New Hampshire by Robert Frost

Source of book: I own this

 

It is always so refreshing to return to Robert Frost, my lifelong favorite poet. New Hampshire is the fourth collection in my Library of America hardback Collected Poems. My wife gave this to me either before or soon after we married, and it was my first LoA book. 

 

Previous posts about Robert Frost:

A Boy’s Will

North of Boston

Mountain Interval

 

 

This collection is a good bit like Mountain Interval in that it has a combination of short poems in specific poetic forms, interspersed with longer narratives in blank verse. This makes for a bit of a dilemma for this blogger. So many of the blank verse narratives are wonderful, but they are too long to reasonably quote. To me, they are somewhere on the continuum between vignettes and short stories, and are every bit as compelling. Frost writes with such a delightful nuance, humanity, compassion, and insight. Had he chosen to write prose stories, he could have been a master, I suspect. But in poetic form, they are simply gorgeous. The best I can do is mention a few, and quote some particularly outstanding lines. 

 

Starting off with the title poem, “New Hampshire,” which is both a paean to that state and a surprisingly deep reflection on the ill of commercialization which seems to have infected much of our country, Frost tells both a story and a philosophy. 

 

The having anything to sell is what

Is the disgrace in man or state or nation. 

 

To Frost, that is what is (nearly) unique about New Hampshire - the state isn’t trying to sell you something. While I prickle at his jab about California, he is right, to be honest. California embodies the “we have something to sell you: our perfect climate, our beaches, our movies” and so on. The Golden State, like Florida, has always been about marketing. 

 

Frost eventually has to concede, though, that New Hampshire and Vermont are both kind of like that, and he ends with:

 

It’s restful to arrive at a decision,

And restful just to think about New Hampshire.

At present I am living in Vermont. 

 

That’s typical Frost humor, to be sure. A bit wry, a bit tongue-in-cheek, and very dry. 

 

There are a bunch more of these narrative poems, about topics such as a census taker, a man who gives up farming to stare at the sky with a telescope, a girl named Maple (NOT Mable) who discovers a new way of understanding her identity, a French-Canadian immigrant who hand-crafts axe handles, a sensitive man who is teased about his wife, two boys picking wild grapes, the dilemma of where to bury one’s wife when each of you has been married three times, witches, an abandoned house containing a printing of books by the previous occupant, and so on. 

 

I should quote a marvelous line from “Two Witches.” 

 

Right’s right, and the temptation to do right

When I can hurt someone by doing it

Has always been too much for me, it has.

 

That’s a deliciously poisonous statement right there, and far too true as well. 

 

And this one from “A Fountain, a Bottle, a Donkey’s Ears and Some Books”:

 

We struck a road I didn’t recognize,

But welcomed for the chance to lave my shoes 

In dust once more.

 

That is definitely me. The whole poem is a delightful adventure. 

 

There are also quite a number of memorable short poems in this collection, many of them well known. Here are my favorites - although honestly I could have quoted any of them. New Hampshire is a strong collection, with few weak poems in it. 

 

Fire and Ice

 

Some say the world will end in fire,

Some say in ice.

From what I’ve tasted of desire

I hold with those who favor fire.

But if it had to perish twice,

I think I know enough of hate

To say that for destruction ice

Is also great

And would suffice.

 

Once again, underestimate Frost at your own risk. He is not a “safe” or “nice” poet like some think, based on the few “safe” poems taught in school. (Although the decline of poetry in high school English courses is really sad.) Many, like the one above, are prophetic, in the old sense, that of speaking truth - unutterable truth sometimes - in the language of poetry and metaphor. (That’s one reason the loss of poetry in our culture is such a worrisome loss. We lose the ability to understand truth on a less literal yet deeper and richer level.)

 

Back to this poem, I love the personification of passion (fire) and hate (ice). I think it gets at why things like racism and hate are misunderstood in our nation. Racism isn’t some fiery dislike or rage most of the time. It is an icy cold indifference to suffering, to inequality, to the structures that determine our opportunities. Fire destroys quickly, but its effects are evanescent. Ice, on the other hand, grinds mountains to powder and shapes landscapes for millions of years. The cold indifference of hate is indeed great and its effects lasting. 

 

This next poem was one I remember deeply affecting me as a child. I can’t entirely explain how or why, but it was one of the reasons I became a poetry lover. 

 

Dust of Snow

 

The way a crow

Shook down on me

The dust of snow

From a hemlock tree

 

Has given my heart

A change of mood

And saved some part

Of a day I had rued.

 

Where to start with this one? Frost uses a super simple form. ABAB, with two feet per line, a combination of iambs and anapests. He also chooses to omit all adjectives and adverbs, making the poem spare and stark. 

