The Bear Who Let It Alone

Thanks to all the kerfuffle around the miss-the-mark satirical New Yorker Magazine cover about the Obamas, I got to discover this short piece written in 1939 by James Thurber, the magazine's founder, part of which was featured on Olbermann this evening.

It perfectlty encapsulates what I consider to be one of the central insights about religious belief, political thought and ...life in general.

The Bear Who Let It Alone

In the woods of the Far West there once lived a brown bear who could take it or let it alone. He would go into a bar where they sold mead, a fermented drink made of honey, and he would have just two drinks. Then he would put some money on the bar and say, "See what the bears in the back room will have," and he would go home. But finally he took to drinking by himself most of the day. He would reel home at night, kick over the umbrella stand, knock down the bridge lamps, and ram his elbows through the windows. Then he would collapse on the floor and lie there until he went to sleep. His wife was greatly distressed and his children were very frightened.

At length the bear saw the error of his ways and began to reform. In the end he became a famous teetotaler and a persistent temperance lecturer. He would tell everybody that came to his house about the awful effects of drink, and he would boast about how strong and well he had become since he gave up touching the stuff. To demonstrate this, he would stand on his head and on his hands and he would turn cartwheels in the house, kicking over the umbrella stand, knocking down the bridge lamps, and ramming his elbows through the windows. Then he would lie down on the floor, tired by his healthful exercise, and go to sleep. His wife was greatly distressed and his children were very frightened.

Moral: You might as well fall flat on your face as lean over too far backward.

James Thurber
From Fables For Our Time. Copyright © 1940 James Thurber. Copyright © 1968 Rosemary A. Thurber.

h/t The New Sun

God's Gonna Cut You Down

Johnny Cash's final testament.

YouTube - Johnny Cash God's Gonna Cut You Down

Life And Music

Alan Watts leaves us words of wisdom... animated by the creators of South Park



Thx to my favourite pro, Andrew Sullivan.

Islam, Women and our own Myths

As a child of parents who had decided to reject their own parents' and society's religious traditions with the belief that they were ushering in a new era of peace, love and understanding, (...dawning of the age of Aquarius, and so forth) one thing that can be accurately said about me is that I was not raised religiously. This sets me apart from most people I know in that I seem not to share a common set of references that those who were raised with the pressures of religious tradition have. ...even when they were raised in vastly different religious cultures.

One might think that that would make me hostile to religion in general (or at the very least, indifferent) but quite the opposite. Not having had the pressures of an almighty religion to instill silly and irrational fears in me as a child or the disillusion of seeing the world fall short of some grand religious ideal... this actually enabled me to develop a healthy and balanced curiosity about the subject and throughout my life as I explored the traditions and texts of the different major religions I invariably found the same thing: Tremendous wisdom and advice on how to live together harmoniously and be spiritually fulfilled, mixed with quaint, archaic and obsolete notions that obviously only made sense in the contexts they were thought up in. But always, I find the wisdom far outweighs the silliness...

I also see in religion one of the best and most successful human enterprises to create and foster social cohesion on a large scale and as such, it has been one of the main forces behind the success of civilization (large numbers of people living in close proximity without hating and killing each other) I know that there are many people who ardently argue the opposite, that religious fanaticism has been the main cause of most violence throughout history... or at least that it's behind the worst violence today.

But I've also noticed that all of the most strident critics of religion (Dawkins, Harris, ...even Bill Maher, who I really like otherwise) seem to have suffered from having been raised in somewhat overbearing religious environments - and you often get the feeling that they're just really pissed off at something in their childhood.

And besides, to blame religion for fanaticism is simply to ignore the evil that lives in men's hearts. Fanaticism is not a product of religion but of human nature. (Just think of all the death, destruction and violence caused by communist, capitalist or fascist ideological fanaticism throughout the last century)... Humans start to think fanatically when they feel threatened... think of it, we all do. If we fear the current rise in religious fanaticism that seems to characterize the dawn of the current century, we should try to understand what makes many Muslims of the world, many religious and traditional Americans, and here at home, people like the folks of Hérouxville feel so threatened. I'm not saying that the threats these groups perceive to themselves are all legitimate, ...or even real, but it is only by being aware of them that we can hope to make any headway. To simply blame their fanaticism on backward religious beliefs is to delude ourselves and compound the problem.

That being said, we of the so called "enlightened" classes also feel threatened by religious fanaticism and as such we tend to retreat into our own comforting, uninformed, borderline-fanatical beliefs.

Beliefs like: "Islam oppresses women"

My fellow MySpace blogger and friend Umit sheds some much needed light on this belief in her blog. [Update: For reasons of her own, she now sets her blog to 'private' but her post is still available on another blog site]

Read it carefully, imagine this in the context of 6th century Arab(!) culture. After which I challenge you not to see in the birth of Islam a radically progressive and pro-woman agenda.



Note to western christian-raised folks: Like me, most of you aren't particularly religious and yet recognize the inherent goodness and wisdom behind the christian message while brushing over the inconvenient parts that have been used to incite violence in our history. I assure you that if you take a look at the Koran, you'll find that it espouses and promotes virtually the same values as Christianity and that the less convenient parts that can be used to incite violence are pretty much of the same nature as what can be found in the new testament.

Two Wolves

Thanks to my friend Andrea (who got it from her friend Katherine) for posting this on her blog. ...Man! MySpace is really great for this stuff!

Origin and author unknown:

A CHEROKEE TALE

One evening an old Cherokee man told his grandson about a battle that takes place inside people.

He said, "My son, the battle is between two wolves inside us all.

One is Evil.

It is anger, envy, jealousy, sorrow, regret, greed, arrogance, self-pity, guilt, resentment, inferiority, lies, false pride, superiority, and ego.

The other is Good.

It is joy, peace, love, hope, serenity, humility, kindness, benevolence, empathy, generosity, truth, compassion and faith."

The grandson thought about this for a minute and then asked his grandfather:

"Which wolf wins?"

The old Cherokee simply replied, "The one you feed."

Believe nothing...

Divine blood may be flowing through YOU!

The DaVinci Code, which I haven't read or seen given that it seems to just repeat the ideas I once read (and later dismissed) years ago in "The Holy Blood & The Holy Grail" puts forth the idea that Jesus had kids and that he still has decendants today.

Here's an interesting perspective on the idea from the Los Angeles Times

If the above link is dead try here