There’s "Cynicism" and then there’s "cynicism." Do you know the difference? Do you know which one rich white people fear?
Everyone’s a cynic who doesn’t believe what you believe. Everyone’s a cynic who doesn’t do what you do.
Idealism—how rich!
07.07.05 | Permalink | Comments Off on Idealism—how rich!
All the blog’s a stage
07.07.05 | Permalink | 5 Comments
Following up on blogger conversations at GA, Jess’ Journal has a new post on blogging ethics, where she talks about writing under a pseudonym:
I think that blogging under one’s own name adds a level of responsibility that some people aren’t willing to deal with. When you can be confronted in "real life" by something you wrote in a public forum, (and those who expect a blog not be be public are deluding themselves…) you tend to think more about what you post and its ramifications. Again, from the article on Winn Schwartau’s site:
"IT security ethics are no different than ethical behavior in the physical world. Ethical people understand how their actions affect other people. They know what is right and wrong and take personal responsibility for their actions."
This of course does not delve into those who do blog under their own names, but in a persona quite different from their "real" selves. One can control others’ perceptions more readily in written form than in person. What can be easily identifiable in the real world as manipulation can appear completely reasonable online. And, one always has the last word on one’s own website.
I’m going to leave aside for now Jess’ implicit allegation of irresponsibility and denial and assume that sentence was just poorly written. Instead I want to deal with Jess’ underlying assumption: public authenticity is not only possible but also good.
There is a school of thought that believes that each of us holds within us something like a "true self" and that we need to "be true" to it. For lack of a better word, I’ll call this school of thought "expressivism," because its adherents often hold that an excellent way to "be true" to your "true self" is to "express yourself," an action which can take a whole host of different forms. For expressivists, then, not "expressing your true self" is bad, in whatever language they choose to express "bad" with.
The problems associated with identity, selfhood and the like are a recurring them here on this blog. So it probably comes as no surprise that I am not an expressivist. Click to continue reading “All the blog’s a stage”
Thinking of London
07.07.05 | Permalink | Comments Off on Thinking of London
This OKC native’s heart and mind is with London today.
For every Batman a Joker
Joshua at Fagistan finds the noblesse oblige and corporate feudalism of Batman Begins hard to swallow.
[Batman Begins] gives us a man who sees a significant moral difference between killing someone and merely letting them die. It also gives us a portrayal of grotesquely corrupt municipal governments and the utter failure of democracy to provide safety or comfort to the people. With democracy fallen around us, there is only one place to turn. The rich, handsome, perfect Bruce Wayne with his billions and his ruling instinct and his good breeding and his castle literally right out of the English countryside. The justice system leads to killers being declared "insane" to avoid punishment. Fascism proposes that we simply kill all the bad people before they can do bad acts. Feudalism allows us one judge and executioner to carry out an incoherent system of justice, in which claiming not to want to kill people but killing them anyway is "heroic."
But this has always been Batman, has it not? A rich vigilante torn between an obsession for vengeance and need to grant mercy?
It’s not as though Batman succeeds. Sure, he defeats many villains over the course of his crime-fighting career. But his enemies more and more come to depend on the Batman for the raison d’etre—the Joker’s psychopathy feeds off the Batman, and Bane is drawn to him like a magnet. And because the crime never abates, Wayne’s obsession never abates.
The obsessed, rich vigilante and the psychotic criminals need one another. The one without the other would not survive for long.
First sign of our post-O’Connor future
With all those unaborted fetii piling up…
On behalf of shame
06.30.05 | Permalink | Comments Off on On behalf of shame
There are, of course, two kinds of shame. One is a social, ostracizing shame, a shame that casts you out, that scapegoats. The second is a self-inflicted shame, a shame that comes from the realization that you have violated your own deepest values.
It is this second, transformative form of shame I wish to argue we employ more in UU congregations. But while it is a self-inflicted shame, it can certainly be precipitated by others. In fact, this is one service that true friends offer to one another—you shame your friend privately so as to save her from the public, ostracizing form of shame. And yet transformative shame can occur in public, if that is where the moment of realization occurs.
My hunch is that many of my fellow religious liberals will regard the intentional, public precipitation of transformative shame as "sinful," presumptous, improper, or otherwise unbecoming of a Boston Brahmin. My hunch is based on five years of observation of a noticable lack of public shaming. But perhaps we believe we have evolved beyond the need for transformative shame?
There are two things to know about transformative shame. First, it is always deserved. Click to continue reading “On behalf of shame”
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