was a dizzying experience: I – like most readers of it, I suspect, in my time as well as his – was not able to completely comprehend it, but still had a sense on every single page that something very profound, very important, and very exciting was being presented. Someone once said that all philosophy is a commentary to Plato: it seems to me that all philosophy in the past two centuries has been a commentary to Kant. Building on Kant’s insights, Arthur Schopenhauer, in his World as Will and Idea, attempted to build a bridge between these and the wisdom of Eastern schools of thought. Schopenhauer is often branded as a philosopher of pessimism, but his pessimism is really no different than that embraced in the first of the Buddha’s Four Noble Truths: that in existence there is suffering.

Sadly, it seems that since that second golden age of the nineteenth century, philosophy has been descending again into pedantic, arid controversies that dull the mind rather than quicken it, but there are a few lights in the twentieth century that were a joy to read, or at least inspired awe. One such awe-inspiring work was Alfred North Whitehead’s Process and Reality, which represented a herculean attempt, and perhaps a successful one (as with Kant’s Critique, I have to admit that my capacity for understanding the work was limited), to create a systematic, holistic model of existence that incorporated the most important insights of all of the great philosophers who preceded him. A more accessible, but equally inspiring, writer of the twentieth century was the French philosopher Albert Camus, who in such works as The Rebel, The Stranger, The Plague, and the Myth of Sisyphus (it was the first of these which had been on the list, but all are worthy rivals for a place on it), addressed the challenge, the burden, and the tragedy of contending with existential freedom. And, finally, the most recent of the works that made it on that list of two hundred, John Rawls’ A Theory of Justice, presented a novel approach to designing a just society, by envisioning a thought experiment in which its architects, while crafting its rules, were unaware of what their stations in life (rich, poor, male, female, etc.) would be after the project was completed. A book that did not make the list, but which constitutes an ingenious critique of and counterpoint to Rawls’ conclusions, is Robert Nozick’s Anarchy, State, and Utopia. The two should really be read together. I am glad that I did. (And I believe that Nozick’s Philosophical Explanations really deserved a place on the list of two hundred as well. Its final section, on the meaning of life, is one of the most insightful, profound, and provocative treatments of that subject that I have ever read.)

These are just some of the more memorable works that I encountered, as I worked my way through the list, randomly selecting titles, and I am sure that there are many others, which I may someday read, or may never get to, that have the same potential to awe and to enlighten. But would any of these be included among the three books that I would select, to be preserved after the memory of this civilization has faded?

There are other books that would be of more practical value. As an extreme case, I think of the many books that have been written to provide advice on personal success. I have a shelf full of these, such as Napoleon Hill’s Think and Grow Rich, Dale Carnegie’s How to Win Friends and Influence People, and Robert Collier’s The Secret of the Ages. Most of these books begin with the promise that by following the insights and principles contained within them, one can transform one’s life, and find success in both the personal and professional sphere. But I cannot think of a single one of them that affected my life in a profound, transformational, and permanent way, with perhaps one exception. This was a little book entitled The Richest Man in Babylon, by George Clason. Written in the form of an extended parable, it contains some very simple maxims on how to manage one’s money. I took them to heart, and put them into practice, and have always appreciated the wisdom embodied in them. Still, I couldn’t possibly imagine including even this book as one of the three written legacies to be left behind by this civilization to serve as a guiding light to another.

There are so many other types of works to consider – great novels, romances, poetry, works of religion – which might serve as a testament to our civilization, and provide an echo of its greatest moments. But in the end, my choices were still guided by pragmatism, more than anything else. What, I asked myself, would be of most practical benefit to some future age, where our own civilization had been forgotten?

My first selection would be a book on general science that contains the foundational principles and discoveries of biology and physics, and, ideally, some rudimentary mathematics as well. Now I am cheating here a bit, since I don’t actually have such a book, and so wouldn’t be able to take it off of my shelf, if, like George Wells in the movie, I was about to embark on my final one-way trip to the distant future in a time machine. I believe I still have my college physics textbook, which was pretty comprehensive in scope, so in a pinch I would probably take that. But a quick search on Amazon.com tells me that I could buy a book on general science and have it delivered to me in three days, so only a moderate delay would be required to have this book available.

My second selection would be a one-volume edition of world history, because in my opinion one of the most important legacies to be left behind by any civilization is a complete record of both its triumphs and its failures. There is much truth, I believe, in the familiar quotation that those who forget the lessons of history are doomed to repeat it. Here, I would be better prepared, as in my personal collection I have at least two one-volume histories of the world: one that was published in 1906 (which I referred to in my last blog entry, “Time’s Arrow”), and a Columbia History of the World published in 1981, which, while more recent, is by now also a little dated. I even have a book conveniently titled The Lessons of History by Will and Ariel Durant, but it is rather short in length, and therefore light on actual history. And so here, too, I might be tempted to delay my selection of an actual book until I can find one that brings the story of world history a little more up to date.

My third and final selection, and one that I actually have in my possession, is a one-volume collection of the complete works of Plato. This would seem to be the least practical of my three choices, and, for that reason, might appear to be the weakest. But I believe that there is a need for philosophy in civilization, and that it is essential that certain fundamental questions about the nature and purpose of our existence be asked. Plato, and in Plato’s works, Socrates, raised the most important of these questions, and addressed each of them with a depth of insight and lack of prejudice that continues to be unrivaled by any other great thinker before or since. And because of the foundational nature of the questions addressed, a study of Plato, in some distant future civilization, would provide fertile soil for the growth of other great ideas, germinating in future great minds, perhaps rivaling or even surpassing those that had graced our own civilization.

One book that many – at least many living in the western hemisphere – might find to be conspicuous in its absence is the Bible. I know that others would consider this to be an essential – perhaps the most essential – book to be included as part of our legacy to the future. I disagree. And I won’t defend my omission by resorting to the charge made by many agnostics and atheists: that religion has done more harm than good in the world, or that, at the very least, it has been responsible for much of the mischief (wars, pogroms, repressions, and resistance to scientific advances) that has permeated our history. Rather, I contend that the search for God, and for a relationship with God, is one that is dynamic, and defined by the person, or the culture, that is engaged in it. If our Bible, and the other great religious works that have appeared among the extant and recorded civilizations of our planet, truly represent the inspired word of God, then I have to believe that any future civilization, with no memory of ours, will have their own prophets and channels for receiving God’s inspired words. And these words will be expressed in their language, and in the context of their own unique history, culture, and development. It will speak to them in ways that our own never possibly could. Similarly, if the great poems, dramas, romances, songs, and collective dreams of our people must someday be forgotten, we can take some consolation in the fact that if there is a future age, then it will produce great poets, dramatists, composers, dreamers, and prophets that will move and inspire their audiences in ways that our own works perhaps never could.

It would be a great consolation to know that we will leave at least some of our words as a legacy for that future age, but whatever words we leave behind for the inhabitants of that civilization, I have every confidence that they will be able to provide the music, at least as unique, as inspired, and as beautiful, as any that we ever produced.

Time's Arrow

During this, the week of the U.S. Thanksgiving holiday, I would like to talk about something that I have been feeling thankful for. It is that the world is getting better.

Now that seems like a rather shocking – or at least very naïve – thing to believe, given the many terrible things and disturbing trends occurring in the world today, and I am the first to admit that I run the great risk of having this read by someone at some distant future time, wondering what could have possibly made me believe it. If so, this would not be the first time that great optimism for the future would be shown to have been unwarranted in the worst possible way.

