Not Even Not Zen 415: Biomythography - Note 130: Rationalizer Movements

Rationalizer Movements

In the late 1800s, my relatives in the Pond and Light families of Pennsylvania fell for evangelical movements. They believed the world would come to an end in 1869, 1872, 1874, and 1881.  The world kept not ending. They kept believing. Some of them sold off their possessions to fund their local movements. In the early 1900s, they refused to fly in planes because flying was "unnatural" and "against God." They refused telephones as "tools of the devil."

Every religion waxes and wanes with popular movements. None of our families are exempt.

In re-growth cycles, religious leaders often choose scripture passages, even changing them to emphasize popular points. These are winning methods to increase their numbers of followers. Rationalization of old views is a way of keeping religions relevant. It is also, to its critics, morally reprehensible as it involves cherry-picking from established religious tenets. Modern Christianity is already tremendously different from its beginnings as a cult in the Roman Empire. Popular trends accentuate the differences. 

Currently, there is a Christian view of when life begins as stated in the Bible, which is after three breaths. The Biblical view of life beginning with breath seems clear, as it is reinforced in repeated passages in the texts. Even the Book of Genesis highlights the breath of life. It's not a popular view with modern churches because life beginning with breath seems antiquated. To some church leaders, this means there needs to be a movement to rationalize the scriptures in order to remain both socially relevant and popular. 

The current rationalization movement may seem odd because its leaders don't reference the words attributed to their Christ but those words aren't what their modernization is about. Instead, this social movement seems, like all religious rationalizations, to be about reinventing the past and reinterpreting scriptures to suit what's popular. 

Leaders rationalize texts in every religion. All of them must keep up with the times, even when they say they are returning to tradition ('returning to tradition' is another cyclically popular movement). Religions can't help following social trends because, if they don't, they fade away. 

The rationalizer view, as always, involves ignoring unpopular parts of religious texts and finding passages that best suit a modern purpose. The act of picking and choosing becomes the central issue. As seen from the outside, this hardly looks like much of a religious debate but, from within, it is usually a furious one. After all, each argument is about how people should live their lives. The Theravāda, Mahāyāna, and Vajrayāna schools of Buddhism split over points of emphasis, not original teachings. So did the Orthodox and Catholic faiths.  

Even now, the Islamic world faces movements to rationalize parts of their holy texts to accommodate believers who don't live in warm, desert climates and can't always follow an unadjusted lunar calendar. The Buddhist world rationalizes texts saying followers can take no life, not even to eat, because we now understand how plants, mushrooms, and other non-animals are alive and, in some cases, how they demonstrably think and learn. The Buddhist rationalization to 'cause no unnecessary suffering,' seems to me a good adjustment because it's in keeping with the original spirit - but of course not everyone agrees. 

These religious changes are natural and inevitable. The act of reading scripture, itself, lends itself to the act of interpretation. Different portions of text jump out to different readers as people seek confirmation for their views (a part of the process we could do without, maybe, although we're not going to escape it). Insights come differently to each person because we are all individuals with our own unique backgrounds. Reading the same text ends up with different results for everyone. 

It's too bad for my relatives who have fallen for such movements. It's inconvenient for me when I get caught up in our current ones. Rationalization movements, however, are a constant part of human history. They will continue adjusting our religious beliefs for the foreseeable future - for as long as humanity is in need of social consensus.
 

Not Zen 207: Goals and DIrections

Fennec Fox, Wikimedia Commons, Khonstan

Choosing Directions

On the day before she gave birth, a fennec fox dug deeper into the den. She had made her home in a bluff overlooking a dry stream bed. Her older sister lived an hour's trot to the west. When she delivered her pups, the fennec licked them clean to discover they were the color of the desert sands. 

"Beautiful," her mate whispered.

"And hungry," she replied. The four pups cried. She fed them, and then her mate fed her. 

For a week, the fennec stayed home in her den. Her mate brought her meals, morning and afternoon. But one evening, he did not return. What had happened, she didn't know. She was aware her territory included coyotes, wolves, bobcats, jackals, and bison. Any of them could have killed her mate. There had been a rain and a flash flood on the day he left, too. The water could have washed him down the streambed and into foreign territory.

She knew she had to hunt. On the day after her mate had failed to return, she ventured to a colony of cactus mice. They lived under a sequoia. She hovered in the shadows of nearby rocks and watched them. The mice dashed from place to place, aware of her gaze. She found them hard to spot as they made their sprints from hole to hole, cactus to cactus. After a failed attempt to grab one, she gave up and headed home.

In the den, she nursed her pups, aware her milk was running dry,

The next morning, she trotted to where young jerboa lived under a ledge near the stream bed. She heard one or two of them, either of which would have made a meal for her. Again, they failed to show except for a brief flash across the sands, which she missed. She grew impatient and returned home. 

When she got there, she discovered two of her cubs missing.

Frantic, she dashed across the expanse. She tried to track one set of paw prints in the sand, then another. A thought interrupted her panic and she dashed back home to make sure the other two pups still lived. 

"Ah, here you are," she murmured as she nuzzled one of the remaining pair. He cried and crawled forward to nurse. 

Her sister found her with the remaining pups drinking the last of her milk. The older vixen trotted across the stream bed with a lost pup in her mouth. She put it down at the entrance to the burrow.

"This is yours," she said. 

Hardly daring to breathe, the younger fennec clambered to her feet. She advanced to the entrance of the burrow and sniffed her child, now returned to her.

"Has your mate died?" her sister asked.

"I think so," she confessed, although she held out hope. "He has been missing for three days."

"Why have you not gone out to hunt?" The older sister studied her and saw how thin she had gotten and how low on milk. 

The fennec described her attempt at the cactus mice. She told her sister about her trying to hunt the jerboa.

"You didn't stay to catch anything," her sister pointed out. 

"True."

"You didn't even find your children. You traced them only part of the way."

"I feared losing more, yes."

Between them, the formerly-lost pup crawled down from the entrance of the den. He wandered deeper into the shade. He didn't cry for food like his siblings. She realized this was because he had nursed on her sister, earlier. She felt flush with gratitude. Her sister remained stern.

"Your mate has died, probably, and you haven't gone anywhere or done anything about it." The elder fennec made a decision. She stood taller. "My mate and I can help but you must commit to this, too. You've done nothing."

"I meant to hunt. Even now, I could find my other pup, maybe."

"No, you can't do everything at once. That's what you've been trying to do. You must make a choice. And you must choose only one or two things, not everything. Allowing yourself too many directions to try has meant no forward progress at all."

 

Not Even Not Zen 414: Biomythography - Note 128: The House Intercom

The House Intercom

Our house on Black Rock road had an intercom when we moved in. Our neighbors, the Ganleys, put it in with a 1960s style of wiring. At the time, it must have been very modern. Even so, I suspect there was something retro about it even when it gleamed. The control knob and the metal speaker grate were both putty colored. Intercom systems had been around in offices, after all, for thirty years. The Ganleys liked theirs well enough but they decided to build another house for themselves, moved next door, and sold off our place. Eventually, we moved in and inherited the intercom.

My mother caught on right away. She started pressing the intercom button to summon me.

"It's time for chores," she said. "Come to the kitchen."

My father didn't seem to like the system but the rest of us got used it. We kids loved it, at times. My little brother and I pretended to be spies via the intercom. We sent each other coded (ha, ha) messages over the radio. Never mind it didn’t make much sense. We were playing. The intercom was an ever-present walkie-talkie to us. Sometimes we were genuinely spies, too.

"Go up there," I hissed from my bed.

"Why me?"

"Because I've already gone a bunch of times. Mom is getting suspicious."

I would send my brother upstairs to report on what our parents were doing. This was partly to find out dumb things we could have simply asked about, like when dinner might be ready, but partly to slip out of the house without my parents seeing. Then my brother would give me his secret report via the intercom.

“You know I can hear you sending messages about me, right?" my mom told me one time.

“Oh, yeah.” I sat up straight. I had been caught!

As a spy system, the intercom had its drawbacks.

One day, I woke up to music coming over the intercom. It was a 1920s jazz band number with a lot of clarinets. I remember thinking, this is not a bad way to start the morning. I assumed my father had snuck a radio into my room. I tracked the sound to the intercom speaker and felt confused for a few minutes. When I got upstairs, things made more sense.

My father was standing between the dining room and kitchen. On the counter next to the kitchen intercom, he had placed one of his smaller radios. He had found a morning jazz broadcast on it. Normally, big band era music bothered me. The tunes seemed slow, overly simple, and even the lyrics got boring. Sometimes, though, the same broadcasts would insert a hot jazz age number in the playlist. This was one of those.

"What do you think?" he asked.

"It's nice," I admitted. It was dangerous to admit I liked anything. My father would use it as permission to repeat it endlessly, sometimes in the worst variations possible. (I admitted liking 'Tie Me Kangaroo Down' and it resulted in four years of 'Three Little Fishies' on my father's theory they were basically the same thing.) That came true this time, too, as for five days running we woke up to radio broadcasts on the intercom. Eventually, my mother spoke to my father about it.

A few months later, my father got interested in the intercom one more time. He heard me and my brothers playing. When he took the session over, he insisted I do an Abbot and Costello routine with him.

Me, prompted by my father: "Nicknames, nicknames. I’m supposed to say nicknames. Now, on the team we have Who's on first, What's on second, I Don't Know is on third."

My dad, gleefully : "That's what I want to find out. I want you to tell me the names of the fellows on the team."

Me: "I'm telling you. Who’s on …"

My dad, interrupting to say my lines, which are Abbot's lines: "Who's on first, What's on second, I Don't Know is on third."

My dad as Costello again: "You know the fellows' names?"

Me: "Yes, I know this, dad."

Dad as Costello again: "Well, then who's playing first?

Me: "Who. I mean, Yes."

Dad: "The fellow's name on first base."

Me: "Who is on first."

Dad: "Yeah, who is the fellow playing first base?"

Me, getting tired and trying to sound like an owl: "Hoo. Hoo."

Dad: "Hah!"

He had heard the routine hundreds of times and memorized most of it. Heck, he'd subjected me to it so much I'd memorized most of it against my will. And yet it still made him laugh. We could never go more than halfway through the routine without him stopping it with his laughter or him wanting to redo some part of our sketch to make it better. It was the most fun he ever got out of the intercom.

A few years after we moved in, static started to appear on the line. The power started to fade. Eventually, the system didn't work at all. Finally, during a remodeling effort, my parents covered up most the intercom speakers with paneling or backsplash tiles.

Not Even Not Zen 413: Biomythography - Note 127: Laundry Chutes

Laundry Chutes

My parents didn't have a laundry chute in their house. We experienced our indoor slides through the grace of my Aunt Jenny. By 'we' I mean me and my younger brother. We had access to her slide, or at least our cousins did. I wanted to try it so much I may have peed my pants a little while thinking about it. My parents didn't care.

As soon as we arrived to see my aunt's new home, I heard from my cousins about how great it was to play on the indoor slide. The metal ducting led down to a basket in the laundry room. When my Aunt Jenny gave her brother and the rest of us a tour, we followed her to every room, to the bathrooms, even to the attic. Jenny had a sparkling smile, great perfume, and the warm manners of a natural hostess. Her dark, auburn hair was beautiful. Everything she showed us was beautiful. A couple of my cousins lived in the attic and I envied the huge and weirdly segmented space they had. But the only place where I stopped and sighed was the tan-brown flip door to the laundry chute. I think the adults noticed.

After the tour, my cousin Annie took me aside.

"We can't play in the laundry chute while guests are here," she told me. "My momma says."

Her younger brother, Gary, nodded. He had heard the same orders. Gary was my age and one of my best friends. Annie was the voice of wisdom to us both. I slumped in disappointment. One of my older cousins, Bobby, was standing nearby. He saw my reaction.

"Maybe when the adults all go outside," he allowed.

"They might smoke on the back patio." Annie added thoughtfully. She was a rule-keeper. However, she was sharp about how adults worked.

Even when my understanding was limited, I knew enough to realize Annie was the best guide I had to the ineffable world of social rules. If she said grown-ups wouldn't care about us using the laundry chute if we didn't bother them about it, then she was right.

Although the adults did eventually walk out onto the patio to smoke, we didn't get to use the slide on our first visit to Aunt Jenny. The timing didn't work out. I got to romp around the house with Gary, though, so I wasn't too disappointed. Plus we played board games with my older cousins, who were understanding about my age and lack of understanding, and hence they were fun. As we left their house, I closed my eyes. In my car seat, I pictured myself next time, sliding down the inside of Aunt Jenny's house. The idea burned me so much I felt it in my arms and belly.  

But we didn't even get to look at the laundry chute in our second, brief visit. We had to follow a grown-up agenda. It was our third trip when, finally, we were granted sleepover privileges. The adults wanted to do their unknowable (or just unmemorable) things, whatever they were. I wanted to play with Gary, maybe Annie, maybe even Bobby or Jim or the neighborhood kids. With luck, we could read comic books at night. I'd almost forgotten about the slide.

In the morning after the sleepover, the adults abruptly drove off. They wanted breakfast out. Gary was the first to see the opportunity.

"Their car just pulled out of the driveway," he whispered as he approached me in the hall. Even when he was trying to be sly and conspiratorial, Gary had a wistful, abstracted smile. He was already looking forward to something. "We could slide down to the laundry for a while."

Gary organized it, so he went first. He laughed when he hit the basket in the basement garage. He clambered out, made some unseen adjustments, and called to me up through the ductwork.

"Okay, it's your turn!"

As I scrambled in, I held my breath. The space was smaller than I'd realized. The slide down shocked me. The laundry chute ductwork was big enough - and it was fast - but this was the first time I'd descended in pitch darkness. It was also my first experience with claustrophobia in a slide. The thrill of fear lasted a couple seconds. I popped out into the bright lights of the garage and plopped into the laundry.

I laughed until I held my sides. They really hurt. The panic, the relief, and then the fun of sailing through the air into the pile of laundry made me hyperventilate.

"Wanna do it again?" Gary asked. He leaned down to check on me.

"Yeah!" My body went from lying down, gasping, to springing up on my toes, ready.

"Let's go!" He raced through the garage side door and into the house. I hopped over the canvas-covered basket wall and thundered after him.

After a couple more trips down the slide, my younger brother discovered us. Naturally, he demanded a turn. And immediately after that, Annie found us all. She didn't approve. In fact, she worried about us, especially about my brother. Nevertheless, she agreed this was the right time to play. The adults had gone. Annie took over playtime and became our slide supervisor. She decided whose turn it was and if the laundry at the bottom was piled deep enough.

"You are not allowed to stop," she told my brother after he playfully halted himself in the middle of the laundry chute. He let himself fall again a few seconds later but the pause worried Annie. She focused on me because it was my turn next. "You, either."

She glared at Gary and her older brother Bobby, who had joined in, on the basis those two had likely given my brother the idea. (She was correct.) I was totally in awe of all three cousins. They didn't just have the best slide in the world; they had advanced themselves to the point where they did tricks while using it.

My younger brother raced up the stairs and announced, "This is the most fun I've had in a house!"

I knew what he meant. I felt like I could have ridden the laundry chute all day and all night. I would have happily slept in the laundry basket at the bottom. It would have been the best way to wake up early and slide again in the morning. We kept taking turns.

"I hear tires," Annie said eventually.

"They're here." Bobby spied out the window. "Hurry up, hurry up!"

Gary had been the last to slide down to the garage. That was good because he knew how to put the laundry basket back where it belonged. My three cousins skittered frantically in different directions all at once.

There's a classic cartoon in which Donald Duck panics and dashes around trying to fix all the messes he's made in a room before he's discovered. This was the same sort of thing but with three ducks quacking and hopping with worry. In the end, though, the cousins succeeded. Mostly under Annie's supervision, they restored the house to a reasonable level of neatness for adult approval.

My brother and I didn't get to visit again for nine months. The next time we arrived, I found the laundry chute door sealed. Amazingly, my aunt and uncle seemed to be working to remove it.

"What happened?" I asked Gary.

"Bobby got stuck." He waved impatiently at the laundry chute door. "It was kind of a big thing. The firemen came."

Gary liked firemen. He loved fire trucks, too, so he should have looked happier. As it turned out, the problem had been bigger than he admitted at first. He didn't want to talk about it. I had to get the details from Annie.

Bobby, my second oldest cousin, had hit a growth spurt. During it, he started to find it hard to fit down the laundry chute. But the laundry chute was fun. He ignored the rug burns (really, metal joint burns) he started to get from the slide. He ignored the two shirt buttons that one trip ripped off him.

After a couple more close calls, he resisted the impulse to go sliding for a month. But then he did it again. And he got stuck.

This was not a matter of getting caught in a cute way. Bobby wasn't left with his legs kicking comically in the air. He didn't get pinched by his fat like Winnie the Pooh and with his head poking out in the hallway at the top of the stairs. No, Bobby had no fat. He was a skinny guy, just grown too big for the ducts, which formed a kind of S shape within the wall. On the day he jammed, he made it through the curve at the top. Where it bent near the bottom, toward the garage, is where he got stuck.

1. Picture a tight space where you can't move your arms or legs.
2. Make it utterly dark.
3. And you're jammed so hard in the stomach and chest, you can barely breathe.

No, it didn't sound like a cute sort of accident. Bobby panicked. He yelled. His brothers tried to rescue him. They lowered knotted towels to let him grab on. They tried to pull him up. No success. They tried to pull him the rest of the way down, instead. Even worse. He jammed tighter.

Bobby's parents arrived and tried to rescue him. Again, they made it a little worse. At least they felt secure enough in their understanding of a nearly dire situation to call the fire department. Even the emergency crew, though, felt flummoxed. While they tried to figure out how to get the job done - cutting into the wall and the duct meant possibly cutting into Bobby - the young teen spent another hour stranded in a dark, narrow space. Eventually, the rescue team poured grease on him and pulled on his feet. Success!

"My momma says it's off limits," Annie concluded. After her story, I wasn't tempted.

Well, I wasn't tempted for about half an hour. My younger brother, the smallest of us at the time, felt the rule shouldn't apply to him. I sort of felt the same. When my brother learned the slide was getting blocked off and removed, he panicked. He begged me, got me to take his side, stomped his feet over the unfairness of the house rules, and appealed to Annie.

Later in the day, I trotted in through the garage taking a break from a game of freeze tag. My little brother popped out of the laundry chute and fell into a mound of laundry.

My mouth opened in outrage. When I advanced on Annie, ready to make my case about how unfair this was, she turned her back and disappeared.

I never did get to try the laundry chute again.

#

Laundry chutes were common features in multi-story homes between 1920 and 1970. Since then, most buildings have done away with them. Although children getting stuck was a factor in putting them out of style, the more important reason turns out to be house fires. Flames travel between floors faster when a house has a laundry chute.

There's no reason modern laundry chutes can't have safety features like their own sprinklers in case of a fire. It's probably easier to make people carry their laundry downstairs, though, so here we are.