Lefty Parent » Transcendence

Drive: Self-Direction, Mastery & the Purpose Motive

Cooper Zale — Mon, 05 Jul 2010 18:46:59 +0000

Click here to view the embedded video.

Commenting on my blog “Much More and Much Less than a Boss” on Daily KOS, Alpha99 put up a link to a video on YouTube that they thought I would appreciate called “Drive: The surprising truth about what motivates us”, done by Daniel Pink, who writes about business and human motivation, based on his book by the same name. I played it and was practically mesmerized by this visually captivating and provocative piece, done on a white board with markers and a rapid-fire voiceover by Pink. The issues it calls out are a perfect illustration of what I see as the transformative shift going on in our culture from the hierarchical control model to more of an egalitarian circle of equals.

At the beginning of the video piece, Pink’s voiceover sets things up as follows…

Our motivations are unbelievably interesting. The science is a little surprising. We are not as endlessly manipulable and predictable as you would think. There is a whole set of unbelievably interesting studies that call into question the idea that if you reward something you get more of the behavior you want and if you punish something you get less.

Overdoing it a bit with the adverbs perhaps, but his verbal enthusiasm is contagious. Pink is saying that current research (he cites two MIT studies and refers to a larger body of parallel findings) is challenging some of the assumptions of behavioral theory (carrots and sticks, the power of rewards and punishments to compel us to do better) that are at the heart of some of the key conventional wisdom of economics and management science.

You can watch the video to get an elegantly simple and visually engaging white-board presentation of these MIT studies on motivation. The first involved MIT students as the subjects and the follow-up people in rural India, and the objective was to see to what degree different levels of monetary reward would motivate people to accomplish various tasks, some mechanical and some cognitive. But he states the gist of the findings as…

As long as the task involved only mechanical skill, bonuses worked as they expected, the higher the pay the higher the performance. Once the task called out for rudimentary cognitive skill, a larger reward led to poorer performance.

I am a great believer in, “What’s good for the goose and gander is good for the goslings”, that is, applying the wisdom of what is true for adults to children and youth as well. So the wisdom that Pink is calling out regarding the “management” of adults seems to me consistent with what Alfie Kohn has found in his critique of the conventional approach to rewards and punishments (“Punished by Rewards”, etc) in the educational and parenting arenas. To the extent that the development of a young person, including any formal education they might have, involves learning a set of mechanical tasks (say even the “Three Rs”), then external motivators (good grades, gold stars, praise, etc) may be effective.

But beyond that, getting into the area of cognitive development (certainly a key stated goal of any 21st Century educational institution) then those same external motivators are probably not being effective. Consistent with that failure would be the problem highlighted by studies showing a majority of high school students bored with their educational process (see my piece “Engaging High School Youth in Their Own Education”).

So then using the conclusions of this research as his evidence, Pink states what I find to be a fascinating conclusion about the role of money in motivation…

Fact is money is a motivator, but in a slightly strange way. If you don’t pay enough, people won’t be motivated. … But the best use of money as a motivator is if you pay people enough to take the issue of money off the table. You pay people enough so they are not thinking about the money but about the work.

I intuitively get this, but I have never been able to put it so succinctly and clearly. As Pink points out it smacks a bit of communism rather that capitalism, as in, “Each according to their abilities, each according to their needs”. From the perspective of my own life, give me what I need (a living wage) and I can relax and give you the best of what I have to give. Because I’ve been blessed with being able to develop skills that pay well in the workforce (taking money off the table) I have been able to focus on quality of life, balance, and more intrinsic motivators.

So in Pink’s progressive, humanistic approach to designing the workplace, if you can take money off the table…

There are three factors that science has found lead to better performance and personal satisfaction – autonomy, mastery and purpose.

Pink is saying that years of social science research confirm that once your basic needs are met people naturally strive for the autonomy to direct their own lives in the direction of achieving mastery of things that are of interest to them, towards the goals of having and fulfilling broader individual and/or community purposes.

He makes a profound critique of the business concept of “management” which he sees as the opposite of autonomy and engagement, the more natural human state that brings out the best of higher cognitive skills…

Autonomy is the desire to be self-directed, to direct our own lives. But traditional definitions of management run afoul of this. Management is great if you want compliance, but if you want engagement, which is what we want in the workforce today as people are doing more complicated, more sophisticated things, self-direction is better.

Again, I am tempted to broaden the reach of this to challenge our conventional notions of how our youth should be educated. The administrators and teachers seem to be focused on managing the educational process rather than seeking student engagement in their own learning process, which according to the research, fully leverages the higher cognitive processes, the development of which is one of the key stated goals of our education system.

The conventional practice of management, as he sees it used in business (and I am extrapolating to schools as well), relies on an underlying assumption that people are innately lazy and inert, and need to be pushed to make something of themselves. Instead, Pink acknowledges the natural human “urge to get better at stuff… because it’s fun and if you get better at it it’s satisfying.

Finally in this video, Pink cites examples that he says illustrate the creative power of these natural urges toward autonomy and mastery, particularly when combined with a higher purpose. He calls out the examples of the development of the Linux operating system (which now runs one quarter of the servers in Fortune 500 companies), Apache web server software (key to the development of the World Wide Web), and Wikipedia (the free open-source encyclopedia).

As Pink frames it in his voiceover on the video…

You gat a bunch of people from around the world who do highly skilled work, but they’re willing to do it for free and volunteer their time maybe 20 or 30 hours a week. But then what they create they give it away rather than sell it.

Pink identifies “the purpose motive” as a profound challenge to the conventional wisdom of economics about the dominance of the profit motive, and a key element to business (and human) success going forward…

When the profit motive becomes unmoored from the purpose motive bad things happen, bad things ethically sometimes. But also bad things like crappy products, lame services and uninspiring places to work. When the profit motive is paramount or becomes completely unhitched from the purpose motive people don’t do great things… And that heralds something interesting. I think the companies that are flourishing, whether they’re profit, not for profit or something in between are animated by this purpose motive.

His final words summing up his video piece…

The big take-away here is if we start treating people like people and not assuming that they are simply horses… slower, smarter, better smelling horses. If we get past this kind of ideology and look at the science, I think we can actually build organizations and a work life that make us better off, but I also think they have the promise to make our world a little bit better.

Amen to that and so be it!

Embracing a Successful Anarchic Institution

Cooper Zale — Fri, 14 May 2010 21:00:33 +0000

I recently read a May 7 article in Education Week, “Embracing Wikipedia”, where author and science teacher Matthew Shapiro makes the case for Wikipedia as a research tool, particularly for students (and therefore I guess for any casual life-long learner), competing favorably (at least in Shapiro’s opinion) with the “Gold Standard” Encyclopedia Britannica.

Heads up folks… you might even want to sit down! Wikipedia uses an anarchic form of governance. In fact, though it may be a long time until “brick and mortar” institutions adopt it, this portable, adaptable and minimalist governance model, may well be one of the biggest trends of the 21st Century, particularly in cyberspace.

