I recall, from the hallucinatory mists of childhood, much public advice to “worship every week at the church or synagogue of your choice.” Memory says there were televised PSAs. It was certainly common political and social “wisdom,” often spoken.
Even then, even as a kid, I didn’t get it. I could not grasp this notion that everybody should simply believe in something — no matter what — and trot off obediently every week to confirm that belief — no matter what.
This is nothing against religion. Nothing against churchgoing, for those so inclined. This is nothing against sincere belief in Higher Truth. What I didn’t get was the concept that absolutely indiscriminate worship of something was a good thing. In itself. Regardless of the nature of the belief.
I mean, really. Joining Jim Jones’ People’s Temple, as a social good? You should go worship with the Thuggees, because it’s better than worshipping nothing? Would Discordianism have pleased the makers of those PSAs, as long as the Discordians met politely once a week?
Well, no. Those urging the conformity of worship wouldn’t have approved of the Discordians, but some of them actually did approve of the deadly People’s Temple.
—–
These days, messages to worship weekly come from pulpits, where they belong. Not so much from public figures or the media. What we hear instead is another incessant drumbeat of conformity: vote, vote, vote, vote, vote. These days, everybody’s an expert on how to keep “democracy” alive. In the hallucinatory mists of today, there are definitely PSAs: vote, vote, vote, vote, vote. Every recognizable face in Hollywood, it seems, is on video asking us to vote, vote, vote, vote, vote.
Even a pro-voting kinda guy like Mike Rowe recognizes part of the folly in this — that ill-informed dumbasses don’t improve the world by v*ting, any more than drunken jackasses waving firearms improve the state of the Second Amendment.
But Rowe, a minor celeb himself, lacks perspective. He doesn’t see that the drums beating vote, vote, vote, vote, vote aren’t merely calling the ignorant to have greater influence (though that, too, because it benefits politicians of a certain persuasion). The more sinister purpose of the hypnotic beat is to make all its hearers, even the well-informed (and especially the conscientious), believe that, once they v*te, they have done their great, heroic bit for “democracy.” After that they can go home, pop a brew, relax, and let their duly elected leaders (and masses of unelected bureaucrats) handle everything.
Again, this is nothing against v*ting (though I am generally against it, I understand the urge, as an member of AA understands the urge for whiskey). This is against the delusion that some easy and familiar mass ritual is inherently a good thing, no matter its content and consequences.
This is against the conformist assumption that v*ting — for something, for anybody — is a social good in the same way that joining the Heaven’s Gate cult is was a social good by the standards of those old “worship every week” messages.
—–
Drums have beat for v*ting for a long time, of course. But this year the pounding seems louder and more incessant. Odd, you’d think, given that both mainstream presidential candidates are so loathed, given that politics and parties and bailouts and cronyism are so widely perceived as having failed the entire civilized world, given the fact that no mainstream politician anywhere has a clue as to any conceivable solution to the problems they themselves have caused, given that even ordinary people now perceive that the center cannot hold.
But again there’s something indiscriminately religious here. We already know that when religious prophesies fail, believers become even more devoted and fanatical. From the linked article:
What Festinger failed to understand is that prophecies, per se, almost never fail. They are instead component parts of a complex and interwoven belief system which tends to be very resilient to challenge from outsiders. While the rest of us might focus on the accuracy of an isolated claim as a test of a group’s legitimacy, those who are part of that group—and already accept its whole theology—may not be troubled by what seems to them like a minor mismatch. A few people might abandon the group, typically the newest or least-committed adherents, but the vast majority experience little cognitive dissonance and so make only minor adjustments to their beliefs. They carry on, often feeling more spiritually enriched as a result.
—–
Delusion within a “complex and interwoven belief system” is in full-blown force right now, in those who support the government religion. Anybody can confirm it easily. You don’t have to read far into commentary by mainstream “experts” to see delusion in hallucinatory action.
Take two examples I plucked virtually at random from yesterday’s news scan.
First, Nobel Prize-winning economist Joseph Stiglitz declares neoliberalism dead.
