Paradise by the Dashboard Light

I have mixed feelings about Rebecca Solnit. I like her when she's writing critically, as she does in her essay "Men Explain Things to Me Facts Didn't Get in Their Way" or her contribution to The Battle of the Story of the Battle of Seattle. I'm not so pleased when she starts getting spiritual. Take her new and important book, A Paradise Built in Hell: The Extraordinary Communities that Arise in Disaster (Viking, 2009). Her project there is to counter the myth of people reverting to "savagery" when things get tough -- you might call it the Lord of the Flies myth. The corporate media dusted this one off right after the earthquake in Haiti, partly to support a US military occupation but also because media people believe it, as most elites do. That's probably projection, because it is elite groups who live in a constant state of Hobbesian war of all against all. The myth also did yeoman's duty in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina, as the media tried to depict black residents of New Orleans (rather than white Blackwater operatives) as violent looters.

Anyway, early on in her book Solnit writes:

Few speak of paradise now, except as something remote enough to be impossible. The ideal societies we hear of are mostly far away or long ago or both, situated in some primordial society before the Fall or a spiritual kingdom in a remote Himalayan vastness. The implication is that we here and now are far from capable of living such ideals. But what if paradise flashed up among us from time to time -- at the worst of times? What if we glimpsed it in the jaws of hell? These flashes give us, as the long ago and far away do not, a glimpse of who else we ourselves may be and what else our society could become. ... The door to this era's potential paradises is in hell [page 9].

Eeeuuuw. I'm sorry, there are just so many things that I object to here. I'm not interested in an "ideal" society, which almost by definition is a society that exists only in ideas. Yes, a man's reach should exceed his grasp and blah blah blah, but I think that in trying to imagine a society worth living in, we must also attend to what is possible. (I think Paul Goodman said something to that effect once.) The good news of Solnit's book (and others like it -- see also Alfie Kohn's The Brighter Side of Human Nature) is that solidarity, consideration, empathy, kindness and generosity are possible, are workable.

But y'know, it isn't just "now" that paradise is used to refer to something far away or long ago. It has been used that way for a couple of thousand years. Ultimately it comes from a Persian root meaning a walled garden, which tells you something right there: it's a hiding place, a refuge from the unpleasantness outside. Luke's gospel says that Jesus assured the good thief on the next cross over that "today you will be with me in paradise," presumably meaning Heaven -- which is something remote and impossible if anything is. But I also see from the Wikipedia article that in contemporary secular use the term refers to "'a society (whether it be hypothetical or otherwise) whose organizational features serve to render, and are fully calibrated towards, the harmonious luxuriating development of the psychological, physiological and creative natures of mankind. As such, a society, continent or planet so constructed, naturally provides a suitably nourishing and convivial social and educational formulae apt to bring about unconditional joy and happiness within that populace'."

An old friend, who was in Philosophy before she switched to Political Science, took a similar stance, which now that I think of it helps me understand why that last sentence I quoted especially sets my teeth on edge. We were discussing the problem of suffering (or the problem of evil, as it is more commonly called), the dilemma which asks how an omnipotent, omniscient, and perfectly good god could permit so much misery in the world. My friend argued that this world is Hell: it's a test, or a purgatory, or something. Apparently she believed that when we die the testing will be over and we'll go to a better place. I've run into numerous people since then who've said the same thing. But according to the standard justification of Yahweh's relation to suffering, we suffer here because it's the best of all possible worlds: as the conservative Christian philosopher Alvin Plantinga put it, God could not create a world with less suffering in it. That doesn't mean this world is perfect, only that it is the best that poor, helpless, bumbling but well-meaning Yahweh can provide for us. This argument has troubling consequences for belief in a paradisiacal afterlife, because it means that this life is Heaven -- it can't, or at any rate doesn't, get any better than this. If that is true, we're in deep trouble, but I don't think it is true; and I don't believe in other worlds or an afterlife anyway.

