PAULAYN RYAND

Romney, who has taken on diametrically opposed values from his previous incarnation as governor of a liberal state, has the deserved reputation of doing anything to realize his ambition for the presidency.
The latest addition to these anythings is his selection of Paul Ryan as his running mate.  He is everything that Romney is not--he is an ideologue who has never budged from his core values.  Now can you have any doubts, Romney seems to be saying, that I am a severe conservative!

By now everyone knows that if the Republican Party were less extreme, Romney would be touting himself as a moderate, standing by his record  as governor of Massachusetts.  Like a chameleon, he adopts the shade of his party's background--which is now very red--without a hint of any permanent hue.  Ryan, however is a "severe" conservative indeed.

You have probably already heard that over 60% of the massive cuts Ryan proposes will come from programs that hurt the most vulnerable.  You have probably also heard that his cuts will not save any money for a long time, since they are offset by tax reductions for the wealthy.  You have probably also heard that this would be the greatest transfer of wealth from the middle class and the poor to the already wealthy in the nation's history.  These are not the policies of someone trying to balance the budget; it is the attempt to stiff the majority of Americans by means of a rigid, specious, extremist ideology.

It all comes down to individualism vs. collectivism, he tells us.  He also tells us that it is the philosophy of Ayn Rand that has shaped his identity.  He hands out copies of her novel, Atlas Shrugged, to his interns and staff.  He gives the book to various people as a present at Christmas.  In TV commericals for his reelection to Congress in 2009 he mentioned that America is, as it were, in the dire situation depicted in the novel.  For any American politician to mention a novel during a TV ad, he must indeed be a true believer of its author's philosophy.  He has mentioned Ayn Rand so much that his inner core is a combination of the two, Paulayn Ryand.

As you know, Ryan is an active noodler, which entails shoving your hand down a catfish's throat and wrestling it to shore.  I suggest a new sport: randling.  This entails throwing Atlas Shrugged, which is over 1,000 pages long, at a  pesky Canadian goose, followed by a copy of The Fountainhead to finish him off. I think, though, Ryan would prefer to continue throwing those books at us.

Ayn Rand was a Russian immigrant who suffered much during the Russian Revolution.  The Bolsheviks confiscated her father's successful pharmacy business; the family fled to the Crimea.  When they came back to Petrograd (as St. Petersburg was then called) the situation was so dire that at times they were close to starvation.  She was allowed to visit relatives in New York in 1926 and never returned.  It is understandable that she hated the extremism of the Soviet Union.  But she countered it with an extremism of her own, laissez-fair capitalism, without any regulation at all.  In fact, she referred to the highly corrupt pre-trust busting era of the late nineteenth century America as the Golden Age.

If you haven't read Atlas Shrugged, don't.  It is a terrible novel.  I'm not talking about content, I'm talking about craft.  It is the story of a strike of all the so-called productive members of society against the rest of society--which in Rand's eyes is the useless, needy majority, composed of people who put restraints on the creative ones.  The Social Contract in any form is a as heinous as the Nuremberg Laws.  Well, the master race goes on strike and society falls apart.  The leader of the strike, John Galt, ending the strike on his own terms, gives a radio apeech at the end of the book describing his (that is, Ayn Rand's) philosophy.  You make your own values, you create your own life, you have no obligations to anybody you choose not to have obligations to.  You follow reason and unadulterated self-interest.  John Galt presents this philosopy in seventy (small print) pages, yes, seventy pages full of language so abstract and tedious you just can't get through it.  I propose the Dorsett Aesthetics Test.  Those who can finish reading this speech and like it have absolutely no aestheic sense and should not waste their time with art.  Those who either fall asleep or start laughing after a page or so are Mozarts, the majority of us giving up well before the seventieth page.

Ayn Rand was modest too.  She referred to herself as the greatest thinker alive.  She said there were only three philosophers of importance, Aristotle, Aquinas and Ayn Rand.

This advocacy of extreme individualism, which Ryan so assiduously supports, makes the dialogue which we should be having impossible.  There can indeed be too much government; there can indeed be detrimental effects of unregulated capatalism.  I would think that sane conservatives and liberals could agree that there should be minimum standards for everyone: adaquate schools, adequate health care, clean, simple housing in a safe environment.  The debate would be between those who claim that we can only afford the bare minimum for the needy, while the liberals would claim we could do a little bit more.  Once these minimum standards have been achieved, well, then, let's talk about tax cuts.  Similar sane conversations could be had regarding defense, bank regulation, etc.

Any effective modern country must have both collective aspects and  aspects that foster entrepreneurship.  The balance can tip in either direction with damage to the country's well being either way.  That's the word that both Ryan and Rand lack: balance.  Any program such as Social Security, Medicare, Food Stamps, Pell Grants, and God, forbid, Obamacare, is, to their way of thinking making the mumified Lennin smile in his mausoleum.

Why can't Ryan realize that all Americans must be represented, including the poor, weak and elderly?  In Ryand's view the poor are exploiters of the rich.  Alan Greenspan in Wonderland.  The Bland Hatter is running for president!  The True Believer has been taken through the Looking Glass to help him get elected!  This is no fiction: the choice this November is between extremism and moderation. Let's agree to have a battle.

