Laboring in the Vineyard One Sip at a Time

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Democrats, economy, evolution, faith, FDR, gay rights, GOP, midterm elections, Obama, Paul Krugman, Politics, recession, Roman Catholicism, Technology

Happy Labor Day! I want to tell you I’m laboring too, over a nice bottle of Cabernet Sauvignon. Yes I am. Some short ribs on a slow cook in the oven slathered with sauce and pasta salad and corn relish melding in the fridge. It’s a quiet, fairly overcast day.

Yesterday the Bronco did good. We got into town for a whirlwind trip of groceries and hair cuttings and a new vacuum cleaner. Still much to be done, and of course the next disaster is no doubt lurking around a corner waiting to pounce. But as of now, things have calmed.

We have taped the entire Star Wars saga and are going to watch them in order. A novel idea doncha think?

I’m twittering a lot these days. Which means I haven’t devoted the time I usually do to blogging and blogs. So much fun on twitter with the retweets. I get sometimes a half-dozen new followers a day, and come across some funny stuff. It’s also fun to think you are actually talking to people you watch on TV. Why Sarah speaks, and Keith and Rachel and Colbert and ME chime in with tastefully snotty replies. It’s a hoot.

I don’t know how Martha Stewart does it, juggling all the stuff she does. Nor other Type A personalities who are driven. I’m not so driven. But you knew that.

One of the reasons why in some regions of planet earth, humans moved forward into more sophisticated modes of community, was based on whether they had indigenous animals suitable for domesticating. This allowed greater movement of peoples and their belongings but also allowed drudge work of farming to be handled by animals, freeing up our minds and hands to other creative pursuits.

A number of evolutionarily interested folks are looking at the changes we were thus able to make in our new “community” way of life as driving forward our bigger brains. In essence, perhaps gene mutation is one factor, but new ways of living push us forward as well. A new book lays this out and is worth a look at. Read a short review of The Artificial Ape: How Technology Changed the Course of Human Evolution.

A goodly number of folks would tell you that the Dems are about to suffer some mighty big losses come this November. Of course, if we become pessimistic and decide not to vote, then we will cause that to be true. That’s a self-fulfilling prophesy as they say. But Jim Kessler (who has some street cred here) has some ideas of why it need not be so. We need to find some optimism here, so do read.

One of many things that disgusts me about the average American voter is that they seem to have the attention span of a gnat. Everyone knows that you don’t recover from the ditch Bush and his evil band put us in, in a couple of years. Yet as much as Obama has cautioned that it will take years to recover, people are ready to throw him and Democrats out and usher in the party of NO simply because they are like two-year olds with no self-control. So the recession will drag on for more years than necessary. Remember FDR did not turn around the country in four years either, certainly not in two. Read Paul Krugman’s assessment.

There is a story at Killing the Buddha by Alane Mason. It’s about a gay friend, about death, dying, but most of all about faith and living. It is breathtakingly beautiful in its writing and in what it says. It is one of those pieces that make you gasp at the strange beauty of our humanity. It gives pause, it gives hope. You should just read it.

I still mourn Freddy Mercury, lead singer of Queen. He died of AIDS, back when everyone infected died of AIDS. He would have been 64. So many of our finest artists died in those early years. So many died, and were reviled and shrunk from as if breathing the same air they did was dangerous. We didn’t know better I guess, but still awful.

I remember being a lawyer and seeing deputies wear surgical gloves just to touch an inmate who was HIV positive. I recall a court clerk who scraped a pen used by an infected inmate into the garbage can with a piece of paper. I remember, and I am ashamed for those people and their ugly fears and callous behavior.

Grumpy Lion sends us over to Common Dreams to read a long essay by David Michael Green. I’m an American.  I live in a country – nay, an empire! – that insists on destroying itself. He echoes my thoughts, far more eloquently that I ever could. Read it and sigh. It is all too true I fear. And when you have finished reading, you will weep.

Have a good barbecue today folks and see ya tomorrow!

The Optimistic Lie

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American optimism, environment, Jesus, sociology, Technology, the cross, theology, triumphalism, world economies

I’ve been pondering an idea from a couple of days ago that I read. Sooner or later it matures into something that warrants my setting it down.

