Fundamentalism Gone Sideways

Tags

Extreme right-wing, fundamentalism, theocracy

Anyone who knows me at all well, knows that I’m a bit of a crusader when it comes to fundamentalism. Since I fully admit that, I never ask people to accept my conclusions without good documentation.

I’ll try to be nice here, but please don’t hold me to it.

First of all, fundamentalist Christians refuse to accept that this description to the left is actually what is described in Genesis as the structure of the earth and universe. As you can see, it is not a globe at all, but rather a series of pillars, o’er covered with a “dome” with water above it, and of course below. The sun and visible planets and stars are inside the dome.

If you read the flood stories, you will note that this depiction allows for the waters to both arise from the earth and the sky. It also accounts for the oft-heard phrase, “four corners of the earth”. The “earth” was actually a flat disk. This is acknowledged by Jewish experts who ought to understand their own texts better than others, one would think.

Since even the most staunch Christian fundie accepts the spherical actuality of the globe, you can see why they can’t accept this actual description of Genesis but must fudge it to account for reality.

My point is simply that fundamentalism is based in large part on a fanatical belief in the truthiness of a book, and it is a self-serving literal-ness at best. In this they are no different from other fundamentalists in other religions. As any Muslim will tell you, fundamentalist jihadists misread and twist the Quran in a similar fashion in order to get it  to “say what they want it to say.”

Suggesting that all fundamentalists are cut from the same cloth,  sets the Christian right on edge. They deny it of course. Indeed if you look at the Wikipedia entry on fundamentalism, you discover that it is not limited to even religion at all but pertains to any ideology which is reduced to an irreducible set” of precepts which cannot be deviated from in any respect. A strict literalism is imposed as to the agreed upon rules.

Bob Altemeyer has done some exceptional work in this area, and makes his main research “The Authoritarians” avail as a PDF file here.  The Wikipedia entry, while certainly nothing  but a starting point, has a fine bibliography to get your started located here.  Psychology has done much work in the area and you might start with this Pathos article, which will lead you to books and studies. Another well-researched book might be The Fundamentalist Mind by Strozier, Termen, Jones, and Boyd. This should help get you started if you wish to learn more. Again, don’t accept my word for it, go to the actual sources.

My point is not to rehash what is common knowledge, among anyone who wants to understand why we are troubled in this country with a segment of society which continues to place it’s personal religious interests above the common good, and most would say common sense. It is rather to point out by the above, that these are not choices made by rational minds, but rather what certain brain configurations are prone to fall into. Since in most cases it is extremely hard to eradicate or upset these mindsets, the only solution is to be ever vigilant to keep them out of the decision-making arenas of our common lives.

This we have done a poor job of doing.

Since we believe that religion is a matter of personal preference, we are loath to interrupt those preferences by any sort of “test” to eliminate those belief systems that threaten us all. And I agree that we should continue to do so. But we must also recognize that there are those among us who want a world much different from the one we inhabit. It is their stated purpose and their heartfelt belief that we should all be forced if necessary to accept their world vision in the guise of a government reactive to their vision of God.

They believe in a nutshell that all laws must be referenced to a book, the Bible in this case, and that of course they will tell you what the Bible says should be the law.

You may or not be aware that James Inhofe, (R-Ok) is the new chairman of the Environment and Public Works Committee. Inhofe has for years argued that climate change is a hoax. Inhofe has received, tens of thousands of dollars from fossil fuel interests to fund his campaigns. Of course he tells you that he is a true believer, and perhaps that is true. It is always hard to say. But in any case, the Senator is prepared to argue that 98% of the scientific community is wrong on the issue of man-made climate change, and that his fundamentalist-driven approach is true.

What Inhofe admits, is that it doesn’t matter if climate change is occurring. Man is arrogant to go against God in this matter. As his proof he raises Genesis 8:22 which is God’s promise:

As long as the earth endures, seed time and harvest, cold and heat, summer and winter, day and night, shall not cease.”

Of course they also interpret that “as long as the earth endures” involves a “self-correcting resilience” that they nowhere find in the bible, but assume.

