You're thinking, "Oh no, he's trying to wring every last bit of blog commentary out of the Myers mess. Now he's gonna claim Myers is a threat to democracy." Well, yes, sort of. But hear me out.
When I first heard about Myers' plans to desecrate a consecrated Host, I reacted hotly, as any serious Christian would. Then, after the fact, I tried to put aside my anger and react with love, pity and sorrow, seeing Myers as his Creator surely does: as a lost sheep who might yet be saved. Now the aspect of the story that's weighing on my mind is what Myers' act, and acts like it, portend for the future of life in our pluralistic democracy.
Yesterday while driving around, I listened on CD to a 2005 lecture given by James Davison Hunter, the University of Virginia sociologist who specializes in studying the culture war (it was Hunter who coined the phrase "culture war.") The thesis of the lecture was that the cultural conditions that brought about the founding of the American Republic no longer exist. Hunter explained that even though American at the founding contained people who believed religious faith was the source of ultimate authority for the government, and those who believed pure reason was, the American settlement was sufficiently opaque to accomodate both sides. The reason? A shared commitment to a broad understanding of what constituted the common good. Whether you believed an understanding of the Good derived primarily from religious dictates, or natural reason shorn of the distorting lens of religion, there was broad agreement on where society ought to be headed.
That's over, Hunter says. The Enlightenment dream that Reason alone can disclose authoritative truths to live by has been shown to have been empty. All Reason alone gives us is radical subjectivity. It has shown us how and why to doubt everything, but does not show us why we should believe in anything (other, I suppose, than the truths disclosed by science -- which aren't moral truths at all). Hunter says the students he teaches at UVA have never read the postmodernist philosophers, but they, by virtue of living in contemporary America, are as postmodern as any Derrida.
What does this mean for the future of democracy? Hunter says that we're at a pretty risky time right now. We've lost a shared understanding of the Common Good; and moreover, we're getting to the place where we don't have the civic conviction that life in a pluralistic democracy demands a certain degree of mutual respect, and respect of the forms we've developed for working out our differences in public.
He told a story at the beginning of the lecture that illustrated the crisis, as he sees it:
Back in the 1990s, during the Congressional fights over arts funding, Hunter says he was invited to a top-secret meeting in NYC, in which the heads of various arts groups and foundations, as well as an ACLU lawyer, gathered to strategize. They invited Hunter to speak to explain the conflict from a sociologist's point of view. Hunter said he began by saying that in a pluralist liberal democracy like ours, how you say and do things is as important as what you say and do. His point was that given human nature and human passions, we have to be very careful to watch how we say and do things, because it's very easy to spark unnecessary conflict. Preserving the political order that guarantees us individual freedom, including freedom of speech, requires a certain standard of behavior, especially when you share the public square with people who believe things radically different from what you believe.
Hunter said after he spoke, Sidney Blumenthal, then in the Clinton White House as an adviser, came to the podium to give his advice to the group. Hunter quotes him as saying, "You know how to deal with this? Seize power!"
I read P.Z. Myers' action as a "seize power!" moment, a radical declaration that he is not bound by the social conventions necessary to preserve ordered liberty in a pluralist democracy. Even if you agree with Myers' point of view, this should worry you. He shouldn't be allowed to get away with this without some kind of formal sanction from the university for the same reason it was a surrender to the forces that tear down the liberal order when U.S. universities capitulated to the demands of radical protesters in the late 1960s.
A liberal democracy -- and especially a community of scholars -- cannot tolerate acts like Myers's. There is a reason Hunter titled one of his books on the long-term implications for American democracy amid the culture wars "Before the Shooting Begins." From Elizabeth Fox-Genovese's 1996 review of that book:
The prevalence of such views ominously underscores the problem Hunter is engaging. For we do live in a world in which moral battles have become intensely partisan, but then they always have been. There is nothing new in American history about the conflict of moral values per se. Slavery, prohibition, women's suffrage, desegregation, to cite only a few, have all divided the American people along moral fault lines. But now, more readily than before, we find a conflict of moral values grounded not in theology but ideology, not in cohesive community traditions but in personal preferences.In a final section on American attempts to deal with ethnic and cultural diversity, Hunter convincingly argues that the current wave of multicultural education is simultaneously reinforcing and diluting differences among groups, with the ultimate effect of reinforcing a mindless individualism or personalism. By an extraordinary sleight of hand, multiculturalism, he argues, has replaced the political idea that all persons and groups should be treated equally under the law with the idea that all cultures are equal. "No moral differences are allowed, for to suggest that one culture is better, more virtuous, and more excellent, and others are worse-why, this would be 'undemocratic.' "
Ours has become a world in which virtually all moral issues are contested. As a result there is an accelerating tendency to claim more and more partisan issues as issues of fundamental rights or morality and, conversely, to treat more and more moral issues as the object of partisan struggle. Thus while an increasing number of Americans are coming to regard morality as a private matter that should not be imposed upon others, increasing numbers are also determined that their personal moral vision should prevail. Ponder the relation between these two observations: morality has become largely if not exclusively a matter of personal feeling; moral issues must be fought and lobbied for like any other political spoil. One is left to conclude that although there is a general feeling that no common morality is possible or even desirable, each group or faction will attempt to impose its morality on all.
