A recent New York Times article discussed how some American companies, before employing young people just out of college, are looking at how they present themselves in online communities such as MySpace and Facebook.
Not surprisingly, many kids in high school and college use these “protected” online spaces to try on personas, indulging in the posturing common to adolescents, such as claiming attitudes and behaviors that they rarely, if ever, actually indulge in. This is no different from teen posturing in real life, except that, instead of being performed for an audience of their peers, it’s available for all the world to see.
” ‘The term [companies have] used over and over is red flags… Is there something about [a potential employee’s] lifestyle that we might find questionable or that we might find goes against the core values of our corporation?’ ”
It seems to me that any company which decides NOT to hire a person on the basis of their MySpace profile falls into three errors:
Assuming that what’s presented there is real.
Assuming that, even if true, high school or college behavior reflects how someone will behave in adult working life. Many working adults smoke dope or drink on weekends, without letting it affect their working lives. A sign of adulthood is in fact the ability to behave appropriately in each of the different spheres of your life.
Rampaging hypocrisy. Could all of these puritanically-minded recruiters truthfully say that they did not behave like adolescents during their adolescence? Could they say the same for every current employee of their organization?
A few of the companies contacted for the NYT article said that they do not conduct such investigations of potential employees, some explicitly stating that they felt such material to be irrelevant (good for them!). Nonetheless, I suspect that the phenomenon is more likely to grow than shrink, given America’s Puritanical bent.
That being the case, how should young people behave online?
The key is to realize that the Internet is a hyper-public piazza, in which you should assume that everything you say, no matter when or to whom, is being recorded – and may someday be held against you. We’ve all made the mistake of accidentally copying an email to the very person denigrated in it. There have been well-aired cases of regrettable emails being publicized, to the humiliation and sometimes material damage of the originator. Even Microsoft has been hoist with its own petard by internal emails which became public knowledge thanks to subpoenas or leaks.
The only way to be absolutely safe is never to say anything online that you might someday regret, or that you might not wish some third party to hear. An oft-cited rule of thumb is: “Don’t put anything out there that you wouldn’t want your grandmother to see.”
Which is, of course, extreme and unreasonable – we all have sides to ourselves that we don’t share with our grandmothers. Perhaps a better rule of thumb is: “Don’t put anything out there that you wouldn’t want your parents to see.” And then for the parents to actually go and look.
A newly-published study on teens’ use of MySpace and their parents’ perception thereof is enlightening. It shows that, while parents profess to be concerned about what their teens may be doing or experiencing on MySpace (their fears heightened by media hysteria), “38% have not seen their teen’s MySpace page and 40% never look at their teen’s MySpace pictures.”
Furthermore, “Less than half the parents say they have limits on both computer use
(46%) and MySpace use (32%) but kids say that those limits are not followed.” And: “One-third of the parents are not sure about whether their teen is giving out personal information; even when they think they know, they underestimate how often their teenagers give out their name, school name, phone number, e-mail/IM, and social information. For example, 34% of parents were not sure if their teen had given out the name of their school and 43% were sure that they had done so, while 74% of the teens stated that they had provided their school name.”
In other words, parents claim to be setting limits on how their kids use MySpace, but are not actually checking to see how they are using it. Which is very easy to do: most MySpace pages are open to the public, and it would be a very duplicitous child indeed who actually set up two MySpace profiles – one for parental consumption and one for friends.
My own daughter has a MySpace account, but uses it only occasionally to stay in touch with her American friends. Ross is far more active on Fotolog, and my readers already know that I keep close tabs on her there – not because I don’t trust her, but because it’s entertaining. I also have both a professional and personal interest in understanding how online social networking works and how people use it; Ross’ Fotolog is a handy case study that’s easy for me to follow because I actually know some of the people and their back stories.
Ross knows that I see almost immediately whatever she posts (one of Fotolog’s features is email alerts whenever a friend adds something to their Fotolog). Does this affect how she behaves there? She says: “No, but you and I have a weird relationship.” (She did once change a post on my advice; I thought it a bit harsh on one of her friends and that she might soon regret having said it.)
But I have talked to Ross a great deal about online reputation management, and the wisdom I’ve passed on (based on my own online experience as well as reading) does seem to inform her online behavior. She’ll do fine in the working world. (Unless she applies for a job at the Temperance Society…)
So Zidane “held a high-profile TV interview in which he issued an apology to any children who might have been watching” when he head-butted Materazzi during the World Cup final. (Forbes, and many other sources)
Before he even said it, several opinionists brought up the usual “what about the children?” moan, much as they did over Janet Jackson’s nipple exposure a few years ago.
