Pandora’s Box

         Prometheus clocked me from the get, knew me for what I am and what I’m here to do. He knew Zeus was still pissed about the whole fire thing. (Gods! That bit with the eagle and the liver! That was pretty creative.) Even so, I love my brother-in-law. He’s been through a lot and I bear him no ill-will for trying as hard as he did to warn his brother against me.
          Epimetheus, bless him: I love him too. The rash way he welcomed me, bundled me up lock, stock, urns, and box and brought me home may have seemed like daring—may have seemed like love—but the truth is he had no choice. It is Prometheus who lives in the light that illuminates the path before him, while my dear husband must (like the rest of us) content himself with the murk of afterthoughts and “what ifs” and “Oh, shit! My bads.”
          I was created to weaken men’s knees and I came well-kitted to my task. From Athena I gained the quiet, non-lethal arts of needlework and weaving. Aphrodite, true to her nature, shed grace upon me: grace lousy with “cruel longing and cares that weary the limbs.” Bitch.
          Hermes, mindful of my purpose, and suck-up to Zeus that he is, gave me the power of speech (for which I thank him), but he laced it with “a shameless mind and deceitful nature,” condemning me to trade in lies and crafty words. It is he, as well, who gave me my confusing name. Does “Pandora” mean “All Gift” because “all who dwelt on Olympus gave each a gift, a plague to man”? Or am I (conceivably worse, considering what almost happened) “All Giving,” condemned by Zeus to bestow upon mankind all things “necessary for life”?
          It was thusly, given unwanted gifts and compelled to share them, that I, Pandora the All Giving All Gift, clothed and bejeweled by perceptive Athena, watchful Persuasion, and the ever-lovin’ Charities, if you please, was sent forth—a punishment ashamed of her punishing nature.
          Chock full o’ evils, I am a gag gift sent to an innocent world by a narcissistic dill-hole who is, himself, stricken with the very worst toxins masculinity has on offer, but I swear I’m not even sure it was me who. . . . But, honestly, does it matter? I’ll take the blame. Because whether it was I or Epimetheus who won the tussle over the lid—no matter which of us succeeded in prying it up—it was my box.
          Which makes you wonder, by the way, what that fucker, Zeus, had in mind from the beginning. I mean why this sick charade? Zeus, the All-Frickin’-Mighty, could have poured Sickness, Death, Taxes, Ingrown Hairs, and Binge-worthy Television onto the heads of unsuspecting mankind at any moment he chose. Why did he create me, the first woman, to fling around his horse shit? All-Mighty Self-damned Coward.
          But here I am, and here is Epimetheus. We were both curious and we were both conflicted. I mean . . . a box from Olympus! There’s gotta be something mighty interesting in there. And weren’t we dying to know what?! We were at it for hours—no help from our All-Mighty Father. Epimetheus’d convince me that, well look, I came from Olympus and I was heavenly (for all we knew then), but in the next moment I’d remind him that hey man, we just met and maybe I’m not all peaches and light. So we’d go back to thinking about it some more. After all, as I’ve mentioned, it was Prometheus who got all the foresight in the family—and he’d already recused himself from our childish interest in a matter he considered long past closed. He didn’t want me on the ranch to begin with. Much less was he interested in my box.
          Be all that as it may, I do know that it was me who slammed it shut. It was me who clapped down the lid just in time to save you from the full complement of horrors. I was the one who trapped the hope of relief in there.
It turns out that I had my own gift to give in that it was I who saved you from ruinous longings for a day when the multitudinous evils of the box will end. I saved you from desperate aspirations for a Some Day when our rulers will be just, humane. It was I, not Prometheus and certainly not Zeus, who saved you from the daydream that you, with just a bit of logic and eloquence, could get the world to see that no one need starve—not in Ogbomosho and not in Los Angeles.
          I saved you from hoping.
          Since you don’t have to hope for these things, you are free to have peace of mind and to “care about the environment” and to “give to the poor” and to believe you are healthy and beautiful living within the bubble of the artificial famine of wealth.
          But does anyone congratulate me—what praise have I received—for withholding that last gift? And, by the way, for ending the Golden age while I was at it?
          Sure, I get it. I was sent as a punishment: to the men who were the “Heroes.” To the men who were blessed to live in a time before women. Until I was shot down here by Zeus to perform the function for which I was created. I was made to turn men’s heads—and they willingly partook of the goodybag of horrors that came with me, mucking things up for everybody.
          It was from my box that flew sickness, plague, social media. . . .But I also saved you from hope.
          No one thanks me, but I assure you: you are welcome.

A Malenky Slovo With Nadmenny Chellovecks: or Pascal’s Wager Accepted

I “came out” to my family as an atheist when I was a child. Here’s what I told them:

It may be that I am incorrect. It may be that when I die I will be confronted with supernatural beings who will demand answers for my arrogance in having ignored their mandates to live certain ways.

