The Life and Death of the Mind
I'm going to spend a lot of time working on this article, and it'll probably go through several revisions, but nonetheless, it's probably going to end up being fumbly and awkward and offensive, like a twenty-one year old virgin the first time he gets to third base (ie. You). Some of that's intentional, some of it isn't. I'm going to be offensive in new and exciting ways from the ways I've tried before, though, so hold on to your hats and read on.
I'm going to start, of all things, with Neitzsche. Now, a lot of what Neitzsche was getting at in Beyond Good and Evil translates nicely to a justification for anti-semitism, but more charitably, his complaint applies to a lot of modern religion and to a society which, whatever you think about religion, has been heavily influenced by the Big Religions.
Now, Herr Neitzsche's thinking -- and while I agree with him on a lot of things, I want to stress that these particular thoughts are his and not mine. Or, at least, they are what I think he thought and not what I think I thought -- runs something like this: 'evil' in our modern sense got created by a group of people in Rome who were disenfranchised under the current system (specifically, Jews and Christians), and, since they couldn't dominate the Romans through force, they tried to win the spiritual game, by first reversing Greco-Roman morality, and then dubbing the old virtues "evil". See, "evil" didn't mean for the Greeks and the Romans what it does to us; the word means something closer to what we'd call "bad" or "unfortunate". The things the ancient bigwigs valued, stuff like cleverness, strength, magnaminity (Which Aristotle calls one of the highest virtues, but moderns have a hard time separating from pomposity), attractiveness, wealth, are all qualities that are awfully darned useful. They aren't "bad" or "unfortunate", so trying to call them such in this reordered morality is obvious fiction. So, says Neitzsche, the slave morality invented this notion of "evil" -- Someone with "unfortunate" qualities got dealt a bad hand and is pitied. Someone with "evil" qualities has a dark and black soul and deserves our Righteous Condemnation. Being bad means that nature screwed you. Being evil means that God hates you.
So what are the Good Christian virtues? The ones that Neitzsche tells us were created by taking the ancient sense of good and bad, and reversing it: humility (Aristotle warns us that an excessively humble person will never accomplish his potential), modesty (The Greeks loved beauty. The Victorians put a fig leaf on David. The Americans went insane over a wardrobe malfunction), meekness, patience (Code for "Just live with it instead of trying to change things"), poverty, and what my Neitzsche prof called a kind of "Holy Foolishness." The sort of detatchment from worldly knowledge that says, "Don't think too hard about things. God has handed down the Gospel truth, just shut up and obey." Also the kind of disinterest in worldly knowledge that tells you to throw Galileo in jail for supposing that the Earth goes around the sun, that anyone who tells you the Earth is any older than Dick Clark is the spawn of Satan, that Darwin was the antichrist, and that the Bible is exact literal truth (Except for the bits they find personally inconvenient).
Now, I don't personally believe that Religion Is All About Not Thinking Too Hard (And many religions Officially Agree with me. A lot of them even say you're supposed to think long and hard about your faith, and also other things.), but a lot of the actual practitioners do seem to believe this. All that suff about Neitzsche was a little bit of a tangent, but I'm getting back on track now.
We live in a nifty time in history. If you're reading this article, you can read. You probably got a substantial number of years of public education, and even if you got it by virtue of your parents throwing money around, you know that even if they hadn't, you were legally entitled to some education anyway (Sadly, this isn't true worldwide, but I imagine that my readership is extremely limited in the third world.). Many of you have probably had some kind of college experience. I can make speculations like this (except for that first one. That was good old Cartesian logic) because we live in a period where education is commonplace, where literacy is expected, and even a college degree is considered a possibilty for most folks of at least moderate intelligence from an at least lower-middle-class background. Before World War 2, only the super rich and the super smart got into college. Before the industrial revolution, only the rich and priveleged went to school at all. Before the printing press, only scholars and scribes knew how to read and write.
We are the only animal with the power of reason (more or less). Some would say that having been made "In God's image," means "With the power of reason." (Others, of course, say it means "With testicles."). I don't mean to keep coming back to religion, but I don't think I'm going to be able to avoid it.
Today, in America, we have so much potential to live the life of the mind. We've got more internet users than just about anywhere else in the world. We've got more TV than you can shake a pointed stick at. There are like fifteen colleges within a 20 minute drive of where I'm sitting right now.
I want you to stop now, go to the bathroom, get a cup of coffee, or do something else for about twenty seconds. Because I want a long pause for the next line.
We really hate intelligence.
