The Anatomy of Tragedy

Let’s mingle some death with our lovely myths
And take a page or two of papyrus, or stone.
Beware of flying things bearing strange gifts
Wrote no man yet I have yet to know.

From hoary Athens to the relic of Rome,
An eagle on high carried hard carrion.
Terrestrially bound below, a poets poor dome
Was strong eye spied, a thing to be smashed upon.

The talon claws acted like yawning jaws
Unloosing the clasped terrapin in shell
So that, now grasped under natural laws
And the full felt weight of earth, he fell

Down upon, crashing upon, the poet’s poor pate.
Dull thud, echo-eeking, calamitous knock,
Aeschylus could not write, but lived, this mistake;
The sad, sorry fate of a head for a rock.

Cracked and halved, the tortoise split for the feed.
The sharp beak and eye to tear and devour.
The skull, too, in mirror of the thing, lay cleaved 

As if opened and splayed on a dangerous hour

Like curtains that part for the act that brings death.

His cold ruddy blood flowed from a place
Winding round and down and round toward Lethe
Washing ashore on the hard banks of fate.

Plays upon a stage are often written this way.

Nature, when true, keeping all creatures in mind,
Unmaliced and free of care, simply throws her clay; 

As free from bound earth, her seeing is blind.

So in this new time of old wars waged for crowns,

While those who care less and less yet by degrees,
And try, as once was said, to ‘drink life to the lees,’
Good nature toasts to those follies of tragedy.

The Artist, The Art Critic, and Innocence Lost

I always fancied myself an artist even at an early age.  I was naturally adept at drawing and painting and unlike those things I was not particularly good at—school work comes to mind—I actually enjoyed doing it.  I could with a certain amount of easeful sweeps of the wrist characterize the essence of ordinary objects around the house.  Give me some fruit and a bowl and I would give the very same back, on paper, or canvas, with the added feature that it all arose from my burgeoning, artistic soul.  I could depict the same with people as I loved doing portraits of friends and family expressing their wonderful flaws and features.  I was very good at drawing faces.  All this flowed from the well-spring of a young artistic mind.   All this was artistic expression enjoyed immensely.  That is, until Ms. Ferguson became an art critic.

Note her title. I didn’t know it then but the woman was unmarried. This may say something. It may not. However, this is neither here nor there and in fact, may be unfair of me. To the point:

All this creativity, mind you, was, as mentioned, largely due to an unself-conscious artistic youth.  It was before any seeds of doubt supplanted those notions that criticism brings as an inner mirror and forces one to reflect on a self not yet known.  The artistic expression I enjoyed ‘immensely’ might have had to have been wrestled away. This had to happen sometime.  Some of the greats like Picasso may have successfully continued the work in that child-like ability to create art uninhibited, but most of us are shaken out of that beautiful slumber.  We are taken like virginity.  Unwittingly or not, Ms. Ferguson sowed these seeds of doubt for me and, though I knew it had to happen, she became the reaper in the haunting of my memory.  It did have to happen!  I know this.  We cannot sustain it.  We may get too big for our britches.  It is, after all, as the philosopher man once said, the unfurled, proud white sail that is first blown away by a powerful wind.  I did not want to be lost at sea. I would be at the mercy of her harsh wind.

I had her for my fifth year at school at the unripe age of ten years old.  Ms. Ferguson was not an art teacher but a science one.  It did not matter.  If she had taught the ways of sprinkling fairy dust coupled with the fine art of tiptoeing through day-lilies, she would have been just as harsh and unbending.   She was just too exacting and much too demanding in a way that spilled into a certain kind of rigid dogmatism for which she was ruthless.  It is difficult to say science can be dogmatic. But I think it’s important to remember she touched me subjectively where I lived. It may have only seemed dogmatic to the naked ten year old ego. But then again, as you’ll see, I may have touched her, too. The never ending dance around that eternal flame vanity.  Notwithstanding, she knew not the art of compassionate teaching and owned none of the tactful grace that lends itself to open -mindedness.  She did not practice gentleness.  She declared things (and facts) quite matter of factly and if one deviated, as I dared do once, one paid the price with a ruthless single-mindedness. This single-mindedness, I picked up on then, did in fact stand shoulder to shoulder with dogma.
 “Children, you see God has made the grass a soothing colour our eyes can enjoy,” she once declared. I innocently cut out the middleman by cheerfully suggesting something else.  “Maybe our eyes just learned to like it!” I gleefully shared.  I was met by a condescending stare seemingly fit with child crushing capacities.  I was told I talked nonsense and clearly spoke before I had formed ideas correctly.  More than this, she sadistically expected consensus.  “Isn’t it, children?  Isn’t it nonsense?” she asked aloud as if compelled by a teacherly duty to make my shame public.