To those beings I will say, “I apologize. I see now that I was wrong. I had every opportunity to listen to those you sent to tell me the truth of your existence and expectations, but I wasn’t able to ‘believe’ because of the intelligence you gave me. I thank you for that intelligence. It has been the single thing I have been most proud of and have gotten the greatest use of throughout my life. I thank you for it even if it is now the cause of an eternity of torment.

“This is the only life I know for positive sure that I’m going to get, so I’m making it count. I WANT to be kind and do good works. HERE, in THIS life. Because I think it will make this life better for everyone, not because I’m afraid of what may or may not come after this life.”

Believe it or not, the novel A Clockwork Orange (NOT the film! The novel! And make sure it has 21 chapters! Don’t get the corrupt American edition!) is great at teaching this concept. It’s author, Anthony Burgess, was (is?) a Catholic. Spoiler alert: The message of the novel is that “God” gives us free will~which means we have the free will to behave like church ladies OR Reality TV Show Stars and that it is ungodly–it is AGAINST God’s WILL–to tamper with that choice for another person.

In short, the message of the novel is that someone who tries to force another person to behave one way or another is WORSE in the eyes of God than someone who rapes, maims, murders, etc.~because the rapist (et al), has God’s okay to do all that (having been given free will), while evangelizers do not have God’s permission to play god (i.e. “Justice is Mine, sayeth the Lord.” “Judge not lest ye be judged,” etc., etc.)

Because Jesus (and a Labradoodle)

Please don’t hurt me.

So I had a marvelous time at the picnic I fretted over here.

The picnic was with my atheist Meetup group.

The thing about my atheism is that I didn’t have to think much about it before I came to the Midwest, where it has come to seem to be something I am.

When I left a comfortable community of friends in California for a job in the Midwest (thanks, American economy in 2008!), I blithely figured there must be smart liberals everywhere~no matter to me if they weren’t the majority.  I cheerfully reckoned that I’d just naturally find ’em wherever they were and carry on in the bosom of my newfound friends.  I didn’t realize as I was making the decision to leave L.A. how much my lack of religion and children and a marriage would alienate me from the common experience in the Midwest.  If I had realized, I don’t know that I would have had the guts to make the move I did.

It took me 4 years to find anything like a community of friends.  Sure, I found people to hang out with here and there~but nothing like a community.  At one point I got so desperate for community that I betook myself to the nearest Unitarian Church~couldn’t hack it: too churchy.  So where could a Godless Heathen go to find a group amongst whom she could openly mock those who call themselves Christians while ignoring the teachings of Jesus?  With whom she could openly talk about whatever topics hit her mind without worrying about offending everyone?

Finally I found Meetup, which truly does seem to have a group for just about everyone.

Long story short: yesterday’s picnic was with my Godless friends.  It was at a shelter in a public park.  I followed signs posted along the roads through the park, signs helpfully posted with the name of our Meetup group discreetly reduced to initials with arrows pointing us down the right path. “This way,” we were assured, “this way to your friends.”

All fine and well: we arrived at a gathering that to the untrained eye appeared no different from the groups that occupied the two other structures in the clearing~a bunch of happy, laughing people eating burgers and hot dogs as their kids ran around shooting each other with water guns.

Fine, fine, fine~but here comes the part that brings me to the subject of today’s post: Two of my friends and I decided to leave the safety of our little shelter and take a walk through the park’s woods.

All fine and well: Three middle-aged women~three smart, independent, self-sufficient women, all of us with Ph.D.s, on a meander through a park.  No bigs.  Until we were all derailed by a simple question from another lady with a dog.

Upon our ramble we crossed the path of a lady sitting on a bench finger-combing burrs out of her labradoodle’s ears.  We ooooo-ed, we awwww-ed over the dog~and then the woman asked us, waving vaguely in the direction of the three shelters in the field where we had left our friends, “You with that group down there?”  We readily agreed that we were.

“And what sort of group is that you’re with?” she asked.  And we froze for a microsecond.  Then we hemmed.  Then we hawed.

Minion of Doooooom.

Three adult women asked an innocuous question in broad daylight by another woman sitting with a labradoodle~and we were scared to answer.

Why was she asking?  What had she heard?  What had she seen?  Had she walked past our shelter prior to her repose on the bench?  Had she heard us joking about Satan Worship, about Jesus, about sex, about Republicans, about any number of the things we regularly guffaw about?  Had she seen us sacrifice that baby?  Was she fixin’ to go off on us?  And even if her question was entirely unmotivated by any impulse outside of the interests of a pleasant chat, what would happen if we told her the truth?

