Interesting facts about the history of English dialects

Many of the things I go off on are just me messing around with ideas I have no business writing about, but linguistics is one topic on which I actually know my stuff. Too bad it is very boring to most people and does me little good gaining a reading audience!

But a recent book that I read I would suggest to anyone. 'The history of the mother tongue and how it got that way' by Bill Bryson I devoured in the last few days--the closest thing I get to page-turning fluff. (Those sensitive to this kind of thing might avoid the chapter on swearing, even though it is quite fascinating). I have known quite a lot about this topic already (I taught a section of History of English at BYU), and normally I do prefer to get more into the technicalities, but this book is full of fairly interesting and amusing gee-whiz facts about English that most people would probably be interested in and also not know.

A few things I didn't know. Who doesn't love reading things translated into English around the world like this message on an eraser in Japan: 'This product is environmental kind and will self destruct in Mother Earth.

One fairly curious point that I think would surprise most people is that American pronunciation, rather than being 'newer' or more modern, is actually often a preservation of archaic pronunciations because they were isolated geographically during a particular period of change in the Isles themselves.

Most people are aware that in the UK there are some fairly diverse pronunciations, and that in a much bigger area, we over here, on the other hand, kinda sound all just Americans. This is because the colonization process ended up sampling and freezing snapshots of a larger and more rapidly changing set of dialectal varieties because it stashed particular variables across the ocean where they wouldn't change along with the others.

Also probably something I would add to this theory is that of the two Americans are put more on guard about how they say things. UK people have always been considering anything said over here abominable. Samuel Taylor Coleridge called the word talented a 'vile and barbarous' coinage of America. It was actually first recorded in Britain in 1422; as most words, it happened there first and actually only gained the horrible notoriety that one would imagine when using the word talented (or customize, etc.) when noticed being said by Americans. Consequently many famous Anglophiles like Franklin and Jefferson are extremely apologetic about anything considered American--resulting in the likelyhood that everything different over here is likely to be older, and not newer, because we have less confidence to innovate.

For instance, most movies if they were portraying Queen Elizabeth I, would certainly have her pronounce vowel in 'plant' more like the 'ah' in 'want,' If anything they usually have historical figures sound even more British than the British today if that is possible. Turns out Bess would have said her /ae/'s just like 'Mericans do today.

The change to the long 'ah' vowel actually happened in the UK in the 1800's, so this would be an example of the US preserving the former pronunciation even though it usually gets characterized as being the upstart of the two speech communities. The UK is the hotseat of linguistic diversity and change in English and always has been, and the US is actually the more uniform, and it turns out, conservative, of the two.

New posting activity in my various blogs

I had a few comments on my recent posting that were collectively a bit weightier than doing an italics or anything like that, although there is not yet a very good way to do this in my opinion. For now I thought I would try to make a separate note even though it doesn't really work as a time-sensitive post.

I am still less than a month into writing for public consumption. And it seems to me that there is a process involved when I publish something officially that makes the typos all of a sudden start glaring at me. Before I hit 'publish post,' mistakes are unimportant enough that they blend into the background. I think I remember that phenomenon from watching something print out on those old dot matrix printers!

Also, there is another wave a few weeks after I write something and I have totally forgotten what I wrote about that helps me revise further. So it turns out that I also do quite a bit of cleaning up of my longer documents a while after writing them.
Hence any of you who are reading my posts, first congratulations, and second you may want to wait a while. They do get better. I am generally a very good editor of others' writing, and I can even do it to my own after a while. I may have made this comment before but it bears repeating.

Also, a note about my two Huckabee posts. At first I thought I wasn't at all into the sad state of GOP primaries. That is probably the case because the nags they put out each time are so utterly depressing. A few of the issues, however, about Huckabee and Romney have interested me because of the obvious personal connection above just choosing a primary candidate, so I started writing about it. At first I assumed that I didn't have much to say as per usual. Then the length of the short blurb of a post I planned to do surprised me, but at first I hoped to keep it within one post.

Now I have no idea how much I will write about it, but my thoughts have currently evolved into two separate posts which make two fairly different though related statements, which I will state now in case actual them reading fails to communicate my intentions:

1. The GOP has a reason to want to crack down on evangelical hostility to Mormons rather than indulge it for any temporary peace they hope to keep within the party. Letting a group with specific standards for religious ideological uniformity anywhere in politics have their way on this one (Romney being automatically out)is IMO feeding an insatiable monster to which we will have to offer the sacrifice of more and more potential conservative candidates of various religions down the road, and wider public fear of that monster will scare more and more moderate voters away from the party.

2. Why the excuses for not doing #1 (from perspectives of those who don't want it to be done) are all washed up.

I would be interested in whether any of you who read the posts end up getting those general ideas out of them. If not, I have more work to do. If you do get where I am coming from, I would also be interested in what you think also. And if you are only going to read them once you might want to wait a while still!

Elephants at the party and the GOP's Mormon problem

There is a saying that when elephants start dancing, mice get out of the way.

The GOP's most elaborate and embarrassing dance steps yet are for placating their large evangelical component. My feeling is that party leadership would prefer to condemn any hint of religious bigotry toward otherwise qualified candidates such as Romney. But instead they avoid it, hoping to keep peace with this feisty faction rather than risk its wrath themselves. And wrath is truly the word--this group is famous for it. And often they confuse the wrath of God with their own. They can turn any issue, seemingly as innocent as where people buy their toothpaste, into one of imminent hellfire for any unsuspecting discount shoppers, as they did in a recent documentary.

Most conservative leaders and strategists don't deny that some party constituents have deliberately sabotaged elections of otherwise viable Mormon GOP candidates--handing congressional seats and governorships to democrats by default. Beyond that, it starts getting tricky because, fairly so, people reject being broadly characterized when there is unpopular behavior involved.

To get beyond that tediousness, I will try sound as though I do not wish to speak definitively for all members of these religious groups or even know exactly what to call them. So because I know that ignorance about my religion and who exactly comprises it causes obvious mistakes, I will at least try to admit a certain amount of ignorance about who these groups are or what they call themselves--purposely avoiding overly-specific labels or absolute certainty about why their members do certain things (like picketing my church services, for example, which I know that someone does).

Whoever these exact people are and whatever they are called (evangelicals will suffice here until someone better informs me), the results, when they become politically active in the name of religion, are clear. Many examples could bolster my case but one is sufficiently illustrative: When Matt Salmon was running neck and neck for governor of Arizona in 2002, his Democratic opponent eventually gained the upper hand after a group of concerned citizens put banners on his billboards with the nasty suggestion to 'vote Mormon.'

The GOP's glossing over this problem as an unfortunate but inevitable reality isn't necessary, and the longer they do, the more candidates will be sacrificed to an appetite for religious ideological purity that is not appropriate in politics. If it is instead confronted once and for all, everyone will benefit--everyone except for those with indefensibly bigoted positions, of course. And history is not kind to those who are caught defending such positions in the name of any excuse. Consider how civil rights activists treat past historical figures that even tolerated the status quo about race relations--ultimately, we are held to a higher standard, the right standard.

And why should the GOP continue to risk an unfavorable association with those that they don't even support? It certainly should not be because of something as lame as never getting around to raising the issue. The issue being whether they are willing to hand over the reigns of the party that values a broad religious tent (the only party that does), to the left, whose leadership would ban everyone's sacred practices with Marxist zeal. Would this sacrifice be worth it simply so a privileged few can exorcise a personal religious beef?

Well as unfortunate as it is, the party leaders prefer to avoid this confrontation like they would avoid kicking a bees' nest, leaving them quite free to contaminate the reputation of the larger party with rhetoric about faiths (only including Mormons, but actually encompassing Islam and most bravely even Catholicism) that evangelicals happen to think are 'heretical.' Party leadership claim relative powerlessness in the face of such powerful beliefs, but why evangelicals even get to label heresy, and why placement of that label on candidates during elections is even appropriate at all, is a matter that they can definitively decide if they have the stomach for the unpleasant task.

Out of the context of this particular election (where they can avoid any more conceded larger point by insisting that the problem is actually Mitt himself and perhaps Mormonism itself), if the GOP could possibly drop the kid gloves they would do well to once and for all pose this question: can individual religious beliefs of any party constituents receive larger party sanction in any way under any circumstances?

