Accidental Historian

It is Finished

2010-09-09T11:40:00.000-05:00

That's it. I'm done. I'm officially shutting this blog down.

And moving it over to TypePad.

Excuse my dust while I get the new digs built. It'll be a little while before I have everything in order. It will be a good thing, though. For one, it looks like I might just be able to do that experiment in Podcasting I was thinking about.

I've shut the comment section down on this blog for what I hope are obvious reasons, but I'll still be keeping it up. For some reason TypePad only imported the posts from August and September, so I'll want to keep this one around as an archive. And so I can point people to the new spot. It should be pretty easy to remember:

http://accidental-historian.typepad.com

Good News and Bad News and Other News

2010-09-09T09:19:00.002-05:00

So the good news is I’m still blogging.

The bad news is that I’m blogging from beyond the grave.

The really bad news is that death looks exactly like my regular life.

Silver lining: this proves my hypothesis that Texas = Hell.

Anyway, yeah. Big, bad Dennis Markuze didn’t get me. He didn’t even leave Montreal. I know this because of the IP address from which he’s been leaving his bullshit all morning. Which also indicates that he lacks the faith in his god to believe that the job got done. So, good times.

Meanwhile, yesterday I got to contend with Tropical Event Hermoine and spend a bunch of time driving around Dallas in the neighborhood of the tornadoes that were apparently much worse than I though. Yet here I am, still alive…

Anyway, we’ve proved yet again that Dennis Markuze is not a threat. But he is massively annoying.

-------------------------

This has also caused me to make a decision I’ve been putting off for a while. I’m going to migrate the blog, probably to Wordpress. Blogger’s interface is clunky and annoying. Their moderation is basically useless, as you have to have it all the way on or all the way off. The rollout of their Spam filter only clinched it, as I have received 29 comments from DM since yesterday, marked all of them as Spam, and still they get posted as normal. A quick perusal of the message boards indicates that I’m most definitely not the only person having this problem.

I can’t complain too much, as Blogger is free. That also makes it really hard for me to feel like storming off in high dudgeon. Still, I’d rather have more control than what Blogger offers.

Anyway, further bulletins as events warrant…

Hooray!

2010-09-08T12:20:00.000-05:00

I've officially arrived. Today I received my first direct death threat from DM, which I have deleted as per my policy of deleting everything that dipshit posts on my blog.

Either way, I'm apparently going to die today.

Check back tomorrow for the exciting conclusion.

Coyote

2010-09-07T22:57:00.000-05:00

I stopped on my way out of Chicago in January to buy one last thing: a bottle of Lagavulin 18. It slowly disappeared over the next few months until I realized I only had one glass left. I decided I needed to save it for a special occasion.

-----------------------

I bought a new pair of jeans on Friday. It was well past time. The jeans I brought down with me were starting to fall down and even at their best they made me look like I was doing my best white boy gangsta impression, an odd idea, since I’ve always been pretty clean cut.

My new jeans are Levi’s 560s with a 36” waist, 34” inseam. They created a mystery.

When I was out at college I had a few pairs of Levi’s that had a 34” waist. I currently weigh less than ten pounds more than I did in college. Yet there’s no way I can possibly wear a 34” waist pair of jeans.

-----------------------

My new Levi’s and I boarded a plane on Saturday morning. The row behind me, up against the opposite wall of the plane was a woman.

She was gorgeous. I imagined talking to her, finding out that she, too, was a traveler, headed back to her native Chicago for a weekend’s respite from life in Dallas. Perhaps she’ll give me her phone number, tell me to call her when we’re both back in Dallas.

Instead I said nothing. I can’t imagine what someone like her would see in someone like me. Apparently my waist size and my impression of my attractiveness are not in any sort of sync. My impression of my attractiveness and value to women is also apparently not particularly high.

-----------------------

Coyote, we’re told, was walking aimlessly through the desert one day. This, after all, is what Coyote does. He travels, looking for adventure, looking for someone to trick.

On this particular day, though, Coyote happened upon a man. Now, this man was doing something peculiar. He was pulling his eyes out of his head and throwing them up to the top of a tree, then summoning them back with a word.

Coyote asked him why he was doing that. The man told Coyote that it allowed him to see the land all around him and know what was coming up next.

Coyote begged the man to tell him how to throw his eyes to the tops of the trees. The man agreed, but told Coyote that he absolutely had to make sure he only did it four times in the day. Any more times than that and he would not like the results.

-----------------------

“There’s a box of your old jeans in the middle bedroom,” my mother says to me. “Are they too big or too small?”

I tell her I’ll go look. The box comes out of the closet and there are my old college Levi’s. It’s been five years since I was able to fit in to them and they’ve probably been languishing in that box in the closet for that long. I pull them out, smell the musk of cardboard and age.

I pull them on. They fit perfectly.

Mystery solved.

-----------------------

It’s strange, being back in the house I grew up in. And not just because I haven’t stepped foot inside for nearly nine months.

Everything seems smaller.

Perhaps I just have better posture. Perhaps it’s a trick of the memory or perception. But I swear I’ve grown taller since I was last here.

-----------------------

Somewhere in that house is a picture of me from Christmas of 2004. I was down at what I like to call my “college weight,” that time before I started gaining back the weight I’d lost. I was wearing those Levi’s. Some time during the semester after I would stop being able to wear them.

She saw that picture once. Looking at it she said, “You were so thin then.”

I heard, “You’re so disgustingly fat now.” I heard, “You’re not good enough.”

Of course, I heard that second one all that time, even if those words were never used.

-----------------------

Coyote threw his eyes up in to the tree and found he could see for miles. Then he called them back down. Soon he wanted to look again, so he threw his eyes up again.

Then a third time.

Then a fourth.

He heeded the man’s warning and walked on without doing it a fifth. A little way down the road, though, he decided he wanted to see what was around the next bend. “Those are just the man’s rules,” he said to himself, “From the man’s country. I am not now in the man’s country, so I can do what I want.”

He threw his eyes up in to a tree. Then he called them back.

They did not return.

Coyote wept, for he could not see.

-----------------------

I came back to Chicago for a specific purpose: The Fox Valley Folk and Storytelling Festival. It’s my Fox Valley Guild people, plus Megan Wells and Oba William King. Lollapalooza and the return of Soundgarden couldn’t convince me to come back to Chicago. The Fox Valley Folk and Storytelling Festival could.

I had one story to tell. First set of the first day. After that I was on my own.

I pulled on those old college Levi’s, musty smell and all, along with a shirt from roughly the same vintage that somehow traveled with me to Brookfield and then Irving.

I told my story. It’s a new one, about a boy who waits for his dreams to come through a door in the back of a garden, but finds his dreams only after he leaves.

Afterwards I spend some time with my parents, grab some lunch from a vendor at the festival. Then I watch more stories.

After a while I decide I need a break, so I head back to grab my book. Rounding the pavilion I found myself face-to-face with her.

She didn’t notice me, or did a damn good job of pretending it was so. I suppose it’s the former, as she was deep in conversation, I don’t look quite like I did the last time I saw her, and I just kept walking.

What do you say to someone you have nothing to say to, after all?

-----------------------

Not long after everything ended I got a new job. I moved out of my parents’ house. I then proceeded to hide in my cups for reasons that I didn’t understand.

The magic number I call “my college weight” was 227. The BMI charts say I should weigh between 180 and 195, but there’s no way I could look or be healthy at that weight. I should probably have gotten down to about 210 or 215 before I stopped last time around. But I didn’t. I stopped losing at 227, stabilized at 230-235 for a while.

When I met her I was around 275. When we stopped talking I was around 285.

At the 2009 Fox Valley Folk and Storytelling Festival I was at 320, just 20 pounds below the weight I was when I started losing in 2004 and 20 pounds above a threshold I’d sworn I’d never again cross.

In the middle of September of last year I decided I needed to fix it again. But this time for good. I’d probably lost fifteen or twenty pounds by the Illinois Storytelling Festival, which was also the last time I’d seen her.

I don’t know why any of this matters.

-----------------------

Coyote called out to his eyes to return again and again, but he called out in vain.

Mouse came to investigate the sound. “Why are you crying and calling out?” he asked.

“My eyes are in the tree,” Coyote replied, “And I cannot get them back.”

“I can climb up the tree and fetch them for you,” Mouse offered.

“No,” Coyote replied, “Just give me one of your eyes and I’ll be on my way.”

So Mouse gave Coyote one of his eyes. The tiny eye did not fit well in Coyote’s socket and he could barely see. So Coyote stumble off, running in to things as he went.

-----------------------

The mind plays tricks.

She’s never been at the Fox Valley Folk and Storytelling Festival before, so maybe it was just someone that looked like her. This other girl…woman…whatever…had longer hair than she’d had last I saw her, looked younger.

But, no. I’d have recognized that round face, pert nose, and those slightly reddish cheeks anywhere.

It’s ironic, I suppose. Her hair is longer, mine shorter. She looks younger and everyone says I do, too. Perhaps being together aged us.

Later on I see her again and know it’s her. I’m in conversation and she’s off in the distance. She keeps looking over at me.

A tiny, petty, part of me hopes that it depresses her that I’m not in her life any more, now that I’m wearing my old college jeans.

Another part of me considers walking up, saying hello. But I still do not know what to say to someone that I have nothing to say to.

-----------------------

In his stumbling, Coyote runs in to Buffalo. Buffalo takes pity on Coyote and give Coyote one of his eyes.

Buffalo’s eye is too big for Coyote, but Coyote smashes it in to his socket as best he can.

Coyote then continues on, able to see but unable to gain the proper perspective.

-----------------------

I practice Otherness. It’s easy enough, I suppose, to announce that you’re different in major ways. It’s much harder to do subtly, however.

For day two of the Fox Valley Folk and Storytelling Festival I don a Lost Immigrants shirt. “I am no longer of Chicago,” I say. “I am one with Coyote,” I also announce.

The lost immigrant, after all, is one who wanders aimlessly in a land that is not his own, a characteristic of Coyote.

-----------------------

All day I do not see her. But I still wonder what would happen if I did. I still wonder what you say to the person you have nothing to say to.

At the end of the day, though, she walks past the storytelling tent.

I turn, see her. She sees me. Our eyes lock.

I turn back to the storytelling.

It’s a sort of benediction, the answer to my question.

-----------------------

I don my new Levi’s 560s and a Local H shirt for my return to Dallas.

Just before I board the plane I see the woman from the flight up. At least, I see someone who looks an awful lot like her.

But she’s just a shimmering mirage.

In a moment she’s gone.

-----------------------

I throw my musty smelling college jeans in the wash when I get back to my apartment.

They’re still warm when I pull them out of the dryer and pull them on.

I head out in to the muggy Dallas night.

-----------------------

When I return I pour my last glass of Lagavulin 18.

I offer up a toast to her, then dedicate the glass to Coyote, Raven, Eshu, Anansi, Loki, and all the other Trickster gods.

I’ve decided that my life needs more mischief.

For in mischief there is opportunity.

AtF: Not Gonna Happen

2010-09-05T19:42:00.000-05:00

This is usually the time I'm writing an AtF post. Instead I'm sitting in Geneva, IL at the Fox Valley Folk and Storytelling Festival. Entertain yourselves for a while.

Follow-Up Note...

2010-08-31T17:29:00.000-05:00

Remember that post I wrote a couple weeks ago on gay marriage?

How about this particular unintended consequence?

Dallas Judge's Ruling Saying Gay Couple could Divorce in Texas Rejected on Appeal.

Basically, two guys got married in Massachusetts, where it's legal. They then moved to Texas (for reasons I can't fathom), where it's not. Now they can't get a divorce.

I can imagine no clearer illustration to explain why this issue should most certainly not be left to the states to decide. I mean, other than the fact that "states rights" have been a cover argument for, "We walk to be a bunch of bigoted fuckwits and don't want anyone telling us not to be," since some time in the neighborhood of John C. Calhoun.

Why Hell, Anyway?

2010-08-31T14:00:00.000-05:00

Failing the Insider Test is one of those great blogs that almost never gets updated. That means that I forget that it exists for months on end, then suddenly think, “Hey, I wonder if anything’s been posted?” Today was just such a day. And I discovered a great, if long, post about the morality of god that was written back at the tail-end of May.

It posits that the question of how people base their morality without the Bible is just a weasel attempt to get out of answering questions about how you can call a homicidal maniac of a god “moral” and “loving.” It also includes this brilliant thought:

The truth is that Jesus loves people in much the same way that a stalker in a horror movie loves the woman he's harassing. When he's turned down, he'll turn nasty, hunt her down, and begin torturing her. But if only she hadn't rejected his love, she would have seen how loving he is!

But it really got me thinking about something else, a question.

What, precisely, is the purpose of Hell?

Let’s accept for the moment the three premises upon which Hell is founded:

1. Hell is eternal.
2. Hell is punishment for sins.
3. Hell is part of the plan of the infinite god.

Now let us ask what the purpose of punishment is. I would argue that there are two purposes:

1. Punishment is a deterrent.
2. Punishment is a corrective behavioral measure.[1]

We see punishment as a deterrent in the idea that you do not want to go to prison. We also see quite a bit of the idea in ancient/primitive systems of law. If you steal, your hand is cut off. If you kill, your head is cut off. Therefore, you probably don’t want to steal or kill. I most civilized nations there is a move away from this attitude.[2]

We see punishment as a corrective behavioral measure in the treatment of children. If you don’t play nice you don’t get to play at all. If you don’t do your homework you don’t get to go hang out with your friends. The idea is to say, “If you don’t do what you’re supposed to do, you don’t get to do what you want to do.” The primary difference between punishment as a corrective measure and punishment as a deterrent is that punishment as a corrective measure is not permanent.[3]

Hell is not, and by definition cannot, fall under category 2. An eternity of suffering pretty much precludes that idea. Catholic doctrine attempts to work around that with the idea of Purgatory, but even so it leaves Hell as a place where any rehabilitation is impossible.

So that leaves Hell as a deterrent. But it’s really not good at that role, either. See, the thing about prisons is that we can see them and we can think, “Yeah, I don’t want to end up in that place.” I cannot see Hell, however. Moreover, the descriptions we get of Hell are from people who also did not see it. Our primary Biblical conception of hell comes from the Book of Revelation. Our modern idea of Hell comes from a combination of Dante, Milton, and Medieval and Renaissance painters. The one thing that John of Patmos, Dante, Milton, and all those artists had in common is that none of them ever actually went to Hell.

Moreover, the idea of Hell doesn’t actually fit in to a Jewish cultural context. The punishments of Yahweh were made against people, their descendents, and their tribes. “I will punish you, your children, and your children’s children,” is actually far more effective of a deterrent than, “After you die you’ll be sent to this horrible, horrible place that neither you nor anyone else has ever seen. Trust me.”

This argument, however, is a dead end. It’s one of those that would be answered with a, “Yeah, just wait and see…” sort of response. So let’s end it here.

Instead, let us go back to the basics.

What is the purpose of punishment? To get people to follow the rules. Period. Full stop.

So what rules am I supposed to follow in order to stay out of Hell? Is it the Ten Commandments? Is it Jesus’s two commandments? Is it the codification of rules decided on at the Council of Constantinople? Last week’s Papal Bull?

It’s none of that. The entire point of Hell is to force people to acknowledge that Jesus is god and totally in control of everything. That’s it. You can be a loving, caring, peaceful person who does not accept Jesus and be sent to Hell. You can be a complete bastard and get your ticket stamped for Heaven. This is problematic for the idea of Hell, but not for the reasons most people argue.

Quite simply, if Jesus shows up and takes over the world, anyone who doesn’t acknowledge that it happened is a moron.

Imagine that you lived in Rome at the time of Attila the Hun. Someone says, “The Huns are coming, evacuate!” You don’t actually believe that there is any such tribe as the Huns, so you stay where you are. One day Attila shows up with his horde and all of the sudden you’re forced to acknowledge that, yes, Attila and the Huns exist.

At the point the ravening horde of Huns shows up at the gate the question of belief is thrown out the window. In the same way, if Jesus were to show up today at the head of the Heavenly host, belief and non-belief would become a non-issue. Hell, too, would become a non-issue, since the entire purpose of Hell is to act as a deterrent to non-belief.

Moreover, at the moment of death if there is a Heaven and Hell non-belief becomes a non-question. So, again, Hell becomes a non-issue, punishment for something that is now no longer an issue.

It also makes god and/or Jesus in to a pair of complete jackasses. If Hell exists as a place of eternal punishment for non-belief that was set up as part of god’s plan, then you cannot, by definition, say that this fits in to any example of love. And it certainly doesn’t fit in with the concept of forgiveness.[4]

You can, however, say that it fits quite well in to a primitive understanding of law as a deterrent from breaking the rules.

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[1]This can fall in to two categories. There’s retributive, or an “eye for an eye” mentality. In this if I do something bad an equivalent bad should be done to me with an eye towards teaching me that if I don’t like something, other people probably don’t, either. There’s also a code of laws idea where certain things are judged to be of a certain level of pain. For some transgressions I would need to pay a fine, for others I would need to be incarcerated.

[2]Just, y’know, not America, where we’re coming up with fun new ways to throw people in to prison and make sure that it becomes a stigma that follows people throughout their lives. Because we wouldn’t want to actually evolve as a society or anything. It’s much easier to say, “They’re bad people, that’s why they’re in prison and not out here with us good people.”

[3]Prison, in theory, should be a corrective measure. Separate offenders from the normal population, force them to serve their time, and in the process help them find some way of contributing to society when they get out. But by overcrowding prisons, understaffing them, and basically reducing it to a situation where a whole lot of people are just killing time, waiting to be released and ostracized from their communities we turn prison in to a deterrent. There’s a very strong chance that it will basically ruin your life. And all the prison rape stuff doesn’t help…

[4]This is one of the biggest problems with the love/forgiveness idea of Jesus and why the whole “Jesus as a stalker” thing is so apropos. If I love someone, I want to see that person happy. If it turns out that me not being involved in their life makes them happy, then if I love them it means I let them go off and do whatever. If they then turn around and say, “Wow, I just realized that my life would be much better with you,” then love means that I take them back and forgiveness means I don’t hold any bitterness I might have against them.

For that matter, if there was someone I loved (in a romantic sense, since it’s an easier story to tell that way) who left, then many years later came back and said, “I’ve made a mistake, I’m sorry,” I would not then force them to be punished for all those years of neglect. It’s entirely possible that if my world had moved on since then and I’ve gotten married and am quite happy then I wouldn’t say, “Hey, sweet, I’ll dump my wife just for you.” But when confronted with this sort of situation what sort of sadistic bastard would say, “I still love you, I forgive you, but now I’m going to have to chain you to the wall in my basement and poke you with white-hot metal pokers for all eternity.”

Because that’s what Hell is.

In a Land of Make-Believe that Don't Believe in Me

2010-08-30T14:00:00.003-05:00

Do you have the time
To listen to me whine
About nothing and everything
All at once?

I am one of those
Melodramatic fools
Neurotic to the bone
No doubt about it
--Green Day, “Basket Case”

It’s a story that begins, I suppose, in 1994. Specifically, it begins on a Tuesday night in the Fireside Room of my old church. I know this because it happened at junior high youth group. My youth leader had decided to do one of those messages on the evils of rock music. The songs he chose to deconstruct in order to inoculate us from worldly evils were Pearl Jam’s “Jeremy,” Green Day’s “Longview,” and Offspring’s…um, whatever the big song was off of Smash.

We were all given lyric sheets with the swear words edited out. The youth leader sat up front with a boombox, hitting the fast forward button on the CD player every time one of those words came up in the song. We learned about the messages from those songs: sex is okay, violence and suicide is okay[1], and masturbation is a-ok.[2]

The whole thing made me vaguely uncomfortable. I liked all of those songs. That particular night came just a couple months after my first introduction to the world of alternative rock[3] and I already possessed a copy of Dookie and Ten.[4] I went home and stuck my copy of Dookie in to a little slot at the back of my RCA boombox. I didn’t want to be influenced by the evil rock, but I also didn’t want to just throw the CD out. It languished there for a while.

That night was the beginning of a ten-year war in my mind that had everything to do with music.

Do you the enemy?
Do you know your enemy?
Well gotta know the enemy
--Green Day, “Know Your Enemy”

Superpages.com Center is probably not the sort of place I’d spend a lot of time visiting. I’m more of a small club, 21 and older show sort of guy. Still, last Thursday I put on my RCPM Che shirt for indie cred and headed down to Fair Park. Green Day was in time and I’d grabbed a seat in the pavilion. I’ve never actually seen Green Day live and this seemed like as good an opportunity as any.

Apparently my indie snobbishness has insulated me from a lot in the world of concerts. And I’m not just talking about venues that charge $9.50 for a Miller Lite in a plastic cup. I don’t even go to the House of Blues much because they have too many all-ages shows. So I was shocked to find myself surrounded by tweens in skinny jeans and leggings and, um, the various other accoutrements that are popular with the high school and junior high set these days.

Overall it was a weird effect. There was a better than even chance that if I saw a member of the female gender I was then expecting the dude from To Catch a Predator to jump out of the bushes in a very special edition of the show or I quickly realized that she was there escorting her high school-aged offspring. It’s an odd thing, being 29 and single at an all-ages show.

I apparently totally missed the switchover that Green Day managed to make from the music that I grew up with to the music that thirteen year-olds listen to. I quickly dropped in to Grampa Geds mode and started putting up Facebook statuses about the damn kids with their skinny jeans and wondering if they even knew about Green Day’s history of writing songs about jerking off. It was certainly better than going to my seat and listening to AFI.

The rage and love
The story of my lfie
The Jesus of Suburbia is a lie
And screaming

Are we, we are the waiting?
--Green Day, “Are We the Waiting?”

I eventually removed Dookie from its randomly imposed purgatory. I added Nimrod, Insomniac, and International Superhits! to my Green Day collection. But then I, like most people, totally forgot that Green Day had ever existed. Then news came that they were releasing a new album and they’d be trying something different: a Tommy-esque rock opera. I was intrigued.

When American Idiot came out I loved it from the start. I named it my 2004 album of the year.[5] Mostly, though, I connected with the story of growing up and growing disaffected. 2004 wasn’t quite the beginning of the end, but the markers of discontent were there. 2005 would see one last, half-assed attempt to seriously follow-through on ditching all of my worldly music and listen only to proper Christian entertainment.

But, see, we’d been promised a revolution. Jesus was gonna show up and make everything happen. There was going to be revival.

But there was never a revival. Jesus kept obstinately insisting on not coming back. The Jesus of Suburbia was a lie.[6]

Here they come marching down the street
Like a desperation murmer of a heartbeat
Comin’ back from the edge of town
Underneath their feet

Their time has come and it’s goin’ nowhere
Nobody ever said that life was fair now
--Green Day, “Homecoming”

Billie Joe Armstrong has re-invented himself, just as Green Day re-invented itself with American Idiot. I’d seen the whole pseudo-Emo, heavy eyeliner and frosted hair shit, which I find rather annoying. But what I hadn’t seen was what he does on stage. Billie Joe has morphed in to a manic televangelist for disaffected youth.

But there’s a message in the whole thing that I’ve never really noticed before. The question is asked every once in a while, “Where has all the protest music gone?” We wonder why there is no Bob Dylan, no “Universal Soldier,” no “Eve of Destruction” for the endless War on Terror generation. It’s there. Green Day seems to have figured out how to do it. But no one takes them seriously because they were originally a three-chord pop punk band playing silly songs about masturbation and entertaining junior highers.

One of those thirteen year-olds is now twenty-nine. At first I was disoriented to find myself at a show surrounded by teenagers. But as the night went on I began to realize something. It was a good thing. Sixteen years ago my youth leader tried to warn me about the dangers of the evil rock music. I strongly suspect that a lot of the kids in that audience have heard that exact same message.

For three hours on a Thursday night Green Day made me extremely happy that I eventually ended up deciding to keep Dookie around. And the more I thought about it, the more I realized that American Idiot wasn’t really a re-invention of the band, it was a re-invention of the idea of how the band presented itself.

I wanna be the minority
I don’t need your authority
Down with the Moral Majority
‘Cuz I wanna be the minority
--Green Day, “Minority”

When all of your songs are two and a half minutes long it’s pretty easy to squeeze a big chunk of the library in to a three-hour set. Even at that, I was impressed. They managed to work in most of American Idiot and Dookie, as well as several other old songs I like, not the least of which was “Minority.”

But there was also plenty of tagging. The band riffed in “Iron Man” and “Highway to Hell” and “Hey Jude” among many, many others. Everyone sang along and cheered.

It reminded me that rock music is a part of our culture, woven in so tightly that I can even sing along with and enjoy songs that I would never choose to listen to on my own and enjoy the hell out of myself. It also reminded me that we’ve seen this culture war of the Christian establishment against rock music ever since, well, rock music started. Elvis was too dangerous with his swiveling hips. The Beatles made young girls scream just a little too loud. Black Sabbath worshiped the devil.

Green Day sang songs about jerking off. It doesn’t seem like much of a statement to rally behind, but that’s not really the point. They had something to say beyond that. For the first time I really listened to “Minority” and realized what they were saying when they referred to the Moral Majority. I think I’ve always known they were referring to it, but I didn’t realize that they were firing an intentional salvo in the culture wars.

Last Thursday I realized something: the culture wars are over.

It might not seem like it, because we’re seeing a furious rear-guard action. But I can tell you a story about a thirteen year-old kid who put away his copy of Dookie because he’d been told it was of the Devil.

I can also tell you the story of a twenty-nine year-old who went to see Green Day sixteen years later.

--------------------------------

[1]Or something. I’m still a bit lost on how “Jeremy” really fit in to the whole motif. How the fuck you get any particular “rock is evil” message out of “Jeremy” is completely and totally beyond me. I mean, the song is a story about an abused kid who lashes out and eventually ends up committing suicide.

I suppose this is one of those INOUIITB (It’s Not Okay Unless it’s In the Bible) moments. If “Jeremy” had been a story about Demon possession or some other such BS from an appropriately Christian source it probably would have been a morality play set to the music of Carman. The fact that it involved a grunge rock band singing the evil Devil’s music meant it didn’t work that way because it would have blown the doors wide open on any number of assumptions.

[2]Thank Jeebus that “Brain Stew” wasn’t out yet…

[3]In an incident that involved Soundgarden’s “Black Hole Sun” and a maroon minivan on the way back from the youth group’s Spring Break Work Trip. Yeah, I sold my soul to rock and roll that day. I think I got a pretty good price, too…

[4]This was in that weird sweet spot where I liked Pearl Jam because “Spin the Black Circle” had not been played every twenty minutes on Q101. Seriously, I hated Pearl Jam for about eight or ten years after that. Still can’t stand “Spin the Black Circle.” Also, I’ve never owned Smash and never will.

[5]Okay, there’s a non-zero chance that I gave that to Velvet Revolver’s Contraband, mostly because I was a fucking moron in 2004.

Okay, no. I just looked. I gave the number 1 to American Idiot, the number two to Contraband, and the number 4 to Local H’s Whatever Happened to P.J. Soles? In at number 3? Collective Soul’s Youth. What the hell was wrong with me in 2004? American Idiot and PJ Soles were obviously the best two albums on that list, not for the least reason that they’re the only ones I still listen to. This, of course, totally ignores the fact that RCPM’s Americano! came out in 2004 and isn’t even on the list. But the simple reason for that is that I wouldn’t become aware of RCPM until early in 2005. I also totally feel like I’ve sidetracked in to berating past me about the year 2004 in music at several points in the past on this blog. But that 2-4 is completely unforgivable, as is the rest of the list. Honestly, I’m embarrassed to mention any of the other albums I liked in 2004 save U2’s Vertigo. It wasn’t a very good album, but it had a couple of good songs and “Love and Peace or Else” is genuinely amazing.

[6]This isn’t exactly what the “Jesus of Suburbia” in American Idiot refers to. But it’s how I’m using it.

AtF: Who's Buried in Raedwald's Tomb?

2010-08-29T23:54:00.000-05:00

So, this week on After the Flood, we find out that things that have nothing to do with anything are deeply, deeply important. Let’s start this out.

During the summers of 1938 and 1939, there came to light one of the greatest archaeological discoveries of the century. It was the Sutton Hoo burial ship of one of the great kings of East Anglia. It is commonly believed to be that of Raedwald (or Redwald) who became Bretwalda in the year AD 616 (his name appears on the genealogy).

Now, the Sutton Hoo burial ship was a fantastic archaeological find. We’re talking King Tut’s Tomb fantastic here. So let’s talk archaeology and what Sutton Hoo means.

In order to talk Sutton Hoo we can go with something people have heard of a little more about. Like, say, King Tut’s Tomb. Specifically, why King Tut’s Tomb mattered.

We all know about the Egyptian pyramids.[1] The lesser story about the pyramids is why they disappeared towards the end of the Middle Kingdom. Basically, they were giant targets for grave robbers. See, that was the crazy thing about the Pharaohs. They were gods on Earth, but they were also paranoid, and with good cause. They built giant friggin’ mausoleums out in the desert as a way of saying, “Hey, look at me!” They then filled said mausoleums with as much shit as they could stack inside.

Said shit then got stolen. A lot. And I’m not talking about the looting of archaeological sites like we see all over in the Middle East now. I’m saying that pyramids were getting looted during ancient times. That’s why there were all kinds of crazy traps and curses inside the tombs.[2]

So they moved to the Valley of the Kings, which was only marginally more successful. And by “marginally more successful,” I mean, “rather than being entirely looted, the tombs of the Pharoahs were only mostly looted.” This is why so many people know of King Tut. It’s not that he was a great ruler, it’s that he was the only ruler who’s tomb had been found intact up until that time. Period.

Let’s move two thousand years in to the future. Pretend that in between now and then the writings of every single President have been lost save William McKinley. Future historians know that there were a bunch of Presidents and have a general idea who they were, when they were in office, and what the fortunes of the United States were under them. But then they find a stash of letters written by William McKinley and all of the sudden they’re all, “Holy crap, we know something specific!” That’s what King Tut’s Tomb is all about.

William McKinley never makes the list of the best Presidents, nor does he make the list of the worst Presidents. Mostly we just kind of forget that he was a President. That’s basically where King Tut would have been in the list of Pharaohs. But we remember him because of something that happened three thousand years after he died and because of an awful lot of coincidences that happened in between those times. Such is the nature of archaeology.

This thought in mind, let’s talk Sutton Hoo. It was a major archaeological find in exactly the same way King Tut’s Tomb was.[3] It provided a snapshot of a bit of the Anglo-Saxon culture in England at the time of the burial. Most importantly, it provided a snapshot where an awful lot of things that had not been found together were all in one place. Of course this isn’t to say that we can learn everything about the East Anglians from Sutton Hoo. But it taught us a lot more than we knew before.

There are limits to what we can learn from pure archaeology, though. Especially if there is no language to speak of. Imagine if your house were suddenly to become an archaeological site, but for whatever reason your books and junk mail and recipes or whatever you have floating around with words on it disintegrated between now and whenever it was found.[4] So those future archaeologists have to wander in a decide who you were, what your social standing was, and how you spent your life based on a lot of circumstantial evidence.[5]

If you’re Bill Cooper, of course, you won’t think about Sutton Hoo quite like this. Oh, no.

The royal title of Bretwalda appears in the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle (MS. C - British Museum Cotton MS. Tiberius. B. i.) as Bretenanwealda, and means literally the one ruler of Britain. In other words, Raedwald was the supreme king to whom all the other provincial kings owed obeisance. Now Bede (4) tells us that Raedwald was born of the Wuffingas, as were all the East Anglian kings, and it is this title that tells us something of the seriousness with which the Anglo-Saxons kept their pedigrees.

Except that East Anglia never, ever, ever…ever, was in charge of all of Britain. Ever. It was – briefly and during the time of Raedwald – possibly the most powerful of the Anglo-Saxon kingdoms, but it never ruled all of Britain. The other kingdoms maintained their integrities and eventually knocked it down a peg or three again. Cooper’s own genealogy should show that East Anglia never, ever took over completely. So…yeah. Although I kind of wish I was a Wuffinga. That’s an awesome family name right there.[6]

It’s possible, as I mention in footnote [6], that the so-called “Wuffing Dynasty” is actually a bastardization of a Norse clan from Sweden. If this is the case -- which I’d consider highly likely, given the connections between the Sutton Hoo burial site and Sweden (also in footnote [6]. I’m being lazy about holding together complete thoughts tonight. Sorry)[8] -- then the fascinating thing about Bill Cooper’s use of Sutton Hoo is this: it totally blows his actual argument out of the water.

I love it when he makes my (self-appointed and booze-soaked) job easier, especially when he goes and digs that hole just a little deeper. This is a direct and egregious violation of the First Rule of Holes: When you find you’re in a hole, stop digging. Of course I suppose that you need to acknowledge that you’re in a hole and Bill Cooper probably gave up on that acknowledgment the moment he said, “You know what I should do? Write a book.”

See, the primary source of the Anglo-Saxon migration idea comes from the Venerable Bede, who lived and worked at the tail-end of the 7th Century. By that point the Germanic tribes had been in charge in England for between two and three centuries. That’s a lot of slack time. And that’s a lot of time for things to get confused.

So can we say that the primary migration came from the people we think of as Angles, Saxons, and Jutes? Yes. Probably. We’ve got an awful lot of evidence. But the Scandinavians were most certainly involved. For one thing, there’s some question as to whether or not the Jutes were actually Geats. But that’s just splitting hairs.

Basically, the idea is this: the Romans never truly conquered Britain. When they withdrew from the island it created a power vacuum that really wouldn’t be properly filled until Alfred the Great, although it’s possible to argue that William the Conqueror was the one who actually managed to do it. So you had the Angle, Saxon, and Jute clans looking across the water thinking, “Hey, that looks like a pretty sweet place to go.” But you also basically had the proto-Vikings of Scandinavia.

So let’s look at Raedwald and his East Anglian kingdom. Let’s say some Angles and some Geats showed up at roughly the same time. Somehow these people intermixed and we ended up with the Angles getting the place name and the Geats getting the dynastic name. This is not a hard concept to imagine, given the idea that we’re looking at a mass migration of people who had a loose cultural connection to each other to begin with.

Then, by the time they actually start writing down their genealogies and folks like the Venerable Bede show up, time has destroyed part of the memories. So they recall, vaguely, someone named The Wolf as a semi-legendary king, when “he” was, in fact, a Geatish clan known as the Wolf Clan.[9]

For the record, it’s no crazier than Bill Cooper’s theory. And it’s backed up by a minimal amount of real-world knowledge…

----------------------------

[1]Hopefully. If you don’t, then you really, really need to re-think your education.

[2]The most famous curse, of course, being the one in King Tut’s Tomb, which supposedly ripped through Howard Carter’s entire team. The second-most-famous was the one in Imhotep’s tomb, which very nearly killed Brendan Fraser on several occasions, but ultimately did not succeed due to merchandising concerns. Then Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson took over the franchise, in what I consider “the greatest idea ever had by anyone at any time, ever.” Other than, y’know, Kitten Mittons.

Also, you know what’s awesome about The Rock? He has, as best I can tell, zero actual acting talent. He is the epitome of the “guy who plays himself.” And he’s fucking awesome at it. He’s basically been parodying his own acting career since he first showed up as the Scorpion King and didn’t have a single line.

[3]Just without the curses and whatnot.

