Abandoning Our Tree Tradition

 This will be the last essay that I write before the New Year. I have some topics and ideas for content all lined up in my outgoing file, but in order to keep myself focused on family and friends and gratitude for this holiday season, I’m taking a little break. I hope this essay finds you looking forward to your own traditions and making new ones. Thanks for your dedicated readership! That’s a huge present for me!

Likely, as you read this, your home is decorated by colorful lights, tableaus of singing carolers, snowmen, snow globes, variations of Santa Claus, even a little scene made of tiny statues depicting a mother and father leaning over a newborn infant in an animal food trough surrounded by a cast of animal visitors, a winged and hovering chubby baby and three sagely old dudes bearing kingly gifts (and apparently, rubber cigars) and possibly a large, formerly living pine tree standing in a bowl of murky water. That's basically what our house looks like, too. At least it did in previous years.

This year, all of the above is in place, as usual, however, instead of a formerly live pine tree, we repurposed a smaller decorative plastic tree lit with swirly fiber optic lights and surrounded it with a conical base of books set in a kind of circular barricade and draped with colorful lights. Heaven knows we have enough books between us to manage at least three more such displays, but for us, this was plenty. Micki came up with the idea and rendered it perfectly even though such a display was a withdrawal of our former tree-related decorating.

Christmas trees are ubiquitous at this time of year. Recently there has been a resurgence of the live tree as the centerpiece for holiday trimming. For a brief and deeply tacky time, faux trees were quite hip and popular, especially since they were less likely to go up in roaring conflagrations like inverted rockets if they got too dry. Some of the fake trees were quite convincing (at a distance) and came pre-lit with flashing lights and “flocking” which made them appear to have bits of freshly fallen snow on their plastic boughs. Like with everything lately, costs have gone up and a similarly-sized fake tree could cost up to double what a real fir tree might cost. Certainly, that’s a one-time expenditure that ideally ought to give the frugal buyer years of undimmed holiday exuberance. 

For a cheap-o like me, those premium prices pose a tall order for an obviously plastic tree that tries and fails to give the charm and sincerity of a real tree. Sure, it is simpler to set up and you can keep it up far longer, switching out the colored lights and ornaments to keep up with the New Year’s holiday onslaught. Red lights and hearts for Valentine’s day; green lights and Irish-themed beer coasters for St. Patrick's Day; multi-colored lights and bunnies and eggs for Easter; read-white-and-blue lights and flags and tiny foil fireworks for Independence Day. Just shop near the front of your super mega Walmart and you can decorate your yearlong tree any way you wish. If you can hang in there, it will soon be Christmas again and no need to root through the attic for the beat up and torn box the faux tree came in. It just depends on if you’re willing to forgo taking the kids to a tree farm or lot, miss out on imbibing hot cocoa with plenty of super tiny marshmallows and the bright, fresh smell of a live tree in your house and sap on your hands. 

The departure from our yearslong tradition of loading a Frasier fir tree on the roof of our small SUV the Friday after Thanksgiving and setting it up in our den (along with pictures of me cutting the twine and someone helping make sure it’s straight in the heavy treestand) came as we drove to our middle son’s in-laws early in November. We were anticipating our now one month-old granddaughter's arrival, and we knew that we would be spending Christmas with her and her newly-minted parents at their forested abode. With our youngest traveling to be with his sweetheart for the holidays and our oldest living the busy schedule of a young, work-a-day laborer, we knew our house wouldn't be the same nexus of smiling and cheery family and visitors as in previous years. All this made rational sense, but it still wasn’t easy.

Right over the hill from our house at the mouth of the driveway that leads to our YMCA is a gigantic, three-storey blow-up snowman that heralds our town’s largest tree lot. Every Monday, Wednesday and Friday morning when I head there to work out, or any time that we traverse the town roads to our usual grocery shopping destinations, the glossy, dark green trees under the sprawling tents seem to beckon to us seductively. As we drove to and from the farm where our daughter-in-law’s parents live, we passed thickly planted tree farms and countless family vehicles stuffed with happy, rosy-cheeked passengers and loaded with a twine-wrapped and strapped tree on the roof. The temptation to have a tree in the house was super strong. It pained us to go without. We helped each other by reminding ourselves of the commitment having a freshly cut tree requires. Since we would be away, a big green tree in the house would be a challenging prospect. We had to stay strong.

  

Micki helpfully pointed out that Frasier firs need to be watered regularly if they are to stay shiny and pliable during the weeks between Thanksgiving and New Years and maybe beyond. As the son of a lifelong fireman, I mentioned the hazards of keeping a drying pine tree in the house unattended. They are like mega torches and can render a home to smoking cinders in no time. She explained that our two otherwise self-sufficient cats were quite prone to chaos and mayhem while alone and bored without their human companions to cater to their every whim. We could come home to a fallen tree, previously precious dashed ornaments, gallons of spilled tree water or far worse. I said if Hal or Freya (our feline friends) knocked over our book-tree hybrid, it could be easily cleaned up once we unpacked and settled from our visit. No chance of smashed ornaments, a very low chance of the fake fiber optics catching fire. We both nodded slowly, sadly. “It's true”, she said. “It's true,” I agreed.

“Likewise”, one of us stammered breathlessly as we passed yet another tree farm offering free cocoa and a complimentary wreath of fresh greens with the purchase of a tree, “what’s the point of having a real tree if no one is there to enjoy it?” Again we nodded slowly, murmuring how true this was. 

We usually put our presents to one another under the tree for us to open on Christmas Eve (Santa’s gifts for everyone are placed by the hearth by Mr. Kringle himself in fancy red bags and named stockings to be opened Christmas Morning). We knew that those packages would have been sent to their respective prospective openers or stashed away in the hatch of our car next to our travel-ready pups rather than under a tree. A tree with no presents under it is rather a poor and sad sight (unless, of course, it’s after the festive rendings and tearings.) After the season ends, I carry the newly undecorated tree to my wood pile to dry out and be used as kindling for the coming fire pit weather.

So, we continue to comfort one another with rational reasonings and elegant explanations. Once we’re gathered around our granddaughter’s first Christmas tree, cuddling her and carefully opening boxes and packages so as not to wake her, should she choose to slumber in the firelight, the last thing we’ll be thinking about is whether or not we have a real or fake tree at our house. The kids live in the midst of countless acres of woods positively marching with evergreen trees. The fresh winter air there will far outpace anything one tree can pump into our nose and lungs. It will be an absolute joy to share that time with the kids and help them start their own traditions. We’ll still bake cookies and cook too much food and I will make my venerable aunt’s challah bread recipe and we will eat like conquerors. Not having a tree this year is a small sacrifice to what we will enjoy making new traditions and expanding our own joyfulness in the process this season.

