Philosophy and Phylogeny

In my somethety-something years on this planet, I've read exactly zero books of philosophy. Somehow that seems both odd and correctable. Or as Wittgenstein would say...well, I don't know what Wittgenstein would say and that's the point. I bet he would say something about truth tables if we're talking young, calculating, I-see-the-world-with-more-clarity-than-anyone-else Wittgenstein or maybe something about how my use of "philosophy books" determines the meaning of philosophy as that which I haven't read and precludes every book I HAVE read from being considered philosophy, if we're talking to older, more world-weary and world-wise Wittgenstein.




And so that preceding paragraph is an example of how I've gone through most of my life. I recognize my lack of philosophical erudition and can compensate for it with soundbites and off-hand examples that hint that I DO know what the hell I'm talking about. As long as my conversation partner doesn't know any more than I do, or at least isn't confident that they do, I win! The key is to make sure you gauge, before you bust out with some jargon that may or may not be correct, the other person's knowledge. The last thing you want is to have someone correct you. You want to leave other people with the impression that you sure know what you're talking about, throwing Sartre and Kant into random conversations in applicable ways. Oh, I forgot, that's the other key. Just memorize a few exemplars of Kantian or Cartesian thinking and wait for a time in the conversation where you can say "well, as Kant would probably say..." That way you don't have to really worry about it derailing into a true discussion of philosophy while still getting across the point that you know a lot about Kant even when you don't.

Now, don't go thinking that this is easy. It takes a lot of work trying to predict where conversations are going to go before you actually get in the same room as the people you are going to be conversing with. Organized gatherings (church, book clubs, business functions) make it a lot easier, but know that there's a good chance you won't be able to use your pithy little insight if the right topic doesn't come up. The absolute last thing you want to do is use it in an inappropriate place and look like a fool.

So, I don't know how we got here but anyway, what I wanted to say when I started out was that I think I'll get around to reading some major works of philosophy this year. I've had Being and Nothingness on my shelf for more than two years now, so I guess I should finally read it. Of course, if I can pull it off right, I can get you to THINK I read it even when I didn't.

Turn Off Your Smoke Machine

Warning: This post will discuss the single biggest failing of the modern American Christian church. If you can't take it, then stop reading now and save yourself. If you can take it, let's start a movement to end this horrible abomination.


Simply put, the single biggest failing of the modern American Christian Church is not any of the following:

1. Leadership


2. Fundamentalism


3. Guns


4. Stale Communion Bread/wafers (this one was close)


5. Reticence to change

No, it is not any of these. It is the architecture. Modern American churches by and large have the most boring, uninspiring, unhelpful architecture in the history of the known church universe. Let me "explain."

If I wanted to let everyone know that I was an obnoxious, horrible douche*ag (edited for content), would I drive a Jetta with a broken mirror and wear 5-year-old socks? NO! I would wear crisp power suits with red and blue striped ties, have a faux-hawk, drive a BMW 325xi (or maybe the Z4 convertible if I was going for the douchebag/tool difecta) and probably have a Hill badge displayed prominently on my person at all times. (Side note, by driving a Jetta with a broken mirror and wearing old clothes, I'm saying that I'm totally not in any way a douche).

Likewise, if the modern church is serious about it's beliefs that it and It alone hold the keys to the knowledge of good and evil (God = good, funky buttlovin' = evil, pants = ????*) then the church buildings need to show it. If the way, the Truth, and the Life is through the church, let me know, man. I mean, Jesus H. Christ, if I knew all this important stuff about Jesus H. Christ, I would write it in big letters and perhaps statues of sinners burning in hell all over my church. Come on McLean Bible, give the people what they want need. Admittedly it's probably hard to simulate eternal hellfire but there's gotta be something you could do other than look like a mall (actually, there may be something to this....aw, never mind). At least try to be majestic or something like the Crystal Cathedral.

When it comes right down to it, the modern "traditional" American church is the only church movement/body/pantaloon in history to not match it's architecture with it's theology. here a just a few examples"

1. The Catholic Church - Huge, ostentatious cathedrals, some even built with the bones of their enemies**.
   What is says: "We own you. God lives here and we own him too. Plus, we have a truckload (cartload? Popemobileload?) of money, so we've got that going for us. Plus we have cool miters, so we've got that going for us."



2. Islamic Mosques - Tall minarets, domey looking things.
   What it says: I don't know. I don't speak Arabic.



3. Good Ol' One Room Clapboard Baptist Churches - "One Room Clapboard Churches" kinda says it all.
   What it says: One Room Clapboard Churches. Simplicity. Something to do with water or immersion, or squirt guns or something. Also potluck dinners that the same person will bring the same pot of spaghetti to every month for 50+ years.



4. "Emergent" "Churches" - so many options to reflect who they really are!
   
   • Coffee house - "Look how cool we are! We meet in a coffee house! A secular coffee house!"
   
   
   • An Old Warehouse - "Look how cool we are! We don't care at all about our image!"
   
