pilgrim.not.wanderer

One of the ways we make sense of our lives is by narrating them according to certain culturally meaningful stories.

There is almost always a grain of truth to these stories.  But they can become stale.

One of our great stories is the one where the heroic rebel steps out from the monolithic crowd.  He or she finally gets to ‘be themselves’.

Whenever things go bad for us in a group we belong to, we always narrate the situation as if we’re a heroic rebel and the group is a monolithic crowd.  We end up as the hero.

Sure, there is grain of truth to this story.  But it is getting really stale.

In our culture, we ALL think we’re the rebel hero.  That sensibility is now deeply imbued into our mass culture. The need to stand out is the engine which drives ‘the system’. 

The way we step out from the crowd and achieve authenticity is through our clothes, our music, our cars, our hobbies, etc.  All of this is consumed.  To be rebel is to be an edgy shopper.  To be rebel is to consume on the cutting edge.  Then everyone will want to be like you.  They’ll all become like you.  Then a new rebel will emerge, and the cycle continues.  This is how consumer culture works.

True rebellion now requires us to fade into the crowd.

On the other hand, what’s so wrong with consumption?  What we consume really does shape us into the kind person we are.  I like finding quirky, interesting things to buy.  Is this so bad?  Always?

Isn’t the problem with the way sellers try to harness us by our base passions, bypassing our critical judgment?  

Again, being ‘passionate’ is always praised in our society.  Maybe the problem isn’t really with consumerism, but with ‘passion-ism’.  Who is praised for having good judgment?  

Embodied creatures must consume, right?  That’s how life works, right?  So isn’t a good and interesting life built (at least in part) by consumption?

No problem really, if by multiculturalism we mean the welcoming of the food, fashion, art and private religious practices of the many people groups immigrating into Canada which differ from the larger Canadian tradition.  

I recently attended our local multicultural festival.  It was great.

The philosophical problem with much of the talk about multiculturalism is that it goes on as if multiculturalism itself is not a substantive culture.  

Not just any culture can function as a host for multiculturalism.  Not right now.  Maybe with time, but not right now.

Multiculturalism depends for its survival on certain cultural values and institutions, right?  

Don’t we have to tend to these cultural values and institutions if we want multiculturalism to thrive?

So long as we treat these cultures as flavours to spice up our boring Western lives, aren’t we being patronizing?

When those comic strips were published, our first worry was hurting the feelings of Muslims and the hate crimes against Muslims they might inspire.

When savage protests broke out across the Muslim world (at least as seen in the news media), no one blinked an eye.  In the face of death threats, Western media were expected to refrain from publishing the comics or repent of having done so.

This happened because Muslims are the other.  

Because of they are the other, their savage religious violence wasn’t condemned.  But surely if we engaged in such savage religious violence, we would have condemned ourselves, right?

Here we uncover a bizarre form of socially acceptable bigotry.  Those savage Muslims simply cannot be held to the same standard as we Westerners.

(I’m not endorsing this.  I’m saying that this is what our actions say, whether we realize it or not.)

The extent to which this double standard exists is the extent to which Muslims are barred from being fully welcomed into our society.  

The only person who is free from self-limitation in view of the other, is the other.

The only person who can issue a naked demand for what’s in their interest, with no shame, is the other.

Only the other can boldly engage in overt self-assertion, even violently, without a hint of shame.

The Nazis were able to rise to ascendancy because of their ability, thanks to post WWI realities, to cast themselves as the other.  How else were they able to lead the Germans in such bold self-assertion without shame?

You can bet that soon we’ll all be trying to narrate history such that we end up as the other.  In the world of tomorrow, which has already broken in upon today in many parts of the West, this will be THE way to achieve cultural power.

Only the other is free from social pressure to engage in self-questioning and self-doubt.  

The icon of righteousness is the other, fist raised high, defiantly culture-warring against larger society.

How do you think white-power racism groups get off the ground?  They ‘otherize’ themselves, right?

…even though most of it is phony.  The more self-consciously ‘punk’ the band is, the more phony it is.  At least nowadays.

Topic for discussion: the only music more sonically inbred and conservative than punk is new country.  Talk amongst yourselves.

Another topic for discussion: when Hanna Montana started wearing studded belts the ‘punk’ look finally (and mercifully) died (been sick for years) and went to rest in peace in Disney heaven.  Pick one up at your local Disney store and look just like Good Charlotte or Simple Plan.  Take that mom and dad!!!  Talk amongst yourselves.

http://www.ruinediphone.com/

Punk is how Disney sells children’s albums, GM sells SUVs, and McDonalds sells BigMacs.  The Sex Pistols were the original boy band, designed as an elaborate advertisement campaign for Malcolm McLaren’s ‘anti-fashion’ leather fashions.

You can spot a phony punk a mile away by their over fondness for the Sex Pistols.  

In other words, while a radical denial of absolute obligations cannot destroy the moral passions of man, it can render them homeless.  The desire for justice and brotherhood can then no more confess itself for what it is, but will seek embodiment in some theory of salvation through violence.  Thus we see arising those skeptical, hard-boiled, allegedly scientific forms of fanaticism which are so characteristic of our modern age.

