The cost of harmony

I am in wonder that there is so much violence in the world, as it has been my experience that people will tolerate a great deal before they strenuously object to it—much less kill over it.

Two members of one of my lodges have clearly shown the desire to take control of the lodge. I began to suspect this months ago, but said nothing because tolerance of bad behavior is the norm, which is to say that we get along by overlooking one another’s sins, both venial and cardinal. However, their particular behavior became so egregious that I tried to address it in lodge. They misused their power to silence me, so I wrote a letter to everyone who regularly attends lodge. I mailed that letter Saturday, and spent the weekend contemplating the effect of the bomb that I had sent on its way.

I go to lodge tomorrow and also to the trustee’s meeting that precedes lodge. I dread both so much that I can hardly get them off my mind. I have already received an angry phone call from the one lodge member who does more than anyone else to set the tone for avoiding disharmony at all costs. Our exchange put me in mind of children who were molested by relatives and later bring verifiable accusations against their molesters. Oftentimes, it is not the molester who is ostracized, but the victim who “made trouble” by bringing the molestation into the open.

This is an example of why I have trouble explaining the level of violence in the world. One key to the dilemma might be that proportionately more governments commit violence against other governments than do individuals against other individuals; and I should think that everyone has witnessed instances of smaller groups treating a person worse than the individuals within those groups would have done. Such could be my lodge’s response toward me. If so, I won’t be surprised.

Even my caller agreed with the facts I related, my letter being largely a listing of egregious actions followed by an appeal for the lodge to retake control. Yet retaking control will require aggressive action, and it might be easier to simply blame me for creating disharmony.

Such considerations are among those that prevent me from trusting any group. People like to think that groups are definable, but the larger the group, the less it can be contained within a definition. The Freemasons, the Catholic Church, and the U.S. government, for example, have all done so much good and so much evil that it is difficult to tell which is weightier. Whether a given person sees these institutions as a curse or a salvation depends upon who he is and where and when he is alive. The important points are that groups are not human beings; they have more power than human beings; and they exceed our individual capability to rationalize.

But how am I to behave tomorrow? First, I will not defend my letter. I started it a month ago, gave it serious deliberation, made it as fair and accurate as possible, and won’t, therefore, back down from any of it. Second, I will enter the lodge more as an observer than a participant, i.e. from a standpoint of emotional neutrality rather than reactivity. Furthermore, I will re-read parts of Marcus Aurelius.

“When you feel that you simply cannot live if a person or a group of people disapproves of you, remind yourself of what kind of people they are. Ponder their limited intelligence, their fickle sentiments, their often base motives, and reflect upon how little their opinion is worth” (my paraphrase).

Organizations; feelings of superiority

I got up this morning, opened the blinds, and turned on the radio. The first word spoken was Iraq, so I changed over to a classical music station and listened to Handel. Iraq has nothing to do with me except for the fact that the government will take my property at gunpoint unless I help pay the interest on our war loans.

I weary of the oppressive nature of organizations—all organizations, even democratic ones. In our society, we figure that one vote per person is about right, but I think we could do better. Instead of voting for only one candidate for an office, each voter could have ten votes and award them as he pleased. This could work out as follows: five votes for candidate A, three for B, one for C, and none for D. Or in the case of ballot measures, each voter could have 300 votes to distribute. That way, people who were deeply invested would have more say than people who were not.

One of the groups I belong to has been trying to decide whether to move a pool table from the basement to the dining room. Those who play pool oppose the idea, but others have the vague hope that it might encourage more people would come to meetings. Now, which group do you think is more invested? Yet, everyone has the same voting power. This reminds me of a cynical definition of democracy: “Democracy is two wolves and a sheep voting on what to have for dinner.”

Another of my groups is moving its meeting place due to a rent increase. I brokered the move, which might reasonably have been expected to take nine hours but instead took nine months. I was the reluctant center of attention at meeting after meeting as I answered the same questions and addressed the same issues. I was emotionally finished well before the process was physically finished, and I often found myself almost too perturbed to stay in the room.

