Sex and Death -- Our Neuroses in the West

For at least 1000 years, we've not handled sex and death well in the West. Maybe not in the East either, quite possibly not in the Middle East, but definitely not in the Judeo/Christian, mostly Christian, West.

And why?

My guess: We've been neurotic about it ever since the vast majority of us bought into the notion that the Messiah, the Son of God, God incarnate, was born of a virgin, lived a virgin, and after dying, didn't stay dead.

So what does this story, especially as it is more and more glorified, imply? Well, one idea it seems to promote is that sex is too scandalous for a god, too carnal, even for incarnation. Tricky story here: On the one hand, we can't have a god born of an unmarried woman. Way too scandalous. On the other hand, we can't have a god born of a married woman who has had sex with her husband. If God is the father (and the Son as the Gospels would have it, thus giving us a family dynamic that at least casts a glance at Oedipus), then some mere mortal can't be involved . . . except in the giving birth part. But virgin birth? What's the point of that? Why is sex unworthy of a god's entry into the world? The Hindu Rama had a mama and a papa . . . on earth. Why not Jesus? I suspect it's because if Jesus comes from or goes to dust, the rest of us really are just dust to dust.

So a Child is Born in a manger and he, too, grows up to be a virgin before . . . .



Dying. But he doesn't stay dead. Or so we’re told. (As a child, I was instinctively skeptical about the Resurrection of Jesus. Sure, I wanted to believe it, but c’mon! My pastor didn’t cotton to skepticism. “If there’s one lie in the Bible,” he preached, “then it’s all lies!” This hard line struck me as troubling. It shut down the discussion instead of, perhaps, tending the sparse kindling of my flickering faith. And, of course, I didn’t really know about metaphor or allegory or even myth then.)

Death must be defeated. And if the Messiah can’t defeat death, what chance do the rest of us have? We call him the Messiah because he defeats death and shows us “the way.” Does the way require abstention, poverty, and crucifixion? Well, yes, it would seem so. After all, sex is suspect; we are plagued with wanting more than we have; and the anxiety about our mortality is the cross we all bear.
Now, there's much to inspire us in the resurrection part of the story, but only so long as we don't get the idea that consciousness cannot die and we can live forever in some sort of immaterial realm, i.e., as long as we don’t take the resurrection literally.

Why do we imagine that consciousness is eternal? Because we can’t imagine not being. It’s oxymoronic: to imagine not being. And so we create myths to help us wrestle with death. We let these myths work through the culture, through us as individuals; we revisit them and we try to derive some wisdom from them. It’s hard because we’re surrounded by what appears to be the finality of death. “Aye, but to die, and go we know not where . . . . ”

The 19th century French thinker Senancour struggled with faith and said, “if it is nothingness that awaits us, let us act as if it is an unjust fate." My response is, well, you do that. I can appreciate how unjust nothingness seems, and I can understand how hard it is reconcile to this. I sure don’t want to not be. So I can see how we’d create myths to helps us place all of this in perspective.

Perhaps the ancient Mesopotamian text “Gilgamesh” does this best. Our eponymous hero spends much of the time raging against the night after he sees his best friend, Enkidu, die. There is no bringing his friend back to life and Gilgamesh quickly surmises that the same awaits him, even him, the part divine, biggest, baddest, somfabitch in between the Tigris and Euphrates. So he looks for the elixir promising immortality. He finds it. Then loses it. Only then is he open to the wisdom of an elder who tells him that there the immortality of a memorable legacy is available to him, and that’s all, but it can be good, really good, if we can see the wisdom in it. Gilgamesh does, in fact, happily reconcile himself to this figurative immortality and then, guess what? Everything he found unsatisfying in life becomes glorious. And a life of wanting more, more, more only to be unsatisfied, unsatisfied, unsatisfied, becomes a life of fulfillment.

Great story!

But not good enough apparently for some of the seers to follow in the Fertile Crescent. I can hear them now, sitting around the fire, listening to the tale of Gilgamesh: “Yeah, yeah, I got your legacy, but don’t tell me that my mind will be snuffed out like a oil lamp.” What’s the point, after all, if we all just really die?

So we create myths and legends to help us deal with it. But let’s not create an industry around the idea that there is a literal life after death.

