Important Friday Links

If I could write half as well as the people in the following links, I would be a very happy man.  First, This is a very thought-provoking article by Marilyn Robinson, even if you don't subscribe to christianity or religion in general.

Another answer, favored by those who claim to be defenders of science, is that religion formed around the desire to explain what prescientific humankind could not account for. Again, this notion does not bear scrutiny. The literatures of antiquity are clearly about other business.
Some of these narratives are so ancient that they clearly existed before writing, though no doubt in the forms we have them they were modified in being written down. Their importance in the development of human culture cannot be overstated. In antiquity people lived in complex city-states, carried out the work and planning required by primitive agriculture, built ships and navigated at great distances, traded, made law, waged war, and kept the records of their dynasties. But the one thing that seems to have predominated, to have laid out their cities and filled them with temples and monuments, to have established their identities and their cultural boundaries, to have governed their calendars and enthroned their kings, were the vivid, atemporal stories they told themselves about the gods, the gods in relation to humankind, to their city, to themselves.

Reclaiming a Sense of the Sacred, Marilyn Robinson,  The Chronicle of Higher Education, February 12, 2012 via The Teeming Brain

Also, most of the blog posts by Jacob Bacharach make me teem with envy.  I want to be this kind of fabulous gay writer.

Teeming Brain, where I found the Marilyn Robinson quote above, is also pretty thought-provoking.

Be ye not afraid

I was going to write a post about fear, but Freddie Deboer beat me to the important part of it.  He makes the important point that the United States hasn't been under existential threat, since the fall of the Soviet Union.  Well, that's probably not entirely true, the Russian and U.S. nuclear arsenals still exist, are aging and could conceivably be fired in anger or due to human or equipment error.  But they neither side seems inclined to fire them any time soon, and there's certainly no popular momentum on either side to use them, so the rest of us, more or less rightly, don't worry about the existential threat of nuclear weapons so much.  Although personally, I'd be happy if both sides voluntarily dismantled their capability to destroy the planet.  The point is, terrorists (both foreign and domestic), liberals, conservatives, Iraq, Afghanistan and disaffected loners are not even close to an existential threat to this country.  So why do we keep acting as if they are?

It's frustrating and nonsensical that we are led by people and listen to people who spend most of their time telling us to be afraid of our absolute destruction.  Politicians do it to paint their opponents as weak and as an excuse for abandoning our existing legal framework for one that pleases their base emotionally and themselves and their supporters financially (We're under attack!  We can't afford to do things the right way!).  Talking heads and media types do it to generate a climate of fear that keeps people clicking for fear of being left behind on the latest existential threat to their day (Is your latte killing you?  More at 11!  How can you vote for liberals when they want to let terrorists kill you children?).  How strange is it that the same people who have been loudly proclaiming the supremacy of the U.S. in law and justice are also the ones screaming for us to abandon these principles at the first sign of a terrorist?  Our laws and principles are really not capable of effectively dealing with terrorist threats to this nation?  When Lindsay Graham expresses his deep wish that a U.S. citizen be tried as an "enemy combatant", isn't he expressing a complete lack of faith in the U.S. legal system?  Don't we need better leaders than people willing to abandon bedrock principles the moment things get a little scary?  Who understand that when we put ourselves forth as the foremost beacon of truth, justice and fairness in the world that we actually have to behave in a manner most consistent with those principles? If we're holding ourselves up as better than, then we actually have to ACT better than, you know?

Didn't we used to think of leaders as the people with the clear heads, who were supposed to tell us not to be afraid?  People who would tell us that the enemies who face us are nothing we can't overcome and the challenges ahead of us something we don't need change who we are to face?  Why are we burdened with leaders whose only contribution to the national mood is division, distrust and paranoia?  Well, because we elect them obviously.  I guess my point is, maybe we should stop electing people who tell us to be more afraid, against all logic and judgement.  Maybe we should stop watching talking heads who tell us to be afraid of our neighbor, that we've failed as a group and a society and it's time to buy a gun and start jumping at shadows.  Maybe we could rationally assess our fears, and see if our day-to-day lives really warrant the kind of fearful stance that our "leaders" want to inspire in us.  If not, what should we do about that?  Maybe we could start by not listening to manipulative and fearful people and not voting the same into office.

I don't know, it's just a thought.

Onward

Well, my rambling poetry isn't taking the world by storm.  I guess this means I should write more stuff.

I can't control it sometimes

To be fair, my other site does promise poetry in the sub-header, so actually writing some was inevitable.  Here is an excerpt from Omphaloskeptical Odyssey:


So they would draw on their charts
and cut out some hearts
and offer them up the sky.

Because someone once said
in this book they once read
that it is water, wind, fire and stone
that turns a body/mind into some bones.

"Maybe if you proffer
some gore in a coffer
the elements will leave you alone."

So hearts they uplifted
and entrails they gifted
but never their friends or their own.

****

If you want to read more of that kind of existential silliness, please follow the link.  Just something I wrote when I was working through an existential crisis, thought it might be fun to share.  Those of you without existential concerns or good taste in poetry will probably not find it as interesting.

Products I enjoy

For the record, IFTTT.com is pretty cool.  Linked my blogger to tumblr accounts with a simple rule.  Worth checking out.

Damn the Robots

Most of my blog hits come from a porn bot attempting to get link backs.  This whole "building an audience" thing would probably go more smoothly if I:

1)  Wrote things.

2)  Wrote interesting things.

