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Occasional Essays Occasionally Posted

[occasionallyposted]

Sincerely, R. Cohen

Five Leonard Cohen Songs Performed by Ross Cohen

Nearly five days after Leonard Cohen’s 83rd birthday, here are five covers of his songs.

[occasionallyposted]

... Teaching: Not a Science, Not an Art. Maybe a Craft?

“I don’t see what’s wrong with the education system. It’s an easy fix. Just….”

– More than a few intelligent folks with no teaching experience (me, sometimes)

“Teaching’s an art. You either have it or you don’t.”

– More than a few teachers (me sometimes, too)

I don’t think either of these positions capture what’s so difficult and so great about being a teacher.

The first treats teaching like a science. Gather enough data, stare at the problem long enough, apply as many fixes as possible, and see what works. Admittedly, data does play a role in what teachers do, and teachers are constantly refining their teaching. But approaching teaching as a science, or a puzzle to be solved, opens up the door to those who like that sort of thing, but who have no idea what to do in front of thirty real, live students.

The second treats teaching as a God-given gift. It isn’t. Sure, some people have the knack, and some others take a few years to become good. But this doesn’t help teachers, or those thinking of becoming teachers. If us teachers act as though we were born knowing how to write standards-aligned objectives in crayon and how to check-for-understanding when we had to have our diapers changed, we’d be implying that others weren’t.

We’re not some exclusive group that’s elevated above society, making the world better with our genetically modified gifts. That’s The X-Men.

Maybe teaching is a craft, like woodworking. There are methods and guidebooks and there’s plenty of room for individual creativity. It also requires time to get right. I know smart, well-meaning folks who can break down mahogany down to the molecule but can’t carve it into a chair. That doesn’t make them unqualified. That makes them unpracticed. Conversely, I know folks, born with deep wells of creativity, who struggle assembling IKEA furniture.  

So yes, teaching requires some knowledge. It also requires some artistry. Mostly, like any good craft, it requires discipline and patience and, above all, time to get it right. And once you spend enough time at it, there’s no craft more rewarding.

[occasionallyposted]

Education and Freedom

Epictetus, the Stoic philosopher, once said, “Only the educated are free.” On countless posters, in countless schools, under images of open doors, forest pathways, and Sun-lit climbers standing on mountain summits, rests some variation of “Education is Freedom.” But how is this so? How is education freedom?

Since we often only notice freedom when we’re without it, perhaps the opposite of education can also lead us to the opposite of freedom. Then, all we’d have to do is develop this negative image into the picture we want.

The opposite of education is, I think, ignorance. If education creates an awareness of gaining knowledge, ignorance is an awareness of knowing that there are things we don’t know. When we’re knowingly ignorant, we’re aware of our knowledge’s limit. We’re also aware that, beyond this limit, there’s more to be known.

This feeling when we’re consciously ignorant, when we’re aware of our knowledge’s limit, resembles the feeling we have when we’re consciously not free. Therefore, as education is freedom, ignorance is limitation.

When we educate ourselves, the limits to our knowledge turn into mile-markers; what was once our end transforms into a moving destination, ever-ahead, yet never oppressive or discouraging.

This must be what real freedom feels like – to run out of our cell and into the vast expanse without fear or fear of tiring, filled with delight.

Initially, I believed real education, like real freedom, could only be self-education. For if we were sprung from our cells by someone else, we would be in that person’s debt. What’s the point of being free if we’re chained to another by links of obligation?

But here the analogy breaks down. After all, we can’t be consciously ignorant if we don’t know we don’t know. We wouldn’t have a desire to escape our prison if we didn’t know we were jailed.

In order to be consciously ignorant, to know we don’t know, we’d need an awareness of something, or someone, outside our cell. Otherwise, what we’d believe was education and freedom would merely be a prisoner running around a pitch-black cell, avoiding the walls by luck.

So whether we listen to a teacher, take in a film, read a book by a long-dead author, or debate with a friend, we are always educating ourselves through interactions with others.

Education may be freedom, and freedom may affect the individual, but it’s only found among company.

