tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10139378.post115032804896219001..comments2023-11-02T04:09:25.628-05:00Comments on Filosofia y Flores: Holier Than ThouE.A.Phttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08412076189760062421noreply@blogger.comBlogger8125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10139378.post-1151098994330204332006-06-23T16:43:00.000-05:002006-06-23T16:43:00.000-05:00Lots of good discussion here. Through reading ever...Lots of good discussion here. Through reading everyone's thoughts, I think I finally know how to express what I meant to express earlier to Don Quixote. <BR/><BR/>The mothers in many (though not all) of these circumstances I've described are not merely offering heart-felt advice. They are advising their daughters that NO OTHER OPTION will make them as happy AND as valuable to God's Kingdom. They are justify the smaller Sphere of Woman through the use of the Bible and through (and I know I've mentioned this to you before) statements like "women aren't as good at decision-making," and "women aren't as smart, athletic, good in a crisis, etc." They also reinforce this concept constantly. Any childless woman in the congregation is discussed as though she's made a mistake in choosing this. That same comment arises every time she's discussed. They go beyond encouragement to build a culture in which this is THE option because not only are the other ones not discussed, but anyone who chooses them is pitied, disparaged, or worse. <BR/><BR/>I know this statement can be a discussion stopper, but it's true: you aren't a woman so those comments don't apply to you and you can ignore them. I notice the many little ways that this is reinforced in casual conversation, devotional books, advice, even sermons. The volume belies any stated exception (and often they don't even bother to state an objection). <BR/><BR/>We may have to agree to disagree here, and discussion is never over. I just felt like my expression was lacking, and more discussion amongst the commenters illuminated some things. Thanks for your help, guys!E.A.Phttps://www.blogger.com/profile/08412076189760062421noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10139378.post-1151010612825986632006-06-22T16:10:00.000-05:002006-06-22T16:10:00.000-05:00I'm ignoring the larger issue here, but I'm up for...I'm ignoring the larger issue here, but I'm up for picking some nits.<BR/><BR/>Don Quixote- <BR/><BR/>1) On raising children to be ANYTHING- Let's say you lived in Las Vegas (to avoid legal issues) and your daughter wanted to be an escort- would you object? After all, "I think that raising children with the idea that there are some things they cannot do is demonstrably wrong." I'm going to go ahead and assume that you meant to add, "unless those things they want to do are at odds with Judeo-Christianity."<BR/><BR/>I think the bigger point J. Morgan is making is that for some cultures there are "basic, unquestionable assumptions" that are just as unarguable to them as denying opportunities at "God-given talents" are to you. You can still disagree with it, you just have to be able to admit that you don't have an absolute stranglehold on truth, and that you can't change them (however meritous your argument) any more than they can change you. You can disagree with some crazy Wahibbist who wants your head, but you can't convice him that he is wrong by falling back on Judeo-Christian/American values. You've started with different "basic, unquestionable assumptions."<BR/><BR/>2) "What if Mari Curie’s mother had raised her not to be a scientist? We would not know what we know about radioactivity, which has been used in nuclear medicine to save thousands of lives." Well, maybe, but then we wouldn't have blown Hiroshima and Nagasaki off the map either. You can't make arguments like this- you have to be extremely selective to make it work. What if Hitler's parents had raised him to marry and support some "silent, barefoot uterus", wouldn't the world be better off?Justinhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/13183798231387166052noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10139378.post-1150805861754519312006-06-20T07:17:00.000-05:002006-06-20T07:17:00.000-05:00EAP, thanks for you kindness about my comment. I ...EAP, thanks for you kindness about my comment. I agree with much of what you and Don Quixote have said, but there is one point that I think I do disagree with and that, for me at least, makes a big difference. <BR/><BR/>The Knight of the Sad Face said, “Ideally, of course, EVERY child should be raised with the idea that he or she can do ANYTHING with his or her life” and, again, “As you say, all options should be encouraged.” I don’t think I agree with that in any principled sense. I mean, that is itself one of those “basic, unquestionable assumptions about the constitutive elements of the world and human existence” that I was talking about in my post. There are lots of cultures – many American fundamentalist cultures included – that would reject that premise or for whom it wouldn’t even be on the map. Not to stereotype (too much), but that is a white, middle-to-upper-middle-class assumption about “how things should be” that isn’t necessarily shared by other people, even other people who share the same faith. <BR/><BR/>And why is that such a bad thing? When the Roman Catholic Church allowed African faithful to incorporate traditional, tribal costume into the Liturgy, everyone cheered that this was a great step forward and an acknowledgement that Christ and His Church have no boundaries. When it is close to home - say, a different culture in the same country (presumably where we think they don’t have any excuses) - or something that we have a vested interest in - say, as married persons or as women – then it is, at best, something unfortunate that we as enlightened Christians should be “exasperated” with. <BR/><BR/>Why does my objection matter at all? Well, I think it matters because it allows us to see a culture that we deeply disagree with (say American fundamentalism) through lenses that don’t look down on it without giving up one ounce of our deep disagreement. As I said in my original post, “an understanding of the reasons for these basic disagreements, I think, can be good for humility, charity, and self-reflection.” I think that we not only need to understand, as the Man of La Mancha has pointed out, that these are real differences, but also the extent and depth of them (I think they go all the way down). So, I am not advocating some tolerant cultural relativism - I still think I am right and that we are doing it the right way – but I am saying that that doesn’t necessitate viewing other cultures that I deeply disagree with as “exasperating.” They REALLY are different (which is how, in my original comment, I got around to “the inestimable love of God for His children, in all their variations and forms.”<BR/><BR/>I also wanted to say something about the gender issue. A gender critique doesn’t exactly make sense in these cultures if they are consistent. As EAP has pointed out, both women AND men who start having kids at 18 and keep going until they are 35 are pretty boxed in. Biology is destiny for BOTH genders. Procreation and child rearing / child providing is the extent of life, regardless of gender. The gender critique comes in – and in fact originally came out of – an inconsistent culture in which women continued to be boxed in by being EXCLUSIVELY tied to procreation and child rearing while men were not. When you have a man who goes to college, works in an office, travels for business, and has a poker night while women are “barefoot and in the kitchen,” then a gender critique is more than appropriate. When both genders work their asses off for nothing more than child rearing / child providing, then the critique looses some of its potency.JMChttps://www.blogger.com/profile/03881349417962495204noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10139378.post-1150753513914908102006-06-19T16:45:00.000-05:002006-06-19T16:45:00.000-05:00Did Grant just call your breasts large and perky?R...Did Grant just call your breasts large and perky?<BR/><BR/>Really great post. "Regularly scheduled polemic" - that'll stick with me. I think you're right on in saying that there's nothing wrong with most of it PER SE, but that it's ultimately tactless and useless and probably does more harm than good.<BR/><BR/>My wife's uterus is inactive but not silent, and it keeps me up all night singing "yankee doodle dandy" or the theme from "I dream of Jeanie." What a pain.RJhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/02716003236306728379noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10139378.post-1150749941266483662006-06-19T15:45:00.000-05:002006-06-19T15:45:00.000-05:00Thanks for the comments, lads. j morgan - Gone are...Thanks for the comments, lads. <BR/><BR/>j morgan - Gone are the days when your obstinate pursuit of the position as All-Time Devil's Advocate in our freshman group made me want to smack you like my little brothers. Oh, there's mischief in your eyes, but your ideas and priorities are a source of inspiration to me. Thanks for sharing your experience; I'll be chewing it over for a while. <BR/><BR/>don quixote - I know we've had conversations about this before, so I'm surprised that you misread me. I have ABSOLUTELY nothing against the stay-at-home mom. I have a few friends my age who have already stepped into those shoes and love them. You can thank them for breaking me of any assumptions about their life and aims and the happiness that it can bring to them and their children. I would have no problem at all with a daughter who chose that path. <BR/><BR/>I have a major problem with a perspective that gives the female half of the species no options as either independent women or as a childless married women. I will admit some cultural conditioning has made me choose college, marriage, even my taste in music. Early in their lives they learn, they are made to feel that nothing BUT motherhood is an option for them. Women will be as diverse as men in their choices because we are ultimately human. I was going to point out that it isn't assumed that men will marry and have children, but I guess in their culture it is. I focus on the women's plight out of empathy and exposure - after all, I talk to a good deal more women than men in that community. I also object to their culture boxing men in to few and constrained roles, I just might not have language for it, and I certainly wouldn't understand their position as well. <BR/><BR/>Your paragraph about the ideal of being raised with options hit the nail on the head. I would hope that if/when any tiny brains are learning the ropes with my husband and me, I would give them the options that God gives them - to glorify him in every way he grants them to do so. <BR/><BR/>I should also point out that I'm not exactly conquering the world right now. I'm working, partially out of need, partially out of desire to do that right now. Later on, who knows what I'll choose and IT JUST MIGHT BE STAY-AT-HOME MOTHERHOOD. I just find the "biology as destiny" makes me itchier than the no-children-just-work option, and the fact that it's cloaked in Biblical rhetoric makes me itchiest of all.E.A.Phttps://www.blogger.com/profile/08412076189760062421noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10139378.post-1150470069708861142006-06-16T10:01:00.000-05:002006-06-16T10:01:00.000-05:00EAP,Having grown up in an independent, revivalist,...EAP,<BR/><BR/>Having grown up in an