Gillette ruffled some feathers last week with an ad about masculinity, pointing out things that happen, like bullying, casual violence, and casual sexism - some obviously shitty things - suggesting that the excuse, "Boys will be boys" is not a good excuse, and encouraging men to 1. be less shitty, and 2. encourage other men to be less shitty, and 3. stop making excuses for shitty behavior by other men and boys. It ends with close-ups of some kids watching their dads stop other men and boys from being shitty, pointing out today's men are models for the men of the future, so our behavior teaches our kids to be shitty, or not shitty.
It has been hotly discussed in a number of places I frequent online, so I thought I'd put my thoughts in one place.
The ad itself... viewed on its own terms, without having it framed by someone who wants to rant about "SJWs" and the North American culture wars, or by someone who wants to rant about "Toxic masculinity"... isn't that controversial, really.
It's true that people make excuses for boys and men's bad behavior. It's true that some boys and men do shitty things. Among the behaviors identified, it's not controversial to identify these behaviors as shitty:
Groping women
Catcalling
Interrupting women
Patronizing or stealing ideas of female colleagues
Bullying smaller or weaker people with physical violence or verbal harassment
Treating women like trophies or toys
If someone is mad about the Gillette ad because they think the above behaviors shouldn't be criticized, they have much bigger problems than a men's grooming company telling them how to be decent human beings (most urgent: they aren't decent human beings).
Only slightly less slam-dunk obvious is the ad's emphasis on the excuse made for bad behavior: "Boys will be boys" (which is repeated by a whole lineup of men: this is pretty emphatic). I would guess that a lot of people who regularly say "Boys will be boys" will be surprised to hear it pointed out as troublesome. The ad posits a better response for men's shitty behavior than excuses: men stepping in to stop the shittiness.
But remove this from the "somebody is telling men how to behave" pearl-clutching, and again, it's not very controversial. Given a choice, I think most people would say that it's better to stop bad behavior than to make excuses for it.
Anyone disputing 1. that the behaviors above are bad, and 2. that correcting them is better than making excuses for them, definitely carries the burden of proof.
The most common complaint I've heard about the ad is that it's somehow claiming that ALL men are shitty... yet the ad clearly ALSO shows men stopping all the behaviors pointed out (except the man interrupting his female colleague while putting hand on her shoulder and restating her idea in his own words - he seems to get away with it).
The Pyeongchang Olympics are here! Some of my friends are really excited about this, so of course I take it as my Roboseyoly duty to throw some cold water on the proceedings. We have a lot of cold water around the house right now, because our laundry room's pipes have been frozen for literally three weeks! Before running out to the coin laundry to ensure I have underpants for the next week (rueing that cancelled trip to Hawaii more and more), I'd like to say a few things about the Pyeongchang Olympics.
Part One: Tempering Expectations
I had intended to write this about two or three years ago, but never really got around to it, which means I am now Johnny-come-lately instead of being stylishly ahead of the curve, but I've been telling whichever friends would listen that the Pyeongchang Olympics are going to be a letdown pretty much since they were awarded.
When news of the latest "Final deal" regarding the Comfort Women came out on December 28, I wasn't as excited as a few of my Facebook friends. Sadly, my initial "Wait and see" reservations proved correct as the story soured faster than milk and pickle juice.
This topic is overwhelming to write about, because writing about any one aspect causes every single other thing to rush out for inclusion as well. It's like drinking a cup of jello: poke. Nothing. Poke. Nothing. Bigger poke. Omygoodnesseverythingiscomingatoncewhatwasithinking? Plus, no matter how carefully I write this piece, everything I omitted for simplicity or brevity will get thrown in my face in the comments anyway. It's daunting, and I'm frustrated at yet another apology doomed to be rejected both by Korea's and Japan's publics, followed by further recriminations, deepening grievance and apology/insincerity fatigue that will make it harder for both sides to offer and accept the next (hopefully final) apology, when or if it ever comes.
The Korea Times came out with a howler of an article recently, mistakenly using the headline "Tips for Keeping Partners from Cheating" on an article that was clearly meant to be titled "How to Suffocate Your Partner and Poison Your Relationship With Mistrust." This is a far cry from its 2009-10 nadir (setting the record straight, and alien graveyards), but still. My response on Facebook was sarcastic, but basically: 1. Don't trust your partner? Find another. 2. Partner asking for your passwords? People usually extend to others the amount of trust they deserve themselves. Memo for everyone: possessiveness and obsessiveness aren't cute and charming. They're creepy uncomfortable suffocating and insulting.
Not to be topped (bottomed?), The Korea Herald ran an article by Dr. Kim Seong-kon, a longtime contributor there, titled "Korean Mother: A Cultural Icon" - now, Dr. Kim has been writing an article a week for a very very long time, so maybe we have to forgive the occasional stinker, but this one went over the line.
Kim suggests "the Korean mother" as a cultural icon for Korea - a symbol of Korean culture, or essence, or somesuch. Nothing terribly wrong with that, though compared to the examples he gives, like Japanese samurai, which only Japan has, choosing something every living person necessarily has seems odd.
Kim describes the sacrificial and nurturing quality of Korean mothers, name-checks "Please Look after Mother" by Shin Kyung-sook, compares Korean mothers to birds that feed their babies while they starve, and even points out how Korean mothers are different from the mothers in his anecdote, AND in this one TV show he saw, which is enough to satisfy a scholar these days, I guess. (Peer review, here I come!)
Asia Pundits raises a number of objections to the article - asking whence Korean teen suicide, if Korean mothers are so great (but acknowledging the issue is waaaaay more complex than that), and in what way trundling kids off to hagwon until 8 or 10pm is different from sending kids to their rooms early in the evening. Asiapundits also outlines the pressure Korean moms often put on kids to get into a good school -- even using the threat of violence to bully kids into studying harder. The article is worth reading. The top comment (as of now) below that post mentions "stage mother superficiality" - making parenting decisions based on what the other moms in the sewing circle will think, rather than what's best for the kids, which happens, I suppose (elsewhere as well of here, of course).
Newer blogger Wangjangnim weighs in a little more emotionally, with his best point being that Dr. Kim's description of Korean mothers is a not-too-subtle disguise for a series of normative statements about gender roles that are a generation or two out of date, and which also fix the acceptable standard for motherhood ridiculously high. (Meanwhile, Chosun Ilbo English headline this morning: "Actress Park Si-yeon Happy to Focus on Being a Mom" -- still waiting for a major daily in Korea featuring a headline, "Famous and Accomplished Woman Happy To Focus on Career For Now" with a positive write-up). Wangjangnim also mentions (though briefly) overseas adoption, which has created a whole bunch of Koreans who are alienated from their Korean moms.
