Letters from Kamp Krusty

Terminally Unhip

In "Almost Famous", Lester Bangs gives us a great line, (HT: Seth): 

The only true currency in this bankrupt world … is what you share with someone else when you’re uncool.

To that end, I give you a Top Five List:  Reasons I'm Profoundly Uncool.

I could go well beyond five, of course, but I'm hoping you'll play along.  It occurs to me now, having already written the below, that I neglected to mention that I play the flute, once thought I was cool for wearing a bandana around my ankle, own a minivan, and last week tripped and fell, for no apparent reason, while jogging. 

Friends, I recently broke my pinkie, which prevented me from playing my accordion.  That sentence -- I shudder at the sentence I just typed -- should suffice.  But here you go:

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1.  I do stuff like this. 

2.  I've got this, and it's very pronounced.  I was born with it, and frankly, it's made me somewhat shy in person.  To compensate for the condition, which causes pronounced eye movement, my head moves involuntarily.  The compensatory head movement has creeped people out my entire life, but I can't control it, and it allows me to do fun things including, but not limited to, seeing straight.

How severe is it?  I went to the University of Illinois on a full-ride scholarship for the handicapped, or disabled, or however it's to be put.  Only once have I met someone with the same condition, with the same severity, and he was defined by it.  Couldn't play sports, couldn't drive, and he continually made reference to his, and by extension my, freakishness. 

I read in wikipedia that one actor has the condition.  And it says, quoting here, "A typical adjective used describe the appearance of actor Pruitt Taylor Vince's nystagmus is 'creepy'." 

Thanks.

I tend to forget about it -- but not for long.  I'm snapped out of forgetfulness, quickly, when the gas station clerk says, "Yeah?  And you're problem is...?" or the grocery store lady says, "What's the matter with YOU?" because I'm unwittingly shaking my head "no".   This happens all the time.

I've grown up trying to get in and out of social situations without much eye contact, and I enjoy not being seen.  This may explain why I'm in radio.

But I didn't let it stop me from playing sports, which leads me to...

3.  I never got a hit in eight years of organized baseball.  Eight...years.  And no hits.  I batted 0 for holy-crap-I-don't-even-want-to-think-about-it.

I did hit the ball once.  Once.  Some kid caught it for an out.  It was a blazing fastball, too.  I'll never forget that pitcher.  The pitcher's name was Tricia.

I played basketball, too.  I got off the bench long enough to take one shot, total, in my career. 

It went backward.

4.  I go to other hemispheres to help the afflicted, apparently through Komedy like this.

5.  In high school, I was the president of the Illinois Student Librarians Association.  You will not find it on the net, because, after 80 years of thriving, it voted to dissolve under my leadership.

We had two annual conventions:  The "Fall Convention" was to plan the "Spring Convention."  The "Spring Convention", however, was to plan for the "Fall Convention."

Also true:  We played Dewey Decimal bingo.

Your turn.

Gimme Three Steps

Say what you want:  Dude sold 70 million books.  70.  Million.

So if you get a chance to talk to Jerry Jenkins, you take it, even if you haven't read the Left Behind books.  You ask the obvious.

How do I write a story?

He says there are two steps.  You think of an interesting character, and then you sit down and write about stuff happening to him.  That's it, partner.  And that's three steps, really, if you count the sitting down part.

You just invent a guy, and start makin' stuff up. 

It's that simple, he says.  Of course, I don't do it, because it frightens me.  I'm afraid my story will be stupid.  I'm also afraid I'll be handcuffed, mentally, by the imagined expectations of my imaginary audience of friends, peers, and intellectual heroes.

"That's what the first quarter-million words are for," he said.  "Then, once you get them out of your head -- your friends, your mom, your critics -- you can actually sit down and write."

A quarter-million words!  That's enough to take Rachel Ray through an entire half-hour show.  It's daunting.  But I want to try this make-it-up-as-you-go-along thing.  Respect the series or not, accept its theology or no (I don't) -- people turn the pages.  Jenkins says he enjoys Stephen King, and that's how Stephen does it.

I'd like to try, but I just...I don't know.  Truth is, as I've told Carolyn a few times, I don't enjoy writing, but I enjoy having written.

Imagine my artistic rapture when he responded to my, "Jerry, you're constantly churning this stuff out.  You must love writing, right?"

