RevSpork

More Izzoizm

For my original post, click here.

Although the Fere managed to ameliorate some of the problems with the souls they populated on their planets, others kept popping up.  What flummoxed the Fere was the dizzying variety of moral and ethical systems which led to countless clashes between peoples.  Although these souls believed they had reached a positive afterlife, they could not understand why "unbelievers" were there as well, which led to strife.  The Fere presumed that reaching "heaven" would be satisfactory to the souls, but it was not so.  The Fere, being powerful, thought the souls would listen to and respect them, so they decided to create a new moral code, based on the Fere's own moral and ethical codes but compatible with those of the souls.  

This was not an easy task.  The Fere conferred for days, their highly evolved minds not used to such primitive problems.  After all, they thought, had not these moral and ethical problems long since been solved?  But they persevered, and they came up with a simple list of morals that could be understood by all.  When the Fere next appeared to the souls of the heavens, they placed this moral code into each soul's mind, that it could not be forgotten.

1. The Fere are not gods but Teachers.  We desire no adoration, sacrifices, nor worship of any kind.  We only desire the respect you would offer to a parent or elder.
2. All souls are divine by their very existence; to do violence to another is to injure the divinity of the universe.
3. No soul is property of another.  
4. No soul holds power over another without the other soul's approval.  No soul can place itself under the power of another.
5. You are what you create.  Thus, to steal from a soul is an attempt to steal a part of a soul, and that is forbidden.
6. If one creates, it is the property of one.  If many create, it is the property of many.  If all create, it is the property of all.
7. Love one another, in all ways.  To force love unto another, however, is to do violence, and that is forbidden.
8. Build upon what the Fere have created for you.  
9. Honor others as you would yourself.
10. The Fere are your servants as well as your elders.  Ask, but do not demand.

The souls, not used to direct communication with the Fere, were frightened at first at this intrusion into their minds, but they pondered the Fere's moral code, discussing it with each other and thinking through the days and nights.  Although a few souls would complain about one or more of the codes, the vast majority of souls ultimately accepted the moral code and took it to heart.  After all, if this was heaven, why complain?

Izzoizm

All right folks, I've got a religion for you.  It's been wracking my mind for a couple months, but if I didn't toss you guys and gals a religion every once in a while, I'd worry I'd bore you to death with other concerns, like burning questions and word search puzzles.  

I don't think my new religion is 100% original - I seem to recall an Isaac Asimov short story that works on a similar plane, and Riverworld also springs to mind - but then again, what religions are 100% original?  And it's quite possible that someone else out there put out something just like what I'm about to post.  But I assure you, dear readers, that this religion, if not original in reality, is original coming from my mind.

So here goes:

In the beginning, there was...whatever.  Big Bang, beginning of the universe, etc etc. Stars formed, planets formed, all that stuff.  Some amino acids dropped by Earth five billion years ago, give or take a million years or so.  And they evolved into more complex creatures, and evolution kept going and going until... here we are.  And eventually, there we go, into the dust whence we came.  

But evolution kept going.  Humans continued to develop, more complex, more intelligent.  Eventually, billions of years later, we became so advanced - technologically, genetically, ethically - we found ourselves as close to perfect as one could get.  We could halt the expansion of the universe. We could manipulate time and space.  We could halt the degeneration of entropy.  We really could "touch the face of God."  (for the purpose of this religion, we'll call this evolved version of ourselves the "Fere Perfectum" (Latin for "nearly perfect") or "Fere" for short.

However, the Fere also found themselves in a quandary.  With reaching the pinnacle of existence, they also found themselves with no challenges, no internal or external conflicts, no further reason to exist other than existence itself.  With nothing to look forward to, the Fere decided to look backwards.

Working with their abilities, the Fere created a series of worlds designed to hold those who died before them.  Here, for them, would be "heaven."  Traveling through space and time, they plucked human souls from the point of death, built human bodies around them, and settled them on these worlds.  They decided not to discern between good and bad souls; they could create brains lacking the biochemical instabilities that led to evil in the first place.  These resettled souls required neither food nor drink, nor could they reproduce.  Any wound instantly healed. On the other hand, they had the ability to age as they saw fit, slowing or even reversing if desired.  They were given familiar surroundings and technology.  And once they were done, the Fere stepped back and watched.

