Although I am a social conservative, I believe that social liberals have played and continue to play a vital and important role in challenging the reasons for socially conservative positions. Quite frequently the position you take is less important than the reason you have for holding that position, but this fact has often been lost to both sides of controversial political issues. I feel it acutely because I’m often annoyed or ashamed by the rhetoric or actions of people who are (technically) on the same side of issues as I am. For example, I am pro-life but I cannot abide those who aggressively promote the idea that abortion is equivalent to murder.
I am also deeply skeptical of the arguments for same-sex marriage, but I cannot contest that the argument over the issue has exposed deep, ugly, and un-Christian attitudes within the community of social conservatives. Much of the reaction against the gay rights movement has been born out of fear, pure and simple. I heard once as a kid that there are ultimately only two human motivations: fear and love. Either we act for something we desire, or we react against something we fear. There’s room for caution and prudence in this paradigm, but fear is almost invariably a symptom that something is wrong. In acting out of fear, social conservatives have been too slow to denounce indefensible treatment of homosexuals or–in the worst cases–have even employed bigotry as a political weapon. They have failed to live up to the example and teachings of Christ and, in the long run, nothing has done more to damage their cause then this alliance with hatred.
And so I’m extremely impressed with what I have read coming from Exodus International today.
Grace is in the second grade and she is a good student, when she is not socializing. At home she has four pets: two cats (Cecelia and Leonardo) and two dogs, Lucy and Jackson. Grace is an avid performer, singing into her karaoke machine and taking tap dancing classes. Event though she is the youngest member of the family, her nickname is The Queen because she tries, often unsuccessfully, to call all the shots. Grace has Down Syndrome.
As someone who is passionately pro-life, something I care deeply about is recognizing the humanity in those who don’t meet our usual definition of perfection. One of the great, unknown tragedies of modern America is that the vast majority of babies with Down syndrome are aborted, depriving them of their lives and us of their light and of our need to exercise our humanity in empathy with and sacrifice for those who need us. As Viktor Frankl said:
If all men were perfect, then every individual would be replaceable by anyone else. From the very imperfection of men follows the indispensability and inexchangeability of each individual.
To be born with a serious genetic defect is of course a terrible tragedy, but to spare us from the knowledge of tragedy by hiding those who suffer–either through abortion or institutionalization and segregation–is to compound and expand that tragedy. We are most human when we recognize humanity in those who are not like us, and that’s why I love this story:
Guidotti’s life has been all about beauty and the power of images. He spent years as a fashion photographer in Milan, Paris, and with a studio in New York, always shooting what fashion editors decreed to be beauty. Then, fifteen years ago, when he considered photographing a woman with a disability, he was shocked at images in medical textbooks he consulted. Where, he asked, is the humanity?
Where indeed. As a result, Guidotti began a personal effort to change that by photographing people–often children–who suffer from these conditions. The results are challenging, beautiful and–especially when you learn that so many of the subjects died young–heartbreaking.
Bill passed away in 2010 due to complications from Marfan Syndrome, a connective tissue disorder. Bill always wanted people with this condition to be proud of their long fingers, arms and legs. He wanted to be a pilot.
Check out the article, and watch the video as well. Really, you’ve got to watch the video.
After a little bit of a break from posting at Times And Seasons over the past few weeks, I’m back in my usual Monday morning slot with a post about the futility of debating the Trinity between Mormons and mainline Christians. Check it out, if you are feeling theologically inclined. (There’s also a gratuitous Star Wars reference to help things along.)
I have to start this post with a frank admission of guilt: I really like the Twilight soundtrack. Something about the music, the constant rain, the muted color palette, and the absence of concern for any of the characters made watching the film a relaxing, mesmerizing experience. I may even have watched it more than once. (I’m honestly not sure.)
One of the best things about the soundtrack is that in addition to really strong tracks from bands I already love (like Muse, Iron & Wine, and Paramore), it also introduced me to some great tracks from bands that I had never heard of: “Full Moon” by The Black Ghosts, “Spotlight” by Mutemath, and “Eyes on Fire” by Blue Foundation.
