Rejoice with the wife of thy youth

Naomi Wolf has some interesting things to say about life in a sex saturated culture in New York magazine:

Pornography works in the most basic of ways on the brain: It is Pavlovian. An orgasm is one of the biggest reinforcers imaginable. If you associate orgasm with your wife, a kiss, a scent, a body, that is what, over time, will turn you on; if you open your focus to an endless stream of ever-more-transgressive images of cybersex slaves, that is what it will take to turn you on. The ubiquity of sexual images does not free eros but dilutes it.

Other cultures know this. I am not advocating a return to the days of hiding female sexuality, but I am noting that the power and charge of sex are maintained when there is some sacredness to it, when it is not on tap all the time. In many more traditional cultures, it is not prudery that leads them to discourage men from looking at pornography. It is, rather, because these cultures understand male sexuality and what it takes to keep men and women turned on to one another over time—to help men, in particular, to, as the Old Testament puts it, “rejoice with the wife of thy youth; let her breasts satisfy thee at all times.” [Proverbs 5.18] These cultures urge men not to look at porn because they know that a powerful erotic bond between parents is a key element of a strong family.

And feminists have misunderstood many of these prohibitions.

I will never forget a visit I made to Ilana, an old friend who had become an Orthodox Jew in Jerusalem. When I saw her again, she had abandoned her jeans and T-shirts for long skirts and a head scarf. I could not get over it. Ilana has waist-length, wild and curly golden-blonde hair. “Can’t I even see your hair?” I asked, trying to find my old friend in there. “No,” she demurred quietly. “Only my husband,” she said with a calm sexual confidence, “ever gets to see my hair.”

If this wasn’t such a sad story, I might get more schadenfreude out of it. As it is, I came to similar conclusions myself some time ago. It lead to the shocking realization that popular characterizations about traditional social mores are wildly superficial and inaccurate. To name two, there’s the misplaced idea that all religious people have always been literalists on every line of the Bible, as well as the idea that past social norms are always arbitrary.

Room for the poor?

Rod Dreher has a question.:

What is it about our time that makes the heavy old forms of Christianity — Orthodoxy and Catholicism — so apparently ill-suited to compete with the amorphous Pentecostalism that’s sweeping the poor? Is it the case that the very complexity and depth that appeals to middle-class North American intellectuals makes the faith relatively inaccessible to the masses? Is it the case that we live now in a demotic age, in which any institution that depends on hierarchies and traditional authority will struggle for the hearts of the common man? That is, in the past it would have been understood that the Thing That We All Do is worship at the Catholic/Orthodox parish, whether we remain as beginners in faith, or have plumbed the theological depths of the Tradition, because That Is What We Do — but today, there is an unregulated free market in faith, and we are free to choose.

Is it the case that the more demotic forms of Protestant Christianity preach a gospel that, however twisted in some of its manifestations (e.g., the prosperity gospel), nevertheless holds out to suffering people the hope that their lives can change for the better — whereas the older, more traditional forms of Christianity are more accepting of suffering as part of the human condition, to a degree that tips over into fatalism?

One of the things I admire so much about Catholicism is its depth and its breadth. It has room for all kinds of spiritual approaches, and popular piety as well as high theological rumination. (Perhaps this is true of Orthodoxy also; I don’t really know). I liked that I could go to mass on Sunday, and could share a pew with people from all walks of life, sociologically speaking. But in our country, I do wonder if the poor (excluding the immigrant poor from Latin America) have any entry point into Catholicism or Orthodoxy. And why that is. And how it should change within the tradition, because it’s impossible to imagine a Christian church that has no room for the poor and working classes.

In thinking about this question, I turn to my own experience in my local parish. We do have services for the poor - St. Vincent de Paul, family events that are inexpensive, etc. - and I do see a range of people in the pews. There are a lot of older European white people, but there are also families, rich and poor, and more than a few families from Asia. In the end, though I’m not certain how much of Rod’s question applies here in northwestern Canada. We don’t have the kind of evangelicial footprint he writes of, though they are here. We do have a history of being settled by people fleeing religion. There are good number of spiritualists, agnostics and atheists in this part of the world, and we have to overcome their idea that we are the bad old empire.

I think that’s the barrier to getting young people; they think we’re the page about to be turned. Rebecca and I are both of the opinion that being current and fun - with no watering down, because you never want to patronize - would help. I would suggest sports programs and web-sites that are current, informative and well put together would help. They can act as ice breakers. In the US south, where Rod hails from, the danger traditional Christianity faces is in some ways similar. It looks different and strange, like an alpine flower brought down from the mountain. Perhaps down there, it needs to have more resemblances to local fauna to make outreach easier. Still, individual can do-ism in the culture is going to be a challenge for a Church with a structure like Catholicism.

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Religion, Catholicism, Christianity

Good advice

Some good advice from an Orthodox website.

When your “gettin’ it done”, don’t forget family.

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Religion, Catholicism, Christianity

Microsoft patents the mother of all adware systems

Another reason - as if you needed another reason - to avoid Microsoft products.