I’m currently reading a book for review on Christology. A theologian, new to me, Douglas John Hall, said something I account very true.

He suggested that Canadians (he being one) and Americans, share a common cultural evil–a culture of optimism. It is not so by default, he argues, but is carefully groomed and maintained.

If you think about it, you will probably agree. I recall my civics classes in high school quite well. My overriding “feeling” about the entire learning process, was one of optimism. Americans somehow always get ‘er done, always find the solution, always win. We are the technological giants of the world. We set the standard.

The destruction of native peoples is mentioned, but glossed over in favor of an ideology that we were a big people with big ideas, the adventurous cream of the European crop, destined for big things. We NEEDED a big land. And along with that is a concomitant not stated but thoroughly impressed notion, that the end (which has been glorious) justified the means, (near annihilation of a people).

One of the impediments to our earlier release of our grip on Southeast Asia and the disastrous Vietnam war, was the lie that we had “never lost a war.” Draws don’t count, and the South would be what in the Civil war? We had great designs on much of Canada and we, nobly? gave them up? We ultimately told the big lie in Vietnam, a voluntary withdrawal is not losing. Yeah, but it was, and everyone knows it.

I recall some years ago, listening to a Amway pep talk on tape. “Don’t worry about the depletion and final end of oil, the speaker claimed. Americans ALWAYS find another way to accomplish. Never worry about scarcity, we always solve a problem.”

Thus do we perpetrate the unsaid real lesson–we are entitled to live as we wish, as comfortably, and as elegantly as money can buy, because when resources are gone, we will discover new ones. World–not to worry–America is in charge and will save you–or at least keep you at subsistence level where you are now–if only to preserve our largess.

Hall argues that in doing this we mask something that is part of the human experience–anxiety, limits, loneliness and temptations. We refuse these items on the menu if you will. We choose entertainment, more toys, and pseudo-intellectual pursuits–gallery openings and charity balls. We refuse to do with less, we find ways to stretch a dollar and fake high-class decorating on a dime instead.

Our presidents, no matter how dire the circumstances are sure to include a statement that they have no fear of America’s ultimate victory. Never never panic the little people with pessimistic predictions. Only do that when offset by the solution you KNOW will work–just vote for me!

Yet, it seems, we aren’t truly buying the optimism any more. Increasingly, as we try to figure out why so many hate and revile us, how our hard work is no longer reflected in our stock portfolios, and we face what seemed unimaginable only 50 years ago, namely we are the first generation not to significantly out-pace our parents, we are left with a vague unease, that something is amiss.

We are more prone to feeling that we toil for nothing. Yet will continue, Hall argues, to fly too near the sun, grasping at more, knowing somewhere inside that by doing so we deprive even more of the world’s poor. We know no other way he claims.

And his answer, in part, at least, is that churches need to be harbingers of a new way of seeing life–one that is not tied as he puts it to triumphalism. It is one that ties us back to the cross of Jesus.

We are, if I read him right, caught in a mode of human victory over every obstacle. We are much like the child who masters tying his shoes, and thus is ready to conquer the world. We are aided by the atheist who tells us that nothing surpasses the human mind, and everything we have is wrought from its inner recesses.

Some few of us, some few millions, are getting it, finally. We humbly confess our near ruination of this planet in every respect. Watching Blood Diamonds last night, I’m reminded of a main character who has struggled to regain his family torn by revolution, murder and mayhem. He says, “I get that the white man would do this to us for the diamonds. What I do not get is how my own people could do this to each other.”

We have done this to each other and to ourselves. We may be past the point of fixing it. And I am convinced, we will not fix it without finding the humility to express our evil wrongs and to do our penance in however we might view that. By prayer, by learning to live simply, by accepting that different does not mean not as good.

I do not embrace pessimism. On the contrary, in dismantling the optimistic lie, I live in faith and hope that we as a species will, with out extraordinary minds, gifted by God, turn and see the truth, and save ourselves and all that lives.

If we do not, then, God will weep for his lost planet, and will look on in his universe to other more successful life evolutions. And we, spiritual souls that we are, will have learned a grave lesson as we journey on with God. But it will be sad will it not?

