{"id":166,"date":"2015-06-16T04:10:52","date_gmt":"2015-06-16T04:10:52","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.oestia.com\/?page_id=166"},"modified":"2015-06-16T04:21:25","modified_gmt":"2015-06-16T04:21:25","slug":"essays","status":"publish","type":"page","link":"https:\/\/www.oestia.org\/?page_id=166","title":{"rendered":"Essays"},"content":{"rendered":"

Sunday With the Atheists
\n<\/strong>by Charles Carreon
\nApril, 2014<\/p>\n

\"Image\"<\/p>\n

Last weekend, Sunday morning, in search of fun atheists, Tara and I went to the Free Thought Arizona Sunday meetup at Tucson\u2019s UniversityMedicalCenter. I guess there\u2019s enough doubt about God\u2019s existence in the place where most folks meet their final crisis of faith that they can get together there without getting somebody\u2019s lease cancelled. You know this is Arizona, where we almost passed a law that would\u2019ve in short order been used to let landlords kick unwed mothers out of their rental units on the grounds that they didn\u2019t have to rent to people who obviously didn\u2019t adhere to the same religious tenets as the landlord. So I felt kind of lucky to be able to gather under any anti-God banner at all, and awaited the appearance of the featured speaker with eager anticipation.<\/p>\n

The un-service was kicked off by a chirpy, tall woman with a cap of silver hair attractively styled, with a confident manner of speaking that suggested no one ever interrupts her. She introduced us to the \u201cThree Wise Men\u201d of the day, who all had either smart noggins that they\u2019d put to work to bring lucre into the FTA treasury, or were wealthy donors whose generosity was measured in five figures. Disappointment number one \u2014 when I was known as a Buddhist, I tried to be a generous Buddhist, and always figured if I wanted someone to like my religion, I shouldn\u2019t charge them for it. So I found it somewhat disenchanting when my fellow Buddhists chased after wealthy donors and influential names, as if the Buddha would have interviewed for a position as Steven Seagal\u2019s guru. I was hoping that un-religion would be un-funded, but alas, it appears to require an institution as well. And even though I don\u2019t have a female body, I thought the choice of three wise men to be both anachronistically patriarchal and disturbingly allusive to Judaeo-Christian dogma. What, I wondered, do we gain by drawing analogies from the adversary\u2019s lexicon?<\/p>\n

My sense that I was at a boot camp for people who might be working to outgrow the bad habit of spending Sunday morning on their knees grew stronger as we were treated to a multi-fella acapella un-hymn for un-believers lead by celebrity atheist Steve Martin, courtesy of a slightly grainy YouTube video presented by a big, experienced atheist with a laptop. He and his wife then lead us in a singalong of the karaoke version of “This Land Is Your Land,” from which Hollywood excised the activist content:<\/p>\n

\n
As I was walkin\u2019 I saw a sign there
\nAnd that sign said \u201cNo tresspassin\u2019\u201d
\nBut on the other side, it didn\u2019t say nothin\u2019
\nNow that side was made for you and meIn the squares of the city \/ In the shadow of the steeple
\nNear the relief office, I see my people
\nAnd some are grumblin\u2019 and some are wonderin\u2019
\nIf this land\u2019s still made for you and me<\/div>\n<\/blockquote>\n

I’d have enjoyed singing those lines, but didn’t have the opportunity, so I sang the ones that were displayed on the screen, feeling a little more like a sap with every saccharine verse. Who, I began to ask myself, were these people who thought this was a good thing to do on Sunday morning? I mean, I had a good time, because Steve Martin is sweet and funny, and singing out loud never killed anybody, but our friend Ramzi seemed uncharmed. He’d come with us because he was game for a new kick, but it looked like the novelty had worn off instantly. Ramzi later explained to us that they lost him when the first wise man’s commendable activity was revealed to be getting the FTA on the list of nonprofits that get a cut from the Fry’s VIP Card program. An old-school, natural food aficionado, Ramzi is not a Fry’s shopper, so for him it was like being teleported into a crowd of the terminally nikulturni. Next there would be a WalMart promotion. Deal Ramzi out.<\/p>\n

