photography, politics, psychology, religion, and me

Mormons are Republicans. OK, not everyone, but a lot of them. Especially the ones in the US West. This bothers me, not on the face of it, but because I’ve seen and heard so much from some of these members that suggests they have not fully considered the many relationships between this (or any) political ideology and the doctrine of the LDS church. I’m going to rant for a moment about one of these relationships.

Much has been made by liberals of the Right’s (and Americans’) apparently endless tolerance for violence in media juxtaposed with their moral indignation at representations of (certain kinds of) sex. For me, this was brought poignantly home when Mel Gibson’s “The Patriot” was the subject of questionably valid rumors that this or that general authority recommended members selectively lifting their “R-rated movie bans” to see it, because it was so patriotic–despite the horrific and occasionally senseless violence it portrayed.

Violence is a problem for me. I like a WWII gunfest or an explosion-riddled cop drama as much as the next guy, but I don’t convince myself that this enjoyment reflects well on the state of my soul. I also respond to scantily-clad ladies dancing on poles in videos, so I am aware that I am a flawed individual.

Money is a problem for me. Well, I wish I had more–that’s one problem. Another problem is the verbal and rhetorical contortions and gymnastics practiced by members of the church whenever anyone quotes one of the many, many passages of scripture warning about the dangers of wealth or condemning the love of money. If you have to work that hard to convince yourself that Jesus wasn’t really saying wealth is spiritually dangerous, then perhaps you need to reconsider your relationship to the words of Jesus. Nobody applies this level of forced analysis to the (arguably not-so-obvious-as-they-seem) scriptures apparently condemning homosexual behavior.

So yeah, about that homosexuality. How many times is it mentioned in all of the scriptures? Maybe half a dozen? And some of them are ambiguous, like the BoM reference to the “sin of Sodom,” which–according to our own prophets–is not limited to homosexuality, but refers to all immoral (even, potentially, nonsexually immoral) behavior. So you’ve got a handful of condemnations of homosexuality compared to….

…at least sixty condemnations or negative references to violence. One of these is in the Pearl of Great Price, when God Himself tells Enoch that the main reason for the flood that killed so many of His children was the proliferation of violence on the earth.

…139 hits for “oppression” (and variants). Nearly 150 hits for “justice.” Over 300 hits for “poor.” Over 200 for “money”–some of those will be neutral references, but guess how many are saying how awesome owning money is versus condemning or warning against this. The much more morally loaded terms “lucre,” “wealth,” and “rich” (and variants) give over 350 hits, the vast majority of which criticize, warn against, or actively condemn the substances and states referred to by the terms.

So when I see Republicans talking about “economic freedom,” and then look to see what they really mean; or railing against regulation of the financial industry–an industry based on playing with money to make more money–or, even more horrifyingly, Republicans actually opposing legislation that would ban “gifts” by lobbyists to lawmakers; I sometimes can’t believe what I’m reading. Aren’t many of these Republicans, at least nominally, Christians? Don’t they read the same Bible I do? What do they think these lobbyist “gifts” are? This is, as clearly as anything in history ever was, pure corruption: providing material goods or services to someone in power in order to influence that person’s judgments affecting his or her sphere of stewardship. And then I go to church and hear members casually mentioning that they don’t understand how any “thinking member of the church” can fail to be Republican.

Just in case my point isn’t poignant enough, we all know that our wars in the Middle East have turned into things much more reminiscent of the Mekong Delta than of the South Pacific. We all know there were no WMDs in Iraq, so we invaded a sovereign nation that posed no direct threat to us. The list of our wars of aggression is horrifyingly long. We claim our soldiers are “Fighting for our freedom,” while perhaps failing to ask ourselves how, exactly, our freedom is threatened by Taliban operatives in Afghanistan, and whether we will ever not be at war.

How many times do you think “war” is referenced in the scriptures? How many of those mentions are an endorsement of war?

Finally, I see recent reports that the US essentially floods the world with weapons. We sell to our allies, but also to our enemies, and certainly to people who are up to no good. I don’t dispute the many good things the US has done and represents; but I dispute the mindless practice of ignoring our concurrent and deep involvement in a great many explicitly anti-Christian activities. And I have a hard time understanding how members of the LDS church can ignore these things when they vote.

A vote for the “lesser of the evils” is one thing, and I respect that approach. Mindless devotion to an ideology in denial of its abhorrent elements is another, and I can’t respect that.

Part of me is relieved, as only a doting father can be. Another part, however, feels a growing concern. It’s not her behavior–my darling daughter is a bubbly, adorable infant as she should be–it’s the behavior of–well, things, around her. I still feel a dread at sharing any of this with her mother, who cannot be grieved with vague, probably unfounded worries; but I wish to write my observations, if for no other reason than to discount them with the lifetime of normalcy surely to come.

Two events stand out in my mind: a mere five or ten minutes out of the last week. How important can such a small span of time be?

First is the cat. Not the frightened one, the other one. He purrs when she does. That is to say, she does not purr, but when she is content and comfortable he purrs. He may not be in the same room, but I have tested this several times–he purrs. When her contentment ends, so does his. I have half-convinced myself that he is also more surly and irritable than normal when she is out of sorts, due to an imminent diaper change or a delayed feeding. But perhaps he simply has an affinity for his new sister. Perhaps this is not unusual, even though his behavior seems  keyed to hers even when he is out of earshot and has had no contact with her for hours.

Then there is the television. We are a simple family, with no need for cable TV or a satellite dish. We content ourselves with three computers constantly connected to high-speed internet service, a Netflix account, two personal MP3 players, some thousands of songs on hard drives, perhaps two hundred DVDs. The lack of good hockey–especially during the Stanley Cup playoffs with Vancouver involved–is a trial, to be sure, but we prefer our lifestyle, even though some might call it ascetic or even Luddite. Due to our lack of cable television, when our DVD player ceases to play discs the television eventually reverts to the random static that–as I understand it–reflects cosmic radiation, a galactic or even pan-galactic phenomenon reflected in the interstitial spaces of our quotidian entertainment schedules.

The incident, if that’s what it is, involved this static. Sam’s bassinet was, for reasons I can’t now recall, parked in front of the television for some minutes. The DVD–Mystery Science Theater 3000′s Shorts, Volume 1, I think–had finished prior to relocating her bassinet thus. The DVD player’s screen saver had been silently running for perhaps half an hour. As it does, it suddenly terminated when the DVD player automatically powered down. The television reverted to static–as I said, we are a bit old-fashioned;; this is an old-style CRT, not a modern flat-screen model–though it remained silent, a nice feature when I bought the TV back in 1999. I kept on with my activities, cleaning or something similar, while liminally noticing the switch to static out of the corner of my eye. Then some unexpected stimulus from that quarter of my visual field attracted my attention. I turned to see the static bunching and spreading… I don’t know how else to say it… as if it were waves in a pond or shifting sands in a windstorm. The waves of static fluctuated from left to right as I watched, back and forth, quickly and nearly randomly, though with a repeating pattern: back and forth, as if two wave patterns were intersecting without any system to their movement. I stared for many seconds before I saw a resonance below the television screen. My daughter, as is her wont, was waving her arms and turning her head from side to side. She happily flailed away, unaware that the static behind and above her, like an animated headstone from a low-budget futuristic movie, waved and fluctuated in time with the motion of her hands.

I watched for some minutes, unwilling to believe what I saw, but unable to look away. The spectacle ended with a scowl on little Sam’s face at the exact instant the television turned itself off–another attractive feature on a 1999 model 32-inch Philips/Magnavox set. Or I assume it turned itself off. It seemed a little too soon for that to happen, but I neglected to look at my watch.

Naturally, Alex was nowhere around. If she were, what would she think? But she was not, and what would she say if I were to tell her that perhaps her daughter can control the static pattern on the television? Or perhaps it can control her? Of course I screwed up my courage, later that day, to attempt to replicate the phenomenon, but with no repeat of the inexplicable sight I have described. The static showed no responsiveness to my daughter’s motions. I don’t know what to think, but if I were a drinking man, I might have a drink right now.

