Just to set the tone, I loved this book. I loved how epic it was. I loved that Hugo gives us a detailed description of absolutely everything, so I feel like I know this Paris of the 1800's and the people that inhabited it. I think that is my favorite aspect of his writing. A lot of people aren't fans of the long digressions into nonessential things like the history of Waterloo, but I think it paints a more complete picture, and it makes Hugo unique. The only thing I really didn't like about the writing was the repitition of "there are times when..." or some permutation thereof. Perhaps it wouldn't be as noticable in 400 pages or so (in fact I think that I didn't really get annoyed with it until after that page mark), but after 1200 it can drive you quite insane. It is similar to my annoyance with Tolstoy always describing Vronsky's strong, white teeth in "Anna Karenina." Seriously, after the twelve millionth time, it gets a bit old.
But all in all, my rating of the writing is two thumbs up.
On a non-related note, I think the title is quite misleading. This is really a happy, powerful book about the resiliency of the human soul and the ability of the individual to rise triumphant despite terrible extenuating circumstances. It is written about those in poverty, both spiritual and monetarily, and there is one obscure reference towards the poor I think as being called "les miserables" somewhere in the middle of the book. It seems to me, however, that what Hugo is trying to get across is that circumstantial poverty doesn't matter, and that even poor people, given that they have a moral compass, can know the extent of happiness. Valjean is the embodiment of Horatio Alger monetarily, yet he faces conflict within. So it seems to me that "les miserables" aren't necessarily those made miserable by society, but those made miserable by their own depravity, which isn't always imposed by society.
As for the characters... well some of them were really annoying to me. Perhaps the most annoying was Cosette, maybe because of the way Hugo wrote her. It is obvious that she isn't a feminist character, but it seems Hugo is almost over-emphasizing her "womanly" characteristics (where "womanly" at the time meant oblivious of important things, innocently capricious, and stupidly obedient). An example of this is the line that says something like "Cosette thought Marius had gone insane, and so she obeyed him." Seriously, that line is in the book, towards the end. Watch out for it. So as compared to other writers of the time, Hugo doesn't really create many empowered female characters. However, my favorite character in the book was arguably an empowered female. Eponine's character is best displayed when she dresses up as a boy. Throughout the book (when she's alive anyway), she remains the sole female character with the strong qualities of Hugo's male characters.
Moving on though, Marius really annoyed me because he was so stupidly in love. I think he is supposed to be kind of the hero (next to Valjean), but he never proves himself to me. I think Hugo's young hero is perhaps meant to be contrasted to Valjean though. A central theme of the book is the contrast between youth and old age, and the contrast between Marius and Valjean most vividly shows this. Marius is young, disillusioned, passionately in love and lust, obsessed with idealistic symbolism rather than realities, while Valjean has seen reality as harsh as it can get, and he is very street smart so to say, bearing not passionate, idealistic love, but just a realistic devotion towards others and Cosette.
While the revolutionary insurrection seems to be cast in a positive light by Hugo, I find it interesitng that Marius and his friends, who are all young and caught up in ideas rather than realities, are implicated in such a senseless struggle whereas Valjean, who is largely nonpolitical, is the character with the most concrete and realistic conflict. Other characters have conflict with surrounding events, whether it is politics or circumstances preventing love affairs, but Valjean's sole conflict is his own soul, and I think that Hugo uses Valjean to show that true wisdom comes not from the solvency of external clashes, but rather from the annealing of the opposition in the heart (or at least a peace with the opposition).
I got from the book that you can have whatever circumstances in your life that you want, or even the most confusing moral storm in your heart, as long as you find what you love in life and morally dedicate yourself to it, you can be happy.
I know this post is very unorganized so maybe I will fix it later, but for now this will have to do.
Summation: awesome book.
Friday, August 29, 2008
Tuesday, August 26, 2008
Idealism is a dying art
The self I am from two years ago, living in some other four-dimensional matrix of time and space, would read this post with disgust and sadness, but so be it, sometimes we change this way.
