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My Plea to Anyone Voting “Yes”: A Libertarian Marriage Amendment Perspective

By on October 9, 2012 in Liberty & Freedom, US & International Affairs

[easyazon-image align=”left” asin=”B000EUKR2C” locale=”us” height=”160″ src=”http://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/I/41RZVN56TAL._SL160_.jpg” width=”100″]On Election Day this year, Minnesotans – like myself — will vote on whether or not to add a ban of gay marriage to the state’s constitution.  This is an open letter to anyone planning on, or considering, voting “Yes”, as in, planning on voting to add the amendment to the constitution and thus ban gay marriage by law.  Even if you’ve made up your mind, I implore you to let me bend your ear (or eyes), and I promise in return to respect your choice, whatever it may be.  It can never hurt to have another perspective.  

Let me say upfront, I understand where you’re coming from.  Fifteen years ago or so, I would have absolutely voted “yes.”  My position at that time was largely informed by my religious values.  I’m not here to argue those views (if you share them) because they are unarguable.  If you hold certain religious beliefs, you hold those beliefs.   Nothing I can say here would change that, nor do I wish to try.  The debate on the merits of religion is not relevant to this issue, despite it being entwined with the issue in the media.

What is relevant is how you regard freedom, and the covenant We the People have with our government as expressed in the US Constitution.

You may say this amendment merely impacts a state constitution, but all state constitutions must adhere to the US Constitution as the ultimate law of the land.  If you read the US Constitution, you’ll note that all of the Amendments, except for the 19th (Prohibition of Alcohol), preserve the rights of the people, not limit them.  That one amendment limiting freedoms was repealed soon after it was enacted.  It didn’t work.

This is a powerful concept:  Laws limit freedoms; Constitutions preserve them. 

The US Constitution was designed so that no law could be created that limits freedoms (of the majority and the minority alike) preserved within it.  I am not going to argue that gay marriage is protected in the Constitution.  It’s not.  Not directly.  But the Founders very carefully crafted the original Bill of Rights with the intent of enabling individuals to pursue their own individual happiness without stepping on the rights of others to do the same.  That is the primary purpose of the Constitution.  

I’ll say it again in another way.  The Constitution is there to ensure you can do anything you want – anything – so long as you do not infringe on another person’s right to do the same.  

This new amendment if enacted, clearly limits the rights of certain individuals to pursue their own happiness.  This amendment if not enacted, does no such thing to any individual.  I take it as a very serious matter any law that restricts freedom for any reason.  You can disagree with a behavior and not require that it be set into law.  The creation of any law – much less one set in a constitution – should be undertaken with extreme caution, and thoughtful reason, and not merely on the basis of trying to mold the world into a single group or individual’s ideal.  We are all doomed to having our freedoms limited if we misunderstand that truth.

True freedom is messy.  True freedom requires that we live among people who do not hold our values.  True freedom requires that we work together, if not to live in harmony, then to at least leave each other alone.  Each law we add to the books tears down the fabric of true, voluntary (free) society a little more.  Would you rather your neighbor adopted your beliefs because they are beliefs worth having or because they are required by law to do so?

Another argument for voting “no” is more esoteric.  The discussion always turns to the idea that those who are pro-gay marriage want to “redefine” marriage.  The problem is that marriage has had vastly different definitions during our relatively short time as a country, much less throughout all our existence as social creatures.  If you have the time, I’d encourage you to read a fascinating book called [easyazon-link asin=”B000EUKR2C” locale=”us”]Marriage, a History: From Obedience to Intimacy, or How Love Conquered Marriage[/easyazon-link] by Stephanie Coontz.  It is quite dense, but it is immensely thorough in its study of the history of marriage throughout human history, from ancient cultures, to our own.  One thing is certain: Marriage has never had a consistent definition.  