WHAT'S WRONG WITH THE CATHOLIC CHURCH?

Well, if you are considering or even participating in the good deeds nuns and Dorothy Day-type Catholics are doing around the world, there is nothing wrong at all--to the contrary, more power to them.  But if you're considering the imperious, power-hungry bishops, well, that's another story.  It's the story, if fact, of this article.

These bishops stirred up a hornet's nest--I think they are the ones who will be stung the most--by their accusation that the Obama administration is severely restricting religious freedom by requiring that all health insurances comply with doctors' orders, including, of course, prescriptions for birth control.  Never mind that many Catholic institutions had been doing just that, the bishops decried Obama's alleged curtailment of religious liberties. Deeply offended by the administration's alleged anti-religious stance, Ross Douthat, the ultraconservative columnist, wrote:

If you want to fine Catholic hospitals for following Catholic teaching...then don't tell religious people that you respect our freedoms.  Say what you really think: that the exercise of our religion threatens all that's good and decent, and that you're going to use the levers of power to bend us to your will.

To whose will?  An old friend of mine, the great poet Samuel Menasche, wrote in one of his most famous poems, "Zion ground down must become marrow."  In other words, governments must strive to pass laws that reflect the very essence of religion.  Every religion has at least a few non-humane tenets.  Everything should be done to avoid a showdown, but when one occurs, the decision must be in accord with love and wisdom.  What is the essence of religion?    Compassion; perhaps best expressed in the biblical injunction to love one's neighbor as oneself.  And you can't love your neighbor while destroying the world.

Is the desire to prevent the use of birth control in accord with this quote from Leviticus?  I can understand the opposition to abortion, but opposing both abortion and birth control is nothing short of immoral.  We are already sharing the planet with six, almost seven billion people.  The environment is being decimated; due to overpopulation, ours is the greatest period of mass extinction of wildlife since the age of the dinosaurs.  Before birth control and medical advances which greatly increase the lifespan, women had many children.  Just like baby crabs, though, many didn't survive.  Can you imagine if every married woman had a dozen or more children today--not to mention those mothers who never marry? The admirable progress toward gender equality would vanish overnight: what mother could balance a career with a dozen kids at home?  I remember I once treated the fifteenth child of a thirty-four year-old woman in a pediatric clinic.  I looked over her record, and found out that she had been pregnant every year since marriage except one.  She was an Irish Catholic.  How long would  civilization last if everyone behaved like that?  If loving one's neighbor includes neighbors not yet born, and I am sure it does, unprotected sex is a very heinous policy. In this case, being a good Catholic makes for being a very bad citizen.  (We don't have that problem today, because very, very, very few Catholics and others follow the immoral teaching that birth control is wrong--98% of American Catholic women, in fact, have used birth control at some time during their reproductive lives.)

One of the central characters of Jonathan Franzen's good novel, Freedom, is a bird-lover and ardent defender of nature.  Every year he sees the birds' habitats being decimated by encroaching suburbia.  He views the Catholic Church as public enemy number one--and he has a point.  Life on this planet would become unbearable within a few generations if one followed the Church's teaching that birth control should never be used.

Perhaps, you might say, that this teaching is God-inspired and thus should be followed no matter the consequences?  But if a teaching is not in accord with love and wisdom, it is certainly not God-inspired.  Let's examine the flimsy theological reasoning behind the ban. (Before Humanae Vitae, a papal encyclical from 1968, there was no ban on birth control.)  The Catholic view (or should I say the Vatican view) is that God made the genitalia for procreation.  Any use of the genitalia that abrogates the possibility of conception--including masturbation--is therefore immoral.  This view, I think, is ridiculous.  Let's consider, to make an analogy, the mouth.  The mouth, as the first part of the digestive tract, has the essential function of introducing nourishment into the body.  The mouth is also used for communication--who could speak without one?  It is also used in sexual communication.  If God has given the mouth at least three purposes, how can one be so sure that He only gave the genitalia one?  Is it not possible that God created genitalia with the additional purpose of communication between two individuals who love each other?  If the genitalia has an additional purpose than procreation, birth control is certainly not sinful.  I think banning it is as silly as teaching that the mouth should be used only for eating, and not for singing.

The self-righteous bishops, who are more interested--at least in regard to birth control--in power than in love and wisdom, should be humbled on at least three accounts: 1.  How can you be so sure that you're right when virtually no other religion agrees with you on this issue?  2.  How can you advocate the ban on birth control which would endanger if not destroy civilization and the environment including all living creatures?  3. How can you ban birth control on such shaky religious grounds?

The last thing the Obama administration wants to do is have a dispute with the Catholic church.  This is why he pussyfoots around the issue.  The administration won't say that banning birth control is immoral,  since this would provoke a war with parochials with parochial views, but religious tenets that harm people must be opposed in the name of the Greater Good, namely in the name of God Himself.

Regarding this issue, you now  know why that I, a religious person, am on the side of President Obama--and why, in the struggle between truth and power, I am on the side of the nuns.

