Gender roles and religion
I started a discussion about genetic defects that took a left turn into the politics of the hijab (or covering of women's bodies, whether voluntarily or under compulsion).
The left turn happened after I stopped attending to the OP, and I couldn't find a place to step in and try to rectify that left turn. So, I decided to start this thread, despite the fact that such follow-on threads usually don't have the liveliness of the original thread.
So, here's the point of this thread:
It's not the superficial details of the social control (i.e., wearing the hijab or burka) that matter, it's the overall cultural/religious stance towards women.
My beef is not with what women wear. My beef is with fundamentalist sociopathies that declare women to be second class citizens, to be unclean, to be the property of men to control. If one cannot draw a line and say that fundamentalisms that demand female circumcision, fundamentalisms that ban abortion even if the mother dies are simply evil, then one can hardly draw non-religion-based moral lines at all. That is, to not draw a line is to cede morality in a nation to whatever bunch of crackpots have the raw power to enforce whatever lunatic "religion" they claim.
ON EDIT: At some point, fundamentalism ceases to be religion and becomes mental illness. When the distance between reality and religious assertion passes some event horizon of cruelty, you can't give the headcase spouting it the protection of "freedom of religion". This kind of psychodrama has been played out in every century of the so-called Christian era, which speaks to the universality of the phenomenon of the mental disorder.
END EDIT.
Its my opinion that if women had the freedom and the time to examine the totality of their social situation, without the overbearing censorship of fundamentalist religion, they would not choose to wear a burka or cover their face with a hijab. But that's just my opinion about a situation that is unlikely to happen anytinme soon.
On the opposite point that Western women feel the tyranny of looks, here is the one comment I made in the previous thread:
The US is nowhere near as bad as countries like S. Korea or Brazil, where everyone (men and women) feel pressured to undergo plastic surgery to meet the demand for personal good looks.
The problem goes way beyond religion. Appearance has been a pillar of culture forever. Societies dictate the bounds of appearance.
So, those are nothing but opinions. I don't claim they are the right answer. But, here is what I do claim:
Most Western** (Christian, Jewish, Islamic) fundamentalisms look the same. Women are property. Men are in charge. Sex is the snare of the devil, and therefore women are the devil. In any "he said, she said" situation, the men are assumed to be victims and the women are assumed to be perpetrators. (** I know little about Eastern fundamentalisms, and will not discuss them.)
These were the attitudes of the Catholic fanatics of the Spanish Empire of the 16th-18th centuries. This is still the attitude of fundamentalist (Hassidic) Jewry. (When they marry, women shave their heads and wear a wig. They bear as many children as the husband demands. Women sit in a separate section of the temple.) It is the attitude of fundamentalist Islam, which allows men to have multiple wives, but not vice versa. (This whole discussion was started because of the station of women in the fundamentalist Islamic society - and their are non-fundamentalist Islamic societies which have not been discussed.)
IMHO, women who think that they are "choosing" to wear the hijab should take a good long look at the role of women in their religion and in their society. Are women equal? Or are women property? Are women viewed as neutral actresses or as temptresses? Are women encouraged to reach their full potential, or mandatorily sidetracked into the role of homemaker? As one commentator in my earlier thread wrote:
Yes, there are women who choose to wear hijabs and head coverings because they think they have a freedom of choice. They don't. And the reason for the covering is to either please or not offend a male god.
In closing, the issue is not the hijab/burka. The issue is the entire misogynistic mindset of fundamentalist religions - and all the "traditional marriage" conservatives who equally want their women "barefoot, uneducated, and pregnant". The hijab is a distraction.
If the American version of (for want of a better term) Enlightenment democracy cannot defend its commitment to individual rights for women in its own country, then we might as well just call up the biggest fundamentalist Christian whackjob preacher and appoint him president for life.
Comments
Thanks for your understanding
While I do in fact believe that there are some serious issues involved, you gotta believe I hate arguing in favor of fundamental religions... *sigh*
Exactly. So now we've got some politician who espouses a morality that is violently in opposition to yours. The only way you can influence whether that politician gets power is by influencing voters and now aren't we back to that "one Catholic at a time" problem? Or, looking at it internationally, aren't we back to either "one Muslim at a time" or "freedom bombing"?
Inevitably you're going to need to win hearts and minds here one heart or mind at a time... or else use force. So that's why I keep asking how you plan to influence the changes you (and I) both wish. My own guess is that starting with "You are all reprehensible monsters" isn't going to get you very far. I think you'll need a much, MUCH better view of the opposing viewpoint before you can even hope to build a bridge of understanding. Without that bridge, you have no way whatsoever to influence them.
A lot of wanderers in the U.S. political desert recognize that all the duopoly has to offer is a choice of mirages. Come, let us trudge towards empty expanse of sand #1, littered with the bleached bones of Deaniacs and Hope and Changers.
-- lotlizard
I thank you for your well-written argument
No one changed Nazi minds one at a time. You have to discredit, and then destroy, the political and social power of their organization in order to break the spell. Again, this is about politics and politics is about power. Edward Snowden and Assange went after the organization, and were highly successful until they were essentially detained by the authorities and had their materials and facts removed from the corporate news feed. Nowadays all you hear about either of them are what traitors they are. They are hated by TPTB because they succeeded in breaking through at the strategic level.
Usually, such strategic campaigns are run by TPTB. In the 1980s Grover Norquist went after liberals with a "starve the beast" campaign. This campaign was like strategic bombing. He did not target individuals, as you propose. The campaign went right over the heads (figuratively) of most liberal voters. They did not organize to oppose the strategic plan to essentially defund and decertify labor unions, the backbone of the Democratic Party. Later those voters didn't understand the power of the loathsome Newt Gingrich's strategy to discredit the DP by smearing its officeholders with vile propganda tropes. The plan was executed at an organizational level, with a rightwing media network running behind the scenes, largely hidden from the awareness of liberals. The public debate on these topics was only successful to the extent that the starvation campaign and the smearjobs weakened one side of the debate.
