Death Is Bad

There was a time not too long ago that whenever any Muslim anywhere did something morally reprehensible, the assholes on Fox News would demand that every Muslim everywhere repudiate those actions and engage in a public repentance ritual. There were some groups that were more than willing to do this, and went on air to publicly repudiate all acts of violence on behalf of all the Muslims in the world.  Then there were those people who said that asking for this sort of thing is kinda… well, I guess the word wouldn’t be racists, but whatever the religious equivalent of racism is. Two murderous psychopaths detonated a home-made bomb in Boston, and you expect all Muslims everywhere to denounce the act? You’re implying that the Muslim plumber in Oklahoma shares in the responsibility for that act somehow. Fuck you.

I side with the latter.

Interestingly, now that an atheist killed several Muslims,  some of those people appear to be flip-flopping. I’m going to ignore the weirdness that this looks to have been over a parking dispute rather than religious reasons. Likely the killer’s strongly negative views of the religious made it emotionally easier to pull the trigger. So let’s say that there was at least some religious motivation mixed in there. A number of prominent atheists have jumped up to publicly denounce these murders.

Now on the one hand, these are the equivalent of church leaders. It’s certainly a good idea, after this sort of thing happens, for a church leader to remind everyone in his church that we do not fucking do this sort of shit. Just so no one gets the wrong damn idea. We don’t want to be like those assholes secretly applauding the women’s-clinic bombings.

On the other hand, if I recall correctly, a lot of the people making these public statements are the same ones who said “Stop demanding that all Muslims repudiate every action of every crazy individual, you’re being racist.” Or as Scott would say, you’re building a Super-Weapon.  And yet, as soon as an equivalent situation crops up in atheist land, they immediately jump up and repudiate the action.

I’m left confused by the inconsistency. If you demand that others “own” every action by everyone in their religion, I’m going to think you’re an asshole, but at least you’re consistent when you then apologize for some psycho in another state killing people. If you protest that it’s bigotry to imply that a huge and diverse group all be tarred by the actions of individual nuts, I understand why you would refuse to accept the guilt-by-association when someone tries that on you. But if you claim that all Muslims shouldn’t be called on the carpet for every extremist’s action, and then also jump up to apologize for an unrelated atheist’s extreme actions, I’m left wondering… were you secretly trying to sabotage the Muslims earlier? Because you are clearly not heeding your own advice. In the realm of “Leading By Example” you are in the camp of judging an entire group by the actions of isolated extremists.

Maybe it’s just a tacit acknowledgement that we all know that people really do stereotype groups by the outliers they see in the news. A realpolitik acceptance that humans are simple, racist creatures, and it’s best to work with that fact when it comes down to brass tacks. We can talk a great, noble game of not judging groups when it is some other group that is being judged. This allows us to paint ourselves as noble. As soon as it’s OUR group that’s being judged, well shit, we all know that people really are racist, and the noble talk is all bullshit, so get the PR machine going and start telling everyone just how much we repudiate that guy.

Bleh. Hanson wins again.

Still, I don’t want anyone getting the idea that I’m not strongly against murder. o.O So let’s strike a balance…

Killing people is an abhorrent thing, and no one should do it. But anyone who wants to imply that I, or any other atheists, need to repudiate the actions of a murderer who is an atheist, is a bigoted asshole.

Last Call was published in 1993 and is set in the then-present day, so it’s now a period piece. The most fascinating part of reading it came when the protagonist had to cross-dress as part of a disguise. Nowadays that’s no big deal. In the book he is so repulsed by the idea that he seriously contemplates a far weaker disguise that would likely get him killed. Take a great-than-50% chance of being killed, vs dress like a queer, was actually a serious dilemma. He’s grossed out by it, and he gets non-stop harassment from everyone. Literally random people on the street threaten him simply for being there. A cab driver first extracts a promise that the protagonist won’t rape him before he agrees to drive him anywhere.

It wasn’t because Tim Powers is homophobic or anything, this was required to make the story believable in its day.

I was reminded of the pilot episode of “Friends”. I saw it when it first aired and laughed. When I saw it in reruns years later, a scene jumped out and punched me in the face. Chandler and Joey had to share a blanket/bed for some reason, and one of them had to quickly assert that this doesn’t mean he’s gay (because back then sharing a bed made you insta-gay), and that the other one should not take this as an invitation to butt-rape him (because that’s what gay people do!). The other guy quickly asserted that he was also absolutely not gay, and he’s also expecting no queer stuff! Studio audience laughs.

This was just good family fun back in the day. It was so ubiquitous that I apparently didn’t notice or think anything of it in 1994. It was only watching it later that the insane homophobia of the joke was apparent, and I felt awful that I hadn’t seen it before. Even at 14 I should have seen that.

