We haven't come very far in 2,000 years

Last night I finished listening to a series of lectures, Exploring the Roots of Religion, a non-sectarian archaeological perspective by Prof. John R Hale.

In a lecture on Rome, Prof. Hale said that sports was marked by religious fervor in the ancient world as much as it is today.

Made me think how little we've advanced in 2,000 years. We still gather to watch human beings knock the stuffing out of each other. At least nowadays we generally restrict it to broken bones and crushed skulls.


But we live on the edge of barbarity. (There are those alive today that can remember Auschwitz, Bataan, The Killing Fields, and other modern atrocities.) We are all at our centers products of the same evolutionary line, and our best efforts to distinguish ourselves from other peoples is often to kill them.

Started: 1/16/12

We Don't Laugh Like That Anymore

I just listened to an old CBSRMT CBS Radio Mystery Theater episode that advertised the "new" 1974 Buick Regal.

It occurred to me that less than 30 years before that episode was first broadcast, the Golden Age of Radio was in its heyday; and here it is, nearly 40 years after that, and I am further away from 1974 now than I was from 1944 then.

Makes you stop and think. Makes me stop and think, and if you're not yet stopping and thinking about this sort of thing, you will someday soon.

Turner Classic Movies played a few Abbott and Costello scary comedies Sunday night. The were too scary for Dee Dee, but I did manage to watch a bit. The screwball buddy comedy is timeless, but we'll never see the likes of Abbot and Costello again, or Hope and Crosby, or Martin and Lewis.

Started: 1/16/12

(Most posts will now end with a "started" date, except for those I began so long ago that I don't remember the date. My subjects sometimes key off a recent event, so the date might be helpful at some point for anyone that's interested, including myself. I archive and save nearly everything I write, including these posts; together with email and my fiction, they form a fairly full picture of me that someone someday might enjoy reading. I wish I had this full picture of my grandparents, great-grandparents, etc.)

The Real Free Thought Heroes

Atheists are often angry skeptics[1], and this type of atheist is just as annoying as angry fundamentalists; neither side can let the other enjoy a little harmless diversion.

Christopher Hitchens died recently➚; he was celebrated for his acerbic atheism; he said if you had given Jerry Falwell an enema before he died, you could have fit him in a coffin the size of a matchbox.

This is unfortunate on many levels, not the least of which is a incredible irreverence for the dead. The angriest atheists seem to delight in being angrily witty[2], and there is a temptation for the listener to grant more value to something that is said well.

Now, there is some merit in the assertion that anything said well is worth hearing, regardless of what is said (much poetry exists for that reason alone), but it doesn't mean the words give us any insight into the human condition, and it can often mean they hurt others.

The best writing shouldn't hurt anyone (not intentionally), but it often does; Truman Capote's Answered Prayers comes to mind; it is first great writing and secondly gossip (which would have faded with the personalities it embarrassed had Capote not so sublimely elevated the lowly deeds of his celebrity friends[3]).

Hutchins' comment on Falwell was clever, but that's about it. Taken out of context (which is how another atheist presented it on the radio), it offers no insight into Hutchins, Falwell, or atheism, and certainly has no regard for my sensibilities, the listener, and I am probably among those most interested in the dialog.

Unfortunately, the angriest atheists only want to be heard and applauded by like-minded atheists, allowing of course for a few chortles here an there at the absurdity of befuddled believers (of which there is no shortage). It's not about listening, understanding, and debating, it's about ensnaring and embarrassing the gullible (also of which there is no shortage).

And so I offer two diametrically opposed heroes of free thought, two role models, one for each side of the coin, two men who had more in common than either would admit, and seemed even to like each other: Jerry Falwell and Larry Flynt.

Jerry Falwell
I liked Falwell, not because he was a Christian, but because he had the balls to engage Larry Flynt as a human being on national TV and to really mean it, and that's no small thing when you're running a multi-million dollar ministry; there were real dollars and careers at stake. Call him right, wrong, or crazy, Falwell was nothing if not genuine, and he took the high road after suing Flynt for the unflattering parody linked below. In the course of filing and losing the lawsuit, Falwell and Flynt got to know each other quite well, and I think they liked each other on some level, even while disagreeing with each other on just about everything.

<- Jerry Falwell Talks About His First Time[4] Rated MA 
I'm not kidding, this is from Hustler, okay?



Larry Flynt
And Larry? After all these years I can't figure out if his conversion by then-President Jimmy Carter's sister was genuine or not, but it sure seemed like it at the time, and I'd like to think it was; he made a couple odd financial decisions for Hustler at the time that he probably wouldn't have done otherwise, including a cover declaring "We Don't Need a Cover Girl to Sell This Magazine."

