Make the World Go Away

One of my Facebook friends from high school posted today:

I'm thinking of a break from Facebook. I can't take the political shit that's going down. Bathrooms, Donald Trump bashing, people getting beat up. Can't take the stupidity I see on here. And the hate. How did we get so unforgiving to other people and their way of life. What happened to peace and love?

Well, I certainly sympathize; I've had the same idea myself.  But two things stop me. One is that many of the people who complain about negativitity and hate on Facebook or elsewhere are complaining because they posted something hateful, dishonest, and negative on Facebook, and someone called them on it. (One good example, but there are many others, is the person who told me she'd like to shoot Mexicans for target practice.  She was very upset when I called her racist, I was being mean and political, and she was tired of all this political stuff.) Such people never take responsibility for what they themselves say.  Responsibility is for other people -- they can just exult in their Trump-like, Reagan-like talent for blurting out whatever pops into their heads, because they're telling it like it is, and they don't care who they offend.  But you'd better not offend them, because that's being negative, and they're very special snowflakes, too good for this world.

It also seems to me that one reason the world is in the trouble it is, is that so many people react to the problems they see by running away from them, hiding their heads in the sand, retreating into "mindfulness" and other egocentric practices. Apparently they believe that if they don't see it, it isn't happening, and if they ignore it, it'll go away by itself.  I decided as far back as high school that I wasn't going to do that. And it's not easy. But do you want to know why Trump, for example, is so successful? It's because people didn't want to engage with the people around them.

And it also seems to me that this is a First World luxury. I noticed this in high school too, when I heard white people saying that they were tired of hearing about black people's problems.  Not as tired as black people were!  (And are.)  Maybe my friend can make the world go away, but poor people can't. Black people can't stop police shootings of unarmed kids by giving up Facebook. I can't escape antigay bigotry by giving up Facebook. Women who need abortions can't get them by giving up Facebook. Children killed by Obama's drones can't come back to life by giving up Facebook.

But, as I say, I sympathize. Everyone has to set their own limits and do what they can.  My limits include not remaining silent when confronted by bigotry and injustice, which of course is considered negative and hateful by many.  I can live with that.  Or, to put it another way:

Except that I don't accept these Western either/or binaries: you have to do both.

Onward, Christian Soldiers

This image has been making the rounds lately, and I must say I agree completely.  If you're using the Bible to hurt people, you're using it wrong: you should be using a sword, or a battle axe, as the Lord intended. You can't do any serious, God-breathed damage with a floppy leather-covered book. Geez!

This is basically the "No True Scotsman" move, which isn't an argument but an attempt to distract your attention.  Since there are numerous passages in the Torah and Prophets where Yahweh commands Israel to murder all the pagans and their livestock and burn their cities to the ground, it seems that "loving thy neighbor and even thy enemy" is perfectly compatible with mass slaughter.  One Christian told me that God had to do this, because otherwise the Israelites would have enslaved the people, and that would be worse than killing them. He forgot that in other Canaanite cities, Yahweh commanded that at least some of the inhabitants (virgin females, usually) should be enslaved.

In the New Testament, love is evidently compatible with Jesus verbally attacking his fellow Jews and condemning people to eternal torture if they didn't meet his impossibly high standards of attitude and conduct. Sometimes he just insulted people at random, like the pagan Syrophoenician woman he called a dog when she begged him to heal her sick daughter. Yahweh and Jesus can hardly be dismissed as marginal figures, bad apples who make Judaism and Christianity look bad.

It's ironic to see this meme citing Paul, who wrote, or rather dictated, the letter to the Romans, because Paul is a popular whipping boy for liberal and especially for gay Christians.  Even a lot of self-identified non-Christians denounce Paul as the original betrayer, worse than Judas, who replaced Christ's simple and beautiful message of Love with a bunch of Jewish stuff.  In any case, Paul talked pretty sometimes, just as Jesus did sometimes, but he could also be harsh when his congregations got out of line or he had to contend with other Christian missionaries whose teachings conflicted with his.  Love, for Paul, must therefore be compatible with sayings like

You suffered from your own people the same things those churches suffered from the Jews who killed the Lord Jesus and the prophets and also drove us out. They displease God and are hostile to everyone in their effort to keep us from speaking to the Gentiles so that they may be saved. In this way they always heap up their sins to the limit. The wrath of God has come upon them at last.