WEISHEIT UND DAS ALTER

"Es ist traurig wenn ein junger Mann nicht zum Tempel geht;  es ist aber trauriger wenn ein alter Mann den Tempel noch besucht."  So läuft ein altes, mir beliebtes indisches Sprichwort.  Es mangelt dem Jungen etwas; der weise Alte hat nichts mehr zu beklagen.  Weisheit, eine innere Erfahrung dass alles Eins ist; eine Anschauung, die die Welt so wie sie ist bestätigt, und die Verwirklichung dieser Lebensphilosphie im täglichem Handeln, nämlich mit Liebestaten, ist alles was man braucht.  Normalerweise wächst dieses gefühlte Wissen mit den Jahren. (Hoelderlin verfaßte mitten im Jugendtumult die schoenen Worte, "Friedlich und heiter ist dann das Alter." Leider verfiel er mit 35 Jahren bis zu seinem Lebensende in geistige Umnachtung.  Nicht jeder ist glücklich genug, die genügende Erfahrung in einem Gesundheitszustand zu genießen, um friedlich und heiter im Alter zu sein.)  Es gibt natürlich viele unweisen alten Menschen;  jungen Menschen, die weiser sind, gibt es sicherlich auch, aber die Tendenz, dass man weiser wird im Alter, ist nicht zu bezweifeln.  Warum?  Jüngere Leute sind notwendigerweise mehr ehrgeizig und kompetitiv, weil sie mitten in einer Karriere sind und eine Familie oder wenigstens sich selbst unterstützen müssen; in einer Hund-frißt-Hund Welt darf das Ich nicht als Maus vorkommen.  Mit anderen Worten, sie glauben, dass sie einzigartig sind oder sein sollen. 

Ein Motivationstrainer, mein Neffe sogar, berät seinen Kunden nur jene Arbeit anzunehmen die sie lieben, die ihnen Spaß macht.  Aber gibt es genug wunderschoene Stellen für Arbeiter, die für eine Familie verantwortlich sind?  Die Zufriedenheit der Arbeiter--ist das der Lebenszweck der Arbeitgeber?  Sind die Arbeiter für sie an erster Stelle Menschen oder Mittel?  Die Antwort ist klar.  Geld ist knapp und Arbeit lang und schwer.  Ihre Bedürfnisse deckt ihr Leben nicht ab.  Die Alten wissen, dass ihre Bedürfnisse auch nicht abgedeckt werden, aber das wissen sie schon längst; sie erwarten das nicht vom Leben, was es nur brüchweise und ungenügend gibt.  Das Wissen, dass unsere Wünsche nicht erfüllt werden heißt in Buddhas Sprache dukka; diese Erkennung ist der erste Schritt auf dem langen Weg zur Weisheit.  Wer innere Augen und innere Ohren hat; wer mit diesen Fakultäten alt geworden ist, der kennt euch, ihr himmlische Mächte! 

Obwohl ich jetzt den Tempel hauptsächlich besuche, wenn dort ein Konzert stattfindet, sehe ich nicht stolz auf die Religioesen herab.  Kritiker die glauben dass den Frommen an Logik mangelt, vergessen dass viele Gläubiger Religion brauchen.  Ein großer Bedarf huscht die Logik fort. Die Lebensverhältnise der Kritiker sind oft bedeutend besser; sie genießen meistens eine gute Ausbildung, sind Professionelle, haben eine gute Arbeitsstelle und sind nicht isoliert.  Wie die sterbende Violetta im dritten Akt von la Traviata singt; Religione è  sollievo ai sofferenti--Die Religion ist Entlastung für die Leidenden.  Die Kombinationen von inneren und äußeren Zuständen machen oft ein schweres Leben aus.  Wenn man sich auf Erden trostlos fühlt, kommt es oft vor, dass man himmlischen Trost sucht.  Ein großer Freund der eigentlich nicht da ist?  Shhhh--Der Alte, der schon seine Krücke weggeworfen hat--d.h. den Glauben an einen Gott, der in die Geschichte eintritt oder mindestens Gebete beantwortet--dieser hat keine Lust die Jüngeren frühzeitig aufzuklären.  Die Zeit ist ein besserer Lehrer.  Wenn  man Rat sucht, soll der Alte einem beraten, sonst sollte er es der Zeit überlassen, den anderen Menschen zur Weisheit zu bringen.    

Es ist moeglich, dass ich Religion brauchte, als ich jung war--sie hätte mir vielleicht helfen koennen. weniger isoliert zu fühlen zu einer Zeit der Verwirrungen und der Vereinsammung; vielleicht hätte sie mir Bekanntschaften und sogar Freunde angeschafft--der Patient hatte damals Medizin gegen Isolierung noetig.  Aber ich hatte kein Talent dafür.  Ich versuchte, Jude am Monntag, Christ am Dienstag, Muslime am Mittwoch, Buddhist am Donnerstag und Hindu am Freitag zu sein, und, ich muß  gestehen, ich war froh, das Wochenende frei zu haben.  Solcher Oekumenismus bürgt dafür, dass ich schon damals für Dogmatik nichts übrig hatte.  Das Freidenken machte mich alt zu früh, d.h. zu einer Zeit als ich noch Unterstützung brauchte, selbst wenn sie nur ein Wahnbild wäre.

