My personal opinion is God would be delighted by your insight! Humans have attempted to describe what God has done for which they had no words. Therefore, the creation of the world and the creatures in it is capsized into a seven day story. Yet, the natural unfolding process which you define is aligned perfectly with what the "story" of the Jewish scriptures and Christian OT tell us: A cosmos existed, over time various life forms evolved; over more time value was assigned to various types of behavior because of the outcomes achieved, so that individual choice and preference varied more and more. I experience no tension between your writing and my faith"only validation of what I know to be true but perhaps lacked the insight to express.
Thank you, Andy.
Andy Schmookler responds:
Thank you, Karen, for your appreciations. It would please me greatly if God would be delighted by my insight. I wonder how, given that insight, the God you believe in would describe His role in the unfolding of life on earth, and then of human civilization over the past 10,000 years.
Although you say that "some religious people may feel disenfranchised from your writing," You also say, "I experience no tension between your writing and my faith." Which leaves me wondering: what would those who would feel "disenfranchised" have to change -- or give up? -- in order to feel that comfort you report with the evolutionary perspective that I've presented here?
To address your one reservation -- that that readers might be turned off by my statement about the "blindness and weakness" of Liberal America, and thus bail on following me where this series is going -- I would say a couple of things.
First, my critique of Liberal America is not a blanket indictment. After all, I consider myself part of that segment of American culture, and what I've seen has inspired me to fight as strongly as I can for more than a decade against the destructive force that has been ascendant in America in our times. And of course, there have been many others.
But not enough. Had there not been a problem of weakness, how else to explain that a force that continually deceives has been so often able to defeat the force of Liberal America that has more habitually been armed with the truth? How else has a force that has done virtually nothing to enhance the lives of the great majority of the citizens of this nation -- and indeed has been working to take power and wealth away from them -- been able to persuade such a large number of those Americans to align with it and to regard the political side that is clearly more concerned with their well-being as the enemy?
So, for those who know that they have not been blind and weak, there's no need to take my critique personally. And for those whom the shoe fits, the challenge is to wear it, and awaken to the nature of the profound battle being waged these years in the American power system. The election of 2016 has done much to achieve that awakening. The underlying reality has become so blatant, that many who were blind now see it. And the threat has become to palpable that many who supported weakness are aroused to fortify the political muscle of Liberal America.
As I said in the first installment, that is all to the good. And it would have been still better had that happened earlier in the battle, when the force of destruction did not control so much of the battlefield.
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Livvie Mellan:
I really loved the part where you talk about "the sacred," because it reminded me of a couple of major experiences in my own life, and gave me new language to talk about them. As with what you said about cultures orienting themselves around experiences of "the sacred," these two conversations are what put me on the work-path I've followed my whole professional life.
The first one was a conversation with my thesis advisor, when I was pursuing a Ph.D. in French and was on my way to an academic career. He could tell I was lukewarm about that prospect, and in a conversation in which I was complaining about a love-relationship gone wrong, he asked me if it had ever occurred to me that I had more love in me than would be satisfied just by being in a relationship with one man. At first I thought he was talking about my having multiple lovers, but he soon made it clear that he was talking about a career that was all about giving people some kind of loving care. Like a therapist, and more particularly, since he knew my love of the theater, like getting into something like psychodrama.
When I heard that, it was like I'd been hit by a thunderbolt. It was like the planets stood still. It changed the course of my life.
A second conversation with those qualities of thunderbolt and planetary stillness happened a couple of years later. A lawyer with whom I was offering a workshop that didn't get any takers suggested, "I really think we should do a workshop about money. That's really the last taboo." And again, it went right to my core. I recognized that every time the subject of money came up -- like with a couple or with an individual -- it was as if there are ghosts of family members (theirs and mine) around the room. So rich in what it means to people, and often so much in need of help that people don't get. It seemed important to create a safe space for people to talk about these money-related things.
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