Freshness Guaranteed!

”There is more stupidity than hydrogen in the universe, 

and it has a longer shelf life.”
– Frank Zappa

Christine O’Donnell certainly proves the point. As does Sharron Angle. As does Jim DeMint. As does, and did, and continuously will, Sarah Palin. Moonbats may show poor sense on a lot of occasions, but why do wingnuts seem to be so uniformly, certifiably stupid? Maybe it’s all that fluoride in the water that their Bircher forebears tried to warn us about.

The recent survey showing atheists in America are more knowledgeable about religion conversely shows just how ignorant many religious Americans are. I was startled (but really wasn’t) to read about Gary Bauer addressing the recent Value Voters Summit (which also hosted O’Donnell) in which he derided Islam, pointing out that the “Creator” is mentioned in the Declaration of Independence and that “That’s not Allah.” What does it take to educate someone that different cultures have different names for the same [alleged] deity? And, while we’re at it, that deities are no better or worse than how we define them?

But stupidity is not selective. Atheists and humanists recently gathered to decide how in-your-face to be toward religious America, with “accommodationists” and “confrontationalists” throwing brickbats at one another. As disunited as Democrats – I guess there’s something to be said for a lack of lock-step thinking. Digging in heels instead of making an effort to work together doesn’t make a whole lot of sense. That of course describes the last two years in Washington, which seems to have been ground-zero for a stupidity bomb.

Frank was right. It’s super-prevalent and it has a lo-o-o-o-o-ng shelf life. Rest assured that the stupidity we witness today will still be just as fresh when the 2012 elections roll around. And still just as hard to swallow.
 

Everything but why...

Watching a wasp cruise by while I was sitting on the deck first made me grateful that we hadn’t had as many this year, then made me think as always about the line from Dylan Thomas’s A Child’s Christmas in Wales, in which he remarks upon receiving a book that tells him “everything about the wasp but why.”

The same holds for scientific explanations of reality. We can conjecture concerning the mechanics of the Big Bang and come close to explaining how; we just can’t put our fingers on why.

Is the Universe here because Someone or -thing wanted it here? Does existence boil down to a volitional whim? If so, where did that whimsical entity come from? How did It amuse itself before touching off the BB? And where did It get Its sense of humor?

This is of course the hardest thing of all to wrap one’s mind around. Next to second-guessing death, it’s why we have churches. And considered too long, to the point where wrapping becomes unwrapped, it’s why we have loony bins.

So when it comes to contemplating the Universe, especially while gazing up at the night sky when it’s hard not to, it becomes a little crazy-making to ask why.

Better perhaps we should content ourselves with asking why not.

The Worst Thing

In a novel I’m reading, a character poses the question “What’s the worst thing that ever happened?” The answer is “The Holocaust.” And since I’ve just come off watching the “World At War” series on dvd, I find that’s not an inappropriate reply. The fact that a madman was able to sell an entire country on his racist agenda and undertake the cold-blooded extermination of six million Jews – more than 11 million people in all if you count Hitler’s other “undesirables” – undoubtedly qualifies as the most horrendous event in human history. And while there have been other genocides, none have been pursued to such extremes. Stir in the fact that the perpetrators were supposedly civilized twentieth-century Europeans from a country that had made significant contributions to Western culture, hardly “barbarians” like Pol Pot, and it’s even more grisly.

But is it the worst thing that ever happened?

Genocides are events, set pieces in history. 9/11 is another – pretty horrendous, but still overshadowed by what the Nazis did. What had been the worst thing before the Holocaust? The senseless slaughter in the trenches of WWI? It’s all a matter of perspective; maybe Asians or South Americans would point to something else.

But “worst things” can be turning points instead of events. Think of things with less horror but longer lasting repercussions: the invention of the internal combustion engine and the double whammy of its effect on the atmosphere and demand for oil ... the decision of the Roman Catholic Church to forbid birth control and its impact on overpopulation in the third world ... the introduction of the slave trade to North America and its consequences for American history and society ... the creation of the atomic bomb, with immediate horror to be sure and producing years of anxiety for those of us who were taught to “duck and cover,” but whose worst implications may even lie ahead....  (Readers, feel free to submit other suggestions.)

So a horrendous occurrence may be shocking, but the impact of a decision or invention can be just as harmful in the long run. And we may not even know how devastating they are until it’s too late. But lack of decision can also have an impact – and with that in mind, I would like to nominate for “worst thing in the world” the fact that human beings haven’t yet outgrown the fairy tale of “God.” There’s no specific event, no turning point. But the fact that we still lead countries in His name, kill in His name, even hate fags in His name, and then wonder why He doesn’t intervene in wars and genocides makes us not much more enlightened than our “uncivilized” ancestors.