What they witnessed shocked them.  Although most were happy to reach "heaven," some were infuriated to have been rescued from "eternal slumber."  They immediately caused trouble, attempting to destroy the heaven created for them.  Other peoples, freed from their mental instabilities but ignorant of any other way of living, continued their evil or insane ways they lived previously.  Unable to kill, they attempted to torture instead.  Most of these people were swiftly captured and imprisoned; others roamed free.  Although the Fere expected some negative reactions, many of the souls' outrage and violence confused them.  

Originally unwilling to make themselves known to the souls, the Fere felt they had no choice.  They appeared to the souls, most of whom thought they were angels and hid from them.  The more troublesome souls immediately attacked the Fere, but they were immediately repelled by the Feres' far greater powers.  This did not stop them; they continued to push forward, oblivious to the reality of their situation.  For days, weeks, this continued, for many souls knew nothing else.  Finally even the most determined souls began to tire, and the Fere spoke to each troubled soul, in their own language, directly into their minds.

"Why are you unhappy?" they asked, "Have we not freed you from your pain, your need to do injury to others?"

Many grumbled that they did not wish to continue existing, that they had hoped their deaths would end their wretched existences.  Others denied they were unhappy, that they only did what they had always done during their lives.  Without the ability to kill, they said, they had no purpose, only rage.

The Fere listened.  They discussed what to do.  First, they discussed the killers.  On the one hand, they could reintroduce the animals some of these souls hunted, to give them some release and restore their life's purpose.  However, they did not wish to subject other living beings to terror.  They finally decided to repopulate these killers on another world, give them hunger and thirst, and introduce animals for them to hunt: animals with no fear of them, with tough hides and tougher disposition, and when killed and eaten regenerate the next day.  They also learn from the earlier attack, making them even harder to hunt.  The Fere figured these souls would eventually weary of the hunt and want to move on with their lives.  The souls embraces this option, despite the words of one of them, who thought The Fere were "kicking the can down the road."  The Fere promised themselves to look that phrase up.

The atheists were a tougher problem.  The easiest solution would be to simply release these souls from their bodies as nature intended.  However, they also felt that, given the chance, they might decide to try this new existence, at least for a while.  So they did both.  They talked to each atheist soul and offered them two options: immediate release, or renewed mortality, just to try this life out.  Most opted for the former and were released.  Some decided on the latter; they were placed on a planet designed to accommodate mortals.  For the time being, the Fere had solved some of the problems.

That's it for now.  But here's this: a lot of this sounds pie-in-the-sky, but so do a lot of other religions.  And I never said this was 100% original.  But of it this way: if I'm wrong, then when you die, you'll be thinking, "Geez, humans are dumb."

Why did Sally Ride hide her sexuality?

In the wake of former astronaut Sally Ride's tragic death from pancreatic cancer, MSNBC, CNN, the Christian Science Monitor, Salon.com, and many other news outlets asked themselves two questions: why did she hide her illness? Why did she hide her sexuality?  Many have tried to answer this question, but perhaps the simplest answer, one that folks have the hardest time wrapping their heads around, is thus: it's none of your damned business.

From the time Sally Ride shot into space nearly thirty years ago, it seemed to me, even at my young age, I suspected she didn't think that being the first American woman (and third woman) in space was that big a deal.  I think she was very honored and humbled at being the first American woman in space, and she devoted much of the rest of her life to promote science education, particularly for girls.  That was obviously what she wanted to do in her life, and I presume this will be what she is remembered for. 

Some gay activists are disappointed and annoyed that Ride didn't come out when she was alive, even criticizing her for not participating in Dan Savage's "It Gets Better" Project. (Never mind that Ms. Ride was fighting freaking pancreatic cancer at the time.) To them I say: to hell with you.  Just because someone becomes famous for something doesn't give the world a license to know everything about them.  "Famous folks" like writer Harper Lee and actor Harrison Ford are considered almost freakish for the crime of keeping a private life, not telling the world what they do from the time they get up to when they go to bed.

