Willful Ignorance

¡Hola! Everybody...
Yes, I am still here, more contrarian than ever, thumbing my nose at the hypocrites, committing crimes of the heart, and saving damsels (okay! Okay! I know sodomy is not considered a good deed... ). Warning: some of my posts will be dangerous to your ignorance.

I will be gone for most of the day, so play nice kiddos. Today I mourn a death...

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-=[ Ignorance & the Death of Reason ]=-

To be ignorant of one’s ignorance is the malady of the ignorant.

-- Amos Bronson Alcott (1799–1888)

American teacher, philosopher, writer, reformer

If you think education is expensive, try ignorance.

-- Derek Bok, president, Harvard University

There are two things which cannot be attacked in front: ignorance and narrow-mindedness. They can only be shaken by the simple development of the contrary qualities. They will not bear discussion.

-- John Dalberg, Lord Acton

Due to a national tragedy -- the death of Reason -- today’s notes will seem more strident than usual. I offer no apologies for that. Reason died a horrible, tragic and unnecessary death. And please hold your prayers! If you want to offer condolences, I appreciate it, but I would rather that instead of praying, or extending your condolences, I hope that today you make a pact to learn, or help someone learn something new today.

In this way, you honor what Reason’s life was about.

That is how Reason was; she always stood for the value of education. She dedicated her life to it, and she had many flaws, believe me, but the worst was the one she and I shared: an absolute abhorrence toward ignorance. She detested, most especially, that people paid more attention to their cars than to developing their critical thinking abilities. Her mission was to open the eyes of the willfully ignorant -- those who shunned her presence

Alas, she failed…

We were raised poor in some of the worst neighborhoods in the country, but Reason always valued education. She and I were both “smart,” but she always said I left her in the dust when it came to the brains department. However, I know that was just Reason’s way of reinforcing my thirst for knowledge. She showed her love by her actions and not through mere words or religious dogma.

When I was growing up, other kids would often make fun of Reason and me because we were “smart.” Moreover, throughout my life, I have been the recipient of personal attacks because people perceive the manner in which I express myself as condescending. However, Reason taught me that most of those attacks come from people who, loathing their ignorance, attack others instead of attacking their own ignorance.

For a time, Reason stopped talking to me because I decided to fit in and ignore my intelligence. Eventually, many years later, we came together again and she was the most happiest when I entered university and graduated first from NYU and when I was accepted to Columbia later. She was the one that taught me the responsibility attached to the gift of intelligence and she made sure I understood that the responsibility is to give it back, to give back to the larger familia, La Communidad.

Today, I choose to honor reason by questioning everything and prodding others to do the same. She never let me forget that was my responsibility, no matter how much I fought to deny it and tried to “fit in.” And for that, I am eternally grateful. I love you Reason. Your absence is felt all across this land of ours.

Love,

Eddie

Right Wing Hysteria & Moral Cowardice

¡Hola! Everybody...
Life is a celebration -- each day is another opportunity to deepen that celebration... or not. LOL

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-=[ Moral Cowardice ]=-

Man, you are a died in the wool dumb ass. Please tell me that you do not consider the killer of DR Teller a move by a right wing extremist.....it was a crime by a CRIMINAL, plain and simple, and ALL efforts to make it into something it was not, the lone action by a lone gunman, not associated with any conservative movement, have failed.

-- An example of “reasoning”

This was the opening salvo from a twat who, when confronted with facts tying recent killings to the White Nationalist Movement, ran crying to his site, wrote a blog about me, and then cried and whimpered that I was mean (and a racist to boot! LOL I just love it that neocons are now experts on racism). I believe this individual and individuals like him are moral cowards...

But before I continue, I must admit to a huge mistake. After some thought, I have come to the conclusion that classifying the perpetrators of recent hate crimes by white supremacists as “mentally unstable,” does a disservice to all those Americans who suffer from mental illness. The vast majority of citizens suffering from mental illness never go out on killing sprees. Most, in the face of debilitating illness, go out and function just as the rest of us, never harming a soul.

These so-called “lone gunmen” are not crazy, psychotic, or mentally imbalanced. They knew exactly what they were doing. They are definitely angry -- but they are angry about very specific things, and in very specific ways. For example, each one picked targets that suited their political goals -- political goals shared by massive movements. They stashed weapons and they carried out their premeditated acts of violence.

There’s a consistency to the ideology of these angry, armed, white males and the common thread that ties them together is white supremacy and right-wing hysteria.

If we heard the exact same story of a black or Latino/a and it was discovered that the individual had ties to a Black or Latino/a Nationalist movement numbering in the tens of thousands, I’m willing to bet this fool and people who think as he does would be shooting black and brown people on sight, no questions asked.

