Corporal Punishment in Korea's Schools

Brian in Jeollanamdo's latest post calls bull on the education officials who claim foreign native teachers are not "ethically qualified" to teach Korea's children, when Korean teachers hit students with sticks, or humiliate them by forcing them to take off their skirts. Brian's article is rich with links to recent news stories and articles about the issue of corporal punishment, and a good place to get a quick primer on the topic.

see, sometimes stuff like this happens in Korea. (caught on cellphone camera) (warning: shocking videos of violence against children)


And this...



In response to public embarrassment over videos like this, rather than, say, re-training and firing teachers who hit their kids, teachers banned cellphone use in classrooms. ARGH!

yet the moral fiber of the native English teachers is called into question more often than the Korean teachers who do stuff like that. (read more about it at Brian) fact is, the foreigners working in Korea's schools are on a super-short choke chain leash, while the Korean teachers know that it's pretty much impossible for them to get fired, once they land that vaunted public school job.

I had a student once tell me that in Korea, the stick a parent uses to beat their child is called the "love stick," and the old trope that abusive teachers are the only ones who care enough to hit the kids still circulates from time to time.

Here's the Metropolitician's old post about his own problems with the Korean Teachers' Union.

Happy Easter! here's someone to pray for.

No soundtrack. This is sad stuff.

the North Korean Arirang Games: a propaganda gala that might just be the biggest spectacle on earth, performed yearly.


The Ryugyong Hotel, maybe the ugliest building in the world, and certainly a contender, was never completed. It would be one of the world's tallest, and during one year of the 1990s, North Korea put a full 2% of its entire GNP into its building, but bad engineering, no money, and low-quality concrete doomed it to never being completed.


Things are getting worse in North Korea. The food shortage has reached the capital, and Kim Jong-il's reign might be entering its death throes. That throws a wildest of wildcards into East Asian geopolitics, and meanwhile, people in NK are starving.

I went there once. . . you can read about it if you like.

These kids were chosen for the propaganda video, and probably trained brutally, because they looked healthier than the other kids in Korea. This article might make you cry: the reporter describes a hospital in NK, and the health care adults and children receive.



Follow these links. Read them. Let them break your heart, and then go call your local government representative, write letters, and ask them what they're going, and what your government can do, to help these people.


http://freekorea.us/2008/03/22/china-arrests-40-more-north-korean-refugees/

http://freekorea.us/2008/03/20/the-beginning-of-the-end-food-shortages-reach-pyongyang/

http://freekorea.us/2008/03/20/must-read-wapo-predicts-food-situation-will-pressure-kim-jong-il/

http://freekorea.us/2008/03/19/most-of-the-film-had-to-be-kept-secret-for-the-past-years/

This is a series called "The Vice Guide to North Korea" -- an utterly fascinating account of a TV crew that entered North Korea as tourists, and poked around, surreptitiously recording things on camera (despite the risk of being arrested and detained for doing so). Their take on North Korea is really eye-opening, and sad as hell.

http://freekorea.us/2008/03/22/the-vice-guide-to-north-korea-ep-14/

http://www.vbs.tv/shows/north-korea/

http://freekorea.us/2008/03/19/the-vice-guide-to-north-korea-ep-13/

also, while you're writing letters:

Get mad, real mad, about the way China has stifled criticism about Darfur, Tibet, North Korean refugees, religious prisoners, rampant deforestation and pollution, and every other topic, in the lead up to these Olympics. It's EMBARRASSING that the Olympics are going to Beijing, given China's human rights record, and it's pathetic that no country is willing to step up, say "We're willing to pay more for cheap plastic toys, because China's behaviour is not fitting for a developed nation, and we will not send our athletes to such a violent, repressive, country, where groups and entire countries and cultures are dehumanized and repressed without accountability.


Every time China has been criticized, they're responded NOT by changing policies or improving the situation, but by counterattacking, smearing the critics, and increasing export tariffs to those countries, using its economic clout to stifle criticism.

Instead of discourse and reform, we get bullying and intimidation, and bullcrap like this.

The more I think about it, the more upset I get.

