The day after I arrived in Dallas an arctic atmosphere the size of a continent repositioned itself over the United States in the shape of an inverted parabola, its southern limit extending to the middle of Texas.
Temperatures dropped over 30 degrees within a couple of hours and all of the Dallas / Fort Worth area was glazed over with snow and ice. Several of my colleagues (who had arrived for the same scientific meetings that I was attending) were unable to sleep because of the constant clapping of sleet against the large parietal windows of their rooms.
Periodically throughout the next day power went out in the hotel as the city's faltering electricity was portioned out in cycles to its many stranded citizens. For, in fact, very few people were willing to brave the storm and drive to work. As a result the hotel was only half staffed and services were limited.
One is justified in wondering why a middle-aged Californian would wish to trek out in this weather. Certainly not after food, there was plenty of that in the hotel. Not even entertainment, the need of exercise or the promise of interesting insects (all hunkering down beneath the ice) would suffice.
The only possible reason left was books. And that was precisely the pull. Two years ago I had discovered a nice used bookstore (called Half-Price Books) on the other side of town and I was determined to visit it again.
I knew the trip would be tricky as soon as I stepped out of the hotel. The parking lot looked like shattered glass with patches of crusty snow throughout. After slowly making my way to the other side I came to the lawn. The snow had all but covered it up leaving only little tips of grass visible on top. Glad as I was to be free of the parking lot, I stepped with confidence onto the congealed turf only to realize (too late as it turned out) that it was harder than I thought.
Instead of gaining purchase, my unsuspecting foot glanced out from under me and slid to the bottom of the hill pulling me along with it. Fortunately it wasn't too steep or too far to the bottom. The worst thing that happened was the loss of my travelling snack - a Snickers bar - that I had slipped into my coat pocket. In the excitement of the fall I didn't even detect that it was gone until it was too late to go back and get it.
Now, however, I was aware of what I was up against. No more thoughtless or over-confident steps would do. I would have to make the four mile trek with tiny steps. Ahead of me the metropolitan floor extended in a patchwork of blacktop, concrete and little sections of frozen plants. The prospects weren't promising for any of these and so I tried the grass again. This time I gently eased my full weight into a square inch of my shoe. Thankfully it was enough (well maybe it was obviously enough) to break the crusty surface and I stood triumphantly secure.
Thus I plodded over lawns and pansy (poor things) past sidewalk and business until I discovered the remarkable value of poor masonry - concrete curbs, to be precise, which projected unprofessionally above the level of the walk. For some reason they were left un-iced and when there was a lull in the traffic (which was most of the time since nobody in their right mind was on the street) I ventured to balance my way along more easily.
Occasionally I would come upon a parking lot with patches of lovely black footholds. These I would navigate much like an old man playing hopscotch. And in fact it really was fun. I also became quite adept at noticing just slightly uneven surfaces. Failure in this regard could have been a serious problem where walks and driveways sloped ever-so-subtly into the four-lane street.
Unfortunately there were places that became quite difficult, like the entire block I had to manage between a row of crepe myrtles and a metal fence; or the extended driveway that was seemingly as smooth as glass. Very often I was left looking for any irregularity in the ice that I could find - like small pebbles or the frozen reliquiae of animals.
It was while I was inching my way along that I realized half of the stores around me were closed. What if the bookstore was closed too? I wondered. It couldn't be. Besides I was now over an hour along and couldn't bear the thought of turning back empty-handed.
I had been motivating myself through this wintry adventure by the thought of fine books. Now I seemed on the verge of distraction. But what was I to do? I was over half-way there. I couldn't stop now.
And so I mustered my tiring determination once again and kept walking. But in my worries I had failed to pay close enough attention to my footwork. Instead of tiny steps I had lapsed into my more comfortable lope and suddenly I slipped. My right foot raced to the side and my right hip instinctively pirouetted an instantaneous 90 degrees. My left foot shifted into a new position while my left knee flexed and tightened. My back arched forward like an amateur tight-rope-walker hovering over the abyss. Miraculously I remained standing.
And then I started to laugh out loud. How foolish I must have looked, flailing my body around in jocular abandon. But it didn't matter. The black plastic hood of my jacket was cinched tight around my head. I was certain that nobody could recognize me.
So I continued to laugh and walk and sniffle with joy, imagining how happy I would be to find a friendly book.
And so it was I found my favorite Texas store - humble though it is. And it was open, while most of the neighboring windows were dark. In the Natural History section I found an expensive cricket book for a song. I found Ernst Mayr's last book for a couple of dollars. In the regional section I found the essays I'd been looking for (for years) at a reasonable price. And then the cashier announced that because of bad weather, the store would be closing soon. I couldn't help believe that they had remained open just for me.
But now I had a problem I hadn't previously considered. I had a bag of books; no gloves and a long way still to go. Now if I fell, I would have to decide what to do with my hands. I could use them to break my fall (thus dropping the bag) or I could hold on to my package and deal with the bruises. In the end I couldn't make up my mind - and, in fact, it made no difference. I still had to start walking.
At the first crosswalk from the store I noticed an old beat-up truck spinning its tires. A middle-aged woman was pushing it from the back and her young friend was driving and cursing in the front seat. They had been out rummaging for discarded metal to recycle and got a flat tire. I helped them push their vehicle on to flat ground where the jack could be maneuvered without sliding. It wasn't easy pushing it on ice. Not until I found a foot grip on the curb did we make any progress. After managing as best we could I bid them a hearty "good luck" while silently hoping they weren't out on darker errands - along streets of abandoned shops.
The cloudy day was now turning into a cloudy dusk. Only a couple of cars were left in the vast acreage of a mall's parking lot. I moved along in controlled slides and then found a covered parking area with no ice. There was a cold breeze funneling through but the dry ground was a dream-come-true. I felt like walking around in circles to get the full benefit of secure footing but finally convinced myself that this was a waste of energy. And so I worked my way back to the snow and the tiny careful steps. There were still thousands to take - one after another - soon becoming a habit. Finally I was back before the hotel where I had fallen. On the ground was my candy bar - now frozen but untouched and intact. My cheeks were as ruddy as ever and my hands and arms were locked into a book-embracing rigor. But all was well. I pulled the hood off my head, breathed in the freezing air and walked anticlimactically into the lobby: a silent successful adventurer.
Some of my colleagues were standing around in idle chitchat. I nodded their way and smiled, feeling somehow above such sybaritic comforts. But then again, in a matter of minutes I would be in a warm bed reading.
Wednesday, February 9, 2011
Monday, January 24, 2011
The Meaning of Kitzmiller v. Dover
Six years ago last December in the celebrated case of Kitzmiller v. Dover Judge John E. Jones III decided that a school board in south central Pennsylvania (in the town of Dover) could not make Intelligent Design (ID) literature available to its students. In fact the decision was initially praised as a landmark handling of the difficult science and religion controversy. A well-written account of the case, including valuable background information, has been written by Gordy Slack in, The Battle Over the Meaning of Everything. Slack is a popular writer on evolutionary themes and clearly places himself in the evolution camp but his book is usually fair. (At least the biases are obvious.)
Nearly a year later we learned that Judge Jones wasn’t nearly as informed on the science presented in the case as he should have been. As it turns out, he copied the bulk of the scientific argument in his written decision from documents provided to him by the ACLU before the trial even started. This is quite significant considering the fact that the ACLU was also providing legal help to the plaintiffs. What makes the copying so pathetic is that it suggests that the judge was not well enough informed to detect differences in the creationist arguments of his ACLU report and the arguments of ID that were presented in court.
I’m guessing that Slack was unaware of this finding when his book went to press, although this is giving him the benefit of the doubt. The Center for Science and Culture broke the story in December, 2006. Slack’s book was published in May, 2007 giving him time to have learned of the judge’s misbehavior. But since one never knows how long publishers hold on to manuscripts, it is possible that Slack was in the dark. The latest reference I could find in his Notes was to a website posting for January, 2007.
The case is an important one in America’s ongoing culture war. And the negative ruling against ID has had significant impact. The full effect of Judge Jones foul play may not be known for years but in the meantime a few things need to be reconsidered.
A good place to start is to rethink what the meaning of Kitzmiller should be. My take from Slack’s account is that the real issue in Dover was the religious motives of the school board. On this point I think the ruling was fair although ultimately unconstitutional. This may be a difficult position to hold, but let me explain.
Slack’s account makes it clear that the school board had little understanding of the science behind ID. Several of the early statements indicated strong fundamentalist positions against anything differing from its own brand of Christianity. This is clearly not the kind of environment where open enquiry can thrive. And as Slack shows, these professed Christians were caught in deceptive acts of dishonesty as the trial progressed, leaving one to only guess at the potential for manipulation from the erstwhile school board itself.
However, the case that was officially presented was about the right to have literature available for students to read. Textbooks containing a discussion of ID were to be placed in the library and a statement was to be read in class informing the students that they were available.
There was no pressure in this process from teachers or from anybody else. There is certainly nothing here that comes close to an establishment of religion one way or another. To suggest that putting a scientific book in a high school library violates the 1st Amendment is like saying that celebrating Martin Luther King Day does too - since the civil rights leader was a Christian preacher. This just stretches things too far.
Now perhaps you might take offense at my referring to ID as a science, so let me explain. During the trial, Kenneth Miller was asked by the Plaintiffs to define science. He did so by saying that it is an attempt to “provide natural explanations for natural phenomena”. I think this is a fully acceptable definition for experimental science but it hardly can be considered a complete definition for all science. It is similar to some of the definitions we find in various educational standards around the country. But it lacks a key element that has always been a part of science: namely observation. An earlier definition of science from the Kansas Science Standard that Miller has commented on reads: “Science is the human activity of seeking natural explanations for what we observe in the world around us”. This is a much better definition but Miller decided against using it in Dover.
My advanced degrees (M.S. and Ph.D.) are both in a branch of evolutionary biology known as systematic zoology – which has been called the “science of diversity”. A large part of my research is descriptive. For example, I describe the morphology and biology of animals. Now this sort of research is not experimental per se. Even so, it has been considered a science from as long as we have been calling anything science. As a matter of fact, descriptive biology is the oldest science we have. To consider otherwise would require kicking Linnaeus out of our biology classes.