 

And then, what of the imagery? While those of us who care about plants know that a hemlock tree is not the hemlock plant used to poison Socrates, this is certainly an intentional allusion. So, you have a crow (a symbol of death), hemlock (likewise), and a dusting of cold, lifeless snow. How do these symbols and their meaning to the narrator change his mood for the better? And in that last word, both a plant (rue) and its meaning of regret? That’s interesting. Is it the reminder of his mortality that makes him feel better? Perhaps he wishes to seize the day now. Or, perhaps, whatever he has regretted about the day seems insignificant in light of the brevity of life. Somehow, however, a viscerally unpleasant experience (getting snow down one’s neck) and a reminder of death makes things better. As I said, I likely had no conscious understanding of all this when I was age 10 or so, but it spoke to me somehow. 

 

Another one in this collection is a complicated, paradoxical, philosophical musing. 

 

Nothing Gold Can Stay

Nature’s first green is gold,

Her hardest hue to hold.

Her early leaf’s a flower;

But only so an hour.

Then leaf subsides to leaf.

So Eden sank to grief,

So dawn goes down to day.

Nothing gold can stay.

 

Another short, simple poem. But so very fascinating. By “gold,” Frost must certainly mean the New England sort, rather than the Western sort - we have gold on (and in) our hills much of the year. And no, despite what people from greener climes claim, it isn’t brown - it is definitely gold. 

 

But Frost was a New Englander, and things aren’t gold for very long. Just in spring and fall, and briefly. 

 

The most interesting part of this poem to me is the idea that going from buds to full leaves is comparable to The Fall - a loss of Eden. The metaphor works. Our state of innocence (that early leaf as a flower) cannot last. We change, we grow, we learn, and we understand sorrow and grief. It is beautiful and achingly sad. 

 

Back in high school, I memorized two Frost poems. “The Road Less Travelled” was one, of course - that’s a staple of English Lit, as well as one of the most misunderstood Frost poems. The other was “Stopping By Woods on a Snowy Evening.” I won’t quote it here, but did want to mention that when my wife and I were dating, we used to take walks in the snowy woods near where her parents lived. And I quoted it to her one time. She’s not particularly into poetry, but she took note, and eventually gave me my Frost collection as a token of her affection for me, poetry and all. 

 

I’ll end with a poem that is not as well known, but that I discovered this reading. 

 

Misgiving

 

All crying, 'We will go with you, O Wind!'

The foliage follow him, leaf and stem;

But a sleep oppresses them as they go,

And they end by bidding him stay with them.

 

Since ever they flung abroad in spring

The leaves had promised themselves this flight,

Who now would fain seek sheltering wall,

Or thicket, or hollow place for the night.

 

And now they answer his summoning blast

With an ever vaguer and vaguer stir,

Or at utmost a little reluctant whirl

That drops them no further than where they were.

 

I only hope that when I am free

As they are free to go in quest

Of the knowledge beyond the bounds of life

It may not seem better to me to rest.       

 

Oh man, this one spoke to my experience the last several years. So many people I know (of my parents age in particular, but not exclusively) seem to have stopped growing and learning at some point in their lives. Some, for example, seem to have discovered Ayn Rand and Republican politics in their teens or twenties, and have been impervious to reality ever since. Others ossified in the early 40s, and seem to have gone backwards in spiritual growth from there, becoming increasingly racist and unempathetic as they have aged. I literally had a conversation about this with a younger relative, and we both expressed a hope that we can avoid the “Boomer” fate of becoming increasingly set in our ideological ways as we age - that we can still remain open minded and flexible and compassionate as we grow old. 

 

Frost uses leaves in the wind as a perfect metaphor for this. Having longed for freedom, they choose to rest as close to where they started as possible. That last stanza is just fantastic. I too hope that since I am indeed free to go in quest of the knowledge beyond the bounds of life, that I do not decide just to rest where I am. 

 

I very much enjoyed reading this collection, and can recommend it along with Frost’s poetry in general.

The Girl Who Fell Beneath Fairyland by Catherynne Valente

Source of book: Audiobook from the library

 

It is hard to believe that it has been eight years since I first read The Girl Who Circumnavigated Fairyland as part of a brief book club. My older kids read at least the first three books back then, but I never went beyond the first one. Then, two years ago, I borrowed the audiobook for one of our road trips, so that my youngest (who missed out the first time) would get a chance to experience it. She enjoyed it, so I put the others on our list. 

 

The Girl Who Fell Beneath Fairyland is the second book in the series. 

 

Like the first book, this one is kind of a twisted version of fairy legends, perhaps similar to the Tim Burton view, a bit like Lewis Carroll, with the absurdity of imagination you see in Douglas Adams, but also the philosophical ideas expected in, say, Terry Pratchett. They are full of whimsy for the kids - although rather dark and scary in places - and packed with “Easter Eggs” for the adults. I find them rather enjoyable, myself, but mileage appears to vary. 