If it turns out that consciousness is eternal, then I wonder why there’s no firm evidence of that? We’re an ingenious species, a sentimental species. Wouldn’t someone in the after-life have figured out how to contact us in the here and now? You might say that God forbids this. But no one has rebelled against this edict? You might say that our temporal life will seem so . . . yesterday to us once we enter the Empyrean.

Much as I’d like to, I can’t buy it.

When we’re dead, we’re so dead. Death is like the bullet that destroys our brain before we hear the report of the gun that’s been pointed at us.

We rage against the night. As well we should. And we create a god to create a celestial, unlike the material realm around us, to support the afterlife. But if upon arriving in the afterlife, my consciousness is so expanded that I'm just la-dee-dah about Tina, then I'm not really me anymore. I might as well have died.

And since death is a door that has remained closed, we keep telling ourselves, via the afterlife industry, that there’s no brick wall behind it. And we have to keep telling ourselves and keep telling ourselves and keep telling ourselves, because if there IS anyone on the other side, they just don’t seem to care enough about us to make any contact with those of us on earth. Our insistence on an eternal consciousness is an afterlife addiction.


There’s a lovely, and gently honest, definition of faith in the Christian New Testament. In Hebrews 11:1, our unknown epistler explains, “Faith is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen.” It’s hard to know if the claim of “evidence” in the second clause is figurative or literal, but if it’s literal, it’s qualified playfully, I think, by the first clause which states that the substance of faith is hope. Just hope. Not evidence. And I admire Kierkegaard’s leap of faith whereby he embraces the second clause in its more literal sense. And what did he leap over? The Abyss of Doubt? Yes. And rational thought. And these two – the Abyss and rationality -- are inseparable because rational thought tells us that nothing awaits. Even that phrase, “nothing awaits,” seems to anthropomorphically suggest a consciousness that we will greet in some fashion, however briefly. No, let’s just stop hoping for what cannot be . . . nothingness does not await. It simply is.


My life is good. Sure, I don’t want the goodness of it to end. But nothingness means that I can’t possibly find myself in some realm where I’ll miss my earthly life.

I like the word “off” as a verb here. Disease, old age, or some calamity will off me. And I will not be in any form whatsoever ever again.

The Christian story of resurrection and the Gilgamesh legend of the partially divine being reconciling himself to immortality can inspire us to consider the figurative immortality we might achieve. But not if we take them literally. Then we just get neurotic as our beliefs fly in the face of what we see around us all the time, but are unwilling to accept and encouraged not to by the peer pressure of the after-lifers.

Wacko Conservatives -- Dr. Laura and the "Ground Zero" Mosque Opposition

Dr. Laura Schlessinger, the conservative talk radio advice and insult dispenser, recently sprayed the airwaves with "n______" in response to an African-American caller who had been upset by some racial slurs, specifically n______, directed her way. Dr. Laura wondered if maybe the caller was too sensitive, too thin-skinned. After all, she argued, black people use n_________ all the time with one another. By the end of the call, Dr. Laura had used the term many, many times as she explained why white people might be confused about whether the term is permissible.

I'm not confused. Who's confused? White kids on occasion, sure. But adults? I'm confused about how anyone could be confused about it. What? African-Americans start using the word with one another (and for the record, I think it's a bad idea even for them) and suddenly it's open season for white people to use it? Who are the white people just waiting for tacit permission to say "n________" so that they can get down with their black bros? Who are the white people stupid enough to think that's going to be cool?

This needs to be explained to adults?

An NPR commentator provided a good analogy explaining why the permission to use "n_____" does not extend to anyone who isn't black. "I can say things about my sister," he explained, "but you can't say things about my sister."

So Dr. Laura apologized, but also told Larry King that she would quit the show so that she could speak freely. "I want to regain my First Amendment rights. I want to be able to say what is on my mind, in my heart, what I think is helpful and useful without somebody getting angry."

She's an idiot.

She never lost her First Amendment rights. The Bill of Rights protects us from the government, not from the displeasure of others. Does she really believe that the First Amendment protects her from other people taking issue with her? She has every legal right to say and think just about whatever she wants.