Oh, maybe it does no real harm to use words like "paradise" and "hell" in connection with human societies, but it still makes me put my guard up. I know that it's probably impossible to avoid the use of symbols and metaphors, but these strike me as notably ill-chosen. "Hell" is particularly troublesome when applied to disasters, natural or artificial, since Hell is a place made by Yahweh for the punishment of the wicked; I don't think Solnit wants to suggest that the residents of New Orleans or Haiti were wicked and merited horrific punishment -- that's the attitude she opposes. As for "Paradise," I would like to live in a world where people had enough to eat, had suitable shelter, received adequate and acceptable medical care, were encouraged to educate themselves and provided the resources to do so; where conflicts were resolved without violence, where people renounced vengeance, and treated one another with empathy and compassion. But I don't think it would be Paradise -- for one thing, I suppose that in such a world there would still be conflict, still illness, accident, and ultimately death.

Especially there would be conflict. I don't think a world without conflict would be a good place to live. So we must learn to live with conflict, not to fear it, even to welcome it as a way to learn from others and from ourselves. So I reject that secular definition of an earthly paradise which requires that such a society would be "harmonious" with "unconditional joy and happiness" in its citizens. Even if such a society were truly "ideal", it's not my ideal. But neither is the kind of society I just briefly outlined; I submit that it would be better than ours today, that it is possible and could be worked toward if not fully achieved. (How to work toward it is another question too complex to address now; I'll try to begin to address it some other time.)

And I had better concede right away that I haven't yet read all of A Paradise Built in Hell. It might be that at some point in that hefty volume she addresses questions like these. I've put the book aside for the time being, however, because I realized Solnit didn't need to convince me of her primary thesis about human cooperation during disasters -- I already believe it -- and I didn't feel like wading through her supporting evidence yet. I have too much else to read right now.

P.S. Solnit has a pretty good article at The Nation this week. I hope I'm not being too hopeless when I say that I think I'm actually pretty hopeful about human possibilities, even though I remember that Hope was the final evil to emerge from Pandora's box, and that the word "Hope" was co-opted by the Madison Avenue election campaign of our current President. Don't let him have it.

Paradise by the Dashboard Light

I have mixed feelings about Rebecca Solnit. I like her when she's writing critically, as she does in her essay "Men Explain Things to Me Facts Didn't Get in Their Way" or her contribution to The Battle of the Story of the Battle of Seattle. I'm not so pleased when she starts getting spiritual. Take her new and important book, A Paradise Built in Hell: The Extraordinary Communities that Arise in Disaster (Viking, 2009). Her project there is to counter the myth of people reverting to "savagery" when things get tough -- you might call it the Lord of the Flies myth. The corporate media dusted this one off right after the earthquake in Haiti, partly to support a US military occupation but also because media people believe it, as most elites do. That's probably projection, because it is elite groups who live in a constant state of Hobbesian war of all against all. The myth also did yeoman's duty in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina, as the media tried to depict black residents of New Orleans (rather than white Blackwater operatives) as violent looters.

Anyway, early on in her book Solnit writes:

Few speak of paradise now, except as something remote enough to be impossible. The ideal societies we hear of are mostly far away or long ago or both, situated in some primordial society before the Fall or a spiritual kingdom in a remote Himalayan vastness. The implication is that we here and now are far from capable of living such ideals. But what if paradise flashed up among us from time to time -- at the worst of times? What if we glimpsed it in the jaws of hell? These flashes give us, as the long ago and far away do not, a glimpse of who else we ourselves may be and what else our society could become. ... The door to this era's potential paradises is in hell [page 9].

Eeeuuuw. I'm sorry, there are just so many things that I object to here. I'm not interested in an "ideal" society, which almost by definition is a society that exists only in ideas. Yes, a man's reach should exceed his grasp and blah blah blah, but I think that in trying to imagine a society worth living in, we must also attend to what is possible. (I think Paul Goodman said something to that effect once.) The good news of Solnit's book (and others like it -- see also Alfie Kohn's The Brighter Side of Human Nature) is that solidarity, consideration, empathy, kindness and generosity are possible, are workable.

But y'know, it isn't just "now" that paradise is used to refer to something far away or long ago. It has been used that way for a couple of thousand years. Ultimately it comes from a Persian root meaning a walled garden, which tells you something right there: it's a hiding place, a refuge from the unpleasantness outside. Luke's gospel says that Jesus assured the good thief on the next cross over that "today you will be with me in paradise," presumably meaning Heaven -- which is something remote and impossible if anything is. But I also see from the Wikipedia article that in contemporary secular use the term refers to "'a society (whether it be hypothetical or otherwise) whose organizational features serve to render, and are fully calibrated towards, the harmonious luxuriating development of the psychological, physiological and creative natures of mankind. As such, a society, continent or planet so constructed, naturally provides a suitably nourishing and convivial social and educational formulae apt to bring about unconditional joy and happiness within that populace'."

