The Science of Breathing

All of my photos in this post are from the same day; some from the morning during a brief spring snow and some that evening after a complete melt.

If this oval can become Godzilla, then what's keeping you from achieving your dreams?

By our seven-year-old.

This recent art by our five-year-old, on the other hand, is less intentional and enjoyable.

It's a bit hard to make out, so if you can't tell he scratched "We" into the hood of my car with a nail. He wasn't even mad or trying to be destructive, just bored waiting for his turn to hammer and didn't realize it would be damaging and permanent. At least it was my car and not a stranger's, at least he was practicing his literacy, and at least it was such a positive message of unity and connectedness.

He scrawled the same message into his latest two pieces of paint-your-own ceramics.

It just so happens that these two moments theme nicely with the pieces I want to share this time. I didn't plan it, the ideas just synchronized among the things that came across my (life) feed that I thought worth saving. They're very big, vague, abstract themes. I may even be the only one who sees them. I'll let them speak for themselves and they may emerge for you or they may not.

Before the weightier items, a few quick ones that resonate with me and say a lot concisely.

Privilege isn't the presence of perks and benefits. It's the absence of obstacles and barriers. That's a lot harder to notice. If you have a hard recognizing your privileges, focus on what you don't have to go through. Let that fuel your empathy and action.

I think one of the most humbling lines to live by is that 'if someone tells you you hurt them, you don't get to decide that you didn't.' It's not a difficult thing to take a few steps back and admit that your actions have caused harm to someone you care about.

People don't change their behavior when other people yell at them, shame them, or send them away to be alone. People change their behavior when they feel heard, understood, and loved. Growth and change require connection and compassion.

At bedtimes we've been working our way through Telephone Tales by Gianni Rodari. It's a bit like One Thousand and One Nights; a traveling salesman calls home each night and tells his daughter a bedtime story. It was published in Italy in 1962. My library's catalog describes it as: A collection of nearly seventy short and surreal stories told by Signor Bianchi, a traveling salesman, to his daughter over the telephone nightly. In my review I wrote: While not always carefully crafted stories, each tale is entertaining for its imagination and inventiveness. You never know what you're going to get. Here's one of my favorites.

The Sun and the Cloud

The sun was riding across the sky, cheerful and glorious in his chariot of fire, casting his rays in all directions, to the immense displeasure of a cloud in a stormy mood, which muttered, "Squanderer. Wasteful fool. Go on and spend your rays, your sunshine. You'll see how much you have later."

In the vineyards, every grape ripening on the vine stole a ray or two every minute, and there wasn't a blade of grass or a spider or a flower or a drop of water that didn't take their share.

"Go on, let them rob you blind--you'll see how they thank you later, when you have nothing left to steal."

The sun went on his way, riding cheerfully through the sky, giving rays of sunshine away freely by the millions, by the billions, without bothering to count them.

It wasn't until sunset that he even bothered to count how many rays he had left, and surprise, surprise--he wasn't missing a single one. The cloud, astonished, dissolved into a sheet of hail, while the sun settled down happily into the sea.

No matter how many he gave away, he wasn't missing a single one.

Rattle shared this while we were all awaiting the verdict of the Derek Chauvin trial for the murder of George Floyd.

Poem with an Ear Pressed to the Ground

That it would come down

to the science of breathing

how the lungs receive oxygen

how a pulse becomes stilled

that it would come down

to the compression of an airway

somewhere between the diameter

of a quarter and a dime

shallow breaths the equivalent

of surgical removal of the left lung

trying to breathe with fingers and knuckles

under the force of 90 pounds of pressure

like sipping air through a drinking straw

that it would come down to 12 peers

in chairs palpating their own throats

to feel the pulse beneath their probing

fingers, the tender skin indent

the metric beat of pumping blood

an ear pressed to the ground

prone and pleading

all of us needing the one

who we all came from

who held her breath

spent and waiting

for a newborn to cry

to breathe with life.

~ Kindra McDonald

So, so glad that for once the outcome of the trial turned out right.

Part of Baratunde Thurston's excellent TED Talk, How to Deconstruct Racism, One Headline at a Time:

When I say "white supremacy," I'm not just talking about Nazis or white power activists, and I'm definitely not saying that all white people are racist. What I'm referring to is a system of structural advantage that favors white people over others in social, economic and political arenas. It's what Bryan Stevenson at the Equal Justice Initiative calls the narrative of racial difference, the story we told ourselves to justify slavery and Jim Crow and mass incarceration and beyond. . . . 

And I need to pause the game to remind us of the structure. A subject takes an action against a target engaged in some activity. "White Woman Calls Police On Black Real Estate Investor Inspecting His Own Property." "California Safeway Calls Cops On Black Woman Donating Food To The Homeless." "Golf Club Twice Calls Cops On Black Women For Playing Too Slow." In all these cases, the subject is usually white, the target is usually black, and the activities are anything, from sitting in a Starbucks to using the wrong type of barbecue to napping to walking "agitated" on the way to work, which I just call "walking to work."

