Food for The Eagle by Adam Savage

Good evening.

I hope you don't mind, but I'm going to read my speech from my new iPad.

Yep. I'm not only a humanist, I'm also an early adopter.

I want to start by saying that, to me, any discourse from me about how one can live a moral existence without religion or the church would sound improperly defensive. That there's an opposite to be defended is absurd and based on a provably false premise. So let's dispense with that.

(To be clear: I'm referring to the humanist axiom "Good without God," whereby "good" means morality. It's provably false that there exists no morality outside of religion, therefore the statement sounds defensive to me.)

By what route does anyone come to believe what they believe? We all like to imagine that it's based on a set of logical facts, but it's often a much more circuitous route.

For me it was pretty simple. I'm actually the fourth generation in my family to have no practical use for the church, or God, or religion. My children continue this trend.

Here are a few things I've learned.

Prayer doesn't work because someone out there is listening, it works because someone in here is listening. I've paid attention. I've pictured what I want to happen in my life. I've meditated extensively on my family, my future, my past actions and what did and didn't work for me about them. I've looked hard at problems and thought hard about their solutions.

See, I order my life by the same mechanism that I use to build things. I cannot proceed to move tools around in the real world until my brain has a clear picture in it of what I'm building. The same goes for my life. I've tried to pay attention. I've tried to picture the way I want things to be, and I've noticed that when I had a clear picture, things often turned out the way I wanted them to.

I've concluded by this that someone is paying attention—I've concluded that it's me. I've noticed that if I'm paying attention to those around me, to myself, to my surroundings, then that is the very definition of empathy. I've noticed that when I pay attention, I'm less selfish, I'm happier—and that the inverse holds true as well.

I think one of the defining moments of adulthood is the realization that nobody's going to take care of you. That you have to do the heavy lifting while you're here. And when you don't, well, you suffer the consequences. At least I have. (And in the empirical study I'm performing about interacting with the universe, I am unfortunately the only test subject I have complete access to, so my data is, as they say, self-selected.) While nobody's going to take care of us, it's incumbent upon us to take care of those around us. That's community.

The fiction of continuity and stability that your parents have painted for you is totally necessary for a growing child. When you realize that it's not the way the world works, it's a chilling moment. It's supremely lonely.

So I understand the desire for someone to be in charge. (As a side note, I believe that the need for conspiracy theories is similar to the need for God.) We'd all like our good and evil to be like it is in the movies: specific and horrible, easy to defeat. But it's not. It's banal.

There's a quote I love: "Evil is a little man afraid for his job." I always thought some famous author said it, but I asked my 200,000 followers on Twitter today, and it turns out that Roy Scheider said it in Blue Thunder.

No one is in charge. And honestly, that's even cooler.

The idea of an ordered and elegant universe is a lovely one. One worth clinging to. But you don't need religion to appreciate the ordered existence. It's not just an idea, it's reality. We're discovering the hidden orders of the universe every day. The inverse square law of gravitation is amazing. Fractals, the theory of relativity, the genome: these are magnificently beautiful constructs.

The nearly infinite set of dominoes that have fallen into each other in order for us to be here tonight is unfathomable. Truly unfathomable. But it is logical. We don't know all the steps in that logic, but we're learning more about it every day. Learning, expanding our consciousness, singly and universally.

As far as I can see, the three main intolerant religions in the world aren't helping in that mission.

For all their talk of charity and knowledge, that they close their eyes to so much—to science, to birth control education, to abuses of power by some of their leaders, to evolution as provable and therefore factual (the list is staggering)—illustrates a wide scope of bigotry.

Now, just to be clear. If you want to believe, or find solace in believing, that someone or something set these particular dominoes in motion—a cosmic finger tipping the balance and then leaving everything else to chance—I can't say anything to that. I don't know.

Though a primary mover is the most complex and thus (given Occam's razor) the least likely of all possible solutions to the particular problem of how we got here, I can't prove it true or false, and there's nothing to really discuss about it.

If Daniel Dennett is right— that there's a human genetic need for religion— then I'd like to imagine that my atheism is proof of evolutionary biology in action.

There may be no purpose, but its always good to have a mission. And I know of one fine allegory for an excellent mission should you choose to charge yourself with one: Carlos Castaneda's series of books about his training with a Yaqui indian mystic named Don Juan. There's a lot of controversy about these books being represented as nonfiction. But if you dispense with that representation, and instead take their stories as allegories, they're quite lovely.

At the end of The Eagle's Gift, Don Juan reveals to his student that there's no point to existence. That we're given our brief 70-100 years of consciousness by something the mystics call "The Eagle," named for it's cold, killer demeanor. And when we die, the eagle gobbles our consciousness right back up again.

