My prediction for PA: Clinton 54, Obama 46
Reality: Clinton 54.7, Obama 45.3
Although I hoped reality would be a little bit better than my prediction, in fact reality was a little bit worse (as an Obama supporter). Now, in the couple weeks off until Indiana/North Carolina, I'll throw my 2 cents in on where the Obama campaign could've been better. My focus will be on the period of time since it has been just him and Clinton.
1) Having re-votes in Florida and Michigan.
From the beginning, when this issue came up, he should have loudly advocated for those primaries to be re-done. He easily could have pushed behind the scenes for them to be held in June, giving him plenty of time to campaign in those places. He would've lost Florida, since the only Democrats in the state are old white New Yorkers (I know- Nacole and I flew down there in '04 and went door to door getting out the vote on election day), but he could've kept it close. Michigan would've been close also, but could've gone either way with some serious campaigning.
Going the opposite way has left him open to the charge that he's disenfranchising people, but more broadly, makes him look scared of Clinton, scared that he can't win. It's like those early round NCAA games, where a #16 team jumps out to a surprise lead early in the game, and then starts playing not to lose, instead of playing to win. Meanwhile, the #1 seeded team just keeps doing what it's always done to get there in the first place, and then in the end the lower seeded team ends up succumbing. Clinton was the #1 seed in the Democratic tournament, and Obama was a mid-range seed. Once Obama was ahead, and started feeling the pressure, they started playing not to lose, instead of playing to win. This brings me to:
2) Whether/when Clinton should drop out of the race
I cringe every time I read something saying Obama supporters are calling for Clinton to exit the race. That also makes Obama and his campaign look scared, like he can't actually beat her. And it makes him sound like a complainer. No one is looking for whining/complaining in their commander-in-chief.
Again, from the beginning, when this kind of talk first surfaced, Obama should have strongly and clearly said, "This is a democracy, and Senator Clinton should be in this race for absolutely as long as she pleases, and no one should be saying she ought to quit." Setting that tone would have kept people in his own campaign from saying it, and it would have established him as confident that he can beat her, and supportive of participation in our democracy.
In the end, what she has to throw at him is going to be nothing like what the Republican attack machine is going to throw at him. He has coasted in his previous, rather minimal electoral experience, and beating Clinton is a necessary step in his development as a candidate. And if he fails to beat her, he will have no one to blame but himself.
3) Trade
In the run-up to the Ohio election, which is really where he let Clinton back in this thing, Clinton was talking all kinds of talk about the downsides of trade, and so Obama also started in on that topic. Then one of his people was quoted up in Canada as saying that Obama didn't really believe any of that stuff, but was saying it because he needed to.
Oh crap, I thought, when I read that.
The working class white folks in Ohio-Pennsylvania-Michigan type country need to hear someone of high political stature tell them the truth- expanded trade is better for the country as a whole. Yes, we should negotiate some basic environmental/labor requirements into our trade agreements, but those can be negotiated upward slowly over time, as increased trade provides us with increased leverage with our trading partners. But increased trade benefits America, economically, and from a security perspective, as it makes other countries richer, and therefore more likely to focus on making money, and less on making trouble.
Those folks need someone to tell them that all those manufacturing jobs that built those towns are gone, and they're not coming back, and any politician who promises that either doesn't know anything about global economics, or more likely is just telling them what they want to hear. What the discussion should be about is how to help those people make the transition into those portions of the economy that are benefiting from increased trade. It's a great example of where government could come up with some reasonable ideas to accomplish some good, which is central to the Democratic party story. The Republicans understand that increased trade is better, but their response to the issue that the cost of increased trade is real pain borne by real people is "too bad for you".
I don't know Obama personally, but as soon as I read that comment I was sure that it was true, and so, I think, did everyone else. And in the moment when that came out, Obama lost a great deal of his image as a new, transformational candidate, and became a lot more like just another politician telling you what he/she thinks you want to hear. While Obama was still seen as pretty much a transformational figure, he was largely immune to charges of lack of experience, since transformational figures only come once in a blue moon, and people understand that. Whenever Obama does something that makes him seem like just another politician, he becomes just another politician, only one with virtually no national political experience. And then Clinton starts sounding better, because the Clintons, both of them, are master politicians, and she has way more experience than Obama does.
On the trade issue again, Obama played not to lose. And it cost him. I think if he had said what he really thinks about trade, as thoughtfully and candidly as he did about race, people in Ohio, Pennsylvania, and Michigan, and similar places, would respect him more, and be more likely to vote for him, even if they disagreed with his position. Those people, in their hearts, know what the real story is. But no candidate is giving them an option to hear it and face it constructively.
4) Bitterly clinging
The night that we got back from our weekend of paintball and skydiving, which I previously wrote about in the very first posts on this site, Ed sent out a global email response to a global email, which resulted in the entire NYC office having to attend sensitivity training (fortunately for me, I left NYC just before the trainings started). When I read that email, just before the shit starting hitting the proverbial fan, I actually yelled at my computer "No, no, no, Ed, WTF are you doing??? WHY, oh WHY, would you ever say that?"
That's the kind of response I had when I read those remarks by Obama.
I won't dwell too much on the word selection, since so many others have at length- "bitter" could have been "angry", "frustrated", or even "anxious", but "bitter" implies a character flaw, a smallness of spirit. "Cling" makes a person sound weak and needy. It's going to be hard to win people over by implying they are weak, small-spirited people.
The more interesting point, which appears to me to be largely unexplored (I've seen one small piece in the NYT that focused on it), is, what exactly was Obama getting at and did he have a valid underlying point, albeit one that got blown away by the firestorm resulting from his extremely unfortunate choice of verbiage?