Confessions of a Sci Fi Junkie

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Entertainment, Literature, Movies, psychology, science, Science Fiction, Technology

Yes, it’s true. I confess. I’ve had an addiction of sorts for many years to science fiction. Actually, us “real” junkies don’t use the term sci fi, finding it trite and the phrase of choice for the truly uninitiated. You know the ones I mean, the kids who really watch Star Wars, and BattleStar Galactica only for the cowboy shoot ’em ups, and not for the deep sociological meaning.

Sociological meaning you ask? But of course. Real fans know that much of science fiction but masks a political statement by the author of the state of the world today. It is critical analysis of our “issues.” Anybody who watched the old Star Trek knows that. Roddenberry wrote scripts that addressed war, racism, sexism, and a plethora of social ills of his day. They are mostly still our ills lo these many years later.

I came to the genre in my late 20’s and held on fast for more than ten years. And this is somewhat surprising since I was never a fan of fantasy, even in my youth. I cannot tell you how many times I sat down to begin Alice in Wonderland, only to throw it aside in disgust as “weird” and “unbelievable nonsense.” I guess you could say I was not a child who had a great imagination.

When I joined the science fiction world, I tended to the hard science writers; those that took technology of the present and “futurized” it. Azimov was a favorite as was Heinlein, Clarke, and a host of others who dropped me into a universe of faster than light travel, robots, and other really neat things like portable phones and touch pads.

We, the science fiction followers, thought of ourselves as ahead of the curve, preparing ourselves intellectually and emotionally for the 21st century, still years away. It was much later that I broadened my landscape to include fantasy and it happened slowly and carefully, just a writer here and there. It broke wide open with Lord of the Rings. I distinctly recall going into the my office one day, and announcing “FRODO LIVES” to much laughter from those who had read the trilogy years before.

Television and movies were not to be found in quantity, and well, quality was even worse. To this day, I enjoy the thrill of really really bad sci fi movies. Sci fi is an apt description, since these were D list affairs, costing thousands to make rather than millions. The actors were either very new at their craft, or very old and still horrid. The plots were predictable, the aliens laughable. As I said, they remain  so bad they are hilarious to watch. (think of watching old episodes of Dark Shadows.)

Today, my but things have changed. Science fiction in all its permutations is big business today. That is true in the land of movie making and television fare. Weird is the new normal. From Lost, to Heroes to Caprica and Sanctuary, the airways are filled with distinctly not normal stories. And, it appears we are eating it up.

If you add together the science fiction/fantasy world and the “reality” TV world, you have cornered the market. What this says about us as humans is hard to gauge. It may be that we are hell bent on escaping reality but then isn’t all such creation just that anyway? Whether I’m entering into an alien futuristic world, or merely watching some other real human’s life, escapism is inevitable.

NASA must be sad these days. Their space traveling days, as creators of rockets and propulsion systems is seemingly over for the time being. We are ending our “adventure in space” in a sense. We will have to hitch a ride in the near future. We are not gearing up for Mars landings and building bigger and better ships to travel faster and further.

But we will, of that I have no doubt. We are a curious species. Not the only one, but the only one both curious and capable it seems to deeply alter their environment. The porpoise may wonder about the universe, but I suspect it has little hope of building a space ship. Our need to know will drive us inevitably into the cosmos. Our arrogance will push us to discover if in fact we are the most intelligent of species in the universe.

That is the promise that drives those of us who love to fall into this world of robots and faster than light travel. It is the dream we dream, yet know we cannot partake of it but in our minds. It is in part also the world of fantasy, since other worlds, we believe will be so incredibly different from us that indeed we may find talking rabbits and “plants” that giggle when touched.

Whether we are escaping, as some suggest, into worlds that are less threatening, is still up for debate. The same can be said for golf and quilting or any “hobby” that becomes a favorite of leisure time. In the end, I’m not sure the debate is fruitful. I’m just mighty glad that I have this opportunity, for however long it lasts, to wallow in the glut of other worldly movies and such. Some suck, and others are true genius as one would expect.

So the next time you hear about sci fi being taught at our schools of higher learning, don’t shake your head and decry the “basket weaving” mentality of college curricula. There’s more to this than meets the eye. Or eyes, as the case may be. Engage!