Guide to Propaganda

(The Evil Villain’s) Guide to Propaganda

Not long ago, I watched a movie about polar bears with my dad.

The movie made me sad.

The polar bears are dying, the movie told me. 

In the movie, a mother polar bear

swam

and swam.

Her baby died.

All of the icebergs are melting, the movie told me. 

Here is why it is happening. 

Here are the consequences. 

Please support our cause so the polar bears don’t die anymore.

I thought the movie was good. 

I thought it was convincing. 

I said, “Of course, my dear father, you care about this world we share. 

Of course you care about polar bears. 

Surely you too support this cause:

Surely the sound arguments were also convincing to you.”

He did not see things the same way, quite.

“What PROPAGANDA,” my dad said.

This was confusing to me. 

I thought about his statement.

I think what he meant was, 

“This movie is trying to use my emotions to convince me of its message, but I disagree with its message, so I feel manipulated.”

This is not propaganda.

Yes, propaganda uses emotional responses to influence people.

But so does sound argument! 

Just ask Aristotle. 

You know, the FATHER OF MODERN ARGUMENT.

That dude.

According to him (and most everybody since) there are three elements to good argument:

The speaker’s 

ETHOS,

or whatever makes us listen to them

their expertise

charisma

way with words

authority

reliability

The argument’s 

LOGOS, 

the evidence, 

logic,

 and reason

 that build the speaker’s argument,

and finally, the listener’s 

PATHOS, 

the emotional response

that makes the listener care 

that inspires action

When you combine all three, you get a pretty killer argument.

How do you know an argument was effective? 

1. People listen

2. They come to believe as you do

3. And act on this belief.

So, what is propaganda?

It’s a shortcut.

LOGOS

Let’s say I’m an evil villain 

and I’m trying to control the masses for my evil ends. 

                                                        (not much of a stretch, if you know me.)

I'm trying to decide how best to go about it.

Logos would not be my method of choice.

First of all, it takes a 

looooooooooooooong

time

to persuade someone with LOGOS.

You offer facts that support you, which they might challenge

They’ll probably offer facts that disagree with you

  Which you have to rebut 

your argument has to build upon itself so that it makes sense 

each conclusion must be well supported with evidence 

each point you make should follow logically from the last, no fallacies.

a good LOGOS-BASED argument 

takes a lot of work to build

even when you’re telling the truth and you’re right.

Second, the whole point of a LOGOS-BASED argument is that if it is wrong…

it will fail.

Logos is DESIGNED to REVEAL the TRUTH.

Our entire justice system rests on the infallibility of logos 

(we can PROVE someone innocent or guilty)

All scientific theorems are subject to logos at all times 

(we proceed with the ideas that have PROVEN to work)

We owe 

the majority of our modern understanding of the world around us

our technological advances, our progressive societal morals (like the idea that all men are created equal), and more 

to prizing and prioritizing evidence and reason. 

Logos has served us well.

When it comes to LOGOS, pretty much Right = Right. 

Logos is not the friend of evil. 

It is not the friend of villains and liars and other people in a hurry.

ETHOS

ETHOS is a bit different.

Ethos is supposed to give people credit for knowing a lot, 

for being good at what they do, 

for being worth listening to. 

But we all know people are fallible, buyable, selfish. 

We know they can be blackmailed and bargained with. 

We know they cheat, scheme and lie. 

There are a lot of ways that I, 

as an evil villain, 

can bend ethos to my ends.

FOR EXAMPLE:

I can convince or force someone with a lot of ethos to speak for a cause they don’t actually believe in. 

Monsanto pays scientists to “prove” specific things about their products. The tobacco industry used to buy doctors until we made them stop.

I can create a disreputable source and 

camouflage it as the kind of source that

supports its arguments with logos.

Fox News pulls this off pretty successfully. 

I could even build up a cult of personality where anything I say, my followers will accept as true, regardless of how obvious the lies. 

The current winner at this particular game is the Great Leader of North Korea, who runs a whole country full of people starving, slaving, and suffering who nonetheless worship him rabidly and single-mindedly.

With ETHOS, Right could = Right, but all too often, Might = Right. I would definitely use ethos if I were an evil villain...

PATHOS

…but mostly, I would use PATHOS. 

PATHOS is the easiest to manipulate of all.

Listen to the following phrases:

“I’m so mad I can’t think straight!”

“It was a crime of passion.”

“He’s riling them up into an angry mob”

“Come on, there’s nothing to cry about.”

