I find myself caught in a bit of a quandary; hoist - as it were - with my own petard. For you see I regard the rabid verbiage tossed around by the right wing as characteristic of a society being rent apart by its extremist elements. But on the other hand I am no slouch at tossing around some extreme verbiage of my own, particularly when it comes to describing my thoughts on that same right wing. "Bat-shit" crazy is a pretty common reference, as are "economic terrorists", "American Taliban", and "gun nuts". Not exactly words with which to build bridges.
There are some bridges that simply can't be built. There doesn't appear to be any way to bridge the gap between Young Earth Creationists and rational thought; which would seem to make the Y.E.Cs crazy by definition. But old earth creationists, if that's a good description, need not fall into camp crazy. They accept the cosmos as it appears to be, all 13.7 billion years of it. Then they weave a Creator into the mix, sort of after the fact. By all accounts there are some O.E.Cs who also reject the idea that god loves guns more than children, or that he hates the poor. Except for the belief in a creator, an O.E.C. and I could have a lot of common.
There could be a rather substantial bridge between ardent conservationists and hunting enthusiasts. The conservationist may not be a big fan of guns, but hunters are notable conservationists. In fact, given that we don't much want mountain lions and wolf packs roaming near where people live and raise kids, hunters are about the only predators around to keep the deer population (as one example) in check. Hard core conservationists and equally hard core hunters should be allies in many a political battle.
Everyone who grinds out 40, 50 or 60 hour weeks to just get by while worrying about affordable health care and a quality education for their kids would seem natural collaborators in the political fights with corporations and Wall Street. The person pounding rivets next to me on the assembly line may be a Y.E.C. while I an atheist, and we would still have more in common than either of us would have with the person sitting in the C.E.O's chair. We would both suffer the same repetitive motion injuries, both face lay offs and a need for unemployment insurance during the lean times, maybe lose the same friend to an unsafe environment in the plant, breathe the same metal dust, endure the same heat in the summer, work on the same frigid floor in the winter. About the only real difference in our lives would be that he spent his Wednesday nights at Bible study and Sunday mornings at church, while I spent Wednesday nights bowling and Sunday mornings fishing.
Why is there even an argument against regulating Wall Street so they can't tank the economy once again? Why do corporations get a free pass on busting unions, and why would any working person see that as a good thing? One would think that anything resembling a "Labor Party" in the US would reign supreme, yet there is no such an animal anywhere in sight. American working people shuddering at the very thought of a Labor party. Still, it would seem there should be very wide and heavily traveled bridges built between every group of laborers in the land. Instead the rift between left and right goes right down the middle of the people who actually do the work of building and maintaining a nation.
There is something more insidious going on. The fact is a divided people are a controllable people, and virtually all of our institutions are designed to keep us divided. A two party political system seems kind of an obvious ploy in this case, but it has been the way in the USA for so long that we all just look at it as normal. But really, could there be anything more divisive than a political structure that only allows two points of view? We are told the answer is either "X" or "Y", but no mention of Z, A, B, or ... We just had an election where virtually nothing changed. The government is still completely hamstrung by a small knot of lunatics (sorry, no other word fits) in the House and a Senate paralyzed by the very idea of leading. (Thus the enduring stalemates engineered by the filibuster - a bad idea that the Democrats couldn't find the courage to change even when they had the chance.) Yet when I look close at the parties and their policies, there often isn't much difference. Mostly they seem to rule by keeping a constant state of crisis going. The terrorists are coming, the economy is failing, the debt is out of control, the army is too small, the army is too big, China is communist and our enemy, China is turning to capitalism and is our competitor, the Arabs are ... well, we don't really know what the Arabs are, but we are sure it is bad for us.
I'm not sure why it works, but a constant state of panic results in the American public voting the same people who cause the panic back into power, over and over again.
The media is a complete farce and have a deep financial stake in keeping the panic going. Take any issue, any statement, any speech, any political activity at all and one doesn't even have to turn it on to know the spin FOX news, MSNBC, and CNN are going to offer. Their "reporting" is so cast in stone that no matter what the issue the response is predetermined. Obama is never going to say a single thing that FOX can not turn into an impending Armageddon. Every single thing that any Republican states has MSNBC beating the political war drums. CNN ... they are the ones on the yellow stripe right in the middle. Newspapers and magazines are the same, as are most blogs. (I know, I know!) But it is the kind of "reporting" that keeps the sponsors happy and their respective audiences feeling like they are special, better than the audience of that other station. It is gospel on the left that FOX viewers are the worst informed people on the planet, gospel on the right that MSNBC and CNN are bastions of "liberalism" and misinformation. All work at nothing but widening the divides to keep the money flowing.
