Nights I Don't Sleep

There are nights, many nights, when I don't sleep.

I close my eyes, sometimes even drift off, but I never really rest. My brain never stops spinning. Instead, it's playing some new song, telling some new story, telling me to talk to my wife even though she's tired. Those are the good nights.

Some nights are spent thinking of what I've done, things I'd change, words I would unspeak. My mind gets made up: I'm a bad man who has done bad things. Not as bad of things as some. Not as many bad things as others. Sometimes, there are dark dreams, only dreams, but they seep out my ears so my head is empty when I pretend to wake up in the morning.

And the morning? I've taken advantage of staying awake. "I'm sorry, I didn't get enough sleep." is enough to draw out an apology and a lighter workload, some days. Others, I know words are flying behind my back: "If he's so tired, why doesn't he sleep?"

I can't tell them that I've forgotten how, can't reveal that I've forgotten how it feels. Sometimes, I never know if I'm asleep at all.

Me: A Musical History

I love music.

I was a latecomer, not really developing an interest until I was in my early teens, and until I left for college, I listened to very little that didn't come from the radio or thrift store tapes of artists I'd heard on my favorite station.

When I was 17, I left for college, and there came in contact with my first high-speed internet connection. I'd discovered Napster far earlier, but there was no comparison between picking one or two songs, waiting all night for them to download and then deleting them when it turned out they were just Donald Duck farting, and having the entire musical world at my fingertips.

My preferred poison was Audiogalaxy, where you could queue up entire discographies and wait for them to become available. Audiogalaxy was also my introduction to musical criticism, with articles posted several times a week about whatever album was tickling the editor's fancy. I learned about Sigur Ros and their towering soundscapes, Neutral Milk Hotel's lo-fi maximalism, and Okkervil River's emotion-first approach to writing and recording. Okkervil's Will Scheff was even a contributor.

File sharing wasn't all that was broadening my horizons though. After reading a fawning review in USA Today, I went to Circuit City (RIP) and purchased Radiohead's Kid A, which I hated and proceeded to skip through looking for "real songs". I forced myself to listen to the album ten times in a row--after all, I'd paid for it--and had probably the biggest musical conversion of my life. After that, the radio and its band weren't enough. I sought out music blogs, and discovered The Mountain Goats and Bright Eyes by reading Mitch Clem's webcomic, Nothing Nice to Say. I made friends based on our shared musical tastes, including the co-founder of Fifty Books Project, Chris.

When I graduated from college, I found myself in a funk, stuck in a small town with all friends hours away. I started a job and my coworker, Eric, showed me his own music site, the now sadly defunct Firesideometer. This was a whole new approach: not only could I listen to music, I could get it for free, meet the bands, and be thanked for it. Eric, bless his objectivist heart, eventually handed the reigns of the site to me, and, along with a few other contributors, we resurrected the site, increasing its traffic 10x and discovering, and frequently meeting, lots of great bands who were and remain under the radar. Eventually, the grind of writing multiple reviews every week along with the time investment of sifting through the garbage for the gems led the site into hiatus, where it remained until our domain lapsed and the site was bought out from under us.

After the Ometer phase ended, I found myself with less time to listen to music. A girlfriend who eventually became my wife changed my life for the better, and now I've got a daughter, who I who I can guide through the musical landscape gracefully, and music became something to put on while I worked. Shows became largely a thing of the past, and I haven't reviewed a record in years.

In spite of life and its crazy twists and turns, there is still, inside of me, a place that only music can touch. I can't help but air guitar when listening to Dismemberment Plan's Emergency and I, I still cry sometimes at OK Computer. When things are bad, I can crank up Bright Eyes, Tim Hecker, or William Basinkski. Wilco's I'm the Man Who Loves You and Radiohead's Videotape will always be wedding songs for me, and Ben Fold's The Luckiest sincerely makes me remember how lucky I am. Air's Talkie Walkie never fails to calm me, and remind me of the time I listened to it on repeat while on a nighttime bus ride in the Philippines. Nick Drake plays guitar how I wish I could. And if none of these ring your bell, there are thousands of others, songs I have loved and forgotten, songs I have hated and still remember. I still get a chill when I hear something new, still a little buzz of being in the inner circle when a no name band surprises me with brilliance. Music is no longer the only thing in my life, but there is very little of my life without music in it, and I wouldn't have it any other way.

This Needs to Stop. Yes, This. It Needs to Stop. Stop.

