ADL is Actually Doing Little

(SoCI: Still at Valley View. Remember, kids - if you use a microwave, the aliens can scramble the molecules and get inside your brain.)

I should preface this by saying I am a Jew, I am proud to be a Jew, I don't like getting picked on, and picking on Jews isn't nice. Still, the ADL is conducting itself in an awfully immature, ineffective manner regarding the political equivalent of cyberbullying.

The ADL may have its heart in the right place with this campaign, but I think its resources are terribly misdirected thanks to hypersensitivity. It's a Facebook group, people. It's a well-known fact that Facebook is heavily monitored to a scary degree, which means that it's not exactly prime terrorist organization HQ. (I know plenty of organizations that don't advocate the destruction of anything that prefer to stay off Facebook because of its Big Brother qualities.) There certainly are websites and online groups with power and the capacity to cause real-world harm, but I'm pretty sure they're not on Facebook. Besides, if the ADL knew anything about Facebook, it would want all of its enemies organized through it, because that's the best way to keep tabs on people, especially when your cause is more supported by our government and powerful corporations than theirs is.

The ADL is focused on minor name-calling from a bunch of kids who, even if they are educated about the issue at hand, don't have a lot of immediate global power. For perspective, the organizations I'm more knowledgable about - the mental health organizations - fight very hard against stigmatization and public defamation, but even they don't bother going after Facebook groups or other online annoyances. They have plenty to lose from bad public opinion and yet they focus on those who are really in power. 

I realize that it is somewhat hypocritical of me to claim that an online group of young people can't change anything. The ADL is correct in perceiving an ideological threat in the fact that large amounts of young people are anti-Israel, but they're approaching the issue incorrectly. Shutting down the group is not going to win over hearts and minds from the demographic most concerned with their right to free speech. Taking a cue from Icarus and MindFreedom and even the TAC, what the ADL should be using is counter-education and awareness. If they want kids to support the ADL, it shouldn't attack them but rather stage campaigns of PR that show it, the Jewish community, and Israel in a positive light. They've got a lot to work with - Israel tends to be more progressively secular and modernized culturally, so they can appeal to kids' support of gay rights, free speech, self-expression or sexuality. (Or, they can take a stance that doesn't involve as much annihilation of someone else's culture and homeland - but that's an argument I'd rather stay away from.)

It's also rather hypocritical of the ADL to want to shut down these sites, since they're organizing online and using the internet to connect to like-minded people, and there are plenty of people out there who think the ADL is a dangerous or hate group and want its communications shut down. America allows free speech, and while it's terrible to use the internet to claim that you don't like someone, it's completely legal. The group itself is not advocating violence - in fact, its stated mission is to simply change Facebook's policy and country listings. This is contrary to the ADL's mission but not even close to the sort of threat not protected under free speech. If they want the freedom to organize online against certain ideas and beliefs, then they must respect the freedom of others to organize online against certain ideas and beliefs.

Helping Hands

(SoCI: I'll be at Valley View through the last of July. Will have limited internet access to do things like check on/reply here, Facebook and my newer email address.)

Since I've been bragging to everyone not JF for the last month about how awesome I am for making these, and since this blog has a specific weekly post dedicated to "Stuff I Maked," I now present: JF's Birthday Present. In the spirit of this blog's original conception, I present it in the form of a lab report.

Hypothesis: I am a cool girlfriend.

Research: I got the idea watching Iron Man with him when he kept drooling over the super-high-tech butler helping hands. I got the idea to use lamps when I gave him a broken one of mine to use for parts and he mentioned using it to make some helping hands.

Materials: Secondhand lamps, needlenose pliers, clear nail polish, paintbrush, the internet, stickers, clamps, a flexy light, wire and/or tigertail, scrapbooking tweezers, screwdriver, magnifying glass from headset & plastic holding piece, diamond grinder wheel, magnet with hole, vice grip, dad (for helping)

Procedure: I got some secondhand lamps at Savers, and stripped everything but the base and flexy parts. On one, I unscrewed the bottom of the base, removed the knobs (hint: if you leave the whole clicky on-off knob apparatus intact, it's really fun to play with and annoy people) and threaded tigertail through the magnet, through the switch hole, through another hole, and screwed the base back on. There were two fabric-coated wires poking out of where I took the lamp part off. I trimmed the fabric off (so nothing's flammable), melted a third piece of wire to stick in, and crimped clamps to all three wires. On the other, I took a magnifying part from a headset thing, stripped off the plastic, used another plastic piece to attach it into the flexy part (had to use the grinder to get this plastic piece the right shape). Then I took the little flexy light and wired it to the section of the lamp where the straight metal ends and the flexy part begins.  I found some cool quotes about building/creating/making stuff, and I put them around the bases of the two ex-lamps in letter stickers, painting over them with clear nail polish.

Observations/Data:

Here's the one with the magnifying glass and the attached little flexy light. The light is attached with lime green wire, which is because it matches the stickers I used and also because Bro lost my copper and silver wire. The card attached to it (with lime green ribbon, I might add) has the entire quote I put around the bottom, since only the abridged version would fit.

Here's the quote around the bottom. This one by Alice Walker says "Helped are those who create anything at all, for they shall relive the thrill of their own conception and realize a partnership in the creation of the universe that keeps them responsible and cheerful."

A close-up of the magnifying glass attached with the plastic piece and the little flexy light. The paper I used for the cards is paisley because JF likes paisley. The little cards match the big birthday card I made and the tissue paper I used to wrap them in.

