A Reply to Common [Catholic] Objections Against the Free Market. 2


    Objection #2
     Without the state helping to redistribute resources, a wealthy class will hold on to the means of production and will keep the poor from being able to climb out of poverty.
    "A society in which the ownership of the means of production is confined to a body of free citizens, not large enough to make up properly a general character of that society, while the rest are dispossessed of the means of production, and are therefore proletarian, we call Capitalist. Note the several points of such a state of affairs. You have private ownership ; but it is not private ownership distributed in many hands and thus familiar as an institution to society as a whole. Again, you have the great majority dispossessed but at the same time citizens, that is, men politically free to act, though economically impotent... It is a necessary inference that there will be under Capitalism a conscious, direct, and planned exploitation of the majority, the free citizens who do not own by the minority who are owners.” (The Servile State by Hillare Belloc)
        Hillare Belloc is basically saying that in a capitalist society, without state intervention, class disparity cannot be solved. The wealthy will hold on to the means of production, and the poor will remain “economically impotent.” GK Chesterton and many other Catholic thinkers have argued this and advocated for the means of production to be distributed more evenly around the economy. Belloc, Chesterton, and all others who think this way are incorrect in their assumption that the rich will always hold capital tight. Yes, wealthy people will seek to do this at times. However, this sort of class warfare sort of argument only works if the means of production are limited. Underlying Belloc's argument is a flawed concept of wealth that smacks of Mercantilism. Capital is as limited as there are problems in the world to be solved – that is to say wealth is unlimited. As long as people want a better life style and have desires for comforts, new experiences, and more effective methods of producing, there will always be more money to be made.
The only real way to limit the hands that wealth belongs to is by state intervention. In the free market, for instance, if a bank makes mal-investments and goes bottom up, it's assets are sold at low prices, and competitors can enter the market more easily. Those that don't have the buying power they would normally need to enter into the competition, now are more able to. However, when there is a state in place that has the power to intervene, those banks/companies that failed to utilize their resources effectively go to that state begging and pleading saying “we are too big to fail!” And then the state uses the money it stole from us via taxation to buoy up these firms. In the free market, no such safety mechanism for the rich would exist. A rich man can fail just as easily and just as spectacularly as a poor man. Only the state provides a method for limiting the distribution of resources. This is what happened in 2008, when republicans and democrats both voted to bail out the banks and car companies. All of those resources should have been sold off to new competing firms (good for poor people) for a fraction of the price.
        The rich, however, are not the only ones who use the state to discourage innovation and limit wealth. The poor of America have learned that they can use the state to punish the success of some by taxing the rich more and by suing those with resources. By definition the state does not support itself. It only relies on what it takes from others. Anyone, then, can lobby the state to steal from one group and give to another. That is what a state does. So when literally everything is an opportunity to sue, the people of a nation live in absolute fear of one another. We get used to it here, but just think of how much the fear of a lawsuit has on American life. The fact that a McDonalds as to put “careful, cup may be hot,” on their cups is a prime example of the poor doing the opposite of what Belloc argues will happen in a free market. The gun of the state is the weapon by which man steals his brother's assets. As Murrey Rothbard puts it, when one uses the state to steal from producers, that act subtracts from production instead of adding to it. “The "political means" siphons production off to a parasitic and destructive individual or group; and this siphoning not only subtracts from the number producing, but also lowers the producer's incentive to produce beyond his own subsistence. In the long run, the robber destroys his own subsistence by dwindling or eliminating the source of his own supply. But not only that; even in the short run, the predator is acting contrary to his own true nature as a man.” As I have already shown in the above paragraph, the free market is perfectly capable of regulating itself. Bad ethics is bad business and is never actually sustainable. Without help from the state, such businessmen as those who caused this past recession always fail, and their resources are divided amongst the less affluent, competitive man. What then does the state do? Only turn man against himself by providing an easy means of piracy.
         So how does the standard of living rise, then, if not by the force of a gun? It rises when Dave the Peasant decides that he is going to save his resources and pool them together, to say, buy a plow and a pair of oxen. When he does this, he no longer needs to dig with a hoe. He gets more work done with the plow than he ever could have with a hoe. Dave's standard of living has just been raised. He now produces way more food, and maybe another man in the community, lets call him Jeff, no longer needs to farm in order for every one to get fed. Jeff figures that the other farmers need plows and that he is just the man to build them. He now builds plows, which makes plows easier to get. Now other farmers can afford them.         You see, a lot more work can get done by a man with a forklift than a man with a horse cart. Of course you had to work 13+ hours a day back in the industrial revolution, everything was still being done by hand! It wasn't government restrictions that changed the situation, it was the desires of generations of men to provide a better life for their families. It takes time for the standard of living in a community to rise up, but there are no shortcuts. It is supreme ingratitude to steal the thanks from these men women and children, from whom we've inherited the standard of living which we now enjoy, and give it to self important politicians. Economic calculation is always open for the poor man. we ought not penalize him for succeeding. Every state law and regulatory burden is an obstacle to the poor man's emancipation. No, Belloc, and the Church, misunderstands economics when they claim that resources will always be distributed only to the rich in a free market system.
        Moreover, it is not possible to force employers to pay employees higher wages by government inflation. Such measures are unsustainable. If you owned a factory in 1920 and the state came and said to you, you must provide your employees an air conditioned working environment, you would have shut down. Well, now this is something that we all take for granted. If the government stopped telling companies to air condition their work places, would all companies immediately stop air conditioning their buildings to save money? No, of course not. Why? Because they are competing for employees. If one company has air conditioning, and another does not, which job is more preferable? A company that does not have an air conditioned work place must pay employees more in order to work there. A man might decide that he wants higher wages more than he wants air conditioning, and that is his business. Far be it from us to tell that man that he must take lower wages and force his employer to air condition.
       No, free association and free exchange of resources is the answer to poverty, not the cause of it. 
Economics Politics
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A Reply to Common Objections Against the Free Market. I



