Why Do Fish - Fall From The Sky - Every Time - You Walk By?

I'm wondering what to make of all the accounts of "damned things" Charles Fort collected during his lifetime. ("Damned" because the scientific establishment in his day either completely ignored these events, or denied the validity of the reports.) Mostly I'm wondering why we don't hear of such things anymore. As far as I know, there's no cell phone footage of falls of fish or frogs, nor pictures of thousands of yellow and black worms upon a glacier.

(Such weird details in Fort's data, like he found multiple accounts of rains of frogs over the centuries, but never tadpoles. And lots of reports of worms on glaciers, or found after heavy snow.)

A cursory look at Youtube doesn't reveal any videos of these things actually falling from the sky, and the scientific establishment still says when it happens, it's due to waterspouts (which still doesn't answer Fort's question: why are the falls of animals always of a single species? Are the waterspouts discriminating in what they lift up?)

Fort had some odd suggestions as to why these sorts of things happened, including the possibility of "super-constructions" that periodically pass over the earth's surface and drop things. Also, that there's an area of null gravity some miles above the earth's surface, in which there are floating fields of ice and gelatin. (I do wonder how much he believed any of his own proposals; my impression is he didn't, really, but he didn't accept the received wisdom of the scientific establishment either.)

In any case, this sort of thing doesn't appear to happen much, if at all, any more. I think I know why.

Suppose the world as we know it is actually a simulation, one that has been running for a very long time. Perhaps all the unusual data Fort collected, all the "damned things" that could not be reconciled with scientific laws and known natural phenomena, were simply glitches in the simulation.

Why don't these "glitches" happen anymore? Whoever - or whatever* - is running the simulation has upgraded the system, replaced their hardware or software or both.

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* Fort also wrote, "I think we're property."

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Gods and Men

So, the story of Daphne and Apollo. The problem begins when Apollo, embodiment of all things masculine, makes fun of Eros' ability as an archer. As revenge, Eros shoots Apollo with an arrow that causes uncontrollable love.¹ Meanwhile, Eros shoots Daphne, daughter of the river-deity Peneus, with an arrow that kills any and all romantic attraction or feeling. She just wants to be left alone in the forest – don't we all? Why Daphne, though? Why does she – or anyone else at all – have to be involved in Eros' plot against Apollo?

Not taking no for an answer, Apollo chases after Daphne, making this one of the earliest stories in the West illustrating patriarchal denial of women's sexual consent. They run through the forest until Daphne tires and cries out to her father to save her, specifically, to take away her beauty which, she thinks, is what provoked Apollo's lust. Peneus hears her and transforms her into a laurel tree. But because Apollo's insatiable desire has nothing to do with Daphne's appearance – really has nothing to do with her at all, save that she's a woman – he still seizes her, wrapping his arms around the tree trunk. Ovid informs us that Apollo can feel Daphne's beating heart underneath the bark, so not only is she still sensible and aware, as a tree she is firmly rooted to the ground and can no longer get away from her rapist. The story ends as Apollo claims the laurel tree for his own and fashions laurel wreaths as his own personal symbol.

Three male gods, all demonstrating a complete lack of regard for the lone woman in their midst. Eros uses Daphne as part of his scheme to humiliate Apollo, with no thought for Daphne's well-being. Also, it is not entirely clear how this whole plot resulted in Apollo's humiliation. Apollo personifies entitled male privilege that sees women only as possessions to be seized and used however he wants. Peneus, who had been lamenting his daughter's unwillingness to provide him with either a son-in-law or grandchildren, in the act of “aiding” her instead actually removes his daughter's agency and essentially throws her into the arms of her rapist.

Gods, it seems, in particular male gods, are reprehensible. Others have examined this before, of course, the patriarchal privilege and oppression of women found throughout the Greek mythic corpus, but it was not just the Greeks. Similar tales can be found in the Rig Veda, for instance. These myths did not cause misogyny so much as grant excuses for it, provide justifications for it, normalize it as part of the natural ways of the world. Interestingly, though, the Greeks themselves were uncomfortable with their own mythology. They eventually came to view their own gods as sociopathic. They knew the gods, as depicted by Homer, Hesiod, and the other poets, were vile, loathsome beings. However, these accounts by the poets, Homer and Hesiod especially, were myths, that is, scripture, so they could not simply abandon these tales. Their effort to rehabilitate the gods involved reading the old stories in a new light, reading them not as literal-if-mythic events but as allegories about the human condition and our place in the cosmos.

But does allegory actually provide a solution to the problem these myths raise? Allegorical reading, pleading that the story is actually saying something other than what it in fact is saying, is simply a poor attempt at having one's cake and eating it, too. If there were a lesson to be learned, a point to be made, an observation about humanity, the cosmos, and the divine, why not simply say it rather than couch it in an offensive and disturbing narrative? Another problem with insisting on an allegorical mode of interpretation is that it is all-too-easy for a reader to come to the wrong conclusions about the meaning of a text, because many different plausible arguments can be made about what the figures and events in a myth are meant to represent.

