Im missing my partner and friend this morning. Alexia is off in Haiti, of all places, facilitating a big meet-up of Haitian church-leaders who are gathering to brain-storm about the problem of human-trafficking. She has developed quite a reputation - and consulting business - with her ability to get people focused and talking to each other in constructive ways. Apparently, even the honchos who run charities and churches have the big egos associated with all people who get things done. It helps to have somebody there to guide the conversation ever back to the problem at hand, when a my-idea-versus-your-idea debate is always a possibility. I have to say that my relationship with Lex is one of the strangest that I have ever taken up, and that it has lasted far longer than either of us could reasonably have expected. We come from wildly different perspectives on both politics and religion. But somehow we are able to have real conversations about the things that really interest us and matter to us. Looooong conversations. We met for dinner at a Dennys in Glendale a few days ago, and we stayed so long talking that I was hungry again when we left. Really its just one conversation that started six years ago and has been going like a tire-fire ever since. We just take breaks for a day or a week, and then take up where we left off. The underlying idea is the well-being of our fellow humans. We really want people to be happier and more comfortable in their skins, and for everybody to be more-or-less joyously engaged in meaningful activity. Purposeful activity. Whatever sort of thing it is that makes their lives resonant and destroys the looming threat of dying with their hearts full of regret. Of course we both know that nobody can do that for another. Everybody must choose his or her path, adjust it as needed, and live in accordance with what codes he or she adopts along the way. Neither Alexia or myself thinks that we have any ultimate answers. Nor are we even fully clear on what the questions are. That is why we have spent several hundred hours in conversation. Trying to figure it all out. Sometimes the talk is high-minded, and sometimes little more than gossip. But the thread is always there. I come at every philosophical question from an evolutionist standpoint, as most of you know. I look at this endlessly complex, high-tech, fast-changing society of ours, and see millions of smart primates trying their damndest to keep up with the demands of dealing with all this STUFF. All the mountains of things, and rules, and expectations. I see the mass denial of our animal natures, and source many of our problems to that. My prescriptions tend to center on each of us finding our animal selves - making peace with the beast within - and THEN taking a reasonable approach to being civilized. By way of building on a robust foundation. Alexia - being a Lutheran pastor - believes that we are children of God. Immaterial souls encased in biological organisms for whatever reasons that God might have had for creating such a system. I cant speak for her, but my general assessment of those with that perspective is that they assume a SPIRITUAL reality to each human that trumps the real but less-profound mammal reality. Naturally - given the differential between our world-views - we focus on different solutions to any problem we might be talking about. But not as different as you might think. Whichever of us is right about the true nature of humanity, we are looking at the same creature. Religions have only been able to establish their various doctrines because those doctrines work. Whether or not there is even a wisp of truth to the widely variant origin-stories - and interpretations of the mind of the deity in question - every religion that gets any traction MUST have some insight into the human being. That is a given. You cannot persuade any creature of anything without having some idea what that creature will respond to. So really, whether one sees - as I do - billions of bipedal apes trying to gain and keep the acceptance of a protective tribe, while negotiating the status demands of an inescapable dominance hierarchy; or billions of meat-encased souls attempting to re-unite with their creator through an elaborate moral pageant ... the pieces are pretty much the same. A person trying to become indispensable to her tribal group would act an awful lot like a person trying to please her god. The questions become ones of efficiency. What works better? Given that moral codes - as formulated by founders of religions - while all satisfying the upward-aspirations of their believers are all over the map as to what specific actions are necessary day to day. This of course, leads to the visible distinctions between these groups and the inevitable conflicts that arise because every group KNOWS that it is privy to the word of God. It seems to me that religion is FANTASTIC for uniting small groups of people, ad much less reliable for uniting enormous groups of people. I suspect that unless the worlds human population is decimated by pandemics or alien attacks, and we shrink in numbers to a few million, religion will either fade out or become hugely problematic. But atheism alone is no panacea either. Given that we are now asked to constantly interact with people from all sorts of cultures who believe all kinds of crazy shit, strong moral and ethical codes are needed now as much as ever. And simply negating the supposed source of the existing religion-based codes does not solve any of the problems those codes rose up to deal with. What then, ought a person believe if that person is to have the best likelihood of being healthy and happy and productive and kindly cognizant of the needs of others? This question can be copy/pasted onto the political debate without any loss of relevance. Who has the answers? Who is even honestly asking the questions? Liberals? Conservatives? Religious people? Atheists? Men? Women? The well educated? The street-smart? At any table in any diner where Alexia and I sit down and pop the conversational cork, all of these groups are gathered and many more. Even if its just the two of us. Somewhere there is a cross-over point - a golden mean. And when we find it well write the book.
Posted on: Sun, 16 Nov 2014 17:30:41 +0000
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