There are few things I love in life more than the feeling that comes over me when I hear something for the first time and think “Wow, I could really fall in love with this song.” My relationship with music is a lot like my relationship with people. It’s always fun to meet new people and exciting to learn the things you have in common, but it takes time for a true, strong friendship to build. At any given moment my roster of favorite tunes is filled with songs from both ends of the spectrum: those that I love because I just discovered them and those that I love because they’ve been with me for years and I’ve sung along enough to memorize all the lyrics.
There aren’t that many bands, albums, and songs at the older end of the spectrum, however, because a lot can go wrong along the way. A lot of the times the lyrics–which I often don’t catch the first time around–end up letting me down. Other times, the song ends up being an unusual standout from an otherwise mediocre band. Of all the songs that I’m thrilled to hear the first time, only a small number make the “must have” list and get locally stored on my iPhone.
Other than the intrinsic excitement of hearing a good new song, there are two more things to anticipate. The first is sharing new finds with my friends. The second is the prospect of more where that came from. One good song is like a nugget of gold in a prospector’s pan: I immediately want to know if there’s more gold in them hills.
So, over the years, I’ve got my music-prospecting strategy fairly well-refined. I use a combination of Pandora, NPR, TV commercials (if they’re good enough for Moby they’re good enough for me), soundtracks and sometimes even the radio to generate new leads. Then I get on Spotify and start listening. I’ve discovered lots of my current favorite music this way, from DJ Shadow to Lecrae to Ludovico Einaudi. And yet, despite a steady stream of new music, I still find myself often thinking “I have no idea what to listen to right now.”
I keep trying out new schemes to organize the music that I’ve discovered, and I keep failing. I’ve tried making playlists many, many times but I invariably start strong with a handful of tracks and before I’ve got a single album’s worth the initial focus of the playlist (a particular emotion? an associated activity? a genre?) has grown so muddy that I find they’re all starting to run together and I can’t tell if a song should go in or not. I’ve also tried the opposite approach: throwing a bunch of music into a playlist, and then tossing back out the songs that I don’t like as I listen. But, since I’m usually listening while I work, I end up being bothered enough by bad songs to notice, but not enough to remember to toss them out. So far, nothing works.
I’m starting to think that despite the huge access to great new music, in some ways the days of CD collections were actually better. I don’t think I ever had more than 2 or 3 dozen CDs in high school in the late 1990s, but that meant that choosing what to listen to was easy: I could flip through my entire collection (mentally or physically) in just a few seconds. I had the tracklisting of every album memorized, and I could skip any tracks I didn’t like without even thinking about it. My music collection felt like my hometown. I didn’t exactly choose it in the sense that most of my first CDs were hand-me-downs and even the one’s I bought were based on extremely limited knowledge, but they were mine. I knew them inside and out. Now? I feel like I don’t have a musical home anymore. Even in my own collection I’m a foreign tourist visiting a stranger’s soundscape.
Part of this is what economists call the Paradox of Choice. The original theory (that more customer choices lead to fewer sales) has started to fall out of favor, but the basic realization that deliberation is costly is certainly true. I don’t think it’s just that I used to have fewer music, but I think it’s that–because I had less to listen to–what I listened to I learned very well. It became a part of me, so choosing was second-nature. Now, with so much to choose from, my exposure to any given song or album or band is fleeting and glancing. It’s not just that I have more to go through when I’m deciding what to listen to, it’s that I have to think a lot harder about every single option because I don’t really know them that well. The result is that even tracks that are unbelievable good when I think to listen to them fall through the cracks. My wife put on Regina Spektor’s “All the Rowboats” in the car the other day, and I was stunned that I had forgotten such an awesome song was in my collection. It feels like getting lost in my own home.
I started writing this piece as a way of asking for help and advice about how to better track my music. And I’m still curious to hear what folks have to say, but maybe I’ve already identified the real problem. I’ve been trying to find an easy way to build my musical mansion. Maybe that’s impossible. Maybe another quaint economics axiom applies: there ain’t no such thing as a free lunch. Maybe if relationships with music are like relationships with people, then trying to a satisfying and easy relationship is like asking for a full-length abridgment. Maybe easy outside options are the enemy of all relationships that require investment to grow.
