Tag: Philosophy

A New Religion

I grew up in a big Catholic family with twenty-three first cousins but by the time I was in eighth grade half my aunts and uncles were divorced. My mom remarried and my stepfather, who was an ordained Methodist minister, turned out to be psycho. My mom threw him out of our house soon after my thirteenth birthday, but the two-year marriage had left me quite damaged. (I am summarizing for people who might not have read my synoptic “From Boom to Bust” thread.) I discovered a new world view in the book, Dune, and found myself embracing humanism. I have talked about reading a lot of sci-fi and philosophy. What I haven’t mentioned much is the television show Star Trek.

Star Trek was airing in prime time when I was six and seven years old. I mentioned sitting with my dad in the big easy chair watching it with him, being terrified yet fascinated. By the time I was thirteen the show was in syndication. We would get home from school and be on our own for several hours before my mom got home from work. I would watch an episode of Star Trek almost every day. Eventually I had seen every episode multiple times. Two of my best friends were also into it: Chuck and Alan. (I have already mentioned both of them. Chuck and I started out in beginning band together in eighth grade, having been friends since kindergarten. Alan was the airplane nerd from the Bay Area whose mother was the school librarian.) Chuck and I were obsessed with the show. We bought and read books about it, including the making of the series and the science upon which it was based. Chuck’s dad was an architect and we both had taken drafting in eighth grade. We set about designing our own starships, drawing up detailed floor plans and doing our best to sketch the shapes of the ships. We got into philosophical arguments about specific episodes (we would rarely agree on anything).

We were all somewhat secretive about it. You have to understand: back in those days Star Trek was just this campy, weird show that had been on for only two seasons. The entirety of the Star Trek “universe” was just some re-runs on afternoon TV. People who were really into it were considered weird nerds. It wasn’t something to brag about. But actually it was a bold and innovative concept which with the potential to become a new religion. Instead of ancient myths involving warring tribes in the Middle East, we are given a mythical future, wherein mankind has overcome our barbaric past by means of science and reason. On the bridge of the Enterprise we have, in addition to the All American Hero captain Kirk, a black woman, a Russian, an Asian, and an Alien working side by side. In 1967, in the middle of the war in Vietnam and the nuclear standoff with the USSR, this was a shocking vision of the future, almost too much to hope for. I grew up doing bomb drills in school. We all figured we might be wiped out in an atomic holocaust at any moment. Star Trek offered a vision of hope for the human future. It wasn’t mere entertainment: it was philosophical speculation of the best kind.

One day in high school this guy who had recently moved to our town from the Bay Area appeared on campus wearing a Star Fleet shirt and Vulcan ears. Everybody was talking about it and laughing. “Have you seen ‘Spock’ yet?” I had to admit he looked pretty good: he even had the haircut. It turns out my friend Alan was hanging out with him. Alan and I never hung out at school together. I would go to his house for sleep-overs and such, but I don’t think anyone really knew we were friends. I’m not sure why, but it felt like something I wanted to keep secret. Anyway, he called me one day and asked if I wanted to go to Sacramento to a Star Trek meeting. I had no idea there were such things, but I said yes. The three of us, Alan, “Spock” and I carpooled over to a lecture hall at Sac State where the meeting was held. There were mostly grownups there. I was considered pretty weird by most of the students at my high school, but even I was saying to myself, “Man, these people are really nerdy.” And the atmosphere! It was very serious, as if we were in church. There was mention of Star Trek conventions, which sounded amazing. But the room got very quiet when someone who had recently returned from a meeting with an affiliated Star Trek club in Los Angeles gave us all an electrifying update. There were talks — just talks at this point — about the potential for a Star Trek movie. Word was that most of the original cast had signed on to the idea, and there was funding and studio interest as well. It was likely to be a full-fledged feature film! Holy cow! I sensed the tension mounting in the room as people were afraid to hope yet were exuberant at the thought of it. You may be laughing now, but seriously, for Star Trek aficionados it was a first glimmering of the glorious future to come in the following decades.