“Flattery will get you everywhere with me.”

“Love is blinding you.”

It’s no secret that our emotions and our logical abilities do not necessarily go hand in hand. In fact, it’s well understood that when our emotions are 

running high, 

our ability to reason is 

running 

low.

We’re more likely to act out of an impulsive, illogical place than a logical place. 

How often do we fail to do something that we logically know will benefit us? 

Like: exercise,  eat right,   save money,   bite our tongues

How many times do we do something that we know will hurt us because we’re in some kind of emotional state? 

Like: cheat on a lover,  punch a wall,   

eat an entire tub of ice cream after a breakup,   say something cruel

We can barely control ourselves when it comes to emotions! 

So you can only imagine that a supervillain 

with a good understanding of emotions

and no concern for your welfare or autonomy

could easily learn to control you this way!

With PATHOS, I can say almost anything I want, it doesn’t even have to be true. Because once I’ve got you REACTING you stop THINKING.

I can get you angry using a SCAPEGOAT. I can point to things you don’t like and then tell you who to blame for it. (It’s the immigrants’ fault. It’s because of the gays. It’s all of those people on welfare. No, not you: the black ones.) 

It doesn’t matter whether there is any evidence at all supporting my claim. 

People like to have a clear and easy target for their anger. 

The easiest target to choose is someone they already have negative feelings towards, because they’re less likely to question it.

Just ask Hitler.

I can get you scared using emotionally loaded catchphrases and vague, unsubstantiated threats: (Communist. Socialist. Godless. Anti-american. Unpatriotic. The liberal agenda. It’ll bring about the destruction of our country. It’s a threat to the family.)

It doesn’t matter whether there is any evidence to support my threats.

It doesn’t matter whether the accusations make any sense at all.

She’s a witch because she floats! She’ll curse you! Burn her!

You’re a traitor if you don’t tell us what your neighbors are doing!

Weapons of mass destruction!

If I tell you your FAMILY is THREATENED and your BELIEFS are UNDER ATTACK and GOD and COUNTRY and LIBERTY ERMAGERD DO SOMETHING!!!, 

9 times out of 10

I can get you to stop using your head 

as anything but a blunt weapon.

Truth or lies, sense or nonsense, good or evil, if I can get you angry or scared enough, you’ll do what I want.

With pathos, SPITE = RIGHT. FIGHT/FLIGHT = RIGHT.  

PATHOS VS. PROPAGANDA

Propaganda, by definition, uses pathos more than ethos, and uses logos barely or not at all.  Pathos is the quickest way to get people to do what you want. Ethos can be quick too, sometimes, but logos is slowwwww.

But even if you think you’ve identified propaganda, it’s just a tool. It is not inherently evil.

When something tugs on your heart-strings

It may be propaganda

It’s certainly pathos

But it’s not necessarily wrong

It depends on what they’re doing with the pathos.

1. Are they trying to rile you up past the point of reason?

2. Are the emotions they’re arousing directly connected to the issue at hand?

3. Are your emotions being used to underline the facts presented, or to get you to gloss over/ignore the facts?

4. What actions is the speaker trying to inspire by making you feel this way?

5. Will those actions benefit you? Others? Your country? 

6. Who else will those actions benefit?

7. How thoroughly have they checked their facts?

8. Is someone paying them to say this?

The polar bear movie checks out. 

It's primarily logos, 

backed by significant ethos, and when 

pathos is used (feeling bad about the polar bears) 

it is directly connected to the issue at hand 

and apparently necessary 

to inspire any kind of concern for the situation.

Public Morality

This is a different format and slant than previous posts to this blog, but in the same spirit of the rest of the posts, I hope that this essay communicates my view respectfully to both those who already agree with me and those who are predisposed disagree with me. I also hope the latter group will communicate back through the comments section. What did I overgeneralize or misinterpret? What resonated? Is there common ground that I missed?

The Humanist Counterbalance to Freedom

The “Land of the Free, Home of the Brave” prides itself on liberty above almost all else—after all, “life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness” are each citizen’s native rights, as stated in the Declaration of Independence.

That phrase is perfect, because happiness is such a subjective thing that the pursuit of it really ought to be left to each individual. There is no one vision of paradise that would be appealing to every single person on the planet. And yet, there continue to be quite a few people out there who think they know what’s best for everybody else. Many of them sincerely want others to be happy. And often, they are right! Often the advice they give would make a number of people happier, when their own choices are making them unhappy.

