Category Archives: reason

The Land of Fantasies

Death of Truth, Epidemics/Pandemics, Health, Mennonites, reason, The Sleep of Reason, Trust and Distrust

 

I thought I was done with posting about vaccines, measles, and Mennonites in Canada. It turns out that was not quite the case.

I just read yesterday in CBC News that Alberta has confirmed that it now has more measles cases than the entire United States even though it is 60 times larger than Alberta! How is that possible?

 By now you know my theory. Alberta is home to a stupendous number of true believers–credulous people who don’t need evidence to support their beliefs.  The funny thing is that Alberta has always been that as long as I have known about it.

In the 50s the big craze was Social Credit.  Albertans believed the whacky political leaders who came up with crackpot economic theories. They believed them wholeheartedly. And of course, many of those believers were Mennonites. Social Credit ruled in Alberta for decades as a result of the devotion of Albertans. Many Mennonites in Manitoba espoused those theories too.  I remember Social Credit rallies in Steinbach when I was growing up.

In the last couple of years Alberta has given birth to the truckers convoy and their fantasies.

In the entire United States they have had 1,288 measles cases. That’s a lot for a disease that was considered eradicated. Alberta has now had 1,314 cases. That is an astounding comparison given that the US has more than 60 times as many people.

 

I know some people think measles is a pipsqueak disease but of those cases, Dr. Lynora Saxinger, an infectious disease specialist, told CBC News, “there have been 102 hospitalizations, including 15 ICU admissions, as of July 5. No deaths have been reported.” And this is all for a disease that should be eradicated, except for the vaccine deniers who refuse to take the available treatment.  There is no good reason for that to happen, but too many people in Alberta have not been listening to the health experts but instead have been “doing their own research.”

 Is it really a good idea to do your own research?

We don’t always have the time or ability to test scientific ideas. Can you imagine going to make an appointment to see a dentist and then insisting he or she tell you in advance what anesthetic they use so you can do your own research on line to determine whether your dentist was right or wrong? How could I possibly do better research than my dentist who has gone to many years of university to learn things like that.

 

I know experts are not always right, but is it likely that we will do a better job of choosing the right anesthetic? Or the right treatment for measles? Or polio? I really can’t match that expertise. Expertise is important. We should never be slaves to experts, but unless we have good reasons, and by that I mean rational reasons, based on evidence, to the contrary, we should believe them.

 

It is the same with vaccines. How can I know which vaccines are good for me or not?  That is not an easy job. Most of us, I would submit, are not qualified to do the research ourselves on line. Rather, I would submit, get a physician you know and trust, and follow the advice you get. That’s what I do.  Now if I have carefully researched an issue and rationally concluded my doctor was wrong and I was right I should not follow the physician’s  advice, but I would say this won’t happen often. If I am entrusting my child’s health to my own “research” rather than my doctor’s research I had better be awfully sure I am right and she or he is wrong. Otherwise would I not I be guilty of child abuse in not following the good advice if my child was harmed?

We should not be a slave to experts; nor should we be blind to their benefits.

 

Will to Believe

Death of Truth, Epidemics/Pandemics, Ethics, Mennonites, Philosophy/Ideas, reason, Skeptical Philosophy, Trust and Distrust

 

We live in a dangerous society. We see that every day.

One of the problems is the willingness to believe that is so prevalent among people.  For example, Professor Arthur Schafer said that in 1970 there was a strong willingness in the Canadian public to believe that we faced a likely insurrection just because 2 politicians were kidnapped.  The evidence of insurrection was extremely weak, yet when Pierre Trudeau implemented the War Measures Act and civil liberties such as Habeas Corpus were suspended and hundreds of people in Quebec were detained on very thin evidence that they posed a threat, people loved Trudeau.  He was tough. This was his most popular moment. People should have suspended their belief, but instead took a leap of faith. They wanted to belief it was true. People love to do that.

More recently, many people believe that immigrants are the major cause of crime. There is no evidence to support that and a lot of evidence to undermine that belief. Yet it is commonly believed.

