Taoist Climate Change on Halloween

In the midst of the intensification of the very polarized and thus divisive U.S. presidential campaign “season” (i.e., year) during its last week, Halloween of 2024 occurred in Boston, Massachusetts not only without the need of trick-or-treaters and their parents to wear winter coats, but also with the option of wearing shorts and short-sleeve shirts without even having to wear a light jacket. That this was so as late as 8pm was nothing short of surreal not only to New Englanders, but also to any transplants from the northern-tier Midwestern and Plains states.  It being around 70F degrees well into the dark hours was nothing short of unprecedented, and so much so that the negative impact of the cold climate in detracting from the holiday in prior years could finally be grasped. I had realized this more than a decade earlier when I was in Miami during Halloween. There is indeed a silver lining to global warming for people living in places that are cold during the late fall, winter, and early spring seasons, even as contrary to political correctness it is to admit this even to friends. The proclivity of the human mind/brain to divide up the world in terms of dichotomies of mutually-exclusive, antagonistic poles does not necessarily fit with empirically with the real world. Taoism speaks to this.

  A man wearing shorts and a woman with bare shoulders (left); costumes not covered by coats (right)

Themes in The Dao De Jing include appearance versus reality, and order versus disorder. Maya, which means illusion, is in appearances but not reality. Both order and disorder are in appearance, and perhaps in reality as well. At the very least, Newtonian physics and quantum physics taken together provide good evidence that instances of both order and disorder exist in nature. This is without doubt in human society too. A political system can be stable for a period of time then suddenly, in the midst of revolutionary fervor, become disordered. Times of peace are more orderly than are times of war. Nevertheless, it is important not to overdo the starkness of these dichotomies. There is order even during war, and instability even in times of peace. In terms of the American political polarity being projected onto the member-states, President Obama reminded Americans that people drive pick-up trucks in “blue” (i.e., liberal) states and there are gays in the “red” (i.e, conservative) states.  There is some red in the blue and some blue in the red. Not that both colors mix or “bleed” into each other; rather, some of the other color can be drawn in as an island of sorts in a state colored red or blue. This has been visualized as the Ying and Yang of Taoism.

The Ying and Yang were originally meant a theoretical constructs used to explain change in nature. Literally, shade on the northern side of a hill can become directly lit by the Sun, and the sun-lit southern side can turn to shade—both as the Sun moves with respect to the hill. In Boston, that might be Bunker Hill. Dong Zhongshu (179-104 BCE) in China misinterpreted Ying and Yang to apply mostly to humans, as for example in terms of gender and hierarchy. The point of Ying and Yang was originally that difference forces in nature interact and can change into each other, whereas Confucianism has emphasized hierarchy and human control over other humans. We distinguish weak and strong, but in actuality things are always changing, and here we can see the imprint of Buddhism on Taoism. It is a trap, according to Taoist teachings, to divide things into polar opposites and value one pole over the other. Going to extremes doesn’t work in the long run. A weapon that is too hard will break; a tree that is too strong will crack; the strong and mighty may reside down below and the soft and supple may reside on top. The moral power, or De, of the way of nature (or the natural way), Dao, is not in favor of the artificial, absolutist dichotomies that we construct in making distinctions in the world.

Our assumption that the good and bad cannot touch falls prey to the point that some aspects of a good thing may be bad, and that some aspects of a bad thing, such as climate change, may be good. A Taoist would tell us that we should not feel morally ashamed in admitting this to ourselves and others. It is ok to celebrate being out on a warm night on Halloween in Boston or Chicago, for instance. In the case of Boston in 2024, at an informal street festival, a woman wore a cape as part of her costume. She was part of an informal marching band. Written on her cape was “Climate Mom.” I submit that “Climate Grandmother” might have been more fitting, as, at the very least, it would have suggested that record carbon emissions from human sources in the prior year would be “paid for” especially by the kids at the festival. Even in their case, the prospect that more of their Halloweens will likely not be hindered by having to wear a winter coat over a costume, and cut short, or compromised, by the physiological urgency of getting back inside somewhere to warm up, can be admitted to be a plus. Every Halloween of my youth in the northern Midwest meant that a winter coat had to cover whatever costume I wanted to show off while “trick-or-treating” outside.

That the Climate Mom was allowing herself to dance even as kids were too during a street-fest in Boston in 2024 suggests that even the dichotomy between the concerned grandmother and the care-free kids who would not have to wait many decades before they feel more of the bad effects of climate change can be relativized in a common spirit of enjoying the experience of being alive. The musicians playing in the crowd of revelers were caught up in the surreal experience of playing and dancing on a warm Halloween night in Massachusetts, which is north of New York City and just south of Maine.

Similarly, as the U.S. presidential campaign was really getting heated in the rhetoric being tossed around that week, a Trump supporter could admit to agreeing with something that Harris said, and a Harris supporter could admit to agreeing with one of Trump’s policy-suggestions. This bit of blue amid red and bit of red amid blue was almost unheard of in 2024, as partisans perhaps more than in any other presidential campaign season since World War II painted the opposing candidate as the incarnation of evil itself. In actuality, both Harris and Trump, like the rest of us, were still human beings and thus imperfect, again, like the rest of us. None of us are saviors or Satan, so it is important to distinguish ourselves and the world in which we live from the mythic language used in religion. Imagine if you will, people so glad that Halloween was on such a nice evening that a spirit of joyful dancing in a street could even include Harris and Trump, with everyone even at close contact, without thieves or police, simply relishing the experience of the senses in being alive without personal sorrows, politics, climate change, or foreign wars obstructing, for however briefly. Even the Climate Mom was dancing on a night in which it was clear to everyone that climate change was part of the cause of the comfortable temperature.

Love as God Loves Us: Embodying Inconvenient Compassion

I contend that compassion is an automatic byproduct of having shut out the outside world for a time to experience transcendence in its religious sense (i.e., reaching beyond the limits of human conception, perception, and emotion). Such experience as prayer, for example, or meditation can result in a heightened sensitivity in perceiving the world, including things and other people who are in proximity. Such sensitivity where other people are being perceived can illicit compassion to them. It is the bracketing experience itself, away from our daily life, rather than what is being prayed about or meditated on that triggers the generalized sensitivity and thus the enhanced readiness or inclination to feel compassion where it applies. I submit furthermore that with some beliefs regarding how God in the Abrahamic religions views us creatures in Creation, we mere mortals can assume to some degree the perspective that, given how God is depicted in scriptures, God would or does have in watching us in our own little worlds.

