Context and the Truth

A while back the local library had a sale. Seeing as I sold most of my things (books included) before I moved to California, I figured for fifty cents a paperback and a buck for a hard cover I couldn’t go wrong with picking up some new reading material.

I found a book entitled “Ten Great Religions”. This particular volume is hardcover and printed in the year 1883. The cover is worn and the pages quite yellow, but for the most part it’s in pretty good shape. The front and back covers are thick green, and in gold there is very old fashioned engraved lettering containing the title and beneath, a layered ring encapsulating the ten great religions in a sort of gothic design. There is no doubt that this book has traveled around during the last 125 years. It retains a sort of “sorcery” feel.

I brought the book to work and had it sitting on my desk when Gwen, an inquisitive and charming friend of mine, picked it up and started flipping through it. On the title page, written in green ink obviously from a pen requiring an ink well to use, and probably 100 years old, Gwen found a sentence written by hand from a previous owner. She read the passage aloud:

“The best thing God has bestowed on man is the power to take his own life. Page 345<>

She looked up at me and asked if this book was cursed. Perhaps the first owner cut his wrists or something. The passage itself, combined with the very nature of this ancient tomb (by our standards in California) was quite creepy.

Gwen put the book back on my desk and passed the creepy feeling onto me. Surely the person who wrote this was disturbed. Had I purchased a cursed item? I entertained the idea.

Obviously this quote, written by hand, was condoning suicide. Not just condoning it, but recommending it as a course of action; almost saying: “suicide is good, try it sometime”.

“The best thing god has bestowed on man is the power to take his own life” can not be interpreted too many different ways. It is pretty clear what this is saying. Suicide is God’s gift to man. What kind of religion says this?

I then went to page 345 and looked at the entire passage quoted:

“All religion is the offspring of necessity, weakness, and fear. What God is, if in truth he be anything distinct from the world, it is beyond the compass of man’s understanding to know. But it is a foolish delusion, which has sprung from human weakness and human pride, to imagine that such an infinite spirit would concern himself with the petty affairs of men. It is difficult to say, whether it might not be better for men to be wholly without religion, than to have one of this kind, which is a reproach to its object. The vanity of man, and his insatiable longing after existence, have led him also to dream of a life after death. A being full of contradictions, he is the most wretched of creatures; since the other creatures have no wants transcending the bounds of their nature. Man is full of desires and wants that reach to infinity, and can never be satisfied. His nature is a lie, uniting the greatest poverty with the greatest pride. Among these so great evils, the best thing God has bestowed on man is the power to take his own life.”

Given a little greater context than the last few words of the passage had given me, I now have a greater insight as to that writing on the title page of my ancient new book.

This passage sounded quite contemporary to me, as if a modern atheist was describing the failings of Christianity. More importantly, the creepiness of the last few words was lost in what was now obviously an intellectual exercise. The original opinion of that passage condoning, even recommending suicide was totally wrong. The real meaning of the passage was to point out man’s conceit and arrogance. This was an indictment of the human animal and all his wants and contradictions and how he wraps these evils up in the blanket of religion. How religion both reflects and encapsulates the folly of man. And in the midst of this great pit of want, fear and weakness, and total lack of virtue, the greatest gift this foul human animal has had bestowed upon him from the God he imagined is the ability to remove his existence from the cosmos; his existence being that dismal.

Well, not a very cheery thought, but certainly a completely different feel than “suicide is good, try it sometime”. This now sounds more like “your religion is the result of your own hubris; the best that it grants you is the removal of your own existence”.

As I read further, I found that the author of the book was talking about the ancient religions of Rome; the pre-Christian religion with Jupiter as it’s chief God. At this point in the book he was discussing the fall of this religion, which was replaced in Rome by Christianity. The passage quoted above which the author of my book used, in it’s entirety, was a quote extracted from the writings of Pliny the elder (a Roman philosopher who died in AD 79).

So, as it turns out, the passage written in my title page has nothing to do with what I had originally believed was an obvious meaning. “Suicide is good, try it sometime.”

Instead, the author was using this quote from Pliny the elder to demonstrate the fall of the ancient Roman religion and how it was expressed at that time.

This all became relevant to me when I applied it to today’s world of the “sound byte”.

