Some Disturbing Data and a Short Exhortation

In my last post I cited recent polling results concerning Americans and our faith. As I have lived in a few other countries in recents years, it constantly amazes/irks/bewilders/embarasses me that religion has so thoroughly infiltrated our political discourse. In no other Western nations can I quickly find anything comparable, and everywhere I go, one of the first comments I get from foreigners is how religious my country is. I almost don't believe them, but if you look at some more recent polls (and you can always take polls with a grain of salt and a communion wafer) it is difficult to dismiss the sometimes insidious affect that religion plays in our culture.

Newsweek Poll (April, 2007):
- "91 percent of American adults say they believe in God"
- "nearly half rejects the scientific theory of evolution."
- 26 percent said it was not possible to be both moral and an atheist
- "66 percent of American have no doubts God exists"

International Polling Firm LPSOS (Dec., 2006):
- 11 percent of those surveyed said it is "very likely" that Jesus will return to Earth this year
- 14 percent said it was "somewhat likely."

(personal note: I know things aren't great, but I don't think JC's gotta come down and wreck house just yet.)

Pew Forum on Religion & Public Life (Oct., 2006):
- 61% said that religious groups should express views on social and political questions
- 35% believe that scriptures are actual word of God to be taken literally (my italics and bold)

Barna Research Poll (1995): Study sampled both born-again Christians and non-Christians concerning their prejudice towards other religions. Breaks down like this:

% of non-Christians who view the impact as negative
Islam - 24%
Buddhism - 22%
Scientology - 30%
Atheism - 50%

...Now notice how drastically the percentages increase with the born-again Christians

% of born-again Christians who view the impact as negative
Islam - 71%
Buddhism - 76%
Scientology - 81%
Atheism - 92%

...And Now a Short Exhortation:

Why is it that we Americans exploit those qualities which divide us rather than embrace those which unite?

As was pointed out, with aestetically pleasing graphics, by BostonD a few weeks back, we are not acutally such a divided nation. Obama was correct in '04 when he said, "There are no red states; there are no blue states. There is only the United States of America." My faith resides in our populous's capacity to be, well, populist. I believe that we have many more things in common than the pundits would have us believe, yet we Americans do like our dichotomies -- Hamilton or Burr, Union or Confederacy, Celtics or Lakers; Tastes great! or Less Filling!, Jolie or Aniston, Alien or Predator, Freddy or Jason, O'Reilly or any guest he has on. Only in America can two beers of the same brand find a forum to compete, and for some reason I find myself always rooting for Bud Dry -- cause I'm an American and I like the underdog. After World War II we embraced Western Europe as allies, enacted the Marshall Plan, and provided for our burgeoning Middle Class -- the dichotomies seemed to be held at bay. Yet, soon came McCarthyism, the civil unrest of the 1960's, and 40 years of the Cold War. Due to the latter (and this is just a inchoate theory of mine) we formed ourselves not from the inside out, but in opposition to the ideology of Communism. Any form of it was and has since been met with knee-jerk disdain and dismissal. Today, while Western Europe enjoys many programs built upon socialist principals and ideas, our national identity has been so warped and manipulated that the French -- our allies for over 200 years, who indelibly influenced our founding documents -- are now our straw men.

According to Mark Buchannan in his NYTimes blog, this may just be a natural part of the human psyche:
"People experience real psychological discomfort – psychologists call it 'cognitive dissonance' – when confronted with views that contradict their own. They can avoid the discomfort by ignoring contradictory views, and this alone brings like-minded bloggers together."

...But I digress and this "short" section of the post is now overwrought with rambling ideas...

What happened to "Render unto Caesar that which is Caesar's"? What happened to the distinct realms of Church and State? As I've said before, faith by it's very nature is personal, not communal. As exemplified in The Book of Job (as far as William Blake and Harold Bloom read it), Job's faith in the beginning of his book is one of easy piety and therefore incomplete in the eyes of God. Only after his "test" does he attain the more transcendent fulfillment of faith. For belief in the divine is, in itself, a hardship or (if you'll forgive me) a cross to bear. Faith can be both a crutch during times of emotional pain and the catalyst for similar internal conflict. In that leap of faith you're asking a lot of your god and even more of yourself. What you don't get to ask a lot of, however, is everyone else, especially those that do not take the same leap along side you.

