"The Eternal Return"
THE BOOK OF WISDOM
What, if some day or night a demon were to steal after you into your loneliest loneliness and say to you: 'This life as you now live it and have lived it, you will have to live once more and innumerable times more' ... Would you not throw yourself down and gnash your teeth and curse the demon who spoke thus? Or have you once experienced a tremendous moment when you would have answered him: 'You are a god and never have I heard anything more divine’
Friedrich Nietzsche
By John MacDonald
The Lord’s Prayer
Our father - everyone else I see has found someone; was it too much to create someone for me?
who art in heaven - far away in heaven. I can feel your distance from me. It's crippling
hallowed be thy name - I have always loved you, my absentee father
thy kingdom come - I keep getting up every day, hoping today will be the day that I meet that special someone
thy will be done - I am 33 years old. How long do I have to wait.
on earth as it is in heaven - Since I have found no wife on earth, will I be alone for eternity?
give us this day our daily bread - Please give me someone to nourish my empty soul and satiate my parched spirit.
and forgive us our trespasses - What have I done do make you hate me?
as we forgive those that trespass against us - How can I judge even the worst criminal; for but for the fact that I haven't lived their life, I could have ended up the same way; even though I have, a prisoner in my own life
And lead us not into temptation - If you won't give me a partner, at least take away my longing
but deliver us from evil - I am in hell. Save me.
for thine is the kingdom - is it not in your power to help me (I shudder that it might be a fact that your allowing of free will prevents you of brainwashing someone to love me)
the power and the glory - Oh no
forever and ever- Oh god, no
Amen
Chapter 1 (a)
“Sorry I was running a little late, but it’s good to meet you Mr. MacNeil,” Dr. Atter offered a little half heartedly, though genuinely sorry for making her new patient wait. Did you bring your medications with you?
“Yes,” Andrew replied in a dry, monotone voice, as the Psychiatrist took notes. “I take 1 mg. of Risperidone three times a day as an anti-psychotic; 30 mg. of Cipralex once a day for depression; 1 mg. of Clonazepam twice a day for anxiety, and 50 mg. of Trazodone once a day to help me sleep at night.”
“I understand from your case worker that there has been some concern about the medication?”
“Yes,” answered Andrew. “I went to my family doctor recently and had a physical done because I haven’t been producing any semen when I come to orgasm, and my nipples have been swollen. I’ve also had significant weight gain. My blood work came back and showed that I had a high Prolactin hormone level. My doctor thinks this is probably responsible for my physical issues, and could be a result of a benign tumour, or more probably a side effect of the Risperidone.
Atter thought for a moment. “Well, it could definitely be a side effect of the medication, but you haven’t really been stabilized for very long, so I’d like to wait a while before changing your meds. Are you getting further tests done for the tumor?”
“An M.R.I., yes.”
“Okay, so we’ll leave the meds where they are for now, and get into a bit of your case history. I guess you’re with me now because you’ve moved out of the area from your old psychiatrist.”
“I moved from Burlington in the summer time,” Andrew said. “I bought a townhouse just north of here in Milton.”
“Your diagnosis,” the doctor continued,” is bipolar affective disorder with a secondary diagnosis of panic disorder, although your old psychiatrist says here that the bipolar may actually be a case of schizo-affective disorder.” Andrew looked visibly disturbed by hearing his diagnosis read to him, so Atter decided to change the subject. “And you’re an elementary school teacher?”
“Yes”
“For how long”
“Next year will be my eighth year. I’m off work on sick leave until September. Oh right,” Andrew remembered the paper he was carrying in his right hand, “I need you to fill out this form saying I’m mentally safe to return to work.” Dr. Atter took the form from him and put it on the desk beside her.
“I’ll look at that later,” she remarked. “For now, why don’t you tell me what’s been going on this year.”
“Dr. Pasin, my old psychiatrist, had given me enough repeats on my medications to last to about Christmas. I was supposed to hook up with your office in August but I missed my appointment and never really followed up. When I ran out of meds I let it go for a while because I was feeling okay, but my condition eventually deteriorated. I was drinking heavily every night, so that was helping me sleep about five to six hours, but I was feeling horrible during the day. My depression and anxiety got worse and worse, until I decided that I didn’t want to deal with life any more, so I sent E-mails to my school board and union basically saying I couldn’t handle things anymore and I was going to the hospital.”
“What happened next?”
“My union officer was kind enough to go to my house and take the dogs to the kennel. They weren’t my dogs. My mother spends her summers in Nova Scotia and her winters in St. Petersburg Florida, and the trailer park she and her husband stay at in Florida won’t allow dogs, so I agreed to take them for the winter. If you’ll believe it, my officer also took back the kitchen floor full of beer bottle empties and brought the money for them to me in the psyche ward in the hospital.”
“How long was it before you went back to work?”
“I was in the hospital for about a week. After I got back home, it was already explained to all the parties concerned at the school board that I hadn’t been able to get my meds, so that was the reason for my erratic behaviour. The board was pretty good about letting me get back to work fairly quickly.”
“But then three weeks later you were back in the hospital again?”
“It was the same sort of scenario. I was feeling really depressed and just didn’t want to have to deal with life any more – I sent more E-Mails. My mom flew up to see me from Florida this time. She cleaned up my house for me, which was an absolute mess, and spent some time visiting me in the hospital.”
“What happened this time?” Dr. Atter asked.
“I suppose I could make up a lot of different excuses, but the truth is probably that I was still drinking heavily, and bipolar medication doesn’t work well with alcohol.”
“Are you saying that you weren’t drinking earlier in the year when you were
doing well?”
“No,” Andrew admitted. “With a few exceptions I’ve basically had the equivalent of twelve beers a day for the past eight years.”
“So,” Atter observed, “the fact that you lasted as long as you did this year was probably more luck than anything else?”
“I guess so. This was the ninth time I’ve been in a psyche ward in the last five years. The psychiatrist and the social worker met with my mother and me and I was basically told there was no point in me showing up to a psyche ward again because there was nothing they could really do for me. All I was doing was hiding there. The social worker recommended I go to the Briardale addiction and mental health facility for addiction disorder, so I was there for 28 days. Luckily my insurance paid for it.”
‘How long have you been sober for?”
“My clean/dry date is April 6th, the day I went into the psyche hospital the last time.” Dr. Atter wasn’t sure she believed him, but moved on.
“What kind of follow up do you have?”
“Well, I have you, and my case manager Nathan here at the mental health clinic. I also attend AA meetings regularly, and I have to go to Briardale once a week for about a year for discussion groups.”
“It sounds like you’ve got a lot of good supports in place. What’s your mood been like?”
“Since I’ve been off the alcohol I’ve been feeling really well,” Andrew offered, with a noticeable shake in his voice. “I’ve been going for walks and journaling and meditating; basically doing all the things we were taught to do, and staying away from people and places where there is alcohol.”
“That’s encouraging,” the doctor continued. “You were diagnosed bipolar about five years ago when you were twenty-seven. Is that the first time you started having symptoms, or was it before that?”
“I’ve been prone to fits of depression and elation my whole life, but I didn’t actually go fully manic and have my first psychotic episode until I was twenty-seven,” Andrew replied
“Could you describe the incident?”
“Sure,” Andrew replied, seemingly more confident now. “I guess it had its seed some years before. I was still in university doing graduate work in Philosophy when my one professor encouraged me to audit a summer course on the New Testament. This was a time when I was considering doing a PhD., and he said it would be helpful if I went on to study the medieval Philosophers. I didn’t really have an interest in it because I’m not Christian, but I figured I’d give it a shot. Anyway, while reading the textbook it was pointed out that scholars had noticed similarities between Jesus and the older Greek God Dionysus. My mind immediately made a connection between this and what Friedrich Nietzsche said at the end of his autobiography: “Have I been understood? Dionysus versus the crucified.” For a while I became a bit obsessed trying to isolate the parallels between the two Gods because I got it in my head that the writers of the New Testament had done some copying from older sources, but it didn’t last for very long.”
“University was going well and I was getting awards for my work, although thinking back it wasn’t really a big deal because there weren’t that many graduate students in the department. I was also debating constantly at conferences and getting the praise of my professors. In the end, I went to teacher’s college instead of on to a doctorate program, although I did apply and get accepted to some PhD. Programs.”
“Where did you go to teacher’s college.”
“Buffalo.” Usually Canadian teacher candidates go to the states because they
can’t get into a school in Canada, but for me I just decided to be an elementary school teacher too late to apply for a job in Canada.” The doctor scribbled down some notes after he said this.
“Anyway, I couldn’t get a job at home in St. Catharines, so I eventually
got a job in Toronto, and made it through my first two years of teaching fairly well.”
“So you left St. Catharines?”
“I had an apartment in Toronto, but I came home and stayed at my mom’s house on the weekend,” Andrew replied. “All my friends were there.”
“So what started to go wrong?”
“An incident happened during my third year that changed things. I applied and was able to switch school boards from Toronto to Burlington so I could commute from St. Catharines every day instead of being away from home. At the time, I was trying some fairly in depth language lessons with my students, and the other two grade four teachers thought I was bringing in concepts that were too difficult and not really teaching the curriculum I was supposed to, so they started distancing themselves from me. Their two classes were basically coordinating activities while I was on my own. I started getting really frustrated by this so I went to the principal to complain. I think I cried in her office. She brought in an arbitrator from the board to help us resolve our differences, but no solution really came of it. As the school year went on, I became increasingly angry and started finding fault with anything that was going on at the school that wasn’t in line with my vision for the school. No one was giving me any special recognition for my innovative reading and writing strategies. I ended posting a lot of angry messages on our intra-school E-Mail conference, and ended up having a breakdown. I started to think people were watching me and following me, and I became obsessed with the Jesus thing again. I was hospitalized for the first time a few weeks later.”
Dr. Attler had scribbled the odd note during Andrew’s explanation, but she mostly just sat and listened. “Well, that gives me a bit of a sense of how things started for you, although we will definitely come back to this because you were fairly vague on a number of points. All the same, it was okay for a getting acquainted session. If you wouldn’t mind, could you tell me if there is a history of addiction/mental illness in your family?”
“There’s quite a lot among the men, although the women seem to be better. My grandfather on my father’s side committed suicide, although no one will really say why. There’s a lot of depression and some delusional tendencies. Almost all the men were into alcohol or drugs or both.”
“Did you ever use drugs?”
“I’ve tried marijuana, but that’s it. I don’t use it. I was always too scared to try anything harder. You can check my hospital records. They did many urine and blood tests on me when I went into psyche wards the various times and they never found anything.”
“Do you think I don’t trust you?”
“I’m just saying.”
“Well Mr. MacNeil you seem to be doing pretty well and you’ve had a bit of a stable period. I’ll sign off on your return to work papers for September to return at full time, understanding that if anything changes between now and then we can always revise that. It was good to meet you, and if you see my secretary she can book you an appointment for a month from now. When do you see your case manager?”
“Next week Thursday.”
“Good. If any issues come up between now and then you can always call him or the regional crisis team, and Nathan will keep me informed”
“Thanks,” Andrew said, with a little more intonation in his voice than when he began the conversation.
Chapter 1 (b)
Two days later, at four in the morning, Andrew sent the following E-mail to Dr. Atter’s office:
Dear Dr. Atter: Thanks for seeing me the other day. I am doing well. I’ve been doing some writing. Here are a few fictional stories you may find entertaining if you’re bored sometime – just to say thanks for taking me on as a patient; Andrew
Story 1
(Part 1) The main part of the lecture material from my last day of courses:
We generally like to end your undergraduate career with what you started your first year in Philosophy with: Thoughts about God. I will do that here, but I will close with a number of other issues as well.
It’s generally difficult to know how far you can trust Theological scholarship, because someone who has a doctorate in theology generally wouldn’t have gotten that far without having a faith of some sort that may be clouding their judgement when it comes to the exegesis they do. I’m not saying that it does, I’m merely raising the issue. Most of the scholarship you see is based on expanding tradition and reinforcing it, although certain trends in recent years in Early Christian scholarship have led to fundamental re-evaluations of what has long been held regarding who or what Jesus was. It has even come to the point now that The Committee Of The Scientific Examination Of Religion has proposed that the question of whether Jesus was a man or myth is a testable hypothesis, and has convened The Jesus Project, in part, to attempt to resolve this issue (how open and honest those scholars will actually turn out to be about the issue, remains to be seen). On the other hand, some feel that the important point is not trying to come to judgement about historicity, but rather to determine, from the texts that we have, what can be best inferred about the meaning of the New Testament Narratives.
Current issues in liberal scholarship range from debates on the authenticity of source texts (even the famous book of Q, the hypothetical doctrines of the earliest Christians, for example, is in a scholarly mess right now. Some proposes a stratification of Q, the earliest being the community that lived by the teachings of Q 1; Other deny the attribution of Q 1 to Jesus because at most the sayings display a common cynical tang, and as such need not come from a single sage, let alone Jesus; Others propose a proto-Luke hypothesis instead of Q {Proto-Luke is a hypothetical document that may have been the main source for the gospel writers. Making the New Testament Narratives acting as a haggadic midrash or creative-rewriting of the Elihja-Elisha narrative of 1 and 2 Kings in the Old Testament, it is an alternative theory to the Q hypothesis}), to issues of contradictions and forgeries, to the problem of the extent to which the New Testament is in fact a creative Christian re-write of the popular pagan and Jewish stories of the day, a ‘haggadic midrash’ of the older literature.
The degree to which ‘haggadic midrash’ may be present in the New Testament depends on who you read. Some focus on the relationship between Jesus and the older stories in Homer. Others look at the derivative relationship between Jesus and various parts of the Septuagint (the Greek Translation of the Old Testament). Still others offer a more holistic point of view, arguing that if all the scholarship on the New Testament as creative-rewriting is taken into account, then virtually nothing is left over that would give us an original story about Jesus, or the need to posit that Jesus existed at all.
This latter view, though completely unorthodox, was given a major scholarly endorsement when Dr. Robert M. Price published an article supporting this theory in ‘Encyclopedia Of Midrash: Biblical Interpretation In Formative Judaism,’ 2004, edited by renowned Judaism scholars Jacob Neusner and Alan Avery Pecks. The interesting thing is that what happened with the peer reviewed publication of Price’s article (whether you agree with the article or not), is that discussions about Jesus transported from the realm of historical debate, and moved purely into the realm of literary debate. What we are left with as the New Testament is a series of documents by Christian writers with absolutely no writers outside that community ever claiming to even have seen Jesus. What most people don’t seem to realize is that we now have a fully defensible interpretation of the New Testament that gives an entirely possible analysis concluding that the Jesus cult started as many other cults prior to that time, without any actual god or even person heading the movement, and then concluding that the details of Jesus’ life were fleshed out by re-writing the popular pagan and Jewish stories of the day, with particular interest placed on sources such as Homer, Josephus, The Septuagint, and Euripides’ ‘The Bacchae.’