Roughly speaking, God may look down at us from heaven similar to how a parent perceives one’s child, but here as a small creature doing the best that a small yet selfish created being can.  Augustine warns that applying the relation between a human father and son should not be thought to apply to the relation between the Father and the Son in the Christian Trinity. Specifically, Augustine wrote that human weakness “can only think of what it has been accustomed to do or hear.”[1] Augustine urges that “no carnal thought creep up” in thinking of Jesus’ phrase, “As the Father has taught me,” like how a human father teaches his son.[2] Thinking of the relationship in the Trinity as being akin to a human relationship would be to “fashion idols.”[3] Human weakness might prompt us to reduce God’s perception of us to seeing our weaknesses, but God’s perspective on Creation, including the created beings within it, would more likely be to see us as functioning as well as we can in our little corners of this created realm. Not even a parent looks at one’s very young child, or toddler, as being weak in trying to walk for the first time, or even the second or third time. Rather, from this analogy, I submit that God sees even human adults as small, circumscibed  beings fiddling with ourselves without situating ourselves in the wider context of Creation, and beyond. Such a divine perspective is subtle and wholistic and yet penetrating and specific. The good news is that we can assume that perspective to an extent sufficient to change our negative attitudes and emotions regarding another person, whether we deem that person to be ugly, pathetic, strange, or crazy, to genuine compassion as though a friendly demeanor were a natural end in itself.

One morning while on a local transit system’s bus, I watched with a visceral feeling of distaste as a particularly ugly woman aged about 60 years boarded, sat down, and proceeded to keep her miuth open while touching her tongue with one and then another of her fingers longer than to lick off something edible. The sight of the person was itself revolting to me and yet I couldn’t help myself in staring in disgust (though not showing my reaction). Writing in retrospect, I feel ashamed of myself. It was not that she gave the impression of being a bad person, and not yet of being mentally ill. At the time, I thought about how God manifested as the Father in Christianity might look on human beings specifically as finite, imperfect creatures (meaning in Creation), doing the best that we can. Looking at a living person from outside the created realm would change how we observe other people. This shift in perspective is difficult to describe.

In allowing myself to assume such a stance, though without presuming myself to be divine and thus superior to the woman, my attitude toward her instantly changed to one in which I saw her not as weak or pathetic. Instead, I saw her creatureliness as she tended to herself as best she could.

We all can be pitied in spite of our nasty selfish pettyiness because from God’s perspective, we look like little children rather than self-sufficient adults. Our existence is radically of fundamentally contingent rather than solid and complete. By intentionally assuming that perspective to some degree, and thus without presuming ourselves  to be like God in that respect, my anger and disgust suddenly dissipated. I did not yet feel compassion for her, but I did notice that my attitude toward the woman was then much different that that of a well-dressed Caucasian man who was eyeing the poor Black man who had just dropped his bag and was standing in the aisle close in front of the other man, who was seated. I could understand and even identify with the distaste that comes when someone enters my personal space too closely, but I was more taken with how much my attitude toward the ugly woman had changed from that of the seated man looking up at the Black man who was hiding his face in a hood.

The woman and I disembarked at the same bus stop; she used the front door while I used the back door. So I couldn’t miss seeing her walking in front of me in a way that intimated that she was suffering from a mental illness.  I would have felt ashamed for myself had I not used my free will to try to adopt God’s perspective on us. I walked faster, and thus I walked by her.  She looked at me, and, when I was in front of her, I looked back and saw that she was wearing a sweat shirt that had cartoon characters from the “Peanuts” comic and television shows that feature Charlie Brown and his dog, Snoopy.  “I like your shirt,” I said in a friendly tone that was genuine.  It was not that I thought I might get some heavenly reward; rather, the compassion seemed to arise quite naturally from me having assumed a perspective that has been attributed to God.

Thinking about how God looks down at us and then trying to adopt such a posture as much as we can as finite, hardly omniscient entities, and then staying in that posture for some time while watching another person (or persons) is not only done by grace. Our free-will in deciding to do this is necessary too, as it is for then deciding to approach rather than avoid the other person even if one is noxious, mentally ill, or just plain creepy. It is astonishing how quickly and dramatically anger, disgust, and the will to avoid such a person can change to kindness and compassion. If we are indeed made in God’s image, perhaps the esoteric meaning in it is that we are the only species that can self-consciously that can adopt a perspective and attitude as if we were looking in on creatures who are in Creation. That we can do so even while knowing that we too are creatures within Creation is itself astonishing, and this point is perhaps why we can assume such a posture only to some extent, yet even that is sufficient for the Kingdom of God to manifest within us, if only episode by episode, and then perhaps enough that habit kicks in and the Kingdom can gain some traction.

 

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1. Augustine, Tractates on John: Books 28-54, 40.4, trans. John W. Rettig, Fathers of the Church: A New Translation 88 (Washington, D.C.: Catholic University of America Press, 1993), 126.
2. Ibid.
3. Ibid.

The University of California at Berkeley

In visiting a university even for a short period of time, a surprisingly deep grasp of its dominant organizational culture's mentality is possible, especially if it is foreign to the outsider's perspective and yet draws on  instinctual urges whose imprints one has previously seen. It is perhaps human, all too human to relish sending harsh messages to outsiders, albeit indirectly because cowardness and self-illusion are included with the appetite for blood. This can be so at a university even if scholarly visitors are among the targets. The primitive instinctual urge to aggressively harm people by reminding them unnecessarily that they are not in the tribe can have sufficient power to overcome other contending urges to characterize the very culture of an organization. I will argue that the University of California at Berkeley can be characterized as such. For I witnessed this triumphant urge in rather  obvious behavior of some faculty and administrators. I came rather quickly during my visit to grasp the nature and roots of the favorite blood-sport of enough rude faculty members to get a picture of those primped  up, intellectually stunted "scholars" at that heavily passive aggressive university. The message of exclusion for taxpayers visiting the campus and scholars invited to give a lecture there, I being neither, was made clear to me by a student employee at the main library,  which tellingly is closed on Saturdays even during the semesters: Even if a visitor on the large campus does not have an umbrella and rain is pouring down, the university's shuttle buses are only for students, faculty, and staff. The student enjoyed his power to say no to me; I could not detect even the slightest tone of shame in representing such an inhospitable institutional host. Bad air! Instead, the he relished the firmness in the power to say no, which is to say, to exclude. In contrast, the campus shuttles at Yale, ironically a private university, transport anyone around campus! So much for California being easy-going. So much for UC Berkeley sporting intellectually curious and passionate scholars in search of new ideas from visitors. Rather, Nietzsche’s new birds of prey, whose spite naturally issues out from deep ressentement, populate the faculty and their bosses. So much for even common courtesy and gratitude to California taxpayers and distinguished professors from other universities invited to deliver a lecture; if you are walking around campus or walk out of a library and get wet, tough luck! Public is apparently below even common. 

