Leaving Extremism: A Review of "Radical" by Maajid Nawaz

Maajid Nawaz (b. 1978)

     In the decade and more since the tragic violence of September 11, 2001, Western nations have been struggling to make sense of what happened.  Nothing has proven more difficult than the maintenance of clarity in the midst of the heady emotions in the years since Jihadists crashed passenger airliners into the World Trade Center, the Pentagon, and in a field in Pennsylvania (in an abortive attempt to suicide bomb a session of Congress, as it was later surmised).
     Thankfully, a small but growing number of insider texts have appeared, detailing the multifaceted nature of Islam.  One of the major challenges, both to violent radicalism and to the mainstream Western narratives, has come from Maajid Nawaz, the founder of an anti-radical activism group called Quilliam and its international subsidiaries.  A former recruiter and rising star in the radical Islamist group Hizb al-Tahrir (which eventually spawned the openly militant Al Qaeda among others), he came to abandon his radicalism and embrace a more liberal, apolitical view of Islam while maintaining his childhood faith.  His story is detailed in "Radical: My Journey Out of Islamist Extremism."
     Nawaz began, as so many radicals, as an average child in a European minority group.  His grandfather immigrated to Great Britain from Pakistan during the violent Partition of 1947, in which Pakistan was split from the rest of India.  In one of many miniature history lessons within the narrative, Nawaz explains the myopia and apathy of colonial authorities in the face of the violence and death that their policies unleashed, a theme that echoes throughout the narrative.  While deploring violence for the act of insecurity and cruelty that it is, Nawaz does not compromise on calling out the sins of Western nations in geopolitics, grievances which (when added to a toxic mixture of half-truths or outright lies) eventually helped give impetus to movements like Hizb al-Tahrir, one of the original international radical Muslim political organizations, founded in 1953.
     Growing up in a majority white community in England, Nawaz learned about racism at a tender age, after being punched in the stomach by another boy at school for being a "Paki."  The child proceeded to shout that his father had said that "Pakis" slept with apes and thus gave rise to AIDS -- an example of the racist propaganda used to stir up hatred in an already insecure and shrinking Empire by neo-Nazi groups.  As Nawaz grew up, he saw many friends (including white friends) beaten and attacked by hate groups like Combat 18, a neo-Nazi group that sent armed men in vans patrolling for vulnerable "Pakis" to beat.  It was during such an attack, when Nawaz was alone and unarmed, that an unknown good Samaritan threw himself between the neo-Nazis and Nawaz, taking the beating and hatred that had been intended for another.  The complicity of the police with such matters only fueled the passion of Nawaz and his teenage peers for American gangsta rap music by NWA and others.
     During a particularly dangerous confrontation, Nawaz was impressed when his brother intimidated and overcame the local thugs by threatening them with a backpack, saying he had friends in Al Qaeda.  The gangsters backed down.  Nawaz was impressed with this new power that was able to overcome white supremacists, and his brother got him involved in Hizb al-Tahrir, an organization dedicated to recruiting young Muslims around the world to unite in an effort to bring about Caliphates or Muslim rule in their respective countries, usually by infiltrating educational institutions and the military.  The proximal goals, of course, included the already theocratic Afghanistan (until the American-led coalition destroyed that dream by ousting the Taliban) and came to include Pakistan, Bangladesh, and other nations.
     When at university, Nawaz became a rising star in HT, organizing rallies and recruiting.  Threats by African students were answered by a violent al-Qaeda member who offered protective services, eventually murdering an African student during a confrontation and receiving life in prison.  The local branch of HT was rebuked by international leadership, as Great Britain was desired as a cash and recruit source rather than as a source of negative media attention.
     Eventually, Nawaz became an international recruiter noted for his effectiveness and devotion, traveling to various recruitment centers including Denmark, Pakistan, and Egypt.  Despite the toll on his family life, the young man was still committed to the cause when, at the tender age of 24 years of age, he was arrested in Egypt by the secret police for suspected involvement with Hizb al-Tahrir, which was banned in the country after the Islamist murder of Anwar Sadat involving a different organization.
     Here, a note of terminology is vital, and Nawaz admirably clears up much of the confusion that still plagues Western media commentary.  He distinguishes Islam (religious entity) from Islamism (the political activism that seeks to instate a Caliphate and which is often poorly educated in terms of Islam itself).  Islamists sought to infiltrate societies and establish member states to the putative International Caliphate by building up numbers and ideological support.  Jihadists, by contrast, sought to use violence suddenly to instate Islamic law.  Over the years, Nawaz says, the contrasts between groups and ideologies in the latter two groups have become blurred, as Islamist organizations have started embracing Jihadist principles, and the terms are often used interchangeably by commentators.  I found it useful to compare early Islamists with early socialists (say, the members of the Fabian society) who sought ideological converts, and to think of early Jihadists as Communist revolutionaries (say, Fidel Castro) who sought to expedite matters with weaponry.
     In any case, it was after long torture and imprisonment that Nawaz found himself imprisoned with various groups in the Mazrah Tora prison, from convicted homosexuals to the liberal politicians arrested for running against "President" Mubarak.  Nawaz was represented by an Egyptian Communist and was adopted by Amnesty International as a Prisoner of Conscience, causing him to question HT's messages that sought to dehumanize atheists, Communists, and Western society in general.  After the show trial, however, it became obvious that years of imprisonment lay ahead.
     During this time, yet another example of Western hypocrisy emerged that caused hatred to boil over among the thousands of political prisoners interned indefinitely at the prison - Tony Blair accepted a vacation getaway from Hosni Mubarak, despite his crimes against humanity that included torture and secret police.  "Indeed, Prime Minister Tony Blair had accepted a succession of free holidays from Mubarak at the exclusive Sharm el-Sheikh resort while we Britons were tortured in Mubarak's jails. (Blair later stated he had made a charitable donation equal to the cost.)"
     Nevertheless, the kindness of Amnesty (and its local Christian representative), the exposure to liberal traditions in the Prison Library and in books leant by the British Embassy (from 1984 to The Lord of the Rings, one of Nawaz's new favorite series of books), old ideological assumptions were challenged while kindness thawed his hatred.  "It was the unconditional nature of Amnesty's support that humbled me: you're a human being so you deserve our support."
     He began to study the texts and theology of Islam for the first time in his life, realizing that Islamism is less about religion than it is about politics.  "It might sound strange, given how committed I was to the Islamist ideology, but I had never properly studied Islam of the Qur'an."  He began to feel that the place of Islam was religious rather than politically revolutionary -- Islamic law had never been made into a monolithic code, not even under the Ottomans, who had established local courts run at the discretion of local officials; instead, the Islamist desire to establish a codified form of Sharia (of which many interpretations existed) was simply a relic of the Colonial European notions of the Nation State and jurisprudence.  Instead of breaking free of European cultural baggage, Islamists were increasing their dependence upon it.
     The 7/7 London Tube bombings in 2005 also rocked Nawaz's perspective.  "From the distant vantage point of Mazrah Tora at the time, I felt revulsion when I heard the news.  In contrast to my reaction to 9/11, I immediately thought of the human cost involved.  Gone were my ideological acrobatics and my Machiavellian justifications.  This time I saw the plain and simple death of innocents."  No longer was "The West" a faceless, inhuman Other to be destroyed, now that the victims were in Nawaz's home country.
     Nawaz had a passionate debate with a fellow prisoner, a bomb-maker named Omar.  "I turned to Omar and asked him: Do you know where the biggest demonstrations against the Iraq War took place?  From news clippings in old newspapers, I showed him pictures of the million-strong march of February 15, 2003, in London.  The fact that the largest demonstration against the Iraq War was not in Egypt, Saudi Arabia, or Pakistan, but in the UK, touched me.  These were human beings in London, campaigning for other human beings in Iraq.  Rehumanization.  Where the heart leads, the mind can follow."  (The latter is a frequent refrain throughout the last section of the book.)  "And we went on like this for an entire day, discussing theology, politics, and war, until eventually Omar began to rummage his hand through his hair and appear extremely uncomfortable.  So I stopped pushing.  For a moment, I thought he might turn on me.  I'd seen him wrestle in the prison yard with bear-like Ahmed, and if he wanted to, he could settle this in an instant.  But Omar was no fool, certainly not unintelligent, and he had grown very fond of me.  A couple of days later, there was a knock on my cell door.  Omar was back: 'Maajid, I've been thinking about what you said.  I've decided you're right.  I agree.  British civilians are not a legitimate target.'  On that day I felt that I had saved many future lives from the hands of this bomb-maker friend of mine (who after Egypt's uprising is also likely roaming free)."  The reader notes that when this friendship was underway, Nawaz was not yet de-radicalized.
     In the end, upon his release to England, Nawaz was to do much soul-searching.  His marriage, founded on shared radical ideals, fell apart.  "I had seen too much, learned too much to ever again be that same Maajid she had married.  In many ways I think I was a nicer person then, and like so many nice people who seek power, I wanted to force everyone else to be nice.  It's a form of totalitarianism."  Desperate to convince himself of his failing beliefs, and trying to finish his final exams for his long-delayed undergraduate degree, he made one last recruitment effort.
     "I tried to recruit Fatima [an outspoken Pakistani student].  Like the death throes of a dying body, I tried to project all my insecurities about my existential crisis onto her.  I showed her my BBC interview and told her about how important it was that we Muslims know our identity properly.  And Fatima just looked at me square in the face as she said, 'I may not be able to argue with you, or respond to your points, but I know what you are saying is simply bullshit.  And you know what, Maajid?  So do you!' "
     Finally, Nawaz left HT and radicalism behind, founded an anti-radical activism network called Quilliam (along with its subsidiaries).  He has advised the British and American governments (once sitting beside and conversing with former President George W. Bush during a special luncheon event).
     Among the most important messages in the book are Nawaz's insistence on the dangers of popular multiculturalism.  Of his last months as a recruiter and spokesperson, he writes: "I watched as our ideology gained acceptance and we were granted airtime as Muslim political commentators.  I watched as we were ignorantly pandered to by well-meaning liberals and ideologically driven leftists.  How we Islamists laughed at their naïveté."  Not only does supposedly multicultural ideology fail to truly know the nuances of the cultures it pretends to embrace, it commits the typical error it publicly attributes to its enemies by essentializing minority culture into a simplistic stereotype (letting one segment of a population speak for the whole population, for instance): "Most Muslims are not Islamists; yet the organized minority dominates the discourse.  Islamism had been creeping upon Muslims for over eighty years now, and little had been organized to directly challenge it.  Yes, certain Muslim associations have been stressing a tolerant Islam, but this was not sufficient."
     Another vital and (to me) new message was Nawaz's efforts to redefine Islam in the political discourse not as a necessarily hegemonic and intolerant force but as a religious pursuit, whose theology's true interpretation allows and even encourages healthy engagement in modern, liberal society.  Nawaz boldly calls for new interpretations of the traditions of Islam for the modern era, and for the depoliticizing of Islam as a whole.  He has faced assassination attempts for his about-face and his liberal minded efforts, but he remains courageous in his new identity.
     So what do I think?  I think Nawaz is filling an important niche and is doing important work.  He's a brilliant, honest guy with the integrity to stand up for what he believes in against overwhelming odds.  That being said, I will admit that as a secularist and atheist, it was jarring to see his repeated inline blessings upon "the Prophet" and his "Companions" whenever they came up.  Nawaz is by no means retracting his basic religious identity, but seeking to redefine it in a positive way.  Few public figures with his ability and clout have done so, and I think it's vital for figures like Nawaz to step forward and call for reformation in Islam.  However, having grown up in a different religion with many shared holy texts, I know well that religions hold the seeds of totalitarianism and oppression within them, no matter how nice, intelligent, or well-intentioned their practitioners may be.  The nice Christian intellectual still has an Old Testament that commands the brutal stoning to death of adulterers, homosexuals, witches, and even disrespectful children.  I have not read more than a smattering of Muslim sacred texts, but I have read enough to see that they contain at least strong evidence of misogyny, tolerance for violence against "the unbeliever," and more fundamentally, of an unhealthy prostration before an all-powerful, rather less than kind deity whose word is law.  In other words, religion generally does not think well of critical thinking or freethinking, which is central to a free and progressive society.  While I think Nawaz is a very good man, I think he is still subject to the same dangers as any other devotée of religion, certainly any follower of the three monotheisms (not excessively to echo the great Christopher Hitchens).  One small element that also bothered me was his criticism of Ayaan Hirsi Ali (atheist former Muslim, author of the bestselling Infidel, collaborator on the Submission film that got Dutch film maker Theo Van Gogh murdered, and women's rights activist).  As a good secularist, Ali lays the blame for religious violence at the door of religion, which seems to be a fairly logical place to put it.  Nawaz needs to do more work on convincing me that Islam is a religion, fundamentally, of peace rather than a religion with peaceful and violent people within it (just like the Christians and Jews have yet to convince me that their religions have ever consistently been religions of peace).
     I think that irrational beliefs, like religious superstitions, need to be fully discarded to rid us forever of the specter of religious terrorism and totalitarianism, but the root problems are human. And besides, the majority of religious people will always cling to a form of their faith, so it is all the better that there are charismatic advocates standing up for the kinder, gentler forms of those faiths. Nawaz opened my eyes to the rich diversity of opinion and the pleasant surprise of liberal thought within the Muslim community worldwide.  He is right to call for more vocal support for democratic ideals, and he is also right to call for an end to the Western abuses and hypocrisy that give fuel to the Islamist flame -- all without justifying the vile atrocities committed in the name of radical Islamism. Whatever the label they use, there will always be good and kind people fighting the efforts of the violent, the ignorant and the small-minded; and I am glad someone of the caliber of Maajid Nawaz has come over to the right side.

Walking Through the Valley

Some of the best descriptions of emotional disorders can be found in the Old Testament (which is not really very surprising).  When one reads of "a horror and a darkness" descending upon Abraham, or listens to Job groaning that "that which I have dreaded is come upon me," one feels a startling moment of sympathy with the suffering ones.  Sympathy is, after all, what makes for good literature.

Unlike Abraham or Job (nice guys, but unfortunate enough to be Jewish back when God was still bipolar), I seem to have little excuse for what seems to be an ever more crippling series of depressions.  I mean, life is pretty good -- job situation, relationship status, friendships; all seem to be far above the average in terms of the average human experience.  But it still just gets to me - the sense that there is no hope, that my life is a meaningless sham or farce, that I'm a fake and a phony destined to die unfulfilled and alone, with nothing but a retail salary, an unread blog and manuscripts, and student loan debt to my name.

Well that got heavy fast.

Anyways, it was during a night of such sleepless ponderings that I was forced to take action, and after making a melted cheese-and-chili tortilla (and following it with its sinfully delicious peanut-butter-and-honey twin), I broke out my little journal and my notepad and tried to duke it out with my "black dog" of depression the old fashioned way and remind myself of a few important truths.  Here is some of what I came up with...

Laughter, hope and love represent the greatest triumph of mankind over the cosmos.

Humans alone among all known species are capable of grasping the horrifying emptiness of the universe and the stark banality of existence; but humans alone among all species are capable of looking that darkness full in the face before filling it with beauty, companionship, love, laughter, fellowship and hope.

Part of being human is finding beauty in the darkness and hope in despair.

Life, like death, begins in the mind.  Some people are more fully alive on their death bed than the young, strong person taking care of them.  Others die many years or even decades before their body ceases to function.  True love means sharing this deeper life, and true hatred, evil, and cruelty mean withholding it.

What is real life and living?

It involves love; it involves seeing beyond the self.  It means companionship, humor, friendship, courage, honor, goodness, decency -- and all of these things for their own sake rather than for the approval of others.

Real death has nothing to do with age, and it has comparatively little to do with sickness.

True death involves fear, the end of possibilities, an utterly self-centered existence, cruelty, loneliness, grim austerity, the end of humor and the inability to laugh either at oneself or one's world -- in a word, death is despair.  The loss of hope and good spirits is true sickness and can kill.

Some of the greatest acts of kindness involve simply making another person laugh, or feel less alone for just a moment.  More lives have been saved this way than will ever be counted.

It is the capacity for this richer life and this darker death that allows humans to transcend the mundane and become more than mere animals or biological automatons.  This allows them to aspire to be gods and find glory, but it also permits them to aspire to be monsters and find everlasting shame.

Good and evil might exist in the human mind alone, but this doesn't devalue them; it makes them all the more powerful and important for existing above the level of mere biological necessity.

True heroism has nothing to do with muscles and guns and the slaying of dragons.  True heroism means decency for the sake of decency in the face of all that is frightening and horrible in the world.  Being a hero means living as a human being, despite the universe.  In this one can find a full life and a good life in any place and at any time.