When I was young – perhaps still a child – my mother bought a book on world history for me from a rummage sale. The book was very old, with a tattered cover, and sat on my shelf for years, unread, though I kept it with me through the years, promising myself that I would get to it someday. When I finally did get around to reading it, and reached the final chapter (this was about sixteen years ago), I was intrigued by some statements by the author which represented his appraisal of the destiny of the world in the coming decades. “Throughout the last century,” it says, “the sentiment of the brotherhood of man has been greatly deepened and strengthened. This new moral sentiment constitutes a force which is working irresistibly in the interest of a world union based on international amity and good will.

“It is most significant,” the passage continues, “that at the same time these movements towards world unity have characterized progress in the political and moral realms, wonderful discoveries and inventions in the physical domain – the steam railway, the steamship, the telegraph, the telephone, wireless telegraphy, and a hundred others – have brought the isolated nations close alongside one another and have made easily possible, in truth made necessary, the formation of the world union.”

This passage – and the book that contained it – was published in 1906.

What a sad irony that within a decade of this book’s printing, the advanced nations of the world descended into the bloodiest and most devastating war in the history of civilization, and that this was followed by an even more devastating war in the very next generation. Alongside these wars, atrocities and mass murders were committed upon millions of persons by their own governments, including in nations that had been considered among the most enlightened and civilized in the world. And by the end of the century, weapons of war had been developed capable of destroying the entire planet, with the growing danger that fanatics just crazy enough to use them might someday acquire access to them.

But we must not be too quick to judge the faulty vision of that writer in 1906: after all, many events in the century preceding that book had occurred which would inspire one to optimism, including the universal abolishment of slavery, the growth of woman’s suffrage movements, and a dizzying array of new inventions and technologies that had been unimaginable just a hundred years earlier, such as the telephone, the horseless carriage, the electric light bulb, the phonograph, and the heavier-than-air flying machine. The growing “brotherhood of man”, in addition to manifesting itself in temperance movements and other social welfare initiatives, was also evidenced by the growth of international trade, linking the advanced economies of the world so tightly that it seemed that a war of any kind would be so self-destructive as to not be warranted for any reason.

Given the blood-stained record of the twentieth century in retrospect, can we really afford to be optimistic, or bold enough to say that things, in general, have gotten better? I believe that we can.

I believe this, because in the midst of all of the calamities, tragedies, and outrages of our civilization, there seem to be real marks of forward progress, and not just in the area of scientific invention and technological advancement. The history of blacks in the U.S. exemplifies this very well. Many if not most of them lived as slaves in the early decades of the country’s history, until the institution was abolished with the passage of the Thirteenth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, after the Civil War. But freedom did not bring equal treatment under the law. Voting rights were routinely denied to blacks in many states. In the two World Wars, units of American black soldiers were segregated from white soldiers, and the U.S. armed forces were not integrated until 1948. Black soldiers in these wars justifiably might have wondered what they were fighting for, since many of their relatives back home were being excluded from a decent education, banned from certain establishments, and forced to drink from separate drinking fountains and to use separate bathrooms. Civil rights would finally come after decades of domestic struggle, and in 1989, Americans would see General Colin Powell rise to become the first black Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. Two decades after that, America elected its first black President.

I have seen other, dramatic signs of progress and change within my lifetime. I remember a story that my mother told me of how, when she was a child, living in a suburb of Chicago, she used to walk past a country club which had a prominent sign that read “No Jews or dogs allowed”. Such a thing would be unthinkable today. I remember, too, in my own childhood, living in a culture that believed that women were incapable of working in many of the professional occupations held by men. A popular riddle exemplified these prejudices: A man and his child are in an automobile accident; the man dies, and the child, alive but seriously injured, is rushed to the hospital. The attending doctor in the emergency room that evening takes one look at the victim and says, “I can’t operate on this child – he’s my son.” Very few persons back then were capable of arriving at the solution to this riddle, which seems so obvious today: that the doctor was the child’s mother. And I remember the racial and ethnic derogatory words that were so casually and regularly used by persons of all ages – words which are now rarely heard, if ever at all.

Similar tales could be told in Europe, and Asia, and Latin America: of the growth of liberality, and breaking down of old barriers based upon gender, racial, and ethnic prejudices. And it does seem that these developments are just the latest in what has been a long and sometimes halting progression which has been a central feature of the story of human civilization. But the progression has had disturbing undercurrents.

One undercurrent is that not all of the gains are necessarily permanent ones: there is always the risk of a retrogression. I remember well a striking example of this back in 2001. A news program recounted the shameful treatment of Japanese-Americans after the U.S. entry into World War II, as many families at that time were resettled into detainment camps. The program condemned this policy, of course, and its narrator wondered how such a thing had ever been possible, even by a government and citizenry shocked and terrified by the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor. The conclusion seemed to be that the persons of that generation were simply more bigoted and prone to racial paranoia than we are now, in this more enlightened age. And then, a short time after this documentary aired, the twin towers of the World Trade Center were brought down on September 11. Panic ensued, radical airport security measures were introduced, and when it was revealed that racial profiling was now being used in security screenings, with particular attention being paid to persons who appeared to be of Arab descent, the policy was roundly applauded by a frightened and insecure populace.

Another undercurrent is that, alongside the gains of progress, there is a countervailing, dangerous trend that increasingly threatens to undermine all of these gains. Schools are no longer segregated, but now many have metal detectors at their entrances, to protect the students from being knifed or shot. The Chicago of the nineteenth century was one in which members of any particular white immigrant ethnic group – German, Polish, Irish, and Italian – dare not venture into a neighborhood belonging to one of their rival ethnics, for fear of being beaten up or killed. Now, anyone can venture into any neighborhood of downtown Chicago or its adjacent suburbs without any fear of reprisal, and the only ethnic markers, if they exist at all, are the food and drink specialties exhibited in the neighborhood restaurants and pubs. The ethnic differences - both personal and geographic - have blurred beyond distinction, and a typical native Chicagoan numbers among his ancestors representatives of several ethnic groups. And yet, today, a little further south, among the poorer, predominantly black neighborhoods of the Chicago suburbs, murders due to gangland violence – with even children numbered among the victims – are at epidemic proportions. The Prohibition-era gangs of Chicago and other large cities are a thing of the past, but modern gangs deal in drugs that are much more dangerous and addictive than alcohol. Every mark of progress seems to be accompanied by an underlying countercurrent of violence and barbarism.

The evolution of Halloween as it is celebrated in the U.S. provides a very telling example of this strange phenomenon of forward and backward movements occurring together. According to folk history, the celebration of the holiday had its roots in a sort of ritualized extortion practiced by marginally delinquent youths upon potential adult victims, as the youths threatened vandalism to their property unless the youths were given some sort of reward, as exemplified in the demand: “Trick or treat”. But this evolved into the harmless holiday ritual – the one that I remember in my own youth – of groups of children going from door to door in store-bought costumes, knocking on the doors of neighbors, and getting little treats of candy from the amused homeowners – most of whom had their own children also roaming the neighborhoods in costume. Today, the ritual survives, but hardly any children now roam the neighborhood without their parents in tow, standing nervously nearby, terrified that if their children were left to do this unaccompanied, the children could be abducted or otherwise molested by adult predators.

