Understanding As Noise (guest post by G--rge G-ld-r) [2007]

[I received a very interesting piece taking issue with my objections to the concept of belief without understanding. It seems that I am not au courant with information theory as it is presently practiced. So today’s guest Rational Ranter is Dr. G--rge G-ld-r, technoguru of universal bandwidth and the “P. T. Barnum of modern information theory.” [Originally posted 30 April 2007]]

Y

our sophis and tries amount to nothing more than an argumentum ad consequentiam informed by anti-epistemic materialist cant. Cautionary fables from the Mah Jong aside, information is archetypical and precedes its decryption. Just as the automobile, a phenomenon decried by the most eminent biologists of the nineteenth century, demonstrates empirically that the cart precedes the horse, so belief precedes understanding. An archetypical formation may be addressed by superpositional prestidigitation. Consequently misunderstanding may be avoided only by a process of noetic myopia focused exclusively on the information in question.

In this sense the medieval Bogomils were entirely correct in asserting that the meaning of scripture is only evident to the eye of faith. Attempts to decrypt information without the key of noesis simply introduce noise into the mix. The mathematical theory of misinformation shows that corruption and gibberish both increase exponentially, diagonally in a simple oblique direction. This makes all the difference.

Just as the medieval warm period establishes the preconditions for the feudal state, so the little ice age that follows creates the foundation for capitalism. In each case belief in the system precedes its implementation. Even the reductionist absurdities of Karl Marx’s diacritical materialism precede its implementation in the gas chambers of Nuremburg and the Gulag. Tides and times may come and go, but the substrate of ideas in a text remains eternal. Faith, or something like it, is the key to true interactive realization of a text. This is in no way a matter of Biblical literalism, but if the shoe fits—so be it.

[The rest of the piece involves a proposal for investment in a structure spanning the East River in New York, a project beyond my financial means at this time. sbh]

Untitled Novel: Something Has to Give [1990]

[rough draft of the opening of an untitled novel, written 29 April 1990]

“S

omething is going to happen,” said the Astrologer. “Epochs pass. The eras change. One runner falls and another takes up the torch. Something is beginning anew.”

His assistant studied the chart. “I don’t see it,” he complained. “The planets—”

“It’s not in the planets,” said the Astrologer. “I feel it in the crosswinds of empire, in the stretch of the cloth of society, in the currents of the actions of men. The time is ready. Rome is pressed to the breaking-point. Something has to give.”

“Get some sleep,” advised his assistant. “You’ll need your strength when you meet the Emperor.”

“The winds,” muttered the Astrologer. “I feel it in the winds.”

#

T

he Emperor Tiberius sweated in the summer night, tossing and turning in his bed despite the sea-breezes that blew in his retreat on the isle of Capri. All Rome stagnated, and flies buzzed around heaps of decomposing garbage in the canyons of the city. Sejanus, yet unfallen, dreamed of extorting another golden tribute in exchange for a distant office. One of his appointees, a Pontius Pilate, discussed with an engineer imported from Macedonia his plans for the construction of a new aqueduct for his tiny province of Judaea, late at night at his residence in Caesarea, on the coast of the Mediterranean sea. And in a nameless cave in the Judaean desert John the Daywasher was having nightmares. And because of his nightmares history would jump channels and flow into a new course.

Because of his nightmares Simon of Gitta would never become a merchant like his father. Because of them Joseph, a Levite from Cyprus, would sell his estate. Because of them one Helene would see the inside of a brothel in Tyre, Eleazar of Bethany would lose a fortune, and Saul of Tarsus would be executed in Rome. Because of them Pontius Pilate would be recalled in disgrace to face charges before the emperor. Because of them Salome of Nazareth would prophesy in Egypt, and because John had had his nightmare, her brother would die painfully before his thirty-fifth birthday, and his name would be a curse for thousands of years.

#

“Still awake, brother?”

John shook his head slowly. “I have been—dreaming. Dreaming, brother—” He paused. “What hour is it?”

“The seven sisters have risen.”

“Then sunrise comes soon.” John took the other’s arm. “Listen, brother,” he said intently, “I have to go—at once.”

The other’s expression did not change. “Go? Why?”

“The Lord wills it. I have dreamed dreams and seen visions, and I know I have been called. Now is the hour.”

“What have you dreamed and what have you seen?”