I have been thinking a lot about idealism versus realism, which is more functional in the world, which is futile in the end. I used to be so stubbornly an idealist that all of my notions of the world were these constructs like castles in clouds, no ladders to reach them. I wanted world peace, flawless communism, shared spirituality, ubiquitous compassion, environmental consciousness, individual enlightenment, synergistic society, moral entertainment, and the death of the corporation, hierarchical government, and hell. All of those things still sound quite nice to me, but honestly, in this day and age, does it seem realistic, or even remotely plausable, that we are on our way towards world peace, or flawless communism? No. Thus while perhaps the world needs its dreamers to come up with far-fetched ideas so people still have decency and hope, these kinds of dreams are futile and non-functional.
The other extreme, however, is equally detestable, which is the extreme of cynical resignation. So the world sucks, the government is corrupted, the environment is poluted, crime is still high, unemployment rampant, selfishness abounding, poverty common, stratification horrendous etc etc etc. Oh, well, that's the way things are now, and given the realities of the human spirit, honestly what more can we expect? NO. I hate that view. It's so limiting. I don't believe the human spirit can envision qualities it can never possess. Placing that bound on the human spirit only actualizes the bound itself. If you believe that a man does not have it in him to be fundamentally good, you become a man that doesn't have it in him to be fundamentally good.
So idealistic dreamers are useless, and cynical settlers are uselses. That leaves Aristotle's Golden Mean (which really is the most subjective concept ever, but I'll ignore that): people with a sound concept of reality, yet a sincere desire to improve that reality and a firm believe that improvement is possible.
So my opinion about social change has changed. Originally I thought we should always aim high, never make concessions. I viewed everything very deontologically. Now, I see that deontology and utilitarianism are not always harmonious on the real world, and that when they conflict in terms of social structure, it is necessary somtimes to choose utilitarianism, because what is the aim and function of a social structure but to benefit as many people ase possible, even if it isn't by taking a step towards the idyllic utopia?
For instance, the global economy today is largely governed by capitalism. The idealist response to this is to vehemently protest that capitalism by strapping yourself to Wallstreet or something and poof magically everyone suddenly realizes how great communism or at least a more distributed, socialistic wealth would be and immediately changes the system ingrained by thousand of years of practice and fundamental properties of the human nature perhaps endowed by survival of the fittest from the very first. I'm sure that scenario seems highly plausible to you. It is the action I would have advocated a few years ago, being a staunch believer that ever social action had to be consistent with these magical social ideals.
However, the practical yet hopeful response to capitalism is to work within the system and use the characteristics of capitalism to ameleorate social problems and build sustainable constructs that distribute wealth. Examples of this are microcredit and economic sanctions to prevent human rights abuses. As much as I disagree with the capitalistic nature of the global economy, I must admit that it's not going anywhere, but there are still a lot of features of the economy that provide loopholes for change. In a world that is so invested and dependent on this economy, there is always stick and carrot methods for creating change. And microcredit is a very creative way of using the monster that stripped so many of any hope of wealth to actually go back and create some wealth. It seems dirty, in a way. It surely isn't completely morally consistent with economic ideals. But it works.
See, this is my long-winded main point. You can apply this idea to any social structure or problem today. Idealism is necessary for ideas, but only approaches made within the system work. We can't overthrow the system of human nature, and we can't overthrow the system of human government or economy. But we can work within it to mold it. We can change the parameters of its container, and wait to watch it fill the new space. So maybe I have grown up and abandoned my innocent childlike ideas of change. In some ways I really have become the adult that I disliked back then. But this works. And we don't have a lot of time to fix things. There is not time for that perfect world.
I have been thinking a lot about idealism versus realism, which is more functional in the world, which is futile in the end. I used to be so stubbornly an idealist that all of my notions of the world were these constructs like castles in clouds, no ladders to reach them. I wanted world peace, flawless communism, shared spirituality, ubiquitous compassion, environmental consciousness, individual enlightenment, synergistic society, moral entertainment, and the death of the corporation, hierarchical government, and hell. All of those things still sound quite nice to me, but honestly, in this day and age, does it seem realistic, or even remotely plausable, that we are on our way towards world peace, or flawless communism? No. Thus while perhaps the world needs its dreamers to come up with far-fetched ideas so people still have decency and hope, these kinds of dreams are futile and non-functional.
