Five Before Chaos

Yet another awesome, sunny early spring day. Since we’ve had a crazy winter with lots of wind, the woods are a mess, lots of tree debris everywhere. So I spent last evening collecting and burning said debris, and drinking beer. My bro came over and we grilled and ate way too much meat: pork chops, a ‘zampet’ sausage from Ping’s Sausage Shop, and a London Broil. Mmm. Colon cancer.

I’d like to talk a bit today about rigid ideology. On our side. What prompted this is reading something over at Americablog yesterday. John Aravosis want to some black tie D.C. function, the Radio and Television Correspondents Association annual dinner. Typical DC hobnobing thing, all sorts of types there. Mr. ‘as-popular-as-explosive-diarrhea’ Dick Cheney was there. Anyways, John was doing what people do at these kinds of functions – schmoozing with all sorts of people. Then he made the fatal mistake of talking to Florida Bush-stooge, Senate candidate and election theft enabler Katherine Harris and getting a picture with her, recognizing the camp value (same reason I collect Nixon memorabilia). Then, he made the doubly fatal mistake of commenting that he was surprised how nice of a person she was on a personal level. This unleashed a bunch of negative, harsh comments from a small percentage of his readership, calling him a sellout, traitor, etc.
Now, I’ve been reading John for about a year. I think he’s a real activist. He got ranting homophobe Dr. Laura off of the air, he successfully put presssure on Ford to resist caving in to the wingnuts about advertising in gay-themed publications, brought the whole ‘your cell phone records are for sale’ thing to light, etc. He’s one of those on our side that’s actually accomplished something other than spout out bumper-sticker slogans . Admittedly, he is definitely more in the mainstream than I am. But that’s fine. My point is that he is anything but a sell-out. He really got upset about this, and I would think that he could use a bit of a thicker skin. But it prompted him to write a post about those on the left who fear money and power.
He makes some good points. There are those of us on our side, due to their rigid ideology, that cannot deal with the idea that someone who is working for us should be justly compensated for their work. It’s almost like there are some that feel because they’re able to live off the power grid in their wigwam, that we ALL need to live that way. It’s like some kind of hippie fascism. And, like the worst of the conservatives, they are unable to see things in anything but a dualistic black and white. Either you renounce capitalism and any modern comforts completely or you are evil and impure.
I live in Plainfield, Vermont, home of the progressive Goddard College, not your typical college. It’s definitely one of theose progressive alternative schools where they spell women with a ‘y’. Lots of great people have come through its doors over the years, many of which I am good friends with. The legendary jam-band Phish started out there. Until recently, right down the road, we had the Institute for Social Ecology, a kind of anarchist-type educational institution. So they’ve kind of helped make Plainfield what I call ‘ground zero for the granola belt’. There are lots of back-to-the-land types here, to varying degrees. Lots of fifty and sixty-something guys with huge beards. My own house was originally built with no running water, an outhouse, kerosene lamps, and a wood-fired kitchen stove. Needless to say, you have some of the leftiest of the left here.
I had my first firsthand experience with the idealistic ideology when involved with the Plainfield Co-op, our little food store that has been here since the early seventies. Jenni was on the Board of Directors. It has reached a point, due to various factors, that it is in serious finacial distress, and the BOD wanted to make some radical changes, such as hiring an experienced manager who actually had experience in retail grocery. The idea of moving it to a bigger, more suitable place was also proposed. Now, the PR campaign was kind of botched from the board from the start, lots of miscommunication and such. But some of the bullshit the diehards were spewing was UN-FRICKIN’-BELIEVABLE. The new manager wanted to do such radical things such as proper inventory management, better product placement, the end of paying all of our vendors in cash out of the register, and basically putting long-needed standard operating procedures that any responsible business should have, in place. Some of the bullshit responses to this:

“It’s corporate. We should question (above-stated) standard operating procedures.”
” We shouldn’t even be discussing making this store profitable. Profit is immoral.“
“We shouldn’t move the store because it will get more cars driving by. The age of the automobile is going to be coming to an end very soon.’
“We have to have non-heirarchical management.”