   
   • And old unused church building - "Look how cool we are! We're 'subverting' the mainstream church!"
   
   
   • Strangely, for all the gushing over the "ancient-future" idea, I have yet to hear of an "Emergent" church that meets in underground catacombs like the authentically ancient Christians did. That would actually be pretty awesome.
   
   
   
5. Episcopalian Church - I don't know, something vaguely English/Celtic looking.
   What it says: "If you liked Lord of the Rings, you might be Episcopalian***!"



6. Unitarian Universalist - Anything they damn well want to build.
   What it says: "Do you like it? If not, we'll change it so you do like it!"

So come on mega-churches of America, take back the mantle of "most important buildings in the city!" Show the people what you're about! Bring out the Left Behind-style corpse dummies. Kill Persecute a Muslim. Fight in the Holy War! You've got a soul, now be a soldier! Or a construction worker!




*The Southern Baptist Convention recently published a document disavowing its former stance on the necessity of wearing pants. Pants-wearing is now technically a "greyish area" as defined by the bylaws of the Convention.****

**Could just be the bones of dead parishioners, teh internets were unclear on that point.

***If I am confusing Episcopalian and Anglican, please forgive me since I don't really care at all which is which.

****Not actually true. Pants are still required at all times.

Poetry Thursday: What? Edition

Mr. Lorca, this is my kind of poem.
Only better. Much, much better.


City That Does Not Sleep
Federico Garcia Lorca

In the sky there is nobody asleep. Nobody, nobody.
Nobody is asleep.
The creatures of the moon sniff and prowl about their cabins.
The living iguanas will come and bite the men who do not dream,
and the man who rushes out with his spirit broken will meet on the street corner
the unbelievable alligator quiet beneath the tender protest of the
stars.

Nobody is asleep on earth. Nobody, nobody.
Nobody is asleep.
In a graveyard far off there is a corpse
who has moaned for three years
because of a dry countryside on his knee;
and that boy they buried this morning cried so much
it was necessary to call out the dogs to keep him quiet.

Life is not a dream. Careful! Careful! Careful!
We fall down the stairs in order to eat the moist earth
or we climb to the knife edge of the snow with the voices of the dead
dahlias.
But forgetfulness does not exist, dreams do not exist;
flesh exists. Kisses tie our mouths
in a thicket of new veins,
and whoever his pain pains will feel that pain forever
and whoever is afraid of death will carry it on his shoulders.

One day
the horses will live in the saloons
and the enraged ants
will throw themselves on the yellow skies that take refuge in the
eyes of cows.

Another day
we will watch the preserved butterflies rise from the dead
and still walking through a country of gray sponges and silent boats
we will watch our ring flash and roses spring from our tongue.
Careful! Be careful! Be careful!
The men who still have marks of the claw and the thunderstorm,
and that boy who cries because he has never heard of the invention of the bridge,
or that dead man who possesses now only his head and a shoe,
we must carry them to the wall where the iguanas and the snakes are waiting,
where the bear's teeth are waiting,
where the mummified hand of the boy is waiting,
and the hair of the camel stands on end with a violent blue shudder.

Nobody is sleeping in the sky. Nobody, nobody.
Nobody is sleeping.
If someone does close his eyes,
a whip, boys, a whip!
Let there be a landscape of open eyes
and bitter wounds on fire.
No one is sleeping in this world. No one, no one.
I have said it before.

No one is sleeping.
But if someone grows too much moss on his temples during the night,
open the stage trapdoors so he can see in the moonlight
the lying goblets, and the poison, and the skull of the theaters.

More Bad Poetry

See, I was serious about cranking these suckers out fast. This one took maybe 7 minutes.


A Walk in the Park
by Schuyler

He turned around three times
Like a dog looking for a place to sleep
Only he wasn't sleepy
Just convinced there was someone
In the room with him
But there wasn't
And there never had been

The room was known
To him alone
And how even he learned of
It's existence
Is still a little hazy
The walls all painted gray
Were painted gray as they always had been
When he saw the room
Before today
In dreams or in real life
He didn't know
But it all seemed different
Now that he was on
The inside
Of a room
He didn't know was there
When he walked past the blank wall
Where the door
Was hidden by a cloud
In his eyes
Just yesterday

Two Hundred Words of Bad Poetry

Hmm. I'm liking this idea of writing bad poems of nonsense with an arbitrarily decided number of words. I think it could work. Next, I'll arbitrarily decide the structure that the poem must fit. Wow, I love writing bad poetry. It doesn't even have to make sense. Actually, I think it's better when it doesn't.



The Absence of Fire
by SJSTL


When a synapse fires in the morning
Does it make a sound
Like a pop or like a thud
Or is it something that we as robots
Aren’t supposed to worry about
Okay then, just let me find my socks
Amidst the tangled thoughts of the masses

At a time when everyone else
Would never speak a line out of turn
Some idiot wandered
Over to the smoothie machine
And threw up
All over it

Man, I really wanted a smoothie today
I guess that an
Italian Soda With Whipped Cream
Will suffice
Hold the fire, and don’t forget the ice

This is the way the world ends
Not getting what you want
And settling for something
Similar but not quite the same

And now this lovesong is stuck in my head
I think all things to all people
Is nothing at all to anyone

What a weird day to notice for the first time
That one leg is shorter than the other

A large bird just landed on my window sill, dead.

