Category Archives: Philosophy/Ideas

Toni Morrison on Hate

Books, Male Dominance, Philosophy/Ideas, racism

 

 

I have still not got over Toni Morrison’s  novel–Love. It is that disturbing. The novel is actually much more about its opposite. Hate. It is about a specific kind of love—love that is transformed into hate. How can that happen?

Morrison has a fine understanding of hate. She described how the Cosey girls fought over the coffin of Bill Cosey, the patriarch of the family , until one of the women, L (does that stand for love?) restored order. But the hate lived on. Hate is darn hard to destroy. Morrison described the haters this way: “their faces as different as honey from soot, looked identical. Hate does that. Burns everything but itself, so whatever your grievance is, your face looks just like your enemy’s.”

The novel is deeply imbedded into a racist society infused with white male dominance, even though there are very few white characters in the novel and none of them is a major character. The natural product of such a society is that the dominated black males turn to dominate those  “beneath” them. And of course that is only other non-whites.

The man at the centre of the novel is Bill Cosey a 52-year old black man who rapes an 11-year old black girl with the consent of her family. The girl is so young and ignorant that she “grinned happily as she was led down the hall to darkness, liquor smell and old man business.” And as so often happens, the young victim ends up hating herself after the abuse. “I must have been the one who dreamed up this world, she thought. No nice person could have.”

Heed and Christine–11 and 12 year old friends—end up competing for a 52-year old man, entirely unworthy of either of them, and the two become transformed into enemies in the process. They learn to hate.  “The eyes of each are enslaved by the other’s. Opening pangs of guilt, rage, fatigue, despair are replaced by a hatred so pure, so solemn, it feels beautiful, almost holy.” Can you imagine a hate that is “almost holy”? Even the holy is turned perverse in a world ruled by hate and dominance. The dominance of whites over blacks turns the blacks into dominating other blacks.  That is the world that is a product of hate and in such a world even the holy turns evil.

Heed and Christine had a hard time maintaining their hatred for each other. Hate does not come easily and it is difficult to maintain. As Morrison said, “Like friendship, hatred needed more than physical intimacy; it wanted creativity and hard work to sustain itself.” They had “bruising fights with hands, feet, teeth and soaring objects…once–perhaps twice–a year, they punched, grabbed hair, wrestled, bit, slapped, never drawing blood, never apologizing, never premeditating, yet drawn annually to pant through an episode that was as much rite as fight. Finally they stopped, moved into acid silence, and invented other ways to underscore bitterness.”

Both of them ultimately realized that neither one could leave. They were married to each other in a dark perverse marriage. They both had “an unspoken realization that the fights did nothing other than allow them to hold each other.” That is what undying hatred is all about. It bonds the two in unholy matrimony. “There in a little girl’s bedroom an obstinate skeleton stirs, clacks, refreshes itself.”

 

I’ve been told I’m going to Hell Soon: Fellow feeling and Religions

Evangelical Christianity, expansive religion, Fellow Feeing, Philosophy/Ideas, religion

Some people just cannot grasp the idea that religions might actually have something in common. A couple of years ago I got in serious trouble with a real estate agent from the Bible Belt of Manitoba. I was speaking at a continuing educational seminar for real estate agents and we were talking about ethical rules. I told the real estate professionals, ‘Don’t worry about trying to memorize all the rules.’ I said, ‘Just know where you can find them and remember this—the fundamental rule: The Golden Rule. “Do unto others as you would have them do unto you.” I should have stopped there. Instead, I made a big mistake. I brought in religion of all things to an educational session for real estate agents. How stupid could I get? I said to them, this rule, the golden rule, was the basis of all moralityandall religion. I said all religions had this important rule in common. I presumed this would please people. Religions actually agree with each other. There is no reason to argue. They should be able to get along. But at least one agent did not accept that.

After my talk I was approached by a real estate agent. He asked me if I was “born again.” I knew immediately I was in trouble. No I said, “I was born only once to my knowledge.” But I did think about Bob Dylan who said, “He not busy being born is busy dying.”

The agent pounced on my comment. “I thought so,” he said. “You are obviously nota Christian because you are equatingChristianity with Islam. That means you are going to hell.”  And that was not enough. He added, “And you’re an old guy so you will be going to hell soon.” That last part really hurt. (Well not really)

Obviously this was a man without fellow feeling. He could not grasp that it was a good thing, not a bad thing that all or most religions agreed on the fundamentals. He much preferred to think that hisreligion was superior to all others. I would say that meant he was not religious at all. No empathy; no religion. No connection; no religion.

As I have already said, the word “religion” in fact comes from the old Asian/Indian word religiothat means “connection.” I think it explains religion perfectly. It explains how religion is what connects us to others. I would even add it is what connects us to the world, to nature, to all beings.

It is deeply interesting to me that religion has a common core.  Karen Armstrong has some interesting things to say about this. She had joined a convent at the age of 17 but found it was not for her. She became a scholar instead. For the next 40 years she learned a lot about compassion and dedicated her life to the concept. In my view she did not move far from the world of what a convent or at least religious retreat should be. When she studied world religions she too was surprised to learn that compassion was the core of allmajor religions.