And, my personal favorite, not stopping his dog from humping her dog, which is clearly a case for dog police, not people police.

All of these activities add up to living. Our existence is being interpreted as crime.

Now, this is the obligatory moment in the presentation where I have to say, not everything is about race. Crime is a thing, should be reported, but ask yourself, do we need armed men to show up and resolve this situation, because when they show up for me, it's different. We know that police officers use force more with black people than with white people, and we are learning the role of 911 calls in this. Thanks to preliminary research from the Center for Policing Equity, we're learning that in some cities, most of the interactions between cops and citizens is due to 911 calls, not officer-initiated stops, and most of the violence, the use of force by police on citizens, is in response to those calls. Further, when those officers responding to calls use force, that increases in areas where the percentage of the white population has also increased, aka gentrification, aka unicycles and oat milk, aka when BBQ Becky feels threatened, she becomes a threat to me in my own neighborhood, which forces me and people like me to police ourselves. We quiet ourselves, we walk on eggshells, we maybe pull over to the side of the road under the brightest light we can find so that our murder might be caught cleanly on camera, and we do this because we live in a system in which white people can too easily call on deadly force to ensure their comfort. 

The California Safeway didn't just call cops on black woman donating food to homeless. They ordered armed, unaccountable men upon her. They essentially called in a drone strike. This is weaponized discomfort, and it is not new.

From 1877 to 1950, there were at least 4,400 documented racial terror lynchings of black people in the United States. They had headlines as well. "Rev. T.A. Allen was lynched in Hernando, Mississippi for organizing local sharecroppers." "Oliver Moore was lynched in Edgecomb County, North Carolina, for frightening a white girl." "Nathan Bird was lynched near Luling, Texas, for refusing to turn his son over to a mob." We need to change the action, whether that action is "lynches" or "calls police."  . . . 

The crime of living while Black.

This was an important one from Heather Cox Richardson in response to a few far right Senators wanting to start a caucus "based on Anglo-Saxon values." From April 16, 2021:

The authors of the America First Caucus platform lay out very clearly the racial argument behind the political one. America, the authors write, is based on “a common respect for uniquely Anglo-Saxon political traditions,” and “mass immigration” must be stopped. “Anglo-Saxon” is an old-fashioned historical description that has become a dog whistle for white supremacy. . . . 

This was a myth welcome to pre-Civil War white southerners who fancied themselves the modern version of ancient English lords and used the concept of “Anglo-Saxon” superiority to justify spreading west over Indigenous and Mexican peoples. It was a myth welcome in the 1920s to members of the Ku Klux Klan, who claimed that “only as we follow in the pathway of the principles of our Anglo-Saxon father and express in our life the spirit and genius of their ideals may we hope to maintain the supremacy of the race, and to perpetuate our inheritance of liberty.” And it is a myth that appeals to modern-day white supremacists, who imitate what they think are ancient crests for their clothing, weapons, and organizations. 

Emphasizing their white nationalism, the members of the America First Caucus call for “the architectural, engineering and aesthetic value that befits the progeny of European architecture… stunningly, classically, beautiful, befitting a world power and source of freedom.” They also condemn the current education system, calling it “progressive indoctrination” and saying it works “to actively undermine pride in America’s great history and is actively hostile to the civic and cultural assimilation necessary for a strong nation.” They conclude that “The future of America’s position in the world depends on addressing the crisis in education, at both the primary and secondary level.” They envision a world in which people who think as they do control the nation. . . . 

This extraordinary document makes it clear that Republican leaders are reaping what they began to sow during the Nixon administration, when party operatives nailed together a coalition by artificially dividing the nation between hardworking white taxpayers on the one hand and, on the other, people of color and feminist women whose demand for equality, the argument went, was code for government handouts. In the years since 1970, Republicans have called for deregulation and tax cuts that help the wealthy, arguing that such cuts advance individual liberty. All the while, they have relied on racism and sexism to rally voters with the argument that Black and Brown voters and feminist women—“feminazis,” in radio host Rush Limbaugh’s world—wanted big government so it would give them handouts. 

It was a political equation that worked with a wink and a nod until former president Trump put the racism and sexism openly on the table and encouraged his supporters to turn against their opponents. They have now embraced open white supremacy.

They backtracked after criticism, but I'm sure the change is in name only.

Perceptions in the collective consciousness.

A Spade Stay A Spade

"Lets call a spade a spade, not a gardening tool"

Refers to calling something as it is

Speaking bluntly without "beating around the bush"

For example,

A Black boy: one strike

A Queer Black man: two strikes

A Queer Black woman: three strikes

An unarmed Black man: threat

An unarmed Black woman: disposable

An unarmed Black child: armed and dangerous

A well-dressed Black woman: unsafe

A well-spoken Black man: not safe

A well-mannered Black child: Still not safe

An Angry Black man: unjustified

An Angry Black woman: unstable

An Angry Black child: unruly

A Black girl: too much

A Black woman: not enough

A Trans Black woman: less

A Black person: the set-up in a joke

A Black culture: the delivery of a joke

A Black life: a punch line that's never not funny.

