Rational Rationality

Let us consider the appropriateness or otherwise of someone (call him ‘Philo’) describing himself as a theist, atheist or agnostic. I would suggest that if Philo estimates the various plausibilities to be such that on the evidence before him the probability of theism comes out near to one he should describe himself as a theist and if it comes out near zero he should call himself an atheist, and if it comes out somewhere in the middle he should call himself an agnostic. There are no strict rules about this classification because the borderlines are vague. If need be, like a middle-aged man who is not sure whether to call himself bald or not bald, he should explain himself more fully

~Jack Smart

This quote sums up quite nicely my views, and so to help visualize this point I made this illustration to help show the difference between an agnostic and an atheist.

I’d love a serious one, for the chance to hear some new argumentation and actually have a meaningful conversation, but I always enjoy trolls as well. Shoot me a question and we’ll disqus in the comments! (see what I did there?)

Let’s see, Barack Obama. Not that manly. Admits he used coke. Married to mannish wife with big, muscular arms (although in all fairness, she does have a nice behind). Could he have done coke and had gay sex with an ex-con Larry Sinclair? It doesn’t seem completely implausible.

~ The Globe

1. You’d have to be a pretty big asshole to insult the president and his family in this way and then get offended when the same thing happens to the people you’re a constituent of.

2. You’d have to be pretty sophomoric to resort to middle-school esque stereotypes of homosexuality in order to try to demean a man who, despite his flaws, is intelligent, well spoken, and all around pretty cool.

3. You’d have to be pretty demagogic to paint negative pictures of people as evil or sinful just because they disagree with you on political issues, and especially because we finally have a president who is in favor of gay rights.

4. You’d have to be pretty blind to still believe that one’s sexuality means anything about their ability to govern, or that it means anything at all.

5. You’d have to be pretty insecure to insult said man’s wife and say vile, untrue things about her when she’s not even involved in the issue.

6. You’d have to be pretty sexist to insinuate that muscularity or strength on women is unattractive and then try to make up for it by saying she has a nice butt, which only makes you even more insensitive to women.

7. You’d have to be pretty petty to think that any of this constitutes news or even a story of any value, or that this obvious bullshit should be considered anything other than a self-conflicted homophobe’s wet dream.

8. You’d have to be pretty interested in gay sex yourself to invent such an implausible scenario.

Did I miss anything?

So i’ve been TED talk binging, and I just saw Brené Brown’s talk on listening to shame. It’s a really great watch and i want to expand a little on the themes in it. To avoid being redundant, I’ll summarize the talk; guilt is what helps us decide what is right or wrong; “I made a mistake.” Shame is what makes us insecure. “I am a mistake.” Everyone who’s ever got famous or successful has made mistakes, felt guilt. That’s the only way to improve, so you have to put yourself out there and gain confidence, beat back shame. Shame makes you think you aren’t good enough, it causes depression, etc. Yet ironically, in modern society strength is the opposite of vulnerability; to appear as a strong, tough guy you mask your feelings, your emotions, you hide everything. But the thing is, the people we respect the most are artists, daredevils, risk takers, comedians, who perform publicly, taking the risk that failure means humiliation. And the best ones do, all the time. But to get really good, you can’t think, “I am a mistake.” You have to think, “I made a mistake.” And then you fix it.

So after watching this talk, I realized something about my views, and my own behaviors. I like to think that I try to be a pretty empathetic person, but I make mistakes, a lot. One thing that I can’t stand is talking behind people’s backs; it’s dishonest, it’s cowardly, and it causes nothing but unpleasant feelings. Even still, I lapse sometimes, and poke fun at my friends for showing what seems like weakness or emotional sensitivity. It’s ironic, because I tend to deal with the same issues most of the time; but for some reason, I catch myself making fun of the very same problems, a perfect hypocrite. I’m falling into accepting the same social constructs of gender roles that I despise so much. So first, an apology. I’m sick of the twang of annoyance I feel when people express themselves emotionally, because that is strength. I’m sorry for talking behind backs and then feeling miffed when the same happens to me, because distrust and gossip is a vicious circle; once one person starts gossiping, it’s hard to stop everyone from it.

Also, happy mother’s day. Thank you mom, for helping me understand these things and being there to laugh, cry, and swear with me when I needed it. You, more than anyone else in my life, have shown me how important it is to have an open heart and to be able to trust people. I love you.

reportsofmydeath:

I don’t want to die worthless.

You won’t.

Finally. Now we’re getting somewhere. Maybe this is what it takes, pushing it to the point at which I can’t handle it myself. If it weren’t for my running partner I never could have done this. I know this is an incredibly narcissistic post but I feel so great right now, I don’t care.

I love this pain. I want to feel this proud, this accomplished every day. I’ve had hard runs before, plenty, runs where I wanted to stop so bad but nothing like this. This was like the first time I wanted to push it, where it was painful but I wanted the pain. It hurts like hell, but these are the warmest tears I’ve ever shed.

I’ve gone through many phases of political and social self identification, and as a learning and slightly confused teenager I’m sure I’ll go through many more. I began, as most kids do, simply believing anything I heard and agreeing with it; then, only to my parents, then with whatever talk shows or newscasts I listened to. My parents were liberals, I decided I was a liberal. They were democrats… so I was too.

But I’m not a democrat. Sure, I’m fairly far to the left on most issues, but I don’t come close to agreeing to many of the things most democrats fight on. And even past party lines, I’m simply not a liberal on every single thing. I completely support gay rights, drug legalization, euthanasia, etc, but I have very mixed feelings on abortion. Not even on religious grounds; I’m an atheist. It just feels really wrong to me, and while I’ve ended up deciding that I’m pro-choice, it’s the kind of fight that I don’t want to take a side in.

For a while, I wondered if there was something wrong with me. With how I was looking at the issues. Everyone was either liberal or conservative; it was a sliding scale, and I needed to get all the way to the left. I forced myself to change my views. After debate, after all these years of blogging and self reflection, I’ve realized, no, my views are mine. I don’t have to conform to these standards, these black and white groups, that I’ve been conditioned to believe are all that exist.

It seems like an obvious thing to realize, but when you look at how news channels constantly go “here’s the issue! let’s bring on liberal blogger Jack Johnson and conservative law maker John Jackson to present the only two conflicting opinions! we’re balanced here!”, you can see how this misconception happens. Having left and right isn’t balanced, because I’ve realized there is no left or right. Those are words we use to group together vaguely similar opinions on important topics, but few people are really dead set on all of them; it’s not this 1 dimensional line-graph of which side you’re on; there is good, bad, greed, altruism on all sides.

Ultimately, identifying in a group means you have to take responsibility for all the stuff the group says, all the baggage. It’s like buying a cable plan with 1000 channels. Hey, that sounds great! …until you realize you only watch five channels regularly. So why are you paying for shows you don’t want? I can only call myself Alex, because that’s the only group that perfectly agrees with me.

But is there some redemption for allying under these groups and banners? I harken back to my post on nationalism. For all the faults of identifying under groups and movements, nations and parties, there are important reasons. There are important groups. There is reason to rally behind leaders (Gandhi, Martin Luther King, FDR) even though we may not agree with all they do, even if those are truly heinous things (japanese internment, anyone?) We’d all love to have truly infallible leaders, to have elected officials that perfectly represent our views. But in a world as large as ours, to run such massive societies requires representative democracy to get anything done; and representative democracy means you don’t always get what you want.

So where’s the balance? Which groups should we be part of, and which should we ignore? Well, I think that the movements, the rallies of the oppressed and discriminated are the ones that have the most legitimacy. Democrats and Republicans are not oppressed. They’re the two power houses in American politics and no other party comes close to their political sway. So identifying with them is pointless. It doesn’t accomplish anything. When we are faced with true wrongness, with racism, sexism, bigotry of any kind, the drawbacks of banding together as one entity are outweighed by the necessity to stop whatever evil we face.

It’s just a matter of balancing that decision for yourself. I think if we were in a room with Hitler with a gun, we wouldn’t stop to ponder which of his policies we disagreed or agreed with. And contrariwise, if someone asked you to pledge your support to “Americans for Justice and Liberty”, you probably wouldn’t devote yourself to their cause, because you know that everyone claims that’s their goal whenever they have ulterior motives.

A good example of a movement somewhere in between those two extremes is Occupy Wallstreet. On one hand, it’s an honest outcry against the unfair nature of political domination by money in our country. On the other hand, the system is incredibly complex, and a simple coup de tat wouldn’t fix a whole lot. Perhaps Stephen Wink puts it best, although a bit exaggeratedly;

The discontented, dissident voices that take up arms to oppose the system usually end by strengthening it. Each use of violence further legitimizes violence and affirms its ultimacy. By making violence the alternative of “last resort,” we insure its place as the definitive redeemer. In war, regardless of the victor, the domination system remains the fundamental construct for the victor’s authority. Though the particular vantage point of the powerful may shift as a result of the struggle for power, the system of domination remains in place. Regardless of whether a struggle ends with power shifting to the left or the right, the game remains one of control and power over other peoples’ lives. Thus, whether one remains complicit with the system or takes up arms against it, the system preserves its power and the cycle of violence retains the appearance of inevitability. People become resigned to this seemingly inevitable and invincible system of domination. Their resignation, in turn, drains any hopes of escape. Violent opposition to the dominating system risks perpetuating precisely the system it seeks to transcend. “Whoever fights monsters,” warned Nietzsche, “should see to it that in the process he does not become a monster.” For the most part, where movements of the oppressed lash out at the dominant group the cycle of violence escalates and it ends by either destroying or further marginalizing that movement in society, or by establishing that movement as the new oppressor. But if we sit passively by, we become accessories by our inaction to the injustice of the system. Somehow, we must swim against the tide of the current paradigm in an effort to find another way to oppose this system.

Where does this all leave us? Well, I know where it left me. I don’t identify with any political party. If push came to shove, I’d vote Obama over Romney, but not because he’s a democrat, not because he’s “on my side”, but because after analyzing each issue I concluded that I agree with him on more things than I did with Romney. And I think that’s how it should be. Become patriotic, united, only when you must, only when it is called upon to protect your freedoms. Otherwise, think for yourself, don’t become a drone of some group’s bidding, and for the love of god, never get fooled into thinking a lobby like “Americans for Justice and Liberty” is really for justice and liberty.