Theory v. Practice

Theory without practice is dead. Practice without theory is deadly.

Moral Decay

A Ioved one recently posted a comment about the root cause of school shootings being the moral failure of our culture.

My first thought after reading his post was "Yes! Our culture has rejected its Judeo-Christian values and Greco-Roman rationalism and so this is what we get."

I think that is true (e.g. cultures throughout history have declined following a period of decadence in which the values that established and nurtured society were abandoned), but if we look at where this started in the West, it was with those of us who were entrusted with passing on these  systems of belief and thought.  My own nominalism and licentiousness are far more responsible for "moral decay" than the most stridently atheist monologue Bill Maher has to offer. 

Legalism is equally wrong, especially when applied to others and in particular when applied to people without faith. (It would make no sense for a rabbi to be concerned that I'm not keeping kosher, right?).  But many of us have rejected the notion of self discipline born out of love and gratitude towards God for what He's done for us.  If we can, by His grace, bring ourselves to the point where we as Christians are concerned first and foremost with loving God and loving our neighbors, with real zeal, we would be sowing the seeds of cultural transformation we long for.

Quote from Arthur James Balfour

"So it is with those persons who claim to show by their example that naturalism is practically consistent with the maintenance of ethical ideals with which naturalism has no natural affinity. Their spiritual life is parasitic: it is sheltered by convictions which belong, not to them, but to the society of which they form a part; it is nourished by processes in which they take no share. And when those convictions decay, and those processes come to an end, the alien life which they have maintained can scarce be expected to outlast them" 

Quote from Edmund A. Opitz

This quote, I believe, accurately traces the source of our present economic injustices not to the talking points of the Republicans or Democrats, but to the seed of greediness that each human heart is sown with. Which raises the uncomfortable question: What am I cultivating?

"The market is a universal human institution; trade and barter is as old as mankind. Wherever the human community exists there is a division of labor and a swapping of goods. So long as mankind survives on this planet there will be markets, and this will be true even under authoritarian regimes. The market, yesterday, today, and forever; but not the market economy. The market economy is a contingent thing; it has come into being in certain areas of the globe at certain periods and chunks of it now disappear daily before our eyes. There’s no miracle of parthenogenesis by which the market can give birth to the market economy all by itself; the market does not institutionalize itself as the market economy without help from moral values and the law.
We live on a planet where almost everything is scarce relative to human demand, and therefore we must economize. To 'economize' means to conserve scarce resources, which we do by attempting to diminish inputs while maximizing outputs. In other words, the more-for-less mentality is built into economic action, and that’s the danger. Unless this frame of mind is counterbalanced by noneconomic forces, the more-for-less attitude degenerates into the something-for-nothing mentality—as has happened to us. When a nation is permeated by the something-for-nothing spirit it will invariably set up a corresponding power structure designed to transfer wealth legally from producers to pressure groups."

Edmund A. Opitz

TS Eliot Quote on Democracy

This quote will rankle some, and I don't post it standing from any moral high ground.  Rather, I believe it succinctly captures why the last 16+ years of global warfare in the name of spreading democracy has been, and is, a Fool's errand.

“The term ‘democracy’ … does not contain enough positive content to stand alone against the forces you dislike—it can be easily be transformed by them. If you will not have God... you should pay your respects to Hitler and Stalin.”  

-T.S. Elliot

Quote from MLK Jr.'s Nobel Acceptance Speech

'I refuse to accept the idea that the "isness" of man's present nature makes him morally incapable of reaching up for the eternal "oughtness" that forever confronts him.'

-Martin Luther King Jr.

Tolerance

"...only a genuine commitment to the truth makes tolerance possible. Assent to the truth must be done freely and with genuine understanding; it can be encouraged and rewarded, but it cannot be coerced. Tolerance for error is therefore not an endorsement of falsehood itself—for we do not, strictly speaking, tolerate what is false—it is a respect for the dignity of the knowing person, whom we do tolerate.

...tolerance is intelligible only with some presumed and shared understanding of the true and the good. After all, we do not tolerate what we think is true or good. We tolerate what we think is wrong or even bad—and, again, we do so out of a special respect for the truth and how it is known and loved by rational beings."

-Matthew Rose

"Real" Men

Slightly tongue-in-cheek post of the day:

"Real Men 'X'"

All I need to do is replace the 'X' with something I already do, an attribute I already possess, or a virtue I'd like others to know I'm chock-a-block with, and...Voila! Ego stroked, nagging sense of inferiority ameliorated, and membership in the elusive group of "Real Men" firmly established!

This morning I think 'X' equals ' practice cynicism' for me...

The Fruit of our Labors

http://www.defenseone.com/ideas/2017/01/weaponized-narrative-new-battlespace/134284/

Brad Allenby has written an interesting and thought-provoking article over at Defense One, about the 'weaponization' of narratives.  Here are my somewhat disjointed musings on it...

In brief, Allenby asserts that the speed of information exchange has overwhelmed the ability of cultures, institutions, and people to process this information and has caused many to retreat into one of two corners:  Nationalism or Fundamentalism.  From these simplified views of the world, individuals are more vulnerable to 'weaponized' narratives: Fake news tailored to leverage existing belief frameworks in order to manipulate one's behavior.

