paradise lost

My Dad is a very involved and devout evangelical Christian. I used to be, twice. If you’ve been reading, you know I’m not any more, not at all. This makes for some interesting conversations.

fa lala lala

Here I am again, happy that I didn’t put “go to sleep at a reasonable time” on some list of things to do today (or yesterday, I guess).

It is December 24 and I’m caught in that strange limbo between my churchy upbringing and my decidedly anti-churchy adulthood again. I’ll be driving to Mom’s later today to partake in the family tradition of Eve celebration. Mom has a tremor in her hands these days. We think it’s a side-effect of the anti-anxiety medication, but we’re going to make sure and ask the doctor next visit, just to cover the bases and be sure.

We always did it this way, the Eve thing. Mostly, I think, so that I could have an extra bit of alone time with my new toys. That only-child thing came in handy as a kid – I was usually pretty spoiled. I was also a loner, so the 25^th tradition of hosting friends, or being hosted at friends’ homes, for the big tryptophan overdose was a chore. I was always much happier with the thought of making up imaginary stories for my action figures to battle through, or reading my new books, or playing my new games, than I was being social with kids that I didn’t identify with, or adults that I got even less.

I shirked off the illusion of Santa at an early age. Mom said I was three when I looked up at them one Eve and said that I knew the Santa thing was a crock, and that they didn’t have to pretend on my account. They laughed, she told me, but it was a sign of things to come.

That’s kind of how I feel about the religiosity of the whole season too, or rather, the attempt to impose a religious reason for the season. When I was eleven or twelve, around the same time that the church we had gone too unintentionally ostracized Mom for being in a failed marriage (how dare she!), I started to peel back the curtain and see churches for what they really were – country clubs for the religiously mobile.

I remember reading for the first time the opinion of scholars that December 25^th was an unlikely date for the birth of a Jewish messiah, if the little tyke had indeed been born during a census as the story goes. The Roman empire, being as continentally expansive as it was, included some pretty damned cold and snowy places, and the middle of winter would not have been a good time to ask all of the citizens and subjects to head back over hill and snowy dale to descend upon their home towns for the census taking. They were reasonable, those Romans, and conducted their censuses in the early spring, after the snow and before serious planting season. If there was a historical Jesus born in an historical manger in his foster-dad’s historical home town during a census, the smart money is on it happening some time in April or early May, closer to Easter than to this charade of a religious holiday in early winter.

I’ve never been able to take “The Reason for the Season” seriously since then. It was the first of many disillusionments when it came to all things x-ian. Others, like the fact that most of our Judeo-Christian holidays are simply neo-versions of pagan holidays superimposed over the old celebrations as a way to churchify the days people were going to celebrate anyway, or the fact that so many pre-Jesus pagan deities share so many instances of serendipitous coincidence with the Jesus mythology, just cemented the deal. The added fact that this holiday, more than any other, typifies our western obsession with turning everything into a reason to shop, helps my cynicism too.

It’s not that I’m a Scrooge. I enjoy the happiness that sometimes overpowers the stress of angry shoppers playing full-contact consumerism down the toy aisles. I take a bit of consolation in the fact that more of my friends do secret Santa variations instead of wholesale shopping one-upmanship. An informal survey of climbers at the climbing gym this week (I was covering so that my friend, the owner, could get some well-deserved R&R) revealed that more than half of the more regular and serious climbers do a present-sharing scheme version of some sort, limiting their over-consumption. This may be because we tend to be counter-culture a lot.  Or maybe because we’re simply less affluent than many. The two probably kind of go hand in hand. Either way, we’re all happy. Hell, we’re often silly we’re so happy.

But still, I have a level of frustration as I watch drivers share their xmas spirit by fingering each other as they race from mall to mall, or other friends participate in the race to see who is least cheap, and most “generous” (like it’s a competition or something), credit be damned, the stress of anticipated card bills already dancing like obese sugar plum accountants just behind their fake smiles.

I wonder if the sardonic humor I feel coursing through my veins is just a world-weary reaction to the foolishness I’m watching, or whether it’s something darker; something more Freudian.