Long Stories

It struck me this week, that I am still waiting for closure on stories that I started 17+ years ago.  Namely Starcraft and the Wheel of Time.  Although there must be others.  What other stories have drifted through limbo this long?  I lost track of Wheel of Time shortly after Robert Jordan died, and decided to wait until the last book is out before finishing it.  To my joy and consternation I have discovered it is finally finished!  Joy because it is closure, consternation because my optimistically titled "to-read" shelf is already overly full and somewhat intimidating.  This is largely because I still insist on spending my time in digital skinner boxes instead of reading.

Starcraft 2 is not quite a skinner box, but it IS still fun.  In my time as a man-child, few games have pleased me more than the Starcraft series.  I'll grant, it's a direct graft of every major SF series in recent memory presented in a pleasing and non-offensive fashion, but I still love it.  I was initially disappointed that the new story was such a re-hash of the original plot, but in playing it through again so I could play the new expansion I changed my mind a bit.  It's not high-brow literature, and the story itself is more than a little stereotypical, but I was strangely affected by it anyway.  At the very least, I'm excited to see the end to a story left dangling over a decade ago, especially the bits involving Raynor and Kerrigan.

And as silly and potentially problematic as their relationship is, Raynor and Kerrigan were always the heart of the story, but their particular kind of tension can't be sustained indefinitely for a variety of reasons.  "Will they or won't they now that she's a mutated alien hive queen?" gets kind of tired 20 years on.  The arc in starcraft 2 is interesting, and the last couple lines between them strangely affecting.  They basically absolve her of all responsibility for the first acts of genocide on account of her being mind controlled and all, but then, given the choice between a life with Raynor and control of the alien swarm that can give her revenge against Mengsk, she chooses the latter without hesitation.  Which means the romance roulette wheel finally lands on "they won't" with finality, and thank the Xel'Naga for it.  At last I have closure on these silly, stereotypical characters.

From there, it's more or less just simple revenge.  Raynor graciously decides to help destroy Mengsk, because he wants to kill him too, and, well, she was going to anyway.  I really kind of admire how they portray Kerrigan.  She's not a hero so much, but she's strong, independent and doesn't take much shit from anybody.  It's too bad that how they present her in both outfits and pose basically makes her look like a space prostitute.  Seriously, when she mutates into an alien hybrid for the second time, they give her bone high heels and bone sculptures that leave her breasts largely exposed and shaped around her ass like she's wearing a bone g-string bikini.  So, you know, the typical "strong woman" as imagined by video game designers.

Still, after she and Raynor share a tender moment exploding Mensk and his office from the inside out, she takes a breath and simply says: "Thank you, Jim.  For everything."

And he replies, "My pleasure darlin'."  And as she gently floats away on bone wings with no conceivable flight properties, "It always was."

Tropes, cliches and problematic relationship dynamics aside, I like that ending.  It is a "True Thing" in human relationships.  Don't we all know someone it's always been our pleasure to spend time with, no matter how weird it gets?  Mostly though, I just like it because it's finally over.  As far as I'm concerned, the main story reached it's conclusion and for what it was, it was relatively satisfying.  Yes, the protoss and Kerrigan still need to defeat the insane god coming for them, but that just feels like loose ends at this point.  The only likable and relatable Protoss protagonists died with Tassadar and Fenix,and the only bad guy with a constant, malevolent presence in the series just made a state change from water and carbon to vapor and ash.  So, for the 3rd installment it's just going to be moving some pixels around until you get a movie showing an explosion at the end, in the usual Blizzard fashion, or so I assume.  I'll play it, but for me, the story really ended here.  With a post-human psychic renouncing everything she knows to embrace a greater destiny, and a lonesome cowboy finally willing to admit the woman he knew is gone, and was probably never who he thought she was to begin with.

It's about damn time.

Down the Drain

I need one of those waterproof shower note pads.  I had several ideas for a story and a couple of punchy blog posts in the shower today that I forgot almost immediately upon getting out.  I distinctly remember thinking, "Hmm, that would be a great, short blog post for today."  And now it's gone.  All gone.  All I am left with is this lamentation for ideas still caged and forgotten.  Poor things.

Windmills

Blog under real name or pseudonym?  New career or old career?  Vanilla or Chocolate?  Evening or morning?  Forward or Backward?  Past, present or future?  Many chances or one?  Doubt or Belief?  Striding into the future regardless of mistakes or sliding into irrelevance under their weight?  Words or white space?  Vocal or mute?  Humble or Proud?  Order or chaos?  What are these circles that I find in the windmills of my mind?

Please stop the world for a tic, I need gather my wits.

Actually, if we could just rewind it real quick so I can have a much-needed chat with my 18-year-old self, that would be GREAT.  Will only take a moment, I swear.

When you're ready

"Our marriages have never required the church's imprimatur.  The best use of our passion and conviction is to build relationships that are strong and honest and beautiful.  Along the way we can always hold wedding feasts that "the church" [or society] can come to when it stops pouting outside."

                     - a user in my secret gay adventist facebook group

The brackets are mine of course.  I love this framing of the issue.  Gay marriage only gives you more access to community, connection and tradition, not less.