Anticipating some knee-jerk reactions, there is a perhaps subtle yet profound difference between the commonly used word “anarchy”, which most people use to describe chaos and confusion, and the governance model by the same root with the “y” removed and an “ism” added.

The Merriam-Webster online dictionary describes “anarchism” as…

A political theory holding all forms of governmental authority to be unnecessary and undesirable and advocating a society based on voluntary cooperation and free association of individuals and groups.

In the Wiktionary we get a somewhat different definition…

The political theory that a community is best organized by the voluntary cooperation of individuals, rather than by a government, which is regarded as being coercive by nature.

I have to laugh, since Wiktionary is an “open source” (like its encyclopedia cousin Wikipedia) dictionary that can be edited by anyone, but is generally maintained by a large informal “committee” of volunteers, which makes it in fact, an anarchic institution. No surprise then that its bias is to give the word anarchism a better spin, and take a poke at the competition in that last clause.
Wikipedia describes itself as a…

Free, web-based, collaborative, multilingual encyclopedia project supported by the non-profit Wikimedia Foundation. Its 15 million articles (over 3.2 million in English) have been written collaboratively by volunteers around the world, and almost all of its articles can be edited by anyone with access to the site.

Well anarchic institutions like Wikipedia, that are run informally be regular folks rather than formally by experts, don’t get much respect. Shapiro points out in his article that there are a fair amount of teachers that he works with discourage their students from using Wikipedia as a source, but he does not share their concern, saying…

Like any encyclopedia, the online resource Wikipedia is not a perfect reference guide; however, it is an excellent place for students to start the research process and has immense pedagogical value for teachers.

My son Eric, who left school at age 14 and continued pursuing his education on his own, became very versed in current events, history and other areas of knowledge by reading the online edition of the New York Times every day and looking up anything he read that caught his interest on Wikipedia, drilling down from article to article until he was satisfied he understood.

Speaking to its veracity relative to a traditional encyclopedia written by paid experts…

A recent study, published in Nature, showed that for every four errors found in Wikipedia, there were three errors found in the Encyclopedia Britannica. Yet that study was conducted in 2005, and since then those same Wikipedia entries have been subjected to intense online scrutiny. Each entry is assigned a discussion board to resolve disputes, and particularly contentious battles can be resolved by “admins.” These online arguments can actually improve the quality of the information.

That last statement by the author speaks to the possibility that a reference maintained by an informal (anarchic) web of volunteers can be better than one traditionally maintained. Going into more detail on this point he says…

When I worry about the accuracy of the information, I can check the citations (which are also hyperlinked) to separate fact from fiction. But in general, I don’t worry. After all, if people volunteer their free time to share their passions — whether it is for football or physics — chances are they know their stuff. Take the example of Vaughan Bell, a neuropsychologist at London’s Institute of Psychiatry. He has continually reworked the Wikipedia entry on schizophrenia, not because he is paid to do so, but rather because he is passionate about the topic.

Here the anarchic volunteer model may in fact be superior in our modern wired world, because it engages the passions of the people most interested in the topic around the world. Could this be an evolutionary model for our human race, moving from hierarchical institutions of top-down control toward more informal self-forming organizations based on love, the love of knowledge? Moving from Britannica to Wikipedia?

Even the Britannica cannot deny the value of online contributors, since its editors recently allowed their online encyclopedia to be modified by readers (although reader edits must go through a review board).

Wikipedia is just one example of a new generation of institutions that the anarchic Internet can spawn, harnessing the power of caring individuals all around the world and substituting un-paid volunteer passion for paid expertise.

This piece is more a rumination than a solidly argued position piece. But given my biases as a right-brained non-linear thinker, activist, and a person with a love of improvisation and not doing the same thing the same way twice, I like anarchism as a very useful governance model moving forward into this new century. Not perhaps for countries or such geographic entities, but maybe for the kind of emerging knowledge infrastructure that may mark this new information era.

Thoughts on Many “Religious” Paths

Cooper Zale — Wed, 14 Apr 2010 23:39:38 +0000

I believe we are approaching a developmental crossroads in the evolution of our human species, though we might be a little bit stuck and in need of some sort of inspirational push. With all the violent religious (and secular) fundamentalism in the past century, we need to come to a new covenant among more tolerant belief systems and traditions to accept “many paths”, acknowledging that your path through the transcending mysteries is just as appropriate for you as mine is for me. That is, as long as both of those paths follow a few basic principles, like the Golden Rule.

This was brought home to me when we took an old friend of the family (in Los Angeles briefly from back east) to our favorite neighborhood restaurant for dinner. She is a kind, gentle and thoughtful person, not ego-involved in the least. Though her religious beliefs are profoundly different than our own, getting cues that she would be willing to talk about those beliefs, our son Eric was brave enough to initiate and lead us through a discussion about our differing views of god, theology and tolerance of other beliefs.

I can’t recall what she said initially that put the subject out on the table, but Eric picked up on it and very respectfully asked her if she would be comfortable with him asking her some questions about her religious faith. She said she would be more than happy to and would like to ask us about ours (knowing us to be what politicians call “unbelievers” these days).

As an aside, I am still looking for a generic word that can encompass the belief systems of atheists and theists alike, to fill in the blank in the question, “What are your [blank] beliefs?” The first thing that comes to people’s mind is the word “religious”, though the word has connotations of participating in an organized denomination that is theistic.

But of course Buddhism is considered one of the world’s great religions yet belief in a deity is not a key part of its principles. I will sometimes say that my “religion” is Unitarian-Universalism (and most, but not all UUs would define this belief-system as a religion, even if they do not believe in deities). Depending on the situation, I often describe my religion as humanism (or even “Unitarian-Universalism-Humanism”, though that has so many syllables to verge on the ridiculous).

But then there are the people who would say that they don’t believe in any religion, and they aren’t necessarily all atheists. My mom for one always said that she believed in (and even talked to) “God”, though she also thought that organized religion was the scourge of the Earth.

Anyway… when asked by our out-of-town friend about his beliefs, our son Eric (who has participated in UU youth and young-adult groups for many years) said that he is an atheist, having found no evidence in his life that any deities exist. Our friend listened thoughtfully and with great interest.

I too sometimes define myself as an atheist (based on that same lack of evidence), but in this conversation I told our friend that I was a “humanist”. (I write the word without the capital “H” because I am not a member of any defined Humanist organization.) My choice of response to the religion question is generally political and calibrated to be the most effectively provocative. So in this conversation, “humanist” best characterized where I put my faith, compared to our friend, who many would call a “person of faith”.

In response to Eric’s inquiry, our friend shared that she believed in Jesus as her personal savior. Then he asked her about her beliefs regarding heaven and hell. She said that she was not sure what Heaven was, but she was sure it involved being “with God”. It followed that Hell was a place you would go and “not be with God”, which in her thinking, was as bad a place as there could be.

