… Because getting your head cut off with a chainsaw is not a good way to start any day.
I am adding a new feature to my entries to make them more comprehensive. This addition will be entitled: “Best Week Ever!”
Britney Spears may have just lost the right to drive her own children around, but Kevin is having the best week ever!
Actually, the “Best Week Ever” will just be a short, concise accounting of the profane aspects of my life since the last post. Here, I plan on keeping track of the movies I have seen for the first time, any new albums I may have listened to, and just about any other regular thing that happened. It is so easy to get lost writing about ideas and philosophy that when I look back on this blog a few years from now, I won’t have a feel for my tastes and what my daily life consisted of. So, I plan on rectifying that before it becomes something I may regret not doing.
Best Week Ever: Dec. 1st – Dec. 6th
I watched the movie, Deliverance. I know it is a classic, but I have never seen it. Beyond the five minute rape scene, I have no idea why anyone would consider this movie a classic. I guess I just had higher expectations for a movie that is quoted from so often and has become synonymous with inbred hillbillies.
Rebekah and I got most of our holiday shopping done on Saturday. I decided to scan and restore some old photos of my family and have them framed as gifts. I am still working on that now, because restoring old, beat up photos is very time consuming.
On Sunday, we went to Ikea in the morning to do a little more shopping, and then we went to go see the musical Wicked in Hartford at the Bushnell. It was really good. The writing was very clever and funny. The acting and singing were also very good. After watching the musical, I sort of wanted to read the book, because I think it is interesting to look at the Wicked Witch as a hero and not a villain. Rebekah assured me that the book sucked, and was nothing like the musical. After, we went and had dinner at Hot Tomatoes in Hartford. It was OK, but if I am going to spend twenty five to thirty dollars on an entree, I would rather go to Max’s or Grant’s.
Monday was just a regular school day. Tuesday, I worked in the morning, and then spent the afternoon cooking for Chanukah dinner. I made some amazing brisket, roasted with wine, garlic, and onions. I also made latkes, but they didn’t turn out well. I said the prayers, and did the menorah thing. I got a new Nintendo Wii controller and Resident Evil 4 for Chanukah. I got Rebekah most of the rest of the books in the Wizard of Oz series.
Yesterday was my last day of classes for the semester. I have three finals next week. The day dragged on, but I had a quiz in Philosophy in which I know I did rather poorly, by my standards. I have gotten an A on every quiz in the class (we have one each week) and on the last one, I drew a blank on half of it. Oh well. I doubt it will bring my average down any, so no harm. I determined that in order to get less than an A in my sociology class, I need to get less than a 51 on the final. On my Precalc final, I need to get above a 74 to get an A for the class. I am pretty nervous in some respects, because I need to maintain my 4.0 this semester to be named as a Babbidge Scholar, which will help me immeasurably into getting into grad school (specifically Yale). After these finals, I will be a junior!
I was going to write a more detailed post about many other things, including my genealogy project, my new efforts to actually follow through on my book idea that I have been kicking around for about 4 years or more. But, instead, I will go attempt to avoid getting my head cut off again on Resident Evil. Allen Ginsberg said that he saw the greatest minds of his generation destroyed by heroin. Well, today’s greatest minds are being destroyed by Nintendo. Not that I am one of the greatest minds of our generation, but you get what I am saying.
Current Book:
None (taking a short break)
Current Albums:
Band of Horses - Cease to Begin
Yaphet Kotto - Self Titled 7 Inch
eels - Blinking Lights and Other Revelations
This morning’s entry will be about a wonderful and non-controversial subject. ABORTION! Or, as some people prefer to it, “smasmortion,” or as my reactionary Philosophy professor would call it, “mass extermination.” Whatever you choose to call it, it is what I am going to be writing about. For the sake of expediency, I will just refer to it as abortion. I know this is a very touchy subject for many people and tends to make people feel very uncomfortable. Some would say that the uncomfortable feeling is good, since we are talking about such a horrible thing. Some people feel the current abortion culture as being no better than the Third Reich. Others feel that by sanitizing the descriptive words we use for it, such as “terminating the birth” or “reproductive health,” we allow a more civil discourse on the subject. My viewpoint is this, no matter how immoral the idea of abortion is to some, the underlying morality of the situation is, at best, a gray area. With that being said, I do not feel it is the government’s role, in a democracy, to regulate a gray area of morality at the expense of our civil liberties.
I know that seems like a bold statement. Abortion, a gray area? We are talking about murder right? Civil liberties? What about the child’s right to life? Isn’t an abortion an infringement on the rights of the unborn child? Isn’t the government’s role to protect its citizens? Well, I would like to answer all of these logical questions. I would also like to discuss the sanitation of the abortion language. I also want to touch on partial birth abortions as well as the likening of abortion to any sort of genocide or atrocity carried out by a government. My goal isn’t necessarily to get you to agree with me. I know some reading this will not agree with me, and that is fine. This is American after all. To be American is to be opinionated. My goal, I suppose, is to get you, the reader, to at least attempt to understand, not only my opinion on the subject, but that other people may have good reasons for having different opinions, and even if you do not agree, you can have respect for other viewpoints. I also want to point out that since series of books can be written about this topic, that anything I write here in a couple of pages will be an oversimplification of a very complex issue. If you feel the need to argue with me, which is fine, please do not use the lack of a thorough and complete argument as justification for dismissing my point of view. I am very welcome to disagreement, but I do not feel like digging through countless web pages to find arcane wording on a decision made by the Arkansas Supreme Court in 1923. Fair enough?
