09.07.04
Posted in philosophy, fun at 2:19 pm by
I just counted 2,545.5 M&Ms for one of those stupid “guess how many M&Ms?!?!” contests. Words do not exist that accurately and completely describe the the fervor with which I hate counting M&Ms. Actually, I hate most shitty jobs in general. This one was particularly bad–not only was it monotonous but the final count of 2545.5 doesn’t include the approxomately 150 or so renegade M&Ms that were slippery and made their way out of the counting zone and onto the floor; naturally, I took it upon myself to make the ultimate sacrifice and eat the rogue M&Ms.
What deep truth am I going to draw from this? Well, I’m not sure it’s deep, but I think it’s truth nonetheless. Humans were created to be satisfied, satiated. I believe part of human nature is to quell the need for satisfaction.
This, of course begs, the obvious question, “what really satisfies?” Christians everywhere raise their hands and strain, I hear, “ooh, ooh, I know, I know.” Well, the obvious answer for these Christians everywhere is that God satisfies. But, if you hadn’t picked this up from my writing just yet, I’m not really thrilled with that answer. Not because it isn’t a right answer, I most certainly believe that it is a right answer, but it’s WAY too vague.
What the hell does it mean that God is the only source of satisfaction? I’ve heard many a “Christian” landlord who makes gobs of money off of broken down barely maintained properties–that money certainly satisfies them as well. Even though I’m not sure God would be as quick to attach her name to those properties. And it’s not that you can’t be a slumlord and a Christian–I’m sure there are a few (if not many) floating around.
But, this would seem to imply we need to adjust our definition of satisfaction. I would posit that satisfaction isn’t as much a feeling you have because of things you’ve been given as much as a way of life.
Satisfaction is a way of life? This from the guy that said two paragraphs ago that “only God satisfies” is too vague. So what do I mean? I think that while one can certainly feel a sense of satisfaction it comes as much from crossing the barriers that exist between one’s self and one’s passions.
If that’s the case satisfaction may not be a concrete feeling as much as it is a feeling in the abstract. A whole group of feelings that arise from diligently following one’s intended path. Those feelings may be joy, elation, boredom, pain, exhaustion, or anxiety.
All that to say this: I’m not sure if it’s God that does the satisfying or not. I believe that it is God that creates people with a purpose, but without a path. The journey they walk along the way to God’s intended purpose is fraught with barriers, but it’s the way that you attack those barriers that leave you with satisfaction. You play a role in your own satisfaction.
Some Christians have overplayed this sin thing. Not to say that sin isn’t real, but sinners don’t have the evil Midas touch, where everything they touch turns to shit, either. If this was the case God wouldn’t call people to do anything, right? We should sit idly by involving ourselves in as little as possible so that we mess up as little as possible. You and I have a responsibility in pursuing our purposes.
So, to bring this full circle, I suppose that once I took a moment to recognize that counting an assload of M&Ms this morning was a means to an end–albeit an infintescimally small hurdle in the overall purpose of a Ph.D. it was in a sense satisfying to me.
And, by the way, for all of you wondering about the half M&M in the above count. It was an amputee–but they’re people…er…M&Ms too!
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09.05.04
Posted in faith at 1:54 pm by
Misogynist:
Definition: [n] a misanthrope who dislikes women in particular
Synonyms: woman hater
See Also: misanthrope, misanthropist
Okay, this will invariably come off a bit strong. I don’t really think that the folks who plan worship for our church HATE women. But I’d like to talk about why I think it’s fair to use that characterization of the way worship is lead in our church. If asked, I doubt that any of the male leaders of our worship team could honestly say that they “hate” women, yet we each Sunday there’s a systematic devaluation of women woefully present in the worship rhetoric at our Church.
That’s a little unclear. Perhaps some examples will help. This morning we sang the song “Shout to the North.” At least this song has a verse about women in it–but why does it follow a verse about men being strong in weakness, while women are second to our manly singing about kings. Men ALWAYS lead women in our religious rhetoric.
