Why I'm Christian

It's guys like him. Michael Wilson is the minister at my church. The United Church of Canada is probably one of the more progressive churches out there, and I'm proud to be a member there. Not once has a message of intolerance been preached. All sermons are hopeful and acknowledge the rights of others to practice whatever religion they want and not denounce them as heathen or evil. And most importantly, I feel comfortable there. A lot of people I know are quick to dismiss religion as misguided and manipulative (and that, sometimes, is true) when a lot of people who are involved with it are good people who truly care about others.

Take, for example, a great sermon Michael preached a few months ago in response to this story.

He compared these idiots to the Pharisees of Jesus' day. He talked about John baptizing Jesus in the river Jordan when they (the Pharisees) came along and wished to be baptized as well. (The Pharisees were essentially the Jewish right-wing - read: opposed change in the religious system.) They wanted to be on the same ground as everyone else so that they could still feel superior to everyone else. They approached John, asked to be baptized, and he basically told them to screw off. "You snakes (or so it goes, roughly), here everyone is trying to change themselves and here you are trying to keep things the same. Out, you snakes!" Michael was all the more incensed at the fact that the students suing their university at the behest of his fellow Christians. "These snakes," he said, "wish to keep their fellow man in ignorance. They do not want any change in their neat, ordered structure. They'd rather just feel superior to everyone else than expand their knowledge, which is what they've been doing all their lives. These snakes are trying to keep things from changing, when changing is what so many more wish to do." But the best was still yet to come. He then told us of his neighbour's young 8 year-old daughter, Miriam. (This sermon was delivered in the winter, btw.) Michael was out shovelling his driveway when he saw that Miriam was shovelling a driveway all by herself. He then realized that she was shovelling the driveway of an injured elderly man who was unable to shovel his driveway himself. Michael called out to her, "Why are you shovelling your neighbour's driveway, too?" Miriam answered, "Because, God says we hafta help others!" Now here's the kicker, something that Rev. Franklin Graham or Benny Hinn would never tell you after reciting this story: Miriam and her family are devout, practising Muslims.

In a later sermon, of which subject I don't really remember, these few lines in particular stuck out for me: "It doesn't matter whether you believe that Christ hasn't come yet, believe in Allah, believe in Buddah, believe in Vishnu; God still loves you. We're all God's children." Oh yeah, that's why I'm a Christian.

Since When Were They Pro-Life?

Hmm....why do they do it? A giant, steaming rolling ball of hypocrisy in the Terri Schiavo case is all I can make of anything I read about it. This woman has been in a persistent vegetative state (PVS) for a good 15 years now. Doctors have said repeatedly that she has no hopes of recovering. Can this woman really be considered alive when the only thing keeping her from dying is a feeding tube? All this talk about her being alert, conscious, and awake is bullcrap. This would mean that a huge cover-up was taking place, being conducted by Terri's parents and the hospital staff in Pinellas Park, Floridia. How did they get that around all the other court-appointed doctors who determined that she would never recover? If that was the case, then the judge would simply ask her what she wanted, there would be no fuss. I wouldn't be making this post.

This whole thing is a big farce on the part of the nut-job conservative "right to life" (which should elicit snickers from anyone) movement hoping to consolidate their right-wing Christian base. They are nothing more than pawns in he sleazey game of politics, and they should know better.

This has been an oft-repeated line throughout the case: "we should err on the side of life." How many times did you, Mr. Bush, err on the side of life when you were governor of Texas when you had the state execute 151 people, including at least one mentally handicapped man? That amounts to two executions a month for as long as you were governor. How about those who would cut benefits to seniors, take away funding to veterans hospitals, and leave your health-care to benefit Big Pharma? But, I guess we all should have seen something like this coming, what with the Republican courting of the religious right throughout the past few years. Now they want the GoOP to do what should be the impossible: put the laws of God above the laws of the land. Even Floridia governor Jeb Bush says that he has his limits (that's the most sense I've ever known a Bush to make). I was talking with a friend the other day, and this is what he said: " If the Shiavo parents had real friends and spiritual advisors, they would be comforting them on the loss of their daughter, and helping them learn how to continue with their lives. I know they love their daughter, but at some point you have to be willing to say good-bye.
It just strikes me as odd. Being religious, I believe that the spirit has life after the body has died, and that helps me accept death. How in the world did we end up where death is the crushing blow to the religious; to the Christians who are supposed to believe that Christ overcame death.
There are some very bad people involved in this, and I hate the pain they have and will inflict on both sides of the Shiavo family." But I digress.

