James E Hartley

Immigration: Winners and Losers?

Who is helped and who is hurt by immigration?

This question seems like it should be relatively straightforward.

In a previous essay in Public Discourse, I noted that immigration does not have any significant net aggregate economic effects. But the absence of an aggregate effect does not mean there are no distributional effects. After all, taking $10,000 from every person who reads this essay and giving it to the author of this essay has no aggregate effect on wealth, yet I still think that is an admirable idea. (You may have a different opinion.) So, maybe the economic effects of immigration are similar redistributions of income or wealth.

Read the rest at Public Discourse

The Golden Rule Redux

“You can have everything in life you want if you will just help enough other people get what they want.” Zig Ziglar said that. According to his son, Tom, it is the most famous of all Zig Ziglar quotes. It’s an upbeat and memorable rephrasing of Adam Smith’s key insight into how an economy works.

But, Ziglar isn’t talking about theoretical economics; he wants to sell you an idea.

Before his death in 2012, Ziglar had become one of the more famous motivational speakers, the type of speaker who holds a convention and firms pay for their employees to go hear what he has to say. Naturally enough, he put much of his advice into books offering advice not just to the sales force of large firms, but to people in all walks of life. (For example, Raising Positive Kids in a Negative World, Confessions of a Happy Christian.)

Top Performance: How to Develop Excellence in Yourself and Others has just come out in a new edition, a 2019 reprint of a 2003 reprint of a 1986 book. The new edition adds three new chapters, one by Zig’s son (more about that anon).

The book is very much a pep rally for the harried business executive. As such it fits into a rather large genre of books on that theme. I am obviously not the target audience for books in this genre, but every time I read them, I do get to wondering why this genre is so popular. It is not exactly true to say that when you have read one book in this genre, you have read them all, but there is no doubt that the books are, at their heart, remarkably similar.

The formula: Create pithy aphorisms and cute acronyms, and then tell a bunch of stories with very well defined moral lessons. I suspect part of the reason the books do so well is that if you are a mid-level manager and you need something to fill the time in your monthly or quarterly staff meeting, relating a new motto or acronym gives you a good solid hour of material and maybe someone will remember something from it and work a bit better for the next month or so. That is not a criticism, by the way; if you are a mid-level manager, this is, after all, exactly your job.

On that front, this book fits the formula. We have GEL (Goodfinder, Expect the Best, Loyalty); the Five Ps (Purpose, People, Plan, Process, Profit (side note: this is one of the new chapters)); and the Four As (Awareness, Assumptions, Analysis, Action).

So, what makes this book different? Ziglar explains in what sure seems like an uncharacteristic dig at another writer in the same genre:

It’s true that a pleasing personality helps win friends and influence people. However, when we add character and integrity to that formula, we are able to keep those friends and maintain the influence.

That sounds right; indeed, it would be hard to disagree with it. But, how do you go from a statement like that to an hour long talk, let alone a series of talks plus an entire business enterprise selling talks and seminars? (And make no mistake: Ziglar Enterprises is in the market of selling. One, slightly uncharitable, way in which this particular book could be read is a commercial (e.g., “Am I recommending that your organization get involved with one of these personality profile analyses? The answer is yes. We also have a consulting team that specializes in developing personalized personnel programs for your organization.”))

How does this work? The new chapter by Tom Ziglar provides an interesting example. Tom shares with us “The Ziglar Performance Formula.” It is a math equation!

Attitude x Effort x Skill = Performance

A new employee starts with ones in all three variable on the left hand side. What do you, the manager, do? On day one, make sure the new employee has a really nice time getting to know everyone. That moves Attitude to a 2, and Performance has literally doubled overnight! On day 2, give the new employee small tasks that can be accomplished. Now Effort moves to a 2 and performance doubles again. On day 3, teach the person how to do the job, and you guessed it, skill moves to a 2, performance doubles again and is now at an 8 compared to the 1 it was at on the first day. Presto! You are a managing genius!

But, there is more. Imagine a disgruntled employee. Then attitude is negative. And if attitude is negative, then performance will also be negative. Indeed, the more skilled the employee is, the more damage a bad attitude does. So, Attitude is what matters most.