An old friend, who was in Philosophy before she switched to Political Science, took a similar stance, which now that I think of it helps me understand why that last sentence I quoted especially sets my teeth on edge. We were discussing the problem of suffering (or the problem of evil, as it is more commonly called), the dilemma which asks how an omnipotent, omniscient, and perfectly good god could permit so much misery in the world. My friend argued that this world is Hell: it's a test, or a purgatory, or something. Apparently she believed that when we die the testing will be over and we'll go to a better place. I've run into numerous people since then who've said the same thing. But according to the standard justification of Yahweh's relation to suffering, we suffer here because it's the best of all possible worlds: as the conservative Christian philosopher Alvin Plantinga put it, God could not create a world with less suffering in it. That doesn't mean this world is perfect, only that it is the best that poor, helpless, bumbling but well-meaning Yahweh can provide for us. This argument has troubling consequences for belief in a paradisiacal afterlife, because it means that this life is Heaven -- it can't, or at any rate doesn't, get any better than this. If that is true, we're in deep trouble, but I don't think it is true; and I don't believe in other worlds or an afterlife anyway.

Oh, maybe it does no real harm to use words like "paradise" and "hell" in connection with human societies, but it still makes me put my guard up. I know that it's probably impossible to avoid the use of symbols and metaphors, but these strike me as notably ill-chosen. "Hell" is particularly troublesome when applied to disasters, natural or artificial, since Hell is a place made by Yahweh for the punishment of the wicked; I don't think Solnit wants to suggest that the residents of New Orleans or Haiti were wicked and merited horrific punishment -- that's the attitude she opposes. As for "Paradise," I would like to live in a world where people had enough to eat, had suitable shelter, received adequate and acceptable medical care, were encouraged to educate themselves and provided the resources to do so; where conflicts were resolved without violence, where people renounced vengeance, and treated one another with empathy and compassion. But I don't think it would be Paradise -- for one thing, I suppose that in such a world there would still be conflict, still illness, accident, and ultimately death.

Especially there would be conflict. I don't think a world without conflict would be a good place to live. So we must learn to live with conflict, not to fear it, even to welcome it as a way to learn from others and from ourselves. So I reject that secular definition of an earthly paradise which requires that such a society would be "harmonious" with "unconditional joy and happiness" in its citizens. Even if such a society were truly "ideal", it's not my ideal. But neither is the kind of society I just briefly outlined; I submit that it would be better than ours today, that it is possible and could be worked toward if not fully achieved. (How to work toward it is another question too complex to address now; I'll try to begin to address it some other time.)

And I had better concede right away that I haven't yet read all of A Paradise Built in Hell. It might be that at some point in that hefty volume she addresses questions like these. I've put the book aside for the time being, however, because I realized Solnit didn't need to convince me of her primary thesis about human cooperation during disasters -- I already believe it -- and I didn't feel like wading through her supporting evidence yet. I have too much else to read right now.

P.S. Solnit has a pretty good article at The Nation this week. I hope I'm not being too hopeless when I say that I think I'm actually pretty hopeful about human possibilities, even though I remember that Hope was the final evil to emerge from Pandora's box, and that the word "Hope" was co-opted by the Madison Avenue election campaign of our current President. Don't let him have it.

Don't Worry, Be Happy (or Sleepy, or Dopey, or Doc ...)

While I was surfing the Web last weekend I stumbled on a blog post about the "atheist bus" ad campaign that I've written about before. This post was by a Christian writer who found the campaign's slogan strangely attractive:

There's probably no God. Now stop worrying and enjoy with your life.

His answer was predictable, at least to me.

Then it slowly dawned on me. This ad is a cry for freedom; a cry against the tyranny and oppression caused by a diabolical god. For once, I find myself fighting alongside the atheists. A god who paralyzes with fear, overburdens with guilt, and replaces the joy of life with sorrow and regret is no God at all. This god is an idol that demands tribute and can never be feed enough. The atheists are avidly fighting against a god who takes life rather than gives it.

