Pagan Perspective

Leave a comment June 6, 2021 Steve A. Wiggins

“I would live in a world of Christ-like humans, but not one full of Christians.” So Kate Horsley’s protagonist Gwynneve writes in Confessions of a Pagan Nun. This novel is an attempt to envision what life would’ve been like for a woman in medieval Ireland when Christianity came to the land. Gwynneve is a spiritual seeker who comes to be a nun when it’s clear that this new religion has taken over the old ways. Learning to write, she transcribes her story after hours in her clochan, or cell. She recognizes that Christianity has brought good things to Ireland, but at a high cost. The disparity between rich and poor increases, women are denigrated so that men can run things, and the land is ravaged for the benefit of their new way of living.

The novelty of the idea caught my attention when a friend pointed the book out to me. I was a bit surprised to see that Shambhala, generally a nonfiction Buddhist press, had published the novel. Since this is a story designed to make the reader think—it is contemplative, as a story from the point of view of a nun would likely be—the choice of publisher makes sense. While it’s not likely that a book published there would make the New York Times bestseller list, as an erstwhile writer myself I can attest that novels outside the usual pale have great difficulty in getting mainstream publishers interested. This too is a matter for contemplation.

One of the main themes of the story seems to be how a worshipper of the goddess Brigit has to become a devotee of St. Brigit when the church made the gods into saints. This is something that happened historically as well as in novels. Aware that it was easier to persuade individuals to convert to a new religion if they didn’t have to give up their gods, this seemed a small accommodation to make. Horsley is not wrong, however, in pointing out that Christianity was not a free ride. More than a religion, it was (and is) a powerful means for social control. The vision it offers tends to benefit men over women, the wealthy over the poor, the powerful over the weak. Despite what the Bible emphasizes, religion has its own conversion experience when it tastes power. Confessions of a Pagan Nun is a story intended to shift perspectives. The open reader will learn from contemplating its message.

The Heart of Memorial Day

2 Comments May 31, 2021 Steve A. Wiggins

The Memorial Day will be a somber one for the many people who’ve lost someone due to Covid-19. Even as those who know that science can help to bring a pandemic under control have been vaccinated, it is too late for millions who didn’t make it. Memorial Day weekend, for many of us in northern climes, has been unseasonably cold. Around here it’s been rainy too. The official kick-off to summer seems to be a memorial to the long winter of 2020 and ’21. It’s also hopeful, because things are starting to get better. Having an organized national response helps, even as the Fascist Party is gaining strength. “Memorial” means looking back. Remembering the past. I’m saddened, shocked, and distraught that one political party has refused to look at how insidious fascism is, and how it always starts under the guise of righteousness. Remember this.

We tend to think of Memorial Day as a play day. Indeed, the number of boats being towed as I’ve been out driving attests to the plans of many. We’re ready for life to return to normal, but even that involves memory. Remembering what was normal. We have never been a fascist nation. That’s not a memory but a sick future dream. Those who attempt insurrection and then block any investigation into it can’t have the good of the nation at heart. It should be a play day. It should be frolicking in the sun. Instead I’m wondering how we’ll ever stop this apparently inevitable evil that has taken over a country formed as a democracy. Has it stopped raining yet?

Although I wasn’t close to him, my father was a veteran. He fought for the cause of liberty, at least as it was understood before Trump’s America. He was, according to his family, never the same after seeing war. Bureaucrats, fat from the monies they pocket from special interest groups and lobbies, seem to have forgotten. They’ve forgotten the frighteningly large national cemetery at Arlington. They’ve forgotten that we fought to stop the very thing they are now promoting in their own country. I’m sorry, Mr. Lincoln, these dead may have died in vain after all. I had hopes of warm days and leisurely outdoor activities as the end of May rolled along. Either that, or at least being able to get out and take care of all the yard work that’s been piling up over the past several weeks. I wonder, will it stop raining today?

