Signs of Basilea in a Sea of Fearful Portents
The smoke has cleared from elections 2010 and I would guess most Americans are feeling a bit fatigued from this latest assault on our senses - and our good sense. I feel no small amount of gratitude that the assault has ended. This past campaign was marked by a decided misanthropy. Beginning with all the ad hominem advertising, the tendency to demonize designated scapegoats was particularly pronounced.
Immigrants provided an easy target for many candidates. But the adherents of Islam were particularly targeted by pundit and candidate alike. In the heat of the campaign, Time Magazine asked Americans if we are Islamophobic. And for good reason.
One of the darkest moments of this campaign came when PBS reporter Juan Williams remarked that seeing people dressed in Muslim garb at airports made him nervous prompting PBS to fire him and Fox to just as quickly offer him a job. In all honesty, many of us might be willing to admit to the same sort of unbidden nervousness that Williams spoke of. It’s hard to erase the programming that our media has implanted in our minds equating Islam with terrorism, particularly in the post 9-11 context of airplanes.
But for most of us, repressing irrational phobic responses to the other is something we’ve learned to do as adults. And most of us are capable of quickly engaging in the real life calculus that reminds us that the odds are that the Muslim in line in front of us is about as likely to be a terrorist as we are.
It was into this twilight moment of suspended rationality surrounding William’s firing by PBS that Bill O’Reilly interjected a comment that would make my blood run cold: “The world has a Muslim problem.” You see, calling an entire group of people a “problem” has a pedigree. It was a trick that Joseph Goebbels and his Third Reich propaganda apparatus used to perfection. When human beings are problems, the only rational response is to solve that problem. In Goebbel’s case, it was the Final Solution. Clearly this insanity did not go away with the Nuremberg Trials.
As I recoiled from my computer screen after reading O’Reilly’s comments, I thought of my Muslim students at the university. I thought of their aspirations, their talent, their dreams. I thought of how much they had taught me in the process of teaching them. I did not sleep well that night.
This misanthropic rhetoric is a good example of a phenomenon Harvard law and ethics professor Cass Sunstein details in his recent book Going to Extremes. Sunstein observes that when groups of people already inclined in a particular ideological direction circle their wagons, speak only to each other and shut out all competing understandings, the tendency is for their views and thus their rhetoric to become increasingly extreme in tenor. That is particularly true in an age of internet which allows a tailoring of one’s sources of information and feedback.
Those who know me well will readily say that my generally progressive leanings are rarely disguised. I tend to be up front with my biases with others, particularly my students. This is a function of my pedagogical philosophy that acknowledging one’s biases (and thus disabusing oneself of the inevitably self-serving belief that an entirely objective approach is possible for anyone) allows others to account for them. I see that as an exercise in intellectual honesty.
I am also clear that students need not share my leanings to learn in my classes though, in all fairness, some who find their own understandings drawn into question often experience it that way. I try to make it clear to them that it is often from hearing from those with whom we disagree that the nuances – and sometimes fallacies – of our own beliefs come into focus. We all need each other fully present for learning to occur.
One of my acknowledged biases is my appreciation of racially and ethnically diverse settings and, correspondingly, my aversion to being in all white - particularly all white upper middle class -settings. The gated communities of suburbia constitute one of the rings of hell for this Dante. The striving, the need to validate oneself through incessant – and often cut-throat – competition, the smarmy sentimentality, the superficiality and the sense of entitlement that marks this existence drives me nuts.
Ironically, it is precisely the white professional middle class which I represent. And yet, I find myself most drawn to the majority-minority realities of the Bay Area in California and now parts of Florida. In these new realities, whites do not make up the majority of the population. The demographic tapestry combines strands of a rainbow of human faces accompanying my own white, male face. I experience life in such Technicolor settings as much richer, deeper and ultimately more fully human than the black and white realities of my childhood.
I acknowledge other biases emerging from my spiritual journey. Two of the remaining vestiges of what was once a fairly vibrant Christian faith are the image of G-d and the kingdom of G-d. The former comes from Judaism and the Hebrew Scriptures and charges all human beings with the duty to recognize the image of G-d residing on the face of human beings. My Franciscan lens reminds me that I am not relieved of the obligation to seek out that image even – perhaps especially – when it is hidden beneath the distressing disguises of poverty and disease. Francis also reminds me that the image of G-d is not relegated to human animals, and that all of creation bears the image – if not the glory – of G-d.
The other vestige of a faith that once sought to embrace the world with the Good News of Jesus is his teaching of basilea, a Kingdom of G_d, a realm in which the poor are blessed, the captives freed and the little ones are assured of having what they need. This is a kingdom in sharp contrast with empires whose currencies are power and privilege - empires which manifest themselves in exploitative relationships between those with power and privilege and those exploited to obtain and maintain it, empires like Caesars in Jesus’ time and the global corporate realm of Citizens United in our own time.
