"OK, so enlighten me; exactly what form is this 'leap of faith' of yours going to
take?" As a confessed skeptic, Lincoln had conveniently attributed her own realization
that it was perhaps time to move on in life more to psychological evolution than divine
intervention, but skepticism doesn't necessarily denote unfaffable denial. Iron; having
been brought up a 'believer' who similarly never necessarily 'believed' in his childhood;
was more inclined to apply quasi religious terms to what rationalists and atheists may
rather have attributed more 'concrete' notions. He almost stumbled on a hoarse marble
step and unconvincingly covered up the fact with an idiosyncratic hop over a
conveniently placed overgrowing shrub bed which Lincoln saw through like an
international disarmament committee through a truculent terrorist's peccable promise of
putting down arms, which at least provided some light relief. "Come on Marti; where
are we going; Florida; Hawaii?" Baring in mind that with the military barricade they
were unlikely to be going anywhere beyond the jejune junta's own back yard, such
romantic notions were unlikely. Come to think about, such places probably no longer
existed; nobody knew the extent of the devastation done by the war and related
economic slumps, and it was a possible if uninviting notion that being cooped up in this
immuring play pen was the best thing to be. At least it was a devil they knew. But such
defeatist ideology had recently passed Lincoln by to her great satisfaction and relief.
She had begun to recognize life as a dream; a game. It was an impious
imbroglio which they were irrevocably inclined to tear apart at the seam, and as any
formulaic fantasy would diffidently dictate, that seam would have to be located
somewhere within the reverential heartland of their siege squeamish societal superiors.
"The Trade Center." The answer to her long forgotten question shaking her out of her
private dialectic deliberations, Lincoln was reminded of her accomplice's expedient
assurance that he 'had it all worked out'. Actually it would have taken just about the
extent of the parricidal president's uninspiring imagination to locate the state HQ within
its tallest and most obvious monstrosity of a building; it would certainly have appealed
to his gangrenous sense of grandeur. "The Trade Center's on the other side of the
ramparts; right in the middle of the financial district. Nobody's been in there for years."
The 'ramparts' were a defensive measure set up by the new administration to
protect themselves from unwanted interruption; to allow the elite to exist independently
of their subjects in a secretive utopia barricaded by a vast herd of surveillance devices,
physical blockades and blood thirsty assassins. A gigantic metal barrier had been
erected which served as a modern equivalent of the Berlin wall; it kept people from the
'other side' out; not that anyone was sufficiently motivated to traverse the unsightly
border just to witness whatever doubtlessly disappointing spectacles lurked beyond.
Iron, though, was the unusual and ultimately unavailing underling who attritious
regimes feared like a confectionery corpulent kid's seasonal trip to the dentist's. The
kind of character who believed he could walk on water; stroll through barrages of
bullets. In short, he was the rare, confident individual perhaps too committed to an
assumed but unappointed task in life for whose apprehension such constricting
deterrents had been put into place. "Nobody's tried to get in there for years." But
Lincoln was less convinced, despite the irritant voice inside her that exclaimed with an
irrational anticipation that she would end up doing the irresistibly inadvisable
regardlessly; "There are gun turrets; sniper cameras; laser fields."
"Uh-huh." This was sounding more inviting to Iron all the time. Somewhere in the
background a homeless street band strummed up as if playing a tribute to a civilized
past. Then again, music had always been one of the utmost forms of social deviance.
"That wall stretches all the way from West Street to the old Brooklyn bridge; its four
stories high with guard posts all the way around. I know I told you yesterday about my
past suicidal adventures but I hope I haven’t got you in the mood."
"No honestly; I've been doing research."
"Research, huh?" She was ushered out of the camouflage canopy of the leaf tickled
winter trees which offered the untouched innards of Central park insignificant
protection from the fripperous fumes and irksome ideology of the arrant administration
which had applied a deauterious death touch to every other imbricated inch of the
misfit metropolis with a nippy nudge in the arm; redirecting her as yet destinationless
meander towards the dungeon like entrance to 72nd Street subway station like a
prisoner having to be reminded of the route to the gallows. "Yeah; research." Aware
that Iron was hardly the intellectual type, Lincoln allowed him to justify himself while
she drummed her feet down the detrial stairway like a single boulder on the top of a
rocky mountain struck by the inescapable volition of gravity and released to initiate a
full blown landslide as it fumbled downward gathering pace. "It would just be to invite
failure and inevitably death to try to climb over the top; to attempt to get to the center
of the maze by clambering over the hedges. Guerrillas would be advised to take the
long way round." Lincoln recognized the insinuation;
"And those 'guerrillas' would be
you and me, right?"