If asked and answered in the affirmative, the question will simply mean that the party ceases to be a political party and starts to be a religion. Are there those who actually might prefer us to have religious elections every four years? That is something that does get said about the right, so we had better not do anything to confirm it if it doesn't fit. Most believers in the party itself do NOT want to give up the hope of reaching broad ideological consensus among those of different religions, but if they want to substitute that consensus for a future contest between narrow religious sects, they should by all means permit such internal squabbles. But I hope they welcome the party's pejorated reputation resulting from giving the right to religious ideological purification to a group that claims hellfire as the destination of a large number of the electorate.

And I mention that fact not because it is a point of religious contention with me personally (because it is--I don't think those who don't think as I do are going to hell, and I especially wouldn't relish the thought.) But rather I mention their curious focus on doom for the unbeliever because in my opinion when evangelical doctrine is scrutinized like they themselves would scrutinize Mormon doctrine now, is what won't go over particularly well with all of the supposed 'damned' voters (most of them). It turns out, Mormons are only a small number of the 'un-elect.' In fact, some particular brands of evangelical brethren are not even mutually assured salvation it seems, depending on who has irritated whom recently.

And evangelical belief in who may be hellbound goes beyond, in my opinion, their mere objective judgment of it in my opinion; it actually seems quite important to some religious persuasions that their fellow human beings are destined for eternal suffering. And one of the reasons they consider Mormons heretical is they don't share this feeling with them. When my oldest son was four he attended a 'non denominational' preschool. When he questioned, mildly, that those born in India or Africa and who would never hear Jesus Christ's name mentioned should have to suffer like any unbeliever, he was kicked out of the program. I am not making that up. She said she couldn't tolerate heresy in her home. And what was his heresy? My son simply thought that others' suffering seemed unfortunate and unfair in his mind. So the definition of a nonheretical doctrine must be one that also maintains a properly enthusiastic attitude about the damnation of others, and doesn't just acknowledge the fact of it.

In their most comfortable expression these non-heresies, evangelicals often say that Catholicism, just like Mormonism, ‘isn’t really Christian.’ But what evangelicals often say among friends or while teaching preschool children wouldn't ever be as surprising as their liberty to pass such notions for public political ones. Perhaps it is good that the GOP does not scrutinize all done in the name of private expressions of faith--because it is true that politics shouldn't be about such things. But the problem is that they are the only ones that don't currently use smearing someone with any associated religious belief as a strategy in politics. Allowing that kind of scrutiny of Mormons alone, if they allow any at all, will eventually sanction the scrutiny of all religious members of their party by democrats if Huckabee were to get the nomination by running on an anti-Mormon ticket.

So the question about Romney in particular this year shouldn't be whether Southern or Iowan evangelicals will excuse him for what they find problematic about Mormon doctrine. The question the GOP should make sure it asks and answers before sacrificing one more Mormon candidate like him is whether--in a world where any beliefs associated with a candidate's religion are mete to rule out his candidacy--evangelicals will fare any better with their critics than the Mormons do with now with theirs.

They should hope so because refusing to deal with this issue will hasten the day when religious beliefs are held up for approval right along with the candidate's other qualifications. Democrats will eagerly encourage any sense among the electorate that the whole politics thing is actually about what attitudes and prejudices they might have about this or that faction of the right. They would love it if rather than having a debate about conservative principles, which as a party we all think will win every time they are actually tried, the electoral process should instead be about whether the public shares individual religions' positions about Catholicism, or even which principles they think should be basic to Christianity itself. Of course no one will agree about any faith issue in a political election--that forum for discussing them isn't appropriate.

And thus the vote for no religion at all will win the day. Why didn't Marx himself think of anti-Mormonism as a way to have the populace vote against religious expression? It would have been quite effective if it had been tried just this way.

How far does it get the GOP to not deal with where this is all headed, when the reality is that if Huckabee were to win the nomination, someone on the left will waste no time pointing out that his denomination believes that Catholics aren’t Christian, and thus along with Mormons, Jews and Muslims, probably 95 percent of the world’s population is going to hell? Aside from that bleak statistic not being very enthusiastic on the accomplishment of the all-important work of creationism of the evangelicals' God, this opinion just won't be something that wins elections. And so unless GOP leaders actually feel comfortable voicing those types of opinions they better be prepared to at least deal with them, because by association, most people will think they share them.

For now the GOP is trying to bide time, allowing this large, loud and powerful portion of their base to skate by on this one. But the risks of failing to maintain the ideal of religious tolerance that the larger party embraces are dire--and GOP leaders that attempt to save themselves while this group publicly embarrasses the rest of us (elephants really shouldn't dance at all, frankly) will like mice, look cowardly and small.

Branjolina, Schadenfreude, and The Perils of Pygmalion

This post is proof that I listened first to my mom and later (a little) as an English major for four years. Themes of great literature are truly timeless and can continue to give insight in unexpected places. Even if some of them are kind of snoozers. Just Kidding, Mom.:

After the new focus given by My Fair Lady, everyone seems to have forgotten that George Bernard Shaw’s main theme of Pygmalion is right out of Paradise Lost. Rather than adopt the happily ever after theme of the Greek legend that gives the play its name, Shaw's Pygmalion, Higgins, is given a Miltonic twist: he is the lonely, anguished creator, having worked his masterpiece and then unexpectedly betrayed by it. Pygmalion himself, in designing the perfect woman, has only his hubris to blame in his mistaken hope of the perfect woman; while she seems like a great idea, she would be too good for him. Higgins, the perennial bachelor, blows it with even a real woman. He sours to her because as a common ordinary man, he is unable to cope in a real relationship and is threatened by either fault or perfection in the end.

Rather than a stone Venus that is model for legendary perfection in women, a wife must be a flesh and blood partner. It is quite the dilemma that we are all in. We want perfection in others, their faults of course being obvious obstacles for us in many ways, but we all seem to resent it quite strongly if the ideals we hope for in others are actually approximated.

I was standing in the supermarket line today and was actually drawn to one of the stories on Angelina Jolie, Brad Pitt, and their shocking recent statements about their daughter’s race. Their partnership and resulting daughter is the ultimate product of Hollywood and the supporting culture—youth and beauty are everything, the ultimate hallmarks of success.

But also running strong through our culture is an intense counter-current of resentment of anyone who successfully attains those hallmarks. People are hated simply because they happen to have the bad luck of winning the game we are all playing. Angelina Jolie said openly that she feels that her blonde daughter will be an ‘outcast’ in her world. She didn’t say, but it also may be such resentment or resulting lack of an ability to relate to this child that they haven’t had to rescue from a desperate third world situation, that keeps her daughter home with hired help when the rest of the family are out recreating together. Jolie and Pitt typify physical beauty that our culture craves but they are also as much of a product of its unanalyzed values; they are successful, but in order to be able to handle that success they must attain new extremes of reflexively exorcising their collective guilt for that success rather than simply enjoying it.

Because resentment and jealousy are such fundamental human feelings, the Hollywood compulsion to the third world is only an extreme example (Hollywood is extreme about everything) of everyone’s natural tendencies. We are more comfortable relating to those who we feel have less to resent for or be jealous of. Thus we seem to value cultivating proximity (for comparison's sake) to people who are less rich, less smart, less attractive—we all want to stand next to the person in the picture that makes us look thin and not the one that doesn’t. This is obvious and harmless. But we err when this comfort crosses over into the desire to build important relationships on such a stratification of qualities rather than a real partnership of flesh and blood equals. This is the fallacy that there exists an actual idealization (like Rousseau’s) of a type humanity untouched by the material rewards, such purity creating access to a type of virtue that the rest of us miss, sullied by the aims we know in our hearts to possess. But Rousseau, among many others, probably is less attracted to the virtue of unspoiled humanity as he is repelled by the threat we all feel any time anyone else succeeds in playing the game that we all try to win ourselves.

In the case of their biological child, Jolie and Pitt are coming up empty. Hollywood activism is a natural magnification of extreme idealization of virtue once its possessor is safely judged to be non threatening. And of course no one is knocking Hollywood activism, not even in this blog; the problem is the resulting lack, when there is this simplistic perception of virtue and compassion, of any basis for positive empathy toward anyone others than someone we feel safely superior to. Apparently there is difficulty, in this extreme Hollywood example, (just like in the worlds of Bernard Shaw and Milton in a far flung corner of the world), in trying to have natural familial relations based on anything else. But when you have defined virtue in other people by making sure they are safely ‘have nots’, so you they can’t resent them for any reason, what do they do when your own child is one of the ‘haves’? Jolie elaborated thusly, saying that since her daughter has had everything handed to her, in Jolie's mind her daughter will miss out on something fundamentally important for qualification as a valued human being.

