In the 17th-Century, in China, the literati class of painters, authors, poets, and playwrights developed an aesthetic sense based around the concept of The Original. As defined by scholar-artists Mo Shilong and Yuan Hongdao, among others, originality required a decisive appreciation for whatever mastery had come before one’s efforts. Veneration of one’s predecessors has rarely if ever been a foreign concept in Chinese history, and it stands to reason that artists, as anyone, would seek to uphold the ideal of respect for one’s ancestors. In the 17th-Century, however, that respect manifested as more than simple appreciation and admiration of an artist’s forebears. It went to the audacious length of providing them inspiration for living their lives in equal greatness and with equal measures of respect due to them after their passing. None of their efforts, it must be noted, were aimed at achieving that greatness; it was simply a by-product of a life lived well and as it should be: originally.
To produce an original work, an artist was required to know his canon, to be intimately familiar with motifs and themes explored and employed by masters before him. And artists were, for the most part, universally male in Chinese society at the time. A successful (read: original) artist would be able not only to duplicate a brush stroke from a recognized master painter or utilize a signature metaphor of a recognized master poet, but also to morph that brush stroke or metaphor in such a way as to reveal something unexpected, something new, fresh, even bizarre or strange. Original artists walked untrammeled paths through their efforts, but they did so by following the steps of those who had walked those paths before them.
Another significant quality of originality in the visual and literary arts was that the artist knew when to pick up his brush, when to attack his panel or page and immerse himself in the creative process. Among the more outspoken members of the literati class in 17th-Century China was Gong Xian, active during the early Qing era. Advising his contemporaries, and presumably his successors, Gong stated that artists should always strive for originality even if it meant tossing a work in the trash and starting over.
"If on occasion you paint a grove of trees that is quite commonplace, with no touch of the unusual, what is the point? At such a time, it’s best to put down the brush and exert your energies for a while to figure out [how to make] a change. You must think [until an image] of a land emerges in your mind with hills and valleys, and [only then] continue [painting] to completion. Otherwise, you might as well abandon this paper as there’s no hope for it." [Trans: Cahill, Burnett]
The painters and writers of Gong’s era, however, were divided into two camps: the literati, for whom originality was the only goal worth pursuing, and the professional or courtly artists who painted for the royalty following a strict canon of duplication in exacting detail with no deviation from the norm. As contrary as the two approaches may have been, the two factions didn’t so much war with each other as they served distinct populations.
Roughly concurrent in time, and several thousand miles to the west, Leonardo da Vinci and Michelangelo Buonarroti were producing what are to this day considered among the more masterful works of art ever created in the Euro-American world. With a storehouse of narratives to choose from, and a wealthy government at their back, these two, among many others, delved into the notion of originality without explicitly stating that they were doing so. The result was no less original, and relied upon the artists exploitation of the exact same avenues of creative enterprise as were utilized by their brethren originators in China.
Consider the two canonical works by these artists: the Mona Lisa, and the David. Recognizable by anyone who has so much as heard the word “art” in the Euro-American world, this painting and sculpture reveal just how keenly their makers were aware of the need for originality in their efforts. Leonardo’s painting has long been studied for the curious smile that seems to curl and simultaneously lie flat across the subject’s mouth. For me, the answer is clear enough. I think she really did have a hot ass (tip your hat to Marcel Duchamp for that revelation), and her mouth is quivering in that stillness because she and Leo had just finished knocking boots. What’s so original about that, you ask? Well, consider that portraiture of the time was a medium reserved for the upper classes to explore what it means to be adored by the public, or oneself in some cases (mostly the popes, if you ask me). A portrait was meant to reveal the subject’s grace, virtue, and chastity (if a woman) or strength, power, and virility (if a man). Piety would creep in there from time to time, though I find that most of the papal portraits reveal something more akin to villainy. Either way, a portrait of a young woman fresh from her lover’s bed, or about to leap into it, would not be considered proper or acceptable, nor even thought of as a safe image to create in a world where witch hunts were not so long in memory as they are for us today. I contend that the Mona Lisa received the praise and glorification that it has simply because it was at once unexpected, bizarre, a bit strange perhaps, and, therefore, original.
Leonardo also had a tendency to follow people around the streets of the city, looking for figures of bent or twisted form, people with deformities, war wounds that left them mutilated, or facial features that bordered on the grotesque. His sketchbooks are full of these studies, as are Michelangelo’s of grotesque exaggerations of human musculature. Both artists had a fondness for what was considered beyond the pale in terms of beauty, and where Leonardo would primarily employ this appreciation in his creation of painted images, Michelangelo would turn his eye for the bizarre and otherworldly to work in both painted and sculpted media.
Looking at the David, however, there isn’t much of the figure that is readily apparent as bizarre or strange. What then stands as the sign of originality in this image? Certainly other artists had endeavored to capture the narrative of the diminutive boy who toppled the giant with a single stone. Donatello had his cherubic bronze (c. 1430), which makes me rather ill to look at, and Verrochio had a bronze (c. 1470) as well, though less sickly in appearance as the hero prepares to hurl his bullet from a whirling sling. What differs between the two is not so impressive as what difference exists between both of them and Michelangelo’s work of 1504. In the later marble sculpture, Michelangelo inserts an element that has not been seen in any treatment of the narrative to date. And recall that the tale, being biblical in origin, had been a part of public discourse for centuries. So how then could the artist invoke The Original in his work? On the David’s face is a look of trepidation, of fear. Doubt has crossed the brow of this youth whom we know to be triumphant, but in this moment that we are looking at him we see something of his experience that has never before been shown to anyone. Not in literature, certainly not in liturgy, and most definitely not in art. Fear in the eyes of a king? Who would dare? Mike did, and we’ve been patting him on the back for it these past 500 years.
Another element of the marble David worth mentioning is that it was immediately embraced by the populace of Firenze as a symbol for their plight. Having very recently shed the yoke of the ruling Medici family, Firenze’s people looked to the David to symbolize their strength and vitality, their character, and their resolve to remain triumphant as a free people. Viewed through this lens, Michelangelo’s sculpture reflects both the zeitgeist (contemporaneous nature, which was so strongly promoted by Mo Shilong and his crowd of literati artists and writers) and the artist’s drive towards originality.
Fast forward now to the late 19th-Century in the Eastern United States. Albert Pinkham Ryder is at work on a painting. Forget what the image is meant to depict, just attend to the fact that Ryder’s painting has been sitting on his easel for nearly a full decade before he decides it is, at last, finished and fit for display. You’ll recall Gong Xian’s admonition to artists that it is better to let a painting sit untouched than to busy oneself with the act of painting in an effort at forcing The Original to reveal itself in the work. Ryder’s own diary contains passages that could be seen as verbatim translations of Gong Xian’s much earlier instruction. In particular, Ryder speaks of allowing a painting “to ripen,” and of being attentive to “the season of fruitage,” rather than working at a piece for the sake of industry or to answer another’s desire to see the piece completed. Ryder further advises artists to focus on their own individual imaginations as sources of inspiration, leaving slavish duplication and stagnant imitation aside. Like Leonardo and Michelangelo, Ryder sought to promote an appreciation for what lies outside the mainstream view. And like the 17th-Century Chinese masters, Ryder expressed a desire for originality in art rather than simply following precedent.
Tuesday, January 5, 2010
Conversion Diversion
This post was inspired by a handful of conversations I’ve had recently in various forums online. The issues of belief, faith, religion, atheism, and my personal views vis-à-vis these subjects have all come up recently, either as tangents or foci of debate. In particular, some friends have suggested I come across as overbearing, rude, arrogant, and generally off-putting. The common thread I’ve noticed running through all of these amicably leveled accusations is that I am in some way making it more difficult to win appeal from those whose views differ from my own. Hence this note and message that I in no way wish to sway or “convert to atheism” anyone who feels inclined to believe in the supernatural realm of gods, heaven, hell, prayer, etc.