[occasionallyposted]

... Leonard Cohen

Dear Leonard Cohen, Thank you, Leonard for your company all these years. When darkness fell, when lovers came and went, when poetry and song wouldn't cooperate, you were there – not as a doctor prescribing a cure, but as a fellow patient sharing our hospital room and conversation. Thank you, Leonard for leaving us body of work, "a manual for living with defeat." Who knew one could do so with so much honesty and grace? Thank you, Leonard for finding light in words both holy and broken. You illuminated language in a way no one else could do. Thank you Leonard, for coming out of retirement, performing well into the night, and releasing a trinity of moving albums. You disproved Capote by writing a beautiful third act and by dictating the terms of your final exit. Thank you, Leonard. Sincerely, R. Cohen

[occasionallyposted]

… Wonderful Doubt

There is perhaps no more amazing ability we possess than our ability to doubt.

Whether it is a God-given gift or a fluke of evolutionary engineering, doubt propels us into regions no other animal on Earth inhabits. We might be presented with a world that’s vivid and concrete, yet we can choose to reject it for a universe unseen. We can put pressure on a truth, as told by a person in power or as written in a seemingly infallible text, until cracks appear in its surface and a better brilliance shines through.

Because we are doubtful, we are allowed to be dissatisfied with the way things appear to be and we are charged with striving to make things better.

It’s this latter charge that we often forget, and when we forget it, it sinks our doubt into despair.

For if our skepticism isn’t paired with measured idealism, we cannot, it seems to me, be more than a negative influence on the world.

Doubt creates the vacuum we must ourselves fill.    

[occasionallyposted]

... Elie Wiesel

A few words I wrote after Elie Wiesel's passing: When I first heard Dr. Wiesel had passed, I remembered being with him in Carolyn Johnston’s office in January of 2008. We were having an argument. He was sitting across from me, surrounded by books. His legs were crossed, his eyes were focused on mine, and the fingers of his left hand were rested on his lips and cheek – a pose that signified he was intently listening, and which had the added effect of giving his untamable hair look even more like a prophet’s or an Hasidic Tzaddik’s – a Just Man’s. Our argument was purely academic and artistic. I liked No Country for Old Men; he didn’t. After I pleaded my case, he looked at me for a while, closed his eyes, then began asking questions. “Didn’t you think the plot was unbelievable?”, “Why would the villain be able to just walk away at the end?”, “Where was the justice in the film?”, “Where was the moral dimension?” Admittedly, none of my answers were worthy of his questions, but being young and headstrong, I held to my position. At the end, Dr. Wiesel smiled and wished me a good rest of the day until we were to meet for class again. Looking back, I can’t believe my cheek. What gave me the right to disagree with a Nobel Laureate, a published author, a social activist, and a keen-minded philosopher like Elie Wiesel? I could only do so because of the type of person he was. With me, and with all of his other students, Dr. Wiesel lifted us up to his level. He treated us as equals, and he considered himself a fellow – and perpetual – student. Because no one could listen the way Dr. Wiesel listened. Whether he was listening to students or professors, presidents or preschoolers, Elie Wiesel listened with his whole soul. Some people are engrossing talkers; he was a captivating listener. Because Dr. Wiesel made everyone who met him feel like he was his or her friend. “It may be hard,” he’d say, “but a person can live without love. A person cannot live without friendship.” By this measurement, he gave many, many people reason to live. Because through Dr. Wiesel, I’d learned that asking questions and challenging authority, when done from a place of reverence and respect, creates a closeness even stronger than faith. He taught me that to wrestle with God is to embrace God, and to wrestle with our teachers’ opinions was to draw closer to our teachers’ souls. Now that Dr. Wiesel is gone, I’ll never again be able to sit across from him and debate the merits of popular films. And yet (his favorite words were “and yet”) I am unspeakably grateful for those moments and for the legacy of words Dr. Wiesel left behind. Over the last few days, I’ve read through his books The Oath and Somewhere a Master, if only to hear his voice again. And when I have questions about what he means when he writes about Azrael's silence, or if I take issue with his assertion that Pinhas of Koretz believed all people can bring about the coming of the Messiah, I feel closer again to Dr. Wiesel, my mentor, my teacher, my friend.

[occasionallyposted]

... Suffering and Struggle

Suffering and struggle are, in and of themselves, worthless. What benefit that can be derived from these comes from being forced to confront the bare reality before us.

But we can encounter reality in other ways. We do not necessarily need suffering and struggle. What seems like, from a distance, a wrestling match with the real is often, from up close, a lovers' embrace.