I'd been thinking a lot along the kind of lines I think Obama was exploring, and here's what I think he was trying to explore; since Obama was in San Francisco at the time, I'll use homophobia as my working example.
I've been wondering a lot about why Republicans have had so much success using extremely divisive social tactics in their electoral strategies over the last 20 years or so. Homophobia is a great example; witness all the "defense of marriage" stuff that inevitably comes up when gay people try to obtain the right to marry each other.
When push comes to shove, I don't think that the vast majority of people care if Mike and Ed marry each other, yet many are willing to be drawn in by all this defense of marriage baloney (as if Mike and Ed wanting to commit themselves to each other for life somehow weakens marriage as an institution; I mean, how can more people wanting to make commitments to each other be weakening the institution of marriage?). But if the Republicans have been successful with this sort of tactic, then using the framework of economics, it must be because they are supplying something that people are demanding. But what is it that people are demanding?
I think if you look at the long arc of human history, the amount of change per unit time (the velocity of change, if you will), has been steadily increasing; i.e., change itself is accelerating. In the Middle Ages, you probably wouldn't have noticed that, since the velocity of change at that moment in time was still slow enough that the world looked pretty much the same when you died as it did when you were born. Plus, lives were typically pretty short.
But now, that ever increasing rate of change has produced a world in which you can expect to live 60-80 years at least, and that number is increasing, and at the end of any 20 years the world appears to be vastly different than it was at the start of the 20 years. 20 years ago, there was, on a practical level, no internet or cell phones, gas cost like a dollar a gallon, terrorism was something that only happened in places like Israel, and it wasn't easy or practical to move all your manufacturing operations to whatever country on earth had the lowest average hourly wage.
Now, the velocity of change has reached such a level that it's possible to observe the world around you changing in large-scale ways. And that can easily be disconcerting. But what's really disconcerting is the effect all this change has on social institutions, which are a primary tool people use for organizing/making sense out of their lives.
50 years ago, it was still more or less the case that everyone could expect a man to work, a woman to stay home and raise the kids, the man would have lifetime employment at a reasonable wage with healthcare and a pension, and wherever you lived, you knew pretty much everyone around you, and pretty much everyone you knew, lived around you. People met each other at local community events, married each other, pretty much stayed married to each other, raised kids, and died. Everyone pretended homosexuality didn't exist. It was, relatively speaking, a simple framework with which to understand the world, even if it glossed over a lot of messy reality (i.e., divorce happened, some women worked, homosexuality did exist, etc.)
But in 50 years' time, basically every one of those expectations has been destroyed. (Except dying, of course. We can all still expect to die. Though who knows what the next 50 years will bring on that front.) And there really hasn't yet been time to evolve a new set of expectations about how the world will work. Because although it doesn't take a lot of time to destroy institutions or expectations, it does take a long time to build them. I alluded to that in the last post, in which I claimed that the conceptual debate over racism and sexism is over, but it will still likely take generations to work the majority of legacy effects of them out of the system.
With all of people's expectations about the way the world will work for them effectively destroyed, people become some combination of anxious, angry, and/or frustrated. They want to make sense of the world, and have some kind of reasonable expectation of how life is going to work. And then along comes the Republican party, offering up the spectre of "liberals", "secular humanists", and "gays", as the convenient target to focus all that anxiousness, anger, and frustration. And so otherwise decent, friendly people get sucked into some of the bizarre stuff that the extreme right-wing, socially conservative part of the Republican offers up.
And because the Democratic party hasn't developed an alternative narrative to organize around, the Republican party has had the market cornered, and has profited handsomely from it. And may yet again in this election; I think it's going to be a close win for the Republicans if it's McCain-Clinton, and a close win for the Dems if it's McCain-Obama. But I think this is the sort of thing that Obama was trying to articulate, however imperfectly.
Oh, and don't think that the Democratic party is without guilt on matter of this nature; there are portions of the left wing that offer up the spectres of "globalization", and "multinationals" as convenient labels to explain all the ills of the world, and those labels are no more useful than the ones the Republicans offer up.
Change will continue to accelerate. As a people, we need to get more adaptable, through more realistic expectations about how stable life will be, and especially through becoming better educated; the more you learn, the easier it is to learn new things. And the easier it is for you to learn new things, the more adaptable you are.
Adaptability should be a new ideal. Now what we desperately need is leadership, to explain this to people and get started the process of making ourselves more adaptable. That's the hope that I- dare I say it- cling to that Obama can provide us, and why I continue will continue to root for him in this contest.
So, Senator Obama- stop playing not to lose, and start playing to win. Your potential is great, but the leadership so far has been shaky. There's not a lot of time left to steady it up. But we need you to do it.
Yes you can.
Friday, April 25, 2008
Tuesday, April 22, 2008
Election '08 by Gus, Part 6
My prediction for today's primary: Clinton 54, Obama 46.
In the end, I think PA's demographics, which feature a sizable subgroup of older, white voters, overwhelmingly favor Clinton. Bill Kristol, who I think is intelligent, articulate, and wrong on virtually everything he has ever expressed an opinion about, said in a column about a month ago that Republicans should be careful, because the rift in the Democratic party is fundamentally not ideological; rather, it is generational.
That's why there's really very little difference between the two of them on policy issues. I think the biggest difference is healthcare, for which I am persuaded my Paul Krugman's analysis that Clinton's plan is better. I'm hopeful that Obama will win the nomination, then the presidency, and then promptly adopt Clinton's plan, since it is superior and he should be smart enough to realize that. I think he was very cautious with his proposal, as he has been on other issues, and now he's sort of stuck with it until he beats her. Moving to her plan before then would be interpreted as a sign of weakness.