Ich glaube jetzt, wie fast alle Wissenschaftler, dass der Geist eine Projektion des Koerpers ist.  Es ist als ob das Gehirn auf ein inneres Bildschirm einen Film zeigt, ein Film der für den Individuum mit der Geburt anfángt und mit dem Tode endet. (Der Titel deines Filmes ist dein Name.)  Dieses Lichtspiel, dessen Inhalt unsere engere Identitát darbietet, ist sehr wertvoll--für uns--äußerst wichtig.  (Es gibt aber Billionen von wichtigen Filmen!)   Einige moegen ihre Filme für wertlos halten--ihre Einbildungkraft hat ein selbstgefälligeres Drehbuch geschrieben; aber das Gehrin, das Stunde nach Stunde Daten von der inneren und äußeren Umwelt bekommt, ist nicht in der Lage, den Film zu zeigen, der dem Selbstgefühl besser gefallen würde.  (Noch ein Wort vom Buddhismus: tanja, nämlich die Lust nach etwas, was die Welt nicht anbieten kann.  Die Quelle alles Leidens nach Buddha.)

Der Inhalt des Films koennte spannungvoll, froehlich oder traurig sein--vielleicht alle drei--aber es handelt sich um "nur" einen Film.  Wenn zur rechten Zeit ein übernatürlicher deus ex machina ankommt, geschieht nur im Drehbuch und nicht außerhalb von  ihm.  Die Fiktion dass der Film eines Tages in die Hände des großen Redakteurs kommen wird, der nach ein wenig Umschreibung im ewigen Lichthaus immer spielen wird, ist genau das, eine Fiktion.  Ein Film der nie endet ist Einbildung.  Unser Vorhaben, ein erfolgreicher Regisseur des eigenen Films zu werden, ist vielleicht auch eine Illusion, aber eine notwendige und eine bessere, deren Folgen große Szenen sind, die uns alle inspirieren koennen und sollen.  (Vielleicht sind Wille und Determinismus nur zwei Teile einer Wirklichkeit; es kommt darauf an, von welcher Ebene aus man die Sache betrachtet.)  Nur zwei Dinge sind imstande, den Film in einen Klassiker zu transformieren; zwei Dinge, die wir schon erwähnt haben: Liebe und Weisheit.  Wenn unsere Hauptrollen und Nebenrollen in einem miesen Film stecken bleiben, sind unsere Wahnvorstellungen daran schuld.

Ja, unsere Geschichten finden mehr oder weniger im Dunkeln statt--Aber wir sind mehr--hier spreche ich von unserer breitesten Identität--als Film.  Das erfahren wir jenseits aller Worte, wenn unser Tun und Lassen von der Liebe und von der Weisheit geprägt sind.  Nicht zu vergessen: wenn der Film vorüber ist, erst dann wir es im ganzen Lichtsaal hell.


NB: Deutsch, wie Sie schon wohl festgestellt haben, ist nicht meine Muttersprache.  Aber ich moechte jetzt auch deutschsprechende Leser erreichen. (Obwohl die Zahlen nicht sehr groß sind, liest man meine Aufätze, Gedichte und Uebersetzungen  überall in der Welt.  Meine Gedichte sind in den letzten 40 Jahren in mehr als 400 Zeitschriften erschienen; ich bin auch der Autor von ein paar Sammlungen von Gedichten.) Vielen Dank zu Mary Uppman, die diesen Aufsatz gelesen hat, und mehrere Stellen, die Verbesserung brauchten, fand.  Wenn Sie für weitere Aufsätze wie diesen interessieren, bitte mich wissenlassen.

THE WISDOM OF AGE

There is a Hindu saying which goes something like this: it is sad to see a young person who doesn't go to temple; it is even sadder to see an old person who still does.  This in no way implies a loss of spirituality; it suggests rather a gain in wisdom.  Wisdom, an inner-experiential knowledge of the interconnectedness of all things, combined with its practice, love, is all one needs.  It takes time to realize this.  There are certainly many older persons who are not wise and younger ones who are; the tendency of increasing wisdom with age, however, is not to be doubted.  Why?  Younger people are necessarily more competitive, since they are, in general, what the ancient Hindus called "householders," a status which entails supporting a family, or, at the very least, entails supporting themselves.  Many younger persons are so thirsty for success that they try to con a drink from persons ahead of them, who, in turn, are trying to con a drink from those ahead of them.  In this process, of course, those behind tend to be ignored by those who imagine themselves as being deservedly ahead.

I heard of a motivational speaker who strongly advised everyone to work at a job one loves.  But are there enough lovely jobs to go around for workers who have to support a family?  Resources are scarce; no wonder many young people are frustrated.  Their needs are not being met.  True, the needs of older people are not being met either, but the old tend to realize that one's needs are not ever going to be met and have come to terms with this--another aspect of wisdom.

