Embryo of Philosophy

I was rewatching "The Moment of Truth," making comments in my head, and thinking that I should do a commentary of all the episodes one of these days. Then I thought, "Well, why not start now?" Now, this isn't a "Veleda processes and then comes to intelligent conclusions" type of thing. (But is it ever?) No, I'm going to tell you, "And then Morgana comes in, and I squeal out loud." Okay, there may be some (slightly) intelligent conclusions, since I have seen this episode before. But, uh, yeah. On with the show.

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So, b_hallward is writing a series of absolutely gorgeous Merlin AU drabbles in which Merlin is Arthur's guardian angel. Go read them. Even if you've never seen Merlin, even if you don't like angels. They're masterpieces.

( Fandom talk )

I have very amusing dreams, which I would love to tell you about, if only I could remember them. They're easy to recall in the first few moments after waking, but they fade in a way that can only be likened to dew, evaporating in the morning sun.

But even more vexing is when I get an idea for a story while lying in bed, or in the hazy mists between sleeping and waking. However, now I only have bits and pieces flitting through my mind. General ideas, snatches of conversation; but I don't know who's saying what or why.

Reading the above two paragraphs, I worry about the fact that I don't even have to work to reach this level of pretension. It just comes naturally.

There's going to be a debate between Christopher Hitchens, author of God is Not Great and Dinesh D'Souzaat, author of What's So Great About Christianity at CU, put on by the Aquinas Institute for Catholic Thought. I got a free ticket, but I'm not sure if I'm going to go. I kind of hate Hitchens with a passion, you see.

I haven't read either Hitchens or D'Souzaat's books. I should read the latter's before the debate. However I don't want to touch Hitchen's with a ten foot pole. I know that I should read his book before condemning him, but after reading excerpts of him in Chris Hedges' book I Don't Believe in Atheists I just want to avoid him. I've seen valid criticism of Hedges' book, but Hitchens' quoted hateful comments about Muslims wouldn't be acceptable in any context. I see enough racism (because when people bash Muslims, they aren't thinking of white people) without seeking it out. Richard Dawkins seemed at least less hateful, so I was prepared to give him a try. Now that I know that he's planning on writing a children's book about the possible negative effect of things like fairy tales and Harry Potter, I'm feeling a little differently. He states that those things might have a "sort of insidious affect on rationality."

One can't help noticing the similarities between the rabid Christian right and over-zealous atheists. They both believe with absolute one hundred and ten percent certainty that they are right; they both believe that their beliefs make them better than people who believe otherwise; they're both unbearably smug; and they both hate Harry Potter for promoting witchcraft. It's like two sides of the same scary coin.

It all goes to show that total bat shit has no religious denomination.

I probably should still read Dawkins and even Hitchens, if only for the sake of being informed. But I have so many, many books that I have yet to read that I actually expect to enjoy that I'm not sure that I can convince myself.

And I should probably go to the debate.

Two things have been occupying my mind as of late.

Ralph Nader was speaking at CU last Wednesday. I didn't go, as Wednesday is D&D night, and I cancel on tekararogue and my brother quite enough as it is. But it did get me thinking about third party candidates.

After the 2000 election, I defended Nader voters. It wasn't Nader who stole the election from Gore, it was Bush and his Republican cronies. The Nader voters hadn't done anything worse than vote for the candidate that they liked best, I argued.

Four years later we came to another election. I was disturbed to learn that Nader was running again, and that some people were planning to vote for him. Bush was a disaster, that was clear. I felt that the most important thing was getting him out the White House and stopping him from doing any further damage. "Anybody but Bush" was a slogan going around, and I agreed. I couldn't vote at the time, but I supported Kerry and felt that others should as well. Still, I didn't feel like I could really criticize Nader voters. Doesn't everybody have the right to vote for what they believe in?

So, now another four years have passed, and we come to our current situation. Once again Nader is running, and once again people (especially progressives) are talking about voting for a third party. For a while, though I was even more bothered than in 2004, I still didn't feel like a could really pass judgment. Then, I found this quote from the November/December 2004 issue of Mother Jones, which finally made things clear for me:

"Anyone that the Democrats run against Bush, even the appalling Joe Lieberman, should be a candidate around whom every progressive person in the United States who cares about the country's future and the future of the world rallies. Money should be thrown at that candidate. And if Ralph Nader runs -- if the Green Party makes the terrible mistake of running a presidential candidate -- don't give him your vote.

Listen, here's the thing about politics: It's not an expression of your moral purity and your ethics and your probity and your fond dreams of some utopian future. Progressive people constantly fail to get this."

It's true. People know that their third part candidate of choice won't win, but they vote to "make a statement." And that just doesn't work. Maybe it did once, I don't know, but it certainly doesn't now. Yeah, you could make your statement. But is making statement really worth damning the entire world to more of the same shit that we've been trying to survive this past eight years (and that many people haven't survived, thanks to, among other things, multiple wars)?

In perfect world, the Green Party candidate, Cynthia McKinney, would have my vote in a second. But we don't live in perfect world, in case you hadn't noticed.

You want to make a statement? Tell the Republican party that we want our country back. We're kicking them out of the White House. There's a statement for you.

Now that I've alienated a large number of you, let's try and get the rest.

Last week, I found myself debating with a small group of conservatives. It left me with a question. Why are conservatives so stupid? Now, hang on! Don't walk off in disgust yet. Allow me to explain.

