Was Slavery Allowed in the Bible?

If you travel around the USA, you may come across a billboard like the picture to the left.  And you may wonder, why are they still arguing about slavery and about the bible being God's word?  It could be a legacy from the time of slavery.  The situation, (maybe oversimplified) is that today, there is a sizeable part of the USA that believes in the bible as the literal word of God. Others believe we need to interpret the bible for a modern world.  (Or don't believe it at all)

To anyone who looks further into the debate about the bible, it seems like the strongest support for the literal interpretation of the bible comes from the Southern Confederate states in the civil war.  Did the civil war have anything to do with this split on how the bible is interpreted?

I found this in Wikipedia: "Religious conflict over the slavery question"

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Origins_of_the_American_Civil_War#Religious_conflict_over_the_slavery_question

Before the Civil War, most Americans held the belief that the bible was literally true. According to the proslavery side, was written in the bible that white people should enslave the black people.

The slavery debate raged on with each side combing through the bible for passages that supported their cause.  The pro-slavery side won the technical debate by a landslide.  Apparently there are a lot of passages in the bible supporting slavery, and almost none to refute it. So the literal interpretation of the Bible actually does support slavery. The reference given in Wikipedia is a book by Mark Noll, "America's God: From Jonathan Edwards to Abraham Lincoln. (2002)"  I don't have the book, but apparently it explains how the bible debate was won by the pro-slavery faction.  But the abolitionists felt in their hearts that slavery was wrong anyway.

The book "Slavery and Sin: The Fight Against Slavery and the Rise of Liberal Protestantism" By Molly Oshatz has some words about the debate on p 61:

"Christian abolitionists ... endeavored to make the case that the bible did not in fact sanction slavery, an argument that proslavery exegetes quickly dismantled... The most persuasive antislavery moderate of all, Harriet Beecher Stowe, avoided biblical argument in favour of narrative." 

If it is true that a literal interpretation of the bible supports slavery, where does that leave bible literalists?  Today slavery is seen as an evil. Even the Southern Baptists have officially apologized for supporting slavery.  The only concession by literalists seems to be that the word slave was mistranslated.  If an important word like slave could be mistranslated (I don't think it was, but anyway...), what else could be mistranslated?

Before the war, three major branches of American Protestantism split into north and south versions because of their interpretation of God's will on slavery. The Methodists in 1844, the Baptists in 1845, and the Presbyterians in 1857.  The southern versions of these Churches could insist on an even stricter literal interpretation of the bible, while the northern branches had to use a more liberal interpretation of the bible, to support their view that slavery was wrong.  The Northern churches could begin to acknowledge that the Bible was written more for the ancient desert people than it was for 19th century America.

The debate that could have been settled by reading of the bible, ended up in a shooting war, with hundreds of thousands of Americans killed.  But even though the north won the war, southerners apparently remained convinced that the bible was literally true, while eventually conceding that slavery was wrong.  And that is about where we are today, with the bible literalists now attacking Darwinists and homosexuals instead of Abolitionists.  Hopefully this time it will not be resolved with guns.

Book Review of Hominids by Robert J. Sawyer

Robert Sawyer is a Canadian science fiction write and despite his having written 21 books, I never heard of him before.  And I thought I liked science fiction books.  Most amazingly, I had to find out about him through Mary Ann. She, who dislikes science fiction, was in the middle of reading this book when I found it on the table.  Somehow I lost Mary Ann's place marker in my rush to finish the book.  She chose it because it was the Waterloo selection for "One Book One Community" for 2005.

http://oboc.ca/past-years/hominids/

I won't get into the plot of the book, so this review will not contain any spoilers.  There is a comparison between the world we live in, where Neanderthals are extinct, and a parallel universe where Neanderthals became the only sentient species, and Homo Sapiens went extinct instead.  It seems to me that Sawyer comes up with a lot of ideas about how Neanderthal civilization might have evolved, based on his research, or his knowledge of our own history and science.  For example, he writes that if humans had not been warlike, we might never have reached the moon, as those rockets were originally invented as a weapon of war.  How would technology evolve if we did not use fossil fuels?  These are all interesting questions from a scientific viewpoint. Additionally, Robert Sawyer tackles religion and philosophy.  How would a society evolve that did not believe in a father-figure God who punishes and rewards us in the afterlife?