Career Modeling

I know there's nothing more tedious than a wannabe writer writing about writing instead of actually writing something interesting, but hey, it's my blog, and writing is what I've been thinking about today. Specifically, how difficult it is or would be to make a career out of it, especially the way things are going in the industry.  Everyone* seems to think the old method is dying.  Or, at the very least, people seem to be worried that the old methods are dying.  To be sure, every industry story I've read about working in the traditional print magazine or newspaper industry seems unpromising.  Most publications seemed trapped in a downward spiral of layoffs, increasing workload to cover for the layoffs and less pay.  Freelancers are more and more expected to write for free, with "exposure" as the only payment.  And online writing, as far as I can tell, seems contingent solely on generating clicks, which is why it has quickly and sadly devolved into endless gossip, pointless trivia and the dreaded listcicle articles, because apparently what people love is x number of adjective facts about y.  I don't see a lot of quality writing online, and I don't see a lot of interest in it.  Although, I could just be looking in the wrong places and/or underestimating people.  Well, I'm almost certain I'm underestimating people.  Which is how I'll feel right up until I see headlines promising 9 surprising and useless facts about popcorn anyway.

As far as writing fiction goes, it seems possible to make a living selling stories, either as books or screenplays, but less and less chance to be a megastar, as the book industry seems to be undergoing the same contraction that magazines and newspapers are.  But here, as in music, the model of "make a book or album and charge for the pleasure of trying it" seems to be dying as well.  Not only is piracy an ongoing concern for writers, people seem less and less inclined to buy a story or album when they can't try it out first.  Or they're into the kickstarter model where people fund your project if they like you, the sample product or the ideas.  This is not terrible, of course, I don't bemoan it.  It's great for the consumer both in cost and as incentive for creators to make better products.  But it seems to me that, for the time being at least, the model seems to be shifting more to a structure where creators put their work out in samples or for free and let people buy just the pieces of it they like, or the whole work for cheap.  Or even putting the whole album or book out there for free, and letting people pay you if they think it's any good.  I actually think this new model works out better in a lot of ways, in that what gets made is influenced more by the consumers and less by wealthy industry types trying to tell you what you like or attempting to mind-read your preferences from a distance.  What I am not sure about, is where this leaves writing/creating in terms of a career.  Is it possible to write/create full-time now, or is it something only those truly passionate about it will do on nights and weekends, as they can when they can get away from the day job that pays the bills?  I don't know, but I feel like it's something I should have a handle on before I make any hasty decisions.

My guess right now is that it's better to just generate some good work for free, keep an active blog, and hope that I get lucky or produce writing good enough (down the road, if not right away), that people would want to put some money in the tip jar.  Or at least build a big enough audience to pick up the notice of a bigger publisher.  Most of the nuts and bolts commentary I read by artists I respect basically suggest this method.  Knuckle down, do the work, put it where people can see it, connect with other people who write about the dame thing, write about it on your public platform and hope other people resonate with it enough to pay you money for it.  Oh, and don't quit your day job until your other work starts making enough money to replace it.  So I think that's what I'm going to go for, at this point anyway.  Although it seems vital that I do so under a better pseudonym or simply my real name.  Using my real name is potentially problematic because my existing career has nothing to do with creative writing, and I'd rather not accidentally destroy it by telegraphing the possibility that I might be more interested in doing the work I'm not paid to do.  But still, it might be necessary.  I'm obviously terrible at pseudonyms.  In any case, real life friends should look out for twitter and blog accounts cropping up soon under my real life name.  I'm not sure exactly what, if anything, I'm going to do with them yet, but it would be nice to have them up as placeholders.

But, first things first:  knuckle down and do the work.  Assuming I can get past my last mental block and allow myself the pleasure of writing and the possibility of failure (both of the stupid neuroses I've struggled with most of my life), I intend to do just that and star putting more review pieces and fiction out.  And if my piano playing ends up getting better, maybe I'll throw some of that up too.  I hope people like my work.  If not, I intend to get better.  Will it ever become a career?  I guess I won't know until I try.  And if I have things to say, which I do, then I might as well say them.  In the meantime, at the very least, it seems like the hobby I want to cultivate and that seems good enough.  Hell, at least some of what I write will have to be better than "10 Alarming Reasons to Buy a Horse."

*Okay, the limited selection of authors I've read the the internet.

Please Stay Tuned

So much to say.  So few words.  Programming will resume before the next millennium.

Aaaah

You know, it feels good to have that last post out of my system.  New programming soon.  Less ranting.  I want to keep writing until I get better at it.  I want to write things people will actually want to read.  Still a ways to go, but there's less and less in my way.

Leaving Adventism, Part 2

I can't specifically remember the first moment I thought, "Hey, my religion might be bullshit," but I remember one of the first times.  I sat in the Gem State Academy chapel, my cheeks burning.  It was the culmination of one of the many prayer weeks, and the preacher had just made the altar call.  I was ashamed and angry, and my face felt flushed.  I was being asked to come to the front as a symbol of my willingness to serve Jesus, and I was terribly conflicted.  On the one hand, I wanted to be a good person, which I and everyone I knew equated with following Jesus.  And on the other, someone from my religion, which prides itself on intellectual argumentation and religious scholarship, was using heavy-handed emotional arguments and peer pressure to get me to make a meaningless gesture as a token of tribal identification.  It seemed mindless and manipulative.  And while the preacher framed my natural resistance to manipulation as "wrestling with the Holy Spirit," the angry thought running through my head was, "Hey, maybe this is all bullshit."

It took me a long time to more or less settle on that conclusion, but the evidence kept mounting.  And instead of dealing with it, I just noticed the cognitive dissonance that kept cropping up, and I just kind of passively faded from the Adventist scene.  After I left college I would only attend church sporadically, although I couldn't really tell you why.  I just did not like it and did not belong there.  And it wasn't just the fact that I was a closeted and therefore unhappy homosexual, although that was an important part of it.  It was also that the more I was outside of the church, the more I realized the church's explanations for just about any damn thing did not square with my experience of the world, and just choosing to ignore my experience when it conflicted with Adventist teachings was not an option for me.  Not forever anyway.

