This is Where I Live

On the edge of everything.

Another View on "A More Perfect Union"

I am going to say a few word's on Obama's most recent speech, "A More Perfect Union," the full presentation you can watch here or read the transcript here. I would love to hear your reactions. I find this speech and Obama's reaction to his former preacher's language a watershed moment in American history. I will present my understanding of the issue and open myself up for whatever criticism you think it entails.

My understanding is that Obama made this speech in order to quell (or at least address) the criticism he received for not distancing himself from his former preacher of 20 years (now recently retired). This preacher was a man who married him to his wife, baptized his children, and provided spiritual leadership for those two decades. This same man has also told his congregation that America deserved the terrorist attacks of 2001 (as the terrorist were merely "chickens coming home to roost"); he has called this country "the United States of K.K.K.A.," he has accused the "rich white" American government of creating HIV to kill black people; and he called upon God to "damn America" again and again.

To his credit, Obama states that he categorically and unequivocally condemns such language. He also understands that if this is all that people knew about his former preacher, he sees why they condemn him. However, he adds:

"I can no more disown him than I can disown the black community. I can no more disown him than I can my white grandmother – a woman who helped raise me, a woman who sacrificed again and again for me, a woman who loves me as much as she loves anything in this world, but a woman who once confessed her fear of black men who passed by her on the street, and who on more than one occasion has uttered racial or ethnic stereotypes that made me cringe.

These people are a part of me. And they are a part of America, this country that I love."

Obama then attempted to categorize the remarks and the man who made them by placing them in the context they were made, a context the media has been gracious enough to explain to us as the tradition of "Black Liberation Theology." Obama has explained that while the remarks themselves were wrong, they came from a man and a place where race and racial discrimination continues to be very much alive, and often manifest themselves in the anger preached from the pulpit of black churches.

Obama then called upon all Americans to bridge the racial divide, to recognize the continuing racial problems people of all colors face, to work together for a better America, and to focus on the real issues of the presidential race.

I found Obama's speech to be moving. I found the language to be eloquent. I found his call to overcome racial issues in America to be poignant and timely. But I found his refusal to completely disavow his relationship with his former preacher to be terribly irresponsible. I also found it to be telling of who Obama really is.

I see two ways of dealing with Obama's former preacher's rhetoric. The first is Obama's explanation: while his preacher's language was reprehensible, it is understandable and at least not wholly inexcusable given the racial legacy he faced and the continuing racial problems in America today.

The other side of the argument is that ultimately, there is no context, no explanation, no circumstances that justify, explain or condone such vitriolic anti-american hatred and lies spewed forth by this preacher on multiple occasions before hundreds (and now hundreds of millions) of people. And for Obama to attempt to separate his former preacher's comments from the rest of his ministry for whatever reason (particularly when there is no effort by his former preacher to disavow such comments) demonstrates the former's complete inability to comprehend this fundamental point. For him to dismiss the comments without dismissing the man demonstrates his inability to lead this pluralistic, multi-racial, multi-cultural nation.

Never mind the moral equivalence that Obama makes between the private fears of an old lady and the public hatred of a preacher. Never mind the moral equivalence he makes between this lie-spewing preacher and the ENTIRE black community. Never mind that this preacher is not a relic of the past but a man who continues to preach to congregations today (I just read an article about him being invited to give three sermons at another church in Chicago).

What kind of nation are we in that a top presidential front-runner -- and a man that tens of millions of my countrymen and women support -- refuses to disavow his connection with a man with whom he has the most intimate of friendships but who has cursed and damned America? And what kind of nation will we be if we vote into office a man who ultimately excuses such behavior as the unfortunate result of past and present racial injustices?

Obama continues:

"The profound mistake of Reverend Wright's sermons is not that he spoke about racism in our society. It's that he spoke as if our society was static; as if no progress has been made; as if this country – a country that has made it possible for one of his own members to run for the highest office in the land and build a coalition of white and black; Latino and Asian, rich and poor, young and old -- is still irrevocably bound to a tragic past."

Obama is wrong. The profound mistake of his former preacher's sermons is not that he failed to recognize the progress America has made in race relations. The profound mistake of his former preacher's sermons is that he knowlingly LIED to his congregation to stir up racial animus amongst his parishioners. And through his lies, he revealed such hatred and disdain for his own country and for people of another skin color, that no amount of rationalizing or explaining can change the intended portent of his words. No past history of racial discrimination justifies, excuses or explains intentional lies designed to stir up hatred and racial division. And no amount of rationalizing makes it OK to stand beside a man who has acted and spoken this way.

Why is no one talking about this?

For Obama to continue to stand beside this man and to refuse to "disown" him as the anti-american bigot that he is, he has made his actions communicate far beyond his eloquent speech. Ultimately, it leaves him only two real messages to the discerning listener. Obama has either elevated himself to god-like status by claiming to hate the sin but absolving the sinner on behalf of us all, or he has denigrated himself to embracing Wright's devilish rhetoric, despite his qualified condemnation. Personally, I'm not comfortable with a President of the United States of America who claims to do either.