He explains that the mystics, to give thanks to the eagle for the brief bout of consciousness they're granted, attempt to widen their consciousness as much as possible. This provides a particularly delicious meal for the eagle when it gobbles one up at the end of one's life.

And that, to me, is a fine mission.

Thank you.

— Delivered to the Harvard Humanist Society, April 2010

http://www.boingboing.net/features/savage.html

Oh no... not this again!

I stood there. Naked.

In an instant I was surrounded by a firing squad of thoughts, questions, doubts

in their sharp shooter poses. Guns cocked.

The familiar organic coating slithered over me

filling every curve

and hardened into a protective shell – so constricting so I couldn’t breathe.

Eject. I’ve already starred in this movie.

I imagine...

I did a lot of stream of consciousness writing in 2006 when I was trying to figure out what I wanted my new life to be like. I'm still trying to figure it out but I read this and realized that my ideal life is pretty much the same.

I imagine…

Loading up my car for a trip to camp… to sleep under the stars in the desert with no tent. To sleep by a campfire on the beach in Baja and wake up smelling smokey, to drive up the coast with all of the windows down.

I may be with someone – my kids, a friend,  a lover… it’s peaceful and I smile and we laugh… a lot. I imagine being free and happy with simple things – a simple kind of life. Independent and powerful and smart enough to make decisions and face challenges. To may by brain work through problems.

To have a job that I love but doesn’t suck the life from me. Where I can leave and not feel like I have to work weekends.

To me, happiness is peace. Friends drinking wine. Dancing until midnight. Laughing at stupid stuff. Waking up to fresh coffee.

I imagine hanging with my kids. Teaching them how to be smart people. Showing them new things – helping them experience fun activities that teach them about nature. Showing them that giving an old lady and her dog a ride to the bus stop is a lesson in random acts of kindness. That life really doesn’t revolve around Tamaguchi and Pokemon. That rain is beautiful. That they have everything. That they are strong and smart. How to solve problems. That its okay to cry. That its not okay to be meant to people. That there are thousands of things they can do to be happy. That crawling into bed with me on a Sunday morning is really okay. That I’ll always be there for them no matter what. That strong, smart and beautiful is a very powerful combination. That there is beauty in everyday things. That there is a lesson to be learned in every interaction. That there you should never ever give in – ever. That you should tell people what is beautiful about them at any time – not just special occasions. That you should never save your good clothes for special occasions. 

Dr. Mary Jane is in the House.

Last weekend I took the kids to the Adams Avenue Roots Festival to see some music. I met one of my friends at The Blind Lady Ale House – a kid-friendly pub. Seriously… it was like the Lord smiled down upon North Park. After a frosty, noon Hefeweisen accompanied by a juicy orange slice we cruised around, ate churros and roasted corn, listened to music and gawked at crappy silver jewelry.

But the day wasn’t complete until I had one of my little minions carry out a task in the name of social research. There in the middle of the street fair was a medical marijuana booth and I wondered an organization like that might handle precocious questions from kids and pre-teens who might be roaming about.

Being of curious mind, I had to find out for myself. So I shamelessly sacrificed one of my own in the name of science. I basically paid Wyatt a pack of gum to go up to the kind folks behind the table and say, “Hello. I’d like to inquire about medical marijuana.” They unceremoniously told him he had to come back when he was older. Wyatt politely thanked them, meandered his way back and promptly he hit me up for a buck to buy a pack of Hubba Bubba strawberry-flavored gum.

Packed Like a Van of Sardines

I was headed to Austin on a business trip on dark March morning. I parked at my usual garage where a white utility van shuttles sleepy business travelers to their terminal. I gave the driver my pack to stow in the back, then climbed in across the bench with my carryon and comfortably settled in with four other passengers. I considered for a moment how this situation would be different if I were in Asia but instead of going through the mental exercise, I sprawled out my legs, cracked my complementary copy of USA Today and let the thought escape. The shuttle made another stop to pick up a fifth – and that’s when one of the gentlemen behind me quipped, “Jeez! How many people care they gonna cram in here?!”

The number that immediately came to mind was two. That's when I whipped out my short, plastic stools with cartoon characters on them and mentally placed them around the van: between the driver and shotgun passenger, in the aisle… oh and there was easily enough room for another bench. I proceeded to waive passenger after passenger on, filling every crevice of this monstrous van putting couched passengers on mini stools, sitting on top of other peoples’ bags and up against each other. Benches that were designed to comfortably hold three people were now crammed with five – not counting backpack babies and small animals. By the time I was done I had managed to fit 21 adults, 2 infants and a piglet into my ridiculous-sized American EconoVan. I anticipated the angst and outrage that my fellow passenger would have expressed as I demanded his money. I smirked as I stuffed my pockets with imaginary dollars and waited for an undetermined and uncommunicated number of minutes before I felt like hopping in the driver's seat and whisking my pesky passengers away to their terminal.