Happy New Year

Reflecting on the problems which arose during the year ending has been and remains, for me, the foundation of hope that the new year will be, in fact, happy. The subtext is "it can't be worse", but I know by now, having been through this cycle 53 times, that of course it can be, and for many years has been. So, usually hope has come tinctured with a dash of anxiety, a sense that there are likely problems awaiting me that I cannot foresee, problems which in context will be as or more profound as those daunting me at year-end. But it feels different this year.

Why ? Because for the first time in a long while, I end this year and start the new one "happy". I said it to myself recently, "I am happy", and doing so shocked me because I can't really say I am much familiar with that. The very term - happiness - has always seemed to me to be a seductive and deceitful trap, one in which the bait is itself the net which falls on us, sooner or later. Our expectations can contain the seeds of success or failure, satisfaction or disappointment, hope or despair, all at the same time; if this is true, then it must also be true that our various states of mind are a function of our expectations more than anything else. What shapes our expectations ? The desire to control events, to engineer outcomes. It stands to reason, then, that one way to moderate the ebb and flow of happiness and despair is to moderate the instinct to control.

Relinquishing control is easier said than done for most of us, because control is the first tool we reach for in response to fear. What do we fear, usually ? For me, and I suspect for most of us, we fear that we are irrelevant, that our lives don't matter. So we end up spending most of our time figuring out half-baked schemes to makes ourselves feel, at least to ourselves, important. When the schemes don't work, we're not only disappointed that we didn't achieve the marker of relevance we desired, but we've managed to add to the store of references supporting the conclusion that we don't, in fact, matter, and moreover, that we shouldn't. But it's what we do : year after year, plan this or the other project for success - projects to proclaim to ourselves that our lives are significant.

I believe that the reason this year seems different to me is that because I have grown spiritually this year (however modest and incomplete), I do already feel significant (enough) without having any need to create self-relevance. Significant how ? In all candor and with no embarrassment, it seems evident to me that the less I think about myself the way I always have, as an independent albeit vulnerable being solely responsible for crafting my world and a failure if I don't, the richer life seems. Indeed, I am coming to learn by experience that "to be spiritually minded is life and peace" (Romans 8:6).

But "happy" ? Yes, and one reason is that I've learned that I'm the guy He's referring to : "...that the works of God should be made manifest in him." (John 9:3). Another is that I am blessed with good kids that know I love them and that I have done the best I can for them. Another is that I've learned to truly recognize, accept, and reciprocate the love of my wife. Indeed, one of the prayers I've recited for awhile is "Help me to learn love"; that prayer, too, is being answered. I feel fortunate to say that, to say all of this. Feeling blessed is an excellent way to feel happy. It no longer seems that complicated.

So, I can now genuinely say, Happy New Year !

a real Christmas

Admittedly, religiosity is a state of mind. Faith, however, is not. As one new to it, I am learning that while there cannot be faith without doubt, belief can also be a matter of certainty; it is becoming evident to me that faith grows, not linearly towards bedrock fact, but with ever more frequent moments of certainty which more than balance, more than offset, doubt. I experienced one such moment certainty yesterday. I saw the face of God in my children, mother, aunts, nephew, cousins. And I felt the love of the Christ of the Trinity in their presence. My children, and my nephew, are living examples of Rahner's "anonymous christians". But my mother, cousins, aunts, who have lived lives blessed with faith throughout, visibly and audibly (to me) manifest the grace of God in their essential being. I've always known they were good people, and I always strived (and failed) to be like them. I know why now : I have not lived as they have, though I could have and chose not to, having consciously decided to walk away from God in anger. While I revel in my newfound piety, I have much catching up to do, even as I realize to do so is impossible because I cannot relive my life. One of the damaging consequences of my choices is that my kids were not raised with religious consciousness; but while I've missed much of the joy which a life of faith brings to those who believe in Christ, maybe it's not too late for them. Frank the evangelist ? It's probably the best legacy I can provide for them, the best way to ensure a chance for the sort of blessed lives I witnessed yesterday. What did I see ? I saw true faith lived. Not just believed, internalized, but lived.

purpose

Today, all the feelings of foreboding associated with Christmas returned, occasioned by my firm's second annual Christmas lunch. For 16 years now, since 1993, Christmas lunch, indeed the entire holidays season, has been a rueful time for me, because I associate it with my father's death in December of that year. He did alot for me - he made me walk. Without his commitment, 2 hours every night for 12 or 13 years, to engage in difficult, brutal, physically and emotionally exhausting strength-on-strength exercises, my legs against his arms and shoulders, I would never have walked. I owe him my life. And I am in debt to my mother and brothers for sacrificing any semblance of normal family life in favor of our nightly contest of wills to make my legs strong enough to carry me along, albeit haltingly, these 53 years. And I benefitted mightily otherwise by learning what force of will can accomplish. I can't help but think that over these 16 years, my willfulness, my power of will (if you will), feels progressively weaker. Yet, I know it's still there, it really is the only strength I have, and it's as strong as anybody's. Even now.

Today's lunch was meaningful. We have a group whose identity is slowly developing into its own, distinct from the old firm. I spoke the blessing, for the first time in my life, and for the first time in my life I meant every word of it. Our group really does seem to be developing the sense of belonging critical to any committed enterprise.

Long ago, I sensed that I affected people positively; I suppose that they drew some degree of inspiration from my perseverance. Through the years, I lost that, and my life diminished. Now, faith in God, the God of Christ and the Holy Spirit, is growing in me a sense of purpose, and it has nothing to do with my wants, goals, etc. Rather, I am coming to the view that all the pain and deprivation in my life has value only to the extent to which it serves to demonstrate to me and to others that God is present in us, in me. God's grace is in the honesty we have for ourselves and others and in the consideration we exercise for others, lived in selflessness; this must be what we call love, isn't it ? And when people see those attributes truly lived (however fleetingly), they recognize it, and it changes them, it brings a bit of grace into them. Maybe that's what my purpose is, what it's been the whole time, whether I was up to the task or not. Maybe we all share that same purpose; some's circumstances bring them to the realization easier than others.

