Monday, December 19, 2022

Trending From Church, Which I'm Doing Too

The sanctuary of Brooklyn Baptist Church, which used to be
Golgotha Finnish Congregational Church
(which I attended as an infant - my first church)
in Brooklyn's Sunset Park neighborhood. 
The remaining Finns sold their building to the Baptists,
a multi-cultural evangelical congregation,
in the late 1980s.

______________________


For it is not an enemy who taunts me—
 then I could bear it;
it is not an adversary who deals insolently with me—
 then I could hide from him.
But it is you, a man, my equal,
 my companion, my familiar friend.
We used to take sweet counsel together;
 within God's house we walked in the throng.
- Psalm 55:12-14 ESV


Christianity continues to dominate American culture.  Yet religious practices here, such as church attendance, are in decline.

Some researchers misread data gleaned from church attendance statistics and inaccurately state that America is becoming less "Christian".  What's really happening, however, probably points to more of an honest admission by Americans regarding the priority they place on acting out their faith.

Yes, many Americans no longer attend church.  And technically, I'm one of them.  I watch the video feed from "my" church online, but frankly, I admit I have no desire to return to in-person worship.  And it's not because of Covid, or doctrinal issues, or how hard it is to find a parking space on Sunday mornings in the hipster Dallas neighborhood where "my" church is located.  

Mom and I both had stopped attending in-person church before the pandemic ever hit.  Her reason is mostly her age, and her increasingly limited mobility.  My reason is completely different, but I wonder how common a reason it may be.

More and more Americans appear to be comfortable in not just dropping church attendance, but being unaffiliated with church, period.  By now, that trend should surprise nobody, since it's been going on for decades.  People have stopped going to church for all sorts of reasons, and it doesn't look like many of us plan on returning anytime soon.

Nevertheless, look around you:  Here we are, the Monday before Christmas, and how many homes in your neighborhood boast Christmas decorations?  You likely know the folks on your block who attend church regularly, and those who don't.  And I'll guess that the folks who never attend church have the same amount of decorations as those who do.

So while church attendance has been the big data point researchers have been watching, does it really point to any significant decline in levels of America's cultural Christianity?  That's always been a fairly shallow concept anyway, right?  How theologically-sound have been the measures of how "Christian" America was, and is?  

Every Advent season, for example, some folks complain over the evolution of "Happy Holidays" instead of "Merry Christmas", but in reality, that change indicates more of an inclusion of other celebrations instead of an outright refutation of Christianity.  Plurality of faiths among a society like America's, with our strong immigration ethos, should not be conflated with people from Christianity's legacy losing interest in observing it within pews.

(Sidebar #1:  Pews, of course, are those long wood benches with built-in backs that "church growth movement" experts pilloried during American Christianity's seeker-sensitive movement, one of the tricks churches began using to try and fill sanctuaries - excuse me, "worship centers" - when America's church attendance decline became noticeable, back in the 1990s.)

(Sidebar #2:  And IF there are fewer and fewer "Christians" honestly celebrating Christmas, why do the remaining Christians blame society at large?  Most American Christians are dyed-in-the-wool capitalists, and capitalism is all about bottom-line marketing to the consumer.  So why bemoan the folks who are trying to appeal to the broadest constituency with their inclusivity of all December/January religious holidays?  As long as Christians aren't penalized for their "Christmas" sentimentality (Christmas is not a Biblical holy day anyway, you know), what's the harm?  Christians who fear the fact that fewer and fewer Americans actually observe a religious Christmas should pray about how they can minister better to their lost neighbors, instead of grumbling about terminology that only reflects society.)

Having fewer and fewer folks in those pews likely isn't a bad thing anyway, because it means that people who only marginally voiced allegiance to Christianity simply have decided to stop their pretenses.  Not that everybody remaining in America's churches are "saved" - I believe that, unfortunately, there are folks who attend church still as a pretense for a faith that they want to exercise on their own terms.  

For example, the idolatrous rise of Christian nationalism has taken over much of the religious right, meaning that allegiance to Christ may be falling to allegiance to Americanism.  

Depending on how one defines a "Christian nation", dropping church attendance still doesn't necessarily mean that Christianity itself is experiencing a "mass exodus", as one Roman Catholic demographer cleverly put it.

I was raised in the evangelical church.  I can trace my life by the Christian churches I've attended:

  1. Golgotha Finnish Congregational Church; Brooklyn, NY
  2. Maple Flats Baptist Chapel; Cleveland, NY
  3. Kenwood Heights Alliance Church; Oneida, NY
  4. Rome Alliance Church; Rome, NY
  5. Arlington Alliance Church; Arlington, TX
  6. East Park Church of the Nazarene; Arlington, TX
  7. Pantego Bible Church; Arlington, TX
  8. First Evangelical Free Church; Brooklyn, NY
  9. Calvary Baptist Church; New York, NY (the only church I've ever joined)
  10. Arlington Presbyterian Church; Arlington, TX
  11. Park Cities Presbyterian Church; Dallas, TX  (my longest affiliation; over 20 years)

I've written articles for Crosswalk.com, a prominent evangelical website.  I served as a leader in the singles ministry at New York City's venerable Calvary Baptist, which was, overall, my best church experience.  For about three years, I worked in the financial office at Pantego Bible Church, a sizable non-denominational fellowship now located in Fort Worth, Texas.  For over a decade, I sang in the chancel choir at Dallas' wealthy Park Cities Presbyterian.  

Most of my Facebook friends have been acquired over the years through my various church affiliations.  My parents met as counselors at an evangelical Christian youth camp near Cape Cod, and my mother graduated from an evangelical college.  My brother and sister-in-law met while students at Moody Bible Institute, an evangelical college in Chicago.  So I'm definitely a product of America's Christian church culture.

Yet even I have lost my enthusiasm for the American church.  Yes, I still watch Sunday services online, but mostly I do that for my mother, who is a luddite and needs me to get the connection on my laptop computer for her.  I have personally become disillusioned with the way American evangelicals "do" church, and have both moved myself out of their circles, and have been forgotten by them.

I may have a few church-going acquaintances who actively shun me, but mostly, there's simply no more room in American evangelicalism for people like me.  I don't fit the mold they've created for what the typical evangelical church congregant should look like.  