[4]Now that I think about that, though, it’s a crazy thought. I’m looking around my living room and there’s almost nothing that doesn’t have some words written on it. Basically, future archaeologists would get a look at my couch, loveseat, coffee table, rug, and dining room table. Also my random stuffed duck that sits on my left speaker. And my talking Kick the Cheat. But the point is that the ratio of things with words:things without words is quite high. Such is the nature of living in a literate society.

This is actually one of those places where we can’t understand what it was like to live in the before times, the long long ago. We take words for granted, to the point where we don’t usually notice them. Try to conceive of living for a day in a world without written words.

I honestly cannot.

[5]Many, many years ago, like when I was 12 or something, my mother got me a copy of a book called Motel of the Mysteries about a future archaeologist discovering a motel room and attempting to excavate it. My favorite prof at WIU used that same book to start out History 301 on ancient Greece. I loved that. This is also one of those places where it seems pretty obvious to say that parents should encourage their kids to learn and read. I suppose I was somewhat precocious, but by the same token my parents were constantly buying me crazy books and encouraging me to learn. Then one day I found my college prof using one of those books my mother had randomly gotten for me years before. And I enjoyed the book a hell of a lot more the second time around because I got what it was all about.

[6]Wuffa, said ancestor who started the Wuffings, comes from the Old English word for wolf. This is also one of those fascinating things, since the family name probably means that the Wuffings were an offshoot of a Geatish clan known as the Wulfings, who were mentioned in Beowulf and a few other Norse myths. On the off chance you’re thinking, “Wait, wouldn’t that mean that the Wuffings were actually Scandinavian and not Anglo-Saxon?” you’d be right. One theory actually holds that Beowulf was composed in East Anglia.

There were actually many items in Sutton Hoo that appear to have Scandinavian origins. Artifacts at the site are linked to artifacts found at a gravesite known as Vendel at Gamla Uppsala in Sweden.[7] This points to a much more complicated story of the settlement of Britain than the simple, “The Angles, Saxons, Jutes came over and set up shop,” that we usually get. This should be surprising to no one, save, perhaps, Bill Cooper.

[7]Gamla Uppsala was also the location of the Thing of all Swedes, which was a general assembly of sorts. And, yes, the word that we use to describe random items that can’t really be properly defined descend directly from that word. Considering the current state of affairs in Congress…

[8]Hmm. That sentence included a comma splice and parenthetical thought within a hyphen within a nested clause. I’m reasonably certain I just broke the English language with that one.

[9]I’m going to go out on a limb and assume they had BattleMechs.

Rule Number One

2010-08-24T14:00:00.002-05:00

Down in Texas where guns and guitars
Are the friends that man loves best
You might feel like your spinning wheels
Are truly headed West

Someone said the best we can hope for
Is to make a beautiful mess
And I put my soul up for sale
And the whole world asked
Could you take any less?
--Over the Rhine, “Last Night on Earth Again”

Rule Number One of my life is pretty simple.

Don’t get too attached.

I say it’s “Drink Local,” but that’s really Rule Number Two, since Rule Number One always seems like one of those things not to say. Some of the worst things about this life we all are forced to lead can be summed up by looking at Rule Number One. Everyone and everything leaves at some point. This, I’m forced to admit, includes me. I hold on to things for far, far too long because I want to believe that I can, somehow, overcome the simple truth that everything ends. But in the end there’s that one rule.

Don’t get too attached.

---------------------

I’m supposed to go back to Chicago for the first time since I moved in a couple weeks. I’ve been dreaming about that return since, basically, the moment my Chevy and I hit southbound 55 out of Brookfield.

Now I don’t want to get on that plane and fly north.

I’d rather get in my Mazda and drive West.

I have no idea what I’d do when I get there. I don’t know where “there” is. I’m just assuming that at some point I’d run out of road. When you run out of road there are three options: you can go back the way you came, find a different direction, or keep going straight and see what happens.

---------------------

I shouldn’t be allowed in to animal shelters.

I fall in love with abandoned dogs too quickly. I just want to take them all home and hug them. Even if a dog that I want to rescue has been adopted there’s always another. Next week. Next month. Forever.

It depresses me. It leaves me feeling helpless.

---------------------

I’ve come to understand my tendency to fall for what I call “Crazy Girls.” It’s a specific neuroticism. On my part. I want to be the hero. I want to save the day.

At the end of the day, though, someone gets abandoned. I can never tell who abandons and who is abandoned, though.

I’m beginning to fear that it’s me who will always do the abandoning, though. Such is the nature of Rule Number One.

----------------------

It’s a strange thing, living my life. I suppose I’m successful. I have all the accoutrements that indicate success. I park that new car of mine outside of the apartment I’ve filled with gadgets and toys and books. I get updates about my 401(k) in the mail. I get a paycheck that’s more than enough to purchase all of the things I need and most of the things I want.

But that new car, that apartment full of toys, that 401(k), that paycheck all serve to create a life I don’t want, I don’t need. They trap me.

They trap me because I bought in to the idea that all of these things matter. They trap me because I keep thinking I can justify my entrapment by showing ever more success. But my life now has to follow me around on a truck. My things own me.

The life I never wanted forces me to continue living it.

----------------------

A wealthy man walked up to the prophet one day and asked how he could get in to Heaven.

The prophet replied, “Sell off all you have and give the proceeds to the poor.”

The rich man walked away unhappy, for he wanted his things more than he wanted Heaven. When he was out of earshot, the prophet turned back to the crowd and said, “It is easier for a camel to travel through the eye of a needle than a rich man to make it to Heaven.”

A murmur began in the crowd. For the crowd, you see, wanted Heaven, but they also wanted riches.

The prophet saw their discomfort and asked them why they complained so.

One man stepped forward and said, “But I need to put food on the table and my children through school. I have a cell phone bill and cable TV and that unlimited 3G data plan for my new iPad doesn’t pay for itself. All of these things are necessary for me to live here. I can’t be waiting for Heaven until the day I die.”

The prophet smiled, for he had heard all of these arguments before. “Were you not there?” he asked, “That day in the synagogue where I walked in and said that the Kingdom of God is here, now? Were you not here when I said that I was building it on this Earth?

“How can we build Heaven on Earth together if we insist on trapping ourselves in our own personal Hells?”

The crowd slowly melted away, even unhappier than before. For as much as they wanted to find their way to Heaven, they also wanted easy answers. Everyone else had promised them easy answers if they just had enough money or lacked enough sense.

So they went away and tried to forget the prophet’s words. They bought 58” LCD TVs that were as thin as a sheet of paper and were happy for a while. Then when that brief bit of euphoria wore off their new 58” TVs told them that if they bought a new BMW 5-Series they’d be happy, then the iPhone 5, the XBOX 720, that new mp3 player that could literally store every song ever recorded, every podcast ever made, and have enough room left over for all the porn on the internet.

But those things only temporarily made them happy. At night on their adjustable memory foam beds they lay awake and stared at their ceilings, unable to forget the words of the prophet.

So they bought season tickets and hoped that a championship season would satisfy them. They sought out gourmet chefs and the best wine in the hope they’d fill themselves to the point where they’d forget it all. But they never forgot the words of the prophet.

Every day the bills came. Every month they did the math, came up just short or with just enough. Every year they dreamed of that big raise, that big promotion, that new job that would finally provide them with all they needed.

All the while the prophet spent his days wandering on his single pair of sandals, wearing his single cloak, sleeping under the stars.

Every night while the crowd stared at their ceilings the prophet slept soundly.

------------------------------------

Perhaps I need a different Rule Number One. Maybe “Don’t get too attached to the wrong things” would have been better.

But I fear that I no longer know what the right things are.

I fear that there are no right things.

Mostly, though, I’m just afraid.

What happens if I reduce my life to the absolute necessities and travel about as I see fit, then one day find myself reaching the end of that road and wondering why I ever left my comfortable apartment and all my toys for a life of senseless wandering? What if it turns out that the things that seem like the right answers now just seem that way because I’m so tired of the answers I’ve always chased?

That other life always seems so shiny, so worthwhile, when your own is dusty and boring.

It’s why the new convert is a zealot.

It’s also why the new convert is always so damn annoying to the people who have been trudging along for so long.

Update for the Sake of Updating

2010-08-23T22:06:00.003-05:00

So I'm too tired to write about the Council of Nicaea. I'm also too tired to write about trickster gods, which is what I was kinda-sorta working on. I have another post worked up about the general awesomeness of storytelling and Neil Gaiman, but it hasn't really jelled yet.

Instead of doing actual work, then, I think I'll just write a quick update post.

Next Saturday. Lost Immigrants. The place is called Love and War in Texas and it's off of north bound 75 in Plano. Seeing as how the building seems to be actually made out of neon signage, I doubt you can miss it (Michael Mock, I'm looking at you. Also, it's right by the Fry's. And it's made out of neon signs).The band's website say they go on at 8 pm. And it's $8.

Either way, Big A says he may or may not be available later on, as he works at night. Michael Mock seems down. I'm hoping Fake Al Gore is, y'know, not going to be in Colorado.

Still, I'm thinking perhaps dinner and hanging out, if anyone is interested. Some time in the neighborhood of six-thirty-ish, I'd say. And this time there's about a 90% chance I won't get confused by the parking structure, so I might even be there when I say I'll be there...

Also, other random Dallas-area people who may or may not be reading this blog and enjoy really good music of the neo-traditional/Americana variety should also go. The Lost Immigrants are really quite good.

------------------------------

Meanwhile, on the list of things that kinda-sorta piss me off about not living in Chicago:

A Chicago musician named Matthew Leone was recently hospitalized. A shitload of Chicago bands decided to hold a benefit. Sunday actually marked one of my dream concerts: Local H and the Lovehammers on the same goddamn stage. Not only that, but they went on at the same time and played a cover of "Baba O'Riley."

Seriously. If anyone is willing to point me to a YouTube video of that, I'll be eternally grateful.

-----------------------

Also, on a totally unrelated note: I've resigned myself to the idea that I'll be spending my thirtieth birthday in Dallas. This kinda-sorta depresses me. Um, I'd like to be out of Dallas by early 2012, ideally. I've decided that if the world is going to end in 2012, I'd rather see it end from somewhere else...

I don't generally do birthday parties. I believe part of the problem is that I historically have not had a lot of friends and I don't like hanging out with large groups of people. However, I'm thinking of doing something different for 30. This is, admittedly, nine months away, but hey...

See, I got to thinking about this specifically because I went to see Local H on my 28th and the Lost Immigrants on my 29th. So I was thinking, "Hey, birthday concert. That'd be fucking awesome." Perhaps, y'know, invite Jessi Lynn on down, see if the Lost Immigrants were available or Seneca was over on this side of the pond in May.

Then I realized that I live in a two-bedroom apartment and do not so much have a venue for such things.

I can't tell you how much it sucks to not be excruciatingly rich. So, basically, if I win the Lottery (which would be tough, since I don't so much play the Lottery...) between now and then and find myself in a place where I'm stupid rich, I'm going to have a sweet party. Seriously, this would be my ultimate birthday lineup:

Jessi Lynn
Seneca
Lost Immigrants
Mike Doughty
Lovehammers
Local H
RCPM

Also, it's entirely possible that Idlewild, the Saw Doctors, Pearl Jam, and Soundgarden would be involved in the Real Ultimate Power Birthday Lineup, but that would be one hell of a birthday Gedstravaganza. And even my imaginary Lotto winnings scenario doesn't have enough funds for that. And I'd need more hangers-on to really justify it. And if it gets too big the sets would have to be really short, it would have to be stretched over two days, or there would need to be multiple stages, which would kind of defeat the purpose. So that's tough.

And, now that I think about it, my musical tastes are really bizarre. But, okay, let me see if I can turn this in to an even more pointless thought experiment. There'd be three sets.

First, the singer-songwriter set, consisting of Jessi Lynn, Matt Nathanson, Over the Rhine, and Mike Doughty.

Second, the roots rock set, consisting of the Lost Immigrants, Saw Doctors, the Peacemakers, and Pearl Jam.[1]

Third, the rock goodness set, consisting of Seneca, the Lovehammers, Local H, Idlewild, and Soundgarden.[2]

Why do I get the feeling that if I woke up a billionaire tomorrow I wouldn't actually change much in the way of my living habits, but I'd get in to the habit of, say, paying Idlewild a stupid amount of money to fly over and throw a private concert?

That would be awesome.

Also, I literally have no clue why I just wrote this part of a post that was supposed to be a really quick update. This is apparently what happens when I feel like writing but don't have the brain power to write anything, y'know, worthwhile.

---------------------------

[1]Pearl Jam doesn't technically fit here, but of the major grunge acts they were definitely the folk-iest. And the rock goodness set is just too long as it is. Even so, I've seen the Saw Doctors and Peacemakers do two and a half hour sets and, although I haven't personally witnessed one, I know Pearl Jam will do up to three hours. So even at that it's a long night.

[2]At this point I'm thinking that there's only one thing that needs to be done here. Throw Flogging Molly, the Fratellis, Green Day, Toad the Wet Sprocket, Randy Rogers Band, Cross Canadian Ragweed, and Reckless Kelly in here and call it "Gedsapalooza." It'll be about a thousand times better than this year's Lollapalooza was. Plus it will have this bizarre Chicago rock/Texas Country vibe that literally makes sense to only me.

Why can't I be an eccentric billionaire? I'd probably leave random waitresses $100 tips for cups of coffee, adopt all the dogs in dog shelters, and engage in the creation of whimsically bizarre music festivals. I sure as shit wouldn't go out and destroy the Gulf of Mexico, create human centipedes, or talk about how I give to charity because, um, you should see my tax returns...

EDIT:

Holy mother of awesomeness. It's on YouTube. Except the cameraperson obviously did not understand that Scott Lucas was the most important person on that stage...

AtF: Wherein Geds Discusses Beards

2010-08-22T22:55:00.000-05:00

So, as we covered last time on After the Flood, Bill Cooper’s prized Anglo-Saxon genealogy is a work of imagination and myth. It’s now time to figure out why Cooper thinks it’s a worthwhile pursuit.

To be fair, the Saxons do not seem to have brought over with them a detailed chronicled history of their nation like that possessed by the Britons or, indeed, the Irish Celts which we shall examine later. That is not to say that none existed, of course just that none has survived to the present day from that pre-emigration period. What has survived, however, is a detailed genealogy of the pre-migration, and hence pre-Christian, kings of the Saxons, and this enables us to take Saxon history back, generation by generation, to the earliest years after the Flood. But this is no new discovery. It was everyday knowledge to the historians of previous centuries. On Thursday 6th July 1600, for example, a certain Elizabethan tourist, Baron Waldstein, visited London's Lambeth Palace. His journal tells us that in one of the rooms there he saw:

'...a splendid genealogy of all the Kings of England, and another genealogy, a historical one, which covers the whole of time and is traced down from the Beginning of the World.'

By now we should all know exactly how I’m going to respond to this. In fact, now that I’m thinking about it, I’m going to let everyone else do the heavy lifting. Look over the previous explanation and ask yourself, “What would Geds say while bitching about this?” If it helps, pour yourself a nice bourbon.[1]

Anyway once you’ve decided what I would say, feel free to go down to footnote two. You’ll have your answers.[2] I’ll wait. I have delicious bourbon at my disposal. While we’re waiting, perhaps I should discuss facial hair.

See, I grew a beard several years ago. At the time I was in the habit of naming random objects in my possession, mostly of the computer and car nature.

Anyway, I was still with (for whatever definition of “with” you want to use) Her at the time. I don’t remember how, precisely, it came up. Either I said I needed a name for my beard or she asked if I was planning on doing so. Either way, I was immediately forbidden from naming my beard. This, of course, meant that it needed to be named, specifically the most absurd thing that came to mind.[3]

Right then and there I named my beard “Lorna.” It was not a well-received decision.[4]

Some time after I moved to Texas I decided I needed a change. You know, beyond, “Hey, I just moved a thousand miles away.” This was also before I bought a new car in a fit of, y’know, even more change. Either way, I switched from the full beard to the goatee. I promptly named my goatee, “Lorna, Jr.”

A few weeks ago tragedy struck. My hand slipped while I was trimming Lorna, Jr. and I was forced to go clean-shaven. The following day at work my co-workers were rather adamant in their insistence that I look better while clean-shaven. It also occurred to me that clean-shaven is actually much lower maintenance than a goatee.[5]

I was thinking of going with the porn ‘stache. But, um…no.

Anyway, where was I? Oh, right. I was talking about Bill Cooper and his somehow-less-edifying-than-my-stories-about-facial-hair bullshit. Also, that was a lot of hyphens. But I digress. His good buddy the Baron Waldstein continues:

Later, arriving at Richmond Palace on 28th July, he saw in the library there:

'... beautifully set out on parchment, a genealogy of the kings of England which goes back to Adam.'

Yuh huh.

In case anyone’s wondering, the Baron Waldstein was an eighteen year-old Moravian tourist in England. There’s about a 103% chance that he didn’t have the historical background to understand what he was seeing, assuming that he was even attempting to skeptically analyze the things he saw.

Cooper then goes to beat that most familiar drum.

Such genealogies were immensely popular, and as fascinating to the general public as they were to historians and other scholars. As tables of descent, they provided a continuous record of human history from the Creation, through the post-Flood era, down to modern times. But it was these very attributes that made these records unpalatable to certain scholars who delighted to call themselves Rationalists, and who sought from the 18th century onwards to replace such history with certain anti-biblical notions of their own. (3)

I don’t generally include the footnote pointers, but that footnote number 3 points to a book called The Rise of the Evolution Fraud. It’s got two five-star reviews on Amazon! Also, it’s got two reviews on Amazon!

Anyway, this is tiring, really. I tossed in the facial hair stuff not because I thought it was interesting, but because I thought it was more interesting than, “Cooper sees anti-Christian conspiracies everywhere: film at 11.” Although it is kind of funny the way he seems to find it necessary to vary his attacks against, y’know, real historians. This time anyone who dares suggest that the Anglo-Saxons didn’t directly descend from Adam “delighted to call themselves Rationalists.”

First of all, if we’re talking Rationalists, um, they were around before the 18th Century. There was this guy named Descartes and this other guy named Spinoza, for instance. I’m just going to take a shot in the dark and say that this is a veiled shot at David Hume, which is kind of funny, since Hume wasn’t really a Rationalist and, in fact, was the one who influenced Kant’s thinking enough to lead to the writing of the Critique of Pure Reason. Hume was an empiricist and a historian who can probably be credited with an awful lot of the changes in British history Cooper rails against, however.

Second, “delighted?” Really? That particular word choice bugs me for some reason.

Either way, we’re just about to start having fun.

The pre-migration records that have come down to us are in the form of genealogies and king-lists, and I have assembled the table of descent which opens this chapter from each type. That table shows the (sometimes simplified) descent of six of the Anglo-Saxon royal houses of England. The houses are those of Wessex (Occidentalium Saxonum); of Lindsey (Lindis fearna); of Kent (Cantwariorum); of Mercia (Merciorum); of Northumbria (Northa hymbrorum); and of East Anglia (Estanglorum). But it is the treatment that these records have received from the hands of modernist scholars that is as fascinating, and as telling, as the records themselves, and we shall here consider the veil of confusion and obscurity that modern scholarship has thrown over them.

You know what’s really confusing? The question of why the Anglo-Saxons were recording their genealogies in Latin. Although I suppose we could offer the benefit of the doubt and say that it was later scribes recording in Latin. So…yeah. Let’s move on.

We are commonly asked to believe that these six royal families concocted these lists, and that the lists are thus rendered untrustworthy and false. We are asked to accept that, say, the House of Kent concocted a list of ancestral names that just happens to coincide in its earlier portions with that of, say, the House of Northumbria, in spite of the fact that the two kingdoms lay hundreds of miles apart, spoke different dialects and whose people hardly ever wandered beyond their own borders unless it was to fight.

Um, yes. I am, actually, asking you to believe that the lists were made up. If we go back two weeks, we’ll see that actual historians have found that this is exactly what happened. The term “East Anglia” didn’t exist until the 800s. Northumbria was a kingdom that came in to being with the merging of two other kingdoms. And, in both of those cases, the “houses” are named after geographic locations and would, therefore, not have been the names of anyone or anything until well after the migration. And with the story of the genealogy of Alfred the Great of Wessex being stolen from Ida of Bernicia I introduced you to the Sisam Hypothesis, which introduced the possibility that, yes, the Anglo-Saxons stole genealogies from each other.

Either way, I’ll cut things short here. I’m just too damned sober to handle the next bit…

-------------------------

[1]The alcohol of choice tonight is Buffalo Trace. I also have Rahr & Sons Buffalo Butt beer at my disposal. I was in a very Buffalo-y mood during my last alcohol purchase. Also, Rahr & Sons was having some problems this spring after a storm blew their roof off or something. It’s good that they’re back up and running.

[2]First: Just because something was once common knowledge does not mean it’s correct. It was once common knowledge that there was nothing between Europe and Asia but unnavigable ocean. It was also once common knowledge that the Americas were a part of Asia. Also, there was a long period of time where people thought there was a flood that covered the entire Earth. But no one takes that seriously any…oh…wait.

Second: There is an assertion that the Anglo-Saxon genealogies were once common knowledge. Assertion without proof is useless.

Third: The Anglo-Saxon genealogy offered by Cooper as evidence ends in 899. Anglo-Saxon domination of Britain ends, by necessity, in 1066. A genealogy seen buy a guy in 1600 means next to nothing without corroborating documents. The fact that he saw it on a Thursday, meanwhile, means jack shit. That’s the sort of detail one adds in when attempting to bolster a bad argument with arguments that sound accurate.

Fourth: The diary entry, or whatever it was, doesn’t even say anything other than, “I saw this one thing.” It has no citations and offers no reproduction. So we can’t know if it even supported Cooper’s fanciful genealogy from just above it. Considering that I’ve seen several different Anglo-Saxon genealogies in the past couple weeks, I strongly suspect it mostly doesn’t.

Fifth: Once again, even if the genealogy is accurate to the Anglo-Saxon migration to Britain, that doesn’t mean it’s accurate to the time of Noah. Especially when you’re looking at a genealogy that only goes back SEVENTEEN GENERATIONS.

Seriously. Math. How does that work?

[3]I still haven’t really decided if this was a sign that the relationship was a turrible idea or that the idea of dating me is a turrible idea for, well, anyone.

[4]I once knew a guy who had a beard named Lorna. She had the worst gay-dar in history. But that’s a story for another day…

[5]At one point my boss asked if I was planning on sticking with the clean-shaved thing. I said I was going to for a little while, since the goatee is really the second-highest maintenance form of beard. She asked what the highest maintenance beard is. I said, “The beard of bees. I mean, you’ve got to keep them fed and constantly carry epi-pens around with you.”

There’s about a 90% chance I shouldn’t be allowed out in public.

Is Just Sayin', is All...

2010-08-20T22:09:00.000-05:00

So the A.H.A.S.D.A.C. was woefully under-represented at my Six Months in Hell Party. However, there is an opportunity for, um, redemption? Yeah. I'ma call it redemption.

Next Saturday. Lost Immigrants are doing a show in Plano. I'm thinking of having a meeting...

The Beast, Part 3

2010-08-19T00:07:00.001-05:00

Eventually, no matter how long it takes, the wait must end. We receive the hoped for, dreaded news, for better or worse.

The First Ending:

When the knight opened his eyes again he found he was not staring at a beast, but face to face with the princess.

The returned to the castle and went to the king, who was overjoyed to see that the brave knight had returned and overcome with wonder to see his daughter back, safe and sound. He turned the kingdom over, knowing it was in good hands.

The princess told her father that she had been with the army at the ambush all those years ago, but as she lay dying a witch had appeared and asked her if what she would give up to live. The princess had said to give up everything she held dear and the witch saved her life but placed a curse on her in the process. The knight had broken the curse with his kiss.

News spread far and wide that the kingdom was once again safe and the story spread of the princess who had been turned in to a beast and the knight who had, as a little boy, seen through the princess's masquerade as a knight and many years later seen through the princess's curse.

The princess and the knight lived long, happy lives and they and all their kingdom lived happily ever after.

When I first told this story I felt it was a great, subversive tale. The damsel in distress was the monster. The brave knight won by not fighting. I had a lot to learn, then. But this ending is still about that thing which we hope for, that thing we should never stop hoping for.

Still, I began to wonder, one day, if the fairy tale ending made sense. If it was even possible.

The Second Ending:

The knight's eyes never opened again. With a single great swipe of his claw the beast ripped open his chest and stilled his stout heart.

No other champions ever arrived at the border of the kingdom and the king soon died, leaving behind an empty, desolate land that was divided up among his neighbors and forgotten.

Sometimes the end is fast, devastating. Even then, though, the end isn’t really the end. The story continues, just with different borders.

The Third Ending:

The knight and the princess returned to the castle and for a time joy again reigned in the kingdom.

Soon, though, the knight-turned-king began waking up when the moon was at its highest point in the sky to find the princess-turned-queen's side of the bed cold and empty. When that happened he knew he would find her standing atop the railing out on the balcony that overlooked the forest. In her dreams she was tortured by the terrified faces and agonized cries of those she had killed while living as a monster.

One night while the moon was high in the sky he awoke to find the bed was cold and empty. Exhausted by the constant worry he decided that this one night he would not get up, would not go to her, would go back to sleep.

The next morning a servant found her broken body crumpled beneath the balcony at the base of the great keep.

We do horrible things to each other on our way to that elusive happily ever after. Sometimes we don’t survive, but don’t realize that we’ve lost until long after we think we’ve won.

The Fourth Ending:

The knight and princess were made king and queen, but the happy prosperous times did not return with them.

Monster slaying did not translate well in to governance and the new king was soon in far over his head.

The new queen took it upon herself to clean up her parents’ kingdom and cleared out the bandits and ruffians with speed, skill, and more than a little viciousness. As good and decent people returned she enacted tough laws with harsh punishments for even the tiniest infractions.

Many years later a witch moved in to an abandoned hut at the edge of the kingdom and the rumor passed around that it was the very same witch who had placed a curse on the princess all those years ago.

The king traveled to the witch's hut in secret and asked why breaking the curse hadn't returned the princess to the way she once was.

The witch laughed at him. All he had done that night in the woods was to return to princess to the way she had once looked, the witch told him. The curse was that the princess's true inner nature was revealed for all to see.

The fairy tale must follow its own inner logic. We must stop and ask a simple question: “Why did the princess become a vicious monster?” That question takes us to the most terrifying places of all.

The Fifth Ending:

Joy and hope returned to the kingdom, but it took a long time for things to return to normal.

The princess was haunted by her time in the forest for a long time afterwards, but the knight and the old king were there for her when the dreams returned.

The knight found the transition from warrior to administrator hard, but over time learned how to govern.

Nothing was ever the same again and happily ever after often seemed out of reach, but there was happiness to be had in abundance. And it was always more than enough to carry the kingdom through the hardest times.

At the very least everyone lived hopefully ever after.

Sometimes all the best we can hope for is that the scars have sufficient time to fade and we’re given the time we need to learn from our mistakes. In the fairy tale this is a disappointing ending. In real life, though, it’s usually the best one we can hope for.

----------------------------

I apparently wrote these posts on Halloween of 2008.

Well, that’s not entirely true. I did write two posts on Halloween of 2008. The first was the story, right up until the point where the knight kissed the beast. The second was just five endings. It was an early attempt to figure out how to differentiate between the spoken and written word, to say, “We can do this when telling, and we can do that when writing.”

But I never published them. There wasn’t really enough there to make it worthwhile. So they sat there on my old Toshiba laptop. And they moved to my new Asus (nicknamed, coincidentally, “The Beast,” which was also the nickname of my 1984 Chevy Caprice Classic. The story in question still doesn’t have an official title) laptop when I transferred my files over. But that was just a happy accident. I hadn’t meant to do anything with those two posts. Hell, I’d totally forgotten about them.

Then I found myself lying awake at one in the morning, my only company images of a Neil Gaiman story. It’s an interesting story, too. We find that the main characters are a big, strong man and a frail, weak woman.

In the end, though, we find that the woman is not as she appears. And that causes the man’s downfall.

It got me thinking about this old story. The beautiful princess, the terrifying monster. The way they’re one and the same. It had seemed so subversive at the time, a subtly empowering tale of a princess who was, most definitely, not a damsel in distress. A brave knight who could not solve problems with violence, but had to recall the innocence of youth instead.

That’s not, ultimately, what this story is about though, is it? The first time I told it I told it to Her. I was still hoping for that fairy tale ending, but aware of the fact that I would have to figure out a way to get through some dark places to make it.

I wrote the additional endings six months after it all ended. Endings two and four are the most honest assessments I can see of how she responded. Ending three, I think, is how I wanted to respond. Ending five was that Hail Mary that said, “Maybe it can still work.”

To all of those I think I can add another:

The Sixth Ending:

The knight opened his eyes.

Standing before him where there had once been a monster he saw the princess. He smiled, relief and hope filling his soul.

They turned from the clearing and began picking their way through the dark and treacherous woods. At first the knight worked on his plans for the future now that the kingdom was his and the princess he’d dreamed of since that day in the meadow all those years ago walked beside him. It would be wonderful.

But every time he closed his eyes he saw that terrible monster.

As the knight traveled back through the forest he collected the armor he’d left behind. When they reached the edge of the woods and found his horse the knight mounted the steed.

He never returned to the castle, never collected his prize. Instead he rode out of that kingdom.

As the years passed he would occasionally wonder what had happened, what would have been. In the quiet, dark moments of the night he would sometimes wish he had made a different choice. He would fall asleep hoping to dream of the princess.

But he never did. On those nights he dreamed only of monsters.

The biggest thing that surprises me, looking back on this story, is that no matter what ending I write, it’s always about the knight. It’s never about the princess or the monster.

They’re just characters, props.

Sometimes I wonder who the real monster is in this story.

So, In Case Anyone's Wondering...

2010-08-18T15:41:00.000-05:00

The universe loves me.

Seriously. I'm heading back to Chicago some time in the neighborhood of October 8th and will be there for the next week.

Roger Clyne & the Peacemakers just announced they're doing a show at Joe's on Weed Street on October 9th.

Kismet. Karma. Whatever you want to call it, I have it.

The Beast, Part 2

2010-08-18T14:00:00.000-05:00

I am reminded, at this juncture, of the slacktivist’s most recent take on that most bizarre day of days in the Christian calendar. We know what to do with Good Friday. We know what to do with Easter Sunday. We can see the symbolism of the candles going out, the curtains dropping, the lights going down. We know what it means, loss and sorrow, Paradise lost. We can then see the light coming back, the shades drawing back to allow the light of morning to arrive in all its glory. What know what it means, happiness and joy, Paradise regained.

It’s that time in between that we cannot fathom, though we are more intimately aware of it than the sorrow on one end and the joy on the other. To live is, after all, to wait. To wait is to be uncertain, to acknowledge that we cannot know, cannot be certain, we can only hope or fear.

Time does not matter when the uncertainty of life consumes us with hope and fear. Seconds stretch out to hours, days, years. Years compress in to months, weeks, minutes.

This is the logic of the dream and the story. Time passes and things change, but not in any way that can be reliably understood through the simple and useless act of looking at a clock or calendar. This is how we can be the little boy, the brave knight, and the ailing king all at once. They are us, but at different times. Those times do not matter, though, not in the logic that can come from dreaming, storytelling, or waiting.

We start a story with “Once upon a time…”

We end a story with “…Happily ever after.”

Everything that happens between is a mere ellipsis between the beginning and the end. But that mere ellipsis is what matters more than anything else. That ellipsis is the waiting. It is the only part we can conceive of in the story, the only part we can properly understand.

And we tell stories to pass the time. We tell stories of monsters to articulate our fears. We tell stories of heroes to articulate our hopes.

Those stories, in turn, are filled with moments of sorrow, of joy, and of waiting. Our heroes suffer because we suffer. Our heroes face defeat because we face defeat. Our heroes win the day because…well, because we hope to win the day and by telling the stories we hope to bring the magic that protects and guides the hero in to our world.

----------------------------------

The nature of the hero, too, must be examined. For the hero is not the biggest, the strongest, the best-looking, the best-equipped. The hero is not the smartest, wisest, the most articulate. The hero is not the richest, the most powerful, the most popular.

The hero is the one who sees what must be done and does it. The hero is the one who stands before the monsters with nothing and yet does not give up. The hero is the one who realizes that not all monsters are, in all actuality, monsters.

Ultimately, the hero is the one who is capable of seeing beyond the collective fear and takes the necessary steps.

More than that, the hero is the one who risks everything if it turns out that the monsters are, in fact, monsters.

But the hero must face uncertainty, too. Otherwise we could not identify with our heroes and they could not identify with us. So in our stories, too, we must find those moments where there is nothing to do but wait.

-------------------------------

It is the storyteller’s responsibility to make sure that we feel the uncertainty.

When the beast approaches the teller should speed up. The urgency of the tale should match the urgency of the moment. We should hear that quickened step, that beating heart.

But then, at that crucial moment, that terrifying moment when all becomes clear the storyteller should slow.

Then pause.

Hero, monster, audience, and storyteller should join together here, in this moment.

Uncertain.

Waiting.

The Beast, Part 1

2010-08-18T01:46:00.000-05:00

I can’t sleep. I made the mistake of reading a short story by Neil Gaiman called “Feeders and Eaters” just before bed. It was a story based on a nightmare. Now I can’t banish the thought that I’ll have an nightmare if I allow myself to cross in to the land of slumber.

I couldn’t help but think of the nature of fear, the quality of monsters. This, I suppose, is the beauty of Neil Gaiman’s twisted genius. He manages to make the mundane creepy, then the creepy terrifying. But to those who stand outside of the story, unaware, the terrifying would look completely normal.

This brought to mind a story. My first story.

Once upon a time there was a happy, prosperous kingdom.

The people who lived in the kingdom loved their king for he was wise and just. They loved their queen for she was equally wise and fair. But above all they loved the king and queen's only daughter, for she was as wise as her parents, as just, and as fair and all agreed that she was the most beautiful girl in all the land.

I told myself this story one night. I hit upon a premise and simply told it, alone in my bed, staring at the ceiling. This would set a precedent. I start all my stories now by hitting upon a premise and telling them to myself until they make sense.

But there was something about the princess that no one knew. She secretly longed for adventure and felt restricted by the life of idle luxury she lived in the castle. So whenever she could she snuck off in to the woods and practiced fighting and archery with a sword and bow she had hidden at the edge of a clearing far from prying eyes.

My fascination with the standard myth and fairy tale is based on a simple idea: what if we take the standard and make it non-standard? We start with the “Once upon a time…” and work our way to the “…Happily ever after.” But in between, well, we meet the standard characters only to find that they aren’t.

One day the king received an urgent request from an ally in a distant land. They had been attacked and desperately needed help or would soon be overrun. So the king assembled his army and put his generals at its head and sent them off to war.

The kingdom had been at peace for so long that they had forgotten the carnage and terror of war. So while the army arrayed itself along the royal road the people of the kingdom gathered in a festive mood to see the colorful flags and bright spears glitter brightly in the sun.

A long while after the dust had settled and the kingdom returned to normal, the king and queen realized something was wrong. They had not seen their daughter in quite some time. The searched the castle from cellar to keep and turret to tower, but couldn't find her anywhere. They sent their servants in to the fields, but she was nowhere to be found. The finally sent messengers far and wide across the kingdom, but day after day the messengers came back with no news to share.

The first person I told this story to was Her. I told it while lying on my bed in the dark, talking in to a telephone. Three, maybe four years later I realize the story was about Her, about how I perceived Her. All it took was Neil Gaiman’s nightmare to realize that.