This is exactly why irrational beliefs are so dangerous. They can spread like a virus leading to others believing what you believe, even though there is no evidence to support that belief, but even worse, can lead others to believe other irrational beliefs because they have been conditioned to do that by the culture of belief.

It is an obvious fact that some politicians lie.  Some —we know them well—even lie all the time.   The evidence of weapons of mass destruction concocted by the CIA to support actions President George W. Bush who wanted to take against Iraq in order to invade it are just one example. “Credulity is a rampant disease in modern societies,” according to Arthur Schafer. Not only that, but it is one of the most dangerous diseases our world has ever faced.

It is very easy to confuse people. We are not a skeptical rational society, even though, according to Schafer, our very capacity to survive, not just flourish, is dependent upon our diligently, conscientiously, and thoughtfully looking at evidence to support our beliefs.

We can’t always wait until we have decisive knowledge either. Take the case of climate change. The issue is so important because we are facing possible extinction. Sometimes we have to act on probability based on the best evidence and analysis that we can muster. It would be nice if we had perfect knowledge but that is seldom found in the real world. Really, that is never found in the real world. Probability is the best we can muster.

Do we have to pretend that we have certainty? Will people not act unless we exaggerate the level of certainty? Can we live useful effective lives while living with uncertainty? The problem is that there is so much that is uncertain and so little that is certain we really have to learn to embrace uncertainty.

Schafer said, “if you don’t have a healthy scepticism, you are really sunk. As a society we don’t have nearly enough.” We don’t need more credulity. We have to learn critical thinking.  Being infected with irrational beliefs is not healthy. That is asking for trouble—serious trouble. That is why it is so important to root out irrational beliefs that are not based on evidence—genuine evidence, not wishful thinking.

Of course, in recent times we have learned another problem, namely, that many people don’t trust authority anymore. That is what has happened with vaccines. Too many people have lost confidence that they are getting the straight goods from government and are not willing to believe authorities when they tell us it is vitally important for almost all of us to get vaccinated.  We need a rational scepticism in other words. We need to look critically at claims by authorities that vaccines are safe. Then if there is no good reason to doubt them, we should believe them.

We must also turn our sceptical lenses on to the critics. If Robert F. Kennedy for example, is not giving us the straight goods on vaccines we should reject his criticisms.  Irrational criticism—criticism that is contrary to the evidence—is just as dangerous as irrational belief. Neither belief nor criticism should be based on wishes, hunches, or instincts. All must be based on good evidence. The best evidence in fact. Sometimes this makes our job hard because it is not always easy to choose which side is right or rational.

As a result, Schafer concludes that Clifford has got it right and those who feel a liberal tolerance to those who espouse superstitious or irrational beliefs have got it wrong. “It is not permissible to believe whatever makes you feel good,” says Schafer. It is ethically wrong. And we ought to be willing to say so. According to Schafer those who take the attitude that it is permissible to believe whatever makes one feel good is sort of like stealing. “Such beliefs are equivalent to stealing from your fellow citizens by making yourself credulous” says Schafer.

We have to remember that giving up reason and evidence, as the only valid basis for beliefs, is not just unwise it is dangerous. If we base beliefs on sacred texts, authority, or wishful thinking we can come to believe absurdities.  Voltaire got it right when he said, “Those who make you believe absurdities can make you commit atrocities.”

We have to remember that irrational beliefs can have very serious consequences. We should not do anything to encourage them. We ought to do everything we can to stamp them out. We should be cultivating a spirit of questioning, of careful scrutiny of evidence, of diligent searching for the best and most reliable evidence, and of conscientious analysis of arguments based on evidence. We should do everything we can to foster critical thinking for it is in such horribly short supply and our lives depend on it. That’s why it is unethical to believe without evidence. The ethical life is the rational life. The superstitious life is based on moral flaws.

That’s why we should not tolerate irrational beliefs such as the belief espoused by that Mennonite woman in Ontario who said eating flowers was better at combating measles than vaccines.