Microsoft patents the mother of all adware systems. 

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Tech, Windows, Microsoft

Justice in a vacuum

Here are two articles I read today; I found both to really interesting. The first is a New Yorker article about an economist who thinks democracy leads to bad policy when it works properly. Why? People are uninformed and irrational. They choose based on prejudice rather than current theory. They tend to choose to tax and spend and regulate.

Fractured Franchise: Books: The New Yorker:

[Bryan] Caplan rejects the assumption that voters pay no attention to politics and have no real views. He thinks that voters do have views, and that they are, basically, prejudices. He calls these views “irrational,” because, once they are translated into policy, they make everyone worse off. People not only hold irrational views, he thinks; they like their irrational views. In the language of economics, they have “demand for irrationality” curves: they will give up y amount of wealth in order to consume x amount of irrationality. Since voting carries no cost, people are free to be as irrational as they like. They can ignore the consequences, just as the herdsman can ignore the consequences of putting one more cow on the public pasture. “Voting is not a slight variation on shopping,” as Caplan puts it. “Shoppers have incentives to be rational. Voters do not.”

Caplan suspects that voters cherish irrational views on many issues, but he discusses only views relevant to economic policy. The average person, he says, has four biases about economics—four main areas in which he or she differs from the economic expert. The typical noneconomist does not understand or appreciate the way markets work (and thus favors regulation and is suspicious of the profit motive), dislikes foreigners (and thus tends to be protectionist), equates prosperity with employment rather than with production (and thus overvalues the preservation of existing jobs), and usually thinks that economic conditions are getting worse (and thus favors government intervention in the economy). Economists know that these positions are irrational, because the average person actually benefits from market competition, which provides the best product at the lowest price; from free trade with other countries, which (for American consumers) usually lowers the cost of labor and thus the price of goods; and from technological change, which redistributes labor from less productive to more productive enterprises.

The economic biases of the non-economist form a secular world view that people cling to dogmatically, the way they once clung to their religious faith, Caplan thinks.

As the twig is bent

ABC News: God vs. Science: Most Scientists Are Nonbelievers

An interesting story at ABC on a study about scientists and religiosity.

The question Elaine Howard Ecklund most wanted to answer was pretty basic: Does the study of science drive a person away from religion? It does not, she said in an interview.

Nearly all the scientists who said they believe in God, and have a current affiliation with a church, were raised in a home where religion was considered very important, she said. Thus, they conform to the same pattern seen in the population at large. As the twig is bent, so grows the tree.

Most of the scientists who believe in God have children, she said. And the 3,000 pages of transcribed interviews tell her something else.

“In my interviews, some scientists reclaimed the religion of their youth when they had children, and people in the general public do that as well,” she said

I’d wager that a lot of the ones who were ambivalent about religion were raised that way too.

Ecklund is convinced that her research shows that whether a scientist believes in God is determined primarily during childhood, and most of the scientists she studied came from homes where religion was not considered important. Her study, published in the current issue of the journal Social Problems, puts it this way:

“These data reveal that at least some part of the difference in religiosity between scientists and the general population is likely due simply to religious upbringing rather than scientific training or institutional pressure to be irreligious.”

Aha.

That is likely to be hotly debated in the years ahead, and there is a hint in her own research that suggests otherwise. The disciplines she studied include physics, chemistry, biology, sociology, economics, political science and psychology. Physicists did not lead the list of nonbelievers, which may be a bit surprising given the historic battles between the church and Galileo and Copernicus. Of all those surveyed, biologists were least likely to be religious, the study shows.

The antagonism of biologists to religion is true to my experience - in reading popular scientific works as well as debating on the web. The question is why? I think the popular view of Darwinism as the ultimate stick with which to bash religion makes it attractive to people who are curious about the world and detached from religion. Then there is the “problem of pain”, which is considered to be among the most serious problems anyone with a benevolent view of God is said to face. I don’t personally find it to be the toughest nut to crack; you either grasp suffering as being potentially redemptive or you don’t. For good or ill, my problem has always been divine hiddenness.

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Religion, Catholicism, Christianity, Social science, Education, Science

A bit of Bakhtin

Terry Eagleton reviews a new book on Mikhail Bakhtin:

Bakhtin’s central concept of dialogism does not mean bending a courteous ear to others, as some of his more liberal commentators seem to imagine. It means that every word or utterance is refracted through a host of other, perhaps antagonistic idioms, through which alone its meaning can be grasped.

“Trade easy pleasures”

Excellent Commencement speech at Stanford this year.

Gioia to graduates: ‘Trade easy pleasures for more complex and challenging ones’:

There is an experiment I’d love to conduct. I’d like to survey a cross-section of Americans and ask them how many active NBA players, Major League Baseball players, and American Idol finalists they can name.

Then I’d ask them how many living American poets, playwrights, painters, sculptors, architects, classical musicians, conductors, and composers they can name.

I’d even like to ask how many living American scientists or social thinkers they can name.