"No.  I don't enjoy writing.  What I enjoy is having written."

The Real Atheists Club

I don't think atheists are bad people.  Not at all.  This video is, I guess, making a point about what wonderful people atheists can be.  They're "not so bad", it says -- they can be smart and generous and good spouses and all that. 

Well, let's see:  Duh.

(If you watch it, do look past the way it bungles the meaning of the word, "fool", which is kinda...foolish.  We were all young, once.)

Of course, I've never thought atheists were bad people.  I don't think atheists are necessarily hedonists, or can't have great marriages, or don't make good parents.  I don't think that at all. 

I just don't think atheists exist.

People who say there is no God?  They exist.  And some of them are some of the coolest people you'll ever meet.  And moral, too.  They think killing an innocent person for no reason is wrong, period.  They think lying to friends just for personal gain is wrong, period.  They can be very other-centered, compassionate, charitable, and merciful.  You might even say some atheists are some of the most upstanding people you'll meet.

Shoot, it's almost like -- no, it's exactly like -- at some level, they believe in God.

Frequently, I'll mention on-air (as a challenge, really, to Christians) Dallas Willard's wisdom:  What you believe isn't what you say you believe, what you really believe is what you do.

And sometimes, what you do gives you away, right?

I agree with J. Budziszewski of UTexas (who's really agreeing with C.S. Lewis, for starters) that there are some things we just can't not know.  Take any freshman ethics course, and you'll be struck by the god-free attempts to find some basis for our in-common sense of what's right.  They're "elegant contrivances", to be sure:  systems developed to somehow, some way, explain this nagging sense that we all have, universally, for justification.  It's inescapable, though, that none of these contrivances make any sense, or have any ultimate grounding, if we're here by happenstance.  None.  (Trust me, I've searched, asked, debated people who make their living arguing for their atheism.  There's no binding response coming, becaause it doesn't exist.)

Am I saying atheists are lying about their atheism?   Not really.  Denial is a pretty well-established concept in psychology.   I practice it in subtle ways, daily.  (Another post.)

Just check the polls on morality.  Pollsters will ask something like, "Do you agree that ultimately, what's 'right' or 'wrong' is up to the individual, that there's no absolute truth that transcends us?"  And they'll find a large percentage will say "Yes, I agree with that."  People will say that, but no one actually believes it.  Thankfully, we know this from their behavior, and the way they'll properly consider wrong -- just plain wrong -- the actions of racists, or sexual predators. 

They say something, they think they believe it! -- but they don't believe it.  They're not lying to the pollster.  It happens.  Denial is complex.

Irony:  The video's parade of "goodness" from atheists doesn't make the case for atheism, it makes the case for Goodness.  If we're cosmic accidents, it simply makes no sense to make this appeal if we don't know what "good" means. 

I already know the counter-arguments.  "But we're only saying that society has determined these things are 'good', and we can do those things, too, and..."  Yes, of course.  But I'm actually giving you more credit than, "You just go with the societal flow, here..."  I'm saying these are real, and deep, convictions, deeper than some contract with society we never signed, deeper than some utilitarian point-system someone came up with that binds no one, deeper than a majority vote. 

These are things we can't not know.  We've never stopped knowing them, we just lost our confidence that we can know them.

We all know.  Every society in the history of man has acknowledged some transcendence.  Sigmud Freud, who said belief in God was wish-fulfillment, nevertheless spent his life reacting, personally and professionally, to this God Who Did Not Exist.  Uber-Krusty Richard Dawkins (handled nicely here) tries, vainly, to contrive meaning in a universe without God, even as he mocks believers for refusing to face the cold wind of truth.

Atheists don't exist.  All of us are quite obviously desperate for a very deep justification.  Desperate, and our consciences will stop at nothing to get it.   That need for justification shouldn't be there.  So why does Dawkins have it? 

The cold wind of truth is this:  Contrive away, but it's just your lonely contrivance.  Without transcendence, meaning is up for grabs, which is another way of saying, there isn't any.  There is matter and physical law, and that's it, no more.  There's no binding reason to object to cruelty to humans or animals.  We can contrive neat little stories, but ultimately, there's no point to hope, or love.

And really no one, including, very obviously, Richard Dawkins, believes that.

Because what you really believe is what you do, right?