Religion – Auxiliary Memory

Will People Change vs. Can People Change?

by James Wallace Harris, 2/28/24

I just finished listening to The Deluge by Stephen Markley, a book that speculates on what the next sixteen years could be like. The book is almost nine hundred pages in print, and over forty hours on audio. Reading this book feels like it’s compressed the last twenty years of polarized political conflict into a forty-hour long disaster film. It’s intense.

Markley uses a large cast of characters to dramatize how people on the left and right will battle for control over the next five U.S. presidential election cycles. Most of the story involves two groups of characters, those working within the political system, and those who decidedly don’t. Markley portrays an ultrasecret ecoterrorist group that works to force change by violent acts versus a dedicated group of political wonks that labor in Washington to influence both parties. Dynamic women characters lead both groups. (By the way, I disliked both women. The only character I cared about was a drug addict in Ohio, who Markley uses as a kind of everyman.)

To further spice up the story, Markley explores the growing power of computer surveillance, artificial intelligence, privacy, and how everyone can be tracked.

I’m not going to review the details of The Deluge because I want to use my reading experience to talk about a specific response to reading the book. I’ll link major book reviews at the end in case you’re considering reading the book. I can say liberals will be terrified by the conservatives in this story, and conservatives will by horrified by these fictional liberals.

The Deluge is about climate change. We could have solved that problem by now if we had acted promptly twenty years ago. The government could have added a tax on all fossil fuels and then raised it slowly month by month. For example, by adding ten cents to the federal tax on gasoline each month. If we had started this in the year 2000, gasoline would be approaching $30 a gallon today. That would have forced people and corporations to make the changes needed.

That tax revenue could have been used to overhaul the power grid and for developing renewable energy technologies. If we had taxed carbon properly, we wouldn’t be fighting over climate change today. That didn’t happen. It didn’t happen because the people who owned trillions of dollars in fossil fuel reserves made sure it didn’t happen. They built a political and religious coalition to fight with them to protect that wealth.

All that’s beside the point now. What Markley envisions is the breakdown of the United States over the next sixteen years so it’s obvious to all we need to do something. The Deluge includes dramatic scenes of a massive fire that destroys Los Angeles, a massive flood that overwhelms the Midwest, and a massive hurricane that devastates east coast states. These events caused the insurance industry to collapse, leading to economic chaos. Markley doesn’t overplay all this. His fictional disasters are realistic, only somewhat larger than what we’ve already experienced, killing just hundreds or a few thousand people in each event, but having an enormous impact on politics and the economy.

Reading The Deluge makes readers ask themselves: Will American change soon? But I ask: Can people change at all?

Before reading this novel, I had seen two insightful videos about climate change that ask the same questions. The first video makes a careful case saying people don’t change and if there is a solution for avoiding climate change it must work with the psychology of how people act. The second video summarizes the first video with impressive summations of it and this tweet. (I wish I could summarize what I watch and read this well.)

Over the two hundred thousand years that our species have existed on this planet, we haven’t changed. Our societies and technologies change, but not us. Over those two hundred thousand years we have developed four major cognitive tools to understand reality: religion, philosophy, mathematics, and science. Only science using mathematics has consistently proven it can consistently describe reality. If you don’t believe that I wouldn’t fly in an airplane.

Science is not black and white. It’s statistical and hard to understand. But science has overwhelmingly shown that adding more CO2 to the atmosphere is turning up the temperature. The parts per million of CO2 in the air acts like a thermostat. Add more CO2 turns up the temperature. The only way to return to the weather we liked in the past is to return to the CO2 levels of the 1960s, but we keep adding more. The only way to stop adding CO2 is to completely stop using fossil fuels. And if we want to turn down the thermostat, we need to remove CO2, which isn’t easy. That’s why taxing carbon is the only way to force us to change, but we won’t do that, because it’s not in our psychology.

However, The Deluge suggests when things get bad enough, we’ll change. It ends hopefully. People even have hope for their children and grandchildren.