With this, I gave up on her class and went inward.  What was waiting for me there was a pencil, a clean white sheet of paper, and a thought of the near ecstatic activity of drawing something.  With no intent of listening to the lesson but absolutely no conscious intent towards revenge (and this is true!) I decided to attempt my hand at drawing Ms. Ferguson. 

Despite her almost unnatural inability to be humane, I was for reasons even an artist cannot explain, quite taken by her visage.  In my clandestine way, I started sketching her doing my best to catch her very essence.  I sketched the way her hair, cut straight to the shoulders, framed a bony, sharp face.  I managed to create a beautiful shadow where her cheekbones protruded like the rigid rocks from craggy cliffs.  It was as if a person could stand under them in a rain storm and manage to stay dry.  I captured them as if in flesh.  I also captured a protruding nose of which the bridge created cavernous depressions that housed deep set, darkened eyes.   I enjoyed sketching her eyes with her lazy, drooping eyelids that effectively seemed the control center of her overpowering condescension.  I could not help but notice (the artistic eye!) that one of her lids slightly drooped lower than the other.  They reminded me of entering a room with two windows where one of the window shades was pulled subtly lower than the other causing a case of strange equilibrium in the viewer.  That was it!  I realized why I liked her face!  It was asymmetrical and interesting, qualities I could not bestow on her as a teacher.  She was depth at least written in the physical.  I thought I had captured her and was again proud of my ability to imitate life in art.  But it was short lived.

My self-congratulatory artistic expression was indeed short lived.  The model, the muse, the inspiration, and very soon the critic, all encompassing the one person, stood behind me ready to extinguish it. She caught me just as I finished.  Ms. Ferguson did not take kindly to the drawing.  She actually claimed I was making a caricature of her (what’s a caricature?) and, in the process, poking fun at her features like---dare I say it?---like a common doodler!  My artistic pride slowly fizzled to shame and it was this display planted the seed that I was just not nearly as good as only I thought.   How I wanted to tell her it was actually a loving expression to how I saw things! Is that not scientific? May be not.

            But at that moment, it did not matter how I saw things.  What was in charge as a matter of ‘seeing’ the situation were a pair of droopy but sharp eyes.  As I said, I any artist must face this situation to be shaken out of his own comfortable consciousness, and certainly at a young age this can be traumatic. So be it. That’s life.  Before I ask again if Ms. Ferguson had to be this harsh, I might meditate on the possibility that she did me a favour.  After all, she may have caused me to plant my own seed of doubt that now seems an engine of improvement.  Is it possible I owe her thanks more than I owe her condemnation?  The slow and linear artistic strokes of time soften even the hardest edges of memory.

            However, I still do wonder if she really thought what she claimed.  Was her criticism a reflection that my art was less than stellar?  Or did I do such a good job that I created an ugly feeling in an ugly lady who may have finally saw herself mirrored in some energetic and youthful art?   It certainly amplified my self-consciousness, but maybe, just maybe, I did the same to her.

Rider and Horse

I sat with a small child on my knee who
Rode my knee like a rider who knew not
Yet the importance of how she must trust
The horse.

Yet she did and did not know it. I sat with this
Small child who taught me more about me even
Than she presently knew. That is what she presently
Knew of me

As well as the teaching of it (This, I
Laugh, would make a Zen master blush) . And how
Is this to be? The paradox may fall
Like a riddled

Rain bathing both. She trusts the horse without
The knowledge of the expression of trust
Yet the expression is felt while the definition
Is not. And must the

Definition ever be? If no, that is
Alright with me. For the expression,
Like the rainless blue inside her eyes,
Clears all the contradictions

And suns me in a riddle of infinity.
She has wrapped me in an immeasurable
Aspect in unbounded ways and I trust her
For I know she will not let me

Fall despite the infinite chances in
This timeless infinite moment.
We two are only brought to a halt
With a wrap on the door. Neither has

Fallen. I catch myself inside her eyes.
My nose is larger than I thought. I check
My hair, the part is fine. We grasp the reins
And ride to infinity over again.

Little girl, there is boundless time in front
Of us and illimitable time behind. But in the

Space of a moment can we ride towards
The very notion of what we want to call
Eternity.

Amor et Infinitatum

Full felt fast is fire's desire,

Round and round and round again,

Hot turning like lively ashes atop a pyre.