But this is the same series that later on had the napping episode, pictured above, where the guys discover that cuddle-napping on the couch is the best thing ever. During “Friends” 10 years on air, the culture shifted that dramatically. That’s kinda surprising. We’ve come a long way, and I’m old enough now I can even see some of the progress in my life time. It’s weird.

I recently came across this post of 10 WOMEN CHRISTIAN MEN SHOULD NOT MARRY. It is, of course, hilarious.

I have a love/hate relationship with fundamentalists, because both atheists and fundamentalists do something that no one else seems to do – they take their religion seriously. Phil Goetz already covered this in his “Reason as memetic immune disorder” but for decades I was never able to figure this out. How is it that nearly everyone that’s religious doesn’t take the most important thing EVER seriously? And why was it that, when confronted by two groups that DO take the beliefs seriously, they defend/side with the group that is morally abhorrent to them but spouts the same buzzwords (fundamentalists), while rejecting the group whose values line up 95%+ with theirs but who say things that are both obvious and blasphemous (atheists)?

A digression that will become relevant.

Up until a few years ago, I knew exactly what I was doing at my job. I had certain numbers that came from location X, and other numbers that came from location Y. I combined these numbers, ran the right algorithms and analyses, and produces new numbers. The whole process was understandable.

Over the last few years my job has expanded to where now I’m confronted with mystery numbers and I have to figure out where the heck they came from, and why they are what they are, and what the heck does this mean for the company? I never have a fucking clue about how to do this – every month is a new damn struggle where I start from scratch trying to make sense of things. And I never get a full understanding of what exactly I’m doing – in the end shit often just works out and I heave a sigh of relief and go on to the next mystery numbers. Maybe people higher up in our company see more parts, and this makes sense to them. But to me, I am working with black boxes.

I’m of the opinion that this is the difference between engineering/science and “normal” people. A typical child, when given a lighter, will treat it very much like a black box. Figure out the wheel and the button, and after that explore the many ways having a fire-creation box can impact life. An engineering-minded kid, OTOH, will take that fucker apart. S/he’ll want to know how every piece interacts, why it acts the way it does, and what makes it go. S/he’ll discover the valves and the butane and probably break it, but s/he won’t feel at ease until it makes sense. I have transitioned from knowing all the guts of my work, to trying to optimize a black box from the outside. It’s stressful as hell.

But there is one thing that makes it better… no one else around me really knows what the hell is going on either. We’re all flying by the seat of our pants, getting through this as best we can, and relieved to see everything’s still working at the end of each quarter. There’s a solidarity to that. We can wink and nudge each other, and we cut each other a lot of slack. Ain’t nobody got a clue as to what’s happening in this shitstorm, so it’s ok that we’re fumbling forward together.

It occurred to me that this is how the vast majority of humanity lives. With no deeper understanding of how everything clicks into place and functions, simply as black boxes within black boxes, interacting with other black boxes. Nothing is deterministic in any comprehensible way. A few years ago I couldn’t imagine life like that. How does one live in a fundamentally chaotic world?? Now I know.

Then here comes the atheist with his fancy methods of “determining true things about reality” and “empirical testing,” upsetting the whole arrangement. Look asshole, no one actually believed that stuff about talking snakes and a world-wide flood and souls. That’s all just poetic shorthand for “Nothing makes sense. Let’s take comfort in being together.”

This is also my current model for post-modernism.

The two mindsets – one of taking propositions seriously and attempting to make sense of the universe, the other of accepting that we are adrift in chaos and all we can do is survive it – are so antithetical to each other that I don’t think they can ever be reconciled. Now that I’ve been exposed to both I can, with effort, shift from one to the other. But I’ve never been able to hold both in my mind at the same time. I had to write the middle part of this post a different day than I’ve written the top and bottom parts of it. And I gotta say – the stable, lawful view of reality feels so immeasurably better that it’s hard to describe the relief of slipping back into it. (I only stay in my existentially-horrifying job because I don’t think I can get anything that pays nearly this well elsewhere)

I used to think it was possible to spread atheism simply by pointing out the truth of it. Later I figured that I could do so by spreading to people love for truth so deep that they would naturally find it on their own. Now I think that I’m just really damn lucky, one might even say privileged, to have lived most of my life in circumstances that make fucking sense. Or perhaps that I have the right combination of advantages and blindnesses that only expose me to the parts that make sense, and keep the chaotic churn hidden from me. Ignorance is bliss?

Anyway, this is my current pet theory that tries to make sense of non-fundamentalist religious people. And it serves as a counter-point to Phil’s post: maybe reason isn’t a memetic immune disorder, maybe the analytical mindframe simply can’t coexist with the wishy-washy chaos-universe mysticism that most liberal religions consist of, and thus has to snap into either atheism or fundamentalism. (And the direction of the snap is strongly influenced by social pressures).