Faith and Reason

Yesterday, while engaged in my quarterly task of cleaning out the garage, I was thinking about the relationship between faith and reason. It is, I realized, a dynamic relationship which spans all of life.

When we are children, we live in a world of faith. We take most things on faith - the love of our parents, the goodness of existence, the benevolence of Nature. As we grow, and as we begin to experience more of reality and to use our reason, the field of faith diminishes. Things that had been mysteries become puzzles, and those puzzles demand answers. Maturing is, therefore, a movement away from faith toward reason, until many of us reach the point where we banish faith altogether. An intellectual arrogance sets in, in the garish light of which everything seems susceptible of explanation. The world becomes disenchanted, the comforting precepts of religion fall away, and we are left to confront the true mysteries of existence: Why am I here, Who am I, What is the meaning of my life, What happens to me after death? In face of those corroding questions, we often become cynical, surrendering to hopelessness, to the growing conviction that such questions can never be answered.

It is at this point that the rationalist succumbs to doubt - the disheartening certainty that Truth does not exist, or if it does, that it can never be attained. Faith is killed in us, and we surrender ourselves to a mortal existence which, we fear more and more, will be extinguished with death. Most of my acquaintances are in this condition: Either they do not allow themselves to think about such overwhelming questions at all, busying themselves with quotidian cares which they convince themselves are of utmost importance, or they abandon the idea of faith altogether, and content themselves with mocking it in the cleverest possible terms for the benefit of others who are as lost as they.

What is missing in all this, I think, is a kind of balance: a balance between faith and reason which understands that the two are not at odds, but must, in fact, be embraced together if resolutions to those abiding questions are to be wrought. Faith without reason is little more than superstition, and reason without faith is, more often than not, simply solipsism. Those who argue for the preeminence of faith over reason make the same mistake, in mirror image, as those who use reason to dismiss faith.

For as we grow older and near the end of life, we begin to feel inexorably the tug of that instinct of faith in the warm bath of which we began our lives. We do, or ought to, understand that reason can take us only so far in the search for Truth. That, like any other corporeal entity, reason has its limits; indeed, could not exist without limits. But the Truth of which we are in search transcends limits, and so, reason, no matter how comprehensive or well honed, is an inadequate tool for the attaining of it.

The faith of childhood is a naive faith, and the reason of mature age is a circumscribed reason. But the reason of advancing age yearning as it does for faith, coupled with a faith which reflects a lifetime of experience and reason, may together be adequate to the task which confronts us at life's end: obtaining insight into the enlightenment which only death can bring to life.

Flesh and Spirit

I was reading this morning in 'The Calendar of Wisdom' Tolstoy's reflection that life takes on meaning only as we begin to convert the physical into the spiritual. This is the same sentiment expressed by Kazantzakis in his spiritual exercises, 'The Saviors of God,' when he said that the purpose of life is to convert flesh into spirit. As a proposition, this seems to me indisputable.

Tolstoy also wrote that so long as we continue to view life only as a physical phenomenon, we will find ourselves in the midst of contradictions that cannot be resolved. Escape from meaninglessness, then, lies in our ability to perceive and to grasp the spiritual essence of existence. The older I get, the clearer this idea becomes to me, and the more urgency with which it presses itself upon me. To remain in the physical realm to the very end is, I think, to condemn oneself not only to insignificance, but to extinction. The longing for some form of survival after death is thus embedded in the very nature of our existence as corporeal beings, and it begins to assert itself more and more powerfully as we approach the end of our physical lives.

But there is another dimension to life; one that is not confined to the physical realm, and, therefore, which offers the hope not only of meaning but of survival. What form that survival may take is, of course, shrouded from our view. But if the two concepts - meaning and survival - are linked, as I think they are, then some sense of the nature of survival may be found in the meaning with which we invest life. This is the essential insight of Beckett's great play, 'Waiting for Godot,' when Vladimir declares, against the bleak backdrop of empty time and space, that life does have meaning with which we have the power to invest it. Even Beckett, aesthetic and moral anarchist that he was, could not restrain this insight. And I reach out for it, as do his characters, desperately, as a form of lifeline.

That lifeline ought to lead us past life itself into some other state of meaning and life which lies beyond time and space. That much is clear to me. Yet I see every day everywhere around me people who have no such thought, no such expectation. They are devoted to the physical realm, and apparently see or feel no possibility of transcending it. Religion, of course, offers some comfort, but this is a sort of pre-fabricated comfort, designed and built by others, in which the souls of the faithful huddle, protected from the winds and storms of fundamental questions such as How should I live? and What follows death? I sometimes think that religions were created precisely to prevent people from asking such questions in their hearts, or to help them avoid doing so. 'Give me a patent answer, and I need never confront the question.' Such is the motto of the religionist.

