Tell a Story

This month, December, observe the world around you a little more pointedly than you have in November. When the time is right, tell a us a story about the most peculiar thing that happened to you or around you.

No One Is an Atheist on Their Deathbed (Right?)

Mark Edmundson writes this in his article about Sigmund Freud's later years in Sunday's New York Times Magazine:

"The ability to believe in an internal, invisible God vastly improves people's capacity for abstraction. [Sigmund Freud writes in "Moses and Monotheism"] 'The prohibition against making an image of God--the compulsion to worship a God whom one cannot see,' he says, meant that in Judaism 'a sensory perception was given second place to what may be called an abstract idea--a triumph of intellectuality over sensuality.' If people can worship what is not there they can also reflect on what is 'not there, or on what is presented to them in symbolic and not immediate terms. So the mental labor of monotheism prepared the Jews--as it would eventually prepare others in the West--to achieve distinction in law, in mathematics, in science and in literary art.' It gave them an advantage in all activities that involved making an abstract model of experience, in words or numbers or lines, and working with the abstraction to achieve control over nature or to bring humane order to life. Freud calls this internalizing process an 'advance in intellectuality' and he credits it directly to religion."

In the words of Linda Richman, discuss.

Liberty for All

It's fairly likely that you recently participated in Fourth of July celebrations. It is also likely that there were fireworks, patriotic music and ice cream. If you attended one of the bigger ones, you may have been treated to fighter jets zooming more closely overhead than you were comfortable with and making all the babies cry.

We take pride in being American, some of us do anyway. Being American is about independence, personal liberty, international power. For some, it's about being white and speaking English. That's why we want to build a wall to keep the Mexicans out, and insist upon passports in the hands of every Canadian at the border to the North (they are a bit more civilized than the Mexicans, after all; and might find a wall insulting). Whether the literal and/or figurative walls actually get built, there is no denying that Americans exhibit an overwhelming sentiment against letting large groups of outsiders in easily.

[Here's an interesting immigration antecdote. Stories like this one suggest rather strongly that immigration policy is in need of reform.]

With this in mind, here are some questions for consideration:

• Should the US adopt a policy of amnesty for current illegal immigrants?
• Should the US be responsible for opening her doors to particular oppressed groups (i.e. Iraqis)?
• What other policies might help fix the immigration problem (trade, labor, etc.)?
• Is the government responsible for making the citizenship/immigration process accessible/comprehensible/reasonably efficient?
  

Plus Minus

I love a website called Edge. Every year, the editors pose a question to a number of leading scientists and philosophers. This year's question is "What are you optimistic about? Why?" Some of the answers are quite intriguing, and they inspired me to ask all of you the same. The answers on Edge lean toward the scientific, but obviously we will have a much different take on the question. Specifically, I'd like to ask you what you are optimistic about with regard to your personal life.

Shortly after I read the Edge answers, I came across a great article on the power of negative thinking. In it, John Gravois argues that blindly reciting Oprah-esque mantras to oneself is dangerous, and that some forms of negative thinking, such as envisioning horrible (but plausible) events to plan a reaction, actually help people retain more control over their own lives. For example, imagining what actions you might take if that mean dog across the street were to break from his leash is probably going to help you a lot more than thinking to yourself "I'm good enough, I'm strong enough, and doggonit, people like me." What are some of the negative thinking exercises you regularly engage in that you believe help you in your daily life, or that you think might help you in a future scenario?

I'm interested to see your answers to these questions, because I've been intrigued by thought experiments lately. The gist of my question is this: how does your negative or positive thinking affect your daily life? What sorts of positive or negative thought experiments do you execute on a regular basis?

Corporate Globalization

From Wal-Mart to Microsoft to McDonald's, the trend of corporate globalization has been exploding. There are good and bad side effects from these trends. I feel the negative side effects outweigh the positive side effects, but I am interested in seeing a legitimate argument for or against corporate globalization. Is it immoral, unethical, or wrong in any other way? Or is it just bad for the consumers, but otherwise permissible? Is it just "good business"?

I suspect a majority of the readers will find corporate globalization to be negative in some respects, and if so, what can or should an individual do?

Soul and Meat Handbook

1. This blog is intended as a forum in which all of us can share ideas, write essays, and ask thought-provoking questions. Please refrain from dominating any discussion--try to treat each post as a conversation, not a lecture. This blog is not a one-person soapbox.

2. We reserve the right to vote people off, once it gets out from this "core" group of people (forrest, indubitably, LL, mia, sammee, Sweet Jane, thecrazydreamer and whatyoudream). We also reserve the right to delete posts and comments, without asking the post-er, if there is a consensus by a few of us to do so.

