Deuce of Clubs

Deuce of Clubs: A Demonstrated Aptitude for Reasonable Mayhem

Mon, 09 Nov 2009 17:17:58 -0800

09nov2009 — Mandible news

Deuce of Clubs: A Demonstrated Aptitude for Reasonable Mayhem

Thu, 05 Nov 2009 14:01:56 -0800

05nov2009 — From Claire Wolfe's I Am Not a Number: Freeing America From the ID State (1998):

Everywhere in the world that you find Governments, you also find big scale bribery: Give a few thousand to get a contract, a few hundred thousand to get a couple of meetings with the president, give a job to the mayor's nephew in return for favors granted.
But we don't live in a culture of baksheesh or mordita as much of the rest of the world does. Most ordinary people don't think in terms of having to slip a twenty, or a hundred, to the store clerk, the secretary of the prospective employer, the policeman or the telephone company rep to earn ourselves a little better service.
That will change. When people are regularly getting bounced by corrupted, inaccurate databases and come to realize that "legitimate" solutions could take months, everyone will gradually get used to the idea of greasing the wheels with bribery to get the system rolling again. (41-2)

Harkening back to the analogy of the abuser, we should never forget that the moment at which an abuser is most likely to kill you is the moment at which you leave. Because that is the moment at which you publicly declare that the abuser has no right to control you. Nothing infuriates a control freak more than that.
The government is the same. It will tolerate, to some extent, people who try to "fake" its systems (e.g., it regards the standard "tax cheat" in an entirely different, and kinder, light than it regards the principled tax resister). But those who question the government's fundamental "right" to perform certain functions are intolerable to tyrants.
So there may be terrible dangers. (49)

Listen up and believe this if you don't believe anything else I say. Within ten years of the moment I write this, you will not be able to get care at a hospital or doctor's office unless you present your Card for scanning. Even if the doctors want to help you, it will be illegal for them to do so.
Tough luck, kiddo. Suffer.
Now you, as an individual, should be able to get a fake Card. As we've already seen, the black market for them is revving into action and, to the extent that it works, you'll be able to wangle some medical care, before the central database finds out you're using an invalid number. To the extent that your chosen method of fakery doesn't work, you and you alone are out of luck. Or you may be able to find a black-market doctor somewhere who'll treat you despite the law.
But think on a broader scale. Nationwide, there will be thousands of doctors, nurses, nurse-practitioners, dentists, chiropractors, physical therapists, and other medical professionals who also will have refused to submit to The Card.
You might have noticed, there are a lot of medical professionals in the freedom movement, and some of them are just about pissed postal already. They've seen government control at its worst, coming at them for years, and they've had it. Some have probably "had it" long and hard enough to risk everything on resistance. (54)

There are, in fact, many modern utopian comnunities operating. . . .
Many of the existing and semi-successful ones are New Age communities or interesting experiments in lifestyle, like Arizona's well-known Arcosanti, not the dream homes of freedom seekers.
Arcosanti is interesting, and we can learn from it. (SF writers Larry Niven and Jerry Pournelle also drew on the ideas of Arcosanti's founding spirit, Paolo Soleri, in writing the novel Oath of Fealty.) But it isn't for most of us. (57)

I know of one interesting, more diverse and more libertarian, community operating in the Southwestern U.S. Called Greyhaven, its proponents praised its defensibility and relative invisibility. But on the other hand, they also did much to expose its location by discussing the place openly on Fidonet and the Internet. I don't know whether Greyhaven still exists, or under what conditions it may presently operate. (58)

I know a couple who are divided on the issue of whether to stay in America or leave for (hopefully) freer climes. She says, "Let's get outa here and head for an island." He won't go. She's casting her lot with him, even though staying is against her own wisdom.
He points out that, if the American alleged authorities want to get you, they can get you anywhere in the world. True. She answers that they really have to want you a lot to bother coming after you in foreign lands.
He points out that, bad as America's getting, he still can't think of any place freer. She counters that there are countries in the world more likely to leave you alone, even if their laws actually look more harsh on the books. Even in a government-ridden place like Canada, she says, their police aren't as hostile and their banking system still respects some privacy. (67)

[Quoting Michael E. Marotta, "Money in the 21st Century":] "In the 1200s, the bankers of Florence adopted Arabic numerals without hesitation—and the city council outlawed the new system. Of course, this was futile. In our age, the invention of public key cryptosystems is also well-received and also subject to government controls. Such controls cannot last." (109)

Deuce of Clubs: A Demonstrated Aptitude for Reasonable Mayhem

Wed, 04 Nov 2009 19:12:56 -0800

04nov2009 — The Trouble With Is, Is Is (Author unknown)

Behind the unqualified use of the word "is" lurk a number of assumptions, each of which can lead to trouble. (We use the word "unqualified" because there certainly appear to be places in our common speech where trying to avoid using the word "is" is—see?—not worth the effort it takes.

So what's so bad about "is"?

For one thing, what we consider "bad" are the many ways in which it can be misused in everyday speech:
"It is good . . ."
"He is lazy . . ."
"That is a rock . . ."
all have one thing in common. The "is" implies that we are describing something "out there" that has a certain quality—"goodness," "laziness," or "rocklike"—which exists independently of our personal experience of it. And the next implication is that you must agree because "obviously" that is what it is. But what we really are describing is an internal experience which may have validity only for us.

One way out of this dilemma maybe be to say:
"I think it is good . . . "
"I believe he is lazy . . ."
"It looks to me like a rock . . ."
or, if we don't actually say it out loud, we can at least think this way to ourselves, as a reminder that what we describe is not "out there" but an experience inside ourselves.

Another thing we imply when we use the word "is" seems to be that we have examined the subject (whatever it may be) thoroughly, and have determined how best it can be described. But, in reality, we can only have examined a limited number of possibilities (as an expert may be defined as a person "who knows how much he does not know"). Of these possibilities, we have chosen one (or several) for a personal reason that may have validity only for us.

In our everyday speech, in memos and letters and conferences and conversation, we hear or read pronouncements like, "He is an organization man," or, "He is unimaginative," rendered with the air of finality that would be more proper coming from the Princeton Institute of Advanced Learning.