But some of us cannot content ourselves with other people's solutions to the questions that contain and consume our lives. We must devise or discover the answers for ourselves, and first that means facing the questions squarely and with a clear mind. This is what religion teaches us not to do, and in this way, it stands as an impediment to discovering the truth. To my mind, most religion is not a path to truth, but an obstacle on that path. Shove it aside, and though you may experience fear and trembling, at least the pathway will be open, whether or not you choose to take it.

All this is not by way of saying that people should simply reject religion. As I have written elsewhere here, religion is a necessity for most people, and, on balance, its presence does more good than its absence in the life of humanity. But once you have perceived that religion leads inevitably to contradictions that cannot be resolved - that it is directed at the physical and not the spiritual - then it is necessary to move beyond it, and its concept of god, and seek the truth where it lies: not in the church, but in the individual human soul.

The Set Up

I was informed today that a script we recently finished for an independent producer has been set up at a studio. This happened because everyone is thrilled with the work we did. The note from the director said that the set up deal is done, the studio plans to fast-track the film, and "the rewrite starts after the New Year."

This is typical. The studio loves the script so much, the executives want us to write it again. Does it ever occur to anyone in this industry to make the movie that the writers write? I am aware of only one instance in recent years in which this was done - Clint Eastwood making Paul Haggis' first draft of 'Million Dollar Baby.' The result was Oscars for Best Picture, Best Director, Best Actress. Ninety-nine-point-nine percent of Hollywood films are written, rewritten, and re-rewritten a dozen times by writers, executives, producers, and directors, with the result that most of what is in the theaters is crap, worth neither making nor watching. The remedy for that dismal fact - just on the basis of the odds - is simple: Make the movies the writers write. Just as an experiment - just to see what would happen. Because whatever happens, it couldn't be any worse than it is now.

The main culprits in this mindless muddle are, of course, the producers and the studio executives, none of whom could write a coherent screenplay if the Taliban were holding their sisters hostage. But another culprit is the Writers Guild, which does nothing to protect the aesthetic integrity of its members' work. Yes, they do a pretty good job of looking out for our economic interests - but that is only half the job of representing writers. The other half, which they fail miserably to do, is to stand up for the artistic integrity of the work we create.

I have already recounted how, on one occasion, I asked the Guild to intervene to prevent the secretaries in the typing pool at Warner Brothers from making changes to a script we had written. I was told solemnly that doing so was outside the Guild's jurisdiction. Money is in - aesthetics are out. Well, it can call itself a Guild if it wishes, but it ought not call itself a Writers Guild, in my view.

Among other things, this raises the question: Why would anyone who wants to take himself seriously as a writer write screenplays in the first place? To me this remains an impenetrable mystery. The screenplay is a hybrid literary form, the integrity of which is up for grabs the moment it is submitted to the studio. Everyone on a film has the right, either acknowledged or implied, to change a screenwriter's work at any time, with no regard for the writer at all. On 'Ali,' a twenty-two year old production assistant (a gofer, as they are called, because they go for coffee and donuts) was asked to rewrite one of our soliloquies. And there was nothing we could do about it, not least of all because we had been banned by the director from the set.

If you want to take yourself - and be taken - seriously as a writer, write plays, novels, short stories, or poetry. Write anything but screenplays. But that rarely happens these days, since most young writers - and many of the older ones - are seduced by the promise of wealth, fame, glamor, and the chance to have lunch with movie stars. I have had lunch with movie stars, and pleasant as that experience can be, it is not worth the sacrifice of your artistic integrity.

Finished at last

I am relived, and pleased, to announce that tonight at 10:50 I finished writing my book - the memoirs of a retired Compton police sergeant.

It has been an enormous and exhausting undertaking (505 pages), but I feel privileged to have had the opportunity to write the story of this 120-man police force that managed to keep order in a city with 10,000 gang members. Their courage, skill, and raw humanity have moved me deeply.

I hope you will enjoy the book one day. I will keep you posted as it proceeds toward publication by St. Martin's press next Fall.

Unexplained Absence

I have not posted here recently because I have been laboring mightily to finish my new book. It is the memoirs of a retired Compton police sergeant who spent twenty years on the streets of Compton. Some of the stories he tells about that tiny police force's efforts to maintain order in America's most dangerous city in the 1970s and '80s nearly defy belief. It is a vast and human document, the writing of which has consumed all my free time. I am 470 pages into it now, and hope to finish in the next two weeks. At that time, I will resume posting on this site. Meanwhile, I apologize to all who follow it for my absence.

