Brett Alan Williams's Blog, page 9
January 5, 2015
January 5, 2015: My Long Silence
My last entry of September 1 was in appreciation of a Global eBook Award for The Father. At that time I was fully engaged in writing the second volume in this trilogy. Things were looking up. Then two things happened. First, my research of source material for that second volume revealed problems in a deeper study of Western civilization that shocked me. Some of this landscape I’ve walked before, but the big realization was that the ideals I have fully supported – present in the West from its founding - are the very ideals that appear irresistibly fatal to human meaning. Not a secret to philosophers, many have tried unsuccessfully to rectify this for centuries. Most of us are tacitly aware of the social symptoms large and small, like disunity, disconnectedness, isolation, retreats from ethics, monumental greed and common rudeness. Fewer of us – including me – have taken time to dig up the roots of these problems. That’s what volume two was meant to be about. The Father is, in a sense, the symptoms of social decline and their ultimate consequences. The uncovering of more fundamental causes were to be central to volume two, and what John goes off to find at the end of volume one. Hence the research.
And just what are these issues that paralyzed my pen? To be quite approximate, they boil down to one: individualism. Sounds harmless at first glance, and who could be against it? From individualism came the authorization (which became a demand) to question and challenge everything, especially authority outside the individual. The “discovery of individualism,” especially after it took flight with the Enlightenment (1650-1750), created a surge in innovation and personal meaning through exercise of the will in a way never before experienced by humans. People had previously been subservient to their role in a hierarchy determined before they were born. There was no independence, no self-determination, no rights or equality. That anyone would dare consider such ideas would have been revolting to ancient and medieval peoples. Meaning came from belonging to a true community of like-minded people known for life, in face-to-face relations with common beliefs, primarily that of religion. As Pierre Manent put it, in modernity “we are henceforth doomed to confront our autonomy without transcendent foundation.” [1]
In the West, individualism has triumphed in a 400 year battle with religion, tradition, community belonging, and the guiding reference these once provided. We traded virtue (self-restraint for the greater good) for liberty (expression of the will for self-satisfaction), and now live in an era when individual rights, expression, and gratification of every kind are paramount. A perpetual present where “free choice” is king - well suited for consumerism – and disconnected not only from others but from a past that once animated civilizations. I have embraced all these freedoms. But as Morgan states in The Father, “We…invent ourselves. We can just as easily uninvent it all. Problem is, once you know what you’re up to, you can never pretend again.” There comes a time in all our lives when this is a dangerous realization to make.
There is a direct correlation between education and religious belief. The more a population is educated, the less it really believes stories of murderous gods, miracles and resurrections. Be they one of the many resurrections listed in the annals of history, like the Egyptian god Osiris, or other examples that some of us believe are absolutely true. Or do we? There is an ever more strident tone from those appearing desperate to reassure themselves rather than convince others, notably in the battles of Creationism against the proven material success of science. Some of this is a reaction to smug, almost evangelical pronouncements from a handful of atheist scientists who have their share in generating the response. Pointing to atrocities in the Mid-East as the certain outcome of supernatural beliefs only fans the flames, and sounds a good deal like arguments I made at Creationist museums – looking for a fight - when I was younger. But the Enlightenment command to question and challenge everything, so central to individualist states, does not spare beliefs people consider sensitive. Sensitive because those beliefs give their lives meaning. Most on this planet are poor, their lives short, misery a daily fact of life. Belief is all they’ve got. Yet even in America, the most religious of Western nations, religious belief is in retreat. Those considering themselves non-religious were 5% of the population in 1930, 8% in 1990, 20% in 2013, reports UC Berkeley and Duke University surveys. The January 3, 2015 Wall Street Journal noted a front-page story on mass closures of churches across Europe, transformed into clothing stores, skate board play grounds, taverns. Congregations are disappearing. Apparently this is not true of Judaism’s stability and Islam’s expansion in Europe. [2]
