Marrying Without God in Canada

In fact, I was unable to marry without the benefit of religion in Canada.

The ridiculous religiosity of Americans is something that is taken for granted. Our more flamboyant preachers and their less temperate proclamations attract easy derision. The corollary is that we believe other countries are free from the effects of religion or at least its more authoritarian manifestations. Once, I accepted this view uncritically. Then I married a Canadian.

The federal system in Canada allows a great deal of autonomy to each of the provinces, so what applied to me in Québec may or may not have a parallel elsewhere in the country. In any case, we didn’t marry in Québec as my former husband had wanted. He, like much of the population of Québec, did not believe in God. Passionately nationalistic, he would have much preferred to have gotten married in his country than in mine, however the laws in Québec were written with the assumption that marriages would take place within the Church. He knew that many of his acquaintances at work were not believers and a few had recently married. He asked one woman if she happened to know how to go about getting married in a civil ceremony. “Oh,” she said, “I don’t believe either, but just get married in the Church. It’s what everyone does.” I would hear some variation on this time and time again. “Oh, of course we don’t believe, but just go along because it’s easier that way.” We married in a civil ceremony in the United States. Later I found out that, between the time we first talked about getting married and the actual event, the province of Québec changed their marriage laws to make civil ceremonies easier.

For an American who is used to the exact opposite, little institutional state support for religion coupled with highly fervent personal beliefs, Canada was little bit like going through the looking glass. Everyone assumed that I was Catholic and most people assumed I didn’t believe in God. An easy lack of belief was frequently coupled with religious rituals.

My ex-husband did have one acquaintance who was a fervent believer and frequently referred to me publicly as a “concubine.” Because we had not been married according to the rules of the Roman Catholic Church, we were not married. This insult made me seethe inside. It is really hard to imagine a comparable thing being said and let pass here in the United States.

One day, shortly after I moved there, we were driving in the car and I had one of the biggest shocks of my life. I saw a dead man hanging from a tree. As we moved, the perspective changed and it was apparent that what I saw was a life sized statue of the crucifixion that happened to have appeared superimposed on a tree. I never got used to see these realistic depictions of a dead man. They always made me vaguely uneasy.

At the time I lived there the political party in power was trying to get religious instruction removed from the public funded school. They didn’t succeed. My ex-husband related to me how in elementary school there were two children whose families were Jehovah’s Witnesses. When the other children colored pictures of the saints, these two children were not allowed to. Because they thought that coloring was fun, all the children thought that the two Jehovah’s Witnesses were being punished because they were not Catholic. My ex’s conclusion was that simply exempting the children of non-believers from religious instruction was not adequate.

Québec was the last Canadian province to have free, universal education and it was the interference of the Catholic Church that kept that from happening. As much of the western world became more and more secular, Québec, like Ireland, was seen by the Roman Catholic Church as a bulwark. Then in the late fifties and early sixties they had “la révolution silencieuse.” The province became better educated, less insular, wealthier and progressively less religious.

Boys

The dozen or so blocks of Park Avenue just north of Grand Central are lined on either side with office buildings. At lunch hour, and then again from six o’clock to seven, the sidewalks are filled with men. Surely women work in those buildings as well, but the crowd always has a distinctly male cast.

I missed their reemergence this spring. Most years I look forward to the coming of warmer weather and the annual shedding of the overcoats. In the good weather, I’ll take a stroll over to Park and engage in a bit of surreptitious ogling.

Unfortunately, my spirits this spring were depressed by death throes of a love affair. I didn’t amble over to Park to look at the office boys. In fact, I didn’t pay much attention to the boys anywhere in town.

My spirits have not returned to their previous level, and I have not yet gone out with the idea of looking at men uppermost in mind. However, I was on my way home the other day and I found myself, with no premeditation, walking down Park Avenue around six-thirty or seven when my man-o-meter started clanging. It took me by surprise. There in front of me were three persons dressed for business. The woman in the middle was flanked by two men.

