Contested Symbols

[Dr_Evil_Mouse]

Your optimism is... well, I don't know what to do with optimism. All optimism is premature, if I can be glib and blunt.

Way I boil it down, every step forward we take is another turn of the screw of power (bad metaphor, I know). What I mean is that each advancement that we make amounts to a new ratcheting up of power over ourselves and others, and that can only be a recipe for misery.

Go back and look at the optimism of the post-Depression age; look at the industrialisation, the vigour, the nationalist spirit... where did that culminate? In the worst mechanised slaughters of peoples that Europe had ever produced since the Crusades. Look at the optimism of the post-WWII period; look at the excitement, the opportunity, the focused scientific minds... where did that lead? To the nuclear arms race, to the delirium of electronic media, to atrocities no major governments felt themselves responsible for ending, but of exploiting for political reasons at home.

My point is that the logic of progess is paradoxical at best, at times, in how it promises to move us forward, but in fact pushes us back, but with better and better gadgets for inflicting harm on our fellow humans and other beings, all in the name of control.

Nice progress. The same people who brought us mass-produced Aspirin also brought us Zyglon-B. The same kinds of corporations are up to no doubt the same fuckery today.

Yet against this stand those voices who are oriented towards the urge for recognition, i.e. who need first to be heard and recognised, and taken, positively, into account. Who is anyone to say, No?

I think we agree in this - that things need yet to be made better. Trick is - what are we willing to give up in order that others' lots be made better?

[StaggerLee]

In keeping with the themes of identity and political correctness:

Whatever happened to "Peace and goodwill toward men?" (and women)

(And people who don't gender identify)

[allison]

For me identity and individuality are different things that are at odds with each other in contemporary society-and have been throughout history as well.They are intrinsically related-how we see ourselves as individuals often becomes our identity but our identities are often not individual.That is-I may see my nationalism(for example)as a component of my unigueness as an individual,something that differentiates me from my neighbor, and in turn that individualism becomes my identity-how I describe myself,communicate to the world.But that identification is also common to others,and in the world at large I will either choose to assert that identity against others(thats is choose to polarize my identity) by subverting it to a group identity(us and them mentality) or will feel like I am losing my individuality when faced with the fact that my nationalism isnt peculiar to me but a part of many other people.My individuality>identity will either lead to choosing one group over another to sustain my uniqueness or choosing no group because to do so means I lose my sense of self.

Hope that makes sense.

All I am trying to say is that I do not think mankind has learnt how to balance individuality/ identity and collectivity.And in a culture predicated by the personal need to be individual,the societal need to belong -everything always seems to fall apart into either us and them or dropping out of the collective to sustain the individual.

I apologize if that doesnt make sense!!

[Birdy]

Your optimism is... well, I don't know what to do with optimism. All optimism is premature, if I can be glib and blunt.

Way I boil it down, every step forward we take is another turn of the screw of power (bad metaphor, I know). What I mean is that each advancement that we make amounts to a new ratcheting up of power over ourselves and others, and that can only be a recipe for misery.

Go back and look at the optimism of the post-Depression age; look at the industrialisation, the vigour, the nationalist spirit... where did that culminate? In the worst mechanised slaughters of peoples that Europe had ever produced since the Crusades. Look at the optimism of the post-WWII period; look at the excitement, the opportunity, the focused scientific minds... where did that lead? To the nuclear arms race, to the delirium of electronic media, to atrocities no major governments felt themselves responsible for ending, but of exploiting for political reasons at home.

My point is that the logic of progess is paradoxical at best, at times, in how it promises to move us forward, but in fact pushes us back, but with better and better gadgets for inflicting harm on our fellow humans and other beings, all in the name of control.

Nice progress. The same people who brought us mass-produced Aspirin also brought us Zyglon-B. The same kinds of corporations are up to no doubt the same fuckery today.

Yet against this stand those voices who are oriented towards the urge for recognition, i.e. who need first to be heard and recognised, and taken, positively, into account. Who is anyone to say, No?