Non-heirarchical management can work great… if everybody on the team has the required skills necessary. Someone needs to know about profit margin. Inventory control. Marketing. Unfortunately, in the 30-plus years of non-heirarchical management, there was never a time where all of those skills were present, hence the problems. You’re only as effective as your least effective person.
When I mentioned to one of them how if we actually made a profit, we could afford to pay our employees a livable wage and healthcare (a favorite cause for the left), I heard, “Well, it’s not right that profit should have to pay for healthcare.” In other words, because we should have universal health care and don’t, that we shouldn’t try to do what is the current norm for paying for healthcare, until we do have universal healthcare. Sorry, hard-working employees. Tough shit, my ideology doesn’t allow this.
So basically, thanks to certain peoples’ fear of vague undefined notions, a complete lack of sense of what it takes to run a business, and a pervasive almost Marxist ideological rigidity, we’re in trouble.
Now, I don’t think that our extremists are evil. I can’t find an equivalent of the xenophobic, racist, intolerant right-winger on our side. But our extremists are just as fearful of change, and can’t seem to grasp that it is a complex world, with complex issues, and there is no ‘black and white’ to anything. Scientists who study adult development call it ‘dualistic’ thinking, which is the first stage of adult thinking. The first. It’s the kind that hopefully as a 30-50 year old person you should be well-past. And unfortunately we have a lot of well-educated people on our side that aren’t.
I’m not advocating that we go to the ‘mushy middle’ of things. We can be left, even far-left. But we need to avoid the rigid ideology, recognize nuance, and see the world as it really is, not just as how we think it should be. If we do that, we will be closer to getting it how it should be. If we don’t, we are no better than the other side.

Good morning. Another sunny, early spring day. Wanted to let you know about a great post at Petty Larseny I found today via Buzzflash, called ”The Ten Commandments of Covering Religion”. It is a commentary that touches upon that recurring theme here at FBC… holding religion up to the same critical scrutiny as anything else. This is written with journalists in mind. It’s really nothing extreme, by any means. It’s just a call for journalists to cover religious issues with the same investigative and critical style. They may seem a bit enigmatic on the surface, but they’re really quite simple. You should hop over and read the article, where it goes into detail about each of them. They are:

1. Thou shalt have no other god without confirmation.
2. Thou shalt not make the grave mistake of assuming uniform adherence to denominational tenets.
3. Thou shalt not take the Lord’s word in vain.
4. Remember the soul, to keep it wholly in mind.
5. Honor thy first source and thy second source.
6. Thou shalt not kill heterogeneity.
7. Thou shalt not commit adulteration.
8. Thou shalt not steal the boundaries between faith and reason.
9. Thou shalt not bear false witness against thy neighbor’s religion or lack thereof.
10. Thou shalt not covet privacy for religion.

Also have a read of this from Cenk Uygur, with another call to start ‘an open dialogue as to whether religion makes sense.’

Ok, the spam continues. I’m turning on word verification in the comments. For those of you that don’t know what that is, when you want to post a comment, it shows you a random group of letters and you type in the letters you see. This supposedly cuts down on automated spam in the comment section.

Beautiful, sunny, early spring day in Vermont today. Blue sky. Jenni didn’t want to go to work today, because a tulip broke through the mud yesterday. With all this beauty, it is hard to imagine the amount of idiocy going on in this nation. Howzabout Christianist teenagers run amok in San Francisco?

Yep, apparently 25,000 young people crawled out of a cave in Texas and made it to the Sodom and Gomorrha of the west coast to protest ‘the virtue terrorism of popular culture’. Led by a man named Ron Luce,who

“wants teens to find Bible-based solutions for the spread of sexually transmitted disease, teen pregnancy, drug abuse and suicide.

The villains, Luce said, range from the promiscuity and “sexualization” of young people on MTV and the popular online meeting hub MySpace.com to a corporate culture that spends millions trying to woo the under-21 crowd.

Battle Cry will try to bring them back to God through two days of religious rockers, speakers and the debut of what Luce called a Christian alternative to My Space.com.

“This is more than a spiritual war,” Luce said. “It’s a culture war.”

Religious rockers? Has Stryper gotten back together? Seriously, though, if you’ve ever heard some of that contemporary Christian rock, no wonder these kids are so disturbed. I’ll spare you the rest, just read the article. I wonder how many of those kids snuck off to sample some of the alternative lifestyles that Frisco is famous for.

