I’m not a poet, but in this instance, a novelist composing a sonnet, taken from the mind of the protagonist in my current work-in-progress, The Mural Gazer. Buddy Hope has decided to take the final, life defining step of ending his life. But he’s not approaching this ‘task’ from the usual anguished trajectory. Instead, he sees it as a logical conclusion, a job that needs doing, almost as if it were a household chore.
I’ve been trying to figure out how he came to this conclusion. Many of us have contemplated the act of suicide, not as something we would actually do, but as a way of getting underneath, or behind, or into the meaning of life. That’s not where Buddy’s head is at. He’s simply tired, and doesn’t look forward to another thirty or so years dragging himself through a world that has no purpose, no sustainable joy.
To paraphrase someone very close to me, who chose Medical Assistance In Dying (MAID), Buddy isn’t living anymore, he’s just existing. He’s depressed at the prospect of carrying on, when every moment takes him farther from that time in life when he believed in his purpose as a father, a reporter, an armchair philosopher.
The question hanging in the air at this point in the novel is: Will Buddy’s recollections and contemplation heading toward his final act change his mind. He’s composed his parting letter, and left it on the dining nook table of the camper he’s been living in as his home-away-from-estranged-home. He’s saying his veiled goodbyes to family and friends, and is about to drive out of cell range to his chosen spot. Nothing he’s considered so far has dissuaded him from deploying EEK, his Emergency Exit Kit.
What Sense Reveals isn’t written to a particular person; it’s written to all the people he has known and loved.
I have been reading two books lately that are giving rise to cognitive dissonance: Disloyal, a tell-all memoir by former Donald Trump acolyte Michael Cohen; and A New History of Western Philosophy, by Anthony Kenny.
There’s nothing anyone could write about Trump that would surprise me anymore, although Cohen’s account of the utter sleaziness of America’s president has confirmed in lurid detail the disgust I harbour toward this reptilian specimen. The word Cohen has not yet uttered, however, is almost more telling than what he has said.
Trump is portrayed as crass, vicious, misogynous, greedy, undisciplined… insane, pretty well sums up his character. I could have reeled off those epithets and more before reading what Cohen had to say. But the former ‘personal attorney to President Donald J. Trump’ has yet to attach the ideological label that explains the true threat Trump represents: The man is a fascist.
And what shocks me in Cohen’s account is how mesmerized Trump’s followers are by the bare-fisted power of ‘the Boss’, how overwhelmed they are by his all-consuming ego, which has become the ego of his political brand, the MAGA nation.
In true fascist form, Trump has latched onto the disgruntled facet of the American soul, and given it voice. He has justified for his followers all manner of bitterness and rebellion, and amplified their distrust of a political system that has certainly made itself worthy of condemnation. But the glaring irony of his presidency is that he, of all people, is the most ruthless user and abuser of average Americans. There’s only one American that truly counts in Trumpian logic: Donald J. Trump.
Trump has taken the US to the brink, and anyone who thinks the threat to democracy he represents was beaten in the recent American election is living a delusion. ‘The Divided States of America’ is an apt moniker for the US psyche right now.
Cohen’s book underscores the deviancy of a president who supposedly stood up for the common man in Middle America, while reaching out to other fascists of his ilk like Russian President Vladimir Putin.
Kenny’s history of Western philosophy attempts a distillation of the thinking that has led from Ancient Greece to ‘Philosophy in the modern world’. It’s fascinating in its scope; daunting in the depths it alludes to. Right now I’m reading about Kantian logic, and how it plays out in the formulation of morality and ethics.
A central theme of this tome is the quest for moral knowledge and thereby certainty with regard to ethical behaviour. Over and over again, philosophers have attempted to apply reason in response to the question: What is morally right and wrong? And why should I obey the edicts of morality, rather than simply look out for my own interests?
Kant’s ‘categorical imperative’ comes down to a statement that moral behaviour is ultimately self interest taken to its logical extreme. I won’t go into a detailed discussion about a philosophical conclusion I haven’t yet fully understood, but the categorical imperative basically says that to act morally, I should always ask before doing something: What if everyone behaved that way?
For example, why shouldn’t I steal whenever I want something and it’s obvious I can take it without being punished, either because I’m cunning, or powerful, or both. The answer is: If everyone behaved that way, there would be no such thing as private property, and the social structure I rely on to lead a better life would collapse. So I’m acting in my own, and everyone else’s interests when I adhere to the edict: Don’t steal.
