23 years later

 In the spring of 1998 we all graduated from Huntington College (well, I technically didn't until winter 1999 because I had to take a PE credit, even though I'd been a four year, two sport athlete).  A lot has changed for me since being at Huntington, but I wouldn't trade that experience for anything: it was the place I needed at the time to become the person I am today.  

I am always curious about how people from HC live today--what they believe, what they value, what they do.  There are certain core things about me that I think have not changed from my years at HC.  For example, I continue to be passionate about real, genuine dialogue about (what I'll call) "the human condition."  This includes religious questions (Is there a god?  Which religion is "correct"? Can one rationally maintain religious exclusivism?) and questions about how one ought to live (including questions about sexual ethics).  I have come to hold different views on these topics since HC, but my interest in the questions and answers abides.  In retrospect, I think it is this interest that led me into studying philosophy. I was a psychology major at HC but I was always interested in the more philosophical elements of psychology--the ones that bore on questions about the human condition: who are we?, where are we going?, what is our purpose?, how can I know any of these things?

Apart from my ongoing interest in these questions, another thing that carries through with me today is (what I'll call) my penchant towards iconoclastic views.  Whatever social milieu in which I find myself, I want to push the buttons of those in that milieu.  I've had to learn how to do this in a respectful way.  And I am still learning the various ways in which the way I engage in discussion and dialogue has a gendered aspect--it is very "male" in the sense that it is combative and argumentative.  In part, this is just who I am but in part is was fostered by the social norms within "analytic philosophy" (i.e., the philosophy that grew out of traditions mostly in America and the England).  But I have tamed myself quite a lot over the years, I think.  

I never had sex in high school.  Or college.  I won't reveal who the first person I had sex with, but it's someone you all know but probably wouldn't expect (not Kim, not Jenny to whom I was engaged for about a year).  For me, anything sexual was always a very private and shameful thing.  This is what I'm learning about myself through therapy.  I am someone who has always loved relationships with women, sexual or otherwise.  That continues to be a huge part of who I am.  When I was at HC and for a very long time after that I was not able to be honest about who I was sexually.  And as a result, this very important part of who I am was not really integrated within myself.  This is something I have only been learning to do more recently.  

I was married to Shelly for like 8 years.  I continue to love her and always will.  But I was not a good husband in many ways.  In part, this was because I wasn't able to be honest with her about who I am and what I want.  I have a deep aversion to telling someone I love something that will upset them.  And so I often just don't tell them.  And then I hide things.  I did that a lot with Shelly.  And I even did it with Sara, who I was recently engaged to before we broke up.  These past three months have seen a lot of honesty with myself and emotional growth (I hope) as a result.  Lots of hard looks at myself.  I suppose that is why I wanted to share with you all and see how you all are doing.  

About 5 years ago, my friend and mentor (from whom I learned a good deal of philosophy as a graduate student) was killed while riding to work on his bike.  I delivered the eulogy at his funeral.  One of the things I realized from that experience is how important it is to have people in my life who have been in my life for a long time.  Eric was such a person.  He knew me through my many transitions--relationships, fundamental changes in religious beliefs, etc.  I realized when he passed away that no one knew those transitions (especially the religious and philosophical ones) like he did.  And thus in a sense a piece of me was forever gone.  I believe that people anchor our identities in that way--they can attest to who we were and thus who we are.  You all (Jared, Dave, Cal) and many of my other HC friends are anchors in that way.  And thus, again, my motivation for wanting to reconnect and catch up.

