October 2010

Domino Theory

By in germans supported their troops too, ohferfucksake, samesecks No Comments

Dan Savage:

State-sanctioned discrimination against LGBT people legitimizes the kind of anti-gay attitudes and beliefs that lead directly to anti-gay bullying at the ballot box and anti-gay bullying in schools.

I do believe this is precisely ass-backwards. Or, okay, maybe you could say that state-sanctioned discrimination is emblematic of anti-gay attitudes and beliefs, but to imply that grade-school kids are taking their cues from the military as to whether it’s okay to call each other gay as an insult, or to play “smear the queer” during recess, seems, ah, just a bit of a stretch. And conversely, the military being integrated in 1948 didn’t do much to ease bullying of black people, at the ballot box or anywhere else. I’m getting a sneaking suspicion that some people are attaching way too much significance to repealing DADT.
And once again, it amazes and saddens me to see that leftist activism, or what passes for it, is more concerned with making sure our military displays a cosmetic diversity than aggressively challenging the size and direction of it. As much as progressive bloggers love to stroke themselves for supposedly being dirty, idealistic hippies, none of them will ever bother suggesting that dramatically slashing military spending should be a priority, even if only for the quixotic fun of it, purely for the sake of starting that conversation and getting people to start thinking about it. Legitimizing it, you might say. It has to start somewhere, doesn’t it? Why not among people who incessantly complain that the media and political elite never listen to them anyway? But Chalmers Johnson, who is hardly some wild-eyed refugee from Woodstock, has a new book out, and I’ll bet you won’t see many of the top progressive blogs even so much as mention it. They’re too busy making sure that every eligible citizen gets a fair chance to be chewed up and spit out in Afghanistan, Pakistan, Yemen, Somalia, and whoever else we’re covertly waging black ops against.

The Way That Can Be Improvised Is Not the Way

By in poetry No Comments

I liked Stephen Mitchell’s translations of Rilke, but I remember hearing his Tao Te Ching as a book on tape (remember those?) lo these many moons ago, and feeling puzzled at how different it sounded from the other versions I’d read. So this is pretty funny (and several months old, but I just happened across it while looking for something else):

Tao Te Ching is an ancient Chinese scripture originally written by Lao-tzu (who some scholars believe is actually an amalgam of various wisdom texts). Mitchell alleges he studied the texts and various interpretations for years, immersing himself in Zen training before writing the book. As a result, “rather than provide a literal translation, the book embodies language that conveys Mitchell’s version of Lao-tzu’s meaning and the spirit of his teaching,” the complaint says. “Accordingly, Mitchell’s book is a highly original work.”

Well, I guess that’s one way of putting it. Another way was memorably provided by Sam Hamill:
When an otherwise notable translator like Stephen Mitchell muddies the waters with something as irresponsible as his wild interpretation of Lao Tzu’s Tao Te Ching passed off as translation, it is like a virus in a computer that begins to invade other programs. Mitchell writes that he felt no compunction to study the original Chinese because he somehow got the transmission directly from his Zen master, so felt free to interpret the Tao Te Ching freely. In at least a couple of chapters, there is not so much as a single word brought over from the original. The problem with this kind of practice is that the naïve reader might assume that the English bears some resemblance to the original, which all too often simply isn’t so. Or as Chuang Tzu might say, “Not quite there yet, eh?”
To truly understand Lao Tzu, Chuang Tzu or most classical Chinese poetry, we would need a large scholarly apparatus to clarify all the allusions and explain a cast of characters and provide an explication of cultural-philosophical contexts and linguistic differences. We would know the Analects of Confucius and the Classic of Filial Piety, the I Ching, and elementary Chinese cosmology.

Adam’s Curse

By in alan watts, foolosophy, mythology, religion No Comments

Wrath James Wright:

Like so many other Christians I had chosen to view the story of Adam and Eve as a metaphor for something. I just wasn’t sure for what.

A lot of people have criticized the myth for what seems to be an endorsement of ignorance, a hostility to the sort of knowledge that has improved human existence. But I always liked the interpretation Alan Watts gave, where he viewed the apple as containing the mixed blessing of self-knowledge. Reflective knowledge, if you prefer. Self-consciousness. The sort of abstract thinking we do with the neocortex. We lost the ability to be “natural” like other animals. Our instincts are constantly at war with our considered values. There is no one way, determined by biology and environment, for humans to live. We truly are free to make our own way, but we often want to be free of the responsibility, and we long for the comfort of simply acting without thinking. We ask ourselves questions of purpose that we can’t satisfactorily answer. We don’t know how to simply be.