There's an old passage that I came across a long time ago that ties it up pretty nicely:

"The life of man is a long march through the night, surrounded by invisible foes, tortured by weariness and pain, toiling towards a goal that few can hope to reach, and where none may tarry long.  One by one, as they march, our comrades vanish from our sight, seized by the silent orders of omnipotent death.  Very brief is the time in which we can help them, in which their happiness or misery is decided.  Be it ours to shed sunshine on their path, to lighten their sorrows by the balm of sympathy, to give them the pure joy of a never-tiring affection, to strengthen failing courage, to instill faith in hours of despair.  Let us not weigh in grudging scales their merits and demerits, but let us think only of their need -- of the sorrows, the difficulties, perhaps the blindnesses, that make the misery of their lives.  Let us remember that they are fellow sufferers in the same darkness, actors in the same tragedy with ourselves.  And so, when their day is over, when their good and their evil have become eternal by the immortality of the past, be it ours to feel that, where they suffered, where they failed, no deed of ours was the cause; but wherever a spark of the divine fire was kindled in their hearts, we were ready with encouragement, with sympathy, with brave words in which high courage glowed."
--Bertrand Russell

The Odd Persistence of an Atheist Fanboy

"Even in literature and art, no man who bothers about originality will ever be original: whereas if you simply try to tell the truth (without caring twopence how often it has been told before) you will, nine times out of ten, become original without ever having noticed it."

Clive Staples Lewis (1898-1963)

    C.S. Lewis, perhaps more than anyone besides Terry Pratchett, helped me survive my teenage years.  That's an odd thing for a religious skeptic to say, but let me assure you, the man changed my life.  Through his writings, the wise, gentle Oxford don introduced me to a vision of what faith could be.  He represented to me a world where humor and beauty and reason could co-exist in utter harmony, not to say interdependence.  He showed me a vision, in his fantasy novels especially, of a fallen, painful world made whole again after a noble battle against evil.  It was a world where an average person could find themselves acting courageously, where good and evil were clearly defined, and where there was redemption and forgiveness, even for the most evil.

    Lewis told tales of courage, decency, honor, and simple goodness - values he exemplified in his own life.  His were tales of wonder, fear, deep joy, and of powerful and ancient evil finally overthrown by goodness.  C.S. Lewis, more than any other, was capable of seeing the world as it ought to be.  And for a distressed young person, there can be no better solace than the fay, adventurous joy that Lewis expressed. 

    It is because of the rare and beautiful souls like Lewis that I cannot and will not allow myself be be dragged into the hate-filled cant against Christianity and Christians en masse that is so very popular in certain circles today.  Those rare individuals for whom right is right simply because it is right, those people whose simple decency puts to shame the greatest ethical systems of philosophy, and those persons whose earnest and love-centered living inspires and elevates every life they touch - it is such people whose lives and work demand my respect, even if I do not share their faith.

    ​Sure, we need sharp-tongued critics in our culture - they provide a necessary if sometimes unpleasant service.  But they cannot and never will create the kind of joy, love or hope that bright spirits can generate in even the most dismal settings.  Lewis inspired a generation of Londoners to survive the Nazi bombardments that brought the ancient city to its knees; he reminded men, women, and children how to be human in a world gone mad; and he injected new life, love, humor and reason into a religion marked by hypocrisy and shattered by the chaos of modernity.

    He also helped a certain lonely, confused, and deeply miserable teenager to see hope in a very dark world, and I'd challenge anyone to better that.

    I might not share the faith anymore, but I shall always be grateful for everything else that I learned from C.S. Lewis: the value of humility; the sheer magic and fierce beauty of life and nature; a simple sense of decency; and the realization that people are valuable and that most of them, when given the chance, are fundamentally decent.  Perhaps most importantly, Lewis showed me that in the face of folly, fear, or pain, it is laughter above all else that can remind us of who we are and get us moving again.

    ​​Not a bad message for our own time, come to think of it.

(Not) Being Antonio Banderas (AKA How I went to the Gym, Failed to Flirt with the Pretty Girl, and Wrote a Blog Instead)

Well then.  What a title.  But I’m afraid I’m stuck with it, because I simply do not have the energy to create another.

At any rate, I had a terrible knot in my back (that’s what happens when you start working out for the first time in ages).  I decided, contrary to my lazy nature, to try to hit the gym and work out the knots with some light, healthful tension training.  Oddly enough, I was right – sometimes knots develop from overtraining one area – meaning I was a stupid caveman and did chest three times in a row, which strained my back.  So don’t do that.  Train all groups equally, as if they are an ACLU-approved fruit salad. There, you got a free training tip and a terrible metaphor, all for free.

At any rate, at the end of my sweaty exodus (I really do recommend it, I felt much better) – I say, as I prepared to leave, I beheld a vision.  The most incredibly fit, well-proportioned, gorgeous Látina woman was doing yoga in front of the wall mirrors as I left. 

And... she was between me... and the door. 

There comes a time in every pasty man’s life when he is forced – forced, I say – like a gladiator of old, to face and transcend his timidity.  In what I thought was a move muy sútil, worthy of Antonio Banderas himself, I smoothed back my sweaty locks and waved casually as I passed, a subtle and sophisticated smile upon my (rather chapped) lips.

Of course, it was at that moment that I came in view of the mirror, and to my dawning horror, I saw what she saw: a tall, doughy creep with holes in his cheap shoes who was leering at her from a flushed, grime-encrusted face as he waved the hand that held his old phone that had clearly been carelessly broken and taped-together (repeatedly).

Obviously, I fled.

And so it is that I sit here, alone, about to write what I can only hope is a cogent series of thoughts as I weep softly in the night.  (“MOM I’LL TAKE OUT THE GARBAGE AS SOON AS I’M DONE.  I KNOW I SAID I’D HAVE A GOOD JOB AFTER COLLEGE.  I DON’T KNOW –   ASK THE PRESIDENT!!!”)

There you have it.  A masterpiece, phoenix like, rises from the ashes of broken dreams and a shattered, lonely ego.  That’s how it’s done, kids.  That is, indeed, how it is done.