independent, revivalist, rapture-awaiting, KJV-only, patristic, literalist, Baptist church, I can completely relate to your struggle. How is that we and they share the same faith? DO we share the same faith or are we erroneously calling different things by the same name? Yeah, it takes its toll to be a faithful Christian wondering how other faithful Christians can be so blind to the obvious. <BR/><BR/>For most of my life, I have rejected – in part or, more often, in whole – Christianity because I could not understand how obvious truths could be denied or ignored when they became inconvenient to precisely the same people who hammered away with “T”ruth. <BR/><BR/>It has occurred to me, however, in the last few years, that it is because these things are actually and legitimately not obvious truths apart from a whole set of assumptions about “the way things are” that Christians – and everyone else – can be so vehemently oppositional about some of the most basic things. <BR/><BR/>Let me give you my early childhood example. I was a dinosaur child. I went to the museums, watch the PBS, read the books, and bought the rubber models. I was all about the dinosaurs. I can remember being very young – 4 or 5 probably – and rejecting Christianity more-or-less in its entirety because, as I understood it, Christian faith necessitated an account of the physical world that precluded the possibility of the actual existence of dinosaurs. And, because there was no room for dinosaurs in Christianity, there was no room in Christianity for me. Cased closed. Now, for most of my life, I thought that these people were absolutely absurd, stupid, and ignorant. I also thought that, deep down, they probably knew that there were dinosaurs and that their account of things was deeply flawed. I couldn’t understand why they held onto it (power, fear, convenience, etc. were all top contenders). <BR/><BR/>I have since come to realize, however, that it wasn’t anything like that. For fundamentalists (and everyone, but I am sticking with the example), the basic, unquestionable assumptions about the constitutive elements of the world and human existence made claims and arguments for the existence of dinosaurs, to them, completely implausible and almost laughable. They are, at least to some extent, operating with a different lexicon that yield very different translations. <BR/><BR/>So, in thinking about your examples, it occurs to me that, in all likelihood, for most women who have grown up in this culture and currently exist in a patriarchal, authoritative familial arrangement, none of this is intelligible or experienced as oppressive. “Biology isn’t destiny” is literally unintelligible to these women. Most of them, I suspect, are very proud to be stay-at-home moms with 7 kids and an Econoline van. Even things about their lives that are less-than-desirable – like being coerced into having sex when they don’t want to – don’t necessarily indict this arrangement or the basic assumptions that support it (likewise, it wouldn’t occur to me that, if I got cancer, I would lose faith in the medical establishment).<BR/><BR/>I can tell you that, for Southerners of a particular generation and background, Christianity and strong racial views are not in any way incompatible. Charles and I have often noted to each other that Christianity is incredibly flexible in terms of the variety of philosophical assumptions to which it can be easily and happily married. To that I would add that, I think, ideally, Christianity would generate or rely on previously-generated philosophical systems internal to itself, but that it isn’t necessarily problematic for it to look elsewhere. <BR/><BR/>I imagine that the flexibility of Christianity is itself a reflection of the inestimable love of God for His children, in all their variations and forms. The knowledge of Him is literally not confinable; likewise the communion of saints and the unity of the Church is not either. Building the literal presence of Christ in the world with badly damaged pieces is no easy task and, by the very nature of the pieces, the product of even a perfect Craftsman – until He chooses to perfect the pieces themselves - will not be able to hide wounds and scars. It occurs to me that, for God, the pain caused to His Church by the things that you have noted, is a continuation of the pain experienced on the cross. For us, however, an understanding of the reasons for these basic disagreements, I think, can be good for humility, charity, and self-reflection. <BR/><BR/>Anyway, it is just a rather long thought. Thanks for your post; it was great. As I am sure you can now see, I very strongly relate.<BR/><BR/>Love,<BR/>JMCJMChttps://www.blogger.com/profile/03881349417962495204noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10139378.post-1150414576033253662006-06-15T18:36:00.000-05:002006-06-15T18:36:00.000-05:00e, thanks for the honest and insightful post. Kee...e, thanks for the honest and insightful post. Keep wrestling!CharlesPeircehttps://www.blogger.com/profile/12579865233393399422noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10139378.post-1150399448912531952006-06-15T14:24:00.000-05:002006-06-15T14:24:00.000-05:00First, I say if you have to curves show them off. ...First, I say if you have to curves show them off. There is nothing the matter with large perky breasts. Secondly, I know what you are saying about the stupid Bible thumping Christians who make the rest of us look bad. I can totally see why people hate Christians. Thirdly, I pretty much hate any bumper stickers that are trying to make a statement. You don't see millionaires going around with bumper stickers on their Ferarris that say Rich and Proud of it or something of the sort.GMackhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/01789184853372711530noreply@blogger.com