There was one topic in the book, that was particularly timely, about surveillance.  In the Neanderthal world, everyone's actions are recorded all the time by implanted devices.  There is no privacy, but hardly any crime either.  This topic foreshadows the current 2013 scandal where we find out that the NSA is recording all kinds of phone calls and emails.  Similarly to what happened in "Hominids", NSA is not necessarily looking or listening to all these recorded messages, but in case of a crime, can go back to see what happened.

In the political climate of today, Robert Sawyer comes off as extremely left wing liberal. This book will insult many conservative readers,  who have tired of hearing about everything that is wrong with our warlike, environment destroying species.  In fact the book already has insulted many, judging from comments on this website.

http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/264946.Hominids


To me (the Lost Motorcyclist), who is now officially a 60's liberal, "Hominids" reads like a science fiction story from the fifties, except with bit more sex, as censorship has loosened over the years.  In other words, the book's philosophical underpinning is science, reason, peace and tolerance.  I have this feeling that some of modern science fiction has been replaced by religious, magical, and warlike fantasies posing as science fiction.

The change from old style science fiction to magical war fantasies may have been started with the very successful movie "Star Wars".  The title tells you about all you need to know about the pacifism in this movie, and then "May the force be with you" tells you what you need to know about the attitude toward miracles and magic.  Star Wars had very little in the way of real science.  It was more like a typical war movie, only this time set in space.  As the space ships passed by, they made quite a bit of noise even though they were in a total vacuum.  Sorry, Star Wars fans, but there is no noise in space.  Little errors like this generally disqualify a movie from being real science fiction. Actually they are probably not even errors as much as a clear sign from the director that this movie is not intended for real science fiction fans.

"Hominids" took me back to an interesting time where real science fiction was better appreciated, in a world where science itself was respected, and evolution was taken for granted.  A time before the right wing backlash against science had begun its last ditch effort to take us back to the dark ages of superstition and witchcraft.

And so, just as much as the conservatives are tired about hearing what's wrong with religion, pollution, and exterminating species; I am also tired of arguments as to why we need to use up all the Earth's resources as fast as possible.  So to me this book was a comfortable read.

History Is Controversial: Get Used to It

I have started reading "History on Trial" by Nash, Crabtree, and Dunn. It's about the controversy in the USA concerning the history curriculum. And I must confess I don't understand people who think they can teach history without controversy.

I have a personal experience that shows how controversial the teaching of history can be. Back in 2002, Mary Ann and I were touring out in the American West by motorcycle, and I wanted to visit the site of the Battle of Little Big Horn, where Custer's force was massacred by Indians. There was a National Historic Park, and historical interpretation centre there, and we dropped in to get the "story" (i.e. the interpretation of the events.) I was very surprised to see how balanced the interpretation was, giving the Indian's side of the story very sympathetically. I had expected a one sided condemnation of the Indians. But after about twenty minutes, I started looking around more and more, and came to realize we were not at the "Official" interpretive centre, we had been lured to an alternate interpretive centre set up by the Indians on their own land, which was kind of dressed up and signposted to look like the National Park Centre. Unfortunately, the National Park was closed by the time we got there, so I never got the other side of the story.

But one more thing I noticed, driving down the interstate highway, was a pickup truck flying the flag of the Seventh Cavalry, the very regiment that was massacred. I wish I knew why people were still flying those flags, but never had a chance to talk to the pickup truck driver.

So that is one anecdote of my impressions of American history. I have more, but they will wait till another day.

I have spent three years myself teaching Canadian history, and I enjoyed it more than teaching math, which was more my specialty. History is more fun than math because it is controversial, and as a teacher you have the opportunity to help students question what they are being taught. We had the text book, which was the curriculum, and it was the basis for all the "correct answers" on the exams. But instead of simply memorizing all the facts, I preferred to treat the facts as simply one side of the story in most cases, and we spent more time discussing than we did memorizing. The result, I thought, was that many of the students had more fun and actually remembered better.

