Cult of Death: Islamist Thanatophilia

"We have discovered how to hit the Jews where they are most
vulnerable. The Jews love life, so that is what we will take from
them. We will win because they love life and we love death."
--Hassan Nasrallah, Secretary General of Hezbollah

During the Bronze Age, human societies engaged in the cult of death. Evidence of this can be seen in the Vale of Hinnon (Ge-hinnon, the original vision of hell) near Jerusalem where archaeologists have uncovered jars and jars of the bones and ashes of children sacrificed to the idol Molach. The children were thrown alive into the fires within the mouth of a graven image of the idol in order to appease the god. Similar evidence has been found that is associated with civilizations practicing human sacrifice on a large scale throughout the world. The cult of death seems to be associated with a level of tool technology and the organization of society that is consistent with the Bronze Age. Thus, the Aztec rulers were engaged in human sacrifice at the time of first contact with the Spanish explorers, which was well into historical times for European civilization.

In these cults of death, the sacrifice of individuals was justified for the good of the people, their lands and crops, and carried out by a religious hierarchy that was wedded in some way to the political rulers, whether by actual intermarriage or by a fusing of the ruling family with godhood. The religions tended to be nature religions in which gods were thought to be in control of the various functions of nature (the sun, moon, rain and storms, crops, etc.) and were considered to be capricious and so needed to be placated by the spilling of human blood.

The Western Religions (Judaism, Christianity and Islam) all stem from the Israelite Religion, which also began as a nature religion that required human sacrifice. It is the evolution of this religion through monolatry (the worship of one god while acknowledging the existence of others) to a monotheism that developed the replacement of human sacrifices with animal sacrifices, and then with prayer and study, as an understanding of the unique nature and value of individual human life seemed to go together with the worship of a unique and individual deity. This development has resulted only recently in the value modern Westerners place on the individual human being as an individual with rights.

Although Islam is categorized by scholars as one of the Western Religions (because it, too, developed out of the ancient Israelite Religion), it does not share the same Western values with Christianity and Judaism. A little more than a century after the death of Islam's founder Mohammed, it got stuck or turned away (the term is in the eye of the beholder), from such a development, maintaining instead a culture that placed value not on the individual and his choices, but upon the society as a collective, its values dictated by its ruler-priests. The reasons given for this turning away are varied according to historians and scholars of religion, and include the nature of Islam's parent society, and internal and external conflicts during its spread. Islam had access to much of the Western Classical Canon at a time when Europe did not, and in fact transmitted that heritage back into European culture while, at the same time, turning away from it.

In Islam, as it was among the Bronze age Israelites-to-be, the rules do no apply equally to all, but are administered through certain individuals according tribe and family. The tribal and familial heads have standing and everyone else is subsumed in those identities. As the anthropologist Mary Douglas terms it, the society is "strong group", which means that human worth is judged through group identification, rather than through individual character. This means that some lives are worth more than others, and that those whose lives are worth less than others may be sacrificed, sometimes even capriciously, with little remorse on the part of the killers for the lives taken. This means that it can be perceived as an honor to allow others to use one's life and death for their own purposes, so long as those purposes are referenced to the needs of the group. This is how Islamists can claim that they represent "the religion of peace" while condoning barbaric practices such as the stoning of women, or suicide bombings, or the ritual sacrifice of children. Their judgment of what is peace is made according to the impact on the group, and in these cases, only the group they value, and not the impact on the individuals who have been sacrificed to the perceived needs of that group. (This is a pattern shared with other collectivist cultures and sub-cultures whether they are religious or not).

A week ago Shabbat, the nature of the Islamist Death Cult was on display again as two terrorists invaded the home of an Israeli family, murdering the father, his three-month old baby daughter, and two sons while they slept. The mother was also murdered as she tried to fight them. The children were murdered in a manner consistent with the ancient cults of human sacrifices, the perfect knife slashed their throats in one stroke. The attack was a terrorist attack by definition, since these people were killed in an attempt to terrify others in the name of the political/religious goals of the Islamists. But even more ominous, the ritual nature of the sacrifice demonstrates the allegiance of the killers to the ancient and barbaric death cult.

There are those who will put themselves through all kinds of mental gymnastics in order to either justify the actions of these terrorists or to portray them as confused men who did not act on their own volition, but were used by unnamed "third parties". One such apologist commenting on my Facebook account even tried to argue that "nobody wants to harm others."
This is at its sorry best, wishful thinking, and at its worst, an injustice to the innocent victims of murder plain and simple.

Those who justify murder and child sacrifice often do so in order to maintain their fantasy that all ideas and cultures are equally good, and that one cannot be preferred over another. This is the concept of multiculturalism. Multiculturalism was the justification that hid behind the robes of the judge in New Jersey who thought it was just fine for a Muslim man to rape his wife in America because our laws should not override the husband's religious beliefs. Although this decision was overturned by a higher court, a sign that neither logic or righteousness are totally absent from American jurisprudence, most commentators still thought of this as a case of 'religious freedom' gone too far. Almost no one was able to articulate the principle that makes the original decision wrong. (Hint: It's Individual Rights).

It is clear that the Islamists' death cult is an example of Thanatophilia--a love of death over life--they have said so, and very clearly. If the Nasrallah quote above is not enough, here is one from the Albanian Islamist leader, Ali Benhadjj, who said:

"Faith is propagated by counting up deaths every day; by adding up massacres and charnel-houses." (Cited in Anna Griefman's Death Orders: The Vanguard of Modern Terrorism in Communist Russia).

What may not be so clear is that those who would make themselves apologists for such murders are also bowing down at the shrine of the death cult, and are worshiping at the idol of death, destroyer of worlds. To make moral equivalence between a three-month old baby in Itamar and her murderer, or between a four year old child running from the terrorists' guns in Beslan and his killers, is an exercise in the destruction of the difference between good and evil, and between evil and innocence. It is itself an indication about how far from Western values some westerners have strayed, and how willing they are to bow to the death-dealers, and have become themselves worshipers of death, the real haters of the human race.

Despite the peddlers of moral equivalence and multiculturalism, there are large differences between murder of the innocent, and the defense of one's own life and its value; there are large differences between a culture that values death over life, and one that values life over death, and values will ultimately determine how we make the judgment between them. While members of Hamas and Hezbollah were passing out candy and urging Islamists to celebrate the sacrifice of innocent children to the cult of death, their grandfather, speaking at their funeral was reminding his people of the commandment at the heart of the cult of life:

See, I place before you this day life and death, the blessing and the curse. Choose life, that you and your children may live. (My translation).

In accordance with this commandment, with the value placed on life, indiscriminate murder is forbidden. And so the grandfather and rabbi pleaded for justice through law and sound judgment, and pleaded against indiscriminate revenge.

There can be no justice at all in a society that bows down to the idols of death and destruction on principle. There, one will always witness the "religion of peace" unselfconsciously stoning women, sending young men off to death and murder by suicide attack, and ritually murdering innocent children. A society that worships at the altar of death is likely to see the massive deaths of themselves and their own innocent children. This is more than terrorism for political purposes, it is the love of death for its own sake. It is the cult of death.

Those who love life will act on that value. They will defend the innocent and will not traffic in the moral equivalency between the murderer and the murdered, and they will not allow their own judgment to be clouded by moral relativism, but will stand up for the rights of the innocent, and justice for their undeserved murders.