As Boston University’s Peter L. Berger notes, it would take something like a genetic mutation to remove the religious impulse from humanity. [3] And there’s the problem. Our own human nature of the heart is denied by a human creation of the mind. Gladly, education continues to expand. Though most of it is utilitarian, avoiding philosophy, the urge to question everything grows more widespread. As a career physicist, I’ve been comfortable with the practice in science. And yet, even as an agnostic, the consequences of it in the social domain terrifies me. (Some presume agnostic equals atheist. Not so.) Our loss in the belief of anything not measurable creates a variety of social strains in modernity that the ancients were free from (they had other problems). Noted symptoms are an example. As Marcel Gauchet writes, “As though society is incapable of supporting its own internal contradictions discovered on the social terrain once religion ceased to conceal them.” [4] It is perhaps the irony of all ironies that, according to Louis Dumont, it was Christianity that had the single strongest hand in transmitting ancient Greek Stoic individualism to the Enlightenment through Christianity’s personal (individual) relationship with Christ. Followed by Calvinism that turned lose the Puritan idea of sanctifying the profane world with tireless, endless, obsessive work as a “calling,” becoming the Protestant ethic. [5]
In America, work is our purpose. Purpose we have in abundance. As Tocqueville noted in 1840, Americans are incessantly busy. [6] We’ve got plenty to do. (Purpose is internal, meaning is external, our value reflected in someone or something else.) On the other hand, meaning is inherent and irrefutable regardless of how bad things are if and only if we can keep our beliefs alive and unquestionable. That is no longer possible for a growing number of people in the modern world. When calling was attached to belief – seen as human participation in a divine plan – purpose and meaning were united. Once Enlightenment reason acted as a solvent on belief, work became a matter of the material world, not salvation in the next. Meaning became isolated from work but survived outside our toils as the longstanding gift of God. But God of the Judeo-Christian world was defined by ancient writings and traditions. It was open season on religion and tradition, targeted with the deepest philosophical scrutiny. Read literally, not symbolically, the beginning of dismissal commenced.
As history shows, the old gods depended on us, our perception of them to keep them alive. Those gods had been absolutely real to those people. They didn’t sacrifice, in some cases, humans, because they thought their gods were myth. They all had their witnesses, and held that their gods existed regardless of belief in them. But when perceptions changed, the gods were buried. Do current trends imply we’re on the same path? Perhaps our beliefs require a new definition – as Karen Armstrong notes, one that can match our scientific prowess. [7] In other words, must humans redefine our beliefs to save our beliefs and thus ourselves? Along the way, on the first Monday of each odd-numbered month, I’ll post to this blog my latest findings on these subjects.
So goes the first of two things that happened to stall this blog. The second occurred just days after I’d had a conversation with my mother, telling her how good things were. How I had nothing to complain about, knowing I would anyway. “It’s times like this,” I said, “I have to pinch myself to make sure I’m awake. But there’s one thing for sure in this life: whatever it’s like, good or bad, it will change.” Change it did. I was preparing for a coffee shop writing session, but running late. The routine was modified, and in the moments of catchup one of my six children was out of his usual place. (Those who are not animal lovers won’t understand, but my children consist of 3 cats, 3 dogs.) This was the cat, Cooty, that tended to everyone else in the house. There to mother any of them; come to me when there was trouble between them; and act as an almost constant appendage of mine. Then Cooty appeared in a panic, running straight for me as he always did when something was wrong. He fell and began to convulse as I hesitated for the longest second, staring at him. I ran to him like a fool, pleading with him to tell me what was wrong, his mouth wide, eyes buldged, already dilating. I could think of no reason for this. Seized with panic I could think of nothing. The best I could do was assume a heart attack, but he was only 12, an indoor cat. My job seemed to be to comfort him, to be there in these last terrifying seconds as oxygen ran out in his brain, hearing me tell him how much I loved him, how everything would be OK. I held him and scratched his head in the way he liked as he stopped moving and I kept talking, telling him what a good boy he was. This happened to me before, in life and in a scene I wrote about, and maybe that was the only thing I had to reference under the circumstances. Later I found he’d chewed off a piece of carpet backing. Online I discovered there are ways to save a choking cat. I didn’t know this. I’d never seen a cat choke. But I was the man with 21 patents. My career was spent thinking of new ways to solve hard problems. I was decisive under pressure. There wasn’t a situation I feared I could not solve. In those few instants on that autumn morning all that changed. Decisive I was not. When faced with someone in their most dire moment, with trust I'd fix any problem, to do nothing feels like betrayal and a guilt hard to shake.
