In praise of excellence

As we approach Labor Day weekend, I am thinking about all of the hogwash we have been subjected to about “serving mankind.” I am asking: “Who is it that really serves mankind?” My answer is this: Every person who daily labors to the best of his/her ability, with honesty, integrity, skill, competency and excellence is serving mankind as a living example.

Federal Judge Learned Hand, one of my heroes, had no superior in the jurisprudence of the English speaking world. In a commencement address at Bryn Mawr College he said this to the young graduates:

“Observe, I suggest no sense of service. More hypocrisy is poured out to youthful ears in the name of serving mankind than would fill a library of books. I can remember the droning on that score that I had to listen to, that I should become a drudge in some distasteful pursuit to assist a mankind not visibly affected by similar endeavors. If it be selfishness to work on a job one likes, and live as one wants, because one likes it and for no other end, let us accept the odium. I had rather live forever in a company of Don Quixotes, than among a set of the walking dead professing to be solely moved to the betterment of one another. Let us then do our jobs for ourselves and we are in no danger of disserving society.

Though six associations, groups, companies, combinations of societies for the improvement of mankind, with their combined boards of directors, secretaries, stenographers and field agents were to be put into some scale against six honest carpenters who liked their job and did their work with excellence, they would kick the beam as high as Euripides. The six honest, excellent, carpenters may serve as a beacon for all time, and men will love them, but be that as it may, six honest carpenters who do their job with excellence because they like it and for no other reason will save themselves. That is quite enough to ask…”

Those words ring in my head as we’re approaching Labor Day. Read more

The sanitized life

As usual, Mark Twain said it best: “There are people who strictly deprive themselves of each and every eatable, drinkable and smokable which has in any way a shady reputation. They pay this horrible price for health. And health is all they get from it. How strange it is. It is like paying out your whole fortune for a cow that has gone dry.”

The knee-jerk and hysterical people who are on a never-ending crusade to sanitize our lives are not only boring, but lose their case by hyperbolic obsession. It is almost impossible today to read a magazine or newspaper without being overwhelmed by the latest news on what is bad for us to do, eat, drink and smoke. We are told to stay clear of fat, milk, ice cream, butter, cream, sugar, coffee, alcohol, tobacco, red meat, white meat, shell fish…the list would take up the rest of this entire column of all that will destroy us. How I love Julia Child, the great goddess of cooking, who uses real butter and real sugar and when asked the secret of her energy at age 90 replied “red meat and gin.”

Perhaps I would change my habits for the better if only anyone was sure what “better” was, or is. I am told to “walk more”, and yet Arnold Palmer who has walked five miles a day all of his adult life came down with prostate cancer. I would give up my wine except that I remember “The French Paradox” and the fact that Bertrand Russell sipped about a fifth of bourbon daily and was still strong and productive in his mid-90s, as was Winston Churchill, who not only sipped his bottle of brandy daily but went through a box of expensive cigars, daily.

And I remember that religion, from the Crusades to Northern Ireland, has killed more people than all of the drinkables, smokables and eatables combined. Using statistics, of course, this proves that religion is the most deadly habit of our species. Read more

Viruses of the mind

A child comes into the world, born an atheist as all babies are, and then is quickly indoctrinated with the religious virus of his or her parents and culture. A child through enculturation absorbs the culture of his, or her people. Enculturation is the process by which an individual learns the patterns of the family.

Children, through innocence, believe everything the parents tell them. They believe in the “tooth fairy”…”Santa Claus”…”The Easter bunny”…”witches changing princes into frogs”…”a man being born of a virgin”…”a man who could rise up from the dead”…”walk on water” and so forth. Children, being gullible, are easy prey for mental infections. It is easy for a child’s consciousness to be exploited by a mind virus that is identical in nature to a computer virus or a biological virus.

The helpless young are easy victims of an insidious propaganda regardless of how ignorant or bigoted.

RELIGION IS A CULTURAL ACCIDENT. Children believe what their parents tell them and so follow the religious belief of their parents, or culture. The diety of one’s worship is a product of one’s culture. Catholic nuns do not have visions of the Buddha…nor do Buddhist nuns have visions of Christ.

Religions come with built in guilt mechanisms if the host starts to question. It is like a computer’s warning statements if you try to delete a file needed for its operating system. Fear will usually remain even if guilt is overcome. A woman in my Congregational church in Tacoma, WA had grown up as a Roman Catholic and left to become a Congregationalist. She told me that she often awakened in the night in a cold sweat afraid she was going to be punished for that after death.

In my university class I would tell the students that the only reason they are Christian is due to the fact they were born in the United States to Christian parents. Had they been born in Israel they would be a Jew…in Japan a Buddhist…in India, Hindu…and so forth going through the various religious traditions. I told them they were not Christian because they had studied all the other religions of the world and then chose Christianity. And the only reason they were a Methodist, say, is because they were born into a Methodist home in the United States. They were not Methodist because they had studied all the other Protestant traditions and then chose to be Methodist. In other words, quite simply and factually, they were only an enculturated Methodist Christian.

Another illustration that I would use with my university classes to point out the virus of the mind that infects a young child through their parents’ indoctrination: I would take the last ten class sessions and invite representatives from ten different Christian groups to speak about their “beliefs.” I would usually start with a Christian Science practitioner (who was always the best prepared)..next would be Jehovah Witnesses (who always came in threes)..then Seventh Day Adventists…Mormons…Pentecostals…a Roman Catholic priest…Methodist…Lutheran…Presbyterian..and so forth. They all quoted from the bible to try and justify their beliefs and all called themselves “Christian.” The students soon realized that they were listening to TEN TOTALLY DIFFERENT RELIGIONS. Following their memorized presentations the majority of the speakers fell apart under the penetrating questions of the students. Read more

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