Get Over Yourself

Hey, Mitt - no one is asking you to "apologize for being successful." What I think people are saying is that a person's worth is not measured by who he knows or what kind of car he drives. Your tin-eared comments and casual name-dropping make it sound as if your riches are what define you and your life. Criticizing you by pointing this out is not a demand for an apology. It's an expression of pity.

The Shame of The Truth

The horrific tale of Bradley Manning's incarceration reminds me of this scene from the 2002 film version of The Count of Monte Cristo:

Dantes: Monsieur, I know you must hear this a great deal. But I assure you: I am innocent. Everyone must say that, I know, but I truly am.
Armand: Innocent? 
Dantes: Yes.
Armand: I know. I really do know.
Dantes: You mock me?
Armand: No, my dear Dantes. I know perfectly well that you are innocent. Why else would you be here? If you were truly guilty, there are a hundred prisons in France where they would lock you away. But Chateau d'If is where they put the ones they're ashamed of.

Why are we so ashamed of truth?

Legalize Gay Marriage In Minnesota

Live and let live. Are these just words? A tired cliché that ought to be removed from our lexicon? Or does this sentiment express a deeply held value among Minnesotans? I believe it is the latter, and I am staking my holiday season plea on that belief.

Next year, in 2012, I am asking you to vote "no" on Minnesota's proposed amendment to ban gay marriage. Marriage should accessible to everyone; the rights, privileges, and responsibilities of marriage should not be exclusive to opposite sex partners.

One might ask me: Why? Why do you care? I am a married heterosexual man. I got mine. What difference does it make to me? Why do I feel so passionately about it? Why do I need marriage equality?

I could say, I have family members who would be hurt by this ban. I could say, I have friends who would be hurt by this ban. These are both powerful and true reasons, and it is likely that if you explored your family tree and your list of friends and acquaintances, those reasons would almost certainly apply to you as well. But for me, the answer is deeper and more primal than that.

Does my happiness and well-being hinge upon my exclusive access to it? Is my joy enriched by another's hardship and misery? Of course not. In fact, quite the opposite: it is tarnished by the suffering of others. Let us be honest: the world can be a hard and lonely place. Our happiness and well-being are intimately connected to the people around us. My redemption as a person cries out for everyone to share equally in the mere possibility of human fulfillment. And marriage is an important avenue to achieving true happiness on this earth, because a deep and abiding human connection can bring such fulfillment. How could I deny someone this precious thing? How can anyone?

You can dislike gays and vote against this amendment. Disliking someone has never been a reason to promote iniquity. You can adhere to your faith's notions about human coupling and sexuality and vote against this amendment. Though the state recognizes your faith-based marriage, no marriage performed by the state is necessarily sanctioned by your church. That would not change, whether this amendment passes or not. In short, you can oppose gay marriage and still vote to legalize it.

You can do these things because to legalize gay marriage is an act of civic faith and of basic humanity that would not impugn your personal views or religious practices. Rather, to vote against this amendment is to say, "I may not agree with gay marriage, but I trust that a civil marriage between same-sex partners will not affect me negatively, and it may well improve the well-being of society."

But what you absolutely cannot do is say, "I believe in personal freedom" and vote to ban gay marriage. You cannot say, "the government should not tell people who they may love or what that love must be" and support this amendment. You simply cannot say, "I am a tolerant person with a 'live and let live' attitude" and oppose gay marriage.

Please, vote against this amendment. Find the humanity in your gay and lesbian brothers and sisters. Believe in their right to seek lasting companionship and fulfillment. Legalize gay marriage. Live. And let live.

Now I'm a Believer

A couple of years back, a friend recommended a book to me - James Carse's The Religious Case Against Belief. I recently got around to reading it, and found it to be an engaging, worthwhile experience.

God said it - I believe it - that settles it.
        - bumper sticker

So begins the book. Carse sets out to disentangle "religion" from "belief", which are not the synonyms I (and most people) take them to be. For him, this is no mere academic exercise: it can be argued that conflicting religious beliefs are responsible for much of what is shocking and violent in our world today, and he wants to draw a sharp distinction between the two.

Carse argues that belief marks a boundary beyond which thinking and questioning and exploration cease. For a believer, there is nothing beyond his own beliefs. Religion, on the other hand, is surprisingly difficult to define; he writes that it is an ethereal and mysterious and enduring phenomenon, in which its practitioners strive for knowledge without ever reaching it.

The author posits that the great religions of the world have thrived not because of their legions of believers, but because of vital conversations within themselves about their own meaning. Using his expansive knowledge of history, he illustrates that the result of these religious dialectics is what he labels the "poetry of religion." In striving for the infinite, there can be no boundaries, no ultimate truth; only horizons and contexts.