However, I hope that I will produce a book which you all will find as absorbing in the reading as I have in the writing. It will be published next Fall by St. Martin's Press.

See you again as soon as I surface...

Mulkey

Today, we finished a screenplay about Louis Mulkey, a Charleston fireman whose passion was coaching high school basketball. When his boys were eighth graders, he promised them that if they worked hard and believed in themselves, as seniors they would win the South Carolina state basketball championship. It was an unlikely prediction: Their school had never won a state championship, had never even come close to it. But Louis Mulkey believed in those boys, and he inspired them with the idea that the force of history was nothing compared to the power of faith.

Three years later, on the eve of his team's senior season, Louis Mulkey was killed in a fire. He died as he had lived - for others. He refused to leave a burning building so long as his men were inside. He gave his life trying to save them. But what he did for his fellow firefighters was no less heroic than what he had done for his boys - he gave his life for them, he shared with them his dreams of victory, his faith that love and hope and sacrifice must triumph in the end.

The next season, in their senior year, Louis's boys worked their hearts out to make his promise real. They struggled their way to the state finals, where they met a team that was much bigger and better and more qualified than they. But they had a dream and a motivation that came from beyond themselves, and they fought, and pushed themselves to the limit and beyond... and they lost.

At the buzzer, an opposing player made a miraculous shot - a desperation throw, an eighty-foot effort in the final split second that arced its way the length of the court and went in. Louis's team had lost his promise by a single point. It is what happened then, after they lost, that makes the story so special - a miraculous ending to a heart-rending season which no one could have predicted, and which I, certainly, could not have invented. In fact, if I had tried to invent it, no one would believe me. But it was true - it was fact - and facts have a way of altering our perceptions.

My way of looking at things has been changed by the experience of writing this film. (I am a writer because the best of what I write always changes me.) Many of my old beliefs, long jaundiced by life, have been resuscitated by this project. It has reminded me that one man, with faith in his heart and a single-minded devotion to the humanity of others, can make a difference, no matter what the coruscated purveyors of cynicism who fill so much of our culture now may say. My buried belief that sainthood is possible even for those who have been taught that only that which is material, that which is profitable, that which can be reckoned on the bottom line has value, finds a new breath in this story.

Louis Mulkey, in many ways a flawed and self-doubting man, changed the world. One of his players, a freshman at Georgia University when I met him, said to me: "If it wasn't for him I'd be mopping floors somewhere." It was the testament of a humble young man whose life had been touched by pure selflessness; by a simple caring and compassion that altered forever the course of his destiny.

Those of us who live can still, by having the courage and the selflessness to intervene in the lives of others, change not only those lives, but our own as well. The task of telling the story of Louis Mulkey has reminded me that each of us can, through faith in humanity, achieve in our lifetimes a kind of immortality.

Looking Back on Death

I have always been fascinated by war. I have read a great deal about it, and written a good deal about it. I view it not as an isolated phenomenon, a subject for scholarly study, but, rather, as an integral part of history, and as a revealer of human nature and the human spirit. For I have long believed that violence is a spiritual disease, and so these massive acts of violence have much to teach us, for better or worse, about the soul of man.

I have been particularly drawn to World War I, both for its unutterable vapidity and the scale of its human waste, but also because of what its horrors taught about man’s capacity for endurance, courage, sacrifice, and even poetry. World War I produced some extraordinary poetry, and lately I have been listening to a recording of “Poets of the Great War,” a truly beautiful and wonderful compendium of the best poetry that came out of that uniquely European cataclysm. And some of it is great indeed. My deepened appreciation for Wilfred Owen who was, I think, one of the finest poets of the twentieth century – indeed of any century – and my discovery of Richard Aldington, Isaac Rosenberg, Edmund Blunden, and a rediscovery of Siegfried Sassoon, have been a great gift of the experience.

One cannot listen to an anthology of such poetry without feeling that one has, in some sense, penetrated to the heart of the experience of war. From the poets' portrayal of the soldiers’ minds and souls, of their sufferings, sacrifices, and even of their shortcomings, one derives a portrait of humanity at the very edge of existence (Owen wrote in “Spring Offensive" that the soldiers knew “their feet had come to the end of the world"), seen in the lurid light of flares and artillery barrages and gas attacks and machine gun bursts. You cannot but take such insight to heart; you cannot help but be changed by it. By the time I reached the final poem, Laurence Binyon’s famous elegy, “For the Fallen,” accompanied as it was by the stately and powerful variation from Elgar’s “Enigma,” I was moved to tears.

But I was moved also to reflection. For you cannot, I think, look into other men’s hearts and souls (as poetry always compels you to do) without peering into your own. And what I saw, reflected in the shifting glow of that beautiful and melancholy, and at times terrifying verse, was my own experience of war.

