Incredible Events of the Past

In an old book, I ran across an account of the Chase Vault in the cemetery of Christ Church, on the island of Barbados. It seems that, beginning in 1807, recently deceased people began to be interred in that vault. At first nothing unusual happened. But then a young woman committed suicide, and her remains were interred in the vault. The next time the vault was opened, all the coffins had been thrown around as if by an incredible force, even though the island had experienced no earthquakes and there was no sign of damage on the inner walls, the outer walls, or the surrounding part of the cemetery. The cemetery workers put the coffins back in their places, and interred the next coffin. The next time the vault was opened, the coffins were again found strewn about. This time, after the coffins were rearranged and the new coffin interred, the workers placed sand and ashes carefully and smoothly on the floor. The next time the vault was opened, and the coffins were again strewn about, there was no disturbance in the ashes. Superstitious people believed that ghosts, who leave no footprints, had thrown the coffins around, perhaps the uneasy ghost of the woman who took her own life. The church ordered the coffins to be buried elsewhere and the crypt left open.

The evidence for the ghost tantrum seemed good. The ashes on the floor would have revealed the activity of marauding humans or animals. This was, in fact, the same trick that Daniel used in the apocryphal book Bel and the Dragon to prove that the pagan priests had used a secret trap door to sneak into the altar and eat the food, pretending that the god Bel had eaten it. Daniel threw some flour on the floor, and the priests left footprints in the flour, which they could not see in the dark.

But there is one flaw to the story of the tantrum ghosts of Barbados. There is no primary documentation of it. The vault began to be used in 1807, and has been empty for over a century. The priest supposedly wrote a record of the events, but this putative record burned in a church fire. The Journal of the Barbados Museum and Historical Society carried an account of the marauding ghost in May, 1945, over a century after the supposed events. Quite simply, today, nobody can be sure if the stories were real. No other accounts of the marauding ghost have survived, if they ever existed.

The reason I am writing this essay is to draw a comparison with the gospel accounts of the Resurrection of Jesus. The evidence for the Resurrection seemed pretty good. A stone was rolled over the opening of Jesus’ tomb, and Roman guards kept watch over it. Supposedly angels made the guards faint and then rolled the stone away, and Jesus came walking out. The stone and the guards gave considerable credibility to the account.

The problem is that the Resurrection account seems to have first been written down long after the supposed event. It is not found in the earliest Christian writings. For example, the earliest version of the earliest gospel (Mark) did not contain it. Mark 16: 9-20 were added later, at a time when any eyewitnesses would have been dead. Quite simply, as with the marauding ghosts, nobody today can be sure if the stories were real. No other accounts of the resurrection have survived, if they ever existed. One might have expected a Roman military record of it, since it would have been a major breach of military control if it happened.

It is clear that the earliest Christians believed that Jesus was alive. They said so. But that does not mean that his body actually came forth from the tomb. They may have believed Jesus’ continued existence to be a spiritual one. Disciples walked on the Emmaus Road with a man whom they did not recognize until after he had left, and then they decided it must have been Jesus. Jesus appeared inside a locked room. None of these sound like a physical resurrection, but may have been visions or delusions that reflected a deeper faith rather than evidence that would convince a skeptic.

You can believe Jesus is alive if you want to, but do not call me a liar for disbelieving the supposed evidence of the resurrection just as I disbelieve the evidence for the tantrum ghost of Barbados. Whether Jesus is alive or not is, to me, a spiritual question.

Cynicism for Fun, Health, and Profit, part four. Protect Yourself from Road Rage

Many drivers in America carry guns and are often willing to use them in road rage shootings. According to this article, there were 1,319 road rage shootings from 2014 to 2016. This resulted in 354 people being wounded and 136 being killed. The rate seems to be increasing, from 247 in 2014 to 620 in 2016. Official statistics do not keep separate record of road rage incidents; these numbers were gleaned from published reports by the organization that published the above article.