But it's likely these same people don’t always follow the good advice of others, even when they know it will benefit them. Why? Because sometimes we just feel like exercising our agency instead. Because we can. And that feels good, even if some of the consequences don’t. Typically when we’re ready to change (or when the consequences start hurting enough), we change. Agency allows us to do this at our own rate and on our own terms. The great gift of freedom: becoming whoever we want to be, whenever we feel like it.

But obviously we’re not operating in a vacuum. We share space with each other, we coexist, we depend on each other for survival. For this reason, most of us agree that certain things merit reducing or removing a certain amount of freedom. Ideally not our own freedom--but we subject ourselves to that possibility in order to enjoy the benefits of living in a community and a society. For example, if one of us kills another of us, this certainly justifies the removal of autonomy from that person, at least until we can be safely assured they will not go right back out and do it again. Most of us want to feel secure; basic safety is one thing that we value over freedom, to different degrees.

What else justifies the removal of freedom? According to Noam Chomsky’s recent interview explaining his brand of anarchism, not much. “The burden of proof for anyone in a position of power and authority lies on them.  Their authority is not self-justifying.  They have to give a reason for it, a justification.  And if they can’t justify that authority and power and control, which is the usual case, then the authority ought to be dismantled and replaced by something more free and just.” In other words—why would you let anyone else be in charge of you unless they can prove that it’s better for you and everyone else if we keep it that way?

Well, the problem is, many of us believe very strongly that we have the absolute answer to peace and happiness. If only we could convince/coerce/force others to live according to our plan of happiness and peace, everything would be just perfect. Hitler tried it. He knew exactly what happiness looked like for his people, and he attempted to enact that view in the world. The crusades were a mass attempt to force everyone to be happy and peaceful in a very specific way. A great many laws exist in Iran to make sure that people only demonstrate their peace and happiness the way that one group thinks it ought to be expressed. When we see extreme examples like this, we can all agree: freedom is better than enforced conformity, no matter how pretty the ideal that conformity is striving for.

Hence, humanistic laws: laws that balance the desires of the majority against the rights of the minority. Laws based on who will benefit or suffer the most, rather than who has the most power or who is speaking the loudest. Laws which privilege the liberty and even the personal dignity of the individual over the desires of the majority. Our laws aren’t purely democratic: we’ve set ourselves up so that even if most of us want to gang up on someone and take away their rights, the constitution doesn’t allow it. One of the biggest struggles of the last century has been expanding the definition of “us”: it used to mean “us rich white men not of Italian, Irish, or Eastern European descent” and now it is a more genuine “us,” though it still excludes (and seeks to exclude) certain groups, including non-citizens, people of different sexual preferences, and people who have broken certain laws (including certain victimless crimes, and excluding certain crimes which have extraordinary numbers of victims).

Tolerating vs. Coexisting

A few years ago, I spent a day in Salt Lake City with a good friend of mine. I hadn’t seen him since high school, but just like I remembered, he had a way of making me feel loved and valued. It was a great day. We acted like high schoolers, hanging out in the park and talking, getting milkshakes, walking around (okay, maybe that's just Mormon high schoolers).

I told him all about how much happier, more secure, and more open-hearted I had been since leaving the LDS church. He listened with respect and apparent understanding, and I showed the same respect and loving acceptance towards his decision to remain a faithful member. I started getting warm fuzzies. We're communicating with each other across our differences, I thought happily. We're coexisting. This is great. He really listened when I told him I am happier now than I was before. He's actually respecting my autonomy and my lifestyle.

At the end of the night, those fuzzies disappeared in an instant as I heard him say the phrase, "I don't want you to take this the wrong way, Rachel, but…" and he handed me a Book of Mormon. "I was hoping you might read this for me? And pray about it?"

A wave of frustration washed over me. I tried to calmly explain why this was so offensive, and he listened with a patient smile. I told him I understood that the impulse to keep pushing his ideas on me was a loving one, but despite this, it is disrespectful and implies a highly conditional love to continue to insist I change. I had clearly stated that I was not in the market for a new belief system, and furthermore, he knew for a fact that I had already tested out his ideology and decided it wasn't for me.

This friend was certainly “tolerating” my presence as an agnostic. He didn’t treat me as sub-human. He didn’t hurt me or snub me. And that’s pretty much what tolerance amounts to: putting up with something you’d rather not have to put up with. He had little interest in changing his mind about me—seeing me as a whole and happy person, rather than someone missing the point of life. 