Then he asked her what she believes happens to people who don’t believe in God and don’t accept Jesus as their personal savior, including those who (through no decision/fault or their own) are never exposed to Jesus/God as a choice) and those (like him) who freely choose not to believe. Regarding the former group, she said she would expect God to be compassionate and give them the benefit of the doubt. Regarding the latter (including Eric), she said (as respectfully and apologetically as possible) that when they die they would not “be with God”.

The parameters of the conversation, as set down by Eric, were to explore each others beliefs but not challenge them. So we did not explore the ramifications of her statement that Eric and I “would not be with God”, which some would interpret as going to Hell.

It was a long and interesting discussion, in an area (theology) where most people fear (or wisely refrain) from going. Eric brought up “Pascal’s Wager” in the discussion. Pascal posited that if you nave nothing to lose if you believe in a god that turns out not to exist, but have much to lose if you don’t believe in a god that turns out to exist, so you might as well hedge your bets and believe. Eric and I were not taking that wager.

Thinking again about this conversation some weeks later, I do appreciate the precision of her language as to being (or not) “with God”. She did not say we were, “Going to Hell”, or even used the “Hell” word. But she sure felt we would be missing out, and spoke candidly to us in her engaging, respectful but steadfast way.

Why are our fundamental beliefs about the transcending mysteries of “Life, death and beyond” (sounds like a theological chain store…*g*) generally so difficult to talk about and avoided, like politics, in polite conversation? Isn’t this particularly problematic as our world becomes more of a “global village” where religious differences or various framings of “believers” versus “unbelievers” become such a source of discord and violence in our ever greater interconnection? Why can’t we all accept each other’s beliefs and acknowledge that there are “many paths” to heaven, the light, happiness, meaning, the greater service to humanity, the evolution of consciousness, or however one defines the point of living?

Does this rise to a level of crisis that is blocking or at least impeding our further human evolution? I think it does!

Many of us in the world today are convinced that our particular beliefs in those transcending mysteries are the right ones, and everyone else has it wrong (and may need to be redirected or otherwise dealt with by coercion or even violence by the deities, or us humans as their agents).

But all the rest of us that acknowledge that there can be “many paths” need to get together across the world and across the perceived chasms between various believers and unbelievers and build our covenant of “religious pluralism” (or whatever better words you could frame the concept with). We need to speak as confidently about this covenant as any person does who is convinced of the exclusive truth of their religious beliefs.

Acknowledging and championing “many paths”, whether we’re applying it to theology, education, or any other facet of human development, seems to me to be the key to our current impasse. One alternative would be to engage in a “culture war” (as some on the American right suggest), which ideally would just be more of a competition, but might become a more literal violent struggle. Another alternative is to build walls between us (good fences make good neighbors), agreeing to profoundly disagree and live separately and not interact.

“Many paths” may in fact be the most difficult of the options. For 180 years America has struggled with a public education system that, despite educational innovators and “alternatives”, always seems to move back to an OSFA (one-size-fits-all) system based on ever increasing standardization and regimentation. For at least 3000 years various “believers” have seen theirs as the one true faith, and commit themselves to spreading that truth to everyone else.

At a more personal level, since I don’t believe that a god or gods exists, how can I find a way to accept that those who do believe are not deluded?

How can we move to new ground (or return to old ground as theologian Karen Armstrong would argue) that a single “God”, “Goddess”, pantheon of deities, “the universe”, or however we frame it is just a metaphor for a deeper reality that we share but can’t (or at least don’t) fully know? We are all journeying and wrestling with these transcending mysteries as we make meaning of “life, the universe and everything”, and thus have many different “takes”, abstractions or models of what it’s all about.

Enough said for now… I would really be interested in your take on this.

Coming of Age at the Laundromat

Cooper Zale — Tue, 06 Apr 2010 20:49:22 +0000

n 1971, when I was sixteen years old and still living with my mom and younger brother Peter in Ann Arbor, our old washing machine in the basement broke down and my mom (who could barely pay the regular bills) decided she could not afford to fix or replace it, at least not right away. Who would think this would be the catalyst for me to have a transforming experience.

Tears in her eyes, she pulled the wet clothes out of the broken-down and leaking washer and threw them in a plastic laundry basket. Her life was already heavy on her shoulders, a divorced single parent with two teenage kids, suffering from depression, and just barely paying bills on the child-support payment from my dad. Having to take laundry to the Laundromat (until she could somehow magically move the money pots around in her budget to get a new washer) felt like the last straw.

She stared me straight in the eyes with a look of desperation and said, “I just can’t take this anymore.” I was afraid and not sure what to say, not sure how I could help. I did not like feeling this way. I did not want to hear what I was afraid she would say next about life not being worth living.

“Would you mind taking these to the laundromat, Coop? It’s right across the street from the A&P. The dryer still works, so when they come out of the wash just throw them back in the hamper and bring them home.” I don’t think I had done more than one load of even my own laundry in my whole life, though my mom had talked me through the process once or twice.

I said okay, grateful there was something I could do for this person who I was grudgingly accepting as another human being like me (rather than some iconic parental figure to constantly rebel against). She explained about separating whites from colors and how to use the powder detergent and the liquid fabric softener. I loaded everything in the trunk of our car, pocketed the five dollars she gave me to feed the machines, and headed off. I was always glad to have an excuse to get out of the house when my mom got this way.

My first time at the Laundromat I think I was the only male there. There were a couple women my mom’s age going through the motions with sad eyes, which looked at me somewhat inquisitively as I entered carrying the plastic laundry basket. Our machine at home was the typical top-loader, but here I had the choice of front and top loaders.

Initially I stuck with what I knew, found two top-loaders side by side, and sorted the basket full of clothes into them. I managed to figure out how to use the change machine (which luckily was working) to get the quarters I needed to fire up the machines. I had plenty of change with which I could invest in a candy bar and a can of soda. (We weren’t that poor!) I sat in the driver’s seat of our car in the laundromat parking lot, with my feet out the open door, listening to the car radio as I consumed my Coke and Snickers, noted that the sun had gone down, and thought about life.

It was the first of numerous times I took our family’s dirty clothes to the laundromat over the next five years to wash but not dry it. We never did get that washer fixed or replaced. I had been taking out the trash, making my own meals, and occasionally went to the Food & Drug to buy my mom a pack of cigarettes (with a note) and a six-pack of Tab (for her fix), but other than that I had been doing very little to help out around the house.

I felt good at the laundromat, like I was in a little bubble of peace of mind with all the stresses and strains of life (my own, my brother’s and my mom’s) swirling around beyond it. I could not solve my mom’s problems with depression, loneliness, finances, anger at my dad, lack of self-esteem, and the rest of the load she carried. I could barely move forward on my own issues of self-esteem, not feeling genuine, and not knowing what direction to take my own life after high school. But for those few hours a week when I was getting the family’s clothes washed, I felt no one (including me) could fault how I was spending my time.

I did not passive-aggressively resist this task and make my mom pester me each time to do it (like I had with taking out the trash, see that post). I accepted it as a starting point to move away from frustrating self-absorption toward a more caring persona where I was a contributing member of circles of people beyond myself.

