Mathematics After The Fall

During the past month or so, two different people have made a statement so shocking that it caused me to doubt their sanity. It arose during discussions on Catholic instutional issues, including the papal conclave. They felt that American and western European people are too comfortable. I’ve heard this from other people, and disagree with this point, but I’ll withhold that argument. The shocking statement goes farther, much farther. I’ll make this a headline for emphasis:

There is not enough suffering in the world.

This is insane. At least, it’s insane with the proper definition of suffering. I’m using that from Salvifici Doloris, which I’ve meditated upon previously. From section 7 of that apostolic letter, “man suffers whenever he experiences any kind of evil.” Thus, to increase suffering means increasing evil. This is unthinkable.

The letter spends a great deal of time talking about the lessons from suffering, atonement and redemption and even completion. So much so, that I even noted that suffering sounds almost good. Thus, I can see how a person with an poorly formed conscience could leap from use to need. At least, I can see that until the consequences become apparent. To increase suffering is not just mortification. If we take suffering as good, we should exhibit that good - walk up and punch people, steal wallets, maybe even shoot a few folk. I pray, fervently, that once folks realize the implications of that statement, they will repent. To make it more obvious, I think if I ever hear that again I’m going to just slap the speaker to demonstrate the idiocy.

A speaker might qualify the statement, backing down from inflicting pain, instead talking about the wealth of the First World (Canada, western Europe, and the USA). If the comment was directed at poverty, I would agree; after all, there’s the Gospel verse about camels, needles, and rich men, and the Gospels mention poverty a lot. That’s not right, though; my opponents talk about comfort, particularly easy sexuality. Again, given their cellphones and tennis shoes and clean mixed fabric clothes and hot showers, I question their honesty, but there’s something there. Compared to 1850, or even 1950, there has been a big shift in prosperity. Instead of worrying about starvation and the great depression, now we battle against obesity and stock bubbles. As I’m fond of reminding people, in 1850 slightly over half of all babies born in London did not reach 25 years of age. Now it might be 5 percent. The vast majority of us enjoy food, housing, and structure exceeding the upperclass of 100 years ago. I am not forgetting the underclass, or youth hunger (the only appropriate number of underfed kids is zero), but in general, America has become a nation of kings.

Our problems are different now. The basics of survival are satisfied. When I had a blood infection in college, an antibiotic kept me from losing my arm. Glasses let me read. Electricity led to the light and the plane and the computer. I consider these all wonderful testaments to the brains God gave us. However, they change the rules. Our capacity for evil has increased, not just through the ability to destroy humankind via nuclear device. The consequences of sexuality (pregnancy and disease) are more avoidable, and generally less deadly, though AIDS is a major exception. Television and the Internet spread lots of concupiscence and evil, though they do have good parts. On a more basic level, almost everyone can read, and thus we’re not dependent on hearing the Word read to us. We have cheap Bibles, too. Some of us even read theological and pastoral works, making us more knowledgeable than the average priest of 300 years ago. We are not “simple lay people” anymore.

When the speakers talk about an excess of comfort, they feel that the lack of trial makes us more likely to ignore God. They spy lots more priests and religious in the Third World, where physical suffering is greater. The fact is true, but that doesn’t mean we should abandon our advances. There have always been people with comfort, and some of those believed, and some even became Saints. The Church has preached to the Kings as well as the Peasants. Though the truth of the message remains, the specific emphases and tactics change from time to time and place to place. The reduction of physical suffering doesn’t mean that we recreate it, for as I noted, suffering proceeds from evil. It means that we find new ways to talk about God, or adapt the old ways. There still are plenty of problems to serve as starting points. We might even use intelligence, and talk more about thought and theology. But I will never argue to create suffering. If anyone needs some, just ask and I’ll share.

I believe in happily ever after. I want happily ever after. Is there any wonder why I’m still single? A while back, when I was smitten by a woman I had recently met, I was writing this letter to an old friend. And I described why I liked this girl, and that I hoped things would work out. The paragraph ended, “And they lived happily ever after. The End.”