Fragility

Leave a comment May 28, 2021 Steve A. Wiggins

Who doesn’t like a play? Since I’ve been reading many lengthy novels this year I like to intersperse them with some shorter pieces of literature. Many of us are assigned plays in high school English class. For those of us from non-literary families, these may be the only plays we’ll encounter in our youth. Shakespeare and Arthur Miller ran the entire gambit for my high school career, but I’ve done some exploring on my own since then. I’d heard quite a bit about Tennessee Williams’ The Glass Menagerie over the years, but I’d never read it. I found a used copy at a book sale and so my excuse for not reading it was at an end. Unlike when I read A Streetcar Named Desire, I really had no idea what to expect. Dysfunction, it seems, spurs creativity.

I suspect the play is well enough known that my musings about its symbolism and impact wouldn’t add much to the discussion. (Besides, I suspect few English teachers read this blog.) My particular edition, however, comes with the essay “The Catastrophe of Success,” written by Williams after he found fame. It reminded me a bit of a speech Ursula K. Le Guin gave late in her career, after receiving an award. Both writers note that money drives far too much of what we consider creativity. Williams notes in his essay that success leads to pampering and pampering is good for no one. His description of staying in a hotel is a familiar one—poorly paid employees treat paying guests as if they were wealthy, cleaning up after them and tidying other people’s messes.

As many critics have noted, Williams grew up in a dysfunctional family and drew heavily on that for his fiction. Another aspect, perhaps related to that, was the sense of pressure on his writing. In his essay he mentions that writing grew more difficult when life was easy. I often think about this myself. My fiction suffered a bit when the pressure of the daily commute to New York ceased. I had to catch an early bus and I was determined to get some writing done every day. That was the origin of what now seems to be my permanent early wakefulness. That pressure of knowing I had a very limited amount of time before I had to be showered, dressed, and at the bus stop, led to a tremendously creative output. I see from my limited experience of reading Williams that I still have much to learn from those whose experience has become a lesson.

Come Together

Leave a comment May 26, 2021 Steve A. Wiggins

When’s the last time a commercial made you cry? Well, made you cry for joy? A colleague sent me this commercial for chewing gum that left me nearly blubbering. Go ahead and give it a watch, I’ll wait. You see, I’m in the waiting period after my second vaccination (even scheduling that, it turned out, was difficult) and we’re waiting for everyone we know to reach that state where being together with strangers, unmasked, will become safe and normal again. We’ve all been under enormous pressure for the past 14 months. The absolutely directionless response of the Trump administration prolonged the agony in this particular country, and some places in the world are still having a difficult time of it, but there is a light. There is a light.

Even we introverts are social creatures. Like cats, we suffer in prolonged, enforced isolation. We’ve been through difficult times. It’s been the deepest hope of mine that we would come out of this pandemic better than we went into it. The commercial, although clearly shot with humor, shows a more inclusive, completely accepting society. As the couples separated for months reunite the only concern is that they have fresh breath. It’s not what some other couple is doing. It’s not who makes up that couple. It’s simply that we are all ready to be back together instead of divided. It’s about love, not hate.

The most deadly poison of the Trump years was the normalization and acceptance of hatred. We are already, and we have been from the beginning, a diverse people. Like some mythological tower, we were divided because of fear. There was nothing really to be afraid of down here. Those at the top of the power structures (many of them sociopaths) want to protect their privilege. It’s far easier to do that when the rest of the people are at one another’s throats. Is English God’s own language? Can people not be taught to pound swords into plowshares? Perhaps when the time comes we’ll burst from these doors ready to accept those who are different as fully human. Perhaps we’ll not judge them for who they love or how. I don’t know why this commercial hit me so hard. Perhaps it’s the Jim Steinman power ballad, perhaps it’s the quality of the acting, perhaps it’s the welling emotion that’s been suppressed alone in shadowy corners for over a year, but this particular commercial hit a chord. And I don’t even chew gum, if that’s what it’s advertising.

Perhaps You’d Like…

Leave a comment May 19, 2021 Steve A. Wiggins

Back in the early days of the internet I recall wondering how it could be used for research. I was teaching at Nashotah House at the time and knew of no online resources that couldn’t be had in print. All of that has changed, of course, with the web becoming the collective brain of humanity. I tend to use it for research for my fictional tales. Need to remember a detail about some obscure location you once visited in Scotland? Check—either Ecosia or Google will take you right there. Memory problem solved. For some kinds of facts, however, it’s still a struggle. There’s the infamous paywall, for example. Your search brings you right to the info, but you have to pay for the privilege of reading it. Commercial sites require a subscription that, although it has a cancellation policy, you know you’ll end up paying for forever. University library websites are even more jealous of guarding their secret knowledge.