I could bear my fellows better if I respected their intelligence. As it is, I see more in me than I see in them, but I am unable to use my gifts to the benefit of either.

“…intercourse with others requires a process of leveling down. The qualities which are present in one man, and absent in another, cannot come into play when they meet; and the self-sacrifice which this entails upon one of the parties, calls forth no recognition from the other…. To show your intelligence and discernment is only an indirect way of reproaching other people for being dull and incapable.”
Schopenhauer

It would be appropriate here for me to say how it is that I am superior, but I cannot well do so, and this leaves open the possibility that I am deluded. After all, I have accomplished little. I do many things well but none outstandingly. The highest award I’ve earned was a bachelor’s degree. The most money I’ve made was a trifle. I excel in neither looks nor personality. I seldom took a class but what I was outclassed by some of my fellows. Likewise, I am strong and coordinated, but not remarkably so.

The only thing I can offer to support my claim to superiority is that I appear to think more deeply than most people, but I cannot say why this is the case. It could be a matter of intelligence, but I doubt it. I think that it is more a case of curiosity combined with intellectual courage, but I cannot prove this, and I have no way to account for it.

In any event and for whatever reason, I have felt this way for as long as I can remember. I first became aware of it in the context of religion, because I was one of those rare people in rural Mississippi who expressed doubts about what I was told in church. To my astonishment, even my fellow theology students at Whitworth College went to class like horses led to a trough. I initially surmised that other people didn’t ask questions, because other people already had answers, but if this was true, why didn’t they share them with me?

I concluded that I could think deeply or I could be a Christian, but I couldn’t do both because Christian belief necessitates an accommodation between a person’s intellect and his desire to believe. I came to see that faith in Jesus was like floating in water in that it could only happen if a person was able to let go and relax, but I could not relax, and I found a strange comfort in this. Other people appeared to sell their souls too cheaply. They made a pact with God that denied their intellect, and they called this pact faith, deemed it a virtue, and said that only “a fool” would disagree. I considered it a pact with the devil, because I could not see how such a God surpassed the devil.

So, what do I do with my life? As the years pass, I join organizations like the Freemasons and the Odd Fellows, organizations that require at least a token theism. Does this connote the personal superiority of which I boast? No, I think that it connotes a seriously ambivalent personality. One might even conjecture that I feel superior to other people to hide the fact that I don’t have it together nearly as well as they do. But I don’t believe it. In this, at least, I can let go and relax. The fact that I have not made the most of my abilities does not disprove their existence.

It is oftentimes the case that special gifts come with special liabilities. Whether this is necessarily true or co-incidentally true seems to vary, but, in my own case, I know two things: I could become a great deal more than I have ever been; and I am not yet dead. The fact that the same could be said of anyone does not concern me.

Why we eat badly; the holiness of good food

Peggy’s parents sent us a $60 fruitcake for Christmas. It’s a heaven-in-a-bite affair for someone like myself who loves fruitcake, but it’s also a gain weight looking at it affair. A really good fruitcake is one of the few gustatory evils that still tempt me. If the one at hand was less tasty, I would give it away, but—except for the revolving head and projectile vomit—fruitcakes are to me what demons were to Linda Blair.

Peggy and I were talking about the days of childhood when we believed that anything they sold in stores was good for us, or otherwise they wouldn’t be allowed to sell it. This belief enabled us to eat all manner of horrible things with unmitigated delight. As we talked, I wondered whether the many obese adults we know are able to eat with such pleasure, or whether, even as they indulge, the voice of conscience is playing a discordant note. I thought that this must be the case, but Peggy speculated that they are able to stifle that voice so completely that it is powerless. Though she is not obese, I have watched Peggy eat compulsively, and I can but offer that I witnessed no such abandon in her. I just saw someone whose hand kept returning to the plate in a way that looked desperate instead of joyful. If such torture has been largely alien to me, it is only because I gain weight less easily.

It seems to be the human condition that we all, at times, will trade a portion of our health and our dignity for that which delights our palate—or our lower regions. Some say that a life without indulgence is not worth living. That might be true, but can’t we at least elevate our indulgences?