Then why am I so vocal, some may ask?
Up until roughly 30 years ago (by my measure) there was a population of people in America, and in the world generally, who could count on being reviled by nearly every other segment of the population. These people found themselves routinely harassed for their style of dress, manner of speech, general comportment, and preferences in romantic partners. They were made the butt of distasteful, hateful, and in all ways degrading humor. They were physically assaulted, fired from jobs or not hired in the first place, and effectively treated as second class citizens.
Then the Stonewall Riots occurred and America at least was told to wake up to the fact that gays and lesbians were not only present in our society, but that they are, in fact, human beings. Thanks to the tireless courage on the part of millions of men and women in this country, and to leaders like Harvey Milk (among many others), the LGBTQ community has been in a great many ways accepted into society as contributing and valued members of the communities in which they live. In large part, we owe a debt of gratitude to big media, who recognized at some point that you should never waste the purchasing power of any demographic. To wit, reruns of Queer Eye and Will & Grace now air regularly, and are filled with advertising targeted at the “metrosexual” culture that has sprung up from the fertile soil plowed with the blood, sweat, and tears of the first LGBTQ activists.
I am not so naïve as to assert that we’ve won, that LGBTQ members of American society can walk free and proud and able to enjoy all the freedoms and privileges of their heterosexual brothers and sisters. Yet our state’s governor recently signed three LGBTQ equality bills, including one that recognizes Harvey Milk’s birthday (May 22nd) as a state day of remembrance. President Obama has also just signed the updated hate crimes legislation to include sexual orientation, gender identity, and disability as categories for prosecuting hate crimes. “Gender identity,” is taken to include transgendered individuals, transsexuals, and transvestites. While we haven’t reached true equality, we have succeeded in making progress away from the dark days of socially acceptable gay-bashing (by which I refer to physical assaults carried out against gays and lesbians). These things still happen, to be sure, but public awareness of them and opposition to them has grown enough to make prevention through education much more likely to take effect in younger generations.
And for anyone still against the idea of homosexuality being presented to children as an “acceptable” way to live, please remember that 30 years ago I might have been writing about the way people of color were treated in an effort at supporting a sea change in thinking towards gays and lesbians. In 2009, however, I’m looking back to that sea change that has already occurred in an effort at provoking another one with regards to atheists.
Before I’m accused of contradicting myself, note that I am not calling for a change in thinking about religious belief. I do not want anyone to feel that I aim to threaten their right to believe as they choose about God, the Christian Bible, the Koran, Allah, Jehovah, the Torah or Talmud, Zeus, Hera, Quetzalcoatl, Buddha, Quan-yin, Shiva, Krishna, or any of the other deities that people might believe in. I’m not trying to change your minds about your beliefs. What I want to do, and why I post the things I do, is to provoke discussion about the fact that, just as the LGBTQ community once did, atheists in this country and around the world are beginning more and more to say, “We’re Here!” We exist, people, and like the LGBTQ community we are also human beings.
For a sampling of why our outspoken nature might seem a bit over-the-top to you, I present the following statistics from a study conducted by the University of Minnesota in 2007:
Atheists, it seems, are the new “reviled class” of citizens in America:
In a Gallup poll response to the question: “If your party nominated a generally well-qualified person for president who happened to be (INSERT TYPE HERE), would you vote for that person?”
TYPES and percentage of people answering “Yes” to the question regarding that type.
Atheist:
20% in 1958
40% in 1978
50% in 1999
Homosexual:
25% in 1978
60% in 1999
African American:
35% in 1958
75% in 1978
95% in 1999
Jewish:
60% in 1958
80% in 1978
90% in 1999
Catholic:
65% in 1958
90% in 1978
95% in 1999
Additionally, those polled consistently identified atheists in a negative light vis-à-vis the following statements:
This Group Does Not At All Agree with My Vision of American Society
Group and percentage of respondents who identified that group with the above statement
—Atheist 39.6
—Muslim 26.3
—Homosexual 22.6
—Conservative Christian 13.5
—Recent Immigrant 12.5
—Hispanic 7.6
—Jew 7.4
—Asian American 7.0
—African American 4.6
—White American 2.2
I Would Disapprove if My Child Wanted to Marry a Member of This Group (note the conspicuous absence of one group here—progress has been made, but there is much work still to do)
Group and percentage of respondents who identified that group with the above statement
—Atheist 47.6
—Muslim 33.5
—African American 27.2
—Asian American 18.5
—Hispanic 18.5
—Jew 11.8
—Conservative Christian 6.9
—White 2.3
While it is easy to assume these figures reflect an overwhelmingly sizable population of Christians living in America, which we all know to be the case, this in no way obviates the need to cry foul. There was a time when the overwhelmingly sizable white population in this country felt justified in espousing bigotry towards those of African ancestry, or towards anyone with a different (i.e., darker) color of skin. There was a time when it was widely accepted that gays and lesbians were being justifiably targeted as wrong-doers, in all ways immoral and depraved and deserving of not simply scorn but physical assault for their “crime” of having been born with a genetic predisposition towards homosexuality (If anyone wishes to debate that last point, all I have to say to you is “Bring it.”)
Thankfully, for those populations, times have changed. The wheel has revolved to a different place in the sky and we as a species are growing more and more tolerant of diversity. So for those of my friends and anyone who happens across my page and wonders at the oft loudly-proclaimed “We’re Here!” that my posts reflect, it is for the reasons below that I make presentation of my atheism so much a part of who I am in real life and online.
We are here, and I want very much to see a change in national and global consciousness towards atheists. Our lives are not lived immorally. We are not to be feared or mistrusted. Our efforts at promoting decency and personal responsibility are on par with a great many members and leaders of religious communities, and might well be seen as superior in some cases. I think you would be hard pressed to find an atheist who would promote the notion that people who think differently are destined to suffer a horrifying fate after death. Irrespective of the fact that atheists don’t believe in the after-life, what aspect of atheism suggests that it is a good idea to teach children to either hate or feel pity for their peers who believe differently?!?!!
If you’ve read this far, you have my gratitude, and I would like to hear your thoughts in response if you care to share them. If anything I’ve said has helped you see a reason to think better of atheists as a portion of the national or global community, I would like to hear it from you also. If you remain unconvinced that atheists are anything other than vile or otherwise unsavory individuals, I really have very little else to say to you.
Then why am I so vocal, some may ask?
Up until roughly 30 years ago (by my measure) there was a population of people in America, and in the world generally, who could count on being reviled by nearly every other segment of the population. These people found themselves routinely harassed for their style of dress, manner of speech, general comportment, and preferences in romantic partners. They were made the butt of distasteful, hateful, and in all ways degrading humor. They were physically assaulted, fired from jobs or not hired in the first place, and effectively treated as second class citizens.
Then the Stonewall Riots occurred and America at least was told to wake up to the fact that gays and lesbians were not only present in our society, but that they are, in fact, human beings. Thanks to the tireless courage on the part of millions of men and women in this country, and to leaders like Harvey Milk (among many others), the LGBTQ community has been in a great many ways accepted into society as contributing and valued members of the communities in which they live. In large part, we owe a debt of gratitude to big media, who recognized at some point that you should never waste the purchasing power of any demographic. To wit, reruns of Queer Eye and Will & Grace now air regularly, and are filled with advertising targeted at the “metrosexual” culture that has sprung up from the fertile soil plowed with the blood, sweat, and tears of the first LGBTQ activists.