But back to the generational thing- it's fascinating to watch this all unfold. Clinton represents the generation for whom the defining struggles of the day were racism and sexism. It's part of why Clinton is so fundamentally combative- she views the world, as I think many Boomers do, as a titanic struggle with itself over these issues. So, if you are someone who still sees the primary struggles with the world today being racism and sexism, you are far more likely to be drawn to her.
Obama represents the post-Boomer generations: mine, and the one after mine, which is at the beginning of its political life. I look around at all my friends who are married, and I see a lot more fathers helping out with childrearing/housework, mothers in management positions, etc. I think it is safe to say that from my generation onward, the idea that men and women are fundamentally equal is at the macro level a settled issue. The fight is over. Women won it.
Does that mean sexism is dead? No, of course not. Does that mean I think right now every father in America is doing 50% of the childrearing and housework? No, of course not. What I'm saying is, I can't find a single example of any married-with-kids couple of my generation that even comes close to the kind of split my mom and dad had. What I'm saying is, I can't think of anyone of my generation who really gives a two-penny damn whether their boss is male or female. I'll be the first to say we need more female politicians, more female CEO's, more female scientists, etc., but the conceptual debate is over. Now we're just trying to figure out how to engineer the reality.But that's a total change in society from top to bottom, and change at that scale simply takes time. There's no way around that fact.
For my generation onward, I also think the racism issue, at the macro level, is done. Minorities won it. In my generation, and especially in the next one, interracial dating is increasing, the number of children of mixed heritage is increasing, and again it's becoming harder to find people who really care that much what other people's race is.
Does that mean I think racism is dead? Hell, no. But the conceptual debate is over, and again, it's going to take time now to cycle the holdouts out of the system. There will always be some racists, and some sexists, just as there continue to exist today people who stubbornly insist that the world is flat. But the trend is positive, and I think it will pick up steam from this point on with each passing generation.
What it all means is, for people of my generation, and especially people of the next, they don't resonate with a lot of the Clinton pathos. They resonate a lot more with Obama, who speaks in a way that signals that he also sees those issues as settled. The issues that I think really resonate for people of my generation and the next are poverty and the environment, and to a lesser extent, how to fix healthcare, education, and social security, and how to exist in a rapidly globalizing world. Resolving those issues requires a change in focus from the defining issues of the Boomer generation, and also will require major changes in how we as Americans do things and think about things. And so the broad issue of change really resonates for these people, and they are overwhelmingly drawn to Obama.
I don't mean to imply that I think all Boomers go for Clinton, or that all people below a certain age go for Obama, but I think this framework explains why age is the single strongest predictor of Clinton/Obama preference (unless you are black). The fact that the Democratic campaign is so close suggests to me that we are near the tipping point, where the balance of power will start to shift away from Boomers and to the succeeding generations. I don't know if we're really there yet; Clinton may well win this one in the end. And if she does, I'll vote for her. Although she's not my preferred candidate, and I do think John McCain is a good man, and a true patriot, the differences between the two parties are too stark, and I will vote for Clinton without hesitation.
But another thing that worries me about Clinton is that her supporters, whether the ones that were with her from the beginning, or people like me, who will vote for her, however reluctantly, even she wins the nomination, are the same people who've voted for Democratic candidates in the last several elections. And we've seen what happens with that coalition. It loses. Or, depending on how you view the last couple of elections, it wins, but too narrowly to avoid losing anyway.
My worry is that Obama's supporters are heavily made up of people relatively new to political participation, either because of age, apathy, or both, and that a sizable number of these people are so invested in him personally that they will sit out the election rather than vote for Clinton. I think the number of Clinton supporters who will really sit out this election and potentially hand over yet another presidency to the Republicans is far lower. So to me, that's one more reason to root for Obama today. He is unlikely to win the PA primary, but if he can do better than the 54-46 prediction I'm publicly announcing here, then I think he will be tough for Clinton to beat in the endgame.
We owe the Boomer generation a great debt, for fighting it out amongst themselves and leading us to a place where I think we can make equality of race and sex overwhelmingly the cultural norm. So thank you Boomers, for a truly important contribution to our evolution as a society, and as a vision of true democracy. But now it's time to fight a whole new set of fights, and every 4 to 8 years we have to wait to really get started on those things is precious time lost. So let's elect Obama, and start making some progress. Can we do it?
Yes we can.
In the end, I think PA's demographics, which feature a sizable subgroup of older, white voters, overwhelmingly favor Clinton. Bill Kristol, who I think is intelligent, articulate, and wrong on virtually everything he has ever expressed an opinion about, said in a column about a month ago that Republicans should be careful, because the rift in the Democratic party is fundamentally not ideological; rather, it is generational.
That's why there's really very little difference between the two of them on policy issues. I think the biggest difference is healthcare, for which I am persuaded my Paul Krugman's analysis that Clinton's plan is better. I'm hopeful that Obama will win the nomination, then the presidency, and then promptly adopt Clinton's plan, since it is superior and he should be smart enough to realize that. I think he was very cautious with his proposal, as he has been on other issues, and now he's sort of stuck with it until he beats her. Moving to her plan before then would be interpreted as a sign of weakness.
But back to the generational thing- it's fascinating to watch this all unfold. Clinton represents the generation for whom the defining struggles of the day were racism and sexism. It's part of why Clinton is so fundamentally combative- she views the world, as I think many Boomers do, as a titanic struggle with itself over these issues. So, if you are someone who still sees the primary struggles with the world today being racism and sexism, you are far more likely to be drawn to her.
