Everything Happens For a Reason

Every time I hear that, I think of the Donner Party.

The most tragic element of the story of the Donner Party is that they almost made it. They started out in Springfield, Illinois for one thing; they had already come a long way before they met the snowstorm. Along the way they had many scrapes and adventures and some of them nearly did them in. They nearly starved to death in the desert of Utah for one thing. Of the 87 men, women, and children in the Donner Party, only 46 survived the ordeal - and many of them survived only by resorting to cannibalizing the dead. So what, in the grand scheme, is The Reason this happened? Many harrowing and gruesome events occurred - which I will not repeat here - ordeals NO ONE should ever have to go through.

It is a natural reaction I think to claim divine grace in a narrow escape. Many of the survivors of Hurricane Katrina say that God was looking out for them that through the whole ordeal. Richard Dawkins has famously pointed out that God certainly wasn't looking out for them when he sent the hurricane in the first place. And by implication, God apparently WASN'T with all of those who died. I CANNOT believe that God is like that -- that he picks one person to make it through a narrow scrape and abandons another. I must therefore conclude that the difference between the doomed and the rescued is something more sinister: DUMB LUCK.

I am a lucky man. Every day here lately I have been awed, struck dumb in the wonder at how lucky I am. But I am lucky in the way that a guy who walks away from a train wreck is lucky. If I didn't know better, sometimes I'd say that someone was protecting me. But I refuse to believe that - that CAN'T be true - not if (by implication) that certain someone was ignoring so many others. A Buddhist would talk about "karma" -- but I have issues with that as well. I refuse to believe that those who suffer "had it coming" so to speak. That's not what the real concept of karma is about, but it is an annoyingly popular perception of it.

What's a guy to do?!

Well, it's a funny thing. I have also been struck by the sense of awe and wonder found in the work of known atheists. Douglas Adams notably. It seems paradoxical - probably because the word "atheist" has such a negative, angry connotation - but when there are no angels protecting you, when there is no spiritual wall protecting you from the Forces of Evil, the preciousness of life just seems to become breathtakingly real. Every river is ageless beyond civilized reckoning. Every trait that makes us human has been honed and refined through millions of years of struggle, of violence, of survival. For me at least, the idea that "God spoke and it all just happened" seriously cheapens the story. All the juicy bits get cut.

So yes, I am Lucky with a capital "L." And I am learning to deal with it. But no: I am NOT lucky for a reason -- and that makes it all the more precious.

A Meditation On Evil

I am pleased to report that I recently had the experience of watching (with my daughter) a DVD of the 1986 made-for-TV film, My Little Pony & The End Of Flutter Valley. My daughter loved it - I endured it as well as I could. Just to give you a plot summary, the Ponies are going across the meadow to see their friends The Flutter Ponies -- little tiny ponies with butterfly wings and high squeaky voices) in order to observe the annual Flutter Pony Celebration.

BUT...

There are three witches who hate laughter and joy and flowers and sunshine and rainbows, So they want to RUIN the celebration! And they nearly succeed - but at the last minute, the Ponies recover the Magic Sparkle Gem, which restores the celebration! And the witches end up in a big mud puddle. It's that classic "pony vs. witch" conflict so common in contemporary literature. Practically unwatchable. It is certainly not for the weak.

But those witches now. For those up on their literary criticism, they will recognize the witches as embodiments of the Iago character type, so named by Samuel Taylor Coleridge as a character who acts out of pure malice with no ulterior motivation. Those that have actually read Othello will notice that this actually isn't true -- Iago is wreaking havoc on Othello and Desdemona out of revenge - he was denied a promotion. A little over the top as far as revenge goes -- but even the original Iago is not really the true embodiment of the Iago character type. You only find that kind of malice in a children's story.

Similar characters can be found in other cartoons fromn the 1980's. Take the 1970's - 1980's version of the SuperFriends. You have your Hall of Justice with Superman, Batman, Wonder Woman, Aquaman, etc. And you have your Legion of Doom with Braniac, Bizarro, Solomon Grundy, Lex Luthor, and so forth. And the Legion of Doom is not interested in drugs or money or power. They just do bad things -- they plot to make a volcano erupt and destroy a town. Things like that. Or take the Smurfs - Gargumel is not after the smurfs' land, or their magical secrets or anything. And he is not interested in revenge. He just hates Smurfs and wants to exterminate them.

