Transcript after the cut.
Welcome to “Shamus Tacticus: A field Guide.” My name is Typhonblue and today I will be presenting a somewhat rarified and fascinating specimen of the species Shamus Tacticus—colloquially known as “the Shaming Tactic.”
Without further ado, I present today’s shaming tactic:
The Patriarchy
This shaming tactic can be employed in the following way: “I can ignore your emotions and opinions because… patriarchy!”
Interestingly this shamus tacticus can also be utilized to silence those women who have lost the competition for “which woman expresses the least empathy towards men.” Empathy towards men being the primary symptom of the patriarchal thought patterns that parasitize a women’s brains and remove their independent will.
This particular Shamus Tacticus arises out of cross-pollination between several subspecies and species.
Blatantus Liacus — quite simply, Blatantus Liacus is the perpetuation of complete and utter bullshit.
Femicus Paracitis Alluricus – A subspecies of Femicus Alluricus, an inflated belief in the attractiveness of feminine submission or parasitism.
Femicus Centrus Completeus – a man is incomplete if he does not somehow center his life around women.
Blatant Liacus enters the fray by describing women in ‘patriarchy’ as property of men rather then their legal wards. To understand the difference consider the relationship between your dog and your child. Your dog is your property; your child is your ward. Women were the wards of men historically; they were not men’s property.
Femicus Paracitus Alluricus adds supposed plausibility to ‘the patrairchy’ as a shaming tactic. It asserts that men have an immense desire women’s submission.
For most parents who have a severely mentally disabled child, the prospect of being the guardian of someone who will never achieve adult independence is exhausting, suffocating and terrifying. But for some reason men will take enormous pains to arrange society just so they can take complete responsibility for an adult sized female leech for the rest of their lives.
Femicus Centrus Completus, the idea that men wish to revolve around women not unlike the moon revolves around the earth, is foundational to Femicus Paracitus Alluricus because in order to dominate a woman a man must center his entire life around her; and one must assume that a man will sacrifice his own independence to do so, and will sacrifice his independence in order to center women with eager glee rather then the frantic horror of a fox whose foot is caught in a bear trap.
Now that we’ve examined the taxonomy of this particular Shamus Tacticus, let’s look at its anatomy directly and observe its uniquely nuanced self-contradiction.
How is patriarchy theory a shaming tactic, one might ask.
For that let’s direct our attention to the international study of patriarchy, the CEDAW map. CEDAW refers to the Convention on Eliminating Discrimination Against Women or, less euphemistically and more accurately titled, how ‘n*****s are eviler then us white folks’.
What you will notice as you analyze the CEDAW map, is that the most patriarchal and thus lest moral cultures are both poor and dark skinned.
Now one might be tempted to say that societies grant women as much freedom as those societies can afford. In poor societies the technologies, including birth control, that liberate women do not exist or cannot be afforded; further poor societies are often violent societies and the political and social limitations on women serve to both protect them and compel men to take the risks that get men killed at far greater rates.
And you might say our own social history reflects this progression. As technologies that created safer and more comfortable societies and lessened the necessary labor in the home were developed and enjoyed widescale adoption women were granted more social and political freedom.
Nah.
The real answer is that us wealthy white folks, and by white folks, I mean wealthy white women are just better people then those patriarchal, girl raping n****r bastards.
So why is Patriarchy Theory a shaming tactic?
Well let’s step through it.
Let’s imagine for a moment that ‘patriarchy’ put men in charge. But men wished to take care of women as best they could and when it was technologically feasible for women to be free of the limitations of the home, men endeavored to provide them that freedom.
If we imagine patriarchy as paternalistic but ultimately good-natured we approach ending the dynamic by pointing out that men having to take responsibility for women is exhausting, unfair and limiting to them as well as infantilizing to women and we try to correct the situation like intelligent adults.
But this, this is too reasonable. And this reasonable conception of “patriarchy” just doesn’t create the necessary moral opprobrium against men as a group. It doesn’t get the dander up; it doesn’t whip people into a self-rightous fury; and we all know the hate must flow!
Therefore Patriarchy theory necessitates the belief that not only were women the wards of men in history (not property, wards) but that men actively set it up that way in order to rape, beat and murder women with impunity and secure all the social goodies for themselves.
Patriarchy theory says men are evil fuckers. Not misguided, not part of a society that either didn’t have or couldn’t afford the technologies that free women and make public life safe and comfortable, not part of a system that just doesn’t work any more and forced into a role that they didn’t necessarily want.
No.
Men are EVIL FUCKERS.
I hope you enjoyed this installment of “Deconstructing Shaming Tactics.” Thank you for listening, direct all inquiries to “shamustacticus@gmail.com” and please tune in next time, when we will present another weapon in the endless arsenal of Shamus Tacticus.
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by 
Don’t forget, however that white cis feminists will then appropriate intersectionalist language regarding white supremacy (still, sadly, not dead yet) to hold Western white men, regardless of class, in the developed world responsible for those practices in the developing world, so that the Western world cis white women can exploit that oppression for their own purposes.
For example:
Concerned about circumcision? Not until we eliminate vaginal mutilation in a part of the world I will never see and wouldn’t spend seven-tenths of one percent of the time that I spend shaming “Nice Guys” working to get the Federal Goverment to appropriate 0.7% of GDP as foreign aid.
Or my recent favorite from the same thread of Amanda Marcotte’s rape apologia (how hasn’t that gone viral:
Also, it’s documented that 1 in 4 women experience domestic violence/abuse in their lifetimes. That number is much higher in some places in the world.
http://www.feministe.us/blog/archives/2012/09/19/is-it-rape-if-you-dont-mean-for-it-to-be-rape/#comment-526759
Note the author leaving out some salient details, such as… where. It’s like arguing that 1 in 4 people live on less than two dollars a day, true, but not quite relevant to the Western experience (though sadly, in the US, there is a non-trivial number who live on that little). For most of us, poverty is defined as living on about $30/day. At any rate, the appropriate response to this kind of bullshit is to point out that one must, on some level, be the change one wishes to see in the world:
Good point. That’s why whenever I hear about a woman coming forward with allegations of rape, my first reaction is to raise the possibility that she might just be regretting that she consensually had sex, or trying to get back at an ex, or trying to get attention, or deflect blame for a pregnancy out of wedlock. I’m not saying it’s true, I’m just raising the possibility.
http://www.feministe.us/blog/archives/2012/09/19/is-it-rape-if-you-dont-mean-for-it-to-be-rape/#comment-526740
Sorry, didn’t mean to dig up that particular festering dog but it seemed apropos to typical unifem derails.
I say this with a bit of pride in my voice….
I’m glad Marcotte’s ideologies are far more similar to the white nationalists who posted at Inmalafide than mine will ever be….
http://dearwhitefeminists.wordpress.com/update/
(yup, that is from an old comic that picture you have, but Marcotte u8sed it in her book.)
eventually when they ask where have all the Real Men ™ gone, one of them will say Stormfront…
Great video.
I’ve always liked your critiques of radfem and how they point out the radfem’s betrayal of the entire promise of feminism (at least what it was during the early second wave era) – giving women the cultural positive liberty to live their own lives on their own terms.
Now, it has descended into painting ever more hyperbolic pictures of female victimhood, reinforcing and emphasizing women’s “complete powerlessness,” and using that as an excuse to attack men and blame men collectively for everything wrong with the world.
Your videos show that women who actually achieve the promise of (early) feminism, i.e. the ability to live their own life on their own terms, are the greatest enemy of the parody which recent feminism has descended into.
I’m sure that these recent feminists would see a successful, happy, individuated and fulfilled woman as a gender traitor who’s “identified with her oppressors” and is thus the “ultimate victim” of being brainwashed by the Patriarchy. You know, just like a successful African-American person is a race traitor because they MUST have “acted white” in order to succeed within such blatantly racist institutions like (for example) standardized tests or English language.
“unifem”
Valerie, love it. So now ehn one of these vocies f social justice decides to tkae direct action, we can call her the “Unifem Bomber”.
YAC,
“Now, it has descended into painting ever more hyperbolic pictures of female victimhood, reinforcing and emphasizing women’s “complete powerlessness,”
Notice how much this stuff sounds like a bodice-ripper rape fantasy? There has to be a link between this and the orthodox demonization – not simple dennciation, but demonization – of rape as the ultimate evil. I guess one’s own worst sins are the ultimate evil.
Typhon,
“But this, this is too reasonable. And this reasonable conception of “patriarchy” just doesn’t create the necessary moral opprobrium against men as a group. It doesn’t get the dander up; it doesn’t whip people into a self-rightous fury; and we all know the hate must flow!”
This mentality is not only Male Supremacy on steroids, but it is demonizarion that allows these peole to deny any repsonsibility for the ills of the system they decry.
That first, Green map? Excellent religion map, too… the darker areas are the places where fundamentalist religions are strongest. That is truly what “patriarchy” is, IMHO.
But nobody except Greta Christina wants to talk about that. Never mind.
@ Daisy Deadhead
Fundamentalist religions give men a ‘superior’ role while requiring them to sacrifice their humanity in service of it.
Dark skinned people aren’t bad people because they’re “patriarchal”, they’re just dealing with situations in which they need a buffer class of people who are willing to sacrifice their lives to sustain their societies.
The only way you create a buffer class is by giving them something in exchange for their sacrifice. That something is a “superior” identity.
It’s a fiction and a sham but it works!
“That first, Green map? Excellent religion map, too… the darker areas are the places where fundamentalist religions are strongest. That is truly what “patriarchy” is, IMHO.
But nobody except Greta Christina wants to talk about that. Never mind.”
Oh I know someone else who goes there. She gets banned all over for asking questions like that and pointing stuff out.
You know why gay men love bitches? Because bitch is often a synonym for fighter.
Except that most catholic countries (e.g. Ireland, the only white colored country on the map, Italy, Argentina, most of the Caribbean, Spain) are lighter greens, while there are countries like Myanmar/Burma, India, Papua New Guinea, or N. Korea that are not fundamentalist, but are dark greens.
Sorry, meant to say most of the wealthier Catholic countries.
Equilibrium, did you see “60 Minutes”? 90% reduction in Irish Catholics attending Mass within the past 5 yrs. That is incredible!
Actually, Burma could be defined as fundamentalist Buddhist/Nationalist, as in, some Buddhists are currently insisting on being the majority religion and persecuting others. Also (re: N Korea) I consider fascism a type of fundamentalism, as Eric Hoffer did too.
Typhon Blue: Fundamentalist religions give men a ‘superior’ role while requiring them to sacrifice their humanity in service of it.
