You will always hear people going on about how religion is dead, based on the latest Pew report, which they generally have never read, based on the percentage of people they consider to be religiously non-affiliated, the "nones". "Nones" is a category invented, as I've pointed out before by Barry Kosmin, a speaker promoted by the atheist promotion group, Center for Inquiry, a board member of it and who, also, invented the category because he didn't want to say what his research showed, that in the United States being affiliated with a religious denomination was the norm. A rather odd thing for a sociologist to be able to get away with doing, you would think, especially as he would appear to have both an ideological and, likely, something of a financial interest in the promotion of atheism.
But you may also notice that such claims are usually based on assertions around declining church attendance among Americans, which is a rather superficial measure of a-religiosity. As I've pointed out, as well, I would be considered a "none" since I don't consider myself a member of any particular denomination and I haven't regularly attended church other than funerals and weddings for decades. Clearly that as a means of identifying someone as religious, that doesn't work.
A curious page on the Pew website I hadn't noticed before the other day is this one, 5 facts about prayer which contains this as "fact" #3
3For many Americans, every day is a day of prayer. More than half (55%) of Americans said they pray every day, according to a 2013 Pew Research Center survey, while 23% said they pray weekly or monthly and 21% said they seldom or never pray. Even among those who are religiously unaffiliated, 21% said they pray daily. Women (65%) are more likely than men (46%) to pray every day. Older people (60%) are more likely than younger adults (45%) to say they pray daily.
Note that even as they give those numbers they conflate those who "seldom pray" but still pray with those who never pray. Which, when the question is religious identity is a completely relevant and even definitive distinction. I really don't know where these Pew numbers crunchers and analysts get their training in reasoning, perhaps the same place that Barry Kosmin did.
But the Pew numbers do match my experience. While, as a New Englander, I hold such things as extremely personal and not to be widely talked about, I pray every day, several times a day. The Sunni requirement of five times a day seems kind of skimpy to me. I didn't when I was in my teens or twenties, or my early thirties. I was pretty much an agnostic all that time, reading all of the anti-religious stuff from Bertrand Russell, Thomas Huxley, more modern writers, as well. I also studied Theravada Buddhism which is entirely reticent on the question of the creation of the universe and God, holding those are superfluous to becoming enlightened.
It was only, later, when I began to realize what a disaster materialism was for democracy, for liberalism, that I went back and re-read the Gospels and also began the long process of reviewing the secular, anti-religious authors who had so influenced my youth and early adulthood with as critical an eye as they presented religion in. That was a slow process until the wider writings of those and other such authors became available in complete form, from neutral sources, online. Once I read those I was pretty certain that materialism in every form it has taken is a malignancy in human society and the world. I didn't get that from reading the critics of materialism and atheism, I read it in the words of the materialists, themselves.
While I had practiced various forms of meditation as found in the great Buddhist contribution in psychology and meditation technology, somewhere along the line, prayers started forming in my mind as I did that. Today I practice a sort of self-invented Jewish-Christian, perhaps Islamic, adaptation of Buddhist meditation which suits my purposes. I also call to mind different verses of scriptures, most of them Jewish and Christian, one of them the first part of the Shema, though I didn't realize that was what it was until later. I don't know where I picked it up. I also think on the Lord's prayer and always think about the passage in Matthew about what doing good to the least among us means.
Now, as a New Englander, that feels a lot like dreaming about being in school in my underwear, so don't expect me to ever talk about it again.
I remember, once, an agnostic told me that he prayed at times, and it wasn't the kind of flippant prayer such as the one Ernest Renan wrote. If you counted how many of those "nones" prayed instead of counting how many of them are going to church or claimed membership in a denomination, I suspect the headlines announcing the death of religion would evaporate and such outfits as Pew would have to look for other ways to get into the news. Though it wouldn't stop online atheists from lying about the numbers.
Wednesday, June 3, 2015
Tuesday, June 2, 2015
Quick Lunch
By chance no one was here during lunch time so I could go online. I went to Rupert Sheldrake's site to see if there was anything new and found a new podcast
a sort of review discussion of a book by Nick Spencer, Atheists, The Origin of the Species. Of course, Mark Vernon and Rupert Sheldrake are different in tone from what I write, and I agree with almost everything. I do think Sheldrake is a bit more charitable and optimistic about the ultimate role that atheism has held and will likely hold in the future. While I think there is some of their discussion that some more informed atheists either won't find surprising or will be pleased by, I don't think most of them would like it.
I like what Mark Vernon says about the central contradiction of the new atheism, something which if you mention to the blog atheists, they glaze over in total incomprehension. Then they go on to talk about the kind of "Christianity lite" that some atheists try to adopt. I really don't agree with Sheldrake at that point about the value of "Humanism" in the civil rights struggle the success of which I think depended, entirely, on the force of religious belief to succeed. What he says about John Gray's kind of atheism is more likely, I think, to be the result of atheism in the world. That can be seen by atheists snarking about "human rights warriors", apparently the successor of the "Neville Chamberlain atheists" who they snarked about before. I totally agree with the idea they discuss that atheism likely will, inevitably, devolve into that kind of amoral atheist assertion, usually based in an especially vulgar, 1920s--30s notion of natural selection.
But, for the most part I agree with them.
Apparently, from the mention of the solar eclipse that happened the day they recorded it was March 20. I've got to get back to work.
Update: Malplena poto sonas la plej laŭte.
a sort of review discussion of a book by Nick Spencer, Atheists, The Origin of the Species. Of course, Mark Vernon and Rupert Sheldrake are different in tone from what I write, and I agree with almost everything. I do think Sheldrake is a bit more charitable and optimistic about the ultimate role that atheism has held and will likely hold in the future. While I think there is some of their discussion that some more informed atheists either won't find surprising or will be pleased by, I don't think most of them would like it.
I like what Mark Vernon says about the central contradiction of the new atheism, something which if you mention to the blog atheists, they glaze over in total incomprehension. Then they go on to talk about the kind of "Christianity lite" that some atheists try to adopt. I really don't agree with Sheldrake at that point about the value of "Humanism" in the civil rights struggle the success of which I think depended, entirely, on the force of religious belief to succeed. What he says about John Gray's kind of atheism is more likely, I think, to be the result of atheism in the world. That can be seen by atheists snarking about "human rights warriors", apparently the successor of the "Neville Chamberlain atheists" who they snarked about before. I totally agree with the idea they discuss that atheism likely will, inevitably, devolve into that kind of amoral atheist assertion, usually based in an especially vulgar, 1920s--30s notion of natural selection.
But, for the most part I agree with them.
Apparently, from the mention of the solar eclipse that happened the day they recorded it was March 20. I've got to get back to work.
Update: Malplena poto sonas la plej laŭte.
Fast Work Day Post
First, I'd better point out that during Lent when I was fasting from taking notice of the snark being flung at me from the rump of commentators at Eschaton, I assumed the pseudonym "Camera Obscura" to post comments on other blogs under, I'd been getting trolled by He Who Craves Attention when I used my own name and I didn't want to be tempted to respond to him. I have been keeping the same pseudonym since then to avoid his trolling, I assume I'll have to either put up with that now or to adopt a new one. The boy does love to act out to get attention for himself.
Here is a small part of the exchange I had over at Religion Dispatches. If you want to read them in all of their embedded, out of order confusion, you can look at it there. I think this brings up an interesting point as to where the value of truth is more likely to arise, from religion or from atheism.
The idea that is an either/or proposition is really bizarre, considering the idea that the truth is superior to lies is, itself, thoroughly embedded in moral obligations.
As shown, yesterday, atheists, when challenged to account for the huge numbers of murders, the huge mass of oppression committed by atheist will take refuge in a pose that, why, atheism is just the negation of belief, it contains nothing else, heaven, help us, so to speak, it's not an ideology. More about which later.
So, just for now, taking atheists at their word about their ideology, atheism contains no commandment to tell the truth, it contains no means of evaluating the reasons to tell the truth over lying when that is expedient, when it is just desired or just for any reason.
Neither can the science that they claim as their property do that. I have yet to have anyone point out to me the scientific paper that contains scientific evidence that we are required to tell the truth or even that it is better to tell the truth. Of course, science is entirely unequipped for that task. So, neither atheism nor science can assert a firm position that the truth is better than lies. And neither can materialism.
On the other hand, in addition to those two quote from the Second Testament I mentioned, I went looking at concordances for mentions of the truth in the entire cannon. Here are just a few mentions of the word in the Revised Standard Version from the Psalms and Proverbs.
Those who walk blamelessly, and do what is right, and speak the truth from their heart Psalm 15:2
Lead me in your truth, and teach me, for you are the God of my salvation; for you I wait all day long. Psalm 25:5
O send out your light and your truth; let them lead me; Psalm 43:3
In your majesty ride on victoriously for the cause of truth and to defend the right; Psalm 45:4
You desire truth in the inward being; therefore teach me wisdom in my secret heart. Psalm 51:6
You love evil more than good, and lying more than speaking the truth
Psalm 52:3
Teach me your way, O Lord, that I may walk in your truth Psalm 86:11
Do not take the word of truth utterly out of my mouth, for my hope is in your ordinances. Psalm 119:43
The Lord is near to all who call on him, to all who call on him in truth. Psalm 145:18
for my mouth will utter truth; wickedness is an abomination to my lips. Proverbs 8:7
Whoever speaks the truth gives honest evidence, but a false witness speaks deceitfully. Proverbs 12:17
Truthful lips endure forever, but a lying tongue lasts only a moment. Proverbs 12:19
A truthful witness saves lives, but one who utters lies is a betrayer. Proverbs 14:25
Buy truth, and do not sell it; buy wisdom, instruction, and understanding. Proverbs 23:23
Certainly, in other religions, certainly those I've read in, Islam, Buddhism, Hinduism, there are similar injunctions to tell the truth and praise for knowing and speaking the truth, all of which, by their own professions of atheism being just a denial of belief, would be entirely absent from atheism. Which certainly has been confirmed in my experience with arguing with atheists online. Whatever compulsion they have in line with regarding the truth to be superior to the false must come from somewhere other than their ideology and a lot of them would appear to feel no such compulsion.
This business of drawing distinctions between knowing and believing, reasoning and feeling, is dishonest in itself. I think those are frequently false distinctions used to deny the fact that there is no bright line between knowing and believing, reasoning and feeling. Every person who does those things are all the same person, doing so out of their one mind. I think we, ultimately, choose to believe what we know, I think our feelings are certainly involved in that as much as reason is. As can be seen with what is so often asserted to be known, most evident in the blog babble of self-advertised rationalists, feeling has everything to do with it. And the nature of what is felt has everything to do with the moral nature of the outcome, for better and even up to the worst.
Here is a small part of the exchange I had over at Religion Dispatches. If you want to read them in all of their embedded, out of order confusion, you can look at it there. I think this brings up an interesting point as to where the value of truth is more likely to arise, from religion or from atheism.
The idea that is an either/or proposition is really bizarre, considering the idea that the truth is superior to lies is, itself, thoroughly embedded in moral obligations.
As shown, yesterday, atheists, when challenged to account for the huge numbers of murders, the huge mass of oppression committed by atheist will take refuge in a pose that, why, atheism is just the negation of belief, it contains nothing else, heaven, help us, so to speak, it's not an ideology. More about which later.
So, just for now, taking atheists at their word about their ideology, atheism contains no commandment to tell the truth, it contains no means of evaluating the reasons to tell the truth over lying when that is expedient, when it is just desired or just for any reason.
Neither can the science that they claim as their property do that. I have yet to have anyone point out to me the scientific paper that contains scientific evidence that we are required to tell the truth or even that it is better to tell the truth. Of course, science is entirely unequipped for that task. So, neither atheism nor science can assert a firm position that the truth is better than lies. And neither can materialism.
On the other hand, in addition to those two quote from the Second Testament I mentioned, I went looking at concordances for mentions of the truth in the entire cannon. Here are just a few mentions of the word in the Revised Standard Version from the Psalms and Proverbs.
Those who walk blamelessly, and do what is right, and speak the truth from their heart Psalm 15:2
Lead me in your truth, and teach me, for you are the God of my salvation; for you I wait all day long. Psalm 25:5
O send out your light and your truth; let them lead me; Psalm 43:3
In your majesty ride on victoriously for the cause of truth and to defend the right; Psalm 45:4
You desire truth in the inward being; therefore teach me wisdom in my secret heart. Psalm 51:6
You love evil more than good, and lying more than speaking the truth
Psalm 52:3
Teach me your way, O Lord, that I may walk in your truth Psalm 86:11
Do not take the word of truth utterly out of my mouth, for my hope is in your ordinances. Psalm 119:43
The Lord is near to all who call on him, to all who call on him in truth. Psalm 145:18
for my mouth will utter truth; wickedness is an abomination to my lips. Proverbs 8:7
Whoever speaks the truth gives honest evidence, but a false witness speaks deceitfully. Proverbs 12:17
Truthful lips endure forever, but a lying tongue lasts only a moment. Proverbs 12:19
A truthful witness saves lives, but one who utters lies is a betrayer. Proverbs 14:25
Buy truth, and do not sell it; buy wisdom, instruction, and understanding. Proverbs 23:23
Certainly, in other religions, certainly those I've read in, Islam, Buddhism, Hinduism, there are similar injunctions to tell the truth and praise for knowing and speaking the truth, all of which, by their own professions of atheism being just a denial of belief, would be entirely absent from atheism. Which certainly has been confirmed in my experience with arguing with atheists online. Whatever compulsion they have in line with regarding the truth to be superior to the false must come from somewhere other than their ideology and a lot of them would appear to feel no such compulsion.
This business of drawing distinctions between knowing and believing, reasoning and feeling, is dishonest in itself. I think those are frequently false distinctions used to deny the fact that there is no bright line between knowing and believing, reasoning and feeling. Every person who does those things are all the same person, doing so out of their one mind. I think we, ultimately, choose to believe what we know, I think our feelings are certainly involved in that as much as reason is. As can be seen with what is so often asserted to be known, most evident in the blog babble of self-advertised rationalists, feeling has everything to do with it. And the nature of what is felt has everything to do with the moral nature of the outcome, for better and even up to the worst.
Monday, June 1, 2015
Hate Mail - I'm not on 3rd Grade Play Ground Duty This Week
If I responded to every stupid thing that gets said about me I'd never get any serious reading done. Stupid people say stupid things because they don't understand things and are too lazy to find out. Look at the Bertrand Russell quote in the left sidebar. Though the one from Gwendolyn Brooks is much more interesting and the one on my masthead, too.
Between Rounds Analyses
A resolution broken in less than 24 hours was that I wouldn't get involved in a blog brawl this weekend. I got into it on Saturday and, since it rained here, thank God, yesterday and continues today, I can't get much done in my garden. So it kept up. I don't think I ever thought it out, as such, but I have kind of adopted the scorched Earth policy in debating online atheists. I think the topics are serious enough in their importance and in the results that are guaranteed to come with the adoption of their ideology that any point they raise that can be refuted, must be refuted. As their talking points are all quite threadbare from being hauled out for years, decades and centuries, once you know the refutation of them, it is necessary to keep repeating those every time you run into them.
There were several aspects in the claims of the atheists during this brawl, some of them identifying themselves as "Humanists" one claiming to have been something of a "Humanist" chaplain. I'll quickly go over several of those in some posts.
One of their favorites is the citation of the many historical and contemporary instances in which purportedly believing Christians have murdered, oppressed, enslaved, etc. people, violating just about everything Jesus said and the Law and the teachings of the apostles and early members of the Church in Jerusalem and elsewhere in the earliest documented generations of the religion. Since they come up with pithy aphorisms to hurl against religion, I made up one.
To claim that the violations of the teachings of Jesus by Christians debunk Christianity makes about as much sense as claiming that mistakes in multiplying debunk arithmetic.
You could substitute the frequent violations by scientists of scientific method debunking scientific method or any number of other idols of the atheists in that formula.
But even weirder ideas come up when, in response to your pointing out the crimes and sins of atheists, atheists declaim any responsibility for their ideology because "Atheism is the absence of belief in a god(s). That's it. No extras, no side orders, no creed and no manifesto." as just one of them put it.
Which makes any criticisms made by atheists of the crimes and sins of religious people logically incoherent. They would have to leave their ideology to even find the idea that what such criminals and sinners do was wrong, never mind to find the pose of moral indignance that is a hall mark of the skit that they put on daily, in many places. Even by their own and always opportunistically made assertion, atheism lacks the ability to determine that something is immoral, yet, somehow they make accusations of immorality in others in support of atheism.
Clearly they have to swipe the idea of morals and immorality from outside of their atheism because, by their own admission, atheism doesn't produce those.
And, since, just about to a person, they erect an idol they identify as science* as their replacement god, they can't find the idea of morals or immorality from that source either. They will, also, inevitably exempt science from any dealing with morals or morality, declaiming that the pure, chaste entity that is "science" doesn't truck in such stuff and is fully exempt from any moral analysis of what "it" does in the world.
As it is, atheists do what amoral ideologues always do, they try to have it both ways depending on what is to their advantage at any single point in a brawl. They will use morality that they would have had to take from some other ideology or intellectual manifestation, almost always those derived from religion to attack religious peoples' failures in living up to those moral teachings which atheism doesn't not only produce but frequently attacks. But when someone calls to mind things like the scores of millions killed under atheist regimes, they suddenly revert to claiming their ideological privilege because "atheism is just an absence of belief". I asked the "Humanist" chaplain,
I really would like to ask you, as a "Humanist" chaplain, where do you find moral positions since neither atheism nor science produce those?
That is a question that I've never gotten an answer to when I asked it. Of course atheists don't hold their side up to the same moral meter stick that they do religion.
I used to say that was something they share in common with all fundamentalists. But I think that does an injustice to some fundamentalists who do, unlike many of the ones whose faces get on TV, do hold themselves up against their understanding of their moral obligations as laid out in scriptures. Only you're not likely to find any who made a successful show biz career out of that practice. I might disagree with their conclusions and their reading of those scriptures but at least they're trying. I would encourage them to take what Jesus said more seriously, I think they'd never oppress or kill anyone if they did.
