…no matter how many people walk by you on the sidewalk.

The test of a first-rate intelligence is the ability to hold two opposed ideas in mind at the same time and still retain the ability to function.

– F. Scott Fitzgerald

Say I agreed to help you paint your house. Say I showed up with a hammer. It’s brand new, I announce, Isn’t it great? Sure, you reply, it’s a wonderful hammer. And I’m sure it can pound nails like nobody’s business. But it’s not so good for painting. Say I called you anti-hammer and stormed off.

And then went looking for a job at Kirkus Reviews.

Let me explain.

After writing the book The Science Spell, I paid Kirkus Reviews $400 to review it. I wanted an intelligent blurb from a respected source. What I got was some mild praise for the writing and a dismissal of the book as anti-science. They didn’t exactly storm off, but they were anonymous, so they may as well have.

I was astonished (and stung). The book is an exploration of the limits of science, not its faults. I thought I had made this clear. The Science Spell repeatedly affirms the value of science. At one point I even nominate it for “humanity’s greatest achievement of the last three hundred years.” Over and over, I praise its contributions and accuracy within a certain sphere. But the reviewer seemed unable to hold in his mind two simple thoughts at the same time: science is great and science has limitations. Just like hammers.

Welcome to 21^st century public discourse. Please check all subtlety, nuance, and complexity at the door.

I’ll go out on a limb and assume that my anonymous reviewer was a leftie. A lot of my friends are lefties too. And since they know me, they know I am not even in the general vicinity of anti-science. But some still worry that, in the current climate, my probing could fan the flames of those who are.

According to some on the left, I’m not even allowed to claim that the book—or anything, for that matter—is not political. Even though, you know… it’s not. Despite the ardent wishes of many to see politics under every bed and on every piece of toast, the book isn’t saying anything about who’s right or wrong—or what should be done—in the public sphere. The Science Spell is intended instead for individuals. It invites you to wander off, sit under a tree, and consider reality in ways you may not have before. To reduce the book to a label like “anti-science” is to decline that invitation.

My Kirkus Reviewer didn’t engage with any particular point I tried to make in The Science Spell. Instead, they ran to the nearest big tent where all the familiar flags are flying. It seems to me that my reviewer needed one of those flags. A glorious cause. A grand proclamation. “I stand with science!”

Why couldn’t my reviewer accept the simple idea that, like hammers, science has both uses and limitations? Why in general are people so quick to disengage from conversations about particulars and make sweeping pronouncements? Why are we meeting complex issues by shouting sound bites? Why is everything so political?

It’s not. Nothing is political these days. Not even politics.

What we call politics is missing the two fundamental elements of its definition.

Politics is fundamentally communal. It attempts to contain a riotous mix of people with different beliefs, goals, and preferences in a way that allows them all life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. (An impossible job, maybe, but so is teaching high school.) If you want to live by your rules only, you belong in a cabin in Montana, not the White House.

Politics is also fundamentally practical. Politicians aren’t supposed to theorize about governing, they’re supposed to govern. If you want to live in a world of unreachable ideas, you belong in a university, not the U.S. Senate.

Yes, politics is informed by the individuality and unreachable ideas of each politician, but if it stops being communal and practical, it stops being politics.

This is what we’re seeing more and more. Our representatives are not so much bad at their job as indifferent to what that job is: to recognize the reality of different kinds of people and to somehow work with them. Like plumbers who’ve decided their job is now to mow your lawn, politicians are practicing something other than politics.

That something is religion.

For most of the twentieth century, church membership in the U.S. remained high and consistent at roughly 70%. Then it began a dramatic decline. By about 2020, membership had fallen below 50%, the largest recorded drop in American history.

Our drift away from churches coincides with the rise of the lunacy we’ve been calling politics. This isn’t proof the two are connected, but I suspect they are. We didn’t, I think, stop listening to preachers. We just took them out of church and put them in public office.

Of course, religion has always bled into government. Moral ideas have to inform politics. And both embody community standards and agreements. Like politics, religion is communal. But there’s a reason our founding fathers wanted to separate the two: unlike politics, religion is absurd.

A lot of us agree that politics needs to get less absurd. What fewer recognize, I think, may be even more important: while it may be possible to get the crazy out of politics, it’s impossible to get the crazy out of being human.

There is something inherently absurd about being human. First of all, you exist. Why did that happen? Nobody knows. OK, fine, we say. We’ll accept that. But then, guess what? You don’t exist. You’re here… and then you’re not. Same for everyone you love. OK, time out. That’s one absurdity too many. That’s stepping over a line.

And so we step over lines. All the time. We are crazy. Batshit crazy. We do batshit crazy things. We climb the face of El Capitan without ropes. We drive cars as fast as we can in circles. We slaughter people by the millions to defend our “honor.” We paint the Sistine Chapel. We care for a disabled child, without fanfare, our whole lives. We work day in and out at a job we hate. We pretend we’re not going to die right up to the time we do. Every choice we make is crazy. But how could it be otherwise?