Fiction research often involves trying to find general information. What some specific object is called, for example, or whether there was actually a Burger King in the location about which you’re writing, at the time your story is set. Fiction writing is an exercise of the imagination, but verisimilitude can make all the difference. Just because it’s fiction doesn’t mean it can’t be factual. Here’s where another limitation arises. If your query can be commodified, it will. You’ll find yourself wading through pages and pages of vendors trying to sell you stuff, as if knowledge for knowledge’s sake is moribund. Even WordPress gets into the act. If your Premium plan fills up, you’re only option is to “upgrade” to Business or E-Commerce, where you make money on your account. (This blog remains free.)

I don’t make any money off this blog. I use it to share the little I’ve figured out by looking deeply at the world—quite often involving observations about religion or books—over half-a-century. Like many academics I believe knowledge should be free (ah, but they get paid for keeping it within the walls of the university with the occasional free cookie outside. Or better yet, a paying engagement). I don’t go to websites to be sold anything. I maybe want to remember what a Quisp box looked like in 1969 without wanting to special order a box. For sure, the web is a great place to buy the things you need. At times, however, all you’re looking for is information. At that point your price will be the time it takes to scroll through countless pages that assume you’re here to buy, not just to browse.

Nihil Obstat

1 Comment May 18, 2021 Steve A. Wiggins

Intolerance within religions has been on my mind lately. Every religion has a history and the study of that history demonstrates that religious leadership reflects the rise of dominant personalities to the top. Once that dominant personality reaches the zenith of leadership, he (and it usually is a he) decides what it is proper, or orthodox, for others to believe. I was thinking about this while seeing a book with an imprimatur. There is a wide range of belief within Catholicism. Books which teach official doctrine, or which are used for educational purposes, require an imprimatur for widespread use. An imprimatur requires a review process and includes a designated bishop to declare the work “without error.” In the context of scholarship, this practice makes certain assumptions—that humans of a certain rank can declare a statement an error or fact. A theological fact.

Theological facts don’t really exist. If a fact is something that has empirical measures to determine its truth or falsity, theology falls outside the pale. Ultimately it will come down to the word of one person outweighing that of another. And as doctrine changes over time it would seem that old imprimaturs might expire. The idea is that when something is declared without error, it is without error at that time. As centuries progress, new empirical facts are discovered that impinge on theological “facts.” The idea that any one word is final seems hopelessly time-bound. I’m not picking on Catholicism here, because many religions have official teachings that rank as non-Catholic nihil obstats. It’s merely a convenient example.

The fact hidden in plain sight in cases of religions not permitting diverse views is that censorship stands behind it. It’s no wonder that in a world increasingly supportive of diversity that “one size fits all” theology has come to be questioned. Religions, however, lose their authority if they can’t declare the truth or falsity behind a proposition. Bishops come from priests. And priests come from seminarians. I used to teach seminarians—I don’t know if any of my former students have become Episcopalian bishops or not—opportunities are about as rare as teaching posts. The point is, those who make such doctrinal decisions had to learn them partially from the academic community that grants degrees. As the academy opens up to new ways of looking at things, future imprimaturs will reflect the realities of their times. Religions—all religions—evolve and change. What may be an error today might look quite different in a future light. Perhaps tolerance now will anticipate where we’ll eventually be, in the truth of the time.

Shunned

1 Comment May 14, 2021 Steve A. Wiggins

Belonging is important for our species. As much as some of us may be introverts, we still need other people. Given the wide divisions of human interests and activities, one way people have traditionally come to know one another is through religious organizations. Let’s face it, getting to know your neighbors can be dicey. People from work may not be those you want to spend off-hours with. Joining an organization is a great way to get to know people and, if you’re seeking like-minded friends a religion has been a time-honored way to find them. Of course, many religions are now becoming as polarized as our society, but even despite that one religious practice seems especially insidious—shunning.