I did two of the hardest things I've ever done on Oct 31, 2011.  I told my parents I was gay.  And then they asked a question I should have seen coming: "well, what does this mean for your Adventism?"  Because if I could throw out what the bible says in "plain english" about being gay, then what else in the  bible was I willing to get rid of?  As it turns out, quite a bit of it.  I didn't specifically say at the time, I just told them there were bits I liked and would keep, and the rest I had to take a step back from.  In other words, I didn't consider myself an Adventist anymore.  I'm honestly not sure which of those two revelations shocked and hurt my parents more.

Honestly, I probably should have told them both of those things 15 years earlier.  But I dragged my feet for a variety of good and bad reasons.  Partly because most of my family and friends are Adventist and I wasn't ready to face the push-back or the pity or the patronizing attitudes like, "If you just understood the bible and christianity better, you would stay," or "If you weren't so easily tempted by Satan you would stay."  Because I watched a camp director I was friends with describe his son's decision to be truthful about his sexual orientation and embrace it without shame as choosing "to serve Satan."  Because I knew, having watched it happen to other people before, that my friends and family would assume that the boy they all thought was so bright and observant, who had been raised his entire life in Adventist churches and schools, had somehow managed to miss the truth and beauty of the Adventist religion and lifestyle.  That I could not possibly have processed Adventist philosophy and found it wanting, I must have misunderstood, been tempted, been an unobservant idiot.

The idea angers me, honestly.  Perfect I am not, but I know what I know, I know what I learned, I know what I saw, and and I know how much Adventism doesn't fit with my experience, knowledge or philosophy.  And while my person life philosophy is still a work in process, and I expect to be wrong, and make more mistakes and reserve to change my mind about a few things in the future regarding life the universe and everything, I can tell you this:  I have some serious fundamental problems with Adventism.  And I can tell you why.

To begin, I don't remotely agree with the basic world view or eschatology.  In Adventist thought the world is fallen, and must become more and more fallen as time goes on.  Eventually, God will withdraw his presence, the world will get really bad, Christians, especially Adventists, will be persecuted, and eventually Jesus will return to smite Satan and any human who does not worship God. In Adventist teaching, the world is always only a couple of years away from the return of Jesus, because the world's just THAT evil.  People outside the church might be well-meaning, but are fallen. When it comes down to it, they have been tricked by Satan in some big or small way.  It is the job of every Adventist to save them, to bring them the truth of the bible and this world view and baptize them into the church.  It is a calling.  If they do not convert these people, they will DIE in a lake of fire at the end of time.

To be blunt, this simply does not square with my experience or any rational observation of the world.  It took me a long time to get out of the adventist mindset to notice, but as it turns out I think a lot of things have gotten better for a lot of people.  More people are fed, more minorities have the civil liberties they deserve, more sickness can be cured.  I don't quite buy the liberal idea that the universe MUST bend toward progress, equality and justice, it seems pretty obvious to me that civilization is a thin veneer that will tear if people get scared enough.  But, I don't see a world just endlessly spiraling towards misery and destruction.  Yes, there's a long way to go, yes they're a lot of idiots who could push it that way, but that is only part of the story.  There's also progress and hope and change for the better all over the damn planet, much of it brought about by people who aren't Christian.  To see a world spiraling towards sin and service to Satan you have to ignore large and significant chunks of it that aren't doing that by any rational measure.  I don't see a spiral to ruin in the world.  I'm not sure why Adventists see it.  I DO see an increasing distrust of religious authoritarianism, but that only feels like the end of the world and all things good to authoritarians.

Further, in Adventism, the basic nature of man is fallen.  You, as a human being are born to sin.  In Adventist teaching human beings are incapable of being good on their own.  The ability to be good stems directly from submission to God.  They speak of the outside world as a dark and fallen place where people can't help but succumb to their base urges all the damn time, without God giving them the strength to resist the temptation to steal, cheat and lie.  They say this, despite making forays into the outside world all the damn time, and encountering decent people who are not stealing, cheating or lying without submitting to God first.  I don't know how Adventists reconcile this discrepancy, but I cannot.  In my experience, some of the most respectful, kind and decent people I know are atheists who grew up in non-religious households.  Yeah, I've known some atheists who are tremendous assholes, and some Christians who are real nice people, and vice versa.  But the assertion that people can't choose to be good without God is just false on it face.  Millions and billions of people do it every day.  And even if you want to argue that that's still God choosing to help them anyway, you must concede it's God choosing to help them even though they don't worship or follow him.

In my experience, people choose to be kind, truthful and decent for a variety of other compelling reasons.  They like how it makes them feel.  They like how people trust and like them.  They have their own non-religious or non-christan value systems about how it's wrong to kill, steal, lie and cheat and think it's important to honor that.  They see that when they act decently, the end result for everyone involved, including themselves, is better.  They do all this without fear of divine punishment.  To assert that they can't possibly be doing this without submitting to God first is ludicrous, because we have that data:  they do it anyway.  At least some of the time.

I'm not asserting the reverse is true either, that people are born to be good.  I'm just noting the obvious, which is we are not perfect, but we still manage to be decent to each other most of the time.  And it's profoundly disturbing to me that Adventists, and christians more broadly, frame a lack of perfection as perpetual failure and an inclination for evil.  More specifically, that they raise children and brainwash adults into believing that they should feel bad just for existing, as innately imperfect and evil things.  Not only is this teaching wrong because it does terrible things to a human's self-esteem, it's wrong because it's a obvious and terrible lie.