Obama represents the post-Boomer generations: mine, and the one after mine, which is at the beginning of its political life. I look around at all my friends who are married, and I see a lot more fathers helping out with childrearing/housework, mothers in management positions, etc. I think it is safe to say that from my generation onward, the idea that men and women are fundamentally equal is at the macro level a settled issue. The fight is over. Women won it.
Does that mean sexism is dead? No, of course not. Does that mean I think right now every father in America is doing 50% of the childrearing and housework? No, of course not. What I'm saying is, I can't find a single example of any married-with-kids couple of my generation that even comes close to the kind of split my mom and dad had. What I'm saying is, I can't think of anyone of my generation who really gives a two-penny damn whether their boss is male or female. I'll be the first to say we need more female politicians, more female CEO's, more female scientists, etc., but the conceptual debate is over. Now we're just trying to figure out how to engineer the reality.But that's a total change in society from top to bottom, and change at that scale simply takes time. There's no way around that fact.
For my generation onward, I also think the racism issue, at the macro level, is done. Minorities won it. In my generation, and especially in the next one, interracial dating is increasing, the number of children of mixed heritage is increasing, and again it's becoming harder to find people who really care that much what other people's race is.
Does that mean I think racism is dead? Hell, no. But the conceptual debate is over, and again, it's going to take time now to cycle the holdouts out of the system. There will always be some racists, and some sexists, just as there continue to exist today people who stubbornly insist that the world is flat. But the trend is positive, and I think it will pick up steam from this point on with each passing generation.
What it all means is, for people of my generation, and especially people of the next, they don't resonate with a lot of the Clinton pathos. They resonate a lot more with Obama, who speaks in a way that signals that he also sees those issues as settled. The issues that I think really resonate for people of my generation and the next are poverty and the environment, and to a lesser extent, how to fix healthcare, education, and social security, and how to exist in a rapidly globalizing world. Resolving those issues requires a change in focus from the defining issues of the Boomer generation, and also will require major changes in how we as Americans do things and think about things. And so the broad issue of change really resonates for these people, and they are overwhelmingly drawn to Obama.
I don't mean to imply that I think all Boomers go for Clinton, or that all people below a certain age go for Obama, but I think this framework explains why age is the single strongest predictor of Clinton/Obama preference (unless you are black). The fact that the Democratic campaign is so close suggests to me that we are near the tipping point, where the balance of power will start to shift away from Boomers and to the succeeding generations. I don't know if we're really there yet; Clinton may well win this one in the end. And if she does, I'll vote for her. Although she's not my preferred candidate, and I do think John McCain is a good man, and a true patriot, the differences between the two parties are too stark, and I will vote for Clinton without hesitation.
But another thing that worries me about Clinton is that her supporters, whether the ones that were with her from the beginning, or people like me, who will vote for her, however reluctantly, even she wins the nomination, are the same people who've voted for Democratic candidates in the last several elections. And we've seen what happens with that coalition. It loses. Or, depending on how you view the last couple of elections, it wins, but too narrowly to avoid losing anyway.
My worry is that Obama's supporters are heavily made up of people relatively new to political participation, either because of age, apathy, or both, and that a sizable number of these people are so invested in him personally that they will sit out the election rather than vote for Clinton. I think the number of Clinton supporters who will really sit out this election and potentially hand over yet another presidency to the Republicans is far lower. So to me, that's one more reason to root for Obama today. He is unlikely to win the PA primary, but if he can do better than the 54-46 prediction I'm publicly announcing here, then I think he will be tough for Clinton to beat in the endgame.
We owe the Boomer generation a great debt, for fighting it out amongst themselves and leading us to a place where I think we can make equality of race and sex overwhelmingly the cultural norm. So thank you Boomers, for a truly important contribution to our evolution as a society, and as a vision of true democracy. But now it's time to fight a whole new set of fights, and every 4 to 8 years we have to wait to really get started on those things is precious time lost. So let's elect Obama, and start making some progress. Can we do it?
Yes we can.
Saturday, April 19, 2008
You Gotta Have Pope...
Since (a) I'm writing a blog under the heading "The Doubting Thomas Chronicles", and (b) I'm a recovering Catholic, I can't resist using the occasion of the pope's visit to talk about the Catholic Church.
My relationship to the Catholic Church has roughly followed this arc:
0-6 yrs old: unaware of it. Overall view of the Church: N/A
7-13 yrs old: went along with it willingly without really understanding it. Overall view of the Church: naively positive
14-18 yrs old: actively rebelled against the idea of it, as I was going through an atheist phase that occurred largely as a result of attending a Jesuit all boys high school where religion was forced upon you and where I was something of a social misfit. Overall view of the Church: uniformly negative
19-26 yrs old: actively ignored it, as I was no longer atheist, but was convinced of the Church's utter irrelevance to the lives of actual people. Overall view of the Church: totally irrelevant
27-34 yrs old: attended church intermittently, typically going regularly for a few months at a time, and then not going for a few years at a time. This occasional need to attend church regularly, typically at times where I was experiencing great change in my life, I assured myself was due solely to the comfort provided by going back to a routine that had been drilled into me for years 0-18. Overall view of the Church: mixed, but on balance negative
35-present: attending church extremely intermittently. Overall view of the Church: decidedly mixed, but on balance closer to neutral.