Because We're Here: The Spiritualist, the Global Warming Truther and Least Astonishment

"We come into the world and take our chances.
Fate is just the weight of circumstances.
That's the way that Lady Luck dances,
Roll the bones. Roll the bones.
Why are we here? Because we're here,
Roll the bones, roll the bones.

Why does it happen? Because it happens,
Roll the bones, roll the bones . . ."
--Peart and Rush, Roll the Bones

This morning, opening my Facebook and E-mail accounts for the first time in a week, I saw two posts whose headlines posited a reason for the earthquake and tsunami that occurred in Japan on Friday, March 11.

The first came to me through Facebook, and was a You-Tube video of a spiritualist warning people that a change in the earth's axis would cause "mega-quakes" and that people ought to prepare by moving away from all major faults. In this video the perpetrator of pseudo-science very skillfully mixed a small snippet of fact gotten backwards--earthquakes can change the earth's axis of mass to a very small degree-- with quite a few scientific sounding terms in order to develop a plausible-sounding prediction that was hailed by the person posting it as proof that because the earthquake occurred after the "prediction" was made, then the explanation given by the spiritualist must be correct and altogether right. It is the end of the world as we know it.

The second came to me through an e-mail link to a website blog called Grist. The title of the article is: How is Climate Change Connected to Tsunamis? The gist of the grist article claim is that climate change causes ice to melt, which causes isostatic rebound of the earth's surface, which can cause earthquakes, and thus that we might expect to see more tsunamis due to global climate change. This is also pseudo-science in broad strokes. And like the first, it is using speculation about a small fact--the disappearance of continental glaciers does create a measurable isostatic rebound that goes on for quite some time (in a geological time frame)--to posit a cause for a natural disaster. When all you have is a hammer, so the saying goes, everything becomes a nail.

Both explanations are being used to promote the author's respective agendas, and neither has much to do with science. And both are also a form of whistling in the dark. I have said before that human beings tend to operate by the Principle of Least Astonishment. That is, we expect that all of the events, accidents and chance meetings of history with natural processes that brought us to the moment of our advent upon the earth are now finished, and that now that we are here we can reasonably expect the conditions of the earth itself to remain unchanged and unchanging because it is now, as it was and ever will be, the world as we expect it to be, without end, forever.

Human beings, fundamentally conservative creatures that we are, generally do not like astonishment. We survive great shifts in human and earth history by stubbornly insisting that the earth should not move beneath our feet, and that the waters should not transgress the shoreline by more than the routine workings of the tide. The Principle of Least Astonishment is a psychological defense that allows the vast majority of us to survive our encounters with Deep Time long enough to get about the business of passing on our genes and supporting our offspring in a relatively normal fashion. A few of us recognize that we are riders on the storm, and fewer still want to confront nature. They are the ones who go forth chasing tornadoes, running Class V rapids, and flying into hurricanes with shit-eating grins on their faces, because they feel truly alive when confronting the power of nature. It takes all kinds . . .

And generally, when faced with the enormity of a natural disaster, there are those who want to establish a cause and assign blame. This is another psychological defense. It is a way of throwing salt over the shoulder and spitting into the fire in order to make sure that such a disaster could "never happen to me." This masks the fear that it could by assigning blame to the victims as a class, and positing a solution that relies on the virtue of a belief that is supposed to protect one from the same fate.

The spiritualist and the anthropogenic global warming (AGW) truther who wrote the items I found today have both convinced themselves that they know the cause of the earthquake and the tsunami, and they both have assigned the blame to human activity. The spiritualist believes that our spiritual darkness has created bad energy that has knocked the earth from its rotational axis--never mind that it was the earthquake that changed the figure axis of the earth by a mere 1.8 micro-second--and that we can expect terrible punishment for our sins in the form of terrible earthquakes to come. The AGW truther believes that our environmental sins in the form of large carbon footprints are to blame. Both believe with an absolute and religious fervor that if only humanity could become enlightened (the spiritualist) or reduce its carbon footprint (the AGW truther) by implementing a specific grand plan to attain perfection, then such disasters could be averted and the innocence of Eden restored upon the earth.

As a rather ordinary scientist, I have no program that can match such grand schemes and great plans. I have only the rather bare and plain assurance that natural disasters are likely to keep occurring at rather regular intervals of Deep Time that are unpredictable in the course of Human Time. We know that earthquakes will take place on active faults, and that when the fault typology is such that energy can build for long periods of time, those earthquakes will be spectacular. And that they will occur entirely without human causation or consent. The human suffering due to these disasters can be mitigated by our understanding of the natural processes involved, and by application of our technology and resources to warn people out of the way of an impending disaster and to protect them as best we can when that warning is insufficient.

We can mitigate and manage natural disasters. We can prepare and plan to ride the storms and survive, faces to the welcoming sunshine that follows. But we cannot put an end to them. They are as much a part of the nature of our dynamic planet as is our own existence. And there is always the chance that we, as individuals, will roll an unlucky sequence of circumstances. In that case, nothing we could have foreseen, nothing we could have done will change the facts. Any person is vulnerable to the accidents and exigencies of nature. That is the consequence of being alive.

In the novel Hawaii, one of the main characters, Dr. Whipple, is confronted with the death of one of the Hawaiian royalty, the Ali Nui, whose bones must be hidden according to custom or their will come a terrible consequence, the whistling wind. The bones are hidden, but the whistling wind came anyway, sinking the ships in the harbor at Lanai. The Hawaiians fall of their faces, sure that the spirits of the Ali Nui sent the wind. A puritanical missionary raises his arms in an aweful curse, saying that the Christian God had sunk the ships as punishment for the immorality of the sailors, drunkards and fornicators, all. But Dr. Whipple says quietly: I don't think the Ali Nui sent the wind, and I don't think that God sank the ships."

I don't think the spirits caused the earthquake, and I don't think global warming caused the tsunami. And making major changes to our ways in order to propitiate either the spirits or the climate will not prevent future natural disasters. Further, such actions taken rashly and out of a sense of misplaced blame and guilt could very well cause all too predictable harm to many millions of people.

The Spiritualist and the AGW Truther are both speaking and acting out of a kind of faith that refuses to recognize the uncertainty inherent in the nature of reality. Their tendency to resort to the reasons they have endlessly rehearsed is a defense against the realization that they, too, are vulnerable to that uncertainty. This is the Principle of Least Astonishment in action. It is understandable but it is an evasion nonetheless.

But much worse than that, both believe at some level in the myth that human beings are not a part of nature, but are instead the evil outside cause of the destruction of nature. This is a kind of thanatosis, a death wish, projected upon all of humanity, which in such a formulation is not quite real to them because they are thinking of humanity as a vast collective rather than a collection of individuals. It is a faith every bit as dangerous as that of the Inquisition or the Supreme Soviet. In the name of humanity, then, they would condemn many individuals to surely suffer due to their solution to the messiness of life on a dynamic planet.

Faith as cold as ice; Why are little ones born only to suffer,
for the want of immunity or a bowl of rice?
Who would place that price
On the heads of the innocent children,
if there's some immortal power to control the dice?
We come into the world and take our chances.
Fate is just the weight of circumstances . . .
Roll the bones. . .