Ya gotta respect China for what they're doing (unheard of growth), but the way they're doing it just cooks my grill. And blaming the Dalai Lama for the violence in Tibet is the biggest load of bullshit I've ever heard. . . this is a world leader, IOC? Seriously? (yep, that's right. I'm putting the SH-poop-word on here. I'm that fucking mad.)

This is an award-winning documentary about North Korea.

Why Modern Religion Deserves Richard Dawkins, Part 4: Why Should I Listen To You? or The Crisis in Moral Authority

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.

To read this essay in the context of the other parts, go to the previous essay, or the table of contents.

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 President names 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 start looking for the angle. In a country with so many Christians, having a church that often seems more interested in 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.

To read the other essays in my Richard Dawkins series:
The previous essay. Table of contents.

Why Modern Religion Deserves Richard Dawkins: Part three: The Straw Man We Gave Him

Soundtrack: just hit play and start reading.
REM: Losing My Religion


To read the other essays in my Richard Dawkins series:
The previous essay. Table of contents. Background for the next essay. The next essay.

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.

From Salon.com, a few articles I spotted that kind of get at some of the problems:
October 23, 2007: "How Bush Wrecked Conservatism" -

"The Coulterization of The American Right"

"In Bush We Trust" -- GWB has attempted to set in place a theocracy

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

I could go on, but even Dawkins is kind enough not to cite more of that kind of dreck in his book -- though he does tell you where you can find it.

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.

To read the other essays in my Richard Dawkins series:
The previous essay. Table of contents. Background for the next essay. The next essay.

Why Modern Religion Deserves Richard Dawkins: Part two: Creation/Evolution, Science and Anti-intellectualism

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!

To read the other essays in my Richard Dawkins series:
The previous essay. Table of contents. Background for the next essay. The next essay.


"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. . .

And three hundred years from now, I have very little doubt that people will sniff and snort in the same way at George W. Bush and James Dobson and the Kansas School Board and whoever else is trying to get Intelligent Design on the science curriculum. (Heck, the Kansas School Board is already being mercilessly mocked, and it isn't even a decade!)

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!

There has to be another way.

To read the other essays in my Richard Dawkins series:
The previous essay. Table of contents. Background for the next essay. The next essay.

Why Modern Religion Deserves Richard Dawkins, Part 1: Parameters

To read the other essays in my Richard Dawkins series:
The previous essay. Table of contents. Background for the next essay. The next essay.

Soundtrack: hit play and start reading.

(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.

To read the other essays in my Richard Dawkins series:
The previous essay. Table of contents. Background for the next essay. The next essay.

Oh no. He's talking about religion again: The H-Bomb

Cake. Sheep go to heaven. Goats go to hell.


So, I read "The God Delusion" by Richard Dawkins last week. It was really interesting, and I'm working on an essay series titled, "Why Modern Religion Deserves Richard Dawkins" that will appear on the blog in several parts. If god talk is too much for you, I'll try to intersperse it with normal blogoseyo stuff, so it doesn't get too heavy.

Dawkins gave me a lot of food for thought, and stirred up a bunch of stuff I've had on my mind before, too.

Here's one interesting point. This wasn't in Dawkins, it was triggered by something I read here (point 10), which has been turning around in my head for a while.

I used to say "nobody flew airplanes into buildings to prove The Beatles are better than the Rolling Stones."

It was my way of saying "Religion is important. God is important. Don't dismiss it too lightly." Yeah, heart-poisoning hate, and a bunch of geopolitical yuk played its role, but in the box "reason for killing innocents" on their application for heaven, Osama's hijackers wrote, "Defending our Religion from the Infidel". So why is it, I thought, that when religion is on the table, the stakes get frighteningly, murderously high.

The answer is complex, but the theological part of it is simple.

Heaven and hell, grasshopper. Just so simple, polarized so quick. No middle ground can ever exist between two people who each honestly believe the other is going to hell.

See, if I say "I like avocado salad" and Robby-Bill-O, that charming hyuk from the boonies, says, "I like roast squirrel," we can go on our merry ways, cheerfully thinking, "To each his own."