3. Our contributors should write a short essay/post introducing a topic. In this essay, they can take the approach of asserting something or simply inquiring about something. After explaining what their thoughts are, they should indicate what they would like the conversation to encompass, as well as specific things they don't want to include in that topic. For instance, if I were to make a topic about abortion, I might decide to limit the topic of whether a fetus should be considered a human as well as the morality of abortion, but I might restrict the topic by saying I'm not interested in discussing the politics or legality of abortion.

4. When posting an essay or a question, please try to do so only after the previous post has been addressed by those interested in the discussion. Allow about a week for the discussion to die out before creating a new post, so that someone's post doesn't get buried too soon.

5. Take turns posting. If you have an idea that just can't wait, save it as a draft instead of posting. Then we can have a moderator publish the drafts on a regular schedule, so that we always have a queue of topics.

6. We reserve the right to moderate comments so that they are relevant to the topic and productive.

7. When posting a topic, please utilize the label option, so we can organize thoughts. Use whatever general or specific labels you think are appropriate.

8. Until we come up with a different procedure, one person will start a post, and the rest of us will continue the discussion in the comments section for that post. If you feel your response merits a full-on essay, start a new post, but try to wait at least a few days so that the original post isn't buried.

9. Try to comment under the relevant post. In other words, don't comment about a post from June under a topic written in August; if you would like to re-start discussion on a topic, consider writing a new post, phrased in a different way. (If you're anything like Sweet Jane, you'll obsessively check archived posts for new comments anyway, so don't worry about your thoughts getting lost.)


Our guidelines will necessarily evolve with the blog. When we change a rule (after a consensus builds in the comments on this post), we will add it to the bottom, or edit an existing rule by striking through the original, Constitution-style. Please read the new comments for this post every once in a while so that we can make the necessary changes as a group.

You Are Not Forgiven

What the hell is forgiveness? My mom and I were listening to NPR (shamefully, that's code for watching Oprah), and there were guests on the show who were good examples of forgiveness in action: a woman who was shot in the head for pretty much no reason, rendering her unable to think, speak or walk like the normal person she was previously; and a survivor of the London Underground terrorist attacks who'd had both her legs amputated. Both women said they forgave their attackers.

Bullshit.

I'll say it right now: I don't believe in forgiveness. There is no such thing. Dictionary definitions of forgiveness tend to be unhelpful: "to grant pardon for or remission of; to absolve." The idea behind these definitions is: "It is okay. Whatever you did, it's okay." But short of changing your moral system, there is absolutely no way for that to be true. Either what someone did was wrong or it was not (putting aside for a moment the very real gray areas of morality and ethics). Forgiving someone cannot entail being okay with what they've done. If such a thing exists, it exists in the following sentiment: What you did was wrong, but in order to be a happy person, I have to move past my resentment towards you.

Even Christians can't get around this one: either the God-given moral laws are true or they are not, and there is no way in which even God could say of some evil you commit, It's okay. They do try to get around this by moving into the other definition of forgiveness, that of forgiving debts. Accordingly, because I halfway agree with that notion, here is the other way in which forgiveness exists: What you did was wrong, but I'm not going to kill you or maim you because that really wouldn't make me feel any better and it's probably wrong anyway, so I'm letting you off the hook.

What the hell is forgiveness? Can you guys make sense of this word? I sure can't, and I'm okay with that. Who am I to absolve someone of their deeds?

Site Updates and Introductions

First, I've made several updates to the sidebar on the site. Please give me some feedback on it. Ideally I'll continue to tweak the design on this site because right now its a little too generic for my taste. If you have any design ideas, please let me know.

Second, introductions are in order. If you feel like it, I would encourage everyone to write at least a brief message introducing himself/herself. If it's short, just throw it in the comments of this thread, and if it's long, put it on your own blog, and then put a link to it in the comments of this thread.

Finally, if you haven't offered input yet into the organization of this blog, be sure to read through the previous post and comments and throw your thoughts into the mix. The more input we get, the better we can make this. Thanks.

This is it!

Whether you imagine an anime character with motion lines coming down from his body, one leg in the air, one fist raised in triumph, eyes closed, mouth open; or an 80's hair band member in the same pose: this is it!

While I hate the silly word "wampeter" that Vonnegut made up to describe a thing around which people come together - usually more randomly than they have done so for the purposes of this blog - it's pretty accurate to describe this coming together of minds I (generally) respect. Okay, always.

So welcome to Soul and Meat, which as you might have seen comes from the following dialogue in Vonnegut's Bluebeard:

"I can't help it," I said. "My soul knows my meat is doing bad things, and is embarrassed. But my meat just keeps right on doing bad, dumb things."
"You and your what?" he said.
"My soul and my meat," I said.
"They're separate?" he said.
"I sure hope they are," I said. I laughed. "I would hate to be
responsible for what my meat does."

So our first order of business should be to establish some guidelines. First, organizationally, it seems best if we comment on new posts until we're done with a topic, and only then will someone make a new post with a new topic. This should prevent interesting comments from being buried. Other thoughts?