Day: July 30, 2011

I’m a “faith-based atheist.”

What in the world is that?

It means that, unlike an agnostic, I’m certain about god: specifically, that there isn’t one. But such certainty isn’t something that submits to any kind of objective proof: just as the religious person must accept the existence of his or her god(s) as a matter of faith, so must the true atheist rely on belief over material evidence – after all, how do you prove god doesn’t exist? Anything short of this standard-of-proof makes one an agnostic, not an atheist.

What’s still more difficult, is to strive for an ethical existence when the most commonly invoked “cause” (or source) of human ethics (namely, the alleged “higher powers”) have been unequivocally rejected. It seems to me that the only ethical atheist is one who accepts that his or her belief is indeed just that – a belief, not a demonstrated “fact.”

Atheists who assert some kind of exceptionalism for their own beliefs vis-a-vis the beliefs of non-atheists strike me as hypocritical. I’m profoundly uncomfortable with many atheists – of the secular-humanist stripe – who attempt to position themselves as rationalists – I think it’s not only philosophically perilous but ultimately unethical due to this inherent hypocrisy.

Despite this, I’m also displeased with the tendency of humanists (again, i.e. “secular humanists”) to categorically place human beings in the center of things. Such pre- (or even anti-) Copernican posturing is just as irrational as the traditional, god-centered systems they presume to criticize – in my judgement, anyway.

With the categorical rejection of the transcendental and god-centric, I believe that  there must come a similarly vehement rejection of the anthropocentric. So… but what’s left, then?

Let me get back to you on that one. Does this make me sound like a nihilist? This is a possibility.  I’m most comfortable with a sort of aesthetic take on the whole matter, a la Robinson Jeffers Inhumanism.  But that doesn’t really resolve the epistemological issues – which are what seem to most interest me.

Another issue is how I can reconcile my committed atheism with my frequent self-description as a “Buddhist.” However, one has to understand that Buddhism, in most conceptions, is doctrinally agnostic with respect to the theist question. To attempt to paraphrase Gautama Siddhartha, as I have understood it: when asked about the existence of deities or God, he reportedly answered that, like everything else, it was both true and not true. Thus there is room within Buddhism for both atheists and theists, as well as whatever falls in between. 

[Last updated 2015-10-08]

Lately, because of facebook, I’ve been “reconnecting” with people I haven’t interacted with or known about for up to 25 years.   People from high school!  Jeannine, Kray, Richard…. People from elementary school! Tammy.  People from the Mexico City time! Aura, Vlady.
Anyway, questions crop up:  Didn’t you go to university in Missouri? (No, it was Minnesota). I heard you joined the Army? (Yes). Is it true you were married? (Yes). And then you got divorced? (Um, not exactly – separated-then-widowed).

Being a fundamentally lazy person, I have decided to answer a whole pile of these questions at once. I’ve created a year-by-year timeline of my life-since-high-school. Each year has 2 to 6 telegraphic sentences summarizing what I recall as the salient aspects of that year.
I can now point interested people to it – if they’re interested. More me out there, for all the world to see: I believe in transparency – it cleanses the soul.
[UPDATE 20210520: While doing some link-rot maintenance, it came to my attention that I posted almost exactly this blog-post 2 years before, here. Anyway, the below timeline is out-of-date by about a decade, now, and it’s long been superceded by my Year-In-Six-Sentences category.]