These numbers are low compared to the population as a whole. Do not fall into the half-full half-empty trap, telling yourself that, any time you use your car, there is less than a 50 percent chance that you will be the victim of road rage. Over time, the odds accumulate that you might be a victim. The figures are large enough to justify thoughtful and continual precaution while driving.

Moreover, the number of road rage gun incidents is under-reported. I know this for a fact because one of my students told me of an incident in which an enraged driver followed another and shot his car. The incident, not involving any injury, went unreported.

One reason they often go unreported is that the victim may place him or herself at risk of further attack. A policeman once told me that a man at a stop sign got out of his car and used a baseball bat to smash the windshield of the car behind. The victim started to report it, but the police discouraged the victim from taking action. The reason is that, if you report or sue someone who commits violence against you, your name and address become a matter of public record, and the perp may track you down. You lose the protection of anonymity.

One way, you might think, to get around the problem of revealing your identity to the attacker is to let your insurance company pursue a suit against the attacker. However, this will not work: before an insurance company can act, they need a police report, which contains your personal information and to which the attacker may also have access.

Statistically, you are unlikely to be injured or killed by road rage. But the numbers are great enough to justify a cynic’s wariness: if there is a pickup truck nearby, you can assume the driver is armed and angry, and you should take precautions. Under no circumstances should you make that driver angry or angrier.

From an online search, I found a story about a road rage shooting in France. See, they aren’t all in America. But the article was published in 2013. America stands out among industrialized countries in the frequency of road rage.

Cynicism for Fun, Health, and Profit, part three. More Cynicism for Drivers

In 2016, 27,461 Americans died in traffic fatalities, which is about 11.6 per 100,000 population. This number is actually lower than in most previous years, going all the way back to the beginning of the twentieth century. Many of these deaths were caused by other drivers. The world average is 17.4 fatalities per 100,000 people. The American traffic fatality rate is almost exactly double that of France (5.1 fatalities per 100,000). In both America and France, traffic fatalities would be vastly reduced if cautious people were cynics. Wait four seconds, not just two. That’s all it takes. I was always a little annoyed at Tulsa drivers, who would not move for four seconds when the light turned green. After my experience, I have become one of them.

I share now some further thoughts about cynicism and driving. This is important, since so many of us spend so much time doing it.

Guys who drive big trucks are more likely to demolish small cars, and their drivers, than are other motorists. There are several reasons for this.

• First, I refer primarily to guys in big trucks. Gals are a little more cautious, and a little more thoughtful about other people. This is because, in general, women are more empathetic than men. This is not a fundamental difference, but a difference of degree.
• Second, the driver of a big pickup truck has a sense of invulnerability. Many big pickup trucks have lots of defensive armor, such as deer-catchers on the front, and the cabin of the truck is much further above ground level than that of the typical automobile. A big pickup truck really can run into and over almost any other vehicle with little risk of harm to the truck or driver. My previous car was demolished by a pickup backing up at full speed into the road. The damage resulted entirely from the hitch at the back of the pickup, which was not even scratched. This sense of invulnerability is part of the psychology of most guys in pickups. I notice that, where I live, many houses have lots of unrelated people living together, since they cannot afford to each live in their own place. This is because they are poor. But why are they poor? Outside of many of these houses—I can think of three such houses in the half mile near where I work—several pickup trucks are parked. I have checked the prices of pickup trucks, and each of these trucks costs about as much as my house and property are worth, here in rural Oklahoma. They cannot afford a good place to live because they spend their money on a truck instead. It seems to me that, here in rural Oklahoma, there are many shacks that could easily blow away in a wind storm; the residents could tie their shack down to their pickup truck to save it.
• Third, by looking down on us, they often feel superior. They feel that this gives them the freedom to proclaim their superiority. Where I live, it is not uncommon to see Confederate insignia on trucks. For a while, when we had a black president, several trucks displayed full-sized Confederate flags from struts that took up the entire truck bed.
• Fourth, by driving a big truck, these drivers feel that they really own the road. The rest of us have to move to the side for them, whether they are in our lane or in the oncoming lane. This would simply not happen in, for example, France, where the roads are too small. I saw two pickup trucks, both small, in France. One was broken down and used to store firewood. The other was very old. While French drivers are not noted for their courtesy, they at least have less dangerous weapons to use against other drivers. According to counts that I have kept (though the study is ongoing), patrolmen pull over cars disproportionately often in comparison with how common they are, compared to pickup trucks. In rural Oklahoma, about one-third of vehicles are big pickup trucks, but I have not yet seen one of them pulled over during my study period. They seem to own the road here in Oklahoma, with official approval.
• Finally, many drivers, especially those of pickups, assume that you have no momentum. They assume that you can stop for them in literally no time at all. Part of their feeling of invulnerability is to think themselves exempt from the laws of physics. “Stopping distance” is not just a good idea; it’s a law of nature. The cynic assumes that other drivers do not even know the simplest laws of physics.