[occasionallyposted]

… Praising Ignorance (sort of)

There’s an old Zen chestnut that goes something like this:

A young monk called on a master, eager to study under him. Wanting to impress the master, the young monk enters the hut, sits down, and talks a mile a minute about all the books he’s read, the teachers he’s learned from, the hours of meditation he’s logged.

Amused, the master asks the monk if he’d like a cup of tea. The monk says yes.

As the monk keeps talking, the master keeps pouring. Talk talk talk. Pour pour pour. Until tea flows out of the cup and into the young monk’s lap.

Soggy and annoyed, the young whippersnapper leaps up and shouts, “What’s wrong with you? That cup won’t hold any more tea!”

To which the master responds, “Like your mind. How do you expect me to teach you when your mind’s already full?”

Ignorance is a tricky subject. Sometimes it’s praised, as in “Ignorance is bliss.” Other times it’s bandied about as an insult, as in “How could you be so ignorant?!” Both of these attitudes toward ignorance hold some truth, which also means that neither of these attitudes are completely right.

Let’s take a look at what the word means and its origin. Let’s educate ourselves about ignorance.

Ignorance is “a lack of knowledge or information.” It’s from the Latin word ignorantia, meaning “not knowing.”

So ignorance underscores what a person doesn’t have over what a person has. This makes ignorance different from, say, stupidity or idiocy, which both describe active states of foggy understanding and oafish misguidedness.

Neither a blissful state nor a jab at one’s intellect, ignorance is a leveler.

If we stack on one side the sum total of things we know and stack on the other side the sum total of things we have yet to know, will someday discover, and may never find out, we’d see that that second pile is embarrassingly larger than the first pile. This would be true for anyone, be they Albert Einstein or Kim Kardashian, Lisa Randall or Ryan Lochte. When we’re caught up in how much we know, we lose sight of how much ignorance we share with those around us.

So should we revel in our ignorance? Probably not.

Defending himself against the judges of Athens, Socrates said (more or less), “The only difference between you ignorant knuckleheads and me is that I know I’m an ignorant knucklehead.” The powers-that-had-been of 5th Century B.C. Athens didn’t take too kindly to Socrates’ candor, so they slipped him a hemlock cocktail. But why? Because he corrupted the youth or denied the gods, as charged? I don’t think so.

Socrates exposed the truth about wisdom: those who are wise are those who admit they have no idea what’s going on, and those who think they’re wise are fools.

It takes real guts to say “I don’t know.” And it takes even more gumption to do something about it. Because if ignorance is a leveler, it’s also our common starting point. When we admit our cup is empty, our knowledge pile is lacking, that we’re a knucklehead no wiser than the average Athenian or YahooNews commentator, the real learning starts.

Then again, I could be wrong.

[occasionallyposted]

If you like poetry...

23 August 2016

... consider reading my poetry blog, Miner/Poet. I’ll try to keep them good and true.

[occasionallyposted]

... Anger

Anger’s a part of our make-up, so lots of folks smarter than me have thought and written about it. Thinkers from Buddha to Seneca to Darth Vader have offered their takes on working with anger, suppressing anger, or giving in to anger.

I myself struggle with anger. I’ve lived with some who express it healthily and with others who might as well grow big and green when the latest dolt cuts them off in traffic.

Most days, I fall somewhere between Peacenik and Hulk.

Since I’m a high school teacher, I try to be aware of how my anger affects my students. Despite looking like young adults, they sometimes do and say some pretty aggravating things. (“Mr. Cohen, why did you give me an F?!” or “Mr. Cohen, [I know you’ve explained this fifteen times already, but] what are we doing?!”)

But they have an excuse. They’re kids. I’m not.

I’ve even deputized a few students in each of my classes to tap their pens on their desks to tell me when I’m about to fly off the handle. How do they know I’m about to get mad, you might ask? Well, it turns out I make a pretty silly face when I get mad. My eyes get wide and my lips get thin, which makes my cheeks look puffy. It’s like I’m holding my breath or drowning…which I kind of am.      

So, I figured I’d weigh in on anger. And, though it’s not as incisive as De Ira or as elegant as anything the Dali Lama wrote, here it is:

Dealing with anger is like having to throw up. The worst part of throwing up is denying we have to throw up. Likewise, the worst part about being angry is denying we feel angry.