This is relating to others with the mistaken view of a Pygmalion creator figure. In this way the Jolie/Pitts are only an extreme example (again, Hollywood) of the awkwardness that often results when people try to have interpersonal relationships that don’t agitate any of our various conflicting/difficult natures, and our mistaken guesses about what qualities in others we would actually value if we were to choose them AS their creators. Parenting only brings such normal creative instincts to the surface in an obvious fashion, as did the situation in Paradise Lost and Pygmalion. Of course we are taught that we are to give our children every advantage—even the ones we didn’t have ourselves. We are to selflessly slave away time and resources to make sure that they succeed even in ways we ourselves didn’t. But then we are faced with the anguish of the Miltonic hero: if we succeed in our creation, will we be able to relate to them as equals? Will they betray us once they are more powerful? And thus will our fear of such betrayal cause us to preemptively feel threatened by them as we are often threatened by others?

Wouldn't we rather just have our children be like us after all, rather than follow through with that idealistic parenting? Fact is, many parents do just that. They set out to give their children a leg into a better world and then pull back if they cusp it. In an interesting study of parents of older children, parents end up being closer not to the children who have above else lived lives their parents approve of, but those who live lives more closely to their own. We teach our children that nice, unselfish squeaky wheels shouldn't even ask for grease. But of course we grease squeaky wheels just like everyone else, and thus our children who are perceived to be more needed by us have our closer, more involved parenting, while those that dutifully listen to us and go and do as we tell them are probably going to wind up less close, after less need for our parenting interaction.

This manifests itself in a number of common ways, and not just despairing as Jolie has that your child doesn’t blend into your carefully-crafted multi-ethnic hoard. Pretty much every child or younger sibling for that matter gets some type of lecture about how, (when that child has actually benefited from better circumstances that we seem to be all seeking for ourselves and our families), he didn’t really have to attend the much more educational school of hard knocks like we did.

It can quickly get much worse when the resentment of others who have 'had it easy' is unsoftened by any such familial relationships. Those who we are confident are worthless (unschooled by the reality of our real struggles) because of their riches or other success can be objects of open scorn, even violence. Thousands were victims of brutality and murder during the French Revolution simply for having what their murderers wanted for themsselves, so easy is it to translate jealousy into the depersonification necessary for the ultimate injury. And this is one of the tragedies of Pygmalion and each of our lives. When we are faced with a person who might have more than us (in any real or perceived way, and who really can escape our potential for envy) we try to level the playing field against them with our own denial of affection. Thus the rich person in the mansion or whoever might qualify for resentment (really in need of compassion just as anyone) is denied the most fundamental humane treatment of all.

This retaliatory impulse makes us much think we are more comfortable with others whose achievements do not exceed our own, even if they represent no actual detraction to our circumstances. The unfairness is obvious and it creates a situation where unfortunately no one can win this game we have made up. By definition Jolie's daughter lacks worth because she has the advantages we are trying to make sure that everyone has. We establish standards as a society, but rather than celebrate when anyone meets them, we of course express natural resentment and hostility. Resenting others for what they have is actually such a common emotion that our language has no word for it, which is very typical. Our language ironically seems to label those faults and/or good qualities which we perceive as important, but be less comfortable expressing the ones which ones actually are real weaknesses.

Thus we must borrow words from German to describe the very common feeling of delighting in another’s misfortune (or the reverse, which I am talking about here), because it is so common and ordinary that probably we never need to ever talk about it happening. In the Chinese orthography system, an argument is represented by two symbols for the female form. Three women are the word for gossip. Two women, or people to be fair, apparently get together for the purposes of labeling the faults of a third, absent, person. But the characteristic of resenting the success of others probably would not ever be discussed in this way, thus no need to label it. In fact no need to admit it.

Why is it that we feel this automatic resentment for the occupants of the larger house on the hill? They did nothing to us. Their attainment of success does not detract from our own enjoyment of what we have. Yet greed in our language and our culture, is a much bigger problem than the real problems that actually cause us all to suffer. Not one of us has immediate circumstances lessened by the fact that someone else has more. What actually causes pain and anguish are the everyday, small expressions of common resentment and hostility from the actual people in our lives, not nameless, faceless ‘wealthy, greedy, selfish, or materialistic’ villains, though it certainly seems to be easier to think so.

Like Schadenfreude, those qualities which barely have a name, all around us, are our real enemies. Which are the more important virtues: niceness/meanness or benevolence/malice? The answer seems to me to be that the qualities in our culture, or that we think are important in others, are inversely proportional to their actual identification as such. Because we are unwilling to deal with people's real faults, and unable to deal with those without faults, we have a great deal of difficulty being able to take comfort in any of the relations near us, and even worse can indulge openly violent hostility to those far away. Because of this complete surrender to common hostilities and resentments of others, we may have to settle for inventing a wife out of clay or a family out of a third world.

Huckabelievers: Don't find yourself Huckstered--his excuses are weak

It seems like every time Huckabee opens his mouth about Mitt Romney and the Mormon Church recently, he needs two or three excuses to explain what he said, why he didn't say something else, why he waited so long to say it, etc. It seems like if someone is always needing excuses for it, it might be a bad sign about what he seems to be talking about. And unfortunately one of the things he has talked about lately is that he was concerned about one of Mormonism's doctrines.

And it seems the larger religion of which he is an active part, evangelical Christianity, is also quite often coming up with excuses about why it is that even mentioning a candidate's religion in a political campaign is appropriate, much less their dubious stance toward these other ideologies. They particularly attempt to justify why some of them oppose members of those groups in primaries in their own party, often causing the democrat to win as a result.

These groups as I mentioned sometimes respond to what little scrutiny they receive about the issue with the concern that Mormons, belonging to a church named 'The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints' since its inception in 1830, are not Christian. But would this concern fly about a Jewish candidate? Evangelical attitudes seem the same toward a number of other groups to which the 'not Christian' label wouldn't ever apply, including Judaism and Islam, with slams on new-ageism, paganism and whatever 'ism they can think of on top sounding extremely similar.

If I had to guess it is just an instinctual response to anything that presents ideological competition for these religions to scare their faithful into action. And the use of preaching is a much wider mechanism for interaction with the flock. Billy Graham participated in a documentary alleging that discount stores were threatening the souls of unsuspecting budget shoppers. But the fact is that preaching at the pulpit is an effective way to clarify any threat from any evil, in this case against threatening candidates, and pointedly do so when the collection plate goes around also helps I imagine.

And but it is important to distinguish that using this threat as an excuse is baffling because, unless candidates are really running in a race of religion and there is not actually a wider body of political philosophy that unifies conservatives, Mormon candidates pose no loss of political power as would perhaps a pro-choice candidate.

Thus the fact that they believe there should be some kind of showdown when a candidate is among the less tolerated groups highlights the fact that some factions on the right DO think that it is perhaps not really a political contest but a religious one. The larger party, which does not feel this way, should of course be careful giving any such sanction--after all this is one of the spectres the left waves to attract voters away from our party. We would bring that spectre to life if we indulged such excuses.

Thus holding the religiously intolerant to account to avoid these problems will have wider implications than just this election. But this election itself will make it much harder to turn a blind eye, particularly recent attention to statements made by Mike Huckabee a 'religious conservative' and former preacher himself. If those like Huckabee continue to make ridiculous statements about Mormons, eventually they will attract enough of this negative attention to party infighting that no one will ever forget that crazy cousin party leaders keep trying to hide in the political family.

I think Huckabee was relying on just this practice of turning a blind eye to evangelicals' issues when he made recent statements about Romney's faith. Probably many heard about it; I did, and I don't follow the whole sad saga of GOP primaries closely. But others, and not just Mormons or their friends, found Huckabee's recent claims dubious. He said that he was inclined to be tolerant and fair toward Romney and Mormons personally, but that he was concerned that Mormons held the view that Christ and Lucifer were brothers. Just concerned, that is all.

Right. I am at best skeptical here. Without a better explanation than that, this 'concern' makes much more sense as a deliberate slander on Mormons in general and Romney in particular as his rival. I am sure that Huckabee and his people are somehow aware of how easy it is to stir up this animosity and fear among those who are so inclined toward Mormonism, and rather than to choose a high profile moment to rise above it, he instead jumped in the fray.