What did Cardinal Ratzinger sacrifice? What did Franklin Graham sacrifice? You are assuming these men had humanity to sacrifice in the first place, which I think is a stretch. At some point, we must look at who is on top and who benefits from power the most. There IS that class of men… and yes, they ARE men. They are running the joint.
Dark skinned people aren’t bad people because they’re “patriarchal”, they’re just dealing with situations in which they need a buffer class of people who are willing to sacrifice their lives to sustain their societies.
The only way you create a buffer class is by giving them something in exchange for their sacrifice. That something is a “superior” identity.
It’s a fiction and a sham but it works!
I did not say “dark people are bad”–excuse me. Please do not infer that I did.
On one level you are right about the identity thing, but I simply disagree that these are the primary motives. The motive is genuine religious faith and it is a major emotional reality to many people worldwide, particularly to fundamentalists. I know I am talking to a bunch of atheists/agnostics here (I think Gingko and Patrick are the exceptions?), who have probably never experienced strong faith, but it can be a very powerful force in one’s life, especially if augmented with behavioral doctrine, culture, ethnicity and community.
Dungone has already informed me he didn’t care about people who are fundamentalists; he said they should just stop believing… POOF! And like magic, one assumes, entire cultures disappear off the planet. (As Rocky used to tell Bullwinkle: that trick never works.) But he overlooked the obvious question: why should or would this ever happen if people think this IS the divine path they should follow?
If the dogma of a faith says such-and-so (insert gender and nationalist babble here), then that is the reason to follow it. Full stop. It’s not (only) about being promised a superior identity, but about subscribing to a certain view of the universe that explains everything, gender-roles included. I think people simply pay, pray and obey, period, with no thoughts to why… the whys and wherefores come about later, upon reflection. “God says so”–is enough for fundamentalist religion (closely followed by “its always been done this way”) … although I find it interesting that you think they are sacrificing their humanity. The fundies I argue with around here, think it is us heathens who have sacrificed OUR humanity and are disconnected with OUR past, history and culture.
Thus, I try not to use the terms “sacrificing humanity” and suchlike, on the radio and/or when engaged in direct debate with them… it never goes well. They think that’s a major put-down, and they’re right. (and I certainly don’t like it when they say it about me.)
I am religious, but I can’t wrap my mind around fundamentalism, or national chauvinism, or authoritarianism, or the like.
@ Daisy
“There IS that class of men… and yes, they ARE men. They are running the joint.”
Apex fallacy. Was I talking about the highest ranking men? No. I was talking about the average man.
And without an identity of self-sacrifice in exchange for a ‘superior’ identity for the average man, there would be no high ranking men either. Without privates there are no generals or presidents; without wage-slaves there are no CEOs, etc. That self-sacrifice creates the very hierarchy that enables high ranking men to exist in the first place.
And I never said ‘religion’ is sacrificing your humanity; I said buying into the whole ‘superior’ male identity in exchange for self-sacrifice is sacrificing your humanity. Not your humanity to yourself; your humanity to other people.
In other words saying that ‘men lead’ is another way of saying ‘men are expendable’.
Typhon Blue: And without an identity of self-sacrifice in exchange for a ‘superior’ identity for the average man, there would be no high ranking men either. Without privates there are no generals or presidents; without wage-slaves there are no CEOs, etc. That self-sacrifice creates the very hierarchy that enables high ranking men to exist in the first place.
Sure, but there is an ideology/level of indoctrination with ALL of those… e.g. one must believe in a certain type of venture-capitalism; one must subscribe to the colonialist politics of war, etc. These are the ideas/concepts integral to the “faith”, which then involves the sacrifice itself.
These ideologies must also be attacked, if you intend to end the sacrifices that are made on their account.
“Typhon Blue: Fundamentalist religions give men a ‘superior’ role while requiring them to sacrifice their humanity in service of it.
What did Cardinal Ratzinger sacrifice?”
DDH, OMG can’t believe you opened that door!
His humanity.
But seriously. His humanity. And it has to do with more than his celibacy. He is so deep into the closet it’s a wonder he can breathe at all.
“Thus, I try not to use the terms “sacrificing humanity” and suchlike, on the radio and/or when engaged in direct debate with them… it never goes well.”
I think that’s what the Church calls a “prudential decision”, right?
I care about Fundamentalists, and not just in the way I used ot care about the Soviets. A lot of them really do have their hearts in the right place. Ithink that was a lot of the energy behind the development of the evangelicla movement out of the Fundamentalist community.
And in a related note here’s an example of the kind of thing I am talking about.
http://andrewsullivan.thedailybeast.com/2012/10/the-gospel-of-hard-truths.html
Gingko: But seriously. His humanity. And it has to do with more than his celibacy. He is so deep into the closet it’s a wonder he can breathe at all.
(giggle) Now you really do sound like Andrew Sullivan! Are you talking about his “pastoral care of homosexual persons” essay/pamphlet? http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/On_the_Pastoral_Care_of_Homosexual_Persons
Did you read Sullivan’s essay/reply? I really liked it. He deconstructed it to a fare-thee-well.
The only nice thing I can think of to say about Benedict XVI is, apparently he really loves cats. 🙂
http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-osiQLHZgoOY/T_r6rV_RSJI/AAAAAAAAD4Q/KBCKS4YJyeA/s1600/Pope-Benedict-in-car-with-Gracey.jpg
http://i.telegraph.co.uk/multimedia/archive/01735/cat-pope-blessing_1735673c.jpg
http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-mpD_H65f7FI/Tq6_w9QsbjI/AAAAAAAAAcA/gfoP2hnFtwk/s1600/Pope+and+Kitten.jpg
Tons of those photos! Maybe there is hope for him after all?
@ Daisy
“These ideologies must also be attacked, if you intend to end the sacrifices that are made on their account.”
If men gain self-determinacy then these institutions will no longer have the necessary support structures to continue.
What comes after will likely be an instantaneous reorganization into a new form.
I is excite.
As Milton Jones says,
“Some people like cats and some people don’t. I was reading the other day, the Pope, he’s a cataholic.”
@ Patrick
I have no clue what you’re on about.
Ginkgo:
Good, but “so deep in the closet he’s sipping tea with Aslan” is still the best I’ve seen.
@Typhonblue
Fundamentalist religions give men a ‘superior’ role while requiring them to sacrifice their humanity in service of it.
Hmm… let’s use everyone’s favorite socioeconomic metric of male disposability to test that hypothesis: The life expectancy gap.
First, let’s take the life expectancy gap in years and expressed as a percentage of women’s life expectancy, of the 7 Western countries in the G8, which run the gamut from right-wing to near-optimal workers’ state:
Japan: 7.1 years or 8.2%
Canada: 4.6 years or 5.5%
United States: 5.2 years or 6.4%
United Kingdom: 4 years or 4.9%
France: 7 years or 8.3%
Italy: 6.1 years or 7.2%
Germany: 5.6 years or 6.8%
Which gives us a non-weighted average of roughly 5.65 years or 6.75%
To compare that with some countries where religious law has a much stronger tradition than secularism:
Somalia (highest estimated prevalence of vaginal mutilation): 2.5 years or 5.1%
Iran: 3.2 years or 4.4%
China (highest female-male ratio of suicide): 5 years or 6.5%
Afghanistan: -0.1 years or -2.2%
And just to give a little deference to people who bothered to try to invent a metric for this stuff, let’s conclude with the Global Gender Gap Report’s 7 most sexist countries, in no particular order:
Pakistan: 0.6 years or 0.9%
Yemen: 3.2 years or 5%
Saudi Arabia: 4.4 years or 5.8%
Benin: 2.2 years or 3.8%
Côte d’Ivoire: 1.8 years or 3.7%
Chad: 2.7 years or 5.2%
Mali: 4.5 years or 8%
So in one country that could credibly be referred to as patriarchal, the death gap was larger than the Western average… but for the most part, it was significantly smaller. This would suggest that increased male dominance does not result in a concomitant increase in relative male disposability, if anything, that power serves to mitigate said disposability, and without an offsetting increase in the political or economic or domestic power of women.
There are places where unidirectional sexism can be argued to happen. They’re just not where the unifems like to pretend they are.
Valerie, fascinating post!
Latest gender squabble:
http://www.insidehighered.com/news/2012/10/19/furor-over-male-scientists-facebook-post-about-female-scientists
@ Valerie
“There are places where unidirectional sexism can be argued to happen. They’re just not where the unifems like to pretend they are.”
Then we’re left with the idea that this ‘unidirectional’ sexism, this immorality, correlates very well with poverty and dark skin.
Why is that?
Oh, blah, blah, blah.
A. People are going to look and notice no matter where you are. And I include both men and women in that “people”, though I’m willing to say most of the looking is male to female and not female to male.
B. I just love how a few of this guys critics have the cognitive dissonance to think that his statement criticizing what he perceived as a lack of beauty at that neuroscience conference proves ass-grabbing was frequent at some other conference. What I took from it was that no one would be tempted to do any grabbing in neuroscience conferences.
C. Economically and socially privileged people complaining about minor annoyances. Nothing new under the sun. The issue with him could be resolved simply by calling him a poo-poo head back and ignoring him and not inviting him to any of the cool parties.
Grumble.
“Some people like cats and some people don’t. I was reading the other day, the Pope, he’s a cataholic.”
“@ Patrick
I have no clue what you’re on about.”
Oh I do.
Patrick, for your information all the real queens are dog people.
Great Danes.
DDH, AS did get there first. It wasn’t the ruby slippers that were the tell, though they were for AS. For me the tell was all the highly decorative assistants and hangers-on.
Clarence: The issue with him could be resolved simply by calling him a poo-poo head back and ignoring him and not inviting him to any of the cool parties.
LOL–I think that has happened already.
What I find disturbing (as a side issue) is how Facebook is now ‘public’. I say things there I don’t say on my blog… or at least I used to. Now you have to be on your best behavior there too! Jesus, is no place safe to say ‘impolitic’ things to your friends? I have FB and Google+ friends who rigidly police the “circles” they have everybody in, and *what* they say *where*… so if something “gets out” they can track it down: WHO SAID IT? WHO REPEATED IT? Damn, its worse than a cheerleader camp.
I find this whole new trend of nothing being private ANYwhere, a bit alarming. There is a video of me floating around online– taken without my knowledge and posted– so that is partly why I am increasingly annoyed about this state of affairs. I am inclined to defend this person just because it was something he wrote without the intention of making it public.
Grumble too, but for a different reason than Clarence.
Perhaps you would be pleasantly surprised if you read up on more than just the feminist incursion into atheism and find out what the rest of it.
You may not see how, but I find this statement to be deeply ironic.