She became a historian of religion, received the prestigious $100,000 TED prize in 2008 for her work promoting interfaith dialogue, and founded the Charter for Compassion, a multilingual and multi-denominational effort to transform the world’s religions into a force of global harmony rather than discord. She enlisted a wide array of thinkers from many faith and moral traditions.

Armstrong summed up her life long study in a book called Twelve Steps to a Compassionate Life. In it she wrote:

 

One of the chief tasks of our time must surely be to build a global community in which all peoples can live together in mutual respect; yet religion, which should be making a major contribution, is seen as part of the problem. All faiths insist that compassion is the test of true spirituality and that it brings us into relation with the transcendence we call God, Brahman, Nirvana, or Dao. Each has formulated its own version of what is sometimes called the Golden Rule, “Do not treat others as you would not like them to treat you,” or in its positive form, “Always treat others as you would wish to be treated yourself.” Further, they all insist that you cannot confine your benevolence to your own group; you must have concern for everybody— even your enemies.

 


         Armstrong also challenged the common view that religion is the cause of all wars:

“In fact, the causes of conflict are usually greed, envy, and ambition, but in an effort to sanitize them, these self-serving emotions have often been cloaked in religious rhetoric. There has been much flagrant abuse of religion in recent years. Terrorists have used their faith to justify atrocities that violate its most sacred values. In the Roman Catholic Church, popes and bishops have ignored the suffering of countless women and children by turning a blind eye to the sexual abuse committed by their priests. Some religious leaders seem to behave like secular politicians, singing the praises of their own denomination and decrying their rivals with scant regard for charity… Disputes that were secular in origin, such as the Arab-Israeli conflict, have been allowed to fester and become “holy,” and once they have been sacralized, positions tend to harden and become resistant to pragmatic solutions. And yet at the same time we are bound together more closely than ever before through the electronic media… In a world in which small groups will increasingly have powers of destruction hitherto confined to the nation-state, it has become imperative to apply the Golden Rule globally, ensuring that all peoples are treated as we would wish to be treated ourselves. If our religious and ethical traditions fail to address this challenge, they will fail the test of our time.”

 

Armstrong quoted the final version of the Charter for Compassion, which was launched in November of 2009 and came to embody this spirit by offering an antidote to the voices of extremism, intolerance, and hatred:

 

“The principle of compassionlies at the heart of all religious, ethical and spiritual traditions, calling us always to treat all others as we wish to be treated ourselves. Compassion impels us to work tirelessly to alleviate the suffering of our fellow creatures, to dethrone ourselves from the centre of our world and put another there, and to honor the inviolable sanctity of every single human being, treating everybody, without exception, with absolute justice, equity and respect.

It is also necessary in both public and private life to refrain consistently and empathically from inflicting pain. To act or speak violently out of spite, chauvinism or self-interest, to impoverish, exploit or deny basic rights to anybody, and to incite hatred by denigrating others — even our enemies — is a denial of our common humanity. […]

We urgently need to make compassion a clear, luminous and dynamic force in our polarized world. Rooted in a principled determination to transcend selfishness, compassion can break down political, dogmatic, ideological and religious boundaries. Born of our deep interdependence, compassion is essential to human relationships and to a fulfilled humanity.”

Armstrong offered the following as a definition of compassion:

 

“Compassion is aptly summed up in the Golden Rule, which asks us to look into our own hearts, discover what gives us pain, and then refuse, under any circumstance whatsoever, to inflict that pain on anybody else. Compassion can be defined, therefore, as an attitude of principled, consistent altruism.

In fact, the first person to formulate the Golden Rule predated the founding figures of Christianity and Islam by five centuries and a millennium, respectively — when asked which of his teachings his disciples should practice most tenaciously, “all day and every day,” the Chinese sage Confucius (551–479 BCE) pointed to the concept of shu, commonly translated as “consideration,” which he explained as striving “never to do to others what you would not like them to do to you.”

Armstrong clarified this as follows:

“A better translation of shu is “likening to oneself”; people should not put themselves in a special, privileged category but relate their own experience to that of others “all day and every day.

Compassion, thus, is a matter of orienting oneself toward the rest of humanity, implicitly requiring a transcendence of self-interest and egotism. I would say that this means that we are not required to renounce self-interest, but rather to transcend it. We must combine it with beneficence. We must love others like ourselves, but clearly that entails, that first we love ourselves.”

Centuries after Confucius, the three major monotheistic religions adopted the strikingly similar doctrines that many believe are at the core of each religion. I also believe that this same principle—the Golden Rule—is the also at the heart of all morality. I hope to explore that in a subsequent post. It is also interesting that the compassionate spirit is ennobling in all cases and even when it has a secularorigin.In other words, fellow feeling or compassion is the basis of religions and a morality. I think that is important.

I think that real estate agent did not understand religion at all. Nor morality for that matter.

Golden rule

expansive religion, Fellow Feeing, Philosophy/Ideas, religion,

 

The golden rule is ancient and wise. It has 2 basic formulas—one positive and one negative. The positive version says something like this: “One should treat others as one would like others to treat us.” The negative version, sometimes called the ‘silver rule’, says, something like this: “”One should not treat others as would not like to be treated.” For my purpose it does not really matter which version is better. Both are good. It is a good rule.

