There is the past that is ours, we lived it, or through it. Then there is the one we want to believe actually existed, our parents and grand parents narrate stories about it. The times which were simpler, when things were cheap and electronic gadgets were unheard of.

And there is the one which no one close or dear explains about, which we learn from books and various other records. Some make it a subject of study and others browse through if need be.

There is the one we would want to dig and the other that better remain buried. We learn and unlearn from it. One that we forget, one that constantly haunts; one we are proud of, one we’re ashamed to own; one that makes us happy, one that sinks us into depression. One we wish we could relive given a chance and re-do things with corrections.

There is this sadness attached to the past. If it was bad, we are sad, if good, the missing of THAT goodness makes us sad. So should it be completely forgotten? Most people swear by living in the present. Not really.

Good, bad, mine, yours or anyone’s—past is an instructor and a constant mentor. Deny it and education is denied. Accept it, and the trails to wisdom release and it is this knowledge that finally becomes the source of steady delight.

Time to look back.
Yorely yours,
Manjit

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Looking out across the vast, windblown blanket of snow the Prairies is hypnotic. And yet I can't help think that in spite of the vastness of this land and the great distances between us, Canadians seem to share a common set values that I have been lucky enough to have experienced first hand.

Canadians, I have learned, have a profound love of our land and our natural spaces. And they want to take care of them for our children and grandchildren. They feel like they are already seeing the early stages of global warming and they are concerned about what it will mean for the future. They want to help, to do their part. And they have an innate sense of fairness - that we should all be doing our share. The passion with which people have expressed their views has been at times overwhelming, but these stories are the very reason why we did this tour.

It started with a seed of an idea. Long before TV, cars or cell phones, entertainers would load a tent and all their regalia on wagons and move from town to town. When their tents went up, people gathered to share ideas as well as music, acrobatics and theatre. Eventually, a permanent site for annual gatherings was established in Chautauqua, New York, and it became a magnet for people wanting to engage in public discourse.

A few years ago, I began to float a modified version of a Chautauqua. Why not take our ideas on the road, I suggested, going to communities to find out their concerns and to talk about emerging global environmental issues? The idea took root in recent months as, over the past year, reports about water shortages, fires, floods, heat waves and hurricanes suddenly showed us that such problems were no longer just happening somewhere else, they were happening at home too.

As the Inuit have been telling us, global warming can no longer be seen as a slow motion catastrophe - they are seeing it happen in the Arctic right now. In addition, Al Gore's film, An Inconvenient Truth, had an explosive impact on the public psyche, while books like Tim Flannery's The Weathermakers and George Montbiot's Heat ramped up public awareness and concern about climate change.

So we started planning, but we knew we couldn't just blow through communities - we needed the conversation to carry on after we left. Our hope was to act as a catalyst to conversation, a dialogue about community, provincial, federal and international issues, starting at the local level. We contacted local community groups in cities on our proposed route and asked whether they would partner with us and organize the events to enable us to gather with local people. Those local organizations have been amazing, and critical to the success of the tour.

When we set off from St. John's, we had no idea what to expect. But the response has been incredible. To date, we have recorded hundreds of video testimonies from people telling us what they would do for the environment if they were Prime Minister. And we have collected thousands of ballots voting for the environment.

Sustained applause and intense discussion during the question and answer sessions indicates to me a hunger for such discourse and a desire for real action from our political leaders. So here we are, nearing the end of the tour, having met with people in dozens of communities across this vast country. It's an experience that I wish I could share with everyone, because it has changed my life. Next month I celebrate my 71st year filled with a new hope and optimism for the people of this country.

Originally published on March 2, 2007

Dr. David Takayoshi Suzuki is distinguished Canadian geneticist who has attained prominence as a science broadcaster and an environmental activist. He is also a co-founder of the David Suzuki Foundation.

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China
Tea was first cultivated in China. Legend has it that Shen Nong, the second emperor of China, discovered tea when some leaves fell into his pot circa 2700 BCE. He found the resulting infusion pleasing and invigorating. Historical records confirm that tea was cultivated in Yunnan province and given as tribute to Chinese emperors as early as of 1066 BCE. This tea was green tea as the process for producing black and oolong teas was not invented until relatively recently. For a long time, tea has been the subject of great scholarship. Lu Yu, Chinese scholar of the seventh century common era, penned its first great work The Classic of Tea (Ch’a Ching). The work details the origins of tea, tea cultivation, tea preparation and the appreciation of tea. It is not a mere industrial cookbook or medical desk reference, but an evocation of the spiritual nature of tea and related ceremony.

Tea spread from the southern regions of China north during the Tang Dynasty. Most of this tea was brick tea and had to be roasted before it could be infused. The following Song Dynasty saw new developments in tea which was increasingly an infusion of whipped powdered tea. Song tea preparation, while not in favor in China today, has been preserved in the Japanese Tea Ceremony codified by Sen-no Rikyu. Mongol conquest of China saw the destruction and rebirth of much of China’s tea culture as the invaders and new rulers of the middle kingdom did not favor tea prepared in the Tang or Song style. It is at this time that the green teas started to be prepared as they are today with loose leaves steeped in near boiling water became the dominant style. In the sixteenth century under the Qing Dynasty, the fermented" or oxidized black and oolong teas start to emerge primarily as product to export to the West.

Tea in the West
Dutch traders were the first Europeans to encounter tea and bring it back to the west. Their trading empire based in Batavia brought them into contact with the Chinese. The tea that they brought home was black tea which the Chinese refused to drink as it was fit only for white devils. Because the Dutch had no experience with tea, they consumed it not as a social beverage, but a medicinal one. The fashion of drinking tea was eventually picked up by various nobility in France, and tea became wildly popular for about half a century. The British, who are so often thought synonymous with tea consumption were some of the last in Europe to catch on to this new eastern product. Over the course of a single century, however, tea became the drink favored and accessible not just by the British elite, but also by the common man.

To quench the growing thirst for tea the British East India Company had to import ever greater quantities of tea. To pay for these shipments the Chinese demanded gold, silver or copper because they had no desire for inferior western manufactured products. This led to an increasing trade deficit between the two nations. The British East India Company through third parties started dealing Indian opium in China. The opium trade while outlawed by the Chinese authorities was hugely profitable and provided the needed silver to obtain tea demanded by British subjects. In 1840, the Chinese authorities destroyed British opium warehouses that had been tacitly allowed to operate in China. The British responded by attacking and taking many major Chinese ports in the ensuing Opium War. The pursuit of tea brought about the forcible opening of China and the undermining of its empire.

The British thirst for tea also caused them to attempt to cultivate tea outside of China. India was seen as one possible place for cultivation where the British might be better able to control the entire tea production process. After several failed attempts to introduce Chinese tea plants to Assam, India, English botanists discovered a wild variety of tea that grew naturally in Assam. Thus, began cultivation of tea outside of China for the express purpose of feeding western demand. Western driven cultivation spread to Ceylon (Sri Lanka), Africa and North Carolina.

