The Only Place Where Different Social Types Can Genuinely Get Along Is With David Bowie

It always baffles me.  When people make up religions, afterlives, and gods, they could imagine anything, and certainly better ones than existing religions offer.  Instead their substitutes tend to be worse.  This person basically imagines David Bowie's afterlife as an ectoplasmic Studio 54, where only the truly cool people get past the bouncer.

It's kind of like the Rapture.  If you're still here, you have been weighed in the divine balance and found wanting.  That includes Miss Texas 1967, who like the rest of us losers will get to experience the Tribulation to come, with all its horrors.  Does she (or the people who've shared this tweet) really find it comforting to imagine Bowie and, e.g., Carrie Fisher partying for eternity, with an inexhaustible supply of Ecstasy, coke, and cocktails, while she hovers in the outer darkness, with only a dwindling hope that The Thin White Duke will take her before midnight on December 31?  I wish I could take seriously the possibility that she meant her fantasy ironically, snarkily, satirically, but the person who shared it has been dead serious in cursing 2016 and all its works, and I doubt Miss Texas 1967 is any different.

An Inordinate Fondness for Flesh-Eating Bacteria

A friend of mine posted these remarks --

Several people I know have had to say goodbye to their pets recently or having to face the prospect of doing so. I'm not a believer, but it seems to me that if God does exist, S/He wouldn't be so petty as to deny happiness to all of creation. So good on Pope Francis.

-- with a link to this article about everybody's favorite Bishop of Rome.  Since President Obama has proven to be a disappointment, many liberals and progressives are evidently looking for a New Hope, and they've found one in Jorge Mario Bergoglio.  They never seem to see the irony in this.  They're quite ready to dismiss with scorn those Christians and Christian leaders who appeal to imaginary beings to say things they dislike, but they seem sure that Pope Francis is a true Christian who's getting the Church back to the real, original teachings of Christ, risking his life to speak truth to power and preach the real will of God.  This is true even for some who present themselves as atheists; I must say I doubt that someone who appeals to the real will of God is really an atheist.  But leaving that aside, how do they know what God really wants?  How does Francis know what God really wants, or will do?

My friend's comment on the meme is a case in point.  Why does he take for granted that the creator of supernovae, mass extinctions, plagues, cancer, flesh-eating bacteria, birth defects lethal and merely disabling, predators, and human beings -- with all our unlovely traits and practices -- gives a rat's ass about "the happiness of all creation"?  Why would he suppose that such a being cares whether human beings see their pets in the afterlife?  (Except for cats, of course. That's why I'm a cat person, so I'll have a companion animal in Hell.)  The prevalence of suffering in the world is, at the very least, evidence against any claim that its creator is concerned with "the happiness of all creation."

I'd also say it's going too far to take for granted that these humans will go to Heaven.  Will Fido look down on his Mommy's torment in Hell, as Lazarus did on Dives from the bosom of Abraham?  And that's assuming that there is an afterlife, which is a big assumption.

The linked article, from the New York Times, is thoroughly fatuous and sloppy.  As so often has happened, it involves a wild explication of a stray remark by the Pontiff.  The writer begins by declaring that Francis "has given hope to gays, unmarried couples and advocates of the Big Bang Theory."  I'm certainly gratified to know that I can hope to be reunited with the Big Bang Theory in Heaven; surely the creator of the universe wouldn't be so petty as to deny me that.

Anyway, here's what happened:

During a weekly general audience at the Vatican last month, the pope, speaking of the afterlife, appeared to suggest that animals could go to heaven, asserting, “Holy Scripture teaches us that the fulfillment of this wonderful design also affects everything around us.”

Italy’s Corriere della Sera newspaper, analyzing the pope’s remarks, concluded he believed animals have a place in the afterlife. It drew an analogy to comforting words that Pope Paul VI was said to have once told a distraught boy whose dog had died: “One day, we will see our animals again in the eternity of Christ. Paradise is open to all of God’s creatures.”

The news accounts of Francis’ remarks were welcomed by groups like the Humane Society of the United States and People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals, who saw them as a repudiation of conservative Roman Catholic theology that says animals cannot go to heaven because they have no souls.

