Flotsam and Jetsam: An Essay on Perspective

Dropped into this middle state, as Pope calls it, we are, so far as we are aware, the only creatures on this planet with the capacity to wonder about our own existence and to question it. We stare into the infinite void that surrounds us and try to make order of it. It is the horror of a Lovecraft of Maupassant which scares us, if only momentarily, into believing that beyond the veil we cannot see there is nothing, or, if it is there, we are insignificant. Religion tells us otherwise and consoles us that in the vast universe we are not an accident or an aberration, but a key part of a grand plan. It would be, indeed, a terrible irony if the swirling chaos birthed us only to dump us like so much flotsam and jetsam on the shore of life alone and horrified, cut off from anything else.

Some time ago I was riding the train into work. The sky was overcast and the intermittent splatter of rain drops on the car windows left rivulets that formed intricate patterns as the wind drove the forlorn drops backwards. I had settled into my chair, one of the last on a train that was fully loaded, and like always, I began filling out my crossword puzzle. I always get some sense of satisfaction from forming the words. It is not solely pride at figuring the clues, but something much deeper about putting the chaos of the puzzle to rest. Once I start and answer even one clue, I have to finish.

We rocked gently back and forth. No one talked. No one ever talks during the commute, unless it be on their cell phone to a faceless interlocutor who, for his absence, might as well not exist in our little self-contained reality here. My seatmate stared vacantly out the window; the static of noise that escaped her earbuds did not afford me enough of a tune to identify her musical stylings. We were just fifty some odd people who lives had, for a brief moment, intersected and would, we believed, pass on without ever seeing one another again.

We passed underground and the soft sunlight blinked out to be replaced by a the yellowing glare of the rail car's florescent bulbs. The clacking of the wheels now echoed off concrete walls and the sudden drop in elevation caused a static to hiss in my ears until I could again equalize the pressure.

As we passed out of cell phone range, the last of the conversations died down. Save for the occasional "Excuse me," or "Sorry," there was only the sound of the wheels on the track. At every station, we made room for the new arrivals. The doors chimed and once more the track slipped behind us and was swallowed by the darkness; only the mysterious and occasional light shone in the darkness of the tube.

Not far from my stop, the train eased to stopped. Standing passengers muttered automatic "sorry's" as they jostled one another. A few looked up, but such stops were not unknown. A older gentleman, rotund and red faced, looked nervous. "What is it," he asked. No one answered. With a screech and lurch the train moved forward a few feet then stopped. The red-faced man let out a groan; the passenger next to me just sighed.

"Ladies and gentleman, we are being asked to hold our position. There is a train ahead of us on the track. We will be moving momentarily."

"What does that mean?" asked the nervous older man. Again, no one answered him. The everyday needs no explanation, even when it is inexplicable; it has the comfort, at least, of being familiar and no one bothers to question it. One outsider, though, can provoke a situation.

A lady in front of me with a wide face and a hat that reminded me of ones I had seen in old movies with matriarchal women on their way to church answered, though she did not address the questioner specifically. "Never run good, this train. Been riding it for years. Don't think a day has passed that something didn't go wrong." Whether she intended this to comfort our agitator or not, it failed. His face was flushed and only grew redder as time drew on. Now, more heads popped up from their ipods, newspapers, books, and naps. A svelte, high cheek-boned lady sitting across from me began to bounce her leg in irritation and sigh loudly as she shook her thin face.

"Ladies and gentlemen, we apologize for this delay. The train ahead of us is experiencing mechanical difficulties. We will be moving momentarily."

More people grew agitated by the further delay and quiet sounds began to pierce the hum of the background noise: the rustling of papers, the beeping of cell phones, the din of overlapping voices. I sat stock still, taking in the new sensations. A new energy quickened the passengers. Whispered conversations ebbed and flowed. Sentences were let loose and then hung; half ignored, half answered, merely passing each other and carrying only the slightest resemblance to real conversations.

"Not again..."

"This never happens on the New York Subway"

"How difficult is it to get a train to run on time"

"I know! Can you believe it? I was once stuck for over an hour"

"Hiking rates, buying new cars, and they still can't keep the trains running for a single day."