It is a strange paradox, that as the world – or at least the more civilized nations of the world – seems to become progressively more enlightened, it also becomes progressively more dangerous, to the same degree. Slavery – at least state-sanctioned slavery – is universally abolished, but human trafficking is now a world-wide epidemic. And while democracy seems to be on the rise, so, it seems, is extremism among larger and more increasingly armed groups of people, fueled by religious fanaticism, anger at perceived slights or injuries suffered at the hands of others, or simply the desire to subvert the regional balance of power by any means necessary. Our modern economies are capable of providing more things to more people more efficiently than ever before in the history of our civilization, but the gulf between rich and poor is growing menacingly large. Technology continues to produce dazzling new miracles on many fronts, but with industrial and technological progress has come negative environmental consequences that risk the sustainability of the world’s entire ecosystem.

It would be Pollyannaish to downplay these negative undercurrents which pervade the march of civilization, or to not acknowledge the fact that a severe economic crisis, terrorist act, large-scale war, or effective demagogue playing upon lingering resentments and prejudices could send the edifices of our civilization crashing down, at least for a time. We have fallen down many times over the centuries, and every nation has chapters within its own history that represent shameful episodes that it must contend with: episodes that it would like to blot out of its collective memory, but knows that, to truly continue on any kind of forward march to progress, it must never blot out. And yet, in the face of all of this, it seems that after every time we pick ourselves up, we are a little better, and a little wiser, and there is an enduring, permanent improvement to our collective ethos that we retain. It is this that leaves me feeling grateful, and hopeful – that no matter how dangerous the challenges we face in the future, we have a better, broader, more resilient character that will enable us to deal with them more effectively, and more wisely, than those before us were ever capable of doing.

Let There Be Light

I thought it might be fitting, on Halloween, to describe a personal experience that I once had of Hell:

It happened when I was a young man, of twenty-one or twenty-two years of age. This was a period of my life when I was experimenting with drugs. I think that it is safe for me to admit this, given that decades have now since passed, and also because even U.S. Presidential candidates have admitted to using drugs in the days of their youth. And for me, at that time, “experimenting” is the appropriate phrase to use. I was never addicted to any particular drug, but was fascinated by the effects that drugs had upon the mind. Some affected mood, others bolstered self-confidence and induced more spontaneous, self-expressive behavior, while others seemed to alter perception itself, tempting the user to believe that he or she was encountering profound, enlightening insights. And, given my propensity for an analytical frame of mind, I actually recorded, in a notebook, the various effects of different drugs upon me. I did not do this dispassionately: In my youth I suffered from a painful shyness, which persisted into adulthood, and, even though I had passed out of my teens, the lingering effects of adolescence only magnified the angst that I felt because of it. I wondered if there was some perfect combination of drugs that might make me more comfortably assertive, spontaneous, and expressive. It really was a sort of “Jekyll and Hyde” experiment that I was engaging in: a “personality dialectic”, in which I hoped to release those elements of my personality which had been suppressed, and which only emerged intermittently, generally as the result of a unique combination of social circumstances and/or mood-altering substances.

After several trials, with several different drugs, I finally decided upon a specific “cocktail” of drugs: a combination which I felt would produce the desired effect. My plan was to ingest these at home, and then travel to a nightclub which was about a half hour’s drive from my home. All went according to plan, at least up to the point where I arrived at the club. I sat down at the bar and waited, excitedly, for the drugs to take full effect.

But then something horribly wrong began to happen. I noticed it first when I realized that the music playing in the background no longer seemed to have any rhythm or recognizable, coherent melody. And a bartender who was speaking to me was completely incomprehensible, as if he were speaking in a foreign language. Then I noticed that the bottle of beer that I had ordered was lying horizontally on the bar. I managed to set the bottle upright (I think), but immediately retreated outside to the parking lot, and headed back to the van that I had driven to get there.

What happened next almost defies description. There was blackness, just blackness. Only gradually did I become aware of the fact that I even existed. But I had no idea where I was. I could see nothing, hear nothing, feel nothing. Even worse, I had no idea what I was. I was this entity, in the middle of nowhere, that didn’t know who it was, what it looked like, what its history was, or how to even find answers to any of these questions. In this empty void, I tried to convince myself that there was something out there beside myself, although there was no evidence to support this belief. I cried out, in a language without words, to this “thing”, begging it to make itself known, and to tell me who – or at least what – I was. But there was only silence, and the void. Words cannot convey the terror that I felt, and the lonely isolation. I was a being with no identity, no history, no belonging, and no connection.

I don’t know how long I was in this state, because there was no standard by which to judge the passage of time. In desperation, I tried to conjure up a memory: if not of myself, then at least of some other being that had known me, and had interacted with me. I reasoned that if I could remember such a being, than through that being’s reactions, I could surmise who or what I was. Finally, a recognizable image appeared in my mind. It was the image of my mother. And, seeing what she looked like, I began to piece together what I might look like: a human being, with a face, two arms, and two legs. The images of friends then began to follow, and memories soon returned in their wake. I remembered the name that I had been called by these others, and soon was able to reconstruct, in my mind, a complete image of myself, and a history of what I had been.

Not long after this restoration of identity had been completed, I was able to restore my sense of perception as well, and locate myself within my van, within the parking lot of that nightclub. After another stretch of time, I found the strength and willpower to position myself on the driver’s seat, start the van, drive back home, and get into bed.

It took me a couple of weeks before I was completely back to normal (during that time I experienced difficulties with both sleeping and “taking in” the world around me), but eventually was able to restore a normal sense of equilibrium to my life. The irony was that I really had succeeded in what I had set out to do that night: I had managed to destroy the personality that seemed so awkward and ill-suited to me at the time, but in its absence there was apparently nothing left to replace it with.

And the experience also left me with a revelation of what a real “hell” would be like: a state of existence that is completely separate and unconnected from anything or anyone else. Hell, I realized, is separation –total isolation; no communion with any other sentient being.

As I have reflected on this nightmarish experience, in the many years since it happened, I have occasionally wondered: isn’t this the supposed goal of many “enlightened” spiritual practices - to annihilate the self? But upon further reflection, I realized that this is not, in fact, what had happened to me. It was not the “self” that was annihilated, but rather any and all connections that this self had with any external reality. It was left completely and utterly alone and isolated, without even the consolation of memories of connectedness to ground its being. Enlightenment traditions, on the other hand, seem to counsel a sort of dissolution of the self, along with a merging with some greater reality. In my own personal experiences of meditation, when I have managed to quiet the mind, and attain a quiescent state in which distracting trains of thought subside, leaving only a sort of empty, non-reflective awareness of the world, the ensuing feeling of peaceful bliss does not arise from having severed my connections with everyone and everything around me. Rather, it stems from feeling more grounded and connected, with everything, and less wedded to an abstract concept of the self. And yet, no matter how far into this meditative state I have gone, I have never lost a sense of who I was, or of my own personal history, or of where I was at the moment. And so I can only conclude that what I experienced, during that altered, drug-induced state so many years ago, was a sort of anti-enlightenment: the opposite of what it is that so many spiritual, meditative disciplines exhort us to attain.

But I have also wondered: wouldn’t God have experienced something like what I had during that great stretch of time (an eternity, in fact), before the universe was created: a sense of being an entity in a void, with no identity, no past, and no connection with anything else? And during this infinite stretch of complete, empty solitude, how would an entity know that it even had the power to change this situation? After all, if things had been this way for an eternity, what evidence would there be that anything different was even possible? To me, such an existence would not only be unbearably lonely, but unbearably terrifying as well. I recently put this question to a friend of mine, and he replied that such a scenario would not present a problem or a difficulty to God, since God is perfect. Now, such an answer is rather trite, but I have to confess that there is a certain logic in it. After all, any being that perceived a sense of lack in its existence could surely not be perfect.

