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- Paul

Bright Silent Night

It was Sunday, but there would be no school tomorrow. Winter break. It was pretty late. It had snowed all afternoon.

“Hey Mom – can we take the sled to the Pines?”

“I don’t see why not,” Mom said. I was thirteen, Lynne five. Even though I called her “Punko Kid” and “Scrubby Head” around the house, I was pretty responsible for her everyplace else.

We dressed in what you needed: long underwear, big mittens over gloves, layers of shirts, knit sweaters, hats, and heavy coats with hoods. We toddled to the door, closing it hard behind us.

I stepped inside the big old barn that was our garage and flicked on the single light bulb that threw its dim yellow light into the large interior. It felt even colder in there than outdoors, like the air had tried to go inside to warm up but didn’t realize there wasn’t any heat in the garage. Lynne waited near the light switch and I went back for the sled – the good new long one.

We pulled it down the driveway and up to the top of the hill. Under the streetlight, I noticed that the whole road was covered with snow.

“Wanna ride over?” I asked, looking from Lynne back down to the sled.

“Okay!” Lynne tottered stiffly in her snowsuit toward the edge and sort of fell backward. I guess it was really the only position she could have assumed.

I tugged hard once on the rope, and the nose lurched to point forward, then edged gently into the street-snow, packed but frosted over with the fine granular grit of the latest layering, as we left the familiar green glow of the street lamp behind us on top of Mt. Vernon to enter the dark tunnel of Grand Street. All the huddled houses had stopped chatting with each other from across the street like normal, while our metal runners whisked through the snow in fresh impressions that I could just make out when I spun around, still pulling, to find Lynne silently staring upward.

And the running runners started to whisper, This is the only time forever that you will be here together to hear this sound, so low that neither of us could make it out, only the whispery sound of it. But I could see that Lynne was going eye to eye with the stars back there, and that they were taking each other in, because she wasn’t moving at all or even talking. And because every once in a while I’d glance up and the stars would try and catch my eyes too, peeping between the tree branches whenever I looked ahead.

The wind blew. Little storms of ice-flakes rattled against my hood and collar. The deep shadows were standing steep and tall at the next dimly lit intersection ahead, looking cold enough to fall over and break. But they held up all right, their black shafts blending back into the dark tree trunks and limbs that reached up for the forever-dark that was glittering.

Always. Always and forever. Only the trees were speaking now, but not to each other, in a chorus of the same long note that no one could hear except us as I paused at the intersection with Noble to listen for cars before crossing, and there wasn’t a single one. And I pulled Lynne, who was still busy forgetting everything and remembering all, into the heavier playground snow that was never ploughed, and on down the first slope, which was gentle. I could still see ahead from the last outreach of the green streetlight at the final intersection behind us as I pulled ahead toward the all-black where I knew the hill was.

“Ya ready?” Lynne woke up from not sleeping and sat up behind me. “Yup!”

Whoosh… I shoved us off down the steep hillside leading toward the ball field that we couldn’t see but knew it was there, the snow steadily flowering in soft explosions that slowed us down to a short stop at the bottom. We sat there under a broad encirclement of trees that intimated forever, between the short breaths that were ours to hear for only a few more seconds.

“Wanna do it again?”

“Yes!” And we trudged back up for one more short ride down. And seeing that the snow was too soft and thick for much of a sled ride, I said, “We should have taken the toboggan.”

“Yeah,” Lynne said.

So we went home again, passing back the same way through the intersection of Grand with Infinity.



“How was it?” Mom asked, as we shook the last snow off our boots and set them in the tray.

“We should have brought the toboggan,” I replied.

“Pretty good!” Lynne added brightly.




© 2005 Paul Martin all rights reserved


The blog’s still in suspended animation, just wanted to say “Happy Holidays…”

To Readers and Book Publishers

As of today I’m putting the blog on hold to give more time to other priorities.

I started blogging as part of an effort to get a book manuscript published, but recognized some months back that a blog or Web site doesn’t really do much to help with that. After a book’s published, or has been scheduled to be published – that’s when it might be somewhat helpful. But I enjoyed blogging, so I kept doing it anyway…

Publishers: So if any publisher who happens to have my proposal at this time, which mentions this URL in the cover letter, should for some reason look at this blog, please see any date prior to this one to see what the blog was like.