One day a messenger happened across a young boy sitting by the side of the road at the edge of the forest. Desperate for any lead he asked the boy if he had seen the princess.

The boy said that he had been in that exact spot when the army passed. A knight had pulled away from the march and asked if he had any water. The boy took the knight to a well and noticed that this knight was different, for he didn't smell like sweat and horses, but like a meadow on a crisp spring morning. When the knight lifted his helmet to drink, the boy saw that it was not a grizzled old warrior, but a beautiful girl who winked and smiled and put her finger to her lips and asked him to make it their secret.

We fill our stories with stock characters. It’s an easy shorthand to explain to the audience exactly what to expect. But it serves another purpose. We are each of those stock characters at some point. Sometimes we’re the young boy looking at the world through innocent eyes, sometimes we’re the messenger desperately seeking news, sometimes we’re the king waiting for good news and fearing the bad. The story affects us in different ways depending on which character we are.

The messenger put the boy on his horse and took him back to the castle as fast as possible. When the king and queen heard the story they immediately sent their messengers out to find the army and bring the princess home.

But they were too late. The army had been ambushed in a high, desolate mountain pass and when the messengers arrived all they found was death.

The king and queen were devastated. They mourned the death of their daughter and the kingdom mourned with them.

Everyone had lost a father, a son, a brother, or a friend. But in the princess they lost more than that. They lost hope.

It seemed important to me, at the time, to acknowledge that even in fairy tale land there are more than three characters, more people than just those main playerss. So often we forget the collateral damage. But, still, the princess had to be a greater symbol because the princess was a symbol to me. And I could take any role in the kingdom I created in my head that night.

Not long afterwards the kingdom received even more bad news. Travelers began disappearing from the roads. It seemed something was lurking in the woods.

The king sent his remaining guards in to the forest to find out what was there. None returned. Rumors began to swirl that there was a monster somewhere out there in the deep, dark corners of the woods.

The woods, of course, represent the scary, unexplored places. Only the bravest souls and the most terrifying monsters occupy the woods.

The king sent word far and wide and called for a hero to come and slay the beast. He promised great reward to any brave and skillful knight.

There were many at first, arriving alone or in bands. Some were renowned warriors and adventurers, others were down on their luck soldiers and some were nothing but scoundrels looking for a quick reward.

They entered the woods alone or in bands.

None returned.

We venture out in to the woods ill-equipped most of the time. We just want to take a quick route through our pain, through our fears, and come out the better for it. But if we approach our darkness and our monsters with too cavalier a mood we come out worse in the end.

The people who lived at the edge of the woods began leaving the kingdom, afraid for their lives. As months spread out to years the good, happy, prosperous people left in larger numbers, leaving empty homes and fallow fields that were eventually occupied by bandits and squatters. The king had no energy to stop it.

Eventually the queen died and all agreed it was a broken heart. Everyone wondered when the king would follow.

If we don’t go out in to the woods and face the monsters, though, despair can overtake us.

Then one day something happened that had not occurred in well over a decade.

A knight appeared at the borders of the kingdom. He rode atop a great, white charger and his armor was so bright it seemed the sun was reflected it and not the other way around.

The knight went to the castle and asked to see the king. When he was ushered in to the throne room he said that he had come to slay the great forest beast.

Hope is a wonderful thing. It comes riding up, shining brightly in the darkest of moments.

The king told the knight that he had no more left to give as a reward, save one thing. If the knight could slay the beast and save the kingdom, it would be his to rule. Then the king sent the knight off, fully expecting to never see the brave, foolish knight again.

Hope is a foolish thing to those who have given up. Hope is also a strange thing, especially when we realize that hope and despair are different characters played by the same actor.

The knight rode to the edge of the forest and arrived as dusk began to gather the evening gloom at the edges of the horizon. It was overgrown and dense, so he tied his great white charger to an old well and walked in alone.

As the night got darker and the woods got denser his shield became a hindrance, forever catching on tree trunks. He left it behind. Then he was forced to take off his helmet because he could no longer see and his armor because it kept getting caught in the branches and the brambles.

I added this part intentionally, but did not understand why. Since I knew what was coming next I knew that the hero had to be vulnerable. But in the larger context the hero has to approach the great monsters in the darkness naked. We cannot be honest with ourselves when clad in our self-righteousness and while trying to protect ourselves from the truth that can only be found in honesty. Honesty cannot penetrate the iron we wrap around our heads and hearts.

The moon was high in the night sky when the knight, armed only with his sword and protected only by his tunic, stepped out of the dense undergrowth and in to a wide clearing. All around him, glowing softly in the bright moonlight, were broken swords, bent shields, and naked, shattered skulls. He drew his sword, knowing he had found the monster's lair.

At that exact moment the monster appeared. It stepped out of the shadows opposite the knight and stared malevolently at him through narrowed eyes.

The beast stood a full head taller than the knight. It was covered in coarse fur that could not hide a tight, solidly muscled physique. Its arms hung nearly to its knees and ended in long, sharp claws. But most terrifying of all was the beast's face. It had a long, wolflike snout that was filled with pointy, bloodstained teeth.

Man and beast stared at each other across the clearing for a long moment. Then both took a step forward, as if by unspoken agreement. A second step, then a third and a fourth and a fifth and they were in the middle of the clearing.

It’s hard to properly describe a monster. It’s harder still to describe the moment it arrives and the hero realizes that there are only two options: advance or die.

The knight raised his sword to strike. The beast flexed its claws.

A slight breeze crossed the clearing, sweeping across the beast and the knight. On the breeze the knight caught a faint, familiar scent. A meadow on a crisp spring morning.

Every little boy grows up dreaming of one day being a hero. In the world of fairy tales that can happen. The other great truth of the fairy tale is this, though: the hero needs to be a little boy, too. When we are young we want to be strong and wise. Should we get that far we need to remember how to be innocent.

For it is innocence that tells us that not all monsters are what they appear to be.

The knight's sword hand dropped to his side. The beast paused, confused.

Then the knight leaned towards the beast, eyes shut tight for fear of what would happen if he was wrong, and kissed the snarling lips of his foe.

We stay here, in this moment.

Uncertain.

Questions that Could Use an Answer

2010-08-17T09:00:00.003-05:00

The debate over the Cordoba House[1] has apparently become my big hot button issue, to the point where I have twice violated my policy against getting in to Facebook-related arguments over random shit.[2] Here’s the new one.

A friend of mine posted a link to this article in the New Yorker. It’s yet another one of those think pieces that points out that the arguments against the Cordoba House are shrill, bigoted, and ignorant and advanced by people who are shrill, bigoted, and ignorant. It also helps to point out the divide in this country: there is an intellectual elite that is apparently “out of touch” with “real America.” Unfortunately “real America” is a self-defined collection of reflexively ignorant morons.

Anyway, it turns out that my friend has a friend who is a reflexively ignorant moron who popped in to say, basically, “That’s interesting, but I don't [EDIT: oops, missed that word] see the author’s viewpoint.”

This hit my hot button. I basically asked what it was about the author’s viewpoint that was flawed, seeing as how he pointed out that it’s a bunch of ignorant demagogues pushing a narrative that there’s going to be a giant mosque planted on Ground Zero when the reality is nothing of the sort.

There was also a humorous interlude when someone asked the friend of a friend if she’d actually read the article. A response was up for about two minutes that snapped, “Did you read the article?” It was deleted, I’d assume at the moment the friend of a friend realized she was posing that question to the author of the article in question.

Anyway, I then got the old, “Well I guess we just have to agree to disagree.” This statement annoys me. I articulated my annoyance by basically saying this:

We can’t agree to disagree, as you haven’t actually managed to articulate a position with which I can disagree. All you’ve said is that you don’t like the idea of the Ground Zero Mosque, which is actually none of those things.

For the record, I’m going to use that first thought again.

My friend then popped in and told me to be nice. This got me thinking about all the clucking over “tone” whenever the New Atheists dare to hold an opinion on things. So I asked about it, basically saying this:

Why is it that being perceived as “not nice” is apparently so much worse than being perceived as an ignorant bigot?

These were, in all actuality, rhetorical questions. I mean, they may or may not have received answers, but I’ll never know, since I dropped a friend and went to bed. Quite frankly, I don’t give a shit.

Still, I think it’s a question worth asking over and over and over again.

Why is it that being perceived as an ignorant bigot is apparently a more desirable trait than being not nice?

--------------------------------

[1]Better known as the (not) Ground Zero (not) Mosque…

[2]This, by the way, illustrates one of the things I absolutely hate about Facebook. It’s what I like to think of as the “Two Degrees of Separation” principle. You’re always within two degrees of seeing something massively stupid on Facebook. Either you find out that your friends have moronic stances on things, or you find that their friends have them. Hence my anti-Facebook arguments policy.

There’s also the minor problem that the vast majority of people you’re friends with on Facebook aren’t people you usually talk to. So that random person you haven’t laid eyes on in, like, five years can continue to annoy you by proxy or they might have a random acquaintance who annoys you due to the Two Degrees of Separation. It’s a pain in the ass.

It’s also why I have one less Facebook friend[3] as of tonight. The mathematics are simple: I don’t think less of the friend in question. However, I haven’t talked to said friend outside of this interaction more than, like, twice in the last three years. I honestly don’t care if I ever see this friend again and her Facebook status updates don’t exactly make my life better. So why bother keeping track of this person? And can I honestly call her my friend?

And if she doesn’t want to keep track of me, well, I can’t say that I give a shit about that, either. Would I have known the difference if she had de-friended me? Probably not. I’m actually somewhat lost on the point of Facebook, really. I’m reasonably certain that I could drop down from my current collection of over 200 “friends” to around 60 and it wouldn’t actually change a thing. Except that the people left would be the ones I genuinely want to keep track of.[4]

[3]Actually, seven. I figured I’d clean house while I was thinking about it. I probably would have dropped several more, but I found myself discouraged from my task by the fact that Facebook has made it much harder to de-friend people. Which is a really bizarre thing to lament, now that I think about it. So I basically dropped the people who I'd really rather never see again in real life and a couple of people who I apparently went to high school with but who I barely remember and who keep inviting their entire Friends list to events I wouldn't go to even if I didn't live a thousand miles away from Chicago.

[4]Thus begins my Facebook rant. It goes like this:

I have a policy when I'm cleaning my apartment. If I pick something up that I haven't seen in a month three, look at it, and can't imagine wanting to see it again in three months I throw it out. This goes for anything that lacks intrinsic or sentimental value (I will throw away some random trinket. I will not throw away my signed vinyl pressing of Scott Lucas & the Married Men's George Lassos the Moon. I also do not tend to get rid of books or CDs). This was an exceedingly easy decision tree to work through before my last move. If I looked at something and said, "I can't imagine taking this to Texas with me," it did not go to Texas. Friendships are like this. We stop talking to people for a reason.

I left the church I grew up in with absolutely no intention of going back. Yet I'm still connected to that church because I'm Facebook friends with a lot of people who I went to church with. I'd like to keep a connection with a few of them, but that sub-set of people I knew from church and still want to talk to is significantly smaller than the full set of people I knew.

For these purposes I can divid my Facebook friends list in to five buckets.

Bucket 1: People I like and want to keep an active relationship with.

Bucket 2: People I like but just want to be able to contact if need be.

Bucket 3: People I don't care about, but once did.

Bucket 4: People I barely remember and can't fathom why I am "friends" with them.

Bucket 5: People I have come to actively dislike for one reason or another.

At a rough estimate, approximately half of the people on my Facebook friends list fall in to Buckets 3-5. This wouldn't be that big of a deal if Facebook were just a contacts list. But it's not. It's a social networking site. That means that you find yourself either actively or passively networking with people you aren't actually friends with and then you find yourself networking with their friends.

The big question is, "Why bother?"

Facebook is basically a daily high school reunion. My ten-year reunion rolled around last fall and I didn't go. I had other things to do that particular weekend, specifically dogsitting a hyperactive schnauzer and the Illinois Storytelling Festival. However, even if I hadn't had those other more important, time consuming things to deal with I would not have gone to my ten-year reunion.

Why? I didn't like most of the people who I went to high school with and have forgotten a lot of the rest. The ones that I did like I can still get ahold of.

I'd also hazard a guess that I wasn't missed. I was a fat, poorly socialized nerd. Most of the people I went to high school with probably don't remember me and probably didn't miss me at the reunion.

If I can't be bothered to go to my high school reunion, why would I want to see Facebook status updates from the people I'd see there? More importantly, in what universe would I consider the people there my friends?

Byzantine Logic, Part 4: The Great Persecution?

2010-08-16T23:21:00.000-05:00

Many, many moons ago I attempted to start this project off on what could be considered the wrong track because the only way we can learn from history is by explaining in excruciating detail how we got to Point A before we can start our journey towards Point B. In the process I had this to say about the persecution of Christians:

There was absolutely nothing special about the persecution of Christians.

The Roman authorities saw Christianity as a potentially destabilizing force in exactly the same way it saw criminals and revolutionaries as a destabilizing force. The only reason we’re lead to believe the stories of the Christian martyrs are special is because we have a lot of them.[1]

Having said that, I find it necessary to visit the place where that was not the case: the Great Persecution under Diocletian.

Now, if we remember the post on the tetrarchy, before Constantine the Great took over the Empire for himself there were four Emperors and, eventually, a massive struggle for dominance. At the beginning of the Fourth Century, though, things were more or less stable. Diocletian was based in the East and held sway as the more powerful Augustus, with Galerius holding the title of Caesar under him. Maximian was Augustus of the West, with Constantius his Caesar.

The story goes that the first persecutions under Diocletian were directed at the Manicheans in 296. Manichaeanism wasn’t exactly Christianity. It was a weird combination of Buddhism, Zoroastrianism, and Gnostic Christianity that was even more alien to the pagan Romans than the monotheism of Judaism and Christianity.[2] In 299, then, there was a story that the Emperor took part in a divination ceremony, but the attempts by his haruspices[3] came to naught and the Christians were blamed. These were, specifically, Manichaeans, who were connected largely to Persia.

In 302, though, there was a massive hubbub. A church deacon in Caesarea named Romanus had his tongue cut out, then was strangled in one of the few martyr stories of Eusebius that doesn’t have a bunch of dodgy acts of god that save the martyr for some future torture that’s even worse. [4] There are a few different versions of the story, however. It basically boils down to this, though: Romanus did something that got the personal attention of Diocletian. It’s possible that Romanus insulted Diocletian personally, it’s also possible that Romanus did something to interrupt the state religious practices.

Diocletian and Galerius then argued about how best to handle things. They consulted the Oracle at Delphi, who said that the Christians were hindering Apollo’s work. Galerius jumped on this as an opportunity. He urged Diocletian to persecute the Christians, which lead to the razing of the new church in Nicomedia. A general persecution against Christians was then called and maintained by Galerius wherever his influence spread until he repealed it shortly before his death in 311.

Lactantius records that in his Edict of Toleration Galerius said, "wherefore, for this our indulgence, they ought to pray to their God for our safety, for that of the republic, and for their own, that the republic may continue uninjured on every side, and that they may be able to live securely in their homes." Of course, this was recorded in a book called De Mortibus Persecutorium, or “On the Deaths of the Persecutors, so we can hazard a guess as to what Lactantius’s bias was in the whole thing and, therefore, how trustworthy his appraisal of Galerius was.

This, meanwhile, leads to a series of interesting side discussions. The main theme is, of course, the question of whether or not the Great Persecution even happened. I believe we can say it did, as without the Great Persecution the specifics of the Edict of Milan do not make too much sense. In that document Constantine and Licinius legalized Christianity and declared a general religious tolerance in the Empire. But it then restored property taken from Christians in a step that would have been unnecessary had they not been singled out for persecution. Constantine also attempted to make political hay out of his resistance to the persecution when it looks like he basically did nothing to help or halt it.

However, we have to ask the question of how reliable the stories are of the Great Persecution. There’s the minor problem of its two main chroniclers: Lactantius and Eusebius. Let’s say for the sake of argument that I don’t trust them. Browse through The History of the Martyrs in Palestine for a while. If you manage to stay awake you’ll see an awful lot of torture porn and stories of martyrs surviving increasingly gruesome and sustained beatings and slow, painful deaths at the hands of their persecutors. It’s really rather tiresome and surreal.

And we know Eusebius’s bias. I’ve already talked about how he has two totally different stories of Constantine’s conversion to Christianity that don’t line up in any meaningful way with Lactantius’s tale.

But there’s another issue: the role of Galerius in the whole thing. Let us consider the relationship Constantine and Galerius had for a moment. They hated each other. Galerius did everything short of have Constantine assassinated in an attempt to get rid of Constantine early in his career. Constantine did not take that well.

Galerius was largely out of Constantine’s reach, however. He was in the East, spending most of his time in Nicomedia, Antioch, or down in Egypt while Constantine was consolidating his power in Gaul and marching on Rome. Then Galerius died in 311 while Constantine was still dealing with Maxentius. So the only way for Constantine to possibly get his revenge on Galerius was posthumously.

So let’s say that the Christians in the East managed to make a nuisance of themselves. Diocletian and Galerius then moved to try to get them to stop, using violence and persecution where they thought necessary. These persecutions were, ultimately, unsuccessful. Christianity proved itself resilient. It’s also entirely possible that the Romans who had to carry out the persecutions weren’t particularly interested in doing so and the lack of a strong, central authority after 305 meant they didn’t have to.

Still, the laws that set off the Great Persecution stayed on the books until Galerius rescinded them in 311. With the Edict of Milan in 313 the Christians had a struggle, a villain, and a champion. This dovetailed nicely with Constantine’s own story, wherein he was the champion and Galerius was the villain. Constantine and Christianity, then, were in accord on the necessity for a good story that makes the bad guys really bad, the good guys really good, and leaves a lot of inconvenient facts on the cutting room floor.

This, again, doesn’t say that there was no Great Persecution. It does, however, say that the Great Persecution might not have been all it was cracked up to be. The villains in the story, Diocletian and Galerius, did not have all that much to gain. But the good guys, well, they had an entire Empire just there for the taking.

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[1]This, in turn, got me a link over at Unreasonable Faith. That link then ended up at some random Christian apologetics blog. On that blog, wherein the author quoted the text quoted at Unreasonable Faith without actually bothering to link to my blog, the response was this: “I couldn’t be an atheist. I’m not inconsistent enough with my beliefs. Reference this article by VorJack of Unreasonable Faith fame. He quotes Geds of the Accidental Historian[.]”

His reason?

Okay, then, might I make the same claim about the Crusades and the Inquisitions? “There was absolutely nothing special about the persecution of indigent tribes of nonbelievers, witches, or heretics. The Christian authorities saw them all as potentially destabilizing forces in exactly the same way as it saw criminals and revolutionaries as a destabililizing force. The only reason we’re lead to believe the stories of the nonbelievers, witches, and heretics’ torture and death are special is because critics of Christianity try to use them to argue against the faith.”

This is spectacularly absurd reasoning. The persecution of Christians as part of a general overall system of persecution of any destabilizing force in the Roman Empire was not special specifically because the Romans did not single Christians out. The Inquisition, however, did single Jews out for special treatment. And the Crusades, well, the Crusades were not what everyone seems to think they were. This will be a huge part of the later bits of this series, so I should be able to get a long explanation some time in 2013. But, suffice it to say, the treatment of Christians as criminals by the Roman authorities is different than the Inquisition and the Crusades because they were three completely different things.

Also, notice the projection. Nowhere in the original quote did I say anything about the Inquisition or the Crusades. I do not get the impression that the author of the blog post ever bothered to read anything I have ever written. But he just assumed that I would follow my statement with arguments X and Y and reacted accordingly. Also, note how he completely missed the possibility that “not special” might not mean the same thing as “justifiable” or “defensible.”

[2]In case you were wondering, in 381 the Manichaeans were stripped of citizenship under Theodosius I as part of a general move against the Arians, specifically, and non-Nicene Christians in general. At this time, by the by, the First Council at Constantinople finally established the Nicene Creed as the Christian confession of faith in the Empire and more or less established the doctrine of the Trinity, some sixty-five years after the Council of Nicaea. For those doing the math at home, this was three and a half centuries after the death of Christ, three centuries after the writing of the Pauline Epistles, and between two and a half and three centuries after the earliest dates given for the writing of the Gospels.

[3]Guys who read entrails.

[4]There is, however, a bit where Romanus’s tongue was cut out, after which he continued to praise god and witness. That’s a bit sketchy.

Monday Morning Demagoguery

2010-08-16T11:43:00.000-05:00

This is why we can’t have nice things. The demagogues like to tell us that those nice things are actually shit sandwiches. To wit, this quote from the Rev. Thomas Euteneuer, the president of some stupid anti-gay group called Human Life International:

[A] society cannot long survive this kind of violence done to its basic values, and history surely shows many societies like Ancient Greece, whose rapid decline was preceded by the proliferation of the gay lifestyle and its public acceptance.

The rapid decline of Ancient Greece? Really? You mean the society that lasted for a good, oh, six centuries whilst allowing (encouraging? Idealizing?) homosexual activity throughout? You mean the tiny collection of city-states and their colonies that managed to basically conquer the entire known world, taking down the greatest empire to date in the process? You mean the society that had an indelible impact on the Roman Empire and Byzantium? You mean the society that indirectly caused the Renaissance when the first Humanists began to bring Greek manuscripts back to Western Europe?

That society?

If that’s your definition of “rapid decline,” I’d say you should encourage homosexuality in America, Reverend Euteneuer. That means America will be certain to maintain a dominant world position for several centuries, which will be followed by an impact that reverberates through the next two millennia.

I’d take it.

(via Right Wing Watch, by the by)

On Gay Marriage

2010-08-14T17:38:00.001-05:00

I had a pastor once who got a bug up his butt about abortion. I don’t know how it happened or when, but I remember that one Sunday morning he did a long message about the importance of fighting abortion. I don’t remember him ever really talking about abortion before that, so I’m guessing that it just kind of became a trigger one day. Or perhaps it had always been an issue, but he’d been holding it in. I don’t know.

I remember being pissed after that Sunday morning because he basically said that if you weren’t trying to stop abortion you were a bad Christian. I wasn’t trying to stop abortion, but I wasn’t a bad Christian.[1] It just wasn’t my issue.

One thing that the pastor said that morning has apparently stuck with me. I didn’t pay much attention to it at the time. Hell, it’s entirely possible that I agreed with it at the time, or at least allowed his argument to hold sway. Now, though, I just kind of want to smack him.

The argument basically went like this: “Opponents of abortion say we cannot legislate morality. But in America we legislate morality all the time. Look at all the laws against murder and theft.”

The pastor was a good man. He was a good speaker. He was a good husband and father. I’m going to assume he still is.

But he most definitely was not a Constitutional lawyer. Or if he was he got his degree from Hollywood Upstairs Law School. He was also not a historian.

See, I’m not a lawyer, either. I don’t pretend to be one. But I don’t have to be a lawyer to understand something: the laws of the United States of America were not designed and were not intended to legislate morality. They were designed to create a livable society. The problem that a lot of people have is that the necessary conditions to create a livable society and the necessary conditions to create a moral society have an awful lot of overlap. And most people are unwilling to understand the nuanced differences between the two things.

I can say that the religious or philosophical morality tells me I should not murder or steal. I can also say that a society that allows people to be murdered or stolen from is an inherently unstable society. Both of these statements are true[2] but both of these statements are not equal. Both of these statements are also immaterial. There isn’t anybody arguing against outlawing murder and theft.[3] We can all agree that they’re bad to do and bad for society to allow.[4]

It is in the lesser crimes and misdemeanors that we see the difference between a drive towards a moral society and a stable society. It is also where we can see that a drive towards a moral society is actually an inferior goal to a drive towards a stable society. Morality, after all, is fungible.

Let us consider for a moment the concept of usury. It was once considered one of the worst of all sins to charge any interest on a loan.[5] This is no longer considered an issue. This, though, is also one of those places where the proponents of a moral society and the proponents of a stable society really should be working together. I can stand behind the argument that credit card companies should not be extending lines of credit at better than 20% interest to anyone capable of filling out a form that arrives in convenient junk mail form is immoral. I can also stand behind the argument that the practices of the banks related to credit cards and mortgages destabilizes society. For evidence, please look at the last two years of life in America.[6] Even this, though, doesn’t really help me to illustrate my point. So let’s look at that most contentious argument in American politics: gay marriage.

The main arguments against gay, well, anything, have been primarily moral in America. It was simply regarded as being wrong. This was fine as long as the homosexual population was forced to stay in the closet. Ever since the Civil Rights Movement and the Gay Pride Movement, however, the idea of being an out and proud homosexual in America has gradually gained greater and greater acceptance. Now we’re at the point where gay marriage is allowed in some places and wide swaths of the country are fighting for it everywhere. Much like the Women’s Suffrage Movement and the Civil Rights Movement before it, the fight has been taken up by people who are not part of the repressed group but realize that there is a greater issue at stake than the rights of people who are different.

When the issue of gay marriage comes before a court, as it recently did in California, the arguments about the morality of gay marriage do not matter. The issue is one of a stable society and the rights of those who reside in that society. Opponents of gay marriage are starting to get that, but it seems to me that they’re largely trying to work around that pesky First Amendment without seeing the larger issue. For this isn’t actually a First Amendment issue at all.

If the argument were as simple as one side waving its favored religious text and the other side holding up the Constitution, we’d be able to handle this in a jiffy. But there are religious people on both sides of the argument. There are religious people pointing to different verses in the same exact holy books on both sides of the argument. And no one is going to say that we should make gay marriage illegal on First Amendment grounds because someone reads that verse where Paul says that there is no longer male or female, slave or free now that Jesus has done his thing, then extrapolates that to say we shouldn’t make distinctions between gay and straight.

The concept of marriage for civil society is quite different from the concept of marriage in religion. For the religious it is often a sign of some sort of miraculous, god-given institution. For civil society it is a contract that binds two people together and brings with it certain benefits related to inheritance, the custody of children, responsibility and visitation in the event of illness, and probably a bunch of other things that have never really mattered that much to me personally. It is a legal combining of household assets and debts that allows us to have a more stable society because we can see the contract. The fact that gay people cannot get married to each other right now means that they do not have access to those same contracts. This reduces the stability to society. It is also a violation of the rights of a non-zero number of American citizens. This, I would argue, is wrong.[7]

Any argument against gay marriage, then, has to be an argument from stability.

This is why we’re being subjected to the bullshit of people like the Liar Tony Perkins of the Family Research Council. They have to argue that gay people will make bad parents. They have to argue that gay marriage will somehow destroy straight marriage. They have to argue that the tyranny of the majority should be allowed to trump the rule of law in this case. They have to do this because these are the only sorts of argument that will make sense given the parameters of the argument.

Consider the ever-popular slippery slope argument. Gay marriage opponents stand up and hyperventilate about how if we allow gay marriage we’ll have to allow polygamous marriage and if we allow that we’ll have to allow adults to marry children and people to marry ducks. It’s a hilariously ignorant argument about societal instability, but that’s exactly what the argument is. If gay marriage were made legal tomorrow in the entire country the only thing that would change is that gay people could enter in to a marriage contract with each other. It’s that contractual agreement part that matters, too. Children cannot legally sign contracts. Ducks and dogs can’t either. There’s the question of polygamous marriages, but that’s a different argument.[8]

Similar, too, is the “gay marriage will destroy straight marriage” argument. It’s not a valid logical argument. In fact, it’s a pretty fucking stupid argument from a logical perspective. But it’s a visceral argument that attempts to paint a picture of a bleak future where the very fabric of American society has been ripped apart.

The very absurdity of the arguments, though, point to the complete indefensibility of the position being argued for. The thing that’s truly sad, though, is that we have to have these arguments at all. And that, for the moment at least, the side that is in favor of ignorance and absurdity still has the upper hand.

--------------------------------

Side note: people talk about allowing civil unions as a substitute for marriage in order to keep the precious religious folks from worrying. It's stupid, especially when you consider it from the perspective that marriage is simply a contract in the eyes of the law. If a civil union is going to be thought of in the same way as a marriage for contractual perspective, then they're the same thing. But they're not, which brings up a thorny issue: a little case called Brown v. Board of Education.

A marriage and a civil union that are separated because a certain class of people is considered less desirable to have one or the other creates a situation known as "separate but equal." That term comes from a court case called Plessy v. Ferguson. Brown v. Board overturned the ruling in Plessy v. Ferguson. Creating a separate category of civil unions specifically to allow gay marriage would require overturning Brown v. Board. Which is a bit problematic. This is a backdoor argument, but it shows exactly why the gay marriage fight is a Civil Rights activity.

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[1]Seeing as how I’m no longer a Christian this will become a point of contention for certain parties. If I am not now a Christian that means that I could never have possibly been a real or good Christian because to admit that it’s possible for me to realize it was a load of bullshit and walk away would require them to admit that they could decide to do the same thing. This is terrifying.

I have decided that from here on out I will not accept any other argument for this phenomenon without a hell of a lot of additional support. The arguments that I hear from a certain segment of Christians for why people leave Christianity are completely founded on laying blame and projecting. This cannot be accidental. The entire fundamentalist Christian mindset is founded on maintaining beliefs that cannot stand up to prolonged exposure to reality. The desperate anti-evolution fights, attempts to change history curricula, and creation of an isolated, parallel Christian educational subculture bear this out and offer more than a little proof of the fact that those who are in the evangelical and fundamentalist subcultures are, at the very least, viscerally aware of this. Constant checking of Bible verses that belittle the idea of the wisdom of man whenever this Bible/reality divide comes up doesn’t really help any attempt to make a case for the contrary, either.

[2]The former statement requires more qualification than the latter, however. But for the sake of simplicity I’m drawing a bright line around murder and theft and labeling them as Bad Things.

[3]With the possible exception of Basil Marceaux.com.

[4]Even there, though, we can have an argument. Watch a couple episodes of Leverage and you’ll understand what I mean. The entire concept for the show revolves around the idea that there are some people who absolutely need help and cannot get it, so a team of thieves and con artists who have switched to the good side pull off elaborate schemes to right the wrongs done. This generally involves some measure of deception and theft and general lawlessness, but we overlook that because the people who have been wronged have had much greater evils visited upon them by much worse people. Hence the show’s tagline: “Sometimes bad guys make the best good guys.”

[5]This was actually the root of European anti-Semitism and the root of the myth of the cabal of Jewish bankers who rule the world. The Church did not allow Christians to charge any interest but did not give a shit what the Jews did, since they were all going to Hell for killing Our Lord and Savior, anyway. This meant that if people needed money for something and had to get a loan the only people who were likely to loan money were the Jews because they, unlike anyone else in Christian Europe, could demand an appropriate ROI. Note, too, the idea that it’s not okay to loan money at interest, but it’s absolutely a-okay to take out a loan with interest. Morality is flexible.

[6]This, unfortunately, is one of those places where absolutely no one was looking out for morality or stability. It was a maelstrom of idealistic attempts to help create the American Dream combining with corporate greed. And that’s where we absolutely need the government to step in and regulate. There exist in this world greedy motherfuckers who will take everything they can get their hands on just because they want it. There also exist in this world people who are unwilling or unable to properly plan ahead. The government should be doing everything in its power to minimize the damage that can be done when these groups meet. This supports societal stability and, I would argue, is a morally important position to take. Also, I feel like Fred Clark right now.

[7]I would argue this is another example of the fungibility of an argument from morality. Fred Phelps would argue that gay sex is immoral. I would argue that violating the Constitutional rights of American citizens is immoral. How do we choose between those two arguments, especially since Phelps would argue that he trumps me because his arguments come from a higher moral authority while I would argue that I trump him because his moral authority is nothing but his imaginary friend and his own overinflated sense of outrage. Arguments from morality are fungible precisely because moral frameworks vary according to people and experience.

This is, ultimately, why we have the First Amendment of the Constitution. By eliminating religion as a consideration, the Constitution allows us to create a nation based on the idea of creating a stable society specifically to allow people to pursue life, liberty, and happiness as they see fit. If I am killed I obviously cannot do that. If my possessions are stolen from me I cannot pursue happiness. If I decide to pursue a homosexual relationship I am attempting to use my Constitutional freedoms to find happiness. This is why murder and theft should be illegal, while homosexuality should not. Once we get over that hurdle the question of whether gay marriage should be allowed is merely academic.

[8]I have nothing against polyamory or polygamous marriages, morally or legally speaking. However, if we’re talking about marriage in terms of a contract that handles inheritance and questions of who is responsible for making medical decisions in the event of incapacitation, I’m willing to hear arguments against polygamous marriages from a stability standpoint. Again, IANAL.[9]

[9]That’s one of my favorite internet acronyms, by the by. Because although IANAL, I cannot say that I anal. Although I can say that I am anal…

The Power of Story

2010-08-12T23:07:00.000-05:00

And with last night’s post, I am at peace.

I mentioned on Monday that there were several posts I could have written, but there was one that was really, really bugging me. It was about finally making good on a promise to myself and reading Neil Gaiman, only to discover that I had been confronted in a brand-new and powerful way with the power of the story. It came about when I finished reading Neverwhere, but I understood it while reading the introduction to Fragile Things.

As I write this now, it occurs to me that the peculiarity of most things we think of as fragile is how tough they truly are. There were tricks we did with eggs as children, to show how they were, in reality, tiny load-bearing marble halls; while the beat of the wings of a butterfly in the right place, we are told, can create a hurricane across an ocean. Hearts may break, but hearts are the toughest of muscles, able to pump for a lifetime, seventy times a minute, and scarcely falter along the way. Even dreams, the most delicate and intangible of things, can prove remarkably difficult to kill.

Stories, like people and butterflies and songbirds’ eggs and human hearts and dreams, are also fragile things, made up of nothing stronger or more lasting than twenty-six letters and a handful of punctuation marks. Or they are words on the air, composed of sounds and ideas – abstract, invisible, gone once they’ve been spoken – and what could be more frail than that? But some stories, small, simple ones about setting out on adventures or people doing wonders, tales of miracles and monsters, have outlasted all the people who told them, and some of them have outlasted the lands in which they were created.

This is the logical conclusion to the thought that the story can best be described by being told. It cannot be taken apart, dissected, evaluated, and explained. For the story exists in a special place, set apart from all of us, set apart from the world we live in. The moment we stop and say, “But, wait, that’s not possible,” or, “Well if the hero had just done [this] it would have worked,” we step outside of the story and back in to reality and the story, that fragile thing held together by our hearts and belief, shatters and falls apart.

The story will not bear scrutiny because the story cannot bear scrutiny. Fortunately, the story does not need scrutiny. This is the job of the storyteller, however, to create a story that does not need to be scrutinized. This is why the story should always tell us where it is going and should not suddenly swerve to the left for no reason and with no gain when the narrative is driving to the right. This, too, is the job of the audience, to believe for just a moment that the gods can walk the Earth, that Hel is a place just as Valhalla is, that the hero can make a journey of years across a barren land with neither food nor water, that the world is structured in such a way that what must happen is, naturally, what does happen.

We should put down American Gods or Neverwhere with a sense of loss. When we step away from those books we should come back to reality, realize that we do not live in a world where the gods travel around in cars and there is no near-invisible, quickly forgotten world of London Below. While we are in the book, however, we should believe that it is possible for those things to be real. No, we should know that they are real. We can talk about it as accepting the allegory and fiction, we can discuss suspending our disbelief. But those are merely words, abstraction. Whatever we want to call it, we must know that when we open a book or sit down for a story the storyteller is inviting us to experience a different world. It is a gnosis, a secret knowledge that is shared only with those willing and prepared to accept it.