 

Infectious Beliefs

Ethics, Philosophy/Ideas, reason, religion, The Sleep of Reason, Vaccines

 

The British philosopher William Kingdon Clifford said “we should not believe anything except those propositions for which we have good evidence and that the confidence we place in our beliefs should be proportional to the amount of evidence that supports them.”  According to Clifford we have a moral duty to engage in the hard work of looking at science, or our own good work in order to consult the best available evidence conscientiously and honestly before we commit to believing.

 

We have to be open-minded. That means that we have to be willing to accept evidence that contradicts our cherished beliefs or that contradicts those propositions we would really like to be true and we must be willing to discard or modify them if the evidence entails such actions. Only on that basis are we entitled to belief something. Only on that basis can a belief be ethical.

 

The fundamental basis for Clifford’s position is that the harm, the evil, the tyranny, the cruelty of humanity is a function of our superstitions, ignorance, and prejudices. As German philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche said, “we have to have not the courage of our convictions; we have to have the courage to attack our convictions.”

 

The basis of all superstition is that people believe things that are false and for which people have no good evidence.  Some people say believing something without evidence is acceptable provided we don’t act on it.  Clifford denies this. People often say that they live most of their lives based on rational evidence and if they choose from time to time to base their beliefs and their actions on horoscopes, or hunches, or perceived answers from God to our prayers, or perceived dictates from ancient sacred texts that is no one else’s business. We should be free to do that. Clifford disagrees.

 

Clifford says that if we believe a statement without evidence because we want to believe that, we are conditioning the mind to do that again. It will then tend to believe another statement without evidence just because we also want to believe it is true. This is really a kind of slippery slope argument. Credulity leads to ever more credulity. It is not possible to sequester such beliefs in order to avoid contamination. Contamination will follow inevitably from our acceptance of beliefs without evidence in one case. Our mind is so trained to think that this is acceptable.

 

Schafer gave an interesting example from his experience as an ethics consultant with hospitals.  If you accept beliefs, such as religious beliefs, without evidence, you are more likely to believe that they should let their children die rather than giving them a needed blood transfusion. One irrational belief leads to another and that other belief may be seriously harmful. In fact, this is what we might be experiencing now with  the explosion of anti-vax beliefs for which there is little or no evidence.

 

Another example that Schafer gave was the father of Turrel Dueck whose father was a fundamentalist Christian who believed that chemotherapy for the treatment of cancer was not appropriate. As a direct result of that irrational belief Turrel’s life was put in eminent danger. His father took him to Mexico for scientifically untested medicines that proved wholly useless. Irrational beliefs lead to more irrational beliefs. As a result of some irrational beliefs some have come to believe that homeopathy is a valid discipline, which Schafer said is total garbage.

Part of the problem is that people pass on their superstitions and their prejudices and irrational beliefs to their children. As a result, ordinary people in ordinary situations can infect others with their irrational beliefs. Irrational beliefs are never innocent. They often have seriously harmful consequences.

Schafer said “Clifford sees irrationality as a kind of infection.” The analogy Schafer employs is that of the person who knows she or he is infected with the aids virus having sex with an unprotected and unaware partner is committing a serious assault on that other person. So too with the person who relies on irrational beliefs. According to Schafer, “the penis or vagina in such circumstances can be a lethal weapon.”  The same is exactly true of irrational beliefs that are accepted without evidence. The people who knowingly engage in unprotected sex without telling their partners of the risk are engaged in spreading infection and ought to be punished. It might be that the criminal justice system is not the best forum for this but the principle remains and is equally applicable to those who adopt irrational beliefs.

“There is no such thing as an innocent religious belief, if religion is irrational,” says Schafer. If it’s not rational it shouldn’t be believed.