 

This book continues the adventures of September, a girl whose father is off fighting in World War Two, and whose mother is a “Rosie the Riveter.” Having saved Fairyland from the Marquess while losing her shadow, she has returned to real life, but struggles to adapt. She knows she will return, but doesn’t know when. 

 

She eventually does, but finds Fairyland again in distress, this time because everyone is losing their shadows - and their magic. The problem appears to stem from September’s shadow, who is now ruling “Fairyland Below” as Queen Halloween. This is a distressing state of affairs, which September must try to set right. 

 

September manages (after some adventures) to get down below, and finds herself reunited with her friends Saturday and Ell the wyverary. Well, not exactly them, but their shadows, which are...a bit different. 

 

In Valente’s vision, “shadows” are not just literal shadows, but a person’s other side. In some ways, it is their dark side, but I think a more accurate description would be that the shadow is a person’s id - it is their more primitive and unfiltered side. Thus, Saturday isn’t the shy boy he usually is, but an aggressive and assertive sort, as he would deep down like to be. 

 

Even more to the point, Halloween is September’s id, who always wants to have her way, even when that way hurts others. This version of her isn’t evil - she desires the end to her deepest pain: her absent and endangered father. Her shadow-stealing all traces back to the desire to have those she loves with her and safe. 

 

Ana Juan's illustrations are delightful

There are some truly outstanding scenes in this book, particularly the one in the library with Avogadra, the Questing Monk, who explains the classification system for plots. Here is just a bit of it:

 

“Already we know that Prince Myrrh is an Endgame Object Type W—that’s Wonderful, since we have yet to see if he will be any Use in governing. He sleeps suspended in a Theseus-type narrative matrix; however, he does seem to have some gravitational pull on events, which is unusual for a T-Type. After all, we still remember him even after all these years. It’s far easier to forget something than to remember it. Remembering takes all kinds of magic. No one knows who he is or what he looks like or where to find him, and yet we all know of him. We all know he sleeps in an unopenable box on an unbreakable bower. That’s a frightfully strong E.K.T. Field for one little creature!”

“What’s an E.K.T. Field?”

Avogadra grinned. “Whilst on an expedition to prove the Rule of Three, my honored colleague Black Fermat hypothesized that certain Quest Objects cast a field around them, like a magnet or a planet—an Everyone Knows That Field. This is how they draw in unsuspecting Heroes. When an E.K.T. Field is in effect, everyone within its power will know a good deal about the Object, even if they can’t say where they heard about it or why it’s so deathly important to remember all that dusty old nonsense. They’ll chat about it with any passing stranger like it’s sizzling local gossip.”

 

There are so many Easter Eggs in this section for anyone who knows mythology or finds cookie-cutter plots annoying. Kids may not get it, but adults will. 

 

I also enjoyed the mad scientist, who invents outlandish contraptions that then have to discover their purpose. Including the “squidhole,” which is a kind of wormhole type portal, but smaller and easier to manage without quantum physics. 

 

There is also a good play on the labyrinth myth - which turns out to be the entire quest in a way. 

 

This book is a bit different from the first one in a couple of ways. First, September is a bit older, so she thinks more like a teenager than a child. As Valente notes in the first book, children are “heartless.” Now, September is growing a heart, which means she has to be more nuanced in her actions toward others. The moral complexities are now apparent to her. In that sense, the book itself is more ambiguous. The shadows are essentially people, and their desire for freedom must somehow be reconciled to the need for shadows and their persons to be reunited to make whole beings again. 

 

Likewise, the book lacks a true villain. Halloween is September, or at least a side of her, so she can’t be destroyed. Rather, she has to be somehow healed or made whole. We also see the return of the Marquess, who, at the end of the last book, was revealed to be a girl from an abusive family who dragged herself back to Fairyland, and determined to punish it for making her return to her horrible real life. Rather than go back again, she puts herself in a deep sleep. But her shadow is discovered by September, and the two have to team up. 

 

This is a rather interesting development. In many ways, the Marquess (aka Queen Mallow, aka Maud) is a straight-up villain in the first book. Except that when we discover her true identity, she becomes much more complex and understandable. Some reviewers have complained that the second book undermines the character development of the Marquess from the first book, but I disagree. The second book continues the process. The Marquess was never pure evil, but rather a deeply hurt person acting out in pain and despair. It seems natural that, given time, we would come to understand her - and she would have a chance at redemption. 