The basilea of G_d calls human beings to their highest potential. The image of G-d is recognized and honored. Right relations between human beings are driven by respect for the humanity of the other and play out in fair, honest dealings. Citizens of the basilea recognize their duties to others as well as themselves. They stand in stark contrast to the grasping, atomistic and never satisfied consumers of empire whose only pertinent inquiry is “What’s in it for me?”
The Kingdom of G-d did not occur in Jesus’ lifetime nor is it likely to ever be fully realized in ours. It is always already here yet still coming. But occasionally one gets glimpses of it. In the past month, I have seen two.
Last week I attended a Japan Festival in a development south of town. It was a celebration of Japanese culture complete with dance, music, lectures and food. Clearly, it was an opportunity for Japanese restaurants to market their wares and perhaps gain some customers. But the parade of young Japanese children and their proud adult mentors onto the stage to demonstrate the culture of a Japan far away both in distance and time was amazing.
As I looked around me in the audience of about 1000, I saw many Asian spectators including my friend from Taiwan who had invited us to the event. But I also saw the diversity that has become Orange County – white, Hispanic, black, Caribbean. Here was assembled a cross-section of this community - and ultimately of the world’s people’s – to learn and appreciate the culture of one of those peoples. The embrace of the other that cool, sunny afternoon provided just a peek at a basilea in which there truly is neither Greek nor Jew, slave nor free. It warmed my heart.
The other glimpse of the kingdom came two weeks ago in perhaps an unlikely setting. One of the many hats I wear is soccer uncle. My nephew, Cary, plays on a soccer team which is largely Hispanic and my husband and I often attend his games. After an early Saturday morning game here in Orlando, I went with my sister and nephews to a Burger King for breakfast.
My nephew had two of his teammates with him, Garren, a young African-American boy, and Victor, a child of Mexican heritage. Of course, the boys wanted to eat at their own table and so I sat with my sister and her older boy at another table.
At one point, the giggling at the other table had gotten particularly boisterous and I turned to see what they were up to. There was my nephew, his arm around the shoulder of each of his friends, laughing, a beautiful blue eyed white face framed by two beautiful children of color, a miniature of Central Florida diversity and a stunning rejection of the misanthropy of their elders this election season. There was no fear of the other in the horseplay of these young boys, just sheer joy. It took my breath away.
These are the moments that I dare to hope for our world. These are the glimpses of the basilea of which Jesus spoke that reminds me of my debt to seminary and to the Christian tradition from which I come. These are snapshots of life that I find myself treasuring, smiling and telling myself that perhaps the O’Reillys and Williams of the world will not have the last word.
There are the days that the kingdom of G-d comes just a tiny step closer to reality. And for that, this weary heart is truly grateful.
++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
The Rev. Harry Scott Coverston, J.D., Ph.D.
Member, Florida Bar (inactive status)
Priest, Episcopal Church (Dio. of El Camino Real, CA)
Instructor: Humanities, Religion, Philosophy of Law
University of Central Florida, Orlando
http://pegasus.cc.ucf.edu/~ncoverst/
frharry@cfl.rr.com
If the unexamined life is not worth living, surely an unexamined belief system, be it religious or political, is not worth holding.
Most things of value do not lend themselves to production in sound bytes. ++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
Blue Islands in a Red Sea of Rich Retirees and Rednecks
The electoral map of Florida graphically illustrates the truth this morning. While the governor’s race has narrowed to 50,000 votes, it still appears that billionaire Rick Scott has bought himself a governorship. The map shows the handful of blue urban islands surrounded by a sea of red suburban and rural counties, the realm of the rich retirees in their gated communities and their bible thumping redneck cohorts. The breakdown by demographics details this reality: Scott voters were wealthy, white, Hispanic males and poorly to moderately educated people. Sink’s voters were poorer, female, Hispanic females and blacks, and those with four year degrees or more.
It never ceases to amaze me how easily working class men allow their masculinity to be pimped. They vote against their own interests with regularity. And they listen to steady diets of conservative pundits and fundagelical preachers who maintain the closed circle of the conservative drumbeat. It’s not hard to believe Obama is the antichrist when you never venture outside the circled wagons.
There are days I regret returning to this home state of five generations. Florida has generally voted in ways that I could rarely understand much less embrace. But the unholy alliance of wealthy retirees and the blue collar folk who maintain their plumbing is a deadly combination that appears to be largely the norm in Florida politics. I watch with some level of consolation as California turns back the same kind of billionaires attempting to buy their state’s elections and rejects amendments sponsored by Texas oil companies to gut their environmental laws. Why is it California can get their feces coalesced and Florida seems stuck on the toilet?