 

 

There are no innocent beliefs

Conspiracy Theories, Death of Truth, Epidemics/Pandemics, Ethics, Health, Philosophy/Ideas, Pluralism, reason, Skeptical Philosophy, Social Democracy and Trust, Sociology of Knowledge, Trust and Distrust, Vaccines

 

According to Professor Arthur  Schafer, if we are credulous people then we can easily believe the Christian story, or the Muslim story, or the Jewish story.  Or we can believe as the Mennonite woman interviewed by the CBC believed that eating flowers was as effective at defeating the measles virus as vaccines.

 

If we are credulous, we can believe anything because it makes us feel good. Then we can believe horoscopes because that makes us feel good, even though there is absolutely no evidence to support such beliefs. Even reputable newspapers publish horoscopes. It makes their readers feel good. Then they are more inclined to purchase the newspapers.

If we are credulous people, we can believe that Bill Gates implanted tiny chips into vaccines so that he could control the world, or kill millions of people, without any evidence at all. If we are credulous people our political leaders can make us believe that an election they lost was stolen by the opposition, even in the complete absence of any evidence.

If we are credulous people, we can believe that ivermectin can kill the coronavirus just because it is very effective at killing parasites in livestock even though we have no evidence to support that belief at all. If we are credulous people we will believe anything at all,  just because our political leader who has virtually no scientific knowledge at all, tells us to believe it. Credulity is a very dangerous thing. Not just for individuals, but for society. Society does not work well unless we believe our leaders when belief is rationally justified and do not believe them when the evidence does not support their claims. We cannot afford credulity.

The fact is, according to Arthur Schafer, that our society which many of us think of as secular, is actually “impregnated with a lot of irrational superstitions.”

Today almost no one agrees with William Kingdon Clifford, says Schafer. Schafer says instead, people believe things just because authority figures, such as Presidents, or mothers, or church leaders tell us to believe them. They are willing to accept all manner of irrational beliefs. According to Schafer, many people believe what they have been told to believe by their parents as they grew up, without challenging those beliefs at all. They require no evidence to support them.  As a result, children born and raised in a Muslim home usually become adherents of Islam. Children born and raised in a Christian home usually become adherents of Christianity. Parents want their children to believe them, even when they give no good reasons for doing so.

As a result, Schafer argues that people are entitled to believe what they want to believe, but are not allowed to enforce those views on other. This is called tolerance. In a pluralistic society, we must tolerate diverse views provided they don’t hurt others. To get along with others we must learn to respect their diverse views and must reject their harmful views, that are unsupported by evidence,  but in such a way that we can still tolerate each other. We have to learn to live together. Sometimes that is not easy.

This is the attitude of tolerance. This is a liberal good—a very important  good at that. We tolerate the fact that others have irrational beliefs. We tolerate that they believe any kind of superstition no matter how nonsensical as long as they don’t try to impose it on us.

But Clifford goes farther than that. Clifford is different. He doesn’t believe that your belief in horoscopes is innocent. According to Clifford, says “there are no innocent beliefs.”  All beliefs have consequences.  Many liberals hold that I have the right to believe whatever I want, so long as I don’t harm anyone else. Clifford says that by believing irrational things we are exposing ourselves and the societies in which we live, to serious potential harms. As long as we would harm only ourselves that might be acceptable. But by our actions we are actually exposing many others to serious harms as well through our credulity. That we are not entitled to do. That is morally wrong, he says. Credulity is a harm that we must work hard to suppress. Tolerating irrational beliefs is a sure way to encourage such harms.

 

Credulity is Bad

Conspiracy Theories, Critical thinking, Epidemics/Pandemics, Morality, Philosophy/Ideas, reason, religion, Skeptical Philosophy, The Sleep of Reason, Trust and Distrust

 

 

The philosopher William Kingdon Clifford argued, that to believe anything because it comforts you, or makes you feel good, or sustains you in life, or makes life a little less intolerable, is not just epistemically wrong, not just intellectually wrong, but morally wrong. In fact, if the decision that needs to be made is serious enough, such as whether or not to send people to war, or whether or not to cut health benefits to millions of people to raise money to give tax breaks to wealthy people, or whether or not to encourage  vaccines to fight serious diseases or encourage eating wild flowers instead, the decision could amount to one of the worst crimes that you can commit. That’s a pretty drastic statement. According to Clifford  It is a travesty and has some horrible consequences.  We will get to those later. In any event, according to Clifford this is a morally wrong. I think it is hard to argue with that. Serious decisions must be made on the basis of serious evidence, analysis, and scrutiny before they are made and innocent people suffer.