Basically, my views on the Church have been very much in flux over much of my life, but they are, I think, starting to stabilize as I have entered what I presume to be the middle third of my life (this despite all the responses I got to the Why I Love Half Moon Bay post, which seemed to more or less uniformly predict that I would be dead soon, if not already).
Note that throughout this discussion I am referring to the Church as a social/political/religious institution; I am not talking about theological Catholicism. These 2 things, while related, are nevertheless distinct, but yet are often blurred in actual discussions. For the record, on a theological basis I'm a pretty lousy excuse for a Catholic, since I'm agnostic on most of the issues that are considered non-negotiable and skeptical to outright rejecting of the rest. Here are my positions on a few of the fundamentals, which should show you why I'm going to have a hard time achieving one of my longshot life goals: being pope myself.
Belief in one God: yes. For the record, it was physics which brought me back from the land of atheism. Does this mean I think Hindus, for example, have it all wrong? No. It's certainly possible to me that what Hindus define as many gods are simply different aspects of the same one God. Who knows? Answer: not me.
Existence of a historical Christ: yes. It seems unlikely to me that you could found a 2000 year old religion of the scope of Christianity on someone who never existed at all. On the other hand, Scientology is bogus crap and it's doing fine, so who knows? But still, I fall down on the "yes" side.
Divinity of Christ: Depends. Yes, but I also believe that all life carries within it some aspect of the divine. Do I believe that the historical Christ was any more divine than you, or me, or any other human that every lived, or will live? I dunno. But what I do know is that most of what I believe that Catholicism has to offer people does not depend on the answer to that question being "yes".
Immaculate Conception: Most likely baloney. For sure the most important stuff that Catholicism has to offer does not depend on the answer to that question being "yes".
Papal infallibility: total baloney. Period.
God as Trinity: agnostic. Again, I don't feel a particular need for the answer to this question to be "yes" to feel I can get something useful from Catholicism.
Resurrection of Christ: agnostic. See "God as Trinity" above.
Transubstantiation: in a physically literal sense- no. (And eww, BTW). In the sense of representing something being shared over 2000 years of history, sure.
So, as you can see (if you also went through many years of Catholic schooling), I'm guilty of multiple heresies worthy of sudden, instant, and immediate excommunication from the Church. Fortunately, Church authorities don't know I exist, so I haven't been kicked out of the club yet.
At several points above, I referenced what I think the Church has to offer. In fact, I have come around to the point where I think it actually serves a useful purpose (remember, I'm talking about the institution). Society is in a period of rapid evolution, partly as a result of rapid changes in our scientific knowledge of the world. As a result of this rapid evolution, we are being confronted by the need to consider a lot of important questions as human beings, which I'm not going to try and list here in this post, but are principally organized at the macro level around issues of whether/how much to control our environment and our biology.
I think that over the next 25-50 years, as the Boomer generation, which is the wealthiest and most self-obsessed generation in history, enters its twilight years, it will lead to a tremendous focusing of research dollars on developing new capabilities that will lead to even more questions about whether/how much to control our environment and our biology. But every time we develop a new capability that allows us to say "Yes we can!", there ought to be a reasoned discussion before we decide "Yes we should!"
And that to me is one of the sources of added value of the Church today- since its answer to the question "Should we?" for basically any new capability is pretty reflexively "no", it serves what I believe to be a useful function in articulating the arguments why not to do things. In the end, I think it's much more responsible and powerful to make a decision to do something after carefully considering a lot of reasoned, impassioned arguments not to do it than it is to simply plow forward all the time.
One example of this is embryonic stem cells. I fully support the idea of stem cell research. But when stem cells first started getting serious attention as a path toward significant advances in human health, the primary way of getting them was extracting them from viable human embryos. Now, I don't know when exactly "life" begins for a human, but I don't think that's the important issue. What's important is, a viable human embryo represents human potential, and any decision to sacrifice that embryo represents a conscious decision to be sacrificing human potential.
In the early stages, the embryos from which the stem cells were being extracted were embryos that were destined for destruction anyway, and given those parameters I didn't have a problem with stem cells being extracted from them. But without some attention devoted to the issue, it is easy to imagine quickly reaching a place where people would mass produce viable human embryos solely for eventual sale to research organizations needing their stem cells for research. In that case, we would be converting to a situation where we were mass producing human potential solely to destroy it. Even if it were done with the goal of improving human health, which is a fine goal in and of itself, I would not want to go down that road unless I were sure there were no other way to obtain the needed stem cells.
The Church, of course, came out strongly against the use of embryonic stem cells, as did many other religious and non-religious groups, and as a result we did not plow full steam ahead on that front. But over the last couple of years there have been a couple of possible advances on alternate sources of stem cells (e.g., amniotic fluid, bone marrow), that may make it possible to get the benefit of stem cells without mass producing embryos for destruction. And these avenues would not likely have been pursued, certainly not as vigorously, if we had plowed full steam ahead with embryonic stem cells.
In the end, after much research, it may be decided that really the only workable source of stem cells for human health research is embryos. If that is the case, then my opposition to their use will cease, although I will still be uncomfortable with the cost in human potential. But the delay while we look for alternate sources, whether that search is successful or not, definitely carries with it a cost in human potential- the delay causes some number of people who might otherwise have lived long enough to receive whatever benefits eventually accrue from stem cell research to instead die, or at least suffer longer, as a result. And that's what makes a decision like this difficult- no matter what you choose, there's a cost in human potential. The only thing in this sort of debate that really irritates me anymore is how each side typically tries to obscure the fact that there's a cost in human potential no matter what you choose.