First, I want to discuss partial-birth abortions, just to get it out of the way. A partial-birth abortion is used for fetuses in the second trimester of pregnancy and beyond. Basically, the baby is delivered just as if it was being birthed, all except for the head. The head remains in the womb. The doctor takes a pair of scissors, cuts a hole into the skull and suctions out the brain. The baby is then considered dead, and then delivered the rest of the way. In this case, if the baby’s head is outside of the womb, legally, continuing the procedure would be nothing less than first degree murder. Most people think that they are illegal in the US. There is a loop-hole in the Roe v. Wade decision (and subsequent laws) that allows them only if there is a sound medical reason to do so, such as that the pregnancy is threatening the health (or life) of the mother. Since the wording is vague, some people have read into this that it can include the mental health of the mother. From what I have been told in class, (I am too lazy to do the research right now) about 4000 partial-birth abortions are preformed a year in the US.
Obviously, the thought of a child, who has started to develop organs and has started to resemble a baby pulls at our heartstrings. The idea that they have their brain sucked out while they squirm, just two inches from freedom sounds nothing less than murder. If not murder, perhaps something inherently immoral. I agree. To me, the further along the pregnancy, the less gray the morality of the abortion is. Even though the fetus may or not be viable at this point is a moot in my opinion. Personally, if the pregnancy has been carried to term this far, unless the mother’s life is seriously in danger, I feel that all efforts must be made to wait long enough for the fetus to be viable and then labor be induced. Whether or not the mother keeps the child is up to her. Obviously if continuing the pregnancy is life threatening, then the rights of the mother to proper medical care over-ride the limited rights of the fetus.
The main point of my argument happens to be that abortion, in the 1st trimester, is a gray area of morality. I understand the argument that pro-life people make that the embryo is a potential human life and that the potential human life also has rights. The reality of the situation is not whether or not YOU or I think it is a black and white issue. There is no pressure in our society to get abortions. If you, personally, do not want to get an abortion, don’t. I think the real issue of abortion goes beyond what any individual thinks of abortion, which is the point that many people cannot see past. The legality of abortion is a matter of government involvement in our lives, to what extent it can interfere, as well as the freedoms we have and how far they should be protected.
In a democracy, the government is of the people, and the laws should reflect the beliefs of the majority of the people. When we allow a minority of people to start writing the laws, and subsequently, defining morality for everyone, the government stops being a democracy and then becomes an oligarchy. We become no better than a dictatorship, because the will of the people is not expressed in the laws of the land. We cease to be free at that very moment. The fact of the matter is that a majority of the people in our country believe that abortion should be legal in some shape or form. I am willing to bet that most people would not even consider having an abortion, and may even consider it to be immoral, but they recognize the fact that it is not their place, or the government’s place, to tell someone else that it is immoral in their particular case. Abortion is a gray area, in that our society believes it is a grey area. Things like murder and rape are not gray areas; hence, they are illegal. The question everyone has to ask themselves is not whether or not they think abortion is immoral, but whether the government should be forced to impose the will of a minority on the majority. In my opinion, that is something that you really cannot ask in a democracy.
Now that we are talking about freedom and rights, let’s discuss the rights of the unborn child. It is a dicey proposition to start trying to determine when a blob of reproducing cells has reproduced enough cells that it could be considered a human being. I will not even attempt to do so. Just about any point that you legally determine is going to be somewhat arbitrary. I would guess that the determination should before the fetus has significantly developed organs, especially the brain and heart. But, of course, that is overly romantic of me. The point is that a blob of cells with the potential for human life is certainly different from a developed fetus. Again, removing these cells may be morally questionable to most of us, in our own life. I don’t think that anyone can argue that there are definitely times when abortion can be considered OK, such in the cases of rape and incest. Forcing a woman to carry and give birth to a child that is conceived in such circumstances would be morally reprehensible. But, in saying this, we recognize that the mother has more rights than that of her embryo. So, how far does the mother’s rights extend? Who can determine just when it is OK for her to exert her rights over those of her embryo? Ultimately, only one person; the mother. However, there is a point that the child has equal rights of the mother, and its rights should also be considered. And, again, that point is determined by a democratic process. When the rights of the child and the rights of the mother are seen to be the same is a matter of political debate, obviously, but we, as a society, do recognize that that time does not start at conception.
I am sad to say it, but freedom is not free, as many conservatives say. But, I do not mean it the same way they do. When they say it, they mean that we have to give up some of our freedoms in order to retain most of our freedoms. I do not agree with this sentiment, but that will be the source of another post, I am sure. When I say that freedom isn’t free is that there has to be casualties in our efforts to retain our freedom. In the case of abortion, the casualties are obvious. The child, certainly, but also the mother. I can not speak from experience, being that I am not a woman, nor have I ever had an abortion, but from the women that I know that have had them, they are profoundly affected by it. I am sure it is a rare woman that can look at abortion so callously as to not give it a second thought. The act of exerting her freedom comes at a terrible price. However, the fact remains that she made the decision and she must deal with the consequences. Ideally, a woman who considers abortion considers both the good and bad consequences and comes to a well thought out and logical decision that is right for her. This is important however. The mother freely chooses what to do. Sure, there may be pressure from the father or her family, and maybe even economical factors have a say in the decision, but ultimately it is the mother’s full decision. She certainly has the right to keep the child. As obvious as this seems, I mention it all for a reason. The reason is that many pro-life people, with their propaganda, tell people that abortion is a mass extermination of the same level of Nazi Germany, and perhaps worse.