None of these things needs to be a conscious decision on the part of the pickup driver. They do, however, make these assumptions, even without intending harm.

I have long made the assumption that drivers of commercial trucks are very cautious and are unlikely to do anything that might put other drivers at risk. This is because their trucks are well marked, and the company that sponsors the drivers (even if they are owner-operators) can get sued as a result of the truck drivers’ negligence. I still believe that this assumption is largely correct, although some people who know truck drivers tell me that my optimism is frequently unwarranted.

I also drive with my lights on (the driving lights, not full headlights) even in the day, in order to increase my chances of being seen. I also drive with my right hand ready to honk, and my left ready to flash my bright lights. While I have only had to use these tactics three times in the past year, it might have saved my life.

I also sometimes use my flashers. Usually, flashers indicate that the vehicle is going significantly under the speed limit. But where I live, almost everybody speeds. If I am driving merely at the speed limit, in dense traffic, I often use my flashers, since to the other drivers I represent a slow-moving hazard. I do this infrequently and only in dense, rapid traffic.

As a cynical driver, I find it nearly impossible, except on a lonely roadway with few other drivers, to relax and enjoy the drive. I have to be constantly alert, anticipating the possible recklessness of other drivers.

The Jesus Algorithm

Evangelical Christians claim to love Jesus. But to them, Jesus is not a person. He is an algorithm.

An algorithm is a formula or computer code that controls something that happens, for example, that determines what the computer does. It has a certain function, and is valued just for that function. The algorithm certainly cannot decide for itself what to do.

To evangelicals, Jesus has just one function. He forgives sins. You are a sinner, they say, and what you need to do is to press control alt J to activate the Jesus algorithm. If you say the right words, all of your sins are totally forgiven, but if you do not, you are damned. Jesus himself has no say in the matter, any more than a computer does. If you are a good person, who obeys the Golden Rule, and truly loves other people, that does not matter. Jesus is not permitted to forgive or save you. And if you use control alt J, Jesus must forgive you even if he sees into your heart and knows that you are going to just go and do the sinful act again. To evangelicals, Jesus has no intelligence or personality. You have leeway for judgment. Jesus does not.

This is why Donald Trump is the darling of evangelicals despite his numerous, large, and ongoing sins. He uses the algorithm, or maybe has an intern do it for him.

It gets worse. Evangelicals (particularly the televangelists) fantasize that they have exclusive access to the keyboard. A Democrat cannot slip in and press control alt J. If you are a Democrat, you are damned, and there is nothing you can do about it. Republicans, on the other hand, have unlimited access to the keyboard. In fact, most of them seem to have special Cheap Grace apps on their phones that repents of their sins every ten microseconds, so that before they even realized they have sinned, they have asked forgiveness, which God is obligated to give. (Cheap Grace is a term invented by theologian Dietrich Bonhoeffer, to refer to this kind of thoughtless repentance that does not cost anything in your life. Back in the 1970s, when I was an evangelical, we all respected Bonhoeffer, whom the Nazis executed. I guess evangelicals don’t do that anymore.)

