American Cowardice 1

Driving home tonight I witnessed two police cruisers pulling over a man in a sedan. They shined their spotlights on him, and approached from both sides. I drove past without seeing what happened next, but I imagined the following unrealistic conversation.

Drunk Guy: Man those lights are bright could you turn them down.

Officer: It's normal procedure. For our protection. So we can see what you're doing.

Drunk Guy: For your protection? What do you need protecting from?

Officer: Well you see, we don't know if you are some PCP-head or gang-banger and might go crazy on us. You could be anyone. We can't be too careful.

Drunk Guy: But you're wearing body armor and have a gun, and 3 other guys with body armor and guns, and a radio to call for help to get a bunch more guys with body armor and guns. Plus you've been trained in hand-to-hand combat and all that stuff...

Officer: Well yes, but you could be a really belligerent alcoholic...

Drunk Guy: But you have pepper spray and a taser and handcuffs, and there is a shotgun in your car. And even if I drive away you have much faster cars with bullet proof glass, and that radio again with which to call helicopters and tire spikes and, paramedics if one of you gets hurt...

Officer: Of course, but we can't be too careful...

The point of my rambling imagination is not that cops don't face real dangers, but that perhaps we've gotten our ideas of danger out of perspective. When I get pulled over for a speeding ticket I sweat. Why? Because a guy (or girl) with a gun is about to give me a lecture. Police officers certainly do get injured and die in the line of duty, but far more criminals and bystanders are shot by cops than the other way around. This is because the cops are better armed, better trained, better prepared, and usually outnumber their opponents. In other words, however dangerous it may be to be a cop, it is more dangerous for everyone else.

This is not an anti law-enforcement post. This is just what got my mind started down this train of thought. My broader point is this:

We have become a society of cowards. We have institutionalized cowardice.

Look at that chart to the right. We spend as much money on our military as the almost the entire rest of the world. Our military is the best equipped, best trained, most advanced everything. In the past century we have inflicted millions of casualties on the rest of the world while we have suffered less than 1% of the deaths we have caused.

Yet, despite our utter dominance, we live in fear.

After those police officers have got the talkative drunk guy out of his car he decides he does feel slightly belligerent. He cracks some jokes at the cops and doesn't exactly follow instructions. They push him up against the car and try to cuff him. He gets defensive.

Drunk Guy: Hey why are you pushing me!

He shoves back. The police both grab him and force him face first to the ground. He squirms, while one officer gets out his cuffs and the other pulls his taser out.

Officer: Hold still or I will taze you.

He doesn't hold still. The cop cuffing him, being bigger, stronger, in better shape, trained for this sort of thing and sober is, at most, in danger of inhaling some intense halitosis. The drunk guy keeps squirming. They taze him. Twice. For their own safety. Everyone agrees this is perfectly reasonable.

Review: The Wasp Factory

I got turned onto Iain Banks by a good friend from Gamescape. I picked The Wasp Factory up first as it is the novel he is most famous for, though I had initially intended to seek out his science-fiction which he writes under the name Iain M. Banks. I will hunt down Consider Phlebas next as the start to his 'Culture' series.

But this book isn't sci-fi. Quotes on the cover call it "Gothic Horror", but I don't think that is right either. It certainly contains horrific stuff, but... the nature of this book eludes me.

Here is what I can say - it is extraordinarily well written. Banks gets you deep deep into the head of his main character, which is disturbing since the main character is a complete sociopath. Banks is clearly an amazing study of the human psyche. He knows who all of these characters are and exactly why they are cracked.

I wouldn't say this book was particularly enjoyable. Intriguing, yes. It had a heavy dose of mystery which drew me through the whole thing. You know from the beginning that something is... off, and you want to find out exactly why that is the case, but it isn't really a healthy kind of curiosity. Its the kind of curiosity that gets you killed in a horror movie.

The book has some very interesting things to say about human relationships, family, and gender, but I can't say much more than that without giving away too much. Suffice to say, if he can write science-fiction with characters as deep and complex as the characters in this novel then it will be some really addicting stuff. But I don't see myself handing this novel off to many friends, unless they have very peculiar tastes... like Doug.