Stop whining and communicate

The American Left’s Silly Victim Complex:

This Adbuster’s critique of the American left today had lots to say that I find to be just as true of the left in Canada.

Pique quote:

The American left has turned into a skittish, hysterical old lady, one who defiantly insists on living in the past, is easily mesmerized by half-baked pseudo-intellectual nonsense, and quick to run from anything like real conflict or responsibility.
…

The sad truth is that if the FBI really is following anyone on the American left, it is engaging in a huge waste of time and personnel. No matter what it claims for a self-image, in reality it’s the saddest collection of cowering, ineffectual ninnies ever assembled under one banner on God’s green earth. And its ugly little secret is that it really doesn’t mind being in the position it’s in – politically irrelevant and permanently relegated to the sidelines, tucked into its cozy little cottage industry of polysyllabic, ivory tower criticism. When you get right down to it, the American left is basically just a noisy Upper West side cocktail party for the college-graduate class.

And we all know it. The question is, when will we finally admit it?

And now, the money quote:

A liberal wielding power is always going to seem a bit strange because a liberal always imagines himself in an intrepid fight against power, not holding it. I therefore prefer the word “progressive,” which describes in a neutral way a set of political values without having these class or aesthetic connotations. To me a progressive is not fighting Mom and Dad, Nixon, Bush or really any people at all, but things – political corruption, commercialism, pollution, etc. It doesn’t have that same Marxian us-versus-them connotation that liberalism still has, sometimes ridiculously. It’s about goals, not people.

Awww, shucks. Rolling Stone’s Matt Taibbi started out so well too. The comments are downright hilarious, if you’ve got time to kill. I have sympathy for his criticism and also think he’s highlighted a real solution - stop thinking of yourself as the ragged outsider. It’s delusional. There’s no reason a group like this - tops in education and earnings - is on the outs unless it is because it simply cannot broaden its appeal by way of outreach. Charity starts at home, so listen up. I’m far less impressed with the name change, and really don’t think it adds anything at all. The real use of the term ‘progressive’ is for those in the liberal camp to use in talking with one another. Using it outside the camp gets you nothing but splintering and therefore, weakness.

I remain as Tory as I ever was, so my suggestions here are really intended to strengthen the process by way of seeking a better exchange between the parties involved.

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Social science, Conservatism, Politics

The Traveler’s Dilemma

This quote is taken from a Scientific American story on game theory problem called The Traveler’s Dilemma:

Suppose you and I are two smart, ruthless players. What might go through our minds? I expect you to play a large number–say, one in the range from 90 to 99. Then I should not play 99, because whichever of those numbers you play, my choosing 98 would be as good or better for me. But if you are working from the same knowledge of ruthless human behavior as I am and following the same logic, you will also scratch 99 as a choice–and by the kind of reasoning that would have made Lucy and Pete choose 2, we quickly eliminate every number from 90 to 99. So it is not possible to make the set of “large numbers that ruthless people might logically choose a well-defined one, and we have entered the philosophically hard terrain of trying to apply reason to inherently ill-defined premises.

If I were to play this game, I would say to myself: “Forget game-theoretic logic. I will play a large number (perhaps 95), and I know my opponent will play something similar and both of us will ignore the rational argument that the next smaller number would be better than whatever number we choose. What is interesting is that this rejection of formal rationality and logic has a kind of meta-rationality attached to it. If both players follow this meta-rational course, both will do well. The idea of behavior generated by rationally rejecting rational behavior is a hard one to formalize. But in it lies the step that will have to be taken in the future to solve the paradoxes of rationality that plague game theory and are codified in Traveler’s Dilemma.

Of course that doesn’t make a lot of sense without reading the article, where the game is explained, so I’d do that.

Like the Prisoner’s Dilemma, on which it is modelled, this game gives a fascinating insight into how what we might call “rationalist minimalism” can lead us astray. What puzzled me was the assumption that my “best response” has to be one that leads me to a better result than my opponent. That drives the “Nash equilibrium” to $2, which can clearly be bettered if the two players don’t get too torn up over which one of them gets the largest amount. It’s a bit like a “one in the hand beats two in the bush” scenario. If we both see this, then going for the larger number is not so hard to see. It costs me nothing if my opponent gets a large sum too.

Also from the article:

The game and our intuitive prediction of its outcome also contradict economists’ ideas. Early economics was firmly tethered to the libertarian presumption that individuals should be left to their own devices because their selfish choices will result in the economy running efficiently. The rise of game-theoretic methods has already done much to cut economics free from this assumption. Yet those methods have long been based on the axiom that people will make selfish rational choices that game theory can predict. TD undermines both the libertarian idea that unrestrained selfishness is good for the economy and the game-theoretic tenet that people will be selfish and rational.

It also brings into question an atomist understanding of how societies work, with each of us being lone rangers making choices based on our own thinking through of any problem that comes our way. When do act on such ideas, problems arise. If the subject interests you, EF Schumacher and/or commentaries might interest you.

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Philosophy, Social science, Education, Conservatism, Politics