I was stunned to learn that almost all religions have adopted the golden rule. They all have a version of it. Christians have it, but so do Jews. Islam has it. Hinduism, Buddhism, Islam and many other religions have it. Even very ancient religions have it. Some Christians think they had it first but that is far from the truth. Members of other religions probably thought they had it first too.

The Initial Declaration of the Parliament of World Religions proclaimed the Golden Rule. It was signed by 143 respected leaders from all of the world’s major faiths, including Baha’i Faith, Brahmanism, Brahma Kumaris, Buddhism, Christianity, Hinduism, Indigenous, Interfaith, Islam, Jainism, Judaism, Native American, Neo-Pagan, Sikhism, Taoism, Theosophist, Unitarian Universalist and Zoroastrian.

In ancient Babylon there was an early incarnation of the Rule in the Code of Hammurabi, one of the earliest codes of moral conduct ever. The Torah had a version. The Old Testament had it, “Love your neighbor as yourself: I am the LORD.”(Leviticus 19:18).

Ancient Egypt had a version: “Now this is the command: Do to the doer to cause that he do thus to you.” Another example from a Late Period (c. 664 BCE – 323 BCE) papyrus: “That which you hate to be done to you, do not do to another.”

Ancient Greek philosophy had versions: “Do not to your neighbor what you would take ill from him.” – Pittaccus  (c. 640–568 BCE). Thales (c. 624 B.C.- c. 546 BC): “Avoid doing what you would blame others for doing. Pythagoras who lived about 500 years before Chris had a version, and so did Epictetus and two of my favorite Greek philosophers, Epicurus, and Socrates.

Ancient China had it as well as shown by its  most famous philosopher, Confucius. So did Laozi. I could go on and on, but I think that is enough to make my point.

Virtually every religion has adopted the Golden Rule. It is what virtually all religions have in common. There must be something good about. And there is. It is the basis of religion. It is what connects us to each other. It is truly religious. And there is no need to denigrate any other religion. That divides us. They all have it! I think that is fantastic.

The Sleep of Reason

Philosophy/Ideas, politics, , , ,

 

Goya, the famous Spanish painter was well known for dark art.  No one ever accused him of seeing only the sunny side of life. Goya inscribed one of his works with the following words: “The sleep of reason brings forth monsters.” I find that profoundly true.

Voltaire the child of the Enlightenment, one might say a Fundamentalist Enlightenment thinker, said, “Those who can make you believe absurdities can make you commit atrocities.”

Our species has impressive powers of reasoning. It is what sets us apart from most species. Yet we give up our advantage all the time. Why do we do that? Why do we allow reason to go to sleep? More importantly, why do we do that when it is clearly against our own interests to do that? That is a very big question. One I would like to answer.

One of the worst things that we can do is to abdicate our power of reasoning. If ever—ever–we give up our rationale for beliefs we are doomed.  We must always insist that all beliefs are based on reason and evidence.

Our reasoning power may be weak. It is certainly far from perfect. For each and every one of us our power of reasoning is flawed, but we never have a better tool to justify belief. Any belief. Beliefs based on evidence and reasoning are not guaranteed to be true. They are not certainly true, but they are the best-grounded beliefs we can have.

Reason goes to sleep whenever we don’t base our beliefs on reason and evidence.  The bars to reason are many and varied and include the following among many others: faith substituted for reason, indoctrination, fear, prejudice or bias, laziness, ignorance, herd instinct or wish to conform, wishful thinking, ideological blinkers, and advertising or propaganda.

 

I am going far beyond religion now. Beliefs based on something other than reason, like faith, or feelings, or wishes, can have dangerous consequences. This can lead to crazy beliefs. No where is that more obvious than the United States. There is a good reason for this. America is in my opinion the most religious country in the west. At least by conventional definitions of religion. Kurt Anderson described this phenomenon this way in his book Fantasyland: How America Went Haywire(2017): “Unlike the Earth’s other moderns, we have rushed headlong back toward magic and miracles, crazifying some legacy churches, filling up the already crazy ones, inventing all kinds of crazy new ones.]Because the US has given itself over to beliefs without reason to such a fantastic extent for so long it has become vulnerable to believing all kinds of crazy things. Americans have become vulnerable to all kinds of crackpots from the ludicrous to the deranged.

For example it is astonishing how many Americans believed, without any evidence whatsoever, that Hillary Clinton ran a child sex ring out of the basement of a pizzeria that had no basement. Or that there is a government conspiracy to spread toxic vaccines. Or that Satanic child molesters are everywhere.  That Obama is the anti-Christ, a  Muslim and was born outside the United States. That the massacre of elementary school children in Sandy Hook by a lone gunman was a scam promulgated by paid actors. That climate change is a hoax. That the high school students at Parkland Florida who were terrorized by a gunman were also paid actors.

The gullibility of millions of Americans is truly astonishing. Where did this come from? I believe that it is the result of checking reason at the door for decades if not centuries.    When reason sleeps monsters are indeed brought forth.

 

Faith, Truth, and desire

Evangelical Christianity, Philosophy/Ideas, reason,

 

This may be my most controversial post so far. I urge my friends who will be disappointed in me not to think of me as wicked, but as a fallen brother. I also  urge them to point out to me where I went wrong.