A Willing Crowd Awaits<\/p>\n

\"Image\"<\/p>\n

Once they\u2019d gotten the crowd\u2019s blood moving with the singalong, they unleashed Susan Blackmore on us. Elfishly styled in pixie-type boots with snug pants and a form-fitting jacket that revealed a pleasing figure of the short Englishwoman type, Susan bounded about the stage with a lot of zip for a gal whose hot twenties are somewhat behind her. Like a lot of corporate trainers and salespeople, she had all the right moves. Her speech lined up with her posture and her facial expression. She tossed off a few self-deprecatory jokes. She looked at the audience and claimed us as her own. I felt no twinges of resistance in the audience. The pre-talk PR had clearly done its work, and Susan was drafting along in its wake, an expert with a topic and a room full of people who needed her knowledge to justify their atheist mindset and make it credible.<\/p>\n

A One-Eyed Buddha<\/p>\n

\"Image\"<\/p>\n

When you need a ride somewhere you\u2019re often not particular how you get there. And people who have gone straight from Christian or Jewish religion to unbelief, are poorly equipped to examine the legitimacy of Susan\u2019s claims about \u201cZen Buddhism,\u201d to which she first claimed to be devoted, then later said she was not. I\u2019ll agree with her second position.<\/p>\n

Susan\u2019s thesis for the day was revealed incrementally, so my surprise grew as she moved from one misstatement about Buddhism to the next, using the \u201cnonexistence\u201d side of Buddha\u2019s argument to argue that really smart people don\u2019t believe in their own existence. This was like poking out one of the Buddha\u2019s eyes and saying that he had no depth perception, and believed all life to be two-dimensional. The Buddha didn\u2019t say people don\u2019t exist.<\/p>\n

One of the most popular Zen scriptures is the Diamond-Cutter Sutra, i.e., a Discourse on the Penetration of the Impenetrable. In Chapter Six, the Buddha explains that people who understand the Dharma \u201cneither fall back to cherishing the idea of things as having intrinsic qualities, nor even of things as devoid of intrinsic qualities.\u201d Buddha then explains to his friend Subhuti why real Buddhists don\u2019t say that people and things either exist or don\u2019t exist:<\/p>\n

\n
\u201cWherefore? Because if such people \u2026 grasped and held on to the notion of things as having intrinsic qualities they would be cherishing the idea of an ego entity, a personality, a being or a separated individuality. Likewise, if they grasped and held on to the notion of things as devoid of intrinsic qualities they would be cherishing the idea of an ego entity, a personality, a being or a separated individuality. So you should not be attached to things as being possessed of, or devoid of, intrinsic qualities.\u201d<\/div>\n<\/blockquote>\n

What does this really mean? That if you are looking for answers to \u201cexistence\u201d and \u201cnonexistence\u201d from the Buddha, you are barking up the wrong lotus blossom. Buddha was not teaching physics, physiology, or even philosophy or psychology. He was not pronouncing on the \u201creality\u201d of our humanity, our planet, our solar system, or our galaxy, if you could even define the term \u201creality\u201d in a satisfactory fashion. Buddha was teaching his way of \u201cending human suffering.\u201d His philosophy is an integrated package of knowledge that it is dangerous to mine for clever quotes that support views opposed to the Buddha\u2019s true intentions.<\/p>\n

I, Bundle<\/p>\n

\"Image\"<\/p>\n

Susan told us she had spent a lot of time asking herself the question \u201cWho am I?\u201d She seemed confident that she was one of a small group of people who had done this. She then took us on an odyssey of self-disassembly. Like Alan Watts enjoyed doing, Susan poked fun at the notion that there\u2019s a \u201clittle person in your head,\u201d a \u201chomunculus,\u201d as she put it, who experiences everything we see, feel, hear, smell and touch. She showed us powerpoint graphics of the brain marked up like a side of beef, all the choice cuts exhibited to show there\u2019s no little person here, in the cerebral cortex, or the cerebellum, thalamus, hypothalamus, etcetera. This was really rather frivolous, for what person really expects to find a \u201cself-center\u201d anywhere in their physical corpus? That\u2019s like expecting to find a sign posted on the sun, giving its galactic address. Not bloody likely.<\/p>\n