Tea Today
After water, tea is the most consumed beverage on the planet. Most of this tea is black tea and is prepared in tea bags. India rather than China now produces the most tea. Further, India consumes more tea than anyone else. Even on a per capita basis the British have been surpassed in their tea consumption by both the Irish and the Germans.

Since the American Revolution, more than two hundred years ago the United States has had a rather tepid relationship with tea and has favored coffee and cola. The United States has always been the exception to the rule that English speaking nations drink tea. While it is unlikely to unseat coffee or cola, tea particularly “unfermented” or unoxidized green and white teas are growing in popularity in the US. The growth can be attributed to the growing western recognition of tea’s health benefits.

Originally published on TBDTea.com. Reproduced here with permission.

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In this zone, which can be up to several hundred kilometers broad, developed much of the culture of modern Eskimo (Inupiat and Yupik in Alaska) peoples. Some decisive and significant adaptations took place here and in adjacent Siberia that allowed a more efficient exploitation of this zone. Settlements spread and grew, in some places becoming more specialized, as the historically visible cultures appeared.

Arctic Small Tool Tradition
One of the most distinctive and widespread Arctic cultural traditions appeared around 4000 BP. The Arctic Small Tool tradition (ASTt) was first called the Denbigh Flint complex by its discoverer, Louis Giddings (1964), after the type site on Cape Denbigh on Norton Sound. Subsequently, it has been found throughout the Tundra and Arctic Zone that is characterized by coasts that are ice-bound in winter and treeless hinterland, from the Bering Sea side of the Alaska Peninsula, northward along the coast and throughout the Brooks Range, and eventually, along the Canadian Arctic coast and the Arctic Archipelago to Greenland. The archeological assemblage is distinctive. It derives its name from the finely-flaked, tiny lithic tools that are its hallmark. Irving (1964), from the perspective of the Punyik Point site in the Brooks Range, linked the widespread appeance of these distinctive tools into the Arctic Small Tool tradition.

The origins of this tradition are obscure. It appeared fully developed in northwestern Alaska and spread rapidly southward and eastward. Its microblade, core and burin technology seem to have roots in the Paleoarctic tradition and in the general technology of Siberia and northeastern Asia. However, the continuity with Paleoarctic is cut almost everywhere in Alaska by the intervening and widespread Northern Archaic tradition which had its roots to the south and east in the boreal forests. It seems most probable that the transition to ASTt must have occurred somewhere outside of Alaska, probably northeastern Asia. Also noteworthy is that this time period marked the development and spread of circumboreal cultural adaptations (perhaps as arctic environments stabilized worldwide).

Subsistence was apparently balanced between hunting and fishing with the most likely mainstay species being caribou and anadromous fish. According to Dumond (1987), there is very little evidence for winter ice sealing, consistent use of dogs, or boat use - all of which are traits of the modern Arctic Eskimo groups. Some investigators feel that the Arctic Small Tool tradition marks the arrival of the ancestral Eskimo cultures while many others feel that, although there appears to be some technological continuity, the ancestral development of the historic Eskimo cultures took place in Siberia and the islands of the Bering Sea at a much later date. Nevertheless, the AST tradition people, by exploiting the resources of the coast and the hinterland, were the first group of people to spread across the North American arctic, as far east as Greenland (recognizable there as the Pre-Dorset culture).

There are currently two models for the subsequent course of the Arctic Small Tool tradition. Many investigators, including Anderson and Irving who worked in northwestern Alaska and the Brooks Range, see the tradition as encompassing a number of subsequent phases after the Denbigh Flint complex, lasting until around 1000 BP. These include the Choris, Norton, and Ipiutak phases. There is certainly a strong thread of cultural continuity through them that indicates some form of connection. Other researchers, such as Dumond whose perspective derives from work on the Alaska Peninsula, see a hiatus following the Denbigh part of the AST tradition and the shift to a new, but related, tradition named the Norton tradition. In this construct, Dumond subsumes the earlier Choris, the classic Norton, and the later Ipiutak cultures. The tradition is distinguished by the appearance of pottery just after 3000 BP. This pottery is clearly derived from Asian antecedents, is fiber-tempered and linear-stamped. Microblade use has diminished or ended, projectile points are larger with more lanceolate forms, burins have changed in form, and oil lamps and slate tools make their appearance. By the time of the proper Norton culture, after 2500 BP., the pottery is check-stamped and polished slate implements are present. The settlement pattern seems to have changed to that of large coastal communities that reflect an increased reliance on sea mammal hunting for subsistence.

Around the Bering Sea, the Norton culture persisted until around 1000 AD. On the Alaskan Peninsula this is evident as Norton influence progressively spread across it from the Bering coast to the Pacific coast by 600 AD. Further north, it seems to have been superseded by the Ipiutak culture (which others see as all part of the Arctic Small Tool tradition), which lacked pottery, ground slate, and oil lamps, but otherwise maintained a technological continuity with Norton. Ipiutak shows Asian influences or connections in its spectacular art which seems to show Scythian style elements. The type site, found by Larson and Rainey (1948) at Point Hope, contains hundreds of permanent houses and lavish burials. Ipiutak sites have also been found away from the coast, in and around the Brooks Range, in NOAT and GAAR. Cape Espenberg, in BELA, has Ipiutak sites. Ipiutak lasted from around 2000 BP until about 800 AD, when the Thule Tradition appeared.

Thule Tradition
This tradition, ancestral to the historic Inupiat and Yupik cultures of Alaska, has also been called the Northern Maritime (Collins 1964) or the Neo-Eskimo tradition. As defined by Dumond (1977), it includes all the prehistoric, recognizably Eskimo remains from coastal Siberia, St Lawrence Island (after about 100 AD), the northern Alaska coast (after 500 AD), and from the southern coasts (after about 1000 AD). The assemblages are characterized by use of polished slate for tools and reliance on coastal resources, especially open water hunting.

The earliest identifiable cultures of this tradition, named Okvik and Old Bering Sea, were found on St Lawrence Island, Siberia, and other islands of the Bering Strait. The assemblages typically contain polished slate, fiber-tempered pottery, and toggling harpoon heads of bone or ivory. Also noteworthy is an elaborate art of carved ivory objects that differs from Ipiutak. It is possible that Okvik-Old Bering Sea evolved out of Norton, but this has not yet been convincingly demonstrated. What is known is that it evolved into the Punuk culture on both sides of the Bering Strait after 500 AD at the same time that Ipiutak was extant on the north coast of Alaska and the late Norton was present in the Alaska Peninsula area.

Late Ipiutak was contemporaneous with Birnirk. After 800 AD, Ipiutak was replaced on the north coast by Birnirk. There are various hypotheses on the causes and origins of this transition, from Old Bering Sea-Okvik and Siberian influences (but not Punuk) to indigenous development. Originally, the Birnirk focus was primarily on seals but included some caribou; at ~800 AD whaling harpoons appeared in some Birnirk assemblages. While Punuk was almost exclusively coastal and marine oriented, Birnirk was a mainland culture as well as marine, especially in its use of caribou. Birnirk disappeared by 1000 AD, but not before giving rise to the classic Thule lifeway of winter ice-hunting, kayak and umiaq open sea hunting, dogs and dog sleds, settlement in large villages focused on whale hunting, but still using mainland resources.

