09.13.05
Posted in faith at 1:36 pm by
I’ll admit it. Sometimes, when I’m in line at the supermarket, I pick up a copy of the Weekly World News, or whatever the tabloid du jour is. I pick up the tabloid with the picture of the ‘bat baby’, and flip through a few pages. Sometimes, if I find the tabloid interesting enough, I’ll even buy a copy.
So, I suppose nobody’s surprised by the fact that yesterday, when I was over at the Christian Top 1000 page, I couldn’t help but cruise on over to the “Jesus Christ is the ONLY way to Heaven!!!” page. You should check it out. It’s worth a few laughs. I particularly like the ’sticky note’ philosophy to web design. That is, whenever something new happens, a new bit gets tacked on. Nothing old is ever deleted…just new stuff.
My personal favorite bit is the ‘beer is demonic’ part of the page. I found that to be particularly charming. Oh, and any page that uses the term ‘hellivision’ to refer to the evils of television–that’s a page worth checking out.
Anyway, as I perused my way down the page, I saw some link about feminism. I clicked it. As you will be when you click the little link, I was charmed. As I perused that page, I found out a befuddling truth. Are you ready? Ok. Here goes. Turns out, the natural end of feminism is lesbianism.
*Sigh*, who knew?
But, ah, isn’t there one minor problem with that? What about me and lots of other guys? I’m a feminist. Am I turning into a lesbian, too?
Can somebody from the ‘psycho-Conservative-Fundy’ league of Christian web developers (aka jesus-is-savior.com) fill me in on the details of this transformation?
Addendum: How could I have missed this bit…at the bottom of the page you get this message, “Created April 2002 A.D.” I’m glad they clarified the A.D. bit, of course with the average intellect of the readership there being what it is they might well easily make the mistake.
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09.12.05
Posted in grad school at 10:24 pm by
Every once in a great while, I complain about being a grad student. Sometimes, it’s because I just got my ass handed to me by a professor who, in a round about way, reminds me of my total depravity. Other times, I complain because it feels like I might never be finished with this little ’social experiment’ called higher learning. I really shouldn’t complain, eventually life will be normal again…but sometimes, being a grad student just gets to me.
Sometimes, I think I should’ve gone to grad school directly from my experience as an undergrad. But, then I remember I was a lazy ass student whose 100 thousand dollar (adjusted for the cost of inflation) education was wasted on him. I lament this fact sometimes. I really should’ve worked harder. This makes me realize that taking some time off to work between my BA and my MA and PhD wasn’t such a bad idea.
I can’t help but think I would’ve learned so much more had I been so persuaded to actually DO my readings. Yet, that supreme bit of advice somehow never made its way into my thick head. Don’t get me wrong, I learned things in college–just not as much as I should’ve learned.
Fortunately, a touch of perspective ala’ 3 years in the ‘real world’ seemed to do just the trick for my reticence to do my readings. Now, I’m a bonafide geek. I show up in class with the answers to most questions bouncing around in my head somewhere. I’m genuinely interested in what I study. That never happened (or only happened a few times) as an undergrad.
As I read the above, I am forced to wax philosophical on a few things. First, I’m incredibly self-absorbed right now. Set on pondering the random pitfalls of my own little educational existence. Second, the first thing is probably true because I spend so much time alone. I miss my wife.
You see, with gas prices being what they are, and with grad school being less than excited about the prospects of picking up and moving closer to Grand Rapids for my sake, I’ve started spending 2 nights a week in my little office in East Lansing. (Please, nobody tell the administration I’m sleeping on a cot in my office–I think that’s a violation of fire code.) Even as I write this, I’m typing in my 9 x 9 ‘bedroom.’
I know these seasons are only temporary, and that the end goal is worth it. (And, I know that my wife–also a grad student in addition to holding down a full time job–is just as busy as I, if not busier.)
I know that a blog is a place to have discourse. It’s a place to share ideas, and grow, and learn, and all that jazz. But, in another very real sense, y’all are a touch of community for me. A place that I come to be known when my Jen isn’t around. So, for being a community when I needed one most…friends, for that, I thank you.
We all live crazy lives. Many of you who come here to read are in the early stages of adulthood, you’re striving like mad to make ends meet, to establish yourselves academically, professionally, financially. And, while we share ideas, and we share thoughts, I think it’s only fair to at least identify that, to a degree, we share our lives, too.
We struggle out loud, and we cry out loud, and we laugh out loud. At eachother, and for each other. So, I guess what I’m saying is this: Thanks. Oh, and, I think we should have a blogvention.