Marriage has been through many upheavals and re-definitions throughout its existence.  For example, marriage licenses required by states and other governments are a recent phenomenon.   Until very recently, the state had no business in “defining” marriage.  That was done by religious institutions and local custom.   In some cultures, a couple merely had to say “we’re married” for it to be binding.  Just as easily, they could say “I divorce you.”  The point being that marriage was a contract between individuals.  Some hold it as a religious sacrament, and that is fine.  Nothing prohibits you from getting married in a church, and having that recognized by God without getting a “legal” marriage certificate.  True, there are many “benefits” bestowed upon married couples in today’s law crazy world.  The stakes are high for deciding who is married.  I would solve that by saying the state should have nothing to do with deciding anything about marriage.  Leave that to We the People.  Leave that to your churches, mosques, and synagogues.  Leave that to you and your partner (gay or straight) to decide what commitment you want to have to each other and how you want that defined.   

Laws never succeed in changing behaviors as much as social pressure and good ideas do.  True democracy comes from the bottom up – from us – not from the top down via mandate.  Prohibiting alcohol did not eradicate its use, and alcohol abuse has arguably done much more to destroy the fabric of society and family than gay marriage could ever dream of doing.  I am not asking you to give up your beliefs about gay marriage.  As I said when I began this essay, I once believed as you do.  I understand why you hold those beliefs and do not wish to demonize them despite having significantly changed my own beliefs on the topic.  But I implore you to not be part of setting something in near stone because it does not conform to how you believe your life should be lived. 

The beautiful thing about this country and the ideals upon which it was founded is that people with vastly differing opinions and beliefs about how life should be rightly lived can literally live side by side in peace.  Thomas Jefferson was speaking of religious tolerance when he said the following, but I think it equally applies to the idea of marriage:

“The legitimate powers of government extend to such acts only as are injurious to others. But it does me no injury for my neighbor to say there are twenty gods, or no God. It neither picks my pocket nor breaks my leg.”  

The only way to ensure that one day your own ideals won’t be made illegal is to preserve the rights of others to be different — even if you don’t agree with their lifestyle — as long as they do not hurt you, take your property, or infringe upon your own rights to purse Life, Liberty, and Happiness.  Voting “Yes” on this Amendment is about far more than gay marriage or marriage in general.  Voting “yes” sets us down the path to giving up on this Great American Experiment and deeming it a failure.  

That is the ultimate tragedy. 

I doubt I have convinced you to change your vote, but I hope I have at least given you something to consider.  Thanks for reading.  Vote “No!”

Cheers,

PersephoneK

Comments { 4 }

PokerStars and DOJ Agree on Settlement; Absorbs Full Tilt

By on July 31, 2012 in Liberty & Freedom, Poker, US & International Affairs

There was great news in the poker community today when it was announced that the DOJ and PokerStars (and by extension Full Tilt Poker) ended their legal dispute that started April 15, 2011 — what has become known as “Black Friday” — when the DOJ effectively shutdown the three biggest online poker websites and scared the bejesus out of many others.  You can read about the agreement here: http://www.pokerstars.com/press/pdf/ps-settles-us-dispute-acquires-assets-of-ftp.pdf

The short version is that in acquiring Full Tilt, PokerStars is agreeing to pay out any money in the frozen accounts of Full Tilt’s players, which they did not have access to since Black Friday largely because Full Tilt had shady accounting practices made worse by the sudden DOJ action forcing them to pay all accounts immediately.

I’m really happy about the decision, but it seems to me that if online poker had simply always been legal and regulated (reasonably), it wouldn’t have possibly destroyed at least one major poker business and seriously interrupted two others, not to mention the thousands of players, many of them professional poker players who’s sole livelihood was by playing poker, and the US would have been collecting taxes from all parties all along.  Instead, one business is being asked to take on the debts of another, in the hopes that it can enter the US market once the law makers get around to making it unambiguous to play online poker and run a poker business over the internet.

I’ve said it before, but it is still unfathomable to me that the country that essentially invented poker, and certainly escalated it to what it is today, a country where poker is intertwined with our mythology and mystique, a country founded on principals of freedom and individual liberty, is not leading the world in both online poker players (we were) and online poker businesses.

Appalling… lets hope this latest decision gets us on the path to fixing that error quickly.

Comments { 1 }

SCOTUS Ruling on ObamaCare Sad Day for Liberty

By on June 28, 2012 in Liberty & Freedom, US & International Affairs

Shock and sadness. 