What makes descriptive biology so important is that it serves as a base from which other sciences work. For example, knowing how to tell the difference between a malaria-vectoring mosquito and a benign mosquito can be tricky but without this kind of knowledge advances in medicine and public health are limited. This argument also holds true for ecology, agriculture and many other sciences.
From my perspective, the current research centered on irreducible complexity (and ID) is similarly descriptive. It may not be providing “natural explanations” for how this complexity came about, but the identification of this complexity by itself is a net gain in our understanding of life. It is a base of information that can be accessed by many other disciplines in the future, even by those who wish to argue against ID.
This importance of observation is recognized by the National Academy of Science. In fact the very first paragraph in the introduction of its influential publication Science and Creationism makes this clear: “Science is a particular way of knowing about the world. In science, explanations are limited to those based on observation and experiments that can be substituted by other scientists...”
I am a bit surprised that Miller decided against using this definition – coming as it does from our most eminent scientific body. It is particularly surprising because it was written for the primary reason of bolstering the claims of science against the rising influence of “creation science”.
But the problem for Miller and the other Plaintiffs in Dover is that this definition isn’t sufficient to keep ID out of the halls of science. So instead of being embarrassed by this ambiguity, Miller chose a different definition, or so it seems.
Of course I may be wrong but a lot depends on definitions – especially in court. The larger issue, however, is that arguing over what is and what is not science has a long history of getting us nowhere. Philosopher Larry Laudan has traced this history in some detail.
Over two thousand years ago Aristotle argued that logical demonstration was the key element in scientific findings. In the pre-modern era it was determined that a more robust understanding of science would involve a particular method. Accordingly the scientific method was used as the defining ingredient.
When this definition proved imperfect, philosophers decided that science needed to be verifiable. Later still this perspective was altered so that scientific data and conclusions would be generally falsifiable instead. And there have been other definitions that could be added to this brief list.
Laudan comes to the conclusion that science should be determined by the credibility of the data and not the “scientific” status of the claims. He originally made these observations in 1983 and they are just as important now (if not more so) in the wake of the Kitzmiller case. This bickering over he meaning of science may have kept creation science out of the classroom. It will not work indefinitely for ID.
So what should be the meaning of Dover? My answer is that three things stand out.
The first one is that Judge Jones was right in identifying an underlying religious antagonism against evolution among members of the Dover Area School Board. It certainly appears that the level of scientific misinformation was becoming a problem and I think the judge made the right decision in this local area at the time of the trial.
However my other points suggest that Judge Jones will go down in history as an activist judge who was not capable of handling his most visible case. I say this because ID cannot be truthfully taught and be seriously considered a breach of the 1st Amendment (my 2nd point); and, because ID also makes observations of reality that can indeed be verifiable – and that fall under the umbrella of science (my 3rd point).
But I would like to make one final point that has significance well beyond the Kitzmiller case. It is that we are at a critical point in this conflict that requires a reasoned tolerance between both parties.
In this highly charged debate, a lack of understanding can become disastrous. Zealous biases that remain uninformed lead to dogmatism. And dogmatism, as Huston Smith has explained, is a character disorder. Even worse, it can destroy public order. This may sound like I’m being critical of conservative Christians. And in fact I am, in part. But the argument goes both ways. There is far too much dogmatism coming from the materialist camp as well. And its refusal to understand the basic Christian concerns in this issue can only make things worse.
Let’s face it. Both sides have legitimate concerns. The Plaintiffs in Kitzmiller, like thousands of other Americans that value the scientific method, were (and are) deeply concerned about the anti-intellectual tendencies that misinformed fundamentalists threaten to impose upon our children. It doesn’t matter that ID is good science (and I am arguing that it is). There are many vocal bigots that are downright scary to people trying to maintain a balanced position in this debate.
On the other hand, the defendants in the case have very legitimate concerns of their own. Materialism in its atheistic forms has been used to justify some of the worst civil rights violations of the last century. And one doesn’t have to go very far to see the connection between the moral decline of Western Society and the marginalization of religion.
Of course there has been a lot of ink spilt over this argument by both parties, and not everybody will agree with me. But strict materialists, with even a modicum of understanding, should be able to see the legitimacy of their religious opponents’ arguments.
There are a lot of strong opinions in this debate. And, as often happens when the stakes are this high, people take up sides – and sometimes a sword. No doubt this is inevitable. There are a lot of people who see the issues in absolute terms. And I don’t mean to imply that this is a bad thing.
As Huston Smith has written, one can think absolutely about an issue (with strong feelings) and still be tolerant of other people who think differently. In fact this is what tolerance used to mean: people with strong beliefs peacefully putting up with each other.
There has been foul play on both sides. It’s time to let it go and strive for understanding. This is more than just an academic argument, or even a political argument. This can divide us as a people in very harmful ways. Let’s all try to be a little bit smarter, and maybe our children will grow up to be wiser than we have been.
References:
DeWolf, David et al. 2006. Traipsing Into Evolution, Intelligent Design and the Kitzmiller vs. Dover Decision. Discovery Institute Press.
Laudan, Larry. 1996. The Demise of the Demarcation Problem; in Michael Ruse ed. But is it Science? The Philosophical Question in the Creation/Evolution Controversy. Prometheus Books, New York.
Miller, Kenneth R. 2008. Only a Theory, Evolution and the Battle for America’s Soul. Viking. The Kansas definition of science is on page 186.
The National Academies. 1999. Science and Creationism, A View from the National Academy of Sciences. National Academy Press, Washington D.C. Second Edition.
Slack, Gordy. 2007. The Battle Over the Meaning of Everything. Jossey-Bass, San Francisco.
Smith, Huston. 2001. Why Religion Matters. Harpers, San Francisco.
West, John G and David K. DeWolf. 2006 A Comparison of Judge Jones’ Opinion in Kitzmiller v. Dover with Plaintiffs Proposed “Findings of Fact and Conclusion of Law”. www.discovery.org/scripts/viewDB/filesDB-download.php?command=download&id=1186
Nearly a year later we learned that Judge Jones wasn’t nearly as informed on the science presented in the case as he should have been. As it turns out, he copied the bulk of the scientific argument in his written decision from documents provided to him by the ACLU before the trial even started. This is quite significant considering the fact that the ACLU was also providing legal help to the plaintiffs. What makes the copying so pathetic is that it suggests that the judge was not well enough informed to detect differences in the creationist arguments of his ACLU report and the arguments of ID that were presented in court.
I’m guessing that Slack was unaware of this finding when his book went to press, although this is giving him the benefit of the doubt. The Center for Science and Culture broke the story in December, 2006. Slack’s book was published in May, 2007 giving him time to have learned of the judge’s misbehavior. But since one never knows how long publishers hold on to manuscripts, it is possible that Slack was in the dark. The latest reference I could find in his Notes was to a website posting for January, 2007.
The case is an important one in America’s ongoing culture war. And the negative ruling against ID has had significant impact. The full effect of Judge Jones foul play may not be known for years but in the meantime a few things need to be reconsidered.
A good place to start is to rethink what the meaning of Kitzmiller should be. My take from Slack’s account is that the real issue in Dover was the religious motives of the school board. On this point I think the ruling was fair although ultimately unconstitutional. This may be a difficult position to hold, but let me explain.
Slack’s account makes it clear that the school board had little understanding of the science behind ID. Several of the early statements indicated strong fundamentalist positions against anything differing from its own brand of Christianity. This is clearly not the kind of environment where open enquiry can thrive. And as Slack shows, these professed Christians were caught in deceptive acts of dishonesty as the trial progressed, leaving one to only guess at the potential for manipulation from the erstwhile school board itself.
However, the case that was officially presented was about the right to have literature available for students to read. Textbooks containing a discussion of ID were to be placed in the library and a statement was to be read in class informing the students that they were available.
There was no pressure in this process from teachers or from anybody else. There is certainly nothing here that comes close to an establishment of religion one way or another. To suggest that putting a scientific book in a high school library violates the 1st Amendment is like saying that celebrating Martin Luther King Day does too - since the civil rights leader was a Christian preacher. This just stretches things too far.
Now perhaps you might take offense at my referring to ID as a science, so let me explain. During the trial, Kenneth Miller was asked by the Plaintiffs to define science. He did so by saying that it is an attempt to “provide natural explanations for natural phenomena”. I think this is a fully acceptable definition for experimental science but it hardly can be considered a complete definition for all science. It is similar to some of the definitions we find in various educational standards around the country. But it lacks a key element that has always been a part of science: namely observation. An earlier definition of science from the Kansas Science Standard that Miller has commented on reads: “Science is the human activity of seeking natural explanations for what we observe in the world around us”. This is a much better definition but Miller decided against using it in Dover.
My advanced degrees (M.S. and Ph.D.) are both in a branch of evolutionary biology known as systematic zoology – which has been called the “science of diversity”. A large part of my research is descriptive. For example, I describe the morphology and biology of animals. Now this sort of research is not experimental per se. Even so, it has been considered a science from as long as we have been calling anything science. As a matter of fact, descriptive biology is the oldest science we have. To consider otherwise would require kicking Linnaeus out of our biology classes.
What makes descriptive biology so important is that it serves as a base from which other sciences work. For example, knowing how to tell the difference between a malaria-vectoring mosquito and a benign mosquito can be tricky but without this kind of knowledge advances in medicine and public health are limited. This argument also holds true for ecology, agriculture and many other sciences.
From my perspective, the current research centered on irreducible complexity (and ID) is similarly descriptive. It may not be providing “natural explanations” for how this complexity came about, but the identification of this complexity by itself is a net gain in our understanding of life. It is a base of information that can be accessed by many other disciplines in the future, even by those who wish to argue against ID.
This importance of observation is recognized by the National Academy of Science. In fact the very first paragraph in the introduction of its influential publication Science and Creationism makes this clear: “Science is a particular way of knowing about the world. In science, explanations are limited to those based on observation and experiments that can be substituted by other scientists...”
I am a bit surprised that Miller decided against using this definition – coming as it does from our most eminent scientific body. It is particularly surprising because it was written for the primary reason of bolstering the claims of science against the rising influence of “creation science”.