Right off the top, I'm not married, I don't have kids, and I'm not currently employed.  Singles have never had an easy task navigating the cliques of conventional church, and the longer we stay single, the harder it becomes to assimilate.  Being divorced is marginally OK, especially if you still have kids at home, but being never-married means something is deeply flawed in you.  Unless you're making a ton of money from a great job, and can tell others your career simply comes first.  Which, um, I can't!

I live in my aging mother's aging house and help care for her.  Some folks peg me as a "mamma's boy".  If my life was a sitcom, I'd be the butt of the jokes.

To make matters worse, I am not a Christian nationalist, I have never voted for Donald Trump (or Hillary or Joe, for that matter), and while I believe it's a sin, I don't believe abortion is the greatest one.  I am not an anti-vaxxer, and I've had all my Covid shots.  I remain a registered Republican, but I don't vote a straight Republican ticket.  My faith is supposed to be in God, not politics or governments or laws.

Even worse than all that, however, is my battle with chronic clinical depression, which many Christians mock as a fake illness, a sin, and an excuse for laziness and immaturity.

I managed to sustain considerable friendliness with many folks at the churches I've attended, but as my life has continued to wear me down emotionally, I've discovered that those friendships only went as far as what other people could understand about me.  After that, I suspect my problems were simply too confusing and demanded too much time and attention - time and attention they could more easily spend on people more like themselves.  

Some would accuse me of whining and complaining now, but hey - I'm not complaining as much as I'm parsing out reality.  Modern life is complex and extremely time-consuming.  Schedules fill up fast.  In such a world, streamlining one's friendships to obtain maximum benefit from them makes sense.  And I understand that.  I can't say I'd handle the trappings - and traps - of modern success any better than anybody I've known.

In retrospect, I also realize I could have worked harder myself at making those friendships last.  I know I'm not outgoing or charismatic.  But that means my relationships were not organic enough to develop into friendships on their own, right?  Just going to the same doctrinally-sound church while professing hope in the same Biblical Savior proved woefully insufficient as a baseline for sustainable fellowship.

It's been a sad realization for me.

Maybe there's a country-club mentality among modern American Christianity, and maybe that's what's turning off many folks.  Us versus them.  In versus out.  And as American churchgoers increasingly embrace political dogma alongside their churchy preferences, the freedom many conservative religious people feel to wrap the Cross of Christ with the American flag gives them an unBiblical purpose.  And what is that purpose, but to market themselves as our country's patriotic remnant.  It's the new church schtick, since the specter of eternal damnation doesn't seem to hold as much resonance anymore.  Market your church as a defender of traditional family values, keep trying to legislate morality, and draw your battle lines around the vices in our society you can most easily define.

Maybe church has become a matter of defining what separates us.  Whereas Christianity can point to a history of welcoming the disenfranchised - at least, in Christ's day - today, it's mostly about how well a person can assimilate into a moralistic group, and how much sin they can avoid while still having their share of fun.  Anything that challenges their expectations and preferences provides sufficient justification for excommunication, or at least social distancing.

(Sidebar #3:  Churchgoing conservatives hate social distancing when they perceive liberals are forcing it.  But churchgoers have been doing it for years.)

So yes, while I'm not particularly threatened with data analyses that paint dire futures for Christianity in America, I personally can vouch for the data showing church attendance in decline.  Some churches do continue to grow, but I suspect such outliers generally reflect church-hopping - some call it "church-shopping" - as socio-religious butterflies flit from one congregation to another, like there are big revolving doors within any given city's church culture.  Some people who still want the churchy vibe strive to find the best fit for how they intend to live their lives (but not necessarily how Christ has taught us to live them).  Meanwhile, if somebody with as rigorous a churchy background as mine can become so disillusioned with the American church, imagine how easily other folks - with an even more ambivalent view of church attendance - can find it daunting and discouraging.

As for me, the basics haven't changed:  I still believe in God, and I believe in Jesus Christ, His holy Son, Who was born of humble birth to provide salvation for all of us humans who believe that He is the only Way to Heaven.  I still believe in the holy "catholic" (small "C", meaning "universal) church, and the communion of saints, as the ancient Apostles' Creed reads.  I even believe that believers should not "forsake the assembling of ourselves together", as Hebrews 10:25 reads.  

However, are people like me who no longer attend church the only ones who have fallen out of such idealistic descriptions of Christian fellowship?  What about the people who remain in their country-club-type churches, in their cliques; never bothering to consider if how they're exercising their churchy paradigm is corrupting the communion of saints by... forsaking assembling with marginalized saints?

"Oh, those marginalized people can attend church with us, but they will need to rise up to our pseudo-religious standards.  We shouldn't have to work harder to include them, or figure out why they're not as fun to be around."

(Sidebar #4:  If just about everybody in a congregation feels that way, it's kinda like the Kitty Genovese tragedy in 1960s New York City, when a woman screamed for help during an attack in the middle of the night.  Basically, although they heard her screams in their upscale Queens neighborhood, her neighbors figured "somebody else" would come to her aid - which meant that in reality, nobody did, and her corpse was found later).

Some folks find basic Biblical faith to be extremely exclusionary.  Which, theologically, it is.  And for those people who simply find the Gospel itself offensive, their abandonment of the church is sad, but not surprising.  Meanwhile, haven't many churches today made a different form of exclusiveness so popular amongst themselves?  

Some sins are more acceptable than others (gluttony, vanity, coarse joking, and increasingly, alcohol abuse are the wink-wink "bad habits" that can actually win a churchgoer more acceptance).  Popularity continues to define church pecking orders.  Wealth is an obvious way of doing that, but pick a metric - any metric - within society at large, and you'll find it mimicked either brazenly or discretely in church.  We are to love our neighbors as a way of demonstrating our love for God.  Churchgoers who prefer mixing in their religiosity and their lifestyles, unfortunately, are simply demonstrating their love only for neighbors who are like themselves.

And despite everything I've just written, I get that.  I really do.  As social creatures, all of us tend to do that in most aspects of life.  It's a comfort factor, and a safety factor.  Unfortunately, doing the same thing in church, like folks do in country clubs, is part of the dumbing-down of church and theology that's been going on for generations now (and not to bash only conservative churches, but liberal ones have been doing it all along, too).