 

I think that the paradox here is that the Fairyland books are all about quests and fantasy, but they undermine the usual tropes. This bothers some who expect the clear good/evil dichotomy of fairy tales and fantasy. Valente eschews these, instead choosing to populate her world with characters of the same shades of grey we find in the real world, where we have very few true villains, particularly in our everyday lives. Fairyland isn’t a video game, where you slash and kill anything that looks dark or ugly. Rather, people (and I use that term to include all the sentient creatures in the books) are also puzzles to be solved, just like unopenable boxes and labyrinths. And that is a very grown-up quest, come to think of it. 

 

While the author narrated the first audiobook, this one was narrated by Valente’s friend, folk singer S. J. Tucker, who apparently has branched out into audiobooks. She did a fine enough job - I have no complaints. The one peculiar difference is that Valente pronounces the wyvern/library hybrid that Ell is with a short “i” while Tucker uses the long “i,” which is how I said it in my head. Who knows? Newly invented imaginary creatures lack standardized pronunciation, I suppose. 

On Bullshit by Harry G. Franklin

 Source of book: Borrowed from the library

 

True story #1:

 

Person A: Posts obviously false, defamatory, and inflammatory claim about Rep. Ilhan Omar. (Maybe one like this?)

 

Persons B, C, and D: “That’s not true.” Posts debunking from reputable fact checkers. 

 

Person A: “Well, maybe she didn’t say it, but she is so evil it is the sort of thing she would say.” 

 

***

 

True story #2:

 

Person E: Posts claim that Hydroxychloroquine cures Covid-19, sourced from a right-wing lobby group, of course. 

 

Person F (me): “That’s not true, and please stop posting stuff like that, because it makes things harder for my wife who cares for Covid patients at the hospital.” Posts multiple peer reviewed current studies giving proof. 

 

Person E: Deletes my comment and blocks me from further commenting, but leaves misleading post up. 

 

***

 

True story #3:

 

Joe Biden: Picks woman of color Kamala Harris as running mate.

 

Il Toupee: ““He said that, and some people would say that men are insulted by that and some people would say it’s fine. I don’t know…”

 

***

 

These three stories are good illustrations of what Harry G. Frankfurt defines as “bullshit.” This book is really just a 2005 republication of a 1986 article that Frankfurt wrote. It seems supremely relevant right now, for reasons that are obvious after reading it. 

 

Frankfurt spends the course of the book getting at exactly what bullshit is, what it isn’t, and what it means. To do that, he starts with a related concept of “humbug,” which is an interesting enough idea. The two aren’t exactly the same, but they are related. Humbuggery shares a few commonalities with bullshit, particularly the fact that neither is the same thing as lying (see below), yet are both deceptive. Both also are concerned, not with the truth, but with accomplishing a goal. In illustrating humbug, Frankfurt gives an example of a typical jingoistic Fourth of July speech. It isn’t a lie, even if it fudges the truth. But the point is to communicate (or misrepresent) what the speaker feels about certain things. It creates an impression. 

 

It is clear that what makes Fourth of July oration humbug is not fundamentally that the speaker regards his statements as false. Rather, just as Black’s account suggests, the orator intends these statements to convey a certain impression of himself. He is not trying to deceive anyone concerning American history. What he cares about is what people think of him. He wants them to think of him as a patriot, as someone who has deep thoughts and feelings about the origins and the mission of our country, who appreciates the importance of religion, who is sensitive to the greatness of our history, whose pride in that history is combined with humility before God, and so on. 

 

That is pretty good as far as humbug goes, but it isn’t quite bullshit - although it is close. Frankfurt looks then at where we find bullshit, and what that can tell us. On the one hand, there is plenty of off-the-cuff bullshit, made up for the moment - we lawyers sometimes have to do this when things take a turn we weren’t prepared for. (Sometimes this is inadequate preparation, but more often, it is when one or both of the parties say something rather different from what they told us…) But often, bullshit is actually carefully crafted. 

 

The realms of advertising and of public relations, and the nowadays closely related realm of politics, are replete with instances of bullshit so unmitigated that they can serve among the most indisputable and classic paradigms of the concept. 

 

The real core concept, for Frankfurt, is that bullshit doesn’t care about truth. An intentional lie is, like truth, based on truth. For bullshit, truth is irrelevant. Frankfurt tells of a conversation involving Wittgenstein as an illustration, and posits that the issue wasn’t that his friend said something wrong, but that she didn’t seem to care about accuracy. 

 

Her fault is not that she fails to get things right, but that she is not even trying....He construes her as engaged in an activity to which the distinction between what is true and what is false is crucial, and yet as taking no interest in whether what she says is true or false. It is in this sense that Pascal’s [the friend] statement is unconnected to a concern with truth: she is not concerned with the truth-value of what she says. This is why she cannot be regarded as lying; for she does not presume that she knows the truth, and therefore she cannot be deliberately promulgating a proposition that she presumes to be false: Her statement is grounded in neither a belief that it is true, nore, as a lie must be, in a belief that it is not true. It is just this lack of connection to a concern with truth--this indifference to how things really are--that I regard as of the essence of bullshit.