What has kept you from murdering your friends today?  Your enemies?  Lying, cheating, stealing, raping, beating?  Have you fought the urge to kill at every moment of your life, constrained only by a christian conscience?  Do you enjoy watching the suffering of others?  Do enjoy causing the suffering, death and humiliation of others?  Is your negative behavior your proudest moment?  I'm not asking if you've never been tempted to do an immoral thing, or have never done something you regret, that's happened for everyone.   I've had moments I'm not proud of where I was angry, lashed out, did something selfish I thought I could get away with, told a lie when I should have told the truth, etc.  Furthermore, I can imagine circumstances that could tempt me to do worse things than I have out of desperation or anger.  But I don't enjoy the suffering of others.  I'm not inclined to kick puppies.  I'm not thinking about how to cheat people when I'm talking to them. When I see other people hurt it makes me hurt.  And it doesn't take a great deal of self-control not to operate as a monstrously evil bastard in my day to day life.  And you know what, I don't think it takes that much effort for anyone else either.  Yeah bad stuff happens.  Yes there is systematic injustice to confront and fix. Yes someone can make a series of choices that lead to progressively bad choices.  Yes, people make evil decisions for stupid reasons.  But I don't think, in their deepest self that that "bad" is who they naturally are.  Because they are not, by nature, evil.   And I think it's wrong and immoral to convince them they ARE evil and fallen, just to guilt them into joining your religion, as if that was the only way they could ever hope to be consistently good.

Which is the next thing I disagree with Adventism on:  It's wrong, in my opinion, to attempt to convert people to ideas you have no proof for.  I think it's absolutely fair to have some belief system, about what it all means, about why we're alive, where we go when we die, what the basic nature of man is.  But the key feature of those beliefs, the reason they are beliefs and not facts, is that there is no actual proof for any of those ideas.  They may soothe existential worries, and that's great, but I think it's absolutely wrong to attempt to coerce people into believing something you can't prove, no matter how good it makes someone feel.  I absolutely think it's wrong to prey upon people's fear of death in weak moments, in order convert them to your unprovable beliefs for any reason.

There are two essential claims made for why someone should be an Adventist.  One, you get to live forever (and more importantly aren't killed and then re-killed in a lake of fire).  Two, your life on earth will be better, because these beliefs lead to better thoughts and therefore better behavior and better results in the here and now.  I heard over and over in my youth that the Adventist lifestyle was self-evidently better, and that Adventists living that lifestyle would be such happy and well-adjusted and fulfilled individuals that people would naturally be curious about and eventually willing to join the religion to get the same benefits.  But very few people actually do that so they also insist church members must go out and save their friends, using emotional appeals and manipulation (Jesus died for you, you'll die forever if you don't join, don't you want to feel like a good person not like the terrible asshole you are now?).  How little faith do you have to have in your philosophy or religion when you can't actually let it speak for itself, after proudly proclaiming it speaks for itself?  Either your religion leads to such a good life that it speaks for itself, or you have to go out and convert people to get them to join.  Doing the one kind of puts the lie to the other.

Of course, the basis of these beliefs that they are so keen to impart to you is the bible, and the belief that the bible contains infallible truth, is the true word of God and can be read in plain english.  Personally, I don't see any reason to believe the bible is more true than the Quran, or the Bhagavad Gita or the writings of Nostrodamus.  But even if I were to concede, for the sake of argument, that the bible is true, I have a tremendous problem with the inconsistent ways Adventists interpret it.  As I mentioned in part 1, they have no formal method for determining which parts of the bible were cultural, and specific to the time it was written, and which are timeless truths.  In practice, it seems to me, Adventists interpret the bible as is culturally convenient, unchallenging and in accordance with their pre-existing biases.  They rely on "intuitions from the holy spirit" in order to distinguish truth from lie, with no training or discussion whatsoever on how to distinguish "the urgings of the holy spirit" from "accumulated emotional biases."  They consistently refuse to understand the main principles of the text, when they conflict with arguably interpreted rules that are less challenging than the principle.  The bible is the Truth . . . except when it's not . . . depending on your feelings.  I don't find these standards of interpretation or logic particularly impressive or likely to yield much truth.

As far as Ellen G. White goes, I think I would have liked her as a human being, but I'm not sure I believe she was a prophet from god.  She was hit in the head with a rock when she was young, which dented her brain and put her into a coma for a while.  A few years later, she started seeing visions.  I think the simpler explanation is she had some minor brain damage that resulted in periodic hallucinations.  She seemed nice though, especially as she aged and relaxed on the condemnation and embraced compassion a bit more.

Which leads me to the most major problem I have with Adventism:  the unhealthy and unnecessary dominance of authoritarianism over grace.  I honestly believe there is a beautiful core to the message of christianity that's been absolutely corrupted by a very human need for certainty and control, and Adventism is no exception.  I think the ideas that God is the all-powerful and all-knowning embodiment of love and also bound by rules and vengeance and must kill you for being imperfect are absolutely irreconcilable.  Adventists usually do some handwaving about "the divine mystery" when this kind of thing comes up, but that usually just means "we can't explain it, so try not to think about it."  The ideas don't match.  They can't be reconciled.  God can't be both of those things.  The basic story of christianity can't be "You are so bad that only the threat of hellfire can keep you in line." and also be, "you're so kind and so moved by the suffering and death of Jesus that you want to follow him."  God can't be a kind and wise person who only loves you if you serve him as a slave because that correlates with no definition of kindness or wisdom I've ever encountered.  And the only people it serves to ignore the voice saying "this makes no sense" are the people at the top of the very human religious organization here on earth, or at least the people who suspect they may believe a crazy thing and don't like to be reminded of the obvious problems with their story.