And - shucks - not finding comfort and safety in church myself, it helps explain why I have no desire to return.  Extrapolate that across our country, and the trend explains itself.

Maybe at one time, there was something special and unique about going to church and being "in fellowship" with other people who claimed to believe in Jesus Christ.  When I attended Calvary Baptist, on busy 57th Street in Midtown Manhattan, we had homeless people attending, along with at least one matronly lady who I'd see arrive in a silver, chauffeur-driven limousine.  Plus cultures, skin colors, and ethnicities from literally around the world.  

Calvary's diversity was stunning.  There were Sundays where I'd stand on the main floor of its packed sanctuary (literally every Sunday, ushers would be cajoling seated parishioners into making extra room in their already-full pews), surrounded by this panoply of contrasts, all singing the same hymns, and tears would well in my eyes; I'd be overcome realizing how it represented a sample of what Heaven will be like.

Today, however, church no longer seems special.  And that's not God's fault, it's ours.

_____


Monday, February 6, 2023

By the way, some readers who are familiar with Park Cities Presbyterian and its congregation - one of the world's wealthiest - might casually deduce that my detachment from it stems from personal bitterness at being so economically poor relative to its congregants' affluence.  In response to such a presumption, I would first say that I never participated in Park Cities Prez because I was pretentious enough to figure I could fit in with their target audience.  I schlepped over there (a 40-minute drive in the best of times) because their corporate worship services were in the classical, traditional style, which I believe best reflect God's glory and holiness (and hey - those church growth experts say preference is the top reason to pick a church, right?).  

Second, I'm actually grateful to God for the time I got to spend at Park Cities Prez.  I learned a lot about money, wealth, and the people who have it.  For example, I learned not to begrudge people their wealth; not just because being jealous is wrong, but money really does add heavy complexity to one's life.  I also saw that money truly is relative, and God has given His church (the "holy catholic church" :-) plenty of it to do His work.  The thing is, in areas where we see funds lacking, it could mean we aren't spending His money properly.  

But enough about money, and Park Cities.  My conclusions about the church in general stem not just from my experiences in Dallas, but from the ways and things I've seen professing evangelicals from across the church spectrum do, be, and embrace.

I also have found it curious that since posting this essay in December, the only feedback I've heard (except from one long-time friend at Park Cities) has been from other folks who are disaffected from church.  I don't know how to explain that, but it seems to prove my point that churchgoers today are more comfortable without folks like me.  If I could be proven wrong, I'd gladly admit it!

Wednesday, December 7, 2022

Curtains for the Swastika?

https://www.bbc.com/news/magazine-29644591
American companies used the swastika in non-political marketing
during the early part of the 20th Century,
before the rise of Nazi Germany.
I have to say, looking at these images, my first impression
as a person educated and inculturated in the West,
is that they are all of Nazi propaganda,
even though none of them are.


 
Antisemitism can be like a bad virus.  There may be periods of time when it appears to hibernate, or stagnate, or otherwise lose its public potency.  But history unfortunately seems to prove it's always there.  Under the surface.  Waiting for seasonal taboos to wear thin, so it can re-emerge.

These days, it's managed to explode onto our public consciousness in the form of celebrity endorsements and social media tirades.  And if you're not Jewish yourself, or close friends with Jewish people, maybe it seems like a mild distraction, if anything.  

After all, how many of us are literally hateful of Jews?  We're beyond that, right?  How many of us celebrate the totems of what we call the Holocaust?  We know our history, and appreciate that the swastika exists as one of the most instantly-recognizable symbols of bigotry on our planet.

Or... does it?

Did you know that before Adolph Hitler co-opted the swastika for his evil Nazi party, the symbol had already served for thousands of years as a religious icon across the world?  Depending on the culture, it represents various positive themes and virtues, as well as aspects of revered divinity. 

Not just then, but today as well. 

In its original Sanskrit, "swastika" means "well-being".  In Hinduism, depending on the direction in which the icon is flipped, it can represent either the sun and prosperity, or night and power.  Buddhists consider the swastika as the footprint of the Buddha.  In Jainism, it represents one of their deities.  

The swastika can be found in ancient art by Native Americans and even early Christian cultures.  For centuries, it innocuously represented good luck across much of Europe.

It adorns buildings built before World War II, and was used as a logo for the Boy Scouts.

But by then, nefarious winds had already begun to blow for the swastika.  Its first usage in politics began in the late 1800s, in Romania and Germany, and it was soon co-opted for antisemitic purposes by fringe far-right groups across Europe.  Eventually, during the mid-1930s, Hitler and his Nazi party adopted the swastika as an official logo for white supremacists.  

(It must be said that while the swastika has a confusing provenance as a symbol, the notion of white supremacy is based on wildly incongruous theories about a supposed Aryan race.  Without getting bogged down in the ridiculous hypotheses that have long been debunked about Aryanism, suffice it to say that Germany's infatuation with blue-eyed blondes contrasted deeply with the peoples upon whom the Aryan concept was founded, which ironically included Iranians and Afghans.  Indeed, while Hitler himself did have blue eyes, he definitely wasn't blonde.)

Almost overnight, it seems the swastika got forged into a representation of horrific oppression to the point of genocide.  And wherever world history has been taught since then, people have come to absorb the swastika unilaterally with this message:  It stands for hatred of Jews, as well as minority groups in general, such as Blacks, homosexuals, and Europe's Roma ("gypsy") peoples.

When virtually any Westerner sees it today, they instantly know what it represents.

But that's us Westerners.  What about those folks inhabiting the rest of our planet?  They don't reflexively see anything evil when they see a swastika.  Should we - shucks, CAN we? - just throw away the other uses that societies, cultures, and religions have had for the swastika throughout our human existence?  

An increasingly vocal segment of religious freedom advocates say they want to reclaim this logo that means different things to them.  They say the swastika should not be held hostage to Hitler and his legacy, however horrific it was.  As long as people use it for non-hateful purposes, they should be free to do so.

After all, the swastika itself is neither good nor bad.  Right?  It's just an artistic representation of a concept.  Whether that concept is equilibrium, or stasis, or psychic energy, or prosperity, or evil racism.  It's how a person uses it that is good or bad. 