IMHO, to stop the fundamentalists from taking over you have to confront them head on at the strategic level. Confront the Israeli fundamentalists fifty years of violation of International Law regarding settlements and walls and reprisals in the Occupied Territories. Confront head on the vile theocracy that we have supported in KSA, and all the Wahabbi madrassas that propagandize this murderous fundamentalism all over the Muslim world. Confront head on the fundamentalist whackjobs who have taken control of the US Air Force Academy and have instituted religious indoctrination there. (God bless Mickey Weinstein, although I haven't heard much about him lately.)
But ala Norquist, most people are too busy and too indoctrinated to listen to a strategic argument. Chomsky's conciseness filter is in play. If you can't make your point in a two minute pitch, you won't get anywhere with the short-attention-span citizenry of today. You can't win misinformed people over without strategic arguments. The problem is that people have already been indocrinated against my strategic arguments, my two minute pitch. It is "fake news", "Russsian trolling", "anti-Semitism", "Putin loving".
Its a Catch-22. You can't convince people in the face of the bogus media narrative, and you can't change the media unless you convince large numbers of people via wholesale leftwing political organization, which is snuffed out whenever it arises.
----
OTOH, the stink from all the rot in our society is strong. Everyone smells what a putrid mess the Catholic Church is. Twenty-somethings are fleeing fundamentalist churches rapidly. The number of people declaring "no religion" is starting to be the largest group in society, although it is nowhere near the 80-90% numbers you see in Western Europe.
In the end, the large religious denominations have become part of the Shadow State. Their leaders take their cues from Washington. It is only by pointing to the blatant corruption of these so-called religious organizations that they can be gotten rid of. Engaging them on some moral plane, one at a time, as you propose, is exactly what fake Christian-ist assholes like the late Charles Colson - who switched from being Nixon's attack dog to being an Evangelical minister - dine out on.
My opinion is that an organization is on a different level (i.e., the leadership) than the individuals who make up the bulk of the organization. I'm sure most Germans thought they were on god's side even as the Nazis were slaughtering millions. No amount of arguing morality with Germans, even if the Nazis hadn't criminalized such behavior, would have derailed the Nazi program once the Nazis were in charge of the country and its propaganda apparatus. Ditto in Stalinist Russia. Solzhenitsyn reports on prisoners in the Gulag who continued to extol the same Stalin who sent them there, certain that Stalin would recognize their innocence.
I have been singularly unimpressed with my attempts to get past the indoctrination of the masses by the media. The only people willing to engage with me one-n-one are people already on my side. The indoctrinated just blow me off as an aging hippie, a socialist, a communist, a Putin stooge, whatever.
Can you point to any large scale successes of your proposed approach?
Tentatively I can point to success
The hearts and minds strategy takes time. I would point out that progress HAS happened in the general arena of feminism. It might continue to happen if the feminists can wrest feminism back from the Democratic party. So yeah, I think it can win.
That all being said, I'm intrigued with your plan too. Just to get my thinking more clear, can you give me one specific example of how you intend to strategically attack one of these institutions?
In the larger picture regarding the US (and for that matter, most of western society), I don't have any simple answer to the problem of matrix-people. They have been well and truly captured. They may well end up destroying us all. But I have had zero luck talking to any matrix person about a non-matrix idea. As you say, such thoughts are summarily rejected. This is true even of members of my own family who are very, very bright and reasonably well educated in terms of history and politics.
For instance, my brother was touting something that Clapper said that supported an anti-Trump stance. I pointed out that Clapper was a liar of the worst sort and simply accepting his words without evidence to back them up seemed dubious. Now, you need to understand that my brother is in information security and knows ALL about the excesses of the NSA going back well before Snowden. He also knows that Clapper lied to congress... as did Obama. He simply edits that knowledge out of his argument stream. In this case by saying, "Just because he lied once doesn't mean you cannot trust anything he says." My rebuttal that it was a pretty freakin' huge lie with massively damaging consequences that really should've landed him in prison got nowhere.
I have no methodology for springing someone loose from the matrix. Just like the movie, they need to make the first steps.
*** EDITED TO ADD ***
Oh... and what changed the Germans minds was blowing them the fuck up. I think we all understand that violence is the final arbiter of these things. I'm curious if you have answers short of that? Note that I'm no pacifist. My own sense of reality is that life = competition and the notion that we might somehow never fight with anyone ever again seems... well... specious at best. I also acknowledge that there are "aesthetics" that I would, in fact, fight and be willing to kill over. too bad those are never the reasons the US finds itself at war.
A lot of wanderers in the U.S. political desert recognize that all the duopoly has to offer is a choice of mirages. Come, let us trudge towards empty expanse of sand #1, littered with the bleached bones of Deaniacs and Hope and Changers.
-- lotlizard
Examples are thin on the ground
I, personally, have no plan. A strategic attack must be built on a widely circulated revalation or event that penetrates the mass consciousness, like Snowden's data dump or Occupy Wall St. An attack depends on suspending the normal, banal boundaries of the corporate media. It depends on breaking through the bullshit that is constantly spoon fed to the masses.
I had some hope that the sadistic massacre of Palestinians during the latest Gaza demonstrations would galvanize some public awareness. Instead, the Israelis doubled down on the anti-BDS message and the corporate media went along.
When America is OK with defenceless civilians, including medical workers, being shot down by cross-border military snipers for merely demonstrating on their own territory (flying kites is a joke, not a reason for murder), one must ask if any outrage perpetrated by the international PTB can lead to consciousness raising.
At this point, some inadvertent release of embarrassing info in the ongoing Trump V Dem wars is my best hope for an opening for a strategic attack. Perhaps the Dems will accidentally point the finger at Netanyahu while trying to implicate Jared Kushner, although with his bankster/Zionist background, bulging eyes Adam Schiff is unlikely to make that mistake. Perhaps Trump will implicate Hillary in the Libyan debacle. Perhaps the attempt to break our alliance with MBS will get some traction from the oil faction of MAGA, before the totally bogus shale oil play crashes and burns from interest rate increases.
But, basically, strategy must bide its time until there is a "teachable moment". Then it must pounce on whatever fundamentatlist winds up under the microscope.
i read yesterday that some fundy israeli
settlers threw rocks at some israeli soldiers, injuring several of them.
to my surprise, israel continues to exist, even though the people throwing rocks -- and as we know, people throwing rocks represent an existential threat to Israel -- were not shot dead by the soldiers they were attacking.
