If I'm Calvinist is God Hobbes? Part 3: Leviathan or What Happens When You Pick On Tommy Hobbes

This is part three of a three part tale.  Part 1 is here.  Part 2 is here.

I think Thomas Hobbes must have been picked on a lot at school. Tommy Hobbes getting pantsed, Tommy being hung from the flagpole by his training codpiece. You know, the normal fruits of being small, irritating and self righteous in a society of boys.

After all, in his book Leviathan he describes the natural state of man's existence as being among other things "nasty, brutish and short" which would have made perfect sense to anyone sentenced to a stretch at an English boarding school. His book is the dark, Hobbesian (I know but it is the mot juste) masterpiece of the English Enlightenment. And it clearly shows the fruits of years of brooding on human nature and its defects whilst hanging from flagpoles being pelted with rotting vegetables.

In Leviathan Hobbes makes essentially two arguments: the first that man in his natural state behaves like a bunch of adolescent English boys in school or stranded on a tropical island and if you think that's bad, you should spend a day with their sisters. His second argument is that the only way to stop the little shits from beating....I mean the only way to establish order and peace where the talented, tiny, tinny tenth can flourish is for an all powerful force to impose order from above. Sort of a Terminator Skynet version of Mr. Chips.

But Hobbes argued that the Leviathan didn't have to be a super intelligent globe spanning satellite and robot network dedicated to the enslavement of humankind. Well actually he didn't argue that but what he did argue was that Leviathan didn't necessarily need to be the 17th century version of Skynet: the Absolute Monarch ruling by Divine Right. Although he believed that it was probably the best most stable form of Leviathan until robots got invented. This was because in his view monarchy best facilitated the orderly transition of power for example, from from King "Potato" Chips I to King "Fritos" Chips II and so on.

Instead, Leviathan could be a self perpetuating oligarchy, sort of a school board on steroids who didn't monkey around with detention and suspension but was willing to expel the disorderly from their bodies with extreme prejudice. It could even be a democracy where the people create an all powerful government and then revel in its democratically endorsed persecution of themselves, sort of a Hobbesian masochist nirvana.

Regardless of form, the key attributes of Leviathan were that it be both an all powerful and self perpetuating institution. He argued that if it didn't have both of these attributes then society would suffer constant disorder interrupted by bouts of dynastic or electoral chaos. Like those he experience while hanging from flagpoles.

"Lookit:  I'm a Monster King!"

The one thing that Hobbesy - I guess I should pause for a biographical note: at the start of the 9th grade Hobbes decided that his bully problem was attributable to his lack of bling and threads that were far from being 'de rigueur' so he briefly became Home Boy Hobbesy. For his efforts he was tossed into the school pond and nearly drowned from all the damned Spanish bling.

So anyway, one thing Hobbes didn't include in his conception of Leviathan was God, or at least the Judeo Christian deity of that name. And you can understand why: aside from Golgotha or a men's communal prison shower, the English boarding school is considered to be the most God forsaken place on the planet. Reflecting on this while dodging flying produce was in fact how he developed the concept of an all powerful ruler in the first place. A Leviathan who by strange coincidence sure looked like a cross between God and Tommy Hobbes which is why his selfie is on the cover of the early editions of his book. On the cover, I might add, as a 1,000 foot tall giant King. Who says that academics are modest?

Well not me and certainly not Hobbes because between their obsession over their own point of view in their area of expertise (and damned near everything else) their towering rage at the other boffins for denying their peculiar brand of 'truth', contempt for the the hoi polloi who couldn't (as they would say in their quaint vernacular) 'give a shit' and their utter estrangement from what was then called 'ye olde reality based village' making one of these cats or even worse a sackfull of them Leviathan was an incredibly life shortening proposition. Think Robert Mugabe crossed with Robspierre and Pol Pot all on a toasted Paul Krugman bun. Yuck.

And this is where Hobbes and Calvin parted ways. Hobbes thought it would be swell to ruled by a crowd that called all the shots, couldn't be deposed and had a vigorous if obscure fantasy life. Mind you, he was fine with religion so long as it was civic and national in nature being run by and for Leviathan. In this he was a real Mussolini: 'everything in the state, nothing outside the state, nothing above the state'. Although not being Italian he didn't have Il Duce's fashion sense or penchant for high drama much less his stable of on-call starlets.

Calvin by contrast was God's man. He had seen Mr. Big in the Vatican and knew that combining lawyers, guns and money with an absolutist religion was a recipe for one helluva toot followed by a continental scale hangover. His definition of a good Leviathan was one with powers limited by God's commands ideally interpreted by a brilliant judge. Namely himself. Now mind you this didn't make him a liberal but distrust of Mr. Bigs and the fear that if there was only one slot Luther or Zwingli might get in and if he had to listen to Luther's plodding prose one more time or sing 'A mighty fortress is our God' when it was obvious that God never ever played defence he'd probably go full Torquemada on someone. Preferably Luther.

Now where was I? So anyway this resentment and fear of the other guy drove Calvin who was a theocrat at heart to support republican governance. Limited by God's Constitution so to speak. Which is how an exiled Cheese Eating Surrender Monkey became more American than a Brit with the Kick Ass name Tommy Hobbes. Which just goes to show that ideas and faith matter more than putting yourself on the front of your book as a 1000 foot monster king.

Whoah! Settle down little scientists! A tale of Ptolemaic, Copernican, Newtonian and Einsteinian Denialism

Wrote this in my snow cave phase.

There has been a lot of loose talk thrown around about people being 'deniers' of this or that - but principally of the theory of Anthropogenic Global Warming.  Whatever your view on that subject it seems to me we should have some humility about what we think we know given how often and far our understanding of reality changes not to mention all those who have been persecuted for holding the 'wrong' views. This tongue in cheek review of celestial mechanics and physics hopefully helps remind how temporary and contingent certainty and settle science really are.  Or at least makes some of you smile.

Bow wow Ow!

Before Ptolemy came along with his really stupid name, the dominant theory of celestial mechanics was that stars were God's 'daisy chain' and every time an Angel shed a wee tear, another one was 'born'. Indeed the science had been 'settled' on this "Wodehousian construct" for millennia. But Ptolemy disagreed and for his insolence was branded a Daisy Chain 'denier' by the leading scientific bodies of ancient Egypt - dogs. Or technically Mann-Dogs. Usually in such a 'progressive' age the denier of scientific orthodoxy would have disappeared from the debate without a trace, presumably into some Pharoah's tomb despite the fact that unlike the Pharoah in question the denier was not technically 'dead'. But Ptolemy was fortunate to be born in Greek Alexandria when the Romans ran the show and the Romans, not being particularly fond of traditional Egyptian religion, sent some of their legionnaires wielding rolled up Sunday Papyri to persuade the pooch priests of their error thereby establishing new 'settled' science.

