Terry Levine | Noggin Advertising | Copywriter | Digital + Direct Writer | Blogging | Toronto | Canada

OUR NEED TO BELIEVE: MORE THAN 140 WORDS ON 'LIFE OF PI'

It's been centuries now since science took hold in our culture and in that time religion has slowly given way to rational explanations of how things work. For instance, we understand disease is caused by bacteria or malfunctioning biological processes, not retribution from angry deities. Same goes for the weather and earthquakes and volcanoes. As we have investigated, we have gained understanding and, with it, the gods have receded. But not entirely.

A lot of atheists, people who have dispossessed themselves of quaint superstitious notions, are often dumbfounded by the persistence of religious belief, particularly in the face of cold, hard facts. Some religious hangers-on no doubt hang on out of ignorance. But it's a mistake to chalk it up solely to that. Religion -- the stories we tell ourselves and each other to explain the 'why' -- persists because the human need for these stories often transcends cold, hard facts.

So (semi-spoiler alert), when the factual truth is revealed at the end of Yann Martel's Life of Pi, fantastically brought to life by Ang Lee, and Pi asks "which story do you prefer?" he is really acknowledging the powerful importance of believing, not just knowing. In his mind, even the most devout follower ought to know the reality that Jesus wasn't born of a virgin and Moses didn't part any seas. But, for many, our hearts gain something from believing the story.

You might say, done properly, believing helps many become one with their own inner tiger.

THE SAME BLOOD.

One criticism laid on Mitt Romney during the recent US presidential campaign was that he seemed to think rich people -- so called 'job creators' -- deserved a tax break because they needed an incentive to grow the economy but poor people, if they got help of any kind, well, they were just moochers.

That kind of thinking is a form of dehumanization. We count, but they don't. Our needs matter, but theirs don't. Our pain hurts, but theirs doesn't.

I've seen it endlessly from both sides in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Just take the latest events in Gaza and Israel. Hamas has lobbed hundreds of rockets, specifically targeting towns and cities. But because the rockets' capabilities are primitive and only a few have actually hit population centers or killed Israelis, apologists for the Palestinians claim that Israel's response has been an overreaction. "Only X Israelis have died, but how dare Israel kill Y innocent Palestinians!"

The exact same logic is coming out of the mouths of Israelis. "Those Palestinians, they target our cities and kill innocent people. We only target their terrorists. But if a family is wiped out in the process, that's simply collateral damage. They asked for it."

Dehumanization. Our dead are an outrage. Your dead are the price of war.

I had a heated exchange on Facebook yesterday with a supporter of Israel's right wing. I dared to compare Likud to Hamas, but it didn't go over very well. He told me that if I equated the two, any hope of achieving peace was pointless.

I strongly disagree and, in fact, I believe the complete opposite. I don't defend Hamas's policies. But if you're incapable of recognizing that Palestinians view Benjamin Netanyahu or Avigdor Lieberman in exactly the same way that Israelis see Khaled Mashal or Ismail Haniya, no matter who does "worse" things, no matter who kills more people or makes more inflammatory threats, then there will never be peace. If you're incapable of recognizing that the human fear of being driven into the sea and another Holocaust motivate Israelis in the same way that Palestinians' human pain and hatred over what they call the Nakba motivate them, then you are part of the problem.

This conflict will only end when enough people on both sides realize they bleed the same blood.

We're not there yet.

COLD TURKEY.

Imagine I'm a cigarette smoker. I smoke close to a pack a day. Have for 45 years. Since I was 19. I don't really love smoking. But it's just become routine for me now. I wake up and light up a cigarette. I have another one with my coffee. Midmorning. At lunch. Here and there all day long. Before bed.

I used to have a beautiful, rosy, olive complexion. But now my face is wrinkled. I know in my heart it's the cigarettes, but I blame age. I apply some expensive moisturizer to make my skin look better. It helps a little. I feel better. I light up another cigarette. I can't really taste food anymore or smell a flower because the smoke has dulled my senses. My teeth are yellow too -- I gargle with whitening mouth wash, it helps -- and the tips of my fingers, can't do much about that. My voice is hoarse. I cough a lot. Thick yellow green phlegm. I've been told my breath isn't great, so I try to chew gum as often as I can. I've learned to live with these things. Because smoking is just what I do, what I've done, for 45 years. Don't expect me to change.