Now the man on the left had a nice athletic build, but it was the one on the right who truly set the meter off. I’ve always had a weakness for the thinner boys. Perhaps it was like an alarm going off after a good deep sleep, because suddenly everywhere it turned there seemed to be a nice looking young man. The one directly in front of me had a wonderful line from on shoulder to the next and, of course, narrow hips. He had a that loose limbed gate that belongs only to the young and his shoulders swung easily in opposition to his feet.

Although I only saw the backs of the three individuals in front of me, I judged them to be less than twenty-five years old. The the thin one turned to say something to the woman. Until then, I had mainly noticed his body. His cheek had that smooth fullness which made me think that even twenty-five might be a high estimate. His dark brown hair had a slight wave with made it slightly unruly but not sloppy.

 That sort of physique I might never again know intimately. Oh well, at least I once did. Alright, maybe more than once. But my man-o-meter has finally begun working again. It seems to me that this is the not the first time that, after a temporary hiatus, my libido upon its return seems to respond to entirely inappropriate stimuli. The man-o-meter definitely needs some recalibration.

Tomorrow, or perhaps the day after, depending on the weather, I will head over to Park around lunch time. At lunch time, in the nice weather, the men walk slowly or just mill about.

Ignorance is Misery

Although I am an atheist and fairly “out” about it, I’ve been trying to avoid writing about it too much because I don’t want this to turn into an atheist blog, mainly because I feel that the subject is being covered much better elsewhere. There are quite a few blogs that cover it regularly from different perspectives. However, once in a while I see something and I just want to draw more attention to it. The BEattitude has put of a video of Arizona State Senator Sylvia Allen using the age of the earth, 6,000 years old, in her explanation for her position of uranium mining. This is not simply a matter of private belief.

Looking for Suggestions

I haven’t tried to paint a really good illusion since I stopped painting professionally. Lately, however, I’ve been getting the urge to do one and, since it’d be for myself, the sky’s the limit in terms of subject matter. Originally, I was focusing on a wall in a sad looking half-bath, but then this morning I turned around and suddenly realized that I had three locations simply begging for some sort of illusionistic treatment. In the main room of my apartment, there are three closets with folding doors which lay flat and are really, really boring. All are eight feet high (240) cm. and reach the ceiling. The widths are 22 inches (56 cm.), 42 inches (107 cm.) and 36 inches (91 cm.). 

So what should I paint?

The context is a 1960 white brick residential tower in midtown Manhattan. Yes, it’s boring, but that also means that there aren’t very distinctive architectural features which need to be incorporated. I want to do something a little challenging and all three doors should relate to one another. By the way, you don’t see all three at the same time.

Another Type of Illusion

Recently I’ve read several references to the tendency people have to find patterns and meaning in randomness. One of the more personal references put me in mind of a passage in Middlemarch.

An eminent philosopher among my friends, who can dignify even your ugly furniture by lifting it into the serene light of science, has shown me this pregnant little fact. Your pier-lass or extensive surface of polished steel made to be rubbed by a housemaid, will be minutely and multitudinously scratched in all directions; but place now against it a lighted candle as a centre of illumination, and lo! the scratches will seem to arrange themselves in a fine series of concentric circles round that little sun. It is demonstrable that the scratches are going everywhere impartially and it is only your candle which produces the flattering illusion of a concentric arrangement, its light falling with an exclusive optical selection. These things are a parable. The scratches are events, and the candle is the egoism of any person now absent–of Miss Vincy, for example. Rosamond had a Providence of her own who had kindly made her more charming than other girls, and who seemed to have arranged Fred’s illness and Mr. Wrench’s mistake in order to bring her and Lydgate within effective proximity.

Rosamond is by far the vainest person in the book, but haven’t we all, both the silly and sage among us, labored under a similar delusion.

Middlemarch becomes a far more depressing book as I age. To see these young people with all their dreams, silly and vain at times but grand and noble as well, and to know that these dreams will not be dashed so much as wither and decay is much harder when you’ve gotten to the point of having your dreams slip away yourself.