I'll bet that my dad thought his purpose in life was to make me walk. He did what he said out to do. For most of my life I thought of my own purpose negatively - if I had any purpose at all, it was to avoid failure, to survive, and to somehow provide a foundation for my kids so that they wouldn't fail. Maybe I could have avoided many problems by knowing that there is a positive reason for my existence after all - to demonstrate that life lived with God's grace triumphs over all the obstacles we think we have. I have alot of catching up to do to fulfill my purpose.

With my lumbar spine now joing my cervical spine in the herniation sweepstakes, I could barely wak out of the restaurant. Nonetheless, I was contented and secure in the knowledge that I had a place among people who valued me and wanted me to be among them. I saw one of the folks who departed from us en masse 9 years ago, and despite the many millions he's been given over those years, he looked miserable. I guess there's never enough money if it's money not truly earned. It's a bit of a shock to me to realize that my life, for all its desolations, must be considered blessed insofar as I'm happy; if it is, it's due entirely to the grace bestowed upon me from God, and I know it. That other guy doesn't know that. I'm the lucky guy, not him.

land of the free

I am convinced that many of our problems stem from freedom - abuse of freedom, and fear of freedom. Western society has materially recreated the world to its specifications, almost completely obviating our need to tend to survival and freeing us to exercise choice in virtually every aspect of our existence : we each define ourselves individually and socially, we each ponder and decide which philosophies suit our psychologies, we each determine what it is that constitutes our happiness. The modern emphasis on the primacy of the individual - the valuation of rights over obligations, for example - has arisen to occupy, indeed compel, our attention in the absence of any real need to consider ourselves, for the sake of survival, as part of a community. But maybe human consciousness isn't ready, has not satisfactorily evolved, yet enough to keep pace with our relative triumph over our materiality. Rather, we when given the opportunity of complete freedom seem to value only more materiality, more physicality, as the proper end of our choices. Thus, when freed to live life by our own design, many of us devolve to sex and wealth as objects of our interest. This, to me, devalues freedom. And we - on a private, individual basis - know it. we know better. And that knowledge makes our devaluation of freedom, our poor choices, abuses of freedom; much of our personal regrets, resentments, failures, are outcroppings of our inability to use freedom to become the people we know we should be rather than the people we allow ourselves to be. And some of the idiotic manifestions of freedom - we all know them, they're all around us in our culture - scare others who, when they see the flamboyant choices of others (mostly the recreationalists who think that life is a party), conclude that they are being left behind somehow in life's contest to see who can be the happiest, and therefore think that the best way all around is to shut down everybody else's exercise of (bad) choice. There is in our society awareness of the means for development of humanity toward the horizon of higher consciousness which is humanity's end, but in my view we are in danger of losing that awareness through simple inattention while we are otherwise focused on celebrating our materiality. By accident of rhetoric it seems that the fearful devoted to shutting down freedom altogether have appropriated the language of freedom to do so - the Palins, and hannity, etc., who always seem to be "scared" of something, and indeed I suppose they are. But of the wrong thing.

Thanksgiving

I am thankful for my son's life. Thanks to God for giving Kevin a chance to live his life.
I have been haunted by Thanksgiving since I was 14 years old. I recall that on Thanksgiving in 1970, announcing from my customary backseat-right position on the way to my grandparents for dinner, that I had nothing to be thankful for. 3 days later, my grandfather died, unexpectedly, at age 61. Of course, I felt responsible. I still do. But the episode taught me that my thinking or feeling something does not make it right, and that focusing on my problems obscures appreciation of my (considerable) blessings. And it taught me to remember these lessons, so easy to forget or rationalize away, on Thanksgiving. Now, I am haunted by my mistakes - my failings as a parent chief among them, along with the cavalier self-pity demonstrated so long ago from the backseat of my family's car, which might have had something to do with those failings (and many others). This year, more than any other, I feel real thanksgiving - for my mother and brother, my kids and their love, my wife and her love, true friends, partners who respect and protect me, Ashes. But now, too, for my faith in God, the joy which comes with it, and maybe even something else which comes with faith - the loss of a bit of that focus on self.

proof ?

As unlikely as it may be, answered prayers seems to me to be powerful evidence, in the mind of the prayor, that someone is doing the answering. And it's not the prayor. It's not proof, alone. But when one realizes that that for which one prays occurs, and for no good reason beyond the prayers, it is difficult to not feel utter joy at the realization that faith does allow one to "prove" what one believes. Astonishing.

fpa progress report

I am doing a somewhat better job at work because I am working harder, which is the key to everything - not just work. As a result, I am feeling better. I am working harder because I prayed for help to do what I needed to do.
My son Kevin has expressed belief in a God of some sort. I have been praying that he find faith.
It may not be the case but it sure does feel like answered prayers.
My newfound faith is challenged daily, not only by the circumstances of my life but by me, directly and consciously. So far, it's sometimes weakened but it's never absent, and over time it's strengthened in response to each challenge, each day, each internal conversation about whether I am engaging in wish-fulfillment, as my friend says. I think that every time I affirm my faith, I end up with more faith.
This faith has helped me. That too is a powerful argument for faith; but my faith is in the God of the Trinity, and a faith that is defined by devotion to God, not to self. So feeling better is no longer what this is about for me. It's about trying to be true to the good, and true to a view of life as an element of a larger reality rather than an end in itself. the collateral benefit of this philosophy is that I feel better. Close enough.