Once we own up to the fact that we’re angry, we have to find a way to let it out with minimal damage and splatter. You’ve got to find your anger toilet, somewhere it goes and then goes away. Everyone’s anger toilet is different. Some folks have journals, others have mediation cushions, others still have punching bags. Although some may swear by journals or diaries, I’d advise against anything that preserves a record of your anger. When the toilet’s filled with puke, flush the toilet – don’t keep it around.

There’s another way being angry is like throwing up, and it’s really important.

When our anger has run its course, move on. Let it go. Would we want to continue to make ourselves throw up after our bodies have told us we’re done? So why do we keep jamming our fingers down the throats of our memories to bring up angry moments? We wouldn’t. At some point, what was an unpleasant – but necessary – bodily function becomes an illness. I’d argue that a person who repeatedly and purposefully makes himself angry is no different from a person who makes himself vomit. Both are sick and both require our compassion and help.

One last thing. This may be obvious, but it’s still true:

Try not to spit anger or puke on the people you love.  

[occasionallyposted]

...Marriage, a Spectator’s Sport

IN her essay, “The Necessary Enemy,” Katherine Anne Porter writes about a young wife experiencing a dilemma. Despite marrying the love of her life, she realizes – three years into her marriage – she has begun to hate her husband. She knows he’s done nothing wrong. He’s not cold or abusive or sleeping around.

Still, she hates him, and, even worse, she hates that she hates him.

Porter’s analysis is brilliant. She draws her conclusions from flaws in the institution of marriage and from Freudian psychoanalysis. By the end, she’s led her readers to understand that love and hate inhabit the same heart in ways that are natural, if not healthy.

But Porter leaves her young heroine out in the cold, without any warm advice, still hating her husband.

I really felt for her. As a young man, who’s been married for three years himself, I also worried I’d start to feel hate too. Porter made hate out to be an inevitability. I don’t know if she’s right.

So I began to think about why fiery, passionate marriages cool into hateful, domestic conveniences.

Often we hear about couples who fall out of love with one another, who say things like “She’s not the woman I thought I married.” Although I don’t deny that sentiments like these are deeply felt, I do think the disenchantment is misplaced.

People don't fall out of love with their partners because their partners have misrepresented themselves; people fall out of love because they’ve realized they themselves have been exposed as frauds.

In order to understand what I mean by this, we should ask, “What do we mean when we refer to our ‘selves?’”*

What we call our self includes more than the miraculous ecosystem of cells and fluids and neuromuscular electricity. We think of our self as an identity – a consciousness that thinks, feels, and experiences this world. And, in order to establish some kind of consistency, we draw from our past thoughts, feelings, and experiences to solidify our identity.

This identity, however, is rather contrived.

Its contrivance comes from the fact that we’ve established our identity on a tiny plot of land, consisting of a carefully curated and skillfully edited collection of meaningful memories.

Think: if we were to sit back and isolate the moments that made us into the people we are, we’d probably return with only a handful of events. We’d offer up a pivotal birthday, a childhood tragedy, a teenaged rite of passage, a world-changing exchange with a friend or mentor.

Now all these events are qualitatively rich; but if we’re being honest with ourselves, we would acknowledge that the vast majority of our time is spent doing necessary, but uninteresting, things – sleeping, staring at one screen or another, sitting on the can, picking our noses.

Normally, we can forget about all this. We can, as T. S. Eliot said, “prepare a face to meet the faces that [we] meet.” We can be engaging, brilliant, graceful, never conked out, a bore, or – God forbid – gassy.

But every so often, we’re caught unaware. We’re stopped at an intersection, digging around in our nose, when we realize the driver of the car next to us has been staring at us for who knows how long! We’re embarrassed for a moment. Not because we were picking our nose (If we were, we wouldn’t do it) but because we were caught picking our nose. Thankfully, our embarrassment drives away as soon as the light turns green.

Our husbands, wives, and partners, though, stick around. We’ve worked past the first dates and all the romantic resume-waving that goes into all that. We’ve charmed their parents and siblings. We’ve tied the knot and opened our hearts.

Yet the most intimate moments of marriage aren’t those that happen in the bedroom, when the camera pans to the open window and the fluttering curtains – they’re the times when we have to pick our noses, sort through the dirty laundry for a pair of wearable pants, or fart.

Our partners haven’t changed. We haven’t changed. We’ve just exposed ourselves for who we are.