I am not so naïve as to assert that we’ve won, that LGBTQ members of American society can walk free and proud and able to enjoy all the freedoms and privileges of their heterosexual brothers and sisters. Yet our state’s governor recently signed three LGBTQ equality bills, including one that recognizes Harvey Milk’s birthday (May 22nd) as a state day of remembrance. President Obama has also just signed the updated hate crimes legislation to include sexual orientation, gender identity, and disability as categories for prosecuting hate crimes. “Gender identity,” is taken to include transgendered individuals, transsexuals, and transvestites. While we haven’t reached true equality, we have succeeded in making progress away from the dark days of socially acceptable gay-bashing (by which I refer to physical assaults carried out against gays and lesbians). These things still happen, to be sure, but public awareness of them and opposition to them has grown enough to make prevention through education much more likely to take effect in younger generations.
And for anyone still against the idea of homosexuality being presented to children as an “acceptable” way to live, please remember that 30 years ago I might have been writing about the way people of color were treated in an effort at supporting a sea change in thinking towards gays and lesbians. In 2009, however, I’m looking back to that sea change that has already occurred in an effort at provoking another one with regards to atheists.
Before I’m accused of contradicting myself, note that I am not calling for a change in thinking about religious belief. I do not want anyone to feel that I aim to threaten their right to believe as they choose about God, the Christian Bible, the Koran, Allah, Jehovah, the Torah or Talmud, Zeus, Hera, Quetzalcoatl, Buddha, Quan-yin, Shiva, Krishna, or any of the other deities that people might believe in. I’m not trying to change your minds about your beliefs. What I want to do, and why I post the things I do, is to provoke discussion about the fact that, just as the LGBTQ community once did, atheists in this country and around the world are beginning more and more to say, “We’re Here!” We exist, people, and like the LGBTQ community we are also human beings.
For a sampling of why our outspoken nature might seem a bit over-the-top to you, I present the following statistics from a study conducted by the University of Minnesota in 2007:
Atheists, it seems, are the new “reviled class” of citizens in America:
In a Gallup poll response to the question: “If your party nominated a generally well-qualified person for president who happened to be (INSERT TYPE HERE), would you vote for that person?”
TYPES and percentage of people answering “Yes” to the question regarding that type.
Atheist:
20% in 1958
40% in 1978
50% in 1999
Homosexual:
25% in 1978
60% in 1999
African American:
35% in 1958
75% in 1978
95% in 1999
Jewish:
60% in 1958
80% in 1978
90% in 1999
Catholic:
65% in 1958
90% in 1978
95% in 1999
Additionally, those polled consistently identified atheists in a negative light vis-à-vis the following statements:
This Group Does Not At All Agree with My Vision of American Society
Group and percentage of respondents who identified that group with the above statement
—Atheist 39.6
—Muslim 26.3
—Homosexual 22.6
—Conservative Christian 13.5
—Recent Immigrant 12.5
—Hispanic 7.6
—Jew 7.4
—Asian American 7.0
—African American 4.6
—White American 2.2
I Would Disapprove if My Child Wanted to Marry a Member of This Group (note the conspicuous absence of one group here—progress has been made, but there is much work still to do)
Group and percentage of respondents who identified that group with the above statement
—Atheist 47.6
—Muslim 33.5
—African American 27.2
—Asian American 18.5
—Hispanic 18.5
—Jew 11.8
—Conservative Christian 6.9
—White 2.3
While it is easy to assume these figures reflect an overwhelmingly sizable population of Christians living in America, which we all know to be the case, this in no way obviates the need to cry foul. There was a time when the overwhelmingly sizable white population in this country felt justified in espousing bigotry towards those of African ancestry, or towards anyone with a different (i.e., darker) color of skin. There was a time when it was widely accepted that gays and lesbians were being justifiably targeted as wrong-doers, in all ways immoral and depraved and deserving of not simply scorn but physical assault for their “crime” of having been born with a genetic predisposition towards homosexuality (If anyone wishes to debate that last point, all I have to say to you is “Bring it.”)
Thankfully, for those populations, times have changed. The wheel has revolved to a different place in the sky and we as a species are growing more and more tolerant of diversity. So for those of my friends and anyone who happens across my page and wonders at the oft loudly-proclaimed “We’re Here!” that my posts reflect, it is for the reasons below that I make presentation of my atheism so much a part of who I am in real life and online.
We are here, and I want very much to see a change in national and global consciousness towards atheists. Our lives are not lived immorally. We are not to be feared or mistrusted. Our efforts at promoting decency and personal responsibility are on par with a great many members and leaders of religious communities, and might well be seen as superior in some cases. I think you would be hard pressed to find an atheist who would promote the notion that people who think differently are destined to suffer a horrifying fate after death. Irrespective of the fact that atheists don’t believe in the after-life, what aspect of atheism suggests that it is a good idea to teach children to either hate or feel pity for their peers who believe differently?!?!!
If you’ve read this far, you have my gratitude, and I would like to hear your thoughts in response if you care to share them. If anything I’ve said has helped you see a reason to think better of atheists as a portion of the national or global community, I would like to hear it from you also. If you remain unconvinced that atheists are anything other than vile or otherwise unsavory individuals, I really have very little else to say to you.
Why Creationism will never be taught in the public school system...except perhaps as an elective course.
While I'm loathe to ever say "never" with any sincerity, I do strongly believe, in the sense that I'm a strong atheist, that the so-called Intelligent Design, argument from design, Creationism, and other such nonsense will not be allowed into any public schoolroom in this country for one very simple reason:
It's fucking stupid.
Okay, that isn't the reason, but I had to say it.
The reason I don't see those silly ideas ever making it into a curriculum supported by tax dollars is because those ideas are completely out of alignment with every single other idea that is taught in public school curricula.
Math, reading, language arts, the very grading that teachers do, the standardized testing and the scoring methods used to evaluate the test takers' performance...all of it relies on the scientific method of gathering evidence and drawing a conclusion based on the findings.
Teachers do not look at students and say, "They deserve As" and then look through their performance to support that notion. No. Teachers look at students' performance and then base their grades upon that performance in comparison with an established standard for earning a grade of A through F. The established standard, by the way, has been so established through examination of evidence collected from the field of education, from colleagues and administrators, and from history. Granted, education in this country is proper fucked in many ways, but that doesn't change the fact that what students are exposed to as "education worthy" material is and always has been based upon evidence.
Mathematicians complete proofs based on observable evidence. Biologists examine living and deceased organic specimens for evidence of how natural systems in organic life function. Chemists and Physicists conduct experiments, with observable data as a result, and draw conclusions based on those data. These individuals might propose one or more hypotheses, but will always proceed through repeated testing and re-testing before claiming anything resembling theoretical knowledge. A good example would be evolution, but most of you, if anyone is reading this, already know that.
Creationism, on the other hand, proceeds from a conclusion and looks for evidence to support it. That's called bogus scholarship, and it will get you kicked the fuck out of any Masters or doctoral program you enter, perhaps even an undergraduate program if your professor catches you at it, which happens rather often really.
You can't decide what the results are and then proceed to claim that you had the right idea all along just because you're able to point to things that support your idea. Hell, it's possible to do that with any hypothesis, but that doesn't make it right. What's more, any hypothesis so supported can be quickly and resolutely brought down to the ground where it belongs by one simple test: If there is anything anywhere that conflicts with the hypothesis, that in any way falsifies the claim it attempts to make, then that hypothesis is considered a failure.
Like the God Hypothesis.
It's fucking stupid.
Okay, that isn't the reason, but I had to say it.
The reason I don't see those silly ideas ever making it into a curriculum supported by tax dollars is because those ideas are completely out of alignment with every single other idea that is taught in public school curricula.
Math, reading, language arts, the very grading that teachers do, the standardized testing and the scoring methods used to evaluate the test takers' performance...all of it relies on the scientific method of gathering evidence and drawing a conclusion based on the findings.