I did not understand this for the longest time. I believed that I could be a good writer simply because I know how to put words together in a grammatically coherent way and can then use those words to present ideas. I used fiction as a blunt instrument. When I started storytelling I believed that the fact that I knew myth and archetype and could compose a story that meant that I was going to be able to step on to a stage and be a storyteller.

In truth, one can be a storyteller doing exactly that. At least, in the sense that one can stand up and tell stories, since it doesn’t require anything other than a story and a language. But, well, the difference between being someone who stands up and tells stories and being the storyteller I want to be is as vast as the difference between being a resident of Texas and being a Texan. The former describes your location. The latter describes your soul.

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It occurs to me, too, that this particular bit of story is not so unrelated to the Ravi Zacharias posts or the Byzantine Logic and After the Flood series(es?) as it might first seem.

The farmer in my story necessarily exists in a place that cannot possibly exist. You cannot built a high, stone wall all on your own in a single season. You probably cannot go three years with absolutely no harvest. More importantly, the farmer could have always taken the stone wall out and put in a chain-link fence or drilled drainage channels in to the wall. These are real-world solutions to a problem.

But, of course, there is no farmer. There is no farm. There are no wild animals and summers with ironic weather. It’s a story about me, a guy who grew up in the suburbs and works in an office building. And since it’s a story about me that’s been universalized, the fragile thing becomes strong because I can stand in a room full of people who also grew up in the suburbs and work in offices and touch them because they will take out of the story the meaning that they need to take out of it. The can see the farmer building that high, stone wall in their mind and associate it with going to school to get that degree they didn’t want because it was marketable.

This is how that fragile thing becomes remarkably strong. It travels outwards from the storyteller and comes to rest for just a moment in the mind and heart of the audience member. And as long as they live in the place where the story is they know that there is a farmer with a little field and that they are the farmer and their lives are that little field.

I could, I suppose, bring Carl Jung in to this conversation and discuss the collective unconscious and mythological archetypes. Or I could bring Joseph Campbell in and discuss the Hero’s Journey and the monomyth. But I’d much rather bring Paul Tillich in to the conversation and discuss ultimate concern and the broken myth. In order for faith to center on an ultimate concern you must be able to approach with both doubt and belief. This is why the drive in Christian evangelism has moved toward the personal testimony and the emotional story of a feeling of relief and transcendent personal change upon accepting Jesus as your “personal lord and savior.” It’s not in the Bible and it doesn’t exist in any meaningful sense until quite recently in Christian thought. But it has power because it makes for a damn good story if done right.

But, like any story, that one is a fragile thing, unable to bear scrutiny for too long. This, ultimately, is why we see an endless series of arguments where opponents and proponents of Christianity talk around each other. A high and mighty pastor spends Sundays talking about family values, then gets caught diddling a cocktail waitress on Monday and someone says, “See, he wasn’t actually protected from sin. He’s no better than anyone else!” What that critic is actually saying is, “The story has been broken. It can’t live up to reality.” So the proponent of religion says, “No, it was the Devil’s work,” or, “He wasn’t a true Christian anyway,” or, “We’re still human, even if we’ve been saved.” What’s really being said is, “No, this one instance doesn’t break the story. The story is still good.”

The Christian landscape is littered with broken stories. One cannot walk across it in bare feet without getting cut by the shards. But the true fight is over the big story, the myth at the center of the ultimate concern. And this is where the Ravi Zachariases, the Ken Hams, and the Bill Coopers of the world unwittingly do the most damage to their own cause.

They hold up the story and try to make sure everyone can see that it is worth our ultimate concern. And in this moment we must pivot, we must switch from Neil Gaiman to Paul Tillich. For the broken story is a thing that is quite opposite from a broken myth.

Christianity was first conceived as a broken myth. This is not in terms of cracked, damaged, and destroyed, but in terms of breaking through from the ethereal to the earthly. The realm of the earth was on one plain, the heavens another. But the moment the god stepped through in the form of Jesus that separation was broken and the myth became reality.

Perhaps the broken myth and the broken story are not so different, then. It’s just that when the story breaks it is because we have exposed it to reality. When the myth breaks it exposes itself to reality. In both cases, though, what matters is that something that belongs elsewhere can now be examined, measured, inspected.

In insisting that the Bible is historical Ravi Zacharias encourages us to treat the Bible as any other history text, to evaluate it, break it down, apply textual criticism. If we do that honestly we find that the Bible is like any other historical text of its day: as accurate as we can gather in some cases, wildly inaccurate in others, and sometimes just plain wrong. Further, we find that it is filled with the biases of its writers and redactors just like any book. That would be fine if we could just leave it at that.

But too many times the apologist then takes the next step. They still insist on the certainty offered by the unbroken myth. That means that if the myth does not line up with reality we must change reality itself. To change the myth would introduce too much doubt in to that balance of doubt and faith, especially for those who cannot understand the difference between faith and certainty.

The story is a fragile thing. It is immensely powerful, but only while it exists outside of reality. This holds true even for those who insist it is reality that should be the one that breaks.

Reality will carry on whether there is a myth or not. But we have forgotten all but a few of the stories and myths that were once told. This, too, is why those who claim that the world would fall apart without Christianity are wrong.

The world is held together by stories. In the end, though, the world doesn’t care which stories they are. Jesus supplanted Sol Invictus as Sol Invictus supplanted Jupiter as Jupiter supplanted Zeus as Zeus supplanted Cronos. That last one was a myth in and of itself. Our stories can even tell us how they will be forgotten and fade away.

But there will always be another story. As long as there are tiny people clinging to a miniscule corner of a vast universe and trying to make sense of it all we will tell ourselves stories to explain and entertain.

So I place my faith in the story.

The Worried Storyteller

2010-08-12T00:11:00.001-05:00

One describes a tale best by telling the tale. You see? The way one describes a story, to oneself or the world, is by telling the story. It is a balancing act and it is a dream. The more accurate the map, the more it resembles the territory. The most accurate map possible would be the territory, and thus would be perfectly accurate and perfectly useless.
--Neil Gaiman, from the introduction to Fragile Things

The story does not make sense in the absence of an audience. I’ll go further. The story does not exist in the absence of an audience. It is the silent babbling of the mute falling upon the closed ears of the deaf.

Once upon a time there was a farmer. He owned a small bit of land that always provided him with enough. Some years he had just a bit less than he was comfortable with and some years he had more than he needed. But he always found he had enough to get by.

One harvest season he heard that wild animals had gotten in to the fields in a farm down the road and ruined the crops. All winter the farmer stared at his own field and tried to decide how to make sure that never happened to him.

My sister tells me that when I was younger I was terrified of going to new places. If there was a school or church trip to an amusement park or water park my parents would have to take me to the place beforehand so I could see it. So I could know where it was. But without that trip the idea of going to a new place made me extremely uneasy. I don’t remember any of that, but it explains an awful lot about who I have spent most of my life being.

When spring time rolled around and the farmer was beginning to plant his seeds he realized what he needed to do. So he dug a deep foundation all around his fields and began piling stones. Soon he had a wall that was so high no animal could jump over it and a foundation that was so deep no animal could burrow under it. When he was done he looked at his wall with satisfaction because he knew his crops were safe from any animal that came by.

I’ve spent a large percentage of my life walling myself off. I want to be safe and secure, ready to deal with all of life’s eventualities before I’ll really do much of anything. It’s ironic, I suppose, that circumstances forced me to make the two biggest decisions of my life with almost no information. I chose Western Illinois University without ever visiting. I like to point out that I spent all of 22 hours in Texas before moving, but the truth is that I’d already decided I’d have to make that move before I ever came down.

That summer was extremely wet. It rained for days, then weeks on end. The water that fell from the sky could not run off the field over that high, stone wall so it just sat on the field. The farmer’s crops drowned and when harvest season rolled around he had nothing. All that winter the farmer stared at his high, stone wall and tried to decide how to make sure that he never lost his crops again.

When spring time rolled around and the farmer was beginning to plant his seeds he realized what he needed to do. He tore down his high stone wall and turned its deep foundation in to a drainage ditch. He then dug run off channels in to his field so that any excess rain that fell would quickly drain off.

Girls didn’t really notice me when I was in junior high or high school. I was an awkward, chubby geek. The first girl I ever dated was someone I met the summer after high school. She was a bitch and she cheated on me. It took me an awfully long time to be able to reduce the reasons why it ended to that simple sentence.

In the immediate aftermath I decided I wasn’t going to start dating until I had figured out exactly what I needed to figure out in order to meet someone and not make mistakes. I declared a three-year moratorium on dating, during which I would not even consider a relationship. I then set about creating a convoluted system by which I could decide if a woman would be with me forever or break my heart in to a thousand pieces.

The system basically boiled down to this: figure out who the most awesome girl I knew was, then rate any new girls I met according to whether she was better or worse than the baseline. Updated the baseline periodically by arbitrarily picking a different girl. It was a foolproof system.

That summer there was a drought. What little rain fell from the sky ran down the runoff channels and in to that deep ditch. The farmer’s crops withered and died underneath the summer sun and when the harvest season rolled around he had nothing. All that winter the farmer stared at his drainage ditch and tried to decide how to make sure that he never lost his crops again.

My three-year moratorium on dating became something on the order of a six-year moratorium on dating. When I finally met someone who met all of the criteria I had set out (really, she seemed to blow them all away) who was actually interested in me I decided that I would do my damnedest to make sure she stayed around. An all-too-short period of something between bliss and denial was then followed by a year and a half of something between misery and denial.

When spring time rolled around and the farmer was beginning to plant his seeds he realized what he needed to do. He went out to the edge of his field and dug a retention pond. That way when it rained he could collect the water and use it to irrigate his fields later.

We officially ended our association with each other at the beginning of April. I went on a date with an absolutely fantastic girl at some time in May. At the time I was in no shape to be dating, physically or emotionally. She never returned my calls.

From that point on I kept trying to meet new women. But I was quick to cut them off. I was also not nearly so willing to cut my ties to the past as I wanted to be or insisted I was.

That summer wild animals came and drank from the retention pond. When they were done they went in to the farmer’s field, where they ate his crops and trampled them underfoot. For the third year in a row when harvest season rolled around he had nothing.

I began to withdraw. I started to say I didn’t want to meet anyone. I told anyone who was willing to listen that all I ever met was crazy girls and it just wasn’t worth it. I could hear myself insist just a little too loudly that I was resolutely single, that I was completely content on my own. I could see the doubt written all across the faces of the people I tried to convince.

After all, it’s incredibly hard to convince people of things you don’t believe yourself.

The farmer went out in to his field, fell on his knees and began to weep. While he was crying an old woman came walking across the field and found him.

“Why are you crying?” she asked.

“Nothing I do seems to work,” he replied. “I built a wall to keep the animals out, but it kept the water in. I built a ditch to take the water away but then no water stayed. I built a pond to hold the water but then the animals came. Now I have nothing.”

“Well what did you do before?” the old woman asked.

“I don’t know,” he said, “I just planted my crops and tended them as best I could.”

“Well maybe you should do that again,” she said. “Do what you can today and let tomorrow take care of itself.”

The next year the farmer did not build a wall, or dig a ditch, or make a pond. He simply planted his crops and tended to them. And from then on when harvest season rolled around he always had enough to get by.

Sometimes, though, the audience member who gets the most out of the story is the storyteller.

----------------------

I was disappointed with myself last week while I was recording my stories. They didn’t seem to work, not the new ones, not the old ones. It was extremely frustrating.

I went to a Guild meeting tonight. It was the first time I’ve done anything storytelling-related in public in months. The Fox Valley Folk Festival is coming up over Labor Day weekend and I’ll be there. If tradition holds they’ll even be kind enough to let me tell a story or three. Even though I’m a thousand miles away I consider myself a member and I’m pretty sure that’s reciprocal.

I needed to kick the rust off and try to answer a few questions that popped up last week. The big one was, “Do I really suck at this as much as I seem to right now?” But I also wanted to minimize the potential damage, so I told my new story, “The Worried Farmer.” Well, specifically I told the new story I feel the least attached to.

I prefaced it with a quick (well, as quick as I get) explanation of my little project from the last week, along with my observations about what I call my “storytelling voice,” then solicited feedback. The double-edged sword of storytelling is critique. Storytellers will tend to reserve criticism unless specifically solicited for fear of hurting feelings, overanalyzing a work in progress, or causing a new storyteller to freak out and quit altogether. This is especially true if the storytellers in the audience don’t know the teller too well. So my expectations for feedback at a Fox Valley Guild meeting are quite different than my expectations at a Dallas Guild meeting. Such is the nature of things.

Either way, “The Worried Farmer” was one of those random story concepts that just kind of came to me while I was working on a different story. I think it was actually inspired by a Peacemakers song, but I don’t actually recall. It came as a series of images: a worried farmer, a trampled harvest, and a high stone wall. From those images I knew the beginning and the end, but I didn’t know the middle.

He built the wall and I tried to figure out what ironic destruction could follow. Flood made the most sense. From there drought was the easiest follow-up. But here I ran in to a problem: I needed a third catastrophe, since stories almost slavishly adhere to the Rule of Three. The hero faces three challenges, answers three questions, slays three beasts. The big points are repeated three times. It’s one of the oldest techniques in the book but we keep using it because it works. Three drives the point home without beating it in to the ground. Three draws attention to itself.

So I needed a third. But I couldn’t, for the life of me, come up with anything. I also didn’t feel like working on it too much, so I dropped it.

The first time I tried telling the story to record it the third plan and third catastrophe literally presented themselves. In hindsight it’s the most obvious thing in the world. But it’s funny how sometimes the obvious isn’t really obvious until we tell the stories.

To the Rule of Three I added another of the oldest techniques in the book to “The Worried Farmer.” By having wild animals cause the third disaster I’d turned it in to what is known as a ring story. The ring story allows the teller to bring the story to a point of closure and wholeness where it ends where it began. But in doing so the storyteller also invites tension.

For when the wild animals do destroy his crops that worried farmer has two options: he can learn from what has happened or he can build another high, stone wall and go around the circle again. There is an old song about what happens then. Perhaps you remember it.

This is the song that never ends
Yes it goes on and on my friend
Some people started singing it
A long long time ago
And now they are stuck singing it
Forever just because
This is the song that never ends
Yes it goes on and on my friend…

And so on and so forth ad infinitum.

The thing about a story, though, is that it is not complete until it is told. So as I stood up at the Guild meeting I did not yet know what the story would become. All I had was an idea in the back of my head that I didn’t tell it well, but it was okay since it’s a new story and it’s not like I care about it too much.

I started out more quickly than I usually do. This was a good thing, as I tend to take a long pause, collect myself, and then kind of drone in to a story. Honestly, I think that’s the thing I need to avoid the most, because that’s what sets the tone for everything else. I need to tell stories more conversationally.

I still took pauses. But they made a whole hell of a lot more sense with an audience hearing the story for the first time. It’s a story that started more with images than words and is built more on images than words. So you need to take a moment to let the images build and sink in. Let the audience see that high, stone wall. Let the audience see the crops withering under a relentless summer sun. Let them feel the farmer’s distress as he cries in the field. Then let them feel relief as that outside agent arrives to help the farmer see what he could not and break the cycle.

The storyteller interacts with the audience, too. When the wild animals came to drink from the farmer’s pond one of the other storytellers, a guy named Tim who is really quite good, got that little smile on his face that said, “I know exactly what’s about to happen.” That’s an absolutely key moment, because one of the biggest secrets of storytelling might be the thing that’s the hardest to comprehend: a story should always let you know what is going to happen next. If it doesn’t then that means you haven’t created a proper narrative structure. If you haven’t created a proper narrative structure then you can’t tell a useful story.

This, too, is why The Worried Farmer is a story with two characters. We need to believe that, if left to his own devices, the farmer would endlessly build and tear down walls, dig and fill in ditches, and create and drain ponds, always expecting a different result from the last time whether he’s on trip two around the circle or two thousand. We need the old woman to show up and offer a way out.

And, for the record, it’s almost always an old woman in these stories. In mythological archetypes the wise old man arrives in order to call the hero off on a journey, while the wise old woman arrives to dispense advice at the right time. It’s the classic father and mother figure that we write in to our stories.

But I digress.

This marks the third time that an afterthought story has become one of my preferred tales simply because I got in front of an audience and told it in a way that I understood it for the first time. Funny how that works, I suppose.

It also resulted in a discussion about how things that sound good in front of an audience don’t necessarily work in a recording and vice versa. Which was honestly an aspect of the whole thing I hadn’t really considered. But it’s an extremely useful bit of information to store away.

Anyway, when all was said and done Tim told me that he thought I have a unique voice and should basically keep working on cultivating it. I don’t necessarily know if that was something I needed to hear, but it certainly was something that I appreciated hearing. I have been extremely fortunate in my short time as a storyteller to be exposed to the work of some fantastic tellers. I have also been extremely fortunate in that there is a large overlap between the list of fantastic storytellers I’ve seen and the list of fantastic storytellers who have helped me, offered me advice, and encouraged me.

But I have also basically only told my own original stories. That means that after about three and a half years I only have nine stories that I consider “done” for a value of done that merely means, “I have told them in public or would be confident doing so,” and another dozen or so stories floating around in my head that are somewhere between a random idea and something that’s just not ready yet. What that means, though, is that I have nine stories that I have never heard anyone else tell. I have nine stories that mean something to me and that are, ultimately, a part of me. What that means is that I have nine stories that no one ever heard before they heard them from me.

That means that I am developing in to a storyteller rather slowly. But it means that I am developing in to the storyteller that only I can be and speaking with a voice that I had no choice but to create for myself.

And but too, also...

2010-08-11T15:23:00.002-05:00

The term of the day:

Argumentum ad sparkleponium: an appeal to a mythical race of creatures or a non-existent phenomenon.

This is why I've come to love Sadly, No!

On a Related Note

2010-08-11T09:10:00.000-05:00

There's this note about Shakespeare denialism over at Unreasonable Faith. It seems germane to the discussions we've been having about history over in our neck of the woods...

The Terracina Hypothesis

2010-08-10T23:23:00.000-05:00

This is a thought experiment based on the discussion that has been started on the whole 99.6% accuracy of the New Testament claim made by Ravi Zacharias in the video I posted yesterday. It is an attempt to explain why brute-force calculation using numbers and relative ages doesn’t mean a damn thing.

Let us, for the sake of argument, invent a historical event. Let’s say that after the decisive Battle of Cannae, but before the extended stalemate/delaying tactics period, the possibility has arisen that the Romans and Carthaginians fought one more major battle near the city of Terracina. Let’s say that it’s something that has been hinted at, but there was no direct evidence and precious little indirect evidence until recently when a series of manuscripts were discovered that had previously unknown historical documents and have allowed us to track down a larger collection of previously unknown documents, including several dozen records of the Battle of Terracina.

Historians immediately begin rifling through the documents, excitedly attempting to pick apart this heretofore undocumented battle. But they quickly run in to a problem. Some of the documents claim that the battle took place near Terracina. Some claim that they took place near a city a few miles away called Ad Turres. Some documents claim that Hannibal won the battle handily, while some claim that the Romans very nearly carried the day before being forced to retreat when one of their key commanders died. A pattern quickly emerges where in all but one case the documents that say the battle was fought at Ad Turres was an unquestioned victory for Hannibal and the documents that say the battle was fought at Terracina was a close-fought thing. But that one remaining document says that Hannibal won the battle decisively at Terracina. It, unlike the other two, is also the only document that does not reference previous works. It also contains information that is repeated in all of the other documents, much of which is shared across both sides types, but it has a lot of unique data and points out several unique features of the terrain around Terracina.

No documents can be dated before the year 100 CE, more than three centuries after the Second Punic War. But the document from 100 CE is, in fact, the one unique document.

The historians see the pattern and formulate what’s called the Terracina Hypothesis. They posit that the singular document is based on the oldest source and, therefore, that the one, single document (known as T1) that says that Hannibal won a decisive victory near Terracina is the oldest, with the other documents all based off of it. Further, they posit that the two different tales depend on two later modifications different modifications. They hypothesize that there were two different documents, now known as X1 (antecedent to the Ad Turres documents) and Y1 (antecedent to the Terracina documents), that both made mistakes and were copied forward, while the T1 document was lost to the historical record sometime around 100 CE.[1]

This is where the Hannibal at Terracina story rests for about a decade. Books are written about it, textbooks modified to indicate it. Everyone is satisfied by the explanation. Then two things happen.[2]

A certain Professor Jones then begins a close study of the various Terracina sources for an upcoming book, during which he discovers two things that had been missed before.

First, The T1 document makes reference to several place names that did not exist before 50 BCE. The document also makes reference to a prominent citizen of the city who was not alive during the Second Punic War, but who has been referenced as living in the area a generation later. Originally these errors were taken as alternate spellings of similar places that were known to exist in Terracina and an individual who was known to be a minor Roman general at the time of the Second Punic War. This new information casts doubt on the validity of the T1 document and it’s placement as the original document. Second, he discovers that there was a mis-translation of a section that only survives in one of the documents that claims the battle occurred near Ad Turres. According to the original translation, the scribe who wrote the document had claimed to be making a copy of someone else’s copy of the original, but he actually claimed to have been entrusted with the original document and was working off of it. This may or may not be the truth, but the those two bits of information are enough to cast serious doubt on the Terracina Hypothesis.

Meanwhile, an archaeological expedition operating near the ancient town of Terracina made two interesting discoveries. The first is that there are an awful lot of Carthaginian artifacts in the area and there is evidence that there was, in fact, a battle.[3] The second is that it’s still possible to make out several different landmarks mentioned in all three accounts. This provides strong evidence that all three accounts recorded the same events.

Our professor from above takes the new information he has uncovered and the new archaeological evidence and formulates a new hypothesis. He theorizes that there was, in fact, a X1 document and a Y1 document. But they did not follow the T1 document, but were the independent creation of two different writers while T1 came from a third source.

The biggest obstacle is, of course, the different city names given. X1, according to the new hypothesis, was simply written by a scribe who was a bit lost and didn’t know the name of the actual city near which the battle took place. Accurate descriptions of the immediate terrain lend credibility to the account.

But what of the other discrepancies? The professor’s hypothesis explains it thusly:

The Battle of Terracina was the first major battle after Hannibal completely wiped out the Roman legions at Cannae, which followed Hannibal’s decisive victories at Lake Trasimene and Trebia. Another decisive victory would cause complete despair in Rome and invite the possibility of a complete victory for Hannibal if he could figure out how to exploit the situation. The Y1 document, then, was a bit of Roman propaganda, to say, “Well, Hannibal won, but we bloodied him pretty well and he’ll have to be far more careful in the future.” The X1 document, meanwhile, was written by someone traveling with Hannibal who did not know the area, but recorded a great Carthaginian victory, possibly as propaganda, but equally likely to be an accurate account of the battle due to the consistent Roman inability to deal with Hannibal. The T1 document, meanwhile, was actually the last document produced. It was based, at least partially, on some sort of local tradition, most likely oral, which had been modified slightly between the original event and when it was finally recorded, thus accounting for the inconsistencies in place names.

This theory then becomes known as the Jones Hypothesis. Jones presents it at a symposium and publishes some papers. Several other historians review his papers and take a look at his sources, re-check his translations, and do the whole peer review thing. They conclude that it’s a good theory. It is then largely accepted as the most likely explanation for what happened at Terracina and why we have three different stories and becomes the standard academic explanation for what happened. This does not mean it is universally accepted. Some historians still hold to the old Terracina Hypothesis. But the general consensus falls to the side that Jones has the right idea.

Interestingly enough, this doesn’t necessarily mean that the Jones Hypothesis is right. It may well be that the Romans nearly did win the day and no propaganda was needed on the Roman side. It might also be that there was no battle, but that Hannibal’s army encamped in that location and two factions in his army that was a large collection of disparate peoples from all over started fighting each other in an event that was later recorded as a major battle. But the Jones Hypothesis best fits the information we have available, which is why it is generally accepted within the academic community.

----------------------------

Now, then, I’ve told a story here about the formulation of two different hypotheses about a historical event. Even though I’ve made the event up, we can say for the sake of the illustration that we’re reasonably sure that the event actually did happen. Note what we had available: several different accounts that differed in specifics but agreed on a general idea of what happened. Note, too, what we did not have: original source documents or, for that matter, any documents dated within three centuries of the event. To this we then added archaeological evidence and external research (the place names given and whatnot).

Note, though, the thing that no one in this story did at any point: add up the number of manuscripts found and divide by their proximity to the original event in order to come up with some bullshit, hyper-accurate statistic of “accuracy.” That’s history, that’s propaganda. What the actual (pretend) historians did was take the various accounts, figure out the points of difference and commonality, and iron out a specific narrative.

If you’re reading this and you’re the sort of person who wants to believe Ravi Zacharias, I’d be willing to bet you just thought, “But you’ve just disproved your original point!” And if you didn’t think that, well, I’m going to just hand you a freebie right here. So, y’know, pay attention.

“Aha,” you’ll point out, imaginary internet debate partner, “Doesn’t the huge number of New Testament manuscripts we know of mean that we can be sure we have created an accurate composite of the story of Jesus. Perhaps even, I don’t know, 99.6% sure? Doesn’t that just prove the New Testament is true?”

The short answer is, “No.” But I’m guessing that you’ll be wanting the long answer. You imaginary internet debate partners are so hard to please.

In the book Misquoting Jesus, Bart Ehrman tells a story about a page from the Codex Vaticanus he has hanging in his office. His explanation of the paper is basically this: there is a passage at the beginning of Hebrews that contains the Greek word PHERON[4] in most manuscripts. The passage translates to “Christ bears all things by the word of his power. In the original of the Codex Vaticanus, however, the scribe replaced PHERON with PHANERON,[5] which translates to “Christ manifests all things by the word of his power.” Another scribe later came along and replaced “manifests” with “bears.” Still later another scribe came and put “manifests” back in, then added the note, “Fool and knave! Leave the old reading, don’t change it!” Ehrman then says:

I have a copy of the page framed and hanging on the wall above my desk as a constant reminder about scribes and their proclivities to change, and rechange, the texts. Obviously it is the change of a single word: so why does it matter? It matters because the only way to understand what an author wants to say is to know what is words – all his words – actually were. (Think of all the sermons preached on the basis of a single word in a text: what if the word is one the author didn’t actually write?) Saying that Christ reveals all things by his word of power is quite different from saying that he keeps the universe together by his word!

Bear in mind, too, that the Codex Vaticanus is one of those 5600 source documents that supposedly creates a 99.6% accuracy. Counted among them, too, is the P52 fragment mentioned by BeamStalk in the comments on the first Ravi Zacharias entry. Well, actually, to call P52 a fragment is practically an insult to fragments everywhere. Not only does it not contain a complete book of the New Testament, it doesn’t even contain a complete thought couched in a single complete sentence.

And this doesn’t even get in to the fact that the writers of the four Gospels had different ideas about what the Christ story actually meant. It doesn’t get in to the fact that Paul wrote his epistles without a full knowledge of the Christ story or a complete understanding of it’s importance. It doesn’t get in to the fact that the letters attributed to Paul offer a somewhat different theology than the one attributed to James and are still different from the letters attributed to Peter. For that matter, the letters attributed to Paul offer a different theology than the letters attributed to Paul that we’re pretty sure Paul didn’t actually write (basically, the three “pastoral epistles:” 1 and 2 Timothy and Titus).

Meanwhile, there’s an extremely important bit of this discussion that I haven’t even encroached upon. It boils down to a simple concept:

There’s no one telling me that I will go to Hell if I don’t accept the Jones Hypothesis to explain the Battle of Terracina.

When people like Ravi Zacharias trot out their stupid statistics to explain why the Bible we have today is a more accurate book than, say, Homer’s Illiad or the Histories of Herodotus, they unwittingly do the Bible a great disservice. See, I don’t have to believe that Helen of Troy actually had a face capable of launching a thousand ships that then remained beached outside of Troy until the night a large wooden horse filled with Greeks was wheeled up to the gates.[6] And I don’t have to accept Herodotus’s version of the Life of Cyrus as the absolute, definitive story of the life and times of Cyrus the Great.

So, yes, we can have a pretty good idea that we have the ability to find an accurate picture of the New Testament. But that just means that the New Testament is subject to the same exact scrutiny I’d place the Illiad or the Life of Cyrus under. And under that scrutiny the New Testament fails miserably, as it is an internally inconsistent document that is not well-supported by external evidence. In fact, it’s basically not supported by any external evidence. And there’s actually external evidence that neatly undercuts the validity of the Bible.

You have to approach the Bible with the attitude that you will believe it in order to believe it. So when an apologist like Ravi Zacharias makes the argument that you can support the Bible with historical evidence what he actually does is undercut the validity of the said document. He invites inquiry of the document and insists that the Christian faith will fall apart if the Bible is shown to be unreliable.

Skeptical inquiry in to the Bible does exactly that.

-----------------------------

[1]This is, basically, a modified use of the “Two-Source Hypothesis” of the origin of the four Gospels, natch.

[2]Everything here is massively oversimplified. I’m creating a scenario and attempting to tell a quick and useful story about how historians do things. That means that an awful lot of convenient things have to happen to make the narrative, y’know, work and be usefully easy to understand.

[3]Generally speaking, the evidence of battle takes the form of two things: discarded, damaged, and broken implements of war and graves. The occupants of said graves generally provide evidence that they did not go peacefully in to that good night. There will be shattered skulls, broken bones, and no evidence that the bones had the time to heal. You could basically call Ducky to the scene of an ancient battlefield and he’d be able to do his thing right there. With some modification.

Either way, if you get enough bodies from the same general time period in the same place you can generally determine if you’re looking at the local cemetery or a battlefield. You can also generally determine if the people died violently or peacefully. It’s exceptionally hard to figure out the precise circumstances of death, however. By which I mean, we could determine there was a battle, but not who won or who killed whom in the process.

[4]There’s an accent mark on the O that I’m not entirely sure how to reproduce. But it doesn’t technically matter for the purposes of my retelling of Ehrman’s story.

[5]Again with accent marks…

[6]For that matter, I don’t. One of the weasel things Bible “historians” do is point to archaeological evidence to show that there were cities and whatnot in the Middle East and Levant in the Bible times and crow, “See, the Bible is right!” Archaeological evidence has shown there was a city in Troy and has shown that one of the incarnations of Troy was destroyed at about the time Homer’s Illiad would have existed. That doesn’t mean that Achilles, Hector, and Menelaus were there. And Athena, Apollo, and Zeus sure as shit weren’t, either. Oh, and Hephaestus probably didn’t forge[7] the armor of Achilles in the fires of Olympus, in case you’re wondering.

[7]Word 2007 insists that I want to use the word "forget" here. I'll be honest, I find the red lines and spelling auto-correct to be helpful sometimes (but don't get me started on the iPhone's auto-correct. Every single time I try to write "hell" it changes the word to "he'll." That's annoying as he'll). I find the green lines to be helpful sometimes, specifically since I have a bad habit of hitting the space bar twice very quickly without realizing it and I do have a habit of writing sentences that don't exactly have specific subject-verb agreement in them when I'm getting flowery. So the grammar correct can help me keep an eye on some things. But, so help me, I have no clue what the hell they were thinking with the little blue squiggly lines.

Ravi Zacharias Disproves Biblical Literalism

2010-08-09T23:15:00.001-05:00

Sadly, he doesn’t realize this is what happens and, rather, thinks he’s defending the whole thing.

Either way, I had about four different posts I could have written this evening. Then, towards the end of my work day, I found someone from my former life had posted this video on Facebook. Said friend was, I have no doubt, intending to use this video to bolster the message of the Bible and apologetics, not the other way around. But I shall use it to show that it’s extremely easy to debunk standard Biblical apologetics, and further to show why they seem so very convincing.

Either way, the video is from a talk given by Ravi Zacharias, a fairly well-known evangelist, at the University of Illinois. A student asks him why I would uncharitably tend to label as a set up question.

I just wanted to ask you, could you explain in a manner more pragmatic than we’re used to why a person should believe in the word of god as the Bible and why they should basically believe every word it says as opposed to any other “holy” [air quotes and everything] book and why they should give their entire lives to Christ.(23 seconds in)

Yeah, seriously. That’s his question. And it’s intended to get a set answer, roughly broken down in to, “This is why the Bible is correct, this is why everything else is wrong, and this is why you should accept Jesus.” The student in question will then, theoretically, be able to go, therefore, and make disciples of all nations because of the Ravi Zacharias method of proving the Bible is the most believable document in the history of the universe. So how does Zacharias respond?

First, with a whole bunch of mealy-mouthed philosophical garbage.

Let me start off as best as I can. First, I believe that truth as a category does exist. Number two, it is possible, in a majority of claims of philosophical and historical statements to verify the truthfulness of those affirmations. Third, I believe there are existential realities from which I cannot run which drive me to find the answers to the existential questions that I live with, not just the philosophical ones. The philosophical ones are real and I have to deal with them, but so are the existential ones. (1:17 in)

This is an awful lot of words that say absolutely nothing. Let’s break it down in to its component ideas. He basically says that he believes truth exists, that truth can be supported by human thought and human history, and that it’s important to pursue truth, not just as a thought exercise, but as an attempt to give meaning to human existence. There is nothing wrong with this, but it doesn’t say anything. More precisely, it doesn’t say anything about the Bible or why the Bible would hold truth. Mostly, it doesn’t explain why we should look to the Bible for truth.

But it uses a lot of big words and sounds really, really smart. And I’m reasonably certain that’s what it’s there for.

Then he tosses in the most random and oversimplified explanation of existentialism I’ve ever heard, in which he says it’s a rejection of rationalism and an appeal to, as Zacharias puts it “gut level feeling.” As someone who has read his own fair share of existentialist thought and is prone to identify himself as one, I have no idea where that idea would possibly come in to play, as existentialism was the realization that relentless rationalistic thinking wasn’t overly helpful in understanding people and the true quest for any person was to figure out how to give their own life meaning. This doesn’t reject rationalism so much as it admits that people aren’t unfailingly rational and probably aren’t ever going to be capable of becoming unfailingly rational. But that’s neither here nor there, as I have no clue what existentialism has to do with explaining why we should believe every word of the Bible and give our entire lives to Jesus. So I’ll just skip on ahead a bit.

You start off by saying, if you take the Bible at the question then why the Bible and why not any other system of thought? You start off with the scriptures and ask yourself the question, here there are sixty-six books by nearly forty different authors over nearly fifteen hundred years that are books on history, that are books on philosophical thinking, that are books on theological thinking and systematic thinking [note, I’ll buy the first three, but I fail to see how the Bible has books on “systematic thinking”]. Now, if the Bible made several assertions one after another that you found out to be false, either historically or philosophically or in the existential realm, you go further and further and if you see that kind of systemic contradiction and failure then you have reason to believe that I cannot really trust this document it is not in keeping with the way I am seeing history and reality. (2:23 in)

I find this fascinating, because what Zacharias is explaining here is more or less exactly the path which I took to stop believing in the Bible and, ultimately, to decide to leave Christianity behind. He even goes on to use one of the earliest parts of the Bible that caused me to begin questioning the validity of the Bible in an attempt to prove the Bible. But I’ll cross that bridge when Zacharias does.

