Through the Prism: There Is Only Fascinating Mystery

Accumulation.

I feel that lately, accumulation, and it's the word that springs to mind today as I'm reminded I'm aging. I've had a relatively privileged, peaceful, undramatic life. Nevertheless, all the time I'm more aware of the weight of all the life experiences I've accumulated, both good and bad. The marks may be small, but they eventually add up.

Katherine Lo

MARK

Not everything hard will break you, but it will
probably leave a mark,

like the scratch on the front bumper
from a ladder propped against the garage wall,

the one you didn’t even know you’d touched
until it started moving. Even then

a brief moment of bewilderment at this spontaneous
wobble before your brain understood

and your foot stomped the brake. That we don’t
always feel the damage

is a kind of grace, the reprieve of a door pushed
against an overstuffed closet,

solid restraint to the chaos waiting to fall
on your head the minute you forget

and pull it open. You need to deal with it,
some might say, and they may be right. But first

there’s laundry, and groceries, and teeth
to floss. Some Saturday, after you’ve said goodbye

to friends in some parking lot, you’ll head to your car
and squat in the space

and light you never have in the garage,
and take a look. Long black scrape, white paint

crimped at the edges. But not bad. Nothing worth
the trouble of fixing.

—from Rattle #81, Fall 2023

I feel blessed to have had far more good than bad.

A few recent life experiences and notes on a couple of excellent books follow.

A colleague recently texted me a link with the following note, and it couldn't have made me happier:

Made me think of you. Thx for always speaking your truth. https://www.instagram.com/reel/CzeES3JxEdC/

It's Trevor Noah's introduction to his new podcast, What Now? Here's my transcription.

If there's one thing I've always loved, it's having a spirited conversation. I've always loved how the words coming out of another person's mouth can change how the mush in your brain processes or sees the world that it's seen a certain way for such a long time.

It feels like these days, though, we might be losing that ability, or it's become a little bit harder. You know, a few days ago I was, I was, at an event and people were having really interesting and dynamic conversations, conversations about really difficult topics. Men, women, young and old alike. And every few minutes, somebody would start their opinion with the phrase, 'Now, I would never say this in public, but . . . ' Or, 'I would never say this if I was being recorded, but . . . ' And I found that fascinating. So many of us have opinions and ideas about the world that we live in that we are either unable, unwilling, or too scared to share. And I thought to myself, if we cannot have conversations about difficult things, if the conversations themselves are now the difficult things--then what hope do we have of fixing the difficult things?

You know, I, I almost think of it like a, like a minefield. One of the most dangerous places you can ever walk into is a minefield, because you do not know where they are. You do not know when your last step may be. All you know is at any moment something could blow up. But the danger comes when you step into the minefield. Imagine if discussing how to navigate the minefield was as dangerous as the minefield itself. That's what I feel like we're living in now.

And so, in this podcast, on this episode, and with every single episode that follows, I hope to get into those conversations. Let's chat about the things that make us uncomfortable. Let's chat to the people who make us uncomfortable. Let's come to consensus. Let's walk away still fighting, but understanding each other a little bit more. But most importantly, let's have the conversation.

I, too, love a good conversation, and am proud that this monologue made someone think of me.

A few little anecdotes about my kids:

This past weekend, for the first time ever, after ten years of encouragement, our boys walked silently through the woods, senses attuned to the world around them, carefully looking and listening and observing.

Of course, it was because they decided they want to try to kill a bird with a thrown spear, and were attempting to hunt.

-----

[Older], watching LEGO Masters: "Oh, I'm definitely cheering for that team. They're such devious masterminds. I mean, it's hard to be an evil genius at school, but watching this . . . "

-----

Does it count as dad-joke master status when you surprise even yourself with your spontaneous ability to get the kids rolling on the floor?

On this morning's drive to school, [Older] was lamenting his November birthday, that there is more darkness than daylight, which robs him of celebration time. I said that's all part of having a fall birthday, the shorter days, the dreary weather, etc. "You were just like a leaf on a tree in the autumn: the temperatures dropped and you fell out of Mom."

Similar snippets have dotted this blog for years, as I'm constantly amused and amazed by their philosophical ponderings.

Someone else's anecdote about their kid:

Sneha Madhavan-Reese

BOUNDARY CONDITIONS

who but men blame the angels for the wild
exceptionalism of men?
—Sam Sax, “Anti-Zionist Abecedarian”

Along the border of any governed region, there exists a value which must
satisfy its laws. This is a rule I learned for solving differential equations.

Math seems like it doesn’t exist, my newly graduated kindergartner declares.
It’s just rules that someone made up. She’s brilliant beyond her years.

