So here’s the deal.  I’m trying to produce a custom-sized document in Word.  When I go to print, not only does it automatically re-adjust the margins (to 2.54 on the bottom and .88 on each side.  WTF?), but the document settings menu automatically switches to…

wait for it….

Portuguese.

Um, can I blame the smoke in the air?  ‘Cause this shit is bizarre.

Geen reactie’s, je kan de eerste zijn »

Which is wierder?

I’m a Barbie Girl in nonesense Dutch?

I’m a Barbie Girl in nonesense Dutch lip-synched by two kids who look like they’re from Tarzana?

I’m a Barbie Girl in nonesense Dutch lip-synched by Israelies who think they’re singing in German?

Or, I’m a Barbie Girl Vlogged onto scenes from Lord of the Rings (with Orlando Bloom falsettoing as Barbie)

Really, it’s a toss-up.

1 Reactie »

Rex asked me some weeks ago to comment on his thoughts on Protestant fears of hard-working minorities.  I basically think that his commenter (McCreery) gets it right: that fear of certain minorities — Asians in particular, Hispanics less so — is grounded in ultimately religious narratives of the fraught relationship between work and reward, but also (less directly) in the basic ambivalence toward learning.  There are a couple of ways I would critique/contribute to Rex’s view. 

#1, I don’t think that it’s part of the Anglo-Protestant tradition that a group can out-suffer anyone.  And therefore, it is not possible for Asian (or Hispanics) to “out-suffer” Protestants.  Protestantism is deeply (to the point of heresy, in my view) individualistic.  Suffering is always, and only, individual, and can play no part in social grace or redemption.   The flip side of this, of course, is that evil is always, and only, individual — there is no such thing as “social” (or as we would say in the social sciences, “structural”) evil.  It has taken a long, hard slog of theological work, starting with with Rauschenbusch and on through Niebuhr, King, and Stendahl to form a “principled opposition” to this basic point of Orthodox Protestantism.  It is even now not really dominant within the Mainline, and it is basically what Evangelicals and Fundamentalists roused themselves in the 60s and 70s to fight.  The Protestant fear of Asian and Hispanic ascendancy does have to do with the perceived work ethic of those two groups (especially Asians), but this is not about suffering, it is about rewards (partly).

#2: Rewards are tricky in Protestantism.  Traditionally, they come most pointedly not from work (Calvin was quite clear on this).   Instead, they are supposed to come from faith alone (Luther’s point) — but faith itself is a gift from God, and so technically not deserved in any way.   Both of these points have since been massively perverted, of course.  In the first instance, people are supposed to be punished for doing bad things (even if they don’t necessarily get rewarded for doing good).  In the second instance, confession of faith apparently grants a carte blanche to all sorts of incompetence and sin.  These two major deviations aside, the cardinal doctrines of Protestantism remain points of reference, especially for anxieties.   Technically, rewards are supposed to be an indirect sign of God’s grace — wholly undeserved, of course, but ideally correlated with internal virtue.   This is really I think, at least one of the potential sources of resentment — that inasmuch as others have achieved worldly success, it is because they are more internally virtuous (they work harder, they’re smarter, God simply likes them more).  If material rewards are an indirect sign of God’s grace, and “we” have a monopoly on the truth, then how in God’s name could He show favor on “those” people?  This is especially worrisome when it comes to Asians, who have converted in substantial numbers to the “correct” religion, unlike those Latinos still (at least in the unspoken fever dreams of the bigots) in thrall to the whore of Babylon.  It is thus not that minorities have “out-suffered” us, but rather that God has shed his grace on them — and this should not be, since we have kept the faith.  Confession of Jesus is the sole qualifier, after all.  There is, and can never be, such a thing as “more faithful” or “more holy,” since this smacks of the rejected doctrine of works.

#3: I’m not so sure that there’s any real antipathy left in the Protestant fold towards markets per se.  For one thing, I suspect that one of the major theological accomplishments of the past, oh, three hundred years, has been an elision between the “invisible hand” of the market distributing rewards according to inscrutable mechanisms, and the unknowable grace of God, distributing grace according to a plan which we will know only when it all comes to an end.  While it is true that there is still a deep and powerful antipathy towards “elites,” this is by no means directed toward the economic elite — who have achieved the indirect sign of God’s unknowable grace — but rather towards other, more obviously morally impure targets (hippies and gays, most recently).

#4: This is where we start to get toward to the embrace of “plain speech” and a rejection of “fancy” erudition.  Part of the orthodox tradition of Protestantism is, as Steinbeck put it so well, “it’s there in the Bible in black and white.  If God had wanted you to understand it, He’d have put it down different!”  Rex is right in pointing out that orthodox Protestantism rejects layered reading in favor of superficial meaning — especially “approved” readings that are “obvious” because one has been told that they are so.  This was nowhere more painfully obvious to me than it was in Texas, where students understood that they “should” read whatever the “approved” text is, though they often reject what they perceive to be “dangerous” readings thereof.  This cultural attitude extends in all sorts of interesting ways — to, for instance, a rejection of the “obvious” outgrowth of Bible-reading (the humanities) and an embrace of “plain” learning — basic skills like math and engineering, but also (intriguingly) an emphasis on the “apostolic” tradition and the original texts, as if reading something in Greek or Aramaic made it “more true” because it was it was written 1200, or 1600, years ago.  My evangelical cousins are all quite well tutored in Greek – the better to read the “real” meaning of the words of Jesus, rather than the folderole layered upon Him by later commentary (which apparently does not include oh, say, Saul of Tarsus).  This is where we cycle back to the resentment and anxiety directed toward Asian achievement, so famously (though not in actual fact) concentrated in the “obvious” and “plain” domains of math, engineering, and the biological sciences.   

I will, once I’ve had a chance to think on, comment on one further aspect of this that needs attention; namely the rather bizarre fetish made by so many Americans of the law (as in “illegal immigrants”) when it comes to immigration.

Geen reactie’s, je kan de eerste zijn »

I can make a half-way decent religious argument about the recent Supreme Court decision (i.e., the necessity of the handed-downness-from above of certain eternal truths, if we left it up to democracy we’d all be worshipping golden calves, blah, blah, blah), but it only kinda sorta touches on gay marriage, per se.

Or, I can make a half-way decent secular argument about gay marriage (American values re: the essentially sameness of all individuals before the law, democracy requires that we bestow civil equality upon people of whose lifestyles we despise, blah, blah, blah) that doesn’t really touch on the Supreme Court decision.

I’m not sure I can make an argument that covers both.  This is actually kind of a problem, inasmuch as I’m trying to put together something so that I can go speak to Sunday Schools about the recent Supreme Court Decision on gay marriage. 

See, this is what comes of being politically engaged — you have to actually think this shit through. 

More once I’ve actually put something together.

Geen reactie’s, je kan de eerste zijn »