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Posted in culture at 5:14 pm by
I’m sure this has been driven into the ground already in other places over the blogosphere–but, if it has, I haven’t seen it. Here’s my thing:
All over the news, you name it, FOX “News”, CNN, CBS, MSNBC, the Katrina victims being shipped around the US are being referred to as ‘refugees.’ Government officials calling these folks refugees, even God fearing church-goers (imagine that.) These people are NOT refugees. They ARE evacuees. They’ve been evacuated from their homes.
Refugees are people from another country. They’re not our own. To call the folks who’re evacuees ‘refugees’ is yet another in a long line of slaps to their face. They are us. They haven’t sought refuge from a foreign dictator, or a foreign war. They are us. We are them. They’ve been evacuated. To call them a refugee disowns them. It works, rhetorically, to make them less than American.
I know, you didn’t know the difference between ‘refugee’ and ‘evacuee’. And, you know what, neither did I until it was pointed out to me. Not knowing you’re a racist, or not knowing you’re participating in racist proceedures is not a defense of behaving in that way. These kinds of things root their way into all of our lives. It’s how we deal with the very real problem of racism in our lives that defines us.
Go ahead, accuse me of over-reacting, of making a mountain out of a molehill just like I did with ‘the blockbuster thing‘. Maybe it is just a molehill. (Though, I suspect not.) But, either way you slice it, enough molehills add up to one hell of a mountain.
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09.11.05
Posted in life at 9:40 am by
When I get to heaven, you’ll be able to find me at the Indigo Girls concert.
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09.08.05
Posted in life at 10:30 pm by
I promised Zalm that I’d have something to say that was inspired by Dave Bazan of Pedro the Lion and Headphones. I’ve been listening to this song for the past, oh, say, three days…um…straight. (You think I’m joking…I’ve really listened to it a lot.)
Anyway, I think that it nearly perfectly captures what Dave would say if he were involved in our little blog-versation about truthful communication and virtue. Frankly, I’ve been thinking about this post, and what I’d add to the song to make the post, well, ‘mine’. (As opposed to simply ripping off Dave’s lyrics.) For about 15 minutes last night I considered recording myself doing an MP3 cover of Dave’s song (which would’ve avoided copyright issues). But in a last minute decision crafted to not scare the shit out of all of you, I decided to put my ‘covers-of-indie-bands-career’ on temporary hold.
After all that contemplation, I decided that I hadn’t anything to add to Dave’s song. Here are the lyrics in full (but go to iTunes and buy yourself a copy):
Big Trucks
dad dad why did you let that man
push you around like that
you should have beat him down
down to the ground
down to the ground for that
he said son you’re still young
and you always jump the gun
there’s real people in the big big trucks
that you flip off when they get in your road
you get so hacked but you pay no mind
to the great big sign that says oversize load
you really think they can go as fast
as you in your 87 trans am
they know you’re in a terrible rush
they’re going just as fast as they can
dad dad i really don’t understand
what driving big trucks has to do with that man
you should of taught him a lesson about being rude
about talking to you with such an attitude
he said son you’re still young
and you always jump the gun
there’s real people in the big big trucks
that you flip off when they get in your road
you get so hacked but you pay no mind
to the great big sign that says oversize load
you really think they can go as fast
as you in your 87 trans am
they know you’re in such a terrible rush
they’re going just as fast as they can
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Posted in life at 10:14 am by
In a number of places, there’s been a discussion going on about the value of a story in understanding life. For example, Kristen McCarty–of McCarty Musings fame–wrote a nice piece on what ‘Christian fiction’ is all about. Also, Zalm, of From the Salmon, referenced the latest Sojourners issue. The last point raised in the piece by Brian McLaren was that we should be tellers of stories in order to bridge the gaps between individuals.
I think this is a fascinating thought. That we should be story tellers. I think that, quite often, we (or at least I) rely on our (my) powers of logic and persuasion to stir up passions in people. From an academic perspective of suasatory influence (persuasion), this just doesn’t make much sense.
For whatever reasons, the human mind is much more swayed (at least in some situations) by metaphorical evidence than it is by statistical evidence. (And, I’m refering to metaphorical evidence somewhat synonomously with storytelling in the sense that humans are likely to draw connections for themselves between the stories and life. That is, the story is a metaphor for reality.)