In conclusion Hunter argues that we need a revitalization of our democracy both through the practice of mutual tolerance in the service of finite goals (as when pro-choice and pro-life women work together to ease the situation of poor women who confront unintended pregnancies) and through the cultivation of continuing, substantive, and informed discussion of the issues that divide us within the context of a reinvigorated local political practice. The conclusion, understandably, is brief, perhaps because Hunter is much too intelligent not to know that it offers little more than a utopian leap of faith. Few readers, I suspect, will find it an adequate response to the problems that the book so chillingly sets forth. But the very weaknesses of the conclusion instructively invite us to reconsider the analysis of the book as a whole.
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Derek Copold | July 29, 2008 12:43 PM, I think I may have unintentionally offended you by appearing sanctimonious about America and using Europe in some of my comparisons. I guess my European chauvinism is stronger than I thought. I apologise and promise I'm not out to make unfavorable comparisons. Bill Bryson, who has lived in Britain most of his adult life, can tell you as an Iowa-born American exactly how crappy Britain is at its worst, and his travel book, "Neither Here Nor There: Travels in Europe", casts a judicious eye over our fair continent and finds many aspects (not least the plumbing, the service and the food) wanting.
Peace. We don't need unnecessary friction in the discussion.
"except everyone agrees the puppy has feelings." KB
TR: Really why? Oh on some emotional level I might feel that, but for all I know that's merely projection and anthropomorphizing. The animal feels pain, but if I made the death quick and painless that'd eliminate that issue. I could even make its death "happy", if dogs are capable of feeling happiness as we understand it, by overdosing it on some ecstatic drug. That might screw with the meat, but I've never intentionally gotten high either so that might also be an interesting new experience. (Granted the idea of eating dog and getting high on it strikes me as queasy, but this reaction is is a purely cultural reaction and not a rational one. It would make me queasy if it was a dog I bought as well)
Granted the devotion to the Eucharist is not like any attachment to an object, but I'd thought it would be easier to use this analogy when discussing with atheists. That it would be more relatable for them/you to talk in terms of property, anthropology, and psychology. It was honest as I think it's rationally valid as far as analogies go.
However I'll admit the results were almost entirely disappointing. I didn't expect total agreement, but it was almost complete incomprehension which has indeed flummoxed me. Would it have been better if I just said my gut-level reaction without any thought to it? Namely that, this action, was revolting and in essence placed him in service of Satan for that moment? That reaction is also true of me, but I feel it's more proned to be misleading. One can do an evil act without being evil as a whole. I've considered or done things that are evil. Still I guess maybe the more supernaturalist line would've been more comforting on the "religious people are wackos" perspective. So if it helps you, feel comforted by it.
I think understanding that other people do NOT have the same reactions as you do to the same exact event is an important thing. It is one of the problems with the 'Golden Rule', because what I want done to me is not always what other people want done to them.
But I will note that other cultures eat dogs all the time. And horses. Not too many eat cats. But, any cat of significant size to be eaten would probably be a lot harder to eat, and the pet size first wouldn't stand for it (hard enough to just give them a bath). (Sorry, watch the Travel Channel a lot. Hard to shock me based on what people do and do not eat.)
You don't have to be an atheist for this lack of response. Just not a member of your faith. Indeed, during the early years of some of Protestant denominations, taking Eucharistic wafers with the intent to publicly do bad things to them, to show the lack of results was pretty common.
I'm fairly certain they didn't view the wafer as having any sentience, feelings, and certainly did NOT worry about the feelings of those who did think so.
The fact is, I can understand you would BE upset. But I can no more share that upset, than you would SHARE the upset of those pagans who had their sacred places defiled, their gods and holy days co-opted during the Christianization of, well, just about everywhere that was done.
In the end, the fact that you don't think those Gods exist, and that those holy things actually ARE holy, and just think they mistakenly BELIEVE they are holy, or exist, makes a difference.
So, do you think that people who believe in other Gods are whacko, and that their attachment to THEIR holy objects are signs of their mental disturbance?
Or do you think they're just wrong, and their attachment proceeds not from 'wackiness', but from that initial error? Do you think they should be insulted that you think they are wrong? They should assume that because you don't agree with their assertions, you are claiming they are 'wacky'?
Or do you simply disagree and don't believe in the things they believe in?
good good grief, ya all sing along to this catchy refrain from the wizard of oz: "ding dong your god is dead..your wicked god..your mean ole god. ding dong.. your wicked god is dead."... then try to explain to me how the "omnipotent one" can only whisper in the ears of a choosen few while billions would be satisfied with a simple email????
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