Kant’s is just one perspective in the history of morality in Western philosophy. The point is, there have been great thinkers throughout the ages trying to answer the fundamental questions about right and wrong, and find some basis for ethical behaviour.
If you have persevered this far, you probably have identified the cognitive dissonance I am experiencing reading Michael Cohen’s Disloyal at the same time as Anthony Kenny’s A New History of Western Philosophy. It comes down to this: What’s the point in enunciating philosophical statements about morality and ethics when, at the end of the day, it’s always the immoral and unethical pit bulls like Trump that come into power?
I’ll suggest a couple of answers, but with the disclaimer that I can’t resolve the conundrum for anyone else. You’ll have to come up with your own answers for behaving in what you believe is a moral and ethical manner.
First, it’s a mistake to conclude that Donald Trump is behaving immorally or amorally. He may not have formulated his moral code in comprehensible English, but clearly he believes that you take whatever you can get, by whatever means are available to you, without the least concern for the harm you do to others. Lying, bullying and cheating are techniques for achieving an end, and with few exceptions, other people are a means to your ends, not entities you need concern yourself with.
There are millions of people in the world who share Trump’s morals, and always will be.
So, for ‘morality’ in a less selfish, less brutal and dishonest form to survive, it must be articulated, and espoused, and championed by millions of others. Always, and every day.
Morality isn’t a ‘pillar’, in any physical sense of the word. It’s not something that exists outside human consciousness, that you can put in place, then walk away from, secure in the knowledge it will hold up your sky. Morality and ethics are ideas that have to be stood up for every day, and exemplified by people who believe as strongly in their moral codes as Trump and his associates believe in their’s.
That comes down to the responsibilities that are the obverse side to our charters of rights and freedoms. Morality isn’t comprised in vociferous complaining about the excesses of Donald J. Trump and his ultra-rich coterie. It’s about how we live our own lives, and try to persuade others about what’s right and wrong, fair and unfair in the world around us.
Cognitive dissonance is an essential state of mind, when you think about it.
Thanks for checking out my first video post of Today’s Writes. This excerpt is taken from Episode 56 of my novel in progress, The Mural Gazer. At one level, it’s a philosophical but very personal take on suicide – not as a desperate act, but as the rational decision by a man who’s grown tired of living. So I don’t see it as a discussion of suicide per se, so much as an existential, inner conversation on the value of life without meaning.
Protagonist Buddy Hope is more sad than desperate. Sad, because purpose and meaning have drained out of is life, and the thought of continuing seems cowardly. He has arrived at this ‘to be or not to be’ moment, not in Shakespearean torment, but almost dutifully. The twisted irony of his circumstance is: his purpose in life has become to end it.
And what about those he’ll leave behind?
That becomes the real question. And Buddy doesn’t have an answer. He’s written his note. Said oblique goodbyes to his estranged wife, children, lover, and friends Bernice and Harry. But he knows his leaving will be a painful shock to them, and they will be left to struggle with the question: why? To wonder what they could have done to save him.
So another conundrum confronts him: Buddy realizes he has to commit a cowardly act, if he wants to discontinue his cowardly existence. His only consolation, if you can call it that? The belief that people will have to patch the fabric of their own consciousness with shared memories of him, and that mourning might, in a convoluted way, bring them together.
Is that a vain hope?
Today’s Writes are excerpts and reflections on some of my works in progress. They are an opportunity to share, and an invitation for people to participate in my story telling. Thank you for being here.
Poetry, of course, stands on its own. In fact, one of the joys of all literature is the creative response it evokes in the minds of readers. Sharing our responsive impressions is now possible, and this is mine to Rosemary Ratcliff’s poem Our Changing World.
This video was produced for the Chemainus Valley Cultural Arts Society, where I volunteer as a communications guy. Collaborations like this help bring the arts in general, and literature in particular, to a larger audience.
If you want to simply hear her poem, and let its language activate your own interpretations and visions, hit the play arrow, and close your eyes! Then share what it evokes for you in a comment!
Sometimes, usually late at night, after having devoted an inordinate amount of time to figuring out some arcane and indecipherable philosophical theorem, I ask, “Why torture myself? Why not simply accept uncertainty and live out my days happily, secure in the knowledge that what is, is, and what shall be, shall be?”
Why bother with philosophy?
