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Geoff's Miscellany

Miscellaneous Musings

Culture

The Church in Africa is Unimpressed

March 2, 2019 by Geoff Leave a Comment

In response to efforts of the American leaders in the United Methodist Church to influence Africa’s Methodists to reject the Biblical teaching on homosexual marraige, they did not budge:

I thank God for His precious Word to us, and I thank him for you, my dear sisters and brothers in Christ.
As the General Coordinator of UMC Africa Initiative I greet you on behalf of all its members and leaders. We want to thank the  Renewal and Reform Coalition within the United Methodist Church for the invitation to address you at this important breakfast meeting.
As I understand it, the plans before us seek to find a lasting solution to the long debate over our church’s sexual ethics, its teachings on marriage, and it[s] ordination standards.
This debate and the numerous acts of defiance have brought the United Methodist Church to a crossroads (Jeremiah 6:16).
One plan invites the people called United Methodists to take a road in opposition to the Bible and two thousand years of Christian teachings. Going down that road would divide the church. Those advocating for the One Church Plan would have us take that road.
Another road invites us to reaffirm Christian teachings rooted in Scripture and the church’s rich traditions…

While “we commit ourselves to be in ministry for and with all persons,” we do not celebrate same-sex marriages or ordain for ministry people who self-avow as practicing homosexuals. These practices do not conform to the authentic teaching of the Holy Scriptures, our primary authority for faith and Christian living.

However, we extend grace to all people because we all know we are sinners in need of God’s redeeming. We know how critical and life changing God’s grace has been in our own lives.

We warmly welcome all people to our churches; we long to be in fellowship with them, to pray with them, to weep with them, and to experience the joy of transformation with them.

Friends, please hear me, we Africans are not afraid of our sisters and brothers who identify as lesbian, gay, bi-sexual, transgendered, questioning, or queer. We love them and we hope the best for them. But we know of no compelling arguments for forsaking our church’s understanding of Scripture and the teachings of the church universal.

And then please hear me when I say as graciously as I can: we Africans are not children in need of western enlightenment when it comes to the church’s sexual ethics. We do not need to hear a progressive U.S. bishop lecture us about our need to “grow up.”

Let me assure you, we Africans, whether we have liked it or not, have had to engage in this debate for many years now. We stand with the global church, not a culturally liberal, church elite, in the U.S.

The rhetoric used by Dr. Kulah is excellent. Why? He lulls white American Christians into a moment of agreement by starting the speech with a beautiful call for unity. A cherished idea in modern academia is that while American academics are superior to all the knuckle-draggers in America, ultimately, they are exactly similar to everybody else on the planet. But once he gains that support, he makes a hardline distinction between two roads the church can travel, “One plan invites the people called United Methodists to take a road in opposition to the Bible and two thousand years of Christian teachings. Going down that road would divide the church. Those advocating for the One Church Plan would have us take that road.”

He then reminds them that elite Americans and their western enlightenment values are of no use to the kingdom of God. This is encouraging.

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Filed Under: Contemporary Trends, Christianity, Culture

The Digital Tribe

February 23, 2019 by Geoff 2 Comments

No man is an island, even conceptually.

We see ourselves enmeshed in multple layers reality:

  1. Family
  2. City
  3. Nation
  4. Sport teams
  5. Religious groups
  6. The physical world
  7. Etc

There are certainly more elements to this and many of our social selves instantiate precisely to fit into these groups. So we behave differently at work than at home, in a forrest than at church, at a restaurant than at a friend’s house, etc.

Our bodies have an entire reflect system to help us navigate all of these communities. For instance, you may value your job and your family, but you feel more guilty about leaving your family for a slightly bigger paycheck then you feel about doing w/out the money.

Our emotions, far from being mere spontaneous reactions are deeply social and party rational, insofar as they respond to things we deeply value, either innately or through choice. You might call your family, friends, and religious group a tribe.

Your emotions respond to your perception of your tribe’s approval. This helps you survive. The word being valuing your tribe and the opinions of your tribal members is loyalty or even faith. They are the people you trust and entrust yourself to.

Now, in more ancient times, people were necessarily localist, and so outlier tribe members had two options: leave the tribe or find a niche therein. If they could not, too bad. Leaving meant facing hostile groups or the environment without support.

In the age of the Internet, it is far easier to find a tribe if your family is boring, hostile, or uninvolved. This can be good. So much of our culture is complete bullshit these days, that finding a real, local tribe to fit into is almost impossible in some regions. For instance, I live in a city w/no gym and probably a 90% obesity rate. Almost everybody who goes outside wears sweatpants and sports-team shirts. I do not hate these people, I just cannot fit in with them. Thankfully, I live near a large city with more like-minded people. But if I didn’t, the Internet could provide me with access to experts in weight-lifting, forums of weight lifters offering guidance, support, and encouragement, and all of this would be to my choosing. And this happens for people in many domains: gaming, religion, humor, dating, etc.

