Observatio

Mouse is a syllable, a mouse nibbles cheese, therefore a syllable nibbles cheese. -- Seneca

Describes, fairly well, the state of our political logic these days.

Consternatio

A disturbing sight last weekend, while we were hiking in the Sunol Wilderness, near Pleasanton. On the busy trail heading back to park HQ from what they call Little Yosemite, we spotted a dog with a Safeway bag of his own poop hanging around his neck.

My God, what kind of sadistic creep would do that to a pup? We all know that a dog’s sense of smell is something like 400 times stronger than a human’s. Can you imagine having to walk a few miles with your own feces hanging in a pouch a couple inches from your nose? Worse, it was a hot day...

It’s almost cute when people put bandannas and sunglasses on their pooches. I like when I see a dog carrying his own leash in his mouth too, but for the love of God, making a creature as noble as the family dog wear a shit sachet is just plain vile.

Opinatio

Laura Miller at Salon has written a piece about the coming revolution in publishing, which will make it possible -- and already has, to a great extent -- for anyone to publish a book. She likens this to a colossal slush pile, that mountain of unsolicited writing that only agents and editors (or their interns, more likely) have had to contend with till now. It’s not a pretty thing, the pile of slush.

As a writer, I’ve always respected the publishing professionals who sift through all that gravel to find a shining nugget. I’ve always hoped they’d see the value in the nuggets I send in, but the more I’ve participated in this game the more I’ve come to realize it’s essentially a lottery. Now and then a talented writer gets lucky, but not very often. Miller’s point is that, if anyone can publish using e-books or print-on-demand self-publishing outlets, it will be the hapless reader who has to do her own slush pile sifting. There is no reasonable way to judge the quality of millions of potential titles -- even the professionals don’t receive millions of submissions -- so the reader will have to dip randomly into the swamp or rely on trusted blogs or other book enthusiasts to figure out what’s worth reading, worth paying for. As Miller makes clear, not much in a traditional slush pile meets either description. “Crapola” is a polite word to use to refer to these brain droppings.

I promised myself a long time ago I’d never self-publish. Even when it became easier and cheaper to do it, I turned my back to that option because the odds of being read are just as astronomical via that approach as through the old system, plus there’s a tinge of pathos surrounding the whole thing. Especially after I had a book published through the old system, I decided that I would live or die as a traditionalist and let others try out the new way. So far, it doesn’t look to me as if self-publishers have found a way to overcome the real obstacle between them and literary recognition: anonymity.

People buy books by authors they’re familiar with. Or that their friends have liked. Or that repetitive ads or cultural references have thrown into their view. They can’t buy books that they don’t know exist, nor do they often drop twenty-five on a title by a complete unknown. As long as these are the facts of life, self-publishing is going to be an exercise in futility, even if, for a little while, you get a buzz over seeing your words in print and an ISBN code with your name on it.

Miller thinks not very much will change with this new model. I’m not so sure. I have a feeling that traditional publishers will find a way to exploit the seemingly universal American desire to publish. For a fee, and not a comfortably small one, they’ll take your .doc file and park it on a server somewhere in New Jersey, and you’ll get to say that your book is available through HarperCollins. Nobody who doesn’t know you will ever be able to find it, and you’ll never get a dime of your investment back, but by Jove you’ll have had a book “published.”

The sad thing is that there’s never been a shortage of people who think they can write, nor of companies that will be delighted to take their money no matter how lousy the writing is. The technology is changing, but I’m afraid the natural dynamics of writing and publishing will always be the same.

Consternatio

This age needs rather men like Shakespeare, or Milton, or Pope; men who are filled with the strength of their cultures and do not transcend the limits of their age, but, working within the times, bring what is peculiar to the moment to glory. We need great artists who are willing to accept restrictions, and who love their environments with such vitality that they can produce an epic out of the Protestant ethic ... Whatever the many failings of my work, let it stand as a manifesto of my love for the time in which I was born. -- John Updike

What consternates me is that this is Mr. Updike, at age 19, writing to his parents. Doesn't sound much like a chap I could identify with.

Opinatio

In all seriousness, the destruction of Touchdown Jesus somewhere in Ohio -- by a lightning bolt, no less -- is a big deal. I can’t think of a better demonstration of the irrationality of faith.