Recently, an answer to that question emerged. As mentioned previously here, for some weeks I have been muddling through Anthony Kenny’s A New History of Western Philosophy. Having just finished the lengthy section on Medieval Scholasticism, I considered myself not much the wiser for it. On the contrary, I felt disheartened and depressed.
That night, however, a list of conditions that I consider foundational to my own philosophy took shape, one after the other, in my mind. Even as I tapped them into my mobile – which I keep handy on the night table for recording thoughts – I realized these fundamentals were in response to my reading of the Medieval scholars… that they are part of my attempt to make sense of what my intellectual forebears had to say.
Here are the foundational statements to my own metaphysics:
Substance is neither created nor destroyed.
Change is incessant and never ending
All change is transformation of one substance into another
There are three fundamental substances: energy, matter & spirit.
Nothing exists that is not composed of the three fundamental substances.
The three fundamental substances never exist in isolation from one another.
The purpose of Being is Being.
The purpose of existence is existence.
The purpose of change is change
The nature of spirit is Being.
The nature of matter is existence.
The nature of energy is change.
Entropy is countered by Being
Being is threatened by entropy.
Nothing cannot exist.
This moment has been possible for all eternity.
All future moments are possible in this instant.
I can imagine that which does not exist; I cannot imagine that which is impossible.
What I imagine does exist.
I can only know what exists in imagination.
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Not everyone will agree with that starting point. Perhaps no-one other than I will. And I may have to revise its terms as I go. But for this existentialist, at this moment, every one of those statements is true, none of them are conditional or contingent.
When I was a kid, my parents insisted I go to church. My older sister and brothers didn’t have to put on a scratchy suit and sit in the bum-polished pews of Norwood United for an hour or so of tepid religion – either because they were already saved or irredeemable, I didn’t know which. But I had no choice.
Then, at some point, Mum and Dad stopped attending, but insisted I continue to make my weekly pilgrimage to the House of God. I resented this arrangement, felt like a sacrificial lamb, being sent as a proxy to atone for my family’s guilt. The only redeeming factor in the whole situation was Rev. Kennedy’s daughter, who sat in the front pew, revering her father, while I sat toward the back, revering her.
Eventually, having recognized my own apostasy and the unattainable nature of the reverend’s daughter, I stopped going to church, too, saving the offertory money for other entertainments that might or might not have required forgiveness, but certainly had nothing to do with salvation.
Thus I spiralled like a misguided spark down the black hole of disbelief. I didn’t permit myself to know it at the time, but I’d stumbled upon my own sort of absolution at the drained font of atheism. It took decades for me to realize I was an atheist, decades more to believe it. I suppose it was mostly the unsettling notion of personal mortality that kept me in suspended animation all those years.
Having lived long enough to know that I don’t want to live forever, though, I’ve freed myself from that more or less selfish entanglement for imposing God on the universe. And what other reason could there be?
Well, it turns out that belief sort of sneaks up on you. If there is no God, I found myself asking, how do I explain all this? ‘All this’ referring to a seemingly infinite and eternal universe which harbours that most astonishing of all miracles: living Beings? Entities that are conscious, that procreate, and that have evolved into something as complex and incomprehensible as my self?
If you are not awed by the panoply of life buzzing, rooting, galloping, creeping, wriggling and a thousand other …ingings all around you, and inside you, and before you, and after… if you aren’t amazed, utterly and profoundly amazed by every bug on every leaf on every tree in the forest, then you can’t be fully human, can you?
That’s where religion sneaks back in. Aren’t awe, wonder and other such terms clearly in the religious realm? Don’t you have to be certifiably religious to use that kind of language in public? Doesn’t it bespeak things we mere mortals can’t understand, or even appreciate wholly. And if we can’t comprehend this universe of ours, who can? I mean someone has to? Otherwise, just like a bunch of passengers on a jumbo airliner, whose pilot has just died of a heart attack, we’re doomed.
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The catch to that sentence, “I don’t understand!” is it presumes there is someone who does. And of course, there have been plenty of prophets throughout the ages, who have proclaimed God’s word in fulfilment of that presumption. And most people throughout history have taken a proclamation of some sort as their truth.
Who knows, they might be right. That I don’t believe in a divine being who exists outside the realms of the physical universe and animal consciousness doesn’t mean all those prophets have been wrong, or charlatans. I don’t have to disprove the existence of God to disbelieve; nor do believers – despite the strenuous logic of thinkers like Augustine, Aquinas, Duns Scotus et al – have to prove His existence as a prelude to common faith.