There’s got to be a better take away then just “things were better back in the day”, and I think there is. Trying to pretend that it’s still 1997 and I’m still living at home might help me recapture some of the lost sense of connection with my tunes, but even if it did, dialing back 1/2 my life doesn’t sound like a good candidate for Plan A. After all, the whole problem is that it’s the weight of incredible musical potential that’s dragging me down. Can’t let go of the weight without letting go of the promise. So, I guess I’ll just start dedicating more time and effort to listening to all this great music, giving it some of the respect it deserves, and wait with stubborn patience to build back the bridges of nostalgia, but bigger, brighter, and more solid than mere memories.
Everyone knows this man is a grumpy, time-traveling hobbit, right?
[Here there be spoilers!]
Allow me to regale you with a tale of my relationship to George R. R. Martin’s Game of Thrones. Once upon a time, long, long before most of you who watch Game of Thrones had ever heard of it, I read the first book. I was immediately impressed by Martin’s craft. The man can write, and I would never question that. But what he chose to write really rubbed me the wrong way. Specifically: I felt like the books were engineered to manufacture a sense of realism by deliberately doing horrible things to likable characters. When Ned Stark got executed at the end of the book I set it down, and I’ve never been tempted to pick up another one.
So, when all the Red Wedding stuff started breaking out over Twitter, it took me a few days enough to bother to investigate. When I eventually read a description of what had happened, I felt incredibly vindicated. And it’s not just that Martin killed off more likable characters, but it’s why he does it.
There’s a general assumption among most Americans that democracy is a good thing and that, as a general rule, more democracy is better. With the single exception that we ought to have a Bill of Rights to carve out protections so that the majority cannot persecute the minority, reforms like direct election of Senators (before the adoption of the Seventeenth Amendment in 1913, state legislatures elected national Senators), direct involvement via ballot initiatives, and even reform of the Electoral College to apportion votes equitably with respect to population all seem to strike most people as more or less common sensical. The same general attitude is applied internationally as well, which is why so many Americans were initially supportive of the Arab Spring revolutions that swept the Middle East.
I think this is all wrong. Democracy, in my mind, is overrated. And for clarity, “democracy” means to me “rule by the majority” or even just “rule by the people”.
Let’s start at the beginning with the American Revolution. There’s a widespread urban legend that 1/3 of Americans supported the Revolution, 1/3 were neutral, and 1/3 opposed it. The problem with this view is that it’s not actually accurate. It stems from a letter by John Adams written in 1813 that was actually about American opinions of the French Revolution, although it has been mistakenly quoted by historians dating back to the early 1900’s. The best explanation I’ve found for this issue comes from the Journal of the American Revolution, which addressed the issue directly. According to that piece, no one really knows what the actual breakdown for support of the American Revolution was. In addition to the absence of statistical polling at the time, the issue is complicated by the fact that the American population was growing very rapidly. However (citing the Journal of the American Revolution again), historians like Robert Calhoon estimate that between 40% and 45% of the free population (so African American slaves are not included) or “at most no more than a bare majority” supported the Revolution. So the 1/3-1/3-1/3 quote is erroneous, but the idea that the Revolution was supported by a minority of Americans is reasonable.
This is a controversial claim. Another organization that weighed in on this issue is the Independent Institute, a conservative/libertarian think tank. William F. Marina wrote a piece for them denouncing the “minority myth” as a malicious lie to support elitism and citing “the obvious delight that these writers take, which is, indeed, a major reason they cite it, in the notion that it is a minority that often knows best.” Despite Marina’s foreceful defense of the view that the majority of Americans supported the Revolution, however, the Founders themselves seemed less clear about it. Writing to a friend in 1813, John Adams responded to his friend Thomas McKean’s assertion that the overwhelming majority of Americans had supported the Revolution, Adams demurred. He cited the strength of the Loyalist cause and then wrote (again, Journal of the American Revolution): “Upon the whole, if we allow two thirds of the people to have been with us in the revolution, is not the allowance ample?”
John Adams
So we should take two things from this. The first is that we don’t really know if the majority of Americans supported the Revolution or not, and neither did (at least some of) the Founders. The second is that, to this day, that assertion is hotly contested. Why? Because of an idea that the American political system is founded on the “will of the people” and that–if the Founders did not follow the will of the people–they were “a pretty slippery and hypocritical bunch”, as Marina put it.