Nothing Christlike about it

My immersion in theology and biblical criticism has been one of the most intellectually thrilling events of my life. The reading has improved my faith, not weakened it. Faith has improved my life, crutch though it may be. So I am satisfied that my religious turn this year has been truly beneficial, and I have every intention to continue to explore and deepen my faith. That said, it should not have been surprising to me that in only 10 months I've become deeply disappointed in Catholicism as an institution. It appears that I've returned to the Church just in time to witness its inexorable movement to alienate/exclude all westerners who do not accept a subservience to a 17th-century institutional order. As it welcomes the ultra-conservatives of SSPX, it seeks to divide the anglicans by siphoning off its right wing unhappy about the women and gay clergy issues, and to slowly move to eviscerate the liturgical reforms of the Second Vatican Council. It's as though the Church does not want anyone whose views would require some degree of flexibility on institutional as opposed to theological matters. Once agai it is proving that the Catholic Church is about itself, not the faith it proclaims. The term "anti-Chirst" is bandied about freely these days (mostly by Fox folks and the radio haters); somebody ought to consider literal application of the term to the Church's attitude about its relationship to its people and its God.

capitalism versus government

Much of what passes for public debate these days is tiresome rhetoric about socialism, taxes, government takeovers, etc., as though the goal of the current government is to destroy capitalism and install stalinist control of American life. The linchpin is reliance on Reagan's dictum, "The Government is not the solution, it's the problem". Couple that with tax cuts and you have the entire Republican party program (with some anti-abortion and anti-gay spice for the neanderthals, who like their politics hot and nasty). They count on the reality that most of the U.S. population really considers itself to be living far better than they expected (the joys of living on debt) and thus consider themselves part of the producing class sought to be destroyed by evil, stalinist taxes; that, and the American creed that the promotion of self-interest is a virtue above all others. The result is what's happening now : government's attempts to solve problems are being assailed as attacks on "liberty" and "freedom" [presumably, the freedom to go into more debt aping the lifestyles of the real beneficiaries of our system, the top 1% whose tax cuts amount to real money]. What they don't recognize, and nobody's saying, is that government only comes into a problem when the money-making apparatus can't or won't address the problem, in most cases because its own excesses created the messes that government must address because no one else will. Our society gives almost unchecked rein to capitalism, but people here don't see it that way. Rather, all they see is government seeking to fix problems which must be fixed if we are to continue to function as a free wealthy country, and rather than seeing such as the cavalry coming in at the last minute to save us, government is seen as a threat to the continued hoggery to which our society has become accustomed. Freedom to be greedy. Freedom to ignore the poor. Freedom to bully immigrants. The land of the free, indeed.

Autonomy versus Democracy

People who complain about the slowness and cumbersome nature of governmental bureaucracies as compared to the efficiency of private organizations are overlooking a major factor in the operational sector of each. Private organizations and businesses are much simpler to run than the government. Decision making is usually handled by a single individual or small board whose goal is simple: make a profit. Of course there are lots of factors that go into reaching that goal, but the goal never changes, and ownership really only has to answer to itself. What they say goes, and opinions from the smaller players, such as low level employees, carry almost no weight at all.
This is almost the opposite tack of the operations of a Democratic government. Governmental leaders are responsible for making sure that the rights of every member of society are not infringed upon. The smallest players, in theory, have as much right to influence a decision as the biggest groups. Minority concerns are some of the highest priorities in a true Democracy. We cannot neglect those who disagree with us (as long as they aren't anarchists, proposing the abolition of the government). The real challenge is to determine whether a policy leads to freedom of choice for the constituency or does it trend toward the oppression by one group over another or even anarchy.
By the nature of its stated intentions, Democracy is a slow and laborious process, and not an easy task. Virtually every issue requires a compromise between opposing factions. Freedom for the populace is a much more difficult goal than profit. People have to learn to be patient with the operations of good government.

progress ?

Here's a quote from 1968 to show how far we've come as a nation. This was from a speeach made by Robert F. Kennedy in 1968 : “Too much and too long, we seem to have surrendered community excellence and community values in the mere accumulation of material things. Our gross national product … if we should judge America by that – counts air pollution and cigarette advertising, and ambulances to clear our highways of carnage. It counts special locks for our doors and the jails for those who break them. It counts the destruction of our redwoods and the loss of our natural wonder in chaotic sprawl. It counts napalm and the cost of a nuclear warhead, and armored cars for police who fight riots in our streets. It counts Whitman’s rifle and Speck’s knife, and the television programs which glorify violence in order to sell toys to our children.
“Yet the gross national product does not allow for the health of our children, the quality of their education, or the joy of their play. It does not include the beauty of our poetry or the strength of our marriages; the intelligence of our public debate or the integrity of our public officials. It measures neither our wit nor our courage; neither our wisdom nor our learning; neither our compassion nor our devotion to our country; it measures everything, in short, except that which makes life worthwhile.” It was true in 1968, and it's immeasurably more incisive now.

"I'm just saying"

Evidently "I'm just saying" has become a rhetorical device allowing irresponsible speakers to say whatever bombastic and incendiary idiocy they think will excite the giggling mob which is their audience. For example, Beck's "What will God think is worse, sticking a needle into the brain of a 8 1/2 month old fetus and sucking it out, or breaking a terrorist's arm ? I'm just saying" presents a facially invalid equivalence (because it is not factually grounded in reality in any sense) and the closing device provides an implication of validity distracting the listener from the statement's fundamental fallacy. It's a way of communicating to the unreflective that the speaker is bravely going where only brave leaders go, where sheep have not been lead before, but where they should be if they were smart and brave like the speaker. Of course, the sheep are already there; that's why it's said, but the device gives the sense that the utterance is considered beyond the pale but shouldn't be, thus making the sheep conclude they they too are out ahead of those who disagree with them. That it is poor grammar just makes it all the more attractive to the sheep; we can predict that soon everyone whose opinions consist of only those fed to them by Beck, Hannity, etc will be using the expression constantly (and inappropriately). So in addition to coursening our ethical discourse, these guys are contributing to the deliquency of our language. I'm just saying.

Weakness

Obama's winning the Nobel Peace prize is an act of communion by the civilized world with that aspect of America which is hopeful, charitable and loving. But his critics see it as a "reward for America's weakness". What are these folks scared of ? America as part of a better world, as opposed to its dominating a fractured, dispirited one ? At some point an understandable interest in keeping tax rates as low as possible is no longer a valid basis for opposition to a government acting consistently to strengthen what's best in the country as a community of diverse people. We should be pleased that we are being encouraged by the rest of the world to lead the world, not just one country's top earners. Fear and selfishness are the very essence of weakness.