Review: Garth Nix's Abhorsen Trilogy

Ever since a boy named Harry Potter blasted onto the scene the Young Adult publishing world has been on fire. Mainstream literature bores me. Romance, Crime, Mystery, Western & Horror are all genres that rarely catch my interest. I normally gravitate to Sci-Fi/Fantasy, but while there are some real stars out there (Neil Gaiman, China Mieville), there are many more producing slush (David Eddings, Terry Brooks).

Meanwhile the Young Adult category has come to be a place where any genre from romance to mystery to fantasy can go to be quietly reinvented in exciting ways. Garth Nix's Abhorsen Trilogy is an example.

The Abhorsen Trilogy is the story of young girls and boys thrust into the role of protecting the world from dangers from beyond the grave. Nix writes with urgency and style. His characters, particularly the young female protagonists, are strong and compelling. The world the characters inhabit is mysterious and dark. He pulls you in with morbid curiosity. You desperately want to know what lies in the shadowy corners of this magical world and you know that it is going to be bad.

As is often the case in recent years, you need to ignore the "Young Adult" label here. These books are mature. They deal frankly and in depth with death, suffering, loss, and mortality. A frequent fantasy trope is the protagonist with a world-shaping destiny. Usually in such cases you are meant to feel pity for the protagonist, but it is difficult, because they get awesome powers, attention, fame and many other desirable things to compensate for the burden. In this series when one of the characters is forced to take on a task because of prophecy you genuinely weep for her. Nix makes all of his hero's pay to accomplish amazing things, and the price is never trivial.

One frequent complaint I have about fantasy novels is shallow magic. Too many authors treat magic as a story shortcut. It ends up feeling contrived and not at all magical. Not Nix. The magic in this story is wed to an entire metaphysical worldview which is consistent and more importantly beautiful. You never feel like magic is being used as a way of getting around story obstacles, nor is it mere flash and sizzle. Nix doesn't use magic as special effects. The magic is actually the basis of the story, and the more you begin to understand the magic, the more you realize how well it is all woven together.

This series is very good and I highly recommend it, but it isn't perfect. Nix sometimes rushes through things that need more space to breathe. He introduces a great many mysteries and story hooks which are insufficiently resolved in his hasty climax. I felt like he could easily have added 100 pages across the series in developing a few of the relationships and tying up loose ends. Perhaps he was writing to restrictions from the publisher, or perhaps he was so excited about his plot that he couldn't restrain himself. Either way it unfortunately diminishes the powerful impact his stories otherwise have.

Not 17 Again

I rented "17 Again" expecting to be mildly amused, and was instead moderately pissed off. Despite the hotness of Zac Efron (I guess) and the cheezball plot the movie managed to get me angry for a few reasons.

#1 - Sexism. Did Anyone else have a problem with the fact that the dude goes back to high school to help his kids and he ends up having to save his daughter from sex, and save his son from virginity? Yes we are convinced that the jock the girl is dating is a complete douchebag, who the teen daughter needs saving from - but where are we led to believe that the "head cheerleader" the son has a crush on is a redeemable human being? Actually, does anyone remember anything about the personality of the cheerleader girl at all? Exactly. It doesn't matter - if the son wants to bang her then he absolutely should and dad (transformed into Zac Efron) should do everything in his power to help. On the other hand, anyone who wants to have sex with his teen daughter is obviously a scum bag in need of severe humiliation and scorn.

#2 - Homophobia. It was a short moment in the film, but at one point someone suspects Zac Efron of being gay - and despite the fact that it would be the perfect resolution to the situation for him to confirm the suspicion he vigorously denies it. Why? Because being gay is just not cool and Zac Efron is cool. Right?

