Someone who agrees that force is the necessary and best means of governing

Completely randomly, today, I happened by Paul Hill's webpage on the Army of God website (if you have not seen the documentary on the militant wing of the pro-life movement, Soldiers in the Army of God, I highly recommend it).

Why Shoot an Abortionist?

If you are interested in others who share your view that force is the necessary and best means of commanding obedience from a recalcitrant nation, you will find a friend in Paul.

Enjoy.

Love,
Ben

Rediscovering my innocence

Something's happened for me, here, recently. I'm recapturing my innocence, I think. I've been facing up to a lot of my less noble qualities, lately. My jadedness about some things, especially love and teaching and policy and politics and just more noble efforts, generally. My self-centered attitude toward too many things in my life. Sex in particular.

The world of porn is full of recreational fantasy. But, lately, I've started to face just how far its taken me from more innocent and equitable attitudes toward sex and love in my past. There's nothing wrong with porn, necessarily. And it can be a fun outlet for both single people and couples looking for recreational sexual release without all of the dangers of casual sex or the uniformity or repression of one's own passions and turn-ons or experiences of a less risque sex life.

But the truth is that more loving and equitable sex is the norm I want in my life. I know from my longest committed relationship that lots of kinky sex is, perhaps, a warning sign that something is not right. That people in a relationship are, perhaps, not feeling as loving toward one another and the sex is just a manifestation of that fact. I know from the beginning of that same relationship and my first really serious relationship and sexual relationship that loving sex as a norm is a sign of just how well things are going in the relationship. That is the feeling I want for life with a partner. And all of the cynicism to the contrary on that just leave me a little skeptical that cynical advice should be trusted. Cynicism is almost always based in a reality. But it is, generally, a reality that cynics have resigned themselves to and lost track of the consequences for that resignation and the fatalism that animates it in their lives.

Lately, I've really started to face this loss of innocence in my life and started to reembrace a lot of personal ideals, as much as political ideals, that animated my younger days of learning and exploring the world. Sex is one place where I've explored this. Money and education are two others. I want some level of independent wealth, so I'm not dependent on any job or pension for income or retirement. And I do want the option of a life of independent writing and teaching if I am not happy in a school or university job. But I'm not as jaded about the need to be so competitive in this arena, though I'm fairly confident that I can make quite a bit of money in my lifetime, assuming that I live to a ripe age. And I want an educational experience that is good for both my learning and which helps young people from a broad range of backgrounds. My experience at Eisenhower seriously jaded me about doing work with kids and folks from less advantaged backgrounds since it meant getting shit on regularly by people whom have been jaded for a long time much more seriously than anything I've been experiencing. That is something on my heart I will have to deal with to reclaim some of my younger idealism: the jadedness that I have absorbed out of my experiences at Eisenhower.

But I am realizing, today, that there is nothing quite as nice as living a life out of a more genuine and decent heart and mind. Everything else in life is just one long rationalization for what shitheads we've become. And I just have no interest in rationalizing that because life seems kind of wasted when any of us are always rationalizing what shitheads we've become instead of just facing up to what shitheads we've become.

The nice thing about having jaded folks reject you is that you don't have to live a life trying to pander to or figure out or otherwise rationalize the jadedness. You are free to find a life where jadedness isn't so prevalent, and leave more cynical folks to their own devices. I do see, now, how far the cynical among us will go to rationalize their cynicism. But I'm letting go of my own cynicism about the idea that virtue doesn't pay or that jadedness is more honest or decent or genuine than it really is.

There really is no replacement for a life where you know you can trust your own outlook on life because it is not centered or seriously informed by jadedness. And there really is nothing worse in the world than not being able to trust yourself and others not being able to trust you, for real, because you've allowed your jadedness to substantially inform your worldview.

I don't want to live of life where I am constantly trying to justify my jadedness to my children, as so many adults that I met and knew growing up. It's an unhappy way to live. And I don't want it for my life, like so many of the adults I encountered in my life. I want something better.