I think we agree in this - that things need yet to be made better. Trick is - what are we willing to give up in order that others' lots be made better?

how glum!

i think it would do wonders for everyone to sit and think of at least two positives for every negative that you mentioned up there DEM, as they do exist. you seem to want to hang on to everything bad, instead of looking at the positives of those negatives, and thinking it remarkable that as a species we have the ability to learn from our mistakes! as if that's not reason alone to celebrate! history is full of despicable tales and horrific stories of death and atrocity and war and famine and disease, almost as if they are natural occurences, born with the creation (?) of humanity. they are how we have moved and traveled throughout time, and evolved from world order to world order... they exist almost as a method of population control and just morph into a different appearance every so many years... this time it's not Hitler, it's famine, it's not Saddam, it's drought, etc. i don't think there's anything you or I can or can't do to change these things from occuring. they come just as they have always done. you're looking to avoid an unavoidable situation!

optimism for me is found in my day to day life.. the love of friends and family, the want to be a good person, to have a fulfilling life, to do good for others, etc... and i hope that it would be about this for others.. and this is what i mean when i talk about individuality and how we need to return to it.

i'm sorry, i just got the feeling that you weren't so open to looking to improve on the situation! i think prior to this i ownly merely pointed out the obvious with where our current system was going wrong... i didn't offer any solutions.

[Dr_Evil_Mouse]

- neither of us were offering solutions, then - whew! That's where real trouble ensues.

I have to remember, first off, that humans have so many times precipitated plenty of environmental crises; whether it's lands depleted through want of firewood to make glass or to fire engines, or, say, through scientists like Lysenko in the USSR forcing his modified corn in the 1950s to ruin a massive stretches of central Asia. And then there's the problem of people maybe or maybe not stepping forward to help those who've been hurt in any of these processes.

I hear you about the need to accentuate the positive. I guess I was trying no to be seduced by it, given so much of the evidence. In the end, what is everyone prepared to give up? Some people with lots of people working for them are really attached to their stuff and their ways of doing things, and will manipulate lots of people to hang on to that and keep things as they are, no matter what.

Are they not completely out of this discussion? I don't know; this is a funny medium that way.

The Stephen Franke and Noises from the Toolshed (2005-20-08) just launched into "Call It Democracy". Nice touch they bring .

[Birdy]

I think on an extremely individual level there exists a want to do good amongst all human beings, and that perhaps maybe the resources we have to actually exercise this want aren’t adequate. For example, take a look at the response on this message board to things like Hurricane Katrina and how people responded. There is never a “screw that, i’m not going to help outâ€, but rather i would think, apathy grabs hold and we progress with our daily lives and don’t do anything-- sheer ‘out of sight, out of mind’. But should we blame mankind’s general nature for this? Or should we take a good hard look at what it is about our society that’s making us so damn lazy!?! I tend to the latter, mostly because it’s something we can do to better our predicament... that and it’s really damn easy to sit down to look at the last say 100 years of North American history and watch it all unfold. Basically, i think we’ve cushioned ourselves—especially in the last 50 years or so, after having to witness what the likes of Adolf Hitler brought the world. (even look at Hitler—completely a product of his environment!!) Bracing ourselves for fear that something like that could ever happen again, but in doing so, we’re taking away the reality that it very well could happen again, and if it should, we as people need to be prepared for it, not so much on a military level, but on a mental mindframe level where we could actually unite together to reach some kind of positive outcome. I just fear that as long as there is a ‘state’ who manages things for us, the less efficient we as human beings become, and what if one day something were to happen to the ‘state’? scary business.

i also think it’s important to note that in all of your examples of human beings precipitating environment crises, there was a general want to do good amongst them. Unfortunately that want of good culminated in tragedy. These kinds of things, to me, are almost the necessary evils of society and how we have been able to progress from the stone age to the 21st century... experimenting sometimes reaches positive outcomes, sometimes doesn’t... but it has brought us to this point, and that’s pretty friggin’ remarkable.

i, on the other hand, am all ears to anyone who wants to offer up solutions! we can sit in here all day long and discuss what is wrong, but that’s not really getting us anywhere, is it? and THAT is where the real trouble lies... the NOT DOING ANYTHING.

