Andrew Sullivan's Blog, page 214

A Poem For Sunday

“Summer Moods” by John Clare (1793-1864):

I love at eventide to walk alone

Down narrow lanes o’erhung with dewy thorn

Where, from the long grass underneath, the snail

Jet black creeps out and sprouts his timid horn.

I love to muse o’er meadows newly mown

Where withering grass perfumes the sultry air,

Where bees search round with sad and weary drone

In vain for flowers that bloomed but newly there,

While in the juicy corn the hidden quail

Cries “wet my foot” and hid as thoughts unborn

The fairylike and seldom-seen landrail

Utters “craik craik” like voices underground,

Right glad to meet the evening’s dewy veil

And see the light fade into glooms around.

(From “I Am”: The Selected Poetry of John Clare, edited by Jonathan Bate © 2003 by Jonathan Bate. Reprinted by permission of Farrar, Straus & Giroux. Photo by Tom Marsh)

The Depths Of Writing

Looking back at the writing and publication of his book The Life You Save May Be Your Own, Paul Elie recalls the advice he received from the editor and poet Jonathan Galassi – “Go deeper. You need to go deeper”:

I asked him what he meant, and he explained, roundabout but in such a way as to draw clear lines between the literary text and all the other kinds of writing that washed up against the pilings of our office. What I’d written was too journalistic. It made too much of superficial connections. It was boosterish in style—it was trying to put the idea of a “school” of American Catholic writing over on us instead of trusting the material. And (again, all this was conveyed indirectly) it didn’t get to the bottom of what made these people a school, or what made them Catholic writers, or what made them Catholics at all, or why what they believed mattered to them or us.

Roger Straus liked it too—and Jonathan and FSG signed up the book. And day and night for a thousand days and nights I sought to go deeper, starting by moving my point of entry into the story back nearly half a century—to the moments where those four writers themselves turned, in their different ways, to literature and to religious belief in their own efforts to go deeper. And somewhere in the middle of those thousand days and nights, I concluded that the experience of depth—intellectual, emotional, spiritual depth—is the central literary experience. It is what makes literature literature, and what makes us read literature, and write it.

“Go deeper.” It’s not advice a writer can outgrow or set aside as unnecessary. Augustine asked, “Who understands his sins?” Likewise, what writer can truly say, “I’ve gone deep enough”?

Mental Health Break

Glide through an origami dreamworld:

Faith At All Costs

Asher Elbein visited Toco Hills, a “Modern Orthodox enclave nestled near the edge of Midtown Atlanta,” and found that for many observent members of the community, it’s a struggle to make ends meet:

The stereotype that Jews are wealthy—or at least comfortably middle class—has long ignored the truth that many are struggling to get by. And Orthodox Jews, who often have higher living expenses than other Jews due to their observance and the limited choices they face when looking for a place to live, are especially vulnerable to shifts in the economic climate. For [Rabbi Ilan] Feldman, dealing with the correlation between religious observance and financial hardship is part of his job. “For someone making $60,000 a year, in America, that’s middle class,” Feldman said. “But in this Orthodox community, $60,000 means you aren’t going to make it.”

Elbein talked to people in the community about what keeps them connected to Toro Hills:

For [Tzivia] Silverstein, it comes down to value instead of cost. In terms of personal and spiritual fulfillment, she says, the neighborhood pays for itself. As heavy as the expenses are, they are necessary sacrifices for belonging to the community. “I see maybe one movie a year,” she said. “I choose to put my kids through religious school instead of buying a nicer car. It’s astounding, the amount of money that other people have, to spend on things like renovating their house or buying a bigger TV. To me, my most important relationship is with God. The material world is a means to an end.”