Around 1000 AD, Thule culture expanded. Following almost the same path as the Arctic Small Tool tradition 3000 years earlier, Thule people moved to the east across northern Canada to Greenland. They also expanded from the coast into more interior regions, such as the North Slope, the Brooks Range, and along rivers such as the Kobuk and Noatak (where the Arctic Woodland Culture developed). They exploited a wide range of resources, kept up extensive trade networks and social relationships. Thule influence also expanded to the south. Following the Norton culture on the Alaska Peninsula, Thule influence reached as far as Kodiak Island. In the Pacific Coastal region, Thule did not replace the indigenous cultures but did seem to influence them.

Originally published in National Park Service, Alaska. Reproduced here with permission.

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Other psychologists study drives, the ego, objects, or the self. Jungian psychologists study images. The emphasis on the imagination is what is unique about Jungian psychology, which is an imaginal psychology.

“Anxiety” is one of the most important technical terms in psychoanalysis. “The ego,” Freud says, “is the actual seat of anxiety” (SE 19: 57). According to Freud, “It is always the ego’s attitude of anxiety which is the primary thing and which sets repression going” (SE 20: 109) – or, more generally, I would say, which sets defenses going. Freud says that “anxiety is a reaction of the ego to danger” (SE 20: 129). That is, the ego reacts anxiously – and then repressively or defensively – to what it regards as dangerous. Jung says: “In this way, as Freud rightly says, we turn the ego into a “seat of anxiety,” which it would never be if we did not defend ourselves against ourselves so neurotically” (CW 10: 170, par. 360). In a very real sense, every neurosis is an anxiety neurosis.

What Jung means when he says that “we defend ourselves against ourselves” is that the anxious ego neurotically defends itself against the unconscious. As a practitioner of imaginal psychology, I prefer to say, instead, that the anxious ego-image neurotically defends itself against non-ego images. As James Hillman says of the ego, “it too is an image” (1979: 102). “Ego” means “I.” The ego-image is the “I”-image. It is who or how “I” imagine myself to be. The psyche – or the imagination – comprises an ego-image and a variety of non-ego images.

In effect, I advocate that Jungians adopt a new terminology that I believe would be advantageous. The terms ego-image and non-ego images emphasize that, as Jung says, “the psyche consists essentially of images” (CW 8: 325, par. 618). As I define “unconscious,” it is what the ego-image is unconscious of. Ironically, it is not the unconscious that is unconscious. Rather, it is the ego-image that is unconscious, and what it is unconscious of are non-ego images.
To the extent that the ego-image is unconscious of non-ego images, it tends to react anxiously and defensively because it regards them as dangerous.

The function of non-ego images is transformative. Non-ego images are what I call “images of transformation.” They attempt to contact and impact the ego-image in an effort to transform it. The ego-image, however, regards non-ego images as dangerous precisely because they are transformative. That is, non-ego images are only ostensibly dangerous, from the perspective of the ego-image. The ostensible danger that non-ego images pose is to the partial, prejudicial, or defective attitudes of the ego-image. Non-ego images present alternative perspectives on the attitudes of the ego-image. If the ego-image is not defensive but receptive, it may entertain these alternative perspectives seriously, consider them critically, and then either accept or reject them. How might the ego-image be less defensive and more receptive? It would have to be less anxious and, I would say, more curious about non-ego images.

“Curiosity,” in contrast to “anxiety,” is not a technical term in psychoanalysis. Freud does, however, discuss curiosity. True to form, he derives it from and reduces it to sexuality. Civilization, Freud says, progressively conceals the body and, as a result, provokes “sexual curiosity.” He says: “This curiosity seeks to complete the sexual object by revealing its hidden parts” (SE 7: 156). Sexual curiosity, Freud says, is perfectly normal, although it may also be prurient or even perverse, as in voyeurism. It is ultimately, he says, “curiosity to see other people’s genitals” (SE 7: 192). According to Freud, sexual curiosity in particular is the very origin of curiosity in general. From this perspective, curiosity is originally an urge to see the unseen – and, more specifically, what I might call the “sexual unseen,” the hidden parts of the body, the genitals of other people. I would say, however, that curiosity is neither derivative from nor reducible to sexuality. Sexual curiosity in particular is merely one variety of curiosity in general. In this respect, I would say that curiosity is an urge to know the unknown – and, more specifically, what I might call the “imaginal unknown” – the non-ego images of which the ego-image is unconscious. From this perspective, a defensive ego-image is an anxious ego-image, and a receptive ego-image is a curious ego-image.

It is a notorious fact that it is rare for the ego-image to exhibit any initiative in regard to non-ego images. Seldom does the ego-image approach non-ego images. Most frequently it is non-ego images that approach the ego-image, that attempt to contact and impact the ego-image in an effort to transform it. Rather than approach non-ego images, all too often the ego-image avoids them, or, when non-ego images approach it, attacks them – demonstrates just how neurotically defensive it is and exactly how it is defensive, in an effort to protect the ego-image. The ego-image employs the familiar, famous defenses of “flight” or “fight.” An anxious ego-image is a suspicious ego-image – even, at the extreme, a paranoid ego-image. In contrast, a curious ego-image would be an inquisitive ego-image. It would inquire into non-ego images.

Jung declares that it does not matter – or matter very much – what the image is. What matters to Jung is not the image but the concept – for example, the concept of the treasure or the monster. Jung says that “it does not matter” if the treasure is a ring, a crown, a pearl, or a hoard (CW 8: 112, par. 229). Similarly, Jung says: “It matters little if the mythological hero conquers now a dragon, now a fish or some other monster” (CW 8: 372, par. 718).

Gregory Bateson notes that in formal logic a class is “on a different level of abstraction” from the members of the class (1987: 201). As a result, the class cannot be a member of the class, and a member cannot be the class. In this respect, the concept “treasure” is a class, and the images “ring, “crown,” pearl,” and “hoard” are members of the class; the concept “monster” is a class, and the images “dragon” and “fish” are members of the class. Logically, a treasure is on a different level of abstraction from a ring, crown, pearl, or hoard, and a monster is on a different level of abstraction from a dragon or fish. In effect, Jung privileges the class over the members of the class. What matters to Jung is the class (or concept). The members (or images), he says, do not matter or matter little. Jung commits a version of what Alfred North Whitehead calls the “fallacy of misplaced concreteness.” Whitehead defines this fallacy as “mistaking the abstract for the concrete” (1967: 51). When Jung says that the concept of a treasure matters more than the image of a ring, a crown, a pearl, or a hoard and when he says that the concept of a monster matters more than the image of a dragon or a fish, he regards the abstract concept as more important – in effect, more “concrete” – than the concrete image.

On the contrary, I would argue that it matters a great deal if the treasure is a ring, a crown, a pearl, or a hoard – or if it is, in fact, a treasure at all – and if it is a dragon, a fish, or some other monster – or if it is a monster at all – and that it matters a great deal if the hero attempts to conquer the dragon, fish, or monster or engage it in some other way. Why it matters – and why it matters so much – is that, in contrast to a concept, which is an abstract form, an image is a concrete content. The concept is nondescript; it possesses no distinctive qualities. In contrast, the image possesses quite distinctive qualities that imply, with exquisite exactitude, an essence. It is in and through those distinctive qualities that it is possible accurately to ascertain what is essentially implicit in the image.

Consider a dream that Fritz Perls cites. The dream is of a lake with water that is drying up. The dreamer says:

And I think that there’s one good point about the water drying up, I think – well, at least at the bottom, when all the water dries up, there will probably be some sort of treasure there, because at the bottom of the lake there should be things that have fallen in, like coins or something, but I look carefully and all that I can find is an old license plate. (1969: 81)

The dreamer anticipates that she will find at the bottom of the lake a treasure, but all that she finds is an old license plate. In contrast to a treasure, which as an abstract concept possesses no distinctive qualities, an old license plate, as a concrete image, possesses quite distinctive qualities. The dreamer says that the license plate is “outdated.” She notes that the essential function of a license plate is “to allow – give a car permission to go” (1969: 81). An out-of-date license plate is, in this respect, essentially dysfunctional. What this image essentially implies is that even if the dreamer has a car and may want or need to go somewhere in it, she does not effectively possess the wherewithal, the means to that end – an up-to-date license plate that would allow or give that car permission to go there. This image is, truly, the license plate “hard to attain.”

Jung is what I call a conceptual essentialist. He privileges the concept over the image. He derives the image from and reduces it to a concept. He replaces the image with a concept. For Jung, the image is incidental – relatively trivial, even utterly irrelevant. What is ultimately important to Jung is the concept, for “some other monster,” as he says, would serve the same purpose just as well as a dragon or a fish. From this perspective, a dragon might as well be a fish, and a fish might as well be a dragon, for both are monsters. The dragon and the fish are merely examples of the monster. They are images that exemplify a concept. For Jung, the images of the dragon and the fish possess the same essence, and that is the concept of the monster.

I, too, am an essentialist, but I am what I call an imaginal essentialist.
I maintain that images have essences, implicit ones, and that the Jungian methods of interpretation and active imagination can render these essences explicit. Although it is extremely difficult – I would say, impossible – to define the essence of a concept, because a concept is an abstract form, I argue that it is possible, as Hillman says, to “stick to the image” (1983: 54; 2004: 21) and accurately define the essence of an image, because an image is a concrete content with distinctive qualities. Hillman emphasizes “the actual qualities of the image” (1977: 69). It is the actual qualities of the image that enable the elaboration of a definitional consensus through the Jungian methods of interpretation and active imagination. Conceptual essentialism is futile, for it results in incessant, vain definitional conflict over concepts that are intrinsically vague. In contrast, imaginal essentialism is feasible, for it relies on the distinctive qualities implicit in images.

The images of the dragon and the fish possess very different essences that are neither derivative from nor reducible to the concept of the monster. These different essences are a function of the distinctive qualities of these images. Functionally, an image is a qualitative distinction with an essential difference. A dragon is a dragon is a dragon – and not a fish. A fish is a fish is a fish – and not a dragon. The one is not equivalent to the other, and neither the image of the dragon nor the image of the fish is commensurable with the concept of the monster. Different images serve different – often vastly different – purposes.

I do not merely prefer concrete contents to abstract forms. I do not just have a predilection for images over concepts. For me, the decisive consideration is purely pragmatic. Images simply have more practical value than concepts. What is so practically valuable about images is that they are more informative than concepts. The images of a dragon and a fish possess more information than the concept of a monster. Concepts are generalizations; images are particularizations. In this respect, it is the unique nuances, the details, of a specific image that eloquently articulate and heuristically indicate what it essentially implies and that pragmatically inform the conduct of any analysis.

Of course, from a certain perspective, a dragon and a fish are also concepts and not images. “Dragon” and “fish” are classes with members – for example, “Grendel” and “Jaws.” As concepts, a dragon and a fish are not as abstract as a monster, but they are not as concrete as the images of Grendel and Jaws, which are a dragon and a fish with not only distinctive qualities but also proper names and very specific narratives.

“What others call neuroses,” Ginette Paris says, “I call ‘monsters.’” She says that monsters are “images,” in contrast to a neurosis, which is an “abstract concept” (forthcoming). I agree with Paris that a neurosis is an abstract concept, but I disagree with her that a monster is an image. A monster is also a concept. It is no more a concrete image than a neurosis is. Catherine Atherton notes that the concept of the monster is “vague, malleable, and inconsistent” and that, as a result, “any general theory about what monsters are and what they do” must acknowledge “this uncertainty.” Atherton says that “it is we who decide – in some sense of ‘decide’ – what counts as monstrous.” She says that different definitions of the monster are a function of “different times, places, and cultures” or of different perspectives within a culture (1998: x). That is, in teratology, or the general theory of monsters, the definition of the monster, as a concept, is indefinite. I would say that it is the ego-image that decides what counts as monstrous. What the ego-image counts as monstrous are non-ego images, which it tends to regard as dangerous. A monster is just a non-ego image that an anxious and defensive – or neurotic – ego-image considers a danger.

In this respect, Jung mentions “the totally erroneous supposition that the unconscious is a monster.” This notion, he says, is just “fear of nature and the realities of life” (CW 16: 152, par. 328). The unconscious, Jung asserts, is not a “monster” but a “natural entity” that is “completely neutral.” He contends that the unconscious “only becomes dangerous when our conscious attitude to it is hopelessly wrong.” He says of the unconscious: “To the degree that we repress it, its danger increases” (CW 16: 152, par. 329). Or, as I prefer to say, non-ego images from the unconscious only become dangerous when the anxious and defensive – or repressive – attitude of the ego-image wrongly regards them as monstrous.

“Monster” is an epithet by which the ego-image disparages the non-ego image. This is an example of the process that Bateson calls “teratogenic,” which he defines as “a creating of monsters” (1991: 292). A teratogenic ego-image creates a “monster” merely by calling it so. The non-ego image is a “so-called” monster. Calling it so “monsterizes” the non-ego image and immediately restricts the options at the disposal of the ego-image. For example, calling it so may excuse killing the non-ego image.

Among the seven plots that Christopher Booker identifies as basic, the very first is what he calls “Overcoming the Monster.” I might say that the hero does not “undergo” the monster but “overcomes” it. Booker says that the monster is what “the hero must confront in a fight to the death” (2004: 22). From this perspective, overcoming the monster entails slaying the monster. The contemporary monster, Booker says, is the “monster of global terrorism” (2004: 695). He notes that the first war in Iraq in 1991 did not “overcome Saddam Hussein,” did not “slay the monster.” In this respect, the second war against Iraq in 2003 was an effort by America and George W. Bush to complete the plot, but, as Booker says, “the plot was not quite so simple,” for, even if Saddam Hussein was to a certain extent a monster, he was not as monstrous as all that. He did not possess weapons of mass destruction, and, from another perspective, Booker says, “of course, it was not Saddam who was the monster” but “America and Bush” (2004: 696).