Which is what rankles me,  the prioritization of the organization and rules of the organization over the message.  They don't challenge the cultural biases of their congregations because they want those congregations to stay and give money, and the only challenge they do give to their members is to submit to God and the church.   The stuff about grace, love, humility and whatnot is given lip service, but when it conflicts with the needs of the organization, the organization wins.  They single out people who are different in a way that conflicts with the general congregation's cultural biases, on the basis of broken and cherry-picked rules but irregardless of important christian principles, and make them feel unwanted and unloved.  So my divorced and gay friends end up leaving the church because they can't feel the church's love in the church's disdain for who they are or choices they had to make to have a better life.  Meanwhile, the remaining congregation, who will look you in the eye and tell you all sins are equal and that all men are pre-disposed to sin, therefore no one can look down on another for their sin, are NOT run out of the church even though they are fat, or lazy, or prideful or shameful gossips or cheaters or otherwise breaking the rules.  It's comfortable hypocrisy in the name of goodness and humility and I can't stand it.

And this mindless enforcement of the rules, absent reason and kindness leads to all sorts of terrible traditions and rules, the worst of which, to my mind, is how they forbid dancing.  Dancing is not a part of Adventist culture, because there is a fear that it will incite lust in the participants which might tempt them to break another rule uninformed by principle that insists people not have sex before marriage lest God kill you dead.  Our old joke used to be, "Why do adventists forbid oral sex?  Because it might lead to dancing."  Worst of all, they claim this will make you a happier person, because you remove yourself from temptation.  They forbid dancing, one of the basic expressions of human happiness and intimacy, and call it joy and freedom.  That is insane and there is no biblical principle they can point to that supports it.  It's just an arcane rule, based on another arcane rule, that nobody can really explain but that people follow anyway for fear of rocking the boat or burning in hell.   If your religious philosophy claims love as it's central tenant, but freaks out when two people dance close together in a loving way, or two men show each other love and physical affection, it might be prudent to ask why that disconnect exists.  I did, and I couldn't find a good reason, other than mindless authority, tradition and culture.  The life of Jesus and the core principles of the bible have very little to do with it.

The core of christianity (and Adventism) is quite nice in some ways, of course.  Jesus comes along and says, "Hey, you know what might change the world?  Being kind in response to violence.  Tending to the sick, feeding and clothing the poor, abandoning the crass accumulation of wealth and embracing personal and spiritual growth, loving yourself and loving your neighbor, not judging people.  You know, not being a dick and maybe being helpful to someone other than yourself."  That part I have no problem with.  The part I have a problem with is where the church comes in after and says, "You see that nice guy?  He died because you're an evil jerk.  You're bad and you should feel bad.  Now his dad's real pissed off for killing his kid and because of how bad you are, and he's basically going to have to kill you twice in order to make his point proper, and the only way to get right with him is to abandon your own thoughts and free will to his will, which we have conveniently written down and interpreted for you.  Now, I know you're asking, how can I know you really speak for him?  Well, it's true because it's true.  And hey, if you submit now, not only will you not be murder-killed, but you get to live forever and grow wings!"  Well, I'm paraphrasing here.

I think Jesus, like Buddha, had some good ideas that can still change the world if actually followed.  I think the authoritarian framework that came after, including Adventism's onerous rule system, is essentially emotional blackmail that is less concerned with changing the world, than with false certainty and control.  I do not believe a message of love and grace is at all reconcilable with the idea that God will someday return and smite Adventism's enemies because that act is monstrous, not loving or gracious.  Why would you as a practicer of love and grace and a follower of Jesus want harm to your enemies, and why would the ultimate expression of love and intelligence in the universe smite them?  Is God so limited that he can't sit you down and present a compelling argument?  Rules, punishment and hierarchy seem so obviously human, not divine, in origin that I can't believe they were ever successfully grafted onto ideas of love, humility, tolerance and grace.  I don't see anything humble or gracious in the authoritarian assertion that one segment of humanity has found all of the Truth and the rest of us must submit or burn forever.  I see no love or compassion in telling people they are shit and should feel bad, giving them only submission to human authority in the name of God as a reason to feel good.  In short, Adventists and other authoritarians seem more like people who like the idea of following Jesus more than they actually like following Jesus.

Finally, even if I hadn't left because of all of the above, I would be forced to leave as an unrepentant and not celibate gay man.  The church thinks that sex outside of marriage is a sin, therefore, since I am not allowed to marry another man in the eyes of the church, I must be celibate forever, or God must kill me.  It also thinks that homosexuality is a "lifestyle choice" that could tempt any man, that there is no such thing as a sexual orientation, just perversion, and that otherwise straight children can be turned to the gay side simply by seeing happy homosexual couples out in public.  It thinks that three bible verses about slavery and rape and not by any possible reading about committed homosexual life partners are applicable to committed homosexual relationships.  This is not only ignorant and wrong, it's so wrong it makes me question what other ideas they hold they aren't similarly detached from reality.  It's tragic because they end up using all this ignorance as a reason to run openly gay people out of their churches.  Because given the choice between loving the sinner and hating the "sin", they choose the hating over the loving more often than not.  People leave, not because they can't let go of their sin, but because they can't see the church's love for them through the church's hate for a piece of their nature that they can't change.  It's all so unnecessary.  I've never felt closer to God than the day I first had sex with a man.  It was the first time I felt like a complete person, like I finally fit in the world and understood who I really was.  And my former church finds that idea appalling, that I could and would gain any solace from being loving and affectionate with another man. Apparently Jesus was about love, but only so much.  And loving, accepting and socializing with the outcast, so long as it was culturally comfortable.