Now, I read that and instantly think (I can’t help myself): if attitude is negative and effort is also negative, then when you multiply the two negatives together you get a positive, so a highly skilled employee with a really bad attitude engaged in destructive effort would generate really high performance!

Obviously, like I said above, I am not the target audience for this book. In thinking like that, I entirely missed the point Tom was making.

What is the point? You don’t have to take my summary of it. Zig Ziglar tells us:

It is my firm conviction that if you only take one thought or one idea out of Top Performance, it should be […] People don’t care how much you know until they know how much you care…about them.

Or, as Zig summarizes his book:

I want to share with you one phrase that I honestly believe is worth the price of this book…Logic will not change an emotion, but action will!

Or, as Zig says in the last chapter

The primary reason for this chapter, which I consider to be the most important one in the book is to encourage you to become a Top Performer in your spiritual, personal, family, and social life as well as in your business career.

How do you do that last bit? Take time for several things: to get started, to grow, to be healthy, to play, to be quiet, and for those you love.

As you look at the things Ziglar is emphasizing, the message of the book is obvious. Character matters. Attitude matters. It makes no difference how skilled or knowledgeable you are; it makes no difference if you are an extrovert or an introvert; if you don’t have a good attitude, you will not be a top performer.

If nothing else this book is an excellent reminder that the one thing you should do today is be a little bit nicer to everyone you meet. As Ziglar notes, that lesson alone is worth the price of the book.

The message, as Ziglar would be quick to note, is not original with him. Jesus said it: Do unto others as you would have them do unto you. The Apostle Paul said it: If I have not love, I am nothing.

So, take Ziglar up on his challenge today. Smile at a stranger. Say a kind word to everyone you meet; it doesn’t take long to say just one nice thing to the person who answers the phones or cleans the building or stocks the shelves at the store or gives you your coffee. If you do that, not only will you set off on the path to be a top performer, but you’ll also make this world a little bit of a nicer place to live for someone else.

Kanye 2024

“In democracies changes are chiefly due to the wanton license of demagogues.” Aristotle wrote that in Politics.

Hamilton, in The Federalist Papers warns: “of those men who have overturned the liberties of republics the greatest number have begun their career, by paying an obsequious court to the people, commencing Demagogues and ending Tyrants.”

I think it is safe to say that nobody is a big fan of demagogues. Where does that leave democracy? Can we conclude that in a democratic society, we really don’t want rulers whose first instinct is to maximize their popularity with the crowds? Can we conclude that we want sober-minded leaders, who think about what is best to do and not what ill-informed citizens of the country might impulsively want to have done? Can we conclude we don’t want people who run for office on the basis of personal charisma instead of policy ideas? Can we conclude that a candidate who has handlers managing public appearances in order to orchestrate popularity is not good for the country?

Enter Coriolanus.

Coriolanus was a war hero in Rome. He single handedly defeated the city of Corioli, came back to Rome greeted with great praise, and was slated to be elected to high office. One problem. To do so, he had to go to into the marketplace and get the crowds to accede to his election.

As Shakespeare relates (in the play cleverly entitled Coriolanus), he wasn’t thrilled at the prospect:

CORIOLANUS: What must I say?
‘I Pray, sir’–Plague upon’t! I cannot bring
My tongue to such a pace:–‘Look, sir, my wounds!
I got them in my country’s service, when
Some certain of your brethren roar’d and ran
From the noise of our own drums.’
MENENIUS: O me, the gods!
You must not speak of that: you must desire them
To think upon you.
COR: Think upon me! hang ’em!
I would they would forget me, like the virtues
Which our divines lose by ’em.
MEN: You’ll mar all:
I’ll leave you: pray you, speak to ’em, I pray you,
In wholesome manner.
Exit
COR: Bid them wash their faces
And keep their teeth clean.

It is safe to conclude that Coriolanus did not have a high opinion of the Common Man.

But, if you want power in Rome, you have to play the game. What we can call Coriolanus’ handlers, the others promoting his candidacy (most notably his mother), earnestly try to persuade him to just do what he needs to do to get elected. First step he needs to stop insulting everyone.