This science stayed nice and settled for a long time with only the occasional Ancient Academy of Sorcerers and Scientists beheading or crucifixion to see off the odd denier. The theory even survived the rise and fall of the bacchanalian 'party hearty' theories of the Romans when so many established truths became a bit fuzzy and unstable, particularly in the morning. Even the Huns bought the Ptolemaic line although they couldn't pronounce, much less spell it, however, as was typical, the Ostragoths were ostracized

Oh poop!  I'm Passe.

And then a nearsighted priest named Copernicus, a Pole who was so blind that he spent all his time looking through spyglasses up at the sky rather than where the heck he was going - comes up with this crazy idea that 'Earth you know, is just this planet' upon which the scientific, priestly establishment blew hot steaming chunks of anathema. Because the 'wee' earth theory was clearly even crazier the old 'wee' angel tear model of the universe. The Ptolemaic establishment was able to see off such ridiculous denialism with only the occasional singed denier so long as the theory was presented in Polish or in Copernicus' execrable and oh so declasse Polack-Latin. But once the Italians - who believe it or not were the 'go-to' hepcats of high tech back then - could decipher for the Pope the Pole's priestly patter Ptolemy's period of planetery preeminnce was...passe.

Tetherballs.  It's all tetherballs these days.

A chappie named Galileo Galilei was instrumental in unsettling the Ptolemaic consensus. It seems at that time a lot of your hipper, more dialed in priests and laymen in Italy surreptitiously bought Copernicus' theory. Particularly after Galileo illustrated the theory in tetherball terms to a Curia that was mad for the sport. But the times being what they were and Polacks being, you know, Polish they were reluctant to risk their 'street cred' and A list status just because someone from Cracow was right about reality. They needed a sign from above that the Copernican construct was 'cool'. Particularly from the Pope who for various obscure reasons like having signing authority for all of God's money for the entire Earth was important to the very hip. But the Pope being very Right Wing (after all, he works for God) was reluctant to accept the new idea and risk his awesome Pope-gig. So Galileo 'took the fall' for ‘team tetherball’ so to speak, getting brought up on charges of Ptolemaic denialism and a prejudicial preference for polish pronunciation and for his effrontery was exiled to Siena. Siena. The second city of Tuscany. The same Tuscany where the Tuscan state fair was held every year and instead of Hog Husbandry the Future Farmers of Tuscany held competitions in vintage wine and cheese making. Awesome wine and cheese that goes great with a mushroom risotto. Apparently exiling Galileo to Tuscany was like sentencing him to six months hard leisure at the Santa Barbara Biltmore Spa and Resort. In effect the Pope was saying - without saying so out loud - 'two thumbs up, way up'.

Oh Gally!

So Copernicus' new theory won. But all of the credit and resulting equity upside was captured by his Italian VC the heretofore obscure firm of Galileo, Borgia & Pope. So Galileo had it made: the top new scientific theory in the world, Papal sponsorship for his fund and its rather 'sharp' dealing, the Borgia's on your side which made mealtime so much less fraught and all the time in the world to work on, I mean paint this hot, I mean intriguing new subject nicknamed “Mona” Lisa and boy was Galileo going to try. And all because he knew his tetherball.

And then the protestants blew it all to hell.

I don't care a fig about Newton or his stupid theory

Specifically one protestant: Isaac Newton was an Englishman who taught Lord knows what (honest! - he taught theology) at Cambridge while he was rethinking the foundations of the universe, inventing his own new branch of mathematics and dodging falling apples. The Cambridge establishment didn't really know what to make of this fruit fleeing wunderkund who supposedly discovered that 'apples fall from trees' which any bloody idiot could have figured out with out calling it a sodding "Principia".  But an English win is an English win no matter how obscure the sport so "jolly good shows" all around!

Watch out! Apples!

But imagine the reaction of GB&P (GG having died while - reportedly - trying to help Lisa live up to her nickname) when they got the news that Newton had discovered the secret to celestial mechanics and in doing so had just happened to invent both classical physics and the calculus thereby wrecking their CoperniCo copyrights. I imagine that they had the same reaction that college freshmen do when they come face to face with The Calculus for the first time: "What the fuck? I mean what the fucking fuck?” Which is of course the classic Anglo Saxon reaction to being asked to undertake any intellectual exercise: beery prose filled to brim with all the nuance and subtlety of an English Football hooligan.

But GB&P being more Romano-Parmesan than Anglo-Saxon responded with a more nuanced, Machiavellian manner:  Che cazzo? Voglio dire che il cazzo cazzo?  (Everything sounds sexier in Italian).  After the Romano-Parmesanisms were done they began working the 'effing protestant' angle.  Which was the novel theory that protestants weren't just hell bent sinners but in fact hell bent thinkers and they pointed to the calculus with all of its inexplicable sigmas and functions and integrals and differentials as just the sort of incomprehensible gobbledygook that Satan would produce if he wanted to confuse the faithful.  After all, counting on those Anglican bastards to pass you in calculus could lead to a serious priest shortage.

So they worked the ad-anglican angle hard while feverishly casting about for their own Newtonian or more accurately, Salamandraeian champion - someone "of the faith" who could do the voodoo that only Newton could doodoo so well.  And try as they might they kept coming up snake eyes - for a while they thought that Tycho Brahe - the noseless Nostradamus of the north and his loopy Tychonic system (honest, it was based on geometric loops) was going to save them but in the end they had to admit that all of the cazzo calculus crap made perfect celestial predictions and that the ingelese interloper had it right.  What really threw them was that Leibnitz - another protestant had also invented the calculus at the same time and all of a sudden it seemed like protestant inventors of new branches of mathematics and physics were becoming as common as fleas on a Pope and they needed to change the subject pronto.  So they relaunched that perennial favorite the Inquisition and a good time was had by all.

Nobody expects a relaunch of the inquisition.