No one, however, is moaning about protecting the children from news broadcasts, which hourly contain enough real shock and horror to send any child into trauma. Or the actual lives of many children, including many in the United States. Years ago several people were killed in random shootings in a housing project, I think it was in Detroit, including a child walking home from school. Civil administrators interviewed on TV spoke of the need for post-trauma counseling for the schoolchildren whose classmate had been killed. All I could think was: “Wouldn’t it have been more effective to prevent the shootings in the first place and avoid the cause of the trauma?”
So the world entertains itself wondering what Materazzi said to Zidane, and debates whether Zidane was right to react as he did, and wonders how to explain this great mystery to the poor, innocent children who have been exposed to a sports hero behaving badly.
Uh, people, did you even notice? There’s a war on. Or two. Or three. Explain THAT to your children. If you can.
I have been living in Italy long enough for this to be my fourth World Cup. And, to my own surprise, I’ve grown to enjoy it and actually care about who wins, even though most of the finer details still escape me. Aside from a passing interest in Olympic equestrian events (when I can get them) and figure skating, World Cup football is the only sport I watch. So the experience of being actively interested in a sporting event is a new country for me to explore.
The World Cup has, appropriately enough, followed me around the world. For the earlier games of the 1994 World Cup, I was home in Milan, during a typically hot, humid summer. We lived in an 8-story apartment building with windows looking onto the same courtyard as four similar buildings, and of course everyone had their windows open. So, when Italy scored, it was a community event: we heard the whole neighborhood erupt in cheers.
For the final games, I was in California for work, staying (as usual) at Fabrizio’s large house in San Jose. The whole gang of Italian staff and their families transplanted to California for Incat Systems, plus me, watched the Brazil-Italy final together on Fabrizio’s big TV.
In 1998 I was back in California for work (I spent a large part of each summer there from 1994-2000) for at least part of the Cup – I remember watching the Iran-US game with a Woodstock friend at his house, but I’m pretty sure I was home in Italy when France won the final (or was that in 2002?). I was sardonically amused by the fact that France, so protective of its lily-white Frenchness, won largely thanks to its team members of north African descent. French president Chirac’s habitually sour expression barely changed as he watched the victory from a privileged seat in the stands, and I wondered if he was sucking on the sour lemon of realization that these “colored” people have much to contribute to France.
Even funnier was the after-show footage shot in the Paris pubs, of drunken revelers singing “We Are the Champions” – in English. So much for French Anglophobia.
I got interested in those games as I watched them, but the fact that I watched them was almost accidental. This year is different: I am actually keen to see the Italy games – and not just when it lets me take an hour and a half out of the workday. Fortunately, I’m not alone in this. We had the Italy-Czech game on at the office, and anyone who wanted to was welcome to watch it, alongside the boss. I left early to be home in time to watch most of the Italy-Australia game (which started at 5 pm on a workday), and I wasn’t the only one – there was an unusually early traffic jam in Lecco as I was riding home on the bus.
The usual Italian soccer season leaves me cold because, just as in American professional sports, who wins seems to depend more on the club’s business savvy (keeping enough money rolling in that you can buy the best players) than any real local affiliation – why should the Milanese root for the Milan team, whose “greatness” is simply a reflection of Berlusconi’s bankroll? I doubt there’s a single actual Milanese on the team, and perhaps there never has been. (I groused about this years ago, see below.)
Much the same is true of most Olympic events: countries that pour money into certain sports (whether as individuals or as governments, viz China) tend to win those events. Sports that require specialized equipment or locations (skis, snow, ice rinks) are won by wealthy countries that can afford those things.
Some Olympic events are more democratic. Kenyans can win marathons thanks in part to genetic ability, and in part to living at an altitude which helps them train. They don’t even need expensive shoes: they’re used to running barefoot. On the other hand, a natural-born Kenyan ice skater won’t be recognized anytime soon, because he or she may never see an ice rink.
Football, too, is a leveller. It doesn’t take much equipment to practice, so good players can be found in all corners of the world and all walks of life (a couple of Italy’s players grew up in poor neighborhoods in Rome, such as Totti who, back home, is the butt of jokes for his fractured Italian grammar). The professional teams scout far and wide, so you get Ghanaians playing in England, English playing in Spain, Ukrainians playing in Italy… Then, when it’s World Cup time, the best go home and play for their national teams.
This contrasts with the Olympic ideal of “amateurism”, which I’ve never understood – perhaps someone can explain it to me. Professional athletes can’t participate in the Olympics, yet many who compete do nothing but their sport, even if they don’t draw a direct salary for it. So I don’t understand where that line is drawn between “professional” and “amateur”.