Timeline

• 1983. I graduate from Arcata High, Arcata California. My summer internship at a civil engineering office turns me off of the idea of pursuing engineering, careerwise. I walked a lot in high school – mostly in the fog.  I start college at Macalester College, St Paul, Minnesota – the main reason for my choice of Macalester: it’s very far away from home. I meet my best friend Bob on day one (he is still my best friend 25 years later).
• 1984. I change my declared major from math to religious studies – not out of any sense of religiosity, but because I’m looking for answers, and because a math professor left my self-confidence in ruins. I work for Mondale Campaign that summer.
• 1985. I study art history in Paris in January term. By May, however, alcohol and drug issues have caused me to drop out of college. I live in my car, first passing through Duluth and Ottawa, and then up and down the East Coast (mostly Boston, New York City, with a week in New Orleans). By fall, I’m living a few blocks from Barack Obama (not that I, like, know him or anything) on Chicago’s South Side, and working in a hardware store. My unabiding love for instant ramen is formed during this period.
• 1986. I travel to Mexico and end up with a job at Casa de los Amigos, a Quaker meetinghouse / leftist hostel in Mexico City. I travel to El Salvador for a few weeks in the fall, and get to see a civil war up close and personal.
• 1987. After a year working in Mexico City, I travel (somewhat aimlessly) with a friend by horseback in the mountains of Michoacan (southwestern Mexico). I meet lots of interesting people, including many indians, hippies, a draft dodger or two, and a dangerous, drunk, angry man with a gun. That shoots bullets.  Eventually, I return to Minnesota.
• 1988. I enroll at the University of Minnesota (having forfeited my scholarship at Macalester by dropping out in 85).  My declared major is computer science, but soon changes to linguistics. I dabble in languages: Portuguese, Medieval Welsh, Japanese, Russian, Ancient Sumerian, Georgian (Kartuli). I work hard at a book bindery (book-making factory). I study hard. Bob and Mark are my housemates, among others.
• 1989. I graduate (cum laude, Phi Beta Kappa) from the Univ of Minnesota (Twin Cities), despite the “lost semester” from Spring of 85 at Macalaster on my transcript. My major: Llinguistics; minor: Computer Science; undeclared minors: Spanish, Botany.  I return to Mexico, spend 2 months in Guatemala, and 2 weeks in Cuba. I become very sick.  Return to Humboldt County.
• 1990. I’ve ended up in Eureka, somehow – broke and directionless. I deal with this directionlessness by enlisting in the U.S. Army, as a truck mechanic. I complete my training in South Carolina, and narrowly miss getting sent to Kuwait for the first Gulf War. I end up in South Korea on December 28th.
• 1991. I am stationed at Camp Edwards, Geumcheon (about 7 km from my current home) – 296th Support Battalion, 2nd Infantry Division. I drive a giant camo green tow truck (named Rocinante) around northwest Gyeonggi province. I am a competent mechanic, but an indifferent soldier. The Army is downsizing in the wake of the end of the cold war, and when it’s offered, I grab honorable “early out”discharge.
• 1992. I live in Pasadena (in the house my great grandfather built around 1910), taking art classes and trying to learn Arabic. I’m a bit aimless on the job front – I remember working as a temp at a Robinsons May department store warehouse. I move back to Minnesota, and Bob and I become housemates again. I start working in a bookstore. I meet Michelle and Jeffrey (her son, who is 5 at this time).
• 1993. I do graduate-level coursework in Spanish Literature and Literary and Cultural Criticism (Lit-Crit), as well as the Dakota (Native American Great Plains) Language, at the University of Minnesota – tuition is cheap because I’m an alum. I work in a bookstore. At some point, during an initially platonic camping trip on Michigan’s U.P., Michelle and I begin dating.
• 1994. Michelle and I move in together. Then I spend 6 months studying the Mapuche (Native American Patagonian) Language in Valdivia, Chile, and I get to see Buenos Aires, Tierra del Fuego, Patagonia, Uruguay, etc. I’m back in Minnesota with Michelle and Jeffrey for Christmas.
• 1995. I work nights for UPS to save up money (which means I can say I’ve been a card-carrying Teamster), and I apply to graduate schools.  My first choice is UCLA, but I start at the University of Pennsylvania in August, in Department of Romance Languages, because of Michelle’s eventual East Coast job prospects.
• 1996. Work very, very hard at Penn., teaching Spanish to lazy, over-privileged Ivy League undergrads and taking qualifying exams. Michelle and I get married in a pizza joint in Minneapolis over the summer (the Judge came on a motorcycle). Michelle and Jeffrey then join me in Philadelphia, after she graduates in Chemical Engineering from the University of Minnesota.
