Some ugliness that makes me happy
Sometimes, ugly things can make you happy.
Two cases in point, recent events wise:
1)A girl scout takes to Youtube to say that people should boycott the Girl Scouts cookie sales to protest their evil, nefarious ways. Those evil, nefarious ways, of course, being that stuff about being open and inclusive of transgendered children. Her, and the people supporting her, have the usual vapors that can be summed up with the phrase “BUT WHO WILL PROTECT THE CHILDREN?!” You know, the usual mixture of fear and hate-mongering mixed with a boneheadedness that makes ignorance look like bloody Socrates.
This does not make me happy, other than in the way I joked on Facebook, to wit: they have made it so it’s a moral imperative for all good people to eat girl scout cookies. I plan to do so. I mean, I get to support transgendered kids, and eat cookies. There is nothing but win there.
No, what really makes me happy is that the internet is in an uproar, and people are organizing counter measures. I really hope that in a few months we see an announcement that the Girl Scouts broke some cookie-sellin’ records. Let the bigots choke on a few metaphorical tagalongs.
2)Jessica Ahlquist, a sixteen year old with more chutzpah than whole platoons of older folk, won her ACLU backed case to have an explicitly religious banner taken down at her school. This banner, hung in a public school, was so unconstitutional that it beggars the imagination. Such a violation of church/state separation should even have religious folk up in arms. Alas, not so — most seem to be condemning her as some kind of terrible demonic atheist, and in the aftermath of the judge’s damning summation against the school district, many took to twitter to, you guessed it, rip in to the 16 year old. Including with some messages that look an awful lot like threats of violence. And, of course, because where you find religious bigotry you can be sure other bigotries aren’t far behind, and you get things like this:
Oh my gosh http://t.co/Ra3UdelL—
Jessica Ahlquist (@jessicaahlquist) January 12, 2012
It’s 2012, and that’s downright depressing. It’s downright depressing that a 16 year old who stood up for the constitution is being treated so shamefully by so many. It’s downright depressing that so many Americans really don’t support the constitution, and that so many Christians still expect special privileges.
What isn’t depressing is Jessica, who is standing up to all that bile and bigotry with what can only be described as pluck, a sense of humor, and incredible composure. We can all learn a lesson from her, and it makes me ashamed to think how often I’ve kept quiet in the face of all those little barbs against atheists. Another wonderful thing is the number of people who waded in and did Twitter battle with the hordes on her behalf. A bunch of bigots learned something today: atheists may quarrel amongst ourselves a lot (herding cats and all that), but damn it, we will protect our own.
So yeah, some ugliness that makes me happy, because so many are standing up to counter it with beauty. We have a chance, folks, we crazy humans.
The lion dies, but the roar never will
Christopher Hitchens died tonight (I will not say “passed away,” that desperate attempt to look away from mortality). And I cried, something I don’t think I’ve done for a public figure since Carl Sagan.
This sums up so much:
Christopher Hitchens- you will be sorely missed, you magnificent, eloquent, extraordinary son of a bitch.—
Donna Mugavero (@MsInformation) December 16, 2011
He was one of those rare folks who charted his own course, truly spoke his own mind. To say that I didn’t agree with him all the time is almost silly — that was part of Hitch’s gift. He might make you mad, he might make you want to scream and throw your computer or newspaper or copy of Vanity Fair across the room, but dammit, the man made you think. He made you look at all the holes and flaws in your arguments, all the weak, unnoticed assumptions.
Above all, he was a seeker of truth, and showed an intellectual courage and honesty that few of us can muster. A hawkish supporter of the war on terror, he originally maintained that water-boarding wasn’t torture. Challenged, he let himself be water-boarded, and admitted he was wrong. That is seeking the truth; that is intellectual honesty. It is a commitment that inspires me in my quest to be a better skeptic.
As an atheist, I feel gratitude for the fiery way in which he helped give us a voice. Not just his voice — he inspired so many to speak themselves, to stand up, to be proud, to demand the end to the bigotry against atheism.
His most valuable lesson may have simply been this: in matters of truth, roar like a lion. Life is short, morality is certain, so burn brightly.
We lost a good one. But I’m reminded of Carl Sagan’s death, another man who burned brightly and lit the way. Others arose, took his place, the battle continued. A generation on, there are more amazing people promoting science and skepticism than when Sagan was alive. So, too, with Hitchens: others continue the fight.
The lion dies, but the roar never will.
Suffering as a fetish
Pardon the short post, but continued ill health has ruined Thanksgiving for me and I’m basically being a bum in bed. In the mean time, here’s a pointer to some good reading material: Susan Jacoby talking about the obscene exploitation and love of suffering exhibited by right wing Christian presidential candidates.