"Appeared to suggest"!  "Was said to have once told"!  With support like that, who needs an actual declaration from the papal throne?  You can hope for anything you like, regardless of what the Vatican says, and you can make up whatever fanciful tales you like about what the pope says or believes, but that doesn't guarantee you'll get what you want.

For what little it's worth, the Christian Bible doesn't have any clear account of the afterlife or of the "soul."  (I'm frequently surprised by people who talk confidently about souls, though they have no idea what a soul is, even if it exists; no one does.  I don't see how you can have a "new debate" on whether animals have souls when you don't know whether human beings have them.)  It doesn't, as far as I know, say anything about the status of non-human animals in the heavens or after death.  The "conservative Roman Catholic theology" is constructed of later extrapolations from the Bible, Aristotelian and Platonist philosophy, and theologians' prejudices and fantasies.  I don't see why the Humane Society or PETA, unless they are affiliated with and subordinate to the Roman Catholic Church, should care much what the pope has to say on this or any subject.  From the Times article I conclude that their spokespeople simply took the opportunity to expound their favorite talking points.

Maybe Francis does believe that animals will go to heaven; that's more than can be said for most human beings, since Jesus said explicitly that only a few would find eternal life salvation compared to the many would be lost.  But unless you're a conservative Catholic who believes that the pope has the keys to the gates of heaven, transmitted by apostolic succession from Simon Peter -- unless, that is, you accept Catholic mythology -- I see no reason to believe that Francis knows any more about this than anyone else does.

Step on a Crack, Break Your Mother's Back

It's possible -- no one has proven that it's impossible, anyway -- that the universe is a vast booby trap, designed and constructed by a cosmic practical joker waiting for us to make a misstep so he can jump us while holding us responsible for our doom. It's possible that the universe is set up so that it's possible to kill a human being in such a way that it's impossible for them to go to heaven (78); even cremating a cadaver can prevent the spirit from finding its way to peace (91). It's possible that absolute good and absolute evil are at war in the world, and everything bad that happens to us is just collateral damage in that conflict; sorry about that (86). It's possible that we can persuade absolute good or absolute evil, or their many agents, spiritual and material, to do us no harm (or less harm, at least) for the moment through bribery, sweet-talk, flattery, and appeasement, or at least by burning sage (186) for protection. It's possible that what "white doctors call 'being sick' is more like an accident, like the person went off the road and the [molecules] forgot how to be" (190). And it's possible that if you're going to ask a sacred mountain to take care of a dead friend, you should be "careful not to say the name of the dead" (252).

What I find puzzling is that so many religious believers see the universe just this way, though they'll object to the bald way I've described their worldview here. Officially God is good, but when you listen to what believers say about him, "good" is not the word that comes to mind. And I'm not talking only about the Christian god here. The page numbers in the paragraph above refer to a novel I just finished reading, Going Through Ghosts by Mary Sojourner (University of Nevada Press, 2010), based on Native American cosmology and religious practice. (I should mention that it's not at all a bad book, even if its theology annoyed me.) Try this exchange between a living character and the ghost of a murdered one (124):

"What do your cosmic supervisors think about this place?" Maggie asked.
"They are busy with an earthquake about to happen in the Middle East," Sarah said.

"Busy" how? I wondered. Are they busy trying to prevent it, or busy trying to start it? Do earthquakes happen because the spirits are understaffed, or inattentive, or hungover? This sort of thing is supposed to be spiritually superior to the ways of the whites?

Near the end of the book, Sarah the friendly ghost, now happily "all-the-way-dead", is watching the living with her recently dead teacher Minnie (244).

They had been told they were only to watch, and it had been made clear that they were not to intervene in anything. "Sometimes," their teachers had told them, "we might drop something down in front of a human. We see which way they go. There is something else you can give them; we'll show you when you've learned to watch."

Sure, it's possible that the afterlife is like an American elementary-school classroom with the students gathered around an ant farm, or at best a university psychology rat lab. But is that the best of all possible worlds? What entitles the teachers to test the humans they observe with such smug detachment? Their superiority is assumed by the author, but not recognized by this reader.