Unlike me.

Because I’m still alone.

And I can’t stop typing.

Dear God, please let me stop typing!

A Voyage Among the Stars

"For small creatures such as we, the vastness is only bearable through love."

Carl Edward Sagan (1934-1996)

I first became familiar with Carl Sagan in the same way most people have done - through his award-winning television series Cosmos and its companion volume. The PBS series melds astronomy, biology, physics, history, literature, philosophy, geology into a grand summary of what humanity has learned over the centuries.  Sir Terry Pratchett calls it the best work of popular science in existence, and according to the official Carl Sagan website, it has been seen by over a billion people (suitable number!)  It is considered to be the most widely viewed documentary of all time, and made Sagan a cultural icon for his generation.

I then proceeded to read his numerous and excellent best-selling educational books (currently, Shadows of Forgotten Ancestors), which helped convert me from a fear-driven and superstitious perspective to a calmer, more rational way of looking at the world.  I fell in love with Sagan's warm, knowledgeable presence (on page and on screen), and I was enchanted by the mingled charity and erudition with which he discussed and explained popular superstitions like New Age, various fundamentalisms, and the like.  The man seemed humane, reasonable, and inhumanly knowledgeable.  His accomplishments include almost single-handedly popularizing space research, helping create and secure funding for SETI (especially after its NASA disavowal), popularizing science and rationalism (along with literature) to millions of readers, and (perhaps most impressively), finally finding true love in his middle age.

That's why I was thrilled to read Keay Davidson's excellent biography, Carl Sagan: A Life (New York: John Wiley & Sons, 1999)  One of the most thoroughly researched contemporary biographies I've had the privilege of reading (430 pages of body, 70 pages of endnotes, and an 18 page small print bibliography), it sheds a great deal of light on Sagan's incredible life and career, illustrating not only his triumphs but his failures.  The book is another fascinating illustration of the rise of a meteoric personality - as Malcolm Gladwell is fond of reminding us, there are no self-made men.  A host of people and experiences, mentors, successes, failures, and happy accidents go into making a generation-defining man or woman.  Nonetheless, the key ingredient, without which such factors are worthless, is hard work.

"By the end of his graduate student years, he would be on a first-name basis with at least three Nobel laureates (H.J. Muller, Joshua Lederberg, and Harold Urey) and one future Nobelist (Melvin Calvin).  Rather than waste his summers relaxing and partying, he spent them working for top scholars."

Sagan began life in New York City with loving parents Sam and Rachel.  Sam, who worked in the Garment District, imparted to his son a sense of kindliness and the value of people.  Sagan's brilliant but emotionally unstable mother Rachel imparted to him a love of learning and a sense that he was capable, one day, of being great.  (I couldn't help but notice the similarities between Rachel Sagan and Chrisopher Hitchens' mother Yvonne).  This was a two-edged sword: Sagan's self confidence led to a spectacular career as an astronomer, founding father of Exobiology, writer, presenter, activist, and public intellectual.  It also made him self-centered (like many great people).  It took decades, two failed marriages, and the love of his life to draw him out of himself and soften his egotism.  Rachel's other gift was optimism, protecting the young Sagan from the disturbing events of the Second World War:

"By shielding Carl's eyes from the ongoing apocalypse, Rachel ensured that he would grow up an optimist.  Emotionally, that optimism would be his greatest strength; intellectually, it would be his greatest liability.  It was a mental blinder that kept him politically naïve until he was in his fifties, when he finally opened his eyes and faced the dragon in his mental Eden: the nuclear age, the threat of global annihilation.  Carl inherited this mixed legacy from Rachel."

After a brilliant high school career in an underfunded public school (he once covered every blackboard in an empty classroom with details of classical mythology), Sagan had to overcome the fact that his parents couldn't afford to send him to a school for the gifted.  He was forced to work hard to catch up to his brilliant peers in Chicago's grueling Hutchinson program, which (Davidson notes) gave him the classical education and grounding to help him become a true lover of culture rather than merely a scientist. Indeed, Sagan was the rare polymath, committed to attempting to gain proficiency in every discipline.  As Will Durant was fond of noting, wide learning should be the goal of every person with the means, and an understanding of all knowledge used to be the definition of philosophy.

Rare is the scientist with world-class understanding of two broad disciplines, say, astronomy and biology.  Sagan was one of the rare ones.  The Hutchins program gave him the confidence to straddle disciplines.

Throughout his career, his broad interests (true to Davidson's model of contradictions) would make him vastly popular, grant him innumerable opportunities, and also stress his credibility on detail work (he once mixed up the mixture of time-measuring radioactive materials on Voyager, rendering them useless).
Moreover, Sagan continued his lifelong habit of networking - Davidson notes that from a young age, Sagan corresponded with the great astronomers and planetary scientists.  He would befriend (and even work with) the greats, from Harold Urey and Stanley Miller to Gerard Kuiper.  Despite his rise in prominence in the science world, including unprecedented newspaper publicity and a cross-country trip to California to drop in on Linus Pauling for an impromptu chat, Sagan started out as an enthusiastic believer in UFO's.  It was only after reading rationalist texts like Charles Mackay's Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds that Sagan began to turn on his old beliefs.  This was one example of Sagan's interior contradictions (again, redolent of Hitchens' note in his memoir Hitch-22 that nearly everyone "keeps two sets of books").

All his life, Carl Sagan was troubled by grand dichotomies - between reason and irrationalism, between wonder and skepticism.  The dichotomies clashed within him.  He yearned to believe in marvelous things - in flying saucers, in Martians, in glistening civilizations across the Milky Way.  Yet reason usually brought him back to Earth.  Usually; not always...