I'll start with the sublime. Another one of my college professorsonce said that we live in a country with a "Homer Simpson mentality." Our heroes tend to be folks whose hearts are in the right place, and whose heads are up their asses. I'm old enough to remember that The Simpsons used to be about the loveable scamp Bart Simpson, but which character became so popular that the show's focus has drifted toward him? The loveable moron. Who's the only Friends character who got his own spin-off? The loveable moron. Who won the 2004 presidential election? The loveable moron. We like dumb people.
And what's the flip side of the coin? Who's the kid who gets beaten up in school? The smart kid with glasses (No one ever actually beat me up; I was bigger than them.). Who's the character we mock and who never gets the girl? The smart kid with glasses. Who's the styleless geek? You guessed it. What does the smart ugly girl in every teen movie have to do to get the guy? Take off the glasses and start acting like a bimbo.
Here's a snippet from an NPR interview back when California was having their little Recall thing. I want to make it clear that I'm writing this from memory, so I can't vouch that it's entirely accurate. The host asks a voter for his rationale: I don't really care about the issues or politics or that stuff. I'm voting for Arnold because HE'S THE TERMINATOR. An author I know whom I'm sure will deny knowing me if asked had this to say.
We're zeroing in on my point now. How could the citizenry of California elect Arnold Schwarzenegger? Because they weren't thinking. Because, folks, thinking isn't cool. Another political example -- and politics isn't really the whole of my point -- is President George W. Bush on Bill O'Reilly's 'The Factor'. O'Reilly asks (and answers) a tough question about those who oppose the views of the conservatives: You went to Yale. And they're all pinhead liberals.
Bush: I didn't spend too much time trying to figure out why my professors thought the way they did.
Maybe, Mr. President, because they're much smarter than you. But, see, this is my point. If a smart person disagrees with you, why in the world would you just dismiss that with such blase? The Daily Show's Jon Stewart summed up the exchange with the same sentiment I heard: Seriously, education is for jackasses.
What the hell kind of message is that? "Don't trust smart people!" "Vote for me, I'm folksy and plainspoken! You can't trust my opponent with his book larnin'!" Time after time, I see this dumb hick mentality: "You and your fancy ed-you-kay-shun! You don't know anything!" How many times has someone said to me: You just think that because you've got a fancy Master's Degree. In the first place, most of the time, the person saying it is accusing me unfairly. Very rarely do I whip out my education as a trump card. Generally, I get that response when I've espoused an opinion the speaker does not share, and I've supported it with facts that are not open to dispute. But, frankly, being falsely accused isn't what upsets me. What upsets me is their reasoning. Even if I was claiming that my point was more valid because of my education, why is that wrong? Why shouldn't the fact that I spent four years at a Jesuit school mean that I have a little more understanding of Catholic theology than the average person on the street? Why shouldn't the fact that I've read Neitzche, Sartre, Aristotle, Heidegger, Plato, and Saint Thomas Aquinas mean that I've got some grounds to speak on the meaning of life? I don't pretend to be an expert on things I'm not an expert on, but why is it that your irrational argument based on half-truths and gut feelings better than my argument, which is based on the fact that I spent the past eight years pursuing higher learning?
Another example. My dad used to work for people who were not very smart. More than once, my dad explained very clearly and rationally why some kind of move was not well-considered (My dad's a chemist. Sometimes, these were issues like "If you mix these two chemicals together, the building will blow up." He quit this job shortly after a cinderblock made its escape from the roof and nearly beheaded him.), he'd be told, "Now, don't you go using that logic crap on me!"
There's recently (past hundred years or so) been consternation over the teaching of the theory of evolution in schools. Religious Fundamentalists don't want it taught, because it conflicts with their worldview. Thing is, this isn't about "scientists are trying to oppress our religion." Some textbooks are being required to carry disclaimers mentioning that evolution is "only a theory." This is technically true, but it doesn't give the right impression. There is very little in science that isn't "just a theory," and Relativity doesn't have to carry a disclaimer.
My issue is this: Science is not (despite what even some scientists think) about truth. Science is about models that let you make useful predictions. Even if evolution is not true, it is a model which is useful for making, well, all of modern biology (Newtonian mechanics is a model of the universe which is useful, but not true, or, at least, not accurate outside a certain range. Aristotelian physics is similarly useful and not true). Creationism, even if it is true, is not useful for scientific purposes. Put another way, even if the account of creation given in Genesis is accurate, it is nonetheless the case that God, in His infinite wisdom, created the universe in such a way that it behaves as if evolution was true. How is it that they don't get up in arms that science texts claim the earth goes around the sun? In the intest of keeping people happy, here's the disclaimer I'd go with: "The purpose of science is to find models which describe observed phenomena and can be used to make predictions about the behavior of the universe. Nothing in this text should be taken as anything more than explanations which fit the facts. New facts may be discovered at any time which discredit existing models. These models explain the observed world and are useful in making predictions about it, but this has nothing to do with abstract notions of Truth. If you want Truth, consult a priest or a philosopher."