Both AsiaPundits' mention of teen suicide, and Wangjangnim's mention of overseas adoption, as presented, are probably unfair "Yeah but what about this!" reactions. Both reduce very complex issues into pot-shots in a conversation about something else, far less than these two issues deserve. (Honestly, though, adoption sprang to my mind as well during my kneejerk-rage reaction phase.) Neither of those fraught and complex issues are fair to lay solely at the feet of Korean mothers: both require far-reaching discussions of Korean society. There are other little digs one could make -- my facebook feed featured a funny wisecrack about the prevalance of car seat use, for example. Moms in Korean dramas notwithstanding, I have several main problems with the article:
First: When I try to talk about an entire country of over 50 million as if it's a single, undifferentiated mass, my commenters give me hell. Essentializing an entire culture is always fishy territory, whether it's a foreigner or a Korean holding the broad brush. Korea is a pretty big, complex thing: big enough, and complex enough, that you can find evidence to validate any bias or agenda you bring to it, from the fuzziest of happy purrs, to the bitterest of angry yawps. This gets us no closer to the bottom of things.
Second: There are tons of moms in Korea who don't fit the rose-tinted profile Dr. Kim offers. Hell, if Doc Brown and Marty McFly skipped back in time and showed this article to a seventeen-year-old Dr. Kim, I bet he wouldn't recognize his own mother in it. Nostalgia does that.
Next: for Koreans whose moms were less than ideal, or for Korean moms who aren't living up to Dr. Kim's standard, I'd hate to compound their hurt or guilt, by making them feel like their family issues also problematize their bona fides as Koreans. In my first year here, I dealt with panic attacks from a kid whose mother would beat him for bad scores. I had another kid in my second year who had internalized her mother's verbal abuse so completely I never heard my brightest student of the whole year say a positive thing about herself; she came to class with bruises sometimes, too. I've dealt with moms whose kids' accomplishments seem more to be baubles for boasting to their friends, than for their kids' own benefit. They were all Koreans. I know someone who had a (brief, doomed) engagement with a man whose parents had dropped the guillotine on OVER THIRTY previous prospective fiancees. But those three anecdotes, as well as the mom I saw on a Korean drama that my mom-in-law likes, who is a manipulating, selfish badword, don't mean all Korean moms are like that, any more than Kim's anecdotes and TV reference mean American moms are all deficient.
Dr Kim: "But those mothers don't typify REAL Korean motherhood!"
The "NO True Scotsman" fallacy: Justifying funny pictures of men in kilts since the Internet
There are also tons of moms outside of Korea who do all the things Kim describes. Tiger parenting? Pressure to succeed? Sacrifice for kids? Emphasis on education? Those ring a bell to more than Korean kids, as does every other behavior (good or bad!) you name when you describe a stereotypical, or an idealized Korean mother. Except maybe making kimchi, which not all Korean mothers do anymore.
The book thing: Kim points to "Please Look After Mother" as an example of Korean motherhood... now Gord Sellar has problems with that book; I myself found it touching at first, but trying too hard, and finally reaching maudlin territory. I have doubts that the author set out to write a book about Korean motherhood; I find it more likely she was trying to write about her mother. The conversation about whether or why any piece of Korean culture that finds success outside Korea's borders is quickly labeled "representative" of Korea is a long one, and off point here, except that I find it frequently spurious, especially because the designation is usually post-hoc. Except for D-War.
(Source) Common sight at night in drinking districts.
For that matter, how can Kim claim Korean motherhood is unique if the book became a New York Times best seller? If a book becomes a best seller, it's fair to say that means it's struck some kind of a chord with readers. If a book resonates, that means an audience can relate to it... which means all those Americans buying the book must have connected to the portrayal of motherhood in it at least a little, since the book is about nothing else... the success of that book SHOWS that Korean motherhood isn't as unique as Dr. Kim claims it is, doesn't it? If Korean motherhood were totally singular among world cultures, it stands to reason that the book would only have been successful in Korea, and not found a mass audience outside of it.
Finally, I just find it tiresome that Kim gives into that all-too-common impulse, where one seems unable to talk about a great Korean thing, without comparing it to a foreign thing that isn't as good.
Nobody has to tell me that Gyeongbokgung is in more harmony with nature than Beijing's Forbidden City, for me to be impressed by it. In fact, bringing up the Forbidden City mostly reminds me how much smaller and less fancy Gyeongbokgung is, how much more famous the Forbidden city is. Telling me hamburgers are shit does nothing to impress the health benefits of Korean food, except show me that someone has an inferiority complex, and is a bit petty, and doesn't understand American food: the Korean correlative to hamburgers is something closer to ddeokbokki than bibimbap. And it isn't necessary for American mothers to be told they suck, before we can properly celebrate Korean mothers. If it is necessary, that's a shitty kind of patriotism.
This type of argumentation is tone deaf if the author is appealing to anybody except Koreans themselves (of course he's writing this to Koreans... why in English? is the real question) Picking USA (and Japan, the other standby), again and again, as the points of comparison to show Korean superiority, also betrays a type of colonized thinking, because why USA and Japan? They're the two countries who have most recently dominated Korea politically and/or economically, so they're the two burrs in South Korea's saddle, when it comes to national pride and perception of national sovereignty, that's why. Showing that Korea is culturally superior, even with less economic or military clout than USA or Japan, is simply a tacky ploy at restoring a Korean pride somebody imagined has been damaged.
But the fact that pride is always measured against these countries over others, reveals that the Koreans who write articles like Dr. Kim's (which, to be clear, is a subset of Koreans - not the whole lot) still haven't gotten over the period when Korea was colonized: they can't leave that scab alone, and simply celebrate what Koreans are: these ones have to get a dig in. Using those specific measuring sticks to show Korea's better, unintentionally underscores that Koreawas well bested by them in the past.
Korea has enough kit now that it would be utterly possible to celebrate its culture on its own terms -- between the Korean Wave, the achievements of Korean businesses on the world stage, OECD membership, Ban Ki-moon, Psy, and Storm Shadow, the growing popularity of Korean food and the medal standings of the last few Olympics, there's enough there to stand without comparisons. But compare they do (some of them), and it comes across badly every time. (Example: Why Korea Sucks at Marketing Itself. Discuss.)
Lee Byung-hun as Storm Shadow. Making Korea's national status look goooood.
Given his output, we have to expect Dr. Kim will write a clunker from time to time. But this one was over the line.
I'm glad you had a good Chuseok weekend with your mother, Dr. Kim, it shows. But please try to express your love for your country and your mother without shitting on other countries and their mothers, and next time ideas are thin, maybe take a week or two off from your column over pinching out a turd like this one.
Funny footnote: I have some history with Kim Seong-kon - a letter to the editor in response to his article was the first time I ever sent writing of mine to a publication other than my university's poetry journal. You can read it here.
Special note for commenting: let's try to keep this comment discussion more nuanced than just telling everybody how horrible Korean moms are, OK? There are horrible moms and great moms in every country.
This is a re-worked version of a post I wrote last month. If you read that one, don't bother with this one. I don't like editing posts after people have already left comments, so instead of just editing that one, on the advice of a friend, I'm putting this one out as the version of record.
Removed: a bunch of stuff about gendered spaces, which I blundered through last year, and, on the advice of said friend, which I'm going to leave alone until I have the tools and background to write on it more credibly. To sum up: I got it wrong before, perhaps got it less wrong with that last post, and I'm still working on getting it right.
Tumblr feminist probably fits in a category with pejoratives like "armchair quarterback" and "slacktivist" and "Randroid"... but the term, strikes me as mean-spirited - more than those others.