Those are the raw emotions that have been cycling through my body for the past several minutes after learning of the Supreme Court’s (SCOTUS) ruling over ObamaCare (or the Affordable Care Act, ACA).  I did not see this coming.  I fully expected, naively so it would seem, for this law to be overturned, and ruled unconstitutional.

I was wrong. 

More surprisingly, conservative Justice Roberts, of all Justices, weighed in as the swing vote.  BAM!  Knockout punch.  Down for the count.

For me, this decision was never (mostly) about Americans’ rights to medical care.  Healthcare and access to insurance are complex issues in my mind, and I’m not completely sure where I fall on the morality side of all points of the issue.  I have been a major flip-flopper over the past decade.  I’ll save that discussion for another time perhaps. 

The ObamaCare ruling has always been about the amount of power We The People want our federal (and really any level of) government to hold over us. 

Without having yet had the chance to read the full opinion (so I reserve the right to modify this position later), it is my understanding that the primary basis SCOTUS used in upholding the “individual mandate” portion of the law, which essentially requires everyone to purchase health insurance, is that they deemed it a “tax” as opposed to a fee.  This effectively removed the Commerce Clause from the equation, in their minds.  Once that was done, SCOTUS ruled that since Congress has the constitutional power to implement taxes on the people, it has the power to implement the individual mandate portion of the law.  The individual mandate portion of the law was the glue holding everything together.  If they’d struck it down, the entire law likely would have been thrown out.  They kept it in, so the law stays too.  Justice Roberts did make the point to say that the decision does not comment on the wisdom of the law, but rather on its constitutionality. 

Fine.  Done.  Not good.

I feel SCOTUS took the easy off-ramp on this one.  Once they removed the Commerce Clause from the argument, this was an easy victory for the President.  Of course Congress has the power to tax (how much or whether or not they should, is a completely different discussion also for another time), but I will concede, this is one of its powers. 

In my opinion, the individual mandate is not a tax.  It is an automatic “opt-in” program (unless my state opts-out??? but we’ll put a pin in that for now), with a penalty assessed to “opt-out.”  Either way, I pay.  Just for having been born in this country, I must pay for something that the government has no business in controlling in the first place.  I pay either for myself, or for others, or both of us.  I pay for something that should be left up to the marketplace.

Oops.  I said I wasn’t going to get into the broader healthcare vs. government discussion, but here I am. It’s all so intertwined.  While I would love to live in a world where money is never a consideration to whether or not someone receives the best medical care, I don’t. We don’t.  We never will.  It is a utopian dream that is impossible to realize.  Everything has a price.  Everything is paid for in some way.  Socialism in its various forms never works because it denies the basic laws of economics.  It is what we (some of us) want the world to be, not what it is.  When I was seven, I wished endlessly for the Millennium Falcon to appear on my front lawn, but it never did.  No matter how much I wanted it to be true, it just wasn’t possible.

The next best thing we have in Human society to an impossible Utopia is the Free Market system of Capitalism, and the presumption that “all men are created equal… endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights… that among these are Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness.”  It’s not perfect.  It’s sometimes not pretty.  But by using the power of the markets, and the rule of law to protect individual liberty, we allow individuals to decide what is best for themselves, provided they do not infringe on the rights of others to do the same. 

Today, President Obama said this in his victory response: “I did it because I believed it was good for the American people.”  Thank you Mr. President, but I do not need you to decide what is good for me.  I need you to execute the laws of the land, and uphold the ideals for which this country was founded through centuries of blood, sweat and tears, and framed so perfectly the beautiful sentence I cited above from the Declaration of Independence.  That is what I want from you.  I want nothing else.  

Unfortunately, now that ObamaCare has been vindicated by the highest court in the land – a decision I respectfully, but strongly disagree with – I fear that this president, those who follow, and Congress will feel emboldened to even more vigorously impose their wills upon us, strip us of more freedoms, all in the name of doing me “good” as if I were a child – or a small dog.  This is a path I’m terrified of traversing.  Government, and government power grows ever larger.  It seems to be a one way directional machine.  The more we allow this to happen, the more complicity we are in our eventual total loss of freedom.  It’s not without precedent.  After all, that is how this nation came to exist in the first place.  Power corrupts; Absolute power corrupts absolutely.  We’re not quite there, but it’s only a matter of time before history repeats itself.