The other extreme, however, is equally detestable, which is the extreme of cynical resignation. So the world sucks, the government is corrupted, the environment is poluted, crime is still high, unemployment rampant, selfishness abounding, poverty common, stratification horrendous etc etc etc. Oh, well, that's the way things are now, and given the realities of the human spirit, honestly what more can we expect? NO. I hate that view. It's so limiting. I don't believe the human spirit can envision qualities it can never possess. Placing that bound on the human spirit only actualizes the bound itself. If you believe that a man does not have it in him to be fundamentally good, you become a man that doesn't have it in him to be fundamentally good.
So idealistic dreamers are useless, and cynical settlers are uselses. That leaves Aristotle's Golden Mean (which really is the most subjective concept ever, but I'll ignore that): people with a sound concept of reality, yet a sincere desire to improve that reality and a firm believe that improvement is possible.
So my opinion about social change has changed. Originally I thought we should always aim high, never make concessions. I viewed everything very deontologically. Now, I see that deontology and utilitarianism are not always harmonious on the real world, and that when they conflict in terms of social structure, it is necessary somtimes to choose utilitarianism, because what is the aim and function of a social structure but to benefit as many people ase possible, even if it isn't by taking a step towards the idyllic utopia?
For instance, the global economy today is largely governed by capitalism. The idealist response to this is to vehemently protest that capitalism by strapping yourself to Wallstreet or something and poof magically everyone suddenly realizes how great communism or at least a more distributed, socialistic wealth would be and immediately changes the system ingrained by thousand of years of practice and fundamental properties of the human nature perhaps endowed by survival of the fittest from the very first. I'm sure that scenario seems highly plausible to you. It is the action I would have advocated a few years ago, being a staunch believer that ever social action had to be consistent with these magical social ideals.
However, the practical yet hopeful response to capitalism is to work within the system and use the characteristics of capitalism to ameleorate social problems and build sustainable constructs that distribute wealth. Examples of this are microcredit and economic sanctions to prevent human rights abuses. As much as I disagree with the capitalistic nature of the global economy, I must admit that it's not going anywhere, but there are still a lot of features of the economy that provide loopholes for change. In a world that is so invested and dependent on this economy, there is always stick and carrot methods for creating change. And microcredit is a very creative way of using the monster that stripped so many of any hope of wealth to actually go back and create some wealth. It seems dirty, in a way. It surely isn't completely morally consistent with economic ideals. But it works.
See, this is my long-winded main point. You can apply this idea to any social structure or problem today. Idealism is necessary for ideas, but only approaches made within the system work. We can't overthrow the system of human nature, and we can't overthrow the system of human government or economy. But we can work within it to mold it. We can change the parameters of its container, and wait to watch it fill the new space. So maybe I have grown up and abandoned my innocent childlike ideas of change. In some ways I really have become the adult that I disliked back then. But this works. And we don't have a lot of time to fix things. There is not time for that perfect world.
Thursday, August 21, 2008
environmentalism
I will confess that while I have always cared a great deal about humanitarianism, I really couldn't have cared less about environmentalism. I think this was because I didn't see the effects of ignoring it at all. My parents recycled and bought organic food, but I didn't really understand at all why it would make that much of a difference if I turned the heat up or left the lights on or threw away my plastic bottles.
I think that while you are in college, you are probably the most ecologically friendly you will ever be (for most people). My carbon/eco footprint is significantly lower than it was in high school. But I'm starting to care more. I have avoided organic food because it is so much more expensive, and money conservation is very important in college. Now I understand that there are more globally important things than conserving money, and buying more expensive things is sometimes not a bad thing, if they are better for the environment.
Actually, being in college has made me far less wasteful. There is something about being completely accountable for your own actions that makes you more aware of the effect those actions have on you and those around you. It was easy to waste food my parents bought with their money, much less easy to waste food I bought with my (really their) money. I am more aware of how senseless it is.
It's too bad that things are so stratified so that people in America are living as if there are eight worlds while people in Africa are living as if there's only an acre. It's also too bad that people that are trying to reverse that are getting labelled as crazy liberal hippie green folks. I can't decide if it is good or bad that being "green" is currently a fad for college age kids. It's probably a good thing, because then we have to at least pretend we know something about the environment if we want to be cool.