"Glad to see you're following the plot." Iron received a flouting knuckle to the deltoid
as he rolled both extravagantly and illicitly over the abandoned turnstile like a
showboating dolphin in a sea park attraction. "OK so what's this 'long way'?" She
avoided the enforced dead end with the more conventional method of seeking out an
open barrier and slipping through with significantly less fuss. "The only way to get into
the financial district is by South Street."
"What's at South Street?"
"The government customized an old seaport there; right near what’s left of the bridge;
they used to ferry people over to see the sights; cruises across the bay; in the early days
of the new establishment. Now it's a service depot."
"Servicing what?"
"Supply ships mainly; and the odd gunboat."
"Wait a minute; nobody needs supplies anymore; they've got those machines; those
genetic mixer things."
"South Street doesn't serve the financial sector, it serves Liberty Island." This was
getting more obscure all the time.
"And what's at Liberty Island?" A medusa like glare
ensured he declined the temptation to answer with the obvious.
"It's some kind of
facility; a hideaway or something. It's a military outpost; a back to basics deal. No
computers; no nothing." The old 'trust no one' psychology was beginning to kick in as
that apparently not so deceased ailment of skepticism raised its ugly head; "How do
you know all this?" If Iron had been a government spy all this time he had done a
remarkably good job palming himself off as a hotch potch nut case. "Oh, I ran into a
weak willed military attaché who divulged their greatest secrets with a little friendly
persuasion like any good maltreated minion would. Anyway, by my, um; calculations,
we can bypass the wall by.."
"Going by sea, as it were; round the bay right into the heartland." She took a moment
to beg god to turn back the hands of time and have some temporarily debilitating object
land on Iron's head just moments before he hatched this hair brained scheme, but
understood that in reality fate had a depressingly black sense of humor. They stopped
at the edge of a windy platform like young theme park tourists halted after a three hour
wait right at the gates of the star attraction at the veritable stop sign of an age
restriction notice as a dithering train eased into its intended place as if put there by
convenience or something a little more profound. "The C train used to go to the World
Trade Center, right?" Clearly Iron had it all worked out.
"Right..."
"But when the ramparts went up they bricked up all the stations underneath them."
"A wall isn't an effective deterrent when there's a ready made tunnel right under it, so
the line just trails off; unless of course you know better." This was a first;
"Now the train goes right through to South Street; they use it as a militia line; they
transfer troops if and when needed from there to the rest of the city." At last the so
called 'plan' was beginning to take an admittedly lumbering, loitering shape. "So you
reckon if we were to take the train down to South Street, what; hijack a boat? Get
round to the financial district and proceed to crash a pretty sizable party?" She
supposed what appeared infallible to one may well appear ludicrous to another, but her
life had been largely comical thus far....
Only minutes later though, it was all too clear that whatever hole Iron had dug
himself, it was big enough for two. The campaign was inescapable. Lincoln lay down
flat on her back across a harsh plastic row of seats as still and cold as a prostrate body
in a morgue. Iron followed suit and put his feet up on the opposite rack as if a seasick
sailor perched on a hardy hammock between two leaning palm trees on a luscious
desert island; facing the other way so that the pair appeared like reluctant room mates
on an ill fated school trip. The cruising contraption pulled in to 59th at a gastropodic
pace which would have reminded her of the first grueling leg of a seemingly age long
round the world trip in a cramped economy seat on an old 747 if she had been
privileged enough to have ever experienced such a Machavelian journey. An errant
premonition gave her last minute nerves. This entozoic enterprise was not only
unrecommended and misdirected, it was; as she had protested; highly suicidal, which
brought her back to those dioramic doubts about the life she had lived; regrets Iron
may well have shared if he had retained any viable memory to speak of. "You know, I
really should have made something more of my life. I've got such a rich family history;
It's a real shame to end it all here; with me. Hundreds and hundreds of years in the
making, then I'm left with it all and all I can do is throw it away. It's like history's a car
construction plant, right? Each ancestor makes a bit of the vehicle; engine, bodywork,
gears etc. In the end it's all dropped on your desk for you to put the thing together. So
you can make it roadworthy. But actually when it's all plonked down there in front of
you in a god awful mess, all you can do is look down on it, shrug and say huh?" She
frowned as she began to taste that all too bitter taste of responsibility. In her mouth it
tasted noticeably sour. "I don't think my grandparents would have been too proud of
me. All that culture. All that survival. They've given me such a rich life and what do I
give back? Disaster; extinction."