When I was in college, our political leaders, in their monstrous wisdom, offered me the chance of war. In that case, it was the War in Vietnam. At eighteen I dutifully lined up with other youths of my era and registered for the draft. (I will never forget the young woman who took my information – a rather pretty, full-skirted girl name Julie Gueri, who, though I saw her only for minutes and never saw her again, proved to be one of the most important women in my life.) And then, as the prospect of war drew close, I did what I have always done, and which I continue to do: research. What I learned about the history of the West’s involvement in Southeast Asia, and in particular what the French and now my own nation had done there, troubled me to my soul. I came to the conclusion, as did millions of others, that the war was both illegal and immoral, and that I could have nothing to do with it, except to protest.

Meanwhile, friends from high school who were not astute enough in the ways of academia to gain the safety of college, were being swallowed up by the war. I followed the growing lists of the killed with morbid regularity, and I noted in my yearbook the name of each of my comrades who died. “Killed in Vietnam,” I wrote beneath their pictures, “July, 1969” or “December, 1970”, or “April, 1971.” And as the war wore on and the casualty lists lengthened, and my yearbook became littered with notes of their deaths, my doubts about our involvement turned to hatred, and my hatred, to a determination to do something to stop it. And so I became active in the anti-war movement, which was growing almost as fast as the war itself. I protested, organized sit-ins, marched on Washington several times, but was careful never to break the law, for I understood that breaking the law to oppose evil, while sometimes necessary, was simply not in my nature. My feeling was that law – sane, humane, democratic law – was, in an important sense, what we in the movement were hoping to preserve; that we were not just fighting against something horribly wasteful, but fighting for something vitally necessary.

However, war allows no reprieve for the young; it devours them as hungrily as a hurricane devours the trees. When, at last, I was drafted, a line was drawn – not by me, but by the government. It was my moment of decision – I was being forced to break the law – and though I agonized over it, my decision was never in doubt: I refused. (The rest of that story is not important now, though I will add that I did not, thank God, have to go to prison, though I suppose I was prepared to. Instead, I was ordered to teach mentally disturbed children for two years.) What matters now, and mattered to me then, was that I had hoped to live my life without committing any great evil, without murdering anyone, without ransoming my soul for some diktat or some benefit of power. And so I refused to participate in what I saw as the greatest corruption of power – an illegal and immoral war.

That I had to do so was as clear to me as the fact that I was born and had to live and must be a part of humanity. It was, I believed then and still believe, a question of saving my soul. For I felt with all the depth of my being that the life of my spirit was at risk, and that, if I made the wrong decision, I would lose my eternal identity forever. And so I refused the war for the sake of my immortal soul. It was with me as it had been with Hamlet when he said, “My fate cries out!” My soul was telling me that I had no choice but to say no.

But now, forty years later, listening to these poems which dramatize the sufferings and sacrifices of an entire generation of boys, and feeling the power of that poetry in my soul, I have wondered for the first time in those four decades whether I made the right decision. At the time, I saw it as my duty to try to save my school friends’ lives by stopping the war; now I wonder if my duty was not to have joined them in that war, and to have taken upon myself their sufferings and sacrifices.

Camus famously said that war teaches us to be losers; I think now that he was wrong. War teaches, or can teach us, what it means to be human, in all its strengths and weaknesses. I was offered the chance to learn those truths about myself, and I turned it down. I was offered my own war, and I refused it. What it may have taught me once and forever about myself I will never know. And I will never know exactly how my high school classmates, who did not refuse, lived and suffered and died. I will never know their sacrifices and their terrors and the comradeship that only war can engender. I will never know who they truly were.

In “For the Fallen,” Laurence Binyon writes: “They shall grow not old, as we that are left grow old/Age cannot weary them, nor the years condemn/At the going down of the sun and in the morning/We will remember them.” And in a closing tribute to their immortality in death, Binyon compares them to the stars, saying: “As the stars that shall be bright when we are dust/Moving in marches upon the heavenly plain/As the stars that are starry in the time of our darkness/To the end, to the end, they remain.”

I was one of those who were left, and now I am growing old. Age has most certainly wearied me, and the condemnation of the years is fast approaching. But I do remember those of my young friends who went to Southeast Asia in the Sixties and Seventies and did not return, and whose names I always touch when I visit the Wall in Washington. I remember them, if not every day, at least every time I look at my yearbook, or chat with a graying school chum on the phone. And in listening to these poems I cannot help but wonder whether it was not I who was lost in that terrible tempest of violence which swept through our young lives; and if it is not they, more so than I, who remain.