When the first real experience of religious disillusionment kicked in, back in my pre-adolescence, I was angry about it; angry at the church and at god for the way Mom was treated so callously by the church; angry that god had simply not shown up in such a profound way. I stayed angry about it all through my teens – angry and depressed. Then, when I fell back into religion as an adult, through most of my marriage, I was told that god had not failed – I had failed; my faith had failed. I was encouraged to read Job a lot. Have you read Job? Wonderful morality tale, that Job is, if amazingly depressing, and a very sophisticated apologetic for the shitty things that happen to people. And for a while I believed it all again too, silly me.

When I walked away the second time, the curtain pulled back one more time to reveal the gears and machinations behind the holy veil, I vowed that I wouldn’t throw the baby out with the bath water. There are amazing things about faith that have nothing to do with religion at all. My faith remains a living, breathing thing. I’m not sure what my faith is in any more – certainly, it’s nothing to do with the specific mythology of western religion – but I can still feel a breath of belief in me. And a strong one too.

Like Ramakrishna, I now believe that all religions have truth in them, in their innate humanism. It isn’t coincidence that most world religions have a version of the golden rule. Science and atheism can’t explain everything out there any more believably than any religion can. In a sense, science can be a religion too, with its high priests in white garb, test tubes in hand – our gatekeepers to a better understanding. I don’t have faith in science, as interesting as new discoveries are, just like I don't have faith in religions with their old explanations. Both are corrupt, flawed by the need of institutions to control people, and control information, and keep people dumb and in the dark.

Faith, to me, is sacred: The ongoing search for an understanding of things as a whole. Science isn’t an answer – it’s a path. Same with religion. And all paths, potentially, even when they are corrupted by the intrinsic nature of institutions, can lead to the roof. That’s what Ramakrishna said. Who cares how we get there, so long as we move in that direction. 

I just prefer no path. I like bushwacking. A bushwacking kind of faith isn't very defined. It doesn't mean that you can't get anywhere - it's not being directionless - it just means that you have to scrape through the burning bushes, and wade through the seas. Nothing is done for a bushwacker - we do for ourselves.

I have faith in the knowledge that we don’t know everything. I have faith in the truism that the more we know, the more we should know that we don't really know. I have faith in the thought that empathy might win out one day, and that our species will actually become what we’re capable of being. I have faith in the ability of my fellow humans to transcend the bullshit, only occasionally sometimes, but at other time, in some people or in some places and times, on a scale that is truly miraculous and marvelous to behold. I have faith that we could do that more, and that if we could, it would change everything.

So yeah, I still have a semblance of faith.

Sometimes, when I think about how anti-tradition I am, it bothers me. I wonder if I’m just being kooky and unjustifiably recalcitrant. I wonder how much easier it would be to just go with the flow. I wonder if the reason that so many of the high profile atheists seem so goddamned angry all the time is because, like me, they still feel the sting of their lost religion and the comforts it provides. Is that why I’m prickly about this topic? Because I’m still angry that I saw behind the curtain and the truth robbed me of all my comfortable illusions?

Maybe it is. At least, maybe it still is a bit.

And then I remember that I’m not generally inclined to swim with the current at the best of times. Certainly, in the face of so much cultural and self-deception, it’s unreasonable for me to expect such behavior of my self. I’m that guy that goes up the down escalator some times, just because. This is who I am. I like being the wrench in the works, when the works need wrenching. Seeing behind the curtain, through the veil, was probably kind of inevitable. Seeing behind one too many times, in one to many milieus, has made me skeptical and cynical a bit, I know. I have to live with that.

Honestly, I try not to push it too hard. I'm no better at being an anti-church evangelist than I was at being a pro-church evangelist. Ask me, I'll tell ya. Otherwise, you probably would barely notice. I’m okay with mostly letting those around me enjoy the season. I’m not a humbug kind of cynic, but I don’t keep my mouth completely shut either. Christmas doesn’t make me sour, just thoughtful, and very observant.

And glad I don’t have to go to church.