It’s at this point that marriages reach their crisis, and if they collapse, it’s not because we’ve fallen out of love with our significant other; it’s because we cannot believe that he or she could possibly stay in love with the totality of who we are, present tense: a bag of meat, bone, and bile that’s both grimy and sublime.

We cannot believe our lovers can love us because we are so rarely able to love ourselves.

* I owe a debt to Alan Watts for his many lectures on concepts of the Self here and elsewhere.

[occasionallyposted]

... Ambition and Mastery

Over the last seven years I’ve spent teaching, I’ve noticed a troubling trend. The best teachers leave their classrooms to become instructional coaches, assistant principals, and other types of administrators. Often, this move up reflects a teacher’s desire to affect more students, change policy, or merely to earn more money.

None of these motives, or any others I’ve left out, are misguided. But an unintended consequence occurs:

The greenest and least proficient workers at a school spend the most time working with students.

Somehow, this seems backwards.

Now, it’s beyond the scope of this little piece to offer school reform. Instead, I’d argue this trend underscores a tension between two ways of looking at one’s career and life: one can be ambitious, or one can be masterful.

Ambition is defined as a strong desire to achieve. It’s derived from the Latin word ambire, which means “to walk about”, specifically to canvas for votes. Ingrained within ambition, then, is achievement tied to motion and the esteem of others. One realizes one’s ambition by moving forward and upward. The greater one’s ambition, the higher one must rise. The higher one must rise, the more difficult it is to realize one’s ambition.

Ambition is dynamic. Ambition is forceful. When it’s spun correctly, ambition is sexy. It is unsurprising that rising ambition has become the mantra of many Americans.  

Mastery is static. Mastery is quiet. Because it requires years of failure and self-examination, mastery is difficult and square.

Yet mastery has a virtue all its own. Someone who’s mastered an art or craft or discipline might not be popular as the ambitious person, but a master is respected.

The ambitious seek, the masterful are sought.

The ambitious stand on the shoulders of others, the masterful stand on their own.

The ambitious teacher becomes a principal. The masterful teacher becomes a better teacher.  

So we choose: are we masters of our ambition, or are we ambitious for mastery?

[occasionallyposted]

... Fate and Free Will

From “The Mountain Stoic” –

On a road there is a dog tied to the cart.  The dog cannot help being tied to the cart, it is merely the situation as he finds it.  The cart begins rolling down the road, headed to some destination or other.  The dog has two choices:  he can fight against the rope and cart, pulling, getting dragged, yelping, and struggling; or, he can trot along side the cart to wherever it is going.

Regardless, the dog is going where the cart is going.  There’s no helping that.  The only choice is whether he goes willingly, and thus makes it easier on himself and more enjoyable, or he gets dragged biting, snapping, and pulling the whole way.

https://mountainstoic.wordpress.com/

[occasionallyposted]

... God, Morality, and Platypuses

Let’s state two hypotheses:

1) God exists.

2) God does not exist.

In order to prove either of these hypotheses, one would have to provide definitive, empirical evidence one way or the other.

Since we do not have definitive, empirical evidence supporting either hypothesis, adopting either a theistic position or an atheistic position would be unfounded. The certainty that either position demands has not yet been validated by skeptical inquiry and reason.

Therefore, the only safe and rational position is an agnostic position, with a slight difference. Whereas the current definition of an agnostic is “one who believes nothing is known or can be known of the existence or nature of God,” a better definition of an agnostic would be “one who believes nothing is yet known about the existence or nature of God.” Again, we’re looking to soften the certainty around such statements. Just because we have not uncovered any definitive, empirical evidence yet does not suggest that we’ll never uncover any evidence, or that there is no evidence to uncover.

Let’s entertain the idea that God exists. If so, where would we find proof of God’s existence?

Perhaps we should first consider where we will not find proof of God’s existence.

We will not find it in any religious texts.

Religious texts originate from, and are tethered to, the times, cultures, and peoples from which they originate. The Old Testament, the Christian Gospels, The Koran, and all other similar texts tell more about their authors, cultures, and times than the inner workings of a celestial father’s mind. Thomas Paine’s work, The Age of Reason, is a thorough exposure of the internal inconsistencies within religious texts, which are most likely due to the shortcomings of their (multiple) authors than to the shortcomings of an infallible god.

If we are to find proof of God’s existence anywhere, we shall find it written in the language of science.