John shook his head slowly. “I can’t say,” he said helplessly. “There was—”

“Tell me,” said the other intently.

“I saw—I saw—” John groped for words to convey the immensity of his vision. The other waited patiently. “I saw a man winnowing,” he said at last.

“Yes?”

“It was the Lord. I think it was the Lord.”

“Go on.”

“He was holding a gigantic fork in his hand, tossing the wheat into the air, whole fields of wheat at a time. And a mighty wind was blowing, a storm. And the chaff blew away, and I heard it screaming as it blew, and it screamed with the voices of men.”

“What did the voices say?”

“They were screaming in terror of the fiery pit,” said John. “And the grains of wheat were singing in praise of the storehouse, and the wind was howling. And then the man turned to look at me—that’s when I knew he was no man, but the Lord Himself—he looked at me, and he said, “John, my servant, fire is not quenched with fire, but with water. And through water alone can men be saved.”

“And what happened next?”

“I woke up,” said John. “I woke up and I was cold, and the night was hot.”

“Yes.” The other paused for a moment. “This is not the first time you have had nightmares,” he observed.

“That’s why I have to go,” said John violently. “This is not the first time. He’s coming, coming soon, and I have to be ready for him. Everyone has to be ready for him.”

“What do you mean?”

“I don’t know,” said John. “But I will. He wants me to meet him at the Jordan river.”

“How do you know? Was that in your dream?”

“No.” John paused. “You know my father was a priest.”

“Yes.”

“A priest in a temple of thieves. There was a time when I dreamed—but no, it’s not worth the telling.”

“Wait until the morning,” cautioned the other. “Tell the Brethren your dream. Perhaps they will be able to enlighten you.”

“No, I have to go now. I may already have stayed too long. Tell the brethren—” John raised his hand, then let it fall. “Tell the brethren whatever you want. I’ll be at the Jordan River.”

#

T

he news drifted out, like ripples on the surface of a quiet pond, from Jericho to Bethany to Bethlehem, that there was a new prophet on the banks of the Jordan. His dress was wild, his words wilder, and no one knew how he stayed alive in the desert. The priests from the temple at Jerusalem sent out a team to investigate, but there was nothing to say. He didn’t claim to be a prophet, let alone the Prophet like Moses that was causing such a stir among the heretical Samaritans, he didn’t claim to be Elijah or Enoch returned from heaven, and especially he didn’t claim the most dangerous rôle of all, that of an anointed king come to rule over the ancient and forgotten Kingdom of David. And yet the crowds came out to see him, to hear him, and to be washed by him in the River Jordan. It all seemed harmless enough—if it weren’t for the crowds.

“There has to be something more to it,” complained

Thirty White Stones [1996]

[passage from an untitled novel, written 28 April 1996]

T

here were thirty white stones in the leather bag; all the others were black. To the touch there was no difference among them; no way for the fingers to tell the color. It was in the hands of God, or perhaps left up to the whims of blind chance.

Simon glanced up to encounter the hostile stare of the other Simon, the son of Zebedee. The man gave him a tight smile, a mirthless grimace, and then deliberately turned to the Baptist. “I can understand,” he said flatly, “why a descendent of the ‘House of Joseph’ should draw lots with the rest of us, but why are there women here? What have they to do with these high matters?”

The Baptist gave him a broad grin and shrugged. “Who am I to meddle with the will of God?” he asked. “If it be His will that a woman should sit in the circle of the thirty, then what is it to you?”

The son of Zebedee gave him a look of exasperation. “Are you saying that God’s hand is in that sack? that God’s hand will guide the rocks to the right people?”

“Nothing happens that is not God’s will,” said the Baptist. “But then,” he added, “not everything that happens is God’s will.”

A movement from the other end of the table caught their attention. It was typical of Dositheus, thought Simon, to so effortlessly turn the attention of men. He should have been an actor.

“Can you think of a fairer way to make a decision?” Dositheus put in smoothly. “We are all taking chances just by being here. Is it not an honor merely to be here? Who knows whether the white stone may not be a sentence of death? If God’s hand is not in this, then it is in nothing we have done.”

Simon could not get the hang of the currents in the room. There was something buzzing under the surface, something as real as a rock in the path of a plow. Why was the son of Zebedee so angry? Why was Dositheus not making his usual objections? The conviction grew on him that something was off-center in the business, that the lottery was fixed in some manner he did not understand. But how could that be? He looked over at the Baptist, but John’s expression was bland, open, giving nothing away.