I write this with a growing mix of love and dread, mixed perhaps with some fear or fear-like emotion–possibly just extreme nervousness and a bit of flatulence, which–let me tell you–can sometimes turn perfectly ordinary mild fear into full-blown terror. Please let it be the gas. Just the gas. I write so that those who read these words might begin to understand, or at least approximate an understanding, of the heavy @#$% that is going down in the lives of two very normal parents. Okay, mostly normal. Also, what is normal, anyway.

My wife’s pregnancy was uneventful enough, so it seemed: there was some nausea, some glowing, some elation, some very uncomfortable sleeping, some dizziness, some delusions regarding fictitious characters from 1950s sitcoms. All to be expected. Delivery was normal. Everything was normal–delighfully, gorgeously normal–or so I thought at first, and why shouldn’t I? Who expects anything to go wrong, especially something completely foreign not only to his own experience but even to his imagining? Looking back, of course, I can see irregularities. Do they mean anything, or are they merely the hiccups of a genetic heritage that ate too much bratwurst yesterday? Are they omens or the effects of a sleep-deprived new father’s distorted memory?

My beloved’s nausea, first of all, was anything but even. Not even… that’s an understatement; it was not divisible by anything but itself and unity. That’s right: the number of days during which she experienced nausea was prime. Prime. And there were the cravings, which is to say, there were no cravings. Is that normal? Television would suggest it is not. Also there was that time in my wife’s second trimester when I woke up in the middle of the night to find her levitating a couple of feet above the bed, surrounded by a faint greenish light, but that was probably just my imagination. And the snoring. Is it common for pregnant women to snore? I mean, really loudly? Perhaps so, but I swear those snores sounded exactly like a slightly out-of-tune double-belled euphonium. I can’t count the number of nights I woke up mumbling about horse platoons, trombones, pool halls, and shy librarians. The wife did not like me mumbling about the librarians, by the way. Finally, perhaps most tellingly, were the swollen ankles. I have surreptitiously asked a dozen women about this, and my love’s ankles were not in any way normal. If only I had known this at the time. Or is this all in my mind?

The day of delivery was when the true signs, the clear signs, began to appear. My love’s breathing rhythm matched almost perfectly an ancient Aztec chant I once heard in Oaxaca; I was told it was a prayer for mercy from Atlacamani, goddess of hurricanes. When I cut the umbilical cord, I could barely focus on my task, compelled to notice that the cord lay, beyond the cut, in the Celtic rune symbol for “fire.” A slight shift of a nurse’s hand as I severed it curled the cord into the Celtic rune for “game.” Coincidence? This same nurse told me that the three ominous thunderclaps as my beautiful daughter cried her first querulous cries–all but drowning out her new voice–were not out of the ordinary for late spring, but I pulled back the blinds from the room’s only window a few minutes later to see nothing but sunny blue skies, clear to the horizon.

And now we are alone, we three, in this small, comfortable home. Tomorrow it will be three weeks since Sam’s birth. I cannot stop staring at my darling little girl or her beautiful mother; the wonder of what has happened in our lives transfixes me when I ponder it. But the strangeness continues, and I think the… what shall I call them?… phenomena… are accelerating in frequency. Last week I heard our cat

I write this with a growing mix of love and dread, mixed perhaps with some fear or fear-like emotion–possibly just extreme nervousness and a bit of flatulence, which–let me tell you–can sometimes turn perfectly ordinary mild fear into full-blown terror. Please let it be the gas. Just the gas. I write so that those who read these words might begin to understand, or at least approximate an understanding, of the heavy @#$% that is going down in the lives of two very normal parents. Okay, mostly normal. Also, what is normal, anyway.

My wife’s pregnancy was uneventful enough, so it seemed: there was some nausea, some glowing, some elation, some very uncomfortable sleeping, some dizziness, some delusions regarding fictitious characters from 1950s sitcoms. All to be expected. Delivery was normal. Everything was normal–delighfully, gorgeously normal–or so I thought at first, and why shouldn’t I? Who expects anything to go wrong, especially something completely foreign not only to his own experience but even to his imagining? Looking back, of course, I can see irregularities. Do they mean anything, or are they merely the hiccups of a genetic heritage that ate too much bratwurst yesterday? Are they omens or the effects of a sleep-deprived new father’s distorted memory?

My beloved’s nausea, first of all, was anything but even. Not even… that’s an understatement; it was not divisible by anything but itself and unity. That’s right: the number of days during which she experienced nausea was prime. Prime. And there were the cravings, which is to say, there were no cravings. Is that normal? Television would suggest it is not. Also there was that time in my wife’s second trimester when I woke up in the middle of the night to find her levitating a couple of feet above the bed, surrounded by a faint greenish light, but that was probably just my imagination. And the snoring. Is it common for pregnant women to snore? I mean, really loudly? Perhaps so, but I swear those snores sounded exactly like a slightly out-of-tune double-belled euphonium. I can’t count the number of nights I woke up mumbling about horse platoons, trombones, pool halls, and shy librarians. The wife did not like me mumbling about the librarians, by the way. Finally, perhaps most tellingly, were the swollen ankles. I have surreptitiously asked a dozen women about this, and my love’s ankles were not in any way normal. If only I had known this at the time. Or is this all in my mind?

The day of delivery was when the true signs, the clear signs, began to appear. My love’s brediary-of-the-spawn-athing rhythm matched almost perfectly an ancient Aztec chant I once heard in Oaxaca; I was told it was a prayer for mercy from Atlacamani, goddess of hurricanes. When I cut the umbilical cord, I could barely focus on my task, compelled to notice that the cord lay, beyond the cut, in the Celtic rune symbol for “fire.” A slight shift of a nurse’s hand as I severed it curled the cord into the Celtic rune for “game.” Coincidence? This same nurse told me that the three ominous thunderclaps as my beautiful daughter cried her first querulous cries–all but drowning out her new voice–were not out of the ordinary for late spring, but I pulled back the blinds from the room’s only window a few minutes later to see nothing but sunny blue skies, clear to the horizon.

And now we are alone, we three, in this small, comfortable home. Tomorrow it will be three weeks since Sam’s birth. I cannot stop staring at my darling little girl or her beautiful mother; the wonder of what has happened in our lives transfixes me when I ponder it. But the strangeness continues, and I think the… what shall I call them?… phenomena… are accelerating in frequency. Last week I heard our cat howl when I left our baby in the next room for a moment. I rushed back, expecting to see a scratched hand or a tuft of fur. I saw nothing but a broad smile on my daughter’s face. I did not see the cat again for two days; he did not start eating again for another day after that, and now he seems to be reluctant to be in the same room with the girl. Three days ago, as I cuddled my little snookums on my lap, I used my silliest voice and talked about recent behavioral neuroscience research I had read from the most recent issue of a professional journal. Suddenly, I gasped in pain and shock, my disbelieving eyes finding my finger with her diminutive digits wrapped around it. The pressure only lasted a second, but I still have baby-sized, finger-shaped bruises on my right index finger. They make typing this account difficult. The look in my baby’s face as she crushed my flesh can only be described as fury–dark, unrelenting fury of the type usually reserved for her mother if feeding is a few minutes late. Thinking back on the incident, I noticed that I had been summarizing a positron emission tomography study. She squeezed at the exact moment I said “positron.”

