The Passport

A light rain had passed away perhaps a half hour before but the clouds remained, obscuring the dying light of the early evening in Bogotá. It rains or drizzles most days in Bogotá and when it isn’t raining we have the protection of somber gray clouds. On this night, darkness seemed to descend quietly, gently, earlier than usual and I was left with an unsettling feeling of emptiness. It was not only emptiness, but the sensation that something meaningful was coming to an end. I absentmindedly ran my fingers over my knife, clipped to my pocket, a hole in the blade for my thumb to snap it open in an instant. The rough ridges along its edge reminded me of the bloody violence I had done with it. They reminded me of its potential. I felt hollow again. The flea market is full of color and life in the morning. But later it dies a slow death. Endings: On Sundays the street people congregate around several of the plazas to sell the garbage that they find or steal during the week. This is where tonight’s story begins, on the edge of this zone of desperate poverty.

I wandered slowly through what passes here for a flea market (though the term is perhaps more appropriate here than elsewhere) running my eyes over the worthless detritus swept from the city by this wave of scavengers. Earlier in the day, it is a real market and there are items for sale that have value. But by the end, everyone who has someplace better to be has left, anything worthwhile has been sold and all that is left is an odd assortment of broken, forgotten, mismatched junk. There was a computer keyboard from the 1980s, a broken piece of a telephone, hundreds of tiny porcelain figurines, cables and connectors that may have been torn from an abandoned building, and tattered and mismatched clothing of all descriptions. Certain scavengers seemed to specialize in just cell phone accessories and their dirty and mismatched wares were laid neatly on blankets. There were no tables. Everything was arrayed on blankets that could be rolled up when night fell and would later serve to keep the vendors warm while huddled against some building.

To me, everything I saw by this time held negative value. It was utterly useless to me, would take up space in my life and carried the risk of disease as an additional danger in some cases. At least those were the calculations that ran through my head. The people peddling these trinkets and pieces of refuse were dirty and listless, no doubt enduring years of invisibility or outright disgust at the hands of the rest of Bogotá. Curiously, I sensed no feeling of community or comradeship among these people who shunned each other, or just gazed silently and who on other days seemed to wander the streets alone.

It was dusk when I passed through and most of vendors were in the process of rolling up their blankets and moving off throughout the city. Many had already left. On the edge of this curious gathering I glanced over yet another blanket filled with small electronics, porcelain figures, old records, tattered paperbacks and one item that caught my eye. It stood out from the rest immediately. It was rectangular, red and about the size of a paperback but thinner. The official seal of Colombia was embossed on the cover.

It was a Colombian passport. I stopped. Perhaps it was the “officialness” that caught my eye and held my attention. Or maybe it was just something about the mood that hung in the air. I reached down and thumbed it open. A man with short, neatly trimmed curly hair stared back at me. He was born in 1969. In the photo, he didn’t look so different from me. I read his name and forgot it. I glanced at the man selling the passport but he wasn’t interested enough to even pay attention to me. It was not his passport. Had he stolen it? Had he found it? Impossible to say, but it seemed to hold as little value for him as all of the other odds and ends held for me.

At one time, this document had been valuable to someone. This was a representation of someone’s identity. With this document the man in the photo was permitted to travel the world. With this photo a man could prove that he was a person, a citizen of a nation, and not a nameless and dislocated vagabond. Perhaps this is why the street scavenger didn’t value the passport. He had no identity. The concept of identity, of belonging, had slipped away from him.

I did not move. I did not release the passport. I was captivated. First, it was the fantasy of buying it and assuming that other identity. Becoming someone else would be leaving behind who I am or it could be just stepping into that other skin. It would be like being invisible. What would you do if you were invisible? What did these invisible people on the street do? The comparison is not adequate though. The identity of this man on the passport represented freedom to me in that brief instant but the very concept of government issued identification is one of bondage. Colombia has a system of national identification cards, la cédula, that is far more rigid and inclusive than the United States. To name someone, to identity them, to force them to produce this name and personal data on demand: is a manner of control. In the most basic sense, we assert our control over the world by naming, by applying language and labels to everything around us. It is no accident that this was the power ceded by God to Adam in Hebrew myth, because by naming all the creatures of the Earth he could assert his dominion over them. Likewise, in many cultures the true name of a demon or other evil spirit is the means to defeat it.

With that passport I would be Colombian. It offered me protection. It offered me escape. The red faux leather cover was different than my American passport. Would the red hide the blood? The passport was undamaged and untarnished, and the paper was only slightly aged by the years. It felt light in my hand. Endings. Beginnings. I was at the seashore and the ocean lapped at my feet. It was cold and reminded me of the vastness of the ocean. The seaweed had been brought up by the tide and lay stinking all around me. From within the tangled mess of rotting plant matter, I saw a conch shell, untouched by the action of the waves. I plucked it from the knotted cords of green and brown and held it to my ear. I looked into the endless ocean and the crashing waves as I listened to the conch. It whispered in my ear, “Colombia… Colombia… Colombia…” as softly as if it were the amplified sound of my own inner ear. As I held the conch to my ear, blood began to slowly drip from it. Threw its twists and turns there came a trickle of warm red liquid. This is what it offered me. The blood began to spill onto my hand and run down my arm. Right then I made the decision to be rid of the conch. I didn’t throw it back to the depths but instead dropped it at the edge of the water, among the seaweed. Perhaps the next wanderer would see the value as I had.