So while I didn't use to be that interested in environmentalism, I'm changing my mind. I'm realizing that the crazy liberal hippies are really the only sane people, because everyone else is behaving as if somehow the earth is going to be amazingly fertile forever and ever when really there is so much evidence that it is dying because of how we are treating it. Everyone else (me included) has their eyes shut to actualities, and relies perhaps too much on scientific progress coming up with solutions that allow our hurtling expansion to continue. I guess people are acting as if they can defy population dynamics. There is a human carrying capacity, and while endorsing this crazy, industrialized society has temporarily inflated it, it really can't last for long, and then what will happen? As the Black-Eyed-Peas say in what may be the best song every, "we've only got one world, one world, that's all we've got, one world, one world."
Why is it suddenly normal to behave as if we have an infinite number of worlds, and radical to observe reality? We in America have just maybe always been privileged with the ability to ignore things as they actually are. We live in this dreamworld, and as we dream, those that are aware of the problems are madly trying to build solutions so as not to awaken us from our dreams. But our dreams are getting so extravagent that the solutions being madly built are not big enough to sustain them, and soon everyone is going to have to wake up to the idea that they have been living this nice dream while parts of the world have been awake in a nightmare.
My parents don't believe in global warming. But really, honestly, even if you concede the global warming point (which I'll confess global warming is rather imminent), there are so many other things that will also destroy us that are really undeniable.
I'm sure a lot of parents were annoyed at having to endure a political message while watching "Happy Feet" and especially "Wall-E," but honestly, I think that if things don't change, the world will go the way that Wall-E went. Science and industry destroy us, and they are the only saviors we have. We destroy this world and wait patiently for the spaceship that will take us to the next.
So I think that now that I am realizing this, and caring a bit more, I will read some "green" books and see what I can do to quit contributing to this madness.
I think that while you are in college, you are probably the most ecologically friendly you will ever be (for most people). My carbon/eco footprint is significantly lower than it was in high school. But I'm starting to care more. I have avoided organic food because it is so much more expensive, and money conservation is very important in college. Now I understand that there are more globally important things than conserving money, and buying more expensive things is sometimes not a bad thing, if they are better for the environment.
Actually, being in college has made me far less wasteful. There is something about being completely accountable for your own actions that makes you more aware of the effect those actions have on you and those around you. It was easy to waste food my parents bought with their money, much less easy to waste food I bought with my (really their) money. I am more aware of how senseless it is.
It's too bad that things are so stratified so that people in America are living as if there are eight worlds while people in Africa are living as if there's only an acre. It's also too bad that people that are trying to reverse that are getting labelled as crazy liberal hippie green folks. I can't decide if it is good or bad that being "green" is currently a fad for college age kids. It's probably a good thing, because then we have to at least pretend we know something about the environment if we want to be cool.
So while I didn't use to be that interested in environmentalism, I'm changing my mind. I'm realizing that the crazy liberal hippies are really the only sane people, because everyone else is behaving as if somehow the earth is going to be amazingly fertile forever and ever when really there is so much evidence that it is dying because of how we are treating it. Everyone else (me included) has their eyes shut to actualities, and relies perhaps too much on scientific progress coming up with solutions that allow our hurtling expansion to continue. I guess people are acting as if they can defy population dynamics. There is a human carrying capacity, and while endorsing this crazy, industrialized society has temporarily inflated it, it really can't last for long, and then what will happen? As the Black-Eyed-Peas say in what may be the best song every, "we've only got one world, one world, that's all we've got, one world, one world."
Why is it suddenly normal to behave as if we have an infinite number of worlds, and radical to observe reality? We in America have just maybe always been privileged with the ability to ignore things as they actually are. We live in this dreamworld, and as we dream, those that are aware of the problems are madly trying to build solutions so as not to awaken us from our dreams. But our dreams are getting so extravagent that the solutions being madly built are not big enough to sustain them, and soon everyone is going to have to wake up to the idea that they have been living this nice dream while parts of the world have been awake in a nightmare.