Being Jewish, it is hard for me to accept the idea that abortion and the Holocaust are in some way connected. Let me delve into it anyway. Besides radical Muslims and wacko Catholics, people consider the Holocaust one of the worst things that happened in recent history. I do not think it was the sheer numbers, because many more people were killed in China and the Soviet Union under Stalin and everyone’s favorite dictator Mao Tse-tung. The Holocaust is not just about Jews though. What made it so horrible was the reason for all of the deaths. Willing and open enslavement and genocide of not just Jews, but any “inferior” race was the explicit aim of Hitler’s Final Solution. Though Stalin and Mao killed more people, their reasoning was rather pedestrian in comparison. Their goal was to solidify their power and influence. They killed people who they determined were political enemies. Which, of course, is horrible. I am not saying that it isn’t. But, their goal was not to wipe an entire race of people off of the planet. So, what made Hitler more insidious than the others was purely his ultimate goal. But, their objective was not so different. Stalin and Mao wanted a new type of man to be built in their countries, that of the ideal Communist. Though their views of the Communist man were quite different from Marx’s Communist was much different, but I digress. They wanted to rid their countries of the people who had different ideologies, hence the mass murders. Hitler wanted to rid his country (and the world) of people not only for their ideological differences, but also their racial differences. Stalin sought to get rid of the capitalists and Hitler wanted to get rid of the capitalists, the communists, the Jews, the Slavs, gypsies, the homosexuals, the mentally ill, the physically deformed, the blacks, and etc. That is what made Hitler more evil. That and Hitler didn’t have as large of a population to terrorize as did Stalin and Mao.
Well, with all of that being said, how does abortion even come close to the horrors of the Final Solution. Superficially, one can say that Hitler killed between fifteen and twenty-five million people, and is responsible for all of the deaths of World War II, over forty-two million. Abortion has “killed” between thirty-five million and forty-eight million in the US since 1973 (depending on whose stats you believe). I think that we can all admit that that is a staggering number of deaths. Inconceivable really. Even that many abortions seems rather ridiculous in my opinion, and I am pro-choice. But, the difference between Hitler and abortion is an important distinction to make. In Nazi Germany, the government decided who was fit to live, and who was not. They also decided who should have children and who should not. The issue was repression, government involvement at such an intimate level. Their goal was not preserving civil rights, but that of a twisted scientific experiment in genetics. One man decided the fate of million of people, and the fate of their children. The government made these decisions in the place of the individual, which is a major distinction. In the case of abortion, one person makes the decision for each “death,” which happens to be the person most affected by the decision. It is not a concern to anyone besides those affected by it that need to be involved by the decision making process. If you consider abortion murder, then the only comparison you could make to Nazi Germany is that of numbers of “dead.” Beyond that there is absolutely no comparison. None. In fact, I feel that by banning abortion, we become more of a Nazi state. When the government starts regulating such personal decisions in such a moral gray area, we become more of a fascist state, not less of one, as pro-life people would suggest.
The last point I wanted to make about abortion now was about the sanitation of the language used by pro-choice people, as well as the inflammatory language the pro-life people use revolving around abortion. I am even guilty of it. Referring to an embryo as a “blob of cells,” and etc. In a way, I think most people know that abortion may not be wrong, but it isn’t necessarily right either. Because of this, I think that it is easier for people to use words that hide the true meaning of what it is to have an abortion. This is common in any language that describes things that people have to do that is really unfortunate. Much like during wars, soldiers start using derogatory language to describe the people they are fighting. By dehumanizing their enemies, it allows them to believe that they are not killing real people. If you think of it in those terms, one can understand how things like “planned parenthood” and “termination of the pregnancy” are used commonly in the discourse on abortion. Pro-life people use harsh shocking words to solidify their viewpoint on an emotional level. Using words like “extermination” and “murder” are, obviously, over-the-top and really unnecessary. I do not think that using this sort of language really wins any sort of support by people on the fence on this issue. I think it is time that the debate of abortion rises above such a manipulation of language and the ensuing anger on both sides.
The reality is that abortion is not a great thing. Forty-eight million abortions is not something to be proud of. Pro-choice people do no good to their position by pretending that abortion is anything less than it really is. Pro-life people do not do any good to their position by coming off as religious zealots, causing emotional trauma to women in difficult situations as it is, in their protests outside of medical clinics and hospitals. What we should be proud of is the fact that we have the freedom to have abortions if we so choose, and the right to have our own children if we choose. The real question we should be asking is how do we put an end to unwanted pregnancies? What sort of social programs can we enact that would heighten the awareness of safe sex and birth control?
My source of contention with pro-life people is that they are naïve on two fronts. They talk about abstinence, and get angry when birth control and safe sex are taught in schools. They talk about banning abortions and get angry when people disagree with them. Here are some truths about our society. People have sex, even teenagers. Pre-marital sex. Sex for other reasons besides procreation. I know. As much as you may not like it, or think that that is immoral, that is what actually happens. Another thing, people have abortions, regardless of the legality of it. For centuries people have had illegal abortions, probably since the beginning of human history. Immoral or not, it happens. I do not understand how someone who lives in our society cannot see these things as facts. Now, if one understands these to be facts, regardless of how they feel about them, how can they go on to say that safe sex and birth control should not be taught to people? How can they say that abortions should be illegal, when they are against the very thing that would help prevent unwanted pregnancies in the first place? I would understand the pro-life position if they said, “Well, we believe in mandatory sex-ed in schools. Everyone. At an early age. We believe that people should have free access to birth control and condoms. We believe that there should be no prescription necessary for the morning after pill. After all of that, is someone becomes pregnant, well they shouldn’t be able to have an abortion, because we gave them every opportunity to avoid it.” If they said that, I think that would be infinitely more logical and I would understand it more.
But, I digress. Oddly enough, I do not even think the debate of abortion is even about abortion. It is about freedom and control. It is about cultural definitions of morality at odds with religious definitions of morality. We are entering an age of unprecedented moral identity, one that no longer has an authority in the church, or even the government. With our freedoms and civil liberties, we are allowed to define our own morality in any way we see fit. No longer do people need to fear excommunication, or exile based on their beliefs. It is a great time to be a human being. The only valid definition of morality in a democracy is that of the majority of the people within the society, and right now, that means that we believe that abortion should be legal, and so it is, as it should be
Current Books:
Today’s entry will be an actual blog post about my life today. In this great period of reflection, I do not want to lose sight of the here and now. Granted, my life isn’t nearly as exciting as it used to be, so I apologize in advance if you find this trivial and boring. I just don’t want to use up all of the good, juicy stories about my past all at once.