Coexisting involves more mutual respect and humility than tolerance does. Coexisting means allowing others to prosper in whatever way they see fit, and in return, being allowed to prosper in whatever way you see fit. Instead of trying to change each other into someone who fits our personal image of what is Right, we should refocus our efforts on making space for others to flourish into whatever manifestation of humanity they should choose. Let our own lives reflect our ideals of the world; let us know the best ideals by their fruits, instead of their volume, popularity, or aggressiveness.

The Ex

Imagine you were with a man for many years. Imagine at some point you decided to divorce him, citing irreconcilable differences. Suppose you parted on good terms, he fully supported you setting off on your own, and all was well. Imagine that despite this, many of his friends are very invested in getting the two of you back together. They don't believe you that he was okay with the split; they don't believe you that you're happier since the split. Some of them even think you're an evil person for divorcing your Ex. "Did he tell you that?" you ask them, and they say "He's too nice to say that. But you should be ashamed of yourself!" Or they say, "Yes, he did tell me that!" but all they can show you to prove it is something another friend claims he said--a friend who says a lot of messed up things that don't sound like your Ex at all.

You don't mind hanging out with your Ex's friends still--some of them are pretty cool about the divorce--but you start to avoid the ones who get up in arms about it, or try to convince you to reunite every single time they see you, or who clearly don't consider you part of the group now that you're not with your Ex anymore. But some of them don't stop there.

"Your Ex didn't like it when you drank. You shouldn't drink," they say. "You shouldn't date women," they say. "What would your Ex say!" They don't seem to understand that what your Ex thinks doesn't really matter to you anymore--and they don't believe you that any time you check in with your Ex, all is well. Telling them to mind their business doesn't affect them at all. "I'm his good good friend!" they say. "It's my duty to tell you these things." ("I promise I didn't tell them to act this way," he always says apologetically when the two of you talk).

I’m sure I’m not the only ex-Christian to feel this way. Believe it or not, I’m in touch with my own concept of the divine, and I’m not extremely interested in outside interpretations of what he or she or it wants for me. I’ll listen politely to your opinion, share mine, and then hopefully we can both be done with it. If you said something poignant, I’ll think about it more. Hopefully the same applies vice versa. But being pushy about it isn’t going to change my mind. And it’s certainly not going to influence me to get back together with my Ex.

It's long been a struggle of mine to state my problem with organized religion--not because it's hard to pinpoint, but because it's important to me that I state it in a way which makes it clear my problem is not with the beliefs, the people who hold them, or their personal practice of those beliefs. I understand that some people want to put more faith in God than in science; I don't agree but I see how someone's life could take them in that direction. I myself once sincerely believed there was no nobler cause than being a follower of God, no better way to fight for humanity.

Respecting Other’s Viewpoints 101

When I was seventeen I participated in the Congress-Bundestag Youth Exchange year to Germany. As part of my training to visit another culture, I was taught that respecting other people's culture and opinions means that even though my traditions make much more sense to me and often seem innately superior, I’m here to learn about others. Be open to trying new things, they told me. Practice your listening skills--you're not just here to tell people about your awesome culture; you're here to learn amazing things from theirs. Open your mind. They've been doing things this way for a while--something must be working for them. Sometimes your way actually is better, and sometimes theirs is. You'll never get anywhere with another person if you assume you're right about everything.

Several amazing conversations and experiences later, I was heading back to the United States with a new take on the world, reflecting deeply on my long-held faith. After two years of deliberation, I left the church of my youth. Over the years, this decision has drastically changed my views on the ethics of regulating public morality. I strongly believe that even my sixteen year old self, faith unshaken, would agree that there are certain pitfalls that should be avoided.

Trading Autonomy

There are many religious people, especially those in the so-called religious right, who actively advocate the removal of autonomy in the name of public morality, though the same people will often oppose it in any other sphere. For example: they don’t believe that corporations should be regulated or restricted, they don’t believe in stricter gun laws, and they don’t think that giant sodas should be eliminated; but they do believe in restricting a woman’s choices when she’s pregnant, restricting people’s choices in marital partners, and restricting people’s choices in entertainment and recreation.

There are non-believers who think the religious support restrictive morality laws out of fear that they will be punished if they don't. Allowing others to commit sins, after all, might be seen as tantamount to telling God that even if you personally don't want to commit sins, you're pretty much okay with other people sinning. Doesn't that mean you're supporting the sin?