Blog Readers: Whatever happens with the book, I plan to resume blogging. I don’t know when that will be. But since most blog readers are bloggers themselves, you’ll know I’m back when you see me commenting to your blogs again.

For now, I’m letting go of all blog-related activity. I’m also not planning to respond to comments to this post, although of course I’m glad to receive and read any.

I’ve enjoyed it, and I look forward to reconnecting with you down the road…


A Note for the Diablog Door:

If we feel a sense of threat or offense when someone questions or challenges our religious beliefs, is it really, A) the religious side of our brain that we’re using, and B) God that we’re defending?

Judging Others’ Choices. Post #4

If I were him, I would have acted differently. If I were her, I would never have chosen to do that.

This is the essential thought process by which we judge others.

Yet surely if you were him or her, then “you” would no longer be you. Unless you’re a member of the Holy Trinity, you don’t get to be more than one person at a time.

Because you assume that if you were in the other person’s place, you would act differently; or that you would never have gotten yourself into that position to begin with and, therefore, this other person must also have been able to act differently – well, we’re just not reasoning correctly when we think along such lines.

All we’re really saying is that we would never have done such-and-such under any circumstances. And we may not even really know that much.

We can’t plausibly make ourselves the measure of others.

Free Choice and Judgment. Post #3

I appreciate the diversity of viewpoints and the thought that people put behind their comments to this blog. I started to write a reply to one of you in the comments section of my last post, and then realized that the comment and my reply is a post in itself. It summarizes a lot of what’s been said so far, and at the same time looks at how free choice bears on the issue of passing judgment. Lucy, along with a number of other commentators, favors the idea that when we do wrong, it’s primarily a matter of free choice rather than primarily a matter of limited moral knowledge or awareness.

Lucy: “Paul, I am not trying to pass judgement on anyone. God makes the ultimate judgement on each and every soul. Judge not lest ye be judged. You are talking about the grey area between good and bad choices, or that is what it seems to me. Maybe we just understand things differently.”

Paul: I’m saying that it’s impossible to prove that we do or do not have free moral choice (or free will in any other aspect of our lives.) I'm also acknowledging that most people who’ve posted comments, myself included, do feel that we have a measure of freedom in moral decision making. However, the prevailing view seems to recognize strong influences that bear on how we come to arrive at moral decisions, to the effect that our degree of choice is far from completely free. My personal view is that the degree appears highly limited.

If, instead of seeing moral choice as quite limited, we see it as perhaps not perfectly free, but nearly so, then this conduces to judging other persons, and not just their actions. We view them as doing evil not because “they know not what they do,” but because, although they have full moral awareness, they choose evil. This allows us to blame them deeply as persons – to judge them. At the same time, it allows us to see ourselves as highly virtuous free-choosers of the good. All this represents a big payoff for the ego.

So when, as in your previous comment, somebody says something like, "I know that there are some sicko's out there that are so weak that they can't make a good choice," it sounds highly judgmental. Like you say, you’re not passing ultimate judgment in the sense of deciding who’s going to heaven and hell. But when the Bible says to judge not, not to throw stones, etc., these lines aren’t meant to dissuade Christians from trying to wrestle Jesus Christ out of his throne on Judgment Day! That’d hafta be really hard!

I think the lines are telling us not to pass moral judgment on other persons; not to consider ourselves experts on their minds, their hearts, their souls, what they’ve been through in life – not only in the outer world, but also in the private world where they developed whatever sense they came to have of themselves in relation to others. Just because I wouldn’t or couldn’t have done what some other person did doesn’t give me insight that he or she freely chose it. We are not to consider ourselves the measure of others. Judge not.

Btw, I’m casting no stones in your direction, Lucy, and appreciate your comments and patience. And I only know something about ego because I have one…

Free Choice and Morality. Post #2

Morality Demands Free Choice

Some of you believe that morality is possible only if we have complete freedom of choice. Examples:

Gangadhar: “Without free will, no opportunity for choices between right and wrong exist. Creatures without free will cannot have ethics because they have no choice.”

Kate: “As Gangadhar said, without some acknowledgement of… free will, how could there be any ethics?

"It would be crazy then, to hold anyone responsible for their good or bad acts. It would make no sense to have prisons, or the educational system for that matter. Everything would be relative. Why not still have slavery? Why shouldn't Hitler rule the world? I know I'm oversimplifying here, but do you see what I mean?