While 52 million people have been displaced by war, the northern white rhino functionally extinct with five remaining, and another Malaysian plane full of people lost at sea, the death of Cooty hardly ranks on a scale outside my home, but that doesn’t mean I don’t still miss him. Tiger (a dog) doesn’t look for Cooty anymore, but Smokey (a cat) still does. Cats have different sounding meows that mean different things – at least to other cats. When I’m in bed at night and hear that meow that would bring Cooty running, it breaks my heart. Smokey seems to recognize Cooty’s photo as he smells the glass and frame, then looks behind it, like he’s going to find where Cooty’s been all this time. It’s surprising to me how large is the space occupied by just one of these creatures. Unlike we humans, they are pure innocence. When the nightly routine has each in their respective places, mostly pinning me to a fixed form and location in bed, then, like the long lost and rather "corny" TV ending of The Waltons, I say goodnight to each by name, including Cooty and two cats I lost long ago, Hawkeye and Sammy. In the world we’ve made where nothing is permanent, I suppose, like meaning, we have to invent it, and tend it to keep it alive.
[1] Pierre Manent, “The Modern State,” in “New French Thought: Political Philosophy,” Princeton, 1994
[2] Naftali Bendavid, "Europe’s Empty Churches Go on Sale," Wall Street Journal, 1/3/15
[3] Peter L. Berger, Ed. “The Desecularization of the World: Resurgent Religion and World Politics,” Eerdman, 1999
[4] Marcel Gauchet, “Primitive Religions and the Origins of the State,” in “New French Thought: Political Philosophy,” Princeton, 1994
[5] Louis Dumont, “Essays in Individualism: Modern Ideology in Anthropological Perspective,” University Of Chicago Press, 1986
[6] Alexis de Tocqueville, “Democracy in America,” Mentor, 1984
[7] Karen Armstrong, “The Battle For God,” Ballantine, 2000
And just what are these issues that paralyzed my pen? To be quite approximate, they boil down to one: individualism. Sounds harmless at first glance, and who could be against it? From individualism came the authorization (which became a demand) to question and challenge everything, especially authority outside the individual. The “discovery of individualism,” especially after it took flight with the Enlightenment (1650-1750), created a surge in innovation and personal meaning through exercise of the will in a way never before experienced by humans. People had previously been subservient to their role in a hierarchy determined before they were born. There was no independence, no self-determination, no rights or equality. That anyone would dare consider such ideas would have been revolting to ancient and medieval peoples. Meaning came from belonging to a true community of like-minded people known for life, in face-to-face relations with common beliefs, primarily that of religion. As Pierre Manent put it, in modernity “we are henceforth doomed to confront our autonomy without transcendent foundation.” [1]
In the West, individualism has triumphed in a 400 year battle with religion, tradition, community belonging, and the guiding reference these once provided. We traded virtue (self-restraint for the greater good) for liberty (expression of the will for self-satisfaction), and now live in an era when individual rights, expression, and gratification of every kind are paramount. A perpetual present where “free choice” is king - well suited for consumerism – and disconnected not only from others but from a past that once animated civilizations. I have embraced all these freedoms. But as Morgan states in The Father, “We…invent ourselves. We can just as easily uninvent it all. Problem is, once you know what you’re up to, you can never pretend again.” There comes a time in all our lives when this is a dangerous realization to make.
There is a direct correlation between education and religious belief. The more a population is educated, the less it really believes stories of murderous gods, miracles and resurrections. Be they one of the many resurrections listed in the annals of history, like the Egyptian god Osiris, or other examples that some of us believe are absolutely true. Or do we? There is an ever more strident tone from those appearing desperate to reassure themselves rather than convince others, notably in the battles of Creationism against the proven material success of science. Some of this is a reaction to smug, almost evangelical pronouncements from a handful of atheist scientists who have their share in generating the response. Pointing to atrocities in the Mid-East as the certain outcome of supernatural beliefs only fans the flames, and sounds a good deal like arguments I made at Creationist museums – looking for a fight - when I was younger. But the Enlightenment command to question and challenge everything, so central to individualist states, does not spare beliefs people consider sensitive. Sensitive because those beliefs give their lives meaning. Most on this planet are poor, their lives short, misery a daily fact of life. Belief is all they’ve got. Yet even in America, the most religious of Western nations, religious belief is in retreat. Those considering themselves non-religious were 5% of the population in 1930, 8% in 1990, 20% in 2013, reports UC Berkeley and Duke University surveys. The January 3, 2015 Wall Street Journal noted a front-page story on mass closures of churches across Europe, transformed into clothing stores, skate board play grounds, taverns. Congregations are disappearing. Apparently this is not true of Judaism’s stability and Islam’s expansion in Europe. [2]