So tomorrow I’ll go to Mom’s and help make dinner. We’ll open a couple presents (I’ve talked her into simple things with practicality, and no sweaters, but I can’t talk her out of it entirely). I’ll even have a little gift for her and Miriam to open, just cuz. And then, after they go to bed at their early hour, I’ll sneak up the stairwell and spend a bit of time thinking on the roof and staring up at the stars.

I’ll hope that maybe we’ll all reach out for our best selves a little more this year. I’ll wish for a pervasive empathy to settle like a swaddling blanket over the human race just a touch more than it ever has before. I’ll believe that we’re capable of it, and that, in itself, will be a little miracle for me. I’ll try to see things the way they really are and still be hopeful. Up there alone. On the roof.

Because that’s what matters – getting to the roof and having your eyes open enough to appreciate it when you get there.

At least that’s what I think.

Happy Seasons and Merry Greetings, everyone.

all these moments will be...*

So my dear Mom, fresh back from a road trip with her BFF (she's feeling that good these days - modern medicine has its virtues) is telling me about all the friends she was able to see at the holiday trailer in Harrison. One of them, Jane**, a woman about her age, is apparently having some memory issues herself.

Not able to remember that she, too, was feeling pretty anxious about it herself up until 4 weeks and new meds ago, she says, "And poor Jane, she's having such a hard time with it." She smiles and laughs like Jane is somehow just missing the point and I have no heart to bring up people-in-glass-houses truisms.

"She's so embarrassed by it," says she, my indestructible Mom. "It's like she can't just live in the moment." She makes a pompous face; chin in, shoulders back. "She takes it all so seriously!"

We laugh, because it's funny (not Jane's anxiety - I know, even Mom knows, that it's not especially a laughing matter - but the delivery and expression are perfection) and also because it's just great to hear her laugh.

Then she gets serious. "I just wish that I didn't feel so guilty."

I shake my head. The change of direction is kind of stunning. "Guilty?" I say. "What about?"

Her face scrunches, my fragile Mom, equal parts sorrow and confusion. "Oh, all the things. Your Dad. Everything. I'm so worried that God won't forgive me even though I ask. Every night."

This both breaks my heart a bit, and raises my gorge. Of all the people.... It's just wrong.

The god issue is one we rarely discuss. She knows my thoughts are... eclectic. She was raised Mennonite Brethren - strictly hellfire and damnation. Her utterly illogical and overwhelming guilt, and the institutions capable of using it so carelessly and intentionally, are a big part of the "why" of my eclectic agnosticism. Guilt was injected into her DNA at a young age and we haven't found an effective gene therapy for it yet.

Somehow, I seem to have escaped permanent infection. Maybe it's because I was adopted.

"Mom, don't you think that a god worth believing in, a god that would die for you, would have heard and delivered the first time you asked?"

We've had this talk before, and she's heard it in her heart before - where truth really rests - but like so many things now, it requires re-visitation.

She smiles, remembering, like a star peeking out of the twilight. "Yes, I know. I suppose He would. It's just so hard sometimes. To remember that. You know?"

"I know," I say. "But it's worth remembering. Let's make a post-it and put in on the computer. You can remind yourself every time you sit to play Spider Solitaire."

She gives me that look, very serious like when she used to tell the teenage me that smoking was bad. "That's a great idea. I'll see it every time I e-mail you too."

"That you will. Any idea where your Post-it's are?"

"Oh, I just saw them earlier. Now where did I put them...?" There's a pause and she looks around her, lost. Forlorn.

And she pulls them out of her little emergency bag. Presto. Haha, the jokes on me. And we laugh.


* Extra awesome points if you can name the movie this fragment of dialog came from.
** All names except "Mom" are fictionalized. Everything else, as best as I wish to put it back together, is pretty much true.

...one of those days...

Do you ever have one of those days? You know the kind....

One of those days when the overwhelming weight of the world just seems to be bearing all of its deep gravity well down on you? When all of the culpability of the species just seems to be unfucking avoidable and you have to own it, hold it to you at the same time that you're trying to tear it out of you?

One of those days when you can't resist to the urge to take on the sins of your race, your country, your gender, your species? When every story, every song, every image reminds you of the incredible fuck up this all is, all of it, in spite of the good things, because of the unmitigated horror of the bad?