Just to bring this all back to our present political climate, I find the case of President Bush and his often mentioned religous devotion (relies on it for strength, reads a little of the Bible each day). His supporters (now dwindling down to 28%) are largely made up of conservative Christians. I have always been shocked by how he can rally this demographic as many of his policies appear a smack in the face of what I always believed to be Christian ideals. (I don't think I need to go through the litany of these policies: war, pooping on the poor, craven missue of power, abuses (both physical and of civil liberties).) I had initially planned for this post to be simply a list of the Beatitudes and then examples of how the Bush Administration has gone the other way, but then I read Nicholas Kristof's Op-Ed this morning, in which he points out some of Bush's oft overlooked accomplishments. Kristof (who is no Bush supporter) reveals the vast humanitarian legacy of this administration, one that actually exemplifies Christian values, thus begging the question: Why doesn't either Bush or his Christian followers talk these facts up more? Why does it take a notoriously liberal columnist to shed light on Bush's more laudable successes?

It would seem to me that we can all agree on and be proud of Bush's commitment to AIDS and Malaria in Africa, but we choose otherwise. It's easy to blame the media for our polarized society; it's even easier to blame Bush himself ("you're either with us or you're for the terrorists"), but ultimately we still have a choice in how we think. In summation to whatever this post has become, as we approach a seminal election and debate the timeline in Iraq, let's try to set aside the all-too-easy partisan rhetoric and accept our pluralism. One of the pillars of America's greatness is our diversity, and we must remain mindful to embrace these differences, for, in a great paradox of this great experiment, we are more united by our shared differences than divided by them.

My prayers are with you?

I’ve gotta be honest…I’m a little torn. I live about an hour from both Liberty University, and Liberty Christian Academy. You may have heard of LU, but chances are that you haven’t heard of LCA. It’s a high school that has provided “serious” Christians the opportunity to be schooled from the age of 14 to 25 in Lynchburg, Virginia. All of these lessons have been taught by Jerry Falwell. The idea of someone being 25 years old without being exposed to ideas that fly in the face of that sect makes me more than a little nauseous. I believe the best way to determine your own beliefs is to test them in the face of others. Falwell, apparently, disagrees.

My initial reaction to his death was one of amazement. I really kind of thought that guy was never going to die. The fact that he lived to the age of 73 is, to me, anyway, some sort of terrifying support to the idea that there is a God, and that He (or She, you liberal bastards) agrees with this crazy son of a bitch. My next thought was a recollection of the VISAA volleyball tournament last year in which Mr. Falwell packed the gym of the high school that I work with his students. Buses were chartered and the entire student population came to root on the…well…whateverthefucktheyare. We lost, and I felt like I was on the other end of a crusade.

What shocks me, though, are the hit pieces put out, in the hours that the man’s body is still warm, by Salon and Slate.

Was he a hatemonger? Absolutely. Are those who advocate hate for him any better? I don’t think so. What’s always bothered me as a liberal is those liberals who will support those who want to have sex with animals (as long as it’s consensual, whateverthefuckthatmeans) but will openly criticize and, or, attack those who believe that premarital sex is a sin. If you are open to all opinions, be open to those that are closed to others. Don’t claim to be open, and then be closed to others. At least Falwell was straight up about it. He hated homosexuals. If you claim to hate him, simply because he hated homosexuals, I’m not sure where that self righteousness comes from.

I don’t know if the world is a better place without him. I personally think abortion and gay rights are good things, so, personally, there’s one fewer person alive that agrees with me. But in my barest opinion, whether or not the guy’s a real bastard, I’m not going to rejoice in his death. I really do think that death as a whole is a negative thing.

P.S. Go ahead…throw Hitler at me.

Why I Don't Underline

In one of actor Ed Norton's finest roles, a duplicitous Aaron Stempler betrays the devil beneath his orchestrated angelic facade when it outs in open court that a string of numbers carved in the chest of a murdered priest corresponds to a passage in the priest's private copy of The Scarlet Letter; something about wearing two faces that apparently reveals the killer's motive. It was proven that Stempler had underlined the passage, thus demonstrating his connection to the murder.

