Neda
It is my sincerest hope that the people of Iran will find a peaceful resolution to the conflict that is tearing Iran apart. It is my sincerest wish that no-one else will lose her or his life, that no more families will be doused with the gasoline of grief and set afire by the agony of losing a loved one.
Woke up around 6:50 in the AM to make sure our boy made it to the bus on time. Fixed some instant coffee (-like substance) and sat in bed reading Infinite Jest for awhile. I read before work every morning, which is usually the only time I get to actually sit and read anything not on a screen, so I figured I might as well do so this morning even without having to go to work. I’m almost done with the book; I’m into the 800s. After I read, I took my now-cool-enough-to-drink coffee outside to the balcony with me and I sat in the plastic chair with the metal legs and sipped from my Dia de los Muertos mug while having a smoke. The sky this morning is default daylight blue. No clouds. The promise of a hot day feels obvious. Like, there’s no need for an explicit promise; anyone from the neighbors to the bees could tell you it’s going to be hot today.
Sitting here now, the laptop is warm on my bare legs. A readout in the Menu Bar tells me the CPU is 131°F presently (actually, this temp keeps going up and down a degree or two by the minute).
I’ve not yet dived into the morning’s email. I subscribe to a few science-oriented emails via Google Alerts and ScienceBlogs and the AAAS, and every day I get at least six updates. Sometimes there’s nothing that really grabs me, or something grabs me but is over my head and I can’t therefore really get into what it’s saying even if the headline is intriguing. I wish I could be back at school, studying science and grokking even the nuances, but it’s like they say: if wishes were food, no one would go hungry.
So the reality is that my paycheck went to rent and fuel and necessities, and there’s less than $40 left to last from now until the mid-month paycheck. I’m not even considering the fact that, thanks to an untimely annual fee I didn’t see coming, I’m overdrawn in my secondary account. I console myself with the fact that at least I still have a job. My thoughts go out to those who have lost theirs, or who are still hanging on—after months, now—to some paltry unemployment check while they try to find work like the end of one particular thread in a ginormous bale of knotted strings. I don’t know what we’d do if I lost my job. As precariously perched as we are on the fence between emergent poverty on one side and safety on the other, the idea of being out of work is harrowing and stomach churning. Which is not to say that I am unaware that I am still living better than most people in the world, or that it is not without irony that I am sitting here with a MacBook and writing this post for my personal blog while science-oriented emails sit in my in-box as my partner of eight years sleeps beside me and our boy attends to schoolwork at his school. I mean, I may be worried about putting gas in it, but I have a decent car sitting out there.
So I’m in the strange position of being both under the sword of Damocles and grateful for my riches, wondering simultaneously how I’m going to parcel out my meager funds and what book I’m going to read next. This is, doubtless, a modern problem, the fruit of great wealth floating the boat of the nation like some huge swell so that even the poorest people often have cell phones even as they call a plastic tarp shelter a “godsend”.
And but so I’m thinking that I should probably re-read one of my Walter Kaufmann books, but maybe secondarily to one of the other books I’ve got that I’ve never read and have on my list. Reading takes me away from contemplating my pecuniary troubles while also serving to educate me further or enhance my understanding of the world. I prize anything that will better me, because it’s a worthwhile and never-ending goal that requires constant effort. And let us be clear here what I mean when I say that I want to better myself. I see bettering myself as one sure way to be better for others. I want to better myself so that I am better able to interface with the world, which is, for me, mainly made up of other people and their connections to others and possibly me. Actually, I find all this to be ethically necessitated by the social contract [see here and here; do not overlook Pateman's and Mills' invaluable critiques].
Ah… Well, the groundskeepers are here now. Leaf blowers and string trimmers are furiously abuzz and aggressively a-whine. My partner has pulled a pillow over her head. The tea kettle was heard recently to whistle downstairs. The day’s active phase is ramping up. But as for me, I’m already wanting to get back to the earlier quiet. A day off should have plenty of quiet, even if it’s not possible to keep the chatter down in the brain’s thought pool.
One of the most difficult positions held by atheists—a de facto position following of course from the main proposition of atheism—is that there is no divine aid or comfort to be looked for in difficult times. Religious people are fond of saying that they are “carried through the hard times” by their beliefs, by their deity. They say, over and over, that they don’t know how they’d cope if it wasn’t for “God” being there for them. Some of their stories are quite moving, emotionally and psychologically. That there is not a shred of evidence in them, or despite the fact that they are talking about their own actions based on what they believe and not on any demonstrable intervention on the part of said deity, seems lost to them. Their belief is tantamount to proof for them because they sincerely feel that it is what led to their successfully navigating some difficulty or surviving some hardship. It is difficult to argue with this position.
When an atheist says to a believer that there is no “God”, she or he is saying to the believer that there is no help for life’s worst times, that the person is on his or her own. It is something like a psycho-social replay of the scene in Bambi when Bambi’s father looms over the young deer and says, “Your mother can’t be with you anymore”. Of course, in the movie the young Bambi has no choice but to accept this and then deal, without support, with all that follows. In real life, the believer is under no such obligation to accept what the atheist is saying. The atheist is simply and immediately cast in the role of “Bad Person” or “Mistaken Person”, and the believer distances him or herself in at least a psychological way.
I feel a certain amount of distress over this. more…
There are bound to be casualties on both sides in the culture wars. Try as we might to be considerate to those whose feelings and opinions matter to us, we are bound to run into some difficulty that either hurts them or us. If we speak our minds to persons close to us whose position radically differs from ours, we risk making them feel diminishing and alienating them. If we keep our mouths shut and keep our ideas private, we risk feeling passively diminished and alienated.
Ideally, we’d like to be able to be who we are and know that those close to us will accept us. This is especially the wish where family members are concerned. It’s also the type of relationship most likely to expose us to one of the most unfortunate sides of the culture wars. It is the place in our lives where we will probably have to draw strictly defined lines in order to save ourselves and those we care about from long-lasting wounds.
