I recently read an estimate that an average person living in a developed country has approximately 30,000 days to "experience [his] existence." The estimate was followed by the assertion that 30,000 days is all the time a person can "rationally" expect to have. Any expectation of any existence before or after this 30,000 days was labeled impossible to prove and therefore irrational. The emphasis was on "rational thinking" which the writer embraced as descriptive of his beliefs while hotly rejecting the term "atheist" as pejorative. The writing leads me to begin wondering.
If you only had 30,000 days to “experience your existence,” and then that was it, no more, none. You knew this, rationally, to be a fact; then it seems to me it would be rational to conclude that you would make all life decisions with this fact foremost in your mind. I am not quite sure exactly what those life decisions would be, nor that it is rational to conclude everyone would make the same decisions (the history of rationalism does not support that expectation), but certainly for many this 30,000 day limit would influence their decisions.
I can’t help but wonder though, whether those life decisions would change if there was a possibility, a mere possibility, that you might have an infinite amount of time, a quantity of time that makes 30,000 days shrink into insignificance; an eternity, let us say, to “experience your existence.” Certainly, the history of man’s past rational conclusions leads us to consider the possibility that at this time, we may not have all the facts concerning our existence. There may be existences beyond our 30,000 days we yet know nothing about. I think a rational person, for considering all possible contingencies is certainly rational, might modify his initial decisions when considering this possibility.
Another thought occurs. What if the life decisions you make during your 30,000 days determine the quality of your eternal experience? That is a belief held by many, in a variety of faiths, both in the present and throughout all recorded history. Certainly, it is not rational to conclude that even the most massive of mass delusions could influence that many people through history to such similar conclusions. It seems more rational to consider the possibility, even the merest possibility, that how you choose to live during your 30,000 days determines the quality of your experience for all eternity. Would the possibility of an eternity determined by your 30,000-day existence make it seem even shorter and even more precious? Possibly precious is too weak a word. Would not the life choices you make become crucial?
What if you came to believe—for belief may be what would be required, because the “rational” arguments against this are persuasive—what if you came to believe this eternity was a certainty and not just a possibility? How would your choices change then? How important would those choices become? Are we forced, rationally, to consider this possibility also?
I am beginning to sweat just a bit. Who needs this kind of pressure? I am beginning to wish rationalism had a better record of accomplishment. The history of rational man is full of rational certainties reversed when more data was discovered. With that track record, it seems rational to make life decisions considering the possibility that what looks like irrational belief now will become rational truth when we have more data. However, as we continue to give weight to more and more "beliefs" in the name of rationalism the clarity and certainty of rationalism seems to blur more and more. There is comfort in the certainty that given all significant data, rational men will inevitably get the answers right, but that is cold comfort for me. History is long, but I only have 30,000 days.
Furthermore, a great many believe the whole point of the 30,000 days you have, the reason you have them, is to prepare you for, and give you an opportunity to, experience the best eternity possible, and—here’s the kicker—the quality of that eternity, they believe, is determined by the decisions you make, the things you choose to believe during your 30,000 days. Is it not the most rational path to consider this possibility also? How odd that rationalism so forcefully pushes us to embrace irrationalism.
That is it! That is enough! Too much to consider! Do I have to get all this right? What happens if I mess up, have a weak moment, get a little tired, distracted, or just do not make the best, most rational decision about something? Have I blown the whole thing? My 30,000 days are diminished by these lapses in rationality; they may be destroyed by just plain wrong conclusions—of course only because I didn’t have all the facts—and finally there is still the merest possibility my eternity may also be screwed up by my bad choices.
It seems to me rationality collapses because it is rigid, unforgiving, and ultimately, cannot carry its own weight. The most rational thing for me to do is to make what rationalists may consider the very irrational decision to believe in a loving, forgiving God—even when I cannot always see his love in what he does or does not do. It seems best for me to give God my faith and service during my 30,000 days and trust to his love for the quality of existence I experience for eternity.
Certainly, life is precious and short, but is it all we have? I believe not. I think it is rational to believe there is more.
Tuesday, December 27, 2005
Saturday, December 24, 2005
Truth du Jour
“What you say may be true for you, but it is not for me.”