My love of Star Trek was a secret I shared with just two special friends, but perhaps it showed up with my band friends whenever I rolled out my Spock impression. While Captain Kirk resonated with my heart, especially reminding me of myself in elementary school, Spock represented what I was striving to become during my teen years. Having emerged from puberty being prone to emotional hysteria, Spock’s disciplined dedication to the principles of logic captured my own struggle to use my awakening mind to override my turbulent emotions. I amused myself endlessly trying to craft Spock-ish phraseology. I remember one time during band rehearsal when Tana turned to me and said, “Ooh, I love that harmony.” I responded with, “I agree: the nodal interference in the overlapping wave forms produced by the oscillating columns of air does produce an effect that is most pleasing to the ear.” She looked at me like I was nuts, then burst into laughter.

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Dune Applied

Perhaps the characters in a story about a violent struggle for control of a galactic empire who rely on martial arts, subterfuge, treachery, and manipulation are not the most ideal role models for a thirteen-year-old junior high school student, but then again. After Walt left I was a hot mess. I had always allowed my emotions to flow outward on clear display and it had gotten me into a lot of trouble. In class I tended to blurt out whatever came into my head, which meant a lot of quality time spent in the hallway on time-out. While I craved the attention these antics brought, it was doubtless slowing me down academically. Adults found me alternately delightful and threatening. Walt had attempted to break my spirit by literally beating the gay out of me. I struggled spiritually, having read the Bible from cover to cover when I was twelve and finding it utterly horrifying. I never told anyone about it at the time, but I will write about it in a separate post. The fact that Walt was supposedly a man of God, an ordained Methodist minister who was as bad an example as I can imagine, left me deeply conflicted. Once I started reading philosophy I quickly became an atheist and turned to science fiction and fantasy literature for usable myths. Dune really hit the spot with its deeply humanistic material. The character Paul Atreides, fifteen years old at the start of the story, was a role model for me. The product of centuries of selective breeding, he was also in the process of receiving deep training in mind control techniques, martial arts, and politics. I found the litany against fear to be incredibly useful in helping me control my own hysteria, the product of post-traumatic stress. It was the perfect formula to encapsulate the lesson of the story of The Mummy Box:

“I must not fear. Fear is the mind-killer. Fear is the little-death that brings total obliteration. I will face my fear. I will permit it to pass over me and through me. And when it has gone past I will turn the inner eye to see its path. Where the fear has gone there will be nothing. Only I will remain.”

I committed this to memory and recited it to myself whenever I felt anxiety. Inspired by the references to gestalt in Dune, I read “Awareness: Exploring, Experimenting, Experiencing” by John O. Stevens, a collection of exercises based on the Gestalt Therapy of Fritz Perls. I began training myself. Paul had trusted teachers guiding his training to prepare him for his future role as Duke. I had Steve (my therapist), my band directors and my piano teachers who I came to see as mentors. I embraced the idea of human potential and became committed to the idea of training myself to the highest possible degree. I became cagey about my true intentions and motives.

I began to observe myself, imagining a hidden camera in a high corner of the room. How did I appear to people, how did this scene “play?” So while outwardly I was still open, honest, emotionally present, behind the scenes there was another me, a director orchestrating secret plans. After Walt I was a person with many dark secrets. I managed those secrets in layers. I cultivated friendships based on trust earned through layers of self-disclosure, carefully listening to the revelations I would receive in turn, reflecting and offering insight where I could. Several young men wanted to be considered my “best friend,” the person to whom they could tell anything and have the confidence protected. They were jealous of each other, competing for my attention. All of them felt they knew me better than anyone else, but none of them ever achieved the security clearance of “above top secret.” There were things I would never tell. Eventually, through reprogramming my own mind using the principles of Psycho-Cybernetics, my deepest secrets were hidden even from myself. My true self and my true history became buried under layers of artifice, and I lost my core. But I had become very adept indeed.