This vision blinded Sagan, sometimes, to the needs of the people around him.  These included friends who worshiped him, although he hurt them; wives who were entranced by his passions, although they were enraged by his absenteeism and often illogical "logic"; sons who were enthralled by his example, even as they struggled to escape his shadow; and colleagues who envied and honored him, even while they scorned his wilder notions and mocked his pomposities.  Hardly anyone who knew Carl Sagan intimately has an unmixed opinion of him.  In the final analysis, he was the dichotomy: the prophet and the hard-boiled skeptic, the boyish fantasist and the ultrarigorous analyst, the warm companion and the brusque colleague, the oracle whose smooth exterior concealed inner fissures, which, in the end, only one woman could heal.

 Sagan met Ann Druyan when she was still in love with Timothy Ferris, a notable science writer and correspondent for The Rolling Stone.  It was not long, however, before a special chemistry emerged, a chemistry that was cemented after working together on the Voyager project.  Druyan's assignment was to find suitable music to represent the cultures of the world.  The record was meant to symbolize the very best of what it means to be human - art, science, culture, love, etc.  As Druyan notes in the afterward to my edition of Sagan's posthumous masterpiece, Billions and Billions:

In the course of my daunting search for the single most worthy piece of Chinese music, I phoned Carl and left a message at his hotel in Tucson where he was giving a talk.  An hour later, the phone rang in my apartment in Manhattan.  I picked it up and heard a voice say: "I got back to my room and found a message that said 'Annie called.'  And I asked myself, why didn't you leave me that message ten years ago?"  Bluffing, joking, I responded lightheartedly.  "Well, I've been meaning to talk to you about that, Carl."  And then, more soberly, "Do you mean for keeps?"  "Yes, for keeps," he said tenderly.  "Let's get married."  "Yes," I said and that moment we felt we knew what it must be like to discover a new law of nature.  It was a "eureka," a moment in which a great truth was revealed, one that would be reaffirmed through countless independent lines of evidence over the next twenty years.  But it was also the assumption of an unlimited liability.  Once you were allowed into this wonder world, how could you ever again be content outside of it?  It was June 1, our love's Holy Day.  Thereafter, anytime one of us was being unreasonable with the other, the invocation of June 1 would usually bring the offender to his or her senses.

Thus began, in some ways, one of the great love stories, a union worthy to accompany the romances of C.S. Lewis and Joy Davidman, Sheldon and Davy Vanauken, or Christopher Hitchens and Carol Blue. Davidson carefully chronicles Druyan's work in helping Cosmos become a reality, in helping Sagan craft several best-selling works of popular science, in mending relations with various of Sagan's children from previous marriages, in pressuring Sagan to make his political principles into action (protesting nuclear weapons, campaigning for social equality, etc.)  She made him more human, in other words.  I wish, in a sense, that Davidson had spent even more time on this section of the book - after all, a third of Sagan's life was dominated by his relationship with Ann Druyan.  Nonetheless, Davidman (true to purpose) is not writing a hagiography, and he reveals the negative aspects of the relationship as well - the painful, ugly, litigious divorce from a hurt and angry Linda Salzman, the long-term resentment of children (especially his son Dorion), and the fact that Ann had been with a mutual friend (the writer Timothy Ferris) for years during their growing mutual attraction.  Davidson's candor is difficult - I think Sagan stopped being a glowing hero of mine when I read that Lynn Margulis alleges that Sagan refused to help around the house, resented her attention to their son, and even hit her at times.  At that moment in the narrative, I firmly disliked Sagan.  Thankfully, my impression was much salvaged later on.

True to the cliché and a popular song, people change, and it seems that Druyan truly brought out the best in her husband.  A famous opponent of nuclear proliferation, he was an early public proponent of Nuclear Winter theory (he helped in its development, though he was most instrumental in his public avowals of it).  He famously and vehemently criticized the work of Edward Teller, and vehemently debated him in print and in person on multiple occasions. By this time, his nomination to the National Academy of Sciences was underway, and it was none other than Lynn Margulis (by then a famous biologist in her own right) who fought hard to affirm his nomination to the National Academy of Sciences.  Dozens of colleagues, however, were jealous of Sagan's fame and wealth, and despite the advocacy of many famous friends, Sagan was never nominated (though they did later award him a prestigious prize).  Margulis wrote him a passionate letter, angry with the academy: "In summary you deserved election to the National Academy years ago and still do; it is the worst of human frailties that keeps you out: jealousy."  It was Margulis's forgiveness of Sagan's bad points that tempered my earlier dismay and dislike - every person has great successes as well as terrible shortcomings, to say nothing of downright nasty moments.  What counts is changing one's ways.  Indeed, Druyan notes that before Sagan's last illness, the entire extended family had gathered for Thanksgiving (including all the children and grandchildren from previous marriages).  "By unanimous acclaim it had been the best Thanksgiving we'd ever had."

The book is filled with fascinating context.  One finds a mini-bio of Sagan's childhood hero, Edgar Rice Burroughs, an explanation of Nuclear Winter theory, a discussion of the covert wartime exploits of Gerard Kuiper in the Second World War, a delightful discussion of the mighty H.J. Muller's public attacks on Oparin in Soviet Russia and desperate flight to the West after a stint in the Spanish Civil War, and countless other tidbits.  One of my favorites, besides the Muller biography, was a discussion of Lynn Margulis and the Gaia theory - seeing life as a unified whole.  This meshed nicely with the idea of Life as a heuristic (learning, problem solving) entity - Sagan more than once referred to Dawkins' gene-centric approach to evolutionary biology.  My absolute favorite was a discussion of Sagan's friendship with Isaac Asimov, who once congratulated Sagan on his book.

Isaac Asimov wrote to Sagan that he had just finished The Cosmic Connection and "loved every word of it."  He also commented, flatteringly, that the only thing that disconcerted him about the book was that it showed that Sagan was smarter than he was.