What I am being asked to accept is that the US and by implication no one else, should do anything about the clear evidence of a catastrophe in the making because of what a few people who are in no way experts in either the bible or the science of climate have decided is best for us all. Are you willing to stake the lives of your children and grandchildren on their being right?

Is Inhofe any different from the thousands who have gone to stand upon hilltops on the appointed day and hour to await the second coming, always to return home at dawn, a home that often no longer is theirs since they have sold or given away everything to insure God knows them as the true believers they profess to be?

Are we to go instead to live in Chief Justice Roy Moore’s world in Alabama? Judge Moore tells the Governor in that state to ignore a legal judicial pronouncement from a federal court on the illegality of a  gay marriage ban because the judge has determined that the bible told him otherwise, and by fiat he proclaims the federal court decision as “unconstitutional.”

So much for the rule of law. While running for governor himself, Moore decried evolution teaching as “distorting our way of thinking”. Yet, the electorate in Alabama saw fit to elect him as Chief Judge of their Supreme Court, making him the greatest interpreter of the law in the state. This is sanity?

My point is that these people are dangerous to OUR life. We can laugh at them, we can face palm their stupidity and their childish emotional needs all we want, but they have carefully and for the most part quietly wormed their way into positions of power within our country. They have infiltrated school boards, city councils, state legislatures, and obviously on into our higher governmental positions where they, armed with pseudo-science and pseudo-theology, restructure our laws to fit their kingdom to come as they view it.

We ignore them at our peril. If we don’t stand against this sort of soft-headedness, we cannot expect an electorate who by and large is too busy to think these things through themselves to do it for us. We will find ourselves soon before the modern-day Inquisition defending truth against a country that is now governed by a rabble of no longer able or willing to discern truth from fantasy religious fanatics. They are NO DIFFERENT THAN JIHADISTS PEOPLE.

You have been warned.

 

 

Just a Word

Tags

new blog

I’ve recently in the last week started a new blog. It is nothing like this one, which has historically functioned as political satire for the most part.

Years ago, when I first started blogging, I was determined to be eclectic, including recipes, crafts, as well as political news. This I did against the sage advice to new bloggers to “keep to a topic”.

This made sense of course, since almost no one on earth shares my particularized grouping of likes and dislikes, interests, hatreds, peckish pet peeves, desires, and passions. You all have limited time, and you can go elsewhere where you get what you expect pretty much day in and day out.

Over the years, I separated out the recipes and religious, and the emotional growth stuff but never entirely. I also found as an election was won or lost that in the interim I had less interest in the day-to-day beltway chatter that motivates some. I don’t eat, sleep and play in the political arena.

I realized that this blog was getting a bit far afield for days on end, and sometimes for even weeks.

I hope to remedy that.

This blog remains what it is supposed to be. Here we discuss politics with all it’s wide-ranging and never ending topics.

The new blog Existential Eccentricities  is something quite different. A number of people on Facebook have said over the last few months, that they enjoy something I did there most mornings. A rather bizarre, (hopefully funny) stream of consciousness about whatever popped into my head at any given second.

It is in a word, uncategorizable. It often pertains to events of the day, as well as personal asides on just about anything. I keep it fairly short, 500 words give or take. There may be as many as five or six topics, each given a sentence or three before something else pops in.

It may provide a bit of levity to your morning coffee. Perhaps you will account it as more a running commentary on a crazy woman.

I enjoy writing it immensely.

I hope you might enjoy reading it. If not, well, there is nothing like talking to yourself.

It is the razor strap to my razor, the place where I hone my craft.

Come by and let your hair down if you dare.

Can They Get Any Crazier?

Tags

abortion, right to choose

I do not mean to offend anyone.

That said, lets begin offending!

Seriously, I recognize that people have legitimate feelings and beliefs on this subject. I can sympathize. I can even say (easy coming from my perch as post-menopausal of course), that I might personally agree with those who say that it is taking a life. For me it might have been had I decided to do such a thing at the time that I was capable of conceiving. It never happened so I can’t say.

All that being said, let’s look at some points of contention:

(1) when does life begin? The simple answer to the simple-minded is “at conception. When egg meets sperm, cell division begins. But pregnancy does not, and some 50-80 percent of all fertilized eggs don’t implant successfully, and this can take six to twelve days to happen. Where you draw the line raises a host of really ugly problems that are legal in nature, and that is why when life begins is a subject medical and legal experts would rather avoid.