[The Chameleon]

I think on an extremely individual level there exists a want to do good amongst all human beings, and that perhaps maybe the resources we have to actually exercise this want aren’t adequate. For example, take a look at the response on this message board to things like Hurricane Katrina and how people responded. There is never a “screw that, i’m not going to help outâ€, but rather i would think, apathy grabs hold and we progress with our daily lives and don’t do anything-- sheer ‘out of sight, out of mind’. But should we blame mankind’s general nature for this? Or should we take a good hard look at what it is about our society that’s making us so damn lazy!?! I tend to the latter, mostly because it’s something we can do to better our predicament... that and it’s really damn easy to sit down to look at the last say 100 years of North American history and watch it all unfold. Basically, i think we’ve cushioned ourselves—especially in the last 50 years or so, after having to witness what the likes of Adolf Hitler brought the world. (even look at Hitler—completely a product of his environment!!) Bracing ourselves for fear that something like that could ever happen again, but in doing so, we’re taking away the reality that it very well could happen again, and if it should, we as people need to be prepared for it, not so much on a military level, but on a mental mindframe level where we could actually unite together to reach some kind of positive outcome. I just fear that as long as there is a ‘state’ who manages things for us, the less efficient we as human beings become, and what if one day something were to happen to the ‘state’? scary business.

i also think it’s important to note that in all of your examples of human beings precipitating environment crises, there was a general want to do good amongst them. Unfortunately that want of good culminated in tragedy. These kinds of things, to me, are almost the necessary evils of society and how we have been able to progress from the stone age to the 21st century... experimenting sometimes reaches positive outcomes, sometimes doesn’t... but it has brought us to this point, and that’s pretty friggin’ remarkable.

i, on the other hand, am all ears to anyone who wants to offer up solutions! we can sit in here all day long and discuss what is wrong, but that’s not really getting us anywhere, is it? and THAT is where the real trouble lies... the NOT DOING ANYTHING.

I think you are assuming a lot when you say "I think on an extremely individual level there exists a want to do good amongst all human beings".

While this is true for some, I have crossed paths and been witness to many things that prove this is not so.

Many people thrive ont he misery of others and truly enjoy inflicting suffering on others.

In a perfect world your assumtions woudl be right. ANd most people do have a moral compass for "doing good", but certainly not all. Some peopel are just evil to the bone.

Edited November 29, 2006 by Guest

[Birdy]

that's fine. i'll admit that some are evil to the bone.. you know, i really don't think there was any hope for say Charles Manson, but i'm talking about the "general" nature of mankind and in that, i have to be very 'general'.

[SmoothedShredder]

Is this thread about the Christmas style Peace Wreath or what?! Wow, symbology is an enigma! A really big idea (or lots of little ideas) packed together in a slick package.

Solutions you say?! Well for me it's keep up the damn wreath. The progress that has been made on taming religon appears to me to be like this:

At one point religion contained government... it decided what the government decided... Some Guy named God and his son Jesus came along and gave us the general rules that the 'governing body' would interpret and use the guide their decisions. That has (was suppose to) changed by 'separating' state and religon.

With regards to this particular issue (re: christmas peace wreath, and things like Santa Claus in the mall, Christmas pagents and the like)... the message has gone too far. The Governments irrationally tried to 'separate' itself from religous things by not allowing them within it's beuracratic reasoning AND in public spaces is sees over... This was never the point of separating church and state... Government went too far, and now individuals (like those on the Committee to ban the peace wreath) have taken that lead, and are flexing their muscle confident that since the Government did, we can too... well they can't... individuality is protected in the Constitution, and a subdivision is in no way one of the institutions that the goverment holds free Dominion over...

For me this was not the point of 'separating' Church and State, and want to clarify that no separation actually occured... rather just the nature of the relation between the two... Where once Religon contained Government, Government now contains religon... all of them.

So the solution: The Woman can do what ever she wants with her wreath... The Subdivision has no power (in a governmental sense) to control her, and should 'self-realize' that about themselves and fuck off (unless of course there's some contract or agreement that she signed when she moved into the subdivision which hasn't yet been mentioned). If the government were to do ANYTHING in this situation, it would be to moderate the discussion between the two paying close attention to and bringing to light how the Constitution would be used to interpret this particular situation... no doubt in my mind, this individual has a right to express her identity... she's not hurting anyone who isn't already hurting themselves by getting offended by these Pagan symbols... therefore in this particular case, there's your solution. It might be a bumpy road, but I'm optomistic this will be the outcome... but who knows, maybe they'll stone her, and teach her about what their god thinks about her god Old testament style!!!