Now, I had no idea that such a thing as neoliberalism had even been tried. I had no idea of what neoliberalism is even supposed to be. But apparently it consists in large part of “…the idea that markets function best when left alone, and that an unregulated market is the best way to increase economic growth, which will ultimately benefit everyone …”
Huh. I thought that was libertarianism. Or the non-moralistic, non-warmongering part of conservativism. Had zero idea that any sort of modern “liberal” was in favor of such freedom. And of course you and I know free markets haven’t actually been tried in recent times. All we’ve had is some extremely government-managed, crony-ridden, 20,000-page-regulated, favorite-picking false pretense of free, unregulated markets.
But the growing mainstream view is that we’ve apparently tried blazingly free markets, unhindered by regulation. And they’ve failed. Utterly. The very concept of free markets is discredited. Dead, decrees Stiglitz, or at best staggering around on its last legs.
And now the widespread “expert” belief in the failure of something that was never tried is becoming an excuse for — guess what? — more and bigger government. The very “religion” that gave us these faux free markets, the very religion whose promises and prophesies have so consistently proven false.
My second plucked-at-random example comes from Ryan Cooper. Cooper rightly perceives that government regulations are strangling us to death. But you see, this is because we have the wrong kind of regulations. We have an inefficient regulatory process, that’s all. With the proper (and increased) form of regulation “big government can be made agile” — again.
Yes, big government was once “agile.” Yes, it can be made so again.
This is desperate thinking, people. Cultish thinking, divorced from observable reality.
But — trust us! — everything will be okay if we all just go out and worship faithfully at the church of government.
—–
H/T OdS for sending the link that helped me pull together a half-formed idea.
“[N]eoliberalism — essentially the idea that free trade, open markets, privatisation, deregulation, and reductions in government spending designed to increase the role of the private sector are the best ways to boost growth — has dominated the thinking of the world’s biggest economies and international organisations like the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank.”
I’m pretty sure the IMF and WB — not to mention every interventionist act like NAFTA and industry regulation by dot-gov — is designed to prevent exactly that, while providing a framework for pretending otherwise (for the uninformed).
Free markets aren’t dead. Drug and gun trafficking… although one could make the argument that they are subsidized by dot-goc laws that eliminate most “legal” competition. (There was a Bloom County strip in the ’80s in which drug cartels donate a box of unmarked cash to the Opus/Bill presidential campaign becayse Opus says they’d maintain the War on Drugs.)
I remember those PSAs, and absent any research on the topic I’d be willing to bet that they were sponsored by some interfaith advocacy group, I’ll have to see what I can find out. Now I’m curious. Church attendance isn’t just about belief, it’s about business. Butts in pews, offerings in plates.
I haven’t paid any attention to the Libertarian Party in many years. Back in the day the core “politburo” of the party, and control of the party’s official platform, was firmly in the hands of the anarchy-by-next-Tuesday Rothbard Jihad. The platform itself was referred to even by party members as the “Platform Turd”. There was an attempt at a Minarchist insurgency that looked promising, but it fizzled like most attempts to get libertarians to work in concert. Nowadays they run political hacks in pursuit of donor dollars who can’t even articulate their party’s ideas.
The Libertarian brand is soiled, I really don’t blame anyone for rebranding.
I don’t even bother trying to analyze the logic in politics anymore, nobody pays attention, and nobody cares, outside some very tiny enclaves of reason. Almost every political utterance anymore can be boiled down to “Blue Tribe GOOD! Red Tribe BAD!” or vice versa. It’s all prolefeed designed to keep the establishment in power, with the validation of vote counts they can wave around.
RG — Won’t be surprised if you’re correct about those PSAs. I haven’t gone searching yet, but in a brief look, I did get an amusing reminder of how one generation’s vital PSA becomes another generation’s joke:
https://pjmedia.com/lifestyle/2014/5/31/the-10-most-terrifying-public-service-announcements-from-the-1970s/
We should also not forget that the Ad Council, responsible for putting most PSAs on the air, is quite often funded by and doing the bidding of the federal government. Oh, probably not in the case of the “weekly worship” ads, but in many other cases.
Seems there are some real benefits to being too deaf to watch TV… I don’t remember any of those PSA things. My sons used to tell me all about the programs they watched. Listening to what they thought they understood from the “news” broadcasts was sometimes hysterical. Bonanza and Star Trek, The Rifleman and Have Gun Will Travel… many others I can’t remember… but they never once mentioned a PSA telling them to go to church.
