Category Archives: Thoughts

Consider

Lament for Jacob Marley

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Why is that Jacob Marley, the true hero of A Christmas Carol, is so oft unappreciated by readers or the viewing audience? While Scrooge may be the central character of the story, can there be any doubt that the hero of the story is Marley?
The dictionary defines hero as: A person noted for feats of courage or nobility of purpose, especially one who has risked or sacrificed his or her life.

While subsequent plays, stories and interpretations have Marley’s soul being saved by his actions leading to the redemption of Scrooge; in the original Lewis Carol tale there is no evidence that Marley received any benefit from his actions in saving his old partner and friend Scrooge.

Indeed the last we see or hear of Marley is: “The spectre, after listening for a moment, joined in the mournful dirge; and floated out upon the bleak, dark night.” The only comfort the reader is left to imagine is that even though Marley is condemned to walk the Earth bound in his chains of greed for eternity, his spirit can take some comfort in the knowledge that Scrooge will not share his fate.

Scrooge’s action, of allowing the light into his dark life and soul, led him to joy and friendship. Marley’s action, of securing “… a chance and hope of escaping my fate. A chance and hope of my procuring, Ebenezer”, still leaves Marley’s ghost wandering the earth with “’No rest, no peace. Incessant torture of remorse.”

Is this not the embodiment of nobility of purpose, to save Scrooge from sharing his own fate with no gain for Marley?

Why this concern for Marley? Because it is in Marley’s words the true lesson or principle of A Christmas Carol is found. A lesson often lost in the joy and happiness of Scrooge in reclaiming his humanity and letting the light back into his life.

Consider Marley’s words:

“I wear the chain I forged in life, I made it link by link, and yard by yard; I girded it on of my own free will, and of my own free will I wore it.”

“’It is required of every man, that the spirit within him should walk abroad among his fellow-men…”

“Mankind was my business. The common welfare was my business; charity, mercy, forbearance, and benevolence, were, all, my business. The dealings of my trade were but a drop of water in the comprehensive ocean of my business!”

Marley forged his chains, link by link, dollar by dollar, possession by possession, and girded them on of his own free will. It is our choice whether we let the spirit within us walk among our fellow men or hoard it to ourselves. Focusing, as did Marley, on accumulating possessions, property and wealth for no purpose but the amassing itself. As far too many today focus on the accumulation of possessions and dollars, rather than upon letting the spirit within walk among their fellow man.

In locking his spirit within Marley became possessed with his worldly goods letting them become the entirety rather than “…but a drop of water in the comprehensive ocean of my business!”

Whereas in truth “Mankind was my business. The common welfare was my business; charity, mercy, forbearance, and benevolence, were, all, my business.”

The common welfare, charity, mercy, forbearance, and benevolence are all of us our business. Mankind. No qualifiers or limitations, simply all of Mankind. Not those we judge deserving, not those who agree with us, not those we approve of, not those we go to church with, not those who profess the same faith. Simply Mankind in its entirety, no ifs, ands, or buts.

The welfare of every single person is our business and to him or her we owe charity, mercy, forbearance, and benevolence to help in achieving wellness; in order that we may achieve our own spiritual health and wellness.

Wishing All a Joyous and

Consider

“Are you spending Christmas with family?”

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With my sisters in the Toronto area and my brother in Newfoundland the answer would appear to be “No”, but is that true?

I had breakfast with the homeless and volunteers at Resurrection Life. I had my Christmas turkey dinner at Seven Oaks Alliance with hundreds of other dinners. Both halls were well populated with people I know and with whom I exchanged meant wishes of a Merry Christmas.

In between I got to visit, play bingo and carol with a diverse group of homo sapiens, most of whom I have shared the past several Christmases with. This custom started when, in the knowledge that I had no place to go or share Christmas with, I was invited to come and join the celebration.

Although my recovery and activities have resulted in other opportunities for visiting and celebrating the Day, it would not have been Christmas without attendance at this special celebration.

It was sitting there, in a in a moment of quiet reflection between bingo games, that I found the true answer to the question of family and Christmas. Yes I was celebrating Christmas with family and friends.

For family, friends and community are terms that we each, as individuals, get to define for ourselves. Not with words and rules but with our hearts and spirits.

Hmmm

Faith is cerebral

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Studies suggest the brain calculates math and ethics the same way

Whether it is a child’s belief in Santa or a religious belief in the incredible miracle story, belief looms large at this time of year. Religion is the starting point, but this five-part series explores the many facets of belief, from the placebo effect to the neuroscience of belief and disbelief. Today, atheists on belief and disbelief.

Sam Harris may be the best-selling author of two books on the destructiveness of religion, but he has not given up on belief. Now a doctoral candidate in neuroscience at the University of California at Los Angeles, Mr. Harris and his colleagues have just published research that, they believe, maps for the first time where in the brain decisions are made about what we believe and do not believe.

Mr. Harris said he wanted to understand the biological process that allows people to accept certain descriptions of reality as valid.

Test subjects were scanned with an MRI while being asked to decide whether they believed the veracity of a particular statement. The researchers then looked for which parts of the brain “lit up.”

They discovered the part of the brain used for lower cognitive functions — such as deciding whether something smells good or bad, or assessing pain — is also used to decide whether a proposition is true or false.

“Although many areas of higher cognition are likely involved in assessing the truth-value of linguistic propositions, the final acceptance of a statement as ‘true’ or its rejection as ‘false’ appears to rely on more primitive [processing],” Mr. Harris and his team wrote in the journal Annals of Neurology this month.
In an interview, Mr. Harris said there are many studies in neuroscience that have “broken down the boundaries between higher cognition and more primitive emotional processing.” But this appears to be the first study to show that at the physical level of the brain.

He said it at first seemed surprising that “such a creaturely preference is operative here.” But he added it makes sense because evolution had to employ ways to make sure the decisions we made would help us survive as a species.

“Belief really is the hinge upon which so much of human activity and human nature swings,” said Mr. Harris, author of The End of Faith and its follow-up, Letter to a Christian Nation. “You are to an extraordinary degree guided by, or misguided by, what you believe. If you’re a racist that is a result of what you believe about race. If you’re a jihadist, that is built on what you believe about the Koran and supremacy of Islam. So belief is doing most of the work humans do. And it’s an engine of conflict and reconciliation, so it really matters what people believe.”

What was particularly surprising, he said, was that there were virtually identical patterns of brain activation whether someone was being asked to evaluate a straightforward proposition, such as two plus two equals four, or something that tested an ethical belief, such as whether torture is just or unjust.

“One obviously has very strong emotional association and one doesn’t. So it is surprising that the coolest, calculated kind of reasoning we can engage in and the most emotionally laden in ethics could be so similar.”

Mr. Harris’s study concluded with the poetic notion that “truth may be beauty, and beauty truth, in more than a metaphorical sense and that false propositions may actually disgust us.”

He said other studies have shown that when something disgusts us, the area of the brain known as the anterior insula is most active. In his study, it was the anterior insula that was most active when a proposition was rejected.

“The feeling of doubt, of not buying a statement, is on a continuum with other modes of rejection — the epitome of which is disgust.”

His next task will be to study how the brain evaluates religious beliefs and he expects that his results will be much the same as his latest study.

“I think on the basis of this study I expect to see that belief is belief is belief. Evaluating the belief that Jesus was the son of God is importantly different than evaluating the belief two plus two equals four. [But] there’s going to be a common final pathway that governs whether the belief is accepted or rejected. There’s something held in common between these modes of thinking.”

clewis@nationalpost.com