There is something happening in the world of print. I see it everywhere. Whether I am reading about religion, social issues or technology, it is there. It is especially prevalent in books and blog posts that aim for the heart. This technique is apparently a shortcut to humankind’s emotional core.

What is this technique?

Well, what is it? Would you like me to share it?

I want to tell you, reader, what it is.

I truly do.

I mean that sincerely. I wish you would hear me.

Please, hear this.

Come on, aren’t you listening? Why don’t you listen?

Fine. If you won’t listen, I won’t share it.

I won’t.

It’s probably not that important…

…but it is.

It’s a small thing. Very small.

Miniscule, in fact.

Basically, it is this, and this only:

There is no need to turn every.

Single.

Sentence.

Into.

A.

Paragraph.

It doesn’t make reading easier.

It just makes it more annoying.

Thanks.

Three Weeks Wisdom: What I’ve Learned About Being a Dad and What’s Left

Three weeks ago today, my wife Liz did an amazing thing: she somehow managed to produce a baby while lying in a tub of water, with nothing more to dull her pain than some gritted teeth and the distractions provided by a willing-but-helpless husband—that would be me. After nine months of watching her growing in Liz’s belly, Clemence took only three hours to make her appearance, gray-smeared and screaming, into the world, and things changed. In between the dirty diapers and late-night wake ups, this is what I’ve learned.

No one can tell you what it feels like to hold your baby for the first time.
That isn’t to say they won’t try—a dozen or more people, all quaver-voiced and well-meaning, told me that when baby Clem was placed in my arms, my heart would explode with love like an overfilled water balloon and the residue from this explosion would cascade over all my internal organs, filling me enough compassion and adoration for this little person. When she popped out, I felt… surprised and relieved. It turns out that I wasn’t broken after all—as time has passed, I’ve grown to love my little girl more and more. I’ve yet to experience the heart explosion and that’s ok.

You can never know everything…
Upon finding out that we were having a baby, Liz and I (but especially Liz—sorry, honey) began doing heavy duty research on child-rearing. Sleep schedules, feeding plans, diaper-free training, and baby-led weaning became part of our everyday vocabulary. We talked about them until we knew them inside and out, which, of course, led to a very smooth and easy three weeks, during which we hardly even realized we had a baby. And that sentence is a lie. For all the reading and talking we did, the first few weeks of parenthood have been full of exhausting, stressful, confusing times. We’ve frequently felt disconnected, irritable, worried—these last three weeks have been among the most challenging of our marriage. Learning to balance work, wife and baby has been tough, and there’s still so much to learn.

…but that doesn’t mean you should go into it blind.
I’d like to preface this section by saying that everyone prepares for children in their own way, and I don’t intend in any way to disparage parents who handled things differently than we have thus far. With that said, if we hadn’t done our homework, things would be way harder. When we shared our parenting (and birthing) ideas pre-birth, it was amazing how many people told us not worry about it, to just do our best and things would all work out. Being unwilling to do less preparation for a baby than we would for a job interview, we did our homework anyway. Guess what? Reading all those books and having all those talks really helped. They alerted us to issues that could (and sometimes do) arise, and assured us that we weren’t bad parents just because we didn’t know why our baby was crying or how to keep her awake to feed. The time spent reading and discussing was time well-spent. Without it, I’d probably be dictating this post from a padded cell.

Having a baby has shown me what an amazing woman I married.
Obviously, I think my wife is fantastic. I wouldn’t have married her otherwise. But this whole baby thing has helped me to realize that she’s actually some sort of superhuman. First, after discussion, she decided to do a natural childbirth at a birthing center with no epidural, something I was not even 100% sure was possible anymore, and, of course, she kicked labor’s butt. After the birth, theoretically the most intense experience of her life, I was the one who collapsed on the bed while she nursed the baby and greeted our visitors. After we got home, her ability to nurse every few hours day and night made me wonder if she was an elf of some sort. She’s frequently tired, but apparently no longer actually needs sleep—it’s a luxury she’s willing to do without if it’s time for a feeding, or if Clem is just feeling a little sad. She cleans the house, makes meals, says crazy things to our baby, and essentially holds things together while her innards are, medically speaking, being completely restructured. She pulls energy from reserves I’m pretty sure she doesn’t actually have. Every day, I’m literally in awe.

Babies throw schedules off…
I thought I’d be back at peak productivity the Monday after Clem was born. I was wrong.