This morning as I walked around Lake Underhill, the elections seemed far away. The mist and fog left over from yesterday’s rains – the first in over a month – still swirled around the edges of the lake providing intermittent cover for the wading birds. The sun rising through that mist illuminated the lake and cast the bridge across the lake with its rush hour traffic a golden hue. It is a very peaceful place which I have come to love each morning, grounding myself in the real before entering the realm of the surreal.
As I walked this morning, suddenly I heard the words of Julian of Norwich in my ears: “And all shall be well and all manner of thing shall be well…” I suppose Dame Julian is probably right. As my father is so fond of saying, “This, too, shall pass.”
++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
The Rev. Harry Scott Coverston, J.D., Ph.D.
Member, Florida Bar (inactive status)
Priest, Episcopal Church (Dio. of El Camino Real, CA)
Instructor: Humanities, Religion, Philosophy of Law
University of Central Florida, Orlando
http://pegasus.cc.ucf.edu/~ncoverst/
frharry@cfl.rr.com
If the unexamined life is not worth living, surely an unexamined belief system, be it religious or political, is not worth holding.
Most things of value do not lend themselves to production in sound bytes. ++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
Making sense of the latest black night in American politics
It’s been a long night for those of us who believed that America might possibly engage in some real, substantive change a mere two years ago. I look to the Hope poster on my wall with the stylized portrait of President Obama and my heart sinks.
The results from Florida are dire. Republicans have swept the mindless Tea Pots into office. Even the fraudulent medical corporate magnate Rick Scott seems to have won our governorship here in the once Sunshine State. How the buzzards hover over what is left of a once beautiful state. Across the rest of the country, similar results are coming in.
In many ways, I am not as alarmed this night as I have been on black nights like this in the past. It’s clearly not as bad as the night Ronald Raygun swept into power with his revolution that would ultimately empower America’s most selfish impulses: “Are YOU better off than you were four years ago?” And it’s hardly the devastating night that Gingrich and his mindless bunch of thugs inflicted their Contract on America upon the nation.
But, of course, the pattern of this mindlessness remains constant. Working class men get their masculinity pimped and vote for corporate candidates who oppose their very existence, much less their interests. Blacks and Latinos don’t vote at all or simply vote for a Spanish name, in this case Rubio, regardless of the fact he represents Latin America’s fascist impulse whose privilege comes at the expense of their own concerns. And the soccer moms, unable to get instant gratification from the Democrats, switch sides. Of course, Republicans rarely have any trouble knowing how to vote. When your moral reasoning is dominated by stage two (what's in it for me?) and stage three (What does the tribe say?) thinking, there are always candidates willing to play into your greed and fears.
To paraphrase the Gospel of John, Jefferson wept.
As I sat as calmly as possible at dinner eating my garlic and sun-dried tomato pizza, I said to my gentle husband of 36 years that we face two basic questions this night. The first is simply how we resist yet another episode of the compulsive fascist tendencies America periodically produces, shooting ourselves in the foot and then begging wimpy Democrats with names like Clinton and Obama to come rescue us from the self-inflicted pain. What does resistance look like in a world dominated by Tea Pots and their corporate sponsors?
The second question is more serious. At what point does the situation suggest that resistance is futile, that departure is warranted? This is the question folks like the Frankfurt School scholars asked themselves in the rise of the Third Reich and the closing of the German mind (and withering of the German heart). When does the scapegoating move from immigrants to the queers and the academics? When does the demand for conformity dressed up as patriotism become a red alert for anyone with an IQ over that of a rutabaga to get the hell out of Dodge?
I do not think America is at the latter point…yet. But I do not rule out its possibility. Tonight my husband and I talked of our love for our home, our desire to remain close to our families and the desires to make it to retirement in our jobs. Then we talked about which country would be the best place to which we could flee. Which would take our animals, if any? Which would allow us to continue tapping whatever resources we might have left? How would we survive without our families? Where would the remaining days of our lives be the least difficult should our presence in our homeland no longer be reasonably possible?
I have no crystal ball this night. But I do see major hard times ahead for America. Whether it will revise itself as it has done so many times before and find the will to deal with its problems , whether it will devolve into corporate sponsored fascism or whether it will simply dissolve into tribalistic competing feudal realms with little in common other than a history, time will tell. And this night, I have to say, I am glad I will not be around long enough to know the answer to that question. Frankly, this night, I’m just not too perky about the future of a country I once loved.
++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
The Rev. Harry Scott Coverston, J.D., Ph.D.