I’ve achieved that unenviable stage in life where I must revise my dreams. During the past decade, I’ve seen many friends fail to achieve their goals. What becomes of us? There are so many stories of people who sacrifice everything for a goal and who finally, after many setbacks, achieve. Where are the stories of those who fail? Had I been in a casino, I would have known that to wager everything was to risk tremendous losses. No one would have egged me on. But in life, in which the wager was even higher, to sacrifice everything for a “noble” cause is encouraged. But it is this illusion, this self-centric illusion, that keeps us going. Is it necessary for human happiness? Is living without it akin to depressive realism?

Once, I recall walking down the street on the other side of the river in Hoboken. I can’t recall why I was there. On a lamppost or telephone post a notice was attached. A woman’s brother had died and she wanted to know if anyone wanted his paintings. If not, she would be forced to throw them out. I didn’t stop painting then, but it was a rent in the veil. It was like seeing the ghost of Christmas future.

George Eliot was, as I understand, not a believer. However, she thought that religion might be necessary for the lower classes.

Color Illusion

Richard Wiseman put up a nice color illusion on his blog not long ago. Yesterday, he posted a varition. I decided to give it a go myself.

After reading some of the comments on Mr. Wiseman’s blog, I decided to do it as a vector graphic and I saved it as a gif. I also played around with different thicknesses for to turquoise stripes and the space separating them. In the image displayed, the stripes are 2 pixels wide and are separated by a space of one pixel. Although the point of doing it as world map was to take advantage of familliar conventions, I’ll probably play with different color combinations when I have time. Though maybe I won’t. My color theory class years ago just gave me one big headache and convinced me to not major in art.

Baloney Detection

There was a time in my life when I could have truly used a baloney detection kit. When I think back on it, some of the things I believed were so preposterous that I’m really ashamed of myself. I hide this period of my life from people who don’t know me well. Suffice it to say, for now, that it’s one of the reasons I don’t usually call people who believe in various alternative explanations of reality “stupid.” On the other hand, it’s the reason the I am adamant that these views should be confronted. Too many people politely sidestepped the subject back when I myself believed a lot of baloney. So I was excited to see on Richard Dawkin’s website they have put up a video describing a “The Baloney Detection” kit.

Although the Baloney Detection Kit might be very good at arming journalists who are working the science beat, it really isn’t practical as a tool for ordinary people to evaluate claims that come at them in the course of life, claims that may have a direct impact on their behavior and inluence major decisions in their lives. Back during my adolescence I was given a ridiculously common bit of advice: follow your heart and work hard and good things will follow. Last week my friend Peter, while mulling over poor career decisions each of us had made, called it “magical thinking.” Peter was raised in a religious family. In my case, I could say that this pearl of wisdom was the Ur-magical thought in my life, my ur-baloney and I don’t know that I would have been able to catch it using the kit.

Claims about the meaning of life, the existence of spirits or angels, the causes and cures of illness and disease are widespread. Unlike claims about cold fusion, we are forced to evaluate the veracity of these claims and, most importantly, act on them whether or not the full research is in. When we ask the question, how do we know what we know, or at least when I ask myself that question, hearsay or conventional wisdom is the reason for the vast majority of our knowledge. Unproven assumptions about causality permeate our daily lives. They were necessary for our early ancestors and they are still necessary today. I would not be able to get out the door without them.

Schermer explicates point number 7, “Is the claimant playing by the rules of science,” by emphasizing the importance of the opinions of scientists. Among my close personal friends, one of the few bonafide scientists, possessed of a PhD and gainfully employed in her field, is also one of the most gullible people I know. Before my experience taught me to be more skeptical of her claims, I gave them quite a bit of credence based on her credentials. The three enthusiastic proponents of  The Gaia Hypothesis I know all have far better scientific credentials than I.

I have one to add to the “baloney detection kit” based on a pattern I’ve detected among proponents of hooey. Often we wind up evaluating the veracity of a lifestyle claim by putting it into practice in our own lives. When the result is not what we were told to expect, we are encouraged to blame ourselves for not being sufficiently faithful or pure. It’s because you didn’t follow the diet perfectly or you didn’t pray with a sufficiently pure heart. Since false claims have an annoying tendency to yield poor results, a handy explanation for failure is necessary. I suppose that this would be related to tool number 5, “Has anyone tried to disprove the claim.” A more useful way of conceiving of this in our daily lives was came to mind while reading a review by Jerry A. Coyne. He says, “I have never met a religious person who could tell me what would disprove” God’s existence. Similarly, although we can’t always ask whether or not an assertion hasbeen disproven, we can ask what would disprove it.