Gasp! I am Unmasked

By in jests japes jokes jollies No Comments

“A lot of bloggers seem to be socially inadequate, pimpled, single, slightly seedy, bald, cauliflower-nosed young men sitting in their mother’s basements and ranting. They are very angry people,” he told the Cheltenham Literary Festival. “OK – the country is full of very angry people. Many of us are angry people at times. Some of us are angry and drunk. But the so-called citizen journalism is the spewings and rantings of very drunk people late at night.”

Hey, asshole! I’m not bald!

(I wonder if they purposely ran his picture as an ironic accompaniment to those words.)

How Sharper Than a Serpent’s Tooth

By in history, mythology, religion, spiritual-not-religious No Comments

The problem is that this tidy narrative is an American myth. The real story of religion in America’s past is an often awkward, frequently embarrassing and occasionally bloody tale that most civics books and high-school texts either paper over or shunt to the side. And much of the recent conversation about America’s ideal of religious freedom has paid lip service to this comforting tableau.
From the earliest arrival of Europeans on America’s shores, religion has often been a cudgel, used to discriminate, suppress and even kill the foreign, the “heretic” and the “unbeliever”—including the “heathen” natives already here. Moreover, while it is true that the vast majority of early-generation Americans were Christian, the pitched battles between various Protestant sects and, more explosively, between Protestants and Catholics, present an unavoidable contradiction to the widely held notion that America is a “Christian nation.”
…America can still be, as Madison perceived the nation in 1785, “an Asylum to the persecuted and oppressed of every Nation and Religion.” But recognizing that deep religious discord has been part of America’s social DNA is a healthy and necessary step. When we acknowledge that dark past, perhaps the nation will return to that “promised…lustre” of which Madison so grandiloquently wrote.
This is what I was saying a while back with regards to another popular myth, most commonly expressed in the form of those COEXIST stickers and t-shirts. And I do mean “myth” in the specific sense of a story that expresses aspirations, values or perennial themes rather than historical truth. Let no one doubt that I’m all in favor of aspiring to create a society where religious beliefs are treated in the same way as other lifestyle choices: expressions of personality, peccadilloes at worst, not worth fighting about. But if you’re a religious person, you might regard me warily upon hearing this. Why would a fire-breathing atheist and aspirtualist like myself be supportive of this? Don’t I want a scorched-earth campaign against all metaphysical woo-woo to eliminate it for once and for all? Well, no, actually, partially because a society that demands of its members that they subordinate their beliefs about God, the human soul, the afterlife and holy books to a general principle of living and letting live is already a fully secular one.
What irritates me to no end about the COEXISTers is that they act as if this has been the inherent character of religion itself all along. It’s almost like a form of ingratitude — they refuse to recognize what a truly revolutionary innovation it was to separate church and state and how beneficial it was for everyone, especially believers. That is what permeated our cultural consciousness to the extent that we can hardly comprehend a person who thinks doctrinal differences are matters of life and death; after all, aren’t all religions just different paths to the same truth, different names for the same God? But at the time that Jefferson and Madison were implementing these new ideas, you could still find examples of people in Europe being tortured and executed as a result of sectarian fanaticism and mob rule, or for such heinous offenses as being rumored to have failed to remove one’s hat before a religious procession, as well as possessing a copy of Voltaire’s Philosophical Dictionary. That sort of thing was still typical behavior in “civilized” Europe, and had been ever since Constantine. It didn’t change until it was forced to. By all means, enjoy this postmodern form of domesticated religious tolerance that’s so commonplace now! Just don’t forget that it was secularism that gave it to you.

Born Against

By in foolosophy, philosophy, religion, spiritual-not-religious No Comments

Brad Warner:

The history of philosophy throughout the world has been a struggle between two basic fundamental systems — idealism and materialism. Spirituality is a kind of idealism. It takes the view that the spiritual world, the world of ideas, imagination, and mental formations, is the true reality. Matter is regarded as secondary at best or sometimes even as nonexistent. We are spirits trapped inside bodies made of gross matter – and some bodies are a lot grosser than others – and the way to happiness, according to the idealists, is to get free of this material world and its miseries. In many Eastern philosophies we are told, “I am not this body. I am the spiritual soul within.”