This is already probably too long.  So I'll try to be brief about the ways in which I have changed since being at HC.  Here are a few:

• I no longer believe in the existence of a god of any sort.  I suppose that means that I am not a Christian, although I could totally get on board with many elements of liberal Christianity such as that upheld by contemporary text scholars John Crossan and Marcus Borg.
• I taught at Concordia College (Moorhead, MN) from 2008-1012.  While I was there, I was transitioning to a pluralistic religious view (i.e., there is no one correct religious view, but there is a god) before moving, finally, onto an atheistic, naturalistic view of the world, which is more or less what I hold now.  In any case, Crossan and Borg both gave lectures there (Borg used to teach there early in his career).  I asked them both the same question: Why need I believe in a higher power or god in order to be a Christian?  Why not simply think that the force that changed us was just the "better angels of our own nature"?  Both of them answered essentially the same thing which is that Christianity doesn't rule that out.  That helped solidify what was at that time fast becoming a conviction of mine: that epistemically we cannot know whether or not god exists and also that it didn't matter to what mattered to me about the Christian message whether or not god exists.
• To me, what matters about religion has nothing to do with an afterlife but, rather, with what religions speaks to in the here and now.  That was a deeply held conviction for me even when I was still a Christian.  The metaphysical claims of Christianity (afterlife, atonement) never really sank in deeply for me because they never really seemed to matter.
• The schema of the traditional family structure (husband, wife, maybe children) is not the only way to live well.  For me, this has quite far-reaching consequences.  Almost any arrangement could work.  Sara and I had been trying an open relationship.  The failure of that relationship had not so much to do with that mere fact that it was an open relationship but, rather, that we weren't doing it well and then (because of my own betrayal of Sara) never had a chance to fix.  I am not sure that I could ever be happy in a traditional monogamous relationship.  Which isn't to say that I think others couldn't be.  I am not sure most human beings are cut out for monogamy.  I suspect the level of de facto monogamy is quite low even though the level of de jure monogamous relationships is still quite high.  Being able to be honest with myself and others about this is a huge part of me being able to live honestly to to fully integrate my own sexuality into my identity.  The cultural barriers to and resistance to open relationships--even from people who are otherwise fairly liberal--has been surprising to me.  
• Although I am not religious, I think there are things that religion provides that, in its absence, people need to fill with other things.  For me, that vacuum has been filled with: honest conversation with friends about the dark parts of me, beautiful journalism and interviews (sometimes I listen to Fresh Air on my Sunday long runs--that is my church), philosophy and literature (I recently read Anna Karenina), mind altering drugs (I've done mushrooms, LSD, and lots of THC) for the purpose of self-exploration, preparing and eating meals with friends, and other things.  Religion provides rituals and those rituals are something I believe humans need.  But they needn't be religious. Religion provides opportunities for self-growth--again, this can be achieved through non-religious ways.  Religion provides community of like-minded believers which, again, can be created in non-religious contexts.  Religion provides a moral code of conduct and, again, this is something that we don't need religion for.  People will claim their ethics comes from "the Bible" or something.  But it doesn't; it can't.  Rather, people interpret the Bible through a pre-existing ethical lens.
• Racism and misogyny pervade our culture in subtle and not-so-subtle ways.  The former are probably the more important ones because they are often missed.  The most interesting ethical questions are not primarily about whether x is wrong or right.  For example, I would think it is virtually universal at this point that people will say that racism and sexism are wrong.  What they won't agree about is what particular actions/policies/structures are/aren't racist/sexist.  That is the important question.  I read a number of feminists and black intellectuals fairly regularly now.  This is something that has definitely changed since I was at HC.
• Ok, this one is a bit philosophical, bear with me.  I don't think that there is any other truth than the truth that humans create.  There is no "god's eye view" of things.  All there is is situated human knowledge. Truth is subjugated to justifiability or warranted assertability.  This doesn't mean that anything goes.  The things we ought to accept as true are those things for which there is the best evidence.  That is the best approximation to what is true.  I apply this generally--both to empirical claims and to value-based or normative (such as ethical or aesthetic) claims.  If you will, this view is a kind of compromise between an all out relativism, on the one hand, and objectivism, on the other.  
• I firmly believe that the overwhelming majority of people are not fundamentally evil.  And I roundly reject any kind of ideology that tends to categorize a person or group of people as evil.  One of my problems with religion (Christianity, in particular) is that it does this.  The whole sheep vs goats thing.  Although I believe this theoretically, it is sometimes difficult to put into practice.  This is one of those things that any good religion (atheistic or otherwise) should teach how us to do.  For me, good literature, art and movies help disabuse us of simplistic black/white dichotomies.