Of course it’s not the only place we will find ourselves drawing such lines. Other relationships (professional or casual) will require us to do so for the sake of civility. But I am mostly concerned here with close interpersonal relationships, especially familial ones, because these are really thorny and fraught with danger.
“Many persons have no idea of what constitutes true happiness. It is not attained through self-gratification but through fidelity to a worthy purpose.”—Helen Keller
Mission Statement: [The] purpose of the Humanist Symposium is not primarily to criticize religious beliefs or debunk the latest superstition, but to offer and discuss a positive alternative to belief systems based on the supernatural. [From Ebonmuse.]
Welcome, friends, regulars, and first time visitors, to the 33rd Humanist Symposium! We’ve much to discuss, as ever, and only so much time in our busy lives to do so, I know. Yet it is certain that we need to take this time to peruse and pursue the topics at hand. As humanists, we are confronted with a world poised on the edge of an enormous valley whose plummeting depths are shrouded by perpetual mists and obscuring shadow. It is the Valley of Change and Interesting Times. It is also known as the Valley of Uncertainty and Potential. We all know this awesome valley from personal experience, certes, but each of us has her or his own take on it.
Here is a chance to lend an ear to what others have to say, gathered here for the nonce on this windblown overlook on the Kalends of March (a number of us wearing Darwin tee-shirts, I see), as one by one, alone or with friends, we plot our course into the future that awaits us.
The following works can serve, I think, to help us consider the topics we have to deal with, and help us to choose a path down into and through the valley.
In “Anti-atheism and anti-theism“, Faithlessgod would have us consider our attitude toward theists and how that attitude effects the ongoing dialog between believers and non-believers. Are we all supporting double standards? Does the Golden Rule still apply? How’s our footing?
Meanwhile, in “The Renaissance of Atheist Evangelism“, Ebonmuse, of Daylight Atheism, takes on the usual criticism that “atheist evangelism” is something inherently bad for atheists and the atheist cause generally. A healthy attitude is of invaluable assistance on these slopes.
Negotiating the scree with care, in “Why Evangelical Humanism?“, She Who Chatters makes a solid case for humanistic evangelism being a necessary tool for constructing a better world for all.
Ivaluthy Mahendran shares that vision. He has looked upon the hardship of the world and is ready to shout, so that the valley echoes, “I Have a Dream!!!“—it is a dream of getting through the valley.
In “The Brain, Engine of Creativity“, BlackSun expertly defends the fruits of the Enlightenment against the malaise of New-Age unreality as typified by Elizabeth Gilbert, author of Eat, Pray, Love. Wishful thinking makes for an unreliable guide in dangerous places.
Down into the valley we make our way, and the paths we choose will ever require us to pay attention and to move with care. The Mystic Atheist believes we must pay attention to the old stories told in the valley by the theists. He shares his ideas in The Word of Science: A Story Still to Tell.
While over at Distiller’s Corner, Burak Bilgin considers “A Paradigm Shift for Self-Actualization“. What do we expect to make of this journey?
I humbly submit to the symposium the powerful speech given by author Haruki Murakami on the occasion of his being awarded the Jerusalem Prize for the Freedom of the Individual in Society. It is called “The Novelist in Wartime“, and it presents an admirable statement all humanists can support. Our duty as humanists is clear; our responsibility is to help, as best we may, those in danger of falling.
Russell Blackford highlights one of the constant dangers we face on our journey—the slippery slope that ends in a social pitfall—in “Geert Wilders should have been allowed into the UK“, posted at Metamagician and the Hellfire Club.
And the Examiner.com: DC Political Atheist Examiner, Paul Fidalgo, says in no uncertain terms that “The sorry excuse of offense” must go! We can’t stand still and argue about the danger of avalanches or we won’t get anywhere.
But—no offense intended—Zach Alexander really thinks we also should “pay attention to the aesthetic message our ads send, not just the literal message”, in “Ugly Atheist Buses“. Think of it as being dressed properly for the long trek; you know a well prepared hiker when you see one, right?
In “Curiosity and the ‘Shut Up, That’s Why’ Argument“, Greta Christina admonishes us to both keep up the discussion with friends and family who may not share our views, and to understand where they might differ from us in their conversational expectations. The message is clear on this journey: communication—and good, healthy, open communication at that—is a must if we are to help each other succeed.
Atheist Revolution wonders aloud about what it will take to make a more accommodating space on campus, in “Reaching Out to Atheist College Students“. How can we make the journey a little easier for those still learning to navigate the many paths of this place and time?
There are a lot of questions about this journey. There are a number of viable paths, and many more dangerous ones, and sometimes it seems that the society we live in is geared against our success. So it seems only fitting to conclude this symposium with a hopeful message, one that can lend us strength as we work on finding our way through the valley.
Tom Rees, of Epiphenom, says that a “New ARIS survey will show that US atheists/agnostics have nearly doubled since 2001″. We are not alone on this journey. This is both a reason to rejoice and a reason to consider our role in helping so many others—people who may now be embarking on an adventure that some of us have been on for some time already. I know we’re up to it.
…
A few final words. I’d like to thank Adam Lee, (Ebonmuse of Daylight Atheism), for giving me this opportunity. I really appreciate it. I’d also like to thank those who have hosted the Humanist Symposium previously—most recently, A Superfluous Ramble—and those who will be hosting it in the future—such as your next host, Atheist Revolution (on March 22nd). I feel myself to be in the best company with all of you. These symposiums are of benefit to the greater community of the world, however small and intimate they may seem, and to host one is a privilege that should always be celebrated and gratefully acknowledged.
Finally, I’d like to thank you, the readers of these posts. It feels good knowing that there are people all over the world who are interested enough in the humanist perspective to take the time to read what secular humanists have to say. I think the most important thing we need right now is an open dialog that allows for honest questions and answers. That sort of thing begins here… and in the comment sections of blogs everywhere.