And frankly, a lot of it has to do with one's intent, doesn't it?  Why does a particular person use - and even cherish - the swastika?  The swastika does not have a soul, but it can reflect the soul of its user.  In that regard, it's like anything else.  What is a person's heart-felt reason for using anything, whether it's a symbol, or an appliance, or a vote, or a skill?  Is the person deploying the item trying to be kind, or respectful, or helpful in the most charitable sense of the term?  Or are they trying to foment something bad and evil, like hatefulness?

In a way, the swastika illustrates what widespread publicity and media attention can do to anything.  Think about it:  Hitler came to power during a pivotal time in world history - the establishment and proliferation of mass media, especially utilizing audio and video, not just static media like print and photos.  World War Two was the first time a war had been brought to Western audiences (any audience, actually) with then-fledgling tools of sight and sound and moving pictures, in which the swastika was prominently displayed during scenes of outright hatred and violence.  

And ever since, the media and our Western cultures have continued to repeat and repeat those visceral images without realizing that by doing so, we all were unintentionally stripping the swastika itself of its global history, and creating for it a relatively new legacy as a symbol of evil.

After all, the religions and worldviews that historically have utilized the swastika were way off the Western world's radar, and by extension, the radar of our media and educational elites.  It's not because, as antisemites claim, Jews control our society.  It's because our Western world has established itself as the universal prototype among virtually all aspects of conventional living.  Woke activists decry the influence Western "civilization" has had across our planet, but this influence has been a fait accompli.  It has happened.  It is our reality.  It doesn't mean everything Western civilization has accomplished is right and perfect and good.  But resenting it, complaining about it, denying its existence, and mocking its influence can be just as negative as the negatives one would want to change about it.

Societies will continue to evolve, just as Western civilization itself has evolved.  But such evolutionary dynamics take time.  And sometimes the changes that come along aren't for the better after all.

Aesthetically, the swastika is a stark form.  It's relatively organic, it's not ethnic, nor is it complicated to make.  It's remarkable to consider that ancient societies of various proficiencies across the planet used it simultaneously, but with no apparent formal interconnectedness or replication.  It's not particularly beautiful, although some cultures have adorned it with flourishes and other iconography.

That basic starkness unfortunately lends itself to Hitler's purposes of intimidation.  For example, unlike many more innocuous symbols, the swastika can have a particular, visceral impact on the psyche of people who behold it.  Especially if they're Jewish.

Hitler was many awful things, but he was also a keen exploiter of manipulation, and his propaganda ministry did a masterful job of co-opting the swastika as an icon and logo.  That part is indisputable.  Even when I watch re-runs of my favorite sitcom, Hogan's Heroes, and the swastika is spoofed - such as when Colonel Hogan bends a large antenna into a crude swastika - the imagery is chilling to me.

By the way, the top four German characters in Hogan's Heroes - Colonel Klink, Sergeant Schultz, General Burkhalter, and Major Hochstetter - were all played by actors who were Jews in real life.
https://apnews.com/article/religion-germany-race-and-ethnicity-europe-2c28b5892381cd4148dfde5bc4fbb004
New Yorkers celebrating Diwali
wanted to have this ornament on their condo's door
.

None of this, of course, addresses whether people who are not Nazis or antisemites or white supremacists should try and reclaim their interpretation of the swastika.

Is there any dispensation of politically-correct leniency here?  

Recently in Queens, New York, a Hindu doctor and her husband put an ornamental decoration celebrating Diwali on their condo door.  And their condo association flew into a panic, because the decoration innocently included a swastika.  

The couple was offended when they were told to remove it.  They expressed frustration that their personal religious freedoms were being curtailed, apparently because Diwali isn't a prominent holiday in New York City.  At least, not prominent enough for a building full of diverse neighbors to instantly associate a swastika with Hinduism and their festival of lights.  Instead of bigotry.

Now, normally, I'm a huge proponent of religious freedom.  And not just freedom for my Christianity.  Sociopolitically, I tolerate the existence of religions other than my own because generally speaking, faith is an integral part of most peoples' worldview and identity.  And restricting one person's legitimate religious freedom is theoretically a restriction for all religious freedom.  So while I don't know a lot about Hinduism, if the swastika is an integral part of its adherents' worldview and identity, I'd ordinarily default to a position of respecting their right to display their faith's symbols, even if they include the swastika.

However... And it's a big "however":

Some ways of displaying faith symbols can be more appropriate than others.  And when it comes to the swastika, things obviously get complicated today.  Altruism is one thing, but cold, hard reality can be another.  That's not the fault of religions and traditions which revere the swastika symbol, but it's a reality they have to accept, and a problem with which they have to negotiate.  

Unfortunately for the swastika, and for people groups cherishing it, that particular symbol, in the broader context of global saliency, has been nearly irretrievably corrupted.  Not just by Hitler and his Nazis, but by some bigots today who perpetuate it and exploit its ability to resonate among newer generations.  And these newer generations aren't just in North America, but in South America, and in Europe, which includes Slavic countries.  And Israel, which is located in the Middle East.  

Geographically speaking, this covers a lot of ground, both literally and figuratively.

Don't get me wrong:  Displaying the swastika should not be illegal.  But people who are respectful of others and want to live amicably within a pluralistic society should want to do what we can to avoid unnecessary conflict, and that includes taking the initiative of NOT displaying symbols that we know will be interpreted negatively by our neighbors.

The educational curve to contextualize a swastika in any other purpose than hatred's is simply still too great.  Again, not because the swastika itself is evil.  But because some people who use it are.

I'm pretty sure that's not the answer people like the couple in Queens want to hear.  And perhaps if they lived in Asia, where Jewish history and culture is the least represented demographically, and where the swastika's provenance as a valid religious icon commands far broader public recognition, restricting its usage would be a tougher argument to make.  

And yeah, for all its multiculturalism, New York City - of all places - is not the ideal test market for redeeming the swastika.  Right now, considering all the antisemitism rearing its ugly head across the West, no place within easy reach of the Internet is probably suitable.  

It's a profoundly bizarre feat bigotry's acolytes have pulled off:  the nearly-complete corruption of an ancient design.

Is that fair?  No, it isn't.  But then again, hate rarely creates equity.

_____

Monday, October 24, 2022

Bad Journalism Exploits and Shifts

 
Examples of trickster journalism continue to rampage across our media landscape.  Unfortunately, it's easy to find reasons for why we need to beware of and refute such sensationalistic gossip masquerading as reporting.