Susan argued that Buddha taught that human consciousness is composed of a \u201cbundle\u201d of psychic factors. She never actually told us what that bundle is composed of though, whereas the Buddha was very clear that the personality bundle is comprised of five factors that act together to create the \u201cexperience of I.\u201d Understanding how those factors in the personality bundle interact is actually a meditative process that allows a person to observe their own mind. Self-observation reduces automatic reactions within the personality bundle and frees one from unconscious action. Put simply, in Buddhism, understanding one\u2019s personality to be composed of factors is not presented as an assault on the personality, but as part and parcel of the practice of seeing reality.<\/p>\n

Susan blurred the concept of the personality bundle by pairing it with Buddha\u2019s example of how a carriage is not intrinsically a \u201ccarriage,\u201d since it is simply assembled from a frame, wheels, and axles. That is a good way to understand the component nature of a carriage, but unless Frankenstein was fully human, there is a great deal more to a human being than meat and bones and brains, and thus it is useless to analogize a human being to a carriage that is made solely of physical parts. The analogy cannot account for the most important aspect of a human being, because no carriage ever drove itself where it wanted to go, or refused to roll downhill by applying its own brakes, or ran down a child in the street because it was inattentive.<\/p>\n

\"Image\"<\/p>\n

As Einstein is said to have said, \u201cThings should be made as simple as possible, but not simpler.\u201d When you analogize a human being to a machine, you make it too simple to draw conclusions, and those conclusions are likely to be dehumanizing and dangerous. Among her fun \u201cthought experiments,\u201d Susan asked us how many of us would consent to be teleported, and asked one volunteer where she\u2019d like to go. The volunteer said \u201cCabo,\u201d as in \u201cCabo San Lucas,\u201d the tequila sinkhole at the bottom of Baja, but Susan heard \u201cKabul,\u201d the heroin capital on the roof of the world. This affected the outcome of the thought experiment in unforeseen ways, but it shouldn\u2019t have, because the whole point was to determine whether people who saw themselves as \u201cegos\u201d rather than \u201cbundles\u201d would refuse teleportation, regardless of the assurance that all of our physical elements would be reconstituted into a person indistinguishable (in either Mexico or Afghanistan) from the one who had been teleported from Tucson. Of course, if you were blown up on arrival in Kabul, or hit by a an exploding tequila shooter in Cabo, it might all come to the same thing, but Susan\u2019s point was that people who robustly conceived of themselves as bundles would more readily accept the new form of transport. According to Douglas Adams, the resistance to teleportation runs much deeper, as he made absolutely clear with this blast of doggerel:<\/p>\n

\n
And what about matter transference beams? Any form of transport which involved tearing you apart atom by atom, flinging those atoms through the sub-ether, and then jamming them back together again just when they were getting their first taste of freedom for years had to be bad news.Many people had thought exactly this before Arthur Dent and had even gone to the lengths of writing songs about it. Here is one that used regularly to be chanted by huge crowds outside the Sirius Cybernetics Corporation Teleport Systems factory on Happi-Werld III:<\/p>\n
\n
Aldebaran\u2019s great, okay,
\nAlgol\u2019s pretty neat,
\nBetelgeuse\u2019s pretty girls
\nWill knock you off your feet.
\nThey\u2019ll do anything you like
\nReal fast and then real slow,
\nBut if you have to take me apart to get me there
\nThen I don\u2019t want to go.Singing,
\nTake me apart, take me apart,
\nWhat a way to roam
\nAnd if you have to take me apart to get me there
\nI\u2019d rather stay at home.Sirius is paved with gold
\nSo I\u2019ve heard it said
\nBy nuts who then go on to say
\n\u201cSee Tau before you\u2019re dead.\u201d
\nI\u2019ll gladly take the high road
\nOr even take the low,
\nBut if you have to take me apart to get me there
\nThen I, for one, won\u2019t go.<\/p>\n

