We are not trained to think. In classical education–the kind engaged in by the ancient Greeks and those in later generations who sought to emulate them–the study of learning was nearly as important as the learning itself. Logic was taught, so that the educated could understand where they were apt to be wrong and avoid being so. The intellectual leaders who poured the philosophical foundation upon which the United States of America was built–Jefferson, Adams, Franklin, Hamilton, Monroe–were inspired by the works of Aristotle, Plato, and Socrates, the rediscovery of whom ended the Dark Ages. Jefferson himself believed no education could be thought complete without a full reading of Homer and Virgil in the original Greek and Latin. Can you imagine such a thing being spoken today, even by a President? The Renaissance (literally "rebirth") was a replanting of the classical spirit of self-discovery, and the Catholic Church–by nurturing the bud back into bloom through patronage–boosted its own prestige but doomed itself to death at the hands of the very tools it had kept safe: reason, education, and art. No church can survive the application of reason, and once its robes are exposed by education as imaginary, art steps in to make us laugh at the nakedness.

The American founders had no respect for the Church, nor for the Protestant denominations which followed it, despite treading carefully so as not to offend them and lose the support of the superstitious people they hoped to elevate. Fortunately (unlike in modern America) they had only to make occasional token gestures to appease the believers, like putting "and nature's god" (originally uncapitalized and clearly a Deist statement, not a religious one) into the Declaration of Independence, because nearly everyone allowed to vote back then was educated. That time was called the Enlightenment, and its leaders were writers and thinkers like Paine, Locke, Rousseau, Hobbes, Kant–men (and in rare cases, like Mary Wollstonecraft, women) who stood on the very edge of the Dark Ages and held up a light.

Bertrand Russell somewhat-famously said, "The fundamental cause of trouble in the world today is that the stupid are cocksure while the intelligent are full of doubt." The men who stood at the edge of that darkness were the doubters; they stood up against centuries of certainty because the truth was more important to them than the comfort of what they already believed. In other words, it didn't matter what felt true, it only mattered what was.

Does Reality Matter Anymore?

Can you imagine such a test being applied to the debate over health care reform?

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A couple of years ago, I played a joke on a new friend. Instead of laughing about it, she accused me of harassment and breaking and entering. Granted, it wasn't a very funny joke, but I wasn't aware the penalty for a comedian bombing was so severe. So I'd like to post a warning for any practical jokers out there: never, never play a joke involving somebody's car, house, or computer without getting notarized forms signed in triplicate that they're planning on getting the joke.

First, a little background. This was not the first time I planted a joke grenade on someone's computer. Allow me to describe just three prior offenses.

In college, back when "sound cards" were brand new and nobody but geeks like me knew how to record or play sound on computers, I changed my friend's computer startup sound. He was ahead of the technology curve himself and had managed to hook it up to his stereo, so the next time he booted his computer, he got blasted with a deep-voiced recording of God instructing him to fill his disk drive with potato chips. (For the record, he denies following the instructions.)

A couple years later, my girlfriend was running sound for a play that was being performed at the Edinburgh Fringe Festival. I'd rigged up a system for them to run the sound cues off of a laptop computer–way ahead of its time back in 1997! When she got to Scotland and booted it up, the joke grenade deployed and she got a very cute romantic animated message from me.

A few years after that, I installed a widget on my brother's computer so when he booted up, he got HAL9000's eerie red light on his desktop, reporting loudly that all systems were functioning perfectly.

If you haven't detected the pattern yet, let me describe it bluntly: these jokes are not very funny.

But they're kinda cute in their own way. They're just stupid little joke grenades. They're mildly subversive, in a spirit of fun, and you wouldn't think someone would respond to one by suggesting she might file a harassment suit. Right? Then keep reading.

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So where we left off in Part One, I was 1) struggling with whether to make the characters in my screenplay more sympathetic, and 2) in Maine.

After a day in lobsterland, we packed up and continued on into Nova Scotia. In case you were wondering whether they have a different set of values up in the Northeast with regard to their natural environment, the following two pictures are from a highway rest stop along the way:

Every writer needs something different to write their best. I need trees, water, and wildlife. (And the occasional shoulder rub doesn't hurt.)

This was my first view of the Nova Scotia coast:

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