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Take God Shopping

“Fasten your seatbelt, kids, it’s gonna be a rough ride.” For as long as I can remember I “thought” that the universe—after the Big Bang—would expand until it reached its absolute maximum size (billions of light years across) and then collapse back in on itself. Sigh, that isn’t the case. Not only is the universe expanding, it’s accelerating. And that’s when I came up with the child advisory about mankind’s condition, “Fasten your seatbelt, kids, it’s gonna be a rough ride.”

Remember in 7th grade science when you were first introduced to the idea that the earth rotates on its axis while revolving around the sun. And then the miles per hour figures were added. Yep, were rotating at around 1,000 mph while racing around the sun at, oh, 66,650 mph. My genuinely limited mind really could not then absorb such ideas. But practically speaking, I had enough sense to turn my back to the wind—no guy I ever saw had much success pissing against the wind.

Yet that is exactly what Republicans are doing concerning Gay marriage. Here you are a 65-year-old man, married for decades with the requisite children and you know in your heart of masculine hearts that what is normal is man on woman sex. Period. No debate. No discussion. Not only that, it is God’s will. End of story.

I am about Mitt Romney’s age and when he says that “such matters” (homosexuality) were not openly discussed in the mid-west in the early 1960s, he’s correct. That is because being Gay was such a repressed and punished life that few individuals had the courage to be out and open. Oh, I had some suspicions about certain men at the YMCA but they were so nonthreatening as to be sweet. Essentially, I had so little experience sexually, my mind so wrapped around the mystery all things feminine that I did not even remotely think about that which was “unnamed.” And if it (being “queer”) ever came up, I would knowingly laugh yet was totally clueless. Totally.

That was 50 years ago. FIFTY YEARS AGO. You think the earth is moving fast, well, we’re moving along at glacier speeds compared to the rapid turn (evolution?) in the acceptance of Gays—as human beings worthy of our respect. How far we’ve come from the 60s.

But it’s abnormal and it’s against God’s way. Abnormal? Okay, It isn’t your cup of tea, but because you don’t live that way, does that make it abnormal? No, I really don’t necessarily think so. Because it’s not right for you doesn’t mean it isn’t right for her or him.

God’s way is a trickier argument to refute. Why? Because we have so much invested in our belief in God (and “THE” way) that anything remotely challenging one’s belief, well, that is simply unacceptable.

And that is so profoundly sad. God is an evolutionary idea. He/She/”X” has changed right along with the human imagination.

It is okay every now and then to put a new suit of clothes on God. Go ahead. Take God Shopping for some new t-h-r-e-a-d-s. I’d go haute couture, for sure. Damn the cost. Some new shoes, a dress. Perhaps, an idea. Or, two. Maybe it is time God came out of the closet, too. Ya think?

If not, the ride could be unnecessarily rough. For all of us.

The Brand Tattooed On Our Backside Is “$ucker!”

The system was rotten. This had been said over and over; yet the old hulk was immovable. When people accept futility and the absurd as normal, the culture is decadent.
Historian Jacques Barzun on the state of the Catholic Church in the 15th century.

“Yet the old hulk was immovable.” That about sums-up America’s political infrastructure today.
Republicans and Democrats alike self-righteously bemoan the condition of America’s highways, bridges, rails and mass transit. Our electrical grid is inefficient and our nuclear plants ancient. America’s coal plants liberally spew carcinogens and our public water systems criminally leak billions of gallons. Our antiquated waste treatment facilities are inadequate and America’s groundwater is becoming undeniably undrinkable. As William Bendix often said in The Life of Riley, “What a revolting development.” As bad as our increasing third-world infrastructure is, our democratic infrastructure is in worse condition.

As a fiscally conservative liberal—Yes, ye simplistic Rushian Ditto-Heads, we do exist—I have become increasingly despondent over the prospects of America turning around the ship-of-state. I ask my more affluent readers, what good First Class deck chairs when you’re booked on the Titanic?

Is America the 21st century “Ship of Fools?” Our future denied to us as we straightjacket (hang) ourselves with idiotic conservative platitudes and ineffectual liberal pieties?

