Credo

I try not to treat this page as a standard weblog, but I suppose some things kind of flow out of the medium. This seems like one of those things.

See, I've been listening to the public radio again. They've got this new series called "This I Believe", where all kinds of people from all walks of life read short essays about their beliefs. I like them an awful lot. So I thought it might be interesting and useful, to myself if not for anyone else, to compile a list of things that I believe.

Some people who know me might find some of these sort of surprising. Feel free to harangue me or ask for more details – all of the comments down there at the bottom get forwarded automagically to my email.

Let me start with something I deal with on a day-to-day basis, because of my job with the wacky tabloids, and let's see where that takes me.

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Things I Believe

I believe that *something* is up with UFOs. I'm not sure what. I don't think all of them are the same, either – some are almost definitely stealth aircraft, some are almost definitely weather phenomena, and some are almost definitely neither of those two things. And a lot of the ones in that third category sure do seem to act with intelligent purpose.

I believe in the draft. Specifically, I believe that mandatory national service would be a good thing, under two conditions. First, it must be applied universally – no exemptions for anyone, regardless. And second, it should not be exclusively military. If you're entering grad school as a research chemist, spend a year or two actually researching chemistry (or just cleaning test tubes) at a government lab. Clear paths at a national park. Build housing projects. Do something.

I believe war is wrong. We as a species can take trips off the planet, plumb the depths of the ocean and replace malfunctioning organs. We can build freakin' remote controlled robots, dammit. We should be advanced enough that we don't have to go killing people to enforce national will. If somebody breaks into your house, I don't have a problem with you shooting him. If you and me and everybody we know all put on uniforms and go and shoot at him and all his buddies and everybody wearing their uniforms, I have a problem.

I believe assault weapons should be legal, and hanguns should be outlawed.

I believe that unless the U.S. drastically changes its foreign policy, especially its current trade deficit, then China will annex Taiwan within the next eight years.

I believe that there's something to most conspiracy theories, but I also believe that their true nature was revealed in the science fiction movie Cube, in which the characters are all victims of a massive conspiracy with no head, no steering force, no consistent agenda – just a blind, unstoppable bureaucratic machine.

I think most human tragedies have occurred because we tend to live within and surrounded by blind, unstoppable bureaucratic machines. Some of them have names (corporations, governments, churches), but the worst of them don't.

That said, I believe Lee Harvey Oswald was probably a patsy and definitely wasn't acting alone.

I believe that enlightened anarchy is the inevitable form of government, but that it'll only work once differences in economics and education are eliminated. So don't hold your breath for the inevitable.

I believe that people who claim to have ultimate answers are lying, and people who believe the world fundamentally breaks down into an "us" and a "them" are dangerous or evil or both. That's "ultimate" and "fundamentally" – I also believe concrete answers and arbitrary divisions are necessary to day-to-day life.

I believe in the scientific method. I also believe there is a mystery at the heart of the universe, that there is an order of intelligence greater than ours that acts as an ordering force and, thus, can be given a name, and that that name is God. I believe that kindness is the ultimate expression of that ordering force. You can't have a team if people don't play nice. I also think that there's something to the Gnostic idea that the true God's essential nature is hidden and as a result, we have to deal with all sorts of impostors and half-gods – even if we only understand them as allegories or ideas.

I believe that Jerry Falwell is following one of them. So is Osama bin Laden. So is Fred Phelps. I also believe that they each genuinely believe they're doing the right thing. That's why they're dangerous.

Finally, I believe that the most important thing we can study is consciousness, and that we really don't. We don't. I don't think we know half as much about the *way* we understand things as we do about how atoms behave or best way to get a large hunk of metal in orbit around our planet, and I think that's a little messed up. I believe a lot of the best tools to examine consciousness are currently illegal. I believe that the War on Drugs is an example of a blind, unstoppable bureaucratic machine, and it's also an example of the dangers of following a (possibly allegorical) half-god, blindly and unstoppably.

And now I believe I'll get back to work. I've got a story about earthquake prophecies from a two-headed snake spirit (no lie!) I've got to finish.

Posted by grant at July 14, 2005 03:56 PM