To be clear now, not every feminist on tumblr is a "tumblr feminist," just like not everybody linking events and causes on facebook are slacktivists (some back the "likes" up with action). The term seems reserved for the bottom rung or two of the hierarchy of disagreement (source), and not writers and thinkers who ply in the top section of the pyramid, those who've done their background reading, invested time and thought into making a meaningful contribution. But then, the term is not clearly defined, which makes it more useful for name-calling -- moving goalposts is an easy way to avoid taking responsibility for making generalizations.
The term "tumblr feminist" set off alarms right from the start. Google tricks (a keyword timeline search mostly) confirmed my suspicion: "tumblr feminist" was probably coined in that
obnoxious youtube clip above: the first time that exact word combination appears is the month he published it. Subsequent mentions up until last month, when I suddenly came across it four or five independent times, had that same tone: contemptuous, and originating almost entirely in men's rights-type
forums. It ventured outside of those realms mostly in response to comments or potshots from within it.
Since the start, the term has been used as a "straw man" (straw person) to whom people have ascribed the views they want to argue against -- basically, the Men's Rights folks have been using "tumblr feminist" the same way Fox News uses "the liberal media" or "the gay agenda" as a boogeyman. And that'd be the Men's Rights folks who use that flag to mostly act like sexist pricks, not the group that are said to exist, who have done all the same gender studies reading as feminists have, but are picking up the stories and issues on the male end of the gender spectrum. (As a side note, that latter group might do well to find a different name for themselves that doesn't confuse them with the former group. Perhaps one with enough jargon, or long enough, that online misogynists find it cumbersome to co-opt.)
In the last month though, people outside of Men's Rights forums have been using it in name-calling exchanges, in "am I really a TF?" "why ____ is a TF" or "I'm not a TF because" type blog posts. It's gained a little traction. Personally, I don't like that: labels are useful for introspection -- asking myself "is there mansplaining in this blog post/comment? Am I gaslighting?" But this label has been weaponized from the start, and using labels as weapons leads to defensiveness (follow-up with gaslighting), or anger (follow-up with tone policing) to derail conversations.
Along with its troublesome origins, my other problem with the term is this:
Every topic on the internet draws responses ranging from knee-jerk reactions to clear, informed reasoning, and discussion on every topic features too much knee-jerk and not enough clear, informed reasoning. Every single one.
Naturally, the same is true of women's issues. Writing that lacks clarity, rigor, or perspective? That's about 70% of the entire internet, isn't it? (That statistic is made-up. It might be more.) "Tumblr feminists" may or may not be an actual thing, but I know for sure I haven't heard a satisfying reason why they should be singled out over everybody else also using the internet less like this...
Everybody's using the internet this way. Lots and lots and lots of men do. Every discourse has a few worthwhile voices and a lot of noise and people simply out of their depth. So if the group that becomes a target for derision is a subset of feminist writers (though if the term becomes common, wanna bet it remains reserved only for those feminist writers it originally applied to?) and they're simply acting the way most people (most men included) on the internet act, it's time for a motivation check. Does the simple existence of the term automatically indicate feminists, or women online in general, are singled out for persecution? Not all by itself, though given the term's origin (first yellow flag) and patterns of sexism on the internet (Food for thought. --Patterns which trace right back to the origins of the internet, when the photo used to test compression algorithms was part of a playboy centerfold) it'd be worth looking into. A cursory look around suggests that we might be onto something.
To tie this to Korea: it's like the __ __ 녀 or "ladygate" videos (more about Korea's online misogyny at Koreabang and Yonhap News): after a while, it stops seeming like a coincidence that every viral video about shameful public behavior features a woman behaving unacceptably, and we have to ask what's behind the singling out of women for shaming. You think men never fight, smoke, or act out drunk on subway cars? (You've never been on line 1, have you?) Yet it's the women doing the above whose videos go viral. Weeeird. Or maybe not.
I remember my first blog posts about Korea culture... they're painful to read, and full of mistakes and signs that I was way out of my depth, talking about stuff I didn't really know much about. My enthusiasm far outstripped my understanding. I got better: I learned more, and my comments got more moderate and thoughtful. I'm glad I didn't get too badly bullied, shamed, or disparaged, back there during my starting point... that would've sucked. If I had been using my blog for emotional catharsis, I hope nobody would have mistaken my writing for attempts at elevated discourse: that mismatch of expectations leads to misunderstandings, and people forget that not everybody who writes on the internet is actually doing it for an audience. I hope that as so-called "Tumblr feminists" use the internet to sort through, hash out, and ripen their ideas about gender issues, or just to vent pent-up emotions that their everyday life doesn't let them, their readers are as patient as mine were, or are discreet enough to look the other way, rather than singling them out for bullying and disparagement, the way a phrase like "Tumblr feminist" does. The internet is big enough, and there are enough people writing thoughtful, well-reasoned things about gender issues, that we don't have to seek out the "tumblr feminists" to pick on them, do we?
You've seen this video, if you read the K-blogs. It's been discussed elsewhere...
1. This video is from May -- which pleases me. This video was made by Koreans, for Koreans -- unlike "banning" dog meat during the olympics, this video isn't a performance for a foreign audience. It's Koreans trying to start an earnest discussion. We expat bloggers and viewers didn't figure into it at all. I like that Koreans are deciding to start these kinds of conversations.
2. It's only two guys, and a 5 minute video: who knows what story the original footage told. I'd be surprised if the narrative was as clean as it's presented to be.
It's impossible to make a general statement about whether Koreans are racist or not, just from this. Absolutely impossible. (Though the youtube commenters have been quick to do exactly that.)
So...
Here's a research proposal of sorts: How to Make This Experiment Actually Tell Us Something About Racism in Korea.
(soundtrack: Mashup-Germany - Top of the Pops, 2011. Love these year-end mashup things.)
A. Count the number of passersby in the full hour of filming, or film until a set number of pedestrians pass by. Or until the subject of the experiment (the white guy, or the SEAsian guy) has approached and spoken to a set number of people (say 200, or 500). Send them out so they spend an equal amount of time approaching strangers on the weekend, the daytime, the afternoon, the evening, and lunch break.
B. Make a few categories of responses, say:
1. stops longer than ten seconds and helps
2. gives less than ten seconds of help
3. passive negative response - averts eyes, moves to other side of sidewalk, walks faster, etc.
4. active negative response - says "no" or responds with hostility
and maybe
5. does not notice
Log the responses from video footage, so that different subjects can be compared in terms of their rate of the different types of responses.
C. Train the subjects to use the exact same wording and body language in their approaches. If you have the budget, have one set of subjects being more direct, and another set being less direct... in the exact same way, with the same wordings and gestures, as much as possible.
D. Ensure there are equal numbers of male and female, good-looking and unattractive, tall and short subjects in each group.
E. Find that variety of subjects across more than two races: South-east Asian, South-Asian, Middle-Eastern, North-African, Central-African, Caucasian, Latino/Hispanic, and East-Asian.
F. Repeat the experiment using similar groups, similarly trained, or the same group in:
1. a residential area
2. a busy downtown area
3. a popular tourist area
or/and in
1. a big city
2. a medium-sized city
3. a tourist town/area
G. If possible, have an equal number of subjects approaching people speaking Korean (the local language) and English (a commonly spoken cosmopolitain language).