Another good example is when we sing a call and response song, women are always the response. They always follow. Of course I buck the system and join in with the women, but for all my civil disobedience this doesn’t do much to change the system.
Another example–this’ll be the last, I promise–is that I cannot remember one single solitary time that a woman was the “go to” person who lead worship. Whenever an announcement is made, a man makes that announcement. I can’t say that this is ALWAYS the pattern, but, in the approxomately 75 or so times I’ve been to our church I can’t remember a time where a women led the worship.
The biggest question is this, though. So what? It’s this that I’m faced with most. Folks don’t believe that this is really a problem, “Brandon, why must you nitpick?” they’ll say. Admittedly, these examples at first glance seem like small cultural norms that don’t rob women of any REAL power or leadership. However, at second or third glance, the truth begins to emerge.
If I’m nitpicking, then it wouldn’t be a big deal for women to begin to have the role of leader in a church setting. It really shouldn’t matter. I hypothesize that it matters to folks. The reason that I hypothesize this is that out of literally hundreds of call and response songs, I’ve never heard the women lead with the call and the men respond, women are RARELY allowed to be in charge of the worship and when they are it’s because a man wasn’t able to be found to take a leadership role. It must matter, because if it didn’t, we should see women in leadership more often.
For one reason or another we’ve created a system that places women second. The system exists–like it or not–regardless of whether or not it is percieved to be in existence. It can be scientifically shown that there is a fundamental difference between the power and involvement given to women versus that of men in the worship experience.
Women are a sort of “also rans” at our church. Men don’t tend to notice this. It’s easy not to, after all. We’ve placed ourselves in a position of power and it feels pretty good. Women too have been desensitized to this, and this, I believe is where the damage is truly done. It’s hard to say where our church would be today if women’s voices were of equal value to the voices of men. Invariably those voices would’ve added things to our church, but they’ve been silenced.
But there are still naysayers. Folks–men and women alike–hear this and are confronted by the facts that we have a system that excludes the voices of women from worship at worst and makes those voices out to be also rans at best. These folks don’t see the problem. Women are fine with their status, they feel loved, and men are happy to have voices that matter.
But, what if, just maybe, these women were only happy in this situation because they’d been conditioned over the course of a life lived in a male dominated society where they’d learned that their voices just were second best–that’s just the way it is, they think.
Dale Spender (who despite the name Dale is a female) is a feminist scholar and the writer of a popular radical feminist book called “Man Made Language.” Spender would argue differently. In the book “Man Made Language,” Spender describes a study that she did where she systematically removed male reference from her classroom rhetoric (of course, she didn’t just do this herself but many researchers male and female alike did the same.) Including male reference in rhetoric (using he / man language to be inclusive of both genders) caused no stir. Both males and females were able to go along without trouble in the classroom when the use of he / man rhetoric was implemented. HOWEVER, when MALES were excluded from rhetoric the response was astounding. Use of the she / woman forms to be inclusive were taken as offensive and deviant. Male students even threatened to leave the classroom if they were continually referred to as females.
If the male response in this study was so vehement it seems plausible to expect that women should be equally offended by the exclusion of their gender in something as simple as the generic use of he / man language. This research seems to confirm my hypothesis that women have been conditioned to be “okay” with being also rans.
At our church I think that women have been lied to. Men have told them that their voices are more valuable than men’s in certian areas. These areas are often child care, secretarial duties, and general baking tasks. Men are left with caring for the flock, leading worship, and generally being in charge of the structural issues of the church. It doesn’t take long to do the math and figure out if the church is segmented into male and female roles where males do an inordinate amount of the leadership in “malish” tasks and women do the “femalish” tasks–EVERYTHING QUICKLY BECOMES LESS THAN IT COULD BE IF WOMEN AND MEN WERE ON EQUAL FOOTING IN OUR CHURCH. EVERYBODY LOSES!