A friend sent to me an excerpt from a well-written article by N. T. Wright.  He argues that as a historian there is convincing evidence that Jesus Christ came back to life after dying. This is what he concluded:

The historian’s task is not to force people to believe.  It is to make it clear that the sort of reasoning historians characteristically employ — inference to the best explanation, tested rigorously in terms of the explanatory power of the hypothesis thus generated — points strongly towards the bodily resurrection of Jesus.

Is that true? I accept it as a principle, that the more astonishing the claim the stronger the evidence must be to support it. I would suggest that someone rising from the dead is such an unusual accomplishment that objectively we would never believe that this had happened without very strong evidence indeed that it had in fact occurred. I don’t know about you, but I have never found such a claim about anyone else was ever true or even mildly convincing. Would any of us accept such claims about Mohammed, for example?  I would suggest that Muslims might believe that, but unless one had been indoctrinated to believe from a very early age it is highly unlikely that anyone would ever reach the conclusion that the evidence “points strongly towards the bodily resurrection of Mohammed”. Only those who already believed in the faith, would feel that evidence pointed strongly in that direction.

Would anyone say that about the evidence that any person at all  rose from the dead? Can you conceive of any evidence at all that might lead one to believe that? I would submit that any such conclusion is highly unlikely. The reason is that such beliefs are not based on evidence, they are based on inculcation or indoctrination and even highly intelligent people are guided, usually unconsciously, by that indoctrination, not by evidence at all. They don’t even realize their belief is based on indoctrination.

For the same reason it is obvious why most Christians were raised by Christians and most Muslims were raised by Muslims. We tend to believe what our parents teach us, especially what they taught us from a very young age. It is not that the evidence for Christian beliefs is so much more available in Christian countries or evidence for Muslim beliefs is much more available in Muslim countries. The key is indoctrination not evidence

I am no expert–but I have never seen evidence for the resurrection of Christ that would actually convince anyone other than a person who already believed it. The evidence is not strong at all; it is extraordinarily weak. At least I have never seen any.  It is not surprising of course that the evidence is weak. After all millennia have passed since the alleged event.  Finding convincing evidence of such an astoundingly rare event would in fact be miraculous, if not impossible. Of course, that does not mean those who believe in the resurrection are wrong, I am only suggesting that they do so not on the basis of belief, but what I call “indoctrination” and they call “faith.”

Of course millions of people believe that Christ rose from the grave and they are entitled to do that but I don’t believe it is  based on evidence at all but faith.  That really means that such beliefs will be held no matter what the evidence. I think it was John Loftus who said, “You cannot reason people out religious beliefs, because they were not reasoned into them”.

Faith is belief without reason.   If you believe something without there being a reason, then you have faith in it. According to the Bible in Hebrews11:1, “Faith is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen.” That is precisely what Friedrich Nietzsche objected to about faith.  Hopes are not evidence! The search for truth, he believed, is corrupted by wishes and desires.  If hopes are the “evidence” of truth you know the evidence is tainted. Contrary to the book of Hebrews, it is completely unreliable .

N.T. Wright earlier in the above referenced article said, about the historical evidence for the resurrection of Christ,

 

“The question divides into four.  First, what did people in the first century, both pagans and Jews, hope for?  What did they believe about life after death, and particularly about resurrection?  Second, what did the early Christians believe on the same subjects?  What did they hope for?  Third, what reasons did the early Christians give for their hope and belief, and what did they mean by the key word ‘resurrection’ which they used of Jesus? Finally, what can the historian say by way of comment on this early Christian claim?”

The fundamental problem I see with an approach like that of N.T. Wright is that it is based on hopes. His method is to find evidence to support beliefs he has probably had since the time of his youth and which ground his hopes for a life after death.  Hopes have no place in historical or scientific inquiry. They have a place in theology of course. Hopes are part of faith–a fundamental part of faith in fact.

That is what made Friedrich Nietzsche say, “Faith” means not wanting to know what is true.” The faithful believe what they want to believe. It is extremely difficult  not to believe what you want to be true. Nietzsche also said,  “The craving for a strong faith, is no proof of a strong faith, but quite the contrary. If one has such a faith, then one can afford the beautiful luxury of skeptics: one is sure enough, firm enough, has ties enough for that.” In other words, if faith is strong enough, no reasoning will talk one out of it. No evidence, no matter how compelling will dispel the belief.

All of this reminds me of that great 20thcentury deep thinker—Archie  Bunker. Archie Bunker proudly claimed to have faith. He said,  “Faith is something that you believe that no one in his right mind would believe.”

People who acquire faith usually do so not because of a convincing argument, or a powerful religious experience, but as a result of deep and persistent inculcation or indoctrination by their parents.  Such a faith is therefore nothing more than a very powerful prejudice.  It is very difficult to divorce oneself from one’s parents. It is actually much more difficult than to divorce a spouse. Nietzsche disdained such faith. He said “To accept a faith just because it is customary, means to be dishonest, to be cowardly, to be lazy.”