Member, Florida Bar (inactive status)
Priest, Episcopal Church (Dio. of El Camino Real, CA)
Instructor: Humanities, Religion, Philosophy of Law
University of Central Florida, Orlando
http://pegasus.cc.ucf.edu/~ncoverst/
frharry@cfl.rr.com
If the unexamined life is not worth living, surely an unexamined belief system, be it religious or political, is not worth holding.
Most things of value do not lend themselves to production in sound bytes.
++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
So, this is what Academia comes to?
On one of the lists on which I occasionally contribute comments there is an article about a racist work of fiction in which a thinly veiled Southern Poverty Law Center figure is murdered by a racist zealot which has been assigned by some professors at a handful of colleges for student reading. At least one of the professors, himself an avowed semite, hails this work as "an emotionally compelling account of Whites as historical victims of non-Whites--just the sort of thing we need to motivate a renaissance among our people."
Interesting assertion. Who might “our people” be? Other racists? More likely this professor of psychology at Cal State Long Beach is presuming to speak of all white people. That is how all misanthropy tends to work: Everyone shares my biases (including G-d, most of the time) or they ought to.
One of the comments responding to this article posed this question: "So this is what academia has come to." Here’s my response:
Academia has come to precisely what the public has allowed if not demanded it become. It has become degree processing factories at the public level and entitlement legitimating enclaves at the private level. It has become vocational schools producing unquestioningly obedient workers gaining skills with very short shelf lives while avoiding the production of reflective, critical thinking members of society at all costs. It has become producers of consumers, content to accept the limited range of consumer goods and services offered us along with the incessant advertising which conditionalizes our self-esteem to make us believe we actually need this schlock all the while avoiding the responsibilities of citizenship at all costs.
Academia is a reflection of our larger culture. It reproduces and reinforces the values we have imposed upon it. Those values do not include thoughtful, critically reflective human beings, the products of an academia which is actually living into its own vocation rather than that imposed upon it by a culture dominated by corporate interests.
++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
The Rev. Harry Scott Coverston, J.D., Ph.D.
Member, Florida Bar (inactive status)
Priest, Episcopal Church (canonically resident, Diocese of El Camino Real, CA)
Instructor: Humanities, Religion, Philosophy of Law
University of Central Florida, Orlando
http://pegasus.cc.ucf.edu/~ncoverst/
frharry@cfl.rr.com
If the unexamined life is not worth living, surely an unexamined belief system, be it religious or political, is not worth holding.
Most things of value do not lend themselves to production in sound bytes.
++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
Fearing Democracy in the Hands of a Consumerist Electorate
On Florida’s ballot next week is a measure which would give citizens the power to vote on any development which would impact a region in a substantial way. Currently, such decision making takes place on county commissions which are increasingly dominated by developers with the result that Paradise is being paved to put up a parking lot.
The state teacher’s union has recommended its members vote no on this amendment. As a colleague revealed last week, this recommendation arises out of support for the AFLCIO who sees the amendment as potentially detrimental to the construction industry where many of its members work in Florida.
It’s a bit ironic that a union whose business it is, in part, to create thinking socially responsible citizens would recommend against the right of citizens to determine their own futures in terms of development. At some level that doesn’t evince much confidence in the job their own members – here, public school teachers – are doing.
This revelation has led to a discussion on our faculty list which has thus far been relegated to myself and the colleague who provided the explanation for the FEA recommendation against Amendment Four. But it has also prompted some serious concerns regarding my own vote on this amendment.
In theory I favor citizen oversight. But increasingly I see few actual citizens and an awful lot of consumers, as this exchange from the faculty list reveals:
Harry, it seems to me that the fear you express here is a general fear of democracy itself, in the hands of a largely uneducated electorate, ignorant of where their interests really lie. And I share that fear--it seems to me the problem we're facing, the problem of a largely ignorant citizenry, is precisely THE challenge for us as "educators." And since those who have been in that role for the last several decades have apparently done a pretty bad job of it overall, we seem to be facing the threat of our government being placed in the hands of people who, for example, don't even understand what the First Amendment says. Pretty scary, all right.
I wish I felt ignorance was the only problem. Ignorance is curable. But I observe this to be something much more pernicious.
What I observe is that many Americans see themselves as consumers, not citizens. Consumers are passive recipients of entertainment and consumer goods. We pride ourselves on making choices even as the choices we make fall within a limited set provided by consumer goods and services providers. Increasingly, that includes our candidates for office. Our choices are corporate lite and corporate right. And the corporate media insures that the emperor will never be informed by any little boys that he has no clothes. Whatever else results from consumption of corporate media, it is rarely critical consciousness.