Our Supreme Court has become just another “bought & sold” branch of government. Our system of checks & balances, a joke. Common good? Common future? No more, gentle reader. We’ve been bought and sold. And cheaply, I might add. And the brand tattooed on our backside is “$UCKER!”

Rather than “fix” our public schools, we auction them off to Jeb Bush inspired, for-profit consortiums of capitalistic leeches, corporations that prosper off the “common good.” Everything is on the auction block, folks. Our roads, our water, our schools, our government, our souls.

Might America’s future be some dystopian combo of a “Mad Max Matrix” where vast numbers of our populace invest their hours lulled by the mind-numbing Huxley “soma” of the internet –“there is always soma, delicious soma.” While others of our agitated citizenry gun-up and dumb-down awaiting “some” Rapture, a scene of such pointlessness that it is right out of “Waiting for Godot?”

Our options are few. Our choices, negligible. The 2012 presidential election is a perfect example of both. Elect Obama and it’s a government of small choices and limited change. Or, elect Romney and America gets “Norquistian No-tax” tax cuts for the wealthy (A redux of Bush 43’s polarizing and impoverishing economic policy). Yes, and a return to the Neo-con foreign policy of costly wars supporting American imperialism. Either option is poor but I much prefer Obama to Romney. Yet either man’s election solidifies an already polarized electorate, guaranteeing more divided government. And our ship of state lists even more. Oh, lucky us, oh, fortunate America.

One of my favorite pieces of literature is “Candide” by Voltaire. In it Voltaire explores a time such as America now experiences. The light of reason and progress has dimmed. Corrupt. Despotic. Superstitious. Unparalleled greed and fraud.

A man once confident in “The Enlightenment,” Voltaire offered that the only course for the sane man is to retreat, and “cultivate our garden.”

With absurdity our new norm, withdrawing to one’s garden may, indeed, be the wisest choice.

Speak Dawg.

I have a number of friends, intelligent all, who are quite dumb about democracy. They think separation of church and state extends to the voting booth. That folks who want their religious values incorporated into public policy are wrong and that such advocacy/implementation undermines the nation. Arguably, certain religious values do undercut individual rights (freedom) but, hey, majority rules, yes?

If the braindead, say, of Tennessee want “creationism” taught in the public schools and elect a majority of state representatives of that persuasion (Republicans) to achieve that objective and actually do so, how is that not “pure” democracy in action? Salute it.

Actually, Tennessee is, perhaps, the perfect example that evolution is not a hoax. One might think that a state with a motto of “America At Its Best” would have moved-on from the embarrassing carnival of the 1925 Scopes Monkey Trial. Evidence is being offered that certain families of monkeys in Central Africa have evolved more in the past 87 years, since the Trial, than today’s typical state legislator of Tennessee. Good news for monkeys, a bit less so for their cousins in the Tennessee legislature.

I argue—and defy anyone to offer a more eloquent defense—that the ignorant and the stupid have just as much right to elect their candidates to office as anyone else. My learned friends think that when the uninformed vote in large numbers, America inevitably ends-up at war, oh, in Iraq or cutting preventative healthcare for women.

The fish I wish to fry in this column do have something in common with an ignorant or uninformed electorate—God must surely love’um all because He made so many of us. NO, I pose the following concern to every thinking American concerned with the course of our democracy. In the presidential election of 2000 it became crystal clear that not every vote was equal – the candidate with the most votes did not take office. One man does not equal one vote. Some votes in America are worth more than other votes.

And that undeniable fact is best illustrated by asking yourself the following question: Are “ALL” voters equal? When walking into the voting booth do two typical voters have the same “opportunity” to influence the course of our democracy? We want to believe as much, yes? Think again.

Folks, we need to understand something. America, from its inception, skewed the game in favor of “certain” interests. I get that. I understand the philosophical and historical underpinnings of our democracy. But what has happened with the 2010 Supreme Court Citizens United decision is that the individual with a million bucks (or $50 million) to invest in buying his legislator (to secure his agenda) has more influence—undeniably—than the average Joe Schmoe voter.

