In a previous essay (not on this blog), I briefly profiled architect Christopher Alexander and alluded to his magnum opus, the four book Nature of Order. In this essay, I’ll be reviewing the first two books of the set, The Phenomenon of Life (TPoL) and The Process of Creating Life (PoCL). The prominence of the word life highlights the importance of this concept in Alexander’s thinking. For him, life is a quality inherent in all things, not solely a property of plants and animals. This is not a particularly radical belief. It’s a tenet of Buddhism and Taoism, and is beginning to find adherents among some scientists. The thing is, it’s hard to define life in a way that includes creatures like animals and insects, but excludes things like crystals or complex computer programs. Viruses are a good example of the difficulty; are they intricate crystals that self replicate in certain animals, or are they living beings in their own right? Ask a biologist sometime, and see what he says.

In any event, Alexander defines life very broadly, and believes that it exists in the world around us in varying degrees.

So, right away, we find that he is tackling some big questions: What is Life? What is Space? What is the Nature of Order? These are questions that occupy mystics, and there are some who see Alexander that way. I don’t. He is too practical and hardworking, and he is not too concerned with individual spirituality; his focus is on reforming the built environment but, yes, he addresses… spirit.

Spirit is always threatening to disrupt our lives

I wish I could talk about Christopher Alexander without getting into questions about the meaning of life, but it’s no use; the man continually and infuriatingly will point out the 600 pound gorilla in the room that we’re all trying to ignore – humans are spiritual beings, and the world is a spiritual place. We make demands on our buildings that aren’t satisfied by profit and efficiency. That we so successfully avoid this reality so much of the time explains much, Alexander contends, about the often unsatisfactory nature of the world we’ve made for ourselves.

Spirit is always threatening to disrupt our lives; seen in a certain light, the bureaucratization of our society’s large institutions seems designed to prevent such troubling eruptions—see Franz Kafka, Charlie Chaplin, Michael Moore, et al. It is axiomatic that no priest wants a saint in his parish, but then, neither does the mayor, or the factory owner.

Alexander points out that structure, too, can work against human wholeness and spirituality and this seems logical enough. After all, no one leaves nature to get ‘back to the city’ when seeking peace and enlightenment. There are, of course, exceptions. Beautiful gardens or soaring cathedrals can be engines of transcendence. But these are exceptions that prove the rule; generally speaking, the built environment is perceived to repress human wholeness. Why? Why don’t humans create beautiful living structure as readily as do bees, clouds, trees, or termites?

Nature of Order is a work of great detail and great force that attempts to answer this question. That the question of Spirit comes up, implicitly but insistently, is the work’s strength and weakness. The force of Nature of Order is derived from Alexander’s fearless exploration of the structure of the world, and the proper place of humans in that structure. But it also makes his philosophy threatening… a lot of people just want to build a better house, not wrestle with questions about the ontological grain of the universe.

Alexander’s confidence can resemble hubris; and sometimes he seems to rely overmuch on intuition when making his points. To read his books well, one must surrender to them. Not abjectly, and not forever, but a certain suspension of skepticism, while reading, helps enormously when trying to absorb the material.

The Phenomenon of Life
In Book 1, The Phenomenon of Life, Alexander gives his fullest and deepest explanation of his conception of life, and why it is more deeply felt in some places and things than in others.

Early in TPoL, Alexander describes an incident from his teaching career that succinctly captures many of the themes of his work, and the reasons his ideas meet resistance. He asks his students to compare two things: a picture of a 7th century illuminated manuscript (the Durham Gospel fragment) and the wall of the very auditorium in which the lecture was being held. Then he asked a simple question – which of the two had more life?

The question met enormous resistance. Not because it was hard—nearly every student agreed, albeit reluctantly, that the graceful, calm-yet-intricate manuscript held more life than the postmodern, brass-detailed wall. The question itself was what created resistance. Just admitting that one artifact can have more life than another was disturbing. If it is possible to enhance the life of a building, then it is important to do so; but the question of life is not being addressed in today’s architectural curricula—except by Alexander.

Alexander finds this ability in humans consistently, and he also finds that resistance is common. When asked, people agree with amazing uniformity on the relative amount of life imbued in various objects. Although the question seems strange, it has an answer. But this is astonishing, because it tends to destroy the difference between the subjective and the objective. Science stoutly rejects data which cannot be measured. Human opinions, notoriously squishy, cannot be measured by any known instrument… but what if humans, in aggregate, are themselves effective measuring instruments?

There is another, deeper reason for resistance. Lurking beneath Alexander’s simple question is a much thornier question: if humans respond to the life of a place, and if life can be detected and worked with rather simply, how is it that so much of the built world works against life? Suddenly, the work of a developer or a surveyor moves beyond the question of profit, and into the realm of religion. Faced with this, it is much easier to fight against the question, and the person raising it. But this is denial.

Alexander makes his case for pervasive life thoroughly and with great cumulative force. He begins by discussing what he calls centers:

“In using the word center in this way, I am not referring at all to a point center like a center of gravity. I use the word center to identify an organized zone of space – that is to say, a distinct set of points in space, which, because of its organization, because of its internal coherence, and because of its relation to its context, exhibits centeredness, forms a local zone of relative centeredness with respect to the other parts of space. When I use the word center, I am always referring to a physical set, a distinct physical system, which occupies a certain volume in space, and has a special marked coherence.” (TPoL, p. 84)

Redefining a word as basic as ‘center’—or ‘life’—seems willfully inscrutable at first, but the idea is actually quite useful. Consider a pond in a clearing; it is not exactly a whole in itself, because it is part of a larger whole, the clearing, which is in turn part of a forest, and so forth. But the pond is something, and calling it a center does help us to see it as a locus of interest in the midst of a larger whole, a locus that influences that larger whole. And the idea is recursive; the clearing is itself one of many centers in the larger forest and influences that whole, which in turn is one center of a larger regional whole, and so forth.

Like Alexander’s earlier concept of a pattern language the value of the concept lies in its use. Learning to analyze wholes in terms of centers makes it easier to actually see how a whole is formed, and how it can be strengthened or how it is being weakened. It gives those who are trying to analyze space an effective analytical tool.

If it seems presumptuous of Alexander to redefine a word for his own use and to propose an entirely new way of analyzing the world, well, that is a valid criticism but it is also pretty much the point of TPoL. Alexander is proposing a new way of perceiving and analyzing space—he is proposing the basis for a new theory of the world’s geometric underpinnings. Whether he succeeds or not is for each reader to decide.

Living wholes, then, are made up of strong centers, and the life of a whole is increased by strengthening and increasing its centers. As I began to get comfortable with this idea, I indeed found it to be a useful way of looking at the world around me, a way to figure out why I like some places more than others. TPoL is copiously illustrated, and the illustrations do help to convey what Alexander is getting at. But ultimately, an interested reader will have to decide for himself how useful the idea is.

Alexander continues his argument by explaining why some centers have more life than others. And here, I think, he presents an idea that is extremely compelling and immediately useful. It amounts to a general theory of aesthetics, and will likely be adopted rather quickly in the field of visual arts.

Alexander proposes that there are 15 fundamental properties—structural features—that appear consistently in things which have life. Let’s just list them:

1) Levels of Scale
2) Strong Centers
3) Boundaries
4) Alternating Repetition
5) Positive Space
6) Good Shape
7) Local Symmetries
Deep Interlock and Ambiguity
9) Contrast
10) Gradients
11) Roughness
12) Echoes
13) The Void
14) Simplicity and Inner Calm
15) Not-Separateness

About a third of TPoL is devoted to a masterful exposition of this idea. The 15 properties are shown and discussed in manmade artifacts and in natural phenomena. The illustrations and text work together and gather force like Ravel’s Boléro, culminating in an essay titled A New View of Nature. Ultimately we realize that Alexander has done an amazing thing; he has made it possible to talk, really talk, about why we like some things and places better than others. Rather than falling back on vapid words like ‘pretty’ or ‘awesome’ we can speak with precision about the qualities that distinguish Yosemite Valley from, say, a gravel quarry, or why we are more moved by a giant sequoia than by a mall. His beliefs and accompanying language legitimize human feeling, validate our intuitive sense of value, and, without hubris or solipsism, make the world personal.

I have barely skipped a stone over the surface of this remarkable book. In 476 exhaustively illustrated and footnoted pages, Alexander rigorously makes the case for his new view of the world, and takes initial steps toward a mathematical statement of that view. It is an intellectual tour-de-force and fully supported by his real world work as a builder and architect. Such seriousness commands respect; dismissing Alexander casually will not do.