So the upshot to me seems to be that I think talking about how we evaluate claims is important, but I don’t know if any list of questions or rules of thumb is up to the task of rooting out superstition, especially the more subtle and common forms. The only answer for now my well be continuing to be dreadfully unpleasant and confronting people when they try to feed us spiritual platitudes. The impression of consensus when everyone nods gravely about the importance of pure motivation in career success gives the impression of truth.

Returning to my original example of hard work and pure motivations as the key to success in life, Robert H. Frankwrote in the New York Times, “Contrary to what many parents tell their children, talent and hard work are neither necessary nor sufficient for economic success.” I am, surprisingly, still offered the same bit of advice regarding careers. When I point out to my would be interlocutor that I have been as pure and true as is possible and things have wound up quite badly, I am often reassured that something good will surely come of this because, after all, all things happen for a reason. Que sera sera -eh Peter?

Getting Out of the Way

Insulting comments on blogs are tempests in teapots. I responded to a post on Shapely Prose asserting that overweight girls who report feeling good about themselves are not, as some might claim, just saying that out of defiance or resignation. At first, I thought it was refreshing to come across a feminist blog. It’s been a long, long time since I’ve been involved with feminist issues. Commenters are a self-selecting group and the women commenting there have strong opinions about body image. So, perhaps the responses shouldn’t have surprised me, but they did. I made two comments that seemed to set them off:

1. Women are more critical of one another’s bodies than men and this has driven me away from the company of some women, including women in feminist groups
2. I agreed that we are indoctrinated to believe a lot false claims about diet and health. However, in agreeing with them, I made the inadmissible sin of referring to a “healthy” weight. I guess in retrospect a tipped my hand. One function of jargon is to signal in group and out group status. This was apparently their signal to pounce.

Fascinating group dynamics followed. The moderator wrote, “And the indoctrination about dieting is also so complete that you persist in talking about being a ‘healthy weight’ on a blog dedicated to the idea that health is not weight-dependent! I let your comments through because you seem reasonable, inane comments about feminism aside, but you might want to do some more reading.” Maybe the big girls don’t know the one thing that tiny girls hate is condescension. I understand moderating comments to keep out trolls, hecklers, foul language and advertisers, but does she really mean to keep anyone who deviates from her position by more than a degree. 

After that Cindy wrote:

Every woman I have ever known who has said that she doesn’t prefer to be in the company of women because they are competitive, backstabbing and snide has been, to a person, describing *herself.*

I’m not accusing Jackybird of being the woman she dislikes. It just jogged my memory. I’vebeen recruited several times in my life to be the less-attractive “she-wingman” (read: fat) of different women who have this complaint about women. And they were always describing themselves.

My sister is an excellent example. She’s always been the better-looking of the two of us. Slim, olive complexion, great hair, etc. She can’t stand women because she thinks they jockey for status over one another, especially where men are involved. Now that she’s getting older and living in a college town, she’s not getting as much male attention and has nothing nice to say about the young college women in her environment. My dad even brought this up to me, how she’s concerned about the male pre-occupation with appearance now. I told my dad my sister wasn’t going to find any sympathy with me. My sister will have to do what the rest of the ugly majority have had to do: develop their character and interests and not rely on spectacular good looks for favor.

Was that an insult, or not? I guess she’s allowing for the improbable possibility that I am the exception she has not yet encountered. Strangely, my sister is also named Cindy, so it was a bit disorienting to read how little sympathy Cindy has for her sister. However, I don’t think she and I have much in common. Gosh. I was the nerdy kid who was beaten up in school and, yes, it was mainly at the hands of the other girls. In fact, it was one of the reasons I learned how to dress in a manner flattering to myself. One of the funny social dynamics among women, at least straight women, is that the ability to attract the attention of men causes other women, even the ones who don’t like you, to treat you with respect. Yes, I think it’s pathetic and I don’t like to see it happen, but it does.  But I wasn’t anything like this woman’s sister unless her sister is a geek and a nerd. ( If you didn’t see tonight’s nerd humor: this was great.) I want to be sympathetic; there seems to be some pain in Cindy’s post.