As Boston University’s Peter L. Berger notes, it would take something like a genetic mutation to remove the religious impulse from humanity. [3] And there’s the problem. Our own human nature of the heart is denied by a human creation of the mind. Gladly, education continues to expand. Though most of it is utilitarian, avoiding philosophy, the urge to question everything grows more widespread. As a career physicist, I’ve been comfortable with the practice in science. And yet, even as an agnostic, the consequences of it in the social domain terrifies me. (Some presume agnostic equals atheist. Not so.) Our loss in the belief of anything not measurable creates a variety of social strains in modernity that the ancients were free from (they had other problems). Noted symptoms are an example. As Marcel Gauchet writes, “As though society is incapable of supporting its own internal contradictions discovered on the social terrain once religion ceased to conceal them.” [4] It is perhaps the irony of all ironies that, according to Louis Dumont, it was Christianity that had the single strongest hand in transmitting ancient Greek Stoic individualism to the Enlightenment through Christianity’s personal (individual) relationship with Christ. Followed by Calvinism that turned lose the Puritan idea of sanctifying the profane world with tireless, endless, obsessive work as a “calling,” becoming the Protestant ethic. [5]
In America, work is our purpose. Purpose we have in abundance. As Tocqueville noted in 1840, Americans are incessantly busy. [6] We’ve got plenty to do. (Purpose is internal, meaning is external, our value reflected in someone or something else.) On the other hand, meaning is inherent and irrefutable regardless of how bad things are if and only if we can keep our beliefs alive and unquestionable. That is no longer possible for a growing number of people in the modern world. When calling was attached to belief – seen as human participation in a divine plan – purpose and meaning were united. Once Enlightenment reason acted as a solvent on belief, work became a matter of the material world, not salvation in the next. Meaning became isolated from work but survived outside our toils as the longstanding gift of God. But God of the Judeo-Christian world was defined by ancient writings and traditions. It was open season on religion and tradition, targeted with the deepest philosophical scrutiny. Read literally, not symbolically, the beginning of dismissal commenced.
As history shows, the old gods depended on us, our perception of them to keep them alive. Those gods had been absolutely real to those people. They didn’t sacrifice, in some cases, humans, because they thought their gods were myth. They all had their witnesses, and held that their gods existed regardless of belief in them. But when perceptions changed, the gods were buried. Do current trends imply we’re on the same path? Perhaps our beliefs require a new definition – as Karen Armstrong notes, one that can match our scientific prowess. [7] In other words, must humans redefine our beliefs to save our beliefs and thus ourselves? Along the way, on the first Monday of each odd-numbered month, I’ll post to this blog my latest findings on these subjects.
So goes the first of two things that happened to stall this blog. The second occurred just days after I’d had a conversation with my mother, telling her how good things were. How I had nothing to complain about, knowing I would anyway. “It’s times like this,” I said, “I have to pinch myself to make sure I’m awake. But there’s one thing for sure in this life: whatever it’s like, good or bad, it will change.” Change it did. I was preparing for a coffee shop writing session, but running late. The routine was modified, and in the moments of catchup one of my six children was out of his usual place. (Those who are not animal lovers won’t understand, but my children consist of 3 cats, 3 dogs.) This was the cat, Cooty, that tended to everyone else in the house. There to mother any of them; come to me when there was trouble between them; and act as an almost constant appendage of mine. Then Cooty appeared in a panic, running straight for me as he always did when something was wrong. He fell and began to convulse as I hesitated for the longest second, staring at him. I ran to him like a fool, pleading with him to tell me what was wrong, his mouth wide, eyes buldged, already dilating. I could think of no reason for this. Seized with panic I could think of nothing. The best I could do was assume a heart attack, but he was only 12, an indoor cat. My job seemed to be to comfort him, to be there in these last terrifying seconds as oxygen ran out in his brain, hearing me tell him how much I loved him, how everything would be OK. I held him and scratched his head in the way he liked as he stopped moving and I kept talking, telling him what a good boy he was. This happened to me before, in life and in a scene I wrote about, and maybe that was the only thing I had to reference under the circumstances. Later I found he’d chewed off a piece of carpet backing. Online I discovered there are ways to save a choking cat. I didn’t know this. I’d never seen a cat choke. But I was the man with 21 patents. My career was spent thinking of new ways to solve hard problems. I was decisive under pressure. There wasn’t a situation I feared I could not solve. In those few instants on that autumn morning all that changed. Decisive I was not. When faced with someone in their most dire moment, with trust I'd fix any problem, to do nothing feels like betrayal and a guilt hard to shake.
