An argument is an injury.
As much as a sore muscle, an argument is a training for strength.
An argument can also destroy you–or you can betray your intellect by clinging to a sinking one.
Attachment is bad with arguments.
You are not an argument, and if you find the notion that you are one persuasive, perhaps the inevitable fate that awaits you is well earned.
Perhaps that is what is meant by karma.
Sometimes it is best for all concerned that an argument is abandoned–which is better than one being abused. Many would–and have, and are, and no doubt will–contend this in the case of Christianity. So warped and distorted by the mad priests and broadcasters is Jesus’ simple and humble message that it might be better scrapped and recycled into something po-mo, or maybe New Age. Put back out to pasture and allowed to stew in the rich broth of history, maybe it stands a better chance, upon rediscovery, of being taught as radical social policy and not made to wear the martial colors of political aggression. My money isn’t on it.
History is littered with cast-off theories, with crackpotism later proved true, with notions tossed out with the bathwater of broken cultures and old-boss regimes. An anthropologist might discover one just as the last believer dies and realize it is the answer to our prayers, or it is the last unheeded warning for our own doomed state. What we failed to learn from the Maya can hurt us now, and they press their case in bare stone and shattered pots.
But that’s the point: an argument has got to have an audience, and we have largely quit that job. We don’t want an argument; we want assurance that we’re ok–that or a fight. What a better blood-sport than politics? What a better buzz than patriotism? What a better forum than TV?
Like all team loyalties, though, we’ll ride these into the ground. We’ll indoctrinate our children. We’ll honestly start to think that our team is the best team for no other reason than it’s ours.
It may make for heartwarming convention coverage and a hell of a balloon drop, but it’s hardly an argument.
we’d rather not admit to, but we all know are so.
by Special Correspondent T.S. DeHaviland
1. Elvis is dead.
He’s not coming back. The world that gave rise to him is not coming back. And we wouldn’t really like it if it did.
2. The Democratic the Republican parties, the President and his cabinet, most of the Congress, don’t care all that much about us. They care about power. That is why they are politicians
3. CEOs of major corporations do not have our best interests in mind. They do not have their shareholders’ best interests in mind. They do not have their companies’ best interests in mind. They have their own best interests in mind, and they’re not afraid to screw you and each other and everybody else to get what they want.
4. Michael Jackson is probably a pedophile.
And O.J. Simpson is most likely a murderer.
5. Everybody is interested in sex in some way. It’s the packaging that we argue about. We might not even be interested in being involved in it personally, but we’re fascinated nonetheless. We might very well feel guilty and speak out against it. But we wouldn’t speak at all if we didn’t care one way or the other about it.
6. Women make less than men because the people in charge are sexist. All too often these people are women themselves. However, the only way to change this is for more women to be in charge.
7. Most Americans don’t really care about what happens in Africa. That apathy is largely due to skin color. Should we feel guilty about this? Absolutely. But we should not use our guilt as an excuse to not actually do something about it.
8. Image, for most people, is more important than health. You don’t start smoking because it tastes good nor to get a nicotine buzz. You start smoking because it’s cool.
9. Everyone who has at least some level of success has had help of some kind along the way. Everyone. “Pulling yourself up by your bootstraps” is not only contrary to the laws of physics, it’s arrogant bullshit.
10. Despite all this, most people are pretty decent. At least when you’re dealing with them on a personal level. Or at least they genuinely want to be. Even Osama bin Laden really thinks he’s doing the right thing. George W. Bush does too. This is also why both these assholes are so disturbingly dangerous.
Inspired by, but only tangentially related to, a post by drownedinink, here are some thoughts on the role and power of the institutions we support and create.
1. The originating purpose of every institution is to serve society in some way.
Governments, churches, schools, are all developed to deal with some perceived need. That need may or may not be shared by all members of society, and institutions sometimes work at cross-purposes depending on their originating purpose. Sometimes, as in the case of divided government, that is a good thing.
2. Institutions become dangerous when they shift from serving their originating purpose to existing for their own sake. This process is nearly inevitable as the originating need is met or if the power over the institution is turned over to those other than the ones who created it or as the institution becomes recalcitrant (see below).
This danger is lessened if the institution still more-or-less meets its originating purpose, or if it is benign. If a church, for instance, still meets the spiritual needs of a preponderance of its adherents, even if it mainly exists for its own sake, it will probably be tolerated. If an academic institution still educates, even if it mainly exists to maintain its own momentum, chances are it will not be shut
down.
But when an institution fails to address or addresses inadequately its originating purpose, or when the need for it no longer exists, it may become a danger to those who would dissolve it, or it may simply leech a society dry. The Christian church prior to the Reformation, for instance, began to exist for its own sake and therefore began to seek greater and greater power and influence. It
accomplished this through taxes, tithes, and indulgences, through excommunications, executions, and wars. Needless to say, this did not go over well with the princes and peasants who found themselves caught in the middle.
3. Part of an institution’s move to exist for its own sake is recalcitrance brought on by the vested interests of those within it. Institutions are not independent beings able make their own decisions (not even the market, contrary to what many economists maintain). Rather, those within them make decisions to uphold or increase the power of their institutions in order to maintain their own
roles within them. Clearly, a pastor, politician, or professor will defend her institution because it upon those institutions that she relies for her livelihood. But it also guarantees that the institutions to which people belong will move toward being unresponsive to their originating purpose and will move toward existing for their own sake.
4. The aggression of an institution is often a mark either of its own irrelevancy or the perceived need of those within it for unity. When those within an institution begin to feel that the institution no longer fulfills its mission, it often becomes evangelical or begins to eat up other institutions. Big business in America has sought to either diversify or refocus in response to its market relevancy. But its social relevancy has long ceased, as it is more than able to provide for the needs
and desires of most people. It is so irrelevant to social needs, in fact, that it has created mass marketing in order to create desire for its products.
As its originating purpose recedes into the social distance, big business seeks not just emotional power by creating desire, but also political power in order to maintain its existence even as it threatens the livelihoods of the consumers upon which it relies, demanding that it be granted rights and that it receive subsidies, tax breaks, and protection from offshore competition.
Fundamentalist religion seeks constant growth in membership largely because it has lost its ability to meet the spiritual needs of Modernity. Contemporary megachurches appeal to parishioners through building community through self-help classes, coffee shops, and gyms, not through genuine spiritual attention, and certainly not through almsgiving and assisting the poor and imprisoned. Fundamentalist religion’s metastasis is much more a function of its vast irrelevance than of its actual spiritual appeal.
Wars are as often a result of internal politics as they are of external pressures. Political institutions, failing at home to meet the basic needs of the people, take to war to reinforce (or re-create) their need to exist. Arguably, the most recent war in Iraq was waged more to consolidate the fading Republican Revolution of 1994 than it was to oust Saddam Hussein. The Third Reich was based almost entirely on the principle of a failing or irrelevant government creating the need
for itself through wars of expansion.
Since institutions are necessary in order for complex societies to exist, we should perhaps consider most highly when creating institutions not how best those institutions should function, but under what circumstances they should be dissolved.