Teachers do not look at students and say, "They deserve As" and then look through their performance to support that notion. No. Teachers look at students' performance and then base their grades upon that performance in comparison with an established standard for earning a grade of A through F. The established standard, by the way, has been so established through examination of evidence collected from the field of education, from colleagues and administrators, and from history. Granted, education in this country is proper fucked in many ways, but that doesn't change the fact that what students are exposed to as "education worthy" material is and always has been based upon evidence.
Mathematicians complete proofs based on observable evidence. Biologists examine living and deceased organic specimens for evidence of how natural systems in organic life function. Chemists and Physicists conduct experiments, with observable data as a result, and draw conclusions based on those data. These individuals might propose one or more hypotheses, but will always proceed through repeated testing and re-testing before claiming anything resembling theoretical knowledge. A good example would be evolution, but most of you, if anyone is reading this, already know that.
Creationism, on the other hand, proceeds from a conclusion and looks for evidence to support it. That's called bogus scholarship, and it will get you kicked the fuck out of any Masters or doctoral program you enter, perhaps even an undergraduate program if your professor catches you at it, which happens rather often really.
You can't decide what the results are and then proceed to claim that you had the right idea all along just because you're able to point to things that support your idea. Hell, it's possible to do that with any hypothesis, but that doesn't make it right. What's more, any hypothesis so supported can be quickly and resolutely brought down to the ground where it belongs by one simple test: If there is anything anywhere that conflicts with the hypothesis, that in any way falsifies the claim it attempts to make, then that hypothesis is considered a failure.
Like the God Hypothesis.
Bullshit and the Bullshitting Bullshitters who do it.
I regularly find that I am more than tempted to reply whenever I encounter the vocal presence of the religious-minded among us. In their outspoken manner, believers inspire me to action because I find their productions and utterances to be unavoidably compelling of comment. I don’t think that is their intention, of course, but neither can I resist at least feeling the impulse to reply, and I have just recently discovered why that is the case.
To clarify, when I identify “the religious-minded among us,” I mean to point to creationists, evangelical Christians, Islamic fundamentalists, and any other sort of believer who feels devout in their belief. And it isn’t just that they are devout in their belief, but that they are prepared to argue, at length and with great vehemence, for the validity and truth of their faith. They believe that what they hold to be true is absolutely and universally true, and not only for themselves but for the entire population of the world.
These believers, when confronted with those who would deny their claims, are the sort who will continue to proclaim that what they say is true; they will often resort to maligning the deniers in the eyes of a supernatural being called, variously, “God,” “Allah,” “the Lord,” “Almighty God,” or “our Savior,” among others; and they will shout over anyone attempting to demonstrate the fallacies inherent to their beliefs. Alternately, these believers may resort to avoiding questions that target holes in their logic, and instead choose to loudly recite passages from their chosen book of faith. Even more alarming is their tendency to ignore criticism and, in a very sophisticated manner, turn the tables by attacking what they see as similar if not greater holes in their critics' logic.
These are the fundamentalists, the zealots, and the town square screamers. They promise salvation to anyone willing to subject himself or herself to thinking that will inexorably lead to rabid displays of devotion. They display, themselves, an unwillingness to accept alternate, conflicting, and, most importantly, undermining points of view as even potentially valid. To borrow from Dan Barker, these are the people you don’t want to sit next to on the bus – unless you are already one of them.
Before going much farther, I need to address what will, for the people I have identified above, appear to be a glaring act of hypocrisy. Am I not just as vehement in my defense and arguing for atheism and secular reason? Are my arguments not likewise couched in terms of rabid devotion to an idea? Do I not also engage in maligning those who offer contrary viewpoints and propose to critique my beliefs?
The answer to these questions is a resounding yes, except perhaps for that bit about being a rabid devotee. I don’t really get spitting mad when defending reason and secularism, though I have been known to raise my voice and feel my blood pressure rise from time to time. Back to the point, isn’t it a little odd for me to take the stance that the religious among us are in some way wrong to do what they do, but that when I do it, I’m perfectly justified in doing so?
The answer here would also be a resounding yes if my actions and behaviors were likewise based in fantasy. However, given that I base my beliefs upon ideas and theories supported by observable evidence from the natural world and the history of human affairs, I can state without feeling the slightest twinge of regret or remorse that I am in no way a hypocrite when I speak or write in defense and promotion of reason while at the same time calling religious people bullshitters.
Those who disagree with me here very likely have some set of sophisticated arguments about why accepting the theory of evolution is just as much a matter of faith as accepting any religious belief about the origin of the universe. They will also likely have a handful of selected and, again, quite sophisticated arguments about “transitional forms,” and connections between Darwin’s theories and the pseudo-science of eugenics or the horrors perpetrated by Nazi Germany.
Please note that in using the term “sophisticated” I am not meaning to convey anything favorable on these so-called arguments. In fact, quite the reverse is true. To be a sophist, by definition, one must be prepared to argue, strongly, for beliefs and issues that do not necessarily have any basis in fact or which, more likely, depend upon appeals to at best ancillary issues and, more commonly, ideas or facts that are not at all germane to a discussion based in reason. They may well appear to be reasonable, but the fact remains that each of these so-called arguments depends upon a presupposed supernatural figure, and this is especially true of all such “arguments” presented as evidence for the existence of this deity. That’s called circular reasoning, and it, too, is bullshit.
I need to take another moment here to clarify what I mean by my earlier statement regarding the nature of religious people. It is, of course, obvious that I aim to take a harsh and dismissive stance towards the target audience I’ve identified above. If you are reading this and feel slighted or abused by my statements, please accept that I am not using the term “bullshitter” with the intent to insult, ridicule, or otherwise offend anyone. That said, neither do I mean to place a humorous connotation on the term after the fashion of Mel Brooks’ philosopher in “History of the World.” When I use the word “bullshitter,” and the related verb “to bullshit,” I do so in the style of Harry G. Frankfurt as established in his text on the subject, On Bullshit. Some reviews and the opening paragraph of the text can be found here:
http://press.princeton.edu/titles/7929.html
Returning to the present discussion, I begin with the hypothesis that evangelical, fundamentalist, and zealously expressed forms of religion, and their corollary proselytizing and public sermonizing, are examples of bullshit. Specific to my encounters with religious varieties of bullshit, I have met people who claim that the earth and the universe in which it exists were “created” from an ultimate supernatural being known as God. When faced with accusations of bullshit, they often resort to the ex nihilo nihil fit defense. For example, an attempt at humor goes something like this:
Atheism: the belief that nothing had nothing happen to it, and then exploded into something which randomly organized itself into all the animate and inanimate objects in existence. Of course this makes perfect sense.
The “reasonable answer” presented as a foil to this barbed commentary on atheism is that a “creative intelligence,” or “purposeful designer” must be the source for existence. The word “is,” for these people, presupposes a deity. If anything can be said to exist, it must be the case that somewhere in the history of existence a deity can be found as the ultimate source. This is the infinite regression fallacy, which looks like an infinite series of Russian dolls extending back into the origin of space-time.
In arguing the infinite regression hypothesis, creationists and their ilk point to the “uncaused cause” or “prime mover” because they can’t accept abiogenesis as possible, nor that absolute knowledge of the origin of the universe may never be obtainable. They refuse to acknowledge that not knowing where the universe came from is acceptable, and so, in a grand God of the Gaps fallacy, they place their deity in the one “hole” they see left: the beginning of it all. Again, this is sophistry, and it is therefore bullshit.