We stammered.  We mumbled out, “just friends” and “social group” and finally someone got out “Meetup” and we all nodded and confirmed, relieved: yeah, Meetup.  It’s a Meetup.  We’re with a Meetup.  And then we quickly moved away.

What would have happened if we had told that lady the truth?  What would she have done or said if we had answered her with the simple truth and had said “We’re part of an atheist Meetup group”?

Nothing.  Probably nothing.

But within that moment of embarrassed dissembling among three strong women is the answer to the question of what it’s like to be an Atheist in the Midwest.

An Atheist’s Sympathy for Kim Davis

Look, I don’t know anything more about Kim Davis than the headlines I see on my FB feed and what I gather from the blurbs of the articles I click on and scan through quickly before moving on to the next complaint about special snowflakes or the latest time-suck of a loop from which I awaken 17 “replays” later.

But I feel a little bit sorry for her.

I suspect I wouldn’t if I knew more about her.  I suspect she’d repel me if I sought out video of her speaking her loathsome nonsense (I assume she’s been on the news?  I don’t get commercial television, so I’m not sure).  I suspect I’d be grossed out if I took the time to read more about her (to me) cartoonish beliefs about what her Imaginary Sky Friend tells her to do or not do.

But from my comfortable remove, I feel sorry for her.

Here’s what I know:

• Kim Davis is a County Clerk.
• Part of her job is to issue marriage licenses.
• She’s got an Imaginary Sky Friend (ISF).
• She imagines that her ISF doesn’t like homosexuals.
• She imagines that homosexuals should be unhappy because her ISF is on record as disliking them.
• She imagines that her ISF is so impotent that he needs her to do his policing for him. [I’m just guessing here, but I imagine that she imagines that her ISF will reward her for this policing.]
• She imagines that she is making her ISF happy by refusing to do her job.

Here’s why I feel sorry for her:

1. If it is true that this woman believes that she cannot, in good faith, do her job in the case of signing a form that will allow same-sex couples to marry, she is a very stupid woman.  Her stupidity is pitiable. If she cannot understand the difference between signing a paper that allows others to live a life she would not want for herself and condoning that life, she is a very stupid woman.  Her stupidity is pitiable.
2. In a remarkable case of the exception proving the rule, one can judge this book by her cover.  She is a physically ugly woman and people are calling her out on that fact.  But her ugliness is beside the point of this case and I feel sad for her that she is facing ad hominem attacks.  She’s a victim of a shallow culture that slips too quickly and much too merrily into name calling and insult slinging.  I pity her for that.
3. This point should be obvious from the main gripe that web culture is holding against her (outside of her unprofessionalism and her ugliness): she has been spectacularly unsuccessful in exercising the very right she would like to deny to others.  She’s been married four times.  That’s sad.  It’s pitiable.  Those of us who’ve been there know how draining one divorce is.  She’s been through three (four?  Is she currently married?  I don’t even care. I don’t like her, but I don’t have an ISF telling me that I should want her to be unhappy).
4. And again: she’s stupid.  It’s sad and pitiable that she places all her intellectual eggs in the basket of one very old, dated, and strange book~it’s even worse that she understands that book so inadequately and yet is so persistent in her willingness to open herself to the cruel wraths of today’s media hot seat in defense of what she thinks it is telling her to think.  If I (or you, or any intelligent person) was jeopardizing my job and facing so much scorn and public humiliation, I would take another good, hard look at that book in order to get my talking points in order.  We (you and I, oh fellow intellectual, my Reader) would find what we know from having looked into it before: that the hero of that book has absolutely nothing to say about same-sex marriage.  We also know that the hero’s dad, who says a lot of stuff about a lot of stuff that doesn’t have anything to do with the way we live now, does seem to dislike homosexuality~but he expresses a similar level of dislike for tattoos and shellfish, making his opinions a bit difficult to take seriously. So again, Kim Davis is pitiable; she’s holding on to a weird passage from a dated book that fewer and fewer and fewer people are taking seriously~and she’s risking her job and has opened herself up to ridicule in order to do it.  That’s sad.
5. She’s proud of herself now; she’s got supporters~but where will she be left when the frenzy dies down, when all the gay men and lesbians in Kentucky are back from their honeymoons and she wakes up unemployed (still in prison?) and on the wrong side of history?  She’s infamous now.  She’ll go down on the same side of history as those idiots who were against desegregation of public schools.  Her friends and family will be ashamed to say they know her.  She’s a symbol of the stupidity of a stupid moment in history.

In short: Kim Davis is (as we used to say) “a hot mess.”  She’s pitiable.

UPDATE, November 9, 2017

But wow!  Kim Davis looks like a freakin’ genius now!  We never saw this comin’: