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Got Soul, Part II

Wednesday 15 December 2004

Regarding my recent post on the soul, Isabella commented,

What loaded questions. That nobody can answer. I don’t know if you’re a reader of fiction (heck, I barely know you at all), but your entire post reminds me of an SF novel – Terminal Experiment, by Robert J Sawyer. I don’t think he’s a very good writer, but he grapples with some very interesting ideas, starting with the 21 grams that leave the body when you die.

Twenty-one grams that leave the body when you die? I’d never heard of this. Being a skeptic, I immediately thought, “Urban legend,” but I thought I’d poke around on the internet a while and see what turned up.

In an article entitled “Soul Man“, I found that the the 21-gram idea can be traced back to an early-twentieth century physician, Duncan MacDougall of Haverhill, Massachusetts. He did a relatively crude experiment in which the beds of six terminally ill patients were put on scales to check for weight loss at the moment of death. He claimed to have accounted for evaporation of any sweat that might be on the patients skin, and reasoned that the effect of bowel movement or urine elimination would be negligable because it would remain on the bed. His results were far from uniform, but they indicated some weight loss at death. (The full text of the 1907 AMA paper is here.)

From this, it’s safe to say:

Urban Legend.

But were the questions I asked really “unanswerable?” That depends on what we mean by “unanswerable.” Science is not usually about “definitely” answered questions, and after all, it is science than can answers this question for us while we’re still alive.

All bets are off once we’re dead, though.

The saddest part about not believing in a soul, though, is that we’re right, we’ll never know.

Lingusitic Netherworld

Tuesday 14 December 2004

My wife and I, for the first several years of our friendship, spoke nothing but English.

When I met her, I barely spoke Polish; as we became friends and spent more time together, though my Polish was improving, her English was still much better, so it just made sense to speak English.

When we decided to try dating, after being friends for six years or so, I told her, “Okay, one thing that has to happen is a linguistic change. We can’t go speaking English all the time.” And so one early date, we spoke nothing but Polish.

It was awkward. The language felt heavy in my mouth as I occasionally stumbled to express something that I knew I could say in English and she would easily understand. And hearing her speak Polish to me – it was surprisingly odd.

Since then, we’ve reached an equilibrium. We speak a lot of English because we’re eventually going to be living in the States for some time, and she wants all the practice she can get. “You get so speak Polish all the time. I never get to speak English,” she reasoned. Fine by me, I thought – speaking my native language is still easier than speaking Polish, a sign that though my Polish is getting pretty good, fluency is a non-issue, and admittedly, an impossibility due to my inherent laziness.

When we’re with friends, we speak Polish of course. Guests leave and we sometimes continue speaking Polish, sometimes slip in to English, and most often, mix the two.

When she’s tired and I’m tired and neither of us wants to think about what how to say what we want to say, she speaks Polish and I speak English, leading to some undoubtedly strange sounding conversations. Most telephone conversations are mixed like this, though no one else knows it. (Or didn’t, until now.)

I’ve recently noticed that when she speaks Polish, she sounds like a different person in some ways. My wife speaks very good English, but she’s generally spoken it very deliberately. That’s why she makes so few grammar mistakes – she’s thinking carefully as she speaks. But when she speaks Polish, all those linguistic concerns disappear and she just talks.

Even her voice sounds a little different when she’s speaking Polish. It’s somehow a little deeper. It resonates a little more. The sounds in Polish (“szcz,” “prz,” “rz,” etc.) generally sound harder (not more difficult, more solid), so when she’s speaking Polish, she sounds older and less naive.

Re: the “less naive” comment: My wife and I are both idealists, though I’m a pessimistic idealist — I hope things will work out for the best, but I usually doubt they will. So in that sense, we’re both a bit naive.

I can only imagine what I sound like speaking Polish to her. Because Polish grammar is so difficult (it’s a heavily inflected language), I still make tons of mistakes. But my Polish is now at a level that I usually know I’ve made a mistake, but I just don’t want to go back and correct it, or, more often, I don’t know exactly how to correct it.

The result must be somewhat horrific.

Because my wife speaks English so well, I sometimes feel a bit stupid speaking Polish with her. She uses grammatical constructions that, as a teacher, I know are difficult for Poles to master, and she does it without thought. I, on the other hand, must sounding little like this. Well, no — that’s a bad example. My problem is mainly with the endings, so “better example this would be.”

One of the advantages of this linguistic soup will obviously be bilingual children – as long as they don’t take their Polish cues from me, that is.

Original Sin :: Salvation, Mercy, and Logic, Part III

Monday 13 December 2004

The discussion of salvation leads naturally to the question of one of the most puzzling doctrines of Christianity: Original Sin.

Simply stated, the idea of Original Sin is that because Adam and Eve sinned by eating of the Tree of Knowledge (interesting that God commanded them to stay ignorant), they plunged the whole human race into a state of sinfulness. Recall that Matthew Henry wrote that “in a graceless soul, [. . . ] is empty of all good, for it is without God; [. . . and] this is our condition by nature, till Almighty grace works a change in us.” How could this have come about, though? By what mechanism could Original Sin enter the entire human race?

What exactly did Adam and Eve do? Two things: a physical act, and more seriously, a psychological act. They physical act, of course, was eating the fruit, whatever that might have been. The psychological act was going against the will of God – disobeying, in other words. Yet for something to affect the entire human race, it would have to be passed on genetically. How could either eating a piece of fruit or disobeying a command naturally affect a human’s genetic makeup? Of course, it can’t affect us at all naturally, but we’re dealing also with a supernatural element in the story of the Fall and Original Sin, so perhaps God somehow altered Adam and Eve’s genetic composition to pass on an Original Sin gene.

Yet this is starting to get ridiculous. “Sin” is a psychological and even spiritual condition. Despite various notions of “physical sin” and other twists, sin is not physical but spiritual and psychological. How then could it be passed on genetically? If it were, it would be discoverable. Imagine the headline:

Scientists Discover the Genetic-Theological Source of All Our Woes!

If it’s not passed on genetically, we are left with the unsettling conclusion that perhaps Original Sin doesn’t really affect us as much as it affects how God views us. Original Sin is a condition we’re placed in by God, thanks to Adam and Eve’s rebellion. Perhaps it could be explained by saying that God withdrew himself from Adam and Eve after the Fall, making it impossible for them to have access to the godliness they needed to live a life free from Original Sin, and that that gap is what Jesus’ sacrifice was intended to overcome.

Polish Christmas Carols

Sunday 12 December 2004

Christmas in Poland is not the commercialized ugliness that it is in America (though it is changing). Since Poland is around 95% Catholic, Christmas has an enormous religious significance, second only to Easter. It stands to reason, then, that there are numerous Polish Christmas carols.

In the interest of honesty and fairness, I’ve selected Christmas carols only from freely distributed CDs, in an effort to infringe on copyright privileges as little as possible.

So, as a gift to anyone who’s interested, here are six Polish Christmas carols.

Wśród Nocnej Ciszy (“In the Silence of the Night”)

This is not the Polish version of “Silent Night,” but an entirely different carol. It is addressed to the shepherds in the fields who go to see the newly-born Jesus.

It begins with a shofar, and then the first voice you hear, somewhat off-key, with an ever-increasing tempo as it nears the chorus, is that of none other than Karol Wojtyła — John Paul II.

After the Pope’s verse, you hear Józek Broda (“Joseph Beard”) playing the “leaf” — I’m not sure from which tree, but he’s famous for it.

The other singers are Polish singers — pop stars, theater performers, folk singers, and every other kind of artist imaginable.

Dzisiaj w Betlejem (“Today in Bethlehem”)

This is a fairly standard Polish carol, performed in the Goralski (“Highlander”) style. Goralski folk live in the southern, mountainous region of Poland, in the Tatra Mountains, around Zakopane (“Buried”).

Typical of this style of music is the bass part. I’m not a musicologist, and I can’t really describe it — regular, repeating, simple, on the down beat. You really just have to hear it.

 Oj, Malućki (“Oh, Little One”)

This is a traditional Goralski carol, which has become as known as “Silent Night” in Poland. The solo singing style is typical of the Goralski style — it sounds to my ears sometimes as if the singer is occasionally straining to be in pitch and just _barely_ making it. It’s a horrid style when the singer is, well, less than perfect.

Otherwise, it’s intense but pleasant.

The lyrics here, according to Kinga, show a typical Goralski
attitude. One verse is,

Hey, what fer didja come down here?
Was it bad fer ya in heaven?
But daddy, your sweet, lovin’ daddy
Tossed ya out of heaven
There ya’d sit drinkin’
All kinds a sweet goodies
And here you’ll just be drinkin’
Yer bitter tears

My translation is horrid, and somewhat too direct, because it’s in the Goralski dialect, and I just can’t capture it in English. The best translated line, to get the spirit of the dialect, is the first line, “Hey, what fer didja come down here?” The original version contains the same awkward grammar when compared to “proper” Polish. I also chose to use a Southern, Twain-esque dialect (i.e., the “didja” and “fer”), in an effort to reproduce the feeling of Goralski in English, with its non-standard pronunciation of many Polish words. I think it works well because the Goralski accent here carries the same stigma as the Southern accent in the States.

 Pójdżmy Wszyscy do Stajenki (“Let Us All Go to the Stable”)

Another Goralski version of a standard Polish carol. I love this one — hard not to tap your feet as you listen.