#3 - Persistent Lame "Geek Jokes". One of the main characters is Zac Efron's friend from high school who first shows up in the film running in to a basketball practice late wearing a wizard's robe and mumbling about his D&D game. This character later ends up being rich but ridiculously socially maladapted, living in a house full of toys and manequins. Listen, as a geek, I love to poke fun at geeky behavior and pastimes. We are a funny group of people. In fact, there is probably no subculture that laughs at itself more. But this movie wasn't laughing with us, it was laughing at us, demonstrated by the fact that it utterly failed to understand geek culture, in favor of perpetuating demeaning stereotypes. The geek in this movie committed cardinal geek sins like saying "the force is strong with this one" while dressed in a Star Trek uniform. He spoke elvish, but didn't remember that Gandalf the White is the one who appears in Fangorn Forest in the Two Towers. The movie wasn't interested in presenting a sympathetic and realistic portrait of a geeky personality they just needed somebody to do their slapstick and be the butt of their jokes, and the weirder the better - so make him forget his pants all the time, and wear ridiculous hats, and cover his walls in memorabilia, oh and make him act like a total dunce around women, because all geeks are like that, aren't they?

#4 - Banality. I guess in the final estimate, my complaint about this movie is that it was so painfully banal. So perfectly mainstream. So determinedly status quo. And I mean that in the most condemning sense. Zac Efron played a white-bread hero from a picket-fence town who knows how to teach boys to be MEN, and protect women from their own inner whore, and even how to be kind to the village idiot. I got the distinct impression that Zac Efron was too cool for real geeks who won't be happy as bumbling sidekicks, too cool for women with minds of their own, and too cool to let his son go through high school as something other than a mac daddy. He was definitely too cool for me. A real American Hero.

Speaks For Itself

Evangelical Lutheran Church in America (ELCA) votes to recognize same-gender couples - Allows those gay and lesbian people in relationships to serve as church leaders!

Today the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America (ELCA) passed a resolution stating that it will commit itself to find a way to allow congregations that choose to do so to recognize, support and hold publicly accountable, lifelong, monogamous, same-gender relationships. Additionally, the voting members passed another resolution stating that the ELCA is committed to find a way for people in such publicly accountable, lifelong, monogamous, same-gender relationships to serve as rostered leaders of the church.

“We are thrilled with these historic decisions,” said Jeff Lutes, Soulforce Executive Director, “God is smiling and the ELCA will benefit greatly from the spiritual gifts of those who can now love, worship, and serve with integrity. I hope every Lutheran congregation will see the rightness of today’s decisions and open their hearts accordingly.”

Soulforce has a long history of working for change within the ELCA. In 2001, fifty Soulforce volunteers were arrested outside the Indianapolis Convention Center during civil disobedience after the ELCA voted to continue requiring gay and lesbian clergy to vow celibacy to be eligible for ordained ministry. In 2003, Soulforce maintained a visible presence at the ELCA Churchwide Assembly in Milwaukee by leafleting and vigiling to educate ELCA voting members. In 2005, Soulforce partnered with Goodsoil in Orlando where approximately 100 people walked silently to the front of the hall and stood between Presiding Bishop Mark Hanson and the 1,018 members after they rejected a proposal to allow gay men and lesbians in committed relationships to be ordained as members of the clergy. The action created tension within the hall and forced ELCA voting members to face the injustice of their vote.

After nearly a decade of waiting, Soulforce rejoices over today’s decisions and commends Lutherans Concerned, Goodsoil, and so many others who have also worked tirelessly for many years to bring about this change. Now more than ever, Soulforce is committed to the practice of relentless, nonviolent, resistance until all lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender people are free from both political and religious oppression.

BenX: Autistic Gospel

We don't appreciate foreign cinema enough in this country. Absolute gems like this Belgian film about a boy with Asperger's go completely unnoticed. It was entered for consideration for the "Best Foreign Film" category at the Academy Awards in 2008, but didn't even get the nomination. There is no way there were 5 better films last year. This is an amazing movie.

Now that there is absolutely no suspense as far as my opinion of the movie - go rent it. Stop reading what I think and go watch the film. Then come back and tell me if you saw the same things I did.

*************

BenX is ingenious in its construction. It is told partly through documentary style interviews, partly through a linear narrative, partly through fantasies of the main character, and partly through the main character's interactions in a MMORPG. Through this jumble of different approaches we get into the head of Ben, an autistic boy, in a way I would not have thought possible in film.