Carse spends a great deal of energy developing his definition of belief in order to distinguish it from religion. He starts by enumerating three types of ignorance: ordinary, willful, and "higher". Ordinary and willful ignorance are self-explanatory, but this last form was unfamiliar to me. He states that "higher" ignorance is a form of mental discipline in which a person has come to practice intellectual humility and honesty in the presence of a vast and unchartable universe. The money quote: "knowledge is corrigible, belief is not."

He goes on to say that willful ignorance is the cornerstone of belief systems. For Carse, belief has a limit imposed by some authority (a text, a person, an idea), and its effectiveness as a system is in securing its intellectual borders and defining its limits:

Once believers have selected their authority, genuine dialogue is abandoned. Discourse does not take its own spontaneous path but is aimed always at correcting and strengthening the existing thinking of those who already believe. Indeed, an attempt at genuine dialogue within a belief system can be taken itself as an act of unbelief.

Belief needs and thrives on opposition, because only walls that are being attacked need defending. He further states that because of this rigidity, belief systems actually contain the seeds of their own demise.

Believers and warriors tend to merge into one another: the military sees itself in religious terms, while believers take on the images of warfare.

[Belief systems] have an absolute commitment to their own orthodoxy, something missing in all the great religions... For all of their apparent worldly power, they are surprisingly fragile.

In striving to distinguish these two related yet (for him) oppositional words, he actually lights upon a compact and almost elegant definition of evil: "evil find its perfect home in our own belief system and the moral certainty that goes with it."

As his distinction between belief and religion become clear, the book develops the idea of the human institutions that make a body of believers vs religious adherents. He uses the terms civitas and communitas to speak about these groups. He begins to examine just how difficult it is to define "religion" and what it encompasses. He uses some iconic historical figures: Galileo, Martin Luther, Abraham Lincoln, and even Jesus to help illustrate his message about the gulf between religion and belief.

My greatest critique of Carse's work is that while his distinction between religion and belief may be meaningful and fairly well-established among scholars of religion, my experience with these phenomena in the wider world is that the two are almost hopelessly entangled. And while his definition of belief is compelling, he goes a bit too far when he tries to categorize scientific pursuits with it.

All that said, Carse's work is a good reminder that religious tradition and experience has a richness and depth and eloquence that resonates with people.

Pretty Much

"All of this playing at politics is completely unnecessary. Democracy is for those capable of self-governance. Americans are not interested in governing themselves, but in watching television, and the political spectacle does not make for particularly compelling television viewing."

From ClubOrlov, a blog I've been checking on now and again. 

I can't decide if I'm a cynic or a cynic.

FWIW: An Open Letter to Gov. Mark Dayton

Dear Governor Dayton:

I admired your tenacity in facing the Republican legislature during the Minnesota state government shutdown. Although I was disappointed that you had to make so many concessions to end the stalemate, I respected your reasons for doing so: to protect and serve the greater good for Minnesota.

There is another fight in Minnesota looming in which the greater good is at stake: stadium financing. I urge you to change your stance on public financing of a Vikings stadium. You must oppose it, I beg.

Study after study after study (c.f., Robert Baade, Phil Porter, Frank Rashid, etc.) have consistently demonstrated that investing in professional sports does nothing to promote jobs or economic growth in the at-large community. In these difficult times, we here in Minnesota simply cannot afford to waste public money on such dubious investments. We need to make sound investments in jobs, education, infrastructure, and affordable, accessible healthcare.

There is a moral issue here, bigger than state pride in a professional sports team, and far more important than anyone's re-election prospects. The stadium must not be financed by public money. We must end the cycle of corporate blackmail, and spend limited resources in ways that reflect our values as Minnesotans.

Take a stand against publicly-funded stadiums, for the good of Minnesota.

Please consider my request.

Thank you.

Respectfully,

(me)

10,000 Burpees: Day 100

Well, I did it: 10,000 burpees in 100 days. I even achieved a personal record for time today as well: 11 minutes 55 seconds. Nowhere near the 8 minutes I had hoped to attain, but I can't complain. For one thing, I didn't sleep very well last night and I felt a little ill today, and it was hot as Hades. But more to the point, only the most elite members of the gym come in at eight minutes (or less), and I suppose it was a little too much to expect that a mere 100 days would put me in that category. Still, the results are solid: I'm stronger and leaner than I was when I started.

There were a few days that I didn't complete all 100, and there was one day that I didn't do any (!), but I always made them all up the next day; there were no two days in which I didn't keep pace of the goal of 100/day. Toward the end of the time frame it got to be a chore; I'm looking forward to taking a few days off. But then I will have to add to the regimen if I am to meet the goals I set forth.