What’s my point? That the Internet offers replacement tribes and therefore creates a set of emotional commitments. So while people might feel lonely because they have very little close fellowship with like-minded friends, they also find themselves highly influenced by distant individuals with no skin-in-the-game for their well-being. For instance, an individual with gender dysphoria whose behavior might have been taboo 30 years ago, might have been pressured into therapeutic intervention or into having a private life of cross-dressing and public life that looked much different. Now, such an individual can go to Twitter and find what appears to be millions and millions of supportive cheerleaders, feel really good about a permanently life-altering series of surgeries, and have not one conservation with a dissenting voice that is genuinely concerned. This happens with divorces, religious conversions, abortions, and so-on.

Why? Our tribes are digital.

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Filed Under: Economics, Culture

The Parody of Modern Conservative Ideology

February 20, 2019 by Geoff Leave a Comment

Conservatives rarely conserve anything. This is well known.

What they like to do is make conservative cases for making society worse. For instance:

henever you find an article that begins with the title, “The Conservative Case” for or against something, lock your door, check your wallet, and grab your gun. You know what’s coming is an unadulterated sell-out of everything “conservatism” purports to hold dear.

The words directly following the ellipses usually denote some obviously non-conservative thing, like “a $5 trillion budget” or “transgender bathrooms” or “4-foot-11, 80-pound female Navy SEALS.” Do any liberals ever write “a liberal case” for something obviously conservative, such as the traditional two-parent family or constitutional originalism?

No, this self-sabotaging practice is unique to the American Right, which perhaps helps explain why it’s in such disarray.

Publius Decius Mus

Here are some examples:


Now, an even better one:


What does this mean? It means that the same neo-cons (I’m not including Trump, who likely doesn’t care about homosexual marriage one way or another) who opposed gay marriage in the United States just a few years ago, used their influence in American foreign policy formulation to use gay-rights in Iran and elsewhere as a pretext for more infinite foreign wars. The conservative case for sending your sons to die for the right to engage in a practice condemned by conservatives in a country hostile to your way a life. The conservative case for more government spending to support rights abroad we oppose in our land. The conservative case for making your grandchildren live in a world unrecognizable to you. The conservative case for being a loser.

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Filed Under: Culture, Philosophy, Politics

Why do Academics believe stupid ideas?

February 15, 2019 by Geoff 1 Comment

I’ve wondered this for a while. Why do folks with doctoral degrees, who look down on others for their stupidity, nevertheless reject the value of IQ tests? Why do academics who believe in the power of ethnic solidarity and identity politics also believe that human beings are born as blank slates? Why do academics who oppose fascism, support larger government all the time? Why do academics who believe in the sexual revolution decry rape culture which is essentially the direct result of that revolution (devolution)?

Here’s a nice summary of Jacques Ellul’s explanation:

A related point, central in Ellul’s thesis is that modern propaganda cannot work without “education”; he thus reverses the widespread notion that education is the best prophylactic against propaganda. In fact, education is largely identical with what Ellul calls “pre-propaganda” – the conditioning of minds with vast amounts of incoherent information, already dispensed for ulterior purposes, posing as “facts” and as “education.” Ellul follows through by designating intellectuals as virtually the most vulnerable of all to modern propaganda, for three reasons:

(1) they absorb the largest amount of second hand, unverifiable information;

(2) they fell a compelling need to have an opinion on every important question of our time, and thus easily succumb to opinions offered to them by propaganda on all indigestible pieces of information;

(3) they consider themselves capable of “judging for themselves.”

They literally need propaganda.

Ellul, Propaganda: The Formation of Men’s Attitudes, 2

This is basically right. Nicolaus Taleb calls them “intellectual yet idiots.” Bruce Charlton calls them clever-sillies. It’s probably best to start calling them goobers and weirdos. Sometimes mockery is the best medicine for bad ideas.

What’s the difference between propaganda and education? I can think of one thing: propaganda provides ideas, habits, and attitudes while not providing its consumers with the tools to reject its influence. On the other hand, education provides a tradition of ideas, habits, attitudes along with the tools to reject them if they are inconsistent with apparent reality.

Appendix

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Filed Under: Culture, Education Tagged With: education, propaganda

Words and Rhetoric

February 14, 2019 by Geoff Leave a Comment

When using rhetoric or dialectic, your currency is words, they’re backed by definitions which reflect concepts or terms, and they’re used to buy emotions and thoughts.

When you’re using dialectic, you want to be sure that you and your conversation partners agree about definitions. For instance, I was a part of a classroom management discussion recently, and the author of the material we were using eschewed the use of threats, manipulation, and shame. But those words all have conceptual overlap with these terms, “explaining consequences,” “persuading,” and “social proof.” The author of the materials was even against explaining consequences to students because he believes that changing student behavior only happens through the poorly defined concept of “relationality.” Here’s the point. Teachers were very confused about whether or not they had any discipline tools at all. The author of the material was also a Christian who talked a lot about showing grace to students, but he defined grace in a confusing way. So the main way available to teachers who need to manage their classrooms is basically forgiving them for things.

