W. Grey Champion's Blog

 My dear readers, I will no longer be posting to The Weekly here on Blogger, but this blog will remain as an extensive archive of my posts going back many years. Peruse it to catch up on Past Posts from The Weekly, and all the auxiliary sections: In the Courtyard, Dokusan, and loads of poems in  The Carriage Lamp. As I hope you know by now, current posts on From the Moleskine may be seen on my author website. Here is the link: www.wgreychampion.com. Please continue to follow it, and send your email address to receive information about topics.
I set up the blog at least ten years ago, before I retired, and never have found the Google platform "user friendly." If one was not conversant in machine language (html to the cognoscenti), one may as well give it up! Even now when I have begun copying and pasting text to the blog it is appearing as though pasted onto a white sheet - then onto the sepia template. No apparent reason or solution. But as much as I love to write, I find I cannot keep pace with constant revolutions in technology. Thus for the website I turned to my publisher Luminare Press upon release of my latest book, Ruminata . Three books now in publication are described there with links to purchase them. My consultant Melissa was very kind and patient with me as she walked me through editing the blog, and the site she created is wonderfully interactive. You may leave comments, contact me by email - and do add your own email to the short list!
With much gratitude for your readership -
Grey
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 My dear readers, 
You may note above that this blog will now also be appearing on my author website: www.wgreychampion.com. The website was created by my publisher Luminare Press upon release of my latest book, Ruminata. Three books now in publication are described there with links to purchase them. You may leave comments, contact me by email, and add your own email to the short list. Follow the blog at either site!
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Boiling frogs
Since the death of Fred Hiatt, lodestar of the editorial page at The Washington Post, the depth and relevance of that page have declined, given over as it appears to young people sadly lacking the needed experience or perspicacity. Too often I am finding more interest in the advice columns or Letters from readers. One such letter today, for example, vindicated my essay "Travel: You Can't Get There From Here" in pointing to deregulation as the root cause of airline miseries. The writer, an airline consultant, asserted that deregulation moved the industry toward emphasis on profit and commerce, hence away from its role as a public utility, requiring government oversight. Just as banks are required to have reserves for downturns, airlines once were required to have reserves for unexpected contingencies.

Now slowly the hordes of travelers mobbing airports increase year after year, while the poor souls being crushed must surely put one in mind of boiling frogs. Please refer to the Wikipedia article on that age old metaphor for unexpected guffaws. The truth is, depending on how slowly the temperature is increased, a frog may allow itself to be boiled alive; and the metaphor is often used to warn against the gradual acceptance of the unacceptable. That wonderful fellow, Buttigieg, who heads the transportation department, scolds the airlines for their unacceptable behavior; yet we see with our own eyes that people continue to buy tickets and flock to airports expecting every time to board a plane irrespective of past experience. The frogs are not jumping - they are accustomed to the heat. 

Global warming is a far more dangerous example, notwithstanding the naive idea that people would be sufficiently alarmed to take mitigating action before it was too late. No indeed! Regardless of how often their home has been blown away, flooded, burned to the ground, or sucked up in a tornado, they vow to rebuild, even lauded for their tenacity. The average person must live to a ripe old age even to notice that storms are more frequent and more damaging. His grandchildren will have grown used to it.

 The Christmas season in a word has been taxing, more so than ever, pre or post pandemic: physically, with temperatures so low Anna and I could not even meet in the courtyard to commiserate; and mentally as the highly infectious cloud of viruses hung over renewed expectations of jolly gatherings, said cloud notwithstanding. Here in the States, despite rising respiratory infections and deaths, vaccination rates are underwhelming, especially for the booster shots and even among vulnerable populations. Most of the old people I see have apparently decided to dance with the Grim Reaper, back to claim those he missed! Surely statisticians could tell us how long it will be before every soul in our 300+ million population has been touched by a personal loss to covid.

For myself, I am having a natural if poignant nostalgia for Christmas in the old country, after settling for Zoom calls these several years. I would dearly love to see the home farm, my nephew and family, my old friend who would meet me in Matlock on Christmas for dinner at High Tor, where I was assured a room for the night. Many of the airlines have recouped to some degree; but still come accounts of airports inundated with hordes of stranded passengers, and a new word is coined - flightmare.