In streamlined whip of unending spin

Love's flames lick no cornered edges tips

And fail to find an end, nor no finite wall.

Nowhere is there times hard held grip

But like the smooth sphere of a shiny ball 

Revealing no terrestrial marks,

Movement enshrouds illusory sight

Of no end or germinating spark;

Where there is no future or a past much like

The circling of two single snakes,

Concave things contoured north to south

Where each a link of chain, aligned, do take

The others taut tail within their mouth.

And so we walk in love from anywhere

Arched in infinite curves we do not see

And, though limitless, leaves a center bare.

It is when that finite space is filled we

Sense our time and take a nauseous turn.

And in the snuff of a mortal gust

We then know, within, it will fail to burn.

Love does not die but will go on without us.

Jerusalem: Fragments

Some definitions that may help meaning:

Kippah; An informal name for a yarmulke, the small rounded headwear worn by males in Jewish ceremonies

Uzzah;  Uzzah was a 1010 BC Israelite who, among many more, entered into Jerusalem with King David.

Zion; In many cases, this can mean the Jewish people or the Israeli state as whole.  In this case, I use it as a nickname for Jerusalem.

Lime; Limestone; a chalky stone containing calcium; this stone is commonly used in buildings in Jerusalem; the Wailing Wall is an example (see also 'alabaster' in Part I).

Some descriptions explained:

"sons of the commandments” (Part III) The 'bar' in Bar Mitzvah literally means 'son'.  'Mitzvah' means law or commandment.  The main thrust is that a boy becomes a man and is responsible for his actions and behaviour under the law.

"gendered partition" (Part III) In many Orthodox Bar Mitzvah ceremonies, the women can be commonly separated (partitioned) by a makeshift wall, males on one side and females on the other.  In large part, the men are on the side with the more favourable view. 

"upon the shrine" (Part III)  In this context, I mean the Ark of the Covenant.  This was a large chest that is believed to have held the tablets of the Ten Commandments inside. In other chapters of the Bible, it says it housed the scrolls of the Torah.

"Hora's circling steps" (Part IV) The "Hora" is the name of a Jewish dance often witnessed at a Bar Mitzvah.  The'Hora' is usually exemplified by an energetic group dancing in a circle.

"Tree had lit on fire" (Part V)  This is a humorous (I hope) allusion to the biblical story of the Burning Bush.

Quick note:  This was also a true story. We actually heard firetrucks but all the commotion was beyond our view of vision.  We were told quite earnestly that a tree was on fire.  This amused me greatly.  When I heard of no rational explanation for this fire, I was amused all the more (and, of course, I 'catalogued' it in hopes it could be part of a poem). 

Jerusalem: Fragments 

I. First Night

The moon sits bright in an eastern sky.

The moon is in the sky. Projecting

Cold, clear beams, she eyes in objective

Nowhere stares of glimmered chance

To spy upon what beauty may be

Found. Here upon contoured corpse of land,

Her piercing glare of crystal white does

Fall upon each and all bejeweled

Rocks and stones that lay upon the bosom

Of breasted earth glowing everyone

A pearl. And upon the loam rise those

Stones hewn, brick to brick, white on white,

Alabaster necks of splendor that stem

From embroidered body of antique earth.

No nightly veil can hide the modest

Means. The sister satellite in the

Sky does amplify the gems that sit

On sacred flesh and those calcite necks

Above, the works of praising man. Here

Lies aged allure in palling light; bones

And stones to be admired or feared;

Ghosted; ornamented; beauty still.

II. Bar Mitzvah for Two

Twins stand on the brink what with a double

Shuffle of a holy book. Sweeping from

Right to left, they sway destined to be the sons

Of the commandments and the heirs of a

Long hauled history soon to claim them men.

They mumble in dusty tones the old voices.

Twin-round kippah’s, cocked and white on sandy

Heads, two of an age, shift and move like the

Eyeballs of a suspicious face. My red face,

Marked by the sun, or the burning notion

I could bump heads with my reading neighbour

Like magnetic worlds in a collision,

Peers down. Here I stand amongst the rest with

Books. I stand with solemn men in a

Hotel basement observing the reading

Rites of tradition twice and two holy

Boys. The pages peer up from my hand,

Lifeless, dull, aged in colour, like a dead

Canary, a hue like the yellowing teeth

Of old piano keys. But I burn bright

As I watch our opposites, those female

Creatures as bejeweled as the earth, decked

On top, all, hiding scalps from God, spill past

The gendered partition like lovely lemmings

To get a closer glimpse. They jockey for

A look at the boys made men without a

Hint of doubt of their lovely leap of faith.

