FDR's Bill Of Rights=Not Scary.

Today, as I do from time to time, I listened to Glenn Beck for a little while as I did some housework. He was talking about 'FDR's Bill Of Rights', as gleaned from one of his Fireside Chats. Beck used his scariest voice to deliver his indictment of some of the terrible 'rights' that may be coming our way under Barack Obama. What are some of these horrible, evil, spine-curling socialisms we should fear? Cut to FDR:

"Necessitous men are not free men. People who are hungry and out of a job are the stuff of which dictatorships are made. In our day these economic truths have become accepted as self evident. We have accepted, so to speak, a second Bill of Rights under which a new basis of security and prosperity can be established for all—regardless of station, race, or creed. Among these are the right to a useful and remunerative job in the industries or shops or farms or mines of the nation."

Terrifying, right? Well, it gets worse. The socialisms keep coming:

The right to earn enough to provide adequate food and clothing and recreation. The right of farmers who raise and sell their products at a return which will give them and their families a decent living. The right of every businessman, large and small, to trade in an atmosphere of freedom from unfair competition. The right of every family to a decent home. The right to adequate medical care and the opportunity to achieve and enjoy good health.

Protection against monopolies, the protection of recreations, homes, fair business practices, healthcare, and education. These are the things we're supposed to be afraid of? Glenn Beck talks about government as if it were some horrible Lovecraftian god, bent on the annihilation of humanity as a whole. I've heard him acknowledge before that government is a useful tool of the people (he compared it to fire), but I don't think he believes it.

Of the major institutions that shape our lives, we (the people) have the most control over government. We don't get to elect CEO's. We don't get to produce Madonna's next album. We do get to vote for our representatives, and they are rightly concerned with what we think.

Government isn't like fire. If it's properly managed, it's more like a fluorescent light bulb. Strict adherence to the perceived values of the founders is a narrow kind of thinking. They had a king stepping on their neck when they wrote the first bill of rights. The American experiment was just a dream. The founders were brilliant in laying out the rights that they did lay out, but they could never have dreamed of how far our country has come since then, how educated it's citizens have become, and what a high standard of living we've accomplished. We've entered an age (and a wealth) where we can secure a higher level of happiness, health, and enrichment for all of our citizens, with no cost to the freedoms secured by our founding documents. Ours is a country of visionaries. In the U.S., we look forward. We build upon what generations before created, and we blaze new trails. The stuff FDR is talking about here is that kind of forward thinking that should inspire us to thought and action. Thanks to Glenn Beck for bringing this talk to my attention.

Cloud Interlude 2

The Truth

"If there is a God, it's going to be a whole lot bigger and a whole lot more incomprehensible than anything that any theologian of any religion has ever proposed."-Richard Dawkins, From a TIME magazine debate with Francis Collins (2006)

This quote should have created common ground in the religion v. science war, but why am I not surprised that it didn't?

The Medicine Cabinet Recommends

1.The World's Only Poisonous Primate @ Why Evolution Is True: Be sure to watch the cute youtube video after you read about the dark side of the slow loris.

2.I agree with Andrew Sullivan's assessment of President Obama's performance thus far. Let's hope the American people share a similar view. Also, see here for an analysis of of The President's Moscow trip that nicely compliments Mr. Sullivan's observations. Mark Daniels money quote:

"Obama appears intent to follow a foreign policy realist's approach, a departure both from recent Democratic orthodoxy and from the Wilsonian adventurism of his immediate predecessor, Republican President, George W. Bush."

3. Did our ancestors use music as a weapon?

4. Go here to watch the trailer for the upcoming Where The Wild Things Are movie. I'm incredibly excited about taking my kids to go see this. I love the way they're marketing this film, and I love the look of it. It reminds me of one of the kid's movies I would've watched when I was younger, back when movie makers didn't underestimate the kinds of things kids could handle, or the sophistication of their artistic palette.