It rather makes me want to throw up in my mouth a little, though that may just come from being sick.
Social myths inside our heads
A missed day again, yoinks. This cold thing, folks, is slowly killing me. A slow, achy death, with mucus and a muffled ear. JOY. Actually a tiny bit better, but that’s what it feels like — tiny, tiny, tiny, Good health is the limit of the Cold as Virus approaches zero in tiny, tiny little increments…
Be that as it may, a blog post. Saw this delightful blog post shared by someone on Google+: Adventures in Polyamory. It’s a wonderful, warm account of polyamory, and thought-provoking as all heck.
What I love is how honest and open JT is about his feelings as he went through this experience, and how it exposes how social norms shape our thoughts. There’s so much that we take for granted as being true that we often never notice that is, in fact, nothing more than arbitrary social norms. Gender roles are a great example — ask anyone what a “man” is or what a “woman” is, and I guarantee that almost every single thing you hear will be nothing more than their culture’s norms about those categories. I also guarantee you that those people will mostly think that those are innate, a priori truths.
I’ve spent my entire life going up against this stuff, consciously and unconsciously. I am a guy. I am — at least mostly, I think — heterosexual. I am cisgendered. Just your typical guy, right? Only, I don’t really feel at home with a lot of what our culture defines as “male.” And frankly, I’ve spent far too many years — and fight it even now, when I’m more consciously aware and trying to embrace rationality! — feeling bad about how I fail to “make the grade.” There is still part of me that is the sad little boy inside, embarrassed and ashamed because I know I’m a “sissy.”
I look at my life, and realize how much of it has been ruled by those social norms, largely unconsidered. So many “facts,” and ones that often have made me miserable! So many myths, things that are nothing more than social constructs, ruling my thoughts and all too often making me hate myself.
Even with the idea of love — I’ve never really believed the usual construction we have. I have no doubt that some folks are quite happy to hook up with one other person for life. I know some of them! But I think human experience must be more varied than that, more creative. And right at the center of my being I get the idea that someone can love more than one person. Love, it seems to me, would be a pretty small and pathetic thing if it only worked between two people. In fact, it never does — we all love multiple people. It’s only romantic love that we fuck up with a ton of extra baggage, including our desperately messed up ideas about sex.
I really don’t know where I’m going with this — mostly, I’m embarking on a a lot of new voyage of discovery stuff for myself here. But it does strike that atheism and skepticism both are inherently radical stances. In the atheist community we often try to convey this image of “hey, we’re just like you, nothing freaky here!” to the outside world. Which can be true, but also isn’t. Because if you take it seriously, really get on board with the whole rational, skeptical inquiry thing, you end up here — looking hard at all those social constructs we are taught as “fact,” and hitting the realization that they are actually myth. There are both social and personal voyages there, and neither particularly easy — and both leading in wonderful new directions.
Transcendence, secular style
Short post tonight, but just wanted to make sure everyone reads this wonderful post by Greta Christina:
Letting The World Surprise You
…since I now think that this life is the only one I’m ever going to have, I feel much more driven to experience it as fully and as richly as I possibly can. It is sometimes intensely frustrating to know that there are restaurants I’m never going to eat at, movies I’m never going to see, books I’m never going to read, people I’m never going to meet. But that makes me feel that much more passionate about really experiencing the restaurants and movies and books and people that are part of my life. It makes me feel that much more driven to stay present with them, to not space out and drift into my own little world, to connect with them and see what surprises they might have in store.
The simplest bit of wisdom I have picked up in life (from my very, very small store of wisdom!) is that there is nothing that is mundane. If you want to make an apple pie from scratch, as Carl Sagan noted, you must first invent the universe. Everything is a wonder, everything is amazing, simply because it is. Every person you meet, hell, every insect that dive bombs your face, is amazing, simply because they exist, instead of don’t exist; and because they exist because of an immense chain of events stretching back to the first event.
It says something about us, I think, that in the midst of such wonder we can become jaded.
Some theology just confuses me
So, there’s this song that keeps bugging the crap out of me. I don’t know the name, don’t know the artist, and don’t really want to, because it’s the kind of music that makes me gag, super-saturated with cloying sentimentality of the most shallow kind. And the singer is apparently Christian, judging by the songs, and this one in particular, though I don’t mean this to be a polemic against Christians. Just this little bit, where the full extent of thinking about God is pretty much Hallmark card territory, or maybe a Thomas Kincaid picture (seriously, if you heard this album, you will be convinced that this person has Kincaid pictures all over their house). I am forced to listen to this thing regularly, in a place where I can’t get away from it.
The line that bugs me is this: “I’m off to see Lord Jesus, but without you I won’t go.” I mean, WTF?