I’ve told this to a few people, and they’ve uniformly laughed at my naivete. One married man added “More like for better or for worse.” Everyone is right, of course. There is no happily ever after. There is no “ever after”. In the end, maybe 40 or 50 years will pass, but one of the partners will get sick, suffer, and die. Even if I believe in the afterlife, seeing her in the eternal paradise, there’s still the pain, sadness, and loss of this life. Then, there’s doubt, at 4 AM more doubt than other times, still a consequence of faith. And who knows how the New Jerusalem handles these things? Also, there’s no happy forever. Any two people will disagree sometimes; all people are unhappy sometimes. Maybe he wants the toilet paper to unroll from the front, and she wants it from the back. She prefers red bedsheets, he likes blue. Sometimes she has a terrible day at work, or the children act up, or he has the stomach flu, all not happy events. More seriously, a couple might disagree on when to go to bed, or what mutual fund to buy, or how to order their lives. Maintaining love is difficult enough, at least bad enough for roughly half of all lifetime commitments to fall into divorce. Of the remaining half, we likely know marriages that are together for the sake of the children, or two good friends that share a bed, or two roommates that don’t like each other much but remain bound by law and honor. Clearly, statistics are not on my side.

Still, I believe in happily ever after. I’m reminded of an answer from the New York Sun in 1897. The question wasn’t about Happily Ever After, but the answer nevertheless makes perfect sense.

Virginia, your little friends are wrong. They have been affected by the skepticism of a sceptical age. They do not believe except what they see. They think that nothing can be which is not comprehensible by their little minds. All minds, Virginia, whether they be men’s or children’s, are little. In this great universe of ours, man is a mere insect, an ant, in his intellect as compared with the boundless world about him, as measured by the intelligence capable of grasping the whole of truth and knowledge.

I investigated some truth and knowledge, like a good student, through a Google search on “Happily Ever After”. There’s a Philadelphia toy shop and multiracial fairy tales and academic fairy tale history and a French film and some romance resources and a lot of other stuff. Most importantly for a statistician like me, there’s a happiness study from NBER which claims that among other things, unmarried people would need $100,000 in additional income each year to be happier than married people. It’s an interesting question, since my income might make that jump next year. Would I be happier married as a grad student, or single as a corporate statistician? Very interesting. To go farther, there’s a book on The Case for Marriage. It states that “the evidence is in, at least for the ways in which marriage is practiced today: Both men and women gain a great deal from marriage.” Even farther, according to this article, I’m already too late.

Is it proper, then, to be “settling”, getting married just to be married? I can’t imagine that. One of my requirements of setting on the search for happily ever after is that I might not find what I’m looking for. I’ve accepted this possibility. I’ve been on my own for nine years now, mostly good. Sure, I want to be wanted, and my lack thereof is a depressing factor, and I fear failure. I have fretted over dying alone, my body decomposing for days or weeks until someone finally came around. The desire to have children is there, but slight, as is the desire to what Aquinas calls “the marital debt”. None of these are overpowering, and they distract from the true call, a suitable partner.

Who is my suitable partner, my life-sharer, my happily ever after? That I can imagine. The characteristics of my dream I revealed through a literary crush, Clarisse McClellan. Intelligence, since the language and imagery I use is academic and complex. Wonder, since my vocation is ordering the mysteries of the world. Whimsy and laughter, since humor is a neglected form of beauty. Courtesy, since goodness demands respect for all souls. Righteousness, since I claim a portion of the values of the fairy tale. Sweetness, since there is no more powerful transformative weapon than love.

It’s nice to make this list of traits. One might even look upon marriage as a market, where each girl has a list of qualities attached, on personality and attractiveness, and I would look down the list and select compatible people. At the same time, boys like me have our own lists; a woman looks for the qualities she desires, and those which I might meet. A good system could measure the validity of claimed truth, institute some sort of physical ranking system, and maybe even match people’s lists automatically. Interestingly enough, this sort of brokered marraige market is available in much of this world, just not America, the land of Kapitalism. That seems a little backwards, even accounting for literal Puritanism. Perhaps the online services serve as modern marriage dealers, though without research or subtlety.

Yet even with efficiency, the traits are not enough. That’s not happily ever after, either. I’ve talked about what type of woman attracts me, why I’m not willing to settle, the research, and what happily ever after is not. But what is Happily Ever After? I was asked that question, once, and the answer I gave was simple. Let me repeat it, slightly expanded, here. I think it’s achievable.

