Archive for May, 2007
Off to get married
In two days I’ll be nervously pacing, wondering if I’ve forgotten anything, and preparing to take vows to the woman I love. We’re rehearsing this evening, guests are arriving Friday… and if I know what’s good for me and my relationship, blogging won’t be happening between now and Monday! So check out the archives and recent posts.
My partner and I have been together for four years now (the month of our wedding is actually our four year anniversary). I met her, quite by accident, when I wasn’t looking for a relationship. In fact, I was doing everything I could to go ’straight.’ Now I’m just walking the (straight) line, by way of Johnny Cash.
While the state I’m in won’t be recognizing our ceremony on Saturday, having made it illegal by both passing a law and a constitutional amendment, the circle of people attending do recognize our relationship. They recognize that four years of relating, of taking out the trash, working out disagreements, sharing space and ideas, being vulnerable and learning courage…that whether it occurs in a same-sex or opposite-sex context, it’s a process. And it’s something to celebrate.
I don’t blog much about my personal life here, and don’t plan to (that’s what social networking sites are for…as well as face to face conversation!), but I am excited about Saturday and wanted to share it with you.
Image: New York Wedding Rings.
Buddhist countries and peace
Check out the results of this recent study.
Interestingly
One of my critiques of the postcolonial introduction (”lack of mutual critical accountability”) is central to LT’s analysis of the brown bag brouhaha. Really, now I’m done.
Postcolonialism: A Very Short Introduction
The scholastic tradition in which I’ve most recently been trained is analytic philosophy, indebted to the logical and mathematical perspicuity of Bertrand Russell and his peers. When faced with a question, my instinct is now to break out the logical-inference-making part of my brain, tracking premises, conclusions, and distilling reality to propositions.
I recognize that this is only one way to engage with the world, and has its limitations. Postcolonialism: A Very Short Introduction describes, through narrative and history, what those limitations might be, in the eyes of others.
The “Other” is an important theme in postcolonial thought, as is the problem of knowledge and boundaries. The form that the book takes resists my normal approach of refuting premises or responding with thought experiments. This is intentional.
Brown Bag Brouhaha
You can start here, continue here and here (and dissenting voices here and here) to read about the scuffle over Starr King seminary renaming “Brown Bag Lunches” to “Bring Your Own Lunches”, due to alleged racially offensive overtones. I may have thoughts later, especially in light of the reading I’m doing on postcolonialism and narrative.
Update: Just spotted Fausto’s contribution. Excellent parsing, as usual, of what’s really at stake and why.
Update 2: No further post from me at this time, since the dead horse has been beaten, kicked around some more, and now taken off to the glue factory. You can read my comments at a few of the links above, and my final comment at Rev Sean’s is here. I have my opinion, am sticking to it, but am open to hearing more–which is why I’m looking forward to the course at Meadville.
Read the Wikipedia entry on colorism to get an idea of the background.
Bert and the Floating Eye: a webcomic
I thought I’d poke a little fun at myself, so I used StripGenerator to create this little comic. We’ll see if any other ideas emerge. If so, I may publish an occasional series here. And yes, I’m sure that I’m stealing from Lump of Clay somehow. But I don’t have a statue and I’m far less smart and witty, so I think it’s okay.
Let me know what you think about the strip in the comments: style, characters, the “joke.” (Click to open and read in a new window.)
Sweet Dreams in America: A Critical Response
Sharon Welch, in five short chapters, draws upon evolutionary theory, chaos theory, jazz and blues, postcolonialism, models of multicultural education, Foucault, Derrida, Kant, Bonhoeffer, in a search for an ethical approach that recognizes universal trajectories within conditioned, historical boundaries. Is she successful? For this reader, it’s hard to tell.
I’ll be honest and disclaim up front that my exposure to ethics has been through analytic philosophy, particularly modern ethical theory and metaethics. Typical in this approach are thought experiments, careful examination of language, and attempts to derive general statements about human ethical nature.
Welch doesn’t do any of this. Read the rest of this entry »
Still working on the posts
Somehow, the real world of packing for a move, getting ready our wedding (Saturday!), and just general stuff to do (like take a nap on Memorial Day) has gotten the best of me. My vlog is in pieces on the Mac, waiting to be published. My Sharon Welch response is a series of notes jotted in my Moleskine. I’ll cull them together soon, I hope.
In the meantime, though, here’s an on-topic comic from Jesus and Mo (Jesus and Mohammed are talking to the bartender in case it’s not clear):
Hitchens v. Wilson
After five rounds, we’re still reading five or six paragraph letters that basically distill to:
Hitchens: Christians and religious people do bad things and justify it by religion. You cannot marshal any evidence for your claims and you make things unnecessarily mysterious.
Wilson: How can you define "bad" since we’re all just protoplasm and the result of randomness? You’re not listening to my question and keep harping on morality even though you can’t account for it.
And on it goes, couched in different terms, but the same recycled points. Both men get in some good zingers: Wilson says to Hitchens in part four, "the tangled skein of innate and conflicting moralities found within the billions of humans alive today also has to be sorted out and systematized. Why do you get to do it and then come around and tell us how we must behave? Who died and left you king?"
Sweet Dreams in America: Chapters Four and Five
Here’s the final bullet-point summary of Sharon Welch’s book. I’ll dip a little bit into a response, but largely save that for my next post. Her last two chapters contain the framework for a multicultural education which tackles the issues she’s been identifying.
Chapter Four: "The Art of Ambiguity"
- There are two approaches to multicultural education which fall short of engaging ambiguity:
- One which heightens conflict and guilt in the privileged and dominant group
- Another which seeks to create a "safe space" in which there is only listening and no criticism