My parents don't believe in global warming. But really, honestly, even if you concede the global warming point (which I'll confess global warming is rather imminent), there are so many other things that will also destroy us that are really undeniable.
I'm sure a lot of parents were annoyed at having to endure a political message while watching "Happy Feet" and especially "Wall-E," but honestly, I think that if things don't change, the world will go the way that Wall-E went. Science and industry destroy us, and they are the only saviors we have. We destroy this world and wait patiently for the spaceship that will take us to the next.
So I think that now that I am realizing this, and caring a bit more, I will read some "green" books and see what I can do to quit contributing to this madness.
Sunday, August 17, 2008
attempt at secularly analyzing gay marriage
This post will focus on analyzing this article, which is an article by the LDS church supporting ammendments in California and other states defining marriage as between a man and a woman. Because I believe the article makes an admirable attempt at being secular, and because my viewpoint, as confused as it is, has always been secular on this issue, I'm going to try to deconstruct this secularly without really talking about religion. That said, I am LDS, so this topic is confusing and close to heart for me, and my best friend is gay and hoping to marry and have children with her girlfriend, but struggling also with religious implications, so I have a very clear window into either side of the issue. For my religious conscious, I will pray about this article, but for my intellect and civil opinion, I will analyze it.
Okay. So my view before I read this article was that civil marriage between gay couples had no conflict with religion. I believed that the choice to allow gay marriage within its own walls and within its own members was wholly the choice of the church, but that the right to the civil definitions of marriage was wholly a legal, not a religious, right. I know that there is occasionally a bleeding between morality and legality, since it is safe to assume that a lot of laws are at least superficially based on moral codes (and I think that people can't really argue that that is at least partially true), and I know that even our forefathers like Jefferson who wrote the letter to the Danbury Baptist Church, a letter I have read, had a lot of overlap between state and religion going on (there is the argument that ceremonial deism, like having "in God we trust" on the currency, proves that we don't really have a separation of church in state; but I think that falls into the difference between religion and morality, because when currency was first designed, I think the belief in God was fairly universal, and the differentiation came in further details). But I believe that while today there is mostly a consensus on some fashion of universal morality, there is no consensus on the details that dictate religion, and the differentiations between religions in a country that is united by a single legal code make it obvious that overlapping religion and state (although not necessarily morality and state, because they really are different in our country at least) is a bad plan. And I think that churches for the most part know that, and I know the LDS church knows that So gay marriage was a prettty clearly legal issue to me before I read this article. Let the government recognize the civil marriage, and let the church define the religious marriage. It preserves the individual moralities unique to particular religions, and it also preserves the separation between church and state. However, reading the article has confused things a bit for me. Perhaps they are not as black and white as I was hoping.
So I'm just going to go through the major points of the article and try to de-jumble my thoughts. The article starts of pretty religiously by explaining the LDS church's opinion, but I believe it continues to try to argue a more logical rather than moral approach. The first interesting point that I think it brings up is child development's necessity for gender diferentiation in parents. They cite a few people, but I'm sure, given the debate going on today, that it would be equally easy to find experts arguing the other side as well, so I don't think the quotes really help the argument much. However, while I have thought about this point before, I confess I hadn't thought about it much since I viewed this issue as so strictly an issue of legal rights. Perhaps, though, it is useful to think about social implications, as this article does.
I think that obvious arguments against this are just individual differences between every person and every couple that makes some kind of rule of obvious gender roles in marriage pretty hazy. In some marriages, the father works, and it some the mother works, and in some the mother is the stoic less emotional one, and in some the mother is, and those kinds of immediate differences I think are available in people of the same sex too. However, I admit that there is a biological difference between men and women that is the general rule in most cases. There are some apparent personality differences that come from both the biological addition of the genes on that different chromosome, and in the societal climate of gender (which is slightly degenerating, but there are still some pretty clear gender divisions in society). So I concede that it's probably true that having parents of both chromosomes is necessary, if not biologically, at least in society today. A lot of that depends, though, on incomplete reserach and evidence of the balance between nurture and nature. So while any kind of evidence supporting this point in the article is incomplete, it is at least a valid possibility that the point is true.