It was a more “grown up” frame of reference, my coming of age as it were. There was no religious or secular ceremony where I stood before a congregation and declared and demonstrated that I was ready to be an adult. There was only a gangly sixteen-year-old presenting a plastic bin of clean wet clothes to his mom so she could throw them in the dryer.

Saint Gotthard Tunnel

Cooper Zale — Sat, 02 Jan 2010 21:46:43 +0000

Nearly two months into my European odyssey, on a train from northern Italy to Switzerland, a weary traveler and somewhat of a lost soul, I entered what I recall as the Saint Gotthard Tunnel, under the Alps, and emerged into a completely transformed world and a new chapter in my existential journey with fresh insight into the human condition. (Note that I may have actually gone through a different tunnel of comparable length, as noted by someone who read this piece with a good knowledge of Western European railway geography, though at the time that was my recollection.)

It was early November, 1973, when I boarded the train in Venice headed across Northern Italy then under the Alps to Interlaken, Switzerland. My now lengthy trip was beginning to feel like one long ordeal and I was pretty tired out and longing to go home, yet determined not to do so until my money ran out. Add to my own personal ennui having spent the last few nights in Venice, a city that has a history of romantic ennui with its soot-stained brick piazzas, copious pooping pigeons, and looking like it had been raised out of the Adriatic and still in need of having the water damage cleaned up.

I recall the train left first thing in the morning on a sunny day with a temperature in the fifties. It was mid-afternoon before we reached the famous tunnel, an astonishing nine miles long, dug under the Alps between 1871 and 1881 at the cost of at least 200 worker’s lives lost. The sun still shone in a cloudless sky when we entered the south end of the tunnel, and though the actual time might have only been about ten or fifteen minutes, in my spent psychological state it seemed like quite a while, long enough at least for the blackness to capture my attention and my imagination.

Alone, rattling along in the all-encompassing blackness, a sense of dread flowed through me that the world, or at least my world, had suddenly ended. It was a month earlier on my trip that I had watched on German television the start of the Arab-Israeli Six-Day War, and then met an American soldier on a train, called back to his base to counter an imminent Russian military move against Israel. It all felt like the world was coming apart with me right in the middle of it an ocean away from home and family. And still the train careened down its path under the world.

From total blackness the train emerged from the north end of the tunnel into the other extreme, a white-out blizzard with thousands of large snow flakes impacting against the window of my train car. I recall it was ten or fifteen more minutes before I could see anything but white out that window, as the train found its way out of the snow squall. From my now cozy seeming compartment I could see a winter wonderland of evergreen trees punctuated by the occasional wood and stone houses all decorated in a thick icing of fresh snow. The train finally pulled into the station at Interlaken, my intermediate destination and transfer point to another train that would take me up to the mountain town of Grindewald.

I only had time to buy and eat some way to expensive railroad station food before I boarded my train to my final destination. The snow continued outside at a less frenetic pace as the train climbed upward into the mountains, stopping at every little village along the way. It was late afternoon and the end of the school day, and at every stop dozens of Swiss school kids either boarded or debarked from the train. They sat in the seats all around me, with their rosy cheeks, brightly colored hats and backpacks, laughing and chattering in what sounded to me like German, full of energy and enthusiasm for the daily adventure of the ride home from school.

I was a lonely soul surrounded by all this joyous youthful energy and hope for the future, and the irony of this scene was not lost on me. I had my reasons to be sad and reflective, but the world was full of other people with reasons for hope and joy. The view of the Swiss winter wonderland out the window was appropriately stunning and I was headed to what by all accounts was a gorgeous little town at the base of one of the world’s most photogenic and storied peaks. Not enough perhaps to get this eighteen-year-old to shelve his angst, but enough at least to give his darkened places glimmers of hope.

I arrived in Grindewald in the early evening and checked in to my youth hostel. On its upstairs balcony I looked out over the valley below at the lights of the town, though darkness and clouds obscured the view of the Eiger across the valley from my location. Like most youth hostels I stayed at I found other English-speaking older youth and young adults to talk, swap stories and even venture into town for a beer with. My extreme wave of angst had passed through me and moved on for now.

The next morning brought blue sky instead of clouds, and out on the hostel’s balcony, there across the little valley where the town nestled, was the amazingly huge mountain, with its jagged peaks gleaming white and silver and filling half the sky. I had somehow found my way, on my own, to one of the most spectacularly beautiful places in the world with a whole lifetime of additional adventures ahead of me. Yes I was still homesick, but I knew at some level that I had the courage and the agency to seek out and find a place like this. Other destinations would be attainable in the future when I was ready to seek them.

Playing the Silver Ball

Cooper Zale — Fri, 16 Oct 2009 17:20:37 +0000

In the late 1970s during my last couple years in my hometown of Ann Arbor, inspired by that song from the Who’s rock opera “Tommy”, I became a pinball wannabe wizard, making time each day I was on campus for my college classes to drop a few dollars worth of quarters in the slot and transcend my muggle life into the world of metal spheres, plastic flippers, bumpers, targets, spinners and those accursed ball-eating gutters. Inspired by reading Ray Bradbury’s Dandelion Wine some years earlier, it was a time in my life where I was experimenting with living in the moment, at times aided by smoking marijuana, and beginning to wrestle with life at a more metaphysical level.

It was a profoundly simple and dazzling universe of exotic noises and lights highlighting the spectacular laws of kinetic physics guiding that iconic silver ball on its course (whoa… way too many adjectives!), a compelling game of skill that required a calm mind, hyper focus, extreme sensitivity and the ability to meld with the machine and bring it alive.

It was almost an erotic experience to drop a quarter in the slot, bringing the machine to life, and with skillful fingering of the buttons, urging the flippers to propel the ball ever upward to drop all the targets, find the right slots, holes and spinners to rack up your score till you cross that point threshold and the machine makes that great knock noise and racks you up a free game, the climax of your wizardry. There is also the interesting aspect of actually shaking the machine in an attempt to control the ball, without shaking it so hard that you trigger the mechanism which ends your game with a “tilt”.

I played mostly at a pinball arcade on Liberty Street in Ann Arbor called “The Cross-eyed Moose”. It was maybe a twenty-minute walk from my house and located in the midst of the campus part of downtown between the several buildings where I had classes and just a block from the Cottage Inn where I worked cooking pizzas on Friday and Saturday nights. Entering the threshold would bring that unique acoustic environment of boings, dings and clinks to my ears and I could feel my mind start to relax and reorient. It was the perfect visceral counterpoint to my college classes spent mostly sitting in seats taking notes and pondering abstract concepts in history or society outside of any real context.

The late 1970s was when the video arcade games began making their appearance to compete for quarters with pinball. First the minimalist Pong and then the more complex Pacman and Ms. Pacman, Donkey Kong and then generation after generation of more sophisticated games. As these electronic games entered the pinball arcades, with their simulated rather than real physics, I began to play them as well, find my favorites, and getting intoxicated (at times aided by marijuana) in turn by each of their simple and visually stunning worlds. I have always been enough of an adventurer and never been enough of a purist to reject the new, even though the silver ball and solenoid game has a sensual physicality that I can’t imagine an electronic screen game ever equaling.