They are not crazy, solitary gunmen and women; they are part of a fascist movement composed of moral cowards. No... These fascists -- America’s homegrown terrorists -- are not unhinged; they are perfectly sane individuals taking neoconservative ideology to its conclusion. In this way, they are an extension of fascist ideology in the same way that groups of Klansmen are extension of that ideology. It is an ideology undergirding a well-organized and sizable political movement in America.

In the coming days, I will show that the neocon movement is predicated on racist notions of white superiority. The core thrust of modern conservatism comes from modern-day pseudo-scientific “research” no different in empirical validity from 19^th century eugenics and head measuring. Furthermore, these attempts to scientifically validate racist ideology have been given almost free reign on the editorial pages of some of the most influential newspapers and journals.

Georges Santayana famously said that those who refuse to learn from the past, are condemned to repeat it, and we ignore the actions from the well-organized far-right at our own expense. One need only take the lessons Santayana was referring to -- the lessons of fascisms and the hell they wreaked during WW II. Hanna Arendt wrote extensively of the symbiotic relationship between propaganda and fascists movements. One cannot breed without the other. Even shit needs flies...

Speaking of which, here’s an interesting response to my link on the White Nationalist Movement (quoted verbatim):

By and large it is liberals who have as much in common nowadays with this guy than do most conservatives. After all it is popular to be anti Israel, and pro hama's. -- An Idiot

I chose this particular nugget of “reasoning” because it is a prominent meme running rampant on the neocon blogosphere these days. It is really quite simple (or simplistic):

Right-wing propagandists are pro-Israel.

The American Left is anti-Israel.

Therefore, a white supremacist is a left-wing extremist!

Or as one responder put it:

All cats die.

Socrates died.

Socrates was a cat.

The dire lack of logical reasoning by the talking heads and their sheeple on the right is par for the course. Limbaugh has made millions using logical fallacies, as has O’Reilly and the rest of their hate talk comrades. Recently Glenn Beck of Fox News stated that, “What they’re missing is: The pot in America is boiling. And this is just yet another warning to all Americans of things to come.”

Actually, Beck has it right: the pot is boiling, but it is boiling because of people like Glenn Beck, ranting hysterically every night about impending apocalypses of various forms -- looming “liberal fascism,” the “economic meltdown.” Obama, every white supremacist’s nightmare, is coming for your guns and a class of inferior people has stolen the America that you once knew. In this way, fascist ideology, interchangeable with neocon principles, gets credence and emboldens those on the far right. Guns sales since Obama’s election going through the roof -- and it ain’t happening in East LA or Brownsville, Cabrini Green, or Harlem.

Propaganda and fascism -- one cannot thrive without the other. In creating the black and brown face of evil, we help dehumanize those faces, making it easier to justify their extermination.

This is taking neoconservative ideology to its logical conclusion. In this way, frequent MSM commentator Pat Buchannan, a Holocaust denier himself, can advocate setting up snipers on our southern borders with nary a whimper from journalists.

Combine hate radio, hate websites, hate podcasts, and a crisis economy where people feel they are losing all they have, and we see the beginning of a perfect storm of hate crimes and murders committed by a significant percentage of millions of stable, hate-filled who have been primed to move from sullen bigotry and anger to violent criminal action

A social security check arrives late. A bounced check starts bank charges that end up costing hundreds of dollars and the movement gains momentum, blaming immigrants, blacks, Jews, gays, war protester-- and the next thing you know we are seeing dead people on national TV. And those millions of other Americans afflicted with fascist hate are seeing one more case of a person letting go, unleashing the hate that the extremist media has built up...

Anti abortion people attempted to put on a “shocked” face, publicly denouncing the murder of Dr. Tiller.

The Washington Post reported that John de Nugent, white supremacist friend of the Holocaust Museum murderer James W. Von Brunn, “called von Brunn a genius but described the shooting as the act of ‘a loner and a hothead.’” “The responsible white separatist community condemns this,” he said. “It makes us look bad.”

Yeah, right... Sounds like my man up there in the epigraph, doesn’t it?

What it does is it exposes such thinking as the moral cowardice that it is.

Eddie

Taking Jesus Back

¡Hola! Everybody...
Okay, so pending confirmation from my sister, we might move the picnic over to her house. It’s closer to public transportation for those who don’t have cars. I’ll be sending an email later today, so stay tuned.

Today? I’m taking Jesus back!

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-=[ Kidnapping the Baby Jesus ]=-

Blessed are you when people revile you and persecute you and utter all kinds of evil against you falsely on my account.

-- Matthew 5:1-12 (New Revised Standard Version)

I have a friend, let’s call him Thomas. Thomas curses like a sailor, smokes cigarettes, occasionally enjoys getting his drink on, and is one of the funniest people I know. His commitment to social justice and the work he has done has done more to ease suffering than most people you will ever meet. He doesn’t “give a shit” about whether you accept Jesus as you savior or not. His main concern is your problem and how he can help you solve it.