Also, along the lines of social problems, I'm a very strong believer in a close family being integral to changing the dissintegration pattern of love in today's world. I think the best way to change the filth in the world is to strengthen the family. In a society that makes it difficult now, and will probably always make it difficult, considering people's strong opinions, for a family with two parents of the same sex to have all of the benefits of stability that the traditional family has, it makes sense to me that families based on this crumbling ground, through probably no fault of their own but more just the nature of people and society, may start out with more problems in familial stability. Not to say those can't be surmounted, but in a world in which we are quickly losing so much, it may not be fair to bring a child into that kind of tumultuous situation, all religious ideas concerning that set aside. It may not seem fair to deny people legal rights just based on the fact that they are discriminated against the way African Americans were once discriminated against, and the ability to raise children may seem like a basic human right, but I don't really have a strong opinion on that, and I'm just remarking about the need for familial stability in this day and age that may not come from that.
It also seemed like the article was not suggesting that any other legal rights be denied same-sex couples. I'm not sure of all of the extra rights that come with marriage as opposed to just being a couple, but it seems like this issue these days is a big more on the grounds of the rights of same-sex couples to the recognition that their relationship has the same value as a heterosexual relationship. And while the government can grant them that piece of paper, I don't think it will change any of the people that have always been against this's minds, and thus maybe there isn't that much of a difference between the already provided rights and that extra piece of paper.
The most interesting thing I thought the article said, though, was that legalizing same-sex marriage would actually detereorate separation of church and state rather than uphold it. I didn't really see that coming, and I find it intriguing. They talk about religious organizations like adoption agencies and schools being forced to adopt children into same-sex families or provide housing for same-sex couples, and I agree that this kind of legislation is just another way of the government stepping over that line between church and state. While not allowing gay marriage legally because of the moral opinion of churches seems a violation of church and state to me, this is a different issue. This is the issue of not allowing gay marriage not because of some unique moral opinion of churches (although that is obviously part of it for the LDS and many other churches), but rather because doing so would provide more of a deterioration of religious and legal freedom than not doing it. *That* to me, seems like the most valid secular argument this article, or any church, could make. I don't think it's right for the government to force religious organizations to follow the legal definition of marriage, and doing so violates my very reason for believing that gay marriage should be allowed in the first place (ie that it is entirely a legal and not a religious matter). So I really think that this is the most valid point this article makes, and it is an argument that has no plea to the moral opinions of the LDS church, just to the rights of any church to practice freely, and it makes me understand more, whereas I didn't before, why my church, a church that believes in separation of church and state, is opposing a seemingly solely legal ruling.
I am not quite as convinced by the argument in this article about changing school curriculum. That doesn't seem to be an infringement on the right of religion at all. Let schools teach that homosexual marriages deserve all of the same respect as heterosexual marriages. That doesn't seem to be any different from what the article was earlier advocating in the form of tolerance. That doesn't mean that parents can't teach their children that it's morally wrong. School teaches kids that it's legally perfectly fine to smoke when you are eighteen (even if it may be stupid) and drink alcohol when you are 21, and drink caffeine like coffee or tea throughout. The school teaches that it's legal to have sex when you are in high school, that it's okay, just as long as you use contraception. It would be wrong for the school to teach any differently, because then they would be teaching a moral opinion instead of a legal fact. So while the LDS parents can teach their kids not to drink alcohol or caffeine or smoke or have premarital sex ever, it's not an infringement or wrong at all for the school to teach that these things are legally permissable. It wouldn't really be any different in schools taught that same-sex marriage was legally permissable. So this argument doesn't really convince me at all.
Ok, so that's my secular opinion of this article. As I am caught between a lot of confusing ideas, I don't really have a moral opinion at the moment, but I can at least assess the arguments the church makes that are clearly logical rather than spiritual arguments, since my logic concerning this issue can't really get confused the way my spiritual opinion can, fortunately (I guess). So I couldn't tell you what my moral opinion of this article, this is my secular opinion.
Honestly, every time I see the agony my best friend is going through (she was raised Baptist, raised to believe it's wrong to be gay, and her family is still very much of that opinion), I just thank God that I'm not gay, or that I don't think I'm gay (whichever it is), becuase I have no idea how I would deal with that.