On the surface of the ocean exist propagating dynamic disturbances;
in other words, waves. In other words, the boundary between air and water,

between the requirements for life, between dark and light, wrong and right,
between what can be held and what can only be imagined, between dreams

and the realities that shatter them, the things that keep us awake at night,
at every boundary there are laws, and sometimes these laws make no sense.

Of course it’s made up, but that doesn’t mean it’s not real. There is math
in the air we breathe, I tell her. People die for made up reasons every day.

There is math in the shuddering earth. Find equations that govern its motion,
whether by earthquake or explosion. Try and fail, try again and fail, to solve.

—from Poets Respond
November 7, 2023

I recently read Nasty, Brutish, and Short: Adventures in Philosophy with My Kids by Scott Hershovitz. He, his kids, and their interactions reminded me ever so much of me, mine, and ours. Here's a short review and some excerpts.

One of the most entertaining and accessible philosophy books I've encountered. Launching from the naturally philosophical inquiries of children, Hershovitz gives a broad tour of philosophy topics and considerations. It's a great introduction to general philosophical thought. I was hoping for even more insight from and about children--he generally uses anecdotes of interactions with his children as prompts for adult considerations--though a clear understanding of kids and parenting advice permeate the discourse--it's ultimately a philosophy book with children, not a book about children and philosophy. Nevertheless, I thoroughly enjoyed reading it and found Hershovitz a witty, engaging writer.

When you first bring a baby home from the hospital, your main job is to keep the kid alive. It's custodial care: feed, burp, bathe, and change an endless series of diapers. Then wake up and do it all again, assuming you even slept. The task that comes after that--more than a year later--is integrating the kid into the community. To do that, you have to introduce the kid to the idea of rights and responsibilities--even if you aren't yet using those words. When Hank would kidnap Giraffey, we'd explain that he had to ask first, since Giraffey was Rex's. We also taught Hank what was his--and when Rex needed to ask his permission.

Those early property lessons were soon supplemented by lessons in promising, privacy, and personal space. Sometimes it felt like we were running a little law school for students who had no idea what their rights and responsibilities were. In contracts class, the boys learned to keep their promises. In torts, they learned to keep their hands to themselves--and knock on doors that are closed. In criminal law, they learned that there are consequences for bad behavior.

There's more to morality than rights and responsibilities. Indeed, one of the most important lessons a kid can learn is that you shouldn't always stand on your rights. You should share what's yours, at least some of the time, even though you have the right to exclude others from it. That's kind and caring, and when kids acquire those virtues, rights recede in importance. But the early years of parenting are mostly about morality, in one form or another. That's why we've started our journey with questions about rights--and are soon to turn to revenge, punishment, and authority, topics that are each, in their own way, connected to rights.

-----

"Is God real?" Rex asked a lot when he was little. . . .

When a kid asks a Big Question, I think it important to start a conversation, not cut one off.

So I never say yes or no. Instead, I share a range of views. "Some people think that God is real and that the stories we read in the Bible happened, just the way they are told. Other people think that those stories are just stories, which people made up to explain things they didn't understand." Then, I ask: "What do you think?" And I take Rex's response seriously, not as a conversation stopper but as a conversation starter. If Rex says that God is real, then I'll want to know that makes him think so, whether he's noticed that the stories in the Bible don't quite add up (there are two creation stories, for instance), and why so many bad things happen in the world if God is real and could stop them. If he takes the other path, if he says that the stories are just stories, then I'll ask him why so many people take them so seriously, how he would explain the existence of the world, and so on.

The conversation has to be pitched to a kid's capabilities. And you shouldn't think that Rex and I spend hours sitting by the fire, sipping brandy, and sifting life's mysteries. Most of these conversations are short--often just a minute or two. But they add up over time. Sometimes in surprising ways.

Hershovitz shares his opinions, his personal takes on all the common philosophical categories, explaining his reasons and encouraging disagreement from readers who see things differently. This is not about children, but it's something that doesn't get explicitly articulated enough and I really appreciate it.

Somehow, lots of Americans have been convinced that government "handouts" hamper freedom. The truth is, providing for people's basic needs promotes freedom. It makes it possible for people to say no to a boss who would treat them badly. . . .

Americans talk a good game about freedom. We love our constitutional rights. But if you care about freedom, the American workplace should seriously disturb you. The government is powerful. But so is your employer. And as things stand now, you have nearly no rights in that relationship.

And I like this bit simply for his voice and humor.

We should be grateful to live in a society where a person's worth is a function of something worthwhile, like the number of Likes on her latest Facebook post.

Oh, wait. I meant to say: We should be grateful to live in a society that values everyone equally.