If you take a look at the chart on this page which partially lists some of the things that might be said about an individual (just as many things could be said about the company you work for, or an organization you belong to, or your neighborhood) you will see that they represent a wide spectrum of different experiences that different people have had at different times with this one individual. To choose one and to speak of it as if it characterized the real, living person, is to imply "all." When you imply "all" you seem to have closed the subject; you have, in effect, said, "He's __________, and that's all there is to it."

Now, no one believes you should try to say all about a subject every time you say something about it; that would be nonsensical, even if it were possible. But you can describe your reaction to a person or situation in such a way as to make it clear that you are making an inference based on your own limited personal experience.

You can say, "I've only seen him a few times but he seemed to be a nice guy" (instead of, "He is a good guy"), or you could say, "I've seen him several times at club meetings and he strikes me as a loudmouth" (instead of, "He is a loudmouth").

When we make clear the limitations of our experience and that we are talking about that experience rather than the person, event or thing, we leave open the way to further discussion (rather than disagreement and argument). No one can seriously question that that was what you felt; but everyone can—and most people do—argue with the categorical statement, "That is ____________."

There is still another way in which we sometimes use "is" that can lead to trouble. We may use it in the sense of "identities"—as in the phrase "2+2=4." We substitute "is" for the "=" sign and say "2+2 is 4." They are not the same thing at all. "2+2 is 2+2." But it does not appear to be "4." "4" is something else altogether. The arithmetical expression simply says that we can use the symbol "4" instead of "2+2" in certain types of operations. It is permissive but it is not descriptive.

When we use "is" as if it were an "=" sign in common speech, as in "truth is beauty" or "knowledge is power" we begin to wander rather far afield from the world we actually experience.

This all may sound so obvious as to be almost childlike. Yet the "fact" remains that many of us, every day, use "is" as if it were some kind of a weapon. In doing so, we replace the richness and diversity of human experience with a dull and lifeless monochrome. We kill the animal and dry its skin and nail it to the temple wall, and in the end reduce the world we describe to a two-dimensional diagram—sans color, sans depth, sans motion—sans everything.

Stamp Out Is!

Deuce of Clubs: A Demonstrated Aptitude for Reasonable Mayhem

Mon, 02 Nov 2009 12:54:19 -0800

02nov2009 — Actual yearbook photo caption of a former classmate of mine, now in prison for embezzlement:

(True tale!)

Deuce of Clubs: A Demonstrated Aptitude for Reasonable Mayhem

Sun, 01 Nov 2009 20:29:28 -0800

01nov2009 — "Oh, you don't hear so good? I said: 'Da Yankees lose in six.' Don't make us hafta help ya's wit dem ears."

Deuce of Clubs: A Demonstrated Aptitude for Reasonable Mayhem

Wed, 28 Oct 2009 21:22:41 -0700

29oct2009 — Stuff I've figured out: Advice for struggling artists — a guest post by Erin Kathleen Cheyne

I've officially reached starving artist status, and I'm happier than I've been in my life. I take a lot of weird side jobs to make ends meet—henna tattooing, washing dishes or slinging drinks, but it's so much better than the corporate world was.

Stuff I've figured out:

• Be cautious in picking your "backup work!" I worked a few hours per week doing secretarial, but found that the environment really killed my creative stream. Another secretarial job worked out fine, but the environment was better. Choose carefully, and try to enjoy whatever you're doing as much as you would creating art. You never know when a former employer or co-worker will need a new logo or refer you to someone!

• Always have a backup plan—my landlord liked the charm factor of having a starving artist upstairs, but it's less charming when I'm late on the rent.

• Try to create something every day, even if it's just a postcard-size watercolor. Keep variety in your work, try mediums with which you're not comfortable.

• Grants: there are SO many grants available for individual artists and writers, and very few people apply for them. I was reading one of the larger grant guidelines—they give out $40,000 to 8 artists every year—only 80 people applied. Regardless of education history, they look for talent, professionalism and creativity. Make sure to follow the application guidelines exactly as they ask, and don't be afraid to call them if something is unclear.

• Don't be afraid to throw in a shameless plug for yourself now and then. Example: I roll my own cigarettes—it costs about $3 per week. I was in the gas station a while back, and saw a new brand of rolling tobacco. Asked the owner if he'd try it, he just rolled his eyes and said he's always been able to afford real cigarettes. I just laughed it off and said I was a starving artist—and left with a contract for a website, logo and advertising package.

• Don't be ashamed of it. You're doing what everyone wants to do and nobody has the guts to do. Make a list of your artistic achievements, experiment with new stuff, and don't be embarrassed about weird part-time jobs. My relatives used to give me an awful time at the reunions, but after I came up with a good elevator speech (I'm working as a freelance graphic designer, working on launching a full-scale studio, teaching art at a private school and working on an animated short for fun!) they started taking me seriously—and it made it easier to take myself seriously. Eventually, instead of joking about me to their friends, they started referring people to me. You probably do more than you realize, and as soon as you take yourself seriously, everyone else will.

• Network like CRAZY! Don't go to networking parties, duh, lameness. Always keep a stack of business cards in your purse, hand them out whenever you meet anyone new. Students, professionals, bartenders...anyone! (I had a separate set printed without my name and only my business number, good if you're at a bar or gym...haha.) My doctor has referred me to people, my pastor has helped me find work, and the mailman's girlfriend just called about a new business card.

• Keep track of local artists! I can't stress this enough. Go to gallery openings, wacky open-mics and anything else of that sort. Talk to the guy sitting next to you at the coffee shop. Keeping an eye on the local art movement gives you a clear view of trends and local quality. Figure out what the best local artists are doing and try to one-up it. Maintain good relationships with other artists—if I can't do something, my friend Brent probably can. And vice versa.

• Maintain a beautiful lifestyle. Even if you're flat out broke, it's possible and necessary. Try to do something for yourself once a day, grab a book of poetry from the library and have a cup of tea, take a walk in the park, sneak a bubble bath, have a glass of wine. Can't afford flowers? Go out and pick some. Can't afford pottery barn? Make something! It's the only way to keep sane. Learn to bake bread. Learn to sew—when my clothes hit rag stage, I take them apart and reconstruct. And as far as nice furniture goes, most towns have an annual large-item trash day, so you can throw out furniture without having to buy a tag. It's on my calendar, and once a year, all of the women in my family drive around with a u-haul and pick up cool, abused antiques. Paint them, put new seats on chairs, reupholster—you've got a sweet set. I was offered 5,000 for a swedish hutch we re-painted. It's cool, and the only expense is paint.