So anyway, Isaac Newton became Sir Isaac Newton and went on to make exciting discoveries in optics and fig filled biscuits and died a happy Cambridge Don as opposed to a Cambridge Ike as one would have reasonably expected. And Cambridge really dug their Distinguished Don and lorded him over Oxford who at the time was trying to present Tycho Brahe's fake nose as a major biomedical innovation and not having much luck. And so things went on like this for a couple centuries - Cambridge on top, then Oxford, and so on and so forth until the Swiss Patent Service inexplicably butted into a game heretofore reserved for tweedy chaps with tenure at snotty English universities.  

But Albert Einstein was a clerk of a different...patent classification, I guess.  Einstein had the odd bit of trouble differentiating the German umlaut from the English colon which made him a lousy patent clerk - second class.  But that patent weakness happened to be the very same psycho-spacio inversion that allowed him to visualize the space-time continuum.  And as a result of his disability he came up with a couple theories that to be frank, were seriously bent.  For example according to Einstein when you are standing still and I pop you one right in the kisser your kisser is moving relative to my hand even as I am moving my hand to hit your kisser which is ridiculous since you're the one who falls like a sack of potatoes, not me.  Or the idea that the faster I run, the heavier I get - I mean you could go into any Bernese bar and grill and see guys sitting on their ass getting more massive by the minute.  And then there are all these examples with sliced bread in them, what in the hell does sliced bread have to do with the space time continuum?  Yet the calculus and all of these physics Poindexters say that I shouldn't trust my lyin' eyes and if I do then I've become the science denier.

Ja, I'm bent!

Well in their defense Einstein made some very specific predictions about what would happen to sunlight when it whipped around the moon during an eclipse - and the Cambridge Dons (presumably named after the renamed Newton) verified that yes, the Jew postman is right while still cutting him socially and excluding him from their clubs and daughters.  Even Oxford didn't want him so he had to go to Berlin to get a real college job and there were Nazis there and everyone knows that Nazis were serious Jew deniers.

You meant the only way I can win this war is to use Jew Science?   Well then I just won't win it. So there.

You didn't have to be an Einstein to figure out that doing the Jew Genius gig in downtown Hitlerville was not going to work out so he sent away for a job to this little Correspondence College that did a lot of IQ testing of high school students in Princeton, New Jersey.  Now Princeton, being out of the mainstream of, well, practically everything had a hard time fitting Einstein into their evaluation framework which principally relied on two aptitude tests that they had developed:  the DIG (Dad is graduate) and DIM (Dad is millionaire) tests.  However they were trying increase their reputation with crazy intellectuals and there was absolutely no one who said 'crazy intellectual' louder when you looked at him than Einstein so they bunged him into a building with all the other big name has beens.

I say 'has been' because almost as soon as Einstein got settled, Nils Bohr began to bore right into the old boy with his Quantum reality routine which was packing them in throughout non-Nazi Europe.  Typically he'd wait until his laureateness had just woken up from a nap and would run in and show him the little 'quanta circus' in his hand - it was like a flea circus only much smaller.  So he'd stand there claiming that there were at least 50,000 quantum lions standing on photons in his hand and didn't herr Doktor see them?  Right there.  "I  understand that as you get older you can't visualize new concepts or see Quantum circuses anymore but look - did you see that!  That photon went through both the north and south entrance gates at the same time.  Isn't that incredible!!!"

And what was Einstein going to say?  That the greatest physicist of all time didn't 'get' quantum mechanics?  "Vell, ja......I.....guess"  So Einstein, swallowed Bohr's boring line of quantum hooey and set out to come up with a universal theory of everything.  Which was a mistake.  As Timothy Leary showed much later at Harvard a universal theory of everything is only achievable through the use of very powerful illegal drugs and only lasts for a few minutes until the nice men in the white suits come to take you to the place that will make all of those nasty spiders go away.

I guess it was just as well that Einstein didn't go the Timothy Leary route because what with Hitler cutting up in Europe and the Japanese becoming loud deniers of western civilization much less science, it was more important for him to persuade the Americans to figure out how to build this nuclear bomb thingy before Hitler got one.  Or as Einstein would say:  "Ve must build ze big Boom!"  Only Einstein kind of slow rolled the whole program for a while because he realized that if the Americans got the 'boom' they'd just drop it on Berlin and Einstein and the missus still had a great little cottage in Wannasee that was actually on a lake rather than a see and they didn't want it incinerated.  As it turned out the Nazi's collapsed on their own accord so the cottage didn't need to be nuked after all but after the Cossacks who billeted there got through with it it might as well have been.

Ze big boom!

But that just meant that the western civilization and science denying Japanese were going to get nuked.  Which taught them a thing or two.  Nagasaki on that, you bloody deniers.

OK, I'll admit that last sentence is in rather bad taste, I don't think that people should die simply because they disagree with my choices or that I should gloat at their discomfort (well, death really).  But given the rhetoric being bandied about today one could infer that the advocates of the catastrophic AGW line are a lot closer to 'nuke-em and gloat' territory than we'd like to believe.  They seem to be straying to a 'utilitarian' 'logic', which argues that 'deniers' are destroying the world and must be shut up - for the greater 'good' you see.  Aside from that ridiculous totally unsupported assertion of "fact", the willingness of the Enviro left to dehumanize those that disagree with them is frightening.  They're trying to turn us into Mann-Dogs.

I guess so that they can thwack us with their rolled up but oh so recycled Sunday papyri. 

Norman Ediston, 21st Century Essene Monk

 

This is my friend: Norman. Norm died a couple of weeks ago. He was what America calls 'homeless'. Which is a terrible misnomer for the people who (as the English put it) 'live rough' on our streets.

In my experience there are three kinds of people living rough:

Those who find themselves there through failure or circumstance and who are trying desperately to escape.

Those possessed by the twin demons of mental illness and mind bending drugs - often both and often hard to tell apart - except that those possessed by drugs die faster.

And then there are the outliers like Norm.

I don't know Norm's back story but by the time I met him Norm didn't really fit into either category. He wasn't anguished and struggling nor did he appear to be possessed by 'demons'. The Norm I knew seemed to be at peace: with his situation, with others and with his God. Norm lived underneath the freeway in a small tent, not far from the church. He worked at church every week, directing traffic and parking cars. He also was a regular attender at the monthly 'Homeless' Barbecue that I help at. That was where this photo was taken.

Norm and I spoke often. Usually about the weather - whether it was hardest to live rough in a Houston summer or a St. Louis winter - we agreed to disagree about that. Or about the parking traffic and how otherwise intelligent church goers couldn't follow simple directions. Sometimes we talked about the church and faith and while I never pried, I know he was a believer. I always looked forward to seeing Norm with his wry, enigmatic smile. It's how I imagine Abraham or Moses must have looked after crossing the Sinai.

