posted by Justin - 2010-02-01 20:30:45
My Table
So the way I see it, everyone’s got the right to believe what they want. You wanna believe the things I consider absolutely insane – things like: Holocaust denial; no moon landing; that Dane Cook is AWESOME – go right ahead. Long as you’re not hurting anyone, or trying force some impressionable youth to follow your beliefs, then it’s all good in the hood.
Though the audience for this little website remains limited because of the six-month-long process to add comments (I’m just going to move it to wordpress in mid-March if we haven’t figured it out by then; trying to expand this audience), I believe we still have a fairly wide range of views in the discussions we end up engaging in.
As you well know, I’m a non-religious American progressive black male, and among the people who get into these chats I’m certainly the only one who can consider himself all of those things. I can only approach each issue from my own point of view, with my own background and my own history, as much as I read and learn.
All of us here contend with ideas with which we disagree each time I post something or other. But each and every one of us only has so much energy. The fact is, there are only so many ideas that can have a seat at my mental table. Which is to say that there are only so many things I can bring myself to debate or discuss at length. Usually, for me, something that doesn’t earn a seat at my table does so not exactly by being what I consider incorrect, but by being poorly thought out and unsupported by sturdy evidence.
Of course, what is and isn’t sturdy is up to your own interpretation. Clearly my views on religious faith, among other things, don’t square up with those of most of the people on Earth. And there are people whose table is smaller than mine, refusing to even acknowledge the fact that, say, homosexuals might not actually be immoral.
My table only has so many seats. And even if an idea hasn’t earned one, it doesn’t mean I feel the need to be hostile to the holder of said idea, merely that I’ve picked other battles over these.
Here’s an example, from the same Cracked writer who wrote about the reasons the 21st century is making folks miserable. Here he writes about a particularly popular conspiracy theory, namely that 9/11 was an inside job that was then covered up by an extremely large number of people. I’ll let his words speak for themselves, but suffice it to say that he takes the time to explain why the theory is some serious bullshit, which wouldn’t matter if they weren’t, you know, making money off besmirching the name of a whole bunch of people.
But “Loose Change” is just one example. I’m sure a few of you saw that “Obama Deception” thing that was floating around the interwebs a while ago. In this day and age, it’s real easy to make a crackpot theory go viral if you know how to use video editing software.
As a related article on the same site says, “at the last count the world was secretly being run by the Illuminati, Knights Templar, Freemasons, Trilateral commission, New World Order, Skull & Bones society, Bilderberg group, Nine Unknown Men and the ever-popular Jews. It's unknown whether they all vote on various issues or just ask Dan Brown whose turn it is each week. Conspiracy theorists honestly believe that these invisible elites have run thousands of years of history but are incapable of killing someone who lives in a basement and shouts on street corners.”
This isn’t to say that no conspiracies have ever been legit. The governments of most nations include some deeply shady individuals. I mean, you know, Karl Rove and Abramoff and the like sound like fictional characters, but they’re real folks.
But I don’t have the energy, the time, or the patience to bend over backwards and formulate an argument against someone trying to tell me that God sent Katrina because America has Too Much Gay. (And now Facebook will tell me tag Katrina Baumann. So I will.)
There are very few arguments I will entirely dismiss. But not everything gets a seat at my table.
What doesn’t get a seat at yours?
(Enjoy your next two weeks, folks. Will have a reflection on my travels on 2/16, followed by three Korea-retrospective deals before heading back to NYC 2/25.)
Peace and love,
Justin PBG
Though the audience for this little website remains limited because of the six-month-long process to add comments (I’m just going to move it to wordpress in mid-March if we haven’t figured it out by then; trying to expand this audience), I believe we still have a fairly wide range of views in the discussions we end up engaging in.
As you well know, I’m a non-religious American progressive black male, and among the people who get into these chats I’m certainly the only one who can consider himself all of those things. I can only approach each issue from my own point of view, with my own background and my own history, as much as I read and learn.
All of us here contend with ideas with which we disagree each time I post something or other. But each and every one of us only has so much energy. The fact is, there are only so many ideas that can have a seat at my mental table. Which is to say that there are only so many things I can bring myself to debate or discuss at length. Usually, for me, something that doesn’t earn a seat at my table does so not exactly by being what I consider incorrect, but by being poorly thought out and unsupported by sturdy evidence.
Of course, what is and isn’t sturdy is up to your own interpretation. Clearly my views on religious faith, among other things, don’t square up with those of most of the people on Earth. And there are people whose table is smaller than mine, refusing to even acknowledge the fact that, say, homosexuals might not actually be immoral.
My table only has so many seats. And even if an idea hasn’t earned one, it doesn’t mean I feel the need to be hostile to the holder of said idea, merely that I’ve picked other battles over these.
Here’s an example, from the same Cracked writer who wrote about the reasons the 21st century is making folks miserable. Here he writes about a particularly popular conspiracy theory, namely that 9/11 was an inside job that was then covered up by an extremely large number of people. I’ll let his words speak for themselves, but suffice it to say that he takes the time to explain why the theory is some serious bullshit, which wouldn’t matter if they weren’t, you know, making money off besmirching the name of a whole bunch of people.
But “Loose Change” is just one example. I’m sure a few of you saw that “Obama Deception” thing that was floating around the interwebs a while ago. In this day and age, it’s real easy to make a crackpot theory go viral if you know how to use video editing software.
As a related article on the same site says, “at the last count the world was secretly being run by the Illuminati, Knights Templar, Freemasons, Trilateral commission, New World Order, Skull & Bones society, Bilderberg group, Nine Unknown Men and the ever-popular Jews. It's unknown whether they all vote on various issues or just ask Dan Brown whose turn it is each week. Conspiracy theorists honestly believe that these invisible elites have run thousands of years of history but are incapable of killing someone who lives in a basement and shouts on street corners.”
This isn’t to say that no conspiracies have ever been legit. The governments of most nations include some deeply shady individuals. I mean, you know, Karl Rove and Abramoff and the like sound like fictional characters, but they’re real folks.
But I don’t have the energy, the time, or the patience to bend over backwards and formulate an argument against someone trying to tell me that God sent Katrina because America has Too Much Gay. (And now Facebook will tell me tag Katrina Baumann. So I will.)
There are very few arguments I will entirely dismiss. But not everything gets a seat at my table.
What doesn’t get a seat at yours?
(Enjoy your next two weeks, folks. Will have a reflection on my travels on 2/16, followed by three Korea-retrospective deals before heading back to NYC 2/25.)
Peace and love,
Justin PBG
[end post]