         This post is intended as a reply to a friend and I concerning the Church's Social teaching, specifically as stated in the encyclical Caritas en Veritate. I will post three more replies later to counter all four critiques of the free market as raised during our previous dialogue. 

Again, I agree wholeheartedly with the church that the individual needs to be protected from exploitation and that the poor ought to be taken care of. I just disagree as to how practically this ought to happen.
  1. The free market has no rules! You need contract enforcement, a medium of exchange, an independent judiciary for a market to function. Without the state these things are impossible.
Pope Benedict writes:
         “It is in the interests of the market to promote emancipation, but in order to do so effectively, it cannot rely only on itself, because it is not able to produce by itself something that lies outside its competence. It must draw its moral energies from other subjects that are capable of generating them.” Chapter III. Caritas en Veritate.
         This is one of those statements which seems to say that the the market cannot regulate itself because such regulation “lies outside its competence.” I don't think this is an easy stance to take when you look at how human beings function on a daily basis. I believe the market is able to rely on itself for regulation. It is able to do so because it is not an it. That is to say the free market is comprised of people who, as it happens, are brilliant problem solvers.
         So as to your statement about the definition of capitalism, You’re correct. Laissez Faire Capitalism is a market free of any rules imposed by elected officials. It is not, however, free of any rules. As you commented, “You can’t have a free market unless you have things such as contract enforcement, prosecution of fraud, fair weights and measures, a medium of exchange, secure property you can use as an asset to borrow against, or an independent judiciary,” you are absolutely right.” However, when you say “These are things the market cannot produce by itself,” I believe human action proves the opposite. The free market is perfectly capable of providing for these needs on its own, and the Austrian school of economics shows how these things arise in a depth of detail that would put a crackhead to sleep of boredom.
         The rules that govern a free market are not forced from without, but instead arise from people, who encountering an obstacle, will find a way over, around, under, or through it. To be sure, not having a way to enforce contract is a problem. Problem solving also happens to be very economically lucrative. I think here, it is important to instead of thinking about an economy as a whole, think about human action on a more individual level. 
         So let’s say it’s Europe in the renaissance. You are a Florentine cloth merchant, and someone in Munich wants to buy a very large order of cloth. Knowing that you aren’t protected by any rule of law, as a border is crossed, what do you do? You might ask the other merchants around for references. Has anyone else heard of this guy? Is he reputable? Does he have any record of previous business transactions? Finding out that this man has no record, you might have a limit for how much cloth you are willing to sell him. If he is reputable, then you wouldn’t be afraid of trading with him. This is the market providing governance from within, and it is actually how commerce worked during much of the renaissance. Merchants kept a record between them of who had traded with whom. If someone was not on the list, you would not be unable to trade with them, but you might, for instance, require payment in advance, or a deposit of some sort, or you might limit the amount you are willing to trade until he has gain more repute. Because people do want to engage in commerce, they naturally and organically find ways of managing risk. Look at the internet, for instance. For the most part, no country has been governing internet commerce. If you get taken by someone on Ebay, it’s pretty hard to track them down and prosecute them. But when you look at their reputation, for instance, you can see if people have been unhappy with the service provided to them or if they were pleased. So you give someone reputable your credit card information, trusting that this person would rather not ruin their reputation by stealing from you. This protection naturally rises from within.
         Ebay itself has a natural desire to keep business, so it works to ensure that sellers cannot simply give themselves reputation points. Ebay knows that if people don’t trust that system, then they won’t shop there. So Ebay has entire departments constantly working on trying to safeguard the public from conmen. They are always figuring it out. Why? Because they have financial incentive to do so. The state, on the other hand, has no monetary intensive to be excellent. There are no alternative states from which you may chose your allegiance. The state has no economic incentive to be effective as it has no competition. It simply says, “if you do not think we did a good job, too bad.” So the state does not need to be effective to remain in power. Moreover, the state can only make laws, which are cumbersome, bludgeoning things that cannot keep up with the speed at which the markets change. For instance, with the example of the merchants, a state might say, depending on the political mood of the time: “You must trade with anyone who wants you to.” In which case, trade would shut down completely. Or “You cannot trade with anyone unless you have a license.” Why shouldn't I be able to trade with an unlicensed person if I want to? I'm the one assuming the risk here! Such a policy would put barriers on trade as opposed to encouraging it. The free market's solutions to this issue, by which I mean, people's own problem solving prowess, does, in fact, produce organic safeguards. Not only does regulation arise from within the market, but these regulations are far more effective protections for the individual than state laws. 
Economics Politics
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The Free Market is the Answer, Not the Enemy