Now, that’s not to say that one should, in a truth-seeking dialogue, NEVER use statistical evidence to support one’s perspective. In situations where others are exceptionally knowlegeable about a topic, such statistical evidence can be effective. However, in colloquial situations such as blog-conversations, such statistical or logical evidence is oft tossed aside. (There’s a place for such support, but I’ll get to that in a paragraph or three.)
When people dialogue, it seems that the most fruitful dialogue happens when we tell stories, often times. They’re more persuasive to people who might be hostile to the opinions we espouse. Stories allow us to see the nuts and bolts of a perspective and then to draw our own conclusions about that perspective.
Stories allow us to venture into a world that might be foreign to us. We can, through that story, poke around a bit. Stories allow us to discover for ourselves what we might have otherwise been hostile to; we can explore at our own pace.
Interestingly, scientific results seem to back this assertion. In a 1968 study in the Department of Communication at Michigan State, experimenters found that arguments containing analogies were more persuasive than arguments that didn’t use any form of analogy in situations where individuals had both high and low initial credibility (McCroskey & Combs, 1968).
Now, I’m not going to argue that persuasion should be the dependent variable of interest in every dialogue. In fact, I don’t think it should. But, I do think that this result (and honestly, many other more recent studies that have found similar results) should signify something important about the use of metaphor. There’s something about the telling of stories that makes them pallatable. And, pallatability is what’s–sometimes–lacking in our blog-conversations.
We’re in a big damn hurry to make a judgement about the “other side,” and all to often, we use heuristic judgements to do it, I’d hypothesize. I think the story slows this effect down a touch. When we’re not given ‘the be all end all of ‘truth'’ from some ‘authority’ that percieves her or himself to be God’s gift of knowlege to the planet, we’re much more likely to observe a bit and draw conclusions about things that we might otherwise not do.
As I said before, statisical and logical evidence (particularly in academic circles) is valuable. But in such a mixed setting as a blog, they’re less helpful. And, frankly, I think we need all the help we can get.
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09.06.05
Posted in faith, life at 8:06 pm by
I know, I know, lots of you are in favor of opening up a hunting season for Calvinists. Perhaps, you’d train your hound-dogs to recognize the scent of “Institutes of the Christian Religion” and you’d send them out to root us out of our dank little holes. Some of you think the world would be better without us. I know. Frankly, I can, off the top of my head none-the-less, think of a few Calvinists I could do without.
But, I am one. Now, I’m not the sort of Calvinist you’d be likely to argue with…well, actually, I am. But, that’s more because I’m one beligerent son-of-a-bitch, it’s not particularly related to my breed of Calvinism. That is, I’m a Calvinist in the vein of Abraham Kuyper. I’m what the cool hip young Calvinists have been calling a ‘neo-Calvinist’. I’m not really a good neo-Calvinist, (of course bad-neo-Calvinist.com is one hell of a mouthful) but I try. Basically, a neo-Calvinist is a person who believes that every single square inch of everything falls under the Lordship of God. It’s all a part of the Kingdom of God. Because that’s the case, every single part of the Kingdom aches for renewal.
Yada yada yada…renewal, reclaimation, etc, etc, and so on and so forth. We neo-Calvinists are a slippery bunch. You get the idea.
As a Calvinist, or neo-Calvinist as the case may be, I don’t like natural disasters. They put a kink in the bow of my nicely wrapped ’soverign God’ package. It’s all well and good to be a believer in a soverign God when good stuff is happening all around. But, honestly, Katrina shakes my faith to its very roots. How can an all-knowing, all-seeing, all-powerful God let such a terrible thing happen to her people.
Now, I’m not saying that we Calvinists don’t have some pat answers for this. We do. I could rattle them off for you (see, I’ve taken apologetics, too.) Yet, somehow those pat answers don’t seem to placate me like they once did. And, like lots of folks, I could lie to you and say that I totally understand how this all fits into God’s plan. Some of these folks even believe themselves.
See, I’m not buying what they’re selling. They’re selling shares in understanding. I don’t think I need understanding. What I need is a faith that ‘does.’ As I reread this, the concept of a faith that ‘does’ is particularly abstract. Stick with me here, I think what I mean will become more clear. Somehow, an immovable, unshakeable understanding has become synonomous with a strong faith. (And, to be honest, according to the logic of the Kingdom of Man this makes perfect sense.) However, the logic of the Kingdom of God–the same one that asks for faith like a mustard seed–defies this.