Since I've adopted this kind of perspective, I've become a lot less irritated by the Church's stands on things like premarital sex, contraception, etc. I mean, I disagree with those positions entirely, but I respect the fact that the Church is struggling hard to provide some guidance in a world that really does seem to be in need of guidance. And that brings me to the second source of added value in the modern Church:
Let's suppose 2 hypothetical people. Person A is a 35 year old single male, sitting in his beach house in sweats blogging on a Saturday afternoon, whose total responsibilities for the day involve answering a few emails for work, and, possibly, though not necessarily, bathing. Person B is a thirtysomething mother of 2, with a husband, a house, and a job, and whose Saturday responsibilities are "numerous".
Both Persons A and B wish to be decent people. Person A's approach is to spend long amounts of time pondering exactly how to do that, carefully considering various points of view, reading a lot about issues, etc., in order to make each and every decision himself after careful consideration. Person B, much as she would like to follow an approach not unlike Person A's, simply doesn't have that kind of time. What she would like is a template. The Church can provide that; i.e., if you simply follow its recommendations and proscriptions on behavior, I think you will be a decent person. I don't think its recommendations and proscriptions are the only set of such that will lead you to being a decent person, but if you just don't have the time/energy to try and figure absolutely everything out for yourself, the Church can help with that.
Of course, I don't think the Church is the only place you can look for a template of behaviors that will lead you to being a decent person. Most of the world's established religions can provide that, including Islam, BTW, which I think as a religion suffers unfairly from the things that are done in its name. Christianity has a 622 year head start (assuming you start Islam from the hijra, or flight of Muhammad from Mecca to Medina) in committing terrible acts that are inconsistent with its own theology. Islam is in that place right now, at 1386 years old. In 1386 AD, Christianity was currently enmeshed in a schism caused by the simultaneous election of 2 popes, one in Rome and one in Avignon, popes generally exacted tribute from all the local nation-states, friars roamed the countrysides causing as much scandal as anything else, about 200 years of crusading had recently been completed, and the Church was selling indulgences like hotcakes.
My point here, to circle back to something I said earlier, is: don't confuse theological Islam with institutional Islam. I studied Islamic Law at Yale Law School, and after doing maybe 25% of the total required reading, I came to the conclusion that theological Islam is no more inconsistent or prone to abuse than is theological Christianity. But since it has no single voice, as the pope functions for the Catholic Church, institutional Islam is a lot more prone to abuse, and we are continuing to see the effects of that. So maybe, after all, having a pope, proclamations of infallibility or no, is a useful thing.
So, give him a little respect, even if it's grudging. He wants to be a force for good, and his voice adds value, even if you disagree, as I do, with 75% or more of what he says. And here's hoping I don't get excommunicated for this post; Islam and Judaism are too much work, Buddhism takes more concentration than I have, Hinduism is too different, non-Catholic Christianity is too similar, and Scientology is bogus. So if I get kicked out, I'll have to develop my own religion. And if I do, I'll be looking for converts.
Don't say you weren't warned...
My relationship to the Catholic Church has roughly followed this arc:
0-6 yrs old: unaware of it. Overall view of the Church: N/A
7-13 yrs old: went along with it willingly without really understanding it. Overall view of the Church: naively positive
14-18 yrs old: actively rebelled against the idea of it, as I was going through an atheist phase that occurred largely as a result of attending a Jesuit all boys high school where religion was forced upon you and where I was something of a social misfit. Overall view of the Church: uniformly negative
19-26 yrs old: actively ignored it, as I was no longer atheist, but was convinced of the Church's utter irrelevance to the lives of actual people. Overall view of the Church: totally irrelevant
27-34 yrs old: attended church intermittently, typically going regularly for a few months at a time, and then not going for a few years at a time. This occasional need to attend church regularly, typically at times where I was experiencing great change in my life, I assured myself was due solely to the comfort provided by going back to a routine that had been drilled into me for years 0-18. Overall view of the Church: mixed, but on balance negative
35-present: attending church extremely intermittently. Overall view of the Church: decidedly mixed, but on balance closer to neutral.
Basically, my views on the Church have been very much in flux over much of my life, but they are, I think, starting to stabilize as I have entered what I presume to be the middle third of my life (this despite all the responses I got to the Why I Love Half Moon Bay post, which seemed to more or less uniformly predict that I would be dead soon, if not already).
Note that throughout this discussion I am referring to the Church as a social/political/religious institution; I am not talking about theological Catholicism. These 2 things, while related, are nevertheless distinct, but yet are often blurred in actual discussions. For the record, on a theological basis I'm a pretty lousy excuse for a Catholic, since I'm agnostic on most of the issues that are considered non-negotiable and skeptical to outright rejecting of the rest. Here are my positions on a few of the fundamentals, which should show you why I'm going to have a hard time achieving one of my longshot life goals: being pope myself.
Belief in one God: yes. For the record, it was physics which brought me back from the land of atheism. Does this mean I think Hindus, for example, have it all wrong? No. It's certainly possible to me that what Hindus define as many gods are simply different aspects of the same one God. Who knows? Answer: not me.
Existence of a historical Christ: yes. It seems unlikely to me that you could found a 2000 year old religion of the scope of Christianity on someone who never existed at all. On the other hand, Scientology is bogus crap and it's doing fine, so who knows? But still, I fall down on the "yes" side.
Divinity of Christ: Depends. Yes, but I also believe that all life carries within it some aspect of the divine. Do I believe that the historical Christ was any more divine than you, or me, or any other human that every lived, or will live? I dunno. But what I do know is that most of what I believe that Catholicism has to offer people does not depend on the answer to that question being "yes".
