What's Next?

Okay, so maybe I don’t post too often here, but when I do, I try to make it worthwhile. This particular jeremiad comes as a result of trying to answer an existential question from my 12-year old son (“Is there a Heaven for us when we die?”) without compromising what I believe, and without bumming him out. I think I accomplished both, but it left me with a whole lotta thoughts, which I’ve tried to organize here ...

Seeing as how we humans are, as far as we know, the only creatures on the planet (maybe in the universe, for that matter, though I personally think the odds are against us being unique, what with 100 billion stars in this galaxy alone, and 100 billion galaxies of similar size just in that part of the universe that we can see) that live in awareness of four dimensions instead of just three, it makes sense that we spend a lot of time wondering What’s Next. And, since we don’t know What’s Next, we also spend a lot of time making up stories about What’s Next. In other words, the afterlife.

(Just to make sure we’re all on the same papyrus here, when I say “afterlife”, I mean the continuation of some immortal, usually immaterial form of consciousness, with memories and thoughts more or less intact. Not reincarnation, which is the supposed continuation of consciousness in a new physical form, albeit with memories of past lives usually blocked by death and/or birth trauma, and not some kind of gestalt entity that’s metaphysically more than the sum of various individuals. I mean, purely and simply, the soul -- the continued existence of the mind after the body has gone kerflooie.)

We’ve had various legends and beliefs about life after death ever since we stopped getting our knuckles dusty, if not before. Cro-Magnon cave art in Altamira, Lascaux and bunches of other prehistoric timeshares attest to this. Contrary to popular belief, religions didn’t start out simple and get more complicated as civilizations did. If you want proof, just take a stroll through the Fields of Aaru, ancient Egypt’s version of Heaven -- if you can get in, that is. First you have to be mummified, an excruciatingly drawn-out process involving, among other indignities, having your brain scooped out through your nose. (Of course, being already dead makes it easier, I suppose.) Then you have your heart weighed by Anubis; if your ticker’s no heavier than a feather, you get to pass Go; if not, it’s eaten by Ammit the Devourer, a demon made of equal parts lion, hippo and crocodile. Ouch. And once you get past Anubis, it’s still many a long kilo to Paradise, along a road beset with cranky, knife-wielding demons. And you thought Saint Peter’s Pearly Gates was a tough room.

We can debate the excesses and foolishness of various belief systems until the holy cows come home -- there’s something to offend everybody in doing that. Nor am I above going for the cheap laugh (e.g., Scientology). But what I want to explore is the notion of the survival of the soul after death. It all comes down to two questions:

1) How much evidence is there for an afterlife, and --
2) How much evidence is there against?

The answer to the first question is easy: Zero. Nada. Zip.
The answer to the second is easy, too: Oodles.

So, first off -- what objective evidence (remember, according to the Scientific Method a hypothesis must be testable, and the way it’s tested is through means that are empirical and measurable) is there for life after death?

None.

At this point, most people immediately point indignantly quivering fingers at NDEs (Near Death Experiences). They mention the commonality of such experiences, which surely serves as proof for those not too blind to see. After all, if one dying person sees a glowing tunnel with a numinous light at the end, that could just be the last gasp of oxygen-starved tissue, but if a whole buncha people have in essence the same experience (minor details, like your mileage, may vary), then that’s proof, right? Can I get an “Amen!”?

Well, no. It could be the Local to Harpland, but it could also simply be that the brain is hardwired to create such hallucinations at the moment that our mortal coils get shuffled off. (Having done my share -- and probably yours, too -- of woo-hoo drugs, I’m personally convinced that this is the way to bet -- but I still acknowledge that I have no proof of this.) Still, the commonality of NDEs don’t mean doodley-squat, since they’re all subjective. If I see someone about to die get on the last train to Croaksville, then they’ve got my attention. Plus a lot of Hosannas.

Okay, so what about the evidence against? Simple - so simple that it’s practically impossible to believe so many millions can willfully ignore it. We’ve mapped and charted every last bit of the brain, and we know what mental functions correspond to where. (And don’t even start with that crap about only using ten percent of the brain. The only people that’s true for are the yokels who believe it in the first place.) More importantly for this argument, we know that damage to the brain’s physical sites causes corresponding damage to the mind.

And that’s it. We’re done. Case closed.

We know that ischemic strokes can cause infarctions that starve the brain of oxygen, and a direct result of this can be mental impairment. We know that brain trauma can cause a near-infinite variety of cognitive dysfunctions, sensory impairment, paralysis and other problems. We know that damage to the frontal lobes causes problems with sequencing tasks, lability, aphasia; that parietal injury can cause troubles with reading, writing, mathematical ability and coordination; that temporal lobe trauma can cause memory loss, asexuality and aggression.

