A little over a year from now we will be electing our nation’s 45th president. Between now and then the media will rage, campaigns will rise and fall, and the American citizen will be faced with a choice: vote or die. Well, not actually- but at least a choice of whether to vote or not. Every time election season rolls around I feel the pang of ignorance after not having educated myself on the issues (once again). This feeling evolves into a disconcerting realization that not only have I failed to make informed decisions on the predictable candidate platforms—I’ve failed to make decisions about some of the largest issues in life. This is because, generally, decisions of this nature carry with them at least a minimum requirement of ideological and behavioral conformity upon which their sincerity is conditioned. Knowing this, they are more easily avoided than made.

To wit: consider the question of whether God exists. To decide that God does exist is not just to affirm some isolated premise, but to accept an idea with implications permeating every level of behavior and thought. Just the simple belief in the supernatural opens a world of suppositions that cannot be taken insouciantly. I mean they can—but then what does that “belief” actually amount to? And consider the opposite: to decide that God does not exist is to endorse the idea that at some level, matter has no cause, that the universe (just like God) has always been there, that there is a viable secular basis for ethical systems, and so on. One decision, whether we like it or not, often demands another.

Not only that—a decision demands a stance that usually alienates at least one group. A stance is often simultaneously an affirmation and a rejection. And personally, as someone who considers themselves to be a thoughtful individual (and a lawyer), I hate to make a decision from which there is no escape. But no amount of semantics will allow me to be at once pro-life and pro-choice, pro-gay marriage and pro-conservative right, pro-Obama and pro-tea party, or pro-New York Mosque and pro-Glenn Beck (may he rest in non-broadcasting peace). While I might try my hardest to search out the middle ground, occasionally it does not exist. And when there is no middle ground, there is a line, and I’ve learned that I sometimes avoid stepping over to one side or another, which leaves me in the category of bystander.

I think my aversion to choosing sides, to whatever degree it exists, is rooted partly in the awareness that I really don’t know what I believe about some things, and partly in fear of the consequences that I will face after having decided what I do believe. I suppose this is a good problem to have, since it means that I feel an obligation not only to have principles, but to act on them. And it’s not that I haven’t made any decisions on major life questions—I certainly have. There are some questions whose answers are clear to me, and my position on those issues is well decided. Most of those, though, are based on what I believe is the truth, and there are many issues where the truth is more closely aligned with opinion than fact, depriving me of the “it’s the truth” option.

But just so this entire post isn’t a mushy pile of indecision, let me say this: I believe in the freedom of choice, and in the responsibility to choose. I support ideas that encourage the full development of human potential rather than those that limit it or restrain it. I stand behind the principle that education is the pathway to freedom, but also that true freedom comes only with the subduing of the self. I am convinced that most human behavior is a product of environment, incentives, socio-economic status, and degree of personal moral foundation. My own ethical system is formed around Christian virtues, among which I believe love and selflessness are the greatest. Furthermore, I accept the following as legitimate positions, theories and ideas: constitutional modernism, biblical contextualism, democracy, nuclear disarmament, global warming, the link between cell phones and cancer, the link between everything and cancer, that organic food is actually better for you, the results of a new study that suggests watching Jersey Shore might have an immediate and negative effect on intelligence, that babies shouldn’t watch TV, that people are increasingly shifting their reliance on people to reliance on objects, that the gap between the rich and the poor is still growing, that death is not the end, and that writing a blog is an exercise in narcissism.

Even so, the real question is, what am I doing about it? Vote or die after all I suppose.

N

I have not written yet about my love affair with books. It is a significant relationship in my life, and one deserving of a digital place in this ragtag journal of mine. Now as with any relationship, there has been conflict, drama, friction, fiction, reconciliation, and occasionally page tearing. But it has been so very rewarding, and I predict we will grow old together.

It started in college when I began taking philosophy classes. After the intro course, the book lists on the syllabi were increasingly longer and more prestigious: the complete compilation of Aristotle’s works; Sarte’s Essays in Existentialism; Nietzsche’s Beyond Good and Evil; Heidegger’s Being and Time (might as well have been in German); etc. As they piled up on my shelf, I began to take pleasure in the intellectual aura they gave my room in the basement of our dilapidated college house. I realize now that this was mostly a superficial interest in looking smart, but it wasn’t long before I actually wanted to be smart. Naturally class helped me along—my professors constantly planting questions and ideas into my mind that would eventually lead to philosophical contemplation. Overall I think just the proximity of the books combined with the engaging discussions inspired in me a newfound interest in knowledge that has since become sincere—or in other words, I pursue knowledge now mostly in the belief that it will make me happier and better able to contribute to the lives of others. But at that time, my new interest expressed itself most clearly in my acquisition of what I perceived as the most effective medium of knowledge: books, and the words within.

Between my junior year of college and just the other day, I have purchased hundreds. Philosophy, history, psychology, classic literature, Pulitzer Prize winners, biographies, and the complete collector’s edition of Calvin and Hobbes (I should footnote here that my love of Calvin and Hobbes preceded my love of Philosophy, and certainly contributed to my love for reading, if not the development of my personality) (I should further note that this edition was a birthday gift from my loving wife, who so graciously puts up with my book buying habit, and did not leave me when I asked to her to buy me a very expensive set of comic books). Many of my books sit unread, I admit. But that will slowly change, and until then they will occupy an honorable place in my growing personal library. Even now, while my purchasing volume has slowed considerably, I can hardly pass up a bookstore I’ve never been in, and I never pass up a book sale unless the selection is completely meritless. My appreciation for books has matured (in that I no longer hope that their strategic position on the shelf will appear as some sort of mental resume to my friends and guests), but I am still entranced by their physical attributes: the smell of a new book (or a really old book), the crispness of their pages, the regal stature of an Easton Press leather bound, their soldierly appearance when you line them up, spines outward—I love it all. I love it because I know what books represent, and this makes them so much more meaningful.

What every book represents, in my opinion, is the ability of language to influence human life. Language is, in a way, everything. It defines everything, it gives an identity to all characters and qualities. It gives human emotion a means of communication beyond physical touch. Language can also create realities that exist only in words. Most importantly, it is the foundational structure relied on by our mental lives. And knowledge relies on language for its transmission—sometimes in a simple and plain manner, other times guarded by a steep vocabulary or an artistic form. Regardless, a good book, one that through all the tools of the linguistic arts, or through creative genius, or through the mere telling of the truth, leaves the reader in a different state than it found them is a wonderfully powerful thing. And when you are first or finally moved by a book, you gain a freedom that is so simple to maintain.

On the other hand, as Sean Maguire said to one Will Hunting, “I can’t learn anything from you I can’t read in some (expletive) book—unless you want to talk about you.” And therein lies the limitations of a book. They can’t replace the real thing (usually).