And being honest about it with yourself and the pain and disappointment it represents and how it sits on your heart and the role it plays in distorting your worldview and informing bad choices on your part is the most important thing that a person can do to face up to its tragic consequences in their life.

The assistant principal I've written about who didn't seem to care about kids more genuinely suffered with this kind of jadedness and pain on her heart, I'm pretty clear. As did my principal and most of the teachers and administrators I've worked with. It's sad to see teachers with this on their hearts because it is a field where you would most expect idealism to animate their efforts and where it is most needed. But a jaded teaching population very much holds the same pain of disappointment and hurt and the fear that comes with it from lives that have been treated just as shabbily as anyone else and advocates many of the same jaded policies and holds onto more cynical ideas about life and people that keeps all that cynicism and jadedness in place.

That's as much the reality check for me that I want to rediscover my own innocence as any insight into my own psyche: I don't want to end up as unhappy as so many adults seem to end up or to lose track of just how unhappy I've become because I've just been unhappy for so long.

And I want a woman in my life who feels the same or is moving in that direction so that we can have a family that is more genuinely committed to our children's welfare and not just our fear and pain and disappointment with the world in the name of our children's welfare. I saw too much of that rationalization at Eisenhower. It made me very sad to watch adults live their lives like this and for kids to try to grow up amidst it.

I don't want that for myself or for my own children. I don't really want it for any children or any adult. But I must say that many adults, more than children, seem to rally for the very policies which will most entrench that unhappiness in their lives. They may not realize that is what they are doing, much of the time. They may believe it is for noble purposes. But, generally, the people who are responsible for this jaded, cynical, too often ignoble, cowardly, and stupid world we live in is: us.

And I, for one, do not want that in my life no matter how much others may try to justify or rationalize it.

I want something better.

Love,
Ben

Religion, conscience, freedom, and political regression

I very rarely read the Christian Science Monitor, anymore, because we used them in extemporaneous speaking when I competed on our college speech team and I was never much impressed with their news or analysis. Though I should clearly rethink that view and revisit the Monitor when I find excellent reporting on counterinsurgency strategy on its site like this interview by Dante Chinni with Bill Roggio.

But this article at the Monitor, I thought, captured so much that was wrong with our current political moment romaticizing force.

Higher Education's Missing Soul

I actually agree with the story's major thrust - that there is not enough discussion and engagement on campus on matters of religion and spirituality, matters of the soul - but I do take umbrage with efforts to impose such engagement.

In fact, it is the issue among any others where imposing a value is both a serious violation of conscience, counterproductive, and which illustrates the other futility of force to resolve an issue, especially a serious issue.

My major objection to the idea that religion courses should be mandated, which this article implies without openly backing, is not just that most people I know who are not interested in such discussions or who are not interested in mandated discussions of this kind or who are agnostic, atheist, non-religious, or anti-religious and don't always feel comfortable having such discussions or always want to have those conversations on a college mandated timeline, or that doing so is futile and counterproductive when people do not agree with the fundamental purposes of having that conversation or when they are not actively pursuing such conversations, or even that the substantive matters of faith - meaning teaching about timeless values of faith and virtue - are undermined by a conversation that, at the outset, is forced upon a person's conscience. All of these are very good reasons to disapprove of forcing religion on the consciences of students. But none of them are my major objection.

My major objection is that the most important and fundamental value of liberal principles and liberal democratic thought is that conscience, and religious conscience, especially, given our history, needs to be respected and as sovereign and independent as possible to make all of our other liberal values work. This is actually the fundamental point of my larger work - that conscience should both be as respected, independent, and sovereign as possible, that liberal values and the learning that occurs in a free world from ideas and their consequences work, better, with more freedom and independence for conscience, and that, as an empirical matter, choices and judgments are made as matters of conscience and independent thought whether we try to coerce that thought or those choices or not and that better choices are made and more honest thought and communication occurs the more freedom is available for such thought and conscience.