This is the other one. The little knob in the middle is part of the lamp base that I screwed back down over the tigertail running through the magnet, to hold it down. The magnet is where the on-off knob used to be.

A close-up of the three clamps. They are on rubber-coated wires that are a few inches long. The wire is posable, but a little less easy to keep in a set position than the flexy lamp arms or the flexy light.

The magnet and the quote. This one is by Philipus Aureolus Paracelsus and says "When a man undertakes to create something, he establishes a new heaven, as it were, and from it the work that he desires to create flows into him... for such is the immensity of man that he is greater than heaven and earth."

Conclusion: I think he liked it.

Things I Would Change: The first one doesn't flex all the way; something I didn't think to check on when buying the lamps. It's rigid metal until about halfway up. Also, the wire setup I used to attach the flexy light could definitely use some work (I won't be surprised if the first thing JF uses these to do is improve on that) but I tried a couple different things and this was the best I came up with. Tigertail plus beading crimps were a flop, and there was no way to superglue it while leaving easy access to the battery compartment. I also wish the wire the crimps are on was a little more posable.

Diagnosis: Human (Mad Pride Manifesto)

(SoCI: No, I'm not turning into Furious Seasons. I'll still have other stuff to talk about here. This is just a continuation to my previous post, and is here in celebration of Mad Pride month. Next week, new soapbox, I promise.)

Thus, we are “depressed” not because the world is being destroyed while we sell our hours to mindless routines, but because our brains are too weak to handle it. We are “ADHD” not because our culture slams us with an average of 3000 media messages a day, but because our brains are too weak to handle it. We are “schizophrenic” and “bipolar” not because we were traumatized or overwhelmed by the madness of our culture, but because our brains are too weak to handle it. Instead of taking a ruthless moral inventory of our culture, families, societies, economics, religions, education systems, and pointing the blameful finger outwards, we do it of and to ourselves, and now of and to our biology. Everyone is mentally ill, that is, every individual except the sum of the parts: society. ~From "Indicator Species?" by Steven Morgan

I can't get to the page to link you guys because I don't have a membership and don't want to fool around with all that, but apparently if you log into the DSM-V website, there's a place for "suggestions", and the DSM guys list five categories of suggestions. One of these is "suggestions for a new disorder to be added to the DSM."

When you consider that the DSM is pretty much the be-all-and-end-all Bible of psychiatric diagnoses, that's just weird. Inviting laypeople to make up new disorders? Nobody gets to make up other types of diseases; one has to discover a microbe or isolate a cluster of symptoms or something. This exposes the fluidity and subjectivity of what many people like to present as a solid, objective science. This invitation to create mental illnesses out of imagination, social stigmas, boredom, thin air or whatever speaks volumes about our society and the nature of mental illness.

Most mental illnesses are seen as disorders because they prevent the person from functioning properly in the social world we have set up for ourselves. People have become so indoctrinated into this reality that they fail to realize almost all of the expectations placed on us are arbitrary and unnatural. Nobody counts "air dependency" as a disorder, but if we all tried to live on the moon, this would become a failure-to-cope disorder just like mental illness. If our society had an established place, purpose, or outlet for "mentally ill" behavior, it would become normal. Normal and healthy behavior is completely relative - an American assertive, go-get-em girl would be seen as irreparably rude and offensive in Japan. Does that mean that by changing location and surrounding culture, this girl acquires some sort of behavioral condition? Is failure to hold up to the expectations of other people really a disorder?

I'm not denying the existence of psychiatric quirks that fit DSM-style definitions of named disorders. I'm not (in this post) bothering with the argument over whether they arise from genetics, brain chemistry, environment, choice, or alien lasers. Those are all extraneous issues. The fact is that some people perceive an alternate reality or experience a state of consciousness that is foreign to most, and society as a whole has chosen to recognize these differences as dangerous or broken. 

The most beautiful as well as the most ugly inclinations of man are not part of a fixed biologically given human nature, but result from the social process which creates man. ~Erich Fromm

Why have we chosen to label certain thought patterns as disorders and not others? My entire family hates being late, to the point that we tend to show up obnoxiously early to things. This creates major stress as everyone gets anxious and tense and people start lashing out at each other because they're upset over the threat of being late. Yet because our society values punctuality, it is acceptable to allow this fear to create high levels of stress. But if a different situation causes one to become very anxious and upset, they have OCD, a phobia, paranoid delusions, etc. Even though excessive need to be around other people may culminate in perpetual partying and perhaps a neglect of relationships, studies or other responsibilities, the DSM IV is lacking Tucker Max Disorder because wanting to be around other people has been deemed "normal" - but excessive need to be alone is bizarre and strange. I can write a checklist of traits and say "if these apply to you, you have X disorder," but that's meaningless. Homosexuality used to be considered a mental illness but today is a (kind of) socially acceptable variation on thought patters regarding sex. Did it suddenly become healthier? Why haven't doctors ever decided that cholera or the flu "isn't a disease anymore, jk guys"?

I concede that many people who are labelled mentally ill may engage in behaviors that are destructive to themselves or others, but I honestly believe that if we collectively showed more respect, empathy and need for those whose minds we do not understand, we would severely diminish addiction/self-harm/homelessness related to mental illness. People often assume that these choices stem only from the thought patterns, without considering that the choices may instead be a reaction to the frustration, anger and alienation that are a result of society's refusal to validate those thought patterns. In an interview on Madness Radio, Richard Unger points out that "recovery" rates for mental illness rose significantly in the 1970s and theorizes that it's because during that time, altered or extreme or alternate states of consciousness were more accepted and so the people experiencing them had the opportunity to work through, engage with, and share them.