* Of course, when they talk about "science" they are referring to their ultra-romanticized, non-existent ideal form which they, somehow as materialists, seem to believe exists independent of the scientists who invented science, set its methods, staked out the territory it covered (originally much less than it has gained under the ideological hegemony of atheists and others) and declared their invention exempt from considerations of morality, despite the one clear fact, that science produces ever more powerful and efficacious means of doing evil, often with the total and complete knowledge of the scientists who devise those means of doing evil things. Unless anyone needs to be reminded, the candidates that will most likely kill us all, nuclear weapons, climate change due to the activities of the extraction industries, etc. are all brought to us by scientists.
That those perils have had their scientist alarm sounders and even, occasionally, organized opposition doesn't count for much. I would like to be able to question such scientist activists around the matter of the moral exemptions that scientists granted themselves and the role that exemption has played in the near total impotence of their efforts to counter the results of science.
There were several aspects in the claims of the atheists during this brawl, some of them identifying themselves as "Humanists" one claiming to have been something of a "Humanist" chaplain. I'll quickly go over several of those in some posts.
One of their favorites is the citation of the many historical and contemporary instances in which purportedly believing Christians have murdered, oppressed, enslaved, etc. people, violating just about everything Jesus said and the Law and the teachings of the apostles and early members of the Church in Jerusalem and elsewhere in the earliest documented generations of the religion. Since they come up with pithy aphorisms to hurl against religion, I made up one.
To claim that the violations of the teachings of Jesus by Christians debunk Christianity makes about as much sense as claiming that mistakes in multiplying debunk arithmetic.
You could substitute the frequent violations by scientists of scientific method debunking scientific method or any number of other idols of the atheists in that formula.
But even weirder ideas come up when, in response to your pointing out the crimes and sins of atheists, atheists declaim any responsibility for their ideology because "Atheism is the absence of belief in a god(s). That's it. No extras, no side orders, no creed and no manifesto." as just one of them put it.
Which makes any criticisms made by atheists of the crimes and sins of religious people logically incoherent. They would have to leave their ideology to even find the idea that what such criminals and sinners do was wrong, never mind to find the pose of moral indignance that is a hall mark of the skit that they put on daily, in many places. Even by their own and always opportunistically made assertion, atheism lacks the ability to determine that something is immoral, yet, somehow they make accusations of immorality in others in support of atheism.
Clearly they have to swipe the idea of morals and immorality from outside of their atheism because, by their own admission, atheism doesn't produce those.
And, since, just about to a person, they erect an idol they identify as science* as their replacement god, they can't find the idea of morals or immorality from that source either. They will, also, inevitably exempt science from any dealing with morals or morality, declaiming that the pure, chaste entity that is "science" doesn't truck in such stuff and is fully exempt from any moral analysis of what "it" does in the world.
As it is, atheists do what amoral ideologues always do, they try to have it both ways depending on what is to their advantage at any single point in a brawl. They will use morality that they would have had to take from some other ideology or intellectual manifestation, almost always those derived from religion to attack religious peoples' failures in living up to those moral teachings which atheism doesn't not only produce but frequently attacks. But when someone calls to mind things like the scores of millions killed under atheist regimes, they suddenly revert to claiming their ideological privilege because "atheism is just an absence of belief". I asked the "Humanist" chaplain,
I really would like to ask you, as a "Humanist" chaplain, where do you find moral positions since neither atheism nor science produce those?
That is a question that I've never gotten an answer to when I asked it. Of course atheists don't hold their side up to the same moral meter stick that they do religion.
I used to say that was something they share in common with all fundamentalists. But I think that does an injustice to some fundamentalists who do, unlike many of the ones whose faces get on TV, do hold themselves up against their understanding of their moral obligations as laid out in scriptures. Only you're not likely to find any who made a successful show biz career out of that practice. I might disagree with their conclusions and their reading of those scriptures but at least they're trying. I would encourage them to take what Jesus said more seriously, I think they'd never oppress or kill anyone if they did.
* Of course, when they talk about "science" they are referring to their ultra-romanticized, non-existent ideal form which they, somehow as materialists, seem to believe exists independent of the scientists who invented science, set its methods, staked out the territory it covered (originally much less than it has gained under the ideological hegemony of atheists and others) and declared their invention exempt from considerations of morality, despite the one clear fact, that science produces ever more powerful and efficacious means of doing evil, often with the total and complete knowledge of the scientists who devise those means of doing evil things. Unless anyone needs to be reminded, the candidates that will most likely kill us all, nuclear weapons, climate change due to the activities of the extraction industries, etc. are all brought to us by scientists.
That those perils have had their scientist alarm sounders and even, occasionally, organized opposition doesn't count for much. I would like to be able to question such scientist activists around the matter of the moral exemptions that scientists granted themselves and the role that exemption has played in the near total impotence of their efforts to counter the results of science.
Saturday, May 30, 2015
Gildas Boclé, Jean-Baptiste Boclé - Candy Men
Jacques Pellen - Guitar
Gildas Boclé - Bass,
Jean Baptiste Boclé - Organ, Synthesizer, Vibraphone
Ronan le Bas - Uillean pipes
Michael Brecker - Saxophone
Marcello Pellitteri - Percussion, Drums
Friday, May 29, 2015
Fats Navarro - KoKo
Fats Navarro (tp)
Charlie Parker (ts)
Allen Eager (ts)
John LaPorta (cl)
Billy Bauer (g)
Lennie Tristano (p)
Tommy Potter (b)
Buddy Rich (d)
Update: Boperation
Fats Navarro trumpet
Howard McGhee piano
Ernie Henry alto sax
Milt Jackson piano, vibes
Curly Russell bass
Kenny Clarke drums
I'm not entirely sure of all of those, the reference I found for it isn't very clear.
Summer Stock
I have had to take a job for the summer in my old age. No, you won't see me burning like a potato chip too long in the oil in a life guard stand or slinging ice cream or greeting people at minimum wage. I will certainly not be a greeter. Getting a lifeguard job is probably more likely.
That means I will be writing new pieces less often, a three day a week schedule might even develop, though I'm too undecided to announce one. I will continue to post Richard McBrien's pieces on Fridays, something which is popular if the numbers of hits on the blog stats are any indication. I may re-run some pieces, especially some I thought were more important from a period when not as many people read this blog and from the other blogs I've written for. The two blogs which I took down will not be among those. I may also post more podcasts and online videos of interest, links, excerpts.
More ragtime too, probably. I took down my Scott Joplin, James Scott, etc. books and have been impressed again by what good music it is, bless Dover Books for reissuing those. And there may be clavichord, the poor person's instrument of its time, one simple enough that even many relatively humble homes ran to one, despite what a couple of ignorant people seem to believe about it. Also one of vast expressive powers that attracted some of the greatest composers to it. And Jazz. Always new.
I won't post this weekend but will try to post on Monday.
That means I will be writing new pieces less often, a three day a week schedule might even develop, though I'm too undecided to announce one. I will continue to post Richard McBrien's pieces on Fridays, something which is popular if the numbers of hits on the blog stats are any indication. I may re-run some pieces, especially some I thought were more important from a period when not as many people read this blog and from the other blogs I've written for. The two blogs which I took down will not be among those. I may also post more podcasts and online videos of interest, links, excerpts.
More ragtime too, probably. I took down my Scott Joplin, James Scott, etc. books and have been impressed again by what good music it is, bless Dover Books for reissuing those. And there may be clavichord, the poor person's instrument of its time, one simple enough that even many relatively humble homes ran to one, despite what a couple of ignorant people seem to believe about it. Also one of vast expressive powers that attracted some of the greatest composers to it. And Jazz. Always new.
I won't post this weekend but will try to post on Monday.
Hate Mail - Planes Landed Safely Today
and Duncan Black's stable of rump regulars still are reading deficient or just can't stand to be accurate.
Normal programming will now resume.
Update: Only proves what I've always said, a life spent in scribbling about pop culture is equivalent to voluntary dementia. Only in his case it's probably gone from hack to plaque by now. The geezer simply has no reading comprehension at all.
Normal programming will now resume.
Update: Only proves what I've always said, a life spent in scribbling about pop culture is equivalent to voluntary dementia. Only in his case it's probably gone from hack to plaque by now. The geezer simply has no reading comprehension at all.
Fr. Richard McBrien on Fridays - More on Papal Infallibility, It Ain't What You Think It Is
I am only infallible if I speak infallibly but I shall never do that, so I am not infallible. St. John XXIII
My mother didn't say it as such but I know she wanted to see two things before she died, a good, liberal woman as president of the United States and women ordained as priests in the Roman Catholic Church. She wouldn't have wanted any conservative to be president, no matter what gender or other symbol of equality moving forward. She, as I, never voted for a Republican in a partisan race. As it is she had to settle for seeing women ordained in churches with officially recognized valid apostolic succession, the Episcopalians, etc. and to see Nancy Pelosi as Speaker of the House. She loved Nancy Pelosi, as do I.