And God? He’s totally out of the picture. He has given all of his authority to Jesus, who is completely under the control of the evangelicals.

I greatly admire, and love, the Jesus who said “Behold the lilies of the field...even Solomon in all his glory was not arrayed as one of these” and “Ask not what your country can do for you...” Oh, wait, that second one was John F. Kennedy. I think I would really enjoy knowing Jesus, if only the evangelicals did not keep him in a box like a veal calf and prevent him from having any personality.

Cynicism for Fun, Health, and Profit, part two. Cynicism is not Paranoia

I waited for the light to change at an intersection in Tulsa. Dramatic music; you know what is going to happen next. When the green left-turn signal came on, I slowly proceeded into the intersection. Another car shot through the intersection against a red light and nearly collided with me. Had I not waited a couple of seconds before entering the intersection, I would not be writing this, unless possibly by using one of those Stephen-Hawking devices. Maybe I could have bought his, once he didn’t need it any more. I slammed on my brakes and avoided death. Had I simply followed the rules, I would be dead. I hesitated a couple of seconds, and am intact. Something similar happened scarcely over a year ago, when a big pickup truck backed up from a driveway at full speed and collided with my previous car, totaling it but leaving me uninjured. I was already being cautious before my most recent accident; but it was at that moment that I decided to become a cynic.

Cynicism is the expectation that bad things are going to happen to you. In the example above, a cautious person waits a couple of seconds before driving into an intersection; a cynic waits maybe four seconds before doing so. A cautious person looks at the other cars, as I did. All the other cars had stopped for the red light. The car that ran the light came from behind them at full speed and was invisible until the last moment. The cautious person dies; the cynic lives.

The cynic lives and is happy. This is because, if the event that the cynic feared occurs, he or she is ready to take evasive action. If the event does not occur, he or she can sigh in relief. Cynicism is the precautionary principle applied in a consistent and thoughtful way.

Paranoia, on the other hand, is a delusion. The paranoid person assumes everyone else, and all the forces of nature, are focusing malicious intent on them personally. There is no way that this could be true. There is no network of physical laws that could work this way.

In fact, it is also paranoia to think that the laws of nature conspire against anybody, not just you. “Don’t tempt fate” is a statement of paranoia, not cynicism.

Of course, evolution has instilled in our brains a mild paranoia. The shadows of leaves swaying in the wind, which you see from the corner of your eye, do not attract your conscious attention. But if one of the shadows moves a little differently from the others, it instantly grabs your attention. This attention occurs faster than conscious thought is possible and is accompanied by a brief rush of terror. A shadow that moves differently may be a predator ready to leap on you. Today, that predator is most likely to be another human being. This is an instinct that may have begun hundreds of millions of years ago when a clam shut its shell when a shadow, which may have been a predator detected by its simple eyes, passed overhead.

Cynicism, at the intense end of the scale, grades into paranoia. But unlike mid-range cynicism, paranoia makes you unhappy. The paranoid person assumes that the forces of man (less frequently, woman) and nature are a constant and focused threat, and happiness never follows when the anticipated evil does not occur. And the constant worry can make you sick. Worry actually depresses the immune system, leaving you vulnerable to infections that you might otherwise avoid. Moreover, it is very unlikely that the paranoid person avoids catastrophes any more often than does a healthy cynic.

Cynicism is not quite the same as pessimism. Pessimism is a lazy assumption that bad things will happen more than you expect that they will. We joke about it and call it Murphy’s Law. We also trivialize it by saying that a pessimist sees the glass as half empty, while the optimist sees it as being half full. The implication is that a glass, half of whose volume is filled, can be either half full or half empty, so you might as well say it is half full. But whether the glass is half full or half empty depends on what is happening. If the glass is getting fuller, then it is half full; if the fluid is being lost, the glass is half empty. In fact, a glass that is “almost empty” can be accurately described as “becoming full” in the first case. A cynic does not make lazy or trivial assumptions. The cynic wants to know more information. In the absence of such information, the cynic assumes the glass may be losing its contents, and it is time to make preparations for the time when it may be empty. Cynicism is an intelligent and thoughtful pessimism.