Immaculate Conception: Most likely baloney. For sure the most important stuff that Catholicism has to offer does not depend on the answer to that question being "yes".
Papal infallibility: total baloney. Period.
God as Trinity: agnostic. Again, I don't feel a particular need for the answer to this question to be "yes" to feel I can get something useful from Catholicism.
Resurrection of Christ: agnostic. See "God as Trinity" above.
Transubstantiation: in a physically literal sense- no. (And eww, BTW). In the sense of representing something being shared over 2000 years of history, sure.
So, as you can see (if you also went through many years of Catholic schooling), I'm guilty of multiple heresies worthy of sudden, instant, and immediate excommunication from the Church. Fortunately, Church authorities don't know I exist, so I haven't been kicked out of the club yet.
At several points above, I referenced what I think the Church has to offer. In fact, I have come around to the point where I think it actually serves a useful purpose (remember, I'm talking about the institution). Society is in a period of rapid evolution, partly as a result of rapid changes in our scientific knowledge of the world. As a result of this rapid evolution, we are being confronted by the need to consider a lot of important questions as human beings, which I'm not going to try and list here in this post, but are principally organized at the macro level around issues of whether/how much to control our environment and our biology.
I think that over the next 25-50 years, as the Boomer generation, which is the wealthiest and most self-obsessed generation in history, enters its twilight years, it will lead to a tremendous focusing of research dollars on developing new capabilities that will lead to even more questions about whether/how much to control our environment and our biology. But every time we develop a new capability that allows us to say "Yes we can!", there ought to be a reasoned discussion before we decide "Yes we should!"
And that to me is one of the sources of added value of the Church today- since its answer to the question "Should we?" for basically any new capability is pretty reflexively "no", it serves what I believe to be a useful function in articulating the arguments why not to do things. In the end, I think it's much more responsible and powerful to make a decision to do something after carefully considering a lot of reasoned, impassioned arguments not to do it than it is to simply plow forward all the time.
One example of this is embryonic stem cells. I fully support the idea of stem cell research. But when stem cells first started getting serious attention as a path toward significant advances in human health, the primary way of getting them was extracting them from viable human embryos. Now, I don't know when exactly "life" begins for a human, but I don't think that's the important issue. What's important is, a viable human embryo represents human potential, and any decision to sacrifice that embryo represents a conscious decision to be sacrificing human potential.
In the early stages, the embryos from which the stem cells were being extracted were embryos that were destined for destruction anyway, and given those parameters I didn't have a problem with stem cells being extracted from them. But without some attention devoted to the issue, it is easy to imagine quickly reaching a place where people would mass produce viable human embryos solely for eventual sale to research organizations needing their stem cells for research. In that case, we would be converting to a situation where we were mass producing human potential solely to destroy it. Even if it were done with the goal of improving human health, which is a fine goal in and of itself, I would not want to go down that road unless I were sure there were no other way to obtain the needed stem cells.
The Church, of course, came out strongly against the use of embryonic stem cells, as did many other religious and non-religious groups, and as a result we did not plow full steam ahead on that front. But over the last couple of years there have been a couple of possible advances on alternate sources of stem cells (e.g., amniotic fluid, bone marrow), that may make it possible to get the benefit of stem cells without mass producing embryos for destruction. And these avenues would not likely have been pursued, certainly not as vigorously, if we had plowed full steam ahead with embryonic stem cells.
In the end, after much research, it may be decided that really the only workable source of stem cells for human health research is embryos. If that is the case, then my opposition to their use will cease, although I will still be uncomfortable with the cost in human potential. But the delay while we look for alternate sources, whether that search is successful or not, definitely carries with it a cost in human potential- the delay causes some number of people who might otherwise have lived long enough to receive whatever benefits eventually accrue from stem cell research to instead die, or at least suffer longer, as a result. And that's what makes a decision like this difficult- no matter what you choose, there's a cost in human potential. The only thing in this sort of debate that really irritates me anymore is how each side typically tries to obscure the fact that there's a cost in human potential no matter what you choose.
Since I've adopted this kind of perspective, I've become a lot less irritated by the Church's stands on things like premarital sex, contraception, etc. I mean, I disagree with those positions entirely, but I respect the fact that the Church is struggling hard to provide some guidance in a world that really does seem to be in need of guidance. And that brings me to the second source of added value in the modern Church:
Let's suppose 2 hypothetical people. Person A is a 35 year old single male, sitting in his beach house in sweats blogging on a Saturday afternoon, whose total responsibilities for the day involve answering a few emails for work, and, possibly, though not necessarily, bathing. Person B is a thirtysomething mother of 2, with a husband, a house, and a job, and whose Saturday responsibilities are "numerous".
Both Persons A and B wish to be decent people. Person A's approach is to spend long amounts of time pondering exactly how to do that, carefully considering various points of view, reading a lot about issues, etc., in order to make each and every decision himself after careful consideration. Person B, much as she would like to follow an approach not unlike Person A's, simply doesn't have that kind of time. What she would like is a template. The Church can provide that; i.e., if you simply follow its recommendations and proscriptions on behavior, I think you will be a decent person. I don't think its recommendations and proscriptions are the only set of such that will lead you to being a decent person, but if you just don't have the time/energy to try and figure absolutely everything out for yourself, the Church can help with that.
