CAPTAIN'S BLOG
Response to Salon's article: "Interview with Camille Paglia: takes on Stewart and other liberals"7/31/2015 So in this article, this lady Camille (who I've never heard of) makes a few silly claims and barbs, buried amongst some good commentary about modern liberalism and how annoying they can sometimes be. My Dad sent me the article, and while I disagree with much of what she says, there are some kernels of truth in there somewhere. Just enough to fool a casual liberal or a casual republican into thinking she knew what she was talking about. Below the jump, I'll include my commentary, some of which is still in email form. I'll gussy things up if anyone wants me to. Until then, let me know what you think in the comments! As for the article, it features something that I'm seeing a lot of from the increasingly-desperate right: people claiming to be things that they are not - or that appear to be only in spirit. Milo Yanolopolis (or whatever his name is) is either not gay, or hates being gay (in a way that is unhealthy - and it adds no credence to his arguments anyways), and this lady just seems to need to meet moree liberals. I've seen plenty of liberals who especially disagree with the atheist faction of liberals - insisting that wishy-washy spirituality is important - but they're just as wrong as people who think Christianity is great and Islam is evil: they just don't understand the forces at work behind religion, how those forces influence people's behaviour, and how those influences lower the overall wellbeing of both the believer's and often, the people around them. Perfectly rational, well meaning people doing harm just because they don't really know any better.
It breaks my heart. I guess that's what makes me a liberal though. And it's not like religion should be illegal - it's just that if your reason for doing an action that affects others in a negative way, there is a social cost to that. It should seem like an irrational thing to do, and indeed it is, because is there was a rational reason for doing some thing, then people would use that as a reason instead of sticking with "I just feel like this is true". Sam Harris prescribes very well the kind of secular spirituality and the moral landscape necessary to navigate our way into an unclear future. 2,000 year old books are plainly inadequate preparation for this: they are already coming apart at the seams as 'moral' documents, given that one story might ask one to kill their only child, another might suggest that homosexuals are to be killed, and another suggests that if your daughter is raped, she needs to marry her rapist, especially if she was impregnated, fails to ban slavery (but is strangely concerned with adultery and idolatry), and makes a lot of unnecessary and imperfect claims: even the phrase "do unto others as they would do unto you" comes apart after considering how Charles Manson might respond to that offering. But that's all individual bad ideas; the larger reason religion is a problem is that it encourages belief without evidence. That is not something that benefits society - beliefs without evidence (or with shaky, false, or disproven evidence that people refuse to let go of in favour of better evidence) cannot be argued against, and that is as dangerous as preventing free speech - as it prevents free, intelligent discourse. Beliefs, cultures, traditions are supposed to evolve over time - and they cannot do that if people ruthlessly hold onto beliefs that simply aren't true or are divisive or negative. We need to leave behind the burqas and our shame of sexuality and the fear of homosexuality and transgenderism behind, if only so that moving into the future is easier, where we can discuss things that we need to be discussing, instead of wasting our time arguing about 2,000 year old philosophy written when we thought the sun revolved around the earth and we could barely feed or clothe ourselves. It is merely a bonus to my argument that the various holy texts contain some of the most abominable morality known to man - it makes zero sense to punish or shame women who aren't virgins on their wedding night, or men who sleep with other men, or to prevent people from wearing mixed fibers. It also makes zero sense to worship anyone - ever. For any reason. Jesus had some good ideas, and some bad ones - almost like he was just a human - and is not to be worshipped. No one should ever be worshipped: it is the only true common thread between the fears of the Right about Fascism, Communism, and so on - these were all religions of the State, and are just as dangerous as any State-Sanctioned religion: which the Founding Fathers themselves knew all too well, hence establishing the world's first(ish) agnostic/deist/atheist state, as reinforced by the Treaty Of Tripoli: "the Government of the United States of America is not, in any sense, founded on the Christian religion." The US went a step further and also assures people of Freedom from Religion - a true jewel in the crown of the US. It also seems to me that the "Liberals control the media" argument remains as transparently false as ever. No one controls anything - the world is not on rails, and it flits between one progression and another, ruled only by chaos. There's plenty of places for Conservatives to get their misinformation: as is always the case, I am stunned by the blindness of the group of people shouting that the lefty-pinko-communists are controlling everything, when it is very