But the problem for Miller and the other Plaintiffs in Dover is that this definition isn’t sufficient to keep ID out of the halls of science. So instead of being embarrassed by this ambiguity, Miller chose a different definition, or so it seems.
Of course I may be wrong but a lot depends on definitions – especially in court. The larger issue, however, is that arguing over what is and what is not science has a long history of getting us nowhere. Philosopher Larry Laudan has traced this history in some detail.
Over two thousand years ago Aristotle argued that logical demonstration was the key element in scientific findings. In the pre-modern era it was determined that a more robust understanding of science would involve a particular method. Accordingly the scientific method was used as the defining ingredient.
When this definition proved imperfect, philosophers decided that science needed to be verifiable. Later still this perspective was altered so that scientific data and conclusions would be generally falsifiable instead. And there have been other definitions that could be added to this brief list.
Laudan comes to the conclusion that science should be determined by the credibility of the data and not the “scientific” status of the claims. He originally made these observations in 1983 and they are just as important now (if not more so) in the wake of the Kitzmiller case. This bickering over he meaning of science may have kept creation science out of the classroom. It will not work indefinitely for ID.
So what should be the meaning of Dover? My answer is that three things stand out.
The first one is that Judge Jones was right in identifying an underlying religious antagonism against evolution among members of the Dover Area School Board. It certainly appears that the level of scientific misinformation was becoming a problem and I think the judge made the right decision in this local area at the time of the trial.
However my other points suggest that Judge Jones will go down in history as an activist judge who was not capable of handling his most visible case. I say this because ID cannot be truthfully taught and be seriously considered a breach of the 1st Amendment (my 2nd point); and, because ID also makes observations of reality that can indeed be verifiable – and that fall under the umbrella of science (my 3rd point).
But I would like to make one final point that has significance well beyond the Kitzmiller case. It is that we are at a critical point in this conflict that requires a reasoned tolerance between both parties.
In this highly charged debate, a lack of understanding can become disastrous. Zealous biases that remain uninformed lead to dogmatism. And dogmatism, as Huston Smith has explained, is a character disorder. Even worse, it can destroy public order. This may sound like I’m being critical of conservative Christians. And in fact I am, in part. But the argument goes both ways. There is far too much dogmatism coming from the materialist camp as well. And its refusal to understand the basic Christian concerns in this issue can only make things worse.
Let’s face it. Both sides have legitimate concerns. The Plaintiffs in Kitzmiller, like thousands of other Americans that value the scientific method, were (and are) deeply concerned about the anti-intellectual tendencies that misinformed fundamentalists threaten to impose upon our children. It doesn’t matter that ID is good science (and I am arguing that it is). There are many vocal bigots that are downright scary to people trying to maintain a balanced position in this debate.
On the other hand, the defendants in the case have very legitimate concerns of their own. Materialism in its atheistic forms has been used to justify some of the worst civil rights violations of the last century. And one doesn’t have to go very far to see the connection between the moral decline of Western Society and the marginalization of religion.
Of course there has been a lot of ink spilt over this argument by both parties, and not everybody will agree with me. But strict materialists, with even a modicum of understanding, should be able to see the legitimacy of their religious opponents’ arguments.
There are a lot of strong opinions in this debate. And, as often happens when the stakes are this high, people take up sides – and sometimes a sword. No doubt this is inevitable. There are a lot of people who see the issues in absolute terms. And I don’t mean to imply that this is a bad thing.
As Huston Smith has written, one can think absolutely about an issue (with strong feelings) and still be tolerant of other people who think differently. In fact this is what tolerance used to mean: people with strong beliefs peacefully putting up with each other.
There has been foul play on both sides. It’s time to let it go and strive for understanding. This is more than just an academic argument, or even a political argument. This can divide us as a people in very harmful ways. Let’s all try to be a little bit smarter, and maybe our children will grow up to be wiser than we have been.
References:
DeWolf, David et al. 2006. Traipsing Into Evolution, Intelligent Design and the Kitzmiller vs. Dover Decision. Discovery Institute Press.
Laudan, Larry. 1996. The Demise of the Demarcation Problem; in Michael Ruse ed. But is it Science? The Philosophical Question in the Creation/Evolution Controversy. Prometheus Books, New York.
Miller, Kenneth R. 2008. Only a Theory, Evolution and the Battle for America’s Soul. Viking. The Kansas definition of science is on page 186.
The National Academies. 1999. Science and Creationism, A View from the National Academy of Sciences. National Academy Press, Washington D.C. Second Edition.
Slack, Gordy. 2007. The Battle Over the Meaning of Everything. Jossey-Bass, San Francisco.
Smith, Huston. 2001. Why Religion Matters. Harpers, San Francisco.
West, John G and David K. DeWolf. 2006 A Comparison of Judge Jones’ Opinion in Kitzmiller v. Dover with Plaintiffs Proposed “Findings of Fact and Conclusion of Law”. www.discovery.org/scripts/viewDB/filesDB-download.php?command=download&id=1186
Monday, January 10, 2011
Building Soil in the Desert
Soils in arid lands are usually not very productive. Because they are dry for long periods, many living things that normally work together to form rich soil are lacking. Very often the soils are sandy or of hard clay and only a few kinds of plants adapted to these harsh conditions can survive in them. As a result, agriculture has not been sustainable in these areas like it has in many parts of the world.
Today, however, there are apparent exceptions to this claim. Many desert regions are very productive. The Central Valley of California, for example, is one of the richest agricultural places on earth. Yet surprisingly it gets less than 12 inches of rain a year. In this dry land farmers have been producing abundant harvests for over a century. Even so, I stand by my claim: it just isn’t sustainable – at least at a local level.
In the desert, we have only been able to grow crops by bringing in billions of dollars worth of artificial inputs such as: fertilizers, pesticides, adjuvants, pheromones. I don’t mean to imply that this is a bad thing. The reality is that we would not be able to feed the world in its current condition without using the desert so proficiently. It is true that industrial agriculture is responsible for the loss of vast amounts of productive agricultural lands - especially through erosion and the sterilization of croplands. But this isn’t really an issue so much in desert regions where the rich soil wasn’t present to begin with.
In those deserts that have had the luxury of warm sandy soils, with enough water nearby, modern agriculture has made out quite nicely. In other deserts it’s been more difficult. These areas, though rich in biological diversity, have never been very agronomically productive.
My grandparents (on my father’s side) learned this the hard way. They were both raised in the cold desert of central Utah where sage brush is supreme and where the 5,000 foot elevation makes it cold enough that only one crop a year is possible. They got married at the turn of the 19th Century; and, after living for several years in Emery County, they loaded up their things and moved south to Hanksville, in Wayne County looking for a better life. This is the country east of Capitol Reef National Park and just north of Lake Powell. It is strikingly beautiful in its spare colorful formations but the soil is the soil of arid lands. It is not very productive.
My grandmother had to work very hard just to raise a small vegetable garden. Grandpa Wells would divert water from the local canal (that he helped dig from the Fremont River) to moisten the hard clay soil enough for Grandma to work with a shovel. This was a long hard process but without it, the ground couldn’t be broken and there was not nearly enough rain to grow a crop without it. Grandma and Grandpa had six children (and I don’t know how many grandchildren). Almost all of them had to live somewhere other than Hanksville. To this day the area remains mostly unfarmed.
The question that nobody seems to be asking is whether or not it is even worthwhile to develop a locally sustainable agriculture in places like Hanksville. And by locally sustainable I mean an agriculture that is continuous, year after year, without artificial inputs.
I guess that nobody has asked the question because on the surface it makes no sense whatsoever. How can anybody imagine growing a crop in hard clay or sand without adding fertilizer or other inputs from the world of agribusiness?
My answer is that pursuing agriculture as a business is not a very good idea in many of these desert lands. On the other hand, pursuing agriculture as part of a locally sustainable lifestyle is a real possibility.
The key to making it work all depends upon the soil. Historically, our American agriculture (even in the desert) has been based on using the soil. If a desert region lacked a suitable substrate for growing crops we never bothered with it. Maybe a few cows were left to find a meager sustenance on such land but that was about it. In fact that’s about where things stand today.
But it doesn’t have to be this way. It is possible to build soil, in the desert. Take the silty clay loam of Hanksville as an example. There are abundant minerals in this soil that would greatly enrich a crop, but they just aren’t available. But if a dedicated individual were to put forth the effort of creating compost - and lots of it - over time the hard clay would crumble and become part of a more frangible soil.
You would need to start with a big compost pile using the fallen leaves from local shrubs and trees. Mix these with animal manure and keep it moist, while turning it over occasionally. When this turns to soil, spread it on the garden. Seeds planted in this soft earth will grow. You may not have a lot to start with but keep at it. A drip line for watering would serve well if you have a lot of plants or a frequent hand-watering with a bucket or hose will do. Once the seedlings are on their way, add more leaves (even straw will work) and then place rocks over the leaves around the seedlings to retain moisture. If you keep things moist enough you will soon see signs of earthworms. After a few seasons the worms will work the ground from hard dirt to a rich soil that can be easily cut with a spade. Before too long you will have discovered one of the best kept secrets of these under-utilized lands: deserts can be extremely productive.
Of course local conditions will vary. You may need to bring in earthworms yourself if they don’t occur in your area. You may also have to be creative about finding enough plant material for composting. Then once your garden is thriving you may need to figure out how to keep rabbits or rodents out. But be persistent. Desert agriculture isn’t a well-established science in any form. And locally sustainable desert agriculture is a discipline that hardly even exists. It shouldn’t be this way. With the right care and determination the desert has a lot to offer.
Today, however, there are apparent exceptions to this claim. Many desert regions are very productive. The Central Valley of California, for example, is one of the richest agricultural places on earth. Yet surprisingly it gets less than 12 inches of rain a year. In this dry land farmers have been producing abundant harvests for over a century. Even so, I stand by my claim: it just isn’t sustainable – at least at a local level.
In the desert, we have only been able to grow crops by bringing in billions of dollars worth of artificial inputs such as: fertilizers, pesticides, adjuvants, pheromones. I don’t mean to imply that this is a bad thing. The reality is that we would not be able to feed the world in its current condition without using the desert so proficiently. It is true that industrial agriculture is responsible for the loss of vast amounts of productive agricultural lands - especially through erosion and the sterilization of croplands. But this isn’t really an issue so much in desert regions where the rich soil wasn’t present to begin with.