How I wish I could claim to be surprised by the number of ignorant and stupid comments I see on “teh intarnets”–but I can’t. The ridiculously virulent form of foolishness that can reduce otherwise decent people to a manic and bellicose condition of trollishness is so widespread around here that I am more surprised when I run across an actually thoughtful, calm, intelligent (and intelligible) comment. It makes me frakkin’ sad and a wee bit pissed.
Lately, I have almost despaired over the miasma gathered about the issues of climate change and evolution. If it isn’t flat out ignorance of the facts of either subject (or both), it’s a pathetically malnourished capacity for understanding that conjures something very like it. Or it’s a pissy form of apathy. In any case, when it is not some form of apathy, there seems to be a rather fundamental dislike of genuine science on the one side, and an Ann Coulter-like support for the usual dissentient pundits on the other. Not suprisingly, those who automatically scoff at evolution or climate change typically accuse people like me of being the real fanatics, resorting to all manner of hyperbolic descriptions to describe us as, essentially, sickeningly insane and steeped in our own stratagems. They then go on, typically, to portray us as terrorists or amoral freaks whose agenda includes destroying the world that decent, moral, god-fearing, country-loving folks made or whatever. Or they simply say that we are obviously stupid. Not that both sides don’t have their low points; there’s plenty of pots and kettles, stones and glass houses, motes and planks, etc.; all the usual wanker stuff. But seriously, there are a number of strong distinctions between sides here, readily and accurately characterized by the presence of qualities such as insightfulness, integrity, honesty and forthrightness on the side of those who support the sciences, and an absence of one or more of these on the other. Take a look at the freepers and people like Michael Crichton if you’re not sure what I’m going on about. From one end of the spectrum to the other, their voices add up to a deafening, mind numbing wall of sound. It gets so that it’s very difficult for the lay person to get any idea at all of what’s simply true and what’s merely truthy.
This is a tactic of theirs, just so you know. If they can get you to stop before you start poking about, reading up, learning the facts, then they win. This is why their arguments usually devolve into ad hominem attacks or pulp fiction conspiracy theories. If they can get you to believe that what people like me are saying is equivalent to what people like them are saying–if they can so level the playing field–then they’ve all but won. They have the goal in sight once you stop looking for the truth beyond the post or comment. They have only a few steps to go in their endeavor if they can get you to think that in the end it’s all just arguments, smoke and mirrors, trivial or pointless. If you buy their shtick, you’ll walk away thinking that it’s all just a matter of opinion or, in some cases, that it’s a matter of shady politics or villainous social engineering that you should distrust out of hand.
It would appear that their shtick is potent. The sad thing is, I see a lot of people parroting the disinformation back like it’s a weaponized retort aimed at killing the bothersome dissidents who would overthrow a righteous America or patriotic “God” or some such thing.
But if you want the truth, here it is. Two issues (that are really kind of just one issue) here addressed in one rambling paragraph. OK? Listen…
First off, I don’t hate America or “God” (I am simply opposed to nationalism and theocracy as I am delusion and fanaticism). I am not a member of some occult cabal, and there is no camarilla speaking in Al Gore’s, Barack Obama’s or Henry Waxman’s ear. Richard Dawkins, PZ Myers, Sam Harris and the like do not want to eat your children or destroy morality. Secondly, that being said, a) please understand now that the world is in fact already beginning to feel the effects of global warming, a phenomenon that a great deal of evidence points to as having a man-made driver as its primary source, and know, too, that b) the theory of evolution is a robust, well-tested and open-ended attempt to explain the mechanisms of evolution–which is a real phenomenon in the world and not something that Darwin, Wallace, Huxley and many, many more esteemed scientists invented in order to supplant “God”. As for atheism (or secular humanism): it is not a religion, it is a philosophical viewpoint. Similarly, there is no “Church of Global Warming”. Finally, the scientific method is beautiful and trustworthy, and the dividends of scientific exploration are fruitful and exceedingly valuable to you, me, and everyone.
Let’s try to put it as simply as possible and see if everyone can understand it, shall we?
Science has nothing to do with “God”. Science deals solely with the empirical universe as it may be observed, recorded, studied, tested, etc., utilizing whatever tools may be created to do so, as well as our innate human abilities (though educated, certainly, honed and refined). Science does not deal with anything that lies outside its purview, nor does it make statements—let alone judgments—about any such thing. Scientists, whatever their personal feelings or beliefs, whatever they might choose to express as a personal opinion, do not interject religion or philosophy into their actual work because doing so would taint the science.
The theory of evolution says nothing about whether or not “God” exists, and therefore makes no claims regarding the qualities, characteristics, or modi operandi of “God”. Should a scientist express her or his opinion regarding “God”, her or his opinion is still incapable of reflecting on her or his actual scientific research. That is because science does not deal with unfalsifiable matters (matters which cannot be tested for empirical validity), and as the existence of “God” can neither be proved nor disproved then “God” must be considered an unfalsifiable matter. This is not a shortcoming of science or the scientific method; it is a remarkable strength. Whereas endless speculation and typically unresolvable arguments over hypotheticals belong to philosophy and theology, to the realm of science belongs only that which may bear the strictly vetted tools and critically maintained rules of science.
Naturally, the tools and rules of science may be brought to bear on any subject presented as empirical, falsifiable, and subject to tests of its veracity. Even when it is resistant to change, science does not turn away from a valid avenue of discovery because it may realize a fault in some long-standing theory. If one is capable of providing some real-world credentials and a compelling outline, and if one’s presentation includes a thorough grounding in current scientific understanding, then scientists will very likely pay attention to a new idea or theory. With a few sad exceptions, only the ignorant, the crackpots, the cranks and the trolls get short shrift from the community of scientists. And where the scientific community has originally failed to recognize a valid offering, time has—thanks to members of that same community—often vindicated the one who brought that offering. But never has science found something to be a fact or valid theory that at its base was unscientific, unfalsifiable. This is not because of some conspiracy against those who don’t know the secret handshake and password, it is simply and only because science has nothing to do with that which cannot bear the application of science’s tools and rules.