And now my face does blush with the acceptance

Of the thought that fusty laws speak partitions

To divide and demarcate our learnt

Acquiescence with the deeper need to

Spill with pride. Intuition seeps through.

And so do the words in the book. They seem

As curled and aged like the well-worn page.

But I must seem as diligent as the rest.

I look down again and read the rules.

The old tome almost slips from my hands as

My mind wanders toward thoughts of hummus

And olives and talks with lovely ladies

Who feel no fear yet know to hide their heads.

III. The Party

Reverie and joy among the smiling

Faces and dancing for tradition is

What makes this celebration of festive 

Rite as sacrosanct as old city light.

The light of Zion shown through the villa

Windows. Each arch top aperture did frown

In stuccoed scowls and let through white heat

That fueled the flame of swirl and swoon of Hora's

Circling steps. Among the noise the children

Conspicuously congregated in

A corner.  Both secrets and curiosity

Reigned among the young.  In the middle of

Their muffled noise, a twin did bleed his new

Mannish blood, the result of a brotherly

Prank gone wrong. I implored upon him justice

Should be met and such sibling travesty

Must be shown. But the boy now man, as if

Sagely seeing more of love than fear, did

Wipe his adolescent fluid and told me,

No. And the blood of siblings does flow on.

And age old stories can be told anew.

Commotion was upended by commotion.

A new curiosity came from the

Window where the screech of a Jerusalem

Fire truck whirled and wheeled from the street

Below.  The children, like a tight pack of

Bees that cannot lose their squeeze, sped there.

The new commotion, they were most proud to 

Relay, was that a tree had lit on fire,

Ablaze, in the bright light of day.  Without an

Answerable cause, this, to me, spoke of

Unclear mystery's like those twin tales

We call love and fear. And the sign for a

Wonder did remind once more that those

Same age old stories can be told anew.

Another sight might help me mull my thoughts.

I leave these festive faces who dance in 

Rings so my mind might mingle with city air.

IV. Uzzah’s Mistake

A natural inclination can kill.

The new king entered into the sparkling

City, a natural leader to lead

A joyous procession of minstrels and

Cymbals and concubines and one oxen

Driven cart. Loin-clothed and lean he danced like

The possessed caring not a whit for the

Shame that poured from windows. He would be king.

He would be the well-spring that led to what

Would be believed the waters that immersed

A final one. All in this new city.

Within this carnival of cymbalic

Crash and lyre strum did poor Uzzah walk.

He walked apace with those torpid beasts of

Burden, the yoked souls set free only by

The merciful slake of their animal ignorance.

What animal is not ignorant? But

Awareness of  ignorance seems the sin.

So the oxen did pull the cart in an

Intuitive step like organic machines

In zen-like rote. They pulled the cart that housed

The sacred text meant for no earthly eyes

Or hands but to be placed in the bosom

Safety of the welcoming sacred town.

Yet in a sudden one ox did falter

And slide upon the dusty city floor.

Could it have been one jewel strewn stone

Upon his path that caused the shrine to shake

And move upon the wheels?  Therefore, Uzzah,

A man whose intuitive nature took

Hold like a double swell of both love and

Fear, laid his hands upon the shrine

So as to steady God's word so that it

Might not fall to grace where rocks and stones are

Laid. And for his deed did God strike him dead.

The impulsive step borne of human care

Left him lying there among the quarry.

And much does God want of both love and fear.

A natural inclination can kill.

V. On the Balcony

Among the flowerpots and plastic

Cups I find an empty length of ledge

To rest some sun-scorched arms. I hear still

The din from festive faces that maze

Around stuccoed hotel halls that echo

Like cloudy calls of far off friends unfound

In a dream. Patioed and bent on

High I ponder from my heightened place

The things I want to love and those I

Need to hide. Ambivalent are those

Angels that shine as bright as the noon

Day sky for they never need be seen.

This holy place of sun-scaped earth does

Not belong to me. She has had in time

So many a lover and those who claim

The hold of heathen hands. I stand here

Balconied above with heated heart and arms,

A sun-burned player of that tragic play

To ask, “Wherefore art thou, Jerusalem?”

For now, I return to those found faces,

Those Semitic smiles that pierce my festive

Mask and ask with eyes to partake in hummus,

Olives, those drinks in plastic cups,

And the felt coolness of sliced cucumbers

That soothe and smooths the heady pulse of this

Heated heart and the pain of sun-scorched arms.