If you want to learn more about Sagan's unprecedented career, his inch-thick resume, his friendship with Johnny Carson (who hilariously parodied Sagan in addition to boosting his fame through interviews), his early love of science fiction (culminating in his own novel, Contact), his anonymous essay endorsing marijuana use (space-age pseudonym: Mr. X), his relationship and falling out with Lester Grinspoon, and his fight against myelodysplasia, you really must read Keay Davidson's remarkable biography.  At the end of it, I think I've come to appreciate Sagan as an educator, a passionate admirer and student of the cosmos, a brilliant, witty, and ultimately kindhearted soul, and (after some necessary mellowing) an eminently human individual - in the new Cosmos series, host Neil DeGrass Tyson tells the beautiful story of his friendship, as a precocious child, with Sagan.  After a snowy journey to the bus stop after a day at the observatory, Sagan gave Tyson his home phone number and invited Tyson to stay with his family for the night if there was any trouble with the bus.  That day, Tyson says, set his course to being the astrophysicist and popularizer he is today (he retells the story in an interview here).  Indeed, Sagan's greatest contribution was to inspire me (and countless millions of others) with a passion for the truth and (by extension) a hunger for knowledge and impartiality.  And unlike certain other popularizers and public intellectuals (Dawkins, cough cough), Sagan engaged with those who disagreed with him in a calm, respectful, and rational manner.  Perhaps his true love, Ann Druyan, puts it best in her memories of their last night together during Carl's battle with terminal illness.

Contrary to the fantasies of the fundamentalists, there was no deathbed conversion, no last minute refuge taken in a comforting vision of a heaven or an afterlife.  For Carl, what mattered most was what was true, not merely what would make us feel better.  Even at this moment when anyone would be forgiven for turning away from the reality of our situation, Carl was unflinching.  As we looked deeply into each other's eyes, it was with a shared conviction that our wondrous life together was ending forever...

As I make the changes in proof that Carl feared might be necessary, his son Jeremy is upstairs giving Sam his nightly computer lesson.  Sasha is in her room doing homework.  The Voyager spacecraft, with their revelations of a tiny world graced by music and love, are beyond the outermost planets, making for the open sea of interstellar space.  They are hurtling at a speed of forty thousand miles per hour toward the stars and a destiny about which we can only dream.  I sit surrounded by cartons of mail from people all over the planet who mourn Carl's loss.  Many of them credit him with their awakenings.  Some of them say that Carl's example has inspired them to work for science and reason against the forces of superstition and fundamentalism.  These thoughts comfort me and lift me up out of my heartache.  They allow me to feel, without resorting to the supernatural, that Carl lives. 

The Greatest of These

I’m really having to force myself into this writing thing today.  Not feeling terribly motivated – but as my self-help book says, motivation begins in action, not vice-versa.  Therefore, I am going to try to get on paper a few of the thoughts that have been bothering me.

First of all, I’m deeply saddened and disturbed by the destruction of Malaysian Flight 17 today by (either) Ukrainian rebels, Ukrainian military, or (sadly not unlikely) the Russian military.  Pace my beloved Christopher Hitchens, such sentiment is neither maudlin, nor is it a mere pastiche.  I find it utterly horrifying what we human beings can do to each other, especially because I know that under different circumstances, I could have been on that plane (or been targeting it, for that matter).  I suppose that’s really part of what’s been on my mind lately.

I haven’t had the heart to tackle this because, frankly, I’m scared of such a big, controversial, and deeply personal subject – but that’s what blogs are for, isn’t it?  To bare the grimy, unwashed corners of our souls so that grimy, unwashed souls on the internet can read and feel, well, less alone?

I speak, of course, of... RELIGION.

As will probably become obvious over time, I am not religious.  I was, however, extremely devout from childhood into my teenage years.  My family is extremely religious.  I went to an ostensibly secular state school which boasted the dubious distinction of housing numerous religious clubs and social organizations (including churches on campus) while being voted the #1 LGBT-friendly campus in the Southern half of the country.  As a result, tensions between conservative and progressive church people combined with the increasingly vocal secular students and their eager professors.

Needless to say, to go from a background of cringing in the dark for fear of the Devil and his minions stalking in the night and believing (and trying to argue for) the validity of the “Ken Ham Model” of cosmology into an environment where RA’s put together hall displays of condoms and other contraceptives, and my Intro to Biology professor banned questions/arguments about evolution, “Intelligent Design,” etc. as his first act of the semester – this was a bit of a culture shock, to be sure.  Moreover, going from an environment in which I was raised to consider all non-straight people to be AIDS-carrying “Sodomites” waiting to snatch my soul to serving (poorly) as a Resident Assistant for an “in transition” resident (trans-sexual) – this, too, causes some searchings of the soul.

Where am I?  Well, despite my immersion in the new world of the “new atheism” and “coming out as an atheist” (lots of which is hype, some of which is legitimate), I do not hate religion or religious people, nor do I think that if one believes in religious ideas, one is necessarily illogical, stupid, or evil (that’s the Dawkins camp, by the way – the man can be as harsh and big-mouthed as Bill Maher sometimes).  There are a great many kind, sweet, intelligent, and useful religious people in the world, and their faith cannot and must not be used in some way to discount their good characters.

But here’s the thing – there are a great many kind, sweet, intelligent, and useful atheists in the world – and agnostics, and all the other names that people coin in a desperate bid for individuality.  The point, ultimately, is what kind of person you are and what you do – your theories come second.  That’s something people tried to tell me when I was younger, and I’m only just now starting to get it through my tastelessly thick skull.

