So something about me is that I'm a bit of a misanthrope. I love humanity, but I hate people. So I have found a good compromise for myself in being something of an anthropologist, looking at people through the lens of their groups and cultures and trying not to deal with them too personally if I can help it. Of course this is a pretty good definition of a racist, but I believe my intentions are slightly less self-interested than those of racists. I crave diversity and take the same dispassionate view of my own people as I do of 'others.' And that's just the way I am. So in my travels I have taken a peculiar interest in, though always at a distance from, American religion.
American religion scares the hell out of most people, and there's no reason it shouldn't out of me too. But for some reason, I feel good humored enough to engage my heterodoxical peers without feeling like I will wind up bound and ass-fucked on the river side like that guy in the Burt Reynolds Movie.
Nonetheless, I have a couple of stories that I usually like sharing about my experiences in America regarding the foibles of provincialism in middle USA.
The first is a simple conversation I had on one of my first visits to Salt Lake City. As many of you will know, the Mormons have a thing about genealogy. it's got something to do with knowing everybody's bloodline for the hereafter and so forth, so they do their best to track down all the birth records and match them up with folks and put it all onto the computer.
Well I have a thing for genealogy too, and while I was in the shopping mall in town I noticed they had a little darkened room with a bunch of computer terminals in the back. Standing out front was this tight little old lady who looked remarkably like Dana Carvey. I decided i would like to go in there and do my little search to get more info on my ancestors, so I approached the little old lady.
Now I was cautious. My dad had warned me as a kid that most folks don't take too kindly to Jews, so I decided to keep it on the down-low as I walked over to the woman.
"So," I said, in my most gentile-like voice, "You guys have genealogy records here, huh?"
"Yes, we do."
"Well, I'd be interested in looking up my ancestors. Is there a fee?" Damn! Blew my cover. . . But no, she didn't notice.
"No there isn't. Our software is open to the public."
"What if. . ." here goes, "What if you're not, you know, Christian?"
"Oh we have records for Catholics too."
That was it for me.
"Thank you, ma'am. I'll check back a little later." The flashbacks to Hebrew School came in a wave. . .kicked out of Sumer, kicked out of Babylon, kicked out of Greece, kicked out of Syria, kicked out of Persia, kicked out of Utah. . . Wait a minute. This was America. The Mormons are an oppressed minority, surely there's some simpatico there.
After a quick walk around the bookstore I came back to the little old lady who had not moved or changed expression for the intervening 15 minutes. It was a little like the gatekeepers and wizards in the Legend of Zelda who never seem to recognize you no matter how many times you enter their lair asking for magic.
"So do you have records for everybody?" I asked.
"We try to get records for as many people as we can."
"What if you're like. . .I don't know, Buddhist or Hindu or something, do you have records for them?"
"Well yes, everybody."
Phew, so maybe she would think I was a Hindu.
I walked in and sat down at the computer, typed in my parents' names and shazam, up came the names of my maternal grandparents- birthdays and death days with location. I was impressed. . .what else did they know about me?
Not much, apparently, just that I was some stray Hindu who walked into their shopping mall on a cool Autumn afternoon. . .
Well years before that I was driving around Arizona on highway 10. That's a pretty lonely road once you're outside Phoenix and Tucson. But somewhere out there, there's a road marker that says, "Meteor Crater site, 40 Miles." That comes to about an hour round trip off the freeway, but I wanted to see the thing, so I took the turn-off and drove along an even lonelier desert road until I got to the crater museum.
It's actually pretty spectacular there. Once you navigate past all the RVs and find a parking spot, you walk into the museum part that leads onto a deck that surrounds most of the crater. It's impressive.
The idea is that a rock came flying out of the sky at incredible speed and struck the earth, leaving this huge, well, crater in the ground. And it was still there. I was looking right at it.
Part of the museum was a little movie theater where every 15 minutes they would show a movie about how the crater was formed- a rock flew out of the sky, hit the earth and bounced a few miles in one direction. Scientists recovered the rock and it is now sitting in the middle of the museum on a pedestal for you to look at.
Well I was no fool. I knew how craters were formed. What I found most interesting about the movie was the people sitting in front of me. There was a husband in his late thirties perhaps, a wife, four sons and about five daughters, all sitting next to each other - the boys first, then the girls, in order of height (and presumably age). The father wore one of those beards like the Amish that made us pancakes at Reading Terminal Market in Philly- full beard but with the moustache shaved off. The women all wore little bonnets and aprons like little house on the prairie, each one identical.
I was mesmerized. What a country, that these people can live like this, that I can live the way I do, and that the German tourists seated across the aisle could be there too- three different centuries of culture under one roof watching a movie, and nobody was killing each other. I was proud.
The movie ended and we all wandered out into the main room of the museum to see the big meteorite that had hit the ground out here in Arizona. The thing was mounted on its pedestal by a steel rod, and the helpful museum curator informed us that even though the rock was only about the size of a terrier, it weighed something like 4,000 pounds (I may be making that up, but it was especially dense).
At this point, the man with the beard looked over to the curator.
"This thing came from outer space?" he asked, almost scoffing.
"Yes it did," came the answer, "In 1936 at over 400 miles per hour."
The man looked back at the curator, the scoff now fully realized.
"Well, I don't believe that." And he walked away with his wife and children.
I was beside myself. I had never seen such assurance in someone's faith before, standing up to a multi-million dollar science exhibit complete with grad student curator. It's hard to describe, but I was almost in love. The sheer stubbornness to flat out reject science like that without any counterargument or discussion. I was beyond envious. I was adoring.
When I used to read books about homeschooling, I was very careful to separate the "true" homeschoolers who let their children unfold in a natural, self-directed way, from the religious nuts who brainwashed their children even worse than the schools would have. I used to read about homeschooling families that wouldn't register their children as citizens when they were born so they wouldn't have to pay taxes and could live free on the land. They wouldn't need vaccines and they would never be drafted to fight in some God-forsaken country overseas.
At the time I was convinced these people were nuts. But the more I read, the more I realized- there were a lot of people like this. And the more I read, the more I realized that they're really a lot like me. I have no faith in government, vaccines, or school. I am not interested in having my children fight in Iraq or Afghanistan. And while I don't believe the earth was created in 6 days 6000 years ago, I find the scientific explanations utterly inadequate. (With a margin of error of half a billion years, they are hardly ones to be casting stones.)
So perhaps this American, from so far away- both culturally and geographically - was really more my brother than I would have suspected him to be, perched on my 4th floor apartment on Columbus Avenue. That different people could have such different beliefs and still, in this day and age of standardized knowledge and culture, maintain their loyalty to themselves- I find miraculous. And while I'm glad I will never have a real conversation with this man, for him and his people I am still most grateful.
After all I'm a bit of a misanthrope. Hate people, love humanity. . .