It is interesting how a graphically stunning game environment for a quick-paced game of skill can focus and calm ones mind. My partner sally currently plays a game called “Minesweeper” that can be found on most PCs. Your virtual game board is a grid of boxes, some concealing mines and others a number between one and eight (or blank for zero) indicating how many mines are in the eight adjacent squares. The goal is to click on all the squares in the grid that are not mines. If you click on a box with a mine the game ends. For me, playing Minesweeper is a slow deliberate exercise in making the logical inferences, based on the number of mines adjacent to each revealed square, to determine which still unrevealed squares cannot be (or at least are probably not) mines. My partner Sally, on the other hand, seems to get into an almost meditative state when she plays the game. She picks the squares without consciously thinking about the logic of her choices, and can clear a board in a minute or two that would take me ten or twenty.

So back again in the late 1970s, embracing the “Zen” of pinball was a small but important step for me in beginning to acknowledge a subtle, deeper level of meaning in everyday life. It had been years since I had read Bradbury’s Dandelion Wine, but the main premise of the book had stayed with me, even as all the details of the story dropped away. I found I could play better pinball if I communed with the machine, treating it like a sentient being that wanted to be engaged, honored, and played well. It would be silly perhaps if you took this sort of thing literally, but I was exploring the subtle world of the efficacy of metaphor.

You can look at a pinball machine, or any machine, organism or system, as just the sum of all its parts, working together and obeying the laws of physics. All its outputs are predictable based on understanding its parts, processes and providing the appropriate inputs. But the complexity introduced by putting all these elements in close proximity to each other in a closed system, makes it very difficult to grasp how best to interact with this system. How could I provide the right inputs to the pinball machine in front of me, including pushing each of the flipper buttons at just the right time and giving the machine just enough of a nudge at the crucial moment to keep the ball in play and continuing to score points?

So what I found worked best for me, to maximize my time on the machine with a minimum of quarters, was to employ a metaphor and cast the machine, as I said, as a sentient being. With a machine I had not played before, before dropping in my first quarter, I would carefully read the instructions to understand the “rules” of this particular game, including the implications in terms of bonuses, scoring multipliers and extra balls of dropping all the targets or getting the ball up into that little hole in the top right corner of the machine. Given that understanding, that honoring of the machine’s “rules”, I would begin to play. I would learn to master the trajectories of the different rebounds off the bumpers and use of the flippers to give the ball direction and velocity to hit and drop a target or throw the ball through a gap up to the top of the machine where it was not in danger of guttering out or falling between the flippers. I would learn to catch and control the ball with a flipper, so better to aim it. I would experiment with what sort of bump of the machine’s chassis would change the balls motion sufficiently to keep it out of a gutter or to increase the action as it rebounded between close set bumpers. I would learn to bring the machine to its most intensely alive state, a metaphorical orgasm of sorts. And acknowledging my skill and wanting me to continue to honor and interact with it so, the machine would give me free games.

Trying to live viscerally in the moment, I began taking greater notice of the plants and animals that inhabited my home town, giving them metaphorical sentience as well, touching the plants, inquiring into their health and acknowledging the squirrels, crows and other critters. I became very cognizant of the weather, which became the metaphorical communication and commentary of “Mother Nature” with me and my fellow Ann Arborites. Walking across town, in the humid heat of summer or the biting winter wind, became a journey with a host of friends and acquaintances, going through the cycles of their existence. I imagined the big old trees advising me. In summer I would often walk across town barefoot, feeling all the sensations of pavement, asphalt, wood, grass and bare ground and the subtle messages implied metaphorically in each.

Still at this point, if asked, I would call myself an atheist and not acknowledge believing in “God”, particularly the version with the capital “G”, but enjoying my relationship, metaphorically, with Mother Nature, a more relaxed deity, with less of a need to be explicit.

It would be years later that I would read Karen Armstrong’s The History of God and embrace her theory of the metaphorical power of “God” in the development of Western culture. She explored the loss of the power of metaphorical deities and scriptures with the reductionism, scientism and literalism brought on by the Protestant Reformation and the Abrahamic religions trying to stay relevant in the Modern World where they were being challenged by the compelling dogmas of science. In my always evolving cosmology, “God”, “The Goddess”, “Mother Nature”, “Gaia”, or any other deity is a metaphor for our attempt to grasp a deeper level of existence that will never be completely graspable.

We all find or invent our metaphors that help us live effectively in this very complicated world we have created. Not sure I have settled on mine yet, but I am certainly enjoying the process of trying various ones on for size.

The Zen of Walking

Cooper Zale — Sat, 22 Aug 2009 19:01:26 +0000

In 1977 and 1978, as a young adult now living on my own in my hometown of Ann Arbor (my mom and dad had remarried each other and she had moved down to Ohio to live with him), I was somehow able to live almost completely in the moment, aided by the transcending joy I found walking from place to place in town. After twenty plus years of navigating these streets on foot, by bicycle or by car, I knew them so well I could head out towards my destination of the moment, let my mind totally drift with any thought so at times I barely knew exactly where I was but still managed to get where I was going, experiencing the joys of all four full seasons and continuing my exploration of the magical side to life.

In the hot humid summer days (and most memorably those hot August nights), I would walk half-naked with shorts but no shirt or shoes, bare chest encased in the heavy summer air and bare feet touching the pavement and occasionally the Earth itself. If I could have gotten away with walking across town completely nude I would have. But most everywhere with the trees lining either side of the street forming a green cathedral-like ceiling above me, I felt cloistered in sacred space, so where I ought to be (at least for the moment).

Then fall would come with its “what are you doing with your life?” cold breezes, the look and smell of the leaves turning, the college students returning to town and the “townee” children and youth journeying back and forth from their schools, a sea of colorful backpacks and jackets, all shuffling through fallen leaves. The weekday routine would be punctuated by football Saturdays with thousands of people converging on the stadium on foot in their maize and blue to see the Wolverines play. The air would be crisp and electric with anticipation and plans.

Winter would arrive in November or December, maybe relenting for a bit in January but often continuing into April. On the coldest days the sky was often clear and blue and I would still walk, encased now in my down jacket, beanie pulled down over my ears and scarf wrapped round the rest of my face and neck so that there was just a slit for my eyes to see. After the early winter storms the town was particularly stunning, with houses, bare trees and everything else in a bright white icing of snow (the dirty slush still waiting to make its appearance soon). And then there would be those magical days when snow would be falling straight down (no wind) and you would experience as quiet a world as you could ever (not) hear.

