A rude question

You spent one and half hours watching a debate between two vile human beings who have been constant media presences for the last few decades and about whom there is nothing new we could possibly learn and you want me to take your opinions seriously?

Same old, same old

Some emerging religious leaders like Rev. William Barber or Rev. Osagyefo Sekou offer a new understanding of morality that is intrinsically linked with social justice, which might appeal to religiously unaffiliated people seeking a greater meaning in these troubling times.

I've been hearing variations on this argument all my adult life. To be fair, Kaya Oakes qualifies her remark with a "might". Still, those religious organizations that have invested heavily in social justice have not succeeded in attracting many members. If anything, they are losing members even faster than other, less political groups. The Catholic religious orders that heavily directed themselves towards social justice in the last few decades are all headed for extinction. 

The article Oakes writes is based on a new survey by the Public Religion Research Institute and Religion News Service. And if you read that survey first and then her article, I think you will concluded that she has precious little to add. And neither do I.

The mistake she makes, and many have made before her, is that she considered things that she believes young people are interested in and then suggested that religious groups should offer these same things. As others have pointed out before me, if people can already get this stuff outside religion, why would they look to religion for it. Beyond that, I wonder if young people are much committed to social justice? I haven't seen any evidence that there is anything there but a lot of virtue signalling.

The thing religion seems to offer less and less, it seems to me, is a way of life. It's become something you do at certain moments in life. For some only when they are baptized, get married and die. But even for those whop go to church every Sunday (or even every day) religion is something they do separately from the rest of their life. And what would they do if they were being religious all the time?

Is it even a good idea to "be religious"?

Judge Boggs

No idea who he is but I love this. (h/t I found it here.)

re: By the way, apropos targeting metaphors and the like
Danny J Boggs [Sixth Circuit Address]Fri Apr 2 05:42:07 PDT 2010 

I think we could just bring this thread to a conclusion by simply agreeing that:
All of MY SIDE's references and statements are to be taken in the coolest, hip-ironic, culturally aware, benign-metaphorical way possible (see Watts v. United States, and [granting my side the full benefit of the] the conflicting interpretive modes the various judges/justices on the Supreme Court and the Court[s] of Appeals [have approved]),  

AND 

All of YOUR SIDE's references and statements are to be taken in the most mindlessly literal, threatening way possible. 

That should work for almost all of our commentators, of whatever persuasion.
Also, any charge against MY SIDE requires exquisite legally admissible proof of its accuracy, 

WHEREAS 

Any charge against YOUR SIDE must be true if it was asserted by anyone, anywhere.  

People on MY SIDE are responsible only for what they said personally, in full-quotation context. 

BUT 

People on YOUR SIDE are responsible for the inferred implications of anything said by anyone who ever held any idea vaguely similar to what your people think.

OK? 

People you can stop caring about

I mean stop caring about their opinions, not stop caring about them as human beings. (There was a time when such caveats weren't necessary; how I wish we had those days back again.)

You show up with a new pair of glasses for which you've paid a lot of money and someone says, "Those don't suit you." Or perhaps you're in your early twenties and you've purchased a new sports jacket, bringing your total of such jackets up to two, and a family member says, "I worry that you're getting obsessed with clothing." Or you've just read a novel or non-fiction book you loved or are wondering about some new ideas you've discovered or a new genre of music and someone undercuts your enthusiasm with some snide comment.

And it bothers you.

Life would be a lot easier if you could determine whether you need to take this person seriously. "Do I have to rethink my choices in light of this comment?" is really just another way of saying, "Is this a serious person?"

And that is precisely why you must decide whether they are. And you have the right to do this. Even if, as is almost always the case, it's someone who is otherwise important in your life.

There are people in your life who you must respect (a superior at work, your spouse's friend or sibling or parent) or even someone you love (members of your family or a lifelong friend) who aren't willing to be serious or who stop be able or willing to do so. They are so consistently shallow, insensitive, trite, inconsistent, untrustworthy, manipulative or just plain unobservant that you should stop taking them seriously. So stop taking them seriously!