It's from the book We Were All Someone Else Yesterday by Omar Holmon. Here's another.

Ever Wonder What Happens When Someone Says

"All Lives Matter" Five Times Into A Mirror

"Said it before and I'll say it now:

America is really fortunate that Black people only want

equality and not revenge."-Joel D Anderson

We say Black lives matter

they critique how we mourn

We say, Black lives matter

they talk politics at the wake

and then

have the savior of a solution

to say

"All lives matter..."

They say all lives matter

and America's fruits turn a strange sour

They say all lives matter

and reparations crash Wall Street to collect

They said all lives matter

and thousands of Black bodies

came marching out of the Atlantic.

I haven't finished the book yet, but this is from Emergent Strategy: Shaping Change, Changing Worlds by Adrienne Maree Brown.

We are in an imagination battle.

Trayvon Martin and Mike Brown and Renisha McBride and so many others are dead because, in some white imagination, they were dangerous. And that imagination is so respected that those who kill, based on an imagined, racialized fear of Black people, are rarely held accountable.

Imagination has people thinking they can go from being poor to a millionaire as part of a shared American dream. Imagination turns Brown bombers into terrorists and white bombers into mentally ill victims. Imagination gives us borders, gives us superiority, gives us race as an indicator of capability. I often feel I am trapped inside someone else's imagination, and I must engage my own imagination in order to break free.

All of this imagining, in the poverty of our current system, is heightened because of scarcity economics. There isn't enough, so we need to hoard, enclose, divide, fence up, prioritize resources and people.

We have to imagine beyond those fears. We have to ideate--imagine and conceive--together.

We must imagine new worlds that transition ideologies and norms, so that no one sees Black people as murderers, or Brown people as terrorists and aliens, but all of us as potential cultural and economic innovators. This is a time-travel exercise for the heart. This is collaborative ideation--what are the ideas that will liberate all of us?

The more people that collaborate on that ideation, the more that people will be served by the resulting world(s).

Science fiction is simply a way to practice the future together. I suspect that is what many of you are up to, practicing futures together, practicing justice together, living into new stories. It is our right and responsibility to create a new world.

What we pay attention to grows, so I'm thinking about how we grow what we are all imagining and creating into something large enough and solid enough that it becomes a tipping point.

Ursula Le Guin recently said, "It's up to authors to spark the imagination of their readers and to help them envision alternatives to how we live."

I agree with her. As Toni Cade Bambara has taught us, we must make just and liberated futures irresistible. We are all the protagonists of what might be called the great turning, the change, the new economy, the new world.

And I think it is healing behavior, to look at something so broken and see the possibility and wholeness in it. That's how I work as a healer: when a body is between my hands, I let wholeness pour through. We are all healers too--we are creating possibilities, because we are seeing a future full of wholeness.

Imagining the future.

Unusually, I love this new picture book far more than my kids.

“What are you doing?”

“I like to close my eyes and imagine into the future.”

“Are you doing it right now?”

“Yes. Come. Close your eyes and do it with me.

“In the future, this spot will look different.

New things will grow.

“New plants and trees will come.

A whole forest maybe.”

“It is nice here.”

“Yes. It is.”

“Wait, what is that?

Does something live here?”

“Maybe. I don't know.”

“What is it?”

“We are in the future. I don't know what it is.”

“What is it doing?”

“SHHH, it will hear you.”

“AAAAAAAAAAAA!!”

“SHHHHHHHHH!!”

From The Rock from the Sky by Jon Klassen.

More from Heather Cox Richardson. April 19, 2021

America today is caught in a plague of gun violence. . . . 

Americans used to own guns without engaging in daily massacres. . . . 

Today’s promotion of a certain kind of gun ownership has roots in the politics of the country since the Supreme Court handed down the 1954 Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka, Kansas, decision, which declared racial segregation in public schools unconstitutional. Since Democratic President Franklin Delano Roosevelt instituted a government that actively shaped the economy, businessmen who hated government regulation tried to rally opposition to get rid of that government. But Americans of the post-World War II years actually liked regulation of the runaway capitalism they blamed for the Great Depression.

The Brown v. Board decision changed the equation. It enabled those who opposed business regulation to reach back to a racist trope from the nation’s Reconstruction years after the Civil War. They argued that the active government after World War II was not simply regulating business. More important, they said, it was using tax dollars levied on hardworking white men to promote civil rights for undeserving Black people. The troops President Dwight Eisenhower sent to Little Rock Central High School in 1957, for example, didn’t come cheap. Civil Rights, then, promoted by the newly active federal government, were virtually socialism.

This argument had sharp teeth in the 1950s, as Americans recoiled from the growing influence of the U.S.S.R., but it came originally from the Reconstruction era. Then, white supremacist southerners who were determined to stop the federal government from enforcing Black rights argued that they were upset about Black participation in society not because of race—although of course they were—but rather because poor Black voters were electing lawmakers who were using white people’s tax dollars to lay roads, for example, or build schools.