“Enough,” he said abruptly. “It’s been decided. Let’s get this thing over with.”

The Baptist took the leather bag and handed it over to Nicetas, standing close by. He thrust his hand into the bag with a spasmodic jerk, then pulled out his stone. It was black. Expressionlessly he passed it to the next man, a dour Galilean. His stone also was black.

The first man who drew a white stone took it out almost with a look of fear. It was Judas, the man of Kerioth. Something felt wrong there, but Simon was distracted. It was Helena’s turn to draw. He watched her closely.

She closed her eyes, tentatively reached her hand into the sack looking as if though she thought it might contain scorpions or snakes, and pulled out a stone. She did not look at it for a second, then opened her eyes and spread out her hand. It was white.

Across the table the son of Zebedee made a sudden movement—suppressed fury, thought Simon—and he missed seeing the next man draw in consequence.

The Dance is Over (Well, Maybe) [2011]

[Originally posted 27 April 2011]

A

s a result of the gods know what arcane political calculations President Obama smoothed the path of his Republican opponents by releasing a certified copy of his long-form birth certificate, obtained through a special waiver granted by Hawaiian officials in deference to his position. Well, that, and they were tired of fielding the endless requests for it by every Tom, Dick, and Harriet with an axe to grind. Bankruptcy enthusiast and real-estate mogul Donald Trump claims credit for this development—will Louisiana Governor Bobby Jindal be far behind?

Will this make any difference to hard-core birthers? It’s doubtful. First, Hawaii doesn’t count as American soil. Second, the Founders required that both parents be US citizens. (It does too say that in the Constitution! Use your magnifying glass, damn it!) Third, Barry What’s-his-name gave up his citizenship as a child when he chose to grow up in Indonesia. And fourth, he’s black. (Did I just say that aloud?) Anyway, however you stack it up, he has no business being president.

Personally, I was enjoying watching the birth-certificate shuffle the major Republican candidates were stuck with. Too bad somebody had to ruin the fun.

Inaccurate Historical Marker Moved; Racists Freak Out

It appears ISIS has won. They are tearing down historical monuments in New Orleans now too. It must end. Despicable!—Corey Stewart

T

here is no parallel at all between the destruction of priceless repositories of information such as the libraries and archaeological sites that the so-called Islamic State has destroyed and the relocating of worthless modern historical markers. If those markers were our only source of information about the events of the Civil War and Reconstruction then they would have some value, but that is far from the case. There is a mass of documentation about the aftermath of the election in which Grant-backed William Pitt Kellogg defeated white supremacist John McEnery for governor of Louisiana. Both claimed victory, both held inaugurations, and both attempted to govern. The whole business culminated in the riot known as “The Battle of Liberty Place” in which white supporters of McEnery overpowered the police and drove Kellogg briefly out of office until order could be restored by Federal troops. This is the event commemorated by the obelisk just removed.

This 1891 monument with its 1932 inscription in support of white supremacy ought to be preserved somewhere as a shameful and hideous record of American racism, but you'd think decent people would prefer to hide it away somewhere out of sight.

Tambo and Rush: The New Minstrel Show [2007]

[originally posted 25 April 2007]

I

 am out of sorts today. Who knows why? Things continue to deteriorate here in my ex-house, I can’t get hold of people, and the electric company—who has been paid in full—continues to leave pointless messages in my voice mail. And to top it all off, I am greeted when I wake up by something called “Barack the Magic Negro.”

Okay, let me be clear about this. I don’t listen to Rush Limbaugh. I have only listened to him when forced to by my fellow human beings, who for some reason think this guy is—what? Funny? Clever? Something, anyway. I remember once when I was stuck on jury duty and my fellow potential-jurors had the Rush on the big TV screen in the front of the room. He was babbling about something which he described as voodoo economics—Bush Sr.’s term for Reagan’s version of Friedmanism—and then said the only funny thing I’ve ever heard from him. Of course, he said (I’m paraphrasing from memory), now I’ll probably get in trouble for that for defaming one of the world’s great religions. He waited for a laugh. None came, at least not from his audience. I laughed, or rather chuckled, earning a nasty glance from one of the Rush-heads present. Oh well.