Another point to add to this whole PVS business. Terri Schiavo can't feel anything, because in her condition - according to neurologists - she won't feel any pain as she dies, no matter how slowly it takes. Patients in PVS have severe brain damage and are in a state of "wakefulness without awareness." Anything she may do that would seem to be a direct reaction to her surroundings would be purely coincidental. For a complete history of this case, go here and make of it what you will.

Musical Renaissance My Ass.

Wilco. Modest Mouse. Elliot Smith.

These are just a few artists whose work is starting to get mainstream attention, most noticeably from teenagers like myself. I'm providing these artists because they've been around for a while now and are only now starting to get noticed on a grander scale. They've been recording music for the better part of ten years and now they're getting attention. I attribute this to the internet and its increased usage of downloaders, not that there's any more good music being produced today than there was, say, ten years ago.

Wilco's break into my life came with Yankee Hotel Foxtrot. I had read a favourable review and downloaded a few songs. I was blown away when I listened to 'Ashes Of American Flags' and 'I Am Trying To Break Your Heart'. I immediatly started to seek out their earlier material and found an excellent back catalog.

This is how most bands get their material known: first, they record an album, the album gets good reviews, and from thereonin that should be enough to get airplay. This would be true if the world was perfect. In today's *advanced* world, it is the internet that allows us to have such a wide knowledge of music, because just because a record sounds great, doesn't mean that it'll be played. A good album will have some fans in Britain who'll then rave about it over a message board to someone in North Bumfuck, Saskatchewan, who'll then download every song off the album, and then procede to buy said album at the earliest available opportunity.

But this is just a build-up to the point I'm trying to make. The music being made today is no worse or better than earlier years. You just have to a) look hard enough to find it, and then b) download it. It's the greater access to the good music, not the greater amount of good music, stupid.

Rene Descartes Is Flying On An Airplane...

i woke up at night and my language was gone

no sign of language no writing no alphabet

nor symbol nor word in any tongue

and raw was my fear - like the terror perhaps

of a man flung from a treetop far above the ground

a shiprewcked person on a tide-engulfed sandbank

a pilote whose parachute would not open

or the fear of a stone in a bottomless pit

and the fright was unvoiced unletteret unuttered

and inarticulate O how inarticulate

and i was alone in the dark

a non-i in the all-pervading gloom

with no grasp no leaning point

everything stripped of everything

and the sound was speechless and voiceless

and i was naught and nothing

without even a gibbet to hang onto

without a single peg to hang onto

and i no longer knew who or what i was

and i was no more

So, is language necessary for thought? Definitly.

René Descartes is flying in an airplane. The flight attendant asks him if he wants some coffee. He replies, “I think not,” and disappears. In the context of the poem by Aharon Amir, this is quite simple. Without language you cannot have thought. And when you don’t have thought, you cease to be who you are: calm, rational, and coherent. Language is absolutely necessary for thought. Without language, we would not be able to know anything; our lives would be completely instinctual, with no rationality to our actions. Without language, we cannot communicate with ourselves: reading, talking, writing.

First and foremost, language is used for communication. Not just communication with others, but with ourselves. Who do we communicate the most with? Ourselves. We need to tell ourselves to breathe. Even now, as I write this, I am thinking to myself, processing everything I can remember that I was told or I read over the course of this unit. My thoughts are my way of using language to process the data communicated to me, so that I may communicate my thoughts with you.

Some people subscribe to the school of “if you can’t say it, you don’t know it.” This is wrong for a few simple reasons. First off: dyslexia. The Merriam-Webster Medical Dictionary defines dyslexia as: disturbance of the ability to use language. A dyslexic person has trouble putting words together, and comprehending written language. Just because a dyslexic person can’t express coherently what’s on their mind, doesn’t mean that they don’t know anything. Similarly, there are feelings that can’t be conveyed, and descriptions that can’t quite be expressed. In the case of feelings, the very fact that they can’t be conveyed should be able to tell us that that feeling is to the extreme, therefore we can know, somewhat, what the feeling is. The inexpressible description can come, for example, in the form of a movie. I can watch a movie on television, but have difficulty telling someone else what it’s about. I’ve watched it from the beginning, and I can understand the plot and follow what’s going on with relative ease, but I just don’t know how to describe it to someone else in a way that they would understand. The language I absorb helps me to know what is going on around me.