Nowadays, of course, we have a confessional culture.  Everything is on the table, and we must know everything about the people we see on our teevees and interwebs.  What we do to women in the public eye is especially galling: we demand to know who they're sleeping with, if they'll marry the person they're sleeping with, and when they do get married (after which we demand the wedding photos), we demand to know when she's going to get pregnant, and at the first (true or false) sign of an enlarged abdomen, photos are posted everywhere of the woman with thick yellow arrows pointing to what they call a "baby bump," and if she actually does have a kid, she has to release every baby photo and be asked extremely personal questions about giving birth, as if she were the first woman ever to procreate in this manner.  ("Was it natural? Did you get an epidural?  Did you take a dump during the delivery?")  And if she doesn't unload all this information, she's somehow aloof and "hiding something."  Sure, some celebrities love the attention and can't get enough of seeing their names in the gossip rags.  They are whores, and if that's the way they wish to live their lives, that's perfectly fine with me.  But they are not the norm, nor should they be.

Sally Ride bucked this trend.  She didn't want to be known for her love life: she wanted to be known as a scientific pioneer and educator.  What she did emotionally, intellectually, and sexually during her 27-year relationship with Tam O’Shaughnessy is the exclusive property of those two women.  She didn't want to make public her fight with cancer presumably for the same reason: this fight was hers and hers only, and if she wanted folks to know, she told them.  While I type this, I can't even understand why this should be an issue. 

I deeply, deeply hope that when the dirt settles onto Sally Ride's grave and grass grows over it, people will remember of Sally Ride how she wanted us to remember her: astronaut, scientist, educator.  If she wanted to be primarily remembered as the first lesbian in space, she would have promoted that, but she thought her private life was just that: private.  In other words, none of your business.

An open letter to Jennifer

Dear Jennifer,

I know you well, although you exist only as a template.  You exist because you, like myself, turned forty years of age in the last few months.  Your name was the most popular girls’ name in 1970 (followed by Lisa, Kimberly, and Michelle, none of which are even in the top fifty most popular names today).  Even when we were in our thirties, forty seemed to exist only as a number in the clouds, a number we never thought would be attached to us.  Now it is, and we have no clue what to do with it, except add more years to it and try not to think of fifty.

Forty is an important age for us in the civilized world.  Our average life span is about 80, and we just tripped over the halfway mark.  For a long time, we didn’t feel our age.  We could drink entire kegs of beer, drive a hundred miles per hour in school zones, crank the volume up on our car stereos until the windshield visibly bulged, and insert acres of various hallucinogens into our bodies without blinking (literally).  We were the coolest people on Earth. 

We don’t do any of that anymore.  We’re either too busy or tired to do any of that.  Or maybe we just outgrew that crap.  Moreover, we think folks our age who still do those things are terminally immature and pathetic creatures.  So we instead sneer at the youths who do that stuff now, who think they’re the coolest people on Earth.  What losers.

Ah, the youth.  Those high school and college kids.  It never occurred to us that people born in 1990 could be grownups. They are presumably still wetting their beds and learning how to read, aren’t they?  Now a great number of them, perhaps a majority of them, are more sexually active than we are.  It doesn’t make sense at first, but the longer we think about it, we realize that we’re not the “hope for the future” anymore, and that these little snots are. 

Worse, we’re faced with a batch of these…these kids, many of whom are wildly successful.  We watch professional football games, and the only guy our age is Brett Favre, who looks half-dead even when throwing a touchdown pass.  There are NFL coaches younger than us.  Hollywood stars are these little kids playing dress-up, right?  No.  Of the five supporting actress nominees for the Oscars last year, only one – Mo’nique – was older than us.  By three years.

Forty is scary.  We’re still in the game, but the time remaining in the game grows shorter.  I sometimes wonder what really scares us about crossing the halfway mark.  Maybe it’s not death we fear as much as irrelevance, which makes death more a convenience for society than a tragedy.  Remember reading Brave New World in high school?  Everyone looked young until they dropped dead at the age of sixty, then were burned for their phosphorus.  Two of the most popular science fiction films during our first decade of life were Soylent Green and Logan’s Run – old folks were processed into food in the first one, and there were no old folks in the latter movie’s utopia – everyone got blasted before they could sprout a gray hair.  Is that what we’re afraid of?  No, not being eaten: being irrelevant to the point where we as individuals offer so little use for society, we might as well be utilized as an energy or protein source.  There is literal death and there is social death: when we cease to be of use to the world around us, the only difference between the two deaths is a heartbeat.