The passport now out of my hand, I felt its pull. It could grant me my darkest wishes. Fear and desire seemed to hang over it. I looked back at its current owner but he seemed to not comprehend the value of the object between us. He looked absently at the few scattered people passing or maybe a stray dog in the distance. I straightened back up and returned to my world. If I wasn’t careful, I could drown in those dark waters. I headed back home in the dying light of a Sunday evening. I absently ran my fingers over the black metal of my knife, folded neatly in my pocket. The hollow man was there on the ground behind me. Between the potency and the existence, between the essence and the descent: fell the shadow. Between the idea and the reality, between the motion and the act: fell the shadow. This is the way it all ends. This is the way it all…

Carl Sagan

As a boy, I first came to know of Carl Sagan through his novel Contact. This introduced me to pi and number theory and reading this book--in which I learned the word "numinous" was tantamount to a religious experience. His entreaty was to see a deeper order in the world, to imagine that such mysteries exist, contained not in an ancient book or magical incantation but in the complex and uncharted depths of nature. Carl Sagan was a writer, cosmologist, astronomer and peace activist. He was all of those things and something more.

Apart from the scientific discoveries he made (mostly in relation to the planet Venus and the moon Europa, as far as I am aware) it was his power to inspire that has left the world with the great lasting benefit. He inspired generations of students to think and examine their beliefs. He imbued many, myself included, with a deeper appreciation for science, mathematics, and nature, while cutting away the deadwood of superstition. His book The Demon Haunted World tears down superstitions by exposing them to the light of reason, and he does it with ease.

Tonight I would like to share with you twelve aphorisms and quotations by the late Carl Sagan. Each one captures some of the essence of his body of work--fiercely dedicated to science as a way of knowing and the expansion of the boundaries of human knowledge.

1 ---- ---- ----
Evidence that contradicts the ruling belief system is held to extraordinary standards, while evidence that entrenches it is uncritically accepted.

2 ---- ---- ----
For all our conceits about being the center of the universe, we live in a routine planet of a humdrum star stuck away in an obscure corner ... on an unexceptional galaxy which is one of about 100 billion galaxies. ... That is the fundamental fact of the universe we inhabit, and it is very good for us to understand that.

3 ---- ---- ----
If we long for our planet to be important, there is something we can do about it. We make our world significant by the courage of our questions and by the depth of our answers.

4 ---- ---- ----
In science it often happens that scientists say, "You know that's a really good argument; my position is mistaken," and then they would actually change their minds and you never hear that old view from them again. They really do it. It doesn't happen as often as it should, because scientists are human and change is sometimes painful. But it happens every day. I cannot recall the last time something like that happened in politics or religion.

5 ---- ---- ----
One glance at a book and you hear the voice of another person, perhaps someone dead for 1,000 years. To read is to voyage through time.

6 ---- ---- ----
Science is a way of thinking much more than it is a body of knowledge.

7 ---- ---- ----
Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence.

8 ---- ---- ----
The nuclear arms race is like two sworn enemies standing waist deep in gasoline, one with three matches, the other with five.

9 ---- ---- ----
The truth may be puzzling. It may take some work to grapple with. It may be counterintuitive. It may contradict deeply held prejudices. It may not be consonant with what we desperately want to be true. But our preferences do not determine what's true. We have a method, and that method helps us to reach not absolute truth, only asymptotic approaches to the truth — never there, just closer and closer, always finding vast new oceans of undiscovered possibilities. Cleverly designed experiments are the key.

10 ---- ---- ----
In some respects, science has far surpassed religion in delivering awe. How is it that hardly any major religion has looked at science and concluded, "This is better than we thought! The Universe is much bigger than our prophets said, grander, more subtle, more elegant. God must be even greater than we dreamed"? Instead they say, "No, no, no! My god is a little god, and I want him to stay that way."

11 ---- ---- ----
I would love to believe that when I die I will live again, that some thinking, feeling, remembering part of me will continue. But much as I want to believe that, and despite the ancient and worldwide cultural traditions that assert an afterlife, I know of nothing to suggest that it is more than wishful thinking.
The world is so exquisite with so much love and moral depth, that there is no reason to deceive ourselves with pretty stories for which there's little good evidence. Far better it seems to me, in our vulnerability, is to look death in the eye and to be grateful every day for the brief but magnificent opportunity that life provides.

