Sometimes I wonder things...

I see it's already been a month since my last post. Inexplicably, however, the earth's rotation continues unabated. The tides come in, the garbage gets taken out, and everywhere the unsettling tentacle-scrape of expanding civilization can be heard. When I was younger and more idealistic, it aggravated me to contemplate the miniscule extent of my affect on the biosphere at large. But now I find it somewhat comforting that I could have a greater impact on the grand scheme by tossing an errant soda can into a stream than I exercise through even the most profound act of mentation. Sometimes being insignificant can be reassuring. And it’s much less stressful than the alternatives.

So anyway.
I wonder things sometimes.

Why, I wonder, would a presumably logical, mentally functional adult choose to answer all political questions and form the decisions based thereon by first asking himself, "What would Osama [bin Laden] want me to do?" and then selecting the alternate course? I've wondered in the past about the motivations of Christians who preface every action with the question, "What would Jesus do?" This, too, seems to illustrate an alarming degree of cognitive surrender and abdication of personal responsibility, but at least patterning one's life after the (supposed) tendencies of a benign religious figure has an air of wholesomeness and good intention about it. Basing one's--political--life on the principle of contradicting a random radical religio-socio-political wacko, however, seems not only highly misguided but petty and vaguely petulant as well.

I wonder, too, why a parent would choose principle over their own child. An acquaintance of mine related a story to me just this afternoon that brought this question to mind. It seems that she is the daughter of extremely, obsequiously religious parents. Well, based on other conversations I've had with this friend, I had already gathered that she is...well, not. This is not to say that she is a blood-drinking, Bible-burning, old-lady-kicking Neo-Baalite. It's just that, as a nineteen year old university freshman, her lifestyle is considerably more relaxed in any number of ways than that of her progenitors. This is obviously a surging wellspring of potential conflict, but, so I thought, one that need not merit any more strife than what is typical of the grudgingly adaptatious relationship between a young adult and her family. But I digress. To return to this afternoon, I listened, fully and excusably awestruck, as this young lady recounted to me the circumstances in which she circumstances surrounding her domestically eventful previous few weeks. I learned that some members of her immediate family had encountered her out about town somewhere some days previously. Apparently they decided that her attire caused them some considerable distress. Pursuant to this violation of the family dress code, she was summoned to the paternal estate for a (pun unintended but sadly unavoidable) dressing down. Certain privileges and/or financial benefits were withdrawn as punishment. I made no comment at this point, obviously, but it occurred to me that this was a fair and fitting punishment. By the age of nineteen, if one wishes to oppose the mandates of one's parents, one should reasonably be expected to be able to do so without being caught. Enough said. But the tale continues. Some span of time elapsed, and this individual returns to the family estate, once more at the behest of the parental units. They, apparently, want to talk. On the father's birthday, no less. Those of you who once had childhoods will immediately recognize this as an ill omen. So after all the requisite pleasantries had passed, the talking began. It seems that the girl's parents had somehow gotten wind of the fact that she had been taking birth-control medication. So do you suppose that Mr. and Mrs. X issued a collective sigh of relief congratulated their daughter on having made the very mature, responsible decision to avoid an unwanted pregnancy? If you answered yes, you obviously didn't read the course material closely enough, my pupils. For you see, I think I mentioned earlier that these were pious and stoutly religious individuals. So naturally, they were incensed. It is here that my friend perhaps made her first truly grievous error. Sensing impending domestic tribulation, she elected to go for broke and announce at this moment that she intended to spend the coming summer months residing--unwed, of course--with her current romantic interest. She said little of what transpired in the ensuing moments, skipping ahead in her narrative to later that same afternoon. Her parents drover her back to her dorm on the University campus, escorted her to her room, removed some of its furnishings to which they had reasonable claim, and departed, with a final admonition to--and here I quote directly from the girl herself--“have a nice life.”
Oh, but wait! There’s more, all for the same low price.
Sometime shortly after this debacle, the young lady in question had been discussing this unpleasant circumstance with some other members of her family, and had had occasion to express the view--and in my most humble assessment, perhaps a valid one--that she had been summarily disowned by her parents. Well, it just so happens that this sentiment made its way back to the ears of the parents. A few days later, when she went home to collect her belongings--which had thoughtfully been packed and stacked in the garage for her convenience--her parents informed her that since she was going to carry on about having been disowned, she may as well see what it was like to actually be disowned. So they immediately put an end to all financial support, cancelled her insurance coverage--including Medicare, which paid for her ADHD treatments--and said, in effect, “Bye.”
My gut reaction to all this was to scream, childlike, “That’s not fair!” But I decided instead to put myself into the role of Father, and see if I might not get some better perspective on the situation through his eyes. So I’m a father. My daughter, I find, is taking chemical substances to prevent pregnancy. Obviously, this indicates she is having sex. I know for a fact that she’s not married. She’s nineteen. And she’s having sex. Now I come to the real dilemma. I can take this issue as an intellectual one, and realize that since she is only nineteen and unmarried, it is especially imperative that she not get pregnant, and therefore be glad that she had the foresight to get on the Pill. As an alternative--or perhaps as a corollary to the first option--I can elect not to think about it at all, opting instead to go and beat the living shit out of her boyfriend and dump him in a reservoir somewhere. Or, lastly, I can do what my friend’s father did. I can make a moral issue of it, and cast out my wayward daughter for daring to offend my theological sensibilities. I can cast her off to her own devices and be done with her.
Yeah, I sure that’s what Jesus would have done.