Oddly enough, this blog takes up a lot of my thoughts. Really, this is my only creative outlet to speak of. I have lists of entry ideas stored away on my computer, ranging from continued thoughts about evolution and morality all the way to modern political thought and the true meaning of A Christmas Carol. I am exciting to start my first Connections style post, and I am sure a lot of you will enjoy it (hopefully). It is a tremendous exercise in writing, to try to link so many divergent facts and ideas, while attempting to maintain a cohesive story. I want my blog to be something I read years from now, and gain some insight into how I am now, and how I become who I eventually become.
After reading my old journals I realized that very little had to do with about what was actually going on in my life, and the things I was thinking about. Rarely did I discuss my relationships, or the important things happening in my life. For instance, most of the things that happened between Valerie and I (refer to previous post), I did not discuss on my journal. I just wrote about the initial first week we met. After everything else, the thought about having a child, and that profound impact on me – I wrote nothing. I scoured the rest of my journal, only to find one other mention of her, in reference to her wanting to play bass in my band (that never really formed).
Obviously I do not want to continue the legacy of my old journals by neglecting what is really happening to me. So, after that page of introduction I guess I will start.
Currently, there is little drama in my life to speak of. I hardly speak to anyone at school. I spend most of my days at home, doing homework, reading, or updating this journal. I guess I spend a large part of each day just thinking. Which, can be a luxury really. And, sometimes, it isn’t. At times, I find that I am stuck inside my own head, almost like a captive. That is why this journal is important to me. I guess it allows me to have a dialogue of sorts, about the things I am thinking about. Rebekah and I have a lot in common, but she also doesn’t have the same interest I do in debate and discussion about morality, philosophy, politics, etc. I can understand, she went through 7 years of school, and I am just going through it now. She has been there, done that. It makes sense that it causes some amount of friction between us, because we are at two different points in our lives. It would be the same for me if I was dating someone who was still in high school and wanted to talk about all of the drama they were going though and crap they were learning.
But, that still doesn’t really help the experience I have of being trapped in my head. Being that we are really good at communicating, I have discussed this with her and we came to a sort of plan, which included our “Book of the Month Club.” Which is a great idea. We are both supposed to read a book that we mutually agree upon and have something to discuss that doesn’t involve her lawyer work, which I don’t understand, nor does it involve my classes, which she doesn’t like to talk about it. I think the choice of our first book wasn’t very good (The Road by Cormac McCarthy – see previous-previous post), since she claims to hate the book more than anything else she has ever read. But, I think it is mostly because the book is about morality and ties directly in with my classes. So, I am going to let her pick the next book. I just hope it isn’t something like The Ya-Ya Sisterhood or whatever. I think the idea for this started when she got me to read all of the Harry Potter books, which I think are amazing and we had a lot of good conversations about them. Also, the episode on the Office, “Branch Wars,” that had the Finer Things Club also contributed to the idea. Maybe we should set aside time and wear fancy, frilly clothes from the Victorian Era, while having tea and crumpets to discuss the books. That would be awesome. I wonder if anyone else would be interested in joining our book club if we did all of those things?
I guess we will see how all of that pans out. I am optimistic about it, despite picking the wrong book to start with. Many of you might say, “Well, Kevin, if you like talking about the content in your classes, why don’t you just befriend some of the other students and talk about it with them?” That would be a good idea, except for the fact that the other students are all more than ten years younger than I, and most of them have so little life experience that their ability to grasp and expand on the ideas we are learning about are atrocious, at best. I am not trying to sound arrogant, or high and mighty – but really, at that age, I am sure that I would not be all that much more insightful about these subjects as well. I listen to these kids in class, and what comes out of their mouths, for the most part, is really scary. I am sure there are some worthwhile students to befriend, and that perhaps I am not giving them a chance due to their age. I suppose it is possible. I just honestly do not see how I could really have a friendship with any of these people. Again, we are at two completely points in our lives. I am engaged to get married. I go to bed early. I actually study. I don’t go out and get drunk every weekend. I actually like reading and thinking about things. To me, I just do not see the point of making attempts. If I try to befriend females, I come off as that creepy old guy and, I have never much liked men for the most part.
So, that leaves this blog. This allows me to organize my thoughts and get them out of my head. I realize that most of you, the audience, could care less about my theories of evolution of morality and religion. But, as I said in the introductory post, my main audience that I am concerned about is my future self. So, I can understand if you do not find my posts all that interesting. It’s cool. I mean, my soon to be wife doesn’t find them all that interesting and I am cool about it. But, I guess the point of this post is to point out that with all of this free time I have, more than I have had in a long, long time, probably since I was a little kid, I find myself many things:
Free and trapped. Loved and lonely. Busy and bored.
Quite a contradiction of existence. I think it is good though. These are good stresses in my life. I know Rebekah loves me, and it is irrational for me to expect her to dote on my every idea and thought. I am OK with it. Perhaps what is missing from my life are good friends. I mean, I have good friends, but they live all around the country. Perhaps I should say, good LOCAL friends. I have always loved entertaining a group of friends. Like, having a “Finer Things Club” or hosting a movie night. But, I don’t want to make it sound like I am unhappy, because I am not. At times, I feel lonely, but only when I am by myself for long periods of time – which is natural.