Personally, I don’t think we will change. If you want to know what the next sixteen years could be like, read The Deluge. If you believe people can change, and we’ll do the right thing eventually, read The Deluge. If you don’t believe we’ll change, I wouldn’t bother with the book unless you like looking at train wrecks. And if you suffer from depression, I suggest avoiding reading this novel at all costs. I seldom get even the slightest depressed, but this book bummed me out.

Reviews:

‘The Deluge,’ an epic new climate novel, drowns us in catastrophes – Los Angeles Times
The Enormity of It All: On Stephen Markley’s “The Deluge” – Los Angels Review of Books
A New Novel Confronts the Scale and Gravity of Climate Change – New York Times
The Deluge by Stephen Markley review – apocalypse in slow motion – The Guardian
How will climate change destroy us? ‘The Deluge’ imagines the scenarios. – The Washington Post

JWH

Democracy Awakening by Heather Cox Richardson – Review Part One

by James Wallace Harris

Americans have general thought of America as a democracy, although it’s never been a true democracy. When the United States of America was first created a limited number of white males could vote. As time progressed more white males were allowed to vote. As liberals and radicals influenced politics, they advocated for wider suffrage state by state. See this timeline for details, but the Fifteenth Amendment in 1870 gave black men the vote, and in 1920 the Nineteenth amendment was passed that gave women the vote in all states. Whites have always suppressed black voters, and even some men still resent women voting. And political parties have always tried to control who could vote and how, and even suppressing voting.

A true democracy would allow every citizen over a certain age to vote, or universal suffrage. Before the 21st century most Americans didn’t see that as a problem, but as ethnic demographics have changed it has turned some Americans against democracy.

America is supposed to have a representative democracy, but it inspired the formation of political parties supported by various special interest groups fighting for power. In America Awakening Heather Cox Richardson describes how we’ve reached the current state where liberals advocate more democracy and conservatives push for less, apparently wanting authoritarian rule instead. Authoritarians general promote some ideal in the past as the authority of how things should be govern. Most modern American authoritarians look to either the Founding Fathers and the Constitution or to God and The Bible, or a combination of both. Modern American authoritarian leaders tend to be white and paternalistic, and their followers tend to want a strong man, or strong father figure, although more women are wanting to be Republican leaders too.

Richardson says it’s important to understand that many terms like conservative, liberal, radical, Republican, and Democrat have changed over the centuries. In the 19th century Republicans were for African Americans voting, and for gun laws, and in the early 20th century, for regulations on corporations. In the 19th century and through the first half of the 20th century, Democrats tried to keep African Americans from having the vote. The Republican and Democratic parties went through a polarity change in the 1960s. Richardson says its important understand how words have changed meaning because authoritarians often abuse them and justify their abuse by claiming history supports their new definitions. In other words, history gets distorted and abused.

I’m reviewing Democracy Awakening because I think it’s an important book everyone should read for the 2024 U.S. presidential election, but also to push my ability to remember. I love reading nonfiction books, but their information often feels like it goes in one ear and out the other. I can only retain what I learn in the vaguest way. Since I’m also reading about memory and aging, I’ve decided to read Democracy Awakening differently. I’m going to distill what Richardson is saying into my own words but in some concise form that I hope I can remember. I’ll do that in a series of blog posts, outlines, tables, etc.

My friend Linda and I are reading Democracy Awakening together and for our first discussion we are covering Part 1, Chapters 1-10, which I hope to cover today. Here is the Table of Contents.

Because I’ve also read other books on this subject already, including watching related documentaries and YouTube videos, I’m going to reference them in this series to show how there’s a synergy in my reading.

Heather Cox Richardson is a history professor who has specialized on the history of the Republican Party through a series of books. I have not read these books, but I have read some about each and it gives me confidence that Richardson is an expert on this subject. On the internet there are zillions of people claiming to be knowledgable on specific subjects but when you check into their creditials, you find little to back their claim of authority.