Je t'aimais, je t'aime et je t'aimerai

The Uncanny Valley, Latter-day Saints and the Rest of the Christian World

So I was recently pondering the great divide between Latter-day Saints and the rest of the Christian world (as you may or may not know, most of my family are all Latter-day Saints and I used to be, so it still informs much of my life view). It seems that if the recent presidential race has shown anything, it has shown that to many Christians, the only thing worse than an unbeliever is a heretic whose beliefs are close enough to be understood but not enough to be accepted. While much vitriol and hatred was reserved for the "enemy" (Barack and Hillary), the real invective was for those damn Mormons. I remember reading polls saying there were tens of millions of conservatives who would rather see a candidate like Hillary whose platform was fundamentally different from their own rather than someone like Mitt.

Well, I was wondering why this was so...

Then today I was surfing Wikipedia (a reputable source, I know, but check its sources on this one) and I came across the theory of "The Uncanny Valley." This theory "was introduced by roboticist Masahiro Mori in 1970, and has been linked to Ernst Jentch's concept of "the uncanny" ... [and] is famously elaborated upon by Sigmund Freud in the 1919 essay, simply entitled "The Uncanny[.]"

"Mori's hypothesis states that as a robot is made more humanlike in its appearance and motion, the emotional response from a human being to the robot will become increasingly positive and empathic, until a point is reached beyond which the response quickly becomes that of strong repulsion. However, as the appearance and motion continue to become less distinguishable from a human being, the emotional response becomes positive once more and approaches human-to-human empathy levels.

"This area of repulsive response aroused by a robot with appearance and motion between a "barely-human" and "fully human" entity is called the uncanny valley. The name captures the idea that a robot which is "almost human" will seem overly "strange" to a human being and thus will fail to evoke the empathetic response required for productive human-robot interaction."

"The phenomenon can be explained by the notion that, if an entity is sufficiently non-humanlike, then the humanlike characteristics will tend to stand out and be noticed easily, generating empathy. On the other hand, if the entity is "almost human", then the non-human characteristics will be the ones that stand out, leading to a feeling of "strangeness" in the human viewer. In sum, a robot stuck inside the uncanny valley is no longer being judged by the standards of a robot doing a good job at pretending to be human; but is instead being judged by the standards of a human doing a terrible job at acting like a normal person."

The article then went on to describe another potential Uncanny Valley that occurs when things become "transhuman" or "posthuman." In other words, if men and women evolve with technology and gain prosthetic enhancements or something that moves them to be materially different in some supposedly positive or advantageous way, there is an initial revulsion before they can be completely seen as an "other" and thus seen with some level of empathy again.

I have found the following graph online that illustrates the Uncanny Valley:

[bunraku puppet obviously is in the wrong place]

Are you coming to the same conclusions as I am? Maybe the reason why so many Christians (evangelical or otherwise) harbor such revulsion for Latter-day Saints is that they have been tought or convinced themselves that the Latter-day Saints are fundamentally different from the rest of Christianity. Taking this to heart, they nonetheless see Latter-day Saints around them acting Christian and speaking the Christian language (talking of Christ, calling themselves Christian, taking the sacrament, etc). While they remain totally convinced that Latter-day Saints are NOT Christian, their Christian behavior strikes that chord of being uncannily like Christianity. And so instead of empathizing or relating like they do with Christians of other faiths, they view Latter-day Saints as mimicking and making a mockery of Christianity. The latter then fall deep in the uncanny valley and are placed in the same place as zombies or corpses, an inhuman form of unholy life not to be tolerated.

Hmmmmm....


More on this topic soon. I don't think I'm done with it.

Talk about a cynic!

"The most merciful thing in the world, I think, is the inability of the human mind to correlate all its contents. We live on a placid island of ignorance in the midst of black seas of infinity, and it was not meant that we should voyage far. The sciences, each straining in its own direction, have hitherto harmed us little; but some day the piecing together of dissociated knowledge will open up such terrifying vistas of reality, and of our frightful position therein, that we shall either go mad from the revelation or flee from the light into the peace and safety of a new dark age. "

-- H.P. Lovecraft, "The Call of Cthuhlu"

Cesar Millan is Right

"How old is your baby?" the woman in the pet store selling over-priced organic dog food asked me?

"Um... my dog is 11 months old," I answered.

"Ahhhh, well, she is part of the family now. I have two dogs, and they are my babies," she said.

"Oh, well my dog is my dog," I answered.

"Oh. Well, here is what I feed my dogs," she said, showing me a bag of 5 pound dog food for $20. "They eat better than I do."

"That's really unfortunate," I responded....

I stopped at that point and looked around the store. Almost everyone was carrying their dogs, some petting them neurotically and talking about the massage and salon regimens they had set up for their animals, and how they planned their days and weeks around them.

People, these are DOGS. They are ANIMALS. They are not your children... they are not your babies... and they don't think or act or feel like humans, as much as you transfer all your emotion baggage on to them. The more you fail to recognize these simple facts, the more your otherwise potentially healthy relationships with these animals is going to be off-balanced, and your dog will suffer for it.

I love my dog. I really do. She is my favorite DOG in the whole world. And when I look at her, she is an animal, then she is a dog, then she is her breed, and then she is my Kayla. Any other way of seeing it is just plain ridiculous (and quite pathetic, I must add). I give her food, exercise, shelter and attention. I also discipline her and give her clear boundaries. If she crosses those, she is immediately punished. She appears to be a balanced and content dog, and I daresay she is more balanced than the 15lb handwarmers these people carry around and pamper into idiocy.

Get a grip folks.

Time For Me To Breathe A Sigh of Relief

So I survived February.

This may not seem like much of an achievement, but I'm amazed at just how difficult it is every year.