When the black hole is so dense that it's hard out get out of bed, off of the floor, out the door? When the sunlight hurts and smiles feel like razorblades? When the thought of peace, the ephemeral unlikelihood of it, the whisper of its possibility and the truth of its goddamn improbability, reduces you to tears?

When you want to slap every child you see push another down, ram your car into every self-involved driver that didn't see the person they almost ran over, strangle every self-serving politician you watch lie, again and again and again, destroy every person that ever hit their spouse in anger, knowing the whole time that it's the wrong answer to every one of those situations and not caring?

Knowing that even if you could, the shame would just be worse afterward?

One of those days when you can't see the hope through the fear, or the love through the hate, or the intelligence through the ignorance? When bigotry seems to be the rule and tolerance – not even real acceptance, just tolerance – looks like it's about a million fucking light years away from being possible?

When laughter makes you want to cry, crying makes you want to scream, and honesty makes you want to smash every mirror in the world?

One of those days? Do you know the kind I'm talking about?

I'm having one.

Sometimes it's good to just sit in awe and fucking own it for a day.

S'okay though. It's just a day. Tomorrow's a new one, and things'll be better. It's just one day.

“Everybody's scared for their ass. There aren't too many people ready to die for racism. They'll kill for racism but they won't die for racism.” Florynce R. Kennedy

I’m having a really hard time editing the novel today, and I absolutely have to be getting that shit done, so I thought I’d just rant a bit and get what’s on my mind off of it.

…no jokes about how little there is on my mind on the best of days. You’d be preaching to the converted right now anyway.

Why am I distracted and pissed? The news. I know - huge fucking surprise. This time though I’m not even at my mother’s, and I’m not paying attention to CNN or Fox. Yes, Virginia, there really is a dearth of objectivity in media even in alternative, independent land.

I suppose that the Beck/Palin revival in Washington had something to do with it. The Park51/Cordoba House/Ground Zero Mosque bullshit also added to my angst. So did all of the alternative responses to both. Seems to me like everything just keeps getting more and more polarized, and the people that, according to my bias, should be enlightened and know better just, apparently, aren’t and don’t. I have seen the enemy…, and all that. And so the voices get louder, screaming across the growing divide. There aren’t any solutions out there, in that place where we yell epithets at each other. It’s tempting to give in sometimes and contribute to the erudite insult combat, but the results are generally discouraging, and I always feel a little dirty afterwards.

Wars of words aren’t really any better than wars with weapons. The body count appears lower, but we just don’t count it right if we think so. If we counted in terms of wasted brain cells and lost time and the new barriers of ill-intent we erect the attrition rate would be horrific.

This is not, of course, to say that debate and disagreement, even passionate disagreement, are bad things. But when we lose grasp of reason and self-control there is no upside. We’re supposed to be aspiring to something better, aren’t we?

All this openly racist banter that’s going on makes me wonder what it is our elders and parents fought for back in the not-so-long-ago. We won some new laws, but apparently didn’t win that many hearts or minds. MLK (oh man, you are so missed) must be rolling over like a motherfucker.

I openly pondered on FB the other day that this might all be a sign that the military/industrial/political complex has just figured out that a domestic conflict might be more profitable – put the war closer to the combat, so to speak, and save all that expensive shipping costs.

I know; how dark and depressing a thought is that, only because it seems to fit with a profitability mindset. It’s almost believable.

I also found myself wondering whether all the craziness was just the final frantic gasps of organized fanaticism, er, I mean religion as it kicked and spasmed its way into the grave.

See? I am an optimist sometimes!

Okay, I feel better. Back to making my make-believe world marketable.

‘Every quality, taken to extremes, becomes a weakness.’ Paulo Coelho

I’ve spent a good portion of the last week reading blogs, news and alternative news sources. It’s triggered a bit of introspection along the lines of Mr. Coelho’s quote above, and from that introspection I felt the need to try to clarify a couple thoughts.