Here's the challenge though: the only way to do this honestly is to tick them off the serious people list without their ever knowing that you have. Because your (or my) wanting them to know that they aren't taken seriously anymore is contradictory. On a psychological level, at least, you still care even if you have intellectually made the move. That's inevitable at the start. You need to change that. This is going to sound circular but the key to stop caring is to stop caring. You don't have to say a single thing to the other person. You just put them on a list (I use a real list that I keep in my wallet). Every time they say something that gets to you, you notice and redirect. You get upset but then redirect: "I don't need to take this person seriously!"

Snake Goddess!

This is a figurine of a snake goddess from the Minoan palace at Knossos. It's roughly 3600 years old. Keep it in mind the next time someone tells you that notions of feminine beauty are contingent things dependent on cultural values.

There is, of course, some variation but those variations are variations within a range.

The same is true of sex roles. There is some variation you can play with but there is a range you can't go beyond and that range isn't just a set of cultural fictions that you can ignore. If you're a man you will be a lot happier if you work at being good at being a man and if you're a woman you will be a lot happier if you work at being good at being a woman. If you don't, you'll be miserable. There are no other options.

What no one seems to notice about Lena Dunham

I think she is worth noticing as a terribly bad example. Remember the episode of Seinfeld where George succeeds by doing the opposite of what he normally does? Well, Lena is sort of George for everyone. You could do well in life by simply doing the opposite of what she would do.

Anyway, her latest gaffe surfaced in an interview with the equally embarrassing Amy Schumer:

I was sitting next to Odell Beckham Jr., and it was so amazing because it was like he looked at me and he determined I was not the shape of a woman by his standards. He was like, "That's a marshmallow. That's a child. That's a dog." It wasn't mean — he just seemed confused. 

The vibe was very much like, "Do I want to [have sex with] it? Is it wearing a … yep, it's wearing a tuxedo. I'm going to go back to my cell phone." It was like we were forced to be together, and he literally was scrolling Instagram rather than have to look at a woman in a bow tie. I was like, "This should be called the Metropolitan Museum of Getting Rejected by Athletes.”

All sorts of people rained abuse on Lena for this. 

The gist of the criticism was that she had presumed to read this guy's mind. That's wrong. Our minds are not closed spaces. Very often, most of the time, you can tell what people are thinking (including what they are thinking of you) by observing them. Most people don't bother developing the skill but it's easy enough. All you have to do is stop talking and pay attention to others. (Bonus point: doing this will make me a better person too.)

Let's begin by reminding ourselves that the experience she describes is a very common one. You walk into a room, a coffeshop, a bar and someone looks up, sizes you up, and returns to whatever they were previously doing having determined that you aren't worth their paying any more attention to. That has happened to you thousands of times. And you have done it to others thousands of times. It's a normal human interaction and the thoughts of the person who rejects the other in such circumstances are relatively transparent.

And feelings of shame go with this experience. It feels shameful to get summarily rejected. It can also feel shameful to do it. Sometimes. We might think we should be putting more effort into this other human being. We glance up furtively, hoping not to get caught making this summary judgment. But it keeps happening so we all keep doing it and experiencing it.

The moral lesson here is, "Get over yourself and learn to deal with it because this sort of thing is going to be unavoidable for people who live in cities."

If there is one thing we can count on from Lena though, it is that she will never get over herself. The shame she feels comes pouring out. You can see it it in the way she wallows in her rejection. "... I was not the shape of a woman by his standards. He was like, 'That's a marshmallow. That's a child. That's a dog.'" She calls herself "it". He might have thought those things but she couldn't possibly know based on her own description of his reaction. Their interaction was too short for her to have figured out that much in the (unlikely) case that it were true. He looked at her and then he turned back to Instagram.

What Lena felt in response was a narcissistic injury. It was her sheer unimportance in his eyes that she can't stand. And she'd rather imagine that he judged her negatively in degrading terms than face the fact that he barely even noticed her. He probably has never heard of Lena Dunham. That shame is too horrible to face so she substitutes another kind of shame, quite literally body-shaming herself, because it's easier to deal with that thought than with the possibility that there are people out there for whom Lena Dunham doesn't matter at all.

Behaving that way will produce a very sad life.