The First Amendment exists for the very purpose of allowing people to piss off other people and not get killed or jailed. We don't need a First Amendment to protect supporters of say, moms and puppies. We need it for ....

Muslims, I guess, in this country. But . . . conservatives have forgotten this.

Conservative commentators -- following in the footsteps of their ideological ancestors who persecuted Catholics and some wayward Protestants, not to mention Jews -- have conflated Islam with Nazism because a Muslim leader, an imam who has been chosen by President Bush, Condoleeza Rice, and the FBI as a liaison with the Muslim community, wants to build an Islamic cultural center two blocks away from Ground Zero to better serve his growing flock. “Nazis don't have the right to put up a sign next to the Holocaust museum in Washington,” Newt explained.

He has also argued that you can't find churches or synagogues in Saudi Arabia, so why should we allow mosques here! Great idea, Newt! Let's use Saudi Arabia as the standard for religious tolerance.


1.57 billion people, 23% of the world's population, are Muslim.

To conservative Newt Gingrich, they are all Nazis . . . or the moral equivalent. For you young 'uns out there, Newt is a presidential aspirant, and former Speaker of the House. No conservatives have stated that he's crossed a line here. None of them seem to get it that when we suggest that all Muslims are morally nefarious, craven, and maniacally genocidal (i.e., Nazis), we might create a few more enemies among them.

And, yes, unfortunately the spineless Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid agrees and our mealy-mouthed qualifier in chief, President Obama, can't take firm stand. (For the best commentary on this, see here.)

So Dr. Laura believes that her First Amendment rights are violated if people disagree with her; Newt believes that the First doesn't apply to people with whom he disagrees; Democratic Party leaders side-step the issue at best; and as is often the case, the only people who seem to understand the First Amendment are the people who need it most.

Another Overused Word: Passion

The statement on the bottle of Lipton iced tea says that the tea leaf selectors are apparently "passionate" about choosing the right tea leaves for my tea. What does this passion get them? A spot in the fridge of a gas station mini-mart.

One of the funders for my local NPR affiliate claims that accounting is not just their business, it's their "passion." Same's true for a pharmaceutical company going after diabetes. More and more, I hear this word used to define the commitment of employees in various commercial enterprises. I pity the employee who hasn't mustered this passion despite her obvious competence.

From whom shall we expect this passion then?

Is it not enough to be deftly skilled and diligent with our work? We must also have a "passion" for it? Apparently so. No longer can we merely enjoy our work, grow in competence, and attend to challenges successfully. And if we cannot necessarily enjoy our work, then can we at least trade competence and reliability for compensation?

No. Now, considering the full understanding of the word "passion," we must harbor one of two possible attitudes toward our work: We must either "suffer and endure pain" for our work, e.g., be crucified by it for some greater purpose. Or we must be in constant "throes of sexual ecstasy" as we go about our work. Between the two, I guess I'd opt for the latter, though I don't know how well that would go over in my line of work, nor can I imagine how I'd get through the day even if my employer approved of my new-found gusto.

But just imagine, say, the Bank of America building in San Francisco. From every office, at all times, comes "Oh, my God! Oh, my God!"

What could get done in such a place? What would meetings be like? And consider the effect on company morale if Barbara experiences a crucifying "Oh, my God" while in the next office, Bob experiences multiple orgasms . . . all day long.

Okay, okay, I know, with its current usage, the flames of "passion" -- whether they inflict pain or provoke climax (or both . . . for some?) -- have been doused so that, now, our "passion" need only be, what? A fanatical commitment to our work to the detriment and possible exclusion of other aspects of our lives?

Song of the Month or Week

"El Microfono" by the Mexican Institute of Sound. Very much fun.

Great Lines or Paragraphs From What I'm Reading

". . . I give you the fair-minded American patriot Josiah Quincy of Boston. In the 1760's he boldly opposed the British occupation, but when a mob of Bostonians tormented British troops into shooting some of them -- the Boston Massacre, it was called -- and the troops were charged with murder, he and John Adams defended the redcoats and saved their lives. Remember when American leaders did things like that? The country [at that time] wasn't just threatened by jackleg terrorists, it was occupied by an army, and yet people like Quincy and Adams felt strong enough to focus on due process -- to resist the occupation but still identify with the occupiers as people. Those were the days."