The Ultimate Reality

When asked by a student, "What is the ultimate reality?", the zen master simply pointed.

What he was saying is that this is the ultimate reality, the one we have now. Here, on this planet, in this form of existence, at this level of awareness. It is far beyond anything we could have ever imagined in our pre-awareness state, before birth. Simple consciousness is clearly our greatest gift, life itself.
Do what you will, but learn how to better make consciousness work for you. That means being clearsighted about things, about attaining an even keel, and recognizing within yourself the infinite limit of your knowledge. Everything in life is phenomenal. Pay attention.

Antipodean Notes

At times past, being far away from home afforded the opportunity to see our lives, looking back at that life from far away, as though others, not us, are living them; physical distance created psychic distance, too. No more. Communications technology now is such that even vast distances mean nothing. But even beyond that, being 10,000 miles away did not produce the changed perspective I expected. Wondering why lead me to thinking that now, on the downside of the sine curve of life, it's time, not distance, which is the predicate to seeing one's life from a perspective removed from life's preoccupations. The shock of distance, this time, produced the realization that while my current view of myself did not change, what I think about myself is vastly different than what I saw as a younger man, when physical distance did cause me to see myself differently than I did when in my own environment. Put differently, when I was young the simple fact of distance caused me to reassess whether the life I was living, back there where I lived, was satisfying; invariably, that self-assessment caused me to adjust my thinking in beneficial ways not likely to have occurred to me had I not so radically changed in point of space. However now, a change of space did not spur any changes; rather, it caused me to realize that some of the important presuppositions guiding my conception of myself as a younger man were now not only no longer important, but just flat wrong. Had I been able to see this when I was younger, things would quite likely have turned out vastly different for me. My myopic view did not change in space as much as I thought it did; otherwise, I would have come to the realizations which I now know time, not space, afforded me. I guess there's just no getting a jump on hindsight.

Considering Frankie's most recent blog concerning the rise of rhetoric over dialectic brings me to address something that has been bothering me since Barack Obama was inaugurated. It concerns a particular Op-Ed columnist, Charles Krauthammer. I read Mr. Krauthammer's editorials in our hometown paper, the Times-Picayune, on a regular basis, probasbly twice a week on average. Mr. Krauthammer clearly owns the talent of a first-rate writer. However, virtually every article by him since the inauguration has been an ad hominem attack on our president.
Now, to his credit, Mr. Krauthammer acknowledges Mr. Obama as an excellent public speaker. But if you know anything about black people at all, saying that one speaks well is tantamount to a veiled insult. And that has been the extent of Mr. Krauthammer's praise for a man that I consider capable of becoming one of the greatest presidents this country has ever had. Am I that wrong about Mr. Obama's character? Is he that poorly fitted to be the most powerful man in the world? The columnist considers the president's message of hope and reconciliation to be nothing more than flim-flammery. He considers the president to be a moron in matters of foreign relations. He calls our president a hypocrite and a deceiver.
Is this all because our president has made overtures of peace to Muslim countries? Is it because our president strives to provide an example of the power of forgiveness that Mr. Krauthammer calls him naive? Is it because Mr. Obama is trying to force much needed change in the insurance and banking industries?
I can understand, and even agree with, some of the criticisms of President Obama. But a constant drone of personal attacks? Mr. Krauthammer clearly has an agenda, one that coincides with the interests of banks, insurance companies and the Republican party. I have a strong hunch that he is being bankrolled by at least one of those groups. I believe that he is prostituting his talent in favor of the biggest spenders.
Because President Obama employs the nice guy approach, certainly does not mean that he is weak. Other countries (and big corporations) cannot walk all over us unless we let them do it. Offering the olive branch of peace is not a sign of surrender, but a valid indication of a willingness to work together toward more desirable outcomes than the ones we currently face. The Republican zealots, with all of their Christian rhetoric, really should acknowledge that the man of peace is truly blessed. And if President Obama has fooled everyone except the Republicans, and he turns out to be evil in the final judgment of history, he is certainly using the methodology of a good Christian.

rhetoric over dialectic

I've been trying to think of a way of articulating a unity of the various currents which make societal discourse these days , such as it is, at the worst dangerous, at best irrelevant. It's not enough to identify the ills of the world, for the ingredients at work now have been among us all along, all through our past - the spinners of truth, the grabbers, the haters and the hatemongers, the fearful and those who manipulate their fears. And it has always been the case that we follow, inevitably, a course through history which again and again refuses to conform to our predictions of it, refuses to be the world which gets a little better, a little easier to be in, because we think we've made it better. we might have been right about that for awhile, it might have been better overnight, but tomorrow the problem changes into something else, something we haven't addressed or something that at first appears unamenable to improvement. But that is how history moves, it is how our lives move, and how reality unfolds moment to moment - one thing prompts reactions which cause a change to a third thing, and so on forever. And it's also how much of rational thought throughout history, including philosophy and science, proceeds -the smart guys call this the dialectic. The heirs of the Enlightenment called it progress. It was the means by which we moved from one problem, solved or not, to another; or one thought, logically met or not, to another, third thought. Underlying the dialectical method of thinking, however, required the rational good faith of the participants, a shared commitment to honesty in discourse, and of necessity a mutual absolute commitment to accepting the movement of the terms of discourse as logically compelled. Some of us liked to couch the terms of analysis as ideology - as reflective of a larger systemic conception; others liked to keep it on the empirical, the practical. But all, all who mattered, honored the terms - truth prevails, because truth needs no help, and if it's true it will be seen, known, as true. Both sides of the public debate argued different sides of agreed problems. That is no longer true. Now, what we read and hear in the public sphere is all just rhetoric, communicated in staccato fashion and designed to make a short-term impression, without regard to the larger framings of problems. There are many reasons - rapid communications, a distracted, lazy, largely contented public, and the appearance of opportunistic entertainers masquarading as political sages. But the most troubling reasons are 1) the failure of the commitment to honesty when voicing views for public consumption, and 2) the shift away from solving problems and towards simply being heard so the other guy won't be, for short-term gain. If one's purpose is nothing more than to "win the day", and the intended audience can be counted on to know not much more than what one says, then one can say anything and have a good chance that it will be accepted by somebody, maybe lots of somebodies. If one does this long and loud enough, one's intended audience truly becomes captive because it knows only that which you say, and before you know it, you have a political movement : witness the tea parties, townhall meetings, the bad dream that is Sarah Palin. Rhetoric has replaced dialectic as the means by which public discourse, and therefore history, moves.