Winter would seem to hang on forever until one day, usually in late March or April when Mother Nature would flip some sort of circuit breaker and the sun would feel suddenly warm again, the air would be filled with the aroma of plants fornicating (in their own kind of at-a-distance-way) and you could feel your own hormones and other urges start to bubble as well. Mixed in those days where a cold breeze and a crack of thunder in the distance would signal the rain storm that would soon deluge everything. There is nothing quite like walking in the rain, with or without an umbrella.

It seemed easy to learn to be in the moment journeying through those changing seasons because there was so much that seemed moment-us and full of moment-um. To me it also always seemed to help to have a destination and not walking just for exercise perhaps. And best was a destination that was across town and diagonal (as the crow flies) with the mostly square grid of city streets from the start, allowing you at almost every intersection along the way to choose one of two or three paths, without lengthening the trip. Besides the tree-lined sidewalked streets there was the scattering of parks in your path that could be traversed and maybe even the Huron river to be crossed.

Of course when you have so fully inhabited a place for all the years of your childhood and youth, every venue along the way has its ghosts of the past. Walking by my “Feminist Aunt” Mary Jane’s old house on Lincoln where she had the party that Norman Mailer came to. Traversing the churchyard adjacent to Eberwhite Woods where we used to lie on the ground in the middle of the night and stare at the stars. Walking down Prospect where I used to deliver the Ann Arbor news on my paper route. Passing the Washtenaw dairy where my dad used to take my brother and I for ice cream.

It felt easy on those walks to feel that the world was nothing but magic and that Ray Bradbury had nailed it in his book Dandelion Wine. When you are relaxed, happy, and not really worried about anything that isn’t within the range of your five (or six) senses, little things have an extra transcendent metaphorical quality. Squirrels deftly crossing the telephone wires across busy State Street. That ozone smell that tells you that rain is coming. Evergreen branches sagging with heavy wet snow. Kids pouring out of school after that nerve jangling bell sounds. The sound of the University of Michigan Carillon in the distance (usually just bonging out the fifteen minute intervals leading up to the hour) as some music student playing “Eleanor Rigby” on the big bells resounding for miles around. Nothing was a big deal, but it all felt significant in its small way.

Having fallen in love with traversing the pavement in my hometown, I have continued to find the opportunities to walk in Los Angeles as an adult. Oh yes, when I did have the money to do so, one of the first things I did in L.A. (I moved here in 1979) was buy a car, and drove it pretty much everywhere. But as the years passed my love of walking and bicycling re-emerged, and trying to live “green” with a smaller carbon footprint, I made a commitment about eight years ago to not drive a car to work (though I still drive it elsewhere). In general I have looked for every opportunity I can to run errands or get from point A to point B on foot, or by bicycle, bus or train (or sometimes even a combination of two or three on the same trip!)

A big city can be a bit of a challenge to find good walking or safe bicycling routes. But I have such an enhanced sense of the neighborhood I live in from walking and riding my bike that I never had when I was primarily driving around. Because of that, it is interesting that there are essentially three zones surrounding my house. The inner zone, about three miles in every direction is the extent to which I will walk from my house to run some errand or find a nice coffee place to hang out in and write. That three-mile radius really feels like my “neighborhood”, where I know all the quirky little back streets and unusual houses and little parks etc. Then there is a second zone beyond that extending maybe eight or nine miles that include all the places I have bicycled to from home. Those extents and all the real estate in between do not quite feel like “neighborhood” but familiar and “home turf”. Beyond that second zone it’s just “the big city”.

Unfortunately, neither of my kids, now 20 and 23, have (yet) become much of a walker. I guess that is often the reality for kids in a big city. Their lives are full and busy and the car can facilitate you chocking your life full of the absolute most of activities and flexibility. To be a walker, bicyclist and mass-transit rider in this city, I have had to accept that I cannot pack my days so full and need to really enjoy and draw as much as I can from the moments I am en-route, depending on my own legs, and perhaps more fancy free.

Dandelion Wine

Cooper Zale — Fri, 21 Aug 2009 17:02:09 +0000

Reading Ray Bradbury’s book paved the way for my own encounter with, and embrace of, the magical side of life, while still not believing in god. I think I read the book over forty years ago in junior high English class, and I can hardly recall any of the details of the story, but no book I’ve read has had more impact on my life. It’s one of those cases where you encounter an idea that does not seem to impact you immediately, but seeds a thought in your mind that maybe comes to fruition at some later time, when that idea addresses a new need.

I think as a child I lived in a world of constant magic, creativity and imagination, so acknowledging a magical side of life was not an issue… there was just life and it was what it was… and for me that included being magical. Now looking back, I acknowledge the context of circumstances, the privilege of being a white male growing up in a progressive, middle-class community in America. I also acknowledge the proactive effort of my parents to raise me “outside the box” and dedicate time and money (given their modest means) to create an enriched environment for me to bloom within and explore life’s enchantment.

As a youth I began to be exposed more to the “muggle” (that great word from J.K. Rowling’s Harry Potter books which conveys a more precise meaning here than the word “real”) world when my parents’ relationship began to fracture, leading to their divorce when I was ten. Add to that, my own precocious sexuality being put down two years earlier by a third grade teacher when my supposed friend blurted out to the whole class that I had told him I would “pull down my pants for Amy” (another classmate of ours), something I thought I had told him in confidence. Four years later it was the ugly aspects of my junior high school experience including being jammed in with way too many other kids my same age and feeling constantly and utterly inadequate.

Reading Dandelion Wine was one of those occasional oases during my three year participation in that discomforting institution. I was already into science fiction and fantasy, having read Jules Verne’s 20,000 Leagues under the Sea and Mysterious Island, Bradbury’s Fahrenheit 451, plus various other more pulpy stuff like A Fighting Man on Mars by Edgar Rice Burroughs, about earthlings having adventures in fantastical Martian and Venusian societies. So in Dandelion Wine, here was Bradbury writing about a kid’s summer experience, where no aliens came from the sky or zombies from the ground but real life events were still framed in a magical fantasy context. I appreciated the reframing (which our English teacher did his best to point out to me and all my classmates). Of course then I looked around me and saw nothing magical about my junior high experience, and was too busy just trying to keep some thread of my self-esteem intact, so I filed Bradbury’s summer odyssey away in my mind.

During my pre-teen and early teen years I only managed to inhabit magical realms compartmentalized from “real” (better “muggle”) life in books, comics, TV and movies. Even today, the smell of paperback books brings back memories of wild imaginary tales plus one of my favorite haunts on my bicycle as a youth, now an Ann Arbor landmark called the “Blue Front”, a hole-in-the-wall newsstand, that also sold comic books, pulp sci-fi paperbacks, Mad Magazine, and even some soft-core porn magazines (which as a kid you might be able to sneak a look at when the guy behind the counter was looking away).

Marvel & DC comic books with their super heroes and villains, expanding exponentially on the capabilities of normal humans, plus movies about archetypal witches, wizards, vampires, and giant reptiles emerging from the sea, led a kid with an active imagination to at least imagine that the “muggle” world could be incanted with these sorts of meta-real possibilities. My friends and I would fantasize about having super powers ourselves, being more than “just kids” somehow, and better challenge what felt at times like a tyranny of adults and their “adult world” and the lack of their acknowledgment of us (youth) as equal partners in it.