While 52 million people have been displaced by war, the northern white rhino functionally extinct with five remaining, and another Malaysian plane full of people lost at sea, the death of Cooty hardly ranks on a scale outside my home, but that doesn’t mean I don’t still miss him. Tiger (a dog) doesn’t look for Cooty anymore, but Smokey (a cat) still does. Cats have different sounding meows that mean different things – at least to other cats. When I’m in bed at night and hear that meow that would bring Cooty running, it breaks my heart. Smokey seems to recognize Cooty’s photo as he smells the glass and frame, then looks behind it, like he’s going to find where Cooty’s been all this time. It’s surprising to me how large is the space occupied by just one of these creatures. Unlike we humans, they are pure innocence. When the nightly routine has each in their respective places, mostly pinning me to a fixed form and location in bed, then, like the long lost and rather "corny" TV ending of The Waltons, I say goodnight to each by name, including Cooty and two cats I lost long ago, Hawkeye and Sammy. In the world we’ve made where nothing is permanent, I suppose, like meaning, we have to invent it, and tend it to keep it alive.
[1] Pierre Manent, “The Modern State,” in “New French Thought: Political Philosophy,” Princeton, 1994
[2] Naftali Bendavid, "Europe’s Empty Churches Go on Sale," Wall Street Journal, 1/3/15
[3] Peter L. Berger, Ed. “The Desecularization of the World: Resurgent Religion and World Politics,” Eerdman, 1999
[4] Marcel Gauchet, “Primitive Religions and the Origins of the State,” in “New French Thought: Political Philosophy,” Princeton, 1994
[5] Louis Dumont, “Essays in Individualism: Modern Ideology in Anthropological Perspective,” University Of Chicago Press, 1986
[6] Alexis de Tocqueville, “Democracy in America,” Mentor, 1984
[7] Karen Armstrong, “The Battle For God,” Ballantine, 2000
September 1, 2014
"The Father" wins Global eBook Award!
The 2014 Global eBook Awards have been announced, and The Father took home Bronze in the New Adult Fiction category. As a debut novel, I’m grateful to see this book recognized by the judges. This adds to my excitement for the next volume in The Father trilogy. Thanks to the Global eBook organization, and a salute to all those authors seeking their ideal creation.
August 6, 2014
Congratulations Contest Winners! (Check here for delivery updates.)
Goodreads has selected winners in the free book giveaway of The Father from 740 entries. Check this blog to see when yours have been mailed. Only country or US state will be listed as they are delivered into the hands of the USPO. Deliveries begin 08/7/2014. A book is a serious investment in time. We hope this one exceeds your highest expectations. Thank you for your interest.
All copies of The Father destined for Australia and Canada were delivered to the post 8/7/14. Watch your mail!
Half of the 22 copies headed for Great Britain are on there way as of 8/8/14.
All remaining UK and all US books were shipped today, 8/12/14. That's it. All 50 books are on there way. Enjoy!
All copies of The Father destined for Australia and Canada were delivered to the post 8/7/14. Watch your mail!
Half of the 22 copies headed for Great Britain are on there way as of 8/8/14.
All remaining UK and all US books were shipped today, 8/12/14. That's it. All 50 books are on there way. Enjoy!
July 19, 2014
The origin and travels of religious belief
This book is about the remains of ancient man and the varieties of interpretation these remains allow in regards to religious beliefs, while accepting that the interior space occupying skulls of long lost humans (and close relations) are hard to extrapolate. There’s excellent speculation on the subject based on the reasonable assumption that humans share the same wiring with fairly consistent brain volume regardless of timeframe. It’s amazing that different primate lines appear to have ritual, myth, and a sense of afterlife, including Neanderthals, perhaps even Australopithecines 1.7 million years ago. A university text in anthropology and archeology, Dickson’s book joyfully rattles the brain of readers, though in large part it’s written as a “report” on findings and hypotheses. In other words, not a great deal of literary story telling of the facts, as someone like Peter Gay will do (“The Enlightenment”). Thrilling are findings on the evolution of religious belief. Cultures will inevitably complicate themselves (through innovations – technical & social) and religious practice tracks this complexity from small groups with a shaman early on, to cities with ecclesiastical organizations, creeds, orthopraxy, and orthodoxy as an end state. A survey of many hunter-gather groups (contemporary & extinct) to complex civilizations reveals the process: 1. Gods are gradually withdrawn from the local setting, 2. Anthropomorphism fades, 3. Religion is increasingly separated from everyday affairs (secularism), 4. Homogeneity of belief diminishes, 5. Religious system fragments (e.g. Reformation), poised for cult-state conflict. At least up to the point of codification, humans keep struggling to invent ways to make their gods greater, more distant, unconfinable, undefinable, as growing numbers of people intrude with greater numbers of common sense eyes laid on claims of priests, prophets, and miracle workers. Like the classical question of large vs. small republics in political philosophy - it’s hard to keep everyone thinking the same. Once the ecclesiastical state is reached, the gods – Olympian, monotheistic or pantheistic – gain universal powers, are difficult, dangerous and temperamental.