So that's the reason just being concerned about Mormonism, doesn't wash. If Huckabee were actually interested (even concerned) about this issue, he wouldn't have had to raise it with Romney himself in the context of a national political election.

Any average, every-day Mormon has some kind of an answer to this question, precisely because it has been asked so long and so often by similar detractors. Any church representative of average learning or expression could give a fairly basic explanation of their thinking that all beings living or otherwise are siblings on the spirit level. Basically anyone that has a name--Lucifer, Jesus, Sally, Arnold, anyone--is the spirit brother or sister of any other, because all of us call God 'Father.' That doesn't speak to whether Sally or Arnold are spiritually identical, even humans have the equivalent of some kind of half siblings, so their is plenty of conceptual room for an understanding that the belief that having a common father can make brother and sister of various spirit entities in a way that even if not consistent with their personal views of God or the human soul, few people would find 'concerning' if explained in this way.

Thus it would be very easy for someone to understand at least how Mormons themselves feel about this issue without the necessity creating some strange association of Jesus Christ with the devil at the national level to besmirch a candidate in a GOP primary. It is very easy for any basically intellectual person to get the whole story on this issue without raising it in this type of debate.

I also doubt the validity of his second excuse, that Huckabee felt compelled to make this statement about Mormon doctrine because he feared silence would imply acceptance. Somehow, though, most high-status members of the GOP, such as Reagan who has spoken warmly of the Mormon church at BYU, and George Bush senior who welcomed Romney to speak on this topic at his library (and both who have met amicably with Mormon church leadership), have been able to avoid coming down on either side of the issue. No one was confused that these presidents might be closet Mormons if they neglected to speak harshly on one of the church's possible doctrines. The last four presidents, actually, have been extremely positive about Mormons in general without feeling obligated to endorse or even mention any specific doctrine or other.

Nothing really makes sense here except Huckabee's eagerness or at least willingness to make some kind of cheap shot to access ambient negativity toward Mormonism among his potential supporters. The GOP continues to allow this, and this is perhaps why they often give excuses of their own that don't wash. There seems to be the belief that in general Mormons are an expendable group and no hardened secular politician will grieve for them if they are out of the party. They are consolidated in western states we don't need, etc.

Even if GOP leaders were to think such states of affairs are unfortunate, they must use the excuse for inaction that doing anything is hopeless, because it is obvious that evangelicals among them tolerate Mormonism less than losing political control. But if the GOP were willing to talk about this problem in the open, the obvious either or fallacy in their thinking would emerge: Mormon conservatives should not just be assumed damaged goods for risk of angering evangelical constituents; in fact, appealing to the reasonable among evangelical groups would clearly benefit all parties. These Mormon candidates (at least the conservative ones) would actually wield that power in a manner more highly favorable to many evangelical political objectives, more so than even the statistical average among their evangelical brothers, and definitely more so than the resulting democrat they may help into office.

In fact it is easy to point to elections that Mormons win, in a wide variety of states. And they are particularly able to win in states when a large contingent of out of state religious conservatives doesn't come around with their usual anti-Mormon tracting. So this would be an easy one: leave your proselyting for your missionaries--the Mormons do. Not one of the members campaigns for any candidate as part of their church affairs, they wouldn't risk their tax exemption among other things.

But there is the state of Mormons and then their direction. As they are, Mormons are an increasingly untapped leadership resource, that if the GOP continues to automatically rule out, will be a big waste. Mormons are the MOST Republican of ALL GROUPS (Yes of course I know that there are exceptions--even one in ten is a very strong conservative trend though that ten percent represent a large number of people). In the 2000 election, for example, about 90% of the voters in Utah cast for Bush. It was the third election in a row in which the democrat came in THIRD (remember Perot?) in that state. I would think that the party faithful would think this tendency made the Mormon component of conservatism to be desired and cultivated rather than thrown to the dogs.

Mormon percentage of the population could even grow and even out among the states. A presence within the party that is enthusiastically supportive of both party candidates and principles you would think that the GOP would cultivate and emulate rather than automatically subject it to capricious abuse to keep them from running or worse voting.

Another GOP excuse might be that they don't really know any very well on the east coast, but surely Mormons are pretty creepy, right? I think we need to go no further than two words: Mitt Romney. In fact, Mormon Republicans are like Romney, among the most user-friendly conservatives around. They don't tend to have quite as many skeletons in the closet that will come out on election eve like that DUI that everyone hoped would just go away. No MAJOR behavioral and character flaws like some of the conservative ideological leaders have been embarrassing the party with. (And though Rush Limbaugh has been making many of these points like a champ, this one he has avoided, for obvious reasons).

I am not saying that Mormons are perfect--they aren't. And in fact a fair criticism of Mormons (that I will even admit to myself) tends to be of their hypocrisy because of their high standards. We do have a pretty long and strict list of behavior and character restrictions, and so of course we will have a hard time living up to all of them. The fact that Mormons are not perfect is fair and I won't argue (even though it really is obvious and thus unhelpful)--but for GOP leaders looking for candidates to prop up, it is at least somewhat handy that Mormons have these high aspirations in the first place. They tend to at least limit the amount of say substance abuse, womanizing, or gambling that any GOP candidate or intellectual will obviously get rubbed into his face.

So what I am saying is that although true, the excuse by anyone that Mormons don't live up to their own standards 100%, having those standards at all allows GOP leadership some amount of comfort that a Mormon candidate, increasingly a higher and higher percentage of the true-believing conservatives out there, won't end up with some horrible failing to sabotage them at the last minute, or the first minute for that matter.

It is so hilarious to watch the likes of Chris Matthews, with obvious tedious frustration that there is little to smear Romney with. ('Moderate' candidate fans, like those for Guiliani and McCain, just wait until after the primary to see the big party the media has pulling them down because of their personal lives, and I hope you will be happy to at least have gotten rid of Romney). But for now, I think assuming that he won't be the candidate and they have to use all their dirt now, Matthews keeps running shows with his own excuse that he has nothing to smear him with: Who IS this Mitt Romney? What do we REALLY know about him? (He tries to sound as if he hasn't actually been trying REALLY HARD to get to know Mitt Romney, at least to dig up some amount of dirt on him).

But more importantly for the party, even if Mormons must remain a necessarily untapped resource for conservatives for whatever excuse that well they just seem oh-so-unsavory, there are those eager to point highlight the situation and say that it represents wider superstitious bigotry on the right, to the detriment of all conservatives and the GOP, even though the left are no great fans of Mormons themselves.

My feeling is that at least one of these people is going to eventually get sick of using tired excuses and someday decide to do something about the tanking Mormon candidates get from those in their own party. When this is addressed we will not only have some increasingly better candidates to run, but we will honestly, without excuses, be able to say that we stand up for freedom of religion, and that we value a candidate's faith but don't evaluate it in the voting booth. What the evangelicals are doing would change that and no one will be happier than the democrats.

Mitt Romney, Mormons and Modern fashion

A few years ago I saw an obstetrician on one of those Maternity Ward type of shows and I found myself thinking automatically: ‘That man is Mormon.’ Why? I am not sure, because really the only thing that I could tell about him outside of his professional context was his dress: a dark suit, white shirt and tie. But possibly, that combination is getting more and more stereotyped as something that Mormon men do.

It occurred to me that maybe this image of the power suit, really only popularized in the 80’s, just happened to coincide with a period of explosive growth in the church’s worldwide missionary prominence: the widespread image of two youths in white shirts walking down the road happened to become universally recognizable also at a transitional period where boys' serving missions got closely associated with with their level of religious devotion, considered more of a commandment after this period than just an option.

The result of some of these coincidences is that if I had to guess, we have in recent times begun down a fork in the road of dressing in a manner unique to our culture that might actually end up giving this clothing symbolic significance for us like other formalized religious apparel has.

If you think about it, it already has such nearly arbitrary significance. White shirts don’t universally carry the connotation of respect or holiness that would brand a righteous priesthood bearer as such, we have really infused that meaning onto them over time and after associating that combination with men who are missionaries, bishops or GA's--and happen to be displaying particularly high levels of religiosity while wearing them.