Religion is perhaps the worst of the bunch. Looking around the world right now and it is hard to imagine anything doing more collective harm than the RCC, Jihadists, and the Protestant Right Wing. Child abuse, the growing oppression of women, violence of the most appalling kind, a growing hatred of anything that smacks of rationality and education ... it is hard to imagine how it could get any worse, though every day it seems to do just that. Yet the vast majority of the people in both the US and the world take up the banner of one religion or another, and it shows. The religions are playing the same game for the same reason, to hold power and keep the panic going.
It seems so glaringly obvious that we are all being played for fools. Yet somehow it isn't obvious, and somehow we can't seem to do anything about it. It isn't an analogy that the crazy people are running the asylum, it is simply a description of the world we live in. And I have to wonder who is more crazy? The nut cases running the asylum, or the supposedly sane people who keep electing them?
Sunday, January 27, 2013
Sunday, January 20, 2013
3 steps
Rumor has it the TPRP (T-party / Republicans) are going to back away from blowing up the economy in an attempt to extract concessions from Obama. That is good news, if it is true. Still, it would be better if the TPRP realized that it isn't Obama they are trying to coerce but rather the entire American public. It would be even better if the segment of the American public that voted these lunatics into office realized the same thing.
If the TPRP actually backs away from being the economic equivalent of suicide bombers we get just a few more minutes of respite from our teetering and failing social /economic / military / corporate structure. It probably isn't enough of a respite to prevent disaster, but it may be enough for a new mentality to begin to grow. Imagine MADD (Mothers Against Drunk Driving - a hugely successful social movement) morphing into something bigger. Maybe they could add in the fathers and include more of the human family. Let them work toward the right of children to survive their childhood superseding the right of gun lovers to provide weapons to every nut case on the street. They might even point out that a gun in a house with children is like putting them in a car without a seat belt. Call it PAMMC (Parents Against Mass Murdering Children).
If that works, maybe PAMMC could grow into AAASV (Americans Against All Sensless Violence). Even more inclusive this could include people who are not parents. They could work against the endless worship of violence that poisons our society. Not only gun violence but rape, domestic violence, and assault. In a group like this off-the-reservation types (like yours truly) might find some allies among the more liberal religious traditions who don't believe that god loves the NRA.
(A gun loving god is the ideology of the far Christian right. It is also the ideological home for Young Earth Creationism, Climate Change Denying, Obama is a Muslim, and Capitalism is Blessed claiming crowd, any or all of which would have me abandon the name "Christian" even if I still was one. I would figure any real god would understand and approve.)
Who knows, maybe then we could take the last big step to being an intelligent species, TEHFAW (The Entire Human Family Against War). As long as we remain a war fighting species we can't really claim to be an intelligent species. Sure a world full of TEHFAW would mean the end of the US as we know it. Reduce war, the mechanisms supporting war, the funding for war, the love of war, and the endless involvement in war, and what is there for the US of A to add to the global debate?We abandoned social justice long ago, have ceded economic vitality in the name of corporate profitability, and are quickly abandoning intellectualism, science and innovation to religious fundamentalism. Should the world turn away from war what will become of us? Will we take to fighting with each other and end up like the Balkans? A place of endless misery in a world that has, otherwise, moved on?
This society is heavily invested in violence, weapons, war and hate. Turning to something new will mean nothing less than a wholesale rejection of what we have been building for that last several generations (at least) and turning to something that is utterly foreign to American sensibilities. That being the idea that there are other people in the world who are just as valuable as we think we are, and they don't share our love of violence. Three steps. I'll be rooting for those who try to make them, but I don't think we can.
If the TPRP actually backs away from being the economic equivalent of suicide bombers we get just a few more minutes of respite from our teetering and failing social /economic / military / corporate structure. It probably isn't enough of a respite to prevent disaster, but it may be enough for a new mentality to begin to grow. Imagine MADD (Mothers Against Drunk Driving - a hugely successful social movement) morphing into something bigger. Maybe they could add in the fathers and include more of the human family. Let them work toward the right of children to survive their childhood superseding the right of gun lovers to provide weapons to every nut case on the street. They might even point out that a gun in a house with children is like putting them in a car without a seat belt. Call it PAMMC (Parents Against Mass Murdering Children).