In those deserts that have had the luxury of warm sandy soils, with enough water nearby, modern agriculture has made out quite nicely. In other deserts it’s been more difficult. These areas, though rich in biological diversity, have never been very agronomically productive.
My grandparents (on my father’s side) learned this the hard way. They were both raised in the cold desert of central Utah where sage brush is supreme and where the 5,000 foot elevation makes it cold enough that only one crop a year is possible. They got married at the turn of the 19th Century; and, after living for several years in Emery County, they loaded up their things and moved south to Hanksville, in Wayne County looking for a better life. This is the country east of Capitol Reef National Park and just north of Lake Powell. It is strikingly beautiful in its spare colorful formations but the soil is the soil of arid lands. It is not very productive.
My grandmother had to work very hard just to raise a small vegetable garden. Grandpa Wells would divert water from the local canal (that he helped dig from the Fremont River) to moisten the hard clay soil enough for Grandma to work with a shovel. This was a long hard process but without it, the ground couldn’t be broken and there was not nearly enough rain to grow a crop without it. Grandma and Grandpa had six children (and I don’t know how many grandchildren). Almost all of them had to live somewhere other than Hanksville. To this day the area remains mostly unfarmed.
The question that nobody seems to be asking is whether or not it is even worthwhile to develop a locally sustainable agriculture in places like Hanksville. And by locally sustainable I mean an agriculture that is continuous, year after year, without artificial inputs.
I guess that nobody has asked the question because on the surface it makes no sense whatsoever. How can anybody imagine growing a crop in hard clay or sand without adding fertilizer or other inputs from the world of agribusiness?
My answer is that pursuing agriculture as a business is not a very good idea in many of these desert lands. On the other hand, pursuing agriculture as part of a locally sustainable lifestyle is a real possibility.
The key to making it work all depends upon the soil. Historically, our American agriculture (even in the desert) has been based on using the soil. If a desert region lacked a suitable substrate for growing crops we never bothered with it. Maybe a few cows were left to find a meager sustenance on such land but that was about it. In fact that’s about where things stand today.
But it doesn’t have to be this way. It is possible to build soil, in the desert. Take the silty clay loam of Hanksville as an example. There are abundant minerals in this soil that would greatly enrich a crop, but they just aren’t available. But if a dedicated individual were to put forth the effort of creating compost - and lots of it - over time the hard clay would crumble and become part of a more frangible soil.
You would need to start with a big compost pile using the fallen leaves from local shrubs and trees. Mix these with animal manure and keep it moist, while turning it over occasionally. When this turns to soil, spread it on the garden. Seeds planted in this soft earth will grow. You may not have a lot to start with but keep at it. A drip line for watering would serve well if you have a lot of plants or a frequent hand-watering with a bucket or hose will do. Once the seedlings are on their way, add more leaves (even straw will work) and then place rocks over the leaves around the seedlings to retain moisture. If you keep things moist enough you will soon see signs of earthworms. After a few seasons the worms will work the ground from hard dirt to a rich soil that can be easily cut with a spade. Before too long you will have discovered one of the best kept secrets of these under-utilized lands: deserts can be extremely productive.
Of course local conditions will vary. You may need to bring in earthworms yourself if they don’t occur in your area. You may also have to be creative about finding enough plant material for composting. Then once your garden is thriving you may need to figure out how to keep rabbits or rodents out. But be persistent. Desert agriculture isn’t a well-established science in any form. And locally sustainable desert agriculture is a discipline that hardly even exists. It shouldn’t be this way. With the right care and determination the desert has a lot to offer.
Saturday, December 18, 2010
The Gift of Leaves
Autumn leaves are wonderful things. Their bright and often deep earthy colors evoke a longing for calm and a slower time of year. Even the yellows and oranges have a profundity about them that demands a solemn and joyous attention. They are beautiful and soothing symbols of change.
But they are more than this. They are also gifts of the fertile earth and part of nature's way of nourishment.
A fresh green leaf on a vernal maple tree draws nutrients from a vast storehouse of compounds and minerals that are kept in the trunk and the roots of the tree. Some of these nutrients were taken directly from last year's atmosphere. Others were absorbed by the surface roots that received the decaying products of last year’s fallen leaves. Still other nutrients have come from deeper in the soil where minerals have been slowly prized from the older rocks, gravel and sand.
Through the summer this leaf will gather the energy that comes from the sun and use it to rework the air and the soil into a packaged piece of latent life. In the autumn as it falls to the earth, it carries with it these ingredients of future growth and health.
Sadly, not many of us see these free gifts of the earth for what they are worth. Perhaps we stop at Thanksgiving time and enjoy the beauty of the changing leaves but how often are we thankful for the fallen leaves? Or, more likely, are we bothered by the extra work of raking or blowing them off the lawn?
In our eastern cities where trees grow more plentifully, homeowners often have access to a service of landscape waste removal. All that is required is to have the leaves piled in the street where the city takes care of removing them. In the drier areas of the country, leaves can be piled into dumpsters and removed with the weekly garbage. Either way, the gift of leaves is lost and the natural cycles of regeneration are lost with it. We are left with only the artificial alternatives and superficial gardens that mass marketing enables. In the end we may have green lawns and pretty flowers but never with the sustainable fertility that comes from the gift of leaves. A few plants may thrive but the natural diversity of a vital soil is lost.
Fallen leaves are only gifts if they are worked back in to the soil. Maybe there are too many of them on your lawn and they really have to go. If so, consider yourself lucky. You have an excess of the gift of leaves. Chances are your neighbors do to and just don't know it. You have a great opportunity to gather these gifts and pile them up in your backyard. If you're worried that the wind might blow them around again, sprinkle water on top and cover them with something substantial. Before you do, however, you really should let the kids roll around in them with the dog and smell their autumn richness. It will be an aromatic memory that will stay with them all their life.
Make your pile as big as you can. Gather leaves from those who don't want them. Find leaves that come from different kinds of soil. They will add variety to your pile. In a few weeks you will notice that your pile is smaller. It is already starting to decay. At this point you might want to find some barnyard manure to mix in. If you have a hard time finding some, try looking in the garden section of a hardware store. You can often buy steer manure in a bag for cheap. This manure is a magic ingredient. If you mix it in well with the leaves, or even pile it in layers, and keep it moist, the earthworms will take over with a vengeance. You may not be aware that you have earthworms. You may have even been responsible for killing a lot of them with your commercial monthly landscape routine. But this manured pile of leaves will attract worms if there are any of them around at all.
Then after a few weeks, indulge your curiosity and look under your pile. You will be amazed at the number of small creatures running around. They are all busy changing the gift of leaves into the perfect food for plants. Every few weeks you should turn your pile over. In a few months you will have created a rich humic soil that will be better for your garden than the most expensive fertilizer you can buy. This process may take a little longer if it get's cold over the winter, but don't worry, the leaves will come through. Just be patient.
And while you wait, be thankful. The fallen leaves in your yard are not meant to torment you. They are a gift. And they can make you happy.
But they are more than this. They are also gifts of the fertile earth and part of nature's way of nourishment.
A fresh green leaf on a vernal maple tree draws nutrients from a vast storehouse of compounds and minerals that are kept in the trunk and the roots of the tree. Some of these nutrients were taken directly from last year's atmosphere. Others were absorbed by the surface roots that received the decaying products of last year’s fallen leaves. Still other nutrients have come from deeper in the soil where minerals have been slowly prized from the older rocks, gravel and sand.
Through the summer this leaf will gather the energy that comes from the sun and use it to rework the air and the soil into a packaged piece of latent life. In the autumn as it falls to the earth, it carries with it these ingredients of future growth and health.
Sadly, not many of us see these free gifts of the earth for what they are worth. Perhaps we stop at Thanksgiving time and enjoy the beauty of the changing leaves but how often are we thankful for the fallen leaves? Or, more likely, are we bothered by the extra work of raking or blowing them off the lawn?
In our eastern cities where trees grow more plentifully, homeowners often have access to a service of landscape waste removal. All that is required is to have the leaves piled in the street where the city takes care of removing them. In the drier areas of the country, leaves can be piled into dumpsters and removed with the weekly garbage. Either way, the gift of leaves is lost and the natural cycles of regeneration are lost with it. We are left with only the artificial alternatives and superficial gardens that mass marketing enables. In the end we may have green lawns and pretty flowers but never with the sustainable fertility that comes from the gift of leaves. A few plants may thrive but the natural diversity of a vital soil is lost.
Fallen leaves are only gifts if they are worked back in to the soil. Maybe there are too many of them on your lawn and they really have to go. If so, consider yourself lucky. You have an excess of the gift of leaves. Chances are your neighbors do to and just don't know it. You have a great opportunity to gather these gifts and pile them up in your backyard. If you're worried that the wind might blow them around again, sprinkle water on top and cover them with something substantial. Before you do, however, you really should let the kids roll around in them with the dog and smell their autumn richness. It will be an aromatic memory that will stay with them all their life.
Make your pile as big as you can. Gather leaves from those who don't want them. Find leaves that come from different kinds of soil. They will add variety to your pile. In a few weeks you will notice that your pile is smaller. It is already starting to decay. At this point you might want to find some barnyard manure to mix in. If you have a hard time finding some, try looking in the garden section of a hardware store. You can often buy steer manure in a bag for cheap. This manure is a magic ingredient. If you mix it in well with the leaves, or even pile it in layers, and keep it moist, the earthworms will take over with a vengeance. You may not be aware that you have earthworms. You may have even been responsible for killing a lot of them with your commercial monthly landscape routine. But this manured pile of leaves will attract worms if there are any of them around at all.
Then after a few weeks, indulge your curiosity and look under your pile. You will be amazed at the number of small creatures running around. They are all busy changing the gift of leaves into the perfect food for plants. Every few weeks you should turn your pile over. In a few months you will have created a rich humic soil that will be better for your garden than the most expensive fertilizer you can buy. This process may take a little longer if it get's cold over the winter, but don't worry, the leaves will come through. Just be patient.