Adventists keep using that word, "love."  I think it means something different than they think it means.  And ultimately, that's why I had to go.

No Gravity at the center of my brain

I've been working on my second and mostly final leaving adventism post.  It's very cathartic, but I can't figure out whether it's a simple blog post with general thoughts about why I left my childhood church, and therefore imperfect and incomplete, or a blistering indictment of Adventism that will devastate any arguments in it's path for all time.  If the latter, it's doing a terrible job of being that thing.  So it will probably be a blog post, as coherent as I can write it at this time.

I think I'm feeling a little trapped by this very Adventist notion that I can't leave the church, unless I present a compelling and biblically sourced argument to support my ideas.  But, of course, I don't agree the bible is the basis of truth and all argumentation must rest on the texts therein.   To have any sort of successful debate on a topic, all sides must agree on a basic premise.  Adventists generally like to start with "we all agree the Bible is truth and Ellen G. White was God's prophet" and go from there and just kind of awkwardly disengage from people who don't agree with that.  But I don't agree with that premise, so we can't have an argument using the bible as a source.  I guess the premise I would agree to is "Adventism is a legitimate religious and lifestyle choice."  and what I'm arguing is that that lifestyle choice leads to worse outcomes, at least for me, than my other available options.  The Bible doesn't really enter into it.

So, fuck it.  Imperfect but cathartic argument incoming.

I dreamed a dream

I had a dream that I was attending a lecture on the german language, that turned quickly into a giant bollywood musical led by a beautiful actress.  She sang sweetly to me about changing my life while back-up dancers in the thousands swirled around in her in beautiful concentric patterns.  Each back-up dancer was also a fiercely devoted fan of the actress and wept for joy to hear her sing, reaching their arms out as they danced like teenagers at a Beatles concert.  All I could think was:  I just came here to learn german.

And, after I woke up:  Maybe some all-dancing, all-singing ancient goddess is trying to tell me something.

Maybe the universe is trying to tell me something.

Maybe, and most likely, my subconscious is trying to tell me something.

Maybe.

Important Stories

I have written a birthday story for my birthday, as my gift to you.  Or your punishment, depending on how well you like it and what you know you did.  Please enjoy, or don't, as is your custom.

Luddite 4 Life

It occurs to me that I should probably actually post to this blog once in a while if I want people to read it.  And maybe post things worth reading, but we'll worry about that later.  I've mostly been dragging my feet on "leaving adventism, part 2" because it's a big post, kind of a milestone for me personally, and I want to say what I have to say in a concise, but well-argued and well-rounded manner.  In other words, I'm trying to put more effort into it than my usual toss-off posts.

So, in the spirit of getting back into the spirit of writing, I present this toss-off post, as written by a cranky old man.

Goddamn that twitter.  I say goddamn it.  I have reluctantly come to realize that not only is twitter just about the most worthless place on the internet to have any sort of conversation, I have a personal problem regarding people being wrong on the internet.  And since 140char is not enough space to establish context and caveats for any given statement, any given statement is likely to be wrong, as read in plain english, absent the necessary context or caveats.  So, I could waste my whole damn life attempting to fight for truth in a medium that is hostile to discussions of truth, fact, evidence and reasoning.  In short, twitter is not a medium for discussing basically anything of substance.

"Well, duh," you say, "everyone knows that."

To which I reply, "Do they?  Because, did you notice how rapidly journalists and politicians, ostensibly the keepers of the keys to complicated, nuanced highly-detailed arguments and ideas, stampeded to using the medium least capable of supporting a discussion about any of those things?  And isn't it their constituents that dragged them there?  Have you noticed how political argument has gone from bold, overly concise assertion on twitter to emotional appeal in the form of picture with out-of-context quote typed over it?  Like 140char was a space just too big and terrifyingly open with which to construct a thought?"

And now there's Vine, because a one minute Youtube video is just too goddamn tedious to sit through.  Okay, okay, I keed a bit.  Much like twitter, on a technological level it's pretty clever.  The ability to make a stop motion, or edited-on-the-fly little six second snippet and post it to your friends relatively rapidly is technology with great potential.  Even greater, if the same tools could be used to create a video for beings with an attention span somewhat longer than a hamster.  But still, I've watched maybe 20 of the things and while yes there was the usual cats, duck face and lunch pictures there were also "magic" tricks, stop-motion, time-lapse and loop videos that seemed genuinely clever and worth my time.  And if this technology actually inspires someone to get more expensive and better tools and make even longer, more intricate little movies then frankly that's fantastic.

Among my many and obvious problems is, increasingly, a bias towards ideas and activities that take longer than a few seconds to grapple with, because, in my opinion, most ideas require more effort and more time to grapple with them properly.  So I'm attempting to re-orient myself to the media I use, in ways that encourage honest grappling with ideas that I find important and interesting, and minimizing time spent looking at and then forgetting minutia in shorter time frames.  In other words, the problem is not twitter, Vine or Facebook, the problem is how (and maybe whether) I use it.  And honestly, if I don't find my preferred medium of communication on the internet, there's nothing stopping me from creating it myself.