obvious that that is exactly what the Right wants you to think: it's all they ever say. The liberals can't be trusted because they control everything. The liberals can't be trusted by they're atheists. The liberals can't be trusted by they're communists. These aren't reasons not to trust people: they are playing into your fears to scare you into thinking they way they want you to think. You ever watch Rachel Maddow? She might be biased, but she's not fearmongering or lying or misinterpreting the truth. And when she is being biased, she says the words in an effort to make her biases clear. Quoting in an effort to keep this short: "but I respect every religion deeply" That concerns me deeply - some religions are barely ok I guess (, but Islam is objectively terrible. It is the best grouping of bad ideas yet created - and it appears to have been written by a schizophrenic warmongering child molester. "The real problem is a lack of knowledge of religion" We can agree on that, although it seems to me that a complete education of religion would preclude any kind of religious belief. Especially if you examine all religions, the techniques used to hook into the minds of people stick out in stark relief - they are all painfully obvious variations on a theme, and are indistinguishable from cults. "I find it completely hypocritical for people in academe or the media to demand understanding of Muslim beliefs and yet be so derisive and dismissive of the devout Christian beliefs of Southern conservatives." I can agree with this - we should be derisive and dismissive of both Islam and Christianity, and the liberals who can't see that need to make an effort to learn not only that religion is bad for society, but that there are better ways of thinking out there. "Exactly what are these people offering in place of religion?" A secular philosophy based around mindfulness and the maxim that we should work to increase the wellbeing of all conscious creatures to the degree that they are conscious. Each moral dilemma will require individual attention - for example, we can think about whether it's right to keep women out of the workforce, or to force them to wear cloth bags all the time, and think rationally about the advantages and disadvantages for each. It just so happens that those two example have exceedingly obvious benefits vs drawbacks. "There’s a tremendous body of nondenominational insight into human life that used to be called cosmic consciousness." Some of it has been incorporated into modern thought - like mindfulness. It's the good stuff that works without any of the cruft, of which Sam Harris is a proponent. Much of it has been discarded as utter hogwash, however: including the nonsensical word "cosmic consciousness". That sounds like something that awful Deepak Chopra would say. "It has to be remembered that my generation in college during the 1960s was suffused with Buddhism, which came from the 1950s beatniks" That can hardly be called Buddhism - it was divorced of all cultural context and retained too much of it's religious woo. No had any idea what was going on, or really how to actually attain realistic results. Most Gurus, even today, are utter frauds. Buddhism is a great place to start a philosophy though - although one wonders how one compares Buddhism with Christianity or Islam and decides that all three deserve equal respect - that concerns me. "The real problem is a lack of knowledge of religion as well as a lack of respect for religion" Only good ideas deserve our respect. Bad ones deserve the ridicule and disrespect they get. "Snark is a disease that started with David Letterman and jumped to Jon Stewart and has proliferated since. I think it’s horrible for young people! " She means "sarcasm and satire". Satire and sarcasm are some of the most powerful social forces on the planet: Voltaire was a proponent, especially, of satire. I feel like saying something like "learn your history" to her. " If he had actually done the research and the work, where each chapter had the substance of those wonderful chapter titles, then that would have been a permanent book. " So the right has abandoned Hitchens, eh? I thought that might happen eventually. It's more politically advantageous to hate him instead of acknowledge his support for the Iraq war, and his despisement of The Clintons. You'd think that'd be enough for a lifetime of support, but the right is being whittled down slowly to just the extremely religious, so it's not too surprising. His book on the fraudulent Mother Theresa often shocks people a lot. Hitchens was a great researcher and worked hard to make sure he knew the truth. He lived and visited, personally, countless nations and explored their economies, social structures, and saw firsthand how Religion Poisons Everything. So to call him a poor researcher is to demonstrate a terrible ignorance about the reality of the situation, and I feel bad that she has missed that boat - because it is a ruthlessly logical boat that I thought the right would admire somewhat. But that's the problem with reason and logic - it disagrees with most Conservative ideals. " It was an appalling performance, demonstrating that that man was an absolute fraud to be talking about religion. He appears to have done very little scholarly study." You can say it all you want, it doesn't make it true. Just watch one of his many debates. Is this the demeanor and arguments of an unprepared person? Indeed, it seems like, as always, the things the