In contrast to this apparent socialism, southern Democrats after the Civil War lionized the American cowboy, whom they mythologized as a white man (in fact, a third of the cowboys were men of color) who wanted nothing of the government but to be left alone (in reality, the cattle industry depended on the government). Out there on the western plains, the mythological cowboy worked hard for a day’s pay for moving cattle to a railhead, all the while fighting off Indigenous Americans, Mexicans, and rustlers who were trying to stop him.

That same mythological cowboy appeared in the 1950s to stand against what those opposed to business regulation and civil rights saw as the creeping socialism of their era. By 1959, there were 26 Westerns on TV, and in March 1959, eight of one week’s top shows were Westerns. They showed hardworking cowboys protecting their land from evildoers. The cowboys didn’t need help from their government; they made their own law with a gun.

In 1958, Republican Senator Barry Goldwater of Arizona rocketed to prominence after he accused the president from his own party, Dwight Eisenhower, of embracing “the siren song of socialism.” Goldwater had come from a wealthy background after his family cashed in on the boom of federal money flowing to Arizona dam construction, but he presented himself to the media as a cowboy, telling stories of how his family had come to Arizona when “[t]here was no federal welfare system, no federally mandated employment insurance, no federal agency to monitor the purity of the air, the food we ate, or the water we drank,” and that “[e]verything that was done, we did it ourselves.” Goldwater opposed the Brown v. Board decision and Eisenhower’s decision to use troops to desegregate Little Rock Central High School.

Increasingly, those determined to destroy the postwar government emphasized the hardworking individual under siege by a large, grasping government that redistributed wealth to the undeserving, usually people of color. A big fan of Goldwater, Ronald Reagan famously developed a cowboy image even as he repeatedly warned of the “welfare queen” who lived large on government benefits she stole. . . . 

The idea of individuals standing against a dangerous government became central to the Republican Party.

We are in a bizarre moment, as Republican lawmakers defend largely unlimited gun ownership even as recent polls show that 84% of voters, including 77% of Republicans, support background checks. The link between guns, cowboys, race, and government in America during Reconstruction, and again after the Brown v. Board decision, helps to explain why.

In contrast . . . 

Judith Butler: Creating an Inhabitable World for Humans Means Dismantling Rigid Forms of Individuality

This sense of the interdependency of the world, strengthened by a common immunological predicament, challenges the notion of ourselves as isolated individuals encased in discrete bodies, bound by established borders. Who now could deny that to be a body at all is to be bound up with other living creatures, with surfaces, and the elements, including the air that belongs to no one and everyone? . . . 

Pandemic is etymologically pandemos, all the people, or perhaps more precisely, the people everywhere, or something that spreads over or through the people. The “demos” is all the people despite the legal barriers that seek to separate them. A pandemic, then, links all the people through the potentials of infection and recovery, suffering and hope, immunity and fatality. No border stops the virus from traveling if humans travel; no social category secures absolute immunity for those it includes.

“The political in our time must start from the imperative to reconstruct the world in common,” argues Cameroonian philosopher Achille Mbembe. If we consider the plundering of the earth’s resources for the purposes of corporate profit, privatization and colonization itself as planetary project or enterprise, then it makes sense to devise a movement that does not send us back to our egos and identities, our cut-off lives.

Such a movement will be, for Mbembe, “a decolonization [which] is by definition a planetary enterprise, a radical openness of and to the world, a deep breathing for the world as opposed to insulation.” The planetary opposition to extraction and systemic racism ought to then deliver us back to the world, or let the world arrive, as if for the first time, a shared place for “deep breathing”—a desire we all now know.

And yet, an inhabitable world for humans depends on a flourishing earth that does not have humans at its center. We oppose environmental toxins not only so that we humans can live and breathe without fear of being poisoned, but also because the water and the air must have lives that are not centered on our own.

As we dismantle the rigid forms of individuality in these interconnected times, we can imagine the smaller part that human worlds must play on this earth whose regeneration we depend upon—and which, in turn, depends upon our smaller and more mindful role.

Imagining the future.

I fell in love with this short film when I watched it.

Dissolve into the Immersive, Entrancing Rhythms of a Sufi Chant

A ritual at the heart of Sufism, the dhikr is a demonstration of devotion in which worshippers share in a meditation on Allah via synchronised group chants, rhythmic movements and, in some instances, the spinning dances of whirling dervishes. The Dutch-Chinese-American filmmaker Jasmijn Schrofer drops viewers into the rhythms of the dhikr in her short film Tarikat (‘The Path’). Through the ritual of sound and movement, the individuals seem to dissolve into a unified whole, even as Schrofer often lingers on the close-up expressions of each one. The result is an intimate and immersive viewing experience in which viewers might just find themselves lost in a trance alongside the faithful. 17 mins.

Occasionally over the chanting is the murmured voice of a woman, transcribed by captions. Just a few words once a minute or so. They make a sort of poem:

Years ago I awoke in a dream.