In this instance, perhaps the cry of Ariane, Dawkins, and others is not far from the cry of Jesus, “And you experts in the law, woe to you, because you load people down with burdens they can hardly carry, and you yourselves will not lift one finger to help them… you have taken away the key to knowledge. You yourselves have not entered, and you have hindered those who were entering.” (Lk 11:46, 52).

Sometimes I wonder… Would Jesus ride the atheist bus?

I joked in my first post on the Atheist Bus Campaign that an 'atheist bus' must be a bus that doesn't believe in gods, but this guy wrote as though he thinks that were true, or that riding a bus means agreeing with all the advertising it carries. That's presumably why a Christian bus driver refused to drive a bus with the atheist ad on its side; or maybe that driver knew that many riders would think so, and blame him -- not the bus company -- for the ad. ("Presumably," another blogger shrewdly speculated, "he was previously perfectly happy to drive about in buses advertising capitalist multinationals, bearing exploitative images of women and encouraging us to go out and spend money on goodness knows what rubbish – but there you are, that’s Scummerland for you.") And presumably, I as an atheist should refuse to ride a 'Christian bus' displaying a Christian ad. People are scary.

But I think that our blogger knows better, and is just constructing a sermon theme, a superficially startling opener that in the end turns safely home to the faith you know and love. What I don't get is how he can claim Jesus for the opposition to what he calls "the tyranny and oppression caused by a diabolical god." The Jesus of the gospels is a preacher of hellfire and damnation. Shortly after the passage the blogger quotes, Jesus tells "the crowd," "I tell you my friends, do not fear those who kill the body, and after that can do nothing more. But I will warn you whom to fear: fear him who, after his killed, has authority to cast into hell. Yes, I tell you, fear him!" (Luke 12:4-5, NRSV). Be afraid, be very afraid! This heartwarming passage, which is followed immediately by more of the same, can be read as referring either to Yahweh or the devil, or to Jesus himself, whom the gospels depict as having "authority to cast into hell." It doesn't much matter, though, for the ultimate source of that authority must be the same: Yahweh, the god of Israel. Jesus' promises of reward usually alternate with threats of eternal punishment.

Jesus' message in the New Testament would be meaningless if there weren't a Hell, created by Yahweh for the devil and his angels, awaiting those who fall short of whatever standard Jesus demanded of people. Being "saved" is only a concern if you're in danger, and Jesus is clear and explicit about what the danger is. The cosmology of the New Testament is incoherent -- it's impossible to know exactly what one must to do avoid Hell and be admitted to the Kingdom, since different requirements are declared at different points. The function of this incoherence -- not necessarily its intent -- is to foster that paralyzing fear and anxiety that our blogger objects to. First you have to create the danger, then you can sell the remedy for the danger.

On one of my first trips to Korea, my friends took me to a famous and very old Buddhist shrine at Seokguram Grotto. I wrote in my journal:

HK told me, as we continued downward, about the meaning of the white paper lanterns that were hanging above our heads; they were in memory of the dead. They're part of the rituals intended to help the dead make their way to paradise more quickly. HK said she'd been surprised to find no such elements in Christianity when she was in the US. I explained to her about masses for the dead in Roman Catholicism, and prayer to saints for intercession, which are intended to shorten people's stay in Purgatory. I also told her the rabbinic story of Rabbi Aqiba saving a spirit from Hell, and mentioned Wittgenstein's remark from the Tractatus that any afterlife would be as mysterious as this life.

It's odd to me that people invent hell, and then invent ways to get other people out of it. Which comes first, the punitive impulse, the construction of a system of posthumous spiritual "justice", or the construction of loopholes in the system in the name of mercy? It's commonplace, a cliche really, for unbelievers whether atheist or just members of competing cults, to blame these systems on the greed of priests and other religious professionals. There's probably some truth in that notion, but it also seems to me that laymen like the process, the system, the game, the complications.

There's certainly a human impulse toward elaboration, and one toward creating obstacles so as to have something to get around. The iconoclasts who smash one such game will see it replaced with another by their followers, if they don't invent the replacement themselves. Jesus was no exception, for what it's worth. He was in some kind of competition with the Jerusalem temple cult. Rather than deny outright the need for expensive atonement outright, he (or his disciples) established the cut-rate alternative of baptism -- but inflation inevitably set in. If Jesus himself instituted baptism, he was in on the process himself, and by the time Paul became a Christian, Jesus' followers certainly had such a system in place. If we knew that people really needed this sort of help after their death, it would be perfectly reasonable and rational for their friends and relatives to give it. But we don't know any such thing, and that is the problem.