One morning, then the next, I realize I'm not feeling great, I've lost some weight, I'm feeling tired, out of breath and I can't sleep so I go to my family doctor. He sends me to a specialist, an oncologist. She runs a battery of tests. Bad news, she says. I have cancer. Lung cancer. A tumor. The tumor hasn't spread, luckily. The good news is I can undergo chemotherapy and radiation and there's a good chance I'll get rid of it. But, she says, I have to quit smoking. I smile. I undergo the treatment. But while I do, I sneak a cigarette, then another. Actually, I don't just continue smoking. I up my smoking from one pack a day to two. Hell, make it three. I figure, as long as I can stop the cancer with chemo, why stop? It's covered by my health insurance, right?

Listen, for 45 years, smoking has been part of me. It's just not easy to stop. I resolve something important to justify my decision to continue. You see, it's not the smoking that's killing me, it's the cancer. I'm not going to dwell too much on where the cancer came from. I'm just going to bomb the cancer into submission, embargo it, kill it and keep on smoking. And if I get more cancer, I'll treat it. If I get emphysema, there are meds for that too. If I lose circulation in my leg and get gangrene, well, there's always a wheelchair, right?

But I'll be damned if I stop smoking. For 45 years, I've smoked. No, it's not smoking that's the problem. It's the cancer. So don't ask me to stop. I'll just keep smoking. I'll just keep doing what I've always done. And if you tell me to stop, well, I'll just smoke more. It's my right.

Damn you cancer. Damn you doctors. Damn you buddinskis who tell me to stop. But cigarettes, ahh, cigarettes, I love you.

If you haven't figured it out yet, this post is not about the perils or lunacy of inhaling tobacco smoke. It's about my people's homeland. It's about Israel.

Israel, I love you. You have done beautiful things. You have made Jews proud. You have made a desert bloom and invented the laser keyboard and the world's smallest video camera and instant messaging and you predicted quarks. But your military policies are not making us proud. They are shaming us. Israel, it's time to quit the occupation cold turkey. It's time to cure this disease. Not just because your smoking, your occupation, is killing Palestinians second-hand, which is frankly pretty bad, but because it's killing you. And it's killing our hope.

TAKING ONE FOR THE QUEEN: 140 WORDS ON SKYFALL

Some musings about the 23rd (or 25th) James Bond movie, Skyfall.

It's entertaining to see it the same week as the hand-wringing over US's spymaster David Patraeus' resignation for an extramarital affair. It just goes to show that people do in fact treat fantasy differently from reality. Or they're more forgiving of Bond's pursuits.

And while this might be common knowledge to serious Bond buffs, it was interesting to discover that Britain's most legendary spy isn't even British, he's half Scottish and half Swiss.

Finally, it's a bit surreal not only to watch the most blatantly homoerotic scene in Bond history, but to have the uber-hetero spy acknowledge (or kid) about having had gay sex. 

Oh James, how far you've come. We hardly know you anymore.

OBAMA 2.0: FORWARD MARCH

Tomorrow, Americans head to the polls. And if results are as expected, Barack Obama will win a well-deserved second mandate. But it will most certainly be a different kind of mandate than the first.

Four years ago, Obama flew into the White House on an emotional high of change. Eight years of conservative raping and pillaging left the country on the brink. With a lot of unease, they bet on hope.

And it was a bet that paid off. In the last four years, Obama saved America from the worst recession since the Great Depression, resurrecting the auto industry and Wall Street. He passed near universal healthcare. He ended a fraudulent war, began winding down a second one, and killed Osama Bin Laden. Obama helped Egyptians and Libyans cast off decades-old dictatorships. He ended Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell and got behind gay marriage. And he proved not only that liberalism and moderation weren't dead, they were alive and well and offered Americans more than the sclerotic policies of Ronald Reagan.