I heard a noise without sound or language.

I was absorbed in silence.

How can I return to this silence?

The Path

How old was I when

I started thinking in language?

Mystery can't be expressed in words.

Songs evoke the silence.

They stir the air.

Breathe.

Time unfolds, expands.

Moving air bears a hanging flame.

My humble soul is lifted.

A wave that will penetrate everything

rumbles in the distance.

Souls flow into a river of time.

Breathe.

I rise.

One thousand splashing drops

celebrate their humility in still water.

Breathe.

Self-awareness, empathy, and a sense of connectedness.

Spirituality Is a Brain State We Can All Reach, Religious or Not

Traditionally, this spiritual state has been described as divine, achievable through contemplative and embodied practices, such as prayer, meditation and rhythmic rituals. Indeed, this higher state of consciousness and connection has been reported in many spiritual traditions, ranging from Buddhism to Sufism and Judaism to Christianity. However, recent neuroscientific research shows that the same state can be achieved by secular practices too. Scientific and creative epiphanies with their accompanying ecstatic states characterised by a sense of unity and bliss are similar to religious experiences, with both involving a higher state of presence and observation. Many geniuses, such as Albert Einstein and the mathematician Srinivasa Ramanujan, reported spiritual-like states during their revelations or breakthroughs. But these don’t have to be the rare experiences of a chosen few. They can be reached in daily life. As the Nobel laureate and poet Czesław Miłosz put it: ‘Description demands intense observation, so intense that the veil of everyday habit falls away and what we paid no attention to, because it struck us as so ordinary, is revealed as miraculous.’

I’m a neuroscientist and, among other things, I study the way that spiritual states are reflected in the brain and other parts of the body. Spiritual practices have been shown to be closely linked to self-awareness, empathy and a sense of connectedness, all of which can be correlated with the frequency of brainwaves as measured by electroencephalogram (EEG). Studies using EEG have demonstrated how ‘fragmented’ or out of step our whole brain activity can be much of the time, suggestive of conflicts between our behaviour, thinking, feeling and communication. On the other hand, expert meditators demonstrate more ‘harmonious’ brain waves, which could be indicative of greater synchrony or connectivity within and across different neural areas. In short, spirituality, similar to love, has physiological effects in the brain and body, and EEG provides a window on these changes.

What’s more, research suggests that we can do more than just measure this kind of activity. We can also train our brains to behave in a more ‘aware’ way by engaging in activities that facilitate greater connection or neural synchronisation. Higher synchronisation – imagine a large group of brain cells singing together – has been found following the practice of different contemplative paradigms, such as meditation and prayer (creating, as it were, slower ocean waves, now growing calmer and calmer). One way of interpreting this is that neuronal synchronisation enhances our brain ‘harmony’ or ‘integrity’ – achieving a state in which the brain works in a more congruent way, adopting a more global perspective. Other findings point to the psychological consequences of this state – greater neuronal synchronisation tends to enable a greater ability to make moral judgments and problem-solve creatively.

Neuronal synchronisation also correlates with feeling more self-connected, which can, in turn, further increase empathy, creativity and social effectiveness. In two words, it’s associated with greater self-awareness, which has many practical benefits. For instance, the psychologist and author of Insight (2017) Tasha Eurich wrote in the Harvard Business Review in 2018 that people with greater self-awareness are more confident, make sounder decisions, build stronger relationships and communicate more effectively. The self-aware also receive more promotions, have more satisfied employees, and achieve more profitable companies. . . . 

As spirituality is closely related to one’s state of consciousness, self-awareness and neuronal synchronisation, the more one’s consciousness is elevated, the more one feels the connectedness of things. . . . 

For me, a big part of spirituality is overcoming daily challenging situations with calm and care.

Studies using EEG have demonstrated how ‘fragmented’ or out of step our whole brain activity can be much of the time, suggestive of conflicts between our behaviour, thinking, feeling and communication. On the other hand, expert meditators demonstrate more ‘harmonious’ brain waves, which could be indicative of greater synchrony or connectivity within and across different neural areas. In short, spirituality, similar to love, has physiological effects in the brain and body, and EEG provides a window on these changes.

Another one from Telephone Tales. It doesn't have an implied moral like the first one, or any kind of message that I can find--and it's not fun nonsense or logic and language games like some of the others. It stands out to me nevertheless. It speaks to my emotions in a way I can't easily articulate.

The Scarecrow

Gonario was the youngest of seven brothers. His parents had no money to provide him with an education, so they sent him off to work on a large farm. Gonario's job was being a scarecrow, to keep birds away from the fields. Every morning, he was given a paper wrapper full of gunpowder, and for hours and hours, Gonario would walk back and forth across the fields, stopping every so often to set fire to a pinch of gunpowder. The explosions startled the birds and sent them fluttering, in fear of hunters.

Once, the gunpowder set Gonario's jacket on fire, and if the boy hadn't had the presence of mind to leap into an irrigation ditch, he certainly would have burnt to death. His dive frightened the frogs, and they hopped away quickly, with a great deal of croaking. All that croaking, in turn, scared the crickets, which stopped chirping for a moment.