And while you wait, be thankful. The fallen leaves in your yard are not meant to torment you. They are a gift. And they can make you happy.
Thursday, December 16, 2010
Filling the Measure of Creation
I Just learned about a black flightless beetle that lives in a canyon west of Fresno. This canyon is the only place it lives. There are no other isolated remnants or small populations anywhere else in the world. This beetle’s existence is spent rummaging through wild grasses and fallen oak leaves looking for small insects to eat, in a small corner of the world occupying only a few square miles.
As an entomologist, this sort of discovery interests me a great deal. I get excited about finding small creatures in unexpected places. In fact I have spent over three decades doing just that. And one of the things that I have come to appreciate about life on this planet is that it is local. I don’t mean that animals and plants can’t occupy large areas. Of course they can - and they do. But when we find them in their preferred habitat it is in a specific place.
Take mountain lions, for example. They occur throughout Western North America (as well as Florida) and in parts of Central and South America. They have the widest distribution of any wild cat species in the world. Even so, how many wild mountain lions have you seen in your life? Even if you get into the mountains a lot, it is more than likely that you have never seen one. In the many years and countless ventures that I have made into cougar country I have only seen one. It was at tree line in the John Muir Wilderness and the experience was awe-inspiring. I will never forget it.
A fact I wish to consider is a simple one: the species of the Creation have geographical and ecological limits. Scientists may outline detailed distribution maps and theoretical species ranges but if you ever hope to see a specific one, you need to find the right habitat.
Years ago I traveled through most of the Western United States collecting small click beetles that live on the ground between small plants and cobbles near streams and rivers. I got to the point that I could predict, with a high degree of accuracy, which places would harbor these insects and which would not. It all depended on recognizing the type of habitat and understanding the requirements of the insects. Others thought I had a sixth sense about these things but mostly it came from a lot of experience.
The Bible and the Doctrine and Covenants indicate that living things were meant to fill the measure of their creation. What does this mean exactly? Perhaps it means that living things are meant to propagate their own kind. I think it also means that living things are meant to fill a particular niche. This may seem a bit awkward - combining Genesis with ecology. But the truth is that the created order was made with intricate and sophisticated care. And so I think that filling the measure of creation means, in part, that living things enjoy the places they were created to enjoy.
But there is more - something quite significant that we usually fail to consider: we ourselves are products of particular places. This may sound like an evolutionary argument. It is not. It is an argument much older than Darwin that considers humanity and other species to be intricately woven into the very nature of the cosmos. Just as a diamond forms when certain conditions of carbon, heat, pressure and time prevail - so we are inevitable when the proper conditions prevail. The cosmos was created (or has always existed) for us.
This was the thinking of Aristotle and of the Medieval schoolmen who saw nature as a great scale of being, where form and function were all important evidence of this cosmic design. Since Darwin this understanding has been enlarged by D’arcy Wentworth Thompson (in his On Growth and Form first published in 1942) and more recently by Michael Denton (in Nature’s Destiny).
Thompson’s volume runs to over a thousand pages filled with example after example of how growth and form conform to an inevitable nature of life. “Still, all the while, like warp and woof, mechanism and teleology are interwoven together, and we must not cleave to the one nor despise the other; for their union is rooted in the very nature of totality.”
Denton’s insights stem from his research on the formation of red blood cells which he sees as epigenetic products. What he means by this is that the sum total of the genes involved are no where near sufficient, by themselves, to create red blood cells. They do create the required proteins but these proteins are essentially left on their own to continue the cascade of interconnected parts and processes that ultimately lead to a red blood cell. Denton argues that a similar situation exists for most (if not all) of the body’s processes.
“I am now quite convinced,” writes Denton, “that the discovery that protein folds are natural forms is only the beginning of what may turn out to be a major Platonic revision of biology, and an eventual relocation of biological order away from genes and mechanism and back into nature – where it resided before the Darwinian revolution.”
This perspective understands life as a physically necessary outcome of the created order. But if this is so, how do we explain the great diversity among individuals of a given species. Why, for example, do we all look so different?
Here the answer seems to be that we have built in to our genetic make-up an ability to adapt to changing environmental conditions. It is a necessary part of inter-generational survival. This is how the Eskimo have become so different from the Kalahari bushmen - even though both are very human.
This is the Darwinian process of natural selection but I believe that it is much more restricted than Darwin (or his modern acolytes have) imagined. This ability to adapt is a process of joining us to a particular place. It is not a process of generating new species.
What I wish to make clear is that we are a part of the eternal order. And we are also part of the places our forefathers lived. We are both eternally intended and locally derived.
This should all be obvious but it seems that the decades of toiling against a materialistic (Darwinian) counter culture has inured many of us to the realities of place. The religious among us have been defining our natures in heavenly terms even as we discount the fallen physical world we now inhabit. This is a mistake. Who we are has much to do with where we live - both now and in the future.
Yet there is more, I think a lot more, to filling the measure of creation. In our fallen world, for example, most living things are kept from growing in to their full potential. We see this when we notice a beautiful maple tree or dogwood in full bloom in our neighbor’s yard. With proper care these impressive trees become fuller, healthier, and much more attractive than the same kinds of trees growing wild in the forest. It is really remarkable what a capable gardener can do. Yet the sad implication is that there is potential in living things that never gets realized because there is no master gardener to bring it out.
How can anything fill the measure of its creation that fails to realize its own potential? I don’t think it can. The sad reality is that in our fallen world, very few opportunities exist for any individual of any species (humans included) to live to its potential. Consider the tangled bank of a stream (to use Darwin’s famous example) containing hundreds of plants all competing with each other for space, for limited nutrients and for light. Most of the individuals in this habitat will be small and undernourished as they get pushed aside by a few dominant individuals.
Our competitive world is much the same. And just as no exceptions are made in a tangled bank for pretty flowers, tasty herbs, or healthy crops - hardly any exceptions are made for us either. Competition and a harsh world are the main things that count - and it’s the weeds that do the best.
Occasionally a seed will land in an opportune spot and develop fully. But this is an exception. For the rest of us there is really only one way to reach our potential: get planted in a garden.
Before there was “nature red in tooth and claw” there was a garden. Before our ancestors had to deal with weeds there was a garden. Before we had to deal with all the burdens of a fallen world there was a garden.
According to sacred literature plants and animals (even humans) once lived in a place of achievable potential. Not only did they live there, but this garden was prior to the world we experience here. Prior, that is, because it represents the true state of things. The Creation, after all, was made to reach the measure of its creation.
And yet here we are - living lives that find us less than we should be - living with other species living less than they can be. And the inevitable question becomes quite simply: how can we learn to garden?
A very big clue from the natural world is that a garden respects the reality of place. The stones, streams, trees, or any number of other native elements are all used. The goal is to keep things real - and remember, a garden is real. In fact our garden is more real than its fallen counterpart. It represents our true potential.
Another important part of a garden is the gardener. But not any hired hand will do. A gardener that knows the potential of his garden is rare indeed. In fact such a person does not exist in a fallen world of limited perspective - at least we can’t see Him. A hired hand may learn useful things. He may learn how to prune roses, or that blueberries prefer pine mulches, or that impatiens want just the right amount of sun. But how does he plan for the unexpected disease, for fires, or for the vagrant rabbit let in through the open gate?
Clearly, no hired hand will do. But all is not lost. We may not live in our garden yet but we can work on it even so. We can learn to love a place and learn the needs of its living things – even discovering that some places are meant for us as a land of our inheritance. This created order was meant to be diverse and sustainable. It is also a place where it is possible for us to thrive if we can learn to live as we were meant to live. And when we get proficient at this we can start to understand ourselves a little better and the true nature of our potential. Of course we may need a little help from somebody who knows more about this than we do. But the inklings are there. And who’s to say that we can’t learn to garden with His help?
References:
Denton, Michael J. 2004. An Anti-Darwinian Intellectual Journey; in, William A. Dembski ed. Uncommon Dissent, Intellectuals who find Darwinism Unconvincing. ISI Books, Wilmington, DE. Denton’s quote is on page 174.
Denton, Michael J. 1998. Nature’s Destiny, How the Laws of Biology Reveal Purpose in the Universe. The Free Press.
Thompson, D’Arcy W. 1992. On Growth and Form. Dover Publications Inc., New York. Quotation is from page 7.
As an entomologist, this sort of discovery interests me a great deal. I get excited about finding small creatures in unexpected places. In fact I have spent over three decades doing just that. And one of the things that I have come to appreciate about life on this planet is that it is local. I don’t mean that animals and plants can’t occupy large areas. Of course they can - and they do. But when we find them in their preferred habitat it is in a specific place.
Take mountain lions, for example. They occur throughout Western North America (as well as Florida) and in parts of Central and South America. They have the widest distribution of any wild cat species in the world. Even so, how many wild mountain lions have you seen in your life? Even if you get into the mountains a lot, it is more than likely that you have never seen one. In the many years and countless ventures that I have made into cougar country I have only seen one. It was at tree line in the John Muir Wilderness and the experience was awe-inspiring. I will never forget it.
A fact I wish to consider is a simple one: the species of the Creation have geographical and ecological limits. Scientists may outline detailed distribution maps and theoretical species ranges but if you ever hope to see a specific one, you need to find the right habitat.
Years ago I traveled through most of the Western United States collecting small click beetles that live on the ground between small plants and cobbles near streams and rivers. I got to the point that I could predict, with a high degree of accuracy, which places would harbor these insects and which would not. It all depended on recognizing the type of habitat and understanding the requirements of the insects. Others thought I had a sixth sense about these things but mostly it came from a lot of experience.
The Bible and the Doctrine and Covenants indicate that living things were meant to fill the measure of their creation. What does this mean exactly? Perhaps it means that living things are meant to propagate their own kind. I think it also means that living things are meant to fill a particular niche. This may seem a bit awkward - combining Genesis with ecology. But the truth is that the created order was made with intricate and sophisticated care. And so I think that filling the measure of creation means, in part, that living things enjoy the places they were created to enjoy.