Human beings are crazy because being human is crazy.

We can call religion absurd, then, but that’s just what the doctor ordered. We need it. Or something like it. If we need politics to meet the reality of a bunch of different people trying to coexist, we also need something to meet a more fundamental reality. We need faith.

Despite what many modern civilized people think, faith doesn’t just come in the form of religion. More importantly, faith isn’t optional. It isn’t just a collection of delusions entertained by primitive yahoos. Whether we call ourselves an atheist or a believer, we need to have faith in something.

Faith frames our lives. Faith is the story we tell about ourselves. It’s the story we feel ourselves to be a part of, even if we’re a bit player.

All cultures have had big communal stories. Before they were called religions, they were called myths. But our stories don’t need to be shared with the entire culture. They can be shared only within certain institutions, sub-cultures, informal groups, families, or with no one at all.

And they are always running in the background. From going to work to dying for our country, some story guides us and gives our actions meaning. “Because I am a father, my job is to provide for my family, even if it sometimes makes me unhappy.” This is a commonly held faith. There’s no proof for it anywhere. Indeed, some men do not worship at this church. Their scriptures tell them something different: “Yes, I am a father, but I’ve got one life to live and I’m free to do what I want, even if it makes my family unhappy.”

Telling ourselves a story is like breathing. It’s so embedded in how we live that we almost never think about it. If we stopped breathing, we’d be dead. If we stopped having a faith, we’d feel dead. Life would become nothing but a series of meaningless, disconnected impressions, events, thoughts, and feelings. Without a story, humans break down.

To ignore this—to imagine we all just need to be “rational” or “scientific”—is to invite the very ills we are witnessing today. The crazy is just going to build up somewhere and then blow its top: “Jews are evil!” “Immigrants are evil!” “Corporations are evil!”

Science can’t save us. We need a faith. Science isn’t one. Science is a collection of neutral facts and laws and a method for discovering them. It allows us to build nuclear bombs or nuclear power plants. Its logic, curiosity, and application have to be directed somewhere. No one has faith in a hammer. We have faith—or don’t—in the person holding it. Similarly, we can’t have faith in science, only in the people doing it and deciding how to use it.

Yes, science solves problems. But people choose what problems to solve. You can have the best hammer in the world, but if crazy holds it, things get broken.

And so faith has continued deranging our minds alongside all our brilliant scientific discoveries. If it isn’t wearing its traditional religious clothes, it shows up disguised as ideologies like nationalism, communism, individualism, fascism, racism, and antisemitism. Atheist zealots have killed and died for all of these, just as religious zealots kill and die for their God. (I’ve got no problem with people dying for their faith. It’s the killing for it that bothers me.) Intelligence has not exempted people from choosing faiths, including the most horrifying ones. As Saul Bellow noted, “A great deal of intelligence can be invested in ignorance when the need for illusion is deep.”

Of course, there are those who see themselves as purely rational who speak out for kindness, equality, tolerance, and happiness. This is wonderful. I would, though, point out that their faith is hiding in plain sight. Kindness, equality, tolerance, and happiness all glow with the light of some sort of faith, even if it’s complex or hard to name.

I think almost all intelligent people who claim not to believe in life-after-death or a God of any kind, do at least believe in something crazy, if unnamable—decency, love, beauty, kindness, the grandeur of a sunrise, the romping of a puppy, Michelangelo’s David, or McCartney’s “Hey, Jude.” But they can’t justify it rationally. While their brains say they’re headed for eternal extinction, something else sings in their blood—some inordinate longing and extravagant desire. A song of faith.

The song never ends. There is something about faith that calls for more—more than can be proved, more than this physical world. It can’t be satisfied by a form of government any more than it can by science. Whether the equal distribution of wealth or its unlimited accumulation sounds good to you, neither is enough. Faith dreams beyond both the overalls and the yachts—beyond the normal, beyond the reasonable, beyond the material.

Science and government have their place, but neither can make faith go away. That is not their job. Their job is to build a kind of playground. Their job is to create a sane and reliable space in which each of us can live out our own chosen faith—our own chosen story, our own form of crazy.

If that sounds, well, crazy, it’s because we’ve been missing something fundamental about faith. Just as we’ve forgotten that politics is fundamentally communal, we’ve forgotten that faith is fundamentally not communal.

Faith is individual.

Faith is the most powerful force in our lives. It is also a territory as vast and intricate as the Amazon rainforest. Yet our culture tends to either ignore it or treat it simplistically. In Part Two, I’ll explore the nature of faith itself.

You can find The Science Spell here.

Share

You may have noticed I haven’t been exactly Swiss-like in keeping to schedule over the last week or so with my emails. I seem instead to be drifting to more of an Italian approach: I send something out when I feel moved to. My great-grandfather came from Sicily, so let’s blame him.