As Dickson notes, the more control (knowledge) humans have over their actions and future, the less they employ religion. A big step change takes place with the shift from hunter-gather to agriculturalist at the invention of agriculture ca. 10k years ago (see Wells, “Pandora’s Seed”). Notable was the hunter-gatherer’s absence of accumulation, low population density, absence of full time specialization, and feuds but no warfare. (With Ukraine/Russia, Israel/Palestine, Iraq, Syria, China / Japan / the Koreas – maybe we should give that hunter-gather model another look?)
Recalling that this blog illuminates books that assist writing of the next (fictional) volume in “The Father” trilogy, “Dawn of Belief” serves that purpose well. “Belief” provides fodder for a chapter from which the temporary safety of their Arctic Circle hideaway, John and his comrades debate religion, its source, meaning, and place in America now shattered by civil war and foreign exploitation.
June 20, 2014
Facts of nature can sometimes win. Blueprints: Solving the Mystery of Evolution
Having this 1989 book on the shelves for so long, I feared its contents may be dated – not so. Why? Because it’s about how the idea of evolution evolved, from the 1700’s to modern times. The authors make concepts clear with good analogies, and periodically segue into conversation between themselves to clarify ideas. It works well, anticipating reader questions. Besides a step-by-step accumulation of evidence that built this theory, what the authors do best is presentation of the personal lives behind this drama. The mountainous insecurity faced by telling truth to dogma; fierce resistance to natural reality; human arrogance and missteps on both sides along the way. We find many heroes go unrecognized or ridiculed and ostracized until long after their death. The scene between Archbishop Wilberforce and Darwin’s bulldog, the dazzling and sulfurous T.H. Huxley in a packed public forum of raucous onlookers was a thrill to read three times. The whole story is a prime example of how facts of nature can sometimes win against more comfortable and entrenched ignorance – at least in those nations and those times confident enough in themselves to accept that nature really has no political party. The evolution of evolution did not begin with fossils of extinct human lineage, but with geology’s requirement of an earth billions of years old (rather than created on October 23, 4004 BC at 9 a.m.), and witness of living animals in constant transition thanks to environmental change (natural selection). Fossils began to echo the same theme. Mendel’s peas pleading for recognition of heritable genes; Darwin’s first flashes of insight on the Beagle; fistfights for the Nobel for being first to decipher DNA’s structure where we find natural selection at the molecular level, and, finally, how species try to stay the same while changing – a story well worth knowing.
May 18, 2014
Congratulations Contest Winners! (Check here for delivery updates.)
Goodreads has selected 50 winners in the free book giveaway of The Father from 967 entries. Check this blog to see when yours have been mailed. Only country or US state will be listed as they are delivered into the hands of the USPO - no names or addresses will appear. Deliveries begin 05/19/2014. A book is a serious investment in time. I hope this one exceeds all of your highest expectations. Thanks again to all for your interest. (Once deliveries are complete your information will be deleted.)
5/19/2014: Signed books for all winners from Australia, Canada, The UK, and the US states of AZ, CA, CO and part of FL were mailed today, 5/19/2014. US delivers are estimated to arrive no later than 5/27/2014. While overseas deliveries are provided no arrival estimate from the USPO, they suggest 2-3 weeks are typical.
5/20/2014: Signed books for all winners from FL, GA, IL, IN, KY, MA, and MD were mailed today. Delivers are estimated to arrive no later than 5/27/2014.
5/21/14: All signed copies of the The Father were mailed out to the MI, MN, MO, MS, ND, NJ, and NV winners today. USPO estimates deliveries by 5/28/14.
5/22/2014: The final block of Goodreads giveaway copies of The Father went out in today’s post. These include OH, OR, PA, TN, TX, VT, WA, and WI. The USPO claims delivery expected by 5/29/14. Enjoy!