While visiting California, I spent some time on UC’s main campus. I was "testing the waters" on signing on to be a visiting scholar there. I was dissuaded from any such elongated affiliation within days, however, because the director of that university's visiting scholar's program (such scholars merely use the libraries) refused even to meet with me. Because the program at the time charged $750 for the first year and $1,500 for the second year for what is essentially access to the libraries with a university ID (and use of the campus shuttles), it was entirely reasonable for me to discuss the program with its director, but, alas, she was too important for that, and thus lost some revenue as a result. Her reply to my email went beyond rude dismissiveness. 

I met enough faculty, nonacademic administrators, and doctoral students, moreover, to be able to quickly grasp the university's organizational culture, which, incidentally, I found locals knew of surprisingly accurately. One retired scholar who had studied at the University of San Francisco told me that the faculty and faculty-administrators at Berkeley (Cal) only value certain scholars as colleagues, and meanwhile make it intentionally clear to others that they are not wanted. This is the antithesis of scholarly collegial courtesy. This is the bottom line that scholars visiting Berkeley should know. 

I witnessed and in fact was subject to the passive-aggressive rude behavior of the director of the university’s Institute of European Studies as he apparently quickly sized me up and reneged on his offer to meet with me concerning my scholarship on the E.U. and U.S. (perhaps this comparison put him off), and then rather blatantly excluded me (and another Yale alum) from his introductions of faculty to each other as we waited to hear a lecture on Churchill. The director, having blown off meeting with me by writing that maybe he would see me at a talk or two, literally stood over the two seated Yalies—myself and a retired Yale College graduate—in the small seating area while introducing his colleagues (actually coworkers) to each other. This explains the lack of scholarly collegiality being extended to scholars from other universities; academic courtesy does not extend to everyone who holds the Ph.D. degree; rather, academic colleague only pertains to the faculty at his university, Cal. During the reception after the talk, he looked over and laughed at me at one point, which explains why he blew off my email so blatantly, and it was clear to me that he had dissuaded the speaker and a similar fellow from speaking with me. I was not alone in noticing this; a local retired restauranteer observed it too. One student working at the wine table told me that it was typical behavior at that university, and the other student working there told me that the faculty in the philosophy department are known for being particularly nasty. 

For example, a senior professor of ethics said to me as soon as I told him that I had gone to Yale, "Cal is every bit as good academically as Yale." We could throw Harvard in too. Well, the rankings simply don't support that view. Neither does even a quick contrast between the main reading room of Sterling Library at Yale, where you can hear a pin drop even when the all of the chairs are occupied with even plenty of undergraduate students, and the reading room in Doe Library at Berkeley, where ongoing conversations are not only ongoing, but also stubbornly so. The immaturity and inconsiderateness alone bely any claim to intellectual maturity. So too does the starkly different occupancy levels in the two reading rooms on school nights. One of my favorite phrases is, the proof is in the pudding. Sterling library is open every day during the semesters (except holidays); in contrast, Doe Library, and thus its periodical and reference rooms, is closed on Saturdays even during semesters. There is no film library (the film archive's "library" label is a bloated misnomer), whereas one is housed on the seventh floor of Sterling Library at Yale. Perhaps the biggest difference lies in the capabilities of the managers and the student employees of the respective libraries, especially in fixing problems versus pretending that they simply do not exist. Inflexibly adhering to a broken status quo is a basic sin of management. 

 

Although the weather is better in Berkeley than in New Haven, and the interpersonal climate is admittedly harsh at both universities, the faculty (and faculty administrators) at Berkeley stuck me as particularly hostile with regard to visitors (whereas too many Yale employees, including faculty and fundraisers, relish intentionally inflicting anger by excluding some insider groups but not others). The ethics professor at Berkeley, whom I had emailed in vain before my arrival and met at a talk, even felt inclined to insult Yale in talking with me. "I bet its cosy and accommodating there," he said with a smart-ass. demeaning tone. He clearly didn’t realize that a cosy and accommodating organizational culture is a good thing. I could gleam from his assumption that the cultural mentality dominant at his university was not at all cosy and accommodating, and definitely not to visiters! Not welcoming for sure. Nevertheless, I was polite; I held myself back from replying that being cosy and accomodating is better than being frosty and hostile towards visitors.

Regarding visiting scholars who affiliate with the university  library to do their own research for a year or two, I found out that that UC charges them $750 for the first year, and $1,500 for the second. This implies not only a certain institutional greediness, but also an implicit refusal to extend collegial courtesy to scholars, which is to say holders of true doctoral degrees (e.g., Ph.D., Ed.D., J.S.D., D.Sci.M., D.B.A., and Th.D.). I don't understand why a scholar would stay there even a few months, given how dismissively faculty regard outsiders not on the faculty. You’re not one of us is a very primitive, tribal instinctual urge that Nietzsche would likely say is out of control in the weak who seek nonetheless to dominate even the strong. I saw a lot of passive aggressive weakly constituted inhabitants on what is outwardly a very beautiful campus during my visit to the Bay Area.

 

I've hardly been uncritical of Yale in my writings, but this has ultimately been geared to improving the university by raising awareness among my fellow alums of the wordening atmosphere on campus. In contrast, I don't think the conceited mentality of bloated intellect and primitive ill-will towards people deemed "outsiders" at Cal deserve the fruits that come from improvement. A professor in Cal’s law school had gone to Yale; I met him in person at Cal on the second day of my visit. He claimed to have left teaching at Yale because of the toxicity at Yale’s law school, that toxicity being definitely true, but in not replying to my subsequent emails, he too seemed rather toxic to me; perhaps one toxic organizational culture had spit him out and he subsequently added to the toxicity of another university. I attended a talk at that law school during my visit. Tellingly, the event coordinator took over the Q&A when the speaker from Harvard would have called on me. I left immediately,  disgusted even as I passed the awaiting reception food. A bad odor nixes even good food.