Price wrote in a recent open letter that
‘I remember first encountering the notion that the Jesus saga was formally similar to the Mediterranean dying and rising god myths of saviors including Attis, Adonis, Tammuz/Dumuzi, Dionysus, Osiris, and Baal. I felt almost at once that the jig was up. I could not explain away those parallels, parallels that went right to the heart of the thing. I felt momentary respite when I read the false reassurances of Bruce M. Metzger (may this great man rest in peace), J.N.D. Anderson, Edwin Yamauchi (may I someday gain a tenth of his knowledge!), and others that these parallels were false or that they were later in origin, perhaps even borrowed by the pagans from Christianity. But it did not take long to discover the spurious nature of such apologetical special pleading. There was ample and early pre-Christian evidence for the dying and rising gods. The parallels were very close. And it was simply not true that no one ever held that, like Jesus, these saviors had been historical figures. And if the ancient apologists had not known that the pagan parallels were pre-Christian, why on earth would they have mounted a suicidal argument that Satan counterfeited the real dying and rising god ahead of time. That is like the fundamentalists of the 19th century arguing desperately that God created fossils of dinosaurs that had never existed ... Take the gospel Jesus story as a whole, whether earlier or later than the Jesus story of the Epistles; it is part and parcel of the Mythic Hero Archetype shared by cultures and religions worldwide and throughout history (Lord Raglan and then, later, Alan Dundes showed this in great detail.). Leave the gospel story on the table, then. You still do not have any truly historical data. There is no "secular" biographical information about Jesus. Even the seeming "facts" irrelevant to faith dissolve upon scrutiny. Did he live in Nazareth? Or was that a tendentious reinterpretation of the earlier notion he had been thought a member of the Nazorean sect? Did he work some years as a carpenter? Or does that story not rather reflect the crowd's pegging him as an expert in scripture, a la the Rabbinic proverb, "Not even a carpenter, or a carpenter's son could solve this one!"? Was his father named Joseph, or is that an historicization of his earlier designation as the Galilean Messiah, Messiah ben Joseph? On and on it goes, and when we are done, there is nothing left of Jesus that does not appear to serve all too clearly the interests of faith, the faith even of rival, hence contradictory, factions among the early Christians … I admit that a historical hero might attract to himself the standard flattering legends and myths to the extent that the original lines of the figure could no longer be discerned. He may have lived nonetheless. Can we tell the difference between such cases and others where we can still discern at least some historical core? Apollonius of Tyana, itinerant Neo-Pythagorean contemporary of Jesus (with whom the ancients often compare him) is one such. He, too, seems entirely cut from the cloth of the fabulous. His story, too, conforms exactly to the Mythic Hero Archetype. To a lesser extent, so does Caesar Augustus, of whom miracles were told. The difference is that Jesus has left no footprint on profane history as these others managed to do. The famous texts of Josephus and Tacitus, even if genuine, amount merely to references to the preaching of contemporary Christians, not reporting about Jesus as a contemporary. We still have documentation from people who claimed to have met Apollonius, Peregrinus, and, of course, Augustus. It might be that Jesus was just as historical as these other remarkable individuals, and that it was mere chance that no contemporary documentation referring to him survives. But we cannot assume the truth of that for which we have no evidence … Additionally, we can demonstrate that every hortatory saying is so closely paralleled in contemporary Rabbinic or Hellenistic lore that there is no particular reason to be sure this or that saying originated with Jesus. Such words commonly passed from one famous name to another, especially in Jewish circles, as Jacob Neusner has shown. Jesus might have said it, sure, but then he was just one more voice in the general choir. Is that what we want to know about him? And, as Bultmann observed, who remembers the great man quoting somebody else? … Another shocker: it hit me like a ton of bricks when I realized, after studying much previous research on the question, that virtually every story in the gospels and Acts can be shown to be very likely a Christian rewrite of material from the Septuagint, Homer, Euripides' Bacchae, and Josephus. One need not be David Hume to see that, if a story tells us a man multiplied food to feed a multitude, it is inherently much more likely that the story is a rewrite of an older miracle tale (starring Elisha) than that it is a report of a real event. A literary origin is always to be preferred to an historical one in such a case. And that is the choice we have to make in virtually every case of New Testament narrative. I refer the interested reader to my essay "New Testament Narrative as Old Testament Midrash," in Jacob Neusner and Alan Avery-Peck, eds., Encyclopedia of Midrash. Of course I am dependent here upon many fine works by Randel Helms, Thomas L. Brodie, John Dominic Crossan, and others. None of them went as far as I am going. It is just that as I counted up the gospel stories I felt each scholar had convincingly traced back to a previous literary prototype, it dawned on me that there was virtually nothing left. None tried to argue for the fictive character of the whole tradition, and each offered some cases I found arbitrary and implausible. Still, their work, when combined, militated toward a wholly fictive Jesus story.’
The idea that there are innumerable similarities between the New Testament Narratives and older pagan and Jewish literature is not a new idea. Early church fathers such as Firmicus Maternus, Justin Martyr, and Terturlian, among others, saw the parallels between Jesus and the pagan myths. Dr. Barrie Wilson writes in his recent ‘How Jesus became Christian’ that ‘There were simply too many divine-humans and too many virgin births within the Roman world to mark out the Christian movement as in any way unique … Justin Martyr’s response was that the Devil invented these non-Christian tales. So, too had Satan devised figures of previous divine humans – Bacchus, Hercules, Dionysus, and many others. The whole intent was to confuse Christians. Likewise the mysteries of Mithras arose to create confusion. Clearly, Justin Martyr was embarrassed by the similarities between the virgin birth and divine-human tales from his own culture.’
To take even one example, the parallels between Jesus and the dying-rising Greek god born of a god and a mortal woman, Dionysus, have long been posited, either in traditional myth or in places like Euripides’ ancient play ‘The Bacchae,’ with work ranging from scholars like Bultmann and others in the 19th century, to the more recent studies of scholars like Martin Hengel, Barrie Powell, Dennis MacDonald, Robert M. Price, and even popular writers like Timothy Freke and Peter Gandy. Parallels, for example, in the play ‘The Bacchae’ can be drawn as to general overarching themes, as well as to specific details of the New Testament Narratives. In ‘The Jesus Mysteries,’ several striking parallels are drawn out between The New Testament and the ‘Bacchae,’ the latter being a much earlier work. To begin with, Freke and Gandy teach that
(1) According to the gospels, Jesus is an innocent and just man who, at the instigation of the Jewish high priests, is hauled before the Roman Governor Pilate and condemned to die on spurious charges. Exactly the same mythological motif is found five centuries earlier in Euripides’ play The Bacchae, about Dionysus. Like Jesus in Jerusalem, Dionysus is a quiet stranger with long hair and a beard who brings a new religion. In the gospels, the Jewish high priests don’t believe in Jesus and allege that ‘His teachings are causing disaffections amongst the people.’ They plot to bring about his death. In The Bacchae, King Pentheus is a tyrannical ruler who does not believe in Dionysus. He berates him for bringing ‘this new disease to the land’ and sends out his men to capture the innocent godman … Like the Jewish high priests who are appalled at Jesus’ blasphemous claim to be the Son of God, King Pentheus rants in anger at stories of Dionysus’ divine parentage … Like Jesus, Dionysus passively allows himself to be caught and imprisoned … The guard relates the wondrous things he had witnessed Dionysus perform and warns King Pentheus: ‘Master, this man has come here with a load of miracles.’ The king, however, proceeds to interrogate Dionysus who, like Jesus before Pilate, will not bow to his authority. When Pilate reminds Jesus that he has the power to crucify him, Jesus replies, ‘You would have no authority at all over me, had it not been granted you from above.’ Likewise Dionysus answers the threats of Pentheus with: ‘Nothing can touch me that is not ordained.’ Like Jesus, who said of his persecutors, ‘They know not what they are doing,’ Dionysus tells Pentheus, ‘You know not what you are doing, nor what you are saying, nor who you are.’ … As Jesus is led away to crucifixion, he warns the crowd not to weep for him, but for themselves and their children, who will suffer for the crime of his execution (cf. Luke 23 v 28-30) … As he is led away, Dionysus, likewise, threatens divine vengeance.
(2) Before his death, Jesus celebrates a symbolic ‘Last supper’ of bread and wine. [the author here doesn’t note that this is also a symbolic celebration. In the Gospel of Judas this is made more explicit when Jesus wanted to shrug off this painful mortal coil, just as Socrates did when he offered the rooster to Asclepius] In The Bacchae, Euripides calls bread and wine the ‘two powers which are supreme in human affairs,’ the one substantial and preserving the body, the other liquid and intoxicating the mind. The ancients credited the Mystery godman with bringing to humanity the arts of cultivating grain and the vine to produce bread and wine.
(3) As [Joseph Campbell] writes, ‘To drink wine in the rites of Dionysus is to commune with the god and take his power and physical presence into one’s body.’ In the Christian rites of the Eucharist Jesus is said to symbolically become the wine drunk by the participant in the ritual. Likewise, Euripides tells us that Dionysus becomes the wine and is himself ‘poured out’ as an offering. In some vase representations, bread and wine are shown before the idol of Dionysus. Just as in the Eucharist a Christian is given ‘redemption’ in the symbolic form of a wafer biscuit, in the Mysteries of Dionysus the initiate was presented with makaria (‘blessedness’) in the form of a cake.
(4) In Euripides’ The Bacchae, King Pentheus tries to insult Dionysus by describing him as ‘the god who frees his worshipers from every law [cf. St. Paul],’ but Dionysus replies, ‘Your insult to Dionysus is a compliment.’
(5) A Letter To Philip explains that although from the time of the incarnation Jesus suffered, yet he suffered as one who was ‘a stanger to this suffering.’ This teaches that the incarnate Higher Self (represented by Jesus) seems to suffer when the eidolon suffers, but in reality is always the untouched witness. In The Acts of John Jesus explains ‘You heard that I suffered, but I suffered not. An unsuffering one was I, yet suffered. One pierced was I, yet I was not abused. One hanged was I, yet not hanged. Blood flowed from me, yet did not flow.’ … Five hundred years previously Euripides portrayed King Pentheus as binding Dionysus, while actually he was not. As Dionysus says: … ‘He thought he was binding me; But he neither held nor touched me, save in his deluded mind.
We also find striking parallels to ‘The Bacchae’ indicated in Robert Price’s
encyclopedia article New Testament Narrative As Old Testament Midrash (2004): In
terms of Dionysus in general, we read from Price
Gospel of John, Water into Wine (2:1-11)
Though the central feature of this miracle story, the transformation of one liquid into another, no doubt comes from the lore of Dionysus, the basic outline of the story owes much to the story of Elijah in 1 Kings 17:8-24 LXX. The widow of Zarephath, whose son has just died, upbraids the prophet: “What have I to do with you, O man of God?” (Ti emoi kai soi, 17:18). John has transferred this brusque address to the mouth of Jesus, rebuking his mother (2:4, Ti emoi kai soi, gunai). Jesus and Elijah both tell people in need of provisions to take empty pitchers (udria in 1 Kings 17:12, udriai in John 2:6-7), from which sustenance miraculously emerges. And just as this feat causes the woman to declare her faith in Elijah (“I know that you are a man of God,” v. 24), so does Jesus’ wine miracle cause his disciples to put their faith in him (v. 11).
In terms of The Bacchae, Price writes
Acts of the Apostles
Pentecost (2:1-4ff)
The whole scene comes, obviously, from the descent of the Mosaic spirit upon the seventy elders in Numbers 11:16-17, 24-25, with an assist from Euripides’ The Bacchae, where we read “Flames flickered in their curls and did not burn them” (757-758), just as tongues of fire blazed harmlessly above the heads of the apostles (Acts 2:3). Ecstatic speech caused some bystanders to question the sobriety of the disciples, but Peter defends them (“These are not drunk as you suppose” Acts 2:15a), as does Pentheus’ messenger: “Not, as you think, drunk with wine” (686-687).
Paul’s Conversion (9:1-21)
As the great Tübingen critics already saw, the story of Paul’s visionary encounter with the risen Jesus not only has no real basis in the Pauline epistles but has been derived by Luke more or less directly from 2 Maccabees 3’s story of Heliodorus. In it one Benjaminite named Simon (3:4) tells Apollonius of Tarsus, governor of Coele-Syria and Phoenicia (3:5), that the Jerusalem Temple houses unimaginable wealth that the Seleucid king might want to appropriate for himself. Once the king learns of this, he sends his agent Heliodorus to confiscate the loot. The prospect of such a violation of the Temple causes universal wailing and praying among the Jews. But Heliodorus is miraculously turned back when a shining warrior angel appears on horseback. The stallion’s hooves knock Heliodorus to the ground, where two more angels lash him with whips (25-26). He is blinded and is unable to help himself, carried to safety on a stretcher. Pious Jews pray for his recovery, lest the people be held responsible for his condition. The angels reappear to Heliodorus, in answer to these prayers, and they announce God’s grace to him: Heliodorus will live and must henceforth proclaim the majesty of the true God. Heliodorus offers sacrifice to his Saviour (3:35) and departs again for Syria, where he reports all this to the king. In Acts the plunder of the Temple has become the persecution of the church by Saul (also called Paulus, an abbreviated form of Apollonius), a Benjaminite from Tarsus. Heliodorus’ appointed journey to Jerusalem from Syria has become Saul’s journey from Jerusalem to Syria. Saul is stopped in his tracks by a heavenly visitant, goes blind and must be taken into the city, where the prayers of his former enemies avail to raise him up. Just as Heliodorus offers sacrifice, Saul undergoes baptism. Then he is told henceforth to proclaim the risen Christ, which he does … Luke has again added details from Euripides. In The Bacchae, in a sequence Luke has elsewhere rewritten into the story of Paul in Philippi, Dionysus has appeared in Thebes as an apparently mortal missionary for his own sect. He runs afoul of his cousin, King Pentheus who wants the licentious cult (as he views it) to be driven out of the country. He arrests and threatens Dionysus, only to find him freed from prison by an earthquake. Dionysus determines revenge against the proud and foolish king by magically compelling Pentheus to undergo conversion to faith in him (“Though hostile formerly, he now declares a truce and goes with us. You see what you could not when you were blind,” 922-924) and sending Pentheus, in woman’s guise, to spy upon the Maenads, his female revelers. He does so, is discovered, and is torn limb from limb by the women, led by his own mother. As the hapless Pentheus leaves, unwittingly, to meet his doom, Dionysus comments, “Punish this man. But first distract his wits; bewilder him with madness... After those threats with which he was so fierce, I want him made the laughingstock of Thebes” (850-851, 854-855). “He shall come to know Dionysus, son of Zeus, consummate god, most terrible, and yet most gentle, to mankind” (859-861). Pentheus must be made an example, as must poor Saul, despite himself. His conversion is a punishment, meting out to the persecutor his own medicine. Do we not detect a hint of ironic malice in Christ’s words to Ananias about Saul? “I will show him how much he must suffer for the sake of my name” (Acts 9:16).
Some apologists like R. Joseph Hoffmann have struck back hard and fast against reductionists like Price, MacDonald, Brodie, Helms, Miller, Freke/Gandy, etc. One of the most popular apologetical books currently in circulation is Paul Rhodes Eddy and Greg Boyd, ‘The Jesus Legend: A Case for the Historical Reliability of the Synoptic Jesus Tradition,’ primarily arguing that there would not have been a paganizing influence on the Jews of Jesus’ time. In his review of this book, entitled the Jesus Mirage, Price makes the very poignant counterpoint that
Another egregious case of Janus apologetics, facing both ways at once, is Boyd’s and Eddy’s argument that the resurrection of Jesus cannot have been borrowed from polytheistic mythemes. Their first step is to circumscribe a magic zone from about 165 BCE to 70 CE when there was no Jewish inclination, but rather the reverse, to accept Hellenistic influence. They figure that the Hasmonean victory over the Seleucid Hellenizers put an end once and for all to the temptation to Hellenize. Hellenization began to rear its ugly head again only after the Roman victory over Jews. This strikes me as a gratuitous assumption. Indeed, the fact that there is during their magic period much evidence of Jewish anti-Hellenistic Zealotry surely means the “danger” of influence continued. You don’t strengthen the fortifications when there is no enemy at the door. And no evidence of Hellenization? What about the astrology of the Dead Sea Scrolls? Ah, er, it’s not what it looks like! The presence of horoscopes at Qumran doesn’t mean the sectarians actually used or believed in them, say the apologists. Perish the thought! It was probably because they needed them to write scholarly refutations of them! And second- to third-century synagogues with mosaics of Hercules, Dionysus and the Zodiac? Purely decorative, that’s all. Come on! Obviously, you don’t decorate your house of worship with images of gods you find abhorrent! And this was just at the time Yavneh Judaism was getting stronger and stronger! Judaism just was not a solid monolith even at this time, much less in Jesus’ time .. ... Our authors find it necessary to misrepresent Margaret Barker, too. She argues very powerfully (in The Older Testament and The Great Angel: A Study of Israel’s Second God) that popular Judaism had not embraced the monotheism of the Exilic prophets yet, even in spite of priestly indoctrination and interdiction. She ventures that Jesus as the resurrected Son of God was a direct survival of Israelite polytheism. Boyd and Eddy cannot seem to get through their learned heads that Barker is not talking about a Jewish embrace of pagan mythemes. Her point is that mythemes the rabbis later reinterpreted (explained away) as pagan were always indigenously Israelite, shared with Canaanite neighbors, not borrowed from them. Thus there is no need to posit some repulsive borrowing from hated paganism to account for easy Jewish familiarity with dying and rising gods. Ezekiel knew the daughters of Jerusalem were engaged in ritual mourning of the slain god Tammuz even in the days of the Exile. Baal and Osiris were well known in Israel, too.