If that works, maybe PAMMC could grow into AAASV (Americans Against All Sensless Violence). Even more inclusive this could include people who are not parents. They could work against the endless worship of violence that poisons our society. Not only gun violence but rape, domestic violence, and assault. In a group like this off-the-reservation types (like yours truly) might find some allies among the more liberal religious traditions who don't believe that god loves the NRA.
(A gun loving god is the ideology of the far Christian right. It is also the ideological home for Young Earth Creationism, Climate Change Denying, Obama is a Muslim, and Capitalism is Blessed claiming crowd, any or all of which would have me abandon the name "Christian" even if I still was one. I would figure any real god would understand and approve.)
Who knows, maybe then we could take the last big step to being an intelligent species, TEHFAW (The Entire Human Family Against War). As long as we remain a war fighting species we can't really claim to be an intelligent species. Sure a world full of TEHFAW would mean the end of the US as we know it. Reduce war, the mechanisms supporting war, the funding for war, the love of war, and the endless involvement in war, and what is there for the US of A to add to the global debate?We abandoned social justice long ago, have ceded economic vitality in the name of corporate profitability, and are quickly abandoning intellectualism, science and innovation to religious fundamentalism. Should the world turn away from war what will become of us? Will we take to fighting with each other and end up like the Balkans? A place of endless misery in a world that has, otherwise, moved on?
This society is heavily invested in violence, weapons, war and hate. Turning to something new will mean nothing less than a wholesale rejection of what we have been building for that last several generations (at least) and turning to something that is utterly foreign to American sensibilities. That being the idea that there are other people in the world who are just as valuable as we think we are, and they don't share our love of violence. Three steps. I'll be rooting for those who try to make them, but I don't think we can.
Tuesday, January 15, 2013
Directions
It seems every few weeks sees another poll about the "direction" the country is taking. It strikes me as a kind of nebulous question and, should I ever be part of such a poll, I wouldn't be sure what to say. At first brush it would seem pretty obvious that I do not think the country is going anywhere near the right direction. But that might suggest I think that the Democrats / Obama are leading us off in the wrong direction and that the Republicans should be back in power to correct our course. Nothing could be further from the truth. The Democrats / Obama are going off in the wrong direction mostly because they are sticking to the same path the Republicans choose years ago.
Which make me wonder, is the country out of whack, or just the people leading it?
The government is utterly pro-gun, regardless of the current rhetoric. There might be some restrictions, eventually, on large capacity magazines, though I wouldn't bet on it. There is no chance that there will be real gun control. Real gun control would require universal background checks, licences, and registration. Real gun control would include an absolute ban on any weapon that could fire more than 6 rounds without having to be reloaded, and draconian penalties for anyone who manufactured, sold, or possessed hardware that circumvented that restriction. None of that will ever transpire. Yet less than half of the households in the US have guns in them. Adults who own a gun number barely 1/3. The vast majority of Americans, even those who own guns, want serious gun control. The only people who seem to side completely with current government gun policy are the seriously bat-shit crazy right wingers. The rest of the country? Not so much. When it comes to guns the country, the people, are a lot closer to going in the right direction then is the government.
(By the way real gun control has nothing to do with banning "assault style" weapons. What a gun looks like is of absolutely no consequence. An assault looking rifle holding a maximum of 6 rounds has exactly the same killing potential as a 6 shot revolver. In fact the six shot assault rifle is a lot harder to hide than the revolver and thus is less of a threat. Restricting the capasity of a gun to produce high body counts is what matters. Dictating what a gun looks like? Why bother? Doing so only plays into the hands of the NRA and the gun manufactureres.)
The government is still anti-gay, again reflecting the right wing, religious fundamentalist attitudes towards sex. Some progress is being made, but in this case it is the people of the US dragging the government along, with the feds kicking and screaming in protest. The majority of the people in the US are just not that concerned about gay people getting married, living together, hanging out with their kids, whatever. People are now voting for laws that end the discrimination against gay people, and being openly anti-gay is roundly and openly criticized. This fight is nearly over and gay people won it. The rest of us get to profit from the fact that civil rights and personal liberty have pushed back against oppression and religious ideology. Yet it will be years before the government catches up to the reality.
