Doing Cancer with Buddha

 

Photo by Ravi Palwe on Unsplash

 The study of philosophy has been an interest since discovering Alan Watts* in the early 1970s, when I stumbled upon The Book on the Taboo Against Knowing Who You Are. In the half-century since then I have read or read about all the most famous thinkers, but it was Alan Watts who had the greatest influence on my thinking. Not Nietzsche, not Hegel, not Hume: Watts.

I’ve often wondered why he is not listed in philosophy tomes as one of their own. I understands that he was something of a populist, and his thinking centered on religion—especially Asian religions—but other philosophers have centered their thoughts on religion. Ah, but there it is: We focus on western philosophers and the principle western religion, Christianity. Those who write about the eastern religions are shut out of the west.

Mr. Watts’ 1966 classic has something to teach us in the western world about death. As any adult cancer patient knows, death is always around the next corner, the next day, the next month. Death stalks the cancer patient like a specter from the future.

After the cancer diagnosis I picked up The Watts book again and experienced the flashes of insight again that changed my life in 1973, but this time with a death sentence interpreting the words. I saw death as a black wall. I saw the death of my ego, my sense of self, and an uncaring universe that would continue without me. But I also saw, in Reading The Book, a universe that lives through the senses of those who live, have lived, and will live. I saw every new life as a realization of a universe that can know itself only through its people, its animals, its rocks, and oceans. It is a universe in which every new life is us, a blank slate through which the universe us as we experience the universe.

 

[*] Yes, I know. I’ve heard it before: Alan Watts is not a Real philosopher. He merely reports on what other philosophers.have said? I’m not so sure. Much of his interpretations of Asian religions and philosophies looks original to me.

Jesus in a Medical Cart

 

https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/c/c9/Christus_Ravenna_Mosaic.jpg

US work that is in the public domain in the US for an unspecified reason, but presumably because it was published in the US before 1929.

 

Upon entering the previously unknown world of cancer diagnosis and prognosis, I saw a religious plea brochure on a countertop in the oncologist’s waiting room. Oh, no, I thought, I’m going to be deluged with sappy Christian propaganda. The descent into illness and death is not just fertile ground for Christian evangelists and other proselytizers: It is justification for their existence. Remember “No atheists in foxholes” mantra? It was a favorite for years, until enough people came forward with the invention of the internet, people who had faced death and did not convert to their religion and its and any one of its associated ideologies.

To my surprise, Christians did not spring en masse from woodwork and sewers to inform me of the suffering that awaits me if I do not convert to their particular brand of their particular religion, or of the rewards that await if I just pay them lip service. That’s all. Just lip service. Pretend Christianity. Instead of swarming around cancer patients I saw only the brochure and an infusion cart with a sticker that proclaimed the cart’s technician’s something something Jesus something something. My chemo and iron infusions were performed by a kindly lady who worked out of the cart and arranged it so the Jesus sticker faced me. She was such a sweetheart that I forgave her for her superstitious delusion. Her gentle and friendly manner were far from the violent, threatening posturing of my previous experience with Christians. I can only hope she is setting a trend.

If that is her goal, it is not working, or so I thought. I relied on the news of a decline in religiosity among Americans, but a tour of social media and news reports of a surge in Christian fundamentalism reveals that the religion of misogyny and xenophobia is not done with us yet. Americans working to produce a bright future are locked in a battle against forces that seek to return them to a medieval theocracy. The state of the future is the battleground.

Unless you’re dying of cancer; then you have only the present world that dreams of freedom from the kind of religion and of the kind of government Christianity (and Islam) seek to force on us.

 

More information:

https://bigthink.com/the-present/a-surprising-explanation-for-the-global-decline-of-religion/

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Cancer and Fatigue

 

Photo: Tomáš Vendiš, CC BY-SA 4.0 <https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0>, via Wikimedia Commons

The intent to document ongoing cancer treatments for those diagnosed with the disease, but who have not yet been initiated into the daily grind of scans, chemo and radiation treatments, and the effect the disease has on pre-existing conditions and their prognoses. It was a good plan, but I didn’t foresee the crippling fatigue that chemo treatments have on the body. I spend far too much time lying on the sofa, soaking up YouTube and Great Courses + videos when I want to be writing, reading, or house cleaning. * Fatigue restricts cleaning up after oneself. When all the energy you can call on is expended to heat a can of soup, there is nothing left to clean the dishes.