Love must also be compatible with the outpourings of rage I've seen from LGBT and allied people in response to the antigay Christians who denounced last week's Supreme Court decision on same-sex marriage, since their reactions generally accuse their opponents of "hate."  This implies that the pro-gay side is motivated by "love."  They could've fooled me.

Is "hate" compatible with authentic religion?  I'm an atheist; it's not for me to say, and I really don't have an opinion on the matter.  Personally I think that hate is as valid as love, and I'm not the first person who's noticed that they aren't that far apart, whether in sacred or secular domains.  It seems obvious to me that not only ordinary believers but the great exemplars of religions have spoken and behaved hatefully as often as they have spoken and believed lovingly.  If you take the Bible as an account of the wishes of Yahweh, which seems reasonable to me, there's no question that he often wanted large numbers of people to be butchered to appease his wrath; if you don't take the Bible as an account of the wishes of Yahweh, I don't know what evidence there is that he disapproves of slaughtering whole populations who worship the wrong gods, or worship the putatively right one in the wrong way.  The popular way out of this problem is to insist that when Yahweh commanded mass killing, when he erupted into paroxysms of misogynist abuse, when Jesus threatened the mass of humanity with eternal punishment, they did so in a spirit of Love that is so far above the pathetic human standard that we can only contemplate it with awe and humble self-abasement at our failure to be as holy as they.  It's impossible to prove such claims wrong, since they have nothing to do with reason; but one can still reject them.  One can still say, with Huck Finn: All right then, I'll go to Hell.

As far as I've ever seen, though, no religious teacher, ancient or contemporary, explicitly preaches Hate.  They all insist that they are preaching Love.  Even the Westboro Baptist Church, as far as I know, claims that God hates fags; if they also hate us, it's because they must stand with God, and hate what he hates. And why not?  But most believers call their teachings Love.  The liberal gay and pro-gay allies who expressed their eagerness to see a Texas preacher immolate himself in protest of same-sex marriage being legalized, don't seem to have thought they were preaching hate; they thought he was the hater, so by the simple process of elimination they must be full of Love.  It doesn't seem that he actually said he would do it -- like a true War Wimp for Jesus, he said that other people should put their lives on the line for traditional marriage -- but who cares about facts?  There's no time to be accurate, honest, or rational!  We're fighting a war against Hate here!  Ironically, the only Christian minister who's actually set himself on fire in response to this issue was a pro-gay Methodist who burned himself to death in 2014, leaving a suicide note explaining that "the self-immolation was an attempt to die a martyr for the black and LGBT communities." 

Arguing about whether hate is compatible with true religion (or true atheism, for that matter) seems to me a distraction from more important questions.  It's so much easier, though, than thinking.

But back to the meme that set me off.  I know it's no fun to have other people tell you that you're going to Hell, or that you're a bad person because of your sexual tastes and practices, and if you're unlucky enough to be isolated in a hostile community, it can be very unpleasant.  People who've been wounded emotionally by such communities can be excused if they have trouble discussing these issues rationally, but they're in no position to condemn others for irrationality -- especially if their responses consist mainly of "Oh yeah?  Well, you're going to Hell!"  Which they mostly do.  See you in Hell, folks!

Oooh, Burn! Slam! Shred! Eviscerate!

My friend A shared this image, which she got from something called "Solidarity: A Socialist, Feminist, Anti-Racist Organization."  I commented, "I love poppet magic.  It's so rational."

Someone else didn't know what poppet magic is, so I explained.

Poppet magic is when you make an image of who or what you hate (or take an image that already exists, as here), and damage it -- stick pins in it, burn it, whatever -- in the belief that the damage you do to the poppet will be done to the person. It's ancient and found in many cultures.