 

Even doctoral students at Cal talked down to me as if they were spoiled, immature children dismissive of an adult. I told them that I am a scholar visiting from somewhere else and had studied at Yale, but I was to be put in my place anyway. The philosophy students whom I met, both undergraduates and doctoral students, seemed eerily to resemble so closely the immaturity and the abrupt anti-social characteristic of the philosophy professors I had met that I couldn’t help but remember that an apple doesn’t fall far from its tree. Paul wrote that you can know a tree from its fruit. Who would stay long in a room of pretentious,  rotting fruit?

 

To illustrate: I sat in on two lectures in a class on Nietzsche; the professor, it seems, was incapable of replying to emails that she herself admitted she had received, and her graduate student behaved quite boorish to me. “I’ll take those!” he harshly as I was returning extra copies of a handout to the professor. That student had heard me introduce myself as a scholar from elsewhere at another talk (where I had met the "ethics" guy)  I complied with the teaching assistant politely; had I been equally demanding and disrespectful, I would have put the copies on the professor’s desk, and told her disciple, you need to go through your professor rather than talk to me directly. After all, he was not even a colleague. 

Besides applying reason to master that temptation into fueling my decision not to return even though I was keenly interested in Nietzsche’s startlingly paradigmatic philosophy. Days later, an undergraduate student majoring in philosophy admitted to me at a reception that that department is even more toxic than the university moreover. It is nice to have one's hunches confirmed. When I had been a student at Yale, it was common to avoid the philosophy department there, as it was not yet in recovery from the toxic implosion from contending personalities that had nearly rid that department of its faculty. That such deep thinking as philosophy encourages could be associated with such petty, even mean people would seem to defy some natural law.  

 

Perhaps a dysfunctional organizational culture is simply a tree whose fruit is sour. Such culture is notoriously difficult to change. Besides the sheer number of people who conveniently conform to viciousness to feel a sense of belonging—of being on the inside—and to feel plearure by excluding outsiders, group-think is very hard and thick against internal and external second-guessing. The sheer distance between an organization’s leader and the herd animals who reside within an organization enables the status quo to continue even as the organization’s own message to itself and society is quite different. I think a dysfunctional organization must decline quite a bit before its inhabitants have to recognize that being more welcoming is in their own self-interest.

More than one local resident in Berkeley told me that in part due to budget cuts from the government of California, Cal-Berkeley had been in a slow decline for twenty years. “They feel threatened and are defensive,” I was told by more than one scholar who lived in San Francisco at the time of my visit. One such scholar, who had received her doctorate at the University of San Francisco, said, “The faculty at Cal want specific people; they treat them like shit. If they have sized you up even as a visitor, it won't get better.” That is to say, the faculty administrators, like the director of European Studies, and the faculty quickly size outsiders up and are not shy about slamming the door shut in a way that is intended to say, you aren’t worth anything to us, but other people are. That mentality is quite toxic and yet it can thrive because of the pleasure that is gained by self-love from exercising the underlying sordid instinctual urge. According to Nietzsche, the strong are able to master even their most intractable urge, whereas the weak cannot. Hence they are slaves to it.  This is perhaps partly why the weak resent the strong and try to bring them down, such as by insisting that a university saturated with immaturity and hostile pettiness  is nonetheless equivalent academically to a Yale or Harvard. Such a claim, made by such people, belies its own validity and actually makes transparent the probable thesis that petty, immature professors don’t come up with mind-blowing new theories that are paradigmatic. Instead, such "scholars" are pedestrian academics.  

Living Ritual

I contend that for a religious ritual to be “alive” is for it to be responsive to spiritual truths as they are played out by or among the people who have gathered even just as spectators rather than participants. In liturgy, the readings and the ritual itself can stimulate a spiritual state of mind (un état de l’esprit—this last word alone signifying the connection), which in turn can even unconsciously prompt conduct that can be observed to be religious (or spiritual) in nature. For a ritual to be alive is for it to incorporate such conduct in order to draw attention to the underlying religious truth manifesting in one or more persons. The antagonist in this drama is the strict literalist who goes inflexibly by the letter of the ritual’s laws rather than the spirit thereof, ignoring that only the spirit rises and thus is capable of lifting humans in general and in a liturgical context in particular.

Immediately after finishing a short essay on Robert DeNero’s Catholic-priest character in the film, True Confessions (1981), I felt an urge to go to an outdoors Easter Vigil at a nearby Episcopal Church. Actually the first half of the lengthy liturgy—that which corresponds to before the resurrection—was outdoors behind the church. Watching the Easter candle being lit, I was surprised—and impressed—that the priest put the top-end of the candle in the fire. That candle was getting a baptism by fire! From that candle, the flame was carried candle by candle until all of our candles were lit. But it was moderately windy—enough that we had to cup a hand or use the thick program booklet to protect the small flames. Even so, they went off, and we came to each other’s aid in the seating area when a candle was snuffed out. After lighting mine thrice, I gave up, and shortly thereafter the four other people in the same row did too. So as the Old Testament readings were read—Genesis, Exodus, Ruth, and Daniel—I noticed that an old woman with the aid of her friend to her right took extraordinary care to keep her tiny flame alive. At first, I thought, why is keeping a small individual candle lit such a big deal? Then the symbolism sunk in: she was nurturing a flickering light in the midst of the darkness (and chillness) of night, like a person might keep an unsteady faith in God from being extinguished from the adversity in a world that can be unduly harsh. A person’s faith depends on the human will, which is subject to instinctual urges and even sheer whim. It dawned on me that the fortitude of the old woman should not be kept under cover, but, rather, should be highlighted to the rest of the congregation and even the clergy.

Light versus darkness is the paradigmatic leitmotif of the Easter Vigil. Theologically, the world is dark until the resurrection of Christ, which can be interpreted figuratively as the vindication of living by the spirit in a material world. In other words, meekness and even (and especially) coming to the aid (and even befriending) detractors (without incurring abuse or giving up on a point) turn out in the end to be a kind of strength that surpasses even moral conduct, including the virtues extolled by Aristotle. It can be distracting to mischaracterize the Gospels as historical accounts, for they were not written as such, and to focus on or even reduce the resurrection as a historical and even a metaphysical event. I submit that the religious domain is unique, or sui generis, even from related domains, such as history, metaphysics, the natural sciences, and even morality. Therefore, I strongly recommend looking for distinctly religious meaning in religious teachings and faith narratives that does not lean on another domain for legitimacy. In short, Jesus’ resurrection may have “really” happened, but we can’t get this historical fact out of a faith narrative. Distinct (and most likely subtle) religious truths, or meaning, apart from questions of history and metaphysics are also “really” of value, and I submit even more so since no exogenous crutches are used for legitimacy; such truths, likely erudite for religious adults rather than children who cling to facts even in religion, are self-validating and thus are of higher value than is religion as history, metaphysics, morality, astronomy, and biology. Self-validating religious meaning is like faith in that neither is subject to gravity.