So many of our modern truths distributed so efficiently to us are taken in little bits and pieces and delivered to us without proper context. It makes one realize that anyone can take any work of literature, religion or science and extract from it any meaning they choose to find. In reality, nothing is obvious to those who value intellect above all else. The simple and the obvious are for those souls too lethargic to find the truth on their own. It is much easier and less painful (in the short term) to believe what you hear than to question it and find empirical evidence to prove its truth. Finding the context of any statement determines its meaning. It also requires work.

Here is a sound byte for you. See if you can put it into context.

“Simply stated, there is no doubt that Saddam Hussein now has weapons of mass destruction.” -Dick Cheney August 26, 2002

“President Bush would have ordered an invasion of Iraq even if the CIA had told him that Saddam Hussein had no weapons of mass destruction, Vice President Dick Cheney said Sunday.” - Meet the Press, 11:25 a.m. PT, Sun., Sept. 10, 2006

Nothing

The smell of beer permeated the small apartment. The big bay window overlooked the busy street of Arguello, just next to Golden Gate Park in San Francisco. The décor was far from chic; an old shag carpet from the sixties with interwoven brown and gold strands; a mish mash of furniture picked from various garages, some old scratched up wood cabinets and a trashy modern particle board desk. A beat up old television sat on a milk crate behind which were fixed the faces of 2 young men, sitting on the floor, hypnotized to the sights and sounds of a hockey video game played on an outdated console system.

The "pièce de résistance" however sat in the middle of the room on the back wall: a sofa from 1968 composed entirely of red and gold paisley style flower patterns. Combined with the brown and gold of the shag carpet, and the "crème" color of the walls, staring at the scene long enough could induce the viewer into a state of hallucinogenic psychedelia.

Upon the sofa lounged 3 more college aged men drinking beers, one of whom was intently looking through a magazine titled "Modern Rome" (out of boredom no doubt) but obviously not finding anything of interest. The magazine featured on its cover the Vice President, pointing his finger while saying something presumably profound with a look of great anger upon his face. The headline read "Prostrate Before Your King".

Aside from the bleeping noises of the video game, the only other sound in the room was that of Chris, sitting straight up on an old chair adjacent to the sofa espousing ruminations on the failings of the current government while vociferously pontificating on the unstirred populace that tolerates such injustice.

The eyes of his audience were blank.

"…and people don't realize THEY have the true power. We give it up to these idiots who rule the country like the bunch of spoiled children they are and we openly let them walk all over us! I mean, just read Frank Baum's "The Wizard of Oz". It's all right there! Oz is the aristocracy, the dominant ruling class, and the munchkins are the proletariat, the workers; just allowing themselves to be dominated!"

Here came a pregnant pause, as Chris gurgled down almost half the beer from his bottle before continuing.

"I mean, look at women!"

At which point Jeff, the lad on the sofa reading the "Modern Rome" magazine said "I do. Every chance I get".

"Exactly", Chris now sat up and pointed excitedly at the fact that anyone had responded to him. "That's it exactly Jeff! The objectification of women is intolerable in our modern society! That is why I subscribe to 'Modern Rome', there is a whole article in there on the intolerable objectification of women. All about how our male dominated society views woman as nothing more than sex objects!"

Jeff, searching speedily back at the table of contents, then flipping through to the middle of the thick magazine, finally showed a spark of interest on his face. Holding the magazine aloft he announced; "Hey, I found some booty on page 97!"

On the sofa next to Jeff, Mike and Jon now stirred.

"Hey, let me see that", they announced simultaneously.

Unwilling to give up the magazine now that it finally got interesting, Jeff just showed them the images depicting lurid advertising of scantily clad women, surrounded by text no doubt explaining the cultural dilemma behind those images.

Chris sat back disappointed.

"You guys are idiots." He gurgled down the remainder of the bottle of beer.

At that point Vince arrived, back from working his day job as a ditch digger on a construction site in Oakland. Filthy dirty, in sweats and a beat up Oakland A's baseball hat on his head, he headed straight to the frig, without acknowledging the group in his apartment, and pulled out a beer.

"Why does my apartment smell like a festering armpit? Do you guys just bring 'stank' with you wherever you go?"

"Don't look at us" Mike snapped back. "Talk to your roommate, Machiavelli over here", he said pointing to Chris. "Besides, you don't have time to enjoy the aroma, you need to get ready, I fixed you up with a girl tonight!"

