No Faith To Lose

I have no faith in the religious meaning of the word, but it’s not something that I lost along the way. Let me explain.

Religion works in two ways: it means to provide its adherents with an explanation of their own place in existence, and it imposes a system of rules, some procedural and many relating to so-called morality. Long before anyone tried to indoctrinate me into the presenting religion I had provided most of this framework for myself. (Self-aggrandizement alert: warning! more to follow!)

Certainly, I was the subject of religious interest from an early age. I was baptized as an infant, and I was also, in the quasi-religious manner of the Christians of the time, circumcised. I started kindergarten in a Roman Catholic grammar school before the age of five, and that is where the religious processing began in earnest. Before that my mother and various relatives had taken me along to church services and taught me simple prayers, “now I lay me down to sleep,” etc. I’d been told that God loved me, and that a particularized Guardian Angel followed me around. I well remember thinking that it was all a bit interesting, but that it had an unlikely ring to it and never seemed to have any bearing on the world that I lived in. I admit that I hedged my bets for a while and did some rote praying.

I recall a prior understanding that I was alive, and some consideration of what that meant. I was alive, along with my parents and family and neighbors, and we could all still see each other and talk together. Other family members existed only in photographs or in other people’s present conversations in the past tense. They were dead. I did not dwell on this, I simply observed that they had been alive but were not any longer. Death seemed very final, nothing in any of these conversations ever suggested that the lost family members carried on somewhere in a transformed state or lived in some religious paradise.

So I greeted my first Catechism lessons about heaven and hell with the cynicism that I had learned from my family. Plus, it seemed to make more sense that “Pop Pop” and the rest were simply gone. It was obvious that vast numbers of people had already died, along with all of the dinosaurs, another interesting phenomenon to a four year old, and that no one had ever heard from any of them again.

I make no claims to great intelligence or unique insight. I think that I was merely doing what children do, trying to make sense of the world, the better to survive it. I believe that I had also developed my system of personal ethics, the moral system with which I still approach the world, also before I arrived at school.

It is now common knowledge that babies are great observers of human behavior. Professional scientists show babies various tableau played out with hand puppets or dolls, and they register the babies physical reactions. Then they test the babies’ approval rating for the various dolls. Babies can see very well when a doll is in distress, and they are very interested to see whether a newly introduced doll will help the distressed doll or impede it in some way.

In this way babies judge the people that they see around them. They seek out and shamelessly cultivate the people whom they believe can help them, currying favor with delighted smiles and gurgles. They are innately aware that they need the help.

Being assured by science that I behaved that way as a baby, and having considered the matter at some length, I am convinced that I never abandoned the behavior. Perhaps that too is a common experience. Growing children and even adults, as well as babies, need help in this life, and it remains important to identify not only those who will provide the help, but also to spot those wreckers who will more likely impede us.

Back to the subject of my own personal morality. I flatteringly believe that in that pre-verbal miasma I decided that it was good to help people and bad to impede them, and that I decided at some point to be one of the good people, to offer assistance whenever the opportunity presented itself, and to deny myself the guilty pleasure of impeding others.

I will not include here the beautiful catalog of my good deeds, nor will I detail the loving, empathetic behavior that I have generally displayed to my fellows. Except for the times when I was losing my temper, or being abrasive, just for fun, that happened too. I have not been perfect, and I have disappointed people in many ways, but I fear no judgment on the subject of my virtue. The path that I chose, and have walked, is righteous.

I shamelessly take the full credit for this, because: 1) my extensive religious upbringing never emphasized love and empathy, but rather guilt and fear; 2) my parents, and many other family members, were not loving people and never offered much in the way of assistance or encouragement; 3) my teachers, with few exceptions, were cruel; 4) most of my childhood friends were even crueler; and 5) the world at large, of course, is horrible.

But there’s nothing supernatural about it, there never has been. No religious training ever took root in me. I had solved the moral equation myself, and religion, and each of them, seemed to have nothing to add. So, it is not true in my case to say that I lost my faith at some point. I never had any faith to lose.

Just Hangin' With The Tube

Just chillin' with some You Tube vid's, came across something that illustrates a point:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wvarPF5zlUA&feature=related


One of my supporters reminded me of this great song recently, I was revisiting it. On the "related" list was another version, I gave it a try. Someone had taken the album track and set it to a fabulously inventive video creation.

That's You Tube . . . why don't I take this song that belongs to someone else and create something ultra-personal and entertaining in the privacy of my own home, and then post it on You Tube?

Please take a minute to thank the Lord of your choice for You Tube.

It's Awkward

I've hawked this site before:

http://awkwardfamilyphotos.com/page/4/

Now they're including awkward stories as well. Many revolve around marriage announcements.