And yet, there was – according to so many religious traditions – a moment when a perfect, supreme being willed the universe into existence, a moment when the Creator declared, in the words of the Old Testament, “Let there be light”. It seems unthinkable that such an act would occur without an underlying need or desire to perform it, but “need” or “desire” are verbs that would be entirely incongruent with an uncaused First Cause, or unmoved Prime Mover. One can understand, when confronting this puzzle, why the Gnostics believed that the “god” that created this universe, and who identified himself as the “creator”, was in fact created by some higher, more sublime Being. Perhaps the Kabbalists are closer to the truth with their theory that Godhood manifests itself through a series of emanations, called “sefirot”, which arise from a primordial source know as “Ein Sof”, a word which has been interpreted to mean “nothingness”, but also “without end or limit”.

In the year preceding the one during which I performed my terrifying experiment, I had written the following poem, which I titled “In the Beginning. . .”:

In the beginning there was Change.
God created Change in his
own image . . .

And yet God remained a static
force during an eternity before
Change.

There was no change of time
nor change of place
No change of mind
nor change of face

In Change there was a
Beginning.

I suppose that it is unthinkable – maybe even blasphemous – to imagine that a Supreme Being once experienced the horrifying loneliness of being an isolated entity with no history, and no self-concept, as I did during that bad drug experience. All that I can conclude is that such an experience, if permanent, would truly be an unimaginable hell for any ordinary conscious being. And, as an ordinary, conscious being, I am now permanently grateful that I am not alone in this huge universe, and will leave the question of how this existence came about to greater minds than my own.

The Great Divide

I had the great privilege of attending a ceremony recently in Washington, D.C. at which Olympia Snowe was given the 2013 Paul H. Douglas Award for Ethics in Government. (The late Paul H. Douglas, a man of strong moral convictions, a liberal who championed fiscal conservatism, and an ardent crusader for civil rights in the mid-twentieth century, was once described by the Rev. Martin Luther King as “the greatest of all the Senators”.) Senator Snowe had a long and distinguished career, serving in both houses of the U.S. Congress. As I listened to the speeches of some of her peers in government, along with her own acceptance speech, I could perceive a common theme that emerged among them. This was that Senator Snowe, and others like her, were able to achieve great things in government because they were willing to work with members of the opposite political party to achieve important goals. “Compromise” was a word that came up more than once during the ceremony, and it was not used in a pejorative sense. Rather, it described the ability of Snowe and other legislators to make small sacrifices in return for significant gains: pieces of legislation that – while not entirely satisfying the original objectives of either party –nevertheless represented tangible and important contributions to the nation that could find support in both parties.

How different things seem now, in a Congress where “compromise” has become a dirty word. Factions regularly prefer to hold the entire government hostage through their intransigence in such important matters as long-term national debt reduction, rather than work with elements in both parties to affect a workable compromise. In a recent marathon 21-hour speech, a senator dredged up the name of Neville Chamberlain, suggesting that to compromise with his political opposition on a budget bill was comparable to that British prime minister’s policy of appeasement with Adolph Hitler.

When did “compromise” become such an ugly word in politics? It has certainly been an element of the U.S. political tradition, going back to the drafting of the Constitution itself. That was an instance where the perfect was recognized as the enemy of the good, and the founders – after several weeks of intensive, old-fashioned “horse-trading” – produced an instrument of government that merely succeeded in satisfying, rather than impressing, most of them. As Benjamin Franklin put it, shortly after the document was completed:

I confess that there are several parts of this Constitution which I do not at present approve, but I am not sure I shall never approve them: For having lived long, I have experienced many instances of being obliged by better information or fuller consideration, to change opinions even on important subjects, which I once thought right, but found to be otherwise. It is therefore that the older I grow, the more apt I am to doubt my own judgment, and to pay more respect to the judgment of others. . . .

I doubt too whether any other Convention we can obtain may be able to make a better Constitution. For when you assemble a number of men to have the advantage of their joint wisdom, you inevitably assemble with those men, all their prejudices, their passions, their errors of opinion, their local interests, and their selfish views. From such an Assembly can a perfect production be expected? It therefore astonishes me, Sir, to find this system approaching so near to perfection as it does; and I think it will astonish our enemies, who are waiting with confidence to hear that our councils are confounded like those of the Builders of Babel; and that our States are on the point of separation, only to meet hereafter for the purpose of cutting one another's throats. Thus I consent, Sir, to this Constitution because I expect no better, and because I am not sure, that it is not the best. . . .

On the whole, Sir, I cannot help expressing a wish that every member of the Convention who may still have objections to it, would with me, on this occasion doubt a little of his own infallibility -- and to make manifest our unanimity, put his name to this instrument.

Sadly, the wisdom of a Benjamin Franklin – or a Paul H. Douglas or Olympia Snowe – seems to be in increasingly short supply in the U.S. Congress, which is now become that confounding Babel of discordant, uncompromising selfish interests, some of whom are driven by simple self-aggrandizement, others by an almost fanatical devotion to ideology, and others by a craven timidity, fearing that any overture to compromise will prematurely end their political careers.

Meanwhile, the country continues to careen toward disaster, with an unsustainable growth in national debt, an underemployed youth that cannot afford a decent college education without throwing themselves into a hopeless mountain of debt, a crumbling infrastructure, and a shrinking middle class that is leaving in its wake a growing divide between the very rich and the very poor.

We can only hope that a growing number of our political representatives will learn – and learn quickly – that brinkmanship is not statesmanship, that compromise in politics is not the same as compromise with a dictator, terrorist, or foreign enemy, and that the higher ground is only reached when we are able to understand and work with others who are not like us, who do not share all of our particular views, but who nevertheless want to bring about a future that is better for all of us.

The Wedding Toast

In 1998, I had the honor of being the best man at my youngest brother’s wedding.  It was a great privilege to do it, but added to the prestige of doing so was something else: it was a chance for me to vindicate myself after having had this honor once before in my life and falling down on the job.  That was on the occasion of my best friend’s wedding, a couple of decades earlier.  I was completely oblivious to what my roles and responsibilities were as a best man, including making a wedding toast, and so did not perform them at all.  In my defense, both my best friend and I were still just teenagers at the time.  I think that we were both confronted with roles and responsibilities that most men don’t have to contend with until they are at a more mature age.  Still, after my friend’s wedding, I developed the growing realization that I had really stumbled rather badly in my role as his best man, and it bothered me.  In fact, for years afterward, I was like one of those restless, roving spirits, cursed to wander the earth because of some terrible wrong that was committed during its lifetime, perpetually re-enacting the critical event in the vain hope that it might be rectified or set right.  In my case, I became a sort of “wedding crasher”: not because I went to weddings uninvited, but because, after the official best man made his toast, I would wander (or rather stagger, because I would usually pretend that I was drunk) up to the wedding party’s table and offer up a toast of my own, using jokes mainly memorized from a book that I had found called 2000 Insults for All Occasions.   My wedding “roast” was generally met with peals of laughter from the audience, though I always felt guilty when I looked over at the best man and invariably saw a downcast expression on his face, because he now clearly felt that his own toast had come up short by comparison.  But now, finally, I had an opportunity to genuinely set things right, with this second chance to be a legitimate best man myself.

And yet, with my brother’s wedding only days away, I found that I had no idea what to say in my speech.  Could it really be that, after all those years of successfully making toasts at weddings where I had not been the best man, that I would fall down, again, when I legitimately had the role?

I desperately searched about for something to say – something to speak about.  Aside from the salutary jokes (I still had the book that had served me so well in all those other weddings), what could I offer that was more genuine, and more substantial?  Was there something from my own life experiences that I could share?