Although I do not visit temples except to attend an occasional concert, I do not look down at those who are religious in the traditional sense.  Many people who criticize the devout fail to realize that many of them are either  internally or externally desperate--or worse, both; their critics, however, tend to  have good jobs and a good social life.  They can afford to scoff at religion; they don't need it.  But some people do.  The endless combinations of the state of one's brain and the state of the world, which make us who we are, sometimes result in difficult, even desperate lives.  It is natural to seek support beyond if one feels lost on Earth--an imaginary friend?  Shh!  The older person who has thrown away his "crutch," that is, the belief in an external God who intervenes in people's lives, has no desire, if he is kind, to reveal to those  needing this belief that it is illusory.  As the Hindu saying implies, it's best to let time do that.  If the person asks advice, well, give it; if not, let the natural tendency toward wisdom take its course.  (Ignorant deeds, which harm, must always be opposed.)

I think I might have needed religion when I was younger--it would have perhaps helped me not to feel so isolated at a time when I felt so alone, and might have provided some socialization which I so desperately needed.  But I was not good at it.  I tried to feel like a Jew on Monday, a Christian on Tuesday, a Muslim on Wednesday, a Buddhist on Thursday and a Hindu on Friday--and was happy, I must say, to take the weekends off. Obviously such an ecumenical approach obviates the possibility of taking any religion's dogma as literal truth, which made me old too young, that is, at a time when I needed more direct help, even if that help was imaginary.

I have come to believe, like most scientists, that the mind is a projection of the body.  There is an internal screen, as it were, on which the brain is showing a movie that begins with birth and ends with death.  (The title of your movie is your name.)  This film about one's narrow identity is very precious to us, and alas! Darwinian mechanisms combined with a self-absorbed culture sometimes insist that one's movie is worthless if it doesn't become a blockbuster.  One's story can be gripping, happy, or sad--but it is no more real than a movie. If a deus ex machina arrives, it is part of the film, not a part of reality.  The fiction that it will some day be gloriously edited, then shown in the sky forever is precisely that, a fiction.  A film that never ends exists only in the imagination.  Although our attempt to be a good director of our finite film might be another illusion, it is a noble one, and sometimes results in great scenes that inspire others as well as ourselves. (Both free will and the lack of it are true; it depends on which plane of existence one is discussing.)The only things that can really take us beyond ourselves, resulting in a classic, are love and wisdom.  What keeps us starring in a Grade-B film is delusion.

Yes, our stories, more or less, take place in darkness. When the movie is over, however, the lights go on.

Book Review: The New Universe and the Human Future, by Nancy Ellen Abrams and Joel R. Primack

Cosmology fascinates me and I enjoy reading about it and learning about  new discoveries.  True, it might not transport me as much as a great performance of a Chopin nocturne, but that still leaves a lot of room for fascination.  I  often go to the library, usually looking for something else, and  wind up borrowing a book or books on cosmology while I'm there.  That's how I found "The New Universe and the Human Future,"  by Nancy Ellen Abrams and Joel R. Primack, Yale University Press, 2011.

Impresseive credentials: she's an attorney, a cultural philosopher and lecturer at the University of California, etc.  He is a Distinguished Professor of Physics at the University of California, etc.  The book is adapted from the Terry Lectures that they gave at Yale University in October 2009.  Impressive crednetials, indeed.

Good credentials, however, do not always translate into a good book. The basic tenet of the book is that the universe is not only imbued with meaning, but, if we fully realize what that meaning is, we will stop depredating our planet and turn into seven billion Johnny Appleseeds.  I'm not kidding.

Do the authors somehow believe that if our politicians read this book, John Boehner would have another good cry while all the members of the House and Senate--in unison at last--belt their hearts out, singing "We Are The World?"  Do the authors know nothing about the psychology of power?

According to the authors, we are cosmically special and live in a cosmically special time. So, special people. don't be intimidated by the size of the universe; we have a central role in it. In Chapter One, they discuss two cartoons that joke about the feeling of insignificance in an unbelievalby vast universe.  The authors write:

In both cartoons, the feeling of cosmic insignificance is uncomfortable to think about, so the characters run from it.  This feeling derives from the Newtonian assumption that in  the incomprehensibly vast cold universe we are, to quote the famous biologist Stephen Jay Gould,  a "fortuitous cosmic afterthought."  But we know now that this is not the case.  The new picture is revealing a universe in which we intelligent beings have a central or special place in several different senses of the phrase.

Tell that to Betelgeuse.

The cosmos is indeed a mysterium tremendum et fascinans.  The sheer scale from quarks--or possibly strings--to the size of the unverse--or possibly multimverse--is so beyond the human scale that we are transported into a realm of awe--and for some, into a realm of terror, when we compare our size to Its.  Yes, this can give us a new perspective--ecstasy, rememeber, refers to the delight of traveling outside ourselves.  But meaningful is not an adjective to be applied to the cosmos.  Meanings are created by brains; as far we know,  there is no meaning without neurons or their equivalents, (artificial intelligence is possible.)