I’ll take my example of worship leadership. Most likely, a woman’s perspective (I’m certainly arguing that women bring unique and valuable things to the table) would be able to radically alter the way we do worship at our church. Perhaps a man’s perspective could really help make our children’s ministry more effective. The difference is that because we have a male dominant system at work women will listen to a man’s opinion about children’s ministry, but when it comes to a woman making a suggestion about worship leadership–her voice needs to be validated by a man. It’s not just women who lose, it’s all of us who lose. Our church and the Church is worse off because of this.
Do the men of my church hate women. No, and yes. None of them have any malicious hate against women–at least not that I know of or perceive. But, through ignorance and perhaps lack of education (or lack of wilingness to be educated about such a subject) they are misogynistic. They strategically and systematically favor men–whether they realize it or not. And ignorance, my friends, is the shittiest of all excuses. After all, many slave owners didn’t hate black folk. But they owned slaves. The slaves they kept they often treated quite well, but they were still slaves! And, good treatment certainly didn’t make slavery right.
Kindness is not only a poor substitute for justice, it’s the most dangerous substitute for justice the world has ever known.
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09.04.04
Posted in politics at 2:24 pm by
Watching the current campaigns bothers me a bit. It seems that neither candidate has really learned to take the meaning of a phrase in context. I know, it’s an easy slam to be able to pick one line out of a speech, twist it’s meaning and make another candidate look like she or he has egg on their face–but for crying out loud, I think this time around it’s gone a bit too far. (By the way, I’m making a concerted effort to be bi-partisan here so…bear with me.)
First of all, Senator Kerry. President Bush probably doesn’t need to be ripped a new asshole over his comments about whether or not the war on terror can or cannot be won. You know, to pick out a few times where he says that we will win the war and then–conversely–to hear him say that we may never win this war, let’s grant the poor president a bit of slack. Look at the overall message, when he said what he said. For example, when the President said that the war may never be won, he was speaking of defeating the concept of terrorism on the whole. It is not likely that we’ll ever be able to so brainwash everyone in the world into believing in our brand of capitalism that we ever will be able to defeat the concept of terrorism. When President Bush said we were (or would be) victorious, he was talking about dismantling the threat of al Queada. Now whether you agree or not that we can defeat al Queada the way the President proposes, that’s a legitimate question. Senator Kerry, if you’re such an intellectual, why not bring the big guns out and craft a rhetorical argument that carries weight. Please stop the pissing contest.
Of course…one can’t have a pissing contest by one’s self. (Or, at very least, you shouldn’t have a pissing contest by yourself!) President Bush and his minions play this game like champs. Partially, this is Kerry’s fault for not monitoring every word that he’s said carefuly and hawkishly since age 26. For example, mini me, er…Dick Cheney mentioned during his speech (or was it Zell Miller–the two have really ideologically blended in my mind) that John Kerry has said that he would never go to war without UN support. He did say this. He was 26 years old and protesting the Vietnam war. John Kerry is no longer 26, it’s no longer the era of the Vietnam war.
Another example, John Kerry’s “sensitive” approach to terrorism. Is Dick Cheney really so stupid to believe that this means that John Kerry will be treating Osama Bin Laden to tea and crumpets in the rose garden? John Kerry meant sensitive in another (perfectly acceptable) sense. Sensitive to the needs of oppressed nations, sensitive to the reasons that terrorists become terrorists, sensitive to not offending the French during most every campaign speech given, sensitive to creating friends internationally. It’s like Dick Cheney and the rest of the Bush clan wants me to believe that by “sensitive” John Kerry means that if Osama Bin Laden is ever caught, we’ll have him over to the national mall and given a spanking and asked not to do anything mean like 9/11 ever again. I’m sorry that I find it so hard to believe that but, Kerry risked his life for his country and volunteered for tours of duty in Vietnam–this doesn’t seem like the guy who’ll back away from a fight.
Anyhow, you can see how viciously context can be twisted. But the truth is–doing so makes a poor (though unfortunately believable) argument. Twisting context sets the groundwork for an argument infected by the straw man fallacy. Really, it’s a sad statement about what both politicians believe about the overall intelligence of the people of this country. They’re both telling us one of two things, one that we’re stupid and we’ll believe anything they say, or two, that they’re stupid and this is the kind of argument that sways them.