And so far as I could tell, Norm was at peace: with himself, with others, with his life. It's what made him such a unique figure at church. I believe that to know Norm was to get a glimpse of what the Essene monks of biblical Israel must have been like. As I understand it, the Essenes took vows of poverty, living in the wilderness copying scriptures (it's where the Dead Sea Scrolls come from), praying and communing with their God. Some scholars believe Jesus was an Essene. John the Baptist probably was.

Whether or not Norm was really like an Essene, Norm's existence had a singular quality: He was in some fundamental way beyond the cares of this world. Most of us spend our days struggling, grasping, getting, justifying - always chasing something or someone. But Norm didn't. He was past all that. As if he was standing on the boundary between this world and the next, looking with bemusement back on the roaring bedlam he had crossed.

I Know These Things

I have learned that love is perfect and infinite.
For it comes from a God who is both.

But we don't treat love that way.
We hoard, saving it for our 'special 'loved' ones'.
Or we hide it, lest our black hearts corrupt.

Some of us see more clearly.
Whether due to greater suffering or truer vision,
they have acquired the ability to love without restraint.
Never hoarding but extravagantly giving and receiving.

I know these things because I know Cindy.
And she showed me how.

Mildred and Sam

Last night in my small group my friend Jerry asked us to think back to our 'best' Christmas memory. I had an immediate answer that had to do with being in Jakarta, Indonesia and having my dad - dressed at Santa - terrify dozens of small local children: "manusia iblis merah! manusia iblis merah! (red demon man! red demon man!"). But as I listened to the others talk about their best Christmas experiences I decided I was wrong. My best Christmas memory happened the year my son Sam was born. He was born a month before Christmas so had nothing else happened it probably still would have been my best Christmas.  A brand new baby is an incredible gift any time of year.

But I don't believe that was why Sam made that Christmas so special. For some time we had been helping Mildred, an elderly woman who lived in a small apartment near our home. Among other things we always brought her to church with us. And we didn't particularly like her. She was a rather miserable, bitter and terribly lonely 75 year old woman who apparently had never fit in anywhere. She was often critical and rude but it wasn't much of a sacrifice to drive a few blocks and pick her up so we tolerated the occasional outbursts.

From what we could tell she had been alone for most of her adult life.  She had never married or had children. She'd worked as a department store salesperson and had been fortunate enough to retire with a small pension that paid for an apartment in a nice part of town. But it was barren, empty of art, pictures of family members or any of the markers of a life lived with others. She was alone and apparently she had almost always been that way. 

On Christmas eve - as was common in the first few months after Sam was born - it took us longer than anticipated to get going so I drove over to pick up Mildred while Sam's mom finished all of the complex procedures necessary to bring an newborn infant out on a snowy winter's night. When we got back, mother and child still weren't ready so I brought Mildred inside to wait. And Sam's mother, being far more intuitive than me, brought him in and plunked him into Mildred's lap so she could finish getting ready.

It was then that a small miracle unfolded. Mildred leaned over him and with tears in her eyes whispered and sang him a tuneless song, the melted snowflakes on her coat glistening in the Christmas lights. She was a woman transformed. For those few minutes she wasn't bitter or miserable, she was filled with the true joy of Christmas: celebrating the birth of a baby who would love the world but also could be loved.

It's been twenty six years since that night but I think I've finally realized what God and Mildred and Sam had to teach me: that the key to surviving as a Christian in this world isn't in being loved, it's in loving. Because we Christians can survive even if no one loves us. After all Christ died for us and sent his Holy Spirit to minister to us. It's not ideal and not easy but God promises us that He is always with us and always will love us and that is enough. No we don't need other people to love us but we do need others to love. We must love others the way he does, for there is no other way to truly be like Christ...to be Christian.

And so on that snowy St. Louis night we - but mostly baby Sam - gave Mildred the most precious gift she had ever received: someone that she - even in her limited, bitter state - could love. And I think that's the best gift we've ever given anyone.

I 'work' with the homeless at church. Mostly I hang out and do what my brilliant friends Andrea, Sarah and Carolyn tell me to do. I've gotten to know a whole host of what I call 'lost boys' - mostly men who have fallen between this world's cracks, people like LaKeith and Chris. And I've always thought that what I was doing was showing 'love' for them. But I realize now that as Christians they don't need my love so much as they need to have real people in their lives that they can love. The task of 'lifting' them out of their struggles isn't my job, it's their's and God's and the first thing they need to master is the vocation that we all are called to: to love one another.

Which can be very hard for me. Requiring me to admit my weakness and limitation. Because it's only when my pride dies, that I can become someone who can truly help the lost and the lonely progress on they journey to Christ. So this Christmas, I'm trying to focus less on 'proving' my love to others and more on making my self vulnerable and approachable enough so that other people can do God's will through me. Which will be strange for a rather hyperactive and self righteous man like me. 

In my mind's eye I can still see Mildred holding Sam and singing her tuneless song. And it is still beautiful. 

My encounter with T. Boone Pickens

T. Boone Pickens is dead. Here's a Forbes piece on him.

I have a personal recollection of T Boone: I was attending the University of Chicago when he came to give a speech. I was able to weasel my way into the handful of students who were invited to have lunch with him beforehand. I did this because at the time he was making a play for Phillips Petroleum which was my father's company whose then headquarters were in the town I graduated high school from: Bartlesville, OK. The news even featured a prayer service at the Church I attended (I suppose beseeching God to hex Boone or something). Each of us got to introduce ourselves to the great man and so I pointed out my connection. After lunch as we walked to the speech site Boone sidled up to me and worked me the entire time, emphasizing his concern for Phillips and the people of Bartlesville and so on. The ironic thing was being a Good Chicago economist, I was rather agnostic on the whole affair. But Boone was clearly more than just a cold corporate raider: he wanted to be seen as the hero. But I'll let History be the judge of that.

The savior of the world

In an uncharacteristic failure of judgement, a friend asked me to give the invocation (church talk for kickoff or warmup prayer) at church. This is what I said.

Dear lord thank you for this day,
for the sunshine
and the truth of your gospel.
Lord Jesus give us eyes to see,
ears to hear and the faith to know that you are the savior of the world.

Thoughts on the occasion of a child's baptism.

Thoughts on the occasion of a child's baptism.