Right complains about most are a reflection of their own greatest weaknesses, rather than a true appraisal of the trustworthiness of any one individual. " In the early 1990s, when I first arrived on the scene, I got several letters from Native Americans saying my view of religion, women, and sexuality resembled the traditional Native American view. " She then fails to describe her views on women and sexuality - which should be pretty quick, as the only positions that make sense are that women can do what they want to their own bodies, and they can have sex with whoever they want, just like everyone else. Done! If they're anything like her views on religion, however, I am similarly deeply concerned. "He’s certainly a highly successful T.V. personality, but I think he has debased political discourse." Coming from someone who reads Fox News, Drudge, and Breitbart, that's pretty hilarious. Does she also respect Alex Jones? I find him to be indistinguishable from brain cancer. " then he’s partly at fault for the political stalemate in the United States." Hah! Certainly not the part that actively seeks to demonize the Left, calling them Commies and other names, and makes impossible demands and refuses to negotiate in any kind of good faith. "Since the rise of the Web, the nightly network newscasts have become peripheral, and the New York Times and the Washington Post have been slowly fading and are struggling to survive." I'm still baffled that the Right interprets this as them winning - it's just the mainstream that is being rejected, the outragemill that is the driving force behind TV. TV as a whole is fading - but websites like Reddit are mostly Liberal, again, just because the Left's ideas make way more sense than the Rights. Young people aren't growing up alone in their household to be influenced by their parents or church - they are growing up in a global community with millions of voices. "Liberals think of themselves as very open-minded, but that’s simply not true! " There is much close-mindedness everywhere. But the Left contains and values the philosophies that can fight that close-mindedness. It's only the craziest who think everyone is out to get them that cannot be changed - again, because they do not value evidence. The liberals who think like that - the anti-vaxxers, the homeopaths, the naturopaths, the chiropractors, the gurus, the anti-pharmaceuticals, the anti-GMOers, and other nauseating things - they are a major concern and the liberal party - especially in Canada - lack the tools to debate this effectively, as people often want to let their friends believe what they want, and don't want to ruffle feathers. Fortunately, there are people like me who ruffle those feathers anyways, and slowly, the tide is turning. They only trust themselves, and get offended when people suggest that they are wrong. That should sound familiar - the right has it's fair share of them too - but at least liberals are primarily not like that, and the Liberals basic ideals protect it from doing stupid things like banning gay marriage or stem cell research. "When the first secret Planned Parenthood video was released in mid-July, anyone who looks only at liberal media was kept totally in the dark about it," That has a lot more to do with the fact that the videos are totally fake. "But the videos were being run nonstop all over conservative talk shows on radio and television" Surprising no one - the Right cares far more about inflammatory-ness than they do about fact checking - everyone runs a story before fact checking it these days, but only the Right sticks with their first thought against all evidence, and appears to increase in fervor with the invalidity of the claims being made. The capacity to make a big deal out of nothing is, I think, the most dangerous aspect of the Right's political sphere: it distracts us from the real questions we need to be struggling with, instead of arguing over silly bullshit. "ut here’s my point: it is everyone’s obligation, whatever your political views, to look at both liberal and conservative news sources every single day. You need a full range of viewpoints to understand what is going on in the world." Many of us do - and we are extremely disappointed in what we see. The Republican Primaries are a good start. " I think it’s an absolute civic obligation for people to at least briefly review the full political spectrum of viewpoints on any major issue." That's actually not quite right: some ideas are simply without merit, and can be dismissed out of hand. Bringing a climate change denier to voice his opinion versus a climate change scientist is two equate two things which are not equal - the scientist knows better than even some guy who worked at Greenpeace for a while. As for Bernie Sanders, I think he'd made a great president - much better than Hillary. I'd love to see Sanders/Elizabeth Warren run: I think they would make a great team and would do a lot of important good for the US. Letting the Conservatives in now would be a terrible break of stride - but the statistics say it's likely, but the Conservatives are bumbling this state pretty hard. If Trump gets to run as a serious candidate - or runs as an independent - that's when things will get interesting.
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AuthorChristina Hitchens is a trans female writer living in BC, Canada. She loves computers, animals, and a good argument. Archives
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