My nobler friends,
I crave their pardons:
For the mutable, rank-scented many, let them
Regard me as I do not flatter, and
Therein behold themselves: I say again,
In soothing them, we nourish ‘gainst our senate
The cockle of rebellion, insolence, sedition,
Which we ourselves have plough’d for, sow’d, and scatter’d,
By mingling them with us, the honour’d number,
Who lack not virtue, no, nor power, but that
Which they have given to beggars.

Not exactly what his handlers have in mind, It doesn’t end well. Coriolanus to the crowd:

You common cry of curs! whose breath I hate
As reek o’ the rotten fens, whose loves I prize
As the dead carcasses of unburied men
That do corrupt my air, I banish you;
And here remain with your uncertainty!
Let every feeble rumour shake your hearts!
Your enemies, with nodding of their plumes,
Fan you into despair!

And so, he joins the enemy and proceeds to march on Rome.

Here is the question: Is Coriolanus doing what we want leaders to do? He stands on principle; he refuses to abase himself before the crowd; he is aghast at the idea of showing off his war wounds to curry popularity with people too cowardly to fight. He wants Rome to be great, but is deeply concerned that in the race for popular opinion, the rulers are doing long-term harm in order to garner short term praise from the rabble.

In other words, if you don’t want a popular demagogue, if you don’t want a leader who constantly checks the poll numbers, then is Coriolanus your type of leader?

In my reading group discussing this play (The Grecian Urn Seminar), the room was surprisingly split almost exactly in half on the matter of evaluating Coriolanus. Even on the simple question of whether he was a good guy or a bad guy in the play, the room was nearly perfectly split. Is he a noble guy who was sadly forced into a bad situation for betraying his country or is he an ignoble guy who despised the people and was willing to sell out his country for a personal vendetta?

Granted: Coriolanus is not exactly the best or worst type of leader imaginable. That isn’t the real question. The real question is whether his impulses with regards to being popular are the right ones. In the midst of being persuaded to play the popularity game, Coriolanus exclaims:

Well, I must do’t:
Away, my disposition, and possess me
Some harlot’s spirit!

Consider that line. Do we want leaders possessed of some harlot’s spirit? All things to all people? Policies promised in order to get a few more votes in crucial places?

Whether you want it or not, of course, doesn’t really matter. That’s what we have.

Imagine someone wanted to be elected leader of the most powerful country in the modern world. What is the best path to power? Become a Rock Star. Have a Reality TV Show. Perfect the art of delivering exactly what people want to hear and see.

I know you are thinking of the current President of the United States right now. But it goes back further than that. Much further. When was the last US Presidential election where the more telegenic, charismatic personality did not win? Go election by election and ask, “Which Candidate is more like a Rock Star? Which candidate is more likely to light up the room by walking into it?” (Note, this is not the same question as which candidate do you personally like better. Imagine a crowd of normal people, the type of people who never read blog posts about Coriolanus.) You have to go all the way back to 1964, when the candidate with more of that Rock Star quality lost. That year, by the way is not only before I was born, it is also when TV was in its infancy.

So, ask yourself again: would you rather have Coriolanus as leader? Would you rather have a leader who despised the people? Would you rather have a leader who asked what was best for the country instead of what is most popular?

Or put it this way: if the election was between Coriolanus and Kanye West, for whom do you vote? Who wins?

A History of Futility

The Question of the Day: When is a history book not a history book?

Or, maybe this should be the Question of the Day: When is an author simply trying to be too clever for his own good?

The Answer to both questions: Yuval Noah Harari’s Sapiens: A Brief History of Mankind.

Let’s start with the positive. This is a fun book to read. A very fun book to read. It is the sort of book that makes you realize again that the world is littered with fascinating anecdotes and facts and factoids which are interesting, informative, and marvelous fun. Open up to a random page in this book and you have a very good chance of learning something like that.

Picking five pages a random—really I am just going to open the book to five different pages and relate what is there—this book has the following bits:

1. In looking through The Code of Hammurabi we discover that society has two genders and three classes, and that each gender-class combination can be described with a specific monetary value.