(2) Is personhood different from life? Surely most of us would say yes. When in the growth of the foetus does it become a person? Most would argue when it has viability outside the womb. Other’s of course want to return to that moment of conception. Again, medical experts will differ and the legal implications are huge.

(3) can you rationally be for some types of abortion and not others? Can you justify logically abortion to save the life of the mother? Are you not tampering with God’s province then? Can you make exceptions for rape and incest and if so why? Morally aren’t you compelled as Steve King is to ban them all? (men find these issues so darned easy don’t they?)

(4) what are the common lies told about abortions: (a) it causes  breast cancer (b) it causes infertility (c) most women regret them later (d) forcing women to watch ultrasounds will change their minds (e) abortions psychologically damage women (f) imposing severe regulations on abortion clinics makes abortions safer (g) abortions threaten women’s lives and health. None of these claims are remotely true.

(5) Fetuses suffer pain at abortion. This is not true either. Most medical experts based on a myriad of studies don’t believe a fetus is capable of pain prior to the cortex being wired in at 24 weeks. The vast majority of abortions are done before this period.

(6) the US in the guise of the right to anti-abortionists is well-known for its save the fetus at all costs” but then ignore the infant, child, youngster afterward. The same people who are in the forefront of pushing these anti-abortion bills through the House of Representatives, are the same folks who vote against food stamps, contraceptive care for women, medical care for children, and a host of other social programs that ensure that youngsters born in this country will be raised under healthy conditions. The argument is clear, you aren’t pro-life if your ONLY concern is bringing forth a birth, a birth you then abandon.

As you can see, the issue is a complicated one and there are no easy answers. While it is easy to take a flat stand as many Republican men do (not having to contend with pregnancy has it’s benefits), when you get in the weeds the going gets pretty darn hard. Not that most of the far right has any problem with being disingenuous or illogical.

On the anniversary of Roe v Wade, the GOP House thought to take advantage of the situation and pro-offer a bill that would make their base happy, and accomplish nothing since it could not pass the Senate, nor be signed by the President. It was a win-win for them. •

Until even some of their Republican ladies even thought that the bill went too far, encompassed too much, and was just full of some of those unintended consequences mentioned in (1) and (2). Marsha Blackburn, (R-TN) and all around stupid person, charged with marshalling the bill through the House, retreated in the face of  growing distrust in their own caucus. The provision that proved deadly was the requirement that rape victims would be denied an exception to the general ban unless they had reported the rape to police.

The extremists on the right are predictably displeased and threatening to pressure those wavering Republican women. I’m sure it’s the traditional, if you want to keep your job, you better!

With all this at hand, just how comfortable are you with telling another woman what is best for her? I know I’m not. And I will support her right to decide these very complicated matters herself and with the people she chooses to ask advice of. As they say, if men could have babies, this would never be an issue.

• • •

Whose Freedom?

Tags

1st Amendment, free speech, Paris

This whole Charlie Hebdo thing is pretty deep if you stop to think about it. Of course most don’t treat it as such. It has become a knee-jerk reaction for most. Jon Stewart pointed this out when he suggested that some countries who have championed free speech and press, actually arrest plenty of speech in their own countries.

We are all in danger, it seems to me, of being hypocrites, myself included. I confess right now that I have participated in at least two attempts to squelch the free speech of others when it came vile bigoted hate speech against the President.

It’s not nearly as easy an idea as it might appear to be.

A friend of mine posted a link to statements made by the Pope. He suggested that free speech must be protected, but that,   “You cannot insult the faith of others. You cannot make fun of the faith of others.” Francis did not expound on what should be the consequences of such inappropriate speech, but he warned that the attacks in Paris can fairly be expected from such talk.

I tend to disagree with Francis here, at least insofar as he claims that the ends justify the means. If he suggests that we should ban hate speech vis-a-vis religion if it would engender violence, then this leaves us under the thumb of every radicalized person about any issue he or she defines as “religious”. Where would it stop?

