Juneteenth

I am reminded today, June 19th --Juneteenth, Freedom Day -- of the visit that Jen and I made to the Whitney Plantation when we went to New Orleans. It is a trip I would recommend anyone visiting New Orleans should make. In fact, I'd recommend it as the focus of a trip that every American should make. 

It isn't a trip to be made lightly. National Geographic compares it to making a trip to Auschwitz . I would imagine that the contemplation of any human being treated as less than human is going to evoke similar emotions in anyone with a shred of empathy. For as much reading and learning of slavery we have had in schools, it doesn't prepare you for the gut punch of seeing a price list of people.

There is, I think, this myth that we white Americans like to hold onto that slave owners actually treated their slaves relatively humanely, and that it was really only some particularly cruel owners that treated them badly. After all, a dead slave was no good to the owner, right? The truth that one learns at Whitney is that in almost every case, slave owners simply treated slaves as a commodity, cogs in a wheel of a machine that, in Louisiana, was used to turn sugar cane into sugar, a grueling and particularly dangerous process. Yes, while plantation owners did not want their machinery to wear out early, they were horribly practical in the life-expectancy of those cogs. People did not live long while working the cane fields, a handful of years maybe, ten to twelve at most. The phrase "being sold down the river" came from the slave experience of being sold down into the cane fields of Louisiana from cotton plantations further north. 

I compared the entire explanation of slave ownership by our guide at Whitney to my experience owning a car: I don't want to treat my car poorly. I'm really pretty fond of my 2012 Ford Fusion. It was a pretty dear investment. At eight years old, though, I know it's getting to the end of its lifespan. I know I'll move on and get something else in a couple years. To think, even now, that this is how plantation owners felt about people, and that I could conjure up such a comparison now, quite literally nauseates me.

I was very impressed with our guide at Whitney. A young black man, he gave us what I believe was really the unvarnished truth and a horrible sense of what it was like to live at Whitney. There was no need to embellish the awful facts. They were laid out before you like the price list I mentioned or the tiny slave quarters or the "hot box" chamber mentioned in the National Geographic article. Stands of the sugar cane with its razor-like leaves were right there, and the treeline past the fields that led away into the swamps that would beckon slaves to freedom or death, either way escape from their condition, still stands out there. 

This is the story of my slave benefactor at Whitney, Chris Franklin. I say benefactor because Mr. Franklin paid a very costly price in order to provide me a single afternoon of education. I am very grateful. Reading that story, one might say, "It wasn't all THAT bad. They even got extra potatoes and egg nog at Christmas." Then you compare that to Mr. Franklin's impression of how well he felt the master kept his hounds. Slaves were treated no better than dogs. The master was fine to marry off a couple because he knew it meant additional litters of slaves for him.

None of us are free until all of us are free. That is a great sentiment to carry forth today. In a literal sense I'm sure we are all appalled at the idea of a man, woman, or child being manacled in an iron box on a hundred degree day. We have a ways to go to stamp out ignorance and injustice still, however. The focus, of late, has been on the police profession. The police do have the ability to use force that is immediately apparent. However, discrimination still pervades every industry in America. It is still apparent in the retail industry, for example. For, as progressive a company as Nordstrom is, I am still reminded that only two years ago black teens looking to buy clothes for prom were racially profiled by Rack employees. Even so, I believe that the discrimination in the legal, medical, and especially the media is as damaging, if not more so, than by police.

So we need to look at ourselves and our own sense of humanity. My religion is built on empathy and loving-kindness. In just writing that I am reminded also that I am a sinner. I need to practice.

I want to get this down in writing, though it is certainly only a half-baked idea. It isn't even really an idea, but a stream of thoughts. And this is why I need to get it down: it's a thought experiment, or a series of thought experiments, a hypothesis that needs to be held up to scrutiny in order to be refined.It's on the nature of good and evil, morality, right and wrong. I've been ruminating on it, turning over this big ball of dough in my mind, adding ingredients here and there, throwing out the entire batch at times and remixing it. Now it's time for me to throw these into the oven, bake it, and see how it tastes, see how others think it tastes.

As with baking, putting these ideas out there for public scrutiny is final. Final in a sense that once it's out there, especially on the internet, you can't just take it back. Just as once a cookie is baked, if it's terrible, you just can't break it back down and get your eggs, flour, sugar, and chocolate chips back. However, you can take the entire batch, throw it into the garbage and start again. I need to actually try this and see how it tastes finally.

So here goes: Good exists.