Shit. That's still not right. I meant to say: We should be grateful to live in a society that says that it values everyone equally.

And I mean that. We don't live up to that ideal. But at least it is our ideal. That is, in itself, a moral achievement, since few societies have shared that ambition. Of course, it would be leagues better if we actually managed to build a society that valued everyone equally.

Speaking of, one of the best sections is the beginning of the first chapter. It's a great introduction to the style of the book.

I love drawing a bath. Not for me, of course. I'm a straight man socialized in the last century, so I don't take baths. Or express the full range of human emotions. But my children take baths, and someone has to draw them. Most nights, I make sure that someone is me.

Why? Because the bath is upstairs. And downstairs is a fucking madhouse. As kids get tired, their kinetic energy increases and their self-control self-destructs. The noise rivals a rock concert. Someone is screaming because it's time to practice piano, or because there's no time to practice piano. Or because we didn't have dessert, or because we did have dessert but he got it on his shirt. Or simply because there must be screaming. Screaming is the cosmological constant.

So I escape. "I'll start Hank's bath," I say, bounding up the stairs, on the way to the best part of my day. I close the door, start the water, and tinker with the temperature. Not too hot, not in too cold. Back and forth, as if I might get it right. But make no mistake: The water will be too hot. Or too cold. Or both, because kids reject the law of noncontradiction. I will fail. But I am at peace. Because the bath muffles the screams. There, alone on the tile floor, I sit with my thoughts (and by thoughts, I mean phone), soaking up the solitude.

My wife has figured me out, so sometimes she strikes first. "I'll start Hank's bath," she says, crushing my soul. But she's a straight woman socialized in the last century, so she wastes the opportunity. She turns on the bath, but instead of fiddling with her phone while the water fills, she does something sensible, like laundry. Or something inexplicable, like return to the room the children are in to . . . parent?! I know that I should feel bad about this. And I do. But not for the reason I should. Solitude is the greatest luxury we can afford. Someone should soak it up. Better Julie than me. But if not her, definitely me.

So there I am, sitting on the bathroom floor, dimly aware that the downstairs crazy is crazier than normal. Hank (age five) is full-on wailing, so it must be something serious (and by serious, I mean trivial). When I cannot let the water rise any longer, I shut it off and shatter my serenity.

"Hank, the bath is ready," I shout down the stairs.

No response.

"HANK, THE BATH IS READY!" I scream over his screams.

"HANK, THE BATH IS READY!" Rex relays, with great satisfaction.

"HANK, THE BATH IS READY!" Julie says, with great irritation.

And then the sobs are ascending upon me. Slowly. One. Step. At. A. Time. Until Hank arrives, out of breath and out of his mind.

I try to calm him down. "Hank," I say softly, "what's wrong?" No response. "Hank," I whisper, even more softly, "what's bothering you?" He still can't collect himself. I start taking off his clothes as he tries to catch his breath. Finally he's in the bath, and I try again. "Hank, what's bothering you?"

"I don't . . . I don't have . . . "

""What don't you have, Hank?"

"I DON'T HAVE ANY RIGHTS!" Hank wails, bursting back into tears.

"Hank," I say softly, still hoping to soothe him but also now curious: "What are rights?"

"I don't know," he whimpers, "but I don't have any."

Plus, I very much relate.

And a final excerpt from Hershovitz. I remember in junior college when one of the instructors told me I had an absurdist sense of humor, that I found humor in pointing out life's essential absurdity. I've proudly embraced that label ever since.

. . . the juxtaposition of those two thoughts: We don't matter. But things matter to us.

According to Nagel, holding those two thoughts in your head lends life an air of absurdity. And he means something specific by that. Nagel says that something's absurd when there's a mismatch between its seriousness and its significance. As a law student, I sat through a training on how to format citations for law journals. It included an endless, enthusiastic conversation about whether certain periods should be italicized. There was nothing at stake. It's really hard to tell whether a period is italicized. And no one cares. It was truly absurd.

Nagel thinks our entire lives are a little like that conversation. We take them seriously. We worry about our looks, our clothes, our careers, our projects, our plans--and all to what end? None, in the end. Because this will all come to an end, and it won't matter what happened to us.

We are insignificant. And we know that. And yet, we carry on as if it all matters.

Absurd.

We don't matter, but things matter to us. Absurd, indeed.

One other thing today, the source of some of the pictures sprinkled throughout this post, the new book We, the Curious Ones by Marion Dane Bauer, illustrated by Hari & Deepti. Of it, I wrote in my review:

A beautifully illustrated, wonderful poem about, as Bauer says in the Afterword, "the complex and sometimes fraught relationship between science and story." She charts the development of different cosmologies over time, how the stories we have told about the universe and our place in it have impacted our identities. It is lyrical, insightful, philosophical, and wise.