Singing,
\nTake me apart, take me apart,
\nYou must be off your head,
\nAnd if you try to take me apart to get me there
\nI\u2019ll stay right here in bed.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/blockquote>\n<\/div>\n<\/blockquote>\n

Some Negative Implications of Seeing Humans As Machines<\/p>\n

\"Image\"<\/p>\n

Why does the notion that human beings are machines so fascinate people? On an industrial scale, equating people and machines is good business, because we only need people for the work they do. A backhoe digs a ditch, thus accomplishing what many ditch-diggers would otherwise do. Treating the ditch-diggers as inefficient, costly machines, I fire ten ditch-diggers and get a backhoe on the job. It\u2019s better for my wallet, and since I cannot experience the mental suffering and hunger of the unemployed, I need not care that the ditch-diggers go hungry. This kind of logic rules our society, to the point where we are now supposed to feel encouraged if \u201cthe economy is improving,\u201d even if we ourselves are living behind a dumpster. A rising tide will lift all boats, ya\u2019 know?<\/p>\n

All ditch-diggers understand the fallacy of the industrialist argument that they are irrelevant, because it ignores their subjective being, the primary thing that distinguishes us from machines. So you\u2019d think we\u2019d be more resistant when people try to analogize our minds to machines, because a mind is the one thing a machine does not have. I am constantly amazed that people would analogize a video recorder attached to a computer to an eye attached to a human brain. Fercrissakes, the video never swings around to take a second look at a hot body, nor does it flinch when focussed on a gruesome scene, or close its eyes to block off a painful scene. That\u2019s the important thing, not the fact that the CMOS sensor functions somewhat like the human retina!<\/p>\n

The real damage to our self-understanding occurs when, having analogized ourselves to machines, the analogy takes over, and we start to make mechanistic inferences about ourselves. So not only is this analogy not very useful, because we learn little about humans by analogizing them to machines, but it also tends to project itself back upon our self-image, causing us to define our motivations in mechanical terms. There is absolutely no evidence that any good comes of this type of self-image. If I may indulge myself, \u201cGarbage in, garbage out.\u201d<\/p>\n

The AI crowd, of course, want to analogize our minds to computers. For people who are equally ignorant about how computers and their own minds work, this analogy will be appealing. Because \u201cany sufficiently advanced technology will appear to be magic to those who do not understand it,\u201d for those ignorant of cybernetic science, computers are essentially magic. I hear people saying all the time that their computer \u201cknows\u201d something, when in fact it is just a sophisticated alarm clock with a very complicated schedule. Most of the time, in fact, our computers are triggering Pavlovian responses with little beeps and chirps that \u201ckeep us on track,\u201d which is to say, in time with the industrial Leviathan that winds all the clocks.<\/p>\n

Meditation vs. Annihilation<\/p>\n

\"Image\"<\/p>\n

Susan backed up her discussion of the \u201cWho am I?\u201d question with the declaration that she was a Zen Buddhist, so I assumed that she had practiced the \u201cWho am I?\u201d meditation that is taught to both Buddhists and Hindus. But Susan appears to have misapplied the \u201cWho am I?\u201d practice, turning it from a path of self-discovery into one of self-negation.<\/p>\n

Perhaps much of this confusion would have been avoided if someone had told Susan that if you are pursuing the \u201cWho am I?\u201d inquiry for spiritual purposes, then when you ask yourself \u201cWho am I?\u201d you are not supposed to articulate a verbal answer. The Tibetans call it a \u201cpointing out instruction.\u201d I would analogize it to being out hiking with a friend, who points at something way across the canyon, and says, \u201clook right there.\u201d You try and look where they\u2019re pointing. When at last you are able to pick out what they\u2019re telling you to look at, then you don\u2019t need any further instructions. You actually see it, whereas before you didn\u2019t, and you don\u2019t need anyone\u2019s help to know what it is. In the case of looking \u201cinside,\u201d you don\u2019t actually see anything visual. Rather, you have the experience of knowing that you\u2019re knowing. It\u2019s very life-affirming, in a quiet way. Indeed, how anyone who\u2019s ever done the practice would seriously get up and say, \u201cI don\u2019t exist\u201d is quite beyond me. It would just be laughable, absurd, a joke.<\/p>\n

