"Precautionary Principle"

My titles are starting to sound an awful lot like like one-hour legal dramas on T.V. But stick with me because this morning I bring you a brief discussion of God, a tale of innocence, innocence lost, heartbreak and much, much blathering. Let's get started.

By Porcupine Porcupanimosity
Staff Writer
It was some time in elementary school circa 1984? when I began hearing lots of talk on the nightly news about atheists and believers, about prayer in schools and about using the word God in the Pledge of Allegiance. I began learning about the messy laws that bind and tear apart the religious and the secular and why it was such an emotional issue. Heady times. I wore leg warmers. Ronald Reagan puttered around the White House.
With this in mind, my brother, on break from college and no doubt a Philosophy 101 class, quizzed me and a friend -- who was sleeping over-- all about God.
"Why do you believe?" he asked.
"Why not!" we answered in unison as if it was obvious. Why wouldn't you believe if it got you into heaven? Or led to all manner of good things? Seems silly to mess with what we don't know. Even now, this seems a sensible approach.
That night I think we danced and sang to "What A Feelin'" by Irene Cara about 20 times and didn't concern ourselves again with my brother's question. Pragmatism had driven our faith. We just decided to believe, and moved on with our slumber party.

Little did I recognize the philosophical heft of our stand, courtesy of a mathemetician who didn't believe in playing the odds. It remains unclear to me whether deciding to believe in God means that we actually do believe in Him. Let's just hope that either way God doesn't welch.
For me and many others, that youthful pragmatism has been eroded by one devastating reality after another: that the world is host to random catastrophe, poverty, violence, selfishness, meanness and unbearable amounts of sadness. It also has lots of good things, but there's no point in trying to counterbalance. It can't be done without exquisite lying.
So though I am on record to whomever is taking notes that I am still a believer, details of that belief remain vague.
For now, the closest thing to surety I have about life is that in death we all turn back into the earth or cosmic dust or whatever it is and it starts all over again. Whether souls or consciousnesses or essence or other etherea is saved for a special date and time TBA, I can only hope. Or wager.
In the meantime, let me say this: I don't disrespect religion or the religious, though I am more than happy to disrespect all manner of individuals who represent all kindsa suck. (A distinction I make, unlike degraded blowhards who have lost all touch with reality.)
But I do find discussions of "working on" or "practicing" or "strengthening" faith to be troubling. Faith isn't something to be worked on, in my opinion. In reporter academy, ideally, we don't pick our favorite conclusion, find ways to support it, and call it "faith."
We call it bad journalism.

Hubris is...

...flouting calls by the public for what is public information.
...shamelessly defending the company you keep while hunting ducks.
...providing undeserved mercy to people close to people close to you.
...acting defiant as a weary, indignant nation watches, adding yet more nuance to your murderous legacy.

But hubris is a mild word when referring to leaders and despots, so perhaps it's better described, though harder to recognize, closer to home. Until, that is, a hot, sunny day when you log on to your student loan web site and reality takes it's gloves off.

Then, hubris becomes...

...quitting your job happily with three student loans and personal debt exceeding the GDP of a handful of underdeveloped nations.
..too-late remembering, thanks to your textbook case of ADHD, that your balances after 10 years of regular payments exceed the original amount.
...swallowing all that information quietly, and choking on it.

Silhouettes compared

http://blog.washingtonpost.com/cheney/

Why I quit

Many reasons. Here's one reason, captured beautifully by Cary Tennis of Salon.

"I also found that work was really tiring, and that people after work did not have the energy to work on their projects. This too shocked me. Whatever art or writing or sports they might be doing, they let these things go, because they were tired. So I saw a nation of people whose energies were being wasted.
This sounds sillier and more naive all the time. And yet it was my experience.
So I thought, not me, that will not happen to me. I will work but I will not allow it to tire me out. I will write, and make music and live my life, even though I am working in an authoritarian organization in the daytime.
But I did not have the strength and endurance to do so. I lost the battle. I took refuge in addiction, so shameful was my failure to be an artist in America and also a worker in America."

Scooter Liberation

Get thee to a punnery, Porcupine!

So I know this constitutes news-to-drool-over for Washington insiders and politicos, but President George W. Bush granting clemency to the man convicted of lying about the Valerie Plame CIA leak was greeted with a decided yawn and Vhatever, by my mother when I told her about it, all excited. Her eyes glazed over. I might as well have been talking about granting clementines to the man convicted of lima beans.
A

"pls be sure to get this jousting event in the calendar in July"

A little taste of what I'll be leaving behind.