The truth is I like this new approach. It might sometimes mean more than two emails a week and sometimes less. I hope you like it too.

Composing this note also reminds me how much I appreciate you being on the other end of this writing. You are a small group. But that makes me especially grateful for each of you.

Chris

Life is complex. Life is mysterious. Life overflows. Everywhere: people of every stripe and opinion, mites, spiders, ants, birds, fish, bacteria, trees, shrubs, moss, fungus. You can’t turn your head without seeing some eccentric creature. You can’t take a breath without communing with them.

The alpha male wants none of this. He needs life to be simplistic.

Some aspire to be an alpha male. That isn’t possible. The alpha male is an archetype—a way of relating to existence. The masculine and the feminine themselves are archetypes. Neither is embodied only in men or women. The masculine and the feminine are larger than that.

Every man and woman embodies both masculine and feminine archetypes. Women may more easily embody the feminine and men more easily the masculine. But we each find our deepest fulfillment in embracing both—in a marriage within.

The masculine archetype includes the inclination to separate, analyze, put things in rows and categories, move along lines, and accomplish. The masculine steps away from life—to observe, take stock, investigate, corral, direct.

The feminine archetype includes blending, union, feeling, beauty, flow, becoming porous to the wind. The feminine is life itself. In its completeness. Without justification. Without explanation. Without the need for a goal.

The masculine reduces, simplifies, and explains in order to accomplish missions. Missions serve the greater feminine whole. They explore, enlarge, enrich it. When the masculine accomplishes a mission, he takes on a new mission. The missions never end. There is always more to know and do.

The alpha male is masculinity turned cancerous. The alpha male does not want to serve the feminine. He wants her to go away.

Western civilization has been in alpha male mode for at least 3000 years. Domination, control, brutality. Lately, by fits and starts, we have been emerging from this era. We are appreciating more the fundamental value of the feminine.

Emergence invites overcompensation. In their rage at alpha male dominance, some condemn masculinity itself. In their fear of the emerging feminine, some double-down on their alpha maleness.

The masculine urge to make things orderly, contain things, and figure things out works for particular goals in particular situations. The alpha male wants to do these things once and for all. He wants to make life completely understandable, linear, predictable. He wants to make life barren.

He wants destruction not creativity.

The alpha male is the masculine not in relation to the feminine but at war with it. War is what he needs. War destroys in an instant what took years to create. War offers missions—narrow, linear, defined. War promises the alpha male final victory over life itself.

For the alpha male, life is alien—a horror. He is terrified of its fundamentally feminine nature: complex, unfolding, mysterious, beautiful. He doesn’t know what to do with life. It is too much—too swampy, too uncertain, too pregnant with possibility. He wants no hidden corners, no rotting logs, no dark soil, no jungles. He cannot love life, in her wantonness, her depths, her refusal to behave.

The alpha male tries to dominate what he cannot understand. To reduce what he cannot love. To skeletons, rocks, dollars. The alpha male cannot play for the sake of play. He must have points on a scoreboard. He must be moving towards victory. He must have proof of his superiority.

The alpha male is alienated from pleasure. From the sensual. It’s too elusive, too ephemeral, too borderless. Pleasure is surrender—of everything he’s worked for, of everything he’s tried to prove. Sex cannot be sensual. It must be conquest, achievement, proof.

The alpha male is alienated from all feeling except resentment, revenge, rage. They seep into all he does. His happiness requires a foot on the necks of others. His celebrations require the exclusion of the unworthy, of those who wronged him.

In the center of the alpha male stands a boy in the cold, shut out. The mysterious calligraphy of tadpoles in cattails, the smell of summer mud—these no longer intoxicate him. The eroticism of existence no longer tantalizes.

Beneath his bluster and brutality, he is wild with grief.

Something strong
and low
doesn’t care
about my plans.

Something strong,
something low
has bitten me
gently
suggesting
it become me.

If I give in
what will I
become?

A man
unbecoming.
A shipwreck
in half-lit
depths,
home
to multitudes.

I’ve decided to start using Substack for these emails.

This means that the poems and other creations you receive will also live in eternal bliss on my Substack page, where you can browse previous work and also leave comments and join conversations.

In the future, I may explore options such as a paid subscription offering more material, or more in-depth, or experimental, or riskier material.

But for now, the only difference for you will be a new look for the emails and a new place where these creations can stick around for the after-party.

If you head over there now, you’ll find this recent poem.

Why do I need 
to write 
in the morning?

I want to give
something
a chance
to speak—
something
I sense
gets trampled
in the maelstrom
of doing
responsible things
and trying to be 
impressive.

A small animal,
a squirrel,
that pops its head up
only when 
it’s safe.

That 
is the creature
I am sworn to protect.

A poem from my first collection, published under my given name, Chris Dingman.

SparkWrites.com