As it happened, there was something which occurred very recently that had left a very profound impact upon me.  It came about as the result of an inspirational tape series that I had been listening to during that year, which prescribed a series of exercises that one should undertake to get in touch with one’s spirituality.  One of these exercises was to go away on a personal retreat, away from other people, with nothing brought along that might keep one engaged with and bound to the usual day-to-day activities: no phones, no pagers, no homework from the office, and nothing to disturb the mind, like alcohol or caffeine.  For my personal retreat, I rented a small, simple oak cabin in the southern part of the state of Michigan, in a heavily wooded area called the Dunes (so named because of the very tall sand dunes that are scattered about not far from the beaches of Lake Michigan).

Now I hardly expected anything genuinely profound or life-changing to happen.  After all, I was really not that far from civilization at all, and my stay was very short: just three days and two nights.  This was a far cry from the extended seclusion undertaken by a solitary monk, yogi, or shaman, and was even just a minute fraction of the time that Henry David Thoreau had spent in his cabin on Walden Pond.  I nearly laughed at the idea that I would get anything out of this.  Still, I decided to keep an open mind, and go ahead with the experiment.  I quickly found, after the first day or so, that I really was enjoying this solitude.  It had turned out to be a perfect time to do this: in early September, when the days are still warm, but the nights are cool, and, since the regular camping season had drawn to a close, the area was nearly completely desolate.  As the second full day drew to a close, I resigned myself to the fact that, while the experience had not and probably would not produce any profound – let alone life-changing – insights, it had still been a satisfying one, and a happy one.  Of course, it is exactly at that point, when one genuinely expects nothing, that one is often rewarded.  And it was my final experience at this retreat that I decided to share at my brother’s wedding.

On that second and final night of my retreat, I was sitting outside of my cabin, silently looking up at the sky.  While gazing at the stars, I recalled reading as a child that the sun is also a star, no different than any of these others that dotted the night sky.  In fact, it was explained that the sun is really undistinguished when it comes to stars, in terms of its size, age, and brightness.  The sun’s brilliance to us is merely an illusion, the result of its greater proximity.  The night was getting cold and very dark, and so I retreated back into my cabin to go to sleep.

But then I woke up in the very early morning hours.  It was still very dark outside, and cold, but I felt a compulsion to leave my cabin and go out for a walk.  I returned to a very tall dune that I had visited earlier in my trip.  It was easy to find, even in the dark, because of the pathway of white sand that led up vertically along one of its faces.  I had scaled the face along this path a day or so earlier, and it had been no easy undertaking, because of the steepness of the climb.  After advancing each couple of meters, I would find myself short of breath and feeling a tightness in the chest that compelled me to rest for a few minutes before continuing on for the next leg of the climb.  But after several of these halting advances, I had managed to reach the top, which afforded a comfortable flat place to sit and to take in a view of the surrounding woods.  Now, in the cold darkness, I repeated this climb, with the same halting, labored advance upwards, until I was finally at the top.  I looked around from my perch, but there was only blackness, and a deathly silence.  For a long stretch of time I sat there, feeling the chill of the air, hearing nothing, and seeing nothing.

Suddenly, the sky began to brighten in the distance, and turned purple.  The enveloping darkness began to disappear, even before the orb of the sun started to arise on the horizon, and as it did so, the world around me began to change.  I could hear sounds: first the random chirping of a solitary bird, which quickly grew to a chorus of songs from many birds.  There was movement, as many of these birds began to take wing.  It was as if the whole world was coming to life.  I began to see brilliant colors where there had only been shades of grey before.  An entire panorama of deep surrounding valleys and tall majestic trees around me became visible.  I realized that each tree had grown tall in a mutual competition to get closer to the sun, and that in fact every single leaf of every tree had oriented itself in the best way to catch the life-sustaining rays of sunlight.  And this experience awakened me to a profound insight: the magnificence of the sun was no illusion at all – it was in fact the source of light and life to a world full of variety and beauty, and this set it apart from most, if not all, of the other stars in the heavens.  And as I reflected upon this, I realized that this truth could be applied to human beings.  While there are many ways that human beings are measured – in terms of intelligence, or physical attributes, or personal wealth – the true measure of a man or a woman is in how many lives they touch, how many people they reach as a source of love and inspiration.  And, while there are many ways to touch people in this way, such as by being a counselor or a teacher, one of the most natural and immediate ways is through marriage.  Because through marriage, one becomes a source of love, comfort, and inspiration to another, and, if children are produced, both partners become such a source to them and, eventually, to the extended family that develops.  After I recounted this story at the wedding, I finished by asking that God bless my brother and his wife in their marriage, and invited the audience to join me in a toast.

And so I had finally vindicated myself as a best man.  But the lesson that I had shared on that night came back to me in a very personal, intense, and immediate way eleven years later, in 2009, when a serious accident landed me in the hospital.  As I lay there, virtually helpless, I was completely dependent on the goodwill of others.  And my angel of mercy came in a most unusual form.  She was a woman who looked like someone who had been raised in a very bad neighborhood, someone who had to fight for everything that she had.  She was rather stout in build, and had a hard, cold countenance that seemed to say “Stay away”.  Had I seen a woman like this during my regular daily travels on the subway, I would have made a point of avoiding her – not out of condescension, but because I would be genuinely afraid to get too close to her.  But this was the woman who – on many if not most of my days that I was in the hospital – cared for me each morning: bathing me, attending to my wounds, and dressing me afterwards.  She did it with a stoic dedication, but also with a gentleness and compassion that I sorely craved at that time, when I felt so damaged, helpless, and lonely.

I was in that hospital for two and half weeks, and one would think that after such an experience, a former patient would want to never return there.  But for me, at least, the opposite was true.  I loved returning to that hospital for follow-up visits: it was like taking a nostalgic visit to a college that one has graduated from.  The time at that institution might have been grueling, and stressful, but the happy outcome bathed all of these memories in a pleasant, nostalgic hue.

I think that I saw her during my very first return visit.  Since it had been only a short time since my release, she recognized me as well.  (I’m sure that it becomes progressively more difficult for hospital caregivers to remember their former charges over time, given the sheer volume of them that they must tend to.)  My face erupted into a spontaneous grin, which she answered in kind, and then, after I rushed up to her, we embraced each other.  I think that tears even welled up in my eyes as I held her close to me.

Were I to see this woman on a subway now, I might still feel hesitant about sitting next to her, but only because now I might feel that I would be unworthy, taking a place alongside one of God’s own elect, an earth angel, a human sun unselfishly radiating love, warmth, and compassion on those who need such sustaining rays the most.

May the Force Breed with You

In my last entry (“Rational Religion”), I shared my conviction that our civilization needs to find a new path to spirituality, which is purged of myth, superstition, empty rituals, and intellectual chicanery, but is not, as a consequence of this purging, sterile, artificial, or dryly intellectual.  The new path, I believe, would have to inspire, and provide higher guidance to one’s life whenever reason comes up short (and perhaps even overrule reason).  What would such a religion look like?  What would its adherents be like, and, perhaps even more importantly, what would be the qualities possessed by its holy men and women?

Every religion, every culture, and every tribe seems to have its holy people, whether these be saints, priests, mystics, spiritual teachers, medicine men, shamans, or witch doctors.  Usually, these are people who have simply answered a personal call to a higher vocation, although in some cases they do seem to possess unusual abilities as well, either as the result of some form of disciplined practice, or simply because they were endowed with special gifts from birth.  Occasionally, as with the Levites of the Old Testament, there is an entire priestly tribe.  In fiction – particularly science fiction – this idea of a race of spiritual adepts appears often, in the form of persons who have psychic abilities because they come from a family line along which these abilities were passed down, from generation to generation.