I should not dwell on these untoward instances (or, if you prefer, these quotidian events to which my exhausted, semi-hallucinatory mind has attached illusory meaning); we are happy. The days fly by in a blur of giggles and diaper changes, nursery rhymes and sleepytime. I go to work and come home as soon as I can, to find both of my darlings here and happy. I have hinted at my fears to my love, but she seems to notice nothing out of the ordinary. I’m sure she’s right. The random muscle movements all babies exhibit can surely explain the fact that mine lay for over an hour yesterday in the exact body position of Thoth purifying Hetsheput in the mural at Karnak. The same explanation likely applies to her subsequently moving her left hand in the symbol for the ankh, at least five times in a row. It is probably not even worth mentioning that exactly seven birds clustered at the living room window to stare at her as she stared back, arranged in the vines and branches of the bush outside our window in a nearly perfect six-point radial pattern with one in the center. They were not the same species of birds: the outer six were brightly-colored songbirds–a yellow and black one, a blue jay, and some others I can’t remember–and the center bird was twice their size, a jet-black bird with iridescent feathers and piercing eyes. Even when the cat (the one not currently terrified of my little girl) repeatedly flung himself at the window from which these birds were perched mere inches, they did not move. He eventually tired of his efforts and lay panting on the floor as the birds continued to stare, occasionally cocking a head for a better look. I don’t know how long they kept it up; eventually the dishes needed doing. However, from the kitchen I heard a sound exactly as if an avian beak were tapping on glass. It was almost impossible not to parse it into Morse code as I used to do when I was a youngster enamored of the 1800s railway scene. I nearly dropped the soapy plate in my hand when I realized that the tapping had spelled “Tunguska.”

I have had time to breathe deeply and realize how silly this all sounds. I’m sure it’s all nothing more than a terrible combination of too little sleep and too much science fiction. I will try to get some sleep. With any luck, this will be the end of my paranoid imaginings. With any luck.

howl when I left our baby in the next room for a moment. I rushed back, expecting to see a scratched hand or a tuft of fur. I saw nothing but a broad smile on my daughter’s face. I did not see the cat again for two days; he did not start eating again for another day after that, and now he seems to be reluctant to be in the same room with the girl. Three days ago, as I cuddled my little snookums on my lap, I used my silliest voice and talked about recent behavioral neuroscience research I had read from the most recent issue of a professional journal. Suddenly, I gasped in pain and shock, my disbelieving eyes finding my finger with her diminutive digits wrapped around it. The pressure only lasted a second, but I still have baby-sized, finger-shaped bruises on my right index finger. They make typing this account difficult. The look in my baby’s face as she crushed my flesh can only be described as fury–dark, unrelenting fury of the type usually reserved for her mother if feeding is a few minutes late. Thinking back on the incident, I noticed that I had been summarizing a positron emission tomography study. She squeezed at the exact moment I said “positron.”

I should not dwell on these untoward instances (or, if you prefer, these quotidian events to which my exhausted, semi-hallucinatory mind has attached illusory meaning); we are happy. The days fly by in a blur of giggles and diaper changes, nursery rhymes and sleepytime. I go to work and come home as soon as I can, to find both of my darlings here and happy. I have hinted at my fears to my love, but she seems to notice nothing out of the ordinary. I’m sure she’s right. The random muscle movements all babies exhibit can surely explain the fact that mine lay for over an hour yesterday in the exact body position of Thoth purifying Hetsheput in the mural at Karnak. The same explanation likely applies to her subsequently moving her left hand in the symbol for the ankh, at least five times in a row.

It is probably not even worth mentioning that exactly seven birds clustered at the living room window this morning to stare at her, arranged in the vines and branches of the bush outside our window in a nearly perfect six-point radial pattern with one in the center. They were not the same species of birds: the outer six were brightly-colored songbirds–a yellow and black one, a blue jay, and some others I can’t remember–and the center bird was twice their size, a jet-black bird with iridescent feathers and piercing eyes. Even when the cat (the one not currently terrified of my little girl) repeatedly flung himself at the window from which these birds were perched mere inches, they did not move. He eventually tired of his efforts and lay panting on the floor as the birds continued to stare, occasionally cocking a head for a better look. I don’t know how long they kept it up; eventually the dishes needed doing. However, from the kitchen I heard a sound exactly as if an avian beak were tapping on glass. It was almost impossible not to parse it into Morse code as I used to do when I was a youngster enamored of the 1800s railway scene. I nearly dropped the soapy plate in my hand when I realized that the tapping had spelled “Tunguska.”

I have had time to breathe deeply and realize how silly this all sounds. I’m sure it’s all nothing more than a terrible combination of too little sleep and too much science fiction. I will try to get some sleep. With any luck, this will be the end of my paranoid imaginings. With any luck.

Here is some rampant, unsupported speculation: Maybe there’s some kind of case to be made for brain lateralization as a metaphor for gender abilities/roles/specializations/uniquestuffs. You know, say that one side was like “male” and the other was like “female.” No, seriously; dig it:

• Specialization obviously occurs.
• There’s some nature going on, but obviously some nurture, too. Separating the two effects can be difficult.
• The apparent specialization effects that appear when averaging across lots of individuals often disappear when you look closely at any one individual. In other words, variation is more consistent than consistency.
• Because of the above point, any interventions or even statements regarding individual specialization are likely to be misguided without really getting to know the individual(s) in question, first.
• Popular belief about specialization is (a) ridiculously simplistic, (b) sometimes inaccurate, and (c) highly resistant to change.

I know, right? It works… at least as far as I’ve taken it. I’m not sure how much farther the metaphor can be pushed, though.

I’ma blog a bit about conference. Just random thoughts, and I make no guarantee that I’ll get everything (or even listen to all the talks). Note: I missed yesterday (Saturday) because of childbirth education classes and then trying to catch up on the work I missed while in said classes. So I’m starting with…

Sunday Morning Session

Elder Uchtdorf

• The story about the young girl dying of cancer, requesting a visit from the President, made me wonder if being a General Authority means, in effect, being faced with others’ death and suffering on a much more regular basis than most of us Middle-Class Americans are. Maybe lots of people at death’s door call a prophet. If this is the case, then this might serve as a lovely self-regulating principle throughout church leadership. Maybe our leaders, by virtue of being leaders, are given an increased dose of the existential suffering of others that led Siddhartha to question his luxurious existence — the suffering that Jesus’ ministry largely targeted. I like to think that there are processes like this: the Lord qualifying whom He calls.

H. David Burton

• I unashamedly promote (though do not always exemplify… oops) awareness of the Church’s responsibility to improve the physical fortunes of the poor, not only defined absolutely (those who can’t buy food) but relatively (those whose neighbors all have nice cars and they don’t). I think the existence of such inequities reflects very badly both on our Christianity and our humanity. So this talk was gratifying to hear, preached to a membership that (in my experience) has sometimes seemed willing to promote the principles of the Law of the Harvest over those of mercy and Christlike love.
• “Helping people versus helping people to help themselves.” Absolutely. Sustainable charity. This includes things like preparation, thrift, and all the other things said in this talk. What has often bothered me is the tendency of some members to use phrases like this as a smokescreen for vindictiveness, selfishiness, or petty class warfare. Sometimes it’s impossible to tell whether people preaching “tough love”-type charity really mean this, or are motivated by one of the less-laudable possibilities I mentioned above. One touchstone, I suggest, might be such individuals’ messages regarding education. Those who insist that education should be withheld from those who have reduced opportunity to pay for it are, I believe, probably not motivated by actual caring for the less fortunate. Education is preparation; it provides the skills for self-reliance. Withholding it reeks of the “haves” holding onto their loot for fear that the “have-nots” might get some of it.

Silvia H. Allred

• This talk was nice, but I was busy teasing Alex about falling asleep.

David A. Bednar

• I’m always interested in GA how-to’s about revelation, because — barring angels literally appearing — it’s a pretty ill-defined phenomenon in some of its more particular details. Perhaps that’s part of the point.
• I like this talk for various reasons, but one is the universalization of our experiences. I believe it is excellent to let the members know that they are not alone in the doubts, fears, and imperfections inside us.

Thomas S. Monson

• I have no specific comments, but this was still a lovely talk.

Sunday Afternoon Session

Okay, I fell asleep. I admit it. Don’t judge me too harshly. I missed the first talk entirely.