H. Repeat the exact same experiment, as closely as possible, in several major cities on each continent, or in a big city, a medium-sized city, and a tourst town/area in several countries on each continent/region of the world.
Gather statistics. Crunch numbers. Compare.
IF, across all those factors, Koreans still treat the white guy more favorably than the dark guy, TO A GREATER EXTENT THAN the average of all the groups of people, from all the places, in all the data we've gathered... and far enough above the average that it can't be accounted for with the margin of error inherent in gathering statistics...
we can say that this video shows Koreans are more racist than other countries.
A bit over a year ago I made this video to point out the extreme level of overpackaging many products have in Seoul: even Wifeoseyo's mom is shocked by the overpackaging when she comes in from Daegu.
The question is: has it gotten any better since then?
Yet another condescending article lacking in sources, dealing in stereotypes about Korean women in the workplace. Now I'm not sure if this is the Chosun Ilbo Korean as well as the Chosun English (pretty embarrassing if this is the premium content that they've chosen to translate, in putting their best foot forward for the international English speaking audience), but whatever the case, articles like this sure won't help Korea shake off its reputation for being a rigidly uber-patriarchal society.
Now it turns out nobody wants to work as a subordinate to a female, (if by nobody you mean 64% said they preferred working for males, when we don't know what questions, or how they were asked) because of some generalizations that sound to me like gender stereotypes, along with results of a survey that includes no information whatsoever on how the statistics were gathered, or how the questions were asked.
I'm sure other bloggers could give this article a much better read, but the fact remains, articles like this are are a drop in the bucket, and nothing more than symptomatic, of a society that keeps plummeting towards the bottom of the world gender gap rankings... with a millstone (that's the opposite of rising with a bullet, I guess). 92nd in 2006 (embarrassing enough for a country with a top 15 economy), and a startling 115th in 2009. 18th from the bottom. For a bit of perspective on that, many of the countries ranked lower than Korea are countries where female genital mutilation is still practiced.
Frankly, it's embarrassing for ABC to fall for this kind of junk, and allow it up on their page, without sending a fact-checker in.
You can read the comments I left on the article's comment board (or read the copy of one of them here:)
As an English teacher in Korea who works hard, obeys the law, and nevertheless is often judged according to the crass stereotypes presented in the article above, I resent being characterized this way. Using interviews with only two English teachers, and providing no comparative context for the statistics used (comparing drug arrests to the total population of expats, the Korean population, the Korean rate, or the rapid increase in foreigners living in Korea) is lazy and irresponsible, and far below the standards of an international outlet.
Frankly, this article sounds like one of the intellectually lazy scapegoating smear-jobs frequently printed by domestic Korean media, which have been frequently and roundly criticized for bias, yellow journalism, distortion, and manufacturing news.
This journalism is not even as bad as the stuff the Korean media usually trots out — it’s worse. The claims being made are even broader, made to an audience that can’t really know otherwise than to think our citizens really are coming over and influencing all of Korea to smoke out, and the actual focus of the article isn’t really even ABOUT what the title suggests.
From the linked article, about a Dunkin' Donuts spokesperson wearing a scarf that unintentionally resembled the keffiyeh, a scarf symbolic of Palestinian jihad:
“Absolutely no symbolism was intended. However, given the possibility of misperception, we are no longer using the commercial," the company said in a statement.
They pulled the ad entirely because of a possible misunderstanding of its meaning.
To Coreana (who merely rephrased a slogan and narration and attempted to smooth over a Nazi reference, and to my knowledge, is still running the offensive ad): are you listening?
(meanwhile, I can hear sirens in the distance from the beef protests. Hundreds, maybe thousands of North Koreans die weekly in death camps or of starvation, and South Koreans save their outrage for American beef imports???)
I found this on Foreign/er, a random find from the Korean blog list, and found it very interesting to watch.
them cultural lines just keep blurring everywhere.
I really liked the part where, even though you can still hear the hurt in her voice when she talks about the discrimination she experienced when she came to America, she still explains how she doesn't see a racist in the old man shouting at immigrants in his neighbourhood; she sees a man having an identity crisis as the America he knew for sixty years suddenly changes completely. What an amazingly compassionate way to think of these people, kicking powerlessly against a changing world that just won't stop rolling, no matter what they do, and all that remains for them is to slowly watch themselves become irrelevant in the new society that sprouts up around them.
[LETTERS to the editor]Wrong example May 12, 2008 Ser Myo-ja's May 9 front page article, "American pedophiles banned by authorities," should raise concerns among Americans, fact-checkers, and anyone else at all concerned with the truth. Ser Myo-ja reports on the Ministry of Justice's ban on convicted American pedophiles from entering Korea. Ser Myo-ja goes on to mention Christopher Paul Neil [who was arrested in Thailand as a suspected pedophile who preyed on young Asian victims] as if he were American. He's not. He's Canadian. Why wouldn't the article mention that? The Ministry's ban doesn't affect Canadians. You should get your facts straight lest you add to the miseducation of Korean citizens, poisoning the minds of a society already tainted by isolationist ignorance and prejudgment. Your misleading article poorly informs Koreans.
Nathan Van, Seoul
Once again, I raise my glass to Nathan Van from Seoul.
We'll see if my letter to the Korea Herald gets printed. . . it was a little longer than his, and used words like "shame" "racist" "irresponsible" and "duty to the truth". . . even if it doesn't get in the paper, they read it, and it'll go up on this blog, regardless.
Soundtrack time: hit play and start reading. I'm intentionally choosing religious music outside my own culture for this essay.
Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan, luminary of Quawwali singing, a form of worship from Sufi Mystic Islam, where they repeat lines praising God until they reach a nearly ecstatic state. If you give it a chance, it's actually quite amazing. Our man Nusrat has an amazing voice; Quawwali singing is a tradition that's been passed down through his family for six hundred years! Even Jeff Buckley paid his respects to him.
There's a babble of voices these days, see, where so much information is coming at us from every direction that it becomes difficult to even look at most of it, much less investigate, inquire, and discern spirits. While wading through such an overload of input, the difference between a voice I attend and a voice I ignore can be razor thin. When competing with so many other voices for people's attention (to say nothing of trust), the voice of faith and spirituality needs every bit of help it can get, and can barely afford any clutter before it starts losing credibility.
There are different ways a voice can gain influence: the threat of violence, the potential for profit, the sheer power or extremity of the rhetoric, the sheer number (or wealth, or might) of the group speaking (a billion Catholics can't be wrong, can they? What if a billion and three Muslims say they are?), the potential to help one/many/the world toward some goal (world peace, environmental sustainability, personal profit, peace of mind), the qualifications and history of the speaker (when the Dalai Lama speaks on human rights, more people listen than when Kim Jong-il does). All these things can increase the volume of one's voice in the babble. Some of them increase the volume at the cost of credibility (like people who use violence to demonstrate their beliefs), while others increase their volume through credibility.