Teaching logic in schools

If ever you could say that I am on a crusade about anything, it is that I think we should begin teaching logic and reasoning skills in our primary and secondary schools. The current political climate should be all the proof that we need to show that this country's reasoning skills are truly deficient. Frankie's point in response to an earlier post that anything can be reasoned is well taken. However, there is a significant difference between reasoning and reasoning well. We could do no better by our children than to teach them how to reason well.
The age of seven is considered to be the age of reason for the average child. Why do we wait until they are in college to even offer classes in these subjects? Why do we hide one of the greatest gifts of humanity from our children until their bad habits are already formed? Look at what it has done to our political atmosphere!
One thing in particular that really stands out in my mind is to show children the rigors of modern scientific inquiry. Reveal to them the extensive problems with measurement. Show them how many times measurements must be repeated in order to provide reliable data. Show the correlation between measurement, the number of trials and the margin for error. Show them how many factors must be considered before we can obtain reliable data. Teach them about controls and the necessary replication of experimental environments.
We have to teach our children how to analyze statistics. Teach them how to interpret statistics. Show them how misleading statistics can be. Try to teach them how to draw valid conclusions from the given statements. Consider the boon to society if everyone knew how to draw sound conclusions from a set of statements. No more effective snake oil salesmen, no more cult leaders!
We can offer mathematical logic lessons to those who are so inclined and verbal reasoning lessons to those who are inclined in that respect. But we should train all of our children in both. In short, we should teach them that verifiable truth is not easily obtained.
How do we go about this? First things first. Never lie to your children. Answer all of their questions honestly. Admit it when you don't know something because you certainly don't know everything. Do not teach your opinions and beliefs as though they were facts. START TEACHING BY EXAMPLE!

Stuck at home, sick. I had a huge headache yesterday and last night when I went to bed, I felt it creeping into my throat. Probably strep, maybe swine flu. I'll find out tomorrow morning. But there's something else that bothers me more than this illness.
I've been having an ongoing e-battle with a longtime friend of mine who has adopted the conservative manner of not allowing for differences of opinion. It was probably inevitable that our disputes would eventually drift into the abortion debate. According to him, abortion equals murder, and there are no exceptions. My best arguments may have opened a small crack in his defenses, but when I confronted him with the idea that even he may have fathered an unwanted child in his younger days, and that it was possible that one of his partners could have had an abortion without telling him, he ended the 'conversation'.
Like most young men, he, too, was driven by lust for sex. I'm pretty sure that he got his fair share, at the least. After hearing him criticize 'all those people overseas' for engaging in unprotected sex, I turned the point on him and his youthful adventures. I didn't call him a hypocrite, I was willing to let him explain himself out of his logical predicament. He declared himself possessed of a clear heart because he was ignorant of anyone else's wrongdoing. I responded that he may not have helped end one of these so called lives, but he could very well have started one. The phrase 'so-called lives' prompted the end of our discussion.
I should have known. He was always full of passionate intensity and loved to argue. But we had a lot of fun in high school and since then, too. Ironically, he was the person who got me started into hunting, and hunting is the one activity that I have utilized successfully to help me come to terms with the concepts of death and dying (in my own life at least).
About a year after I started hunting, I lost one of my brothers in a tragic work accident. I was devastated. But it was hunting that taught me that death isn't necessarily tragic in and of itself. At first, I was void of all feeling. I noticed it when I shot and wounded a squirrel and went over to end its suffering. Up til then, watching an animal in the throes of death was difficult for me. Finishing them off filled me with many uncomfortable doubts. On this day, soon after my brother's death, I felt nothing at all. I was in an emotional coma.
But eventually, I began to see death as a necessary thing for the furtherance of life, as an integral part of life itself. One could easily say that death feeds the beginning of life just as easily as saying that life feeds the beginning of death. They are the two sides of the same coin. When done correctly, hunting actually teaches an appreciation for all living things.
Stalking an animal in his environment is not easy. One gains respect for the prey and begins to understand the cycle of life and death as a beautiful thing. A good hunter never kills indiscriminately, and never lets a wounded animal suffer needlessly. A good hunter incorporates the wiles of his prey into his own personality. (Call me a squirrel and I won't be offended.) It is the very essence of totemic worship- you are what you eat. People throughout history, primitive and otherwise, have taken animals as symbols of the characteristics they most wish to own for themselves. (American bald eagles, Russian Kodiak bears, etc.) The origins of these anthropomorphic feelings are found in the stories of hunters.
I truly hope that my friend does not end our friendship because of our disagreement over the abortion issue. I confessed that I should like to see abortion end altogether, but I don't think it can happen without extensive education and advances in birth control. Women find themselves in a desperate situation and deserve our assistance, not our condemnation. What I'm afraid of is that the conservatives who spend all day hunting down progressive liberals will never gain any respect for their prey and will never learn anything of value from us. They are trying to kill us indiscriminately. We're not as easily taken down as they would like to think.

time for a change in war strategy

President Obama does not need my advice, certainly. He seems to be making all the right decisions, with a few exceptions (for example, calling the Cambridge cop's actions "stupid"). But I think he's headed for much the same trouble into which Bush blundered : fighting a war for political reasons. On reflection of the facts as they exist now, the U.S. does not need to fight a war in Afghanistan. It might have in 2001, when our enemy, bin Laden, was there, but not now, when he isn't. A war to make some other culture function according to our expectations is a losing enterprise, and that seems to be our war goal - to create a sustainable democratic government in a market-economic society. For the umpteenth time in history : it is their country, their society, their culture, their problems, not ours. Our goal is the same as it's always been - to protect ourselves. We do not need to fight endless wars overseas to do so, for taken to its logical extreme our current approach will necessitate war until there is no one left to be a potential terrorist. Good for the war economy, but that's all it's good for, because it's not good for protecting us.