When my wife and I decided to get married, we went to her house and my house to spread the good news. At her house, her mother was horrified speechless, she hated me and thought that my entire family was crazy. Her father tried to reason with us. He sounded world-weary and beaten down, bitterly disappointed. "Everything is so expensive now," he went on, "why don't you wait until the prices come down." This was the middle of 1969, the very beginning of an inflationary spiral that went on until the Reagan recessions when things topped out at about three times the prices at the time of our marriage announcement.

Things were a lot less dramatic at my house. My parents just laughed, they thought the whole thing was hilarious, as in, we'll wake up tomorrow and discover that this whole thing was a joke, as in, didn't we see this on the Honeymooners? We just gave them a thanks for listening and turned on our heels, leaving for greener pastures.

Families are a mixed blessing.

The Ever Popular Cool Website Alert!

I love Boing! Boing! Extraordinary in every way. Found this link today:

http://crappytaxidermy.com/


The web is amazing, like access to 10,000 new magazines everyday. Dig it while it lasts!

Mortality Alert: John Hughes

Some youngster (only 59) mentioned in a comment that the sometimes quite entertaining film director, John Hughes has recently bought the farm.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZOkNIUw0c2s&eurl=http%3A%2F%2Fwww%2Eboingboing%2Enet%2F&feature=player_embedded


This is a nice little montage from some of his films to the theme of "Teenage Wasteland."

Reiko “Baby Doll” Murayama v. Linda Cooper

I’m a little ambivalent about women’s boxing, but this fight was a no-nonsense sporting event. Both women have heart and skills. Both obviously took the whole thing very seriously, and both were very good sports about it. The problem lies with boxing in general in this post-Muhammad Ali, post-Ray Leonard boxing milieu.

Boxing suffers from the worst announcing by far in all of sports. The fights may not actually be fixed, but the announcers always come in with a script from the money guys about who is preferred by them to come out on top. This fight was no different. It’s all about grooming particular fighters for future, big money fights, actual respective talent notwithstanding.

The women were pretty evenly matched, but Ms. Murayama was way ahead on my card. (Yes I like Asian women, but Ms. Cooper is also racially interesting, so that part of the match up was a draw.) Reiko was more aggressive, landed more punches, and usually controlled the action. In spite of this reality, the announcers wouldn’t shut up about Linda Cooper.

If Ms. Cooper landed a punch, it was trumpeted as a game changer, a round winner, a sign that a knockout was near. During the long stretches when Reiko’s gloves were in Ms. Cooper’s face or ribs, and Ms. Cooper was covering up with her back to the ropes and her eyes puffing up, the announcers quietly talked about Ms. Cooper’s great chances for an exciting title fight, or how young and strong she is, or how popular she is in Las Vegas, where she lives. (Ms. Murayama hails from Tokyo.)

Ms. Cooper’s corner did not share the announcers sunny disposition. After the first round, her corner man yelled in her face, “what’s wrong! wake up!” Before the last round, they begged her to get busy and go for a knock out or else, “you better get out there and throw one fucking punch!” They were watching the real fight while the announcers were off in Cloud-Cuckoo-Land.

The last round was all Reiko, all the time, but all we got from the announcers was the occasional “nice combination from Cooper.”

The decision? Linda Cooper in a majority decision, one card was a tie, so we know that the judges feed at the same trough as the announcers.

Why do I even watch boxing anymore? The boxers still take it seriously, and the result is still in doubt, it hasn’t quite become Professional Wrestling with boxing gloves. So I can take the action seriously, and boxing is as serious and personal as sports gets.

Everything else about the sport, though, has gone the way of all flesh: corrupt.

Liability Alert: Som Tam; Larb; Gai Yang

This is a pretty typical rig in Thailand. This nice couple rides around everyday stopping every now and then to yell, "Som Tam!," "Gai Yang!," providing a valuable service to the community in the smallish Gulf of Siam place where they live.

One can't help but notice the propane bottle up front, providing a nice place to cook larb, an Isan dish made of ground pork, pig skin, some vegetables, a little pig blood, and some God knows what, but it's delicious. A the back, out of sight, is a charcoal grill for cooking chicken on sticks, or, more accurately, in this case, the less agreeable and cheaper pieces of a chicken pressed between a split piece of bamboo. The wife makes Som Tam, the "spicy papaya salad" that you may have seen on Thai menus in L.A. and elsewhere. It's all delicious by the way, from personal experience.

One day I saw them traipsing their daughter along on their rounds, oblivious to the danger of riding around on a motor-cyclized-restaurant including two hot cooking areas.