And other religious clothing is probably quite similar, the difference is the respective age of the religions. The Mormon church is less than 200 years old, Catholicism, Islam and Hinduism, where religious clothing is more pronounced, have been around 1000+ years. So I think the small changes in psychology of wardrobe can be pretty small and end up adding up down the road.

Now in priesthood bearers the situation is that what was originally a purely cultural result of fashion (Joseph Smith obviously didn’t make up the missionary dress code) ends up being a barometer for the wearer’s level of devotion.

So that obstetrician on t.v. (and turns out he IS a local Stake President here in Beaverton), was wearing a dark suit, white shirt, and colored tie—big deal. Right now those are all available in any department store. When the current fashions get very far away from that, though, it will be harder and harder to blend in if we are still outfitting ourselves that way for religious purposes, particularly if it becomes any kind of strict code (like it already is with missionaries). Over time this costume WILL communicate a man’s religion outwardly in this obvious way.

Hypergraphia

It is quite possible that I have this problem, at least in addition to some of my other ones.

Is 'nice' a compliment?

Related to my former post is an aside on the word 'nice' and its recent social currency.

I need to look up the history. Probably best if I post this before I don't.

But what makes me ask the question is the recent fact that 'he's such a nice guy' has become a famous insult. I tried to think about whether that is ever the case with women and to my knowledge it isn't.

I think this reveals different cultural expectations about men and women. I think women are expected to just tell people what they want to here all the time and men are given the freedom to actually be themselves--at least with each other, with their wives it may be a different story--by telling people how they really think about things.

Anyone have any thoughts on what you think about that? I know people have differing preferences with whether they want to have people be open with them (when that openness would entail criticism) but I do think it is interesting that 'nice guy' has become a universal pan, and if I am not right about why it doesn't extend to women I think it would be interesting to know why.

(Also, this question was a potential poll question because of similar things I was interested in, but I am not sure the poll venue works for it exactly, esp because I am not able to enter (yet) multi-question polls to do multivariate analysis).

Truly Sincere, or Absence of Malice?

It is fascinating operating within a culture where the members believe very strongly in ethical rules governing behavior and interaction.

Obviously to those that know, I belong to a religion and so do many of my family and friends. The religion influences our values, obviously, but I think we also borrow many of them from the larger culture. Some evidence of this I saw recently was a survey circulated among some of my family about what character traits we least liked in other people. I was quite shocked that so many of them (and I very honestly can't remember WHO at this point so I am not thinking names) chose dishonesty or insincerity as the thing they most disliked of all the possible things there are to dislike. I think this would be a value borrowed from the larger culture--a Billy Joel song among other things-- because I honestly can't imagine specific prominence in terms of our particular religion.

Although in reality I don't know what good it would do at all, seeing as how any benefits of sincerity would be gleaned from primary reliance on benevolence, or the absence of malice, what I chose.

We are talking BAD character here--so I am not casting any votes for dishonesty or defending it. But this vote threw me me for a loop. In my mind, there is very little to fear from any person who goes around being dishonest or insincere with me UNLESS there is ALSO some kind of other factor to make it harmful to me.

Otherwise, why would it particularly bother me? What would I actually be worried about?

That is why the character trait I picked to most dislike is malice. Malice would be required for anything that someone does, even for things that are dishonest or insincere, to actually be harmful to anyone. So ultimately something like malice or its synonym must exist as the primary bad trait about others, because without it, pretty much anything bad they would do would not be that bad. I am certainly willing to consider various sides of this, and am actually asking for any perspective on the evils of insincerity as a real question and not as a rhetorical one because I haven't heard their reasoning. I know that we hear this mantra beat culturally, that is why I suspect it as another cultural myth of sorts.

But because I have been thinking about this issue so long, though, I have put a twist on the whole subject. One thing I was probably going to post on eventually was our recent discovery that I have a neurological problem where periodically my brain waves slow drastically (they have seen this on an EEG and my husband has pushed a button on a machine that bounds when it starts and stops so it is a fairly clear cut thing). It causes me to start doing bizarre things that I have no previous reason to do, I do not premeditate them, and do not often remember them afterward. These activities can actually be quite complex and seem like normal things that some people would do, at least in some contexts. This neurological state is called chronic sleepwalking, in its extreme form, though my brain waves don't always slow enough to put me all the way to sleep. Sometimes they just slow to make me act funny.

Before we started trying to figure out what I was doing, my way of existing was probably like that of most anonymous people day to day. Probably the things that most of us do from minute to minute are not checked up on by other people to see if we are doing what we think we are doing or what we thought we did. So a lot of the time if people do things that are strange, questionable, out of character, or even something like 'evil' and we really don't have any awareness of what we are doing, we wouldn't even necessarily ever know it.

I have known almost all my life that I have a sleep disorder but only lately did I figure out the rest of it by having my husband start paying attention to all the things I was doing and then checking them out with me afterward. It always seemed kind of like I had poltergeists that moved things from the place I thought I put them, and minor things like that.

Only recently did it seem like there were major gaps in my memory record and major inconsistent accounts between things I thought I had done and the things observed by others. So after a major episode was documented on an EEG machine (it is like Santa Claus, it knows when you are sleeping and knows when you are awake) Slade started checking up on me to see if I had done things intentionally or not. He will ask me if I actually remember things and during strange behavior he has some tests that he will perform. (Apparently if he says 'hey hon, why don't you take off what you are wearing and run down the block?' and I say 'OK' and start to do it (mercifully he doesn't allow me to get too far), rather than rolling my eyes or whatever I would usually do, he knows to start intervening in other things I have planned for the night, too.)

So that gets back to my initial point. Intention renders behavior either it malicious or benevolent. So honesty or sincerity, IMO, in interpreting someone's behavior is only important if we assume that we don't really know their intention and it would make the difference in whether or not what they were doing in some crucial respect.

So why do people think that sincerity is so important? Either they trust the people in their lives or they don't and this IMO has more to do with whether they choose to. They can see benevolence or malice in others' actions pretty much whatever they are.

Ironically because of my neurological disorder I am probably not to be trusted for a true account of my actions on occasion, and I would probably had anyone been watching me for evidence of this, be thought to be dishonest. But even dishonesty itself comes down largely to intention. Obviously if I have no memory of behavior I will not be able to account for it, but I think I am an extreme example of why this can't exactly always be held against people or seen as evidence of a character flaw. If people wanted to think that bad enough they could, but I will refer them to my neurologist.

Probably my ability to account for all my actions and wherabouts is not exactly threatening to anyone, so this is also an extreme example of why malicious intention is always the more basic fear.

And what about whether it comes down to being sincere or being nice? What would we choose in others then? Socially being nice is rewarded instead, for sure. When I am in control of my behavior on my end I choose to hang everything I think out there. Whatever else one thinks about me usually people know where they stand and they don't have to interpret the subtleties of what I do or wait to hear something I said about them. I don't say things behind people's back that I wouldn't say to their face if they asked. But I don't usually experience this trait being rewarded.

'Nice' people often engage in telling people what they want to hear at some point. This would be fine if some of them didn't eventually end up shocking us when we find out it isn't exactly how they feel all the time. But most of us are human, and respond to the humanness of others by acknowledging that occasionally reasonable people disagree. Disagreements are fine with those who trust in others intentions, however, and as I said, that is usually a choice rather than a result of their being inherently trustworthy.

One of the funny things about why insincerity is dangerous is not because people are insincere per se but because they end up communicating their real feelings to us in some other way, probably indirect, and perhaps again, as a suprise if they had first garnered our trust by doing the other. But the real problem was not them being insincerely nice it was them being genuinely not nice. If the reverse were true, that they tell us all the things they think that are critical to us and their behavior is benevolent we have no reason to fear them at all.

People love to talk a good game in terms of what their esteem of others is, but haven't we all had someone articulate how much they like and care about us (probably for the benefit of third parties and how they look) when they can't resist sending different messages under the surface? We all have some sort of feeling about what people feel about us whatever they say to us personally, and we usually don't prioritize directness in this respect.

And in terms of vauing honesty in others in relation being to my religion--it isn't. I think it interesting that the commandment that we have related to honesty specifically mentions bearing false witness of others--again, specifically making the true representation of facts only relevant to what we do to others.

(See my post on witchcraft for how if we have malicious intent toward others, we will see it, regardless of their actual natures.)

All I know is, I am right

If the title hooked you, obviously I don't defend anything so outrageous. And I swear I wouldn’t believe people have actually said this kind of thing to me if it weren't still ringing in my ears.