The pre-eminent advocate of the \u201cWho am I?\u201d school of self-discovery was an Indian prep-school dropout who took up residence at Arunachala Hill, a place sacred to Shiva, about a century ago. Known today as Ramana Maharshi, he was fourteen when he got to thinking about how one of his uncles had died, and fell into a terrible fear that he was also about to die. He then lay on the floor and imagined he was dying, taking note of all the experiences he would not have anymore, eliminating everything that had died, until at last he remained with his own original being. His perception of the world distinct from himself disappeared. He entered into another way of being, no longer separate from \u201cothers,\u201d whom he saw as the Self. In his dialogues with students, Maharshi deflected the projections of guruhood, insisting that he was not anyone\u2019s guru, and recommending \u201cself inquiry\u201d for anyone who seeks inner peace. His questionings of spiritual seekers are demonstrations of Maharshi\u2019s subtle skill at turning every question into another expression of the question \u201cWho am I?\u201d It was literally not possible to talk to the man without him trying to enlighten you as to your Identity.<\/p>\n

Compare that with Susan Blackmore \u2014 quoting the Buddha on your nonexistence, polling neuroscientists for odds on whether you\u2019re a robot, and insisting cheerily, when pressed on what the \u201cno-self\u201d theory of human Identity would do to our notions of human rights, that \u201cGovernments will give us rights!\u201d Yeah, I guess that\u2019s how we\u2019d get \u2018em, if we don\u2019t exist. Because if we don\u2019t exist, we can\u2019t \u201ctake these truths to be self-evident.\u201d And therefore, we couldn\u2019t decree that \u201call men are created equal\u201d and are equally entitled to \u201clife, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.\u201d Wonderful! (Not!)<\/p>\n

We\u2019re From the Government, We\u2019re Here To Help<\/p>\n

\"Image\"<\/p>\n

The political implications of Susan Blackmore\u2019s thesis are indeed dreadful, and it seems obvious that she has not contemplated them in any depth. To simply advert to the notion that \u201cgovernments\u201d will \u201cgrant rights\u201d to people who don\u2019t exist, whose Identity is illusory, and who have abdicated their right to exist, is hardly realistic. To give Susan her due, however, her fellow Englishman Edmund Burke promised much the same when he argued that since his ancestors had sworn fealty to the Kings of William and Orange, he could look to the monarch for protection. He would have argued the point against Thomas Paine\u2019s opposition, on the deepest principle, that the only legitimate government is that which is by the consent of the governed.<\/p>\n

The technocrats who control our lives and determine the fate of the planet will be delighted to hear of this scientific development \u2014 the discovery that human beings do not actually exist. Complaints from the governed will have no grounds on which to be heard. Tom Paine\u2019s ghost will be put to rest. Statistics will no longer hide a human story. When human rights are violated it will be a misdemeanor, and the good of all can finally be determined on the basis of bloodless calculations.<\/p>\n

Whence Cometh This One, and With What Aim?<\/p>\n

\"Image\"<\/p>\n

As an evangelist for the path of exploding our own existence, Susan excels at making something out of nothing. Plucking quotes and conclusions from popular spiritual and scientific authorities, assembling notions that suit her own fancy, and modeling confidence in her own conclusions, Susan\u2019s mind is dangerous territory for those unfamiliar with her jargon and susceptible to her manner. As the capper for her presentation of scientific-style evidence, Susan displayed a reaction-time study that showed that when a person intends to move, they start moving before they can tell you that they\u2019re about to move. From that, Susan blithely drew the conclusion that \u201cfree will is illusory.\u201d The best thing about it was the confidence with which she enunciated this absurdity. For a second there, before I got all my physiological responses in order, I thought she\u2019d actually made a point. She\u2019s a pro, that Susan Blackmore.<\/p>\n

You gotta wonder, and I do, what the heck is so important about nihilism that we gotta put this gal out on the road to push it? Well you know, it doesn\u2019t exactly sell itself.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