Over the years he’s only come to my attention otherwise when he’s doing something horrific. Like cruelly making fun of Michael J. Fox for being ill. That kind of junior high crap may go over well with his audience—I don’t know. They probably laugh at Beavis and Butthead too. But puerility sinks to scurrility with his latest offering. This is, believe it or not, a burlesque of “Puff the Magic Dragon” with some clown doing a bad imitation of Al Sharpton apparently criticizing Obama for not being black enough. It’s a nasty flashback to the days of Rastus, Tambo, and Bones, when watching a white man in blackface do a farcical imitation of a crippled ex-slave was considered the height of humor, right up there with setting fire to a stray dog. I like to think we’ve progressed a little since then.

[daveawayfromhome responded to the original post: “I think Rush’s moon has been waning since Clinton left office. His great foe was gone, and new stars were taking his place. He’s not the only one, heard much from George Will lately? I hope, with a fervent hope that burns my very soul, that when (if) Bush finally leaves office, we will see the back of O’Reiley, Coulter, Malkin - the whole pack of ’em, as they slide off the popular map. Already, FOX is showing signs of weakness.”]

John Adams and the Awful Blasphemy [2010]

[Originally posted at Fake History on 24 April 2010]

Did John Adams say

God is an essence that we know nothing of. Until this awful blasphemy is got rid of, there never will be any liberal science in the world

in 1820?

No. The two sentences given above were both written by John Adams to Thomas Jefferson, the first in 1820 and the second in 1825, but (as the dates show) they were not joined together, not written on the same topic, and not even part of the same letter.

Thomas Jefferson and John Adams, fellow firebrands in the American Revolution, became bitter political rivals in the early constitutional period, Adams being of the Federalist party and Jefferson of the Antifederalist. The election of 1800, in which Jefferson defeated Adams to become the third president of the United States, was extremely divisive, and left lasting wounds. Nonetheless, when the sound and fury had died, the two ex-presidents resumed their friendship and exchanged what has become a classic series of letters on a wide variety of topics. One of those topics was religion. Neither man believed in the orthodox doctrine of the trinity, that desperate fourth-century compromise that tried to insist that the deity could be both tripartite and unitary. And neither bought into the doctrine of the incarnation, either. In a letter of 22 January 1825 Adams expressed his dismay about Jefferson’s plan to staff his college with European scholars because

The Europeans are all deeply tainted with prejudices, both ecclesiastical and temporal, which they can never get rid of. They are all infected with episcopal and presbyterian creeds, and confessions of faith. They all believe that great Principle which has produced this boundless universe, Newton’s universe and Herschell’s universe, came down to this little ball, to be spit upon by Jews. And until this awful blasphemy is got rid of, there never will be any liberal science in the world.

The bolded section will be recognized as the source for the second sentence in the frankenquote as given above. As for the first, in a discussion of matter and spirit suggested by a book the two had recently read, Adams wrote on 17 January 1820:

When we say God is a spirit, we know what we mean, as well as we do when we say that the pyramids of Egypt are matter. Let us be content, therefore, to believe him to be a spirit, that is, an essence that we know nothing of, in which originally and necessarily reside all energy, all power, all capacity, all activity, all wisdom, all goodness.

He followed this by signing off with “Behold the creed and confession of faith of your ever affectionate friend.” Again, the portion in bold is obviously the source for the first sentence of the alleged quotation. Had this been quoted

…God is … an essence that we know nothing of…

it could be said to be a fair quotation, though it would have been better to be a bit fuller, say

… God is a spirit … that is, an essence that we know nothing of, in which originally and necessarily reside all energy, all power, all capacity, all activity, all wisdom, all goodness.

Something like that, anyway. But following it with the 1825 sentence makes it seem as though the “awful blasphemy” is the concept of god, rather than the specific doctrine of the incarnation. (Which is why it earns the red designation, even though the words are all those of Adams himself.) The source for this misleading combination seems to have been a BBC program entitled Atheism: A Rough History of Disbelief (later shown in the US as A Brief History of Disbelief) that first aired in 2004. Google Books shows it appearing in a 2008 book entitled The Quotable John Adams, compiled by Randy Howe.

It looks as though the editing of the 1820 quotation was done in the interest of making John Adams appear to have atheist leanings, something that would have been harder to maintain with a fuller quotation. However, I haven’t seen the program, or how the quotations were used, and the context might explain a lot. In any case, this quotation, as usually given, is bogus.