When I was in my twenties, I began to wonder if it might be possible to create such a priestly tribe.  Could a colony of people set up the conditions under which they not only cultivated a high level of spiritual advancement through natural means (disciplined study and practice), but also augmented this through hereditary means, by ensuring that their descendents had a greater inherent capacity for developing and exercising spiritual proclivities?  The idea fascinated me, and, as only a young and naïve idealist can do, I set about crafting a design for making it possible.

First there was the natural cultivation.  For me, this would simply mean that my colony (or “cult”, or “intentional community”) would dedicate themselves to discovering genuine means for elevating one’s consciousness, and do so both by studying the existing religious and mystical traditions of the world, with a critical eye, distilling truth from fable and empty ritual, and also through independent, open-minded exploration.  I suspect that the most fertile sources for this project from existing traditions would come from Zen, Yoga, and elements of the mystical traditions among each of the major religions, but that is just my own personal bias.  This tribe would have no autocratic spiritual head – no “pope” – and it would have no sacred book, either.  Instead, ideas and practices that had the most merit would survive naturally, as future generations continued to preserve the inspirations and discoveries of certain luminaries among them simply because of their demonstrated merit and effectiveness.

And what of hereditary cultivation?  How did I plan to create a tribe of wizards?  To make this possible, I envisioned a sort of benign eugenics that involved two things: polygamy and sexual selection.  The idea boiled down to these two precepts: every man and woman would be allowed to produce no more than one child of his or her own gender, and every man would be entitled to have more than one wife.

Here’s how it would work in practice:  Suppose each man in the community has three wives.  (Whether this is a rigid ratio, or simply an average among the colony, is immaterial.)  Each wife would be entitled to have one daughter.  The man would similarly be entitled to produce a son, but here is where the eugenics comes in.  Prior to deciding which of his wives will bear the man’s son, each of them must be tested for their “psychic” abilities.  (What this means in practice I’m not really sure:  Telepathy?  Telekinesis?  Clairvoyance?  A combination, with perhaps different weightings assigned to each ability?  Such things would have to be determined by the tribe beforehand, along with suitable tests for measurement, and the appropriate definition might change over the generations, as different abilities were eventually determined to be more relevant, and more important, for the fundamental project of the colony.)  The wife who scored the highest on this test would bear the man’s son, in addition to the daughter that she had already been allowed to conceive with him.  Now since the son in turn will be able to take three wives in the next generation, it becomes clear that his mother, who was the most psychically gifted among his father’s three wives, will be distributing her genetic “footprint” among a much larger posterity than her husband’s two other wives.  This is so because her son will father four children (including a son for the succeeding generation), her daughter will bear either one or two children, while the other two wives’ daughters will each only bear one or two children.  So her genetic posterity passed on to the next generation of the tribe will be at a minimum 25% higher than that of her husband’s two other wives combined, or as much as 3 times higher than theirs collectively.

There are of course some practical complications with this plan, which might cause persons some discomfort to consider.  What of polygamy, for example?  Is this really consistent with a group of people committed to a communal spiritual life?  The idea didn’t bother me at the time (especially if I would one day be one of the founding members of this tribe), because of course there is at least one religion that did practice polygamy in America for an extended period of time, and it didn’t seem to interfere with the fundamental practice of the religion.  And I remembered reading a quote from a woman who had lived under such an arrangement, who said (perhaps jokingly) that she found it was much easier to live with a man when he had to divide his time among two other women.  And so I convinced myself that polygamy would not interfere with the success of my colony.  The other potentially discomforting feature of this plan is sexual selection, as it brings to mind the terrible practice of female infanticide that is so common these days in third world countries.  It is little consolation to say that in my model there would be many more females than males, if any sort of abortion or infanticide is still required.  At the time that I was conducting this little thought experiment, though, I happened to read somewhere that there are certain conditions (whether involving timing, or food intake, or something else, I can’t remember) that make a woman more likely to conceive a child of one particular gender rather than another.  And so again I satisfied myself that my tribe would be able to work this little technicality out without having to resort to brute measures.  (Still another complication might be that the policy of one son per father, and one daughter per mother, would prevent the colony from expanding, because the reproductive rate would not be high enough.  But this policy is not essential to make the general hereditary scheme work.  The only essential part of the mechanism is that the right to produce male offspring is conferred upon specific mothers, based on the criteria established by the tribe.)

Having worked out this model, while on a summer break from college, I decided to run a simulation on my new personal computer (a novelty back in the 1980s), to see how fast my colony would develop the desired traits that would enhance their psychic abilities.  I was pleasantly surprised to see that the trait would become widespread among the tribe within a matter of just a few generations – not only if the trait existed on one particular gene, but even if more than one gene located on separate chromosomes had to appear simultaneously in a single person before the gift could manifest itself.  Overjoyed at this discovery, I was ready to go out and fulfill my duty of becoming one of the founding patriarchs of this new priestly tribe, and seek out several women who might be willing to join me in my noble and holy endeavor.  (I fancied that for my own little “harem”, I would try to choose a woman from each of the major races of peoples, so that the tribe would suitably represent, from the very start, a representative cross section of humanity.)

There were of course some technicalities to attend to.  The commune, or intentional community, would have to have certain codes and rules to abide by, to ensure that the primary mission of spiritual development was being carried out, and these would have to include some form of governance structure.  To prevent inbreeding over time, and excessive isolation from society at large, converts would always be accepted (and of course members would be allowed to leave the community), though as a condition of entry any prospective convert would have to demonstrate a commitment to abide by the rules, demands, and practices of the community.  (This in itself would constitute a form of natural selection, as converts willing to abide by these potentially demanding codes would probably have a greater innate capacity to engage in committed study and intellectual/spiritual development.)  And, in order for the hereditary plan to succeed, it would be prudent to only extend the right of polygamy to males who were born within the tribe, while male converts would be limited to having only a single wife.  As the community grew and expanded over succeeding generations, it would invariably have to branch out and form separate communities, and a level of autonomy would have to be accepted among these, yet some form of productive interaction and exchange (of both people and ideas) between them would have to be encouraged and fostered.  But these details, I imagined, could easily be worked out as the community (or communities) took shape.

Still, as I contemplated the outcome of this project more carefully, I began to realize that potentially serious problems could emerge.  A society in which women outnumbered men by three to one might produce a pernicious “peacock” mentality among the men: an excessive sense of self-worth and entitlement that could engender some unpleasant behavioral characteristics.  And the selective breeding program could result in unintended consequences in the form of genetic traits that are rare in the general population, such as six fingers on each hand, or other mental and physical abnormalities, or a greater susceptibility to certain genetic diseases.  If the program produced a people with abilities that were significantly superior to those of the general population, this could tempt them to develop an unduly exalted sense of themselves, manifesting itself in some form of racism.  Conversely, rather than revering this priestly tribe, and relying upon them for spiritual guidance and counseling, the general population might come to distrust them and fear them because of their special abilities, and even wish to destroy them, like the mutants in the X-Men movies.  And, too, there would always be the risk of a particularly gifted member “going rogue”, and embarking on a malicious path of self-aggrandizement and personal hegemony, like the evil Emperor and Darth Vader characters in the Star Wars movies.