So what on earth do we do?  We still have quite a few decades left; the key is to both enjoy those decades and to provide a service to the world around us.   We are miracles in the universe: whether from the touch of God or the dizzying probabilities of our existence, it is our duty as neighbors, as citizens, as sentient beings to offer a portion of our time to others.  To do so not only benefits the world around us, but also makes you relevant to someone, somewhere. 

“I can’t do that,” you may say.  “I have to work, take care of the kids, get the car fixed.  I’m too busy to volunteer or whatever else you want me to do.”  My simple response is: no.  You are either lying or attempting to live one.  If you cannot donate an hour of your life per day, per week, even per month, you must be wasting time somewhere. 

“Can’t I just write a check and get it over with?” you ask.  Again I respond: no.  Money isn’t always the answer.  Do you think, for example, a homeless shelter can thrive with money and no volunteers?  Sure, if enough folks donated that the shelter could hire a bunch of people (and pay them a fair wage) to properly care for the homeless.  But that doesn’t happen.  Money works to a point, but your presence can mean a lot to folks: the homeless, children…and the elderly, whom – if you’re lucky – you will join the ranks of in due time. 

You’re forty years old.  You’re an adult.  You can’t back out of it anymore.  If you haven’t done so already, reach out to your world.  It’s not too late.  Go be someone to somebody now.   The life you aid - in addition to others – will very much be your own.

I take offense

Last week I found myself coaching a group of eighth-graders, all boys, in creative writing.  I enjoy this volunteer work a lot; I love helping kids learn they have something valuable to say to the world around them.  When I sensed some were holding themselves back, I explained to them my definition of self-expression.

"Let's talk fingerprints," I began, holding up my hand, "Fingerprints are totally unique: nobody has the same fingerprint.  Self-expression is also unique.  It's the fingerprint of the soul.  How you express yourself, whether it's in painting, in song, in prose, in poetry, in rap - nobody can duplicate that.  When you express yourself to your friends, in your school, your church, your community - you are saying to the world, 'This is me.  This is my soul.'  Nobody can take that away from you."

Profound?  I guess.  It's what I've always believed, and moreover, something I've always wanted to tell kids.  They must understand their uniqueness, that their contributions to the world around them can be just as important as those of the president.  Without self-expression, self-awareness would be useless; we might as well climb back into the trees and throw excrement at each other. 

So why do I stifle my own self-expression?  More importantly, why am I pressured to stifle my self-expression?

My wife recently sent me a New York Times article about the change in job searches.  Among other things, recruiters are using the big mainstream job search engines like Monster and Careerbuilder less and relying more on social networking sites like Facebook.  But writer Alina Tugend warns the job hunter, "...get anything that looks bad off your page. That photo of you drunk at a Halloween party, those musings about how much you hate your boss — not a good impression." 

Now I can understand removing diatribes against your boss - if you're going to use a social networking site to promote your résumé, writing about your asshole of a boss is not a smart idea.  But deleting photos of you having a good time at a Halloween party?  Why? 

The Chinese curse may be "May you live in interesting times," but there's nothing in that saying about interesting people.  You may say, "Those party photos may reflect your lack of professionalism."  Well, sure, if it's an office party and you've slapped your supervisor's ass with your own lanyard.  But why would recruiters want people who are just as "professional" outside the office as in?  I take offense. 

The older I get, the more often I'm quietly warned by society to tone my personality down.  And the older I get, the quieter I see friends and acquaintances, making me stick out more and more like a sore thumb.  Given, I have toned down in the last decade or so.  My mental filter is more effective, I'm less hyper, and if you've heard anything about my sex life in the last few years, consider yourself a very special friend.  But it never seems to be enough.  I feel more and more pressure to watch what I say, that even the blandest of my statements can offend, and that my self-expression is detrimental to my professional life, even though my personality is far more subdued in the work environment than anywhere else. 

It all comes down to "maturity," some say.  "Maturity" is one of those words that, the more you try to define it, the less likely you'll succeed.  What is maturity?  The American Heritage Dictionary defines "maturity" as "the state or quality of being fully grown or developed."  Such a definition is easy if you're studying, say, a sheep, or an apple, but what of a human being? 