-- Roy Blount, Jr., in Alphabet Juice

Today . . . I Was Offered My First Senior Discount!

Today, at the age of 55, I was, for the first time, offered a Senior Discount. It was some youngster at the front desk at the University of California Berkeley Art Museum.

"Are you a member?" she asked as I proposed to purchase a ticket.

No," I replied.

"Cal employee or student?" she continued.

"I'm nobody," I said.

"Senior discount?" she offered.



I chuckled and asked, "What age should I have reached to qualify for the senior discount?"

"65," she said, looking right at me.

Amused, I smiled and asked, "What made you think I'm in the senior discount category?"

"Oh, we'd just take your word for it," she kindly offered.

She was charming, so, no, I didn't respond with, "Just take my WORD for it? What is about what you see here that would make you BELIEVE I'm 65 . . . or OLDER?!!!!!?"


The museum was $8 for non-seniors. $6.50 for seniors. Not being good with money, I didn't see my opportunity at the time. Nor did I reflect upon the fact that this was a milestone event in my life: my first offer of a senior discount.

I just said, "I've a ways to go to hit 65, but from your perpective it must be like looking at the Chrysler Building and the Empire State Building from the sidewalk between them. Hard to tell which is taller."

"Yeah, I can't tell," she laughed, still looking right at me. In this moment, she was merely acknowledging what she must have considered our shared plight: the inability to make a distinction between 55 and 65. She wasn't being rude because she's not only unable to make a physiological distinction; she's not capable of discerning an emotional distinction between 55 and 65 either. From her perspective, if you're 55 . . . you might as well just be 65, 75, dead. It's all one big undifferentiated horror.

She gave me a ticket. I reached and took it without difficulty. One day, my hand will tremble a bit.


It was much later that I noted the milestone, but I also noted that it shouldn't surprise me. I was dressed in 3 shirts, a jacket, jeans, and a hat because it was cold outside. Or was it? I had noticed in the morning so many young people around Cal wearing far less clothing, sitting outside, riding bikes, and I had asked myself: "Is it cold, objectively, so that most humans would regard it as cold, or am I cold because I'm getting old? Do I have less energy to fight off the elements?"

Now, if I'm asking myself that question, then . . . .

Gotta keep a sense of humor about this aging thing.

Does being a curmudgeon, to the extent that I am, have an effect upon my face so that it makes me look older than I am. (What's the word for psychological conditions which slowly change the facial affect?)

Literally Overused Words and Phrases – Awesome, Literally, Unique, “It’s All Good.” And a Word I’m Afraid of: Curmudgeon. In Five Posts:

Okay, so these next few posts may seem curmudgeonly to some, but we’ll get to that later.



The misuse of “awesome” is not awe-inspiring, but it’s so fashionable now to use “awesome” (or “amazing”) as the standard response to the smallest convenience or pleasure that I have to wonder if the actual meaning of the word is forgotten, or perhaps it was never fully understood, thus leaving us with one fewer word to describe the stupendous.

Conversation in a store:

Clerk: There’s something wrong with the credit card operation right now . .

Me: Well, here, I can pay cash.

Clerk: That would be AWESOME!


Conversation on the street:

First person: Looks like there’s 15 minutes left on this meter.

Second: That’s AWESOME, dude!


It’s actually kind of cute and kind of annoying all at once. It’s cute because people, mostly young people, say “awesome” with such conviction. It’s as if they’d suffered uniformly drab, disappointing lives up to that moment. “Tic tacs in colors other than white? AWESOME!!!” “There’s a bus-stop. AMAZING!!!”

“Really?” I want to ask. What word is left, then, for, say, comprehensive climate change legislation, a cure for cancer, the resurrection of John Lennon? And so the evocation of awe, previously reserved for the wonders akin to those given us in the Old Testament, annoys after awhile for the same reason that the misuse of “literally” annoys.

This brings to mind the current vogue in the expression of gratitude: “Thank you soooooo much!” which can be evoked by a gesture as simple as loaning a pen to someone for a moment. If such a simple courtesy evokes such gushing gratitude, what is left if I save that same person, moments later, from an oncoming car or a knife-wielding maniac?