For instance, I have an idea for a wrapper service for twitter that facilitates longer conversations.  It would be presented largely in the same format as twitter, and wraps an entire thread around an individual tweet (with room to write substantially more than 140 char).  I want to call it screech, because that's what the arguments on twitter would be akin to.  So, instead of trying to reply to someone's tweet directly in twitter, you and your friends would be reading twitter in screech, and then any tweets that inspired a longer conversation in screech would be a different color or something, and when you clicked on it, you would expand a series of posts in screech anchored to that tweet.  In essence, expandable threads for twitter with individual tweets as the first post of each thread.  See, that would be useful.  And if anyone wants to make this before I find the time to, that would be awesome.

Until that happy day, I am creating new rules for myself and twitter.

1)  No arguing, ever.  People are going to say some stupid bullshit on twitter.  I am going to let them be wrong, because there's no space on twitter to argue a point properly.  It's like trying to ballroom dance in a supply closet.

2)  I like snark.  Snark is okay.  I might tweet stupid jokes, I enjoy reading stupid jokes on twitter.  I will snark and not take it too seriously.

3)  I will be careful of grandiose statements on twitter.  There's only enough room to assert and not to support, and a big idea usually needs support, or at least context.  No idea sounds particularly grandiose when shouted into a tin can.  It's the wrong format for my Big Idea.

4)  I am primarily going to use twitter to link longer, more thoughtful collections of words that I or someone else has written for the consideration of my followers.  Self-promotion and/or links to longer bits of information, are really just the best use of twitter in my opinion.

I'm still not sure what I'm going to do about Facebook.  Or Vine.  Or Youtube, except I'm going to try and stop worrying about the pointless minutia therein.  And maybe actively posting pointless minutia therein.  And I'm still processing whether or when I'm going to start a blog of some sort under my real name, because I think there's real merit to doing that if I want people to take  the things I write seriously.  Whether the things I write are worth taking seriously, is still a matter of ongoing discussion.

But still, goddamn that twitter.  You kids, I swear.

Very Important.

People get that the title of this blog and the greek statue background are my way of poking fun at my own sense of self-importance right?

Science Rides Again

In my zeal to be "right" yesterday, I neglected to make a few simple points about science and Aaron Swartz and science publishing in general.

It's transparent bullshit what the fed was doing to him over the JSTOR incident.  Illegal and rude his actions may have been, but a slap on the wrist would have been sufficient.  Any jail time over a couple of days seems ridiculous.  Even then, it seems debatable.  They clearly were gunning for him for other reasons.

I learned today, JSTOR is a non-profit institution, formed to help libraries and increase availability to scientific journals, especially online.  With this is mind, I think Swartz's stunt was mis-guided.  He had many good ideas, but sticking it to an institution that would probably have been happy to have him as a consultant to make information more widely available wasn't one of them.

I don't question the benefits of open access.  I don't think journals need to live forever.  I question attacking benign institutions with hacktivism instead of, I don't know, being helpful and helping them build a better open source distribution system and transition the peer review process to the new publishing environment.  Science would like to continue while we sort out open access.  Maybe we could preserve existing peer review and then transition once a new framework is in place, instead of throw it away as bullshit and shrug in answer to "what now?"  The problem I have with Schwartz was his method, and his lack of solution to the problem, not the problem he was trying to tackle.  And I'm not really comforted by a lot of non-scientists seemingly ready to tear down an existing process that is vital, without a plan to help replace it, or make the transition orderly.

Academia, in general, is widely supportive of open access to their articles.  The fact that it's not free does not mean it's a conspiracy to keep it from the public.

Science has a culture just like anything else.  The fact that it moves slow is not a conspiracy.  It takes time to change habits, and as a culture it is cautious in changing habits and culture for fear of sacrificing accuracy and effective peer review in changing too quickly or too rashly.  Also, as a culture it has weaknesses and biases, stubborn older generations, young, bright-eyed idealists and everything else.  It also has pretty good checks and balances in the form of peer review and you won't find a more open-minded and curious group of people willing to be swayed by a good argument and evidence anywhere else.  I think concerns about science are best addressed straight-fowardly and not with subversive stunts.  Unlike most other societal institutions power is diluted, not concentrated in a few people.  So conspiracy theories don't make much sense.  Science just doesn't have much an authoritarian organizational structure that would enable selfish retention of power and money, unlike the RIAA, Wall Street or government.

I don't think scientists are infallible.  Far from it.  I'm gearing up to start writing about some fringe science and philosophy and in my reading have decided science and its underlying philosophies have some big blind spots.  I don't think science should be regarded as mindlessly authoritative.  Scientists are sometimes wrong, and sometimes try to make their studies say more than they do.  The community is usually happy to correct them.  In any case, any figure with enough experience and knowledge to be considered an authority, should be able to explain themselves when challenged.

I think the interface between scientists and the public is woefully inadequate.  Given the completely irrational state of politics and finance and the way the evidence for global warming has been downgraded to the level of an opinion, I think it's done a poor job of making the case not only for the application of reason, evidence, logic and math in solving problems, but in fighting for unpopular theories supported by a metric ton of solid evidence.  Scientific journalists and popular science books aren't quite cutting it.  Or maybe enough people aren't reading them.  Or maybe the good and supported stuff is still too drowned out in pseudo-scientific noise.  I'm not sure.  But I wish we had a better mechanism for cutting out the noise and I don't think it's impossible.

I'm happy to have my ideas challenged.  I don't much like being wrong, but I know there's lots I don't know and I frequently will be.  When I fight for an idea, it's because I think it's important.  If you think I'm wrong or unfair, I expect you to tell me.  That said, I'm still working on a style of argumentation that convinces without beating someone else over the head with my ideas or doesn't get needlessly aggressive.

And that's all I have to say about that.