I am aware that all speech is not protected. As Oliver Wendell Holmes said in Schenck v. United States, 249 US 47 (1919), you are not free to yell fire in a crowded theatre. Forever after we have lived with the standard of “clear and present danger” as the bellwether of when speech crosses a line to incite lawlessness.

To succumb to the threat of violence if you “say those things” invites the standard (a difficult one at best) to be flipped to be defined by the one threatening the violence. I have no doubt that the Pope spoke in the general, and as he put it in a friendly manner not meant to be a papal statement of substance.

Yet, of course, those inclined to think little and shallowly about the subject go off the deep end. In the wake of the Paris shootings, Oxford University Press, certainly one of the more respected publishing houses in the world, announced that it would no longer use the words pig, sausage, or pork-related products in its children’s literature. This as a means to not offend Jewish and Muslim readers.

They have been not only roundly ridiculed for such a decision, but criticized as well by the reputable press.

In the post I cited at the beginning, one read the expected Christian whine, “The only ones we have to be kind to are the militant, extremist muslims who might behead us. All the other religions are fair game.” Such rhetoric is of course, both nonsensical and off point.

In fact the world community has stood up very clearly and said, as offensive as Charlie Hebdo is to most people at one time or another, they have he right to say what they wish about Muslims or anybody else for that matter. In a country that is overwhelmingly Christian, (Pew estimates that 78.4% of all Americans define themselves as Christian) it is predictable that the religious right will complain that it is a victim of persecution!

This all suggests that at least some of the Je suis Charlie is nothing more than acclamation that the “right” religion is being attacked. Should Charlie Hebdo attack, (as they of course have done and no doubt will continue to do) Christianity, these self-defined freedom proclaimers will be calling for Charlie’s head.

Some things it seems to me need to be cleared up.

Speech is speech, and unless it reaches the “clear and present danger” standard, ought under no circumstances be prohibited. Westboro Baptist must be allowed to spew it’s hate, as well as the KKK and various right-wing evangelicals and their “burn the Quran”. Atheists who call believers names fall into the category as well.

Speaking against a religion is not persecution of that religion. Persecution involves state action to suppress a religion because of its existence. That does not mean that it is right or to be championed. It is to be marched against, spoken against, and shunned in the most clear way. But it must not be prevented.

When we speak of “not offending” another religion, we are again talking about state action. It is improper to set up creches in public places such as town property, because that is the government speaking then. It is quite proper for a private establishment decorate as it wishes. This is I think where people get most confused.

When a store decides to use the phrase “happy holidays” they are not persecuting Christians, they are choosing to respect all their patrons, Christians and others as well. Similarly if a store chooses to say Merry Christmas or Happy Kwanzaa that is their choice as well.

While I see Oxford Press’s point, I think they have stepped over the line. Some attempts at political correctness are simply absurd. Small children have no clue the point being made, and who are really addressed are parents, who are surely capable of explaining to their young if they think it necessary.

We simply begin down a dangerous path when we start deciding that certain types of speech are not allowed. In Germany for instance, I believe it is still a crime to speak out in denial of the Holocaust. While there might have once been reason to do such a thing in the raw years immediately after WWII, I’m not sure it is still valid. Many countries have liberal prohibitions of speech that attacks the state. These too are wrong, as most of us would agree.

We must never forget that at one time, the most innocuous of things today was then blasphemous. People were arrested for speaking about all sorts of things that threatened the state (religious or secular) either directly or indirectly. We have come a long way, in most of the civilized world. If we resort to making it illegal to speak our minds about anything beyond what threatens life itself, we run the risk of turning backward down a path that leads to dictatorship, repression, and tyranny.

Those on the Right, who so vociferously espouse “our freedoms” should be the first in line to defend speech. But of course, they have are not. But then, true patriots reside elsewhere on the spectrum, as we all suspect.

 

Looking Down From Mt. Olympus

Tags

people, stuff

As I paddled around the pool today I got to thinking, which is what I do a lot of at the pool. Warm, undulating water has that effect on me. I wet, therefore I think. Or something like that.

As usual, I got into a bit of a scrap with some fellow who went to my high school, though I don’t know as we ever met fifty or so years ago.