Monster-slaying is a recurrent but not, as Jungians tend to assume, a universal theme. Of fifty cultures that Clyde Kluckhohn surveys, the monster-slaying theme is indigenous to thirty-seven cultures (1960: 51). Although by definition killing is a putting to death in any manner, while slaying is a putting to death in a deliberate, violent, even wanton manner, slaying has a more heroic connotation than killing – hence the Jungian preference for monster-slaying over monster-killing. To “slay” is more poetic – and, I might say, more euphemistic – than to “kill.” Slaying justifies, dignifies, even glorifies killing.

“Killing monsters is not,” Paris says, “a good idea” (forthcoming). When the ego-image regards a non-ego image as a monster, however, it tends to commit what I call imagicide. The tendency is for the ego-image to “kill” the non-ego image, the “monster.” Consider, in this respect, the ego-image and non-ego image in this dream:

I’m walking in the dark. A very strange animal arrives. The body is of a big dog. The face is of a rabbit with two very big teeth like a snake’s. The animal keeps biting me and literally taking part of my flesh. I grab the animal, twirl it in the air, and throw it away. At that moment, I’m thinking: “Yes, it’s dead.” I’ve killed it.

In dreams, Anthony Stevens says, “from a psychological perspective, the monster is the ‘monster within’” (1995: 188). Edward C. Whitmont and Sylvia Brinton Perera assert that monsters “are not uncommon in dreams.” Such images, they contend, epitomize “energy that is, in actuality, or felt to be, ‘monstrous.’” Frequently, they say, the image of the monster is “an unnatural combination of qualities” (1989: 109). In this dream, the ego-image does not explicitly identify the non-ego image as a monster. It describes the non-ego image as a “very strange animal.” David Williams notes, however, that prominent among “monsters of earthly form” are those that are “combinations of various animal forms” (1996: 178). The animal in this dream is just such an unnatural combination of qualities. It is a combination of three animal forms – a dog’s body, a rabbit’s face, and a snake’s teeth. After the dreamer recounted the dream to me, I asked him why he had killed the animal. “When you asked me why I killed it,” he replied, “I was lost – I had no answer.” Then, he said: “In the dream, I felt that I had to protect myself, that I had to kill it.” The non-ego image bites the ego-image and literally takes part of its flesh. The ego-image responds defensively, as ego-images tend to do, and kills the non-ego image. It does not occur to the ego-image to engage the non-ego image in any other way. The ego-image just reacts; it does not pause and reflect and consider that there might be any viable alternatives but to kill the non-ego image.

Why is it not, as Paris says, a good idea to kill monsters? It is not a good idea in the first place because the non-ego image may not be a monster at all but only a “monster” in the paranoid projection of an anxious, excessively protective ego-image and in the second place because, even if the non-ego image is, in some respect, a monster, to kill it is to obviate any necessity – and any opportunity – for the ego-image to engage it in some other way. For example, a curious ego-image might inquire into the non-ego image – might inquire of it why it is such a very strange animal, a combination of a dog’s body, a rabbit’s face, and a snake’s teeth, and why it bites the ego-image and literally takes part of its flesh – why the non-ego image contacts and impacts the ego-image in just this way in an effort to transform it. Engaging the non-ego image in “some other way” than, for example, killing it (or censoring it) requires an ego-image capable of seriously entertaining, with no bias, a variety of options.

Not only in dreams does the ego-image kill non-ego images. England and America also kill non-ego images – dragons and fish. England has St. George and the dragon; America has Captain Ahab and the fish. St. George lances the dragon; Captain Ahab harpoons the fish. Jung says that, topographically, the unconscious is “something below your feet, and you are St. George standing upon the dragon.” This image, he says, “is the medieval ambition, to kill the dragon and stand on top of it” (1988 1: 155). I would say that this image is not only the medieval ambition but also the contemporary ambition, and it is not only, I would emphasize, a male ambition but also a female ambition. Consider, in this respect, the account that Williams provides of St. Margaret and the dragon (1996: 317-18). Margaret is a convert from paganism to Christianity. A local prefect attempts to seduce her and force her to worship pagan gods, but she refuses. From prison, she prays to God. Instantly, the enemy manifests as a dragon that swallows her. From the belly of the dragon, she makes the sign of the cross. The dragon explodes, and Margaret emerges. Then, however, the enemy manifests again, this time as a handsome young man who attempts to seduce her. “But,” Jacobus De Voragine says, “Margaret laid hold of him by the head, stretched him on the ground, and put her right foot upon him, saying: ‘Proud demon, lie prostrate beneath a woman’s foot!’” (1991: 353). Like Kali the Hindu goddess, Margaret the Christian saint stands on top of a prostrate man. This is feminist – or “genderist” – triumphalism with a vengeance. What an ambition! To kill the dragon, to kill the unconscious, to kill the enemy, to kill the handsome young man, to kill the demon, to kill the non-ego image, and then to stand on top of it!

“The implacable mutual hostility between man and dragon, as exemplified in the myth of St. George,” Carl Sagan says, “is strongest in the West.” It is not, however, “a Western anomaly,” he says, but “a worldwide phenomenon” (1977: 140-1). Although in the motif-index that Stith Thompson provides, “Fight with dragon” is type B11.11. (1955 1: 354), the theme is not, in spite of what Sagan says, universal. The Western tradition, of course, equates the dragon with the devil. Rather than analyze the dragon, the Western tradition moralizes the dragon. Moralistically equating the dragon with the devil, the very epitome of evil, conveniently excuses killing the dragon. St. George is a variation on St. Michael, who fights the dragon at the apocalypse: “There was war in heaven: Michael and his angels fought against the dragon; and the dragon fought and his angels, And prevailed not; neither was their place found any more in heaven. And the great dragon was cast out” (Revelations 12: 7-8). June Allen and Jeanne Griffiths say that “St. Michael threw the dragon out of heaven and left St. George to deal with him once he landed on earth” (1979: 51). As a result, it is easier, they say, to identify with the down-to-earth St. George than the up-in-heaven St. Michael. Hillman notes that the tradition of St. George and the Dragon is “the major Western paradigm” of the hero myth. “Killing the dragon in the hero myth,” he declares, “is nothing less than killing the imagination” (1991: 169). Hillman recounts how in the 1950s he was present when Esther Harding delivered a presentation “in favor of killing the dragon.” Harding was, he exclaims, “so moralistic!” (Marlan 2006: 192). The hero may have, as Joseph Campbell says, a thousand faces (1968), but the face of the hero in the Western tradition is that of a killer. The implications are absolutely incredible: culturally, socially, politically, militarily, religiously, sexually, ecologically – and, of course, psychoanalytically.

