{"id":11605,"date":"2013-12-08T12:01:01","date_gmt":"2013-12-08T20:01:01","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.preposterousuniverse.com\/blog\/?p=11605"},"modified":"2013-12-08T12:01:01","modified_gmt":"2013-12-08T20:01:01","slug":"the-branch-we-were-sitting-on","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/preposterousuniverse.com\/blog\/2013\/12\/08\/the-branch-we-were-sitting-on\/","title":{"rendered":"The Branch We Were Sitting On"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a href=\"http:\/\/www.nybooks.com\/galleries\/david-levine-illustrator\/writers-british\/?page=6\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/www.preposterousuniverse.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/12\/barnes_julian-19911205025R.2_png_380x600_crop_q85.png\" alt=\"barnes_julian-19911205025R.2_png_380x600_crop_q85\" width=\"200\" height=\"325\" class=\"alignright size-full wp-image-11606\" srcset=\"https:\/\/preposterousuniverse.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/12\/barnes_julian-19911205025R.2_png_380x600_crop_q85.png 200w, https:\/\/preposterousuniverse.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/12\/barnes_julian-19911205025R.2_png_380x600_crop_q85-184x300.png 184w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 200px) 100vw, 200px\" \/><\/a>In the latest issue of the <a href=\"http:\/\/www.nybooks.com\/articles\/archives\/2013\/dec\/19\/most-mysterious-subject\/\"><em>New York Review<\/em><\/a>, Cathleen Schine reviews <a href=\"http:\/\/www.amazon.com\/Levels-Life-Julian-Barnes\/dp\/0385350775\/\">Levels of Life<\/a>, a new book by Julian Barnes. It&#8217;s described as a three-part meditation on grief, following the death of Barnes&#8217;s wife Pat Kavanagh.<\/p>\n<p>One of the things that is of no solace to Barnes (and there are many) is religion. He writes:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>When we killed&#8211;or exiled&#8211;God, we also killed ourselves&#8230;. No God, no afterlife, no us. We were right to kill Him, of course, this long-standing imaginary friend of ours. And we weren&#8217;t going to get an afterlife anyway. But we sawed off the branch we were sitting on. And the view from there, from that height&#8211;even if it was only an illusion of a view&#8211;wasn&#8217;t so bad.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>I can&#8217;t disagree. Atheists often proclaim the death of God in positively gleeful terms, but it&#8217;s important to recognize what was lost&#8211;a purpose in living, a natural place in the universe. The loss is not irretrievable; there is nothing that stops us from creating our own meaning even if there&#8217;s no supernatural overseer to hand one to us. But it&#8217;s a daunting task, one to which we haven&#8217;t really faced up.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>In the latest issue of the New York Review, Cathleen Schine reviews Levels of Life, a new book by Julian Barnes. It&#8217;s described as a three-part meditation on grief, following the death of Barnes&#8217;s wife Pat Kavanagh. One of the things that is of no solace to Barnes (and there are many) is religion. He [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[17,27,37],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-11605","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-humanity","category-religion","category-words"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/preposterousuniverse.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11605","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/preposterousuniverse.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/preposterousuniverse.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/preposterousuniverse.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/preposterousuniverse.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=11605"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/preposterousuniverse.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11605\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":11609,"href":"https:\/\/preposterousuniverse.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11605\/revisions\/11609"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/preposterousuniverse.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=11605"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/preposterousuniverse.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=11605"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/preposterousuniverse.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=11605"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}