I think this is just mostly a struggle of learning to come to terms with myself. Most of my life, I have never had the time and space to be alone for long periods of time. I have always had close friends that I spent every moment of my free time with. I can track my life periods by which close friend I spent all of my free time with:
8-10 years old: Joey from Revere
10-16 years old: Grant from Putnam
17-18 years old: Josh from Danielson
18-19 years old: Shawn (Hall) from Arkansas (Basic Training and Tech School)
19-20 years old: Steve from San Diego (Stationed in England)
20-21 years old: Kelly from Germany (Omaha)
21-22 years old: Sandra from Omaha
22-26 years old: Chloe
27-29 years old: Rebekah
So, ever since I can remember, I have always had really close friends; with no free time to speak of. I have always made very close bonds with just one person at a time, and maybe had a few other somewhat close friends. But, now that I am in school, and don’t work very often (soon to be not at all), and my best friend (and fiancé) works normal hours, I am alone for the first time, for a large percentage of the week.
Damn it, even when I am trying to write about the present, all of this shit about my past crops up. I guess any reflection of your present self is bound to be fashioned by your past self.
I have no idea what the point of this entry is. I am happy, but in some form lonely at times, but it is something that I am working on and it is good that I am able to confront this. And, seriously, if this is the worst I have to worry about in my life right now, I am doing pretty damn awesome, if I do say so myself. So, for the time being, this blog and my Book Club with Rebekah are serving as constructive ways of channeling these feelings.
Perhaps I do need more constructive ways of “getting outside” of my head. Any suggestions?
Current Book: Current Albums:
Planes Mistaken for Stars - The First Four Years
Pink Floyd - Wish You Were Here
Orchid - Chaos is Me
In later posts, I will add them right into the text.
Kevin: Circa 2002 Kevin: Circa 2007
Current Book(s):
Today’s book I will be discussing will be The Road by Cormac McCarthy. Before anyone says anything, yes, I know that it is on Oprah’s Book Club. Rebekah and I decided to read this book because McCarthy won the Pulitzer for this book, so we figured it would be good. He is also the author of All the Pretty Horses, The Blood Meridian, and No Country for Old Men. I haven’t read any of these books, but I have heard that they are good. Plus, reading post-apocalypse literature is always awesome.
If you were actually interested in reading this book, and don’t want to know what happens - I guess I wouldn’t read this post, since I will be discussing my impressions and thoughts on the events in the book. If you are not a fan of stream of consciousness narration, like that found in Toni Morrison and William Faulkner’s writing, you will not like this book. The text is devoid of proper grammar and punctuation. Of course, this serves to increase the feeling of anxiety to mirror the subject matter and its usage is very effective in this book. But, I don’t really want to get into the dynamics of style and format. I mainly want to discuss the ideas found in the book.
As I said before, this is a book about the time after the apocalypse. The sun doesn’t really shine because it is obscured by the ash and smoke in the air. Everything is burnt and destroyed. Fine ash covers everything, constantly. The survivors are left with few choices for survival. Animals, birds, and most plants have been erased from the Earth. This is the backdrop for the story. A nameless man and his ten year old son walk down a road to try to find other people that are not ruthless murders to join. They continue with little to no food, poor drinking water, in the face of the unrelenting and horrendous cold, scavenging for food, shelter, and warmth.
What the book seems to be to me, is a discussion about the nature of human morality, shaken to its core without a stable society, church, or government to enforce a moral standard. The father and son often refer to themselves as the good guys, while most of the other people the meet are considered bad guys. Why this distinction is made is the discussion. Even though they are “the good guys,” the father murders one man within the text, maims another, and leaves a man without clothes or food to die in the bitter cold. The “bad guys” are a collective group of people referred to as road agents and armies. Their main description of being “bad” is that they kill other people for the explicit reason of eating their flesh. These are people who see the world in different terms than the good guys.
Each side can be seen as embodiments of two trains of human thought on morality. That side that believes in the inherent goodness of humanity, that morality is somehow encoded into our DNA and that being human means we share a common instinct of this morality, even though it is expressed differently throughout societies. This universal morality is bestowed upon us by God himself, and those who deviate from these moral absolutes are not only rebelling against God, but they are also denying the part of themselves that makes them human. One can argue that there is a limited amount of evidence for this in our own world, being that all cultures on earth, going back to prehistoric societies, have certain taboos that seem universal, including the sanctity of life, maintaining the importance of friendships and community, among a few others.
This argument, in my opinion, can also be explained somewhat along evolutionary terms. It is not necessary to bring God into the equation to talk about instincts, or the essential qualities that define us as human. If you are a believer in evolution, as I am, you can say that these traits can have been selected for in human evolution. My logic on the subject is that in the millions of years of evolution, certain pockets of societies flourished more so than others, due in part to a greater adherence to a social norm that valued team work and a community-first ethic. Obviously, groups that worked together closely would have been more successful, especially since human beings are not really evolved to master the world through brute force, but rather our ability to think and change the world around us to suit our needs. It is logical then than these groups survived in much greater numbers than groups that did not have the same set of values – and tended to be more on their own. Obviously, groups that had no moral problem with murder and chaos would have become extinct rather quickly. In millions of years, these successful groups would have continuously prospered, while more solitary groups would have died out. It might be hard to believe that ethics or morality can be somehow encoded into our genes, but activities, even highly complex ones among other animals, especially mammals, are constantly demonstrated around us. Take for instance bird’s nests, beaver dams, mating rituals. All of these behaviors are not learned by these animals, but somehow encoded into their DNA. It seems at least possible, that these behaviors of expressing these moral codes can be similar.
Even these two thoughts on the same subject, (that of inherent moral codes) whether given to us by God, or evolved over time through natural selection, are not mutually exclusive viewpoints, in my opinion. A creationist could easily argue that God created the Universe, and life itself, knowing full well that eventually we would evolve into “his image.” They may say that since God is all knowing, he didn’t have to literally create Adam in one act, but created the environment and natural laws for an “Adam” to come to fruition. Since science can not really determine the nature of life and how it came to exist, much less explain why the universe itself was created and how – it is a logical argument, and one that will probably never be disproved by science.