But this ongoing lobotomization is consensual, ultimately. It's a lot easier to be a consumer than a citizen because the latter actually requires something of the individual beyond mere passivity. Citizenship requires becoming educated, remaining informed, being willing to commit to critical reflection on issues and candidates. It requires the capacity and the will to see the larger picture - how one's vote affects "we, the people" and not a mere simplistic inquiry into whether one is
"better off than you were four years ago." In short, it requires a commitment that
consumerism rejects - "Talk all the time! Obey your thirst! Just Do It!". As my honors student explained it to me earlier this term, "We're not informed, we don't want to become informed and so our choice is not to vote."
To paraphrase the Gospel of John, Jefferson wept.
It is my observation that our public schools have largely failed to inculcate any sense of citizenship and its demand for commitment in our students. I attribute that in part to the perhaps well intentioned but ultimately high misguided approach of high stakes testing driven pedagogy of the past decade. This approach has neglected the subject matter of history and government on the tests themselves suggesting their lack of ultimate importance to students. Ask yourself how many times you've had your students inquire as to whether something was going to be on the test before reading, listening in class, much less taking notes.
High stakes testing pedagogy also has inculcated a bottom line mentality in our students which plays well into consumerism where the inquiry "What's in it for me?" becomes the ultimate criterion as to one's engagement of anything. It lends itself to reductionism in thought and minimalism in engagement. Such does not bode well for a democracy which depends upon socially responsible citizens.
I do agree that awareness of the provisions of our Constitution and Bill of Rights is minimal and usually deficient if not distorted. This is true of our larger public and not just our students. What never ceases to amaze me is observing the same literalist/fundamentalist approach that one sees in religion being applied to the Constitution. Students argue that "separation of church and state is not in the First Amendment" which is true if one only looks at the letter of the law but is simplistic when considering the interpretation - and thus application - of the law over time by the courts. Many aspects of constitutional law that our citizenry take for granted from the freedom of expression to the right to privacy are not in the US Constitution verbatim but have resulted from interpretation of the civil liberties which are delineated there.
Of course, a standardized test driven approach to education would readily anticipate such a result. Answers must fit into one of four possibilities offered the consumer/student who then chooses from among them. The notion that one would have to read, critically reflect upon the language of the text and then apply it to a factual scenario is beyond the scope of what the average consumer is willing to engage.
It's little wonder then that you hear frightening polemics from folks who in the past would have been considered crackpots or simpletons but today become the primary focus of infotainment. You hear an awful lot of ignorance - much of it perhaps willful - in this rhetoric. But you also hear
an awful lot of self-focus and tribal thinking. And, increasingly, you hear an awful lot of rage and irrationality. I wonder what the breaking point of a country is when the self-focused thinking of children and tribal group think of junior high kids is elevated to the primary basis for decision making in a nation-state.
While I clearly do not like what I see when I look around me in America today, I do think we must take this reality seriously. As I used to tell my juvie clients, "We don't get to choose our facts today but we must deal with them when we go into that courtroom." At heart I am completely conflicted on Amdt. 4. I want to give citizens a check on unregulated development that has turned the state in which my family has resided now six generations into a giant strip mall. I think they have a right to make such decisions. On the other hand, when I look around me, I see few citizens and an awful lot of consumers easily swayed by distorted advertising and disinformation. I'm not sure why they would be any better judges of developmental questions than the status quo.
There's a bit of a cynical Catch 22 here - the status quo is dominated by corporate interests who act in a manner adverse to the interests of many if not most residents. The alternative is to commit such decisions to a public which is largely dominated by corporate interests capable of distorting the issues and disinforming the public who is largely disengaged and disinterested in responsible citizenship.
I seem to remember this is precisely the situation predicted by the scholars of the Frankfurt School back 60 years ago. Weber’s Iron Cage of unregulated capitalism snaps shut.
OK. Enough rambling for a Saturday morning. My yard is calling, my very parched jungle demanding some attention in this day 29 of October drought in this third hottest year on record.
++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
The Rev. Harry Scott Coverston, J.D., Ph.D.
Member, Florida Bar (inactive status)
Priest, Episcopal Church (Dio. of El Camino Real, CA)
Instructor: Humanities, Religion, Philosophy of Law
University of Central Florida, Orlando
http://pegasus.cc.ucf.edu/~ncoverst/
frharry@cfl.rr.com
If the unexamined life is not worth living, surely an unexamined belief system, be it religious or political, is not worth holding.
Most things of value do not lend themselves to production in sound bytes.
++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
Inside the Circled Wagons
Last week Pew Research Center announced the results of a survey it had conducted among American residents regarding their familiarity with world religions. The talking heads have been abuzz ever since over the results, most of them offering sound bites of sensationalism rather than anything of substance.
The survey found that most Americans are largely unaware of world religions including their own. On a 32 question survey which was largely focused on Christianity but included questions about other world religions, the average survey respondent scored about 50%. I have to say that’s better than I would have predicted. But in a country with as much religious diversity as our own, it’s also pretty scary.