Vince gagged on his beer then spit what was in his mouth all over the two gentlemen sitting on the floor playing video games.

"What? I told you: don't fix me up any more!"

Mike shrugged his shoulders up with a look of concern.

"Vince, I'm worried about you. When was the last time you were out with a girl? You work in the day, you go to school at night and you sleep. Men NEED women Vince. We need food; we need air; we need women. When was the last time you were with a woman Vince? And I mean a real woman, no magazines, no polypropylene…real flesh and blood?

Vince filled the pause in the air with a wretched scowl of fatigue and anger.

"Look Vince, I gotta tell you I'm worried about you. You're like an ascetic monk. One more month of no women like this and I'm afraid I'll find you huddled in a corner rocking back and forth and mumbling to yourself."

Vince glared through his scowl. "Mike, how many times do we have to go through this? The last girl you set me up with slipped me a date rape drug and stole my wallet and my car! I woke up in a dumpster in Santa Cruz! It took me all day to hitch hike back to San Francisco!"

"Well at least you were on the beach, it was warm!" Mike shot back without a pause. "It could have been worse huh?"

"No way Mike, I don't trust your judgment". Vince wasn't having any of this.

The rest of the guys were still chuckling at the dumpster story.

"You don't trust me?" Now Mike took offense. He stood up, gesturing to his chest with both his hands. "Remember me Vince? Remember this?" Vince held out both hands depicting faint scars from an accident he had as a child, sliding down a storm drain as a crazy prank. As children he had convinced Vince to slide down with him, and the experience totally changed Vince's life. For the first time after that experience, Vince started taking risks.

"I'm here for YOU man, all your life I've been here for YOU! How can you not trust me! I set you up with a model for god's sake! Remember that? Huh? How many friends set their buddies up with a real live model, huh? I could have taken her for my self, but I didn't! Instead I thought of my great friend Vince, and I graciously presented her to YOU! And this is the thanks I get?"

Jon now sat up. "He set you up with a model dude! Are you serious?"

Chris now put in his two cents. "Oh god" he said through a chuckle, "only Vince could be set up with a model and blow it".

Jeff now shot in. "Was she a real model?"

"Absolutely" Mike confirmed.

"Technically, yes she was a model" Vince finally admitted, then angrily continued. "She was a model for high school biology textbooks because her feet were shaped like bird talons and she had seven fingers on her right hand!"

"Waitaminute waitaminute, waitaminute." Jon now stepped in. "You mean to tell me he set you up with a girl who had seven fingers and you couldn't figure out anything positive to do with that?"

"This is what I've been saying all along, the man has no vision" Mike affirmed, shrugging his shoulders and turning to walk away.

"Ok", Vince continued, "aside from that, she was a felon convicted of grand larceny and she was a cook in a crystal meth lab!"

"So you can't look past a couple of character flaws to see the true beauty of a human being? I had no idea you were so shallow", Mike shot back.

Vince looked at the young men facing him. He opened his mouth to speak, and realized the futility further conversation would bring. Instead, he bent his head back, put the bottle of beer to his lips, and drained its entirety. Sweet alcohol…dulls the pain.

Matt and Ben, the previously unnoticed identical twins on the floor playing video games while occasionally wiping spit beef from their person, finally put their two cents in.

“Vince, you spend more time acting like a girl than you spend chasing them”, Ben let out.

“Yeah man, shut up and take what you get dude. Beggars can’t be choosers”, Matt had to get something in.

Vince spent the next hour managing to convince himself he was going to ditch his friends as soon as he could. He hastily showered and dressed and before he new what was happening he was out on the street with the other six young men walking up Arguello toward Geary and an Irish Pub.

The thin September air was chilled, and the night was dull, so to spruce things up, in an act of violent petulance, Jeff walked over to the corner of the sidewalk and adamantly pushed over a metal news paper dispenser. This set off a chain reaction; the metal dispenser pushed was chained to 6 others. While the one Jeff pushed fell harmlessly (relatively speaking) into the street, the other 5 fell in slow succession as the six other young men looked on. Each fell into the street, save the last, which crashed into the passenger side of a brand new Porche 911 GT2, putting a large dent and scratch into the door and front panel, chipping the passenger side window, and setting off a World War II “air raid” style alarm.