Well, no. It means that you're supporting their right to decide to sin or not, to subject themselves to God's judgment or not. You're allowing them the autonomy God gave them in the first place, when they were born on this planet.

As a former Mormon, I don't think fear is the primary motivation. I think most religious people genuinely believe they're doing others a favor by removing the option to commit certain grievous sins. It's like putting up a caution fence to protect people from dangers to their spirituality, and to spare them the painful punishments that follow violations of spiritual law. It's an extension of evangelism, of trying to help others be happy by sharing the truth with them. But a fence, even a fence designed to protect (like a baby gate, like a fenced backyard for a dog) is a restriction of autonomy. Fear or protectiveness, you're still treating your fellow adults like babies or dogs, creatures incapable of making good decisions on their own.

Take a look at the message you send by restricting autonomy based on personally perceived spiritual dangers but not universally recognized physical dangers:

Public shootings all over America don't merit even the slightest loss of autonomy on the part of gun owners. Evidence (and common sense) suggest that making guns harder to get hold of makes it harder for mentally unstable people to kill lots of innocent people at once. But innocent lives at risk do not merit restriction of autonomy.

What merits a loss of autonomy is two adults who love each other a lot and want to make a lifelong commitment to one another. Why? Because children might see them expressing that autonomy and express their own autonomy. The possibility of further autonomy being exercised to think and act differently than you do is enough grounds to restrict autonomy.

If someone refuses to give his workers adequate healthcare and they die left and right, he's just exercising his autonomy (and business acumen.) Making people pay a fair minimum wage, or put safety features in their factories to make sure workers won't get burned alive if there's ever a fire, making them pay compensation if they didn't take proper precautions to prevent injury to their workers--these kinds of things are unjustifiable restrictions of autonomy.

But if a woman believes the clump of cells in her belly has yet to pluck a soul from the great cosmic plasma, if this woman does something to make sure the cells don't someday become a real, live, person, who might someday be burned to death in a factory, this merits a loss of autonomy. We need to stop her from hurting her own child because we know better and we want to prevent her from suffering. We need to save that baby that she doesn't believe is a baby yet because we believe it and our belief is stronger and more worthy than her autonomy.

There is a very clear difference between protecting actual human beings from immediate harm, and protecting potential souls (or actual beings) from potential harm (or spiritual harm). Yes, as non-believers we fully understand that religious people don't think the souls or the harm are potential or imaginary. That’s fine. I applaud your conviction. But once again: a conviction is something that isn’t generally agreed upon, or it would be a fact, not a belief.

When believers create legal consequences to their own spiritual laws, it's like they're saying, "You know what? We'll just skip the whole 'You make the choice, God punishes you for the choice after you die' part of God's plan. If we let you take the risk, others might think it's okay to take the risk, and then you'll all go to hell!"

To which bewildered non-believers reply: "Well…isn't that why you're always trying to tell other people about your religion? So they can come to realize what a wonderful thing it is, and how right you are, and want to choose your lifestyle for themselves? Isn't the other way of trying to keep the country moral kind of like kidnapping someone and hoping they'll get Stockholm Syndrome?”

It should be clear to the Christian right by now that it's not working…people still just want to be free.

What Freedom of Religion Looks Like

Freedom of religion, carried to its logical conclusion, is Iraq. It's Iran. Such countries represent freedom of religion unfettered by humanism, by the protection of minority groups. If your religion happens to be prevalent, you can live all of your beliefs, all the time. Even if one of your beliefs is that it's okay to rape women. Even if one of your beliefs is that it's okay to force other people to follow your god's laws. If your god says that women should cover up their entire bodies lest they make a man unable to stop himself from raping you, which he'd probably feel sort of bad about that later, which would suck (for him)…women, you'd better cover up. Disagree? Too bad. Your autonomy is not as important as the majority's complete religious freedom.

Be careful when you're trying to defend religious freedom that you mean "the freedom to believe whatever you like," rather than "the freedom to show God how much we believe in him by making his laws our country's laws." Make sure you don't mean "the freedom to remove the autonomy of others so that they won't commit sins against my God."

The fear of religious people that marriage equality would restrict their autonomy is not unfounded. Right now their autonomy not only allows them to believe that homosexuals are dirty and inferior, it allows them by law to treat these individuals as though they are lesser in the sight of God. But just as civil rights removed people's autonomy to treat African Americans as though they were animals with no souls,  (but not their autonomy to believe it despite all evidence to the contrary), marriage equality may, in fact, remove some of their autonomy to act out their belief in the public arena, to harm or restrict other people according to that belief. Yes, it will take away the "right" of religious people to determine which segments of the population deserve less autonomy and dignity than they do.