I was calling stupid people slugs, and he was intent upon proving that he was no such thing. Which begged, literally begged the question, of why he thought I was speaking of him. The irony is so delicious, only the truly stupid would miss it. I guess he did, for he left the conversation in a huff with the usual, “you have too much time on your hands” which is supposed in some distant corner of the world to be an insult of sorts, but of course my response is, “well, actually I have just exactly the right amount of time on my hands, which is all of it, since I’m smart enough to organize my life in such a way that I control what I do almost all the time.”  Or, I could have said, “yeah?” Either one suffices.

Anyway, I thought to lighten the atmosphere by a general meme, about all sorts of fairly unimportant questions which generate, or so I hoped, some conversation. Things like, what’s would you do differently if you could start over in life? or, What’s your most prized possession? Or what are you reading? You know, small talkin’ stuff that passes for what people who really don’t know each other call conversation.

Course it doesn’t work on some at all. I find the uber conservative right to be largely incapable of letting anything roll of their Christian backs. They hold a grudge. I guess they would tell you that Jesus told them to. I never read anywhere where he said that, but they are constantly amazing me with the things they pull out of their bible about Jesus, such as that he hated minimum wage legislation, and was against governments carrying for their citizens. My favorite was a statement that Jesus was for the 2nd Amendment. A jaw-dropping moment if there ever was one.

Anyway, (my favorite segue ), my little graduating class of 1968 is particularly priggish I think. We were a frightfully cliquish set of  groups, totally barely 100  or so, and basically people that couldn’t stand each other then, still can’t. But interesting, some of the nicest people I think of today from that class are people I didn’t know at  all back then. The clique thing, of course. As one has come to expect, the super popular people from then, are mostly dickish today. We knew they would be. The world after all, was not the least bit impressed with them as individuals, they only shined as members of the “in group” of student government/ cheerleader/athlete/pretty faces, in that small setting. They do glory though in their reminiscing  of the only glory days they apparently ever knew. A bit like Brick reliving the glory days through his bottle, or Maggie telling him, “I don’t live with you. We occupy the same cage.”

We maintain a wary truce most of the time, by agreeing to not talk to each other directly. “Like” the innocuous entry, about nothing of value, and avoid each other the rest of the time. I find it funny mostly. A friend suggested that the deepest pain comes when we are young and vulnerable. People in our later ages can’t hurt us as deeply. We have grown a depth of skin to ward off their arrows. He could be right.

A life well lived is the best revenge they say, and I think that might be true.

Someone I read wrote an interesting piece about urban living. I started thinking about that. I’ve lived in cities, and in suburbs, and in the real country. Each has their good points, each their bad. But I think it has more to do with age. The city is for the young, least it was for me. Fast, brutal, unforgiving. The country. Idealistic, pure, honest. Suburbia? Where do you place that baby? Wisteria Lane? Baby carriages and SUV’s? Neat lawns. Deceptive, rigid, and a masquerade? Yeah, can be. All depends on at what point in your life you find yourself there.

I have hated suburbia, and I’ve loved it. I love it now. I have always loved urban as long as you live in the part not in need of renewal. Country? What’s not to like, but be the fact that weather becomes your parent? You have to be physically fit and fairly youthful to contend with a half mile that needs plowing to get to the store ya know?

I’m damned blessed. And I do know it. I was paddling around this morning, as I said. Thought of plenty of shit while Elton John talked about Rocket Man, and Freddy Mercury wailed about having killed a man. Here I am, floating around in a very nice pool, that costs me about $.50 a visit for an hour, getting my upscale “exercise” with a bunch of middle-aged folks like myself.  My husband, is at Wal-Mart buying dog food and coconut milk and various other sundries that are  cheaper than at the “other” grocery story I go to on Wednesday. My housekeeper is cleaning the house.  I’ve got the sauce already cooked for today’s meal, beef enchiladas with ranchero sauce, with mexican rice and ranch beans.