Aside from the great work Thomas does what sets him apart from most of my friends is that Thomas is actually Father Thomas. He’s a priest and one of the most spiritually evolved people I have ever had the good fortune to meet.

One day I was speaking on social justice at a law school in Manhattan. It’s considered the top law school in the land (it competes yearly with Harvard for that distinction). After, during the question/ answer section, a gentleman rose and identified himself as being from the “faith-based” community and his question was to the point: “What can we in the faith-based community do to help stop the madness of mass incarceration.” My response was equally to the point: “Get up and tell the politicians to stop justifying these unjust policies in your God’s name. Tell them, ‘not in our name.’” I went on to explain that though I don’t identify as a Christian, I do know that a major theme as articulated in the life of Jesus is the concept of redemption.

This gentleman insisted we meet so that we could collaborate, and I accepted the invitation. However, when I looked at the program he was running, I immediately realized that this man wasn’t working toward social justice, he was pushing religion. A large part of his program involved coercing program participants into accepting Jesus as their savior, regardless of their spiritual backgrounds. When I visited some of his facilities, I knew I wanted no part of their program and let him know.

Two people, two Christians, each having a different impact on their communities.

I have no problem with another person’s faith. It’s none of my business. I do have a problem with individuals who, though they may like me, or respect my work in social justice, will continue to see me as incomplete because I will not accept Jesus as my savior.

As far as I’m concerned, this preoccupation with conversion experiences is a pathology. It is a plague on our nation and world.

As a young man, I remember learning from a Hindu teacher that all paths are valid. He taught that -- although they use different names and different religious methods -- they all point to the same goal. The poet Gibran described religions as fingers from the same hand.

For too long, we have allowed the neoconservatives to kidnap Jesus and twist his teachings to suit their particular brand of intolerance, injustice, and bigotry. We need to take back Jesus, developing a wider view of Christianity that includes respect not only for other religions but also for science, logic, and reason.

Many of you would think that the two, science and religion, could never be reconciled, but I dispute that claim. I believe spirituality speaks truths that are different from the truths of science. The bible should never be read literally. If you believe in a higher power, then you must certainly believe that higher power created human minds that could think critically and unearth the mysteries of the universe. Only a demented fool would stick to an idea even after it has been irrefutably dismantled. Still, many spiritual stories have metaphysical lessons to teach us -- truths that have nothing to do with science. Let science be science and spirituality be spirituality.

Evolution is a scientific theory like gravity, which has been proven beyond a shadow of a doubt. Leave the child’s understanding of a universe created in six days behind, people. Personally, I do to believe in a Divine Hierarchy that must be prayed to in order to curry favor and so many of you would consider me an atheist or an agnostic., I am neither. I quite literally don’t give a fuck. My spirituality is more closely aligned to what would be called an evolutionary spirituality and no -- please! -- don’t come at me with that bullshit Intelligent Design! That’s not what I’m speaking of when I say evolutionary spirituality.

But I digress. What I want to talk about is a Christianity where science and religion are compatible. A Christianity that allows one to read the bible metaphorically rather than literally and respects the scientific method. Doubt, my friends, is the handmaiden of faith and love is the primary Christian value, and it is directly related to the promotion of liberty and social justice. There are many valid paths to the spiritual mountain and Christianity is only one of them.

I will address three hot button issues in the coming days and make a case for Christianity for those who identify as progressives or liberals. I will say this much, if you think what I have written above to be a pipe dream, please know that there at least 60 million Christians who identify with what I have written here today.

There is, after all, hope....

Love,

Eddie

Sunday Sermon [The Core Wound, Fundamentalism & Bigotry]

¡Hola! Everybody...
My mother is in town and today I’m going out to spend some time with her... Have a great day, people.

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-=[ The Core Wound and Gay Marriage ]=-

The core wound is not merely a psychological issue or birth trauma, it is the basic issue of our existence. It’s our realization that we are both material and spiritual, finite and non-finite. We are at once, limitless and limited. These basic contradictions create the core contradictions of our lives. Mostly, we don’t experience this as a conflict -- at least not in a conscious manner. Rather, we experience it as a wound, an almost inexplicable, unnameable pain. We endure it like a gash in the most intimate places of our being. As a species we are unique in this regard. We all suffer this wound.

I have written before that a response to this wound has been fundamentalism. Fundamentalism festers like an infected wound at the core of our being. This running wound is the violent fault line in our collective psyche from which the molten magma of our hate comes from.

A case in point in the news recently is the issue of “gay marriage.”

What “no gay marriage” means is that men who are genetically pre-disposed to putting their parts and hearts in the hands of other men, and women who are genetically pre-disposed to doing the same with other women, are considered not human enough to be trusted to say who makes them happy as a life partner in the eyes of the law.