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[Academic freedom] consists in certain metaphysical assumptions without which freedom is logically untenable, and without the firm profession of which freedom can be upheld only in a state of suspended logic, which threatens to collapse at any moment and which in these searching and revolutionary times cannot fail to collapse before long.

Man’s rapidly increasing destructive power will soon put the ideas of our time to crucial test.  We may be faced with the fact that only by resuming the great tradition which embodies faith in these realities can the continuance of the human race on earth, equipped with the powers of modern science, be made both possible and desirable.

Michael Polanyi, The Logic of Liberty, 58.

I’m especially interested in academic or intellectual conflict.  

It is a sign of your inexperience or immaturity if you are scandalized by the persistence of conflict even amongst seemingly trustworthy and intelligent ‘experts’.  

We used to think (we still do?) that if set we two brilliant minds (or groups of minds) into conflict with each other, the battle will eventually end with a winner and the truth will be uncovered.  

Things haven’t panned out like this.  Conflict persists and seems to be hardened by these battles.

In my experience, if you give both sides a sympathetic ear you’ll find that each is somewhat convincing.  To the partisans, however, the other side will always be wrong in some plain and obvious way.  Folks on the right-wing are simply greedy and are pandering to the corporations.  Plain and simple.  Folks on the left-wing care more about seeming nice and growing bureaucracies than in actually helpful real people.  Their economics has been proven false, plain and simple.  I can’t accept either view.

Once problem is that we can’t even agree on what the problem is or what the relevant data are.  We can’t even agree on what sorts of things would rightly confirm or disconfirm the opposing positions.

Sometimes I’m tempted to think the side you choose has more to do with constructing your identity, with deciding what kind of person you want to be, than it has to do with arguments or truth.

“…modern totalitarianism, based on a purely materialistic conception of man, is of necessity more oppressive than an authoritarianism enforcing a spiritual creed, however rigid.  Take the medieval church even at its worst.  The authority of certain texts which it imposed remained fixed over long periods of time and their interpretation was laid down in systems of theology and philosophy, gradually developing over more than a millennium from St. Paul to Aquinas.  A good Catholic was not required to change his convictions and reverse his beliefs at frequent intervals, in deference to the secret decisions of a handful of high officials.  Moreover, since the authority of the Church was spiritual, it recognized other independent principles outside its own. Though it imposed numerous regulations on individual conduct, there were many parts of life left untouched and governed by other authorities–rivals of the Church–like kings, noblemen, guilds, corporations.  And the the power of all these was transcended by the growing force of law; while a good deal of speculative and artistic initiative was allowed to pulsate freely through this many-sided system.” 

{snip}

“It would seem to me that on the day when the modern sceptic first placed his trust in the Catholic Church to rescue his liberties against the Frankenstein monster of his own creation, a vast cycle of human thought had come full swing.  The sphere of doubt had been circumnavigated.  The critical enterprise which gave rise tot he Renaissance and the Reformation, and started the rise of our science, philosophy, and art, had matured to its conclusion and had reached its final limits.  We have thus begun to live in a new intellectual period, which I would call the post-critical age of Western civilization.  Liberalism to-day is becoming conscious of its own fiduciary foundations and is forming an alliance with other beliefs, kindred to its own.”

Michael Polanyi, The Logic of Liberty, 133.

By ‘liberalism’ I don’t mean the political left-wing.  The political left-wing is now predominately socialist, I’d say.

A liberal, in the older sense, is someone who very highly values individual freedom and who believes that coercive intrusion into the private lives of individual citizens should be avoided as much as possible.  Such an intrusion has to be justified and the intruder has the burden of proof.  They must prove that such an intrusion is justified, otherwise the maxim ‘live and let live’ must prevail.  Usually liberals advocate ‘the harm principle’: so long as an individual doesn’t harm anyone else, we ought to leave them alone to do as they please.

The trouble with liberalism is that it only survives in societies that value truth, justice, reason, fairness and such.  These values can’t be up for debate.  The are the very values which make debate possible in a liberal society.   If there aren’t enough people in a society who firmly believe in them, liberal democracy will sputter out.  

But there are many folks (so-called subversives) who want to subvert these values.  Given that these values are necessary for the success of liberal democracy, subversion of them cannot be tolerated.  The so-called subversives inevitably appeal to liberal sensibilities in order to justify their subversion of the very values which undergird liberal democracy.  

This is why the most liberal nation is at once the most religious.  American is liberal precisely because it has a strong conservative principle which hold its liberalism in place.  

This explains why contemporary liberals in America are now considered conservatives.

Wouldn’t JFK be considered a conservative if he ran for office today?

I read somewhere that America’s abortion laws are more liberal than those of any European country.

I’ve also been told that Canada has no abortion laws at all.

Unless our society undergoes some fairly major cultural changes, the introduction of abortion legislation (which apparently Canada completely lacks) will result in an increase in risk and suffering to the female population.

The reason for this is simple.  It is relatively easy for a man to run away from an unplanned pregnancy.  A woman can run if she wants, but the fetus stays with her.  Unless she gets an abortion.  This means that a man can enjoy the benefits of the sexual revolution with relative impunity.  But the sexual revolution is bad for women if abortion is off the table.