It is not precisely for this reason, though maybe baring some relation, that I do not underline books. From time to time the impulse to mar a perfectly nice copy of Mailer, or EB White, or Hemingway gestates in my ribaldrous heart, but even on the worst of days, I triumph over this murderous impulse and that is how I sleep at night. It is not that I regard the practice of underlining passages as categorically monstrous (no more so than, say, branding cattle, or small children). Rather, I know myself when it comes to historical consciousness, especially personal historical consciousness, and I fear what implacable self-sleuth might uncover such chicken-scratchings and testify upon my character.

I wish it weren't true. I wish I could say I don't underline books because of my deep respect for the aesthetic experience of reading; but truth be told, I am perfectly liable to break mid-sentence to regard a passing cloud, or thought, or political era, and never you mind what fragile beauty my victimized author had been fighting to achieve. It's not that I don't appreciate continuity in aesthetic experience (I really don't like to take pictures but in the absolutely most covert manner), but I've never had a problem treating literature as platform for thought, and so never mind leaving off the one for the other. So that's not it.

No, the problem is two-fold. First, I know that however important the word or phrase seems at the time, no amount of retrospective projection will elevate the underlined passage to the heroic stature that it occupies at the moment of anointment. This is not because the passage is not objectively great, you understand. Nor even that I fear in subsequent reading that the passage will necessarily shy from the task of rising to its title, wilt under my accusatory eye. I know in the end the word is going to be fine. I just don't want to heap any extra burden on something that already assumes so much responsibility in this world. I know it looks like an accolade, and it is, but we needn't press every pretty leaf we see. Sometimes it's much better to just be happy that it exists and move on.

And the second reason I do not underline books is that any phrase so good to merit immortality shall have it naturally. That is, I believe that if you really like something, you'll remember it anyway; so there's no need to mark-up a bunch of phrases that seem neat at the time but which you'll never remember where they were, or what they were about, or why you liked them.

But that said, I've really no interest in dissuading you from any of your reading habits. Slash Beowulf with an inked scimitar, if it please you. Perhaps you'd infuse it with new life. Me, I like to pass all sorts of things right by.

An Anatomy Of New York City Housing

In January I sublet an apartment in Greenpoint from a girl named Michiko who, having accepted a marriage proposal from a firefighter/documentarist named Bradach, was moving into a newly renovated condo with him in Bushwick. The apartment, owned by a Polish father/daughter combo named Mitch and Monika, was a find because it meant I could move my belongings out of the basement of a house in Greenpoint owned by my friends Chris and Jonah, who come from Maine and are brothers. The bed I purchased from Michiko was a little short, so I traded it to my friend Mikey for a futon that I sold to him six months earlier when he moved into a new apartment in Washington Heights with his brother Brian. Brian, like Bradach, does film editing for documentaries. Brian went to Fordham, which is where Chris went before he got a Masters degree in Theology, but Chris never met Brian and does not believe he exists. Brian's brother, Mikey, dates a girl named Sarah that rents an apartment in Massachusetts from one of Brian's friends from High School and lives in the same town as one of my friends, Andy, that used to rent an apartment in Williamsburg with an NYU Philosopher that knew a guy I went to school with named Sebastian. Now, Jonah also dates a girl named Sara who lives with Kori, the girl I date, who also works in media, but has never done a documentary, but has made one mockumentary. Sara and Kori rent an apartment in Williamsburg with another girl named Kelly from a Hasidic Jew named Abe who collects rent in person and doesn't mind that Sara keeps a Siamese cat named Abbey, which is also the name of a girl Chris knows from Maine who married my cousin Barry from St. Paul. Chris dates a girl named Mary that's friends with Sara and rents an apartment in East Williamsburg with Tabor and Ann Eyvette, who both acted in Kori's mockumentary along with Sara's boyfriend before Jonah, Dillon. When I went to Italy with Kori in April I sublet my apartment in Greenpoint to a couple named Tim and Liz who had a friend that lives down the street named Peter, which is what Kori calls my friend Andy's younger brother Travis. Peter met me on the corner of Calyer and Lorimer to pickup the copy of the key I had made for Tim and Liz, who play in a rock band together called the Mendoza line, which Bradach may have once seen in Milwaukee. Peter (Travis) also plays music and once sublet an apartment in Greenpoint, around the corner from Chris and Jonah, with his girlfriend Heidi, but now lives in Paris with Heidi's older brother Lev who knows Mikey from High School and studies Philosophy at the school where Sebastian studied before he came to New York. Sara, Mary, and Tabor went to school in New Orleans, which is where Mikey went to School and rented a house with a guy named Jim that Jonah and Chris ran into last year at Mardi Gras. Jonah, Travis, Lev, and I went to school together with a guy named Mischa that now lives in New Orleans in a tent not far from where Jim and Mikey once had a house.

Of everyone in this story, Mischa is the only one who does not own or rent.

Say it Sexy like Ricardo Monteva

Two commercials for your viewing enjoyment

First off, these lions are a hilarious:




Also, I can't believe they got this goofy blonde girl to say this:

Bolivians Invent Teleoprtation Machine Powered by Dance

Some Comments on Education

A while back BostonDissentator asked for opinions on education. It was his contention that education is the single most important domestic political issue, and I would not immediately disagree. But for a moment, I'd like to consider an odd, and probably terribly unpopular position on education. I do so not to be overtly contentious, as some accuse me, nor to "spleen" my thoughtful and eloquent colleague, the Boston Dissentator, nor to rouse the indignant spirit of our Southern dispatch, the Virginia Dissentator, nor even really to push any specific policy. Rather, I'll meander tentatively down an intellectual side-alley, not often marked, let alone traveled, in the hopes of shedding some new light on our current thinking about education and maybe say a thing or two about it's role in modern political issues.

It's long been conventional wisdom that education is both the fuel of the economy and the antidote to bigotry, aggression, and fear. I believe a lot of the modern sentiment on education comes from Rousseau's famous quote "man must be forced to be free." Forced through education. This enlightenment belief is readily appropriated by republicans and democrats alike, though usually in divergent ways: The republicans will call for more education to increase national productivity (fuel of the economy) while democrats will tout the intangible benefits of liberal educations (antidote to bigotry). And probably, they are both right. Education increases productivity and acceptance. But is there no end? How productive and accepting can we get? And is there no cost? Why do we crave more and better education, and is there any reason why we shouldn't?

I'd like to offer two diagnosis for why we crave education and then two reasons why education may not be the universal good we often take it for.

Firstly, I think people mistakenly separate political problems into disparate arenas, when really the political world, like the economy, is a complicated interwoven web where everything is related to everything. People siphon-off education as a stand-alone problem and then assume that if they throw enough money at it, they can crack the whole system. Education is an attractive issue to focus on because it's charge is so rewarding: what could be more heart-warming than educating our children? But are we sure that education is really the root of everything. Does improving education improve race relations, or does improving race relations improve education? Does equality of education close the gender gap, or does closing the gender gap produce equality in education? As far as I know, these questions have not been solved conclusively.

Secondly, and this may be the most cynical part of my position, I think the drive for education has been mixed up with the modern American obsession with competition, productivity, and soulless drive for an empty notion of success. A college education is now held up as the necessary achievement of a successful person. And not just any college education. It has to be the best college education. Why? Is college so great that one could not succeed without one. Plenty of very successful people have got along just fine in this world without a college education. Whatsmore, college is not for everyone. The rigid structure of papers and tests can be too much for people. Or the lack of structured time can cause straight-forward minds to flounder. Or maybe someone just doesn't take instruction well and is better left to their own devises. There are any number of reasons college may not be the best place for someone, but it is thoroughly ingrained that children must go to college. I think this a dangerous belief that belies a national obsession with control. Is that too cynical?

Well, maybe it is. Maybe college and education in general is the greatest thing ever and everyone should go. But here are two widely discussed theories for why education might not be the greatest thing ever.

Firstly, from the Economist Michael Spence, we have learned that productive education is theoretically indistinguishable from a useless sorting mechanism. That is, if education did really enhance peoples' human capital (made them smarter) people would end up earning the same income as if they were born with innate ability and degrees and diplomas served merely to divide the productive people from the nonproductive people for employers. The concept is called signaling, and Spence won a Nobel prize for it.

Secondly, there are some sociological theories floating around that suggest the productive value of formal education is not primarily to develop human capital, but rather to teach a common set of practices and values so that the rich can identify their own. Now, I don't want anybody calling me a Marxist for that last sentence. I've never even fired a gun. But I do think that we could definitely be more self-aware in this country about the subtle ways that we perpetuate class divisions, despite our adamant denial of class systems and fervent belief in equal opportunity. I think education may be a particularly insidious form of this classism. I think I will have to make this discussion a separate post.

So there is my most-likely terribly unpopular comments on education. To divest myself of responsibility for them, I'd like to repeat that I am not advocating any policy. And I am most certainly, not, in anyway, against education, or teachers, or anything like that. College was great. Best seven years of my life. I just want to propose that there may be some other ways of thinking about it.

This is the bluetick coonhound puppy dog I babysat yesterday

When people know you're unemployed, or nonemployed, as in my case (unemployed means you are unsuccessfully looking for work, while nonemployed means you don't even look), you can expect some interesting requests. Your friends have things to do, and they know that you don't. What are you going to say? I'm sorry, I'd like to help you out, but I need to spend six hours at the coffee shop today resteeping tea bags until my Earl Gray is so watered-down the Church of England blushes?

Actually, I might say that. I've had it in for Henry VIII since Anne 0f Cleaves. But it wouldn't help. People with urgent requests are in no mood for Theocratic humor. So it came that Monday night my childhood friend, on the eve of his final Law School examination, beseeched my listless person attend his bluetick coonhound puppy dog, Gale, and I assented.

The particular nature of my friend's predicament dictated a special course of action. The puppy was eight weeks old, having lodged a mere forty eight hours in her new West Village home. I understand hound dogs are a little rambunctious in general, but I think youth and lack of Lower-Manhattan experience combined in my small charge to aggravate an already precarious equilibrium. The dog was fucking nuts. You had to watch it continuously; not only because it might apply its searching teeth to any garment in reach, or micturate, with youthful glee, upon any surface, but also because the little bastard would go for your jugular if you didn't entertain it sufficiently- a disease it likely contracted from the New York cinema patronage upon touchdown at JFK.

The dog could not be trusted outside its recently constructed comfort zone. What's more, little Gale did not even have papers yet, so even if she could be trusted at the boarders, they could not legally take her. And yet, the law exam approached, and my friend could not study for a small, floppy-eared, energetic bluetick coonhound at his leg. I got the call.

The arrangement was this: I would sit on my friend's couch, gently succoring the little dog with DVR and chew toys, while third-year law studied in his bedroom. He told me it would be the greatest favor anyone could ever do for him.

Things passed well enough. I walked the dog once an hour. I fed her twice. I even got her to sleep for a few minutes by showing her an entire season of Entourage. She did chew my jacket a little, but it was law school's jacket, so I figured she owned it anyway. Overall, I'd say we got on pretty well.

So beware, work force refugees. Your friends need favors, and they know how to find you (they call your girlfriend- speaking of which, does anyone know what you call a guitarist with no girlfriend? Homeless). But if you ever pick up the message, you might just find yourself reclining on your friend's leather sofa, watching movies and playing with doggie toys, while an adorable bluetick coonhound nestles in your flank and sings you sweet songs of spring hunts and water holes, thick grass and cool barnyard floors; the happy traditions of another shiftless, wandering breed somehow caught up with everyone else, here in New York city.

No More Monkey Business

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Case of the Mondays: This is What it Sounds Like, When Economists Cry

I don't know about you, but few things cheer me up more than being a neutral observer of a catfight. As long as the incident had nothing to do with me I can sit back and relax and bask in two people going at each other's throats for some reason and take comfort in the fact that there was at least one problem that I enountered during my day that wasn't totally and completely my fault. Feels pretty good to have not screwed up.

Now when the fight is between two quasi-celebrity intellectuals the fight is even more amusing and reassuring that I am not the only one who screws everything up that I come into contact with. To make matters dismal, there are a lot of things that we screw up on a daily basis, like relationships, pasta, Ikea furniture, you name it, we daily run the risk of ruining it, so it's always great to see that, if something had to be ruined, it wasn't ruined by you, and this can be especially comforting if the thing ruined is something relatively important like economics, for example, "sure I left the pizza pie in the oven too long, but at least I didnt' ruin economics!"

So even if you ruined like one econometric equation you will feel like you're doing great in comparison to Steven Levitt, author of (get your) Freakonomics, who according to Noah Sheiber, is ruining economics.

Apparently Scheiber wrote an article in TNR which I can't fully read so I don't really know what it said, but boy was Steven Levitt upset. His response is great because you can totally read it and imagine the guy coming home after a hard day at the office and delivering this angry monologue to his buddies or whoever.

Don't know whether he is really ruining economics or not but his angry rant should be sufficient to get me over my case of the Mondays.