Of course, I don't think the Church is the only place you can look for a template of behaviors that will lead you to being a decent person. Most of the world's established religions can provide that, including Islam, BTW, which I think as a religion suffers unfairly from the things that are done in its name. Christianity has a 622 year head start (assuming you start Islam from the hijra, or flight of Muhammad from Mecca to Medina) in committing terrible acts that are inconsistent with its own theology. Islam is in that place right now, at 1386 years old. In 1386 AD, Christianity was currently enmeshed in a schism caused by the simultaneous election of 2 popes, one in Rome and one in Avignon, popes generally exacted tribute from all the local nation-states, friars roamed the countrysides causing as much scandal as anything else, about 200 years of crusading had recently been completed, and the Church was selling indulgences like hotcakes.
My point here, to circle back to something I said earlier, is: don't confuse theological Islam with institutional Islam. I studied Islamic Law at Yale Law School, and after doing maybe 25% of the total required reading, I came to the conclusion that theological Islam is no more inconsistent or prone to abuse than is theological Christianity. But since it has no single voice, as the pope functions for the Catholic Church, institutional Islam is a lot more prone to abuse, and we are continuing to see the effects of that. So maybe, after all, having a pope, proclamations of infallibility or no, is a useful thing.
So, give him a little respect, even if it's grudging. He wants to be a force for good, and his voice adds value, even if you disagree, as I do, with 75% or more of what he says. And here's hoping I don't get excommunicated for this post; Islam and Judaism are too much work, Buddhism takes more concentration than I have, Hinduism is too different, non-Catholic Christianity is too similar, and Scientology is bogus. So if I get kicked out, I'll have to develop my own religion. And if I do, I'll be looking for converts.
Don't say you weren't warned...
Wednesday, April 9, 2008
Why I Love Half Moon Bay
I am trying to establish a pattern of riding my bike on the beach 4-5 days a week. I want to take advantage of living here as much as I can...
Today I rode farther south than I've ever gone before. There's a paved bike/jogging path that parallels the beach, and I want to see how far it goes. The path is anywhere from 20-100 feet removed from the beach, and there are certain stretches where the beach is below; there are cliffs, and the sand is anywhere from 5-50 feet below the cliff's edge. Although the path is removed from the cliff's edge, in a lot of places there is a dirt strip that runs right along the very edge of the cliff, and so if you're careful, you can ride along that, which is a thrill.
Today, as I was riding back home, I saw someone pointing out to sea, and so I pulled onto the edge and looked out, and saw something partially breach the sea. "Hmm, I thought, is that a dolphin?" But the shape somehow didn't seem quite right. Then I thought perhaps it might be a sea lion. But then I saw a small fin, and so that ruled out a sea lion. Now that I could kinda see the body in the water, it seemed to be just lazing around, which is not my understanding of how sharks move.
And then I saw the big one. And it was really big.
"Holy shit!", I thought, "Whales!"
It was a mother and a calf, lazing around barely 50 yards offshore, right around where the waves that hit the shore first become visible. It was amazing. I must've watched them for half an hour. And all I could think was:
damn.
damn, damn, DAMN!
1) I don't have binoculars.
2) I don't have a camera. (Still haven't replaced the one that got drenched in the Mendocino Incident)
3) I was at a place where the cliff rises 30 feet or so above the sand, with the nearest convenient path down a solid half mile back the way I'd come.
4) I was alone.
If I had been with someone else, I'd have had them stay put on the cliff, then raced back at top speed to the place a half mile back where the horse trail goes down to the sand, left my bike, and ran back along the beach until I saw whoever was waiting (That's the only way I'd've found the right place). Then, I'd've shucked most of my clothes and gone into the ocean. The whales were almost certainly gray whales, which are not particularly belligerent, and they were close enough to shore to easily reach them.
I discovered a new goal today: before I leave here, I will swim with the whales.
Sweet mother of Jesus, I love this place.
Today I rode farther south than I've ever gone before. There's a paved bike/jogging path that parallels the beach, and I want to see how far it goes. The path is anywhere from 20-100 feet removed from the beach, and there are certain stretches where the beach is below; there are cliffs, and the sand is anywhere from 5-50 feet below the cliff's edge. Although the path is removed from the cliff's edge, in a lot of places there is a dirt strip that runs right along the very edge of the cliff, and so if you're careful, you can ride along that, which is a thrill.
Today, as I was riding back home, I saw someone pointing out to sea, and so I pulled onto the edge and looked out, and saw something partially breach the sea. "Hmm, I thought, is that a dolphin?" But the shape somehow didn't seem quite right. Then I thought perhaps it might be a sea lion. But then I saw a small fin, and so that ruled out a sea lion. Now that I could kinda see the body in the water, it seemed to be just lazing around, which is not my understanding of how sharks move.
And then I saw the big one. And it was really big.
"Holy shit!", I thought, "Whales!"
It was a mother and a calf, lazing around barely 50 yards offshore, right around where the waves that hit the shore first become visible. It was amazing. I must've watched them for half an hour. And all I could think was:
damn.
damn, damn, DAMN!
1) I don't have binoculars.
2) I don't have a camera. (Still haven't replaced the one that got drenched in the Mendocino Incident)
3) I was at a place where the cliff rises 30 feet or so above the sand, with the nearest convenient path down a solid half mile back the way I'd come.
4) I was alone.
If I had been with someone else, I'd have had them stay put on the cliff, then raced back at top speed to the place a half mile back where the horse trail goes down to the sand, left my bike, and ran back along the beach until I saw whoever was waiting (That's the only way I'd've found the right place). Then, I'd've shucked most of my clothes and gone into the ocean. The whales were almost certainly gray whales, which are not particularly belligerent, and they were close enough to shore to easily reach them.
I discovered a new goal today: before I leave here, I will swim with the whales.
Sweet mother of Jesus, I love this place.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)