Addendum to "Awesome" -- Mea Culpa!!

One of you wrote in response to this entry:

greg, your blog is just AWESOME! amazing, really!

My initial reaction was that I was so pleased that she liked it . . . and then, after a few moments, I realized, to my chagrin, that she used "AWESOME" and "amazing" for comic effect.

Whereas, initially, I just felt complimented.

So, it would seem that, for a moment, I accepted the possibility of my own awesomeness. And that, dear reader, is even worse than the overuse of "awesome."

Literally . . . Overused

I am not literally sick to death of the misuse of these words. Why? Because if I were, I’d be dead. Why? Because the presence of the adverbial form of “literal” in this paragraph’s first sentence tells you . . . . oh, you may be literally tired of this, but . . . I continue: The presence of “literally” means (and, of course, I’m tempted to say it “literally” means) that what follows in the sentence happened just as the words indicated, i.e., in reality, actually, factually. “My head literally exploded when Rosie played 30 minutes of Justin Bieber last night while I was doing math,” means that . . . you’re dead and your math book is a mess.

(Tina sometimes, but never literally, talks trash.)


Yes, yes, yes the overuse of the misused “literal” is not a revelatory observation. Others are fighting the good fight on this front. See here and here. And, yes, I know that the abusers of the word don’t mean me to believe that whatever follows “literally” literally happened. People are speaking figuratively, of course. But is that the end of it? Is that really an adequate defense for “I literally coughed my lungs up” and “I literally cried my eyes out” and “_____(your favorite here)______________”?

Can’t we also recommend that we literally give the figurative “literally” a rest? That would be awesome.

Unique -- This Post Is Not

I’m amazed I intend to spend time on the death of “unique” as a spoken word. The misuse of it has so ingratiated itself into common parlance that it’s official definition may change in my lifetime. Custom has long made “unique” more applicable to the merely unusual and so those of you out there wanting to fight this fight . . . will lose. My English teachers, yours, too, probably, occasionally explained that “unique” is like “pregnant.” There are no degrees of pregnancy. You either are or you’re not. So with uniqueness. Something can’t be “very unique.”

I rarely hear it used correctly, i.e., to indicate that some phenomenon is “one of a kind”, absolutely sui generis. Rather, I most often hear it used to describe relative rarity and, sadly, when I hear it used correctly, the person is quite often wrong about the uniqueness of the phenomenon because they are too hopeful or just quantitatively wrong about the uniqueness of the matter addressed.

It used to be that “unique” maintained its integrity in the written word, but with so much online writing, without proper editors (like Tina), “unique” will fall from its lonely perch to join the ranks of “unusual,” “rare,” “surprising,” and other slovenly, unquantifiable terms.

The misuse of “unique” may be due to the very construction of the word itself. “Un-” gives us the “one” and oneness of things. But the French “-ique,” like the English “-ic” translates to “in the manner of” or “kinda’ like” as in “heroic.” So if “unique” were fully anglicized, it might be a very ugly and unEnglishy “oneish,” pronounced “one-ish” and that does, we must admit, suggest relative rarity rather than one-of-a-kind absolutism. Americans are often peeved with the French and thus may be sabotaging the Frenchy “unique” because we can perceive the potential “oneish” and would use it if that “-ei-” weren’t so thoroughly hideous.

And, just in case you think I’m literally tone-deaf to how silly my objection to “unique”’s misuse makes me seem to you, dear reader, well, I see you rolling your eyes and exclaiming, “No one cares!”, but you are so wrong for I am not unique in my banner-raising about this matter. I have the English speaking world’s grammarians and English teachers behind me and they kick ass. Awe-inspiringly.

"It's All Good" -- All?

What is it about “It’s all good” that makes me think bad thoughts? Especially about the speaker? Makes me shudder like dragging fingernails on a blackboard. This is a current hipster idiom drawn I believe from 90’s hip hop which has been, like popular music throughout the ages, a fount of neologisms, some artful and lasting, some more contrived or, for whatever reason, dated, so that the only appropriate use of them is in the ironic sense (“far out”).