With so many voices out there, the voice for faith must actually be what it claims to be: this is the first step toward legitimate moral authority. Every time religion gets mixed up in politics, or money, every time any religion attacks something it doesn't understand (science and art come to mind) instead of engaging, it loses credibility: we appear stubborn and disingenuous, angling our spiritual claims into political or financial power, to protect our interests, or to suppress ideas that make us uncomfortable. I would never trust a church which had a tithing chart on the wall to shame members into giving the full 10% (as one of my students' mothers' church does): how could I know whether the pastor gave me godly counsel, or just flattered me to maintain his meal ticket? When Korea's new Presidentnames Somang Church deacons to important positions in his government, or George Bush says stuff like this, it makes religion look like a way to get ahead, a card to play for political points, rather than a worthy pursuit of holiness, or an example of the kingdom of heaven on earth. It's at the point, here in Korea, that when church leaders start talking, a lot of people automatically startlooking for the angle. In a country with so many Christians, having a church that often seems more interestedin political influence, publicity, money, outperforming other churches, and inflated membership numbers, over community, integrity, and help for the helpless is an outright tragedy!
Faith gets dragged through the mud when people tack religion onto their agendas in a play for a little extra legitimacy. Religion's credibility and moral authority is in tatters, when it should be the very engine of our claim to legitimacy, and the longer we let all this agenda-poisoned, disingenuous angling pass for religion, the less religion will be able to compete with other influential voices, that are what they say they are.
It's no wonder Dawkins wants to picture religion as a disease in human society, of which humanity is slowly curing itself. Imagining that the aforementioned duplicity will eventually end is a hopeful, cheerful wish for the future indeed! Baby nothing, this bathwater is emitting mustard gas!
So what's to be done, eh?
Well, here's the ten point list for restoring our credibility. Yes, I'm gonna be prescriptive.
1. Head for the front-lines: feed the hungry, clothe the naked, help the sick, visit the prisoner, fight for social justice everywhere. Don't wait for video cameras to show up: just do it. While I don't know enough to speak for the other major religions, the most respected Christians of the last century were Mother Theresa, who fed the hungry, clothed the naked, helped the sick, and visited the prisoner, and Rev. Martin Luther King Jr., who fought for social justice. Pope John-Paul II and Billy Graham might come next, and both of them may have faced criticism for this and that, but they also both were exactly who they said they were.
2. If we don't understand it, don't talk about it. There are very smart religious people in every field of knowledge, who have well-informed and worthwhile views on everything from Harry Potter to Creation to the moral questions raised by medical technology that can keep a person alive long after they would have died back in the days when religious positions on euthanasia were originally formed. Let's listen to them, and support them, instead of wading in over our heads! If I meet another Christian who says "I haven't read them, but I'm sure the Harry Potter books are all about the occult, so you shouldn’t read them, either," I'm gonna scream. (Also: respect other fields of knowledge for what they do. If I meet another Christian who flatly says, "I'd never see a counselor: I'm a believer!" I'll scream, too.)
3. Stop being satisfied with "well, that's what I believe." Nobody else is satisfied with that answer, so if we want to get beyond, "I guess we'll have to agree to disagree," we'll need to dig up something a little more convincing.
4. Recognize that fundamentalism is not only off-putting, but too inflexible to respond to a quickly-changing world. (See here if you disagree) -- fundamentalism turns faith into a foxhole where we hide, when a framework of belief ought to be a hill on which we stand to get a better view of things. Once faith began repudiating society, rather than working in and with it, we started the long march toward irrelevance.
5. Find a positive definition for who we are and what we believe, instead of a negative one. Instead of focusing on how the others are wrong, or bad, let's create and maintain a positive community, where the communal and spiritual benefits of membership are so obvious that recruiting is unnecessary. Instead of writing hate letters to Richard Dawkins, let's get our butts into the community and help so many people, in such tangible ways, that non-religious people stop nodding their heads in assent with Dawkins, and start exclaiming, "Who is this clown? Has he ever actually met a Christian? Why doesn't he attack groups that deserve to be taken down a notch?"
6. Feed the hungry, clothe the naked, help the sick, visit the prisoner, fight for social justice everywhere.
7. Get mad, real mad, and loud, when people use religion and religious language for personal, political, social, or financial gain.
(by the way, if religion must get political, we need to pick our battles better: it is an outrage that the Christian lobby in America is fighting against gay marriage and supporting the war in Iraq, rather than lobbying with every ounce for universal health care in America, help for the poor, and social freedoms everywhere. So what if Christians were called "bleeding heart liberals" when they opposed slavery -- it's better than getting tied in with Bush's oil crusade.)
8. Get mad, real mad, and loud, when people preach hate, murder or fear, while waving religious flags. The world needs to know that we are just as offended as they are by Fred Phelps, and his ilk, and that they are a lunatic fringe, in no way representative of the majority of religious people, who are decent, moral, and helpful, and loving: these people are the straw man I mentioned in part three. Instead, we need to get behind people like the writer of this letter, and represent. If we don't hold the wackos accountable in-house, we'll be grouped with them.
9. Get on the right side in the LGBT (Lesbians, Gays, Bisexuals, Transgender/Transsexual) debate. Every other time a group was oppressed, disenfranchised, or in need, Christians were on their side offering compassion, love and support, until this one, and it’s hurting us. As my friend Mel said in an e-mail once, "We're on the wrong side on this one." Doesn't "I cried for hours when I heard about that gay teenager who got beaten to death" sound a little closer to the Godly compassion we're told to have than "AIDS is not just God's punishment for homosexuals; it is God's punishment for the society that tolerates homosexuals." (Jerry Falwell) or "[Homosexuals] want to come into churches and disrupt church services and throw blood all around and try to give people AIDS and spit in the face of ministers." (Pat Robertson) Who are these guys and what have they done with my faith?
10. Feed the hungry, clothe the naked, help the sick, visit the prisoner, fight for social justice everywhere.
Soundtrack: hit play on Huun Huur Tu, the Tuvan Throat Singers who are like nothing you've EVER heard before.
Yeh.
On Modern Religion's To Do List for finding a way spirituality can jive with the Global Village and the Information Age: Here's where things get harder. We have to do something about these dilemmas; if we bend too far, then we don't really stand for anything, but if we're unwilling to bend, we're irrelevant, because we can't contribute anything to a dialogue if we aren't also listening.
Engage with: art, other religions, humanities and science in a way that doesn't condemn, condescend to, inherently repudiate, or attempt to establish primacy over any of them, and that is more meaningful than simply "agree to disagree." Religion is no longer the core value of society, and the faster we adjust to this, the better off we'll be.
Recognize that the polemical passages in the holy books were written at times when religious groups needed to band together in the face of persecution, or to create a good strong "in-group" feeling that helped them fight off the raiders from the hills, and do not fit in a global village with quickly dissolving borders. It's a new world, where "us" meets "them" every day, such Amish-style segregation or cloistered fear of the "other" no longer washes. Think really carefully about such passages, and how they ARE used vs. how they SHOULD be used, if at all (we've stopped following other parts of the bible; I'm sure it's the same for the Quran). The world will allow us to keep repeating the same "we're right, they're wrong" points. . . but our audience will shrink with each repetition, until religion as we know it will remain only in quaint little pockets, neatly segregated like the Pennsylvanian Amish now, and ignored except as a novelty.
Recognize that the world is very different than it was when the holy books were written and when the organized religions' infrastructures were designed. We must adapt or fade away: an overly rigid top-down model is too cumbersome for the quick shifts of the information age. We need to recognize and empower grass roots movements, and make information freely available. In the age of transparency, being authoritarian and mysterious breeds mistrust instead of a sense of sacred awe.
