Short Circuits Read online

  I honestly do not think one must belong to a specific religion to believe in goodness and kindness, and to work for the betterment of mankind. Good people are good people. Simply belonging to a religion does not make one good. Bigotry, intolerance, and hate, however subtly hidden beneath all the “Amens” and “Hallelujahs” in the world, are still bigotry, intolerance, and hate and do not make one person or one group superior to any other.

  Every human being is…or should be…free to choose whatever concept of God he or she feels comfortable with. Relatively few have or take this option of choice which, like any form of choice, requires asking questions. But it is far easier to simply accept what one is told. So little thinking is involved that way, and thinking too much can give one a headache.

  I’ve been an agnostic since I was old enough to ask “Why?” in matters religious. “Why?” is a question neither welcomed nor tolerated by most organized religions. It is often seen as...well, sacrilegious...to question, and to persist in asking results in such responses as “God has a reason for everything.” Well, thanks, but that was my question: Why? Evasions are not answers. One of my favorite bumper stickers of all time is: “God says it. I believe it. That settles it.” Which is not unlike saying, “My mother, drunk or sober.”

  I have no problem with anyone believing anything they want to believe. I appreciate that organized religion is truly and deeply comforting for many, and provides a form of stability in an all-too-unstable world. And as long as your beliefs do not result in a restriction of my own or anyone else’s rights and freedoms, more power to you. But I believe with all my heart and soul that if your religion of choice promotes or even condones anything that limits the rights or beliefs of others, you are in the wrong religion.

  It is possible to firmly believe in God without showing up in a building every Sunday or Friday to confirm it. Again, if gathering with others who share your beliefs gives you comfort, that is fine…for you, as long as you do not fall into the trap of assuming superiority over others who do not think exactly the same way you think.

  I try my very best to be a good person, to treat everyone with courtesy and dignity, and to always take the feelings of others into consideration. I don’t always succeed, of course, but I really do try. But the world abounds in those who assume their particular religious beliefs give them the right to impose their beliefs on everyone else. Again, how many millions have, over history, been slaughtered in the name of religion? How can God be on both sides in a war? And by what stupefying arrogance can and do people presume to speak for God?

  No, thank you. I prefer to keep my own counsel. I have enough faith in myself to decide fairly accurately what is right and what is wrong…again based on the simple yardstick of the Golden Rule. I truly respect the rights of others to believe or not believe in any organized religion or philosophy even though I may not agree with them. Why does it seem to be too much to ask the same of them?

  * * *

  BELIEFS

  Each of us, from birth, acquires a set of beliefs upon which we base our lives, our attitudes and our actions. There are two basic types of belief: those we format ourselves, from our own experience, and those which are simply handed us. (“This is the way it is, kid.” “Oh. Okay.”) Many of our beliefs are fed us from infancy in the form of the regurgitated beliefs of our parents, not unlike birds feed their young. If our parents and our relatives believe something, we tend to believe it as well. It avoids a lot of pressure from our immediate peers, and saves us an awful lot of that pesky “thinking” stuff.

  Many of my personal beliefs, not surprisingly, tend to differ considerably from the norm. I was never one for believing what I was told simply because I was told to believe it. Despite frequent evidence to the contrary, I consider logic to be the single most important factor in any belief. I am constantly in receipt of emails whose sole purpose seems to be to defy and utterly destroy logic. That people spew out this raw sewage is disheartening enough…that other people not only actually accept it as gospel and pass it on to others is mind-boggling.

  One belief lies at the very core of my being, and it has to do, paradoxically, with beliefs: you have the inalienable right to believe whatever you wish to believe. You do not have the right to impose your beliefs on me. I find it bitterly ironic that so very many people who demand the right to their beliefs also demand that everyone else share them. I may not share your belief. I may on occasion think your belief is antithetical to mine. But I would never dream of insisting you abandon it solely because I don’t agree with it.

  I hold strong personal beliefs about religion. 1) I despise the unmitigated gall of proselytizers who show up at your door to show you the “way to the truth”...you obviously being far too stupid to find it yourself. If I wish someone’s counsel on the subject, I shall ask for it, thank you. 2) If there is a Hell, the Lava Level is reserved for those who presume to speak for God. I sometimes regret being an agnostic if for no other reason than that I would truly love to see Reverend Phelps and his loathsome ilk suffer eternally the agony they have caused others. 3) When someone tells me they are “born again” I am tempted to suggest that if they’d done it right the first time, they could have saved themselves the trouble. 4) More wars, misery, and human suffering can be attributed to organized religion than to any other cause. 5) While I would truly like to believe in God and Heaven…and freely admit to having called upon Him from time to time…logic overwhelms desire, and I cannot. I can and do hope, but I cannot truly believe.

  As to an afterlife, I simply cannot believe in one. I believe, and have stated several times before, that when we die, we simply re-enter the nothingness from which we emerged. We weren’t aware of anything before we were born, and we’ll not be aware of anything after we die. There is nothing the least bit frightening about this concept, and it encourages me to appreciate the preciousness of every minute of life while I have it.