But if I say "I like avocado salad, and you can go to hell if you don't!" and Robby-Bill-O, that ignint backwoods redneck says, "If you don't like roast squirrel, you can go straight to hell for all I care," it gets a little harder to let our differences slide without contesting the point. Especially when he's an uneducated redneck just parroting what his momma taught him, who never learned to think for himself the way I did in college. He can't even spell intransigent!

However, with religious talk, that's EXACTLY what happens. If my friend Ahmed says "There is no God but Allah, and Mohammed is his prophet," and I say, "God so loved the world that he gave his only son, that whoever shall believe may not perish, but shall have eternal life," the implication/assumption, "I'm going to heaven because I believe this" is there, not far from the surface. A little deeper underneath, "and if you don't, you aren't," is often tied on like a free sandpaper sample with my moisturizing lotion set. Those undertones have been known to complicate interfaith dialogue, yo.

My man Yusuf Islam (the artist formerly known as Cat Stevens) says "You can't bargain with the truth" in his song, "In the end."


It's a beautiful, light pop song, catchy and hummable, but the posture he strikes: "you can't bargain with the truth" is pretty inflexible; the song's actual message, packaged in this sound is like a brick in a fluffy pillowcase.

Two points come up because of this:

1. When neither side can supply compelling, empirical evidence, opposing truth claims kind of cancel each other out: all we can really, finally finish on is "well, you'll see after you die!" -- decision deferred. Seeing as nobody's come back from the dead and said, "Yeah, hey everyone, the Hindus had it right all along, and you're all coming back as rhino buttworms for fighting so much", we're back where we started, with my word against yours. Each tradition has a case for their truth claims, many followers, HUGE repositories of teachings, arguments, and anecdotes to support them, and all we finally finish with is several camps shouting what amounts to, "Is so!" "Is not!" "Oh yeah? You'll see!" "No, YOU'LL see!" in a see-saw with makes both sides look a bit small, when there are, you know, hungry mouths to feed and prisoners to visit and aid organizations to support and people being oppressed in all kinds of ways around the world.

2. The promise of heaven and the threat of hell, in the absence of the aforementioned empirical evidence, will not convince a rational thinker who does not already believe what I am telling them. Bringing heaven and hell into a conversation with a non-religious person pulls very little weight.

As this guy (same one I linked to earlier) pointed out, in rational discourse, one does not answer a question with a threat.
"Why should I agree with your doctrine of atonement?"
"Because you'll go to hell if you don't."

Because I can't prove that I'm right until we both die, that statement reads as a non sequitur, and makes further discussion impossible, just as much as
"Why should I vote socialist instead of conservative?"
"Because I'll punch you in the throat if you don't."

By the same token, the offer of heaven is unsupportable, except through reading from a book that my bud isn't convinced yet is true, and maybe anecdotes that he wasn't there to witness.

"Why should I come to church with you?"
"So you can come to heaven!"

is tantamount to
"Why should I sign this petition?"
"Because I'll give you a cookie." (admittedly, with much higher stakes, though)

Where the truth of an assertion is unprovable, incentives and disincentives to agreeing do not change the unprovability of said assertion.

Religions need to find a new way to legitimize their claims, and also to contradict their critics: if nothing else, this heaven and hell talk is a rhetorical dead-end. It also leaves religious proselytizers/apologists vulnerable as an inverted hedgehog to the old trap, where my non-religious friend asks me, "So do you think I'm going to hell, then?"
I have to either answer, "Yes." and piss off my bud, "No," and make it sound like I waffle on the very thing I want her to believe, or dodge, leaving myself open to the "You don't know. You CAN'T know" objection.

All I can really say is, "Here's the information, here's what I think, and like my man Yusuf Islam says, we'll all find out in the end". . . and then keep humble, because it might be ME who's wrong! It might be better to let God decide who goes to heaven and who goes to hell, and as tiny finite humans, respectfully step away. These days, when somebody asks me about heaven/hell topics, I answer, "Not mine to decide." Yeah, it's nice when somebody says, "I agree with your positions on X issue. You seem like a good Christian/Muslim/Buddhist/fillintheblank" -- but as far as I know, God doesn't ask for reference letters when separating the sheep from the goats.

So, as I hope I've demonstrated, playing the heaven and hell card is unfruitful at best, when dealing with someone who doesn't believe, and won't be convinced without evidence, and incendiary at worst, when dealing with someone who DOES believe in them, but passionately disagrees on how to get there.