Think very carefully about the arrogance inherent in any claim to be the "one, true religion," and how often one's religion mostly depends on one's birthplace and family. Think long and hard about what kind of creator would send all Muslims, Buddhists, Hindus, Taoists, Jews, Christians, Atheists (basically, all Notmygroupians), to hell, basically because they had the misfortune of being born in Saudi Arabia, Thailand, India, China, Israel, America, or France, instead of in Myculturesville. Think long and hard about how the claim God would send every Muslim to hell for the sin of being born in the Middle East or North Africa, makes God look a little arbitrary and capricious, and also kind of reeks of 19th century colonial arrogance. Think about the possibility (and the hope) that God is subtle enough to see beyond a checklist of signifiers ("Baptized? Check. Communion? Check. Sinner’s prayer? Check. Went to church every Sunday? Check. OK, You’re in." "You? Sorry. My name's God, not Allah. You wanted to serve me, but you were reading the wrong book. Tough nuts for you!") and actually read the heart. Think about the parable of the blind men and the elephant.
(a sidenote tangentially related to the previous point:
One final thought about Richard Dawkins and his book:
I must say that I respect Dawkins' integrity in qualifying even the chapter that "has contained the central argument of [his] book" (187), by titling it "Why there Almost Certainly Is No God" (my emphasis) rather than "Why There Is Definitely No God" -- to qualify even the statement he most passionately believes to be true shows an impressive accountability to the other side, to the possibility that he might yet be wrong. One of the things I respect about the scientific method is that scientists always know exactly what it would take to change their mind about a topic: compelling evidence. If faced with that evidence, any self-respecting scientist WOULD change sides.
This might sound like a petty swipe, but I sincerely wish I saw such "I don't think I am, but I still might be wrong" intellectual integrity and humility in more religious debates and inter-faith dialogues; things might go a little more smoothly if we did.
sidenote over.)
Create a framework that is integrated and useful. By integrated I mean NOT saying "Here's the sphere of religion; here's the sphere of art; here's the sphere of science, and never the twain shall meet," but one that acknowledges all aspects of being a human, alive and learning, in the modern world, and finds useful ways that each aspect can enhance and inform the others.
See, I think organized religion can be really good. It can offer people a chance at connection and community; it offers a hope for the future that'll get you through the deep valley, when applied properly and compassionately. It provides a concrete moral compass as well as a community that can be around, ready to help when the things get confusing, or when the feces hit the fan. It can connect people with opportunities to make a difference in others' lives, to help others in concrete ways, and it can inspire them to get involved. These are all good things, and I (unlike Mr. Dawkins) am convinced that despite having been abused, and despite some hiccups of intolerance and ugliness, the world IS better because of religion's influence through history.
Yeah, things look bad right now, and it's time for a splash of cold water and an honest look in the mirror for pastors, priests, imams, rabbis, monks and everyone else who is responsible for saying of religion, "This is what we are." It's time for a calling to account of those who are manipulating religion and the religious for their own ends. It's not too late.
You know, the only time in the Bible that we see Jesus fly into a full-blown rage is when he was cleaning the money-changers and crooks out of the temple: the people who used the name of God for their own personal business made Christ himself see red! When religion has become a lever for financial or political gain to many, let's ask again, "What would Jesus do"? He would have stormed into those bastards' offices and started flipping tables!
To survive this atheist attack, faithful readers, it's time our religious institutions did the same.
Update: My friend tamie is a beautiful human being, in all the important senses of the word, and she writes beautifully about why religion, why going to a church (or a temple, or a mosque) IS a good thing. Don't take it from me; Here's why faith can still be relevant.
I strongly recommend you read my summary/explanation Dawkins' his attack on Christian morality, here. I did not include it in the essay, for the sake of length and aesthetics, but it is important/worthwhile to read, and know what I'm talking about, and my basis for the assertions I make here.
I read Dawkins' book carefully: I sure wasn't going to let him get away with anything, when he's taking aim, among other things, at the first twenty-two years of my life, and the better part of the following six, most of my moral fiber, as well as my Dad's livelihood. I was looking, and expecting, to find the straw man argument -- a logical error where someone misrepresents an opponent's position.
And oh, I had my radar set on ultra-sensitive! I would sniff out the first hint of straw like a bloodhound with hayfever! And. . . Dawkins looked ready to offer a straw man. In Chapter Nine, he describes a Jewish child being kidnapped (rescued) by the Catholic Church, taken from his home to be raised by good Catholics instead of by hellbound Jesus-killers (according to them). Now, the problem is, this happened in the late 1800s, and after the ground-rules he himself established in Chapter Seven (about the moral zeitgeist, and the necessity to refrain from judging other eras according to modern values), Dawkins' offering an example of religious fervour gone haywire from bygone times is a red herring. "Yes!" I thought, "Next he's going to start referencing the Inquisition and the Crusades, and then we'll have him: all we have to do is answer, 'Well times have changed, you know; we don't do that kind of stuff anymore.' " Every bickering couple knows that bringing up the past just makes things ugly, and only hurts your case. Never give up the high ground!
I had my "the scientist doth protest too much" defense at the ready, tucked in my sleeve and ready to lay on the table decisively and gleefully!
But then Dawkins did something. . . not entirely unexpected, but much more problematic for the defense. He didn't name-drop the Crusades or the Inquisition, except to mention that he wouldn't unfairly dredge up times when religion was a mere excuse for manipulative, power-mad or hateful people to puke their black souls all over whatever institution had given them power and leeway. Darn! He saw me coming, and refused to pull the cheap trick that would have given me the rhetorical high ground! Instead. . . (Mayday! Mayday!). . . he started drawing examples from mainstream religion in the last seven years!
Forget corrupt Medieval Popes and Bloody Mary and all the Reformation wars -- that stuff's easy to dismiss. Our man Dawkins planned to use relevant examples!
So instead of this:
he was using this:
(Ann Coulter is the most abrasive person I've ever seen.)
and this:
(Pat Robertson calling for Hugo Chavez to be assassinated.)
This would be harder than I thought. In fact, it shaped up as the worst-case scenario: he had a leg to stand on! His one example of the Church's immoral behaviour from times past (when the moral zeitgeist hadn't developed as far as it has now), got my hopes up, but the following pages and chapters chronicled examples of religious intolerance, clannishness, and extreme fundamentalism from our very own day and age. So many, and so sharp, it is shocking and dismaying.
Soundtrack: Hit play and read. Jim White: If Jesus Drove a Motorhome
Pastor Poposeyo called on Wednesday night, and we brushed on some of this, and then I veered away, saying, "Yeah, I'm gonna talk about that in my next post."
Here's the problem, dear readers.
Of all the spiritual and faithful people I know, I don't think any of them believe America, or any government, should be(come) a theocracy. Most of them bluster when they hear somebody lobbying to put creation into the science curriculum. They rankle when somebody says that the only proper place for a Christian woman is in the home, submitting humbly to her husband and head. Most of the Christian women I know don't wear floral prints, and none of them own any precious moments paraphernalia. They can't listen to Christian Talk Radio without squirming.