This thought process can also be used to explain the evolution of religion in human societies. It may seem far fetched, but I have a theory on the existence of religion. Many people have remarked upon the similarity of some stories found in most religions. Stories such as a major flood that wipes away the evil and sinfulness, as well as others all share similar moral teachings and plotlines. For the sake of not making this entry a novel itself, I will leave the example to just the “Flood Myth.” Even though morality might be part of our genetic make-up, society has always needed heroes and villains and their stories to reinforce these very teachings. When people have questioned these moral concepts, I theorize that elders within a group would tell stories to demonstrate what happened to people who didn’t follow the rules of the group to teach them the importance of these rules. Since all modern humans are descendants of a group of Africans that decided to leave Africa in a wave, it would seem rather logical that before these peoples left Africa and moved to the ends of the Earth, they already had a semblance of folk-lore and perhaps what we would call a religion. Now, as these groups got isolated from each other, their culture evolved on its own. And, since people did not have any form of written communication, these stories were passed down through generations orally, and would have been altered slightly to take into account their individual situations. These stories get altered and twisted, much like when you play the telephone game, when you start with one story at the beginning of the line and the story hardly even resembles the same story by the time you get to the end of the line. Tens of thousands of years of geographic isolation led these shared stories into completely different religions. Once written communication entered the scene, some few thousand years ago, these religions stopped evolving in the same sense. The Torah was codified and committed to papyrus. Confucius’ teachings were written down. The Code of Hammurabi was committed to brick tablets. No longer could these words be easily changed and hence the birth of modern religions. Once flexible and plastic, molding to new ideas and challenges, these religions became rigid and unyielding.
But, I digress and will attempt to get back to the ideas of the book. I already stated that one of the two sides of human morality was expressed by the idea of the “good guys,” that of an instinctual gravitation for humans to do “good.” The other viewpoint expressed by all of the others that the father and son meet during their journey. These people are shown as consequentialists. Consequentialism is a philosophy that dictates that the ends justify the means, sort of realpolitik, maybe even Machiavellian. Basically, consequentialists think that as long as the goal you are perusing is good, then it is OK to do bad things to achieve it. The “bad guys” in this book are seen as less than humans, feeding off of each other’s flesh, roving in violent packs. They are always described as filthy and repulsive. Due to the circumstances of the apocalypse, these people have been transformed into unclean animals, without a shred of humanity. Some scenes include a small group of people eating a fetus ripped from its mother’s womb, a group that chains people in the basement of a house that amputates limbs of their slaves and cauterizing the wounds to keep them alive so the group can eat them slowly. I suppose these people justify their actions by saying, “it is either them or me.” They can say, their murder is for the greater good, much like Stalin and Hitler said in their respective reigns of terror.
Obviously, these two viewpoints conflict with each other throughout the text of the book. Good versus Evil. The “good guys” represent those that believe that doing evil, even for the sake of a greater good, is wrong. The man and his son try to maintain a level of humanity, expressed specifically when they bath and cut their hair, and the man shaves, whenever they have an opportunity. This contrasts heavily with the description of the other people they meet, which have abandoned any ideal of hygiene. Even though shaving would actually put the man at a disadvantage, since his facial hair would keep him much warmer, he insists on shaving it off.
This idea of morality is better expressed through the child, since the man tries to maintain a level of morality, but he encounters situations which cause him to wander into grey area. In one such case, both the boy and the man encounter a “bad guy” who is just off the road about to go the bathroom. He stumbles onto the two of them, and the man pulls a gun on the stranger. He tries to reason with the stranger, and proposes that he will not kill him, but will release him down the road, so they can have a head start running away from the stranger and his group of road agents. Instead of agreeing, and saving his own life, the stranger pulls a knife and dives for the boy. He gets the boy with a knife to his throat, and the man shots him in the head. Here, he clearly kills the stranger in self-defense. This leads to the question, “Is killing someone to protect yourself or someone else from being killed morally OK?” Well, most people would agree that is OK, but you are still taking a life. You can also ask the question, “Well, if it is Ok for him to kill someone who is threatening his son’s life, why is it not OK to kill others to feed his starving child?” The net result is the same, is it not? Someone lies dead, and does so to save a life. A consequentialist would argue that there is no difference between these two acts. Starvation kills people just as assuredly as a knife to the throat. The moral distinction, however, is that once the stranger put himself in the position of a murderer, he voluntarily sheds his innocence and humanity so his death becomes morally justified, because he lost his moral assertion to being human. On the other hand, killing an innocent person who still maintains a claim to humanity can not be considered a moral target, even though his death would bring about a greater good. At this point, it becomes more of a question of whose life is worth more. Why should another innocent person die in order for another person to live? Is a murderer’s life worth more than an innocent man’s life? One could argue that all life is worth the same, but is it?
Well, this is enough to chew on for
now. Let me know if you have any
thoughts, disagreements, or ideas about any of this I have written. I would be interesting in what you all think
of evolution, morality, and ethics.
Current Book(s): Current Albums:
Television - Marquee Moon
The Van Pelt - Sultans of Sentiment
Luddite Clone - The Arsonist and the Architect
I would like to preface this, as well as all of these types
of posts, by saying that I do not mean to make anyone feel bad or angry about
what has happened in the past. I do not
mean to sound like I blame anyone else for my problems and the poor decisions I
made. If you feel that way, I am sorry,
but that is not my intention. I also
want to say that I am extremely happy with my life now, and wouldn’t trade it
for anything. No matter what poor
decisions I have made in the past, it led to where I am now and for that I am
grateful. This is merely just an
exercise in trying to determine my growth as a person, from the time in
question to today, as well as to reflect on the chronic problems in my life in
attempt to learn from my past mistakes.