If I’m honest, I think we both really love the idea of being free to adapt and change our traditions as necessary. There may be many Christmases yet-to-be where new and wonderful traditions and experiences await us. This year’s is plenty new for us and we’re just thrilled to pieces to be spending it with the wee bairn and her mommy and daddy. Trees are cool, but as long as we have each other, just what that Christmas looks like—how it is decorated—is really moot.

Whatever your traditions and whatever the composition of your festive arboreal decorations, I want to take this opportunity to wish you a very happy and healthy holiday season. May the lights in the darkness, the joyful fellowship, the exchange of gifts and stories and food and memories remind you and yours of just how good we have things and instill in all of us grateful hearts and a sense of unity with one another. Good Yule!

Celebration Break!

 Greetings readers,

In lieu of an essay this week, I am actually sharing my wife, Micki Bare's, most recent press release announcing that she has won her second AAUW Young People's Literature Award for her book, Blind Fairy; book two in the five-book Zahra of the Uwharries series. (Book three comes out May, 2024!)

I am just so proud of her and this second-in-a-row win. She won the same award last year, for book one, Society of the Sentinelia.

So, here is Micki's announcement. Please also find a link to her Amazon page and her author's page. These books are perfect for any "Middle Grade" readers you may have in your family. (Middle Grade books signify readers between 8 and 12, but you can read these books, too.) They make great holiday presents, too.

ASHEBORO — Local Author Micki Bare has received the Annual American Association of University Women (AAUW) North Carolina Young People’s Literature Award in recognition of the most significant work of original literature for young readers published over the course of the last year by a North Carolina author.

Bare will receive the honor in a celebration event on Friday, Dec. 2, in Raleigh.

Her award is one of four awards to be given out to authors, the others in Poetry, Fiction and Nonfiction.

The Asheboro author’s accomplishment comes after the release this year of “Society of the Sentinel,” the first of a middle school-aged series based in the Birkhead Wilderness of the Uwharrie Mountains.

The story follows the tale of Zahra, a sprite-like tween no bigger than a loblolly pinecone, and an 11-year-old human trying to find her parents and sister. During the quest, the series chronicles Zahra’s unique and critical role in saving her own family and species.

Bare was a long-time columnist for The Courier-Tribune and is also author of the Thurston T. Turtle children’s series.

Micki's Amazon page, here.

Micki's website, here.

Morality Mosquitoes

 Morality Mosquitoes 

We've all been at a baseball game or fireworks display, a family day at the lake or a meandering hike through the woods, a church picnic, a concert in the park, or just pulling weeds in the front flower beds, when something pricks the skin of our face or ear or neck. It's mid-summer and it has recently rained. Suddenly you're surrounded by a tiny airborne attack. Miniscule vampires on nearly silent wings. When they land on you they insert long drill-like tubes (called a proboscis) which go into the skin and find blood vessels and capillaries to drink our blood. These villains, slaked with our precious juices, release a little of their saliva which acts as a painkiller and anti-coagulant, as they remove their feeding tubes and zoom off to collect more blood from your cousins and siblings and grandma in order to feed their larvae and spread their horrible legions across your neighborhood.

It's a nightmare of prehistoric proportions. Little —literal—bloodsuckers carromming around everywhere outside in the shade or when the sun goes down, waiting to prey on us. They are sanguivores, creatures that dine on our blood. Anywhere below the arctic circle mosquitoes will eventually find you and though there are some pristine magical lands (like Liverpool) where the flying horrors are not, as yet, prevalent, it is only a matter of time before the world is coated with the horrid insects, because they are incredibly adaptive lifeforms. These awful creatures have existed for millions of years, surviving natural cataclysms and adapting to humankind's harsh treatment of their environment, including our attempt to heat up the Earth's surface to the point where no animal can survive. The hotter, more humid places on earth are ideal for mosquitoes and every year hospitals pop out more unknowing victims for these monster bugs to feed on.

Other places, especially in Central and South America, Africa, Southeast Asia, Indonesia—anywhere there are humid jungles and people—mosquitoes pose a huge threat to human life. Unlike sharks or hippos or even dogs, a bite from a mosquito can be lethal. They carry and transfer diseases to humans and animals. Called vectors, mosquitoes are the most lethal organism on the planet. They kill more humans than any other animal or insect by far. Every year, well over one million people are killed by an insect that weighs less than 2.5 milligrams, (though one might suppose they weigh more after feeding on our type O positive.)

Mosquitoes carry and transfer zika, dengue, malaria, chikungunya, West Nile and many others. Where people do not have access to health care, especially, such flying nightmares can cause horrible pain as well as death. The zika virus can lead to microcephaly, a genetic mutation that causes children to be born with very small heads and a lifetime (if they survive birth) of challenges. Malaria has no known cure, though the symptoms can be mitigated over the duration of one's life.

This raises a potent series of questions. As technologically advanced as we now are, having learned the secret of the genome and harnessed the power of genetic editing through CRISPR, why not eradicate the little pests completely and save millions of lives yearly? What's to stop us using gene warfare to breed mosquitoes to a tipping point of extinction? Wouldn't that be an example of using scientific discovery to do something measurably good? 

Anyone who has scratched at the spots where the skeeters have bitten them will nod in rapid assent. Imagine those picnics, evening pool and pond swims, canoe trips and camping adventures without being assaulted by mosquitoes. Better yet, imagine the lives that would be saved in places like Borneo and The Congo and Belize and elsewhere where mosquitoes kill hundreds of thousands yearly. 

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A few days ago, I went upstairs to get a handful of clothes hangers from the spare bedroom closet. On my way, my primitive ape brain noted something out of place high on the wall by the attic trapdoor. It took me a moment to flip through the rolodex of dangerous creatures stored in our collective genetic memory, but after a gasp of fright, I suddenly realized what it was. I immediately named him Bruce, after my favorite crime fighting vigilante in Gotham City. 

In North Carolina, we have several species of chiroptera but Bruce was a Big Brown Bat (that is their actual name) though he was tiny, almost mouse-sized. Bruce is not the first bat we've ever had in our home. They wriggle into tight places to get away from predators or out of the elements and wind up lost and away from their colonies and just hang on a wall until they can escape. It is one of the perils of living in an older home.

Bats are rabies carriers, so removal is tricky for homeowners, especially those, like me, who understand just how important these little furry flying mammals are to our local ecosystem. I was able to get Bruce out of our home, at length, with help from YouTube and some now discarded plasticware containers and a pair of heavy yard work gloves and the back cardboard piece from a notebook we use for table games. Bruce is back where he is supposed to be and doing fine (I hope). I did have some trouble getting him to a safe spot, but I hope he was able to fly back to his family.