The same goes for IQ, by the way, and beauty, and athleticism, etc. etc.  If you’re good and do good, to paraphrase Lincoln, then you’re set.  But if you’re neither, then it doesn’t matter how smart or elegant you are – this is the GREAT shortcoming in the New Atheism, by the way, a wilful forgetting that amid all the wonderful scientific breakthroughs and fierce arguments about determinism and the Big Bang and transhumanism, we are ultimately lonely and weak people who very much need love, without which, everything else becomes rather grim and pointless.

That’s probably why the greatest thinkers come back again and again to an intangible, unfashionable, gushy thing like love, and why brilliant philosophers are driven to despair and suicide (or drive others to it).  it doesn’t matter how much you have or know or do – you need to love and be loved.  Bertrand Russell, Victor Frankl, Jesus, Stephen Fry, or the Beatles, the answer seems pretty much to be the same no matter who you dig: Love is the core of a meaningful life, and it is the most precious gift you can give to another human being.

Later, we’ll talk about things like determinism (psychological, biological, and physical); theology (the pain of hyper-Calvinism and the irritation of seeing it mimicked in secular circles); Unity of Life (and whether that means humans aren’t special); and the disturbing popular theories of anti-morality (that it doesn’t exist and is therefore unattainable).  We’ll talk about big ideas and names like B.F. Skinner, Daniel Dennett, Sam Harris, Christopher Hitchens, Richard Dawkins, Carl Sagan, Victor Frankl, Albert Ellis, and many, many others.  But if there’s one thing, and one thing only, that I could ever say to anyone before my tiny blip of a life is done, it’s this: You are more than an animal, and your questions and the deepest cravings of your soul ultimately point to love. That’s what being human is really about. We can be wrong about all kinds of stuff, but if we get this wrong, everything’s going into the toilet.

P.S.  One thing I DO love about Hitchens and Dawkins is the essential realization that the English Bible (Tyndale's New Testament and, by extension, the Authorized or King James series) does in fact contain some of the noblest language in Western literature, and thus has formed the backbone of that literature.  I'll go a step farther and say that it also contains some of the noblest sentiments in literature, period.  We'll chat a lot about that in days to come.  That's the reason for the grandiose title of this overwritten and overlong post.

Aufgabe Eins

When, as a bored and unpopular teenager, I began trying to learn German from my father's old high school textbooks, I of course did a lot of sneezing because of the stunning amounts of dust and mildew that had accrued over the decades.  When I was not sneezing, I was becoming entranced with the lovely new words and sounds I was perceiving anew, none the least of which was the title of the first lesson (and which I have used as the title of this first post here).  Additionally, I spent a few reverent moments marveling over the amount of phlegm that goes into Germanic languages (just where does it all come from?  Where does it all go?)

Why am I writing a blog?  Why, as an unknown, a complete nonentity, am I daring to cast my words wantonly into the howling maw of internet anonymity?  (Sorry, I've been wanting to say "anonymity" all day, and this was the perfect opportunity).

The answer, quite simply, is that if I do not do so, I shall go completely and utterly mad.  I have reached that lovely point in my life when I must seek some form of self-expression because the frustration and depression have built up to an intolerable and critical mass. 

OK, that was a little dramatic - another reason is that I have had very little opportunity since graduating University in which to practice my writing and communication.  The main reason, however, is probably just a little less pointless, banal, and self-serving: I have a lot on my mind, and I want to tell people about it.  If you find yourself to be the poor, unfortunate insomniac who, in a fit of inadvisable web-surfing have found your horrified gaze riveted to this splendiferous muck of stultified prose -- if you find yourself, breathless from your own screaming, tearless from hours of weeping, and nearly blinded from repeatedly smiting the walls, floor, and housemates with your forehead, if only it could make the words STOP -- if, to speak plainly, you (dear reader) find yourself so bored, helpless, and/or inebriated that you not only can tolerate but somehow find yourself welcoming this stream of grandiose, cut-rate, pseudo-intellectual drivel, then this blog is for you.

[Insert wink here.]

[[Not a reference to the popular and highly disappointing dating and hookup website convention known as a "Wink," in which a desperate attempt to secure amatory license for an evening results in the terrifying realization that the twenty-year-old nymph of the avatar photo is in fact a fifty-year-old transvestite from Jordan.]]

The point of the website is, first and foremost, to organize my own thoughts with the two or three people that, in some years' time, I can hope to have discovered this blog.

Secondly, I wish to work through some fundamental philosophical dilemmas that face my half-rate but highly curious mind.  I wish to face head-on the disappointment of my newfound atheism, the sorrow of a lost evangelicalism, the desire to maintain morals and values (humanism) in the face of occasional nihilistic thoughts, and (perhaps most importantly) to combat a growing trend in popular discourse: determinism, the idea that free will is dead, and we are merely conscious robots cruising through our banal existences, doomed to suffer for a time before... Well, you get the picture.  If I can conquer the demons bequeathed me by B.F. Skinner, I'll be doing just fine.

Thirdly, and perhaps most importantly, the summum bonum and sanctum sanctorum (you'll have to look those up for me, they simply sounded vaguely Latin-ish and impressive): I started this blog after seeing a psychiatrist for the very first time.  I felt like a freak for going to the doctor, but things had gotten, as they say, rather bad indeed.  Facing suicide after a disappointing college career, some family problems, and other more personal problems, I made a last-ditch effort to save myself.  I want to share that experience, to make sense of it, and (hopefully) to let a few other fellow-sufferers to know not only that depression is quite real (NOT the illusion I was raised to believe it to be), but that it is more than survivable.  Having just been diagnosed with severe depression, this will be an interesting journey to share.

If this blog amuses, entertains, or informs anyone, that will be a grand and welcome bonus.  If it remains unread until the crack of doom (I once met a plumber named Dom, but I suppose that was a different crack), then at least I will have re-learned a little about writing, and gained a much-needed emotional relief from getting some of my thoughts out.

Peace,

TMB