 

Frankfurt also looks at the related idea of “hot air,” which is a fairly close concept. Both hot air and excrement, as he puts it, are “emptied of all informative content” - of all nutritive value. Likewise, the issue for bullshit isn’t that it is false (although it often is), but that it is phony - it is produced without concern for its truth or falsity. 

 

Again, Frankfurt contrasts this with a true liar: 

 

Telling a lie is an act with a sharp focus. It is designed to insert a particular falsehood at a specific point in a set or system of beliefs, in order to avoid the consequences of having that point occupied with truth. This requires a degree of craftsmanship, in which the teller of the lie submits to objective constraints imposed by what he takes to be the truth. The liar is inescapably concerned with truth-values. In order to invent a lie at all, he must think he knows what is true. And in order to invent an effective lie, he must design his falsehood under the guidance of that truth.

 

This is definitely true. As I will discuss below, lying is definitely an issue. Frankfurt asserts, and I agree, that bullshit is actually a greater threat to the truth than lies, for that reason. There is an interesting passage that briefly touches on Augustine’s different kinds of lies, most of which are lies for a purpose. The one exception is the lie for the sake of lying - what liars do. Most of us lie from time to time, but it isn’t a lifestyle, exactly. 

 

For most people, the fact that a statement is false constitutes in itself a reason, however weak and easily overridden, not to make the statement. For Saint Augustine’s pure liar it is, on the contrary, a reason for making it. For the bullshitter it is in itself neither a reason in favor nor a reason against. Both in lying and in telling the truth people are guided by their beliefs concerning the way things are. These guide them as they endeavor either to describe the world correctly or to describe it deceitfully. For this reason, telling lies does not tend to unfit a person for telling the truth in the same way that bullshitting tends to. Through excessive indulgence in the latter activity, which involves making assertions without paying attention to anything except what it suits one to say, a person’s normal habit of attending to the way things are may become attenuated or lost. 

…

The bullshitter ignores these demands altogether. He does not reject the authority of the truth, as the liar does, and oppose himself to it. He pays no attention to it at all. By virtue of this, bullshit is a greater enemy of the truth than lies are. 

 

Now, about the stories above, and the applicability of the concept of bullshit to our own times. 

 

First, the blindingly obvious: Donald Trump is a bullshit artist. In fact, that is really his only skill. He is able, over and over and over and over, to simply ignore truth altogether and say whatever he wants and thinks will get him what he wants. It is easy enough to look at the 20,000+ falsehoods he has told over the course of his presidency and think of him as a liar. And, to a degree he is a pathological liar. But a better description is “bullshitter.” Truth has no meaning to him. It has no effect on his life and never has. (That’s the advantage of wealth, power, and privilege.) 

 

He’s not the only one, however. While politics in general have become more of a popularity contest than ever, the American Right in particular has had to rely on a combination of lies and bullshit to stay in power. There are, as Frankfurt describes above, specific places where they have substituted specific lies where having truth occupy the ground would be problematic. But more often, they can simply bullshit and will be believed. Certainly the way that some people still hear something Trump says and thinks it might be true is puzzling. 

 

I have also experienced way too much bullshit from my former religious tradition. One eye-opener was in a certain sermon. I call it out as lies, but I would probably now classify it as bullshit. The actual truth of history is irrelevant - the propaganda about how white Evangelicals are the only good people in the world is the point. The bullshit is said to create a certain effect - a feeling of tribal self-righteousness - and truth is essentially irrelevant. 

 

Oh, and there was also Bill Gothard, who is more like Trump than you would think. Gothard is essentially Trump without the crudity. But all of the bullshit. So many claims that he made were straight up false - but not exactly lies. While there were a few cases where I think he deliberately substituted a lie for a truth where absolutely needed, it wasn’t his way of doing things. Mostly, he bullshitted. He made claims that he had no idea whether they were actually true or not - and he didn’t care. If saying something got him where he wanted, he would say it. Classic bullshit. 

 

Now, let’s look at the three stories. The Trump one was in the news. And, it is typical Trump: “some people say...I don’t know if it is true” is his modus operandi, from the Obama birtherism to his attacks against Harris; from his dog whistles about racial minorities to his ass-kissing of white evangelicals. Note that the truth doesn’t matter. He says it without even caring if it is true or not - he is able to say it for the effect it has on his listeners, particularly his base. This is classic bullshit. And it is one of literally tens of thousands of examples from Trump. He is essentially bullshit on a stick. 