Unlike religious texts, which constrain their truths within languages limited by time, culture, and their authors’ proficiency (or incompetence), science – and scientific inquiry – voices its truth through empirical observation, mathematics, and rational thinking. Compared to other languages and modes of expression, scientific inquiry is less burdened by linguistic limitations.

And when new information is revealed that challenges previous assumptions about the world, scientific theories are reconsidered and reformed to take in those new discoveries.

This process of reflection, reconsideration, and reformation makes a scientific mindset better equipped for uncovering the existence and nature of God than a religious, dogmatic mindset. When new information challenges a scientist’s hypothesis, the scientist reconsiders the hypothesis; when new information challenges the tenants of a religious person’s holy book, the religious person pushes back, often aggressively, sometimes violently.

Take, for example, how we classify animals, specifically mammals. Mammals were once defined as “warm-blooded vertebrate animals of a class that is distinguished by the possession of hair or fur, the secretion of milk by females for the nourishment of the young, and the birth of live young.”

This was a perfectly reasonable definition…until zoologists discovered that female platypuses lay eggs.

Imagine the same paradigm-shaking event happening within a religion. What would happen? We don’t need to speculate. The decades following Martin Luther’s Protestant Reformation saw countless acts of individual and mass violence between Catholics and Protestants, often caused by differences of opinion much smaller than the difference between giving live birth and laying an egg.

Were there wars fought between rival bands of scientists over the proper placement of the platypus? How many zoologists died due to acts of taxonomic terrorism?

None. Scientists merely revised the definition of mammals to read:

“warm-blooded vertebrate animals of a class that is distinguished by the possession of hair or fur, the secretion of milk by females for the nourishment of the young, and (typically) the birth of live young.”  

Admittedly, people naturally prefer to hold on to old models rather than embrace new truths. Although we are eager to upgrade our iPhones, we are resistant to more meaningful changes. It would be easier for most people to ignore that platypuses exist than to question their definition of mammals. Although these people are wrong to deny platypuses admittance into the mammal club, their ignorance doesn’t affect the well-being of platypuses.

But when two people of the same sex are denied marriage because their marriage doesn’t fit others’ ideas of marriage, or that by loving one another, they’ve earned a place in a fiery underworld after death and persecution during life, their well-being is significantly affected, and our resistance to change, to embrace new truths into our moral framework, can have tragic consequences for others.

It’s this same inflexibility, rooted in dogmatic religious thinking, that impedes moral progress and human flourishing, just as it clouds our ability to seek out rational evidence of God.

Now one may argue that science tells us how things are, but not how things ought to be. Indeed, many argue for a one-way street running from ethics to science: that ethics should influence how we do science, but science has no purchase on ethics.

In his 2010 TED Talk, “Science Can Answer Moral Questions,” neuroscientist and public intellectual Sam Harris makes the case that science can, and has, been able to give us a clearer sense of how things are in the world. He points out that psychology and neuroscience have helped us understand how living beings experience pain and suffering and, conversely, how they experience happiness and flourishing. Furthermore, he believes that this understanding can allow us to act with more compassion and more moral concern than one might find in religion.

He also argues that just as there are experts in scientific fields, whose opinions are held in higher consideration than amateurs, there ought to be moral experts, whose opinions also ought to be held in high regard. He clarifies:  

Whenever we are talking about facts certain opinions must be excluded. That is what it is to have a domain of expertise. That is what it is for knowledge to count. How have we convinced ourselves that in the moral sphere there is no such thing as moral expertise, or moral talent, or moral genius even? How have we convinced ourselves that every opinion has to count? How have we convinced ourselves that every culture has a point of view on these subjects worth considering? Does the Taliban have a point of view on physics that is worth considering? No. How is their ignorance any less obvious on the subject of human well-being?

Ironically, Harris, an atheist, admits his call for “a universal moral conception of values” sounds similar to the type of calls heard from “religious demagogues.” The difference, of course, is the quality and source of Harris’s sense of conviction. Whereas “religious demagogues” find certainty in religious texts that are non-factual, imperfect and outmoded, Harris’s conviction comes from scientific facts and empirical observations that point to why certain societies and individuals flourish. And while his strong conviction sounds like certainty, it isn’t. If new information comes to light that would grant him a different and greater understanding of how to better care for those around him, Harris would change.  

At this point, some of my readers may ask: “How did you get to talking about morality when you began talking about the existence of God? Everything you’ve written was written under the assumption that God may exist. What if there is no God? What happens to morality?”