It's an easy enough thesis to understand, and accurate with respect to the purposes of  Fake News,  but it misses the mark on several points:

• While Allenby is correct that weaponized narratives offer "ringfenced belief communities...cheap passage through a complex world...at the cost of rational understanding", he fails to establish how this is in any way a new phenomenon, or any different than past propaganda efforts.

• Allenby's unspoken, yet clear assumption is that a secular globalist worldview is *the* correct view, and therefore not subject to weaponization.  In fact, ANY unquestioningly held belief leads to vulnerability on the part of the believer.  Even a fundamental and deeply held belief has to be questioned to determine if its assumptions are true and its rationale is logical.

• Allenby misses the point in stating that we're departing from an "Enlightenment" meme, namely, that there is such a thing as truth.  In fact, postmodernism and the "post-fact" culture that has recently emerged is the culmination of, not a departure from, Enlightenment principles.  The subtle, yet critical, elevation of reason above truth that occurred during the Enlightenment has led inescapably to the current view that each individual “makes their own truth”.

• Allenby completely skips the real factors that make individuals vulnerable to weaponized narratives: lack of truthfulness in underlying claims or "facts", and an unwillingness to think logically about the truth and its implications.

• Indeed, Allenby infers that narrative *is* truth and only when it's weaponized does narrative become problematic.  I would counter that while narratives of fiction can be used to communicate general truths (i.e. stories with a moral), narratives composed of hand-selected 'facts' are simply rhetorical tools when used to make specific points (e.g. hand selected sets of facts which paint a political candidate in a certain light while excluding information that might undermine the narrative).

Leaving Allenby behind for a moment, if the lack of truthfulness and the exercise of reason are indeed the source of our vulnerability to weaponized narratives, several questions come to mind:

• What has led us to the current state in which truth is not valued and reason is not exercised?

• What, if any, role has the systematic "dumbing down" of American education and culture played in bringing us to the present state of public discourse?

• What role has political correctness, which stifles the free exchange of ideas - even repugnant ones - played in stunting discourse and driving people into clans of like-minded folks?

This last bullet is where Allenby's attention should be focused, but perhaps this would lead him down the path of questioning his own beliefs?

Silly Facts

When it comes to current events, it seems we live in a world drawn into three camps: "us", "them", and "not going to talk about anything other than cat videos for fear of being forced into one of the first two camps".   Facts (or at least the notion of an objective reality that may not conform to my preconceived notions/meta-narrative) and the messy nuances of life have no place in this world.

Take the ACA hubbub.  The narrative is Trump is trying to illegally kill the ACA.  Like him or not, this isn't accurate.

By way of explanation, under the ACA people whose household income falls between 100 and 400 percent of the poverty level qualify for two kinds of financial assistance.

The first is a tax credit to reduce insurance premiums, authorized under ACA Section 1401. The ACA supports these premium reductions with a permanent appropriation built into the law.

The second is a reduction in cost-sharing, under ACA Section 1402.  Unlike the premium reductions, these are not funded via tax credits but by direct reimbursements to insurance companies.  Also unlike the premium reductions, Congress did not pass an approprations bill to accompany this article of the ACA.

Why?  Congress didn't want to pass a law that essentially cuts checks to Big Healthcare Companies.  So the Obama administration appropriated the funds.  This isn't legal, as appropration of funds is only allowed by the House of Representatives.

Whether one is for or against the ACA, the reality is Congress needs to act to preserve it due to the fact that they relied on the illegal appropriation of funds by the executive branch to make the ACA viable.

http://www.scotusblog.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/05/HofR-challenge-to-ACA-DCt-5-12-16.pdf

Well said Mr. Rowe / Preach it Smokey

From a recent "Mike Rowe's "Off The Wall"" Facebook post:

"Last week, in your comments about the NFL, you made several references to “black people.” As a woman of color, I’ll remind you that the correct term is “African-American,” as I’m sure you know. You do good work with your foundation, but if you want to be heard by everyone, maybe you should speak more respectfully."

Carla Jamison

Hi Carla

If a black person tells me that they would like to be referred to as an “African-American,” I’m happy to address them as such. Doing otherwise would be rude. Likewise, if a white person asks me to call them “Irish-American,” or “Polish-American,” I’ll try to accommodate them as well. However - if someone attempts to enlighten me on the preferences of all black people or all white people, my antenna go up. Why? Because I'm not convinced a person’s true identity has anything to do with the color of their skin, the content of the DNA, or the country of their ancestors.

As a fan of biography, I’m curious to know more about my own history, as well as the history of others. But as a fan of The United States, I place no relevance whatsoever on the amount of German blood coursing through my veins, or the amount of African blood coursing through yours. I'm interested in what you believe, Clara, but I don't consider your ethnicity when evaluating the merits of your arguments. In other words, your heritage is interesting, but knowing where you came from has nothing to do with where you’ll wind up, or what kind of person you really are.

I could write a few thousand words on the evils of the hyphen, and its role in identity-politics. But I doubt I could say it better than Smokey Robinson did in a Def Poetry Jam seven years ago. If I were King of the World, this would be required viewing in every single high-school – starting tomorrow. The language is salty, but the sentiment is precisely what America needs to hear - no matter where you're from...

Have a great weekend.
Mike

https://youtu.be/iIkNsj6cDGc