Car crash, whiplash! That “my truth” is separate, distinct, and disparate from “your truth” crashed into me with such force my head popped back and forth at the whip/tip end of my flailing body. In that swirling blur, I had something like a chicken’s last thought, that final, squawking half idea as grandma gave a last twisting flip, popping the head off the body, sending it into beak-open, surprise-eyed oblivion, “Squaaaaak doooo yooooou meean?” >pop< But my head remained on my body. I found myself something short of a miraculous, but bodiless, coming-to-consciousness on the compost heap. I was traumatized, but ambulatory, with a perpetual pain in my neck.
Truth is . . . well . . . truth. I may be wrong about what I believe to be truth; you may be wrong about what you believe to be truth, but our errors do not make or unmake truth. Just because you believe something is right or wrong, does not make it so. To call truth false is a lie. To call a lie truth is a lie. I can call some truth “absolute,” some “eternal,” and other truths “conditional” or “ephemeral,” but those labels are merely tests, filters to separate lies from truth, for if I know a thing and know it to be neither absolute nor eternal I know it is not truth.
It would certainly be useful to me to believe truth is relative. If there is no absolute truth, then there are no moral absolutes and I can easily justify all kinds of bad behavior. Any choice to fulfill my personal desires can be justified as true for me regardless of who else I harm, and I can shrug off the pain of those hurt by my choices. I can say they deserve their pain because they cannot find it in their little hearts to be happy for me. I can declare them narrow, judgmental, and intolerant. I can assert their joy-killing beliefs will lead them inevitably to sadness and despair. I can even elevate relativism to the level of virtue and drape myself in a flag emblazoned with the slogans, “Tolerance” and “Pluralism,” and assert a claim for the moral high ground. I can call truth false and lies truth. I can lie, but it is not an enduring or believable lie. It will out eventually.
When I assert there is no such thing as absolute truth, my words simply “don’t mean,” as Gertrude Stein phrased it. What is it that I am saying? “The absolute truth about absolute truth is that there is no absolute truth.” The statement is tautologous, prima facie nonsense at best. Pick at the prim, white, shallow facade of the assertion and fingernails scrape into a greasy black layer of justification. The slightest pressure more and a finger plunges into the rotting filth of selfishness long covered over and hidden from view. The stench assaults the nostrils and I rush off to cleanse hands with hot water and soap.
As long as that lie is at the core of my values, there will always be a hint of the stench of moral decay about me. In my presence people’s nostrils will flare, they will glance around furtively trying to locate the source of the stench. If the visits are short enough, their friendship more shallow than the facade, and the facade remains intact, they may never know source of their discomfort, but the length of their visits will abbreviate and the time between visits will grow.
The false banners of “Tolerance” and “Pluralism” draped about me do not hide the stench either. The verity in tolerance is found in respect for others' beliefs. I embrace this truth when I respect individuals and seek to understand them as they express and live out their beliefs. I do not respect any belief if I think one is just as good as another, or just as bad as another, that no belief accurately represents reality in any meaningful way. What I call “my truth” is actually a truth du jour with pragmatic utility rather than eternal value. If my truth’s only value is that it is mine, then no other truth can have value because it is not mine. As the stench grows thicker, it ripples the light and the words on the banners shift in and out of vision, we see the word “Tolerance” really reads, “Indifference” and “Pluralism” reads “Particularism.”
Monday, December 19, 2005
e-verities
At his Nobel Prize acceptance speech in Stockholm, Sweden in 1950, William Faulkner, hoping to be heard by young writers, said:
He spoke these words at a point in history when it seemed the USSR and the US stood glaring at one another with trembling fingers poised over buttons that could destroy the world many times over. They caught my attention two decades later, during a summer spent immersed in many other Faulkner writings for which he is more famous. That he identified “love and honor and pity and pride and compassion and sacrifice” as truth, universal and lasting, reinforced my hope moving-toward-belief that there were things in life that were not “ephemeral and doomed.”