Nietzsche contrasted this faith with love of reason. He put it this way,

“A kind of honesty has been alien to founders of religions and others like them:  they have never made their experiences a matter of conscience for knowledge. “What did I really experience? What happened in me then, and around me? Was my reason bright enough?  Was my will turned against all deceptions of the senses and was it courageous in its resistance to the fantastic?—none of them raised such questions;  all the dear religious people still do not raise such questions even now:  rather they have a thirst for things that are against reason, and they do not want to make it too hard for themselves to satisfy it.  And so they experience “miracles” and “rebirths” and hear voices of the little angels!  We, however, we others, who thirst for reason, want to look our experience as straight in the eye as if they represented a scientific experiment, hour after hour, day after day. We ourselves want to be our experiments and guinea pigs.”

We have to be “courageous” in “resistance to the fantastic.” I think Wright  lacked that courage. He has instead found convincing evidence where no objective person would have found it. He has been guided not by evidence or “reasoning…tested rigorously” but instead by preconceptions.

Preconceptions are dangerous because they keep us from looking for the truth. After all, if you think you already have the truth why would you search for it? Nietzsche said it was not important to have the courage of one’s convictions. It was much more important to have the courage to attack one’s convictions.” That is what we have to learn to do. That is the basis of critical thinking. This willingness is its most important element.

Nietzsche also said, “Convictions are more dangerous enemies of truth than lies.” He said, “I am dynamite.” I think he meant to say that he was on this earth to break up encrusted ‘truths.’ He was here to attack them, to expose them.

Nietzsche’s approach is difficult. He does not deny that. He scorns easier positions.  Unlike Nietzsche, most people do what John Kenneth Galbraith talks about when he said, “Faced with the choice of changing one’s mind and with proving there is no need to do so, almost everyone get busy on the proof.”

It is very difficult to give up our convictions. This is particularly true of those we learn at a very young age from our parents. They seem to be a part of us. To cut them loose is like cutting off an arm. I also like what Albert Pike said, “We believe what we are taught; and those are most fanatical who know least of the evidence on which their creed is based.”

Dewitt Jones, the photographer enunciated another  profound concept. He said, “I will see it when I believe it.” Until then our preconceptions or biases can stifle the truth so that we cannot detect it.

Christians keep talking about the importance of belief in Jesus.  I am never sure exactly what that means. Can they mean that we have to believe some particular proposition?  After all why would such a belief be necessary? Or does it mean we should trust him?  Have faith in him. That would make more sense. Is that very different however?

Some Christians even suggest that unless we have some beliefs in Jesus we will be condemned to eternal damnation–whatever that means. Forget about eternal damnation, is it fair to base rewards or punishments of any sort on beliefs–particularly fundamental beliefs that we have had since the time of our extreme youth? In most cases our parents should get the credit or blame for those, not us.

Our parents indoctrinated us–rightly or wrongly–when we were very young. We were so young we had no ability  to resist the indoctrination. We are not good or bad because we accepted the indoctrination. We were vulnerable. There was nothing we could do about it. Just as it is not fair to condemn an accused person of a crime when the person is so mentally ill that he or she cannot resist the impulse to commit the crime, so it is not fair to base any rewards or any punishments, let alone eternal ones, on what we were indoctrinated to believe, or not believe, when we were  young children. I cannot believe any God who would do that. That is why we should never be judged by our beliefs. We should be judged by our actions freely accomplished.

Programmed to Believe

Evangelical Christianity, Philosophy/Ideas, religion

 

I read a fascinating story in The New Yorker magazine. It was the story of a young 23-year old legal assistant named Megan Phelps-Roper from Topeka Kansas in the heart of the United States Bible Belt. She became well known as a result of her tweets on Twitter and picketing on behalf of her church Westboro Baptist Church. She would tweet things like this, “Thank God for AIDS! You won’t repent of your rebellion that brought his wrath on you in this incurable scourge, so expect more & worse.”  As Adrian Chen reported in the New Yorker,

 

She believed that “all manner of other tragedies–war, natural disaster, mass shootings–were warnings from God to a doomed nation, and that it was her duty to spread the news of His righteous judgments. To protest the increasing acceptance of homosexuality in America the Westboro Baptist Church picketed the funerals of gay men who died of AIDS and of soldiers killed in Iraq and Afghanistan.  Members held signs slogans like ‘GOD HATES FAGS’ and “THANK GOD FOR DEAD SOLDIERS,” and the outrage that their efforts attracted had turned the small church, which had fewer than a hundred members, into a global symbol of hate.

 

What really interested me about this story in The New Yorkerwas the fact that this young woman was attractive, fully devoted to a cause that attracted a lot of hatred against her and her family, and, most importantly, very intelligent. That seems hard to believe since her beliefs were so wildly unreasonable, but she was. She was often the spokesperson for the church and had been interviewed by media around the world.

How could such a person with all her advantages have such pitiful beliefs? I think the answer is obvious.  She had those beliefs because that is what her parents taught her. From birth she had been indoctrinated by her parents. From them she “learned” that gays were an abomination and it was her duty to attack them whenever she could, in whatever manner was available to her.

Eventually she did manage to wean herself from her parents’ rigid positions. In time she rebelled, but it is never easy to dissent, especially from our fundamental beliefs that we have held since we were extremely young and which were inculcated in us by our well meaning parents who wanted to help us and guide us and protect us from all harm. Yet, in the language of social media, eventually after profound doubts and deep unease Megan was able to “Unfollow” her parents and their church.