If that doesn’t scream privilege and blessing I don’t know what does. So here I sit, writing, and I’m going to do some more reading and some beading and then later join my husband for an evening watching TV and chatting about thirty-two things that might range from the theory of time, to how best to get Frida to stop screaming every time I put her on a leash. We’ll all settle in to relax and chat and snack, and comment on this or that as the evening wends its way to bedtime. We’ll all settle into our beds, the dogs in theirs and we in ours, and we’ll all soon fall sweetly into sleep until we get up and do some more stuff, that pleases us and seldom imposes any undo burden.

I’ll bob around the pool, and Parker will cook (Philly steak sandwiches this week), and I’ll learn hopefully a few more things I didn’t know before, and we’ll laugh at so many things along the way, and the dogs will bounce and lavish us with kisses, and ya know, damn I am one lucky woman.

But I will still scratch my head that there are actual breathing humans in this country who think health care is a privilege, who think that evolution isn’t true, that deny climate change, and who manage to still walk and talk without a single brain cell in their vacuous braincases. And I will be alternatively angry and pitying and finally stoic if I can, that I can only speak truth, and the rest is not up to me.

Is your world similarly insane?

(A world where there is a Mittens, and a Huck, and a Bushite all in the same race? AND a libertarian loon? Oh it’s gonna be a fun one kiddies, a fun one indeed.)

 

 

Women and Children First!

I heard that phrase in the context of the Paris shootings. The one at the store. Where hostages were taken. I was listening to Al Jazeera, and the commentator said, “among the hostages appear to be a number of women and children.”

A normal enough statement, one heard in many contexts. Fires for instance–first attend to the women and children the men are admonished by each other.

It sounds quaint.

It sounds sexist.

It sounds wrong.

Not that I don’t believe in taking advantage of every possible opportunity to get ahead in life, and being favored to survive is certainly one of those things. Can’t say I’d turn down the offer if it came to that. I’m a long way from being noble, so I probably would. Take advantage of the “women first” offer.

I’d no doubt try to lay it to something else. I’m old. I’m not agile like I used to be. I can’t swing from trees anymore. I deserve special treatment. Yeah, I can come up with a good excuse I figure, should I need to.

But it’s not right. I have to admit that. Like it or not, it’s not fair, not right, reeks of all sorts of bad things. It’s not stoic I know. Nor is it rational much.

It places a burden unfairly on one sex for no good reason. You can’t help being male, so why are you supposed to die first as some goofy sort of gallantry? Nobody believes that “fairer sex” crap any more.

Boy from the day you were born, know this–in case of emergency women and children have more right to live than you. Unless you’re disabled or feeble-minded. Or maybe not. If you aren’t healthy in mind or body, ain’t it better to cull the herd and save the fittest? Old ladies would not pass that test.

It’s harder to make an argument against not saving the children first. I can, sorta.

Look, nobody is here by special dispensation. We all were born from the union of a sperm and egg. All are destined to die. Plenty of babies die, plenty of fetuses die. Plenty of old people die, and all in between. There is no way to judge why somebody is worse off by being cut off in the “flower” of life. Heck one could argue that some don’t face as much suffering as the old have had to endure. That’s a good thing. Given none of us knows what happens “after”, heck dying might be the best of all worlds.

So you see, it really makes no sense. We need to stop this women and children first nonsense. We aren’t God, and it’s not our job. Yes, I realize that a toddler isn’t going to be too adept at making his way to the life boat, but then again when there is only a little space left, the toddler will fit and I won’t. It’s just how shit happens.

Yeah shit happens.

Kay Hagan, newly elected from North Carolina in 2008, wanted to take a swim in the Capitol pool. She was told it was male only, cuz some of the senators preferred to swim with their junk free of a suit. Can you believe that? 2008?

Kay Bailey Hutchinson was interviewed about it on UP with Steve Kornacki. She didn’t see it as a big deal. She thought you have to make a lot of allowances for these older men who are going through “the transition”.  You know, the transition? From being troglodytes to human beings? And exactly how many decades need this transition take you might ask?

Did you know that women, as late as the late 90’s were warned about getting into an elevator alone with Strom Thurmond, that dead-man-walking-racist-piece-of-shit? Then there was Robert Packwood. Does this crap never end?

Somebody posted on our high school alumni page, “what would you do over again if you could?”

That’s always an interesting question I think.