Maybe a lot of other people didn’t pay much attention to them either. 🙂
Oh, forgot where I was going with that!
The thing is that more and more people are NOT voting – especially in national “contests,” for all sorts of reasons and no reason at all. With the insanity of the current campaigns, even in some of the local things, I have this dream that the whole farce may die out in four years. Well, I can dream!
The republic may be dying but the religion of government is alive and well in both of our major parties.
Limited, divided and small government was a great idea but it is the last thing that most of our current leaders espouse.
[…] RTWT, but here’s the money quote: […]
I keep telling people it is ok not to vote, the look aghast at me like just told them the Pope is just another CEO. They don’t understand the concept and are afraid to even entertain the concept. The indoctrination is strong.
The two articles you cite are symptoms of deeper and worse problem which you also highlight — indeed, I think it’s the whole point of your post — that millions of our fellow serfs — ah, citizens — have lost the capacity to think both morally and rationally. And their vote counts just as much as ours.
“Limited, divided and small government was a great idea but it is the last thing that most of our current leaders espouse.”
It was a great idea because it was the next-step-down from monarchy that could be conceived at the time, and the best idea the Founders came up with was States’ rights. I do wonder what Patrick Henry or Thomas Paine would have done with today’s knowledge; given our present-day concept of libertarianism and its concomitant literature to mull over, would they have run with the idea of ZAP, or rejected it?
The Boston Tea Party-ers might have understood our disgust with the IRS, but would, say, James Monroe https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/James_Monroe have accepted a similar comparison to “small government” when anarchocapitalism was suggested? I think not.
“Belief is a disease”
Belief is also the tool that allows us to proceed beyond the known, and that may be our greatest gift.
Don’t toss the baby with the bathwater.
Big Government and the requisite surrender of freedom and liberty through ignorance of the Declaration, US Constitution and the Bill of Rights is the brew that has killed our Republic. There is no reviving the patient, we must birth a new one, a close relative that we nurture rather than ignore.
Good job on the Idol of Big Brother, Claire!
It’s particularly interesting to see (not for the first time, of course, but this was particularly well-done) your exposition of the fact that State Worship is very much a virulent version of arguably the worst form of idolatry.
(And, as a Torah-observant follower of YHVH and His Word, I’d add that from the Biblical perspective, it fits just as well. We “cannot serve two masters,” once understood unanimously where our ‘Rights’ came from, and are prohibited repeatedly throughout Scripture from erecting idols in His place — and if the Biggest Brother in Human History isn’t modern “Egypt and Babylon and Rome” all rolled into one, what is?
Since I was first a libertarian, Declaration and constitution-oriented, moderately ‘agnostic’ and only later in life decided to “read Scripture, from the Beginning, for myself,” I was aware — as I suspect 99.9% here are — that the Founders uniformly detested “democracy” (‘the Devil’s own government.’)
But I was still surprised (and challenge readers here not to believe me, but check it out for themselves) to find that NOWHERE in Scripture is there anything that even remotely resembles a “v*te” which is a positive event.
I usually teach it at some length, when the stories come up, but briefly, it goes like this. There are three major obvious “votes” in the Bible.
1) After the ‘spies’ came back from the land. Joshua and Caleb lost that one (the “first recorded vote in history” – 10 to 2. Every adult who participated, “their carcasses fell in the wilderness”, and only those two entered the Land. Oops.
2) I Samuel 8. The story of the prophet who was told by the people (this should sound familiar in Amerika 2016!) “give us a king, like all the other nations!” The prophet was told by YHVH, “they have not rejected YOU, Samuel, but Me, that I should not be King over them.” They got a good-looking loser named Saul.
3) Perhaps the most famous vote in Scripture, centuries later, was a voice vote. A guy named “Barabbas” won that one.
Finally, re: “free markets”.
Both the Constitution and Scripture repeatedly condemn “paper” as currency, much less “money”. (Ironically, the literal Hebrew word for money in Scripture is “qesef”, which is also literally “silver”.)
Bottom line: few of us Americans have ever even see honest money. (I can remember saving silver dimes as a child.)
You can NOT have “free markets” with fake money.