The earth is a multibillion-year-old sphere.
The Nazis killed millions of Jews.
On 9/11/01 a Boeing 757 (AA77) flew into the Pentagon.
AGCC is happening.
If you cannot accept these facts, I cannot fake an interest in any of your opinions.
Ah, you read between my lines
Yes. Fanatics must be crushed before they will abandon their ideology. Funny how, in 1946, no one in Germany admitted to being an ardent Nazi. They were all somehow "deceived" or "reluctant".
And who defines
who is a fanatic?
dfarrah
That's what I was just thinking
Because honestly, the phrase "fanatics must be crushed" sounds pretty fanatical to me right there. And I mean that seriously. That phrase has me backing away from this conversation thinking "Holy crap!"
I have thoughts about under what circumstances I might agree to violate national sovereignty but that would be a fairly long and drawn out thought process and it most definitely would not simply involve my own personal assessment of good & evil. I readily admit that at some point I would, in fact, do so. But I'm none too clear where that point is. I just understand that the capacity for humans to do BadThings(tm) is boundless and eventually I'd want to interfere.
The problem with violating sovereignty is now you're just another American war criminal. Welcome to the club and don't forget to collect your Nobel peace prize on the way out.
A lot of wanderers in the U.S. political desert recognize that all the duopoly has to offer is a choice of mirages. Come, let us trudge towards empty expanse of sand #1, littered with the bleached bones of Deaniacs and Hope and Changers.
-- lotlizard
Right. Four words in a thread that has stretched on...
for two days, and you are "backing away from this conversation".
Do you not agree that Israeli snipers murdering innocent civilians are fanatics?
Do you not agree that MBS is a murderous fanatic at both the personal level (Khashoggi) and a nation state level (the genocide in Yemen, the backing for the Syrian war)?
Do you not agree that the fundamentalists at the AF academy are murderous religious nutbags who really want to nuke someone for Jesus?
Do you really think that anything short of "crushing" them will get these people to stop? (And crushing itself is a vague word. Its not like I said murder, shoot, or any other such word.) Did you yourself not say, two comments ago:
After that statement, you are now accusing me of "American exceptionalism" when I included the nutbags at the AF academy in my list of fanatics?
I feel set up. After listening to this entire 100 post long thread, after offering similar phraseology yourself, without any earlier misgivings, you go this false equivalence route based on four words that in any other leftwing context would be unremarkable but now are a casus belli?
I am sadly disappointed. This is basic "trigger word" nonsense. All of the sudden, its all or nothing for you. Four words out of several thousand, and I have mutated into a Nazi.
Your two responses have gone a good distance towards ruining c99p for me as a place where people do not go ballistic for no reason.
LOL!
Nobody can "ruin" C99 for you, only you can do that for yourself (but why would you?).
Other than that, I concur completely.
"Obama promised transparency, but Assange is the one who brought it."
I don't think you should feel set up
I've made it pretty plain all along that I see ethical problems with "might makes right". That right there represents the entire nature of my problem with the notion that we must DOSOMETHING(tm) about those offensive bastards. In fact, the need to DOSOMETHING(tm) is exactly what defines a fanatic in my mind. It's what made the Crusades happen. It's what makes killing gays happen. "Why, look at that offensive bastard over there doing something I dislike. That's just gotta stop!"
Explain to me how your position is any different than any other such stance. What makes your position any different in any meaningful way at all from the most extreme elements of Jihadism?
Yeah, not my cup o' tea.
A lot of wanderers in the U.S. political desert recognize that all the duopoly has to offer is a choice of mirages. Come, let us trudge towards empty expanse of sand #1, littered with the bleached bones of Deaniacs and Hope and Changers.
-- lotlizard
@SnappleBC
No. Not explicitly. Not in those exact words. I spent several comments talking about strategies for opposing rightwing forces. You made no accusations then. You only jumped in because of four words.
I responded to your comment in detail. In this reply to that, you have chosen not to explain, or even refer to, your ridiculous accusation that I support "American Exceptionalism" in the face of the fact that all the fanatics I listed are either American (AF) or murderous allies of the US (Isreal, KSA). Instead, you just repeat your baseless accusation and demand that I clear my name of charges you invented out of thin air.
This is so loosely worded as to be nothing more than a provocation. According to this vague logic, if I declare that I have to "do something" about the broken pipe that is flooding my basement, that makes me a fanatic? There is simply no proportionality or context in this statement. Shall I let myself be robbed and beaten because doing something might lead to "fanatacism". Do you want me to be Ghandi?
Your verbal escalation is striking. Trying to do something political is equated to a civilization mission like the Crusades? Really? This is the exact same Identity Politics trigger word nonsense that I criticized multiple times in two of my recent threads.
No. You do not get to task me. The burden of proof in an accusation is on the accuser. That would be you. I do not have to refute a baseless, but incendiary, allegation just because you demand it. You have to prove I am what you claimed: a murderous fanatic.
After listening to this reply, I repeat: I feel like I was set up. You just waited and baited me until I said the magic words, and presto you are all puffed up with self-righteousness. I will remember this behavior going forward.
Deus Ex Machina
When precise accusations are attributed to imprecise words.
There is always Music amongst the trees in the Garden, but our hearts must be very quiet to hear it. ~ Minnie Aumonier
Obviously I wasn't as clear as I thought
I don't really understand the imprecision. The call was quite clearly to DOSOMETHING(tm) up to and including "crushing" whatever that might mean. It seems like a pretty clear thought process. Person A is offended at something Person B is doing and so a conflict occurs.
The question I have comes down to agency and rights -- whether it's another nation or another individual. Let's take a look at nations. By what right does any other nation enter into the INTERNAL affairs of another?
I can only presume that the Muslim side is also loaded with people who look at Western culture and see it as an abomination. Heck, *I* see it as an abomination in a lot of areas. Should they "crush us" before our abomination can spread? That sounds like Jihad to me. It sounds just like that no matter who's saying it... even Arendt.
The only setup here is that someone thought that their feminist pleas would cause me to ignore all other moral and ethical aspects and that hasn't occurred.