Consider, for example, an urgent portrayal of a (former) UPS worker's suicide as being indicative of corporate malfeasance at a dangerous parcel-sorting facility.  However, all this Kentucky tragedy literally represents is another type of he-said/she-said claim.  It's based only on hearsay from former co-workers with axes to grind.  

Any good journalist should understand that one suicide by a pregnant woman who'd just been fired does not a story of workplace peril make.  There may indeed exist any number of workplace safety violations at this facility, but no investigation has yet been made.  Shucks, any reporter could go to virtually any large workplace in America and find enough disgruntled employees to craft a narrative of grievances against their employer.  That's not journalism, because it's not proof of anything, except the existence of aggrieved workers.  It's just exploiting somebody's personal tragedy under the guise of pseudo-news.

It generates lots of clicks and views, however, and THAT'S what counts in today's media.

Then, here near downtown Dallas, there was a guy who killed two hospital workers - a nurse, and a social worker - at Methodist Hospital last week.  The ("alleged") killer was on parole and was granted permission to visit the mother of his child as she gave birth that day.  He ended up accusing her of infidelity, hit her over her head multiple times in her room, and threatened to kill her and himself before the day was out.  Then he murdered the next two people to enter her room, the nurse and the social worker, who were caught completely unaware. 

Now some hospital staff are complaining to the media about their perceptions of bad security and how poorly Methodist officials run the hospital.  But again, that is not good reporting.  It's merely using hollow allegations to exploit another tragedy.  Emotions run high after a co-worker is killed, and it's disingenuous to simply record what people say while they're in shock and unable to reasonably process what just happened.  

Granted, in Dallas' hospital tragedy, the shooter's long rap sheet should have prevented him from having access to any public place.  Shucks, the mother of his child should have known better and refused to sleep with him in the first place.  And sure, maybe Methodist officials run a loose ship, allegedly similar to UPS in Kentucky.  But simply chronicling grievances and stitching them into a fabrication of grander misbehavior by management is not responsible journalism.  

Even if lots of people want to think it is.

Another problem here, of course, is that both the media and individual citizens want to hold organizations responsible for the bad decisions and behaviors people make.  But that's not always how life works, is it?  We are all individual, uniquely responsible people who, ultimately, must take accountability for the decisions we make, and the behavior we commit. 

That is a wildly unpopular notion, and it won't generate nearly the same volume of clicks and eyeballs.  It's not salacious, there are a lot fewer victims, and facts require a lot more work to uncover (on the clock - which could get expensive!).  Besides, facts generally aren't as capable of stoking emotional responses as innuendo and hyperbole.

True, other factors may come into play as we devise our decisions and make actions that impact ourselves and others.  And it does seem that the larger an organization, the weaker that organization's sense of obligation regarding workplace safety and similar issues.  Yet increasingly, our society wants to minimize personal responsibility so we can BLAME other people - especially big, faceless organizations like corporations, governments, political parties, bureaucrats, even social media companies and journalism companies - for the behavior of individuals.  Even the behavior we end up committing ourselves.

Doing so helps us feel so much better about ourselves, doesn't it?

Thursday, September 1, 2022

What Makes Racist Imagery Racist

 
On one side of my local FOX news website, I see this headline: "Texas State Board of Education votes to delay social studies curriculum update after complaints (over things like Critical Race Theory)".

Then I see this headline: "Dallas Police Department investigating 'racist' challenge coin rendering (by a white officer)".

This is so frustrating.  As long as white (and I de-capitalize the adjective "white" here because this cop allegedly displayed such disgusting bigotry) police officers apparently feel comfortable joking about racism on their job - especially after the angst and anti-cop violence following the Floyd fiasco - we're going to have other people fearfully arguing over racism and how it's taught in public classrooms.

Hey White people: It's up to US to prove that we're not going to tolerate racism!  Good grief, this is ridiculous.  I'm no sanctimonious non-bigot, and I struggle against denigrating people who aren't like me.  Most of us do, don't we, no matter our race?  But those of us who are mature about this actually try to work for peace and understanding.  We don't find humor or respect in belligerently mocking other people. 

It could be argued that, taken individually, none of these emblems on the proposed "challenge coin" are inherently, unilaterally racist (click on the link above if you want to see the artwork in question; I don't want to post the image on my blog).  For example, there are a lot of blinged-out cars in south Dallas, especially with enormous wheels.  I don't think Black people are the only ones who drive them.  Teeth grilles?  Guns?  Money?  A drug house?  The name of a shopping center that doesn't have some sort of nostalgic reference to rocks, a meadow, or a body of water in it?  These aren't necessarily Black-specific, or perceived as denigrating Blacks.

The Pillsbury Doughboy has been co-opted by the "gangsta" culture as a slang term for a fat man, or a drug dealer, because dough is a slang term for money, and cocaine is white.  "Doughboy" is also the name of a prominent rapper.  Unfortunately, the Pillsbury brand itself is merely collateral damage.

So why am I labeling this cop's "coin" as racist?  Because taken in the aggregate, these icons all have something in common: Negative stereotypes often associated with not just south Dallas in general, but Black people specifically.  If we still need instruction on how to identify racism, then I guess this is a good object lesson.  If you're not upholding virtue and morality when referencing somebody, particularly somebody who is noticeably different from you, and especially particularly if you're a person in authority (like a cop, for goodness sake), and you are doing it to denigrate a group of people at their expense, that is at the very least bias.  If you're doing it to a group of people who are of a different race than you, it's racist. 

And it's wrong.

And BTW, I'm preaching to myself here, too. 😉

Wednesday, July 13, 2022

Uvalde Tragedy Spreads in Media Scoop Hubris

OLI Snippets

(from my short posts on social media)

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The Austin American-Statesman newspaper represents an unrepentant swagger I've so frequently derided among our American media.

Posting the video from Uvalde's school tragedy so soon, before victims' families could see its footage privately if they wished, was utterly unnecessary.  Yet it's typical of the smug, elitist diminution of propriety that mainstream media outlets increasingly foist across our technology-infused information landscape.

Their editors posted a pompous rationale for publishing that video, yet they ignore the grief so many Texans are experiencing by their actions.  It's not the fact that they posted the video, it's their timing.  But no, they had to "break the story" first.  They didn't care who got hurt in the process.  They scored a scoop, and in their minds, that's what counts.