Here is another of his articles which you think would have gotten Fr. Richard McBrien in hot water of the type he mentions in it because he pointed out that, even though a pope claimed John Paul II's statements against the possibility of women being ordained was an infallible teaching, it didn't meet the official qualifications defining an infallible teaching according to the church's official Cannon Law and so it couldn't be an infallible teaching. Apparently Fr. McBrien knew more about church law than the pope, which is probably why no one in the Vatican was willing to take him on. It is possible to be "more Catholic than the Pope", or at least know what you're talking about more than one.
One of the most perplexing aspects of the sacking of William Morris, bishop of the Australian diocese of Toowoomba, Queensland, is Pope Benedict XVI’s claim that the Catholic Church’s prohibition of the ordination of women to the priesthood is the product of an infallible teaching.
In 2006 Bishop Morris issued a pastoral letter before the beginning of Advent in which he called attention to the alarming decrease in the number of active priests who will continue to serve the needs of the diocese by Easter 2014.
He urged that alternative strategies be considered if the Eucharist is to remain available to the Catholics of the diocese. These alternative strategies include: ordaining married, single, or widowed men who are chosen and endorsed by the local parish community; welcoming former priests, married or single, back to active ministry; ordaining women, married or single; and recognizing Anglican, Lutheran, and Uniting Church Orders.
Bishop Morris did not advocate any of these alternatives, but argued only that the Church be “more open” to them.
At the same time, Bishop Morris emphasized that he remained “committed to actively promoting vocations to the current celibate male priesthood and open to inviting priests from overseas.”
However, if it were not for the constant drumbeat of criticism on the part of ultraconservative Catholics, most or all of whom have had no formal education in theology, Scripture, liturgy, or canon law, and the appointment of another ultraconservative as Apostolic Visitor, Charles Chaput, Archbishop of Denver, Bishop Morris would not have been removed from his diocese.
The criticism from the far right and their connection with powerful individuals in the Vatican gave the “investigation” all the impetus that it needed, and the selection of Archbishop Chaput as Apostolic Visitor rendered the final result inevitable.
Bishop Morris revealed portions of the letter from Pope Benedict XVI informing him of his removal from office. In that letter, the pope insisted that his predecessor, John Paul II, had defined the teaching on the ordination of women as priests in his 1994 apostolic letter, Ordinatio sacerdotalis. In other words, the teaching was infallible and, as such, irrevocable.
It could not be considered, as Bishop Morris had suggested in his 2006 Advent pastoral letter, with a view to a possible change in practice. Such a change, Pope Benedict XVI pointed out, had been rendered impossible by John Paul II’s infallible teaching on the subject.
This teaching had also been so described in a 1995 statement from the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith (CDF), which then-Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger headed. Cardinal Ratzinger, of course, is now Pope Benedict XVI.
Cardinal Ratzinger noted that the teaching on women’s ordination “has been set forth infallibly by the ordinary and universal magisterium,” as well as by the 1998 apostolic letter of Pope John Paul II, Ad Tuendam Fidem (“For the defense of the faith”), accompanied by a commentary written by Cardinal Ratzinger, who said essentially the same thing as he is now saying as pope.
But canon 749.3 stipulates that if there is any doubt about the infallible nature of a teaching, it is not infallible. The canon reads: “No doctrine is understood to be infallibly defined unless it is clearly established as such.”
Therefore, even if then-Cardinal Ratzinger concluded that Pope John Paul II’s teaching on women priests in Ordinatio sacerdotalis was infallible, it could not be considered infallible because it was not “clearly established as such.”
And even if a pope, such as Benedict XVI, wished to argue that a specific teaching of one of his predecessors was infallible, canon 749.3 would also seem to preclude such an argument.
Moreover, individual Catholic theologians, major Catholic theological organizations in the United States, and the Canon Law Society of Great Britain and Ireland have expressed serious doubts about the claim that the Church’s current prohibition of the ordination of women to the priesthood is grounded in an infallible teaching.
Therefore, if this was the decisive reason for the sacking of Bishop Morris, his removal seems to have been without sufficient warrant. As such it would constitute a grave injustice to him, to the diocese of Toowoomba, and to the Church in Australia.
My mother didn't say it as such but I know she wanted to see two things before she died, a good, liberal woman as president of the United States and women ordained as priests in the Roman Catholic Church. She wouldn't have wanted any conservative to be president, no matter what gender or other symbol of equality moving forward. She, as I, never voted for a Republican in a partisan race. As it is she had to settle for seeing women ordained in churches with officially recognized valid apostolic succession, the Episcopalians, etc. and to see Nancy Pelosi as Speaker of the House. She loved Nancy Pelosi, as do I.
Here is another of his articles which you think would have gotten Fr. Richard McBrien in hot water of the type he mentions in it because he pointed out that, even though a pope claimed John Paul II's statements against the possibility of women being ordained was an infallible teaching, it didn't meet the official qualifications defining an infallible teaching according to the church's official Cannon Law and so it couldn't be an infallible teaching. Apparently Fr. McBrien knew more about church law than the pope, which is probably why no one in the Vatican was willing to take him on. It is possible to be "more Catholic than the Pope", or at least know what you're talking about more than one.
Infallibility in Question
One of the most perplexing aspects of the sacking of William Morris, bishop of the Australian diocese of Toowoomba, Queensland, is Pope Benedict XVI’s claim that the Catholic Church’s prohibition of the ordination of women to the priesthood is the product of an infallible teaching.
In 2006 Bishop Morris issued a pastoral letter before the beginning of Advent in which he called attention to the alarming decrease in the number of active priests who will continue to serve the needs of the diocese by Easter 2014.
He urged that alternative strategies be considered if the Eucharist is to remain available to the Catholics of the diocese. These alternative strategies include: ordaining married, single, or widowed men who are chosen and endorsed by the local parish community; welcoming former priests, married or single, back to active ministry; ordaining women, married or single; and recognizing Anglican, Lutheran, and Uniting Church Orders.
Bishop Morris did not advocate any of these alternatives, but argued only that the Church be “more open” to them.
At the same time, Bishop Morris emphasized that he remained “committed to actively promoting vocations to the current celibate male priesthood and open to inviting priests from overseas.”
However, if it were not for the constant drumbeat of criticism on the part of ultraconservative Catholics, most or all of whom have had no formal education in theology, Scripture, liturgy, or canon law, and the appointment of another ultraconservative as Apostolic Visitor, Charles Chaput, Archbishop of Denver, Bishop Morris would not have been removed from his diocese.
The criticism from the far right and their connection with powerful individuals in the Vatican gave the “investigation” all the impetus that it needed, and the selection of Archbishop Chaput as Apostolic Visitor rendered the final result inevitable.
Bishop Morris revealed portions of the letter from Pope Benedict XVI informing him of his removal from office. In that letter, the pope insisted that his predecessor, John Paul II, had defined the teaching on the ordination of women as priests in his 1994 apostolic letter, Ordinatio sacerdotalis. In other words, the teaching was infallible and, as such, irrevocable.
It could not be considered, as Bishop Morris had suggested in his 2006 Advent pastoral letter, with a view to a possible change in practice. Such a change, Pope Benedict XVI pointed out, had been rendered impossible by John Paul II’s infallible teaching on the subject.
This teaching had also been so described in a 1995 statement from the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith (CDF), which then-Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger headed. Cardinal Ratzinger, of course, is now Pope Benedict XVI.
Cardinal Ratzinger noted that the teaching on women’s ordination “has been set forth infallibly by the ordinary and universal magisterium,” as well as by the 1998 apostolic letter of Pope John Paul II, Ad Tuendam Fidem (“For the defense of the faith”), accompanied by a commentary written by Cardinal Ratzinger, who said essentially the same thing as he is now saying as pope.
But canon 749.3 stipulates that if there is any doubt about the infallible nature of a teaching, it is not infallible. The canon reads: “No doctrine is understood to be infallibly defined unless it is clearly established as such.”
Therefore, even if then-Cardinal Ratzinger concluded that Pope John Paul II’s teaching on women priests in Ordinatio sacerdotalis was infallible, it could not be considered infallible because it was not “clearly established as such.”
And even if a pope, such as Benedict XVI, wished to argue that a specific teaching of one of his predecessors was infallible, canon 749.3 would also seem to preclude such an argument.
Moreover, individual Catholic theologians, major Catholic theological organizations in the United States, and the Canon Law Society of Great Britain and Ireland have expressed serious doubts about the claim that the Church’s current prohibition of the ordination of women to the priesthood is grounded in an infallible teaching.
Therefore, if this was the decisive reason for the sacking of Bishop Morris, his removal seems to have been without sufficient warrant. As such it would constitute a grave injustice to him, to the diocese of Toowoomba, and to the Church in Australia.