…but it’s a fair trade.
Having a child is amazing. Sometimes it’s exhausting, sometimes confusing, sometimes even mundane, but when I look at her and she’s smiling—she has beautiful gums—I smile too. When I see her make an expression I recognize, I inwardly (and sometimes outwardly) rejoice. I tell Liz about everything novel thing I see, and she graciously pretends she hasn’t seen it all while putting in her several hours a day of nursing. Clem has crazy hair, loves to pucker, sometimes tosses her head back like a snob, rarely cries, makes noises like a velociraptor, sleeps well sometimes, is capable shooting feces several feet, has no idea what’s going on but sometimes gives me a grumpy look anyway, knows nothing about the world and I wish I could keep it that way. There’s just no way to express it. Having a baby isn’t an explosion—it’s a series of incremental but permanent shifts that never stop and never slow down, every one of which shapes this little human who will someday be an adult. And it’s only been three weeks.

Glow

Five in the morning, the starlight fading,
The all-night DJ stops spinning and starts saying,
That it is morning, it's finally morning,
It showed up right before my eyes without a warning.

Signs scroll a detour up ahead,
And the sky is circulating blue and red.
The dashboard tells me I'm running out of time,
But I just slow the car down; I don't mind.

Everyone must belong somewhere,
I just hope I recognize it when I get there,
Where it ends--if it ends--God only knows,
But I'll head for the horizon's glow.

Deep in Death Valley, the radio,
Is speaking to me in a language I don't know.
Some mixed-up signals, some Spanish song,
I'm interpreting the words all wrong.

Here on the shoreline, as close I can get,
To the spot where dry land gives away to wet,
I raise a chorus; Oh, I raise a hymn,
To the day the sun will rise again.

Moral Abolitionism: Some Thoughts

In his article Morality: The Final Delusion, philosopher Richard Garner puts forward a radical belief: not only is there no objective standard for morality, but morality itself is a man-made concept. This concept is called Moral Abolitionism. Garner continues to say that

"[A]theists who... stop short of moral abolitionism will be stuck exploiting and supporting something nearly as superstitious and hazardous as the religion they have just rejected."

Having read his article, and several others in a similar vein on Philosophy Now, I'd like to share some thoughts about the precepts set forth by the post-moralists.

Moral Abolitionism is a fairly consistent ideology...
It's always bothered me that hardcore atheists still manage to stump for some kind of objective morality. As Garner points out in his article, even the New Atheists themselves, determined to throw off the shackles of religious thought, still can't bring themselves to deny that morality exists altogether, which seems to be the logical endpoint of a universe with an objective standard-bearer for morality. It's a classic apologetic argument, but it's still strong: how can one thing be better than another if there's no standard of comparison? I realize that atheism and MA are, at the core, complimentary concepts; it's evident, however, that embracing the former does not generally mean embracing the latter.

Unlike moral realists, post-moralists accept that they have no right to make any sort of moral judgement at all. Jesse Prinz, in his essay Morality is a Culturally Conditioned Response, says:

"Objectivists might reply that progress has clearly been made. Aren’t our values better than those of the ‘primitive’ societies that practice slavery, cannibalism, and polygamy? Here we are in danger of smugly supposing superiority. Each culture assumes it is in possession of the moral truth."

By making such a bold statement, Prinz is saying what most post-moralists will not: there is no objective morality at all. From this, we can extrapolate that completely relative morality is essentially the same as amorality--a moral system with no rules is not really a system at all.

...but it's ultimately unsatisfying
So, after dismissing morality as a harmful, outdated idea, where does Moral Abolitionism leave us? Garner addresses this briefly, claiming that moral judgements can be replaced by preference backed up by reasoning.

Instead of telling others about their moral obligations, we can tell them what we want them to do, and then we can explain why. We can express annoyance, anger, and enthusiasm, each of which has an effect on what people do, and none of which requires language that presupposes objective values or obligations. The moral abolitionist is equipped, as we all are, with habits, preferences, policies, aims, and impulses that can easily play the roles usually assigned to moral beliefs and thoughts.

But this, to me, is where it all falls apart. Not the central tenants of Moral Abolitionism--this seems to be the logical endgame for that--but Moral Abolitionism as a system of life. Garner offers, in place of an objective standard, a standard based on how we happen to feel, which, though marginally better than the one offered by Prinz, is still unlivable.

Setting the Example
Garner offers two examples of how Moral Abolitionism simplifies difficult decision: abortion and capital punishment. He states:

[M]oral abolitionists will advise any moralist or moral fictionalists who is not forced by circumstances to make some such choice to stand aside in mute support of those individuals who are.