If the question, why should they stop believing, even though they are wrong about their beliefs, then my answer is, because we have faith in humanity and individual human rights.
Venture Capitalists aren’t exactly the bane of Somalian society at this stage of the game. Do you know what really screws the poor over the most? It’s all the religious missionaries from rich, secular countries who descend on entire continents of poor, uneducated people and try to convince them that condoms don’t work but circumcision prevents AIDS.
Have people been keeping up with the recent Hugo follies? All you can say is WOW. I think this might be significantly worse than any of the previous follies I remember.
Here’s a link.
http://www.xojane.com/issues/hugo-schwyzer-controversy
The comments are scorching, so beware.
Apparently, this all got started over his ex wife’s tampon:
http://www.xojane.com/sex/on-digging-out-my-ex-wifes-tampon
Dungone: Perhaps you would be pleasantly surprised if you read up on more than just the feminist incursion into atheism and find out what the rest of it.
Why do you assume I don’t know about atheism? I interviewed Madalyn Murray O’Hair in 1977, back when I was an atheist myself. (presenting a witness, my co-interviewer Jeff Coleman: http://daisysdeadair.blogspot.com/2010/05/heap-big-woman-you-made-bad-boy-out-of.html#comment-7327537308471205301)
I think that was probably before you were born, wasn’t it?
Dungone: It’s all the religious missionaries from rich, secular countries who descend on entire continents of poor, uneducated people … (etc etc etc)
Really, you need to get some new material. You are starting to repeat yourself. The reason Greta Christina is interesting is because she never does–not (only) because she is feminist. And I also like her kinky stories.
@Daisy,
Damn, there is a lot of irrational hatred in those threads. I mean, aren’t there enough rational reasons to dislike* the man?! Add onto that all the self congratulatory “Go-girl” back slapping and it felt like I was back in highschool. They’re a mob picking on a pariah, and acting like they’re couragous. Bewildering!
(*I know you aren’t agianst him, Daisy, and I respect that, but you have to admit he makes himself an easy sort to dislike)
So let me get this straight. Sometime back in the stone age you were some sort of Marxist/Maoist radical feminist lesbian separatist, but now that you’re a “former atheist”, you want me to believe that you know more about living a life free of dogmatic belief than I do.
Dungone,
I’m really loathe to do this (being an atheist myself), but you’re really being unfair here.
Daisy’s former beliefs are irrelevant to the issue of whether or not, these days, she can be considered some sort of ideologically-blinded person.
I don’t necessarily agree with Daisy, but to try and smear her as ideologically-blinded simply on the basis of having interviewed a prominent atheist is unfair.
Would you consider Johnny Carson ideologically blinded because he interviewed the militant atheist Ayn Rand?
“So let me get this straight. Sometime back in the stone age you were some sort of Marxist/Maoist radical feminist lesbian separatist, but now that you’re a “former atheist”, you want me to believe that you know more about living a life free of dogmatic belief than I do.”
That about sums it up, except I don’t remember ever hearing that Daisy was a lesbian or even bi for that matter. Except for the fact that she has a hubby, a daughter, and she seems to be a dominant type woman (in BDSM terms) I know nothing of her sexual preferences or life, and I don’t see how that is relevant.
Daisy has shown an ability to change her mind about things and to change her belief systems – for the most part. That is commendable. At the same time, the influences of her former maoist and Catholic beliefs are still very present in how she interacts on blog posts.
You got that all wrong. Her argument was an appeal to authority, name dropping, and ageism. There is no smearing that – it smears itself as unworthy of intelligent debate. Moreover, she dismissed my claim that fundamentalism in Africa is made worse by fundamentalists from rich Western countries as just a boring old idea. That’s her whole argument. She like Greta Christina because she enjoys her kink stories. Great argument, there.
As a fellow atheist, I request that you look more careful at the way in which Daisy is making her case for feminism. Daisy believes that there are numerous redeeming qualities to religion and that it’s everyone else’s job to make religions safe for their adherents. She believes that “Patriarchal” societies, not the unquestioned and irrational beliefs inherent to religion, are what make religion toxic to female churchgoers.
All of this causes her to suffer a great deal of cognitive dissonance. Daisy can’t really cope with the idea that Western missionaries from otherwise secular countries are turning things to shit in Africa because it goes against the premise that fundamentalism is endemic to Patriarchal societies. In earlier discussions, she couldn’t cope with the idea that there are far more female worshipers in the USA than there are male because, again, it doesn’t fit the narrative of the Patriarchal male. It reminds me of the way in which feminists within what is now known as Atheism+ often claim that the reason why there are so few female atheists is because of rampant, gut-chilling levels of sexism displayed by Patriarchal atheist men. It’s pure cognitive dissonance.
Here, in this very thread, Daisy also earned my ire by committing the apex fallacy in defense of Patriarchal theory (roughly, it can be described as a hasty generalization or invalid syllogism). Typhonblue pointed this out to her – that men are actually treated as disposable to a far greater extent than they are treated as the beneficiaries of Patriarchy – but it didn’t make a dent on Daisy. Daisy responded with this:
Let it not go without saying that Africa wouldn’t be Africa if it hadn’t been replete with American-educated anti-colonialist Marxist dictators. Such ignorance is what I’ve come to expect from radical-left feminists. It’s not like free market sentimentality is running rampant throughout Africa, but Daisy goes right after the litany of men that whose lives are sacrificed by claiming that it’s their own religious belief in various Patriarchal & Capitalistic constructs which keep women oppressed and keep their countries from moving forward.
Dungone: So let me get this straight. Sometime back in the stone age you were some sort of Marxist/Maoist radical feminist lesbian separatist, but now that you’re a “former atheist”, you want me to believe that you know more about living a life free of dogmatic belief than I do.’
Um, who said anything like that?
Here we go again, We are back to that reading comprehension issue again, I see.
Here is what I actually wrote… please read carefully: But he overlooked the obvious question: why should or would this ever happen if people think this IS the divine path they should follow?
Where did I say ANYthing about how *you* should live your life? I really and truly do not give a shit what you do. I don’t “want” you to believe anything, and don’t care what you believe. It’s just *fun* to argue with you.
That question is centered around others, not around you. Everything is not about you, but I think its highly amusing (and oh so predictable) that you insist on seeing it that way.
That was a political question, about changing the minds of others, not about you.
And yes, as one who has changed her mind many times, I think I do know how that happens; what makes people do it, and how to prompt it in others. That was the point. I don’t think you have any clue… which is why you perpetually get it wrong and why the motives of the religious (which is the majority) thoroughly confuse you.
You are here trying to convince individuals of ideas; this is your personal agenda. (You have made it clear you don’t care about the majority of people–you don’t do politics or activism and proudly disdain it.) Therefore, you project your agenda onto me. (That is called psychological projection.) However, your agenda is NOT my agenda–I am about trying to change the hearts and minds of the majority. I come here to get ideas and learn what people think; I don’t care if you or anyone else agrees with me or not. I am not trying to convince anyone. I argue for the practice, so I learn how to better argue IRL and specifically, on the radio or in public debates, when I have to think on my feet. Learning about people’s ideas is the best way to do this.
It’s also fun. 🙂
In short, that comment was about your tone-deafness to other’s motives. And you were totally tone-deaf to it. Funny, huh?
She views Capitalism as a religion and religion as Patriarchy. She hasn’t strayed that far from radical feminism.
By that standard, Rush Limbaugh would be a feminist – why, he’s been married four times.
dungone:
While capitalism is an economic system, the way various political and economic schools of though deal with it often has the form of a religion. It’s an economic system and if it (or a modified varient of it) can’t serve the political, physical, and emotional needs of a populace it can be replaced by another.
But yeah: just like capitalism by itself is not a religion, neither is religion “patriarchy”. She should check with this guy about just how feminized “Christian” churches really are these days when the vast majority of their congregants (at least the long term ones) are women:
http://dalrock.wordpress.com/2012/09/29/christian-denial-and-institutional-resistance-to-change/
Dungone: Her argument was an appeal to authority, name dropping, and ageism.
Correcting your continuing elitist assumptions and implications that I am stupid, is what I did. You are just upset that I made you look silly. 🙂 You recently said I was “poorly educated and proud of it”–and I refrained from calling you an elitist, but I see that I was being too nice.
Your education, as we see, has not helped your reading comprehension or understanding of human nature ONE IOTA. That is probably embarrassing to you.
Dungone: Moreover, she dismissed my claim that fundamentalism in Africa is made worse by fundamentalists from rich Western countries as just a boring old idea.
I said *you* were boring and that you needed new material, not that the idea itself was boring. I remember the idea from the first 5000 times you wrote it… I remember you said it over on NSWATM too.
Unlike you, I really do read all comments addressed to me, and I remember what people say. I remember their hobby-horses and favorite subjects… and that is one of yours.
No highfalutin education is as important as the ability to NOTICE and REMEMBER, which you notably and glaringly lack. Nobody is as important to you as YOU are.
Dungone: She like Greta Christina because she enjoys her kink stories. Great argument, there.
Argument? What argument? That is just the truth.
You do know the difference between stating a reason I enjoy someone’s blog/writing and “making an argument”? (Or is this more lack of reading comprehension?)
Dungone: As a fellow atheist, I request that you look more careful at the way in which Daisy is making her case for feminism. Daisy believes that there are numerous redeeming qualities to religion and that it’s everyone else’s job to make religions safe for their adherents.
Where have I ever said this? Quote please?
Really, a remedial course in reading might help. I am serious now.
I am a fan of the Constitution, that old time religion. I believe in everyone’s civil rights and believe that THEIR rights also strengthen MINE. An attack on their rights is an attack on mine, etc. I also believe that we should have respect and equality for all people, something I think you didn’t learn as a child. That means having a hands-off attitude in the matter of what people believe, unless it creates trouble in the public square and impacts the rights of others. These “cross-sections” of rights (for lack of a better term) are what I find most interesting… public school education, media and so on. Conservative writer Norman Podhoretz referred to the place where literature and politics meet as “The Bloody Crossroads” and I think we could replace the word “religion” with literature… since we are also talking about the importance of myth, hope and imagination in people’s lives, something literature also specializes in.
But no, I don’t expect a confirmed misanthrope like YOU to participate in this social project, or even to understand it.
Dungone: She believes that “Patriarchal” societies, not the unquestioned and irrational beliefs inherent to religion, are what make religion toxic to female churchgoers.
I think fundamentalist religions are toxic for everyone, as I have agreed with Typhon Blue in this thread. She and Gingko have posited that the men may even have it WORSE, and I am thinking this might be why (as you have reminded me approx 800 times) more women than men are into religion.