• The wider your variety of skills, the better you'll survive. I know one girl, single mother of two, who is a tattoo artist, designs garb for renaissance festivals, paints, sculpts and is a fabulous photographer. She has a gorgeous loft, a nice car and no debt. Diversify.

—Originally posted as a comment at Diary of a Self Portrait. Erin Kathleen Cheyne is a member of The Borogoves.

Deuce of Clubs: A Demonstrated Aptitude for Reasonable Mayhem

Wed, 28 Oct 2009 07:48:04 -0700

28oct2009 —

As an aptitude test for a job, some severe-looking people in a white room put a few materials on a table in front of me and sat back to see what I would do with them. So I put a book back into its slipcase and taped it shut. This they thought *very* high concept, and I got the job!

As a bouncer.

Luckily, this all took place in a dream. So I guess that means I have tonight off.

Only now I can't sleep.

Deuce of Clubs: A Demonstrated Aptitude for Reasonable Mayhem

Tue, 27 Oct 2009 14:46:09 -0700

27oct2009 — From Resist Much, Obey Little: Remembering Ed Abbey:

He was fond of thick, grilled, bloody steaks, although he hated the corrupt ranching industry that thrives, subsidized by the American taxpayer, on our public lands. (Preface, xi)

Let us hold Desert Solitaire and The Journey Home and Black Sun and Ed's other books close to our hearts, recommend them often to others, read them aloud in lines at the Motor Vehicle Division and the neighborhood Safeway, talk about them, buy them so that they stay in print forever. (Preface, xiii)

Finally, borrowing again from Walt Whitman, let us remember Ed Abbey by honoring a favorite credo: Resist much, obey little. (Preface, xiii)

The richest brief example of Abbey humor that I remember is his epigram on "gun control" in his essay, 'The Right to Arms!' "If guns are outlawed," he says, "only the government will have guns." (Wendell Berry, "A Few Words in Favor of Edward Abbey," 10)

For those who think that a few more laws will enable us to go on safely as we are going, Abbey's books will remain—and good for him—a pain in the neck. (Wendell Berry, "A Few Words in Favor of Edward Abbey," 14)

Abbey's anarchism departs from the vulgar characterizations spawned by our media, our educators, our government. His anarchism is a positive force proclaiming the individual as the basis of civil society and trade. It is, he has written, nothing more than "democracy taken seriously." It holds that the one social necessity is absolute liberty for all. It recognizes but one law: no person may aggress against another. It argues that governments are evil by their nature, committing mass murder in the form of war, theft in the form of taxation. Because of the fundamentally antisocial character of the State, all governments, this anarchism maintains, must be abolished. (Gregory McNamee, "Scarlet `A' on a Field of Black," 20-1)

Now that Ed lies far beyond the reach of the statute of limitations, it can be revealed that he did not limit his attacks against wilderness rapists to his writings. He was an activist, a warrior armed with the tools of a warrior. With firearms, flammables, wit, and courage, he physically destroyed those metal marauders that raze wilderness. He pulled up stakes, he closed roads. He did everything he could think of to thwart the juggernaut of so-called human progress save one thing—he never, ever caused harm to another human being. However, he did tell me that he could easily foresee a time when even that terrible situation might arise—a time when the government would so impose a police state on what remains of wildlife habitat, that battles would rage between man and man. But by then it would already be too late and the only spoils of such a conflict would be principles. (Jack Loeffler, "Edward Abbey, Anarchism and the Movement," 38-9)

ABBEY: No, I've got an agent in New York .... He's the only agent I've ever had. I've had a few publishers complain to me about what a ruthless man he is, so I guess he's good. (James R. Hepworth, "The Poetry Center Interview," 55)

Writing and teaching are two of the most incompatible activities I know, because they eat up the same sort of creative energy, require the same imaginative structuring of experience for an audience. What you give to your students—and if you're any good, you give a hell of a lot—you don't have left for the blank page. And teaching is seductive, because the audience is live. They respond. They draw more and more out of you, tap more and more of your reserves, the time and effort you meant to spend elsewhere, elsewhen. If you let them. I let them, and I know a lot of other writers who do too. (Nancy Mairs, "597ax," 67)

In pondering these questions I recalled Steinbeck's once saying to me, after his first three books had failed to sell, "I want a sale of 10,000 copies and no more. That will make enough for my publisher to encourage him to publish another book and will give me enough to live on while I write it, and I'll be able to go on living obscurely." He never had his wish. Thereafter his books were successful beyond count and he became a famous public figure. (Lawrence Clark Powell, "The Angry Lover," 73)

Was Abbey really a barbarian—in the pejorative rather than the classical sense of the term—and an anarchist? By the standard of Bill Clinton and Al Gore, who exhort us plaintively to have "faith in government," he certainly was th.e latter, while what Chesterton called "the huge and healthy sadness" of the pre-Christian era pervades Confessions. According to the vulgar and narrow understanding of his day, Ed Abbey was politically unclassifiable, a torpedo launched at those ungainly iron Liberty Ships of carefully welded opinion. (Chilton Williamson, "Abbey Lives!" 90)

Those of my friends (cattle ranchers, miners, oilfield roughnecks, local, business people) who are familiar with the legend but have neither read nor heard of the highly disruptive speech Abbey delivered at the University of Montana in Missoula in 1985 against a background of shouts and jeers and gunfire in the parking lot, would probably be able to guess correctly the gist of his remarks. ("I'm in favor of putting the public lands livestock grazers out of business.... Almost anywhere and everywhere you go in the American West you find hordes of these ugly, clumsy, stupid, bawling, stinking, fly-covered, , shit-smeared, disease-spreading brutes.... I've never heard of a coyote as dumb as a sheepman.... The cowboy is ... a farm boy in leather britches and a comical hat.... Anytime you go into a small Western town, you'll find [the ranchers] at the nearest drugstore, sitting around all morning drinking coffee, talking about their tax breaks.") (Chilton Williamson, Jr., "Abbey Lives!" 90-1)

Whoever he is, the Ed Abbey in Desert Solitaire is human, and he works. He works the way a character in fiction should work. He has weight, stature, variety. He poses and postures, makes fun of himself and others, takes himself seriously, is loving and hateful, strong and weak by turns. And he is created right on the spot, full-blown, with almost no anterior personality and only the most minimal explanation as to how he got there or how he got to be who he is. (105)