Przybieżeli Do Betlejem (“They Came to Bethlehem”)

This is a version by Igor Jaszczuk, a Polish singer-songwriter. It’s not typical of any Polish style, and in fact, with the dobro, sounds more American than anything. I like it, though.

I hope you all enjoy these carols, and please leave a bit of feedback about them. I’m eager to see what any and all think.

Kinga and I hope you all have a pleasant Christmas.

Polishing my Polish

Saturday 11 December 2004

When I first met my wife, I spoke very little Polish. I could buy my groceries, order a beer, get a ticket to Warsaw, and that was about the extent of my Polish communication. When she introduced herself to me, my wife admitted that part of the reason she’d come over to where I was sitting was that she wanted to practice her English. That was fine, but it began happening too frequently. Soon, everyone who knew any English was coming up to me to pull out their rusty linguistic skills for a good once-over. The result was that my Polish was somewhat slow in developing.

Eventually my Polish reached a communicative level and I could discuss at least rudimentary things. But still it continued – people wanted to speak English with me.

With many people I was more than happy to continue. My wife still speaks better English than I do Polish, and several friends spoke such good English that it just seemed stupid to try to switch to Polish once I could mutter a few phrases. The goal of communication was just that – exchanging ideas – and not to sit in a bar with my friends having a language lesson.

However, I fought the English-as-a-default-language tendency with acquaintances, often to no avail. “Damn it, I want to learn this crazy language!” I thought to myself, realizing the idiocy of the situation: in Poland, and still unable to speak decent Polish. So I fought it, and tried to speak Polish more and more.

It was a triumphant moment when, standing at a bar listening to someone trying to tell me something in English, I realized, “Hey, I speak Polish much better than this guy speaks English!” I was momentarily proud of myself, then annoyed. I wanted to say, “No, możemy po prosto mowić po polsku.” (You can probably guess what that means.) It’s truly tedious to talk to someone who can barely communicate in English when you know you could switch to Polish and probably have an interesting conversation. But how terribly rude that is, for in making the switch, you’re essentially saying, “Great, great – your English sucks, so let’s speak Polish.” At least that’s how I always felt whenever the reverse happened to me.

My linguistic reality now is mixed: I still have some people that I speak mainly English with. I have a few friends with whom I began by speaking English and now mainly converse in Polish. There is an ever-growing number of people that, though they know English, have never used it with me – an ego-patting thing. And of course, there are plenty of friends and acquaintances now that I’ve only spoken Polish with.

Communication with my wife, though, is a topic deserving its own post.

Payment Required :: Salvation, Mercy, and Logic, Part II

Friday 10 December 2004

This is part two of a discussion on the Christian notion of salvation. Christians and apologists are encouraged to comment.

Willful Expose, in response to the last post, summarized the Christian understanding of salvation in fairly traditional terms. In other words, in terms of justice and omnipotence. She argued thusly:

God is omnipotent in that he is all-powerful, but not that he can “do anything” per se. For instance, God cannot sin, because sin is not in his character. It is because of this same character that God requires payment for sins. That payment had to be someone perfect, and only Jesus could be perfect.

Not to pick on Ms. Expose, but I’m not sure I see the logic behind connecting

  • God not being able to sin, and
  • God requiring payment for sins.

This “requiring payment for sins” is not an attribute of God, then, it’s simply a fact about it. I require my students to make up missed work within two weeks, but that requirement is not an attribute of my character, and therefore I can change it as I see fit. The same would be true of God. He might be perfect, but he doesn’t have to “require payment for sins.”

Further, it’s not logical why that payment had to be from someone perfect, someone “innocent.” If innocence is required, then I would think all the infants who have died in the world would more than make up for it.

Ah, but there’s a rub in that — “Original Sin,” a topic I’ll return to in part three on Monday.

Middle Ages

Thursday 9 December 2004

Your Honor, the State would like to conclude its case with two exhibits:

Exhibit A:

My client and his recently spent a weekend in Krakow. With Advent coming, that Saturday night was the last big party night for a while, and they were supposed to go to a club opening with some friends. It all fell through, and everyone ended up going back to my client’s friends’ apartment and having a small “impreza” there.

The aforementioned friend lives with five roommates; each of them has a girlfriend–throughout the evening, people were coming and going. The thought of living in such conditions was enough to make my client’s steadily-approaching-middle-age entire body queasy. No privacy; no silence; an apartment always full of strangers; never pausing, let alone stopping — my client got goosebumps just thinking about it.

Exhibit B:

When younger, my client swore to himself that he would never let these two sentences fall from his lips:

  • “That’s not music!”
  • The stuff I listened to growing up — now that’s music.