But this doesn’t mean the downfall of society is on the way. Didn’t happen when we allowed interracial marriage, won’t happen when we allow homosexual marriage. If you look at nearly any religious text, if you look at nearly any moment in history, or any country ruled by a religious tyrant, you’ll find that God (and/or the end of the world, as brought about by disobeying Him) can be claimed to endorse all kinds of practices that involve harming or restricting the autonomy of others. People justify all kinds of crimes against humanity using God's will and God's law. This is part of the reason we use the constitution, not the Bible, to make decisions about which laws are just.

I'm not saying all organized religion is bad. Although the idea of God's will is a powerful force and many members of organized religion would enthusiastically advocate theocratic government (according to their personal God, of course--not just any god), many other adherents do choose to prioritize treating others better over using the laws to punish people they don't agree with.  The core message of most of these texts is Love and Service. Many members of organized religions do a really good job of remembering that.

But there are those who believe that the best type of discipleship is the kind which declares itself constantly at all times without discretion, respect, or diplomacy, the kind which seeks to understand others only to show them how they are wrong; which listens only to see how to persuade. This type of disciple of God represents a real and present danger to the harmony of communities, because such people are far more interested in a homogenous community than a peaceful or just one. They would rather the community reflect their own personal values than that it embrace everyone's personal values all at once. Such ideology can easily lead to coercion or force, as it is already dangerously close to the edge of that slippery slope, “the ends justify the means.”

In Conclusion

Preventing the cruel or unfair treatment of others, and striving always to protect their autonomy and good health and ensure they have the same range of opportunities and options we would want--these should be our guiding principles in deciding which removals of autonomy are necessary and justified. It is not the job of a country's civil laws to codify a particular idea of morality. It is the job of a country's laws to protect the ability of each individual to practice his/her own idea of morality--weighing that autonomy always against clear and immediate costs to autonomy and safety of others.

To all readers, but my Christian friends especially, I ask you to please remember the true reason for this country's religious freedom, and to stop pushing for more freedom to restrict the moral autonomy of others. Maybe atheists, agnostics, gays, and pro-choicers are wrong, but that's between us and God, your God, if you like—He gave us our autonomy for the same reason he gave you yours. Stop trying to shepherd and parent us. Stop trying to make everybody else live by your personal ideals of right and wrong. We're more likely to see the merits of your morality if you stop acting like the only way to get people to agree is through force.

How We Might Compromise on Gay Marriage

To those who support gay marriage, the issue is an open and shut case of basic human rights and equality. From this perspective, it is insane and wrong to ask that GLBTQ citizens be treated as though their love, their lifestyle, their desires are inferior or sinful just to satisfy one loud contingent of the population. Allowing gay marriage would affirm the humanity and agency of all citizens, instead of just the ones who fit a certain, subjective idea of "normal."

To those who oppose it, the issue is much more complicated, regardless of what you believe as far as equality and human dignity. Most don't oppose gay marriage because they think GLBTQ citizens are inferior, or even primarily sinful people. Their opposition to GLBTQ lifestyles has to do at least in part with the fear that once gay marriage is allowed, those who continue to believe that gay marriage is a sin will be ostracized, forced to act against their beliefs, or persecuted for them; that they will be shamed and bullied and pressured by the mainstream.

It's easy for gay marriage advocates to shrug off this fear. "Of course that won't happen," they say. "No one will be forced to do anything." But part of the reason they're not worried about that happening is because if it did, they don't really care. They believe that those who think being gay is sinful are ignorant and hateful, and if those people don't get their way, good--because they're evil.

Flip that around, and you're back on the anti-gay marriage side of things: they don't believe that it's bad to ban gay marriage, not because they want to oppress or harm gay people, but because they sincerely believe that gay people aren't happy.

If you read my other posts it should be clear to you that I find it misguided to tell others what will and won't make them happy. But I think it's just as harmful to ignore the concerns and fears of those who disagree with you. We should no more shrug off the potential marginalization of Christians than they should shrug off the marginalization of the GLBTQ community. Each group thinks that the other's views are harmful to society, and therefore don't need to be addressed. Each group, in defending their own right to exist and speak up, is also diminishing the rights of the opposition to exist and speak up.

