Fish for Friday

Edited by Morris Dean

[Anonymous selections from recent correspondence]

Know this from Campbell:

Jesus, for example, can be regarded as a man who by dint of austerities and meditation attained wisdom; or on the other hand, one may believe that a god descended and took upon himself the enactment of a human career. The first view would lead one to imitate the master literally, in order to break through, in the same way as he, to the transcendent, redemptive experience. But the second states that the hero is rather a symbol to be contemplated rather than an example to be literally followed. The divine being is a revelation of the omnipotent Self, which dwells within us all. The contemplation of the life thus should be undertaken as a meditation on one's own immanent divinity, not as a prelude to precise imitation, the lesson being not "Do thus and be good," but "Know this and be God." –Joseph Campbell, The Hero with a Thousand Faces (p. 275, revised 3rd edition, New World Library; p.319, 2nd edition, Princeton/Bollingen paperback)

Championing godlessness in a god-obsessed time: "I’m raising my kids atheist in a God-obsessed culture: How I learned to parent godless children." Excerpt:

Atheist. Say it over and over again and it sounds like a meaningless label. I prefer to call myself a humanist, which expresses what I embrace rather than what I reject. Humanism is my religion. I have faith in the higher power of people – our capacity, indeed our yearning, to do good. If you think sustaining faith in an invisible God or his sacrificial dead son is challenging, try being a spiritual humanist....
    Parenting has transformed my perspective on religion. I don’t want my children to face prejudice for their beliefs and I don’t want them to feel prejudice toward anyone else. On some fundamental level, I think world peace begins with me teaching my children respect for freedom and diversity. So how did a nice Jewish bat mitzvah girl become an outspoken believer that Dieu n’exist pas? Feminism made me do it. Sure, let’s blame feminism. Everybody does.
    A women’s studies class at Penn introduced me to the religious origins of gender oppression. I concluded that God didn’t create man, rather men created God in their own image. Patriarchy strikes again! So, God was yet another male authority figure to reject.
    I dabbled with the Goddess – Mother Earth – and found the concept of a female divinity empowering. But she didn’t stick.
    Still, I had a spiritual awakening. It didn’t happen inside any houses of worship or appear to me in the shadowy curves of a bagel. It happened, actually, during political demonstrations, when I felt a soulful connection to a larger group as we joined together to promote a common vision of justice. And I experienced an epiphany again during pregnancy and after giving birth, when I felt my own power of creation plus a deep connection to all women, across cultures and throughout time, who have grown a human life inside them, pushed a baby out of their bodies, fed that child from their breasts, and felt love of divine proportions.

Scientists don't often use words like "conclusive" or "impossible to deny." I know – both my parents are scientists, and they almost never talk in absolutes.
    But that's exactly what researchers are saying in a just-released study about toxic bee-killing pesticides called neonicotinoids (or "neonics"). [Leahy, Stephen (2014 June 24). "How 'the New DDT' Wreaks Havoc on the Bottom of the Food Chain." Motherboard.] So poisonous, so destructive – this stuff is like DDT for bees.
    Every year, we lose 30% of our honey bees. [vanEnglesdorp, Dennis et al (2014 May 23). "Honey Bee Colony Losses in the United States, 2013-2014." Bee Informed] This is a big deal because bees help produce every third bite of food we take. [Grossman, Elizabeth (2013 April 30). "Declining Bee Populations Pose a Threat to Global Agriculture." Yale e360] Just this past winter, states like Michigan and Indiana lost more than 60% of their bee populations.

The hunt in the refuge is baffling: "Alligator hunt begins in Loxahatchee, Florida, amid protest" and "Alligator hunt opens at Loxahatchee." It is after all supposed to be a "refuge" rather than a hunting preserve. My guess is this is either the result of local social/political pressure, or the impact of a corrupt governor packing game management commissions with political cronies instead of trained biologists. (Rick Scott's campaign slogan should have been "I wasn't personally indicted" as the company he ran paid the largest Medicare fraud settlement in history.)
    The other possibility is that due to not being hunted the alligators are becoming too bold and therefore dangerous to people and pets. It is unfortunately not unlike the conundrum of dealing with grizzly bears and mountain lions: we want them there as part of the ecosystem, but we don't want them stalking and eating us when we go visit that ecosystem. There is this theory of "shared consciousness" among wild animals, in that if you kill a known problem individual every now and then, that incident registers with others and keeps them from becoming a problem. There seems to be something to this with shooting problem grizzlies in Yellowstone and mountain lions in California, and it may work with alligators too.

What is this anyway, a machismo thing? A family mythos? "Hunters snag 1K-pound alligator, an Alabama record." Excerpt:

A family battled a 1,000-pound alligator for more than five hours, putting several large hooks into the beast before firing a fatal shotgun blast into the gator's head.
    The result? The catch of a lifetime and a state record in Alabama.....
    "We give all the glory to God. Ten men couldn't have done what we did."

The "ten men" quote is particularly telling. Also, thanking god for giving them the prowess to hunt down something that anyone with a functioning brain and a very little bit of common sense should be able to capture – a-modern day Captain Ahab mentality perhaps?

A Rabbi said to a precocious six-year-old boy, "So your mother says your prayers for you each night? That's very commendable. What does she say?"
The little boy replied, "Thank God he's in bed!"

So you are well traveled, and really know your stuff about various locations, foreign and domestic? Really? Let's find out: "How well do you know the world? Play Geoguessr to find out!"

Cornel West on the mess:

The thing is Obama posed as a progressive and turned out to be counterfeit. We ended up with a Wall Street presidency, a drone presidency, a national security presidency. The torturers go free. The Wall Street executives go free. The war crimes in the Middle East, especially now in Gaza, the war criminals go free. And yet, you know, he acted as if he was both a progressive and as if he was concerned about the issues of serious injustice and inequality and it turned out that he’s just another neoliberal centrist with a smile and with a nice rhetorical flair. And that’s a very sad moment in the history of the nation because we are—we’re an empire in decline. Our culture is in increasing decay. Our school systems are in deep trouble. Our political system is dysfunctional. Our leaders are more and more bought off with legalized bribery and normalized corruption in Congress and too much of our civil life. You would think that we needed somebody—a Lincoln-like figure who could revive some democratic spirit and democratic possibility. –Interviewed on Salon by Thomas Frank”

Satyric verse of the week:

I pressed my muse for verse, but nothing came;
I coaxed again to rouse the fickle dame,
    but she put me on remand
    to desist and use my hand...
To come alone's an uninspiring game.

[In anticipation of tomorrow's Thirst Satyrday for Eros column.]

Copyright © 2014 by Morris Dean