Friends asked me to be Godfather to their first born. This is what I wrote to them:

When I went outside this morning  I saw a rainbow. It was complete, both ends touching the ground, with every color from violet to deepest red. I have never seen one as beautiful.

In biblical times this would have been interpreted as a sign of God's blessing.  But your son bears a much greater sign of God's favor than sunlight bent by rain: he has you.

Never forget that you are his first and most important blessing.

And never forget that it is his life. Help him by giving him the space to play and experiment and grow. Know that he is God's child and that he and his Lord will choose his path. Welcome this because it lifts an unbearable burden from you. You are not responsible for W's future - only his present. Love him, guide him, protect him.... less than you would like, but probably more than he needs. So he will grow up a strong and faithful man.

Thank you for honoring me with the opportunity to participate in his life

Shovel Boy Go Boom

The first time I got blown up, I didn’t think much of it. The second time, I began to perceive a trend.

When I graduated from high school, my father got me a summer job on one of the seismic exploration crews that reported to him in his role as Chief Geophysicist for a major global oil company. A seismic crew searches for oil and gas using wave physics. Onshore, this meant spreading thousands of specialized microphones called geophones over a large area, drilling holes in the ground, placing high explosives in them, and detonating them in carefully timed sequences.

The shock waves propagated through the earth, reflecting differently off layers of rock, oil, gas, and water. Those reflections were recorded by the geophones and sent to a supercomputing facility—usually in Houston—where complex processing reconstructed a map of the underground strata. That was how they found oil and gas. Pretty standard stuff, really.

The Shovel Boy rock climbing six short weeks after the
 events related here. Still 100% boy.

As the youngest and lowest-ranking “man” on the crew - though at eighteen I possessed few of the traditional characteristics associated with manhood - I was given a shovel and told to follow the shooting crew around. From time to time, charges would “blow out,” producing eruptions that looked like scenes from a war movie. My job was to fill in the resulting craters. Hence the nickname “Shovel Boy,” though more often they called me “hey you” or “kid.” The crew took a particular pleasure in hazing the boss’s son.

My secondary job was helping hook up the charges. Typically, they were spread over several hundred meters and connected by wire to the Shooter’s detonation device. Once everything was ready, the Shooter would notify the Observer, who sat remotely inside a truck filled with computing equipment. The Observer would issue the command “Get it hot,” the Shooter would relay it, and we would clear the area before detonation.

Sometimes one of the connections failed. When that happened, the Shooter would send us back to reset it.

That was how I got blown up.

The first time happened in dense forest. I couldn’t hear the Shooter clearly and was struggling with the connection when he yelled, “Hurry up, kid!” I shouted back, “I am!” He interpreted that as “I’m done” and detonated the charge while I was still standing over it.

In moments like that, time really does seem to slow down. I distinctly remember thinking, So this is what it feels like to be blown up, before the blast threw me backward into a pine tree. Then all I could think was, Ow.

Remarkably, I escaped with nothing more than a spectacular bruise.

The second time happened in a swampy forest with knee-deep water. When the charge detonated prematurely, I wasn’t thrown into the air. Instead, a geyser of swamp mud erupted upward. Time slowed again, and I remember calmly thinking, That’s going to land directly on me.

It did.

The mud itself didn’t hurt me, but it came with an unfortunate side effect: exploded swamp mud smells exactly like what you think it smells like. I spent the rest of the day retching and trying unsuccessfully to wash foul-smelling swamp sludge off my body. On the drive back to the motel, the crew made me ride in the bed of the truck. Eventually we stopped at a self-service car wash where I stripped down and was literally hosed off like a car.

So thoughtful readers may be wondering: Why did you keep getting blown up?

The answer was simple. The Shooter and his assistant had the ‘civilized’ habit of smoking a bowl of weed before beginning work and again during lunch. Our routine involved hiking equipment deep into the field and then waiting while the rest of the crew repositioned the geophones for the day’s shoot. That gave us idle time in the mornings and at lunch that \they used it to get high.

Yes, it was incredibly stupid.

But fortunately, I had asthma. Which may have saved me. Whenever I tried to smoke weed, I’d start slipping toward anaphylactic shock before I got anywhere near intoxicated. So I stayed sober.

After the second incident, the crew took its normal two-week break. I went home and told my father absolutely nothing—not about the drugs, not about the explosions, not about any of it.

Why?

Because, I desperately wanted to be accepted by the men around me. Reporting them would have made my life unbearable. Besides, I had already survived two explosions. I convinced myself I could handle it.

Then we relocated from swampy Vicksburg, Mississippi, to the dry plains around Elk City, Oklahoma, and things ‘got real’.

Two things changed.

First, the charges got bigger - from roughly five pounds to twenty pounds per hole (equivalent to a 155mm artillery shell). Although the holes were supposed to be drilled deeper to compensate, the rocky terrain often made that impossible. The result was more shallow charges and many more blowouts.

Second, when a hole blew out in Oklahoma, it didn’t produce a neat crater or a shower of mud. It produced a deadly spray of gravel and sand—more like grapeshot from an old fashioned cannon. Anything directly above the blast zone would be shredded.

After witnessing one Oklahoma blowout, I immediately realized the stakes had become existential. From that point on, whenever the Shooter told me to check a connection, I insisted he physically step away from the detonator before I approached the line. Since he had to keep pressure on the firing mechanism for the Observer’s signal to work..

The Shooters hated it.

They mocked me relentlessly. Called me chicken. Blamed me to the boss for slowing things down. But self-preservation is a powerful motivator, and I held my ground.

Eventually the Crew Chief pulled me off the shooting team  and reassigned me as his personal dog’s body - miserable but much safer job. My replacement was an older man, maybe twenty-four, newly hired.

I met him at the crew’s weekly Sunday barbecue. I remember shaking his hand and thinking, I need to warn him.

But everyone was drinking, including me. Before long the hazing resumed, now with sharper edges. I was mocked as a coward afraid of loud noises and explosions. It is difficult to describe how painful that humiliation felt to me at eighteen. I had tried so hard to “be a man”.

Then I noticed my replacement laughing along with everyone else.

And I thought: Well, fuck you too.

The next day I still told myself I would warn him, but in truth I had no intention of doing so. After a few more days, I rationalized that he had surely figured it out on his own.

Then, on Thursday, we got the call:

“Man down.”

The Crew Chief and I were the emergency response team. We arrived within minutes. The new guy had misunderstood a “Get it hot” warning as a command to check the line and had knelt over the charge when it detonated.

It blew his face off.