D. Todd Christofferson

• The Currant Bush Allegory was a bit odd… because of the Currant Bush talking back. But it was a nice illustration.
• After the account of how Richard G. Scott’s wife advised him to look people in the eye, my wife exclaimed, “So it’s his fault!” Then everyone in the Conference Center laughed, so I guess they heard her.

Carl B.Pratt

• Colonia Juárez! I had compas from there (and near there) en La Misión, back in the day.
• The stories about financial rewards for paying tithing always fall a little oddly on my brain. I don’t think the leaders intend for us to believe that tithing is a financial advancement strategy, but we sure do repeat such stories a lot. I note that, in this talk, we get the counter-information: the Lord does not specifically promise us wealth in return for tithing. I like the concrete explanation: the Lord blesses us with wisdom so we can live better on 90% of our income. Gotta love a good, definable, concrete explanation :)

Lynn G. Robbins

• Paraphrasing Shakespeare: classic opening. But I don’t think Hamlet meant what is implied in the intro to this talk. Hamlet was (I think?) trying to decide whether or not to kill himself. But the message presented in the talk still appears excellent.
• This “be” versus “do” thing is pretty deep and philosophical. I fully agree with the message (be>do), but wow is this ever a more complex issue than could really be addressed in a 20-minute talk.

Benjamín De Hoyos

• I really wish I had turned the session on in time to hear who these speakers are. This one is giving a nice talk.

C. Scott Grow (who has probably never been teased about his name)

• Jimmy Stewart voice!
• Your basic Prodigal Son story? I kinda like these.

Jeffrey R. Holland

• I have a soft spot for Elder Holland. Cool.
• I love the fact that he fearlessly drops apparent scriptural contradictions next to each other. I think this is where some of the most meaningful insights come from.
• “…comfort the afflicted and afflict the comfortable.”  Heck, yes. However, most of us listening to this in English fall into the latter category, not the former–at least economically and freedom-from-daily-terror -wise.
• Hm. Reference to (as DW says they are called) “Cafeteria Mormons.” Of course, I think we’re all in that category, but perhaps the implied categorization is still useful.
• Nice talk. He has always had an ability to synthesize a good “take a step back” view that makes sense.

President Monson

• Brief, to the point, and powerful. Nice.

All in all, another nice conference session. I don’t know that I caught wind of any strong changes in the Church’s direction, but I’m traditionally clueless about such things. That is all.

Dear Sea Monkey,

You are currently at about 34 weeks gestation, and I just saw some birthing videos. Here is your first Life Tip:

HEAD FIRST, FACE DOWN.

That is all.

I have a habit of trying to point out logical problems in ideas by suggesting counterexamples. I know proof by analogy isn’t ultimately very valuable, and I know not everything can be demonstrated (or disproved) by examples, but it still seems valid at least as a way of illustrating — in ways people can understand immediately, if I do it right — the problems with certain ideas.

So, back when Mel Gibson’s “The Patriot” was the hot movie, I got several versions of an email circulated by well-meaning LDS people (I have just briefly tried in vain to find a copy of it on the internet… but if anyone reads this they might remember it) alleging that some general authority had, in the case of this movie, suspended the “R-ban,” encouraging people to see it. Because it was so patriotic and authentic and historical.

Well, the movie was R-rated for good reason: violence (IMDB’s parents’ guide gives it a 9 out of 10 for violence & gore). I personally spoke to many people at the time who had given their own R-ban a temporary leave of absence so they could see it. I think it’s pretty clear that we were willing to overlook the violence because of the redeeming quality of portraying historically accurate events important to the founding of our nation (the US, in case this is not obvious).

So I was saying  to my Wif this morning that we should reignite that email chain but this time claim that certain “patriotic” parts had been “censored,” and that good patriots should demand that they be put back in (Note; this was silly speculation and I do not actually intend to do this). Then the email would explain that the “censored” parts were things for which many Latter-day Saints who consider themselves patriotic would probably not suspend their no-R-rated-movies policy. You know, sex scenes.

Gibson’s most violent scenes (famous for their unrestrained brutality) were, as I understand, largely speculation, though it was a war; horrible things happened. But plenty of things that fall outside our internal filters did actually happen, and they involved the men and women we consider responsible for the birth of our nation. How would Mormons’ reaction to Gibson’s film have been different if the one of the important, historically accurate events was, say, a graphic-type sex scene between Thomas Jefferson and his slave, Sally Hemmings? Or a brutally graphic (you know, Mel-Gibson-style) scene where American colonists murder, rape, and destroy the homes of Native Americans, under orders (or in some cases simply with the inaction of) some of our revered founding fathers? What about a zany sex romp scene involving Benjamin Franklin and one of his alleged mistresses?

My suspicion is that no, the Church membership (in general) would not be open to either (a) sex or (b) immoral actions by the Founding Fathers being depicted in any detail (or perhaps not at all) in movies, no matter how historically accurate those depictions might be, and no matter how important the events might have been to the founding of our nation. It seems to me that we don’t need as much censorship as we sometimes think we do; we self-censor very effectively as it is.

So my loving wif has been describing to me an EPIC (or epic-esque) thread on feminist Mormon housewives. It was dominated by a guy named Nick who had some issues. Big ones. And it captured both our attention (honeypie’s and mine). I made word clouds of Nick’s comments and the general thread, for some kind of comparison. I don’t think this exercise really illuminated anything, but it was fun. What I would really love to do, though I don’t want to take the time away from real research to do it, is to look at the functional or other kinds of patterns in Nick’s communication with the fMh crowd, and theirs with him. I personally found his comments to be low in insight (as would be expected from someone wrapped up in his own problems), occasionally sexist, and frequently patronizing. But my heart went out to the guy, anyway; he has a very, very long row to hoe.

Here’s Nick’s word cloud, made of only his comments (with quotes excised).

Here’s everyone else’s comments (Nick’s not included). I wasn’t gonna do this b/c it’s 1am and dude, I’m tired. But this is fun/compelling quasi-analysis. Sorry it’s a different style. I know that makes it a bit harder to compare.

Finally, Here’s the word cloud for the general thread, nick’s comments mixed with everyone else’s.

Not sure I see any deep meaning here, but make of it what you will. It was a fun exercise. For my job I may eventually have need of some very-smart text analysis software; I think I’ve found something to test it on :)

Update: Because this is so much fun (and preferable to the other work I need to be doing this weekend), I did one more thing: a word difference cloud, if you will. The hacked-together list of words in colors (below) represent the magnitude in relative frequency difference between Not-Nick and Nick in word usage. That is, words used a greater percentage of the time by people besides Nick are blue, and if they are used a lot more frequently than Nick uses them, they’re really big. I made the more-frequently-Nickish words green.

I combined several groups of similar word forms. Those are represented between curly brackets {}.

sexless {woman} listening it’s sex {try} {feel} like out {say} {thing} {want} change even great home must mutual really {sexual} statement {way} {word} what around being better did didn’t each find {get} having {he} herself how {intimate} life lot love may month mormon {need} now often own part patriarchy people person physical please problem same situation something that’s then through whether wow advice again agree always back before best between both can’t case certainly come common community {control} culture day different discussion {do} duty either enough ever every experience express fact family feminist few first form general {go} hard help here hope just kids kind know level long maybe much neglect off others pressure pretty probably put raise rather read relationship responsibility right see simply someone sometimes spouse still subject suggest temple thank these though thought {time} too two understand us {use} we’ve week where while why without work world wrong yet {don’t} abusive address anything care comment desire {give} good hear {husband} man {mean} never notion once point reason seems sense {sensitive} sexuality she’s should sure take together very years yes another blog church etc {marriage} our possible tell {them} comments {issue} least let many men nothing {obligation} well think {wife} believe {make} idea important might matter

Method notes/examples: this method will show a more head-to-head comparison, though it has disadvantages, such as possibly exaggerating small differences in relative frequency. To illustrate what I have done, consider the forms of “you” (you/your/you’re). These are predictably dominant in comments by people besides Nick (a full 5% of wordage!), while Nick used this word group less (1.9%). The difference between those (3.1%) is one of the largest in the word collection, and not-Nick used it much more frequently than Nick did, so it would be big and blue. By contrast, forms of “I/me” (I/I’m/I’ll/I’ve/me/my/myself) were used more often by Nick (5.8% versus 3.4%) so {I} is in big, green font. All quibbles with the method are probably accurate, but I probably won’t have time to go back and revisit this. Oh, and I left out {I} and {you} because they were just massively disproportionate, as well as very predictable, in relative frequency difference.