The evidence suggests, then, that the reductionists do have a prima facie case that a paganizing / Jewish midrashic influence was present. This possibility then allows for the stronger assertion a la Price, Freke/Gandy, Robert Alter, John Bowman, Thomas L. Brodie, John Dominic Crossan, J. Duncan M. Derrett, Earl Doherty, C.F. Evans, Randel Helms, Frank Kermode, Dennis R. MacDonald, Dale Miller and Patricia Miller. Liliann Portefaix, Wolfgang Roth, William R. Stegner, Rikki E. Watts, and many others that there is ample evidence that ‘haggadic midrash’ was rampant in the writing of the New Testament.
Moving on, while it is quite correct to deny the necessity of positing a single sage behind the Q1 writings and community, even if you accept that they do refer to a man named Jesus, the community thought of him as a talented human teacher, not the son of God. And, moreover, this earliest Christian community basically just taught simple things like loving your neighbour and not judging him or her, and is removed from virtually everything that is canonical in Christianity, including any account of a crucifixion or judgements about a person’s sexual behaviour. Jesus may have existed, but because the realm of the argument has been pushed fully into the field of literary analysis, the door then opens to all kinds of literary device.
For example, it could be posited that the real meaning of the New Testament is the more mystical self realization “Christ in you” theology of Paul, one of our oldest sources of the New Testament, whereby the crucifixion took place, a la the analysis of scholar Earl Doherty, in a mystical realm. This would leave the crucifixion resurrection accounts in the Synoptics (the gospels of Matthew, Mark, and Luke) open to a whole range of interpretations.
For instance, as James Tabor points out, the Davidic Genealogy or royal bloodline of Jesus given in Matthew has two shocking peculiarities about it. First, Matthew’s reported Davidic bloodline itself, unlike that in the pro-Pauline Luke, was cursed by the prophet Jeremiah. Second, there are four women included in the genealogy, each with having well known scandalous sexual histories in the Old Testament. That in itself deserves further thought, since, as Tabor says, even the inclusion of women is not proper to a royal Jewish bloodline, but the woman who concerns us here is Rahab, who is part of Jesus’ bloodline in Matthew’s genealogy. What is peculiar about Rahab is not so much her prostitution, but what made her righteous in the eyes of the New Testament, specifically for James. Let’s explore this. (keep in mind, too, that it didn’t imply in the writing of that era that just because the writer made a bloodline that it implied the subject of a bloodline existed historically – in this way the Protestants are able to exclude the book of Judith, a horrible liar and false prophet , from their canon – even though the Catholics accept it).
There is a very interesting line in Euripides’ ‘The Bacchae’ (which we already said might very well be a source text for the New Testament) where Cadmus says "Even though this man (Dionysus) be no God, as you say, still say that he is. Be guilty of a splendid fraud, declaring him the son of Semele, for this would make it seem that she was the mother of a god, and it would confer honour on all our race." This makes one wonder, given the parallels already suggested between Jesus and ‘The Bacchae,’ if the New Testament writers had picked up on this theme and created the "Son of God" story as a political ploy in order to restore the Jewish people to their “rightful” place in the world - The dying rising godman of myth that everyone in the pagan world always talked about, except with a impressive Jewish pedigree, and this one was a real, existing human being!
There is more to this supposition than one might suspect at first. Although this is not well known, in the bible, lying is permitted under special circumstances when it is done in the service of God. In the Old Testament book of Joshua 2:4-6 (the Hebrew name for Jesus, interestingly), the prostitute Rahab (the one mentioned earlier as part of Jesus’ bloodline) is praised for an act of lying. We read “And the woman [Rahab] took the two men and hid them and said thus: There came men unto me, but I wist not whence they were; and it came to pass about the time of shutting of the gate, when it was dark that the men went out; whither the men went I wot not; pursue after them quickly, for ye shall overtake them. But she had brought them up to the roof of the house and hid them with the stalks of flax” This was later picked up on in the New Testament in the book of James at 2: 25, where it is said that Rahab was righteous because of telling this lie in the service of God: “Was not Rahab, the harlot, justified by works, when she had received the messengers, and had sent them out another way?” Was this mention of Rahab by James and her presence in the royal bloodline a secret among the writers that they knew the story itself was a deliberate fraud? Recall the words of Pope Pious X, quoted in John Bale, Acta Romanorum Pontificum "For on a time when a cardinall Bembus did move a question out of the Gospell, the Pope gave him a very contemptuous answer saying: All ages can testifie enough howe profitable that fable of Christe hath ben to us and our companie."
The permission of lying under special circumstances would not separate the Hebrew and Christian scriptures from other ancient spiritualities. It would actually put them all very much in line. The justification of lying hypothesis is very interesting. It resonates with much in spirituality … even shamanism ...where the neophyte is taken in with 'magic' to attract their attention and then is taken to the Truth... and the understanding that what they initially through was magic was simply deception ... and the recognition of how early they were deceived.
Justified lying occurs a lot in ancient spirituality. Confucius, in the ‘Analects,’ indicates “The Governor of She said to Confucius, 'In our village we have an example of a straight person. When the father stole a sheep, the son gave evidence against him.' Confucius answered, 'In our village those who are straight are quite different. Fathers cover up for their sons, and sons cover up for their fathers. In such behaviour is straightness to be found as a matter of course.' (13.18)” The Holy Lie also has a history of societal structuring intentions. For example, The pious fraud or noble lie is present in Plato's Republic in Book 2, Sections 414-7, where Plato says a functional stratified society could be realized if they could convince the people of the lie that everyone from different levels of society were created by God to exist in a certain level of society.
This is also true of the Code of Manu. Roger Berkowitz says of the Manu based society, that its division of society into four castes, each with its own particular obligations and rights, is a desired end because it reflects the natural order of society. He says ‘“The order of castes, the highest, the most dominant Gesetz, is only the sanction of a natural-order, natural legal- positing of the first rank, over which no willfulness, no ‘modern idea’ has power. It is nature, not Manu or the Brahmin legislators, that divides the predominantly intellectual from those who are predominantly physically or temperamentally strong, and both of these from the mediocre, who are extraordinary in neither intellect nor strength. The Indian caste system is an artifice, a Holy Lie—but it is a lie that serves natural end.’
Similarly, we see the permission of lying in Islam. In the Pro-Muslim book ‘The Spirit of Islam,’ Afif A. Tabbarah writes, concerning the mandates of Muhammed,
‘Lying is not always bad, to be sure; there are times when telling a lie is more profitable andbetter for the general welfare, and for the settlement of conciliation among people, than tellingthe truth. To this effect, the Prophet says: ‘He is not a false person who (through lies) settlesconciliation among people, supports good or says what is good.’
Now students, did the Prophet Muhammad even actually exist? Islamic scholar professor Muhammad Sven Kalisch, among others, don’t think so.
It is often supposed that lying is prohibited by the bible, but the situation is more complex than that. As we saw in the case of Rahab, it is permissible in special cases, if it is done in circumstances in the service of God and his people. We see, for example, in the Old Testament, Exodus 1: 18-20 “And the king of Egypt called for the midwives, and said unto them, Why have ye done this thing, and have saved the men-children alive? And the midwives said unto Pharaoh, Because the Hebrew women are not as the Egyptian women; for they are lively, and are delivered ere the midwives come in unto them. Therefore God dealt well with the midwives.”; 1 Kings 22: 21-22 “And there came forth a spirit, and stood before the Lord, and said, I will persuade him .. I will goforth and be a lying spirit in the mouth of all his prophets. And he said, Thou shalt persuade him and prevail also; go forth and do so.”; 2 Kings 8:10 “And Elisha said unto him, go, say unto him, Thou mayest certainly recover: howbeit the Lordhath showed me that he shall surely die.”
Suppose a group of people a long time ago believed adamantly in a world-view that was impossible because their world was under Roman Rule and subject to a Jewish system that they no longer believed in. Suppose that they would have done anything to bring about what they considered to be a proper way of life, but did it in such a way that they knew one day, when the world had changed and become a learned, civilized place of their design, their spiritual offspring would be able to see through what they had done and be able to continue on their way of life without needing to believe in the superstition surrounding it. If you’re into conspiracy theories, I’d take this one over the Da Vinci Code any day, because the scholarship behind the’ DaVinci Code,’ Michael Baigent et al’s ‘Holy Blood Holy Grail,’ is laughable. Who knows? Jesus as factual God; Jesus as Man; Jesus as Myth; Jesus as Lie. When New Testament Narrative becomes pure literature, all you are really left with is Jesus, as you like him.
I can’t even tell you if there is a god or not. Go to an Alcoholic’s Anonymous meeting some time and try to persuade someone there that there isn’t a God, when they are convinced God saved their lives and is present in their group consciousness and presents them with innumerable evidences of His presence, from the special coincidences in their lives to the simple sublime presence of nature; although I guess one could wonder why God didn’t save the lives of others in similar conditions - and while it is true that there is a feeling of connectedness and a higher state while being part of the AA group meeting, its does not necessarily mean this is the beginning of the realization of a higher power that cares about you. This could simply be Social Psychology and the idea that people experience the world differently and behave differently when they are in a group. If you argue that a feeling of serenity in a group is evidence for a higher power that cares about you, is the experience of group rage that occurs at soccer matches where people trample other people in a group frenzy evidence of a higher demon power? Hitler knew well the simple effects of group dynamics, which is why he packed meeting halls with far too many people than should have been there in order to arouse their emotions.
On the other hand, go to a secular humanist meeting sometime and try to convince anyone that there is a God (you wouldn’t believe in invisible fairies would you, so what’s the difference?). One wonders though, since secular humanists ground their argument in analogies and not evidence, are they not also expressing a kind of faith, one where they are adamantly committed to their point of view because they so powerfully feel the absence of God in their lives? One thing I can tell you for sure, there is no evidence that there isn’t a God.
Personally, and this is just me, I think the belief that there is a supernatural father figure that is infinitely interested in the minutiae of your life is more a sign of arrogance than anything else. To me, human life is no different than plant life or fish life or fungal life or bacterial life, and it ends up the same as those forms of life as well. Just the same, for all we actually know, the Hare Krishnas could be the ones that have it right – or maybe one of the now defunct religions like the ancient Greeks, or Egyptians, Persians, Norse, Aztecs, Hindus, etc.
I, and again this is just me, have serious personal objections to those who view Judeo-Christian God as a loving and supporting father figure. Suppose a father had a son, and this son, like all sons, had things he enjoyed, and hopes, and dreams, and fundamental ways of being and doing that gave purpose to his life. All of these things were important to the son, and none of them caused harm to anyone. Now suppose the son, to take one example, enjoyed eating pork from time to time, a healthy, nutritious meat. The father told him that doing this was bad, and gave him no reason that made no sense to the son. Now suppose the son took great fulfilment in his work and enjoyed to put in at least some time at work each day, but the father said if you do that, you are being bad because I don’t want you to work every day. Now also suppose the son took as one of his highest values the pursuit of love, and for him that meant the love of another kind, caring man, and as one of the highest expressions of that love, the son so expressed himself physically with this other man. The father, again, told the son that even though what he was doing hurt no one, and was one of the highest affirmations of the son’s life, the father hated what the son was doing - but gave him no reason as to why. On top of that , suppose the father gave him a whole list of laws and rules that had no other justification outside the fact that the father liked the rules and had no interest in whether the son liked them or not. Again, suppose the father gave some rules that seemed to make constructive social sense independently of whether the father liked them or not, like rules against things like lying and killing (but not all killing, just killing without cause), but at certain times encouraged the son to kill for peculiar reasons, killed vast amounts of people himself, and praised lying if it suited the father to do so. Now imagine again that the father never really let his son grow up and leave the nest, because he told the son ‘if at any points you act in such a way that does not coincide with my world-view, I will hate what you are doing.’ Also, suppose the son had been so mentally traumatized by all this that he thought that in order to show love for his father, he needed to think of him and thank him for everything he had multiple times every day, and spend hours on the phone with him trying to better understand his father’s worldview so that he could live up to it ever more precisely each passing day. And, further, what if the father told the son that he had to try to explain to everyone he met of his father’s point of view, and let them know his father would hate their actions if they didn’t follow them - Now, would this be considered a mentally stable father who was loving and supportive toward his son?
In any case, I hope you have learned enough in your time here to take the stance that I am completely wrong about all this and point out that this whole discussion has left out many of the world’s other religions. Never mind that, because you have been taught comparative religion at some point over the last four years. In the end, there are no facts that I can give you about God. You may have been given a lot of information about Him, but as for actual knowledge, you could have learned as much from your four years by watching Woody Allen’s “Hannah and Her Sisters.” In the end, we just don’t know.
Perhaps if you really wanted to learn about Theology you should have taken a degree in Theology
(Part 2) The Professor’s Closing Remarks
It’s always kind of ironic to tell you at the end of your degree what we could have told you at the beginning of your studies in Philosophy, but I guess that as long as you get it now, we’ve done our job. You have spent a number of years learning the rules of thinking, and becoming better writers, readers, and debaters. Whether any of that will have any relevance to your future career I can’t say, and I really can’t say it isn’t the exact same thing you could have gotten from an English Degree where rhetoric is one of the course areas.
One thing I can say is that if you think you will take a four year BA in Philosophy and translate it into a career of some sort, you are a much more optimistic person than I am. If, on the other hand, you are looking to use your degree as a basis to apply for law school or medical school or teacher’s college, or something of the sort, I think you have been given a good base. Pursue a graduate degree in Philosophy if you must, but understand the realities of it. We had a temporary position open up in our department this year and over 500 people with doctorates in Philosophy applied for it.
In terms of your studies in epistemology, the theory of knowledge, you have been presented with an overview of what humans have taught about what knowledge is for about the past three thousand years up until the present day. Perhaps along the way you have picked up an interesting tidbit or two, such as the fact that human beings use the world as a mirror to describe their own internal states – through the use of metaphor. Mostly, you have been given a history of epistemology, explaining what one thinker said about knowledge, and then why the next thinker disagreed with him or her. Perhaps if you really wanted to study human cognition you could have take Psychology or Education. You were taught a course on cognitive science, but that was taught by a professor from the Psychology department. We can’t even tell you if there is a real world existing outside your mind.
I guess Philosophy of Science could probably have been better time spent by taking a degree in Science. Originally, there was only Philosophy. Now, it’s difficult, with all the specializations, to determine what Philosophy has left to call its own. For you guys out there who took the Philosophy of sex course wanting to learn something, perhaps you did. You learned that you are attracted to an idea of a woman that is so far removed from what a woman actually is that you would probably have no interest in her whatsoever if she presented herself to you in her natural state: with hairy legs and hairy armpits and no make-up and an unshaven vagina and whatever else women do to present themselves to look as though they were just beginning puberty – breasts, but hairless. This is a condition of your age, a psychological condition that you have been programmed to believe in that is very recent in our history. It is the same type of social conditioning that tells us female homosexual behaviour is erotic while male homosexual behaviour is offensive or even insane, because who would ever look at himself naked in the mirror and get turned on by his penis? However, if this was something you were really interested in, you could have taken Gender Studies. Was Philosophy of History your thing, learning about some of the great philosophical movements in history, like Marxism, or would we have better served you by sending you to the History department?
Many of you came to Philosophy to get a good grounding in the study of ethics. I certainly hope that you weren’t hoping to get a job as a bioethics advisor or something of the sort from that because hospitals tend to promote internally. You were given many ethical ‘debates’ to ponder and argue, but, to take one example, is there really a right side to be on in the abortion debate, or does a person just generally side where his/her values are and then attempt to justify it? I imagine it was a shock when we taught you about Nietzsche and slave morality, the idea that most of the ideas we consider ‘moral,’ like being humble and meek, were developed by slaves, who had to have those qualities, so it would make sense that they would value things like that and demonize things like money and power. There is an old story from the Peloponnesian war, long before the advent of Christianity, where a nation was complaining about being conquered. The conquerors response was ‘the only reason you’re upset is because you couldn’t do anything about it.’ I will tell you something. If there is a God, and it is a God of War, the contemporary Christians are really pissing it off.