In a recent statement to the world's diplomats, Pope Francis called for an end to the free market. He said that  free-market capitalism had created a “tyranny,” and that countries should impose more control over their economies and not allow “absolute autonomy”, in order to provide “for the common good.”In his opinion economic inequality is caused by "ideologies which uphold the absolute autonomy of markets and financial speculation, and thus deny the right of control to states, which are themselves charged with providing for the common good."
Pope Francis is one of my favorite Popes of all time. He knows how to love and lead the Church well, but his infallibility extends only to matters of “faith and morals,” as does the rest of the magisterium. No one would argue that Pope Francis and the rest of the bishops’ infallible teaching power extends into the realms of biology, so why do we accept that the Church’s teaching power extends to political philosophy and the economy? 

 Yes, the current financial system is terribly screwed up. Yes, we are dominated by the tyranny of money. However, we are not living in a free-market economy. What we have are centrally planned economies that pretend to be free markets. Pope Francis’ diagnosis is wrong, and therefore his prescription must be called into question. Should countries impose more control over their economies than they already do? Well, what is the common good? I would say general prosperity (the leisurely kind) is a good. Poverty, though a spiritual virtue, is not something that we want people to live in. God’s heart for his people is that the poor be cared for, which means that he doesn’t enjoy watching his kids live in poverty. A high standard of living across the board is the best scenario for the common good, economically speaking. I’ll prove that by asking the following question: “would you rather be poor in Richmond, America or poor in Bangalore, India?” No one would pick Bangalore. Why? The standard of living is higher in Richmond. 

 So what sort of factors cause growth in an economy, which then leads to a raise in the standard of living? Does more government control lead to the general welfare, or does more free market capitalism lead to the general welfare? First, let’s talk about the difference between a free market economy and a centrally planned economy. In a free market economy, banks set their own interest rates according to supply and demand of money. The currency has inherent value (Gold/silver) and is therefore stable and not easily manipulated. When an institution fails, its capital is redistributed to new entrepreneurs at cheap prices. This creates opportunity for the little guy. On the other hand, in a centrally planned economy, interest rates are set arbitrarily by a central bank. The currency is a fiat currency (paper, printed money) that is manipulated for the states benefit. Big business is bailed out when it fails and generally propped up by the state. 

 Clearly, our economy is centrally planned. But let’s just take this one at a time, shall we? 

 Interest rates: 
In a free market society, interest rates work the following way. A bank opens up. They don’t have money to lend out, so they raise their interest rates. That makes you want to save your money in a bank as opposed to take out loans. Once the bank has enough resources to lend out to entrepreneurs, they lower the interest rates. This makes you want to save less and borrow more. This sort of system rewards you, the small guy, for SAVING YOUR MONEY. 
In an economy with a central bank, however, ( 90% of the developed nations in the world), the interest rates are set arbitrarily, and they are generally set LOW. (The Federal Reserve has them fluctuating between 0 and 2 through 2014). This does not encourage you to save, but rather to take out loans. Here’s a thought, one of the greatest struggles of our economic lives is getting out of debt. Not enough people save right? According to people like Dave Ramsey, we are all just being stupid consumers, not saving our money or thinking long term. It’s not because we’re stupid. It’s because our current financial system doesn’t reward us for saving. There are so many repercussions to this practice that it would take hundreds of pages and lots of big economics terms. The point is that centrally planned interest rates make us much more debt laden. This true of us as individuals, and of the country as a whole. The debt crisis in the west is not caused by the free market running unhampered. It is caused by central banks. 

 Currency:
The second thing that central banks do is they inflate the currency. The Fed calls it “quantitative easing.” They basically print money. In a free market, a currency has inherent value and cannot be inflated. Gold and silver have inherent value. It’s scarce, it’s shiny, and it’s easily divisible. A government cannot simply print more gold to finance its bloated welfare system and adventurist foreign policy. When the fed prints money to finance these things, it makes our money worth less. It is a hidden form of taxation. This removes money from the middle class and puts it in the pockets of defense budget lobbyists, insurance company lobbyists, and all the rest of the wall street big wigs. 