Oh, you say, that has always been the case. I do not disagree. All voters are not equal. Does it then follow that the über-rich should receive, carte blanche, our approval as they purchase our government? Citizens United has unequivocally illuminated, for all to clearly see, who owns America —part the curtains— (we are in their back pocket, right next to their wallet). No more facades, no more talk of equality within the voting booth. It is unnecessary. The emperor has no clothes. America is being bought, lock, stock and barrel.

The redcoats are coming! The redcoats are coming!

Danger, Will Robinson! Indeed.

What are we going to do about it? Will the real majority ever speak-up? Have you?

The Cocktail For The Ages.

I want a busy life, a just mind, and a timely death.
Zora Neale Hurston

I am going to employ a standard rhetorical device called paralipsis by saying it is unnecessary to state the obvious (but do it anyway). The Boomer Generation is retiring, is getting out of the way, is moving on. Approximately 13% of the American population today is 65 or older and when the last of the boomers retire in 2030, 18% of our population will be older than 65. 10,000 Boomers are retiring every day and will for the next 19 years.

Steven M. Gillon, author of “Boomer Nation” described it this way, “The pig has moved through the python, and is moving to the final stage.”

Ah, the final stage. Various estimates suggest that nearly 30% of Medicare payments cover the cost of care for people in the last year of life. Whew! That’s a big number. Need more? 12% of Medicare spending is allocated for people who are in the last two months of their life. We will mortgage our future, borrow billions from China for medical care for the last 60 days of an individual’s life? Is that money well spent? Whatta waste! Gosh, we could be spending that on bombing Iran, or tanks or on something that goes “Atten-hut!” I jest. But I don’t when it comes to boomer end times.

In 1729 Jonathan Swift wrote “A Modest Proposal” in which he satirically recommended that impoverished Irish sell their children as food to rich gentlemen and ladies. A tasty morsel of an idea, yes? Modest I suppose because he simply didn’t suggest “they” be ground-up and used as a natural fertilizer – to increase crop production to lessen the Irish famine. Nothing like a little 18th century Juvenalian satire to get the blood racing.

I have a modest recommendation for boomers but, unlike Swift, I am unequivocally sincere in my proposal. Ms. Hurston suggested of living that we experience “a timely death.” I recommend for my fellow boomers that we exit with dignity. Die with grace. On your own terms. Die at a moment of your choosing. Do it for yourself. Do so for your children and America.

One of the ironies of Alzheimers Disease is that when you have finally lost your marbles, you don’t give a damn about your dignity. Let alone for those who are now responsible for your welfare. You are reduced to walking vegetable matter and society is left caring for decaying fruit. That is a harsh but accurate assessment. You may select to experience that end, I will not.

I’ve come to the conclusion that I want to die as I have lived. With purpose, intent and in control. That may be an illusion (philosophical or otherwise) but it has been my modus operandi since it occurred to me that I was master of my own thoughts (age five or so).

I’ve considered the question of whether it is more tragic to die five minutes too soon or five minutes too late. Too late and you are a burden to children and country. Consider the “timely death.” It is an ethical choice.

I predict more and more boomers will choose a “timely death.” Do so with intent and prior to those last horrendous, humiliating and “costly” two months. Phenobarbital and whiskey. The cocktail for the Ages. Or, rather, for the aged. Skaal.

On Loosening One’s Jaw.

You take the same exit off Interstate Four to reach the luxurious Mall of Millenia or The Holyland Experience. I laughed out loud when I made that connection. Contrary to Matthew 6:24, you can have both God and mammon. Just off Exit 78 in Orlando, Florida.

God as a theme park? The idea of God has been exploited since man first put quill to parchment. To claim to know the mind of God is what classic Greeks condemned most in man—hubris. A quality harshly punished by the Greek gods.

That doesn’t seem so much the case these days. Folks (devout and otherwise) speak for God with impunity; I suppose because they think they have immunity. Or, they have the word. Is that one and the same? Subscribing to the “word” anoints one with immunity?