I see two sides to the teaching of History. One side is the curriculum, the "correct version" that must be taught. The other part is learning to interpret, question, and see other points of view, which are optional and depend to a large degree on the teacher and the students themselves. And this second part is much less subject to control by the authorities. Although, I can well imagine teaching in some schools where the parents may find out that someone has questioned something that they hold sacred, and may complain to the principal. But in my three years of teaching Canadian history, no parent ever complained to me that I was forcing their children to think for themselves.

One of the reasons that history curriculum starts people fighting, is that some teachers and parents think that history must be taught without questioning. That means your curriculum has to be right from the start, then the students simply memorize everything and they get 100% if they know the material perfectly. That puts a lot more importance on the curriculum development than on the quality of the teachers.  And the fact is, the curriculum will never be "right". 

I don't really know that much about how Americans teach history, but this is the impression I have had over the years, from watching American TV and movies, reading American books, talking to Americans about their history. They memorize all the presidents, in the correct order. They focus on the positive, and their history is full of white American heroes. They tend to ignore world history (e.g Canada), and anything that could be called a "downer" or anything that may undermine the impression that Americans are not the smartest, bravest, most decent people on Earth.

Why is Canadian History not taught from such an extremely chauvinistic, one-sided point of view, like a mythical fable with very little questioning or interpretation? I can think of a few reasons. For one, Canada has two historical viewpoints that are taught in the classroom - the French and the English. (Although not usually in the same school system). And now, for all I know there may be more. Second, we have no reason to think that Canadians are a "special" people chosen by God, to lead the world. Third, we tend to not believe in the absolute truth of the Bible as much, meaning we are more accustomed to questioning the printed word.

Picture: That's Custer's Seventh Cavalry flag in case you are ever out West and see it flying from a pickup truck.

The Gospel According to John is ... Different

By I. Tawt Itawapuddytat February 2011.

Some Christians have been accused of forgetting that Jesus told us to "love our enemies", and twisting Jesus' words to make him into a warmonger. But that may not be exactly true, according to a book I just read. Apparently, the depiction of Jesus is not consistent throughout the bible.

I have just read a book called "Nailed", by David Fitzgerald. The main aim of the book is to simply prove Jesus never existed, but a part I found especially interesting was the comparison between the four gospels. David Fitzgerald says the Gospel of John is the one that describes the "Republican" Jesus. For the most part I agree.

The first three gospels are Mark, Matthew, and Luke. These are similar to each other, and so are called the synoptic gospels. But the book of John, the fourth and probably the last written, gives a different interpretation of Jesus.

John's gospel is the book that says you must be born again, and so I would suppose it is a favourite with Born Again Christians, who also tend to vote Republican. So there, Fitzgerald may be right.

In the synoptic Gospels, Jesus performs only two miracles, one is walking on water, and the other is feeding the masses with loaves and fishes. The book of John adds a lot more miracles, including turning water into wine, raising the dead, and faith healing.

However, the Gospel of John happens to include the only story of "Let he who is without sin cast the first stone". This teaching is strangely uncharacteristic of John's Jesus. It is also suspected that this passage was added at a later date, by another author.

John is also reputed to have written "Revelations" a book telling of the second coming of Jesus and predicting how the world is going to end in a major conflict. This violent book is also a favourite of Born Again Christians and Republicans.

http://www.twopaths.com/faq_salvation.htm#V

The Gospel according to John left out many of the peaceful teachings of Jesus: the sermon on the mount, "Turn the other cheek", "Blessed are the meek" "love your enemy" etc. It is also missing the last supper, the birth in Bethlehem, and differs from the synoptics on the actual date of Jesus' death. (among many other differences)

The parable of the good Samaritan is only found in one Gospel, and if you guessed that it is not in John, you would be right. It's in The Gospel according to Mark. (In case you did not know, the good Samaritan is teaching the liberal view that some foreigners are better than some of your fellow countrymen.)