To name but a few.

So -- if we are possessed of immortal souls that are bound to our physical forms during life, yet can somehow be cast, free and unharmed, from the brain’s mooring at the moment of death, does it make any sense whatsoever that, up until that moment, physical brain injury can cause devastating consequences to the mind?

We all die. It’s the single universal experience shared by every one of us (I’m not counting birth, since we’re not really conscious beyond a rudimentary stage when we’re born). But we all die, and, if religion is to be believed, we’re all conscious in some form or other beyond the veil. All of us, including the greatest savants and thinkers of our species. If there is a world beyond, then it includes such minds as Einstein, Archimedes, Edison, da Vinci ... a list much too long to even begin to inventory. And we can assume that, in that vast assemblage of knowledge and ability, there must be a few who are interested in letting those of us who are still alive know what to expect in the afterlife.

So I can’t help but wonder:

With the greatest minds in all of human history backing the project for centuries, with brilliance unparalleled in both theoretical and practical applications -- in short, with access to the best and brightest think tank ever -- why hasn’t anybody been able to come up with a more sophisticated way of telling us What’s Next than the Ouija Board?

Not-So-Instant Karma

So, I see that O. J. Simpson has been sentenced to 20-to-life on a robbery/kidnap charge.

(A brief parenthetical rant here: I hate the whole concept of prisons and imprisonment. Not from a reformer’s POV, but from a practical one: they don’t work. Never have. They epitomize, as far as I’m concerned, the human predilection for dealing with chronic problems by hiding them or throwing them away -- out of sight, out of mind. As a result we have prisons that are overcrowded and unutterably cruel criminal factories that can take a young man going in for drug possession or the like and turn him into a hardened killer by the time he’s paroled.

So how to deal with that element of society instead? Simple: rehabilitation therapy, including Schedule 1 empathogens like MDMA, which have been shown repeatedly to have very high success rates. I know it's not a perfect answer, but at least it's a humane alternative to institutionalization. For the small minority who are just irretrievably evil -- well, now that DNA testing has proven to be virtually foolproof in fitting the criminal to the crime, and if all other ways have been exhausted -- then execute them.

What? I told you I wasn’t a reformer. Besides, given a choice between life imprisonment in a max security hellhole and death, I know which one I’d pick. And it wouldn’t be a hard choice.)

All that said, I must say that if anyone deserves the Big House, it’s the Juice. It’s a kinda delicious irony that his sentencing occurs smack on the 13th anniversary of his beating the previous rap. As others have said, he should have no trouble finding “real” murderers galore Inside ...

Lies, Damned Lies, and Lipstick

Keith Olbermann said if Sarah Palin is elected, that “We will all, three hundred and five million of us, have to evacuate the country.”

Maybe that’s being a little harsh on Palin. Maybe her belief that, for example, humans and dinosaurs co-existed isn’t just pure blatant creationism. After all, in the latter case, science has pretty much settled on birds being direct descendents of theropod dinosaurs. So that’s true. Kinda.

And maybe it’s not that she can’t name a newspaper or magazine she’s recently read -- maybe she won’t. After all, constant vigilance is the price of democracy. You never know if the liberal media are going to pounce on her constitutional right to get her facts from, say, the Watchtower.

If McCain and Palin win this election, I’d recommend leaving not just the country, but the planet.

Divine Enervation

At one point in my life, I owned three houses. Now I own none. This used to depress me. Now I feel a great sense of relief.

See? Something good can come out of the housing crisis.

I have all the interest in politics, the economy and related matters of a flash-frozen frog, but when it comes down to a choice between a candidate who’s young, obviously capable of keeping more than one ball in the air, and who seems to seriously put the welfare of the country ahead of everything else, even his own desire to win -- and a candidate who’s about one Lawry’s Special away from apoplexy and whose second in command has next to no experience, and whose oversized glasses shine with the reflection of oncoming headlights when asked a question out of a grade-school primer (not to mention both of them espousing a political philosophy that would make Torquemada blink), even I can do the remedial math.

The Fundamentalists keep telling us that God’s on our side, and this is meant to be comforting. I find it flat-out terrifying. What with the economy, the climate, the wars (note plural, please) and a plethora of other crises, God’s track record so far hasn’t exactly been 100%. Bottom line is that we can’t afford any more of God’s help. And we sure as hell can’t afford leaders who put their trust and the welfare of the country in His hands.

Shake, Shake, Shake ...