I have given up fitting in because of being a heretic to the beliefs of any group, but one indelicate situation is what to do when someone raises a question that I don't know how to answer without awkwardly taking a stand. At a party I was asked "Mormon's don't actually X, do they?" I thought, hm, if I don't answer he will think what he has heard is true but if I do, I know these people will go home thinking that I talked about my religion inappropriately at a party.

In these situations I often just wait for the inevitable declaration of confident belief that inevitable follows the claim to honestly raise an issue of intellectual inquiry. An atheist will eventually tell me, letting me off the hook that all he knows is that he couldn’t possibly believe in such superstitious nonsense as I do, other times religious people who think I don’t quite pass the believer’s litmus test, ends the discussion by declaring they are right by the fact that they have a personal knowledge given to them by God.

Well good heavens. If God was telling you the answers, why do you bother going to other sources afterward? Why would anyone then stoop to talk to lowly ‘ol me?

One night though I felt cornered. It was probably for the first time that I put my toe into the waters of responding to 'the issues' so to speak. At my prof’s office at Stanford, (he had become my close friend and still is), the two of us were alone and he earnestly brought up an issue about what at the time he thought I probably believed. Confidently dismissive, at the beginning of the year he had found out I was from Utah (supposedly) and was a Mormon (correctly) and therefore was politically conservative (wrongly). I actually thought I was liberal then, but I was guilty by association.

He started the ball rolling on how I could possibly believe what I did, etc., and that he was so incredulous to conservatism that he told me he was guilty about his purchase of a teak coffee table. I learned that night that teak is a rain forest wood and not on the list of ethical purchases. I also learned that there is such a list.

Oh dear, I thought. I had no particular views on the rain forest at the time—I swear. I was only 21 years old and was barely holding my head above water in a MA program I was ill prepared for. I hadn’t even ever VOTED before, missing the previous election my freshman year at BYU because I was only 17.

But I thought I would dive in if I could because I was concerned for his guilt, and decided I would do what I could to assuage him. How could I help him perhaps not feel so guilty, I was wondering? So I innocently shared a study that I had just heard. Paleontologists investigating land in South America, convinced that a particular rain forest was the first thing that had ever grown there, thought it would be interesting to look at what was underneath. The reasoning--something that was thought to have always been around would reveal what was before any life forms or some such.

What they found under this primeval forest: corn and charcoal. Basically under the fragile rain forest was evidence of slash and burn agriculture. This particular forest had sprung up rather quickly in human terms after aggressively destructive activity.

My teacher progressed through the various emotional responses to me that I have gotten quite frequently since, but it stuck out that night as a notable first attempt to offer a political opinion.

What baffles me is that I can’t exactly find out why after someone has 1, engaged a young and naive woman on ideas that she swears she is indifferent to, and 2, getting that reluctant and apologetic opinion, 3, that person hostilely rejects the opinion and makes a personal slight. I swear he brought the rain forest up with me pointedly because he heard I felt differently--probably he felt I would be an easy convert.

The irony is that I probably would have been, and but for reactions like that I have not exactly allied with liberalism over the years. For the first time I realized how fragile political views are to being attacked on both sides. I could have easily before that night concluded (like I so often was prone to thinking at BYU) that conservatives were the ones with one-sided opinions or closed minds. That night I learned that on both sides are feelings that hover very low above a person’s personal opinion of their worth as an ethical being—and that it is best to not, even if that person swears what they want is a debate on the issues—to take any of the bait.

I don’t need to leave it at this vague characterization, however, because I actually remember clearly what he said. The sound of it, the sudden emotional outburst, and the look on his face are in my memory forever. All of a sudden, without the kind of warning that would have made me at least TRY to pull back, he asked,“You WANT it to be true that people didn’t destroy the environment, don’t you?”

I was stung, but after a minute, answered with confidence, coming into my stride as a newly-registered voter with the opinions to match: ‘ABSOLUTELY—why would I WANT anything else?’

But the specific argument is beside the point. I am still weak on this issue, and don’t have what I would say is a strong opinion. I have some opinions that are strong, like believing fervently that democracies should respect freedoms and civil rights, but in terms of the environment (or the declared issues about the environment, anyway), I haven’t obsessed on the facts of this or that investigation. If I were to pick what I WANTED to believe and what I DIDN’T, however, it would be easy for me to tell anyone that I intend to pick opinions helped them avoid the guilty burden they carry around on their shoulders.

My teach said that he felt guilty about what he had bought; I was trying to help. Honestly I was offering what at the time as a politically naive girl, I thought that he wanted and that would make him feel better. I certainly didn’t want to say something that would make him shout at me and bring me nearly to tears.

So like Nietzsche observed, once I see something, it is everywhere. I get lulled into thinking that someone wants to have a discussion with me, and without knowing it I cross a boundary into inviting a personally hostile comment about myself and my intentions. I asked him why on earth he had started to yell. He didn’t know. It served as an instructive incident, however, because I am usually very willing to stay on the said subject as long as someone wants without becoming personal. Disagreement is a touchy subject however, even for Stanford prof’s that don’t appear to possibly be threatened by 21 year olds ‘from Utah.’ I didn’t realize that I had without knowing it disturbed his ethical system. He had laughed and toyed with mine—but his was sacred.

December 8—Grandma Hicks Day

There is probably little I can get for Grandma this year that she might want or be able to use. But I will try this forum of public tribute as one of the only things I could think of.

Probably most of the things I think are good about myself come from my mother. I don’t know where the things that are bad about myself came from, and I though I will probably bring some of those things up, I swear I won't attribute them to anyone, particularly not my parents!

My mom taught me how to write. Public school didn’t really do it for me. I took all the AP English classes that Tucson had to offer and ultimately I learned what I have from mom sitting down at the rounded formica counter and teaching me from square 1.

She taught me at the word level, at the sentence level, and at the idea level.

So I guess more than teaching me to write, she taught me how to think. Most of the time I go to compose my thoughts for a Relief Society lesson it is building on something she once said that I thought was interesting. I based my recent talk on Chastity in my ward on the things that she taught me as a young girl that helped me stay out of danger. The ideas worked then and apparently they seem helpful now--I was asked to give a youth fireside on chastity! Yikes!

I have formed some of the theoretical building blocks of what makes for good character on the things that she has said over the years. One such example is when I learned from her the concept of normalization, and how important it can be when being helpful and compassionate to others.

Her story examples always dovetailed perfectly with her statements. When she spoke about normalizing others' feelings, I remember nearly every word of her story about Sister S in her ward who had just lost her husband, and said: “I get so mad at him for dying that I just want to go up to heaven and strangle him to death again.” There were perhaps a lot of things my mom could could have said to argue against this questionable reasoning or lecture her about how she really should take comfort that she will see him again, etc. But it isn't as if my mom could have explained the concept of eternal marriage to her for the first time, Sister S. knew all those things already, and it isn't what she needed to hear at that moment. The situation called for an extra dose of compassion and support, so mom told Sister Stock: “Of course you do.”

Disagreement is of course possible among family members, and in a lot of cases I argue that people should be allowed leeway to be open about their own opinions without being branded as hostile or contentious. Free exchange of opinions, not needing to all be the same, doesn't automatically mean the desire to be disagreeable, negative, reactionary, to show someone up for sport sport or self-aggrandizement, or to detract from people in particularly vulnerable situations like this. Intention is the key. If people are having the free exchange of ideas without potential for hurt or sensitivity on any side, I think that it is a helpful forum for everyone to express their views to see how far they go. I know that I don't have any use for opinions that aren't much good, and it doesn't help to have family indulge me only to find out from others later where I have gone wrong.

But free ideology need not cross all boundaries in all situations, it is a delicate matter. And support and normalization is sometimes much more called for after careful discernment. When people are expressing their feelings (and specifically not their opinions), it is helpful to have people make us feel more comfortable with them. Mom was pointing out a good example of this. It was not the time or the relationship to discuss theoretical issues or be devil's advocate, and before she worried about whether she agreed with sister S, she made sure to give her general approval.

All this of course is easier said than done, and just because she taught me well doesn't mean I will always get it right. But my mom at least proves that whatever else we do, when we want to, we CAN be well said. And the eloquent expression of ideas can, as hers has for me over the years, been inspiring of further thinking and at least the option of good decision making. There is something to be said for those goals, and part of the legacy she leaves me.