The Desert by John Charles Van Dyke is a remarkable book not only because of what it is, but also because of what it is not. Although it is filled with precise observations, it does not provide the reader with the kind of facts provided by Joseph Wood Krutch's The Desert Year. And it is not a travel book, although its author had surely traveled. He was a handsome, asthmatic, forty-two-year-old art critic and art historian who wandered through the desert of the southwestern United States and northwestern Mexico for more than two years, sometimes on horseback and sometimes on foot. The subtitle of his book is Further Studies in Natural Appearances, and Van Dyke claims that it is a careful record of what he observed during his wanderings. But one of the strange things about it is that Van Dyke almost never tells the Reader where he was while making particular observations, and much of the time the reader has no idea which of three different deserts Van Dyke was looking at. (Richard Shelton, "Creeping Up on Desert Solitaire," 110-11)

[Well, that's because Van Dyke's book was a huge hoax—he never traveled the desert on horseback, let alone on foot.]

His written instructions were that he should be "transported in the bed of a pickup truck" deep into the desert and buried anonymously, wrapped in his sleeping bag, in a beautiful spot where his grave would never be found, with "lots of rocks" piled on top to keep the coyotes off. Abbey of course loved coyotes (and, for that matter, buzzards). . . . (Edward Hoagland, "Abbey's Road," 194-5)

"Hayduke" jumped into the hole to be sure it felt O.K. before laying Abbey in, and afterward, in a kind of reprise of the antic spirit that animates The Monkey Wrench Gang (and that should make anybody but a developer laugh out loud), went around heaping up false rock piles at ideal grave sites throughout the Southwest, because this last peaceful act of outlawry on Abbey's part was the gesture of legend, and there will be seekers for years. (Edward Hoagland, "Abbey's Road," 195)

Alas, the long-winged fan-tailed bird up there contemplating this particular bit of the world from a silent and considerable height is no vulture. And just as well. Like Ed himself acknowledged toward the end of his avian musings, "As appealing as I find the idea of reincarnation, I must confess that it has a flaw: to wit, there is not a shred of evidence suggesting it might be true." (David Petersen, "Where Phantoms Come to Brood and Mourn," 213)

Of course, I came into the picture rather late, and there had been an Edward Abbey I did not know—the young restless quixotic version. That Abbey, along the way to becoming the Ed I knew, had experienced his share of troubles, most of them of the flirty-skirty variety. "How can I be true to just one woman," he would feign to ponder, grinning slyly, "without being untrue to all the rest?" (David Petersen, "Where Phantoms Come to Brood and Mourn," 215)

Each night's hike (he rested through the blistering middays) was a life-or-death race to reach another water source before the morning sun attacked him. (Ed would later suggest that the rivers of highly alkaline desert water he'd drunk in his long career of desert ratting might have contributed to the esophageal bleeding that was slowly killing him.) (David Petersen, "Where Phantoms Come to Brood and Mourn," 219)

For me, that humor is what sets Abbey apart from the other great desert writers: Joseph Wood Krutch, Ann Woodin, Ann Zwinger, Barry Lopez, and Charles Bowden. His landmark contribution is in being the first literary naturalist to make us laugh, to keep us from crying about the state of the earth. (Gary Paul Nabhan, 226-7)

He had ten times the number of enemies required to be considered an honorable man, but he just never chose to stop when he was ahead. (John Nichols, 232)

I remembered a letter he wrote to the newspapers—he seemed hardly able to get through a day without firing off a broadside to some newspaper or magazine. He suggested that a suitable memorial should be created for a leading local developer. He wanted to name the Ina Road sewage treatment plant after him. Neither newspaper would publish the letter. (245)

Deuce of Clubs: A Demonstrated Aptitude for Reasonable Mayhem

Thu, 22 Oct 2009 23:15:59 -0700

23oct2009 — A Conversation with Elizabeth Butters

Deuce of Clubs: A Demonstrated Aptitude for Reasonable Mayhem

Thu, 22 Oct 2009 19:03:11 -0700

22oct2009 —

Deuce of Clubs: A Demonstrated Aptitude for Reasonable Mayhem

Wed, 21 Oct 2009 04:57:48 -0700

21oct2009 — From Bart D. Ehrman's Peter, Paul, and Mary Magdalene:

Some readers over the years, of course, have tried to reconcile all of these differences. And if you are willing to do enough fancy interpretive footwork, you can interpret just about anything in a way that irons out all the problems. When I was in college, for example, I found a book called The Life of Christ in Stereo, which took the four Gospels and smashed them all together into one big Gospel in which all the discrepancies were reconciled. And so what did the author do, for example, when Matthew indicates that Peter denied Jesus three times before the cock crowed but Mark indicates that Peter denied Jesus three times before the cock crowed twice? Very simple: Peter must have denied Jesus six times, three times before the cock crowed and three times before it crowed again. (12-13)

The reason these writings [The Clementine Homilies and The Clementine Recognitions] are important for us here is that they both indicate that in his travels Clement met Peter and then journeyed around the Mediterranean with him. Peter, in fact, gives lengthy addresses in these books. It is significant that in these addresses Peter occasionally appears to malign the apostle Paul as a false teacher. What is directly germane to our purposes here is that the first set of writings, the Homilies, is prefaced by a letter allegedly written by Peter to James, the brother of Jesus and head of the church in Jerusalem. This letter also attacks the so-called apostle to the Gentiles.
The letter does not mention Paul by name. But it is not too difficult to see who the author's "enemy" is: it is someone who works among the Gentiles and teaches them that it is not necessary for them to keep the law. As we will see more fully in a later chapter, that is precisely what Paul himself taught (see ial. 2:15; 5:2-5).