Contrary to the hype, you cannot make assumptions on what defines “a heterosexual relationship.” Similarly, you cannot define the infinite varieties of what constitutes a “gay relationship.” The only thing you can say for sure about straight people is that they prefer getting their Twinkies creamed with someone of the opposite sex. The only thing you can say for sure about a gay person is that they prefer to get their jollies off with someone of the same sex. It has been pointed out to me by a gay human being that to consider “gay marriage” vs. “straight marriage” is quite literally a consideration of the sexual positions that people prefer.

Talk to a bigot and the first thing they mention is that gay sex isn’t “natural” so it is an abomination in the “eyes of the Lord.” Yeah, fundies are obsessed with sex acts, it seems.

Your God only knows what those California judges were picturing in their minds as they shivered in disgust and handed down their decision to ratify Proposition 8 (a double sausage dish?). Regardless of whatever lustful imagery they (and all the folks who voted for Prop 8) entertained to enable their decision, there’s only a few possible explanations for creating and supporting laws that deny others their happiness, and none of them have anything to do with how you like to perform a sex act.

The primary reason is known as “moral superiority.” You are sure that you have the universe figured out, and want to make sure that everyone else gets poked (or pokes) the same way you do. Though this worldview frequently masquerades as confidence, assuredness, and deep conviction, it is nothing more than bullying. And like all bullies (as we learned from watching after school specials) it is actually a learned behavior that hides a deep insecurity (i.e., the Core Wound).

Sweetie? Anytime you feel that your security is dependent on denying rights or happiness to someone else, you are acting out of insecurity and fear, which I think is at least two of the poisons mentioned in Buddhism. A genuinely secure person with a healthy sense of ego is able to live their life according to their own values, and not have to impose their values on others personal lives. Your church may not condone gay marriage, or letting women speak in public, but I don’t go to your church, nor would I want to. In other words, a healthy person has a healthy sense of psychological boundaries -- where their territory ends and another’s begins. An unhealthy ego compels an individual to extend their authority over other’s lives as well.

The gay marriage argument has absolutely nothing to do with where people put their cocks or poosies. It is simply another opportunity for people frustrated with the level of control over their own lives to spread the pain derived from their fear of their Core Wound. Like racism, war, and domestic abuse, it’s not about the issue. Rather, it’s all about power. If my friend marrying his boyfriend, and doing whatever they do between the sheets, in the kitchen, or the backseat of their car, somehow affects your marriage, then it is your “marriage” that most likely needs a little work.

::blank stare::

Another reason for the virulent opposition to gay marriage is that some have confused their habitual behavior with reality, and believe that what they believe to be reality is actually reality. This is closely related to the previous rationale but is a little more subtle. As human beings we choose certain habits and lifestyles. Many people in America eat beef all the time, while many people in India consider cows sacred. Some people in Puerto Rico eat morcillas (blood sausages), while many in America consider it an abomination against food. Wheat and marijuana both grow in the ground, but because of social conditioning some people say wheat is natural and to be enjoyed, while marijuana is a mistake to be outlawed.

You think what you do is natural and that’s only natural. But just in case you didn’t get the memo, that does not equate to “what other people do is unnatural.” Beating up on someone for how they were born is the most primitive kind of ego boost. Beating up on women, blacks and homosexuals, for example, is easy because when you deny someone something based on who they are, you’ve developed an airtight argument. My friend can’t become an “un-gay” any more than you can become “un-human.”

Finally, the religious argument against homosexuality is so silly as to not to merit validity. The bible also says you cannot shave, grow two kinds of plants in the same field, or be near a woman for seven days around her period. To the religious who say these are minor issues and homosexuality is a major one, I say, “Sez who?!!” The answer cannot simply be “those in authority.” That is evading responsibility for infringing on the rights of people whose major sin is to be in love. Following this logic, I could easily say, “Let’s outlaw marriages for clean shaven farmers whose wives are having their period while helping him harvest potatoes and carrots.”

Why not? It is writ in the bible!

There is nothing wrong with buying into the cultural and societal conditioning that is designed to make us each believe that we are right, and that our way of life is the best one. Though I will caution you that this way of thinking has often led to an endless road of suffering, war, and almost everything that is vile about us human beings.

To those who accuse me of being a radical making an intellectually dishonest and morally lazy argument in favor of gay marriage, I say you are absolutely correct! Marriage should be allowed between whomever the church performing the marriage wants to allow it and between those who desire it.

As an antidote to your reaction to your Core Wound, may I suggest that instead of beating up on those you deem different, that you please meditate, pray, or go for a fuckin' walk. Take some time to reflect and think about what really comes back to you whenever you “win” by taking away others happiness and come up with a different way to build yourself up.

You will be infinitely happier and that Core Wound? The Core Wound can be transformed into an energy that will help you evolve as a human being.

Love,

Eddie