The buzz was generated by the fact that respondents identifying themselves as agnostic or atheist scored the highest on the survey with an average score of about 2 out of 3 correct answers. They were followed closely by Jews. Of Christian groups Mormons scored by far the highest with 63% correct. That number drops to just over half of the questions correct among evangelical Protestants and by the time one gets to African-American Protestants and Hispanic Catholics those numbers drop to 42% and 36% respectively.
It seems that Christians don’t like being seen as more ignorant than Jews and particularly resent being portrayed as more ignorant than atheists/agnostics. Even more troubling are the numbers about self-awareness of their own traditions. On average Christians scored just over 50% on the questions about the Bible and Christianity. That’s a rather shocking lack of awareness of religions that are generally held devoutly and proffered fervently to others.
Mormons scored the highest here with nearly 2/3 correct answers while evangelicals scored 61% correct here. The remainder of the Christian groups got less than half of the questions correct about their own tradition. On world religions, only Mormons got more than half correct with Black Protestants and Hispanic Catholics scoring less than 1/3 correct. Similarly, regarding religion and public life, none of the Christian groups score higher than slightly more than 50% correct.
A number of concerns emerge from this data. First, while Americans pride themselves on being a religious people, for most of us that religion is largely uninformed. That lack of information includes awareness of one’s own tradition but is particularly notable regarding other religions as well as religion’s role in our public life. The problem with a religious population simultaneously marked by its fervor as well as its ignorance would seem self-evident.
That is particularly true when the data for ethnically and racially defined religious groups are examined. Black churches historically have been centers of refuge for African-Americans in a largely hostile racist culture. More recently, Hispanic Protestant churches have proven refuges for immigrants to America as well as for the many who have moved to the barrios ringing Latin America’s great cities, refugees from economic devastation in the countryside.
But when does the refuge become an intellectual prison? One of the striking aspects of the Pew data is that while racially and ethnically defined churches with their circled wagons mentalities do provide support for those within the circle and defense against the hostile elements outside, they also tend to foster low levels of awareness of religion both inside and outside the circle.
In much the same way gated communities serve as the locus for intellectual incest, where the like-minded and like-situated talk only among themselves and screen out any potential disaffirming other, circled wagons religious bodies become hothouses where one’s biases are both affirmed and protected against any possible challenge. The high levels of support for the anti-gay Proposition 8 in 2008 among these very communities speak to the effectiveness of the circled wagons in screening out any arguments or evidence contrary to the approved group think within.
But perhaps the more serious concern that emerges from the Pew data is how it illuminates high profile inter-religious conflicts such as the proposed Islamic center in Manhattan which has been consistently and deliberately mischaracterized as “the Ground Zero mosque.” Much like the Holy Roman Empire, which was neither Roman nor an Empire and rarely anything remotely holy, the center is neither a mosque nor is it particularly close to the 9-11 site. But such facts have not deterred its antagonists who would paint all Muslims as terrorists, blaming an entire world religion for the acts of a handful of extremists. Imagine if Christianity were summed up by the work of Torquemada or the Puritans of Salem.
Not surprisingly, the Pew data found that religious awareness rises with educational attainment. It’s pretty hard to attend anything other than a circled wagons religious college and not be exposed to some of the ideas about religion that Pew was testing here. More importantly, it’s pretty difficult in most urban centers in the country to attend a college or university where one does not actually encounter a person with religious understandings and practices which are different from one’s own. Hence, while college graduates get about 2/3 of the Pew questions correct, that number plunges to four out of 10 among those with a high school diploma or less.
In a multicultural and religiously diverse country like the United States, ignorance about religions is not bliss. It’s dangerous. A lack of understanding about the role of religion and public life can lead to the homophobia confused for religiosity observable in California and the vote on Proposition 8 which centered largely in religious communities, most notably in the insular ethnic and racially defined religious communities there. A lack of understanding of other world religions (and perhaps educational attainment as well) can fuel high profile confrontations with other world religions such as the gun-totin’ pastor in Gainesville, FL and his plans to burn the mountain of Qurans he had received from fellow Islamaphobics around the country on the anniversary of 9-11.
In all fairness, it is important to note that awareness of religions does not necessarily translate to a propensity to treat the other with respect. The antics of atheist proselytizers Christopher Hitchens and Sam Harris readily demonstrate the willingness to engage in a crude stereotyping which sums up entire religious traditions by their worst case scenarios for purposes of dismissing if not demonizing them. And the role of the Mormons in the funding of dehumanizing and disingenuous advertising in the Prop. 8 campaign demonstrates that awareness alone is not the silver bullet for misanthropy and the willingness to engage in discriminatory public policy.