When President Bush fared poorly in the first debate against Senator Kerry (I am going to try to refrain form using the dimutive form of the president's name, because whatever I think of his policies or of his public persona, I have respect for the office of the presidency. Whatever the Right might say, the fact that I'm a liberal doesn't mean I'm unpatriotic. It's just that my patriotism isn't blind. Even unconditional love doesn't mean that you just accept that your kid is failing in school and likes to torture small animals. True Patriotism, like True Love, means that you want what's best for your country and you try to bring it about. Here's one of those not-tremendously-great analogies I'm so often forced into. Man walks down the street with a Blue State Patriot. Man doesn't see the open manhole up ahead until it's too late for him to stop. Blue State Patriot grabs him bodily and pushes him out of the way. Same setup, but with a Red State Patriot. Man falls down the hole, breaking both legs. Man looks up, says to the Red State Patriot: Hey, why didn't you push me out of the way? Red State Patriot says, "Because I love you. People who love you don't go around pushing you.") among the republican spin responses were things like (another paraphrase), "Well what did you expect? It's a debate. But America doesn't want a good debater. They want a good leader." We don't like you smart boys 'round these parts.
I really didn't mean for this article to be about politics, but I think politics is the arena where, recently, the American Hatred of Intellect has been at its most clear. It's only been the past year or so that I've held any particularly strong political convictions, and a big chunk of the reason is that I've started to feel that the Right (I'm going to try to use 'Right' and 'Left' whenever I can instead of 'Republican' and 'Democrat' or 'Conservative' and 'Liberal' because I don't think that these views are (a) part of the Official Party Stand or (b) Intrinsic to conservatism. Those are primarily political descriptors; when I say Right and Left, I'm talking about more of a social descriptor. Bible-thumpers and Latte-drinkers) hates me for what I am. I'm an intellectual. And it seems like they hate me as much for that as they would if I was gay, black, or non-christian. Maybe even more. (I can't really be bothered to look up the details, but there have been regimes through history who hated intellectuals. I have anecdotal evidence that when Pol Pot came to power, he ordered the execution of anyone seen wearing a wristwatch or eyeglasses, perceived indicators of intellectualism).
So I'll stay on politics a bit longer. There was one moment during the second presidential debate where I was really and truly disgusted by an exchange. The question was abortion. President Bush pointed out that Senator Kerry had opposed a ban on so-called "partial-birth abortions." Senator Kerry countered by explaining that his opposition was grouned entirely in the fact that the bill in question made no exception in cases where the life of the mother was jeopardized. This seems like a very good reason to me, and I think there's even a lot of serious pro-lifers out there who would conceed that some exception should be made in those cases (But I could be wrong. It seems like a very reasonable position to take, but it may just happen that very few people hold this view. And nothing wrong with that).
Here's what happened, though. Here's what's amazing. Senator Kerry said "It's just not that simple." And President Bush turned around and said "It is too that simple." I don't really fault the President for saying that; he was, after all, just playing to his crowd: nothing really mattered beyond establishing Senator Kerry to be "pro-abortion." That's how you win elections. Who I do fault are the people to whom the argument was crafted. Senator Kerry said that (will wonders never cease?) abortion was not a simple issue, and the President countered with, "Oh yes it is!"
In other words, "Don't think too hard about things, folks! There is a simple answer to everything." We do not live in a world of simple answers. This is not to say that we live in a world where there are no answers, just that there aren't simple ones.