6/6/2011
Most people, even some popes, aren't aware of just what the meaning of papal infallibility is. I always thought it was kind of illogical that it took a bunch of late 19th century Cardinals to vote that popes could issue infallible teachings, you'd have thought that was an important enough issue that a pope would have to define it as an issue, after all, the Cardinals didn't declare themselves infallible and they could have been mistaken about that. And, in line with what Fr. McBrien pointed out, it hardly met its own requirement
"if there is any doubt about the infallible nature of a teaching, it is not infallible"
The fact is there was not only considerable doubt about it, there was open dissent from it and it caused a number of Catholics, laypeople, even Bishops to leave the Catholic church, some formed The Old Catholic Church, and a lot of people who remained in it doubting that popes were able to speak infallibly. I think it's one of those things which stand a good chance of being set aside, as any close reading of the very, very long history of the Catholic Church, its doctrines and, even more so, dogmas will know. Anyone who pretends that some things that are as basic to the Catholic Church didn't change radically, sometimes completely, is either ignorant or they're dishonest.
And in the wider culture, most of the snarky stuff about "papal infallibility" is totally a product of even more ignorance as to what the phrase means.
No More Promiscuous Downloads: A Resolution
I will never, ever download a free utility from the internet again, this is the second time I've gotten a putrid, parasitic malware program from one, the horrible Yahoo! browser hijacker. It's almost as bad as the horrible Sweetpacks one I got last year.
And while I'm at it, I've never known anyone who didn't hate Windows 8. I think DOS was less annoying. Heck, I think Windows 95 was less annoying.
Anyone who can tell me how to get rid of the Yahoo thing, I'd be grateful.
And while I'm at it, I've never known anyone who didn't hate Windows 8. I think DOS was less annoying. Heck, I think Windows 95 was less annoying.
Anyone who can tell me how to get rid of the Yahoo thing, I'd be grateful.
Garbage Calling Trash Trashy
I came late to cabloid TV and left early. I hated it and I never watched what I though were probably the worst of the scores of channels on the thing. I never watched "Spike" or almost any of the hundreds of creepy looking channels. Eventually I got rid of my TV because the incredible idiocy that was almost every program on the thing made me realize life was short and I wanted to spend more of it not looking at a screen. What will probably lead me to eventually give up the internet, someday. Maybe.
And tying those two tubes, the all the time and the almost all of the time boob tubes, Salon had one of its growing myriad of articles for those who want to click on multiply to hate on the Duggars. It does one thing right, it goes after the TLC channel, the source of the Duggars fame and fortune and political utility. The ever fecund scribbler, Mary Elizabeth Williams in asking "how much lower can one network sink" lists a number of lowest brow and other shows on TLC which does seem to have more than its share of their promoted families turn out to be dysfunctional. In the case of the Duggars, dysfunctional in a way that Oprah wouldn't touch, much to her credit. Here's a roll call:
This, after all, is the network that was still airing a Duggars marathon Thursday, as the Josh Duggar revelations were coming to light. It has now yanked “19 Kids and Counting” from its current schedule, replacing it with “Little People, Big World” — not to be confused with its other similar reality shows “Little Couple” or “Our Little Family” or “7 Little Johnstons.” In a statement, the network says only, “We are deeply saddened and troubled by this heartbreaking situation, and our thoughts and prayers are with the family and victims at this difficult time.” And while the continuation of the Duggar’s reality show seems highly unlikely, as of Wednesday, the network is still prominently promoting “19 Kids and Counting” on its Web site — along with other fare like “The Willis Family,” about “a musically gifted family of fourteen,” “My 600-lb Life,” “OMG! EMT!,” “Sex Sent Me to the ER,” “Trailer Park: Welcome to Myrtle Manor,” “Hoarding: Buried Alive,” “My Strange Addiction” and “My Five Wives,” a series about “progressive polygamists”that promises “a fresh, honest look at a controversial lifestyle” and should not be confused with TLC’s “Sister Wives,” which only features four wives.
While I've never seen the show, just from her description of it, I'm wondering what's objectionable about "a musically gifted family" even one of, I'm guessing, a dozen children and two parents. If I were the Willis Family, I'd get out of it and steer clear of politics and such political groups as The Family Research Council, which apparently didn't do its homework before they hired Josh Duggar or, more likely, didn't really care what was behind the reality show-biz surface as-seen-on-TV anymore than TLC did.
But the list on what, I also learn is to be taken as "The Learning Channel" is a lesson in what you get with unregulated TV and the political tie ins a dead giveaway on the likely deleterious effects that filling many millions of American's mind with that kind of stupid trash will have on democracy.
The contention that what people think doesn't have that effect on democracy is one of the most absolutely stupid things about the pseudo-liberal libertarianism that took over about fifty years ago. And also the disconnect between what is called the information they take in hour after hour every day and their ability to understand and navigate reality. That it was the previous entertainment industry that promoted that libertarianism, fiction writers, movie industry hacks, TV writers* and the lawyers who served the publishing industry and, later, the same right wing corporate hacks that such junk as 19 And Counting stand in as a cover for. The liberalish-libertarians were stupid suckers. They were dupes, or they never really cared all that much about liberalism, something I've come to see in the past several years of reading them online. They handed the Rehnquists, Scalias and Roberts style of Supreme Court Justice the langauage and tools to finish off both the American mind and along with that democracy.
It is more than a smidge hypocritical that Mary Elizabeth Williams slams TLC for "Here Comes Honey Boo Boo" on Salon when her online mag has profited greatly, with seemingly scores of well clicked on articles about the spectacle of its Mama June Shannon dating a convicted sex offender and other sundry aspects of the spectacle. Not to mention other junk from TLC such as The Duggars. Not to mention a lot of those titles and, I guess, their content is matched and at times exceeded in depravity by some of the life-style articles Salon posts about sex. Unless TLC is promoting anal-oral sex, hooking up with multiple partners, adultery, (I don't really get how that's supposed to be better than polygamy), the commercial sex industry and any number of other things promoted by Salon and such other webloids as Alternet, they have little room to maneuver these topics in without running smack into their own wall of for-profit hypocrisy. Not that their audiences, trained by TV in the simple skill of overlooking, will mostly notice that. The ones who don't notice when their minds are leaking away they watch or read or read the headline and skip the text before playing comments like an unskilled, unchallenging video game.
* Who were too stupid to realize that the system they were promoting would lead to TV producers and directors realizing they could do unscripted shows and forego writers and trained actors. An interesting number of whom have their own personal, at times familial motives in normalizing kinky sex. Though I think it's mostly the kind of financial incentive that selling things with sex provides and an indifference uninhibited by a sense of morality that enables inequality and calls it "liberal". Crappy writers are always shoving in a sex scene when their skills in plot and character catch up with them, copying the style, not of Tolstoy, but 1930s-50s pulp writers. None of which should ever have been mistaken as a cause for liberals to spend their time on. They weren't promoting liberal thinking.
It's no surprise to me that there are lots of right-wing sex scandals, if they don't believe in justice, they have no problem setting double standards that allow them to do things that they condemn others for and to take advantage when they are in a position as the stronger person. It's what being a conservative is all about. What being a libertarian boils down to, as well.
And tying those two tubes, the all the time and the almost all of the time boob tubes, Salon had one of its growing myriad of articles for those who want to click on multiply to hate on the Duggars. It does one thing right, it goes after the TLC channel, the source of the Duggars fame and fortune and political utility. The ever fecund scribbler, Mary Elizabeth Williams in asking "how much lower can one network sink" lists a number of lowest brow and other shows on TLC which does seem to have more than its share of their promoted families turn out to be dysfunctional. In the case of the Duggars, dysfunctional in a way that Oprah wouldn't touch, much to her credit. Here's a roll call:
This, after all, is the network that was still airing a Duggars marathon Thursday, as the Josh Duggar revelations were coming to light. It has now yanked “19 Kids and Counting” from its current schedule, replacing it with “Little People, Big World” — not to be confused with its other similar reality shows “Little Couple” or “Our Little Family” or “7 Little Johnstons.” In a statement, the network says only, “We are deeply saddened and troubled by this heartbreaking situation, and our thoughts and prayers are with the family and victims at this difficult time.” And while the continuation of the Duggar’s reality show seems highly unlikely, as of Wednesday, the network is still prominently promoting “19 Kids and Counting” on its Web site — along with other fare like “The Willis Family,” about “a musically gifted family of fourteen,” “My 600-lb Life,” “OMG! EMT!,” “Sex Sent Me to the ER,” “Trailer Park: Welcome to Myrtle Manor,” “Hoarding: Buried Alive,” “My Strange Addiction” and “My Five Wives,” a series about “progressive polygamists”that promises “a fresh, honest look at a controversial lifestyle” and should not be confused with TLC’s “Sister Wives,” which only features four wives.
While I've never seen the show, just from her description of it, I'm wondering what's objectionable about "a musically gifted family" even one of, I'm guessing, a dozen children and two parents. If I were the Willis Family, I'd get out of it and steer clear of politics and such political groups as The Family Research Council, which apparently didn't do its homework before they hired Josh Duggar or, more likely, didn't really care what was behind the reality show-biz surface as-seen-on-TV anymore than TLC did.
But the list on what, I also learn is to be taken as "The Learning Channel" is a lesson in what you get with unregulated TV and the political tie ins a dead giveaway on the likely deleterious effects that filling many millions of American's mind with that kind of stupid trash will have on democracy.