But none of them were as frightened as Gonario himself, who stood weeping all alone on the banks of the irrigation ditch, drenched like an ugly duckling, looking small, ragged, and hungry. He was sobbing so bitterly that a flock of crows landed on the branches of a tree to watch him. They cawed compassionately to comfort him. But crows can't comfort a scarecrow.

This story took place in Sardinia.

Maybe this explains why it moves me.

Changed by Art

We’re drawn to works of art because they connect us quite directly to the imagined mind of the artist. We believe that artists mean something by what they produce, even if it’s sometimes difficult to discern just what meanings were intended. And thus, whenever we take something to be art, rather than accident or functional artefact, we automatically read into it intentionality and meaning. . . . 

Essentialism explains our preference for objects with particular histories because of a kind of magical thinking based on a causal story of contact. The belief that certain objects have inner essences explains our preference for objects with sentimental value: if I lose my wedding ring, I’m not fully satisfied by an exact replacement; if a child loses her worn teddy bear, she’s not mollified by a gift of a new one. In the case of an artwork, the belief in the artist’s essence is what allows us to feel we’re connecting to the mind of the artist. . . . 

While art is not a biological necessity like eating and sleeping, making and responding to art are activities important for human flourishing. But how might art have such an effect on us, and do we have any evidence that this is so? I offer evidence here for two seemingly opposite ways in which art can improve our wellbeing – by allowing us to escape, and by allowing us to confront and understand negative emotions.

First, consider the idea of art as an escape. Aristotle believed that dramatic tragedies work on us via catharsis – they provoke pity and fear, which then wash away at the end of the play, leaving us relieved. Art therapists use artmaking to help people work through trauma. But there’s a diametrically opposite way in which art can work on us, and that’s via escape. We might think of escape as a cop-out, but it plays an important role in wellbeing. When art allows us to escape, it takes us out of our day-to-day world to another reality. This is why so many of us can’t go to sleep without entering a fictional world – whether in a novel or a television series.

The beneficial emotional effects of escape through visual artmaking have been shown in the work of the psychologist Jennifer Drake, formerly my doctoral student and now an associate professor at Brooklyn College. When adults as well as children are asked to think about a very sad and upsetting personal experience, and then to make a drawing either about the sad memory, or about something completely different, they report a positive mood change (their mood is measured by self-report both before and after the drawing experience). What’s most interesting, however, is that mood is elevated significantly more not when people use art to focus on their sadness but instead when artmaking helps them to escape from thinking about their sadness – when they can think of something different from their sad memory. This finding, which has been replicated, shows that artmaking causes us to feel better when we’re distressed by spiriting us away from those unsettling feelings, rather than by allowing us to focus on and process these feelings.

Second, consider the idea of art as allowing understanding of negative emotions. Philosophers have wondered why we seek out art that confronts us with images and stories of suffering, at the same time as we try to avoid such witnessing or feelings of suffering in our actual lives. Why do we love Rembrandt’s 1659 self-portrait as a pensive, sad and worried-looking old man? Do we enjoy the sadness that this work makes us feel? Thalia Goldstein, another former student of mine and now assistant professor at George Mason University in Virginia, tried to ferret out the differences between the experience of personal sadness and the experience of sadness from art. She asked people to rate their feelings of sadness and anxiety as they thought about a very sad personal memory and as they viewed tragic film clips. Respondents felt equally sad from both the films and the autobiographical memories. What differentiated the autobiographical memory response was that it also triggered anxiety. The sadness from the films, as people projected themselves into the worlds of others, resulted in pure sadness, untinged with the aversive feeling of anxiety.

The psychologist Winfried Menninghaus has offered us the ‘distancing-embracing’ model to explain why we’re drawn to art that so often induces negative emotions. Negative emotions have been shown to compel our attention, increase our emotional involvement, and make the art more memorable and more moving (and feeling moved is pleasurable). Because we know we’re experiencing art, which is a form of make-believe, we distance ourselves from these emotions and remain in control of them. Art invites us in to embrace negative emotions because these occur in a safe space – with no practical consequences for our own lives. We know that they’re make-believe. The psychologist Paul Rozin referred to this as ‘benign masochism’ in a safe context. And by embracing negative emotions, we savour them and come to better understand them.

It reminds me of what Neil Gaiman says about telling dark tales in An Inoculation Against the Darkness.

Finally, something I wrote way back in 2009 that I remembered recently. It was for a Dungeons & Dragons campaign with my friends. We had a blog we used to give our game flavor and depth between sessions, and we were all writing introductions for new characters we were starting.

I'm a natural contrarian, and this character was a bit of a logic game for me. I wanted to make a cleric--a priest-type who could be a conduit for god-granted magic--and was playing with the idea of religion in the fantasy world. Secular humanism is a pretty easy conclusion in our world where the existence of the supernatural must be taken on faith and can't be proven. But what does it mean in a world where divine beings are tangible, can't be doubted, and interact with everyone on a daily basis (at least through their clerics and representatives). I wanted to see if I could come up with a character who could tap into belief and divine power without the need of a god, and I had to convince my dungeon master that such a thing could exist and make sense.