Now don't get me wrong: I don't think there's anything wrong with believing in Heaven or Hell. Go ahead and believe in it, and even go ahead and play the heaven/hell card in a religious discussion, but recognize that it's taking you out of the realm of rational discourse and into the muddy waters of unsupportable faith-based belief. If you're comfortable starting sentences with "I believe that..." instead of "We can see that...", delve away. . . but don't expect to convince Richard Dawkins.

In fact, for the sake of good manners and mutual benefit in interfaith and faith/non-faith dialogues, we might be better served not to play the heaven and hell cards at all, unless we're honest enough to admit that the only support we have is our interpretation of the book our conversation partners haven't necessarily accepted as the absolute truth (and which they may interpret differently anyway), and using it is essentially a rhetorical molotov cocktail that boils down to "I'm right because I said I'm right, OK?", and turning the whole conversation from a discussion to an argument.

But religion IS important, right? I mean, remember what you said about the airplanes back in the beginning? Sure, it's important, but the airplanes bring us back to another important point. Flying airplanes into buildings didn't automatically make Osama's truth-claims right OR wrong. It's time to admit that the actions of a faith's adherents, though sincere, do not prove the TRUTH of their convictions, only the depth and type. Cutting off my finger because I believe the world is flat doesn't make me right; it only makes me a fanatic. Recognizing this distinction is another step toward an actual, fruitful interfaith dialogue. A million pilgrims walking the Camino trail in Spain does no more to prove Christianity's truth than a million Muslims doing the hajj in Saudi Arabia; it is a touching demonstration of devotion, but it doesn't actually change the facts under discussion.



Just because the worship of Isis and Amon-ra led to the building of the pyramids and the sphinx does not mean they deserve a continued following, if their beliefs and practices are shown to be superstitious, irrational, or harmful. This "what have you done for me lately/how do you like me NOW?" crucible swiftly removes history from relevance in discussion of the clash of cultures. It is not relevant that Muslims in the 8th to 12th centuries led a blossoming of study that influenced pretty much every field we know, any more than it is relevant that Michaelangelo's greatest works were all on religious themes. The question is, today, right now, is a religion's practice producing and encouraging the long-term sustainability of humanity, reconciliation and the kinship of all humans, or is it fostering divisiveness and scorn and tribalism, RIGHT NOW? Wiping the slate clean and looking at things as they are instead of as they were might be a breath of fresh air on this whole stagnant debate/culture clash. Having wiped the slate clean, things look rough: this is how the religious look to some outsiders, and they're publishing books, and getting on TV, and spreading their ideas, which shows that they're finding others who agree with them, too.



That's a serious wake-up call, dear readers, and dear believers.

When you boil away all the historical baggage, the crusades and Constantine's christendom and the inquisition and the demonization of the west as "the great Satan", when you close the holy books with mutually exclusive truth-claims, when we stop being afraid to say stuff that might offend someone, and simply judge the tree by its fruit, well, then we're at least ready to discuss the current relevance of organized religion, and whether it is a help or a hindrance to a more enlightened world, rather than running aground on the kind of intractability and dogmatism that hinders discussion when heaven, hell, holy texts and absolute truth-claims come into play.

On those terms, right now, according to Richard Dawkins, it isn't, and the fact he can say that and support it doesn't necessarily make him completely right (I'll get to that), but the fact he says it at all, and can support it at all, and especially the fact that he's found a LOT of support, and has sold a buttload of books, should be a bucket of icewater in the face of religious leaders around the world, who were so busy fighting their culture-wars that they never noticed, in the zeitgeist of the times, it seems that people are starting to get sick of their barking about the same old things, and refusing to listen to dissenting opinions.