ERIC LOUIS BLOUNT (ERNKY) 1958-2009

They buried Eric today. I wanted to speak at his funeral, but I didn't have anything ready to say. It began to come to me during the services. I knew Eric well and we had had lots of significant experiences alongside one another. After all, we did meet when he was six and I was seven and we had stayed in touch over the years.
There were three things that I especially wanted to say about Eric. First of all, he was absolutely fearless. He truly wasn't afraid of anything or anybody. That trait almost certainly led him into the trouble he had in his final years. A great number of people talk about their morality but don't actually do a whole lot about developing it. I think for Eric, most of his morality was wrapped up in that notion of courage. He pursued that virtue with a determination few people can summon. I feel safe in saying that he conquered whatever fears he may have had. For that alone, he deserves our admiration and respect. He was also a really funny guy with a great sense of humor.
One of the pastimes of many boys in south Louisiana is scooping bait with a net. You get a long handle scoop net, go to the closest drainage canal and use the net to catch your bait for fishing, usually minnows and crawfish. Eric and I would spend entire days scooping minnows and crawfish, and as our scooping skills increased, the variety of animals we caught also increased. Eventually, we would catch snakes, turtles, bullfrogs, eels, one small alligator, fish and other things I don't remember. The lure of broader horizons beckoned us farther and farther away from our neighborhood. Once, when we were about 10 and 11 years old, after scooping all along a ditch a few blocks from our houses, we found ourselves facing a culvert that went under the road. It was about four feet in diameter, twenty feet long, pitch black, and in our active imaginations, certainly full of large crawfish, bullfrogs, probably some big fish and many other such wonderful things. Eric didn't flinch. He took the net and methodically, thoroughly scooped the entire watercourse in that pitch black concrete pipe. Something big escaped from the net, (probably a bullfrog), but he did catch some good sized perch and some really big crawfish.
That success led him to immediately head to the other end of the canal where it went under Jefferson Hwy. This one was probably seventy-five feet long and open only on one end, which meant that he had to go in, turn around and come back, scooping all the while, which is equal to stirring up anything that might reside in there. He returned with a really big amphiuma eel, the weight of which led him to stop scooping because he obviously had a colossal haul, something big and trying to escape, something he couldn't see because of the darkness in that horrible place. That, my friend, shows some serious cajones for a ten year old boy. Trust me. They got bigger as he grew older.
Eric and Roger moved away from Louisiana for about ten years to go work as union welders in a few different big cities up north. When Eric came back, he bought a nice boat and we started fishing together again. Again, Eric and I went back to using nets to catch our bait, but now we had developed enough fishing skills to really catch a lot of fish when we got the right bait. That's when he introduced me to the wonderful world of pogies, the favorite food of speckled trout. He showed me how to recognize schools of pogies in the water and the right way to sneak up on them in the boat in order to throw a cast net on them. His confidence in using pogies for catching big trout was unshakeable. He was almost obsessed with catching them before we could go fishing. We would pass up the prime fishing time in the early morning, just to catch pogies. Enthusiasm like that for catching bait can best be described in one word: hopeful. He knew that if you put in the work to catch the pogies, you had good reason to believe that you would catch some big trout, and we did.
That was the Eric I remember: fearless, funny and hopeful. He may not have caught the great big trout of worldly success, but he had the right bait for it. His fishing days were cut too short.

Losing my Religion

You'd have been had pressed to find a more genuinely Catholic boy than myself as a young boy. How I later developed an antipathy toward religion would seem to be an impossibility if you could have seen into my heart and mind as a youngster. I have an idea about the development of the individual that revolves around formative moments- epiphanies, if you will- that steer an individual toward becoming who they are. The problem with epiphanies is that they require consciousness and the formative moments that I am talking about are not necessarily recognized by the individual as a great event at the time. However, it is something that the person will mark and remember, but not necessarily realize is as big an event in their lives at the time it occurs, as they will later recognize as something that helped make them what they are. The event I'm referring to in my life occurred when I was about eight years old.
I found out then that, according to Catholic doctrine, no one could go to heaven unless they were baptized in the church. The problem was that my best friends at the time, the Blount brothers Roger and Eric, were not Catholic, and were therefore ineligible for admission to heaven. I can clearly remember asking my mother, "What kind of heaven will it be if my friends aren't allowed to go?" My mother gave a perfectly catholic response: "They could be allowed in if they would only get baptized in the Catholic church." I accepted that answer and ran over to their house in order to convert my little Baptist friends as fast as I could, certainly to the chagrin of their parents. For their part, Roger and Eric responded with what amounted to a polite refusal. Although I didn't recognize it at the time, the sceptic in me was born right then and there. I didn't dwell on the issue, but it stuck with me. I hadn't begun questioning miracles yet, but I was kind of determined to find a way to get my friends into heaven.
In my teens, I began to recognize hypocrisy in some of the people who went to our church. Mentioning this to my father almost got me thrown out of the house. Then I began to have some serious doubts about the whole religion with a simple logical progression, grounded in the faith, that just didn't add up for me. If Jesus really was God, then he would know everything, including the future. That means that he would know that his actions would eventually lead to his crucifixion. Wouldn't this be suicide on his part? Wouldn't people be better off if they had a living god in their midst, teaching them on a daily basis, than they would be if he let himself be killed and left us just another ugly example of humanity's failings? The illusion began to crumble.
I needn't bother you with the remaining details of my personal spiritual growth. One of the cornerstones of my own current 'system', for the lack of a better word, is that no two people agree on everything, so a diversity of beliefs is a simple fact of life. Trying to force a person to believe anything is actually quite impossible, and rational discourse is the only way to find any common ground, however infrequently it may actually occur. Truth in dialogue, along with experience, are the only ways to find verifiable truth in this world. Honesty is not a policy, it is the only means to a worthy end. Suffice it to say that when I read Thomas Jefferson's quote that "I am of a sect by myself", I found a spiritual brother- one who would probably like me as a person and enjoy my company, but who would probably disapprove of some of my behaviors. Sort of like Frankie.