  I continue to believe in the basic goodness of humanity, despite mountain ranges of evidence to the contrary. It is the relatively few sick, perverted, evil creatures among us whose only link to humanity is genetic who cast their pall on the rest of us. I believe we hear so much about the bad things in the world simply because they are the exception, not the rule.

  Conversely, I hold those who merely accept whatever they’re told, who never question anything, to be second class humans. Ignorance can be cured. Stupidity cannot.

  Well, enough for the moment. Oh, and did you know that the Jews control the world and everything in it? They get their power from eating Christian babies. I heard that somewhere, so it must be true.

  * * *

  THREE RULES

  If all the books of laws and regulations designed to keep humanity from running totally amok were lined up end to end, they would stretch far beyond the horizon. Yet in reality, fully 95 percent of them could be eliminated if everyone followed only three elementary precepts.

  “Do unto others as you would have done unto you.” What could be simpler? The problem, alas, lies in the gulf between theory and practice and in the perversities of human nature (in this case, think of its application by masochists). But for the vast majority of people, the Golden Rule is just that…golden. We all like to be treated with courtesy and consideration. We all appreciate a smile from a stranger, and any simple gesture of kindness. But that other old saying “It’s better to give than to receive” doesn’t apply. We’re happy to get a nod and a smile from a stranger, yet to how many strangers do we nod and smile? Again, the perversities of human nature step in: we’re too busy to think of it, or we’re afraid any such gesture will be either misinterpreted or coldly rejected. So we do nothing. And far too often, we are so surprised by these small acts of kindness when we receive them that we do not reciprocate them.

  I’ve related the story before of a young man in San Francisco who jumped from the Golden Gate Bridge. He left a suicide note in his apartment outlining his depression and sense of total isola
tion. The note ended with this (paraphrased) sentence. “So I am going to walk to the bridge, and, if anyone even acknowledges my existence along the way, I will not jump.” He jumped.

  “Grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, the courage to change the things I can, and the wisdom to know the difference.” Adopted as a mantra by Alcoholics Anonymous, it was written in 1936 by a theologian named Reinhold Niebuhr. Who, alcoholic or not, can possibly argue with that precept? Yet how many of us actually follow it? The time, effort, and emotion expended in fretting over things over which we have absolutely no control is astonishing, and even more astonishing is that we seem incapable of recognizing and acting on those problems over which we do or can by trying have control. Easier to throw up our hands than to work to correct them.

  “This above all else: to thine own self be true, and it must follow, as the night the day, thou canst not then be false to any man.” Polonius’s bit of fatherly advice to Laertes in Hamlet is as valid today as when it was written 400 or so years ago. Unless we are true to ourselves, unless we can stand up for what we believe in and constantly strive to be better than we are, we might as well be a sea slug as a human. We belong to a contentious, often totally dysfunctional, all-too-greedy, survival-of-the-fittest race. Yet it is our capacity to acknowledge our shortcomings and work to improve ourselves that separates us from the other life-forms on our planet. Each of us faces, every day of our lives, the challenge to be better than we are. We all have the capability to change the world. We may not be able to single-handedly discover a cure for cancer, or eradicate poverty. Improving the lives of others needn’t be that complex, but as simple as giving a smile to another human being who might very badly need one.

  Smiles and kind words cost nothing. It’s better to have 500 smiles ignored than not to give one which can make a difference in someone’s life. Who knows who is walking toward the bridge?

  * * *

  SIMPLE RULES

  It somehow always comes as something of a surprise every time I’m faced with the fact that life ain’t easy, and the passage through it is frequently chaotic. To bring some semblance of order, rules were invented, both societal and personal. Since life is a cumulative learning experience, the rules each person sets up for himself/herself tend to be far more varied and flexible than societal rules. I have come up with a few simple rules to help my passage as smooth as possible.

  Many of my own rules are in response to the fact that I’ve always been excruciatingly aware that life is far too short under the best of circumstances to meekly accept those wrongs and unnecessary injustices over which I have any small degree of control.

  In no particular order of importance, here are a few of them:

  1) Never vote for any politician who spends all his campaign money hurling mud at his opponent. I want to hear what he’s for, not what he’s against, and if he hasn’t any positive, constructive things to say about what he plans to do with the office, he doesn’t deserve to hold it.

  2) Refuse to buy any product whose ads include the words “for well-qualified buyers” (which is a subtle way of saying “not you”) or “emerging science suggests” (I don’t want “maybe in the future,” I want “now”).

  3) Never tolerate rudeness or neglect from anyone I am paying to perform a service for me. I do not hesitate one second in asking to speak to the person’s supervisor and relating my unhappiness. (Often, in restaurants and retail establishments, the manager is not aware of the employees’ actions unless told.)

  4) Do not subject myself to any situation/play/movie/book in which I know I will find myself uncomfortable or upset simply because someone says I should. I witness and experience enough sorrow, trauma, and injustice in the day-to-day world without willingly exposing myself to more—and I certainly should not have to pay for the privilege.

  5) In any disagreement, decide if winning is worth the effort put into it, and at the point where it is not, simply walk away.

  6) Do not hesitate in defending those who cannot defend themselves.