VI. Last Night

 Despite night's inky cloak, the moon helped spy

The line of olive trees all jutting at an angle,

Outwardly, like evening samaritan's

Umbrella's offered with inviting

Smiles to roof wet heads. On the hill above

Sat the old town not so ancient as the moon

But near as ghostly white and seeming as

Close. On Zion's hill stands the kings wall still

In perpetual grin in old and yellow

Lime. And beyond the ancient town, older

Than tales borne from the earth, beam tiny

Lights that tell no stories nor deign no laws.

While on holy ground bejeweled rocks and

Stones shine soft and fainting light upon the

Transcendent terrain marking each and all 

An armament, or else a grave. And above

It all, above all that man has carved, spreads

A vast and sleepy sky, in a convex

Arc like an omniscient eye, that feigns a

Constant watch but looks the other way.

Hide Under My Mustache, Poor Horse

'Hide under my mustache, poor horse!

Only I comprehend the state we're in!

Insensitivity of the world runs a course

And overtakes us here on this street of Turin!' 

And so this superman, with looping, aching arms,
Wrapped the nag’s neck in sympathetic choke.
Though equine embrace made no less calm,
Clasped hands, trembling tight, made a loving yoke

That laboured to shield the beast from his flog of dread.
Man and beast, there, held tight to no common vanity.
The Flogger of the man, in his lost mind, stayed dead.
Nature, in blind ambition, straight stripped his sanity.

So, like the clasp come undone from slippery skin
And takes leave of a wrist, snaking around,
Did the man let loose his fingered grasp and, in
Tragic heap, fell straight to the ground.

That good little lamb that frolics happily upon
The globe round top of the green grass lea
In stainless splendour, is in turn the same one
Who, with innocent eye, cannot spy the company

He keeps. Behind that eye the subtle worm
In insidious routes but no true endeavour,
Bores through the skull in parasitic turns.
And the innocent eye is shut forever.

We climb the hill, we crave to be on high.
But the taut tight rope over the abyss frays
And in eternal echoes we hear the sighs.
Angel arms slip from our necks and we fall away.

Analyzing Oil on Canvas

The fantastic Mark Tansey.
One sunny day at the MET I stood in front of this painting contemplating it for many minutes. It was hanging right there in the 20th century section where all the light comes flooding through the angled windows as if to disinfect any gratuitous linseed oil. I am a snob and a selfish person only when it comes to two spatial areas that happen to be free: in front of a painting displayed in a museum and a bar stool. I don't like sharing that space in either case.

A seasoned lady, one of those well-to-do Manhattanite types, sidled up next to me. The corner of my eye dazzled slightly at the twinkling beams dancing off her heaps of jewelry. I was annoyed by it. She began to think out loud so I assumed her observations were meant for me. She seemed to call up all her own powers of benign snobbery when, nose in air, she proclaimed it was a shame the artist didn't create a certain 'closure' to the painting by adding some cow dung underneath the cow.

I very gently pointed to the left of the painting and reminded her of the scientist holding the mop. We did all this without eye contact. She let out an expensive sounding laugh. I finally turned and smiled at her in that satisfied way we do when we think we're witty and this made me hate myself. I didn't want to smile the way she spoke. This was a funny thing as I felt very shabby that day but it subsided after that. However, I do remember wishing laughter paid out.

Is the Sun Conscious?

Is the sun conscious? And could we ever know?

And even if conscious it would seem only to go

Without saying there would be still the same tedium,

The same circular fusion of hydrogen and helium,

From that great ball of fire that churns in hot yellow glow.

Just what do we think we would expect to hear

From this self-knowing glowing ball of a sphere

Other than, “I, a star, am this long chain of energy,

My process unchanging despite my subjectivity.”

Our own conscious thought is nothing more than mere

Desire to believe the sun simply does while wholly aware

And to think his deep furnace works with great care.

Light and heat as deliberate destiny meant for us,

A methodical burning of passion, a fused fiery fuss.

A friend flaming as a favour for all down here.

Is a starfish conscious? Can he know any pain?

Do many directional choices make him insane?

His splayed arms regenerate back to a point

Where oblivious blood spreads to each joint.

Yet movement can stem from sensation of rain.

We wonder if all this mechanism is choice

Whispered in a whim by some strange inner voice

That says, “I go here, I, the mental thinker, this

Mover and shaker, me, this sovereign starfish.”

Like the sun, actions remain in spite of this noise.