Richardson makes her points by citing historical events. I wish I could remember all the cited dates and important changes in history because they show an evolution of how we got to today. The first ten chapters progress mostly in a linear fashion, so I hope to eventually create a timeline.

Richardson also quotes significant papers, speeches, books, and other sources to reveal how concepts emerged that cause people to seek political change. Just the history of African Americans seeking Civil Rights reveals many connections to how conservatives and liberals changed their parties and political goals. I’d like to make a list of the most significant quotes to remember. And I’d like to read the books Richardson references, including books by conservative writers. But this will take a lot of time.

And there’s another problem, both conservatives and liberals use the Founding Fathers as historical authority even though members of both political parties distort history for their cause. Republicans like to cite the past, both the Founding Fathers, and The Bible, as how to create or interpret laws. This is rediculous. 2023 isn’t 1776, or 800 BCE. Yet, reading Richardson’s book Democracy Awakening shows the democracy we have today is constantly changing, and how those changes comes from actions in the past.

It is well documented that Republicans feel the United States took a wrong turn in the 1930s when FDR’s administration created the New Deal. They’ve been trying to undo it ever since. And their methods and philosophy of why and how have evolved over the decades. Part of that evolution is moving away from democracy, which is what Richardson’s book is about.

Richardson believes we didn’t fall into fascism in the 1930s because the United States has a long history of various groups fighting for suffrage. That the history of United States is one of a ruling class struggling to keep power from various groups of people wanting to vote. This includes poor whites, African Americans, women, and immigrants. The current Republicans know they cannot win with universal suffrage and fair elections and so they have to do an end run around democracy.

Republicans formed coalitions with special interest groups that the leaders of the party have no interest in supporting. What has changed is the special interest groups have taken over the power from the old Republican elites. Neither the Republicans nor Democrats have a clear majority with voters, and depend on Independents who swing their votes.

The main problem revealed in the first part of Democracy Awakening is the country is dividing itself into two camps. Those who want an authoritarian government based on their version of the Founding Fathers and their version of Christianity, and those people who want universal suffrage and a true democracy.

The authoritarians cannot get what they want by existing voting laws and population demographics. That’s why they are undermining the election process. Since majority rule is 50%, these two groups are polarized. Neither Republicans or Democrats have a majority. They depend on swing votes from Independents.

What I’m hoping to see in the next two parts is whether or not Richardson thinks democracy can survive. I was recently terrified by a New York Times essay, “Trump Has a Master Plan for Destroying the ‘Deep State’” by Donald P. Moynihan. In it Moynihan says Trump has three goals which I’ll take out of context and quote here:

The first is to put Trump loyalists into appointment positions. Mr. Trump believed that “the resistance” to his presidency included his own appointees. Unlike in 2016, he now has a deep bench of loyalists. The Heritage Foundation and dozens of other Trump-aligned organizations are screening candidates to create 20,000 potential MAGA appointees. They will be placed in every agency across government, including the agencies responsible for protecting the environment, regulating workplace safety, collecting taxes, determining immigration policy, maintaining safety net programs, representing American interests overseas and ensuring the impartial rule of law.

...

The second part of the Trump plan is to terrify career civil servants into submission. To do so, he would reimpose an executive order that he signed but never implemented at the end of his first administration. The Schedule F order would allow him to convert many of these officials into political appointees.

Schedule F would be the most profound change to the civil service system since its creation in 1883. Presidents can currently fill about 4,000 political appointment positions at the federal level. This already makes the United States an outlier among similar democracies, in terms of the degree of politicization of the government. The authors of Schedule F have suggested it would be used to turn another 50,000 officials — with deep experience of how to run every major federal program we rely on — into appointees. Other Republican presidential candidates have also pledged to use Schedule F aggressively. Ron DeSantis, for example, promised that as president he would “start slitting throats on Day 1.”

...