We all believe what our parents teach us. Our parents are our guides and mentors in our life’s journey. Humans, unlike most animals, have a long period of time in which they are nurtured by their parents. This process takes years. Longer in fact than with any other species. During this time we soak up what our parents teach us. Evolutionarily this is what we had to do to survive. Millennia ago, when life was nasty brutish and short, and dangers lurked everywhere, young children that did not listen to their parents’ warnings tended to perish. The risk takers were often taken by predators. Children that stayed close to their parents and abided by their dire warnings tended to survive and later passed on their genes to their offspring. Obedience to parents is wired deep in the human DNA. We are programmed to believe.

When we get older, some of us learn that our parents were not always right. When I was young I thought my mother was the finest cook in the world. I was so lucky to have such a wonderful mom. That is true by the way. Later in life–much later and very subtly–I began to realize she was not a perfect cook. She tended to burn her meats and badly over cook her vegetables. That was the way she had been taught to cook by her mother. That was the standard of good cooking. She was not perfect in other ways either. Pretty close, but not quite perfect.

Parents are important. We love them. They guide us through the informative times of our lives when as young children we are totally helpless and entirely at their mercy. We appreciate what they do for us and for what they have taught us, but we should never remain obedient children. We have to grow up.

I remember a conversation with a young lawyer a few years ago. We were arguing about some ethical issue.  He and I disagreed about whether something was ethically right or wrong. Such arguments are not easy to resolve. His ultimate answer–and it really was an ultimate answer–was that, ‘well that is what I was taught by my parents to believe.’ How could he not believe what he had been taught to believe?

He was an intelligent young man.  Yet he admitted he believed something solely because that was what he had been taught to believe by his parents. It seemed absurd to me, but I had managed, with great difficulty many years earlier, to dissent from some of the things that I had been taught by my parents.

Yet that is what we have an obligation to do. When we mature, I would suggest, we must challenge what we have been taught. Not everything our parents taught us was absolutely true (or wrong). Our parents thought it was true. Why else would they teach it to us?  But our parents, just like anyone else, can make mistakes, even fundamental mistakes and we should make sure we have not been led astray by well-meaning parents.

But such a challenge is extremely difficult. The fact is that it is very difficult to reject fundamental things that our parents teach us. We believe those things. It takes a great deal of courage and determination to challenge  that.

Megan was extremely intelligent and she certainly did not lack courage. To stand up in public on a public sidewalk in front of a funeral for soldiers carrying placards that mock everything about those soldiers, takes a lot of guts. To hold up placards at a funeral of gay people denouncing gays in the most crude and brutal manner certainly takes courage. It is misguided courage, but no less courage for that.

Eventually, she came to realize her parents had taught her badly. They had not just taught her they had indoctrinated her.  Later it took courage to Unfollow her parents.

Our parents are our first and usually most important teachers. Yet, as Friedrich Nietzsche said, “a pupil repays a teacher badly if he remains forever a pupil.” A good teacher wants to be challenged. A good parent wants to be challenged.

Indoctrination or choice? One person’s indoctrination is another person’s Sunday School

Evangelical Christianity, Philosophy/Ideas,

 

Revival meetings were incredibly emotional, particularly for young teenagers. Many of my friends were deeply affected by them.  Those meetings often emphasized fear. Young people were forcefully reminded that failure to accept Jesus as our personal savior would lead to hell. Forever! Some of them were scarred for life. It is hardly surprising that under such circumstances the youth were often terrified and the decisions they made were suspect.

Many young people were filled with fear by powerful professional speakers brought into our town for exactly that purpose. I have already commented about how I thought that this was unfair. Now I want to carry that thought a little farther.  I want to go beyond revival meetings.  What about Sunday School?  Were they any better?

Parents often indoctrinate their children. They want to teach their children the truth. I consider that reasonable, but when they go beyond teaching to taking away the decision of the child and making it their own they have gone too far. For example, when they hire professionals who know how to manipulate the children into doing their will, they have taken the choice away from the children.

Indoctrination by parents of their children is extremely popular in many societies and among many groups. Evangelical Christians are great practitioners of it, but so are other groups. It is not an accident at all that most children raised in Christian homes become Christians as adults. The same goes for Muslims, Jews, and most other religions. Is each group so good at teaching their children? When the vast majority of children from each religion follow the religion of their parents, I believe that is pretty good evidence that the parents have gone beyond teaching to indoctrination.  In such cases, they have manipulated the children and taken their free choice away. Why else would each religion be so successful?

I think it is because parents of many religions indoctrinate their children into the religion of the family. Few of the children reject that direction by their parents and thus few choose some other religion. I don’t think it happens often. When children are young they are hardly in a position to resist the influence of their parents. Many follow their parents without reasoning. Indoctrination leads exactly to that. Is this a free choice?

Mennonites used to think that it is was very important that children not be baptized at birth. That was because the choice of religion would then be that of the parent, when the choice should be that of the child. I agree with that entirely. I believe that they meant that the decision of the child had to be freely made. Infants can’t make such choices. Otherwise, again, the decision would be the choice of the parent not the child.