Not completely—there was still flesh clinging to the bone—but his face looked like raw meat mixed with gravel. His eyes were ruined. He was conscious, disoriented, and trying to claw at himself.

We loaded him into the truck. The Crew Chief, a Vietnam veteran, shoved me into the back beside him and barked:

“Don’t let him touch his face.”

That was my lowest moment.

At first, the wounded man would not stop moaning and babbling. He was weak enough that even I could restrain him, but during the drive to the hospital the full weight of what I had done settled onto me. I had known the danger. I had failed to warn him. My shame didn’t make me more compassionate—it made me colder. I just wanted him to stop talking.

There was an investigation afterward. My father flew in with the corporate team and immediately took me aside to ask what had happened.

I lied.

I said I didn’t know. I said I wasn’t there.

And it worked.

After that, the crew no longer treated me as the boss’s sheltered son. I had proven myself loyal. One of them. All it had cost me was betraying my father and the horribly injured man who replaced me.

Then came the most shameful part of all:

I buried the memory.

I shoved it so deep into my subconscious that even while caring for my father during the last eighteen months of his life, I never consciously revisited it. Only after his death did the memory fully resurface. I never confessed to him. Never asked his forgiveness.

And the faceless stranger? I never even learned his name.

Since that memory returned, I have spent a great deal of time reflecting on what happened that summer. I have concluded there are many kinds of cowardice, and mine is moral cowardice.

I am not physically timid. In many ways I am the opposite. Nor am I socially timid. I can confront almost anyone if I choose to. But when the morally right course becomes personally costly—socially, professionally, economically—my instinct is to protect myself.

Yet there is, strangely, a kind of grace hidden in that realization.

Much later I recognized that this experience changed me, even while it remained buried. I learned, almost unconsciously, that the only reliable way for a moral coward to behave honorably is to commit publicly to the truth before the moment of pressure arrives. To take the stand early, while it is still relatively cheap. To trap yourself with your own stated principles so that betraying them later becomes more painful than defending them.

It is a kind of moral jujitsu I practice on myself.

So the bad news is that I'm still the moral coward who betrayed my own father. And always will be. But the good news is that God has built into me an imperfect but often effective habit of taking stands early, before they become costly and by doing so allowing me to better live up to the standard that I profess as a Christian. And crucially, he did it by taking one of the worst things I've ever done and using it to change me. Without me even realizing what he was doing.

Jesus Christ said to us:

I am the vine; you are the branches. Whoever abides in me and I in him, he it is that bears much fruit, for apart from me you can do nothing.

John 15:5 English Standard Version (ESV)

I am living proof of the truth of that statement. And of the fact that no matter how cowardly we are, no matter how broken, it is God who reaches down and changes us.

Life is Pain

About seven years ago a friend of mine was going through a particularly difficult time. Upon entering puberty both of his children had developed serious psychological problems, problems that were quite disabling and difficult to manage. One day I asked him how it was going and looking at me in anguish he replied, "Bill, life is pain".

I did not like his answer. Like me, he was a Christian and by all outward signs, a much better one than me. How could he, being redeemed by Christ, say such a thing? Particularly to me because at the time I was going through great, if largely self inflicted tribulations and yet he was telling me that life was nothing but. It made everything seem so cruel, so pointless.

I never bothered to ask him what he meant but from time to time I would take out what he had said and examine it anew. Yet I never could quite grasp his point....I'd get close but it always eluded me. Until today. As I was driving home from church it finally hit me. My friend wasn't telling me that everything was hopeless, he was pointing me to the source of all hope.

You see without faith, without Christ's redeeming Grace, life is indeed nothing but pain. It's simply a constant string of tribulations that we try to flee and obscure with transitory pleasure. Unless we have the faith that only Christ can supply.  Let me give you an analogy:  Without faith we are like fish on  a dry lake bed, gasping for breath. When tragedy strikes it lands on us full force, crushing us beneath its weight. The other fish can't help because they're stuck in the mud too. But God's Grace is like that lake full of water. All of a sudden we can breathe and when the same tragedy strikes we feel its arrival but its crushing weight is absorbed by the deep, life giving density of the water - directly by Him and via His people. Yet this Grace is so ubiquitous, so powerful that we can hardly even tell it's there.

So I think my friend's point was that whatever sorrow or tragedy I face, I should look to the only one that can heal my deepest wounds, to the source of all hope, to the Love of our Lord Jesus Christ. And it is my prayer that you're quicker on the uptake than I was. That it won't take you seven long, harrowing years and the collapse of everything you've built to learn what Paul taught us in Romans:

For I am sure that neither death nor life, nor angels nor rulers, nor things present nor things to come, nor powers, nor height nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord.  

Romans 8:38-39 (ESV)

This is Christ's body....

I was minding my own business, drinking coffee before church when my friend Will came up and asked me if I could do communion for someone who didn't show. Despite going to church my whole life, I had never served communion before.  At first I was too young and then later I never felt worthy of the honor. But trapped by the need, I consented. This in spite of what I knew would inevitably  happen.

When it came time, I turned to my partner, Andree and said: "you take the wine"...because I'm a spiller - I spill. I had this terrible vision of dumping a melange of wine and grape juice down someone's spring frock. As it was I was going to have problems with the crackers - I mean wafers. Because what I feared came true as soon as the first customer walked up. As I looked them in the eye and spoke the words the tears began to pool. Each time I said them the pool got bigger. I dared not reach up and wipe them away, that would have just resulted in me serving the crackers - dang! I mean wafers - off the floor.

I prayed "Lord please don't let me blubber" and He didn't but by the end my eyes were so full of tears that I couldn't see much of anything. But sometimes tears help us see more clearly, indeed sometimes we can only see the truth through tears. And my truth came through loud and clear. For while I was saying one thing, another was imprinting on my soul:

This is Christs's body, broken for you
This is Christ's body, broken for you,
This is Christ's body, broken for you,
This is Christs's body, broken for....me.

Damn Cats

In remembrance of Yanti Ardie 's deceased cat Smoky. A po-em:

Cats, cats, cats
Damn all cats
They make me sneeze
And scratch the door
They bring dead things
Lay them on the floor

But they're warm in bed
And they purr purr purr
With scratchy tongues
And fuzzy fur
So I love damn cats.
I miss mine so.

Somebody else's problem

I was strolling down Lindell on a crisp, bright winter's day, enjoying the sunshine gleaming off of the new fallen snow.  A huge round young black man yelled out from across the busy street:  "hey mister, hey wait!" he jay-ran across, heedless of the traffic and pulled up puffing in front of me, his St. Louis street vendor certificate blowing around his neck - "it's a mooch", I thought.