Decades later still--when I found myself reeling, doubting, and feeling doomed even more so than when first forming my beliefs--Faulkner’s words were recalled to me via wordplay encountered surfing the Net. A line in a Publisher’s Weekly news story used, or coined, the word, “e-verities” and brought to my mind Faulkner's “eternal verities.” About that time, some of my students introduced me to blogging, and on an impulse, I began a blog to explore verities. I thought the word, “e-verities,” an appropriate title because the “e” could be an abreviation for “eternal,” “ephemeral,” or “electronic.” The ambiguity of the word reflected the ambiguity of the values being explored and the medium where the exploration was to be recorded.
This post attempts to refocus my purpose. I began e-verities to examine values like those listed by Faulkner: love, honor, pity, pride, compassion, and sacrifice, asking if they are truth, asking if they are eternal, asking if they last beyond this ephemeral and doomed world.
Our tragedy today is a general and universal physical fear so long sustained by now that we can even bear it. There are no longer problems of the spirit. There is only one question: When will I be blown up? Because of this, the young man or woman writing today has forgotten the problems of the human heart in conflict with itself which alone can make good writing because only that is worth writing about, worth the agony and the sweat. He must learn them again. He must teach himself that the basest of all things is to be afraid: and, teaching himself that, forget it forever, leaving no room in his workshop for anything but the old verities and truths of the heart, the universal truths lacking which any story is ephemeral and doomed--love and honor and pity and pride and compassion and sacrifice. Until he does so, he labors under a curse. He writes not of love but of lust, of defeats in which nobody loses anything of value, and victories without hope and worst of all, without pity or compassion. His griefs grieve on no universal bones, leaving no scars. He writes not of the heart but of the glands.
He spoke these words at a point in history when it seemed the USSR and the US stood glaring at one another with trembling fingers poised over buttons that could destroy the world many times over. They caught my attention two decades later, during a summer spent immersed in many other Faulkner writings for which he is more famous. That he identified “love and honor and pity and pride and compassion and sacrifice” as truth, universal and lasting, reinforced my hope moving-toward-belief that there were things in life that were not “ephemeral and doomed.”
Decades later still--when I found myself reeling, doubting, and feeling doomed even more so than when first forming my beliefs--Faulkner’s words were recalled to me via wordplay encountered surfing the Net. A line in a Publisher’s Weekly news story used, or coined, the word, “e-verities” and brought to my mind Faulkner's “eternal verities.” About that time, some of my students introduced me to blogging, and on an impulse, I began a blog to explore verities. I thought the word, “e-verities,” an appropriate title because the “e” could be an abreviation for “eternal,” “ephemeral,” or “electronic.” The ambiguity of the word reflected the ambiguity of the values being explored and the medium where the exploration was to be recorded.
This post attempts to refocus my purpose. I began e-verities to examine values like those listed by Faulkner: love, honor, pity, pride, compassion, and sacrifice, asking if they are truth, asking if they are eternal, asking if they last beyond this ephemeral and doomed world.
Sunday, December 04, 2005
Accessibility
The week before Thanksgiving, with much inner trepidation and hesitation, I chose to attend Thespian Festival in a wheelchair. I borrowed a loaner from church, and my students hauled it on and off the yellow dog, the school bus, each day for me. The boys would set it up and I would climb down and into the chair, leaving my forearm crutches behind on the bus.
The reason for the trepidation is what I perceive to be a trade off. Each time I've chosen to use some additional assist, I got the desired result—increased mobility—but ultimately lost ability, a classic one step forward and two back. When at age thirty I first began using a cane—to go faster, I told myself—I did not expect to require it for basic mobility at thirty-five, or to need two canes for longer walks by forty. When I began using crutches for occasional longer walks at forty-five, I did not expect to require them to get across the room in my own home at fifty-five.
So as I climbed down off the school bus and into the chair that first morning, I couldn’t shake the dark conviction that I had better be planning ramp construction for my home, and shopping around for a wheelchair I can haul around in the WRX. The therapy and corrective surgery I endured through my childhood had as its goal moving me out of braces and off crutches. Going into a wheelchair is like giving up on a life-long struggle, worse even, a retreat behind my starting point. The only wheelchairs I ever remember using were the obligatory ones required by the hospital when checking out after surgery, and a dim, possibly imagined, memory of using one during that eighteen months I was in the hospital when I first came down with polio.
In my experience, there are no surgeries, assistive aids or techniques that make you "as good as new." No Dr., medical equipment salesperson, vocational counselor, or occupational therapist will use that phrase, not a wise one anyway. Wisdom aside, no one who attends to the advice of Counsel will say “good as new." In this age of litigation, such careless phraseology is an invitation to being sued. Even though I'm not sure anyone would really believe the phrase today. I wouldn't, but perhaps my experience is not normative. I believe all that technology, modern medicine, and modern science can do for the handicapped is “mitigate damage,” a legal term meaning to make better, but not to make whole--a long way, in fact, from "as good as new."
I felt deep reservations about leaving my crutches on the bus almost every time I did it. I didn't trust the chair to get me everywhere I wanted to go, even though I can't get everywhere I want to go even using the crutches--certainly I can't get where I want to go as fast as I want to go using them. It wasn’t logic that made me want to hang on to them. It was an emotional compulsion.
Logically, using a wheelchair was the best decision. I could move around with more ease and speed. In fact, I liked the speed. I haven’t been able to go so fast in decades. I was not as tired at the end of the weekend as I have been in the past. In many ways, I could monitor kids better because I was more mobile. Speed and mobility does not seem to be the choice many people make. I noticed a couple of students at the Festival who were temporarily in wheelchairs. For the most part, they allowed themselves to be placidly pushed around from place to place by a friend. When I reach a point where I have to be in a chair all the time I don’t think I will suffer being pushed around, set off to the side where I can see, and allow myself to be moved to the next overlook as the group and the action move on as long as I have any other option. Who would want to be like that, to be—what—furniture, baggage, a burden to others without even the usefulness of furniture or baggage? That’s pretty strong language as I see it appear on the screen from my fingertips. My logical best decision is still emotionally uncomfortable.
Emotion is probably why I feel it is such a production to haul the chair on and off the bus, but the places that aren't accessible to someone in a wheelchair are objective fact. At one point on our trip, we took an hour and a half at a mall for lunch and shopping. I spent most of our free time locating and using an accessible restroom, locating the lone elevator so I could get to the food court, negotiating a plate of food and a drink to a table, eating, and bussing my own table. At each step, I clocked myself so I could be sure not to get out so far that I didn't have time to get back to the bus by deadline.
Wheeling back to the bus, I estimated I had enough time to browse a bookstore. In the store, I noticed two things right away: First, the aisles between the bookshelves were wide enough to negotiate in my wheelchair. Second, stacks of books had been added to the aisle floors, increasing the books on display--it is after all the beginning of the Christmas shopping season and the more product displayed the greater profit potential. At one turn, I found myself with a book tangled in the wheelchair spokes. It was inadvertently captured during a tight turn through aisle book stacks.
A Doctor once told me a physical difference was a significant life change if you had to modify your lifestyle to accommodate it. If I can’t get lost in books in a bookstore without having my attention yanked out of the books and onto the path my chair is threading through the shelves, then my browsing days are over. I can shop, but not browse. On the other hand, in recent years tired feet and weak legs curtailed my browsing. Later, as I wheeled down the mall, passing strolling shoppers on my way back to the bus, it occurred to me that drink-in-hand strolls do not happen in a wheelchair. It was an odd thought though. Since I have been on crutches, such a stroll has been out of the question, also I do not remember ever strolling drink in hand even when I had a free hand to hold the drink rather than a crutch or a cane. Are these lifestyle changes or minor inconveniences?
If strolling, browsing, clocking my travel time, and always keeping the path to an accessible restroom in mind are minor inconveniences, some of the other trade-offs are potentially major. Spending the day in a wheelchair makes my feet swell more than usual, requiring more prone-with-elevated-feet time to recover. In addition, after the first day, my back hurt in the evening, on into the next day, and continued to hurt until a day after the trip was over. There may have been some additional strain on my back from pushing or sitting in the chair. Finally, after three twelve-to-fifteen-hour days in the chair, I perceived myself to be weaker--less able to walk, though that perception could have been a kind of hypochondria, a negative assessment prompted by my emotional reaction to what I perceived as giving up. In fact, I cannot objectively prove a cause and effect association between any physical setback and the use of any new assist. The physical setback could be caused by age, weight, the illusive post-polio syndrome, or I don’t know what—barometric pressure, maybe? Well, I did say potentially major.