Bruce and his fellow bats are insectivores. They eat flying bugs almost exclusively, but they especially love mosquitoes. A Big Brown Bat like Bruce, can eat up to fifty percent of their body weight in mosquitoes in one night. Pregnant or nursing bats (Mrs. Wayne, in this case) can eat upwards of 100% of their body weight in flying bloodsuckers. A bat colony can have anywhere from a dozen to three hundred bats, all swooping and zooming around the night sky eating countless death-carrying mosquitoes. 

Bats hibernate in winter, so in the final weeks of summer, they increase their calorie intake—called hyperphagia— eating even more late-summer mosquitoes to ensure they have stores to survive the colder months. 

Here in North Carolina, all bat species have been suffering a serious fungal infection called White Nose Syndrome. Hibernating bats develop or come in contact with other bats that have the infection and spread it through a colony. White-Nose Syndrome (WNS) can be fatal, killing bats in large numbers and severely reducing the populations in areas (especially suburban) where their propensity for eating skeeters is much appreciated. In years when mosquitoes seem particularly bad, it is fair to suspect that the local bats are suffering from WNS.

Bats aren’t the only animal that likes to eat mosquitoes. Fish love the wriggling larvae (mosquitoes spend their first hours under water, which is why areas near water are so likely to have real mosquito problems). Bluebirds, purple martins, robins, cardinals and (in some places) orioles also hunt mosquitoes during the daylight hours. Making sure there are plenty of bird feeders around in the summer will help keep the mosquito populations down, as well as providing our feathered friends a natural tasty snack (for them, anyway). Some people, too, put up bat houses to encourage bats to roost nearby, and therefore help to encourage the natural predation of the unwanted pests.

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I mention bats and birds and fish, mainly because these are animals that might also suffer if we decided to eliminate skeeters from the planet. Even so, it is worth considering the power we have to eradicate this most dangerous of pests. Right now, if science was unhindered by the moral and ethical quandaries of such an act, we could unleash a small but lethal cloud of gene-modified mosquitoes, ready to mate with existing wild skeeters, rendering the next generation of dastardly buzzers completely sterile. In one life cycle of mosquitoes, we could end a natural tyranny that has decimated whole nations' worth of humans and crippled countless others. As a used-car salesman might ask in another context, what's not to like?

Science, despite its apparent power to change things for the better, is intrinsically tied to questions of ethics. In almost every theater of discovery in the modern world, scientists ask reflexively, despite whether or not we can do a thing; should we do it? Except where bond villain-like billionaires with rocket envy and cash to burn usurp science as a means to wave their unhinged power at us (and signal their Freudian fascination with the phallus) science is almost always willing to pause before rather than after using its awesome powers for change.

This is most certainly not always the case, but generally, science-based research also takes the philosophical questions of morality and ethics to heart, too, asking in advance what the consequences might be. This is why total mosquito obliteration has stalled. We simply cannot know what kind of ecological damage could ensue if we remove an entire lifeform from the planet.

Of course, the irony is that, every day, whole species go extinct. Many, even as you read this, are added to an endangered species list. Animals that used to reign supreme on this tiny blue life-giving planet have long since been completely destroyed, largely from over hunting or eradication of their natural habitats. So why are we so concerned—if we've killed the DoDo already—what will happen if we commit genocide against organisms that we know beyond doubt kill vast numbers of humans every year? After all, mosquitoes do not care about us. They use us as a food source, but even if humanity went extinct because of a mosquito-borne illness, they would have other creatures to feast on. They are simply fulfilling their purpose within the web of nature, unconsciously obeying an eons-old moral imperative to survive. 

The problem is that, very much like with humans, the entire catalog of species of mosquitoes, numbering about 3,000, aren’t all bad. Some mosquito populations never come into contact with people or livestock and don’t become vectors for diseases that can maim and kill. But here is the absolutely salient point: some do. Those mosquitoes cause unbearable casualties to humanity every year.

So are we trying to eradicate all mosquitoes or just the ones that do the most harm? Of the three-thousand species of skeeters, only three are the most likely to act as vectors of deadly diseases. Rather than destroying all of the bugs (a particularly human thing to want to do) we could just eliminate the species that are most dangerous, and hope that the remaining species which do not transmit diseases can stand in as ecological replacements without harming other creatures that depend on them as a primary food source (like Bruce and his batty family). There are arguments for and against eliminating certain kinds of mosquitoes, especially in suburban neighborhoods where rainwater, retention ponds, storm creeks (like in our backyard) and other “standing water” create a beautiful place for mosquitoes to lay their eggs and make battalions of cookout-ruining offspring.

However, one thing that science is working on is discovering why skeeters love us. Something about our smell sends these bugs into ecstasies, like an old aristocratic vampire seeing a buxom farm girl coming back from the well after nightfall, our blood is a delicious treat for mosquitoes and they seem to love some people more than others. Scientists are working on that very thing. If we can take a pill or receive genetic therapies that make us repulsive to skeeters, it might be a very simple and relatively safe solution. We no longer get the diseases they carry, they get to go on replicating in their nightmare reality and feeding bats and birds and fish.

However we eventually solve this serious problem, it’s important to remember that no solution is final. Total eradication is the action of unthoughtful impulse. Science is carefully weighing the consequences of how to end a serious and deadly problem without causing further unintended consequences. This is the work of philosophy, because whenever morality and ethics are involved, modern philosophy is right there (or ought to be, looking at you, billionaires) at the forefront. And, to quote Dr. Ian Malcom, a character from Michael Crichton’s brilliant novel and movie, Jurassic Park, regardless of how we proceed to save lives and end a reign of buzzing and biting and bloodsucking terror, “Life, uh, finds a way”. 

The World Anew

 A new baby in the family is a forceful disruption of the status quo. They are adorable agents of chaos. They bring with them the tidal force to break us out of the customs of our comfortable and quiet lives. They also change us fundamentally, awakening a buried subroutine that silently clicks into action when we first hear the tiny wail that is the battle cry of new life. I have always guessed that babies undid the quotidian rhythms of their families. I never realized their ability as cute little incendiaries or their power to forge their families into new people. I have discovered this truth empirically. Our family just welcomed a tiny bundle and her joyful arrival has engaged an unstoppable paradigm shift in all of us, irrevocably updating our family roles. 

As I reflect on all the members of our extended family that have brought children into this world, I now realize I had no idea at all just how significant their new baby was for them or their immediate relatives. A baby is like a nuclear bomb, except instead of alpha particles and nuclear winter, they bring life, reality, joy, love, adoration and devotion in megaton units. The pulse of their dainty cries and whimpers evokes a prime biological imperative to protect and surround and teach and love the child at all costs. Age-old prerogatives to stand in stark opposition to the dangerous powers and influences of the outside world, to nurture and impart wisdom, to gaze in worshipful awe at the elfin and delicate fingers and toes and perfect ears, to aid in all the myriad duties of rearing a child kick into high gear among the clan.