Anyway, what I’d like to point out here is that Zacharias actually neatly lays out the flaws in fundamentalist/Biblical literalist thinking. If your entire belief system depends on the thing you believe in being without flaw, then in the presence of flaws you either have to give up on the belief system or give up on reality. There’s really no way around it. It sets up exactly the sort of impossible arrangement that forces people to leave, live with cognitive dissonance, or remain purposefully ignorant of any data outside of that which is supported by the Bible. That’s why Christianity has a cottage industry of people who create books about history and creationism and then attempt to get those things taught in school.

They use “teach the controversy” to create wedges in education. But they don’t simply want their garbage taught in schools, they want reality removed. Because reality threatens Biblical literalism. The city known as Jericho has been inhabited since before the universe was created. The World Flood occurred during the Old Kingdom period in Egypt. We have no archaeological or documentary evidence for a massive settlement of Jews in Egypt, nor do we have evidence of a mass exodus and re-settling of said Jews. The Biblical account of Persian succession is just flat-out wrong. And it offers three contradictory accounts of the rise of the Persians and return of the Jews to Israel. There is no evidence that Caesar Augustus called for a census of the entire world that required everyone to go back to their home (which is a stupid thing to do, anyway. I filled out a census form a couple months ago. Guess where I said I lived? Texas. Why? Because I currently live in Texas, even if I spent my entire life prior to January 8, 2010 as a resident of Illinois).

Either way, Zacharias then devolves in to an explanation of why the Bible is better than the Qu’ran. It basically boils down to, “The Muslims say that the Qu’ran is literally the perfect word of Allah. But the Bible is better because it isn’t perfect. It just perfectly predicts the future.” It’s a bit that starts at 3:10 and doesn’t get anywhere close to logic. Or Yuma, for that matter. And it hinges on an extremely bizarre definition of “perfection” which he basically reduces to nit-picking over what words are “better than” others.

This, for the record, is a terrible definition of “perfection.” I could make a grammatically perfect statement like, say, “I drive a Maserati GranTurismo.” The sentence is in the right order. There is a verb and a subject. So it’s a perfectly formed statement. Except for the bit where I have never driven a Maserati, never sat in a Maserati, and just so happen to drive a Mazda 6 (with which I am quite happy, thankyouverymuch). Now, by most definitions a Maserati GranTurismo is, in fact, “better than” my Mazda 6. Except the statement doesn’t reflect reality, which would be accurately stated even if the sentence was, “I gone done drived a Mazda 6 to work today.”

What’s my point? Zacharias is picking nits here. Muslim claims of revealed truth hinge on claims that the Qu’ran is the perfect, revealed word of Allah. The question that Zacharias is answering hinges on the claim that the Bible is the Word of God and we should believe every word in it. These are, in effect, two claims to the perfection of two different holy books. And Zacharias has potentially painted himself in to a corner by arguing that you cannot trust the Bible if you find that it keeps making false assertions. So his next step is an appeal to prophecy.

Let me give you an example of this. The Book of Daniel is written in the late 500s before Christ and yet when you study the book of Daniel you begin to see the specifics of a fantastic prophecy. He talks about a massive empire that will come in to being and how that empire will be divided in to four and that empire will be led by what they call a strident, strong he-goat from the west who will be marching several nations under foot but shall be suddenly cut off and his empire will be divided in to four. Those four then merge in to two and those two blend in to one. When you take the book of Daniel, written late 500s, and put it pro-forma on to Alexander the Great in the 300s before Christ you see the stridency of Alexander, suddenly cut off in his 20s, four kingdoms emerge, given to his four generals, those four come in to two, the Ptolemaic and the Seleucid Empires, that merged then in to the Roman Empire. Centuries before to be so specific in prophecy. (4:19 in)

I remember being about 18 or 19. I’d finally decided I was going to really get serious about following Christ and incorporating the teachings of the Bible in to my own life. My plan was to do the whole reading through the Bible in a year thing. I apparently managed to make it all the way up to Daniel, which kind of surprises me. I don’t ever remember making it much past Joshua during those attempts to do the Bible in a year thing. Perhaps I was doing something else and happened to read Daniel for the first time at this same juncture in my life and have just combined the two memories. Either way, I confronted Daniel for the first time. And not the Daniel and the lion’s den story or the Rack, Shack, and Benny story. I read the prophecies.

I remember, specifically, reading the stuff about the one-horned goat charging in from the west, laying waste to all that opposed him, specifically a two-horned ram. Then goat’s single horn fell off and was replaced by four horns, then two, then one. Daniel then helpfully explained that the ram was the Persians, which the Bible splits in to the Medes and the Persians (for reasons that, honestly, don’t make much sense. The Medes were a kingdom and the Persians their neighbors and/or vassals. Then the Persians conquered the Medes on their way to conquering, well, everyone but the Greeks, basically. There is no mention of this construct of “Medes and Persians” in the Persians’ own history that I’m aware of). The goat’s one horn was Alexander the Great, then the four horns were four successor kingdoms.

I found this absolutely fascinating. So fascinating, in fact, that I decided it was one of those places where the Bible could be proven to be accurately prophetic. I was shocked to discover that there were way more than four successor kingdoms. There were more like twelve.

It eventually settled down to four kingdoms, plus an independent Epirus, after the battle of Ipsus in 301 BCE. But then there was intrigue in Macedon and that left the borders open for a Gallic invasion of Asia Minor. When Rome came on to the scene the old Alexandrian Empire was split between the Ptolemies, who held Egypt and Syria, as well as Cyprus and a few bits of Asia Minor, the Seleucids, who held the vast majority of the territory from Afghanistan to the Ionian coast, the Antigonids, who held Macedonia, and the Aetolian League, which were a bunch of semi-independent city-states in mainland Greece.

Now, this whole thing might seem like picking nits. But the “prophesy” of Daniel as explained by Zacharias doesn’t actually hold up in light of, y’know, reality. There is an alternate explanation, however. Let us consider verses 23 through 26 of Daniel 8:

“In the latter period of their rule, when the transgressors have run their course, a king will arise, insolent and skilled in intrigue.
"His power will be mighty, but not by his own power, and he will destroy to an extraordinary degree and prosper and perform his will; he will destroy mighty men and the holy people.
"And through his shrewdness he will cause deceit to succeed by his influence; and he will magnify himself in his heart, and he will destroy many while they are at ease. He will even oppose the Prince of princes, but he will be broken without human agency. "The vision of the evenings and mornings which has been told is true; but keep the vision secret, for it pertains to many days in the future."

The interesting thing about this is that there is a very specific and particular king to which this could easily refer: Antiochus IV Epiphanes of the Seleucids. Basically, Antiochus IV was a usurper of the Seleucid crown who was considered to be mad, so much so that he was given the nickname “Epimanes,” which means “The Mad One.” Over the course of his life, Antiochus IV raided the Temple in Jerusalem, outlawed traditional Judaism, attempted to force the Jews to worship Zeus, and was ultimately struck down by disease during the Maccabean Revolt.

Certain theologians, including John Drane and Bryan Rennie, associate the Nebuchadnezzar of the book of Daniel with Antiochus IV Epiphanes. Basically, the attempts to force everyone to worship a large golden idol, which led to the whole Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego story, sound a lot like the stories of Antiochus IV attempting to get the Jews to worship Zeus. The bit about Nebuchadnezzar going mad sounds a lot like Antiochus IV’s own purported madness. There’s also a bit at the beginning of Daniel 5 about Belshazzar, the king who succeeded Nebuchadnezzar in the book of Daniel and eventually died and was replaced by Darius the Mede (all of which is BS. The father of Belshazzar was Nabonidus, who was actually still alive and kinda-sorta in charge when Babylon was conquered. By Cyrus the Great) holding a feast and requesting all of the gold drinking cups that were taken from the Temple by his father. Moreover, Jewish numerology associates Nebuchadnezzar with Antiochus IV Epiphanes. I’ll allow Bryan Rennie to argue that point for me.

Either way, Daniel 8 contains a brilliant little prophecy of Antiochus IV Epiphanes. Except modern scholarship also tends to place the writing of the book of Daniel after Antiochus IV Epiphanes. Moreover, the Jewish Tanakh places Daniel not in the books of prophecy, but in the third section, the Ketuvim, or “Writings.” This indicates that the compilers of the Jewish canon did not see Daniel as being a prophetic book, but instead a work of history and/or allegory. This is also interesting, as the Nevi’im includes the books that cover the time from the entrance to the Promised Land until the Babylonian Captivity, but does not include Chronicles or Daniel, indicating that both of those books were written later. This is probably key to understanding the historicity and prophetic validity of the book of Daniel.

But I digress.

Zacharias takes the basic statement, “The Bible has accurately predicted the future.” He follows it up with proof in the form of, “Look at the book of Daniel.” The next thirty seconds of the video then basically say, “Since we can believe this prophecy from Daniel, we can believe all the prophecies that point to Christ.” I can go back to this another time, but I’ll gloss over it quickly. No, we can’t. If you read the Old Testament as a narrative of Jewish history and thought it makes sense. But if you read it with the intention of finding Jesus, you have to hop, skip, and jump around, take things out of context, and generally bollix up the whole thing. You have to eisegete Jesus in to the Old Testament in order for any of the arguments of the Old Testament’s prophetic powers to even make a lick of sense.

The thing to realize is that Zacharias has not actually managed to formulate a defensible apologia for the accuracy of Biblical prophecy. But he has created a form of, to borrow from Stephen Colbert, truthiness. It sounds good, but in order to understand why it is not, in fact, good argumentation you have to really get down in to the weeds and understand that the Bible is an extremely inaccurate historical document.

My confrontation with the reality of the successor kingdoms was the first time I had an inkling of that. I did what anybody does the first time unpleasant reality intrudes on a cherished (or, at least, firmly held) belief: I tried to ignore it or work around it. That moment of intrusion, however, opened up the door and each time reality contradicted the Bible from then on I was more likely to look to see what reality had to say and attempt to understand what the real answers were. It became, to borrow from Zacharias’s introduction to the idea, an attempt to come to a philosophical and existential understanding of the truth. And that’s all because of the insistence that the Bible was accurate no matter what reality might have to say to the contrary.

But we’re not quite done. No, siree.

Bruce Metzger, who’s a scholar from Princeton, made the comment, he said, “Take the twenty thousand lines of the New Testament. It is safe for any scholar to say there is a 99.6% accuracy.” No ancient document, none, has the kind of documentary support that the Bible has, over five thousand documents.” (5:54 in)

“Oh, people can come up with statistics to prove anything. 14% of people know that.” – Homer Simpson

I’m just going to lay this right out there for you: I have abso-fucking-loutely no clue what it means to say that the New Testament has a “99.6% accuracy.” That might well be the most completely and totally meaningless statistic ever thrown out by anyone ever (and I’m sure that 56.2% of all people would agree with me on that one). A cursory Google search just for “bible 99.6% accuracy” leads me to a lot of people who are either explicitly re-stating Zacharias’s quote or basically cribbing from it.

I believe I recall someone from back in the day asking me about this quote or one that’s similar. At the time I recall saying that it was a load of BS. And I’m going to keep saying it. Even in the face of this handy-dandy chart put out by something called the Christian Apologetics and Research Ministry. It’s just a list of historical documents followed by the year of the oldest copy of said document, the number of copies, and a percentage that indicates how accurate said documents are without giving any sense whatsoever of what methodology was used to reach that percentage.

But, basically, it seems to say that if we crunch all the numbers we can be 99.5% sure of being able to create an accurate rendition of the source documents of the New Testament. There are several problems with this train of thought.

First, compare the four Gospels. Each one tells a different story about Jesus and each one has a different conception of who Jesus was and what his message was. Then compare the message of Jesus to the epistles of Paul. You will get a different idea of who Jesus was and what his message was. Then compare the epistles of Paul to the book of James. You will get a still different idea. And so on and so forth.

Then compare the world of the New Testament to the historical record. There are plenty of discrepancies. The big one is the whole bit with Caesar Augustus’s stupidly planned and carried out census of the whole world that required people to go back to their home village and was never actually called. But there’s other stuff that I’m sure I’d love to get in to if I weren’t already 3,500 words in to this post that I wasn’t expecting to be anywhere close to this long.

So even if we can be 99.5% certain that the New Testament is an accurate copy of the New Testament of old based on manuscript evidence, we can’t be anywhere near that certain that the manuscripts themselves are reliable. Moreover, the brute-force number crunching completely ignores the reality of the manuscript evidence. Not all of them are complete. Not all of them are in the same language. Not all of them use the same words. Not all of them put the stories in the same order. So we can come up with a pretty damn good composite picture of the New Testament, but we cannot say that what we can come up with is anywhere close to 99.6% accurate. And we can’t be at all sure that that composite manuscript actually reflects reality.

It’s basically an extremely convoluted way of lying with statistics. But it also makes a compelling sounding case for the accuracy and believability of the Bible. 99.6% is, after all, a big number. And it has a decimal point, which gives the illusion of hyper-accuracy. So let’s break it down one last time.

Zacharias begins by claiming he’s making a simple, humble search for truth. Then he claims that the Bible is the best (and, really, only) vehicle for truth. To prove this he says that the Bible accurately predicted the future between 500 and 300 BCE. He then extrapolates to say that if it did so once, it must have done so again. He then concludes by saying we have a nearly unassailably accurate picture of what the New Testament actually looked like when written.

It sounds compelling, especially for someone who hasn’t researched the specific points that Zacharias brings up. I’d hazard a guess that I’m in a pretty small minority on that one, so I’ll give anyone who has been taken in by that (including 18 year-old me) the benefit of the doubt. And if you are sitting there without any research in front of you it’s hard to refute. It has, in fact, taken me nearly four hours to write a post based on a seven minute YouTube video. And I knew basically everything I was going to say about it going in.

The most important thing to consider, though, is this: the presentation is key. Zacharias tells a story that sounds good because it’s specifically constructed to sound good. He tells a story that sounds compelling because it’s specifically constructed to sound compelling. But absent the construct, his arguments do not logically follow one from another. To wit:

I am searching for truth, therefore I will consider the Bible.
The Bible accurately predicted a single event, therefore it could accurately predict all events.
The Old Testament can be read to predict Jesus, therefore it accurately predicted Jesus.
We have a shitload of old manuscripts of the New Testament, therefore we can believe everything in the New Testament.

These are four thoughts that don’t actually logically progress from each other. It is, in fact, a prime example of what is known as sophistry, using subtly deceptive argumentation. But you really have to know your shit and you really have to pay attention to catch all of it. But the beauty of it is, since the entire point is to defend an all-or-nothing approach to the truth of the Bible, if you can show that it’s false, you can turn the arguments back on the apologist and disprove their use of the Bible.

AtF: Anglo-Saxons Borrowing Genealogies

2010-08-09T00:01:00.000-05:00

Bill Cooper loves him some genealogies. Now, there’s nothing inherently wrong with using genealogies. Most historians covering large stretches of history toss one in occasionally. They act as road maps through the odd collection alien sounding names and seemingly random connections between major characters and houses.

This, it should not be surprising to learn, is not how Cooper uses genealogies. He trots out an Anglo-Saxon genealogy that supposedly goes back to Noah to prove that, um, the Anglo-Saxons knew they went back to Noah. It’s ridiculous, but we’re used to that by now…

Handling this, though, is an interesting proposition. Cooper uses his genealogy to trace six houses of Anglo-Saxons: Kent, East Anglia, Lindsey, Northumbria, Wessex, and Mercia. Kent, East Anglia, Northumbria, Wessex, and Mercia were all Anglo-Saxon kingdoms that still lend their names to locations in Great Britain today. I don’t know what Lindsey is doing in that list, though.[1]

Further, there are recognizable names on the genealogy that we can look at. Specifically for this entry I’m looking at Ethelbert of Kent, Raedwald of East Anglia, and Alfred the Great of Wessex.

First, let’s get this out of the way. According to the genealogy given by Cooper, there were 38 generations from Noah to Alfred the Great. Further, there were seventeen generations from Noah to the scions of the Anglo-Saxon “houses.” For those doing the math at home, if we go with a generic 20 year generation, that means there were 760 years between Noah and Alfred the Great…who was born in the year 849. So Noah, according to the Anglo-Saxon genealogy that proves the veracity of the Bible, was born right around the time the Gospel of Matthew was being written. Although that whole world flood thing would have accounted for the decline of the Roman Empire pretty handily…

Now, I’ve played the genealogy game with Cooper before and won. Last time around I even hemmed and hawed and pretended there were a bunch of different ways we could define “generation.” This time I offer no such quarter because I have a fixed date to work with: the year 400.

The Anglo-Saxon migration to Great Britain started in about the year 400. Therefore, any number we work with when looking at the genealogy advanced by Cooper has to put that first generation of Anglo-Saxon house founders within 20 years of that date. As it turns out, that 20 year number becomes quite handy.

Take Raedwald of East Anglia. According to Cooper’s genealogy, he was nine generations removed from the scions. We know that Raedwald ruled Kingdom of the East Angles in about 520. So he followed the Anglo-Saxon migration by about 120 years. Nine generations isn’t all that hard to believe, especially since some kings had bad habits of dying quickly. Anglo-Saxon leaders who sat back in the great hall and sent their soldiers out to fight on their behalf would not have lasted too long, as the Anglo-Saxons were a warrior culture through-and-through. I strongly suspect, too, that the idea of a king not going out with his warriors and leading them from the front would have never crossed anyone’s mind. Kings, then, didn’t exactly live to ripe old ages.

That, though, leads us to Ethelbert of Kent, which is a much more confusing story.[2] According to the Venerable Bede, “Ethelbert was son of Irminric, son of Octa, and after his grandfather Oeric, surnamed Oisc, the kings of the Kentish folk are commonly known as Oiscings. The father of Oeric was Hengist.”[3]

Cooper gives us Hengist, Oise, Irminric, Ethelbert. I think we’re missing a generation in Cooper’s world.

Either way, we can learn two things here: first that the genealogy Cooper has tossed against the wall is based on some known account. Second, the genealogy is at least somewhat believable. At least, as far as the Anglo-Saxon kings are concerned.

But we have two gigantic problems, one of which I have already pointed out and a second which is extremely related. There is the minor problem that there was no such thing as “East Anglia.” There is also the equally minor problem that there was no such thing as Northumbria until around 600. Basically, in 604 King Aethelfrith of Bernicia conquered Deira. Then the East Angles got involved, Aethelfrith was killed, Bernicia and Deira fractured, and it wasn’t until 654 when Oswald, a son of Aethelfrith, re-conquered the whole area and expanded.

Even then, Northumbria wasn’t safe and wasn’t particularly long-lived. But the point is that there was no “House of Northumbria” amongst the Anglo-Saxon invaders of Britain in the post-Roman world. In fact, there could not have possibly been a “House of Northumbria.”

As best I can tell, the etymology of the term “Northumbria” is this: the lands north of the River Humber.[4] Similarly, the etymology of “East Anglia” is, “That place over in the east where the Angles live. When it gets right down to it, neither “Northumbria” nor “East Anglia” are particularly Germanic words. “Anglia,” at least, comes from German roots. But “Humber” pre-dates the Anglo-Saxon migration and is probably Celtic in origin.

The point is, there wouldn’t have been a family called “Northumbria” or “East Anglia” in northern Germany. But that may well be considered splitting hairs. So let’s go jump over to Alfred the Great’s House of Essex.

This is where it gets interesting. Or, perhaps, tedious. Depends on your levels of fascination with Anglo-Saxon chronology, I suppose.

Let’s go back two generations before Bill Cooper’s split in to the various houses. The line goes like this:

Wooden
Baeldaeg
Brand
Freothogar
Freawine
Wig
Gewis
Esla
Elesa
Cerdic
Cynric

And we’ll stop with Cynric for reasons that are shortly to become clear.[5] This is basically the same genealogy offered by the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, a history of the Anglo-Saxons commissioned right around the time of Alfred the Great.

Now, this is deeply interesting for those looking in to the history of Wessex. See, the founder of Wessex is given as one Cerdic, who may or may not have been a real figure. Cerdic popped in to history in the year 519 at the head of a tribe known as the “Gewisse,” from which I guess we get the word “Wessex.” Conveniently, there is a guy named “Gewis” (or Giwis in the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle) just a couple generations before Cerdic. This is astoundingly convenient…

Moreover, the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle records the genealogy of one Ida of Bernicia.[6] The first three generations are exactly the same as the first three for our good friend Cerdic up there. It is, I suppose, possible that Ida and Cerdic were cousins. But it’s far more believable to think that a later chronicler just kind of borrowed Ida’s genealogy and appended it to Cerdic’s.

And what a genealogy it is, too. Cooper lists one of his ancestors as a fellow named “Wooden.” That’s a pretty odd name for a king, if you think about it for a moment. In the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle (and, for that matter, in the work of the Venerable Bede, also carried on by Nennius in the Historia Brittonium), however, that individual appears, but with a slightly different name: Woden. You might recognize him better according to his Norse name of Odin. Or, possibly, by his name in Neil Gaiman’s American Gods: Wednesday.[7]

Yup. Woden. This was, of course, that weird period of early Christianity and its clashes with Norse paganism when attempts were made to turn the gods in to semi-mythological heroes and to, thus, diminish them.

That doesn’t make it any more believable that the Anglo-Saxons descended from Woden. And something tells me that if I’m not about to believe they came from Woden, I’m probably not going to buy the idea that they descended from Noah a mere 16 generations prior.

The question then comes up, “What could have driven the Anglo-Saxon chroniclers to create such a genealogy?” More, “What could have caused later historians to continue the line?” It’s simple, really.

Alfred the Great was the first of the tribal Anglo-Saxon kings to style himself as king of all of England. But Wessex was a comparative upstart with absolutely no history before 519. He needed a better lineage than that. So either Alfred or his chroniclers borrowed from a different genealogy. And no one was apparently the wiser.[8]

Unfortunately, though, no one apparently thought of the poor, credulous Bill Cooper’s of the world when they were making up genealogies. So someone who wants to remain ignorant was able to find a convenient source of convenient ignorance. And I got to spend a week of my life trying to understand Anglo-Saxon genealogy.

------------------------------

[1]During what I guess we could call the “classical” period of Anglo-Saxon control of Britain, there was what is known as the “Heptarchy.” These were Northumbria, Wessex, East Anglia, Mercia, Kent, Sussex, and Essex. There were also minor kingdoms, among them Lindsey.

Now, this idea is considered problematic. However, if we’re talking about a random genealogy from somewhere (specifically somewhere Bill Cooper thinks is reliable), then the idea that it would take five of the Heptarchy, discard two, and then throw in a random minor kingdom is problematic at best.

Further, the idea of some sort of “House” of East Anglia, specifically, is difficult to swallow. There was no Bob East Anglia. The term “East Anglia” quite literally refers to “the Angles who live to the East.” It’s like saying that South Carolina was founded by the scion of the House of South Carolina. Further, during the Anglo-Saxon period it was known as the “Kingdom of the East Angles.” It didn’t officially become “East Anglia” until a Danish conquest in 869.

But, other than that, the idea of a “House of East Anglia” is totally believable.

[2] There are two Ethelberts listed in the Cooper genealogy. The first is listed as Ethelbert(I) The second is just Ethelbert. There's nothing that's not confusing about that…

[3]Yes, I stole this from Wikipedia. You don’t actually want me to put effort in to this, do you?

[4]Wikipedia informs me that Geoffrey of Monmouth, who we probably all remember, claimed that the River Humber was named after a “Humber the Hun,” who drowned in the river while attempting to invade Britain.

[5]And not just because Cerdic and Cynric were the bad guys in the King Arthur movie starring Clive Owen and Keira Knightley. But that’s reason enough, right?

[6]Conveniently enough, Cooper’s genealogy does not include Ida, as it completely ignores the existence of Bernicia, instead putting in a genealogy for Northumbria that is both impossible and not replicated anywhere else I’ve seen.

[7]It strikes me, having read both American Gods and Neverwhere in the last, like, week, that you can get better lessons in history from Neil Gaiman than Bill Cooper. And actual gods are actual characters in Gaiman’s work. But the man does his research. I mean, as a life-long Midwesterner who was aware of the existence of the House on the Rock but didn’t actually care, I was reading the bit of American Gods that takes place in said book and thinking, “No way, he made that up.” Then I looked it up. Next time I’m back in the Wisconsin area I shall be visiting the House on the Rock. That place is fucked up.

[8]If you want to know more, I present to you the Sisam Hypothesis. Historical detective work can be fun.

Hiroshima

2010-08-06T22:10:00.003-05:00

Every year on August 6th we’re reminded of a single, horrific event. Every year we get a parade of internet articles about it. Those internet articles then result in a discussion. Generally the articles, at least the ones I see, explain how horrific that event was, explain that we should feel terrible about it, tell us that we should be ashamed of anything other than an abject admission that we should agree that everyone who was involved with that horrific event was a criminal, a terrorist, a horrible person. Anyone who defends the actions taken on that day is, by definition, terrible.

A string of people who are against that event then come forward to say, “Yes, yes that event was terrible. And yes, we agree that anyone who disagrees deserves to be tarred, feathered, and tossed out of polite society.” Other people inevitably show up to say, “Wait, it’s not that simple. There were extenuating circumstances.” They then toss out statistics based on projections of events that never came to pass. They add in other, sympathetic-sounding numbers that weren’t actually taken in to consideration by the people involved in the decision-making process.

This second group is dismissed, derided, sometimes in the crass lingo of the internet dismissed as “concern trolls,” since on the internet you have two options: agree with me or be dismissed as a sub-human individual.

No one learns anything. No one comes to a point of agreement. And next August 6th we’ll do it all over again, exactly the same way we did it today and we’ll do it next year.

It pisses me off to no end.

So let’s talk about August 6th, 1945. Because it seems to be an imperative, anyway.

First of all, to the people who just blithely say, “We should never have done it and now history will judge us as terrorists,” I have exactly one thing to say:

Shut. The. Fuck. Up.

And, yes, I realize that this means I’m telling PZ Myers to STFU. I realize this means I’m telling the Slacktivist to STFU. I realize that this means I’m telling a lot of people I probably otherwise agree with to STFU.

But, still, they need to shut the fuck up.

The entire anti-Hiroshima argument, at least as it gets discussed on the internet, is an argument without history, without understanding. It’s based entirely on emotional response and Monday morning quarterbacking. It is a judgment based on sixty-five years of second-guessing and terrible advancements in our capabilities of making war and understanding war.

To those people who come in and say, “But it saved millions of lives in the long-run. Besides, they started it,” I have exactly one thing to say:

Shut. The. Fuck. Up.

It’s an argument that is true enough, but it attempts to paint the people who made the decision to drop the bomb on Hiroshima as humanitarians who cared about how many Japanese would die if there was an invasion of the Home Islands. They didn’t. And comparing Pearl Harbor to Hiroshima is a completely false equivalent. Pearl Harbor was a purely military strike on a purely military harbor. Hiroshima was a military strike on a primarily civilian target.

So now that everyone has shut the fuck up, let’s talk about atomic bombs. Let’s talk about history. Let’s talk about war.

We have this idea that wholesale war, or “total war,” as it’s called, was invented in 1864 by a man named William Tecumseh Sherman. He was the man who unleashed his army to march from Atlanta to Savannah, taking what they needed and burning what they couldn’t carry in order to, as he said, “Make the South howl.” It was, the people who make such decisions had decided, the only way to make sure the South knew there was no option other than surrender.

It was the terrible mathematics of war: if you can’t get your enemy soldiers and leadership to give up, convince the people to stop supporting their soldiers and leaders. In America we pretend that this was some grand new thing because in America we have to pretend that we’re a special country with special ideas and special leaders. We can pretend that civilians have gotten a free pass in war because American civilians have largely gotten free passes in war. Other than the American Revolution and the War of 1812 it’s been Americans on other people’s soil killing their civilians alongside their soldiers.

Then there was the Civil War, where Americans killed other Americans. We still use this as an excuse to be split. The Confederate sympathizers among us get to pretend that William Tecumseh Sherman was a bloodthirsty, marauding barbarian from a foreign land so they don’t have to admit one thing: the people who suffered at the hands of Sherman’s March to the Sea brought it upon themselves. Or, if they didn’t, they were victims of a selfish aristocracy that callously brought the violence of war to the peaceful lands of southern Georgia (also the Shenandoah Valley, but for some reason no one really talks about the fact that Phil Sheridan did basically the same thing there that Sherman did in Georgia).

For those who aren’t insulated by America’s great oceanic moat, however, there’s a different story to be told. It was tradition in the medieval period when a besieging army broke down the doors of a city to have three days of rape, pillage, and destruction. Any city that found itself surrounded by an army knew that it had two choices: surrender or face months (years, even) of deprivation, disease, and a final orgy of violence if it could not send its enemies away.

Civilians suffered on both ends. Precious food was given to the defenders of the city first, as they needed to keep up their strength to man the walls. And when the soldiers all fell and the gates were breached the civilians had their homes looted and their valuables taken. The women were raped, then the ones who could fetch a good price at market were sold in to slavery. It was not pretty. But it was depressingly common. And it was a practice engaged by all parties, be they Christian, Muslim, considered noble or base and depraved pirates.

Those who wish us to sit in abject acknowledgment of our horribleness as human beings because of the bombings in Hiroshima and Nagasaki never seem to be aware of this fact. Or if they are, they ignore it, pretend like it’s not an issue. I believe that they want to pretend that brutality and barbarism in war is some sort of aberration, that those who went to war for the thousands of years between World War II and the time when the first chieftain assembled his men and gave them clubs only fought against those who deserved it, only killed and injured those who intended to be in the line of fire.

Civilians have never been insulated from war, however. Everyone who goes to war makes war against the innocent as well as the guilty. The only real difference between a medieval army and the crew of the Enola Gay is that the atomic bomb was capable of destroying more people in a moment than a medieval army could destroy in a month.

But in the empty, shattered streets of Hiroshima we see a microcosm of every single moment of brutality and barbarism that man has ever visited upon man from time immemorial. But we don’t just have to look at Hiroshima. The entirety of World War II was an orgasm of violence on a scale unimagined previously, even by those who had witnessed the corpse-filled trenches before Petersburg in Virginia or on the Western Front in France.

It started by accident, really. A flight of bombers got lost over southern England and accidentally bombed a civilian airfield near London. A few days later another group of bombers got lost and did the same thing. The Fuhrer had ordered that no such attacks could take place except with his explicit permission. The British retaliated with bombings in Berlin itself. At the beginning of September, 1940 Hitler rescinded his order and the Luftwaffe began bombing London itself.

And do you know what RAF command did? Do you?

They breathed a deep sigh of relief. The RAF was barely hanging on. A couple more weeks of bombings directed against RAF airfields and military installations may well have destroyed the RAF. When the Germans began bombing London it was seen as a godsend by the powers that be in London.

Yeah. Chew on that thought for a while. The Royal goddamn Air Force was happy to see London get bombed because it meant they could continue fighting. Besides, it gave all kinds of cover for what the British and Americans did to Germany for the rest of the war.

In February of 1945 a combined British and American bomber force basically wiped the city of Dresden off the map. It’s quite literally one of the most senseless actions in the long, twisted history of senselessness in war. The reason that Dresden was targeted was because there was quite literally nothing else for the Allies to target in Germany. They didn’t even bother to target the military infrastructure on the outskirts of the city, either. But, other than Kurt Vonnegut, no one seems to remember that one.

Of course one of the great victories in the Pacific Theater was the capture of Iwo Jima. That was a great strategic boon for General Curtis LeMay, since it meant that the B-29 Superfortresses staging out of Saipan couldn’t be intercepted much outside of the Japanese Home Islands so they could drop their incendiary bombs directly on the Japanese cities without fear of reprisal.

Here’s the lesson of World War II: no one gave a shit about civilians.

It’s harsh, but there’s no other way around it.

See, strategic bombing was a blind alley in World War II. The British didn’t surrender when bombs started falling on London during the Blitz. The Germans didn’t surrender when literally hundreds of strategic bombers began pulverizing German cities with near-impunity on a daily basis.[1]

This is the harsh reality of World War II: we try to remember the Final Solution and the Holocaust as the great horror of World War II. We try to remember the Allies as the great heroes, going in to save the world. But America and Britain killed a fuckload of innocent people during World War II, too. And they didn’t care. It was war.

In this context the atomic bomb becomes something different. It wasn’t deployed in a vacuum, where one day America was a noble, chivalrous nation with a lily-white soul and no blood on its hands and the next day it was the worst collection of murdering scum the world has ever seen. The atomic bomb was simply the biggest damn weapon deployed in a war that was already completely insane and unrestrained.

Simply saying, “Americans are a bunch of terrorists,” or, “We should be disappointed to be a part of a country that did such a horrible thing,” completely misses the lessons of history and ignores what war is.[2]

I will never argue that the dropping of an atomic bomb on Hiroshima was absolutely necessary. I will never even argue that it was right. But it was justified. This is the horrible logic of war.

The Japanese did some absolutely horrible things to the Chinese while carving out their Empire. They were ruthless and implacable while they expanded through the Philippines and in to the South Pacific. And it cannot be ignored that they were willing to get in to planes and fly in to warships just to defend their honor in a war that was long-since lost. Hell, they invented a weapon called the Ohka that was a manned rocket designed to be dropped from a medium bomber, then flown in to a warship. Pilots got one training run, then were deployed against attacking fleets. Anyone who can train people to go out and kill themselves must be taken seriously as a foe.

It doesn’t help that the Japanese fed their people anti-American propaganda for years. This isn’t anything special, as propaganda is a huge part of any war. But by the time the Marines hit the beaches on Okinawa the Japanese civilians had been utterly convinced by their own government that the Americans would indiscriminately rape, torture, pillage, and kill anyone and everyone. The Japanese people were prepared to fight to the death.

Until the atomic bombs fell from the sky.

The thing about it is that the power of the atomic bomb scared the shit out of everyone. It’s speculation, but I fear for history if we hadn’t seen the atomic bomb first hand at, say, the time of the Cuban Missile Crisis. We can’t say that it’s good that a lot of Japanese died on August 6th, 1945 because we might have blown up the world in October of 1962. But the fact of the matter is that the reality of the atomic bombs dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki probably spared a lot of pain down the road.

One of the arguments I’ve seen basically goes like this: “Why didn’t America just drop a bomb on some island near Japan and say, ‘Look what we can do?’”

That’s simple: we’d already bombed the shit out of Germany and Japan. A demonstration of the atomic bomb wouldn’t have had nearly the impact if it wasn’t in Japan itself. And in the horrible, dreadful logic of war, that matters an awful lot.

There is a museum dedicated to the Pacific War in Admiral Chester Nimitz’s hometown of Fredricksburg, TX. I went when I was down in Austin in June.

One room of the museum is dedicated to the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. It’s a small, round room made claustrophobic by the presence of a replica of one of the bombs that takes up most of the floor space.

The walls are giant, photographic murals of the ruins of Nagasaki and Hiroshima after the atomic bombs were dropped and obliterated the cities. After what we did to those cities. The only sound in that room is wind. Not a gentle breeze, though, that horrible, unmistakable wind that we’ve been conditioned as a society to recognize as the only sound in the silent world that comes after the apocalypse.

It is a rare thing in history to find a war monument to the horrible things done by the winning side. It’s unheard of to see such a thing in the hometown of one of the great war heroes from that winning side. Yet that’s exactly what that room is.

Walking in to that room I believe anyone with even a tiny amount of understanding would find it impossible to do anything other than stand in silence.

It’s a terrible thing, that power America unleashed against the unsuspecting Japanese on August 6th, 1945. Calling it good is to permit all the horrid atrocities of war we’d be better off leaving behind. But simply labeling it as terrorism cheapens what happened that day, diminishes it.