Dune was teaching me how to be a gifted youth in a world of adults. I was learning how to play them, telling them just enough to win them over, but always holding something back. I remember one particular interaction that has stuck with me. I had a friend named Alan, a year older than me and not part of my school friend group. We had met when I was in fifth grade (my fifth grade class was combined fifth and sixth graders). Alan was a real nerd, obsessed with airplanes and also with the book, Airport by Arthur Hailey. Alan’s mom was the librarian at my seventh grade junior high school. Alan had an older brother who alternated living with his father and his mother, who were divorced. When I was still twelve I had a sleep-over at Alan’s house. As is customary in pre-teen sleep-overs we stayed up late. Somehow the conversation turned to time travel. Alan’s brother Jeff, who was a genius but also mildly schizophrenic and probably autistic, took an interest. As the conversation went down the rabbit hole of time-travel paradoxes, Alan lost interest and went to sleep. Jeff and I continued the conversation until dawn. I was trying to convey the idea that if sometime in the future you were able to travel to the past, then whatever you do/did in the past is already part of the history of the present, so it is impossible to “change” the past, even in principle. He insisted I draw up a flow chart, which I had never heard of. So we spent a lot of time trying to get me up to speed on flow charts. By the time he fully understood what I was trying to say, the sun was coming up. Satisfied, he retired to bed, but I was wide awake: it was the first time I had ever stayed up all night!

Their mom came out to brew coffee and start breakfast, surprised to find me at the kitchen table with a paper and pencil in front of me. We got into a conversation that meandered through several subjects, but landed in the realm of philosophy, which I had been exploring recently. At one point she asked me if this map of the universe I was building in my mind had any room in it for the possibility of God. “That’s complicated,” I replied. For the next hour I unrolled my view of the subject, which was agnostic, but probably close to Spinoza’s views of a rational core knitting the universe together. Alan eventually woke up and came out to inquire about breakfast, so we had to wind things down. But how she closed the conversation has stuck with me. “Well,” she said, “I can’t believe I have learned so much from a twelve-year-old. When you become an adult, if you ever decide to start a religion, I would like to become a member.”

That night and morning of deep and stimulating conversations with older brilliant minds left me with a quiet sense of awe and caution. I was awakening to the possibility of the influence I could have on people and I knew this would bring with it certain ethical responsibilities. I remembered the story of the temptation of Jesus on the mountain top. Such powers can easily lead to evil. I resolved to be humble in my goals even as my ego swelled. I came to see my potential as a world-maker and a leader, but it scared me. So through high school I made sure that my growing influence as a trend-setter and social locus was always directed towards good ends. At least, that was my intention.

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Intellectual Awakening

All through my childhood I enjoyed prowling around my parents’ tall bookcase where the encyclopedias were kept, along with a wide variety of books old and new. I was fascinated by the old books particularly, which my mom had inherited from her favorite aunt after whom she was named. Aunt Carolyn had lived in Santa Fe, New Mexico with her husband for many years and had collected Indian pottery and rugs, which we also had. The dusty old books were typical of the 1930s, with philosophy, poetry, mythology, fiction and non-fiction titles. I couldn’t actually read these books, but I would flip through them looking at pictures, savoring the old bindings and the musty smell. I was infatuated. One day when I was twelve I picked out one with an intriguing title: The Story of Philosophy by Will Durant. I opened it to the first page and began reading. I’ve mentioned that I was dyslexic. Reading was a real chore for me, and I had never actually read any book all the way through except Hardy Boys mysteries. I had read every one of them in my elementary school library, beginning in third grade. But I had never been able to tough it out through any adult books. Until now. I was strangely able not only to follow the stories about the old philosophers, but was somehow able to comprehend the ideas they grappled with. My mind lit up like a Christmas tree and I was hooked. I just kept reading and reading as a sense of euphoria came over me. My mind was unlocked. In fact, I was puzzled why they seemed to think these philosophical ideas were so difficult. It seemed to me there was a lot of unnecessary struggle over rather easy problems. I had already contemplated the nature of reality and “truth”, the limitations of logic, the importance of symbols and semantics — I just hadn’t realized there was a discipline that had given names to these things and grappled with them. I had found my people.

Book in hand I marched into the kitchen to see my mom. “Mom! I finally figured out what I want to be when I grow up. I’m going to be a philosopher!” Her smile faded and her face took on a look of chagrined pity. “Oh, Honey, there aren’t any philosophers anymore.” I guess I knew what she meant: nobody is walking around in a toga with a laurel wreath on their head, whiling away the hours engaging in Socratic dialogue about the meaning of the word “Justice”. Now we only have career choices like Physicist, Doctor, Lawyer, Engineer. I was crestfallen. The wind had come completely out of my sails, and I made one of the biggest mistakes of my entire life.