 

[Note here: this is why people like me who have active bullshit detectors and care about truth more than power find Trump to be completely loathsome.] 

 

The other two stories involve former friends. I have been purging my life of people who repeatedly refuse to engage with truth, but fall back on bullshit, ideology, and slogans. (And, of course, anyone who says racist shit...that’s a deal breaker for me.) In cases like this, where people choose to push bullshit, even when called on it, I’m just done. 

 

Let's look at them. The first one isn’t just bullshit, but slander. It is saying something false about another person to hurt their reputation. I was raised to believe that slander was a serious sin, but apparently it doesn’t actually matter to many white evangelicals these days - they are more than willing to pass along defamatory bullshit without bothering - or caring, apparently - whether it is true. That’s the very definition of bullshit. Does it stir up hate and fear against someone “liberal”? (Particularly if female or non-white, I’ve noticed…) Well, then it might just as well be true. Reality doesn’t matter, just the effect. 

 

The second one is also harmful, because it isn’t just pushing an ineffective and risky “cure,” it is making the lives of medical professionals like my wife harder, because they have to put up with being browbeaten by family members who are sure that all the doctors and nurses are withholding life-saving treatments out of a hate for Trump. Because that has to be the only explanation, right? It can’t possibly be that the science (reality) itself contradicts the claim. 

 

Now, I get it if someone posts something occasionally without vetting it. I prefer to check stuff first, but not everyone does. However, when you get called on it, apologise and take it down. What I don’t get is the way people don’t seem to even care whether it is true. But that is how bullshit works. 

 

By the way, I concealed the demographics of those two ex-friends. I think it might be relevant, however, because I think there is a pattern. Both are Boomers. Boomer females. Boomer female evangelical conservatives. (That might be redundant.) And both have made opposition to abortion their life’s purpose. 

 

I think that last one is also extremely relevant. The anti-abortion industry relies on a combination of deliberate lies (quite a few, actually) but also on a mountain of bullshit. Maintaining that high degree of fear and hate - you have to believe that a large percentage of women worldwide are vicious murderers who have no conscience - while avoiding engagement with the sociological reasons women seek abortions - requires a constant stream of outrage-stoking crap. A mountain of never-ending bullshit. And all that bullshit eventually has an effect. As Frankfurt puts it:

 

“Through excessive indulgence in the latter activity, which involves making assertions without paying attention to anything except what it suits one to say, a person’s normal habit of attending to the way things are may become attenuated or lost.” 

 

I believe that is what has happened to a lot of people I know and used to respect. The Evangelical Industrial Complex, like the anti-abortion industry, relies on bullshit. Bullshit and ideology (and a few carefully placed lies at crucial points.) Over years - and especially 6-7 decades - it takes its toll on a person’s ability to think critically - to even engage with reality. Instead, it becomes ideology the whole way down, and a con artist like Trump is able to speak their language - which is...bullshit. (Oh, and hey! Saw yet another Q Anon sticker on the way to work today. What is wrong with you people?!) 

 

Anyway, this is a good, short, and informative read. I think the best takeaway is that bullshit, unlike truth or falsehood, is unconcerned with the existence of truth, facts, or reality. My wife and I, being raised in cults as we were, learned at a young age to detect and reject bullshit. I am hopeful that the younger generations, having survived advertising and corporate focus grouped everything, are better than my parents’ generation at this. I am trying to do my part to help my own kids learn to detect bullshit and insist on truth. 

 

 

As a lawyer, part of my job is to help people avoid bullshit, particularly that from con artists. If I could just convince my clients to check with me before sending someone money, life would be better. And, if they would just believe that if something is too good to be true…IT IS.

 

Allen Faulton wrote a great piece on spotting bullshit a couple of years ago, and it is still great.

 

"Those Who Wish To Seem": Performative Piety

I wouldn’t consider myself a particularly devoted fan of Rush. I mean, I can probably name a dozen songs off the top of my head at best, and I can’t quote the complete lyrics to an album like a few people I know. 

 

But, I discovered their music during a time of spiritual upheaval, and found that several of their songs spoke to me. 

 

Neil Peart, drummer and lyricist for the band, died recently of brain cancer, causing me to think a bit about some of the songs. I decided I might write a few blog pieces derived from these musings. 

 

This is the first in the series. 