So, like a true fundamentalist, our blogger puts the blame on Jewish "lawyers" in the gospels, and on modern churches that interpret the gospels differently than he does, trying to divert attention from the fact that it was Jesus, as far as anyone knows, who preached the "diabolical god" he objects to. Since he can't believe in the Jesus of the gospels (and who can, really?), he constructs a Jesus he can believe in. Would Jesus join the Atheist Bus Campaign's protest against such beliefs? I see no reason to think so.

In his 1958 Critique of Religion and Philosophy (Harper & Brothers), Walter Kaufmann wrote a dialogue between Satan and a Christian, which concluded (chapter 59):

Christian: You always harp on hell.

Satan: There is no place like home. And you might as well get used to the idea: haven't you been told that I enjoy the company of those who cannot answer me any better than you?

Christian: But I don't understand at all. Only hysterics think of going to hell themselves.

Satan: I know: good Christians consider hell a place for others. But don't you realize that if you are right about everything, you, and those like you, are undoubtedly headed for hell? Don't you see how immeasurably you stand to gain if Christianity is untenable? It is I that bring you glad tidings. Believe me and you are saved. That God exists, that is a ritual phrase, charged with emotion and a thousand connotations: some sheer superstition, some myths, some true, some false, and most of them vague. But here is the truth that shall make you free: I do not exist.

Christian: If Satan does not exist, I must have dreamed. So I can go on believing what I have always believed. But what exactly do I believe? That is the question.

(image link)

Don't Worry, Be Happy (or Sleepy, or Dopey, or Doc ...)

While I was surfing the Web last weekend I stumbled on a blog post about the "atheist bus" ad campaign that I've written about before. This post was by a Christian writer who found the campaign's slogan strangely attractive:

There's probably no God. Now stop worrying and enjoy with your life.

His answer was predictable, at least to me.

Then it slowly dawned on me. This ad is a cry for freedom; a cry against the tyranny and oppression caused by a diabolical god. For once, I find myself fighting alongside the atheists. A god who paralyzes with fear, overburdens with guilt, and replaces the joy of life with sorrow and regret is no God at all. This god is an idol that demands tribute and can never be feed enough. The atheists are avidly fighting against a god who takes life rather than gives it.

In this instance, perhaps the cry of Ariane, Dawkins, and others is not far from the cry of Jesus, “And you experts in the law, woe to you, because you load people down with burdens they can hardly carry, and you yourselves will not lift one finger to help them… you have taken away the key to knowledge. You yourselves have not entered, and you have hindered those who were entering.” (Lk 11:46, 52).

Sometimes I wonder… Would Jesus ride the atheist bus?

I joked in my first post on the Atheist Bus Campaign that an 'atheist bus' must be a bus that doesn't believe in gods, but this guy wrote as though he thinks that were true, or that riding a bus means agreeing with all the advertising it carries. That's presumably why a Christian bus driver refused to drive a bus with the atheist ad on its side; or maybe that driver knew that many riders would think so, and blame him -- not the bus company -- for the ad. ("Presumably," another blogger shrewdly speculated, "he was previously perfectly happy to drive about in buses advertising capitalist multinationals, bearing exploitative images of women and encouraging us to go out and spend money on goodness knows what rubbish – but there you are, that’s Scummerland for you.") And presumably, I as an atheist should refuse to ride a 'Christian bus' displaying a Christian ad. People are scary.

But I think that our blogger knows better, and is just constructing a sermon theme, a superficially startling opener that in the end turns safely home to the faith you know and love. What I don't get is how he can claim Jesus for the opposition to what he calls "the tyranny and oppression caused by a diabolical god." The Jesus of the gospels is a preacher of hellfire and damnation. Shortly after the passage the blogger quotes, Jesus tells "the crowd," "I tell you my friends, do not fear those who kill the body, and after that can do nothing more. But I will warn you whom to fear: fear him who, after his killed, has authority to cast into hell. Yes, I tell you, fear him!" (Luke 12:4-5, NRSV). Be afraid, be very afraid! This heartwarming passage, which is followed immediately by more of the same, can be read as referring either to Yahweh or the devil, or to Jesus himself, whom the gospels depict as having "authority to cast into hell." It doesn't much matter, though, for the ultimate source of that authority must be the same: Yahweh, the god of Israel. Jesus' promises of reward usually alternate with threats of eternal punishment.