There weren't even any crucial new facts revealed in the video - nothing the public at large needs to know to protect ourselves.  It's mostly salacious voyeurism at this point, so who among us needs to see it so soon?  The fact that their editors, as proven by their hollow rhetoric in defending their decision, don't see their own faults helps explain why the American public continues to rate journalism as one of the least-trustworthy professions in the country.

As for myself, I've seen clips from the video as they've been replayed on televised news accounts, but I have zero interest in looking at any more of it.  Uvalde's school massacre was a tragedy when it happened, and things have continued to devolve from there.  Such misery all the way around.

May God have mercy on the families of Uvalde's victims - the Austin American-Statesman sure didn't.

Tuesday, June 28, 2022

Grading the Media: T for Tropes or F for Facts?

 
I've seen several reports recently where the mainstream media/journalism industry has been grading itself.

Generally, within these reports, the negative perspective many news consumers (you and me) have of the media/journalism industry is dutifully recognized.  However - and not surprisingly - journalists give themselves higher marks than they give the public they're ostensibly serving.   They can't bear to fault themselves for these negative perspectives many of us news consumers hold of them.

Although multiple studies have found that few Americans "trust" the news media anymore, reporters insist with straight faces that they present important facts.  So why won't news consumers trust journalists?  Especially mainstream ones?

Some of the problem originates with journalism schools, which for decades now have quietly operated under the noble duty of grooming legions of reporters, broadcasters - and now digital correspondents - to advocate for the underdog, the marginalized, and the oppressed.  Does that surprise you?  Well, you're not the only one!  I've even seen a couple of studies recently in which journalists have been apparently stunned to learn that many Americans expect our news media to report the news regardless of how it affects minorities, poor people, or any other special interest group.

In other words, journalists don't see themselves as having the same job description the general public has for them.  Which is a good recipe for miscommunication, right? 

Now, maybe having a group of people trying to teach the public to be empathetic isn't a bad thing.  Reminding all of us that genuine differences exist between ourselves, and we need to be respectful and kind and helpful to others:  Who can argue against that?  Yet it mostly helps to explain why there's a growing disconnect between media and consumers.  If they want a morality lesson, most consumers will turn to their religious leaders (or worse, their favored politicians).  We turn to journalists for a listing of the day's events.

Unfortunately, when it comes to what we define as news, things get even more complicated.

Generally, "news" can be defined as something that is extraordinary.  Ordinary, everyday events may impact our lives, but in the news industry, ordinary events don't sell advertising space.  And the extraordinary is usually extreme, right?  However, with our media presenting so many extremes, have we all internalized those extremes as being more common than they really are?  Has it warped our perception of literal reality?  It goes back to something I noticed recently about the emerging awareness of how rare non-fungible tokens can actually imperil their own value.  The constant pursuit of the marginal, the fringe, the rare, or the uncommon actually makes the marginal - in the aggregate - more common in terms of dulling an audience's perception of it.  Has the media - both from the left and right of the political spectrum - done the same thing with "news"?

Then there's the problem of bias.  It's extremely difficult to find any news outlet that isn't biased.  Some left-wing and right-wing outlets don't even bother to hide their biases, and often, they let those biases over-rule literal facts. And again, there's this issue of complexity.  Very little in life is as simple as we'd like it to be.  Unfortunately, within this vacuum of grays, facts can get twisted into "spin", to support the overall perspective of the person or organization marketing the facts to their consumers.  Forget the altruistic idealization of facts being neither right nor wrong; any good reporter knows that data is malleable relative to the overall product being sold.  The more aggressive journalists are in marketing their overall product, the greater the risks of facts fading from black and white into gray.  Hey, right-wingers have their tropes, and so do left-wingers, and tropes have to be fed.

And frankly, in this day and age, that's how many news consumers apparently want it.

Americans have come to love idolizing politics.  Religion used to be "the opiate of the masses", but today, politics are the opiate.  Political rhetoric gives a quick high.  Politics provide an easy way to try and make sense of an increasingly complex, confusing, and frightening world. There have been far more perilous times in world history, but today, the Internet and social media have combined to bombard all of us with sensationalistic information from every corner of the planet. And a lot of that information is inaccurate, or outright false. Trouble is, many people can't be bothered to parse out fact from fiction. Many people are comfortable accepting information that solidifies their perceptions of reality. Very few of us enjoy having our sensibilities and values challenged. We don't seek information that destabilizes what we've already decided is right or wrong.

It's almost ethnocentric for any of us, no matter our political posture, to view our world today as being more dangerous or dreadful than it's ever been before.  So what about the Plague, or the Inquisition, or the Dark Ages, or the Holocaust, for example.  Sure, bad things are happening all around us - and depending who we are, even to us - but hasn't the human experience on this planet always been that way?  Instead, Internet technology gives us the impression that crises imperil us like never before, and we are on the precipice of oblivion.  Maybe we are, and maybe we aren't, but simply having to struggle with so much readily-available, demoralizing information isn't the best way to know for sure.  

Unfortunately, Internet technology can broadcast anything of any legitimacy instantly.  It can give voice to any opinion (even mine, here), which means it's easier than ever for any crackpot with sufficient charisma to capture attention and build a following.  Truth isn't necessary these days.  Only the ability to convince.  And people who are scared, angry, lustful, prideful, hateful, and jealous tend to be suckers for biases and tropes.  Whether we want to admit it or not, we all grapple with self-preservation, which includes our ardent advocacy of what we believe, embrace, value, and desire.  Even journalists - people who've intentionally gone into the information business because they get to impact a broader audience - do this.

Nobody goes to journalism school with plans for a career creating ledgers of statistics.  No, journalism schools teach students how to capture attentions, spin details, and convince, and manipulate emotions.  Hey - I took two college journalism classes.  And my take-away was that how information is PACKAGED can be more important than the information itself.  Trouble is - partisans on both sides of the political aisle seem OK with this strategy.  Few Americans actually are willing to break out of their preferred partisan cocoons and consider broader narratives that complicate what their chosen heroes are saying. And reporters fall into the same trap.

