As I have mentioned, my brother is dying of alcoholism. If you have ever seen someone die of alcoholism, you know that this is one of the most gruesome ways to go. My family is on a death watch. They seem eager for it to end. And I can understand that. It’s excruciating. One wonders how this can continue… The man has overdosed on combinations of pills and booze that ought to kill a much larger mammal. And yet he persists.

My family is religious. Evangelical. I find it unfathomable.

My brother is a heathen through and through. A kind-hearted, but deeply flawed, narcissistic heathen. He has caused untold suffering to countless friends, lovers and worst of all forever damaged his one and only child who I know he loves deeply, but to whom he has given nothing but hurt. But people love him.

I am less enthusiastic about his dying, and less inclined to believe it is imminent. The sad fact of the matter is that the dismal state he is in could continue for years. Earlier today he made contact again from a local hospital (how many trips to the hospital have there been this year?). Apparently he was assaulted, again. His back has been broken. His spleen has been kicked in. His lungs have been perforated by broken ribs from beatings on the street.

You may ask why I am not caring for him here in my little suburban house with my two young children… He has been welcomed here from time to time, but extreme, blind, insane drunkenness does not a tolerable roommate make. Nothing is safe. He is a thief and liar. Above all, a liar.

The first time I took him in was when I was 17. After my mother booted him out he landed with me. In and out of my life he went over the past thirty years. The state was kind enough to care for him for a few years.

Despite all that I love him. There but for the grace of Tyche go I.

So back to the topic at hand. Existentialism. I kind of adopted this point of view a while back, with some Nietzsche under my belt, and huge doses of Dostoevsky. I cling to the ideal of existence precedes essence (Sartre’s formulation) and insist that I am responsible for whatever my life is. But I know down deep in my heart that this is just a psychological ploy. I want to believe it, but in my heart of hearts I’m a fatalist. I don’t see any hope for my brother. There’s no meaning to what has become of him.

From a relational perspective, however, it makes more sense. Whether I have the ability, or will to make more of myself than I am at this moment is beside the point. What matters is that I respond to others as if that were the case. And as hard as it is in my brother’s case, I give him the right to live the life he has chosen, even though the idea of “choice” in his case seems wildly out of place with the current facts.

In a couple of hours I will be dropping off my wife at the county jail for a 24-hour visit. Our travails with the state began a little over a year ago when a routine traffic stop devolved into an opportunity for a smug motorcycle cop to try out his new training in detecting chemical intoxication. When I say chemical, I mean legally prescribed pharmaceuticals. My wife, not being a very good driver to begin with, and suffering from nearly crippling anxiety disorder, had a panic attack on the roadside and failed the roadside sobriety test.

After wasting a couple of thousand dollars on a lawyer, we were forced by empty pockets to abandon our fight and submit to the mandatory sentencing that our legislative overlords prescribed. This includes not only the obligatory suspension of one’s license, but thousands of dollars of punitive fines and this ridiculous junket to the now world famous “Tent City”.

Unless you are fortunate enough to live in one of the few dense urban centers of this country that have adequate public transportation, raising a family and functioning in this society is nigh to impossible without the use of 4,000 lb. hunks of metal and plastic hurtling down our millions of square miles of asphalted landscape. What to do for those who find the task of driving to be a challenge? Boo hoo for us.

Yes justice is blind. And a middle-aged housewife, school teacher and mother of two small children is as equally culpable in the eyes of the law for taking her prescriptions and driving a couple of miles to the grocery store as the inebriate at the local tavern who has gulped down a few too many and is driving with one eye closed.

It’s a one-size-fits-all approach that becomes laughable. In addition to the jail time and income redistribution, there are the mandatory alcoholism classes and the absurd requirement that we pay another few hundred dollars for an interlock device on the car to detect what? Xanax?

Meanwhile my kid brother, who actually is an alcoholic, is dying from his disease on the streets of the city. And how does he manage to get his booze? Shoplifting. He literally steals multiple quarts of liquor a day. The same state that has made drinking outside of ones home virtually illegal (without a chauffeur) makes liquor available in the checkout aisle of every Piggly Wiggly type grocery outlet in town.

First, thanks for the comments. I insist on persisting whether I like it or not…

On to a new topic.

Had a little scuffle with my spouse the other day. She has some chronic health problems (both physical & mental). I tend to get very prickly when she’s not feeling well. This has been a source of much discord between us over the years so I have tried to figure out why I am so impatient about it. As we were discussing my weaknesses as a spouse it occurred to me that my sympathy for her was inversely proportional to my empathy. Her unwellness makes me feel unwell, and that kind of makes me mad. OK, so maybe that’s not what you usually consider empathy. I’m stretching it a bit. But I do think there’s a negative correlation here.

When we are emotionally affected by another’s emotional or physical state, that can interfere with our rational response to another person’s suffering. Sympathy for another’s situation is based upon one’s moral or ethical framework. Where one’s sympathies lie is determined by what one believes is fair, right or just. Empathy can occlude this rational response because now we are in some sense sharing the suffering of the other.

So what good is empathy? What benefit is there in”sharing suffering”?

“When I have nothing to say, my lips are sealed. Say something once, why say it again?”

So my guest blogger had nothing to say. Well, he had more to say, but for reasons that will remain inarticulate, he cannot commit those thoughts to the semi-eternity of the blogoshpere. And without further delay I will return to my rightful position here as the sole voice of this enterprise.

What perplexes me most about human beings is that most of us are not perplexed at all.

I see tonight that the Occupiers in Oakland are being attacked. Strange that it should happen there.

When I left I was re-considering my political POV. To be an anarchist seemed a rather silly position to be in. What is the point? We’re so far removed from whatever state of affairs necessary to dispense with coercive government. There is always the temptation to accommodate; to “make do” in the condition we are in. But, upon reflection, I don’t see a better position to take. Primitive as it may be, it’s morally correct.

“You’ve got some nerve talking about morality, Mr. Abonilox.”

Yes, well it’s a matter of taste.

The Abonilox has left the building, but he gave the keys to someone on his way out.