It's the same thing with the claims of flip-floppery. There are two problems I have with the rhetoric used by the Right about Senator Kerry's penchant for flip-flopping. Bizarrely enough, the least serious of these problems is the fact that it's not a true claim. Most of the issues on which Senator Kerry was accused of flip-flopping were, well, false. In the example above, President Bush suggested that Senator Kerry was flip-flopping because he claimed to support the banning of partial-birth abortions when he had in fact opposed the bill. No one has been adequately able to explain how that constitutes flip-flopping to me, absent the "Oh yes it is that simple!" excuse. The fact that he voted against one specific bill does not constitute a 'flip flop' in his position. Suppose the text of the bill had been "Partial birth abortions are banned, and Senator Kerry receives 50 swift kicks to the man-sack." I don't think *anyone* would claim it flip-flopperous for Senator Kerry to vote against such a bill, not unless his position actually were "I will stop at nothing to see partial-birth abortions banned, though it cost me great pain to the scrotum!" Senator Kerry voted against what he took to be a bad bill which just happend to also accomplish something he supported. The argument on his view toward the war in iraq is argued the same way. Senator Kerry said, roughly, that he voted to authorize the President to use force. The Right claims that the position he espoused in his campaign, that the war was wrong, is a flip-flop. In fact, they would say this in direct response to his explanation (Which was, by the way, that he felt the President needed the threat of force. In other words, he voted to give the President this authority, but didn't expect him to actually use it. In retrospect, this seems like a silly thing to expect, but it's not flip-floppery. By the Right's standards, anyone who voted to build nuclear weapons intends for us to use nuclear weapons. More on this later.) The standard flip-flop claim goes like this: Senator Kerry says X. But Senator Kerry also decried/voted against related-but-not-identical-issue-to-X. Therefore, he flip-flopped. It's the 'related to but not identical to' that's the important thing here. Here's a Right-wing sylogism:
I want to get rid of the mice in my house.
I refuse to blow up my house, even though that would get rid of the mice.
Therefore, I am a flip-flopper on the issue of mouse removal.
For the flip-floppery to be true, you have to oversimplify the world: there has to be no such thing as a bad law that accomplishes a desirable thing. There has to be no such thing as threat-of-force-used-as-a-deterrent. There has to be no such thing as nuance. Senator Kerry had explanations for the claims of flip-floppery, and what's the response? "It is too that simple!" Why, those are just fancy-pants college-boy "explanations". A real man of principal wouldn't *have to* explain. Don't go using your fancy-pants "logic" on me.
But like I said, that's the least (or, more gramatically, lesser) of my problems with the claim. The big problem is: if the claims were true, if Senator Kerry had indeed changed his mind on certain issues (And I'm sure he has. It's hard to imagine anyone going through their entire life without changing their mind on something), um, so what? You're supposed to change your mind when new evidence disproves your prior judgment. If you never change your mind, it means either that you believe yourself to be infallable, or you wilfully persist in a point of view that you know to be incorrect. I would hope that even the most bible-thumpin' of President Bush's fans would believe infallability to be the exclusive purview of God. President Bush has repeatedly said that, in light of the new evidence, he would not change the way he pursued the war in Iraq. This is different from, "Even after this experience, I think I made the right choice based on the evidence I had at the time." This is, "Even if I had known at the time that these justifications were invalid, I still would have used them." If I put my money on red, and it comes up black, that's one thing. If I *already knew it would come up black* and I still put my money on red, that's just stupid. It seems that it is better to be consistent than to be right. (I wonder if this is related to my thoughts on the Evolution/Creation debate: the Right confuses science's goal because they live in a world where the notion that a new fact could be discovered which demonstrates the previous model to be incorrect doesn't exist.)
America's Security is an important and complex issue. The future of Social Security is an important and complex issue. Health care is an important and complex issue. The War on Terror is an important and complex issue. The war in iraq is an important and complex issue. Whether the one is part of the other is an important and complex issue. The two candidates in the recent election represented two very different philosophies on these issues. Neither one's position on any of these issues was totally without merit (I happen to believe that one candidate's position on each of these issues was utterly mistaken, but even so, not totally out in left field). So, what was the deciding factor? Gay marriage.
Some people on both sides think that the "answer" is for the two Americas to go their separate ways (Google for "The Unites States of Canada" and "Jesusland" for a proposed map). On the right, these advocates think that God's Chosen People would be better off without the Jesus-hatin' , gun-hatin', queer-lovin', latte-drinkin', higher-educated Hollywood-New York fancy-pantses (They wouldn't; the blue states subsidize the red ones). And on the left, the advocates think we'd be better off without the bible-tumpin', gun-totin', hate-mongerin' hillbilly rednecks (We wouldn't; the red states feed the blue ones). It won't work, and it won't solve the problem. But neither is the answer for both sides to run to the middle in order to offend the smallest number of people possible (Which is what the Democratic party has been doing). This is not a matter of differing viewpoints or differing lifestyles. Smart is better than stupid. Engaged is better than unengaged. The Homer Simpson Mentality is wrong. I don't want the people on the Right to Just Go Away, I don't wish them physical harm, I don't want them relegated to second-class citizenship (Though two out of those three did occur to me in fits of pique). I don't want a violent solution, I don't want to overthrow the government. I want these people to realize that they're wrong on this. I want them to realize that faith doesn't mean stupidity. I want them to realize that being smart is something to be proud of. I want them to start accepting that people who are smarter than they are *do* have grounds to question your judgment.