I learned something of this power when my brother's children were born. I understood the swelling of paternal adoration, pride and devotion with our own boys. I glimpsed the true entirety of it this past week when our middle son and his wife had their first child, a girl, who has changed my heart forever. I see the world anew. We all do. None of us around her will ever be the same. The swaddled bairn doesn’t know it yet, but she commands a filial army of devotees ready at her lightest whimper to obey at all costs.

Part of that change is that I realize the power of the names we give our familial roles. We use them casually, calling each other grandma or mommy or daddy or pawpaw. They are universal in our culture. Everyone has a nana or grandpop, a ma, a papa, or at least someone who stands in that role. What we rarely think about is the magic behind those words. A new baby cries and suddenly those names take on meaning, they become kinetic, they fire dormant life force within us, we become something else, newer, more powerful, more poignantly human. We suddenly are those names. Fundamentally, we are the same material, like an ingot of steel hammered into a sword, but our use and purpose is altered forever.

I am our new wee one’s daddy's stepfather, so my relationship isn't biological and yet, her Pacific-blue eyes wrought the change in me as well. I am now her PopPop. I have been suffused with a new raison d'être. The transformation has begun and I cannot wait to get to the fullness of my duties. Every other aspect of my life is now permeated with the power of PopPop. I take that power from my own father and grandfathers, placed in my heart and mind by them when I was, in my turn, a tiny person. 

My heart is so full of joy with this fresh definition and name that I can hardly express it. Micki is now a grandmother with all the incredible power that the name entails. Our son, his wife are now a father and a mother. Our other sons are uncles, their significant others, aunts, our daughter-in-law’s parents, grandparents in their own right. We all have lives, goals, dreams, responsibilities, commitments and duties, just like anyone. With the birth of our angel every other function we might fulfill in our daily lives now pales by comparison. Neighbors and friends may have little ones and we will celebrate with them the hallmarks and milestones of their children’s lives, but our sweet little warrior princess rules our hearts and minds completely. We are her pious order of servants and teachers. Unless and until she has siblings and cousins, she is our child queen.

As I held her for the first time, I was overwhelmed with emotion. She filled my heart with pure love. I found myself floating, feet not touching the ground. Her life-force thrummed and crackled around me like lightning. I seemed to note tiny flecks of deep fire within her sea grey eyes. Here in a minute bundle of gently wriggling humanity was the powerful reminder of why any of us are here. Suddenly my spirit was lost in a world of endless possibilities, the focal point of which lay snuggling and warm against my chest. 

Uncounted timelines stretching out like the millions of branches of a storm tree fracturing into infinite unknowable directions surrounded us both. I saw all the avenues of her life and the intersections where her choices could and would be influenced by all of us. She can be anything she wants to be, of course and I and all of her family members have the power and responsibility to aid her on her quest. In that second of realization, though, I knew my own role was to be there for her in any way possible. 

When it was time to hand over my new little granddaughter to Micki, her Mimi, nothing was the same for me. I am not the same person who walked into the hospital that day. I am now a repository of life experiences at her beck and call; a walking library of stories, lessons, comfort and love. I can teach her, help her, love her through all that life has to bring her. Each word I say, every choice I make, each breath I and all of us in her orbit take in and exhale will influence and leave an impression on her.

Our lives, our dreams, our hopes and fears are now dramatically adjusted to take into full consideration this one small human, as yet unaware of her own potential. This is, to me, the closest thing to a miracle we will ever find on earth. 

It is natural, I think, to yearn to be part of something larger than ourselves and in the obedience to this impulse, we seek things that lead us astray or leave us empty or cynical and bitter. The wish to depart the material burdens and physical needs is, as Leon Trotsky put it in his essay on literature, required to keep humanity from stagnation. To transcend the merely mortal boundaries of pain and hunger and suffering is perhaps the most human desire. I have the solution. It does not reside in a holy text or revered cave or in the words of a sage on a mountaintop. 

Rather, it is the face of a newborn where we find our own promise, our own potential and our own devotion to our lives and our source of meaning for future generations. For me and those of us gathered around the little life clutched to her mother and father in loving embrace, that purpose has never been more clear. This is not the deluded ranting of the doctrinaire or the casuistry of a false prophet. This is nature, bound within the webbing of which is the promise of all life and the security of our species.

This child and all children are the magical source of our power, but we often forget it or at least take it for granted. We become wrapped up in questions of superiority or superstition; we loudly boast this or that dogma, willing, as it were, to thrust ourselves on swords made of dusty lies rather than understand the true, unparalleled wealth that comes from gazing lovingly at a tiny newborn and all the promise that it entails.

This child—our new granddaughter —is now at the center; she abides in the nucleus of our clan. She holds the promise of decades undreamed of and of life and experience that we will never see. She will carry each of us with her as she grows into the flower of adulthood and in turn bears her own children and celebrates her own grandchildren. I will live in her memory, and so will each of us. Perhaps, though it is egotistical to say it, she will impart to her offspring stories of her PopPop and Mimi, as we will impart our own stories of our ancestors to her.

More sacred than any chalice or mystical rite or ceremony, this child will become a receptacle for our lives which she will carry with her as stories and genetic memory. What could be more precious, more hopeful, more akin to immortality?

And yet, now she slumbers, gently writhing to the stimulus of infant dreams. Our hearts now beat as one with hers in all places and in all things. This is how it should be.

And from the day of her birth, I too am newly born with her and see the world anew.

No Thank You, Mummy

We all have one monster that we don’t like (some of us maybe have more). I’m not sure what it is about the idea of mummified human remains that makes me unhappy. They give me the whim-whams, the shivers, the willies. I like to brag that I’m not afraid of anything; at least not the usual things people are scared of like the dark or monsters or ghouls or home invasions or progress but there is something about mummies and I try to avoid them at all costs. This is especially true in the case of the original Universal Studios movie, The Mummy, as portrayed by Boris Karloff. Maybe I saw it when I was a tot on our little Zenith black and white TV as a ‘creature feature’. Perhaps I had a nightmare about it. Whatever it is, mummies are my least favorite monsters and I now realize that they always have been.

