One set of my friends is set on the Christian faith belief set.
Typically, their statements are of two kinds:
“God is good” when their lives are relatively carefree and “Pray for me/family/friends” when their lives are troubled.
I often wonder why they don’t say “Pray for my happiness” and/or “God is good to put these problems in my life.”
Regardless of one’s belief sets, officially organised or not, consistent world/universe view is as important as one’s verbal output, n’est pas?
Phil Silvers (Fischl Silverstein): “What’s television? Burlesque with an antenna — that’s television.”
What has the science of culture, including the recent data mining that drove the recent round of political elections, proven?
There is no such thing as an “American.”
Thus, when news stories say, “A majority of Americans feel…,” I will ignore the stories and the polls on which they are based.
What I will listen for are, “According to your particular subculture…”.
American is no longer a homogenous term for the people who live on a portion of the North American continent.
Time for the term to fall into disuse rather than future/further misuse and abuse.
Are you familiar with Poe’s Law? From wikipedia:
Without a winking smiley or other blatant display of humor, it is impossible to create a parody of fundamentalism that someone won’t mistake for the real thing.
The core of Poe’s law is that a parody of something extreme by nature becomes impossible to differentiate from sincere extremism. A corollary of Poe’s law is the reverse phenomenon: sincere fundamentalist beliefs being mistaken for a parody of that belief.
I guess what I’m saying is that I grew up in a community where creationism and the scientific method lived side-by-side.
So did parody and solemnity.
I quickly learned that creationism was not so much about the “reality” of a young universe as it was a set of code words we used to dupe those who made fun of creationism.
While smartypants were talking smack about the dumb creationists and their fundamentalist religion, the creationists were running the factories and businesses in town for whom the smartypants worked.
Creationism was established to delineate the true members of a subculture from the false members and/or outsiders.
The scientific method was as valid a laboratory tool for creationists as it was for noncreationists to create new plastic polymers.
But again, it was the set of code words used during coffee breaks and lunch periods that showed who was willing to suspend their disbelief in order to belong to one group or another.
Code words as ancient as our species.
So, the next time you hear someone debating just how old the universe and our planet are, remember Poe’s Law — you should pay attention to what they’re really saying, not what their words mean on a superficial level.
Outsiders and those without a refined sense of humour will miss the nuanced reasons used by those who espouse creationism as their core belief set.
Do you belong to a particular community?
What would you do to maintain your position in a social setting?
Would you repeat the community’s code words without question or a smidgen of doubt?
Not every subculture uses tattoos, piercings and the breaking of social taboos to define themselves.
Some use words and respect the boundaries that taboos provide.
Did you hear the latest? Secret Service and DEA agents now have more condoms in their wallets than bullets on their belts!
Went to the petrol station for a fill-up this afternoon.
The attendant ran right up when I’d pumped only for a few seconds.
“Sorry, guv’nuh. New regulations — can’t put more than seven bullets’ worth of energy in the ol’ tank.”
I couldn’t believe my ears.
I drove home to meet the heating oil salesman.
Same story. A few squeezes of dinosaur juice in the oil tank and he was ready to go.
I asked if he knew where I could get some coal. “Sorry, ol’ chap. Guv’ment regulations and all. Been sold out since this morning.”
I’ve got me wife and kids bicycling in the basement, charging the batteries for our house since this dad-blasted rain’s been pouring down for days, rendering our solar panels practically useless.
Looks like we’ll be walking from now on, thanks to our government that has to pretend it’s in charge every now and then, glosing over the fact it’s beholden to lobbyists and foreign investors.
treetrunkdings 