I don’t have any problem with those who want to “vote” on things, and honestly agree to be bound by the result whatever the outcome.
I object to the almost universal insanity of that “vote” holding bound those who didn’t vote, and didn’t want ANY of the choices. Or who simply refuse to consent to being bound by anything decided for them by others.
Those who choose aggression, of course, must face the consequences, whether they consent or not. Preferably at the hands of the intended victim or their guardians.
“You can NOT have “free markets” with fake money.”
Mark Call wins the thread.
Have you ever wondered where dictatorships come from? They are often unexpected., having arisen among prosperous and educated people (Germany and Venezuela comes to mind) who seemed safe from a dictatorship. America has been going down the slope to becoming third world dictatorship for several decades now. In this latest round of the Kobayashi Maru game the noose will become a little tighter in a Fascism sort of way.
I’m up here North of Disorder and from what I see there are limited choices. The main choices are Clinton (a modern day counterpart of Eva Perón – a fascist) or Trump (a modern day Benito Mussolini – a fascist). There are a few other choices on the November ballet but they stand no chance on election day. Like trying to herd cats getting the libertarian vote out for a libertarian candidate is simply not in the cards.
So what is the alternative?
Simply don’t vote, like Claire says don’t be one of those swept up in the political con game. Just remember one thing, you can ignore politics all you want but, depending upon how much of a pain in the butt you want to be, politics may not ignore you. If you don’t believe me go visit one of the holocaust museums.
Eva vs Benito is a very good comparison but I also find the South Park comparison (a few years ago) of a Turd sandwich vs a Giant Douche fitting today too;
Watch on YouTube
– Yep.
OT: Is there any way to cut down the size of the videos in a comment? They seem to take up most of the screen and smack the viewer in the face.
Pat — What I need to do is find a setting that lets a Commentariat member post a link to a video without automatically embedding that video into the comment section. So far, I haven’t found such a setting. For now, I turned Comrade X’s video into a hyperlink.
But I still need to find a setting that prevents an innocent pasted-in link from turning into an embed code!
Oh, OK. Thank you for the explanation. Sorry for pushing.
No, no. You were fine, Pat. I believe that was the first video link posted in comments here and I was surprised to see it embed itself rather than function as a hyperlink. I agree it was also huge and ungainly (though no intention of the poster, I’m sure!).
I’d just rather not have “live” videos in the comment section, in any case. Now I just have to figure our how to prevent it.
Apparently, WP considers this automatic embedding to be a “feature.”
https://codex.wordpress.org/Embeds
Looks as if getting rid of it will require HWFIW’s skills.
I’ll add it to the list. After the rest. I’m going to at least pretend I have a weekend.
In the meantime, people could use YouTube’s “Share” tab instead of the “Embed” tab. Personally, I don’t care to find embedded videos in comments; a personal quirk.
If they must use “embed,” they could consider resizing.
Example: Change
<iframe width=”560” height=”315“src=”https://www.youtube.com/embed/yuZmI6dRYNo” frameborder=”0″ allowfullscreen></iframe>
to
<iframe width=”280” height=”157“src=”https://www.youtube.com/embed/yuZmI6dRYNo” frameborder=”0″ allowfullscreen></iframe>
I’m pretty sure I have a fix for it. Tomorrow.
Where’s the Canadian whiskey…
I’d add the story of the woman caught in adultery. Let the one without sin cast the first stone.
The Bible folks made a lot more decisions by casting lots, which strikes me as much simpler and just as valid.
WordPress is “helping” you again.
Do try and have a little bit of a weekend,, HWFIW. And I say that fully aware that my emails have been part of your loss of it.
“If they must use “embed,” they could consider resizing.”
But alas, people aren’t using embed. Poor old Comrade X simply pasted in a URL, as people did over at the BHM blog for years — and WP decided that was an embed.
Yes, “helping” again, as LarryA says. And you know, while I appreciate the intentions, I do not get why they ASS-U-ME anybody wants that particular style of “help.”
One word: Prelest.