My dislike for mummies was probably compounded by the fact that there is a public museum in Reading near where my family lived and in that museum, inside a glass case—rather like Lenin’s tomb—lay an Egyptian mummy. Most of that poor ancient human was wrapped and laying in a Ptolemaic sarcophagus. Called Nefrina, this mummy's head was not covered, revealing a remarkably preserved and yet horrible face with sunken eyes very like those of The Mummy. Because I was so little when I was brought there, this ancient human artifact stuck in my head and shuffled in my youthful nightmares. It might have been the lights or the reflection on the glass case, but I used to imagine its dark eyes gleaming with evil intent. I haven’t mentioned this to anyone in years.

I do like scary stories and movies, though, especially within the monster genre. I recently procured a beautiful blu-ray collection of the old Universal Studios monster movies, including (sadly) The Mummy. I was happy to get this treat, because horror has its place in human society, mainly as a way to experience fear in a safe and controlled manner. It's fun to watch these nearly century-old (in some cases) films and feel the childhood chills again. As I was paging through the booklet accompanying the set, I saw that picture again and all my childhood feelings rushed back. Those dark eyes set in a desiccated face, fezz jauntily perched atop the recently bandaged head, the outline of the skull just below sallow skin. Nightmare inducing. No thank you, Mummy.

I have long believed that nightmares are where the concept of monsters were born for our ancestors. Humans hiding in hovels or settled around a small fire in a misty forest told stories of monsters not only to scare their children into behaving but also to put a name to their deepest fears. We dreamed about them and told our friends and families. Those stories became our mythologies and legends and eventually our best selling books and movies.

Some of the greatest and most memorable stories ever written revolve around the unspeakable beasts and creatures that haunt the twilight realm between our conscious and unconscious selves. There are thousands of variants, but most of them participate in some aspect of physical change or hybridization of human and beast; becoming ravening animals or developing terrifying physical proportions or failing to be killed by normal means, are the standard soil for good monster tales. There are also curses, bites, forgotten organisms (like Bigfoot), the creations of science run amok and of course, the mummified high priest who was buried alive because of forbidden love. 

The miserable transformation from human to monster is clearly a recollection of the growth of a child into an adult or maybe the transformation from hale middle age into geriatric infirmity. All teenagers go through a monster phase, usually about the time that their bodies begin experiencing puberty. Young people relate very well to the horrors of morphing from a small child with a piping voice to some spotty, gangly thing that lurks in its lair, eating everything in sight and becoming by the day more grotesquely adult. The ramping up of adolescent hormones, the sprouting of hair all over the body, the terrible vicissitudes of mood and personality are all deeply unsettling, both for the person who experiences them and anyone in close proximity. A teenager in the house can be an astoundingly unsettling thing and we can suppose that it has always been this way. Likewise, losing our strength, our teeth, becoming wrinkled and, as the poet Kipling said, “a rag and a bone and a hank of hair” can be ghastly. Little old ladies eating children to maintain their powers and youthfulness has deep associations with antisemitism (church fathers preached that the blood of children was used in Passover matzah) and the natural knowledge that older women had might have proven the dogmas of the church’s claims frail and futile, giving rise to fear of witches and hags.

Monsters also provide a way for us to explain away or take power from the worst parts of ourselves; our vicious, violent, dangerous natures that Darwin said are only one step away from, ‘the indelible stamp of our lowly origins’. Throughout human mythology, creatures that were part human and part something less definable dogged human civilization. For all of that time, we have tried to reconcile and explain our fears by telling stories to each other as a kind of apotropaic against the wild thing that hunts within.

The werewolf, half man; half beast, holds an ancient grasp on our human collective psyche. The savage animal inside, only appearing when the moon is full and thereby linking the transformation to lunacy, is older than human civilization. Lycanthropy (werewolfism) is found everywhere in human myths, from ancient India and Greece,to  the Old Testament and the Norse sagas. Some literature professors blame our close historical associations with actual wolves, claiming that ancient humans saw much of themselves in their lupine companions. This could be due to our extremely similar genetic makeup, too (think of how close we feel with our canid pals). Others think that the wolf-man isn’t actually a wolf at all but a representation of our fearful simian cousins, the vicious ape waiting to burst forth in brutal primal ferocity. Few cinematic representations of the werewolf manage to hide the primate-like nature of the beast as it hurdles along killing and feeding. Anyone who has seen a troupe of chimps hunting lesser apes or monkeys will see the potential for violence that we share with our Great Ape cousins and that no doubt led to this fear.

If we think about it carefully, most monsters have a simple and definable explanation, but our fear is irrational and blurs our ability to see those connections clearly. Vampires are an excellent example of this. Ask anyone and they will tell you several things about vampires that are common knowledge. Vampires cannot survive daylight, they hate garlic, they drink human blood and they can only be truly destroyed by driving a stake through their heart. All of these bits of knowledge are gathered from folklore, both popular and ancient, which has been passed down for generations. Scholars of myth believe that the first conceptions of the vampire actually have roots in the fear of venereal diseases. Dread of blood, of lurking deviants, the underlying concept of a contagion that rendered people into lustful, subhuman creatures hiding in the darkness all seem to fit uncannily well. Primitive understandings may have convinced people that sunlight or herbs could kill these pestilences or the people who carried them and those "cures" are with us today.

Later, during the Victorian era, as science was beginning to clear away the cobwebs of superstition (at least in part), authors like Bram Stoker took the idea of vampires a step farther, creating Count Dracula, an Eastern European aristocrat who prowled the gaslit streets of London looking for innocent young women to prey upon. The underlying sexual implications and distrust of European aristocracy was not lost on the prurient or repressed in that age. 

Science, too, became a kind of monster as the clock ticked toward the 20th Century. Fear of the headlong race for scientific discovery; repercussions of humanity’s inability to moderate scientific discovery with respect for nature; our attempt to become gods in our own right is the theme of several monster mythologies. Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley’s “Frankenstein” tells the tale of a scientist who will stop at nothing to create life using his own scientific power. HG Wells' masterpiece of science and madness, “The Invisible Man” shows how a sociopath (a term not yet fully understood in Wells’ time) devotes his entire personality to attaining invisibility and then loses the cure. The Invisible Man then goes on a reign of terror, using his newfound power to drive others to his bidding. 

Our lost connection with other hominids like cro magnon and zinjanthropus and australopithecus and neanderthal (likely all killed off by homo sapiens—see above) has given rise to another, less appetizing reality. If we wandered out of the oceans at some point in the dim past then perhaps one of our ancient relatives was some kind of fish/human hybrid. The Creature from the Black Lagoon captures this fear, but it also betrays another, more potent dread that many of us still have. Called thalassophobia, the fear of deep water and what might be lurking in the depths that our eyes have not yet perceived is ancient and pervasive.