The Easter post, part satire and part anti-religion rant, raised more ire than I usually manage to provoke (or at least that I’m aware of). Most of it arrived via my FB link or by private message/email than here in the comments, but I was ready for it. There’s no way I wrote that without an intention to provoke.

But I’m also not one that relishes contention most of the time. I have to feel pretty strongly about something to not look for a win/win solution that’s inclusive. I do recognize, however, that I, like everyone else, have the ability and propensity to become too enamored of an idea, an ideology, a quality in ourselves that we consider one of our strengths, a political position, a religious doctrine, a scientific or academic school of thought, etcetera, etcetera. It is not an affliction that is unique to any one demographic or another. Even those who cherish science, objectivity and reason above all (while pointing at emotion, empathy and metaphysics as foolish self-delusions) things can become entrenched in those concepts to a degree that excludes other valid possibilities. We are all susceptible to the dynamic.

I think we find it attractive because sometimes the journey gets tiring and we just want desperately to believe that we can find that one internal or external position that will allow us to stop exploring. That place where we can say, “I’m finally here”, and that, in that place, we’ll find some rest. But that concept is, I think, mostly an illusion - a mirage.

For sure, there will be, and should be, times when we rest for awhile, but the journey never really ends. We may find refuges and oases at times, and we probably need them when we get there, but the real challenge is knowing to move on after we’ve had that rest instead of trying to settle in as if we’d ‘arrived’.

That was one of my thoughts. The other involves the concept of synthesis as opposed to extremism.

In my first year of under-grad studies, while I was taking all of those ubiquitous survey courses, I was struck by the trend in each discipline for schools of thought to develop around specific approaches, discoveries or styles. Each new paradigm would be based on the ground gained by the one before it, and yet the new paradigm ended up being branded as contrary to the one prior, and a mutually-exclusive dynamic would rear its ugly head resulting in temporary stagnation. This process would continue, spawning school of though after school of thought, until some bright person would come along and try to form a synthesis of all the best aspects of these “disparate” schools of thought.

I always gravitated towards the synthesis concept more than any other one school because, well, it just made more sense. Concepts of amalgamation tend to be more open and dynamic. Constructed on the assumption that ideas that have come before have something to contribute, and that a combination of ideas can be more complete than any separate component can be, the synthesis perspective tends to be (in theory) perpetually inclusive in design, always looking for the next bit of discovery or revelation that will help fill in a bit more of the picture.

I hold pretty strong ideas regarding the nature of institutions whether they are religious, social, bureaucratic, educational or political. I doubt that this disclosure comes as a surprise if you’ve read anything here or know me. I liken any institution to trying to make one specific wave permanent…

That said I also realize that my position on institutions is hardly ultimate or inviolate. We need institutions like laws and courts and representational democracy in a pluralistic society with high population density. I recognize that multiple perspectives are required in a system so that debate can occur; that the progress of ideas occurs through the process of exploration, disagreement and discourse; that diversity is a good thing. I like those ideas. I just don’t like the manifestations of those ideas that we are currently working with and under. If we’re open enough, I think that we’ll be able to evolve past them, but we have to be open to the evolution and not fight it so much.

I wish, sometimes, that it was easier for us as a species to remember and practice that cooperative approach of synthesis. I wish we’d save “you’re wrong” for really special occasions and look for what’s right more often, even if we can only see a little piece in the larger whole. I wish we’d look for a middle path of symbiosis instead of investing so much energy in trying to steer left or right. I wish we’d include instead of exclude. I wish we didn’t need a “them” in order to simply be “us”.

And I hope that I’ll never forget that in front of my own mirror is the best place to renew this wish.


As a side note, I like the idea of this:

‘But He loves you. He loves you, and He needs money! He always needs money! He's all-powerful, all-perfect, all-knowing, and all-wise, somehow just can't handle money! Religion takes in billions of dollars, they pay no taxes, and they always need a little more.’ George Carlin

Easter is magic to me, simply magic.

And not in that wonderful, let’s-all-celebrate-family-and-the-death-and-resurrection-of-Jesus kind of way. I mean, really real magic in a Las Vegas kind of way. We’ve all seen magicians pull a rabbit out of a hat, but pulling a painted egg out of a rabbit’s ass in plain site of a guy hanging on a cross is a pretty cool trick, you gotta admit.