And as we go, let's not forget, too, that if somebody DID fly an airplane into a building to prove the Stones were better than the Beatles, it would not automatically win the argument, it would not elevate the topic to any degree of reverence (or should not). How does it help the discussion, OR change rock history, if Beatlemaniacs become afraid to declare their loyalty, and nervous to whistle "Love Me Do" in public, for fear of offending those militant Jaggerites and Richardsonians, who want "Satisfaction" played instead of the national anthem at sports games? To cease further discussion of beatles vs. stones because of such a demonstration, or for fear of reprisals, is a kind of anti-intellectualism that shrivels under scrutiny, but robs credibility from everyone involved in the dialogue before it goes. To declare a topic off limits because of a threat amounts to intellectual terrorism -- surpression of discourse fits better in a Stalinist regime than a modern democracy. So yeah, let's be ready to talk about this. Let's be ready to disagree, even, but let's not send people to hell for disagreeing, let's listen to each other, and let's actually be willing to have our minds changed.

(PS: Yeah, sure, I do believe in heaven, and wouldn't want anyone to stop on account of me, and I'm sure Mom's up there now, having a grand old time, but I'm not ready to stick my neck out anymore and tell anybody that THEIR way of getting there is wrong, because I'm not God, and such talk will never help religious culture get along peaceably and positively with those in society who respectfully disagree. -- if they respectfully disagree, and we disrespectfully disagree (by telling them they're going to hell), who has the moral high ground?)

To read the other essays in my Richard Dawkins series:
Go to the table of contents. Go to the next essay.

They found the Arsonist.

You can read about it at The Marmot Hole, so I won't reprint the whole thing here, but basically, they caught the guy who torched "National Treasure Number 1". His reason? He was upset because a contractor paid him a lower price than he asked when they built apartments on his land.

Even worse, last year he ALREADY tried to burn another cultural heritage site, to draw attention to his grievance. It seems he went for National Treasure Number 1 because he was further miffed about having to pay fines for trying to burn down buildings in Changgyeonggung palace.

He apologized, and made the "it could be worse" defense, saying, "I was thinking about attacking a subway station, but chose a national treasure instead," which is like a wife beater saying, "you should be thankful: I only hit you with an open hand! Vern next door uses his fist on Marcie!"

Now here's the thing.

It seems like the old forms of protest aren't enough for the crazies anymore.

I mean, back in the good old days, if you had no other options and nobody was listening to your complaints, most people simply participated in self-destructive behaviour -- get drunk, ramble onerously about "The Man" for a while, say bad things about whichever scapegoat you've chosen to bear the blame for your own disappointments, and get on with life. Maybe throw in some passive aggressive law-breaking -- "Ha! I never wear my seat belt, because, damn the man!" "I call police officers 'pig' behind their backs" "I don't declare all my extra income." "I litter. . . mwahahahahaaaa"

But in our hypersaturated information age, that stuff just isn't enough anymore. People want a stage. In feudal Japan, seppuku, or ritual suicide, was a very honourable way to add gravity to one's protest, or to avoid shame in death, in the case of being captured or defeated in battle. Nowadays, a suicide doesn't even make it into a big city's newspaper pages, unless it's a particularly heartbreaking case, and probably one that also happens to fit the political agenda of the right (or wrong) political commentator/journalist/moralist/loudmouth.

So what do the crazies do? The ones that want a stage? I mean, to regain a few moments of power, in the face of all the powerlessness, what do the disenfranchised have to do these days, for someone to validate their complaint, to vent their rage and impotence?

(warning: this is a clip from fight club. it's kinda graphically bloody)


Destroy something beautiful.

Destroy something priceless, something precious. It's not enough anymore for me to drink myself into oblivion and drown in my self-pity. Now, I have to get revenge at the world. Columbine, Virginia Tech, WTC, burning Korea's National Treasure -- finally, they know they exist, I guess. They got their names in the newspaper.

And how many of these kinds of unnecessary, wanton tragedies could have been prevented, if people had listened to those on the margins, and how many of them were the inevitable acts of deeply disturbed minds who were completely out of touch with reality? I don't know. I don't know the role of mental disease in these cases, I don't know if each of these people could have turned a corner, if the right words, or the right kind of compassion, had come along at the right time. I don't know which of these were simply the outward expression of an intense, black hole of hate inside somebody's soul, and I certainly don't know how those deep black holes got there in the first place, and (this is the hardest part) I don't know which disenfranchised group will be the next to lash out. Nobody does -- that's the scary thing. While everybody's trying to reach out to The Muslims, there could well be an abandoned and ostracized Vietnam Vet polishing his rifle; while we're thinking of Cho Seung-hui (Virginia Tech shooter) and trying to reach out to maladjusted immigrants, some member of the uneducated, working poor, helpless to stanch the bleeding of his credit card debt on his mortgage-crippled sub-sustenance-level income, or some salaryman whose health insurance company won't give him a friggin' break, buys a cannister of gasoline and a lighter, and heads for the nearest administrative building. Who's to say?