I also wonder what makes a good person. Look at any two random people you see on the street. Talk to them for a while. Take them out to dinner, maybe. Now tell me: which is the better person? Really? That one? I would have thought you’d pick the other one. But no matter. Tell me, then, how you made your decision. Well, if you happen to be a heterosexual male, odds are the two random people you chose to interview were the possessors of the two most impressive sets of breasts you could find, and your ultimate selection rested on the relative merits thereof. Honestly, sociologists should restrict their subject pools exclusively to heterosexual males between the ages of 13 and 30. Data analysis would be greatly simplified, I assure you. But back to the question at hand: what makes us love one person and hate another? For instance, consider John Wayne and John Wayne Gacy. Well, you say, one was a beloved actor, and the other was a serial killer. The disparity is obvious. We love good guys, and hate bad guys, end of story. Ok, then, wiseass, define good.
...
I’m waiting.
...
There, you see? It’s not so easy, is it?
But I have an idea. Since someone brought up John Wayne, let’s examine this matter in the spirit of the good ol’ Cowboy Code. And no, I’m not talking about the one that reminds us never to drink downstream from the herd or use the blankets you get from an Indian reservation if they happen to be stamped U.S. Army. I mean the one that reminds us, among other things, to always judge a man by his actions. So a good man is a man who does good things, a bad man is a man who does bad things, and a foolish man is a man who votes Bush in November, right? So we’re all decided, we’ll judge on the merit of action. But which actions? Take the man who mugged you one afternoon last week. Do we condemn him as evil scum because he threatened your life to get you to part with the fifty bucks you had tucked into that fake Gucci bag of yours? Or do we call him a hero when, later on that night, as he’s headed for the all-night liquor store to turn your hard-earned stash into hard brown liquor , he happens on a homeless diabetic girl who reminds him of his daughter and decides to give her the cash to buy insulin?

Ok, so you prove it didn’t happen.

Anyway, my point is, we just don’t know how to approach this sort of thing. True, we could attempt to quantify a man’s behavior. That’d be simple enough. One good deed here, three bad deed over there, and pretty soon you’ve reduced human behavior to simple Karmic arithmetic. Q.E.D.
But can we, morally, really live with that? Aren’t there times when cold mathematics would make us really uncomfortable? Batman is one of our all-time favorite heroes. We know he’s a little unstable, but that’s what makes him an effective vigilante. Consider, if you will, an average day--er, night--for the Dark Knight. He saves Gotham from a flood, a blizzard, two separate geological catastrophes, and an influx of Scientologists; he foils every major super-villain for two hundred miles; apprehends three bank robbers, a jewel thief, an art smuggler, two purse snatchers, and a jaywalker. He, in short, earns the title Hero. But what if we follow the Caped Crusader home? We see him pilot the Batmobile back to its secret lodging in the Batcave, peel himself out of what is now undoubtedly a very smelly Bat-costume, ascend once more into Wayne manor, pull all the shades, fire up the Victrola, and spend the rest of the night in the kitchen smashing kittens with a hammer. What do we say? Do we run away screaming with guttural revulsion, or do we silently--if tremblingly--allow our city’s dark protector this one idiosyncrasy? Or what about Superman, arguably the greatest in a pantheon of superheroes and the one man who really was badder than old King Kong and meaner than a junkyard dog? What if we were to follow him clandestinely back to his Fortress of Solitude after a hard day’s defeating Lex Luthor, only to find that he seals himself inside, turns down the lights, puts on an old dress he “borrowed” from Lois Lane, and masturbates to Vietnamese pedophilia? I don’t know about you, but I don’t think I could get out of that place fast enough to suit me. I probably wouldn’t even be able to sleep that night. But if it hadn’t been for this Man of Steel, I might not have a planet to sleep on in the first place…

So how do we add it all up? How much good goes into the equation, and how much bad? And, incidentally, what, precisely, is the numerical value of the Karmic penalty for smashing kittens with a hammer, anyway?

Occasionally, I wonder if perhaps I wonder a little too much...