Over the past two weeks I have given the abbreviated version of Pew’s survey (which you can take at their website) to my students, a number of whom are honors students. They are generally scoring between 75-85% on the survey. I then show them the data on how they compare to other Americans and the difference educational attainment makes (thus explaining, to some degree, their higher scores). And I ask them to consider what difference that makes.
These are students who tend to be dismayed by the religious antics of Quran burning pastors and uncritical, passionate sound bite arguments swirling around Ground Zero. It is important that they realize how the college education they take for granted will change the way they see the world and potentially put them at odds with those they left behind back home. It is even more important that they see how awareness of the other almost always makes a significant difference in the way we see and treat them.
Quran burnings and Ground Zero mosque debates are no doubt the harbingers of things to come in a nation where the fastest growing religious self-identification is “none of the above.” In a very short time, this will be their concern. I wish them well in meeting these challenges. I think they’ve clearly got their work cut out for them.
++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
The Rev. Harry Scott Coverston, J.D., Ph.D.
Member, Florida Bar (inactive status)
Priest, Episcopal Church (Dio. of El Camino Real, CA)
Instructor: Humanities, Religion, Philosophy of Law
University of Central Florida, Orlando
http://pegasus.cc.ucf.edu/~ncoverst/
frharry@cfl.rr.com
If the unexamined life is not worth living, surely an unexamined belief system, be it religious or political, is not worth holding.
Most things of value do not lend themselves to production in sound bytes.
++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
On Intellectual and Moral Courage – Part II
The second site I found which proved useful in bringing to consciousness this question of intellectual courage v. cowardice comes from perhaps an unlikely source. Lloyd Flack is an Australian statistician, according to his limited biographical information, writes a blog entitled “It looks different from here: Irregular postings on science, politics, science fiction, games, comics, history and whatever takes my fancy.”
What took his fancy on May 15, 2006, was a discussion “On the Nature of Fear and Courage.” While statisticians are hardly known for their philosophical reflections, being among the lowest disciplines in principled moral reasoning according to results from the Defining Issues Test, this statistician clearly is an exception to both the ideal type of statisticians and the stereotype that is easily drawn from it of amoral number crunchers.
Flack begins his musings with a critical overview of fear from an evolutionary perspective:
Fear is an emotion that tends to override all other others and to control our actions….[I]ts function is to protect our safety, our very existence. Those among our potential ancestors who did not react strongly to fear tended not to leave descendants. But evolution is a short sighted mechanism and what has evolved in one environment can be quite dysfunctional in another. And it does not take account of an organism's needs other than leaving descendants of itself or its kin. It cares nothing about happiness or morality.
He continues by dividing fear into four categories: physical, moral, intellectual and personal/social fears. He notes three basic strategies of dealing with fear: flee, freeze or fight. And then he discusses each type of fear and response in detail.
While Google picked up on the search terms “intellectual courage and cowardice,” Flack’s site was one of hundreds produced by that search. What caught my attention was his distinction between moral and intellectual courage/cowardice:
Moral courage is the ability to act according to one's conscience despite the risk of disapproval from those whose approval one wants or the fear of bearing the moral responsibility for an action.
Intellectual courage is the ability to accept unpleasant truths and to act on them. It is the courage to admit that you might be wrong.
Flack lays out many aspects of moral courage: acting according to one's own conscience rather than the judgment of others; words or deeds that tell others that they are wrong; incurring the disapproval of those whose approval matters to oneself; accepting responsibility for a judgment call rather than acting according to a set of rules.
His definition of intellectual courage contains aspects of resisting the temptation to believe what one wants to believe if the evidence and reason say otherwise, being willing to admit to oneself [or one’s parents?] that one might have been wrong or to admit that one doesn't know the answer, that uncertainty and doubt might be appropriate.
These are very fine delineations of moral and intellectual courage. But it is not until the two are considered in tandem that they prove useful to the student encountering cognitive dissonance. Flack draws a bead on the many would-be martyrs among my undergraduates who feel compelled to “take a stand” for their revealed truth observing that moral courage “is not taking a rebel pose. Those taking such poses are offending only those whose approval they don't care about. They are usually seeking to impress an in-group of like-minded people.”
In other words, self-imposed martyrdom is almost always less about principle than about ego and the perceived need for affirmation from one’s tribe. Flack continues, “Moral courage can come from intellectual cowardice. A zealot can have moral courage. They don't have intellectual courage.” Hence the reason they avoid classes in which their zealous but often poorly considered and often insupportable understandings would be drawn into question.