 

Arthur Schafer, a wonderful philosopher and ethicist from the University of Manitoba, and the first philosopher I ever heard speak in person, is a fan of Clifford’s reasoning. According to Schafer, Clifford sees our reliance   on illusion on false pictures of the universe, as amounting to creating in us a walking time bomb. As Schafer said at talk to a talk given to the Winnipeg Humanists, Atheists, and Skeptics, Society,  “to put it a little less dramatically, when we believe things because they make us feel good, rather than because we have good evidence for them, as Clifford argues, we make ourselves credulous people.” That Clifford says is wicked. Schafer agrees with that conclusion. So do I.

 

Again, we are talking only about serious important issues here. We are not talking about a decision to pick a red jelly bean rather than a white jelly bean from a cup. For those decisions we are completely free to make them on the basis of a whim, or an inkling, or an instinct or even on a guess.  But we can’t justify decisions that seriously affect the health or welfare of other people on such a basis.

 

If we are credulous people we can easily believe, as the Mennonite woman interviewed by the CBC radio did, that eating wild flowers to combat measles is better than taking vaccines. If we have been conditioned by our parents to be credulous, they are partly responsible. Credulity can be dangerous—to ourselves and others. That is why Clifford and Schafer said encouraging credulity is dangerous for society. Not just for the believer, for society.

We can believe whatever we want but we should be careful about helping to create a credulous society. As we are now seeing everywhere, that can cause a lot of harm.

I am a bit uncomfortable living so near to the Church of God Steinbach

Epidemics/Pandemics, Health, Mennonites, reason, The Sleep of Reason, Trust and Distrust

 

The Church of God Restoration, just outside of Steinbach,  received international attention during the Covid-19 pandemic for its refusal to obey government mandates to stop in person religious services contrary to provincial mandates.

 

Now its affiliated church the Church of God Steinbach, which is a block away from our house,  is in the centre of a measles outbreak.  That is disconcertingly close. As with Mennonite communities around North America including Texas, Ontario, Alberta, and now Manitoba, Mennonites are gaining notoriety as a result of their opposition to vaccines.

 

As of a couple of days ago,  Malak Abas of the Winnipeg Free Press reported, “MORE than 100 people have contracted measles in Manitoba this year. There have been 14 confirmed and four probable cases in June, as per data accurate as of Wednesday.”

Malak Abas also reported this:

“Four new locations in southern Manitoba were pinpointed as possible exposure sites to measles Tuesday: Triangle Oasis Restaurant in Winkler, from 6 p.m. to 8:30 p.m. on June 11, VB’s Entertainment Center in Winkler, from 5 p.m. to 10 p.m. on June 9, The Manitou Motor Inn’s bar, from 3 p.m. to 6:30 p.m. on June 9 and Steinbach Church of God in Steinbach from 9:45 a.m. to 2 p.m. on June 1.”

 

Please note these are all in the Mennonite Bible belt of Manitoba.

I am getting uncomfortable here. Among Mennonites. My people. This seems to be a place where reason has gone to sleep. And as Goya said, “the sleep of reasons brings forth monsters.” I know I keep repeating this, but its important.

 

Mennonites Lead the Charge Against Health Protections

Death of Truth, Health, reason, The Sleep of Reason, Vaccines

 

I used to joke that Mennonites are taking over the world. It’s actually true. And its not a good thing. It’s actually very dangerous. But it is preventable by vaccines. Measles is one of the most contagious diseases in the world. And we have not been taking it seriously, because we have been so effective at combating it. And that is all thanks to vaccines for measles.