As an existentialist I refuse to waste everybody’s time and energy with elaborately futile refutations of God’s existence. Is God possible? Yes. Therefore he cannot be denied with certainty. That’s an end to it. In fact, existentialism is not incompatible with faith.
On the other hand, I don’t have to listen politely to the strenuous attempts of believers to ‘save’ me. Or accede to claims about God-given rights in the realms of morality, justice and politics. I don’t mean to quibble, but there’s a stark contradiction to the lyric “God keep our land glorious and free” in the Canadian National Anthem. Who’s God are we talking about? And how is this presumed God going to be fair and impartial to citizens who don’t believe in Him?
Rev. Kennedy was a nice man. I liked him. Most believers are tolerant people. But there’s an underlying pity, or smugness in perverse cases, to the religious outlook. Not only are non-believers damned, according to the Bible, they are also incapable of true wonder, true awe. The heathens are not experiencing the eternal light of salvation; their vision is dimmed by blinding cataracts of sin. The presumption here is that, without God’s divine light we cannot be truly spiritual.
The damage done in the name of that kind of faith has been incalculable.
The other day I was sitting with a group of people in our workshop, the only indoor space on our property where we can practice the edicts of social distancing in accordance with COVID-19 protocols. We heard a cricket chirping in the room, and I spotted him next to the baseboard on the opposite wall. I excused myself from the conversation, walked over and coaxed the creature onto my hand. What a delight! To accompany a living Being out-of-doors and let him go about his singing in a place where it might attract a mate.
Awe is scaleable. Some people need dramatic music and dazzling vistas to achieve that sense of wonder; some need prospects of omnipotence, eternity and infinity; others find it in the minutest of details, in the awareness of spirit infusing every space, every nook and cranny of consciousness.
As an existentialist and atheist I’m reminded every day of my spiritual connection to this world, and I want to celebrate its wonders every moment. In that sense, I’m a believer, too.
Direct-to-Web is more than just a digital format that allows me to distribute and share books cost-effectively and in an environmentally sensible manner, it’s also a way of opening up the boundaries of literature to new possibilities.
I’ve written 35 episodes of the The Mural Gazer, now, and have developed a format that works. But I’m only just beginning to appreciate some of the possibilities D2W offers. The most immediate pluses for readers and authors:
A D2W book can be read on a mobile, a laptop or a desktop computer. No special devices or programs necessary, other than access to the internet and the web.
Audio readings of a D2W story can be bundled with the print edition, so audiences can read or listen depending on their situations or preferences.
The cost of a getting a D2W book into readers hands is a fraction of print or eBook editions because there are hardly any distribution and printing expenses.
A D2W novel can be the modern equivalent of a serial, published episode by episode on the fly.
Graphic elements can be incorporated into the Direct-to-Web experience.
For those who want to lessen the environmental impacts of producing and distributing books, Direct-to-Web offers a much more sensible format than conventional publishing.
Those are immediate benefits of Direct-to-Web. Some of the possibilities that go beyond what is normally expected of literature, and which I haven’t even begun to explore:
Audience interaction. An author can communicate with his audience while he’s writing a book, and remain in contact after a book is published.
Side-stories. Links can be included in a book that will take readers off on side journeys. The possibilities of this feature for subplots, or excursions to actual settings, or… are enticing.
Collaborative opportunities. Musicians, visual artists, photographers, actors, all kinds of arts disciplines can be brought to bear on a plot or theme. Again, the possibilities are limitless and fascinating.
So, much as I like to see The Mural Gazer as a direction literature needs to go in, I’m pretty sure my vision is dwarfed by the reality of the medium I’m so excited about! Of course print editions of books are going to be the mainstay of most readers for some time. But I’d be surprised if mid-21st Century readers are toting paper and hardcover editions around with them; in fact, I’d be surprised if literature occupies anything other more than a shrinking niche in public consciousness if authors and publishers don’t develop the potential of Direct-to-Web books.
We took our new Rialta camper van on its second inaugural run over the weekend, heading for French Beach, via Lake Cowichan and Port Renfrew, then on to Bamberton via Sooke, Goldstream and the Malahat.
The trip redefined our concept of perfect weather to include foggy, thought provoking days, that force you to bundle up and wear a hat, to ward off the droplets condensing on pine needles and leaves.