No, really, think about it. What does that mean, exactly? I mean, the way I understand how this works, if you’re saved, you’re saved, and it’s pretty much God’s call, right? So is this person in the song saying they will reject their salvation if their friend isn’t saved, too? Can you even do that? I mean, this song is so cloying that I assume the writer is of the mind that God is superniceforgivingsweetkindaguy. Probably hard to turn him off saving you, really. I bet, to do it, you’d have to pretty much blaspheme the Holy Spirit, which is supposedly the only unforgivable sin. Good luck figuring out what that one is, anyway, since the Bible is a bit vague.
Or maybe this is some attempt at the Bodhisattva Vow, Christian style, Salvation For All or Salvation For None? Which sounds great, but in Buddhism salvation is from within, and in Christianity, at least many forms, it only comes from outside, so it starts to sound like a bit of attitude being thrown at God (no criticism there: as an atheist, I heartily approve).
And how, exactly, is the speaker so sure they are going to see Lord Jesus? Isn’t that a bit of an assumption, a bit presumptuous, even, akin to saying “I know the Mind of God, and the Mind of God thinks I rock!”
Or maybe “I’m off to see Lord Jesus” is a euphemism for death, in which case holy hell, CALL THE POLICE BEFORE THERE’S A MURDER. I mean, this song is a bit dodgy. It even has a harp, and if that isn’t a sign of evil intent, I don’t know what is.
What makes a fanatic
A bit of “Thinking aloud” today, as I grapple with a thought that is dancing around in my head:
I realized what bugs me about some types of religious belief, and what that has in common with my more general angsty feelings about ideologies. It also explains why, say, extreme Marxism has more in common with religion, despite its “secularity.”
So my deal is this: insofar as people see their ideals — especially their ethical ideals — as inherent aspects of reality, they are extremists, and probably dangerous.
The religion one is the easy one to see — we’ve all seen or heard or met those folks who think that every little thing they believe is not just true, it’s True, cuz God says so. Note that I’m not saying that every religious person thinks like this — on the contrary, it helps clarify for me why there are many religious folk who, while I might think their beliefs are wonky, don’t worry me one bit. Think of the difference this way: there’s folks who belief that the Great Commandment is Love, and all else is the messy attempts of us humans to live up to that (those are the good religious folk); and there are those who think every little decision they make about ethics, every little thing that disgusts or offends them, is a sign of the Holy Word of God (these are the fanatics who all too easily become dangerous).
And, of course, it extends past religion. Folks who believe, as some of the wackier Marxists out there have done, that there is a grand pattern to history driving towards the Utopian Ideal — ie, that their ethics are the fabric of the universe — well, those are the ones that get scary.
I have no idea if I have explained that at all well. But it makes sense to me. It’s almost like some folks mistake their ethics — the nitty gritty decision-making of living in the world — as their Ideals, whereas most people have ideals that help inform what kinds of ethical decisions they make (but don’t, necessarily, demand particular ones. “Love” is a grand ideal that can take many forms).
Make sense?
Respect
So yesterday I was talking about the PZ Myers post, and the whole Chris Mooney thing, and the issue of how we talk to each other about something like religion. I said I saw a couple of other problems with the Mooney approach, and I want to talk about those here.
The first one is fairly simple, and it’s a common failing in attempts to “be nice:” it’s a position prone to being, in fact, quite cynical and mean-spirited. Let me give an example drawn from the Accommodationist debate in Atheist circles. People who tend to harp on about “being nice” and “respecting religious beliefs” often seem to be saying, in effect, that religious people can’t handle challenges to their beliefs. Or, to be blunt, that religious folk are too weak, or too stupid, to handle it.
It often goes hand in hand with a particularly loathsome idea, namely that maybe some people just need to believe. This is almost always said by someone who doesn’t believe, and it’s hard not to hear a hint of superiority in it. “Some people,” they seem to say, “are weaker, and we should take pity on them.” This, incidentally, is one of my few problems with South Park — it often seems to promote that view a bit. I’m uncomfortable with it because it seems to rest on a lot of assumptions, and rather mean-spirited ones, about other people. If I’m going to assume things about other people, I’d much rather assume the best, rather than the worst.
Of course, I’ve had my struggles with Dysthymia and Anxiety, and had more than my share of ugly, dark moments in my life, and I get the idea of coping mechanisms. So my default position is going to tend to be compassionate on these things. Maybe, in fact, we do need such things at times, and for the most part it doesn’t hurt anyone, so what the hell, right? Which is perfectly true.
But.