_______________________________________________________________________________________<\/p>\n

The Faith of an Advocate<\/strong><\/p>\n

By Charles Carreon
\nMarch 22, 2015<\/p>\n

<\/object><\/p>\n

In my experience, a lawyer is often the first person to believe in the unpopular individual. I do not mean that only lawyers take up the cause of the unpopular, or that all lawyers do it. Quite the contrary \u2013 non-lawyers champion the weak and oppressed as a daily matter, and the majority of lawyers cannot be accused of that. But quite a few lawyers, especially those who represent the criminally accused, will know what I\u2019m talking about. There\u2019s a certain amount of social pressure that can come your way for representing someone \u201ceveryone knows\u201d is guilty.<\/p>\n

In \u201cTo Kill a Mockingbird,\u201d Atticus Finch, famously portrayed by Gregory Peck in the motion picture, is a lawyer appointed by the court to defend a black man who\u2019s been falsely accused. The trial takes place in early 20th Century Alabama, so although Finch is able to save his client from lynching before trial, the man is unfairly convicted by an all-white jury, then killed in an \u201cescape attempt.\u201d Legal scholars have praised and questioned Finch as a role model. The Alabama State Bar erected a monument to honor the fictional hero, while an esteemed ethicist argued that Finch\u2019s character did nothing to alter the historic balance of injustice against the freed slaves and their descendants. That may all be true \u2013 but as a lawyer who has sat in many a jail cell and heard many a sad tale there, I know what it is to be the only person who both cares about someone who needs help, and knows what to do to help him.<\/p>\n

The Habit of Believing<\/p>\n

The first thing you have to do to help someone is to believe in them. You may not believe what they are saying \u2013 after all, jails are full of liars \u2013 but you\u2019ve got to believe in them. You\u2019ve got to believe that they are human beings who made some mistakes, and got themselves in a pickle. Sometimes they\u2019ve gotten themselves in really deep shit. But you\u2019ve got to believe that they can get out of it, straighten up their lives, and get back into decent society. Otherwise, you really can\u2019t help them. Really, why would you bother?<\/p>\n

And like so many things that we repeat, believing in the worth of people can become a habit. You might want to not start, because I can attest that, eventually it becomes so strong that you start to believe that everyone has value. You even look at people who are destitute, whom you formerly have pitied because they seemed to have nothing, and you respect them for the dignity they are fighting to keep, for the self-respect that is as vital as warmth, food, and shelter. It\u2019s really been one of the perks of the job, I might say, having served for six years as a Federal Public Defender, that it actually helped me to develop my respect for humanity.<\/p>\n

Now I\u2019m writing for this blog because I was immediately impressed by the work that my old friend Tom Forrest has taken up here. He\u2019s taken it on with his usual blowtorch intensity, and that is actually sufficient to ignite my interest. And having been told many times that I\u2019m crazy, I have an inherent sympathy for those who really are. I have the luxury of acting crazy, but actually, my mind serves me very well. When I saw the video that Tom was taking, it hit me right away. He was caring for someone, right on YouTube, someone who dwells in a completely different realm, and yet is totally human, totally worthy of care and respect.<\/p>\n

No Crime Here<\/p>\n

It\u2019s not easy to help the mentally ill. I once met a total schizophrenic in jail, during the brief time period when I was prosecuting people in Jackson County, Oregon, a job I did for thirteen months and thirteen days. I remember how it happened. I had charged a fellow with Criminal Trespass in the Second Degree for repeatedly sleeping in the laundry room at the VA facility in White City. I had offered him a plea bargain on the usual carbon pink sheet, handwritten \u2013 plead guilty and walk out of jail today for time served. He hadn\u2019t taken it. He was going to trial. The trial had to be set on an expedited basis, because otherwise he\u2019d sit there for months. So I went over to the jail to see this guy, and find out what the hell was up. Well, what was up was that he was completely schizophrenic \u2013 I mean inhabiting a complete alternate reality. He had no more idea what was going on, why he was in jail, why he couldn\u2019t sleep in the laundry room, than a caveman who had been teleported directly from a moonlit howling session into modern society.<\/p>\n