"You can only struggle and hope. History's full of disasters; heroes and villains. As long
as you work with what you've got and do yourself justice, you've really done all you
can do."
"But have I done all I can do? Haven’t I just wasted my life; my ancestry? Haven’t I let
the side down?"
"You put yourself down too much Saz. Given what you've suffered you've done well
enough just to survive, and to at least try to be ethical; to be honest with yourself and
to try to put your thoughts and ideas into practice. You've never given up; you've
carried on regardless. That's doing your family justice. They only ever would have
wanted you to try. It doesn't matter if you fail; it's the trying, right? You've lived a
difficult life and survived"
"Thus far."
"My family always put pressure on me; having to do the family justice. That's the
Catholic way; family is everything. It's a philosophy the world should have taken on
board more honestly. Would have dissuaded people from just running off into the
world wanting to make a million and who cares who falls by the wayside as you do it.
OK it's good to be independent, but you can stretch it too far. Everyone needs support;
a backbone; a stable foundation. Maybe that's bias talking because in the end I got the
opposite and didn't like it."
"And as long as you're proud of your history, you'll tend to work harder to create a
better future. In this great future you can't forget your past, right? That's what the old
Bob Marley song says." She would find the intertwining vine of philosophy
everywhere. The only problem was that Iron didn't quite realize that her observations
were more often than not accurate, but let her continue regardlessly. "We've already
established that there's only the present; past we use to dictate future."
"And if the history's rich; even if it's been difficult; it's easier to make the future just as
rich."
"The deeper the roots a tree has the better chance of survival. But survival isn't the be
all and end all. We aren’t animals living solely on our basest instincts. If we were, we'd
be a totally different kind of being. We have culture; we have things to learn from;
standard bearers. Every culture has it's richness; it's good points and it's bad points.
You learn a lot from culture. In this day and age not only are we surrounded by
peoples of diverse cultures, but most of us have diverse cultural roots ourselves. That
enriches civilization; gives it spice and zest. When I look back, I see I've learned a lot
from my family. From my parents and grandparents, who to be fair rammed it all down
my throat. Back to my great grandparents I know them as if they were living relatives.
Afterall, my character is the culmination of their characters; scientifically at least. It's
such a warming thought to know you're made up of all those colorful personalities.
Makes you feel a lot less alone. You are all those people; they have determined your
character as it is at birth. You take that character and through your experiences build on
it; you add it to the mix. You can stretch all around the globe; through all of human
history and beyond."
"You could be a relation of anyone on the planet. Afterall, we're all the same species. If
we go back far enough we could see we all evolved from the same beings; perhaps the
same one being. It makes you realize the interconnectedness of humanity."
"People go around living their own private little lives. You just brush by someone in the
street and don't realize they all have their own concerns; likes and dislikes. If you sat
down with them you'd find you had a lot in common; with anyone. You miss so many
opportunities to meet people who you could go back and find you're a distant relation
of. We might miss ever knowing that person who might be that other half of you.
Actually, one of my great grandparents really reminds me of you; spookily so in fact,
although I never met him. These people flow through your blood; you reconstruct their
personalities with a combination of logic and a recognition of yourself. Afterall, all our
ancestors are literally part of us; DNA and all. I dunno; perhaps people reincarnate all
over the place; pop up here and there. People from your history turning up again to
check up on you."
"Perhaps you can know a person more than once, and perhaps bonds between people
survive death."
"Like I say; even the physical sciences point to the idea of people 'surviving' in the
genetics of their descendants. Why can't the genetic mixer sometimes show up repeats;
resurrections? If people can remanifest; as it were; physically- despite the physical
ostensibly possessing no emotive or metaphysical intentionally- why couldn't the
greater reality; who, not what we are; follow suit?"
"Given the specifics of spiritual reality it's probably more likely than the thing occurring
physically."
"Well anyway this guy; one of my great grandparents; he was from Monterey in
Mexico. My family told me all this stuff so all the history didn't get lost, but as I say it's
not really that necessary because you've got them inside you anyway. If you're quiet
and patient you can hear them; feel them. He was a madcap kind of character; poverty
stricken but the definitive optimist. He was always contented with who he was and
what he had. He was a kind of authority on South American culture but also a
reactionary and a revisionist. He wanted to preserve his culture but also keep it up to
date. He was enigmatic; a contradictory character. His wife on the other hand was
strangely straight. Middle class Victorian English type; Victorian England not being too
far back in history for her. She seemed to have all the values and sociabilities of that
formal age, so why she married a poor, eccentric Mexican who had little time for such
conventions, I'll never know. Their daughter was an obscure type. Of all my ancestors,
she reminds me most of me."