There is a possibility that once gay marriage is legal everywhere, it would eventually be illegal for anyone to deny it, no matter what. Everyone wants their way all the way, and they're willing to fight to the death because they're so sure they're right. The crux of this issue is that if gay marriage is legalized, some churches might be oppressed in their right to believe that it is a sin, but as long as it stays illegal, the GLBTQ community is oppressed in their right to believe that it isn't, and live as though it isn't.

So how about this: why don't we kick the government out of this debate altogether? We already have a legal certificate for marriage AND an optional church ceremony. What if we just called that legal certificate "domestic partnership," and the optional church ceremony "marriage"? That way, churches which don't believe in gay marriage don't have to marry gay couples, and churches that do believe in it can marry all the gay couples they want.

The government won't be dictating any kind of morality in either direction, except this: rights are rights, and all consenting adults deserve the same rights.

No church would be forced to acknowledge the marriage of/perform a marriage for anyone. On the same token, everyone's partnership is acknowledged/respected by every government body. Marriage remains intact, rights remain intact. Everyone wins.

How to Stop Butting Fishbowls

My parents and I have a difficult time talking about important issues, because we're operating from completely different paradigms. Their paradigm says "The only thing we can rely on in this world is God's word; the rest is madness. If we trust the holy spirit of God, it will lead us to the truth." My paradigm says, "The only thing we can rely on in this world is our reason, our senses, and our experience, which will typically point us to the truth." We are negotiating the world around us using different foundational principles, principles which are essentially and irreconcilably at odds with one another.

I know that I sometimes feel as though this essential irreconcilability is a cause for despair. I sometimes think that we must always be at war until one side or the other gets their way entirely. Even though I love and respect my parents, trust their basic goodness and think they're quite intelligent, and though I'm confident they reciprocate this, sometimes I despair that we will ever find common ground. And if we can't find common ground, we're doomed to repeat the revolution cycle: the different groups try to overpower one another until one group triumphs and uses their new power, like it or not, to actively oppress the other camp(s), until the oppression reaches such an unbearable level that the other camp rebels and takes over and oppresses their former oppressors, and so forth, until they find balance again, which only lasts until someone figures out how to upset the balance and gain disproportionate power again. It's very possible that humans will be constantly trapped in that cycle--we will never learn from history, we will never become better at mediating the tendency of power to concentrate over time into the hands of a few, or its tendency to corrupt, we will never learn to truly respect those we don't understand, we will never learn to truly listen to those we don't agree with. And when I factor in the large number of people who do not know, let alone love, respect, or trust the basic goodness or intelligence of a single member of an opposing worldview, the case really seems hopeless.

But it's not. At least, I don't think it is. We're constantly coming up with new civilizing mechanisms to help us govern ourselves fairly, equally, and with as much freedom as possible. There's a mechanism already in our collective consciousness, but maybe not foregrounded enough, which might help us find that elusive common ground, keep us in balance and peace, and save us from oppression and war. And it's all to do with humility and dialogue.

Conviction is synonymous, essentially, with enthusiasm. If I'm very, very convinced of something, it means I don't know it. Conviction is not enough of a support on which to base an argument, and I certainly shouldn't base my actions solely on conviction. My personal belief that I'm unquestionably, definitely right means nothing to you--and when I act as though it should mean something all on its own, it becomes problematic.

We all have convictions that guide us--convictions themselves aren't the problem. The problem is when we assume they exempt us from negotiating or compromising with others. This assumption is dangerous to our personal integrity, dangerous to the social fabric, dangerous to the people who agree with us and oppose us alike. This attitude is the main source of violence--violence only occurs when one or more parties are unwilling to negotiate. Intentions matter very little in this world. What matters is the way we treat others. In terms of world peace, in terms of harmony, intentions make absolutely zero difference. What I'm trying to say here is the ends never justify the means. They NEVER do.

You know Jon Stewart's "Stupid or Evil?" segment on the Daily Show? Whenever we're adopting the position that we don't have to answer to others, we're being either stupid or evil, belligerent or tyrannical. Pride is indeed the root of all evil, pride which leads us to believe the integrity of our agenda justifies pushing forward with blind belligerence, or intentionally deceiving or coercing others, tyrannizing others, to achieve it. No party, belief system, or individual is safe from this. We're ALL capable of falling into these thought patterns. Here are some examples of each:

...TYRANNY...