Did we teach you the difference between good and bad, or does even a young child know the difference between being nice and being mean to someone, and that you’re a better friend if you do something for someone else than if you do something for yourself? Maybe there is something like ethics inherent to human beings. Even higher order primates demonstrate concepts like reciprocity, although if you wanted to know that you could have taken a degree in Biology, and keep in mind that animals do many things that we would consider immoral, so I wouldn’t take pro-social behaviour in animals as a justification of ethics. And in any case, it just might be a good survival strategy.
Did you enjoy the business ethics course, or could you have just taken that along with a business degree – since it is taught by a professor in the Business department anyway. I’m sorry if you came to us trying to find out the meaning of life. I don’t personally believe in good or bad circumstances, just positive or negative interpretations of circumstance. As Homer Simpson sort of says, life doesn’t mean anything, it’s just a bunch of stuff that happens.
How should I end? Was your time here worth it? Perhaps it was actually harmful. I’ve noticed many of you going into the pub after class. I’ll let you know there is a high rate of addictive behaviour among Philosophy graduates because they are used to dealing with what they think are the “important issues,” and later on end up getting bored with everyday life. Nietzsche says somewhere that’ maturity of understanding is reached when one no longer repairs to where the rarest roses of knowledge grow amongst the thorniest hedgerows, but is satisfied with the field and the meadow, in the understanding that life is too short for the rare and the extraordinary.’ Also, questioning the idea of there being an absolute morality and reducing it to a question of values often leads to nihilism, which is a very depressing thing. It certainly led me to addiction.
When I went to a treatment centre for alcoholism, I wrote the following piece of prose for one of our morning meditations, which was a summation of what I thought were the essential teachings among the vast amount of information they gave us. You can take it literally, or as a metaphor for philosophy, but please listen:
A Healthy Fear Of My Enemy: Accepting What I Cannot Change, Changing What I Can - I was living in a world where I didn’t belong. Something came along and promised me that in every way I felt out of place, it would help me be at home. I wanted this more than anything, so I trusted it. It was called alcohol. But Alcohol had lied, and it’s name wasn’t alcohol, but alcoholism. I drank for joy and became miserable. I drank for sociability and found argument. I drank for
sophistication and became obnoxious. I drank for friendship and found myself alone. I drank for sleep and became exhausted. I drank for strength and became weak. I drank for exhilaration and became depressed. I drank to feel better and acquired health problems. I drank to calm down and ended up shaking. I drank for confidence and became deathly afraid. I drank to make conversation flow and words came out slurred and incoherent. I drank to diminish my problems and saw them multiply. I drank to feel heavenly and ended up in hell. Alcohol was not my saviour, but a deadly enemy. I had lost a major battle, without even realizing I was in a war. We are now in the endgame, and the prize is my soul. The tactics I have to use in my fight are: AA meetings; sponsors and phone numbers; recovery readings; journalling; prayer and meditation; expressing my feelings; asking for help; exercise; healthy fun; eating and sleeping well; healthy places, people, and things; balance and structure; fearing my enemy. My enemy does not live without, but within. The tactics it uses against me are: cravings, slippery people and places, denial, minimizing, bargaining, isolation, dishonesty, blaming, stuffing feelings, focusing on others, loss of planned structure, instant gratification; being hungry, angry, lonely, and tired; thinking I don’t need my tactics; making excuses. I continue to have the will to fight as long as I keep close to my heart the truth that there are two days in every week about which I will not worry, two days which will be kept free from fear and apprehension. One of these days is Yesterday, with its mistakes and cares, its faults and blunders, its aches and pains. Yesterday has passed forever beyond my control. All the money in the world cannot bring back Yesterday. I cannot undo a single act I performed; I cannot erase a single word said. Yesterday is gone. The other day I will not worry about is Tomorrow, with its possible adversities, its burdens, its large promise and poor performance. Tomorrow is also beyond my immediate control. Tomorrow’s sun will rise, either in splendour or behind a mask of clouds – but it will rise, whether I am there to see it or not. Until it does and I am there, I have no stake in Tomorrow, for it is yet unborn. This leaves only one day – Today. I can fight the battle against alcoholism for just one day; it is only if I add the burdens of those two awful eternities – Yesterday and Tomorrow – that I lose the will to fight. It is not the experience of Today that drives me to my knees – it is the remorse or bitterness for something that happened Yesterday and the dread of what Tomorrow may bring. I will, therefore, fight but One Day at a Time. There is nothing I can do to destroy my enemy, but as long as I fight and fight true, there is nothing my enemy can do to destroy me.
In closing, I can’t say whether you found anything in your years in Philosophy. But being about as much of a liberal arts education as any discipline probably can be, I imagine that if you were paying attention, you probably did.
Story 2
Mark stayed in his seat until the last student had left the class and Prof. Trotnel had begun packing up to go home. "Can I ask you something?" Mark said, more or less shifting his eyes between her teacher and the random questions from the class that he had written on the blackboard.
It was the last day of class, and it was more or less free inquiry time from the students. Trotnel had been fair about it though. Some of the questions, like about 'Tea Cupping’ or ‘Anal Bleaching’ he had to avoid for reasons of his job, but for the most part he had been quite liberal in answering whatever had been thrown at him.
"Whatever you like, within reason," he replied offhandedly, not really paying attention to him.
"Why didn't we cover issues having to deal with gender stereotypes this year?"
“I don't believe in gender stereotypes,” Trotnel replied, stuffing the sealed envelopes of student evaluations into his tattered leather briefcase. What had once been the pride of the Sears carrying collection was now old and lifeless – much like its owner.
Mark had been planning his question for some time, and so proceeded slowly, explaining himself as best as he could: “I’m not gay myself, but I do have an interest regarding what is going on in the gay/lesbian/bisexual/transgender community. I think taking an active interest in what is being done relating togay/lesbian/bisexual/transgender rights is part of being a responsible person - regardless of what the Bible in Leviticus or Romans or elsewhere says; or the Quran in 7, 26, 27, or 29, says, or whatever other thing might say according to whoever imagines they are not only aware of an experience that they think equates to the experience of God, but also thinks they are lucky enough to be able to read the mind of God regarding homosexual or any other matters. I do, though, find it’s kind of funny that while the gay/ lesbian/ bisexual/transgender community is fighting for its basic rights in North America, they in many ways enjoy certain freedoms of choice that straight people don’t really seem to have.”
“ I remember many years ago watching an episode of Seinfeld and hearing an interesting interpretation of male and female nudity, to the effect that the Elaine character said ‘A woman’s body is a work of art. A man’s body is a utilitarian. It’s for gettin’ around. It’s like a Jeep.’ Although this may seem like nothing more than an offhand comedic remark from popular culture, there does seem to be some merit to it.”
“ We seem to exist in a culture and a time when a very specific interpretation has been put on the heterosexual female gender and male gender that both define what they are as well as what kind of meaning they have in terms of their sexual identity. For example, it is generally accepted that a man, gay or straight, may or may not have facial, chest, armpit, leg, and/or genital hair, depending on personal preference or the interests of his partner or partners. For a heterosexual woman (I know quite a few lesbian women for whom this is not an issue at all and are quite comfortable having a partner in a “natural” state), on the other hand, the role is a little more rigidly defined. Facial, armpit, and leg hair is generally frowned upon (find a current Hollywood movie or MTV music video exhibiting it), as many heterosexual men seem to think that the presence of such hair is unattractive (according to a 1982 article in the Journal of American Culture called “Caucasian Female Body Hair and American Culture,” American women’s armpit hair became systematically demonized around 1915, and later leg hair later - this is not to say that the women don’t also believe its unattrative too, because they often very much do). It has even gotten to the point that, in all likelihood in terms of causes, Brazilian waxing with an assist from the pornography industry since the eighties has redefined the female genital region to be at its most attractive when it displays either no hair, or else a minimal amount of hair that is very neatly maintained (keeping in mind that ours is not the first culture or time to favor this interpretation of the female genital region). From a reductive psychological point of view, it could be suggested that an interpretation has been put on the heterosexual female body in North America whereby heterosexual women are expected to artificially present themselves as though they have just reached puberty (breasts, but minimal body hair). Keep in mind that reductive psychology isn’t in any way scientific or an example of reason, it’s just a way framing something that could just as easily be framed otherwise.”
“In any case, even as a general tangent to this, make-up products designed to make you look younger is a massive leviathan of an industry for heterosexual women, as opposed to the relatively smaller number of heterosexual men that use the products for the same reason. Of the older lesbian women that I know, few wear “age perfecting/defying” makeup and others do not, but again for them it seems more of a choice than an expectation – although from a point of view of personal opinion, clowns wear makeup too. It doesn’t make them attractive, it makes them clowns.. Even in terms of the number of women compared to men that get their hair colored to cover up the grey, it’s not unusual to hear that a man with salt and pepper in his hair looks distinguished, even though it would seem odd to hear the same thing being said about a woman. It is also notable that the perky, youthful appearance given to the breast through the generally promoted wearing of braziers (which, incidentally, has no empirical evidence suggesting they serve any other function for most women - even sports-bras are generally regarded as unecessary) has come under attack by certain studies (Sydney Ross Singer and Soma Grismaijer, 1995, 2007), as being possibly linked to breast cancer, although this claim has been widely dismissed because there is, currently, insufficient research data to support such a claim and what data is available could always be read differently. Again, for the lesbian women I know, wearing a bra is more of a choice than an expectation, and most don’t bother at all (which was also once a staple of the sexual revolution, although the ideals of that time in terms of heterosexual women have in some ways crystalized and in other ways more or less disappeared).”
“And it’s interesting in the history of heterosexual culture generally that the female body had been hypersexualized while the male body really hasn’t. What purpose, for example, did the introduction of the high-heeled shoe as a fashionable accessory for females serve other than to provide an uncomfortable way of artificially elongating the leg and lifting the buttocks? Why, on the other hand, does our culture generally understand contemporary female recreational swimming attire to be necessarily form fitting (even for young girls) while heterosexual male swimming trunks are usually loose and often long (anyone violating this unstated law being considered “unusual,” or “European” - although you only need to look to a gay pride float to see men that are perfectly comfortable wearing form fitting shorts in order to sexualize the male genital region - think again of the Seinfeld quote)?”
“Why, on the other hand, do we imprint labels like cutie or hottie or princess or whatever across the buttocks region of even young girls pants while it would be very unheard of to do this for young boys? I still remember when L’Oreal regional sales manager Elysa Yanowitz ended up losing her own job over an incident that started because she refused to fire a perfume saleswoman who a number of male company executives said was not sexy enough.”
“It is interesting, too, in the homosexual community, heterosexual culture still often imposes different interpretations on male homosexual behavior as opposed to female homosexual behavior. All you have to do is turn on a music video station or go to a club to see women grinding with one another on the dance floor or making out with one another; not because they’re gay or bisexual, but because it’s interpreted in general as being ‘sexy.’ It would seem odd, on the other hand, for the same men to grind or make out with one another for the pleasure of women. I don’t recall Britney Spears or Christina Aguillera ever saying they were bisexual, even though both made out with Madonna on the 20th annual VMA award show and clearly expressed later that they enjoyed it. On the other hand, male homosexual behavior is still often the butt of jokes in heterosexual culture, and it is generaly assumed that to be a gay man also means you will exhibit qualities that are traditionally considered “feminine.” If heterosexual culture weren’t an abstract entity, but a pubescent heterosexual boy, then a ‘harem’ mentality would make perfect sense in regard to the specifications of the normalization of female behavior, while male homosexuality obviously wouldn’t even make sense because a male heterosexual doesn’t look at himself naked in the mirror and get turned on by the sight of his penis, or by anyone else’s penis he sees in the shower at a gym for that matter.
Reductive psychology is always a fun practice and it can certainly lead to interesting
interpretations, but it isn’t science. Information can always be read in a different way and lead to different conclusions. But just speaking for myself, I can quite confidently say as a 19 year old heterosexual man with a healthy libido, that if I took my greatest Hollywood actress fantasy, and proceeded to picture her in a fully natural state, I honestly can’t say that I would still be attracted to her. But if I can’t see being attracted to a woman just as she is, and I’m not gay, then what am I? Put another way, who can I sue for brainwashing me?”
Trotnel laughed a little at the last question, which encouraged Mark, because at least it meant he had been paying some attention. “Let me ask you this,” Trotnel replied. “Is there something to be gained by you personally by letting your mind wander into these areas?”
“I guess there might be,” Mark replied.
“I think,” Tronel said, as he started to walk toward the door, “that you have spent a lot of time trying to imply certain things without actually saying them, to the extent that, as you say, even though it isn’t “scientific,” you're trying to backdoor a certain interpretation on me.
“I really wasn’t doing that,” Mark said.
“In any case,” Trotnel remarked, “taking information that countless other people have said and condensing it in order to produce a theatrical effect doesn’t really amount to anything more than creating a sort of magic trick whereby you produce the special effect without the movie.”
“It must mean something," Mark said with a hint of aggravation. Don’t you think that culture interprets gender? It seems so obvious, whether by my interpretation or some other”
“Things aren’t credible because they’re obvious,” replied Trotnel. “History has innumerable instances of some one or group trying to justify something based merely on the fact that it was obvious to them. The founding fathers said ‘We hold these truths to be self evident ...’ That’s just another way of saying ‘We have no way of justifying this, but we believe... In any case, I already told you, I don’t ‘believe’ in gender stereotypes”
Story 3
“Given that this is that last practical time we will have before exams, I thought I would open the floor to two interesting question. Even though there hasn’t been a need for an army in nearly 500 years, I will ask the questions (1) what “support the troops” meant at that time of wars and (2) what could have happened if Germany did not develop the atomic bomb first?”
S: Student
P: Professor
(1) Student responses:
S “I guess ‘support the troops’ meant that whether you actually believed in a war or not, it was a duty for you as a citizen to be grateful to the solider and their family for the sacrifice they were making.”
P “Why”
S “Probably because the people thought that their way of life was ultimately at stake in the figure of young people dying for a cause.”
P “Would we think this today?”
S “There are no armies today.”
P “That’s not what I asked”
S “I guess it depends on believing whether an ‘army’ is necessary or not. If you feel the need to export your belief system around the world, or believe that it is threatened, I guess it is. If not, then no.
P “So the question is, if there is an army, should a society “support its troops unconditionally?”
S “But our world needs no army.”
P “That’s not what I asked.”
2. Student Responses
S “I guess the war would have been longer”
P “What if ancient Britain or America had developed the bomb first”
S “They probably would have won”
P “And how would our world have been different”
S “ ‘German’ probably wouldn’t have been the official language of the world – I guess people would be making a living as translators”
P “Aside from that”
S “The final solution would have never been carried out”
P “What does that mean?”
S “All the Jews and Homosexuals and the like wouldn’t have been killed”
P “But as you well know, Judaism is a very strong religion today. It’s Christianity and Islam that died out and are now considered mythologies – and the world is still full of homosexuality”
S “But Christianity and Islam were based on people that sects stopped believing in. Judaism was more about the belief in the principles of different stories”
P “So why did killing a massive amount of Jews and gays not kill off those ways of life?”
S “They weren’t based on the people that died, but the ideas that consumed them, and you don’t destroy an ideology by killing a bunch of people. There are many people today that worship Osiris today, and that was considered ‘myth’ at that time”
P “What I ultimately wanted to know is how the world would have been different if the Germans had lost the war”
S “Life would have been different, but no one really cares very much about the archaic German ideals of the twentieth century. Our civilization is like any other. We are born out of a certain past, but ultimately make our own decisions about our civilization and what we think is right and wrong.
P “So let’s retrace - supposing there were armies. There aren’t, because the Germans of that time systematically murdered anyone who wouldn’t fall under their way of looking at the world - should troops be unconditionally supported?”