As might be expected, this polemic against Paul comes to expression also in the Clementine writings themselves. This is especially true of the Homilies. Both here and elsewhere we find accounts similar to those in the Acts of Peter where Peter becomes involved with a controversy with Simon (Magus). But in this writing it becomes clear that Simon Magus in fact is a cipher for none other than Paul himself. This is evident, for example, when Peter attacks a thinly disguised Paul for thinking that his very brief encounter with Christ in his vision while on his way to persecute Christians in Damascus (a reference to Acts 9) could authorize him to teach a gospel that stands at odds with that proclaimed by Peter, who spent an entire year with Christ while he was still living and is, according to Christ's own words, the Rock on which the church is built. As Peter says:
"And if our Jesus appeared to you and became known in a vision and met you as angry and an enemy, yet he has spoken only through visions and dreams or through external revelations. But can anyone be made competent to teach through a vision? And if your opinion is that that is possible, why then did our teacher spend a whole year with us who were awake? How can we believe you even if he has appeared to you? ... But if you were visited by him for the space of an hour and were instructed by him and thereby have become an apostle, then proclaim his words, expound what he has taught, be a friend to his apostles, and do not contend with me, who am his confidant; for you have in hostility withstood me, who am a firm rock, the foundation stone of the Church." (Homilies 17 .19) (79-80)

We have solid evidence to suggest that already during the New Testament period there were Christians forging letters in Paul's name. The evidence comes in a letter that itself claims to be written by Paul—2 Thessalonians—in which the author warns his readers against a letter circulating in his name that he himself did not actually write (2 Thess. 2:2). The irony is that a number of scholars, for pretty good reasons, suspect that Paul did not write 2 Thessalonians itself. This makes for a rock-solid argument that there were Pauline forgeries in the first century. Either 2 Thessalonians is from Paul's own hand and he knows of a forgery that is floating around in his name, or 2 Thessalonians is not from Paul's hand and is itself a forgery. Either way, there are forgeries circulating in Paul's name. (93)

The evidence that Luke sometimes modified the information he received—or that his sources of information had already modified it—is even clearer when you compare his account of Paul with Paul's account of himself. Sometimes the differences are minor matters that simply suggest Luke got a piece of information wrong. Other differences are quite important, because they affect the way we understand Paul's gospel message and his mission as a Christian evangelist. (97)

Sometimes the differences between Paul's self-portrait and the portrait in Acts involve the content of Paul's message. According to Acts, for example, when Paul is speaking to a group of pagan philosophers in Athens, he tells them that they and all pagans worship many gods because they simply don't know any better. But God is forgiving of this oversight and wants them to realize that he alone is to be worshiped. Now, having learned the truth, they can repent and believe in Jesus (Acts 17). It is interesting to contrast this with what Paul himself says about the pagan religions in his own writings. In his letter to the Romans Paul is quite blunt: pagans worship many gods not because they are ignorant. In fact, it is just the opposite: pagans know perfectly well there is only one God, and they've rejected that knowledge of God in order to worship other gods. Because they've known all along what they are doing, God is not at all forgiving of them, but is incensed and sends his wrath down upon them (Rom. 1:18-32). (98)

One of the other interesting features of the passage in 1 Thessalonians is that it presupposes a view of the universe that no educated person holds today, namely, that the universe can be conceived of as a house having three "stories." In the basement is the realm of the dead (below us); where we are now is the realm of the living (on the ground floor); and up above us in the sky (the second floor) is the realm of God and his angels. The idea, then, is that when someone dies, they go down to the place of the dead. Jesus died and went down. Then he was raised up, and he kept going, up to the realm of God. Soon he will come back down, and those who are below us will themselves be raised up, and we who are here on ground level will also be taken up and live forever in the realm of God.
There is nothing to suggest that Paul meant all this symbolically. He, like most Jews of his period, appears to have thought that God really was "up there." The same thought lies behind the story of Jesus' ascension to heaven in Acts 1 and in the intriguing scene in the book of Revelation, where the prophet John sees a "window in the sky" and suddenly finds himself shooting up through it (Rev. 4: 1-2). It is hard to know how these authors would have expressed themselves if they knew that in fact there is no "up" or "down" in our universe, but that there are billions of galaxies, with billions of stars in each of them, all expanding to incredible distances, as they have been for billions of years. Like it or not, we live in a world very different from the one of the authors of the New Testament. (120-1)

Finally, there is an important theological contrast between this sermon in Acts and Paul's own writings. It has to do with one of the most fundamental questions of Christian doctrine: how is it that Christ's death brings salvation? Paul had a definite view of the matter; so did Luke, the author of Acts. What careful readers have realized over the years is that Paul and Luke express their doctrines of salvation quite differently. According to Paul, Christ's death proides an atonement for sins; according to Luke, Christ's death leads to forgiveness of sins. These are not the same thing.
The idea of atonement is that something needs to be done in order to deal with sins. A sacrifice has to be made that can compensate for the fact that someone has transgressed the divine law. The sacrifice satisfies the just demands of God, whose law has been broken and who requires a penalty. In Paul's view, Jesus' death brought about an atonement: it was a sacrifice made for the sake of others so that they would not have to pay for their sins themselves. This atonement purchased a right standing before God.
The idea of forgiveness is that someone lets you off the hook for something that you've done wrong, without any requirement of payment. If you forgive a debt, it means you don't make the other person pay. That's quite different from accepting the payment of your debt from someone else (which would be the basic idea of atonement). In Paul's own way of looking at salvation, Christ had to be sacrificed to pay the debt of others; in Luke's way of looking at it, God forgives the debt without requiring a sacrifice.
Why then, for Luke, did Jesus have to die, if not as a sacrifice for sins? When you read through the speeches in Acts the answer becomes quite clear. It doesn't matter whether you look at Paul's speeches or Peter's, since, if you'll recall, all these speeches sound pretty much alike (they were, after all, written by Luke). Jesus was wrongly put to death. This was a gross miscarriage of justice. When people realize what they (or their compatriots) did to Jesus, they are overcome by guilt, which leads them to repent and ask for forgiveness. And God forgives them.
Thus Jesus' death, for Luke, is not an atonement for sins; it is an occasion for repentance. It is the repentance that leads to the forgiveness of sins, and thus a restored relationship with God (see, for example, Peter's first speech in Acts 2:37-39). This is fundamentally different from a doctrine of atonement such as you find in Paul. (143-4)