I used to think there was meaning outside the human brain; my error, however, is more excusable since I'm neither a top-notch physicist or a renowned cultural philosopher.  A brief account of my becoming disabused of this notion might shed some light here.  I knew that nature and the cosmos are indiffent to us; however, I did, and still do, find great meaning in the arts, especially in music.  I was convinced that something so powerful had to be connected with something beyond.  And I found in cosmology support for this.  After all, galaxies have pitches, albeit some sixty octaves below middle C.  So there was, sort of, music in the cosmos.  And string theory--the idea that everything is built up from extremely tiny vibrating strings 'proved" to me that music was eveything.  Then I got to know the brain a little better.  All the universe has is vibrations; it is the human brain that interprets vibrations as pitch.  Pitch--therefore music, in the sense of organization of pitches over time--does not exist outside the human brain.  The awe that we should have for our brains, which not only give us music but enable us, via an organ that weighs only a few pounds, to appreciate and partly comprehend the vastness, smallness and majesty of existence, should be, well, endless. Sure, our brains receive data from the external world, but meaning and music always comes from within.

The old question about whether a tree falling makes a sound if no one is there to hear it no longer makes sense.  The falling tree will make vibrations in the air. but if there is no brain to hear it, there will be no sound.  Even the Big Bang, therefore, had no audible bang at all, since quarks and such antedate all ears by billions and billions of years.

The book is full of truly awesome pictures of the universe, and the physicist half of the two authors recounts our current knowledge about the universe in an admirable fashion, so the book is valuable for that.  But  trying to derive human values from a valueless splendor is folly indeed.

The authors state that we are living in a critical, halfway point in the cosmos, in which we have a central role, and give several reasons for this.  I'm always suspicious when people believe we are central to the cosmos.  Ptolemy all over again; give him a rest.  Many Christians today believe that we are living, or at least approaching, the "end times"--and they've been believing this for the past two thousand years.

I will give only one of their silly reasons of why we are living "at a cosmically pivotal moment."  Multicellular organisms, animals, came into existence 500 million years ago during the so-called Cambrian explosion.  We are living at midpoint now, since the sun will support life on the planet for 500 million more years.  (A highly doubtful presumption; most scientists believe the sun would be able to support life for a longer period than that.)  That equals at least several hundred million (human) generations, they tell us. They write, "As the sun heats up, our descendants will have millons of generations to prepare to survive."  Wow, we humans are unable to predict with accuracy whether the stock market will be up or down in a year; the authors, however, have no problem predicting  that our descendants will be preparing for survival for the next half billion years!  Such nonsense is rendered even more absurd by assuming that during that long  period we will not have become extinct or not have evolved into something else. Name a species that has lasted 500 million years!  A trilobite is not a human; how can the authors imagine that we will be essentially unchanged after 500  million years?

Yes, you guessed it, they also talk about the universe becoming conscious of itself as intelligent beings evolve.  They even state that if we must stop our mad war against the planet, since this might be the last chance the universe has of becoming conscious of itself, since we might be the only highly intelligent life forms in the cosmos.  Oh, the poor universe!  Here is the Sun, just recovering from the extinction of the dinosaurs on Eatth, having to ponder the annihilation of those greedy yet glorious creatures who are giving her, after four billion years, a bit of self-consciousness of her own.  Poor thing.

They speculate that, because of the lack an appropriate mythology, "Maybe this is why no aliens are here.  They may have the technology but not the mythology."  The mythology they present is simply the current picture of the cosmos according to physics.  Awesome indeed, but a human mythology must address the human heart, and cosmology is unable to do this.  The authors believe that it does, but they are wrong.

The authors claim we are so important and critical because we are so rare.  Most of the cosmos is composed of dark energy and dark matter; only a tiny fraction of the universe is composed of atoms.  But the universe is certainly vaster than we had hitherto imagined.  The visible universe, a vast circle with a radius of 13.7 billion light-years  with Earth at its center--nothing special here, it's the same radius with the Andromeda galaxy at the center, althugh the area swept by the circle would differ, more markedly when the center of the circle is very far from us--is only a part of the universe, and some say, a very small part of the universe.  (We don't see it since light has 'only' traveled for 13.7 billion years since the origin of the cosmos.)  Not only that, the theories of the multiverse and of  Eternal Inflation, etc. while unproven, indicate that there's more to the cosmos than our own unvierse.  So what's rare becomes, cosmically speaking, commonplace.  If the cosmos is infinite and eternal as the Eternal Inflation theory would have it, matter, though a "lesser" infinity than dark enegry--at least in universes like ours--would be infinite nevertheless.

They talk about the importance of art, but I hope their aesthetic sense is not summed up by naming the new galaxy after ours and Andromeda collide, "Milky Andromeda." Ugh. "Milkandromeda" would be better, but, with a little effort, those with a better sense of language could come up with something that would stick.

The way to solve our problems, as the ancients have taught,is by putting love into action.  Love Your Neighbor as Yourself.  Empathy, compassion.  A realizaion that greed, hate and delusion now have the ability to destroy us forever.  In short, acting on the the best of what is within us. The power structure would have to evolve from Me Me to Us Us.  If we make significant progress in the realization of love and wisdom, we might not have 500 million years of peace, but peace for a long long time to come  If that happens, our descendents will indeed be blessed.  Betelgeuse, however, will still not be impressed.

The book is a mess.