People are tired of the drug war, particularly when it comes to weed. It is, by any reckoning, just unbelievably stupid. The only reason I can imagine that would keep the government policy alive is that easy access to marijuana might cut into the drug companies profits for prescription feel-good pills. So campaign money pours into the propaganda and election campaign machines to prop up the "war on drugs". Not quite as far along as the battle for civil rights for gays, the fight against the government's position on drugs is also being won.
The Bush / Obama wars in Afghanistan and Iraq have long been understood by the American people as complete disasters. It is kind of amazing that no one has gone to jail for lying us into those wars in the first place. Support for them has deeply tainted some who otherwise would be serious political and maybe national leaders. (I'm thinking mostly of retired General Colin Powell and ex-Secretary of State Condolezza Rice.) Had there been a third party candidate in this last presidential election who ran against Obama's continuation of Bush's wars and the unnecessary anguish that resulted, who promised to close the Afghanistan disaster quickly and bring the troops home from all over the world where they are posted in harms way for no real reason, she (or he) just might have routed both Obama and Romney. (Which explains why no such a person was allowed anywhere near the election process.)
The country is going in the wrong direction, but most of the time, most of the people, are being dragged that way against their will. Maybe nation-states are much like any other religion. Most of the deeply religious people I know are actually much better people than the religions they follow might suggest. Regardless of what their bibles claim to be god's teachings, most believers don't envision stoning people for having sex or working on Sunday. They don't condone cutting off hands or gouging out eyes, sacrificing sheep on an alter, wars of genocide against other groups, slavery, selling their daughters, or the virtues of honor killings. They are good people in spite of their church, not because of it.
Perhaps us Americans should view ourselves in the same light. Our country is a seriously screwed up mess. No society can consider itself healthy that suffers the arming of mass murderers, endless wars on its own citizens (gays, pot-smokers, women) and the citizens of other societies, poisoning its water and air, the selling of its elected officials to the highest bidder, or a relentless abuse of the poor. Yet we all recognize that these are symptoms of an ill society and (many of us anyway) are appalled at a government that endorses and often facilitates the sickness.
The country is on the wrong track, but an amazing number of Americans are actually facing the right direction. There must be some hope in that somewhere.
Which make me wonder, is the country out of whack, or just the people leading it?
The government is utterly pro-gun, regardless of the current rhetoric. There might be some restrictions, eventually, on large capacity magazines, though I wouldn't bet on it. There is no chance that there will be real gun control. Real gun control would require universal background checks, licences, and registration. Real gun control would include an absolute ban on any weapon that could fire more than 6 rounds without having to be reloaded, and draconian penalties for anyone who manufactured, sold, or possessed hardware that circumvented that restriction. None of that will ever transpire. Yet less than half of the households in the US have guns in them. Adults who own a gun number barely 1/3. The vast majority of Americans, even those who own guns, want serious gun control. The only people who seem to side completely with current government gun policy are the seriously bat-shit crazy right wingers. The rest of the country? Not so much. When it comes to guns the country, the people, are a lot closer to going in the right direction then is the government.
(By the way real gun control has nothing to do with banning "assault style" weapons. What a gun looks like is of absolutely no consequence. An assault looking rifle holding a maximum of 6 rounds has exactly the same killing potential as a 6 shot revolver. In fact the six shot assault rifle is a lot harder to hide than the revolver and thus is less of a threat. Restricting the capasity of a gun to produce high body counts is what matters. Dictating what a gun looks like? Why bother? Doing so only plays into the hands of the NRA and the gun manufactureres.)
The government is still anti-gay, again reflecting the right wing, religious fundamentalist attitudes towards sex. Some progress is being made, but in this case it is the people of the US dragging the government along, with the feds kicking and screaming in protest. The majority of the people in the US are just not that concerned about gay people getting married, living together, hanging out with their kids, whatever. People are now voting for laws that end the discrimination against gay people, and being openly anti-gay is roundly and openly criticized. This fight is nearly over and gay people won it. The rest of us get to profit from the fact that civil rights and personal liberty have pushed back against oppression and religious ideology. Yet it will be years before the government catches up to the reality.