I think, in a wierd way, that my very shakeable, movable, uncertainty, is exactly the thing that makes my faith strong. I think the Indigo Girls got it right with their song Closer to Fine. Here’s an excerpt (but go read the whole thing):
I’m trying to tell you something about my life
Maybe give me insight between black and white
And the best thing you’ve ever done for me
Is to help me take my life less seriously
It’s only life after all
Yeah
Well darkness has a hunger that’s insatiable
And lightness has a call that’s hard to hear
I wrap my fear around me like a blanket
I sailed my ship of safety till I sank it
I’m crawling on your shores
I went to the doctor, I went to the mountains
I looked to the children, I drank from the fountains
There’s more than one answer to these questions
Pointing me in a crooked line
And the less I seek my source for some definitive
The closer I am to fine
The closer I am to fine
I think Amy Ray and Emily Saliers captured the upside down logic of the Kingdom of God. It’s not that we give up on the search for understanding. It’s not that we stop trying to figure it all out. I think the light dawns when we realize that the ‘answer’ isn’t really the answer to the question. The search, in and of itself, is the answer to the question.
Which brings me, in a round-a-bout way, back to faith. You see, perhaps faith isn’t something to be ‘had’ in the traditional sense. Perhaps, it’s something to be done. Perhaps, by the very quest for the answers, by the examination and acceptance of the shaking of the very roots of what we call faith, we’ll realize that faith isn’t finding the answers. Faith isn’t understanding some abstract concept.
Faith, I think, in the upside down logic of the Kingdom of God, grows by participating in the process of uncertainty.
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09.05.05
Posted in faith, culture at 9:09 am by
This post started off as a comment on Zalm’s excellent Conversation Peace series. It got much too long for a comment on somebody’s blog, so I brought it over here. To give a bit of background, this series is about the medium of blogging in the process of dialogue. It takes an ethical spin on the way we are to communicate across this medium. In a recent post, Zalm and Kristen (from McCarty Musings) raised a question: Is it okay to be outraged, and then, is it okay to express that outrage. They thought that, yes, there was a place for that…but how, then, should we communicate that outrage honestly, how do we communicate our anger fairly.
Interesting question. What’s the ethic of outrage?
Years ago, my dad led a seminar on feelings at our Junior High. That was back when I was in junior high, so, yeah, that was a while ago. Anyway, the thing I took from that seminar was that “feelings aren’t right or wrong, they just are.” So, to apply that to this situation, outrage itself isn’t the problem.
Rather, the challenge (I’m not really sure it’s a problem) with outrage is how to express it, if I’m understanding the debate correctly. It seems that, if outrage is normal and okay to feel, it must be okay to express that outrage. To me, if there’s nothing fundamentally wrong with a human emotion, there shouldn’t be anything wrong with expressing that emotion, per se.
I think, though, that Zalm was right on the money with virtue number one of his Conversation Peace series. Honesty. I think that in expressing our outrage, we should rise above political tricksterism and foolish rhetoric. Here’s a great example (humbly submitted, because I’m the jackass that pulled off this intentional rhetorical ‘lie’):
In my discussion with Mr. Scott about the hurricane relief debacle over at my blog, I made the comment:
Scott, perhaps folks would take you a tad more seriously if you weren’t spewing partisan rhetorical mis-information and finding the closest black democrat to tack this whole mess on.
Okay, so if you look closely, I’ve basically levelled a deniable rhetorical condemnation of racism on Scott. In responding, Scott was pissed that I played the race card. Now, had I not seen what a jackassety move I’d made, I could’ve responded that I was merely making a statment of fact about the black mayor thing, that I wasn’t meaning to infer that Scott was, in fact, a racist. Of course, I was. And that, to me, is rhetorical cheating. So, if you’re still reading Scott, out of anger, I was unfair and for that I apologize.
I could use any number of other examples, probably looking to Karl Rove for the next bunch (as Rove should have a Ph.D. in this kind of rhetoric) but frankly, I think the fact that I’m dishonest, probably regularly, is humbling and example enough. I think being rhetorically honest in the blogosphere is a HUGE issue. One of the most used rhetorical techniques is often ad hominem. When we can’t really win an argument on reason, we tear down the person we’re arguing with.
So, if we’re going to be honest and not misrepresent individuals or individual’s viewpoints (i.e. any of the family of red herring fallacies,) I think we’ve got to overhaul the way we do dialogue. And, while I’ve clearly represented that I’m no saint, I’d like to share one thing that I feel I do well, too. If we shouldn’t rely on character assasination to express our outrage, what then?