Okay. So my view before I read this article was that civil marriage between gay couples had no conflict with religion. I believed that the choice to allow gay marriage within its own walls and within its own members was wholly the choice of the church, but that the right to the civil definitions of marriage was wholly a legal, not a religious, right. I know that there is occasionally a bleeding between morality and legality, since it is safe to assume that a lot of laws are at least superficially based on moral codes (and I think that people can't really argue that that is at least partially true), and I know that even our forefathers like Jefferson who wrote the letter to the Danbury Baptist Church, a letter I have read, had a lot of overlap between state and religion going on (there is the argument that ceremonial deism, like having "in God we trust" on the currency, proves that we don't really have a separation of church in state; but I think that falls into the difference between religion and morality, because when currency was first designed, I think the belief in God was fairly universal, and the differentiation came in further details). But I believe that while today there is mostly a consensus on some fashion of universal morality, there is no consensus on the details that dictate religion, and the differentiations between religions in a country that is united by a single legal code make it obvious that overlapping religion and state (although not necessarily morality and state, because they really are different in our country at least) is a bad plan. And I think that churches for the most part know that, and I know the LDS church knows that So gay marriage was a prettty clearly legal issue to me before I read this article. Let the government recognize the civil marriage, and let the church define the religious marriage. It preserves the individual moralities unique to particular religions, and it also preserves the separation between church and state. However, reading the article has confused things a bit for me. Perhaps they are not as black and white as I was hoping.
So I'm just going to go through the major points of the article and try to de-jumble my thoughts. The article starts of pretty religiously by explaining the LDS church's opinion, but I believe it continues to try to argue a more logical rather than moral approach. The first interesting point that I think it brings up is child development's necessity for gender diferentiation in parents. They cite a few people, but I'm sure, given the debate going on today, that it would be equally easy to find experts arguing the other side as well, so I don't think the quotes really help the argument much. However, while I have thought about this point before, I confess I hadn't thought about it much since I viewed this issue as so strictly an issue of legal rights. Perhaps, though, it is useful to think about social implications, as this article does.
I think that obvious arguments against this are just individual differences between every person and every couple that makes some kind of rule of obvious gender roles in marriage pretty hazy. In some marriages, the father works, and it some the mother works, and in some the mother is the stoic less emotional one, and in some the mother is, and those kinds of immediate differences I think are available in people of the same sex too. However, I admit that there is a biological difference between men and women that is the general rule in most cases. There are some apparent personality differences that come from both the biological addition of the genes on that different chromosome, and in the societal climate of gender (which is slightly degenerating, but there are still some pretty clear gender divisions in society). So I concede that it's probably true that having parents of both chromosomes is necessary, if not biologically, at least in society today. A lot of that depends, though, on incomplete reserach and evidence of the balance between nurture and nature. So while any kind of evidence supporting this point in the article is incomplete, it is at least a valid possibility that the point is true.
Also, along the lines of social problems, I'm a very strong believer in a close family being integral to changing the dissintegration pattern of love in today's world. I think the best way to change the filth in the world is to strengthen the family. In a society that makes it difficult now, and will probably always make it difficult, considering people's strong opinions, for a family with two parents of the same sex to have all of the benefits of stability that the traditional family has, it makes sense to me that families based on this crumbling ground, through probably no fault of their own but more just the nature of people and society, may start out with more problems in familial stability. Not to say those can't be surmounted, but in a world in which we are quickly losing so much, it may not be fair to bring a child into that kind of tumultuous situation, all religious ideas concerning that set aside. It may not seem fair to deny people legal rights just based on the fact that they are discriminated against the way African Americans were once discriminated against, and the ability to raise children may seem like a basic human right, but I don't really have a strong opinion on that, and I'm just remarking about the need for familial stability in this day and age that may not come from that.
It also seemed like the article was not suggesting that any other legal rights be denied same-sex couples. I'm not sure of all of the extra rights that come with marriage as opposed to just being a couple, but it seems like this issue these days is a big more on the grounds of the rights of same-sex couples to the recognition that their relationship has the same value as a heterosexual relationship. And while the government can grant them that piece of paper, I don't think it will change any of the people that have always been against this's minds, and thus maybe there isn't that much of a difference between the already provided rights and that extra piece of paper.