Blaming consumers for not trusting the broader journalism industry is mostly a smokescreen for avoiding this reality.  If I could grade the media I once studied in college, I'd give it an "F" - but not for providing facts in an unbiased light.

Wednesday, June 15, 2022

When Rarity Is NFT: Not Fiduciarily Trustworthy

OLI Snippets

(from my short posts on social media)

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Non-fungible tokens. Sounds like a disease riders could get from dirty subway tokens in NYC - back when those coin-like payment discs were used. But today's hipsters wouldn't know about subway tokens. They know all about NFT's, though. And rarity is what non-fungible tokens are all about. Except... a recent study suggests that rarity can actually reduce value. "Demand for rarity is self-defeating... the big question now is whether we can observe this effect in other categories, too.” - Jordan Suchow

Which, actually, shouldn’t be too surprising, right? Consider this principle when generally applied, for example, to most of the news stories our media creates. Much of what we commonly consider “news” is what we consider to be rare. Things that don’t happen every day, people who aren’t like other people, etc. What captures the imagination for a moment - that's what purveyors of news (from the mainstream media to extremist news outlets) are selling their consumers. Unfortunately, this push for the extreme may be building within the minds of consumers an ever-rising threshold of what is considered worthwhile. In the media’s case, this means they have a constantly evolving quest to find what their audience will consider to be rare or extraordinary. Which maybe helps explain one reason we have the unhappy, angry society we have today? Pushing the boundaries of the unusual ("rare") is bound to distort what we consider "normal", don't you think?

And yes... I thought I had a couple - and I do!  Original, genuine NYC MTA subway/bus tokens from around 1993.  Well, two are from '93; the one with the ribbon through its diamond-shaped hole was a commemorative token from 1979 in honor of the subway's 75th anniversary.

Tuesday, June 14, 2022

Zero Merit to White Supremacy

OLI Snippets

(from my short posts on social media)

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OK, just so we're clear: White supremacy is ignorant and utterly without merit.  Whites weren't the first people in North America.  Whites aren't the only race of people to create the America we've had, and that we have today, so there's nothing for Whites to "reclaim".  Whites aren't the smartest, most moral, most bestest people ever.  We aren't pure or special.  Oh - and Jesus Christ is not Caucasian.  He's also Jewish, BTW, for the anti-semites out there. 

We can have different opinions on a variety of topics, but don't expect any legitimacy with the idea that some people are intrinsically better.

Saturday, March 19, 2022

Empire-Building More Than a Whitey Thing

OLI Snippets

(from my short posts on social media)

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Right now, we're hearing a lot of talk about "empire-building". But here's the thing about "empire-building": It's not just White Europeans who did it (and are doing it today in Ukraine).

Aztec and especially Inca peoples here in the Western Hemisphere were brutal empire-builders before Europeans ever arrived. Some Native American tribes in what are now the United States and Canada did it. The African continent continues to be roiled by indigenous tribal empire-building, which the mainstream media flatly ignores. China and Japan were voracious empire-builders across Asia, and Hong Kong remains an infamous victim of it. Religions have engaged in empire-building as well, such as Christianity and Islam.

Some empires were smaller than others, some lasted longer than others, but it's all what makes our human history, both globally, and in our communities and neighborhoods no matter where we live. It's complicated, hardly pretty, and rarely humane. Not to excuse what's currently happening in Ukraine, of course. In fact, quite the opposite: Putin and Russia should know from history that respecting the rule of law enacted by a relatively democratic society is a reciprocal duty of sovereign nations. Barbarism no longer is acceptable. By the way, this applies not just in the former Soviet Union, but also here among American political extremists.

Thursday, January 27, 2022

Covid Deniers, Science, and Doubt Benefits

  

Might Americans be increasingly turning their backs on science?

As anti-vaxx propaganda refuses to fade away, and as vaccine hesitancy continues to plague our country's Covid fight, some media and political wonks have begun to wonder out loud if our country's longtime allegiance to science is on the wane.

After all, how else can we explain the refusal by upwards of 40% of our population to willingly take a shot that could bring this pandemic to heel? 

Here in America, a considerable portion of our industrial and political might has been built on science.  The airplane.  Telecommunications.  The Internet.  Medicine, including Big Pharma.  Most of the construction methodologies of the past two centuries.  Space travel.  These are all areas of modern life that American science has mastered, if not literally invented.

But now, after the Covid has permeated this modern universe with shock waves that sound more like stone age echos, the fact that many otherwise sophisticated folks continue to decry Covid vaccines seems to suggest that suddenly, science is suspect.

One of the loudest anti-vaxxers is a liberal Democrat from an American political dynasty.  Even some noted scientists have been joining the anti-vaxx cacophany.  It's been a bizarre revolt against what even right-winger Donald Trump sees as a big win for American innovation:  A vaccine in human arms in less than a year after the pandemic began!

Trump has his many detractors, but nobody should deny him that achievement on his watch.  Yet some of his most ardent fans literally "boo" him when he talks about getting the vaccine himself.

Bizarre, right?

To be clear:  I personally do not believe Covid vaccines are inherently dangerous.  They are not killing anybody.  I've had my three shots and I'm just fine.  I'm just fine.  I'm fine just.  Fine just I'm.

OK, yes, I really am just fine!

However, I know a number of otherwise thoughtful, logical people who agree that the Covid is dangerous, and even lethal, but they still refuse to get vaccinated.

These aren't people who believe the vaccines make recipients magnetic, or anything genuinely stupid like that.  They mostly seem incredulous that a vaccine developed so rapidly could genuinely be safe.  Some of them willingly take other vaccines, but those vaccines have been around for a while, and weren't deployed within a year of their inception.  It's all just too implausible for them.  The vaccines, and even Covid itself.  They seem to be struggling with the whole package, and still shell-shocked with all the havoc that's rocketed across the entire globe in such a relatively short period of time.

Many more of us struggle with change than will willingly admit it.

So is science really being distrusted, or something else?

Skepticism is nothing new in America.  And it's always been somewhat admirable to buck the system.  For better or worse, individualism - even stark selfishness - is part of the American ethos.  Even the "united" part of our country's official name has been a struggle to maintain.  So when our government pays for a vaccine to be developed in a remarkably short period of time, aren't we asking for blow-back from the populace?