 

The United States has just experienced a measles outbreak in the American southwest, particularly in Texas. On February 26, 2025 for the first time in 20 years a child died of Measles in Texas. It was also the first time in nearly a decade in the US. Texas confirmed it had 124 cases mostly in Gaines County and 9 cases in Lea County New Mexico.

 

Here’s the shocking part:

“Most of the cases are occurring in a Mennonite community that largely homeschools, so there would not be school vaccine mandates,” explains Bill Moss, MD, MPH, a professor in Epidemiology and executive director of the International Vaccine Access Center.”

 

You see most schools in the US mandate that children enrolled in the school must be vaccinated against measles. Mennonites in these communities mainly homeschool. And these homes don’t get their children vaccinated.  As Mennonites sometimes say, “We trust in God. We don’t need vaccines.” They think God is stronger than any disease and all they need to do is appeal to God. Sadly, that’s not working so well.

 

As Aliza Rosen of Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health said,

 

“At a time of rampant mis- and disinformation about vaccines, public health experts worry outbreaks like this may only become more common in a time of rampant mis- and disinformation about vaccines, public health experts worry outbreaks like this may only become more common.”

 

As Dr. Ron Cook, of Texas Tech University said on PBS News Hour,

 

“If you walk into a room and you have measles, 80 to 90 percent of those individuals within a week will come down with measles. All you have to do is go in that room, breathe, cough a couple of times, but 80 to 90 percent of those individuals in that room will become infected with measles if they’re not vaccinated.”

 

Even though the vast majority of Americans and Canadians believe in the safety and effectiveness and safety of vaccines, there are growing numbers of people who are skeptical about vaccines, unvaccinated people account for the almost all the new cases of measles. And sadly, those numbers include children.

 

As Caitlan Rivers, Senior Scholar, Johns Hopkins Center for Health Security, pointed out,

“In fact, 93 percent of people are vaccinated against measles. That is an enormous congruency in a population that otherwise can’t agree on a whole lot.”

 

Rivers also said she was troubled by misinformation coming from the newly Trump appointed secretary of Health and Human Services Robert F. Kennedy Jr. who has made it clear that he questions vaccines.  All of us should question vaccines, but when we get clear answers from a wide majority of scientists and researchers, we should believe them until we learn for some reason they can’t be trusted. Unfortunately, many Mennonites in some communities don’t trust in the science. They do their own research on line or have faith.

 

Dr. Paul Offit, an expert on vaccines and one of the  committee advisers and director of the Vaccine Education Center at Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia, said,

 

“I just fear that we are slowly sort of tearing apart the public health process that has basically served us well. I mean, we live 30 years longer than we did 100 years ago, primarily because of vaccines. And I just think vaccines have become, I think, following this pandemic, to some, a dirty word.”

 

Dr. Offit, like Caitlan Rivers lays a lot of blame at the feet of people like Robert F. Kennedy for spreading misinformation about vaccines that has influenced people like the home-schooling Mennonites. This is what he said:

 

“So, if you look at that Mennonite community, about 80 percent of those children were vaccinated. That’s not enough. It has to be in the mid-95 percent range to protect against this disease, measles, which is the most contagious infectious disease, more contagious than any other infectious disease.”

 

And so it will find those people who are unvaccinated and cause an infection. I think this was a line that was crossed. This is the first measles death in a child in almost 20 years. That’s a tragedy because, one, any death in the child is a tragedy.

 

This was a preventable death. We basically eliminated measles from this country by the year 2000. It’s come back largely because people have chosen not to vaccinate their children, in part because they’re scared of the vaccine, scared that it has safety issues like autism, something that Robert F. Kennedy Jr. has been promoting loudly and to many people for the last 20 years. And I think this is the result of that.

 

As a result Mennonites are bringing death to their communities—particularly children—because they are listening to misinformation rather than scientists. As a result children are at risk or even dying from a preventable disease. That’s bad.