Aside from Christian origins of the day - the story of legend, its observance variously practiced over the centuries and around the world, the spirit of giving it intends to engenderer, discussed here recently - the possibility of ever again enjoying that Dickensian Christmas glorified by the inestimable fellow in both his personal and his literary lives, is as dead as Jacob Marley. Why then do we continue to burden ourselves with this expectation?

Upon years of reflection, I have come to believe we do not make Christmas for ourselves but for others. Sadly we mostly fail in this attempt with the result that no one, excepting children, is made merry. The saving grace, however? Christmas at least hauls us out of our rut for a stirrup cup of wassail before we are plunged into the long, cold winter!

 In  the Sherlock Holmes tale called "The Naval Treaty," the famed detective, reflecting upon the bloom of a moss rose, lapses into the following reverie, "There is nothing in which deduction is so necessary as in religion. It can be built up as an exact science by the reasoner." He then offers the beauty of flowers as assurance of the goodness of Providence. It is an odd interruption of the text, and screen writers wanted to omit it from the television version, but Jeremy Brett, the star, insisted it remain. Apart from Conan Doyle's embrace of spiritualism later in life, I wonder if this passage reveals some familiarity with Spinoza, that meticulous reasoner and much maligned Jew of the seventeenth century. 

My friend Anna and I, while not scholars of Enlightenment philosophers, have been discussing Spinoza lately, as he seems to have been the most truly enlightened of them. The strictures of the Abrahamic religions forced even the greatest of Western minds to go to tortuous lengths to protect their beliefs. Thus Spinoza was condemned as an atheist, though denying the charge. He reasoned that God exists, not as a separate being, but as one with his creation. In some ways his writings prefigure modern science, for example the agency of nature to create itself through evolution. To him nature and God were synonymous. But science has of course gone much further in demonstrating the essence of matter to be void. Therein lies the basic problem: Sir Arthur again, in "The Cardboard Box,"What is the meaning of it, Watson? What object is served by this circle of misery, violence, and fear? It must tend to some end, or else our universe is ruled by chance, and that is unthinkable."

When I came upon the teachings of Zen master Suzuki, I gave up the baroque convolutions of Western philosophy, in the realization that much deeper layers of reality come to us neither by science nor reason, but through revelation. Of course God is not a being, nor are any one of us, but what then makes us human? What gives us those spiritual qualities we call "Godlike"? I have never found this spelled out in Buddhist literature, but I would warrant it may be inferred in Spinoza's Ethics: That human capacity of spirit, the Godlike traits, belong to the universal mind, the ultimate reality. It stands to reason.

 Well hasn't that poor boy Elon stirred up a hornet's nest by acquiring that enormously popular, arbitrarily influential Twitter app? To start with, who could have imagined a site with a tiny bird as an icon, upon which users are said to "tweet," would be considered anything but fanciful? And yet somehow those millions of tweeting, tiny birds have brought us to the verge of a very deep philosophical conundrum, i.e. the nature of "reality." What is truth, indeed, what is fact and what fiction? Not since the meticulous Rationalism of Spinoza has the issue been so contentious. But reality is layered, with the perceptible being uppermost. We trust our perceptions; seeing is believing. Science augments our perceptions with the microscope and the telescope. These we also trust, and on these layers Newtonian laws still hold. The quantum layer defies these laws, and the "weirdness" of quanta breaks with our logical brains. Yet well before this layer those who failed high school science, thus having no faith in the scientific method, will surely fail the true-false Twitter exam as well, and are easily recruited into the torch and pitchfork army.

In today's era of robots and AI making it so easy to manipulate our perceptions of reality, and the subtlety of propaganda to inflame tribal passions, the idea that social media like Twitter should be the go-to place to spread outright lies is downright pernicious. Unless one is posting about an experiment at the Large Hadron Supercollider, the plain facts about important issues are available at that layer of reality where we live out our lives, and that includes advances in science that have held up to careful scrutiny, like the effects and efficacy of vaccines. Perhaps before he goes any further, Master Elon should study the wiki method utilized by Jimmy Wales, founder of Wikipedia. There you have an amazing resource of knowledge, curated by volunteers expert in the subject article. Really, Musk, your staff can call out the lies!