And most of all, I want the geeky kid with the glasses not to lose his lunch money. Because nearsightedness runs in my family.
I just wish I could figure out some way to do it.
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I'm going to start, of all things, with Neitzsche. Now, a lot of what Neitzsche was getting at in Beyond Good and Evil translates nicely to a justification for anti-semitism, but more charitably, his complaint applies to a lot of modern religion and to a society which, whatever you think about religion, has been heavily influenced by the Big Religions.
Now, Herr Neitzsche's thinking -- and while I agree with him on a lot of things, I want to stress that these particular thoughts are his and not mine. Or, at least, they are what I think he thought and not what I think I thought -- runs something like this: 'evil' in our modern sense got created by a group of people in Rome who were disenfranchised under the current system (specifically, Jews and Christians), and, since they couldn't dominate the Romans through force, they tried to win the spiritual game, by first reversing Greco-Roman morality, and then dubbing the old virtues "evil". See, "evil" didn't mean for the Greeks and the Romans what it does to us; the word means something closer to what we'd call "bad" or "unfortunate". The things the ancient bigwigs valued, stuff like cleverness, strength, magnaminity (Which Aristotle calls one of the highest virtues, but moderns have a hard time separating from pomposity), attractiveness, wealth, are all qualities that are awfully darned useful. They aren't "bad" or "unfortunate", so trying to call them such in this reordered morality is obvious fiction. So, says Neitzsche, the slave morality invented this notion of "evil" -- Someone with "unfortunate" qualities got dealt a bad hand and is pitied. Someone with "evil" qualities has a dark and black soul and deserves our Righteous Condemnation. Being bad means that nature screwed you. Being evil means that God hates you.
So what are the Good Christian virtues? The ones that Neitzsche tells us were created by taking the ancient sense of good and bad, and reversing it: humility (Aristotle warns us that an excessively humble person will never accomplish his potential), modesty (The Greeks loved beauty. The Victorians put a fig leaf on David. The Americans went insane over a wardrobe malfunction), meekness, patience (Code for "Just live with it instead of trying to change things"), poverty, and what my Neitzsche prof called a kind of "Holy Foolishness." The sort of detatchment from worldly knowledge that says, "Don't think too hard about things. God has handed down the Gospel truth, just shut up and obey." Also the kind of disinterest in worldly knowledge that tells you to throw Galileo in jail for supposing that the Earth goes around the sun, that anyone who tells you the Earth is any older than Dick Clark is the spawn of Satan, that Darwin was the antichrist, and that the Bible is exact literal truth (Except for the bits they find personally inconvenient).
Now, I don't personally believe that Religion Is All About Not Thinking Too Hard (And many religions Officially Agree with me. A lot of them even say you're supposed to think long and hard about your faith, and also other things.), but a lot of the actual practitioners do seem to believe this. All that suff about Neitzsche was a little bit of a tangent, but I'm getting back on track now.
We live in a nifty time in history. If you're reading this article, you can read. You probably got a substantial number of years of public education, and even if you got it by virtue of your parents throwing money around, you know that even if they hadn't, you were legally entitled to some education anyway (Sadly, this isn't true worldwide, but I imagine that my readership is extremely limited in the third world.). Many of you have probably had some kind of college experience. I can make speculations like this (except for that first one. That was good old Cartesian logic) because we live in a period where education is commonplace, where literacy is expected, and even a college degree is considered a possibilty for most folks of at least moderate intelligence from an at least lower-middle-class background. Before World War 2, only the super rich and the super smart got into college. Before the industrial revolution, only the rich and priveleged went to school at all. Before the printing press, only scholars and scribes knew how to read and write.
We are the only animal with the power of reason (more or less). Some would say that having been made "In God's image," means "With the power of reason." (Others, of course, say it means "With testicles."). I don't mean to keep coming back to religion, but I don't think I'm going to be able to avoid it.
Today, in America, we have so much potential to live the life of the mind. We've got more internet users than just about anywhere else in the world. We've got more TV than you can shake a pointed stick at. There are like fifteen colleges within a 20 minute drive of where I'm sitting right now.
I want you to stop now, go to the bathroom, get a cup of coffee, or do something else for about twenty seconds. Because I want a long pause for the next line.
We really hate intelligence.
I'll start with the sublime. Another one of my college professorsonce said that we live in a country with a "Homer Simpson mentality." Our heroes tend to be folks whose hearts are in the right place, and whose heads are up their asses. I'm old enough to remember that The Simpsons used to be about the loveable scamp Bart Simpson, but which character became so popular that the show's focus has drifted toward him? The loveable moron. Who's the only Friends character who got his own spin-off? The loveable moron. Who won the 2004 presidential election? The loveable moron. We like dumb people.