The following commentor also employed the technique of allowing that I might be the sole exception:

It seems like it’s human nature to assume that other people think the way you do. So it makes sense that people who are cruel or superficial see nastiness everywhere. (Like Cindy, this is not a comment on Jackybird (who has a cool handle, by the way).) But your (Cindy’s) observation seems to make sense to me.

I’ve been called a lot of names, but superficial has not been among them. Anyone who actually knows me and has known me for some time could vouch for:

1. my feminist bona fides
2. my skepticism of diets and diet related information
3. my opposition to negative messages about women’s bodies
4. my lack of catiness
5. my general all-around gentleness
6. my ability to have female friends who are prettier than I am

Regarding that last one: I, too, have been recruited several times to be the “wingman” (read: short). Perhaps Cindy’s friends weren’t good friends. It does take a certain amount of tact for the more attractive woman to pull it off without making the other feel bad about herself. However, when it works, it can actually be a lot of fun to be the moon to someone else’s sun. Really, I have so much to say about that, it’ll be my next post.

I accepted the poster’s original assertion that fat girls who say they feel good about their weight aren’t being defensive. After that bitch slap, I’m not so sure.

I wanted to respond but didn’t because the post wasn’t about me. It was strange, because I don’t think I disagree with them much. Well, so much for healthy (is that an okay term) disagreement. Apparently she couldn’t muster the grace to try to be persuasive to someone who agrees with her on most points but is not as well versed in the subject. I certainly will not turn to this particular blog for enlightenment on this issue. She should look for allies not enemies. Perhaps my phrasing about a disenchantment with feminism was clumsy. There are several, complicated reasons behind it and I had thought about writing a post about it. It probably needs a much longer and more nuanced explanation. I haven’t actually rejected feminism. Did these women pick up on the irony of attacking my character because I said that I find it difficult sometimes to get along with other women. I should emphasize, only some women, not all.

Growing-up without God in America

Am I so old that I should be looking on the past like it’s another country? Sometimes I pause and look around me and wonder where the America in which I grew up has gone. I was born in the mid-sixties which means that when I think of my childhood, I think of the seventies. 

Until adolescence, I lived on a cul-de-sac in a town in New Jersey which was close enough to New York to have frequent commuter trains, but somehow it never felt as much like a bedroom community as other nearby towns did. Fathers were heavily involved in their children’s lives. The yuppie phenomenon had not yet hit. We lacked luxury but we had security in an abundance inconceivable today. There seemed to be no one ethnic group which dominated. Sure, there were plenty of second generation Americans who, elsewhere, might have been classified as “white ethnics,” but for some reason no one congregated in groups based on country of origin.  We lived in the first house, on the corner.

A mental tour of the street brings back the names and faces of all the people who lived there. I can remember who used to put on puppet shows and who used to let me cut flowers off her rosebush. The thing I can’t remember about most of them is their religion. It’s not that it was hidden. If it was somehow relevant to me, I knew. Some kids couldn’t play on Thursday because that was the day for Hebrew classes. Catechism class was on Wednesday. Belonging to an atheistic family, I was naturally curious about this religion thing. When I asked questions, the families of my friends often invited me to attend services at various churches as well as one synagogue. People were happy to share their beliefs.

Since I was a child then, there may very well have been tensions of which I was not aware, but in my memory it was no big deal. I wanted to write after reading “How it feels to be an Atheist in America” and some other posts in which atheists describe feeling uncomfortable where they live or where they grew up.  Many people, both in and outside of the United States, seem to view our country as being uniquely intolerant. Of course it’s natural that people with more interesting stories are more likely to tell them. However, I think this leads to the mistaken impression that there is barely a corner of America without a religiously motivated tyrant terrorizing the neighborhood.