Jung considers Moby-Dick “to be the greatest American novel” (CW 15: 88, par. 137). Why is the novel so great? I would say that it is great because Melville so radically deconstructs the hero myth. Captain Ahab does not kill the fish. The fish kills Captain Ahab – and all the sailors except Ishmael, who survives only by accident. In an attempt to commit imagicide, or kill the image, Captain Ahab, in effect, commits suicide and homicide. Melville explicitly diagnoses Captain Ahab as a case of monomania. Captain Ahab is not neurotically defensive; he is psychotically offensive. As Melville deconstructs the hero myth, it is insane. Of course, this deconstruction does not prevent America from chasing the “White Whale” – however elusive, even illusory, it may be – and then harpooning it. America kills the fish first and asks questions later, if ever.

Many villages and towns in England have traditions of dragon-killing heroes. These traditions recount local details about the hero and the dragon. For example, the version that Jacqueline Simpson provides of Jim Pulk and the Knucker of Lyminster even includes which pub the hero visits after he kills the dragon:

Jim Pulk was a farmer’s boy, who baked a huge Sussex pie and put poison inside it, and drew it on a farm cart to the Knucker Hole [at Lyminster], while he himself hid behind a hedge. The Dragon came out, ate the pie, died, and Jim Pulk then emerged and cut off his head with his scythe. He then went down to the Six Bells Inn, had a drink to celebrate his victory, and fell down dead. Presumably, he had got some poison on his hand, which, no doubt, very properly, he drew across his mouth after downing his pint. (1980: 45).

Apparently, the ironically hygenic moral of this tradition is that, however civil the manners of the dragon-killing hero may be, in order to survive a beer perhaps he should also be an obsessive-compulsive hand-washing hero.

In The Mythological Unconscious, I acknowledge that I committed an egregious error when I interpreted a dream that a young man had about a dragon. I erred when I assumed that the ego-image must kill the non-ego image – that, in order to become a hero, the young man must slay the dragon. The young man cautioned me that the dream did not stipulate that “the dragon must be slain.” There was no dragon-slaying indication in the dream. The young man pondered the image of dragons and quite properly wondered: “Why does everyone want to kill them?” (Adams 2001: 426-7). At least on that occasion, he was a much more astute psychoanalyst than I was. I deserved a rebuke. Rather than “stick to the image,” I had unconsciously – and uncritically – projected onto the dream the Jungian concept of the dragon-slaying hero. I had killed the image. The dream, I had to admit, did not indicate that the young man must slay the dragon but, at most, only that he “must effectively engage the dragon in some way” (Adams: 2001: 430).

“Those of us who are students of psychology,” Mary Watkins says, “have become heirs to a potential arsenal of ways to kill the image.” The effect is to lead “away from a direct experience of the image,” she says, “towards a concept” (1984: 135). Psychoanalysts – among them, Jungian psychoanalysts – routinely kill images. Hillman says that this killing occurs by interpreting images – that is, by deriving them from and reducing them to concepts. As Hillman defines interpretation, it is a conceptualization of the imagination. Interpreting a dream, he says, is “killing its images with interpretative concepts” (1979: 116). Replacing images with concepts – for example, interpreting a snake as “fear,” “sexuality,” or the “mother-complex” – is, Hillman says, “killing the snake” (1975: 39). A black snake may be an image in a dream, and in an analytic session an individual “can spend a whole hour with this black snake, talking about the devouring mother, talking about the anxiety, talking about the repressed sexuality, talking about the natural mind,” Hillman says, and then the individual “leaves the hour with a concept about my repressed sexuality or my cold black passions or my mother or whatever it is” (1983: 53-4). From this perspective, any concept is the very death of any image. Not all interpretation, however, is conceptual. There is also what I call imaginal interpretation. Interpretation need not kill the image with a concept. Rather than replace the image with a concept, it may respect the image and, by meticulous attention to the distinctive qualities of the image, render explicit the essence that is implicit in the image.

Of course, interpretation is not the only Jungian method. There is also active imagination. Active imagination requires an ego-image that is curious and inquisitive. The ego-image actively engages the non-ego image in a dialogue. Active imagination is a conversation between the ego-image and the non-ego image. It is not a dictation but a negotiation. In this sense, active imagination is a variety of diplomacy. It is not only a “talking cure” but also a “listening cure.” In active imagination, the ego-image talks to the non-ego image and listens to it, and the non-ego image talks to the ego-image and listens to it. Active imagination is interactive imagination. Both the ego-image and the non-ego image pose questions, and both provide answers. There is no imperative, I would emphasize, for the ego-image to capitulate to the non-ego image. In active imagination, the only obligation is for the ego-image to entertain seriously and consider critically what the non-ego image has to say. What the non-ego image has to say is not necessarily the “truth.” It is an opinion that the ego-image may either accept or reject. In the process, not only may the non-ego image persuade the ego-image, but also the ego-image may convince the non-ego image. The non-ego image may transform the ego-image, and the ego-image may transform the non-ego image. In active imagination, the ego-image is just as much an “image of transformation” as the non-ego image is. Actively imagine a dialogue between St. George and the dragon or between Captain Ahab and the fish: not St. George lancing the dragon or Captain Ahab harpooning the fish – not a concept killing the image – but St. George and the dragon and Captain Ahab and the fish conducting a reciprocal conversation and experiencing a mutual transformation. Or actively imagine a dinner and a drink, a pie and a pint, with no poison, between Jim Pulk and the Knucker of Lyminster at a pub. Or actively imagine, as Nicholas D. Kristof does, a direct negotiation between America and North Korea over the issue of nuclear proliferation. “We sometimes,” Kristof says, “do better talking to monsters than trying to slay them or wish them away” (October 10, 2006: A25).

Why does the ego-image tend to kill non-ego images rather than engage them in some other way? I would argue that it does so because it regards non-ego images as “opposite” rather than “different.” The neurotic reaction of the ego-image to the non-ego image is a function of what I call moralistic, scientific, and aesthetic oppositions – good versus evil, true versus false, and beautiful versus ugly. These oppositions provide the ego-image with a convenient excuse to repress – or “kill” – non-ego images that it considers evil, false, or ugly – and, as a result, dangerous. “Evil,” “false,” and “ugly” are, of course, concepts. When the ego-image applies these concepts to non-ego images, these oppositions obliterate the differences, the distinctive qualities, that are intrinsic to non-ego images.

If Jungian psychology were an imaginology, it would be deconstructive rather than repressive. Such an imaginology would be a combination of Jungian psychology and Derridean philosophy. It would emphasize “differences,” as Jacques Derrida does (1973). The ego-image would not repress non-ego images. Non-ego images would deconstruct the ego-image. The ego-image would not be “opposite” to non-ego images. Non-ego images would be “different” from the ego-image. An ego-image that non-ego images have deconstructed would be an ego-image that does not regard non-ego images as an array of oppositions that it must repress (evil, false, or ugly non-ego images as a danger to the good, true, and beautiful ego-image) but as a profusion of differences that it may contemplate and then engage in appropriate ways. This project would not be a conceptualization of the imagination but what Hillman argues is “the major task” of contemporary psychology: “the differentiation of the imagination” (1975: 37).

REFERENCES

Adams, M.V. (2001) The Mythological Unconscious, New York and London:
Karnac.