A further and more articulate connection between sophistry and religious varieties of bullshit can be made. When we consider that bullshitting is, as Frankfurt asserts, not an exercise aimed at purposefully misdirecting people or intentionally misrepresenting facts, religious varieties of bullshit are shown to be among the more insidious and dangerous types of discourse currently in vogue. According to Frankfurt's definition of bullshit, a bullshitter actually believes that what they are saying is entirely true, unfalsifiable, and, without question, worthy of acceptance as fact. Moreoever, a bullshitter will argue vehemently that their bullshit deserves the same recognition and treatment as any opposing view currently receives, and will even go so far as to accuse said opposing views of adhering to all sorts of logical fallacies, including the very same special pleading and straw men and red herrings and other forms of sophistry comprised by the bullshitter's arsenal of "argumentation."
Among Frankfurt's more compelling, not to mention startling, suggestions is that bullshitting, by nature, restricts the human mind to only engaging in reproductive efforts at bullshit and, more to the point, prohibits the bullshitter's mind from accepting and being open to anything resembling reality.
The scientific method and its corollary investigative mindset, itself requiring of open-mindedness and an inquisitive nature, produce a manner of thinking conducive to learning, discovery, invention, and creativity in general. Contrasted with this approach, over time, the bullshitter's mind fixes itself into patterns of receptivity and productivity that allow for only one variety of thought: bullshit.
To clarify, when I identify “the religious-minded among us,” I mean to point to creationists, evangelical Christians, Islamic fundamentalists, and any other sort of believer who feels devout in their belief. And it isn’t just that they are devout in their belief, but that they are prepared to argue, at length and with great vehemence, for the validity and truth of their faith. They believe that what they hold to be true is absolutely and universally true, and not only for themselves but for the entire population of the world.
These believers, when confronted with those who would deny their claims, are the sort who will continue to proclaim that what they say is true; they will often resort to maligning the deniers in the eyes of a supernatural being called, variously, “God,” “Allah,” “the Lord,” “Almighty God,” or “our Savior,” among others; and they will shout over anyone attempting to demonstrate the fallacies inherent to their beliefs. Alternately, these believers may resort to avoiding questions that target holes in their logic, and instead choose to loudly recite passages from their chosen book of faith. Even more alarming is their tendency to ignore criticism and, in a very sophisticated manner, turn the tables by attacking what they see as similar if not greater holes in their critics' logic.
These are the fundamentalists, the zealots, and the town square screamers. They promise salvation to anyone willing to subject himself or herself to thinking that will inexorably lead to rabid displays of devotion. They display, themselves, an unwillingness to accept alternate, conflicting, and, most importantly, undermining points of view as even potentially valid. To borrow from Dan Barker, these are the people you don’t want to sit next to on the bus – unless you are already one of them.
Before going much farther, I need to address what will, for the people I have identified above, appear to be a glaring act of hypocrisy. Am I not just as vehement in my defense and arguing for atheism and secular reason? Are my arguments not likewise couched in terms of rabid devotion to an idea? Do I not also engage in maligning those who offer contrary viewpoints and propose to critique my beliefs?
The answer to these questions is a resounding yes, except perhaps for that bit about being a rabid devotee. I don’t really get spitting mad when defending reason and secularism, though I have been known to raise my voice and feel my blood pressure rise from time to time. Back to the point, isn’t it a little odd for me to take the stance that the religious among us are in some way wrong to do what they do, but that when I do it, I’m perfectly justified in doing so?
The answer here would also be a resounding yes if my actions and behaviors were likewise based in fantasy. However, given that I base my beliefs upon ideas and theories supported by observable evidence from the natural world and the history of human affairs, I can state without feeling the slightest twinge of regret or remorse that I am in no way a hypocrite when I speak or write in defense and promotion of reason while at the same time calling religious people bullshitters.
Those who disagree with me here very likely have some set of sophisticated arguments about why accepting the theory of evolution is just as much a matter of faith as accepting any religious belief about the origin of the universe. They will also likely have a handful of selected and, again, quite sophisticated arguments about “transitional forms,” and connections between Darwin’s theories and the pseudo-science of eugenics or the horrors perpetrated by Nazi Germany.
Please note that in using the term “sophisticated” I am not meaning to convey anything favorable on these so-called arguments. In fact, quite the reverse is true. To be a sophist, by definition, one must be prepared to argue, strongly, for beliefs and issues that do not necessarily have any basis in fact or which, more likely, depend upon appeals to at best ancillary issues and, more commonly, ideas or facts that are not at all germane to a discussion based in reason. They may well appear to be reasonable, but the fact remains that each of these so-called arguments depends upon a presupposed supernatural figure, and this is especially true of all such “arguments” presented as evidence for the existence of this deity. That’s called circular reasoning, and it, too, is bullshit.
I need to take another moment here to clarify what I mean by my earlier statement regarding the nature of religious people. It is, of course, obvious that I aim to take a harsh and dismissive stance towards the target audience I’ve identified above. If you are reading this and feel slighted or abused by my statements, please accept that I am not using the term “bullshitter” with the intent to insult, ridicule, or otherwise offend anyone. That said, neither do I mean to place a humorous connotation on the term after the fashion of Mel Brooks’ philosopher in “History of the World.” When I use the word “bullshitter,” and the related verb “to bullshit,” I do so in the style of Harry G. Frankfurt as established in his text on the subject, On Bullshit. Some reviews and the opening paragraph of the text can be found here:
http://press.princeton.edu/titles/7929.html
Returning to the present discussion, I begin with the hypothesis that evangelical, fundamentalist, and zealously expressed forms of religion, and their corollary proselytizing and public sermonizing, are examples of bullshit. Specific to my encounters with religious varieties of bullshit, I have met people who claim that the earth and the universe in which it exists were “created” from an ultimate supernatural being known as God. When faced with accusations of bullshit, they often resort to the ex nihilo nihil fit defense. For example, an attempt at humor goes something like this:
Atheism: the belief that nothing had nothing happen to it, and then exploded into something which randomly organized itself into all the animate and inanimate objects in existence. Of course this makes perfect sense.
The “reasonable answer” presented as a foil to this barbed commentary on atheism is that a “creative intelligence,” or “purposeful designer” must be the source for existence. The word “is,” for these people, presupposes a deity. If anything can be said to exist, it must be the case that somewhere in the history of existence a deity can be found as the ultimate source. This is the infinite regression fallacy, which looks like an infinite series of Russian dolls extending back into the origin of space-time.
In arguing the infinite regression hypothesis, creationists and their ilk point to the “uncaused cause” or “prime mover” because they can’t accept abiogenesis as possible, nor that absolute knowledge of the origin of the universe may never be obtainable. They refuse to acknowledge that not knowing where the universe came from is acceptable, and so, in a grand God of the Gaps fallacy, they place their deity in the one “hole” they see left: the beginning of it all. Again, this is sophistry, and it is therefore bullshit.
A further and more articulate connection between sophistry and religious varieties of bullshit can be made. When we consider that bullshitting is, as Frankfurt asserts, not an exercise aimed at purposefully misdirecting people or intentionally misrepresenting facts, religious varieties of bullshit are shown to be among the more insidious and dangerous types of discourse currently in vogue. According to Frankfurt's definition of bullshit, a bullshitter actually believes that what they are saying is entirely true, unfalsifiable, and, without question, worthy of acceptance as fact. Moreoever, a bullshitter will argue vehemently that their bullshit deserves the same recognition and treatment as any opposing view currently receives, and will even go so far as to accuse said opposing views of adhering to all sorts of logical fallacies, including the very same special pleading and straw men and red herrings and other forms of sophistry comprised by the bullshitter's arsenal of "argumentation."
Among Frankfurt's more compelling, not to mention startling, suggestions is that bullshitting, by nature, restricts the human mind to only engaging in reproductive efforts at bullshit and, more to the point, prohibits the bullshitter's mind from accepting and being open to anything resembling reality.
The scientific method and its corollary investigative mindset, itself requiring of open-mindedness and an inquisitive nature, produce a manner of thinking conducive to learning, discovery, invention, and creativity in general. Contrasted with this approach, over time, the bullshitter's mind fixes itself into patterns of receptivity and productivity that allow for only one variety of thought: bullshit.
Welcome to my language. I'm doing my damnedest to watch it, and carefully.
Yesterday, I got into it with a friend over the issue of language learning in a foreign country. At the heart of our discussion was the idea that immigrants need to understand that by moving to a new country, they are taking on the onus of “language learner,” and that if they refuse to properly bear said onus, they should really just GTFO.
For the most part, I’m in complete agreement with my friend, and I really don’t think we ever disagreed on anything at all. It was just a case of needing to clarify our respective stances to avoid talking at cross purposes. For my part, I maintained that the onus of “language learner” isn’t simply a matter of picking up the bits and pieces of another way of talking or communicating. It means adopting an entirely new identity, and in a great many ways, saying farewell to the “you” that you used to be back in your original, or former, homeland.
The stuff of human identity, says Brownwen Roberts, citing a British government-funded study from 1988, is “inextricably bound up with language.” That phrasing has been used by a number of linguists and teachers of language, myself included. I picked it up from my former mentor, Leo Van Lier, at the Monterey Institute of International Studies. In discussing what, precisely, is being taught in the language classroom, Professor Van Lier made it expressly and explicitly clear that he didn’t see the nuts and bolts, the form or forms, of language as the subject matter, so much as he saw it being life itself.
When you take a close look at the WHAT of language, you cannot possibly say that asking someone to learn a language involves anything less than learning HOW to live life through a different paradigm, with a different set of perspectives, and with what may well be a vastly different set of beliefs and values.
I was inspired to put these thoughts down after reading an article on Yahoo! News posted by another friend here on FB, this time dealing with a set of beliefs and values that I cannot wait to see vanish from this earth.
The evidence from history leads me to conclude that men in communities of homo sapiens, by and large, seek control over womens’ lives. In the simplest of terms, women are a natural resource; without them a community of homo sapiens cannot be expected to survive. Before I get too far along, let me just point out that I see very clearly how seemingly immoral the view I’m about to present must be to most people. I’m not pretending that greater discussion is unnecessary, but am, for the moment, avoiding it to focus on the more germane point regarding the connection between survival and language learning/not-learning. I’ll return to language and identity farther down, but for now want to address a specific identity as reflected in the societies where women are still treated as a resource and not much else.
Taking a strictly anthropological perspective on the matter, I can rationalize the behavior of communities in Central, Eastern, and Southern Asia, Africa, the Middle East, Europe, and parts of the Americas (including parts of the USA). The men in these for now indistinct communities feel threatened that their version of life will not survive unless the women living in those communities can be controlled as a resource. As a specified example, I’ll return to the Taliban, cited in the article linked to above. For historic and other contemporary examples, we could look to the nations of ancient Greece, Rome, and China, even more modern Greek society, parts of the Judaic world (namely the Orthodox ones), all of feudal Europe, and certain fringe-religious communities in the United States. In all cases, we would find examples of restriction on women’s public movements, access to education and employment, the voting franchise, and anything other than what was deemed necessary to support the survival of the community, again in strictly anthropological terms.
Understand that I do not in any way whatsoever feel that this is right, good, moral, acceptable, or anything other than abhorrent. I only mean to identify what I see as the mindset of men who refuse to accept women as equals, going so far as to destroy infrastructure that supports their access to education or employment, and, in some cases, attacking women who seek to claim their own rights of dignity and freedom or attacking anyone who would seek to increase women’s access to the aforementioned institutions. Of course, if you were to point this out to any of the men involved in the Taliban movement, or men who, throughout history, have treated women as second class citizens, you’d get a blank stare of incredulity, or, very likely, a lot of shouted denials and claims that they were really acting in women’s best interests. I’ve witnessed this with students in my former classrooms. It’s always about chivalry, as twisted and malignant a version of chivalry as they’re able to conceive.
Back on topic, it is no secret that the Taliban feel it is necessary to restrict the women in their communities from having access to the basic human dignity enjoyed by women in more civilized (yes, I’m playing the “barbarism” card) parts of the world. Women are, for members of the Taliban society, and many other societies around the world, chattel. With regard to the confluence of language and identity, consider that communities guilty of female-debasement have words, phrases, ways of talking about women, and a variety of socially encoded institutions that enforce, reinforce, and maintain disparity between men and women living in those societies. The lifestyle they favor provides them with a social order, systems of governance and commerce, and methods of education and child rearing, all of which require language to exist. If you can’t talk about it, it can’t exist. The institution and practice of taboo relies on this very simple and obvious truth.
Seen from another angle, the very language we use to communicate our experience vis-à-vis a social institution may also reveal our beliefs and values, to some extent. This isn’t to say that any one of us is consciously thinking along certain lines of belief or valuation when using language, but it is no less true that our words are rooted in our social thought banks. We have memes at play in our language use that we may well be unaware of. But our ignorance doesn’t remove the meme from existence, and our continued use of language structures, in fact, supports the continued existence of the meme.
A favorite example of mine is the rather vulgar means of insult that are common to American society.
Calling someone a dick just means that person, most often a male, isn’t being pleasant towards you. The insult isn’t particularly harsh, and is often tossed around jokingly.
“Dude, you’re such a dick.” Said with disdain, this might tell someone that you felt he was behaving poorly, had done something that upset you or made your life difficult or unpleasant, and for really no good reason.
“Dude, you’re a dick.” Said with a grin and maybe a chuckle, you might even be offering the guy a compliment on his behavior as you pat him on the back.
“That guy’s a fucking dick.” Okay, you don’t like him. You’re telling other people this, and maybe with the intent of advising them to avoid contact with the individual in question. But still, the harshness factor isn’t really that high.
Now…consider this:
“Cunt!”
“Stupid cunt.”
“She’s such a fucking cunt.”
In each case, it doesn’t matter how you slice it, these expressions are harshly insulting, considered baleful, and intentionally derisive. You can’t call someone a “cunt” (in American English) as a joke. It just doesn’t work. In England you might be able to get away with it, as the word is used more towards men than towards women (as far as I know), and is more roughly equivalent to our use of the word “dick” in America. Speakers of English English should feel free to correct my English.
The point I’m aiming at here is that in American English a word used to describe male genitalia is given the weight of insult, but not that much, and can even be used to evoke a sense of solidarity between speakers. Contrasted with that, a word used to describe female genitalia is nearly the exact opposite. On the surface, it may seem as I’m splitting pubic hairs, but I don’t think I am. The premise I’m basing this whole text on is that the beliefs and ideas we hold about men and women and their places in society, their interactions, and the value judgments we make about them and their behaviors are inextricably bound up with the language we use to talk about these things. Women in America have it good, better than in most every other country on the planet. But neither is it the case that we have universal agreement about what it means to treat women as equal to men in this country. We may be leaps and freakin' bounds beyond our Talibani counterparts, but true equality remains an as yet unobtained goal financially, religiously, educationally, commercially, politically, and linguistically.
Professor Van Lier used to describe language learning and teaching in terms of peeling an onion. You can’t just keep peeling until you get down to the “real” onion. “[I]t’s layers all the way down.”
Language and life are the same thing.
When you ask me to change my language by learning a new one, you are asking me to change my life by learning a new one. You can’t just expect me to peel away the stuff that’s different or conflicting until I’ve bared the “real” me that can now be re-formed with a new language. Much as I may want to be, I am not Neo. This is not the Matrix. Conversely, you can’t expect me NOT to keep certain parts unpeeled as I seek to protect the way of life I know and live everyday. You have to give me a reason to want to adopt your way of life. Like any war, you need to win my heart and mind over to your side of the issue.
Some people rail against the idea of language death, claiming that we’re losing glorious and colorful and lively cultures. We’re told to be wary of anyone who asserts that one language should be universal, and I certainly am not one to propose that English, or any other language, should “rule the world.” But there is an undeniable value in the English language, one, I believe, that does far more good than harm when applied as a way of life. We may be guilty of calling some people dicks and other cunts, but we don’t have nearly as many life-language supported systems for subjugating women as the Taliban or other similar societies around the globe. We don’t have, as they do in the Chinese logographic system, “words” for women that translate to “person inside the house.”
What we do have is a language that has shown near infinite mutability, allowing for people to noun or verb nearly any word or phrase they choose, and providing fluent speakers with an incredible flexibility. We also have a prosperous society, one that, despite our current economic climate, maintains prominence in the world as a major player politically, and which is still the leading bastion of education. Foreign nationals come here to study, learn from our educators, and return home with their degrees in hand because those degrees are what allow them to get a job. Again, this is coming from my experience in the classroom. Time after time, it was explicitly stated to me that a majority of my students were in America simply to improve their prospects of employment back home.
So when I say that I wouldn’t mind if Urdu, Pashtu, Arabic, Hindi, and any number of other language communities were identified as shrinking, what I mean is that I am hopeful that the ways of life supported by those language communities should be seen to shrink away, to some extent. I’m not wishing annihilation of Indian, Pakistani, Afghani, Uzbek, Tajik, or Azerbaijani society. But I don’t know anyone who would argue with the idea that the Taliban should cease to exist. Beyond simply saying I don’t like them and feel threatened by their barbaric behavior, I think the very way of thinking and living that they engage in is dangerous and damaging to our global social climate. I'll say the same thing about Ann Coulter and Glenn Beck. The languages they use to live their lives, likewise, are a large part of the problem, and adjusting those languages should be addressed as part of the solution.
For the most part, I’m in complete agreement with my friend, and I really don’t think we ever disagreed on anything at all. It was just a case of needing to clarify our respective stances to avoid talking at cross purposes. For my part, I maintained that the onus of “language learner” isn’t simply a matter of picking up the bits and pieces of another way of talking or communicating. It means adopting an entirely new identity, and in a great many ways, saying farewell to the “you” that you used to be back in your original, or former, homeland.
The stuff of human identity, says Brownwen Roberts, citing a British government-funded study from 1988, is “inextricably bound up with language.” That phrasing has been used by a number of linguists and teachers of language, myself included. I picked it up from my former mentor, Leo Van Lier, at the Monterey Institute of International Studies. In discussing what, precisely, is being taught in the language classroom, Professor Van Lier made it expressly and explicitly clear that he didn’t see the nuts and bolts, the form or forms, of language as the subject matter, so much as he saw it being life itself.
When you take a close look at the WHAT of language, you cannot possibly say that asking someone to learn a language involves anything less than learning HOW to live life through a different paradigm, with a different set of perspectives, and with what may well be a vastly different set of beliefs and values.
I was inspired to put these thoughts down after reading an article on Yahoo! News posted by another friend here on FB, this time dealing with a set of beliefs and values that I cannot wait to see vanish from this earth.
The evidence from history leads me to conclude that men in communities of homo sapiens, by and large, seek control over womens’ lives. In the simplest of terms, women are a natural resource; without them a community of homo sapiens cannot be expected to survive. Before I get too far along, let me just point out that I see very clearly how seemingly immoral the view I’m about to present must be to most people. I’m not pretending that greater discussion is unnecessary, but am, for the moment, avoiding it to focus on the more germane point regarding the connection between survival and language learning/not-learning. I’ll return to language and identity farther down, but for now want to address a specific identity as reflected in the societies where women are still treated as a resource and not much else.
Taking a strictly anthropological perspective on the matter, I can rationalize the behavior of communities in Central, Eastern, and Southern Asia, Africa, the Middle East, Europe, and parts of the Americas (including parts of the USA). The men in these for now indistinct communities feel threatened that their version of life will not survive unless the women living in those communities can be controlled as a resource. As a specified example, I’ll return to the Taliban, cited in the article linked to above. For historic and other contemporary examples, we could look to the nations of ancient Greece, Rome, and China, even more modern Greek society, parts of the Judaic world (namely the Orthodox ones), all of feudal Europe, and certain fringe-religious communities in the United States. In all cases, we would find examples of restriction on women’s public movements, access to education and employment, the voting franchise, and anything other than what was deemed necessary to support the survival of the community, again in strictly anthropological terms.
Understand that I do not in any way whatsoever feel that this is right, good, moral, acceptable, or anything other than abhorrent. I only mean to identify what I see as the mindset of men who refuse to accept women as equals, going so far as to destroy infrastructure that supports their access to education or employment, and, in some cases, attacking women who seek to claim their own rights of dignity and freedom or attacking anyone who would seek to increase women’s access to the aforementioned institutions. Of course, if you were to point this out to any of the men involved in the Taliban movement, or men who, throughout history, have treated women as second class citizens, you’d get a blank stare of incredulity, or, very likely, a lot of shouted denials and claims that they were really acting in women’s best interests. I’ve witnessed this with students in my former classrooms. It’s always about chivalry, as twisted and malignant a version of chivalry as they’re able to conceive.
Back on topic, it is no secret that the Taliban feel it is necessary to restrict the women in their communities from having access to the basic human dignity enjoyed by women in more civilized (yes, I’m playing the “barbarism” card) parts of the world. Women are, for members of the Taliban society, and many other societies around the world, chattel. With regard to the confluence of language and identity, consider that communities guilty of female-debasement have words, phrases, ways of talking about women, and a variety of socially encoded institutions that enforce, reinforce, and maintain disparity between men and women living in those societies. The lifestyle they favor provides them with a social order, systems of governance and commerce, and methods of education and child rearing, all of which require language to exist. If you can’t talk about it, it can’t exist. The institution and practice of taboo relies on this very simple and obvious truth.
Seen from another angle, the very language we use to communicate our experience vis-à-vis a social institution may also reveal our beliefs and values, to some extent. This isn’t to say that any one of us is consciously thinking along certain lines of belief or valuation when using language, but it is no less true that our words are rooted in our social thought banks. We have memes at play in our language use that we may well be unaware of. But our ignorance doesn’t remove the meme from existence, and our continued use of language structures, in fact, supports the continued existence of the meme.
A favorite example of mine is the rather vulgar means of insult that are common to American society.
Calling someone a dick just means that person, most often a male, isn’t being pleasant towards you. The insult isn’t particularly harsh, and is often tossed around jokingly.
“Dude, you’re such a dick.” Said with disdain, this might tell someone that you felt he was behaving poorly, had done something that upset you or made your life difficult or unpleasant, and for really no good reason.
“Dude, you’re a dick.” Said with a grin and maybe a chuckle, you might even be offering the guy a compliment on his behavior as you pat him on the back.
“That guy’s a fucking dick.” Okay, you don’t like him. You’re telling other people this, and maybe with the intent of advising them to avoid contact with the individual in question. But still, the harshness factor isn’t really that high.
Now…consider this:
“Cunt!”
“Stupid cunt.”
“She’s such a fucking cunt.”
In each case, it doesn’t matter how you slice it, these expressions are harshly insulting, considered baleful, and intentionally derisive. You can’t call someone a “cunt” (in American English) as a joke. It just doesn’t work. In England you might be able to get away with it, as the word is used more towards men than towards women (as far as I know), and is more roughly equivalent to our use of the word “dick” in America. Speakers of English English should feel free to correct my English.