We have not thought about war the same since the bomb fell on Hiroshima. America lost its innocence that day. It took Vietnam and those iconic pictures of screaming children and civilians with guns pointed at their heads to make the moment personal. But without Hiroshima we might have been able to pretend through Vietnam that we were only killing the people who deserved to be killed.

American civilians don’t know what it’s like to have the gun in their faces. It took something as horrible as Hiroshima to force us to realize that war is a thing that shouldn’t be engaged in lightly. But even so, we have not learned those lessons. We don’t understand the terminology. We don’t understand the importance.

Labeling Hiroshima an act of terrorism proves that point. The “Collateral Murder” video and the completely idiotic reactions to it on both sides proved that point. One side argued that American soldiers were intentionally and knowingly killing innocent and defenseless civilians without mercy or reflection while the other argued that we shouldn’t be allowed to see the realities of war. It’s sheer, unadulterated idiocy on both sides.

So perhaps America as a whole should shut the fuck up. Then maybe we should stop taking war in to everyone else’s backyard just because we think it’s a glorious and wonderful thing to do.

-----------------------------

[1]The flight paths the Americans and British took in to Germany in the last months of the war were called “the bomber stream.” And that’s a descriptive phrase. Around the time of the raid on Dresden the entire German air force could muster something less than 200 fighters to take on strategic bomber formations that contained four times the number of aircraft. Plus escorts. The Germans developed a sort of kamikaze tactic where they trained their aviators to get close enough to bombers to use their propellers as saws and chop the planes apart.

[2]And, of course, on the other side saying, “Damn Japs got what was coming to them,” doesn’t really help anything, either. No one deserves to be nuked.

Listening to Myself

2010-08-06T00:12:00.000-05:00

I’ve been spending a lot of time over the last couple days listening to myself talk.

Now, anyone who knows me more than a little bit would probably snort at that idea. I’m probably the sort of person who can be described with the words, “He likes the sound of his own voice.” The thing is, though, most of the time when people who like the sound of their own voice talk, they don’t actually listen. Or, more likely, they listen to the words.

I’ve actually been listening to myself talk.

It’s been a bit of an education.

I have a tendency to drop in to what I call my “storyteller’s voice” whenever I start telling a story. I slow down my speech, tend to be far more careful in my enunciation, and take long pauses to emphasize points. All of these things go back to my old speech team days and, to a lesser extent, that period of time when I wanted to be a pastor. I was always told to speak more slowly when being coached for the speech team, as people tend to talk faster than they think they do. I got in to a habit of over-enunciating and taking long pauses when giving messages in church or arguing fine theological points to make sure everyone understood that there was a special gravity in the words of Scripture.

As I listen to myself tell stories I hear those things. I hear those habits. And I can’t help but think one thing.

Holy fuck is it annoying. I mean, seriously. It’s annoying.

Now, there are times when it is, in fact, appropriate to slow down. Speaking slowly can work extremely effectively when telling a ghost story, for one. It builds atmosphere and suspense. It also tends to cause the audience to lean in, strain to hear the next word…and just…when they’re…ready…you…

BAM!

Scare the hell out of ‘em. It’s a beautiful thing. It also works amazingly well if you can hit a certain rhythm and accompany the words with a pounding of some sort.

But that device, as with any device, only works when used occasionally and in the appropriate setting. If you’re telling a fast-paced, witty story, you should be fast-paced. If you are telling some sort of informative tale for the purpose of actually teaching, slowing down and properly enunciating can be quite helpful.

It’s been an interesting lesson, really. Especially since it wasn’t one I was exactly expecting to learn.

See, I didn’t set out to learn this about myself. It was just kind of a by-product.

I draw a bright-line distinction between the written word and the spoken word. Both formats of communication have their advantages and drawbacks. Both have their own very specific methods and styles. I’ve always known this, but never really understood how to communicate it. It was simply something that I knew. I have, on occasion, heard another storyteller tell something and thought, “You know, that would be much, much better as a written piece.” On the other hand, I have been known to read something but want to hear the words aloud.[1]

One of the strange drawbacks to the whole thing is that I don’t write my stories down.[2] This is a problem, for although I have a good memory, it’s far from perfect. And with storytelling you kind of need to remember a lot of stuff for a long time.

The solution was quite simple: record the stories. My first attempts came last summer. I used my Creative Zen Vision:W, which has a built-in microphone. It worked, but not all that well. And it only recorded .wavs, which didn’t much like it when I tried to add things like track details.

But the idea was there. And it was sound. It just required me to make the necessary mental leap and think, “Wait. I have Goldwave on my computer. And I have two different microphones that I can use with said program.”

And yea, verily, didst I proceed to discover that I need to talk faster, pause less, and not worry so damn much about enunciation. It’s been a good couple days. It’s also been a long couple days. Seriously, it should not take three hours to record three stories.

In the process, I realized a couple other things. I often find myself composing blog posts or writing out little snippets of fiction in my head, then excitedly heading over to my computer, beginning to write, and discovering that what was in my head simply isn’t coming out of my fingers properly. I’m beginning to think that perhaps I should record myself when I get on a role, the basically transcribe my thoughts.

I’m also flirting with the idea of podcasting, but I don’t exactly have the infrastructure set up to do that. By which I mean the web hosting, not the technology.

I’ve also come to realize that I need to start thinking of storytelling differently. First, I need to practice a hell of a lot more. Second, though, I need to change the way I approach the craft and developing my skill set. I’ve got a two-part plan for that.

First, I’m going to do an old writer’s workshop trick. I’ll just decide that I need to, say, describe a house. And I’ll do it. See the house, walk in, look at the rooms, whatever.

Second, I’ll probably take something that was written by someone else and read it.

I also think that I need to spend some time working with stories that I haven’t personally created. I’m reasonably sure that I’ll treat, say, an old Norse myth or a Jack tale differently than I treat my own stuff.

It should be interesting.

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[1]One of my absolute favorite examples of this is the Drive-By 2001 remix of Poe’s “Hey Pretty,” where the verses of the song have been replaced by a reading of a short section of the novel House of Leaves. Some things just fucking work.

Speaking of, my least favorite example of the combination of spoken word and music is auto tune. Fucking auto tune. I have seen it done right twice. And one involved the Double Rainbow guy and gratuitous use of YouTube’s vuvuzela button (sadly, I can no longer find said video. And Double Rainbow guy has been spoofed and poorly auto-tuned so many times that I'll probably never find it again). Oddly, I was at work while doing that, so I’m reasonably certain I wasn’t drunk.

[2]Save one time. I wrote my very first story out as part of an experiment to see about fooling around with having different endings. It made a certain amount of sense at the time, as the story was a variation on the classical fairy tale that ended exactly the same way all classical fairy tales ended. The alternate endings…weren’t quite fairy tale endings.

Oddly enough, part of the point of that experiment was because I was already coming up against the limitations of the spoken word. The entire point was that I couldn’t stay in the story, but then step back and say, “Here are five different possible endings.” With the written word I could do exactly that.

There’s also a second, where I wrote a story about telling a different story. Oddly, both of these things currently make me happy, as those are basically two of my three oldest stories. I’ve largely forgotten the one that was based on the experiment and I’ve largely forgotten the things I did to make the other one work. So in both cases what I wrote kinda saved my ass.

AtF: On Hold

2010-08-01T22:50:00.000-05:00

Yeah, so I'm about halfway through an AtF post and trying to puzzle my way through Anglo-Saxon dynastic succession.

It's giving me a headache and I've totally lost track of what I'm doing. So I'll probably have to regroup on this one and finish it some other time. I'd like to extend my sincerest apologies to the two of you who deeply, deeply care about the AtF series...

Byzantine Logic, Part 3: Constantine the Opportunist

2010-07-28T23:47:00.000-05:00

Constantine had Rome and would soon have Maximin and Licinius out of his hair. Maxentius was gone. According to legend this was a providential moment guided by the appearance of a sign from the Christian God. Reality does not seem to support the legend. So what do we make of the data we have available?

First off, we can say without too much doubt that Constantine won the day because he was a superior general with a superior army. He had already fought victoriously all across the Empire, from Gaul to Iconium. He had already defeated two of Maxentius’s armies in the process of marching on Rome. It was actually expected by most that Maxentius would wait in Rome and force Constantine to engage in siege warfare, a successful ploy against both Severus and Galerius.

Maxentius marched out of the city and met Constantine on the Via Flaminia with the Tiber at his back. Really close to his back, from what we can piece together about the battle. Like, so close that Constantine’s forces were able to push Maxentius’s in to the Tiber and while that was happening Maxentius’s troops simply could not make the necessary space to regroup. Bad judgment of the terrain can be far more deadly than a hail of arrows.

Divine intervention was really unnecessary for Constantine to win. Still, there’s nothing inherently wrong with giving credit to the divine for such things. Especially when we’re talking about ancient societies that were totally god-crazy. So I’ll leave that aside for the moment.

We have very little evidence that Constantine directly attributed anything to the Christian God. This is the inscription from the Arch of Constantine, completely three years after the battle:

To the Emperor Caesar Flavius Constantinus, the greatest, pious, and blessed Augustus: because he, inspired by the divine, and by the greatness of his mind, has delivered the state from the tyrant and all of his followers at the same time, with his army and just force of arms, the Senate and People of Rome have dedicated this arch, decorated with triumphs.[1]

That “inspired by the divine” is not exactly a ringing endorsement of Christianity.

John Julius Norwich seems to have taken the more direct translation and put the “instinctu divinitatis” as “instinct with divinity.” Still, he says that it “must have been deliberately chosen for its ambiguity.”[2] I’m prone to agree with this, but not his further assertion that Constantine was “treading warily.”[3] I suspect the inscription would have been intentionally chosen and intentionally vague, but not to cover any sort of Jesus-related shenanigans.

Constantine was standing at a moment of sea change in European history and all the evidence I see indicates he knew it. I could, in fact, make an argument that he actually helped bring it about. In fact, I think I will do exactly that.

Polytheism was drawing to a close in the Roman world. The ancient Roman pantheon, borrowed wholesale from the Greeks, was falling by the wayside. In its place had arisen the cult of Helios, better known as Sol Invictus, the Unconquered Sun, associated alternatively with Apollo or Mithras (of whom Constantine had already had a convenient vision years before, precipitating a switch of patron from Mars to . Competing with the worshipers of Sol Invictus was another collection of monotheistic Son worshipers: the Christians.[4]

Meanwhile, the idea of the divinity of the Emperor was probably in serious trouble. When Diocletian and Galerius started handing the title of Augustus out to anyone who happened to be in town they undoubtedly seriously de-valued the idea that there was a single, god-like Emperor. So the Cult of Emperor might have still been on the books, but I’m prone to believe it was in trouble.

One of the grand traditions of the ancient world involved new rulers telling their subjects, “Hey, I’m in charge, everyone worship this guy now.” Or, at the very least, they’d mint new coins that identified the god that was their specific patron. Then they’d dedicate a few temples, throw some games in honor of said god, kiss a few babies, and get on with the business of governing or going to war or going slowly insane or what have you.

When Constantine got to Rome he dedicated a few Christian churches. While the choice of religion might have been surprising, the action itself was not. He then proceeded to be extremely ambiguous about what he actually believed and continued having coins minted with dedications to Sol Invictus for at least the next several years. He also declared that there was to be no religious persecution in the Empire and ordered that any property confiscated from Christians was to be returned. Eventually, of course, he was to call the first Christian council at Nicaea, which would set the Nicene Creed and take the first steps in deciding once and for all[5] about that whole divinity of Christ thing.

One thing that the Council of Nicaea did not do that everyone seems to think it did was settle the issue of the official Biblical canon. This is a key point to consider. The Council of Nicaea was three centuries removed from the life of Christ and two centuries removed from the completion of the final canonical Gospel. There was already a major controversy (Arianism) and a schism (the Meletian schism). Every city and church undoubtedly had its own version of Christianity, which shouldn’t be surprising given the situation today. But there’s an extremely good chance that it was actually worse, due to the whole lack of a set Bible thing.

Oh, and plenty of people were also busy integrating the Christ story in to their own prior pagan beliefs without really worrying too much about the whole monotheism thing. People make a big deal today about how the Jesus story looks a hell of a lot like the Mithras story (born of a virgin on December 25th, came to save the world, y’know…), then use this as an argument that Christianity absconded with the cult of Mithras.

I wouldn’t be surprised to learn that a lot of people just got the two confused. Roman religious thought was already busy merging Apollo, Helios, and Mithras in to the cult of Sol Invictus. Why not Jesus? The average Roman citizen was probably not a sophisticated theological thinker and undoubtedly more than willing to pass on a good story. And if you’re planning on arguing the point, consider modern America. George Washington probably didn’t chop down a cherry tree or throw a coin across the Delaware River. I don’t place too much faith in stories of bigfoot or alien abductions, either. And don’t get me started on the credulous morons who actually believe Dan Brown was writing real history in the Da Vinci Code.

I wouldn’t be surprised to learn that Constantine didn’t draw a particularly strong distinction between the two. He was a brilliant military commander and a damn good politician but there’s no evidence that he was a particularly bright theologian. There’s plenty of evidence that he was theologically ambivalent, in fact, and saw religion primarily as a means to an end.

So let’s consider, once again, Constantine’s stance on Christianity. I’d say it’s a strong possibility we can set aside any sort of divine appearance of Jesus at the Milvian Bridge. Further, let’s set aside for the moment the possibility of a genuine and complete conversion in the modern Christian sense, as we simply have no evidence of such a change in Constantine’s views on religion. I have three theories about what actually happened. I also have a fourth, bonus theory about the historical records.

The first possibility is that Constantine saw the cult of Sol Invictus and the cult of Christ as the two big powers moving forward in Roman religious thought. He decided to try to appease both. So he kept minting coins with Helios on them while ending the persecution of Christians and giving them official legitimacy in the eyes of the state. This possibility, however, is a bit too…passive for Constantine. So on to possibility two.

Constantine saw the demise of the Cult of the Emperor and the end of the old Roman pantheon, either as an actual ongoing thing or a rapidly approaching occurrence. So he decided that if he was going to rule over a changing Empire he needed to get out ahead of it. Thus, he conferred upon the Christian church a legitimacy it craved in exchange for Imperial control. He then called the Council of Nicaea to make sure that this new religious construct would provide the stability the Empire sorely needed following the chaos of the Tetrarchy.[6] The Emperor would then step aside from the whole god on Earth thing and take the position of God’s Vice-Gerent[7] on Earth. Of course this makes Constantine out as cynical and manipulative, so let’s give him an option with the benefit of the doubt.

The third possibility is that Constantine did make a genuine commitment to the whole Christianity thing, but told Jesus he was still going to see other deities. He was young, you know? He wanted to sow his wild oats, see what was out there. Besides, it was a different time. The uptight Third Century was over and it was the wild and crazy Fourth Century. Free love, man.

I’m prone to go with option two, perhaps with a bit of option three mixed in. Given the evidence we have, both of the character of Constantine and his actions post-Milvian Bridge it makes the most sense. In point of fact, we do know that Constantine was baptized in to the faith at the end of his life. The general thought on this is that it was widely believed at the time that baptism was more of an “after” thing than a “before” and that whole “remission of sins” bit was for all the sins that the baptized person had committed prior would be forgiven while any later ones were not covered. So the idea of a baptism late in life was a matter of practicality, especially for someone who regularly had to commit sins as part of his job (yeah, chew on that thought for a while…). Unfortunately, it doesn’t shed any light on when Constantine actually came to believe. But I think it lends credence to the idea that he did, as I can’t imagine him bothering to be baptized just for the sake of appearances while at death’s door. Also, he did dedicate an awful large number of churches…

As to Eusebius…well…let’s talk about that crazy vision in the sky for a moment

Let’s assume for the moment that Eusebius didn’t just make everything up whole-cloth about the vision before the Milvian Bridge. Further, let’s consider the fact that while in Gaul, Constantine claimed to have a vision of Apollo and Victory, which lead to his adoption of the Cult of Sol Invictus. The vision recorded by Eusebius that’s been passed forward is of the sign of the Cross under the sun, inscribed with the words “Conquer by This.” In another context that could be seen as a sign given by, oh, I don’t know…Apollo and Victory. Perhaps Constantine did tell Eusebius about his vision, but conveniently moved it forward in time. Or perhaps Eusebius knew that Constantine had claimed the earlier vision and tweaked it just a bit. Hell, maybe he had heard of the earlier vision and genuinely thought it referred to a moment before the Milvian Bridge.

Stranger things have happened, after all.

So that’s Constantine, in all his grand confusion and contradiction. Next time on the series that will probably never end: the Council of Nicaea.

---------------------

[1]Yeah, it’s from Wikipedia, bitches. It’s the easiest way to get access to the actual text of the arch. Also, the majority of the sources I’ve found seem to agree on the text, but Wiki is the most easily readable of the bunch.

One of the great things about the internets, meanwhile, is that if you do the right search you can find some crazy stuff. Like this brilliantly loopy site about how Constantine was the first Pope. And this other site with a whole bunch of convoluted quotes and replies to replies that is supposed to prove…um…something in response to this other site. I mean, seriously. Somebody who gets to the end, please tell me what you think is going on with this, especially since the last line on the page that’s a reply is, “Even those who consider themselves good Christians would be at odds with Britannica’s take on evolution.”

That reminds me: when I was in college I wrote a paper on the Maccabean Revolt. My last line was, “Even those who consider themselves true Klingons would disagree with Wikipedia’s article about the Model T Ford.” My professor suggested I take that out of the final version. True story…

[2]John Julius Norwich, Byzantium: the Early Centuries (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2007), p 45

[3]Ibid.

[4]It’s actually entirely possible to make the argument that Zoroastrianism was the most important religion of the ancient European and Middle Eastern world. Mithra was a Zoroastrian deity who was mostly taken whole-cloth in to the whole Sol Invictus thing. Zoroastrianism also had a massive influence on the development of mystical Judaism and the whole balance of good and evil and spiritual forces thing seems to have made quite the impression on the early Christians.

[5]Snort. Chuckle. Guffaw.

[6]Snort. Chuckle. Guffaw.

[7]”Vice-Gerent” is a specific title held by the Byzantine Emperors and used in Islam in certain cases. In the Byzantine sense it indicates that the Emperor is basically god’s representative on Earth and second only to the deity in the chain of command. All things considered, it’s not exactly a big step down from the Cult of Emperor thing.

Also, as a side note, when John Julius Norwich introduced me to the term I assumed it had a similar etymology to “regent,” as the meanings are extremely similar. Turns out that they come from different Latin roots, with “regent” indicating a ruler and “gerent” indicating a manager. Chances are they share a closer origin somewhere further in time, but they aren’t quite as closely related as I thought.

Pithy

2010-07-28T09:24:00.000-05:00

VorJack over at Unreasonable Faith linked to my first official Byzantine Logic post. Over the course of setting the stage for the quote in question, VorJack came up with a quote that I, in turn, absolutely want to steal. Erm, borrow. With full credit given:

Like all good historians, he realizes that to talk about a period of history, he has to go back to well before that period actually began. Back to, say, when the universe cooled enough for protons to form.

To be fair, for some things you only really need to go as far back as the emergence of the first single-celled organism...

Byzantine Logic, Part 2: Politics and Panegyrics

2010-07-28T00:28:00.001-05:00

Constantine the Great defined the declining years of the Roman Empire and cast a long shadow over its primary successor in Byzantium. We cannot discuss Byzantium without him. We cannot discuss Christianity in the Roman world without him.[1]

And, just in case anyone was wondering if I was aware of this, yes, I have started the last two posts out with basically the same introduction. The primary difference between this time and last time is that this time I will talk about Constantine the Great.

Constantine is a difficult individual to pin down. Few rulers in European history have had more influence on the world that followed than he did. Yet of all the European rulers of grand importance, Constantine arguably has the smallest library of useful and authoritative biography.[2] The main problem we have with the story of Constantine is that although we have a half-dozen contemporary or near-contemporary biographers, said biographers largely focused on different things and had well-known biases, which clouds any attempt to understand the whole picture of Constantine. Further, since the different focuses were wide-spread enough, few of the accounts we have produce enough overlap for us to iron out the inconsistencies.

The most maddening point in this, of course,[3] is in that best-known aspect of Constantine’s life: religion. Specifically his conversion to Christianity. For this set of stories we must go to Eusebius – which is a lot like going to Glenn Beck to ask what’s going on with gold futures – and Lactantius, a combination that is problematic in its own right.

Between the two we get three separate accounts of Constantine’s vision before the Battle of the Milvian Bridge.

The best-known account of Constantine’s moment of revelation comes from Eusebius’s Life of Constantine, a panegyric to Constantine.[4] He mentions a vision seen in the sky of a cross above the sun with the inscription “Hoc Vince” (Conquer by This). According to Eusebius the entire army saw the vision and Constantine swore to him an oath that it had actually happened.

According to Lactantius – who was probably in the best position to get the story from Constantine's own mouth, as he was Constantine’s son’s tutor at the time – the important moment came in a dream, where Constantine was directed to place the chi-rho on the shields of his soldiers. In the Life of Constantine, Eusebius added that the next day Jesus hisownself showed up and told Constantine to make it in to a banner, and the labarum was created.

In Eusebius’s Ecclesiastical History, meanwhile, which also mentions the Battle of the Milvian Bridge, Eusebius doesn’t mention a damn thing about Constantine’s vision. No cross in the sky. No dream. No nothing.

John Julius Norwich is quite a bit kinder to Eusebius than I tend to be on this topic. After pointing out that it’s quite impossible to believe such an impressive event as the sign Constantine and his entire army witnessed before the battle went unmentioned until Eusebius’s panegyric, Norwich gets down to the business of trying to answer an important question: if it didn’t happen, why did Constantine suddenly switch to Christianity? More importantly, did he actually make a full conversion? He comes up with a pretty impressive series of arguments on the topic, so I’m more than willing to allow him to take the floor for a bit. With commentary, for the record.

There are indications that Constantine had been in a state of grave religious uncertainty since the execution of his father-in-law Maximian two years before, and was increasingly tending towards monotheism: after 310 his coins depict, in place of the old Roman deities, one god only – Helios, or as he was more generally known, Sol Invictus, the Unconquered Sun – of whom Constantine also claimed to have had a vision some years before, while fighting in Gaul. Yet this faith too – by now the most popular and widespread in the entire Empire – seems to have left him unsatisfied.[5]

As far as a snapshot of an individual ripe for conversion goes, Norwich takes a pretty good picture. To that he adds this tidbit:

Eusebius tells how, on his journey in to Italy, knowing that he was shortly to fight the most important battle of his life – that on which is whole future career would depend – he prayed fervently for some form of divine revelation.[6]

In this I’m willing to take Eusebius more-or-less at his word. It’s one of those weird cases where even if Eusebius had a reason to lie, that which we know happened is goofy and unexplainable enough otherwise that we might as well go with it. Seeing as how, “He was unsettled and looking desperately for answers,” seems a pretty reasonable lead-in to, “He suddenly decided to go with the whole Jesus thing.” Of course, Eusebius ended up going with the whole Road to Damascus apologetics theater bit, which is a bit overblown, but we’ll give him his moment of glory.

Robin Lane Fox paints an overall more sordid picture of this moment in Pagans & Christians. He points out the superstitious armies of the period wouldn’t march without the blessing of a priest and posits that none of the available pagan priests would have been willing to bless Constantine’s rebellion. An enterprising Christian bishop, according to this theory, then showed up and said, “I’ll do it.” And thus was history made.[7] I have several problems with this line of argumentation. But to explain, well, I have to explain the Tetrarchy.

In 285 the Emperor Diocletian declared Maximian his co-emperor. This was strictly for pragmatic reasons. The Empire was huge, unwieldy, and beginning to disintegrate from the pressure of barbarian tribes without and civil difficulties within. The lack of communication that could move any faster than a boat at sea or horse on land added to these stresses. Further, Emperors had a tendency to need to be at the point of crisis, which was a tough sell if the Emperor happened to be in Gaul when something bad happened in Iconium. The solution, quite simply, was to have two emperors.

Even this solution didn’t seem to help, though. Eight years later Diocletian added two more emperors, dividing the offices in to senior (Augustus) and junior (Caesar). Maximian’s praetorian prefect, Constantius, was elevated to the level of Caesar and campaigned in Gaul while his son, Constantine, fought in the East under Diocletian, but was considered a prime candidate to follow in his father’s footsteps.[8] While in Nicomedia Constantine got a first-hand look at Diocletian’s Great Persecution of the Christians. But I shall leave persecutions and martyrs alone for now.

The main problem Constantine had was the taint of illegitimacy. Constantius dumped Constantine’s mother Helena (who may or may not have been his wife) for Maximian’s stepdaughter Theodora upon taking his place as Caesar. Bastard sons of junior emperors don’t have the easiest path to power, and Constantine was no exception. It didn’t much help that upon his promotion to Augustus the other Caesar, Galerius, did his level-headed best to get Constantine killed in battle.

That’s another fun moment. Diocletian stepped down and declared Constantius and Galerius the new co-Augusti. Everyone thought that Constantine and Maxentius (Maximian’s son) would be declared the co-Caesars. But Galerius managed to convince Diocletian to appoint his supporters to that position. It was then that Galerius tried to get Constantine to conveniently impale himself on a barbarian spear.

Constantine instead managed to get leave to head West. Constantius died in Britain, but not before declaring his son to be his successor as Augustus. Galerius instead promoted Severus, the current Caesar, to Augustus and made Constantine Caesar.

At this point Maxentius revolted. Maximian traveled to Gaul and offered Constantine his daughter’s hand and the title of Augustus in return for support. Galerius, meanwhile, sent Severus against Maxentius…with an army comprised mainly of Maximian’s old troops. This did not end well for Severus.

Galerius finally intervened fully and attempted to put an end to the whole thing. Somehow or other it resulted in Galerius calling both Constantine and Maximian “Augustus” even after promoting Licinius to the position of Augustus of the West. Maxentius, meanwhile, was in charge of a good chunk of Italy, including Rome itself, but had no official standing amongst the chorus of emperors.

Eventually Galerius died. The East was unstable, Maxentius still held Rome, and the most powerful and popular individual in the Empire was Constantine, who held Gaul, Britain, and Spain.

Maxentius, meanwhile, had been making himself extremely unpopular in Italy. One of the actions he took in an attempt to get a small but growing section of the population of Rome was to allow the Christians to elect a new leader: Eusebius.[9] This later backfired, Maxentius kicked him out, and the Christians ended up being just as pissed at Maxentius as everyone else was.

Still, Constantine’s advisors and his people in charge of reading the signs told him that moving against Maxentius was a bad idea. Maxentius was entrenched, controlled a much larger army than Constantine could muster, and had already held off Severus and Galerius. Constantine decided to move anyway.

It is in this context that we can now go back to Constantine’s Damascus Road moment before the Milvian Bridge. Norwich seems to largely ignore this larger context of Constantine’s campaign and focus on the man’s internal conflict. Lane Fox (at least, from the most comprehensive review I’ve read, which is not the best way of interpreting an idea…but I’m going to go with it) seems to have well underestimated Constantine’s popularity and flat-out misrepresented the relative levels of legitimacy enjoyed by Constantine and Maxentius. So I’ll propose a third path.

Constantine was an opportunist and a shameless manipulator. His use of religion (which I’ll hit in great detail in the next post) shows that he was willing to use belief as a tool for manipulation time and time again. He had already discarded Mars as a patron in favor of Sol Invictus for reasons that can only be seen as selfishly manipulative. It’s not hard to imagine that he would be willing to discard Sol Invictus for Jesus if he thought that would give him an advantage.

What that advantage is, though, is open to interpretation. When he decided to take advantage is an even bigger mystery. Eusebius’s own Ecclesiastical History mentions nothing about a conversion moment at the Milvian Bridge. Lactantius does, but he didn’t make his record until a couple years later.

Meanwhile, Constantine’s own actions after winning at the Milvian Bridge and taking Rome leave open to interpretation just how serious his conversion really was. And now that I have handled the political reality, I shall leave the religious aspect for next time. Hopefully in doing so I’ll be able to paint as complete a picture as possible.

------------------------------

[1]Byzantium was, in fact, a story with much symmetry. The first Roman Emperor to rule in Constantinople was a Constantine born of Helena. The last Roman Emperor to rule in Constantinople was a Constantine born of Helena. This actually freaked a lot of Byzantines out during that final siege of Mehmet. It would end the way it began, they said. Constantly looking for omens, the Byzantines were. Religion and superstition go hand-in-hand more often than not, after all.

[2]The race to the bottom of that category is basically between Constantine and Alexander the Great. The Alexandrian vulgate is slightly smaller and slightly farther removed in time, but it also comes across as being somewhat more reliable and comprehensive for reasons that I will be covering in places that are not this footnote. Let’s just say for the sake of argument that I trust Plutarch or Arrian to have more faithfully attested to things that happened four centuries before they were born than Eusebius to tell the truth about what he ate for breakfast.

[3]And I say “of course” in a weary, “Of course it would be here,” sense, not in an, “Of course you already know this,” sense.

[4]This, in and of itself, is problematic. Panegyrics are basically formalized eulogies, meant to be effusive in praise and not necessarily truthful.

[5]John Julius Norwich, Byzantium: the Early Centuries (New York: Alfred A Knopf, 2007), p 42

[6]Ibid.

[7]At least this is what I’ve been told. Again, I didn’t actually read much of the book. (Fixed. Thanks, Colleen.)

[8]There’s a weird interplay between meritocracy and hereditary rule in Rome and Byzantium. Hopefully I’ll be able to get in to it more fully later. Suffice it to say that the Empire was a hereditary dictatorship when a family was established and a meritocracy based on acclamation by the army when one wasn’t. And sometimes it was just a place where the army got worked up in to a lather and put someone on the throne for the hell of it. Honestly, it’s a wonder Rome and Byzantium survived as long as they did…

[9]Not the historian.

Letting Go: a Sort of Coda

2010-07-26T23:48:00.002-05:00

The thing that’s struck me time and again as I’ve wandered through my own life story over the last couple years is that I seem to be in love with the past. I don’t mean that in the way that I’m a historian and I love to endlessly learn about the past. I mean that I’m in love with where I used to be. It’s why I think it was both inevitable and astute that I latched on to the story of me and Her to try to figure out so much of where I’d been.

When I moved down to Dallas I had a brief uptick in thinking about Her. The voice that tries to scream about Her in my head was also the one doing its best to keep my plans on track to go back to Chicago last weekend.

The reason for this is simple, really. I focused what little ability I have to be nostalgic in to a specific set of memories that revolve around her. She fits in to a sort of idealized version of a past that’s no longer accessible, in much the way that she once fit in to an idealized idea of the future that I knew was impossible to achieve.

On one level that’s terrible. It locked me in a sort of stasis loop. When I start to break out of it the occasional random external stimulus seems to throw me right back in.

On another level, though, it’s brilliant. If I do say so myself…

See, I learn very slowly the things that matter most in life. When it comes to facts, figures, and philosophy I pick up on tidbits and theories extremely quickly. When it comes to life and love I generally need to learn a lesson three or four times to get it, assuming I ever do. If something goes wrong I have a bad habit of attempting to withdraw from the world, learn as much as I can, then step back out of my cocoon.

And this works just fine for me. I’m quite good at being alone. I like being alone, perhaps too much. Often I’ll find myself in a place that’s full of noise and light and color and people and movement and life and think it’s fantastic. Then I’ll go home and get in to my bed alone and be perfectly fine with that.

At some point in the night I’ll wonder if there’s not something more I should want. By the time the sun rises, though, that question has usually disappeared. When that happens I suppose that I could go through my entire life exactly as I am today without ever knowing the difference.

But every once in a while something happens. There’s a moment, an epiphany, if you will. In that instance I realize that all of those things I’m usually content to consign to sleepy two AM thoughts actually matter, actually make life worth living.

It happened most recently with a girl in red at a Roger Clyne & the Peacemakers show. Nothing came of that instance, but it served as a signpost. It served as a reminder.

There was a time I wandered around Millennium Park, aware of nothing except my thoughts of Her.

That moment was the one I was always trying to re-capture, even after I knew that all the things I wanted would never happen. After that, well, after that came a string of first dates that never become second encounters. After that came a series of forced and awkward encounters. I began to wonder if I would ever meet anyone who made me feel like I did that first few weeks with her again. I began to wonder if I would ever let myself.

Oddly, I think it’s good that nothing came of the chance meeting with the girl in red. I think I just needed that moment to jolt me out of my past, shock my system, let me know it’s entirely possible to move forward. Remind me to keep looking.

Because this, I think, is where the brilliance of the whole thing kicks in. Even as I was attempting to remember all of the time spent with her in sepia tones, I could not get out of acknowledging one simple fact:

That relationship, such as it was, was nearly a year and a half worth of complete and total suck. Period. Full stop.

My main problem in figuring that out is that I was always focused on trying to fix it, make it so it didn’t have to be that way. Try as I might, though, I could never, ever silence the quiet, nagging suspicion that there could be no repairs, that there shouldn’t have been any attempts at repair. Some things simply cannot and should not be fixed.

But I wanted to hold on because I didn’t know what else to do. I then wanted to go back because I didn’t know what else to do.

The solution to that problem is so simple and obvious that I had to learn it on the fourth try after wasting an awful lot of years of my life.

Stop thinking about Chicago. Stop thinking about her.

Go to Fort Worth. I might run in to a girl in red.

Or I might not.

But, at the very least, I’ll be out doing stuff, opening myself to possibilities. And the more possibilities there are, the less time there is to think about what never was.

The Day I Let Go

2010-07-26T20:45:00.000-05:00

Good news can be so unkind
When it's everything you have to leave behind
I'm lookin' forward to lookin' back
On this day

In the taillights
So much hindsight
Telling me what I already know
I know
--Over the Rhine, “Lookin’ Forward”

I circled the weekend of July 23rd-25th on my calendar a couple weeks ago. Well, that’s not entirely true. I metaphorically circled the weekend. The actual calendar where I write down upcoming events of note just says “Lost Imigrants Ft. Worth.” I was having an argument with spelling that day and I lost.

I woke up a couple Sundays ago, looked at everything on my plate, and decided, “I think that it’s about time for me to make my triumphant return to Chicago. Work seemed to have slowed down enough to allow the indulgence of a long weekend. It would be a good chance to head back to Chicago, say hello to the family, bum around Millennium Park, eat some deep dish. You know, do all the things that make Chicago home.

There was also the added benefit that Pat Ryan was going to be at the Celtic Knot on Sunday. This would most definitely assure the presence of any number of storytellers and the opportunity to share some good food, some good times, and some good stories. Dallas, to the best of my knowledge, is completely lacking a place like the Celtic Knot that can serve as a destination and meeting place of storytellers.

I genuinely miss having that sort of place. I really do very little in the way of storytelling stuff down here. Part of that, admittedly, has been my own crazy schedule. But there’s really nothing I’ve found that forces me to incorporate storytelling in to my schedule like I had in Chicago. It was possible to do a different storytelling event every week at least. And there was always Storytelling in the Snug at the Celtic Knot.

The Celtic Knot, of course, is where it all began for me.

Some places act as nexuses in life, I suppose. In myth and legend they’re spoken of as “World Trees.” The world revolves around them, the key events happen in their shade. The Hero’s Journey always seems to involve a trip to, from, or to and back again.