I would rather brave the weight of circumstances, and take my chances on natural disasters, knowing that I can mitigate and plan for them, but not control them--knowing that I can die, that I will die from living eventually; I would rather that than I would place my fate in the hands of those whose fear leads them to thanatosis and the knowing destruction of human lives in the name of "humanity." I refuse to worship at the altar of a faith that lays the price of uncertainty on the heads of the innocent. That is idolatry pure and simple.

So bring on TOTO, the paddle and the airplane. It's time to put a shit-eating grin on my face and experience Most Astonishment at the amazing power and beauty of what is. And maybe learn something new about Creation. Because I'm here . . .

Jack -- relax.
Get busy with the facts.
No zodiacs or almanacs,
No maniacs in polyester slacks.
Just the facts.
Gonna kick some gluteus max.
Its a parallax -- you dig?
You move around.
The small gets big. It's a rig.
Its action -- reaction --
Random interaction.
So who's afraid
Of a little abstraction?
Cant get no satisfaction
From the facts?
You better run, homeboy --
A fact's a fact
From Nome to Rome, boy.

Whats the deal? Spin the wheel.
If the dice are hot: Take a shot.
Play your cards. Show us what you got.
What you're holdin'.
If the cards are cold,
Don't go foldin'.
Lady luck is golden;
She favors the bold. It's cold.
Stop throwing stones --
The night has a thousand saxophones.
So get out there and rock.
Roll the bones.
Get busy!

BECAUSE WE'RE HERE.
--Peart, Rush: Roll the Bones Rap

You Shall be a Blessing: Debbie Friedman z'l

To stand in covenant with God is to accept a challenge

to regard one’s entire life as a channel for

bringing divine presence and blessing into the world.

We as a Jewish people, the people of Sinai, made such a commitment,

one to which we remain bound forever. To understand us Jews

is to realize that we are eternally devoted to that vision.

No matter how secular we may declare ourselves,

something within us remains priest at that altar.

--Rabbi Arthur Green

There is a lot going on in the world. There is a lot going on in my life, too, as we are packing and moving into a new life of our own making. And at our ages!

I have had several blog posts planned, some political and some personal, but they can wait.




Yesterday, I heard that Debbie Friedman died.
I put aside the boxes, the bubble wrap and the packing tape.
And I sat on a just-packed box of Siddurim and cried.

Although I can count the number of times I met her on both hands, she was one of those people that completely altered the direction of my life. Many Reform Jews of my generation can probably say the same thing. Debbie was a singer and songwriter who completely changed the world of Jewish Music, and the way worship services are conducted in Reform synagogues. And yet she had no formal training, did not read music, and never got the credentials that have become so very important in the Reform Jewish world.

Debbie's heart and soul were her credentials, and all of the fussy rabbis and cantors looking for degrees and checking for skills off of lists were undone by her energy, her joy, and her love for her work.


But for me, Debbie's influence was much more personal. I believe her music saved my life and confirmed to me my Jewish soul--the one that was standing at Sinai*-- though I didn't believe in that at the time.

*In the Talmud we are told that the soul of every Jew that has ever lived or ever will live stood at Sinai and directly experienced the giving of Torah, each one accepting the Covenant for herself.

My high school years were a living hell.
My Aspergian traits were in full flower, though I had never heard of Hans Asperger. In me resided a strange combination of idealism and social naivete that together made me a perfect candidate to be the class outcast. I went to a small private high school in a very socially conscious town, where social climbing was a blood sport, conducted both on and off the athletic fields. I am not an athlete, and to this day I possess that self-conscious awkwardness that plagues so many of us Aspies.


Things at home were difficult for me as well. There were aspects of my childhood home and family of origin that made it very difficult for me to believe that my differences had value, and that what I did or did not do made any difference at all. Depression is a common co-morbidity for Aspies, and I struggled with undiagnosed depression for most of high school and into the beginning of college. My parents had no idea of what to make of my moods, my social ineptness, my perseverations, and my passions. I was a strange little kid who grew into a very different and difficult teenager. I was vehement that they should leave me alone, and they did. To be fair,they were trying to sort out their rebellious middle child whose behavior required a great deal of attention, and it must have been overwhelming. They finally got a break with my even-tempered, mostly normal baby sister. But that was years later.


And into this difficult picture burst a short young woman with long flowing hair, unbounded energy, a huge guitar and an even huger voice.
My best friend and twin-sister-by-different-parents bought me her first album, Sing Unto God, from Olin-Sang-Ruby Union Institute Camp where Debbie was a song leader, and I fell head over heels in love. In love with this voice and this music, and in love with Judaism and the Hebrew language through the music.

Using a copy of Gates of Prayer: The New Union Prayerbook (with transliteration) and a dusty little Hebrew dictionary I found at the university library, I sat down to teach myself Hebrew. Not yet a university student, I had to do that work at the library. I began to light a candle for Shabbat, hidden alone in my room, like a Spanish converso. I began to understand that somehow, those Jews in part of my family tree had reached out across space and time and bequeathed to me the soul that stood a Sinai. I have no better explanation for this.

My Hebrew study and my solitary practice were not terribly successful, but they stood me in good stead later, when as a college student I began attending services sporadically at the local Reform synagogue. It never occured to me to actually talk to a rabbi; I would go in, sitting with my best friend if she was there, and if she wasn't, I'd leave immediately after the service. Later, when as an adult I actually joined the Reform synagogue here in Albuquerque, I had learned a few social skills and actually talked to people. And I felt like I was coming home to a place I had never been before.

Throughout the years that followed as I studied Hebrew intensively, had an adult Bat Mitzvah at the age of 33 (only 20 years late), served for a while as a cantorial soloist, taught Hebrew, and took my own children through life-cycle ritual and Holy Days--throughout it all--Debbie's music kept the beat of my Jewish life. It was her melody that I sang to end Shabbat with the ceremony of Havdalah. It was her Shehecheyanu that I chanted at my Bat Mitzvah. It was her Misheberach with which I prayed for the sick. And it was her healing album, Renewal of Spirit, that brought me through breast cancer and gave me the courage to ask for the help I so desperately needed. And I sang Debbie's Arise, My Love at the reception after I married my dear Engineering Geek under the Chuppah.

It isn't as if Debbie was my only Jewish mentor. There are countless others who were angels unawares for different parts of my Jewish journey: My two rabbis, Paul Citrin and Joseph Black, challenged me to choose life in very different ways--and I wasn't such an easy student then, either. (Just ask them. Or better yet, don't ask). And my cantor's cantor, Jacqueline Shuchat Marx, taught me how to pursue happiness again after a very dark time. Glenda, my Hebrew teacher, pushed and prodded and mothered, helping me learn to be a grown-up, as well as starting me on the way as a Hebrew scholar. But Debbie was there through her music for the entire long, strange trip my life has been.

I did have the privilege of singing with her as her student at several CAJE (Conference on Alternatives in Jewish Education) conferences, and I was able to thank her in person and sing "Days of Wine and Haroses" with her when she gave a concert at Congregation Beth Shalom in Santa Fe. I will never forget, when she came to give a concert at Congregation B'nei Israel in Albuquerque, her story of being stuck on the tarmac in an airplane at the Sunport. The reason for the delay escapes me now, but Debbie was having health problems even then, and I suppose it must have been uncomfortable for her. It was very early morning, pre-dawn, she said, and she was staring out of the little window at darkness, until, she said, "Suddenly, the mountains came out!" And her joy at their beauty was obvious in the energy with which she said it. That was Debbie, and that was something else that she reminded me of, something that with my Aspie tendency to see the glass as half-full, cracked and dingy, I too easily forget. There is beauty in the most unexpected places and in the most uncomfortable situations. Then she called all of the cantors and soloists in the audience to come up and sing Carlbach's Esa Enai (I look to the Mountains) with her.