I have a different perspective. I think that there is an important distinction between (to use my own terminology) the consent of the governed and the intent of the governed. And I think that when most Americans envision “democracy” they are implicitly assuming that government ought to reflect the intent of the governed. For example, I think that most Americans believe that the purpose of elected representatives is basically practical. We can’t ask Americans for their opinion on every single law, and so we elect representatives, and their job is to go and act as a simple stand-in for their constituents. That is why we passed the 17th Amendment: so that Senators would directly represent their constituents, as opposed to having the state legislature exist as an intermediary. Based on this idea (the intent theory of representative government), not only do legislatures act as stand-ins for their constituents, but the rest of government (the executive and judicial branches) are also simply practical necessities. We have a President because, especially in times of crisis, we need a single person who can act decisively and unambiguously. We have a judicial system purely as a kind of expert legal consultant, although in recent years there has been increasingly a theory that even the Supreme Court ought to reflect the changing mores and attitudes of society. In short: the intent theory is the idea that the entire apparatus of the American political system is an elaborate attempt to enact the will of the American people. In this view, the government (and everyone who works there) is essentially a passive filter that processes the intent of Americans into official law and action.
I believe this is entirely wrong.
First of all, I don’t believe that was the intent of the Founders in creating the system. This is clear from both their actions before and during the Revolution and also from the system that they created. In terms of actions: they acted proactively without waiting for the will of the majority to be clear. John Adams’ letter reflects this. It’s obvious that the will of the people was crucial to their view of governmental legitimacy, but it didn’t serve as the source of government action. In simple terms, the Founders asked for permission from the American people, but didn’t wait for instructions. That’s fundamentally incompatible with the idea that the government merely enacts the intent of the American people. In terms of political structure: the design of the American political system laid down in the Constitution is incompatible with the idea that it is merely a passive filter. After all, the 17th Amendment wasn’t passed until the 20th century. The original intent of the Founders was to intentionally create a layer between national and state government, and have that layer remove the American people a step or two from the process. Since there’s no practical reason for that design decision (it wouldn’t have been significantly more difficult to have popular election for the Senate), it shows that the Founders deliberately chose a less-democratic political system.
Why? Because the Founders were not fools.
The most influential writer on this topic that I’ve read is the modern libertarian scholar Bryan Caplan who wrote The Myth of the Rational Voter. Caplan’s main point, in this book, was to document specific systematic biases common to American voters that lead to poor economic policies. But, along the way, he also pointed out that an important advantage of voter ignorance is that it leaves wiggle room for their representatives to make better decisions that would be unpopular if (biased) American voters knew exactly what was going.
Now I expect that this line of argument is going to raise all kinds of red flags with people, and it should. But the fundamental reality is that elitism has some things going for it. Who do you want to do analysis about global warming, PhD scientists or the man on the street? Who do you want to perform surgery on your kid, a trained and accredited surgeon or a randomly selected poll respondent? Then elitism has a role to play in our society. The government makes policies based on or impacting scientific, strategic, economic, and other matters where expertise is absolutely essential if you want good policies. Then elitism has a role to play in our government.
But obviously the possibility for reliance on elites to be abused is incredibly dangerous. There has to be a counterweight to elitism, and that counterweight is the consent of the governed. Our political system is designed to allow representatives (hopefully representing our elite in the best sense of the word) a wide range of latitude in governance, but to make them ultimately accountable to the people. It is neither populist nor elitist, but a fusion of the two.
So what happens when the balance between populism and elitism is disrupted? Well, take a look at the increasing partisanship and dysfunction in Washington D.C. since the rise of the Internet to get an example. Knowledge is power, and power can be abused. The Internet is, fundamentally, a communication technology that allows for the wide and targeted distribution of information. How much easier is it for activist groups (like the NRA) to micromanage elected representatives and then pass that information directly to their self-selecting constituents who have this information in the absence of any meaningful context. We complain that there’s so little real compromise in Washington, but who can compromise when there are hundreds of single-issue and ideological groups who are literally scoring our legislators on every vote they take?