And that whole Jesus thing, that’s a David Copperfield-quality bit of misdirection in and of itself, if ya ask me. The ability of the church to turn a pagan holiday into a Christian one always astounds, doesn’t it? Always brings down the house. I can almost hear the fourth century Bishops puzzling it out:

Scene I, Act 1
Date: 325 AD
Setting: The Council of Nicaea

Christian Sect Leader One (CSL1): Okay, that’s the Winter equinox covered, and we can do that reverse-psychology thing with the fall solstice…

Christian Sect Leader Two (CSL2): …I love that Halloween thing – the irony kills me…

CSL1: …and the crucifixion/passover timing is a natural. But how are we going to tie it in with fertility rights so the pagans buy in?

CSL2: Hmm… Eggs?

CSL1: Say wha…?

CSL2: Eggs, I said eggs. They represent fertility and reproduction and profligation.

CSL1: Profligation?

CSL2: Sure! “…All your eggs in one basket”, and “ You can’t make an omelet without…” Eggs will sub-consciously encourage more extravagant offerings. We’ll give them eggs, which we can leverage for next to nothing, and they’ll feel obligated to give back.

CSL1: Brilliant.

CSL2: (Beaming) Thanks!

CSL1: I think we still need a spokes-model though. Eggs are decidedly un-sexy by themselves and, well, the dead and bloody Christ-on-a-stick thing may work for guilty manipulation, but we need something to keep people from slitting their wrists.

CSL2: Hmmm, good point.

(crickets)

Constantine: I like bunnies. They’re fuzzy and soft and taste great with eggs. And they fuck a lot, which kinda ties in with the fertility thing.

CSL1 and CSL2: (in unison) Bunnies it is.

This level of sophisticated illusion has always awed me. We celebrate this holiest of Christian pagan-holiday-conversions with a holiday on the day Jesus died, a big meal on the day that the Saviour would have been in hell, the disciples all mopey and trying to figure out what to do next (at least the entrepreneurial ones would have been), and then head back to work to celebrate his resurrection which made so much profit possible! *sniff* Heart-warming!

Here’s to bunnies and eggs, religious manipulation and all things commercial and profitable! Happy Easter!

‘We cannot be too earnest, too persistent, too determined, about living superior to the herd-instinct.’ Author Unknown (often attributed to Abraham Lincoln)

A couple things happened this week that made me think of this one, both of them while I was surfing around on Facebook, and both of them connected to the kind of viral diffusion that social networking is capable of. While that viral dynamic can be a powerful tool and is probably the last truly free form of expression and dissemination left to us, that same freedom carries with it potential for manipulation, desensitization, vapid distraction and the perpetuation of a continual state of irrational fear, even if said state is mild. In a closed environment it’s usually easy to filter out the crap, but in a free one we have to be more careful and discriminating or we can be overwhelmed by a combination of obtuse ignorance and intentional misdirection.

If we fall prey to the BS, we will end up just following the herd, and that’s both boring and disgusting. I mean, if you aren’t at the front of the pack, then your nose is crammed in someone else’s fuzzy butt. Who wants that?

Neither of the two catalysts for this rant was substantial or dramatic in nature, but both were potentially dramatically viral, commanding trends that were noticeable. The first was completely benign drivel, a viral marketing ploy dressed up to be a game in the form of a chain thread encouraging people to do a search on their name in a small, slang-style urban dictionary, and then re-post the directions, and the ostensibly humorous or felicitous result of the search, as their status. As I said: benign, possibly even funny except for the utter innocuousness of the ‘game’. I think, most often, that while these kinds of viral marketing campaigns are meant to drive site hits, they are also something that the marketers behind them take evil glee in, sitting back, watching the hit counters surge, and chuckling over the utter manipulability of the populace they are paid to dupe and coerce.