Lincoln was almost pulling the whole of her ancestral history forward through
her bloodstream with a conscious effort. Maybe she felt if she forcefully made that
blood rush through her she could observe it better and in so doing observe the people
who had created it. That made her feel even worse about past self mutilating
misdemenours. "Her parents moved to Italy when she was young. She was a rebellious
type; left wing. Probably labeled a revolutionary baring in mind the times she grew up
in; a trouble maker. We used to get on really well; my grandmother and me. It's that old
tradition where compatibility skips a generation. I think` she saw a lot of me in her as
well and that made her happy; the past would repeat itself, so to speak; she would live
on. Now it was no surprise who she ended up with, and his parents were another
expected match. My great grandmother on his side...."
She stopped a moment to work out the logistics of something that wasn't really
the slightest bit logical or mathematical on her fingers. Diverse; perhaps, but confusing.
"She was a kind of world traveler. She was Portuguese, and her family went over to
India in the old British empire days. Anyway, she trekked all over East Asia and ended
up in Vietnam. So her son was Vietnamese half by blood and by nationality. He's
probably the person who had the most influence on my life; stubborn in his ways
though uncompromisingly liberal. Since he put so much emphasis on his national roots,
I probably know more about Vietnamese history than any other, which might seem
strange for someone whose spent their entire life in America, most of it in New York;
but then, who knows where an American's ancestry lies? He taught me just about
everything; philosophy, politics, shooting; you know; all the important things. I've
never been to Vietnam but he made me feel like it was my home; an exercise in
preservation, I guess. But that was after the war; of course; with the US, which
probably did as much to kill him as the cancer. The resentment just grew and grew over
the years. He despised the whole thing, and living in America only made it worse. All
the abuse he got made him sour and bitter in his old age. He was a South Vietnamese
but was still berated as a Communist. Though he was a Socialist, my grandfather didn't
like being put in the same basket as those who devastated his homeland, and in the end
he hatred the Americans as much as they hated him, though of course his hatred was
partially justified whereas theirs was born out of ignorance, and of course that little bit
of jealousy after the result of the war became apparent."
By now the train was trundling into another desolate station which in times past
would have encapsulated a thrifty throng of shoppers, businessmen and worn fingered
blue collar workers whose political colors; should they have had time to consider them;
would decidedly have been red; just dying to get home to bed before they perished at
the hands of something far less wholesome. Iron strained unsuccessfully to make out
any hints of life on the mortuary still Penn station then returned to other digressions
about times gone by which at least raised the notion that these places once provided a
hovel habitat in which life could; even when challenged; thrive. So what would you
put if you got a questionnaire about race? What's your nationality?"
"I'd feel guilty to my grandfather to say it but I really couldn't say I'm Vietnamese; I
mean that wouldn’t be an observer's first thought. What someone would think I don't
know. Americans, huh; it's a puzzle. I'm a mixture; I'd ignore the question. On the other
side I had a great grandfather from New York. He married an Irish girl and went off to
Arizona when desert life was a kind of fashionable thing; before the ideological
Mcdonalisation of central and Southern USA. But their daughter had the bright idea of
coming back here, where she met a half Malian, half Jewish Polish guy who'd left the
country at the time of the emerging Third Reich just next door, and I guess since then
that side of the family's been American, whatever that means. I just can't help thinking if
it all ends with me I've killed them all. All the wars and persecutions, and all I have to
contend with is a dodgey government and a few amateur thugs. My family's ducked
trouble everywhere; or at least survived it. I'm a product of all that toil; it's built into
me. But now my sister's gone and there's nobody left. My brother died too; I think I
said before. Occupational hazard of a soldier, right? Mom had a sister, but she passed
away young and dad was an only child. My family's spent centuries scrambling out of
the frying pan just when it begins to singe their shoes and here I am; about to saunter
into the fire in the vein hope I won't get burnt to a crisp."
"Self preservation is always the first incentive of humanity.."
"I know, but it's not just me, is it? What happens to all those memories; all that history?
It just becomes birth and death certificates and nobody knows or cares what happens in
between. Certificates nobody's ever going to look at because there arn't going to be any
descendants to trace back their roots. Mine and everyone else's lives will just be
thumbed past in the records; doomed to obscurity."