This sounds good, but even in his own examples, he's inconsistent. He states " There is no way to determine whether the moral rights of the fetus are stronger than those of the mother because there are no such things as moral rights." but then, later on, while refusing to take a stance on capital punishment, says

Apart from the stipulated penalties in the laws currently in force, any one of which can be changed, nobody deserves to suffer for any reason whatever. It is this rejection of the idea of “moral desert” that will finally make it possible to discuss remedies to crimes and incivilities without having to pander to moral ire and posturing. We have overdosed on desert, and it would be both healthy and economical to go on a diet.

I hardly know how to respond to this. By the logic put forth in the earlier example, no Moral Abolitionist could enforce any sort of punishment on a criminal unless they were themselves the one wronged; that is, in a Moral Abolitionist utopia, criminals would not be tried by a jury of their peers, but rather by the person or people their crimes were against. Further, since there is no way for anyone's belief to be superior, the criminal would have nothing to worry about in the first place, since he couldn't possibly be in the wrong.

I don't doubt that Garner is an intelligent man, and I'm sure he'd take issue with my interpretation. Prinz even addresses my complaint to some extent:

[M]oral values do not become more true. But they can become better by other criteria. For example, some sets of values are more consistent and more conducive to social stability.

But he doesn't--I would say cannot--explain why social stability is more desirable than anarchy, or why it is even important to have a consistent set of values. Is it wrong for me to eat my neighbor? If so, why? The extreme relativity in this pair of papers removes all grounds for condemning any behavior whatsoever. We cannot appeal to inalienable rights: happiness is no better than sadness, kindness no better than cruelty, murder no worse than charity. Maybe these men have considered the implications of their beliefs and have come to accept them; I cannot.

Fear and Trembling by Soren Kierkegaard

“Much is said in our age about irony and humor, especially by those who have never been capable of engaging in the practice of these arts, but who nevertheless know how to explain everything.”

I think it’s safe to say that I was not prepared for this book. I was drawn in by the premise—Kierkegaard, one of the fathers of existentialism, writing a treatise on faith, using the story of Abraham being asked to sacrifice his son Isaac as his basis—and its length, a scant 95 pages. It sounded right up my alley, but I hadn’t counted on Kierkegaard’s writing style, which is intentionally dense and off-putting to discourage the casual reader (me). So it turns out that this little pamphlet actually took longer to read than the 400 page Robin Hood.

But anyway, on to the content of the book. As mentioned above, Fear and Trembling is a meditation on the story of Abraham’s sacrifice of Isaac as recounted in Genesis 22. I say Abraham’s sacrifice because, although God actually provided a ram to replace Isaac, Kierkegaard argues that, in the most meaningful sense, Abraham did sacrifice Isaac since he remained willing up until the final moment, when the ram appeared.

This is one of the most difficult stories in the entire Bible, and Kierkegaard doesn’t shy away from the difficult questions it raises. Interestingly, however, he doesn’t focus on why God would ask Abraham to commit the act, as many theologians do. He rather focuses on Abraham and what his reaction to the request reveals about him and, in the bigger picture, faith itself.

As the conclusions Kierkegaard reaches, I’ll share what I understand of them here, in greatly condensed form. Kierkegaard says that Abraham is the only example of true faith he knows of, and he defines faith in a very complex way which I’m going to try to communicate in a few points:

a) Faith requires a basic belief in the object of the faith. b) Faith requires complete resignation of the finite world into the hands of God, followed by c) a resignation of infinite matters as well, so that d) finite matters can again be appreciated. Further, Kierkegaard argues that true faith requires more than hope, since hope requires a belief that the event believed in will actually happen. Abraham’s faith was true, he says, because Abraham believed that God would restore Isaac to him even though he also believed it was impossible that Isaac should be restored. Kierkegaard points to faith as an example of the absurd: believing that things that will not happen are going to happen is the paradox of faith.

There’s a lot more in this book (the information I described is mostly in the middle third), including some interesting questions about whether or not ethics can be superseded by a divine command and whether or not it is possible to act both within the boundaries of true faith and ethics at the same time (Kierkegaard argues that for Abraham, the ethical choice—that of not sacrificing his son—was actually a temptation away from the absolute best choice of following God’s command), but to be honest, these sections were both interesting and opaque to me.

I don’t really know how to end this review. I wouldn’t want anyone to think that I’ve exhausted or even fairly explained Kierkegaard’s views in this short post. There’s a lot here, and I may return to it in the future.

(Cross-posted from 50 Books Project)