@ RustyGunner August 21, 2016 4:19 am [response style in anticipation of return to chronological comments]:
“Belief” that does not respect the constraints of logic and reason and evidence – in other words, religion – is precisely what is destroying civilization. As Yeats put it – in what I’ve always thought was the real knockout line from that particular poem – The best lack all conviction, while the worst / Are full of passionate intensity. Or Mencken:
Moral certainty is always a sign of cultural inferiority. The more uncivilized the man, the surer he is that he knows precisely what is right and what is wrong. All human progress, even in morals, has been the work of men who have doubted the current moral values, not of men who have whooped them up and tried to enforce them. The truly civilized man is always skeptical and tolerant, in this field as in all others. His culture is based on “I am not too sure.”
“Prelest.” Good word, Dana.
Much better than, “One word … plastics.” http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0061722/trivia?tab=qt&ref_=tt_trv_qu
Let’s examine belief that does not respect the constraints of logic and reason and evidence. First, evidence. It’s odd that the very civilization we revere originated and reached its fullest flower in an age of pervasive, powerful religion. I generally don’t like slinging quotes back and forth, but John Adams, whose genius I respect above Mencken’s, had this to say about our own flowering:
“Our Constitution was made only for a moral and religious people. It is wholly inadequate to the government of any other.”
It’s only since religion has been in decline that the rot in society has become manifest (and every age has wailed about rot). Are the two trends connected? Possibly, but I doubt it’s that simple.
I think a more proximate cause of our problems is a widespread moral cowardice that refuses to name evil for what it is, yoked to a venality that acknowledges no limit to freedom to act in service of self. Who, really, are the best and worst here?
Moral certainty is all that stiffens the spine to strive against opposition. You have to believe that what you are doing is right, even if that belief flies in the face of what everyone tells you is reasonable or logical, or eventually you will fall by the wayside. The universe doesn’t respect consensus, only truth, and most of the time you don’t know for sure until you reach the end of the path.
Religion, at its core, is a prepackaged set of values and assumptions about the world. It’s a kit, if you will, with good and evil defined, at least a basic set of moral choices made for you, your place in the universe identified. It is a framework through which you can view the universe and make sense of it. Not everyone wants or needs that, but lots do.
Not all religions are equal. The process by which belief systems interact with each other and the world is Darwinian. Mithraism is hard to find these days. The largest, oldest and most thriving belief systems are those whose core assumptions are most in tune with nature, human or otherwise. That is not to say that everything they teach is correct, merely that people with those beliefs do better than people who believe something else.
Whatever the source you choose, your morality is the compass that guides you toward right action. You don’t have agency without it. To navigate without a compass is to be aimless and achieve nothing, much like a whole generation today.
Moral certainty is not a guarantee that you will be right, but its lack is a guarantee that you will be irrelevant.
That rambles too much for me to fix in 5 minutes. After I’ve had some sleep I’ll clean it up as a blogpost, if I ever put the thing up.
@RustyGunner August 21, 2016 9:32 pm:
>the very civilization we revere originated and reached its fullest flower in an age of pervasive, powerful religion.
If that is correct, why then did that pervasive, powerful religion not prevent the decline? In fact, however, the civilization we revere originated and reached its fullest flower precisely when and because the stranglehold of religion on thought was being loosened, and, whatever their other achievements, the failure of Adams and the other founders to grasp that religion is an inadequate foundation (to put it mildly) for morality has contributed to the decline. And the moral certainty to which Mencken refers is not that of an individual confident of his own values and choices, but that of those who seek to impose their own values and choices upon others by force.
>a more proximate cause of our problems is a widespread moral cowardice that refuses to name evil for what it is
Actually, it is a widespread moral ignorance, or more properly, inversion, which fails – or refuses – to recognize that the roots of evil are coercion and deceit – or, ultimately, unreason.
>yoked to a venality that acknowledges no limit to freedom to act in service of self.
The atrocities committed by those in venal service of self are insignificant compared to those committed by the truly sincere and selfless whose moral certainty allows them to employ coercion and deceit to pursue their moral utopia with passionate intensity.
>Religion, at its core, is a prepackaged set of values and assumptions about the world.
Usually accompanied by: “and if you don’t buy into this package, something real bad is going to happen to you.”
>It is a framework through which you can view the universe and make sense of it. Not everyone wants or needs that, but lots do.
Everyone does need that, whether they want (or realize) it or not. It’s called a philosophy, which is to religion as chemistry is to alchemy.