I want a partner, that 25 years from now, I’ll wake up next to her and wonder what she’ll be doing that day, want to hear about her tasks, share the successes and troubles of my life, spend time together, become lost in the beauty of her body and soul, and then fall asleep praising God for the unity we share.

That’s Happily Ever After. And why would anyone want anything less?

Friday night I went to a movie theatre for the first time since December 2003 and Return of the King. The film I saw was also about heroism, but more pressing than Peter Jackson’s excellent work because it was based on reality. In this case, the hero was Paul Rusesabagina, who through connections, planning, and force of will saved over 1,200 people from genocide. The movie is Hotel Rwanda. I won’t call it a great movie. It’s a very good one, but the writing is too positivist in spots. A romantic scene was added. Positive Westerners get plenty of screen time, like the peacekeepers and Red Cross workers. And Sabena, the Belgian owners of the hotel, who did intervene (for which they deserve heroic credit). The negative Westerners that withdrew peacekeepers and didn’t care and dallied, not least America, are pushed aside to radio reports. I felt compelled to think only about the success, perhaps ignoring the failures. Yes, the bitter humor of my describing a movie about genocide, that caused a great deal of tears in the theatre, as “too Disney” is not lost upon me.

Why do we not build castles to praise men like Paul? “The false heroes of barbarous man are those who can only boast of the destruction of their fellows. The true heroes of civilisation are those alone who save or greatly serve them,” someone once wrote. If we believe in heroism, if we look for its ideals, we should reward those qualities. Sometimes we do, through medals. One fund distributes a medal to civilians who risk their own lives to extraordinary degrees while saving or attempting to save the life another person. The man who wrote the quote above donated 5 million dollars in 1904 to start the foundation. He was Andrew Carnegie, of US Steel, a man of questionable business morals like Bill Gates today. Yet like Sabena, and even Gates, who has given over $1 billion for disease vaccine research, and unlike many Economic Fundamentalists, Carnegie understood the notion of community responsibility. That fund is the Carnegie Hero Fund, which has honored almost 9,000 people with the Carnegie Medal for attempting to save a stranger’s life at significant peril to one’s self. About twenty percent of Carnegie Medals are awarded posthumously.

Not all medals are as pure as the Carnegie Medal. One almost as pure, and known by more people, is the US Military Medal of Honor. While one might disagree with the act of war, the acts within war that lead to this award are highly heroic. For nonmilitary service, the President awards the Medal of Freedom, and Congress the Congressional Gold Medal. Only a few people have received both. That list on this site includes people I expect, like Pope John Paul II, Blessed Mother Teresa, Elie Wiesel, Jonas Salk, Nelson Mandela, and Roberto Clemente, but also some entertainers and politicians. Though they created great beauty, I wouldn’t call Irving Berlin or Frank Sinatra heroic. The qualifications for the Medal of Freedom and Gold Medal are less defined, more subject to politics and vagaries. This leads to abuse, the lack of heroism in the awards, gifts to those unheroic - or worse, Carnegie’s false heroes. CBS News reports on some of them, CIA director Tenet who lied about weapons of mass destruction, and administrator Bremer who rebuilt Iraq so (in)adequately. Worse yet, evil men can give medals, like General Augusto Pinochet of Chile, who took power in a 1973 coup. During his 17 year regime, somewhere between 3000 and 5000 murders occurred for political reasons, along with much torture. But the Dean of the College of Cardinals, Angelo Sodano, took the Grand Cross of the Order of Merit for his diplomatic skill and brilliance. Hero of barbarous man, indeed.

I don’t expect every man to be a hero. For a start, I’m not. Have I saved someone? Do I serve civilization? No. I look for a lesser goal; I could be a good man. Goodness is my standard, what I expect for myself and for my leaders. Goodness draws people. Why are we not surprised when I listed JP2, Mandela, Mother Teresa on the dual medal list? Their lives had courage, service, standing, and heroism. Those actions, from the fairy tale, still attract us, even when we profess modernity, beyond the childhood stories. We notice when our leaders lack that goodness (note the repetition about the goodness, if not heroism, of Josef Ratzinger). And when their medals come from evil men, it reduces the moral standing of their institutions. Perhaps, in the grand inquisition of truth, it might help leaders to remember why medals exist, why we make movies about men like Paul Rusesabagina. But hey, what do I know?