Finding my religion

It is appropriate now to describe how, for me, religious faith is now a part of me and hence a part of what appears here. I spent 35 years in a fairly constant argument with myself about the existence of God, and fairly consistently I had a hard time concluding God was there. The essential reason was personal : how can the sufferings and hardships of my life be justified if God created my life ? The facts of my life suggested to me that God didn't like me, much less love me as my catechism-limited Catholic upbringing would have it. No, I was content to see life through an imminently reasonable construction of logic and moral precepts sufficient in themselves. And as life progressed it seemed that everything could indeed be explained as a function of the extent to which I and others acted or failed to act in accordance with reason and conscience. I still think this is right. But what was missing, for me, was any real sense of joy in life. Rather, I could never understand the notion of "loving" oneself. I still don't. But in trying to learn how to live joyously, how to "love" myself and my life, it was pretty obvious that with just a few exceptions most of the people I knew who seemed to be content, even joyous, were those who believed in God. Maybe I was predisposed to think so because I had grown up in a largely Catholic world of parochial school and then Jesuit High School, where I learned to admire the academic rigor and disciplined thought of the priests. Indeed, maybe that's why my internal debate didn't simply end altogether when I first concluded, and then did so over and over again so many times for 35 years, that there simply was no God, no easy way to contextualize this life I was living. So, the bare threads of my theological self-dispute lingered on, parallel with the growing realization that my way of thinking - "reason plus conscience = good life" - was producing, with the passage of time and increasingly difficult challenges, the mentality that life was just something to be endured, and my task was to run out the clock. As my thinking became more desperate, so did my attempts at finding a remedy. As it occurred to me that following the road of living in "The World According To Frankie" was shaping up more and more as a dead-end; and also that despite my circumstances as a child, I'd never felt desperate or anything other than content and in control. So, more as an act of desperation than anything else, I decided to start going to church to see if any of the peace provided others there would help me. I did not go there looking for God, I went there looking for personal peace. What I found instead was the head and heart of my youth, of the person I was then, with all the potential of life before me rather than, as now, mostly behind me. And after I found that person there, only then did I start looking for God. But I didn't find him, probably because I was looking with my head, not my heart. My heart got involved on February 15, 2009, a Sunday afternoon after a Sunday morning spent at church. That afternoon, I learned that my son had been in a catastrophically violent auto accident - he'd run off the road at 80 mph, flipped in the air twice, then hit a tree sideways across the top of the hood with his body parallel to the ground and his head pointed arrow-like right into the tree, and he walked away from it, uninjured. As I studied the site and what remained of the wrecked car, it slowly dawned on me that there could be no real physical explanation for how he did not die on February 15. Something kept him alive, and if so then he was alive for a reason. The only rational, now, explanation I could come up with was that God did it, God kept him alive. And I felt this thought, I did not simply think it. I realized that for me to feel as I did, I believed in God. So, with the zeal of the convert, I immersed myself in trying to learn about God - I did not want to "cave" to my emotions, but rather I wanted to know what I felt, why I felt it, and whether I could intellectually support, with real internal integrity, such a radical repositioning on the central question of my, and everyone else's, existence. And the more I studied, the more I believed : the entire Christian faith is founded on the historical facts of Christ's life, death, and resurrection, as revealed in the New Testament. This was truly a 'revelation' to me, because as a Catholic born in the mid1950's I was completely ignorant of the Bible. As my faith has deepened, as my commitment to faith has become stronger, I have even experienced at times the joy I always thought was central to loving life. What I did not know but do now is that such joy is the joy of knowing that God is there. Here. In me. In everything and everybody, in all creation. And I think the task of life is to seek God, find him in life wherever he can be discerned. I am realizing that this is not easy, that like everything valuable in life it take much effort, and that I have been lucky to realize the importance of the search at all. But I am also realizing that if I put my head and heart to seeing him, he shows up every now and then, to let me know he's there. Maybe it is, as my friend has said, nothing more than wish fulfillment. But isn't that the nature of faith, anyway ?

Faith and hope

Frankie beat me to the punch on today's post. He pretty much said a lot of the same things that I intended to say about my least favorite Louisiana politician, David Vitter. I have this thing about hypocrisy being the one personal attribute that should immediately disqualify a person from public office. I think Frankie's observations were quite accurate and appropriate in regard to Mr. Vitter's so called Christian faith. He does not walk the walk.
While we're on the subject of faith, I thought I might clarify a few things in terms of our own beliefs. I'll let Frankie explain his in more detail for himself, but I would classify him as a born-again Catholic. I am an unabashed secularist who has studied quite a few religions in search of a workable world view. I lay claim to any idea that strikes me as worthy, incorporating it into my ever-evolving conception of the world. I will take ideas from anyone, anytime, anywhere. If it seems to contain truth, it works for me.
I am actually opposed to organized religion, mainly because of my personal (albeit limited) understanding of the way the human brain works. I think it is impossible for any two people to have absolutely concurrent worldviews and religions have caused too much trouble throughout history for me to condone any of them. (more later- I have to cut the grass before it rains again)

Disappointing Indeed

Our very own Louisiana Senator David Vitter pronounced President Obama's healthcare speech to Congress " a disappointment", because "he obviously is not listening to the American people", by which I suppose he means the freedom-fighters at the tea parties, etc. I am confused by my senator : on the one hand, he professes to be a Christian stalwart in every particular; on the other, Jesus's second injunction is to "love one another". Does Senator Vitter think this means "love one another except those with preexisting conditions", or "love one another but only if they are insurance company shareholders or executives " ? Vitter and his ilk ran Congress for a decade and yet did nothing on healthcare except expand Medicare to enrich the pharmaceutical companies. There is nothing Christ-like about opposing at every turn any attempt to help the government address the needs of those left behind by insurance company profit-logic, or in protecting the interests of the rich (read, tax cuts) and powerful (insurance companies) no matter the effect on everyone else. It is the task of elected officials including Vitter to identify the problems and solutions of ALL of their constituents, not only those egged on by talk-radio to oppose, by denying the existence of the problem, the "tyranny" of a government trying for once to act, in real 21st-century terms, upon Jesus's command.