Yes, Debbie and her music have been there for my entire Jewish journey.
Until now. And I feel as if, when she left us, she took a little piece of my soul with her.
As many Jews of my generation feel today, our crown is broken and a precious jewel has been taken from us.

And yet I know that her music remains. In particular, her song taken from the verse in B'reshit (Genesis) in which G-d tells Abraham to go to a new and strange place when Abraham is already somewhat advanced in age, speaks to me anew these days. It is not only about the journey of the young, but about the new adventures that await us, boundary crossers all, as we travel on our life's path. Each new step requires a choice. When G-d told Abraham to "GO!", old Abe still had a choice. But despite his age, and all the other reasons to stay in Haran, he went. The Hebrew words for G-d's command are lech l'cha--go to/for yourself!--the name of the song is the feminine of these words, Lechi L'ach:






L'simchat Chayim--to a joyful life!

Debbie Freidman has taught me that we are all meant to make of our lives a blessing. I have been a rather recalcitrant student, and it has taken me all these years to learn the lesson that finding joy in life is what makes our lives a blessing.

Debbie's name and her memory will be a blessing to me and to all who were touched by her energy, her music and that heart of hers.

Alev ha' Shalom, Debbie.

Authority, Bystanders, and Dehumanization: Why Resistance is Important

This morning, I opened my local newspaper, the Albuquerque Journal, to find a headline that offered a false dichotomy to airline travelers. It read:

"YOUR PICK: FULL BODY SCAN OR PROBING PAT-DOWN"

The story highlighted the controversy newly set off by John Tyner, who told a TSA screener not to "touch his junk" or he'd have the TSA guy arrested.
And a week before the "don't touch my junk" hero from San Diego, there was Megan McLain. Africana Online writes:

McClain, a radio host for the libertarian leaning show “Free Talk Left”, was one of the people that did not feel comfortable with the invasion of privacy. She told the TSA screeners that she was uncomfortable with the scanner. On a radio interview this week, she explains the humiliation that followed. TSA agents immediately began yelling “Opt out” when she voiced her discomfort. They brought her to an area where they were going to proceed with new pat down techniques. McClain was familiar with this technique and had some questions first. The technique is more invasive than physical molestation. TSA agents actually squeeze and twist breasts.

The agents were not very cooperative when McClain asked some questions. They handcuffed her to a chair and began yelling at her. She was not in a private area and other passengers had to walk around her. The TSA agents called in 12 police officers because McClain asked to speak to a supervisor. They lectured her for 30 minutes on terrorism while she remained cuffed to the chair. By this point, McClain was crying and shaking. She was unable to wipe her face and felt utterly humiliated. The agents and officers would not allow her to touch her possessions. They eventually ripped her airline ticket in half. Four different agents had her ID and were writing down information, presumably to do a back ground check on her. After about an hour of verbal abuse, the police officers escorted Ms. McClain to the ticketing counter where she had to find another way home since she had missed her flight. (Emphasis added.)

According to the grassroots organization We Won't Fly , incidents like this are being reported by airline agents every day now, as the holiday flying season approaches. And it is vitally important that we understand what is going on. These virtual strip-searches are both useless and unnecessary to airline security, and because of the attention "opt-out's" draw from other TSA agents and bystanders, they may be dangerous. So why is Janet Napolitano and the Department of Homeland (In)Security so determined to publicly invade the privacy of ordinary, law-abiding Americans at our airports by conducting Fourth Amendment prohibited searches that in any other context would be called molestation? Today in a news story about the growing outcry against these practices, Napolitano said:

"It's all about security. It's all about everybody recognizing their role."

Although the first part of the statement is patently untrue, the second part is telling. We've got to know our role, fellow peons, and give up our rights like good little do-be's, submitting to even the grossest invasion of our privacy for the sake of some higher purpose. And pay for the privilege to the tune of the cost of the airline ticket and our self-respect.

More telling is how those who dare to question the false choice given them are being treated. The TSA Gestapo tactics humiliate the few who have enough self-respect to question their authority, and in the manner of petty power mongers the world over, they do not allow the third choice, the one in which their intended victim is allowed to change her mind and not fly at all. Notice that Meg McClain was reduced to tears, powerless to even wipe her face, and unable to claim her personal possessions.

To submit to the virtual strip-search, or permit oneself to be sexually molested in public, or be reduced to utter humiliation as punishment for refusal, these are all actions that render a human being powerless over her own person and property, and thus are dehumanizing. The purpose of such activities on the part of government "authorities" is to instill fear of ever questioning, protesting, or even so much as stepping one toe across the increasingly narrow line of normal. The fear is meant to be felt by both the victim and the bystanders. During the Shoah, the Nazis and their collaborators raised such tactics to high art in order to control the populations of countries across an entire continent. Make no mistake, these tactics exist to do the same to freedom-loving Americans.

Bystanders. Note that I Ieft out the word "innocent." There are no innocent bystanders. A person standing by, knowing what is going on is far from "innocent." Although we are not perpetrators, we are made complicit by the act of witnessing the dehumanization of others. Our silence in the face of the dehumanization of the victim not only shames us, making us far more likely to remain silent in the presence of even more egregious crimes against our liberty in the future, but that very shame we feel dehumanizes us as well. It breaks the bonds of good will we ordinarily feel toward our fellow countrymen and women, destroying any real community and replaces it with conformity and obedience powered by fear.

This is why resistance is so vitally important.

There are two kinds of peaceful resistance available to us. There is passive resistance. In this case, refusal to fly is passive resistance. By choosing the third option--the one that the TSA, the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals, and my local newspaper--and by choosing it before ever going to the airport, we are practicing passive resistance. Let the airlines* go bankrupt if need be, we say. We will not pay to be virtually strip-searched or groped by some Gestapo pervert.

*And to those who say that the fault does not lie with the airlines, well they take our money and allow our rights to be violated without so much as a whimper. And remember the nickel-and-diming for each additional check-through bag? The long waits without a bathroom on the tarmac? Being packed into planes like sardines and fed peanuts on cross-continental flights? Airlines have not been good to their customers for a very long time. With few exceptions, they haven't earned our money and the goodwill it represents.

The passive resistance shown by a large number of people, like those who are calling the airlines and their trade organizations to communicate their displeasure and refusal to fly, can go a long way. The fact that such passive resistance as that voiced in blogs and on chat rooms and discussion lists is showing up on the front pages of newspapers, and has caused Congress to convene a hearing shows how successful it can be. And more importantly, passive resistance also protects one against the shame and loss of self-respect that goes with the meek bystander syndrome.

Even more effective in this regard is active resistance. I decided not to fly last year, and I drove to Continental Congress. but if I ever have reason to be in an airport, and I saw another human being being dehumanized like Meg McClain was, I have decided that come hell or high-water, I would conquer my fears and begin to chant "This is wrong! This is wrong!" I would do so, not hysterically, but as politely and firmly as I could manage, over and over. I would not expect to stop the petty tyrants of the TSA, but I would let them know that at least one witness knows the truth of what they are doing. I expect that in true Alice's Restaurant* fashion, others would join me. There might be consequences. But as the living heir of men who wrote the Declaration of Independence and braved hanging to bring themselves and their posterity liberty, I ought to be able to take it. And keeping my humanity, my menschlicheit, in a place where there are no human beings is very important to my own self-respect.