5/19/2014: Signed books for all winners from Australia, Canada, The UK, and the US states of AZ, CA, CO and part of FL were mailed today, 5/19/2014. US delivers are estimated to arrive no later than 5/27/2014. While overseas deliveries are provided no arrival estimate from the USPO, they suggest 2-3 weeks are typical.
5/20/2014: Signed books for all winners from FL, GA, IL, IN, KY, MA, and MD were mailed today. Delivers are estimated to arrive no later than 5/27/2014.
5/21/14: All signed copies of the The Father were mailed out to the MI, MN, MO, MS, ND, NJ, and NV winners today. USPO estimates deliveries by 5/28/14.
5/22/2014: The final block of Goodreads giveaway copies of The Father went out in today’s post. These include OH, OR, PA, TN, TX, VT, WA, and WI. The USPO claims delivery expected by 5/29/14. Enjoy!
May 1, 2014
Why do we die? Well...It's personal.
Given The Father deals with the trajectory of civilization, I’ll review a number of books I read that helped develop this idea in the story. But civilizations depend on individuals, so before perusing theories on why all societies eventually fail, I’ll start with our own personal demise (recognizing that mortality is very much part of why our social organizations are the way they are). In William Clark’s astonishing book Sex And The Origins Of Death we find death by old age was not a requirement of life, but it wasn't accidental either. Such a fact caused Morgan in The Father to ask, “Do civilizations fail, not by chance or circumstance, but because decline is intended, without knowing it? Like William Clark said of our aging bodies, death is worked toward without wanting to.” In my life, nothing has been more powerful than the recognition of death - not love, sex, money. Here's my view of Clark's book:
Sex And The Origins Of Death
From the outset, what UCLA’s Wm. Clark reports is staggering: Death is “not an obligatory attribute of life,” he writes, and did not appear with the advent of it. Cellular aging resulting in death may not have occurred for more than a billion years after life’s first entry on earth. Programmed cell death (PCD) which we suffer (displayed through wrinkles and forgetfulness) seems to have arisen about the time cells were experimenting with sex.
Sex is an energy costly activity, engaged in because it rolls the genetic dice, inviting variations with each new offspring. An advantage because with environmental change what was well suited in the old world is often not suited for the new. Gene variations result, and through natural selection, a few offspring amongst the dying progenitors may survive to save the species. For example, bacteria reproduce though cloning themselves, and can do so at a rate of 16 million per hour from one parent (take your antibiotics). But when the environment becomes harsh, bacterial parents spontaneously engage in sex, swapping genes with others as a gamble on survival.
In a description of catastrophic cell death, Clark displays a talent to meet or exceed even Sagan’s best – clear, rich, compelling. Here heart attack, and the wonder of cell machinery resist the inevitable as systems and their backups struggle to counter power failures and starvation in a chain reaction of fading miracles. Like a community, some components are wholly unaware of disaster while others sacrifice themselves, transferring energy to last lines of defense - pumps stationed in cell walls countering a siege of water pressing in about to wash them away.
Such stunning, intentioned actions of this tiny, helpless, complex organism, the cell (of which we possess about 100 trillion – as many cells as there are stars in the nearest 400 spiral galaxies including the Milky Way!) is starkly contrasted against our cell’s decision to commit suicide. This happens when life is late, or as early as the womb when ancient relics of evolution are flushed out of us - like reminders of an ocean origin when interdigital webbing of our onetime fins are removed through PCD, leaving what’s left between our fingers. Once the nucleus decides to pull the trigger, one last set of instructions emerge as its DNA begins disassembling. All the while a stack of unread commands are being executed by unwary elements of the cell. The cell detaches from its neighbors, undulates, breaking into globules while still ignorant workers in these blobs work away, floating into a void, devoured by immune systems. Awful…
But there are rays of hope for immortality. “Growth factors” are given to cells like lymphocytes to put a safety on their trigger. And there are executioners in this tragedy, T-Cells. Having spotted an invader they do not murder the foreigner, they command the interloper to kill itself, orders dutifully followed. T-Cells know the security code.
Clarks notes an important difference between us and other “primitive” life forms. For example, paramecium dodge death by letting their macro-nuclei run the show while a micro-version lays dormant. After enough cell splitting, it has sex with another paramecium. Its macro-nuclei suffers PCD and the micro takes over as a newly minted micro-nucleus goes to sleep. Once eukaryotic cells (what we’re made of) became multicellular, reproductive DNA would be not only kept in separate nuclei (as the paramecium) but in separate cells – our germ cells (sperm, egg). The rest of us, our bodies, are their guardians, not only redundant and irrelevant but we turn dangerous with too many divisions. When our germ cells meet others, clocks are reset just as they are for paramecium. Sex can save our germ cells but it cannot save us.