One of the things Sam Harris brought up in ‘The End of Faith’ was that religious conservatives are not waging their war from a perspective of preventing people from harming others, it’s a war on sin itself. From the ‘End of Faith”, p 159…

“It is no accident that people of faith often want to curtail the private freedoms of others. This impulse has less to do with the history of religion and more to do with its logic, because the very idea of privacy is incompatible with the existence of God. If God sees and knows all things, and remains so provincial a creature as to be scandalized by certain sexual behaviors or states of the breain, then what people do in the privacy of their own homes, though it may not have the slightest implication for their behavior in public, will still be a matter of public concern for people of faith.

A variety of religious notions of wrongdoing can be seen converging here… and these seem to have given many of us the sense that it is ethical to punish people, often severely, for engaging in private behavior that harms no one.”

He mentions further in the text that it is safe to say if a drug were invented that was 100% safe but produced a brief feeling of bliss and epiphany, you can bet it would still be illegal.

I know, the protest was about the alleged evils of mainstream culture. The cons love to harp on the ‘personal responsibilty’ thing all the time, yet somehow seem to forget that no one is forcing them to watch any of this crap, or forcing their kids to put provocative photos on Myspace.com. It’s like they believe they have some God-given right to wholesome media, like every show has to be like ’7th Heaven’ or ‘Little House on the Prairie’. They don’t have to watch t.v. Or do they? The real crux of the biscuit is that they are just as hooked on the media as everyone else. Combine that with the above-mentioned hatred of sin, and there you go.

FUNNY SIDE NOTE: As I made that wisecrack about Stryper, I went to their link. Apperently, like nail fungus or herpes, they are still around. And they still look like idiots, just without as much hairspray or mascara. Check it out for a good laugh. It’s even funnier than Poison’s web site.

Try as I might, can’t stay away from the politics….

Interesting story in the Toronto Star, called “How to Spot a Baby Conservative”.
It’s about a study done in (where else) Berkeley, by Professer Jack Block. He tracked 95 kids over the last 20 years, with detailed research on their personalities. His findings:

“The whiny kids tended to grow up conservative, and turned into rigid young adults who hewed closely to traditional gender roles and were uncomfortable with ambiguity.The confident kids turned out liberal and were still hanging loose, turning into bright, non-conforming adults with wide interests. The girls were still outgoing, but the young men tended to turn a little introspective.”

Big surprise, huh? A similar study cited gives this insight:

“The researchers reviewed 44 years worth of studies into the psychology of conservatism, and concluded that people who are dogmatic, fearful, intolerant of ambiguity and uncertainty, and who crave order and structure are more likely to gravitate to conservatism.”

Gee, that’s a stretch, huh? Needless to say, the studies have their detractors, who have appropriately called it the ‘conservatives are crazy’ study. But we knew that already.

I’m reading Thomas Frank’s “What’s the Matter With Kansas: How Conservatives Stole the Heart of America”, and he goes into, in good detail, about the prevalence of whiny conservatives. He calls it ‘plen-T-plaint’. Christians are being persecuted. Family values are threatened. Liberals are ruining everything. Doesn’t seem to matter that conservatives control all three branches of government, does it? Without plen-T-plaint, Bill O’Reilly would be out of a job, probably working the counter of an adult bookstore somewhere (the kind with those ‘movie booths’ that lots of middle-aged professionals seem to hit up on the way home from the office).

It’s really funny how, as much as the conservative leaders like to demonize the perception of liberal non-accountablilty, they sure love to play the victim. But they have no choice, because if they didn’t have the ability to raise the fear and anger and feeling of being slighted, they wouldn’t have anything else to win over the masses with. Certainly not going to with their positions and policies. By keeping people angry and ‘victimized’, it distracts them from the fact that the very people stirring up their anger are the ones whose policies are often responsible for that person’s miseries to begin with. Now if we can only get a few Democrats to point that out. Don’t hold your breath…

I’m starting to get some spam in the comments. The upside, if there is one, is that more people are checking in here. Great. That said, if you want to plug your blog, and it has something to do with the particular topic being discussed, fine. Go for it. But if you want to tell me, a Vermonter, about bad credit loans in California, or how to buy a digital camera, piss off. I’m not interested. And I probably know more about that stuff than you do anyway. So there. Spam will be deleted within seconds of it being posted, so please don’t waste your time. Or mine.