 

***

 

“Limelight”

 

Living on a lighted stage

Approaches the unreal

For those who think and feel

In touch with some reality

Beyond the gilded cage

 

Cast in this unlikely role

Well equipped to act

With insufficient tact

One must put up barriers

To keep oneself intact

 

Living in the limelight

The universal dream

For those who wish to seem

Those who wish to be

Must put aside the alienation

Get on with the fascination

The real relation

The underlying theme

 

Living in a fisheye lens

Caught in the camera eye

I have no heart to lie

I can't pretend a stranger

Is a long awaited friend

 

All the world's indeed a stage

And we are merely players

Performers and portrayers

Each another's audience

Outside the gilded cage

 

Living in the limelight

The universal dream

For those who wish to seem

Those who wish to be

Must put aside the alienation

Get on with the fascination

The real relation

The underlying theme

 

*** 

Limelight remains my favorite Rush song, and with good reason. I am an introvert - I’m a social introvert, but I need my space to recover. This song is, in my opinion, the best description ever written of how it feels to be an introvert in a world which rewards extroversion and punishes introversion. Peart (clearly an introvert) wrote it about his experience with celebrity and the compromises of being a performer. But I think it is more than that. The lyrics resonate with all of us who have felt pressured to perform, to conform, to be someone we are not to make someone else - or some system - happy. 

 

I have blogged many times about my experiences in Bill Gothard’s cult, and later in an increasingly toxic Evangelical subculture. When I found myself working through the aftermath of my experiences, trying to sort out what I still believed, and why, I kept returning to this song. 

 

“The universal dream of those who wish to seem…”

 

There is a universal here. Christ was rather obsessed with it, come to think of it. People who latch on to legalistic religious and cultural practices and use them to both determine their own worth and to look down on others. 

 

I call this Performative Piety.

 

Just like acting, it is a performance. It may be “genuine” in some sense, and the person may be perfectly sincere. But it is still a performance for an audience. In the case of many people in my parents’ generation - particularly the women - you see this same pattern: seeking ever more “piety” to earn the love and approval of the Divine. That’s my experience, in any case. Gothardism is full of people like this, to be honest. Some are quite earnest in trying to earn God’s approval, to be fair, even if it is exactly that - trying to earn approval. Most people, however, in my experience, are not nearly as interested in earning God’s approval, as in earning the approval of other people. 

 

Here is what I believe Performative Piety is:

 

It is those practices which are done, not to benefit other people, but are used to gain approval for the one doing them. 

 

There are therefore two prongs: is the practice done with the intent of benefiting others, and is it done to make God or humans think better of you?

 

Christ describes the Pharisee as standing on the corner and praying loudly. This is Performative Piety in its essence. But note as well what he prays: “I thank God I am not like other men…” This is the key part of the problem. His goal is to draw attention to how good he is, so that God and other people will recognize how good he is. (And, in order to do that, draw attention to how not-good other people are.)

 

In other passages, Christ talks about piety performed in secret. Fasting that nobody else knows about. Giving and helping in quiet ways, without fanfare. Prayers that are simple and secret. 

 

This is why legalists - those who value Performance Piety - love to use cultural signifiers which are easily visible. Say, for example, clothing styles. These are perfect for Performance Piety because they have no real spiritual value outside of their visibility. If you are inside your own home, nobody really knows if you are wearing a denim jumper or underwear. But when you wear something in public, others can make an instant judgment as to whether you have performed piety to their preferences. 

 

There are others, of course. A favorite one in Fundie circles is being a stay at home mom. It is doubly valuable as Performative Piety AND as a way to flaunt one’s economic privilege for all to see. (Which is exactly why it has been used to “demonstrate” why whites are superior to non-whites, dating back before the Civil War.) One thing that should jump out about Performative Piety is that it is often very gendered. Men are expected to perform masculinity differently - and M.O.N.E.Y. is a very important part of their performance. Women, however, have all kinds of performances they are expected to make. Other than having money (being a “good provider”) and “leading,” whatever that means, men only have the Performance Piety requirements common to all humans, like being opposed to certain facets of pop culture (see:Harry Potter) and being loudly right wing in politics. And, rather obviously, these “pieties” make sense only in the culture or subculture in which they exist. 

 

The reason that Christ inveighed against Performative Piety so much is that it reinforced those hierarchies, and allowed the privileged to dismiss others as less “godly” on the basis of appearance. It also encourages an “us versus them” attitude - one that has come to roost here in the United States the last few years. People who don’t (or can’t) perform piety the same way are the enemy, and can be treated as subhuman. (See, for example, James Dobson and his white nationalist approach to immigrants.)  

 

In my own journey, it was this need for Performative Piety which led to a significant crisis. For a variety of reasons, neither my wife nor I had any interest in participating in Cultural Fundamentalism. We had an egalitarian marriage. My wife had a career. I work reduced hours to take a more involved role in parenting and educating our children. She wears clothes which are normal for our culture. We let our kids read stuff like Harry Potter, for crying out loud! 