Cheers,

PersephoneK

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Persephone’s Path Under Redesign

By on April 20, 2012 in Announcements

My apologies as I tweak the look and feel of the site.  I haven’t quite settled on how I want this thing to look.

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The Hunger Games Movie Review: Rough Musings from a Crazy Fan

By on April 3, 2012 in Entertainment & Pop Culture

Disclaimer: This is less a review as it is a totally biased compilation of my raw thoughts after seeing the film twice.  I would recommend not reading this unless you’ve at least read the books or seen the film.  I’m not going to explain plot points like a real review would.  I’m assuming you know the story.

Here be spoilers!

I’m not ashamed to admit I’ve been more than a little obsessed with The Hunger Games since I devoured the book a little more than a month ago (yeah, I was living under a rock).  I quickly gobbled up its sequels, “Catching Fire” and “Mockingjay” between then and now, but the wait for the movie was still torturous.  I’m so glad I didn’t even know about the trilogy until a couple of months ago.  I would have died.

I quelled my obsession slightly by watching every trailer released, and scavenging YouTube for cast interviews.   I was more than a little worried I’d be disappointed.  I love books in general, but for me the motion picture is the most perfect art form there is.  I wanted to like this movie.  I felt that based on what I’d seen in the trailers and a few scene snippets that the movie had the potential to outshine the books.  In many respects it did.  In others it didn’t.  All-in-all, my expectations were more than realized.  I absolutely love this film.

Adaptations are always a tricky business, and the more beloved a book is, the more impossible it becomes to succeed.  Back in the day, when I knew less about the strengths of motion pictures, I hated seeing movies based off of beloved books.  But as I have learned more over the years, and have even written a novel and a screenplay myself, I now try to go into a film based on a book I’ve read expecting to see favorite moments and characters eliminated, or condensed.  I remember that by their natures, books and movies have different strengths.  Books take the reader into the characters’ minds in an intimate way through narrative and exposition, especially when told in the first person like The Hunger Games is told from heroine Katniss Everdeen’s perspective.  Movies show a story through action.  They combine other art forms like photography, effects, costume and set design, and music.  The difficulty is in trying to nudge the viewer’s assumptions about a character’s motivations in one direction or another without flat out saying what they are.  And it wasn’t until I wrote a screenplay myself that I truly appreciated how important a creative and imaginative actor is to a great film.  The Hunger Games scores big on that front.  Jennifer Lawrence, Josh Hutcherson, Woody Harrelson, Stanley Tucci, Elizabeth Banks, Lenny Kravitz, and newcomer Liam Hemsworth, were all fantastic.  Have I mentioned Jennifer Lawrence?  Wow.  But I digress.

So with those things in mind, I feel Director Gary Ross’s treatment of The Hunger Games was wonderful, though not perfect.  Additions made were almost like bonus moments we didn’t have access to in the books, and most of his cuts made perfect sense to me.  I think of this film as a companion to the books.  Perhaps to some viewers that is a knock.  And I do typically agree that a movie needs to completely stand on its own.  After watching the film a second time and reading some reviews of others who had not read the book, I feel it stands up more than the book virgins believe it does.  But I could be wrong.

The first thing I ever want from a film, before I analyze its pacing, direction, acting, writing, etc, is for it to move me.  I want it to stir some emotion in me, and ideally inspire me.  If a film does that, it’s halfway there.

Check!

Two moments in particular that moved me:  The Reaping and Rue’s demise.