When I end a fast, that which is good for me tastes a thousand times better than that which is bad. A piece of salmon, a serving of collard greens, some lentils and barley, a slice of cornbread, a glass of wine; such things are a veritable symphony of taste. They are far too glorious to be consumed in front of the television. Anything more than dim lights, soft music, and quiet conversation would be irreverent. No doughnut or fruitcake could stand against them.

I have concluded from this that we eat things that are bad for us because we are sated. In food as in all things, intemperance deadens our ability to appreciate the good. I would even say the holy, because eating can be a religious observance. Maybe that’s why we—blasphemous species that we are—process our food until its nutritive content is gone, filling it with fake colors and other chemicals, and distorting it so that no can guess its origin.

My joy in baking

Since Peggy was diagnosed as pre-diabetic, I’ve become quite excited about the possibilities of barely processed grains, and am going through every book I can find on the subject. I’m also buying things like sorghum, buckwheat, pot barley, and teff, grains I have never used.

I began baking yeast breads in the mid-seventies. My mother made yeast biscuits, but she never made yeast loaves, so I was the first person I knew to do it. A few loaves didn’t rise as much as I would have liked, but I didn't see fit to throw them out. Of course, the only whole grain I could buy in rural Mississippi was wheat flour.

Over the years, my baking interests turned away from yeast breads and toward whole grain crackers, biscuits and cornbreads. Biscuits and cornbreads were Southern staples that I had always made anyway, but crackers were entirely new and exciting, and appealed to me aesthetically and by virtue of their toughness (you could throw them against the wall without hurting them) and longevity. Peggy and I were traveling a lot at the time, and I would bake enough crackers for a two-month camping trip, and they would keep without refrigeration. My first recipe was for whole-wheat communion wafers and was given to me by an Episcopal priest. I baked them for the church until someone with throat cancer objected.

After fifteen years or so, the thought occurred to me that maybe I didn’t have to stick to the recipe so religiously, and I began experimenting with various oils, flours, sweeteners, etc. I discovered that it is really hard to muck-up a batch of crackers unless you burn them, Unfortunately, that is easy.

I’ve seldom baked a cake, rarely a cookie, and I only bake pies at Peggy’s insistence, but crackers, biscuits, and cornbreads have retained my passion. I eat the last two with molasses or sometimes maple syrup.

People who don't acknowledge others

A man with two white dogs just walked by. I’ve seen him almost daily for years. His dogs are longhaired yet always clean. He is in his forties, and has the build of a runner. He never makes eye contact, almost never speaks, and he and his wife are known for an unwavering coldness that easily turns to rudeness. The one time he spoke to me, Baxter—who was off-leash—ran up to his dogs to say hello. Bonnie was close behind. “If you don’t control your dogs, I will,” the man said. “Fuck you,” I retorted in the sure and certain knowledge that hurting my dogs would not bring anything good into his life. “That was constructive,” he replied, and walked on. Three years have passed. I had seen him almost everyday for at least the preceding seven, and I’ve seen him almost everyday since.

I feel more curiosity than hatred. Why are he and his wife so unfriendly that their neighbors refer to them as “those hateful people with the white dogs”? And how does he keep his dogs show room clean? Most of all, why does he never make eye contact?

There is another man in the neighborhood who I have seen almost everyday for fifteen or more years. He is bald, but hasn’t shaved in decades. He rides a cheap bike at walking speed, and collects cans and bottles for the nickel deposit. He is fit, clean, in his fifties, goes hatless in any weather, dresses simply, and appears intelligent; but he too never, ever makes eye contact. Are these men self-contained or just self-absorbed?

I think back to Harry, who I knew in college and considered the coolest, most self-contained person on earth. He too never made eye contact, and I rather wished that I was like Harry because, except for having a wife and child, Harry was like the lone drifters in Western movies. One morning, Harry shot his wife and baby girl as they bathed, and then shot himself. This made me doubt my ability to judge cool. It also made me wary of—and intrigued by—men who are reluctant to acknowledge the existence of others.