Science simply means “to know”, and knowledge is subject to revision as new, empirical, falsifiable data dictates it. Certainty is measured in percentages reaching ever closer to 100%—with ever-mounting evidence, the successful passing of tests after tests, more and more data, etc.—without ever attaining it. Science ends at 100%, for there is nothing to do after that, nothing more to know. So when someone asks a scientist trained in physics specific questions about this or that facet of, say, the theory of special relativity, she or he may shrug and say, “We just don’t know yet. Isn’t it exciting!”, exhibiting in the response the main trait found in scientists everywhere: undying curiosity yoked to the perpetual drive to discover, hindered only by the frailties of the human organism.
So why is it of late that some scientists are seen to be attacking religion, and why is it that some religious people are calling the theory of evolution inherently atheistic? What’s going on? If science has nothing to say about matters outside its purview (and religion is demonstrably outside its purview), and the theories of science cannot in themselves address religion due to the unfalsifiable nature of x religion’s primary assertions (its metaphysical tropes), then how is it we are in the middle of a culture war with a sampling of scientists on one side and a bunch of very religious people on the other? Who threw the first stone?
I do not have enough time or energy to devote to writing such a history. However, A.D. White, the founder and first president of Cornell, a professor of history, did have the wherewithal to write about the subject in the last decade of the 1800s. His work, A History of the Warfare of Science with Theology in Christendom, is relevant today. By simply recounting history, White explodes the idea that somehow it was Charles Darwin’s theory of evolution that initiated the charge for some sort of godless revolution hitherto unimaginable. After discussing the early concepts of evolution “among the Chaldeans, the Hebrews, the Greeks, the Romans”, White notes some of the theological issues that arose in the 16th, 17th and 18th centuries, and concludes the second part of Chapter 1 by saying that
By the middle of the nineteenth century the whole theological theory of creation – though still preached everywhere as a matter of form – was clearly seen by all thinking men to be hopelessly lost: such strong men as Cardinal Wiseman in the Roman Church, Dean Buckland in the Anglican, and Hugh Miller in the Scottish Church, made heroic efforts to save something from it, but all to no purpose. That sturdy Teutonic and Anglo-Saxon honesty, which is the best legacy of the Middle Ages to Christendom, asserted itself in the old strongholds of theological thought, the universities. Neither the powerful logic of Bishop Butler nor the nimble reasoning of Archdeacon Paley availed. Just as the line of astronomical thinkers from Copernicus to Newton had destroyed the old astronomy, in which the earth was the centre, and the Almighty sitting above the firmament the agent in moving the heavenly bodies about it with his own hands, so now a race of biological thinkers had destroyed the old idea of a Creator minutely contriving and fashioning all animals to suit the needs and purposes of man. They had developed a system of a very different sort….
But A.D. White also believed that
In welding together into noble form, whether in the book of Genesis, or in the Psalms, or in the book of Job, or elsewhere, the great conceptions of men acting under earlier inspiration, whether in Egypt, or Chaldea, or India, or Persia, the compilers of our sacred books have given to humanity a possession ever becoming more and more precious; and modern science, in substituting a new heaven and a new earth for the old – the reign of law for the reign of caprice, and the idea of evolution for that of creation – has added and is steadily adding a new revelation divinely inspired.
As an educated and science-minded person, White believed that theology and science could be, and should be, reconciled. But he knew, too, that there could be no turning back from what science was learning of the world, that to turn back would be to turn against the flow of our better nature. To interpret scripture literally could never be more than a failure, both of the mind and—should you be so inclined—the spirit.
Those who would turn back (think of those in Florida and Kansas and elsewhere) are always the ones to throw the first stone. Scientists would rather not have to muck about in the fantasy world of creationists, but creationists won’t leave science alone. Theologians and religious leaders, religious adherents who shudder when fundamentalists cry out in public, have not truly risen to the challenge, doubtless because they fear that to do so would make their own faith look bad or sully it by proximity. This is a shame. Science, having nothing to do with religion by nature, has been made a religious issue that apparently only scientists, atheists, and a very few religious people see fit to deal with. Naturally, the scientists are accused of having an ungodly agenda, the atheists are used as proof of science’s ungodliness, and the religious people who side with science are seen as damnable liberals who are, themselves, lacking in genuine faith.
But it is in fact the creationists (and the promoters of so-called “intelligent design”) who are the problem, who create the problem, who sustain and add fuel to the problem. They do not seem to grasp that to teach someone the facts is not to indoctrinate her or him into godlessness or evil, whereas to indoctrinate someone into a religion that denies the facts is certainly a bad thing. Fundamentalism and other nonsense is not righteously religious, it’s thoroughly foolish. It may seem unfortunate to some religious people, but the onus is in fact on them to adapt to the facts or perish. The world is not the fantasy land that our ancestors often believed it was, it is something much greater and more amazing. You do not have to be godless or satanic in order to accept the facts of the world. (Cherished psalms, for instance, are not made less poetically beautiful or meaningful.) But what you have to do is give up on absurd literal interpretations of so-called sacred texts, you have to give up on certain naïve conceptions of “God”. If there is a “God”, she/he/it (or they) is much further from our oversimplified understanding than we’ve realized, and those who came before us were misled by their (understandable) ignorance. Even a hundred years ago (and, actually, quite a great many more years than that) there were people who understood that much. Science continues, in its non-theistic fashion, to prove the point. So the question is, why are so many people afraid to embrace that fact today? What is really so terrifying about an even greater universe than religions have made?