I always tell people, “I’m not a photographer, I’m just a guy who takes pictures.” But as an ex-journalist (if there ever was an ambulance chaser, who could combine those contradictory terms) I have taken thousands, probably tens of thousands, of shots.
So, although the technical and compositional skills of photography remain outside the view finder for me, I have learned something about the Zen of photography – the delight one takes in capturing a perfect moment in the neural circuitry of mind and camera.
B.C. offers so many opportunities for those focusing clicks. In this series, my favourites are the two images of Diana walking on a gravel spit off Bamberton Beach. The fog obscured much of the background, which made the parts it revealed more meaningful, more symbolic.
Careful as she was, observing the seagulls in the first shot, I anticipated the instant she would nudge just a fraction of a step too close, triggering their flight instinct. Birds taking wing are an inspiring image for me, and seagulls, with their long, elegant wings and immaculate white plumage, are a constant metaphor of my coastal existence.
Pleased with my photo prowess, I was repacking my camera, when glanced up and saw Diana heading back to shore, and about to step into the frame of a surreal composition that placed a ghostly boat in front of a ridge of hills looming out of the fog. The territory between that moored boat, and the mysterious landscape, is incognito, which means it’s a zone of possibilities, of unknowns.
Shafts of sunlight penetrating a forest canopy; a fungus encrusted log, the haphazard architecture of a driftwood hutch… to encounter those kinds of visual wonder on a couple of beaches, in a few hours… that’s part of the endless fascination of Vancouver Island.
Stay tuned. We’ll be heading out for the third inaugural trip in the Rialta soon… just as soon as I can get a mechanic to tell me why the engine light came on, as if our camper van didn’t really want to leave Port Renfrew, and complete our South Island circle tour.
In Chapter 8 of Anthony Kenny’s A New History of Western Philosophy, on page 463, there is a section talking about Scotus on Divine Law. My initial reaction was to set aside the nuances of the conversation as being irrelevant to an atheist’s point of view. But as an atheist, who has been raised in a society still at odds over the existence of God, and who can’t deny the religious controversies I have been immersed in, I have to pay attention to all the possibilities that might be believed.
If I am understanding Kenny’s explication, the new idea Scotus introduced was the arbitrary nature of God’s absolute power. As an omnipotent, omniscient being, God does not have to decree a ‘natural law’ in keeping with mankind’s happiness. He admits there are some essential aspects of ‘divine law’ that cannot be contradicted, even by God – for example, God cannot command a person to blaspheme Him or deny Him. But outside those absolute contradictions, which are foundational and fundamental, God can command anything He wants.
Thou shalt not kill may be a commandment, but if God chooses to break it or make ‘exceptions’, it is perfectly within his power to allow murder and not classify it as sin. Thou shalt not steal, Thou shalt not commit adultery, many of the Ten Commandment edicts only apply because they are decreed by the will of God, and if God chooses to vary them under certain circumstances, it is within his infinite power and wisdom to do so… and who are we to question the divine will.
To me, the logic of Scotus’ interpretation of ‘divine law’ seems obvious. I have often wondered how theologians up to his time could possibly explain the limits they wanted to place on God – how they could fashion God in their own image and according to their own mental and spiritual powers. If I were a believer, I would go farther than Scotus, actually. I would say that God has the divine ability to enact what seems to us mere mortals as contradictory realities.
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Of course, that godly power is often usurped by religious and political leaders for their own ends, quite often, to simply use as a means of grasping earthly authority for the sake of ungodly enterprises.
This unshackling of God would play an important role in the coming Reformation, Kenny says. By countering the ‘eudaemonistic’ nature of a loving God, he disabused those who agreed with him of any notion that the power of their God could be contained within the bounds of any human desires and comprehension.
A more scholarly philosopher than me might be able to tie that depersonalized version of God to the eventual apostasy of most of His followers. It certainly reinforces my notions of morality and ethics as being evolved systems of belief and behaviour that only exist in individual minds, communing with other individual minds.
There is no moral code, inscribed on tablets that have been handed down to us by God. Each human has his or her own set of moral standards that have been developed over a lifetime. Ethics is the complex, never-ending task of coordinating and reconciling individualistic social behaviour into a code the majority can agree and adhere to. To accuse someone of being ‘immoral’ is really saying they are activated by moral impulses different from your own; to call them ‘unethical’ is to say, they don’t agree with or abide by many of the behavioural standards endorsed by your society.