*"If one person walks in and sits down and sings 'You can get anything you want at Alice's Restaurant', they'll think he's crazy, and they won't take him. If two people walk in together, sit down and sing 'You can get anything you want at Alice's Restaurant', they'll think they're queer and they won't take either one. But if three people--can you imagine, three people?--if three people walk in, sit down and sing 'You can get anything you want at Alice's Restaurant', why then it will be a movement! And that's what I'm starting. The Alice's Restaurant Massacre Movement. And all you have have to do to join is wait for it to come around on the guee-tar and sing 'You can get anything you want at Alice's Restaurant.' In harmony." -- Arlo Guthrie, Alice's Restaurant Massacre.

There are other forms of active resistance. If you are going to be near an airport that has the Porno-Scans on the day before Thanksgiving, be sure to make up a sign and join the protests that are scheduled to occur. And if you are traveling, you can always join in on National Opt Out day, in which you opt out of the scan and elect to suffer the indignity of a molestation pat-down. Remember, during the French Revolution the workers threw their sabots (wooden shoes) into the gears and ground them to a halt before they could grind down the workers. And thus we get the word sabotage. Except opting out in great numbers will not destroy property, but it will slow down the terribly dehumanizing system enough to make a point. And if everybody is being molested together, with bystanders chanting "This is wrong!", as a witness, why then it becomes Civil Disobedience. Thoreau would be proud that some of his spiritual descendants still live and breath under the friendly skies.

Finally a note to those cynics who say: "National opt-out day, protests, and refusing to fly. These will not change anything. It will not make (the ubiquitous) them change the policies. They mean to establish tyranny over us and they will do it."

Well, maybe it will not make them change. There is precious little we can do to change the ubiquitous 'they'. But it will change us. It will change us from shame-faced and culpable little mice, scurrying about with shoulders hunched, afraid of the petty tyrants of the TSA, into proud practitioners of Civil Disobedience. Sure our actions could have consequences. They might not let us fly, or they might call out the riot police and arrest us all. If they do that, then link arms and go downtown singing. I Won't Back Down is a good one.

Read The Night Thoreau Spent in Jail. Our ancestors were made of sterner stuff than we, no doubt. But if they could brave British Regulars at the North Bridge, and the winter at Valley Forge, then we can certainly brave the temporary inconvenience of missing a flight, or donning the plastic handcuffs for the TV cameras and the video cams of strategically placed bystanders. If it gets on camera, TSA CANNOT win. It will go viral within minutes on You Tube.

And for those of you who would protest, but you just cannot bear the idea that you might never fly again, Sam Adams had words for you. They're not kind, but they are to the point:

"If ye love wealth better than liberty,
the tranquility of servitude
better than the animating contest of freedom,
go home from us in peace.
We ask not your counsels or your arms.
Crouch down and lick the hands which feed you.
May your chains set lightly upon you,
and may posterity forget that you were our countrymen."
--Sam Adams, Speech at the Philadelphia Statehouse,
Second Continental Congress, August 1, 1776.

There is a time for prudence, but that time is not when your countrymen and women are being dehumanized before your very eyes. Those who first dehumanize another will dehumanize you, and when you are no longer human beings in their eyes, then your very life is at stake.

The Mark of Cain

"It was after the passing of days that Kayin brought

from the fruits of the soil, a gift to YHWH,

and as for Hevel, he too brought--from the first-

born of his flock, from their fat parts.

YHWH had regard for Hevel and his gift,

for Kayin and his gift he had no regard.

Kayin became exceedingly upset and his face fell.

YHWH said to Kayin: Why are you so upset?

And why has your face fallen? Is it not thus:

If you intend good, bear-it-aloft, but

if what you intend is not good,

at your door is sin, crouching,

towards you he lusts--but you can rule over him.

Kayin said to Hevel his brother . . .

But then it was, when they were out in the field

that Kayin rose up against his brother

and he killed him. . .

YHWH said to [Kayin]:

No, therefore, whoever kills Kayin, sevenfold

will it be avenged. So YHWH set a sign for Kayin

so that whoever came upon him would not strike

him down. Kayin went out from the face of YHWH

and settled in the land of Wandering, east of Eden.

Genesis 4:3 - 8, 15 - 16; The Shochen Bible,

(translated by Everett Fox)

It is hard to understand why a man might rise up and murder one he calls his brother, his friend and companion. Even when both men are flawed, having had run-ins with the law, it is hard to imagine what would impel a man to such anger that he would not stop, that he would beat his friend to death and leave him lying in a pool of blood by the side of the road..

This is the same primeval story that was told first in Genesis, and in its aftermath, the question of what is in those ellipses--what happened that one man would rise up and kill a man that he loved as a brother--this same question haunts me today. It has haunted me since I found out Friday night that the Professional Revolutionary, a man that I knew, worked with, and ultimately had to distance myself from, had killed another young man that I know, the Virtual Artist, who was just pulling his life together after his own troubles with the law.

Nobody knows what Kayin/Cain said to his brother, Hevel/Abel. Nobody knows what Hevel said or did in reply, if anything. The context of the story makes it clear that it is mythos, a story that introduces the meaning of choosing evil over good into the context of a primeval setting after the birth of man as a moral being. No explanations are given, for no rational reason for the murder, the first fratricide, are possible.

What we do know is that a human being can be waylaid by passion, but that the human being can master it. For even though Cain felt the need to compare himself to his brother, and to believe that his brother received favor that he did not, the issue is not that. In the story, G-d makes no mention of that feeling, but tells Cain that the passion he feels can be mastered. This is the difference between an animal and a human being. An animal does what it does based on instinct and not thought. A human being, endowed with the ability to differentiate between good (life), and evil (death), can and must choose actions compatible with life and avoid death. That passion is an animal spirit, "crouching at the door" like a predator, but that the human being can be its master.

In the story, we do not know how that passion was inflamed to the point that Cain could take the life of his brother.That part has been left out, replaced only with the silent ellipses that remind us that there were words between the passion and the action. Although the text is silent on how Cain killed his brother, the midrash and commentary tell us of violent murder: Cain bashed in his brother's head with a stone.

So it is with the death of the Virtual Artist at the hands of the Professional Revolutionary. What words passed between them when the Revolutionary went to visit the Artist? We don't know. Who said what, who did what, and who threw the first punch? We don't know. Only one man is left to speak, and we are not privy to what he has said. We only know the consequences of what was transacted between them: the brutal murder of the Artist in what appears to be the result of passion unbridled by any thought; of rage so great that even after the Artist must have been down, the Revolutionary continued to hit him until near death, the Artist was left alone by the side of the road, awash in his life's blood. Left alone, to be found by a passer-by, he died en route to the hospital.

Even though I hate the sin, the action of a man I know that destroyed the life of another man I knew, I remain haunted. My anger at what happened to the Artist makes me loath the man who did it. My horror at the violence of the death makes me wish that I had never had a conversation or shared a meal with the murderer. I feel tainted.