Sinking Noah’s Ark

Noting that it’s “the only biblical story, violent or otherwise, that has spawned Fisher Price toys and nursery decoration” and that “it holds the dubious honour of being the Bible text most often given as a present by religious relatives to the children of atheist parents,” Myra Zepf makes the case against Noah’s ark and its place in our culture:

It struck me recently why this story makes believers feel warm and fuzzy and leaves me cold. Fundamentally, they identify themselves with Noah in his self-righteous smug destiny, being saved by God for their purity and goodness, whereas I recognise myself among the rest of humanity in my watery grave, sitting as I do on the wrong side of divine judgement. Noah’s faith saved him, and I’m toast. This makes it all the less appropriate as a fluffy introduction for our children to the wonders of religion.

To be honest, it’s the disrespect inherent in this soft missionising that bothers me rather than the presence of religious books in my house per se. In fact, Noah’s Ark is a spectacularly rich text from which to springboard discussion about reality versus fiction with curious little people. There is endless fun to be had wondering together how Noah managed to build an ark half the length of the Titanic, a millennium before the Iron Age, without saws, hammers or nails. Then the minor detail of how he collected the estimated 1,877,920 species from around the globe, including penguins from Antarctica and kangaroos from Australia. What about the food supplies for a year of confinement, including fresh meat for the lions and bamboo for the giant panda? Where did the floods, which were higher than Everest, drain to? Kids will love looking up how much excrement a pair of elephants produces in a year.

(Image: Noah’s Ark by the American folk painter Edward Hicks, 1846, via Wikimedia Commons)

A Waking Dream, Ctd

A reader isn’t convinced that psilocybin’s effects are analogous to those of “long-term intensive meditation and prayer”:

For what it’s worth, there is one big difference between experiences on mushrooms and “unusual” experiences as a result of intensive meditation. And the difference is an underlying sense of confusion that exists in drug-altered states and the lack of that confusion in meditative states. Realization from meditation is like stubbing your toe on a rock. It’s obvious and clear. There is no “this is other than it is supposed to be” or “this is strange” feeling despite some very unusual circumstances surrounding the realization. Drug states ultimately leave you confused and doubtful eventually. At least that’s been my experience.

Another passes along the above video, from the Flaming Lips:

Except for the guy in a mushroom suit, the video doesn’t reference psychedelics explicitly. I think it’s safe to say it’s drug-addled, though. Most people hate it, and the comments on the video are mostly from people who couldn’t make it through it. I kind of like it, but I used to be a big acid head.

Here’s the thing. That video seems to get a lot closer to what psychedelics are all about than the talk about expanded consciousness and spirituality and all of that.

Yes, I have had those experiences where the borders between you and others seem to melt away and you feel the presence of the divine. But if you buy your blotter acid by the sheet, you end up at a place that’s closer to the world of this video than you do to God.

When you trip, your brain gets knocked out of its normal ruts, and the experience can be pretty unusual. Then you sober up, and you process it. You put it in a box, you decide what it meant, you create a narrative that describes what happened. “I felt a strong sense of the unity of all things. And the wood grain on this table looked like it was liquid, and moved around a bit.” Or whatever.

Those narrative boxes tend to be narrow and very much reduced from the experience itself. They’re true, as far as they go, but they aren’t really what it was like. Whenever I trip, even if it’s been years, I have a moment when I think, “Oh, I’m back in this place again.” It’s a feeling that’s completely inaccessible to me now that I’m sober, yet completely familiar when I trip. The point is that what people say about the trip afterward is actually fairly different from what it was like in the moment.

The video linked above is actually a pretty good document of that place. It’s not complete, and watching it isn’t the same as tripping. It’s reductive just like the religious narratives are, emphasizing some things, leaving others out. But the product of this reduction is really different from the stuff you usually publish. And as a guy who used to buy his blotter acid by the sheet, I think it’s closer to the mark.

Some people seem to fall into sainthood naturally, as if it’s their destiny. For most of us, though, finding God takes effort – meditation, prayer, a lot of rational thinking to try to come to terms with our ideas about theology, etc. We have to get kicked around in the world, make mistakes, digest those experiences. Mostly, we have to be with people, find sustenance in our connections, give that nurturing back, grow our compassion. It just doesn’t come in a pill.