The Process of Creating Life
Defining life is a good start for Alexander, but the major theme of his career has been actually getting more life into modern buildings. And to do this, Alexander found, more than a definition is needed; the what of creation is pointless without the how. That is, a living building cannot be designed, then built. The life of a building comes from decisions made during the construction process. Design and construction turn out to be pretty much the same thing.

Alexander begins to talk about this by returning to one of Nature of Order’s fundamental questions: why is it that natural processes automatically create beauty and a feeling of rightness, and human methods so rarely do? What is the difference?

In a series of fascinating examples ranging from a wave breaking to a glass plate shattering to a fetus developing, Alexander shows convincingly that development processes in nature are a series of structure-preserving transformations. Each recognizable phase of development follows naturally from the preceding phase. Put another way, each phase of development preserves and extends the wholeness of the preceding phase—the wholeness is never destroyed, it unfolds into a new wholeness.

Consider the famous sequence of photos of a splashing milk drop. Though discrete phases of the sequence are startlingly different from each other, the changes from moment to moment are gentle and comprehensible. Alexander argues convincingly that this is a feature of all natural development.

Furthermore, the structure-preserving transformations can be analyzed in terms of the 15 fundamental properties introduced in TPoL. As extended here, the 15 properties become 15 transformations. Change that preserves wholeness is shown to be a product of transformation based on one or more of the 15 properties. Each transformation introduces, preserves, or strengthens one or more of the 15 fundamental properties. Again, one of the most useful things Alexander has done here is to provide good language, which makes good analysis possible.

He goes on to argue, with multiple examples, that humans can build in this structure-preserving fashion, but usually don’t. To do this, he juxtaposes traditional (or pre-modern) building processes with modern examples. He is getting at something deep here; humans love old places. We visit New England, or Europe, to see the old buildings, not the modern ones. We have a sense that the old cathedrals, the old city layouts, are somehow richer. Alexander contends that traditional building methods followed the structure-preserving process he finds in nature. For example, he presents a series of plans that show the development of Amsterdam from 1400 to 1800. It is easy to see how the steady development process took previous development into account. Patterns that were latent in 1400 are realized in 1800, building shapes echo each other, the relationship of the town to the water is consistent throughout. There is no sense of planned development—Amsterdam seems to have grown.

The structure-preserving process occurs in the modern world, but more rarely. Beginning about 1900, many forces—changes in banking, in zoning, in planning, in architecture, etc.—began to produce structure-destroying transformations. The wholeness of an existing structure was no longer considered. A classic example would be the extension of a freeway through an existing neighborhood. The freeway is designed and built without reference to its surroundings, and thereby destroys those surroundings. And similar examples can be cited ad infinitum: a skyscraper designed on one continent and built on another, a planned community laid out with equal precision on the drawing board and on the ground, a giant Wal-Mart box seemingly dropped from the sky onto its scraped pad… in every case, the previously existing whole is disregarded and destroyed.

Alexander uses these examples to define two kinds of structure: generated and fabricated. Generated structure creates life, and fabricated structure, nearly always, creates… the opposite of life.

The discussion of generated structure begins with an analogy that struck me very powerfully. Consider a fairly complex origami construction. It is not built to a plan; that is, blueprints of the finished structure are not provided. Instead, a sequence of steps is provided. A plan of the figure would be quite complex—several pages at least. But a sequence—first do that, then do this—is relatively concise. This idea is then applied to the development of an embryo. DNA does not store a blueprint of the exact appearance of a particular animal, it stores a sequence of development which then takes place affected by attendant circumstances. Interestingly, this is proved by recent experiments in biology—cloned animals do not look exactly alike. Same sequence, different circumstances.

Brutally compressed into a nutshell, Alexander’s program for creating living structure is to generate a construction sequence that first, observes the whole, then, makes a change that preserves and enhances the whole while approaching the desired end state, then… repeats as needed. Or, in his more elegant language:

“A living process is any adaptive process which generates living structure, step by step, through structure-preserving transformations.”

These sequences can also be called patterns, harking back to Alexander’s early book, A Pattern Language. Here, they emerge as part of a comprehensive program for reforming human construction methods. As argued, the case for reform is convincing and ultimately hopeful. After all, the remaining remnants of traditionally built structure are good evidence that humans can build in a living fashion. As a species we have been unconsciously competent, are now unconsciously incompetent, but are beginning to notice deficiencies—to be consciously incompetent. It certainly seems possible that the human capacity for self-observation must eventually lead to conscious competence, and to a beautiful living world.

PoCL is a massive book, totaling 635 pages with appendices and notes. The illustrations are copious and superbly complement arguments put forth. I have, therefore, presented barely a skeletal outline of the book’s full force, but I hope I have adequately suggested that it is forceful.

In some ways, Alexander is the living human I most admire. He has, after all, come by his ideas the old-fashioned way… he’s earned them. He has poured his life into his writing and philosophizing and then he has done something harder. He has, for decades, tested his philosophy, often in difficult conditions in the poorest regions of the planet. He is, simultaneously, an idealistic ivory tower dreamer and a pragmatic contractor; that dirt under his nails is a mix of grit and ink and it’s been there for decades. When a man so rigorously tests his ideas in the real world, over such a span of time, and then adjusts his ideas to accord with the practical knowledge gained… well, he deserves a hearing.

In fact, it’s pretty simple—more fun and less louche than I imagined. Here are some do’s and one don’t:

Look for this sign.

• Do just walk in. They’re not private clubs, they’re not secretive, and you don’t need to know a secret handshake or anything. Ordering is as easy as stepping up to the counter, consulting a menu, and placing your order. In my experience, English was always spoken. Prices are reasonable, and all the pot and hash my companion and I smoked was superb—the hash, especially, was very strong. Per the Internet, Amsterdam marijuana is supposed to be way stronger than the stuff we Americans smoke, but I didn’t find this to be the case. It’s very good, but not remarkably better than the best stuff available here. I was not able to distinguish one strain from another, and at least one local suggested that the menus are a bit deceptive. But my lovely companion was able to distinguish each from each, so your mileage may vary.

• Do buy something. It doesn’t have to be pot; this is the most important thing I can pass on to you. Most shops sell a gram as a minimum amount (though they’ll often sell a half gram if you ask) and that’s probably more than you want to smoke at one sitting. So if you buy a gram every time you stop in, you’ll end up with a lot of excess weed at the end of your trip and you’ll be tempted to bring it back with you. Fortunately, most coffeeshops don’t care if you smoke weed that you bring in yourself. They’ll even provide smoking materials if you ask—more on this below. But don’t be a dick and just use the place without recognizing that they are a business; buy something. A lighter makes for a good souvenir. I can recommend the hot chocolate, which is usually made with steamed milk and Nestle’s Quik and is delicious. Coffee, fruit juices, candy bars, and other munchies are also available. Sadly, you can’t get any of Amsterdam’s delicious beer at the same place you get Amsterdam’s strong, tasty marijuana—the licenses are kept separate. Humanity will be truly civilized when this does become possible.

Do ask for a bong

• Do ask for a bong. Most of the residents smoke their dope in the form of large, cone-shaped joints, and that’s why you’re handed a packet of small, stiff pieces of cardboard along with your weed purchase; they’re rolled up and used as filters/mouthpieces at the end of the large joints so you don’t need a roach clip. Watching a local roll a four-inch doobie is a treat but frankly I found them a little intimidating. Instead, my companion and I learned to ask for one of the loaner bongs, which are kept behind the counter (once we were asked for a passport to be held as a deposit, but we were never charged). One will be produced, cleaned, and filled with fresh water. The best bongs had large chambers that held ice. One inhalation fills the ice-filled chamber with thick water-cooled smoke, and a second inhalation pulls that large amount of super-chill smoke deep into your grateful lungs. It’s marvelous.

• Do say hello to others, if it seems appropriate. Apply the same discretion you’d apply in your favorite bar; some people and groups will be doing just fine without the addition of your wonderful tourist self, but others are happy to chat and you’ll meet cool people. We once spent an hour or so chatting with an Egyptian belly dance instructor—conversations like that are the best reason to travel.

I was so baked when this was taken.

• Don’t smoke in the street. It’s illegal, uncommon, and it’s rude. Unlike San Francisco, where I often smell pot in the street, I never once smelled it in Amsterdam. Respect their ways.

Finally, should you smoke pot in Amsterdam? Well, I recommend it. As mentioned above, it’s a great city to be stoned in—there’s a reason it’s pot-friendly. As described above, it’s easy and fun. Also, even if you haven’t smoked marijuana since high school, you’re likely to enjoy the relaxed, non-paranoid atmosphere. And, do you really want to visit Amsterdam and not try the coffeehouses?

A great place to smoke pot.

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One of the problems with not being a conspiracy theorist is that one has no easy explanations when faced with some of the more glaring oddities of the world around us. It is, for example, passing strange that the dollar bill features an all-seeing eye and pyramid and the fact that it can be explained does not mean that it has been explained, if you follow my drift. Similarly, the non-conspiracy theorist is forced into some fancy mental gymnastics when considering glaringly obvious phenomena, such as the presence of two Skull-and-Bonesmen in the 2004 presidential election (the Bonesmen won either way), the screwy layout of Washington D.C., and the pentagonal shape of the world’s most powerful military headquarters. Mundane explanations exist for all of these, but since they are bizarre facts to begin with, the mind is more comfortable with bizarre explanations involving the Illuminati, aliens, or the occult.

since they are bizarre facts to begin with, the mind is more comfortable with bizarre explanations

My own personal example of this began one morning when I was considering the Public Lands Survey System (PLSS) township layout, the 6×6 boustrephedonic square made up of 36 square mile ‘sections’. ‘Boustrephedonic’, incidentally, is the word for the right-to-left, left-to-right layout of the square – it’s from the Greek, and means ‘as an ox plows’ and in this case describes the descending, switchbacking layout of the square – see the illustration. I’ve always wondered about the township layout; why, for instance, is it boustrephedonic, and why is it 6×6, and not some other number? Idly, I added up the columns and rows, to see if there were any ‘magic square’ properties in the design. The columns all add up to 111 – try it yourself. A little experimentation showed that this is a feature of boustrephedonic squares with even, but not odd, numbered sides, so this is not mysterious. The rows, on the other hand, seemed to yield no pattern of interest… until I took one more step. I ‘reduced’ the numbers numerologically to yield a single digit number. That is, I added together the digits of the multi-digit numbers, and if the result was multi-digit I added again until a one digit number resulted. As seen below, the numerological sum of all the rows is three, and it takes no special flash of insight to see that the numerological sum of 111, the column sum, is also three. Curious.

I should say, here, that I am not much of a numerologist. I don’t work out year numbers, or look for numerological significance in the dates of my life. Still, I did read a book about it once, and took away numerological reduction as a sort of ‘mental fidgeting’. And number mysticism has a history in the West that goes all the way back to Pythagoras and his followers. Many great minds have succumbed, and the results are not always pretty. Isaac Newton, for example, spent at least as much time on numerical Biblical exegesis as he did on scientific work and his writings on those topics strike modern readers as deranged. Many movies, such as Pi and A Beautiful Mind, explore the tendency of the mind to project numerological meaning onto complex phenomena.

Be that as it may and ignoring, for the moment, the possibility that I was succumbing to number mysticism, the undeniable fact remained that the Government Land Office (GLO) township is a numerological magic square. I worked out boustrephedonic squares from 2×2 to 9×9, and only the 6×6 square has this property.

So; now what? Well, not having all that many facts at hand, I immediately began to theorize. Eventually, I came up with rather an elaborate scenario involving Thomas Jefferson, the Illuminati, and aerial photography – it was good for at least 20 minutes of happy hour conversation. But, upon investigation, the hypothesis broke down. Jefferson, for example, preferred a 10×10 square and there is no evidence of Illuminati involvement… but then, there wouldn’t be, would there? So I began to tire of the whole thing; not that I disbelieved my nutty theory, necessarily, but I began to bore even myself.

Kaballah?

It turns out that conventional magic squares are important in Kaballah, and are associated with the planets and astrological magic. The 6×6 square is associated with the sun, and is therefore the most powerful of these. One text of Western Occultism (for which Kaballah is a major source), dating from the 1400s, says of it, “The figure of the Sun is appropriated for kings and princes of this world, and it is square and has a grid of six, and it is the figure of total power.”

early Americans were determined to stamp the ‘figure of the Sun’ across the entire Continent – and nearly succeeded

Now, I only sort of believe in astrological magic, or rather, I’m learning to suspend judgement about the exotic belief systems of others, but it is a fact that humans have apparently always used the progressions of the night sky for mystical purposes, and after 1,000’s of years, astrology very much remains part of our world – something about it is irresistibly seductive to some human minds. And interestingly, amazing feats of engineering have a long association with astronomy and astrology. The Pyramids, of course, and Stonehenge, are just two of the many examples of major ancient accomplishments which are now believed to have been largely motivated by astrological concerns. But considered as a whole, the township system is this planet’s most significant man made feature – it would swallow thousands of Great Walls. It is easily visible from space. Which leads to the rather strange thought that future archaeologists, investigating the wonder that was America, will uncover the whole system of townships and naturally conclude that early Americans were determined to stamp the ‘figure of the Sun’ across the entire Continent – and nearly succeeded.

An Apocalyptic Sum

Here is the key; and anyone who has intelligence may work out the number of the beast. The number represents a man’s name, and the numerical value of its letters is six hundred and sixty-six. –Revelation 13:18, New English Bible

Now What?

Now what is the poor non-conspiracy theorist to do, faced with such a rich source of peculiarity? Probably the best thing to do is to ignore such rabbit holes, but instead I began to wonder about possible motivations. That is, if there were some shadowy group behind all this, what might their motives have been?

Because the GLO square has definitely had a major effect on the United States, quite aside from its impact on surveying. Fly over the United States, or look at aerial photos. You will see a grid, a chessboard; square fields or developed blocks bounded by straight roads. No other sector of the Earth is laid out like this. Fly over any part of Europe, or Asia, or South America, or… anywhere but here, really. You will see roads and fields that follow contours, that give way to hills and mountains, that nestle up to forest edges and creeks. You will see a human landscape that is shaped by the natural world; but in the United States, most of us live in a landscape that is—thanks to ownership lines imposed arbitrarily—imposed upon the natural world, laid over it like graph paper on a map. The township system is part of the structural underpinning of U.S. culture, part of every American’s mental furniture. It may not be, quite, the air we breathe but it is certainly the ground we walk on. It shapes our visible world and it shapes us.

Is it too crazy, too speculative, to say that Americans are a different people as a result of our different environment, that our national culture is partially a product of our national landscape? As a nation, we do tend to ride roughshod, at times, over the natural world. Could our straight roads and square fields be shaping us as much as we shape them?

Now here I speculate wildly, but bear with me. One word for the tendency to impose order on nature is ‘Apollonian’. The sun god, Apollo, has long been associated with classical order, control, discipline and masculinity – as opposed to the Moon Goddess, traditionally associated with wildness, paganism, and femininity. As a nation, the United States is considerably more ‘solar’ than ‘lunar’.

But since the 6×6 square is a solar device, a fascinating (and, yes, nutty and conspiratorial) possibility comes to mind. There is the interesting, unlikely, crazy possibility that some person or group manipulated the choice of GLO township layout in an attempt to cast a Kabbalistic spell over an entire nation… and there is the possibility that it worked.

Of everything I’ve written, the above piece has generated by far the most response. I’m glad. It’s one of those stories that took a couple of years to write, as different puzzle parts fell into place. There were a couple of things I didn’t try to include in the published article (which first appeared in a magazine for land surveyors) or on my radio show. For one, it was really odd how information came to me about this. For example, the occult book mentioned (it is alarmingly titled, Conjuring Spirits) practically jumped out at me from a bookstore shelf and opened in my hands to the Kaballah square that began to tie everything together. Another, weirder, happenstance had to do with my study of a classic ‘master’ conspiracy theory known as the Sirius Mystery, and centering on a book of that title by Robert Temple, and also on an underground bestseller by über conspiracy theorist Robert Anton Wilson titled Cosmic Trigger. The basic idea of the Sirius Mystery is that beings from the Sirius star system visited several ancient civilizations to jumpstart human technology, while also providing the magickal basis for every conspiracy since, from the Knights Templar to the Priory of Sion (don’t ask). Naturally, they are in psychic contact with some humans, and intend to return fairly soon…

Anyway, Wilson’s book mentioned that he and two other writers, Doris Lessing and Phillip K. Dick, all wrote books about aliens from Sirius at more or less the same time, and without having any contact each other. I’d read Dick’s book, and decided to read Lessing’s, Shikasta. It’s a good read, but most notable for me was one of the book’s concluding passages, which described the gridded look of the sectionalized United States and attributed it to the evil ‘Shikasta’ influence! It was an odd moment; two separate conspiracy type thingies that I had been studying and thinking and talking about obsessively for more than a year suddenly and unexpectedly came together with a bang. For a couple of days, the world was a different place for me.