And what's the flip side of the coin? Who's the kid who gets beaten up in school? The smart kid with glasses (No one ever actually beat me up; I was bigger than them.). Who's the character we mock and who never gets the girl? The smart kid with glasses. Who's the styleless geek? You guessed it. What does the smart ugly girl in every teen movie have to do to get the guy? Take off the glasses and start acting like a bimbo.
Here's a snippet from an NPR interview back when California was having their little Recall thing. I want to make it clear that I'm writing this from memory, so I can't vouch that it's entirely accurate. The host asks a voter for his rationale: I don't really care about the issues or politics or that stuff. I'm voting for Arnold because HE'S THE TERMINATOR. An author I know whom I'm sure will deny knowing me if asked had this to say.
We're zeroing in on my point now. How could the citizenry of California elect Arnold Schwarzenegger? Because they weren't thinking. Because, folks, thinking isn't cool. Another political example -- and politics isn't really the whole of my point -- is President George W. Bush on Bill O'Reilly's 'The Factor'. O'Reilly asks (and answers) a tough question about those who oppose the views of the conservatives: You went to Yale. And they're all pinhead liberals.
Bush: I didn't spend too much time trying to figure out why my professors thought the way they did.
Maybe, Mr. President, because they're much smarter than you. But, see, this is my point. If a smart person disagrees with you, why in the world would you just dismiss that with such blase? The Daily Show's Jon Stewart summed up the exchange with the same sentiment I heard: Seriously, education is for jackasses.
What the hell kind of message is that? "Don't trust smart people!" "Vote for me, I'm folksy and plainspoken! You can't trust my opponent with his book larnin'!" Time after time, I see this dumb hick mentality: "You and your fancy ed-you-kay-shun! You don't know anything!" How many times has someone said to me: You just think that because you've got a fancy Master's Degree. In the first place, most of the time, the person saying it is accusing me unfairly. Very rarely do I whip out my education as a trump card. Generally, I get that response when I've espoused an opinion the speaker does not share, and I've supported it with facts that are not open to dispute. But, frankly, being falsely accused isn't what upsets me. What upsets me is their reasoning. Even if I was claiming that my point was more valid because of my education, why is that wrong? Why shouldn't the fact that I spent four years at a Jesuit school mean that I have a little more understanding of Catholic theology than the average person on the street? Why shouldn't the fact that I've read Neitzche, Sartre, Aristotle, Heidegger, Plato, and Saint Thomas Aquinas mean that I've got some grounds to speak on the meaning of life? I don't pretend to be an expert on things I'm not an expert on, but why is it that your irrational argument based on half-truths and gut feelings better than my argument, which is based on the fact that I spent the past eight years pursuing higher learning?
Another example. My dad used to work for people who were not very smart. More than once, my dad explained very clearly and rationally why some kind of move was not well-considered (My dad's a chemist. Sometimes, these were issues like "If you mix these two chemicals together, the building will blow up." He quit this job shortly after a cinderblock made its escape from the roof and nearly beheaded him.), he'd be told, "Now, don't you go using that logic crap on me!"
There's recently (past hundred years or so) been consternation over the teaching of the theory of evolution in schools. Religious Fundamentalists don't want it taught, because it conflicts with their worldview. Thing is, this isn't about "scientists are trying to oppress our religion." Some textbooks are being required to carry disclaimers mentioning that evolution is "only a theory." This is technically true, but it doesn't give the right impression. There is very little in science that isn't "just a theory," and Relativity doesn't have to carry a disclaimer.
My issue is this: Science is not (despite what even some scientists think) about truth. Science is about models that let you make useful predictions. Even if evolution is not true, it is a model which is useful for making, well, all of modern biology (Newtonian mechanics is a model of the universe which is useful, but not true, or, at least, not accurate outside a certain range. Aristotelian physics is similarly useful and not true). Creationism, even if it is true, is not useful for scientific purposes. Put another way, even if the account of creation given in Genesis is accurate, it is nonetheless the case that God, in His infinite wisdom, created the universe in such a way that it behaves as if evolution was true. How is it that they don't get up in arms that science texts claim the earth goes around the sun? In the intest of keeping people happy, here's the disclaimer I'd go with: "The purpose of science is to find models which describe observed phenomena and can be used to make predictions about the behavior of the universe. Nothing in this text should be taken as anything more than explanations which fit the facts. New facts may be discovered at any time which discredit existing models. These models explain the observed world and are useful in making predictions about it, but this has nothing to do with abstract notions of Truth. If you want Truth, consult a priest or a philosopher."