It is not possible to separate the autism from the person. Therefore, when parents say, ‘I wish my child did not have autism,’ what they’re really saying is, ‘I wish the autistic child I have did not exist and I had a different (non-autistic) child instead.’ Read that again. This is what we hear when you mourn over our existence. This is what we hear when you pray for a cure. This is what we know, when you tell us of your fondest hopes and dreams for us: that your greatest wish is that one day we will cease to be, and strangers you can love will move in behind our faces.~Jim Sinclair

Before you argue with me on this point, realize that the thought patterns so strange to you have a huge part in allowing your daily life to continue. You appreciate the madness of others every time you turn on the lights (Nikola Tesla, who paved the way for modern electricity, would be considered "very weird" by any social standards), admire Van Gogh's Starry Night (said to represent the ups/downs of manic depression) or wake up in peaceful America (Winston Churchill, British Prime Minister during WW2, made reference to periods of depression as his "black dog", possibly indicating what the DSM refers to as Major or Manic Depression). Would these accomplishments have been possible if the minds of these three men adhered strictly to the thought laws we have established? I'm inclined to doubt that.

If everyone thought inside the box, we'd still be living in the stone age. Creativity and problem solving require the pushing or breaking of boundaries, and historically this has been done by those who do not see or understand those boundaries to begin with. Society relies on the outcasts of thought for progress, but fears them and chooses to arbitrarily define "normal" within random but rigid limits, leaving little room for psychological quirks. If the majority of the population was bipolar, things would be set up to accommodate them, and those without bipolar "symptoms" would struggle to fit in and understand the world.

My main point: Normal means only what we allow it to. There is no such thing as standardized, healthy behavior. Labels are arbitrary. The DSM is a joke. "Mental illness" means nothing. The ostracization of the strange is deeply hypocritical.

Everything we think of as great has come to us from neurotics. It is they and they alone who found religions and create great works of art. The world will never realize how much it owes to them, and what they have suffered in order to bestow their gifts on it.~Marcel Proust

Recommended Reading:

Dissident Voice: Mental Illness or Social Sickness?

Harvard Gazette: Creativity tied to Mental Illness

FAQs on the DSM website addressing some of the issues I've raised

Critics of the Concept of Mental Illness (Really long PDF scanned book chapter)

Who's Afraid of the Big Bad Brain?

(State of CI: Noticing a theme? Mad Pride Day is today. In the upcoming days, the world will be seeing celebrations of neurodiversity, creative maladjustment and destigmatization, as well as declarations of freedom, worth and value from those society has labeled sick or abnormal. MFI has more information here. )

Neurotypical (or NT) people have neurological developments and states that are consistent with what most people would perceive as normal in their ability to process linguistic information and social cues. While originally coined among the autistic community as a label for non-autistic persons, the concept was later adopted by both the neurodiversity movement and the scientific community. ~"Neurotypical", Wikipedia

There are a lot of things out in the world to be scared of. Angry dogs, drunk drivers, fire, floods, nuclear war, people bigger than you, guns, global warming, microbes, monsters, scorpions, getting caught, pandemics, violence, loneliness, uncertainty, fear itself. But ask me what in this perpetually level-orange world scares me the most, and the answer is this: the fact that many people believe that the inability to cope with society's arbitrary standards strips an individual of basic dignities and rights to self-determination, and that frustrations, fears, struggles, perceptions, and beliefs outside the accepted patterns of collective thought and reality render one incapable of making healthy choices for oneself.

The good folks at the Treatment Advocacy Center think that involuntary treatment of the "mentally ill" is an awesome idea even if the people are not endangering themselves or others. The first two bullets under their Mission Statement make this clear - they believe that the mentally ill need other people to make choices for them and that waiting for them to become a danger before forcing treatment is wrong. They claim that "people with schizophrenia and bipolar disorder cannot think clearly" which is a completely inane statement for a few reasons:

1.) People with what is referred to as bipolar disorder have "flat" periods during which they are asymptomatic, so even if they were "cognitively impaired" during episodes, they would not be complete morons all the time

2.)  John Nash, Ted Turner, Mark Twain and Winston Churchill; among others

3.) A large group of schizophrenic, bipolar, and others with different minds manage to maintain a few collective communities, run on anarchist principles, which organize events, create publications, and otherwise display the ability to "think clearly" 

Other claims made by the TAC include:

 "we don't take away rights, being crazy already does that." So if you can metaphorically show that someone is already "not free", it's okay to continue to take away their freedoms! I'm off to steal from people in wheelchairs and violate the privacy of blind people because I'm not taking their civil rights, their disabilities already have! It's like robbing a poor person.

"Involuntary treatment hasn't been shown to be harmful." That's why the CIA guys giving LSD to subjects without consent got pats on the back. Nobody has issues getting locked up and  given mind-altering drugs against their will. You wouldn't have a problem with it, would you? Oh, and all these people are liars.

"The mentally ill are violent" This ignores some basic cause-effect issues - for example, those who don't take their meds may be more violent in hospitals/jails because other people are trying to force them to do stuff that threatens their sense of safety. Try and force me to down some beer and we'll see where my elbows end up (hint: your soft parts) but does that mean non-drinkers are violent? It also ignores studies like these, muddies their main point ("force-treat the nonviolent ones"?) and acts as a scare tactic.