The topic of morality has historically followed from a discussion of God, since many people look to religion for moral guidance.

But suppose God doesn’t exist. Would the bottom fall out of the moral tub?

No.

Only a person relying on old models with God holding out Salvation in one hand and Damnation in the other, who only acts morally out of self-interest or fear, would have to worry.

But if we build our “universal moral conception of values” on a foundation of reason and human compassion, is there a need for a God? And if we act more kindly toward one another, seeing to everyone’s happiness and flourishing, wouldn’t a benevolent god be pleased, even if he were ignored?

People of different faiths view themselves as seekers of truth along a path.  In order to successfully navigate a path, a seeker must have his or her eyes open to changes in the terrain. I believe a rational, scientific mindset allows for such clear sightedness. The scientist and the seeker are one, if both are willing to pursue truth through the best means available in order to actively better themselves and their world.

[occasionallyposted]

... Considering Life’s Purpose

The astronomer Fred Hoyle explained the probability of life on Earth through this analogy:

Imagine a tornado spun through a scrap yard and left a fully functional Boeing 747 in its wake. That is the likelihood of life on Earth.

Whether we believe in Science, in God, in Chance, or in some mixture of these and other causes, we must admire the unlikely probability that Earth is here and we are on it. Once we acknowledge our good fortune, we may – we must – ask ourselves Why? For what reason are we here?

Some may answer as hedonists. We exist only for a short while, so let’s celebrate! This is our one chance, and since there is nothing beyond this, why worry about the consequences of our actions? Whose judgement do we fear?

But great pleasures give way to greater desires, just as a glutton’s stomach and appetite grow larger yet feel less fulfilled. And the discomfort felt after a voluptuous feast belies our guilt – that our hedonism is empty and wrong and we are judged for it.

So should we forsake pleasure? Should we deny ourselves in order to serve a higher power – someone or something eternal with infallible judgement? Hold on a moment. What proof is there of this eternal judge? If he exists, can we read his mind? Are we certain self-denial is the bed of nails he has fashioned for us to lie upon, or is self-denial no better than self-indulgence?

Look around at what we can see. We are not alone. Our cosmic 747 is peopled with billions of other passengers. Each of them has as much a right to be here as we do; each of them has an equal opportunity to worsen or better this world. Each of them is a light as excellent as any other, as excellent as any star in the firmament.

Therein lies our charge: to pursue excellence so we may better ourselves; to pursue excellence so we may better each other; to pursue excellence so we may better our world.

Why be a grasping or a guilty thing? Why cover our lights with shades made of opulent silks or rough sackcloths? Let our lights reveal themselves: let them be lights unto ourselves and lights unto others. Death – what of it? Who cares how long our lights will burn? All that matters is that they burned and that they burned well.

[occasionallyposted]

...Kipling the Stoic

Over the past year, I’ve found myself drawn to Stoicism. Now, some of you may be thinking that means I’ve replaced my face with a poker face, started wearing a toga, or maybe adopted “Live long and prosper” as my email signature.

But lower case stoicism isn’t followed by upper case Stoics. stoics kill their emotions; Stoics seek to accentuate their positive emotions, maintain calm under pressure, and attempt to find reason and humor in the seemingly random workings of the Universe.

I came into Stoicism through the back door. Before associating with folks named Seneca, Marcus, Musonius, and Epictetus, I embraced Rudyard Kipling’s poem “If–,” which I recite on my walk to work each morning. Today, I realized the many connections between Stoic Doctrine and this poem. I’ve split the stanzas up and added my thoughts between. I hope it’s useful.

“If–”

by Rudyard Kipling

If you can keep your head when all about you  

   Are losing theirs and blaming it on you,  

If you can trust yourself when all men doubt you,

   But make allowance for their doubting too;  

Classic Stoic equanimity. One keeps one’s head as others are troubled by events and casting blame outside their selves. One’s trust comes not from the shifting loyalties of others, but from one’s internal compass.

If you can wait and not be tired by waiting,

   Or being lied about, don’t deal in lies,

Or being hated, don’t give way to hating,

   And yet don’t look too good, nor talk too wise:

“The best revenge is to not be like that.” – Marcus Aurelius

Waiting is tiresome, lies beget liars, hatred begets haters. But that’s no reason to adopt negative ways. At the same time, there’s nothing more tiresome and hated than a prig, so lead by example, not ostentation.  