I love acid. If I weren’t old and long out of touch with drug people, I’d probably take it frequently; as it is, I probably won’t get the chance to do it again. But I love it because I find it fun and interesting, not because it brings me closer to God.

Feminist Porn vs Regular Porn

For Aurora Snow, who used to act in adult films, the distinction is one of pleasure:

On a mainstream porn set you might hear a director shout out, “Count to five and then orgasm!” That’s happened to me before. It’s a live performance and it’s the actor’s job to deliver. That’s not to say that all mainstream orgasms are fake, but you won’t hear a countdown on a feminist set.

Feminist porn strives for an organic experience, while creating the best possible working environment. It almost sounds too good to be true, like a mainstream porn performers dream job. As [director and Feminist Porn Award winner] Madison Young advises, “Ask your performers who, where, and how they would like to have sex. Facilitate that experience and document the experience like a wild life photographer.”

Mythbusting Sex

A sexplainer from Aaron Carroll:

Free Love Ain’t Free

Jesse Singal takes note of new research suggesting that people who believe that most women are economically self-sufficient are more accepting of female promiscuity:

In the paper, which consisted of two studies and was published in Archives of Sexual Behavior, researchers from Brunel University asked a large group of Americans to rate their level of agreement with statements like “It is wrong for women to engage in promiscuous sex” and “It is fine for a woman to have sex with a man she has just met, if they both want to.” They also had them respond to statements gauging to what extent they viewed women as economically reliant on men – “Of the women I know who are in long-term heterosexual relationships, most do not depend very heavily on money contributed by their male partner,” and so on.

Overall, the more likely a given respondent believed women were economically dependent on men, the more likely they were to view female promiscuity as immoral. These were modest to medium effects, but they were statistically significant, even controlling for factors like religiosity and political conservatism. What accounts for this connection? The researchers explain:

Results of both studies were consistent with the theory that opposition to promiscuity arises in circumstances where paternity certainty is particularly important and suggest that such opposition will more likely emerge in environments in which women are more dependent economically on a male mate.

Marcotte grumbles, “This study goes a long way toward explaining one of the more peculiar aspects of the contraception mandate debate: the stalwart conservative insistence that the mandate is some sort of employer or even government giveaway, as opposed to an earned health insurance benefit”:

Along with telling women to close their legs, the conservative complaint has been: “Why should ‘we’ have to pay for it?” This, of course, makes no sense, as the Department of Health and Human Services mandate is about women paying for their own contraception, using insurance benefits they earn by working. But right-wing media knows exactly how to push its audience’s buttons: By claiming women are getting something for “free,” conservatives are reinforcing this myth that women can’t actually be independent—they either need to rely on the government or a husband.

That’s what Jesse Watters was getting at on Fox News, talking about single female voters who want the contraceptive benefit, who he called “Beyoncé voters”: “They depend on government because they’re not depending on their husbands,” he argued, ignoring that women are actually demanding the right to the health care they are paying for.

Go Ahead, Get Uber-Drunk, You Have A Lyft Home

Emily Badger examines the correlation between the arrival of ride-share services and a noticeable drop in DUIs, both in Philadelphia and in San Francisco:

We’ve simply plotted arrests on a timeline here; we haven’t adjusted for changes in the city’s population, or bar scene, or the economy. Any number of other things may have changed in the city over the last few years affecting DUI arrests. … These data, though, do suggest that there’s at least more to research here. They remind me of a comment Lyft’s VP for government relations, David Estrada, made to me recently. “As a company — this might sound pollyanish — we talk about our service not being aimed at providing transportation,” he said, “but at lowering crime rates in a city like Chicago.”

DUIs are potentially one way this might happen. If these services, which run on credit cards, take cash out of transactions as well, they may also cut down on other kinds of crime like theft (this is an argument Uber has made in Chicago). Estrada was also simply talking about the idea that crime might decline because Lyft likes to think that it creates community — and jobs in communities that don’t have enough of them. That last argument merits a lot more skepticism. DUIs, though, we might actually wrap our arms around.