I sometimes wish I could go get a new PhD in something else–in this case, sociology or anthropology, to study LDS people. I’ve been having some odd thoughts about de facto succession of leadership and participation in the church. I feel, lately, that I have seen a pattern emerge from time to time:

1. Apparently doctrinally-orthodox member distances him/herself from the church
2. Apparently doctrinally less-orthodox member distances him/herself from the church
3. #2 comes back
4. #1 does not

Of course, it could be my imagination, but this combination of those factors seems to happen a disproportionate amount of the time (not necessarily a majority of the time, though). My seat-of-the-pants hypothesis is this: What if this reflects an underlying difference in styles of belief? Members in category 2 (from the list) might have more of a willingness to acknowledge doubts and uncertainty, or to question orthodoxy, than those from category 1. These differences could lead to different reactions when faith-challenging events occur: A few category 1 members might find that their less-considered faith is fatally threatened by such challenges, while more of the category 2 members, despite initial distancing due to the doubts and disillusionment activated by the challenges, may find that their intellectual foundations (built through years of questioning, doubting, and resolving those things) provide them, ultimately, with answers that lead them back to the Gospel.

This is a standard question among many people of faith, and it assumes a lot of things I really can’t back up with data (so it’s rank speculation). But it feels like at least a hypothesis worth pursuing. But I’m not done yet.

The real kicker, for me, is that–if the process I’ve imagined is really happening–the membership or leadership of the Church may gradually come to be represented more and more by those in category 2, with interesting implications. For example, I think (again, no data) that this style of belief may be favored more by people ultimately drawn, for a variety of reasons, to more liberal social-political views, more intellectual pursuits (higher levels of traditional education?), and a less purely-emotional approach to faith.

The results may or may not be good for the Church in the long run; I don’t know. But this is interesting. The world is run by those who show up for the meetings. The Church is the same way.

More from the Foggy Morning photo shoot.

Foggy morning, grackles in a tree.

From my winter visit Up North:

I know one poll doesn’t answer all questions, but the recent CBS poll is the only one I’ve seen on this issue, and since it’s not done by a clearly biased organization like the Cato Institute, Fox News, or MoveOn, I’d rather trust it for now. Here are some results (done by me painstakingly learning the somewhat arcane world of R graphics! Hooray!):

Know what the coolest thing about this is (besides, perhaps, the fact that the majority of Americans want these tax cuts to remain only for clearly middle-class folks)? Lookit the green in “Don’t Know.” It’s the biggest chunk there. I like the fact that the independents aren’t as likely to be sure of themselves as the big party-affiliated folks are.

I’m trying to process why I was so repelled by Dan Savage’s uncontrolled tirade at L.R. in a recent column. It’s not that I expect more of Savage – his regular column demonstrates every week that one should not expect clear thinking from that source – It’s because this week I’ve seen young people linking to that particular post as if there were some kind of reasonable or uplifting message to be found in it. Yes, we need to stop bullying, and yes, LGBT children are probably among the most vulnerable and obvious bullying targets. But Savage is not the poster boy this movement needs.

In order to illustrate how ridiculous Savage’s comments to “L.R.” were, in response to that person’s rather polite request that Dan stop his hate-mongering, I have modified his comments, below. I do not agree in the slightest with the opinions expressed by my satire (or maybe it’s a parody; perhaps both? I should look that up), and I assume you don’t, either; however, I hope anyone reading this (fat chance) can see, in graphic fashion, that this is the kind of ridiculous “reasoning” that has been criticized in certain extremist conservative radio and TV figures for decades.

———-begin parody and/or satire————-

Dear Limbaugh-esque Right Wing Entertainer,

I was listening to the radio yesterday morning, and I heard an interview with you about your Keep America Safe campaign. I was saddened and frustrated with your comments regarding people of Muslim faith and their perpetuation of terrorism. As someone who loves Allah and does not support the current US policies in the Middle East, I can honestly say I was heartbroken to hear about the Americans who lost their lives.

There is no part of me that took any pleasure in what happened to the Americans who died, and I know for a fact that is true of many other people who disagree with your viewpoint.

To that end, to imply that I would somehow encourage my friends to mock, hurt or intimidate another person for any reason is completely unfounded and offensive. Being a follower of Allah is, above all things, a recognition that we are all imperfect, fallible, and in desperate need of His assistance. We cannot believe that we are better or more worthy than other people.
Please consider your viewpoint, and please be more careful with your words in the future.
— L.R.

Dear L. R.,

I’m sorry your feelings were hurt by my comments.

No, wait. I’m not. Americans are dying. So let’s try to keep things in perspective: F*** your feelings.

And — sorry — but you are partly responsible for the terror and violence being visited on innocent Americans. The kids of people who see Americans as godless or heathen or arrogant and unworthy of the right to defend their nation from danger – even if those people strive to express their bigotry in the politest possible way (at least when they happen to be addressing an American person) — learn to see Americans as godless, heathen, arrogant, and unworthy. And while there may not be any Americans where you live, or at your mosque, or in your workplace, I promise you that there are American children in your schools. And while you can only attack Americans at the ballot box, nice and impersonally, your children will grow up and have the option of attacking actual Americans, in person, in real time.

Real Americans. Not political abstractions, not “unbelievers.” Americans.

Try to keep up: The dehumanizing bigotries that fall from the lips of “faithful Muslims,” and the lies about us that vomit out from the pulpits of mosques that “faithful Muslims” intimidate their friends into attending, give your friends license to verbally abuse, condemn, and kill Americans. And many of your friends— having listened to the local Imam talk about how American ideals are a threat to righteousness and how the Great Satan makes their magic sky friend Allah cry — feel justified in physically abusing the patriotic children they encounter in their schools. You don’t have to explicitly encourage your friends to mock, hurt, or intimidate freedom-loving  people. Your encouragement — along with your hatred and fear — is implicit. It’s here, it’s clear, and we’re seeing the fruits of it: dead American citizens.

Oh, and those same dehumanizing bigotries that fill your Muslim friends with hate? They fill your American friends with despair. And you have the nerve to ask me to be more careful with my words?

Did that hurt to hear? Good. But it couldn’t have hurt nearly as much as what was done to the victims in the Trade Towers, or to the dead American soldiers in Iraq, living day-in and day-out for months in communities filled with bigoted monsters created not in the image of a loving God, but in the image of the hateful and false “followers of Allah” they call their friends and leaders.

Dan Savage’s column has always been a sometimes-entertaining example of pandering to one’s audience and earning revenue through controversy. Now, however, Savage seems to have made the leap from occasionally funny sexual entertainment shockster to ideological Doberman. Sure, his narrow-minded bias is employed for only the best of motivations, but isn’t that always the case? The first reply in this column — currently a popular social media buzz-link — is a showcase of dirty rhetorical tricks and blatant bigotry, covered with a thin sheet of popular sentiment (at least probably popular among his regular readers).

“L.R.,” the writer to whom Savage is responding, expresses exactly one opinion that may be taken as anti-gay: “As someone who… does not support gay marriage…” This was apparently enough to justify a very nasty ad hominem, ad your-whole-presumed-social-group-inem attack. Sections of Savage’s reply are reproduced below, with my comments:

“Gay kids are dying. So let’s try to keep things in perspective: F*** your feelings.”

It seems Savage packed the following assertions into that line:

1. Gay kids are dying.
2. You do not support gay marriage.
3. Therefore, there is no need for me to give even minimally respectful consideration to your words.