Who was John the Apostle anyway? Although John called himself Jesus' "Beloved" disciple, Jesus nicknamed John and James "Boanerges" or sons of thunder, according to their hot tempers. John was the only apostle to live to a natural death.  Apparently, the Roman emperor ordered John to be put in a vat of boiling oil, but John emerged unhurt. No wonder John believed in miracles.

http://atheism.about.com/od/biblepeoplenewtestament/p/JohnApostle.htm



OK now pop quiz.

1 Which book of the Bible says Jesus turned water into wine?

2 Which says "Do not suppose that I have come to bring peace to the earth. I did not come to bring peace, but a sword." 

3 Jesus chasing the moneylenders out of the temple is often cited as proof God wants us to be violent. Here is the description from John and Matthew. Which is John's version?

A "And Jesus went into the temple of God, and cast out all them that sold and bought in the temple, and overthrew the tables of the moneychangers, and the seats of them that sold doves, And said unto them, It is written, My house shall be called the house of prayer; but ye have made it a den of thieves."

B "So he made a whip out of cords, and drove all from the temple area, both sheep and cattle; he scattered the coins of the money changers and overturned their tables."

4 Who said "And I saw heaven opened, and behold a white horse; and he that sat upon him was called Faithful and True, and in righteousness he doth judge and make war."

5 Who said "He that hath no sword, let him sell his garment, and buy one." (This quote is interpreted in the Bible Belt as a commandment to buy a gun.) 

Answers 1. John 2. Ooops! That's Matthew. 3. A is Matthew, B is John, the clue is only John says he makes a whip 4 Revelation (also written by John according to some Bible scholars, so you get a point for saying John) 5 Another trick question, only Luke, not John (or Matthew or Mark) said to buy the sword.

Picture: Apostle John, second from the left here in this picture from about 43 AD. OK I didn't have a real picture of him, and you don't either. I got it from this website for the actor Cory Montgomery. http://www.corymontgomery.com/characters.htm

What Happened to Jerry Pournelle?

Back in the eighties, I used to read a computer magazine called Byte. In it was a column I also often read by Jerry Pournelle. I still remember his frequent use of the expression "Sigh.", as a complete sentence to indicate exasperation yet acceptance of computer glitches. I first heard of Jerry Pournelle as a science fiction writer, and one of his more famous science fiction novels was "A Mote in God's Eye" co-written with Larry Niven.

So what happened to Jerry since then? Byte magazine went under in 1997 and Jerry since then has been writing a blog.

Apparently, like a lot of people in the last decade he has become even more conservative. Back in the eighties, the term conservative had almost no meaning for me, when the political divide was much less distinct than it was today. The distinctions could be partly because I can recognize it easier now, and partly because people were not as polarized by inflammatory newspapers, TV and radio in the eighties. And the "War on Terror" had not yet begun with all its attendant propaganda.

The signs of Jerry being conservative were there to see in the eighties, if I had cared. The book "Mote in God's Eye" had a racist and colonial theme, with Earth colonizing a planet whose indigenous (and intelligent) species was called the Moties. In fact a similar theme to the recent movie "Avatar" about Earth colonizing the moon of Pandora.

However, Pournelle and Niven's book has a theme of racism, discussions of the need to exterminate the Moties, fear of the Moties' high birth rate, unlike the movie Avatar whose theme is more the preservation of nature, and the evils of greed-driven colonization.

Since the book came out in 1974, there have been a lot of changes in the world. So how has Jerry adapted his ideas to the realities of today? He has written recently in his blog about education, about the terrorist attack (the underwear bomber), about Afghanistan, and about global warming. In the first three, he seemed to be against racial integration in schools, and in favour of racial profiling in airports, and in favour of more troops for Afghanistan. That, in my mind confirmed that he was leaning heavily to the conservative side of the spectrum. And so when I came to read his take on global warming, I was not surprised that he came out as a denier . I wonder why so often people who are racist, also happen to be in favour of war, and to top it off also deny global warming? Just a coincidence. Or could it be a result of political propaganda rather than logical thought influencing their conclusions?

So in "Musings on Climate Change", January 2, 2010, we get the summary statement:

"And I am far more afraid of ice than a couple of degrees warming. I fear shorter growing seasons more than I fear longer growing seasons. If the climate must change -- and stasis is unlikely -- I'd rather be warmer than colder. I'd also rather be richer than poorer. Enough. It's bed time."