The presenting subject of the film is autism, or possibly bullying, but these are really just the outward form. The real genre of this movie is gospel. By getting you into the head of this autistic boy, and helping you understand autism as you never have before this movie sets you up for a remarkable transformation, which turns the situation on its head and makes you see life and death differently. It is intense and upsetting. It will be shocking to many. It is absolutely necessary.

The film references the gospel in a number of ways. From the obvious: a scene early in the film has a literature teacher talking about Jesus' crucifixion. To the subtle: the name BenX (which has a cross in it) is a flemish pun meaning "I am nothing". It is a reference to the servant song of Isaiah, "He had no beauty or majesty to attract us to him, nothing in his appearance that we should desire him. He was despised and rejected by men, a man of sorrows, and familiar with suffering. Like one from whom men hide their faces he was despised, and we esteemed him not."

Ben embodies the man of sorrows even better than our traditional pictures of Jesus - who is often strong and manly, articulate and persuasive - a powerful, miracle-working, savior. Ben is none of these things. He is awkward and unkempt. He is fragile and unsettling. His sorrow is profound and in his violent end he teaches us that we are violent people, and he shows us a new way. The film offers us a way into the future which is humanizing and life-giving. It is the gospel. It is fantastic.

Pink Shirts For Justice

These two boys deserve a medal. David Shepherd and Travis Price of Cambridge, MA, took a stand against bullying at Central Kings Rural High School.

After watching a fellow student get harassed and mocked and called (gasp) homosexual for showing up to school in a pink shirt, they decided they'd had enough of the bully culture at their school. They got online and spread word of a plan to have students show up en masse in pink. They bought 75 pink tank tops, and got as many people as they could to participate.

On the day, out of a student body of 830 students, about half were wearing pink. The bullies were predictably angered by the stunt, but the message had been made loud and clear.

It is a classic pacifist move - resist violence publicly and loudly (preferably in large numbers) by shaming the violent and showing them to be petty and ridiculous. Martin Luther King Jr. called it arousing the conscience. The more we make a public show of our peaceful conduct in the face of violence, the more we undermine the social acceptance of brutality.

Fearmongers and bullies in our media and government who want to persuade us that perpetual warfare and torture are the only way to keep us safe don't deserve our respect, but our ridicule. We should all show up outside the offices and homes of such individuals in pink shirts and shake our heads in benign disapproval at their childish insecurity.

Thus Do All (Women)

Tuesday night I went to see Opera Colorado's production of Mozart's Cosi Fan Tutte. It was superb. The music was great, the singing was better, and the blocking and stage direction were original and hilarious. I laughed the whole way through.

This isn't a review though. The show spurred some reflections on gender and fidelity I want to share.

The plot of Cosi Fan Tutte is very simple. Two young soldiers, Guglielmo and Ferrando, are in love and believe their ladies are loyal. Don Alfonso, an older gentlemen and a friend of theirs, believes all women are fickle in their affections and so he bets them that he can prove, by means of a deception, that the ladies are not trustworthy. The soldiers accept the bet and they lay out a plot where the soldiers will pretend to be called away to war, then return disguised as Albanian strangers and swap places to woo each other's lady, in order to test their fidelity. The ladies prove to be very resistant, but in the end they both fall for the Albanians, in time for Don Alfonso to reveal that it was all a ruse and win the bet. The moral of the story is - women are just like that and men should be tolerant, but go into a marriage with eyes open.

With a straight reading, according to a period understanding of the opera, it is wildly sexist - even mysoginist. However, perhaps accidentally, or perhaps because it is rich enough in its original libretto, it is capable of transcending its original meaning and conveying quite a different, even opposite meaning to a modern audience.

The reason is that the men are cardboard caricatures who never once question the morality of lying to their fiancees and proceeding even to seduce one another's girl. At the end of the opera they are just as guilty of infidelity as their women, but they never even realize it. In fact, they are worse than the women because they did it knowingly and even betrayed each other whereas the women were unaware they were being seduced by their sister's fiancee. The men demonstrate no moral volition at all. They are like children, asleep. The women on the other hand struggle mightily and movingly with their emotions and temptations. They are never under the illusion that their infidelity is anything but wrong. They face consequences and accept their responsibility. They are moral adults. The end result is that we end up identifying with the women and thinking of the men as capricious and cruel.