"I hope that doesn't happen today"

"I'm gonna be late again today!"

Somewhere in this concatenation of half-hearted conversations, the confabulations began to coalesce. Two theories emerged almost organically from the crowd and grew seemingly independent. They developed legs and wings and dwelt among us quite as though they were face. Somewhere down at the end of the car the word "fire" drifted from one of these half-formed conversations and was taken up with gusto by our corpulent, ruddy friend.

"Fire?!" he said. "Everyone! We need to find the nearest exits. We going to have to evacuate the train. I'm serious. Look around you." He wiped the sweat from his face, his leg nervously bouncing. A few people laughed at his suggestion, but nonetheless many eyes wandered toward the emergency exit signs. Just in case.

The other theory came from wirery gentlemen of indeterminate age with salt and pepper hair and glasses. To a not very attentive partner, he extrapolated his own interpretation of events.

"It's likely just a stuck door or maybe even a sick passenger. They never tell us what's really going on. They afraid people will panic if they knew the truth. Could be a lot worse."

His would-be interlocutor nodded, but did not raise her eyes from her paper. We waited now; the novelty worn off. Humans are amazing adapters and soon fell back to their papers, their novels, their crossword puzzles or their sudoku. The whispered conversations now ebbed away until only the occasional whisper or soft rustle remained.

"Ladies and Gentleman. We apologize for the delay and would like to thank you for choosing MetroRail..."

--"Choosing?! What other choice do we have?" said the wirery, bespectacled man.

"There is a train ahead of us that is experiencing mechanical difficulties."

The ruddy man with the round face gulped obviously. "Does everyone know where their nearest emergency exit is?" He asked loudly.

"We have been asked to push the train up to the next station, allow the passengers to exit and then push the train forward and unload this train."

"Oh my g--!" shouted the round man. He stood up for the first time and moved closer to the exit.

"See," said the bespectacled philosopher, "I knew it was worse. It's probably even worse than they are letting on. I'll bet there was a fire. Can you see any smoke." He looked out of the window into the dim light of the tunnel. Apparently unable to see any smoke, he said down without saying a further word.

The train jerked forward and with a creaking groan it crept forward. With a jolt, we coupled with the train in front of us and began our shaky journey forward. The train vibrated. Every eye looked up and out as if expecting to see something, though logic said there would be nothing to see.

We sat in a sepulchral silence and we moved jarringly forward. Even the most jaded of commuters now looked up. No one spoke. The rustling and beeping was silenced. Only the groaning of fatigued metal and rusted joints remained. It echoed through the car. The round faced man paced nervously, but never strayed far from the emergency exit. The thin man sat stoically but shot occasional furtive glances in search of smoke.

At long last, the shuddering stopped.

"Ladies and Gentlemen, we thank you for you patience. We will be holding here until the train ahead of us unloads all its passengers."

With the last click of the mic, a deep and overwhelming silence stole over the rail car. No one spoke; not the thin man, not the ruddy man, not even the church-hat lady or the peaked-nose business woman. Aside from a stray cough or two, it was total silence.

In a few moments, a creaking groan signaled we were moving again. The train shuddered forward, its engines straining to propel twice its normal load along the underground track. Light broke out around the forward edges of the car as the train emerged into the station. The packed crowds all along the platform stood shoulder to shoulder completely filling the whole area. They watched us with weary glances, more annoyed than angry, but still resigned to their fate. We stared back no less drained of expression by the prolonged exasperation. The trained continued to jerk along. The faces of the passing commuters on the platform shook wildly, but passenger in the car looked inward.

At last we stopped and the doors opened. Crowded as we were on the train, it was even more difficult to find room on the platform which was packed tight with two hours worth of angry passengers. The ruddy face man was the first off, scarcely pausing to say the obligatory sorrys. I saw him last as he exited the station carelessly brushing people aside.

I followed the thin man with the salt-and-pepper hair and the business lady with the aquiline nose. We stood on the platform and waited for the train to depart, weighing whether it would be best to stay and fight for room on a crowded train or take a cab. The business woman typed furiously on her blackberry with her thin lips pursed tightly. She made no sound other than an occasional and much too emphasized sigh of annoyance. The thin man continued to espouse his theories.