People are tired of the drug war, particularly when it comes to weed. It is, by any reckoning, just unbelievably stupid. The only reason I can imagine that would keep the government policy alive is that easy access to marijuana might cut into the drug companies profits for prescription feel-good pills. So campaign money pours into the propaganda and election campaign machines to prop up the "war on drugs". Not quite as far along as the battle for civil rights for gays, the fight against the government's position on drugs is also being won.
The Bush / Obama wars in Afghanistan and Iraq have long been understood by the American people as complete disasters. It is kind of amazing that no one has gone to jail for lying us into those wars in the first place. Support for them has deeply tainted some who otherwise would be serious political and maybe national leaders. (I'm thinking mostly of retired General Colin Powell and ex-Secretary of State Condolezza Rice.) Had there been a third party candidate in this last presidential election who ran against Obama's continuation of Bush's wars and the unnecessary anguish that resulted, who promised to close the Afghanistan disaster quickly and bring the troops home from all over the world where they are posted in harms way for no real reason, she (or he) just might have routed both Obama and Romney. (Which explains why no such a person was allowed anywhere near the election process.)
The country is going in the wrong direction, but most of the time, most of the people, are being dragged that way against their will. Maybe nation-states are much like any other religion. Most of the deeply religious people I know are actually much better people than the religions they follow might suggest. Regardless of what their bibles claim to be god's teachings, most believers don't envision stoning people for having sex or working on Sunday. They don't condone cutting off hands or gouging out eyes, sacrificing sheep on an alter, wars of genocide against other groups, slavery, selling their daughters, or the virtues of honor killings. They are good people in spite of their church, not because of it.
Perhaps us Americans should view ourselves in the same light. Our country is a seriously screwed up mess. No society can consider itself healthy that suffers the arming of mass murderers, endless wars on its own citizens (gays, pot-smokers, women) and the citizens of other societies, poisoning its water and air, the selling of its elected officials to the highest bidder, or a relentless abuse of the poor. Yet we all recognize that these are symptoms of an ill society and (many of us anyway) are appalled at a government that endorses and often facilitates the sickness.
The country is on the wrong track, but an amazing number of Americans are actually facing the right direction. There must be some hope in that somewhere.
Saturday, January 5, 2013
Insurgents
The fiscal cliff crises turned out to be just another pretend catastrophe drummed up by Congress. "Averted" by kicking the hard decisions down the road a couple of months, it appears we are being set up for a re-run. Only this time there is the added threat of shutting down the government and / or defaulting on the Nation's debt, two things that might actually be catastrophic.
Rational people realize this would be an act of utter insanity - which puts the threat firmly in the camp of the T-Party / Republicans and no one else. Apparently this is how democracies fail. It isn't that everyone in the society decides to commit universal suicide and runs together off a cliff. Driving off a cliff is the wrong analogy. A better one would be a demented few deciding to blow up the house and bring it crashing down one everyone else. Not an act of shared dementia but of terrorism.
Of the 433 members in the House, 233 are Republicans, and of them 51 are T-party members. (These 51 have Michele Backmann as their leader. That pretty much says all that needs to be said as to how bat-shit crazy this group really is. Michele Backmann as their leader?) Without those 51 votes the Republicans have 182, the Democrats 200. Fifty-one extremists control the Republican party.
Fifty-one. Amazing. We should also remember that these 51 people are not Representatives of a democracy in any normal sense of the phrase. Because of gerrymandering the only political reality threatening their positions is if some Republican, even more bat-shit crazy than themselves, mounts a challenge for their seat. But even that seriously overstates their level of support. For example, T-party leader Bachmann vastly outspent political neophyte and Democrat Jim Graves in this last election, yet managed to beat him by just 4200 votes; and this in a supposedly solidly Republican district. Even in these gerrymandered districts the crazies often just barely hold on. And we are talking about just 51 of the 435 congressional districts in the country. The overwhelming majority of us are being threatened by an astonishingly small segment of the society. Which is the way of terrorists everywhere.
One might wonder why 51 terrorists can't be rounded up, charged with treason, and carted off to jail, or Gitmo, or just disappear into the government's anti-terrorism maze. After all they wouldn't even fill one Greyhound bus. The citizens living in those 51 districts would get to hold another election and try again. They could even elect some more T-party types so long as blowing up the economy was not a tactic they embraced as a viable, political tool. The debt "crisis" in the US is not a crisis, it is a problem to be solved. Defaulting on the debt and blowing up the economy? Now that is a crisis. One that, in this case, would be avoided if these 51 went away.