Links

Letter to Thomas Jefferson 17 January 1820 (John Adams)

Letter to Thomas Jefferson 22 January 1825 (John Adams)

A List of Quotations Used in A Short History of Disbelief

Update

Jonathan Rowe and Tom Van Dyke have more information about the “awful blasphemy” quotation and other matters related to John Adams at American Creation. It may be more than you want to know, or maybe less. But it’s worth taking a look at.

Deeply Bogged Down [1981]

[Journal passage, 23 April 1981]

I

 wrote a letter to my step-father thanking him for sending down that Norton Critical Pudd’nhead Wilson—actually it’s the last thing I need at the moment, another distraction with all the term papers coming up and everything, but it’s damn good to have (particularly since the library down here is not too good on Twain—and what stuff they do have has been checked out by professors for the past three years. Or graduate students. However.) Sidney Berger is the guy who was supposed to be doing the Pudd’nhead Wilson for the University of California definitive edition—I wonder if he still is, or what? I notice that the remaining unpublished passages from the text have been omitted from this text for copyright reasons—apparently they can’t be published until the U of C press publishes them. One of those passages, about the society of freethinkers in the town, is of crucial importance (I am convinced) for understanding the development of the novel, since it was in that passage that the main character was originally introduced—if I am correct in my understanding of the way the novel developed.

I’m deeply bogged down in papers and the like at the moment. One of them I don’t even know what it’s going to be about, and I may have to take an incomplete on it. That’s what almost everybody seems to do in Dr. Robinson’s classes—I wonder how he stands it. One of the students in the class—he’s working on his PhD—is supposed to present a paper in the NT seminar this week; at the end of the class session, as Dr. Robinson was leaving, he said, “Oh, by the way, I’ll have to leave at eight—I’m presenting a paper on Gnosticism on the East Coast.” I couldn’t see how Dr. Robinson took it, but I’m afraid that everybody else broke up—that’s something that’s virtually Dr. Robinson’s trademark.

The library is giving me shit again—I put a hold on a book I needed, so by the law of library karma somebody put a hold on a book I was using. The last time that happened I turned in the book and whoever requested it had the gall to either not pick it up, or to turn it back in at once, and nobody of course informed me of it. This time I went in and asked how I could be notified. Now I know damn good and well that there is a way, for the simple reason that when I’ve requested books the guy who has it has done such things as put a hold on it right after me, but the girl at the desk (who is relatively new) insisted that no, it couldn’t be done. Well, fines or no, I’m not turning in the book until I have some guarantee that I get it back as soon as possible.

The M_s just got back from a week in Hawaii—just resting at the beach, according to Mr. M_. I don’t know if I mentioned it before, but I’ve lost my Turkish fellow-boarder—he’s moved to Artesia, New Mexico. Oh, yeah, David M_ is planning to go to South America next fall, and spend a year to a year and a half down there. He’s interested in the Mayas and the Incas and all that—also knows some people down there he can visit.

Class Notes: Q [1980]

[Notes, 22 April 1980]

I

 had a class in Q; we looked at isolated sayings of Jesus—the Agrapha, dialogues with the resurrected savior, papyrus discoveries. Dr. Robinson spent some time telling us all about these finds which have been discovered around the turn of the century and which no one has even examined yet because of various peculiarities in the law (see, in this one case the discoverer has the first right to publish the material, but he died twenty or thirty years ago, and so now apparently the material will have to wait until the resurrection…).

He also told us (indirectly) why it was that [a museum director] had a volume of essays published in his honor which gave a complete listing of his publications when the man is not a scholar. (I had wondered about that, by the way.) Dr. Robinson didn’t give the names, but I instantly recognized what he was talking about, and it seems that the only scholars who were able to get access to [certain] documents for some time were those who did favors for the director of the __ museum—and this was one of the favors.

He had a great comment about R. McL. Wilson to the effect that not many other scholars who had had so few original ideas have spent their time so usefully.

Nothing Is Real [2007]

[Originally posted 21 April 2007]

D

ecades ago now talented songwriter John Lennon was murdered by a born-again Christian missionary. Did we hear in the news about the murderer’s religion? About his missionary work in Lebanon? How he once belonged to a group that prayed for the death of John Lennon? Of course not. That would have been politically incorrect. Instead we were given a fairy-story about this guy being a demented fan—something asserted without any evidence—a bizarre twist on the blame-the-victim theme. It seems it was Lennon’s own music that drove this guy to take his life.