The third part of Mr. Trump’s authoritarian blueprint is to create a legal framework that would allow him to use government resources to protect himself, attack his political enemies and force through his policy goals without congressional approval. Internal government lawyers can block illegal or unconstitutional actions. Reporters for The New York Times have uncovered a plan to place Trump loyalists in those key positions.

This is not about conservatism. Mr. Trump grew disillusioned with conservative Federalist Society lawyers, despite drawing on them to stock his judicial nominations. It is about finding lawyers willing to create a legal rationale for his authoritarian impulses. Examples from Mr. Trump’s time in office include Mark Paoletta, the former general counsel of the Office of Management and Budget, who approved Mr. Trump’s illegal withholding of aid to Ukraine. Or Jeffrey Clark, who almost became Mr. Trump’s acting attorney general when his superiors refused to advance Mr. Trump’s false claims of election fraud.

This is why I believe everyone should be reading Democracy Awakening. I believe Richardson’s book is defining what the 2024 election will truly mean at the deepest level.

JWH

Historical Bible Study Counteracts Irrational Faith Better Than Books by Atheists

by James Wallace Harris, 12/22/22

Most Christians acquire their faith in childhood. A growing proportion of Christians drop most of their early beliefs as they get older and better educated. But a significant proportion of Christians cling to childhood beliefs their entire life. Faith in the irrational can be extremely strong, no matter what evidence to the contrary is given.

Why do some people hold onto their cherished childhood beliefs with such tenacity? We know that a baby taken from a Christian culture and raised in a Muslim culture will become Islamic rather than Christian. Beliefs children are exposed to in their early years, imprint on them stronger than beliefs acquired later in life. It is very hard to deprogram early beliefs, even silly and irrational beliefs. Why is that?

One theory is cognitive dissonance. That theory studies the psychological stress caused by people experiencing conflicting information, usually caused by having old beliefs exposed to new and contradictory information.

For some people, accepting new information can undermine their psychological stability so it becomes imperative to go to any extreme to preserve the beliefs that define their sense of reality. Decades ago, a number of books became popular promoting atheism, with some becoming bestsellers. They may have had an impact because the percentage of people attending church has been declining faster in the last decade. On the other hand, many Christians left the mainstream churches and joined evangelical churches which advocated even more extreme Christian beliefs. In contrast, other believers just doubled down on their faith.

Many from that demographics became anti-science in several ways and politically skeptical. They deny climate change, vaccines, the medical profession, scientists, and even democracy. I’ve wondered if it was to maintain their Christian faith. Their cognitive dissonance is so great they are being forced into extreme views about how reality works. To some family and friends, these people are embracing disturbing irrational beliefs. This is further polarizing our society. If we are to solve our civilization’s problems we’ll need to heal this cognitive schism. To fix our relationships with each other and the Earth we must agree on what is real.

This divide will be the defining crisis for Christianity in the 21^st century. If Christianity wants to regain its validity, its message must be universal. Christianity should have some core values that all denominations embrace, and even non-Christians will admire. Christianity needs to coexist with science, philosophy, history, and all other areas of knowledge. It can’t keep breaking up into smaller and smaller denominations and sects that claim they each own the truth, especially when those truths are so crazy sounding to the average person.

I’ve been discovering a different approach to Christianity in the last decade, which has been an emerging academic discipline for a couple of centuries. That is the historical study of Christianity and its texts. People who embrace both the sacred and the secular are pursuing these studies because it’s the most fascinating cold case in history. Who was Jesus, what did he really believe, and how did Christianity develop. The major focus is on the first century CE. What happened then and how do we know it.

And one of the primary methods for analyzing this period is the study of the New Testament. Most Christians, even the ones who believe in the inerrancy of the Bible seldom study the New Testament with such scrutiny. This kind of Bible study used to only exist in seminary schools – now it’s becoming a popular self-study. However, not all scholars pursuing this history are doing it with the same level of discipline. Many true believers have become Biblical archeologists to prove the validity of their faith even when it conflicts with secular truths. But what’s interesting is Bible study has become a powerful force for eroding faith in the irrational. There are several former evangelicals who are now university scholars that don’t believe what they once believed. And we’re discovering that the Bible does match up with history in many ways, but often not in the ways the faithful want.