Hater or Hater-Ed

On youtube someone who disagrees with you is a 'hater.'

Granted, a lot of the people who make comments about vid-blogs are unabashedly hateful. After really putting yourself out there to be communicate with other human beings and someone responds to you with "What's the deal with your complexion-ever considered Clearasil?" or "That of mole of yours is seconds away from taking over the world!" they are intending little other than deliberately hurt or shame.

That's unfortunate. And in the anonymous environment of internet debate (road rage with a keyboard), such behavior is becoming more and more common. But in condemning this type of response it is not fair or helpful to lump anyone offering any type of criticism into the 'hater' category. Online discussion including video blogging is a great opportunity to educate ourselves and revise our opinions and beliefs by responses from people in pockets of the world we don't even know exist much less ever get to visit.

But rather than embracing this opportunity for learning and refinement of our own views, many of those people who post videos (not something for shrinking violets) don't seem to want genuine response. Even though honest criticism may be a response in the spirit with which the conversation was generated, often that response is viewed with the worst possible motive--hate.

Would a poster who equates different views as hatefulness have others believe, in watning only to be stroked and complimented, that only obligation of a listener is to agree 100%? In our personal lives we may have the wish only to be validated, but in the spirit of internet dialogue, honest debate of issues is obviously preferable to just fishing for pats on the back from strangers who really only matter to us for that very potential of objectivity that the forum creates.

But the temptation is strong to distract the issue away any weakness of one's views and rather accuse those who point out those weaknesses as simply being mean. A common debate technique called the 'red herring' but in this new format doing so has developed this new parlance.

An extreme example could illustrate the benefits of divert an argument rather than confronting it head on. Say Hitler posted one of his political speaches online. A coalition nation might then log on to tell him he was sounding anti-Semitic, maybe helpfully suggest he should think about moderating at least his tone in the interest of not being misunderstood, etc. Rather than respond to the serious charge of anti-Semitism (a difficult task in his case) Hitler might accuse that coalition nation of being a 'hater.' One of his axix allies might further encourage neutral nations to not get involved, because even getting involved (especially when there is truth to any critical assertion) could be considered hateful.

Those who would use such red-herring techniques try to paint the bigger obligation of a listener, not to actually respond with their actual opinion, but to avoid at all costs saying anything like:

"Given X (that you have stated), I believe NOT X."

What this does is confuse disagreement with hateful intention, either deliberately or because of the wounded feelings of those who feel criticized.

But the video blogger is rarely the random topic for hatred by those who actually take the time to substantively evaluate their arguments. In fact they are the ones who have introduced often passionate, controversial issues in an an arena that seems to have the purpose of encouraging response in kind. Sometimes their statement is ironically prompted by ways in which they disagree with common views. Thus they seem to wish to tempt others into entering such a discussion with them, and should welcome responses in any form they come.

What is often frustrating, though, is that while many bloggers seem to want to use a form of logic, they deny the power of that logic. Meaning, they claim to have thought through an issue for the purposes of drawing a conclusion about it, but what often intend to do is less a logical statement than a performative. (If you don't know what the difference between arguments vs. persformatives, Google it, because it is a fascinating distinction in betweem linguistic functions.)

Conversations of all types might include statements like "If I won the lottery I would definitely retire from my job and work for a non-profit organization." Such statements give the impression of logical thought and choice among alternatives. But it is likely that offering opinions is what people are doing when they post a video on youtube containing positions like this, even though they often claim that such a purpose. Instead what people mean by what they say in such a position is something like this "I want you all to think I am a good person because I would retire and work for a nonprofit if I won the lottery." Again, their statement is not argumentative, it is performative.

So in turn, if others respond to such an argument in good faith, assuming that someone wouldn't want to remain inadvertently unaware of the other side of an argument like it so very much often seems, offer their opinions in response. But they don't get the benefit of the doubt of the first person thinking they are just responding in good faith to their argument.

They think that the second person is responding to the INTENTION, which was to say in return 'No, I don't think you are a good person.' Even though they are not intending to say that, they are just intending to respond to the argument that was raised. If those who would call everyone with any level of criticism 'haters' cared to, they could try to use intention to determine whether someone is really responding to them in a hateful way.

If you-tube uesers really want no criticism of any stripe, then that is a different matter, but it would seem that posting personal information in such a public place would be a strange way to avoid it.

My subconscious, and my husband, knows me pretty well

Slade and I have taken to sleeping in separate rooms the past two nights. And before any terrible rumors circulate among the family, the reason is that we have very incompatible ways of talking in our sleep. At least it seems that way. Other times it seems like we are just living out our regular waking hours in some sort of more accurate dream state, kind of like Salvador Dali meant to portray.

Slade's problem is that he continually harasses me in his sleep--his dreams, or whatever they are. One time I woke up with him kneeling beside me and gently sliding his hands under me like he was going to pick me up. (He woke up before he got too far with that, luckily for his back). More typical is that he will all of a sudden reach over and shake me awake, not knowing why, but INSISTING he has a perfectly good reason, until I convince him that he is still asleep and that there is nothing horrible going on at 3 a.m. that needs the attention of an insomniac that just fell asleep two hours ago (and that was a good night).

My nocturnal activities are much more complicated. (I am actually drafting a post on that subject for those who don't know). Basically I have what my neurologist calls 'complex nocturnal behavior' doing things asleep that most people don't. I do things asleep that some people couldn't do awake. I can write things like this for example, sound asleep. A good reason for hiding the password from myself, and I am thinking about it.

It sounds totally bizarre, but I think most people have heard of similar 'sleep eating' and things that people like this do, and I think they are all they same--people like me do a variety of things while their brain is technically sleeping, it is just that in my case, eating isn't really my thing and I am not going to cook hamburger in the middle of the night any more than I am going to do it in the middle of the day. There is actually something in the brain that specifically disconnects our mind and body from acting out our dreams, in in some people's case there isn't a complete disconnect. Go figure that our brains would have this. But they do.

But a few weeks ago was extra funny because I had a series of dreams that caused me to shout about them loudly enough to disturb Slade, who can't exactly afford to get disturbed, considering how he reacts to being agitated in the middle of the night.

One dream was at a public swimming pool where there were obviously huge sharks swimming around under my kids. Everyone but me seemed to be fine with this. (I can draw obvious parallels to how worked up I get about things that everyone else doesn't but that will be a different post.) I kept saying "Slade, do something, you can't just let her stay in there, it's going to get her," etc. This continued for an hour or so. At least I didn't get out of bed, that is always a nice thing.

The next night when I was in supposedly blissful slumber Slade and I had been kidnapped as some part of a criminal plot right out of Reservoir Dogs or something. (I swear the guy with a gun looked just like the owner at my local computer store who has taken nearly a grand from me and not fixed anything, but I am not sure). Anyway, we were in a van without windows along with some other unfortunate souls. The guy with the gun decided to take about four people who had complained away, obviously to me, for the purpose of killing them. My subconscious doesn't mind implied violence any more than I do, but it didn't make me watch, thank heavens.

I spoke out to the guy with a gun, in my handcuffed state, (and also I did so out loud to Slade right next to me, who had started to listen and had become increasingly alarmed about the subject matter of my dream): "Have you EVER killed FOUR PEOPLE before? Do you REALIZE how hard it is going to be to dispose of ALL THOSE CORPSES? And you are going to go ahead and just KILL them ALL just for giving you LIP?"

Slade said next to me in the van in my dream, and also next to me in bed, IN UNISON:

"Shut up, honey."

D'oh! Pearl Harbor Day. No THC for me.

The History Channel has not been keeping me too satisfied lately, and if it has a chance to make anyone happy it will be me. I tried to evolve a top ten list to describe all the silly programs posing as history they won't stop running these days. I an terrible at this kind of thing even though I love the idea, so if any of you has some ideas, which inevitably more clever and more funny people will (JPH3), send them in as a comment because I would love to work this up:

Top ten History Channel program formulas:

1. You may believe in the Jesus of scripture--but tune in tonight when our very credible, Australian-dialected archaeologists will uncover evidence that instead, you are an idiot. In general.
2. All mysterious events in history were caused by aliens, rendering it meaningless, but making it appeal to a much wider audience.
3. What happened on December 7, of course, can never be discussed without Tom Brokaw.
4. 'Reign of Terror' now refers to all periods of history, too bad you wasted your time on your history homework.
5. WWII seems awfully boring, but tonight the same suff will be dubbed over by people speaking an excellent fake German accent. (We will throw in the sound ‘z’ a lot).
6. "Uncovering the mysteries of King Tut: Turns out he is pretty well wrapped up." (Ending with "despite all efforts of these scholars, he will forever, in the annals of time, remain, to all the ages, even though we dig him up and put him behind glass in every single museum, a mystery, which we wish we could have uncovered like we said.")
7. "Search for the giant squid" (Obviously that ends in failure because it may be we discover tonight that there may be no such thing as a giant squid.)
8. Hey, shouldn’t #7 be on the Discovery Channel?
9. Come to mention it, shouldn't #2 be on the Sci-Fi channel?
10. Any show can be rendered fascinating if narrated by 'that history guy.'