S “It’s really two questions. On the one hand, should you unconditionally support someone just because they are in an army, whether they are fighting for something you believe in or not. On the other, should you support a resistance fighter or martyr desperately supporting a dying cause?”
P “I guess you have to decide on this: The world, in terms of ideology, is going to end up one way, or a different way. In the end, does it matter that the world, given past circumstance, is currently in a particular state?”
S “I suppose that if the world wasn’t one way, it would be another”
Chapter 1 (c)
Nathan wasn’t exactly sure how to proceed. On the one hand, Andrew hadn’t done anything really wrong, but on the other he had to convey how concerned everyone was. “Andrew, I really appreciate you coming in on such short notice. There were just a few things Dr. Atter wanted me to talk to you about.”
“Ok,” Andrew replied, looking like someone who was staring down the barrel of a gun.
“She was a bit worried when her secretary forwarded her the E-Mail you sent.”
“Was she offended by the stories? They were only fictional.”
“It’s not that. I really don’t know if she’s had a chance to look at them that closely yet. I have and we’ll talk about that in a minute. But what bothers her more is the fact that you’ve seemed to have written about twenty five pages in a couple days. Do you know what hypergraphia is?”
“No,” said Andrew, still looking quite scared.
“Hypergraphia is an almost obsessive compulsion to write, and it can be a symptom that your bipolar is flaring up. We’re concerned that you may have been in a manic episode in the past few days.” Nathan was trying to be a delicate as possible.
“I don’t know if I’ve been manic,” Andrew answered after a few moments of collecting himself. “I just had some ideas and I thought Dr. Atter would find them fun so I sent them.”
“Do you think it’s ‘usual’ for patients to send their psychiatrists twenty five pages of writing a few days after meeting them?”
Andrew started thinking to himself. What had seemed like a very reasonable thing to do at the time was starting to appear more and more odd. He was a little taken aback when he got the call to come in and see Nathan before his appointment. He initially figured it had something to do with his writing, but the first thought that came to mind was that he had written something very impressive, and that Nathan just wanted to offer him kudos on it. As he drove to the office, he began to become suspicious of that line of thinking, and wondered if he had offended someone by what he had wrote. Now, he really wished he could go back in time and not have sent the thing in the first place. He had certainly been in this place before, although it usually involved E-Mails he wished he hadn’t sent to his employer. “I’m sorry,” Andrew offered sheepishly.
“For what?” Nathan asked.
“For being unusual,” Andrew offered, more as a question than anything else, because he really wasn’t sure why he was apologizing.
“I don’t think anyone here is worried about you being unusual per se, it’s just when we see unusual behaviour that might also be unhealthy, we start to worry. Le me ask you something, are you a particularly fast typist?”
“Not really,” said Andrew
“And from what you wrote, I’m guessing you went over it a number of times to proofread it for errors?”
“I guess so.”
“Given that,” Nathan continued, “how much time have you spent writing in the last few days?”
Andrew thought hard. He wasn’t sure, but when he looked back it was hard to picture himself doing anything but writing. “I don’t really know.”
“Since the E-Mail came at four in the morning, unless you’ve been napping in the middle of the day, you haven’t really been sleeping very much either, have you?”
Again, Andrew couldn’t really remember. “I guess not.”
“Have you been drinking?”
“No.”
“I think you understand,” Nathan went on, “that one of your relapse behaviours, not just in terms of drinking, but also of your mental health in general, is lack of balance and structure. If nothing else, your last few days have been very unstructured and unbalanced. Andrew was silent. “I guess what’s important is not to get embarrassed, but to try to take a positive away from the experience. Would you like to talk a bit about what you wrote?”
“Why?” Andew asked, sounding very distant, and feeling very much the same inside.
“Whatever motivated you to do what you did, I think it was important to you, and so maybe talking about some of the things you wrote about will help you get more in touch with your feelings and help bring some issues to the surface.”
“What do you have in mind,” Andrew asked, calming down a little
“You keep coming back to the religion issue. For someone who says he is not religious, you seem to have put a lot of thought into it”
“I guess part of me is angry”
“Why, ‘anger’ is never a stand-alone?”
“Probably jealousy more than anything. I’ve had deep spiritual yearnings most of my life, but nothing has ever come to fill them – no matter how often I’ve begged or cried. I guess faith is like love. You can’t force yourself to love someone any more than you can force yourself to believe. I grew up at a time when we said the Lord’s Prayer in school every morning – even though there was never reinforcement for it because I never went to church. My father wasn’t religious, and my mother was always scared of church because she was brought up Catholic and was told the Devil was hiding under her bed at night if she ever got up. I watched and never questions stories like Charlie Brown’s ‘ Christmas and It’s a wonderful Life, but I guess since it was never reinforced by going to church or anything it never stuck. As I got older, I was always resentful and jealous of people that had the comfort of God. Maybe what I wrote was a way of trying hurt someone who had faith.”
“I don’t think,” Nathan said thoughtfully, “that someone reading something is going to wound their faith, unless it isn’t that strong to begin with.”
“I guess not. Maybe part of it is that I feel alienated. Theism is rampant and atheism is spreading like a disease, but my precious agnosticism seems to have been left out. Part of me can’t understand living in a world where ancient Norse religion is considered mythology while things like Islam, Christianity, Judaism, and Hinduism are somehow legitimate. You also have to invoke some sort of God concept, regardless of what they tell you, to be part of AA or to get esoteric wisdom from the freemasons.”
“I also have sort of a weird fascination with televangelism. I find it one of the most interesting things to watch on T.V.”
“Why?”
“I don’t know. I guess I find it absurd and reassuring at the same time. You have people like James Robison harping on what he considers to be the radicals and the leftists and the perverts in the 80’s, and being all about feeding the children nowadays. I guess there’s something ‘noble’ about a Christian being charitable because they think it pleases God and they will ultimately be rewarded for it, but I think if there was a God I would think He or She would be much more impressed by a selfless act done by someone who had no interest in the divine at all. And ideas like ‘sew a seed of tithing because someone tells you a harvest will come back to you multiple-fold.’ It’s offensive. Joyce Meyer rants about how she was so abused as a child and how well adjusted she is now thanks to God, but still thinks the man should be the head of the household. I can only suppose that Jimmy Swaggart is over his fascination with prostitutes. He says he is, although he did that before (not that I understand why prostitution is illegal – or pot for that matter). Then there’s Jack Van Impe. That’s my kind of evangelism, with my conspiracies all encompassing and my raptures immanent.”
“I have absolutely no idea how anyone can look on the idea of eternal life as a reward. I’m reminded of the episode of Star Trek Voyager where the immortal member of the ‘Q’ race ‘Quinn’ argued for the right to commit suicide because the boredom of an eternity where he had seen everything and been anything was a suffering worse than death.”
“And so many of the evangelists live so extravagantly, like Joyce Meyer, Kenneth Copeland, Paula White and Creflo Dollar, even though there’s that line in the bible somewhere about it being harder for a rich person to get into heaven than to get a camel through the eye of a needle. ”
“You’re kind of all over the place, but I’m sure,” Nathan remarked, that there are plenty of passages in scripture you can use to justify being well off.”
“What difference does it make? If people don’t like what Paul says about women keeping their mouths shut in the church, or homosexuals, or when Jesus says ‘Do not think that I came to bring peace on the earth; I did not come to bring peace, but a sword,’ they just ignore them and pick out other passages.”
“And then there’s normalizing it by putting it on regular T.V., like when Dr. Phil brings on Reverend T. J. Jakes to offer psychological advice. Or when Oprah brings on new age religious nonsense justified by “physics,” even though there are many out there, like Victor Stenger, who have shown that it’s childish. I particularly liked it when Oprah said Jesus isn’t the only way to God, and then got rebuked by an audience member because Jesus clearly says no one comes to the father except through him. Or being a Rabbi somehow means Shmuley Boteach is qualified to give love advice - I’m not saying Judaism is wrong, I have no idea, but I sometimes watch Michael Kigel’s ‘Messages’ and ‘Passages’ programs just to hear discussions about the nature of God and the world. God must really be omnipotent if he can watch Michael Kigel’s guests and keep a straight face (Andrew momentarily felt like a bigot after saying that).”
“honestly, don’t you love it when “holy people” advertise on T.V. that they are ‘doctors,’ even though a lot of the doctorates are ‘honorary.’ What does having a university or college degree in some aspect of religion mean anyway? From an academic point of view, it certainly has historical significance, to the effect that if you have a Master’s of Divinity or a doctorate in Judaic studies or something of the like it gives some credentials to talk about the state or history of that faith. But from a practical point of view, its meaningless for, say, evangelizing. Thinking that a PhD in some aspect of Christian studies, like Creflo Dollar advertising that he’s a ‘doctor’ (honorary) somehow qualifies you to give people life advice is no different from someone doing the same thing because they profess a doctorate in scientology, or Aleister Crowley studies, or Wiccan studies, Or Druid Studies, or “the pragmatic teachings of the guy ranting on the street about God” studies. The atheists like Richard Dawkins and Sam Harris are no different, making guesses about things they have no idea about. At least the atheist Bill Maher knows he’s a comedian and brings on guests like Ashton Kutcher and Shawn Combs to prove he doesn’t have a real news show.”
Nathan thought for a minute. “Do you actually enjoy T.V. at all, or is it just something for you to take pot shots at? because if all T.V. is for you is an excuse to put a crown of thorns on your head and find hypocrisy everywhere, it must be very unsatisfying.”
Andrew had become a little excited by his previous rant, but he calmed down for this question. His eyes grew vacant. “I had a T.V. in my room growing up. It was one of the things I was thankful for because it provided an escape from the world of my father downstairs. I’ve been watching massive amounts of television for over twenty years. I guess at some point every new show becomes just another show – the same old thing put a little bit differently. Music sort of feels the same. So do books. It’s like being caught in a perpetual re-run.”
“I used to be fascinated with all aspects of culture: music (Nirvana, Greenday, Weezer, Eminem, Ludicrous, Chris Wallace – those were the real poets of my generation. I once became fascinated by the music of Jon Bon Jovi because a girl I had a crush on was obsessed with him. I used to wait until the house was empty and then blast the stereo and dance myself into a frenzy), movies, T.V., sports. Once my friends wanted to go see a movie, I think it was Terminator 2, and I wouldn’t go unless I could bring a walkman to listen to how my favourite baseball team was doing. I used to love sports. Do you know that they say, neurologically, fans get the same thing out of going to sporting events as someone having a religious experience.”
“What changed?”
“I guess it got repetitive. One year of team play turned into another year of team play. The results were different, but it basically felt like the same thing. I remember becoming obsessed with the Ultimate Fighting Championship in the early nineties because it was more than boxing, it was real fighting. But in the end it really wasn’t. There was no biting or eye gouging or weapons or ganging up on your opponent, like you see when people really fight. And in the end one fight looks the same to me as any other fight now.”
“Things like people attacking each other on Jerry Springer for the Millionth time, or people believing in the ‘Maury’ validity of lie detector tests, even though no court in the land would recognize them. You can only take so much satire and sarcasm from shows like The Daily Show and The Colbert Report and Family Guy and Two and a Half Men before it gets tedious. I can only imagine the kind of suffering the current generation is going to experience, which is a thousand times more over-stimulated than I ever was”
“It sounds to me like you’re very bored,” Nathan commented.
“When I wrote my thesis on Heidegger, I talked about how he distinguishes in Classic Greek Philosophy between parestios, which means something like being-at-home, being in the warmth of the hearth fire, and deinon, the fundamental restlessness of human life, to the effect that humans basically fracture their attention in endless directions in order to satiate the restlessness inside of them, but always remain fundamentally unsatisfied – kind of like our relationship to the things we enjoy is a drug-like addiction, a being-addicted, where the lack is obviously more fundamental than the pleasure.”
“Tragic Greeks. It sounds like you picked a thesis topic to fit your mood,” Nathan laughed.
“Nietzsche says somewhere that we only ever dip our pen in the inkwell of our own experience,” Andrew offered.
“Can I make a suggestion,” Nathan asked
“Sure” Andrew said.
“If I were you, I would give the religion thing a rest. I don’t know what ultimately lies behind your attitude towards it, but whatever it is, you have a bad attitude. I think in part you may have genuine anger there, but I also think you get off on it, and in some deep recess of your being you view yourself as something like an avatar for Palpatine in episode three of Star Wars, Revenge of the Sith when you attack religion, which is childish and stupid because religion isn’t going away any time soon and, no offence, certainly not because of anything you do. If nothing else, think of what the Steve Martin evangelist character says in Leap of Faith. If nothing else, the people listen to the holy man or woman, pay a little money, and end up feeling a little better and having a little more hope than when they came in. If you go to the theatre you have to pay to see the show whether you like it or not. At least with religion, the person chooses whether the show was worth their money. Being an agnostic, you have to admit there is at least the possibility to the truth of all the miracles and healings that are reported.”
“Sure,” Andrew replied, “it’s like the Simpsons’ episode where one of Ned’s kids thanks God for saving them from the disaster He sent.”
Nathan rolled his eyes. “Anyway, get off the religion, and stop quoting Nietzsche and Heidegger. It makes you sound like a douche (Andrew was unsure whether he heard correctly at this point or not because it didn’t seem like the kind of thing a case manager would say, but he preferred to avoid the idea that he might be hearing things, so he let it go)”
“I know,” Andrew replied honestly
“Let’s move on. Andrew, another attitude you have that I am very concerned about is your attitude toward women. When was the last time you had a girlfriend”
“My first year of teaching.”
“Why did it end?”
“I got drunk and said something mean about her family.”
“I figured. I think your thoughts and behaviours regarding women is one thing that you’re going to have to go into very deeply with Dr. Atter. I have a few thoughts myself, but it’s probably something better left to a full on psychotherapy session.”
“Okay. I suppose,” Andrew said, “that you’ll want to talk about the third thing I wrote.
“Not at all,” Nathan briskly remarked. I guess it was in some way aimed at the current trouble in the middle east, or maybe not, but from the time that I’ve known you I’ve never got the sense that you were particularly interested in issues relating to international affairs or national security.
“I don’t know if it’s that,” Andrew remarked. “I think everyone has some opinion or other about international issues, but just for me, I would never voluntarily go somewhere and put myself in the position die for them. Life is dangerous enough. And I kind of like some of John Lennon’s Imagine lyrics: Imagine there's no Heaven / It's easy if you try / No hell below us / Above us only sky / Imagine all the people / Living for today / Imagine there's no countries / It isn't hard to do / Nothing to kill or die for / And no religion too / Imagine all the people / Living life in peace / You may say that I'm a dreamer / But I'm not the only one / I hope someday you'll join us / And the world will be as one / Imagine no possessions / I wonder if you can / No need for greed or hunger / A brotherhood of man / Imagine all the people / Sharing all the world. I mean after all, the U.S fought a civil war, in part, about slavery, but you didn’t see abolitionists from around the world rushing over and signing up for the cause. It’s funny. I was in Buffalo going to Teacher’s College when 9-11 happened. Do you know something? When the first plane hit, people were making jokes on the radio, like some stupid pilot accidentally flew into the World Trade Center. Then the second plane hit. I honestly wish I had a tape of some of the things they were saying on the top forty Buffalo radio stations about going out and wiping out the middle east on those first days following the attacks - and playing music like Onward Christian Soldier.”
“Is arguing against social action something you have a passion for?” Nathan asked?
“Not in general,” Nathan replied. “There was a push toward something called ‘Critical Literacy recently in my discipline of teaching. It basically advocated getting kids to respond socially in writing or some sort of literary format to the things they encountered. Can I use your computer for a second?”
“Sure,” said Nathan.
“Here’s a book review I gave about text on Critical Literacy at the time:”
Getting Beyond "I Like the Book"
Creating Space for Critical Literacy in K-6 Classrooms
by Vivian Vasquez
Reviewed by Andrew MacNeil
Getting Beyond "I Like the Book" shows how to use print material to facilitate higher-order thinking skills in students. Case studies provide examples of how students can be encouraged to move beyond reading comprehension and response toward reflective questioning and critique.
Texts are chosen for their functional value and not, as is so often the case, according to levelling criteria.