Indoctrination robs the child of choice and substitutes the decision of the parent for that of the child. I would think Mennonites would reject that unequivocally. They don’t. If parents don’t allow their children to make their own decisions on important subjects such as choosing their faith, or no faith, they are really making the decision for their children.  They are taking that decision away from their children.

One person’s indoctrination is another person’s Sunday School.

Wabi-Sabi Revisited

art, Philosophy/Ideas, photography, Wabi-Sabi

This is one of my favourite old buildings. It is located near Beausejour Manitoba.  A number of months ago I wrote about a new philosophy I had discovered.  Well to me it was new, but it was really an old philosophy. The philosophy is called Wabi-Sabi and it has found a congenial home in Japan, the same country that brought us forest bathing. More on that another time. Wabi-Sabi is a philosophy of genuine conservatism—not the shallow rancid kind practiced by some modern politicians of the right. Wabi-Sabi cherishes what has stood the test of time, even though it is already decaying. Nothing lasts forever, but we should embrace the good while it lasts and then give it up with regret, but understanding.

Wabi-Sabi is a philosophy that accepts impermanence and even celebrates it. Like buildings that are collapsing into decay. Or old vehicles or other instruments.  Even old people are embraced and appreciated for what they can bring, even when it is less than they could bring at one time.

Wabi-Sabi rejects the current relentless pursuit of the new in favor of cherishing instead the old, which is still valuable. Like all good art Wabi-Sabi finds and then celebrates the extraordinary that can be found in the ordinary, provided one has the eyes to see. Or has the mind to see. Common everyday things can have a startling beauty if one is alert. One must be alert for the marvellous as otherwise it might pass one by.

 

I think Wabi-Sabi fits in well with my search for moral humility. One can forsake the hyper-beautiful in favor of a quiet beauty that stills the soul rather than puffing up the chest. It is modest or humble.

Early on in photography, I saw images by photographers who found beauty in the mundane even if they had never heard of the philosophy of the Wabi-Sabi. Freeman Patterson is one of my favorite photographers and I think he exemplified this approach. I remember the first time I saw his photographs of collapsing buildings in South Africa and was amazed at the beauty he found there.  I am nowhere near the photographer that Patterson is, but I have caught on to the beauty in the ordinary even if I fail to match his skill in displaying it. But I try. And, of course, I am not perfect, and never will be. The perfect is the enemy of the good and sometimes even of the one who strives for beauty.

 

One artist who appreciated the beauty of the flawed was Leonard Cohen. Remember the line from his song,

 

Ring the bells that still can ring,

Forget your perfect offering

There is a crack in everything

That’s how the light gets in

 

Too often who seek perfection are continually dissatisfied with the good. What a pity. The good is good enough.

Life is always frayed and if you don’t like the untidy ends you don’t love life. You love death instead.  The art, the photography, I am interested in sees beauty and truth in such rough timber, for as Shakespeare said, we are made of such rough timber. Art that is perfect is too often lifeless.  By definition the ideal is not alive. The ideal can inspire us, but it does not keep company with us. This is the art of the rough.

Recently on the radio I heard a Broadway musical star talk about her “dream home” that she had bought in the country.  She said she loved that it was 100 years older than she was.  It was more than 150 years old. Not old for Europe where such homes are appreciated, but very old here in North America. She also loved that it had its original floors. She said she loved to walk barefoot on that floor, especially on the “uneven floor.”  She loved the flaws. I love flaws. Of course, some say I love flaws because I am so deeply flawed. Maybe they are right.

 

Establishment of Religion

Human rights, Law, Philosophy/Ideas, religion

Recently I posted about the establishment of religion clause in the US. We don’t have such a clause in our constitution but we do have a clause guaranteeing religious freedom, which has been interpreted to include freedom from religion.

I like the English philosophers who often went by the name of liberals.  Today, liberalism is a bad word in many circles—particularly in the United States. I find it very congenial. I am not talking about the Liberal party in Canada or the Democratic Party in the US. I will leave that for another day. I am talking about small “l” liberalism.

I think the philosophy of liberalism was started in England by John Locke, who lived mainly in the second half of the 17thcentury. That’s a long time ago, but I think its important. Locke’s ideas were borne in the crucible of English politics during this time. That history had important effects on liberalism. And it is important today, though too often forgotten.

The Reformation and the problem of religious minorities was central to Locke’s political philosophy because those were the burning issues (literally burning issues) of his times. By the 1680s there was clear political unrest in England. Until then this was not an issue all values were shared because everyone in Europe was a Roman Catholic. Until then the issue of minority rights did not arise for there were no minorities. After that political theorists had to figure out how can we live in a society together when we don’t all share the same values? We are still trying to solve that problem.

The religious wars of the 17thcentury were incredibly bloody and Locke and the liberals did not want to see them repeated. In the 21stcentury we should be no less vigilant.

2 years ago, Chris and I attended a lecture at the University of Manitoba by Professor Steve Lecce. I have often thought of what he said. He said, that the key question of modern and contemporary political theory is, according to Lecce, “How should we live together in society when we don’t all share the same values?”