Jesus' message in the New Testament would be meaningless if there weren't a Hell, created by Yahweh for the devil and his angels, awaiting those who fall short of whatever standard Jesus demanded of people. Being "saved" is only a concern if you're in danger, and Jesus is clear and explicit about what the danger is. The cosmology of the New Testament is incoherent -- it's impossible to know exactly what one must to do avoid Hell and be admitted to the Kingdom, since different requirements are declared at different points. The function of this incoherence -- not necessarily its intent -- is to foster that paralyzing fear and anxiety that our blogger objects to. First you have to create the danger, then you can sell the remedy for the danger.

On one of my first trips to Korea, my friends took me to a famous and very old Buddhist shrine at Seokguram Grotto. I wrote in my journal:

HK told me, as we continued downward, about the meaning of the white paper lanterns that were hanging above our heads; they were in memory of the dead. They're part of the rituals intended to help the dead make their way to paradise more quickly. HK said she'd been surprised to find no such elements in Christianity when she was in the US. I explained to her about masses for the dead in Roman Catholicism, and prayer to saints for intercession, which are intended to shorten people's stay in Purgatory. I also told her the rabbinic story of Rabbi Aqiba saving a spirit from Hell, and mentioned Wittgenstein's remark from the Tractatus that any afterlife would be as mysterious as this life.

It's odd to me that people invent hell, and then invent ways to get other people out of it. Which comes first, the punitive impulse, the construction of a system of posthumous spiritual "justice", or the construction of loopholes in the system in the name of mercy? It's commonplace, a cliche really, for unbelievers whether atheist or just members of competing cults, to blame these systems on the greed of priests and other religious professionals. There's probably some truth in that notion, but it also seems to me that laymen like the process, the system, the game, the complications.

There's certainly a human impulse toward elaboration, and one toward creating obstacles so as to have something to get around. The iconoclasts who smash one such game will see it replaced with another by their followers, if they don't invent the replacement themselves. Jesus was no exception, for what it's worth. He was in some kind of competition with the Jerusalem temple cult. Rather than deny outright the need for expensive atonement outright, he (or his disciples) established the cut-rate alternative of baptism -- but inflation inevitably set in. If Jesus himself instituted baptism, he was in on the process himself, and by the time Paul became a Christian, Jesus' followers certainly had such a system in place. If we knew that people really needed this sort of help after their death, it would be perfectly reasonable and rational for their friends and relatives to give it. But we don't know any such thing, and that is the problem.

So, like a true fundamentalist, our blogger puts the blame on Jewish "lawyers" in the gospels, and on modern churches that interpret the gospels differently than he does, trying to divert attention from the fact that it was Jesus, as far as anyone knows, who preached the "diabolical god" he objects to. Since he can't believe in the Jesus of the gospels (and who can, really?), he constructs a Jesus he can believe in. Would Jesus join the Atheist Bus Campaign's protest against such beliefs? I see no reason to think so.

In his 1958 Critique of Religion and Philosophy (Harper & Brothers), Walter Kaufmann wrote a dialogue between Satan and a Christian, which concluded (chapter 59):

Christian: You always harp on hell.

Satan: There is no place like home. And you might as well get used to the idea: haven't you been told that I enjoy the company of those who cannot answer me any better than you?

Christian: But I don't understand at all. Only hysterics think of going to hell themselves.

Satan: I know: good Christians consider hell a place for others. But don't you realize that if you are right about everything, you, and those like you, are undoubtedly headed for hell? Don't you see how immeasurably you stand to gain if Christianity is untenable? It is I that bring you glad tidings. Believe me and you are saved. That God exists, that is a ritual phrase, charged with emotion and a thousand connotations: some sheer superstition, some myths, some true, some false, and most of them vague. But here is the truth that shall make you free: I do not exist.

Christian: If Satan does not exist, I must have dreamed. So I can go on believing what I have always believed. But what exactly do I believe? That is the question.

(image link)