It’s been over two weeks since I’ve posted anything, which is about par for me. It’s extremely hard for me to type most of the time, so I have to triage my time at the keyboard. Also, I decided that it would be better to wait until I had something to say, rather than just post for the sake of posting. Sorry about that.

I said in my last post that I would talk about the young-onset Parkinson’s retreat Debbie and I went to. I was pleasantly surprised to see most folks vibrant and active, rather than defeated. This is something I have to struggle with greatly, since one of PD’s most insidious (and, it’s tempting to say, invidious) aspects is the way it saps one’s will and induces passivity. It is a struggle to get out of bed every morning, both physically and mentally. I have to triumph over my recalcitrant body and its stiffness and refusal to do what I tell it to, as well as this powerful depression and ennui that produce a reluctance to do the everyday chores and tasks that an adult has to do -- pay bills, shop, etc. So it was quite interesting to meet other sufferers and learn the various techniques and tricks they play on themselves in order to do what needs to be done.

The most common one is one I’ve done myself for many years, with varying rates of success. Basically, if I start thinking about all the many things that I must accomplish during the day, I become (sometimes; not every day, thank God), so totally overwhelmed as to be virtually paralyzed. I simply can’t face doing all this. Forget it.

But I can get up and brush my teeth. After I’m up, I usually make the bed, because that makes it harder to just get back in it, for some reason. Then I get dressed. And so on through the day, one task at a time. It’s important to find the balance between not being overwhelmed by the enormity of the day and not being consumed by each picayune task.

This is how most PWP (and, I’m sure, most people in general), get through each day. I suspect it’s a little harder when your body has to be prodded into each individual movement that most people do automatically. But I’m certainly not claiming that PWP have a monopoly on this kind of existential life.

Some days you get the bear, some days the bear gets you, as they say. Some days the bear just sits on you, completely immobilizing you. Those days are the worst.

Out Among Them English

I am off tomorrow, together with my girlfriend, the marvelous Debbie, (whom I cannot say enough good things about and so, to date, have said none; a backhanded compliment if ever there was one), to an annual fete of young-onset Parkinson's People. Those who know me even a little bit know that for me to go to such a thing, especially with my voice still not working, is about as likely as a ... well, as an extremely clever metaphor for an extremely unlikely thing. And truth to tell, I wouldn't be going except for Debbie's insistence that I get out of the apartment and mingle with real people. I am still highly doubtful about this entire undertaking, and intend (at the moment, anyway), to hide in my room and snarl and snap at anyone foolish enough to stick his hand through the bars. I'll let you know the outcome of all this.

(The post's title, BTW, is a line from Witness which has become a catchphrase within my family. It is, I trust, self-explanatory.)

Let Marion Go!

As I was saying ...

Every fanboy knows the origin of the T-shirt slogan, “Han Shot First!” George made for a lot of disgruntled would-be spice smugglers when he re-cut Star Wars: A New Hope so as to have Greedo shoot first in the bar scene. By doing so, as anybody with even a rudimentary storytelling ability knows, he cut Han’s story arc off at the knees. By shooting first, Han Solo is shown to be at best pragmatic and at worst downright ruthless; definitely a character who looks out for number one and sticks his neck out for nobody when first introduced. By the movie’s end he’s transformed into a moral person who realizes that there are causes greater than himself and is willing to put himself in jeopardy to see them through. A thoroughly satisfying character change, and, for my money, one of the most satisfying parts of the movie.

Indiana Jones, in Raiders Of the Lost Ark, shares a great many traits in common with Han Solo, not the least of which is that they’re both played by the same actor. In Raiders, Indy is shown early on to be a shallow douchebag, as evidenced by the way Marion says he seduced her when she was a teenager and then, one assumes, ditched her. Indy has a decision to make early on, when he stumbles across Marion, bound and gagged in a tent at the Nazi desert encampment. His first impulse is to release her, but then he realizes that if she’s discovered missing, his chance to recover the Ark will be compromised. So he leaves her there to face possible Nazi torture. Pretty high on the asshole meter, if you ask me.

So now let’s chapter-skip to the third act, in which Indy pulls a bazooka and threatens to blow up the Ark unless Marion is released. So far, so good. But when Belloq calls his bluff --- he folds, and whatever growth the character had is lost. (And don’t give me “But he had to give it up or they wouldn’t have opened it at the end” don’t give me that. I can think of a hundred ways to get the story back on track for the big Deus Ex Machina at the end, and so can you.)

It really puzzles me why there aren’t just as many T-shirts being worn at cons that say “Let Marion Go!” (or some similar sentiment) as there are “Han Shot First” ones. It’s just as egregious an error in storytelling, in my opinion.