First, let me take a moment to say that our marketing department informs us that readers of this here blog tend to have a significant interest in sex, Buddhism, Nazi garden gnomes and plainspoken philosophizing, so with that in mind, I feel confident in asserting that they may find it rewarding to check out Warner’s new book (and/or his previous ones) as well as his blog, Hardcore Zen, conveniently located in the sidebar to your right for your browsing convenience. (He doesn’t have much to say about the Nazi garden gnomes, but you’ll find the other topics covered in exquisite detail.)
So. Regarding his definition of spirituality, well… yes and no. It’s certainly true, as the “spirit” part of the word would indicate, that there is a strong ascetic streak of denying or devaluing the worth or reality of the physical, empirical world in spiritual practices, but that’s obviously true of traditional religion as well. Now, you know me — I think it’s clear that “spirit” and “soul” are useful only as poetic metaphors at best, and there is no such thing as an eternal, translucent essence to living beings that survives the body’s death and floats on to inhabit a newborn host like a virus, while carrying with it some sort of moral scorecard that needs to be reviewed and validated every so often. But if not taken to Platonic extremes, the world of ideas, imagination and mental formations is a perfectly nice place to spend one’s time. Maybe this more balanced appreciation could be called cerebral, intellectual, reflective, contemplative, or philosophical to indicate a love of “thinking about thinking”, as one definition of philosophy has it, a passionate enjoyment of ideas for their own sake, regardless of any necessarily practical import to them. The ascetic tendency, I think, should just be left to its old description of capital-I Idealism.
Another meaning of the word “spirituality” is one I feel to be much more applicable to the way it manifests itself in Western culture: a different brand of religion for those who feel themselves to be too cool or independent for religion. Yes, I’m being snide on purpose in reducing spirituality to the level of a marketing gimmick, much as I would be toward people who think choosing one brand of carbonated sugar water shows them to possess greater discernment and more refined taste than people who prefer the more popular alternatives. It should go without saying, but I’ll say it anyway: This clearly does not apply to everyone who self-describes as “spiritual”. Some, or even many, of those people are honest, open-minded seekers with an omnivorous appetite for knowledge and a sense of intellectual integrity that keeps them from settling for pat answers. Etymological preferences aside, I have no problem with them, and I trust they can read between the lines when confronted with a quarrelsome bastard like myself and realize I’m not aiming at them. But there are a million other people who will sing their praises. I don’t need to be one more. I’m more interested in presumptuously poking at what I see as a frequent display of smug, complacent ignorance that pervades the whole “spiritual-not-religious” culture, and aside from this dude, I don’t see anyone else taking that approach.
Warner goes on to explain that spiritualism and materialism are both still “-isms”, and as such, are theoretical frameworks about reality rather than the bare perception of reality, which is an important distinction. This is what I’ve always understood Zen to be, a philosophical tool for clearing away the mental, theoretical debris that prevents us from perceiving what is right in front of our noses, not a belief, practice or official uniform to be accepted from authority. Many people have long recognized Idealism as being full of this sort of debris. I think it’s time that we start recognizing that spirituality as popularly described has accumulated a fair share of its own and begin challenging it accordingly.

Leftist History Nerd Porn

By in art, history, the wire No Comments

From your lips to the collective ears of the Greek pantheon, baby:

What projects will you pursue now that you have the funds?
There’s a project that [“The Wire” co-creator] Ed Burns wants to do that reflects on the 1880 Haymarket bombing in Chicago, which was an elemental point in terms of capital and labor in our society. There’s a book I’m working on with [longtime Simon collaborator] Bill Zorzi about the drug economy of Baltimore in the ’50s and ’60s. We’re trying to reach as many of the surviving players before they pass on. I’m working with Ed and [Baltimore Sun reporter] Dan Fesperman on beating out scripts for the history of the CIA from 1947 on. That’s a long-term project. This grant may enable me to hold onto writers for projects that aren’t greenlit yet.
And while I’m in an ecstatic trance over the thought of David Simon doing a TV show about the anarchist and labor movement, Ima link to this excellent (and very long) interview he did with Vice last year. Just because.

Noble Savages

By in animals, science, spiritual-not-religious No Comments

“For now, let’s keep the door open to the idea that animals can be spiritual beings and let’s consider the evidence for such a claim,” he added.
“Meager as it is, available evidence says, ‘Yes, animals can have spiritual experiences,’ and we need to conduct further research and engage in interdisciplinary discussions before we say that animals cannot and do not experience spirituality.”
Oh, gods, please, no. If animals become narcissistic, pompous bores who spend all their time looking for proof that the universe revolves around them, whose company will I be able to keep when I need to recover from the folly of my own kind? I’ll have no choice but to finally disappear into bags of elephant tranquilizers and syringes full of heroin.

There’s My Flair! And This Is Me Expressing Myself!

By in ohferfucksake, socmed, work No Comments

“They can’t get inside you,” she had said. But they could get inside you. “What happens to you here is forever,” O’Brien had said. That was a true word. There were things, your own acts, from which you could never recover.

Nation of slaves, indeed. Spending your adulthood fearing the potential job you might not get because of something you posted on the Internet once, what a life. If you want a picture of the future, imagine a Facebook Like button…

I had a friend who worked for Pitney Bowes once. She told me with great amusement how she actually got called in to talk with her bosses regarding some concerns they had… over some community college courses she was taking. On her own time. With her own money. They truly felt they had a right to dictate to their employees how they spent their time off the job.

You will be hollow. We shall squeeze you empty and then we shall fill you with ourselves.

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