12 ---- ---- ----
We are made of star stuff. For the most part, atoms heavier than hydrogen were created in the interiors of stars and then expelled into space to be incorporated into later stars. The Sun is probably a third generation star.
---- ---- ----

I hope that after reading these twelve quotes that they will have touched you as they did me. Even more than the work he did in basic, hard science, to me this power to dream and inspire others to dream is Dr. Sagan's greatest legacy. Sadly, Dr. Sagan passed away in 1996 and we have only his books, films and scientific work. But I think he would be pleased with the result of his labors if he could look on his achievements from the grave. You can learn more about him here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carl_sagan

What It Means to Swim to the Shore Alone

I have begun writing the piece on the nature of money that I had mentioned in the previous posting, but I am not yet finished with it. I am about 25% through the outline I sketched out, but personal issues have caused me to suspend its writing for a few days. When I can devote my full attention again to writing about economic history/theory I will have it posted here, but for tonight, I have some brief thoughts to share.

Though I am not myself a Christian, I find the Evangelical programs on the radio entertaining and very often fascinating (though just as often, frustrating). In my car, when there is nothing good on National Public Radio, I will change stations until I find some one that has preaching on it and listen to what the religious man (they are always men, never women) have to say. Often, I play along by arguing his points aloud or commenting on his thick theological accent or just laughing heartily. Last night I was listening to one such program and the message was about prayer, the power of prayer and how Christians (the preacher's audience) didn't pray with the right mindset. Preachers speak in analogies and anecdotes both to explain (we can understand the unfamiliar and complex by way of the familiar and simple) and to convince (it is weak form of pseudo-argumentation that is most closely related with the fallacy of equivocation). This man was no exception. Some of his anecdotes were good while one stood out to me as meaning exactly opposite what he intended. First let me tell the second hand anecdote he told (now third hand).

In the movie The End, Burt Reynolds is trying to commit suicide by swimming out as far as he can into the ocean, thinking that when he had swum too far for him to be able to swim back, he would drown. But when he gets out as far as he can swim, he has a change of heart and decides he doesn't want to die after all. He prays to God to save him and promises God that he would give everything to Him and devote the rest of his life to serving Him if God would just save him and get him back to shore safely. And thus he begins swimming to shore. When he is halfway back to shore, and near the edge of his endurance, he again prays to God and promises to give half of everything he has and to devote a full fifty percent of his life to The Lord. He continues in this manner, further reducing his pledge of devotion in proportion to the distance he is from shore until finally he steps food on the beach and tells God to forget what he had said before.

Does this mean that the man only turns to God in times of need, receives help and continually bargains his sacrifice down as his immediate need diminishes? Is this man an ungrateful sinner who sees God only as his servant who he may abandon when it is no longer convenient for him? The radio preacher seemed to think so. This thinking however betrays a fatal flaw in religious thought and Burt Reynolds' character (I didn't see the movie myself, but the name of the characters is not important) is acting more reasonable than the radio preacher believes and may have even come close to an important realization at the end, as he touched his foot upon the shore of a godless world. Let me explain what I mean.

He has swum out into the ocean and despairs and asks God for help, but then rather than a giant bird lifting him from the water, or the ocean currents pushing him to shore at the speed of a jet ski, or a team of friendly dolphins being sent to pull him in, or any number of events that would seem at least semi-divine and miraculous, the man swims to shore under his own power. God did not help him. God did not answer his prayer. This first and most obvious fact somehow escaped the radio preacher because he has the tendency, as many Evangelicals do, to ascribe any good event to God and any evil happening to the Devil or man's wickedness. Burt Reynolds' character saves himself and is not saved by prayer or by God and when the danger decreases, but is still present, he again cries out to God, offering less for a lesser miracle. Not an unreasonable equation. God never answers his prayer though and he has to rely on his own will to survive to propel himself to shore and when he finally does set foot on the beach, why should he give anything to God when God didn't help him in his time of need? He simply says, "Nevermind" and the bargaining is at an end, but the greater realization would be to come to understand that he did it, as he has done everything else in his life, and that no gods have had any part in his salvation nor any devils in his damnation. He is a man living in a natural universe and forced to rely on his own wits and abilities and no amount of prayer will change that. The reason that his prayers weren't answered is because there was no one there to hear them

This is a radically different interpretation of the story than the radio preacher. He sees it is a rebuke of man's tendency to turn to God only in times of need then to greedily bargain away what was promised and return to a life of sinful self reliance and individuality. I see it as an encouraging story that suggests that one man discovered the true nature of the universe and the fact that he is responsible for his own destiny and not some imagined caretaker who he yearns to believe in. I see it not as a sinful act of rebellion but as what could be a "spiritual" awakening. Of course, because it is a comedy, I doubt that the character had the epiphany I have imagined for him. The fact remains however, that seen through the lens of subservience, slavery, submission, and religious superstition the man's bargaining is sinful while seen through the lens of individualism, naturalism, skepticism, freedom, self reliance, and rationalism, his actions are enlightened and praiseworthy.

The story is the same in each case, the events unchanged and the telling as neutral as possible (I tried to stay true to what I heard on the radio). First, it was a comedy (in the film version), then a Christian parable of man's short sighted and dishonest nature, and in the last reading it has become a fable about self reliance and the human spirit in a naturalistic world. The anecdote could even be a microcosm of the universe as a whole, which we all view through the lens of our own values. My interpretation of the story shows you what I value. How do you read this story?