Here's a question. Let's suppose you have two countries side-by-side. Country A is a liberal utopia complete with electric flying cars and whatnot. Country B likes to have barbecue babies on the weekend. If that's not horrific enough, just insert some suitably horrific thing there. Does country A have any right to interfere in country B's affairs if they don't spill over the border?
A lot of wanderers in the U.S. political desert recognize that all the duopoly has to offer is a choice of mirages. Come, let us trudge towards empty expanse of sand #1, littered with the bleached bones of Deaniacs and Hope and Changers.
-- lotlizard
Navel gazing about the ethics of sovereignty
Can there be a more tedious example of academic gobbledygook then asking me to muse over theoretical geo-political ethics when it is quite clear to me that human beings have a moral impetus built into their DNA to protect babies. A more useful question would've been to name the different ways individual human beings can come together to create solutions.
There is always Music amongst the trees in the Garden, but our hearts must be very quiet to hear it. ~ Minnie Aumonier
Thanks but I'm out with that comment
I was interested in a deep philosophical question about rights and good/evil. If we're just going to do the American exceptionalism riff, I've heard the tune before.
A lot of wanderers in the U.S. political desert recognize that all the duopoly has to offer is a choice of mirages. Come, let us trudge towards empty expanse of sand #1, littered with the bleached bones of Deaniacs and Hope and Changers.
-- lotlizard
Live by the sword, and die by the sword
soon enough, we'll probably get blown up too, and for similar reasons.
"Obama promised transparency, but Assange is the one who brought it."
" No one changed Nazi minds one at a time"
Sure they did. Nazi's didn't exist before they existed. So someone or someones managed to change minds to be part of the Nazi party.
dfarrah
The subject was deprogramming Nazis, not programming...
them in the first place.
They became Nazis out of horrible external circumstances: crippling reparations payments that led to hyperinflation, the crash of 1929, the feeling of solidarity with the soldiers in the trenches in WW1, the incessant street fighting between Nazi and Communist gangs and thugs.
People lived for over a decade in a steadily declining environment. The obvious solutions were tried and failed. That left only the bad solutions, like the Nazis (or like Trump today). People were desperate. They chose the Nazis as the lesser evil. Once the Nazis were in, nobody was allowed to change their mind.
The more I learn about Solzhenitsin
The less I like him, and it makes me question his writing. I won't deny the ravages of Stalinism, but what percentage of that is capito-religious Value Added? It's a little hard to remember now just how subsidized, vicious and lying the attacks on Godless Communism was.
Keep in mind: It was the Soviet Union which defeated Hitler. I recently read that 90% of German casualties were on the Eastern Front. Hitler might well have won if he hadn't made the mistake of thinking the Soviets were primitive pushover subhumans. He attacked the USSR as a war of extermination of subhumans for Aryan lebensraum. He had a soft spot for the English, as semi-Teutons. If he had not divided his forces, he could well have won. If England went down, there would have been no facile pipeline from the western USSR to America's factories, which is what kept the USSR going.
Ah, I'm second-guessing history again.
Comic relief: second-guessing history — via time travel . . .
http://www.viruscomix.com/page417.html
Zweihundert Reichmarks,
bitte.
(grin)
Like the Tyrolean hat. And the blimp.
Ohhhh, Scheiße . . . n/t
how'd you do the Doppel-S?
Not up on keyboard tricks.
LOL. n/t
I will remember Solzhenitsyn as a mystical rightwinger
I will not judge the man. He went through hell and was able to document it, voluminously. I own all three volumes of Gulag, but it is essentially an indigestible pile of names and places I never heard of, plus enough horror stories for a series of slasher flicks. It is the only historical document of record for the Gulag, and I respect it for that.
But Solzhenitsyn was never a liberal. He was, however, made to order for the neocons and all the other rightwing operatives of the Cold War. He showed up in the US and instantly started denouncing its "decadence" (in the 1970s).
When he went back to Russia after 1990, he found fault with it as well.
IMHO, even if he never had been sent to the Gulag, he would have turned out to be a Jeremiah** - a religiously inspired, hectoring critic of secular society. He was fortunate to have been useful to various people, from Kruschev to the CIA.
**Jeremiah - a person who is pessimistic about the present and foresees a calamitous future.
Here is what Eric Hobsbawm had to say about Solzhenitsyn
Ironic in view of all the homosexual priests.
I've seen lots of changes. What doesn't change is people. Same old hairless apes.
Meanwhile, this is ripped from the headlines:
(The NYT, to be precise)
The earth is a multibillion-year-old sphere.
The Nazis killed millions of Jews.
On 9/11/01 a Boeing 757 (AA77) flew into the Pentagon.
AGCC is happening.
If you cannot accept these facts, I cannot fake an interest in any of your opinions.
I'm coming in merely reading
I'm coming in merely reading the various comments from both threads here; however, I will add something though.
If I was a woman and my requirement for being in a religion was to wear an all-black outfit, particularly in nations that hit 100 degrees, yeah no I'm not doing that.
Now I'm purely talking about choice, not forced or coerced or manipulated or societal pressure, just free choice. I sure as hell know I wouldn't go for it; I'd bake to death. God, I find 85 to be hot. I shudder at what that would be at say 100 with a burqa on.
Certainly not if it's polyester
That stuff doesn't "breathe", and doesn't let your skin breathe either. On the other hand, loose-woven and loose-fitting cotton garments, in any color, can be surprisingly comfortable even in fairly extreme heat. (It is probably not an accident that cotton was first grown and first woven in hotter climates.)
Linen is said to be even better, but at least nowadays is a lot harder to come by and much more expensive.
There is no justice. There can be no peace.
Speaking of polyester....
Once upon a time, all sweatshirts and pants were 100% cotton. Today, good luck with that unless you want to pay about $60-80 for a sweatshirt.
"Religion is what keeps the poor from murdering the rich."--Napoleon
Trigger warning (snark): a commercial message
I agree about the cheap crap polyester clothing. I have discovered that the Van Huesen outlet stores cell 55/45 cotton/poly blends at dirt cheap prices ($15 for a shirt, $25 for a pair of men's pants). The clothes are sturdy, durable, conservatively styled.
I've never seen a sweatshirt there, but collared shirts (not just business, but casual), polo shirts, long sleeved collared "jerseys" for cold weather, anoraks, etc.