These growth factors, security codes, telemeres or some other mechanism may finally be commandeered to salvage us from oblivion. For now, as Clark writes, we must die and there are many mechanisms built into us to make sure we do. Death does not just happen, it is worked toward, with safeguards to assure cells don’t backslide into immortality – as cancer cells do, a recipe for disaster. The winner is our species because germ cells are immortal through sex as we contribute molecular chains of ourselves to the future and whoever is made of us. Clark reveals this and so much more. A pure joy to read.
Sex And The Origins Of Death
From the outset, what UCLA’s Wm. Clark reports is staggering: Death is “not an obligatory attribute of life,” he writes, and did not appear with the advent of it. Cellular aging resulting in death may not have occurred for more than a billion years after life’s first entry on earth. Programmed cell death (PCD) which we suffer (displayed through wrinkles and forgetfulness) seems to have arisen about the time cells were experimenting with sex.
Sex is an energy costly activity, engaged in because it rolls the genetic dice, inviting variations with each new offspring. An advantage because with environmental change what was well suited in the old world is often not suited for the new. Gene variations result, and through natural selection, a few offspring amongst the dying progenitors may survive to save the species. For example, bacteria reproduce though cloning themselves, and can do so at a rate of 16 million per hour from one parent (take your antibiotics). But when the environment becomes harsh, bacterial parents spontaneously engage in sex, swapping genes with others as a gamble on survival.
In a description of catastrophic cell death, Clark displays a talent to meet or exceed even Sagan’s best – clear, rich, compelling. Here heart attack, and the wonder of cell machinery resist the inevitable as systems and their backups struggle to counter power failures and starvation in a chain reaction of fading miracles. Like a community, some components are wholly unaware of disaster while others sacrifice themselves, transferring energy to last lines of defense - pumps stationed in cell walls countering a siege of water pressing in about to wash them away.
Such stunning, intentioned actions of this tiny, helpless, complex organism, the cell (of which we possess about 100 trillion – as many cells as there are stars in the nearest 400 spiral galaxies including the Milky Way!) is starkly contrasted against our cell’s decision to commit suicide. This happens when life is late, or as early as the womb when ancient relics of evolution are flushed out of us - like reminders of an ocean origin when interdigital webbing of our onetime fins are removed through PCD, leaving what’s left between our fingers. Once the nucleus decides to pull the trigger, one last set of instructions emerge as its DNA begins disassembling. All the while a stack of unread commands are being executed by unwary elements of the cell. The cell detaches from its neighbors, undulates, breaking into globules while still ignorant workers in these blobs work away, floating into a void, devoured by immune systems. Awful…
But there are rays of hope for immortality. “Growth factors” are given to cells like lymphocytes to put a safety on their trigger. And there are executioners in this tragedy, T-Cells. Having spotted an invader they do not murder the foreigner, they command the interloper to kill itself, orders dutifully followed. T-Cells know the security code.
Clarks notes an important difference between us and other “primitive” life forms. For example, paramecium dodge death by letting their macro-nuclei run the show while a micro-version lays dormant. After enough cell splitting, it has sex with another paramecium. Its macro-nuclei suffers PCD and the micro takes over as a newly minted micro-nucleus goes to sleep. Once eukaryotic cells (what we’re made of) became multicellular, reproductive DNA would be not only kept in separate nuclei (as the paramecium) but in separate cells – our germ cells (sperm, egg). The rest of us, our bodies, are their guardians, not only redundant and irrelevant but we turn dangerous with too many divisions. When our germ cells meet others, clocks are reset just as they are for paramecium. Sex can save our germ cells but it cannot save us.
These growth factors, security codes, telemeres or some other mechanism may finally be commandeered to salvage us from oblivion. For now, as Clark writes, we must die and there are many mechanisms built into us to make sure we do. Death does not just happen, it is worked toward, with safeguards to assure cells don’t backslide into immortality – as cancer cells do, a recipe for disaster. The winner is our species because germ cells are immortal through sex as we contribute molecular chains of ourselves to the future and whoever is made of us. Clark reveals this and so much more. A pure joy to read.