And yet, as surely as I mourn the death of the Artist, so I find myself filled with sorrow at the unforgivable nature of the act of murder the Revolutionary committed. For in that moment, at that stark point of choice, he gave up his humanity. I am haunted by the unchangable direction of time, by a deed so final that no mending of it is possible. I am haunted because there is no reconciliation possible between the man and the friend he killed. And I mourn for the loss of the Revolutionary, too, and for the loss of any hope of an understanding between us in the fullness of time; I mourn for him as I would for a child of my own, lost to the land of wandering, east of Eden.

For the other part of the story is the confrontation of Cain with the finality of his action. His brother's blood cries out from the ground, and is consumed by the soil. And so the soil will no longer sustain the murderer. He is no longer of the earth, to live among his fellow human beings in peace. Instead, he will wander, an exile homeless to the end of his days, marked by the sign that he has murdered his brother.

The mark of Cain. It is not the punishment for murder. That is the exile and the wandering. But the mark is a sign meant to set Cain apart for all time. The mark is the memory of what he has done, a memory known to himself and to others, so that he wanders restlessly outside the good will one human being has toward another; the murderer wanders outside the very presence of human regard. The mark of Cain is the mark of exile not from the very soil of the earth, but from the regard of every other human being.

When I learned of the Artist's death by the hand of his friend, closer than a brother, I tore at my clothes in anger and cried out: Baruch Dayan Emet! Blessed is the Judge of Truth! And we will mourn for him, and cry out at the horror of his death. We will gather to remember his short life, and to express our unfathomed sorrow that he no longer shares the earth with us, his life untimely taken.

But there will be no such cry, no such mourning together, no such remembering and sending forth for the Revolutionary. My sorrow for him will be expressed in silence, his loss from among us deemed necessary and right. Because he has taken upon himself the Mark of Cain in that one aweful moment of choice, a moment about which the story is silent.

And so in silence will each of those of us who knew him mourn his loss from among human kind.

About Lily: A Difficult Decision

During the past few days I spent my 15 minute writing period discussing Lily, her behavior problems, how they have intensified over the past 6 months, and the difficult decisions that must be made about this situation. Dr. Nichol was, in the end, very frank about the stark choice that we face. He was quite clear that if we decide to keep Lily in the household, we would never be able to let our guard down regarding her for the rest of her life, even if we use medications and behavior modification, spending thousands--primarily on the training--she will remain untrustworthy. The only option to removing her from our household is euthanasia. Or as we used to say in those days when the Engineering Geek and I were growing up, putting the dog down. And the decision remains ours. He did not tell us what to do.

From the outside it looks like an easy decision: the dog is displaying more and more fear-based aggression, and the target is generally Shayna, the low dog on the totem pole, the dog who is generally quiet and shy. The obvious thing to do is to put the difficult dog down and to let the shy and quiet dog blossom. Except. . . except that such black and white pictures of the two different canine temperaments happens only in mediocre novels and B-movies.

Although Lily has indeed been showing more and more incidents of aggression towards Shayna, she is still a sweet and obedient dog with us, and is a pleasure to have around most of the time. Since consulting our very capable trainer, Casey, we have instituted a program of home training and she not only has learned to sit, stay, and down-stay, but she is beginning to come when she is called. She is affectionate, and she enjoys Umbrae's company much of the day in the dog run without incident. All of this makes it very difficult to contemplate putting a healthy dog down.

And Shayna's shyness is not all sweetness and light. It has the dark side of fear to it. Shayna will snap if she is cornered by a person, especially a large male person. She never makes contact, and the snarl and snap are a warning: "Look at these teeth and leave me alone!" If she is not cornered, her MO is to run to her "office" (her crate) and hide. She is very reactive to loud noises--pots and pans banging, a door slamming in the wind--and she is absolutely melded to her routine. Although all dogs are creatures of routine, Shayna gets physically ill when it is changed. Shayna can be said to be on sensory overload a good deal of the time, and she manages her anxiety with routine. She, too, will likely need a course of anti-anxiety medications and has already begun training--the beginning of her behavior modification.

By now, the gentle reader may be wondering why it is Lily's behavior and not Shayna's that has created the need for the decision that we are about to make. The difference lies in the nature of the behavior problem. Although both dogs are reactive, Lily's reaction consists of an all-out attack. Further, she has not only attacked and physically injured dogs, she goes after strangers and has come close to injuring people. And that is a line that cannot be allowed to be crossed. Although during the current escalation of aggression, Lily has only attacked other dogs, this must not be construed to mean that it will always be so. Lily cannot be trusted with other people. Ever.

It is also a grave concern that Lily attacked and injured Shayna in the dog run, when we were not there. Usually dogs do not fight when alone. When they fight--which is more common among females*--they tend to fight over resources. Food. The dog bed. Attention. And a person can generally end the fight by walking away. That she attacked when we were not there is very abnormal behavior and is impossible to predict or prevent except by keeping the two dogs completely separate. Forever.

*Female-upon-female fighting is very common. Male-upon-male is a distant second. And male-upon-female almost never happens. Had I known this, the make-up of the canine side of the household would have been different.

These are the reasons that the decision must be made about Lily and not about Shayna.

As is true with most difficult decisions, this one has moral implications. It is generally the moral import of a decision that makes it difficult. Choices that are about pure preference are seldom difficult. We go with what we like. Chocolate or vanilla? Cake or pie? There is no moral dimension to such a decision, as as human beings become practiced choosing our preferences, we make such choices without much thought.

But a decision that involves life and death, even that of an animal, has a moral dimension. It is not the same moral dimension as such a decision about a human being. That is entirely separate. Animals--even animals as sophisticated in social structure and the ability to make decisions as a dog is--are not moral souls. They do not make a conscious choice between good and evil, right and wrong. Rather they make decisions based more on instinct, and are hard-wired to act in favor of survival. And an animal is not conscious of its own death in the future. Dogs, like most other mammals live in the moment. (Dogs are aware of the difference between a living animal and a dead one, but they do not generalize it). That consciousness of impending death is what makes the human a moral being; the myth of the tree in the garden is a story about becoming conscious of mortality and thereby acquiring the need for morality.

Because she is a dog, Lily will not be aware of her impending death--should that be our decision--even when we go to put her down. We will make sure that her passing is unanticipated and painless. A walk in the meadow. A ride in the car. Going out to the garden at the Vet. That is all she will know until she knows no more.

But we are aware of it. And so the factors of our decision include important questions. When is it proper to destroy the life of an animal? Is it ever proper to spend thousands upon thousands of dollars on uncertain treatments for a dog, when a limited amount of discretionary wealth inevitably means that humans in the family will have to choose to do without certain wants, and even needs?

What about Lily? Is she ever really relaxed? Does her anxiety overwhelm the good life for her? What does it do to her brain to go repeatedly into that out-of-control place?

And, of very great importance, what about the threat of pain and suffering to another human being that Lily poses? As much as we'd like to believe that we can keep Lily from encountering another person and harming him or her, there is always chance. Dogs escape. In the confusion of comings and goings, they see the open door and the beckoning world and out they go. Lily was on a leash and slipped her collar and ran toward the neighbor dogs that she bit; they were minding their own business on their own property. She could do the same to a human being should she go into that "red zone" and get loose.

In my moral calculus, a human being's welfare is more important than the life of a dog--even a dog I love. This is so because I am obligated to respect the rights of another person, and also because I can only imagine the pain and fear caused to another person who is attacked by a dog. A dog for whom I am responsible, and whom I cannot cure.