Again: when I make an argument that says “less informed voters would be better” that ought to send up some red flags. But viewing it as less / more informed isn’t helpful. It’s not just about the amount of information that voters have, but also the kind of information that voters have. I would absolutely love to have voters who are more informed about the nature of our government, what the various branches are responsible for, and so on. I think that a kind of basic citizenship test before voting is a good idea (but not an unproblematic one). But when voters get myopic rankings on hot-button issues without any context: that’s more like noise than information. Voters don’t actually know what votes their representatives cast. They don’t even understand the arcane and complex procedures by which the House and Senate operate. They don’t know when a vote represents a pure capitulation, and when it represents a give-and-take. All they know is that on Position X Candidate Y has a D- from their favorite activist organization. So we’ve got a bunch of elected representatives who have to game the system with their votes in order to stay in office.
And that’s thanks to democracy.
What’s the solution? Well, there’s no silver bullet, but I do believe the first step is a recognition of what the American political system is for. And I don’t think that the American political system was designed or intended to get representatives to either guess what Americans would want if they were asked or merely act out their reactions to poll questions. I think the American political system harnesses the concept of consent of the governed to create accountability by creating healthy incentives. In short, representatives (in the past) have had more incentive to get good outcomes then to react to the preferred ideologies of their constituents. But, since we’ve lost an appreciation for that distinction, we risk reforms that will actually make the problem better rather than worse. Banning single-interest groups or clamping down on their free speech is not, in my mind, a viable solution. Reforming the way we create districts (to restrict gerrymandering), reforming the way we vote (to eliminate strategic voting), and reforming the schedule for primaries (to decrease entrenched special interests) all are.
In short: you have to know how the machine is supposed to work before you can understand how to repair or improve it.
[This post has no real spoilers for the most recent Star Trek movie, but it does have spoilers for a lot of older Star Trek material as well as World War Z and especially the book version of Ender’s Game.]
Gary Westfahl has an interesting review of the most recent Star Trek movie (which I haven’t seen) at Locus. In it, he laments the fact that recent Star Trek movies have abandoned Star Trek creator Gene Roddenberry’s optimistic view of the future:
Essentially, Roddenberry envisioned a future universe in which everybody could get along; intelligent beings might have their differences, but they could still respect each other and strive to resolve their conflicts without resorting to all-out war.
For Westfahl, the first Star Trek movie epitomized this essentially peaceful narrative structure:
[It] was completely congruent with the spirit of the original series: an enormous alien construct approaches Earth and threatens to destroy humanity, but investigation reveals that it is merely being motivated by a confused recollection of instructions that the machine absorbed when it merged with the space probe Voyager, and when it then combines with a human partner, it peacefully leaves Earth to pursue new goals.
Unfortunately, however, this movie was not very commercially successful. It was Star Trek II: Wrath of Khan that breathed new life into the franchise. And it did so by taking an empathy opponent from an earlier episode (Khan) and rendering him purely evil so that he could get blown up at the end and everyone would cheer. For Westfahl, this represents the unfortunate trend towards polarization in modern society, and it’s regrettable that it became the pattern for additional Star Trek movies (including the most recent one). I’m with Westfahl on most of this, but there are two glaring omissions that struck me as extremely puzzling.
Over at Worlds Without End, Walker Wright (fellow blogger and frequent commenter here at DR) has an excellent article critiquing one of Hugh Nibley’s most famous essays. The essay Walker is criticizing is Leaders to Managers: The Fatal Shift, and Walker’s article is titled Like a Boss.
When I was serving my mission, I found out that FARMS (now the Maxwell Institute) had a bunch of Nibley’s articles online. I was in the office at the time (trying to wrangle visa problems and tax audits) and reading Nibley’s articles saved my sanity. But, as much as I love Nibley, his anti-business bias really bothered me as being fundamentally uncurious–in contrast with his otherwise expansive intellect–and after studying economics myself I’m more sad than ever that Nibley never took the time to understand some of his favorite rhetorical punching bags. “Leaders to Managers” is a great example of that, and I like Walker’s take on it.
I read a very odd piece in Psychology Today that purports to be written by a “diagnosed sociopath”. Psychology is well outside my area of expertise, but I’m not sure if that matters because the author seemed to be relying much more heavily on Hollywood notions of sociopathy than the DSM’s definition of antisocial personality disorder. According to Hollywood, sociopaths are amoral (correct), manipulative (fairly correct), and brilliant (not necessarily). They villains around which plots revolve and who inspire heroes to come forth and do battle, so they’re sort of a big deal.