"Of course, if they had had the foresight to establish a double rail line, they wouldn't have these problems. This place is so poorly managed, that its no wonder I have to leave so early just to make sure I'm not late every day. This is what happens when you have a socialist model that doesn't allow competition. You get substandard service 'cause they know they're the only game in town. I'm sure their is corruption, skimming from the funds. They why the trains keep breaking down."

He continued his philippic to no one in particular. A blond lady with cheap jewelry and sensible flat shoes who had been on the platform already listened politely.

A new train came and whisked away a sizable crowd, including the bespectacled man and the thin businesswoman. I was not yet late, so I remained for the next train. Instead, I watched the people milling about having parallel conversations speaking at the air and only occasionally intersecting in their words. The only real conversations seemed to be over the phone, but that was only inferential deduction on my part.

Bit by bit, we dispersed until I finally took a train and made it to work, being left only to think about what had just happened. It was, in reality, no spectacular event; nothing worth being recorded in the newspaper or a history book. Yet I saw much of humanity in there. Face to face with the seeming randomness and apathy of the universe, we each sought the divine will. The ruddy man saw danger and evil, unwilled, unwilling, and uncontrollable; something that can only be escaped. The thin man saw a malicious design that actively worked against us in the pursuit of its own interests. The businesswoman saw nothing. She scarcely even noticed the world around her, but absorbed in her own solipsism, she went about her way.

I saw a story. It was story about sight. We all saw and heard the same things, but we each experienced something completely different. Whether it be experience or prejudice, or disposition, we each saw a different shadow of reality. The world, for its part, continued to swirl around us on its eternal course as we scampered about its surface rushing about in artificial haste for unimportant reasons. Important reasons exist, but we mostly miss them while we are distracted by the trivial. I suppose what matters, is what we were before we entered the train.

On Religious Persecution and Historical Perspective

History, the old adage tells us, is written by the victors. But that is not the entire truth; nor is it one hundred percent accurate. Athens lost the Peloponnesian War in the fifth century B.C., but most of our accounts of that conflict come from Athenian sources. What matters is good Press skills and the Athenians had that. Over the course of centuries, it doesn't matter that Athens was beaten, what matters is that they kept records and others did not. What this means is that the historical records is always skewed; even when the record keeper is honest. He invariably interprets events as his world view shapes them.

Let us look at an example. In the 1830s Mormon converts began migrating to Jackson County, Missouri, which had been designated in a revelation to the Prophet Joseph Smith as the site where Zion would be built. However, within only a few years, the Mormons were expelled en masse from the County and took refuge in northern Missouri where, after only a few years, they were again expelled, this time on pain of death if they stayed, under Governor Lilburn Boggs' justly infamous Extermination Order.

As Mormons tell the story, they were the victims of religious persecution driven because of their beliefs again and again until they were forced to make a dangerous winter flight to Illinois. The government, however, said that the Mormons were a threat to public order, and enemies of the state. What is the truth? Well, both.

When the Mormons began moving to Missouri they did upset the public order. Their more communal lifestyle was at odds with the more independent-minded Missourians. Most Mormons were also anti-slavery (despite what you may have heard about blacks and the Mormon church; they did, at least, oppose slavery). In the 1820 Missouri Compromise, Missouri a slave owning territory even though most of the Louisiana Purchase was Free. Still, the issue was revisited again and again. In the Compromise of 1850 and again in the Kansas-Nebraska act of 1854, legislators tried again and again to resolve the issue of slavery in the expanding United States. Missouri, though a slave state since the Compromise of 1820, still had agitators demanding Missouri become a Free state.

In the midst of all this, in 1836, the Mormon owned newspaper in Independence Missouri published an editorial advocating abolition. The day after this issue appeared, Mormon leaders were rounded up, tarred and feathered, and the press was destroyed. This incident is famous in Mormon history, but Mormons often forget the role that this editorial played in fomenting this violent act.