Whoever the historical figure we call Jesus was and what he said is hidden by two thousand years of revisions and creations. Jesus, and that wasn’t his real name, is portrayed differently by the Apostle Paul, and the writers of the four gospels. The human being we call Jesus probably didn’t consider himself divine or claim to perform miracles. Everything we think we know about Jesus was invented by ordinary people decades after he died. They gave him an origin story and superpowers to compete with other figures of their times. Did you know that Augustus, the Roman Emperor, was also called a son of God? The followers of Jesus had to top that. And they kept topping every other competing belief system at the time. Their best recruiting promotion was to promise ordinary people everlasting life. No other religion promised that at the time.

Are there any clues to what the historical Jesus said and did? Maybe. One intriguing approach is the Jesus Seminar.

Many of the people who are doing historical analysis of Jesus and Christianity have examined a tremendous amount of information. Getting where they are coming from requires reading countless books. And it requires learning the disciplined approaches of professional historians. Yesterday, I discovered a video on YouTube that covers some of this territory in a very concise matter. It’s a good introduction to what I’m talking about, although some of the faithful might not like their light, even flippant approach.

After that, I recommend reading the books of Bart Ehrman or watching his YouTube channel. I find his books to be a more efficient method to take in information than watching hours of his YouTube interviews. In 2016 I wrote a review of some of his books for Book Riot. Back in 2014, I reviewed five of his books for this blog.

Trying to decipher who Jesus was is an enticing historical mystery to solve, and I think from the YouTube videos I’ve been seeing, it’s becoming very popular. I’m guessing that it will reshape Christianity. I’d like to think the teachings of the historical Jesus had certain unique philosophical insights but it’s almost impossible to know them until we can distinguish what he might have said from the fiction created about him during the first and second centuries.

JWH

Fiction v. History

by James Wallace Harris, 9/25/22

Ken Burns’s new documentary, The U.S. and the Holocaust, punched me in the soul. No documentary has ever moved me as much, and I’ve seen a lot of them. And it’s not because it’s about the Holocaust. I’ve even read about most of the painful facts it presents before. No, the gestalt of this film, which is well over six hours, is to set off an epiphany about our relationship with history.

At the highest level, the documentary asks: What did Americans know about the treatment of the Jews under the Nazis from 1932 to 1945 and when and how did they learn it? But to answer that question Ken Burns and company have to describe what Americans were like during those years. The U.S. and the Holocaust give a different history of America for those years from any I’ve ever encountered from people, in school, reading, at the movies, or on television.

Maybe the best way I can describe it is to say: Everything that has horrified me about living through the years 2016 to 2022 existed in the 1920s, 1930s, and 1940s. The documentary cements a theory that I’ve been developing in recent decades – that people don’t change and even the percentages of the population that hold specific opinions don’t really change either.

The documentary set off this existential conundrum: Why didn’t I already know what the documentary revealed? Or did I just filter it out? Republicans are in an uproar over Critical Race Theory and other curricula that they’re afraid will upset their children. I imagine they will be just as upset at The U.S. and the Holocaust. I knew about the wide popularity of the KKK and eugenics in the 1920s. I knew Americans were mostly isolationists and anti-immigration in the late 1930s. But the documentary gives us a different take on history than what I was taught.

I have to wonder since FDR was president from 1932-1935, have we always gotten the Democratic party’s view of that history? I wonder if Ken Burns has rounded out the historical period by adding the Republican party’s take on those years? I do know the documentary feels very synergistic with today’s politics.