But there is more - something quite significant that we usually fail to consider: we ourselves are products of particular places. This may sound like an evolutionary argument. It is not. It is an argument much older than Darwin that considers humanity and other species to be intricately woven into the very nature of the cosmos. Just as a diamond forms when certain conditions of carbon, heat, pressure and time prevail - so we are inevitable when the proper conditions prevail. The cosmos was created (or has always existed) for us.
This was the thinking of Aristotle and of the Medieval schoolmen who saw nature as a great scale of being, where form and function were all important evidence of this cosmic design. Since Darwin this understanding has been enlarged by D’arcy Wentworth Thompson (in his On Growth and Form first published in 1942) and more recently by Michael Denton (in Nature’s Destiny).
Thompson’s volume runs to over a thousand pages filled with example after example of how growth and form conform to an inevitable nature of life. “Still, all the while, like warp and woof, mechanism and teleology are interwoven together, and we must not cleave to the one nor despise the other; for their union is rooted in the very nature of totality.”
Denton’s insights stem from his research on the formation of red blood cells which he sees as epigenetic products. What he means by this is that the sum total of the genes involved are no where near sufficient, by themselves, to create red blood cells. They do create the required proteins but these proteins are essentially left on their own to continue the cascade of interconnected parts and processes that ultimately lead to a red blood cell. Denton argues that a similar situation exists for most (if not all) of the body’s processes.
“I am now quite convinced,” writes Denton, “that the discovery that protein folds are natural forms is only the beginning of what may turn out to be a major Platonic revision of biology, and an eventual relocation of biological order away from genes and mechanism and back into nature – where it resided before the Darwinian revolution.”
This perspective understands life as a physically necessary outcome of the created order. But if this is so, how do we explain the great diversity among individuals of a given species. Why, for example, do we all look so different?
Here the answer seems to be that we have built in to our genetic make-up an ability to adapt to changing environmental conditions. It is a necessary part of inter-generational survival. This is how the Eskimo have become so different from the Kalahari bushmen - even though both are very human.
This is the Darwinian process of natural selection but I believe that it is much more restricted than Darwin (or his modern acolytes have) imagined. This ability to adapt is a process of joining us to a particular place. It is not a process of generating new species.
What I wish to make clear is that we are a part of the eternal order. And we are also part of the places our forefathers lived. We are both eternally intended and locally derived.
This should all be obvious but it seems that the decades of toiling against a materialistic (Darwinian) counter culture has inured many of us to the realities of place. The religious among us have been defining our natures in heavenly terms even as we discount the fallen physical world we now inhabit. This is a mistake. Who we are has much to do with where we live - both now and in the future.
Yet there is more, I think a lot more, to filling the measure of creation. In our fallen world, for example, most living things are kept from growing in to their full potential. We see this when we notice a beautiful maple tree or dogwood in full bloom in our neighbor’s yard. With proper care these impressive trees become fuller, healthier, and much more attractive than the same kinds of trees growing wild in the forest. It is really remarkable what a capable gardener can do. Yet the sad implication is that there is potential in living things that never gets realized because there is no master gardener to bring it out.
How can anything fill the measure of its creation that fails to realize its own potential? I don’t think it can. The sad reality is that in our fallen world, very few opportunities exist for any individual of any species (humans included) to live to its potential. Consider the tangled bank of a stream (to use Darwin’s famous example) containing hundreds of plants all competing with each other for space, for limited nutrients and for light. Most of the individuals in this habitat will be small and undernourished as they get pushed aside by a few dominant individuals.
Our competitive world is much the same. And just as no exceptions are made in a tangled bank for pretty flowers, tasty herbs, or healthy crops - hardly any exceptions are made for us either. Competition and a harsh world are the main things that count - and it’s the weeds that do the best.
Occasionally a seed will land in an opportune spot and develop fully. But this is an exception. For the rest of us there is really only one way to reach our potential: get planted in a garden.
Before there was “nature red in tooth and claw” there was a garden. Before our ancestors had to deal with weeds there was a garden. Before we had to deal with all the burdens of a fallen world there was a garden.
According to sacred literature plants and animals (even humans) once lived in a place of achievable potential. Not only did they live there, but this garden was prior to the world we experience here. Prior, that is, because it represents the true state of things. The Creation, after all, was made to reach the measure of its creation.
And yet here we are - living lives that find us less than we should be - living with other species living less than they can be. And the inevitable question becomes quite simply: how can we learn to garden?
A very big clue from the natural world is that a garden respects the reality of place. The stones, streams, trees, or any number of other native elements are all used. The goal is to keep things real - and remember, a garden is real. In fact our garden is more real than its fallen counterpart. It represents our true potential.
Another important part of a garden is the gardener. But not any hired hand will do. A gardener that knows the potential of his garden is rare indeed. In fact such a person does not exist in a fallen world of limited perspective - at least we can’t see Him. A hired hand may learn useful things. He may learn how to prune roses, or that blueberries prefer pine mulches, or that impatiens want just the right amount of sun. But how does he plan for the unexpected disease, for fires, or for the vagrant rabbit let in through the open gate?
Clearly, no hired hand will do. But all is not lost. We may not live in our garden yet but we can work on it even so. We can learn to love a place and learn the needs of its living things – even discovering that some places are meant for us as a land of our inheritance. This created order was meant to be diverse and sustainable. It is also a place where it is possible for us to thrive if we can learn to live as we were meant to live. And when we get proficient at this we can start to understand ourselves a little better and the true nature of our potential. Of course we may need a little help from somebody who knows more about this than we do. But the inklings are there. And who’s to say that we can’t learn to garden with His help?
References:
Denton, Michael J. 2004. An Anti-Darwinian Intellectual Journey; in, William A. Dembski ed. Uncommon Dissent, Intellectuals who find Darwinism Unconvincing. ISI Books, Wilmington, DE. Denton’s quote is on page 174.
Denton, Michael J. 1998. Nature’s Destiny, How the Laws of Biology Reveal Purpose in the Universe. The Free Press.
Thompson, D’Arcy W. 1992. On Growth and Form. Dover Publications Inc., New York. Quotation is from page 7.
Thursday, November 25, 2010
Cardo and Credo
Have you ever set your heart on something so much that it changed your life? Maybe you learned for the first time that compounding interest can make you money - if you could just control your spending. Maybe you learned that home-grown vegetables taste a lot better than grocery store vegetables. Maybe you discovered that turning off the TV and talking with your family is a great thing to do.
Some ideas come into our heads and make such an impression that we are willing to do something about them. It may be that we start to save money, grow a garden, or communicate better. Or it might be something else entirely. Whatever the impression may be it involves a thought, a heart-felt desire, and a planned effort.
This is nothing new, what might come as a surprise is that the heart-felt desire is just another way of saying something that we have been misunderstanding for years - even centuries. In a religious sense this heartfelt desire is what we used to mean by the word faith.
This is easier to see if you know Latin. Take the word cardiologist, for example. Most of us recognize that this is a scientist or a doctor who works on the heart. Cardo, of course, means heart in Latin. It isn’t hard to see the similarity of this word with the Latin credo, which means faith. Our English word creed is also derived from credo. These two words, cardo and credo (heart and faith) come from the same place.
This is clearly a different understanding of faith than a mere passive belief in something. We may have a lot of ideas or rational beliefs about many things. But faith doesn’t happen until we set our hearts on one of them.
This relationship of faith and heartfelt desire is seen in the Book of Heleman (Chapter 3:34 - in the Book of Mormon):
“Nevertheless they did … [wax]… firmer and firmer in their faith of Christ, unto the filling their souls with joy and consolation, yea, even to the purifying and the sanctification of their hearts, which sanctification cometh because of their yielding their hearts unto god.”
This understanding of faith may not be one that you have heard about before - and justifiably so. You won’t find it as a definition in any standard dictionary - at least not directly. But the earlier meaning is still there and occasionally comes through in certain words and phrases.
The most obvious are the words faithful and fidelity. These words convey a sense of being true but we use them about people we love. We are faithful to our spouse because of love. We demonstrate fidelity for the same reason. Simply put, faith is a virtue of the heart - not so much a virtue of the mind. If we have faith in someone, we have heartfelt feelings for them. Similarly, a true faith in Christ is not restricted to a simple rational belief in Him. It means that we love Him.
Consider all the references in the Old Testament to God’s jealousy. They often seem a bit odd. After all, jealousy is not a virtue and admitting that a supreme being could be guilty of this human frailty just doesn’t seem right.
But jealousy exists because love exists and the commandment to love God is the same thing as the commandment to have faith in Him. Unfortunately faith has lost much of this meaning. Today most of us think that faith just means believing - and this is doubly misleading. It’s misleading because the meaning of the word belief has itself changed. It also used to refer to setting one’s heart on something. Belief just like faith was all about the heart and not so much the mind.
This is obvious in German where I love you is expressed as Ich liebe dich. Love is liebe and comes from the same place as the lieve in our believe. The relationship is even more obvious in the old English verb belove.
This is significant. It is certainly more important than a mere academic insight. It changes the way we engage in public discourse about faith.
For example, today we often hear about people lacking faith or who don’t believe in God. Some of these people are professed atheists or hesitant agnostics. Their unbelief is a rational decision. Anciently this sort of thing was unthinkable.
Before modern times, God’s existence wasn’t questioned by anybody. What might be questioned was one’s devotion to Him. The first commandment is not to believe that God exists. It is to put no other gods before Him. In the New Testament, the Apostle James (in James 2:19) admits that it isn’t all that big of a deal to just acknowledge the existence of god. After all, even the devils acknowledge Him and tremble.
One of the most significant effects that atheism has had in recent times is to move the focus of faith from devotion to rational discourse. It has not only clouded our own religious lives, it has compromised our understanding of religious history.
Take the Reformation as an example, and the way we have interpreted it today. Viewed with a cardo and credo perspective, things are not the way we often make them out to be. The Reformation’s interpretation of faith in the New Testament is particularly informative.
Paul clearly taught that we are saved by faith. But he was also keen to point out the importance of living one’s faith. That this faith is grounded in cardo is quite clear in the Gospel of John where the bulk of the references to pisteuo (meaning faith or belief) are found. In fact there are almost as many references to pisteuo in John as in the three synoptic gospels combined.