Whether with knowledge or no they do as they could

Without benefit of knowing if they do as they should.

This no matter if no other thinker inside

Who works as assistant to help mirror the mind.

Some, in natural beauty, simply do as they would.

To be a thinking thing with no thought of a self.

To place an ever reflecting ego away on a shelf,

With just enough of that spark, the one that can see

Despite the sun-strong blinding sense of a me,

So unaware, yet aware, of nothing, and everything else.

Hamlet:Regret

He sat as one, as one alone, but with the many.

One among some rows of sunk sorrowed heads.

He set his own grief aside but only when he

Lifted dry sore eyes that turned and led

To a crumpled site. Mother, too, sat alone,
A creased and jagged black heaping pile
Like an unhewn, sphalerite onyx stone
That shed dark tears. For all the while

Father sat displayed, arrayed in gold,
Plated and protected, and also altared,
A warrior protecting a now ashen soul
Enshrined. Father and son could bear

No strain to such a sympathetic turn;
One too dead inside, the other ground so fine,
Insurance against the feasting worms
That, like talkers to the dead, like to dine.

Who defends, who acts, when the man of cloth
Rises up as expert and starts to spew
Sans brevity? Yet more of Larkin's moth-
Eaten brocade, a deadening world-view

That denies both life and destined death.
There is no deep down meaning if
Instead of celebrating life's real wealth,
We must hear from men who seem convinced

It is to be deferred as only judgment.
So he sat in grief. Even more in vain.
Only now as indecisive as if he then
Played the part of the vacillating Dane.

To rise up! To speak! To take a stand!
To convey in love what god's agent could not:
To celebrate the love of what once was the man.
He might relay in deed and memory just a jot,

Remembrances perhaps, some kind words.
He sat alone in grief and thought of what to say.
From the aperture he heard sweet songs of birds.
He never moved. He put his poisoned sword away.

A Glance Cast

Replete with electric love and filled with

Sensual charge, your stirring stare surges forth

Sharp power all through, heretofore missed

But now coursing into an infinite core

To where no time sits nor moves. And this,

Your gaze, regenerates a world, again alive,

As when receiving an enchanted spark that lifts

Embryonic growth. Then all unfurls and thrives

Like the special start creating true life that is,

And blooms in a thousand million kind of ways.

This, done quick, is what your giving glance gives.

And this, in abundance, is what your single look gave.

A flood of wine, it irrigates and runs a course.

In a corpus blast a universe inflates.

Red rivers rush from the central pumping source

And, in flux and flow, body begins to populate.

A burst within of blood and bone, the mingle and mix,

The thrust and bulge of veins like forest vines

In rhizomatous splendour sown from one look fixed;

All entwined, delicate, tendrilous and tined,

Lush and alive again. No mystery at

All. An atom eye, the creative causal kind,

Is what commenced a dilating heart

And vitalized till now a dormant mind

Once more. The eye or gaze? No need to ask if

One or all. For that gleaming glint is when

Those special things in tandem lithely lifts

A spirit that hopes to do it all again.

Freedom of Belief as Illusion: The Importance of Reasons for Believing

There is much talk in this country about belief.  It is often paired with the idea of freedom.  Freedom of belief has become a tenet we live by and cherish.  Belief is a fascinating part of human nature as it is the lever pulled by which everything else that has to do with behavior is placed in to motion. The moment someone even remotely resembling a fire chief enters your house unannounced to proclaim you have five minutes to get out because the house is about to collapse on your head, is the moment a belief must be welcomed. If you decide to believe him you will also act, presumably by getting out of your own house as fast as you can. Remember, these were mere words strung together by a complete stranger. I would venture that any reasonable person would act accordingly even if they had a priest, or Rabbi, or Imam, over for tea and this religious authority told them to sit tight as God would never allow this to happen. More than this, I would bet my life that any of these three men would act the same as you.  Nothing wakes us out of the slumber of what to really believe about the world when it has everything to do with self-preservation. This is a case of reality (as well as the probability in reality) forcing itself upon you without the benefit of freedom. However, as much as we say we cherish all belief, we are very often quick to decide for others they do not really believe what they do. This is a strange inversion to our idea of the freedom it contains. We do this when it has behavioural consequences we do not like.  This is when we forget a very important aspect of belief: for belief to actually work it must go a long way in objectively understanding how the world actually appears.