Therefore, even great yet subtle religious meaning in a story (i.e., a faith narrative) held to be sacred can be eclipsed by category mistakes. As the Mary Magdalene character tells Peter in the film, Mary Magdalene (1918), the Kingdom of God begins with us, transforming our own hearts, in coming to the aid of our enemies rather than waiting for a metaphysical Second Coming to vanquish them. Peter and the rest of the disciples put their faith in the immanent return of Jesus—an immanent eschatology—to take on the horribly oppressive Romans, whereas Mary, who is closest (not romantically) to Jesus claims that he preached that the Kingdom of God begins with transforming one’s own heart. That message is too much for the other disciples, who are offended that oppressed (rather than just the Roman oppressors) need to transform themselves (and as a starting point no less!).

Outside the Episcopal church during the first half of the Easter Vigil liturgy, watching the old woman being so intent on keeping her small flame going, I thought she would have the inner spiritual strength not only to keep her faith alive, but also to use it to transform her heart into doing what is most difficult and inconvenient—even possibly contrary to human nature itself. For such a sordid nature to rise from itself may be the best definition of Christian resurrection that exists. As I was watching her from behind—behind more than merely literally—I noticed that the tall Easter Candle had gone out. Soon the priest had an assistant bring that illustrious symbol to the fire as he stuck his small candle into it, but with no luck. At that point, I felt a sense of inner weakness as I knew that someone should stand up, walk up to the old lady and light his candle from hers and use that light to light the Easter Candle. In the Gospels, it must take a lot of guts for Jesus to volunteer to read from Isaiah in a synagogue, and even more to say, “This scripture is fulfilled in your hearing.” I feared being refused by the priest’s assistant, which would have led me to feel that I would have no emotional choice but to calmly but defiantly walk away.

In terms of the letter of the ritual, the Easter Candle is to be lit from the fire itself, and this ritual was followed initially, so I contend that some discretion for the priest (or others there) would not be out of line. In other words, the priest could have been aware of the old woman, for all of the other candles around her had blown out. Going to her to light his candle, which in turn he would have used to light the Easter candle, would have had much more specifically Christian meaning than lighting his small candle directly from the fire in the pit. In retrospect, that pit seems very close to earth, whereas the old woman’s faith was not on the ground. Whereas the fire in the pit could not rise very much, the woman’s faith could indeed rise, and the priest could have brought the ritual alive by symbolically incorporating her faith as that which fuels the light of the Easter candle.

I was only vaguely aware of what I had been perhaps called to witness and testify to until I was walking back home from the church. While walking around the city block with the religious procession that marked the half-way point in the night’s ritual, I spoke to the old woman. “I noticed that you took incredible effort to keep your candle lit,” I said. “I didn’t think anyone noticed,” she replied. “I did, and I wish others had, including your priest; were he a good one, he would have noticed you too and acted on it by coming to you in relighting the Easter candle,” I said. She admitted that she too had wondered why the priest had not used her candle, as she was sitting in the front row and thus close to that candle and the fire. “He is a good priest,” she naturally said, so I qualified my statement. He would have been a better priest.

How rare, unfortunately, it must be for priests to observe the laity during a ritual, and even rarer to use some discretion to highlight a specifically Christian truth (or value) being manifest by one or more people present. If a ritual is like a wall made of wood, then sealing cracks so the spirit, which is alive, cannot get through is counterproductive, or at least short-sighted. In other words, doing a ritual for the sake of the ritual treats even the humans present as a means rather than as temples capable of nourishing the flickering Holy Spirit. I wish I had said all this to the old woman as we walked in the procession. Instead, I conveyed most of it, and, as the procession turned a corner, I kept walking straight ahead to my apartment. Discerning a fundamental difference between my own understanding of the core of Christianity and that of that congregation, I felt that something would not quite be right were I to go back to take part in the lit portion of the ritual, for in my view it would only be outwardly lit.  

I wish I had said to the old woman just before I left, “I have conveyed to you what you stand for symbolically by being so determined and successful in keeping your candle lit, and how neither your priest nor I had the inner strength to uncover your lantern for all to see. The world easily overlooks your quiet yet observable faith in keeping the Easter flame alive through ritual in your small yet large way, but your priest should have noticed and called attention to your faith symbolically evident. I would even say that this is why we are gathered here tonight. Faith in terms of how Jesus describes it is like a mustard seed, found not in the high and mighty, but in the unflinching fortitude of an old lady outwardly easily relegated as insignificant. All eyes were on your priest, even though he is blind and thus presided over dead ritual rather than living ritual. I take this to be distinctly Christian: God manifests in seemingly small places, or like the breeze that passes by Ezekiel on the mountain, rather than in momentous signs such as a mighty earthquake. Now it is up to you to spread this message to others in your congregation—that your faith has indeed been noticed and how it manifested tonight via symbol and ritual. Perhaps I’m just here support your gut feeling that your priest should have used your flame to light the Easter candle. My job here is done; good night.” Perhaps to be in such a role is why I was prompted in the first place to attend the ritual that night, or at least that I have the propensity to play such a liturgical role (or that of a messenger of an unpopular truth). I did a meager job, though almost as an afterthought I did something that I think in retrospect was of even greater religious value. As we were walking, after I had just told her that I recognized the religious significance of her effort to keep her small flame from the wind, I leaned toward her with my small candle as a request for her to light it, which she did, with a nod. With that, I was satiated and felt no further urge to continue with the procession for the in-church, distinctly Christian half of the liturgy. The old woman’s faith lit me inwardly, so I had no need for the outwardly lit church. Although the liturgy had been in the dark, and I walked home in the dark, to outward appearances not entering into the lit portion of the liturgy inside the church, the woman had lit me within.