Exterminate. The "E" word. Echoes of Hitler reverberate when you use the "E" word - and Hitler is among the biggest and baddest embodiments of evil. Was he an example of pure unadulterated malice? Well, no, he wasn't actually. The systematic extermination of twelve million people - six million among them being Jews - is a horrific crime. But as staggering as the Holocaust was, scholars agree that it was only a side project. Or more specifically, a means to an end - that end being world domination. That particular flavor of evil was a lust for power.

A harder case against "pure evil" is to be made of Al-Qaeda and the 9/11 hijackers. They DO seem like a very real Gargumel-like threat. They want to kill us. And near as we can tell, we haven't done anything to deserve it. Osama bin Laden himself has given numerous reasons for his own mission against us. US foreign policy is often given as a reason. Our stance on Israel. Interestingly in one speech, bin Laden cites his antics as revenge for the defeat of the Turks in a battle at the end of the Ottoman Empire. And this event - whatever it was - is so removed from the consciousness of the average American that I can't even find it with the cursory web search I am willing to give it.

But we are talking martyrdom here - and that is a very different kettle of fish. It could be argued that martyrdom like that committed by the 9/11 terrorists is in fact the ultimate in evil since even the perpetrator's own life is insignificant in the commission of murder and destruction. They get nothing out of it. But even leaving aside the promise of an afterlife that would make Hugh Hefner blush, there is another big payoff to martyrdom. It is something I will describe in another post, but for the moment I will say only this: human beings are the only creatures on the planet who are willing the give up their lives for ideas -- be they the service of God, or democracy, or for love, for country, for honor. And I will postulate for the moment that we DO get something out of it when we behave like this¹.

So if I haven't been clear, let me be so now. Pure evil does not exist. Evil acts are performed only as a means to an end. Man kills man for revenge, for power, for prestige, or even - in the case of serial murderers - for the thrill. Evil is the baddest of all side projects, but it is always collateral damage.


^{1. http://forum-network.org/lecture/daniel-dennett-evolution-free-will-and-morality}

A Meditation on Space

I live in a tiny apartment. And I dig it. I have a great location over a graphics studio downtown - I am walking distance from everywhere. I am 60 seconds from the nearest major highway. And I have church bells right out my window -- and I am one of those sick monkeys that really digs church bells.

What I do not have is space..

As a result, I use every spare inch of my place for utilitarian purposes. My music collection and book collection are under the bed. My air conditioner in the fall and winter serves as a support for the "shelf" that holds my pots and pans. I do have an elevated storage area in my hallway: an extra foot of clearance above the ceiling lined with a relatively deep shelf - I refer to this as my "basement." This is where I keep my Christmas decorations. Halloween decorations. Tools. Master reels from old recordings. Ad astra.

This way of living is (in a sense) profoundly "un-American." I am not interested in accumulating any more possessions in the traditional sense. I would love a Kitchen-Aid mixer for my kitchen, but I have nowhere to store it. I would frankly love a lot of things. I have come to loathe "gifts." If you like me, do not buy me a "gift" of the sort that comes from a "gift shop." I will re-gift it. Gifter beware.

This has profoundly affected my entertainment behavior. I used to spend all my money on CD's and DVD's, but in recent times, I have sold nearly all my music and video collection in favor of using Rhapsody and BitTorrent services. I will discuss this later in a post entitled "A Meditation on Ownership," but I don't need to OWN my music. I just want to listen to whatever I want whenever I want -- and even in my new "space-driven economy," I can. And it is wonderful. Okay - MOSTLY wonderful. It would be nice to have an X-Box or a Wii system. No matter how you cut it, that is a major space taker. And say what you like about the convenience of watching movies online, nothing beats watching them on that big ol' TV.

There is some risk in owning a bike in this environment. It is especially hard having a bike for my daughter as well. I currently live in the hope that no one gets annoyed with me keeping two bikes in the downstairs landing.

Managing trash and recyclables is also a space-expensive task.

So is playing the cello.

But you know what? I can make it work. And not only that, I LOVE it. My place is cool, trendy, cozy, and I have everything I need. I enjoy living this way. But if you want to get me a gift, the safest bet is to get me something that gets me OUT of the apartment, not something to clutter it!