Interesting ideas, and that is why I come here. (Also, their ideas are stated respectfully and succinctly–something you might learn to do.)
Dungone: Daisy can’t really cope with the idea that Western missionaries from otherwise secular countries are turning things to shit in Africa because it goes against the premise that fundamentalism is endemic to Patriarchal societies.
Um, where did I say this? Where are you getting this wild shit?
I have provided you with a ton of links from my blog, but you never read what I actually think and write, so I won’t bother doing it again.
In short, as a survivor of the feminist separatists/Mary-Daly-faction you previously mentioned, believe me, I am WELL AWARE that there is nothing innately “patriarchal” about fundamentalism… since I endured the feminist variety. As you rightly said… yet… you didn’t really GET IT, did you? This is what interests me about you; you seem unable to read the human heart. (Is this deliberate or a blind spot?)
There are also many ‘matriarchies’ within religions… such as the Marian movement within Catholicism, the “Women Aglow” movement within Pentecostalism, and so on. (The women in African villages are the ones who perform the ritual circumcisions, after all.) As one unaware of religious cultures, you probably didn’t know that. But this greatly interests me also.
In our world today, fundamentalism on “the big scale” tends to be patriarchal in scope and organization. I didn’t capitalize Patriarchal, though, you did. I am simply describing which gender is in charge, who has the supervisory positions.
Dungone: In earlier discussions, she couldn’t cope with the idea that there are far more female worshipers in the USA than there are male because, again, it doesn’t fit the narrative of the Patriarchal male.
Who couldn’t? I just mentioned this. Where did you get the idea I “couldn’t cope” when I pointedly linked Leon Podles and talked about his book, the last time you mentioned this?
http://www.podles.org/church-impotent.htm
I first learned of these ideas from him, as I said before.
Ohhh, that’s right, you don’t check the links, don’t read comments and just proceed with your delusions, forgot. But see, this is why you get so much wrong. (And I assume it doesn’t stop here on the internet.)
Dungone: Let it not go without saying that Africa wouldn’t be Africa if it hadn’t been replete with American-educated anti-colonialist Marxist dictators.
I think I probably know far more about these dictators than you do, in my considerable work with Amnesty International. Can I ask: What have you done to help the refugees from the countries you are talking about–or are you just using these Africans as local color/scenery/props in your arguments?
Aside: The fact that Jesuit Refugee Service has done FAR more than most atheists, who talk talk talk but don’t actually DO anything, is another one of those things I find so interesting. And yet, the atheists think they are morally superior to the Jesuits. And like Dungone, they have done absolutely nothing except vent their spleens.
Dungone: It’s not like free market sentimentality is running rampant throughout Africa, but Daisy goes right after the litany of men that whose lives are sacrificed by claiming that it’s their own religious belief in various Patriarchal & Capitalistic constructs which keep women oppressed and keep their countries from moving forward.
You give your German away with all that Compulsive Capitalizing… you are German, right? East German maybe?
I am a (democratic) Marxist before I am feminist or anything else, which of course, is the *real reason* you dislike me. I think your childhood indoctrination is showing. (But hey, we all have it, don’t we? No worries, dude.) You are still fighting your parents’ battles, and it shows.
If I have to choose between my feminism and my Marxism? Well… ain’t no contest there. 🙂 This is likely why I still have a soft spot for atheism… I mean, come on, religion absolutely IS the opiate of the Masses, he was right, as always. (My question is, why are opiates automatically bad? Can they ever be good? Neutral? Can we :control: the opiates? Etc.)
But please, drop the pretense and JUST ADMIT you hate the dirty commie hippies, okay?
I have always known this about you, and I don’t mind (I’ve been hated by professional haters, hon)– but *you* will feel much better if you come clean about it to everyone else here. (FTR, you totally gave yourself away over on NSWATM when you gave that Spiro Agnew-esque anti-Grateful Dead speech. All that was missing was “take a bath, hippie!” and it was just like old times.)
Peace out.
Jared, I found the thread alarming as hell. Totally agreed. Yow! (cowers under rock)
Dungone: She views Capitalism as a religion and religion as Patriarchy. She hasn’t strayed that far from radical feminism.
(giggle) You are a hoot!
I think you have it mixed up… I quoted Eric Hoffer, one of my patron saints… As he laid out in his groundbreaking book, “The True Believer”: the fundamentalist temperament (which I am beginning to think you might possess yourself) can attach itself to anything. It is also known as FANATICISM. It can be communist, capitalist, feminist, MRA, atheist, religious, anything. The play’s the thing. I agree with Hoffer that in our modern times, when so much of traditional belief is up for grabs, other belief systems easily stand in for religion and provide the kind of community, purpose and fervor that religion once did.
Didn’t that fancy college force you to read Hoffer?
Clarence: Daisy has shown an ability to change her mind about things and to change her belief systems – for the most part. That is commendable. At the same time, the influences of her former maoist and Catholic beliefs are still very present in how she interacts on blog posts.
Hey I am doing better Clarence! 😛
I will confess to bisexuality, which is why I like Camille Paglia, since we bond over Elizabeth Taylor. Its important.
Paglia had a scrapbook of over 600 photos… mine wasn’t nearly as big, but I would loooove to see hers! (“I’ll show you mine if you show me yours”)
For this reason, I find that I do understand a great deal is what she is saying; it is like we share an aesthetic sensibility.
The patient claiming to be an expert on the disease.
Clarence: But yeah: just like capitalism by itself is not a religion, neither is religion “patriarchy”. She should check with this guy about just how feminized “Christian” churches really are these days when the vast majority of their congregants (at least the long term ones) are women:
As I said, you might enjoy the Podles book, but he wrote it from a Catholic POV about the Catholic Church. In a review in (I think?) Commonweal, I think it was Margaret Steinfels O’Brien who said these facts are true of all major faiths, not just Catholicism or Christianity in general. Of course, I can’t find it now.
Here is an Anglo-Catholic take on the Podles idea: http://touchstonemag.com/archives/article.php?id=14-01-026-f
Aside: Mention is made of Julian of Norwich, who is going to be made a Doctor of the Church, which will make the 4th woman to have that status in Church history. (!) Never thought I’d see the day.
Speaking of capitalism as religion… currently reading the biography of Ayn Rand. She wore dollar sign jewelry, just like crucifixes. (made of real gold, of course) She posed in front of the Fed, just like religious people pose for photos at the Vatican. Really, it was like a religion to her, the closest living example of that I have seen.
Dungone: The patient claiming to be an expert on the disease.
Well *of course*. Who better? I guess you think the symptoms of disease were invented by doctors instead of first being described in depth and detail, by the actual sufferers?
Is that really intended as an insult?
No wonder you don’t understand anything.
Dungone: By that standard, Rush Limbaugh would be a feminist – why, he’s been married four times.
I’ve never married bimbos though. Fail.
I marry smart people. Even the biker was smart.
Daisy,
Well, that was an interesting essay. The guy doesn’t believe that early Christianity was universalist, not that he understands universalism, or that it was majority-female?
D&D:
Get a room, you two.
So, back to those maps. We see patriarchy, poverty, and dark skin all correlated. Daisy proposes that they are also correlated with fundamentalism. For the sake of this discussion, I’ll assume that “fundamentalism” = “religion taking a controlling role in the lives of its adherents.” If this is not a good proxy, please correct me. (The fundamentals of Buddhism in Nepal are certainly different form the fundamentals of Christianity in the US.)
So, which of these is the causal factor? Is religion (the opium of the masses) being prioritized because of poverty? (poverty –> religion) Is religion being pushed by patriarchs to distract? (patriarchy –> religion) Is religion pushing patriarchy because of tradition? (religion –> patriarchy) Do dark skinned people prefer religion? Do they prefer patriarchy? (skin –> religion; skin –> patriarchy)
Or, is the whole thing a big lie? (anglo bigotry –> false perception of poverty, religion, patriarchy in areas with darker skin tones)
I’ll put my tokens on: poverty –> patriarchy; poverty –> religion; and bigotry –> misperception. I am somewhat swayed by the argument that patriarchy is a survival strategy for times and places where life is nasty, brutish, and short.
EGR:
You get at least honorary mention (haven’t decided top award yet) for Poster of the Thread.
EGR, we are on the same page… I totally agree, especially your last sentence. The same would be true of pockets of severe poverty in the USA, such as Appalachia or inner cities. What is interesting about the latter is that “the patriarchy” consists largely of gangs and cops… while the women run the churches and homes. In contemporary Appalachia (last 30-40 yrs), I think the role of men as “head of the household” was regarded as a sort of ‘restoration’ … a way of making him feel like his life was not being robbed by the coal mines. (Opiate of the Masses time–“pie in the sky when you die, that’s a lie”, as Utah Phillips, God rest him, used to sing…..also the Grateful Dead’s “Cumberland Blues” always comes to mind.) I think the Promise Keepers appealed to this sense of “restoration” also. In addition, men were losing jobs to outsourcing like crazy, exactly at the time the PKs were gaining influence within American Christianity. This offered men some respect in the home, at precisely the time they were losing self-respect economically. Often, as Hannah Rosin points out, the women were even making most of the money. So the “head of household” position for such a man was like a modern monarchy, almost a courtesy title.
The USA is *huge*… there are poverty-pockets here (i.e. Orangeburg, SC) that are almost as severe as anything in Africa. It all “averages out” with the rich enclaves, so people have NO idea unless they stumble upon them… even here in SC, Hilton Head averages out Orangeburg and on paper, doesn’t look nearly as bad. But nation-states, as we found out from the breakup of the USSR, are not the only way communities divide up. Borders are only one measurement and often do not tell the whole story.
In short, I think our ‘Anglo bigotry’ is in our innate respect of the “nation” concept of borders, rather than looking at the place ethnically… like Tibet is technically part of China, but no, it really isn’t. There was this cool guy in Amnesty International who would have a fit when we talked like that and say “no no noooooo! Look at the place indigenously!!!!” He was awesomeness, his name was Guy Ottewell. You guys would have loved him, he was really an individual and a genius too:
http://www.universalworkshop.com/
He left here and went back to the UK, and I miss him. He taught over at Furman Univ. But in studying British colonialism, he learned to look at land “differently”–in more organic ways. He would look at natural boundaries, mountains, rivers, etc and said that was historically where language and ethnicities changed. He said nation-state boundaries were an imperialistic thing and came later, and they were often imposed by colonialists who had no intrinsic understanding of a place, they were all about acquiring territory. etc. I learned so much from him.
Anyway, that is what HE would say! Hope at least some of that made sense.
Get a room with Dungone?
That reminds me of the famous line at the end of the trailer for Texas Chainsaw Massacre: “Who will survive and what will be left of them?”