When he came up for trial a couple of days later, it went kinda like this, with me playing the Prosecutor:<\/p>\n

\n
Judge White: Mr. Carreon, where do we stand with this case?Prosecutor: Your Honor, I think this man needs to be in Two-North (courthouse code for the psych ward at Rogue Valley Medical Center).<\/p>\n

Judge White: I don\u2019t have any authority to do that. This isn\u2019t a civil commitment proceeding.<\/p>\n

Prosecutor: I understand your honor. And I can\u2019t file a civil commitment proceeding.<\/p>\n

Judge White: So how do you want to proceed?<\/p>\n

Prosecutor: Well, I don\u2019t think he has the mental capacity to know where he actually is, so I can\u2019t really convict him of knowingly entering and remaining on the premises where he\u2019s charged with trespassing.<\/p>\n

Judge White: So you want to dismiss?<\/p>\n

Prosecutor: Yes, your Honor.<\/p>\n

Judge White: Case dismissed for lack of evidence. Sir, you are free to go. The court\u2019s in recess.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/blockquote>\n

This gentleman whose case was dismissed was a gentle soul, who did no one any harm. I didn\u2019t know what to do for him, and I still don\u2019t know what to do for the mentally ill.<\/p>\n

What Can and Should We Do For the Mentally Ill?<\/p>\n

For several months the crazy former defendant would drop by the Jackson County District Attorney\u2019s Office and ask to talk to me. That was probably a first there at the office, and one that I wasn\u2019t sure was entirely to my credit in the eyes of my fellow prosecutors. But it did give me a chance to get the drift of his crazy, something I\u2019ve always been good at, since I figure everybody\u2019s story is worth hearing, and there\u2019s no one more transparently innocent than a man who believes in space aliens and thought waves. After going to Two North to check out the actual facility, I gave up on my idea to institutionalize him. Like caging a fox.<\/p>\n

Indeed, I think Tom\u2019s method of directly relating with the mentally ill, overcoming the wall that separates us from them, is probably the best first thing to do, once you have become infected with the caring bug. You may discover a fascinating thing, that I learned as a child sitting with the waitresses and customers in a Mexican restaurant my parents owned in the sixties, out on East Van Buren in Phoenix, Arizona. It was one of the neon outposts on Route 66 on the road to LA, and I tell you we got all kinds. And before a child\u2019s un-prejudiced eyes, a truth unveiled. Everybody\u2019s a little strange. They\u2019ve all got their quirks. Sometimes those quirks get so big that the person becomes really weird, and past that line, you really can\u2019t see \u2013 that\u2019s real crazy. Hunter Thompson taught us that there are two types of crazy, good crazy and bad crazy. So it\u2019s all scary. But if we care, we don\u2019t turn away, and we reach out to the person and help them come back to our shared reality.<\/p>\n

The Life You Save<\/p>\n

One thing I do know is that our society has allocated very little for those lacking the razor-edged wits required to cut the mustard in the cold and competitive world of work. In this blog, I\u2019m going to think about that fact, and share my thoughts, from a legal and a human perspective.<\/p>\n

What occurs to me right off is that everybody gets sick. Some people\u2019s bodies get sick, and some people\u2019s minds get sick. We are humans because we care for those who are sick, and we stay human by caring. Tom wants to care, and to make his caring concrete. He wants to help people change their own lives. And that\u2019s a two-way street. Like that old road sign used to say, \u201cThe life you save may be your own.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Sunday With the Atheists by Charles Carreon April, 2014 Last weekend, Sunday morning, in search of fun atheists, Tara and I went to the Free Thought Arizona Sunday meetup at Tucson\u2019s UniversityMedicalCenter. I guess there\u2019s enough doubt about God\u2019s existence in the place where most folks meet their final crisis of faith that they can […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"parent":0,"menu_order":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","template":"","meta":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.oestia.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/pages\/166"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.oestia.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/pages"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.oestia.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/page"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.oestia.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.oestia.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=166"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/www.oestia.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/pages\/166\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":171,"href":"https:\/\/www.oestia.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/pages\/166\/revisions\/171"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.oestia.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=166"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}