Hope and change propelled Barack Obama into the Oval Office the first time around. Tomorrow, a real record and a renewed and growing sense of confidence will. While conservatives begin the long-overdue task of eating their own and deciding whether to be moderate conservatives or neo-fascist anti-women, anti-gay, anti-Muslim, anti-immigrant wingnuts, Obama will keep his eyes on the prize: continuing to clean up the mess the Republicans left, making America a more just society and working to move America forward.   

 

THE MYTH OF BALANCE.

There's a widespread and disturbing trend in journalism that's based on the premise that journalism's role is to lay out sets of facts from both points of view in a balanced way and let the reader or viewer decide. You see this regularly on CNN, where two opposing "experts" are invited on to discuss global warming or debt reduction or abortion or Barack Obama's birth certificate. Then a funny thing happens. Instead of the anchor or journalist calling out one side or the other on something inaccurate, unprovable or downright dishonest, he sits back and gives the floor to the other side, as if simply allowing both to express their views eventually leads to the truth. It doesn't.

The so-called Presidential debates are another example of this. Rarely now does the moderator call out a candidate for saying something untrue. The belief is that the journalist should get out of the way and not become part of the debate.

Frankly that's bullshit.

Even on a source like Wikipedia, information is vetted to ensure that it's accurate. Hacks with agendas aren't allowed to inject false claims into entries and when details are disputed, a mechanism exists to offer proof of an opposing point of view. If it doesn't hold up, those details don't make it into the entry. But for too many in the media, that would be viewed as 'bias' or 'unbalanced.'

When a journalist reports on a billion-year-old fossil, he's not biased against creationism. He's reporting fact, supported by 100 years of testing and retesting of theories. It would do a disservice to readers or viewers to offer rebuttal from creationists quoting fairy tales from the Bible as a means of 'disproving' something that is scientifically established.

Which brings me back to politics. As, I think, a byproduct of this so-called 'unbiased' journalism is a belief by voters that both opposing candidates are equally bad, and that the truth on any given issue is somewhere in the middle.

Again, this is bullshit. In fact, it's more than bullshit. It's intellectually lazy bullshit. The truth about global warming doesn't lie halfway between what the coal industry says and climate scientists say. The truth about our existence on earth doesn't lie halfway between evolution and creation. When cases are laid out in a courtroom, both sides may make claims as to what the truth is, but in the end, the truth is not deemed to be "in the middle," it's deemed to be where the bulk of evidence is.

The bulk of evidence is that evolution is a fact and creationism is fantasy. The bulk of evidence is that we are affecting our planet's climate. The bulk of evidence is that Obama was born in America and Donald Trump is a weasel. The bulk of evidence is that Romneycare is 99% the same as Obamacare, no matter what Mitt Romney spins. The bulk of evidence is that you can't get rid of a $1 trillion deficit by giving everyone a 20% tax cut.

These things are proven and provable. And for voters or journalists to essentially cast off their responsibility to seek the truth and make decisions based on some misplaced belief in 'balance,' is not just irresponsible and lazy, it's dangerous.

 

I WONDER: MORE THAN 140 WORDS ON 'SEARCHING FOR SUGAR MAN'

What might have been? Most of us, at some point, are gripped by that question. What if the love of my life had not been there the moment I met him? What if I had not turned at that intersection? What if I had (or had not) gotten into med school?

Few of us, if any, find out what might have been. Sixto Rodriguez did.

Searching for Sugar Man tells the story of a 60s Detroit musician and poet slated to be another Bob Dylan. But after two albums and poor sales, his record label dropped him and Rodriguez vanished.

Except that his album somehow found its way into the homes of Apartheid-era white South African teens and his music became their inspiration to begin fighting the system. Rodriguez became bigger than Elvis or the Rolling Stones but, in this pre-internet era, South Africans believed their biggest pop icon was dead and Rodriguez himself never heard about his superstar status halfway around the world.

Then something amazing happened. To find out, you'll have to discover it for yourself, in one of my favorite movies of the year.