These are not my true beliefs, yet I'm sure they are influenced by them.

A Conversation with Pavo Baradin

A waste of breath.

What? Oh, well you just muttered a quick prayer, right? You’re wasting your breath.

No offense meant, I just think you’d be much better off focusing your energy--and belief--on your own ability to accomplish the task than relying on some distant figure who doesn’t really care about your problems.

No, no, I understand he’s a benevolent god who only wants what’s best for the world, it’s just . . . look, are you sure you want to get into this? I’m going to be rather heretical and you may not like what I have to say. Can you keep an open mind and give me a fair listen? Because once I’m done I think you’ll be glad you did.

Ok . . . see those people drifting in and out of that temple across the street? They’re making themselves slaves, every one of them. Subjugating themselves. Lowering their value in the eyes of the world and, most importantly, in their own eyes. They could be working to better themselves and help each other, but instead they sit around praying and hoping and wishing that their god will somehow take care of it all for them.

And, sure, the god might help out some. The priests will channel his power to heal them and address their other needs, but it’s always for a price. If they’re not baldly taking money in exchange for these so-called favors, they’re taking dignity—in exchange for the god’s blessing you must worship the god, tell yourself and the world that the god is a higher level being than anyone else, more worthy of worship than anyone else. Ultimately, it’s not about you, it’s about furthering the god’s ends and raising him up as superior. Always, in the end, it’s about him, about them. They only help us to help themselves.

Well, I say don’t worship any gods, worship yourself.

Sure, they may have more power than you or I, they may be able to create miracles and alter the fabric of world. I’m not disputing their power. I’m arguing that doesn’t make them any more inherently valuable than anyone else. It’s a bully mentality. They’re saying, “I have all the power so I’m better than you. I’m grander. I’m more important. You’re a fly that I may notice enough to help out every once in a while, but really you’re nothing when compared to me. I’m stronger so I get to be the boss. Now go out and tell everyone else how wonderful I am, because you don’t really matter.”

Well, I say it’s not about who has the most power. Your existence is just as important as any god’s, and you don’t need to feel like you’re any less than any other being. You matter just as much as that god.

And you know what? You do have power. I have power, and he and she have power. We are all of us divine, if we just take the right perspective and know where to look.

How do I know? Because I’ve learned to tap into that power. I’m just beginning to understand the potential and how to draw on it. The gods get their power by standing on top of others. But by learning that divinity isn’t just about the gods but about all life everywhere, I’ve learned that when we focus on mutually lifting each other up we can make our own magic. Not when it’s just you or just me, but when it’s us. We do it together. When I can find the divinity in you and you can find the divinity in me, when we truly believe that we are all divine and don’t need to subjugate ourselves to gods or anyone, we can reach the power that gives us life.

But I’m talking in abstracts, here. Maybe it would be helpful if I told you my story so you could see how I’ve come to believe what I do . . .

(to be continued)

A Conversation with Pavo Baradin (continued)

I didn’t always hate the gods.

In fact, my earliest memories revolve around wonder at the might and glory of the valorous god Heironeous. My father was a high-ranking priest in his church at [insert large Pathfinder city, in a theocracy if possible]—as was his father and his father and many of my extended forbearers—and as first born I was . . . groomed to inherit the family business, if you will. Belief in the supremacy and goodness of Heironeous was central to my identity and everything I knew. I was even born under an auspicious sign and it was believed I’d be the most successful Baradin in church history; expectations for me were high. My education was based on church history and theology, my reading material religious documents. I was always put in charge of my peers and taught to lead them, given every opportunity to speak in public (about the glories of Heironeous, of course), and trained in the martial arts to prepare me for the battlefield. Everyone knew—me most of all—who I was and what I was meant to be.

But as I was taught the family and church history, I was educated in ways no one intended. I was supposed to see a great line of heroes who had given everything for the greater good of the god. At first I believed all the stories at face value, but gradually I began to see those “heroes” as men who had sacrificed themselves at the whim of a self-centered greater being and a thoughtless, overbearing church. My epiphany began with my great-uncle Solangus’ death. Where I loved my father as the strict, distant, powerful role model who taught me the discipline I needed to succeed in life, Uncle was always exciting and dangerous and doting. He spoiled me and treated me to tales of his travels as an agent of the church, full of adventure, great deeds, narrow escapes, and exotic locations. But when he was captured by Hextor’s minions the church disavowed all knowledge of him—Heironeous doesn’t negotiate with Hextor—and he was killed. At his memorial he was hailed as a hero who died serving his god, but all I saw was someone betrayed and abandoned. He had devoted his life to his god and received only rejection in return.