Okay, right. This is beneath contempt, and posthumously justifies Lennon’s crack about reporters being the simple-minded chroniclers of our times. Still, there is actually an interesting story here, though it has very little to do with Lennon, and much to do with the vagaries of the religion-addled mind. Let’s start by going back, back, back…

In the first century (we may suppose, direct evidence being missing) people started writing what were later termed “gospels”, short accounts that told of the message, as the writer saw it, of Jesus of Nazareth. The oldest extant gospel appears to be the one entitled Mark. The author liked to harp on certain themes—the notion that Jesus claimed secretly to be the king (which is what the term christ means), for example. One of these notions was that Jesus’ closest followers didn’t understand this. His followers, according to Mark, failed him on every level. One of them turned him over to the authorities, another one “cut him dead,” (as Mary Magdalene puts it in Jesus Christ Superstar), and still others fail to recognize or report on the significance of his tomb being empty. A miserable performance all round.

Now historically this tells us that the author of Mark was acutely aware he was presenting a notion at odds with the teachings of Jesus’ closest followers. A new teaching, as it were. For our purposes, however, the key point is that collectively the impression given by the gospel writers is that his key followers just weren’t all that bright.

This notion has informed a great deal of scholarship (and faux scholarship) since. On the one hand it fits with the notion that Jesus was a god or an emissary of a god—it’s not unreasonable that his merely human followers might not understand him clearly. On the other hand, for those seeking to create a better Jesus—to free him of having said some of the things that are (in that person’s mind anyway) clearly unworthy of him—it works too. Who was responsible for screwing his message up? Those idiot followers, of course.

Yes, those idiot followers have a lot to answer for.

Now skipping quickly over some nineteen centuries from the first to the twentieth we come to the next step in the narrative. In the 1960s a fellow named Hugh Schonfield wrote a couple of books that became best-sellers and stirred up a lot of debate. If memory serves they were called The Passover Plot and Those Incredible Christians. As I recall Schonfield argued, on the basis of a painfully naive reading of the gospel texts, that Jesus planned for his own resurrection, but the plot failed. His followers spirited the body away, but the attempt to revive him failed, thanks to a spear in the side from one of the guards. The missing body, along with wishful thinking, inspired the story of the resurrection anyway—or something like that. I haven’t reread the books myself for decades, and maybe I've confused it with others of its ilk. The thing is, as Schonfield correctly pointed out, the gospel narratives have been shaped by decades of church history that must be taken into account in examining the events of the time.

What John Lennon got out of this, when he read Schonfield, is that Jesus was all right, but his disciples were thick and ordinary. He remarked as much to a journalist.

He also remarked in the course of discussion that Christianity would shrink in the future and ultimately vanish. Indeed, he said, it’s already happening—the Beatles are more popular than Jesus now.

Nobody seems to have had a problem with this remark until the Beatles publicly stated their opposition to racial segregation, refusing to tour the Union of South Africa. This was still a hot topic in the south of the US, which was then segregated, and a few southern radio stations seized on this Jesus remark as an excuse to attack the Beatles. The manufactured outrage spread. The DJs organized book and record-burnings in their honor. In the end even the press got hold of the wrong end of the stick and started beating the bushes with it, as Neil Innes put it. The Ku Klux Klan joined the fray with various empty threats. Obscure fundamentalist ministers seeking their fifteen minutes of fame hopped on the bandwagon to issue vapid statements to the press. Then Lennon apologized, after a fashion, and the whole thing blew over.

Except among crazed fundies. What they got out of the whole thing is that John Lennon was an evil person who hated Christianity.

A historical footnote here. Lennon’s religious views may be described as complex—or confused, depending on where you stand. A theist of sorts, he believed that the universe was eternal and uncreated, and that it was impossible to know anything about the past through archaeology, palaeontology, and the like. Evolution was impossible; things are now as they always have been. People who study the past just dig things out of the ground and make up stories about how life used to be. He had equal contempt for creationists, and as far as I can see, an equal lack of understanding. According to one story, he hired an investigator to check out European monasteries and other cultural backwaters for the spear that pierced Jesus’ side, apparently believing it had some sort of mystic powers.

Not an orthodox Christian, exactly, but not outside the pale either. He liked to think of himself as belonging to a tradition of enlightenment shared by Zen Buddhism, Sufism, and Gnostic Christianity.