At The Reaping, I really felt what this experience would have been like, not only for Katniss and Peeta, but for all of the citizens of District 12.  You see the worry on the faces of the 12-18 year old kids whose names are in the lottery, and of their families.  This is a community horror, that despite the Capitol’s propaganda machine, every citizen despises and fears.  Then you get a sense of the absurdity and perversity of the spectacle through the character of Effie Trinket, the Capitol’s clueless and self-absorbed Reaping coordinator for District 12.  Whether she has merely trained herself to cope with her job of taking children to their deaths, or whether she just really believes, she has bought into the propaganda the citizens are forced to endure before the worst thing to ever happen to two of them and their families happens.  When Prim is chosen, her sister Katniss, superbly played by Jennifer Lawrence, takes you through a succession of emotions as she processes what has just happened.  She is confused and momentarily in shock, and doesn’t quite believe that her sister has been chosen despite only having her name in the bowl one time in her first year of eligibility.  Once the fog clears, Katniss’ quick, panicked, unthinking action propels her to take her sister’s place, and then you immediately see her go through the realization of what her choice means for her.  Her life is basically over.  A few hours ago, she viewed the Reaping a temporary pain she had to endure before continuing the rest of her day and not-so-terrible life by District 12 standards.  Instead, now she’ll be taken from her home forever, and probably die violently in a few weeks

When the boy from District 12, Peeta, is chosen, we see his obvious horror as well, but what caught my attention were the faces of the boys around him.  They exhale relief that they are safe for another year, but yet they are horrified that one of their own has to face this.  There is no celebration, no happiness in this situation at all.  It is a heartrending moment that continues through Katniss saying goodbye to her family and to her best friend Gale.  When she pleads with him to not let her family starve, in my mind that’s the moment Jennifer Lawrence seals an Oscar nomination.  To quote Effie, “I love that.”

The journey to the Capitol, the spectacle of the pre-Games ceremonies, interviews, and training is all very well done.  Ross nicely changes stylistically a bit from his very raw and rough photography in the District to a more polished look in the Capitol. It’s subtle, but it’s powerful.  The scene between Katniss and Peeta the night before they go to the games is wonderful, but I would have liked to see a little more of this kind of exploration of their predicament.

The second emotional highpoint for me was when Rue dies in the middle of the Games.  The emotional toll the Games has on Katniss is highlighted in this scene.   It is not just about this little girl’s death, which is terrible in and of itself, especially considering the disparity between a 12 year old girl and an 18 year old man forced to fight to the death.  It’s about everything coming to a head for Katniss.  She’s obviously projecting her sister Prim onto this girl since they are the same age.  But she’s also just made her first real, intimate kill (her other kills were Tracker Jacker by Proxy) by shooting the boy who speared Rue.  What she had only done before to animals she hunted, she has just done to a human.  She’s alone, she just lost her only ally, and chances are she is going to die sometime soon.  Her response to cover Rue in flowers is her way of defying the Capitol, and trying to do as Peeta suggested the night before they went into the arena by not being a “piece in their games.”  She’s not trying to start a revolution, yet she knows she’s being provocative.  She’s trying to stay true to herself.  That scene was almost everything I wanted to see as a fan of the novel, with the exception of no bread drop of thanks from District 11.  I think that was a mistake to cut out, and could have elevated the power of the moment to an even higher level.  Perhaps Ross didn’t want people to assume Katniss cared more about receiving a gift than she did about Rue’s death, but I still wanted to see it.  It is an important moment for the entire trilogy.  It’s the spark of the revolution.  The bread is important because it clearly links Katniss’ salute to District 11.  In the book, when the bread drops, she knows District 11 gave it to her, a completely unheard of thing to do for a tribute from another district, and Katniss repays them and Rue with the salute of ultimate respect.  I think that may have been lost in the film, but I could be wrong.  It wasn’t enough of a detractor to take away from the power of the moment.  I still cried

Some reviews I’ve read have complained of the shaky camera, but as one who’s not always a lover of that style myself, I think it was used perfectly for the film.  The grainy quality was there when we needed to understand what living in the Districts was like, but in the reality TV inspired ridiculousness of the Capitol it’s softened or replaced by polish and larger than life color and sparkle.  I give my three fingered salute to Ross and his team for turning what could have been a big budget spectacle from start to finish and still pull in a gazillion dollars, into an intimate movie with an indie quality (when it needed it).  The film did not hide from the violence either, but it didn’t make it gratuitous for the sake of doing so.  I knew who was going to die, and I was still cringing.

Because the film – unlike the books – is not told merely from Katniss’ first person perspective, we get some treats we didn’t in the book.  And because Suzanne Collins herself was part of the writing process for the script, I am satisfied knowing they had her blessing.  The behind-the-scenes scenes of the Games Control/Production Center is a wonderful addition.  In the books we get glimmers of this from what Katniss knows of past games and assumptions she makes, but the movie brings us into the place where all the magic of the arena is created, and where the lives of 24 children are manipulated.  The Truman Show-like power over this world is taken to the darkest level as Head Gamemaker Seneca Crane decides who lives and dies, and what horror the Tributes will face in their demise, with the same joy he’d have if he were producing a weekly sitcom.  The Gamemaker’s are proud of what they’re giving to the masses.  It’s so twisted, yet perfectly weaved into the film.

I also love seeing mentor Haymitch’s sweet-talking as he works to gain sponsors to help Katniss.  He even convinces Seneca not to outright kill her for her defiance, but instead to give the viewers a romance to root for.  We get to see just how truly superficial and rigged the Games are, not only for the Tributes in the arena, but later when Seneca is forced to pay the ultimate price for his choices, a scene only alluded to in the second novel.

I expected the love triangle to be understated based on reviews I’d read, and it was, but in a surprisingly good way.  The note Haymitch sends to Katniss with the medicine (“You call that a kiss”) is a simple way to help the audience understand what we learn in the book by having access to Katniss’ thoughts.  She’s caught between liking, distrusting, and play-acting with Peeta.  She understands she needs to play a social game – something beyond her comfort zone — in order to live, and though she’s not sure what she believes about her own feelings for Peeta, or his feelings for her, she goes for it when she kisses him.  While it’s clear to the audience Peeta’s motivations are genuine, its equally clear that Katniss is completely unsure of pretty much everything.  That was perfect except I would have liked a tiny bit more cave time.  I’m a girl after all.

Other musings:

  • I would have liked a little bit more Cinna/Katniss airtime.  Lenny Kravitz is a wonderful, understated yet cool, choice.  He’s nothing like I pictured Cinna when I read the books, but that just shows my meager imagination.  Now I can’t remember what I thought Cinna looked like.
  • I understand the backstory of the mockingjay pin needed to change in order to eliminate a minor character (I never really liked the version in the books anyway), but I think they missed an opportunity to make it even better.  Instead, they traded a lackluster version for another lackluster version.  I do need to go back and watch for moments when the pin is visible to the arena’s cameras as it becomes the symbol of things to come in the next books.  I’m hoping I’ll not be disappointed.
  • Some fans are bothered by the ending.  In the books, Katniss makes it clear to Peeta that she was pretending where their relationship was concerned, but the film’s version was better in my opinion.  Katniss tells Peeta she just wants to forget; he tells her he doesn’t.  That can mean many things.  Forget the horror of the games, forget their affection for each other.  It is open to interpretation in more ways than it was in the books, yet doesn’t leave an annoying taste in my mouth. I still wanted to see what happens next, but I didn’t feel toyed with like I did in the book.
  • I imagined the “cornucopia” to be bigger for some reason.  It seemed tiny in the film.
  • I wish Katniss had said “thanks for the knife” when Clove threw one at her and it lodged in her backpack in the beginning of the games.
  • The limb holding up the Tracker Jacker hive was a little thicker than was necessary.  They could have shaved about a minute from the run-time.
  • The spectacle of the Capitol exceeded my wildest dreams.  Wonderful art direction, set design, costumes, make-up, etc. Bravo!
  • Stanley Tucci as Master of Ceremonies Ceasar Flickerman was pitch-perfect.  I loved the cheesy 60’s gameshow, The Dating Game-style evoked by the colors, set, lighting, and right down to the sound track.
  • Speaking of sound track, I would have liked a bit more of a robust score.  Not too much, but thought it could have been beefier.  Where it was used, it was effective.

For a movie lasting nearly 2.5 hours, I can honestly say I wish it had been longer.  I don’t think anything in the film was unnecessary (aside from taking too long to cut down the Tracker Jacker nest).  Most of my complaints were that there were a few too many cuts, but in the grand scheme of things, these are minor wishes from a Hunger Game’s fanatic.  I have no idea how I’ll survive the 1.5 years until “Catching Fire” comes out in theaters.

Maybe someday I’ll go into a more intellectual discussion of the film/book’s powerful themes, but for now, and in case you’re confused about my bottom line… The film is wonderful.  Go and see it if you haven’t already.  Though, you may want to give the book a try first.

Cheers,

PersephoneK

Comments { 3 }

The Five Most Important Books I Read in 2011

By on February 29, 2012 in Recommended Reading, Ruminations

Before getting too deep into 2012 (ok, we’re a little deep, but I started drafting this a month ago), I wanted to make sure I tell you about some of the most important books I read during 2011, the same year I got a Kindle!

I read many great books as a result of that simple piece of technology and a commitment I made to myself to devote time reading each week.  Reading became more of a therapeutic meditation time for me last year than ever before, especially on beautiful summer weekends where I would bike ride and read by the several small lakes near my house.   I hope to make book reviews a regular part of this blog, since they’re an important part of my path of life.

So, while many books I read last year were fantastic, there were a handful that stuck out as not only enjoyable, but important.  Important, as in, every human should read them, without exception.  Not all of them were written last year, but last year is when I got the chance to read them.  Here are the five books (not in order of importance, but more in order of suggested reading), and some of my brief thoughts about each one:

1)     [easyazon-link asin=”0805091254″ locale=”us”]The Believing Brain, by Michael Shermer[/easyazon-link]

2)     [easyazon-link asin=”1846942721″ locale=”us”]The Religion Virus, by Craig A. James[/easyazon-link]

3)     [easyazon-link asin=”0060859512″ locale=”us”]Misquoting Jesus, by Bart Ehrman[/easyazon-link]

4)     [easyazon-link asin=”B006W3YQTK” locale=”us”]The Moral Landscape, by Sam Harris[/easyazon-link]

5)     [easyazon-link asin=”B005N0KL5G” locale=”us”]Lying, by Sam Harris[/easyazon-link]

 

The Believing Brain, by Michael Shermer simply and clearly explains how humans’ propensity for believing in superstition is driven by an evolutionary need to make quick decisions or end up as food, and how not believing in superstition was probably weeded out of our ancestors.  His story of an early primate who hears a rustling in the high grass having to make a decision about whether he hears a predator or just the wind is a pure genius, yet its a simple way of explaining why we see shadow monsters in the night.  Understanding this evolutionary ingrained intuition is the first step for humanity in moving past basing our decisions and societal structures on that false “patternicty,” as Shermer defines it. People believe their own brains far more than they should, and that has gotten us into a lot of trouble over the millennia.  Shermer nicely sets the foundation to understanding how all man-made myth and superstitions came to be.

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The Religion Virus, by Craig A. James is the next step beyond The Believing Brain, taking why we’re prone to superstition into the reason why religion continues to this day, despite our development of the scientific method, and virtual disproof of most religions that exist today.  Beginning with the history of Yahweh, the God of the Israelites who would develop into the “all powerful” god Jews, Christians and Muslims know today, and then explaining how the meme’s — or stories — of religion stuck with each generation and evolved just as a virus, (or a good joke), does.  James also explains how animism turned into pantheism then to monotheism.  This book erased any doubt I may have had about the historical evolution of the idea of gods and god and did so with personal reflections, historical fact, wonderful metaphors, and brutal clarity.  With my own religious background being that of a Christian, now more than ever I am confounded by my former believing self for not seeing how the god of the old testament is clearly not the god of Christianity.  And if that is true, what among the Abrahamic religions is there to believe in?  Thank goodness, my answer is “nothing supernatural.”