I had thought going into this that I would find cancer treatments and facts about the disease enthralling and of interest to the blog-reading public. Not so. The facts are more expertly provided on many websites and receiving treatments is an exercise in boredom. It involves waiting for chemicals to spread through the body; waiting for treatment to start; waiting for a PET, CT, or MRI to complete its operation; waiting for the slow drip of chemicals; waiting for appointments and bloodwork. Take a book with you.

I have never appreciated friends as I do now. They have helped me with household chores, getting to appointments, acquiring and preparing food, and moral support. Keep your friends close and be mentally prepared to repay the favors in the event any of them fall victim to disabling disease.

Should that happen to you or a friend, you have my deepest hope for a full recovery and a long life.

* I don’t want to be housecleaning, but I need to be housecleaning.

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C-Notes

 

Photo by Lucas Vasques on Unsplash

I won’t dwell here on the scatological details that sent me in an ambulance to the Presbyterian Hospital except to say that the drive was preceded by a loss of blood, a lot of blood, and a couple of episodes of abject misery in which I didn’t only think I was dying, I wanted to.

While hospitalized, a CT scan found a benign growth in my colon and a malignant one in my lung.

“It’s in the upper part of your right lung,” the doctor said. “Because of its location and your COPD, the mass is inoperable.”

That meant chemo and radiation treatments.

I surprised myself with the lack of anxiety I felt on hearing the news. I had thought that getting a cancer diagnosis was a death warrant. Though a blood transfusion or two and some hospital-strength drugs had reduced the misery to a shadow of itself, I remained yet alert to the meaning of the doctor’s words. Instead of foreseeing the gloom of financial issues, side effects, the commitment of large blocks of time, I saw myself writing about the experience. For some time, my blog had seen an occasional post about whatever interested me at the moment, but it carried no consistency and no theme. Every post was a writing experiment, and every post followed a long period of staring at the blank page. I occasionally submitted work to online content mills and literary magazines, but the blog remained a place for sporadic and too-often unrelated material.

Now, I thought, it has a purpose. Finally.

Now I can write here with a theme, a plan, and a service to those 1,700,000 who might follow me to the radiation and chemo labs over the next twelve months.

A visit to an oncologist laid out the early stages of a plan. First, an intravenous dose of iron to beat back the anemia that resulted from blood loss and from cancer, then, a class to educate me on the procedures I will undergo, and finally, the radiologist. There will be more, so much more, but that is the plan at this moment.

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Ernie the Magic Elf

 

Photo by Brigitta Schneiter on Unsplash

The rise in the number of religious “Nones” and its opposite—the decline in the number of people professing Christianity as their religion—has resulted in an angry backlash from a vocal minority: the Christo fascists. That angry minority includes celebrities, influencers, and power brokers like Clarence Thomas, Jordan Peterson, and huckster cum Bible salesman Donald Trump.

The Christo fascist intends to force his version of a god on the skeptic, the unbeliever, and the secular humanist. It is of paramount importance to the theist that an entire population appear to follow the dictates of his ideology and that they be forbidden from the appearance of straying from the faith. Witness the Muslim world, where any deviation from the norm can result in deadly consequences. That world is a template for the society dreamed of by the Christian evangelical right. My God is the one true God, they tell us. And you must accept my God or have him crammed up your… er, down your throat.

There is an obvious problem with that assertion, or any claim of supernatural entities, be they gods, unicorns, elves, vampires, etc., etc.: The problem: we can safely stake the claim that gods and other mythological and supernatural beings do not exist.

There is no God. One can say that with the same confidence that I might say there is no Ernie the Magic Elf. Both claims express absolutes and the absolute, like Ernie, does not exist. Of course, we might at any time, we might find a Magic Elf hiding in someone’s garden, just as, at any time, one of the thousands of gods posited by humans might step forward to cut out the middleman and make himself/herself/itself known to the world. God might decide that he/she/it can no longer depend on imperfect humans to deliver a perfect message (assuming he/she/it has a message to share), and who could dispute the need for his/her/its change in his/her/its method of dealing with people. After all, the roughly six-millennia method of his/her/its reliance on fallible and often malevolent humans to deliver his/her/its message has left us with wars, crusades, hucksters, priests, religious doctrine, and Kent Hovind.