When President Bush fared poorly in the first debate against Senator Kerry (I am going to try to refrain form using the dimutive form of the president's name, because whatever I think of his policies or of his public persona, I have respect for the office of the presidency. Whatever the Right might say, the fact that I'm a liberal doesn't mean I'm unpatriotic. It's just that my patriotism isn't blind. Even unconditional love doesn't mean that you just accept that your kid is failing in school and likes to torture small animals. True Patriotism, like True Love, means that you want what's best for your country and you try to bring it about. Here's one of those not-tremendously-great analogies I'm so often forced into. Man walks down the street with a Blue State Patriot. Man doesn't see the open manhole up ahead until it's too late for him to stop. Blue State Patriot grabs him bodily and pushes him out of the way. Same setup, but with a Red State Patriot. Man falls down the hole, breaking both legs. Man looks up, says to the Red State Patriot: Hey, why didn't you push me out of the way? Red State Patriot says, "Because I love you. People who love you don't go around pushing you.") among the republican spin responses were things like (another paraphrase), "Well what did you expect? It's a debate. But America doesn't want a good debater. They want a good leader." We don't like you smart boys 'round these parts.
I really didn't mean for this article to be about politics, but I think politics is the arena where, recently, the American Hatred of Intellect has been at its most clear. It's only been the past year or so that I've held any particularly strong political convictions, and a big chunk of the reason is that I've started to feel that the Right (I'm going to try to use 'Right' and 'Left' whenever I can instead of 'Republican' and 'Democrat' or 'Conservative' and 'Liberal' because I don't think that these views are (a) part of the Official Party Stand or (b) Intrinsic to conservatism. Those are primarily political descriptors; when I say Right and Left, I'm talking about more of a social descriptor. Bible-thumpers and Latte-drinkers) hates me for what I am. I'm an intellectual. And it seems like they hate me as much for that as they would if I was gay, black, or non-christian. Maybe even more. (I can't really be bothered to look up the details, but there have been regimes through history who hated intellectuals. I have anecdotal evidence that when Pol Pot came to power, he ordered the execution of anyone seen wearing a wristwatch or eyeglasses, perceived indicators of intellectualism).
So I'll stay on politics a bit longer. There was one moment during the second presidential debate where I was really and truly disgusted by an exchange. The question was abortion. President Bush pointed out that Senator Kerry had opposed a ban on so-called "partial-birth abortions." Senator Kerry countered by explaining that his opposition was grouned entirely in the fact that the bill in question made no exception in cases where the life of the mother was jeopardized. This seems like a very good reason to me, and I think there's even a lot of serious pro-lifers out there who would conceed that some exception should be made in those cases (But I could be wrong. It seems like a very reasonable position to take, but it may just happen that very few people hold this view. And nothing wrong with that).
Here's what happened, though. Here's what's amazing. Senator Kerry said "It's just not that simple." And President Bush turned around and said "It is too that simple." I don't really fault the President for saying that; he was, after all, just playing to his crowd: nothing really mattered beyond establishing Senator Kerry to be "pro-abortion." That's how you win elections. Who I do fault are the people to whom the argument was crafted. Senator Kerry said that (will wonders never cease?) abortion was not a simple issue, and the President countered with, "Oh yes it is!"
In other words, "Don't think too hard about things, folks! There is a simple answer to everything." We do not live in a world of simple answers. This is not to say that we live in a world where there are no answers, just that there aren't simple ones.
It's the same thing with the claims of flip-floppery. There are two problems I have with the rhetoric used by the Right about Senator Kerry's penchant for flip-flopping. Bizarrely enough, the least serious of these problems is the fact that it's not a true claim. Most of the issues on which Senator Kerry was accused of flip-flopping were, well, false. In the example above, President Bush suggested that Senator Kerry was flip-flopping because he claimed to support the banning of partial-birth abortions when he had in fact opposed the bill. No one has been adequately able to explain how that constitutes flip-flopping to me, absent the "Oh yes it is that simple!" excuse. The fact that he voted against one specific bill does not constitute a 'flip flop' in his position. Suppose the text of the bill had been "Partial birth abortions are banned, and Senator Kerry receives 50 swift kicks to the man-sack." I don't think *anyone* would claim it flip-flopperous for Senator Kerry to vote against such a bill, not unless his position actually were "I will stop at nothing to see partial-birth abortions banned, though it cost me great pain to the scrotum!" Senator Kerry voted against what he took to be a bad bill which just happend to also accomplish something he supported. The argument on his view toward the war in iraq is argued the same way. Senator Kerry said, roughly, that he voted to authorize the President to use force. The Right claims that the position he espoused in his campaign, that the war was wrong, is a flip-flop. In fact, they would say this in direct response to his explanation (Which was, by the way, that he felt the President needed the threat of force. In other words, he voted to give the President this authority, but didn't expect him to actually use it. In retrospect, this seems like a silly thing to expect, but it's not flip-floppery. By the Right's standards, anyone who voted to build nuclear weapons intends for us to use nuclear weapons. More on this later.) The standard flip-flop claim goes like this: Senator Kerry says X. But Senator Kerry also decried/voted against related-but-not-identical-issue-to-X. Therefore, he flip-flopped. It's the 'related to but not identical to' that's the important thing here. Here's a Right-wing sylogism:
I want to get rid of the mice in my house.