To a person, they agree that faith works best when tempered by sensitivity, humility, tact, and reason, and that it behooves each person of faith to build a workable framework by which they can be spiritual and intelligent, guided by faith and common sense, living integrated and edifying lives. Most of them try, in different ways, to develop their social consciousness and make the world better in practical ways. They volunteer, and sponsor acres of rain-forest and children in Afghanistan.
Problem is, these aren't the people jumping in front of TV cameras, representing the various faiths. Somehow, the media digs up the dumbest, most knee-jerk conservatives for their pundits and random interviewees, and make it look like Christian folk are all either gun totin' tabacca chewin', gay-hatin' furraner fearin' right-wing nuts, or Ann Coulter. Ditto for the other faiths. The Christian lobby's agenda is so different from the goals of the spiritual people I know personally, that it's a little startling to see them both described as Christian. The way the religious are portrayed in movies is even worse (case in point: I watched "There Will Be Blood" today;) but whose fault is it that screenwriters only have Pat Robertson to watch on TV as an example of "What Christians are like"?
Unfortunately, it is our fault. You see, we let those wingnuts speak for us. The moderate faithful, rather than kicking up a duststorm of our own, asserting our existence and saying "Hey! Not every Christian agrees with Jerry Falwell!" and getting behind the spokespeople who do, we quietly distance ourselves from the fundamentalist wingnuts, and the politicized, fundamentalist Christian Lobby. Oh, so quietly, we distance ourselves. We do not denounce them publicly so that it damages their credibility (and boosts ours) but quietly, so that nobody notices, and our silence is mistaken for tacit approval, or even assent.
As a result, instead of the Christan community marginalizing the crazies in-house, thus marking our turf and claiming a workable place in enlightened society, we have allowed them to bark and squeal, never complaining that they do not actually represent us. Because, in our complacency, we did not marginalize them, we have now been grouped with them, and marginalized by ever-growing tracts of the educated, democratic world.
In conclusion, the problem is not that Richard Dawkins uses a straw-man argument to discredit organized religion, dear readers; the problem is, we have given him the straw man, and it is not surprising, now that we have allowed the media and the intelligentsia to lump us all together, that we find ourselves under attack.
Dear, faithful readers, the moderates have dropped the ball, and now we are reaping what we allowed others to sow, as if on our behalf: we are losing our credibility, and our voice.
From the outside, this is how we look:
"We should invade their countries, kill their leaders and convert them to Christianity." Ann Coulter, on 9/12/2001
All of us are being made to look smug, tribal, belligerent, interested (that is, angling for our own interests, rather than fighting for things like social justice), willfully ignorant, and (thanks, gay-bashers) hateful. Soon to be irrelevant, too if we keep on in this direction.
If Christians at large represented themselves, and supported moderate, sensible spokespeople, and leaned on the media for going with the unfair, cheap stereotypes instead of actual representatives, and meanwhile became the kind of wellspring of grace and love and acceptance, the powerful force fighting for justice and defending the helpless that religion has (at its best, during certain periods) been, then people would read Dawkins' attack and say, "Who is this clown, and where is he digging up his examples? I don't think he's ever met an actual Christian in his life!" instead of nodding their heads and thinking, "Yeah, I've seen/heard/read/met someone exactly like that." It is our fault that people do not. The dire truth, faithful readers, is that at this point, Dawkins IS right, far too often, and we need to get back to proving him wrong. Stay tuned for part 4: How.
For the sake of length, attention span, and aesthetics, I moved my summary of Richard Dawkins' explanation of darwinism/origins here. If you want more background, read up! If you think you can go it without, read on!
"Jesus" by Velvet Underground -- one of my favourite VU songs.
A name came into my mind as I was thinking about this whole Creation/Evolution thing. See, Darwin is not the first scientist whose theory flew in the face of conventional theology. Let's think for a moment about Galileo:
In 1633 Galileo Galilei was imprisoned for publishing his theory that the earth rotated around the sun, rather than vice versa. This idea didn't fit with the way the church understood scripture at the time. However, the inquisition found it easier to throw one guy up against the wall than to re-think the arrangement of the heavens. For them, putting Galileo in the wrong through sheer force of "because I said so," was easier than going through all that thinking.
If we look at this with a little perspective, I’m sorry folks, but the creationist lobby flying in the face of all the cumulative scientific evidence just doesn't wash any better than those priests arguing to Galileo, “That can’t be! The bible says. . . “. Arguing for the six-day, young earth creation in the face of all the evidence to the contrary is a losing battle, and the more bitterly creationists fight it, the sillier all Christians ultimately look.
Now, we shake our heads and snicker at how short-sighted and self-serving Pope Urban VIII and Robert Cardinal Bellarmine were when they released the hounds on Galileo; we tut-tut that they should have been open-minded enough not to impede the march of science, we intone that such blatantly obvious truths, based on growing volumes of observable evidence, should have been given more weight. . .
How is this any different, really? It's the same dilemma: it's less work to dismiss a new idea than to factor it into a new, workable framework, but folks, citing scripture to disprove Darwin only further undermines the intellectual credibility of all faith, and undermining our own credibility, in a world with a multitude of voices competing for attention, is the very, very last thing we want to do!
Just as the church, after Galileo, had to reinterpret and retool the way they understood the bible's account of Earth's place in the universe, the burden lies on us to be intellectually responsible and re-examine our approach to Genesis creation story. Falsely setting up faith and intelligence as mutually exclusive sets religion on a path toward total irrelevance, so a tactical retreat is in order: we are wasting energy and credibility on losing battles, and it would suit us better to get back to the areas where the church still CAN have influence in the world: feed hungry, clothe naked, help prisoners, defend the defenseless, fight for justice, so that even if people can't agree that the bible (or any other holy book) is scientific, they can agree that Christians (or any other believers), through tireless effort, are certainly making the world a better place.
And you know what else, folks? Faith SURVIVED Galileo. Big G's publications weren't an attack, and they only damaged the church exactly as much as the church leaders proved themselves ignorant and dogmatic in response to Galileo's attempt to learn more about God's Creation. Faith CAN survive Darwin too, if we're willing to re-think this whole origin thing with open minds.
I am afraid that, if fundamentalism runs unchecked (both here and in the Muslim world), religion will come to be seen as a politicized, rallying point for dogmatism, a point from which one guards against new ideas, rather than one vantage point from which one can survey all the various fields of knowledge in the world God (presumably) created. If this drawing-lines-in-the-sand, belief-over-evidence trend continues, religiousity will slowly become marginalized, viewed as anti-intellectual and (next after that) outright superstitious, and then (eventually) anachronistic, a leftover of “those dark, old superstitious days of the bloody religious wars." Richard Dawkins will be proven a prophet!
(King of Carrot Flowers Parts 2 and 3, by Neutral Milk Hotel.)
What the hell are you doing, Roboseyo? Why do you zero in on the most controversial topic you can? I mean, everybody knows that religion, politics and money are poor form and bad manners at the dinner table.