Just wanted to point you at a source of quality, affordable clothing. I don't know why they don't advertise. They would be mobbed.
Thanks, but I won't wear anything that isn't
100% cotton. I also hate wool including cashmere. My grandson brought me a lap robe from Sweden that I swear must be made of horse hair. I smiled and said thank you. Now I have to figure out what to do with it.
"Religion is what keeps the poor from murdering the rich."--Napoleon
To each his own. n/t
I agree
Having worn a variety of fabrics in an assortment of hot work environments, indoors and out. You have to let sweat evaporate to get the benefit of sweating, and that works much better with cotton. Never tried linen.
cotton isn't a great choice for activities that will
be both cold and wet. i knew a former ski patrol guy who told me they used to refer to denim as "death cloth".
The earth is a multibillion-year-old sphere.
The Nazis killed millions of Jews.
On 9/11/01 a Boeing 757 (AA77) flew into the Pentagon.
AGCC is happening.
If you cannot accept these facts, I cannot fake an interest in any of your opinions.
There are times when wool is the thing
Cotton's better for heat, wool for cold. I'd wear only wool shirts if I were paddling in chilly weather. But when I was welding or summer hiking, I'd wear a cotton t-shirt. They were easier to find, then.
I gave up on jeans 'cause they never dry once wet, summer or winter. At least real dungarees, not fashion jeans. They were designed for desert work, mining. For cold, I wear parachute pants with thermals. The outer layer can dry fast while your skin stays warm.
For cold, I stay inside - California dreaming
Ok, this is not a serious post.
Re fur, I prefer dog fur, still on the dog. Dogs seems to enjoy cuddling too.
I've seen lots of changes. What doesn't change is people. Same old hairless apes.
Religion
is just politics, with fancier costumes. Also, follow the money.
Had to laugh
Incredibly complex discussion here, and you managed to sum it up in a sentence.
This topic is always hard to address...
My attitude towards gender equity has to do mostly with its complete absence in family courts. Considering that my ex wife got the benefits of social workers telling her that it was all my fault that we were miserable, broke and lousy parents. Anything further I say on the subject is of course tainted by extremely bitter opinions on both the family court and California in general.
Short Version of my opinion: The state has an interest in destroying families. Desperate people with NO support are people who will do what they are told. Gender politics, as promoted and enforced by the government, do much to drive people from each other.
Religious garb, especially demanded by religious officials, has the nature of creating an alternate support system and isolating people from other human interaction. This is frightening to me because fundamentalist/cultist religions actively attempt to influence political and economic control as well as spiritual and religious. Religious garb is an active statement that "I am apart, you will treat me differently." It is akin to a uniform. It serves only to separate humans into further tribal identities.
I don't wear a Judo Gi out in public even though Judo is a major part of my life. Why not? Because wearing it represents that I am fighting. I am ready to learn, I am looking to get thrown to the ground. When priests wear collars out in public, they expect a level of respect and deference. Wearing a Hijab or any other garb of that nature is saying "You are NOT allowed to look at me. You are NOT allowed to talk to me." So yes, it's "Empowering" in the same sense that hanging up a "No Trespassers" Sign is.
[video:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oeT5otk2R1g]
Edit: Unfortunate typo corrected.
I do not pretend I know what I do not know.
Wow. Just got online. Some good writing/thinking has been posted
Thanks to lengthy and serious thought from:
UntimelyRippd (really logical exposition with many useful point, e.g., the Magdalens)
SnappleBC (no need to apologize for the "left turn", you couldn't see the future)
detroitmechworks (would we were all as aware of where we are coming from as you are)
and all the other comments.
They made me realize that this is an even more deep, fraught, and emotionally charged topic than I thought. I appreciate the socialization on this board that lets such topics be discussed without degenerating into a flame war. I conjecture that this is how "debate" was supposed to work in Victorian times: strong feelings expressed in precise language under rational guidelines - although they would have a stroke at this topic and some of the language :-).
I'm going to try to comment on individual comments; but many words were necessary to clearly state positions. Its going to be hard for me (who has a bad case of Michener-itis; i.e., begin at the beginning of time) to comment briefly on such lengthy comments.
Again thanks for the comments.
"At some point, fundamentalism ceases to be religion and becomes
"At some point, fundamentalism ceases to be religion and becomes mental illness. "
I agree so much.
Religion IS mental illness.
I've seen lots of changes. What doesn't change is people. Same old hairless apes.
It all comes down to
whether people, religions, countries want to live in the 10th century or the present.
Seems the past is the choice?
Prof: Nancy! I’m going to Greece!
Nancy: And swim the English Channel?
Prof: No. No. To ancient Greece where burning Sapho stood beside the wine dark sea. Wa de do da! Nancy, I’ve invented a time machine!
Firesign Theater
Stop the War!
Can anyone here even imagine this conversation
taking place at Daily Kos? I mean, seriously.
This is why I still like this site A LOT!
Thanks everyone.
"Without the right to offend, freedom of speech does not exist." Taslima Nasrin
TOP would have immediately broken down into personal attacks
As well as immediately dismissing all arguments about male legal issues as "MRA propaganda".
I remember having to couch my arguments that men are treated unfairly by the California Child Protective Services in feminist terms. And when a cartoon said that moms work harder than anyone else I was berated for asking about the single dads... Apparently both Mothers day and Fathers day are now Mother's day. Father's day because all Fathers are jerks and mom is the one who does everything...
I do not pretend I know what I do not know.
Yeah!
If at (redacted) they disagree with you they say "sounds like you belong over at c99". Isn't that so cute!
Isn't that so generous of them
I think it's great that they send the actual thinkers our way. Maybe I should send Marcos a thank you card?
A lot of wanderers in the U.S. political desert recognize that all the duopoly has to offer is a choice of mirages. Come, let us trudge towards empty expanse of sand #1, littered with the bleached bones of Deaniacs and Hope and Changers.
-- lotlizard
Nah
It'd be a waste. He's just hoping somebody will pay him dotcom beaucoup bux for his site.
I Strongly Second This Comment
Every political blog should have members like arendt, Big Al, OPOL, and many others who aren't afraid to challenge conventional wisdom and offer provocative thoughts as evidenced in several comments above in this excellent essay.