Ah, but this is humanity we're talking about.  There's more to maturity than simply being full grown.  I am pushing 38 years of age, so it's safe to say that I'm physically mature.  But mentally mature?  Am I mentally fully developed?  Hell, no.  My mind is in a constant state of development, and the day I reach my full potential mentally is the day I go to the morgue. 

Emotionally mature?  Ah, that's the ticket.  That's what society demands: emotional maturity, and that's where society's desire for emotional maturity and the need for self-expression frequently clash.  Our capacity for self-expression begins before we learn to walk and talk; indeed, through a combination of our environment and the growth of our brains, the vast majority of that capacity occurs in childhood.  That self-expression, like our bodies, grows and matures, but just we don't suddenly become adults at the age of eighteen, or twenty-one, or even thirty.  Our adult bodies are larger versions of our childhood bodies - we're not frogs - and how we look today is basically a continuation of how we looked as children.  It's the same deal with self-expression.  Who we are as emotional and creative beings is rooted in our immature selves; we cannot deny that.  My immature self lives in me all my life; why should I gag it because society looks down on it? 

What does all this rigmorole mean?  I feel pressured to cloak that immature part of me, that critical chunk of self-expression that makes me me, as the price of admission into the real world.  If I want to succeed in the real world, I must black out what I consider the most interesting parts of my consciousness. 

I could drone on, of course.  I could discuss how cruelly ironic it is that society demands maturity in the real world, yet popular culture is nothing but immature; how celebrities display their immature selves to the love of that same society.  However, my time is up.  I need to iron my suit jacket, redo my résumé, knot my tie, and go forth into the job market disguised as someone else.

Anxieties about Barack Obama

I hear it from my wife. I hear it from friends and coworkers. Because for fans and supporters of Barack Obama's presidential campaign, the idea of a liberal, articulate politician seeming to point the way to a positive, hopeful future has stepped beyond mere romantic fantasy. Even setting aside the Bush Junior years, which certainly rank as some of the darkest, most cynical years of American history, it's hard to summon up genuine enthusiasm for any president during my lifetime.

It feels too good to be true, doesn't it? We'll wake up one day and find the whole feeling a cruel illusion. Some Sirhan Sirhan-like creature will gun him down, or he'll peel off the mask and reveal a more cynical, corrupt - in other words, business as usual - face.

It's the curse of mortality - hope is never permanent. Eventually either the hope or the hoper evaporates into the air. The fear is ugly as fresh dog shit, and even as our hopes and aspirations for our nation reaches ever higher heights, that ill-smelling whiff - or just the idea of it - gathers its forces in our brain cells, just waiting for the opportunity to take over the brain with a sardonic "Ha! I told you it was all a crock!"

All I can say is...don't fret. This isn't 1968. If anything, this is the antidote to 1968...and 2000...and 2004. We are witnessing the end of the Decade of the Asshole. Hasn't this decade felt that way? Assholes who fly planes into buildings, assholes who run our country into the ground, assholes who loot their corporations and wipe out their employees and stockholders, assholes who always win reality TV shows, assholes who bilk the poor out of their money and houses and pensions, assholes who prevent gays from getting married while snorkling some twink on the side...we've jumped the shark on that bullshit. The national nightmare will end.

Could I be wrong? Sure. I have my doubts like everyone else. But worrying about it won't make it happen or not happen. Let it go. All shall be well, dammit.

Simple me

I've often been described as an eccentric, along with all the positive and negative synonyms one can find in a standard thesaurus. I've always been divided about that: for one, I revel in my eccentricities, mostly because to not do so would no doubt facilititate my descent into insanity. However, I am a faithful follower of Yossarian, Catch-22's great prophet, who firmly believed that he was the only sane person alive, and that everyone else was crazy. I first read that book when I was sixteen, and nothing in the past twenty years has tempted me to turn from that axiom.