Vasquez recounts that some of the students in her kindergarten class felt marginalized because they did not see themselves in the school library's books. Her students wrote a letter to the librarian expressing their concern and the librarian attempted to rectify the problem.
This is an important text for the Canadian/Ontario educator and even more so since specific recommendations in the Standards of Practice for the Teaching Profession are reflected in the book's general spirit and specific ideologies.
Some teachers may disagree with Vasquez's proposition that students should be encouraged to think that social action naturally follows from social-policy disagreement. However, this book will be of interest because it illustrates how using analogies when exploring issues augments students' ability to construct meaning based on their own life knowledge.
Andrew MacNeil teaches Grade 5 at Dallington Public School in Toronto.
“Just remember,” Nathan said smiling, “to practice your positive self talk and enjoy your leisure time.”
Chapter 2 (a)
“If you could change one thing about your life, what would it be?” asked Dr. Atter.
“I guess the thing that I suffer from the most, which ultimately casts a pall over the whole of my life, is that every thing, every new thing, is to me just another ‘thing,’ another something that captures my attention and interest for a few moments, if it does at all, and then falls out of my purview. I almost wish I was oppressed in some way so that I would at least have a cause to fight for. When I think about it, I have a hopeless feeling of meaninglessness and boredom.” Andrew mildly shrugged, as people often do when they are not so much being profound as being profoundly honest. “Part of me always wishes there had been something to justify all that I’ve been through, the alcoholism and the bipolar, like if I turned out to be a great poet or politician or something. Once in reflection, Aristotle queried as to why great thinkers and artistic types (I think he was talking about people like Plato and Empedocles) were such melancholics. The reason was that great art requires a certain distance from life, which allows you to see things or people for what they are, being able to see the forest for the trees, as it were. But this comes at a cost. It means not being close to life, not caught up in everyday life – melancholic. I think sometimes artists probably drink or drug, not only to enhance their art, but also to feel more caught up in life, so that they don’t just go around feeling like that awkward kid at a party all the time. I guess it just so happens in my case I got the crappy life without the bonus of ever having created something important.”
“Andrew, you really have to believe that, ultimately, your mood, and the amount of happiness or misery you get out of life depends on the perspective you take. From your point of view, something somewhere caught you at an extremely low point and unveiled a fundamentally tragic existence before your eyes. But life can never in and of itself be tragic or joyful. It’s only ever a reflection of how you’re taking it. Our history is full of limitless examples of people taking either a hopeless, or else a positive and determined stance to the most seemingly desperate of situations, just as we have people suffering amidst the most apparent good fortune. Think of it from my perspective. I have access to more or less the same life world that you do. You have conveyed to me a very negative thought, but it doesn’t negatively affect me in any way. I can understand your point of view, but you saying it to me doesn’t turn my life tragic because, and this is a blessed thought for me, knowing that a tragic understanding of life is only a perspective, one that can’t be forced on anyone, and is never the ‘real-being’ of the world. I know the tragedy of it only ever has as much reality as I give to it. Our interests or boredoms in things can affect our mood, but in the end our mood or attitude or what ever you want to call it has far more to do than any ‘thing’ with whether or not we are interested in life. If this weren’t true a child couldn’t get deep pleasure out of playing with a box. I can certainly get down at times, but through the application of strategies I also know I can train my mind to view life joyfully and stop myself from letting my mood overcome me in a negative way. In your case, you have a serious mental disorder and a severe history of alcoholism that has exacerbated your condition greatly, because any sustained drug addiction fundamentally alters your brain chemistry in a way that is going to severely affect your mood. The negative effect of your addiction on your mood is going to be something you will be dealing with for a long time because it takes the brain time to make up for the changes you forced on it. If you can manage to stay off the alcohol and take your medication, practice your cognitive behavioural strategies, and keep attending your personal therapy sessions with Nathan and myself, you will have a good chance to train your mind to have a relatively happy, satisfied life. Whether you like them or not right now, what they taught you in the Briardale addiction clinic, “Fake it Until You Make It,” which is a staple for new comers to Alcoholics Anonymous, really does work.”
Atter continued. “What constitutes a satisfying life varies by culture and time period, and even extensively so within a certain culture and time period. There are many people that lead a relatively satisfying life among family and friends, or by themselves, without ever really worrying about things like religion or boredom or causes. They sort of fall into satisfaction without ever really having to work at it, or without encountering any major speed bumps. For some others, a satisfying life comes from some manner of spiritual or meditative life, be it organized or not. Others, as you say, need their causes. Some, like you, need to find a different approach. But telling yourself that life is fundamentally wrong is little more than a self-deception that can only lead you into an even more extensive suffering. The dice were tossed, and you, as it turns out, find yourself as a thirty-two year old man who is going to have to work for his happiness. The question of whether you are going to or not is up to you.”
“Where should I start?” asked Andrew
“Let’s think about your social life and your hobbies for a bit.”
“I don’t have any girlfriend or friends, and I haven’t in some time. I guess I used to like sportfishing, but now I feel like torturing a fish for a few minutes just so you can toss it back in the water is kind of sadistic”
“Well, depression and alcoholism often lead to isolation and lack of motivation when it comes to your social circle,” replied Atter
“To be perfectly honest, I don’t really want any friends, and I don’t really have an interest in sex. I still have a mild urge to masturbate every month or so, if I have an erotic dream or something and wake up with a hard on. That’s how I knew I wasn’t ejaculating. I usually picture some sexual experience I had in my youth in order to do it; nothing current.”
“That can still be a sign of depressions”
“I don’t see why. Catholic priests are, generally speaking, celibate, and no one calls them depressed.
Atter snickered a bit at this. “That may be true, but you’re not a priest. Did you have an active libido growing up?”
“Sure, and lots of friends too, although I guess most of them were really just friends of my best friend Tony.”
“What do you mean?” queried the doctor.
“I was more or less of a loser hanging out with losers until my god-brother, one of the sons’ of my godparents, took an interest in me and started to help me with my image. He taught me how to dress and act and took me to parties.”
“Did you want that?”
“Absolutely. I think most kids want to be part of the cool crowd.”
“How did you fit in?”
“Awkwardly at first, but I worked at it. I worked out obsessively and made sure I was always wearing the right clothes.”
“Were you accepted?” asked Atter.
“I guess so. I eventually took some of those friends and began hanging out with them even when Tony wasn’t there, although what he thought and to be able to hang out with him was always the most important thing to me. Whether I fit in or not, I always felt out of place, and, just to take one example, wore a low-drawn cap from the time I was fourteen to about the time I was twenty five – in part to hide my face, and in part because I thought my Scottish forehead was too big.”
“And girls?”
“There were some girlfriends, but I never thought any of them measured up to Tony’s standard of beauty for a girlfriend, so relationships didn’t really last very long. I was really good at finding little faults with them as reasons to break up, like Chandler in that episode of Friends.”
“It sounds like you kind of idolized Tony.”
“I did always want to be like him. I thought he was better looking than me and more popular, and could get better looking girls. There was definitely jealousy there. Whenever he had a girlfriend I would usually find hurtful or mean things to say about them. I guess it was a way of revenging myself against ‘the beautiful people.’ I used to get very angry and jealous and resentful.”
“Did you care about any of your girlfriends. Or, I guess, in another way, did you ever have your heart broken?”
“In a way, I suppose, although I think I was always more concerned about how the girls looked to my friends. I might have loved some girls that never loved me. Some people, after they break up, say it was lust instead of love. I don’t believe that. A feeling is a feeling. You can’t say after the fact that you weren’t really hungry. I guess if I was, a broken heart affects everyone in his or her own way, but I don’t really remember much about that.”
“Social approval was important to you?”
“I I had a kind of abnormal obsession with it. I always dreamt of a beautiful wife and a big house.”
“When do you think you started losing interest in girlfriends?”
“I became increasingly frustrated that I couldn’t get a girlfriend that looked the way I wanted. I started going to strip clubs and ‘rub and tug’ massage parlours because it was just easier. I got sexual attention from beautiful women every time.”
“Sounds expensive,” Atter observed.
“My grandmother had two shops in the front of her house that paid her rent. For some reason she gave all of it to me. I was young and wanted to party. What else was I going to do but blow it on alcohol and women?”
Atter made a few notes and continued. “Why do you think you were so obsessed with things that most people would call superficial?”
“I guess I always had very low self-esteem and bought wholesale into the ‘ideal lifestyle’ projected by Hollywood and the music industry. I’m not really someone you would call intrinsically self-motivated or able to find self worth without external reinforcement”
“Why do you think that is?”
“I guess it leads back to my dad. When I was very young, he took me to power skating. Sports were very important to him. A year later, I joined little league hockey. I’ve seen videos of myself skating circles around the other new players and racking up the goals because I had the extra skating practice. He told me I was going to be the next Bobby Orr. As I got older, and the other kids caught up and surpassed me in skill and stature. I think I became an embarrassment to him. After every play, I would look up into the stands to see if he approved of what I was doing or if he thought I was hustling enough. A lot of the time he just got frustrated with my performance and left the arena. He made a very regular habit of yelling at me on the way home in the truck.”
“What was your relationship like with your father otherwise?” Dr. Atter asked.
“I was very sacred of my dad. I can’t really picture him in my mind without seeing him in the basement or out on the deck with a beer in his hands. My mother and I were always on pins and needles. You never knew what was going to set him off into a yelling rage. I think he beat my mother, although he never did it when I could see, and he never laid a hand on me. His thing was throwing and breaking things. My mother would usually clean up in the morning, although there were a few times, a T.V. and a microwave, when I came home from school the next day and we just had brand new appliances he had bought to replace the ones he destroyed.”
“Do you hate him for how you had to grow up?”
“Not really. I mean, it was one of the best days of my life when my mom and he broke up and he moved away when I was seventeen. I never really hated him though. He had a hard life. His own father committed suicide when he was very young and he found out about it when kids at school started making fun of him. His mother later kicked him out of the house and he had to live with his grandmother.”
“He had terrible some jobs. He worked in a coal mine for many years in Nova Scotia. He was in the air force as a mechanic when he was in Quebec at St. Hubert, and in a car factory on the line for twenty five years when he moved to St. Catharines. I think he enjoyed the mechanic job the most. He sent some of his pay home to his mother and spent the rest of it on two hookers at a time. He hated the factory job, which I completely understand. I worked in factories doing piece work for five years putting myself through university, and it’s so boring you just want to kill yourself. He never wanted me. My mother told him she was going off birth control just before she turned thirty, and my dad basically told her that if she wanted a baby she could take care of it.”
“As for his temper and rages, he was unhappy, so I guess that’s that. It sucked for me, but he was entitled to be unhappy with his life. It’s like someone who’s murdered someone. You can’t say that if you had gone through the exact same circumstances as them that you wouldn’t have done the exact same thing.”
“What’s your relationship like with your father like now?” Dr. Atter wondered.
“He calls me every few months or so and we talk for a few minutes. I’ll call him sometimes if it’s father’s day or something, but that’s about it. I rarely think about him.”
“What about your mother? Do you resent her for not taking you out of that situation when you were younger?”
“No. She was scared, just like I was. My mother has always stood by me throughout the years, constantly bailing me out for all the stupid things I’ve done because of the drinking and my mood problems. I still talk to her on the phone every day”
“Leaving aside for a moment the idea of a thirty two year old man talking to his mother every day, some people would call the kind of behaviour you just described as co-dependent,” Dr. Atter pointed out. Andrew looked like he was about to shut down at hearing this. Dr. Atter noticed this and quickly moved on.
“Andrew, you’ve shared some very helpful information with me today. It has taken many years of alcohol abuse and psychological suffering to get you to the chair in front of me today. Understand that we can help you, but your recovery will take time. You have a number of issues that we’ve only begun to explore, but before you leave today, if it would be okay, I’d like to hear a little bit about the psychotic period you experienced and what it looked like and felt like for you.”
Andrew nodded, and began to tell his story, which was little more than a series of broken events that his memory barely recalled, rather than any kind of narrative.
(b 1) Manic Psychosis
- As a young child, Andrew made up big, impressive sounding words in his writing that meant nothing at all in order to impress his teachers. Not now; oh no. He wasn’t a wandering small account miracle worker like Apollonius of Tyana anymore. He was a fully fledged extravaganza with credentials, like the Hellenized Jesus with a fine Jewish pedigree. He had awards for top marks in his undergraduate and graduate years at Brock University in St. Catharines. He grandstanded and crossed swords with the intelligentsia at conferences, using real words like ‘resplendent’ and ‘parsimonious,’ and knew when the positions of his opponents were ‘moot,’ not ‘mute,’ as the undergrads would often say.
He sat at the ready in his small, unremarkable bedroom in the side-split house his mother had once cried at the feet of her own mother for in order to get a five thousand dollar loan to buy. The walls reverberated with an ineffable, yet somehow orotund silence that harkened the beginning of a war that Andrew was about to launch. He sat rigidly with a copy of the New Jerusalem Bible in front of him, one of the Catholic bibles that his Catholic professor had recommended he purchase as a supplement to the New Testament course he was auditing. In a way, it was more of a devotional bible than a ‘study’ one, because the translation was often more poetic than the original language warranted. What mattered to Andrew right now was not the literality of the translation, but the annotated notes that came with the bible, which were copious. In the index, in the section that dealt with truth and falsity and lies, there was a word that lead him to a section of the bible where a lie was praised as truth, and struck deeply into the heart of the Old Testament. Because of the notes, it lead him to many other passages.
His attention was fixed on this neologism in the index, which the editors indicated was a lie passed off as truth. As a student of Heidegger, he was certainly a fan of invented words, but the fact that there was one sitting there in the bible was cause for excitement and laughter, and not just the kind of laughter that comes from people telling a story about a woman who was not surprised when a snake started talking to her, and then call the story anything but fable.
What of the New Testament as a whole, then? Was there one coherent meaning to it. There was a powerful mystical element in the earliest accounts of Jesus (very close to those in the Greek/Egyptian mystery religions), those of the letters of Paul, elements that were quite separate from Matthew and Mark. The following passages from the epistles express the idea clearly enough: "this mystery, which is Christ in you, the hope of glory Col 1.27" … "do you not recognize that Jesus Christ is in you 2 Cor. 13. 5" … "it is no longer I who lives, but Christ lives in me Gal. 2. 20." This is not a focus on Jesus as a physical man, but as a higher experiential state of one’s own being.
There was the Torah oriented-Jesus of Matthew, who emphasizes the law, seemingly being overcome by the Christ figure identified by Paul, who rejects simple justification by works and puts the emphasis on faith. It was the overcoming of the traditional Jewish justification by works to the Christ version in Paul which is justification by faith and the realization of a movement from a lower self to a higher self. Andrew read Galatians 2: 21" I do not set aside the grace of God, for if righteousness could be gained through the law, Christ died for nothing!" ; Romans 4; 13 "It was not through law that Abraham and his offspring received the promise that he would be heir of the world, but through the righteousness that comes by faith." Philippians 3:9: “and be found in him, not having a righteousness of my own that comes from the law, but that which is through faith in Christ—the righteousness that comes from God and is b y faith.”
The Jesus of Matthew, the torah-advocating Jewish Jesus, intentionally has something very wrong with him – This was explicitly shown to Andrew with how Jesus dies - as a hated, panic stricken man:
32As they were going out, they met a man from Cyrene, named Simon, and they forced him to carry the cross. 33They came to a place called Golgotha (which means The Place of the Skull). 34There they offered Jesus wine to drink, mixed with gall; but after tasting it, he refused to drink it. 35When they had crucified him, they divided up his clothes by casting lots. 36And sitting down, they kept watch over him there. 37Above his head they placed the written charge against him: THIS IS JESUS, THE KING OF THE JEWS. 38Two robbers were crucified with him, one on his right and one on his left. 39Those who passed by hurled insults at him, shaking their heads 40and saying, "You who are going to destroy the temple and build it in three days, save yourself! Come down from the cross, if you are the Son of God!" 41In the same way the chief priests, the teachers of the law and the elders mocked him. 42"He saved others," they said, "but he can't save himself! He's the King of Israel! Let him come down now from the cross, and we will believe in him. 43He trusts in God. Let God rescue him now if he wants him, for he said, 'I am the Son of God.' " 44In the same way the robbers who were crucified with him also heaped insults on him [contast with the Luke account further down]. 45From the sixth hour until the ninth hour darkness came over all the land. 46About the ninth hour Jesus cried out in a loud voice, "Eloi, Eloi, lama sabachthani?"—which means, "My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?" 47When some of those standing there heard this, they said, "He's calling Elijah." 48Immediately one of them ran and got a sponge. He filled it with wine vinegar, put it on a stick, and offered it to Jesus to drink. 49The rest said, "Now leave him alone. Let's see if Elijah comes to save him."