Why Did President Obama Endorse Same-Sex Marriage Today?

Why now, one might ask--at least I do.  It is not at all clear that Obama's endorsement of marriage equality will help him in the election.  African-American churchgoers are opposed.  True, most will overlook this issue by the time of the election, and reassert their overwhelming support.  But some, having heard many sermons demonizing gays, just might stay home--no, I can't see them voting for Romney!  And in this election, every vote counts.  True, Obama has already lost those in a red-state state of mind, but his support for same sex marriage might galvanize them and increase their turnout come November.  Independents seem to me to be a somewhat conservative lot--the difference between them and Red Staters is that they are not radically conservative.  So I don't see any gain for him there.
Therefore, I conclude, that this was an act of courage.  To do the right thing when it is politically risky is indeed courageous.  Especially for a politician.  I expected him to endorse gay marriage after the election.  It still would have been right for him to do so, of course,  but it would have been much less courageous.
The reason I am writing this essay is to discuss two aspects of this issue that, to my knowledge, have not been adequately addressed.  First--Was the president's assertion that his opinion regarding gay marriage had been evolving a matter of sincerity or a matter of political expediency?  Second, how can gay marriage be defended religiously?

Let's tackle the first issue.  The commentators on the right assert that Obama has been hedging on this issue for political reasons only.  According to them, he has always supported gay marriage and he was just waiting to promulgate his "radical left agenda" (Hannity) when the time was right.  They view his long hesitation with complete cynicism.  Since this is an ambiguous time for him to do so--who knows if this will help or hurt him--his decision to endorse gay marriage now does not seem to justify this cynicism.  Why did he not act earlier?  I have no inside knowledge, but I would like to propose a reason for this.  Obama was raised by a white mother.  Just like my son who is half black, he had to find his black identity--society, after all, offers mixed race people no other choice.  And, the choice is, of course, a good one.  He married an African-American woman and attended an African-American church.  This church culture does not look at gay marriage favorably.  And, I, for one, do believe that Obama is a sincere Christian.  He is a decent man and perhaps thought like this--"I support civil rights for everyone, but perhaps gay marriage, as opposed to civil unions, flouts tradition too much."  In his announcement today, Obama was very cognizant of the fact that many good people oppose gay marriage.  He has respect for religious tradition, and was hesitant to repudiate it in this regard.  Finally--perhaps with the help of his vice president, whose recent remarks on this issue might have served as a catalyst--he could be silent no longer.  It was not only a courageous act, but also, as I very much believe, it was the right thing to do.  In any case, the use of the bully pulpit to help stop bullying is extremely significant and will help foster gay civil rights around the world.  Once again, I'm not sure that Obama "evolved" the way I indicated, but is indeed a possibility, perhaps even likely; I'm surprised no one has written about the possibility previously.

Now, to the second issue--Can gay marriage be justified on religious grounds?   I am absolutely convinced that it can.  Let me briefly state why.  The great thinker Simone Weil interpreted the greatest commandment--that we should love our neighbor as ourselves--in the following manner.  This entails, she wrote, loving our neighbor's desire.  By this she meant that we must not only love those who are similar to us, but those who are different from us.  The belief that we must love the homosexual but hate the sin is completely unjustified.  Gay marriage is not about murder, it's about love.  If anyone doubts that gays can love each other, learn about the Aids quilt project--open your eyes!  We should love the sinner yet hate the sin only when the sin is destructive.  Love is never destructive--this should be no news to religious people who profess that God is love.  If God is mouthing our prejudices we have been using Him as a ventriloquist's dummy.  What are we left with when we put the dummy back in its case?  A silence that frequently makes us uncomfortable; a silence which makes us humble; a silence which "sings" and commands us to do the right thing.

Needless to say, I was very proud of our president today. Mr. Obama, when you were elected I literally danced in the street outside my home; I'm ready to do it again.