To summarize:

The Government Contains Individuals and groups of individuals

The Government Contains Religon

The Government does not look to religon to help it make decisions, rather the government makes those decisions based on rational thought and by applying conflicts to a general code agree upon and adjusted by Individuals and Groups, not by citing Religous norms...

The Government allows individuals and groups to co-exist... preferably with as little intrusion and conflict... but when two of those groups have a conflict (which has or may escalate to an infringement of rights), it's the governments duty to help find the solution.

So it can seem simutaniously that the government is supporting a religon (either peace, or Christianity (I'm assuming cause it's Colorado where the Wreath icident took place)), and doing so from a secular point of view.

I'd like to hear if there has been an offical update to the wreath story and what they actually accomplished out there though... I hope the wreath stays, and no fines, and that they all get together and have some egg nog, and actaully enjoy each others company over the holidays! Remember spring is a long time away, and these Holiday celebrations (if done right) can do a lot of good at curbing the negative effective of frozen water and no plant life for four months!!

This is all much a do about nothing... kinda pathetic... I'm going to go check the Tabloids for any juicy K-Fed gossip now!

Peace,

~W

[jonyak]

I beleive that human nature is fundamentaly evil and that their are really only a few truly "good" people.

might be a little deppressing but it just gives me more initiative to be the best I can personaly be.

[SmoothedShredder]

FTR I believe people are fundamentally survivors, not inherantly good or evil... which is tough cause ultimately no one survives! So starting with this strong irrational passionate foundation... Good and evil are determined by your actions, and no action is free from positive and negative (good and evil) consequences. It's how one is aware of the good and evil in everything, and how they manage it which is important... which means it's a skill... which means if I combine your idea with mine JonYak that babies are born really really evil immoral beasts, and only become less evil as they get better at it and are properly trained... and that you JonYak, must be self admitadly at an All-star callibre. I can accept that... but I'll also have to accept that the size of the allstar team is far far greater than half the population of the world... and like I stated before, I don't think people are really good and evil in that democratic sense... so I now say nah! To that argument!... Go Babies!

Is Poo evil? Not entirely, but there's a great deal of evil in it, you can't deny it! You are what you don't poo! I'm going to get me a mushroom pizza now! mmmmmm

And I still want to know what the good is in 'evil'. Anyone? Evil mouse?

[Birdy]

If the government were to do ANYTHING in this situation, it would be to moderate the discussion between the two paying close attention to and bringing to light how the Constitution would be used to interpret this particular situation... no doubt in my mind, this individual has a right to express her identity... she's not hurting anyone who isn't already hurting themselves by getting offended by these Pagan symbols... therefore in this particular case, there's your solution. It might be a bumpy road, but I'm optomistic this will be the outcome... but who knows, maybe they'll stone her, and teach her about what their god thinks about her god Old testament style!!!

hear hear!

yah, the story of this little christmas wreath had a bundle of issues waiting to jump out.

it's all really a viscious cycle.. people relying on governments, governments relying on people, governments governing too little in some respects and too much in others. it's one thing to sit in this thread and gasp about how ridiculous it is to ask this woman to take her wreath down, but to understand the root cause of WHY she's being asked to take it down is another.

[Birdy]

I beleive that human nature is fundamentaly evil and that their are really only a few truly "good" people.

might be a little deppressing but it just gives me more initiative to be the best I can personaly be.

i'd like a definition of what you think 'truly good people' are. from my own definition, i encounter them all the time, so i'm just wondering why you don't.

[jonyak]

Hey I never claimed I was an allstar. In fact I am by no means an allstar(if by that you mean a truly good person). But I do try my best and it is kind of a life long goal to leave the world and the people I touch a little better off then before I was here.

To me a truly good person is someone who does thing totaly selflessly, or at least tries to live to that ideal.

noone ever does though. I have met alot of great people. I am not truly good. I don;t know if anyone is.