"You know in some cultures it's advised that you throw away your most valuable
treasures; they're nice but it's easy to get attached; to make them millstones. You're the
end product as things stand; you're ideals are theirs, so if it's your decision to do
something, it's theirs too."
"And if I didn't do as I felt I'd also be going against my own character; cheating them
all. But it just seems such a shame. If only I could approach the big decisions as if I was
a coincidental character in a film or a book who both has no concerns because the
pages are running out anyway, and has a decent idea that since she's the hero, they'll be
some fantastic and unbelievable happy ending anyway."
"You've got to go with the flow, Linc; walk your own path. You never know; we're not
dead in the water yet. That colorful ancestry might survive; you have to work for it;
fight for it. It seems they did; fought for us to be here."
"You've got that optimism in your blood, right?"
"Well, my dad would have been proud of me, I think. Workaholic type; you know. Do
what you know is right despite what goes on around you. He tended to stand on his
own over the majority of things; never backed down. He saw religion as the underlying
cause of everything; the ultimate meaning, which is fair because at least now I agree
with him. He was so stereotypically Italian he wouldn't have looked out of place as the
dad in one of those cheesy American sit coms, but he was a little deeper a human being
than that. His love of his native culture was a trend he inherited from his grandfather,
who wasn't Italian but Scottish. To a proud Scot, his country is everything; it's history,
it's culture and especially it's football. A Scot's a Scot first and everything else second
whereas an Englishman's rich or poor first or left wing or right wing first, then English,
or a Londoner, or a Yorkshireman, and so on. Perhaps that's unfair but maybe it's
genetic bias talking. He was a Scottish Catholic and went over to Italy; again; cultural
comfort dictates. And though my grandfather married a half Angtiguian, half American
while en route to America during the war, they always remained Italian by nationality
and Catholic by ideology. Actually, my family was always getting moved around by
wars and the like. On the other side my great grandparents were Chinese and Tibetan.
Their son married a half Arabic, half English girl; Chinese as well by nationality. Her
parents had gone over from the UK in the post opium war era. Anyway, providing
you're making sense of it so far, the Chinese girl who was actually half Arabic, and half
English married the guy who was half Chinese and half Tibetan. But it was their
daughters who were to get the rough ride. Along came the Chinese civil war and they
all moved to America as it seems people tended to do in those days; land of
opportunity, they used to say, fingers crossed. But it wasn't until the Chinese invaded
Tibet in 1950 that the family broke up. My mother saw herself as Tibetan and my aunt
saw herself as Chinese. My aunt agreed with what the Chinese had done whereas my
mother started to work for Tibetan independence. Suffice to say I support my mother's
side of the argument, but such things do cause families a little damage."
"So diversity can be negative too."
"In this case yeah, but you could just say it's a difference of opinion."
"So you believe the purpose of existence is to preserve history; to future the species?"
"If it was we wouldn't need half the stuff we have. We wouldn't need to feel; to have
opinions; to possess souls; to love and hate."
"The world would be a boring place."
"Which begs the question what is the meaning of life." It wasn't often Lincoln was
handed such a difficult question. Plus, she had spent most of her life trying to answer it
and didn't think she'd got anywhere yet. In fact, the not knowing if she'd got anywhere
yet or not was worse than not having the answer; or so she thought; and besides,
perhaps the whole point is that you can spend your life thinking about life and never
reach an answer.... which would mean she'd just reached it; hadn't she? "Life; well... I
guess it's weird; it's mysterious. It's vast and it has some meaning which we may or may
not have ever discovered, but most don't know and wouldn't really believe the fact
whole heatedly if they did. The way I see it, we're like drops in a stream. That's why
running, or even still water is so relaxing; it's familiar and natural; it's a symbolic
representation of us. Every raindrop is an individual; it's separated from the rest; all the
other billions of raindrops. It's constrained and in desperate solitude. But when it lands
in the water, it becomes itself. After it's entered the stream, there is no longer a
raindrop; no longest an individual. When it's become part of the whole, it knows the
whole; there isn't one raindrop which it's able to identify as anything else but a part of
itself. It's attained it's true form and realized it's full potential. It knows every corner of
the cornerless thing. It knows the whole world as itself; it is the whole world. Human
beings are just like raindrops; we struggle to stay separate; to remain raindrops forever,
but eventually we all have to submit to the process; to become part of the stream. And
when we get there we wonder why we ever wanted to be anything else. We stop asking
answerable questions, and are left with the important ones; the ones we can't answer.
The ones which throw the very concept of 'us' out the window. Religion; philosophy; it
all asks just one question, but it's one so gigantic and unfathomable that it can't be
posed."