Shunning has been used in Christianity from the beginning. One of the real issues, verging on torture, is when someone is raised in a tradition and has made all their friends in it. Many sects encourage this, some overtly, other less so. Those within the fold will not, it is emphasized, lead you astray. If you are shunned, then, you lose not only your welcome at social gatherings or worship, you also lose your friends. For separatist sects—consider the Amish, for one example—integrating into another society is extremely difficult. You were raised to live one way and how would the shunned even begin to know how to live like other people? This applies not only to small sects; being part of the group is a major draw for everyone from Catholics to members of an evangelical mega-church. It’s a means of having a community.

Moving accounts exist of Mormons or other believers being excommunicated or disfellowshiped. The world they knew is gone. Religions create community and the lost of that community is a cruel punishment to invoke. Particularly since the offenses that lead to such exclusion are often doctrinal—matters of personal belief. People are naturally curious, and the desire to learn more frequently leads into uncharted territory. Some traditions will then invoke sacred texts—more specifically a certain interpretation of sacred texts—to justify the exclusion of the curious. Those texts, however, are interpreted by other fallible human beings. Still, the fact that religions continue to use shunning (call it excommunication or any other name) is an indication of the inherent cruelty that religions can express. What could be more hurtful, especially among those who separate themselves from the world, than to throw them out of the only enclave that they know?

Just Justice

1 Comment May 10, 2021 Steve A. Wiggins

Photo by Tingey Injury Law Firm on Unsplash

Like many people raised to believe in democracy, I’m distressed to see that the right wing, worldwide, has taken to a full-on attack against it in an effort to keep power. In the United States Republicans that stood up against the cult of Trump (who was no architect, but a figurehead only) are now being run out of Dodge by their own party. Meanwhile a friend in Britain sent me an article about the open and obvious corruption of Boris Johnson and how the Tories are completely overlooking it in an effort to keep “democratic authority.” It wouldn’t be so bad if the right wing came right out and said “we want to run things, no matter what it takes,” but instead they appeal to religious ideas and try to make it seem like their side alone appeals to “justice” while doing the exact opposite. Paging Mr. Orwell…

The best test case is Jesus. Have you noticed how Jesus has fallen out of right-wing Christianity? Apart from occasionally taking his name in vain, the principles they stand for generally go against the core teachings of the Gospels. The fascism of the right wing has taken what good there was in Christianity and jettisoned the kernel to keep the shell. It’s like a bag of pistachios where all the nuts have been discarded, leaving only the hard casings behind. The really sad thing is that both in the US and in Britain, these power-mongers are in the minority. They use political loop-holes to make their strong-arm tactics look like the will of the people. Things like restricting voting access, made possible by courtroom politics. Isn’t Justice supposed to be blindfolded?

We know for a fact that many of these same people are fully cognizant that fascism led to World War II. They know Hitler used the same tactics to gain power. They know that millions and millions of people died. And now they trumpet the one thing that brought this nation together—the recognition that fascism was evil—as the way of true Christianity. I’m sometimes asked if I believe in demons, having written a book on the subject. Demons are, if you look closely, are considered the source of evil in the world. Quite often stories about them have them possessing good people by pretending to be something that they’re not. Can demons take over entire political causes? Did we not see naked evil in the Nazi regime? How do we not recognize it now that it has taken root in one political party that has claimed the name of “Christian” while simultaneously discarding the teachings of Christ?

Women and Mothers

Leave a comment May 9, 2021 Steve A. Wiggins

This is our first Mother’s Day with a female Vice President. After four years of a female-groping administration, it feels like we’ve made a turn in the right direction. Ironically, it’s often religions that keep women oppressed, even while women are often more faithful to them. Religions like to claim to have the answers, and for the monotheistic traditions an origin myth with Eve—the first mother—as the first picker of forbidden fruit, has suggested one answer that has held women down for centuries. Taking origin stories too literally can cause so much suffering in the world that we’re confronted with the question of their morality. Religions are for people. If they exclude half the human race we need to pause to ask if we got something wrong. It’s Mother’s Day, always on a Sunday. It’s a chance to think about such things.