I would say that the time of my
adult life where I needed the most advice and made a series of awful mistakes
was probably around the time I left the Air Force. Joining the Air Force is something I will
tackle on another occasion. An objective reflection on that time, at least to
me, demonstrates a horrible lack of planning and responsibility on my
part.
Here is a brief synopsis of what
actually happened. I actually put very
little thought into what exactly I was going to do when I got out. Before I met Chloe, my plan was to go live
with my grandfather and probably go to school.
In retrospect, this was not a bad plan.
After Chloe moved in, and told me that she wanted to leave Omaha
as well, that obviously was going to change my plans, since my grandfather
wasn’t really cool with the idea of both of us moving in. We also were starting to make plans to move
in with Beth in Kansas City, but I
managed to screw up my relationship with Beth (which will be the subject of a
subsequent entry), and with that our plans as well.
So, we decided to move to Connecticut, after consulting many websites about the best areas to move to. We looked at Portland, Oregon and Providence, RI too. We chose CT mostly because it was between Boston and NYC, as well as the fact that I went to high school here and knew the area well. When we decided on CT, I started making plans to take a week to fly to CT and find a place to live and set everything up. Which was a good idea. Then I realized that not only could I not afford the plane tickets, but I couldn’t afford to pay for a motel for a week either (handling money: another entry). I devised a plan to drive to CT and even set up a route that included pit stops with a bunch of internet girls, to and back from CT (poor self-esteem: another entry). Of course, this also did not come to fruition.
Around this
time, my friend Pat thought that he wanted to take a break from school and
decided that he wanted to come with us as well.
Which was cool, because Pat was a great guy. He was going to school up in Lake
Forest, IL, just north of Chicago. Chloe and I made a habit of visiting him, and
he came to visit us in Omaha a few times as well, even after his failed
relationship with Zoe (Zoe: yet another future post). If I were Pat, I would write a post about
this decision to leave school and move to CT with us. I think the hardest part for Pat was that he
started dating a girl in Chicago
just a few weeks before we left.
Time was
rapidly running out, and we had no place to go.
I started asking girls that I had met on the internet and my
ex-girlfriend Sonia to help look for places in the area. Someone found a place in one of the local
papers for a two bedroom in Willimantic for like $760 a month. I called the guy up and explained to him the
situation. I wouldn’t be able to look at
the place, but he assured me that it wasn’t a dive (he lied). He also told me that it was in a decent area
of town (a half lie). He told me that if
I sent the deposit to him within a few days, he would hold it for me. So I did.
We were desperate at this point.
The price seemed right, he told me it was decent and it had two
bedrooms. I think we worked it out that
Chloe and I would share a room and Pat would have his own.
From there,
we rented the truck, packed it up and left to pick up Pat in Chicago. After we left Chicago,
we went to Buffalo and stayed the
night with an old friend, Kelly, and from there drove to Willimantic. When we got to the apartment, it was
open. We walked in. We were shocked. The place was horrible. Pat’s “bedroom” was slightly larger than a
closet, and the only thing that could fit in it was the mattress and box spring
he stole from his dorm. Seriously. For months, I didn’t have a job. I tried looking for vet tech jobs, but since
I had no experience, I couldn’t find one.
I didn’t want to work as a dental assistant, but it turned out that that
was all I was qualified for. I ran into
a ton of problems paying bills, but for some reason I was too lazy to fax all
of the information back to the Air Force so I could be reimbursed for my trip,
which would have been well over a thousand dollars. I didn’t pay my step-dad my car payments for
a few months. He got mad at me, as well
as his new wife. This is one of the
reasons he and I do not speak to this day.
Well, any reasonable person reading this will realize that I screwed up horribly, in a million ways. I feel like an idiot writing this all down and reading it. In order to give myself advice, I will look at all of the options I had at the time:
- Re-enlist in the Air Force and stay in Omaha.
- Move in with my Grandfather and leave Chloe behind.
- Fix my relationship with Beth and move to Kansas City.
- Decide upon a place and move somewhere with Chloe (and Pat).
I think it is safe to say that staying in the Air Force was
not an option for me, so I won’t even bother addressing that one, but, it was a
real option, of course.
So, I will start with option two. I could have told Chloe that she couldn’t come with me because I had already made arrangements with my Grandfather. As much as it would have upset Chloe, in retrospect, this would have probably been the best option, and would have probably been better for both of us in the long run. As much as I said that I would go to school when we lived together in CT, it was really next to impossible once we got settled. Pat left after only staying about four months, and Chloe had difficulty paying her share of everything. She had had a job but lost it and didn’t work for a few months. She had some money in savings, but once that ran out, money was tight for me, and further contributed to my financial problems and the state of our friendship.
Living together for those years in Willimantic were some of the worst of my life. I don’t blame her for it, but just the situation we were in was hard on both of us. We lived in squalor. Our apartment was covered floor to ceiling with cockroaches. We both gained a ton of weight. We both fed off of each other’s laziness and depression. It was really a bleak time for both of us I think and we started to drift apart well before she decided to move back to Omaha to finish college. If I decided to not take her to CT, she would have finished her degree much faster and would be in a better position that she is now. I would have started school and would be in grad school by now. Telling Chloe she couldn’t move with me would have been hard, since we were such good friends. It would have been hard, there is no doubt, but really, would have been the best thing for both of us. Willimantic was a failure in many respects. It is almost like a black hole in both of our lives, and in the end, came close to ruining our friendship – which was the very thing that caused us to move together. So out of all of the options, this would have been the one I would advise myself if I could go back in time.