In the preface to my new book, Ruminata, recently released, I remark upon the unfortunate circumstance of the young generation's dismissiveness of the old, expressing my hope that some among them may read my essays with a more open mind. In the tribal societies, through which we evolved over the great expanse of our history and prehistory, a great strength of the small kinship group was the reverence for elders, precisely because they were the store of knowledge and experience needed for survival. The unbecoming arrogance of many young people today, so obvious in the media which they dominate, is not only graceless but dangerous. By no means do I disparage the entire cohort, among whom are as many who are thoughtful, worthy people. May they be the ones to stand for public office in the near future!

In his monthly reflection, which appears in the Parish Magazine, the Reverend Mark Bratton, rector of Saint John the Baptist Church in Berkswell, England, wrote recently in defense of certain Biblical passages that seem to justify the practice of slavery. In the piece he uses the term "presentism," an attitude toward the past dominated by present day ideas. This is the very pitfall for a young generation that I would characterize as dangerous, when ignorant of history they have not its context, causing them to condemn the primitive past for being primitive and weighing it against their own righteous views. Should we not rather celebrate the progress of mankind toward greater tolerance and humanity?

What is lost in such a blinkered view is a legitimate appreciation of what in modern times we yet owe the past, even the primitive past. The Reverend Doctor Bratton points to Apostle Paul's letter to the Ephesians, which addresses common relationships including master and slave, advising obedience. In other writings, Paul strongly decries slavery, but in the context of Imperial Rome the fate of a disobedient slave could well have been crucifixion. Do we condemn Saint Paul, and change the name of that London cathedral? Do we banish the name of Christopher Columbus, who sailed across the Atlantic Ocean with three small wooden boats expecting to find India? Ridiculous, yet an ironic victory for all those who still believe the earth is flat.

 In my first book, Conjuring Archangel, and based on my conviction that the ancient rabbi Jesus was a closet Buddhist, the wondrously wise and generous Archangel tells his disciple Anna a tale of the virgin birth which he heard from Tibetan sources. Referring to Jesus as "the bodhisattva of the unfortunate venue," he relates that this intensely compassionate spirit was precipitate in his reincarnation, choosing for his mother the woman Mary without realizing she not only was not pregnant, she was still a virgin. Long story short, messenger angels had to be sent, and thereafter for millennia the birth of this remarkable being has been celebrated. Whatever it was he embodied, we surely must count the compassionate heart of Buddhism.

My latest book, Ruminata, recently released, includes an essay called "Potlatch: The Culture of Gifts," potlatch being a tribal practice requiring precise equivalence of gift exchange. Notable among tribes of the Pacific Northwest, it might involve rival chieftains each attempting to bankrupt the other. My essay points to the tawdry commercialization of Christmas that has us weighing the value not only of material items but also the relationships with which we attempt to match them. In other words, as potlatch Christmas becomes travesty, a grotesque imitation of the goodwill intended. But we cannot help ourselves.

If in the exchange of Christmas presents we find a gift received falls short of the one given, a suspicion arises, unspoken surely and perhaps unconscious, that somehow we have fallen in that person's esteem. On the other hand, if our own gift falls short, we sense alarm that next year a greater expectation could bankrupt us in the potlatch. For the true spirit of giving, reread "The Gift" by O. Henry, famed for his ironical endings. A poor young man struggling to find a Christmas gift for his young wife, sells his watch to buy hair combs, while she in like spirit sells her hair to buy him a watch chain. The essence, you see, is sacrifice. 

 I am often struck by the unhappy destiny awaiting a creative young person in the modern world. In childhood they will demonstrate a gift of some kind: they are musical, or athletic, or have a flair for drama; and their education and training will go off in that particular direction, in the tacit assumption that as an adult they will sustain themselves in that arena. In reality, most will eventually become teachers or coaches unless they end up in a fast food joint or a desk job.