5. I still get bitten by the H.P. Lovecraft bug intermittently. No one does horror better. I have lots to say about the subject, but, as is usually the case, more has been said by other writers in other places (thankfully. Less pressure.). One of the best Lovecraft commentators is still Michel Houllebecq. Here is a partial translation of his book 'H.P. Lovecraft: Against The World, Against Life'.

6.My wife and kids have been out of town on a camping trip since Friday night (I had to work). Whenever these separations happen, there is a predictable arc of events. On the first night, it's kind of nice to be alone. I cook myself dinner, go for a walk, and then stay up too late watching movies or reading. By the second night, I'm getting a little restless. By the third day I completely miss my family. The bachelor life would be no good for me; I'm thoroughly domesticated. But absence makes the heart grow fonder. It also vastly increases the odds of my building a spud gun.

7.Jason Moran, performing "You've Got To Be Modernistic" Very nice:

Patriotism

Every Politician Should Welcome The Griddle Marks.

When Helen Thomas starts calling out the administration on their attempts to control the media, even the most dyed-in-the-wool Obama supporter should at least arch an eyebrow. One of John McCain's better campaign ideas was to open the president (personally) up to weekly grilling sessions before the House, ala Great Britain's parliament. How to disapprove?

The president should be taken to task for his policies, and should not be allowed to hand pick the most sympathetic of questioners, and the easiest of questions. It should be articulate representatives from the Cato institute and Heritage foundation that should be grilling Robert Gibbs at press conferences, not fawning co-conspirators like Michael Goldfarb. Answering the the toughest questions the loyal opposition has to offer-- in a regular public forum--will keep any administration honest.

To anticipate a few objections: It doesn’t matter how biased Fox news is, and whatever ways the Bush White House attempted to manipulate the media is irrelevant to this conversation. Just because the last guy played fast and loose with civil liberties doesn’t mean we give our guy a pass to do the same.

Where The Mormons Lost Me

Much to my wife’s frequent dismay, I have a habit of inviting door to door evangelists into our house. I invite them to sit on our furniture, and I offer them drinks. Sometimes, our conversations will span frequent sessions, culminating in the inevitable question:

“So, would you like to buy our product?”

Obviously, because I am an incorrigible heretic, the answer has—so far—been ‘No, thank you. But thanks for the conversation’.

I really do enjoy the conversation. I’m interested in evangelism as a person who is interested in finding out things about God (if there are things to be found out about God), but also as a psychology major who is very interested in human relationships, and the mechanisms through which we choose one belief over another, or no belief at all.

One of my longest recurring conversations was with a pair of Mormon disciples. At the time, I didn’t know very much about Mormonism. One of my supervisors at work was a Mormon, and she was very nice. She had given me a copy of The Book of Mormon on lunch one day, and I hadn’t read it. It seemed really contrived to me. She told me about it, told me I should read the whole book, pray sincerely for God to give me a sign that it was true, and to submerge myself in Mormon culture in the meantime.

‘What kind of sign will God send me?’ I asked.
‘Oh, I don’t know. It could be a warm feeling in your heart, a prickly feeling on the back of your neck, a simple feeling of confidence in the document.’
‘What does the feeling of confidence feel like?’
‘You’ll see.’ She said, very confidently, very self assuredly.

Of course, plunging into a well of specific religious literature and isolating yourself for long periods of time within a community that ascribes to that literature, is an act that is probably only like to be performed by a few types of people, with only a few possible motives. Type one would be the person who wants the claims made by the religion to appear to be true, so that they can accept the dogma (for whatever reason) and enter into the philosophy, lifestyle, and community promoted by that system. Another type is probably someone who was brought up inside that system, and seeks to come to some kind of personal understanding of that which has been handed down to them, so that they may either embrace it, or reject it, based on their own understanding. The third kind of person would probably be someone making a documentary film, or writing a book.