Niiice. I wonder if Mr. Savage would agree with this rhetorical approach in some other context, such as justification to invade Afghanistan. “Mr. President, I feel that a full-scale invasion might be an overreaction.” “Mr. Reporter, Americans are dying. So let’s try to keep things in perspective: F*** your feelings.”

What do you think? Is it OK to use a current crisis to completely marginalize the views of someone who is honestly trying to find common ground on the crisis topic? Perhaps just as disturbing is Savage’s implicit assertion (later to be made explicit) that opinions such as those of L.R. are exactly why “gay kids are dying.”

Moving on.

“A question: Do you ‘support’ atheist marriage? Interfaith marriage? Divorce and remarriage? All are legal, all go against Christian and/or traditional ideas about marriage, and yet there’s no ‘Christian’ movement…”

This one’s not as dramatic, but it’s still a dirty trick. No response to L.R.’s request that Savage tone down his anti-religious rhetoric; instead, Savage attacks the consistency of Christian behavior in related areas. Reminds me of the parody of Bush 43, in which someone asks him a question about his policies, and he responds, “Why do you hate freedom?” Perhaps we as a civilization have become so numbed to the tricks played on us by mainstream-media talking heads that we simply can’t see that a counterattack is not the same thing as a reasonable response to a concern. Also, there have been such movements in the past (except, maybe, atheist marriage), but those who iniated them lost the legal and social battles. I would have thought Savage would know that.

“And—sorry—but you are partly responsible for the bullying and physical violence being visited on vulnerable LGBT children.”

As I would write on any of my students’ papers if they used such logic, this is an empirical question and the statement is unsuported. In this context, I think it’s downright irresponsible. It is incumbent on Mr. Savage to demonstrate that people with views like those of L.R. (recap: loves the Lord; does not support gay marriage; heartbroken about consequences of bullying of gay individuals; thinks we are all imperfect, fallible, and in need of a savior; thinks it’s not OK to believe anyone is better or more worthy than someone else; thinks it is OK to take public figures to task for making blanket discriminatory statements about a large, diverse group of religious people based on a small number of observations) are “partly responsible” for “bullying and physical violence” toward vulnerable LGBT children. What is the evidence of this? How strong is the evidence?

As I tell my students, if you don’t have data to support your statements, at least find good reasoning, and reduce the certainty of your statement accordingly. If you don’t even have good reasoning, then why are you writing such a thing? Test it, Mr. Savage. Use your dollars or your influence to support some research to answer your question, instead of simply flinging the accusations around. It’s not an impossible study: get a nice, representative sample of gay kids or young adults who have been bullied, go find the bullies, do some assessments and data collection with the bullies’ parents, and find out if they’re like L.R. You could also test the assertion that people like L.R. are indirectly responsible for gay kids being bullied, though that would take fancier research design; still hardly beyond the scope of good behavioral science. Wouldn’t that be better than simply accusing anyone who disagrees of sharing responsibility for the deaths of children? I don’t know what the actual facts in this area will turn out to be, but until someone does, perhaps Savage should refrain from lambasting large social groups with what must be assumed to be nothing more than his suppositions.

Early on in the mess o’words, Savage begins to express a discerible “logic.” At this point it appears to be:

1. Gay kids are dying from bullying
2. L.R. says he does not support gay marriage
3. L.R. is part of the reason gay kids are dying.

Except actually there seems to be another point, when we read a little farther:
2 1/2. L.R. is Christian

And that’s where it gets really ugly. How ugly? Let’s find out. Note that Savage never clarifies the extent to which his most vitriolic remarks should be applied, but they seem at least to be for L.R., and to include a vague category of people who self-identify as Christians. Here’s my understanding of the not-very-subtle meaning of some of the remarks:

“…even if those people strive to express their bigotry in the politest possible way…”

(a) “Those people” are a group apart from you and yours, and (b) they are bigots.

“…there may not be any gay adults or couples where you live, or at your church, or in your workplace…”

L.R. lives a culturally restricted life.

“…while you can only attack gays and lesbians at the ballot box, nice and impersonally…”

(1) Voting in ways that limit or redefine legal marriage for people in gay and lesbian relationships is a personal attack on gay and lesbian people.
(2) People who vote like this prefer to hurt others from afar (perhaps they are cowards?).
(3) L.R. is such a person.

“Real gay and lesbian children. Not political abstractions, not ‘sinners.’”

L.R. and/or Christians do not understand the reality of gay/lesbian children, and categorize them as “sinners.”

“Try to keep up…”

L.R. is kind of slow.

“The dehumanizing bigotries that fall from the lips of ‘faithful Christians…’”

(1) Christians who think they are faithful yet hold opinions like those L.R. expressed are not faithful.
(2) Such people say dehumanizing, bigoted things (possibly this means saying they do not “support gay marriage”, though this is not clear).

“…the lies about us that vomit out from the pulpits of churches that “faithful Christians” drag their kids to on Sundays…”

(1) Again with the “faithful Christians” in quotation marks bit.
(2) Children of such people must be forced to attend church.
(3) The religious leaders of such people universally say untrue things about LGBT people.

“…give your children license to verbally abuse, humiliate, and condemn the gay children they encounter at school.”

(1) Children of people like L.R. (or perhaps just Christians with similar views on gay marriage) perceive their parents’ statements (e.g., “I do not support gay marriage”) as license to do all that stuff to gay children.

(2) I think it’s implied that these children apparently actually do such things.

Savage rarely specifies how frequent or common his accusations are, within the outgroup that L.R. belongs to, and that’s another cheap debate trick: leave that kind of thing undefined. The impression is of pervasiveness, but if anyone ever accuses you of that, you can point to your vagueness and claim your comments were only intended to apply to a minority of the target group.

“Your encouragement—along with your hatred and fear—is implicit.”

(1) Holding these opinions is the same as encouraging your children to hurt others.
(2) Such opinions are evidence of personal hate and fear (presumably toward gays or LGBT-related issues).

This is another old trick: characterize opinions differing from yours as being due to some socially-unacceptable impulse (i.e., hate and fear), implicitly ruling out the possibility that they might arise from any rational or positive motivation or mental process.

“…having listened to Mom and Dad talk about how gay marriage is a threat to family and how gay sex makes their magic sky friend Jesus cry…”

(1) Those who do “not support gay marriage” tell their children that gay marriage is a threat to family.
(2) They also tell their kids that gay sex is displeasing to God
(3) If you disagree with Dan Savage on this point, he will publicly mock your most cherished ideals instead of addressing the substance of the disagreement.

“The kids of people who see gay people as sinful or damaged or disordered and unworthy of full civil equality—even if those people strive to express their bigotry in the politest possible way (at least when they happen to be addressing a gay person)—learn to see gay people as sinful, damaged, disordered, and unworthy.”

Since there’s nobody else’s letter being responded to, here, we can only assume Savage is saying that people who say what L.R. said about gay marriage also see gay people as sinful, damaged, disordered, and unworthy of full civil equality. And of course there’s another causal statement, though this one at least has some support in the form of research from other areas: children do tend to accept their parents’ opinions in many areas (though Savage might also want to read up on research showing that this doesn’t happen nearly as much as parents might wish it did).

“…we’re seeing the fruits of [your encouragement, hatred, and fear]: dead children.”

At this point, we can sketch a rough picture of the full Dan Savage Theory of How Gay Children Get Bullied to Death:

Step 1: People (possibly only Christians) who do not “support gay marriage” say things like this where their children can hear it. It does not matter what else gets said (e.g., anything about tolerance, acceptance, humility, equality, etc.).

[unclear: The theory may also stipulate that people with these opinions are necessarily filled with hate and fear, are not religiously faithful, force their children to attend churches where the leaders tell blatant lies about gay people, and tell their children gay marriage is a threat to family. Also, the theory may stipulate that such people are less intelligent than those who have different opinions.]