If looking for conformist thinking, one usually won't find it here on c99%. Thanks, all.
A riddle wrapped in a mystery inside an enigma
I've really come to appreciate the freedom of expression here
If people disagree, they do not start attacking you ad hominem. You get rational arguments.
It reminds me of the early days of the internet, when only research scientists were on line; and the discussions were civilized and erudite.
well, i certainly wouldn't have bothered to post.
or perhaps i should say, "risked".
The earth is a multibillion-year-old sphere.
The Nazis killed millions of Jews.
On 9/11/01 a Boeing 757 (AA77) flew into the Pentagon.
AGCC is happening.
If you cannot accept these facts, I cannot fake an interest in any of your opinions.
Desert Monotheism
Hi Arendt,
good followup thread. I notice when we speak of "fundamentalism", we're mostly speaking of the religions which came out of the arid Middle East (though recent Hinduism is another story): Judaism, Islam, Christianism. Otherwise known as the Abrahamic religions. I think we might include Zoroastrians in here too. The main characteristic of these monotheisms is the rejection of the female principle in the divine. The One God is a guy. It looks like much of our modern misery is due to a Bronze Age, maybe early Iron Age, assertion of patriarchy. Polytheistic traditions tend to be more tolerant, I think, and they tend to include the female principle, in varying degrees of power in relation to the male gods. I keep thinking of a scene in one of Mary Renault's Bronze Age Greece novels, referring to that strange tribe in the desert which worships only Zeus.
(my other just asked "what about the Mediterranean religion, the FSM?")
People still feel a need for balance in the divine, so we have Mary "veneration" (not worship, notice: she's not "divine"), Santa Barbara, Our Lady of Guadeloupe, Jewish mothers, etc. I don't know enough about Islam to guess where the female principle sneaks in, there.
We had a conversation about this about a year ago, speculating about the influence of the desert environment on religious and political power structures.
So we might speak of "fundamentalism" as an aberration, but I think it actually does return to the ancient roots of the tradition. The aberrations are the more tolerant and unbiased traditions that return the female divine (and improved position of women) to us, cloaked in syncretism and "veneration" under the patriarchal umbrella.
I wonder what a political philosophy not grounded in Abrahamism would look like? Try as they might, geniuses like Marx and Freud still drank the desert with their mothers milk.
City States.
Democracy is, by its very nature, a polytheistic political being. As a result, people who disagree with the way a city is run can easily move to a place where their way of life is taught. Worked great... until the jerks decided that their religion was the ONE TRUE Religion...
The problem is that we aren't allowed to have true freedom in politics... 2 Parties, and the attendant Demi-parties, the Greens, Handservants of the great Party Democrat, and the Libertarians, footsoldier of the High Party Republicans...
and as such the naturally polytheistic and flexible Democracy has become brittle with the rot of monotheism.
I theorize that the reason the original Olympians were 6 male gods and 6 female gods was to represent the hope of gender parity in the ancient world. Aaaaand then they went and demoted a female god to bring in a new male one... dammit. So close.
I do not pretend I know what I do not know.
Gender parity in gods
I'm no expert on the Bronze Age roots of Western civ. Matriarchy preceded patriarchy, I think, but the matriarchs had their Year-Kings; the matriarchs weren't exclusive. Patriarchy seems to coincide with the late rise of city-states: the surpluses of agriculture allow a propertied class, and classes of people not directly involved in raising food, and Big Daddy to rule 'em. But I think each little locality had its own set of gods or versions of the gods; springs and trees had their own spirits or demigods. There seemed to be a few repeated themes: sky daddy, earth mother, sun god, moon goddess, along with the cycle of seasons with death and rebirth. I don't recall much warfare over religious stuff until much later, just over property, mainly.
Interestingly, there are (or were until missionaries) many matriarchal and matrilineal societies still around, but I think they're mostly rural.
How does this effect politics? I say monotheism coincides with the objectification of the world and nature, culminating in capitalism.
This is wandering off-topic, so I'll bring it back by saying that the objectifying of women by fundamentalism is the natural outcome of male monotheism. Hindu fundamentalism might shoot my argument down, though.
Yeah, that's Robert Graves theory...
At least what I got from his Greek Myths volume 1 & 2.
However some of my other studies suggest that the question wasn't settled, even as late as 400 BC. (Specifically, I believe there was at least a portion of Athenian society which recorded descent in a matrilinear fashion. (The famous anecdote of Antisthenes being accused of not being Athenian because his MOTHER was from a different city.)
It's an interesting question, and one that unfortunately will probably never be answered due to monotheisms tendency to think that all time started with it, and therefore everything before that was stupid and ignorant. (You see the same thing among modern scientists who don't realize that if a thing is possible NOW, it was always possible...)
I do not pretend I know what I do not know.
I'd view it as a trend
Culminating in Abrahamism. With an end product in capitalism.
edit: we still have Year-Kings here - only every 4 years. If he's a good boy, 8 years.
A long time ago I read King Jesus by Graves; I was too young to really get a lot out of it. I should try again. But iirc he makes the case that the crucifixion was another variation of the year-king story.
I don't think its off topic
Its the objectification that results in tyranny. When people can be objectified as slaves, when women can be traded as property, we are already at some primitive form of capitalism. The Roman Empire traded heavily in slaves, and had the very modern innovation of offshore banks, in places like the Greek Islands.
That was Renault dropping the hammer
She usually did that about once per novel to remind the reader that she was writing historical fiction in modern times about bygone times. There's a comparable Big-Lipped Alligator Moment (that's what TVTropes says such things are called) in The Mask of Apollo, where the actor-hero, delirious with pneumonia, briefly dreams himself onstage in the graveyard scene in Hamlet - it's not explicit, but it's unmistakable. (He's a contemporary of Plato, not Shakespeare.)
There is no justice. There can be no peace.
Good phrase, I like it
Yeah, that was clearly a perspective moment. And it worked! I haven't read Renault in over 30 years, but I remember that.
Edit: And I think it's a realistic way to put us in the mindset of a Greek polytheist viewing Abrahamism. Naturally he'd think the patriarchal god was Zeus.
Help, I got lost. Found it. Sorry.