My familiarity with this aspect of the United States is entirely second hand so I don’t have a clear idea how widespread or representative these situations are. Nonetheless, I have come to learn that there are people who would deplore my comfortable childhood simply because it did not revolve around God.

Was the peacefulness, community and camaraderie I recall from my childhood entirely based upon repressing one’s own views and ideals? My neighbors’ religious practices may have been diverse, but there was a common belief that in the U.S. getting along on a day to day basis was more important than forcing other people to conform to your view. Each could fully belong to a culture that he did not dominate. I laugh when I hear people speak disparagingly of  “secular” society. The secular part of society is the part where everyone can meet and get along whatever his or her religious beliefs might be. When people say that they’re against secular society, to me, they’re against the part of society which allows us all to live together. Without a secular society, all that can really exist is war between factions, or a fitful peace that might come when one group has succeeded in silencing all the others. In recent decades, however, it feels like that common, secular sphere of our public life is getting smaller. Are people really spinning off into their insular communities, or were they always there? Perhaps I just didn’t notice.

But, no, times have changed.

One of my mother’s friends still lives in the town where I grew up. Her grown daughters live not far away. She is Jewish and practicing. I have fond memories playing on the floor with her two daughters and my sister on Hanukkah many years ago. She is also extremely fond of flowers and sometimes gardens on Saturday. Something happens these days which didn’t happen when I was young. Now, if her neighbors pass by her in her garden on their way to temple, they spit on her. I just can’t see this as progress.

Mother Approves!!

My Sister and Me in Chicago on Our Mother's Birthday

Several times within the past few days the question of female sexuality has crossed my path and I thought it was worth taking a little time to think about this. Yesterday afternoon my mother said something very unexpected. “You know,” she said, “I think that you and your sister are the most sexually well adjusted women I know.” I wonder whether anyone looks at herself and thinks that. On the other hand, my sister has always seemed to me to be well adjusted in many ways, including sexually. Of course, there are plenty of things in that part of my life that my about which my mother knows nothing.

Men’s sexuality seems to be taken as granted. If a man is not actively displaying dysfunctional behaviour, he’s presumed to be healthy. In contrast to this presumption of health that most men recieve, women have, if not a presumption of disease, at least a presumption of complications. A man’s sexuality is treated as something that simply is because it’s there. Women’s sexuality is often viewed like an obstacle course that we have to overcome. Which begs the question; what is at the end of the race anyway? I think maybe women should also try to view their sexuality as something that just is.

Not long ago I was talking to my doctor whom I estimate to be near my age. We both agreed that we came of age during a period that was probably the best there ever was for adolescent girls. Feminists were still a very vocal group back then and I really do believe that it is due to their efforts that my generation had it much, much easier than early generations. A huge emphasis was placed on the idea that sex is a healthy, natural thing. We seem to have slid backwards since then. My doctor expressed regrets that the young women who come into her office seem to much more uncomfortable about their bodies than earlier women.

Everyone is an individual and there is no right or wrong as long as you’re not making yourself or partner unhappy or you’re not being self-destructive. I don’t even think that there are good desires or bad desire although there are good actions and bad actions. Honesty with oneself seems to me to be a key. The most important thing I believe is to listen to yourself and understand what you want. Lists are pretty silly in this context but:

• Your body belongs to you absolutely and no one else.
• Never let anyone tell you what you should  or shouldn’t feel.
• Sex is an end in and of itself.
• Both partners should enjoy it.
• Don’t ever be afraid that saying no will end a relationship. If it does, it’s not a good relationship.
• Don’t be afraid that saying yes will end a relationship. If it does, it’s not a good relationship.
• Never use sex as a medium of exchange.

And please, please, mothers, tell your daughters that their bodies belong to them and not to ever allow anyone to touch them in a way they don’t like – and I’m not just talking about the littlest girls.

If Christopher Atkins, Brooke Shields co-star in the Blue Lagoon, had said that he wished that he’d had lost his virginity earlier than 22 it would be so unremarkable I doubt it would even make the news. Very few people, male or female, have the nerve to speak with absolute honesty about this issue. That’s why when people do we call them brave.