And of course, every attack by a dog on a person creates problems for neighbors, dogs and dog-owners everywhere. Whole breeds of dogs are collectively held responsible for the irresponsible behavior of a dog owner who willfully or inattentively lets a dog harm a person. Dog owners find their lives more and more restricted, no matter how responsible they are and how good their dogs are. It tears the social fabric, making for strife between neighbors, anger and fear, and inevitably guilt and shame for the responsible dog owner. Can I keep a dog that is clearly becoming more aggressive, one that I have been warned can never be trusted, and take the risk of creating such chaos?

These are the questions that must be answered. The nature of the questions themselves predict for me the inevitible conclusion. A little time must be taken in order that every human being in the household has the opportunity to ask these questions and prepare themselves for the consequences of the decision that must be made.

A little time. But not so much time that a decision is never made. Not so much that the decision is taken out of our hands by events. A mensch--a real human being--does not let events determine her morality. This idea has been a long time coming to me, even though it seems so simple. I was raised in chaos. I did not learn until late that what I do matters. It has an effect upon the world. In fact, the home(s) or origin for both our problem dogs probably mirrored mine in that important way. But I am a human being and I can learn to be a mensch, and I am obligated to make decisions based upon my ability to think about the future and to make conscious choices. And so, too, with the other humans in the house.

This is not an easy decision. But then, life was not meant to be easy. Life was meant to be life. And it is in the wholeness of life and in the nature of a human being to make such decisions.

About Lily: We Get a Prognosis

"You didn't create a monster," Dr. Nichol assured us as we left the small exam room at Albuquerque's Veterinary Emergency Center. "You were dealt this problem."


After six months of incidents involving aggressive behavior of our dog Lily toward our dog Shayna, and two other dogs in the neighborhood--each incident of which has caused injuries, and repeated trips to the vet for the other dogs--we were at the end of the line. We had consulted a trainer, purchased crates, used calming collars, instituted behavior changes, each of which had been cause for hope, and each of which appeared to achieve a certain measure of success--for a little while. After a quiet period that lasted 4 months, Lily has once attacked Shayna again, and this time it took a dry-firing of a 22 to get Lily to disengage. Poor Shayna had both staples and stitches, and she is becoming increasingly reactive to sudden movements and loud noises. Not a good situation for a dog that lives in a house with a family.


When Shayna was being treated at ABQ Vet Urgent Care Center, Dr. Fizpatrick told us that we ought to consult a behavior specialist, and she recommended Dr. Nichol, who is working on his board certification for Veterinary Behavioral Medicine. "This pattern is not going to get better," she said. "In fact, it is going to get worse each time. Exponentially. Unfortunately, he is not cheap," she continued, "But Jeff is well known throughout the region. He's among the best."


So last week, the Engineering Geek worked from home for a day in order to babysit the dogs, and he spent an hour on the phone with Dr. Nichol's research assistant. We both filled out long questionnaires and submitted them by e-mail. The questions not only required that we detail the agressive incidents, we were also asked why we had chosen this dog, what her daily habits are, where the dogs sleep, how all the dogs and the cats interact, and more. From our detailed answers Dr. Nichol was able to glean quite a bit about our dogs, even before he met us--and them.


On Wednesday afternoon, I loaded all three of our canines--Lily, Shayna, and Umbrae into the Honda, and drove over to the Veterinary Emergency Clinic. There, the Engineering Geek met us, and we went into a two-hour consult.


Dr. Nichol met us in the foyer, greeting the dogs first. A promising sign, I thought. He complimented us on the use of the Gentle Leader head-collar for all three dogs. When we got into the consult, he got straight to business. He had read our questionnaires, and he had many questions. Most of the consult was related to the questions, and near the end of the consult, he also listened to and responded to our questions.



According to the information we had been given about the consult, sometimes dogs are examined and given a battery of lab tests to screen for underlying health conditions before behavioral interventions and any medical treatment begins. When I asked about the blood work toward the end of the interview, the mood got very serious.



Before we get into that, I would like to discuss with you the prognosis for this dog, he told us. Basically, he said that we have a very complicated situation. We have two dogs with behavior problems--Shayna, who is very shy and reactive and may not be using normal signalling to other dogs, and Lily, who displays fear agression that has become physical in the past six months. Umbrae, on the other hand, is a well-adjusted dog. This is not surprising because he has been raised by us since he was a very young puppy. He is not part of the problem at all, and may even mitigate it to some extent.



Now, as if a switch has been thrown in Lily's brain, her threatening behavior towards other dogs, which was always present to some degree, has become outright attacks on other dogs and threats toward people. And because she and Shayna are in the same household, they have begun an transaction in which Lily threatens and then attacks--and her agitation ramps up very, very quickly. In response to three attacks with injuries, Shayna's reactivity has increased, but that also increases the chances of another attack. If we keep both dogs in the same household and do nothing the attacks will certainly worsen in ferocity and the resulting injury over time. And threats towards people will most likely become attacks on people, something that we cannot allow.

The question thus becomes what to do. "What are your goals?" asked Dr. Nichol.

Our first response was to say that we wanted peace in the house, that we want the fighting to stop. When pressed by Dr. Nichol, we expressed that we wished to rehabilitate Lily if possible, and to bring Shayna to a point where she is less reactive and more obedient towards others in the household. (She obeys me, but if I am around she ignores commands from others).


Given these goals, Dr.Nichol discussed with us two broad actions, the second of which has two possible directions.


1) Keep both dogs in the household, treat both with anti-anxiety medication, and institute a program of behavior modification for both of them. (Umbrae would continue with his therapy dog training, as he is not part of the problem anyway).


Prognosis: We may see limited success for a period of months or even years. But we can never trust Lily with strangers or with other dogs--even our own, and the likelihood of another, and more severe attack months or even a few years down the line is high. Bottom line is that we could spend thousands upon thousands of dollars, and completely change our behavior and we still will have to be very vigilant toward Lily for the rest of her life with us.

2) Remove one dog from the household, and treat the other dog.

Here, it was clear from the beginning of our discussion that the dog we were all considering removing is Lily. She is the one with aggression problems, and they pre-date Shayna's advent in the household. As I noticed that this was the subtext of the conversation, I interrupted the conversation. "If Lily is removed from the equation," I asked, "Do we have a better chance rehabilitating Shayna?"

"Definitely," came the reply. Shayna does not have problems with agression. Any aggressive looking response she gives Lily is defensive in nature. However, these attacks will eventually make the behavior more entrenched, so a decision should be reached before we end up with two aggressive dogs. Although treating Shayna's fear and anxiety, which was present prior to any interactions with Lily, will not be a walk in the park, a combined approach of medication and behavior modification has a good chance of succeeding.


We discussed two possibilities regarding removing Lily from the household: re-homing her and euthanasia. Separately, both the Engineering Geek and I had answered on the questionnaire that we had thought about euthanasia. Bruce also indicated that he had thought about re-homing. My response to the re-homing question was a little different. I had written that I had thought about it, but was reluctant to pass on a dangerous dog to others.

According to Dr. Nichol, rehoming isn't really an option for Lily at this point. First, he pointed out, she does have issues with aggression and they are persistent and entrenched. Even if we managed to find a new home for Lily, having been direct about the problems, and even sharing with the new owners the report for Dr. Nichol and getting them to sign a waiver of liability in blood, they could still come back and sue us later should Lily injure someone. Further, part of the genesis of Lily's problem is already that we are at least her 3rd home. She probably had at least one home prior to being a stray, she was then a resident of the shelter, and then she came to us. By the time she came to us, she had made and broken attachments in at least two other places. Each such transition is hard on most dogs, and particularly hard on one that has fear-aggressive issues. "Frankly," Dr. Nichol said, "Your home is the last stop for both of these dogs." He was talking about Lily and Shayna.