Some people might say that God had called me to go to that church to convey a message, but it was all so vague to me and I was not very aware of what I was onto even while I spoke with the woman during the procession. Even though being lit within is arguably more important than delivering a message to a congregation, which may have lost its way, I felt weak because I had not stood up during the outdoor liturgy to light my candle from the woman’s and give my candle to the priest when he was trying to relight the Easter candle from the fire using his own candle, for I was afraid. Perhaps that I was afraid means that my hunch was right that the priest or his assistant would have dismissed my intentionally visible effort. Although I am relatively sure that my religious reading of the old woman’s faith through her symbolic efforts was correct, I cannot say that my urge to intervene in order to make the woman’s faith transparent by my acting ritually and thus symbolically had the legitimacy of being called forth by God, for God could do much better with someone else who is less afraid. In this regard, I can relate to the pope in the film, Habamus Papam (We Have a Pope) (2011). It takes guts to speak truth to power. 

Yale Divinity School

On February 21-23, 2024, Rowan Williams, a former archbishop of Canterbury, delivered a series of lectures on the topic of solidarity in moral theology. In my own research, I relate that field to ethics and historical economic thought. Williams’ theory of solidarity goes beyond what he calls “the vague feeling of empathy” that is emphasized in the moral writings of David Hume and Adam Smith. Williams has solidarity, unlike mere "fellow-feeling," reach a person’s identity and even one’s soul through a shared experience of existential fragility. Solidary pertains to interpersonal relations and is thus relevant to neighbor-love, which includes being willing to attend to the human needs even of one’s detractors and enemies, as well as just plain rude people. I contend that the upper echelon at Yale Divinity School is at two-degrees of separation from this sort of solidarity, especially as it is wholistic rather than partisan in nature. It is no accident, by the way, that the self-love that characterizes the school's culture has manifested in some courses being almost entirely oriented to advocating very narrow ideological partisan positions, politically, economically, and on social issues at the expense of sheer fairness to students, wholeness, theology, and academic standards. At the time, the school was accepting 50% of studen applicants. I leave these ideological and academic matters to the side here so I can focus on the astonishing distance between the school's dean and the sort of solidarity that he heard of in the lectures and that could lead to Christian leadership for Yale's Christian divinity school, which includes two seminaries. 

Decades after having studied at Yale in its divinity school and Yale College, I returned to do research because I could finally intellectually integrate two very different areas of my formal studies at Yale and elsewhere. I was stunned upon my return to find so much meanness by employees, who insisted that alumni in residence are not “members of the Yale community,” by a security guard who profiled me with intimidation, by faculty who rudely dismissed Yale’s policy that alumni can audit courses, and by faculty administrators whose skill in passive aggression surpasses all understanding. In such an organizational culture, a Christian divinity school may seem like an oxymoron. A Christian school within a university that is known “inside the beltway” for having a nasty organizational culture is likely to display hypocrisy.

Christian hypocrisy (and downright meanness) applies to even the highest level of Yale’s divinity school. For example, I walked up to the former archbishop of Canterbury, Rowan Williams, at the reception just after his final lecture at Yale's divinity school. The dean didn't want me talking with him. In fact, the dean had refused to speak to me since I had returned on the preceding Labor Day. I had introduced myself, but he just walked away. At the reception, the dean of a "Christian" divinity school was perpetually stationed near the archbishop, watching him like a hawk. As soon as the dean, Greg Sterling, saw me beginning to talk to Rowan Williams, I knew it was only a matter of time—that I would not be talking long to the archbishop, who, by the way, was very interested in my biological relation to a previous archbishop of Canterbury. Unfortunately, the paranoid, controlling dean who does not tolerate criticism of Yale quickly turned the archbishop around as I was midway through my second sentence in order to prevent me from talking further with the archbishop.  Nice, huh? Very Christian.

Ironically, Williams had just given the last of three lectures on solidarity with one's neighbors. In even deeper irony, the dean had publicly praised the lecture and the topic during the Q&A session, which the dean, rather than the archbishop controlled (although the latter tried twice). Just a FYI to the "Christian" upper echelon at Yale's de facto seminary: Holding a grudge is antipodal to empathy, solidarity, and helping even one's detractors. To be sure, as I had been marginalized at that divinity school even while I was a student (for raising theological questions), and again during the 2023-2024 academic year, when I was back to do research, even by the school’s director of Alumni Engagement, I had written short essays critical of the sheer meanness at Yale (https://lnkd.in/gpRptb6A and https://lnkd.in/enej8PEa). Even so, to intentionally prevent me from talking with another scholar of moral theology and philosophy at a reception really says something about vengeance and abject hypocrisy.

In The Godfather III, a cardinal in the Vatican tells Michael Corleone that even though Christianity had been in Europe for centuries, little of the religion has seeped in. The cardinal takes and cracks open a small rock from a fountain in a beautiful courtyard, and likens the dry inside as akin to Europe immersed in Christianity, yet little has penetrated. Caring for one’s detractors, and even enemies, is not something in the Godfather’s playbook. Neither, I submit, is it in that of Greg Sterling, dean of Yale’s “Christian” divinity school and even a pastor in the United Church of Christ denomination, or sect, of Christianity. Perhaps, as he appeared during my stay to be desiccated inside in spite of the baptismal waters of Christianity, he might benefit from my booklet on Christianized leadership. Although the booklet is geared to business leaders, presumably Christian leadership can also be applied at Yale’s divinity school.

Williams’ three lectures over three evenings were on solidarity, which in turn can lead to communion. Although this includes with the non-human world, the archbishop’s focus was on going beyond a “vague feeling” of empathy to share in one another’s fragile and dependent nature as living creatures. To recognize another person’s dignity and depravity, and thus one’s need to be recognized in discourse and caring is the essence of William’s theory of solidarity. Communion goes on to a greater unity and in explicit relation of all as finite creatures to God. Solidarity takes work; as it extends to a person’s detractors and enemies, that work is not always easy, but it is mandatory. I would add that religious experience, whether in prayer or meditation, or inner, concentrated yearning for communion with that which transcends the limits of human cognition, perception, and emotion (sorry, Augustine), can heighten a person’s sensitivity to other people once one is back in the world. By analogy, it is like walking outside of a theatre during the day after watching a movie for several hours in the dark. Existential sensitivity is on a physiological, emotional, and spiritual level, and is inherently oriented to William’s conception of solidarity. Put another way, regular religious or spiritual experience can heighten a person’s instinctual urge to connect with the dignity and radical dependence of other people as well as oneself. Being more aware of another’s inner pain or existential hardship is another way of putting this. The sharing of this condition, which naturally occasions fear that can be detected outwardly, is the foundation of solidarity, and from this foundation the actual work in caring even for one’s enemies can begin. It is in valuing such work that a person is religious; it transcends creed and even cognition or belief, as if religion were mostly cognitive rather than of the human heart.