And yet.

And yet my client has said those very sentences — thankfully not to anyone but his wife — about techno, which my client refers to as “that abomination, that assault to the ears.”

Your Honor, on the basis of the case presented, it’s clear that Middle Age is preparing a full attack on my client, and I, as his counsel, am forced to respectfully request a restraining order be placed upon Middle Age.

Salvation, Mercy, and Logic, Part I

Wednesday 8 December 2004

The paths to salvation in the Christian religion are almost as numerous as the denominations. Fundamentalists like to talk about “once saved, always saved,” and the moment they assured their salvation by “accepting Jesus” as their “Lord and Savior.” Catholics talk about their “hope” for salvation and the necessity of living a Godly life.

What all semi-traditional Christians agree on, is that salvation, whatever the form, is

  • necessary (It’s often framed in terms of “Original Sin” — the notion that humans have inherited a blemished, sinful soul from Adam and Eve’s rebellion in the Garden of Eden.); and,
  • available only through Jesus.

Coupled with the dual nature Jesus supposedly possessed — completely human and completely divine — this raises the question of whether Jesus was affected by Original Sin.

Quotation marks are not meant, in this piece, to indicate derision but rather semi-direct quotes of traditional Christian formulations.

Catholics solve this problem with the dogma of the Immaculate Conception: the notion that Mary was born free of Original Sin, and therefore did not pass it on to Jesus’ human nature. Protestants, as far as I know, barely discuss it.

It highlights the one of the strangest aspects of Christian theology, namely the convoluted nature of God’s act of salvation. It’s a many-stepped process:

  1. Jesus had to live a perfect life and therefore not “deserve” the penalty of death.
  2. Jesus had to die in an excruciating manner.
  3. Believers have to know of Jesus’ sacrificial death.
  4. Believers have to do something about this knowledge (and at this point, Catholicism and Protestantism part ways significantly).

And all this for forgiveness?

It just seems an unnecessarily complicated method for an omnipotent God essentially to say, “That’s okay — I forgiveyou.” And not only that — it’s conditional. The condition is Jesus. Without Jesus, Christianity says, you’re unacceptable to God.

It seems an omnipotent God would just forgive — simple as that.

“Dad, I’m sorry — I screwed up.”

“That’s okay son.”

The older I get, the more liberal I get in my theological outlook. Once a staunch atheist, I now admit that there are a great many things that are not explainable in a purely material framework, and I’ve reached a point that I can honestly say, “Who knows — there might be a God.” But one thing is for sure — if there is a God, and he/she/it is one tenth of what theists of any and all stripes say about their God, he won’t be doing any damning. He would be too wise, too patient, and too loving for that.

In other words, if there is a God, then there’s a heaven, and if there’s a heaven, we’re all going there.

Glenn Gould :: Goldberg Variations (1981)

Tuesday 7 December 2004

This is the first of several posts inspired by Wallfahrtslied. It’s an effort to share with others some music that has changed my life for the better — music I couldn’t imagine living without. Desert Island Discs.

Glenn Gould recorded Bach’s Goldberg Variations twice. The first time was in 1955, and those “in the know” refer to it as “revolutionary.” He revisited the Variations in 1981, and this recording is the one I prefer. The 1955 Variations is too showy. While it’s a masterful recording, it’s still a bit immature. Despite the light touch, the music seems to be music performed by young man. It’s excited, and passionate. The 1981 Variations shows a more mature Gould. The tempi are more controlled, and not to mention slower. But the biggest difference is the more human feel to the 1981 Variations. While the 1955 recording is far from robotic, it somehow lacks a beating heart that the 1981 version provides. It’s more thoughtful, and with an occasional tragic whisper.

Both versions have been released under the title State of Wonder, and include a “radio drama”/interview with Gould just after having re-recorded the Variations in 1981.

Of course at the heart of both Gould’s recordings are the twenty-five variations themselves. The variations express as many emotions as you can imagine: flirty youthfulness, mature joy, deep, resounding sadness — it’s all here. It’s the human experience compressed into sixty some minutes of music.

You can hear excerpts from both recordings at NPR’s web site .

Slip Sliddin’ Away

Monday 6 December 2004

In the small village where I live, they don’t really scrape the snow off the roads until enough cars have driven over it to turn it into ice. By the time it all begins melting in March, it can be six or so inches thick. The roads underneath are, by then, a pot hole mess.

They don’t really shovel the sidewalks either — even in the neighboring town. From late November to early March, then, we all slip through our days rather than walking. No matter what kind of soles you have, nothing really helps when you’re walking on ice.

If someone slips and falls, well, it’s just her bad luck and worse balance. It’s not the shopkeeper or home owner’s fault for not having cleared the snow in front of his property.