 

Open to Transcendence

New Attitude to Nature, reason

 

Professor Moriarty wished that Aristotle, that great philosopher of the western tradition who said that humans are the rational beings, should instead have said, “the human being is a being who can be consciously open to the transcendent.” As a result of this error, Moriarty believes our society has slid into serious decline. We made a fundamental serious mistake more than 2,000 years ago and are still paying a big price for it.  

 

Moriarty finds an image of this decline in the image of seals in the far north who always need to keep a hole open in the ice, because they can only stay under water for a short period of time or they will suffocate under the ice. Humans are like that. Humans need to keep a hole open for the transcendent to enter Humans who need to breathe the transcendent. And the problem we have, says Moriarty is that

 

“We don’t breathe transcendentally any more. We need these holes through which we breath sanctifying grace. As walruses and seals need to breathe oxygen, we need to breathe transcendentally. The transcendent is not just outside. It is also located inside us. But those holes have closed over and that is why we can continue to do desperate damage to the earth.”

 

We must be open to transcendence but not chained to it. If we fail to do that we have the wrong attitude to nature.  Karen Armstrong, a former nun who has written a glorious book called Sacred Nature might say that by failing to respect the sacrality of nature we have instead come to destroy nature.  I will comment on her book in the future. All in good time, as we meander towards it.

Let me just say that in my view understanding the sacrality of nature is what a new attitude to nature is all about. That and being open to transcendence. However, I don’t want to discount the importance of being a rational creature. In my view, both are essential. Reason is not the enemy of transcendence nor the sacrality of nature.

 

Joy to the World

Books, Classic Books, reason, Religious Quest in the Modern Age

 

Dmitri Karamazov, like his father, is a man of deep sensuality and near infinite passion. He drinks the joy of the earth. The joy of sacred nature in all its manifestations. And the joy of God. For Dmitri, sensuality is near divine. It is where his religious quest leads him. Many see the divine and the sensual in conflict but not Dmitri. His religious quest is for the love of Grushenka or is it the love of Katrina? Sometimes it is very hard to tell. He seems to be in love with both women at the same time.

 

Dmitri is sad for his holy brother, Alyosha, because “it’s such a pity you really don’t know what exaltation is.” I am not sure at all that Dmitri is right about that. I will come back to this after we consider how Alyosha and the young boys held hands at the funeral of their young friend Ilyusha. He came every bit as close to exaltation as Dmitri did, but in a different way. And an important way as well. And he exalted in it too.

 

Dmitri finds joy in the sensual. Like his father he was deeply sensual.  So, he starts his confession with Schiller’s Hymn or Ode to Joy.  The joy is sacred. This poem was the basis for Dmitri’s strange confession. Many think a sensualist like Dmitri should confess, so in a weird sense he does confess, but he does not regret.

Ivan Karamazov, sees the world through his intellect. He is driven by reason, but in a way that shows reason can be passionate too. In that sense, Dostoevsky is like Saul Bellow.  His brother Dmitri sees the world through the body.  And we will get to Alyosha. He is different than both brothers. He is studying to be a priest.  Alyosha understands and does not disparage or even criticize his brother’s approach to the divine. He is not judgmental.

Reminding me of the spirituality of indigenous North Americans, Schiller in his poem puts it this way:

“Man must enter an alliance

With eternal Mother Earth”

 

Dmitri starts his “confession” by eliciting Schiller, but as a sensualist he has trouble with this idea of divine. To him the relationship should be more sexual and this confuses him. Dmitri says, “I don’t know how I could possibly enter that eternal alliance with Mother Earth. I don’t kiss Mother Earth.  And in a directly sexual, allusion, he says, “I don’t plow her soil.”  As a result of his confusion, “everything in this world is a puzzle.”