It is from that perspective that I want to shed translucent light on the shadows and proffer my advice even to a detractor on Christian leadership, for it is self-less rather than vengeful, caring rather than mean, and thus of a power distinct from that of the world. In talking truth to power in the upper echelons of the Danish Church, Kierkegaard emphasized subjectivity over empty shells in Christianity. Unlike Husserl, Heidegger, and Sartre in the decadent twentieth century, I think it is foolish and unnecessary to base everything on subjectivity. Although Nietzsche’s dictum that God is dead was meant to address a logical contradiction in a conception of the deity by humans, and the philosopher proffered good insight on the will of the priests (and pastors) to power as controlling others, he missed the power that lies in helping even one’s detractors, or at least not acting on a vengeful instinctual urge. Such an urge Nietzsche claims runs wild in the weak, even and especially in a Christian priest (and dean) from whom hypocrisy condenses and drips from a dry core. False humility as a means to invisibly extract vengeance is the hallmark of self-love and is antipodal to neighbor-love seu benevolentia universalis rather than just as amicitia.

Judging from how self-identifying Christians typically treat their respective detractors, and even people who are simply downright rude, I submit that the kingdom of which Jesus speaks in the New Testament is still woefully not of this world even though it could be. All it takes is some hard work in being caring rather than retaliatory where it is least convenient. I know I have work to do, but I’ve also made the difficult choices to help my detractors and the spiritual dynamic between the two people when that takes place can indeed by said to turn the world on its head in a spirit of wonder—even expanding human nature. It is very difficult, but possible, and it has been done.

For example, at the reception for Rowan Williams, I put a retired chaplain of Battel Chapel, which is on Yale’s main campus, in touch with Jerry Street, who had been Yale’s main chaplain and was still working in some capacity at the divinity school at the time of the reception. When I had been a student, I interviewed him for my radio show on WYBC at Yale; he had been furious after the interview, declaring, “I will not be edited!” The station’s chief explained to him that it was dreadfully unfair to demand no editing. In spite of Street’s anger and unfairness to me, I greeted him warmly at the fall convocation in 2023, and I gave him and the retired chaplain of Battel a gift, as she put it later, in reuniting the two of them at the reception. I wish I was not so distracted that I could have felt the joy of giving to a former detractor; I really wanted to speak on research with Williams. Had the dean fallen or dropped something at the reception, I would have helped him up or picked something up for him. It gets easier if you have put in work in establishing a habit even if it falters from time to time when the emotions are too strong. The spiritual dynamic of peace that is felt between former detractors as one helps the other on a human level is that which Jesus describes in the New Testament as the peace in God’s kingdom. Such peace is possible in this world. Maybe the dean will become a Christian leader as a result of reading my booklet. 

Yale Vipers

Even though it is sometimes difficult to "read between the lines" to assess whether or not people in an organization are welcoming or tacitly "showing you the door," the message is undoubtable and even palpable when "all the arrows are pointing in the same direction." In the case of Yale, where I have been an alumni scholar temporarily in residence during the 2023-2024 year, the university's administration could do its alumni a big favor by explicitly saying that we are not welcome back on campus, except to visit and of course donate money. Instead, passive aggression, unaccountability, and even unwarranted retaliation rule the roust there, in what is a toxic organizational culture. 

Since I have been back in residence doing research this year, I have unfortunately had to put up with non-academic employees telling me that Yale alumni, including more specifically those who are themselves scholars back on campus for a term or two to work on research as academics, are not "members of the Yale community." This is particularly rich when the person is not a student or faculty, but is instead a non-academic employee. Even the divinity school's Alumni Engagement director, Barbara Sabia, told me in person that I am not really a member of the Yale community, even though my connection to Yale is academic and her own is not; she was fixated on Yale's ID that students, faculty, and staff have (alumni doing research have different Yale ID, which Sabia decided is not a real Yale ID). Zero donations from me to Yale's "Christian" seminary. 

I've also been profiled by Yale security employees (whom, I must say, need to take it "down a notch"; they aren't prison guards). 

He was not even supposed to be in that lobby

He was circling me because I had looked at the building directory.

Last but hardly least, although Yale advertises to alumni that we can return to campus to audit courses, almost all of the faculty whom I asked rudely gave truly pathetic excuses as to why they don't allow auditors; some don't even distinguish between students and alumni in the making of the requests. Seminars are off limits, even for visiting scholars wanting to attend some of the lectures strictly for research purposes, and even then no participation is allowed (hence falling short audit in this way too). This sets up a "bait and switch" situation for alumni who return in part to audit courses. I returned in part to do so, but the faculty have been so rude that I have demurred. Even in trying to get to guest lectures on campus, I have been distressed that my Yale ID does not permit me access to classroom buildings. I did attend some lectures of a large lecture class in the fall, but the professor ignored my presence and later refused to give me the information on when her make-up lecture would be; her graduate-student teaching assistant reneged with impunity. All of the arrows were pointing in the same way; I didn't even retain the notes I had taken of some of the lectures, and I do not plan to cite the professor, as academic discourtesy goes both ways. I had contacted another professor, Teresa Morgan, before I arrived at Yale to request to audit her course. She demurred, saying that she was near her enrollment cap (even though alumni don't count against that cap and there was ample room), so I replied that I would wait until she gives the go-ahead after the first class. When I contacted her, as she did not follow up with me, she said, "I'm going to have to reconsider your audit because you missed the first class and there was a lot of important material in it." I wrote that I had taken the decision not to audit her class, to which she wrote, "That's fine!" No, that was very fine. 

For less than a month during the spring semester, I had been attending lectures by Kevin Elliot that he gives to his EP&E (ethics, politics, and economics) undergraduate class. I had made clear that I was not auditing the entire course, as I would be attending only several lectures directly relevant to my current research project. In other words, I approached him as a scholar rather than as an alumnus. My mistake with Yale, given the wholesale disrespect for scholars not on the faculty, was to do scholarship as an alum. The previous semester, even before I had arrived in New Haven, I had requested Shelly Kagan's permission to audit his EP&E course; I had read most of his ethics book and wanted to solidfy my grasp of normative ethics. But he kept referring to me as "another student" and said that even with my seven years of philosophy, "It would not be fair to the other students for me to audit the undergraduate course without having taken the prerequisite course. Only months later did I learn that Yale does not even track prerequisites, so Kagan is not able to do so. So what I got was a dish of arrogance, rudeness, and the refusal to extend academic courtesy to an academic colleague even though I am an alum. 