 Big Business
Moreover, when these institutions fail, like in the 2008 crisis, the Fed bails them out with printed money. This sucks value from the middle class’s dollar, and gives it the wealthy. That is called wealth redistribution. It is NOT good for the poor, it is NOT good for the middle class. It LOWERS our standard of living. The state also likes to prop big business up by hurting their competitors. Big companies love to lobby to government for more and more regulation. They don’t care about regulation. They have armies of lawyers and accountant divisions specifically for the purpose of handling government regulation. They eat the cost. On the other hand, small business gets slaughtered. If you want an example of how this works, watch Senator Ted Cruiz talk about the new internet sales tax. Big business lobbied for it. Small business doesn’t lobby. Big business crush’s small business. 


In conclusion, central planning makes for a hostile environment for growth and innovation. Pope Francis’s attempts to correct what is clearly a terrible issue, tyranny, but he does it by encouraging more of the same. The Church, indeed the entire world, needs to start taking the economic sciences seriously. We cannot afford, as a church, to be encouraging practices that entrench poverty and keep the worlds resources clutched in the hands of the 1%. The free market is the answer, not the enemy.
Economics Faith Politics
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A Letter to Authors Concerning Roller Coasters

    
    It's funny how when you're sick, all you need is sleep, but your body just wont give you any because it decides that (now that you are in the zenith of your mental abilities) your highest priority is resolving the mysteries of the universe. Really, I've been up for two hours now just letting my fever pilot my mind like an aviator with a blood alcohol content of 5. Thoughts, memories, weird dream-like imaginings are flying by like clouds, and really have no idea which direction is up. My little plane keeps flying through one cloud (metaphor key: cloud=thought... ) over and over. It's the memory of David Corbett's solemn voice asking us all “What is your most profound moment of guilt? What is your most profound moment of shame? What your most profound moment of terror?” These words crash over my mind like waves on a beach; they boom like a gong from some ancient Chinese ritual. “What is your most profound moment of anger? What is your most profound moment of confusion?” That talk has been hatching like an egg, my brains membrane birthing through my skull.

BLAHHHH!

 So melodramatic I know, give me a break. I'm running a 100 fever, for godsakes. In any case, here it is: My hatched egg, a letter to all you beautiful authors.

          In an interview with Elizabeth Carlton, Corbett told the journalist: “In the black recesses of your mind, there is plenty that’s wild and grand and terrifying. I’m always amazed at how students respond when I make them dig up moments of profound guilt, or shame, or terror. The writerly writing fades away, and the truth comes out.” That, my friends, is the whole shabang, the goose that lays the golden egg, its the entire purpose of literature. To let the truth come out.


HARRRGGG!!! This one *huff* better be *huff* made of pure gdamned Gold!

         When I went to school and chose a major, at one time, I selected philosophy. I did that because I saw myself as a truth seeker, and I was under the false impression that philosophy is the place where the big questions are asked. What I discovered beneath the looming philosophy blackboard covered in powdery white chalk was an entire science that is completely devoid of human experience. Using phrases like “epistemology” and “logical positivism,” the students would argue about the big questions like “what is the purpose of life?” “is there meaning?” and “are we just brains in a vat?”



When the conversation ended, both sides carried on with their lives without another thought. Does morality exist? one man would ask, “or is it simply a biological, socio economic construct?” He would posit that no, morality does not exist. He would then promptly rush out the door to attend a LGBT meeting because discrimination is wrong. Similarly, a student would make the grandest argument for the existence of a creator, and destroy his opponent in the most condescending and humiliating way possible. It was what philosophers call “Leisure.”

I spend my leisure time reading ontological proofs of Gods existence!

          Instead of asking “is morality God given or a biological construct?” the author asks something far more profound and far more moving. The author asks: “what does it look like in a person's life when he or she violates the moral code? How does that person cope? How do they change?” When this question is asked in the depths of an engaging plot, inside a dynamic character's life, the most peculiar thing happens: the reader changes too. We've all turned the final page of that old torn up paperback, held the book carefully, pinning the binding together so that those precious pages remain locked as stones in the book's mosaic. We've all lifted that book till made contact with our cheeks, inhaled that wondrous, old library smell, put it down on our bed, and said: I will never see love through the same eyes ever again.

Cause now I'm on team JACOB!

 Story has the power to change us. Story reveals the truth in a way that no theologian, scientist, or philosopher could ever reveal it.


         My friends, it's an undeniable fact that your audience is growing duller every day. No longer can you capture an audience with a powerful first page. Instead, you've got to capture your readers with a two sentence pitch and a helluva book cover. I worked in the writing center in college, and its a fact. The general public is barely literate. Western culture has declined and as has our attention span.

Squirrel!?! 

 This is where the story gets very, very sad. literature is not just some vehicle for entertainment- it is not “the layman's philosophy,” as my ethics professor said and it is not at all like a roller coaster. If you have ever been to an amusement park; if you've ever fearfully accepted the challenge of a mile long steel track that dips you, twirls you about, causes your heart to pound adrenaline through you like a pump, if you've ever partaken in such a life altering experience, you might have noticed an unfortunate truth. The cars hum right back into the same covered tent from whence they came. It goes nowhere.
It's good to recognize that people want a ride that takes their breath away. But why on earth don't we recognize that a roller coaster does not necessarily need to end up in the same place? Who wouldn't ride a roller coaster to work if they had the opportunity? I would be much more excited to go to work in the morning.


Who are we kidding? I would wingsuit base jump to work if that was an option.

 Excitement does not need to exclude meaning. Actually, I would posit that the two are mutually exclusive to a good story.

            David Corbett's central point in his speech that evening was that the human being is redefined in moments of deep and profound confusion. When a man is confronted with deep humiliation or guilt, his insipid “I'm a normal put together person” facade crashes to the ground. Behind this facade is a white sheet in splattered red letters that reads “I'm fucked up.” That man now, must face the fact that he is deeply broken. This is when those big questions that the philosophers ask matter. Not only that, but also in these moments, a written character ought to ask those questions because that's what human beings do. Thus, killing off a character's parent's is not a plot device. We don't go there because it “makes the character face something of a conundrum,” or because “we need more drama.” We do it because deep down, human beings are all seekers of truth. We love to see the facade fall down and grapple with meaning or the lack there of.
Alright my friends, here we go. It's example time.

          The Game of Thrones. The books were amazing and gripping, yes, but the TV show nailed it last Sunday. If you follow the show, all I need to say is this: Petyr Baelish.


This guy is my new favorite villain. For those of you who don't know his back story here it is: After his parents die they leave him with a noble title, but without any wealth or land, thus leaving him at the absolute bottom of the nobility hierarchy. Despite this fact, he falls in love with a noble woman. She is betrothed to another, and though he is a small man, he challenges her fiance to a duel. The stronger man soundly defeats him, but instead of killing him, he leaves him with a scar to remember his place. Most profound moment of shame—CHECK. We're still on a roller coaster, my friends, so far this is pretty dramatic stuff. Petyr, after this unhinging incident, broken down, shamed, wearing the mark of a “beta male,” makes an off page decision: “The only meaning in life is to “climb the ladder.”

See how that worked?
If you missed it, here's the formula:
Terrible event of profound shame and hurt – decision concerning life's meaning—character drama.
So how does this make for the most superb, terrifying, unhinging character drama that people watch the show for? This conversation right here:
Lord Varys:
“I did what I did for the good of the realm.”
Petyr Baelish:
“The realm? Do you know what the realm is? It's the thousand blades of Agon's enemies; a story we agree to tell each other, over and over and over till we forget that it's a lie.”
Lord Varys:
“And what do we have left when we abandon the lie? Chaos. A gaping pit waiting to swallow us all.”
cue scary music.
Petyr Baelish:
“Chaos isn't a pit. Chaos is a ladder.”
slow pan over his prostitute who informed on him, she is tied to a bed and shot full of arrows.
“Many who try to climb it fail and never get to try again. The fall breaks them. Some have a chance to climb, but they refuse, they cling to the realm, or the gods, or love. ILLUSIONS. Only the ladder is real. The climb is all there is.”


           BOOM. That my beautiful authors is a terrifying villain. He's terrifying not because he kills prostitutes, but because he makes us ask the question “is he right?” He makes us ask an unhinging, life changing question: “Is that really all there is? Am I just clinging to illusions?” The roller coaster that is the Game of Thrones just took all its viewers to a new place.

           Thus, my friends, Entertainment and depth cannot be believably separated. I as a reader, am unbelievably tired of reading novels that don't take me anywhere. I know, however, many of you are thinking, “well if that's what you love, then go read literary stuff. Go read the classics, I'm writing a mid grade fantasy for the masses.” Pause for me while I go wrench my guts out... literally and metaphorically at the same time. So here's the deal. To accept that some people just don't enjoy depth is like saying some dogs don't like to lick themselves. Are we human beings or are we beasts? If you want to sell a shit ton of books, let your readers get off the ride in a different place than where they got on. Yes, in order to do this, you might have to get a little crazy. As David Corbet says: “You may need to tell yourself: Okay, I’m going to risk being wild and insane and black and grand. I’m going to write from where my fear is. Make sure your own heart is beating fast. Make sure you really, truly care.” Write us something powerful. Please.
Storytime
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DFW Con


Dfw writers conference this weekend was awesome. Here are the bullet points:


  • Wear bowties more often. Nuff said.


Nothing says "read my book" like a frikkin studdly bowtie
  • From a class on detail, I just strait up do too much of that. I need to stop trying to amaze everyone with my epic turn of phrase and poetics and actually say tell you guys whats happening. No one cares how deep a crimson the sunset is or how it blends with the fiery hue's of a forest in autumn unless some dude just took a sword to his gut.
    And/or is consumed by a gigantic spongebob inflatable

  • I naively attended the session labled how to write a good love scene. What it actually should have been called was: “how to write a steamy sex scene.” Needless to say, it was quite... ehem... informational. In fact, so much so that I'm going to need sub bullet points for this guy.

    - When writing a sex scene, one writes until the change in the character occurs. The classic “fade to a random sunset after they kiss” bit only works if the drama of the occasion has already taken place. So. A really good example of this is Daenerys and Khal Drogo's wedding night in the game of thrones. You really get to see the tender side of Khal Drogo when he touches her. In that scene, things start to change for Daenerys, the scared girl starts to accept her crown here. You could never have seen the drama if it had faded to horses on the Dothraki plains right after the wedding.

    "No... no, Dave! Not that o..... shit."


    - There were two whole power point pages on how to get over “My mother is going to read this” syndrome. The central counter to this particular issue seemed to be the following argument: Your mother has had sex. Probably with your dad. The end.

    - Loves scenes must have lots and lots of tension or else they aren't compelling. There must be at least one serious obstacle—you're a vampire and could possibly eat me if we get it on—or else it sucks. Apparently its the same as in real life. Who knew?


  • The unexamined life is worthless to a writer. David Corbett, the keynote speaker, spoke at the evening cocktail party on the importance of self examination. The writer's entire purpose is the peal back the veil on the human condition. We write to reveal the truth. “What does it mean to be human?” every writer eats, sleeps, and breaths this question. The key, he said, to real, solid characters is to know that the cheerleaders greatest moment of shame was when she threw up all over her shoes. That her greatest moment of guilt was when she almost had the abortion. That the time she was the most free and alive was when she saw her little sister win the dance contest. The moments where one is most helpless or unable to understand are the moments that define us as people. The journey to good authorship, then, is to first accept and understand your own. This insight was so profound. As a youth minister, I'm constantly trying to get kids to open up and “share their shit.” I do this, because when you go there, when you return to those times of deep hurt or extreme joy, two things happen. Firstly, the question “what does it mean to be human?” cannot help but be asked. Secondly, two people who would have otherwise been completely indifferent towards one another, suddenly share a deep bond as a result. The discovery “you are human too,” comes like an echo.
    I wrote a whole post about this here if you're interested.

  • I really want to finish Guardians. The story just demands to be written. It's coming my friends. It's coming.   
Storytime
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Station XIV: Jesus is laid in the tomb


Soft linen wrapped sticky skin,
lain down in lonely dark stone,
cold earth’s womb.

His mother remembers the last time
She wrapped him up in linen.
He was all squinty eye'd and crying.
In swaddling finery.
He wore it like a prince.
He was much smaller then,
So delicate, so beautiful;
A promise, the hope of victory.

Her husband had put new hay in the stone trough
And when Jesus finally slept,
there, He lay still
Peace hung about him,
His adornment

Now, again, he lays, on stone
wrapped in swaddling cloths.
But now, body broken,
Choked, pierced, bashed, and bruised
Yellow, green, purple, blue
Cold lips and tender, discolored, hands.
He makes of this new stone, a manger.

He was born in a cave,
She thought.
Poetry
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Squamping! The Complete Adventures


Squamping! The Full Adventures.
Beloved friends, family, and distant acquaintances who I met one time, as many of you know, the past month has been right treacherous for yours truly. It was also a bit silly. That entirely depends on your point of view. My squamping story starts with the unfortunate beginning of waking up in the same place I used to wake up in high school: In my parents’ house.
It just so happens that this is somewhat normal for college graduates these days, especially if you've studied one of the top ten least marketable majors, like English. Now, nothing against my family, but living at home after not living at home for any significant period of time can be….. trying. From having to wake up early in the morning for no other reason than “9 am is plenty late” to the endless pile of dishes in the sink, it was becoming more clear by the minute, “It’s time to get the hell out of dodge. So I did the only logical thing that any one in their right mind would do. I commandeered a tent and sleeping bag and pitched that shit in the middle of the scariest, most apocalyptic looking abandoned farm I could find.


Yes. Those are shotgun shells.

Now, I know what you’re thinking. You’re thinking: “Marcellino! That’s absolutely the least logical thing you could do! Only a person who is absolutely not in their right mind would do that!” If that is what you are thinking, please refer to my last post were I clearly outline how I am crazy.
                Anyway, as is the case with all crazy people, their methods, though unorthodox, perhaps, usually have some reasoning to it, and for me, I believe that I am following the long standing tradition of American men who do crazy things just to prove they can. From the guy who drives his mattress across town with nothing but his hand out the window to steady it, to the dude who said: “oh look a shark, I’m going to put on a santa suit and bmx bike over that crap,” I am in good company.



But really, in every culture that has ever existed, with the exception of our progressive, egalitarianized western culture, there has been a coming of manhood ritual. I will hold back from jumping on top of my “oh the feminized culture” soap box, if you would like some more on man’s need for such “primitive” shenanigans, as bunji jumping off a makeshift scaffold except with vines instead of bunji cords, head on over to the boys at the art of manliness, they’ll do you right. I’m just trying to let you know that I’m following in the tradition of very respectable, holy people have done similarly crazy things. People like Jesus.

Now make haste, go into the village before us. Upon entering you will find a miniature tyrannosaurus rex upon which no one has ever sat. Untie it and bring it here. If anyone asks, say unto them "the Master has need of it."
                For those of you who don’t know, Jesus spent 40 days alone fasting in thewilderness before beginning his public ministry. Throughout it, he was constantly going up on mountains alone to connect with the Father. Before him, John the Baptist lived in the Judean wilderness surviving off of stolen bee honey. After Christianity was legalized in the 4th century and the persecutions stopped, it just wasn’t quite as bad ass to be Christian anymore, so a bunch of dudes called the Desert Fathers just went out and lived in hermitages in northern Egypt. That’s a desert by the way. St Benedict, before founding the first monastic rule, lived in a cave. St Francis, the revivalist of all revivalists lived in the wilderness for… pretty much his whole life, and St. Ignatius, the evangelist of all evangelists lived in a cave alone for several years before founding the Jesuit order. If none of those do it for you, here’s Theodore Roosevelt riding on the back of a moose.


By now if you haven’t figured it out, the word squamping, is the combination of the words squatting¸ and camping. That is what I was doing. I highly encourage it. Pretty much every day during the month of October, I would go to work, make tasty food, eat it, and then go home in the evening to a campfire, howling wind, 40o nights, and a cozy, cozy sleeping bag. I smelled perpetually of campfire for the entire month. It was awesome.


 So here, chronicled, are some of my experiences for your enjoyment..
The light was already dim as I drove my motorcycle off the country road and onto the squampsite. The October sun had just dipped below the western tree line, and the cabin now stood an ominous dark structure, almost hidden under the canopy of two huge half dead cypress trees. I road down the overgrown path towards what would be my home for the next month. As I past the derelict barn and the heap of old rusted farm machinery, a realization crept in like the cold seeps through your coat in winter. This was going to be a frightful evening. The landscape, which had been unsettling during the day, was now downright terrifying in the twilight. The nape of my neck prickled and my heartbeat picked up as I neared the rotting wooden fence that surrounded the cabin. My tent was pitched just behind it, under the canopy’s dark outline. I had originally planned on clearing the broken glass from the cabin and staying inside it. This was about the time that I thanked God that I had brought a tent instead. There was no way I was going to set foot inside that thing now that it was close to dark. To the right and to the left of my tent were two lines of trees about twenty yards apart. They pointed all the way back into a thick, rugged thicket. Though there were farms on either side of this property, I was hidden from the world. The feeling of isolation sunk into me as I hid my bike next to the overgrown telephone pole a few yards away. It would do if I had to make a quick getaway. I cut the engine, removed my helmet, and listened.
The wind exhaled a long breath through the tree branches, brushing leaves together and snapping dead twigs, finally forcing their eviction. Crickets chirped and jumped from one square of matted hay to the next. You don't hear them jump, so it really just sounds like the largest raindrops you've ever heard occasionally falling from the sky. They did not fall at a high enough frequency that makes you forget their presence, but instead occur irregularly and rarely enough that each jump is profoundly surprising. In my heightened state of awareness, every one sounded like a footstep.
If you have never spent the night outside or in an unfamiliar place alone, you've got to try it sometime. Your senses jump to super human levels of sensitivity, especially your hearing. As my Uncle Stephan—a tried mountaineer and outdoors man—would say, “when you spend the night outside alone you can hear a mouse fart a mile away.”
That's really how it was. I could hear everything for miles around. A dog would bark all the way past Preston Rd and I would jump as if a ravenous pack of coyotes were at my feet. This never turned out to be the case, but my squampsite was not without its dangers.
  Every night after work, I'd ride in on my bike underneath a starry sky, hide the bike by the telephone pole, cover it in a tarp, and start to gather wood for a fire. I'd pack hay and twigs underneath broken fence posts and branches, strike a match, and it would go up in seconds. I'd sit back, smoke a cheep cigar and just feed the fire for hours. Every 45 minutes or so, I'd hear something moving right across the fence. I could tell from the sounds it made that it was small, about the size of a small dog. But it was only fifteen feet away, and it was annoying (scarring) the hell out of me. It was especially terrifying when I zipped myself into my tent and I could hear the thing padding around my fire. I would just be about to doze off when it would scamper from the tent to my fire pit and back. It would scare me just enough to make my nights miserable. I slept in that tent for 10 nights before I found out what that thing was. I was digesting a delightfully dense portion of St. Therese’s Story of a Soul, when the aggravating beast began its usual nightly ritual of making lots of noise and hiding when I tried to see what it was. I walked over to the fence, about three feet away from the noise. It stopped. I returned to my place by the fire, my curiosity unsatisfied. I picked up my book again and dove back into Therese of Lisseux. Just as I was about to grasp the meaning of life, once again the noises start back up. I tried to ignore it and read, but my eyes would just scan over the words without making any sense of them as my mind began to imagine what it could be. A fox? A possum? A poisonous snake? A HUGE RAT!?  I knew now, I must kill or be killed. There was only enough room in this squampsite for ONE! I picked up my shovel, determined to slay this huge rat—that must have been what it was—and strode toward the noise courageously. The noise stopped. I couldn't see anything in the darkness, just the fire casting long shadows on the cabin. I slammed the shovel down on the ground and grunted loudly. If I could not slay it, I would give it a taste of its own medicine! Maybe I could scare it away. I layed about me and banged on the fence, on the tree branches, on the old over turned rusty office chair beside it. I made a lot of noise, and when I was quite done, I returned to my chair, still holding my shovel. Seconds later I heard it move again. This thing was making a fool of me. This time, I just stayed absolutely still. The noise came closer, it moved along the fence till it was only about five feet away. I sat still. It came closer, right under the fence, and I could just see its dark outline begin to take shape. It stepped into the light.

It was a skunk.

My friends, this is how I know that there is a God. It is an absolute miracle that the thing didn't ink me in the FACE when I was banging around with a shovel.

That indecent, however, happened after I had already pushed through most of my fear. The first three nights that I spent at the squampsite were downright terrifying. The third night I came back late from hanging out with friends (who were, by the way, very curious as to why I smelled like campfire), and instead of making a fire and calming myself down, I attempted to go strait to my sleeping bag. This was not smart. It was the windiest night we'd had all fall, with the wind howling through the trees. The tent's lose material flapped so loudly that it sounded like a thunderclap on repeat. I tried to let the haunting melodies of Bon Iver lull me to sleep, but alas, it was not to be. I simply could not calm myself. What must have been an hour passed, and another hour passed, and still I could not shut out the noise and the fear that came with it. Finally, I was just beginning to lose consciousness when atom bomb exploded right outside my tent. My mind raced to keep up with my heart as adrenaline hit my bloodstream like fire. I immediately knew what had happened, but it didn't matter, the damage was done. I would not sleep tonight. My shovel had been standing upright, and the wind had blown it over. It was the loudest noise I'd ever heard.

I made a fire and spent the rest of the night calming my nerves. When little traces of light began to creep up on the outline of the eastern treeline, I finally pulled myself together and went to sleep.

I woke up to the sound of sirens and men yelling.

I must be caught! THE COPS ARE AFTER ME! Or maybe the caught someone doing drugs at the cabin by the road. NO I'M DONE FOR!
These thoughts and more flooded my mind. I didn't even stop to close my tent. I ran to my bike. The sounds got closer and in my morning haze I just couldn't piece it together. WHAT THE HELL WAS GOING ON?! The siren was on the property, across the other side of the treeline, but it was moving at a deliberate pace, not as fast as a car. Huh.

And was just about to drive out of the gate and make a run for it when I saw what was causing the commotion.

It was a bicycle race. It went all along the road and right across the treeline. The cops were there to make sure no cars hit the bikes. I realized that my bikes two stroke engine was going to do absolutely nothing good for me in this situation. I shut it off, pulled it up next to some trees and waited for the race to end. I waited and waited as a continuous stream of men and women passed right by. I ended up three hours late to work. What do you tell your boss in a situation like that?

For the most part, however, my time at the squampsite was one of exterior incident, but of inner conquest. Joseph Campbel wrote on the mythical hero's three part journey. The hero could not be a hero without a time of separation. He writes: "The hero ventures forth from the world of common day into a region of supernatural wonder. . ." (30). Though I didn't have an oriental prison, or cult like secret society on the top of a mountain, or the Judean wilderness, or swampy moon, the squampsite, for me, was such a region of supernatural wonder, separated from the normal world.  Like Batman, the Apostle Paul, and Luke Skywalker, my time in the wilderness was defining for me. I left that squampsite a different person than I had arrived. The experience has settled deep in my soul, pinning me up, proving to my doubting self that I am, in fact a man. Such experiences, once common to a culture, are no longer understood or valued by our safe and comfortable suburban society. But something tells me that this safety is really a facade, and that as this time of crisis continues to deepen and take form, men are going to need their own proving ground. Hero's now, are once again needed. Maybe not to slay dragons, perhaps, but to lead families, to father movements, to be bastions of strength and integrity in a world that is increasingly dark and cynical. These are no less daunting, no less heroic. For Campbel, the hero's time of separation leads to initiation.  He writes that “fabulous forces are there encountered and a decisive victory is won" (30). Think of Luke Skywalker's encounter with Darth Vader in the cave. Finally, the hero's time in separation ends with return. Campbel writes: "the hero comes back from this mysterious adventure with the power
to bestow boons [gifts] on his fellow man" (30). The hero comes back "from the kingdom of dread (return, resurrection)" (246). This is the hero's legacy. I don't believe that I'm done with wilderness, but I think every man needs this turning to take place occasionally in his life. It's the heart of story, and unless we want a boring, un-consequential, comfortable life, we will find the wilderness and seek it out.

 I'd love to hear about y'alls wilderness experiences, so hit me up with them. I'm sure some of you have had wonderful, terrifying separation's and some equally as powerful returns.

–Joseph Campbell: The Hero with a Thousand Faces, 1949
Adventure Storytime wilderness
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