Pop music born neologisms get appropriated across communities of young people if these new words and phrases are found to be clever or if the artful use provides some sort of elite status, i.e., makes you seem “cool.” Some neologisms even get picked up by older generations and while young people may object in this instance, so what? The evolution of the language requires artistic talent and we elders appreciate it when it’s elegant and clever. I, for example, have always liked the use of “down” to suggest approval . . . though I use it judiciously. I’m not 28 after all (and for all I know “down” may be down and out now).

“It’s all good.”

No. It’s not. I hear this faux-Zen expression usually in response to someone’s apology for some small transgression. An elevator passenger asks me to press "5." I press "4" by mistake and I apologize. “It’s all good,” says the seemingly blissed out fellow passenger.

I shudder. Why? How’s it different from the tried and true, “Oh, that’s alright!”? Or the “Eh, fuhgeddaboutit”?

Because the more traditional responses come with a “Hey, I’ve been there, buddy” comaraderie and a smile, even a pat on the back at times, that binds the miscreant and the victim, such as they are, together in the human lot of comic frailty and error.

Whereas, by comparison, “It’s all good” gives off a mellower-than-thou, blithely hip affect that separates the parties involved as if to say, “You’re a fuck-up, but I’m so far above any possible inconvenience you could cause me that you must wish you could be as Zen as I am.” There’s no eye contact, no binding in the human comedy, no acceptance of the apology. No, it’s just Buddha-wannabe and loser. What’s more, it suggests a cosmic order, a determinism, that no one need get stressed about. So not only does it attempt to toss me into a caste of the ignorantly striving, but it also denies me my free will.

Just what does the “all” in “It’s all good” cover? How about if I steal your purse?

Yet this hipster non-chalance is such an obvious veneer – because I know in my heart of hearts that I can piss off anyone without much effort – that the person expressing the Panglossian idiocy of “It’s all good” comes off as mindless as a Haight Street stoner and, well, kind of small. And why? Because “It’s all good” means nothing more than that a person wants to say "It's all good" and seem blithely hip.

Curmudgeon? Me?

Tina does say I’m becoming a bit, just a bit, curmudgeonly, though she acknowledges as much only when I seek her appraisal of something I’ve done or said that seems to me like it may suggest a bit of curmudgeonliness to others. For example, recently, I unsubscribed to the neighborhood email newsletter after weeks of not reading anything in which I seemed remotely interested. Many posts were by the same person who seems to “rescue” small wild animals in our neighborhood. Never mind that we live in the woods . . . where Darwinism is the law of the land.

Also recently, the neighbors all got together of a Sunday night with chairs and wine on a driveway nearby and I didn’t even know about it until Tina said, “That get-together is happening right now up at Nancy’s,” and I replied, “What get-together?” and then Tina recalled that I had unsubscribed to the neighborhood newsletter. “Does this make me a curmudgeon?” I asked and she acknowledged that, indeed, it did. She didn’t pause to think nor did she gaze at me reprovingly and certainly not consolingly. Just kept eating her dinner as if I’d asked something as mundane as, “Did you remember to put milk on the grocery list?”

“Yes,” she said, looking at her grilled chicken, glass of wine in hand.

“I just don’t want to read about every animal that so and so rescues on a seemingly daily basis,” I whined.

“Curmudgeon,” she said still without looking up from the dinner that I, in my loving spirit, had prepared for her, a dinner that included a Tarte Tatin made with tomatoes.

So . . . my curmudgeonliness, such as it is, may in fact be rational opposition to mindlessness. But, I must admit, that’s what all curmudgeons say.

By the way, the dictionary definition of a “curmudgeon” points to a “churlish,” “miserly,” even “avaricious person.” But that doesn’t seem to be the working definition, the common understanding, except for the “churlish” part. There is no accepted etymology of “curmudgeon,” which is good because I had wondered if it shared any provenance with “cudgel” or “truncheon,” or “bludgeon” and hoped not insofar as those three weapons seem far too brutal to be evoked by the relative harmlessness of a “curmudgeon” whose curmudgeonliness is routinely, and perhaps rightly, ignored instead of feared.

Baycation

We didn't travel this summer. Instead, we had a new, and safe, deck built. So . . . had a four-day "Baycation" instead. Here are some photo highlights: