POSTED: No Trespassing!

Judaism also resists the government taking control over more and more of a society because of its commitment to people owning property rather than a society owning property. One of the very few exceptions to this rule was the Jerusalem Temple that was, of course, owned by no individual Jew. Otherwise, much religious emphasis is placed upon people owning property, and much care is exercised to protect people from threats to that ownership.

It should be understood that the Jewish emphasis on private property is a religious manifestation of a people's relationship with their God and the moral law. Along with so many other aspects of Jewish life, this one also is intended to affirm the Genesis account of creation, whose central thesis is that we humans are qualitatively different from animals. No animal owns property. To be sure, many animals exhibit a territorial imperative. For instance, lions and elephants both mark their territories to let others know they claim dominance over that area. However, this is not ownership. Lions do not object to elephants in their territory, and they depend on deer ignoring those border markings. If all animals respected lions' "ownership" of an area and kept out, lunch with the lions would be an unusual event.

The Book of Genesis, however, details the mechanism by which humans can own land. Abraham's purchase of a burial site for Sarah is presented in such detail precisely to familiarize Abraham's descendants with the methodology by which humans can own land. This methodology turned out to be a startlingly novel concept, not only to Ephron and the men of Chet, but also to far more recent nations and races that knew nothing of land ownership by people. Yet Judaism is clear that God's plan for humanity calls for people to own land. This is partially on account of God's desire for us to recognize ourselves to be different creatures from animals, and partially on account of God's desire that we live among one another and interact with one another. Economic interaction and its attendant rewards of wealth are part of God's plan to ensure that the children of God do constantly interact with one another for mutual benefit. Land ownership helps to ensure this dynamic.

--pages 28-29

I'm a sucker for any argument supporting the concept of private property, so I find plenty to like here. However, I'm not sure the authors really nailed these concepts like they did others. For example, exactly how does land ownership "ensure that the children of god do constantly interact with another for mutual benefit"? Mind you, I think it probably does, but the means are not obvious. In fact, when I own land, I want to protect it and enhance its value and productivity. So I will fence it, fight erosion, plant valuable and/or beneficial crops, trees and plants, attempt to cultivate the right conditions for suitable wildlife, and try to prevent pollution and corruption of the property, either from my own sources or from neighboring sources. If I'm smart, I will also cultivate good relationships with my neighboring landowners, cooperating with them whenever possible and imposing on their good will as little as possible. So, it's a good argument, but the authors didn't really spell it out.

The point about animals not owning land is a little forced. Sure, the lion doesn't exclude deer from his territory. But many (if not most) humans don't exclude deer or other non-harmful animals from their property either. To be sure, there are exceptions -- people go to great lengths to exclude deer, squirrels, insects, dogs, rats and rabbits where these animals are pests because of their tendency to eat ornamental flowers and shrubs, garden produce, and automobile wiring (take my word for it!). Plus some of them dig ugly holes in places where holes aren't needed. So point taken, but it just seems like they are straining a bit to push the human/animal distinction here.

Shipwreck!

It's a metaphor, see?

A Thoughtful Argument for a Hamburger

A religious Jew may choose to restrict his diet to vegetables during the week, but come Saturday and most holidays, he is to eat some meat as a religious obligation. The reason for this is that God created a world of hierarchy. Minerals are consumed by a higher life form, namely plants. Animals survive by consuming plants, while the highest life form of all, humans, eat animals. It is interesting to note that those animals permissible to Jews as food are animals that eat only plants. In other words, those animals that violate the hierarchical order, such as wolves and bears, may not be eaten by Jews. Now, for a Jew to attempt to improve on God's definition of morality by refraining from eating any meat on moral grounds is another way of announcing that one is nothing more than an animal oneself. Animals are supposed to eat only plant life. Thus, a Jew who eats only vegetables is announcing himself to be a very good animal. Once each week, God demands of his people that they leave the moral refuge of vegetarianism. We are then forced to confront the reality that an animal died to provide our meal. That places an obligation upon us to be worthy of the sacrifice. Now, for an animal to die for no reason other than to provide meat for another animal is less than ideal. Thus, the plundering animal is regarded as non-kosher, or not fully worthy of being eaten by Jews. However, the Jew who eats meat on a regular basis knows that he must conduct himself in a manner that makes his food's sacrifice morally justified. He is obligated to be a human, not merely another animal.

--pages 22-23.

The Crowded Temple

How exactly does raising the right kind of people help to solve the problem of too many people? The Talmud relates that during the pilgrimage festivals, the Jerusalem Temple was so crowded that people barely had room to stand. However, during the period of the service that called for worshippers to prostrate themselves upon their knees on the floor, there was mysteriously sufficient room. This is, indeed, a mysterious account since everyone knows that people on their knees require more floor space than people standing erect. During the part of the service when people were on their knees, conditions should have been more, not less, crowded than when the people were standing. The traditional explanation is that standing erect is a metaphor for a condition of arrogant self-absorbtion. Prostration is a metaphor for humility and awareness of others. Finally, the Temple itself is depicted in the Torah as an almost mathematical model of the world. It is not hard to grasp the truth of this message: If a population consists of humble people constantly aware of one another, it never feels crowded. However, is a population finds itself surrounded by even a few arrogant and self-centered individuals, conditions feel overcrowded. Overpopulation is not a question of numbers or objectively measurable figures such as people per square mile. Instead, it is a question of whether people feel oppressed by the overwhelming presence of others. This has more to do with standards of civility and behavior than with actual population numbers. Most of us would feel less pressured and more comfortable on the crowded streets of Hong Kong or Tokyo than we would on a lonely urban alley in New York City. What we really have is not a population problem, but a perception of a population problem -- a problem that results not simply from too many people, but from too many people arrogantly and thoughtlessly impressing their presence upon others. Rather than reducing the number of people, we need to reduce the incidence of selfish behavior that oppresses others and to increase the amount of creative behavior that meets others' needs.

--pages 19-20.

This is a powerfully different way of thinking about overpopulation. Importantly, it might be an argument that would penetrate the thinking of the crowded planet hand wringers in a way those everybody-on-earth-could-live-in-Texas-and-have-plenty-of-room arguments don't.

Full disclosure concerning my own cynicism: the first time I read the part about the crowded temple, I assumed that many of the people who were present for the standing part of the service had just slipped out before the humility-inducing kneeling part began. I had to re-read the passage to realize that's not what was happening!

Reduce! Reuse! Recycle!

Sometimes I get books in the mail that I didn't ask anyone to send me. Some of them are pretty crazy. But this one was really, really good. For years I have lamented the pagan roots of most of the ideas animating the contemporary "environmentalist" juggernaut, but without any real notion of how to combat it effectively. Sure, I have some books about "Christian stewardship" of the environment, and some of them are actually quite good, though sadly unread and unappreciated. But here is a very ecumenical ("Jewish, Catholic and Protestant"!) but still hard-nosed (a tough combination to pull off) collection of essays and position papers on Torah- and Bible-based ways of thinking about the creation and our duty to care for and enhance it. Unfortunately the video that came with it was not nearly as compelling -- it was mostly aimed at conservative evangelical types who are already uncomfortable with environmentalism but don't really know why. A noble purpose, to be sure, but not exactly on the cutting edge of cultural progress.

Perhaps because of my unfamiliarity with Torah-based (as opposed to Bible-based) ways of thinking, I found the Jewish contributions the most enlightening, and I'll have several quotes from them over the next few days.

Herewith, the first, dealing with a Torah-friendly way of thinking about the "problem" of "overpopulation":

Is there a Torah approach to the so-called "population bomb"? Naturally, the proper approach is the balanced middle path. We should not ignore the problem, but neither should we precipitate chaos today in a foolhardy attempt to ward off a distant threat, one whose outlines are still dim and vague. What is this mysterious middle path? To discover it, we need to review our fundamental beliefs about whether a human being really is a consumer or a creator. If man is merely a consumer, then, obviously, the fewer, the better. If, however, man is a creator, then, equally obviously, the more, the merrier. And the answer is not "both." That would settle nothing. What are we asking is whether humans create more than they consume or consume more than they create. The Torah answers its own question: Humans can be either consumers or creators. This is quite a different answer from saying "both."

The Torah-true answer is that we can raise children to be either consumers or creators. If we raise them as if they were young animals, they will grow into animals -- basically consumers who are able to work like horses, but never with the capacity to truly create. In order to achieve that ability in our children, we have to raise them in the image of the ultimate Creator. That means imparting to them a sense of limits, an awareness of what is right and what is wrong. Only animals have finite needs. Humans, touched as they are by the finger of the Infinite Divine, have infinite wants. Children have to be taught that every want will demand a choice and a sacrifice, and that each of us must responsibly steward what we have been given and what we have earned. Children deserve to know that while we relate to and sympathize with their feelings, we do not expect them to follow those feelings unthinkingly. We expect them to follow their head, not their heart. They should grow into the realization that the world is not necessarily a fair place, but that it does have rules. Knowing those rules is better than whining about fairness. Finally, they should know that life judges us by our performance, not our intentions. Children raised to live by these and other similarly true and enduring principles, are a pleasure to be around.

That's enough for today; tomorrow, a striking example of what the author is talking about.

So . . . Don't Save for Retirement?

Bags of cash are heavy. That's why I prefer American Express Travelers Checks when journeying to the Celestial City!

Take That, Worldly Wisdom!

Well, this one is pretty self explanatory.  Unless, of course, you're a designer of airplanes, fuel efficient automobiles, or backpacking equipment, in which case you favor lightweight materials. Also it's worth noting that, unless you're Roman Catholic, no one takes the position that any of that stuff on the right-hand scale is of equal or greater weight than the Bible anyway.  Folks may act as if creeds, councils, and confessions are of equal or greater worth than the Bible, but they wouldn't assert it as a contradiction to this engraving.

Note that the Bible is not open.  I'm not sure what that means.

Maybe I'm Taking It Out Of Context

See! one has left the holy way divine,
His clothes are soiled, he wallows now with swine;
Alone, the Pilgrim on his pathway speeds,
And leaves th'apostate to his worldly deeds.

But then again . . . .

"A man was going down from Jerusalem to Jericho, when he fell into the hands of robbers. They stripped him of his clothes, beat him and went away, leaving him half dead. A priest happened to be going down the same road, and when he saw the man, he passed by on the other side. So too, a Levite, when he came to the place and saw him, passed by on the other side. But a Samaritan, as he traveled, came where the man was; and when he saw him, he took pity on him. He went to him and bandaged his wounds, pouring on oil and wine. Then he put the man on his own donkey, took him to an inn in Jericho and took care of him. The next day he took out two silver coins and gave them to the innkeeper. 'Look after him,' he said, 'and when I return, I will reimburse you for any extra expense you may have.' "Which of these three do you think was a neighbor to the man who fell into the hands of robbers?" The expert in the law replied, "The one who had mercy on him."

--Jesus, as quoted in Luke 10 (New International Version)

Bigfoot? Really? That's a Little Disappointing

The cynical review:

So, the big comet heading for Earth that must be blown up with a nuclear device to prevent an extinction level event for all humanity . . . turns out to be AN ALIEN SPACESHIP! Wow, didn't see that one coming. Yawn. And then a funny, intelligent probe from a distant machine civilization comes to check things out but gets chased off by trigger happy military-industrial-Dick- Cheney-how-I-learned-to- stop-worrying-and-love- the-bomb types. And then the super-genius British rocket scientist who gets all the ladies has to supernaturally channel the probe from the distant world that wants to destroy humanity so he can mourn the loss of his woman who succumbed to environmental-damage-induced autoimmune disease and hook up with the Japanese astronaut chick and figure out that the aliens were really here half a million years ago to mess with the genes of . . . BIGFOOT -- YES, BIGFOOT -- to accelerate the evolution of a fellow biological race to fight the machines. So this book is pretty much Armageddon meets Deep Impact meets The Matrix meets Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow meets Bigfoot, with an old Asian guy from Karate Kid thrown in for . . . some reason I wasn't too sure of. So pretty boring overall.

Less cynical, more honest review:

The wasn't a great sci-fi novel, but it was interesting to read as a period piece, published as it was in the early 1970s. An awful lot of bad-to-decent movies have been made out of some of the ideas thrown around in this story. I'm sure some of these ideas weren't original to this novel, but they would have had a lot less currency when Benford was writing, so you have to give credit to him for that. The use of Bigfoot -- YES, BIGFOOT -- as a plot device was unfortunate, but it was the 1970s after all, when my grade school library had books about Bigfoot. I know, because I checked them out. And read them. And believed in Bigfoot. Which is why it was disappointing when I learned sometime within the last couple of years that Bigfoot was a total fake, even that film of the large, hairy creature walking away from the camera (a film that is mentioned in this novel, by the way).

Benford has continued writing in the thirty-odd years since and I think has some pretty good stuff out there; I'm just starting to look into his work. I'll let you know if he got better.

Under the Mountain Sci-Fi Club Rating: ** (out of five)

The Unity of Faith (With Hand Tinting)

Note the mask of the world still being trampled underfoot by Truth (see previous post). Yes, I know that's so we can identify Truth, just like in the old paintings of saints, but it also reminds me of someone coming out of the bathroom with toilet paper stuck to her shoe.

The Truth? You Can't Handle the Truth!

Here we have a portrait of Truth. Make sure you note the oh-so-subtle symbolism, which is helpfully explained by the accompanying poem in case you missed it:

Her right hand holds the faithful mirror clear,
Where all things open as the light appear:
Her left, upon the sacred page reclines,
Where unadulterate truth resplendent shines;

Well, you get the idea. The little thing under her feet might make you think that Truth is a harsh critic of the dramatic arts, but not to worry -- it's just the "world's false mask" that she is "trampl[ing] down with scorn". And that's her temple in the background, "standing forth reflecting in the silvery stream." I hear it has granite countertops and a fantastic media room!

The Word Made Fresh

It's the middle of the the nineteenth century. You desperately want to get your religious point across. Your sermons don't seem to be doing the trick, or at least they don't get disseminated far enough in this age before MP3s, blogs, cassette tapes or even a decent sound system. What to do? What to do?

Well, you could put your religious ideas to bad, maudlin poetry and illustrate them with naive allegorical engravings, some hand-colored to be sure no one misses the point. Infuse the whole thing with a good dose of pietistic legalism and you'll have a work that will stand for the ages. Or at least entertain suspicious, cynical types like me 150 years later.

The two colored engravings above are the title page sequence illustrations. I really like the one showing the sinner being rescued from drowning by the angel with the lifeline. It reminds me of the analogy a young woman used to explain Calvinistic predestination to me in college. "You might think of us as drowning in the ocean, and the Holy Spirit is throwing us a life preserver that we have to grab on to," she said. "That's how most American evangelicals think of the gospel -- as a life preserver that gets thrown out and you have to grab on to it and be saved. But really the Bible teaches that sinners are dead spiritually; they aren't treading water about to drown, they are already drowned and sitting on the bottom of the ocean, and the Spirit has to breathe new life into them for them to be able to accept the gospel."

I eventually saw her point theologically, but even she would have to admit that it would be much harder to illustrate the breathing-life-into-the- dead-at-the-bottom-of-the-ocean-thing than the version I held to at the time.

You Can Take My Gun When You Pry It . . . .

Every once in a great while, the U.S. Supreme Court gets one right, and spectacularly so. I've been a sometime student of Second Amendment law for about 15 years, so it was nice to see this decision come a few weeks ago after so many years of waiting. It may have been another 5-4 vote, but at least it's finally official -- the Second Amendment protects an INDIVIDUAL'S right to "keep and bear arms" for self defense, not merely members of the National Guard. This is a really big, historically significant event. And Justice Scalia's opinion is so thorough and well reasoned that it's likely to stand as the definitive analysis of the question for decades to come.

It's impossible to do justice to the 64-page majority opinion in a blog post (though the whole think is really worth reading even for those generally unfamiliar with the U.S. court system), but I'll attempt to give at least a brief summary of the main argument:

Pro-gunners: The Second Amendment says the people need to be armed so that the militia, which traditionally included all able-bodied men between 18 and 45, can be called upon to resist tyranny and invasion.

Anti-gunners: No, the Second Amendment protects the collective right of the people to defend itself through the National Guard only. If you're not in the guard, the Second Amendment offers no protection whatsoever for gun owners as such. And in any case, when the Second Amendment was written, "guns" were single-shot muskets; now that the world is so different the Second Amendment is a historical irrelevance.

Pro-gunners: We have all the scholarship and history on our side, but more importantly we have five votes and you only have four. We win!

It's difficult to pick colorful excerpts from constitutional law opinions that don't seem out of context, but Justice Scalia came through for us:

Besides ignoring the historical reality that the Second Amendment was not intended to lay down a "novel principl[e]" but rather codified a right "inherited from our English ancestors," . . . [the anti-gunners'] interpretation does not even achieve the narrower purpose that prompted codification of the right. If, as they believe, the Second Amendment right is no more than the right to keep and use weapons as a member of an organized militia, . . . if, that is, the organized militia is the sole institutional beneficiary of the Second Amendment's guarantee -- it does not assure the existence of a "citizens' militia" as a safeguard against tyranny. For Congress retains plenary authority to organize the militia, which must include the authority to say who will belong to the organized force. That is why the first Militia Act's requirement that only whites enroll caused States to amend their militia laws to exclude free blacks. . . . Thus, if [the anti-gunners] are correct, the Second Amendment protects citizens' right to use a gun in an organization from which Congress has plenary authority to exclude them. It guarantees a select militia of the sort the Stuart kings found useful, but not the people's militia that was the concern of the founding generation.

--slip op. at 27.

And so falls the District of Columbia's handgun band at long last.