In a way, I’ll be rooting for option one in this pissing contest. I’d rather be thought stupid than be led by the stupid.
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09.02.04
Posted in politics at 9:56 pm by
I wonder to myself what will happen if John Kerry is elected in November. I was thinking about that on my drive home from school today. I mean I support John Kerry in the election and all, but that’s not to say that he and I share views on all topics. Anticipating the change in our relationship gives me a bit of angst. I feel like I’m forced to support John Kerry a bit more than I normally would if we didn’t have an incumbent in office with whose policies I roundly disagree.
I feel like I’ve been forced into a relationship with Kerry, because, after all, you have to love somebody on an election year. If Kerry wins, I’ll need some space in our relationship. It’ll be sort of like a break-up. Time for him to put his money where his mouth is. I think he deserves that chance–and that’s why I’ll vote for him. But my, how our relationship will change. For one, he’ll have to be okay with my being a skeptic. Cuz’ that’s what I am. I’m going to want to see results. He’s going to have to be okay with my constant emails telling him my opinion on things.
I think Americans have slacked off on their duties a touch. It’s like we’ve bought into the myth that our voice is only heard on election day in the polls. Truthfully, though, that’s not the way a representative democracy is intended to work out. We have a civic responsibility to be actively informed about our government and make our voices heard. Of course, my voice being heard really only matters if someone cares enough to listen. Perhaps that famous “unwaverability” of President Bush isn’t quite the virtue that it’s touted as. Perhaps, that’s one of my biggest reasons for witholding support from Dubya, I just don’t think he’d listen to reason–or if not even reason, my opinion.
Regardless, whether or not my opinion is respected, responded to, or even read, it is my responsibilty to make that opinion known. We’ve got opportunities like never before: email, blogs, petitions, rallies, protests, phone calls, personal visits, and even the occasional postcard. Still, it’s too easy to do nothing at all, but sit on one’s overstuffed chair, drink beer, and complain. Regardless of who carries the day next November, I’ve a responsibility. It’s my distinct hope that I’ll be able to leave an indellible mark on our next President.
All you naysayers are thinking to yourselves, “No way some blog boy will get his emails through to the leader of the free world.” Perhaps, but apathy is lethal. Who better to aprise of my thoughts but someone who could make a difference. Setting my sights at the President may be a bit presumptuous, but a congresswoman or man could be a bit more attainable. Regardless of who I try to sway, the important thing is that I’ll be trying. That, to me, is what it means to be a citizen. Stay tuned then friends for my weekly email to our leaders–I’ll post any responses I receive as well. Mostly, though, I’d encourage you all to do the same. Perhaps if we can turn citizenship into an action verb rather than a common noun this world will be a bit better off!
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Posted in politics at 5:52 pm by
I’ve been trying to process Zell Miller’s speech today. I will admit, I truly don’t understand how he sleeps at night. I suppose the best thing about the speech from a democratic point of view is that it really didn’t say anything. It was the same ole’ “Kerry flips and flops,” “Kerry will be soft on terror,” or “Kerry is a weenie.”
In fact, Miller did absolutely nothing to establish anything even remotely resembling a party platform. Of course, neither did Dick Cheney. I’ve been shocked at the overt Kerry bashing that has taken place at the RNC. Now, that’s not to say that we all didn’t have our Bushbashing fun at the Democratic National Convention…but at least we thinly veiled our attacks, under a shroud of policy.
Are the Republicans really so concerned about Kerry at this point that their only recourse is to smear him? I have a hard time believing that this is the only way W knows how to win an election. Though, if you look at his political history, smearing has a long and illustrious history. John McCain–his own party member–can attest to this.
I’ve been making a video of political speeches for my job/assistantship at school. I’ve been pretty careful that I not so slant the speeches to the point where a party preference could be determined. I’ve looked high and low, spent over 5 hours cruising the internet and in all my looking around GOP and GW reelection websites I found very few clips of the President talking about the good job he’s done. Most focused on John Kerry’s “questionable record.”