Adams, M.V. (2004) The Fantasy Principle: Psychoanalysis of the Imagination,
Hove and New York: Brunner-Routledge.

Allen, J., and Griffiths, J. (1979) The Book of the Dragon, Secaucus, NJ:
Chartwell Books.

Atherton, C. (1998) “Introduction,” in C. Atherton (ed.), Monsters and Monstrosity
in Greek and Roman Culture, Bari: Levante Editori, pp. vii-xxxiv.

Bateson, G. (1987) Steps to an Ecology of Mind: Collected Essays in
Anthropology, Psychiatry, Evolution, and Epistemology, Northvale, NJ,
and London: Jason Aronson.

Bateson, G. (1991) Sacred Unity: Further Steps to an Ecology of Mind, ed. R.E.
Donaldson, New York: HarperCollins.

Booker, C. (2004) The Seven Basic Plots: Why We Tell Stories, London and New
York: Continuum.

Campbell, J. (1968) The Hero with a Thousand Faces, Princeton, NJ: Princeton
University Press.

De Voragine, J. (1991) The Golden Legend, trans. G. Ryan and H. Ripperger,
Salem, NH: Ayer.

Derrida, J. (1973) “Differance,” in Speech and Phenomena: And Other Essays on
Husserl’s Theory of Signs, trans. D.B. Allison and N. Garver, Evanston, IL:
Northwestern University Press, pp. 129-60.

Freud, S. All references are to the Standard Edition (SE), by volume and page
number.

Hillman, J. (1975) Re-Visioning Psychology, New York: Harper & Row.

Hillman, J. (1977) “An Inquiry into Image,” Spring: An Annual of Archetypal
Psychology and Jungian Thought, pp. 62-88.

Hillman, J. (1979) The Dream and the Underworld, New York: Harper & Row.

Hillman, J., with Pozzo, L. (1983) Inter Views: Conversations with Laura Pozzo
on Psychotherapy, Biography, Love, Soul, Dreams, Work, Imagination,
and the State of the Culture, New York: Harper & Row.

Hillman, J. (1991) “The Great Mother, Her Son, Her Hero, and the Puer,” in P.
Berry (ed.), Fathers and Mothers, Dallas, TX: Spring Publications, pp.
166-209.

Hillman, J. (2004) Archetypal Psychology, Uniform Edition of the Writings of
James Hillman, vol. 1, Putnam, CT: Spring Publications.

Jung, C.G. Except as below, all references are to the Collected Works (CW), by
volume, page number, and paragraph.

Jung, C.G. (1988) Nietzsche’s Zarathustra: Notes of the Seminar Given in 1934-
1939, ed. J.L. Jarrett, Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2 vols.

Kluckhohn, C. (1960) “Recurrent Themes in Myths and Mythmaking,” in H.A.
Murray (ed.), Myth and Mythmaking, New York: George Braziller, pp. 46-
60.
Kristof, N.D. (October 10, 2006) “Talking with the Monsters,” New York Times:
A25.

Marlan, J. (2006) “Jan Marlan Interviews James Hillman,” IAAP Newsletter, 26:
191-5.

Paris, G. (forthcoming) [Book Manuscript, No Title as Yet].

Perls, F. (1969) Gestalt Therapy Verbatim, ed. J.O. Stevens, Lafayette, CA: Real
People Press.

Sagan, C. (1977) The Dragons of Eden: Speculations on the Evolution of Human
Intelligence, New York: Random House.

Simpson, J. (1980) British Dragons, London: B.T. Batsford.

Stevens, A. (1995) Private Myths: Dreams and Dreaming, Cambridge, MA:
Harvard University Press.

Thompson, S. (1955) Motif-Index of Folk Literature, Bloomington, IN, and
London: Indiana University Press, 6 vols.

Watkins, M. (1984) Waking Dreams, Dallas, TX: Spring Publications.

Whitehead, A.N. (1967) Science and the Modern World, New York: Free Press.

Whitmont, E.C., and Perera, S.B. (1989) Dreams, A Portal to the Source, London
and New York: Routledge.

Williams, D. (1996) Deformed Discourse: The Function of the Monster in
Mediaeval Thought and Literature, Montreal and Kingston, London, and
Buffalo: McGill-Queen’s Press.

This article is a paper that Michael Vannoy Adams presented as a plenary address at the "Psyche and Imagination" conference of the International Association for Jungian Studies at the University of Greenwich, London, July 6, 2006.

Adams is a Jungian psychoanalyst in New York City. His web site is
http://www.jungnewyork.com

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"I first read Two Lives a year ago, and upon re-reading it this morning, came across a sentence I’d missed earlier."

In Berne, I stayed with an Indian diplomat, who was my mother’s brother’s wife’s brother’s wife’s father, and therefore ‘family’ in the Indian sense.

I shut the book, nodded, and said “Kalpana’s father.” I knew the corresponding relative in my own family.

I keep going back to Seth’s work for this thrill of recognition, and the subsequent reflection that his words often prompt. “‘Family’ in the Indian sense” makes me question just how I distinguish between acquaintances and relatives. What, exactly, is the extent of my extended family? Where do others–my Canadian friends, for instance–draw the line?

I’ve long admired Seth as a prose stylist, believing his writing ought to be cast in bronze as a model of elegance and economy. But many books featuring prose just as clean and subtle, with settings I’m just as intimate with, fail to move me the way Seth’s work does. I think it’s because the central preoccupation of much of Seth’s writing is family. His understanding of the conflicting emotions parents and siblings evoke, and his descriptions of how relationships simultaneously succour and burden make me warm to his work in a way, say, Pankaj Mishra’s fiction doesn’t. Mishra is a fine prose stylist, and a superb non-fiction writer, but I found The Romantics to be one of those distant bloodless novels that leave me cold. If you’re part of a “bread-and-circuses” Indian family (is there any other sort?), Seth’s work is immediately, urgently familiar.

In a July 2006 interview with Danuta Kean, Seth says,

“There is always either a family or a surrogate family, friend or a string quartet, as in An Equal Music, that acts as a family. I like the feeling of family. It may be something stronger still: the way that work and life is organised in India hasn’t changed so much as in the West. Here people are so mobile in terms of which city they work in and how short their holidays are – especially in America. If you are an American in a long-term relationship, either you are with your family for one week at Christmas or Thanksgiving or you are with your partner’s family. The whole thing is so fraught. When do grandparents meet their grandchildren? Let alone parents see their children once they have grown up and moved away? How can families survive under those circumstances?”

For those who haven’t read it yet: Two Lives is a biography of Seth’s great-uncle Shanti and his wife Henny, a German Jew. The couple married in 1951; in 1969, seventeen-year old Vikram Seth came to stay with them in England for his studies. The book is based on Seth’s memories of the couple, interviews with Shanti before his death, and letters and papers Henny left behind.

Two Lives is summarized on the inside front cover as “the story of the century and of a love affair across a racial divide,” but the book is much more than the blurb suggests. It’s not a page-turner like A Suitable Boy, and doesn’t showcase Seth’s command of the language as The Golden Gate does, but the depth of feeling and introspection makes Two Lives the most rewarding of Seth’s books for me.