Sorry for the lack of posts this week. Last week was a busy week with the Buzzflash hit, and I ended up writing quite a bit more than I’m used to. This will be good practice as I finish up my B.A. and go for that M.A. Looking at my sitemeter analysis, I definitely notice more activity after a post, so thank you for paying attention.

As I was out and about today, and listening to various conversations, something dawned on me – a general unease in community. It seems to be all around, lots of miscommunication, and a general feeling of, well, for lack of a better word, worry. A lot of people seem to be in both internal and external conflict (wait till I finally tell you about the whole Plainfield food co-op ordeal – sheesh). Friends and family all seem to have something they’re dealing with. This had me thinking about the various ways people interpret this.

The current chaos in the world: erosion of civil liberties and the rise of a theocratic police state here in the U.S.A., the widening gap betwwen rich and poor as the corporations consolidate power at the expense of our citizenry, the Iraq and Afghanistan fiascos, genocide in Darfur, immigration conflicts in Europe, catastrophic natural disasters, etc., would have those of a more metaphysical bent believing that it is really wearing on our collective unconscious right now. I pondered that for a bit. Not really one to believe in that particular way of thinking (although, admittedly open to the possibility if I could just get my brain around quantum theory), I wondered out loud if it’s just because we have information overload like never before in our existence.

Since the dawn of man, there have always been lots of shitty things going on at any particular time on the planet. Let’s just look at, say, 1981. The Soviets were still in the rather oppressive Breznhev era, and bogged down in a brutal conflict in Afghanistan. I’m sure they were committing just as many, if not more atrocities and crimes against humanity as the Americans are doing now. There was a recession in the U.S., and that idiot Reagan, too. And I’m sure something horrendous was happening somewhere in Africa, as is usually the case. Did we feel any different here? Did an Aborigine in Australia feel doom and gloom during the time of the Holocaust, even though he had no knowledge of it?

As one studies belief systems, especially the more irrational ones, and the many fallacies in human thinking, one thing that seems to stand out for me is how we, as humans, put an incredible amount of significance on coincidence. We make patterns, and draw conclusions. And I wonder if that’s what I’m doing now. At any given time, there are always a bunch of rotten things happening. But it’s not a big deal if you’re not aware of them, is it?

There’s also the possibility that at least here in Vermont, where many are held rather captive by their idealism, that the sheen may be wearing off a bit and the cognitive dissonance is setting in. So, how is it in your neck of the woods? Is there this cloud hanging overhead? Or am I just projecting? Help me out here.

Hoping to have a spaghetti western review for you later this week, as well as an answer to the age old question that always seems to be on my mind: why were musical artists that were so good in the 70′s suck in the 80′s? Stay tuned as I get my groove back.

I just started reading Sam Harris’ excellent book, ‘The End of Faith’. I’m only a few chapters into it, but he makes the compelling case that it is long past time to stop giving people of faith a free ride, in the sense of not questioning its premises, especially in matters of politics. I couldn’t agree more. With that in mind, I point you to this article form the British Times online, called, ‘Holland Launches the Immigrant Quiz’.

Apparently, Holland is making would-be immigrants watch a DVD that shows, among other things, two men kissing, and a female topless sunbather. This serves the purpose of seeing whether or not the applicants will be able to accept the country’s liberal attitudes.

Of course, there are charges of racism here. Personally, as long as it is being shown to ALL applicants, regardless of race or nation of origin, I think it’s a rather good idea. I’ve been following a bit about the conflicts in western European countries between the natives and Muslim immigrants who bring the, shall we say, more archaic and intolerant practices of their faith, and the resulting conflicts that ensue.

Now, I must break here… I am rather hostile to religion. It boggles my mind how so many people, who listen to facts and evidence in every other aspect of their lives suspend that when it comes to faith. I am disturbed at how few people know the history of their religions. And, similar to what Sam Harris says, most of the aspects of religion if embraced in any other context, would ensure a trip to the mental hospital. It’s ok to say that God speaks to you in times of distress, but if the creatures from Alpha Centauri speak to you through your hairdryer, you’re nuts. Can someone explain the difference to me?