  7) Refuse to spend time in the presence of bigots and proselytizers.

  8) Know the difference between ignorance and stupidity, and act accordingly.

  9) Though it is often not easy, try to see both sides of every issue.

  10) Never, ever, under any circumstances, be suckered into opening any message in my spam folder unless I recognize the sender’s name and know that it got there by mistake.

  11) Do my very best…though I often fail…to live by the Golden Rule.

  12) Avoid like the plague anything I am assured that “everyone is talking about.” If I’m not talking about it, it doesn’t matter.

  13) Even in those times when I am depressed or enraged by my own stupidity, never, ever take myself too seriously.

  14) Listen to what others say, respect their right to say it, but only do what my mind and heart tell me to do.

  As indicated in some of the rules above, I don’t always succeed, but that doesn’t mean I don’t try.

  Now, sit down and make a list of your own rules. You may find it very interesting.

  FROM FERTILE SOIL

  LIFE IN A SARDINE CAN

  When you’re a kid, you accept everything as being natural, simply because you’ve not lived long enough to realize there are other ways to live. At the time I broke my leg, having three people (and I think we had a dog) live in a glorified sardine can—a 14-foot long trailer—was perfectly natural. It was just, well, what was. My mom cooked on a small kerosene stove with a canister of fuel which had a hand pump not unlike a bicycle tire pump. She’d have to pump it vigorously several times before she could light the stove. To this day I can close my eyes and smell the strong odor of kerosene and hear the soft “pffftt” as the stove lit.

  When I was released from the hospital I was in a full body cast from just below my shoulders down to my right knee and all the way down my left leg and foot. There was a bar between my legs at the knee to keep my thighs immobile. I quite literally could barely move. And this was in the heat of summer. Mom used keep knives in the icebox, which she would use, when they were cold, to slide down between my cast and my chest and back to try to cool me off.

  For the next 62 years, I never slept on my back again.

  It of course did not even occur to me at the time what my parents had to have gone through for the several weeks that they were in fact trapped in that sardine can with an immobile five year old boy. I never thanked them for everything they sacrificed for me. It would never have occurred to me that I should. That’s what parents are for.

  I remember that I held a grudge against them for several years after they one time found it necessary to “rob” my piggy bank because they simply did not have enough money for something they needed—probably for me—and did not have enough themselves. Looking back on it now, I am indescribably ashamed of myself for my selfishness. But I was a child, and I take refuge in the fact that I couldn’t have been expected to know any better.

  Oh, yes…and the evening of the day I had gone back to the hospital to have my cast removed…it was Halloween Eve, 1938, the night of Orson Welles’ War of the Worlds broadcast…I had to be rushed back to the hospital for an emergency appendectomy.

  I’d never thought of the reason, until now, why, after coming home yet again, my Grandpa Margason drove down in what was then the equivalent of a station wagon to get me and take me back with him to Rockford, where I was deposited at Aunt Thyra’s and Uncle Buck’s for the period of my recovery. I think I know the reason, now: my poor parents simply couldn’t handle any more at the moment.

  Surely there has to be a special place in Heaven, if there is a Heaven, for parents. If there is, my folks are there. And even if there is not the vast expanse of a Heaven, they will always live in the sardine can which is my heart.

  * * *

  GRANDPA FEARN

  It’s really a shame to realize one doesn’t kno
w nearly enough about the history of the people without whom one wouldn’t exist. I’m ashamed to say I know very little about Grandpa Fearn’s, but what I do know I admire.

  Chester (“Pete”) Fearn was born the year after the great Chicago Fire, in Pena, Illinois, a town so small it cannot be found on a Rand McNally road map, and quite probably no longer exists. I know almost nothing of his own family: as far as I know he was an only child. One of his grandmothers was a member of the Blackfoot Nation…to whom I am deeply indebted for my Native American genes, which I credit for the fact that I still have a full head of (though very little facial) hair.

  His father committed suicide when he was quite young, and Grandpa left home to wander around the central Midwest. I doubt he had more than a third-grade education, but he was far from ignorant. He earned his living tap-dancing for money aboard the riverboat Natchez, sister ship to the Robert E. Lee. At some point he found himself in Rockford, Illinois, where sometime in the late 1890s he met and married Annabelle Erickson, my grandmother, about whom I talked in a previous blog.

  Grandpa worked for more than 35 years various Rockford factories and foundries, which repaid his efforts by giving him the Black Lung disease from which he eventually died at age 85. I’m sure if it hadn’t been for the lung disease, he’d still be around.

  He and my mom shared the same sly sense of humor, which I’d like to think I’ve inherited. Two of his favorite sayings were “...don’t ‘cha know?” and, after a full meal, “My sufficiency has been suffancified.” He loved walking, and he loved his “snuss”—pocket tobacco snorted through the nose. And he never lost his love of dancing. On his 79th birthday, he was honored by Rockford’s Arthur Murray Dance Studio (the same one from which I had been ignominiously expelled), whose dances he regularly attended. His prized possession was his pair of tap shoes, which he kept so polished they glistened. Mom kept them for many years, and I often wonder what became of them.