In any event, even though Luke saw Paul as his hero, in many respects he portrayed Paul in ways unlike Paul's portrayal of himself. In Acts, Paul preaches that God overlooks the ignorance of pagans who worship idols; in his own writings, Paul claims that God knows that pagans aren't ignorant at all but commit idolatry in full knowledge of what they are doing, and so sends down his wrathful judgment upon them. In Acts, Paul meets with the Jerusalem apostles right after his conversion in Damascus, to show that they all stand in agreement on every major issue of the faith; according to Paul, he explicitly did not meet with the apostles after his conversion, showing that he did not receive any instruction in the gospel from them. In Acts, Paul is portrayed as being in complete harmony with Peter and the other apostles; according to Paul, he had major disagreements with the Jerusalem apostles, especially Peter, in an ugly confrontation in the city of Antioch over significant implications of his gospel message. In Acts, Paul preaches that God forgives those who have sinned and does not mention that the death of Jesus was an atoning sacrifice for sin; according to Paul, God requires blood to be shed to pay for sin, and his entire gospel is that Jesus' death is, in fact, an atonement. In Acts, Paul is portrayed as never doing anything contrary to the dictates of Jewish law; according to Paul, when he was with Gentiles he "lived as a Gentile." In Acts, Paul has the Gentile Timothy circumcised so as not to offend other Jewish Christians; according to Paul, he refused to have the Gentile Titus circumcised despite Jewish-Christian insistence, because for Paul this would have been a violation of his entire gospel message. (154-5)

To take another example: Paul was quite clear and explicit in I Corinthians that people should not think that the resurrection had already occurred as a kind of spiritual experience, as we have seen. His opponents in Corinth claimed to be leading a resurrected existence. They maintained that at their baptisms they had been raised with Christ from the dead and were now experiencing a glorified existence. Paul writes 1 and 2 Corinthians to argue that it simply is not so, that life in the present in fact is filled with inglorious pain, because the followers of Jesus are the followers of a crucified man. Like him, they too will suffer. The resurrection will occur only when Christ returns and redeems this world, destroying the forces of evil, raising the dead for judgment, and transforming the bodies of his followers into glorified, immortal beings. As Paul puts it in his letter to the Romans, those who have been baptized have died with Christ, in that they have participated in his death, but they have not yet been raised with him (Rom. 6: 1-6). That will happen only at the end, when he returns.
Just the opposite message is proclaimed in the letter to the Ephesians, also attributed to Paul, but probably written by a "second" Paul. Here the author spends a good portion of his letter bolstering his readers by letting them know that they have already experienced the spiritual resurrection, and that they are therefore already "sitting in the heavenly places" (see Eph. 2:5-6). It may seem odd that someone would write this in Paul's name, since this is precisely the view that he opposes in his letters to the Corinthians. But there it is: sometimes even one's followers misconstrue the message. (Ask any university professor who has graded final exams.) (157)

Many of the events narrated in the Gospel stories of Jesus' death have clear parallels to prophecies of Scripture that later Christians claimed that Jesus fulfilled. That Jesus was killed with two robbers, that his garments were divided up between the soldiers, that he was silent during the entire proceeding, that he called out the words of the Psalms at the end, that his legs were not broken—all these, and many other events besides, were seen by Christians as rooted in biblical passages such as Isaiah 53 and Psalm 22. Some scholars have stressed that this relationship between the events narrated and the biblical passages to which Christians turned to make sense of the events is not accidental—that in fact when Christians came to attach salvific significance to the death of Jesus they searched their Scriptures to help them understand why it had happened. They landed on passages that talked about the suffering and death of God's righteous one. These passages affected the ways they told the stories of Jesus' suffering and death. The Psalms and the book of Isaiah, then, colored the ways Jesus' crucifixion was remembered. Later authors wrote down the stories as they had heard them. Only later readers would be able to look at the stories and say, "See—Jesus fulfilled Scripture by the way he died." Of course it would look that way. Scripture itself was the basis for many of the stories in the first place. The stories are not dispassionate accounts of what happened by eyewitnesses who took careful records. They are orally transmitted accounts that have been shaped by the Christians' knowledge of Scripture in the first place. (222)

What most people don't realize is that in the early days of the church, there were also women apostles.
There really shouldn't be any dispute about this matter, since the apostle Paul himself mentions a woman apostle by name in the letter he wrote to the Christians of Rome. At the end of his letter Paul sends greetings to various members of the congregation whom he happens to know (even though he has never visited Rome; he must have met these people elsewhere). Included in his greetings is the following: "Greet Andronicus and Junia, my compatriots and fellow prisoners, who are preeminent among the apostles" (Rom. l6:7). Andronicus is a man's name, and Junia a woman's. (252)

As it turns out, English Bible translators have sometimes allowed their own biases to affect how they have translated this passage (Rom. 16:7). In such venerable editions as the Revised Standard Version, Junia has undergone a sex change. In these translations she is called not Junia (a woman's name) but Junias (a man's name).
Why would translators make this change? It is not because of what Paul actually wrote. What he wrote was Junia, the name of a woman. In fact, while Junia (feminine) was a common name in the ancient world, Junias (masculine) was not a name at all: it doesn't occur in any ancient Greek text. So what is going on with translations such as the Revised Standard Version? It is purely a matter of patriarchal bias. The translators couldn't believe that a woman could be an apostle, so they made the woman Junia into a nonexistent man, Junias. (252)

It seems odd that the Gospel of Peter speaks about the "twelve" being grief-stricken after the crucifixion: hasn't Judas gone off to kill himself, leaving only eleven? It should also be noted that when Paul talks about Christ's resurrection appearances in 1 Corinthians, he indicates that Christ "appeared first to Cephas and then to the twelve." What's going on here? It is interesting that neither the Gospel of Peter nor the apostle Paul ever refers explicitly to Judas Iscariot, one of the twelve, as the one who betrayed Jesus. Did they not know about it? (265n.)

There is only one reference in the entire New Testament to Jesus as a carpenter, and that is in Mark 6:3. As it turns out, the word carpenter there—the Greek is tekton—has a range of meanings, all involving someone who works with his hands to fashion things. So it could also mean "stonemason" or "blacksmith," for example. If it does mean that Jesus worked with wood, it would probably indicate that he made things like gates and yokes. It is unlikely, given his historical context in a small hamlet in rural Galilee, that he did fine cabinetry. (270n.)