Option 3
will be tackled in another entry. My
relationship with Beth, and my actions that led to her disliking me immensely
deserve their own post. So, I will move
to the last option, moving somewhere with Pat and Chloe. This one will probably be the longest,
because I will have to give myself advice every step of the way. I think this option could have worked much
better for everyone involved if we had all taken more time to plan things and
had moved into a nicer area and a nicer apartment. I really felt that part of the reason Pat
left was the conditions we were living with, as well as his strained
relationship with Chloe and lack of good job prospects. I feel that if he had a better job, and we
lived in a better place, he would be more hesitant to leave with his
girlfriend, whom he broke up with after awhile anyway. But, I digress. I will focus more on what I should have done
to make it better for me, since this is what we are talking about.
I honestly
think CT was a good choice out of the places we looked at. I wouldn’t have advised myself against moving
here. CT is a great location, as I have
often said. I will probably live here
for the rest of my life. I doubt there
are too many other places in the country that can claim that you can be doing
just about anything within a two hour drive.
You could be on the beach, in the mountains, in NYC or Boston. With America
being overrun with chain stores, does it really matter where you live
anymore? Everywhere is pretty much the
same now-a-days. But, the decision to
move to CT was not a bad one.
However,
while that may have been a good decision, it was probably the only one we made
that was any good. First and
foremost: I should have applied to UConn
well before I got out. I should have had
all of the paperwork, financial aid, and everything squared away at least six
months before we left. The state of CT
pays full tuition for veterans. On top
of that I would have been getting the GI Bill, which is over a thousand dollars
a month, which financial aid on top of that.
I would have had way more money than I did when I was working full time. If I was a student during the time we lived
in CT, not only would I have been better off financially, I would have had more
direction and would have been in a much better place emotionally and
mentally. I think this would have done
wonders for my self esteem and attitude.
So, not investigating and following through on my desire to go to school
right after I got out was the biggest mistake I made. By far.
The second
mistake I made was not personally going to CT beforehand and picking out an
apartment on my own. I should have saved
the money to do that. Living where we
did was one of the worst things about that two and a half years. The place was embarrassing. I was ashamed of it. The cockroaches. The 100 people living upstairs from us in a
two bedroom apartment. The police around
our apartment all of the time, looking in our windows. The heroin needles on the street. The chicken bones and trash all over our
front yard. The constant car horns at 4
and 5 in the morning. The lack of
anything to do. These conditions
directly contributed to our state of mind during our time there. We were poor.
Living paycheck to paycheck.
Eating shitty processed food constantly.
Whenever we did have money we spent it, just to do something that made
us feel good, even just for the few hours we went to the store. I felt trapped. I didn’t feel that I could ever get out.
The third
mistake I made was screwing everyone that I owed money to. I ran up my credit card debt in Omaha,
and never made any attempt to pay it back.
I was late constantly with payments.
I screwed my step-dad into paying for my car for months on end. I had to beg money off of my
grandfather. I was on unemployment. Some of these problems would have been
alleviated by being in school, and just having more money, however, I still think
I would have had a lot of problems with budgeting. I should have paid my car off faster, as I
promised myself and my step-dad I would do.
I should have left Omaha
with no debt, and money saved. I made
enough in Omaha to put away a good deal of money, but I blew it by eating out
all of the time, and just buying stupid crap, none of which I own today except
for a few pounds around my stomach that I took with me. Screwing my credit still haunts me to this
day and will for at least a few more years.
Destroying the relationship I had with my step-dad, well, that may be
something that I never fix. That could have
an effect on me for the rest of my life.
Granted, he is not without fault for the reasons we stopped having a
relationship, but I probably racked up more evil points than he did in this
regard.
To
summarize, this is what I should have done.
I should have told Chloe she couldn’t come with me and I should have
moved in with my grandfather. I should
have applied to UMass or some other school in the Boston
area well before I got out. I should
have paid off my car before I moved, as well as had some money in the
bank. That would have been the best
course of action. If I had done that, I
would be closer to my family and much further along in my education.
If I didn’t
decide to do that, and insisted on moving to CT with Chloe and Pat, which is
probably more likely given my mindset at the time, this is how I should have
gone about it. I should have applied to
UConn and had everything set up well ahead of time. I always used the excuse that I was on
stop-loss and didn’t know exactly when I was getting out, but I should have
applied anyway, and if I had to wait a semester to start, that is what I should
have done. I should have paid my car off,
and had enough money to travel to CT to find an apartment, and set everything
up well in advance of leaving. We should
have had a decent place to live in, in a decent neighborhood. Probably in Storrs,
or Mansfield, where there were more
people our age, and more things to do.
Maybe even Vernon or Manchester. I should have been more diligent about paying
my bills and being supportive of Chloe going back to school, even in CT. I probably should have tried to get Pat to go
back to school too, which I was at it. I
think having direction and doing something more meaningful with out lives at
that point would have been better for all of us, and our mindset would have
much more positive and made our friendship much stronger. Again, if I had done all of this, those two
and a half years we spent in CT would have been much better and more
productive. Again, I would be much
further in my education. I would have
much better relationship with some of my family. All three of us wouldn’t look back at the
time we spent there as a hole in our lives, especially me.
So, in conclusion, there really isn't much that I can do to change anything that happened. I cannot rectify the situation, or apologize to anyone to make this all better. The only real positive aspect of this time in my life was the fact that it helped shape who I am, and led me to where I am in my life now. I can look back and realize my mistakes. Think about them deeply and write an entry, much like this, and admit the fact that I really screwed up and just use it as a lesson to myself. The only person I can apologize to, or make amends to is myself. Other posts of this nature may be used to help fix broken relationships, or at least come to terms with things I have done in the past that effected others. Sadly, there is no happy ending to this one.
Radiohead - In Rainbows
Band of Horses - Everything All the Time
Current Movies:
Ratatouille
Singles
Trading Places