Step 2: Children of such people perceive such comments [again, not clear whether this only refers to the comments in step 1 or to all the comments Savage later atrributes to his ill-defined outgroup] as license to hurt any gay children they happen to know.

Step 3: These gay children experience significant harm (this is a charitable reading of Savage’s comments), and may die as a result.

If supported, this theory might require some serious changes in how we talk and behave toward gay/lesbian issues (not just toward individuals), because–in the “strict” reading of the theory–simply disagreeing on the point of gay marriage rights is enough to cause your children (or your children’s friends) to bully their gay friends to death.

This kind of theory has serious implications for public policy and debate. If the theory Savage has outlined were to be supported, then we might also reasonably expect to find that:

• Atheists expressing contempt for their neighbors who do not recycle will lead children to bully their non-recycling neighbors’ children to death, even if they also talk about what wonderful people these neighbors are.
• Baptists who talk too much about patriotism may lead their children to contribute to the deaths of children who have doubts about American cultural values.
• Classic rock fans expressing disdain of “emo” music may lead their children to bully emo kids to death.
• Voting a Democrat ticket in the next election and telling one’s family about one’s opposition to the Republican political platform may lead children to kill Republican children.
• Muslims who politely express an opinion that they do not support America’s consumerism or Middle-East interventionism are partially responsible for 9/11.

You see where this is going, and how ludicrous it is. I do not in any way condone what has happened to the many children recently reported to have suffered from bullying or violence because of their sexual orientation. I don’t even discount the possibility that a chain of events like what Savage has so viciously outlined could turn out to be real. This piece of writing is not intended to endorse any particular political, social, or even moral position, except one:

Bad thinking and bad logic are still bad, even when they are employed in the service of a popular (or even objectively right!) cause. Prejudice is always the product of faulty thinking, but those who express it always think they’re being reasonable. If cornered on their sloppy (or even directly unethical) argumentation, they sometimes bust out a version of “ends justify means” rationale. But they are wrong. In many cases, their means are all you really need to know about them.

And then…

“…at schools filled with bigoted little monsters created not in the image of a loving God, but in the image of the hateful and false “followers of Christ” they call Mom and Dad.”

Does Savage really not see the mind-exploding irony (or hypocrisy) of writing something like this in a popularly-read newspaper column when his entire thesis seems to be that even carefully-phrased disagreements about others’ identities can turn into child violence? By his theory, he should probably be responsible (or, as he puts it, “partially responsible”) for about a thousand juvenile-perpetrated murders of Christian children, by now.

Perhaps Mr. Savage’s real reason for writing his vicious little piece was to generate some controversy in non-readers of his column and some good old moral indignation in the readers. Or maybe his real reason is expressed best by one of the first phrases he wrote to a reader who had civilly expressed a difference of perspective:

“Did that hurt to hear? Good.”

So I was getting frustrated with partisan rhetoric about taxes and income. Yes, talking about percentages and rates and proportions and whatnot can often increase clarity with complex data, but sometimes these are also used to conceal or distort some aspect of the information. I decided to make my own graph of 2008 incomes by percentile of the US population, including each group’s income taxes paid. I was working with some chunky data from here, so it’s not a pretty, smooth curve. I used Excel to expand (in an ugly fashion) the groups so you get a rough (very rough) idea of the different group sizes.

The groups are by percentile of income in the US: the lowest-earning 50% up through the highest-earning 0.1% of the population. The height of each bar represents average annual income, and the height of the blue portion within the bar represents the amount of taxes paid.

You’ll notice I had to make the graph extremely big so that the lowest income group’s income even showed up enough to give a hint of a line for the tax they paid.

And 2008 was considered to be a bad year for the super-wealthy.

(click to see the full image with enough detail to be even slightly useful)

US income and taxes by percentile - 2008

First, lemme say I generally have loved LeGuin reads in the past. I found The Left Hand of Darkness to be thought-provoking and well done, and (of course) the entire Earthsea series was brilliant. I finally made it through The Dispossessed, and am of two distinct minds about it.

Mind 1: Her prose is, as always, good. She tackles a topical topic (especially in the 1970s when she wrote this) and gives it some good thought. Her characters are fairly compelling, if somewhat thin. The story manages to move along and come to a satisfying place at the end, with illumination often provided through natural-seeming situations and dialogue. She manages to wrench the heartstrings a few times, too.

Mind 2: It’s preachy, and becomes artistically uneven as a result. The cover material suggests this book is an evenhanded exploration of capitalism versus a radical communitarian/libertarian alternative, but that is kind of like saying Glenn Beck’s Books are “explorations.” The Dispossessed is a unilateral condemnation of capitalism and almost a love letter to a particular conceptualization of communal social society. This bias affects LeGuin’s writing style: the exposition dumps often seem like lectures or cheerleading, the worlds are created barely more than minimally, and even her characters sometimes slide into caricatures whose sole purpose is to advance her political thesis. Here is my tongue-in-cheek fantasy of what Ursula K. LeGuin might have been saying to herself as she drew up the first outline…

“Okay, where to start? I know: two civilizations. One looks just like the US, and is full of spineless, weasely capitalists who are incapable of even imagining anything outside their crass, opportunistic capitalist worldview, and basically they’d all shoot a stranger in the back for two dollars, all except the poor people, who all get shot in the back by strangers. The other civilization is like the USSR, but how it should have been, without that repressive totalitarian thing. It’s the opposite of the Americ– I mean capitalists, so the people don’t own anything and they spend all day working very hard and starving and sometimes dying, even though they never get paid and nobody really cares if they stop working, and they almost never do anything we would think was really wrong, even though there aren’t any laws or police or religion or anything… they all just kind of know what’s right and wrong. They have a bleak, miserable existence but they are soooo soooo happy. Why? Just because, all right? Maybe because they are not dirty, evil capitalists. And they all have vaguely Eastern European-sounding names. And they can have sex with each other whenever they want, without any annoying consequences, like guilt or having to raise children. And the women all want sex as frequently and noncommittally as the men. Yes, this will do nicely.

“Now for a protagonist. Hm. Tall and rugged, of course, and really, really smart. In fact, let’s say he’s the smartest guy in the world, maybe in the whole galaxy. And he is really, really good. I mean, even Americans would say he’s really good. In fact, he’s so good that he makes the rest of his nonauthoritarian communist friends look lame by comparison. He mostly does really brainy math and physics and stuff, but he also gets out and works hard, just for fun, all day long, lifting and digging and hauling and staying  nice and lean and well-muscled and getting dirty and dusty and grimy and taking off his shirt and… whew! I need some air in here!

“Okay, our character needs a love interest, and she is, let’s see… nerdy and brainy and fiercely independent and socially awkward and not very pretty, and she wants a lifelong commitment, even though she’s even more independent and strong and self-assured than the other communist women. But he loves her more than any of the hot girls he can have noncommittal sex with whenever he wants, even though many of them are presumably strong, smart, independent communists, too, and hotter than she is, and less demanding. And he likes babies! Yes, and children. And he makes a lifelong commitment to his not-very-pretty wife (note: this is not marriage, even though it looks pretty much exactly the same) even though almost nobody on his planet ever does this, and even though he could have sex with anyone he wanted, any time he wanted, with no guilt and no consequences. He’s just that great a guy. And he stays faithful to her for years and years, and they always have steamy moments when they get back together and wow, is it getting even hotter in here? Let me go put on something more comfortable. And dim the lights.

“This guy is so smart that even his own communist people don’t understand him and he has to go to the capitalist planet and make them all look very, very bad. Even the good capitalists (actually, there aren’t any good capitalists) look bad when they talk to him. And then he meets the poor people, and all of a sudden he’s singing and marching and defying the government and making impassioned speeches about property and freedom and oh my goodness I need to go lie down I’ll finish this in the morning.”