Deuce of Clubs: A Demonstrated Aptitude for Reasonable Mayhem

Mon, 19 Oct 2009 11:13:38 -0700

19oct2009 — From Ashley Montagu's The Prevalence of Nonsense:

Permanent possession of the gold-encrusted blue ribbon for arrant nonsense is conferred, of course, upon the belief that truth is unchanging and that what this book presents as fact will never be regarded as nonsense in its own right. (ix)

Facts, like Scripture, are at the mercy of any clever manipulator. Hence, when confronted by a challenge to one's beliefs, the proper response is not a readiness to believe, or disbelieve, but action designed to verify the facts for oneself. All of human history illuminates the experience that men are much more ready to die for the preservation of the myths they believe in than for the support of truths that demonstrate those myths to be chimerical. (x)

In Milwaukee, in January, 1966, a lighted sign—not just any old sign like FRESH PAINT or something equally unimpressive—was attached to the top of a disabled elevator in the county courthouse. The sign screamed NOT IN SERVICE. And it was lighted. Yet within just a few hours, workmen were called from their job of repair work to free passengers who were trapped in the elevator. Among them were a county judge, the court chaplain, a bailiff with two prisoners, a bondsman, and three women clerks. They had been concentrating on their own special probems; they had always taken this elevator; they took it now. Why bother about signs? (x-xi)

The superstitions and ritual observances of others become increasingly ludicrous to us in direct proportion to the distance between ourselves and the ritualists; thus we note with only passing amusement the alarm of the hostess in the neighborhood who is distraught at setting thirteen places at table; but that a twentieth-century civilized modern city like New Delhi should permit traffic to be brought to a halt by wandering cows, which must not be disturbed because they are sacred animals, brings forth guffaws. The situation is incredible. (6-7)

Here it is necessary to tread with the utmost wariness and retain the nicest control of language, because we have made use of "is" as a predication, employing it to connect a noun and an adjective; and when we do this "we invariably express a false-to-fact relationship,'' as the experts in semantics delight to point out. (7)

So when we say ''human life is sacred" we mean it is holy, hallowed, to be secured against violation, consecrated.
Yet, as Korzybski would be the first to point out, our statement is contrary to fact in that the quality of being sacred is not discoverable in the objective reality called "human life," any more than greenness is in the leaf when we say "the leaf is green" or blue is in the eyes when we say "the eyes are blue." Rays from some light source impinge upon the leaf; some are absorbed and are picked up by the retina to produce an inside-the-person sensation which we have been taught to call green. We all know that. The "green" is a projection from us to the leaf; and the sacred is a projection from us into the human life. We could descend from the tightrope by exchanging "is" for "appears to be" or "should be." But we should remember that "the events outside our skin are neither cold nor warm . . . but these characteristics are manufactured by our nervous systems." (7-8)

Given the choice of a familiar lie and a strange truth, most men will select the familiar lie. This characteristic was commented upon by Lord Chesterfield in connection with the salons of eighteenth-century London; by Mark Twain among the frontiersmen of nineteenth-century America; and by Stefansson among the Copper River Eskimos of the twentieth century. The trait is universal. (35)

History informs us that the Sepoy Rebellion (l857-58) which shook British rule in India was caused by the discovery on the part of the Moslem and Hindu sepoys that the cartridges for the Enfield rifles, which they had to put into their mouths to uncap (not the rifles), were rumored to be greased with fat from cows and pigs. The cows were sacred to the Hindu; the pigs were defiling to the Moslem. Boom! (63)

V. V. Rozanov, the Russian writer, wrote in his Solitaria, the "private life is above everything .... Just sitting at home, and even picking your nose, and looking at the sunset." There, at least, is one honest man. It is touching that on his deathbed Aldous Huxley should have remembered this passage from Rozanov, and quoted it to Christopher Isherwood. (108-9)

It was Coolidge who "was the contriver of the most persistent and transparent political hoax of twentieth-century America . . . through the medium of 'the White House Spokesman.'" ... All questions had to be submitted in advance, and the correspondents were forbidden to quote the President's answers." His conferences involved only about a dozen newsmen, who could quote only the "Spokesman" and Coolidge was in complete control of the meetings. Here he often waxed garrulous, as well as sharp-witted, informed, and anecdotal. (213)

As long as we are mentally prepared for the shock when some old, beloved, and much-cuddled truth is exposed as cherished nonsense, we are none the worse for being shaken up. (277)

Deuce of Clubs: A Demonstrated Aptitude for Reasonable Mayhem

Thu, 15 Oct 2009 21:47:52 -0700

16oct2009 —

The problem was that gold is too heavy to be constantly lugged around. So, to make it easier for everybody, governments began to issue pieces of paper to represent gold. The deal was, whenever you wanted, you could redeem the paper for gold. The government was just holding your gold for you. But it was YOUR gold! You could get it anytime! That was the sacred promise that the government made to the people. That's why the people trusted paper money. And that's why, to this very day, if you--an ordinary citizen--go to Fort Knox and ask to exchange your U.S. dollars for gold, you will be used as a human chew toy by large federal dogs. Because the government changed the deal. We don't have the gold standard anymore. Nobody does. Over the years, all the governments in the world, having discovered that gold is, like, rare, decided that it would be more convenient to back their money with something that is easier to come by, namely: nothing. So even though the U.S. government still allegedly holds tons of gold in "reserve," you can no longer exchange your dollars for it. You can't even see it, because visitors are not allowed. For all you know, Fort Knox is filled with Cheez Whiz.
Which brings us back to the original question: If our money really is just pieces of paper, backed by nothing, why is it valuable? The answer is: Because we all believe it's valuable.
Really, that's pretty much it. Remember the part in Peter Pan where we clap to prove that we believe in fairies and we save Tinker Bell? That's our monetary system! It's the Tinker Bell System! We see everybody else running around after these pieces of paper, and we figure, Hey, these pieces of paper must be valuable. That's why if you exchanged your house for, say, a pile of acorns, everybody would think you're insane; whereas if you exchange your house for a pile of dollars, everybody thinks you're rational, because you get ... pieces of paper! The special kind, with the big hovering eyeball!
And you laughed at the ancient Chinese, with the seashells. —Dave Barry's Money Secrets (pp. 10-11)

Deuce of Clubs: A Demonstrated Aptitude for Reasonable Mayhem

Wed, 14 Oct 2009 01:51:51 -0700

14oct2009 — From Charles Bowden's Frog Mountain Blues:

We have enough mill towns, boom towns, strip cities, and concrete plains of subdivisions, and if we want more, we can easily build them. We have never built a range like the Santa Catalinas, and there is no surplus of such ground in our world. (11)