The “But” here gets us to the second point. Coping mechanisms are temporary things, and in the long run can become bad. The useful crutch can become a dependency that keeps you from walking on your own when you’re at a point where you can. In other words, they have their time and place, and then can become maladaptive. That’s why I think it’s important to note that it’s no one’s responsibility to help another person maintain their coping mechanisms. In fact, by challenging them — not necessarily in a dickish way, but simply by be honest with our opinions — we can do more good than harm.
Likewise — and here’s my second concern with the Mooney position — it isn’t my problem or anyone else’s, to help someone else to maintain their faith, or make them feel good about it. If me being blunt about my thoughts on God and religion shakes that faith (which is what is happening when someone takes offense), that says they are unsure. It’s not my problem to make sure that they stay sure, or less sure. That’s their path to follow and figure out. If I’m any use at all, it’s simply in being honest.
That, by the way, is certainly what I hope my religious friends and family would do for me. That is, I’d rather they simply speak their minds, honestly state their opinions. If I take offense at a perceived slur to my atheism, that probably means they’ve hit a sore spot — which most likely means a spot I haven’t thought deeply on. The short term result might be uncomfortable, but it can only help me in the long run, right? Certainly it will help more than if they tiptoe around me, fearing to give offense, under some sense that I can’t possibly be as reasonable as they.
In the end, the real thing to take away is that this isn’t about convincing people, or converting, or whatever. It’s actually quite hard to do those things, and one wonders why you’d bother in the first place. Simply be honest, speak your thoughts candidly and proudly, listen to others, and we’ll all muddle along and figure some stuff out. Sometimes it’s uncomfortable, but that, too, is a good thing. Intellectual growing, like physical growing, often involves pain.
Ticking thought bombs
PZ Myers took another swing at Chris Mooney today, and Accommodatists in general, and had an interesting take on the problem:
But that’s all short-term thinking, and I don’t care what happens in the mind of a believer five minutes or a day after I make an argument (the usual domain of the psychology experiments accommodations love to cite in defense of their position; there’s an awful lot of psychology done in our universities with horizons no longer than the next publication deadline). What I’m interested in seeing happen is the development of a strong cadre of vocal atheists who will make a sustainedargument, over the course of years or generations, who will keep pressing on the foolishness of faith. I also don’t mind seeing believers get angry and stomping off determined to prove I’m a colossal jackhole — that means they’re thinking, even if they’re disagreeing with me. At the very least, I hope that a few of them will realize, even if they don’t change their mind about the god nonsense, that quoting the Bible at me has no effect, and maybe some years down the road I won’t be hearing as many idiots telling me ”The fool says in his heart, ‘There is no God’” as if they’ve made a profound point.
I wrote a bit about this on an old blog a long time ago. I think Myers is right — there’s a short term thinking that goes on with this kind of argument, one that is focused on the particular interaction at hand and little more. It always sounds a bit “let’s just make sure we all go away smiling,” and makes you feel good, and has a nice Let’s Get Along kind of feel. Only it often ends up masking truth. Maybe it’s a personal taste thing, but I’d rather have the plainly spoken opinion than the dancing around any day, and it’s no coincidence that the religious people I’ve gotten along with the best have tended to be one’s who are forthright in their opinions.
Confrontational talk has a place, is what I’m trying to say, even if the confrontational nature is only in plainly stating your opinion. It may make a person angry, and turn them off in the short term, but if they are in a place of doubt, if their brain is at all churning over the contradictions in their thought, it will eat at them and aid them on their journey. In that old post of mine, I told the story of reading Harlan Ellison’s classic essay on Christmas, the one that ends with the line “And fuck you, Tiny Tim!” I was one of those uncertain, wafflely, vague, oh isn’t faith so great kind of people, and when I read it I got so angry I threw the book across the room, and then returned it to the bookstore in a huff.
And then, of course, bought it again, about a year later, because damn if Ellison hadn’t been eating at my head for that whole time.
It would be easy to say, like Mooney probably would, that Ellison’s angry, sarcastic, confrontational take on Christmas shut me down, and one could not doubt quote Psychology studies to prove it. But really, I was shutting myself down already. Faltering in my wishy-washy faith (I really, at that point, was a person who believed in faith rather than having any), I was in avoidance mode. I didn’t want to be confronted with the ideas that would kick over the last standing stones of that part of my life. If it had been a nicely put essay, I would’ve dismissed his ideas as silly and not thought again. Instead, I thought. With a lot of pain, to be sure, but Ellison made me think.
Writing this, I realize I have some other problems with the Mooney position, but I’ll save those for tomorrow, because they deserve their own space. I’ll just end this by noting that I will take bracing honesty any day. If I’m talking to a religious person, I’d much rather they be the kind of person that just plainly states their opinions, including about how wrong I am, than ones that dance around lest they offend. There may be a few sparks, but we’re both likely to grow because of it.