I love old movies from the 1930s and 1940s, and none of the hundreds of movies I’ve seen from that era convey what I learned from The U.S. and the Holocaust. My grandparents, parents, aunts, and uncles, all lived through those years, and none of them ever described the mood of the country revealed in the documentary. I’m a bookworm that has read countless works of both fiction and nonfiction about America in those decades, giving me some of the details from in the documentary, but not in the same gestalt. Two books that come to mind are One Summer: America, 1927 by Bill Bryson and In the Garden of Beasts by Erik Larson.

After I watched the Ken Burns documentary I read The Plot Against America by Philip Roth. It’s a kind of science fiction novel, an alternative history where Charles Lindbergh wins the 1938 presidential election and for many of the reasons described in the documentary. Roth was born in 1933, and he makes himself the point-of-view character in his novel. Young Phil is only 8 when it begins and 10 when it ends, but his viewpoint is mature. It’s about the anti-Semitism of those years.

I thought The Plot Against America was a well-told story about Jewish life in Newark, New Jersey 1938-1942. I thought Roth’s alternate history speculation was well done, deriving from the kind of knowledge I got watching The U.S. and the Holocaust. But the story is mainly a personal one, and its gestalt is different from the documentary.

Last night Susan and I watched Radio Days for the umpteenth time. It’s Woody Allen’s nostalgic look back at those same years. It completely ignores all the political history of The U.S. and the Holocaust. Radio Days is like both movies from that period and later films that worked to recall that era. They all filter out the nastiness of racism and xenophobia that existed in America back then. Although some of it came through in the film The Way We Were, and the book version of Breakfast at Tiffany’s.

And just before I watched the three episodes of The U.S. and the Holocaust I read Revolt in 2100 which contains a 1940 short novel by Robert A. Heinlein called “If This Goes On….” Heinlein imagined America would go through decades of The Crazy Years, before undergoing a second American revolution that created an American theocracy. I was disappointed that Heinlein didn’t do more world-building for his novel, but after seeing the Ken Burns documentary I understand his inspiration for writing it. It’s obvious that many Americans back then wanted a Protestant theocracy. Consisting of only white people from England, Germany, and some Scandanavian countries.

I think it’s important to distinguish fascism as a political philosophy from the Nazis, who were also fascists. What many Americans wanted then and now is basic fascism, and the Philip Roth novel shows how America could have turned fascist.

The other day I saw a quote on Facebook that went something like this: If you get warm and fuzzy feelings reading history then you’re not studying history. I’m on the third volume of world history by Susan Wise Bauer, and it’s brutal. Most people want to romanticize history, which is what we get from novels and movies. The Republicans don’t want CRT taught because they want their kids to feel all warm and fuzzy studying American History. The new Ken Burns documentary will not leave you feeling warm and fuzzy.

My current theory is humans can’t handle reality. That we develop all kinds of psychological delusions to filter reality out. We prefer our fantasies. And popular history along with pop culture gives us nice takes on the past that allows us to cope. It’s also why most people’s theory of how reality works is no more complex than a comic book. It’s why we’ve always clung to religion. It’s why I have a life-long love of science fiction.

We just can’t handle complexity. There are plenty of real history books that document the reality of the times they cover, but they aren’t widely read. Maybe the Republicans are right, and history is too brutal for children. But maybe we keep repeating history because we’re all too wimpy to handle history.

I’m getting so I can’t stomach the historical lies of Hollywood, but I don’t know if I can handle all that much real history either. I used to think that maybe four percent of the population was mentally ill. In recent years, I’ve upped that to forty percent. But lately, I’m thinking there’s an entry for all of us in the DSM-5.

JWH

What If I Didn’t Come Back From The Dead?

by James Wallace Harris, 9/3/22

Last Monday I had hernia surgery and was under general anesthesia for over two hours. Being anesthetized is maybe the closest thing to being dead. Our conscious self is turned off so completely that it feels like we’re gone for good.

Interestingly, my book club book this month is Being You by Anil Seth and he introduces the study of consciousness with the discussion of general anesthesia. This was the fifth time I was put under so beforehand I was contemplating being gone. And I kept asking myself: “What if I don’t come back?” I thought it was philosophical fun to imagine nonexistence.