I have found that the harder folks strive towards social norms, the more dirty little idiosyncracies they're hiding. (I now call this the "BTK Rule.") Obviously there are certain back roads that are best not explored or lit up, but these are because of humanitarian considerations, not social ones. If you want to run naked down Michigan Avenue screaming "Eureka!", for instance, fine with me; if you run down Michigan Avenue ripping strangers' clothes off and forcing them to run naked, then I do have objections to that. (There are those who might object to someone running naked in public, believing that such exposure to, say, children, is harmful. These people are lunatics.) I find it healthy, both for the individual and for society, for eccentricities be both expressed and flaunted for the public eye. When society stifles eccentricity, it invites confusion, self doubt, and the blossoming of neuroses far darker and more corrosive than the original deviation. It is no surprise that the U.S. is easily the most neurotic nation on Earth.

Is there a danger? Of course. If everyone expressed their eccentricities, then they would become common and thus "normal." Take homosexuals: until relatively recently, the sight of two men or two women holding hands as they walked down a crowded sidewalk, even in Chicago, would invite stares and/or glares in their direction. Nowadays, this has become so commonplace in many areas of the country, nobody even blinks if they're wrapped around each other, snatching a kiss. (Some gays and lesbians lament this, feeling the social "normalization" of homosexuality has somehow taken something away from them. Of course it has: one-dimensional, boring folks can't use homosexuality alone to generate attention anymore. Live with it.)

Sure, public recognition and display of eccentricities would make these more "normal" in society and its owners less "special." This is how it should be. My eccentricities do not make me "special" or "unique" - they simply define me as an individual human being. Stifling my eccentricities subtract from that definition and thus make me less "me." So much emotional pain is inflicted on our own souls through trying to make entire chunks of them invisible. Furthermore, stifling eccentricities makes them invisible to others, including those who may share them, leading to the Big Lies that they are "alone in the universe" and "nobody can understand me." Those Big Lies have led to more psychotic episodes than any imbalance in the biochemical soup inside our heads.

Yes, I have some idiosyncracies. Yes, I am public about them. I have garnered sufficient wisdom in my thirty-six years to understand them, and to take neither pride nor shame in them. They simply are, and they help define simple me.

Games people play

I don't like it. I don't feel comfortable with it. And so many of my friends feel like I do, seemingly trapped in jobs that add more stress to the soul with very little to offer in return besides a paycheck.

Happy New Year & all that

Here's a New Year message from me:

On New Years Eve, the Girlfriend and I took in some educational programming: namely, TV Land's Top 100 Television Moments of All Time.  Or something like that.  Most of them were pretty goofy (Who really gives a shit about Richard Hatch?), but it was the top two that resulted in serious discussion between the Girlfriend and I.  #2 was the moon landing; #1 was 9/11.  At the very end of the show, Walter Cronkite is asked about the comparisons between the two events in terms of historical value.  Cronkite, whose love and support of science is well-known, stated he believed the moon landing was far more important in the long run, for it marked an important step in the evolution of humanity, while who will remember 9/11 200, 300 years from now?  Sure, I told the Girlfriend.  Cronkite, a true liberal, an optimistic, and a firm believer in the infinite potential of humanity, simply stated the logical. 

But 9/11 could very well overtake the moon landing as the major historical event.  The moon landing was a positive event in human history.  It was more than a symbol of the infinite potential of humanity; it was proof of it.  The 9/11 terrorists attacks were the flip side of that infinite potential: to wipe humanity from the face of the earth.

In my opinion, we have two paths, each launched by these two events.  The moon landing can lead us to further exploration, not only of the worlds around us, but of the world within us.  It has always been my deepest belief that humanity should live like we are God's children, learning and growing and maturing until we can touch God's face, to become like God.  The moon landing was a baby step in that direction. 

The terrorist attacks of 9/11, on the other hand, was a step in the opposite direction, the triumph of hatred over love, insanity over reason, ignorance over knowledge.  It was truly an act of evil.  To kill in God's name is to profane it.  The terrorist attacks could very well mark the beginning of the end not only of our democracy, but of all civilization.  In this scenario, 9/11 would be the historical marker, but in the end, there would be nobody left to commemorate or regret it.

It is our ultimate task, as human beings, to work to ensure we tread on the correct path.  Do it any way you can.  Spread love, knowledge, reason, kindness.  It's easier than you think.

Okay, I'm done for the night.  Happy New Year.  Peace be with you.