What a marvel it is, the internal combustion engine; what a wonder is the oil that, in its refined and crude states, powers such an engine. For nearly a hundred years our world — to large extent and to great effect — the world, I said, has been powered, has been driven even, by the ICE that runs, day and night, up and down the arteries of our great cities and along its railroads and rivers, fueled by the remains of a transmogrified biomass millions of years old. Small irony, that acronym, considering the fact that the exhaust of the ICE has, we now know, contributed to the melting of the polar ice, to the ongoing process of the melting away of glaciers, ice shelves and permafrost. Greater irony that the fuel we burn — as we cruise along the highway, rushing headlong into the future like a juggernaut — fuel formed of the remains of the dead, may at long last contribute to the end of us… or, rather, to the end of our distant progeny, scions of the self-blasted family tree who may not know another branching or extension or flowering.
While certain untrustworthy politicos may talk about our “addiction to oil” as if oil is under the purview and jurisprudent oversight of the ATF and, as such, is some part of the “War on Drugs”, many of us still seem to be unaware that there is really any problem to be concerned about. I say this because the evidence speeds past me and clusters all around me every time I commute the 20 plus miles to work and the 20 plus miles back I have to five days a week. Hell, I can hear the freeway from here, and that sound — like white noise, like a work of industrial ambience — never stops.
But I am especially aware of it now, because now I am learning to hypermile (which is just a convenient and nifty space age way of saying that I am going a step above and beyond in my efforts to cut down on my car’s gas consumption).
Here are the bare basics to hypermiling:
You can read more tips and get beyond the basics here.
Ultimately, as you know, we use oil (petroleum, specifically) for a great many things. A good portion of a barrel of oil is used for non-fuel products, products ranging from heart valves to crayons, plastics to bubble gum. Your car is not only a consumer of oil, parts of it were made out of oil. It’s a no-brainer of an observation to say oil is a part of the economy from top to bottom, really. It’s practically ubiquitous, and not always obvious in its presence. But all you need to do if you want to see oil in action is hang out beside a freeway, or at an airport or sea port, or at a railroad yard. You can practically hear the sky wheezing from all the carbon dioxide (not to mention the “nitrogen oxides, particulate matter, and unburned hydrocarbons” [source]).
So maybe we need to hypermile our lives, as it were, and consider everything we do and all the things we use in our lives that come from or involve the use of oil.
As it turns out, after I had begun composing this post, I had NPR’s Science Friday on while I was driving to a Taco Bell to pick up some foodstuff, and they were talking about the use of petroleum products. The host, Ira Flatow, was talking with author Bill McKibben (see his book, Deep Ecology). They were talking about how much oil is used in bringing things like imported bottled water to us. And it struck me with the force of an oversize interrogative made out of oil barrels: Do we really need imported bottle water? It takes a huge amount of oil per bottle of water to bring it to us. If the choice is between purchasing good water bottled at a local source versus good water bottled in, say, Europe or Fiji, wouldn’t it be better, more environmentally conscious, to buy the local water? That’s a no-brainer, isn’t it? Perhaps the best idea would be to get a water purifying setup for the tap at home, no? How much oil would be saved then? What other choices we can easily make might save oil? Well, of course there’s a page for that. But the thing is, I’m sure you can think of a lot of ways to help save oil on your own. It takes only a little thought. I hope you’ll join me and many others in thinking about what we’re doing, what we can do, what we ought and must do, and then doing something about it because, seriously, we don’t want people in the future to look back on us all with contempt, non-plussed by our self-centered thoughtlessness, stuck trying to muddle through the legacy of our errors. To get to the future in peace, we’re going to need to hypermile our way there.
They talk without being criticized nearly enough:
“When the Christian majority takes over this country, there will be no satanic churches, no more free distribution of pornography, no more talk of rights for homosexuals. After the Christian majority takes control, pluralism will be seen as immoral and evil and the state will not permit anybody the right to practice evil.” — Gary Potter (Catholics for Christian Political Action)
They get free time on the airwaves and are paid by flocks of the faithful to guide them:
“I know this is painful for the ladies to hear, but if you get married, you have accepted the headship of a man, your husband. Christ is the head of the household and the husband is the head of the wife, and that’s the way it is, period.” — Pat Robertson (Christian Coalition)
They hold positions of governmental authority and have great influence on public policy:
“The ‘wall of separation between church and state’ is a metaphor based on bad history, a metaphor which has proved useless as a guide to judging. It should be frankly and explicitly abandoned.” — William Rehnquist (Chief Justice of the U.S. Supreme Court)
They would teach our children:
“The Christian community has a golden opportunity to train an army of dedicated teachers who can invade the public school classrooms and use them to influence the nation for Christ.” — James Kennedy (Center for Reclaiming America)
– They are the American Taliban.
Like it or not, we, as Americans, are involved in a culture war as surely as Middle-Eastern nations are involved in one. It is a war of ideas — ideas that make policies — the outcome of which will determine who controls America. Lately the focus has shifted to an especially anti-science tack, but it is still a part of an overall strategy by a vicious core of Dominionists whose goal is nothing less than the theocratic take-over of America.
It’s a long way from my childhood. Sitting here writing this on Easter — a holiday that means nothing to me now — I can’t but be drawn back to my childhood. I was raised as a Catholic during the liberal ’70s. The church that my parents, and therefore I, attended had long-haired twenty-somethings in front of the congregation, sitting there in blouses and flowery skirts, corduroy pants and peasant shirts, playing acoustic guitar and bongos, and singing about the “Unity of All Humankind”, and the most often repeated message was that love, acceptance and compassion were the truest and best characteristics of a great human being. It was as progressive a church as you were likely to find, really. Which is not to say I understood or even knew then about the Roman Catholic message or the history of the Church.
And that’s sort of the point. Had I been a faithful member and grown up believing, never seeking to plumb the depths of its secretive mind, it is not at all unlikely that I’d have accepted whatever moral and political positions the Pope dictated. I would have done what my parents did, or at least done as they ordered. I would have taken for granted the righteousness of my faith and turned scorn on anyone who called it into question. I do in fact gratefully credit my basically liberal education and temperament for brining me to my senses.