The half-full half-empty error applies to the world in general. The cynic anticipates that bad things are always ready to happen, for example while waiting at a stoplight. This does not mean that most drivers are evil or careless. It does not mean that half of them are. It does not even mean that very many of them are. The cynic recognizes, however, that even if only one in a hundred drivers is evil or careless, then you run the risk of a deadly collision once in every one hundred red lights. It does not take very many days to accumulate those one hundred intersections. The cynic does not assume most people, or even very many people, are bad, but just that the number is not zero.

Cynicism can lead to economic and legal policies that help to make us safer and happier. One example is no-fault insurance. This is the kind of insurance policy, on the government level, in which the insurance companies of both drivers pay equally for the resulting damage. It avoids the costs and delays of litigation. Of course, if significant injury is involved, the negligent (or evil) driver must be punished in some realistically-enforceable way. No-fault insurance assumes that there are a large number of negligent (or evil) drivers, and to litigate all of them would be impossible. My sense of justice flares up against this kind of policy. The driver who causes the accident should be penalized. I believe this very strongly. But no-fault insurance might be the only workable policy. Of course, insurance companies need to know which drivers repeatedly cause collisions so that they can charge higher rates or deny coverage. This, too, is a healthy cynical policy. Insurance companies know that, without charging higher rates for careless drivers, they will lose a lot of money.

Another example of cynicism at work is the development of driverless cars. The technology remains imperfect, and will always be so, but already it has a better safety record than that of human drivers. Its main advantage is to keep careless drivers from endangering other people and their property. But it also helps to protect responsible drivers who might make an unavoidable error, such as sneezing at the wrong time. A cynic assumes that everyone can make mistakes.

Cynicism, therefore, is not a personalized paranoia nor is it a lazy pessimism. It is a healthy anticipation of the countless evils that surround us.

Cynicism for Fun, Health, and Profit Part One.

I here begin a series of essays about the philosophy of cynicism—not necessarily the same as the ancient philosophy by that name, and certainly not in the general sense with which the word is used today. These are episodic thoughts rather than a reasoned argument such as I will develop for my eventual book on the subject.

When you think of a cynic, you probably think of a person who assumes the worst about anyone he or she does not personally know well, that is, about almost everybody else in society, and assumes that the world is out to get them, and that the worst thing that can possibly happen always will. This person, you assume, must be sad and depressed, certainly someone you would not want to know.

Well, there are cynics like that. But that is not what I here propose. What I will now describe is empowerment through cynicism: how cynicism can make you live better and be happier.

Really.

The first step is to recognize that cynicism is the correct interpretation of the facts of daily life, politics, and the economy. Without cynicism, when the inevitable catastrophes come, you will be shocked off of your feet and incapacitated with impotent anger, followed by dejection, and probably by wild drunkenness. If you are a cynic, you will not be taken by surprise. Whatever you need to do next, whether it is important work or truly refreshing recreation, you will be ready to do it right away.

The second step is to use the knowledge conferred by cynicism to make preparations to keep yourself safe. If you know that our politicians are leading us toward a white supremacist totalitarian state, you can make preparations; some people can make more, some less. You might want to move out of a red state if you live in one, or even out of the country, while you have plenty of time to make the transition smoothly, rather than waiting until you have to be a refugee. A cynic knows not to trust anything a major financial corporation says. Most of us already drive defensively, but a cynical driver knows that a small but significant number of other drivers would just as soon kill you as not. If you drive like a cynic, you are less likely to be their victim. By letting cynicism forewarn you of even just a few of the nearly infinite number of evils that await you, you can be able to instantly react to them in a constructive fashion.