According to traditional liberals, the state is not an instrument for pursuing common goals, but rather an institution that allows each of us to pursue our own personal goals while living in society with those who have different objectives. Where values diverge, as they now inevitably do in any post Reformation society and in particular in modern societies that include immigrants from around the world, how can we live together in peace and harmony without resorting to might is right or without resorting to the ability of the majority to dominate? Liberals say that there are some things the majority or the powerful should not be able to do. Instead we will have a method of settling disputes fairly. The state in such circumstances has to be like a referee or umpire. That is why the state must remain neutral between religions for example. It should not assist one religious group to establish its religion over others.

This was very important in the Reformation when religious freedom was the critical issue of the time. It is still important. It is particularly important in places like Steinbach where religion is very important. The Reformation splintered the dominant religion and cleared the way for new problems that were irrelevant before then when everyone agreed.

Until the Reformation a common religion bound us all so that this was not an important issue. Religion until then was the social glue that kept us together. After the Reformation, religion became an explosive issue that could blast society apart. And it often did. It still often does that. Before the Reformation religion was the basis of societal trust.  After the Reformation religion became an instrument of distrust. We still live in this post-Reformation world.

There were 2 possible solutions to this problem of religion after the Reformation:

 

  • A religion can be imposed by force or power to achieve religious unity. This was tried with great vigor in the religious wars of the 17th The result was great misery and abject failure. John Locke developed his philosophy just after those wars which were burned into his memory. Unfortunately, now many of those memories are vague or forgotten.
  • The second possible solution is the radical idea proposed by liberals like John Locke–toleration. That had never been tried before. It was truly deeply revolutionary. It is important to remember this when modern liberals are often seen as dull and boring theoreticians. In the 18thcentury this idea was profoundly revolutionary. Many hated the idea of tolerance because they saw it as capitulation to evil.  Liberals said we had to accept differences.

 

Nowadays toleration, a value that was revolutionary in its day, and I would submit, is revolutionary today, can seem like very thin gruel compared to the spicy virtues reflected by much more aggressive and powerful advocates like ISIS, Boko Haram, Donald Trump, and their ilk. It can seem wishy-washy just like–well—liberals. The liberals stand for permitting others to have their say. This is much less sexy than threatening to ban them, or build a wall to keep them out, or kill them. However, in a world charged with the most vicious of religious hatreds like that of Europe in the 17thcentury or our current world in the 21stcentury, tolerance is not wishy-washy at all. After all the 17thand 20thcenturies were the two most violent centuries in the past 500 years according to Steven Pinker. [2]Tolerance is the most vital of all the virtues! Liberals should step to the plate with vigor and confidence. Liberals actually represent our best chance for civilization to endure.  At least so liberals believe.  At least so I believe.

In the 17thcentury there were those who feared the worst from this revolutionary new idea of tolerance.  Would this not lead to the destruction of public morality?  Personal morality should never be permitted to undermine public morality, it was widely believed. This in fact is the essence of Conservatism! It is stillthe essence of conservatism.

It is still vitally important in a community like Steinbach today as I write.         Recently, our little community has been challenged by a young Lesbian couple who wanted the schools in our area to teach about all families and not ignore the diverse kinds of families like theirs. They want respect. They do not demand acceptance, but they want to be recognized. Many in my community–the modern conservatives–believe sincerely that this can lead to the disintegration of the modern family and with it our cherished western society. The conservatives don’t want to tolerate the lesbians. They feel that this will lead inevitably to the disintegration of all that they hold dear. This is classic conservatism.

Liberals challenge this view. Liberals hold that we can each freely have our own personal opinions and morality without challenging the social order or value of society. Let people disagree. We can all get along provided each of us accepts limits. We must tolerate each other even when we believe others are wrong. This will not destroy society. In fact modern liberals, like Justin Trudeau, believe that the diversity of modern society will strengthennot weaken society.

That means that we must put reasonable limits on our religious values too. We can hold them personally as much as we want, as vigorously as we want, but we cannot impose those values on others. The social value of imposing religious values was rightly discredited after the religious wars of the 17th century. We don’t want to go back there. That is why we in Steinbach must accept same sex marriage as a permitted alternative life style that must be respected, even it is not accepted. This respect will not destroy society it will strengthen it. To live in society we must respect others even when we disagree with them. That is why traditional liberals say that no religion should be established by the state. Everyone should be absolutely free to choose whatever religion they want, including no religion at all. Then we might be able to live together even when we have fundamental disagreements. If we learn tolerance we have a chance of living together. If we don’t we stand no chance.

Many people on the religious right today seem quite willing to permit a religion to become established by the state, provided of course it is their religion. Mennonites at one made a similar principle at the heart of their own position about religion and politics. They knew from profound personal experience how an established religion, such as the Catholic religion in their case, could be used against them to try to beat down their rights to practice their own religion. Nowadays, too many of Mennonites have forgotten this important lesson as they try to impose their own religious views on others. This is what they have done in Steinbach.

A good friend of mine said I must be “even-handed”. I agree. He suggested I had not considered those who advocate imposing Sharia law on us here in the west. Actually I have never encountered that, but if it happened here I would denounce it just as strongly. Muslims too must learn the benefits of tolerance. All of us must.