In 1916 an old man spent his last winter on earth at Campo Bonito just below Oracle Ridge. When he was born in 1846 in LeClaire, Iowa, they called him William Frederick Cody, and when he died in 1917 he was known all over the world as Buffalo Bill. (26)

He never faltered in his sense of the West as theater. Once in "The Wild West" he employed Sitting Bull as a spectacle in his road productions (whatever Cody was doing the word "show" was never used in any of the publicity). When Sitting Bull was murdered in 1890 by Indian police, his horse from the "Wild West" tour, a gift from Buffalo Bill, apparently sensed some cue from the old act in the shooting and sat down in the middle of the flying bullets and raised one hoof. The Indian police were terrified, thinking Sitting Bull's spirit had entered the horse. Cody later retrieved the beast and used him in the tour. (26)

I fumble around trying to discover what the big rock pile means to the cantankerous old man. He looks at me like I'm a certifiable idiot.
"That old mountain," he almost whispers, "that's been the beauty thing of my life." (49)

The mountain stands as a monster example of what geographers call the basin and range province, a stretch of arid ground south of the Colorado Plateau characterized by lonely peaks awash in a desert of soils crumbled off their flanks. What these words mean is that you can walk from hot desert to the cool of a Douglas fir in a day, travel from Arizona to Canada in a few hours. (52)

For about a century, some people have been expecting great things of this site, a pine forest next to a desert city. The great things have yet to happen.
Summerhaven harbors a few hundred cabins on federal and deeded land, almost no work, a long commute to Tucson and a sewage problem that grows more intricate each year and is never resolved.
The thing people have dreamed of, the big money, has yet to arrive. Down the road a little from the village center is The Retreat. In July 1984, The Retreat advertised itself this way: "For the select few. A few very select homes. Think of it." (67)

He liked to drink Blatz in long-necked bottles, and he built his bunk exactly one Blatz high so that he could store a row of the cases right underneath. (68)

When the grove along Sabino Creek was cut for the new ski run, people discovered something they had not known. They found out a little about the trees they killed.
One, now a stump near the top of the run, had lived quite a life as it turned out. The rings on the flat stump revealed the fir had been growing on the slope since 1430.
It had been, at least until October 1984, the oldest known living thing in Southern Arizona. Nobody has much of a handle on what time means to a tree. But we can make stabs at what time means to us: when Columbus set sail to discover a new world, the fir was 62 years old; when Cortez burned his fleet on the beach and marched to the Aztec capitol, it was 89; when Thomas Jefferson penned the Declaration of Independence, 346; and when Tucson became an American town on the desert below, 423. (94-6)

In less than a mile we hit the fork to The Window, a hole in the rock fifteen feet high and twenty-five wide. This aperture can be seen clearly at times in the city below. In 1915 or 1916, a railroad engineer, M. M. McDole, decided he would go up the mountain to view the formation. He figured it would not take too long on a horse. The canyons boxed up and forced him into hard scrambles. By dark, he pitched camp in a little grassy area far below The Window. During the night his campfire spread and burned up his pants. He rode out that dawn in his underwear and never tried to see The Window again. The Front Range is like that—immediate, close, inviting. And then when entered: hard, slow, and hostile. (108)

I am the child of the greatest industrial explosion ever witnessed by the planet, and there is no forest I can ever disappear into. Wherever I go, I bring the world that created me lodged within my head. (113)

A lot of American books these days begin with a sense of loss and I can understand why. I was born in 1945 and spent my first years in a stone house built during the Civil War. Before I could vote, a wrecking ball toppled the fourteen-room fortress to the ground and the ten-acre woods of hundred-year-old oaks across the lane gave way to a nest of fancy homes. (118)

The cows came and they did increase. But the land lashed back. In 1891, Arizona's governor estimated that 1,500,000 cattle were busy eating the Territory. Then came drought and the cows dropped dead. Old reports claim that a man in southern Arizona could skip a stone across the region from carcass to carcass. The grasslands diminished or vanished, the streams and rivers fell away into the sands, and all the numbers proudly printed in pamphlets like that put out by the Santa Catalina Stock Raising Company, all these visions of big bucks went bust and ranchers went belly up.
The land I have come to love is in many ways a ruin left me by my ancestors, and as I stand in this lonely canyon on the Catalinas backside I am viewing an invalid struggling to come back from a savage illness. I would not know this fact except for the books and pamphlets that track this orgy of greed and enterprise. I accept the landscape the way I see it and find it not wanting. But still, I must consider that it once was lusher, more diverse, and more teeming. Down below me on the flats, antelope once ran. Now they are gone. Above me on the peaks, bighorns once dominated, and now they are refugees on one isolated ridge of the range. The black bear clings in small numbers; the grizzly has not been seen for more than half a century. The jaguar no longer visits. No one hears the cry of a wolf. (124)

In the case of the Catalinas, I can think of no greater future asset for my city than to make the range a complete wilderness. When a million or a million-and-a-half people live within Tucson's confines, the residents will be able to boast that just beyond their jurisdiction lives a wild, free mountain. In a nation where people already must travel long distances to taste the world that greeted their ancestors, Tucson will be able to say such ground exists cheek to jowl with its factories, freeways, and tall office buildings. (135-6)

I would prefer a country where there were no rules and where the land offered endless promise and unrestrained human beings could work out their own salvation or damnation. I would prefer a country that creaked along with little or no government. When I was a boy, my old man liked to tell me of a shipwrecked Irishman who washed up on an island. People found him half dead on the beach, choking on the sea water in his lungs. He coughed and asked them, "Is there a government!" and when they said yes, he snorted, "I'm against it." I understand that story. (140-3)

For a man who savors the past and denounces the future, he seems pretty content with life. One eye is bad but the doctors are going to fix that, he snaps. And his bum leg still bothers him but he's got another appointment in a few weeks to see about some surgery, just as soon as he gets his blood pressure under control. He excuses his zest for life by explaining that he hopes to live to see the coming ruin. (153)

Deuce of Clubs: A Demonstrated Aptitude for Reasonable Mayhem

Sat, 10 Oct 2009 17:32:02 -0700

10oct2009 —

NO BLACKOUTS!*
*Except for the blackouts

(See also: Except exceptions.)