Where is the earlier reference to Mary Renault? To my perusal, this is the first reference in this subthread.
Found it:
All interesting stuff. Ms. Arendt has a copy of Graves which I have not read. She might also have some Renault books.
Try "The King Must Die"
where Theseus is musing about all the different sorts of people who wind up in King Minos' bull court. (The nutcase didn't make it through his first session with a live bull, because he pulled a knife and tried to charge. Bad move.)
There is no justice. There can be no peace.
It is not the desert conditions, but its impenetrability that..
is important in the development of theocracy. By impenetrability (called circumscription below) I mean that you can't easily move a short distance to a new place in order to flee oppression.
In the previous comment, detroitmechworks intuits what I am about to tell you:
So, in keeping with my interest for Julian Jaynes' theories of religion, I found this interesting work by a Chinese Taoist scholar. He claims that there was not bicameral period in Chinese civilization, that it went straight to consciousness.
Another interesting reference for you concerns balancing male and female in religion.
Thanks, good references
We had a great (at least, I enjoyed it) in-depth conversation about much of this about a year ago, in one of your essays. We discussed the difference between ancient Chinese culture in a verdant country, and the western origins in arid country: for example, Egypt with its fertile but narrow river accompanied by pharaohs, slaves, and cyclopean (ha, I finally get to use my Lovecraft!) monuments. Egypt was not monotheist-patriarchal, unless you count the real power of the deified Pharaoh. Yeah, there was Hatshepsut, but she had to wear a beard, didn't she? But yes, the arid cultures had control: the local power was the only game around.
"China was much less religious compared to the West"
This may be kind of a circular argument: is he defining religion in terms of western sky-gods? I know the Chinese have a rich tradition of the supernatural, with spirits and demons. The great traditions of social order, Kung fu tse, and natural order, Tao, might not be as supernatural as the Abrahamics, but this goes back to definitions. Is Buddhism a religion or a philosophy, frinstance? "Gods and heaven played only a peripheral role in ancient Chinese life. " Again, we have to be careful with definitions. The "Gods" he refers to are what he considers gods.
"states like Mesopotamia, Egypt, and Greece were circumscribed"
I wouldn't think that Greece was so circumscribed. They had the sea, and a fair bit of fertile countryside. Was this why Athens came up with their form of democracy? And Sparta, being more isolated, had their helots? "To control access to basic resources enabled the rulers to control people and set up a military power to kill people." Sounds more like Sparta. The Epic Of Gilgamesh might be our best window into the ancient western mindset; it even included the myth of the Flood.
"the partnership-domination continuum…categories transcend conventional categories such as ancient vs. modern, Eastern vs. Western, religious vs. secular, rightist vs. leftist, and so on."
Good viewpoint. I envision Native American societies which had multiple poles of power, and were often matriarchal or matrilineal. They could still be brutal and domineering, though. I still kinda go back to the African Genesis model: the first "tools" were weapons. The crucial thing is the institutionalization of violence, the centrality and primacy of violence. Brings to mind that line from Robinson Jeffers about "stark violence is still the sire/of all the world's desire".
We discussed the bicameral mind a bit. I'd still like to see more evidence of that, for reasons I went into last year.
And to return to Renault, I found her novels about the Cretan bull-dancers and the Athens founder-myth of Theseus to be the most interesting. Michenerism (grin): the older the better. I always liked his early parts the best.
Wow, this is such a fascinating byway we're all on, here. Thank you, DMW, UR and OM, for joining in. But to return to my original and possibly very controversial point in response to your essay:
I don't think that fundamentalism is the aberration or exception. Unless you consider monotheism to be mental illness, then fundamentalism is not. The aberrations, thank gods, are all the adaptations which bring the yin and the yang of the spiritual domain (and thus the political) more into balance. Fundamentalism and the ownership of people, especially women, is the pure expression of patriarchal monotheism. To oversimplify.
Whew, rich set of threads here. It'll take time to read it all, and it keeps changing. Thank you Arendt for your detailed responses. But out of it all, did the Troskyists really become the neocons?
post-postscript: the FSM has no gender. Monotheism for the masses!
"did the Troskyists really become the neocons?" You betcha.
James Burnham and his fellow travelers are the ur-neocons.
Michael Lind has written extensively about the Trotskyite background of the neocons.
I remember our discussion of a year ago
ON EDIT: This was intended to respond to your comment, not to one of my comments about your comment. Sorry. Mistake driven by poor interface design.
END EDIT
That discussion taught me a lot. I welcome your input. At any time.
I agree that its about definitions
But in terms of spirituality, the mystical aspects of Tao are much preferable to the totalitarian pronouncements of Western monotheism. I would say spirituality in China was not a force for social domination, but a natural feeling of reverence for the unknown among the people.
Also, depends on which Buddhism, which point has been raised in this thread before. The original Buddhism is definitely a philosophy. Later hinayana and mahayana Buddhsisms picked up the trapping of religions, with saints (boddhisatvas) and priests. I sorta like the Japanese approach, which is complete introspection.
wrapping a couple of replies here
Yeah, that was a great conversation, sharpened a lot of my thinking on the subject, especially when you brought China's environment and politics into it. I REALLY want to delve into non-Abrahamic political thought: South Asia and Native American come to mind, especially since the American federation was modeled on the Iroquois. Marx was great at analyzing capitalism; it was part of his cultural tradition. but his prescriptions also came out of the Abrahamic, objective tradition. I speak out of considerable ignorance. I find it hard to read his writing.
I know you're soured on revolution; I agree with much of what you've said, but I'd settle for an imperfect ending of this current death machine.
I think the October Revolution ended at Kronstadt. So much promise that went wrong - including Trotsky, who killed the Kronstadt sailors. I blame the tone of the Bolsheviks on the general bloodiness of the war, and the fact that the front lines were a short drive from Leningrad. Remember, the biggest difference between the two revs was that the Bolsheviks wanted out of WWI. That said, I think the Soviet Union was making great strides for its people by the time it ended. Far from perfect, but look at the world of 1917.
Is taoism really that different than the spirituality of the polytheists or the shamanists? They were mainly nature gods. I think they have more in common than between taoism and monotheism. When we say Western religion, let's include all of them, not just the monos.