Many churches will have sermons honoring mothers today. Will they work for the wellbeing of women for the remaining 364 days of the year? Our society, purely on the basis of biology, routinely puts women at risk and underplays the need to help them when that happens. I’ve seen this firsthand. We’re finally starting to get some female representation in Congress, yet less than a quarter of the seats are held by women. Isn’t government supposed to represent its constituents? Why has half of humanity had to struggle for so long to be treated as equal? Mother’s Day cannot be a salve to ease our consciences about mistreating women for the rest of the year. Equity should not be a goal, it should be reality.

We’ll be thinking about our mothers today. Still under a pandemic, we’ll be Zooming them or calling them. Those fortunate enough to live close may even get to see them in person. These mothers sacrificed a lot to take on that role. Our society could not continue without them. We’re starting to come to the realization, I hope, that it is male-devised forms of government and business that are the problem. They protect the wealth and power of a few. They jealously guard against letting men offer the true justice of equity. Some religions have begun to address the obvious injustice they have largely originated. The story of the Garden of Eden was meant to teach a lesson. That lesson has been abused for centuries as a way of making women seem somehow less than men. It’s Mother’s Day. Let’s see if we can’t learn to read more deeply and apply what we have learned.

Welcome the Stranger

Leave a comment May 6, 2021 Steve A. Wiggins

Welcome, sibling! Have you ever contributed to a genealogy online? I know not everyone’s into their ancestry, but there’s enough of the treasure-hunt to it, and enough mystery to keep you turning the pages. Some time ago—it was when I was a professor, because I actually had some leisure time—I posted a bit on WikiTree. WikiTree is a free communal effort to map the world of relationships. Just about every week there’s a newsletter emailed around, offering how many degrees of separation you are from someone famous. Often this is tied into the news cycle, so recently Prince Philip was among those measured. Then Carrie Fisher. Without fail, over the past several weeks, the family member through whom I’m connected to the famous is a great uncle. The same great uncle.

I usually lose interest when the relationship starts to get to siblings and spouses. There are webs everywhere. Still, this intrigued me. I’d never knowingly heard of this great uncle (and certainly never met him) but he was under 20 degrees of separation from several famous people. It made me consider how you never can tell what relationships might lead to connections. My direct ancestors, as far as I know, were all humble, work-a-day sorts. One branch of the family had an engineer a couple generations removed, but for the most part they were farmers, laborers, truck drivers, and such. The web of human relationships includes everyone, of course. At some point in our family trees, we share a common ancestor, be they Neanderthal or Cro-Magnon (or a blending of the two). When we harm or hate another person we’re harming or hurting a sibling, distant or close.

Getting along with everyone may be too much for which to hope, but at least tolerating seems worth stretching for. I once found a long-lost cousin. This was accompanied by a wonderful feeling of having found a family I didn’t even know. Genealogy made that particular reunion possible. Before that I might have passed this cousin as a stranger on the street. It made me stop and think. Is that stranger actually someone related? Traveling back to the areas my ancestors lived I occasionally glimpse a face that could be a distant uncle or aunt. My mental calculus kicks in, but there’s really no way to know just how close they might be. Now, if I were my unknown great uncle chances might be somewhat better that I’m only a degree or two removed. Even so, I should try to treat the stranger as though that were the case.

Dark and Light

Leave a comment May 2, 2021 Steve A. Wiggins

I perhaps have nothing new to say about Ursula K. Le Guin’s The Left Hand of Darkness. It was published before I was ten, and although I grew up reading science fiction I really didn’t read any of Le Guin’s work until this year. It wasn’t intentional—in a small town you read what you can get your hands on, and cover art designed to attract young boys often worked on me. Now having read it, I’m left in a reflective mood. Everyone, of course, comments on the gender aspect of the novel. I guess I’ll be forgiven for doing so as well. After all, it is the most striking feature of the story. As we know from our lives on earth, gender affects pretty much everything about our lives. The biological imperative is strong. It’s no less strong in Left Hand of Darkness, but it is different.

In case you’re like me and haven’t read it (until now), it’s not a spoiler to indicate that it is the story of a male envoy to a planet where the people (and only large mammals) are genderless until once a month they enter “kemmering” when one becomes temporarily male and another temporarily female. The genders aren’t fixed, but fluid. Since the kemmering stage comes only once a month, during that time it become an urgent need among those experiencing it. The novel isn’t about only that, of course, but it is the noteworthy feature that relates to the religion and daily life of the inhabitants of the planet Winter.