The risk and suffering would be mitigated by only banning late-term abortions and such.  

I  understand that a majority of Canadians believe there should be some limitations on abortion, particularly late-term abortion.  

So why no legislation on this?

If contraception is so cheap and accessible, how come I see so many pregnant teens and teens with babies on the bus?

Has being a “baby-mama” become an acceptable life-style?  Is it now a life that poor young women select for themselves?  Isn’t it a throughly anti-feminist and exploitative life-style?

New Wearable Feedbags Let Americans Eat More, Move Less

Isn’t any publication that is true, or is at least written in good faith with a view to uncover the truth, permissible even if it causes an increase in crimes or discrimination?

If we want to reduce crime and discrimination, can’t we find better ways to achieve this than criminalizing inquiry or the publication of the truth?

I allow that speech which incites people to commit crimes should be criminal.  Though perhaps this ought to be limited to fairly serious crimes.  If I go out into the public square and incite folks to not pay their parking tickets, we should probably let that pass.  But if I incite folks to kill people or to rob the next 3 Walmarts they come across, that should be criminal, right? (more…)

I saw the new Indiana Jones movie a week and a half ago.  I loved it.  

About a month and a half ago I watched the first Indiana Jones movie for the first time in 10 years or so.  I basically didn’t like it.  I used to love it, but this time I noticed how cheesy and contrived it was. Let me take that back– I liked it.  But its being an unrealistic fantasy with a thin story was obvious.  Talking monkeys?  Come on!  Survived the submarine trip?  Come on!

So what’s with all these people criticizing the new one?  How come these folks talk about the first film as if it were perfect.  Hardly.  I bet 90% of them haven’t seen it in years.  The new one is definitely in character with the first.  I suspect they’re more fond of their memory of the first movie than the actual movie itself.

Also, the whole Russians and aliens thing fits perfectly with the genre.  It takes place in the 50’s people!!!  Indiana Jones is based off those old saturday afternoon serials and comic books.  Soviets and aliens fit perfectly with this.  If you don’t like this then just admit it, you don’t like Indiana Jones.  That’s fine.

Me?  I want to see it again.

BTW - I’m basically preaching to my wife.  When Mutt started swinging on those vines I was cheering and she was shaking her head in disbelief. 

So apparently in Canada you can get brought up on charges simply for publishing or causing to publish anything which might lead to discrimination.

The complainant isn’t required to demonstrate that anyone actually suffered because of the publication. All they have to show is that it might lead to discrimination.  

Also, truth is no defense.  That is, even if what the defendant published was true, you could still be found guilty.  

Also, the intentions of the defendant are irrelevant.  That is, even if you had no intention whatsoever of bring about discrimination, you could still be found guilty.  

If this is true, this is crazy.  It is embarrassing.  

Just think about all the stuff published against the religious right that would be punishable in Canada.  You might reply that the religious right isn’t a minority.  Really?  It isn’t a minority in New York?  Sure it is.  Maybe it isn’t in Alabama, but surely it is in other places.  Doesn’t some of this stuff make you hate the religious right?  Doesn’t it make you want to systematically exclude them from positions of power?  Sure it does.  I makes me want to, and I’m a theologically conservative Christian!

According to the rules in Canada, the fact that the religious right constitutes a genuine threat is not a defense.  Neither is the fact that what is published against them is true.  (If it is true.  That’s not my point.  The point is that even if it is true, that’s no defense.)  And it doesn’t matter if the publisher didn’t intend to encourage discrimination.  That’s no defense.  

I’m embarrassed for Canada.  I hope I’ve been misinformed.  

I just noticed that the Canadian civil liberties union (I think it is the Canadian version of the ACLU) is attempting to intervene in favour of the defense in a discrimination case against a major Canadian news magazine.  Wow.  This is not a right-wing vs. left-wing thing.

If I started a band, I’d try as hard as I could to touch this.  The funny thing is that even if I achieved it nobody local would like it.  The kids these days just don’t like good music.  There, I’m officially a grumpy old man.  Anyway, here’s Elvis Costello and the Attractions at the peak of the their early period.

Here’s a video of Bill O’Reilly going nuts on camera.  What a blowhard.  

Update: Here’s a hilarious remix of the above video.  Somehow they turned it into a twisted gangsta rap song.  If you are offended by rude language don’t click.  F-bombs galore.  Whatever is offensive about this came straight from O’Reilly’s mouth.  This the cable TV face of conservatism?  What a jerk.  I chuckled through the whole thing.

I honestly had no idea that this kind of overt racism still existed.  Wow.

In Muncie, a factory town in the east-central part of Indiana, Ross and her cohorts were soliciting support for Obama at malls, on street corners and in a Wal-Mart parking lot, and they ran into “a horrible response,” as Ross put it, a level of anti-black sentiment that none of them had anticipated.

“The first person I encountered was like, ‘I’ll never vote for a black person,’ ” recalled Ross, who is white and just turned 20. “People just weren’t receptive.”