Now, I know, some of you are thinking how out of line I am here, we need to respect all faiths and beliefs. Ok. Respect… if that means allowing people to practice what they believe, no matter how irrational, as long as they are not hurting anyone or forcing anyone else to believe it, sure. I can do that, hard as it can be sometimes. I am proud to live in Vermont, a state with many sane, rational, forward thinking people, but also a place where a lot of New-age looniness is quite mainstream. I deal. I don’t have to engage someone in a conversation about astrology, because they’re not condemning me because of their belief in it. When I hear, “It’s because Mercury is in retrograde,” I just smile politely and change the subject because there is no rational way to even discuss that.

But to not question their faith when it crosses into the public sphere? Sorry, you want to mandate compulsory childbirth or discrimination against women/gays/people of color because your magical Sky Fairy says so? Uh-uh. Prove it. You want God in the public schools? Ok, let’s have a class analyzing those faiths and their histories, with all the resulting genocide, contradictions and irrationality and whether or not there’s any truth to the alleged events so widely held as truth. I don’t mean those unprovable vague platitudes like Jesus died for your sins, I mean did any of this stuff actually even happen, and if so, where’s the proof? Somehow I don’t think they’d go along with it, even though they love to rant about teaching both sides.

(sigh) -catching breath-

SO, back to the Holland thing. To me, this is telling potential immigrants, “This is how we live here. You are more than welcome to come here – but don’t try to change the way we live because it doesn’t jive with your belief system.” The way I see it, if a fundamentalist Muslim or Christian watches this video, feels disturbed, and maybe has a rare moment of clarity, and says, ‘Men kissing? Public nudity? Do I really want to live there? Will every waking moment have me in constant frustration and anger? Maybe I should stay home,’ it will have served its purpose. Before you rip my head off, please tell me how Dutch society benefits by having that person of a 14th-century mindset enter its society. If you can, then I’ll put my head on the chopping block. I am all for diversity, but not when it means being accepting of those who see diversity as threatening to their worldview.

There’s a blog called Face of Muhammed, set up in retaliation to the loony reaction to those Muhammed cartoons. I have mixed feelings about the tone of the site, although I feel no sympathy for these people who have continued to act like idiots in the name of their particular mythical creature. The one thing on the site that struck me was this, I’d like to know your thoughts on it:

Dear muslims,

If you do not like my country, please leave.
If you do not like the way our women dress, please leave.
If you do not like our separation of politics and religion, please leave.
If you support violent responses to criticism of Islam, please leave.
If you support terrorism in any way, shape or form, please leave.
If you cannot accept satirical cartoons in our newspapers, please leave.
If you do not support democracy or the freedom of speech, please leave my country.

Is that harsh and intolerant? Or sane and rational and indicative of how intelligent 21st century people should be behaving? Fire away.

Gonna enjoy my weekend here, as the snow melts and every other word out of Jenni’s mouth is ‘garden’. Been a great week for the blog with the Buzzflash hit. If even a few of you come back here a few times a week, it has more than served its purpose; thank you. If you page down, you’ll notice I’ve added some links for you RSS readers, to add this to your daily read.

Like to get back into a few light topics next week, I’m kind of getting political burnout here due to local politics issues in my crazy little town; I don’t know who’s worse sometimes, the right-wingers or the Marxists. I’m also going to be part of the strategic planning of a progressive Democrat’s state senate race, so that should be exciting. I’ll keep you posted on how that goes.

So to end our week of ‘what’s up with the Democrats’, I leave you some reading. The first by one of the better things to come out of Texas, Molly Ivins, echoing many of the sentiments you and I have expressed this week. It’s called ‘Enough of the D.C. Dems’.

Our second piece is an op-ed on Yahoo from Richard Reeves. It has some great, blistering attacks on the administration… from other conservatives (who apparently find it easier to attack Bush than the Dems… wutzup wit dat?). It also goes into how the fear card is all that’s left to play. It’s called ‘What Democrats Fear is Fear Itself’. Enjoy.

Next week, I’m hoping to get back into a bit on the lighter side, perhaps some more music or a film commentary. I’d also like to talk about the Hugo Chavez deal, and weed through some of the distortions coming from both sides and try to shed a bit of light on what his deal is.

Have a good weekend.