2. For the first time since the demise of Hitler, the idea of using biological methods to “upgrade” humans in back in vogue.

3. The development of linguistics was vital in allowing European countries to build empires

4. For all the talk of how humans are causing mass extinction these days, this is actually the third time humans have done this. The First Great Extinction happened as humans spread out to become foragers. The Second Great Extinction came when humans became farmers.

5. In 1450, the world could be divided into 5 distinct non-overlapping groupings of people: The Afro-Asian world, the Oceanic world, the Australian world, the MesoAmerican World, and the Andean World. Over the next three hundred years, the first group “swallowed up all the other worlds.”

Harari is a marvelous story-teller. Harari organizes this rollicking ride through the history of the species around three Great Moments:

1. The Cognitive Revolution, when homo sapiens suddenly became quite distinct from other animals;

2. The Agricultural Revolution, when the species radically changed not only the way they lived but the environment in which they lived;

3. The Scientific Revolution, in which modern science was born along with the industrial revolution and rapid technological advances.

At the end, Harari notes we are on the verge of the Fourth Great Revolution when either robots with AI take over the world or we genetically modify ourselves so that we are no longer really homo sapiens at all. Well, unless the climate changes so fast we just go extinct.

As I said, a marvelously fun book.

But…

Sapiens is an incredibly annoying book to read. Harari is a smart guy who has read a lot. But, a guy this smart and this well-read should really not make so many absolutely inane arguments. You see, mixed in with all this fascinating history is Harari’s constant penchant to go wandering off into editorial asides in which we learn one thing very clearly: Harari is a very opinionated guy who never actually talks with people with whom he disagrees.

We could take his constant refrain that modern science has proven there is no soul and thus all those religions out there have now been proven to be false. But, I just wrote about that error a week ago.

So, instead, take a pair of other examples.

1. In his argument that there is no such thing as an eternal or natural law or truth, he rewrites the famous sentence from the Declaration of Independence to show what it would say if it was written using what Harari knows to be accurate biological statements. So, for example, there is no Creator who endows us with anything, so that should just say “born.” This is what he derives:

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men evolved differently, that they are born with certain mutable characteristics, and that among these are life and the pursuit of pleasure.

Perhaps that is cute. (A couple of the students in my reading group which talked about this book thought it was funny.) But, it is absurd nonsense. Take it seriously for a second—which is exactly what Harari wants us to do. It says that one of our “mutable characteristics” is “life.” So, we all “evolve differently” but one of the mutable characteristics with which we are born is…life? Uh…if you think about all the differently evolved people reading this book, what exactly is the range mutations of “life” in that population? How is it even possible to be “born” with a mutated version of “life”? The sentence makes absolutely zero sense.

This is the sort of philosophical non sequitur into which Harari falls all too often in his attempt to be that kid in the back of the room trying to show off how clever he is.

2. In his discussion about the amazing fact of technological innovation and economic growth since the advent of the scientific revolution, he begins with the question, “What accounts for this stupendous growth?” Good question. He starts answering it by showing how the banking system creates money. I cannot even begin to convey my shock. The manner in which the banking system creates money is in every introduction to macroeconomics textbook out there. And Harari gets it wrong. The technical details are thoroughly botched.

Moreover, and even more seriously, money creation does not cause economic growth. At all. Ever. There are a zillion technological advances he could have used to illustrate his point and yet he picked one thing that every student who ever took a first year college course on economics should know is wrong.

Now what is particularly interesting about confusing money creation with economic growth is that it was terribly unnecessary. Much of the rest of the argument about growth is fine. It is thus one of many examples of how the good and the bad of this book are intricately intertwined.

This perfectly explains how the book is simultaneously immensely enjoyable and extremely annoying. It depends entirely on whether you are just taking the bad with the good or if you are seeing some good amongst the bad.

By the time I was nearing the end of the book, I was becoming increasingly fascinated with wondering how Harari could write a book which simultaneously has moments of clear insight and moments of absurdity. It was slowly dawning on me that while it looked like a history book, it wasn’t. In a history book, one expects the author to care a lot about getting the details right.