America is, to its fortune, filled with a plethora of cultures, ethnicities, faiths and philosophies. Many of the faiths found in America are ostensibly Christian. And quite a few of these Christian faiths are evangelical or fundamentalist. The numbers of adherents they possess gives them a sense of security in their beliefs; the larger the flock, the greater the courage of ease. I think it is fair to say that the average worshiper is not concerned so much with how his or her personal faith interfaces with the political realm; she or he will vote for the person or party that attracts the majority of the flock or the one the shepherd touts as best. This is certainly understandable. But it also sets up a situation where the average worshiper may wind up as a tool used by those whose agenda is essentially at odds with the supposed core tenets of the faith, and given enough time such leaders with ulterior motives can sway entirely the faith of the congregation, perverting or repurposing it to satisfy their own ends while maintaining the illusion that they are serving the community of believers.
The culture war in America is centered around the conflict between the Dominionists’ and (at the risk of sounding glib) non-Dominionists’ opposing Weltanschauungen. Specifically, in America the enemies of the Dominionists are most often pluralists, socialists/Marxists, and secular humanists, but it would be remiss to fail mentioning that Dominionism is also completely opposed to womanism/feminisim, anarchism, and, ultimately, democracy itself. In fact, if there is anything akin to Dominionism, in theory and initiating praxis, it is straightforward fascism (a point that David Neiwert of Orcinus has eloquently driven home a number of times). To that end the Dominionists have campaigned surreptitiously to recast “Jesus” as something of a Billy O’Reilly-Graham hybrid. The “meek and mild” shepherd model is out, the sword-bearing Savior is in. This image better sustains the political fire fueling the Dominionist machine for several reasons, but the most important reason it is useful is that it mobilizes otherwise pacific Christians in a military way. Naturally, the “War on Terror” has helped the cause. Coupled with the particularly bellicose and morbid fantasies of the very popular Left Behind series, the “War on Terror” is a banner to fly over the “Army of Christ” as it marches to apocalyptic war against its adversaries, personified and demonized as “Satan” and “the Anti-Christ”. What is immediately apparent, too, is that the idea of who a ‘terrorist’ is or can be comprises any and all who oppose Dominionism and its politically charged evangelical ideals. A war on terrorists would to some degree require specific geo-locations to serve as “battle fronts”, and this was almost the case early on when the “Axis of Evil” propaganda was in vogue. But a war on terror itself needs no place, no specific location in the world, because terror is a ubiquitous, polymorphic force with a surprisingly plastic definition that can just as easily turn up in the shape of your neighbor as in a plane crashing into a building.
The theocracy envisioned by the Dominionists (and their allies) is deadly to the democracy painstakingly brought into being by our flawed but far-seeing signers of the Declaration of Independence and Constitution. Theocracy is anathema to anyone who supports the idea that “Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed” (The Declaration of Independence) — a concept that has in fact been attacked by a large number of people both in and outside of governmental offices. In our government’s offices the expected belief in [the Christian] “God” has made the job of the Dominionists easier. Certainly such an expectation of belief has been bolstered by the ridiculous institutionalized act of swearing on the Bible, an act which, like any professed belief itself, has failed to ensure anything in court or in any other circumstances; liars lie regardless of oaths. It might be wryly observed, based on recent history, that those most likely to swear on a Bible are exactly the ones most likely to lie.
In any case, I don’t think that the majority of self-proclaimed Christians in this country want to live under theocratic rule, and I am willing to bet that a great many of them would be more than a little uncomfortable with the goals and methods of the Dominionists. And it should go without saying that thinking Americans will always be, by default, against any form of theocracy, however apparently benevolent in intent, but especially one that is so steeped in arrogant nationalism, misogyny, homophobia, racism and xenophobia. Though faulted a country it was and remains, it was not the American way during this country’s formative years to accept the rule of tyrants, dictators, or kings. I don’t think that that has changed, really. But there is always the danger that — failing the eternal vigilance of those who know better, those educated people who have learned from history — the liberties we as a nation have cherished and striven for will be taken from us by people who in their ignorance, pride, and thirst for power, who in their desire for security and an absolute authority to follow unquestioningly, who in their bitterly rueful naïeveté and all-too-knowing selfishness will sincerely believe they are doing the right thing (if only for themselves and their kin). We have seen it before, and we ourselves have all but done in whole peoples following such desires. Must we do it to ourselves at long last? Are we doing it even now?
We must each remember the parting shot of Patrick Henry — “I know not what course others may take; but as for me, give me liberty or give me death!” — and we must set them to a purpose better suited to the global village we inhabit but a corner of; we must make it our hue and cry in the name of all people, of any faith or none, regardless of race, creed, color, ethnicity, and irrespective of gender and sexual orientation. We must bring down the Dominionists and their schemes for an American theocracy. It is long past time for leaving behind our childish things, our black-and-white thinking, our selfish sense of superiority and righteousness. There is too much at stake, and there is so much to learn from the world.
. . . . . .
For more information regarding this topic, please see First Freedom First. Please also check out the Blog Against Theocracy.
Merzbow: Metamorphism
![[image]](http://verywide.net/blog/wp-content/images/misc_others/merzbow_ammonoise-metamorph.jpg "Merzbow: Metamorphism [Not original cover art]")
Noise — true and unadulterated noise — is not the chaos from which order emerges, it is the great annihilator that devours all order. The television, the radio, the movie, the CD; the text, the word, the letters; emotions, senses, thought; in the end, noise consumes them all, consumes everything but itself. Noise is the yawning void, the infinite string of random ones and zeros tangling and raveling in a blinding light of overload and feedback, simultaneously attack and decay. It is the amorphous and indefinite haze of shattered alphabets, all babble and insentient glossolalia wrapped, bound and layered over and over in and by and with discordant choral voices saying nothing. It is the utterly unstable, timeless, roiling destruction of all alphanumeric and otherwise information-bearing codices. Noise cannot be reasoned with; it neither hates nor loves, fears nor desires, hopes nor despairs, laughs nor weeps; it is not simply illogical or irrational, it is nonlogical and arational. It lays all composition to waste, and no composition may overcome it.