It tells the story of how we went from seeing ourselves as the center of the universe to knowing we don't matter, but things matter to us. And I especially love the way it illustrates how primary stories are in our understanding of ourselves, the world, and everything. Here are the words.

We, the Curious Ones

by Marion Dane Bauer

Birds sing.
Bees dance.
Woves howl.
"I am here! I am here."
But we are the ones
who tell stories.

We tell of gods and goddesses
dancing in the sky.
We sing of our hunters' daring,
of the nobility of the beast
that fills our bellies,
of the generosity of the morning sun,
the gift of the smiling moon.
We chant in temples,
in sweat lodges,
in churches,
in shrines,
celebrating our lives,
honoring our dead.
We love our stories.
We live our stories.

Long ago we told of a flat world
build on the back
of a turtle.
Or held up by elephants,
the elephants standing
on that turtle.
Or simply floating
beneath a fixed dome of sky.
But most agreed,
the Earth,
stretching away on every side,
was flat.
And we took care not to sail
too close to the edge
lest we tumble into
the abyss.

Always, though, there are those among us,
curious and courageous, too,
who dare challenge
even the stories
we love,
the stories
we live by.
"What if," they said,
"the gods and goddesses
dancing in the sky
are truly distant
suns?"
"What if," they said,
"our flat Earth
is not flat at all?
What if this world is round?"

It took us a long time
to believe in stars
as distant suns,
a long time to believe
in a round Earth,
a very long time to follow those distant
suns
over the edge that was no edge
and return home again.
An even longer time
to find new stories
for this new
round world.
But we did.

"Do you see,"
we said,
"how sun and moon and starts
wheel across our sky,
rising,
setting,
rising again?
Our world may be strangely round,"
we said.
"Yet it still stands at the center
of the universe.
And we, living on this round world,"
we said,
"still stand at the center
of the universe."

"And all,
all,
all,"
we said,
"still revolves around us."
We loved our new stories.
We lived our new stories.

But some went right on questioning.
"What if,"
they said,
"our Earth does not stand at the center?
What if,"
they said,
"the center is our sun?
What if Earth is but one
of many planets
revolving
around,
around,
around
our shining sun?"

We, not at the center?
How could that be?
We struggled . . .
until we found a new story.
"Perhaps our Earth is not at the
center,"
we said,
"yet our sun is the grandest
of all the stars.
The entire universe,"
we said,
"travels around our sun.
Our Earth,"
we said,
"is the most important planet."

"And we,"
we said,
"are the most important of all."
We told this new story
everywhere on this round Earth
until it was
a story to love,
a story to live by.

Yet some kept right on questioning,
and they kept finding new answers.
"Our sun,"
they said,
"is not the center of the universe.
It is one of hundreds
of billions
of stars,
and those only the ones in the Milky Way.
The Milky Way,"
they said,
"is one of two trillion galaxies
in the known universe."

"The known universe,"
they said,
"is the light that has
traveled
toward us since
the beginning
of time."

"Since the beginning of time,"
they said,
"our universe has been expanding,
rushing away from us
in
every
direction."
And beyond all we can see
and measure
and know . . .
might that be infinity?
Infinity filled
with
every
possibility?
Perhaps even other universes?

So here we are
on a medium-sized planet
circling an average star
in an ordinary galaxy
in an unimaginably
vast universe,
a universe that is mostly dark,
that seems mostly empty.
More nothingness
than we know how to imagine.
We,
dust
on a planet made of dust.
How do we love such a story?
How do we live such a story?

But listen,
listen,
listen.
Once more,
the curious sail forth asking questions.
And once more
they return home
filled with discovery.
"Yes," they say, "yes,
the universe is expanding,
rushing away from us
in every direction."

"Yet if our universe is, indeed, infinite,
we do, once more, stand at the center,
even of all that leaving.
Wherever we are is the center.
Yes," they say, "yes,
we are made of dust.
But it is the dust of stars.
Yes," they say, "yes,
most of the universe
is dark,
dark,
dark."

"But there is no nothingness.
Only mystery.
Fascinating mystery."

Our universe,
a continuous restless swarming.
Interacting,
evolving,
growing.
And we,
interacting
evolving,
growing,
too.

For we are part of everything
and everything
part of us.

Dogs bow.
Prairie dogs kiss.
Fireflies flash,
"Come to me! Come to me!"
Trees talk to one another
underground.

And we,
the curious ones,
the ones who discover,
tell stories.
The universe is waiting.
What will you discover?
What stories will you tell?