Think back to when Hurricane Katrina destroyed New Orleans (or rather, the Army Corps of Engineers destroyed NOLA), and the first thing out of Jerry Falwell’s mouth is that God was making a statement about “the gays.” Enough with the debauched lifestyle, the fabulous wardrobes, the outrageousness, the uppity desire to get married just like normal people, God appeared to be saying. I strike you down, Homo Town!

Never mind that there are other more recognizably gay watering holes in this country, my own SF among them. And never mind that the real victims of the flood were thousands of poor blacks who lived in the sections of town deepest below sea level, as you might expect from free market capitalism. The Rev. Falwell declared that it was queerness that had moved the Almighty to smite.

But now God has zapped the kitschiest of all kitschy Jesus representations, using his weapon of choice (lightning, just ahead of heartbreaking irony). If Jerry were still with us, he’d have to conclude that God was angry because we rendered his only begotten son in such a crass and tasteless way, or that he was angry with Jesus himself for an extravagant end zone celebration (always meant to show up the other team). Surely this was an omen, lo.

And yet, I have a feeling that the faithful folk out there are probably just chalking it up as “something that happened.”

This is how the religious mind works. When something supports their fantasy of a great and powerful being in the sky, they embrace and amplify it. When it doesn’t support the fable, they ignore it. This is one of those times. Lightning striking that particular structure was an accident caused by immediate meteorological conditions -- don’t you know anything about science, you dipstick atheist? Doesn’t mean nothin’.

Now, if the lightning had struck Elton John, on the other hand...

Observatio

In that same realm, it’s fascinating to wonder whether consciousness is nothing but a biochemical accident in the first place. Living things, over eons, gradually became more complex so that their moment-to-moment actions were not automatic, like a one-celled organism’s, and their survival came to depend on an awareness of themselves in the environment. You can see how evolution would have favored individuals that had the biochemical advantage of, for instance, being able to detect changes in light or temperature, which would help them find food more easily or avoid predatory organisms and other dangerous thingys. Eventually, the more advanced these biochemical systems became, the more aware some species became. Is consciousness, the way we humans understand it, just a terrifically advanced level of awareness?

The kicker is that an advanced awareness of ourselves in the environment has also given us an awareness of mortality, self, time, and space. We have come to see ourselves as the reason the universe exists -- the ultimate subject -- which is probably a mistake of enormous magnitude. Instead, what if our consciousness is really just part of a larger system? We might be like the leaves on a tree, collecting energy and feeding something larger that we can’t perceive. Or we might be sensors, our consciousness a means of transmitting information back to a central brain or intelligence undetectable because we are too small or too close. (We’re soaking in it!)

You can’t be much of a narcissist when you contemplate this stuff.

Observatio

I’ve just read a short column about what happens to us when we die, theoretically. It seems a pretty good time to contemplate such meaty stuff, since my father died three weeks ago. Where he is, how he experiences his being, if at all, and whether his consciousness has survived intact are all on my mind. If there is an overriding justice in the universe, though, he has probably returned as a little black baby in Detroit.

The column -- I forget where I saw it -- tied the idea of consciousness to Einstein’s theory of relativity, which makes sense in a way. If time and space depend upon an observer, then the absence of the observer implies the obliteration of time and space. The writer said that time “reboots” at our death, though I’m not quite sure what he means by that. Sounds like a nod toward reincarnation, because if time reboots it means there must be a new subjective observer. In that sense, time begins when we’re born, or when we start to perceive the world as a subjective observer, and ends when we die. It is easy to imagine, along with a million other possibilities, that “I” will inhabit another consciousness after this one fades away -- a new one, or maybe even an older one embedded in another time. Who knows? All I know for sure is that it’s impossible to experience nothingness, so either my ability to experience at all comes to an end when I die, or “consciousness” is somehow renewed. It will be interesting to find out, though I’m happy to wait as long as possible for the news.

On the other hand, I’m pretty sure I had no consciousness prior to this life. Nothing comes right to mind. Maybe this life is my first appearance, or maybe, if time does reboot, the observer’s script is erased and there is nothing to be remembered of earlier struttings on the stage.

I’m willing to give Einstein the benefit of the doubt. He thought that the time-space bullpen we find ourselves waiting in -- the present -- is an illusion. That seems as realistic as anything I’ve heard on the subject.

Observatio

My wife has purchased shampoo that makes my head smell like a Junior Mint.

This is not a problem.