• 1997. I resign from the graduate program at Penn, very unhappy with departmental politics. I get to try to be a “soccer dad” with Jeffrey for several months, while Michelle puts in ungodly hours with Merck, Inc., in her new job as a chemical engineer. I start teaching high school Spanish and Social Studies that fall, with an ungodly commute to Moorestown, New Jersey. Neither Michelle nor I particularly like living in suburban Philadelphia.
• 1998. Things begin to break down with Michelle. I’m not doing very well with it. In August, we decide on a “trial seperation,” but I’m not able to handle this well, and by September, I’ve run off (somewhat irresponsibly, I realize) to stay on my uncle Arthur’s land in Alaska. I cut trees and brush with a chainsaw (in the rain), and shovel gravel (in the rain), and write (in a white van, in the rain). In November, I give up on Alaska and on solitude, and I go to LA to stay with my father, who has recently divorced my stepmother, who I have sometimes idolized. This is a very bad period for me. Closing out the year with a bang, I attempt suicide while parked alongside the Pacific Coast Highway north of San Simeon, and nearly succeed.  Time-in-hospital (the parallels with Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance are, um, disconcerting).
• 1999. I begin working at ARAMARK Corporation in Burbank, as a temp in the finance department. I prove sufficiently competent that they offer me a permanent position. Michelle and I occasionally discuss getting back together (long distance, her still in Philly and me in L.A. (well, Burbank)), but we both clearly have difficult-to resolve “issues.”
• 2000. Michelle commits suicide in June: “So there!” I work hard at ARAMARK.
• 2001. I migrate from the finance department at ARAMARK into the IT department, working as a programmer.
• 2002. I rent a horrible apartment in North Hollywood. But work is going well – workaholically, in fact.
• 2003. I migrate again, at ARAMARK, into the Sales and Marketing department. I develop the infamous National Accounts Data Analysis intranet site for my company, basically on my own, and it’s a huge hit. I am promoted and recognized for this. Failure in life… success in business. I move into the tiny house next to my dad’s on the hill in Highland Park. I take my first trip to Australia to visit my mother.
• 2004. I solve some amazing technical challenges for the Sales department, but I’ve created bad blood with my former colleagues in the IT department. Company politics get nasty. I resign in December. But, in 5 years, I’d managed to get promoted 4 times and quadruple my original salary.
• 2005. I spend 6 weeks in Europe, 2 of them with bestfriend Bob who is there for an audition in Utrecht. I fall in love with Lisbon. I then come back to LA and start a new job with HealthSmart Pacific as a Database Administrator and Applications Designer. I move to Long Beach, but I end up commuting part time to Orange County.  I hate commuting, even though driving for 45 minutes along the Pacific Coast Highway each way is oddly resonant.
• 2006. I put in several months of ungodly 80-100 hour work weeks. So I resign, and try to succeed as an independent database consultant.  My heart’s not in it. I take a second trip to Australia. I move back to Minneapolis. I find a wonderful apartment near Lake Calhoun in Uptown.
• 2007. Some interesting projects, but the computer gig is losing its lustre. I decide to return to teaching – I have overcome my prior financial difficulties. Jeffrey has started college, and the trust fund I’d created for him will cover costs, so I’m free, financially. I apply to overseas jobs. I start teaching at “Tomorrow School” in Ilsan, Gyeonggi, South Korea, in September.
• 2008. Tomorrow School gets taken over by LinguaForum, which in turn gets taken over by L-Bridge. I spend a week in Australia with my mother in August – with a brief visit to Hong Kong.
• 2009. I continue at L-Bridge until September. I love teaching elementary-age kids. Am I happy? Not completely. But I’m happier than during most of the above. So, all things being relative, it seems like a good “career.”  But nevertheless, since more than a few days’ vacation is unheard of in the hagwon biz, I decide I need to “check in” back in the U.S., so I resign my job (with the idea of re-taking it, or something similar, upon return) and go back to the U.S. for a few months.  I put 10000 miles on my pickup truck in 3 months, and then sell it.  I spend 10 days at a Buddhist Monastery outside Chicago.
• 2010. I return to Korea, but the job market isn’t what I’d hoped.  I enroll full-time in a Korean language school, and hunker down for a long-term job search, living at a cheap hostel in Suwon (south of Seoul).  I travel to Japan (Kyushu) in April, and start a new job at Hongnong Elementary (public school) in rural Jeollanam Province, at the end of that month.  I really like being an elementary school teacher, and I make a lot of friends among my Korean co-workers, but my principal (boss) is xenophobic (hates foreigners) and the housing situation is unstable (4 different apartments over a 1 year contract).
• 2011.  I let my contract at Hongnong run out, and with some sadness, I say good-bye to Yeonggwang County and return to Ilsan.  I work at Karma Academy.  I have a more stable housing situation (like!) and fewer elementary students (not like!).

[Last updated 2011-07-31]