Slacktivist on Patheos - Latest Comments

Re: The battle against the culture wars II

Invisible Neutrino — Wed, 16 May 2012 09:15:53 -0000

Damn, you nailed it. I honestly am stunned that I didn't realize that before.

Re: Smart people saying smart things

Beroli — Wed, 16 May 2012 09:01:12 -0000

Frankly, I'm inclined to think that, for most people, vote-by-mail resembles "you get one more piece of junk mail a year than you would if you lived in some other states!" much more than it resembles true mandatory voting.

Even in the most literal of senses, it only gets a ballot in front of the faces of people whose reacting to receiving it isn't, "No need to open this, where's the trashcan?"

Re: Smart people saying smart things

Mary Kaye — Wed, 16 May 2012 03:49:23 -0000

Washington State has also gone to vote-by-mail, or at least my county has. I don't know what the effect on turnout has been but we certainly do not have anything close to 100% turnout.

Re: Smart people saying smart things

PepperjackCandy — Wed, 16 May 2012 03:31:16 -0000

The problem with mandatory voting is defining the elections that would be mandatory. Would it be just for major elections, or would every little thing that the city thinks should be put to a vote count? Would primaries and runoff elections also be mandatory?

I wouldn't put it past the people in charge to put little random elections all over the place and then fine anyone who doesn't turn out. Not only would the elections turn out the way they want, because only the most motivated voters would show up, it would make a great source of revenue. They could probably even budget for it.

Re: The battle against the culture wars II

FearlessSon — Wed, 16 May 2012 02:53:03 -0000

The logic went something like this: men cannot control their sexual urges.

If that really were the case, then I would ask those who care about me most to kill me as soon as possible. Please, before I hurt someone!

I'm a monster, waiting to happen! *Sob*

... waitaminute... I think I just figured out why cultural conservative youths identify with Twilight so much.

... now I feel even more dirty. Yuck. :(

Re: Smart people saying smart things

FearlessSon — Wed, 16 May 2012 02:43:40 -0000

Okay, perhaps with the ammendment that we need every citizen to have seen and returned a voting ballot, even if they return it empty.

Maybe someone can decline to participate in the process if they sign a "right to complain" waiver if they really are so dead-set against it...

Re: Smart people saying smart things

arcseconds — Wed, 16 May 2012 01:10:11 -0000

As to how this relates to Lurhmann...

The main goal of cultural anthropology, as I understand it, is to understand the culture under study in its own terms. And I think she's had success here: I'm inclined to buy the fact that evangelicals, as a rule, do not spend very much time discussing policy goals in terms of global statistical utility outcomes, but rather in inner virtue, and personal stories of the road to achieving same.

That's useful to know, and it seems likely it is structuring of their worldview in some sense.

However, there's a further question as to what extent that their official story connects to the more complicated, deeper, and harder-to-get-at situation of their more private lives - whether their actions and private statements actually correlates to the official story. That is to say, to what extent are they hypocrites?

That's a difficult question to ask in cultural anthropology, because once you ask it you're already refusing to accept the culture on its own terms - or at least, on its own prima facie terms.

Also, we have reasons to suspect that even if she's right about what she says (and I suspect there's some truth to it), is it the only thing that's going on? Because it seems we've got reasons to believe that 'personal road to virtue' is not the only structuring principle at work here, there's also 'defend traditional social roles'.

Re: Smart people saying smart things

AnonymousSam — Wed, 16 May 2012 01:06:53 -0000

At the very least, "Do you believe in God?" fails to quantify which, and for some (such as myself), the question is purely irrelevant to belief. My interpretation of divinity begins on the premise of "Every word uttered herein is false." ^_^

Re: Smart people saying smart things

arcseconds — Wed, 16 May 2012 00:36:29 -0000

I'm a (qualified, in principle) fan of the participant-observer qualitative style of research pursued by cultural/social anthropology. The idea is to understand people on their own terms, and to understand a culture from the inside (the 'deliverable' is to translate it into terms so that an outsider can come to some understanding as to what it's like on the inside), and you can't do that by large-scale quantitative research.

For example, you could ask 'do you believe in God?' on a questionaire, but that obscures the incredible richness and diversity of what that means to individual people. I've tried to wave my hands at this in a previous comment. Trying to get a handle on that diversity requires qualitative research. One outcome of that research might be better survey questions, which might help you understand what the 'population at large' believes. On the other hand, one can't understand a theology by survey responses.

If you think this is useless, consider whether you find Fred on evangelicalism at all worthwhile reading. Because he's not doing quantitative analysis at all — he's giving a participant-observer perspective.

Re: Smart people saying smart things

Chris Doggett — Wed, 16 May 2012 00:22:30 -0000

Mandatory voting would certainly solve a lot of issues. One can always
vote to abstain, but just getting ballots in front of faces would be a
big improvement.

Less than you might think. Look into the voter turnout in states like Oregon (USA) which exclusively uses vote-by-mail. (all registered voters are mailed a ballot which they can either mail back or drop off at specific sites) It's not quite "mandatory" voting, but it gets a ballot allegedly in front of the faces of every voter. It's late for me right now, so I'm not going to do the research, but compare Oregon's voter turnout for the last few elections with Washington state, which still uses the traditional voting methods, and see what shakes out.

Re: Smart people saying smart things

Ross — Wed, 16 May 2012 00:13:25 -0000

Or they'll double down and come up with better ways to legally disenfranchise people, rather than just the de facto disenfranchisement they do already by making it as hard as possible for legitimate voters to vote.

Re: Smart people saying smart things

Charity Brighton — Tue, 15 May 2012 23:48:50 -0000

Maybe with mandatory voting it would discourage people from passing laws designed to make it harder for legitimate voters to vote. And it will mute the impact of special interest groups as well as minorities who don't speak for everyone but have to be pandered to because they vote reliably and regularly (such as religious fundamentalists).