The most interesting thing I thought the article said, though, was that legalizing same-sex marriage would actually detereorate separation of church and state rather than uphold it. I didn't really see that coming, and I find it intriguing. They talk about religious organizations like adoption agencies and schools being forced to adopt children into same-sex families or provide housing for same-sex couples, and I agree that this kind of legislation is just another way of the government stepping over that line between church and state. While not allowing gay marriage legally because of the moral opinion of churches seems a violation of church and state to me, this is a different issue. This is the issue of not allowing gay marriage not because of some unique moral opinion of churches (although that is obviously part of it for the LDS and many other churches), but rather because doing so would provide more of a deterioration of religious and legal freedom than not doing it. *That* to me, seems like the most valid secular argument this article, or any church, could make. I don't think it's right for the government to force religious organizations to follow the legal definition of marriage, and doing so violates my very reason for believing that gay marriage should be allowed in the first place (ie that it is entirely a legal and not a religious matter). So I really think that this is the most valid point this article makes, and it is an argument that has no plea to the moral opinions of the LDS church, just to the rights of any church to practice freely, and it makes me understand more, whereas I didn't before, why my church, a church that believes in separation of church and state, is opposing a seemingly solely legal ruling.
I am not quite as convinced by the argument in this article about changing school curriculum. That doesn't seem to be an infringement on the right of religion at all. Let schools teach that homosexual marriages deserve all of the same respect as heterosexual marriages. That doesn't seem to be any different from what the article was earlier advocating in the form of tolerance. That doesn't mean that parents can't teach their children that it's morally wrong. School teaches kids that it's legally perfectly fine to smoke when you are eighteen (even if it may be stupid) and drink alcohol when you are 21, and drink caffeine like coffee or tea throughout. The school teaches that it's legal to have sex when you are in high school, that it's okay, just as long as you use contraception. It would be wrong for the school to teach any differently, because then they would be teaching a moral opinion instead of a legal fact. So while the LDS parents can teach their kids not to drink alcohol or caffeine or smoke or have premarital sex ever, it's not an infringement or wrong at all for the school to teach that these things are legally permissable. It wouldn't really be any different in schools taught that same-sex marriage was legally permissable. So this argument doesn't really convince me at all.
Ok, so that's my secular opinion of this article. As I am caught between a lot of confusing ideas, I don't really have a moral opinion at the moment, but I can at least assess the arguments the church makes that are clearly logical rather than spiritual arguments, since my logic concerning this issue can't really get confused the way my spiritual opinion can, fortunately (I guess). So I couldn't tell you what my moral opinion of this article, this is my secular opinion.
Honestly, every time I see the agony my best friend is going through (she was raised Baptist, raised to believe it's wrong to be gay, and her family is still very much of that opinion), I just thank God that I'm not gay, or that I don't think I'm gay (whichever it is), becuase I have no idea how I would deal with that.
Saturday, August 16, 2008
Purpose of a blog
I have tried to believe that a blog can be a personal thing thrown anonymously in the midst of an impersonal world. I am learning slowly, though, that the personal bits of my life are something worth protecting, both for my sake and the sake of others. I have been turning more to impersonal blogs just as recepticals to dump the mental garbage I get. There is no use for a journal in a connected world. What really is the purpose of a neuron in a net? It can't do much on its own. It is defined by social function.
So unless I make a mistake and let something slip, this is the only personally detailed information you'll get from me: I am a college student majoring in philosophy and neuroscience. Anything else you learn will just be the odd internal projections of my confused semantic net. Ultimately, that's probably the best way to know somebody anyhow, not by their friends or classes or towns. So I guess I'll try to convert myself to this new idea of blogging.
So unless I make a mistake and let something slip, this is the only personally detailed information you'll get from me: I am a college student majoring in philosophy and neuroscience. Anything else you learn will just be the odd internal projections of my confused semantic net. Ultimately, that's probably the best way to know somebody anyhow, not by their friends or classes or towns. So I guess I'll try to convert myself to this new idea of blogging.
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