Every statement he makes in this summary, taken by itself is true, in fact nobody ever disputed them. He seems to have completely missed or ignored the points that are being made in the Global Warming issue. Considering the negative impacts that scientists have suggested such as flooding, massive human refugee populations, runaway temperature feedback, extreme weather effects, migrating diseases and pests, and species extinctions.

But to me this is intellectual dishonesty, as he should know that every scientist on Earth agrees with his final concluding points, I myself would prefer a couple of more degrees this fine January morning in Canada.

Not really changing the subject here, but it's a similar technique in his article " The Truth about Afghanistan, and its meaning for US policy" December 2, 2009.

Here is Jerry's version of truth:

"The obvious truth about Afghanistan is that there are two conditions for an American victory, assuming victory means building a democratic republic in the territory we call Afghanistan. One has to do with the number of troops. The other is the length of the commitment: how long will we stay?"

I think it's the same kind of conservative logic that we get from "Mote in God's Eye". He follows up his supposed military logic with a comment that Obama's policy will meet neither condition. But what Jerry is really talking about is his (incorrect) assumption that a victory is needed to establishing a democratic republic in Afghanistan. Which nobody in Washington is thinking about any more. What they are thinking about, in case Jerry has not noticed, is the stability of the neighbours, specifically Russia and Pakistan that are dealing currently with Muslim extremists uprisings. And planning for the withdrawal of US troops without creating total chaos. Obviously the war is hopeless with Jerry's assumption of victory. I think most people are long past caring about a democratic and corruption free Afghanistan where everybody can fly their kites and listen to Western music. They probably just want the killing to end, and recognize that genocide is not an option. Unlike "A Mote in God's Eye", where it was inevitable.

Then without reading more, I can see catchphrases in his titles that make me think Jerry is getting quite extreme in his Republican right wingism. Titles like "Big science strikes back" and "Breathtaking arrogance of the EPA". Words like "tyranny" (Google counted 168 uses) and phrases like "There is no better term for the ObamaCare Bill than Despotism. ."

So that's what happened to Jerry Pournelle. From being a respected science fiction writer to being a Teabagger. He has gone from writing a book titled "The Mote in God's Eye" to being the mote in God's eye. As Jerry used to say ... "Sigh."

http://www.jerrypournelle.com/index.html

Zen and the Art of Scientific Inquiry

One of my favourite books is "Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance" by Robert Pirsig. I have already written one blog about that book, and several others mentioning it in passing. Now I'm coming back to it again, but this time in the context of science.

One thing that was obvious to me on reading the book was that the title could just as well have been "The Scientific Method of Motorcycle Maintenance". Although it might lack the punchiness, it would have been more accurate.

This sets up my question of the day. Does the title of the book reflect the fact that Americans are afraid of science?

Although he was an intellectual, Robert Pirsig was not a scientist, he was more into literature and philosophy. These intellectual activities had begun early in his life, at a time when he was sliding into a mental disorder. During his recovery, he discovered motorcycling. As part of motorcycling, he first became frustrated at trying to get his motorcycle maintained properly by professional mechanics. Then he decided to fix it himself, and almost accidentally stumbled across philosophical questions while troubleshooting and repairing his bike. One of these questions was about the usefulness of "scientific method" in dealing with motorcycle repair and maintenance.

Robert Pirsig started to understand that there is no black magic in a motorcycle, it can be completely understood in terms of science and engineering. So he learned something about the scientific method, and began applying it to solving the motorcycles' many problems. Soon his motorcycle was working like a charm, and he was then able to embark on a long ride far from his local mechanic, without fear of a breakdown.