But, what if the book is really just a long argument for…something? Maybe all the asides and strange wandering attacks on Christianity and Islam and Communism and Liberalism and anyone who believes something is True…maybe all those asides were not really asides at all. Maybe they are the point of the book.

And then, in the penultimate chapter, Harari shows his cards.

Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind is not a history book at all. It isn’t even intended to be a history book. It is an evangelistic tract for…Buddhism.

The chapter is entitled “And They Lived Happily Ever After.” It beings innocently enough by asking if people have become happier as they and the societies in which they lived have evolved. There is a long discussion about meaning of happiness and an argument that happiness probably has not increased.

So, what do we do? None of the absolutist creeds which Harari has been roundly mocking for 394 pages can give life any meaning at all. All of human history is full of futile attempts to provide meaning to life. But don’t despair. There is an answer: “The Buddhist position is particularly interesting.”

If we all just start Buddhist mediation techniques, then we can all be liberated from our suffering. And here is the kicker:

The resulting serenity is so profound that those who spend their lives in the frenzied pursuit of pleasant feelings can hardly imagine it.

That sentence would fit right into any book arguing how wonderful it is to be a Buddhist. A book like that could be well worth reading, and you would learn a lot even if you aren’t a Buddhist.

But, remember…that sentence comes as the conclusion to a book that is pretending to be a matter-of-fact history of the human race.

And suddenly the whole book makes sense. If you read this book as an argument for Buddhism, then the annoying asides and the absurd arguments all fade. Of course the details don’t really matter; it doesn’t even matter if Harari gets these things right. What matters is showing you how futile your life is. Harari shows you how futile your life is by showing you the record of human futility. But, don’t despair. Just become a Buddhist.

If I had the nonfiction section of my library organized by topic, I would now file this book in the religion section. That is where it belongs. In the religion section, it is a very good book; highly recommended.

Man or Machine?

“Are We Not Men?” (Altogether now: “We are Devo.”) (Yeah, if you are too young, you don’t get the joke. Google it.) According to my quick scan of Wikipedia, there is no link between that refrain and Algis Budrys’ novel Who?

But, there is certainly a common theme.

Who?, published in 1958, is included in the Library of America’s American Science Fiction, Five Classic Novels 1956-1958. (Curiously, this is the only edition in print. Add this to the seemingly endless set of kudos for the Library of America.)

The note at the back of the volume has the origin story. Budrys saw a painting of a man with a metal head and arm. A story was born. (I guess this makes the character in this novel the original Iron Man.)

The tale: Lucas Martino, a brilliant American scientist working on a mysterious substance K-88 is captured by the Russian after an explosion in the plant. Eventually the Russians agree to send Martino back home. Across the border comes a man with a metal head and a mechanical arm. Is this creature really Lucas Martino?

The novel follows the attempt of the American officials to figure this out. The Reader follows along in this journey as the evidence slides back and forth on the matter.

At one level, you can read this novel as simply a question of identity. Who are you? Could you prove that you are you? As one of the investigators screams in frustration, “Nobody—nobody in this whole world—can prove who he is, but we’re expecting this one man to do it.”

Imagine you came out of a hospital with a metal head. Could you prove your identity? That is what this novel seems to want you to ponder. How can you prove that you are you?

But, at this level, the novel is an absolute failure. Yep. You had no trouble figuring out how to prove that you are you. No matter how much you were interrogated by some enemy agents, you could not possibly reveal all the secrets of your life. So, it would be a trivial matter to have conversations with people whom you knew for a long time and talk about the past. No imposter could get through those conversations with everyone who knows you and your past.

How does the novel make this a challenge? It cheats. You see, Lucas Martino was a loner as a kid. His parents are dead. He worked for a year with his uncle, but his uncle, alas, also died. He only talked to one person throughout his entire college years, and, surprise, surprise, he is dead too. Apparently everyone else with whom he worked died in the explosion. (There are two people who knew Lucas when he was young who are still alive. Two. Sadly, neither is reliable.)