Although Elliot's lectures in late January and early February were very relevant to my current research, this would not be true of his lectures after the spring break. Because I had encountered so many faculty who had quite rudely refused to allow me to audit their courses last semester, I had decided not to audit any classes anyway. I contend that a scholar listening to another scholar's lecture is not the same thing as auditing an entire course. 

On February 7, 2024, as the house at 31 Hillhouse that houses Elliot's office and classroom was locked even on school days (and half of his class during the fall term had not been able to enter the building!), I asked the department secretary to open the front door for me. She refused, even though it was quite cold outside and there was no reason to doubt me (and she could have consulted with Elliot). Eventually, she told a student that the student could size me up and decide whether to let me in. The secretary's distrust was palpable, and thus very insulting. When I had been a student at Yale, the university go along just fine without locking classroom buildings and having security guards and its private police employees on every corner even during school days. I submit that the secretary was paranoid and passive aggressive even to alumni; I would have shown her my Yale ID, but she refused even to come to the front door. Petty.

I spoke by phone to Jocelyn Kane of Yale's Alumni Fund because I thought she would have a financial incentive to see that employees do not treat alumni so rudely and as if we are lethal threats. However, Ms. Kane almost immediately laid into me for auditing without going through "the proper procedures," and of course for not paying a heafy fee, which I would not do anyway as I would not be allowed to speak in class. I explained to her that Kevin Elliot had acted on the basis of collegial courtesy to another scholar in inviting me to attend his lectures that would be useful to my specific research, and that that basis is distinct from course auditing. For one thing, a visiting scholar does not participate in class, and does not typically intend to attend all of the lectures. The point is to extract specific material that is highly relevant to one's current research rather than to attend a class. 

But Ms. Kane dismissed my academic credentials and decided she knew better even though she is a non-academic employee. Somehow, from her doubtlessly, either directly or indirectly,  Kevin Elliot got the word that I would have to audit the course in order even just to listen to four or five lectures. It did not escape my notice that in so doing, Ms. Kane was not oriented to address the secretary's rude conduct toward me, and presumably not those of the faculty whom I had told her had not open to alumni auditing courses anyway. At the very least, she should have been sympathetic rather than having me in her sights. Clearly, she instantly oriented to reporting me rather than helping me. Zero donations would come from me to Yale's development office. 

Ms Kane's inability or unwillness to master her own instinctual urge to retaliate even against an alum reporting bad, and even hostile, treatment on campus evinced an overwhelming desire to "turn the tables" on people. I suspect that his mean weakness is eched in the school's organizational culture, for back in September, I had written to Yale's transportation department to report that a supervisor, Shelly, at Transdev, the subcontracted company that operates Yale's shuttles, had thrice shouted over me when I had asked if a shuttle could pick me up at the West Haven train station on that shuttle's return trip to Yale's main campus, as some dispatchers and a driver had allowed and suggested, respectively, the practice. The employee at Yale was instantly obsessed on getting my "Yale NetID" to verify me rather than to "have my back" in going after Shelly. I submit that this fits the same pattern as that which Ms. Kane evinced. It may be that this dynamic is distinct and even epitomizes Yale's dysfunctional organizational culture. 

Weeks later, I happened to meet Yale's "Dean of Ministry," a high position in Yale's divinity school. I said that generally speaking, Yale's faculty don't want alumni anywhere near the classroom, which means that Yale's promotional claim that alumni can audit courses is misleading. The ministry dean dismissively said, "We just say it's possible," to which I replied, "Not to Yale's faculty." Rather than apologize once he realized that what I was trying to describe is essentially the "bait and switch" unethical sales tactic in business, the expert on Christian ministry quickly turned his back on me and walked away under the cover of the night. I wonder what kind of ministry he advocates to his students. Evidently not that they should apologize when they or their respective churches have wronged someone. In a dysfunctional organizational culture, apologizing is weakness. I guess it's not Christian either. That's interesting in part because I was on my way to Yale's divinity school to hear a lecture on moral theology from Rowan Williams, a retired Archbishop of Canterbury. I wonder if he realized that he was in a festpool of hypocritical vipers.

All this leaves a very bad taste in my mouth concerning not only the lack of accountability at Yale, but also the taint of vituperation and and the instinctual urge to retaliate, essentially to "turn the tables" on alumni even by a manager whose task it is to ask alumni for donations! As a rationalist (and yet also a Nietzschean), I wonder whether Ms. Kane has any cognitive dissodence in that her squalid attitude and conduct towards at least one alum contradicts her fundraising task. I also wonder whether she realizes how inappropriate and unsightly it is for a non-academic employee to dismiss what a scholar says about academic courtesy and research. 

In general, I don't like the meanness that I've encountered from non-academic employees and faculty at Yale. All of their arrows point in the same direction: alumni are not members of the Yale community. To be so brazen as to explicitly tell alumni who are on campus for a term or two that we are not members of the Yale community goes beyond being a pathetic fundraising strategy; the underlying psychology is in need of a Nietzschean critique. The weak who seek to dominate resent the strong because the weak, "new birds of prey," know that they do not have the inner constitution to be innately strong. Hence, the weak are full of resentment. This sordid mentality saturates Yale's faculty and non-academic faculty. 

I might add that I raised concerns about the comments that alumni are not members of the Yale community and on the hostility of security guards who have profiled me without cause to Yale's president, the dean of Yale College, and even to Weili Cheng, the director of Yale's Alumni Association, but nothing changed through the year. In person, Cheng was dismissive. I had already contacted her organization about the hostile security guards, and when I mentioned this to her, she said, quite dismissively and even in a hostile tone, "Oh, you," and then immediately turned her back to me and walked away. Nice. 

From my experience, both Yale's development office and alumni association are hostile rather than helpful to alumni who are back on campus for academic purposes, and the faculty are absolutely not on board with the university's policy (and promotions) on alumni being able to audit courses. Even the faculty's understanding of what it means to audit a course is conveniently deficient. I would like to leave you with this observation: I am truly perflexed as to the extent that arrogance and even meanness can trump rationality. Of course, Nietzsche wrote that the content of reason (and ideas) is instinctual urges, and reasoning itself is the tussle of contending urges seeking dominance over other, competing urges. At least it can be said that reasoning is impacted, or even warped, by a person's instinctual urges. So when a faculty employee at Yale's divinity school teaches that a country should not have borders, that the family unit should be abolished, and that monogamy (and even marriage) oppresses "other lifestyles," I am under no illusion that reason is in the driver's seat.