Along the way, in Pirsig's voyage of discovery, he noticed that not everybody shared his enthusiasm for science. His travelling companion, a musician named John, riding a BMW motorcycle, hated technology. Every time something went wrong with John's bike, he had to find a professional mechanic. During the trip, John was reluctant even to understand the function of the choke. Later, the handlebars of his BMW began slipping. In this case an argument ensued because Pirsig suggested a way to solve the problem scientifically, and John refused to consider it. Robert Pirsig's suggestion was to take a square of aluminum from a beer can and use it as a shim to tighten the handlebar clamp. John had to find a BMW dealer, which wasted time and ended up with the same solution. Except that they used an expensive BMW shim made of aluminum instead of a cheap (free actually) shim from an aluminum beer can. Scientifically, there was no difference, as a shim only needs to resist compression on its thickness, so stiffness and tensile strength of the alloy are unimportant. Also, with a shim of this type, thickness and size do not need to be precise. Only the softness of the metal is, and any aluminum alloy is going to be soft enough to conform to the shape of the handlebar without scratching it, and strong enough to not be compressed by the adjusting bolts. But John regarded all such arguments with skepticism as if this science was some strange new religious cult.

So Robert Pirsig had embraced science and saw its usefulness particularly as it applied to motorcycle maintenance. But he learned that not all his countrymen do. Starting with the mechanics who destroyed his bike instead of repairing it, continuing with his friend John. In publishing the book, I don't know who decided that "art" rather than "science" would appear in the title, but I'll bet the decision had something to do with the American public's willingness to buy the book. In other words, no matter who thought of that title, the publisher apparently agreed that leaving "science" out of the title, but including "art" would not hurt sales. So we have the strange title with "Zen" and "Art", but no "science", that quite likely helped make the book the huge success it was.

There are plenty of well known examples showing that mainstream Americans are a bit leery of science. Russians, who do embrace science, were the first to put a satellite in space and a man in space, not the Americans. When the Americans needed to build up their space program to compete, they used Germans, notably Werner Von Braun, who they captured from the Nazis after WW2. While thinking about WW2, it was Germans escaping from the Nazis before the war, who developed the atomic bomb for America.

Coming forward to the present day, the most highly paid specialists in America are not engineers or scientists. They are bankers, who are not scientifically trained and have very little understanding of scientific method. If they did, the economy would not be crashing repeatedly. Also highly paid are musicians, actors, writers, sports heroes, doctors, lawyers, and TV evangelists. Scientists struggle in obscurity and at relatively low wages. And when they do make discoveries that are important to the world, Americans generally heap scorn on them. (I'm thinking of global warming).
Right wing Christian fundamentalists are formidable opponents of science in the US. They are still engaged in an epic struggle against the Theory of Evolution. And now they seem equally prepared to oppose global warming, and even stem cell research.

Some of the hostility for science seems to come from a dislike for the Nazis and the Communists, both were seen by Americans as scientists or engineers gone wild. So now science is somehow connected in the average Americans' mind as not only foreign, but Godless, the enemy, and totally lacking in morality.

On the other hand, Americans do seem to love technology, especially pickup trucks and guns. But they keep telling themselves that their technology was invented by God fearing religious people such as Thomas Edison, not atheists such as Darwin. The reality is that Edison was actually an atheist and Darwin was religious, but you would have to be kind of scientific, to even want to look that up.

As far as I'm concerned, the truth is that science is no less moral than religion, and maybe even more moral. And science is not inherently opposed to religion either, although there is a certain skepticism in science that could severely limit the wealth potential of some charismatic evangelical leaders. You know the ones I mean, the ones who sell valuable "miracles" on TV and live in palaces in gated communities.

Picture: The motorcycle riding robot. This is an English robot, they affectionately call her "Flossie". But the label of this web page from "Popular Science", an American Magazine, is "robot rides more efficiently probably kills more efficiently", in my opinion, another indicator of the ambivalence of Americans toward science.

http://www.popsci.com/scitech/article/2009-07/robot-rides-motorcycles-more-efficiently-probably-kills-more-efficiently

Motorcycling in other Countries: Attitudes

I am re-reading a book by Ed Culberson titled "Obsessions Die Hard" about motorcycling the Pan American Highway's Jungle Gap. Just to explain, the Pan American highway has a notorious gap in it, between Panama and Columbia known as the Darien Gap. Ed's obsession was to not only drive a motorcycle through, on the planned route of the road, but to do it as part of a full length trip on the Pan Am highway that reaches from Alaska to near the tip of South America at Ushuaia. As far as I know, this gap still exists.