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Misquoting Jesus, by Bart D. Ehrman, dives into the specifics of one of those religious meme’s — the spread of Christianity, and specifically, how the books of the New Testament were written, and altered by regular humans, each with their very human agenda’s, biases, and flaws.  Ehrman explains that there are more mistakes — whether by intention or inattention — than there are words in the New Testament!  Most people know that the books of the new testament were written starting around 30 years after the death of Jesus Christ, and none of the books were written by people who ever had met Jesus, but what’s more astonishing is the idea that the earliest known texts contain more errors and discrepancies than the later versions, primarily because earlier scribes who would hand copy texts were untrained laymen, members of their congregations copying texts in their spare time, while later as Christianity spread, scribes were professional and devoted to accuracy.  Mis-quoting Jesus puts into plain words how the new testament contradicts itself in profound and important ways, and how biblical scholars, including clergy, have known this for at least a couple of centuries, but do not teach these well accepted understandings to the masses.  Beyond the errors, Ehrman outlines the different variations of early Christianity, and how each sect’s disputes with each other and their pursuit of converts impacted what eventually became the winning doctrine, and that the winner may not have been close to what Jesus’ mission actually was about. He proves that this is not some conspiracy theory from modern scientists, but historically supported concepts. The bible does contain significant flaws, and anyone believing current Christian doctrine does so while ignoring truths that in virtually every other area of human study would cause most people to dismiss their devotion to flawed thinking and ideas.

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The Moral Landscape, by Sam Harris, is by far the most important book I’ve ever read in my life.  As a former Christian, one of the things that pained and concerned me as I gravitated towards atheism was how to justify morality without God. I knew there were right and wrong answers, and that misery should be avoided and happiness should be increased, but I couldn’t articulate for myself or my Christian friends how to convey that morality can exist without a higher power dictating what the rules are.  Enter Sam Harris and BAM!  Everything was clear.  Harris doesn’t spend time detailing what behaviors are good or bad, but his main thesis is that there are one or more right ways to live and one or more wrong ways to live.  The right ways are those that maximize human well-being, and the wrong ways are those leading to human misery.  He likens these ways to peaks and valleys on a landscape.  There could be multiple high peaks and multiple routes to take to get to them, just as there are for the valleys.  There doesn’t have to be one right way to live, but Harris takes it a step further to say that morality can be scientifically understood and studied, at least to a point.  Right and wrong can be objective, even if studied through subjective data gathering methods.  There are wrong and right answers to our questions of well-being, whether or not we can ever know them.  It is on this point that I believe he loses many people, but why that is is a mystery to me.  He likens the concept to birds in flight.  Right now, there are a specific, finite number of birds in flight on earth.  There is a right answer to that question.  Whether or not we can know the answer (we can’t), does not change the fact that a specific, correct answer exists.  So it goes with morality, maybe.  Whether we can definitively know the answer does not mean we cannot study the question scientifically.  Everyone knows there is human happiness and there is human suffering. Sometimes it’s difficult to maximize happiness, without causing some suffering.  That is the difficulty of these questions, but that doesn’t mean we should forfeit that responsibility to a deity that makes it his business to watch us suffer rather than clarify such important questions for us.  If Harris left me with one idea, it’s that the single most important goal of our species should be to maximize (all) human well-being and minimize (all) human suffering.  And that responsibility rests within each of us, not with “god.”

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Lying, by Sam Harris and Anika Harris is a lovely conceptual footnote to The Moral Landscape, though not at all a sequel.  It is a short essay more than a book, so you have no excuse to not read it.  It will take you an hour max.  While I’m not sure I completely agree with the thesis, no book has stirred my thinking on a deeply personal level like this one did.  I previously believed that there are times when lying is ok (like not wanting to hurt someone’s feelings).  After reading “Lying” I’m not so sure anymore.  Harris makes a compelling argument for why lying is never good because every single lie erodes the fabric of trust between those involved. Eventually that trust leads to less deep relationships, and eventually all kinds of societal ills.  While not lying may be hard, and even uncomfortable (“no, I never wear that sweater you got me for Christmas, grandma, because its hiddeous.”), it is nonetheless pivotal to human growth and a better society, and better world to try.

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So, there you have it… My list of the most important books I read during 2011.  They took me on a journey of human historical, psychological, and ethical understanding that I wanted to share with you in the hopes that you might have a similar experience and chance to grow as a result.  These authors and their ideas certainly helped me take a few steps closer to being the person I want to be, and part of a society I want to live in.  Since I cannot come close to doing their books justice, I suggest you let them tell you in their own words what they have to say.  Check them out!

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