Rudeness
The ruder someone is in a political conversation, the more certain you can be they are protecting an unfair advantage. The ruder someone is in a religious conversation, the more certain you can be they are protecting a dying paradigm.
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The ruder someone is in a political conversation, the more certain you can be they are protecting an unfair advantage. The ruder someone is in a religious conversation, the more certain you can be they are protecting a dying paradigm.
Debates about abortion usually center around when life begins. Some would say life begins at conception, believing that a soul enters the body at that point. Some have claimed “quickening” or, the point when movement begins, is when a fetus should be legally deemed a “person.” Some Rabbinc traditions held that life befins at the first breath.
The theory that has made the most sense to me has been that, since the abscence of an EEG or organized brainwave is considered clinical death, that we might consider the inception of an organized brain activity as the point at which the fetus would be afforded the legal status of personhood.
The article below is written by a neuroscientist who struggles with the question of when human consciousness awakens.
I spent yesterday reading up on the part of labor history that wasn’t in my textbooks in school. I read about the Haymarket Affair where people advocating for the eight hour day became martyrs through a strange string of events.
I read about how Labor Day was originally on May 1 to honor those Haymarket martyrs. The day was originally called “International Worker’s Day” in solidarity with the worldwide worker’s movement now vilified as “socialism.” Because of this associate with radical politics, the day was moved to September and given the more innocuous name of “Labor Day.”
I read about the battle for Blair Mountain where coal miners grew tired of their co-workers and families being shot when they tried to unionize. When they finally took up arms, law enforcement officials that had turn an unseeing eye to violence done against the miners, unleashed the full force of the state to protect moneyed interests- including aerial bombing.
Yesterday, I remembered that the champions of labor who struggled for the eight hour day, and got children out of mines, were not the Democrats or the Republicans. They were the anarchists and socialists who have now been written out of the official story. The sad thing is that the meager protections they purchased with their blood, are being now undone in the name of deregulating business and setting captial free.
There’s probably no good way to handle someone entering a school with an automatic weapon, but it seems like running would be better than teaching children to throw pencils.
In this video Bill Nye (the science guy) is asking parents not to teach creationism to their children. Here is why I agree with him:
Most cynics would say that the Bible is a bunch of fairy tales meant for children and immature adults but, for many of us, Scripture is sacred poetry about life, about ourselves, and about the cosmos. Because children think concretely, they will take the stories of creation as truth claims. Later, if they choose to become scientific, they will have to “unlearn” the facts of biblical creation.
There are plenty of stories from the Bible that are appropriate for children as long as they are not taught as dogma, but just as we must hold back the violent parts of scripture until a person is mature, so must we use discernment in how we teach the origins of the earth. Scripture is about the meanings of life, science is about its truths.
“I don’t want anybody to persecute any religion including Islam, but we have a duty as Americans to understand that they intend to take us over and compel us to become Islamic,” Lee Douglas, anti-Shariah activist.
Is Tennessee about to fall under Shariah law? You would think so by some of the political rhetoric being used in the state. According to this report from NPR Republicans are having to explain to fellow Republicans why they hired a Muslim staff person, or why they do not distance themselves from Islam. We should all be grateful to the Republicans who hold their ground against extremists from the right. I have no doubt that the people of Tennessee will do the right thing. But I also know every fear campaign that happens leaves us with a less thoughtful electorate. And every time any group of human being is used as a scapegoat for political or religious purposes, the lives of the people in that group are put in danger.
There are those who believe all journalism should be objective, but an important task of journalism is to give voice to the voiceless and to reveal things that we may not want to see. Journalists should not pretend that the world is like a debate that always has two equal sides. There were never really two sides to the issue of slavery and there aren’t two sides to the issue of poverty in America. Melissa Harris Perry was doing an interview on “Why Americans hate welfare.” When her guest spoke about the risks involved in being “upwardly mobile” in the financial market, the journalist exploded:
“What in the world is riskier than being a poor person in America? I live in a neighborhood where people are shot on my street corner. I live in a neighborhood where people have to figure out how to get their kid into school because maybe it will be a good school and maybe it won’t. I’m sick of the idea that being wealthy is risky. No, there’s a huge safety net, that whenever you fail, we’ll catch you, and catch you, and catch you. Being poor is what is risky. We have to create a safety net for poor people and when we won’t because they happen to look different from us, it is the pervasive ugliness. We cannot do that.”