Iron; by now sitting up; chin leaning on both hands like a pondering statuesque
thinker; blinked heavily. He'd expected a somewhat shorter answer, but found himself
comforted by such a strange response, which wasn't surprising since he generally
shared her sentiments. "People misunderstand religion. Its unfortunate that its the loud
minority who tend to get noticed, and its this minority which observers from the
outside term 'the religious'. These are the conversionists; the ones who knock on your
door and ask you if you've ever thought about the existence of God, and if you haven’t
they shake wads of literature from their church and you assure them you'll read it,
surreptitiously dropping it in the trash once they've gone and you feel you can get on
with your life. If you say you do believe in God they still aren’t happy unless you go to
their particular church. If you belong to a different religion, they persist, saying they
want you to be a Christian of such and such a persuasion."
"The thing is these are the loud ones, right? They're what 'the public' see as 'the
religious', but they're just like hooligans at a football match."
"Yeah. People say they don't like football because of the violence; they stop watching it
or never get involved because there are people in the crowd; a few dozen in a mass of
tens of thousands; who riot, who shout racist obscenities and who beat up on the
opposing fans. These are the noisy minority."
"Whereas the majority of the crowd are just there to watch the game."
"Exactly. Most religious people are just 'there to watch the game'. This is what the non-
religious don't realize. They think the religious are all convertionists; that they knock on
doors and would rather people submit to a strict code they do or do not understand
than work it out for themselves. What they don't realize is that even the religious term
these coversionists quacks; nut cases. They represent religion in the rationalist's eyes
just because they're loud; in the same way that the hooligans represent football fans in
the minds of those who don't like sport. In actual fact in both cases the majority of
people; be they religious people or football fans, tend to keep themselves to
themselves." Being neither religious or non religious, Lincoln was intent to stress the
case of the 'unattached' spiritualist; "And what's more they have nothing against those
of other religious persuasions."
"Religious truth is to be gained through direct personal experience. You don't give that
experience to someone by banging on their door."
"And one of the foremost tenets of religion is freedom."
"Not submission; right. People believe that religion is a thing we have to submit to. But
we don't just do something because it says so in some bible or sacred text. Texts are
there to read and get what you can out of. Different people get different things out of
the texts. Everyone is different, and since religion is an intensely personal thing, the
person who you are will inevitably influence what you get out of it and vice versa. You
don't even have to be religious at all; spiritual truths aren’t reserved for the religious;
there isn't some private club with some magic book of spells or something containing
all the secrets. All you need be is inquisitive; curious."
Nine stops had gone by largely unnoticed, and as the doors closed prematurely
on Chambers Street station, Lincoln almost swallowed her tongue as that weight of
responsibility hit her as if she was the wicked witch of the west; or whatever compass
point it was; as a Kansas farm house spiraled through the sky to crumple her cranium.
As the train plunged into the final terrarium tunnel of the enslaved world, she realized
this was the point of no return; the being thrust into the arms of something which might
not be as caring as she may have liked. In fact, its embrace felt cold; unconcerned with
the fragile lives it clutched like porcelain voodoo dolls in a grilling bear hug; ready to
be crushed at any moment as inconsequentially as they had been plucked from the
protected obscurity in which they had formerly lived. At least she wasn't going alone.
Iron; well versed in the peculiarities of concealing his real fears and inhibitions; seemed
remarkably unaffected when passing this significant symbolic threshold. "Anti religious
people; the loud ones; most likely the minority; have some pretty strict ideas about
religion for people who don't believe in it. What do we mean when we say 'God'? Many
anti religious people have very strict ideas; definitions; about what God is, but the
religious; by and large; have highly personal interpretations; based on direct
experience."
"There are just misconceptions which need to be broken down."
"If we are to arrive at a sound philosophy."
"But history has also caused its problems. The church, for example, has a lot to answer
for; persecution, genocide, etc etc."
"Tends to turn people off from religion I know; gives it a bad name. But recently more
wars have been fought over oil and minerals than over spirituality."
"And those that are fought over religion are fought due to misunderstanding; due to
one religion attacking another because they're openly and indisputably 'different."
"People will always lash out at those who are different. White people attack black
people because its the most obvious dividing line between them. 'Straight' people attack
gay people; even men have a go at women and women at men when they want to get
things off their chest."
"But we don't blame white people or black people for violence, or homosexuals or
heterosexuals or men or women, so why blame religion? You can't blame the issue
which is being argued about for the existence of the argument; you can only blame the
individuals who are arguing."