A similar dread, albeit in the opposite direction, was beautifully captured by Wells again in his earth shattering novel, War of the Worlds. Far worse than any human horror, the invasion of blank, inhuman creatures from a neighboring world, cold and alien, land here to displace us or use us for food. This fear of the unknown and of the life that could dwell in the frozen depths of space comes directly from the more advanced observations made as observers ground more powerful lenses allowing us to see clearly our closest solar planets and wonder who dwelt there and if their intentions were nefarious or benevolent.

Between them all, vampires, wolves, fish and invisible men, reanimated corpses and the other ancient frights from myth and folklore, stands The Mummy. The sight of this bandage-wrapped undead Egyptian priest is too unsettling for me to consider. Imhotep, punished for trying to use death magic to resurrect his forbidden love, wanders in the dark under the eaves of my imagination. Other people, I know,  like the aesthetic of ancient Egypt and I have had my moments. Thinking of hieroglyphics and pyramids is interesting, engaging. But not mummification, and not The Mummy.

I've been a fan of all the Universal monster movies—all but one—and while I will forever extoll the virtues of literary and cinematic monsters, I’ll stop with him. Monsters provide mysterious and terrifyingly beautiful criticisms of the state of human psychology and fear. Still, nothing will ever induce me to sit still and watch as that shuffling, hollow-eyed monster reaches its stiff, 4,000 year-old fingers for the throats of those that buried him in the sand. If it is up to me, he and all his wrapped colleagues would stay buried forever.

Religion, Heal Thyself

Many of my essays seem anti-religious. It’s true that I think that the monotheistic religions create way more harm than good in the world. They encourage moral imbecility as a virtue and push hate and tribalistic ideology. As a former Evangelical whose childhood and adolescence were filled with conservative Christianity, faith was all I knew or cared about. I was too naturally curious to think that everyone believed the same thing as we did, but we were taught that most other people were either "lost", that is, going to eternal torment, or just going through the motions of belief. Catholics, other mainstream Christians like Lutherans or Presbyterians were just acting to fit in. They were most assuredly not real believers. Even within similar Evangelical theologies, there was an unspoken animosity for other Christians based on a serious sense of denominational superiority. 

I still sometimes look back at those days and those ways and feel a pang of shame, but then I remember what I have learned since my deconversion. Those of us raised in religious systems have no recourse. We’re made to feel as though there is no other option, no other opportunity outside of God’s ken. We are in a hermetically sealed reality like a snow globe, and within that system is everything and outside of it is emptiness, loss, hatred, ostracism and the promise of everlasting torment after death. Young people raised in these belief systems often feel as though they have no choice or opportunity to break away, let alone to see things from another perspective. 

Today more people are leaving their faith than ever before and it has believers of all stripes worried. The Church doesn't seem to meet people's needs for hope and fellowship anymore. We've been exposed to too much on the Internet to feel isolated enough for the false reality of religious belief to keep us from seeing other people as human. It is no longer possible for the faithful to sequester themselves from reality. What they see is terrifying and the few who remain have become even more militant than ever before. Many now adhere to violent and extremist variants of belief, justifying democracy-ending behaviors out of sheer fright of their looming irrelevance.

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Several years ago, I mentioned my lack of belief to a friend and they stepped away from me, as though they were worried that I would be struck by lightning (that’s Zeus, not God) and they were tepid to me ever after. Their belief could not account for someone outside of the parameters of faith. Having been raised a Christian, I know that Jesus said to treat others like we wish to be treated ourselves, but it is a mistake to look for this as a real output of faith. Lack of belief in others is terrifying to believers. It was frightening to me, when I believed. It made me feel insecure, uncertain, as though my worldview, my hopes, my reality were under threat. The lack of belief in others means that there is a world outside of the snow-globe which in turn means that there are choices beyond what we, as believers, have been taught. And yet, the  Internet age has backed the claims of faith into a corner and as a result, this new strain of fundamentalist religion is more dangerous than ever before.

My problem with faith is deeply personal. It might seem as though I have an ax to grind, but that ax isn’t with religious people, so much as with the religions themselves. I don’t object if a person is a Christian, anymore than I object if a person is a Cincinnati Bengals fan. To me, it’s a moot point, so long as they keep it to themselves. However, especially with Evangelicals, this is precisely what they don’t do. They absolutely want you to know that they are Christians, ‘born again’ and they really are still trying to remake the world in an image of their beliefs. Not every Christian is trying to do more than live a life according to their beliefs, but some definitely are and that point has to be strenuously made. Who better than those who used to be inside that snow globe? Actual regular believers, that's who.

———

The fundamentalist brain is a scary place. Loved ones, my mother especially, were led astray by their faith into bleak and gloomy mental prisons where they tried to balance magical thinking, false humility and rabid hatred for others with justification from their scriptures in order to appear as though they had a special protection from sin and eternal death. They often tied themselves in knots trying to appear "godly" while being obviously deluded, or in one specific case, as morally bankrupt and hateful as is imaginable outside of jail or Congress. They absolutely drooled over the idea of The End Times, when Jesus would come back and kill all those who didn't believe in him. 

None of this is particularly new. For centuries,  belief in religious dogma worked to eliminate the unbeliever through assimilation or death. I’m referring to tactics designed to make people of an otherwise non religious persuasion join a faith because of threats of Hell. Here I refer to John Calvin, but there are others. When a person had said the magic prayers, they were told to vote, or rally or behave in a way that would rework our world in the likeness of their bigoted worldview. Those who didn't convert were put to the sword.

Today and for the last four or five decades, Evangelicals have hunkered under a cloak of false holiness and modesty to accomplish these same goals, but today there are other groups that adhere to (or at least claim) religious tenets for their political and economic motivations, like so-called Christian Nationalists. Before I was born, a person’s belief was considered private and personal and it was unconscionable to speak against it. Evangelicals eschewed politics as dirty and corrupt. Then, with the rise of Roe v. Wade, those in power saw Evangelicals and conservative Catholics as a powerful tool in an ideological fight and they melded Christian theology with political policy. Suddenly, Evangelicals were a force to be reckoned with and since it is taboo to challenge a person or group's faith, no one felt able to address the situation. The number of politically active Evangelicals rose and suddenly there was a new ideological ecosystem in American politics that people did not feel comfortable criticizing.

When a system (any system) of belief cannot be criticized, then it becomes a danger. So, to me, unless we call out the deadly influence that religion has had in the world (and on those that believe it) then people’s right to a quiet, personal faith cannot be guaranteed to be unassailable.

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Several years ago, now, my very closest childhood friend and I were exchanging emails on the subject of televangelists. These con-artists are always nefarious rogues and cut purses, always almost a parody of themselves, but they also hoodwink innocent people into sending their last few shekels for nothing but empty promises. This is and always will be a point of deep irritation, as my mother often tuned into these vile snake oil sellers and nodded along with their idiotic End Times prophecies. My point to my friend was that regular preachers needed to make their congregations aware of these predators and call them out for the fiends in human shape that they were. His reply was that his pastor was loath to address this with their congregation, because even a wolf in a sheep’s sweater could bring people ‘to the Lord’. I pressed the issue, though and my friend carried this to his pastor and soon enough I got a snippet of a Sunday sermon in my inbox in which the pastor really did warn his flock about televangelists and other scammers who prey upon believers.

This was a small but satisfying win even if it didn't accomplish very much. Criticism points out weaknesses in a system and opens it up for better operation. The more general and widespread the criticism the better. Ironically, in a later conversation, my friend and I parted brass rags, as Bertie Wooster might say, over the fact that the toothy Joel Osteen was a televangelist, albeit better dressed and more put together. My friend was unwilling to make that claim and we dropped the subject.

The real dangers of belief are when people put aside their more trustworthy critical faculties in order to feel as though they are part of something bigger than themselves. There’s nothing wrong with wanting to associate with a movement that brings joy, or hope or fulfillment. At its root the religious impulse can be neatly boiled down to just that. There is honor and nobility in feeling as though one has a set of beliefs or a code of action and for those reasons it is acceptable to be a person of faith. Again, my argument is not with personal or private belief. 

What irks me is when good people ostracize their children because they don't fit a predetermined mold. There are countless young people who are made to feel that they cannot possibly be who they are, or love who they feel inclined to love because their family and their faith tells them they are evil for their natural feelings. Their anguish and fear often leads to self harm or suicide or other brutalized forms of half life, like addiction and homelessness. The stand against LGBTQ+ rights and freedom by Catholics and Protestants alike—though they claim their faith is about love—has caused uncountable casualties among young people. It is useless to look for sense in these proscriptions, but they are real and deadly. This is merely one example in thousands where faith works to undermine people’s true spiritual freedom and harms rather than heals.

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An acquaintance of mine is a Baptist minister here in my town and he really is working hard to bring the principles of the Sermon on the Mount to the people he serves. He’s a kind and generous man, with a heart of gold and he once told me that every preacher should have an atheist (or unbeliever) on their staff to keep them honest. I was honored by the compliment, but the fact is, faith needs to solve its own problems. 

Criticism from outside can eventually work but only a turn toward internal reflection can purge the venom and complicity of fundamentalist ideas from religious belief. I refuse to give the worst aspects of religion any quarter. “I calls ‘em as I sees ‘em”, as the fella said. But the believers in the world aren’t listening to me or other unbelievers even if they now have to acknowledge that we are real and everywhere. They sequester themselves from our criticism, but in the process they allow much evil in their own realm and very often eagerly participate in the name of fitting in.

It is up to believers to call for an end of extremism in their own faiths. I’m not just talking about Christianity, now, but all the monotheistic faiths must be called to account by their own kind. The Southern Baptist Conference is experiencing this very thing as regards child and sexual abuse inside their organizations, but it also needs to be happening elsewhere. I credit my friend’s minister with having the courage and tact to call out televangelists. It is a message that needs to be repeated often. It is the only way the TV goons lose power. They also need to call out (and some have, but not enough) political extremism, crossovers between faith and fascism, prejudice against LGBTQ+ groups, pro-life movements, hate or fear of people of color (yes it is still happening) and women among many others. Book banning, flat earth and weird offshoots like anti-vaxx and Q-Anon all take their foundational structures from religious dogma. Religious people know this, but they refuse to address it. Criticism is a tool that if used might bring the whole house down. Rather than face this, they will wink and look past much evil toothy to stay relevant.

I have believed for some time that America and the world are coming to an end of faith. People can now find the fellowship and support and camaraderie they seek in other places and in other ways that don’t require dogmatism. Some are seeing that the others they feared and hated are actually not much different than they are. Lifestyles that they were insulated from are now much more prominent, less strange and alien. Paradigm shifts of this nature always take time and there are always moments of discomfort and anguish, but in the long run, it becomes impossible to hide from or disparage people once detested and estranged. Slowly we begin to come to terms with each other despite our previous lack of empathy.

In opposition to this movement of unification, fundamentalist dogma attempts to stand as a bulwark. The essence of faith is in separation from the masses of a specialized community, saved, uplifted, sanctified. That mentality rebels against and eschews anything that challenges its hold on those that believe. This is perhaps my own biggest problem with faith. Inside of the snow globe realm of belief, followers tend to look askance at anyone who doesn't fit. They rebel against those who are different, choosing to remain closed off and inaccessible to growth and tolerance. These are the trappings of totalitarianism and no humanist impulse can survive in the thin atmosphere of suspicion and otherism inside.

For me, faith ought to be about helping people, caring for those who are outcast; the prisoners, the addicts, the orphans and widows, as the scriptures suggest. Instead, faith has become about who proclaims their belief the loudest while simultaneously trying to prove how intolerant they are to anyone who is different from them. This grotesque worldview rebels at any movement of unification and acceptance. Religion has found itself on the wrong side of history too often to be mistaken yet again. Given the opportunity, it burned women who were suspected of witchcraft. It reveled the ideology of slavery. It regularly participates in homophobia and racism and is evidently quite disposed to living with the evils of child abuse that thrive within the confines of its cramped ideological ecosystem.

There are many good believers, people who are genuine, caring, who use their faith to help others. And, for all I care, they can continue to be found worshiping and living their best lives. However, they are the ones who must now bring to bear all their criticism on their own systems. They must, as Dietrich Bonhoeffer and Martin Niemoller did in Germany during the rise of the Reich, stand against the tide of intolerance and complicity with evil in their faiths even if it means their lives.

Some have begun to speak up against the hatefulness within their own systems, but until they all scream out in unison and until the faiths themselves become less intolerant, less angry, less prudish (on the outside), less judgemental, less anti-democratic as a result, faith will continue to die of asphyxiation in its own stifled and turbid air. As an unbeliever, my hope is that this pressure will finally crack the shell and burn off the fundamentalists and the stark raging fools and leave religious belief more humanist, more innocuous, more sheep-like, but much more skeptical and incredulous as a result.

Unbelievers have to make believers critical of their own systems. Islam, Judaism, Buddhism, Hinduism, Sikhism, Christianity all have been allowed to become deeply fanatical and complicit in the worst of human atrocities. Right now, a war is raging in Palestine that is, at its heart, a battle over whose religion grants land rights more firmly. How many more must suffer and die while we allow this to happen? 

Until the evil power of religious fundamentalism is amended the world will be less welcoming to personal faith. So, as the scriptures say, "Physician, or perhaps, religion, heal thyself".