Amir’s poem describes a person engulfed in fear from waking up to having no language, no form of communication, and no way to know who they are. After all, what better way to define who we are than by the way we think, which in turn guides all our actions? When we cannot define ourselves, we cease to exist as people. Without language, we cannot express our thoughts. There are people who claim to have been discouraged from committing suicide thanks to a certain song or what have you. People have been known to explode with emotion from keeping their thoughts to themselves because they have no one to talk to. Without language to guide us, society becomes a massive, quivering, unstable crowd that will give in to its own violent impulses.

But when we do have language, but no will or means to filter through the muck, we also will have serious problems. Propagandists have been exploiting the vagueness within language for generations, using: word games with what some call “glittering generalities,” name calling, and euphemisms; false connections; special appeals such as “the common touch,” the bandwagon, and – perhaps the most powerful appeal – fear. We’ve seen extreme uses of propaganda before (Nazi Germany), and we still see it today in the manifestos and platforms of various political parties. To a lesser degree, even MADD uses fear propaganda to press their message, but in the case of MADD, is that really a bad thing? In the case of Nazi Germany, the people were led by a charismatic madman who understood the power fear could wield in people. Hitler identified a threat (the Jews), he had a specific recommendation for how the people should react (violence against the Jews), and his magnetism while speaking ensured that the people would listen. The majority of the German people, in turn, essentially gave themselves up to be used as pawns in the Nazi war machine.

This is justly the greatest purpose of language: to guide our thoughts to become the people who we choose to be, not the people that others would have us be. Like the last two lines of Aharon Amir’s poem state, “and I no longer knew who or what I was/and I was no more,” a lack of language is a lack of thought and therefore a lack of self.

Edit: To further back this up is a theory called Sapir-Whorf Hypothesis (SWH). In the most general form, it basically states that the language one speaks has a direct influence on the way one thinks and acts. I read a paper written by a linguist who put SWH to the test by asking a Japanese-American woman questions. When he asked her questions in Japanese, "type a" responses were given. When the exact same questions were asked in English, she gave completely different, "type b" answers. To me, this suggests that languages also contribute to the unquie aspects of the different cultures in the world, which is a shame because so many are set to disappear in the next 100 years or so.

Don't Want A Neocon's Views? Watch The News, Instead

I came across this little gem in today's Winnipeg Free Press in response to a letter from a man remarking how popular right-wing radio was in the States:

Right-wing popular

Re: the March 16 letter Radio was right-wing: first off, let me apologize to the letter writer for "exposing" him to the harmful sounds of American right-wing radio during his recent tour of the southern states.
I can understand how terrible it was fo him to hear so many people who disagree with his views, and how dare they put people like Rush and Sean Hannity on the air.

Let me explain, you see, radiois a business, and the idea is to get as many people as possible to listen. That wat, you can charge more for advertising, and earn more money for your shareholders.

So the writer's point that "Rush Limbaugh and Sean Hannity control American opinion" is completely backward.

They are successful because a large number of Americans (and this ex-Canadian) do agree with their views.

Those who do disagree will have to make do with ABC, NBC, CBS, CNN, NY Times, Newsweek, USA Today, CBC, PBS...

Ron Gaunt - Seminole, FL

And so, if you disagree with these opinions, you can watch the news and form opinions for yourself. I urge you to try it.

Hey! I'm Sorry I'm A Freak, It Just Gets Hard To Speak When No One Ever Listens To You Anyway

They say I've lost it. What "it" is, they haven't really told me. My mind, perhaps? Apparently, a mind is a terrible thing to lose, but don't you worry about that. I know perfectly well where my mind is and it's none of your goddamn business. And so, I've "lost it." Everyone's entitled to their opinion, after all. Well you, your opinion, and the horse you rode in on can burn in hell. That's my opinion.

Well now, this should be fun, although I doubt anyone will notice right off the bat. I don't care. There's fun in anonymity; fun in creating another pollutant to add to the wasteland known as the blogosphere in these here internets. So while you're here, rock and roll. Stay a while. If you're reading this, you've got the time.