So: if I burn a flag, I burn the country it represents. If I tear up a photograph of a person I hate, I do him/her damage. Now, I can imagine good reasons to burn a Confederate flag or any other, but I think that what's going on in this picture and this meme is poppet magic. It's anything but rational.  I demand better from people and a movement who are really interested in working for justice and a better world. I demand it, but I don't get it. What I get is the mirror image of the other side. And that's not going to work. It's certainly not going to get my allegiance, or my support. Just my scorn.

Of course, my scorn and a dollar will get me on the bus. But if this is the best that the people who are nominally on my side can come up with, we're doomed. It's masturbation, which is an honorable practice, but doesn't reproduce justice.

Maybe I'm not being entirely fair.  Burning the rebel battle rag isn't the best that people who are nominally on my side can come up with.  There are people -- like Ta-Nehisi Coates -- who have something intelligent to say.  But A doesn't post Coates; she posts the image above.  And too much of what I'm seeing online on liberals about the Charleston murders is not up to Coates's standard.  It's the usual Us. v. Them / Stoopid Conservatives politics-as-spectator-sport crap that doesn't do anything but let liberal white people feel superior to the Reichtards on the other team.  (It looks like the flag in the photo is being burned by young black men -- but the audience that's visible appears to be mostly white.)  And memes are easy, much easier than thinking.  As A. E. Housman said in his classical-scholar mode, "Three minutes' thought would suffice to find this out; but thought is irksome and three minutes is a long time."  If you try thinking about a meme, you'll encounter resistance from others.

Now, of course, the Charleston killings are upsetting.  For most Americans, especially white Americans, they do not touch us personally.  I would never tell the friends and families of the people murdered by Dylann Roof how they should react.  But I feel free to be more critical of the way the rest of us react.  It often seems (I think Walter Kaufmann noticed this) that people reserve rationality for trivial matters, but throw it out the window when things get hairy.  (There's no time to be rational now -- we have to throw a hissyfit!)  F. G. Bailey's concept of the moral mind might be relevant too: it means getting up and declaring one's principles in order to establish oneself as a Truly Good Person and Citizen, a performance that has its social uses but will only take you so far.  At some point one must set one's moral mind aside and apply one's rational civic mind to the problems that face us.  I'm still waiting for my fellow white Americans to do that in significant numbers.

If You're Happy and You Know It, Kick Some Butt

I'm gonna pass this meme along just so I can critique it.  First, "be thankful" to whom?  (I'm an atheist, remember, so there's no one to thank, despite Daniel Dennett.  Wotta maroon.)  But more important: Happiness and anger are not necessarily incompatible.  The happier I am, the more angry certain things make me, because they harsh my buzz.  Things like bigotry, stupidity, evil.  The same goes for hate: I hate bigotry, and I will open a can of whoop-ass for bigots of all stripes.  Funny, isn't it?  Bigots are such tender critters: they can dish it out but they can't take it.  Call them on it, call them what they are, and you're a big old Politically Correct meanie.  And other people, ostensible liberals, will side with them.

As for complaining, this is another in that family of memes that backfires on its creator.  The person who made this meme is complaining about people who complain, like people who judgmentally tell you it's wrong to judge, or hatefully tell you that you shouldn't hate.  As Tom Lehrer said, "I know there are people in the world who do not love their fellow human beings -- and I hate people like that."  But complaining is just fine; it's necessary, though all complaints are not created equal.  As Malcolm X said, quoting proverbial wisdom, it's the hinge that squeaks that gets the grease.

Somewhere there's a quotation from Pauline Kael on this subject that I must recover.  But if you're so happy that you can't get angry about things that matter, you're not happy, just high.

I Heart Hate (And So Do These Guys, Though They Pretend Otherwise)

Hey! Yo! This video is Not Safe For Work! (And what are you doing, surfing the Internet while you're working?)


This is a cute and very well done video, but it's also smug and self-congratulatory, even self-righteous. Yeah, I like the "Get Over It" refrain, which comes from Queer Nation circa 1990. Why not quit the pretense and admit that hate is a valid human emotion? Why pretend that you love those you hate? The satirist and mathematician Tom Lehrer nailed it in this 1965 song:





... Yeah, I'll bet. Me, I want a "I Heart Hate" t-shirt.