Dmitri then deals with his dilemma in this remarkable way:

“…because I’m a Karamazov, because if I must plunge into the abyss, I’ll go head first, feet in the air. I’ll even find a certain pleasure in falling in such a humiliating way. I’ll even think that it’s a beautiful exit for a man like me. And, so in the very midst of my degradation, I suddenly intone a hymn. Even if I must be damned, even if I’m low and despicable, I must be allowed to kiss the hem of the veil in which my God is shrouded; and even if  I may be following in the devil’s footsteps. I am still Your son, O Lord, and I love You and feel the joy without which the world cannot be”.

 

Then he adds a verse from Schiller:

“Joy eternal pours its fires

In the soul of God’s creation,

And its sparkle then inspires

Life’s mysterious fermentation…

All things drink with great elation

Mother Nature’s milk of joy.

Plant and beast and man and nation

Sweetness of her breast enjoy,

To man prostrated in the dust,

Joy brings friends and cheering wine;

Gives the insects sensual lust,

Angels—happiness divine.”

 

As he read this tears were flowing, and even the eyes of his holy brother, Alyosha’s were “glistening.”

Dmitri also realizes that to live like this is difficult and even dangerous. He says he is an insect. One of those filled with what Schiller called “sensual lust.” And he said that lust lives in Alyosha too.  For he is a Karamazov even though he is holy. Even though he is his “angel brother.” Alyosha is more traditionally religious than either of his two brothers or their father, but he is still a Karamazov. That sensual lust is in all of them. That is his confession.

Dmitri warns his brother Alyosha that this will “stir up storms.”  “Because “sensuality is a storm, even more than a storm. Beauty is a terrifying thing.”  Dmitri warns his brother that “a man with a noble heart and a superior intelligence may start out with Madonna as his ideal and end up with Sodom as his ideal.” That is the risk for sensualists like the Karamazovs. All of them.  “What the head brands as shameful may appear as sheer beauty to the heart,” Dmitri tells his brother. He adds, “the terrible thing is that beauty is not only frightening, but mystery as well. That’s where God and the devil join battle, and their battlefield is the heart of man.”

 

George Santos: The Fabulist

2024 Trip to South West United States, Death of Truth, reason, The Sleep of Reason, Trump

 

George Santos has become the subject of a tsunami of attention. People really are attracted to bullshitters. There is nothing wrong with that, unless they start to believe the bullshit.

Every one, it seems, wants a piece of George Santos now. Apparently, HBO wants to make an adaption of a new book about Santos perfectly named The Fabulist. In the book the point is made that we get the scammer we deserve. Like cheap politicians selling cheap beer.

According to Naomi Fry “the Trump era has opened the floodgates to politics as an out-and-out scam for those who wish to take advantage. I want to make it clear I do not think all politicians are scammers. That is not the case. I don’t want to be a part in shredding trust in politics. That is one of the things that is wrong with our current society. More and more people are losing that trust and that trust is vital for the survival of democracy.

America has had scammers in its history from day one. That is the point Kurt Anderson made in his book FantasyLand. Political scammers. Religious Scammers. Commercial scammers—you name it, they’re there.

The New Yorker podcast panel discussed a few famous American scammers in literature and real life. One of the panelists mentioned the Simpsons version of The Music Man, called “Marge vs. Zeller” (2020) where a travelling salesman Lyle Lanley and calls it a Shelbyville Idea. One of the townsfolk does not want to hear that. He says we are twice as smart as the people of Shelbyville. “Just tell us your idea and we’ll vote for it.” And what does he sell? He says Springfield needs a monorail. Even though Springfield doesn’t need a monorail. But Lanley seduces everyone. They beg for a monorail. That is what conmen do.

As Fry said, “The idea is that people will buy anything if you sell it to them in an attractive enough way. They want to believe. Whether it’s in religion or whether it’s in politics, or whether it’s in commerce, people just want to believe.”  That is exactly what the conmen do, and none has done it better than Donald Trump. He has sold his lie to millions and millions of people! That is what the 1980s televangelists did. As Fry said, “They said if you want your soul saved just send us money.” The key is usually the hyper desire of the scammed to believe the scam. When that is present anything is possible.