Thank you very much for this essay. A real explosion of discussion.
As I age, I increasingly find monotheism to be a mental illness
Given all we know about the universe, how can anyone claim there is one omniscient consciousness that controls the entire universe and that we, the human race, are in touch with. It is all complete infantile projection. About the only "spirituality" I have any intellectual respect for is based on the idea of quantum entanglement, ala Bohm. We already use entanglement in quantum cryptography. Far out dudes like Stuart Hamerhoff (and his collaborator, the quantum physicist Roger Penrose) propose that our brains really are quantum receivers for some kind of universal broadcast.
Entanglement plays well with Buddhist ideas of levels of consciousness. [I forget the names, but there are seven levels, with analogies such as (I apologize for the crudity here.) level six is the projector that plays the movie of life.]
In comparison to these sophisticated Buddhist speculations, confirmed by meditative practice, Western monotheism is a joke.
i'm mostly talking about the abrahamic faiths
mainly because they are what i know about.
institutionalized misogyny, however, is not limited to the middle east nor to the "intellectual" heirs of Abraham. india has its honor killings and bride burnings. blech.
The earth is a multibillion-year-old sphere.
The Nazis killed millions of Jews.
On 9/11/01 a Boeing 757 (AA77) flew into the Pentagon.
AGCC is happening.
If you cannot accept these facts, I cannot fake an interest in any of your opinions.
Yeah, I have to think more about Hindu fundies
I mentioned Hindu fundamentalism as an exception which might shoot down my thesis here, especially since the news was full of the huge woman-chain of protest in India today. We'd have to look at the history: is this Hindumentalism a reaction to attitudes instilled by contact thru western colonialism, capitalism, and conquest by Islam? A possibility. But the west does not have a monopoly on bad behavior. As you said, I speak of what I know, and I mostly know xtianity.
The weird thing is
That it looks like the pastoralists (“Hebrew” is derived from the Sumerian word for herdsman) who fled the debt peonage imposed on small farmers in early Mesopotamian societies were the real revolutionaries. They were actually protecting their women folk from prostitution and sexual slavery. For the same reason, the creditor class in the cities instituted veiling of upper class women to distinguish them from prostitutes. Periodically, these pastoralists would attack cities and take over (see the book of Joshua).
So here we are 5000 years later, and absolutely nothing has changed. The rural, patriarchal, spiritual descendants of these pastoralists are sick of being sucked dry and have invaded the citadels of western usury via Trump. We really don’t learn.
We can’t save the world by playing by the rules, because the rules have to be changed.
- Greta Thunberg
Early Man worshipped the Great Mother
And rightly so.
I've seen lots of changes. What doesn't change is people. Same old hairless apes.
Veiling goes back to Sumer
And was a response to the commodification of social relationships that led to prostitution. The earliest Sumerian records show rough equality of the sexes.
(An extremely condensed version of a section of “Debt: The First 5000 Years”. I may not be doing it justice, but the book is quite eye opening on the subjects of money, violence, credit and slavery. Basically everything I thought I knew about human nature and money is highly shaped by my culture. I’m going to be digesting it for a long time.)
We can’t save the world by playing by the rules, because the rules have to be changed.
- Greta Thunberg
Thanks for the reference
A marxist convinced me that it all goes back to agriculture, and the beginnings of property vs personal property that it entailed. But then again, Marx was speaking from the Abrahamic cultural tradition and viewpoint.
Making a list of books from this essay.
this is so tiresome.
i'm telling you what my experience is. i'm telling you that other men my age have shared with me that their experience is comparable, if not similar. i'm telling you that just as male aggressive sexual display affects various women in various ways, NOT invariably negative, but often so, creating emotions of anxiety, resentment, fear and anger, female passive aggressive sexual display affects various men in various ways, NOT invariably negative, but often so, creating emotions of anxiety, resentment, fear and anger.
here's something to consider: if our roles in this conversation were reversed, and if i (a male) were offering to you (a female) the sorts of dismissive (and worse) responses that you are giving me, the modern conventional characterization for those responses would be "mansplaining". your every rebuttal/refutation amounts to pooh-poohing my concern. obviously, there's something wrong with me, because men of course all LOVE to see effectively naked women wandering around wherever they go.
incidentally, in the average corporate or government workplace in the US today, were you to share with your coworkers the text of my comment, you would quite possibly, if not probably, find yourself in the HR office with some 'splainin to do and a permanent note of the incident in your record.
The earth is a multibillion-year-old sphere.
The Nazis killed millions of Jews.
On 9/11/01 a Boeing 757 (AA77) flew into the Pentagon.
AGCC is happening.
If you cannot accept these facts, I cannot fake an interest in any of your opinions.
My disagreement with you
Was not necessarily your own reaction to women in bikinis on the beach. My disagreement with you was attributing your discomfort as the male norm. It wasn't meant as an attack on your character.
Also, I did not put your comment on display for ridicule by reading it aloud to my co-workers. I merely summarized your point in an earnest effort to get their take on your assertion.
P.S. It's a good thing I don't work for the government or corporate office, eh?
There is always Music amongst the trees in the Garden, but our hearts must be very quiet to hear it. ~ Minnie Aumonier
LET'S WRAP THIS UP.
Many thanks to all who participated.
I must say that this thread barely touched on the OP - religion's influence on gender roles. Again, as with the KSA genetics thread, it quickly devolved into personal feelings and attitudes. Rarely were any religious doctrines mentioned, when there is a giant topic of abortion that certainly can dominate gender roles.
I will say that the proceedings stayed civil, which is the strength of C99P. JtC intervened only once, towards the very end of the thread.
----
I don't know how to keep lenghty threads on topic. Its just too hard for the author to police them once it takes ten minutes to scroll through comments to find new ones or to backreference old ones. (And its bloody impossible on a smartphone screen, when the indented text is squashed to five characters wide.) So many boards have this problem. I did find the indented comments on DU to be more helpful in finding backreferences. I recognize the @whoever links are a form of backreference - but they only go back one level. Ditto for using the MyComments tab under MyAccount. Perhaps a multi-panel display with each "fork" in a separate panel. But, this is a universal problem. If it were easy, a solution would be out there.
Anyway, thanks for playing.
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