 

The problem is, when you are the child of someone whose sense of self-worth is tied up with Performance Piety, you become part of that performance. You and your family are expected to act and look a certain way, to prove to God that your parent was a good Christian. We did not perform piety the right way, which then reflected on my parents. Alas, their need for us to conform was so strong that relationships were badly damaged as a result. 

 

Remember, this is in the case of someone who is at least genuine and sincere in her pursuit. It gets even more difficult when you have someone manipulative who can take advantage of Performative Piety to further their own ends. (And oh yes, have I experienced this.)

 

The sincere Pietist becomes used to judging people based on how they perform piety, which gives an opportunity to manipulators. Such a person waits until the Pietist becomes unhappy that someone else isn’t performing piety the right way, and then makes sure that he/she does perform that particular piety. And then reminds the Pietist of just how much the non-performer is failing. It’s the old narcissist method of getting ahead by putting others down. The reason Performative Piety is a perfect weapon for manipulators is that it allows them to seem as if they are being good people, without the burden of having to actually be good people. 

 

...the universal dream of those who wish to seem. Those who wish to be…

 

And here is the worst part of Performative Piety. We humans have a limited ability to do things. A limited attention span. Limited energy and time. When we focus on Performative Piety, it takes away those valuable resources of time, energy, focus, and ability. We are thus less able to do things that are genuinely good. (For example: caring for the vulnerable, taking in immigrants, spending time with our kids, cultivating relationships, wrestling with ethics.) Instead, we spend our time following pietistic rules and trying to get others to do the same. When your efforts and religion are spent trying to impress God and impress others, you have little if any time and energy left to actually follow Christ. And that, by the way, is the point. 

 

Religious institutions have a deep need to cultivate Performative Piety.

 

Why? Well, for one thing, tribalism sells. And a tribe needs to know who is IN and who is OUT. You can take a look at the Pharisees to see this in action. “I thank god I am not like other men.” WE don’t dress like that. WE don’t read those books. WE don’t listen to that kind of music (usually music invented by black people…) WE don’t work outside the home. We vote Republican. WE say the right pious things. WE aren’t like those liberals. (Or black people, LGBTQ people, or those nasty, dirty immigrants. We aren’t like them either…which is why we have to keep them out...) WE obsess about criminalizing abortion as the only political test that matters. 

 

So, tribalism requires certain cultural performances to show membership. But also, Performative Piety gives people what they crave. Approval. Group membership. And that wonderful warm self-righteous feeling. It’s addictive. I can attest to that from experience. So of course churches want to sell that. It it is SO much easier to sell a political or cultural cause than to sell genuine piety that nobody sees. And also, you can’t see that kind of piety, by definition, so it doesn’t work as a tribalist marker. That sense of belonging and approval (and self-righteous superiority) is a hell of a drug, and it is hard to give up, even as the rules get more and more restrictive and absurd. 

 

Performative Piety also gives churches (and subcultures - and cults) a lot of power. Because leadership (or influencers) have the power to determine what “piety” must be performed, they have control. And they can use that power and the power of group disapproval to punish those who fail to measure up. That’s another reason why Performative Piety is so attractive to churches. 

 

It is beyond the scope of this post to get into how badly this addiction to Performative Piety has harmed the reputation of Christianity in America, or how it led to people to elect a white supremacist to the presidency, but it is all connected. And it is continuing to alienate from the faith anyone who wishes to BE, not SEEM. Those who are in touch with that reality, beyond the gilded cage of self-righteous, and vicious religion. 

 

Those who wish to be

Must put aside the alienation

Get on with the fascination

The real relation

The underlying theme

 

Loving your neighbor will never be as cheap a thrill as Performative Piety, particularly if done without blowing the trumpet to announce it. But it is the underlying theme. Working out what it means to love one’s neighbor in the world we live in is no easy task, but it is the core of true Christianity. Those who wish to be must pursue this. 

 

One final thought:

 

The way you can tell someone who is addicted to Performative Piety is whether they feel entitled to judge others for failing to perform - that is, to follow their preferred rules.

 

Hey, that’s something else Christ said! Those who go around telling others to perform piety the “right” way do so because their own sense of self worth is tied up in that quest to impress God and others. Those who are simply following Christ without fanfare don’t really have time to obsess about whether others are following the cultural rules. In fact, if they wish to follow Christ, they would find themselves seeing the “sinners” as the ones who are actually part of the Kingdom, not the religious establishment. Rush describes it as “put[ing] aside the alienation, and that is a good line. Ultimately, Performative Piety is about alienation. It is intended to alienate one from “dirty” other people. And the more rules you make, the more people you exclude. You become part of a smaller group that you can believe is the “elect,” and look down on everyone else. As I said, it’s a hell of a drug. But it is every bit as damaging as crack or meth, and will eventually kill your soul.