So it may seem odd, right from the start, to discuss a “noise composition” like Merzbow’s Metamorphism [iTunes link]. Then again, the four tracks that comprise this release are not only or not simply noise — there is, in fact, some recognizable instrumentation — although anyone who’d deny that they each attain a level nearly tantamount to ultimate noise (and for almost unbearably sustained intervals) has apparently not yet listened to Metamorphism. What instrumentation there is is ultimately broken and violently obliterated. But what should be considered here is that Masami Akita, like minimalist electronic music composer Ryoji Ikeda (see “Of Noise and Data, Pt. 2: ‘Data’”), is the composer of the sound we finally hear and interpret for ourselves. The point is that however thought-numbingly anti-harmonious or deafeningly destructive/deconstructive each song is in-itself, it was an ordered mind that made it and laid it out before us. So, then, let’s ask a useful question. What motivates Masami Akita; why does he make noise?
What drives Akita is of course best summed up by him, and in his answers to the questions posed by Perfect Sound Forever, the following exchange is illuminating:
PSF: Your work has little connection with what we think of as music- melody, rhythm, chorus- [what] are your thoughts on this?
I like melody and rhythm and I was listening to many different types of music. But my project is in a very different way. My music is not only my reaction against other music. It’s just my way.
PSF: What are you trying to communicate through your music?
My own sensation. I don’t see it as something that I’m communicating. I’m not of any special opinion about this. I’m just doing my work. Of course, I need listeners to hear my work but I have no control about how they hear it.
How does one hear Merzbow? That depends on a number of factors more or less obvious. For instance, what are the presuppositions at the point of exposure? Let’s assume two things: assume that 1) whatever Akita’s intentions/reasons, you alone shall hear what you hear, and 2) whatever you think or feel about it, whatever you’ve presupposed, the noise that Akita has created/composed shall defy you — it will persist as noise regardless of your or my or his interpretation or attitude regarding it.
As to why one would want to listen to Merzbow, I am sure there are any number of reasons. One that comes to mind — and perhaps it has come to yours, possibly colored by sarcasm — is masochism. This is not at all a bad answer. But let’s remove any ambiguity by providing the straight, general definition: masochism is “the enjoyment of what appears to be painful or tiresome” (source: Apple Dictionary). Masochism is also “the tendency to derive pleasure, esp. sexual gratification, from one’s own pain or humiliation” (source: ut supra). In short, control issues lie at the heart of the matter. There is, in listening to Merzbow or to noise compositions generally, a risk of losing control, consciously engaged in, or a willing relinquishment of control. The subject may be further illuminated by pointing out that early Merzbow releases were frequently wrapped in pornography and images of bondage (taken by Akita). However, by presenting a triad of masochism-bondage-noise, important as it may be, I am opening the door to a subject too abstruse to be comprehensively taken on here. Caution must be taken. And in the end I can do no better, pragmatically speaking, than to recommend “Full With Noise: Theory and Japanese Noise Music” by Paul Hegarty, who tellingly said,
Noise music becomes ambience not as you learn how to listen, or when you accept its refusal to settle, but when you are no longer in a position to accept or deny.
and then cite at length from another interview with Akita:
You have been quoted as saying, “There are no special images of ideology behind Merzbow”– unlike the early Industrialists such as Throbbing Gristle, SPK, and Whitehouse that used shocking imagery. Yet you have repeatedly used pornography. Isn’t pornography a shocking image that creates a certain ideology, whether intended or not?
I have two directions in the use of pornography. In my early cassettes and mail art projects I used lots of pornography. I made many collages using pornography as it was a very important item in my mail art/mail music. I thought my cheap Noise cassettes were of the same value as cheap mail order pornography. These activities were called “Pornoise”. In this direction, I would say that I used pornography for it’s anti-social, cut-up value in information theory. I soon started to release Merzbow vinyl which was very different from the cassettes of this same time period. I think my vinyl works concentrated more on sound itself because I think vinyl is a more static medium. So, Merzbow went in two separate directions in the ’80s- a cassette direction and a vinyl direction. In the ’90s, these directions were mixed for one Merzbow. I know you’re thinking I’m still using porn images like bondage but these images are not porn to me. I use bondage images only for the release of connected works like Music for Bondage Performance I and 2 and Electroknots. My reasons for using bondage images are very clear- not for shock element but for documentary value. In fact, all bondage pictures I use are taken by myself. I know who the models are and who tied them up. I know the exact meaning of these bondage pictures. This is very different from people using Xeroxed bondage images from Japanese magazines. I know that there are many bondage images associated with Merzbow releases. But many of these releases use stupid images without my permission. I should control all of them but it is very difficult to control all products abroad. I don’t like the easy idea of using images without the knowledge of the image itself. So, it’s meaningless to create ideology by using pornography without the correct knowledge of the image itself.
I don’t wish to stray too far afield, here. What I am driving at is simply this: one submits to Merzbow, one submits to noise. There is, in Merzbow, a distinct BDSM quality and an implicit association with it. Fans of W.S. Burroughs and J.G. Ballard will immediately get this. In listening to Metamorphism, all that is allowed, in a de facto sense, is the experience of hearing. One’s conscious attempts to find order or sense in the extremely cacophonous assault are beaten down over and over, one’s thoughts sheared off at the root. The apparent order that on occasion arises in the four “songs” comes not as a false hope, and not in bad faith, but as a prop made for destruction that, in its destruction or in the process of destruction, brings about a more profound submission by the listener. It is, or it can be, a liberating experience, even if most people would not find it even remotely pleasurable per se.