I went through a period of quiet mourning and depression, then threw myself into my studies with renewed vigor. But this time instead of taking the lessons at face value I looked for the unspoken stories behind them. Uncle may have been a far-ranging agent, but only because early in his career he had expressed doubts about the orthodoxy and been exiled from the large churches so he’d be kept from the flock. Instead of rebelling, he had been a good follower and accepted his fate. After discovering Uncle’s story I began to find others, bullied into submission for the sake of the church, true believers dying young for their beliefs, abandoning families to obsess over duty. I couldn’t find anyone who had actually been happy, fulfilled, and allowed to develop to his full potential. And instead of believing in the church as my vessel to success and greatness, I began to see it as a prison I must escape.

My father died on the battlefield when I was 16, after which I broke down in grief and frustration and shared my doubts with my mother. At first I thought she was crying tears of disappointment, but she let me know she was feeling joy that I had learned to think for myself and relief that I might find a different fate than the one that had been chosen for me. She had lost enough loved ones to the church and wasn’t going to let it happen to another. Instead of letting me repeat my Uncle’s mistakes, she urged me to continue playing the role of true believer while she began working on ways to disentangle me from the web of bureaucracy that was our family’s life. Less than a year later she came to me with my inheritance, papers with a forged identity, and a guide who would take me far from the only life I had ever known. That was the last time I saw her, as I have never been back.

It hasn’t been due to fear, though. Mother let me know through letters in the following months that there was no pursuit; I was simply considered a disappointment lost from the flock and quickly forgotten by those who had invested so much in my future. No, I’ve never gone back because I don’t want to be reminded of the bitterness and betrayal I felt when I realized that my family didn’t matter to the god for whom they had sacrificed so much. As I left that day I vowed never to enslave myself to another’s whims the way they had.

So I traveled, living off of my inheritance. At first I had no idea what to do with myself, as I knew only what I was running from and not what I was running to. Boredom can be a powerful motivator, though, and I was soon looking for something meaningful to do with myself. I tried finding diversion in odd jobs—quickly gaining an education in the ways of the world that I hadn’t known in my previously sheltered existence—but found myself drawn back into the types of things I’d been trained for. I knew reading and writing and churches; I was good at reading and writing and church things, and did in fact enjoy them more than anything else. In [insert Pathfinder location] I tutored a rich man’s children in history and theology for a year. In [insert Pathfinder location] I was a scribe at the library for a time. And in [insert Pathfinder location] I was secretary to a high-ranking government official. The pursuits were each interesting in their own way, but none of them sated my desire to round out my own education. I found I couldn’t stop thinking of the things I had been taught as a child and wanting to know if other gods and their churches suppressed their followers in the same ways.

In the end I decided to make my way in the world as an itinerant student, wandering from university to university to study as each would take me at my advanced age. And instead of avoiding temples and shrines, I began exploring everything I could find wherever I went. I wanted to know the nature of religion. In some ways I learned my family’s heritage of sacrifice and early death in the name of Heironeous was better than many, for we at least believed in what we did and that we were part of a structure attempting to be benevolent. Others were much more open in their greed, sometimes not even disguising the fact that all they cared about was the power they could attain by using faith as a mere tool of their individual ambitions. Not all—many were true believers in their own ways—but there were some. I spent years hopping from place to place, hoping at each next stop I’d find some form of religion that would break the mold, but all I discovered was greater and greater disillusionment.

The one constant to every belief system, every structure organized around a god—indeed, about every organizational structure of any kind—was hierarchy. The highest value is always placed on the god, then the god’s chosen, then the god’s leaders, then the god’s clerics, and on down the ladder until those at the bottom know in the depths of their hearts they have no worth except in the meager ways they might serve the church. And just as I had rejected that system in my own heritage, I gradually began to believe it my mission to help others reject it in theirs. I didn’t know it for many years, but somewhere inside of me was the seed that has become my new destiny. Those travels were my studies as a priest of no religion, of anti-religion, of belief in the inherent goodness and potential for greatness in each individual that should not be suppressed by worship of a god or anything else.

Over the course of my travels I went from negative study of what I didn’t want to be to developing my own belief in the worth of all life. Yes, I studied the bards and how their stories are nothing more than illusions, using exaggerations and lies to build belief in heroes who are no different than you or me, but I also spent time studying with the monks of [insert appropriate Pathfinder location] in their quest for godless enlightenment and individual perfection. I saw that it was people’s nature to rank each other and try to improve their sense of self-worth by comparing themselves to others that they might see as lesser, but I also saw wonderful examples of people setting aside their own interests to help others. I came to believe that if we work together we might overcome the oppression caused and inequality perpetuated by worship of the gods. Instead of trying to step on top of each other to gain dominance, we should focus on mutually lifting each other up and helping each other develop as one.

So that is who I am and what I believe. If you join with me you join with my mission. I will do what I can to help you develop your potential for goodness. I know spells that can protect you from harm, make you stronger in your quests, and cure you of injury. I exist to help you. But in return I expect you to help me in my mission, ensure that your actions are helping others instead of harming them. All we have is each other, and we must share our abilities with those we encounter. Come; let us make the world a better place.

A sense of connectedness.