"I just can't accept that point of view. But I'm curious to know what you think about that aspect of personal responsibility.”

Morality Does Not Demand Free Choice

Here’s how morality is understood when the main factor behind how we behave is viewed as our degree of awareness of self in relation to God – or, conversely, our level of ignorance concerning this matter. (If you’re a Buddhist or have Buddhist leanings, feel free to substitute “enlightenment” for “awareness of self in relation to God.”)

In brief:

That which is moral or ethical is that which does good. That which is immoral or unethical is that which does harm.

The less ignorant we are, the more we do good. The more ignorant we are, the more we do harm.

I think that those who view free choice as the quintessence of morality must still have some experience of moral ignorance vs. moral awareness as leading them to do harm vs. good. All of us remember past occasions of having done wrong where we learned something from the experience and wouldn’t do it again because of what we learned.

Whichever theory is correct, or more correct – whether we do good/harm from out of enlightenment/ignorance or from out of free choice -- does not make the good that we do better or the harm that we do worse. Acting well from out of diminished ignorance is a good thing. Acting well from out of free choice is a good thing, if that’s how it works.

Problems with Morality as Free Choice

However, one problem with the idea that we make perfectly free moral choices is that it makes it easy for our egos to get involved. We may compare ourselves to others. It makes it easy to congratulate ourselves about how good we are, or to pass judgment against others (or ourselves). Because those who choose evil knowing perfectly well what they do must be evil indeed. We might even conclude that Jesus may not forgive those who choose evil knowing what they do.

Passing judgment against others as free choosers of evil makes it easy to demonize them and want to punish them. The criminal justice system is a good example. It’s founded on the idea of punishment. We have a prison system where prisoners are allowed to rape and stab other prisoners, but who cares? They’re getting what they deserve.

Criminal Justice

And what we get is a high rate of recidivism – criminals who exit the system more angry and hate-filled than before they entered it. Why? Because the idea of “teaching a lesson” to an adult in the sense of punishing him is, frankly, idiotic. It’s psychologically incorrect. Punishment may have some use in instilling a rudimentary conscience in a young child. But inmates aren’t young children who view their prison guards and wardens as parental figures whose values and mores they’re primed to internalize.

As a practical matter, what the criminal justice system ought to do is A) protect society from criminals by locking them up, and B) provide for a prison life that’s as sane and simple as possible. Let’s call it a monastic model rather than a punishment model. Instead of enraging the angry, why not give them a simple and structured life that provides opportunities for psychological, spiritual, and educational growth? Why not encourage those with the capacity to become better persons to do so?

As far as the factors we’d consider for judging and sentencing criminals goes, nothing would change. As a practical matter, whether we view free choice as illusion or reality, some criminals do, for example, “premeditate” more than others. Whether their premeditation was freely chosen or whether it was set in motion and absolutely determined by the forces that came into play at the first instant of creation – who cares?

What matters is that premeditation suggests that the criminal is a greater danger to society than someone who, for example, commits a “crime of passion.” Similarly, a serial killer poses a greater risk to society than someone who murders once in the course of a drunken brawl.

The concept of “responsibility” therefore remains a sound way to judge criminals. Not because we must believe that they are ultimately and fully responsible as free choosers of the harm they do, but because factors like forethought, mental competency, and age, are indicators of how great a propensity the criminal has to commit a criminal act again. “Responsible” now simply means “went through a conscious, reflective, and deliberative thought-process prior to commission of the crime.” That type of thought process is stable, likely to be repeated, and makes a person who thinks that way a greater danger to society regardless of whether we ever resolve the question of whether such conscious and deliberative types of thought processes are freely chosen.

Likewise, nothing changes in our view of harmful individuals, institutions, and practices such as evil dictators and slavery. We oppose them as much as ever. Nothing concerning our values and morals becomes more “relative.”

Free Choice:!!!!!!! Post #1

Only since I’ve started blogging have I been aware of the special importance of free will to many Christians and Muslims, where it takes the form of “free choice” in matters pertaining to religion. It seems to me that free will is impossible to prove or disprove.