On the other hand, contrast this with the pro-Pauline Luke account of the crucifixion, where Jesus is dying calmly and confidently, showing unconditional love by forgiving his persecutors:
32Two other men, both criminals, were also led out with him to be executed. 33When they came to the place called the Skull, there they crucified him, along with the criminals—one on his right, the other on his left. 34Jesus said, "Father, forgive them, for they do not know what they are doing." And they divided up his clothes by casting lots. 35The people stood watching, and the rulers even sneered at him. They said, "He saved others; let him save himself if he is the Christ of God, the Chosen One." 36The soldiers also came up and mocked him. They offered him wine vinegar 37and said, "If you are the king of the Jews, save yourself." 38There was a written notice above him, which read: THIS IS THE KING OF THE JEWS. 39One of the criminals who hung there hurled insults at him: "Aren't you the Christ? Save yourself and us!" 40But the other criminal rebuked him. "Don't you fear God," he said, "since you are under the same sentence? 41We are punished justly, for we are getting what our deeds deserve. But this man has done nothing wrong [compare the above Matthew account]." 42Then he said, "Jesus, remember me when you come into your kingdom" 43Jesus answered him, "I tell you the truth, today you will be with me in paradise." 44It was now about the sixth hour, and darkness came over the whole land until the ninth hour, 45for the sun stopped shining. And the curtain of the temple was torn in two. 46Jesus called out with a loud voice, "Father, into your hands I commit my spirit." When he had said this, he breathed his last.
The panic stricken Christ of Matthew made perfect sense if the overall theme of the crucifixion in Matthew is intentionally negative, one of a Torah-promoting, justification by Law or works Jesus figure. It also explains perfectly Paul’s comment that Galatians 2: 21" if righteousness could be gained through the law, Christ died for nothing!"
It seemed to Andrew that there were originally three things going on that represented different levels of spiritual development in one and the same religious mystery. On the one hand, there was lowest level of initiation, the ultra-orthodox Torah oriented justification by works faction displayed in Matthew. Secondly, there was the higher level justification by faith faction of Luke - both of which enticed people with a magical and, in Andrew’s mind, fraudulent miracle working/dying rising Godman story. Finally, there was the highest affirmation, getting beyond the lie of a dying-rising human godman to the mystical "Christ in you" of Paul - a Christianizing of the highest form of the Egyptian/Greek mysteries - the realization of the higher self.
The real meaning of the New Testament seemed to be the mystical "Christ in you," because the crucifixion, which is demonstrated negatively in the panicking Christ portrayed in the pro-Torah Matthew, contrasted with the resolute, confident Christ in the positively portrayed pro-Pauline Luke, is the death to the bondage of the old law - or Christ dying for ‘me,’ which means revealing to me how to become dead to the old law, and through it gain a higher, more essential kind of life. This is why the faithful can be said to be crucified with Christ (even thought they are still alive,) when they become dead to the law. The death of Jesus is death to the bonds of the Torah. Andrew read in Galations 19-20, “19For through the law I died to the law so that I might live for God. 20 I have been crucified with Christ and I no longer live, but Christ lives in me.” Hence, it was absurd to Andrew to conclude that the ultimate meaning of the death from which the believer is resurrected is a physical death. Paul says this quite clearly in Romans 7:9, “9Once I was alive apart from law; but when the commandment came, sin sprang to life and I died. 10I found that the very commandment that was intended to bring life actually brought death.” Paul clearly did not die a physical death in this passage. And all the same, the essential meaning of the crucifixion is a mystical one. One of the key passages reads "who has saved us and called us to a holy life—not because of anything we have done but because of his own purpose and grace. This grace was given us in Christ Jesus before the beginning of time (2 Timothy 1:9). Andrew read Earl Doherty, who points out in "The Jesus Puzzle," "Christ's self-sacrificing death was located "in times eternal," or "before the beginning of time" (pro chronon aionion). This is the second key phrase in 2 Timothy 1:9 and elsewhere. What is presently being revealed is something that had already taken place outside the normal realm of time and space. This could be envisioned as either in the primordial time of myth, or, as current Platonic philosophy would have put it, in the higher eternal world of ideas, of which this earthly world, with its ever-changing matter and evolving time, is only a transient, imperfect copy (more on this later). The benefits of Christ's redemptive act lay in the present, through God's revelation of it in the new missionary movement, but the act itself had taken place in a higher world of divine realities, in a timeless order, not on earth or in history. It had all happened in the sphere of God, it was all part of his "mystery." The blood sacrifice, even seeming biographical details like Romans 1:3-4, belong in this dimension."
Andrew became fascinated. The Christian religion, for all practical concerns, conquered the world because the lower levels of initiation, the mass fascination and acceptance of the fabulous story of the god-man incarnate in real living flesh dying on a tree and then coming back to life, took over. On the other hand, from the point of view of most plausible interpretation, the meaning of the crucifixion is ultimately the “Christ in you” scenario of Paul, and is a mystical one.
- It was morning again. Unrelenting sunlight assaulted Andrew’s eyes through his bedroom blinds. A vicious headache and massive vomiting re-asserted itself into his existence, the latter of which would one day lead to his dentist asking him if he had acid reflux disease, due to the wear on the enamel on his teeth. For anyone who’s never experienced it, Andrew thought, there’s nothing quite as special as puking when your head is pounding.
The brightness of the computer screen was like a slap in the face, but he managed to put in for a supply teacher. The next part would be painful. He had to prepare lesson plans. Had he been smarter, in his healthier moments, he would have ready made lessons for such a contingency, but forethought and planning wasn’t really Andrew’s strong suit. He was more along the line of procrastination and random acts of exuberance. Last year he completed his Christmas reports in one twenty three hour marathon the day before they were due.
He finished – a half assed job if had ever done one. Andrew took a piece of paper from his computer printer and began to scribble on it: I have everything / I’m going to lose it / I have to stop. His mother had left him the house when she moved out with her new husband to Nova Scotia. All he had to do was keep up the payments and maintain the house. He left the note on the floor of his bedroom and tried to get some sleep.
- Jesus was a lie. Systematic questioning washed him away like a relentless tidal wave. He desperately stared in the mirror. “Who am I?” He ran down the stairs to his wallet and quickly opened it up. His licence had his picture and his name. Andrew felt momentary relief. He slowly walked away, but then suddenly stopped. He raced back to the licence again. Same name, same picture. He felt paralyzed.
- Strapped to a hospital bed, he kicked the wall. Outside the room, a guard stood reading a book of Andrew’s philosophy. Andrew had never written a book, but people must have written about him because they discovered he had seen through the Christ Lie. They had seen his proficiency at debating at conferences. They were preparing him to be their leader in a new world order.
The alcohol was passing through him. He needed to piss. The nurse wouldn’t unstrap him. He had to ask him permission to pee in a cup. They were teaching him to be humble, to contain his great genius.
- The television was making jokes at him. “Moby Dick is not about a Whale,” the broadcaster said. “The whale would disagree,” Andrew replied sarcastically to the T.V. The announcer smiled at this.
- Andrew sang and danced mightily in the Niagara Celebration Church. Navies and mauves dripped from the ceiling in front of his eyes and powerful gospel music echoed off his bones. People were laying on hands and speaking in tongues. The time was almost at hand. He was about to replace God and institute a new age of humanity. Angels were screaming in his ears while demons confidently held hands with him and batted the pesky things aside. Why was David Youngren preaching? This was his brother Peter’s church. Had Peter done something wrong?
- Andrew had been wrong. He laughed wildly at how foolish he had been. He hadn’t discovered something that the whole world didn’t know. The secret societies, which had created St. Catharines as a special city already knew. By birthright, he was their chosen prince, but he needed to earn that birthright by discovering the knowledge for himself. Only then would the celebration and his rightful place be realized. He drove all over the Niagara region, a car full of booze, talking to everyone he could find, and discovering secret messages everywhere. The region was saturated with freemason lodges. There were microphones and cameras following everything he did. Even now, they were listening to his advice to shape world events.
- He was a successful professional with a beautiful house. There was no woman in his life. The house was completely wrecked on the inside. His 65 inch T.V. was pushed over and broken. No woman had come over to watch movies on it. His degrees had been bashed against the wall. His mother was there. How did she get there from Nova Scotia?
- He was in the Norris Wing, the psyche ward of the St. Catharines General hospital. He had agreed to go at the request of his mother, although he tried to get the doctors to commit his mother for being crazy for trying to get him admitted. There was nothing to do.
Chapter 2 (b) Depression
“Ashen,” Andrew mumbled to himself as he walked by some random, barren bush along the November chilled sidewalk away from his small apartment and on the way to his psychiatrist appointment at the community health centre at Joseph Brant Memorial hospital in Burlington, where he just finished his third psychiatrict stay. “Cinereal,” he muttered, quite accurately identifying the shade of grey of the branches of the next bush he passed. This activity was getting pointless, so he decided not to pursue it any further.
Not canceling his appointment 9: 30 a.m. appointment had been hard today. It meant he had to put off drinking until around eleven.
“How’s your mood been?” Dr. Pasin asked
“Fine,’ Andrew lied. For the last three weeks, he had been systematically driving through his long term disability and the ten thousand dollars he borrowed from Wells Fargo, the money he was supposed to use until he would be allowed to go back to work.
“Have you been drinking?”
“No.” Andrew generally finished his twelve or so beers by noon, went home from the bar and passed out - woke up around 4:00 p.m., took his medication to help him sleep, and woke up the next morning and did it again.
“Any thoughts of self harm?”
“No.” Andrew didn’t want to live anymore, but he wasn’t going to hurt himself. There was always the chance that circumstances would turn around. Lyrics from the Bon Jovi song Some Day Ill Be Saturday Night came to mind: I wish that I could be in some other time and place / With someone elses soul, someone elses face. He often went to sleep humming Eddy Arnold’s Make The World Go Away.
“What are your thoughts on going back to work?”
“I’m very positive,” Andrew lied again. Etched in his mind were the endless hours passed watching the analog school clock spin around and around until he could leave that horrible place and go to the bar. But what could Andrew do? He needed money to live.
“That’s good,” Dr. Pasin responded. “Given all the money and things you were given as a child, you’re probably for a long time going to have to a great deal of difficulty working for a living because there is a great sense of entitlement going on inside of you, especially given your need for external positive reinforcement in an industry where one generally doesn’t receive awards or trophies or massive recognition for your work. May I ask you something? When exactly did your manic/psychotic thoughts pass?”
“I guess,” Andrew replied, “that they slowly went over time. Some of my psychosis I could maintain just through the thinking that was going on in my own head, or the interpretations that I put on the people and world I encountered; but, for example, when I absolutely convinced myself that a specific Hollywood actress was going to meet me a local bar in disguise and whisk me away to California where we would rule the world together and she never showed up, my mind had to deal with the idea that if I was wrong about that, it might have been wrong about other things too.
“Do you know what Cognitive Dissonance is?” asked Dr. Pasin.
“Yes, it’s when your mind holds various ideas that are inconsistent with one another and the conflict has to be resolved. I guess my mind could have downplayed the recalcitrant evidence of actresses not showing up or whatever and kept inventing a video game for itself whereby I was the main character and the whole world was effected by my relation to it, but for whatever reason it decided in the other direction and decided to give up the fantasy.”
“Your lucky for that. In many ways therapy is helpless against the conviction of someone in a full blown psychosis. It’s interesting, though, that some people miss the “high” of their manic phase once it passes, regardless of the damage or suffering it caused. How do you feel about that?”
“It was the most meaning filled time of my life,” replied Andrew.
“Makes you feel special I guess. Anyway, it’s summer time now,” mentioned Dr. Pasin. “You seem to have major issues regarding the female gender. Do you agree with that.”
“I seem to, yes,” answered Andrew.
“Let me pose two questions to you, if you don’t mind. Would you say that women’s summer garments are more form fitting than men’s and, as an aside, do you think females, even young children, tend to show more leg than their male equivalents?”
“Why are you asking me that?”
“I’m just trying to ascertain certain notions you have about women.”
“Is that all you want to know?” Andrew requested, somewhat angered.
“Not exactly,” Dr. Pasin replied. “Never mind. On a different topic, four things: On the one hand, why do you think men generally wear suits and ties during formal occasions. And, two, why, since you seem to watch the Jerry Spriner show, do you, in fights, constantly see Black women ripping off each other straight-hair wigs to reveal a short, very different hair appearance. Moreover, why do all men not keep their beards like Hasidic Jews, or even Jews for whom the Kabbalah plays an important part to their life? Finally, why don’t all men keep their hair like Sikhs? ”
Chapter 2 (c)
Short Excerpts From One Of The Mixed CD’s That Excited Andrew Into a near Maenad State (Dithyrambs)
Out There Brothers: Boom Boom Boom
Boom boom boom now let me hear you say wayoh...
I say boom boom boom muthafucka say wayoh...
I say boom boom boom now let me hear you say wayoh...
I say boom boom boom muthafucka say wayoh
Ow, I came to make you shake it
Till you break it
Caress your body until you're naked
Bend you over
Grab your shoulder
Slip my peter inside your folder
Make you sweat-a
Get you wet-a
Pump it faster to make it better
Dim the the lights then lock the room
Cos now it's time for me to hit that boom
Girl your booty is so round
I just wanna lay you down
Let me take you from behind
I won't come until it's time
But if I cannot sleep with you
Maybe I could have a taste
Put your naughty on my tounge
And your booty on my face
Barenaked Ladies: If I Had A Million Dollars
If I had a million dollars
(If I had a million dollars)
I'd buy you a house
(I would buy you a house)
If I had a million dollars
(If I had a million dollars)
I'd buy you furniture for your house
(Maybe a nice chesterfield or an ottoman)
And if I had a million dollars
(If I had a million dollars)
Well, I'd buy you a K-Car
(A nice Reliant automobile)
If I had a million dollars I'd buy your love
Bon Jovi: This Ain’t A Love Song
I should have seen it coming when the roses died
Should have seen the end of summer in your eyes
I should have listened when you said good night
You really meant good bye
Baby ain't it funny how you never ever learn to fall
You're really on your knees when you
think you're standing tall
But only fools are know-it-alls and
I've played that fool for you
I cried and cried every night
There were nights that I died for you baby
I tried and I tried to deny it that
your love drove me crazy baby
If the love that I got for you is gone
If the river I've cried ain't that long
Then I'm wrong yeah I'm wrong
This ain't a love song
Patsy Cline: Crazy
Worry
Why do I let myself worry
Wond'rin'
What in the world did I do
Crazy
For thinking that my
love could hold you
I'm crazy for tryin'
and Crazy for cryin'
And I'm crazy
For lovin' you
Soul Asylum: Misery
They say misery loves company
We could start a company and make misery
Frustrated, incorporated
Well I know just what you need
I might just have the thing
I know what you’d pay to see
Put me out of my misery
I’d do it for you, would you do it for me
We will always be busy making misery
We could build a factory and make misery
We’ll create the cure; we made the disease
Frustrated, incorporated
Frustrated, incorporated
Well I know just what you need
I might just have the thing
I know what you’d pay to feel
Put me out of my misery
All you suicide kings and you drama queens
Forever after happily, making misery
Paul Simon Cecilia
Celia, you're breaking my heart
You're shaking my confidence daily
Oh, Cecilia, I'm down on my knees
I'm begging you please to come home
Come on home
Making love in the afternoon with Cecilia
Up in my bedroom (making love)
I got up to wash my face
When I come back to bed
Someone's taken my place
Abba: Dancing Queen
You're a teaser, you turn 'em on
Leave them burning and then you're gone
Looking out for another, anyone will do
You're in the mood for a dance
And when you get the chance...