            But ultimately, I realized that there was a much more fundamental flaw in my plan, and that is that it simply couldn’t work.  The program of selective breeding would not produce the results that I intended.  Here is why – I call it the “paradox of the psychic rabbit”:

            Suppose, in nature, that a rabbit was born with innate psychic abilities along the lines that I hoped to select for in my tribe.  It had a “sixth sense” that allowed it to sense when a predator was nearby, and would therefore remain in its burrow, until its intuition told it that the danger had passed.  Now by the conventional laws of natural selection, such a rabbit would invariably have a survival advantage over other rabbits, and would be much more likely to live long enough to produce several offspring.  Within a few generations, this particular trait, with its immense survival advantage, would become widespread among all rabbits.  Consequently, any natural predators in the food chain that depended upon these rabbits to survive would die out, and rabbits would be left with no natural enemies (and probably ultimately die out themselves as a consequence, when overpopulation stripped them of their own food supply).  Of course, if one of the predators came to be endowed with the same psychic trait, it might neutralize the advantage held by its prey.  Then, for the same reason that the trait became widespread in the rabbits, it would become widespread in the predators as well.  Each and every day, a sort of psychic game of potential move and countermove would play out in the minds of these creatures – both predator and prey – before they ever stepped out of their burrows or dens.  We would have an entire animal kingdom of clairvoyants, telepaths, and possibly even creatures with psychokinetic powers, because any of these abilities would confer an immense survival advantage upon the bearer, and hence would become widespread in just a few generations.  Now, anecdotal stories about animals fleeing the site of an earthquake or other natural disaster on the eve of the event notwithstanding, I think it is safe to say that we do not see evidence of widespread psychic powers among the animal kingdom.  And if such a trait would confer an immense survival advantage on a wild animal, it would have certainly done at least as much for any human being so endowed in our prehistoric past, and so, if it was a heritable trait, we all would have been heavily gifted with these abilities by now.

            Sadly, I was forced to concede that psychic abilities cannot possibly exist as a heritable trait which can be passed on genetically, else it would already have happened long ago.  This means that if they do genuinely occur among human beings, then it must be the result of some spiritual practice or discipline, or else a consequence of some external set of circumstances that galvanized an ability which actually is innate within all of us.  Or, as professional magicians and illusionists have been contending for centuries, these abilities have never genuinely existed, and those who claim to have possessed them have invariably been quacks, frauds, confidence men, or lunatics.

            Ah, the shattered dreams of youth.  Having faced these sobering facts during that particular summer, so many years ago, I solemnly put away my hopes of being the patriarch of a modern Levite tribe, and resigned myself to the fact that I would have to return to college and my (more earth-bound) studies when the new term commenced.  My belief in the need for a new, rational religion has survived the decades, but any fantasies about a priestly tribe perished with that psychic rabbit.

Rational Religion

It has not been a good time for religion.  Scandals involving abuse of children by Catholic priests, terrorist acts committed by Islamist fundamentalists, and support for the continued spread of settlements in Palestine by a government in Israel propped up by religious conservatives are just some of the more prominent examples of acts that seem to fly in the face of what religion is supposed to be all about: cultivating an enlightened relationship with the Creator that guides our values, goals, and everyday actions by providing a moral compass.   But has it ever been a good time for religion?  Of course, it could be argued that it is religious extremism and/or the abuse of power by those in positions of religious authority that are the causes of all of these problems, and not religion itself.  But some would counter that this is being too conciliatory: that there is in fact something fundamentally wrong with believing in myths that have no basis in fact or reason, and that it is this adherence to belief in absurdities that is the rottenness at the core of religion and that makes irrational behavior almost inevitable as a consequence.  The goal of the Enlightenment, in the 17^th and 18^th centuries, was to replace religion with reason, and bring about a better society as a consequence.  Perhaps the strongest rebuttal to a complete renunciation of religion is that the project of the Enlightenment ultimately failed.  The cataclysmic wars and mass murders of the 20^th century were not caused by religious zealots, and the underlying beliefs and world views of the leaders responsible for these (to the extent that they had any), were based upon secular ideologies, some of which ostensibly had science at their base.

The project of nobler living through science – if such a project ever was seriously pursued – seems to be stumbling, and may have already failed.  I have written elsewhere about my own cynicism about recent advances in physics – particularly in its quest to find “a theory of everything”.  And my opinion of the sciences of psychology and particularly psychiatry is just about as low.  Contemporary psychiatry seems to favor the administration of mood-altering drugs as the cure of choice for mental and emotional disturbances, and the distinction between these and the illegal drugs which are abused by addicts seems to be a difference in degree, rather than in kind.

Is there a direct relationship between a rational – rather than faith-based – belief system and a stronger moral character?  I must say that I have met and known persons who believe some pretty incredible things – based upon their particular religious faiths – who are very good people, and who seem to be incredibly rational in their life choices and activities.  (In fact many would argue that this is to be expected, since it is the very belief – even if it might be illusory – in some sort of ultimate divine reward and punishment that causes the religious to live more moral – and perhaps even well-ordered – lives.)  And I remember reading a study once on the brainwashing of persons who had been prisoners in the Korean War.  The study found that those who had strong religious faiths prior to the experience tended to be more resistant to such programs, while agnostics and atheists tended to be more susceptible.  It seems that there is truth to the old maxim, “he who believes in nothing can be made to believe in anything”.  I remember, too, a recovering heroin addict who I knew many years ago, and that the one really strong personality trait that stood out was that he was a person who didn’t believe in anything, and had the deepest contempt for anybody who did.  In the absence of a faith in some type of deeper, more sublime happiness that will be found in this world and/or the next, I suppose that all is left is a sort of hedonism.  One would have to be content with finding pleasures of a worldlier sort, and this could tempt one to follow either the Nietzschean project of becoming bold enough and strong enough to find the sources of these and exploit them, or the path of the addict, who attempts to produce his or her daily joys through “shortcuts”, often involving artificial means.

In my own life, I have explored a number of alternative religious pathways, and have ultimately come away feeling dissatisfied and disillusioned with each one, particularly when the pathway has involved belonging to a formal religion.  There is the inevitable hierarchy, their need for money, and the eventual discovery on my part that this money is being used for other things than merely supporting the spiritual development of the flock, or the alleviation of suffering in the world.  But I have never been able to adopt instead the mindset of the atheist, or even the agnostic.  It seems to me unthinkable that intelligent beings could exist in this vast universe – really a miracle in its own right – without some greater Intelligence, something that is capable of comprehending the fullest extent of this existence – across the limitless stretches of both time and space.  I know that efforts over the centuries for formal proofs along these lines have repeatedly fallen short, but this does not dissuade me from my own personal conviction that there is a vastly superior intelligence out there, which probably coincides with that of the Creator of this existent universe.  And I believe just as strongly that what we do in this existence matters: that in the great scheme of things it is better to be good rather than not good.  Now this second tenet really does require a leap of faith, and I cannot defend it on any logical grounds.  I can only appeal to admittedly piecemeal support of it from personal experience, as I have seen, repeatedly, evidences of the “law of karma” – of “what goes around comes around” – when actions of mine or of those around me have led to consequences which either suitably chastened, or suitably rewarded, the author of them.