In my high school years, maybe becoming a bit more sophisticated and discovering some real agency (other than super powers), I had the experience of creating another compartmentalized magical world in many of the theater productions I participated in, either as an actor (playing a fantastical king or teen on a distopic adult-free island) or backstage (helping create that unreal ambiance manipulating the dimmers to bring weird lighting to the stage).

Coincidentally or not, it wasn’t until I finished high school, that I was able to de-compartmentalize and begin to find magic in moments during my regular life. A suspect coincidence was being introduced to marijuana, that next fall after high school graduation, during my first year of college. Having not really had any experience at the time with meditation or other more Eastern metaphysical disciplines, smoking weed was my first (at least first recognized) experience with altered consciousness. It certainly felt like a very different world getting high, going to the movie theater, and watching the movie Fantasia sitting in the front row.

So even when I was not high, I now had been introduced to another frame of reference, and based on the preponderance of thought and discourse, historically and in the current media about spirituality and deeper levels of consciousness, I began to imagine what a deeper level might feel like, which is a first step towards making it part of your life. Given that, and recalling Dandelion Wine, when I saw a kid joyously playing and laughing, or an old woman see me and smile knowingly, or when I felt completely enrapt in the moment, I would ponder, or at least imagine, if somehow I was in touch with some deeper magical level. It felt good – affirming and supporting – to imagine I was a being operating within a deeper tapestry of connected existence with the rest of the universe.

I recall a hit song of the time I heard a lot on the radio, “Strange Magic” by the Electric Light Orchestra…

Oh, I’m never gonna be the same again
Now I’ve seen the way it’s got to end
Sweet dream, sweet dream

Strange magic
Oh, what a strange magic
Oh, it’s a strange magic
Got a strange magic
Got a strange magic

Sitting at the Laundromat pondering entering the adult world (what I want to be when I grow up), my family’s clothes churning in a mixture of Tide and water in the Wascomat washer, it was such a relief and an inspiration to hear Jeff Lynn (ELO’s lead singer) reminding me about that non-mundane side of things. Inspired perhaps by the ELO song, I recall a tune and lyric of my own that came to me one day as I walked the tree-lined streets of my hometown, and would sing to myself over and over sometimes, like a mantra, particularly when I walked…

Everything has got magic
In its own way
Cool the rational logic
Hey, hey

Certainly to be mystically connected and in tune somehow with everything around me had some efficacy for everyday life, allowing me to relax, bear witness and be, rather than nervously fret and cautiously observe, detached.

I think some people might frame this sort of experience as getting in touch with god, and I thought about that at the time, but there was no sense of a deity, except perhaps a sense of the consciousness of all those big old trees around me. The question of who created all this did not seem to matter… it just is and I am. It would be years later exploring Unitarian-Universalist thought where I would be presented with the ideas of “many spiritual paths” and “creating your own theology”, which after Dandelion Wine and my own first deeper-level experiences would really resonate with me.

Secular Humanism

Cooper Zale — Mon, 13 Apr 2009 19:10:02 +0000

I got my ethical foundations from my family but also from the secular humanist university milieu I grew up in without a hint of religion or god in that context. During the Cuban Missile Crisis I wrestled with the possibility of nuclear war, my own mortality, and was I destined to go to hell if there was a god which I was not believing in. For me, that concern did not change the “facts on the ground”, in the sky, in the heart, or in the laughs of children, where other people might feel the presence of a deity.

One could assume, that if I did not believe in god, then I was essentially saying that those who did were misguided and flat wrong. Though there is an obvious logic to this assertion, which I have pondered often, it has always irked me. Can’t I not believe in god and accept that you do, without my non-belief being seen as a statement invalidating your belief?

Years later after reading more about the theology and history of various religions and the profound impact Christianity in particular has had on American cultural development (something that was minimized in my public school history textbooks), I continue to try and construct a theological context that allows for atheists and believers without the two having to be in conflict.

The best I’ve managed to construct so far is to work with the conception of god from Aristotle and other classical Greek thinkers. They saw god as a totally unknowable concept that launched the universe in motion but was no longer involved in its playing out. If you wanted to try to understand god, your best bet was to try and contemplate nothingness. After reading that, I thought, could there be a deeper level of connection or knowing or whatever that was impossible to really define which many people interpreted as god? From my experience I could acknowledge that deeper level, but I have never thought of it as being associated with a deity, though I can appreciate that other people do.

Some of my more religious, more god-oriented friends and acquaintances have wondered where my ethics can come from if I don’t believe in a deity who will punish me if I misbehave. This appears to be a major concern of many people in our country and apparently a reason why “out atheists” have trouble running for high public office. How can we entrust a person with the reins of power if they do not feel they have to answer (like the Hebrew National hotdog makers) to a higher power?

So where do my ethics come from, if not from following god’s rules?

Well, first I guess from my parents and other mentors who have been in my life. My mom actually believed in god, but thought that religion was the bane of human culture, and responsible for most of the worlds wars and suffering. She never once that I could remember suggested that I should believe as well. I really don’t recall her ever talking about ethics in an abstract sense, or attempt to instruct me. She did tell me how she felt about things that I was doing or not doing. How upset and disappointed she was that I was not staying on top of my chore of taking out the trash when the kitchen wastebasket was full, since she needed me to pitch in and help with the housekeeping. Later, how grateful she was that I had taken on doing all the family laundry at the Laundromat.

My dad was not into ethical instruction either, but I learned from his example, for better or for worse at times. My dad (the PhD and college professor) would always treat other people with great respect, even those much less educated and of lesser circumstance than himself. I clearly witnessed this every day I spent with him. Of course, if he thought someone had done him wrong, then he would plot and plan to even the score somehow… an eye for an eye! And as I have said before, he also approached life as a grand adventure, and there are plenty of ethics to be derived from that orientation, including the importance of humility and bearing witness to beauty and grace.

Then there is the “Golden Rule”, which is so commonly referred to in passing, but its profundity is often overlooked. I have heard great theological scholars say that it is what all great religions really boil down to. When I finally faced my own anger at my parent’s divorce, and put myself in my mom’s and dad’s shoes, the Golden Rule became the main ethical principle of my life. I have been blessed by the important people (starting with my parents) that I have encountered in this incarnation caring about me and being of assistance to me, so I more and more focus myself on being of assistance to others.

I think a lot of my parents’ values and my own came out of or were otherwise nurtured by the context we lived in, a progressive Midwestern state university community drawing people from all over the world. A university exemplifies the possibility and the power (whether real or imagined) of human endeavor, particularly educated human endeavor directed towards helping the larger community.

There is the famous quote from Woodrow Wilson that sums it up: “There is no higher religion than human service. To work for the common good is the greatest creed.” A secular university embodies this principle certainly in theory if not always in practice. My mom and my dad, their friends affiliated with the university and just the gravitas of the buildings themselves on campus all spoke to the fact that we humans were empowered with the capability of learning the great accumulated knowledge of human experience to solve the world’s problems and make human life better.