Sometimes we recognize that those who oppose us feel just as strongly as we do, we recognize they are equally invested in the issue and have valid points, and we realize that our means will potentially harm and/or oppress them (or a third party). But we don't care. We think that the ends justify the means because:

1. We are filled with conviction that our cause is worthwhile
2. We have so effectively dehumanized our opposition that we don't care if they feel pain, or maybe even want to make them feel pain

This, people, is evil. Knowingly oppressing others or causing them pain in order to achieve, or in the process of achieving our ends, is tyrannical.

...BLIND BELLIGERENCE...

Sometimes we are so convinced that we are right, we refuse to account for evidence that our actions will harm and/or oppress others. We refuse to believe or accept that there are other ways of looking at the situation, and we won't negotiate or compromise. This is blind belligerence. We are essentially removing ourselves one step from evil by saying "The ends justify (it if I spend all of my energy defending rather than examining) the means." We do this because:

1. We have lapsed into solipsism, and don't truly understand that those who disagree with us have strong opinions and feel pain too (we all slip into this sometimes, especially when we avoid talking to people who believe differently than us for long periods of time, and only associate with those who share our beliefs--easy to do, since it's more pleasant, or at least less exhausting, to be around people who mostly agree with us rather than challenge everything we say)
2. We think the strength of our conviction and/or the purity of our intentions exonerates us if we're wrong (it doesn't--hence the axiom "the road to hell is paved with good intentions")

There's one more that's somewhere between the two categories. Not quite belligerent, not quite openly tyrannical:

We think that because of our superior knowledge, we have a kind of noblesse oblige to cause others pain in order to guide them away from greater pain, much as parents often guide their children by restricting and physically punishing them. When this attitude is directed at fellow adults, whose experiences, environments, and personalities have led them to other worldviews, it's little more than arrogance dressed as kindness. It's patronizing and, yes, tyrannical.

Paulo Freire's Pedagogy of the Oppressed elaborates on some of these ideas much better than I could. He describes how dialogue, compromise, and re-humanization can help us avoid the revolution cycle (oppressed rise up against oppressor/oppressed conquer oppressor/oppressed become new oppressors). Freire argues that the answer to harmony between humans is not a one-size-fits-all ideology (although this would be great, and you might even think you have it already. I know I do!), because that still leaves you with the formidable problem of getting everyone to agree with and/or submit to it...which brings us back to our game show, "Tyranny or Blind Belligerence"?

The answer to world peace is balance, negotiation, humility, and communication. I don't care if you're Tea Party, Occupy, Democrat, Republican, Christian, atheist, Muslim, rich, poor, we're all in this. We're all guilty of it. We need to stop aiming for total dominance and truly aim for solutions influenced by all of our needs.

How to Appreciate Difference

Lately I've been trying to recognize and assess my reactions to difference, especially because my first reaction is so often to assert the superiority of my own way of life over another. For example, when I see a woman wearing a leopard print top and unflattering zebra spandex pants, my default reaction is often to sneer and think, "that's tacky," or "does she really think that looks good?"

Sometime over the last few years I finally realized that my reactions to difference, whether of opinion, lifestyle, taste, or behavior, say more about me (and often my own weaknesses, hypocrisies, and insecurities) than they say about the target of my judgment. Since I've realized this, I've been trying to bring my actions up to speed with my beliefs. So I've taken to stopping myself whenever I want to mock someone, and asking, "where did that come from?" When I catch myself rolling my eyes when someone says they love "Twilight," or shaking a fist (okay, fine, a finger) at Fox News, or when someone shares a political view I find particularly ignorant or hateful, I'm trying to remember this mantra:

"It's good that there is room for viewpoints and attitudes so vastly different from mine. I'm glad that we're such a free and creative and diverse society that I often encounter people so unlike myself, living freely and without oppression or restriction."

It's easy enough to wish they'd just see things my way, and to imagine what a better place the world would be if only everyone saw things the way I did. But they don't think the way I do, and they won't, as long as they're free to think differently and don't find compelling reasons to join me.

Really, the world *wouldn't* be a better place without them around. Where do you find absolute uniformity of appearance? Only where strict codes are enforced, options severely limited. Where do you find voluntary uniformity? Only where the atmosphere is subtly or actively hostile to difference (often simply by championing compliance).

Where do you find absolute uniformity of thought? Nowhere. Even within the same belief communities, different opinions will thrive unless stifled (whether by the individual or the community). If difference abounds, it's a good sign--it means people aren't being oppressed, silenced, or persecuted for their beliefs. It means we're not being forced to agree with anyone, and they're not being forced to agree with us. Let's remember to appreciate it. Let's be grateful.