In Norse myth the World Tree is Yggdrasil. It’s roots are in the underworld, its branches in the realm of the gods. It connects the various worlds that comprise the Norse universe.

If I may be free to mix a few metaphors, the Celtic Knot functioned as my Yggdrasil. It was there that I met a lot of storytellers. It was there that I learned about upcoming events. It was there that I learned about storytelling in the first place.

I was excited to have a chance to go back.

Then at the beginning of last week I started planning all of my other Chicago-related travels for the rest of the year. Labor Day. A week in October. Thanksgiving. Christmas. Add to that my parents coming down for a visit during that stretch.

All of the sudden one weekend in July seemed like such a bother.

I wish I could explain. I really do. I try and fail to put in to words exactly how that felt.

It was like the world had ended and I had only just caught up. From the moment I arrived in Dallas I was intellectually aware of the fact that I was far away from Chicago. But it was never that far. I could always go back.

Now I was doing a cost-benefit analysis and Chicago was losing.

The fact that I even did a cost-benefit analysis meant Chicago had lost.

So I did what I do. I went to Fort Worth. I went to Kohl’s and bought a couple new shirts. I played some GTA IV. I watched Doctor Who.

I find it increasingly difficult to hate Dallas. It’s not like it’s Dallas’s fault it’s not Chicago.

And I’ve had some good times here. But I think I’ve managed to muddle through by not having to think about just how far I am from home. It’s an easy enough task when you’re able to occupy your time and constantly working on getting past the newest, most immediate problem.

But, then, for a moment everything falls away. For a moment realization hits home, sinks in.

And, all of the sudden, I realize how far I am from my World Tree.

In the dark, though, in the deep, dark, pushed down bits of my soul, I have to admit there’s something else.

You have to be crazy
To try to hold on to
What we can’t get back
No matter what we do
--Zack Walther & the Cronkites, “Tumbleweed”

There’s one more world that connects to my World Tree.

It’s the world that contains the story of all that was, all that wasn’t, all that was never to be.

I love stories, but at the same time I hate them. Because the best thing and the worst thing about the story is one and the same. All stories come to an end. Each book begins with a moment of hope and a moment of sadness. Each page brings with it joy and mourning. There is a whole new world, a whole new creation. But each step taken through that world is a step towards the end.

You can read the same book twice. I often do. Each journey through the old story tells me how far I’ve progressed or regressed in my own.

But no journey is ever the same as the first. Each time after the story is begun with the end a known factor. The journey is not – cannot – be as fresh and exciting. And even if all’s well that ends well, it still ends. It’s the end that’s the most bittersweet, most unbearable of all.

There’s that one story that connects to my World Tree. There’s that one story where the last painful months played out with the World Tree as the only place where remote happiness could be achieved. If that story could be restarted anywhere, the World Tree is the place.

A dark, mad little corner of my mind tries to remind me of that from time to time. It used to happen all the time. When I moved that voice fell silent.

When I considered going back it started up again, chattering away in the back corners of my mind. It spoke nonsense, gibberish. It tried to tell me what I wanted to hear without knowing that I didn’t want to hear it any more.

At times it was about how the story didn’t end. At others it was a tale of spite and vengeance, saying, “Look at me now. Now go fuck yourself.”

When I decided not to go back to Chicago it was that voice that screamed the loudest. While I spent five months angry that voice had to say very little. While I spent a month realizing the move what okay that voice could get no purchase.

In the moment I realized, finally, just how far I was from the place I still call “home,” the voice realized it no longer has power.

And I’ll take this wheel at 10 and 2
Grip it with all my might
And on the dash a picture of you
And I’ll drive you out of my life
I’ll take you to the end with me
And leave you in the dust
Drive you out until I free
This old heart of memories and rust
--Lost Immigrants, “Memories and Rust”

Friday night I found myself in Fort Worth, a thousand miles from the place I wanted to be.

I wasn’t angry, though. I wasn’t even sad.

The little voice in the back of my head was screaming at me, but I know how to fight it. Music soothes the savage beast, after all. And that voice has had the center stage for far, far too long.

Some stories, as it turns out, need to end.

Some branches need to fall off the World Tree. Especially those that have already withered and died.

See, there’s one great thing about the fact that stories end.

There’s always another one to be found.

You just have to put the old one down and start looking for the next.

AtF: Descent in to Madness*

2010-07-25T23:04:00.001-05:00

So I was seriously considering not doing After the Flood tonight. I just wasn’t, y’know, feeling it. It’s hard to feel After the Flood, really. Also, I spent the entire day watching Doctor Who, which really sapped my enthusiasm for being reminded that Brits are also capable of creating things with absolutely zero redeeming value.

I decided that I was going to open the new chapter and see what I felt.

About five seconds later I was saying, “Oh, for fuck’s sake!” So here we are, doing After the Flood. For fuck’s sake.

Chapter 6 is called “The Descent of the Anglo-Saxon Kings.” It’s about…are you ready? The Anglo-Saxons. No, srsly.

Cooper starts out with a high school history paper introduction (he’s quite good at those).

It would not be difficult to go out and buy literally hundreds of books that deal with the history of the Saxons in England. It is a fascinating and popular subject, and the market abounds with books ranging from the seriously academic to 'coffee-table' books filled with pictures of Anglo-Saxon weaponry and other relics.

I don’t really have a problem with this. I just put it there so we can laugh at it. Oh, also because one teeny little bit of it is going to be kind of important in a few seconds. Because, see, Cooper does that thing he does where he manages to transfer from “pedantic but benign” to “oh, for fuck’s sake!” over the course of a paragraph. At least he got in a full sentence this time around.

Virtually all the popular works on the subject begin with the middle of the 5th century AD when the Saxons began to migrate to this country from their continental homes. Some books may even refer briefly to those continental homes in order to demonstrate to the reader that the Anglo-Saxons did not simply materialise but actually came from somewhere real. But that is virtually the only mention that is given to the pre-migration history of the Saxons. All that came before, we are left to assume, is lost in the mists of antiquity, and the pre-migration history of the Saxons is simply left as a blank page. Now why should this be?

Ooooh, I know this one! Because we don’t know a whole hell of a lot about the Angles, the Jutes, or the Saxons? Illiterate Germanic tribes weren’t big on the whole record keeping thing, after all.

There’s also that bit about how Cooper starts out talking about getting books about the Saxons that are limited in scope to the Saxon emigration to Britain. Now, take it from me, when you’re doing history you have to figure out how to limit yourself.

I, for instance, once did a series of posts about battleships. I originally wanted to write a post or two about a specific battleship. But I realized that in order to write about that one specific battleship I would have to explain how battleships came in to being. Then I realized that the story was only half over by the time we reached the USS Texas, so I had to carry it on to the end. Still, I limited myself in that I only talked about non-battleship developments if they were necessary and only as they related (the development of the cruiser from the jeune ecole’s long-range surface raider to the protected cruiser to the light cruiser/heavy cruiser split in WWII to the modern cruisers we see today, for instance, is probably quite fascinating. And it had absolutely nothing to do with anything).

I’m currently working on a series of posts about Byzantium. It’s lead to much discussion about the topic.

Anyway, the point is, if you’re going to write about the Saxons in Britain, it’s a really good idea to limit your topic of conversation to the Saxons in Britain. It’s also really, really easy to do that. We know they came from the continent. We know they were Germanic tribes. We don’t know much else. So if you slap on a quick introduction that basically says that, then you can go on to talk about what they did to Britain after moving.

That, of course, doesn’t mean that there aren’t plenty of works out there about the Germanic tribes in northern Europe. Some of those works might even be covered in the list of hundreds that Cooper just casually tosses out. We, of course, don’t know this because he used the high school history paper introduction.

Now, I’ve probably tossed some variation on the term “high school paper introduction” out during this project. I don’t know if I’ve ever actually properly discussed it, since it seems like the sort of thing that goes without saying. Of course, the high school history paper introduction often says thing that seem to be the sort of thing that goes without saying. So, yeah…

Either way, I’m sure anyone who was forced to write a paper or an essay back in high school knows how much of a pain in the ass they are. You’re handed a topic, like the development of agricultural practices in the Fertile Crescent. You don’t care about the development of agricultural practices in the Fertile Crescent. You’ll never care about the development of agricultural practices in the Fertile Crescent. And if you do get an A on a paper about agricultural practices in the Fertile Crescent the head cheerleader won’t fall madly in love with you and make out with you, so why the fuck should you care?[1]

If you’re a smart high school student you’ll know a few things. First, you’ll know that there’s a format your teacher is looking for. I was taught you need an introduction with three points and a thesis statement, three body paragraphs which covered each of those three points, and a conclusion that re-stated the thesis sentence.

If you can come up with three points and a thesis you’re 90% of the way there. But in order to really make that grade you need a whiz-bang introduction statement. It should be something that’s vague but on topic. It should be something that’s catchy. It doesn’t have to be cited, since it won’t be graded, so you can also get away with some flowery (and space filling) prose. If all else (and I mean ALL ELSE) fails, it can include, “Webster’s Dictionary states that…”

You’re much better off stating the complexity of the problem, though. Or the fact that everyone in the world is really, really interested in learning about the development of agriculture in the Fertile Crescent. So if you’re smart enough to not define agriculture according to the handiest dictionary, you’ll probably end up with something like, “Everyone can agree that human society would not be where it is today without the development of agriculture in the Fertile Crescent.”

High schoolers can get away with that sort of utter crap. If you try to pass it through in a three or four hundred level history course, well, you’re basically going to get graded down. And your professor will probably take it as a sign that the rest of your thinking is equally as sloppy and sophomoric.

And if you attempt to write a book, chances are you’re going to be self-publishing on the internet for some snarky asshole to dissect at a later point in time.[3]

Point is, Cooper tossed out a statistic (hundreds of books) to defend his point (they don’t talk about a topic that he says they should). We have absolutely no way of checking this, though, because he’s just making the sweeping generalizations we’d expect out of a high school history class and not someone who is, theoretically, serious and educated about the study of history. Of course, we know that Bill Cooper is not actually particularly educated or serious about the study of history, so that makes sense. Especially when we get to the conclusion of his high school introductory paragraph.

Is it because the Saxons themselves left no record of what came before? Or, as in the case of the early Britons, is it because what the Saxons did have to say about their own past, runs counter to the modernist creed?

Can Bill Cooper ever take Option 1? No, of course he can’t. We always have to go through the looking glass in to Crazy Cooper Conspiracy World[4] where illiterate societies left perfect records going all the way back to the Bible itself, but the evil modernists have taken it upon themselves to destroy all records and make the baby Jesus cry or whatever the hell it is that those of us who understand history were doing while he was eating tree bark during recess.[5]

After this random vomitus, Cooper tosses up one of his sweet, sweet genealogies. Apparently it was written by the Saxons. And apparently it goes all the way back to Noah. As proof, he offers two quotes from the year 1600 and “evidence” in the form of the fact that the Saxons’ favorite book of the Bible was Genesis.

No. Seriously. I’m beginning to see this as the plot to some novel or horror movie (like, I dunno, House of Leaves or any number of Stephen King novels or something) where the reader is actually watching a character slowly go from engaged in a fascinating puzzle to bugnuts fucking crazy. Cooper just gets nuttier with every chapter.

But we’ll get to that next time.

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[1]Stupid high school.

[2]Interestingly enough, that’s still basically a useful format. I mean, it requires hefty modification to be properly used outside of a high school classroom, but the format fits. That’s probably why they taught it.

[3]Yeah. I went there.

[4]I tried to come up with a full alliteration for that. Nothing struck me.

[5]I’m mean tonight. Probably because I’m out of bourbon. Yeah, that’s right. I’m a mean drunk of a historian, but I’m also a mean sober historian. In completely unrelated news, I’m also single.

*Totally unrelated to, well, anything: the movie Descent was on the station formerly known as "Sci-Fi" today. I've never watched the movie for more than about a minute and have no intention of ever watching the movie. But the description on the DirecTV guide was something about a woman plotting her revenge against a rapist, which fascinated me because it looked like a movie about a bunch of women in a cave, and from half-remembered previews from the better part of a decade ago, I think they ended up being chased by...y'know, cave things. So I looked it up on IMDb. There were four different descriptions, none of which agreed with each other and none of which seemed to have anything to do with the movie as I understand it.

What the hell is up with that? Is Descent like the Doctor's magic pad, where people look at it and see whatever they want? Because I have to admit, I looked at it and saw Doctor Who, but that's just because I then pressed play on, well, Doctor Who...

Byzantine Logic, Part 1: Already Off Track

2010-07-22T20:27:00.001-05:00

It is impossible to open up a discussion about the Byzantine Empire without talking about Constantinople. It’s impossible to discuss Constantinople without talking about Constantine the Great. And, of course, it’s impossible to discuss Constantine the Great without talking about Christianity.

Here are, in no particular order, the five things best known about Constantine the Great:

1. He founded Constantinople.
2. He was the first Christian Emperor.
3. He ended the persecution of Christians.
4. He started his move for control of the Roman Empire as the lowest of the four Emperors.
5. He won the Battle of the Milvian Bridge after being told he’d win under the sign of the cross.

In order to properly understand these five things, though, we need to go back quite a bit farther. Specifically to Alexander the Great’s invasion of the Levant. But, since this is me, I’m actually going to go back to the very beginning of civilization.

Standard operating procedure for invasion and conquest in the ancient world was to assimilate a conquered culture in to an empire. This was by no means simple, but it was still reasonably easy. Armies were usually small and comprised of society’s elite, due to the fact that only those with money could afford the necessary equipment. For most people, then, a foreign invasion and occupation didn’t actually change much of anything. They were simply paying their taxes to a different ruler.

Moreover, cultural assimilation was a fairly simple thing. If you consider ancient Mesopotamia, the various cultures in the area largely grew from a common stock. Successive waves of imperial change didn’t really mean much at all when it came to cultural shifts. It’s not until we see empires from different areas clashing that we really begin to see massive shifts.

By this I basically mean the Persians.[1] The Babylonians did it to a certain extent, and Cyrus the Great probably learned a few things from them, but the Babylonians had nothing on their conquerors.

Then, of course, we have the whirlwind world tour of Alexander the Great. He didn’t just bring conquest, he brought culture. The post-Alexander world was Hellenized. Alexander founded cities and colonies and convinced his new subjects that they were better off taking on a new culture. This was largely done through religion, of all things.

Polytheistic societies are largely accepting of external gods. If you can handle your own massive pantheon, the idea of some other pantheon is that much easier to accept. Moreover, pantheons are largely separated in to the same categories. There’s the chief, the one who handles war, the one who handles the hearth, the trickster, etc. So the Greeks showed up and said, “Hey, you’ve got these gods. They look a lot like our gods. How’s about we combine them?”

It worked. In most cases.

The big exception, we discover without much surprise, was ancient Israel. The independent, monotheistic Jewish residents of that land had no truck with polytheism. They caused a lot of trouble. Not really for Alexander, but certainly for the Seleucids and the Ptolemys.

When the Romans came to the Levant, in fact, Israel was independent. The Maccabean Revolt had allowed the Jewish people to cast off foreign occupation and no one really wanted to mess around with them any more. It wasn’t until the Romans showed up that anyone could. And even the Romans were careful with Israel. Rome basically claimed suzerainty over Israel without claiming full sovereignty.[2] Rome wasn’t really making that arrangement any more by the time they put Herod the Great in charge. But there were some thorny issues with Israel.

Basically, Rome asked its subjects to do three things: pay taxes, accept the Roman pantheon, and worship the Emperor. The Jews weren’t big fans of the first one and refused to do either of the other two. The Roman authorities had very few options to deal with that. They could withdraw, but that would be a major black eye. They could try to force it, but that would require tying up a lot of resources in a tiny corner of the Empire. So the best option was to make the Jews an exception, play up the suzerain theater aspect of the whole thing, and go on about their business. This worked for a bit over a century.

Then two things happened: the Bar Kochba Revolt and the emergence of Christianity.

The Bar Kochba Revolt is basically completely outside of the scope of this particular project. The emergence of Christianity, however, is kind of important. So we shall speak no more about the former and go in to great detail about the latter.

The issue of Christianity as an offshoot of Judaism is a complicated topic at best.[3] The Jewish folk, as we all know, wanted none of it. Some Christian factions[4] would have been plenty happy getting rid of the Jews. But they still wanted the deal that the Jews had with the Romans where they didn’t have to do the whole worshiping the Emperor thing. The Romans, meanwhile, looked at the whole god the father and god the son and random indwelling spirit thing and said, “You know what this looks a lot like? Polytheism.”[5]

And, at the very least, the Romans realized that the Christian thing didn’t have a whole hell of a lot to do with Judaism. So they considered Christians to fall under the same set of rules that all the non-Jewish Roman subjects did. This was a major bone of contention, since the Christians didn’t want to and the Romans didn’t give a rat’s ass what the Christians thought either way. There was a dangerous precedence forming, after all.

Now, there is a certain amount of wild speculation here. Quite frankly, I’m simply seeing some threads coming together, but to the best of my knowledge there is very little to no scholarship on this particular subject. I strongly suspect that it would be rather difficult to study, as we don’t have much in the way of original source documents on the expansion of Christianity. The most famous documents, of course, are the Pauline Epistles, but Paul’s mention of rival factions is always for the purpose of winning people over to his version of orthodoxy[6] and not for the benefit of the historian many generations removed.

The closest thing I can think of to a work that would have considered this is Robin Lane Fox’s Pagans & Christians. Unfortunately, my knowledge of that particular book is limited to a review, an abstract, and that time I started reading it because I was fascinated by said review and abstract, but found it so tedious and boring that I could barely pick it up. I keep thinking I should go back and try again, but then I realize that my paint hasn’t peeled yet and I should really keep an eye on that. Also, lest any doubt remains in your mind, I harbor no intention of submitting this series as a thesis in an accredited Masters’ program…

Anyway, there’s a certain significance to the idea of getting the get out of worshiping the Emperor free card. It has surprisingly little to do with integrity and everything to do with persecution.

Ancient religion was communal (which isn’t to say that modern religion isn’t, but the idea of having a personal relationship with Jupiter is significantly more laughable than the idea that I have a personal relationship with Barack Obama. It’s not just that things don’t work like that, it’s that the world wasn’t designed to work that way) to an extreme. Every city had its patron deity, every nation its pantheon, every season its particular gods. If there was feast it meant the gods were pleased. If there was famine it meant they were pissed. Armies refused to march if they believed the portents indicated the gods were against them. Religion was, in short, a big deal.

Since religion was communal, that meant that pleasing the gods was the responsibility of all people in the community. Those who didn’t pull their own weight were asking the gods to reign down destruction on everyone.[7] They were, by definition, enemies of the people and the state. Those who did not participate were justifiably (given the parameters) hated by the rest of society. They also created instability, so it was in the government’s interest to do something about it.

With the Jews it was largely possible to let them have their special dispensation and look the other way. Israel was a tiny corner of the Empire. Even though the Jewish people had spread, there weren’t that many of them and they weren’t interested in expansion so much as maintaining their purity as the Chosen People. They could be left to their weird rituals, as they’d already proven themselves an adamant, troublesome lot even in the best of times, but they were a tiny and insular troublesome lot.

Christianity, however, was not interested in staying isolated. In its expansionism, coupled with its insistence on getting preferential treatment, Christianity presented itself as a clear threat to the stability of the Roman Empire. So the Empire treated Christians as it would any dissenting, potentially destabilizing force. I speak, of course, of the persecution of Christians.

I’ve already gone way farther than I want to without actually getting to the starting line, so I’ll have to leave most of this until next time, especially since I’ll actually get to Constantine the Great, which will allow me to explain in excruciating detail how much I absolutely despise Eusebius. But I can’t leave on a complete cliffhanger, so I’ll say this:

There was absolutely nothing special about the persecution of Christians.

The Roman authorities saw Christianity as a potentially destabilizing force in exactly the same way it saw criminals and revolutionaries as a destabilizing force. The only reason we’re lead to believe the stories of the Christian martyrs are special is because we have a lot of them. And they’re mostly torture porn, which is always a popular genre for reasons I do not and never will understand.[8]

Consider, however, the most famous story of Roman brutality that didn’t make the Bible: the story of Spartacus. His revolt seriously threatened the stability of the Roman Republic. When the rebels were finally brought to heel the 6000 survivors were crucified along the Appian Way in a line stretching from Rome to Capua. The Romans did not mess around.[9] And they really didn’t like dissent.

Now if y'all don't mind, I'm going to wrap this up and head out. I hear The Criminal Kind is doing a show in Dallas.

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[1]Interestingly enough, although the great centers of civilization are Egypt, Mesopotamia, the Indus River Valley, and China, we really only see civilizations clashing on epic scales in the Middle East. China and India were simply too isolated, and managed to develop without too much outside pressure.

Egypt, too, was protected by the Sinai Peninsula on one side and the Sahara on the other. During the early stages of empire development no one messed with Egypt, so it was able to develop fairly peacefully. By the time there was a sufficient external pressure, Egypt’s reputation was enough to scare off most enemies. The Hittites were the first to really threaten Egypt, but it wasn’t until the Pesians that an external force could bring Egypt to heel. Of course, the Archaemenids swept all before them over the course of about fifty years and held their borders for over two centuries.

This makes it all the more impressive that a twenty-something general from an upstart Greek city-state managed to humiliate the Persian Empire over the course of just a few years.

[2]New word time, everyone. Gather round!

A sovereign, as we all know (hopefully), is a ruler who has complete control over a given society. A suzerain is an external ruler who has control over a client state’s external relations and to whom is owed a tribute and troops when necessary. The suzerain’s client state still has theoretical autonomy within its own borders.

In the case of Israel and Rome, the Roman Empire ruled Israel as a client state, which was a fairly common arrangement in the early going for the Roman Republic, but didn’t so much happen later. There was a Roman governmental body that, theoretically, ruled alongside a self-governing Jewish state apparatus. That particular Jewish ruler, however, was basically a puppet. The first Jewish king to rule in this way was Herod the Great. The Roman Senate declared him the “King of the Jews.”

And suddenly a bunch of details in the Gospels make a hell of a lot more sense. There’s nothing particularly earth-shattering, just a lot of stuff where it’s like, “Oh, hey, I get it now…”

[3]In case anyone’s wondering, right before I wrote that particular sentence I paused, then took a deep breath while my brain let out a long, “Fuuuuuuuuck.” This is not an easy topic to handle quickly.

[4]They weren’t, of course, referred to as “Christians” right off the bat. But for the sake of simplicity…

[5]This, by the by, puts a whole different spin on a lot of the early arguments over the nature of Jesus and the emerging doctrine of the Trinity. If the focal point of the issue stops being, “How do we properly understand the nature of god?” and starts being, “How do we get around those pesky Roman laws and not get our heads chopped off?” a lot of rather esoteric arguments begin to make perfect sense. For instance, the arguments over whether it’s necessary to adopt Jewish customs to be a proper follower of Jesus become purely secular. And the debates over whether Jesus was a god or a man or a man-god become about trying to maintain the sheen of monotheism in the face of skeptical outside observers.

So consider this possibility for the moment. The earliest doctrines of Christianity were formed in an attempt to do one thing: convince Rome to allow them to have the same deal as the Jews where they didn’t have to worship the Emperor. This doesn’t negate Christianity, but it certainly makes the story more complicated.

[6]I actually owe a debt to a Presbyterian minister for this particular insight. It basically goes like this: there were a bunch of different people with a bunch of different attitudes about what the whole Jesus thing meant. In the early years of Christianity there was no written account and the word spread in irregular waves through various people with their own interpretations, motivations, and motivations. Paul was the most persuasive of these and the best at arguing down dissent.

This, of course, doesn’t mean he was right. Consider Glenn Beck’s confusingly large following…

[7]This, again, operates in contrast to modern American Christianity. If I don’t buy in the damnation be on my own head. Although there are times we still get the flavor of that old time religion…

[8]Seriously. What are we up to now, Saw XIII?

[9]Crucifixion, of course, being a truly horrific form of capital punishment, the entire purpose of which was to be brutal and highly public so as to send a simple message: “Do not fuck with us. You will not like the results."

Although the most extreme example of this probably came in the 15th Century with Vlad Tepes, better known as Vlad the Impaler, and with good cause. In 1462 the Ottomans invaded Wallachia as part of a long-term conflict with Hungary (which, yes, I could go on at length about), only to find thousands of bodies, most of which were probably Turkish POWs, impaled on stakes along around Targoviste. It’s said that Mehmet II was so sickened that he turned back and left the invasion to a subordinate.

This is actually somewhat hard to believe, as just nine years earlier Mehmet had conquered Constantinople and seen any number of atrocities during that invasion. Whether the Sultan could handle it or not, the sight apparently freaked his army out and Vlad was able to win against stiff odds.

Byzantine Logic, an Introduction

2010-07-20T11:23:00.001-05:00

So the casual observer of this blog (you know who you are) might have noticed that I’m not really posting much these days. I’ve encountered a weird form of writer’s block. The problem isn’t writing. I can sit down and write a bunch of stuff, but it’s all formless crap, mostly because I find myself devolving in to random tangents and rants about stuff that I’m 99% sure no one else gives a crap about.

There’s really only one solution to this issue. I’m shutting this blog down.

I mean, when you run out of gas you buy a new car, right? That’s what I do.

Actually, I’ve decided to stop delaying the inevitable and start in on my multi-billion-part series on religious infighting in Byzantium.

The problem I’ve had with this project, as I’ve mentioned repeatedly, is scope. It needs to go from Constantine I hisownself to Constantine XI Palaialogos.[1] This period of time stretches across a period of more than 1100 years. In their own ways, the differences between Constantine the Great’s world and Constantine XI’s world are at least as legion as the differences between Constantine XI’s world and ours.

I’m only looking at a sub-set of Byzantine life, but that sub-set is religion. It is, quite literally, inextricable from the larger scope of Byzantine life, precisely because there has probably never in history been a more theologically-minded society. And there has never been more focus on more subtle and nuanced[2] theological points than there was in Constantinople. There were dozens of times in Byzantium’s history where Empire was crumbling around their heads while the people squabbled over whether Jesus was wholly god or wholly man.

It’s telling, I think, that Mehmet II took the city 557 years ago and the issue of Jesus’s divinity still hasn’t been fully settled.[3]

But in order to discuss the religious kerfuffles that ripped Byzantium apart, we must discuss the kerfuffles themselves. That means we need to talk about monthelitism and the Monophysites. We probably need to touch on the Nestorians.[4] I have to talk about the iconoclasts and the iconodules.

And, of course, I have to talk about the Great Schism. The East-West split in the Christian Church did far, far more damage to Byzantium, and the West as a whole, than even that most disastrous battle at Manzikert. In the end, too, the entire conflict was about three things: priestly celibacy, the use of unleavened bread, and the Filioque, a single word inserted in to the Nicene Creed by the Western faction of the church.

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Certain parts of this particular series of posts worry me in ways that extend far beyond questions of scope. The big one is that the question of Byzantium necessitates a discussion that basically boils down to East v. West in general and Muslim v. Christian in specific. Such is the nature of the struggle to keep Constantinople in Christian hands.

To many modern American eyes this question is, sadly, cut and dry. To most, Muslims are seen as a rapacious horde bent on the destruction of all that is good and noble and true. There are others, who generally constitute a small but extremely vocal minority, who would like to paint this issue as being just as black-and-white, but in the opposite direction, with an evil horde of Christian Crusaders descending on a formerly peaceful Middle Eastern world and setting off the ensuing wars that have lasted a thousand years.

Both of these views are wrong. Period. Full stop.

The Medieval world was both more tolerant and more brutal than we can imagine. That description applies equally to both sides. Plunder, pillage, and rape after a successful siege were a fact of life and the religious affiliations of the people who were on the inside of the walls mattered not a whit to those on the outside. Christians and Muslims often lived cheek to jowl, peacefully coexisting at some points and fighting violently at others, especially in place like Anatolia, Greece, and the Levant.

As the noose around Constantinople tightened the final few Emperors desperately looked for help from the West. The math was quite simple. The only help they could receive would come from the Catholic nations. The only way to get that help was to heal the Schism. Yet there were many in Constantinople who said that they would prefer submission to the lordship of a Sultan to that of a Pope.

In all honesty, I find myself hard-pressed to disagree. But I am not here to discuss whether Constantinople was better off as part of the Christian West or Muslim East. I am here to discuss why it fell. And in discussing why it fell the default assumption must be that the Byzantine Empire was better off as an independent Christian Empire than as a vassal and eventual conquered territory of the Ottoman Empire.

Furthermore, I am specifically looking at what the Byzantines were talking about when they should have been shoring up their frontiers and maintaining a strong command structure. This is the second big problem. We know what happened because history has already been written. We can also make judgment calls on whether something was worthwhile or not because we know that history and we can extrapolate cause and effect.

But those extrapolations and judgment calls are not the ironclad truth of the universe. We cannot reset history to the Council of Constantinople, remove the Filioque, and say, “Okay, now what would happen?” We cannot remove a certain treacherous Doge from the planning for the Fourth Crusade and then see how long the Byzantines manage to hold out with a unified front and an Anatolian heartland occupied by bickering, weakened Turkish tribes. We just have to guess.

That’s what makes history so frustrating. But it’s also what makes history so damn much fun. There are as many what ifs in history as there are empires, people, and days in the calendar.

And the bigger the project, the more those what ifs pile atop one another. It’s daunting, but it’s exciting.

At the very least, it’s a damn good cure for writer’s block…

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Oh, I totally forgot about part three.

What, precisely, is my goal in doing all of this?

Whenever this sort of thing gets on to the internet the concern trolls get extremely concerned. I'm generally insulated from this sort of thing due to the fact that I have a small circulation of readers who aren't, y'know, idiots. But I still need a thesis statement for this project. My desire to write a proper thesis statement is exceedingly low and I feel the need to be direct. So here we go.

The concern trolls generally pop up with one of two objections.

1. "You're trying to destroy Christianity by pointing stuff out! Stop offending me!"

or

2. "Just because Christians argue about things, that doesn't mean Christianity is wrong. And you'd see this if you just interpreted Christianity my way."

To be clear, I'm not trying to destroy Christianity. I don't possess that kind of influence and never, ever will. The scope of this project is actually quite limited.

There are a lot of people out there who believe that religion is an inherent force for good in the world. The argument basically goes that religion ties us all together and, therefore, if there was no religion the world would fall apart. If the person making that argument is doing so in favor of a wishy-washy "spirituality" and has the attitude that all religions are basically the same then it stops there. But there are those who take it to the next step, which is to say that if everyone adopted my particular religion, then there wouldn't be any fighting, because it's all the damn infidels that are the problem.

Religion is, however, inherently entrophic. The longer a holy book sticks around the more people pile on their own correct interpretations of it. The more interpretations there are, the more likely people are to fight each other over them.

The story of the Byzantine Empire illustrates that beautifully. From the Great Schism over a single word and a question of yeast to a century worth of infighting over whether or not religious icons were a good idea, the Empire illustrates time and time again that religion can be a tremendously fractious force in society. My goal is to point that out.

Further, since the idea for this project has come about because of modern arguments about the validity of religion, that means that I have to draw parallels. So if I see something a Byzantine Emperor, Catholic Pope, or Ottoman Sultan did that looks a lot like something that's happening today, I'll point it out. History repeats itself, after all. We're terrible at learning from it and correcting our actions, mostly because we either don't learn or learn the wrong lessons.

So will Christianity still stand when I'm done with this? Almost certainly. Will the people who most need to learn from the lessons history can offer learn anything? Probably not.

Do I care? Not really.

---------------------------------

[1]This is my least-favorite family name ever. There are two versions: the Greek and Latin. Neither one is particularly easy to spell and both are commonly used. The one I use above is the Greek spelling, but I’ve tended to use the Latinized version. Technically speaking, I should use the Greek…

[2]I originally wrote “piddling, esoteric.” The point stands, but I decided to be charitable.

[3]Of course, growing up in Evangelical Christian circles I knew the answer: Jesus was wholly god and wholly man. It was so very simple and obvious. But not everyone agrees with the Evangelicals. And since they’re using the exact same text the Byzantines were (and are, as a whole, significantly lower-quality theological thinkers), the fact is that we can have the same arguments today. And some do.

[4]Maybe. I’m not sure. The Nestorians actually rose under Sassanid Persia, but the Roman Church did attempt to tell them what to do. This was post-Constantinople but pre-Schism. And, again, this is where this particular issue gets so damn confusing. It was a theological conflict during the Byzantine period that had a far-reaching effect on Byzantium, but wasn’t a particular issue in Constantinople itself. So how do I handle it, if at all?

AtF: Stupidity Matters

2010-07-18T23:36:00.000-05:00

I’ve been running chapter 5 of After the Flood around in my head for the last week. Well, not really. I’ve given it about as much thought as it deserves, which is about ten minutes whilst trying to figure out two things:

1. Should I just skip it over completely after only giving it about a page worth of deconstruction, and
2. Why do I hate this chapter so much?

I mean, it’s not like I don’t have reason to hate it. It’s a terrible chapter in the middle of a terrible book meant to defend a terrible supposition. But there’s something about this chapter that’s even less worthwhile than the others but I couldn’t put my finger on it.

At first I thought it was because it was just a reiteration of things that have already been discussed. Then I realized that it’s a reiteration of things I have already discussed. It’s not really Bill Cooper’s fault that I worked ahead.

Then I thought that it was because the chapter is unnecessary. It just basically reads like a Bible genealogy. Such and such king did this, then was replaced by this guy, who did that. But if you’re planning on arguing that this one genealogy is the truth when no one else agrees, you kind of have to do shit like that.

The problem with it, really, is that it’s neither interesting nor informative.

History always has to combine interesting and informative in some way, shape, or form. Interesting, of course, is always good. People like interesting. They buy interesting, tell other people to buy it, get it on the New York Times Bestseller list. I make it a point to give a run-down of any interesting history books I run across on this blog. But if something is simply interesting without actually being informative, then it fails as history. There is absolutely no reason to read a book that is exceptionally well-written that tells you things you already know and presents arguments you already agree with. At that point your time is better spent with a good novel.[1]

So we get to this horrid, hateful chapter in After the Flood.

It basically comes across like Cooper did a cut and paste from Nennius, or possibly Tysilio itself, since I’m pretty sure that they’re basically the same. Then, having done that, he cut it all down to the most boring possible parts of Nennius/Tysilio.

See, here’s the fascinating thing about pre-modern history:[2] it’s filled with crazy stories about super-human heroes, monsters, and grand environmental changes. There’s a simple reason for this:

People actually believed all kinds of crazy crap. They believed, in short, in dragons. Now, no one actually saw a dragon. However, something happened and a legend was associated with a particular person or place. That legend was subsequently embellished and all of the sudden there were dragons and giants and water-logged women tossing scimitars at any king who happened to be passing by. It’s just what happens. And, of course, sometimes the people involved actively encourage such beliefs because it makes them that much cooler and more legit.[3]

Also, if you happen to have recently usurped a throne, “I’m the son of a god,” is a much better explanation than, “I’m an opportunistic scumbag,” for getting people to go along with it. I’m just sayin’…

Either way, there isn’t any fantastical crap in this chapter, except for one brief mention of a “monster.” But there should be fantastical crap because I saw it in Tysilio. So either Nennius cut it out after stealing Tysilio’s work or Cooper did.

Now, there’s nothing inherently wrong with saying, “And this story pops up, but it’s probably not believable because, y’know, there aren’t any dragons.” But to copy the entire genealogy in order to support your point that it records the succession of kings that proves that Nennius was right then not mention that, oh, hey, it mentions a bunch of dragons and shit, is intellectually dishonest.