To repeat: it may be that the world really is an obstacle course designed by a being with obsessive-compulsive disorder, paranoia, and Tourette's syndrome, with a booby-trap at the end. What I don't understand is why so many people, given the opportunity to invent their own higher power, invent such nasty ones. The only comprehensible reason I can imagine is that the universe is a fairly inhospitable place; our lives are too often nasty, brutish, and short; so it makes a kind of sense to believe that if you're really, really, good -- if you bear up patiently and uncomplainingly under the worst suffering the Beings In Charge can inflict on you -- then they'll finally smile and tell you it's okay, you passed the test, you're a good little human and everything is going to be all right now. And maybe that's reality; who knows? But if it is, the Beings in Charge are still sadistic demons who should be defied, not deified.

But yeah, I know, a lot of people don't see it that way. Anyone else remember the Clerk's Tale from Chaucer's Canterbury Tales?

The Clerk's tale is about a marquis of Saluzzo named Walter. Lord Walter of Saluzzo is a bachelor who is asked by his subjects to marry in order to provide an heir. He assents and decides he will marry a peasant, named Griselda. Griselda is a poor girl, used to a life of pain and labor.

After Griselda has borne him a daughter, Walter decides to test her loyalty. He sends an officer to take the baby, pretending to kill her, and convey it secretly to Bologna. Griselda makes no protest at this. When she bears a son several years later, Walter again has him taken from her.

Finally, Walter determines one last test. He has a Papal bull of annulment forged which enables him to leave Griselda, and informs her that he intends to remarry. He requires her to prepare the wedding for his new bride. Secretly, he has the children returned from Bologna, and he presents his daughter as his intended wife. Eventually he informs Griselda of the deceit, and they live happily ever after.

There's always been disagreement among readers about how to understand this story (and Chaucer himself sent mixed signals in the text), but it "was an enormously popular one, included in virtually all of the adaptations of Chaucer done for children and juveniles in the 19th and early 20th centuries". A lot of people evidently get off on this sort of thing; Story of O is considered unwholesome, but not the Clerk's Tale.

I also recall Albert Brooks's movie 1991 Defending Your Life. Brooks, who also wrote and directed, plays a guy who's killed in an auto accident.  His spirit goes to Judgment City, where you must defend your life before a cosmic court, who decide whether to send you back or promote you. He meets and falls in love with the saintly Meryl Streep, but of course the court separates them -- she'll move up, he'll be sent back. Brooks desperately runs after the tram she's on and braves even electroshock to follow her; the cosmic judges beam smugly at this proof of his merit and (as I recall -- it has been years since I saw it) change their verdict in his favor. Incomprehensibly to me, Defending Your Life got good reviews and is still a cult favorite. I prefer Kore-eda Hirokazu's non-sadistic 1998 fantasy After Life myself, but I must recognize that many people like to fantasize about being tested, even cruelly, and coming through the test successfully.

But I know this is a matter of temperament; for me, as I've said before, the universe feels less unpleasant if no one is out there watching all the horrors but doing nothing about them. That's leaving aside the thought that someone is out there making the horrors happen. No doubt my preference is as much wish-fulfillment as the belief that someone is testing us, "sending us the disaster to overcome", but I think the wishes we make reveal a lot about us.

Travel / Posting Advisory and Eternal Life

I'll be leaving for Korea on Friday morning, so things are going to be hectic until after the weekend. Hell, they're hectic now, and I should be at home getting ready instead of sitting here in the Pourhouse typing. But that's procrastination!

Meanwhile, I found this at Homo Superior, and the link indicated that it had come from Andrew Sullivan.

The Christian notion of eternal life just doesn’t make any sense to me. I can’t conceive of how I could be “me” without the context of the world I live in, the relationships I have, and my time and place. That would be some other person. To be an ego without a world is to be nothing. I think when you have a better understanding that our existence as personalities in this world is already ephemeral, even while we are alive, it makes regret for our disappearance seem peculiar.

As Rilke says, we are “transpositions of air”.

That couldn't be the Catholic-American Sullivan, I thought. When I clicked through, it turned out I was right: he was quoting a letter from a reader. It's quite good stuff. All I can add is Wittgenstein's Tractatus (6.3412), "[I]s some riddle solved by my surviving for ever? Is not this eternal life itself as much of a riddle as our present life?"