True, true, it is bad manners. (Why do you have your computer at the dinner table, anyway?) But, you see, this guy named Richard Dawkins, a respected scientist, has written a book, and gained fame and notoriety by suggesting that, GASP! religion is not only wrong, but, to wit, the world would be better off if it disappeared entirely! (He even makes a case for why religion should not be privileged above other topics, and made "off limits" for any critical talk, thus, according to him, it's open season already, anyway.)
While my faith does not follow the exact pattern of my dad, Pastor Poposeyo, who sent me to Christian schools and everything (I chose the Christian university myself, though), my spiritual life is very important to me, and it enriches my life a lot (even if I don't talk about it often, and then only obtusely). Yeah, I've unorthodox'd the hell out of what I believed back in high school, but when old Dr. Dawkins publicly, articulately and unequivocally says the world would be better off if religion vanished completely, regardless of my mixed opinions and oddball postures, I stand up and take notice.
As humans often do when faced with a sustained and emphatic attack, many religious folks find it comfortable to write Richard Dawkins and his polemic off completely, either disregarding his rhetoric, or counterattacking.
However, I don't think either of those responses quite washes. If my colleague comes to me and says, "Hey, can we talk about the way you sing loudly to yourself and laugh randomly and suddenly at your inner monologue's jokes during office hours?" and I plug my ears and shout, "NANANANANANA" until she goes away, or call her a dum-dum-head and slap her with my brown-bag lunch, I'm not exactly winning friends, OR influencing people. Faced with a harsh criticism, I ultimately help my office-cred more when I try to look for the valid points beneath mean Sharon's* brutal honesty (even if she IS a shrew).
(Names have been changed to protect the privacy of shrew coworkers. Danielle.)
The hardest times in my life are the ones that taught me the most. . . might it not be the same with criticisms, that the harshest appraisal can teach me the most? Moreover, why WOULDN'T a group being roundly attacked listen carefully to those attacks. . . and rather than listening only to gather ammo for the counterattack, why not listen, and then root out the cause for those criticisms, and do away with them, pulling the rug right out from under such strident opponents? Scratch any criticism, however aggressive, however rude, and there's a teachable moment. . . if we listen. (Yes, I'm using first person plural to refer to the huddled hordes of spiritual people; hope you don't mind.)
Iron sharpens iron. Accountability helps me become a better person, and by the same token, I believe organized religions would be better served by listening humbly to Richard Dawkins' intelligent and not ungrounded attacks, than by simply ignoring or condemning him. Personally, I think Dawkins' book (and Christopher Hitchens' book, etc,) is a wake-up call of the highest order, friends, and urgent as indigestion! Whether he's right about everything or not, whether his information is all accurate and fair might be debatable, but what cannot be argued is that THIS is what modern religious practice and culture looks like to an outside observer, and THAT, dear readers, is a sobering thought.
My discussion of Richard Dawkins' attack upon Christendom and religiondom in all its stripes and shades, will come in four parts. This, the first one, will basically only outline the reason I'm writing, and what I am and am not trying to do with this series. The next one will deal with what Dawkins says about origins, and the way religions have responded to scientific claims about origin. The third one will deal with Dawkins' direct attacks on organized religion and practice in the second half of his book, and how I think religious leaders ought to respond to them. The final one will discuss, "what next" -- what is the outlook for the future of organized religion, in light of the attacks and criticisms discussed in the first three parts of the essay.
Parameters and Disclaimers:
So I read Richard Dawkins' "The God Delusion"; I read it with an open mind, because if you've made up your mind what you plan to think about a book before even reading it, why waste your time? I headed in ready to be convinced (if he presented a convincing case), but also carefully attuned for bullocks (if he misstepped). If you're not willing to give Dawkins the benefit of the doubt, you probably won't agree with most of the rest of what I say here, so kindly move on. (Here is as good a place as any.)
In this series,
1. I AM discussing organized religion at large. To do this, I will paint with a broad brush. These are generalizations, and OF COURSE I know that not all religious people act in the way I describe; however, when a critic like Mr. Dawkins sees what he sees when he looks in from the outside, it means that TOO MANY religious people ARE acting in the way I describe (if they weren't, Dawkins would have no reason to aim his big guns at religion, and would have picked on somebody else, like maybe nationalists, or capitalists, cheese-eaters, or SUV drivers).
2. I AM dealing with material Richard Dawkins discusses in his book "The God Delusion" -- I may refer to a few other books. I strongly recommend you read this book, if you are not sure what you think about this topic, or if you are VERY sure what you think: an unchallenged victory is without honour, and an unchallenged belief is vulnerable both to attack AND manipulation. If somebody can recommend an intelligent, well-written and persuasive defense of God and religiousity, please cite it in the comment board! There are other books both for and against Christianity, faith in general, and God, but I haven't read them, so we'll just have to keep the focus narrow, to indulge my ignorance and laziness. (I do recommend "Finding Darwin's God" by Kenneth Miller, a defence of Darwinism written by a scientist who is also a devout Christian.)
3. I AM discussing religion as it is practiced in modern society; this won't be a philosophical or theological discussion; it will be a discussion of current practice and attitudes toward religion, as seen by a careful and interested observer (your friendly neighbourhood Roboseyo). The practice is the interpretation and embodiment of a religion's beliefs; the texts might show what we want to be, but the actions show what we are. As such, I am not here to discuss what Paul, or Jesus, or Mohammed said about religion, nor how I personally am spiritually fed; I am here to discuss how religion is practiced by its followers today, and how it appears to outsiders.
As THIS GUY says (about Islam, this time) here, "People say 'you can't judge islam by its followers' but that's like saying you can't judge a football team by its results. Islam is its followers" -- nobody cares what the playbook looks like if the team can't win on the field. Or as one might say, the proof of the pudding is in the eating, not the recipe.
4. I AM trying to offer a look at current religious controversies that will be interesting to non-religious outsiders, and challenging to religious readers.
5. I AM trying to discuss the organized religions in general (because Dawkins' attack is a general attack on organized religions); however, like him, I was raised in a Christian family, so that's what I know. Some of my comments may be a little Church-0-centric, out of ignorance of the finer details of Islam, Judaism, Hinduism, etc., not because I think that they are irrelevant. Hopefully the principles I discuss are broad enough that they can be applied to other groups as well. Also: I live in Korea, and come from North America, so a lot of my examples discuss the North American and Korean church; this is not meant as a snub to Europe, South Asia, or anywhere else, but a simple concession that I don't know as much about them.
Also, in this series,
I am NOT trying to definitively prove God exists.
I am NOT trying to definitively prove God does not exist.
I am NOT trying to establish the primacy of one religion over another.
I am NOT trying to establish the primacy of science over religion, or vice versa.
I am NOT attacking you, personally, or your beliefs (really, I swear).
I am NOT ignoring the great variety of different ways people practice religion, and saying every religious person is the same.
I am NOT saying I approve of the strident, and some say shrill way Dawkins attacks religion.
As I said before, and as King Solomon (may have) said long before me, "Iron sharpens iron" -- clear, focused, intellectually vigorous thought begets more clear, focussed, intellectually vigorous thought, and right or wrong, Dawkins has given me a great deal of intelligently and vigorously argued thoughts about God and religion. This WILL sharpen my own thinking, trimming the fat of superstition away, and leaving only the muscular integrity of tested belief, and that, dear readers, is a good thing, no matter how you slice it.