He was a musician, for god’s sake. You wouldn’t expect him to be well-informed on these sorts of subjects. You’d ask him maybe about say Aeolian cadences or the like—though, come to think of it, he wasn’t well-informed there either. But you see what I mean.

But the fundies could hardly be expected to understand these fine distinctions. For them, or a small subset of them, actually, John Lennon was Evil Incarnate, maybe even the Antichrist. His songs, seen through the lens of hate, seemed to support this. “Christ you know it ain’t easy | you know how hard it can be | the way things are going | they’re gonna crucify me.” “God is a concept by which we measure our pain … I don’t believe…” “Imagine there’s no heaven … no hell below us … and no religion too.” Some of them prayed for the death of John Lennon.

It was one of these guys who decided to do more than pray. He decided to carry out god’s will. He studied his prey carefully, and kept himself psyched up by reading pieces about him that cast him in a negative light. And in December 1980 he struck, silencing the voice that had entertained millions.

So who bears the responsibility of having launched an assassin John Lennon's way? Who was it who made sure that it would be Lennon who was the target, rather than say George Harrison (a non-Christian), or Mick “Sympathy for the Devil” Jagger? Was it the Christian cell that prayed for Lennon’s death? Of course not. They were merely exercising their god-given right to believe whatever hateful and addle-pated thing they liked, regardless of consequences. What about those disc jockeys who started it all? Freedom of speech, freedom of the press, and all that jazz. No, they can’t be held responsible for anything, far from it. What about Hugh Schonfield, or the author of Mark? Let’s not get crazy here. No, let’s just call the murderer a deranged fan and be done with it.

Except that in my book it is a short step from burning the works to burning the man himself. People who misrepresent what somebody says, who needlessly stir up hate against him—and for ratings, at that—, who organize public burnings, who fan the flames of hysteria—people like this can’t morally wash their hands of the results when some nutjob takes them up on their words. But that’s just my opinion. I’m sure they never lost any sleep over the matter.

[Arthur_Vandelay responded to the original post, “It’s an interesting point. On the one hand, we shouldn’t understate the fact that Chapman was mentally unstable (much of the debate regarding the VT killer Cho Seng-Hui seems to downplay this factor). On the other hand, he hails from a subculture that produces abortion clinic bombers.”]

A School Shooting in Littleton [1999]

[from my pre-weblog, 20 April 1999]

T

oday I got up in the late morning and instead of getting anything going I got sucked up in the ongoing disas­ter—a school shooting in Littleton, Colorado. At least two masked kids opened fire on the students there, killing fifteen people outright, apparently. Kids trapped in the school called out on mobile phones and watched events on cable. Local report­ers optimistically assumed that because kids were escaping the school that nobody was actually dead—this despite one girl’s report of seeing classmates killed in the library, and having been spared for no obvious reason by the killers. And another kid’s account of students behind him in the hall being shot while he escaped. I saw no reason to suppose that people had not been killed; obviously the dead and seriously wounded would not be in any position to escape from the school. So I wasn’t really sur­prised when an official came up with a figure of about twenty-five dead—appalled, but not surprised. (The actual figure seems to have been lower, thank god, but things could easily have been worse, given the situation.)

The kids who did the killing are supposed to have been from a group unknown to the school offi­cials but in the last yearbook whose members played war games and dressed in black. Very possibly none of this is true. The kids interviewed seemed to be fairly clueless; one of them said they reenacted World War Two battles (difficult, given that there were less than a dozen in the group, one would think), and another kid said they were homosexuals and part of some kind of homosexual conspiracy. Everybody agreed that the jocks picked on the group and harassed them mercilessly, which may explain why these two (if they were really members of this group) apparently picked on athletes. (It doesn’t however explain their targeting minori­ties.) Nobody interviewed seemed to think there was anything wrong with the jocks beating up on this group, with the apparent indifference of the school authorities, which make me wonder how idyllic this school really was, despite the pretty picture paint­ed by some of the students and townspeople. It all sounded fair­ly dysfunctional to me. However.

In the end the SWAT team in­vaded the school (they were actually inside earlier than was evident in watching), liberated the trapped, and finally got to the library, which was a shambles. Both the kids that had done the killing were dead (reports that a third person was present are now being discounted; I can’t help wondering, as at least one girl early on gave a detailed description of one of the killers that doesn’t appear to match either of the two kids found dead—however), along with their victims. What a screwed-up mess.