I refuse to blow up my house, even though that would get rid of the mice.
Therefore, I am a flip-flopper on the issue of mouse removal.
For the flip-floppery to be true, you have to oversimplify the world: there has to be no such thing as a bad law that accomplishes a desirable thing. There has to be no such thing as threat-of-force-used-as-a-deterrent. There has to be no such thing as nuance. Senator Kerry had explanations for the claims of flip-floppery, and what's the response? "It is too that simple!" Why, those are just fancy-pants college-boy "explanations". A real man of principal wouldn't *have to* explain. Don't go using your fancy-pants "logic" on me.
But like I said, that's the least (or, more gramatically, lesser) of my problems with the claim. The big problem is: if the claims were true, if Senator Kerry had indeed changed his mind on certain issues (And I'm sure he has. It's hard to imagine anyone going through their entire life without changing their mind on something), um, so what? You're supposed to change your mind when new evidence disproves your prior judgment. If you never change your mind, it means either that you believe yourself to be infallable, or you wilfully persist in a point of view that you know to be incorrect. I would hope that even the most bible-thumpin' of President Bush's fans would believe infallability to be the exclusive purview of God. President Bush has repeatedly said that, in light of the new evidence, he would not change the way he pursued the war in Iraq. This is different from, "Even after this experience, I think I made the right choice based on the evidence I had at the time." This is, "Even if I had known at the time that these justifications were invalid, I still would have used them." If I put my money on red, and it comes up black, that's one thing. If I *already knew it would come up black* and I still put my money on red, that's just stupid. It seems that it is better to be consistent than to be right. (I wonder if this is related to my thoughts on the Evolution/Creation debate: the Right confuses science's goal because they live in a world where the notion that a new fact could be discovered which demonstrates the previous model to be incorrect doesn't exist.)
America's Security is an important and complex issue. The future of Social Security is an important and complex issue. Health care is an important and complex issue. The War on Terror is an important and complex issue. The war in iraq is an important and complex issue. Whether the one is part of the other is an important and complex issue. The two candidates in the recent election represented two very different philosophies on these issues. Neither one's position on any of these issues was totally without merit (I happen to believe that one candidate's position on each of these issues was utterly mistaken, but even so, not totally out in left field). So, what was the deciding factor? Gay marriage.
Some people on both sides think that the "answer" is for the two Americas to go their separate ways (Google for "The Unites States of Canada" and "Jesusland" for a proposed map). On the right, these advocates think that God's Chosen People would be better off without the Jesus-hatin' , gun-hatin', queer-lovin', latte-drinkin', higher-educated Hollywood-New York fancy-pantses (They wouldn't; the blue states subsidize the red ones). And on the left, the advocates think we'd be better off without the bible-tumpin', gun-totin', hate-mongerin' hillbilly rednecks (We wouldn't; the red states feed the blue ones). It won't work, and it won't solve the problem. But neither is the answer for both sides to run to the middle in order to offend the smallest number of people possible (Which is what the Democratic party has been doing). This is not a matter of differing viewpoints or differing lifestyles. Smart is better than stupid. Engaged is better than unengaged. The Homer Simpson Mentality is wrong. I don't want the people on the Right to Just Go Away, I don't wish them physical harm, I don't want them relegated to second-class citizenship (Though two out of those three did occur to me in fits of pique). I don't want a violent solution, I don't want to overthrow the government. I want these people to realize that they're wrong on this. I want them to realize that faith doesn't mean stupidity. I want them to realize that being smart is something to be proud of. I want them to start accepting that people who are smarter than they are *do* have grounds to question your judgment.
And most of all, I want the geeky kid with the glasses not to lose his lunch money. Because nearsightedness runs in my family.
I just wish I could figure out some way to do it.
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