Mostly I thought about people I would miss but if I didn’t exist I wouldn’t feel anything. I think of death being like how things felt before I was born. I feel the only existence we know is this one. But my atheist beliefs could be wrong. I wondered how it would feel if I came to, but in another existence. I’ve always hoped if that happened I would be given all the answers to my questions about this existence.

My hunch is this existence is our only one. That reality is filled with many infinities but infinite existence isn’t one of them. Mostly I thought if I wasn’t coming back I should do a lot of paperwork before I might die to help Susan out. But I didn’t do that for two reasons. First, I assumed I was coming back. Second, because I’m lazy.

Still, it felt very weird and fascinating trying to imagine not existing.

Before my surgery, I had a long talk with my surgeon and he agreed to do everything I wanted. I was worried about two things. I was afraid lying on the surgical table for hours would inflame my spinal stenosis. I worried that I couldn’t hold my pee for that length of time because of my overactive bladder. I told him of these fears weeks before the surgery. He said he would try to arrange my back on the table like I needed and would give me a catheter but I would have to wear it for a few days at home. So I practiced lying flat each day before the surgery. Then on the day of the surgery, I told him to not worry about positioning me for my back but do whatever was best for his work. I also asked for the catheter to be removed before I came to and if I couldn’t pee on my own in recovery they could put it back in.

He seemed glad I practiced lying flat and agreed to my method with the catheter. This made me very happy and cleared all my worries. My surgeon then said he wanted to pray for me. I said sure. I’m not the kind of atheist that’s against religion or religious rituals. I am actually grateful for any prayers I receive.

I was impressed by the length of his prayer. He carefully went over all my problems and concerns and then covered all his goals in great detail while asking God for help. It was reassuring on several levels. First, it let me know how closely he listened to me, and second, it carefully laid out his working plans. But it fits in with my contemplations on nonexistence. And his prayer set the right mood for the occasion.

I felt that we each used a different language for understanding our shared existence. I use the word Reality for what he calls God. He believes in a personal relationship with God whereas I think I’m interacting with infinity and randomness. What he calls God’s will I call the unfolding of evolving randomness. Prayer assumes we can ask for blessings. I assume I will get what will be but I’m on one long lucky anti-entropic run of fabulous luck. The big difference is my surgeon believes there’s an existence after this one and I think death is oblivion. I’ve always been exceedingly grateful for this existence.

Well, I did come back. I’m writing this on my iPhone with one finger. The surgery went very well but it was more involved than my surgeon expected. I had no back pain after the surgery. And for 24 hours my back felt limber and young. Even after the drugs wore off it hasn’t been bad at all. And I peed right away when they rolled me back to my room after recovery. And in the days since I haven’t had much pain. I did without drugs except for a couple Tylenol and later, a couple of ibuprofen. However, I am suffering from a swollen scrotum which is typical of this operation and why I’m not sitting at the computer.

I’m quite glad to be back but I’ve learned that God’s will or reality wasn’t finished with me regarding this surgery. We never get what we picture, and my surgeon’s prayer didn’t cover post surgical complications. I thought going under inspired a lot of philosophical musings, but it turns out dealing with an expanding scrotum, generates even more existential thoughts.

One side effect of this experience is to feel sorry for women and their boobs. I imagine my affliction feels somewhat like getting a breast implant. My package is so much bigger it’s freaking me out. Having a sensitive globular appendage is not convenient. It gets in the way, making sitting and walking weird. So I imagine having two would be more than twice as inconvenient. And the size of my burden is still smaller that what most women have to deal with. I now regret every time I ever wished a woman had bigger breasts.

Yes, I came back, but to something I never imagined. But then, the future has always been what I never imagined.

If there is a God and he/she/they willed these big balls on me then I hope it’s God’s sense of humor and not punishment. So I will close with a prayer: “Dear God, please make my scrotum normal again. And if you intended a philosophical lesson help me learn it quickly. Amen.”

JWH