Good exists inherently in the universe. It wasn't invented by humans, but I'm not sure that I can positively say that it existed before humans. It wasn't invented by humans anymore than intelligence or creativity was invented by humans. It goes hand-in-hand with those things, so whether it existed before humans, I guess is one of those points of debate. I'll assert that it did, but that's for a later time. 

Good exists. That is my little leap of faith at which I start. It is the basis upon which I say I am a religious person. Science is based in fact. Theories that support certain facts are studied and tested until some fact, some evidence comes along to make that theory in its current state invalid. The theory changes and is re-evaluated until it no longer supports the evidence and must be again re-evaluated, ad infinitum. Philosophy and mathematics incorporate logic. "I think therefore I am." Logic is baked into that statement. Socrates used logic to prove that non-truths failed in their logical absurdity. Taking the logical inverse of some truth, he whittled it down to a point where it made no sense, thus the opposite of that case must be true. (I'm saying this badly, but again, this is just a thought experiment.) I have no evidence to disprove that Good does not exist. We can start with the premise that it does not exist and follow the logic through, and there is nothing that I think I can come up with that would make it a logical fallacy. Good may not exist. It's an examination that I want to work through later. However, I know that if Good does not exist in this world, then it is no ta world I want to be part of. And that is frightening. Too frightening for now, so I am starting with the premise that it does exist.

If good does not exist, then morality does not exist. Again, it's an assertion that I would like to examine later through its inverse, but provided I am making the assumption that Good exists, then I will also say that it is upon that assumption that morality is based. Let's now also assert that Evil then also exists being the negative counterpart or exact opposite of Good, Murder is evil. Rape is evil. Theft is evil. (As an aside, I think another idea to examine is that theft is at the heart of all crime, murder being the theft of life, rape the theft of sex and so forth.) One can argue that the idea that these things are bad or evil have emerged as a necessity of human evolution, that we are repulsed by the concept of murder or rape because it has been hard-wired into our DNA. If we were murdering and raping each other, we'd never evolve as a species in the first place. One can argue that the laws against theft were key inventions to us being able to live in an organized society (and thus not murder each other). This may be. Perhaps our sense of Good vs. Evil is some evolutionary necessity, that our sense of morality springs from us all trying to get along together. However, that begs the question. Perhaps we are evolving, but to what end? What's to say that evolving at all is good? Again, I simply have faith that it is. I believe, have mere faith in the fact, that we are being drawn toward some higher... purpose, for lack of a better term. And it is this higher purpose, this THING, that is not just the idea of Good, the Form of Good in the Platonic sense, but is God itself.

Amongst the Sinners

Tomorrow morning we are headed to Las Vegas for Viva Las Vegas, Rockabilly Weekend. VLV is a combined, car show, concert festival, burlesque show, and generally a scene for women to dress up like pinup models. Jen and I have gone now for years. It's always held on Easter weekend, and we kid, "Hey, where else would Jesus want us to be other than in Sin City for Easter, amongst the sinners, preaching His message?"

Okay, neither Jen nor I are the preaching type. In fact, we aren't exactly church-going types, though I think both of us wouldn't mind that changing. I feel like I am a very religious person, but not in a conventional sense. Maybe I would identify with being more "spiritual" than religious, except that for the fact that those who say they are "spiritual" often just use that as an excuse for either not wanting to think about it too much or not wanting to risk telling people they are religious.

I just don't identify with a particular religion, but in a way I identify with ALL of them, well, all the major ones. To me, they all carry the same message, just put into words that the people of a particular time and place could identify with. I have an entire treatise on this somewhere within me, but I don't want to get into that now, not on the eve of flying out to Las Vegas. Basically though I believe every religion says "Be good to each other." OR in the words of Bill & Ted, "Be Excellent to each other." What being good really means is perhaps what we all get hung up on. However, I simply believe that "goodness" exists, and that we should strive for that.

In doing that, in striving to be good, I feel I too often fall short. On the way home while driving today I was thinking about it. I was thinking about how hard I have been working to try and be better, and still falling short, wondering what I really need to do to become a better person. And I realize I have really been trying to do it on my own. Once in a while I can confide to Jen, or my brothers, or a close friend, but mostly I felt like I had to do everything on my own.

Then the thought, and the feeling came over me -- I don't have to do it alone. I'm not saying that I'm going to start calling upon God to make me a better person. I don't believe in Him like that. To say I believe in a Him at all in a conventional sense would be incorrect . But there is a reason that so many people find strength in prayer, in meditation, in the Bible, in the Koran, in going to church, in the buddha, dharma, and sangha. There is wisdom in religion.

We'll see where this really takes me. Happy Easter to all of you, however you plan to celebrate!