All seven young men paused for an instant, as if this was a scene they had just watched on the television, before it dawned on them what was happening: then they all, in unison, sprinted as fast as they could up the street in a blind panic.

Out of breath they all ran into the crowded pub on Geary. Before Vince new what was happening, a pint was shoved into his hand and he was shoved in front of a young woman sitting on a stool.

“Mireille this is Vince, Vince this is Mireille” Mike belched, then leaned into Vince’s right ear as he moved away and said, “don’t forget, this is a sure thing; all pre-arranged; I even brought special flavored lubricants if you need them”.

Vince grimaced, then cleared his throat.

“Nice to meet you”

Mireille, smiling wide, got off the stool to kiss Vince once on each cheek.

“Enchanté”, she said as she stood up. She was about five feet ten inches tall, or about five inches taller than Vince. Her body was tight and fit and her face glowed with joy. Vince was taken aback.

“Uh…thanks?”

“You’re welcome” Mireille said in broken English.

“That’s a pretty accent, where are you from?”, Vince asked.

“I’m from France”, said Mireille.

Before Vince new it, a very large man pushed him aside and walked straight to Mireille.

“Scuse me darling, what are ya drinkin’ tonight”, he said with a lurid smile.

Mireille grimaced and pointed to the corner where Vince was pushed, “I’m with him”, she said.

Vince, walked back and reached up to tap the man on the shoulder.

“Dude, back off”.

“You gotta problem munchkin? Take a hike before you get hurt.”

Vince mustered his nerve and threw a punch right for the big guys throat. Unfortunately the big guy was quick, and Vince ended up hitting Mireille right in the nose. By then Mike, Chris, Jeff, Matt and Ben, all very large men, were on top of the big guy.

Mireille was bleeding profusely from her nose and leaning on the bar. Vince, stunned, grabbed some towels from the bar. As he approached Mireille he was pushed away from her friends and left the pub in a state of dejection.

He managed to ditch everyone.

He grabbed a cab and headed up to Ocean Beach.

A couple of bon fires burned and the air was cold. Vince sat on the concrete wall smoking a cigarette and just feeling tired. It seemed he was always pressured into doing things he did not want to do and he was growing tired of nights like this. Life it too short to spend it like this.

Just then he got a tap on the shoulder. A thick French accent said “excuse me sir, do you have a light?”

Vince turned to see Mireille behind him holding a cigarette and smiling, her nose wrapped in bandages.

“Mireille…I’m so sorry…”, Vince started.

“It’s ok, is ok really. That man was con, a real jerk. I’m sorry for you, you know”.

“But…where did you come from?”

“Ah, I have an American friend and she took me, the pub was no fun after that you know. We are at that bonfire down there.”

Vince lit her cigarette and she climbed on the cement wall.

“So, why would you even want to get a light from me after a punched you in the face?”

“Well, Mike talked to me and said you are a good guy. I’m new here and I’m looking to make good friends. Besides”, she looked Vince in the eye, “I get a good feel from you”.

Vince grinned a lopsided grin.

“Look, I know what Mike set up, its real gracious of you and all, and I know this will sound odd, maybe, but I don’t really sleep with girls I just met”.

“Pardon?”, Mireille, looked completely puzzled, like she did not understand his English.

“Well, it’s just that Mike told me that he set it up with you to sleep with me. Thanks for that, but it’s just kind of weird and…”

Mireille cut him off.

“I don’t care what Mike said I don’t sleep with you tonight! Is this a joke?”

Vince grimaced. Typical.

“My friends tend to be a little, well, intense. Look Mireille, I’m certain you are a great girl and I’m sorry for all this mess. Why don’t you just go back to your friends at the bonfire and forget we ever met.”

“So, unless you can sleep with me you don’t want to know me?”.

“No, I just feel awkward…all this expectation and pressure and; well I feel foolish.”

“Well maybe you are a fool, what has that to do with me?”

“You want to waste time with a fool?”

“Why don’t you let me be the judge of that. Perhaps, once you relax, you can be less of a fool than you think.”

Vince stopped. This girl really seemed genuine. He felt the muscles about his face start to loosen. He let go of the expectation of sex. He let go of the anxiety of beauty. He let go of all the things he imagined could go wrong.

Before he new it, he was the most calm and relaxed he had been in years, as the echo’s of their conversation and laughter raced out toward the sea.