Even though the novel cheats, at this level the story is a pleasant enough read. It is interesting to try to figure out if the guy with the metal head is Martino or a Soviet agent pretending to be Martino so that the Soviets can discover the secrets of K-88. But, what seems like the philosophical problem is a dud.

But, Budrys turns out to be a clever writer after all. This isn’t really a story about proving that you are you.

The novel is asking a deeper question. What is the difference between man and machine?

As we discover in the flashback sections, Lucas Martino is rather clinical in his thought processes. He wanders through life like it is all one big technical problem to solve and he solves it and he moves on. His first crisis: “It was the first time in his life that he found himself unable to do what he ought to do, and it bothered him deeply. It made him angry.”

He had thought he understood himself, and had shaped himself to live most efficiently in his world. He had made plans on that basis, and seen no flaws in them…For one more moment before he had to get to work, he tried to decide how he could puzzle it all out and still learn not to waste his time analyzing things that couldn’t be changed.

So, when a guy with a mechanical head shows up and acts more like a robot than a human, is this a human or a machine? Is Lucas Martino himself a human or a machine? As the being with the mechanical head ruminates late in the novel:

“A man has no business buying machinery if he won’t treat it right. That’s a damned good design, that transmission. No reason in the world for anybody to have trouble with it.” His voice was almost querulous. “A machine won’t ever let you down, if you only take the trouble to use it right—use it the way you’re supposed to, for the jobs it’s built to do. That’s all. All you have to do is understand it. And no machine’s that complicated an average man can’t understand it. But nobody tries. Nobody thinks a machine’s worth understanding. What’s a machine, after all? Just a few pieces of metal. One’s exactly like another, and you can always get another one just like it.”

Reading that, it became apparent what Budrys is doing in this novel. The portrait of Lucas Martino is the portrait of a machine. The question: are all humans just machines?

An interesting question 60 years later. This idea that we are nothing more than mechanical machines made of meat is all the rage right now. As we peer deeper into the brain, you can hear the breathless excitement that one day we will crack humanity and show that there is no soul, no independent you, that you really are just a hunk of meat responding to external stimuli.

And if we hit that point, what happens to humanity. If humans are just machines, then…

Reread the mechanical head guy’s speech above and substitute “human” for “machine.”

Now explain why anyone gets excited about the possibility of destroying the notion of a soul. Do you really want to live in a world where everyone thinks of humans as just complicated machines?

Unfortunately, even if (well, technically even though) the soul exists, we may still enter this nightmarish world. If people come to believe that there is no soul, nothing that make humans uniquely important, then it is hard to see how we avoid the problem Budrys sketches out in this philosophical tract masquerading as a science fiction novel.

The Structure of Confessions

Augustine’s Confessions has a curious structure. It is divided into 13 chapters. The first nine read like autobiography; Augustine tells the story of his life concentrating on all the sins he has committed. He confesses them, and then he points constantly to God who is the real object of Augustine’s attention. Lots of things we can learn and ponder from these nine chapters.

But, then, in Chapter 10, the book takes a rather stunning turn for those reading it for the first time. Chapter 10 is all about memory. Chapter 11 is about time. Chapter 12 is about Creation. Chapter 13 is an interpretation of Genesis 1. Then Confessions abruptly ends.

It isn’t hard to see why the first nine chapters are the popular part. Much faster pace and it is easy to figure out where it is all going. What is with chapters 10-13, though? Why are they there?

My reading group discussing this book was puzzled by exactly this question.

Consider “Time.” Really. Actually consider the nature of time. What is time? Does time exist? Does the present exist? Does the past exist? If the past exists, where is it existing? If the past no longer exists, then how can we remember it and ask about it? The same sort of thing applies to the future. The longer you think about it, the weirder time is.

Is time a created thing? Did God create time or did time predate God? Seems clear that time must be a created thing. So what happened before time was created? That question is, when you think about it, nonsensical. There can’t be a “before time was created.” Before implies time. So if something is before time is created then time is before time is created. The mind reels.