The third step is that, by acting pre-emptively, you can feel more in control. A great deal of modern suffering comes with feeling that you have no control, utterly no control, over the circumstances of your life. A cynic, acting pre-emptively, avoids this feeling precisely because he or she IS more in control of the circumstances of life.

The fourth step is that, by feeling more in control, you can stop worrying about all the things that might happen. You know they are going to happen; you are ready for them; you are in control, as much as any wretched weak human being can be; now you can focus on the big picture—getting the most out of life, enjoying every day. Take a walk. You know that dozens of dog walkers have left piles of dog shit on the path; so, you frequently look down, and that way you don’t step in them. There’s nothing like a steaming pile of dog shit on your shoes to ruin a nice walk. A cynic would never let that happen. We all know that a lot of people let their dogs poop in public parks; but here in Tulsa I have seen people scooping dog poop out of their yards into public parks. This is a deliberate insult against one’s fellow citizens. But the cynic smiles and says, “I was expecting this.”

You can even enhance your sense of humor. Think about some of the most lovable, and the most effective cynics: Lewis Black, Paula Poundstone, Dave Barry, and the late George Carlin. They knew or know how to make cynicism work for them. (And earn them some money too. Please buy my book on this topic when it comes out.)

Fifth and last, if there is a God in Heaven, it must be a kind of God Who does nothing to prevent all these evil things, large and small, from happening. Back before I was a cynic, when I expected the world to make sense and God to help us out, even just a teeny weeny little bit, I spent a lot of time in agony over the evils of the world. Now I seldom think about it, except when I am writing essays like this.

In upcoming essays, I am going to focus on some specific and, I hope, interesting examples of cynicism at work.

Religion and the Immune System

A healthy skepticism is like a healthy immune system. Skepticism allows the thinker to defend him or herself from attacks of stupidity and destructive thoughts. But it is not over-reactive: it does not, or should not, lead the thinker to be deeply suspicious of and react against everything. Skepticism is also like the immune system in the way it develops. A mind, like an immune system, may be initially naïve against an initial assault, whether of antigens or of stupid ideas, but upon second contact, antibodies and skepticism react quickly enough that hardly any discomfort or danger occurs. I refer to skepticism, not militant atheism.

In contrast, religion is like a dysfunctional immune system. It is dysfunctional in both extremes. First, religion lowers a person’s defenses so that the craziest and most brutal ideas can slip or march right into the brain. If a revered religious leader says you should believe something, then you just might believe it, even without evidence, even against evidence, even against every feeling of altruism and empathy. Religious services, in particular, are designed to allow this to occur. The organ plays softly, you bow your head in prayer, and the preacher specifically instructs you to clear away all skeptical thoughts from your mind. The he (or she) may go right ahead and say something like, “Help us, O Lord, to see that Donald Trump is doing your will on Earth and leading us into the righteousness of which you approve...”

Second, religion overstimulates our defenses as well. It makes believers react against the very things that make us empathetically human. When we see someone in need, religion can make us actually see that person as a sinner who deserves suffering. Religion does not have to do this but often does. Religion can make us look upon environmental pollution and destruction, which ruins the livelihoods of millions of poor people who want to raise themselves out of poverty but cannot do so because their soil is eroding away or they are sick from toxins, and see that environmental destruction is actually God’s will, since it blesses billionaire industrialists with additional billions.

Religion says “O” while skepticism says, “oh.” Destructive religion says, “O Lord, confirm us in our beliefs,” while skepticism (and religion that is skeptical and thoughtful) says, “Oh, Lord, how could we have been so wrong?”

It will be entertaining to see whether religion plays any role in the current war of the billionaires. The Koch Brothers say that Trump’s tariffs are destructive, while Trump says that the Koch Brothers are “a total joke in real Republican circles.” He says he does not need their money in the upcoming elections. This remains to be seen. But what I want to know is, what will the rabid fundamentalists do about this?

Whatever they do, you can bet it will not be based on reason.