Slade said some of these went over his head but that he liked the giant squid one. Clearly I know nothing about comedy, I thought it was actually my most pandering. I should keep my day job, even with the writers' strike.

Intrusive Communication, or 'stop touching me.'

It used to be that new forms of communication took a thousand years or so to develop, and so human beings, along with each form, would develop pretty hard-wired corresponding responses, as individuals and certainly as cultures.

I think safely the first form of communicating with each other was probably some sort of direct touch or physical contact, whether wanted or unwanted. Unwanted physical contact has been given the label of violence, and various defenses over the years are levied as culture gets advanced enough to do so.

The next method of communicating was probably SOME sort of symbolic communication. Probably was first talking, then pictorial scratching, then more fluid written symbolic language. Of course no linguist knows whether full language evolved first and then gradually writing or they happened together so I am guessing.

After the first ways of affecting one another (touch) started to take more symbolic form (language), who knows how many thousands of years ago (OK, yes I know exactly: 6 thousand years ago, sorry), I am sure things really took off in terms of options for communicating.

We started being able to communicate across time periods and physical locations, and affecting each other in very nonspecific ways: offending each other's sensibilities and whatnot, whatever that means, it got started after this major change.

The options didn't start changing until Thomas Edison. He invented some version of the telephone which ended up actually being the voice answering machine. Graham Bell passed him up with the telephone technology while Edison's sat there until the patent ran out and eventually it got picked up by the current voice mail technology.

When we picked up Edison's voice recording technology things started heating up. Previous social etiquette rapidly became outdated. For instance, a situation was created where we would leave our message for someone and not know whether or not they got it. This took us back a few centuries to the days that we all had to pay our own private couriers and hope for the best.

When we used to have to let it ring and ring and ring when we called someone or knock and know they hadn't come to the door, we knew that we would need to try back. Now we don't know exactly what to do.

Did they get our message or not?

Maybe we could call them back, but then, but would they get annoyed with us for bugging them?

In my personal opinion 'screening calls' should be accompanied with the social contract that we would return them when we get the chance, but often that is put off indefinitely, and our callers are left with a dilemma: do we make sure we communicate or do we make sure the people we are trying to affect don't get defensive?

As options other than violence evolved to be employed to affect others negatively, they develop other corresponding defenses. Physical armor initially developed to protect our bodies, and other physical defenses like a mote and bailey developed to protect our homes. But we needed new defenses needed for the new communications too, it seemed, and so people started to do somewhat routine and predictable things to hide from each other verbally like they had hidden from potential harm physically. Previous armor or caves became not being accessible by the new technologies.

Did you ever get a bill in the mail where your immediate reaction was 'what and the &*5^ is this and immediately looked for the 1-800 number to call, and it wasn't there, it said 'for comments write...somewhere in Wilmington, DE or Fargo, ND" NO ONE is going to put a stamp on an envelope and send it in the mail when they have an issue with a bill anymore. It is just not an option. I think it is because we associate 'getting on the horn' with what we do to be immediately contentions--to go to war.

And as soon as there are warriors, there are those who want to make sure that they are peace makers. As soon as email came about it seemed to replace calling on the phone as something good to do when calling on the phone seemed too intrusive. Calling had itself replaced physically putting on our hat and lipstick and going over to do our business in person, but now that email is an option, calling itself seems too intrusive, more like something we would do only when we had a seriously personal or emotional issue. Instead, we can now leave people an email and avoid the awkwardness of forcing them to respond in person.

Then in the past LESS THAN A YEAR probably, there have been even more changes. There was the group email thread, the bulletin board, and now the blog. And after how many thousands of years, sorry 6 thousand years, we have a brand new method of basically 'reaching out to touch someone' in some way.

I noticed how much I myself had changed when I felt that actually emailing Amy to ask her for advice on my blog was too much of an imposition, and that maybe she wouldn't mind if I left her a post on Donna's blog instead.

I think even though I don't want to admit it, as much as things change, they probably, as long as we are human, remain the same.

The myth of guilt

What is guilt?

Does it exist?

It could, but from the way people act, it is more likely that it doesn't. At least it doesn't cause the kind of behavior that people think it does. The myth of 'deathbed repentance' is so rare that is just that--a myth.

Slade probably will never blog, how much the better for the world if he did, but we have between ourselves been talking about cultural myths that are widely believed and perpetuated--perpetuated by thinking that those types of ideas that are the case 'just because'--actually make sense for logical reasons. We use a form of logic, so to speak, but deny the power thereof, by making a logical argument for those things that we really have come to only assume make sense because we always hear them and probably always will.

So because Slade and I love the 'aha moment' we get from popping bubbles of cultural myths in our brains to make room for the other stuff, I will talk about a few of them, even though this is probably not the only way Slade and I are different. But to introduce the concept of cultural myth I need for a mythical concept that really isn't that big of an idea and that nobody really cares too much about believing one way or another. I will gradually move on to bigger stuff as I get some practice not making simple concepts into very very long ones. Which I obviously need more of.

Here goes, myth of guilt:

The fact that people end up feeling bad about and eventually changing their behavior is something that gets the kind of play of a common occurrence with the rarity of a miracle. I actually don't know why, because most people, I assumed it was more common. What happens instead? What do people really do on their deathbeds? I am sure that people can get better explanations of the whole psychological theory of cognitive dissonance than mine, but basically very few people end up thinking that ANYTHING they do, at any time down the road, was wrong. Instead they make final Herculean efforts to justify what they have already thought in the first place. Both in smaller time frames and in lifetimes. So ti anyone spends time fervently repenting in some religious sins or omissions it is likely because they have already done much of that.

Even in situations where people do something that is obviously a 'no brainer' in most respects and bring about the disaster that everyone knows they will, they don't end up sorry. Teenage girls who run off with total creeps, that in five years yell the loudest about how big of a creep it was that they ran off with, are perfect examples of what I am talking about. All of us (but the particular teenage girl in question) know exactly what a creep they are running off with, but admitting 'I told you so' ends up closer to something like a 'well there was no way for me to have known, and it was probably natural given the circumstances.'

In fact most of us think we are exceptions to rules, it is in our nature--even the kinds of rules we would freely expect others to follow. Navigating emotional and personal decisions, such as how to behave in cases of love, marriage, and family, particularly don't mesh well with any kind of statistical calculating on our own part, and certainly not just like advice of we hear from others. That never ends up like anything we are willing to lend credibility to.

Most drivers know that it is obvious that you shouldn't run a red light. But in life when we really want to do something, and then when we have done it already and seek to explain ourselves, it becomes much more persuasive or illustrative to talk about that story we all heard about someone who has run a red light and come out just fine. I ran a red light once when I was a teenager (talk about teenage girls) I remember the night distinctly. Apparently it didn't take long for me to have my license and break one of the worst rules of all, and metaphorically speaking we probably all do that in a lot of contexts.

But in big life decisions, it doesn't seem to make sense, for whatever reason, to actually just make solid, reasoned choices based on what makes sense or what would be safe. 10 times greater likelihood of crashing in driving somehow is strong enough to restrict us but in something much more profoundly dangerous like love, the 90 percent that squeak by doing something reckless seem to compel us to follow their example.

And thus after the fact, are we sorry that we judged a light to be a different color and crashed? Not usually. Isn't really an opinion of mine. There are plenty of boring psych studies--and I promise never to get into those--it ends up for whatever reason not being what people do. People aren't sorry. Mostly if I were to guess why, they end up over their lifetime schooled in the benefits of the road they have travelled. This familiarity is comfortable, and much more so that the path less so, conveniently remains wary enough to justify what we didn't do.