The contention that what people think doesn't have that effect on democracy is one of the most absolutely stupid things about the pseudo-liberal libertarianism that took over about fifty years ago. And also the disconnect between what is called the information they take in hour after hour every day and their ability to understand and navigate reality. That it was the previous entertainment industry that promoted that libertarianism, fiction writers, movie industry hacks, TV writers* and the lawyers who served the publishing industry and, later, the same right wing corporate hacks that such junk as 19 And Counting stand in as a cover for. The liberalish-libertarians were stupid suckers. They were dupes, or they never really cared all that much about liberalism, something I've come to see in the past several years of reading them online. They handed the Rehnquists, Scalias and Roberts style of Supreme Court Justice the langauage and tools to finish off both the American mind and along with that democracy.
It is more than a smidge hypocritical that Mary Elizabeth Williams slams TLC for "Here Comes Honey Boo Boo" on Salon when her online mag has profited greatly, with seemingly scores of well clicked on articles about the spectacle of its Mama June Shannon dating a convicted sex offender and other sundry aspects of the spectacle. Not to mention other junk from TLC such as The Duggars. Not to mention a lot of those titles and, I guess, their content is matched and at times exceeded in depravity by some of the life-style articles Salon posts about sex. Unless TLC is promoting anal-oral sex, hooking up with multiple partners, adultery, (I don't really get how that's supposed to be better than polygamy), the commercial sex industry and any number of other things promoted by Salon and such other webloids as Alternet, they have little room to maneuver these topics in without running smack into their own wall of for-profit hypocrisy. Not that their audiences, trained by TV in the simple skill of overlooking, will mostly notice that. The ones who don't notice when their minds are leaking away they watch or read or read the headline and skip the text before playing comments like an unskilled, unchallenging video game.
* Who were too stupid to realize that the system they were promoting would lead to TV producers and directors realizing they could do unscripted shows and forego writers and trained actors. An interesting number of whom have their own personal, at times familial motives in normalizing kinky sex. Though I think it's mostly the kind of financial incentive that selling things with sex provides and an indifference uninhibited by a sense of morality that enables inequality and calls it "liberal". Crappy writers are always shoving in a sex scene when their skills in plot and character catch up with them, copying the style, not of Tolstoy, but 1930s-50s pulp writers. None of which should ever have been mistaken as a cause for liberals to spend their time on. They weren't promoting liberal thinking.
It's no surprise to me that there are lots of right-wing sex scandals, if they don't believe in justice, they have no problem setting double standards that allow them to do things that they condemn others for and to take advantage when they are in a position as the stronger person. It's what being a conservative is all about. What being a libertarian boils down to, as well.
Thursday, May 28, 2015
Today In Comment Thread Depravity
It is impressive how you can see how much the would be left blog babblers disapprove of the rude boring kind of Texans who gloated over weather based misfortunes befalling "Yankees" and the French and their rude gloating by adopting it when the weather based misfortunes befall Texans.
Somehow, I think it would be a lot more impressive to NOT mimic the rude boring kind of Texans or, for that matter, the rude boring kind of "leftists" in that behavior. Even if only the basest goal of asserting you behaved better than such people and are, therefore, better than they are. I don't get the people who figure they can prove that by sinking to the same level of behavior. Do they figure they're going to make the boring, rude Texans ashamed enough to change their thinking? Though that seems to have been their general plan for, Oh, certainly more than a half a century, probably more than a century. Winning people over with insults and assertions of superiority. Really works, does it NOT?
Somehow, I think it would be a lot more impressive to NOT mimic the rude boring kind of Texans or, for that matter, the rude boring kind of "leftists" in that behavior. Even if only the basest goal of asserting you behaved better than such people and are, therefore, better than they are. I don't get the people who figure they can prove that by sinking to the same level of behavior. Do they figure they're going to make the boring, rude Texans ashamed enough to change their thinking? Though that seems to have been their general plan for, Oh, certainly more than a half a century, probably more than a century. Winning people over with insults and assertions of superiority. Really works, does it NOT?
The The 2008 Style Misogyny Over Hillary Clinton's Candidacy Is In The Air So I'm Reposting My Response To It Then
As entire classes of people are still subjected to destructive inequality and the protest against that inequality has been made to seem passé, the far easier to assert equality of words seems to have become entrenched as an assumption. This is, to not mince words, stupid.
Words aren't enumerated as a class having rights under the Bill of Rights, The Civil Rights amendments or the Civil Rights Act, they are not all created equal. They are not all “perfectly good words”. Some of them should be suppressed. Some should be hunted to extinction, remaining only as mounted, academic specimens.
Achieving the suppression of the language of bigotry is straight forward, you suppress it. You make the use of the words uncomfortable and an invitation to be hassled. For example, the blog boys use the word “cunt”. The way to make them uncomfortable is to constantly call them on it when they use it. It’s simple as that. They refer to women in that way, you make that uncomfortable for them, you harass them whenever they say it. You make it not worth their wile to use the word. When they whine about your calling them on it, you just do it anyway. They pout about you ruining their fun and boy bonding, you ignore it and keep calling them on it while taking pleasure at their discomfort. Their discomfort is a sign your plan is working, I see nothing wrong with enjoying it, privately. Of course, you've got to give up using language like that yourself, you've got to have credibility.
Whenever you propose something like this you can count on two things happening. The first is the invocation of “freedom of speech” or “The First Amendment”. I’m happy to report to you that we are not bound in our personal lives to uphold the “speech rights” of bigots. As I never tire of pointing out, we are not the government. You’d think the left has been out of power long enough to not suffer from that mistaken idea. If a commercial establishment can suppress the use of profane language on its property, individual people certainly have that right in the common ground of life. Those we target for this kind of coercion have no recourse to constitutional relief from us. When it comes to bigots, it’s a mistake to worry about their right to promote the violation of other peoples’ rights. Let them do the worrying. And it gets better, there is no reason for us to treat bigotry as equal to other modes of human interaction. It intentionally hurts people, it has no rightful place in the world. And, let it not be forgotten, strident objection to hateful words is just as much an expression as bigotry, only it doesn’t try to harm entire groups of people on the basis of who they are.
The second thing brought up is whether or not it is the most important issue, the matter of priorities. Who knows what’s “most important”? This election season has certainly shown that it isn't a little problem, IT HURTS MEMBERS OF OUR CAUCUS. If the protection from harm to our members isn't a priority for us then we have got to rearrange our priorities. It also divides the left, it harms our efforts to make progress. This is a big deal, as well, because it prevents other important things from happening. This is a fact to use against blog bigots as well. Calling Ann Coulter sexist names doesn't hurt her but it hurts her opposition which then has to deal with the division of the left due to the childishness of these jerks. It’s not as if we have got a rip roaring huge majority to work with as it is and can spare the members or time spent trying to patch things up. If anyone wants to be on the left, the minimal requirement is that they not divide and distract those who are doing the real work and so enable our opponents. If they choose to run their mouths at our expense, kick them out. It’s not as if the Coulters of the world aren't vulnerable on the basis of things they say, themselves, many of those on the grounds of bigotry. Being a bigot in response weakens your position against someone like her.
Those words and similar ones shouldn't be tolerated no matter what comedian or pop star has used them in their act, no matter how gratifyingly transgressive they make the user feel. People using them have to be made to feel too hot to mistake it as ‘cool’. The soft-handed, man-talkin’, tough guys who, in reality, risk nothing in life more serious than repetitive stress should be derided and made to feel the fools they are.
Not using those words is a part of removing bad habits of thinking from the common discourse. If I was planning a strategy I’d say go after the clear cut offenses first, the easiest ones to target. Just getting rid of those annoyances would be worth the effort, I’d think. I don’t want people thinking in those terms and I do think that is important. I don’t think pay equity or Title Nine or the equal right to public accommodation would have ever become law if those terms were an acceptable default way to think about the covered classes in the voting public. It was certainly no coincidence that gay rights legislation finally started making it out of committees as it became less acceptable to target us with bigoted language and that those reforms fail in those places where verbal gay bashing is still tolerated It really matters.
I've never been much on adopting the language of the enemy. I never believed that it would subvert the intentions of the ones who really meant it. You can’t redeem a term of hatred in common use by using it yourself, you can’t capture it and change its meaning. Words obtain their meaning by their history and their contemporary common use. Words of bigotry are defined by bigots who use them. No matter what the language-pop-sci folk would lead you to believe.
The use of bigotry in “comedy” isn't funny, even when used by otherwise funny comedians. Though it will get you a cheap laugh from other schmucks. Hearing bigotry freely expressed makes it seem acceptable and it influences the thinking of those who might go either way. It gives permission.
It certainly snowballed on the blogs of the left in ways I’d never have believed before last year. It was a real shock that even anti-gay invective is less accepted than the most revolting terms of misogyny. But I've also seen real racism, religious bigotry, ethnic bigotry and other forms of expression destructive of the effort to promote real equality and freedom. It all has to be called, it’s not as if we don’t have real ideas and problems that need to be addressed. Making all forms of bigotry out of bounds is helpful to making any form of bigotry unacceptable. The partial acceptance of bigotry is a stupid blunder.