Take religious belief. If you are a fairly educated young man who truly believes  an omniscient creator of the universe has written—or at least dictated-- the penultimate book on the way the world should be, that young man will heed it completely. If this book is filled with lots of gibberish about this creator having enemies on earth you must believe this too. If there is even vague (it’s not that vague) talk of god hating these enemies so much so that it is his follower’s job to kill these enemies, this must also be acted upon. When a young man truly believes these things, it should not be a surprise when he, along with fellow believers, takes a petroleum-filled Jumbo 747 aircraft and use it as a bomb by flying it in to buildings.

Are we appalled by this kind of act? Of course we are. It is against every fiber of our ethical intuition. This ethical intuition, I would also argue, precedes even the authority of some books. We also know intuitively it does not bring about a better world for everyone. We tacitly or otherwise know this is wrong and wrong for all the wrong reasons. But what has this young man done in relation to what he believes about the world? For one, according to his belief, he has done his family a great service. According to the book he reads as his world view, it is very difficult to get into paradise after death but with his one act, he has now given his family and himself a direct ticket to heaven. Not a bad deal on the face of things. He has assured them eternal nirvana after death. He has also done the world a great service. Sure, he killed innocent people but these were the enemies of god, after all. 

He has actually improved on the world.  He has also pleased the creator of this world. In this sense, according to his belief, someone who flies a plane into a building for god must be seen as a very altruistic person. Of course, this is obscene. He has not made the world a better place. This, coupled with the real fact that his reasons are highly unlikely, pushes the obscenity to the dangerous. If this sounds shocking I only say it to highlight the point that there is rarely a person out there acting like some Austin Powers villain hoping to finally spread evil around the world. Even the most ridiculous claims purport to actually benefit the world. This again should further highlight how important beliefs really are in the world. But we are most likely agreed that if our goal is to build a better world, holding such absurd beliefs is not the way to go about it.

Why is the above so insane? For one we just know it’s wrong to kill innocent people for utterly terrible reasons. But because we are so adamant about holding on to our freedom of beliefs, even our irrational ones, we decide that this could not possibly be what they believed. And this is even though these young men and those like him are constantly telling us these are the beliefs he holds. So we come up with other plausible reasons as if they acted for political reasons or that they were brainwashed. We decide to differentiate beliefs based on what the behavioural outcomes are despite the fact that they may both be logically insane. As an example, I once watched an episode of Bill O’Reilly’s news show. He was interviewing an author who was known for his strong religious criticism. In a moment of uncharacteristic clarity, Bill O’Reilly made the point that to kill innocent people in the World Trade Center in the hopes of receiving paradise after death was just plain crazy. It’s a crazy belief to own. When the author reminded the catholic O’Reilly it was no more implausible than a cracker turning into the body of a man, O’Reilly protested that at least the latter did no one harm. It was pointed out by the author that this was just due to the behavioural outcomes, but, alas, O’Reilly either didn’t seem to understand this point or he decided he didn’t want his own beliefs challenged.

This is interesting because here we can say the young men truly believed because they acted upon it.  After all, we also base the strength of a belief claim on how it is acted upon. I believe strongly in curing cancer. I then give money to cancer foundations. It’s then believed I mean what I say. Shouldn’t we who champion freedom of belief be impressed with such strength of conviction that those who hold it also act on it?  According to O’Reilly it was just fine to believe in transubstantiation as long as it did not have negative outcomes. I suppose this is innocent enough. But as far as interpreting the world correctly (aside from behavioural consequences) believing martyrdom gets you eternal paradise stands in the same relation to the idea that a cracker turns into a man.  As we know, the belief does not end there. We can take any notion of action out of the equation and see these two beliefs baldly in similar light. Two competing claims are set side by side. But we only make a value judgment on their truth value based on whether one is acted upon or whether one is just held within the closed bosom of private belief. However, the warm embrace of privacy does not make something true.

It’s worth noting that partaking in this cracker will itself also result in paradise. It might be as equally worthy to note that many Jews did lose their lives at many points in history simply for being accused of “host desecration.” The belief was so strongly believed that action was taken in defense of it. The belief was so strongly held that it inspired action in the form of anyone defaming the belief would be set on fire in the town square. The only reason this does not happen anymore is not because we have looked closer in to the reliability of the belief but rather we have tempered our actions by not taking it so seriously. O’Reilly’s comments are a good example of this very thing.