He also exposes the disingenuity about “I had no choice” arguments to which undergrads – and sadly many adults who know better - tend to be prone. Flack observes that arguments about
[d]uty can be a mask for moral cowardice. Especially duty to the law or duty in war. Seeking a wickedly excessive sentence because the law demands it or it is what is usually done by prosecutors is often an act of moral cowardice. Currently this is especially common for drug offenses in South-East Asia or in the United States. Moral cowardice is involved in many, perhaps most atrocities in wartime.
Sadly, he’s got us pegged.
Flack is particularly critical of fanaticism observing that:
Fanatics and zealots all have the combination of intellectual cowardice and obsession. Almost by definition.
But intellectual cowardice does not have to lead to fanaticism. It can simply lead to prejudice. To refusing to admit that homosexuality is not a choice. To refusing to admit that transsexuality is real or that chronic pain or chronic fatigue syndrome are real. I'm not talking about ignorance. I'm talking about willful blindness about other people stemming from religious or ideological motives.
No one likes to think their understandings and values could be wrong. No one likes to have their prejudices exposed. And most of us like it even less when the prejudices – if not fanaticisms – of our trusted moral agents, our parents and significant others, are brought into the harsh light of critical reflection. It is painful to consider we’ve been wrong and that our beliefs could have harmed others. It is often even more painful to consider that our parents could have held views which we now recognize as wrong, sometimes even destructive.
Intellectual cowardice is not terribly surprising when human beings are exposed to potentially disaffirming arguments and evidence which draws their previous understandings into question, particularly undergraduate students, many away from home for the first time, trying to figure out who they are. Some humans deal with cognitive dissonance better than others. And some are more comfortable with a lack of definitive answers than others, particularly those who score high on the Perceiving (as opposed to Judging) temperament on the Meyers-Brigg Temperament Inventory as does my students’ instructor.
The question then becomes what we do with such recognitions. Do we confront ourselves, wrestle with our conscience, talk with others to get other opinions? Or do we avoid the disaffirming other, skip the classes and assignments where we will be confronted with critical consideration of our inherited understandings, and rationalize it with ad hominem attacks on the Lucifer who would dare to shine light in the darkness of our inner recesses?
Ironically, if there is anything undergraduate students seek, it is to be seen with respect by others. This is particularly true vis-Ã -vis their peers but also extends to the faculty whose courses they take. Students who confuse questioning of their thought with attacks on their persons are often merciless on faculty evaluations and usually direct their comments in ad hominem form. Not surprisingly, such students are often seen in less than respectable ways by the faculty member who has called them to grow and develop only to be demonized for their efforts.
The truth is that there is nothing respectable about intellectual cowardice. There is even less respectable about ideologically self-blinded approaches to higher education which by its very nature demands critical reflection and evaluation of one’s perspectives. Arguments that Bibles speak and dictate certain required understandings of the world, that the invisible hand governs and guarantees the best economic policy possible, that the US is inevitably the best country in the world in every aspect are simply not credible given their birthplace in ideological matrices - much less respectable.
All of us are capable of operating out of less than critically considered lenses. All of us are capable of intellectual and/or moral cowardice when something near and dear to our hearts is challenged. The question becomes simply what we do when that challenge arises. In my own life, I have developed a sort of fall back position when such challenges arise in which I simply admit to myself and others, “But I could be wrong.” And I could be and have been. But the chances are I will wrestle with such questions for weeks if not months on end. Living with one’s understandings in an ongoing state of being under construction is not comfortable and probably would prove untenable to many. But it is the only way I have learned to live with as much intellectual integrity, if not courage, as possible.
As for my intellectually cowardly students, they have my compassion but not my respect. I realize that my classes will not prompt every student who walks through my doors to become critically reflective human beings and it would only be a monumental ego who would set such as a pedagogical goal. For those who would avoid the opportunities to grow and learn that I seek to provide, I console myself with the belief that even if they have avoided confronting themselves this time, they no longer have the luxury of naïveté in assuming that there are no possible problems with the understandings they felt the need to protect from critique.
Borrowing from the parable of the sower found in all the synoptic Gospels, in some the call to critical reflection my classes offer is a seed that will lay barren on the stony ground on which it fell waiting for the birds to swoop down and eat it. In others it is a seed that may take years to sprout but eventually it will do so. In either case, the sower has done his job.
++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
The Rev. Harry Scott Coverston, J.D., Ph.D.
Member, Florida Bar (inactive status)
Priest, Episcopal Church (Dio. of El Camino Real, CA)
Instructor: Humanities, Religion, Philosophy of Law
University of Central Florida, Orlando
http://pegasus.cc.ucf.edu/~ncoverst/
frharry@cfl.rr.com
If the unexamined life is not worth living, surely an unexamined belief system, be it religious or political, is not worth holding.
Most things of value do not lend themselves to production in sound bytes.
++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