And a lot of these things CAN'T be prevented. You'll never eradicate school bullying. Racism will continue to be felt (whether imagined or not) and victim mentalities will continue to fester, as long as there are groups of people who look different, or act different, or talk differently, from other groups. The powerful will always prey on the powerless, and the powerless will grow angry (the only prerogative left to them).

Now I'm not some kind of communist, but I do think that the measure of a society, and, I suppose, of our entire race in the end, is not the level of opulence the rich enjoy, but the degree to which our most powerless are respected as humans (all these bartletts regulars seem to concur). Dostoevsky's (possibly apocryphal) quote states that "The degree of civilization in a society can be judged by entering its prisons."

Who knows. Maybe the revolution is coming. Maybe things will mostly stay the way they are, and maybe there are some people who will never be satisfied, who will always find excuses to feed their anger, instead of trying to live beyond it. Maybe such people will always want to take something with them when they go, and for all they care, having their name and face in the newspaper for a day, having everybody know exactly WHY they in particular are angry, is more important than any other person's life or treasure.

If that's true, there's nothing we can do to stop those kinds of crazies from continuing to appear out of nowhere, and making the world suck for a day, or a week, or a two-term presidency and maybe more (thanks, for that, Osama. You dick.) For my part, I just hope I can treat the people I encounter as humans, and as worthy of dignity, so that even if I can't stop the helpless/angry/crazies, I'll know I'm not helping to make more of them.

I'm really just adding to the cycle.

When people get their news from the internet, with its 24 hour coverage, things get silly, with journalists clamouring for column inches on the relevant topics.

My favourite example of this phenomenon is the meta-column. This actually makes me think back to my University days, and the idea of primary and secondary texts.


Here's how the ladder goes:

Top:
Primary texts, like "Hamlet" by William Shakespeare.

Secondary texts, like "A Structural Analysis of the Dialogues Between Hamlet and Ophelia" by Dr. Hoight D. Toity

Tertiary texts, like "A Critique of Dr. H.D. Toity's Structural Analysis of the Dialogues Between Hamlet and Ophelia" by Dr. Ivy ReTower

and possibly, if the controversy gets heated enough:

a Quaternary text, like "The Flawed Reasoning in Drs. H.D. Toity and Ivy ReTower's Analyses of Dialogues Between Hamlet and Ophelia: A New Perspective" by Dr. P. Arasite. (aka: I couldn't think of an original article, but I need to publish to stay on the tenure track)

And so it goes. I don't know if you ever reach bottom in this kind of self-reflexive cannibalism.


The crazy thing is, these days, the same self-reflexive feeding is happening in the news. I like to call this meta-news. Meta-news is news that comments on news -- rather than discussing world events, you discuss news coverage of world events, the method, emphasis, responsibility, integrity of such.

Think about it:

Primary news: "Paris Hilton (or Michael Jackson, or Lindsey Lohan, Britney Spears, Tom Cruise, Mike Tyson, or whoever the latest pop-culture whipping person is) Does Something Disgusting but Not Altogether Surprising." by Associated Tabloid Press.

In a move that disappointed thousands of loyal fans, _______ committed a shocking act of ________ in a ___________ last night, in an incident that lasted __________ until ________ showed up and calmed everything down.

(Sometimes the real headline here is "Hey Everybody! Look Over Here And Get Distracted From The Mess We've Made In The Middle-East By Wasting Your Attention on Useless Crap!" by the G.W. Bush Administration and Fox News.

Hey Everybody! Look over here! She has blonde hair! Blonde hair! You like blonde hair! Your sons and cousins are dying in a needless war, and we're only just beginning -- the Iran scheme is already in the preparation stage -- but THIS GIRL IS FAMOUS, and she has a little dog with pink ears and Blonde Hair! She was in a sex video once and she has blonde hair! Look at her! She's rich and reckless with blonde hair! Grab your ankles while we stomp on your freedoms because she has BLONDE HAIR!!!!!)