>Moral certainty is not a guarantee that you will be right
True.
>but its lack is a guarantee that you will be irrelevant.
Maybe. But better irrelevant than evil.
Remember “The family that prays together stays together?” Scared the sh*t out of me as a child.
>If that is correct, why then did that pervasive, powerful religion not prevent the decline?>
Teleological argument. You assume unified direction toward a goal, rather than shortsighted human institutions blundering from crisis to crisis, as they all do,
>In fact, however, the civilization we revere originated and reached its fullest flower precisely when and because the stranglehold of religion on thought was being loosenedreligion is an inadequate foundation (to put it mildly) for moralitythe moral certainty to which Mencken refers is not that of an individual confident of his own values and choices, but that of those who seek to impose their own values and choices upon others by force.it is a widespread moral ignorance, or more properly, inversion, which fails – or refuses – to recognize that the roots of evil are coercion and deceit – or, ultimately, unreason.The atrocities committed by those in venal service of self are insignificant compared to those committed by the truly sincere and selfless whose moral certainty allows them to employ coercion and deceit to pursue their moral utopia with passionate intensity.It’s called a philosophy, which is to religion as chemistry is to alchemy.<
Potato, potahto. They're all belief systems.
I think you are failing to distinguish between the mental constructs of belief systems and the institutions which promote them, which are full of humans doing what humans do.
I’m trying to puzzle out the scariness in “The family that prays together …”
Now, if it were “The family that preys together …”
Or if your family didn’t pray and you worried they might split up because of it …?
Me, I’m glad I never heard that expression until much later. Other than grace at holiday meals and the (very scary, actually) “Now I lay me down to sleep …” recited with Mom in pre-Kindergarten days, our family never prayed together. Had I known we were “supposed” to and failing to do so, it would have been just one more god-related thing for me to have nightmares over.
Claire, this is not especially to you… I do not know how they could have worded it any other way. I remember those PSAs very well. Had it been worded another way, they would have had to urge us to worship at a specific church or synagogue. So I guess it had to be vague and impersonal.
But they didn’t have to. They wanted a palatable, inoffensive, but highly conformist message, so they chose one. And they ended up implying that it didn’t matter what anybody worshipped, as long as they worshipped. Which is still a creepy idea.
@RustyGunner August 22, 2016 10:56 am
Note: the following >quote are things I copied (or [remember]) from the above timestamped comment, which seems to have been replaced by one quite different, timestamped August 22, 2016 6:26 am, when I reopened the page to finish up and post this.
>You appear to confuse the belief systems with the institutions that promote them. . . .
You appear to be saying that the content of a belief system has no essential influence upon the individuals within an institution based on that belief system. That’s . . . not even wrong.
>I’m not sure what you mean by religion preventing its own decline.
I was referring to the decline of civilization, not religion, but now that you mention it, if religion’s “core assumptions” are in fact “in tune with nature, human or otherwise” why would religion be declining? BTW, would a sound, beneficial belief system produce “god-related . . . nightmares” in children? And Claire is absolutely no way some rare outlier in this.
>Judeo-Christian doctrine was the source of our civic traditions and our legal principles.
If you take Judeo-Christian doctrine to be ‘murder, theft and lying are undesirable forms of behaviour’ – and that that was originated by and unsupportable without Judeo-Christian religion (both plainly false). Beyond that (murder, etc. bad) Judeo-Christian doctrine is either irrelevant or inimical to the civic traditions and legal principles established by the founders.
>[reference to being loaded into cattle cars]
Few, if any, of your views would not have been solidly within the mainstream in Nazi Germany. Mine would have been universally reviled. Draw your own conclusion.
Ideas matter. The essential, absolute primacy of logic, reason and evidence is not just another belief system. You apparently disagree. In the face of such a fundamental disagreement, I can only leave you the last word, and be content with whatever influence my arguments may have on others.
That was the message in Walt Kelly’s “Pogo” every four years, that it didn’t matter who you vote for, just VOTE.
I’m being nice, Claire, I really am.
Godwin is smiling right now.
My fault, trying2b. RG’s original comment went into a spam filter this morning. I pulled it out, but that left two similar comments from him and I later deleted one of them. My apologies for any confusion this caused.
Here’s Grace for families who prey together. 😉