A discussion about the science and art of classroom management needs clear definitions, stipulated for that dialogue so that nobody is confused about what is occurring. But instead, the author tried very hard to make teachers feel guilty about using “threats,” but he defined threats as something like this, “If you talk, you’ll get your name on the board.” Here’s what he did: he chose a loaded term, defined it in a non-standard way (using an example rather than a technical definition). But the term “threaten” pulls negative emotional energy out of people, so that they feel guilty about doing it even though they are utilizing appropriate classroom management. Now, why would somebody sell a product that guilty tripped teachers into not using guilt? I do not know. I cannot fathom, but this technique of persuasion is very popular and there are many such cases.

You could think of this process as the inflation of terms, whereby you get more use out of a word by adding more concepts to the word while still trying to get the same emotional response from people.

Another example is the inflation of the term racism. Most people think of racism as “hating somebody for their race/skin color/culture.” People feel nasty feelings toward racists of this sort. If you simply hear the word, you feel negatively toward racists. Here’s the inflation: Over and over again, the term racist is broadened to include (and I’m not exaggerating) teaching your kids to read, caring about their education if they’re white, believing in the concept of western civilization, moving into a homogenous neighborhood (white flight), moving into a heterogeneous/diverse neighborhood (gentrification), identifying with your own culture (insularity), enjoying other cultures (cultural appropriation), and so-on. On the other hand, writing thousands of articles with explicit anti-white bias is not considered racist, which is funny because lumping all Asians into one group is racist, but lumping all Europeans and Americans into one group called “white” makes perfect sense…it doesn’t. It’s a trick.

Of course, in argument appraisal, this is the fallacy of equivocation. It’s a fallacy because it means being vague to make your case less subject to criticism. But it’s also a powerful tool to the rhetorically uninitiated. You use a term in a highly stipulated way, that you do not make clear, in order to take advantage of the emotional associations with the standard use of the word. Other words for which this happens frequently include privilege (it’s a technical term for social advantages, but it is used to make people feel guilty for advantages), nationalism (Hitler was an imperialist who used nationalism as the name for his effort to take over other nations, the association stuck), Nazi (Americans, the descendants of the men who killed the Nazis are accused of Nazism almost as though the movement was their fault in the first place), women’s health care (which literally now means abortion and birth control), the Tea Party (they defined themselves as a small-government political group was branded as fascist), and on and on and on.

When this inflation of concepts happens on a mass media level, it is propaganda. Why? It changes your attitudes toward things by using emotional associations tied to a word’s standard use and associating them with a different concept. When you’re reading or listening, try asking, “what does the author actually mean by this term” rather than letting your feelings guide you.

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Filed Under: Rhetoric, Dialectic, Culture, Education

Evidence for Stoicism

January 31, 2019 by Geoff Leave a Comment

Stoicism claims that virtue is the only good and therefore the highest good.

Is there any evidence for this? People really do not live like virtue is the highest good. But, do they live as if the respect virtuous people? Do people live like they want to be known as good people? Yes:

Human rights non-governmental organizations (NGOs)—like Amnesty International—provide a signaling service to their donors. Donors purchase this signaling service, paying for the ability to show the world they are prosocial, open, multi-cultural, compassionate, empathic, and politically liberal. The primary product on offer is a badge outwardly signaling that the wearer is a person who is associated with the broadly known values of the human rights NGO. For the donor, the benefit is prestige and status that comes with associating with the organization. The NGO, for doing its part, receives money, status, and authority.11
The NGO world is a crowded space. Donors have millions of charities from which to choose. An organization does not need to convince donors to change their minds to attract their donation. Instead, the NGO can convince donors that it represents their views and will provide assistance in signaling their commitment to these views and loyalty to their community.
Corporations have discovered the power of virtue-signaling. In a New York Timesarticle, Paul Sullivan writes, “Firms learn that as they help charities, they also help their brands.” For example, Subaru chose “well-known, noncontroversial charities,” such as the American Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals, the Make-A-Wish Foundation, and Meals on Wheels. On the other hand, Discovery Communications, which produces Shark Week, began a wild tiger conservation program.
Companies also signal their virtues in advertisements. Gillette’s viral commercial “We Believe: The Best Men Can Be” was a calculated virtue-branding effort destined to annoy some and attract others, a worthwhile trade for a declining brand. Amnesty International USA, in a rare endorsement of a corporation, tweeted in support of Gillette: “People are upset about the Gillette ad? Repeat after me: We want a world without #ToxicMasculinity.” The international Twitter account for Amnesty likewise supported the ad: “The [world] will be a better place without #ToxicMasculinity.” In a response to an NPR query, a Gillette spokesperson said, “No longer can companies ‘just advertis[e] product benefits.’ These days ‘brand-building’ also means taking a stand on important societal issues, controversial as they may be.”
A study on corporate social responsibility found that 87 percent of study respondents reported “they would buy a product because of something the company advocated.” However, if the company advocates (signals) the wrong cause, 76 percent said they would boycott the product. This consumer demand produces an incentive for companies to learn what their customers want to signal and enhance their brand through the power of signaling.12

The Virtue Economy by Suszie Mulesky

We live like we know virtue is the most important thing, we just wish to be known for it rather than engage in it.

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Filed Under: Ethics, Culture, Philosophy Tagged With: Virtue, virtue-signaling

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