We now live in a world where we can mostly afford to have beliefs without worrying about consequences simply because we do not take them as seriously. This includes believing a witch put the evil eye on you or that certain stars are aligned in a way that will prove you will find your true love. As long as the downtrodden hobo on the corner only claims it and nothing else, we smile politely that he believes aliens are sending transmissions through his hair follicles. We walk away from him. These are in fact benign. Of course, we also don’t clean up our tramp and invite him to Thanksgiving so he can pontificate further on these pesky aliens. This appears to be freedom belief in a sense, I suppose. It is certainly not respect for them.  But imagine the first time a man refuses cancer treatment because he claims Saturn is not in retrograde with Neptune. His behavior has put his belief, the very same belief he might have had before his decision, in to new light. But the belief has not changed. What would have changed is his behavior which, in principle anyway, should only serve to strengthen an outsider’s notion that he really believes it. But we only question the sanity of his action. We leave the belief alone.

As an example of how we can partition our views on belief and whether they have real world consequences or not, ponder a silly scenario:

Imagine you are at a party, a festive get together where everyone is having a good time. You are a little self-conscious as you don’t know many people but you are willing to mingle and hope to make friends. You walk in to a room of nice people chatting and you see an empty chair so you decide to take it and hope to instill yourself into the conversation. Before you can sit down you are politely told that the lone empty chair is actually occupied by somebody’s invisible friend, Jimmy. Of course, this might sound crazy but for the fact that everyone in the room seems to agree with this so you acquiesce. You may take part in the illusion as you are there to make friends.  Besides, you are slightly embarrassed, but not put out completely, by standing next to an empty chair presumably taken up by an invisible entity. No skin off your nose.

But imagine the same scenario if you ran into the room with your injured child who needed a seat right away. If you were told even politely that the seat was taken by Jimmy, it seems a good bet your reaction would not be awkward politeness. You more than likely will have decided it is not true. You will have plopped your kid down whether Jimmy likes it or not. But here is where a certain fancy pirouette of belief is executed. It will more than likely then be mentioned that Jimmy understood the importance of giving up the seat and got up accordingly. We had an invisible entity taking up a chair and before we know it, he also knows the importance of etiquette. Invisible Jimmy's attributes have now been compounded. This is a good example of a false belief begetting another belief. One might be tempted to compare this to how lying leads to other lies. If this were the beginning of a religion it would not be too long before competing claims were made over Jimmy. More than this, it might not be long before wars are started over him. May be with time his body will turn in to something edible.

This is the cognitive dissonance of belief. One might argue that it is perfectly fine to partition our views on belief this way. However, my argument is that as long as we allow anyone to believe what they want without real world proof to back it up, we also make it difficult to criticize those beliefs that are acted upon with negative consequences (Imagine me arguing that Jimmy did not get up quick enough or that he was rude many times after this scenario). Therefore it is often argued, especially by the more liberally minded, that it is not religious beliefs that fanatics act upon. By denying this—and I will remind again, they are telling us what they believe---we get no closer to understanding real motives.

Freedom is a good thing. We want people to believe what they want to  believe. More to the point, we do not want to put constraints on it. But this only becomes true in a legal sense. We also demand some proof for reasons why they believe what they do. Freedom of belief that has no real world consequences essentially just means we do not jail people for holding stupid views.

Am I free to believe Abraham Lincoln was the 16th president?  Am I free to deny it? I am but I’m also at the mercy of not being invited back to the table of Civil War discussions. I am free to be laughed at. At the same time I am not necessarily free to believe it. I am actually a slave to historical documentation. I am bound by proof. I am shackled to truths in the world.

Much importance has been put on the idea of a person’s subjective views. Everyone, we think, can have their own private beliefs. We in America live in a country where we rightly do not want to put Orwellian limits on what a person believes. However, we must remember that, like a good deal of the aspects of freedom, this comes with responsibilities. The conundrum of the responsibility of the freedom of belief is that we are mostly responsible in realizing we don’t really have it. There is a world out there that works a certain way whether we agree with it or not. If your belief does not take this into consideration you are in danger of being very wrong. We can trace this back to an evolutionary standpoint. Believe that you can keep walking beyond the cliff side you find yourself at and you will find reality elicit a rude awakening upon you. No matter your views on gravity, it will have put real world constraints on you.

The danger of a skewed freedom of belief is when we allow everyone to have their own view at the expense of objective proof. Though many of these may be benign they still, by my view, can give cover to those that are much more dangerous.  The important thing to do is a hard one and one that goes against each individual will. That is the desire to believe things based on wishful thinking rather than the real. Many might see this as a kind of fatalism but it does not mean we cannot change things. On the contrary, seeing and believing things rightly should give us clarity and, therefore, allow us more power to change things for the better. We can still make a difference in the world. This is not restricting.  This can set us free.