Certainty and righteousness are two human qualities that set my jaw. One of my favorite Ralph Waldo Emerson quotes goes, “A foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds, adored by little statesman and philosophers and divines.” And I accuse myself of an intolerance, one perhaps, reflecting that of a closed mind.

I grew-up an atheist. My father as did his father had little use for organized religion. He simply didn’t see the need. For either God or the accompanying religions claiming to know the “word.” It was ludicrous. Why subscribe to superstition? Why ignore mankind’s extended history of an evolving godhead? Why absolve god for the atrocities done in his name (see all of human history)? Why check-your-brain-at-the-door when considering god and faith. Why spend (much or any) time on what is undeniably unknowable?

What’s interesting about my father’s relationship to religion is that he never once said categorically, “I am an atheist.” He would have wanted me to reach my own conclusions without his fatherly imprimatur. And I did.

Clichés say it all, “the acorn doesn’t fall far from the tree” or “as the twig is bent so grows the tree.” I am my father’s son and I am proud to say so but along with the “wheat” came the “chaff.” And that is an important thing to separate. To let go of, if you will. Father had a profound intolerance for ignorance. It was unacceptable. Sloppy thinking was unacceptable. Subscribing to superstition and religion (one and the same) are examples of shoddy thinking and hence . . .

I agree wholeheartedly with his perspective except I have reconsidered his disdain for “sloppy” thinking. I choose to critique the “faithful” not so much as thinking sloppily but as thinking differently. And that, I confess, has been a long time in coming. Indeed.

I still find religion immensely amusing. How can one not? To claim to know the mind of God, c’mon. Hubris? And your God is jealous? Stop it!

What intrigues me is the low regard in which atheists are considered in America. One recent poll had atheists trailing rapists in public approval. Elect an atheist to public office? Hell no, I’d sooner see a rapist . . .

I have a recommendation concerning the dialogue of religion in public life. Let’s start from the following premise: “As an atheist, I am no more immoral for believing as I do, as you are necessarily ignorant for believing as you do.” I think that—go ahead and laugh—ecumenical.

After all, “Reciprocity is the lubricant of life.” A Biblical verse?

Live it.

Shot Your Candy-Carrying Son In The Chest

We shall now have tea and speak of absurdities. From the 1955 movie, “Love Is A Many-Splendored Thing.”

The only thing good about the above movie was the musical score by Sammy Fain and Paul Webster. That and the line, “We shall now have tea and speak of absurdities.” Shall we?

I am going to ask some of my white readers to put on their imagination hats. Oh, I see some white, conical chapeaus that are quite imaginative. And the Daniel Boone “coonskin” simply divine.

Okay, imagine you have a 17-year-old white son, a bit of a cut-up in school, the occasional truant. He’s with you, his divorced mother who’s visiting her boyfriend in a West Palm Beach gated community. On the way back from a convenience store with a bag of candy he’s killed by a Neighborhood Watch official.

Why is he killed? Because there has been a “lot” of white-related crime in the area. Why is he killed? Because the “official” who was instructed by police to stop trailing the white suspect got out of his car anyway and confronted your son. An altercation ensued and the “official” experienced such concern for his life that he shot your candy-carrying son in the chest with his handgun. Why is he killed? Because he is white and unarmed.

Why is he killed? Because he lives in America and that is the long history of the United States. We kill or imprison large numbers of white men— disproportionately so—and have for centuries because that is our “rich” tradition. Why is he killed? Because of fear, intolerance, arrogance and a rush to judgment. All justified, don’t-cha see. He is white, after all.

Imagine/understand that white people made-up only 13.6 percentage of the American population yet white men represented 40.2% of all prison inmates in 2008. By some accounts there were more white men in prison, jail or on parole in 2008 than were in slavery in 1850. Imagine that.