ROFL.
@Marja Erwin, indeed, interesting. It’s always fascinating the age-old rationalizations and recommendations given by the religious about these sorts of things.
The guy is also at pains to make this sound like it’s actually just a Christian “problem.” I mean, such as 75% of converts to Islam in the UK being women. http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/home-news/women–islam-the-rise-and-rise-of-the-convert-6258015.html
And listen to the laments of the Muslim community about Muslim women who are settling on becoming a 2nd, 3rd, or even 4th wife: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2113366/Muslim-women-share-husbands-lack-suitable-men.html
So, it can’t possibly be that Muslim women have a hard time finding a religious husband because Muslim women in the UK are more religious than men? No, of course not. It has to be that these dastardly Muslim males are just too traditional and make for terrible husbands.
@Evil Green Ranger,
“Get a room, you two.”
Don’t get jealous EGR, you can have her.
Wow, Dungone, I am impressed! Are you quoting Waylon Jennings?
My parents used to do that song in their band:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PuNf25kitQ4
🙂
Dungone: The guy is also at pains to make this sound like it’s actually just a Christian “problem.” I mean, such as 75% of converts to Islam in the UK being women.
This was Margaret Steinfels O’Brien’s point, too, in her criticism of Podles… that marks the first time I had read the worldwide stats.
She also made the point that it is true of all major religions, and even some of the smaller upstarts and cults.
“EGR:
You get at least honorary mention (haven’t decided top award yet) for Poster of the Thread.’
Motion seconded. TB has to make the final determination.
DDH,
”
So, it can’t possibly be that Muslim women have a hard time finding a religious husband because Muslim women in the UK are more religious than men? No, of course not. It has to be that these dastardly Muslim males are just too traditional and make for terrible husbands.”
Doesn’t this kind of crap just make you want to shake some sense into them? The male supremacy, it burns.
None of the above. Sorry…
Dungone hath spoken.
I guess its time to fold up the tent and end the revival, in that case. Pass the plate, somebody.
When you consider the propaganda attached to this song it’s rather sad:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XMxtbAP2cyU&feature=player_embedded#!
See, I like that song. And certainly during the time it was originally recorded the culture was far more repressive of women socially. Many a boyfriend could learn from the gentle lyrics of that song. But this -well, luckily election season will be over soon and I can get the image out of my head.
Here we have a bunch of “empowered” modern women imagining that Roe V Wade is in real danger (same thing trotted out every election I can remember since Reagan), that they only earn 70 cents, and all of that.
How derivative. The sad thing is this ridiculous victimization crap IS the backslide that they fear.
Clarence, there is also the matter of Quincy Jones being a straight-up genius; he made everything sound so beautiful and enchanting. (Strawberry Letter 23!)
Lesley Gore is a lesbian and that is likely how they got her “approval” during an election year. She was apolitical for a long time and came out only in 2005.
I thought the song was used to nice effect at the end of the movie “First Wives Club”–but that does mark the first open propaganda-usage of the song, unfortunately. It was all downhill from there.
Daisy:
Yep, and for the vast majority of men, it always was. The home is a matriarchy, and most men have no power outside the home either. The incentive they got to fulfil their allotted role was a little status.
You may be interested to know that the word “hero” and the word “servant” come from the same Indo-European root *ser “to watch over, protect”. Status as compensation for sacrifice is very old.
I actually meant to comment on this earlier, but I am curious to see what Valerie’s statistics would look like if we removed death from childbirth from the stats. In the poorest countries that might extend the statistical life of women by a bit, a couple years maybe even. Point being, if you are poor, a dangerous childbirth is pretty inescapable, since contraception and medical care are hard to come by. And since it is inescapable, it falls in a sort of different category than socially enforced gender roles, and should be considered differently in a statistical analysis. Of course, it might only extend lives by a few weeks or months, even in the poor countries. I’m curious to see.
That Waylon Jennings song was great!
I suppose it could become the new old anthem for for us “angry” guys in the manosphere….
People, I give you what I believe is the second biggest white knight in the history of western civilization
http://www.huffingtonpost.co.uk/vincent-mcaviney/prison-reform-women-in-jail_b_2003571.html
Paul, wow. I hardly know what to say. Is he including the Manson girls in that?
Speechless. Includes all them berserk ladies on “Snapped”! Isn’t he scared?
Wait, this is the UK. Do you have berserk “Snapped” ladies over there? The article acts like they are all in jail for traffic tickets or something.
Because that would just never fly here.
I dunno about Snapped UK. I live in the U.S.
Granted he does say something about “some women will need to be incarcerated, still.” but considering the kind of hand waving of female violence already done in Western Society, I shudder to thing what kind of horrible genocide a woman would have to perpetuate upon the human race in order to qualify in this guy’s mind of needing to remain in prison.
Now, I do agree with him that our society imprisons too quickly, especially for crimes that are not violent…. but I don’t see any reason why women, specifically, should get a pass.
@Paul:
Holy crap. What a terrible article. I’m pleasantly surprised to see that the commenters (so far) at Huffpo are excoriating him.
Also, who is the biggest white knight, or are you using the phrase in the “there’s always something ahead of it” way?
And by “there’s always something ahead of it,” I mean the the trope from Get Smart.
I think Hugo Schwyzer is the biggest “white knight” currently in intellectual circulation in the western world in general. I mean THINK of it. He has been writing feminist articles for, as far as I can tell at least 10 years now, and I have literally never seen him hold women as a group (and hardly ever individual women either) responsible for anything.
It’s a good comment. 🙂
And, holy shit, is that ad depressing. Has it ever occurred to those women that not only did men never own women, men never cared to own them?
There’s been an ongoing campaign in the UK to abolish imprisonment for women for at least the last five years, despite government research showing that women are already treated more leniently at every stage of a criminal justice system for every category of crime. Last week a Tory MP, Philip Davies, pointed all this out in the House of Commons. We’ll see if anybody pays any attention.
We do get ” Snapped ” here in the UK. I watch it a lot.
The campaign against locking up women is for non- violent offenders, since nobody’s stupid enough yet to moot letting Rose West or Beverly Allit free to maraud around.
Clarence, and did you read that Hugo thread I linked? The more he gives them a pass, the more they want to peel and eat him alive. I found the thread comments horrific and… well, damn. All out of proportion to real life.
You’d think they were talking about Ted Bundy.
Daisy, maybe I missed it but can you go over in what manner you used to be an atheist and in what manner you are a theist now? See, most of us atheists have heard that claim before so it’s setting off our bullshit detectors. I don’t want to just toss your claim into that same catergory because you usually have a good story behind what your say. Regardless, just a heads up that if you claim that you used to be an atheist to an atheist, it’s usually gonna to create a barrier to conversation…so even if it is true, don’t blurt it out like that…if your goal is conversation (it’s not always my goal, so that’s fair too!).
Religions are largely born out of risk aversion, fear, and psychosis. Feminists which attribute religious oppression to masculine traits are just being sexist and shaming men for what all humans do that, as a matter of fact, are traits commonly associated with femininity, not masculinity. The whole entire concept if “patriarchal religion” is a load of crap, and when you start substituting “government” for “patriarch”, you’ll get hopelessly lost in a sexist, anti-male quagmire.
Now, notice that I am not blaming religion on women. Far from it. Even if a majority of the world’s religious adherents are actually women, it’s all just a part of a very complex dynamic. Societies (aka governments) will often try to wrestle control of religious ideologies to prevent the destabilizing effects of fearful, dogmatic cults that produce terrorists. A lot of these fearful religions are preached to groups of scared men who are taken by guarantees of an afterlife before throwing their lives away in battle. Such was the case with the Dead Sea Scrolls – they were an example of crazy Jewish sects that fueled constant rebellion against the Romans – which resulted in the Romans creating Christianity.
Modern-day stateless terrorism, with groups such as al-Qaeda, is a perfect example of what had always gone on throughout history. Religion is as bad at the “grass roots” level as it is at the governmental level. And what has feminism offered to the world? They offered “women’s ways of knowing,” reactionary attacks on modern science and reason. In fact, that’s why they reacted so strongly against the work of Sigmund Freud and his study of psychosis – it hit too close to home. Many feminists have been preoccupied with religion – creating their own goddess cults and taking interest in various pagan and occult practices of the past. In what might be one of history’s deepest ironies, many even took an interest in witchcraft. And don’t confuse it for anything else – feminist religions are all about subversion. So is religion a female thing? Yes and no. Is it a male thing? Yes and no. Is it a big-government thing? Yes and no. The one thing that religion is not is an individual human rights.
That doesn’t even start to talk about the complex geopolitics of religion. Secular countries had long been overrun by religious fanatics from far away lands. Poor countries, all else being equal, rarely if ever get a chance to develop a secular tradition because of their rich neighbors. It doesn’t matter if it’s a rich country like Saudi Arabia, Israel, or the USA – they all have the money and resources to converge onto entire continents of poor people in order to indoctrinate them in some of the most fanatical religions ever known to man. If you really fail to grasp the power dynamics involved then you’ll never be able to understand how even a secular country full of free speech and religious tolerance can still have an overall effect of creating crazy, autocratic countries elsewhere in the world, which will then turn around and become a serious threat if they ever become powerful. Overthrow a democratically elected government in Iran, and what will you get? Send religious fanatics to do “missionary work” in the poorest regions in the world, and what do you get?
Yeah, like a religious fanatic who claims that he used to be an atheist because at one point he “believed in evolution.” But it’s not even worth it. Remember, you’re talking to a Marxist. It’s almost certainly bullshit. Unless at one point she was an atheist independently from being a Marxist, then she was buying into the label as part of her dogmatic indoctrination. I can’t even tell you how many conservative Christians I meet who are the worst, most fundamentalist sort, who claim to be against “organized religion” but yet support turning the USA into a theocracy. Daisy is one of those sorts of liberals – she views “organized religion” as an evil, Patriarchal force in the world, but is actually in favor of religious belief.
Sorry for the bad grammar, everyone.
@Daisy, for what it’s worth I did go to grade school in Germany for a few years, but I am not German or from Germany. And it has nothing to do with why I capitalize Patriarchy and, in some cases, Capitalism – when I am referring to them as the name of a religious belief, then that’s what I do. Strangely, I think you already know where I’m actually from, but were too busy looking for some angle to try to use against my dismissal of your Marxist beliefs.
Stoner, I am in your spam filter again.
Dungone: Religions are largely born out of risk aversion, fear, and psychosis.
Have you read Lynne Marguilies on religion? (sadly, she passed away last year) Stephen Jay Gould on “non-overlapping magisteria?