But the history of liberal and secular thought and liberal democracies is fundamentally oriented around such matters of conscience that people like Jesus of Nazareth, Martin Luther, Galileo Galilei, Mohatma Ghandi, Martin Luther King and millions of others have been killed, tortured, imprisoned, harrassed and otherwise imposed upon for their consciences for the long history and prehistory of humanity.

What is disturbing about calls for mandated religious curriculum is that it touches on the very isues that have been responsible for the worst abuses of power and many of the worst crimes against humanity that have been committed in our history. Hitler killed 6 million Jews as a matter of culture and heritage but, fundamentally, as a matter of conscience, because they held religious views different from his own. Stalin killed and imprisoned millions in Soviet Russia fundamentally because they disagreed with the Soviet regime. The Catholic Church in Europe ruled with theocratic corruption and power because they believed that their rule was more important than matters of conscience. Thomas Hobbes wrote the Leviathan as a rebuke of the religious violence and impositions that were derived from religious antagonisms and violence between Catholics and Protestants in 17th century Great Britain which were, fundamentally, matters of conscience.

This issue - matters of conscience and especially religious conscience - is the most fundamental issue to liberal values and liberal democracies. Out of conscience and thought flows everything else.

I am a soft atheist, meaning I don't believe in God, but I do take matters of faith and spirituality very seriously and believe that people of every matter of faith generally have more in common than not and that the substantive matters of faith, namely universal and timeless virtues (and vices), are of more importance than what I regard as an often futile effort to discuss or debate with believers the question of God's existence, which generally lies on a belief and assertion that they have maintained since finding or being introduced to their faith and which they are often not very open to questioning no matter what an empirical exploration of that question might reveal or open up for their lives.

But I love religious discussions. I seek them out. I sought out and was open to solicitation of discussions with many, many religious and not-so-religious people on campus and off-campus around religious and spiritual issues of a very broad range of religions and kinds and ideological orientations of religion when I was on a college campus more regularly. I was a brief member of groups from a Zen temple to a conservative Christian youth ministry. I sang in a Gospel choir, I engaged almost literally every single person who wanted to save my soul on campus and off campus, and I think I even changed a few minds and learned a lot, myself, along the way.

I was a youth leader in my teens at a little liberal Christian church in Wichita, Unity Church. I have a lot of good memories of that Church, a lot of reflections on what a nice experience it was growing up in that church, and take very seriously matters of spirituality and religion, including the life and example and ideas of Jesus. I have much more I can share about all my religious and spiritual views when I have time and inclination.

I would take a mandated religious course without hesitation or bitching or moaning or resistance and with a lot of enthusiasm for the course.

Many people would not. Many young people, in particular, would resist, moan, groan, and otherwise feel imposed upon and be unmoved by such an experience. That is exactly the problem with this current period and with the romanticism of force to resolve matters of conscience: it ignores what people really think. And that is the essence of why such efforts inevitably and have perpetually failed.

I very rarely hear an engaged or sensible argument for force to be used so freely and regularly as it is being argued and used today. It is a popular political moment. It is a sad one that has had and is having some more tragic consequences for those whom force is being used in more tragic and consequential ways - Haleh Esfandiari, in Iran, just to name one - all so that we can learn the lesson on the limits of power and force and of its evils and unfairness.

We will learn the lesson as we do every time we face such matters of conscience. Because, for all of our underdeveloped thought and consciences, we do, generally, care about getting to better thoughts and answers. But many people will and are being hurt in the meantime. All in the name of our hubris.

Mandating religious curriculum is not the tragedy of charging and imprisoning an intellectual with treason for disagreeing with your regime. But it is a violation of conscience that we should begin to take seriously if only to face the ugly consequences that this period of force has had for our consciences.

And our souls.

Love,
Ben