Since I fit none of these bills, I didn’t see the necessity of reading the entire Book of Mormon, or undergoing the very clear self-propagandizing regimen that was suggested to me*. I would rather skim through the book, talk to some sales representatives about their product, and do some critical analysis by reading oppositional writings, and doing some of my own thinking. I wasn’t sure I could be as straightforward with my supervisor as I might’ve wished, so I was glad when the two young men who came to my door were so eager to answer my questions.

I’m sure we went over all of the basic stuff that everyone goes over when they run into Mormon evangelists. I was pretty fascinated by the idea that our God may not be the first God, and that he has kind of learned how to be a Good God via on the job training. I thought that could go ways to explain a lot of the weird stuff in the Old Testament. Of course, my new friends didn’t like my interpretation of that view, and of course, I didn’t like that these young men had absolutely zero evidence to support any of these strange claims about the nature of things. Eventually, they asked me to pray for the tingly feeling, and I said, no, I would prefer some evidence, and they said, fine, thank you for your time, please reconsider. Then they said a prayer with me and left.

Maybe it’s a surprise to you that I did in fact end up reading large portions of the Book of Mormon. I watched a few documentaries on the subject, and read some other material too. I was fascinated by some of their ideas. That man could earn Godhood was interesting. That you could think of God in the way I had just explained was also pretty neat. That Jesus was my brother (because God is my father!) was a new twist. There are all kinds of unusual and interesting things embedded in Mormon philosophy and history. It seemed totally crazy at first, but—as with all instances of habituation—it became more familiar and even more reasonable to me the further I dove in. That is one of the functions of self-propagandizing.

I started talking to my supervisor about it, and she was very eager to answer my questions. She invited me to functions, and let me borrow books and movies.
One day, I told her I had seen a movie that I thought was really good. It didn’t have anything to do with Mormonism, but it was about belief, and God, and all of that stuff, in kind of a meta-poetic way. It was called ‘Photographing Fairies’. She said it sounded interesting, so I brought it in for her to borrow.

The next time we worked together, I asked her if she had seen it. She kind of scrunched up her face and said,

‘Oh, sorry. I can’t watch this movie. It’s rated R’.
‘What do you mean?’ I said.
‘Mormons aren’t allowed to watch R rated movies.’
‘Why?’
‘It was a message delivered to one of our elders.’
‘But the rating system is so subjective!’
‘Sorry.’
‘But this is a good, thoughtful, philosophical movie! It’s beautiful! It got the R rating because it shows a pair of breasts for like, two minutes! And the sex scene is very tame, and it’s between a married couple!’

She shrugged her shoulders, and I relented.

I was probably never going to convert to Mormonism, but if there ever was even a remote chance of my joining up, it was squashed at that moment. I can’t make any claims about God, but I’m fairly certain that if there is a God, he wouldn’t be the kind of philistine the church of Latter Day Saints paints him to be.

I am a person of little faith, but I have more faith than that.



**Thanks to Bob @ The Mormons Are Coming! for linking to this piece, even if he didn't really like it.

The Parachutist In Love

For E.G.

The Parachutist’s ripcord is malfunctioning. He is aware of this piece of information, and finds it duly disturbing.
You see, were the Parachutist on ground, in his plane, lying in his bed, sitting on the toilet, eating eggplant parmesan at his favorite Italian restaurant, bedding a young vixen, bedding a few young vixens (one slightly older than the other), practicing the clarinet, making a shopping list, or even playing volleyball at the beach (again with young vixens), becoming aware of such a piece of information would be easily resolvable. Being however that he is currently falling from a very great height, the information about the ripcord is pertinent.

His instinct is to curse, but not being the swearing type, he decides to pray instead: Praying turns out to be harder to do mid-free fall than one might expect, so he curses.
Being a person who has read a book or two by Deepak Chopra, he attempts meditation: He is going to die. This is evident. He attempts to clear his mind by focusing on the snowy mountain tops that cap the quickly disappearing horizon. Also difficult: Consider G-forces.

What about the man in the colored jumpsuit with goggles and helmet?

The Parachutist’s favorite joke is one that usually only garners polite laughs when he tells it:
Q: How many surrealists does it take to change a light bulb?
A: Two: one to hold the giraffe by the neck, the other to fill the bathtub up with clocks.