The next wave:

Meta-news as analysis: "A Publicist Discusses the Implications of This Latest Non-Scandal" by Headlin G. Rabber.

It seems nobody is advising her on managing her image. She's obviously addicted to flashing cameras. If I were her publicist I'd say she. . . but doesn't her blonde hair look great!


Meta-news as commentary: "Why Are We Paying So Much Attention to Such A Waste of Copy?" by M. Oral Soapboxer

This isn't news! I can't BELIEVE so many people are reporting on this! What a society of clowns and hypocrites we are when we think THIS is important! Pay no attention to the irony in the fact I am adding to the coverage on her, by criticising it.

Look at this. Ahh, grandstanding. The sweet sweet smell of righteous outrage on national television!




Next: Meta-meta news: "Columnists Grabbing For Column Space by Claiming To Be Above It All are Phoneys!"

Don't even click on the link everybody. Don't even read the article. Let MY article be the last one you read on the topic. The only way we can make her go away is to ignore her. And read my article. And send it to your friends. Just click on the e-mail to your friends button, and the press agency sends me a thousandth of a penny. They add up. Really.

and finally, Meta-meta-meta news: Old Roboseyo

What a farce this is. I can't believe I clicked on the link, too. I can't believe I'm putting it on my blog.
Yes, even adbusters etc. is part of the cycle when they criticise it.

What's to be done? Our lives are filling up with useless information. How do we get back to caring about what's important, and getting others to care, too? Seriously, all it takes for us to stop thinking about Blackwater, Guantanamo, Pakistan and Myanmar, is for Paris Hilton to climb out of a car without wearing panties. . . AGAIN? THIS, and we settle back into our duoback chairs and forget about writing letters, attending protests, and storming the lawns of our leaders to get things sorted out?

I don't even know what to say, except that when I think about it too much, I think that if there's real estate for sale on Mars, I'd think about going.

the Korean saying for being too stuck in your own perspective, your own point of view, your own comfort zone, so that you can't think outside the box, and can't think accurately anymore, is "A Frog in a Well"

So how do we get out, and get angry, and actually do something?

leave a meta-meta-meta-meta comment if you like.

Moral Authority and Soft Power, or Nobody Listens When the Pot Calls the Kettle Black, part 2

Here's another example, one that cuts both ways, from where I see it.

(Leading in:) After World War II, the US came clean on the Japanese internment camps they'd run, made reparations, made a public, official apology, and so made it possible to start healing. Germany did the same in Europe regarding the holocaust, making it possible to normalize relations between them and the other countries of the EU.

Over in East Asia, though, relationships between Japan, China and Korea are strained these days because Japanese history books and politicians are smoothing over, or flatly denying a pair of disgusting blots on Japan's wartime history. There was a huge civilian massacre in Nanking during the war, the seriousness, and the very veracity of which Japan has disputed, and Japanese soldiers also kidnapped hundreds or maybe thousands of young women out of their villages in the territories they occupied during the war (Korea, China, Indonesia, etc.), housed them outside the soldiers' camps, and basically forced them to be sex slaves for the duration of the war. They were euphemistically called "comfort women" because that sounds better than "sex slaves" or "rape-bunnies". Japan's politicians have been saying that these women went voluntarily, or that they were amply compensated. Nationalist Japanese politicians are grumbling "I'm about fed up with being asked to apologize" when nobody's ever owned up to it specifically, and Japanese history textbooks have been de-emphasizing or trivializing such events. The Japanese emperor made a number of blanket apologies and such after the war, but Japan has refused to make the kinds of reparations and official statements necessary to allow China and Korea to move on . . . and when they HAVE made apologies, they've often been loaded with vague words, and evasive qualifiers, not ratified by any official bodies, or (former Prime Minister Koizumi caught a lot of flack for this) immediately after apologizing, the apologizers went and paid respects at a war memorial that honoured, among the others, dead war criminals.