Of Dubious Moral Fads and Bread

 Of Dubious Moral Fads and Bread

Twenty years ago, a fad arose around a movie, the premise of which was to do something good for someone and then tell them to 'pay it forward' to someone else. It was a nice enough idea in general, at least for a movie plot, though the film tanked and it soon became obvious that the moral tenet of the piece was more flimsy and stupid than the rubbish chain emails people used to send out at about the same time. The movie, Pay it Forward (2000) was, to one critic at the time, "reprehensible". Everyone in the film plays along and magically benefits and a curmudgeon teacher suddenly realizes that people are inherently good and loses his cynicism. It has a 39% rating on Rotten Tomatoes and is forgettable at best.

The thesis of this movie arose in my mind a few days ago while we were picking up bread for our lunches at the local grocery market. We had our small assortment of groceries paid for by the lady in front of us. She, it turned out, had had her own oddments paid for moments before by the gentleman in front of her. As she paid for our things, she looked back with a magnanimous smile and said, "pay it forward". Nice enough, you might think. Perhaps under other, less embarrassing, less frustrating circumstances.

As we both glanced over our shoulders to see who was behind us, an elderly person with a buggy full of meat and premium food products was just scooting into the checkout lane. Neither of us was prepared to pay her grocery bill at that moment, so we skedaddled, heads held low, feeling awkward and uncomfortable. Once in the relative anonymity of our vehicle, we puffed and sighed and made unhappy, rueful noises. After all, we had been forced to accept another person's charity and then in full view of the cashier and possibly other customers, it looked like we flat refused to ‘pay it forward’ ourselves. We didn’t ask for the charity and we certainly didn’t ask to be loaded down with the guilt of not paying the good deed forward in response. The whole thing felt terrible, especially in light of the fact that neither of us had needed to pull out our wallets to pay. It clearly didn't give us the feeling of having been helped, which is usually one of humble gratitude.

I have been a student of morality for several decades. I’m no expert (no one is) but I’ve given long thought to our moral motivations and questions of why we developed morality and how that morality shows us up in our feeble attempts to categorize, label and then feel superior to others. There are some great works on morality out there and I highly recommend most of them. Morality usually defies definition, but it can be categorized within human behavior, at least enough for us to begin to know what we feel is right and wrong in the scheme of daily life.

Human morality is of perennial fascination for philosophers mainly because unlike most monotheistic religious doctrines would have us believe, human decency is complex, nuanced, difficult to understand and often defies our expectations. Morality is directly linked to our evolutionary survival as a species. It has a foundational connection to the normative behaviors in our social lexicon. We are a social species and morality is, in part, the interpersonal currency we use to navigate the convoluted seas of human development and relationships. The undiluted reality is that at some very important point in our history we had to begin to show kindness to other humans in order to keep enough of us alive to make it through the bleak, dangerous wastelands of our frail origins. If only one survives but everyone else dies, no one survives. Cooperation, kindness, generosity, the ability to see ourselves in the suffering of other people, to recognize our homogeneity and heterogeneity all stem from our moral and ethical concerns during the darkness of our human ancestry. Those moral values have prevailed alongside the violent and genocidal mechanisms that exist in contradictory dichotomy in our heads even today.

Certainly, not all humans have a generous impulse, nor are we all charitable or kind. There are enough of us, now, for it to seem like humanity has a morality problem and religious ideology has taken full advantage of that appearance in order to pounce on human morality as being rotten or malfunctioning or broken from the outset. They offer platitudes and bits of iron-age agrarian ‘wisdom’ claiming that the natural order is corrupted with sin. They create a crab-trap system bound by guilt and fear of eternal damnation. Once inside, it is nearly impossible to extract one’s operating morality from those so-called principles. People within these snow-globe models feel obliged to help, not because it is natural or universally beneficial or even utilitarian, but because they feel compelled lest something bad should happen to them. It belies the motivation for simple kindness and charity intrinsic in almost all of us and warps the desire to do good for its own sake.

If one wants to get an understanding for simple human morality, small children often set the best example. For instance, a child with a full lunch box may share some of her food with another child that doesn't have as much. There is no moral obligation to do this beyond natural empathy and the first child wishing to help or care for her friend. She is internally motivated but gives no thought to that motivation beyond friendship or kindness. When she tells her parents about her decision to help her classmate, they can make the child feel good about helping by making sure that she has enough in her lunch pail to share when needed and encourage this delightful impulse. This is normal, healthy human morality at work.

However, imagine if the little girl only shared her lunch with her friend with the proviso that the friend then pass along that same level of generosity to someone else. The entire thing would feel forced and insincere, as if the child can only benefit if they make certain that others benefit, too. If that child did pass along the help without the obligation, we recognize this as human morality under normal operation. They benefited from kindness and they want to help too. However, with the imperative to ‘pay it forward’ in place, it no longer feels like generosity nor does it feel moral. It becomes an expectation and the first act of kindness is robbed of any meaning or benefit. Except maybe for feeling bad about not being able to help even though you’ve been helped, there is no joy in paying it forward, only obligation.

Paying it forward is a bankrupt idea that was designed to get people to think that all it takes to feel moral is to do something nice to someone unbidden only once something nice has been done to them first. Once the deed is done, the onus is no longer on us, our quota apparently having been reached. The next person has to do something kind and so on, but that is out of our hands. Morality doesn’t have any escape clauses or quotas (outside of religion). 

In his book, Grounding for the Metaphysics of Morals, Immanuel Kant excavates an excellent formula for motivating human good from the rubbish and faux moralities popular in his day. He said that one should always act in such a way that one could hope that the maximizing of that action could become a universal law. In other words, if you share your lunch, that act could be easily taken up by anyone and not lose moral weight. He also said that if we can help then we are duty-bound to help. No strings or forwarding of obligation is necessary. It works well enough without that machanism.

While we are appreciative of the gesture in its purest form and would love to thank the nice person for her generosity, I would also caution her (when not caught off guard) that such acts are designed to employ guilt and a false sense of moral satisfaction. Other acts of kindness, even the very small and simple kind—holding a door, lending a sympathetic ear, sharing a smile or a friendly word—keep our world moving forward. Human morality isn't grandiose or magnificent. It cannot be based on coercion, guilt, threats or other tautological exhortations or expectations.

Human morality precedes modern bankrupt ideas like "pay it forward" and it will outlast them, too. As JRR Tolkien said, 'I have found that it is the small everyday deeds of ordinary folks that keeps the darkness at bay. Small acts of kindness and love.' We need no special prosthetic of morality to help people. That way lies insincerity and eventually true moral bankruptcy. If we can help, we ought to do so. If we want to help, there is nothing more human and moral than to act on that desire. No strings, no obligation, no guilt, just ancient human morality at work.