(But they did; it was one of the poorest selling issues in the company's history. A few companies have experimented with "we don't need _____ to sell you _____, including Ford, IIRC, who had an actor walk out on a white background and just talk, which didn't sell any more cars than Larry sold magazines.)

In any case, Larry made a public profession for Jesus and took a lot of crap from his readers. Call him right, wrong, or crazy, that took courage, and I think he did "come to know the Lord," as we say back where I come from.

In this light, Falwell was more open-minded than any atheist I have ever met, and should be an example for both atheists and Christians.

And Larry, despite having since embraced atheism, if he was truly genuine, he'll be rejoicing with the angels someday along with the rest of us when we all get to heaven. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Larry_Flynt ➚

They both took the time to know each other, and in so doing could disagree civilly.

Larry Flynt, Jerry Falwell on Larry King live 1996, Part 1
(The rest is on Youtube➚; if you watch all four parts, you can sense a connection between these two. They have more than their girth and extremism in common.)

[1]
"Often" because no group is always anything, even if it's mostly something most of the time.

[2]
Not in a funny ha-ha way, but in a Neo-Classical capital W Alexander Pope way.

[3]
Well, former friends, for those stories were the beginning of the end of his career, though in my opinion Music for Chameleons, more or less an anthology of late magazine pieces and published not long before he died, contains some of his best work.

[4]
Like most kids from that era, we found ways to get magazines like Hustler, and we read this issue when it first hit the newsstand. I was too young to understand the implications of what I was looking at (implications don't matter to children, they're an unfortunate facet chiseled into us as we enter adulthood; consequences - that's a different matter), but I felt like I was news along with this glossy, taboo, center of attention. I was probably the only person in my church that knew first-hand what all the ruckus was about. Of course, that's the only reason I read Hustler in the first place, for the articles. I was a very well-informed child.

Things You Can't Criticize

• Teachers
• Voting
• Firefighters
• Police officers
• Soldiers
• Any religion but your own

I'm not saying I want to criticize any of these people or things, just that propriety and preservation prevent me from doing so.

The only type of person that can successfully criticize these things is someone who finds a small flaw that most of us agree deserves criticism (which then can be leveraged into a broader condemnation), or someone who is so far above reproach on everything else that they are just politely acknowledged (like Charlton Heston's comments near the end of his life regarding gun control ➚), or someone who is fundamentally right and has identified something obvious the rest of us have overlooked.

Working on a larger post, different subject, taking some time.

 

Which Version Do You Like? (or, Anatomy of a Revision)

Regarding my post on "What does it mean to keep Christmas?":

Each of these opening paragraphs is adequate. One is better.

Before
I, like many others, more eagerly anticipate Christmas each year, and ever more deeply mourn its passing each year. Our holiday hopes are increasingly higher, which only means they are dashed from a greater height.

After
I, like many others, more eagerly anticipate Christmas each year, and each year more deeply mourn its passing. Our holiday hopes are increasingly greater, which only means they are dashed from a greater height.

The 2nd makes a couple improvements:

1. In the first sentence, closing the distance between the repeated cycle ("each year") instead of the activity ("mourning") emphases the cycle, and saves the activity for a small denouement; it makes your ear wait a bit, and in any case is more suitable for an observation on a periodic event. I also enhances the echo between "more eagerly" and "more deeply"

2. In the second sentence, I first described the amplitude of hope with height; but I wanted the hope to drop proportionally to the height, and I wasn't happy with the implied cliché "high hopes." "Greater hope" is more seasonal, and the repetition of "greater" more satisfying (at least to me) than repeating variations on height.(BTW I’m still not h happy with the 2nd line, there is one niggling thing I can’t let go it, just can’t put my finger on it.).

Sometimes you can't analyze it, you just know it. Just like in the preceding sentence (the one you just read before this one); I separated two independent clauses with a comma. Verboten in the school room, and most of our newspapers, magazines, and business writing.

I understand why, and you are welcome to disagree. It's not, IMHO, because we can't trust ourselves to learn and break rules (although that's probably part of it), it's because those that teach the language you and I speak don't understand why these two sentences have subtly different effects.

Sometimes you can't analyze it, you just know it.
Sometimes you can't analyze it; you just know it.

And that is a pedagogical tragedy.

And I used to teach, so I know what I'm talking about.

And yes, there is absolutely nothing wrong with starting an English sentence with a conjunction. If you're speaking Latin, you have my sympathy.