At the same time as it refuses to come clean on its own war atrocities, Japan is campaigning to become a permanent member of the U.N. security council. Is there something wrong with this picture? Could anyone seriously trust Japan in concerns of world stability when it won't even play straight with its own history?

Michael Honda is the American politician who led a resolution through congress formally urging Japan to come clean, and he says, among other things (read the article) that "If you want to be a global leader, you have to first gain the trust and confidence of your neighbors."

Here's one article about Japan's comfort women history.

Here are some pictures of former comfort womenI saw in a display outside Seoul's City Hall about the comfort women. Many of them were ostracized as "damaged goods" when they came back to Korea, and never married.


This next one especially breaks my heart because her face reminds me of my mom. It could have been anyone's mother -- that's the shocking thing about it.


Here's a painting that expresses the terror and degradation pretty clearly.



And here's the article about Michael Honda.

On the other hand, Korea has its own problems with moral authority: Koreans cry for an apology and compensation to the surviving comfort women (and their numbers are dwindling as many pass on from old age). It's a shame that Korea waited so long to begin campaigning for their vindication (the comfort women issue was hidden like a shameful secret until the 1990s), but the Korean agitation for an apology is toothless, in my opinion.

You see, the Korean government's refusal to enforce their own laws against prostitution cut Korea's protests to Japan off at the knees. How can Korea claim any moral authority, how can their criticism that Japanese soldeirs violated these young women's basic human dignity hold any water, when it's still common for Korean businessmen to visit "business clubs" and "massage parlours" and "barber shops" where the services for sale degrade the women forced to work there? Sure, there isn't a gun to these women's heads, but it doesn't wash for Korea to demand recompense for women who were degraded in the past, when Korea today STILL degrades their own women through the sex industry, and even the government turns a blind eye to it (after passing some token laws to divert international criticism).

Some links about prostitution in Korea from a site that translates articles in Korean newspapers.

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South Korean movers and shakers also find themselves suddenly looking at the floor, afraid to confront anyone about anything, when faced with topics like this.

It's common here for Russian or Indonesian or Philippino women to come to Korea to work in the lucrative sex trade: travelling to Korea and selling herself for a year will bring a woman enough profit to support her family back home for two more years! The "entertainment" districts are well known in Seoul (Mia, Chongnyangni, Yongsan, there was one in Bangi-dong where I lived before; there are many more), and range from places where you can pay for a woman to simply entertain you (a little like a geisha in Japan - she'll sing and converse and pour your drinks), to (in and) outright brothels. Though it's getting better in recent years, it's common enough that a few years ago, there was actually a campaign where an organization was handing out free movie tickets as an alternative to bosses taking their employees to "business clubs" for their Christmas bonuses. It's never spoken in polite company, but a student told me (and the male student who'd completed his military service turned red, but didn't deny) that when a Korean man is about to begin his military service, a common initiation custom is for his friends, or his senior soldiers, to take him to a brothel, if he's still a virgin, and make sure he loses his cherry before he goes out defending his country! Korea's stand on comfort women doesn't wash to me, because their own record for defending the human dignity of women over in Chongnyangni is pretty poor, while Japan's petition to become a permanent member of the security council rings hollow, too, because of their denial of the past.

All this is not to say that the speaker's character is the ONLY concern in discourse -- the fact Nietsche died in an asylum doesn't mean his ideas aren't worth serious consideration, and the fact some particular writer/poet/politician/artist was gay/a pedophile/rude/a plagiarist doesn't mean we can ignore their ideas completely (the ad hominem attack is an ancient, and petty trick). Shakespeare's sexual orientation has no effect on his genius, and more than a big nose would have!

But in certain arenas, especially those on a national and international scale, where practical action is required, and where a lot of people are affected by movers' and shakers' opinions and decisions, and especially in cases where the people effected by those decisions have little or no power, or voice, or wealth, I think one DOES need to look at the entirety of a group's choices and decisions, sniffing around for ulterior motives, in order to lend them credence. If Nike is planting trees to make up its carbon debt, that's good, but they're STILL running sweat shops in Cambodia. Megaphones and mufflers! I wrote in one of my notebooks in highschool (I'm not sure if I stole this from somewhere or not, but. . . ) "Our words show what we want to be; our actions show what we are."


What say you?