Digging Zell Miller out of the nuthouse proves very little. Invariably, there will be folks that disagree with their party. I, for one, am thankful! What a great freedom to be able to disagree. But Zell Miller doesn’t take steps to reach conservative democrats, he simply serves to alienate himself from his party. If he truly wanted George W. Bush to seem inclusive, Miller would’ve established an issue that conservative democrats (centrists) could agree with and get behind.
Instead, Zell, you’ve sunk to the low tactics of the current administration’s pattern for election rhetoric. Attacking the person–rather than the ideas. Which, I guess, is to be expected. When one has been such a miserable domestic failure as W has, there’s little else left for him to attack than John Kerry’s person.
By the way Zell, as was pointed out over on Eschaton, it wasn’t long ago you were on the other side of the flip flop. Defending and introducing Kerry. How quickly things change.
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09.01.04
Posted in faith, politics at 4:28 pm by
Just a quick note for those of you who might be interested in this! I receive emails from Sojourners Magazine. I got this one this afternoon.
Rev. Jim Wallis and Rev. Jerry Falwell will appear “live” tonight on CNN’s popular television program “Anderson Cooper 360.” The hour-long program airs at 7 p.m. EST, and the Wallis-Falwell segment is scheduled to run closer to 7:30 p.m. Please check your local listings for more information.
Our “God is Not a Republican…or a Democrat” petition (www.takebackourfaith.org) is being well-received by the media. Look for another overview of Sojourners’ press coverage in Friday’s SojoMail, including commentary by Jim Wallis on President Bush’s convention speech.
If you haven’t already done it I would strongly encourage you to consider signing Sojourners’ online petition. I don’t know if it really helps or not–but it feels good!
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Posted in fun at 10:19 am by
I’m taking the Hugo Schwyzer challenge. Hugo in one of his latest installments took the effort to count and itemize each blog on his blogroll and categorize them as male and female.
His challenge all started with an article written by a man, Matt Stoller. The article–though I didn’t read it thoroughly–was about women blogging politically, or more correctly it was about women NOT blogging politically (or his perception that this was a rarer occourance.) This was followed up by a rebuttal from Amanda at mousewords.
Thus Hugo counted his blogs and challenged a number of folks to do that as well. Amanda’s logic in expecting 50/50 men and women in a blogroll seems to be based upon the notion that a good approxomate split between men and women is about half and half. This is quite possibly accurate. My thought is this (and I’m happy to have this admittedly raw thought critiqued) isn’t it quite possible for that number to include more women than men and have that be just? I mean, it would seem plausible that if of all the bloggers out there half were men and half were women then a just blogroll would be 50/50. But if there are more women bloggers out there, regardless of the topic, a blogroll would need to be greater than 50/50 to be a “just blogroll” that is representative.
I’m not sure if there’s been any research done on this, and if there has it probably is making its way to the stacks, and as such it would be pretty difficult to find. Although, if folks at typepad or blogspot were a representative sample we could make an estimation of the approxomate split.
This does beg the question, though, what if men were the more popular sex in the blogosphere? Should they be linked to more often than women? Personally, I think not. My reasoning is this. We live in a man’s culture, it’s never hard to hear the male opinion–just turn on the television watch the news, even the female anchorwoman tells you what a man wants to hear. We as a society need to place the woman’s voice in the forefront–we are lacking without it. Hearing the male voice is unconscious–it’s the default. One must go out of their way to hear a woman’s point of view. Since that’s true–I think we should then GO OUT OF OUR WAY to make a woman’s voice heard…unless you’re really ready to argue that a woman’s voice is unimportant?!?
Okay, so the Hugo Schwyzer challenge for a badchristian blog…:
6 women
11 men
hmmmm….looks like I’ve got my work cut out for me. It rather does prove my point though, the default is to hear the voices we’ve always heard–to never allow change to happen. Thanks Hugo, Amanda, and friends, for the wake-up call. And, keep posted–I’m on the warpath for some good female voices!
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