Monday, December 17, 2007
The Silly Season Returns
When I say silly season I mean politically. Granted, The Simpsons is pretty silly, but that's nothing. Just today I found out that Nevada is "ready for Hillary." Okay. I wasn't ready for that trash on my porch when I got home, but okay. But beyond that is the silliness of those making a religious contest out of the Republican nomination race. JFK had the right idea when he simply said that his religion had nothing to do with his qualifications, but some people insist on some sort of idealistic purity or something, so yesterday I saw old Mitt defending his faith and his various positions on Meet the Press. He's a fair dancer, but I did notice something that rubbed me the wrong way.
He said last week that "freedom requires religion", he really did. He agreed that he said it, but he said that he was basically paraphrasing John Adams who said that "Our Constututional Republic requires a moral footing to survive" or words to that effect. Mitt extrapolated that to mean religion, which is probably a great way to turn off any non-believers and athiests right off the bat. I'm not sure why people think they need some old guy in the sky to tell them how to behave, but they do. The trouble is that everyone seems to define "old guy in the sky" a bit differently, and then a few people write books of supposedly revealed words from the "old guy in the sky" which of course conflict in one way or another with other revealed words from the same source, and so we can and do argue endlessly about whose interpretation of "old guy text" is indeed the correct one. Just for grins, here is, once again, my take on why it's best to behave and treat each other nicely.
First, take lying. You can do it. Anybody who never does it is a fool. Remember that Dostoyevsky story called "The Idiot?" It's about a guy who never lies. But, even though you're going to do it some times, you must always know the truth. That means that, as Mark Twain noted, telling the truth is a lot simpler. If, in fact, you lie all the time you will sooner or later have no idea what is reality and what is just your own lies spinning back at you. I'm sure, looking at the history of, oh say the CIA, that such a thing does happen to real people all the time. That can't be good for them, and certainly isn't good for the rest of us.
Lying and other behaviors that upset people result in your being shunned more and more by more and more people. That is, you become much less and less likely to have any influence on how things go in the world. In fact, if you're bad enough we put you somewhere that you really can't control much of anything at all, which is after all the whole idea of a prison. Behaving yourself, even without the threat of prision, will let you have more of an influence over more of your fellow humans, and therefore make you more effective, and make you feel better.
That's a quick and dirty summary, but it also is an explanation of why one should behave that does not refer to any supernatural power, or any reward and punishment beyond what naturally flows from human interactions. Now, back to Mitt, he says, and I agree, that if people aren't acting reasonably well toward each other we can't have a civilized nation. Where we part is when the silly man says that only religion can provide good behavior. Sorry, Mitt, you lost me.
John Adams, by the way, was a Unitarian like me. Tom Jefferson, also by the way, hated and feared organized religion of any stripe. I don't really think that the founding fathers thought of religion as necessary to a free society. In fact, I'm pretty sure that's why they separated it from government in the first amendment.
There's more silliness afoot. And for the record, I don't think that Mitt Romney's religion has a thing to do with his qualifications as President. I was just trying to illustrate the silliness of mentioning it in the first place. Well, I'm off to Jolly olde England, so until next year, toodle-oo.
He said last week that "freedom requires religion", he really did. He agreed that he said it, but he said that he was basically paraphrasing John Adams who said that "Our Constututional Republic requires a moral footing to survive" or words to that effect. Mitt extrapolated that to mean religion, which is probably a great way to turn off any non-believers and athiests right off the bat. I'm not sure why people think they need some old guy in the sky to tell them how to behave, but they do. The trouble is that everyone seems to define "old guy in the sky" a bit differently, and then a few people write books of supposedly revealed words from the "old guy in the sky" which of course conflict in one way or another with other revealed words from the same source, and so we can and do argue endlessly about whose interpretation of "old guy text" is indeed the correct one. Just for grins, here is, once again, my take on why it's best to behave and treat each other nicely.
First, take lying. You can do it. Anybody who never does it is a fool. Remember that Dostoyevsky story called "The Idiot?" It's about a guy who never lies. But, even though you're going to do it some times, you must always know the truth. That means that, as Mark Twain noted, telling the truth is a lot simpler. If, in fact, you lie all the time you will sooner or later have no idea what is reality and what is just your own lies spinning back at you. I'm sure, looking at the history of, oh say the CIA, that such a thing does happen to real people all the time. That can't be good for them, and certainly isn't good for the rest of us.
Lying and other behaviors that upset people result in your being shunned more and more by more and more people. That is, you become much less and less likely to have any influence on how things go in the world. In fact, if you're bad enough we put you somewhere that you really can't control much of anything at all, which is after all the whole idea of a prison. Behaving yourself, even without the threat of prision, will let you have more of an influence over more of your fellow humans, and therefore make you more effective, and make you feel better.
That's a quick and dirty summary, but it also is an explanation of why one should behave that does not refer to any supernatural power, or any reward and punishment beyond what naturally flows from human interactions. Now, back to Mitt, he says, and I agree, that if people aren't acting reasonably well toward each other we can't have a civilized nation. Where we part is when the silly man says that only religion can provide good behavior. Sorry, Mitt, you lost me.
John Adams, by the way, was a Unitarian like me. Tom Jefferson, also by the way, hated and feared organized religion of any stripe. I don't really think that the founding fathers thought of religion as necessary to a free society. In fact, I'm pretty sure that's why they separated it from government in the first amendment.
There's more silliness afoot. And for the record, I don't think that Mitt Romney's religion has a thing to do with his qualifications as President. I was just trying to illustrate the silliness of mentioning it in the first place. Well, I'm off to Jolly olde England, so until next year, toodle-oo.
Labels: Politics