Religions are born of an attempt to channel the irrational and superstition into something manageable; cultural myth and imagination; and a desire for communion and community with others, all combined into a fun and social and (optimally) beneficial package.
That is why they originally began as ethnic enclaves, but that is changing in our modern times, as like-minded people (with freedom of association) choose to come together.
This is why churches send old ladies with funnel cakes to the nursing homes and organize Christmas drives to collect toys for the kids. When atheists start doing these things, people might take them more seriously and respect them… but people like you think its all psychosis to collect toys for kids, so I doubt that will happen.
The fact that you do not understand the continuing draw of religion/spirituality, is why you do not understand people. Much less feminists.
Dungone: they were an example of crazy Jewish sects that fueled constant rebellion against the Romans
Those crazy colonized Jews trying to throw off oppression and create their own autonomous communities! What WERE they thinking?!
Which reminds me, you didn’t answer my question. Are you German?
Let’s cut to the chase.
Dungone: The one thing that religion is not is an individual human rights.
I knew you were a fascist, and thanks for finally admitting it.
This is why so little of what you say is to be trusted.
Yes, the right to practice religion is an individual human right.
If people want to believe in Allah or flying saucers, or nothing at all, that is their inalienable human right to do so. Anything else is an attempt at thought control.
What you don’t understand is, if you can outlaw what I think, or deprive me of the right to think or practice it, you have given religious people the right to do it right back to you. And they will.
Those who do not remember the past are condemned to repeat it.
Not out of a sense of wonder?
Not out of religious experiences unrelated to psychosis?
(But then psychosis is pretty loosely defined. A few days ago, someone cited an article which portrayed it as the opposite of autism, but others include conditions which can affect autistic people as easily as neurotypical people.)
A few days ago, I thought of that and realized that there was nothing inherently mutually exclusive about them. One person can easily develop both male and female attributes. So yeah, I think it may make more sense to think of it as more of a color wheel than a linear spectrum. In the end it’s just an analogy and that’s fine by me.
Dungone. my apologies, just read… you are not German, but you did make an antisemitic comment. You should be ashamed of yourself,. but of course, you aren’t.
Debaser: Daisy, maybe I missed it but can you go over in what manner you used to be an atheist and in what manner you are a theist now?
Buddhist, which may not be regarded as “theist”… I do not know what atheists think Buddhism is? I have heard different definitions.
Debaser: See, most of us atheists have heard that claim before so it’s setting off our bullshit detectors. I don’t want to just toss your claim into that same catergory because you usually have a good story behind what your say.
Like Hugo, when I went into 12-step recovery, I got religion (LOL). Lots of people do, and most pass through it, but some get even more religious. Whole nother subject–I have written about this stuff at length on my blog. In short, I think it was necessary at the time, and saved my life.
I tried to be a traditionalist Catholic and go back to basics, but I never could be a “good” Catholic….that is why on my blog I have a tag for “Catholicism” and another for “bad Catholics”–LOL.
Debaser: Regardless, just a heads up that if you claim that you used to be an atheist to an atheist, it’s usually gonna to create a barrier to conversation…so even if it is true, don’t blurt it out like that…if your goal is conversation (it’s not always my goal, so that’s fair too!).
I simply made that statement to let Dungone know I am not ignorant of atheism, as he assumed I was.
Dungone assumes all kinds of incorrect things about me, since he views me as a paper-feminist (paper Marxist, should say… that’s his *real* bugaboo) and by his own admission, does not read the entirety of my replies.
Until the last 10 yrs or so, whenever I took on an ideology, I tried hard to go ‘by the book’. I realize this is likely because I came from a very chaotic family/background and (as I mentioned Eric Hoffer, who also helped save my life, when I encountered his work at long last) ideologies helped me make sense of the world and I clung to them. (NOTE: I think Hugo still does this) This is why I think iron-clad ideologies are so important to people today (as Hoffer argued), since the world is getting MORE (not less) chaotic. This is also the lure of gangs, the military, security/police, terrorist and other organizations that promise a whole way of life, values, community and collective discipline.
Hope that answers your question.
When I was the most dogmatic about Marxism (I am pretty “middle path” about most everything now… otherwise known as being slack! LOL) then I was dogmatic about atheism too. Or at least I tried… as my first husband noted, I have always been terribly superstitious, and you will NOT put up an umbrella in my house! LOL.
He used to get very upset with me over that, since he was a REAL atheist and still is.
When I have tried to be atheist, my superstition seemed to get much worse, which is interesting. I therefore came to the conclusion that much of religion evolved to “tame” wayward and uncontrollable superstition.
Ah, so that’s why she was trying to tie me in to being German. Fascists – highly religious, incredibly nationalistic reactionaries. Germans – currently some of the least religious, least nationalistic people on earth. Marxists – accuse anyone who disagrees with them of being a fascist.
Dungone: Unless at one point she was an atheist independently from being a Marxist, then she was buying into the label as part of her dogmatic indoctrination.
Not simply “buying into the label” but actually believing and fully subscribing to it. Indoctrination means indoctrination… you don’t “buy into” it… you *submit* to it. It defines everything you do and think.
Remember in the military, where they said “Counter column, march!” and you did it automatically? That is called indoctrination. You did it on command without thinking it over first. Marxism is similar. You could read a news story and know automatically how to interpret it, poof, without thinking it over.
For this reason, the military and Marxism can both feel very comforting. It releases people from the existential pressure of having to think for themselves, at least for awhile.
Dungone: Daisy is one of those sorts of liberals – she views “organized religion” as an evil, Patriarchal force in the world, but is actually in favor of religious belief.
I don’t consider organized religion evil at all. What are you talking about?
Some can be evil and some is not.
I no longer see the world in black and white, but speaking of fanaticism/fundamentalism, you clearly do.
I am neither “in favor” or “not in favor” of religious belief. I accept it as a given in the world, that has always existed and (in my opinion) always will, in some form.
My specific interest is how religion should be incorporated peacefully into the world without violating everyone’s rights or autonomy.
PS: I love religion as myth and imagination; fables and stories, is this what you mean by “in favor”? I do know a lot about all the world’s religions, and this has been a help, not a hindrance, in my life. I love various aspects/groups of various faiths: the Sufi, Jesuits, Benedictines, Samaneri and so forth.
I do have an OM symbol tattoo on my arm, which I guess in Dungone-universe, would get me sent to the re-education camp. http://daisysdeadair.blogspot.com/2007/12/my-christmas-present.html
Dungone: Ah, so that’s why she was trying to tie me in to being German.
Yes, but if you are NOT German, no excuse for the fascism.
It’s even worse than if you were raised that way… you deliberately *chose* it.
Dungone: Fascists – highly religious, incredibly nationalistic reactionaries.
Um, Robespierre, Castro, Stalin, Enver Hoxha, Pol Pot, Kim il Sung, etc… not religious in the least. (?)
Do you even understand history? And you call ME “poorly educated”?
Dungone: Marxists – accuse anyone who disagrees with them of being a fascist.
Even a stopped clock is right twice a day, dude. 🙂
Anyone who thinks religion is NOT an individual right, would easily *deny* that right… and that is horrific, leading to (for instance) all the above leaders jailing or executing people for being clergy… even for simple church-attendance or individual prayer.
THAT is what leads to the re-education camp.
I not only know about religion, I know a whole bunch about the Cultural Revolution. 😉
Dungone: Strangely, I think you already know where I’m actually from,
I have no idea at all. Where ARE you from?
To be fair, I will answer too. I’m from Columbus, Ohio. (GO BUCKEYES!)
Wolverine Stew on the menu this year. Who wants to fight about it?
Daisy:
There’s nothing uniquely German about fascism. They didn’t even invent it (as I’m sure you are aware). Looking at recent world history, I don’t think living in Germany would actually do much to increase the odds of someone being raised fascist.
Actually, I heard an older professor of mine give a very interesting speech when he was visiting Japan, arguing that America was also a fascist state at the time of the Second World War.
Marja: Not out of a sense of wonder?
Of course, Marja, but my first husband the major atheist thought “wonder and awe” was covered under “irrational”… Plato thought music, love, partying and sex were also irrational (they are), so I used to hit him with that one.
Good times!
He used to tell me he believed awe and wonder were primitive emotions, like when we say “Cool!” during the thunderstorm (or like my cat, hide under the bed)… and that it was easily explained away. I don’t think it is, since we have different “wonder” reactions.
Aside: I loved that TV show about the conjoined twins, Abby and Brittany Hensel. They were VERY different personality-wise, and they have identical genes and due to being conjoined, have had the exact same experiences their whole lives. But they are different; one goes “Wow!” about stuff and the other says “Meh”… what accounts for this? They have to compromise on clothes, and make trade-offs, since they have different favorite colors and styles. Fascinating!
It comes down to that indefinable thing we often call a soul. 🙂
Hiding: There’s nothing uniquely German about fascism.
I didn’t say there was. Please do not take Dungone’s statements about what I believe to be Gospel (joke intended).
I was referring to his open antisemitism.
My hitchhiker-partner of days gone by, who was Jewish, told me that there was a definite undercurrent of antisemitism left in Germany that he noticed when hitchhiking through Europe. In Germany, he once was asked to get out of the car of a woman when he answered “yes” to the question, ‘are you jewish?’
He said every single German who picked him up, eventually asked him that question, and it made him nervous. No other country/group asked him this a single time. It was glaring, he said. He had no intentions of ever going back to Germany.
Dungone made the ‘fascist’ connection… read back. I was referring to his antisemitic comment about Jews being crazy for simply wanting independence from Romans.
If Dungone came from a repressive country, this would explain his easy attitude towards human rights being somehow negotiable. He was raised that way. (Just as Americans have raised to be absolutists about rights, or at least make noises in that direction.) And yes, Germany IS repressive in some ways, since they have no First Amendment, and can (and do) outlaw political or religious literature they deem inappropriate. I just read “Inside Scientology” by Janet Reitman (highly recommended!) and there is a whole segment about how the Germans would not allow the Scientologists to set up any kind of organization there, even when they said the German govt could closely supervise them.
You really haven’t got a fucking clue, do you? I’ve had numerous family members who died in Nazi concentration camps.
Dungone, you deliberately and maliciously write all sorts of incorrect bullshit smears about me, which I laboriously have to correct. Over and over.
I have asked you to stop this and you pointedly refuse and instead, double down on the smears.
So, I return the favor.
As a famous Jew once rhetorically asked, How does it feel?
Dungone: Strangely, I think you already know where I’m actually from
Asking again. Nope, no clue.
I do know that you like to wave that “immigrant” flag around, just like certain chronic-victims on Feministe. This makes you immune from attack, since you can claim “oppression”–right? Victim chic is alive and well, even here.