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The promiscuous mingling of church and state left me slightly nauseated

On a recent visit to Valley Forge, Pennsylvania, I happened across the Washington Memorial Chapel, which looks very like a small cathedral, except that larded in with the pulpit, pews, baptismal font and other trappings of ritualized Yahweh worship one also finds heroic statues, state seals, bad poetry and other elaborate encrustations more often associated with city halls, capitol buildings, and other excretions of Governmentlandia. The promiscuous mingling of church and state left me slightly nauseated and even a little shocked, for usually the two principalities have the decency to partially veil their incestuous intercourse. Not that they ever really take a break: the intertwining of spiritual and temporal urges dates at least to the days that popes crowned kings and though there have been spats down through the centuries the relationship is still passionate. And like any relationship that stands the test of time, the attraction is not merely physical—there are numerous practical benefits. Churches benefit when the state mandates, or at least encourages, religious observance and prohibits the use of psychedelics and other alternative spirituality. And governments are always happy to have their subjects sedated by the opiate of the masses and made ready for war or servitude, as the need arises. In business terms—and what other terms could possible apply?—the synergies maximize profit.

But whether we puny humans, struggling to achieve a bit of happiness in this vale of sorrow, also benefit is certainly debatable. It’s difficult, after all, to see institutionalized religion as anything but an expensive inconvenience and the best thing one can say for most governments is that they do a good job tidying up our corpses after we die in the wars they inflict on us. So reducing the reach and influence of these predators is greatly to be desired, and prohibiting their immoral congress is a good place to start.

Because I have a large brain, I know what you’re thinking: you’re thinking, ‘Hey, here in the United States we do separate church and state’ but the separation I have in mind would be considerably more separate. Public officials would not be sworn in on the Bible or any other holy book, they would not be allowed to publicly express religious beliefs—ideally they’d be atheists, or at least agnostic—there’d be no such job as senate chaplain, and in every other way conceivable the two lovers would be thoroughly segregated, or at least adequately chaperoned.

I find it curious that believers are so eager to get in bed with politicians, and a little hypocritical as well. After all, if there is anything at all to this God they keep nattering on about, He is presumably able to take care of Himself, and even promote His preferred agenda, without the aid of government programs, pogroms, or other manifestations of politicized religiosity. And certainly His followers are able to cause more than enough trouble without the benefit of State support.

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I’ve been visualizing myself being tortured…

I’ve been thinking about torture lately. More honestly, I’ve been visualizing myself being tortured and because I have a weakness for compulsive thought this ‘self-torture’, if you will, is detailed and obsessive, rising almost to the level of sexual fantasy. There are good descriptions of waterboarding on the internet, and even videos, and my all-too-excellent imagination does the rest. TV is also inspiring, and has given me all the detail I need when it comes to picturing, and feeling, slivers under my nails, or electrical shock, or hanging from my wrists as they’re yanked up behind me. And of course there are far more demeaning and painful forms of torture practiced on males, things I can’t discuss for fear of offending my mother, who reads this blog occasionally.

I know that I’m sharing far too much information, and I’m certain that you are never bothered by unwelcome thoughts of mutilation and pain, given or received. And yet, I must not be entirely alone in my sickness, because we are certainly obsessed, as a culture, with meting out exquisite pain to our enemies. Torture is a staple of popular entertainment, and of course our government is torturing hundreds—or maybe thousands—in not-especially-secret prisons around the globe. I can’t help but wonder if all this torture, real and fictional, is somehow leaking into our—excuse me, my—psyche, making us, I mean me, more fearful, more brutal, more paranoid, and far more willing to go along with whatever evil the government is currently perpetrating.

So I am against torture for purely selfish reasons: I have this idea that if I lived in a country that just said no to waterboarding, I’d sleep easier at night. But it may be that we’d all sleep easier. It’s an axiom of psychology that personal sins repressed and kept secret find expression in psychosis, and it’s an axiom of mine, completely unsupported by verifiable fact, that the same is true on a national level. Perhaps, for example, our largely unacknowledged dependence on sweatshop labor makes us unsatisfiable, and maybe the blithely ignored evils of factory farming and corporate meat production are making us the fat and unhappy people we seem, statistically, to be. And maybe, just maybe, the practice of torture, in our name and with our tacit approval, affects us as a culture and a people, turning us into bigoted monsters.

Of course I could be wrong, though that always strikes me as unlikely. Perhaps there is no link at all between the torturers we employ and our national psyche, and maybe it’s perfectly possible to be a kind, loving people while also perfecting the arts of strappado and sensory deprivation.

But somehow I doubt it. In short, it seems to me that institutionalized torture is a national sin, and that confession and renunciation of that sin will be a form of national healing. And I say we get on with it.

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