In World Cup football, you’re actually seeing the best of the best, re-sorted from the wealthy clubs into national teams. I don’t know if or how much the players get paid for playing on their national teams, but to be chosen is an honor – the players are felt to be representing their countries. National flags, normally scarce in Italy, are brought out for the World Cup (and sometimes hung upside down or backwards, to the dismay of Italy’s few keen patriots).
It’s interesting to observe societal differences on the field. The US team is multicolored, with a range of surnames reflecting the melting pot of American society. The French team is similarly integrated although, as mentioned, not all the sons of France seem happy about this. The Italian team, on the other hand, does not feature a single player who is not ethnically Italian with an Italian surname. The most we can say is that the players are drawn from all parts of Italy – and, to a Milanese, Naples might as well be a foreign country.
Part of the joy of watching football, to me at least, is the uncertainty – it ain’t over til it’s over, and a goal in the last 30 seconds can turn a game upside down. A formerly-overlooked country can score a surprising win against the team everyone assumed was going to win. I enjoy rooting for the underdogs, and football is practically the only major sport in which Americans are underdogs (cricket doesn’t count – Americans don’t even try to play cricket).
And, last but not least, football gives me an opportunity to watch a bunch of good-looking men, wearing far less than American football or baseball players do, running around getting sweaty. It’s a pity the shorts are so long and baggy this year.
Watching Football… Very Anxiously!
July 8, 2006
Thanks to everyone who shared thoughts on the above (which you, too, can do below).
Of course, when I published that newsletter on July 4th, I was thinking ahead to the Italy-Germany game that evening. Which was frustrating and even boring until the last two minutes of overtime. The preceding minutes had been nail-biters, because it looked as if the game would be decided on penalty kicks – if you’re tied at the end of overtime, the game is decided by five shots each, one kicker against the goalkeeper. This is a situation in which Italy historically doesn’t do well (lost to Brazil that way in the 1998 final), and in any case it’s considered a lottery. But Italy scored two goals in the last two minutes, and the whole country erupted in cheers. We could hear the noise from Lecco at our home 200 meters above the town, as half the inhabitants got into their cars and drove around honking for an hour.
The Germans, defeated on their home field, were stunned and even in tears. The Italian triumph was all the sweeter as a response to some Germans’ jingoistic pre-game behavior. Prime Minister Prodi had turned down an official invitation from German Chancellor Angela Merkel to come to an earlier Italy game – apparently he had confidence that Italy would get this far, which is more than many other Italians did.
It only remained to know who would be Italy’s opponent in the final. The next night, France played Portugal for that slot – a very cautious, boring game which France won by one penalty kick.
Now all of Italy is nervously bracing itself to face the French on Sunday. I really wish it were the Portugese. I wouldn’t mind losing to them, if it came down to it. I would very much mind losing to France. So we’d better not. (I don’t know why the French are the people that everyone loves to hate, but so it is, in Italy almost as much as in England or the US.)
Even if they don’t win, the Italian team are basking in the limelight as national heroes, which helps to erase the shame of what’s been happening in football back home – several top teams may be relegated to the B or even C category for corruption; club owners bribing and/or threatening referees have cast doubts on several years’ national championships.
For this and many other reasons, Italy could really use a win on Sunday. By some estimates, a World Cup win is worth a 3% increase in a country’s GNP. In Italy’s case – “Been down so long it looks like up to me” – the effect might be even greater.
Either way, I don’t think anyone’s going to get much sleep Sunday night. So watch the game and lift a glass of good red Italian wine along with us, and wish Italy well!
Post-Game Reflections
July 17, 2006
Enrico and I watched the World Cup final with our friends Ravil and Amanda; Ross was with her own friends. Our home crowd wasn’t typical for Italy (or anywhere else, for that matter): one Italo-Tatar-American (Ravil), one New Zealand kiwi (Amanda), me (TCK/American), and Enrico – one of the few men in Italy who cares very little about calcio (football) at any time. Ravil, Amanda, and I were far more worked up about the game than he was.
Americans persist in finding football boring, and have published endless articles throughout this World Cup dissecting why this should be so, and wondering how the rest of the world can find the game so fascinating.
Ravil tried to explain it thus to an American friend of his: Americans fans get all excited when their local (city) team has a shot at a national championship. Those happen every year, and the fan base is mostly local.
Most football-playing countries have local teams who play in annual national championships, and there are also regional championships. But the World Cup involves everybody – each country’s entire population rooting for their national team – and it only takes place once in four years. So the intensity of team support is magnified by sheer mathematics.