Mormons often portray this as the culmination of religious persecution, whereas it could equally be seen as a political riot. The truth is that both viewpoints have some aspect of the truth. Swelling numbers of Mormon immigrants instilled the Missourians with a fear that would lose political influence to these strange, religiously different, anti-slavery (mostly) northerners. Not only that, but Mormons were quickly outnumbering the previous immigrants and threatening to take over all political life. This threat of Mormon domination led to the election day riots in cities like Gallatin.

The Missouri Mormon War figures prominently in LDS history, but scarcely a blip on US history and barely a mention even in Missouri history. Both Mormons and Non-Mormons publicized their side of the story broadly in their day, but the Mormon version has become the more widely told tale today because Mormons have kept up the story long after many others stopped caring. The story is taken up by Anti-Mormons who wish to make it sound as if the Mormons were not the victims of persecution, but rather the justly expelled enemies of the state that Lilburn Boggs declared them to be. They have the Missouri State archives on their side in that battle.

Often, I noticed, Anti-Mormon or other writers will compare this story to examples from their own Faith traditions history to show that these upstart Mormons were trying to make themselves victims instead of criminals to tie into the long tradition of persecution that Christians have faced. What intrigues me here, though, is that is an uneven comparison. They take in insider's viewpoint of the Biblical persecutions and an outsider's perspective on the Mormon persecutions to prove their point.

In fact, Jewish and Roman sources depicted the Christians as enemies of the state who threatened the public order and deserved the violent actions taken against them. They broke up families, disobeyed laws, lived communally in their own areas (early on), and advocated radical social changes that disrupted the traditional values of Roman society. Consider the riots in Ephesus that Luke relates in Acts 19. As Luke tells the story, the craftsmen whose livelihood depended upon making votive statues and decorations for the Greco-Roman gods were worried that Paul's success would diminish business and so they rioted against Paul and the Christians.

This story is a nice parallel. The difficult is, however, that we have only Christian story. Doubtless, the pagan workers would have told a different tale of meddling outsiders upsetting the place, living strange customs so who knows what else they really do. In fact, Roman writers often wrote that Christians were cannibals (think of the Sacrament/Eucharist), drank blood, were atheists (they didn't believe in any of the gods!), who swore secret oaths against the government and practiced incest and all sorts of perverted marital arrangements. They often lived separately and shared all things in common and called one another brother and sister. Romans found this all very disturbing and riots ensued. The only solution was to persecute the Christians who were viewed to be the cause of the disturbances since no such problems had existed before.

What is religious persecution? Those who are prejudice and discriminate and persecute others would almost never say they did so because of prejudice. It is always the victims' fault. Victims are not altogether blameless in these situations. I do not mean that the victims' deserve it, but rather that their being different does, indeed, lead to the persecutions. It is contrafactual and hence weak to argue, but had Mormonism not arisen, likely no mass migration of anti-slavery, communal northerners would have settled a southern state like Missouri thus raising tensions and prompting violence (from both sides). So, in a sense, the Mormons did cause their own persecution.

Jesus was executed, not because He was the sinless Son of God and victim of a massive conspiracy to suppress the Truth, but because Jewish and Roman leaders viewed Him as a threat to public peace and the established order. As far as the Romans were concerned, Jesus was a political rebel who had declared Himself King of the Jews. Neither the Romans nor the Jewish leaders lay awake thinking that needed to prevent the "Truth" from coming out. They likely genuinely believed that they were right, which to my mind is more frightening.

Humanity is often prone to an arrogance of assumption. We assume too quickly. Truth is much larger than any one man's (or woman's) paltry ability to grasp. Its depths recede beyond the farthest horizon we can imagine. Pride is the most human of sins. It may even be the defining characteristic of our species. This extends even to our understanding of events. We forget that real people live on every side of every issue. In the end, the truth lies not in the middle, for that would somehow give every bigot some measure of undeserved dignity, but rather beyond, encompassing all the small-minded assumptions of our kind. James Lowell, an American Poet, wrote, perhaps envisioning this struggle:

Truth forever on the scaffold, Wrong forever on the throne,—
Yet that scaffold sways the future, and, behind the dim unknown,
Standeth God within the shadow, keeping watch above his own.