On those grounds alone, I object to the ploys and strategies and refuse to participate. In fact, I find that I enjoy the sardonic responses to these threads far more than the thread itself. For this one, as soon as I saw it start to trend, I posted a modified version encouraging people to follow the instructions and substitute ‘SHEEP’ for their name. The result describes exactly what this kind of viral marketing counts on: the behavior of a creature devoid of reason that follows the fuzzy ass in front of them just because, in all absence of self-possession or independent thought.

The second example involved a scare chain thread warning people that they should perform a search for a certain phrase in the security block section of their privacy settings. The entry brought up a list of names of people you would never have heard of and the post suggested that these people somehow had access to your profile and personal information. They didn’t. The privacy block field was just acting as a search engine, pulling up the names of people who had expressed association to a certain company on their profile. So tons of people were starting to block other people simply because someone told them to follow a few semi-arcane and techy instructions. The list of people to block, which started at around 20, was up to around 75 by the time I checked it out, growing because the search was starting to draw on the names of people that had posted the status warning and were subsequently associated by reference with the company mentioned. Yes, I checked it out, right after I Googled the topic and found out it was a farce.

This is a less benign form of viral dissemination. I can only make guesses regarding the intent of the original publisher, but I can’t see it being a positive one. Taken to an illogical extreme, everyone on Facebook could have eventually posted the status, become associated with the company in the search engine, and we’d all have to block everyone. Stupid. And all it took to find out that the scare was a farce was to do a one-minute search and read an article.

My point? I mean, really, neither of these examples was going to result in a complete collapse of society, and the first one even had the potential to be mildly diverting and entertaining, right? Okay, if you say so… Don’t get me wrong, I like having fun. And having fun in general, being occasionally diverted by a good movie, book, game, concert, whatever… can be a good thing. Hell, I want to be a novelist, so I hope I can be diverting enough to sell a few books. My point is that we need to be conscious of when attempts are being made to divert our attention. If we are being entertained, we need to make choices about how and when that happens.

If you do this, pursue your entertainment with a bit of conscious awareness, then you will be declaring open war on the marketers of the world, just so you know. Their intent is to keep you dumb and make your choices for you, manipulating your attention and usurping your freewill. And it’s not just about diversion either. This concept applies to politics, consumption, social conformity, religion, self-development, fashion, fitness, self-perception and body image… the list could go on and on.

Our time, our generation, has been called the Age of Persuasion by Terry O’Reilly. We are all about ‘getting to yes’ and learning how to ‘make friends and influence people’. What we rarely take the time to realize is that, while we’re running around increasing our influence, everyone else is doing it too. We’re all running around trying to get one up on the other guy, be smarter, sneakier, horde more. We’ve been duped into this self-defeating behavior by ideologies and marketing philosophies that treat people as demographic targets and potential revenue sources instead of, well, people. We are deep into the process, in a very real way, of abdicating our humanity in favor of ‘greater profits and mechanical amusements’.

I’m not saying that you should forgo all forms of amusement. I certainly don’t plan on doing that and I need every one of you to buy my book if and when it gets on the bookshelves. We need that diversion sometimes, a chance to decompress and laugh or sigh or cry. What I am suggesting is that you keep your eyes open. That’s right, open ‘em up. A bit more now. There. Keep them that way. You make your choices instead of letting them make your choices. You see through their lies instead of them leading you through the fog. Take control of your life and your mind and your decisions. It’s empowering, trust me.

You may not always like what you see when you stick your head up out of the herd, but it has to be better than the fuzzy butt you would other wise be staring at.

“Aren't we forgetting the true meaning of Christmas? You know, the birth of Santa.” Matt Groening, The Simpsons

Somewhere along the line over the last ten years or so I seem to have picked up a reputation for being a Scrooge. I happen to not agree with this characterization, but I understand where it comes from. You see, I don’t believe in Christmas any more in the same way that I don’t believe in Santa Claus, the Easter Bunny, peace on earth, or Martians. And at the same time I do believe in it the way I believe in all of those things.

When I was growing up, I was taught that Christmas was the time when we celebrated the birth of the baby Jesus and also that it was a family holiday, marked by the extravagant exchanging of expensive, colorfully wrapped gifts, supplemented by the delivery of even more presents by a big white European guy in a red suit who somehow managed to squeeze his corpulent body down our six-inch chimney pipe. I wasn’t sure what these had to do with each other, but okay, for a good twenty-five or –six years I bought into a varying amounts of our family’s version of the myth.