"Hey mister, I represent (he mumbled some alphabet soup agency) and would you like to buy...."  I put my hand up - I was prepared for such simple come-ons:  "I'm sorry, I never purchase from or give to organizations that come up to me on the street, it's just my policy, I'm sorry."  I turned away and walked off, congratulating myself for handling the situation in a philosophically consistent way.  He muttered "I was just tryin' to make a living".

But I didn't really hear what he had to say because he had already ceased to exist.  With my statement I had defined him outside of the circle of people and things that I had to worry about - I had made him "somebody else's problem".

In his brilliant (well at least to me) Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy trilogy Douglas Adams described the theory of a "Somebody Else's Problem" field - an "SEP" for short.  In Adam's cracked cosmology SEPs were used to make things invisible - by defining something as "somebody else's problem" one could get people to walk by spaceships, buildings, even massive mountains without noticing they were there.  And that's what I had done to my rotund interloper.  After all, I had learned as a boy on the streets of Kebayoran Baru that one couldn't possibly help all of the people who needed it.  There were too many of them and their needs were too great - to survive emotionally you needed to harden yourself and look past the pain and suffering around you.  Indonesia had taught me to build my walls high and tight.  And it worked - I now am a master at making things somebody else's problem.

Yet Jesus came to make everyone His problem.  I sometimes wonder what it must have been like to be Him:  fully human and yet knowing, indeed, feeling the seemingly infinite roar of sin and pain and needfulness around him.  I can hardly handle my own troubles, yet He confronted an entire world's.  No wonder He sometimes fled the crowds - there were too many, it was too much.

What the young man was really saying to me - what we all say every time we come into each other's presence - was:  "I am here, I am real, and I matter".  For if Jesus came and died for each of these then how can they not matter to us?  How can they simply be "somebody else's problem".  All of these thoughts and a few more besides flashed through my mind as I fled down the street.  They rose to a crescendo and stopped me in my tracks.  "Aw crap!" I said and began to backtrack - of course I could help him - I had a few minutes and I knew exactly what he was doing wrong - didn't the clowns at the agency teach him anything?  "First of all you don't go running up to people yelling in inner city Saint Louis - do you want to get your ass shot?  Let me tell you how to engage people respectfully in a conversation, solicit their help, get them on your side so they want to buy your...what is it you're peddling again?"  I double timed back up Lindell, rehearsing Sales 101 in my head - where was he?  Gone.  How in the hell could a guy that big disappear so quickly?  Gone.

"Lord forgive me.  Please help him, show him the answers to his questions, show him that he is loved, heal him from any harm that my indifference did him" - it didn't seem like much.  After all, I was going to fix him.  But I sensed a feeling of completion - it was enough - it was OK.

I turned around and headed for the office.  For a while after that I stopped averting my gaze from the people on the street, I looked in their eyes, I said 'hi'.  In some small way I widened my circle a bit and let a few others in.

"For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life."  Whoever.  And none of them are somebody else's problem

Free Too

I hear what you're saying
I see what you mean
I know what you're doing
But I want to be free

I stood there when she said it
She came straight up to me
So filled with His spirit
So gentle and free

I hear what you're saying
I see what you mean
I know what you're doing
But I need to be free

I was there when she said it
She came straight up to me
So filled with His love
So beautiful and free

I hear what you're saying
I see what you mean
I know what you're doing
Please help me be free

Addendum to On Freedom

And my Kids. Praise God for them. They had lost all the trappings of wealth that they were born into: the private school, big house, beach cottage, winter skiing. But they never complained or blamed me. The only thing they said when then came back from their first week of public school was  "the kids here are nicer". My daughter would frequently ask me to help her with school projects and for a couple of hours I would lose myself with her. One day I offered to drive her home - it was cold and snowy - but I ran out of gas right in the underpass of a rush hour freeway. I shouted with frustration and and cursed myself and she broke into tears. But my son was there to help us within minutes. He was always there when I needed him. Their steadfast love and refusal to judge or complain was the greatest gift anyone has ever given me.

On Freedom

Something I shared at Church:

Four years ago I moved into a minivan. I handed my house keys to my Son and told him to sell everything and give the proceeds to his mother. With my business bankrupt, my marriage gone, my self respect and confidence in tatters, I moved into the van to die. I was in despair, everything that I had built my life on was in ruins.

I spent nine months there. I overnighted in strange places - one was an auto body shop amongst the wrecks. I went days without speaking to anyone. I experienced 100 degree heat all the way down to minus 15f - not windchill - temperature. My toes still tell the tale. I kept clean by bathing in men's rooms and occasionally strolling brazenly into the local College's faculty locker room as if I were a Professor of Indigence, the Hobo Sage.

No one from my Church came looking for me. A couple times old colleagues came by and gave me money - claiming that they had forgotten to pay me for work I'd done.

I was angry at myself and at God. I acknowledged that I had wrecked my life but insisted I didn't do it alone. I was an active Christian: tither, promise keeper, BSFer, sunday school teacher, Deacon:  the full Yaweh. From where I stood it seemed that God had let me run off the rails. I told Him "you let me do this to myself". His answer was: "Yes, I did. Now pay attention."

Spoiler alert: I didn't die. Which was a problem: what exactly was I supposed to do? I couldn't sit still so I started walking which led to thinking then to ideas and ultimately writing. Early on I wrote angry polemics against God. I would send them to my pastor friends. They were hot stuff, I'm sure I could get a gig writing for the Atheists if I still believed any of it. The irony was that I had announced  that I was 'done' with God yet He had never dominated my thoughts so much as in that van.

And then slowly, at first almost imperceptibly I began to see people differently. I started really looking at them, looking into their eyes. I began going up to complete strangers, trying to understand them. It made them really, nervous. I became friends with the disabled woman who worked at McDonalds. I had always avoided her  because her small twisted body made her slow. But I had become slow too and it allowed me to see what I had missed. It was a revelation: up until that point I had looked upon most people as "tools" to be used or obstacles to be gotten around. But there, at the bottom I began to see people for what they truly are: God breathed miracles, on their journeys to eternity.

Then Mom called: Dad had cancer and needed my help. So I became my father's primary caregiver for the last 18 months of his life. The truth is I never really knew my father until then. And then as if by plan, the week Dad died an old friend called asking me to join his new west coast software venture.