It is hard to fathom why a society would perpetuate such cruelty, producing a plethora of concert level violinists, for example, at a time when orchestras and their audiences are shrinking. But writing, it seems to me, has become the most common pitfall. Universities churn out multitudes of young writers, each a unique individual having something to say and wanting to be heard. They go forth proclaiming their uniqueness in lyrical prose and prosaic poetry, only to face the hard truth that every creature born is just as unique and that in the literary world the lightning bolt of stardom strikes but few. The lucky ones might get by writing crime or romance novels, religious tracts, children's books or cookbooks, the only sorts of things of interest to most other people - and the rest will become teachers. 

Is there any conceivable way then for the talented person growing up in this world to preserve that creativity from being obliterated? Along with a day job, that person must be able to continue expressing that creativity even knowing it will receive no attention. Take your fiddle outside to the roof, like Tevye. Write for future archeologists, who just might unearth your manuscript as they mine the ruins of our civilization. Write because you are a writer.

 Results of the election will not be certain for awhile, and surely there has been enough ranting and raving on the subject anyway. Unfortunately, the process tends to expose the truth that we may do what we will, to paraphrase Einstein, but we do not will what we will, that being driven by forces in our nature, in this case the tribal mindset.

If we live to old age, we realize the slow loss of control that attends a weakening body. With spinal problems we turn to a cane or walker. With arthritis we no longer can do many things for which we once could use our bare hands, but must reach for that most valuable of tools, a pliers. Along with such disabilities many things escape our control: the lawn, the shrubs, the trees, the stacks of books and papers, expired medications, neglected foodstuffs that draw the indomitable pantry moth. And then one day a young descendent enters the house and is heard to remark, "It's time for the bulldozers!"

Here we must observe that to lose control is a deep fear triggering, depending on the degree, the survival instinct in any living creature; and beyond anyone's control is the loss of one's peers in old age, after watching as each declines, sickens, and dies. Thus slowly with discernment and percipience we begin to feel the sense of that final loss of control, when "the angel with his darker draught draws up to thee." 

As early results from the elections trickle in, there are rays of hope that restore my faith in the American electorate, which may be awakening to the dangers of stoking the tribal instincts. Only through the freedom to vote may the will of the people be known, but today around the world we witness new maneuvers in the authoritarian playbook, even in America, to subvert that will. Surely our greatest fear should not be death, but the far greater loss of subjugation.

 Halloween is past but with elections a week off, monsters and devils linger here, scarcely deterred by All Saint's Day. Indeed the fiery rhetoric rivals a Guy Fawkes bonfire. Glad as I might be to be rid of the acrimonious political ads, as I sit in the courtyard with my friend Anna relishing the autumn weather, I have a sense that we are rearranging the deck chairs on the Titanic, to exploit that overused analogy. But what are we to do, Cassandra and I? The assembled essays in my new book, Ruminata, address the very problems that will prevent its receiving attention. The essay "Communication" decries the internet as a Tower of Babel where a cacophony of innumerable voices compete for their unintelligible screams to be heard. "Decline and Fall" has the subtitle, "The Tribal Mindset," finding which to be inherent in human nature and exposed in times of crisis and instability to the detriment of civilizations throughout human history. Foremost of all, the first essay in the book, "The Sexual Theory of Everything," explains why homo sapiens, with the Devil's own brain allowing him to escape the laws of nature, remains forever bound to the primal one. Alike with all other animals he will never refrain from reproducing at will, indeed polluting the planet to the extent of eliminating all life forms.

These problems are fundamentally irremediable because if mankind is irrational and at the same time has escaped the mill wheels of natural selection, he cannot evolve. But he will escape - into fiction, where we are replaced by robots, or a miracle of eugenics gets the better of Mother Nature. Our best hope is to go deeper to the ultimate reality - the Buddhist dharma. That essay is also in my book. 

As for Anna and I, we will be in the courtyard awaiting the last call to the lifeboats...