I own a copy of this book, which I bought personally from Ed at a BMW rally in North Carolina, USA in 1993. I am now in the process of re-reading the book. Probably the most important difference between Ed and I in our motorcycling is that he is from a military background, which I will characterize as traditional conservative. I am from a more liberal background, and my overseas experience has been as a CUSO volunteer, which is more analogous the the US Peace Corps, rather than the Marine Corps.

When I met Ed we did talk a little about motorcycling at this rally, and I remember specifically he was chiding me for not shaving. Yes, back then I didn't bother shaving when I was on a motorcycle trip. My attitude was that shaving was a waste of time that could be better spent riding. I didn't even carry a razor or an electric shaver with me. But I did consider Ed's words, and thought maybe he did have a point about presenting a cleaner image to others. So a few days later when I reached Florida for the "Sun Your Buns" rally, I went to a barber shop in Venice. I was not really a frequent patron of barber shops, so I didn't know what to expect, but I had seen movies, and I thought it was normal to ask for a haircut and a shave. There was an immediate reaction to this. I was told "No, a shave is impossible". When I inquired innocently why not, I found out that apparently everyone was afraid of catching aids, so barbers were no longer allowed to shave people. Well there went the main reason why I was in the shop in the first place, which again was mainly because of Ed. But I decided since I was there anyway, to go ahead with a hair cut. "How do you you want it?" he said. "Bush, Perot, or Clinton?" Apparently, between these three Presidential candidates, you just about covered 99.9% of hairstyles men asked for in a barber shop in 1993. Check out the pictures. I chose Bush, because I am always middle of the road in everything.

So getting back to Ed and his book, the more I thought about it, the more I noticed that we had a completely different viewpoint not only on motorcycling, but on our view of local inhabitants. One aspect of motorcycling I liked was that local people were more friendly to motorcyclists than they are to car drivers. Each time I approached a military road block in Sierra Leone, somebody always came to meet me and wave me around all the cars that were lined up being searched. To this day I can't explain why that always happened, but it was part of an overall friendlier attitude to motorcycles than to cars. I got the same treatment over and over again in different ways. It's quite different in the USA where bikers are seen as more threatening than car drivers. I got the feeling in Africa of being trusted more because I was on a bike, and it also fit in with my CUSO philosophy that I tried to respect local culture, and I was in Sierra Leone trying to help the people. Ed, from a military intelligence background, instead used his motorcycle as a cover for his intelligence gathering operations. He had noticed the same attitude that I did, and took advantage of it. I saw that as being not only an opposite attitude, but that Ed was actually undermining the trust people had for motorcyclists. These days we have kidnappings of health workers and so on in various countries, with the pretext that they could be spies. Well, if real spies are using motorcycles for cover, I suppose that could be true.

From reading his book, Ed also seemed to have a suspicious attitude toward locals. For example, he writes that he got offered a boat ride to a place he needed to go. When he asked "How much?" he was told, no charge, just pay for the gas. I would call that a friendly offer and would say thanks. But Ed wrote that he thought it was a scam, because the boat owner also insisted once the trip started, that he needed more gas to return to his home. Which again to my unsuspicious mind would be fair, as the guy has to get home. Then Ed complained that the gas was 4 dollars a gallon. Well, again, he is in a place with no roads in or out. Anyhow, I was just reading this in the book, and I didn't get a chance to ask Ed about it or I might have mentioned that gas even in the UK is four times the price of the USA. But once again, I think Ed and I had different attitudes, could it be military vs. liberal? Because for sure it was all about appearances vs. sincerity, if you consider the spying and the shaving.

Nowhere is it more obvious, though than in the task Ed took on for himself of carving a path through the Darien Gap. Although I sometimes got off the beaten path myself in Sierra Leone, I never took on this kind of "conquest" you might call it. One time I went into a military restricted area with a letter of permission from my school principal. On other adventures I found back roads that hardly anybody knew about, that were great shortcuts for getting around the country. One place I crossed a small river that had no bridge. And that was about it. I suppose some CUSO volunteers were more adventuresome than I on motorcycles. But Ed was taking on a life threatening 100 mile trip where the motorcycle had to be carried as much as driven. That is starting to resemble a military campaign more than a ride in the park.