"It's a question of tools verses the products they're used to manufacture. Reason is like
a cheap pair of shoes. You can walk barefoot but it's more comfortable with shoes.
You walk in them but when they wear out you don't bother gluing them together or
having them repaired; you just chuck them and get a new pair."
"The institutions we use to reach truth aren’t the truth in themselves. Point out the
moon with your finger, but the finger's not the moon."
"Of course the church has had a big hand in stoking the fires of religious conflict, but I
think there's a huge distinction to be made between 'the religion' and 'the church'. They
aren’t the same thing."
"Just like a swimming pool and the act of swimming aren’t the same thing."
"Right. Most people swim in a pool but you don't have to; there are other places to
swim."
"When you're newborn you can swim intuitively; only by not swimming for years do
you forget, then you have to be taught again. Just like when you're newborn you
already have understanding; the Zen mind. Only by not exercising it do you forget
about it; then you may need some help in 'learning' it again."
"The church is merely an institution. The moment the word of God was written down it
was distorted; corrupted. Then it was rewritten again and again; translated and
reinterpreted. That's why Muslims seek to preserve the true word of God; one which
was uncorrupted. The Bible is less the word of God than the church's interpretation of
the word of God; the church being essentially a gaggle of conservative money men. As
time went on, the church's power became so great that they wanted to preserve it at all
costs; they engaged in wars and killed and maimed in the name of Christianity; they
even killed other Christians. I'm sorry, but none of that is in the bible."
"So religious people have to search for the truth by themselves, or else they'll just be
mislead, intentionally or otherwise; by a heavily moneyed institution who just want to
control people to preserve their own power."
"Which ironically goes against everything Jesus stood for."
"You can use the church as a handhold; as a crutch. You can use the books as a crutch,
but in the end you have to do the walking yourself. In Zen it's said once you've read the
sacred books you may as well use them for firewood; it's the understanding you're
seeking, part of which is that we can and should live without material objects as much
as possible, and that includes sacred books."
"You can't take them with you."
"The apparent strength of science, of course, has also contributed to the rationalist's
assumptions about religion. Science deals with right and wrong; fact and fiction. You
can't have contradictions in science; the word itself has become a taboo. If science is
right, religion must be wrong. If people believe in religion it means they don't believe in
science. This is an important misunderstanding. The fact is that religion and science
approach different areas in wholly different ways. You can't compare them; its like
comparing something's color to its value; its meaningless."
"Religious people would be mad to deny the truths of science. Scientists take this to be
a triumph; they believe this means religion is dead; a victim of the rule and compass of
science."
"Actually there's no contradiction. Rationalists are mad to deny the truths of religion.
No religious person thinks the world is flat; that god lives on a cloud; that evolution
and the dinosaurs are quaint fictions. Of course they used to, but when they used to
believe this scientists believed the same thing."
"Science is an institution just like the church is an institution. The actual understanding
behind both is intensely personal. You can use the institutions; to learn new things; to
listen to other people's opinions on things. But in the end the comprehension of it must
come from yourself."
"The problem that afflicted the church is the same problem which has been afflicting the
scientific institution for a while, and the same affliction which seems to take hold of
most areas of human society again and again; selfishness. The church always wanted to
protect itself from both individuality and change. The scientific community wants the
same, as did the US government, trade organizations, businesses; everything. It's a
natural human drive which always brings us down because it's bound to fail, and it's
bound to fail simply because the only constant in the universe is change."
"The whole point of the scientific community was to move with the changes."
"That's why science doesn't deal with eternal facts; it deals instead with probability."
"The most likely hypothesis at that given time is assumed to be correct."
"Until a better one comes along. This is a commendable practice if it's adhered to. But
it isn't. The scientific community; the institution; wants to protect itself like any good
Darwinian species would. It's nature is change, but it resists it. That which resists it's
nature invariably dies out; that's pretty Darwinian too. It's like I said; the only constant
in the universe is change; it's suicide to resist it."
"And all this nonsense about scientific heretics; people who posit workable hypothesis
but are shunned by the scientific authorities because those hypothesis contradict what
the institution holds to be true. But in history this is how science has progressed;
Cornelian theory being replaced by Newton and Einstein, Darwin, etc etc. The very
nature of science is that it goes with the times; it changes to suit human evolution. If it
remains stagnant it deserves the same ideological scrutiny as the church; they're both
conservationist institutions perusing not truth but their own survival. Sure, both are
useful; science for education and the church for community spirit; but as instruments of
truth they both have to embrace human understanding; personal understanding and
personal ideas if they are to retain credibility."