I am just about certain that the real names of the ideals of liberalism, freedom, equality, yes, especially, love, would be considered more outré than the words of real, explicit, misogyny on some blogs of the left. And racism on others, While that might be due to their overuse in some rather gooey contexts, their intrinsically negative context doesn't seem to have rendered the hateful words unfashionable in the same way. Though they have certainly gotten old.
It is one of the more irrational aspects of this that those words, the sure sign of childish, lazy thinking, are, somehow, mistaken to be a sign of adulthood. I don't know what you can do about that except to refuse to go along with that stupid idea.
So feel free to be inventive, be clever, be scathing in your suppression of the “c” word and others worthy of destruction. If you don't like it, you have every right to say so. And do it every time.
Addendum: There is a third thing that can happen in this kind of effort.
I firmly suspect that there is a constant temptation in people to be as bad as they figure they can get away with, though some people regularly seem to be able to resist. This effort can’t be seen as a license to do another stupid, divisive and time wasting* thing, inventing convenient, imaginary implied slights.
In our pop-psych addled age, the temptation of those on the losing end of an argument is sometimes to go from what’s explicitly stated to conveniently asserting things like “body language” and “unconscious intentions”, which are not stated explicitly. Usually it is the minutia of nuance beloved of some leftists that elicits that response rather than in the important, commonly agreed to, difference. Occult, interior motives are asserted to be the unseen taint, the mark of the bad seed, in otherwise sound leftists, asserting their otherwise reasoned arguments to be functionally unsound for the vaguest of reasons. I’d say that splitting those hairs should wait until the explicit expression of bigotry is effectively eliminated. That’s going to be a big enough job to start with. Effectively targeting those who are explicit bigots might help to eliminate those in the second tier of bigoted expression without spending time on them.
As anyone who has ever played cards knows, it’s a hallmark of the unexpressed idea that you really don’t know what it might mean or even if it’s there to begin with. Maybe it exists only in your imagination. If it’s really there it will find explicit expression, if it doesn't you are free to assume that the interpretation more favorable to you is what was intended all along and to act accordingly. I have found that assuming that sometimes has the gratifying result of avoiding a pointless argument and sometimes actually turns things in a more productive direction than angry confrontation over the imagined slight. On many occasions, when the assumed interior intention becomes clear, it was quite harmless anyway.
* I have noticed in meetings of non-profits something like this often takes the form of “not wanting to set a precedent”. Who hasn't sat though twenty-five minute of loftily vicious and absurd argument about just such a “precedent” issue? Well, unless explicitly stated, non-profits can pick and choose on the basis of individual merits and their own contemporary situation without worrying about precedents of that kind. I have never yet seen the bylaws of one that forbids that.
Words aren't enumerated as a class having rights under the Bill of Rights, The Civil Rights amendments or the Civil Rights Act, they are not all created equal. They are not all “perfectly good words”. Some of them should be suppressed. Some should be hunted to extinction, remaining only as mounted, academic specimens.
Achieving the suppression of the language of bigotry is straight forward, you suppress it. You make the use of the words uncomfortable and an invitation to be hassled. For example, the blog boys use the word “cunt”. The way to make them uncomfortable is to constantly call them on it when they use it. It’s simple as that. They refer to women in that way, you make that uncomfortable for them, you harass them whenever they say it. You make it not worth their wile to use the word. When they whine about your calling them on it, you just do it anyway. They pout about you ruining their fun and boy bonding, you ignore it and keep calling them on it while taking pleasure at their discomfort. Their discomfort is a sign your plan is working, I see nothing wrong with enjoying it, privately. Of course, you've got to give up using language like that yourself, you've got to have credibility.
Whenever you propose something like this you can count on two things happening. The first is the invocation of “freedom of speech” or “The First Amendment”. I’m happy to report to you that we are not bound in our personal lives to uphold the “speech rights” of bigots. As I never tire of pointing out, we are not the government. You’d think the left has been out of power long enough to not suffer from that mistaken idea. If a commercial establishment can suppress the use of profane language on its property, individual people certainly have that right in the common ground of life. Those we target for this kind of coercion have no recourse to constitutional relief from us. When it comes to bigots, it’s a mistake to worry about their right to promote the violation of other peoples’ rights. Let them do the worrying. And it gets better, there is no reason for us to treat bigotry as equal to other modes of human interaction. It intentionally hurts people, it has no rightful place in the world. And, let it not be forgotten, strident objection to hateful words is just as much an expression as bigotry, only it doesn’t try to harm entire groups of people on the basis of who they are.
The second thing brought up is whether or not it is the most important issue, the matter of priorities. Who knows what’s “most important”? This election season has certainly shown that it isn't a little problem, IT HURTS MEMBERS OF OUR CAUCUS. If the protection from harm to our members isn't a priority for us then we have got to rearrange our priorities. It also divides the left, it harms our efforts to make progress. This is a big deal, as well, because it prevents other important things from happening. This is a fact to use against blog bigots as well. Calling Ann Coulter sexist names doesn't hurt her but it hurts her opposition which then has to deal with the division of the left due to the childishness of these jerks. It’s not as if we have got a rip roaring huge majority to work with as it is and can spare the members or time spent trying to patch things up. If anyone wants to be on the left, the minimal requirement is that they not divide and distract those who are doing the real work and so enable our opponents. If they choose to run their mouths at our expense, kick them out. It’s not as if the Coulters of the world aren't vulnerable on the basis of things they say, themselves, many of those on the grounds of bigotry. Being a bigot in response weakens your position against someone like her.
Those words and similar ones shouldn't be tolerated no matter what comedian or pop star has used them in their act, no matter how gratifyingly transgressive they make the user feel. People using them have to be made to feel too hot to mistake it as ‘cool’. The soft-handed, man-talkin’, tough guys who, in reality, risk nothing in life more serious than repetitive stress should be derided and made to feel the fools they are.
Not using those words is a part of removing bad habits of thinking from the common discourse. If I was planning a strategy I’d say go after the clear cut offenses first, the easiest ones to target. Just getting rid of those annoyances would be worth the effort, I’d think. I don’t want people thinking in those terms and I do think that is important. I don’t think pay equity or Title Nine or the equal right to public accommodation would have ever become law if those terms were an acceptable default way to think about the covered classes in the voting public. It was certainly no coincidence that gay rights legislation finally started making it out of committees as it became less acceptable to target us with bigoted language and that those reforms fail in those places where verbal gay bashing is still tolerated It really matters.
I've never been much on adopting the language of the enemy. I never believed that it would subvert the intentions of the ones who really meant it. You can’t redeem a term of hatred in common use by using it yourself, you can’t capture it and change its meaning. Words obtain their meaning by their history and their contemporary common use. Words of bigotry are defined by bigots who use them. No matter what the language-pop-sci folk would lead you to believe.
The use of bigotry in “comedy” isn't funny, even when used by otherwise funny comedians. Though it will get you a cheap laugh from other schmucks. Hearing bigotry freely expressed makes it seem acceptable and it influences the thinking of those who might go either way. It gives permission.
It certainly snowballed on the blogs of the left in ways I’d never have believed before last year. It was a real shock that even anti-gay invective is less accepted than the most revolting terms of misogyny. But I've also seen real racism, religious bigotry, ethnic bigotry and other forms of expression destructive of the effort to promote real equality and freedom. It all has to be called, it’s not as if we don’t have real ideas and problems that need to be addressed. Making all forms of bigotry out of bounds is helpful to making any form of bigotry unacceptable. The partial acceptance of bigotry is a stupid blunder.
I am just about certain that the real names of the ideals of liberalism, freedom, equality, yes, especially, love, would be considered more outré than the words of real, explicit, misogyny on some blogs of the left. And racism on others, While that might be due to their overuse in some rather gooey contexts, their intrinsically negative context doesn't seem to have rendered the hateful words unfashionable in the same way. Though they have certainly gotten old.
It is one of the more irrational aspects of this that those words, the sure sign of childish, lazy thinking, are, somehow, mistaken to be a sign of adulthood. I don't know what you can do about that except to refuse to go along with that stupid idea.
So feel free to be inventive, be clever, be scathing in your suppression of the “c” word and others worthy of destruction. If you don't like it, you have every right to say so. And do it every time.
Addendum: There is a third thing that can happen in this kind of effort.
I firmly suspect that there is a constant temptation in people to be as bad as they figure they can get away with, though some people regularly seem to be able to resist. This effort can’t be seen as a license to do another stupid, divisive and time wasting* thing, inventing convenient, imaginary implied slights.
In our pop-psych addled age, the temptation of those on the losing end of an argument is sometimes to go from what’s explicitly stated to conveniently asserting things like “body language” and “unconscious intentions”, which are not stated explicitly. Usually it is the minutia of nuance beloved of some leftists that elicits that response rather than in the important, commonly agreed to, difference. Occult, interior motives are asserted to be the unseen taint, the mark of the bad seed, in otherwise sound leftists, asserting their otherwise reasoned arguments to be functionally unsound for the vaguest of reasons. I’d say that splitting those hairs should wait until the explicit expression of bigotry is effectively eliminated. That’s going to be a big enough job to start with. Effectively targeting those who are explicit bigots might help to eliminate those in the second tier of bigoted expression without spending time on them.