Our government doesn't exactly have a stellar track record with anybody when it comes to absolute honesty and fairness.  So maybe it's the government, and not science, that Covid deniers most suspect.

And these days, a lot of angst and contention likely can be attributed to a general Western weariness of information overload, and social media fatigue.  Never before in human existence has so much unvetted news material been so widely available to so many people.  Communication technology is proving to be not just a tool for good, but a weapon for destruction, as it can seem to lend an air of legitimacy to not just provable facts, but any sort of drivel or contentiousness from any hack with a computer or smartphone.

When people get scared, they tend to default towards what they've previously been conditioned to believe, whether it's true or not.  And although many Covid deniers claim not to be scared, the shrill tone of their defiance betrays a greater likelihood that they really are.

Skepticism isn't necessarily wrong, but unfortunately, a lot of people are skeptical of the wrong things.  And sometimes even neutral facts can be manipulated by people with axes to grind and political points to score.  And I'm not just talking about how governments around the world have reacted to the Covid.  I'm simply pointing out that just because a person doesn't want a Covid vaccine, they should not automatically be accused of being anti-science.  

After all, consider some of the other stuff with which science has been recently been tinkering, and which many in the media and political spheres have twisted to suit their preferences:

Transgenderism:  After millennia of our planet having two genders - and only two genders - and understanding that we are either one or the other, suddenly, we're being told it's OK to simply switch between them?  "Not so fast", many of us respond.  People who misconstrue scientific data on this subject to justify "trans rights" are actually abusing science to machinate a new reality.  Meanwhile, as hard as it was for traditionalists back in Gloria Steinem's day, she and her fellow feminists did get it right:  Gender isn't based on emotions.  It's not that people who are struggling with their sexual identity today should be marginalized, but sexual identity simply isn't as complex as some folks seem intent on making it.  

Global Warming:  Remember when we were told our ozone layer had a hole in it, and that chlorofluorocarbons were the culprit?  So industries around the world set out to change their chemical formulas and products to eliminate much of the artificially-produced chlorofluorocarbons in the atmosphere, and voila!  The ozone layer's hole fixed itself.  But now, we're being told there is global warming, and it's being caused by pollutants created by humankind's activities.  It wasn't just the chlorofluorocarbons after all.  And OK, maybe it wasn't.  But nobody can prove our planet is on an inexorable warming trajectory.  After all, we've only been accurately recording temperatures for a century or so.  What kinds of fluctuations in our planet's temperatures are normal, and what kinds aren't?  And how do we know for sure?  And what about that Ice Age we learned about in elementary school?  Apparently our planet warmed considerably after that, before humankind started driving cars and running air conditioners.  So why should we now panic about global warming when we don't really know how much of it - if any of it - is really happening?  How long have the polar ice caps been melting - and refreezing, and melting, and refreezing, in cycles?  And while global warming may impact species diversity, who says the number of species alive today is worse than it was before all the species died off over the preceding millennia, but whose extinction didn't spell disaster for humankind (because after all, we're still here)?  I don't know of anybody who opposes having a cleaner environment.  So let's work on that, and stop squawking like Chicken Little.

Electric Vehicles:  It's one thing to refute global warming simply because one fears the demise of Big Oil.  But if you listen carefully, you'll notice that Big Oil isn't too upset about the push for electric vehicles.  And why might that be?  Perhaps one big reason is that electric vehicles - EVs as they're called - will still need Big Oil!  That's because we barely generate enough electricity for global demand as it is.  Imagine if millions of car batteries will need to be charged every night all over the country!  Solar and wind might power some of that re-charging, but petroleum products will be the primary fuel upon which electricity providers will be relying.  Which makes the whole EV craze a fallacy, right?  Making matters more duplicitous, the engines in EVs cost a lot more than internal combustion engines, so no wonder auto makers are pushing for them.  But aside from being hip conversation pieces, EVs could do more harm than help to our planet in the long run.  And we haven't even started talking about the human rights abuses already being made in the dangerous mining of rare earth metals necessary for EV batteries.

Instead of science, today's zeitgeists of transgenderism, global warming, and electric vehicles rely more on trendy posturing and political fervor than legitimately-parsed data for their prominent places on the public stage.  So when Covid came along, an already skeptical public - who aren't even necessarily Republicans, or White, or suburban - may simply have lacked the emotional bandwidth to take on more burdens, conflicts, and change.

Not to say that denying Covid science is good, or logical.  However, we can't broadly accuse the people who participate in it as being ignorant - which is the implication, isn't it?  Of all that it could be, vaccine denial might be nothing more than folks saying science has already let itself be over-politicized too much on other topics, so why should the Covid be any different?

Scientists could use this time in history as a wake-up call for how they allow the data they collect to be used and explained.  "Clinical proof" needs to be evaluated apart from politics, since many science-related topics have become fodder for partisan bickering.  In a way, it's unfortunate that the Covid hit at a unique time in history when many people had yet to learn how easy it is to spread hysterics over social media, and how hard it is to figure out what is true and what isn't online.  Particularly in America, folks have already been more distrustful and less considerate of each other as politics have become defining totems of our personal identities.  So it wasn't so much that people want to disbelieve science, as much as some folks have become too used to letting their emotions dictate their actions.  And a pandemic can be an emotional experience.

So if we're parsing blame, let's be fair.

Both America's media industry and political industry (and yes, American politics is a bare-knuckle for-profit industry, not an altruistic panoply of ideologies) are based on stratification.  Identifying and cultivating their preferred customer base through scare tactics and over-generalizations have become their modus operandi.  And each relies on the other for marketing purposes.  So in a way, it's not surprising how ordinary Americans have responded to the Covid, since their sources of information have been hijacked by their political totems.

But aren't there better ways to process this experience?

For example, let's appreciate the importance of respecting others, especially those with whom we have disagreements.  It's hardly fun, yet we should be willing to evaluate facts we might find uncomfortable.  We can't let our personal opinions become facts in and of themselves.  And while voting is important, democracy and majority-rule doesn't decide what is an opinion, and what is fact.

And whether it's the media, politicians, or us ordinary civilians:  Let's not be so greedy with benefits of the doubt - give some to others, especially when they're looking to achieve something for an overall good.  Be patient, and don't forget that other people often have to be patient with us.

In other words, do unto others as we'd have them do unto us.  

Now, where have I heard that before...?