Is it possible to have a rational religion, or is this an oxymoron?  Can one create a religion devoid of antiquated myths, empty rituals and ceremonies, and the intellectual chicanery that accompanies much of occultism and religious mysticism, without going down the sterile path of scientific enquiry?  Such a religion would, I think, have to be more than just a synthesis of what is perceived to be the best of all existing religious views.  It would have to go beyond these, and beneath them, to the genuine, vibrant core of human spirituality, purged of the dross of cultural biases, prejudices, and mythology.  It would have to be passionate and dispassionate at the same time: thoroughly, meticulously, rooting out the “noble lies” of past religious endeavor, while finding something that would truly uplift, inspire, and provide a vital, sustaining root for the aspirations and endeavors of modern humanity.

Perhaps it is time for the appearance of another Moses, Buddha, Jesus, or Mohammed: a prophet who could guide our souls into the next age of modernity.  The contemporary world would be much more demanding of such a prophet.  But there is a gaping, spiritual need to be fulfilled, and it is perhaps vital to the ultimate survival of our species that we find a higher direction to guide us in what seems to be the final, most critical phases of the evolution of our collective civilization.

In my next blog entry, I will describe the plan that I had developed as a young man for this project, but which I ultimately realized was foolhardy, and certain of future failure.

The New World Order?

In my occupation as an economist, I have acquired a nickname among my peers:  They call me “Dr. Doom”.  Anyone who has read this blog would probably feel that the nickname is a very appropriate one for me, but I actually earned it for a different reason.  As part of my job, I am called upon to give periodic outlooks to various audiences on the state of the economy, and I was always among the ranks of the extreme pessimists back at the start of the Great Recession, when I predicted that it would be a long and severe one, and then again, at the beginning of the recovery, when I predicted that it would be long and painful.  Now of course I wasn’t alone in making these predictions, and in fact the general outlook of most economists was rather bleak, but my relatively extreme pessimism, which has been rather relentless for the past six years, apparently set me apart in the eyes of my audiences.  It probably didn’t help that I took an equally dim long-term view, contending that unless our society makes some fundamental changes – reining in the national debt, raising the educational standards of our next generation, and making significant investments in replacing and improving our aging infrastructure – we are heading down a path of inexorable decline, and even crisis.  Again, I am certainly not the only one who has said such things, but apparently, to my audiences, mine has been one of the more shrill voices of warning. 

I have sometimes joked that the Great Recession was caused by a number of large companies trying to make a lot of money without actually producing anything, and the weak recovery has been caused by manufacturers trying to produce things without using any people.  This is hyperbole, of course, but as I look at the dismal state of employment – not just in the United States but also in parts of Europe and elsewhere in the world – I can’t help but think back to a remark supposedly once made by Henry Ford: that he liked to have a sizable, decently-paid workforce so that there would be people who could afford to buy his cars.  Such a sentiment seems quaint these days.

Now as an economist, I would be ostracized by my peers if I suggested that we should resort to artificial means to create jobs, such as paying people to build pyramids, or to dig holes and then fill them up again.  Still, as technology increasingly enables us to rely upon machinery to produce our most important goods and services, I can’t help but imagine a future world where everything is produced by machines – or at least all of the most important essentials, such as food, shelter, and home appliances.  To take this thought experiment even further, imagine that all of these machines were owned by a single corporation, or even a single person.  What would the rest of humanity have to do to procure these products?  One scenario might be that the world would be regulated by a socialist government, in which the products were allocated to those who needed them.  But would the owner of the machinery producing these tolerate such a system, and if so, why?  It would seem that the balance of power would lie squarely in favor of this owner, particularly if the machines were the sole producers of weapons, in addition to the other vital goods and services.  If not – if the owner were compelled to distribute everything for free by a government with the military capability to do so – then for all intents and purposes the production facilities would really be “owned” by that government.

So let us assume – either by ownership or by force – that these production facilities are controlled by a single entity: in fact a single person.  The socialist regime would then only come about as a result of a sort of voluntary altruism on the part of that person, and the rest of the world would be comprised of an entire population on the dole.  More likely, the procurement of vital goods would come at a price, and one that was set by him or her, on very monopolistic terms.  And since nobody else would be contributing to the production of these things, the ability to pay this “price” would become problematic.  The owner would literally have the lives of everyone else in his or her hands.

It reminds me of an episode from that classic television series, The Twilight Zone, in which a young boy has been endowed with god-like powers.  The world has been reduced to a handful of persons – his immediate family and their neighbors – who have been terrorized into a craven submission, endeavoring to only say and do things that will not displease him, lest they meet the unpleasant fate of all of those others who ran afoul of him.  Even if our ultimate capitalist is not quite so malevolent, his total power over others will compel them to find ways to offer something of “value” to him or her, in order to receive the necessaries of existence in return.  Now this may simply involve – at least for the most part – benign forms of entertainment or personal service – but it is hard to imagine anything else that could be offered.

In some ways, this actually does seem to be the trajectory that we are on.  In America, the proportion of manufacturing jobs has been steadily declining, while that of service jobs has increased, and a third type of employment, in which persons are compensated for thinking (e.g., as executives, consultants, accountants, engineers, and other professionals), has rapidly grown.  We seem to be moving toward a two-tiered society, in which “cognitive” employment and more skilled service jobs are well compensated (although, as satirized in movies such as Office Space, even these jobs can devolve into degrading, poorly paid lackey positions), while lower-level service and unskilled manufacturing jobs receive very meager wages.  And of course, our most successful entertainers – including professional athletes – are extremely well paid.  Another form of “entertainer”, the drug dealer, has become a prominent figure in the underclass and the underground economy (and those who control the production of these drugs are often at the heads of powerful private empires in foreign countries), while the less successful members of this group make up the huge prison population that is now a part of the American social system.  Other less successful and less powerful “entertainers”, such as strippers and prostitutes, lead lives that are only at one or two removes from those of prisoners and the destitute. 

One of my vices is watching American court TV programs, and based on my viewing of these, I’ve come to the unhappy conclusion that a whole social milieu has developed among the ranks of the unemployed and underemployed, particularly among young men.  One of the most common court cases involves a dispute between a young woman and a young man (usually an ex-boyfriend), in which she has given him a large sum of money, and contends that it was a loan, while he argues that it was a gift.  Almost invariably, the young men involved in these cases have smirks on their faces, indicating a sense of pride in what they have done, as if separating naïve young women from their money has become a new sport among their peers.  These “players”, who apparently have few avenues, or motivations (or both) to find productive employment, have resorted to this form of non-violent predation to demonstrate their intellectual prowess and social mastery over women.  Meanwhile, the number of unwed mothers continues to skyrocket within these social classes, and it is often the government, rather than the fathers of these children, that provide the necessary additional support to care for the children.

Of course, it is dangerous to wax too nostalgic about the “good old days” when most people were engaged in genuinely productive activities.  Primitive farm labor, grueling and often dangerous factory jobs in the industrial revolution, and the sweat shops that exist in developing nations today can hardly be regarded as the most ideal avenues for human beings to be producers of value.  And while drug dealing, scamming, and dodging paternal responsibilities are certainly not ways that young men should be occupying themselves, is it worse than being enlisted to kill other people, in military service?

If the trajectory of the modern economy is moving us away from one involving producing things, in the conventional sense, then we must take a clear-eyed view of what exactly it is moving us toward.  Will it continue to evolve into a two-tiered society, with thinkers, capitalists and successful entertainers at the top, and drug dealers, welfare recipients, scammers, and convicted felons at the bottom?  Is this an inevitable trajectory?  Or is a future economy possible in which everyone – or nearly everyone – can find avenues for providing something of value that will ensure a level of compensation commensurate with a dignified life?  It admittedly sounds like a utopian hope, but for me, contemplating it at least gives me the strength to face the increasingly dystopian world that seems to be unfolding, even in “affluent” countries such as America.