So at this point, we stand on the cusp of a weighty decision. Rehoming Lily is off the table. So is doing nothing and hoping the problem will go away. Shayna cannot take more of this. So the decision is whether we ought to begin treatment of both dogs with anti-anxiety medications, along with behavior modification supervised by a trainer, or whether we ought to euthanize Lily and treat Shayna. Certainly this issue has financial considerations attached. It is also a highly emotional decision that cannot be taken lightly, and that despite the emotional cost, must be decided rationally and thoughtfully, taking into consideration the impacts on every member of the family and upon the household as a whole.

And making such a decision is going to take some time. How do we deal with the dogs in the meantime? There are more questions than answers at the moment. We (the humans) of Ragamuffin House have to each make a choice of our own, and come to terms with it, and then we have to talk it out, reaching a choice as a family. We must take into consideration the needs of all the non-talking residents--Lily, Shayna, and Umbrae--who are involved in the dynamics that have gone so terribly wrong, and who are impacted by our decision. In the process, we will undoubtedly wrestle with the mistakes that we have made with these dogs, as well as the problems that we were dealt unknowingly, and the sense of failure that humans feel when no choice has a happy ending.

It is hard enough to consider and make the choice for euthanasia when a dog is old and ill. To contemplate putting a dog down before end of life decisions would ordinarily be made is harder.

Objectivist Questions (Part II)

Note: This is the second part of two posts. The first part may be found here, and the introductory remarks, at the very least, are well worth reading, as there I explain the cirmcumstances by which these blog entries were conceived, and I stipulate the background that underpins my thinking.

Yesterday, in his response to my response to his question, C. August posed another question, and also began to expound on an idea about the Founders that was quite interesting. I would love to hear more of this thoughts on this, but in the meantime, in this post I will respond to his further query.

C. AUGUST FURTHER QUERIES

"You highlighted as one of the qualities that make us human "the need to know the difference between good and evil, and the need to choose the good in order to choose life." I'm curious how you determine what is the good?

The Objectivist view is succinctly put in Galt's speech: "All that which is proper to the life of a rational being is the good; all that which destroys it is the evil." And this of course is based on the metaphysical facts of man's nature as a rational being, and one of volitional consciousness, who must pursue values (the good) to further his life (the ultimate value)."

RESPONSE

Firstly, the Objectivist view so beautifully put by Rand in her exposition that you quoted from Atlas Shrugged demonstrates that although she was not raised in a religious home, she nevertheless learned the ultimate Jewish value. Life. Rand clearly retained that Jewish value (among others) when she developed and explained her philosophy, however she did not overtly draw upon Jewish tradition to do so. Rather she built her philosophy on the basis of human nature, specifically in terms of human psychology, by which I mean how a human being thinks and makes choices. Since Rand did that, and did it so well that I have nothing to add to it, I will instead draw upon Jewish tradition and mythos to make the same point.

As a Jew, I also say that the ultimate value is Life. And I would add that I do not mean here an afterlife, but rather this life, embodied on this earth. As far as I know, there is no other, and thus Life must be lived for it's own sake, and not as preparation for death. (This is a major point of departure between Judaism and medieval Christianity). From a Jewish perspective, I come by this value from a Jewish perspective of the first Creation myth in B'reshit (Genesis).

The structure of this story, as written in Hebrew, demonstrates that it was never intended to be taken literally. The structure itself points to the reason that the Priestly author wrote it: it was to contrast the Israelite world-view about the value of life and the earth with that of the surrounding Akkadians. Certain Hebrew words would have recalled to the hearer the older, and very different creation story in the Enuma Elish. That the story has a sophisticated mythic structure is evident from the first Hebrew words "b'reshit bara elohim . . ." which can best be translated as "once, when G-d was about to create . . ." Whereas the Akkadian myth has the world created as a result of a war among the gods, and the earth itself was the shell of the dragon-goddess Tiamat, which points to the idea that embodied being is debased at best, the Priestly story tells of an orderly and lawful creation of the world by the peaceful spoken word. The orderly nature of the earth and all that inhabit it is demonstrated by the order of the days: each of the first three days is paired with the second three, so that light is paired with the sun, the expanse of the sky is paired with the birds of the air, and the separation of the dry land and ocean is paired with the life that lives on each. And each physical act of creation is termed "good." Just in case the hearer had missed the point. In particular, in this story the human being that is created on the sixth day is called "very good." Embodied human life is very good, and belongs to the physical universe.

Human life is very good in Jewish eyes, as it is, and on this earth. I will not expound again in detail on the Jewish understanding of the story of garden, as I have done that in several posts, including a digression in Rules for Patriots? Suffice it to say that there is no concept of Original Sin in Judaism. Human life is good as it is. Right here on this earth. We have no need of heaven(In the morning service, Jews deliberately repudiate the concept of Original Sin by saying: "The soul that you created within me is good . . .". This was necessary to keep that concept firmly out of Jewish thought during our sojourn in Christian Europe).

The mythos behind the rest of that story is that human beings cannot go back to the womb. We cannot forever be children living in the garden, needing to make no effort to live. That would not be Paradise, rather it would become hell. The fruit of the tree of knowledge of good and evil is a metaphor for the human understanding of our own mortality, and the urgency that puts upon our efforts to sustain our lives. As I said above, human beings, alone of all of the mammals, know that they are mortal, and make their living on the earth by use of their minds, and they therefore have the power and responsibility to choose between that which promotes life (good) and that which destroys life (evil). The fruit of the tree, therefore, implies not a fall from grace, but a promotion to conscious being, and it did indeed make humans "like gods" even as the snake (the ancient symbol of wisdom) promised that it would. Wisdom and knowledge come with a price; that price is the need to exert effort to comprehend, to learn, and finally, the knowledge that life is finite and therefore, that the time of a human life is precious and irreplacible to its owner.

From this story we can then infer these values: Life is good, death is evil. Knowledge is life promoting, willful ignorance promotes death and is thus evil. Humans must work to promote their own lives and those of their offspring, and they must make choices and take action to do so. It is therefore evil to take away a person's ability to freely act upon their own knowledge and make their own choices. Thus freedom is good, and slavery is evil. Since "by the sweat of your brow you must earn your bread", a human being has the need of property: the fruit tree and the wheat field. Thus property is good, but theft is evil.

The ability and necessity to choose is a result of consciousness. It is a quality that is ascribed only to G-d and to human beings, and this is why there is story in Midrash that depicts angels as being jealous of the human condition. However, sin (in Hebrew, aiming badly) is the result of making the wrong choices or, and more importantly, the deliberate refusal to consciously choose. This is so because that refusal will inevitably result in death and destruction.

This tale is told again as exposition, where in Devarim (Deuteronomy), we read:

"I have set before you this day life and death, the blessing and the curse*; Choose life, that you and your children may live!"
* The parallel structure of Hebrew poetry pairs thusly: life = a blessing, death = a curse. This is not a magical incantation, it is poetry.

This, then, is how I determine what is good. That which promotes life and those means by which a person can protect, preserve and enhance his or her life.