He has a picture of his nephew riding a horse on his coffee table at home. The picture was taken by his brother, on the boy’s twelfth birthday. The boy’s name is Cody. The Parachutist has tried to teach the boy how to play chess several times and has failed. Once, when Cody was about six, a little marble pawn showed up in his stool. The Parachutist has quit trying to teach the boy chess.

The Parachutist closes his eyes, takes a breath, and then opens them back up again. The earth is very beautiful, and very small from where he is. It is getting larger quickly, which is vaguely alarming. The Parachutist decides it would be better to misinterpret this alarm as exhilaration. ‘Whoop!’ he says.

He’s over a piney region of Alaska. The tree line spreads far and wide, and there are mountains in the distance. The Parachutist tries to imagine himself crashing down through the evergreens. Every snapping twig that he foresees, were he to write a blog about this episode, he may call it ‘Returning to the Earth in a very real way’, and the post would be very spiritual. The Parachutist is a very spiritual person in his own way. He has read books by Deepak Chopra, and always plays Prince music when he beds young vixens.

The Parachutist is pleased with how easily he turned the whole tragic affair into something more philosophical.

He imagines the earth wrapping around him, his body becoming thin and embedded, and he begins to relax his muscles as it all becomes very near, the whistling becoming increased, and the mountain view becoming out of sight. He thinks about the terrain, and tries to picture it without trees. A parking lot. A desert. An ocean. A pile of feathers.

To the ordinary wild porcupine, the grass is gentle and high, and the soil is agreeably moist. It easily absorbs the creature’s small footprints as it pads and sniffs it’s way through the sweet smelling forest, looking for whatever it is that porcupines look for.

Some kind of small bug, I would imagine.

Cloud Interlude 1

Philosophy can save your life. After a day of surprising ups and downs, the sky is still a ridiculous shifting tapestry. Life is surprising and beautiful. Who can complain?

On Holmes

My brother and I sat on my front porch last night into the early morning hours smoking cigars, drinking wine, and talking about the big questions in life. Inevitably--somewhere around 1 am--the conversation shifted to talk of Sherlock Holmes, and the upcoming movie version.

We're both Sherlock fans, and are both slightly nervous about the new film.

Robert Downey, Jr. seems like an obvious pick for Holmes on many levels. Intelligent. Familiar with opiates. Able to employ a passable accent. Both my brother and myself think Downey could do the job, except for one minor problem: He's too charming. Holmes was decidedly not charming, and we doubt it's a quality that Downey is able to turn off. Another concern is that the new movie is going to be too flashy, too James Bond, too Guy Ritchie. We're afraid Ritchie will play up the drug use too much in an attempt to be edgy, which is problematic. The drugs should be in, no doubt, but not the main focus. Holmes is a functional drug abuser. He's not John Cheever.

But we're hopeful.

Holmes is such a great character. He's one of the only characters in the history of literature who seems to have utterly transcended his creator. When you learn about Arthur Conan Doyle you're kind of like, really? This guy created Holmes? He wasn't a bad man, but he wasn't Holmes, either. He bought into spiritualism and believed in fairies, and was something of a nationalist, which is always unattractive. Yet from this all too human mind, one of the greatest contributions to pulp literature was issued. I refer you to my previous post about my views on the nature of creativity.

Holmes, in able hands, is wonderful. Doyle wrote some awesome Holmes Stories: Hound Of the Baskervilles, A Study In Scarlet, The Engineer's Thumb...but the versions of Holmes imagined by Caleb Carr, Alan Moore, T.C. Boyle, and Michael Chabon are also transcendent homages. Holmes in able hands is wonderful. Holmes in more limited hands is, well, still Holmes.

So, while there are areas in which Sherlock nerds like my brother and I may be able to squabble with Guy Ritchie's upcoming version, it's hard to imagine things getting too bad.

But then again, we are talking about Hollywood...