THE PITCHES AND RHYTHMS OF CHINA

I got up from the piano; a few hours later I was listening to music on a plane.
The flights from Baltimore to Beijing were somewhat arduous but uneventful; the fact that China is exactly twelve hours ahead, though, made the adjustment easier. My wife, Nirmala, and I thus began a three-week tour of China and Tibet, along with a group of dance partners and others with whom we occasionally travel. We saw the usual things tourists see, which were quite unusual for us; this article, however, due to space limitations, will emphsize the rhythms, the pitches, the music we heard.
The first day we were on our own. We visited the Temple of Heaven, a huge park which includes as its centerpiece the temple where the emperor prayed for a good harvest. There were lots of activities in the park; tai chi, for instance, and even line dancing. Needless to say, we joined right in the line dancing. We couldn't understand the words they said, but the meaning of the gracious smiles that the Chinese dancers sent in our direction were clear.
The highlight of the day was a visit to Beijing's Lama Temple, a fabulous Tibetan temple that escaped destruction during the Cultural Revolution. The temple consists of many separate buildings and courtyards. The design is linear; one enters a building, exits into a courtyard, then enters the next building. The shrines contain statues of Buddha, guardian spirits, Tara, Kwan Yin, etc. The last building, much taller than the others, contains a very impressive, gigantic statue of Mitreya, the Future Buddha. It was carved from a single sandalwood block, apparently the largest such structure in the world. We felt quite uplifted. There were many devotees; about ten percent of the population is Buddhist. (There are some religious freedoms now, although any form of proselytization is banned.) I, too, lit some incense sticks, praying (wishing?) for things close to my heart, even though I don't believe in divine intervention. Do I contradict myself? Well, then, I contradict myself.
Yes, we visited the Great Wall, and, despite being seniors, were among the very few who reached the end of the long section open to the public. (We took the difficult path.) The next day we rushed through the Forbidden City and the Summer Palace, visits which laid bare the negative side of a group tour. Felt like ants in a maze.
One evening we attended a performance of Peking Opera, which was great. The acrobats were fantastic. In one scene, two acrobatic actors depicted two soldiers trying to strike each other in the dark. Their synchronized rhythmic movements were humorous and breathtaking in their precision. And what a wonderful sword dance a woman did, playing the role of the concubine from the famous piece, "Farewell My Concubine." The music, especially the percussion, which was used to intensify moments of emotion, was very effective and similar to the use of percussive instruments in Kabuki. Peking opera singers sing at a very high pitch, which reminded me of the very distant world of Blue Grass singing, which shares this similarity. Yes, it takes a while to get used to, a difficulty made even greater during this performance, since the instrumentalists tended to drown out the singers. The performance definitely encouraged me to explore this art form.
We subsequently visited the exhibition of terracotta soldiers in Xi'An, a very polluted city. The vast exhibition hall holding hundreds of terracotta warriors was impressive, but we felt we got a more intimate view of some of the statues when an exhibition came from China to the National Gallery in Washington. I was not too impressed by the city of Xi'An. Lots of humdrum concrete high-rises that seem to have haphazardly popped up like gigantic, drab mushrooms. In Beijing, the architectural standards are much higher. The office buildings there are clean, powerful and sometimes even beautiful temples dedicated to the all-conquering god of the yuan.
After a fascinating visit to Lhasa, Tibet, we embarked on a five-dave river cruise on the Yangtze. My friend Glenn and I were the stars of the language lesson on board, since we knew a bit, a very little bit, beforehand. I don't seem to have a problem with getting the pitches of the Chinese language right, since I am so interested in music. We did enjoy, rather unexpectedly, the talent show on the riverboat. Some of the waiters and other workers were quite talented. The star of the show was a young waiter who did a really splendid job as the "Face-Changing Master," a stock character of Peking Opera. Fierce masks seemed to change as if by magic, A few seconds after having covered his face with a fan, the dancer reveals a new mask of a contrasting, bright color. He had us gasping with surprise and delight. He was a good dancer, too.
The rhythms of Shanghai, "The China of Tomorrow," are brisk. Lots of young people with lots of energy walking along the Bund with its very pleasing vistas of a river lined with skyscrapers. During our stay in Shanghai, we visited Yu Garden, a traditional Chinese garden complex built by the commissioner of Sichuan province in 1551, during the Ming Dynasty. The garden complex is quite lovely. I imagined myself living in one of the spacious dwellings--I would rise early, have tea, read for a while; have a lesson in Chinese; play the piano; have lunch; have a lesson in calligraphy and then write poetry. Then afternoon tea with my wife; a walk together; supper together; then attend a Peking Opera performance at the Garden's stage. Not a bad life--if everyone who wanted it could have it, fine--but this is of course impossible. Conscience would therefore force me to turn the garden over to the people, which is exactly what the Chinese government did.
We visited a fascinating museum at Hubei. It houses the contents of the tomb of the Marquis Yi of Zheng, who died around 433 B.C.E. Very interesting bronze artifacts, which were made by a now forgotten wax mold procedure--the liquid bronze melted the wax and took on the desired shape. The most remarkable exhibit were the 65 bells which had been used in rituals. Strike the bell in the front and the pitch is the first note of the scale, "do," technically, the tonic note. Strike the bell on the side and you get "mi," the third note of the scale, or more technically, the mediant note. The bells spanned a range of over five octaves; all the major scales of the West, including medieval, blues and jazz scales, could be played upon them. This is a fascinating discovery, since previously one had thought that the ancient Chinese used the pentatonic (five note) scale exclusively. No one knows what scales were used, though; there was apparently no musical notation at the time.
At the end of the tour we listened to a delightful concert played on replicas of the bells and on other traditional Chinese instruments. All the musical numbers used the pentatonic scale, except for the melody, Ode to Joy, by Beethoven. One Chinese pentatonic folk tune with its tonic harmonies sounded a bit like a tune from a Viennese operetta. I enjoyed the visit immensely.
We finished the tour with a few days extension in Hong Kong. The last time I was there was in 1974. How things have changed! Modern structures everywhere. At the hotel, we sat and had a drink at the bar while listening to a really talented pianist. No one seemed to be listening to her but me, which I guess is the way it's supposed to be. I wanted to say shhh! to some of the nosier guests, but, of course, didn't. I said to myself, you have a lot of practicing to do.
Having returned to the United States, after a wonderful trip to China, I am happily doing just that.