"Scientific heretics. The whole concept should be an oxymoron. When they insist on
being so dismissive, it's plain to see science isn't progressing anymore. I mean come on;
practice what you preach. Science is about theories. Theories are there to be replaced
when something better comes along. Well christ; there are plenty of better things
around by now. Religion and science can learn from each other; if only the institutions
that think they're the bastion of their disciplines would allow the lay people who really
live life in a spiritual way say their piece."
"Religion and science used to be the same thing; one institution."
"Science talks about the physical world and; to an extent; the mental world."
"Religion talks about the spiritual world and; to an extent; the mental world."
"You just can't compare the two, unless you're talking about the mental; the actions of
the brain, which we can stimulate either through chemicals or through religious
practice. It's neglectful for a religious person to ignore the physical side of the world,
and just as neglectful for the rationalist to ignore the spiritual side. Some people would
say that there isn’t a spiritual side, but that’s only because they've never experienced it.
I would be slated for saying that the theory of relativity is wrong just because I don't
have a 'rational' mind; because I don't understand it. I'd be ridiculed for persisting that
the moon isn't up there just because I haven’t been there."
"The human mind is a limited thing; we can't know everything."
"So some people understand some things, and others understand other things. We have
to pool all our resources together as a human race to understand the lot, but instead we
seem to be intent on arguing about them and annihilating each other, which amounts to
annihilating ourselves."
"We're all one human race, right? We all have our parts to play."
"People say other people's problems aren’t their problems, but yeah; we're all human
beings. Sartre argued that when a human being chooses for all humanity, 'humanity' is
the sum total of the free choices of all sentient beings. 'My business' isn’t really
distinguishable from 'yours'; every choice we make is a human choice; it effects us all.
People don't like to be reminded of the ills of society, but they must because otherwise
they would never do anything about them. You can't justify yourself by saying 'at least
I'm not as bad as him or her'. We're all part of the same pulsating organism; we depend
on each other and our world. Every single human being's actions; without exception;
seen or unseen; form an overview of humanity and direct it down a particular moral and
societal path. At every time in every situation and in every second of their lives;
without exception; human beings are responsible for what they do. The scales for us
are evenly balanced between good and evil at every split second which passes us by. So
it is for humanity as a whole."
"One person's actions; one person's decisions; can and do make all the difference. To
say one human being is too weak to defeat all the world's evils; all the world's hardships
and injustices is an excuse."
"However good an excuse."
"It's still an escape."
"However crafty an escape."
"But we can't escape, not really. If we label a particularly awful deed 'evil', we begin to
see the less awful ones as acceptable. If we label murder evil, we may consider assault
not particularly awful. If we label serial killings evil, we may see murder as not
especially bad and assault plausibly justifiable."
"We can go all the way down the line until even murder becomes acceptable."
"It's all about relativity. What a nitty, gritty web we weave. What a slippery slope we
polish obsessively just to ensure our own downfall when we attempt to scale it. It's time
to cut ourselves free; it's time to break the mold. We're all human beings. We are all in
this thing called life together, and until we realize this and act on our realizations there
can be no utopia; no earthly paradise; no harmonious society. Those who blindly claim
this is impossible have perhaps already been lost. We must help our friends out of the
fire rather than watch them burn. We must be icons; idealists. If we had no idealists, an
ideal society would be impossible. If we allow ourselves to become defeatist; what
most people call realistic; we will never gain what we insist is impossible. We must all
be idealistic, because only idealism can create and sustain an ideal world. It may not be
possible to achieve that world, but at least we can try."
"Which returns us to the initial point; trying. Making that effort."
"Yeah, you're right you know; there's nothing to fear but life itself; nobody to fight but
your own shadow, and nobody fighting it but yourself, and for the sake of humanity,
you must fight."
The tired train shuddered to a halt at the sparse, military style station of South
Street Seaport; sinister black glass and fizzing laser encrusted machinery welcoming
them as if to the central shrine of a lost underground civilization unearthed by a crew of
jubilant archeologists made to feel small by the hugeness of their chance discovery. A
frighteningly fickle fresco paint job served to indicate that this was a sparkling new
facility untrodden by the gluttonous foot of the consumer age, but sporting a tense steel
walkway very well trodden by the crushing boot of casts of conspicuous army apes
who thankfully for the moment appeared to be absent without leave. The ancient
vehicle breathed its last and wheezed exhaustibly as if it had just carried the cross to its
own crucifixion site; a metaphor which gave Lincoln a cruel slice of foresight.
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