Especially chilling is the fact that the words "will" and "rights" as applied to the mentally ill are in quotation marks here. Think about the implications of those quote marks around the "wills" and "rights" of other human beings.

There's a bigger issue here, but it's for another post, and that is the diagnoses themselves - the question of who gets to decide what's rational and what's delusional; what behaviors are healthy and which are not. Most people would agree that stepping in to save a life is good, but what the TAC is advocating is forced treatment for people who are simply not functioning within the parameters of the world we have set up for ourselves. They want everyone to see the world their way, and are threatened by alternate perceptions of reality or society. They think limiting forced treatment to "violent" or "dangerous" people is not enough. We have come up with arbitrary labels like "bipolar" or "schizophrenic" to apply to certain thought patterns and behaviors, and we have collectively decided that they aren't going to fly in our world. People who do things differently are broken and flawed - nevermind that the expectations placed on them are entirely artificial constructs of society. If schizophrenics ran the world, the TAC guys would have a pretty tough time. (Stay tuned for a full-fledged post on this.)

Moral of the story: think like us, or we will make you.

Scared yet?

If you think this has nothing to do with you because you haven't been labelled or diagnosed, MindFreedom has this to say: This movement is open to ALL, whether or not you have personally been labeled by the psychiatric system. Mad Pride is really about Human Pride. Yes, given humanity's track record, Human Pride may seem daunting. Mad Pride celebrates how each person's eccentricities, passion, uniqueness and freedom makes you truly human. Do not allow our very humanity to be pathologized by a corporate mental health system that has gone out of control! Celebrate YOUR Mad Pride!

If you want to see what people have to say on both sides of the debate (or take action), here are some organizations that lean against forced treatment:

Law Project for Psychiatric Rights

Citizen's Commission on Human Rights

(Mind the sensationalism and the ironic Church of Scientology connection)

The Freedom Center

MindFreedom International

Bazelon Center for Mental Health Law

And here are some that favor it:

National Alliance for Mental Illness

The American Government

(also note all the police support of the TAC)

I'm having a difficult time finding more independent organizations for this section, as all searches lead eventually back to the TAC and all their "affiliates" are really just localized or specialized offshoots of their own group. They and NAMI appear to have monopolized this issue. Hm.

A Tour Through Time

(State of CI: No, the blog's not broken. I disabled comments on this one. I'm also still on the river, unless the rattlesnake-catching was successful, in which case I'm probably at a hospital in Utah. Anyone who thinks it's awful that I'm joking about this can check out the most recent Bubblegum Psychology Today.)

The Trafalmadorians can look at all the different moments just the way we can look at a stretch of the Rocky Mountains…it is just an illusion we have here on Earth that one moment follows another one, like beads on a string, and that once a moment is gone it is gone forever. ~Billy Pilgrim in Kurt Vonnegut’s Slaughterhouse –Five

I’ve been thinking about the nature of Time ever since I was a little kid and started thinking about traveling through it to meet George Washington and things like that. I don’t know exactly what Time consists of, but I do have a few ideas.

I believe Time exists in a sort of space, on some plane not included our three dimensions. The Earthling vision of time is as a line on the conventional XY graph, a very straight line – beads on a string. In this vision, time travel is completely impossible since there is no “past” to return to and no “future” has been created. The line is a ray existing only up to the present, and the future is an infinite plane of points, of which only one will occur. This vision is what muddies up the concept of free will – if time is a straight line, then only one thing will ever occur, regardless of the infinite possibilities. You have complete control until the present, and once things occur, they become inevitable. Here time is like a zipper, one very tiny line moving at a steady pace, obliterating every other possible point on the Y axis as it passes the X point. The only way for time travel in this version to occur is if every passing moment repeats itself over and over, suspended on that line, hovering in fourth-dimension space like a broken record. Thus, travel into the past would be possible, but travel into the future would not, and the traveler would have no power to change anything, as the line had already been drawn. It would be like re-watching an old movie. I work with this version of time to live in the commonly shared reality to do things like go to school and relate to other people.

"Each clump of symbols is a brief, urgent message - describing a situation, a scene...there isn't any particular relationship between all the messages...when seen all at once, they produce an image of life that is so beautiful and surprising and deep. There is no beginning, no middle, no end, no suspense, no moral, no causes, no effects. What we [Tralfamadorians] love in our books are the depths of many marvelous moments seen all at once."

There’s also the personally experienced Time – every moment individual to the awareness of its existence. Here every person has their own string of beads that doesn’t connect to any others, and the present is nowhere but where they themselves are. Every one is directly straight like Earthling Time, but may become tangled or crossed with another, and all go in the same direction suspended in the same space that is shared Time, where fate is housed. Here Time travel is tricky since one may only move along his/her string of beads, but it is intensely connected to everyone else’s, and probably only possible in the individualistic “unstuck in time” sense of Slaughterhouse-Five.

Then there’s my synaesthetic Time, existing of its own substance but within the space we also exist in, a rolling, moving, round and colored sequence suspended in our world and cycling through. Here “traveling through Time” makes as much sense as “traveling through toaster” or “traveling through speech”. It is comparable to (my) thought; substance immaterial existing in space material. It’s visual and concrete. This is how I see and understand clocks, calendars, schedules and sometimes other people when I get frustrated.

"If you know this," said Billy, "isn't there some way you can prevent it? Can't you keep the pilot from pressing the button?"

"He has always pressed it, and he always will. We always let him and we always will let him. The moment is structured that way."