What is truth here? I think the truth is about limited accessibility, but not the kind of accessibility the ADA addresses. My last three months in Abilene nearly thirty years ago I worked as a night shift custodian in the old downtown Timex factory. Three of us were responsible for daily sweeping, dusting, trash emptying, and window cleaning along with a rotating schedule of larger jobs. We were busy. There was really too much to do. I learned quickly that if we did not clean as well as someone I never saw thought we should have, we had to suffer a motivational talk from our supervisor. The result of a couple of motivational talks was a brisk work pace and a little compulsiveness about cleanliness. After two weeks, I noticed that my perspective on my environment had changed. On a walk through a classroom building at school, I noticed every scrap of paper on the floor, every smudge on the windows, etc. etc. I didn’t feel compelled to run around cleaning up everything in sight, but to a certain extent my perceptions were hijacked by my job. This is what I mean by limited accessibility.
When a leisurely lunch and relaxing stroll in a mall is consumed by things like potty runs, transporting a meal to a table and then to the trash, long runs to the lone elevator in a city block, etc.; my perceptions, thoughts, and energies have been hijacked by minutia and I’m left with limited access to my own faculties. I appreciate what the ADA attempts to do. It does help, but like all other assists it is a mitigation of damages. Accessibility is limited and can never be made as good as new.
The reason for the trepidation is what I perceive to be a trade off. Each time I've chosen to use some additional assist, I got the desired result—increased mobility—but ultimately lost ability, a classic one step forward and two back. When at age thirty I first began using a cane—to go faster, I told myself—I did not expect to require it for basic mobility at thirty-five, or to need two canes for longer walks by forty. When I began using crutches for occasional longer walks at forty-five, I did not expect to require them to get across the room in my own home at fifty-five.
So as I climbed down off the school bus and into the chair that first morning, I couldn’t shake the dark conviction that I had better be planning ramp construction for my home, and shopping around for a wheelchair I can haul around in the WRX. The therapy and corrective surgery I endured through my childhood had as its goal moving me out of braces and off crutches. Going into a wheelchair is like giving up on a life-long struggle, worse even, a retreat behind my starting point. The only wheelchairs I ever remember using were the obligatory ones required by the hospital when checking out after surgery, and a dim, possibly imagined, memory of using one during that eighteen months I was in the hospital when I first came down with polio.
In my experience, there are no surgeries, assistive aids or techniques that make you "as good as new." No Dr., medical equipment salesperson, vocational counselor, or occupational therapist will use that phrase, not a wise one anyway. Wisdom aside, no one who attends to the advice of Counsel will say “good as new." In this age of litigation, such careless phraseology is an invitation to being sued. Even though I'm not sure anyone would really believe the phrase today. I wouldn't, but perhaps my experience is not normative. I believe all that technology, modern medicine, and modern science can do for the handicapped is “mitigate damage,” a legal term meaning to make better, but not to make whole--a long way, in fact, from "as good as new."
I felt deep reservations about leaving my crutches on the bus almost every time I did it. I didn't trust the chair to get me everywhere I wanted to go, even though I can't get everywhere I want to go even using the crutches--certainly I can't get where I want to go as fast as I want to go using them. It wasn’t logic that made me want to hang on to them. It was an emotional compulsion.
Logically, using a wheelchair was the best decision. I could move around with more ease and speed. In fact, I liked the speed. I haven’t been able to go so fast in decades. I was not as tired at the end of the weekend as I have been in the past. In many ways, I could monitor kids better because I was more mobile. Speed and mobility does not seem to be the choice many people make. I noticed a couple of students at the Festival who were temporarily in wheelchairs. For the most part, they allowed themselves to be placidly pushed around from place to place by a friend. When I reach a point where I have to be in a chair all the time I don’t think I will suffer being pushed around, set off to the side where I can see, and allow myself to be moved to the next overlook as the group and the action move on as long as I have any other option. Who would want to be like that, to be—what—furniture, baggage, a burden to others without even the usefulness of furniture or baggage? That’s pretty strong language as I see it appear on the screen from my fingertips. My logical best decision is still emotionally uncomfortable.