One more sickening aspect of the thing was the grandstanding by local politicians—the governor of Colorado and others, who used the opportunity to get a little publicity and push their particular quack nostrums. Oh well, what can you expect? They’re only human. Like those two kids who came to school with an arsenal and blew away their classmates.

Inferno in Waco Texas [1993]

[from my pre-weblog, 19 April 1993]

T

oday the standoff between federal agents and a religious commune in Texas ended with considerable loss of life—on the part of the religious folk, anyway. One national guardsman was supposedly injured, but there are no details at the moment. There seems to be no escaping the fact that the Firearms people, the FBI, and the government in general mishandled this thing from the begin­ning, and the lame attempts of the various spokesmen today to make it look as though the group had initiated the violence were pathetic.

The fact remains that there was really no reason for the Alcohol, Firearms and Tobacco people to be there in the first place. Whatever infractions of the law may have been involved—and my understanding is that they had only to do with possession of certain firearms—they were only minor violations, surely not worth this bloody armageddon. The initial assault on the com­pound was grotesquely mishandled, the result, I suspect, of over­weening arrogance on the part of the federal officials involved. The FBI account of the final disaster is ludicrous—they say that, even though they knew that the group members planned to commit suicide rather than give up (that’s their story, anyway), they decided to inject gas into the buildings in order to force them to give up. They never intended to provoke a suicide. And yet, if they had intended to, they could hardly have gone about it better. If they really knew this, and they actually expected that they would give up, then the FBI are bigger fools than I think they are.

Of course, all this assumes that I can actually believe anything the FBI says about what went on there, which in light of past experience, seems to be an unlikely assumption.

I Could Count My Ribs [1981]

[Passage from my journal, 18 April 1981]

9:54 pm PST—Thingz to do: (1) Finish research for the Music in Culture Paper (2) Write the Music in Culture paper (3) Come up with topic of the Ephesians and Colossians paper (4) Do something about the Vortigern paper (5) Consider getting photo taken and going down to El Monte early next week (6) Write my mother and step-father (7) Finish transcribing material for the Dean.

Present trips: Okay, the major hassles over the past bit have been: (1) the best-friend’s-girl thing (2) Finishing “Keep on Piping” (3) Visiting the damn churches (4) Current new obsession with Mark Twain (5) Finding time to work on “Bad Vibrations” (6) Transcribing tape for the Dean.

For whatever reasons, visions of the two of them together periodically torment me—at the weirdest goddamn times. And the most grotesque and irrelevant situations. However, none of this is what I started to throw in. I wrote and rewrote a letter to my cousin, and then couldn’t decide to send it. The oracle gave conflicting advice; but finally gave me the go-ahead to-day (at one point it had said wait till Tuesday). I put the letter out (cut my lip on the envelope flap while sealing it) and then ate breakfast. I suddenly changed my mind and shot out to retrieve it—at the very instant my hand touched the doorknob the postman removed the letter from the mailbox and carried it off. I took it as an omen and let it go (I could have called him back I suppose). So that episode is finished for the moment.

“Keep on Piping” has been a bitch to do; I’ve “finished” it three times now, and I think I’ll have to do it again. Last Friday I got interrupted by a character who wanted to do some splicing, so my “final” mixdown wasn’t too hot; I think I’ll do it over. Incidentally, the way things have worked out, all my versions (but one) are on the same tape.

Nothing to say on visiting the damn churches, really, except that it’s been a constant drag and hassle. I intended to go to an Adventist meeting to-day, but it was raining and I frankly copped out.

My new obsession with Mark Twain results from getting a copy of Puddnhead Wilson in the mail—no, it doesn’t; that was just an aid. I had already been to the library digging up stuff.

Never mind, I guess; I’m getting tired out. Oh, yeah—I’ve noticed recently that my pants had a tendency to fall off me, and like that, but I was fucking shocked the other day to see that—when I looked at myself in the mirror—I could count my ribs. Freaked out I weighed myself on the bathroom scale, and discovered that I’ve lost about twenty pounds sometime. (I’ve been at a little over 130—say 132 or 3 for some time; now I weigh in at 113 to 114.) As a result, I’ve been indulging in food heavily—I had previously not been, from a variety of motives, mostly being hyped up, but also cash and the belief that I was getting fat, somewhat. I never imagined that I was that out of touch with reality.