Normally I would be sure that rounding up elected officials is the end of the end of a democracy. What I'm not sure of is that these 51 fit the definition of being "elected officials". I think they are better described as insurgents, and maybe we should just treat them as such. (Though a drone missile strike might be a bit "over-the-top".) Baring that, Obama and other leaders of the Democratic Party (such as they are) should simply walk away from anything that even hints at "negotiating" with the terrorists. Call them for what they are, crazy people bent on destroying the economy in order to get their way.
If it was me I would make it kind of clear. If, forty-eight hours before the country defaults, the Republican House is still standing in the way of a bill, they get locked up in the Capital building and surrounded by the American Military machine. There they stay, no food, no outside communications, no aids or lobbyists, until they come up with an answer. No weapons either, and no rules. Should they fail then the Senate and the White House act alone, with the entire house of Representatives being dismissed, (losing any accumulated pensions and all other retirement perks) and new elections held. That's why no weapons and no rules. If 382 discover that the 51 will still not be swayed, perhaps the majority will rule the old fashioned way.
If it was me.
Rational people realize this would be an act of utter insanity - which puts the threat firmly in the camp of the T-Party / Republicans and no one else. Apparently this is how democracies fail. It isn't that everyone in the society decides to commit universal suicide and runs together off a cliff. Driving off a cliff is the wrong analogy. A better one would be a demented few deciding to blow up the house and bring it crashing down one everyone else. Not an act of shared dementia but of terrorism.
Of the 433 members in the House, 233 are Republicans, and of them 51 are T-party members. (These 51 have Michele Backmann as their leader. That pretty much says all that needs to be said as to how bat-shit crazy this group really is. Michele Backmann as their leader?) Without those 51 votes the Republicans have 182, the Democrats 200. Fifty-one extremists control the Republican party.
Fifty-one. Amazing. We should also remember that these 51 people are not Representatives of a democracy in any normal sense of the phrase. Because of gerrymandering the only political reality threatening their positions is if some Republican, even more bat-shit crazy than themselves, mounts a challenge for their seat. But even that seriously overstates their level of support. For example, T-party leader Bachmann vastly outspent political neophyte and Democrat Jim Graves in this last election, yet managed to beat him by just 4200 votes; and this in a supposedly solidly Republican district. Even in these gerrymandered districts the crazies often just barely hold on. And we are talking about just 51 of the 435 congressional districts in the country. The overwhelming majority of us are being threatened by an astonishingly small segment of the society. Which is the way of terrorists everywhere.
One might wonder why 51 terrorists can't be rounded up, charged with treason, and carted off to jail, or Gitmo, or just disappear into the government's anti-terrorism maze. After all they wouldn't even fill one Greyhound bus. The citizens living in those 51 districts would get to hold another election and try again. They could even elect some more T-party types so long as blowing up the economy was not a tactic they embraced as a viable, political tool. The debt "crisis" in the US is not a crisis, it is a problem to be solved. Defaulting on the debt and blowing up the economy? Now that is a crisis. One that, in this case, would be avoided if these 51 went away.
Normally I would be sure that rounding up elected officials is the end of the end of a democracy. What I'm not sure of is that these 51 fit the definition of being "elected officials". I think they are better described as insurgents, and maybe we should just treat them as such. (Though a drone missile strike might be a bit "over-the-top".) Baring that, Obama and other leaders of the Democratic Party (such as they are) should simply walk away from anything that even hints at "negotiating" with the terrorists. Call them for what they are, crazy people bent on destroying the economy in order to get their way.
If it was me I would make it kind of clear. If, forty-eight hours before the country defaults, the Republican House is still standing in the way of a bill, they get locked up in the Capital building and surrounded by the American Military machine. There they stay, no food, no outside communications, no aids or lobbyists, until they come up with an answer. No weapons either, and no rules. Should they fail then the Senate and the White House act alone, with the entire house of Representatives being dismissed, (losing any accumulated pensions and all other retirement perks) and new elections held. That's why no weapons and no rules. If 382 discover that the 51 will still not be swayed, perhaps the majority will rule the old fashioned way.
If it was me.
Ah hell ...
