| God, the Universe, and Everything... |
[Apr. 7th, 2006|02:02 pm] |
| [ | Tags | | | rants | ] |
| [ | mood |
| |  boggled | ] |
So, last night at 2am, I was over at my friend Bill's house, and he, I, and another friend (Aaron) were discussing... Well, see the subject line.
We were all talking about terrorism, and Bill expressed the view that terrorist == Muslim, or vice versa (it was late, and I don't quite remember :), and that the whole Muslim world needed to go away. Now, Bill is a smart man, but sometimes the depths of his ignorance just amazes me (I haven't been so shocked since he told me that he thought Dick Cheny was the only worthwhile person in the 2004 race, because he "didn't have any skeletons in his closet.") We got into why, and his position was that Islam was the only religion that condoned and encouraged the murder of non-believers. He actually challenged us to find a passage in the Bible to the contrary, and although I knew of one off the top of my head, I couldn't remember chapter and verse (Exodus 22:18. Also check out Galataians Ch 5 for Saint Paul's views on circumsion :).
Man, I find it incredible that such a smart man can be just so... dumb.
So, all three of us engaged in the discussion self-identified as moderate, and at least two of us got it wrong (Bill is fairly right-wing whacko, and Aaron is fairly left-leaning commie; myself, I'm moderate mostly because I don't want to be branded either a Republican or a Democrat. I actually think of myself as either a conservative liberal or a liberal conservative.) At one point we were talking about state terrorism; Bill was of the opinion that Us were better than Them because in America, everyone gets a fair trial and the guilty pay for their crimes... Turns out, he has never even heard of Guantanamo Bay. Found out that he gets most of his news from right-wing talk radio... A few minutes later, we were talking about the administration, and how the Dems screwed the pooch in '04. Bill says that the mistake the Dems are making now is that they are trying to pull down Bush, rather than build a valid presidential contender for '08. Well, I have to agree with him to a point, but Aaron, also a smart man, has no idea what Bill's talking about. Turns out, he gets most of his news from Bill Maher :)
The point of this whole thing is that Bill, while having more mental brain power than most people I know, is archtypical of a viewpoint that I can't stand. It relates back to the previous "double-bladed kah-tahn-ah" post, too. The problem is the whole "Acceptance" paradigm: Accept what we tell you, don't question, don't bother checking the facts... It leads to ignorance, suffering, oppression, the dark side, and possibly to furries. I am a full on advocate of the "Doubt" paradigm, which encourages people to educate themselves, to learn the facts, and to draw their own conclusions. Yes, it makes for a much less tractable population; it's the same problem that the Roman Catholic Church saw when Gutenberg made it possible for everyone to have a Bible.
What we really need, I think, is some sort of printing press equivalent. I'd like to say that the Internet is that equivalent, but the amount of trash you have to sort through to get to the treasure is immense, and despite Google's best efforts, only a small fraction of the content on the Internet is indexed. Unfortunately, it won't work in a vacuum; people need to be willing to use it.
Okay, I'm rambling and have lost the point, so I'm going to sign off. |
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