There are lots of answers you can give that sound so, well, intellectual or spiritual or some combination of both.

“All the stuff that happened, even the stuff that wasn’t pleasant contributed to who I am today. Who knows who I’d be if not for everything.”

Yep, I agree. It’s pretty much unknowable.

Still.

Others say,

“I’d not change a thing! It’s been a hell of a ride.”

Yep, I agree.

Still.

See the error of the above, or so it seems to me an error, is that it means you really haven’t grown much, emotionally at least. Don’t you want to take back time wasted with people you now know to be idiots? And people that turned out to be deep and thoughtful and nice? Wouldn’t you have liked to have spent more time with them?

I would.

I’d like to not have participated in any form of bullying, or being mean to anybody just cuz they weren’t in my “group”. I’d like to have been more my own person and not so much of a follower of the crowd. I’d like to have argued with teachers more. I’d like to have been more principled.

These insights come from age and experience. I’d like to think I’d grown some in the intervening years. I was a racist as a kid, because everyone I knew was, though that is no excuse. I’m less of one now, though no doubt I can still be taught a thing or two about being not-white.

I accepted that as a female my life was defined in certain ways. I don’t now, and I’d like to think that matters.

I thought God was a bizarre notion as literally enunciated in the King James Version of the bible. I think quite differently now that I know what a fundamentalist is, and that that version of God is, yes, pretty warped, but there is a vision that makes a lot of sense to me and that  heartens me immensely.

If I had it to do over again, I’d not go to law school but I would go to grad school. I’d have been a theologian or a philosopher I think. Don’t know where that path would have led, but I know one thing. There is no better place to live than in a college town. Anywhere.

An old friend of mine once told me that she had listed in her teenaged years, all her goals in life. Some twenty-plus years later, she was proud to say that her goals were the same. She thought that was a badge of some sort of maturity. I thought it was sad. To be that much older and to have no better goals than the ones you jotted down as a sixteen-year-old?

Save me from people who have no curiosity or breadth of vision. Bring me the dreamers, the wonderers. On them are built the future that I wish to inhabit. The rest? Oh gosh, they are still in the cave, still thinking that the shadows are the reality.

We can’t know who will be the Plato nor the fool. So messing with who lives and who dies should not be our prerogative either. We’re all just doing the best we can, and trying to avoid the troglodytes ya know?

 

 

 

 

It’s All About What You Know

Tags

ignorance, knowledge, shit I learned, stupid

As a self-described political satirist and all-around commentator on the human condition, I confess to spending an inordinate amount of time talking about stupid people.
Now, let’s define our terms here.

Stupid stands alone as a condition not susceptible of being fixed. One is born stupid, lives stupid and dies stupid. Moreover as John Cleese explained, and actual real serious studies confirm, stupid people are so stupid they don’t know they are stupid. The set of skills needed to assess ones relative “smartness” are sadly lacking.

Ignorance is a quite different thing, though I think most people take offense at being called ignoramuses. They should not, since ignorance is something we all share as to many many things. Ignorance is merely lacking knowledge on a particular subject. Ignorance, therefore, can be cured as to any particular thing, merely by acquiring the necessary information.

But what kind of information?

Ahh, there is the rub, as Shakespeare would say.

Which leads to the focus of this essay–the propensity of us humans to become angry at those who express ideas and act in ways that denote lack of knowledge of a subject. I’m here to tell you that you should not. I should not. No one should.

One can go back to Epictetus for the proposition. Perhaps it was known before him, I am ignorant of knowing before Epictetus.

Epictetus argued, (I would say successfully), that no human acts deliberately for the bad. The bad you say? What is that? Let us begin with the premise that there is good and there is bad. It is generally good to not harm people for instance. The devil is in the details as they say. As it any particular person we might disagree. It might be considered by some people to be “good” to kill a tyrant. Others might disagree. But we all agree that a norm is that people should not be harmed.

So, to a great degree, when we talk about specifics, what is good or bad is somewhat subjective.

Does that mean it is arbitrary?

No, of course not. The decision to define something as good or bad depends on the amount and the quality of information possessed. That’s where all the argument comes in. I say that you have made a poor decision about X because you have received either inaccurate or insufficient information. You might say the same of me.