So, if God is outside time, then is God in the present only? Obviously not. God sees all time simultaneously. For God there is no past or future. We can’t describe “God’s time” because time is that thing God created and observes. (I am not sure what observes means either because it implies a location different than the location in which God exists, but space was also created by God, so God is not in a location.)

So, if God is outside time, when I pray for the future, then God knows the future when I am praying for the future. But, God knows the past equally well. For God, there is no difference between future and past. So, can I pray for the past? Can I pray that God will help George Washington make wise decisions? Is that weird? When George Washington was alive, God knew about my prayer for Washington. Why is this weirder than praying for the future? From God’s perspective, praying for the past and praying for the future must be identical.

The longer I puzzle over Augustine’s discussion of time, the more bewildering it gets. T.S. Eliot captured the same thing—this poem (Bunt Norton) could be called the Spark Notes version of Confessions

Time present and time past
Are both perhaps present in time future,
And time future contained in time past.
If all time is eternally present
All time is unredeemable.
What might have been is an abstraction
Remaining a perpetual possibility
Only in a world of speculation.
What might have been and what has been
Point to one end, which is always present.

All time is eternally present. That is the key.

Think about the idea of Augustine confessing his past sins. Those sins are not really past in God’s view. They are eternally present to God. So, Augustine repenting of stealing pears 30 years earlier is not repenting of something that happened 30 years ago for God. It is something that always is existing for God.

In this world, we cannot say, “I sinned in the past.” We can say, “I am a sinner.” And it makes no difference which sins you contemplate; your past sins, present sins, and future sins are all the same from the perspective of God.

And suddenly, chapters 10 and 11 of Confessions seems inseparable from chapters 1-9. When time and memory collapse into the realization that thinking about the idea of memory of his past life leads to the thinking about the idea of time and the realization that “past” time is not really past, then our impression of the autobiographical portion changes. Augustine is not confessing his past sins at all. The sins he committed when he was an infant or teenager or last month are not just things in the past. Augustine is not saying “I used to be a sinner.” He is saying “I am a sinner.”

All time is eternally present. All time in unredeemable. If Augustine is a sinner, not was a sinner, but is, then what hope does he have? That is where God walks in. Augustine is spending the whole book noting that it is not exactly true that God has forgiven him for his past sins. Instead, God is forgiving him for his very nature as a sinner.

What then is going on with the last two books of Confessions? Augustine seems to go off track again, by spending many pages thinking about how to interpret the creation account in Genesis. He notes there are obviously many different interpretations of Genesis, and people spend a lot of time arguing about the right way to interpret it.

But, Augustine argues, God is very clever. What if He intended it to be written in a way that there are multiple true interpretations of the text? If so, then if your interpretation of the text leads to a conclusion which is true, and my different interpretation of the text leads to a different conclusion which is also true, we do not need to argue about whose true interpretation is correct. All interpretations which bring glory to God are true.

Thus you may want to read Genesis as a factual account of the mechanism of Creation. If that is how things were created, then Augustine has no problem with that reading. But, Augustine is more interested in the allegorical readings, the readings in which the structure of the first verse and the first chapter of Genesis reveal an extraordinary number of things about God.

At one level, these last two chapters of Confessions are a very useful description of the modern debate about seven day creationism.

But, what is this discussion of how to read Genesis 1 doing in Confessions?

How do we read Confessions? Our temptation is to read it as an autobiography. Augustine has no objection to us reading it in that way because it is, in fact, a true autobiography. But, then Augustine slyly notes in the final two chapters, this is just one way to read the book. After demonstrating that Genesis 1 can be read for the figurative lesson it offers, Augustine implicitly is inviting us to ask another question: is there a figurative reading of the book you just read?

Of course there is. This is not just the story of Augustine and his life. Indeed, for Augustine, that reading may be the least interesting reading of it. It is also a book about the majesty of God, the nature of sin, the work of Christ, the eternal design of God’s plan, and on and on and on.

The last four chapters of Confessions are extraordinarily clever. You thought you were reading an autobiography. But, oh, it is so much more than that. Once you realize it is a deep book, a very deep book, it makes you want to reread it. Again. And again.

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