Re: The ‘biblical science’ of creationism is neither biblical nor science

Keromaru5 — Tue, 15 May 2012 22:55:40 -0000

Thank you. We say "Lord, have mercy" far too often for it to be all about "patting each other on the back." At least, that's how it is in Anglican, Catholic, and Orthodox rites--and between those three, that's a pretty big chunk of Christianity.

Re: Smart people saying smart things

FearlessSon — Tue, 15 May 2012 22:23:53 -0000

Mandatory voting would certainly solve a lot of issues. One can always vote to abstain, but just getting ballots in front of faces would be a big improvement.

There has to be some way of balancing out weighted interests in the democratic process.

Re: The ‘biblical science’ of creationism is neither biblical nor science

P J Evans — Tue, 15 May 2012 22:00:00 -0000

AFAIK, that isn't what most people here think 'church' should be.
(If a church is doing that, it's either not practicing its own beliefs, or it's a 'prosperity gospel' church.)

Re: Smart people saying smart things

Lliira — Tue, 15 May 2012 20:06:26 -0000

If we all went to the polls, Democrats would win nearly everything nearly every time. Large voter turnout = Democrats win, almost always. Notice that it's Republicans in our country who like to put up barriers to people voting. That's why.

Yes, I do think voting should be 1) made easier and 2) mandatory in the U.S. And that there need to be more than two viable political parties -- I think that near-100% voter turnout would inevitably lead to that.

Re: Smart people saying smart things

Lliira — Tue, 15 May 2012 19:59:56 -0000

Is it really that hard for people to see that the same bad things could possibly happen to them, too?

Yes. It's a huge part of what's behind victim-blaming in every case, whether we're talking about poverty or rape or disability. I have seen "that wouldn't happen to me/my child" over and over and over again.

And religion doesn't have to be any part of it. Libertarians are big on victim-blaming. Objectivism is based on it.

People like to think they can control what happens to them. And yet, they know deep down they can't control a ton of incredibly important things. That cognitive dissonance produces all sorts of nasty public policy. People often remain willfully ignorant on purpose, so they won't have to accept the fact that very often, life does things to you that you can't do anything about. And while this is more common among right-wingers, I've seen plenty of liberals do it too, especially if someone they like has victimized someone else.

Re: Coming attractions (open thread)

Andy — Tue, 15 May 2012 18:42:59 -0000

And it stands for nickel, which is how much the books are worth (as an upper bound...)

Re: The ‘biblical science’ of creationism is neither biblical nor science

Guest — Tue, 15 May 2012 18:23:16 -0000

"I'm not a big fan of these atheismist conferences myself. They tend to
consist of a bunch of people who all agree with each other patting each
other on the back over how right they think they all are."

When religious people do that, it's known as "church." Happens every week. But let's definitely turn up our noses at atheists for supporting each other that way every year or so.

Re: Smart people saying smart things

Jenora Feuer — Tue, 15 May 2012 17:29:48 -0000

[...] the Sister-Bertha-Better-Than-You brush.

Oh, thank you ever so much, now it's going to take me the rest of the day to get the Mississippi Squirrel Revival out of my head again.

Re: If I can’t change your mind

Sgt. Pepper's Bleeding Heart — Tue, 15 May 2012 16:04:11 -0000

How do you go from more than 12,000 gun-related murders in a year (and, I'm inferring from the gaps, about 1,000 accidental deaths) to guns are not a problem?

How many avoidable violent deaths do you need?

Re: Smart people saying smart things

The_L1985 — Tue, 15 May 2012 15:00:46 -0000

I believe that more liberal priests def need to frame policy choices in that way ("it makes you a better Christian to reduce suffering"), but not politicians. That's a disaster waiting to happen.

Re: Smart people saying smart things

FearlessSon — Tue, 15 May 2012 14:14:55 -0000

Is it really that hard for people to see that the same bad things could possibly happen to them, too?

I think that some of them respond from a position of ignorance. "I had troubled times too, and nobody helped me out. I lifted myself up by my own bootstraps, thankyouverymuch! Why should those people have it any easier than I did?"

Nevermind that no one actually gets lifted up by their own bootstraps, there is virtually always some kind of assistance. Even a very well self-motivated person needs to make connections and go out and get help, and some of them do not realize that not everyone can access the same help that they had.

The "heroic individual" myth at its finest. Or to quote Randel Monroe, "I had a hard time with Ayn Rand because I found myself enthusiastically agreeing with the first 90% of every sentence, but getting lost at 'therefore, be a huge asshole to everyone.'"

Re: Smart people saying smart things

Lori — Tue, 15 May 2012 13:24:15 -0000

Is it really that hard for people to see that the same bad things could possibly happen to them, too?

If you believe that people get what they deserve and that God loves you too much to let anything really bad happen to you then yes, it is that hard to see.

I know that happens, but I think it's more common for it to be too scary to acknowledge. I see an awful lot of whistling past the graveyard among the conservatives I know.

Re: Smart people saying smart things

GDwarf — Tue, 15 May 2012 13:08:52 -0000

Is it really that hard for people to see that the same bad things could possibly happen to them, too?

Depends. Many of them claim it's already happening to them, 'cause legalizing same-sex marriage is oppression, don'cha know.

Some of them honestly don't think they'll be oppressed. They're real, true, Americans, after all.

Others fear it will happen to them...which is why they're so resistant to change. If they double-down on their oppression that'll stop those others from ever getting enough power to do the same back to them.

Finally, there are those that simply don't think about the future. It's all about what makes them feel icky now.Generally it's some combination of the above.