You are the Dancing Queen, young and sweet, only seventeen
Dancing Queen, feel the beat from the tambourine
You can dance, you can jive, having the time of your life
See that girl, watch that scene, dig in the Dancing Queen
Blue Rodeo: Lost Together
Strange and beautiful
are the stars tonight
that dance around your head
in your eyes I see that perfect world
I hope that doesn't sound too weird
And I want all the world to know
that your love's all I need
all that I need
and if we're lost
then we are lost together
Corrs: Leave Me Breathless
It's like a dream
Although I'm not asleep
I never want to wake up
Don't lose it
Don't leave it
So go on, go on
Come on leave me breathless
Tempt me, tease me
'Till I can't deny this
Loving feeling
Let me long for your kiss
Go on, go on
Yeah come on
Rage Against The Machine: Killing In The Name Of
Fuck you, I won't do what you tell me
Fuck you, I won't do what you tell me
Fuck you, I won't do what you tell me
Fuck you, I won't do what you tell me
Fuck you, I won't do what you tell me
Fuck you, I won't do what you tell me
Fuck you, I won't do what you tell me
Fuck you, I won't do what you tell me
Fuck you, I won't do what you tell me!
Fuck you, I won't do what you tell me!
Fuck you, I won't do what you tell me!
Fuck you, I won't do what you tell me!
Fuck you, I won't do what you tell me!
Fuck you, I won't do what you tell me!
Fuck you, I won't do what you tell me!
Fuck you, I won't do what you tell me!
Motherfucker!
Johnny Rivers: Mountain Of Love
Way down below there's a half a million people
Somewhere there's a church with a big tall steeple
Inside a church there's an altar filled with flowers
Wedding bells are ringing and they should have been ours
That's why I'm so lonely
My dreams gone above
High on a mountain of love.
George Thorogood: One Bourbon, One Scotch, One Beer
But I'm sitting now at the bar,
I'm getting drunk, I'm feelin' mellow
I'm drinkin' bourbon, I'm drinkin' scotch, I'm drinkin' beer
Looked down the bar, here come the bartender
I said "Look man, come down here"
So what you want?
One bourbon, one scotch, one beer
No I ain't seen my baby since the night before last,
gotta get a drink man I'm gonna get gassed
Gonna get high man I ain't had enough,
need me a triple shot of that stuff
Gonna get drunk won't you listen right here,
I want one bourbon, one shot and one beer
One bourbon, one scotch, one beer
Dennis Leary: Asshole Song
Folks, I'd like to sing a song about the American dream.
About me, about you, about the way our American hearts beat way down
in the bottom of our chests. About that special feeling we get in the
cockles of our hearts, maybe below the cockles, maybe in the subcockle
area. Maybe in the liver. Maybe in the kidneys. Maybe even in the
colon, we don't know.
I'm just a regular Joe with a regular job.
I'm your average white suburbanite slob.
I like football and porno and books about war.
I got an average house with a nice hardwood floor.
My wife and my job, my kids and my car.
My feet on my table...and a cuban cigar.
But sometimes that just ain't enough to keep a man like me interested
no way
No, I've gotta go out and have fun at someone else's expense
Yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah
I drive really slow in the ultra-fast lane,
While people behind me are going insane.
I'm an asshole
I'm an asshole
I use public toilets and I piss on the seat,
I walk around in the summertime saying "How about this heat?"
I'm an asshole
I'm an asshole
Sometimes I park in handicapped spaces,
While handicapped people make handicapped faces.
I'm an asshole
I'm an asshole
Maybe I shouldn't be singing this song
Ranting and raving and carrying on
Maybe they're right when they tell me I'm wrong...
NAAAAH!
I'm an asshole
I'm an asshole
Know what I'm gonna do? I'm gonna get myself a 1967 Cadillac El Dorado
Convertible, hot pink, with whaleskin hubcaps and all-leather cow
interior and big brown baby seal eyes for headlights... yeah! And I'm
gonna drive around in that baby at 115 miles per hour, getting 1 mile
per gallon, suckin' down quarter pound cheeseburgers from McDonald's
in the old-fashioned non-biodegradable styrofoam containers and when
I'm done suckin' down those greaseball burgers I'm gonna wipe my mouth
on the American Flag and then I'm gonna toss the styrofoam containers
right out the side, and there ain't a goddamn thing anybody can
do about it. You know why? Because we got the bombs, that's why Two
words: Nuclear fuckin' weapons, OK? Russia, Germany, Romania, they
can have all the democracy they want...they can have a big democracy
cakewalk right through the middle of Tienamen Square and it won't make
a lick of difference, because we got the bombs, OK? John Wayne's not
dead, he's frozen! And as soon as we find a cure for cancer, we're
gonna thaw out the Duke and he's gonna be pretty pissed off. You know
why? Have you ever taken a cold shower? Well, multiply that by 15
million times, that's how pissed off the Duke's gonna be.
Boys To Men: End Of The Road
Said we'd be forever
Said it'd never die
How could you love me and leave me and never say good-bye?
Tenacious D: Fuck Her Hard
This is a song for the ladies
AFTERWORD (notes from Andrew’s Journal)
To Be Or Not To Be: the question of having children
Have them or don’t have them, but contraception has been around for millennia, and if any generation, far into the future, decides that it is no longer necessary to continue our story, their time will pass, and then human existence will end.
PRO
The Rankin Family
When the waves roll on over the waters
And the ocean cries
We look to our sons and daughters
To explain our lives
As if a child could tell us why
That as sure as the sunrise
As sure as the sea
As sure as the wind in the trees
We rise again in the faces
of our children
We rise again in the voices of our song
We rise again in the waves out on the ocean
And then we rise again
When the light goes dark with the forces of creation
Across a stormy sky
We look to reincarnation to explain our lives
As if a child could tell us why
That as sure as the sunrise
As sure as the sea
As sure as the wind in the trees
We rise again in the faces
of our children
We rise again in the voices of our song
We rise again in the waves out on the ocean
And then we rise again
We rise again in the faces
of our children
We rise again in the voices of our song
We rise again in the waves out on the ocean
And then we rise again
CON
Corinne Maier
Childbirth is torture.
Don't become a travelling feeding bottle.
Continue to amuse yourself.
Subway-job-kids: No thank you!
Hold onto your friends.
Do not adopt the idiot language we use to address children.
To open the nursery is to close the bedroom.
Child, the killer of desire.
They are the death knell of the couple.
To be or to make: You shouldn't have to choose.
The child is a kind of vicious dwarf, of an innate cruelty.
It is conformist.
Children are too expensive.
You become an ally of capitalism.
They will destroy your time and your freedom.
The worst drudgery for the parents.
Do not be deceived by the notion of the ideal child.
You will inevitably be disappointed by your child.
To become a merdeuf (soccer mom) - what horror!
Parenting above all else - no thanks.
Block your professional path with children.
Families: They are horror and cruelty.
Don't fall into an overgrown childhood.
To persist in saying "me first" is a badge of courage.
A child will kill the fond memories of your childhood.
You will not be able to prevent yourself from wanting your child to be happy.
Child care is a set of impossible dilemmas.
School: a prison camp with which you'll have to make a pact.
To raise a child, but toward what kind of future?
Flee from the benevolent blandness.
Parenting will make you soft.
Motherhood is a trap for women.
To be a mother, or to succeed: You must choose.
When the child appears, the father disappears.
The child of today must be a perfect child: a brave new world.
Your child will be in constant danger from pedophiles and pornographers.
Why contribute to a future of unemployment and social exclusion?
There are too many children in the world.
Turn your back on the ridiculous rules of the "good" parent.
The possibility is always open for future generations to commit suicide as a species
In what way do love songs brainwash us about love?
(1) Love is the most important things in our lives:
Bryan Adams
Look into my eyes - you will see
What you mean to me
Search your heart - search your soul
And when you find me there you'll search no more
Don't tell me it's not worth tryin' for
You can't tell me it's not worth dyin' for
You know it's true
Everything I do - I do it for you
Look into your heart - you will find
There's nothin' there to hide
Take me as I am - take my life
I would give it all - I would sacrifice
Don't tell me it's not worth fightin' for
I can't help it - there's nothin' I want more
Ya know it's true
Everything I do - I do it for you
There's no love - like your love
And no other - could give more love
There's nowhere - unless you're there
All the time - all the way
Oh - you can't tell me it's not worth tryin' for
I can't help it - there's nothin' I want more
I would fight for you - I'd lie for you
Walk the wire for you - ya I'd die for you
Ya know it's true
Everything I do - I do it for you
- Question: Who among you out there would die for love?
(2) We would do virtually anything for love:
Meatloaf
And I would do anything for love,
I'd run right into hell and back,
I would do anything for love,
I'll never lie to you and thats a fact.
But I'll never forget the way you feel right now
- Oh no - no way - I would do anything for love,
But I wont do that, I wont do that, anything for love,
I would do anything for love, I would do anything for love,
But I wont do that, I wont do that.
Some days it dont come easy,
Some days it dont come hard
Some days it dont come at all,
And these are the days that never end.
Some nights you breath fire,
Some nights your carved in ice,
Some nights your like nothing I've ever seen before, Or will again.
Maybe Im crazy, But it's crazy and it's true,
I know you can save me, No one else can save me now but you.
As long as the planets are turning,
As long as the stars are burning,
As long as your dreams are coming true - You better believe it! -
That I would do anything for love,
And I'll be there until the final act -
I would do anything for love!
And I'll take a Vow and Seal a pact -
But I'll never forgive myself if we dont go all the way - Tonight -
I would do anything for love!
I would do anything for love,
I would do anything for love,
But I wont do that, I wont do that...
I would do anything for love,
Anything you've been dreaming of,
But I just wont do that...
Some days I pray for Silence,
Some days I pray for Soul,
Some days I just pray to the God of Sex and Drums and Rock 'N' Roll.
Some nights I lose the feeling,
Some nights I lose control,
Some nights I just lose it all when I watch you dance and the thunder rolls.
Maybe I'm lonely, And that’s all I'm qualified to be,
There's just one and only, The one and only promise I can keep.
As long as the wheels are turning,
As long as the fires are burning,
As long as your prayers are coming true - You better believe it - !
That I would do anything for love!
And you know it's true and that’s a fact,
I would do anything for love!
And there'll never be no turning back -
But I'll never do it better than I do it with you,
So long - So long - I would do anything for love,
I would do anything for love,
I would do anything for love,
I would do anything for love,
But I wont do that, I wont do that!
I would do anything for love,
Anything you've been dreaming of,
But I just wont do that...
But I'll never stop dreaming of you
Every night of my life - No Way -
I would do anything for love,
I would do anything for love,
I would do anything for love,
But I wont do that, I wont do that!
Girl : Will you raise me up?
Will you help me down?
Will you help get me right out of this Godforsaken town?
Will you make it a little less cold?
Boy : I can do that!
I can do that!
Girl : Will you hold me sacred?
will you hold me tight?
Can you colorize my life I'm so sick of black and white?
Can you make it a little less old?
Boy : I can do that!
I can do that!
Girl : Will you make me some magic, with your own two hands?
Can you build an Emerald city with these grains of sand?
Can you give me something that I can take home?
Boy : I can do that!
I can do that!
Girl : Will you cater to every fantasy that I've got?
Will ya hose me down with holy water - if I get too hot - ?
Will you take me to places that I've never known?
Boy : I can do that!
I can do that!
Girl : After a while you'll forget everything,
It was a brief interlude, And a midsummer night's fling,
And you'll see that it's time to move on.
Boy : I wont do that!
I wont do that!
Girl : I know the territory - I've been around,
It'll all turn to dust and we'll all fall down,
And sooner or later you'll be screwing around.
Boy : I wont do that!
I wont do that!
Anything for love, I would do anything for love,
I would do anything for love,
But I wont do that, I wont do that.
- Question: who among you would do anything for love?
(3) We need to keep fighting even when the person doesn't want us anymore
Boys To Men
[spoken]
Girl you know we belong together
I have no time for you to be playing
With my heart like this
You'll be mine forever baby, you just see
[verse]
We belong together
And you that I'm right
Why do you play with my heart,
hy do you play with my mind?
Said we'd be forever
Said it'd never die
How could you love me and leave me
And never say good-bye?
When I can't sleep at night without holding you tight
Girl, each time I try I just break down and cry
Pain in my head oh I'd rather be dead
Spinnin' around and around
[Chorus:]
Although we've come to the End Of The Road
Still I can't let you go
It's unnatural, you belong to me, I belong to you
Come to the End of the Road
Still I can't let you go
It's unnatural, you belong to me, I belong to you
Girl, I know you really love me,
You just don't realize
You've never been there before
It's only your first time
Maybe I'll forgive you, hmm
Maybe you'll try
We should be happy together
Forever, you and I
Can you love me again like you loved me before
This time I want you to love me much more
This time instead just come to my bed
And baby just don't let me, don't let me down
[Chorus]
[spoken]
Girl I'm here for you
All those times of night when you just hurt me
And just run out with that other fella
Baby I knew about it, I just didn't care
You just don't understand how much I love you do you?
I'm here for you
I'm not out to go out and cheat on you all night
Just like you did baby but that's all right
Hey, I love you anyway
And I'm still gonna be here for you 'till my dying day baby
Right now, I'm just in so much pain baby
Coz you just won't come back to me
Will you? Just come back to me
(Lonely)
Yes baby my heart is lonely
(Lonely)
My heart hurts baby
(Lonely)
Yes I feel pain too
Baby please
This time instead just come to my bed
And baby just don't let me go
[Chorus]
[Chorus (a cappella)]
- Question: Who among you would keep fighting even though it seemed to be over
(4) And when it ends for good, by the way, it was lust, not love
Bon Jovi
I should have seen it coming when roses died
Should have seen the end of summer in your eyes
I should have listened when you said good night
You really meant good bye
Baby, ain’t it funny, how you never ever learn to fall
You’re really on your knees, when you think you’re standing tall
But only fools are know-it-alls and I played that fool for you
I cried and I cried
There were nights that died for you baby
I tried and I tried to deny that your love drove me crazy, baby
If the love that I got for you is gone
If the river I cried ain’t that long
Then I’m wrong, yeah I’m wrong, this ain’t a love song
Baby, I thought you and me would stand the test of time
Like we got away with the perfect crime but
We were just a legend in my mind
I guess that I was blind
Remember those nights dancing at the masquerade
The clowns wore smiles that wouldn’t fade
You and I were the renegades, some things never change
It made me so mad cause I wanted it bad for us baby
Now its so sad that whatever we had, ain’t worth saving
If the love that I got for you is gone
If the river I’ve cried ain’t that long
Then I’m wrong, yes I’m wrong, this ain’t a love song
If the pain that I’m feeling so strong
Is the reason that I’m holding on
Then I’m wrong, yeah I’m wrong - this ain’t a love song
I cried and I cried
There were nights that I died for you baby
I tried and I tried to deny that your love drove me crazy
If the love that I got for you is gone
If the river I cried ain’t that long
Then I’m wrong, yeah I’m wrong - this ain’t no love song
If the pain that I’m feeling so strong
Is the reason that I’m holding on
Then I’m wrong, yeah I’m wrong - this ain’t a love song
If the pain that I’m feeling so strong
Is the reason that I’m holding on
Then Im wrong, yeah Im wrong - this aint a love song
Yes, Im wrong, yeah, Im wrong - this aint a love song
Yes, Im wrong, yeah, Im wrong - this aint a love song
Yes, Im wrong, yeah, Im wrong - this aint a love song
-Question: who among you would admit it really was love at the time, not just lust?
The Afterlife
Will there be such a thing?
I can only assert maybe
Will it be the picture of bliss
Maybe
Will the bliss eventually pass over, millenia after millenia, to a horific boredom?
Maybe
Why are the guarantees about the afterlife given to me by people that have no more faculty of understanding than I do?
Why can't I convince myself?
Life and Death
Past rises, from time to time, as a phoenix from the ashes, only to be consumed by its flame and become ash once again
What is my present? Am I bored or engaged?; is my mind present or absent?
Future: every next always comes; every next always comes; every n...
Eventually, no one will know or care that I ever existed.