Perhaps that is the difference between a reporter and a journalist. The reporter tries to give both sides of an issue within the dominant paradigm of the popular culture. The journalist tries also to give voice to those who live their lives outside that paradigm.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/09/02/melissa-harris-perry-erupts-wealthy-risky_n_1849720.html
My post yesterday saying that this is not a Christian nation triggered some interesting responses. Anne wrote very politely saying she felt my article was divisive. She said many of my blogs divide Christians, instead of calling them together. She said that while she personally believed the Bible condemns homosexuality, that she also believes in full civil rights for GLBT citizens. I wrote back that while we disagreed on scripture, that my article was not meant to criticize Christians who didn’t impose their religion on others.
Craig said that I was being a coward. He quoted my response to Anne:
“I never put you in any category and I certainly don’t assume you are evil.”
And then he responded:
“No, Jim, you didn’t. You simply impugned an entire group of people that may have _included_ Anne and then hid behind the “I didn’t say that about _YOU_” defense. It’s pretty shameful and cowardly (not to mention obvious). If you’re going to have the false-courage to call an entire group names at least have the intellectual honesty to claim it when you’re called on the carpet.”
He then quoted from my post: “Example: if I wrote, say (emphasis mine), “When people say the US should be a “Christian nation,” they _never_ mean that we should feed the poor, clothe the naked or, God forbid, turn the other cheek. What people usually mean by the term “Christian nation” is that their own _primitive ideas_ of creation should be _imposed_ upon science classes and that their almost perfect _ignorance_ of human biology should become law. Unlike Peter, many Christians only lay down the sword so they can take up the gun.”
Then he continued with his comment: “I would be intellectually dishonest if I then claimed that a specific member of that group did not have “primitive ideas”, was “ignorant”, or “imposed” their ideas upon other people, as you have quite clearly done. Or don’t you get that?
Words, Jim. Words have meaning. You cannot use them to tear down a group and then claim “oh! I didn’t mean it about YOU, stranger” when someone raises an objection. That kind of sloppy thinking is very indicative of the sort of common intellectual dishonesty that wants to have their opinion without any repercussions.
Either stand up for what you say or don’t say it. Coward.”
Here is my response to Craig:
“Craig,
When you say that criticizing a group necessarily includes every single member of that group, you miss the fact that I consider myself a Christian, too. The group I was criticizing was not Christians in general, but only Christians who bully. Groups can be do bad things without all of the members of that group participating.
If you can find an example of any place in any of my writings where I have actually called someone a name please point it out to me and I will apologize. But what I actually did was describe a type of bullying behavior and you took it personally. I will say what I said to Anne, as long as a you aren’t trying to impose your religion my neighbors, we don’t have a problem. If you are not cramming your version of Christianity down other people’s throats I wasn’t talking about you. But if you are, I need to stand in defense of the people you are attacking using the name of Christ.
You illustrated the difference in criticizing and name calling in your comment. When you said my actions were “cowardly” that was not name calling. When you called me a “coward” that was name calling.
I agree that words are important, but so are people. This is a nation of Jews, Muslims, and atheists as well as Christians. Lots and lots of Americans are not Christian. This is their country too. When anyone says this should be a Christian nation they are saying that non-Christians are second class citizens.
And calling this a “Christian nation” is a dangerous lie for another reason. If God gave this land to anyone, it was the indigenous people. The “Christian” founders of this nation robbed that land and committed genocide on the inhabitants. When the “Christian” founders built this nation, they did it with people kidnapped from Africa and enslaved for that purpose. What does it mean when we call these things “Christian?” To say God gave us this land and leave out these atrocities muffles the voices of our victims and masks one of the most heinous crimes in history.
If we ever meet in person I will be happy to take you to coffee and have a Christian to Christian fellowship. But if you attack my GLBT or my non-Christian neighbors, you will find out that “coward” isn’t a very good description of me.”
Those who ridicule government in a democracy are laughing at themselves.
It makes perfect sense, if you wanted to dominate a people, to get them to hate the safeguards that were protecting them. If you were a rich employer hoping to turn the population into cheap labor, it would make perfect sense to get them to hate the democratic process standing between you and what you want. Government is how people share power and prevent tyrants from making their decisions for them. If a person is politically free, but economically a slave, their political “freedom” is a facade. If they were really politically free they would be able (in co-operation with others) to set their own working conditions.
The following NPR piece traces the history of how “government” became a bad word.
http://www.npr.org/2012/09/01/160438753/how-government-became-a-dirty-word?sc=17&f=1001
It has long been known that certain animals (like elephants) seem to recognize and even mourn the passing of a friend. According to this BBC report, that may be a trait may reach into species not considered highly intelligent. This study is a reminder that the clear line we discern between humans and the other animals may exist only in our heads.
“The jays then gathered around the dead body, forming large cacophonous aggregations. The calls they made, known as “zeeps”, “scolds” and “zeep-scolds”, encouraged new jays to attend to the dead.”
http://www.bbc.co.uk/nature/19421217