White men are scary. I mean, they are sooo white. And the way they dress and look. Their pants! They wear them up to their armpits. I swear all white men have two left feet. Rhythm? They couldn’t dance their way out of a conga line yet they sure can “stroll” through our neighborhoods. Where they surely don’t belong I might add. And that straight, stringy hair! White boys were made for mullets.

And the way those pale crackers look at “our” women. Just who do they think they are? Men?

Imagine if your auntie was followed around the department store because she was suspiciously white? Or, imagine driving by a white motorist pulled over by some county star and wondering the exact “nature” of her offense? Or, the awareness that your “whiteness” was just internally noted by the clerk checking your merchandise.

When it comes to quality of life, black men die years sooner than the rest of Americans and over 27% of blacks live in poverty.

It is hard to “accept” such numbers, such circumstances. But not if you’re black in America.

It has been observed that, Racial superiority is a mere pigment of the imagination.
Imagine that. Pigment/figment. How absurd.

Except if you’re living it.

The Game Is In Doubt.

Have you no sense of decency, sir, at long last? Joseph Welch (McCarthy Hearings – 06/09/54)

I consider myself a skeptic. Not a cynic but a skeptic. Perhaps that is a distinction without a difference but I shall attempt to make it nonetheless. A skeptic questions the “facts,” a cynic questions the game. My attitude to the great game we call “America” is inexorably moving from one of skepticism to cynicism.

We pat ourselves on our backs (and rightly so) for our democracy. It’s, as “they” say, the best money can buy. But that has always been the case. America has never been a democracy where “vested” interests didn’t have the inherent advantage. In 1789 when the American Constitution was adopted, only white male property owners, by and large, were eligible to vote. People of color, women, and any white men without property were out-of-luck and out-of-the-process (democracy). It wasn’t until the 1820s that voting requirements started to change nationwide so that all white men could vote.

“Thems that got” have always worked the system (our democracy) to their advantage. Understandably, they want to keep or increase what they have. This translates into tax advantages, outright government largesse as well as less regulatory oversight—whatever can be secured by preferential access (political contributions/lobbying) and achieved through the political process.

The question becomes one of balance. How do we balance the legitimate interests of the individual vis-à-vis the equally legitimate interest of the state (working on behalf of us all)? It is at this juncture that my skepticism is moving to cynicism. The game (America) is becoming increasingly rigged (thumb-on-the-scale preferences on behalf of the rich).

I feel the cynicism in America growing much as the songwriter Leonard Cohen articulates in his classic song, “Everybody Knows”:

Everybody knows that the dice are loaded
Everybody rolls with their fingers crossed
Everybody knows that the war is over
Everybody knows the good guys lost
Everybody knows the fight was fixed
The poor stay poor, the rich get rich
That’s how it goes
Everybody knows.

We saw it in 2000 with the Supreme Court election of George Bush. We see it in government subsidies for America’s petroleum corporations. We experience it in a revenue code that taxes labor at higher rates than investment income. And corporations, according to our conservative Supreme Court, are now people when it comes to speech and political contributions.

But nowhere is our democracy so clearly under attack as by Republican efforts to suppress voter turnout. Republican controlled state legislatures all over America are following Florida’s example of reducing early-voting and making new voter registration initiatives so onerous (fines) as to be unfeasible.

I called Mike Ertel, Supervisor of Elections for Seminole County and asked him if voter fraud was a problem, was rampant in Florida. He stated unequivocally that it was not. Florida legislators (Republicans I say) were/are employing fear of a non-existent problem to change early voting hours as well as registration drives. Ertel declined to speculate as to the motivations. One result: The Florida League of Women Voters has stopped registration drives.

There is no widespread voter fraud in Florida. Republicans are attempting to suppress Black, Hispanic, poor and elderly voting. Why? To skew elections in favor of the Republican Right.
As Welch once asked of McCarthy, I now ask Florida Republicans, “Have you no sense of decency?”

The answer is apparent.

The Odds Are Stacked.

There’s a maxim when studying history that goes: You have to judge a people by the context of their times. This means that to apply modern sensibilities when judging how folks long ago dealt with “an issue” is unfair. Accordingly, we (today) have the cumulative advantage of years in which human beings have “advanced” (scientifically, culturally, ethically).