And the way John uses the word faith is important too. Very often it is used as a verb and is focused on a person. John wanted us to have faith in Jesus Christ. It’s no mere coincidence that John is also the New Testament author keenest on love and the Holy Ghost. It is essentially impossible to read John without capturing a sense that faith in Christ is no faith at all if it excludes a heartfelt determination to follow Him.
Now fast-forward several hundred years to Medieval Europe. Martin Luther insists on sola fide (on faith alone) as the way of salvation. He sees parallels between the hypocrisy of Pharisaic rules and strict Catholicism and sees an unbridgeable gulf between this formalism and simple faith in Christ. But faith in 16th Century Europe is still grounded, at least in part, in cardo. There is an element of credo too and this nuance needs to be appreciated in our histories more than it has been.
Salvation through faith alone is one thing if we mean that salvation comes to those who rationally acknowledge Jesus to have been the Son of God. It is a very different thing altogether when it means that salvation comes to those who love God with all their heart, might, mind and strength. The former can be practically anybody - including insincere speculators. The later are true heirs of salvation. For this group there is no difference between faith and the first commandment.
But now fast-forward to the 21st Century. Our understanding of faith is almost always far removed from any sense of cardo. Those who profess faith very often feel obligated to justify their lack of knowledge in the next breath - as if faith and knowledge were somehow incompatible.
Here it is worth noticing the important distinction between knowing someone (for example the Spanish conocer) and knowing something (Spanish saber). Knowing things is the hallmark of our technological world. It is a world of facts. Ironically it is also a world of constantly changing certainties and perspectives. This is not the kind of knowledge on which one places a foundational faith.
Knowing people and human motivation, however, is different, especially as it involves an understanding of human nature and the reality of good and evil. Such knowledge can be existential. This is the kind of knowledge that one can rely on if, in fact, the person relied upon is faithful - is trustworthy. This is a knowledge that is based in faith.
Suppose, for example, a new corporate executive requires one of her VP’s to close a deal in Las Vegas. She sends the man with the most experience but also realizes that the surroundings may be a problem if he gets distracted. In the end she sends him off with a faith that borders on anxious worry. This is how we understand faith today.
Now consider the woman living several blocks away – the wife of the chosen VP. She has lived with her husband for 30 years. They have experienced the ups and downs of life together. They have raised a family and enjoy nothing more than spending time together with their children and grandchildren. They are very devoted to each other and consistently strengthen their relationship with daily conversations, nightly pillow talk, and weekly dates. This woman sends her husband off to Las Vegas with a kiss and a smile and doesn’t even think to question his loyalty. She has a faith in him that is based on existential knowledge.
Not too many people have this kind of faith in God. This is a great loss. It was the way our forefathers understood faith. This was the “faith of our Fathers.” Today we live in a world where more people believe in the stock market than they do in God. People are willing to gamble on uncertainty while living in a world of trivial facts. This is the farthest thing from a world of faith - a world of cardo and credo.
In the world of long ago many people changed their lives because of Who they believed in - because of faith. It is long past due for us to set our hearts upon Him again. There is nothing more important for us to know.
Reference
Smith, Wilford Cantwell. 1979. Faith and Belief. Princeton University Press. 347 pp.
Some ideas come into our heads and make such an impression that we are willing to do something about them. It may be that we start to save money, grow a garden, or communicate better. Or it might be something else entirely. Whatever the impression may be it involves a thought, a heart-felt desire, and a planned effort.
This is nothing new, what might come as a surprise is that the heart-felt desire is just another way of saying something that we have been misunderstanding for years - even centuries. In a religious sense this heartfelt desire is what we used to mean by the word faith.
This is easier to see if you know Latin. Take the word cardiologist, for example. Most of us recognize that this is a scientist or a doctor who works on the heart. Cardo, of course, means heart in Latin. It isn’t hard to see the similarity of this word with the Latin credo, which means faith. Our English word creed is also derived from credo. These two words, cardo and credo (heart and faith) come from the same place.
This is clearly a different understanding of faith than a mere passive belief in something. We may have a lot of ideas or rational beliefs about many things. But faith doesn’t happen until we set our hearts on one of them.
This relationship of faith and heartfelt desire is seen in the Book of Heleman (Chapter 3:34 - in the Book of Mormon):
“Nevertheless they did … [wax]… firmer and firmer in their faith of Christ, unto the filling their souls with joy and consolation, yea, even to the purifying and the sanctification of their hearts, which sanctification cometh because of their yielding their hearts unto god.”
This understanding of faith may not be one that you have heard about before - and justifiably so. You won’t find it as a definition in any standard dictionary - at least not directly. But the earlier meaning is still there and occasionally comes through in certain words and phrases.
The most obvious are the words faithful and fidelity. These words convey a sense of being true but we use them about people we love. We are faithful to our spouse because of love. We demonstrate fidelity for the same reason. Simply put, faith is a virtue of the heart - not so much a virtue of the mind. If we have faith in someone, we have heartfelt feelings for them. Similarly, a true faith in Christ is not restricted to a simple rational belief in Him. It means that we love Him.
Consider all the references in the Old Testament to God’s jealousy. They often seem a bit odd. After all, jealousy is not a virtue and admitting that a supreme being could be guilty of this human frailty just doesn’t seem right.
But jealousy exists because love exists and the commandment to love God is the same thing as the commandment to have faith in Him. Unfortunately faith has lost much of this meaning. Today most of us think that faith just means believing - and this is doubly misleading. It’s misleading because the meaning of the word belief has itself changed. It also used to refer to setting one’s heart on something. Belief just like faith was all about the heart and not so much the mind.
This is obvious in German where I love you is expressed as Ich liebe dich. Love is liebe and comes from the same place as the lieve in our believe. The relationship is even more obvious in the old English verb belove.
This is significant. It is certainly more important than a mere academic insight. It changes the way we engage in public discourse about faith.
For example, today we often hear about people lacking faith or who don’t believe in God. Some of these people are professed atheists or hesitant agnostics. Their unbelief is a rational decision. Anciently this sort of thing was unthinkable.
Before modern times, God’s existence wasn’t questioned by anybody. What might be questioned was one’s devotion to Him. The first commandment is not to believe that God exists. It is to put no other gods before Him. In the New Testament, the Apostle James (in James 2:19) admits that it isn’t all that big of a deal to just acknowledge the existence of god. After all, even the devils acknowledge Him and tremble.
One of the most significant effects that atheism has had in recent times is to move the focus of faith from devotion to rational discourse. It has not only clouded our own religious lives, it has compromised our understanding of religious history.
Take the Reformation as an example, and the way we have interpreted it today. Viewed with a cardo and credo perspective, things are not the way we often make them out to be. The Reformation’s interpretation of faith in the New Testament is particularly informative.
Paul clearly taught that we are saved by faith. But he was also keen to point out the importance of living one’s faith. That this faith is grounded in cardo is quite clear in the Gospel of John where the bulk of the references to pisteuo (meaning faith or belief) are found. In fact there are almost as many references to pisteuo in John as in the three synoptic gospels combined.
And the way John uses the word faith is important too. Very often it is used as a verb and is focused on a person. John wanted us to have faith in Jesus Christ. It’s no mere coincidence that John is also the New Testament author keenest on love and the Holy Ghost. It is essentially impossible to read John without capturing a sense that faith in Christ is no faith at all if it excludes a heartfelt determination to follow Him.
Now fast-forward several hundred years to Medieval Europe. Martin Luther insists on sola fide (on faith alone) as the way of salvation. He sees parallels between the hypocrisy of Pharisaic rules and strict Catholicism and sees an unbridgeable gulf between this formalism and simple faith in Christ. But faith in 16th Century Europe is still grounded, at least in part, in cardo. There is an element of credo too and this nuance needs to be appreciated in our histories more than it has been.
Salvation through faith alone is one thing if we mean that salvation comes to those who rationally acknowledge Jesus to have been the Son of God. It is a very different thing altogether when it means that salvation comes to those who love God with all their heart, might, mind and strength. The former can be practically anybody - including insincere speculators. The later are true heirs of salvation. For this group there is no difference between faith and the first commandment.
But now fast-forward to the 21st Century. Our understanding of faith is almost always far removed from any sense of cardo. Those who profess faith very often feel obligated to justify their lack of knowledge in the next breath - as if faith and knowledge were somehow incompatible.
Here it is worth noticing the important distinction between knowing someone (for example the Spanish conocer) and knowing something (Spanish saber). Knowing things is the hallmark of our technological world. It is a world of facts. Ironically it is also a world of constantly changing certainties and perspectives. This is not the kind of knowledge on which one places a foundational faith.
Knowing people and human motivation, however, is different, especially as it involves an understanding of human nature and the reality of good and evil. Such knowledge can be existential. This is the kind of knowledge that one can rely on if, in fact, the person relied upon is faithful - is trustworthy. This is a knowledge that is based in faith.
Suppose, for example, a new corporate executive requires one of her VP’s to close a deal in Las Vegas. She sends the man with the most experience but also realizes that the surroundings may be a problem if he gets distracted. In the end she sends him off with a faith that borders on anxious worry. This is how we understand faith today.
Now consider the woman living several blocks away – the wife of the chosen VP. She has lived with her husband for 30 years. They have experienced the ups and downs of life together. They have raised a family and enjoy nothing more than spending time together with their children and grandchildren. They are very devoted to each other and consistently strengthen their relationship with daily conversations, nightly pillow talk, and weekly dates. This woman sends her husband off to Las Vegas with a kiss and a smile and doesn’t even think to question his loyalty. She has a faith in him that is based on existential knowledge.
Not too many people have this kind of faith in God. This is a great loss. It was the way our forefathers understood faith. This was the “faith of our Fathers.” Today we live in a world where more people believe in the stock market than they do in God. People are willing to gamble on uncertainty while living in a world of trivial facts. This is the farthest thing from a world of faith - a world of cardo and credo.
In the world of long ago many people changed their lives because of Who they believed in - because of faith. It is long past due for us to set our hearts upon Him again. There is nothing more important for us to know.
Reference
Smith, Wilford Cantwell. 1979. Faith and Belief. Princeton University Press. 347 pp.