When you include more and more people, a consensus is arrived at as to whether a particular thing is good or bad. It may not be correct, this consensus, however, since a minority might very well possess the better argument, the better data.

What else is at work?

All the panoply of “stuff” that make up the human condition. Our desires, our experiences, our fears, our goals. All impact how important that “good” is to us and thus how resistant it is to being overcome by newer and better data. The stupid person can probably never overcome his emotional lock on a particular belief as being good or bad, while an ignorant one can be brought to a point of discarding her belief in favor of one truer.

Deepak Chopra said the same thing in one of his books. I recall it as something like, “each person is doing the very best they can given their level of knowledge.” It is of course no different from Epictetus.

You may claim no, some people are born bad, and choose bad because it is their nature.

Are you sure of that? I believe that to be a convenient lie we tell ourselves. It allows us to hate whom we hate, and to kill whom we wish to kill or otherwise put them out of our way. American prisons are chock full of people we have “given up on”.

Let’s take a couple of examples.

A young man slips a gun into his waistband and leaves his home to head for the corner where he will sell drugs for the afternoon. If confronted in the wrong fashion, he may well shoot at someone to defend his “turf”. Is this youngster acting deliberately badly?

I would argue no.

He is making a decision that based on all he knows (limited as that might be), this is the best means to attain his goal–living his life in some acceptable manner. The funds he acquires from his trade of drugs for cash affords him money for food, lodging, clothing, and leisure activities. He acquires, among some subset of humans, “status”. He acquires some modicum of power over unarmed persons he comes upon should he choose to exercise it. He has concluded that either his school offers no real education, and even if it does, there are no jobs suitable that would give him the above in an equal measure. He has reasoned that his neighborhood is dangerous and if he is unarmed he faces the real possibility of death.

He has made all these assessments more unconsciously than not perhaps, but they are hardly unreasonable. Given more information, he might not make these choices, but others that we, who have not his experiences consider more “good.” But he is probably not stupid, just ignorant of a series of truths that can and would alter his calculus.

Let’s look at another example: Sean Hannity

Hannity is one of the more egregious cases of Fox News “journalism”, a form of journalism in which actual truth plays little part, but where a point of view is underpinned  with  weak facts, and assumptions to support one  political ideology over another.

Hannity has been caught selectively editing film to say exactly the opposite from what the taped statement actually said. He twists facts, ignores others, mis-states others, and berates anyone who attempts to introduce other facts that go against his desired meme.

Does he do this deliberately? Probably.

So he is actively pursuing the false? Don’t we agree that that would be a normative “bad?”

Yes, it would, but Hannity I am sure believes he serves a higher purpose. I suspect in his mind, he believes that the average viewer is incapable of understanding and is without the “insider” information he possesses. They must be appealed to viscerally rather than intellectually and led rather than informed. Hannity himself is part of that small cadre who “knows” what must be done, knows what is best for the country and world, and can’t take a chance that you, his viewer will be confused. For after all, you are tuning in for an hour, while he is living this “issue” all day, every day.

A Hannity can’t be convinced by better information, because of these hidden assumptions. He can only be “corrected” if his other assumptions about his own relative insider view of the world is changed. In other words, He would have to lose his arrogant assumptions about his relative worth vis-a-vis the “masses” in the world. Hannity is not a man to be hated, but rather one to be pitied. He lives and is content in his own delusions.

What does all this mean in the end? Not much, other than perhaps a lowering of one’s own blood pressure.

When confronted with the wrong-minded I can relax knowing that:

1. They might be purely stupid, in which case, there is nothing any mortal can do about it. Move on.
2. They are ignorant but happy in their ignorance because it satisfies their emotional needs as they view the world, in which case, they are to be pitied. Move on.
3. They are ignorant because no one has yet provided them with the additional information they need to change their opinion. Step in and offer them what you know and where they might obtain more.
4. Learn to discern which of the above is applicable. A few conversations should suffice.

There is only one caveat. Even if talking with a stupid person, if you are in a public forum, do continue. Many people are listening, and some of them, perhaps only one, is paying attention. You can change the world, one person at a time.