This has always been an interesting question to me. How do we judge our ancestors? Our Founding Fathers, white boys all, found it just fine to count a slave as three-fifths a human being for reasons of representation. I find this perversely funny. Slaves could not vote, were deemed to have no rights, yet Southerners insisted “they” be counted nonetheless. “The Three-Fifths Compromise” codified into our Constitution the complete marginalization of African-Americans.

America’s democracy, imperfect as it is, was compromised from the beginning. Without this compromise, it is argued, America may not have become the “United” States. The take-away: it was necessary for the existence of the United States to unequivocally marginalize black Americans (slaves) in our original founding document, the U.S. Constitution. That for all intents and purposes, a black man counted as three-fifths a white man. Auspicious beginnings.

How should we judge our Founding Fathers today in this regard? By contemporary standards, this is clearly racism. But what was it in 1787?

In 1783, the first anti-slavery group was formed (by Quakers) in England. I mention this because it is important to understand that voices opposing slavery were actually raising objections (internationally and in America). It is one thing to operate in a vacuum (slavery is an historical fact, normal and sanctioned by society) and another to become aware that “some” found slavery an abomination and should be outlawed.

Interestingly, most abolitionists while opposing slavery did not consider Africans as “equal” to white men, let alone have them live next door. But the conversation for “justice” had begun. Its clarion message had not yet reached a crescendo; that would take another 180 years. America’s Civil War was more about the Union, less about slavery.

After the Civil War Jim Crow was put in place in the South (and to varying degrees throughout the North). It wasn’t until the post WWII period that civil rights for America’s black citizens actually began to seriously trouble (agitate) white America.

The Civil Rights fight that took place in the 1960s was just the beginning of the quest for black freedom and justice. Slavery/Jim Crow had been a continuous part of the American fabric since the establishment of the Spanish colony of St. Augustine in 1565. That is 400 years of unmitigated terror and oppression of African-Americans. It is less than 50 years since the Civil Rights Act of 1965. 400 years of slavery and oppression. 50 years at making amends/corrections.

The question on the table is what will Americans generations from now make of us? How will we be judged regarding race? What will be the context of our times?

The line most quoted in the just released hit movie, “The Hunger Games” is “May the odds be ever in your favor.” It’s ludicrous. Twenty-four children are selected to participate in a killing field where only one survives. Some odds, huh? Speaking of which.

When I heard that “line” I immediately thought of America’s young black men. The odds sadly never seem in their favor. Why is that?

What does Trayvon Martin’s death say about you? And America in 2012?

Life. Fun With A Capital PH!

I’ve been told all my life that I don’t look my age. Or, that I look young for my age. Or, that I look good for my age. And, yes, more than a time or two, that I don’t act my age. I am writing this column on my 63rd birthday wondering how a man my age might comport himself?

I do not subscribe at all to the current hype that 60 is the new 40 or any other such age-related nonsense. 60 is 60. I’ve a lot of photographs of my father and I imagine a lot of readers have the same experience I do when looking at pictures of their once young parents, “Wow! They sure were pretty.” But I also look at photos of my father and invariably think, “He looks so mature.” He did. He was a serious man with a serious streak of whimsy. I’m more a whimsical man with a curious streak of serious.

Interestingly (to me only), I became cognizant at a relatively young age that we – none of us – get out alive. Any notion that I was immortal, well, I never had such illusions. Death became, not a bosom companion through my days but more of an accompanying shadow. A presence, a reality, the quiet guest, so to speak, always in the other room. I became aware, it became crystal clear that life is about moments and you damned well better be of the moment. I willingly describe myself as a short-term hedonist yet I place a premium on long-term relationships. Ah, the best of all possible worlds.

I first began calculating my remaining years when I was around the age of 20 or 21. My grandfather died at age 83, my father at age 81. I split the difference determining that give or take “months” I would die around 82. And I am so okay with that. I came to “grips” years ago with my mortality, eventually got over the unfairness of it all (death of my all-to-brief consciousness) and in doing so was liberated.