!!!!!!!! I can always claim that I was free to choose to refrain from adding those gratuitous exclamation points to the start of this sentence. In fact I have a strong feeling that I really could have refrained from doing so; or that I could have deleted them rather than chosen to post them. Yet how can I ever really know? I can never go back to that moment in time for a re-try in order to find out for sure...

Note that having a strong feeling that something is true doesn’t necessarily mean that it is. When I was maybe six years old, I remember one time when we had spinach at dinner. I had the feeling that if I tried, I could lift the corner of the house. I watched a lot of Popeye. It didn’t work out.

When I’ve heard people discuss free will in a religious context, it’s usually been one or the other of two ideas.

1. Choosing Belief: It’s up to us whether to freely choose to accept, say, Jesus Christ as our personal savior; or, for example, Mohammed as Seal of the Prophets and the Koran as the divinely dictated last best Word of God to humankind. (Actually, these aren’t just examples. In fact, it’s Christians and Muslims, in particular, that I’ve heard use the idea of choice in this manner.)

2. Choosing the Good: God allows evil to exist - even though, being all-powerful, he doesn’t have to - because this is the only way that he was able to create real human beings. We would all be “zombies” or “automatons” if we weren’t free to choose between good and evil.

To me, each of these ideas has problems. Maybe we can save that for next post.

What It’s Been Like for Me: Belief

In my own spiritual life, the more consequential the matter, the less choice I’ve felt I’ve had. For example, in my teens through early twenties, I had trouble with the Christian beliefs I’d grown up with, and was in despair over this. I wanted to believe, but couldn’t. The beliefs didn’t make sense to me. And as far as people who claimed to know or have special insight that they were true – well, that didn’t make sense to me either. I’ll spare you the details, but in sum: in all honesty I wanted to believe, but couldn’t.

I wasn't "choosing" unbelief. I was dragged into it kicking and screaming. For me, the Catholic Church might as well have been saying, “2+2=5,” or, “Women are bald despite the appearance of having hair.”

Then, at age 23, I had an experience that was the major turning point of my life. It was diametrically opposed to the negative world view I’d developed. I couldn’t deny that it had happened. I found myself revising my perspective on life. Despair ended. Again, to whatever extent choice was involved, it sure wasn’t the prime mover.

What It’s Been Like for Me: Good v. Evil

As far as choosing good vs. evil goes, again, the major impetus behind my acts has never been a sense of free choice. Whenever I’ve been highly conscious that one way is better or right, and another way of proceeding is a way of doing harm or wrong, I’ve done the right thing. It’s been at times of ignorance and unconsciousness that I’ve been at my worst.

In other words, I can’t recall ever clearly recognizing a course of action as harmful to others and thus to myself, in at least a spiritual sense, then taking it anyway. Why would I do that?

So you could say that when it comes to matters of the spirit, I’ve been the opposite of a “free thinker” and “free chooser.” I’ve never been able to believe as I pleased, but only what has been compelling. I’ve never acted badly except when I really didn’t know what I was doing; didn’t fully understand or appreciate the implications.

Where I have the feeling of having the most choice is with the least significant things. What will I decide to have for lunch today, or which brand of light bulb will I pick out at the store? Will I use those exclamation points or not? It really feels like I could go either way on matters of small consequence – just flip a coin if I wanted to.

What’s It Been Like for You?

What’s it been like for you? Have you moved forward in spiritual and moral matters mainly by way of clear and conscious free choices?

If, say, you’re a Christian, did you inform yourself about religions like Islam, Judaism, Taoism, Hinduism, and Buddhism, so that you chose Christianity with full conscious deliberation, having weighed the alternatives? Or did you carefully examine criticisms of your beliefs, find your beliefs implausible, and then choose to believe them anyway, even though you think they’re probably not true? That would sound to me like a real choice, although I don’t understand how it could be done. On the other hand, if you hold your religious beliefs because they make a great deal of sense, then I don’t understand what role choice plays. We all believe things that make a lot of sense, and whether we wish to or not.

If you’re an atheist, do you ever recall saying to yourself: “Hmm… I could choose to believe in God and receive his divine love and eternal mercy, but I’d rather pass on that...” So whatever were you thinking?!? If you’re an agnostic, have you chosen to be undecided and confused? Why?

And when you were a kid, and, say, stole that candy, did you really know what you were doing? Are you still stealing candy? If not, why did you stop? Free choice, or better understanding?