But M. E. Thomas is no supervillain. There was this one time that she followed a guy and fantasized about strangling him, but then she lost him. Not really how big a threat that ever was, because she had no weapon, no physical advantage, no training, and not even a plan. Oh yeah, and like I mentioned, she couldn’t even manage to keep up with him. So how, exactly, was she going to overpower him and strangle him to death? Also, there was this time she was so sarcastic to her dad that he put his hand through a wall. While it’s not exactly Andy Griffith’s Mayberry, it’s hardly American Pysho, either.
I understand that a main point she’s making is that not all sociopaths are violent criminals. Some are just a-holes. OK, point made. But… why would I read a book about that? A memoir has to either have interesting events or an interesting person, but M. E. Thomas evidences neither.
The only reason I was prodded into writing this post is the following:
The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints is a sociopath’s dream. Mormons believe that everyone has the potential to be godlike—I believe this includes me. Every being is capable of salvation; my actions are what matters, not my ruthless thoughts, not my nefarious motivations. Everyone is a sinner, and I never felt that I was outside this norm.
See, this is when I knew that M. E. Thomas is seriously deficient in the practical intellect department. The idea that a sociopath is cut out for “potential to be godlike” in a religion that defines God in terms of His empathy is ridiculous to the point of genuinely sad. Don’t get me wrong: I’m not trying to pass judgment on her moral worth. Not my department. But the fact that she’s advancing such a ludicrous argument shows how completely out of touch she is. I’m not sure to what extent “delusions of grandeur” or “narcissism” play a role in sociopathy, but those are the only traits where’s she’s nailing perfect 10s.
But it’s just too delicious of a quote for anti-Mormons to pass up, especially because it summons up some additional bogeymen. She’s got the noxious idea that Mormons believe we earn salvation through our works and also the fun stereotype that we’re a superficial bunch obsessed with behavior and outward appearances and completely immune to moral introspection. Neither is true, but both will please those who already have an axe to grind, and so I’m fairly confident I’ll be seeing the “sociopath’s dream” quote on an image in my Facebook feed eventually. (Hey, at least it will add some variety.)
I can’t hardly wait.
In any case, I just don’t believe that articles like this one are really going to move copies of the book. It’s got the subtitle: “A life hiding in plain sight”, but I don’t think there’s anything “hidden” about non-violent sociopaths. I think we all know who they are. We just have a different word for them. We call them assholes.
Here’s a though provoking TEDx talk from Caroline Heldman.
This approach to analyzing sexuality in society is a possible antidote to the toxicity of Christian purity culture. There’s a danger among social liberalism that well-intentioned efforts to empower women can backfire, leading to both women and feminism being co-opted by a male-dominant, consumerist culture. Teaching that women ought to dress modestly to protect men from being tempted is wrong, because it says that women exist–or at least must make their clothing choices–for the benefit of men. Teaching what sexual objectification is and how women can rebel against it, however, replaces the subservient motivation with a genuinely empowering one. If women want to wear “sexy” clothing: OK. I support their choice. But if the consequences are habitual body monitoring and degradation of cognitive function (two of the most shocking aspects of the video for me), then women ought to know that.
But there’s an even simpler antidote to the toxicity of Christian purity culture that I also want to reference, however. It’s a video that Reece linked to in the comments to a previous post here at DR, and I loved it so much I wanted to post it on the front page here.
“Jesus wants the rose.” The passionate declaration has been ringing in my mind ever since I first saw the video. What could be more simple, more profound, and more Christian? Modesty and virtue are important, and I believe that they should be taught and celebrated, but as a matter of priority the really fundamental message is that Jesus wants the rose. No matter what.
Although I am a social conservative, I believe that social liberals have played and continue to play a vital and important role in challenging the reasons for socially conservative positions. Quite frequently the position you take is less important than the reason you have for holding that position, but this fact has often been lost to both sides of controversial political issues. I feel it acutely because I’m often annoyed or ashamed by the rhetoric or actions of people who are (technically) on the same side of issues as I am. For example, I am pro-life but I cannot abide those who aggressively promote the idea that abortion is equivalent to murder.