Consternatio

Yesterday, while walking the dog in town, I was across the street from our old post office building -- a nice 20’s era Carnegie-type edifice -- when I spotted a petition table in front. The first words on the poster I glimpsed were “Impeach Obama,” and only after I registered that did I see the photograph that accompanied the caption above: Barack Obama with a Hitler mustache. At that point, one of the young pea-brained, neo-fascist dudes manning the table looked over and gave me a shit-eating grin -- proud of himself and full of adolescent, testosteronical voltage -- and all I could think to do was flip him the bird. Which I did.

His reaction was to take offense. Imagine that.

What I did, in retrospect, was immature and even stupid -- who knows, he might have chased me down and beaten the crap out of me with a bike chain hidden in his camouflage cargo pants -- but it was instinctual and reflexive. What he did was equally offensive but backed by intention and forethought. He meant to offend. He thought he was cute as hell with his Hitler photo and his barely concealed racism (I want to know where these turds were when Bush was up late every night shredding the Constitution). He’d downloaded the petition from some Larouchian web site, no doubt, and picked the day to set up in front of the post office -- and in a dominantly liberal part of our little town, too. He wanted to provoke, and he provoked me into acting like a moron.

I’m not proud of it, but that I offended him for a split second gave me a burst of adrenaline and, maybe too, testosterone, though I realize that this kind of reaction is exactly what, on a larger scale, makes violent conflict the human mode of attacking disputes.

We see how well that goes. The Israeli raid on that humanitarian flotilla is just one recent example.

Opinatio

Recently Andrew Sullivan collected at The Dish a number of responses to his question: What do atheists think about death? It’s been interesting to read the thoughtful replies, which run the gamut from “Not much” to “Terrified, but whataya gonna do?”.

I’ve been an atheist since before I had to shave, but it’s always bothered me that believers seem to think that death is the great fly in atheists’ ointment (that’s one troubling image). I beg to differ. If anything, death is the fly in anybody’s ointment because there is no getting around the human tendency to question and doubt. I know of no honest Christian who has been completely free of doubt, brought on by both the trivial and the profound. Mother Theresa famously suffered from it for long periods of her life. My own mother, as devout as a Catholic can be, has moved in and out of deep faith many times, more often than not because of her view of death. Where there’s doubt, there’s fear. It’s there in the human genome.

Sullivan does not appear, in his various writings on all this, to admit that he could be wrong about the glory of Christ’s love, so I detect a certain pity in his tone when he asks us non-believers how we’ll face the end. In an online debate with Sam Harris, I believe, a few years ago, he reminded Harris that we’re all going to die eventually, and without belief an atheist’s search for salvation in the truth derived through science would leave him high and dry. “What will save you then?” he asked, which is nothing but a stark expression of fear, the fear of annihilation.

Harris’s answer isn’t recorded, but like most of the atheists writing in at The Dish, I would say, “Nothing.” There’s nothing to be done. If consciousness ends, then there is nothing but nothing, and that’s nothing to be afraid of, as Julian Barnes might put it.

We atheists always raise the point, in response to these questions, that there was nothing before we came into the world and it wasn’t so bad. We expect to return to that level of awareness when our brains are no longer oxygenated. As impossible as it is to imagine nothingness, eternity is cut from the same inconceivable cloth. In fact, if eternity is the absence of time, as it must be, there can be no perception of reality or being in it. The only reality we know is that of inhabiting a body and moving from birth to death through time, so to be transformed into a “soul” detached from time is to become nothing we can imagine or identify with. If we attach to it our living personality, it must perceive itself to be somewhere and to be experiencing something. But experience is tied to time, and time doesn’t exist in eternity. Checkmate.

For a year or so I’ve been having this very conversation with an old friend of mine, who is an evangelical Christian. We’re never going to understand each other, but I’m always stunned when he answers a philosophical question by quoting the Bible. I respond that the Bible is man’s work, and no living man has ever known what comes after death. He says, No, it’s God’s work, and God promises eternal life to the faithful. Naturally, I think he’s deluding himself and he thinks I’m willfully refusing to see what’s clear to him. On that front, I guess he has a better fate than I do, since if he’s wrong he’ll experience nothing and if I’m wrong I’ll be tormented forever in God’s eternal barbecue.

I understand the desire for eternal life. I can’t picture it, but I understand it. The sad truth, I’m afraid, is that wishing doesn’t make it so, and neither does believing.