Originally published in http://niranjana.wordpress.com. Reproduced
here with permission.

About the Reviewer
Niranjana Iyer is a writer living in Ottawa, Canada, whose work has appeared in The Missouri Review, The Smithsonian Magazine and Smokelong Quarterly, amongst others. Her literary blog "Brown Paper" is at http://niranjana.wordpress.com.

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Ah, but a man’s reach should exceed his grasp, Or what’s a heaven for.
—Robert Browning

A fool is happy
Until his mischief turns against him.
And a good man may suffer
Until goodness flowers.
—Dhammapada

When we do not expect anything we can be ourselves.
That is our way, to live fully in ach moment of time.
—Shunryu Suzuki

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Q. When did you first realize that you were an atheist? Was it a sort of a Eureka moment or a gradual realization?
In high school I started reading a lot of popular science, especially astronomy, nuclear physics, and evolution. I began to see Catholicism as irrational but I did not become an atheist immediately. When I was a graduate student at UCLA I attended a Methodist church and sang in the choir. When I lived in Hawaii, my wife and I sent our kids to church-related schools, although we did not go to church. Finally, in the 1980s I began to get involved with the skeptical movement and learned about Humanism. The more I gained from experience, the more I read, the more I realized that the God concept had no merit.

Q. Church attendance and belief in God have remained relatively steady in US, while there has been a precipitous decline in Western Europe. What do you think is behind this?
Big money is given by extremely conservative, wealthy sources in the US to churches and other organizations such as so-called think tanks to brainwash Americans. Europe is less vulnerable to what Chris Hedges, in his best-seller, called "American Fascists". Incidentally, he is not an atheist.

Q. On occasion when I chance upon religious programming on TV – it seems half gimmickry and half psychological therapy. In fact, mass religions from fairly early on took on the job of providing 'guidance' to people. What do you make of this sort of role of religion?
While it is mostly good-intentioned, much in the religious right — the American
Fascist movement — is motivated by the desire for political power and the helping people aspect is a phony con game that is part of the scheme.

Q. This question is somewhat related to the previous one. Say if we were to find out that belief in God is psychologically helpful, can we argue for an evolutionary reason behind existence of religion? This question was famously asked by Time in its article – The God Gene – does our DNA compel us to seek a higher power? What do you make of these kinds of assertions?
I don't think it's in the genes. I think religion evolved in cultures, ironically, by
Darwinian means. Religion has always be the method used by those in power to keep the masses in line. For example, I was recently in India. There the vast majority of people live in misery and squalor. But they don't complain, they don't revolt against the rich, because the Hindu religion tells them it is their dharma - their fate. In the West, the divine right of kings justified their dominance. Today George Bush tells us that he is doing God's work.

Q. People have often times argued that religion is needed to uphold moral values. Psychology literature points to that people are more liable to take advice from institutions or people they trust. Is there a case to be made for religion to be there as a service that disseminates morality?
This is the prime example of how religious brainwashing works. People are told that morals come from God. But the facts say otherwise. Moral concepts such as the Golden Rule were around centuries before Jesus. They are the collective principles of humanity. Studies show that atheists are at least as moral as theists, and certainly there is a connection between fundamentalism, in Islam and Christianity, and antisocial behavior. I prefer to call myself a humanist rather than an atheist because Humanism is the source of our morality and provides a positive outlook on life.

Q. Religion in everyday life is understood as something uncontestable while scientific theories are considered debatable. How can we provide a more open attitude towards investigating religion?
Religion makes testable claims so these can be treated the same as any scientific claim. I document these in detail in the book, but let me give you one example. Most believers do a lot of praying and think it has a positive effect. These effects should be observable. Controlled experiments have been done and have found no effects. It could have turned out otherwise, in which case I would have to admit that science had found God.

Q. It is a well known fact that very few people actually ever read the religious texts and it is likely that very few of those who read them understand them. So there is chasm between the way a religion is lived and the way it was fundamentally conceived and hence the numerous 'fundamentalist' movements. The argument that I am making is that 'faith' that is driving most religious people is of a vague though absolute kind. Debunking the extraordinary stories of the books, and even providing convincing arguments against God is unlikely to change the views of the majority of religious people.
Probably. But there are still a lot of people I think I can reach with rational arguments: agnostics; believers who are not too sure; young people, especially college students who are learning to think critically and have not yet formed their views. Also I provide ammunition for those who think like I do to use in their arguments with believers.

Q. Science thrives on the parsimonious model. One shouldn't create something if it isn't needed to explain the phenomenon at hand. Hence if all 'natural' phenomena can be conceivably explained by variables at hand then why devise new ones. This, I believe, is one of the chief arguments that you try to make about absence of God. Can you expand a little more on this?
In an earlier book, Has Science Found God? I refute the claims that there is scientific evidence for God. In this book I go much further than just the absence of evidence argument that you reiterate in your question. I claim there is positive scientific evidence against the existence of the God most people worship, as in the absence of support for the efficacy of prayer that I mentioned earlier.

Q. It is a well-known scientific corollary that absence of proof is not proof of absence. The kinds of models that you describe in your book are really a probabilistic debunking that derive their strengths from 95% confidence intervals and unlikelihood of the hypothesis but not proof that it doesn't exist. Can you shed a bit more light on this?
The word "proof" has at least two different meanings. In logic and mathematics, a proof or disproof is with certainty given the starting assumptions. In science and law, proof means beyond a reasonable doubt. The latter allows one to conclude that God can be "proved" not to exist if the data show this beyond a reasonable doubt. Note I use "show" rather than "prove" in the subtitle to avoid that confusion.

Q. One of the arguments that is made by people who believe in God is that there must a reason to our existence. This is sort of an existentialist argument that says that we must have a cause behind our lives and only human lives, I may add. What do you think of this?
That is simply a pious hope. There is no basis, and I would add, no evidence, for this. In fact, the universe looks just as it should be expected to look if there is no special role or purpose for humanity. However, it is important for me to add that this does not mean that we cannot find purpose in our own lives in family, work, art, music, doing good deeds, and so on. In fact, releasing the bonds of religion gives us more freedom to explore all that life has to offer.

Q. Tell us a little more about the kind of problems you see if we allow religious superstition to dictate policy and even science.
As documented in several other books, the religion-based decision making of the Republicans and Bush administration does more harm than good, threatens the health and well being of all of us, and increases the amount of unnecessary human suffering in the world. For example, most of the federal money spent on AIDS, in Africa and America, goes to advocating abstinence and none to condoms. Scientific studies showing that abstinence does not work are deleted from government reports.

Q. Any final words to the believers and the non-believers?
If scientific evidence were ever found for God or some other form of the supernatural, then scientists like myself would become believers. I give hypothetical examples of observations that would convince me that God exists. I ask all believers and nonbelievers to look at the data and argue about it rationally, without polemics or ad hominems. I try to do this in my book.

Originally published on Blogcritics. Reproduced here with permission.

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