If you can dream—and not make dreams your master;  

   If you can think—and not make thoughts your aim;  

If you can meet with Triumph and Disaster

   And treat those two impostors just the same;  

Imagination is useful so long as it’s tempered by reason, yet reason shouldn’t make us automatons. Use imagination and reason to accept good and bad fate with, you guessed it, equanimity.

If you can bear to hear the truth you’ve spoken

   Twisted by knaves to make a trap for fools,

Or watch the things you gave your life to, broken,

   And stoop and build ’em up with worn-out tools:

Sometimes our words and ways are obstructed by those who do us wrong, but our reaction to those wrongs matters far more than the wrongs themselves. Cleave to truth, virtue, building good works. A life of disinterested service, even with imperfect tools, is better than a life of non-engagement.

If you can make one heap of all your winnings

   And risk it on one turn of pitch-and-toss,

And lose, and start again at your beginnings

   And never breathe a word about your loss;

Again, equanimity in the face of gambles lost. And should one lose, don’t spend irredeemable time and mental energies agonizing about it.

If you can force your heart and nerve and sinew

   To serve your turn long after they are gone,  

And so hold on when there is nothing in you

   Except the Will which says to them: ‘Hold on!’

Indifference to physical suffering. The body must be made servant to the mind. As a distance runner and weight-lifter, these lines have helped me through some steep hills and heavy lifts.

If you can talk with crowds and keep your virtue,  

   Or walk with Kings—nor lose the common touch,

If neither foes nor loving friends can hurt you,

   If all men count with you, but none too much;

As Seneca the Younger once wrote, “The whole world is my home,”  so all its inhabitants ought to be one’s family. Be neither base nor haughty, stay centered and true. Show genuine concern for one’s fellows, but don’t grow too attached before it’s time to board the boat.

If you can fill the unforgiving minute

   With sixty seconds’ worth of distance run,  

Yours is the Earth and everything that’s in it,  

   And—which is more—you’ll be a Man, my son!

One more reminder that the mind rules the body, and when one masters one’s mind and brings it in tune with the world, one gains the world and becomes a man. As the word virtue shares its Latin root “vir” with “virile,” one cannot consider one’s self a man unless he is a man of virtue, which, as we all know “is the sole good.”

[occasionallyposted]

… Ferguson, Staten Island, Cleveland, America

Over the last few weeks, I have read numerous and varied reactions to the grand jury decisions on the deaths of Michael Brown and Eric Garner, the tragic death of twelve year old Tamir Rice, and the protests and riots that have followed them all.  I have nodded my head in agreement with many of my friends, and I have observed the unreconstructed views of some of my acquaintances on social media with disbelief and disappointment.

Throughout it all, I have had to face my students, who have more in common with the dead than those with whom I personally associate.  For their sake, and for my own, selfish need to maintain inner calm, I have attempted to move forward from these events with more than white-hot indignation.  This seemed the prudent course, especially since the medium of social media lends itself to amplified emotion and reckless rhetoric.

And yet, as I learned from my mentor, Elie Wiesel, silence is a form of complicity with the afflictors and an abandonment of the afflicted.

So, after some reflection, here is my stance:

I am a white man, born into a home that was comfortable and safe.  Although I hope to be judged solely by the content of my character, I have most certainly benefitted from the color of my skin.  I neither apologize for this fact, nor do I feel I have ever knowingly taken advantage of this fact.  

I say this to emphasize that I have never feared for my life or worried about the limits of my freedoms on account of my race.

Yet I have no idea what effects such fears and worries would have on a person, or what effects having been born under such fears and worries would have on a people.

I defend the justice of the law because laws have always been just to me.  I uphold the virtue of non-violent protest because I have never needed to call upon violence to affect change.

Yet if I felt that laws were divided into just laws and unjust laws, if I felt that I, my family, and my community, over the course of two hundred and forty years, have lived under the demoralizing darkness of injustice, to only experience faint and intermittent rays of justice’s light, I do not know if my hands would lift up a sign or a brick.  And I would not condemn my brother if he, under the same conditions, hurled the latter.

So my friends, my acquaintances, my students, please: examine the cause before condemning the consequence; admit the limits of our experiences; remember that on every side of this unresolved and unsettling conflict there are people, though fallible and blind, yearning to do the right thing.