I like the schtick, though! You can be jingoistic/right wing as a military veteran, whilst simultaneously ‘above’ Americanism and therefore all liberal/left wing, as an immigrant/’outsider’. Good work if you can get it! (The Marxist in me admires the rhetorical strategy.)
So, since you constantly bring it up, where ARE you from?
Finally, something we can both agree on. Seriously, please leave me alone. I’m tired of going into threads and seeing your comments filled with wild accusations about me. I’m tired of your half-witted snark and of your troll baiting behavior. I’m tired of your interrogatory rhetorical style, as if you had the fucking right to ask me any questions about anything, especially about my private identity.
Dungone: Seriously, please leave me alone.
Seriously, you leave me alone, I will gladly oblige and return the favor. But only if you do not quote me or talk smack about me. It’s always been like that, if you notice… but of course, you don’t. Your aggression and fight-picking started ALL this shit and always has. You crossed the line when you trashed my husband, regarding his adopting my child. Remember that? I certainly do.
Taking shots at me, means I take em right back. So don’t. Agreed?
As the lawyers say, looks like we have a deal.
Daisy:
To be entirely fair, the manner in which the Jews sought independence from the Romans was pretty crazy (three successive ethnic cleansings, anyone?). By the time it came to the actual diaspora, they had killed so many entirely innocent civilians that it becomes really hard to feel too sorry for them at that point.
Hiding, have you ever read Maccabees? What did you think? (There is the Douay Rheims version and then the regular King James version, but its only in the 1611 King James before the Calvinists took it out)
I’ve always thought it would make a great ‘Ben Hur’ type of movie epic, but yeah… Apparently the Hellenistic account of Hanukkah, the Deuterocanonical/Apocryphal account and the Midrash account… are all different. (!) You can go crazy thinking about it. (Which one is true–or is it just a legend?)
Mel Gibson was threatening to make a movie about the Maccabees, but says the script sucked… I am thinking it was because it wasn’t his preferred version of events:
http://www.thewrap.com/movies/article/mel-gibson-says-maccabees-script-sucked-accuses-eszterhas-sabotage-51866
Check the links, they are a riot! (the fight between Gibson and Eszterhaus) They have linked all their feverish correspondence about the script/Mel’s antisemitism.
So I think there is a lot to be sorted out there. If Mel/Eszterhaus stuck to the Deuterocanonical account, Jews will look largely innocent and/or justified. This is one reason I think Mel wanted to do it, as vindication of his own antisemitism.
(/scandalmonger)
“Hiding, have you ever read Maccabees? ”
That was different; they had half a chance against the Seleucids. The Romans were different, and espcially at that particular phase of their history. No one else tried that.
A modern Isareali said years ago that every single time the Jews/Israelites have been driven out of Cannan, it was because of zealotry, with an eye to making a comment about present political divisions. You can even interpret the Babylonian Exile that way.
Gingko, blogger MJ Rosenberg has said that too, maybe you mean him? Dunno where he is from, though.
He was Israel Policy Forum during Dubya’s admin. He blogs at HuffPo and Media Matters.
@Typhon
Then we’re left with the idea that this ‘unidirectional’ sexism, this immorality, correlates very well with poverty and dark skin.
Why is that?
Well, the dark skin is irrelevant. It’s poverty. When the crappy factories with the 12-hour shifts paying 50 cents an hour open up, the cis women go to work, and then they start demanding birth control, because suddenly the best form of old-age security isn’t six children… and then, since people are great rationalizers, suddenly god doesn’t want them to have six children.
Before the industrial revolution, Western countries were roughly as ‘barbaric.’ This is what Farrell refers to when he says that, essentially, sexism has outlived its usefulness as a social institution. Europe and North America didn’t get rich because they were filled with better people, just like Michigan and Ohio didn’t become centres of the auto industry because the people there were better with wrenches.
As I said, I’m arguing the unidirectional sexism happens in the developing world because it doesn’t cost them and may gain them things that aren’t available in the developed world… I’m not arguing that unidirectional sexism in extreme poverty isn’t Pareto-efficient just because it’s not Pareto-efficient in the developed world. Of course, as I often try to explain to neo-liberals, Pareto-efficient != good.
Saying that sexism is correlated with poverty can be used as an argument for classism, just as disingenuously as the high incidence of trans suicides can be used as an argument for cissexism… but the logic is clearly flawed.
@Daisy
I find this whole new trend of nothing being private ANYwhere, a bit alarming. There is a video of me floating around online– taken without my knowledge and posted– so that is partly why I am increasingly annoyed about this state of affairs. I am inclined to defend this person just because it was something he wrote without the intention of making it public.
Take heart… when everyone can be ruined for life for being a human being, soon enough the attacks lose their currency, just as infidelity isn’t a political career-ender today the way it would have been 40 years ago… (okay, the US is a bad example there, but even they’re getting better)
“Stoner, I am in your spam filter again.”
comment rescued 😉
Valerie, I submit to you that not every country in the world required the industrial revolution to find value in individual human rights. And that a respect for individual himan rights has oftentimes brought about prosperity with far fewer resorces than would be otherwise required.
One of my favorite little-known examples of this is Poland from the 14th through the 18th centuries. Poland had a tradition of gender equality, religious tolerance, and social mobility that far surpassed its European contemporaries. Poland had female college professors back in the 15th century. They put freedom of religion into their constitution in the 16th century and largely avoided all of the religious upheaval in the rest of Europe. They pretty much laughed at the Pope when the church told the, they were too easy on the Jews – the Poles saw them as useful for economic development and, of course, they were right. You could actually claim that the Poles were tolerant because they couldn’t afford not to be – but that’s the entire point. They had specific protections for Jews for hundreds of years. For example at one point there were statutes which said that Christians were not allowed to make accusations against a Jew unless there was at least one Jewish witness to it. If course, all of that religious tolerance didn’t help anyone when their country got wiped off the map and later overrun by bloodthirsty genocidal maniacs. Today, if you go to Poland you will find that they have a 24-7 Pope channel on television for all of your latest up to the minute Pope news and Pope reruns. It’s a crying shame, what has been done to that country. But still, it is absolutely not a coincidence that the only women who had ever won a Nobel prize on Physics were both Polish. It’s really infuriating to me, too, when I hear some people attribute it to Communist rule or something like that. But I digress.
That’s really why I take this whole entire view of poor societies as natural havens for fanatical religion with a grain of salt. It’s not really how poor they are, but how weak they are versus their neighbors. There were a fair number of places in the world that were far more advanced in terms of human rights than the people who ended up overrunning them. Many even enjoyed far better lives than those of their vanquishers. I think that is the key element. Building up an egalitarian society is far better over the long term, but it doesn’t lead to the kind of concentrated power that allows for one poor country to fend off the lunatic despots from other poor countries.
Agh… Advanced civilizations still can’t get an iPad to spell right. Guys, say goodbye to the English language because I’m not going back.
Dungone, I appreciate your point with Poland, and I suppose I should say that the correlation isn’t iron-clad. As I said, you take away the incentives for sexism, as you mentioned was the case in Poland, in your words, they couldn’t afford not to be egalitarian, and the sexism often falls away.
There is a general correlation between economic and social progress is all that I’m saying… there are cultural institutions, agglomeration, and yes, the great-persons’ theory, and those all play a role in explaining variation from the average, much as they explain why the United States is a far more repressive nation than its economics would indicate, but the general trend remains clear. The less positive fertility is to economic life, the less biological differences matter and the less economic sense sexism makes.
@Valerie, infant mortality and short life expectancy do place a premium on fertility and you may very well be right that it causes sexism. But both of those things are in turn affected by warfare. Which, At the same time, diminishes men’s value as anything more than cannon fodder. And overall, warfare exacerbates poverty. There’s a strong correlation in Africa between poverty and conflict, so much so that countries who had been at war for a long time suddenly start to prosper after they enter into a period of relative peace. But until then, I think that you will get the sort of fear and rampant paranoia that makes people easy targets for religious indoctrination. It doesn’t necessarily have to serve an overall economic good, just for a few people who benefit disproportionately from everyone else. Fertility, too, doesn’t necessarily have to serve the economic needs of the mother, meaning that it can effectively turn out to be one person stealing an economic good from another, which could be the sort of dystopian Nash equilibrium that keeps everyone in an overall state of suffering, rather than moving the economy forward.
The US has an unusual history in that the wealthy elite had access to the best of Europe’s enlightenment thinking, whereas the rest of the population was made up of some of Europe’s most undesirable religious fanatics. In a sense, it’s very similar to Poland – religious tolerance in the US was both made possible by, and required for, the exploitation of the vast natural resources on the continent. It was only possible because the people who wrote the US Constitution were altogether atheistic themselves and couldn’t care less what everyone else worshiped. So just like the Jews were able to thrive in Poland, religious fundamentalists were able to thrive in the US.
But it’s curious how quickly all of that is changing now. I think that in the past, educated American men must have felt beholden to religion because they needed approval from uneducated women. But now that American women are equally or better educated than the men, there’s this huge exodus from the churches that’s being led by the men, but women are rapidly catching up as well. Except, of course, some of them seem to want to drag their feminism along with them, like a dead cat.
Dungone,
It seems to me that the colonies settled by religious minorities *tend* to have more respect for secular public space and more respect for minorities than the colonies settled by plunderers and slavers [and by their victims] do. Not to deny the presence of slavery in the North and religious fanaticism in the South. Just to question whether religious fanaticism is the problem: I think that given its contribution to abolitionism, it’s sometimes been part of the solution.
You’d be surprised… but they don’t. They were evicted from a civilized and religiously tolerant society because they didn’t have respect for it then, and they were far from tolerant of one another after. If you ever go and read through some of the New England sermons spoken about their neighbors just a few miles away, you’ll hear a lot of talk of witches, warlocks, and devil worshipers. You’ll hear people blaming some unfortunate local event on the sacrilegious practices of a neighboring community and calls to action in order to do something about it.
Times I’ve been bashed in the North: 0
Times I’ve been bashed in the South: 5
I’ve lived in both areas, for years, and I’ve never experienced the same violence, much of it religiously-motivated anti-lgbt violence, and rarely experienced the same harassment, in the North as in the South.
@Marja, I’m talking about things that took place from the 15th-18th centuries. The South grew to become economically dependent on slavery well into the 19th century and they decided to use religion to put a wedge between poor whites and slaves. Prior to that, I’m not sure if religion really played as significant of a role in Southern life, although I may be mistaken. I certainly haven’t heard about entire towns being burnt to the ground and the various witch hunts which took place in the North.