Labor Day fishing

It is fitting that yesterday, Labor Day, Johnny caught fish. Out of Myrtle Grove (I think). A couple of good-sized ones - drum and redfish - and more smaller fish. Not a bad day; not legendary, either. I have never really had a legendary day; a couple of times there've been short runs, every cast, of trout, and then there was my first real catching-fish day : a big redfish, a flounder, a trout, the first real productive, magical, fishing trip I had, at Bayou St Malo. That was a long time ago.
I haven't been fishing since I started truly believing in God, 7 months ago. I haven't been fishing since October, almost a year ago. Our old spot, at Bayou Beinvenue, is the ONLY portion of the entire marsh chosen as a rebuilding-the-marsh site, in all of southeast Louisiana. But that's not the reason. There are plenty : work, getting old, wanting to spend time reading, various (real) crises, having more trouble getting around. Fishing, of course, is biblically sanctioned. Indeed, it may be the only Jesus-instructed occupational, even recreational, activity related in the Gospels. Not to mention the fishes and the loaves, and the fish as an early Christ motif. So, fishing is a righteous benign way to get away from the routine and its labors, and to try to catch dinner (itself a righteous thing - bringing home dinner to the women). So it's time for me to go fishing. only now God will be coming along with me, so maybe I'll do better than I do customarily.

Immoderation

Everyone agrees that life is lived most satisfyingly if done with a sense of balance. Implicit is the need for moderation in all things. And underlying moderation is recognition of humility as a basic virtue. We as a community, political and otherwise, seem to have downgraded humility from a foundational virtue to an embarrassing symptom of lack of self-esteem, which now itself towers as the supreme virtue. Because we are always right about everything, and we have the right to do, say, own, or denigrate everything, we no longer see any need to be moderate about anything we do, say, own, or seek to destroy. The result is the utter immoderation which now passes for public political discourse. Limiting discussion to the facts ? Who needs it, that's for the humble chumps who believe that being factually right is the same thing as being right because I said so. So the more outrageous the lie, the more bombastic the position, the better - there are legions waiting to accept as truth anything, everything, that supports in the listener his view that he is justified in his hate, that his ignorance is not ignorance at all but the wisdom of "real Americans".

Collateral damage

As an adjunct to Frankie's original posting about the Helots and Zealots, I would like to address all true Americans with a commentary that ends with a question.
We all recognize the impressionability of children- they will imitate people who appeal to them. Whether it's a musician, a movie star, an athlete, or maybe just another kid at school, they will try to act in a way that resembles the person that they admire. If we're lucky and we do a good job of raising them, our children will imitate us, at least to an extent. If they act exactly like us, something is definitely wrong- with both parent and child. A healthy child will have a unique identity.
One of the clearest and simplest theories of identity development is described as satellization. In the early stages of identity development, a child's personality and identity revolve around their immediate family unit. This is what is meant by satellization.
Eventually, the child breaks away from the family unit as a necessary step in the development of their own identity. It doesn't have to involve a rejection of the family unit, but it does have to happen away from the family unit. This is known as de-satellization. Anyone with a teenager can recognize this stage; if your children are not there yet, get ready. However, if you do not allow your children the freedom to develop individually, you can expect trouble far beyond typical teenage rebellion. If the child does not break away, no identification occurs and he/she remains an extension of that family unit.
If everything goes naturally, the child will establish a unique personality, build a family of their own and establish a new system of satellites with their own children. Hopefully, they maintain healthy relationships with their original family unit and the larger, extended family becomes a center of gravity, so to speak, for all of the new children in the family. This is known as re-satellization. Solid family groups understand the value of a family full of different characters.
You can see the simple niceness of this theory: Original satellization around the family, de-satellization in order to develop a unique personality, re-satellization in order to continue the process of the creation of a healthy society of unique individuals.
And now for the question. It is directed at those who would refuse to allow their children to hear our president speak to their children about the importance of education. Are you sure you want to teach your children to ignore the President of the United States?
In strictly educational terms only, please consider the implications of your actions. If you are convinced that what he will say is wrong, do you have so little faith in your own ability to teach them otherwise? Understand that, at some point, your children will turn away from you, because they must. Whether or not they return depends on the content of their education. Are you sure that you want to teach them disrespect for our nation's highest office?

The Helots and the Zealots

The Zealots do not realize that they are being manipulated by the Helots. The latter are, with reference to Walter Brennan's term in "Meet John Doe", the money and power people who are capitalizing upon the ignorance of the little people to advance their own greed. The former are, of course, the little people whose passions are so readily inflamed against even littler people. it used to be that the interests of "the people" may sometimes conflict with those of "the chosen", but they were easy to identify. no more. These days, it's the little people who are carrying water for those whose true motives are opposite theirs, and they don't even know it. The public health care debate is a fine example. We all would benefit by a health care system which directs funds to helath care, not to insurance companies and their shareholders. In our late-stage capitalist society, it is only the government which can do that which insurance companies insistently refuse to do - provide care to those who need it but from whom no profit can be derived by insuring. Yet the terms of the current debate have been set to make the problem-solver, the government, the problem : "socialism", "destruction of the best system in the world", etc. Why ? Because the Helots have successfully engaged the know-nothing Zealots' rage at "the Other" and directed it in defense of an insurence system directly at odds with the Zealots' own interests.