Edited November 29, 2006 by Guest

[d_rawk]

At one point religion contained government... it decided what the government decided... Some Guy named God and his son Jesus came along and gave us the general rules that the 'governing body' would interpret and use the guide their decisions. That has (was suppose to) changed by 'separating' state and religon.

You're very right that the notion of seperation of church and state doesn't occur until much closer to our own time (the notion of state is a relatively recent development in fact), but I'm not sure about your chronology here.

The time of Jesus was the time of imperial Rome, and the laws were the laws of that empire except insofar as the Romans condescended to allow pocket communities (such as the Jews) to also maintain their own codes of laws in parallel -- so long as doing so didn't impede or displease the empire in any way. It was the cult of Caesar and Caesar as Lord that gave the rules by which that part of the world was goverened, which is what the Jews were hoping to rebel against and liberate themselves from. Jesus even as a simple historical figure doesn't really bring much in the way of law at all except of the non-legal spiritual sort (love thy neighbour as thyself) much to the dismay of those who were following him expecting a military messiah who would lead the rebellion against the political authority of Rome.

It is only much later when Constantine sees within the growing cult of Jesus - which Rome has been persecuting - a way of re-unifying the Roman empire, and makes his famous conversion, that Christianity makes the strange switch from an underground movement of those operating in defiance of authoritarian governing power to a tool used by the power wielders themselves. Now an emperor with the church in his pocket, Constantine has consolidated power and the power of Rome can continue unabatted (for awhile, anyways). The laws were still the laws of Rome and its emperor.

But you're quite right, I think, that point of the seperation of church and state was something very different than what it is thought to mean now. And in fact church had to be wrestled away from the control by state at the cost of much blood and misery.

unless of course there's some contract or agreement that she signed when she moved into the subdivision which hasn't yet been mentioned

I'm not sure, and admitedly haven't RTFA, but I wouldn't be surprised if this were the case. This seems to be what the role of the homeowners association is all about. I've lived in a neighbourhood were I had to sign on to all manner of little rules (including what I can or can not put in windows, etc..) before moving in.

And I still want to know what the good is in 'evil'. Anyone? Evil mouse?

This oughta be fun ... :crazy:

P.S. - are you high right now?

[SmoothedShredder]

Cool, I can accept that! Selflessness is a difficult goal to achieve. Say you want to pass some bread, but you're not aware you even have arms. I can understand and respect this as your criteria for the inclusion into the good group. Sounds very spiritual and hard to quantify and achieve though. And must lead to much self loathing when one is has not yet achieved a state of 'goodness'.

I'm more utilitarian: add happiness and good to the world at high rates, minimize negative or evil actions, and an self-awarness and actualization of this register is what I would use to determine someone as good. There's lots of opportunities every day to do this, and thus I find it a useful measure of a persons inhearant qulaity. Like when people try, and fail, they still can be good and feel good.

[Birdy]

Hey I never claimed I was an allstar. In fact I am by no means an allstar(if by that you mean a truly good person). But I do try my best and it is kind of a life long goal to leave the world and the people I touch a little better off then before I was here.

To me a truly good person is someone who does thing totaly selflessly, or at least tries to live to that ideal.

noone ever does though. I have met alot of great people. I am not truly good. I don;t know if anyone is.

you yourself fit my definition of a truly good person... i don't for any second presuppose anyone to be perfect, and i think in your definition you're looking for perfection. Unfortunately i think you'll only set yourself up for dissapointment here! i think rather we're all born inherently good, and are corrupted by the tastes the world and society has to offer us... the battle here is to stay on top of that corruption, to try to be good... i think, realistically, that is all we can hope to do as humans. i think as long as there is a want of betterment, than you're AOK.

[jonyak]

I think you misunderstand me. sorry. I don;t strive or look for perfection, its more of a constant state of self improvement that I strive for. part of the job is to try and be aware of how my actions effect other people and try to live well in that sense.

just my personal philosophy on the whole good bad thing.

either way the world is full of them and I think it is totaly rude to ask someone to take down a peace sign. silly people.

Edited November 29, 2006 by Guest

[Birdy]

that's cool.

its more of a constant state of self improvement that I strive for.

that's the very quality i think we collectively possess that makes us 'good'. human beings have always possessed the want to do better.