But theologically speaking, the greatest problem with allegorical approaches is they transform sacred texts into some sort of puzzle for the faithful, which makes of the gods a mystery. The gods themselves become unknowable, their motives unreadable, our relationship to them untenable. Any uncertainty in the compact between mortals and gods is dangerous, because any mistake on our part is easily fatal, or worse. For those who reflect on the consequences of allegorical interpretation, faith must become a minefield.

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¹ But is it really love? Or is this not the mythic beginning of the patriarchal – and misogynist – belief that men cannot control themselves sexually?

Polish & Purity

This has apparently been a thing for a while, but recently I saw an article about "halal" nail polish. Muslims are supposed to wash before prayer (face, hands, feet). According to some Islamic scholars, water has to touch all the skin, otherwise the washing is somehow invalid. The general consensus seems to be that nail polish, being water-impermeable, prevents complete washing, therefore Muslim women cannot wear nail polish and pray. To meet this problem, some companies have invented polishes that are oxygen- and water-permeable.

At best, I can only believe the scholars who came up with this interpretation are stupidly nit-picky. Like Monsura Sirajee, I think this injunction has more to do with avoiding “corrupting” Western influences, and/or just the bog-standard misogyny often found in the Abrahamic traditions.

It seems to me that this interpretation completely misses the point of the washing, which is not unique to Islam; people wash their hands before entering Shinto shrines in Japan, and while it's not exactly hand-washing, dipping one's finger into the font of holy water at the entrance of a Catholic church to make the sign of the cross is a ritual procedure along the continuum of washing rites. Washing off actual dirt isn't the point.

This point about dirt is emphasized in the Quran itself, in the very sura that outlines ritual ablutions performed prior to prayer. Sura 5:6 states, “But if you are ill, or on a journey, or one of you has come from satisfying a call of nature, or you have touched women, and you find no water, then resort to clean earth, and wipe therewith your faces and your hands.” What, after all, is the meaning of “clean earth?” One cannot wash dirt with dirt, so how is it clean, and what is clean earth washing away?

All of this water is part of an initial act designed to set one off in space and time. Washing is the act of leaving the profane, everyday world, and entering into the sacred, whether it's actually entering into a sacred space like a mosque, or entering into a sacred activity like prayer. Being concerned with removing physical pollution is to miss sight of the aim of ritual ablutions, which is the removal of ritual pollution. The everyday world is impure, is dirty, a term we use even if, perhaps especially if, we're not speaking of actual dirt. It's this kind of abstract dirt, this metaphorical dirt of the world, that ritual washing prior to entering sacred space or time or activity is meant to remove. Permeability of nail polish has nothing to do with that.

But perhaps nail polish is an outward sign of a more pervasive dirtiness, as far as certain purveyors of Islamic jurisprudence are concerned. We see a clue to this in the verse above, that simply “touching” a woman (wink-wink nudge-nudge) apparently renders a person – that is, a man – unclean in a way that needs purification. The burden of ritual pollution lies squarely upon women, and interpreting nail polish as a literal barrier to ritual purity simply adds to that burden.

I think, rather than inventing new polishes, what is needed is new schools of Islamic jurisprudence.

Hate the Sin and the Sinner

A judge who works for the Social Security Administration was told, along with all other employees, to watch a 17 minute video on LGBT diversity training – basically how to treat LGBT folks with respect, and understand the diverse and inclusive society SSA is to serve. This judge, Gary Suttles, refused, on the basis that, “this type of government indoctrination training does not comport with my religious views and I object on that basis as well.”

He requested a religious accommodation to exempt him from said training video, and was denied, because by not undergoing the training, Suttles would leave the SSA open to various liabilities. He has since asked a district judge to block the SSA both from making him watch the video, and from imposing further disciplinary actions against him.

The question, unanswered by either Suttles or his lawyer, is what, exactly, is objectionable in simply watching a video about diversity training. They haven't stated how it violates his religious freedom, and they can't, at least probably not in a way that would stand up in court. Because what it comes down to is the Christian Right wants the freedom to openly discriminate against sinners.

After all, simply learning about treating LGBT people with respect does not in any way violate Suttles' First Amendment rights, unless you want those rights to mean that you don't have to acknowledge that we live in a diverse society. And perhaps the objection goes beyond that: if the SSA wants their staff to watch diversity-training videos, they probably also expect their staff to actually comport themselves with the general public in a similar manner. Instead of paying lip-service to that old saw, “love the sinner, hate the sin,” the Christian Right just want to skip the platitudes and hate the sinner. This is the end-goal that some among the Christian Right hoped to get out of the Hobby Lobby decision: the legal right to refuse legal rights to members of any group of “sinners.” This would be the ultimate “religious liberty” for the Christian Right, the freedom not to serve any member of any group, if serving that group can be defined as violating sincerely-held religious beliefs.

By not being required to serve a diverse society, by being able to actively suppress any sort of government or economic support for members of diverse social groups, they can dismantle diversity itself. So far this sort of attack hasn't been able to survive judicial review. 

So far.