It might seem that this idea of shifting genders is itself science fiction, but it is not. There are species on earth that change change gender, bringing into question the statement taken for universal that “male and female he made them.” While gender seems to be evolution’s solution of choice for reproduction, that’s not universal either. In other words, nature provides us with multiple ways in which plants, animals, and things in-between, can continue their existence on this planet. The writers of the Bible weren’t great observers of nature, nor were they scientifically minded. At a glance it looks like animals all conform to the model presented by Genesis. In reality, the world is much more complex than that. Religions aren’t always as comfortable with complexity as writers of science fiction tend to be. Left Hand of Darkness is fine world-building and provocative at that. This may be nothing new, but it is worth pondering again.

Lessons from Mars

1 Comment April 24, 2021 Steve A. Wiggins

It’s a parable. This week, on a planet weeks away, earthlings achieved heavier than air flight. Considering that we flew for the first time on our own planet only 118 years ago (within feasible limits of a very successful human lifetime), the achievement is remarkable. What I found most fascinating about the live stream provided by NASA, however, was the human element in the control room. Not only did all the engineers look young enough to have been my children, I was cheered almost to tears to see several women among them. We’ve come a long way. And I don’t mean just to get to Mars. There’s a lot of work yet to be done on the planet on which we evolved, but it does me good to see scientists recognizing the contributions women make to progress.

While many cultures worldwide still consider women the property of men, that scene showed that with women in leadership roles we can achieve remarkable things. Only with the priorities of diversifying the workplace could we realize a dream that began long before Kitty Hawk. People of all genders and all ethnicities have much to offer our growing sense of accomplishment. Mars is millions of miles away. Perseverance and Ingenuity are being controlled across this godlike distance by a group of humans that consists not just of angry white men who want to rule this world. Although the palpable excitement in the room was for what was happening far away, my spirits were buoyed by what was happening here.

Our biology defines us, but it becomes a sin when it confines us. We are capable of more. We’ve flown on another planet, and yet we still need to learn that on this planet all people deserve fair and equitable treatment. It boggles my mind that on that reddish speck I can see on a clear night, a speck so small that my pinkie held at arm’s length can obliterate it, we have landed a car-sized rover and a helicopter. The math involved staggers this old mind, but the imagination inspires it. We come to moments like these when women and men of various backgrounds come together and dream. Double-masked and socially distant, young people have shown us a world far beyond what angry white men could even imagine. Watching the video of a helicopter taking off, hovering, and landing on another planet, looking at the people in the room, I realize there is a parable here.

Well Grounded

Leave a comment April 22, 2021 Steve A. Wiggins

Earth Day feels like it’s actually Earth Day for the first time in four years. Many of those with more common sense than gullibility know that we have only one planet. Even as we have achieved flight on Mars, any hope of going elsewhere (and some of us would rather not) is many years away. Earth is our home and we can live on our planet without destroying it. Other animals also change the environment, of course. The problem arises when one species becomes unchecked and begins changing things for their benefit only. Or what they perceive as their benefit only. Life evolved on this planet deeply integrated. The more we study nature the more we see how interconnected it is. Thinking ourselves special, we’ve placed a wall between humankind and everything else. It’s an artificial wall.

If you read about nature you’ll be amazed. Trees, perhaps the true heroes of this planet, make our life possible. They couldn’t exist without the fungi that partner with their roots in a symbiotic relationship. If there had been no trees our ancestors would’ve been easy prey to larger predators and would likely not have survived. Large industrial corporations destroy trees as if they’re a nuisance. They are our life. Even as governments with “strong men” leaders destroy the forests in “their” countries, we are losing the very biodiversity that makes life possible on this planet. There’s room for humans to get along here without destroying the environment that supports our very life.

One of the hidden motives in this scenario is a strange development within Christianity. A literalism that would’ve shocked even old Augustine developed around the turn of the last century. That literalism was used by corporations that saw the earth as a resource to be exploited and claimed that we, unlike animals, owned the planet. If you own a home would you destroy it just because you could? What good would it do? No, this Earth Day let’s take the time to consider our religion and its implications sensibly. The Bible does not advocate destroying what God created. It may have been written too early to comprehend evolution, but that was never a problem for early theologians. When fused with capitalism, however, this religion provided everything greedy businesses needed to exploit the planet for its own purposes—the god Mammon. Just this week we flew our first flight on an inhospitable planet far away. Today let’s think of how we might protect the only home we have under our feet.