I believed her.

I still haven’t forgiven myself for this blunder, even though I know I should. I was only twelve. My mom had a degree from Berkeley. I took what she said on authority. I didn’t know then that taking things on authority was what kept Europe in the Dark Ages for centuries. If only I had asked one of my teachers about it. They would surely have told me that every university offers courses in philosophy, often as a requirement for graduation. Who do you suppose teaches those courses? You can major in it. Philosophy is anything but dead. (I will have lots more to say on this subject in future posts.) At that time I surrendered to the impossibility of doing the one thing that really inspired me and resolved that whatever I found myself doing after that, I would do it philosophically. I would be a philosopher in secret.

When I turned thirteen my step-mother gave me a book I had never heard of. No one else I knew had ever heard of it either, perhaps because it had only been published nine years earlier. Everyone knows it now: Dune, by Frank Herbert. As I held it in my hand and looked at the intriguing cover graphics I felt the weight of it in my hand. I flipped through it: no pictures, only small print. And it was thick. What on earth? She couldn’t possibly think I could read such a tome. She said, “I think you might like it: the main character is your age.” So I began the slog, dictionary at my side. It was slow going, but she was right. I very much saw myself in the character Paul Atreides. I quickly became obsessed with the story, which dealt with topics like arid ecology, power politics, and deep philosophies regarding artificial intelligence and selective breeding (of humans!). It became my new bible. I had, I just now remember, already managed to read The Bible cover to cover: perhaps in another thread I will explain how and why, and what I really thought of it. This was so much better though, because it was intellectually stimulating and coherent. On the cover of the book were quotes from book reviews, one of which compared it to The Lord of the Rings. That sounded intriguing, so after I finished Dune (it took the better part of a year), I began reading Tolkein. Oh my. By the time I got through high school I had managed to read both trilogies about eight times. I could only read a dozen or two pages at a time, mostly at bed time, with classical music playing on my cassette recorder. Then I would fall asleep.

In my earlier thread (Boom to Bust) I talked about discovering that I could easily get top grades just by showing up to class and paying attention. I wasn’t good at finishing homework, but I would do enough of it to convince myself that I understood the subject. In high school all the cool kids were taking college prep courses, so I followed suit. I was a top student in just about every class. So when my schedule became completely full of music, including before and after school and during lunch as well, I found myself making a cup of instant coffee at ten-thirty or eleven at night to begin working on my chemistry or physics homework. I would finish at midnight or one AM, set the alarm for five-thirty, and do it all again. My senior year I got sick with walking pneumonia, as one might expect, but it wasn’t diagnosed until after I graduated. But I had no trouble with motivation because my brain was on fire. Even with the grueling schedule, I continued reading on my own in philosophy, mathematics, linguistics, and history. I always had a book with me, which I would pull out whenever there was a pause in a rehearsal or before the start of class. In algebra and geometry there was usually time in class for working on the homework assignment. I would would finish it very quickly, then pull out my book! I remember at a musical theater rehearsal (I was the pianist) when we stopped for the director to re-block a scene, I pulled out a book on calculus. Calculus was not offered at our high school, but some of the more advanced kids commuted to the university to take it. Someone saw what I was reading and asked what it was for. I said, “It’s interesting, I want to learn it.” They gave me a weird look and said, “OK.” Looking back, I think I might have been compensating for a sense of inferiority because I had gotten a late start in taking academics seriously. I wasn’t able to actually take a calculus class until my first year of college, but I did well because I had already familiarized myself with the subject during rehearsals for “Gypsy.”

This all left little time for philosophical reading, but I found time during breaks from school. I liked Descartes, Spinoza, Plato, and Emerson. But I was particularly enamored of two books that I found on the bookshelf at home. One was Out of My Later Years, a collection of essays by Albert Einstein, and the other was Pragmatism by William James. Both sat well with me, raised very few objections. I had finally found a way to harness the madness inside of me and make peace with my weirdness.

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