I do not welcome death (I am much too alive!) but neither do I dread it. It is. I’ve concluded that five minutes too soon is preferable to five minutes too late. That when one dies is important. I’ve got the how covered (barbiturates and whiskey); it becomes merely a matter of timing. My goal is to exit on my terms, date (time) certain. I readily acknowledge the hubris associated with my “plan.” What is the adage? “There’s many a slip ‘twixt the cup and the lip.” But I want to die as I lived. With intent.

The question on the table is how does a man of my advancing years live? At this point in my life I do not have much choice in this regard. As the twig is bent so grows the tree. I will live as I have always lived. (We all do.) I will continue to reflect on the important, shed the nonessential and parteeeee likes it’s 1999!

I’ve passed-on my genetic “essence” to successive generations thus participating in the “purpose” of my species. Meaning of life? It is strictly an individual human construct. I find it in beauty and grace. In relationships, love and affection. In passion. Language. Art. In whimsy. In “a” raison d’être.

My father often spoke of fun. Big fun he spelled with a capital PH. Indeed.

Why Art? Exactly Because It Is Gnarly Out There.

Life is short, art is long. – Hippocrates

It’s an all too brief slog. Life is. Read any amount of history and two overarching themes that “jump” out are how transitory life is as well as how human beings have attempted to understand (convey) our condition. We’re conceived. We achieve consciousness. We die. In between we live. Concomitant is the fact that life is often brutal, violent and sorrowful.

Art is the attempt to make sense of it all. To give meaning. To express what is (reality), what could be (inspirational). And at times, what was. Art informs every aspect of our lives, from how we live, to how we see, hear and learn. We are talking art pieces, human canvases (mobiles) in which we display who we are and why we exist. Art is an individual or collaborative endeavor but it is a collective, societal value requiring an awareness of, reverence for and support to . . . flourish. Art is such an integral part of the human experience yet many take it for granted, much like the air we breathe.

How do you justify art in a world of sorrow? There are the many homeless with their hands forever out, begging at the ramps to our interstates. What of the wretched Kony kids of Uganda? The all-too-regular violence (shootings) in our cities and suburbs. Pervasive poverty. Our forever wars. Mindless acts of brutality. School massacres. Diseases. Our cancerous environment. Ad nauseum.

How do you justify art in a world of shrinking government budgets? Schools in disrepair. Cuts in school funding. Teachers/cops furloughed. Crowded roadways. Disintegrating infrastructure. Unfunded federal and state mandates (education/healthcare). Why art?

Why support culture (art and its creators)? Why give money or yourself to the art museum, the philharmonic, local theater or dance troupe? Why standup and insist that our government (local/county/state/federal) fund the arts and culture at levels of support reflecting their inherent importance. Why art?

Why art? Winston Churchill’s finance minister recommended in Parliament during WWII that Britain cut arts funding to support the war effort. Allegedly, Churchill’s response was, “Then what are we fighting for?” Indeed. The veracity of Churchill’s retort is questioned but the sentiment is timeless.

Why art? The former Prime Minister of Canada, Jean Chretien observed that, “An important measure of a great civilization, of a great society, is its contribution to humanity through the sciences and the arts, through its discoveries, its innovations, its cathedrals and canvasses, its stories and its music.”

Reflect for just a moment on the history of our species. Ours is a history you can easily wrap your mind around. We’re a young species, writing for maybe 10,000 years, creating art for 40,000 years (see: the Hohle Fels Venus). Many things surface (violence, war, famine, struggle) as one mentally chronicles our “journey.” But what stands-out are our achievements in art. Whether it was the Greeks and their playwrights, Renaissance art, Elizabethan theater or French Impressionism, we measure ourselves and our culture by the art we create (foster).

Why art? Because all the pain and suffering will still be with us tomorrow. The degradation and humiliation, the sorrow associated with being human is our condition and our constant challenge.

Why art? Art is our best hope. It is the profound realization that “true” transcendence (beauty & grace) is possible.