Though I can recall individuals to the contrary, it seemed to me that there is generally not a sense of aristocracy and elitism in a public Midwestern university that one might find (or at least stereotypically expect) in say the more exclusive Ivy League schools. I got the sense again from my parents and the other university affiliated adults (friends or my folks and parents of my own friends) that anyone of any race, creed or social situation was basically of equal merit and could equally benefit from the knowledge available in the hallowed halls and ivory towers of this institution of “higher learning”.

And again, in all this vision, in all these high-minded principles (at least as I was exposed to them) there was no place given to or even mention of god. You may call it hubris, but why should we humans surrender to a deity things we can figure out to do for ourselves?

I carried these values, even unconsciously, when I moved to Los Angeles. At first I found myself among people affiliated with the TV and film business, particularly those entry-level denizens like myself tying to break in to that business. There seemed to be a very different ethic at play in this group, one of deceit and whatever works and nowhere the idea of higher service to others.

For reasons of ethics if none other, I gravitated away from the entertainment industry and into feminism and the fight for Equal Rights for Women, joining the cause in Los Angeles that had been a strong motivation for my mother and my “Feminist Aunts” in Ann Arbor. Here was a movement dedicated to service to others, in particular the larger community of women denied their place at the table as partners besides their male counterparts.

In my more recent years, getting involved with Unitarian-Universalism, and lay leadership in a UU congregation in particular, I have become more interested in the common elements of the ethical frameworks that various religions (including Unitarian-Universalism) are built around. Certainly the basic UU principles, featuring the inherent worth and dignity of all people, promoting the democratic process, honoring the many paths to higher truth and meaning, and the interconnected web of all existence, embody a secular humanism that does not require the presence of deities but also does not rule them out.

I have studied history, the critical role religion has played in history, and the basic tenants of many of the world’s religions. I have wrestled with the various conceptions of…

* The one God, as either a male-identified actor in ongoing human affairs in the conventional Judeo-Christian sense, or as only the Creator who set in motion the forces of the Universe in the deist sense

* The Goddess as a female-identified actor, seen in more modern terms perhaps as Mother Nature or Gaia

* Polytheism, particularly of the Greek/Roman, Norse or Native American traditions

My feminism has encouraged me to embrace the idea of The Goddess as a counterpoint to the more prevalent view of the (generally male-identified) God, to extend the male/female equal partnership to the divine level of sorts. But in the end, after extensively processing it all, I can only acknowledge deities (God, The Goddess, Mother Nature) as metaphors for a deeper level of transcending mystery. I still put my final faith in we humans and our evolving consciousness and ability to chart our course and steward our planet.

Duck & Cover, Heaven & Hell

Cooper Zale — Thu, 22 Jan 2009 04:07:49 +0000

I was in fourth grade in 1963 during the Cuban Missile Crisis when there was apparently a real possibility of nuclear war between the United States and the Soviet Union. Somewhere in that timeframe I became aware of this possibility, probably as a result of TV news coverage and a couple “Duck & Cover” exercises led by my teacher in my elementary school classroom. For those of you too young to remember these exercises, you were spared a fearful experience of powerlessness and contemplation of the abyss. For me, it was my first confrontation with my own mortality, possibilities for an afterlife and the existence of god.

During the 1950s and into the 1960s, in classrooms throughout the country, teachers instructed their young students something to the effect that, if there was the brilliant flash of a nuclear bomb explosion, students should immediately duck under their desks and cover their faces with their hands. This would supposedly give you some small modicum of protection from the immediate effects of the blast. Whether or not this technique would provide any real help if there ever was an actual nuclear apocalypse, who knows, but it sure scared the crap out of me and my classmates and gave us a new fear to live with every day.

So I can recall thinking about it while I walked home from school. It was pretty easy for me to let my imagination run wild imagining the blue sky rent by a flash brighter than the sun. Would I be killed instantly or have enough time to realize that this was the end of everything before I died. And then my imagination would invariably drift to what would happen after I died?

So was there a god? Would I go to heaven? Was there a hell and was I in danger of going there instead?

Honestly, I had no evidence at that point that a god or the “God” actually existed at some transcendent level. I had never sensed the presence of or been spoken to by he/she/it. I had never had the yearning for this ubiquitous deity to be present and a guide for my life. I had the love of my parents, teachers, my friends’ parents and other adults in my life. But I knew at that point that I lived in a world where most people believed in this entity in some form or another. I was not theologically sophisticated enough at age eight to even consider the divinity within kind of god-consciousness.

Saint Peter

But it did raise anxiety in me that I needed to confront this whole god concept, because if I died (in a nuclear explosion or otherwise) I might actually be confronted by God’s representative (Saint Peter in conventional Christian theology) and my faith or lack there of could send me to some very profoundly different permanent residence. Was I willing to risk going to hell on the chance that my intuition, that I had not sensed the existence of a god, was misguided? I pondered this many times as I walked the tree-arched streets of my hometown between school and home, and not being able to completely and comfortably resolve it, hoped that the Cuban Missile Crisis or some such other event would not lead soon to a holocaust.

My brother and I would later lampoon this anxiety with our “Steam Bath” game, repeatedly dying in a make-believe malfunctioning appliance where you sit inside the metal box with a hole for only your head to protrude while the rest of your enclosed body is cleansed by the hot steam.

I don’t recall ever asking my parents about god and whether they believed. Maybe I was embarrassed to even admit that I was possibly a non-believer and flirting with being damned to hell forever. Later in my teenage, when my mom was going through the traumatic period after she and my dad divorced, she confided in me that she believed in god, even talked to god (though I don’t recall her relating that god responded in kind) but was totally opposed to organized religion, which in her mind, was the source of most of the war and hate on Earth. I think my dad in some vague way believed in some sort of god, but he was pretty inscrutable on these sort of topics. If I only had him alive and in front of me one more time I would ask him directly. My mom shared with me much later that my dad had shared with her on a couple of occasions that he sometimes felt so out of place in the world that he wondered if he in fact was (seriously) some sort of alien from outer space.

It was in my later teen years, wandering the familiar streets of Ann Arbor on my own, including at times under the influence of Marijuana, that I began to sense a possible magical level of life beyond the world of our senses. From time to time I would have brief transcendent epiphanies when I would see someone throw back their head and laugh heartily or when I’d see a loving look between adult and child. I got in the habit during that period to have little ditties come to my head and I would sing them over and over like mantras as I walked my beloved treed streets. One I remember went, “Everything’s got magic… In its own way… Cool the rational logic… Hey hey”.

So developing this magical sense, my atheism or agnosticism, however you might characterize my theological position, has never felt like a position antagonistic to someone who believed in deities or even the one God. I in fact have often talked myself about Mother Nature (sometimes framed instead as Gaia) as if she really existed. Certainly if she was in fact a deity, she would be one closer to my feminist pedigree (more on that later).