The reason this is interesting is it seems to point toward a shift in gender perceptions between 1790 and 2009 - and in both era's we are wrong. In a classic anthropology men are the embodiment of the intellect, while women are the embodiment of the libido. Don Alfonso wants the soldiers to be "enlightened" and go into marriage in a sober and rational way, aware that women are subject to fickle affections. To some degree these old gender roles still persist, but in some ways our modern thinking actually reverses this line of thought. Men are often thought of in our culture as driven purely by libido, unable to control their lusts and thus not responsible for their infidelities or sexual transgressions. Women by contrast are often held responsible for controlling not only their own libido, but the libido of the men around them.

The point is, watching Cosi Fan Tutte, we easily dismiss the gender roles it presents as wrong, but we miss the irony that we are just as wrong today. It's about time that Guglielmo and Ferrando learned to keep their penises in their pants and stopped blaming their women either for having fickle affections, or for failing to control every man's rampaging libido. When are the men going to grow up and become moral adults, themselves?

Absolute Disaster

I feel like I've been punched in the gut. My favorite team in sports, the San Jose Sharks, had their best season ever. The best season of any team in the league. And then they were eliminated in 6 games by the 8th seed in the 1st round of the Stanley Cup Playoffs. WTF?

Excuse me while I go nurse my wounds.

I'm sure Nick is laughing himself silly, since the Blackhawks beat Calgary to advance to the 2nd round. Bastard.

Curmudgeon

This clip has been popping up all over the blogosphere.

Susan Boyle on Britain Got Talent
by dwarthy

Now there is a voice in my head saying "shut up, Aric!" and usually when that voice gets going I ignore it and then I regret ignoring it in short order. So I will issue a couple disclaimers before going on to ignore that voice...

The basic storyline most people are taking from this televised incident, that we shouldn't judge a book by its cover etc... etc... is a good one. If people are uplifted and challenged to be more compassionate, less judgmental people, then that is an unqualified good thing. I don't want to rain on anyone's parade.

But...

To paraphrase the Princess Bride, "I don't think this clip means what you think it means." I mean, it's not particularly subtle is it? Is no one else out there cynical enough to suspect that this was staged? It's not even necessary to assume that it was a conspiracy that Ms. Boyle was in on, but merely to point out that this show (just like American Idol) is way over-produced. The cameras, judges, audience, etc... it is all coordinated and conducted like a symphony orchestra. How much do the judges have to ham it up, and how selective does the editing of crowd shots have to be before you begin to suspect that it wasn't quite the feel-good story you suppose?

There is a deeper problem as well, besides the slick marketing and presentation at work - which is that the show, far from subverting our stereotypes, actually reinforces them and plays upon them. I mean, why should we be surprised about her vocal skill at all? What is the elephant in the room here? What aren't people saying out loud about Ms. Boyle that would lead basically everyone to assume that she was going to humiliate herself? Could it be that she is stereotypically unattractive, even sort of Downs Syndrome-y looking, and dressed auspiciously frumpy?

Please understand - this is not at all a criticism of Ms. Boyle, but rather of the exploitative platform which intentionally used her to get ratings by knowingly playing on our crass aesthetic judgments and then expertly triggering our sympathies. It is a feel good story written at the expense of her humanity, because we have to first stereotype her before, predictably, having our stereotype upset.

I really do hope that she rides this to achieve what she desires and that she goes as far as she can with the vocal talent and discipline she can muster. Even more so I hope that she doesn't ever feel she has to sacrifice a part of herself in order to live up to the role that has been thrust upon her, of everyone's favorite talented ugly woman.

Fiction, Myth, Lie, Truth

I think that Mythbusters is a great show. The only thing I don't like about it is that it's title is a grave misuse of the word "myth". The word has come to be synonymous with "lie", and I think that this has become so pervasive that it has made it harder to talk about religion - particularly comparative religion, because there is this (false) sense that "myth" and "truth" are mutually exclusive. That isn't how I use the word, and it got me thinking about some other related words that I want to work on defining - defining how I use them at least.


These are all where I am now, not things I'm trying to lay down for all time.



Story

A story is a recounting of events from a particular point of view. Stories are not singular, are infinitely interconnected, and never end - we only stop telling them at one point or another. Stories also come from a storyteller, and are received by an audience. Both of these things change the story with each telling. Apart from storyteller and recipient, there is no story.


Fiction

"Fiction" is another word sometimes used as a synonym for lie. This belies what every moderately literate person knows - that one can find truths in fiction, perhaps even more readily than in non-fiction. For me, fiction is story which may not conform to consensual reality but which is told with the consent of the audience. What that means is that fiction may not conform to things we generally agree are real - it might have Elves or monsterse or faster-than-light travel, it always has made-up characters, and so on. I use the term consensual reality because what is fiction in one culture might be truth in another. Sorry objectivists - deal with it. So, to put it more simply, fiction is a lie told with our consent.



Myth

A myth is a story through which a group of people make meaning. If no one finds it meaningful, then it cannot be a myth. If only one person finds it meaningful, it cannot be a myth. If it is merely an account of widely agreed-upon events, or a recording of some kind, it cannot be a myth. Included in my list of myths are the Bible, Capitalism, American History, the Enuma Elish, Dianetics, Socialism, etc. These are all stories through which people make meaning, and none of them are mere historical records.


How a myth functions is a topic for another post - or ten.



Lie

A lie is a story told which does not conform to consensual reality without the consent of the audience. It is presenting what is not meaningful as meaningful, or presenting what is factually false as what is factually true. Lies are about having power over other people while protecting yourself. The storyteller and the audience are not connected by trust, but are instead engaged in combat, though they may not know it.



Fact

Facts are a lot more rare than we think they are. A fact is something that every observer would agree upon given full access to any information they need to make the distinction. It is something that, having every question answered, every person interviewed, every measurement taken, every person would agree is true, short of severe mental illness perhaps. Given this, evolution is not a fact. Consciousness is not a fact. The "law" of supply and demand are not facts. Gravity is a fact. The speed of light is a fact.


The concept of "Fact" necessarily ignores philosophical stances which would make all of our experience a dream or an illusion, or which are entirely deterministic. It presupposes that there is a shared material world which we experience, and that we can make decisions which are not fully determined.



Truth

Truth is God's truth alone (did I just accidentally reference Calvin? Maybe I did...). Every statement about truth I take to be in part a statement about hope or trust, because it is a limited human being claiming some kind of knowledge which is not limited. Truth is as knowable as God is knowable. Truth-claims are theological, God-claims in the way that I view the world.

Truth is not just something which conforms to someone's presentation of facts, but it is transformative. Truth changes you and makes you better - or it is not truth. You are the test of your truth, and I am the test of my truth.

Gandhi, to theists, would say "God is Truth", and to atheists, he would say "Truth is God". I remember reading that in his autobiography and really liking it.

Beware the "Cultural Jihad"

Things have been serious on the blog for a while now, and I'm sorry to say, they are only getting more serious. You see, we are in the midst of a "cultural Jihad", wherein our traditional American values are being threatened by liberals who are in the pocket of Big Islam and other special-interest groups (see illustration on, of course, the left). These liberals include our seemingly-innocent donut-purveyors and even those who are creating software to allow our children to have digital children of their own!

Thankfully, conservative counter-insurgents are willing to point out the many threats facing us as Americans - primary among them is Rachael Ray wearing a scarf in a Dunkin Donuts commercial. You see, its all part of the left-wing conspiracy to...um...I'll have to tune in to Sean Hannity to find out, because I'm not sure why I should be afraid, I just know that I am.

(As an aside, while you're learning from the Hannity why we should be afraid of each other, you can also go looking for love in what are assuredly all the right places.)

Also, did you know that Nintendo is proselytizing for Islam? Listen for yourself. Before you know it, your toaster will be shouting "Allahu Akbar!" five times a day, and it will have to do with activist judges. Just you wait.

Much thanks to Penny Arcade for bringing these threats to my attention. I recommend them as your penultimate source of political commentary. We all know who the ultimate is.