Frankly, I think this is one of the most important reasons that Christians SHOULD be swearing more.
I know. I just lost you there. What do I mean by that? Well, I think that most ’salty language’ conveys a sense of emotion and power that other words cannot convey. If people are going to be telling the truth about their feelings, AND not running around denigrating their detractors, I think it’s only fair that people really use the words they mean.
For example in expressing my anger and frustration about something, I would hypothesize that the more truthful expression of frustration would be for me to say:
Dammit-all, that fuckin’ pisses me off.
as compared to the more angelic but less honest:
Sheesh, that really drives me up the wall.
I might even hypothesize that if one isn’t able to honestly cathart those feelings they have with honest (if more salty) language, they’re probably more likely to participate in dishonest rhetoric (ad hominem, red herrings, etc) to get their point acrossed. Now, that’s a lot of hypotheses, and I don’t have any scientific support for them, yet they seem logical. (Perhaps, if any of you study communication out there you could do a study…oh, wait, that’s me.)
A while ago a commenter commented (and now I can’t find the comment to save my life) that she didn’t realize the value of the ’salty word’ until a friend of hers had been raped. She said that the pat phrases that were ‘commonly appropriate’ sounded trite and somewhat irreverant. (For example, try telling a rape victim what happened to them is, “really unfortunate, a real bummer, that sucks, etc.”) The only words that really captured honestly the tenor of the day were ’salty’ words, words commonly conceived of as vulgar.
Sometimes, honesty requires us to break down the mores of society and just, well, be honest no matter the cost. I don’t have all the answers here, but I think your voices are as important as mine in this discussion, so with that, I turn it over to you. What do y’all think about the ‘ethic of outrage’?
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09.02.05
Posted in politics, life at 7:32 pm by
I have to make one last post about my newest least favorite person: Michael Brown of FEMA.
Who had these things to say about the folks stuck in New Orleans:
I don’t make judgments about why people chose not to leave but, you know, there was a mandatory evacuation of New Orleans,” he said.
“And to find people still there is just heart-wrenching to me because, you know, the mayor did everything he could to get them out of there.
and this:
When evacuation warnings go out, people should realize it’s for their own good.
Yes, indeed, Mr. Brown. Your heartfelt sympathy is duly noted. The subtext of your comment, (i.e. those fucking poor people are making a headache for me…usually I just sit on my ass and play flash video games on my computer and don’t actually have to do any real ‘work’) is truly astounding.
If you were doing your fucking job Mr. Brown, you’d have made sure there were busses down in New Orleans BEFORE Katrina hit. THEN, perhaps, you’d have a leg to stand on.
As it is, you’re a pathetic little blame throwing loser. And, to think, you’ve nothing better to do than blame the indigent for their lot in life. Yes, indeed, those stupid fucking poor people, didn’t they know there was a hurricane a-comin’? Those morons that didn’t leave the city, indeed.
It’s pretty comfortable to be a white upperclass man and talk about how people should’ve just hopped in their Lexuses and cruised on up to the Smokey Mountains for a month or two at your gated-community vacation home; however, there are some folks without that luxury.
I’ve critiqued Soledad O’Brien before for trying to make a news story about Government unpreparedness where there truly was no story. But, this time, Mr. Brown, Ms. O’Brien, I think, is right on the money with her critique. Mr. Brown, the President can even admit that:
“The results are not enough”
(And yes, that might actually be the first admission that anything has gone less than optimally in the past 5 or so years of the administration.) Mr. Brown, George “I couldn’t admit that I made a mistake or admit a minor judgmental error if I was caught masturbating to a picture of Michael Jackson” W. Bush, has admitted that you fucked up. That’s professional homocide if I’ve ever heard it.
My suggestion: First, the obvious–fire Michael Brown, soon, maybe even tomorrow. Second, hire a survivor of Katrina to do Mr. Brown’s job. Someone who had to take a shit in an overflowing toilet, or had to witness the death of a husband or wife. Someone who chose to break into a convenience store in order to provide their family with enough provisions to survive.
I’d say more, but, friends, I think I’m actually speechless.
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Posted in life at 5:05 pm by
Hello friends,
I’ll be out for the labor day weekend. Perhaps, I’ll be back a-bloggin’ on Sunday or Monday, but I can’t be sure. But, I wish you the best.
I’ll be camping. If you pray, pray that I don’t get too drunk and start cursing loudly at the mosquitoes…like last time.
Thanks,
Brandon
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