Or maybe it was a vision
A prophetic vision of death and life
All wrapped up in a total wash
Of the windows
Of an office building

Dear Prudence

So, yesterday at church (check out the new website!) we talked a lot about worry, trust and life. Since we're looking at the sermon on the mount, we focused on the lillies of the field and the sparrows and what not. During our post-"sermon" discussion much was made of the balance between no worries and meeting our responsibilities. Or how worry could sometimes be a good thing. But I don't think I agree, and that scares me. Let me explain.

No matter how hard we try, I don't think we can divorce ourselves fully from our cultural frame of reference. We always have and always will (at least to some degree probably) desire what can only be called "success." I know I do. That's why I worked my tail off for four years in college to finish at the top of my class with a lucrative degree. Success. Bred through a lot of worry. If you don't believe me, ask Maggie who was there to see it all, including the time I kicked my backpack across the apartment when I only scored 4 percent above average on a Dif. Eq. test. But what was the point of it all? To have a good job? Sure, but what's the point of that? In God's eyes, am I any more of a success because I used fear and worry to differentiate myself from those that "sit at home all day playing the guitar?" I don't really think so. Aren't we explicitly told not to fear the wrath of men? Actually, that's not a rhetorical question. I don't know the bible nearly as well as I think I should (crap! worrying again!) so if someone could enlighten me as to whether or not that idea appears anywhere, I would greatly appreciate it. So, what does it boil down to? I'll distill it to one question that I have: Is there ever a valid issue about which to worry? I'll posit that the answer is no, but that won't stop me from doing it.

Second, I want to look at the idea of prudence. We talked a lot about not worrying, but still meeting our obligations. What obligations? Do we have any that outweigh God? Who cares about the ant and the grasshopper? I can't find any mention in the sermon on the mount that asks for prudence when it comes to money especially. Jesus didn't say to that one guy "Go sell all your possessions, set up a trust fund for your kids and make sure they have some insurance and then follow me." He just said "sell everything and follow me." It seems pretty ridiculous to think that Jesus really meant that, I mean, we can't just abandon everything, can we? Should we? Shoot, I don't know, but I do think it is a typically American thing to think that we can't. That we need to provide prudently for the future, as though by preparing we can somehow stave it off. I guess maybe it all boils down to attitude. If you can prepare monetarily for the future without letting money rule your life, do it. Also, my ignorance may be rearing its ugly head again, so if Jesus ever does say something in the gospels that advises prudence and planning for the future, someone please bring it to my attention. Because I am scared out of my wits that it's not in there and I don't think I can sell everything and follow him....

Bad Poetry Thursday

No genre today, just some of my awful, bizarre, and ultimately meaningless poetry. Seriously, don't read anything into it. I wish I lived in the 20's because then I could write ridiculous crap and just call myself a surrealist and the literati would eat it up. Probably with some absinthe.

The Day The Earth Stood Mostly Still
by Schuyler

On the day that the whole earth
almost stopped moving
my feet were swollen up with pride
and in my hand i held a dearth
of worms with compasses inside
which by way of that were proving
that a worm can be a navigator
and tell north from south and east
but not west.

The dogs on my block all
ate their breakfast at a very unusual rate
and the food all spoiled rotten
in their dishes in the hall
of neighborhood houses long forgotten
by the owners of the dogs that ate
the flesh of the owners
of the neighborhood houses
who had fallen into their dogs' plates.

The sun shone down on metal
robots made of metal gleamed
in sunlight cast from nuclear reactions
and absorbed by petals
on the flowers whose pigments came in fractions
of the colors that I saw in a dream
i had the day the earth
came to a halt and sent us spinning
off into space.
Almost.

Poetry Thursday

Domination of Black
by Wallace Stevens

At night, by the fire,
The colors of the bushes
And of the fallen leaves,
Repeating themselves,
Turned in the room,
Like the leaves themselves
Turning in the wind.
Yes: but the color of the heavy hemlocks
Came striding.
And I remembered the cry of the peacocks.

The colors of their tails
Were like the leaves themselves
Turning in the wind,
In the twilight wind.
They swept over the room,
Just as they flew from the boughs of the hemlocks
Down to the ground.
I heard them cry -- the peacocks.
Was it a cry against the twilight
Or against the leaves themselves
Turning in the wind,
Turning as the flames
Turned in the fire,
Turning as the tails of the peacocks
Turned in the loud fire,
Loud as the hemlocks
Full of the cry of the peacocks?
Or was it a cry against the hemlocks?

Out of the window,
I saw how the planets gathered
Like the leaves themselves
Turning in the wind.
I saw how the night came,
Came striding like the color of the heavy hemlocks
I felt afraid.
And I remembered the cry of the peacocks.