These were gun nut conservatives, specifically. It may be surprising to people that I don't have entirely fully formed opinions on gun control. I hate guns, and wish that private citizens wouldn't own them, but whether I'd like a law outlawing guns altogether, that's harder to say. But these gun nut conservatives were far too out there for me to be feeling shades of grey. Their talking point du jour was that people should be allowed to carry concealed weapons on college campuses. Their argument was that the Virginia Tech shooting wouldn't have happened if everybody had had a handgun. Now, anti-gun control people make this argument all the time, just switching out the specific tragedy in order to be timely. I made the same rebuttal that I always make: So one person comes in with a gun, then another person pulls out a gun, then everyone feels under attack, so they all draw their weapons, and no one's sure who the enemy is, and maybe somebody shoots accidentally, and we're left with mass panic in room full of armed people. Does that strike anyone as an good situation?

A girl argued that that wouldn't happen because you need a license to own a gun, and I argued in return that you also need a license to drive a car, but that doesn't stop people from engaging in both road rage and plain old fashion stupidity. She mumbled a reluctant agreement and wandered off.

But there were three other people there and they kept going. Quoting one of the greatest minds of our time, I pointed out that while guns may not kill people, they certainly help. One person's reaction? "No they don't! No they don't!" Yes. Yes, he did indeed say that guns don't help you kill people. He went one to tell me that he could kill people with his car, or kill people by making pipe bomb. When I pointed out that pipe bombs were illegal for that very reason, he told me "Yes! Exactly!"

And at that point, I realized that these people didn't even understand what they were saying, and I left in disgust. But the conversation stuck in my mind. We have people who insist that guns don't help you kill people, who think that you've proven their point when you note the problem with their comparing gun ownership to pipe bombs.

It's not just this one incident, of course. Some time ago, a friend of my mother's (who's also homophobic, transphobic, racist, sexist, and an all around bigot) emailed her a story that the ACLU was trying to remove all crosses from cemeteries. Now, common sense will tell you that that's ridiculous, and five minutes of research will confirm that (if I remember correctly, she sent him the snopes page debunking the story), but he swallowed it hook, line, and sinker. Then, there are the people who honestly seem to believe that the CEO of the Procter & Gamble corporation is a Satanist who donates part of his company's profits to the Church of Satan. (I am not making that up.) There are people who still believe that Obama is a Muslim, and even worse, these people think that it actually matters.

Not all conservatives/Republicans are stupid, of course. But a large number of them are, and it's not your run of the mill, basic stupidity that can happen to anyone. So why are these people so stupid? I have a two part theory. It could be bunnies.

The first part is that stupid people are drawn to the Republican party. It makes sense. The Republican party revels in idiocy. Being intellectual, hell, even being informed is seen as "elitist" and bad. Look at Bush's "aw shucks" routine, or the way that Palin seems to take pride in being uninformed. Look at the fact that McCain has admitted that he doesn't know how to work a computer. Here's a party that isn't going to make you think too hard. (They don't want you too think to hard. That would ruin the whole racket.)

The other part is that they have to be stupid. There's no other option if they want to keep on believing what they do. If they had to think intelligently about what they believe, that would ruin everything. It's not normal foolishness that makes you think that allowing college students to carry concealed weapons on campus would somehow make for fewer school shootings. That kind of mind boggling idiocy has to be cultivated. No one actually using their mental facilities could continue to believe that the war in Iraq is going fine and dandy. Ann Coulter, that fine example of humanity, has a book entitled If Democrats Had Any Brains, They'd Be Republicans. The lady doth protest too much, methinks. This second type of person disgusts me more far more than the first. It's one thing to be dumb, it's another to be purposefully moronic in order to keep from having to reevaluate your convictions. (Sexist, homophobic, war mongers for president? Perhaps not such a good idea.) The former is the Republican party taking advantage of people. The latter is a group of people taking advantage of all of us.

Well, uh, it's good to know that I've been an equal opportunity offender today.

My birthday is in a little less than a month. I'll be twenty-one. As with every birthday for the past few years, I've started feeling stagnate, like I should be more than I am at this point in my life. I should be paying my own bills, be more self-sufficient than I am. Or something.

I've been thinking about what I want to do with the next few years. My very basic plan was to take classes next summer in order to graduate with a major in women's studies and a minor in religious studies. I'll then move to Austin, get residency and apply to the university to get my masters in library science. Now I'm not really sure what I want to do.

I'd love to live in New York City. I adore New York City. Broadway, the food, the culture, Broadway. But I'll never be able to live there. It's just not economically sensible. So, you know, that's it. Move on and think of something else.

But what if I want to try living my dream? Does it make any sense to try and do what you honestly want, even if it's stupid and difficult as all hell?

Obviously, the answer is to find the middle ground. That's just common sense. I just wish I knew what the middle ground was. Living near the city? Still expensive.

I want to move out of the country. But I have no idea where I could go. Canada seems an attractive option, but the health care, one of the main reasons I want to leave the US, kind of sucks. It's affordable, but the waits are ridiculous. I like New Zealand, but immigrating there seems just about impossible if you're not an engineer, microbiologist, or an expert in sheep farming. The Nordic Countries seem appealing, but the idea of me learning a second, complicated, language is laughable. Plus, it's, like, cold and stuff.

Australia, maybe? England? What do think, littlecloud?

The best idea is to do some traveling before I make a decision, obviously. This raises a question. Should I use next summer to take classes like I planned, or should I abandon the idea of getting a minor in religious studies and use the opportunity to travel? There's also the question of money, but I think I can afford it. I'm going to try working during the school year in addition to volunteering at the library. (I desperately need library experience if I'm going to make a career out of it.)

Naturally, there's always the fear in the back (not so at the back at times) that all of this pointless. Like so many others, I'll compromise and compromise, until I'm living a boring, nondescript life in boring, nondescript place. There isn't really anything wrong with that. It's just not what I want.

I think what it all comes down to in the end is that at twenty-one, I should have made more of myself by now.