Especially as an only child, I had a pretty damned good thing going, after all. I rebelled against my parents having too many friends over, partly because my mom went into paroxysms of anxiety over having everything just right, which seemed to me to be at odds with the whole quiet reflection and family themes, but also because it interfered with my whole ‘new toy’ time. So yeah not completely happy, but only children get spoiled, let me tell ya.

I don’t recall a time when I actually believed in the Santa myth. My parents recognized early that I had a propensity for sniffing out the BS, so they rarely tried to pull any wool over their eyes that they didn’t already have pulled over their own. Like the Jesus thing. I think it was the sincerity of their beliefs that led to my acceptance in such a wholehearted way.

There are very few scholars out there who would suggest that a historical Jesus would have been born on the 25^th of December, or anywhere near Christmas time, considering that the Romans conducted their censuses in mid- to late-spring. I’d figured that one out by the time I was twenty-five or so, a late realization that I attribute to the level of indoctrination my upbringing subjected me to. It was even later that I started to put the pieces together and realized that Christianity as it is propounded by the major sects is simply a rehash of even older theological mythologies, names and dates changed to protect the sanctity of the new institution that Constantine and what would become the Catholic sect were putting together.

And then there’s the whole consumerism nature of the holiday. I am fair and consistent in disliking almost all of the major Western Culture holidays for this aspect, and have been for years. We propagate holiday seasons that include major material purchase requirements all throughout the year, making the purchasing more and more a requisite to properly celebrating the season, even going so far as to suggest that not spending loads of money on gifts and decorations is somehow unpatriotic considering that, if we abstain, we are potentially doing irreparable harm to the economy. Especially in dire times like these. Even when I was getting tons of cool shit as an only child this struck me as somehow empty and contrary.

Perhaps my least sensible and paradoxically largest peeve is the competition to see who can make their house look gaudiest. Oh my god, what a waste that is. A few lights, something tasteful, doesn’t press my buttons, but anything involving inflatable Santas and an energy-sucking over-abundance of multi-colored lights makes me shake my head.

I was also struck early on by the hypocrisy of the seasonal message; that for this brief window of time, each year, we would unite in celebrating the birth of the Christian god to the exclusion of every other religion, then drop the sentiment as soon as New Year passed (am I being too generous by giving the season a whole week of influence) and go back screwing each other over for money, money, money. Assuming, of course, that you ignore the whole concept of  seasonal consumerism as a de facto screwing process in and of itself.

So, yeah, I can see why I get the Scrooge label.

There are things that I always have and do like about the season though:

- I like that it brings families and friends together, reminding us of the ties that bind us.

- I like that people think a bit more about things like those less fortunate than themselves and peace on earth.

- I like that we try to take an extra day or two off from our busy work lives to visit and rest.

- I like that we often spend a day or two outside around this time of year, enjoying the snow, breathing in a lung or two of crisp winter air.

- I like that it inspires us to be reverent for a moment or an evening, regardless of the reason or religion or context; just to be reverent and thankful.

These are good things, worthy things to enjoy about this time of year. I wish that we could carry them with us all year long, mind you, but if we can only manage them for special occasions… well, I’m a pragmatic idealist after all, so I’ll be thankful for what I can be thankful for.

If I’m preaching to the converted, then enjoy the season in the way only you can – as an extension of a mindset you’ve carried with you all year long; grateful and generous. If not, try something new. Take the best parts of this season with you throughout the next year. Practice reverence and generosity, empathy and integrity through all the seasons. Recognize that the most precious gift you can give to anyone is yourself, your best self.

Buy less, see more, consume less, but be more generous with your most valuable commodity – your self. Consider it a Christmas present from you to everyone that loves you, including you.

Merry Christmas, Happy Hanukkah, Boisterous Bodhi, Rippin’ Rammadan, Festive Festivus, Kickin' Kwanzaa, Super Solstice, Happy Holidays… whichever one works for you, enjoy, be safe, love and be loved.