It was shortly after that I strolled into this building on a Sunday morning and someone said 'Hi'.

God brought me full circle. From failure and despair to renewal and purpose.  So how did I change? First of all I am so much more holy than I used to be (snort guffaw)...No, that's a lie. I am the same knucklehead I've always been.

What God did with that time was teach me what it meant to be free.

Free to fail. And being free to fail, free in Christ to truly try.
Free to see myself and to see others for what we truly are.
Free to be honest, to confess sin openly, and ask forgiveness.
And Free to really love, to love God and to love you.

John 8:32 "and you will know the truth, and the truth will set you free.”

Most of you are young, talented and industrious and you will go far. But I'll let you in on a secret: Someday you're going to fail. And I pray that when you do, you'll find the freedom that comes from knowing that you can't possibly live up to God's Standard - the only one that matters. That's the edge we street veterans have. We know that there's nothing we can do by ourselves.

So during this time of feasting and plenty remember that crucial truth that street people know better than anyone else. And take a moment to stop, listen and learn from them, it will bless you. I say this  not because "There but for the Grace of God go I" no, I say it because "There with the Grace of God went I".

One more point: One of the reasons people on the street look so defeated is that they are often so very alone. There is really nothing quite like 'street alone', people everywhere ignoring you. There's a song that expresses that loneliness well. It's not particularly pretty but it is True. The Song is The Wrestler by Bruce Springsteen.

Have you ever seen a one trick pony in the Field so Fancy and Free?
If you've ever seen a one-trick pony then you've seen me.
Have you ever seen a three legged dog making his way across the street?
If you've ever seen a three legged dog then you've seen me.

Then you've seen me, I come and stand at every door.
Then you've seen me, I always leave with less than I have before.
Then you've seen me, when my blood it hits the floor.

Tell me friend can you ask for anything more?
Tell me can you ask for anything more?

Have you ever seen a scarecrow filled with nothing but dust and weeds?
If you've ever seen a scarecrow then you've seen me.
Have you ever seen a one armed man punching at nothing but the breeze?
If you've ever seen a one armed man, then you've seen me.

Then you've seen me, I come and stand at every door.
Then you've seen me, I always leave with less than I have before.
Then you've seen me, when my blood it hits the floor.

Tell me friend can you ask for anything more?
Tell me can you ask for anything more?

These things that comfort me I drive away.
This place that is my home I cannot stay.
The only faith I have is in the bruises I display.

Tell me friend can you ask for anything more?
Tell me can you ask for anything more?

Have you ever seen a one legged man trying to dance his way free?

If you've ever seen a one legged man, then you've seen........me.

 Thank you.

All that's left is love

I heard about another slaughter
And that people don't have  homes
But in the end none of that matters
Rich or poor, black or white
We're all losers in this game of Life
Not one of us gets out alive

Love brought us here
Love will take us home.
All we get to keep is love.
For love never dies.

So many people are shouting
Hating on each other every day
But no one will win the argument
Right or left, my country or yours
We're all lifers here,
There are no eleventh hour reprieves

Yes Love brought us here
Love will take us home.
All we get to keep is love.
For love never dies.

We can't eat it or sell it,
We can't wear it or steal it
Love can't be bought,
It's not for sale.

But we can accept it
Accept it from it's only source
And we can share it
For love never runs out
Love multiplies again and again
Until it covers every sorrow, every sin.

Because don't you know that:

Love brought us here
Love will take us home.
All we get to keep is love.
For love never dies.

Look at all the souls
on their journey to eternity
All beautiful, all loved
I love you.

Words of encouragement to a friend

We are all constantly in a process of becoming. Once in a while we suddenly discover what we've become. It's never quite what we set out for. But if we're fortunate and true to ourselves it will be where we are meant to be. Here's to you becoming an ever wiser, more joyful and creative version of yourself.

A striking bloom

For E.

I spied a flower, a striking bloom
It shocked my soul and pierced my gloom.

But I can't have it, nor make it mine.
Only love its grace, its beauty, its life.


Photo by author: Texas Hill Country Wildflowers

Hitting things...Hard

So Hurricane Harvey landed on Houston with a terrible squelch, temporarily returning neighborhood after neighborhood to the swamp from whence they came. While this was going on I was home spending what seemed like an eternity with my paranoid 'refugee' friend barricaded in his room convinced that I was conspiring with persons unknown to...well, do unknown things to him. By the time he finally escaped my evil clutches (also known as 'when I drove him back to his homeless shelter when it became safe to do so') I was ready to hit something. Hard. Over and over again.

And Harvey obliged, wrecking something like 100,000 homes to one degree or another. Technically I only hit three of them, taking a crowbar to soggy walls and wrecked floors. It was quite cathartic. I did my hitting with friends from church. Like most everyone in Houston who wasn't a victim, we were doing what we could to help or if we couldn't really help, at least demonstrate that we gave a damn. The therapy I got from all the hitting was just an extra, probably not shared by very many others.

It was at my third house-hitting that I had a bit of an epiphany. There were two women there that I was friends with from church (or if not friends at least they never visibly blanched when I came their way). I could tell that this wasn't their usual line of work from their soft shoes that screamed 'nail wounds' and from the fact that during that entire day they didn't smash a single thing (they did the essential but IMHO less fun work of clearing up our smashing). But there they were, covered in dust and sweat, dodging flying boards and falling cabinets, the detritus of disaster. And inexplicably, there was joy - in doing hard work for people we would likely never see again for nothing but a thank you.

I noticed that their attitude was radically different than my paranoid friend's. Paranoia is a bit like cancer: it spreads in a person's mind until it consumes everything: every person is suspect, every event a portent, the whole world a threat. I realized that this is what terminal narcissism looks like....the total focus on self, so extreme that its victims can't even function. There is no joy there - nothing but terror and chaos. And I recognize that in my life: the times when I was most focused on myself were often miserable while when I chose (or was forced) to focus on things greater than myself and on others I was happier.

At this point you're probably thinking "that's what Jesus told us 2000 years ago, knucklehead", "Love your God with all your heart and soul and mind (aka: 'the Greater') and Love your neighbor as yourself' (aka 'the others')" and you would be right.

I think this overfocus on ourselves, this 'cultural narcissism' is what has been happening to all of us. We've become more and more focused on our private entertainments, on our own petty concerns and on our status as victims. And it is making us miserable.  Perhaps Harvey was sent to remind us of this central truth:

"Whoever seeks to save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for My sake will keep it."