It can also point to a more subversive understanding of control structures generally, structures which noise inherently undermines. For example, what is more patriotic than a march (vide “The Military March Form”)? Here we see structure with intent. In the military sphere, the uniforms (uniformity, homogeneity), the discipline of order, the very specific patterns displayed in a myriad of ways, all serve to strengthen the military structure, and this structure reflects the implicit goal of maintaining an ordered, harmonious society. The march is the heartbeat of the structure. It is the celebration of order opposed to chaos. That it may also become dangerous, especially when left unchecked to pursue its own ends, is apparent to anyone with some knowledge of the history of fascist, imperialist, communist, dictatorial and totalitarian regimes. In these may we see how the circle runs round. Consider the following: order needs structure, which in turn needs discipline, which in turn needs submission. In submission we have returned to bondage, which noise destroys (as it destroys everything but itself). Noise is, in terms of the discipline of the march, the war. It is no small point that all discipline, structure, and order eventually fails in a war, just as stone succumbs to the sea. But noise is not simply, militarily speaking, war, any more than it is, politically speaking, anarchy, any more than it is, medically speaking, cancer, any more than it is, sexually speaking, BDSM. One may submit to noise but, unlike the submission to order, that submission will ultimately be annihilated. The listener (the body reduced to being an ear) will be left to wonder about the realities of submission. In the submission to order, so long as it is maintained, so long as the march is kept up, there is no allowance made for asking questions or for self-reflection as such would be perceived as indicative of indiscipline and disorderly conduct. Thus it can be concluded that the submission to noise, however flawed, is or leads to the act of subverting the rule of order, discipline, structure, and society, if only in oneself. Put another way — in the tyranny of the mind, noise is the act of terrorism itself.
– — – — – –
On to “Of Noise and Data, Pt. 2: ‘Data’“
It has long been apparent that every large, land-based animal on this planet is ultimately fighting a losing battle with humankind. And yet entirely befitting of an animal with such a highly developed sensibility, a deep-rooted sense of family and, yes, such a good long-term memory, the elephant is not going out quietly. It is not leaving without making some kind of statement, one to which scientists from a variety of disciplines, including human psychology, are now beginning to pay close attention.
It is a devastating read, Charles Siebert’s “An Elephant Crackup?“, but it is an important and needed read. And not only because of what it says about the plight of the world’s elephant population today. The stunning, inherent revelation is impossible to miss: there is a distinct parallel with the plight of African-Americans, especially African-Americans in their early thirties and younger, of Africans in war-torn countries such as Sudan, Uganda, and Rwanda, and of other peoples the world over.
What we have done and are continuing to do to the elephants is leading to irreversible systemic damage to their culture. It is a perfect reflection of what we are doing to each other, to ourselves. But what the elephants are teaching us, in particular, is that animal species other than our own have psychological lives that parallel and are quite similar to ours. To some people this will not be a surprise. Certainly, many people are aware that it is no case of anthropomorphism when they recognize in their cat, dog, or bird companions some distinct, recognizable emotion that requires no translation. It is easy enough to extend such an understanding to “undomesticated” animals, and the evidence is readily available to support it. But for the majority of us it seems that this is still remarkable news.
We have built up a number of psychological walls between what is demonstrable fact — that many non-human animal species have psychologically rich and complex lives — and that which perpetuates our singular insularity in a sea of so many other species, where we can imagine that we alone are capable of complex thought and self-reflection. We want those barriers against such recognition to remain unbreached because without them we’d have a much harder time exploiting and, more often than not, murdering countless numbers of those “others”. Although it should be fairly clear that we’re capable of coming up with new excuses when our old excuses fail us, and that even without real excuses we are still capable — indeed, willing — to exploit and to murder. This topic has been treated at greater length, and more eloquently, by others (see: Carol Adams, Umberto Eco, Albert Camus, etc.), so I’ll leave it here.
[The elephants] have no future without us. The question we are now forced to grapple with is whether we would mind a future without them, among the more mindful creatures on this earth and, in many ways, the most devoted. Indeed, the manner of the elephants’ continued keeping, their restoration and conservation, both in civil confines and what’s left of wild ones, is now drawing the attention of everyone from naturalists to neuroscientists. Too much about elephants, in the end — their desires and devotions, their vulnerability and tremendous resilience — reminds us of ourselves to dismiss out of hand this revolt they’re currently staging against their own dismissal. And while our concern may ultimately be rooted in that most human of impulses — the preservation of our own self-image — the great paradox about this particular moment in our history with elephants is that saving them will require finally getting past ourselves; it will demand the ultimate act of deep, interspecies empathy.
We are in a time and age that knows more pain and suffering — viewed on a global scale — than virtually any other known to historical records. The deaths from the conflicts in Rwanda, Darfur and Iraq and many other places flow into the deaths caused by starvation, malnutrition, AIDS and other diseases. So many lives displaced, so many lives bound by poverty to perpetual ruin; more names than could be written in a lifetime. In this time of suffering the elephants are showing us something important. Our two tribes are in crisis, though their crisis is perpetuated by ours. How we respond to the crisis of the elephants, and what we think about the response, will reflect, in the end, how we respond to our own. How we respond, and what we think, will illustrate our capacity for understanding the lives of “others”, and it will cause us to consciously bear the responsibility — one that has never been passed off, even in our supposed unconsciousness, without consequence — of our actions. In the end, how we treat “others”, whether human or non-human, is how we treat ourselves, for they are us and we are them in a world that is but one.
. . . . . . . .
It was fortuitous that, the day before reading the NY Times article, Kisha had me listen to an interview with rapper Killer Mike on the October 6th podcast of The Sound of Young America. In it, he discusses the crack cocaine epidemic that devastated countless black families, what life is about for gang members, and the cost of an endemically broken social order, all in terms of his personal history and experience. I recommend that you take the time to listen to it as well. (It is available via iTunes subscription or as an MP3 at the SYA site.)
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