Wednesday, November 17, 2010
The Cost and Irony of Discouragement
You have heard the aphorism that "time is money." And in a highly competitive world that places monetary values on almost everything, this makes a certain amount of sense. It obviously makes sense if you are getting paid by the hour. It also makes sense - although a bit more indirectly - if you don't. Such being our perception of the world, it behooves us to consider one of the major enemies of time management. I refer to the problem of discouragement.
Not every hour of our day is maximally productive. I am best in the morning; and since study is important to me, I like to spend part of each morning studying. I am quite a bit less productive in the evening. This can change, however, if I happen to be discouraged. On really bad days, I might get almost nothing accomplished. The cost of this unproductive discouragement can be significant. But I would like to make the argument that the cost is greater than we might imagine if our calculations are merely monetary calculations. The real cost of discouragement has little to do with money and everything to do with the lack of fulfillment in our lives.
Discouragement can come from many places. Often it comes from the behavior of others. Sometimes it comes from failing to accomplish what we have our heart set on. Sometimes it comes because of poor health. Sometimes we are justified in being disappointed. Other times we are not. Some people are chronically discouraged. Others pass into and out of discouragement. Some people are discouraged so often that they become physically ill. However it is manifest, discouragement is worth reckoning with. It is much too costly to ignore - especially considering the value of the lives that it diminishes.
Several years ago while I was working as a part time Spanish teacher to pay my way through college, I had a chance conversation with my boss. He was also a student and had been studying business management - if my memory serves me correctly. One day he made the comment to me that the major cause of disappointment was unfulfilled expectations. This surprised me for a couple of reasons. The first thing was that I hadn't initially realized this young man was so thoughtful. The second reason was that it shifted the responsibility of discouragement from others to me. Our conversation wasn't really about me - it was about some of our young students. But the simple statement has stayed with me all these years as something that is both obvious and yet often overlooked. We get discouraged because things don't go the way we want them to. This is inevitable. But in the end, we have the ability to find fulfillment.
For Buddhists, all of this is much too obvious. The central tenets of their faith revolve around the unhappiness that comes from wanting things. For them the only relief from this unhappiness is to stop desiring things altogether. I am not in a position to be overly critical of this belief, since I haven't read enough about what they mean by it. I agree with their understanding that desires do cause us grief. I do think, however, that there is a way to find happiness - even enduring happiness - without giving away our desires.
Consider a lonely mother desiring to be reconciled with her wayward son. She may be partly responsible for their estrangement and may or may not be able to make amends. Either way, her desire is not a bad thing. In fact it remains a virtue even if her unhappiness is great and her life would be better if she could just stop worrying about the boy. In fact one can make the argument that a denial of this desire would lessen the mother's humanity. It is not a natural thing for us to not have desires.
And yet it is precisely these desires - or rather the thwarting of these desires - that cause us discouragement. And this discouragement is one of the greatest drags that keep us from becoming what we otherwise have the potential to become.
One of the immediate - and very common - signs of discouragement is to give up. Young people are particularly prone to this mistake. A typical example would be a young man discovering that he has a knack for art. He then spends every one of his high school electives taking art classes. His teachers encourage him because he is their star student. Other teachers, parents and friends also praise his work. Then he enrolls in an art class at college and no longer is the favored student. Other young artists do better work than he does - or so it appears to him. After the first semester, he decides on a different major and never picks up a paintbrush again. He has succumbed to the false notion that if he can't be the best, he might as well be nothing at all.
And so what happens to this young man is that he ends up in a profession that he is only partially interested in. As he gets older he struggles with the tedium of his life and wonders why there is no passion. If he is lucky, he might open a box from the attic one day, discover his painting supplies and try again. Maybe then he can overcome the misconception of his youth.
Is there a way that the grieving mother or the young artist could have prevented - or perhaps overcome - their discouragement? I think the answer is a distinct maybe. The discouragement that comes from a denial of love can be outside of our control. If the son never does make reconciliation, his mother will always grieve. She may apologize for any wrongs she may have done and do everything else to bring him back and yet still fail. For her the best answer may only be patience and to continue in love for others.
For the young artist, his discouragement is self-imposed. He made comparative success the basis for his happiness instead of the artistic involvement with beauty. His discouragement can be overcome by recognizing his mistake and by painting again because he has a gift. In the process, he may find himself again. And in this there is a bit of irony. As he becomes truer to his own nature - overcoming the competitive (even commercial) distraction of his youth - he will inevitably become a better employee. He will in all likelihood make his employer more competitive and more money.
But this misses the point for sure. Failure hurts, just as illness does or loss of friendships does. There is no way to have desires and avoid discouragement. Buddha was right. But desire has another side as well - a human side. It is the side of joy and fulfillment that comes from becoming who we are and who we are meant to be. And the key verb here is "to become". We'll never be the perfect beings we hope to be here in mortality. We will be much less. But failing to pursue the love of others and our own individual gifts - however imperfectly we may succeed - is a sure recipe for inner conflict and even greater discouragement.
A key lesson in all of this is to accept discouragement as we struggle to find the right things to desire. Remarkably as we do this, while being true to God, our desires will become more pure. They will become more capable of an enduring fulfillment. They will also become truer to our own natures - because God rejoices in our individuality and He seeks our happiness. So wherever we may be on this mortal road of discouragement, the best advice is to accept the pain and then move on. We were meant to want things. And we were meant to have joy.
Not every hour of our day is maximally productive. I am best in the morning; and since study is important to me, I like to spend part of each morning studying. I am quite a bit less productive in the evening. This can change, however, if I happen to be discouraged. On really bad days, I might get almost nothing accomplished. The cost of this unproductive discouragement can be significant. But I would like to make the argument that the cost is greater than we might imagine if our calculations are merely monetary calculations. The real cost of discouragement has little to do with money and everything to do with the lack of fulfillment in our lives.
Discouragement can come from many places. Often it comes from the behavior of others. Sometimes it comes from failing to accomplish what we have our heart set on. Sometimes it comes because of poor health. Sometimes we are justified in being disappointed. Other times we are not. Some people are chronically discouraged. Others pass into and out of discouragement. Some people are discouraged so often that they become physically ill. However it is manifest, discouragement is worth reckoning with. It is much too costly to ignore - especially considering the value of the lives that it diminishes.
Several years ago while I was working as a part time Spanish teacher to pay my way through college, I had a chance conversation with my boss. He was also a student and had been studying business management - if my memory serves me correctly. One day he made the comment to me that the major cause of disappointment was unfulfilled expectations. This surprised me for a couple of reasons. The first thing was that I hadn't initially realized this young man was so thoughtful. The second reason was that it shifted the responsibility of discouragement from others to me. Our conversation wasn't really about me - it was about some of our young students. But the simple statement has stayed with me all these years as something that is both obvious and yet often overlooked. We get discouraged because things don't go the way we want them to. This is inevitable. But in the end, we have the ability to find fulfillment.
For Buddhists, all of this is much too obvious. The central tenets of their faith revolve around the unhappiness that comes from wanting things. For them the only relief from this unhappiness is to stop desiring things altogether. I am not in a position to be overly critical of this belief, since I haven't read enough about what they mean by it. I agree with their understanding that desires do cause us grief. I do think, however, that there is a way to find happiness - even enduring happiness - without giving away our desires.
Consider a lonely mother desiring to be reconciled with her wayward son. She may be partly responsible for their estrangement and may or may not be able to make amends. Either way, her desire is not a bad thing. In fact it remains a virtue even if her unhappiness is great and her life would be better if she could just stop worrying about the boy. In fact one can make the argument that a denial of this desire would lessen the mother's humanity. It is not a natural thing for us to not have desires.
And yet it is precisely these desires - or rather the thwarting of these desires - that cause us discouragement. And this discouragement is one of the greatest drags that keep us from becoming what we otherwise have the potential to become.
One of the immediate - and very common - signs of discouragement is to give up. Young people are particularly prone to this mistake. A typical example would be a young man discovering that he has a knack for art. He then spends every one of his high school electives taking art classes. His teachers encourage him because he is their star student. Other teachers, parents and friends also praise his work. Then he enrolls in an art class at college and no longer is the favored student. Other young artists do better work than he does - or so it appears to him. After the first semester, he decides on a different major and never picks up a paintbrush again. He has succumbed to the false notion that if he can't be the best, he might as well be nothing at all.
And so what happens to this young man is that he ends up in a profession that he is only partially interested in. As he gets older he struggles with the tedium of his life and wonders why there is no passion. If he is lucky, he might open a box from the attic one day, discover his painting supplies and try again. Maybe then he can overcome the misconception of his youth.
Is there a way that the grieving mother or the young artist could have prevented - or perhaps overcome - their discouragement? I think the answer is a distinct maybe. The discouragement that comes from a denial of love can be outside of our control. If the son never does make reconciliation, his mother will always grieve. She may apologize for any wrongs she may have done and do everything else to bring him back and yet still fail. For her the best answer may only be patience and to continue in love for others.
For the young artist, his discouragement is self-imposed. He made comparative success the basis for his happiness instead of the artistic involvement with beauty. His discouragement can be overcome by recognizing his mistake and by painting again because he has a gift. In the process, he may find himself again. And in this there is a bit of irony. As he becomes truer to his own nature - overcoming the competitive (even commercial) distraction of his youth - he will inevitably become a better employee. He will in all likelihood make his employer more competitive and more money.
But this misses the point for sure. Failure hurts, just as illness does or loss of friendships does. There is no way to have desires and avoid discouragement. Buddha was right. But desire has another side as well - a human side. It is the side of joy and fulfillment that comes from becoming who we are and who we are meant to be. And the key verb here is "to become". We'll never be the perfect beings we hope to be here in mortality. We will be much less. But failing to pursue the love of others and our own individual gifts - however imperfectly we may succeed - is a sure recipe for inner conflict and even greater discouragement.
A key lesson in all of this is to accept discouragement as we struggle to find the right things to desire. Remarkably as we do this, while being true to God, our desires will become more pure. They will become more capable of an enduring fulfillment. They will also become truer to our own natures - because God rejoices in our individuality and He seeks our happiness. So wherever we may be on this mortal road of discouragement, the best advice is to accept the pain and then move on. We were meant to want things. And we were meant to have joy.
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