Marja, that has a lot to do with the fact that in the North, these things tend to be kept under covers. People most likely won’t come out and tell you you aren’t a woman, or whatever, but they will concern troll the hell out of you (Oh, aren’t you worried that man/woman is dating you only because you are a trans woman? Oh, how is your child handling the bullying from other kids about your situation? – without you bringing up the topic first), get passive aggressive with you (ever wonder why 90% of the “open letters” on Best-of-Craigslit bitching about other people come from cities in the North, or California?
Dungone:
Where in the HECK did you get that most of the people writing the Constitution were atheistic? Heck, you can’t read hardly any of these men’s correspondance without finding at least SOME reference to Deity.
I’m afraid most founding fathers were either Christian or (arguably in some cases, Deist).
They simply weren’t religious fanatics and THAT is what made all the difference.
By the way, Dungone, you might want to “get with the times”, about Poland.
The reason Catholicism now has a hold there is that they were major supporters of the “Solidarity” movement against the communists. Catholics and Catholic priests took risks with and for the rest of the population and the Pope was very helpful politically.
As you point out, Poland used to be much different, but that was then and this is now.
@Dungone
infant mortality and short life expectancy do place a premium on fertility and you may very well be right that it causes sexism. But both of those things are in turn affected by warfare. Which, At the same time, diminishes men’s value as anything more than cannon fodder. And overall, warfare exacerbates poverty.
While taking on the personal value of self-sacrifice is important for a unit, as was said in Patton, the trick in war is not to die for your country… it’s to get some other poor bastard to die for his country.
Regardless, I’m definitely with you on the whole idea that war is bad, though there are plenty of bad things that can stimulate an economy that’s below capacity, Africa’s problem is one of insufficient infrastructure and supply, not demand, so they’re not going to be able to, as the US did, fight a war and a depression in the same stroke.
Deism is the ultimate hyperbolic cop-out for a closet atheist. Any one of them today would prefer the company of atheists to the people who claim that they were Christians. For the record, Thomas Paine, “The Father of the American Revolution” was an outspoken atheist, which didn’t do him a lot of favors with the public. Men such as Benjamin Franklin and Thomas Jefferson were atheists in all but name only. It was Franklin who said, ” Lighthouses are more helpful then churches.” He also wrote of himself as a skeptic, a harsh critic of Christianity, and even admitted, “I began to be regarded, by pious souls, with horror, either as an apostate or an Atheist.” John Adams, said this, of Christianity: “God is an essence that we know nothing of. Until this awful blasphemy [of the Incarnation of Christ] is got rid of, there never will be any liberal science in the world.”
Here’s a whole list of things they actually said about religion, including from their personal correspondences:
http://bahumuth.bitfreedom.com/the-founding-fathers-on-religion
dungone,
“They were evicted from a civilized and religiously tolerant society because they didn’t have respect for it then, and they were far from tolerant of one another after. If you ever go and read through some of the New England sermons spoken about their neighbors just a few miles away, you’ll hear a lot of talk of witches, warlocks, and devil worshipers..”
Those are my ancestors! (some of them) And you are right. But the rest of the story is that the Salem witchcraft trials shattered their confidence in Puritanism as a rational anti-superstition program, and after that all the heterodox religious movements in Ameirca either start there or get their American foothold there – Unitarianism, Christian Science, others I can’t remember at the moment.
“That’s really why I take this whole entire view of poor societies as natural havens for fanatical religion with a grain of salt. It’s not really how poor they are, but how weak they are versus their neighbors. ”
And you know what else does it? Defeat. An Egyptian woman said once that all this veiling was new, they’d never had it when she was growing up and there was nothing tradtional about it, but that it had started right after they started losing wars wiht Israel, either as if they were trying to bribe God or as some fomr of self-punishment.
That clicked for me with the historical sequence in Ireland. Traditional Irish Catholicism was quite different from the ferocious religion we know in the US or modern Ireland for that matter. And the change came duirng the Penal law years, for a variety of reasosn – destruction of a Catholic aristocracy, replacement of the native-educated clergy with a French(Roman)-educated clergy, and a general sense of defeat and subjugation.
“The US has an unusual history in that the wealthy elite had access to the best of Europe’s enlightenment thinking, whereas the rest of the population was made up of some of Europe’s most undesirable religious fanatics…”
This is an oversimplification, though mostly true. Most of the various waves of Germans who came over were too numeroous to be considered an elite, but they tended to be better educated than their Anglo counterparts, and they tended to be liberal – that’s why they had left in the first place. Germans in St. Louis are the only reason Missouri did not join the Confederacy.
OTOH most of the English who came over before the Germans were unchurched until the mid-nineteenth century. New England was an exception.
But this is certainly true for “white ethnics” although they absolutely do not represent any kind of majority and only started tot show up outside the Northeast and Rust Belt in the 80s onward.
Valerie,
“….Africa’s problem is one of insufficient infrastructure and supply, not demand,….”
…and bad, bad governance.
Excellent comments, Clarence. One of the first signs of fanaticism, is a desire to rewrite history so that everybody cool was just like you… MRAs can certainly spot this when feminists call certain women of the past “feminist” 😉 … but some of them are now engaging in this same behavior that they criticize in others. Weird, huh?
For instance, THIS book is foisted on me at regular intervals: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Faiths_of_the_Founding_Fathers
The fundies especially like it since the historian is fairly well respected.
Fundies want to claim all the founders were Christian, and atheists want to claim they were all atheists. Tellingly, both sides are thinking in black and white and refuse all compromise. (I find the refusal to compromise to be most interesting, as one newly interested in the Middle Path. Again, per Eric Hoffer, these two extremists perspectives are far more alike in temperament, than they are different.)
Aside–my favorite example of this rewriting of history: the local fundamentalist Baptists have decided St Augustine was really some kind of proto-Baptist, because they like the stuff he was saying. The “born again” experience he described, was written in the highly-moralistic terms they approve of. The fact that he *invented* the standard “literary confession” that a millenia later became a staple of their worship, is something they don’t quite understand (or believe). Its even funnier when you remember he enthusiastically tossed out heretics right and left, and would have wasted no time in doing the same to them.
Your observation about Poland is correct too. John Paul II funneled LOTS of money into Solidarity, directly diverted from the Church. Carl Bernstein’s book posited that it could easily have run into the millions of dollars… To people in Poland, this was seen as divine intervention. St Faustina’s canonization was also seen as a final religious triumph of Poland over “secularism”. If you have never read Bernstein’s book about JPII, highly recommended for a good chronicle of those events.
Gingko: That clicked for me with the historical sequence in Ireland. Traditional Irish Catholicism was quite different from the ferocious religion we know in the US or modern Ireland for that matter. And the change came duirng the Penal law years, for a variety of reasosn – destruction of a Catholic aristocracy, replacement of the native-educated clergy with a French(Roman)-educated clergy, and a general sense of defeat and subjugation.
Gingko, have you ever read “Why Catholics Can’t Sing: The Culture of Catholicism and the Triumph of Bad Taste” by Thomas Day? You might really like it!
http://www.amazon.com/Why-Catholics-Cant-Sing-Catholicism/dp/0824511530
Short version: when the Irish Church went underground during Oliver Cromwell, they had to meet in secret and in quiet. Irish Catholic literature and reflection ceased to exist and there was no music at all. They were meeting in root cellars and sheds and the like. The cultural expression of the faith was “stunted” due to its oppression… and the first Catholics in the USA were Irish, who brought their lack of literature and good music with them. It was only during the American 50s (in a climate of intellectual freedom) that there was a renaissance of Catholic literature and teaching (Walker Percy, Flannery O’Connor, Bishop Sheen on TV, etc)… but he argues that the liturgical music never really recovered, LOL, which is where he gets the “bad taste” argument. He thinks the desire to return to the Tridentine Mass and other such traditionalist noises, were born of the “triumph of bad taste”…such as the bad folkie Masses. (The result, diehards like SSPX, Opus Dei and the Mel Gibsonoids, were made much stronger.)
DDH,
“Baptists have decided St Augustine was really some kind of proto-Baptist, because they like the stuff he was saying. ”
They can call it what they like but at the rate they are going they will be Catholics in a century – well maybe Anglo-Catholics. They speak English; they should be Anglicans, right?
That cr*mwell episode only went so far, as horrible as it was. It was 1798 that was the beginning of the end, when the last great families were destroyed and the whole country and culture were basiclaly occupied.
I’m very familiar with the entire history of the Solidarity movement, thanks. When I was a kid I’d pick up the phone and someone would say, “tell your dad to call off the protest or soldiers will open fire into the crowd and it will be your fault.” In fact, we just got a copy of the file that the KGB had kept on my family. I had already taken that into account when I said that it’s a crying shame.
dungone. I just heard a radio piece about some office in Germany that is taking the 16,000(?) bags of shredded fiels from the Stasi and trying to fit them back together into documents. One guy who got his file back said it was healing to him to find out exactly who had snitched on him because it meanat he could balme and then forgive specific people, instead of just being generally angry.
@Clarence, here’s the thing about the church: they support whichever side they think will help them get more power. In one place they’ll support the oppressed against their oppressors, in another place they’ll support the oppressor even though it’s the same exact situation with the same injustice. It just depends on which side presents more of an opportunity. That’s why it’s really just such a shame that it worked out as well as it did for them, especially given Poland’s secular heritage. Not that it matters much going forward, either – the clergy is losing power in Poland at a steady pace.
In Poland, the Church got really fortunate. They were well positioned because the Communists had a tight grip over the media and priests could serve as one of the few outlets to get a pro-Solidarity message out. It helped when government agents were stupid enough to murder a pro-Solidarity priest. It sort of took on a mythic quality. It also helped that the Polish church already had some history in the country as a nationalistic entity. But it really doesn’t reflect what the Catholic church is like on the whole, especially internationally. The Poles actually used to select their own clergy – the Polish king would pick them out, which I believe was a very unique arrangement designed to limit Vatican control. At any rate, if you really want to go back to the heart of it, all of this goes back to the Allies selling out Poland to Stalin after WW2. One of my grandfathers, then an NCO the Polish military, had spent 7 years in a Siberian gulag as a result of that. So if there was one thing that Poland was in serious need of, it was a friend who wouldn’t betray them. And it worked out very well for the Church. But that’s really how a lot of these things go – you destroy everything some people ever had and then along comes a priest with a twinkle in his eye telling you that you’ve still got something to believe in – him.
@Ginkgo, yeah, my dad can be a major conspiracy theorist when it comes to any kind of institution. And my mother still gets freaked out over the phone, saying “Don’t say that! Someone could be listening in..” when I say something nasty about Republicans. It’s actually really funny to me sometimes.
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