Yes, that was highly facetious. Sorry, Ms. LeGuin. The book just sometimes seemed like a Harlequin romance novel for frustrated mid-20th-Century progressive women. A hero with no flaws whatever, who does everything exactly right, all the time. A civilization with no flaws (except that this here new generation of young ‘uns is all forgettin’ the principles of the founding mothers!). Capitalists defend their lifestyle with the thinnest of straw-man arguments, and  their civilization has almost no positive side whatsoever. Yes, there’s a Soviet-type nation on the planet, but it gets dismissed and the protagonist pointedly declines to travel there, so we never get to see what might have been a much more illuminating exploration of some of the ideas being dealt with in the book. The narrative stays firmly in the capitalism-versus-utopia vein. The writing was, as always, done pretty well, but it was a propaganda piece. It was The Fountainhead for ’70s liberals.

I will read more LeGuin. She’s still a good writer. Some of her books are at the very top of my personal SciFi/fantasy list, but this book is not among them.

I was searching for a rape-prevention program called “men’s strengths” or “men of strength” or something similar, for citations in a chapter I was writing yesterday. I asked Google. Google was not helpful (as you can see below), and was actually just a teensy bit insulting. ^~^

men_s strengths

1. Do not operate your vehicle without your cell phone held firmly to your ear. Driving without a cell phone in this configuration is highly dangerous; it could result in missing important updates from friends and family, such as: “Take a left on Tenth Street,” “So anyways I says to my baby momma…” or “I’m right here, girl! Where YOU at?” Do not be concerned about the alarmist “scientists” claiming this will cause you to murder innocent pedestrians, cyclists, drivers of smaller vehicles, or your own children in the back seat. First of all, it would probably be manslaughter, not murder. Second, anyone with a cell phone knows that its use *heightens* your attentional focus. Without a cell phone conversation–no matter how unimportant– to keep you alert, you might become so bored while driving that you drive right into a theater full of nuns, children and kittens. Do you want that on your conscience? I didn’t think so. A phone conversation while you have passengers hones your focus to an even sharper point. Texting while driving practically makes you a fighter pilot on Adderall. Plus, if you do happen to make one of the astronomically rare mistakes people are alleged to occasionally make while talking/texting/websurfing and driving, your phone is right there so you can call a lawyer about those bogus manslaughter charges.

2. Drive a really big truck, no matter what. As we all learned in school, farmers and ranchers make up 90% of the American population, they are the best people on earth, and everyone should want to be like them. Therefore, we all need to drive their vehicles, to show our solidarity with this agricultural majority. It is also a well-known fact that, in a collision between a large truck and a small car, those in the latter vehicle are more likely to die. Do you want YOUR children to die? Then you need a big truck, so someone else’s children will die. If they’re in one of those fuel-efficient deathtraps, they’re probably from out of state, anyway. No biggie. But wait, you say, my own children don’t all fit in the cab of an F-350. No problem! Some big cars are called “SUVs,” embodying all the fuel inefficiency and homicidal potential of big trucks, with none of their ruggedness. These are an acceptable substitute for a true truck. As another alternative, remember that seatbelt laws and “children in the bed of your truck at 70mph” laws are not the kind of laws honest people need to worry about (see rule #4), leaving you multiple options for fitting your children in your pickup. Some people will tell you that we increase our dependence on foreign oil and multinational corporations by driving fuel-inefficient vehicles. Nothing could be farther from the truth! If we burn enough oil, those foreign terrorist-type nations will eventually run out, and then they will go broke and pose no threat to our way of life. And corporations? Please! Corporations are our friends, and we exist in a happy symbiosis with them that can only be disturbed if we question their ability to make us buy their products. So, every time you see an angry look on the driver of a freedom-hating, fuel-sipping weenie car as you park your huge truck diagonally across three spots at the grocery store, remember that terrorist lovers like that person don’t deserve to live.

3. Avoid use of turn signals. For those of you unfamiliar with the term, “turn signal” refers both to the little wand sticking out of the left side of your vehicle’s steering column and to the flashing light effect it produces on the exterior of the vehicle when it is moved up or down. Turn signals are an archaic leftover from the ignorant days of our great-grandparents, like castor oil, phrenology, or civic responsibility. In the bad old days, it was sometimes desirable to let other drivers know which direction you were about to turn, to save them some time and frustration or to avoid killing innocent people. In the modern world, however, turn signals serve no useful purpose. You’ve seen how insanely people drive; science proves that they really are trying to kill you. Do you want them to know what your next move is going to be? Unpredictability is one of your most potent weapons in the battle of daily driving.

4. Ignore optional laws. The US legislature and, shockingly, nearly every state legislature has passed a whole herd of laws related to you and your vehicle, because the government is evil and has goal except to make your life miserable. Luckily, grassroots organizations have managed to get the least important laws classified as optional. These laws include seatbelt regulations, reckless driving statutes, and the ever-baffling speeding laws. Of course no police officer or congressperson will tell you these laws are optional–their position requires them to give you a lecture about public safety or civic duty–but it’s pretty obvious. Look at the penalties. Failing to wear your seatbelt doesn’t get you sent to jail; you just have to pay a fine. Likewise with running so-called “stop” signs or passing vehicles that are merely doing the “speed limit” in town when there’s a solid yellow line in the road. These are clearly activities that pose no real threat to others, and “laws” regarding them represent a contemptible encroachment of private behavior by Big Government. Thanks to wise citizens’ groups, legislators have created “punishments” for these “infractions” proportionate to their potential harm. A good example is speeding. I think we can all agree that serious crimes such as armed robbery, illegally entering the United States looking for work, or public urination pose a clear danger to the very lives of Americans, and these crimes should be punished with mindlessly brutal justice. But if speeding posed that kind of danger to anyone, would states like Texas or Arizona be content with *fines* for speeders? Do armed robbers get a ticket and pay a fine? Do judges recommend that repeat border-jumpers be sent to remedial “classes” for their behavior? Do chronic pot users get away with nothing more than some points on their license? I think not. Therefore, speeding is not really a crime. In fact, the faster you drive, the more likely you are to escape the murderous impulses of the psychopaths in the other vehicles on the road.

5. Your vehicle is your manhood; behave accordingly. This rule applies mostly to men. Never forget that your vehicle is the physical embodiment of your masculinity. That is why you hang those rubber bull-sized testicles from the bumper of your Very Large Truck. What kind of man would want a small, weak masculinity, like a sedan or hybrid vehicle? A pathetic sissy-man. All real men demonstrate their virility and strength through the appearance and management of their vehicles. Yes, it’s popular these days to claim that manliness is somehow tied to things like responsibility, maturity, wisdom, or caring for loved ones. The people who say these things are not man enough to own big trucks. If your truck would have difficulty killing an entire family of six in a head-on collision with said family’s minivan, then you might as well just start wearing pink lace and high heels, Mr. Girly Girl. There is a school of thought asserting that insufficient masculinity can be compensated for with a small vehicle (e.g., VW Golf, Honda Civic, Suzuki Katana or, in truly desperate situations, a Dodge Neon) that has been modified at great personal expense to look very cool, go very fast, and ride so close to the ground that stray pennies would tear off its muffler. I concede that some missing masculinity can perhaps be reclaimed by driving such a vehicle at unsafe speeds on the expressway in a way that has a high probability of hurting at least a few innocent bystanders, but even such a semi-male vehicle owner would feel up to a 30% boost in basal testosterone levels by saving up for a decent truck.

6. Bicyclists have no rights. That’s pretty much all there is to say about this one. If bicyclists are stupid enough to believe the obviously-satirical Texas “law” about not riding on the sidewalk, then they need to learn to look behind them every few seconds and dodge your truck. And they should know that those lanes with diamonds and little pictures of bicycles in them only belong to the cyclists if you feel like allowing their use. For example, if you don’t feel like waiting in the turn lane at a traffic light, or if you see the clear necessity of passing someone in an unpatriotic small car on the right instead of the left, cyclists just need to get out of your way.

I shot these pics yesterday while kayaking on an arroyo near (in?) Los Fresnos. I have no idea what any of these birds are, except the cormorant. The rest are pretty much just awesomebirds. Maybe I should learn about birds.