During a fascinating discussion / debate with a close family member the topic of the Christian hell came up. It was kind of inevitable since this person is a devout Catholic well acquainted with my lack of religious belief. But he didn't know much of the story of why I abandoned belief, and that story starts with my struggles trying to square the existence of hell with the actions of a just and loving god. (I have long since discovered that the god described in the bible is neither very just nor much good a love; but back then I worshiped what I thought was the one, true god ... and that god had to be just and loving.)
In an attempt to overcome my objections to hell he told me that, according to Catholic ideology, no one is in hell who doesn't choose to be there. That was a new twist to me. Hell, according to my recollection of Protestant theology, is the place of banishment and punishment all of humanity deserves because of "original sin". God will spare a remnant of humans from this eternal torture, those who do what ever it is one does to be saved. (An action that is vaguely described as "accepting Christ as one's Savior" - and defined somewhat differently by various denominations). No one chooses to go to hell, the choice revolves around rejecting god's "get out of jail free" card.
The idea that those in hell made the choice to be in hell, and god is only granting them this exercise of free will, does not strike me as much of an improvement over the Protestant claims. When we find someone who deliberately hurts themselves we try to find a way to make them whole again. Such a one is broken, not evil. A person who flings themselves willingly into a eternity of torture is not availing themselves of free will, they are exhibiting a brokenness of heart that needs healing, not judgment. A god who would allow such a thing is not honoring free will, he is facilitating evil.
(I will admit the Catholic claim is an improvement over Calvinist ideology. Somehow those poor folks have twisted their way around to the idea that god created some for heaven. The rest of us he purposely created to spend an eternity in hell without hope of reprieve and, somehow, this gives glory to a god love and justice.)
It seems that evil can originate from only one of two places. Religion tells us that we are born evil, a broken species twisted by an original sin. The agency of this sin originated "outside" of the species, the allegory being a woman - who was created perfect - being seduced by an agent of evil to abuse her free will and disobey god. (Somehow she was supposed to know that this was "wrong" before eating from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil.) She then seduced her mate. As allegories go it isn't a bad one. Those ancient creation stories are first attempts at explaining the conflicts that rage between doing good and doing harm.
Biology suggest evil is characteristic of a species of tribal ape evolving into an intelligent species, struggling with the conflicts that lie between contemplative actions and inherited, instinctive actions. We very often act like the brutes that lurk in our genes and our expertise with tool building can amplify those acts into appalling evil.
Either way hell is an inept response.
In an attempt to overcome my objections to hell he told me that, according to Catholic ideology, no one is in hell who doesn't choose to be there. That was a new twist to me. Hell, according to my recollection of Protestant theology, is the place of banishment and punishment all of humanity deserves because of "original sin". God will spare a remnant of humans from this eternal torture, those who do what ever it is one does to be saved. (An action that is vaguely described as "accepting Christ as one's Savior" - and defined somewhat differently by various denominations). No one chooses to go to hell, the choice revolves around rejecting god's "get out of jail free" card.
The idea that those in hell made the choice to be in hell, and god is only granting them this exercise of free will, does not strike me as much of an improvement over the Protestant claims. When we find someone who deliberately hurts themselves we try to find a way to make them whole again. Such a one is broken, not evil. A person who flings themselves willingly into a eternity of torture is not availing themselves of free will, they are exhibiting a brokenness of heart that needs healing, not judgment. A god who would allow such a thing is not honoring free will, he is facilitating evil.
(I will admit the Catholic claim is an improvement over Calvinist ideology. Somehow those poor folks have twisted their way around to the idea that god created some for heaven. The rest of us he purposely created to spend an eternity in hell without hope of reprieve and, somehow, this gives glory to a god love and justice.)
It seems that evil can originate from only one of two places. Religion tells us that we are born evil, a broken species twisted by an original sin. The agency of this sin originated "outside" of the species, the allegory being a woman - who was created perfect - being seduced by an agent of evil to abuse her free will and disobey god. (Somehow she was supposed to know that this was "wrong" before eating from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil.) She then seduced her mate. As allegories go it isn't a bad one. Those ancient creation stories are first attempts at explaining the conflicts that rage between doing good and doing harm.
Biology suggest evil is characteristic of a species of tribal ape evolving into an intelligent species, struggling with the conflicts that lie between contemplative actions and inherited, instinctive actions. We very often act like the brutes that lurk in our genes and our expertise with tool building can amplify those acts into appalling evil.
Either way hell is an inept response.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)