As anyone who has ever played cards knows, it’s a hallmark of the unexpressed idea that you really don’t know what it might mean or even if it’s there to begin with. Maybe it exists only in your imagination. If it’s really there it will find explicit expression, if it doesn't you are free to assume that the interpretation more favorable to you is what was intended all along and to act accordingly. I have found that assuming that sometimes has the gratifying result of avoiding a pointless argument and sometimes actually turns things in a more productive direction than angry confrontation over the imagined slight. On many occasions, when the assumed interior intention becomes clear, it was quite harmless anyway.
* I have noticed in meetings of non-profits something like this often takes the form of “not wanting to set a precedent”. Who hasn't sat though twenty-five minute of loftily vicious and absurd argument about just such a “precedent” issue? Well, unless explicitly stated, non-profits can pick and choose on the basis of individual merits and their own contemporary situation without worrying about precedents of that kind. I have never yet seen the bylaws of one that forbids that.
Do Not Tell Glenn Beck About This!
Researching these posts, I'm always coming across interesting and potentially useful curiosities. One which I found this week, I'd never known before, and that is in the frieze above the, uh, "Justices" in the Supreme Court, along with such lawgivers as Moses and Charlemagne is a representation of Muhammad. While that was he object of a request by some Muslims to have it removed, this article claims that other Muslims, previously, saw it as an honor. This article goes on to point out that attitudes and beliefs among Muslims dealing with images of Muhammad have not been monolithic or set in stone.
I have to wonder if Pam Geller and Franklin Graham know about this, as well as those who are all whipped up into a swivet about sharia law being foisted onto us. It is a fact that is ripe for promoting their kind of paranoid conspiracy filled thinking, the kind of stuff I heard some of the nuttier people around here firmly believed, like the little teensy "JS" under Roosevelt's image on the dime stood for Joseph Stalin. Yes, we have those kind of right-wing nut cases in "liberal" New England, too, no area of the country is exempt from right wing insanity.
Also downright weird, or maybe weird or maybe confirmatory are some of the others in the frieze - which I won't post an image of - such repulsive figures as Lycurgus who made Sparta a brutal, violent military despotism, Draco whose brutal, vicious, homicidal legal code is probably the fondest dream of some of our worst "Justices", Augustus, whose rule decisively ended the Roman republic and began the empire which carries the lesson that a non-democratic, non-egalitarian republic will probably always end up a corrupt, massively violent and depraved empire. Considering that one of the roles in real history instead if sanctimonious declaration of the Supreme Court in most of its history has been to prevent democracy happening, to prevent its necessary prerequisites like people being accurately informed about political and other aspects of reality, maybe they were winking and nodding when they approved of those things. I think the building would have been bad enough, with its kind of creepy neo-classical style, without those decorations.
I have to wonder if Pam Geller and Franklin Graham know about this, as well as those who are all whipped up into a swivet about sharia law being foisted onto us. It is a fact that is ripe for promoting their kind of paranoid conspiracy filled thinking, the kind of stuff I heard some of the nuttier people around here firmly believed, like the little teensy "JS" under Roosevelt's image on the dime stood for Joseph Stalin. Yes, we have those kind of right-wing nut cases in "liberal" New England, too, no area of the country is exempt from right wing insanity.
Also downright weird, or maybe weird or maybe confirmatory are some of the others in the frieze - which I won't post an image of - such repulsive figures as Lycurgus who made Sparta a brutal, violent military despotism, Draco whose brutal, vicious, homicidal legal code is probably the fondest dream of some of our worst "Justices", Augustus, whose rule decisively ended the Roman republic and began the empire which carries the lesson that a non-democratic, non-egalitarian republic will probably always end up a corrupt, massively violent and depraved empire. Considering that one of the roles in real history instead if sanctimonious declaration of the Supreme Court in most of its history has been to prevent democracy happening, to prevent its necessary prerequisites like people being accurately informed about political and other aspects of reality, maybe they were winking and nodding when they approved of those things. I think the building would have been bad enough, with its kind of creepy neo-classical style, without those decorations.
Wednesday, May 27, 2015
Sheila Jordan - Sheila's Blues
Ageless, she was 83 when she sang this.
Sheila Jordan - vocals
Marion Hayden -- bass
Sean Dobbins -- drums
Mike Jellick - piano
Hate Mail - So How Many Rapes of Children Does A Famous Author Get To Commit With Impunity?
And over at his piece of shit blog, you know who is making the case that we should be more outraged over dead pedophile Gore Vidal -- who was a great artist -- than we are about the living Duggars, including the one who was diddling his sisters for Jeebus and the ones who enabled him, who have no talent whatsoever, and who are currently in our face all the time on TV..
Vidal, of course, was an atheist, so obviously you know who is right about this.
OK, I give up. If people are going to insist of telling me about things like this being said, I'm certainly going to use them. "Don't fight forces, use them" and the clueless ignorance and amorality of such folk is certainly a force that has a negative effect in the world.
Considering what I've been told in the last several days is not important, the massive British child pedophilia scandal, the wider European pedophila scandal, Thailand's massive child rape industry with its world-wide network of sex tourism servicing the worlds wealthier pedophiles, several famous and semi-famous men who either were known to be active pedophile rapists for decades or who advocated making child rape legal, I think the internet has officially gone entirely off its rocker. But that massive hypocrisy, drawing a double standard based on who is doing the raping, has always been with us. Various sides have always been willing to overlook what their pedophile rapists do, especially when you can call them "artists" or when what they do involves "art" and, especially especial, when the children being raped are poor or not white.
Update: Well, it's impossible to know what people will continue reading in the future but I suspect that, other than some of his essays he won't keep. Gore Vidal's novels will end up being as dated as the work of other authors who knew how to write, like Laura Z. Hobson or Howard Fast. As the internet proves all the time, we are in a post literate culture which doesn't remember such writers for very long, unless one of their books gets made into a movie, generally botched by a script writer and further damaged by the director and others. The movie of Gentleman's Agreement, even with Gregory Peck, is abysmally bad as compared to Hobson's book, and even that's dated. I don't think Vidal's writing is as good as hers, but that's a matter of opinion.
Vidal, of course, was an atheist, so obviously you know who is right about this.
OK, I give up. If people are going to insist of telling me about things like this being said, I'm certainly going to use them. "Don't fight forces, use them" and the clueless ignorance and amorality of such folk is certainly a force that has a negative effect in the world.
Considering what I've been told in the last several days is not important, the massive British child pedophilia scandal, the wider European pedophila scandal, Thailand's massive child rape industry with its world-wide network of sex tourism servicing the worlds wealthier pedophiles, several famous and semi-famous men who either were known to be active pedophile rapists for decades or who advocated making child rape legal, I think the internet has officially gone entirely off its rocker. But that massive hypocrisy, drawing a double standard based on who is doing the raping, has always been with us. Various sides have always been willing to overlook what their pedophile rapists do, especially when you can call them "artists" or when what they do involves "art" and, especially especial, when the children being raped are poor or not white.
Update: Well, it's impossible to know what people will continue reading in the future but I suspect that, other than some of his essays he won't keep. Gore Vidal's novels will end up being as dated as the work of other authors who knew how to write, like Laura Z. Hobson or Howard Fast. As the internet proves all the time, we are in a post literate culture which doesn't remember such writers for very long, unless one of their books gets made into a movie, generally botched by a script writer and further damaged by the director and others. The movie of Gentleman's Agreement, even with Gregory Peck, is abysmally bad as compared to Hobson's book, and even that's dated. I don't think Vidal's writing is as good as hers, but that's a matter of opinion.
Tuesday, May 26, 2015
TONI-HARPER-IN-JAPAN 1963 with The Cannonball Adderley Sextet - One Note Samba
With the Oscar Peterson Trio - You Don't Know What Love Is
Update: With the Marty Paich's orchestra. Arranged by Marty Paich -
Lady Lonely
I recently read that she retired from performing when she was 29. Amazing singer, she pretty much had it all. No idea why she'd choose to stop. Glad we've got her recordings. Wish this one had less echo but still great, pretty great arrangement, too.
"Too Long"
Maintaining a double standard of judgement really means, you get to be held to a standard of behavior, we don't. Double standards are what aristocracies, oligarchies, dictatorships, slave societies, patriarchal societies, etc. practice. Double standards are the opposite of a liberal position. Equal responsibilities, equal treatment are among the defining practices of liberalism, to the extent those are not practiced, to that extent the people violating that are pseudo-liberals.
The Supreme Court building has a lie carved over the entrance:
Imagine what society, economics and politics would have been like if they'd enforced it. Equality, that is. It would be a liberal society. I have to say, I think the Roman fasces over the "D" is a dead giveaway.
The Supreme Court building has a lie carved over the entrance:
Imagine what society, economics and politics would have been like if they'd enforced it. Equality, that is. It would be a liberal society. I have to say, I think the Roman fasces over the "D" is a dead giveaway.
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