Which makes it exactly the sort of thing Bill Cooper would do.

Again, history should be either interesting or informative. Now, when we talk about “informative,” it’s often limited to data points. I read something and I learn that Person A was actually related to Person B, which I did not know before, or Battle C was fought on Date D, which resulted in the death of Person E. This is information in its most basic form.

But good history can provide a level of information that’s far, far more interesting. By discussing why dragons would pop up or all those kings seem to be children of gods, the historian can provide information about why people in a particular place and time thought the way they did. And in learning why people in the past thought the way they did, we can learn why they built the societies they did. And in learning about that, we learn about why we live the way we do, for we are inheritors of the past.

This, I just realized, finally gets around to why Bill Cooper is neither interesting nor informative. There’s nothing to be learned from any of this. It’s just an angry rant against modern scholarship and a defense of a static universe.

In Bill Cooper’s world there shouldn’t be progress. So the society that was created by god some five thousand years ago is all we need and any progress we’ve made is inherently evil.

He doesn’t want us to learn anything. He just wants us to know that he is right and anyone who disagrees with him is wrong. And, beyond that, he just wants everyone to stop thinking.

This, too, works as an overall critique of conservative religion. I managed to think myself right out of Evangelical Christianity, partially because I learned too much about history to take the Bible literally or even particularly seriously. And once I realized that I couldn’t trust the Bible and there wasn’t anything particularly special about it or the Israelites when compared to other societies and their holy books from the same time, the desire to keep going to church pretty much disappeared.

The only way to get people to stay in such religious systems is to make sure they never learn anything. So rather than, say, encouraging people to learn the social and political pressures that went in to the creation of the European Union, the conservative religious pedants would rather encourage people to be freaked out because the European Union is actually the many-headed beast from the sea from Revelation and the world will shortly be ending. It’s fuck stupid to anyone who can actually dedicate thought to the topic, but that doesn’t matter if you refuse to let that happen.

It’s also strangely helpful that there are so damn many interpretations of scripture and so many different denominations and sects. If everyone is wasting their time arguing about whether Baptists or Catholics are the real, true Christians, then no one is wondering if Christianity itself is a worthwhile pursuit. If the Evangelicals are trying to run the Presbyterians out of the fold for being too damn liberal, the Evangelicals are going to close ranks and fight, rather than wander off to go learn things about their world.

And that’s why demolishing Bill Cooper’s stupidity matters. It’s not about the idea itself, it’s about the system that allows such stupidity.

----------------------------------

[1]Not to disparage the novel. I’ve actually been getting a little antsy about how long it’s taking me to finish John Julius Norwich’s fantastic Byzantium trilogy because I’ve got Neil Gaiman’s American Gods in the hopper. The simple point is that I’m not expecting to learn anything about history from Gaiman’s book. So if the choice were between, say, American Gods and a book that was just a synthesis of everything I already knew about Byzantium, I’d have skipped to the fiction long ago.

[2]Um, this isn’t a blanket statement. But, basically, if we’re talking about history outside of the Greco-Roman tradition there’s a damn good chance there will be some crazy shit involved. In Medieval Europe, as the learning of the Romans and Greeks disappeared, superstition and crazy monster stories worked their way back in.

There’s actually a fairly simple lesson to be drawn from this: the learned Greeks and Romans largely relied on logic and empirical evidence and recorded their observations about the universe accordingly. Ideas that came out as, “This happened because of the will of the gods,” still showed up in the Greek and Roman histories and things weren’t done without attempting to divine various portents, but you simply don’t see Herodotus, Thucydides, or even the Xenophons and Julius Caesars talking about mythological creatures as characters in their stories unless they’re talking about how a place is connected to a myth.

Once you get out of that empirical tradition, however, all kinds of crazy crap pops up. And when you talk about a society that has lost a lot of its learning and replaced it with a single-minded pursuit of a single source of knowledge that is, itself, suspect, then, well, there’s a lesson to be learned.

We can always have a second Dark Age. It takes a lot less for us to lose our history than we’d like to think. And when we lose our history, we lose our minds.

[3]We know, for instance, that Alexander claimed to be the son of Zeus and his mother passed on all sorts of rumors about portents at his birth. If we take this back to a legendary ruler like a Perseus who was also supposedly a demi-god it’s not all that hard to imagine that there might have actually been a proto-Perseus who encouraged people to think he was a child of a god.

Of course we also have places like Egypt, where the Pharaohs were gods on Earth. The Chinese Emperors had the same deal going. And the end of the Pacific War during World War II was complicated by the fact that the Japanese Emperor was still regarded as being divine.

AtF: Kinda Half-Assing it...

2010-07-11T23:15:00.000-05:00

So I didn’t let Bill Cooper harsh my Rogapalooza buzz. Hell, I didn’t let anything harsh my Rogapalooza buzz. On the Fourth of July I declared independence from After the Flood. Also, I watched Doctor Who on BBC America in a fit of patriotism most excellent.[1]

Either way, AtF is back. But I kind of have a problem with the current chapter. See, all this chapter does is detail the stories of the British kings as handed down by Nennius. Y’know, Brutus of Troy through Yvor and Yni, with stops along the way at Leir and Uther Pendragon and Arthur, so I find there’s very little I can say about this chapter that I haven’t already said.

It’s just this massive, massive pile of bullshit.

Interestingly enough, though, at no point in the chapter does Cooper mention that parts of the origin story for Britain as handed down by Nennius include stories of dragons. Or Merlin. Or, as best I can tell, giants. It’s as if Cooper’s worried that mentioning such things might, y’know, ruin things for him.

It’s a tad disingenuous to not bring those things up, I think.

Either way, I’m trying to come up with reasons not to skip this chapter and nothing really comes to mind. So I think I might just do that.

But as a delaying tactic before I go and do anything else, it seems that this might be a good time to discuss something else. Very few Christians actually believe any of this shit. Even the Christians who believe in Biblical literalism probably don’t. This, unfortunately, is not an excuse. It’s an indictment.

Now, there are those Christians who take the Genesis accounts as a sort of allegory. For them the universe doesn’t have to actually have popped in to existence some 6014 years ago for the story to make sense. It’s a big harder to engage these folks on grounds of real history. In many cases I don’t actually want to. Some of the best people I know are Christians or Jews who understand the idea that you don’t actually have to take the Bible literally and yet still live a life that includes religion.

I’ve come to understand that the people who don’t take the Bible literally but still think of religion as important are generally the folks who believe that religion basically says, “Be good to each other.” I have no quarrel with that category of humanity. Quite frankly, I believe that those of us who don’t believe do ourselves a disservice when we antagonize them.[2]

Then there are the literalists. Some literalists, to be honest, are harmless. They just think that the Bible is right and they should follow it. They’ll tend to evangelize, but tend to not attempt to engage in social reforms to turn the world Christian. Oh, believe me, they’ll sit in church and listen to sermons about it. But that’s slightly different. Some literalists, however, are not so harmless. They’re the ones trying to ruin education standards and whatnot.

I only bring this up because, um, I’m bored, I guess.

I dunno. Many, many months ago I had a well-meaning, self-appointed defender of truth from my former life tell me that I shouldn’t be wasting my time with After the Flood because most Christians don’t actually believe in the crap that Cooper spews. This is true. I, myself, cannot imagine taking Cooper seriously at any point after my freshman year in high school.[3]

But, of course, this series isn’t about disproving Christianity. It’s about disproving Biblical literalism. And talking about how real historians do their thing. And drinking bourbon on Sunday nights.[4]

I’ve kind of forgotten why I’m writing this post. It started out as an explanation, but as I’ve gone through the explanation I’ve realized that I’m pretty sure I’ve already explained all of this before.

So, I’ll assume that anyone reading this gets the point, since there’s also far less of a point than I thought there was.

Instead I’ll tell a story.

I took a nap this afternoon. Naps are always weird for me, as I generally take them accidentally and I decide upon waking up that I don’t want to do anything.[5] This particular nap involved a nightmare (erm, afternoonmare…). And I loved it, because, well, allow me to explain.

The nightmare was this: I was back in Rogapalooza. I’d ended up staying at an Opryland-esque themed resort hotel. Over the course of my dream I was convinced there was one more show I could get to, but I wasn’t sure.

So, basically, I spent the entire nightmare attempting to get to the Peacemakers’ website and confirm. But my iPhone wasn’t taking me where I needed to be and I couldn’t get a good wi-fi connection with my laptop. Also, there were weird interludes where I was doing random things like taking boat tours and freaking out because I wasn’t on the internet.

Also, there was a commercial break. It was an ad for some sort of anti-virus computer service and all of the visuals involved Chinese construction workers filling holes with rubber cement whilst Triad members attacked them.

Once I woke up (and realized I was in my own bed, and that it wasn’t 7:14 in the evening), all I could think was, “Man, it’s awesome living in the 21st Century.”

I mean, even a 21st Century nightmare is about crazy technological shit.

Also, that’s way more interesting than Bill Cooper. At least it is to me.

--------------------------------

[1]Okay, so I’ve seen all of, like, six episodes of Doctor Who. Maybe twelve at the most. But pretty much everyone over at Slacktivist watches and discusses the show, so I feel like I have a pretty strong grounding in what it’s about. Here’s the thing, though. The atmospherics on the show can be fantastic. The reason I watched it on the Fourth was because the night before I was watching the weeping angel episode and walked away thinking, “Holy shit, what a mind fuck.” And I love a good mind fuck when it’s done right.

And then the Daleks show up. Seriously, those things are slightly less frightening than R2-D2. I mean, I’m guessing it’s one of those things where the Daleks showed up back in Series 1 in the ‘70s or something, and rolling trash cans seemed all, um, within budget. But wow. Couldn’t they have done what Star Trek did with the Klingons and just, y’know, brought newer, scarier, and less laughable Daleks out with just a hand wave?

Also, Karen Gillan is gorgeous. Just thought I’d throw that out there, since I’m sure you all care.

[2]Man alive. Now I’m one of those terrible appeasers that everyone hates on at Pharyngula. Allow me to make this distinction: science is science, history is history, and religion is religion. If science says something that goes against religion, teach the science. If history says something that goes against religion, teach the history. Period. There should be no quarter given where truth is involved. But if the religious folks want to tie themselves up in knots figuring out how to reconcile one with the other, let them. I don’t so much care.

What it basically boils down to is this: many religious people are decent folks who just want everyone to live their lives and understand that there are people who disagree with them and it’s okay. I’m cool with that.

[3]Of course, in my case that was one of the many data points on my long slide to non-Christianness. If you can’t take Genesis literally, then you can’t take the story of Adam and Eve literally, then you can’t take the whole thing about sin entering the world through Adam and Eve literally.

Oops.

[4]Mmmm, Woodford Reserve. Still the only bourbon recommended to me by Stephen Fry.

[5]It’s really quite odd. Let’s say that there’s something that’s going to happen that I’ve been excited about for weeks. Months, even. I have to leave at six to get there. I take a nap and wake up at 5:30. I’ll then spend the next ten or fifteen minutes having to convince myself to go, because for some reason I’ve awakened from the nap thinking, “I so totally don’t want to go do that thing.”

Six Months in Hell

2010-07-09T23:01:00.000-05:00

Well
Give me a song to sing
Harder than it is to bring
Back all the years I've wasted
For so long
--Lost Immigrants, "Song to Sing"

I want to start this out with something pithy, something timeless, some bit of wisdom that will resonate throughout the paragraphs I splatter out here and beyond. But I find I’m not up to the task. All I can really offer is a single summation of the lessons I’ve learned over my six months in Dallas.

Looking forward to what the future holds is infinitely preferable to mourning what the past once contained.

For some things this is pretty obvious. My larger paycheck is obviously preferable to the one I had in Chicago, not to mention taking unemployment and hoping for a nibble on my resume. My 2010 Mazda 6 is obviously preferable to my 2004 Chevy Cavalier.

For some things it’s more of a wash. St. Arnold and Rahr & Sons admirably stepped up to fill the gap once occupied by Two Brothers and Metropolitan in this beer snob’s beer list.

For some things, well, for some things it’s harder. By any objective measure Chicago is a much more interesting place to be than Dallas. But I can’t afford to be objective about this. I’m not in Chicago, after all. I’m in Dallas.

And given a choice between wishing to be back in Chicago or trying to find a life in Dallas, well, one of those things will only result in depression.

Ultimately, too, I’ve realized that the place doesn’t matter nearly as much as the people who occupy it and the stories that I can tell. On that entirely subjective scale the first six months in Dallas have the last year and a half in Chicago beat by a disturbingly wide margin.

I’m gonna drive on down this highway
‘Til the pain in me is gone
I can’t look back
No I gotta keep moving along
--Lost Immigrants, “Rollin’ On”

I was on I-35W last night thinking about how tired I was of rain and listening to the Lost Immigrants. All of the sudden I started smiling.

I was thinking about pigeons. Specifically my first-ever yearly goals review meeting thing at my new company when my new boss and I spent a good thirty seconds doing pigeon imitations. I think you kind of had to be there.

When we were in the last weeks of the transition of my job to Dallas from Chicago some of the people from down here went up there for a strategy meeting. They were very, very serious. At that point I was 99% sure I was coming down here and 103% pissed about the fact that it had to happen. During that meeting I met my new boss for the first time, but I wasn’t sure if I could say anything because I hadn’t officially accepted the offer. Hell, I hadn’t even officially gotten an offer yet. I’d just had some HR people acting like they were doing me a favor by letting me move to Dallas from Chicago.

We spent the entire day in one of those meetings. I’m sure anyone who’s been in corporate America knows what I’m talking about. Two sides convinced the other side doesn’t have a clue what the other is doing, but trying to convince them that they’re not a bunch of idiots. We were using my laptop for presentation purposes. At the end my desktop picture popped up. It was a picture of my desk. New boss laughed. It was the first time I realized, “Yeah, I can work with her.”

A week or so later I had two different meetings, one with my boss, one with my interim boss/kinda-sorta now my boss’s boss, at least for my remaining time in Chicago. My boss hemmed and hawed his way around trying to tell me to be careful when I got there, tried to remind me that I was representing everyone in Chicago. Interim boss cut to the chase. “Just don’t be you for a while,” he said.

Everyone was sure that the Dallas people were uptight.

A couple months later I was sitting in new boss’s office and we were talking in pigeon.

Honestly, I can say that these first six months would have been terrible were it not for my new coworkers. I think I wanted to hate Dallas. I think I wanted to be able to reach January 1st, 2011 and say, “Fuck this noise, I’m out of here,” and go back to Chicago. But for the last six months I’ve been mostly – surprisingly -- gruntled at work.

And I cannot say enough how much I appreciate that.

But that doesn’t even begin to approach the fullness of the reasons that I’ve been able to make this transition. Work is, after all, the reason I’m here but not the totality of my existence.

It was with tongue firmly in cheek that I called the first meeting of the Accidental Historian Appreciation Society, Dallas Area Chapter.

I remember walking in to the Londoner in Addison on an otherwise random Saturday morning and discovered that someone (I’m pretty damn sure it was Michael Mock, though) had made signs. Those signs are still sitting on my coffee table. Chances are they’d be framed if I were organized enough to do so.

A few weeks (um, months?) later I learned that I’m a horrible administrator. Seneca was in town. They were doing a show at the Dallas Trinity Hall location and I called the second meeting of the A.H.A.S.D.A.C. for that night. I think I gave three different times. I then proceeded to arrive later than Michael Mock, Fake Al Gore, and Big A.

But it was a good night, anyway.

Even that doesn’t quite say enough.

I met some great people during Rogapalooza. Y’all know who you are.

Honestly, I think Gruene Hall in New Braunfels, TX will end up being one of my favorite places in the world even if I never go back there again.

That night was a culmination of a great week. Nine days, really.

You know who you are. Michael, Raquel, Lauren, Robert, Zack, Andrew, Andrew’s brother (with whom I am not Facebook friends, and whose name I do not remember, but, seriously, you’re good people), the Girl in Red, and, of course, Tawni and the Peacemakers theirownselves.

Fuzzy’s Tacos in Fort Worth. The only building in Texas that lacks air conditioning. A few too many Shiner Bocks. Those crazy and annoying drunk people at Antone’s. What else can I say?

I’m happy I met you. How’s that? Also, if you’re not at my Six Months in Hell party I’ll hold an extremely not interesting grudge, since I suck at holding grudges.

And last, but certainly not least, Big A.

What can I say? I mean, seriously?

When you left Chicago She was still in my life. And She couldn’t, at first, understand why I was so unemotional about the whole thing. But then She said, “He’s gone, but he’s not out of your life.”

I don’t think anyone was expecting that the reason for that was an eventual move to Dallas. I sure as hell wasn’t.

It’s been a crazy fucking ride, dudeman. Tater. Trinity Hall. BWW in Allen. Seth. Mike Doughty. Realizing that life hasn’t actually changed since WIU.

What. The. Fuck? Seriously.

I’m not the kind
To make up my mind
To lose sanity, lose my head
For some girl in red

I smell the smoke
Still hear the band
I taste the beer
That was in my hand

That night we met runs through my head
I can’t forget the girl in red
--Eli Young Band, “Girl in Red”

When it gets right down to it I moved to Dallas with a broken heart. But I moved to Dallas with a broken heart because I was in love with the idea of having a broken heart. The girl who broke my heart wasn’t worth it, but I had to leave Chicago to realize that.

I left my broken heart in Chicago.
I left my anger in Oklahoma City.
I left my fear in Fort Worth.
I left my liver in Austin.
I left my inhibitions in New Braunfels.

Tonight I sit on my balcony in Irving. I'm accompanied by a bottle of Woodford Reserve bourbon and a six-pack of St. Arnold Lawnmower.

It’s been exactly six months since I crossed the border from Oklahoma in to Texas.

And it’s been six good months. Six necessary months.

I’m having a party at the Tap-In Bar & Grill in Grapevine, TX. The Lost Immigrants will be providing the entertainment. Hopefully the people who have come to matter most to me over the last six months will be there. I’m calling it the Six Months in Hell Party.

But, if I’m honest, this hasn’t been hell. Hell implies imprisonment.

Since I’ve moved to Texas I’ve actually been freed.

And, when it gets right down to it, that's all that matters.

Something Better

2010-07-07T21:52:00.000-05:00

The harder I fight the stronger it’s a comin’
I wipe the tears from my eyes
and keep on strummin’
Baby, I ain’t runnin’ away
I’m tryin’ to find you something better inside me
--RCPM, “Your Name on a Grain of Rice”

It’s something that puzzles me greatly, the sort of conundrum that I feel would unlock any number of other realizations if I could only puzzle through the ramifications, if I could only make sense of the differences in light of the similarities.

Two girls, separated by seven years. They never met each other, probably never will. The only thing they have in common is me. Well, there’s other stuff, too. Daddy issues, judgmentalism, incessant moralizing about crap that doesn’t really matter, lack of compunction in the realm of being willing to use a certain moronic member of the male gender as long as it suited their purposes (y’know, this guy).

I came to despise one. She spent nine years trying to get me to be her friend again.

I guess the other came to despise me. I spent a year and a half trying to win her back. And somewhere in the back of my mind I still think it would be fantastic to run in to her the next time I’m in Chicago. Oddly enough, I think it would mostly be to have the chance to rub her face in everything she’s missed out on. But what’s the point of that?

There are really only two options. The first is to hear, “I totally want you back in my life,” and to graciously accept that. The second is to hear, “I totally want you back in my life,” and to say, “Ha, you should have thought of that way back when.”

So I’ve wandered out in to the world. I’ve made, for a time, my second home in Brookfield, Madison, Milwaukee, and Texas cantinas. I like to think I’ve come back wiser and found that something better inside me.

And yet I’ve discovered that deep down inside I’m still perfectly capable of petty cruelty. I’m still perfectly capable of irrational desires for things I don’t want, don’t need, and know better than to chase after. So have I really found anything better inside me? Or have I just discovered that the search is futile?

And I said, “Mama, mama, mama, why am I so alone?”
I can’t go outside I’m scared I might not make it home
Well I’m alive, I’m alive, and I’m sinking in
If there’s anyone at home at your place, darlin’
Why don’t you invite me in?
--Counting Crows, “Rain King”*

There was a time in my life when I counted the passage of time by who and what had left me behind. I don’t know why. Somehow I had this idea early on that if I left a place and came back everything would be exactly as it had been. It turned out that was wrong, and that realization shocked me.

I tried to hang on to people and moments in an attempt to savor every moment. I tried to hang on to people and moments in an attempt to make sure nothing ever changed.

It turns out that you can’t do that. Not every moment can be the greatest moment of your life. Not every person can be the most important person in your life. But as long as I was staying in place and the world was revolving around me I didn’t notice it.

See, I very rarely left a place behind. Everyone and everything left me. Such is the danger of spending the first twenty-three years of your life in the same town, going to the same places, seeing many of the same people. Everything becomes irretrievably filled with memories, impressions, and emotions. The ghosts of everyone you’ve ever known take up permanent residence in every building, every restaurant, every store. They walk the sidewalks, sit on park benches, and stare at you as you drive past.

Or maybe that’s just me.

I think that’s why I ended up coming to love live music so much and came to like meeting musicians. I’d expect that transient connection, that fleeting moment of meeting. Jessi Lynn, the guys from Seneca, the Peacemakers, they’d pass through my life for a couple hours, then be gone. But that was okay, because I expected them to leave. Besides, they’d leave that most meaningful connection behind in the music I could carry with me in a shiny little box. It’s the most meaningful possible connection with the most meaningless possible commitment.

My life in Chicago gradually emptied. Old friends left and I never found new ones to replace them. I had professional relationships with work acquaintances. I had my connections with storytellers, but I was gradually losing those people you could call and say, “Hey, wanna go grab a beer?” I was losing those people I could have those meaningful conversations with deep in to the night.

I was going in to hiding. I didn’t want to give anything new a try. I didn’t want to risk my heart or myself.

But you
You never realized
What I could do
Stars in your eyes
You made it true
While looking at the sky
You were searching for something better
While the better was right in front of you
--Lost Immigrants, “Something Better”

The equation, I think, is far more simple than I want to admit it actually is. I think that as long as it seems like a big, complicated equation I can puzzle it out until the end of the universe and beyond. But here’s what it comes down to:

That one girl I despised wasn’t good enough for me.

The one that despises me was too good for me.

At least, that’s my perception. Reality may well be completely and totally different, but reality doesn’t matter in this situation. Perception’s all I’ve got to go on. I can be stupid and petty and cruel because I limit the entire universe to three points on a continuum.

And, in a weird way, it allows me to hold something over the head of the one. “See,” I can say, “You didn’t think I was good enough. Well look at me now.”

Look at me, indeed.

Look at the fool who sat on his couch in Brookfield for more than a year, afraid to try anything new. Look at the fool who moved to Dallas and still thought, “Man, if she could only see me now with my new car and my job that pays the bills and then some and shit.”

I spent two fruitless years trying to prove to her that I was good enough. Why did I then spend another two years after I left trying to prove to her that I was better? That’s a fool’s errand.

She wasn’t worth the dedication I gave to her the first two years and sure as shit isn’t worth whatever I gave for the next two.

It really is that easy.

I realized at some point that if you’re sitting there saying, “Why don’t you see me as good enough?” you’ll never be good enough for that person. Ultimately the problem is that you’re not trying to convince them. You’re trying to convince yourself.

And as long as you’re having phantom conversations with the ghost of a person long-gone you’ll never be able to do that.

So I can’t find her something better inside me.

All I can do is find me something better inside me.

------------------------------

*Funny story. I was listening to Pandora whilst thinking through the various thoughts that lead to this post. I knew exactly what I was doing with the start and end, but needed a connecting thought. And Pandora played "Rain King." I suddenly had my connecting thought.

Tuesday Fluffiness

2010-07-06T23:59:00.000-05:00

And I wonder where I’ll be in a year
Probably be sitting right here
And if you know the answer don’t tell me anyone
‘Cuz I don’t wanna know
--The Refreshments, “Don’t Wanna Know”

I’m not quite ready to start my gazillion-part series on religion in the Byzantine Empire. In truth, I have it whittled down to what seems to be an extremely manageable series of posts, but I haven’t entirely figured out how to pull it together yet. Besides, I feel like getting some thoughts out of the way, so I’ve decided to write one of those disjointed, fluffy posts in the hopes that everything in it will tie together by the end.

I think the best place to start is on my couch. And not just because that’s where I’m sitting right now.

Last week I was sitting on my couch talking to one of my best friends about life, women, and, well, women (seriously, what else is there to talk about?). All of the sudden the image of a dorm room in Lincoln Hall at Western Illinois University flashed through my mind and I started laughing. He seemed confused.

“Five years ago when we were sitting at Western talking about girls would you have believed we’d be sitting here doing this now?” I asked (or something similar).

He didn’t find it quite as funny as I did. Of course he hadn’t had quite the week I’d had…

---------------------------

What if we offered
All these broken hearted pieces to the sky
Would it be enough
To keep on living ‘til tomorrow comes
What if everything
Disappeared to gone and all that’s left
Is a circle in my hand
All that’s left is a circle in my hand
--Lost Immigrants, “Circle in My Hand”

I came to Dallas with a broken heart.

I came to Dallas convinced that I’d be leaving again as quickly as possible.

I came to Dallas convinced that no good could come out of the transition.

I was just here to do my job, make a few bucks, and get back to Chicago. Move along, nothing to see here. Of course I came down here with a single, pretty well set attitude about life: life is what happens while you’re waiting for life to happen.

Once I got done being pissed about everything I started to realize that, hey, I had a point. Funny how that works…

I was talking about weight loss today. Specifically I was talking about how no matter what you do to your body, it eventually adjusts. You can go on a crash diet and lose a bunch of weight, but eventually the body will realize what’s happened and the diet will stop being effective. You can start working out, but eventually the same old routine will stop being particularly effective.

The only way to keep moving forward is to keep changing things around.

I think that’s pretty much the way everything works in life. I had to change my life when I moved. And having to change has made all the difference.

Oddly enough, I think that it helps that I moved to a place I didn’t particularly want to live. If something bad happens in Dallas or something ends up sucking, well, that’s what I expected, anyway. But if something good happens it’s a surprise, it’s a delight. That’s expectation management at its finest.

----------------------------

I want you to be my love
I want you to be my love
'Neath the moon and the stars above
I want you to be my love

'Cause I want you
I know all you--
All you've been through
--Over the Rhine, “I Want You to Be My Love”

It’s impossible to make it to thirty without a certain amount of baggage. We live in a world of pain, of longing, of missed opportunity, of broken hearts and love gone bad. We’re all capable of immense cruelty and extreme thoughtlessness.

The question, then, isn’t where we’ve been, but what we’ve survived. The question isn’t about whether we can find someone who is perfect, but whether we can find someone who has figured out how to live with their imperfections, learn from their mistakes, and make it through life with an unbroken spirit. It’s about finding out whether you can make my life brighter, better, happier and can I do the same for you?

I used to think it was possible to find perfection. I used to think, as so many others I knew believed, that god had somehow preserved a single, perfect someone just for me. It’s an odd thought, that, when you consider that I knew that I was nothing if not imperfect.

I find that the farther my life trajectory takes me from Christianity the more I love Slacktivist and Over the Rhine. The words that I find in those places speak to a longing I don’t think I heard anywhere in the churches I attended. It’s a longing for a better world, but one where we make it better by putting in the work, not just by praying and expecting god to fix it all.

You can’t try to find perfection. You can’t expect to love in spite of imperfection.

The only real option is to love because of imperfection. A wise man once said, “Beauty is beauty in spite of perfection,” after all. Also, something about, “Better beautiful than perfect, anyway.”

I’ve also come to the conclusion that this wisdom needs to be applied to places as well as people.

Open it Up and Let My Yearning Shine

2010-06-29T23:35:00.000-05:00

And the true dope on salvation is
Two weeks in a clinic
And a public testimonial
You tell them kids
Tell them not to hurt themselves
Speeding fast from who you were
--Mike Doughty, “No Peace, Los Angeles”

Four trains of thought came crashing together in my mind.

It’s strange how that happens to me. All the trains start from the same station running on parallel tracks. I can usually tell that they are related. Sometimes I can even tell how. But it’s not until that moment of clarity that I realize why they were all running.

I’ve often tried to figure out how to communicate that moment of convergence but I’ve concluded that it’s impossible. So, in the spirit of my new dabblings in written minimalism, I’m going to try something different.

------------------------

When will I hear the click?
When will I know that it is time to split?
What is the use of it?
What is my life without the heart at risk?
--Mike Doughty, “40 Grand in the Hole”

I wrote a paraphrase of that last line on my own blog comments while sitting in the Chupacabra Cantina in Austin, TX. It was some 14 hours after something happened that I had begun to think would never, ever happen again. Some 72 hours after that I sat and looked at the lyrics and realized something:

It’s a song about addiction.

More than that, it’s a song about wanting out.

I don’t understand the specific situation that lead to the song and hope I never, ever will. But I’m pretty sure I understand the concept all too well.

-----------------------------

I realized at some point over the course of my oft inane and pathetic ramblings about Her that I wasn’t actually talking about Her. Not really. She’d always represented something bigger, something more fundamental about my universe and my place in it than she or I understood.

She was supposed to save me.

In time I realized that she couldn’t.

It wasn’t a clean path from Point A to Point B. And I’m reasonably certain that much psychological violence was done during and after. In fact, I know it was.

-----------------------------

Now the harder I fight the stronger it’s coming
I wipe the tears from my eye and keep on strumming
I ain’t running away
Just trying to find you something better inside me
--RCPM, “Your Name on a Grain of Rice”

Worship concerts used to open up something inside of me that rarely ever peeked out. When I started to lose the ability to connect with god I started to lose the ability to connect to that part of myself. For a while I desperately clung to her, hoping that she would allow me to find that part of me.

But she didn’t want to. I think she was tired of the game, tired of my neediness. She had her own shit to deal with, too.

She had been supposed to lead me back to god, but it didn’t work. Then she had been supposed to lead me back to that part of myself I was losing, but it didn’t work. Finally she was just supposed to give me some reason to believe there was a purpose in continuing on. That didn’t work, either.

----------------------

It screams at me from the pages of my mis-remembered college paper drafts. It unlocks so many things that I never quite connected, never quite understood. Even though I know I’ve mentioned it, I know I’ve said the words, even though I’ve acknowledged it as a factor, I’ve never realized that it was the driving, central factor.

Salvation.

I wanted it. I needed it. I genuinely believed she could provide it.

It’s why I left the church behind, but I tried to stay with her. It’s why I recognized that nothing would ever happen but still tried. It’s why I finally realized that there would have to be a final split but still kept myself tethered to the idea of her. I couldn’t figure out anything else to do.

-----------------------

It’s been more than two years. I’ve been on quite a few first dates, approximately zero second dates. I began to wonder a while ago if that was it, if I would never again be able to make a connection to anyone, never again meet someone and actually want her in my life again. I began to wonder if I was emotionally crippled, doomed to relive a shitty, stillborn relationship endlessly because it was the best I’d be able to do ever again.

In one night that question was answered. I may never see that girl in red again (and, I must begrudgingly admit, the prospects don’t look too good at the moment, which makes me a sad panda), but no matter what happens I now know one thing: I’m still capable of having all those feelings. I want to have all those feelings.

I repeated a line I’d recently come up with to a friend of mine recently. “I’m as warm and fluffy as a Brillo pad.” She told me that she doesn’t buy it, that she thinks I protest too much, that I’m just trying to cover.

I argued the point, but I’m pretty sure she’s right.

--------------------

Never thought I’d need someone to save me
Now I’ll be free as soon as you enslave me
--RCPM, “I Don’t Need Another Thrill”

It seems strange to disagree with a Peacemakers song. But at some point over the last week I heard that line and realized that no, no it doesn’t work that way.

I heard a lot about it in church, you see. We were supposed to hand over our sovereignty to Jesus, let him take control. Only then could we be freed from the world. Slavery described as freedom.

Of course one doesn’t just hand over their freedom to another without repercussion. There’s rebellion. Within the Christian context it’s the flesh striking back in its sinful, horrible way. At least, that’s the general story.

It’s impossible to live that perfect, godly life. Because those who try have to stop being themselves to a certain extent. There is a part of the enslaved soul that longs to be free.

There is a part of the newly freed soul that seeks re-enslavement.

It’s a vicious cycle.

That story of Jesus as perfect sovereign is a myth we keep telling ourselves. Jesus doesn’t save.

Jesus can’t save.

Any more than she could. Any more than anyone can.

-------------------------

I hate the way the story writes itself.

Boy does a bunch of stupid, idiotic, self-defeating things. Fate sends boy to a place he doesn’t want to live. Boy finally starts to accept that this is his life. Boy finally starts to have fun.

Girl walks in to boy’s life at that exact moment. Girl has had her own pain, her own heartache, her own happiness.

Girl tells boy she’ll break his heart in six months. Boy takes girl up on the offer because he’s finally learned that tomorrow can take care of itself, it’s only today that matters.

And, of course, they live happily ever after.

But it’s too neat, too tidy.

That story doesn’t exist.

----------------------------

It’s not what is that’s the killer. It’s what could have been.

But at least I now know the thing I’ve most needed to learn. There’s something in between a life unfettered and a life enslaved. Neither extreme leads to true healthiness or happiness.

It’s that in between spot I need to find.

And that story is still writing itself.

This Might be the Best Idea I've Ever Had...Or the Worst...

2010-06-29T15:08:00.000-05:00

On January 9th, 2010 I rolled across the border from Oklahoma in to Texas.

That means that we’re just over a week from my six month anniversary in the state of Texas. My first thought was to spend July 9th, 2010 quietly drinking myself in to oblivion. Then I realized it would be a hell of a lot more fun to noisily drink myself in to oblivion.

After that I decided it would be even better to skip the “drink myself in to oblivion” part. So I’ve decided I’m going to have a party.

I’m affectionately referring to the plan as the “Six Months in Hell” party.

This plan is still in its infancy, but the basic outline is this: I want to get everyone I know in the general Dallas area together (well, y’know, everyone I know that I like. And that can make it). I’m also a lazy, lazy bum, so I have a strong desire to do as little actual work as possible.

Fortunately, it appears as though the Lost Immigrants may have helped me solve that problem.

The Lost Immigrants, as you may or may not know, are not only my favorite Dallas-based band, they’re also the only Dallas-based band that I know of. And they’re doing a show on the 23rd at the White Elephant Saloon in Fort Worth and another on the 30th at the Tap-In Grill in Grapevine.

I’m thinking this: July 30th, Geds’s “Six Months in Hell” party at the Tap-In Grill in Grapevine. With far more interesting entertainment provided by the Lost Immigrants, because I’m not actually all that cool.

Also, it will be 103% vuvuzela-free.

And just for y'all:

Because I KNOW Y'All Want to Go to this...

2010-06-28T11:30:00.001-05:00

Saturday, July 3rd (as in, "this coming Saturday...") is the Randy Rogers Band Stockyard Stampede at the world famous Billy Bob's Texas. Kinda. I don't really know how it actually works, since the thing is outside.

Either way, when are you ever going to see the Randy Rogers Band headline a show that includes Everclear and...wait for it...MC Hammer. That's right. MC fucking Hammer.

Also, Sons of Bill will be there. They did yeoman's work opening for the Peacemakers at the Wormy Dog. I'm a fan. Literally. I'm a fan on Facebook.