Other versions allow for time travel, future predictions, and parallel realities. Time may exist on a plane beyond the Z axis, meaning it runs alongside our reality but is not made up of the same stuff as our reality. This version allows for belief in a God who exists outside of Time, supremely eternal and wholly unaffected by Time. It allows for time travel by moving around in the space Time exists in, not by moving around in Time. Here, Time is a large plane like the Rocky Mountains with our reality running like a thread through it or along it, borrowing and diluting its substance to make a line of seconds and minutes and hours to organize things in our dimension. This allows for parallel realities, threads that branch off or double back. Because Time exists in space, it can assume shape, creating cause-effect webs, new realities, and moving over to make a space for God. Moments spread out and interact with other moments, and none are more valid or more present than any others. The moment we are on is one point on the big plane, with Time stretching out all around us. This Time can be stood back from, seen, understood, manipulated. This allows for free will and time travel because it is a less restricted version. Time travel is possible here but it would take some serious human invention, since it would involve moving outside of our linear reality. We can stand on top of the Rocky Mountains because we’re made of the same stuff they are, but to move in the space that Time exists in we would have to change our fundamental nature somehow – become water in order to truly move within the ocean. To imagine this, flip space and time around. You can stand in one place on the floor, but the rest of the floor still exists even when you're not standing on it, because it exists in space and time, like we do. If time existed in its own space, it would be like the floor, with every part of it existing with its own nature simultaneously.

This version of Time is so beyond our understanding and our human limitations, and I think it’s this break in perception that frustrates theology and cosmology and quantum physics and all that. We as people invented linear time so our watches would mean something, and then we applied this Earthling construct to things that aren’t limited like we are – God, or the universe. Trying to understand those things in our terms of Time is like trying to understand color in terms of sound. Applying our human perception of Time to things not bounded by it is like trying to find the factory where stars are made (I mean human Henry Ford assembly-line factories, don't say "nebula") or trying to figure out how God breathes. That’s why I think the whole Creation debate is meaningless – we’re trying to place God somewhere on that XY line when He’s the graph paper and the pencil too. It is this version of time that I see as analogous to the human mind – infinite, existing in space, characterized by its relationships and connections.

It was about people whose mental diseases couldn't be treated because the causes of these diseases were all in the fourth dimension, and three-dimensional Earth doctors couldn't see those causes at all, or even imagine them.

Recommended Reading

Wake Forest University: The Nature of Time

Timeless Reality: The View From Nowhen

Linear and Dimensioned Time

New York Times: Time in the Animal Mind

Vice Magazine: "Time" is exchanged/turned into art within a Mexican prison(Caution: photo of a guy in underwear; possibly not-nice sidebar links.)

Thou Shalt Do As I Say, Not As I...Say

(State of CI: I'm on the river! This is another ghost-post. Sorry I'm missing the IB scores freakout, but I think Bro's rattlesnake-catching should provide a similar atmosphere.)

That is a pretty fantastic Jon Stewart clip highlighting the slippery slope that is using Leviticus in public theology. I've been thinking a lot lately about the rules that people follow in the name of religion and how twisted and re-interpreted everything gets - especially in terms of modern Christianity and how it's represented in the media and politics (which in this case are basically the same thing) and the self/community-appointed leaders who take it upon themselves to interpret the Bible and tell us all what God wants us to legislate - I mean, do.

These verses imply that re-interpreting the Bible's rules according to what seems right at the time is perfectly okay - that "right" is a fluid, flexible concept that changes with culture, with the individual, and with the circumstances:

Acts 15:28 For it seemed good to the Holy Spirit and to us to lay no greater burden on you than these requirements.

Romans 14:23 If you do anything you believe is not right, you are sinning.

1 Cor. 6:12 You may say "I am allowed to do anything," but I reply, "Not everything is good for you."

1 Cor. 11:16 But if anyone wants to argue about this, all I can say is we have no other custom than this, and all the churches of God feel the same way about it. (About women covering their heads)

1 Timothy 2:2 I do not let women teach men or have authority over them.

These seem to say that God's law is to do what is "right" and that we as humans have a lot of wiggle room when it comes to deciding what is and isn't right. According to these, cultural norms and changing situations can affect what it means to be a follower of God. One main idea of Christianity is that "Jesus lives", which isn't just a neat catchphrase but also a reflection of the faith - if the role model is still here among us; still existing and growing alongside our world - then it makes sense that the religion modeled after Him would also be able to "live" and grow and change. By this definition, homosexuality is no longer a sin because it's becoming accepted, and swearing may not be a sin if it's tolerated within a certain social circle, and with proper physical and emotional protection, certain sexual behaviors might be alright as well. It's also a personal thing - if I believe that not swearing brings me closer to God, then swearing may be sinful for me, but to a Christian who's trying to "life-witness" or doesn't believe in that power of language, it might not be. This allows for an individual faith and less judgment among people regarding how everyone else should behave. Keep in mind a lot of these verses are in the context of witnessing, with the idea being that "within certain parameters, whatever it takes to love on people and relate to them is right by God" - which could mean that God prefers a Christian to laugh along with dirty jokes rather than play the blushing-virgin act if it's going to make them and the faith seem more accessible and less stiff, judgmental and boring.

These verses imply that it is not - that only God really gets to know and gets to decide what is truly "right", and that the nature and the letter of the law never change, regardless of personal feeling or cultural circumstances:

1 Cor. 4:3-4 I don't even trust my own judgment on this point. My conscience is clean, but that isn't what matters. It is the Lord Himself who will examine me and decide.

1 Cor. 9:21 (about fitting in and hanging out with nonbelievers) But I do not discard the law of God; I obey the law of Christ.

Romans 12:2 Don't copy the behaviors and customs of this world...

2 Timothy 2:19 The Lord knows those who are His...Those who claim to belong to the Lord must turn away from all wickedness.

2 Timothy 3:16 All Scripture is inspired by God and is useful to... teach us what is wrong in our lives. It straightens us out and teaches us to do right.

1 John 2:4 If someone says "I belong to God," but doesn't obey God's commandments, that person is a liar and does not live in the truth.

One thing I remember strongly from synagogue is the idea that God never ever ever changes. He is eternally the Lord and He'll never change His mind or decide to do things differently. This is one way in which He is set apart from humanity. The God of the Old Testament lays down serious, strict laws with harsh punishments for not following them - and even if one believes that Christ's death cancels out this covenant, the idea that God means business when it comes to rules still transfers through the testaments. So does this mean every specific rule in the New Testament is of the "do not pass Go, do not collect $200*" variety, even if those in Leviticus aren't anymore? (*My mom says that when she wants us to do something NOW and to do it WELL and to do it WITHOUT WHINING.) 

These verses imply that questioning the currently accepted interpretations of the Bible is okay:

Romans 16:17 Watch out for people who cause divisions and upset faith by teaching things that are contrary to what you have been taught* (*referring to the original teachings of Jesus and the Apostles)

1 Timothy 4:2 These teachers are hypocrites and liars. They pretend to be religious, but their consciences are dead.

These verses imply that it's not:

1 Peter 2:13 Submit yourselves for the Lord's sake to every authority instituted among men.

Romans 13:2 He who rebels against the authority (established by God) is rebelling against what God has instituted.

The tricky part here is figuring out whose authority is endorsed by God and whose is "false." Jesus warns that liars and false teachers will gain great followings and that Satan can disguise himself as an "angel of light"; so how is one to figure out whether or not Bush and Dobson are really qualified to speak with God-given authority? My honest opinion is that their teachings should be checked against the Bible itself, and that if they contradict Biblical teachings, then they are a devil in angel's clothes. The problem is this process tends to go backwards - Dobson says "being gay is evil," and people manage to read that into the Bible, even though there's no verse that says exactly that in the New Testament. It seems kind of unfair of God to say "go with what feels right to you, unless of course it's wrong." I think, though, that most of the "authority" referred to in the bottom posts refers to political, not religious authority. Today that issue is muddied with the combination of political/religious leadership - further evidence to support the fact that the Church is not a political organization and should disentangle itself from Washington asap.

One of my favorite teachings is that Judeo-Christian morality isn't for pushing on non-believers but only for holding fellow believers to:

1 Cor. 5:12 It isn't my responsibility to judge outsiders, but it certainly is your job to just those inside the church who are sinning.

To me, this lines up perfectly with the slogan "Against gay marriage/abortion? Then don't get one." We can believe something is wrong, but nowhere in the New Testament does it say "force nonbelievers to follow our rules." It says "try and get nonbelievers to believe;" but it always says to do this with gentleness and love. Nowhere does it ask or equip the church to get involved in politics or laws. This isn't exactly relevant here, but I like it.

Then there are the verses that imply that the laws of the Old Testament have been obliterated, but which do so in a roundabout way that tends to also imply something much more obtuse:

Romans 7:4 The law no longer holds you in its power, because you died to its power when you died with Christ on the cross.

1 Cor. 9: 20 ...even though I am not subject to the [Jewish] law

Galatians 5:4 For if you are trying to make yourselves right with God by keeping the law, you have been cut off from Christ!

Colossians 2: 14-23 He canceled the record that contained the charges against us...Don't let anyone condemn you for what you eat or drink...such rules are mere human teaching.

There's also the fact that most verses about sex refer only to "sexual immorality," "sexual impurity" or "lustfulness" - and the only specific NT examples of How Not To Use Your Parts are intercourse outside of marriage, incest, and going to prostitutes. Somewhere along the line people decided that this meant any sexual behavior outside of marriage (maybe barring kissing) and certain types of speech and clothing. What would have happened if it was interpreted differently - if people decided "immorality" and "impurity" just meant things that felt wrong or were dangerous or hurtful - like unprotected sex, rape, or sex without honest emotional awareness/commitment? What if the interpretation was that those rules were for health and protection and that thanks to contraceptives and methods of preventing STDs, maybe now intercourse outside of marriage is okay if one is careful, safe, healthy, loving and responsible about it? This jives with "Christianity as a personal, living faith" but not with "God as an unchanging, all-knowing being." Why has our culture evolved to allow Good Christians to drink after 21, to wear shorts and not cover their heads - to enjoy plenty of freedoms not allowed to Christians hundreds of years ago - but the rules that didn't change were sexual? Of all the Thou Shalt Nots in the NT, almost all of them are forbidden because they hurt people (slander, lying, killing, stealing, etc.) but sex isn't allowed just because it's "dirty"?

So what do you guys think? Is the Bible open to interpretation? Do "right" and "Godly" mean the same thing for everyone or is it an individual distinction? Do cultural changes and norms have any bearing on how faith should be expressed? Who gets to decide what God says is okay two thousand years after He last explained things to us? What, exactly, is sin? How much of a jerk is Mr. Dobson? 

To Have Seen Nothing

(Every concrete memory I have from going under for my wisdom teeth)

The doctor tells me to squeeze his fingers and I know it is only to help get the IV in my vein but I imagine he is holding my hand to help me feel better. I am staring down the mask on my nose at its dark pink interior, trying to decide if it smells like anything, inhaling to determine odor, not because someone is telling me to. The last thing I hear is the beep beep beep of the heart monitor, which sounds just like it does on TV and I think how clichéd, how stereotypical. I picture the green blinks and listen to the beeps and think, that sound is me. I am crying and the nurse I do not like is telling me to stop, which is exactly what I wake up to, so I don’t realize it is over until she says I can go home when I calm down. Nothing is visible, not even the blackness of closed eyes. I give up trying to see anything and wonder what shoes I am wearing. Someone asks me what color Gatorade I want and I become aware of a refrigerator without seeing its glow or hearing the seals pop as it opens. I don’t feel my mouth move or hear the words but I know I am saying “I don’t care, I don’t care,” which is a lie because I only like red, but I am scared and angry and desperate to go home and trying to sound like an adult so I say “I don’t care” when I really want a red one. The nurse I do not like says, “give her whatever we have the most of,” which makes me mad because it isn’t nice and sad because I know it will not be red. I know she is talking to someone, but I can’t hear them. I have no idea whether I am sitting or standing, moving or staying still, and I try to determine what shoes I am wearing because I cannot remember and it is something I want to know. Everything I know comes from an inside-out awareness, since all I can see or feel is a fuzzy nothingness and I can’t hear anything except the voice of the nurse I do not like, which comes sharply purple and brown through one side of the nothingness. Then hands I think are my dad’s but hope are not because I know I am a mess and it is embarrassing.

(Next thing I know, I’m waking up to a dislocated jaw and a purple Gatorade. I wore my green Converse high-tops. I apparently managed to take them off and change into PJs before getting into bed, but I have no memory of this, or of the car ride to my house.)

Big Brother's little sister Big Pharma

Since theocracy is the rule of God or its priests, and democracy the rule of the people or of the majority, pharmacracy is therefore the rule of medicine or of doctors. ~Thomas Szasz

I was at the doctor’s the other day, and I saw something incredibly disturbing. In the examination room, there were at least seven drug or drug company logos – on two wall calendars, a clock, a clipboard, two posters and a pen. If you’ve been into any doctor’s office lately, it’s hard not to notice the immense amount of drug-branded swag that’s everywhere.

Boris Sidis was a man after my own heart – a psychologist in the early 1900’s who spoke out against what he saw as social diseases (war and eugenics, to name a few) and was in great opposition to mainstream psychology and especially intelligence tests. He published The Psychology of Suggestion: A Research into the Subconscious Nature of Man and Society, the full text of which can be found online here (beware: annoying site layout). Experiments discussed towards the center of this page illustrate that people’s minds jump immediately to what they saw the most or what they saw last.  It is not a stretch to imagine that a doctor is more likely to prescribe the drug that immediately jumps to mind because it’s on the pen being used to write the prescription.

(Don't believe me? Say silk three times. What do cows drink? Most people will give an answer they know is wrong because it rhymes with the last word they said and because they have it mentally associated with cows and drinking. Now apply this concept to doctors. Scary stuff.)

The “results” section of this experiment report contains this observation: It was observed that the inclination to brand name prescribing was more and there were occasions when prescribing by generic names would have reduced the cost of treatment.

This study found that Although it is widely supposed that pharmaceutical advertising accounts for rising CCB use, this is the first study to substantiate that advertising patterns are consistent with this claim. Pharmaceutical companies devote substantial resources to drug advertising, despite assertions by physicians that they pay little attention to advertisements. Only 3% of physicians surveyed by Avorn et al described drug advertising as a "very important" influence on their prescribing practices. Beliefs regarding 2 index medications, cerebral vasodilators and propoxyphene, however, corresponded more closely with advertising claims than with published scientific evidence.

Here’s the issue: humans are suggestible. The more you see something, the more ingrained it becomes into your mind and the easier it is to access immediately. This means that doctors who see the same drug logo constantly, associating it with convenience and charity when it’s printed on useful gifts, are more likely to prescribe that drug. The more they do this, the more money the drug company gets to continue advertising in this manner, and the vicious cycle continues.

What we can do about it: Know your stuff. Be wary when you’re prescribed anything, and ask questions to make sure the doctor has thought this through. What are the alternative drugs and how do they compare in terms of price and side effects? Has it been shown to be the most effective drug for people in your exact condition (co-existing conditions, age, gender, etc.) by independent research, not the research of drug companies? Remember that for most involved, this is about your money, not your health.

 Recommended Reading:

Dangerous pushing-for-profit of atypical psychiatric drugs

Money trumps the rights of patients as mental hospitals are encouraged politically to prescribe expensive new drugs not proven to be an improvement

"Pushing Prescriptions" - a report on pharmaceutical lobbying

American Medical Student Association scorecard on "conflict-of-interest" policies regarding gifts from drug companies

Shakespeare In Bed

(A quick scene sketch, that's why there's no beginning/ending. Inspired "cute" by  a discussion "smart" about Ayn Rand.)

Charles Dickens would be a boring lover, I decide. I’ve only ever read David Copperfield, but I remember incredible dullness and traditional gender roles, both of which equal lights-off missionary.

“Really?” He hasn’t read any Dickens, so he takes my word for it. “Okay, Sylvia Plath.”

“Totally neurotic, but probably wild too.”

He agrees. “Switch in a moment from on the floor with ten cans of whipped cream to you want to put what where?”

I laugh, but I feel somewhat guilty gossiping this way about someone I see as a kindred spirit, so I change authors again. “Joseph Conrad. I bet he was really smooth.” He hasn’t read Conrad either, and we’re both still a little stuck on Plath’s virgin/whore dichotomy, so I throw in Mary Shelley. “She had to have been crazy.”

“Oh, definitely. Shakespeare.”

“Thought he was way better than he was.”

“Seriously? The guy could get you off by whispering!”

“I don’t know about that. I’m sure he was great at pillow talk, but high expectations almost always disappoint.” I know it’s blasphemy to see Shakespeare as anything less than a stud, but he had to have an ego, and a guy with self-confidence and the linguistic ability to express it has almost no chance to live up to the anticipation he talks up.

“Fine.” There’s a pause while we envision more authors between the sheets. This all started with his observation that Ayn Rand seems preoccupied with hands and violence. He comes up with one before me. “John.”

I’m confused. He quickly clarifies. “Really gentle and attentive. Definitely, because those are the aspects of Jesus he focuses on the most.”

He’s right, but I’m not about to delve into a discussion of the sexual personalities of Biblical figures. My imagination is bizarre and distracting enough in church already. I exhale softly, a substitute for ignoring him, and roll over. The phone, hot with power from the charge cord, burns into my ear. I’ve got one. “O’Henry. Good the first time, but the same thing every time afterwards.”

“Good? Had to be boring and preachy.”

“How much O’Henry have you read? You know he had to have had that one signature move that was great, but overused.”

He describes one, “you mean like that?”

I blush, grinning. “Yeah. But even that would get old after a while. Poe.”

“Oh man. Master of kink.”

“You sure? He seems like the shy type.”

“Those are the ones you’ve got to watch out for.”

“But he married his cousin.”

“Um, case in point.”

“I dunno, he still seems like the type who might want it but wouldn’t have the guts to ask.”

“I’ll give you that, but once things got going…”

My mental image is a modified cask of amontillado. I need a quick subject change. I curse my school for not assigning the Classics – all I can come up with are contemporary authors he hasn’t read, and the conversation lulls into quiet.

"Communism" vs. communism

I have a serious issue with Misters Stalin, Mao and Castro. They’ve provided a baseless foundation for countless moronic “arguments” against perfectly legit social reforms. Marx and McCarthy aren’t off the hook either.

There have been plenty of teachings that discuss the evils and dangers of loving money, mistreating lower classes, and not sharing. Judaism teaches farmers to not harvest the corners of their fields because everything belongs to God, which means people need to share. The food growing in those corners is available to any poor or any travelers coming through (Lev. 9:9-11*). Christianity teaches self-enforced class equality (1 Cor. 9:22**) and need-based sharing of resources (2 Cor. 8:14***). Respected Buddhist teacher Atisha is quoted as saying “The greatest achievement is selflessness. The greatest worth is self-mastery. The greatest quality is seeking to serve others…The greatest medicine is the emptiness of everything.” Sounds a little like Stalin’s calls to selfless loyalty and the Communist concept of eliminating ownership.

But do you hear people screaming “THAT’S JUDAISM!” when we discuss welfare programs? “THAT’S CHRISTIANITY!” when we lament the gap between the lower and upper classes? Or “THAT’S BUDDHISM!” when we propose that materialism, possession, and money might be harmful to certain aspects of society (like privatized medicine?) No. People immediately bristle with “THAT’S COMMUNISM!”

I’ll be the first to concede that terrible, terrible things were carried out in the name of Communism. But people being morons doesn’t change the ideas they’re ostensibly pushing. Remember the Crusades? People don’t claim “THAT’S CHRISTIANITY!” when we hear about tortures and abuses at Gitmo. This is because Christianity has had better PR and more people have read enough of the Bible to realize that it’s not about the Crusades. There are aspects of what we know as Communism that are awful – repression of individuality, elimination of religion, etc. We need to step far away from all this and start from scratch, because sharing our toys and empowering the common man (or to use a word with some connotations, the proletariat) are very good things. Unfortunately, one can hardly propose any measures to push for these without being accused of Communism. People make it sound like socializing medicine is going to bring Zombie Stalin back from the grave to start killing people.

Here’s the issue: plenty of good ideas have gotten bad reputations, enough so that identifying something as Communism today counts as an argument to shut it down, when in reality the detractor has failed to establish “Communism = Bad” as a premise for their argument.

What we can do: stop letting faulty language and definitions get in the way of innovations in social reform. Refuse to allow new ideas to be labeled “Communism”, or use “Stalinism” or “Marxism” as a stand-in for what most people describe as “Communism”. Be educated enough to call out this faulty premise, and be confident enough not to back down as soon as you’re accused of being “Communist”. And keep a watch out for Zombie Stalin.

* "When you reap the harvest of your land, you shall not reap all the way to the corner of your field…you shall leave them for the poor and the stranger."

**“When I am with those who are oppressed, I share their oppression”

*** “I only mean that there should be some equality. Right now you have plenty and can help them. Then at some point they can share with you…in this way, everyone’s needs will be met.”

Recommended Reading:

Stalin discusses language and Marxism

Lenin's summary of Marxism to compare with the stated goals of today's mainstream Public Welfare Foundation

Modern-day anti-Bush program that was founded by today’s Revolutionary Communist Party

McCarthy rallies against Cold War Communists