The point I’m aiming at here is that in American English a word used to describe male genitalia is given the weight of insult, but not that much, and can even be used to evoke a sense of solidarity between speakers. Contrasted with that, a word used to describe female genitalia is nearly the exact opposite. On the surface, it may seem as I’m splitting pubic hairs, but I don’t think I am. The premise I’m basing this whole text on is that the beliefs and ideas we hold about men and women and their places in society, their interactions, and the value judgments we make about them and their behaviors are inextricably bound up with the language we use to talk about these things. Women in America have it good, better than in most every other country on the planet. But neither is it the case that we have universal agreement about what it means to treat women as equal to men in this country. We may be leaps and freakin' bounds beyond our Talibani counterparts, but true equality remains an as yet unobtained goal financially, religiously, educationally, commercially, politically, and linguistically.
Professor Van Lier used to describe language learning and teaching in terms of peeling an onion. You can’t just keep peeling until you get down to the “real” onion. “[I]t’s layers all the way down.”
Language and life are the same thing.
When you ask me to change my language by learning a new one, you are asking me to change my life by learning a new one. You can’t just expect me to peel away the stuff that’s different or conflicting until I’ve bared the “real” me that can now be re-formed with a new language. Much as I may want to be, I am not Neo. This is not the Matrix. Conversely, you can’t expect me NOT to keep certain parts unpeeled as I seek to protect the way of life I know and live everyday. You have to give me a reason to want to adopt your way of life. Like any war, you need to win my heart and mind over to your side of the issue.
Some people rail against the idea of language death, claiming that we’re losing glorious and colorful and lively cultures. We’re told to be wary of anyone who asserts that one language should be universal, and I certainly am not one to propose that English, or any other language, should “rule the world.” But there is an undeniable value in the English language, one, I believe, that does far more good than harm when applied as a way of life. We may be guilty of calling some people dicks and other cunts, but we don’t have nearly as many life-language supported systems for subjugating women as the Taliban or other similar societies around the globe. We don’t have, as they do in the Chinese logographic system, “words” for women that translate to “person inside the house.”
What we do have is a language that has shown near infinite mutability, allowing for people to noun or verb nearly any word or phrase they choose, and providing fluent speakers with an incredible flexibility. We also have a prosperous society, one that, despite our current economic climate, maintains prominence in the world as a major player politically, and which is still the leading bastion of education. Foreign nationals come here to study, learn from our educators, and return home with their degrees in hand because those degrees are what allow them to get a job. Again, this is coming from my experience in the classroom. Time after time, it was explicitly stated to me that a majority of my students were in America simply to improve their prospects of employment back home.
So when I say that I wouldn’t mind if Urdu, Pashtu, Arabic, Hindi, and any number of other language communities were identified as shrinking, what I mean is that I am hopeful that the ways of life supported by those language communities should be seen to shrink away, to some extent. I’m not wishing annihilation of Indian, Pakistani, Afghani, Uzbek, Tajik, or Azerbaijani society. But I don’t know anyone who would argue with the idea that the Taliban should cease to exist. Beyond simply saying I don’t like them and feel threatened by their barbaric behavior, I think the very way of thinking and living that they engage in is dangerous and damaging to our global social climate. I'll say the same thing about Ann Coulter and Glenn Beck. The languages they use to live their lives, likewise, are a large part of the problem, and adjusting those languages should be addressed as part of the solution.
Tuesday, November 3, 2009
Farewell to a friend
Tomorrow morning I'll be saying farewell to Athena, a little black and white feline friend of mine who has shared her life with me these past 12 years.
She was a roadside runt left behind the litter in a rural area of Oregon where I was living for the summer of 1997. Her life has been marked with a chronic condition that never really threatened her health, but has finally caught up to her.
I just read this column by Rita Mae Brown, an author and companion to a menagerie of domesticated animals. Her thoughts on animals and human being has helped me put some much needed perspective on the hardest of decisions.
http://www.cnn.com/2009/OPINION/11/02/animals.rita.brown/index.html
She was a roadside runt left behind the litter in a rural area of Oregon where I was living for the summer of 1997. Her life has been marked with a chronic condition that never really threatened her health, but has finally caught up to her.
I just read this column by Rita Mae Brown, an author and companion to a menagerie of domesticated animals. Her thoughts on animals and human being has helped me put some much needed perspective on the hardest of decisions.
http://www.cnn.com/2009/OPINION/11/02/animals.rita.brown/index.html
Monday, November 2, 2009
Advertising wonks and marketeers, prepare to be boarded...
Right. So on the side of my page devoted to selling me shit I haven't asked for and don't need, Facebook has seen fit to place an image of a deliciously shapely woman in a string bikini...smoking a cigarette. Above this tawdry conundrum is the title "E-Cig's Exclusive" (it's a link) Beneath the photo is "Scientists have discovered a healthier way to smoke, with more freedom. This could be the choice for you."
Clicking that title directs you to this article on a new kind of nicotine delivery system that is, apparently, healthier.
http://www.broward-post.com/?t202id=8513&t202kw=
Aside from the fact that anything promoting cigarette smoking and nicotine addiction is just repulsive as all hell, do I even need to ask why the fuck the advertising folks thought it would be a good idea to stimulate my libido while attempting to sell their crap? I mean, honestly, I'm an adult male. Horny as the next fellow, and already plum full of reasons to think about sex on a regular basis. What's with the fucking conflation between anything and everything for sale and sexuality?
Seriously, do we need to be tricked into buying things? Is that necessary? Is it a good idea? Whatever the fuck happened to letting people live their lives and decide to look for a product or service when the need fucking arises (Ooooo, pun intended there, what?) All of this over emphasis on sexuality as a device for marketing is such bullshit, and is such a horrible butchering of what Capitalism is really all about.
As an economic system, Capitalism relies upon market demand driving market prices based upon market supply, and vice versa...it's a feedback loop common to any system. Simple. I'm no economist, so if I'm leaving something crucial out, go ahead and sue me. This is America (where I'm typing this) after all. But am I the only one who just can't fucking accept the bullshit behavior of marketers and advert writers who seem to think it's necessary to manipulate people into purchasing goods and services?
Of course, I'm not the only one who recognizes that advertising is proper fucked up, that it's a complete sham and an utterly screwed up system. But this calls for a solid Gilbert Godfried WHAT THE FUCK!!?
Rant completed, Monday, November 2nd, 2009, 1347 hours.
Clicking that title directs you to this article on a new kind of nicotine delivery system that is, apparently, healthier.
http://www.broward-post.com/?t202id=8513&t202kw=
Aside from the fact that anything promoting cigarette smoking and nicotine addiction is just repulsive as all hell, do I even need to ask why the fuck the advertising folks thought it would be a good idea to stimulate my libido while attempting to sell their crap? I mean, honestly, I'm an adult male. Horny as the next fellow, and already plum full of reasons to think about sex on a regular basis. What's with the fucking conflation between anything and everything for sale and sexuality?
Seriously, do we need to be tricked into buying things? Is that necessary? Is it a good idea? Whatever the fuck happened to letting people live their lives and decide to look for a product or service when the need fucking arises (Ooooo, pun intended there, what?) All of this over emphasis on sexuality as a device for marketing is such bullshit, and is such a horrible butchering of what Capitalism is really all about.
As an economic system, Capitalism relies upon market demand driving market prices based upon market supply, and vice versa...it's a feedback loop common to any system. Simple. I'm no economist, so if I'm leaving something crucial out, go ahead and sue me. This is America (where I'm typing this) after all. But am I the only one who just can't fucking accept the bullshit behavior of marketers and advert writers who seem to think it's necessary to manipulate people into purchasing goods and services?
Of course, I'm not the only one who recognizes that advertising is proper fucked up, that it's a complete sham and an utterly screwed up system. But this calls for a solid Gilbert Godfried WHAT THE FUCK!!?
Rant completed, Monday, November 2nd, 2009, 1347 hours.
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