[Dr_Evil_Mouse]

I love this forum .

d-rawk, thanks for the historical overview. It is, as you make clear, a terrifically complicated matter, in terms of all the multiple cultures, actors, and so on. One thing that's also relevant here is the particularity of the US. They have a kind of formal separation of church and state (though not quite so clearly in the Constitution; the phrase "separation of church and state" doesn't figure there or in the Amendments, but in one of Jefferson's private letters), but compared to Canada, religion is shot through politics. As Dawkins pointed out, hardly any politician would ever get elected as an "outed" atheist. Canada doesn't have anything like the First Amendment, but neither do we have the same kind of religious climate as the US.

As for the "problem of evil" (beyond just me existing, I mean) - fact is, imo, there's not much anyone can do that isn't evil for someone or something. Jains, e.g., go to pretty great lengths to avoid inflicting violence on anything around them, by doing things like wearing masks so they don't accidentally inhale bugs, and so on. Shit still happens. Paul Ricoeur makes a useful distinction (in The Encyclopedia of Religion) between natural evil and moral evil, the former being those things like tornadoes and earthquakes, the latter being what we do to one another.

That's a good starting point, I'd think. The trick is getting people who are doing things in the "moral evil" category to recognise what effect they're having on others; sometimes, that's really, really tricky. When Adolph Eichmann was brought before the court in Jerusalem to account for his role in the Holocaust, they set out to frame him as a malevolent, brutal monster; what he showed himself to be was a highly effective, pencil-pushing bureaucrat, who was just following what his bosses told him to do. He seemed to the end to have no moral sense of what he'd done. So how categorically could he be described as an evil person?

[d_rawk]

Oh absolutely -- the religious right in America has been very effective in forging an alliance with the Republican party, which has all sorts of (unfortunate, I think everyone here would agree) implications. And as you say, their entire political history is informed on many levels by religiousity - particularly of the puritanical protestant flavour so typical of conservative America.

But in terms of the institutional mechanisms and hierarchy of the state coupling with the institutional mechanisms and hierarchy of a particular church/state ordained religion, such as typified England, the seperation is well maintained. (ie all the - unnecessary - fretting caused by JFK's election and the questions of how a Catholic could be expected to negotiate his obligations to the pope with his obligations to the American people, etc..)

[edit:]

I was hinting above that the seperation of church and state isn't nearly as comprehensive as it is often taken to be (used as justification for why it is acceptable to disallow hijabs or kirpans in public spaces, or to argue that religious institutions should be outright prevented from interaction with or influence on government in any way), but I need to acknowledge that I was mistaken and it is meant to be more comprehensive than I suggested.

Reading through the interpretations of Justice Black's 1962 Supreme Court decision, it's pretty clear that his decision is widely taken to mean an expanded interpretation of seperation to include much more than just the establishment of, or an explicit 'coupling' with (to reuse my language from above), a particular religion. So my definition was too narrow by far.

I think I'm getting worn out on playing at resident theist. No wonder evangelicals seem so humourless. Where's my secular politico hat?

Edited December 1, 2006 by Guest
first edit - swap out episcopal for particular. second edit - full out retraction

[d_rawk]

Hey whaddya know ... I was poking around Odeo looking for an interview with Garry Wills about his new book, and came across this interview with Barry Lynn (the founder of Americans United for Seperation of Church and State)

He talks about running for office and jokes about political candidates trying to memorize a few quick passages from the bible for campaign purposes somewhere around the 20 minute mark. Good interview.

[Dr_Evil_Mouse]

Barry Lynn's great. He always does well in face-to-face debates with Falwell et co.

[ollie]

I couldn't help but turn on Lowell Green this morning and sure enough... it's the annual "Christmas crisis" panic. This is such a guilty pleasure for me.

Ha! He just said in reference to whom is destroying Christmas: "Just remember, it's not the muslims, it's not the jews, it's the NDP."

[Dr_Evil_Mouse]

I'll have to get back into Lowell Green-induced morning nausea mode next week when I'm done classes.

Cute logic, eh? It's not religious minorities that are the problem, but the people who care about them and try to take them into account.