I read this part again with greater interest than last time:

"some observers claim that the myth of the Darien may have been transformed into something more sinister - the Curse of the Darien."

Then Ed gives many examples of people who challenged the Darien and died, mysteriously or not. He writes further:

"These stories did not overly concern me in 1985 as I was preparing to make my first attempt at the gap. Not being superstitious, I did not really care whether the myth had been destroyed or transformed into some sort of curse, or even if it existed at all. I could not afford to worry over vague tales of how Darien Gappers had struck down in retribution for their trespassing."

Here at least, about superstition, Ed and I are in agreement. However two years after I met him, four years after he printed the book with those words, Ed Culberson died of ALS.

Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance

The picture is me in 1973, two years before I found the book, I was on one of my two trips out west on a Yamaha 250, which like the author, Robert Pirsig, I insisted doing all my own maintenance. Just a coincidence?

I'm not going to call this a book review, because it was such a strange experience reading this book. It was like somebody had written the book that I should have written, then planted the book where I would find it. I also found it incredible that anyone but me would ever want to read it. I did not know at the time it was already a bestseller, or that 20 years later my children would come to read it as part of their high school literature program. And that 40 years later (today) people are retracing his route on their motorcycles in a kind of religious pilgrimage.

The author admits that he knows little about Zen or about motorcycles. But more importantly, to me, he took a motorcycle trip out west through Bozeman Montana. Just like I had, the previous summer of 1974. And I had already come to the same conclusion that I was going to do all the maintenance on my own bike by myself. It gave me the same feeling of freedom as it gave him.

Like him, I was a teacher. But I had assumed (incorrectly) that anyone interested in motorcycles would not read this book because of all the philosophical content. And vice versa for the philosophy crowd. Remember back in 1974 there was general hostility to motorcycle culture, and it was shockingly controversial to feature a biker on a TV show like “Happy Days”.

The coincidences with my life were more than enough to get me to read it even if the entire book had been garbage, but it wasn't. In relation to the motorcycle I understood perfectly what Robert Pirsig was putting into words.

When I first picked up this book in 1975, I had never even heard of it before. I was looking through a rack of paperbacks in a variety store in Northern Quebec, so I was surprised to find a book in English, let alone about motorcycle maintenance. I bought it immediately and couldn't wait to start reading.

I will confess to skipping heavier sections on philosophy the first time through. Later, I came back to read it again, determined to understand all of it if possible.

I would like to do an analysis, not of the content of the book, but of Pirsig's motivation in writing it. I doubt that he started with the desire to write a philosophy book sugar coated with a motorcycle narrative. It seems to me the motorcycle was what inspired Pirsig to write this book. Zen and the inquiry into quality came later and is there to support the motorcycle narrative. Although in his real life, he may have been interested in philosophy before he discovered the fun of motorcycling.

It was the joy and freedom of being able to do his own maintenance that inspire Pirsig to begin writing the book. After all, a previous trip by motorcycle had ended badly for Robert Pirsig because he lacked the experience to diagnose a dead engine. Then he bought a newer, bigger bike, which in turn developed what seemed to be a terminal problem. At the point where he was almost ready to give up on motorcycling, which he enjoyed immensely (and I can relate to that), he discovered that he could get the bike working all by himself. Pirsig's epiphany came watching a mechanic botch up a valve job on his bike for the umpteenth time. After that, he took the bike home determined that he would figure out how to do it properly himself and succeeded. A very similar experience happened to me and I know the feeling of repairing the bike is even more overwhelming than merely riding. That's why I see motorcycle maintenance as the key to Pirsig's state of mind in writing this book. The scattered philosophical discussions of quality and Zen all grew from the moment when he declared his independence from relying on others to do the work for him. And he discovered he could do better quality work because he cared about it.

Another similarity between Pirsig and me is that both of us think about things a little too much. So instead of just putting the wrenches away after doing a valve job, Pirsig keeps on thinking about it until he has to write a book to get all those ideas out. Well I didn't write a book (not yet) but I have written a lot of stuff on my website.

Here is a link if you want to take a look.