To believe, or even opine, that a magic being exists to watch my every act and thought with the intention of punishment or reward fills me with a sense of incredulity. The idea is ludicrous. But, that is an argument from incredulity and the argument from incredulity is a logical fallacy, no different than arguing from emotion. Arguing a point based on one’s emotional attachment and emotional repulsion to it is to concede the point.

When Ernie the Magic Elf is revealed, my a-elfism will undergo a significant reappraisal. When a god reveals himself/herself/itself to the world, my atheism will have received its death blow.  At that time, I will believe.

Taking a Side

 

Photo by Tamara Gak on Unsplash

Several friends and acquaintances have applied varying degrees of pressure on me to state an opinion about the Israeli-Gaza conflict raging in the Middle East. I have steadfastly refused to do so. You see, my Visa bill is due, and the religious, Israeli, Zionist, Hamas, Palestinian, Muslim, and  Judaic conflict over there pales in comparison to the immediate consequences of my missing a credit card payment.

Then, too, there is the pesky issue of the sacred texts ordering both sides to kill me. Me. The Bible followed by Judaism (as well as Christianity) demands in the book of Chronicles ¹ that I be put to death, along with my male and female, young and old fellow unbelievers.

While both religions (and their Christian counterpart) are religions built on hate, the Quran makes Islam a hazardous belief system to me and mine. Believers there are instructed if they encounter me in a fight they are to kill me or take me captive and ransom me. ² Of course, the fight the surah speaks of is to be taken to me from the believer. I do not start those kinds of finds. What if I were killed? What would my Visa card provider say about my credit rating then? Sorry, you faithful, That will be your fight, not mine.

I have long argued that when the WWII allies took a large swath of land away from the Palestinians to give it to the Jews as a form of reparations for the Holocaust and to fulfill the promise of the colonial British Balfour Declaration, they could have given Wyoming to them. Or, what the hell, New Jersey? I am not without empathy for the plight of people who have lost their homelands. Regardless of my sympathy for the Palestinians, I cannot back a side in a conflict when all sides seek my extermination.

Unless one side wishes to help with my Visa bill….

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¹ 2 Chronicles 15:12-13

² Surah 47:4

Leaving Social Media

 

Photo by Glenn Carstens-Peters on Unsplash

"It's easier to fool people than to convince them that they have been fooled."

--Mark Twain 

Michael was still smarting from falling for a scam involving an email claiming excessive activity on his credit card when he told me that Facebook had locked his account for a short time due to his violation of Facebook’s Community Standards.

“What did you do?” I asked.

“I don’t know,” he said. They don’t tell you the offense is, only that it violated community standards.”

Wait. Drug dealers, loan sharks, and bookies have better respect for their customers than that. That is the kind of institutional arrogance a prison guard has over his inmate, not the attitude we would expect from a business toward its customers. Facebook pages make a tremendous amount of money from the data gleaned there. To treat those members like minions beholden to you demonstrates a hubris that, to my knowledge, is unprecedented in the already corrupt business world.

But the story isn’t about Facebook’s failure at human decency. The issue goes deeper. Much deeper.

You see, a large but unknown number of people whose access to their Facebook feed has faced restrictions, will live out the limit to access and continue as before. Facebook faces no consequences for its algorithmic arrogance.

On my friend’s recounting of his Facebook offense, I thought If Facebook ever restricted my account over a non-specific charge, that would mark the end of my relationship with Zuckerberg & Co.

Well, it did happen to me.

Several months ago, I had two Facebook accounts: one, a tame mini blog for keeping in touch with friends and family, and another, a firebrand in-your-face political partisan rag. Over time, I tired of the partisan wrangle. I was arguing with people who appeared to have struggled to complete their eighth-grade education. Winning was not fulfilling. I closed that account and turned the keeping-up-with-family page into a display of literary memes and links to bookish articles.

I committed the Community Standards sin in those displays of the love of books and was locked out of usual activity for 24 hours. I was told I could find the nature of my offense by following an arcane regimen of nested menus, but they didn’t work. They called for me to navigate to something called “Account Quality” which, guided by my limited computer tech skills, I found does not exist. So, I closed the Facebook account.

I’m only one of millions of Facebook users, so my little protest won’t make a blip on the consumer trend to obsequious fealty to the mega-corporate model, but I can only hope that, over time, others will follow in ever-growing numbers.

Michael’s gullibility will, I’m sure, lead him into another scam. Social media has conditioned him into the victim mindset.

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