Herd Not Heard

1 Comment April 18, 2021 Steve A. Wiggins

When mass shootings become commonplace, you might think bipartisan efforts would be made to stem the violence. If so, you misunderstand how little the pro-life party actually values life. By pumping its adherents full of fear, they use the hand not waving a gun to pocket donations from the NRA. Human life is only valuable to get yourself elected. It’s difficult to remember days when I didn’t awake to hear of someone with more guns than restraint opening fire in a public place. Mental illness, it seems to me, is fairly widespread. It’s no deterrent, however, to purchasing military-grade weapons and using them when the stress levels get too high. Meanwhile lives of those—whether fellow gun owners or not—are lost. And Republicans argue that nothing should change. You’d think the insurrection might’ve changed their view.

How does one go to bed secure knowing the next day they may be reading about another mass shooting? Sure, the perpetrator will be caught, if not already dead, and families will be bereaved but we know our rights! Funny how even the Bill of Rights can be prooftexted by those who do the same with the Good Book. What is so hard to understand about “Thou shalt not kill”? Coveting, however, and adultery, seem alive and negotiable, to gather by their support of 45. Such selective reading generally turns deadly and constituencies become mere statistics. What seems to be missing is a basic sense of social justice. A social justice that applies to all.

The idea of wanting a country only for white men and their subservient wives is a relic that simply refuses to acknowledge that societies change. We’ll never reach perfection, but that’s no excuse to stop trying. Firearm regulation might be a rational place to start. While party politics will get in the way of this the pools of blood will grow only deeper. What seems to be missing is the acknowledgement that these are people we are losing to assuage one party’s ambitions. Wouldn’t prioritizing education and providing mental health services be better? Ah, but it might stop some of the wealthy from pocketing yet more money from those who are lined up against the wall. Of course, you can be in the majority and still be gerrymandered into silence. When the Gun Ownership Party begins saying aloud that it can’t win elections fairly, and makes noises about beginning to cull the herd, we should all be getting a little nervous.

One, two, three

1 Comment April 16, 2021 Steve A. Wiggins

The danger of statistics is that they turn an individual into a number. A few days ago an article in the New York Times addressed the rare blood clots that some women develop after receiving the Johnson and Johnson covid vaccine. The response of the cited physicians was telling. Many praised the decision to halt use of the J&J vaccine immediately. Others, however, point to the numbers. If a vaccine is halted many more could be exposed to and contract Covid-19. It is better, they aver, to take the statically smaller risk and use the vaccine. While I understand the logic here, I do wonder if the side effects occurring primarily in women has anything to do with the reasoning. Why not save this vaccine for the men instead?

This raises once again the specter of consciousness. Statistically the odds are small that a woman will develop a clot. What if you are the woman who does? This dilemma always bothered me while camping in the woods. Statistically black bear attacks are rare. How does that help you if your tent is one that looks like a candy wrapper to a bear of little brain? You become a statistic instead of a living, breathing, feeling, blogging person. Statistics. There’s a reason some of us identify with the humanities, I guess. I can imagine what it would be like to have your doctor say to you, “Sorry, this is rare, but look at the bright side—you now become a statistic!”

The fact is we’re all statistics to strangers anyway, the government above all. We are vote-bearing numbers to be gerrymandered and prevented from voting. Beyond that we’re merely annoying. This pandemic has introduced Stalin’s accounting with a vengeance. 542,000 is a big number. Unless you know one or more of them personally. Then the statistics seem to melt. Life is full of risk, of course. We’ve barricaded ourselves in our homes for over a year now, eating things that are likely more dangerous for us than a rare complication. The virus, and perhaps some vaccines, are among various killers on the loose. Nobody can declare with any certainty the correct course of action. Actually doing something about the virus when it was first a known threat would’ve helped, of course. We find ourselves on the brink, it seems, of getting Trump’s disease under control. Would that we all could do so, without having to worry about lying down to be counted.