Emotion is probably why I feel it is such a production to haul the chair on and off the bus, but the places that aren't accessible to someone in a wheelchair are objective fact. At one point on our trip, we took an hour and a half at a mall for lunch and shopping. I spent most of our free time locating and using an accessible restroom, locating the lone elevator so I could get to the food court, negotiating a plate of food and a drink to a table, eating, and bussing my own table. At each step, I clocked myself so I could be sure not to get out so far that I didn't have time to get back to the bus by deadline.
Wheeling back to the bus, I estimated I had enough time to browse a bookstore. In the store, I noticed two things right away: First, the aisles between the bookshelves were wide enough to negotiate in my wheelchair. Second, stacks of books had been added to the aisle floors, increasing the books on display--it is after all the beginning of the Christmas shopping season and the more product displayed the greater profit potential. At one turn, I found myself with a book tangled in the wheelchair spokes. It was inadvertently captured during a tight turn through aisle book stacks.
A Doctor once told me a physical difference was a significant life change if you had to modify your lifestyle to accommodate it. If I can’t get lost in books in a bookstore without having my attention yanked out of the books and onto the path my chair is threading through the shelves, then my browsing days are over. I can shop, but not browse. On the other hand, in recent years tired feet and weak legs curtailed my browsing. Later, as I wheeled down the mall, passing strolling shoppers on my way back to the bus, it occurred to me that drink-in-hand strolls do not happen in a wheelchair. It was an odd thought though. Since I have been on crutches, such a stroll has been out of the question, also I do not remember ever strolling drink in hand even when I had a free hand to hold the drink rather than a crutch or a cane. Are these lifestyle changes or minor inconveniences?
If strolling, browsing, clocking my travel time, and always keeping the path to an accessible restroom in mind are minor inconveniences, some of the other trade-offs are potentially major. Spending the day in a wheelchair makes my feet swell more than usual, requiring more prone-with-elevated-feet time to recover. In addition, after the first day, my back hurt in the evening, on into the next day, and continued to hurt until a day after the trip was over. There may have been some additional strain on my back from pushing or sitting in the chair. Finally, after three twelve-to-fifteen-hour days in the chair, I perceived myself to be weaker--less able to walk, though that perception could have been a kind of hypochondria, a negative assessment prompted by my emotional reaction to what I perceived as giving up. In fact, I cannot objectively prove a cause and effect association between any physical setback and the use of any new assist. The physical setback could be caused by age, weight, the illusive post-polio syndrome, or I don’t know what—barometric pressure, maybe? Well, I did say potentially major.
What is truth here? I think the truth is about limited accessibility, but not the kind of accessibility the ADA addresses. My last three months in Abilene nearly thirty years ago I worked as a night shift custodian in the old downtown Timex factory. Three of us were responsible for daily sweeping, dusting, trash emptying, and window cleaning along with a rotating schedule of larger jobs. We were busy. There was really too much to do. I learned quickly that if we did not clean as well as someone I never saw thought we should have, we had to suffer a motivational talk from our supervisor. The result of a couple of motivational talks was a brisk work pace and a little compulsiveness about cleanliness. After two weeks, I noticed that my perspective on my environment had changed. On a walk through a classroom building at school, I noticed every scrap of paper on the floor, every smudge on the windows, etc. etc. I didn’t feel compelled to run around cleaning up everything in sight, but to a certain extent my perceptions were hijacked by my job. This is what I mean by limited accessibility.
When a leisurely lunch and relaxing stroll in a mall is consumed by things like potty runs, transporting a meal to a table and then to the trash, long runs to the lone elevator in a city block, etc.; my perceptions, thoughts, and energies have been hijacked by minutia and I’m left with limited access to my own faculties. I appreciate what the ADA attempts to do. It does help, but like all other assists it is a mitigation of damages. Accessibility is limited and can never be made as good as new.
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