Even if not much appears to be happening on the field, there is high drama in the simple fact that the teams are out there facing each other in “battle” – in the World Cup, you have to factor in history and culture in a far bigger way than can ever be true for American local sports teams. After all, Pittsburgh has never waged war on Chicago EXCEPT on the sports field, and the cultural rivalry between, say, Los Angeles and New York, rarely results in bloodshed.
We all know enough history to observe that European animosities, rivalries, and stereotypes go back a long way. As I mentioned earlier, the Italian victory over Germany was especially sweet because some Germans (including at least one major newspaper) had been rather rude about Italians, to the effect of: “Send the pizza-makers home.” To which the Italian response was “Two pizzas in two minutes! Tie’!” [Take that!]
Comedy Central’s Stephen Colbert was the featured speaker at this year’s White House Correspondents’ dinner. The White House correspondents are, of course, those journalists we see in the White House briefing room, asking questions of presidential spokesmen and (under this administration) getting few answers. Their dinner guests are the President and many of his staff. The event is an opportunity for the two sides to trade humorous barbs in a sort of mutual roast, but the jokes are usually clawless.
Not this year. Standing six feet away from George W. on the speakers’ dais, before a crowd of media luminaries, Colbert (an actor who plays a rabid right-wing journalist on “The Colbert Report”) proceeded to rip everybody a new one, with a biting sarcastic wit that was evidently not appreciated by the President or his nominal adversaries in the press – neither side was spared.
Live coverage of this event was carried by C-Span, the station usually devoted to boring wall-to-wall coverage of votes and hearings in the US Congress. I suspect that relatively few people saw the event live on C-Span TV, but C-Span posted it on their website for a day or so, and it quickly made its way onto popular video sharing sites such as YouTube and the torrent networks, where it’s been thoroughly enjoyed by millions of ravening liberals like myself.
The mainstream media was slow to pick up the story, preferring to focus their coverage of the dinner on Bush’s own act, a comedy routine featuring himself and a Bush impersonator. The denizens of the blogosphere cried foul at the press’ failure to mention Colbert, so loudly that their outcry is now the story being covered, finally, by the New York Times et al. (Some of the press claim that they didn’t have much to say about Colbert’s routine in the first place because they didn’t find it funny.)
Whether or not the mainstream media tried deliberately to ignore Colbert, the role of by the Internet has been critical: the event was widely seen because it was distributed online where everybody could judge for themselves, regardless of whether the press chose to cover it. Copyrights be damned – this is important! Somebody finally got through Bush’s protective bubble, right in the face of the professional press who have so notably failed to do so. Chalk one up for the forces of online democracy.
“I contend that we are both atheists. I just believe in one fewer god than you do. When you understand why you dismiss all the other possible gods, you will understand why I dismiss yours.” Stephen Henry Roberts (1901-71)
Dawkins has devoted much of his career to explaining evolution to the general public. He does this extremely well, and richly deserves all the praise and awards he has garnered.
Unfortunately, all his explaining doesn’t seem to be getting through to those who need it most. I share his despair as I look at a world where science can show and explain so many fascinating things – and there is still so much to discover! – yet so many people prize blind faith above independent thought. And we have only to watch the evening news to see what blind faith in religion is doing to us all.
Hence, I suppose, this program. Intelligent, rational, polite, and genuinely puzzled by religious belief, Dawkins visits various religous sites, such as an American mega-church and the “holy land” in Jerusalem, trying to understand what people find in it all. He makes no progress towards mutual understanding, in part because he picks extreme examples: Ted Haggard (an American mega-pastor and supposedly an adviser to George W. Bush), who condescendingly tells him: “Don’t be arrogant.” And then chases him off the property, threatening to take his crew’s film because “you have called my children animals.”
“Well, so I did,” says Dawkins, “in the sense that ALL human beings are animals.”
In Jerusalem, Dawkins manages to get hold of a New York Jew who moved to Israel to help colonize the Gaza strip, then converted to Islam and now wants all “kaffirs” out of the Muslim holy lands. This man’s fundamental problem seems to be an obsession with female lewdness. “Look how you dress your women,” he expostulates.
“I don’t dress my women,” retorts Dawkins,”they dress themselves.”
And there, I think, we come to the heart of the problem with religions: they are mostly run by men desperately afraid of, and therefore seeking to control, women’s sexuality. I’ve written about this before, but in several more years of thought am no closer to understanding why women put up with it.
To say that women must be covered up so as not to present a temptation to men is a profound insult to both sexes: to the men, who apparently couldn’t restrain themselves from rape if they were to see a bare ankle. To the women, who are thought to be unable to say “no” should anyone offer them sex. Have we (men and women) no more self-restraint than dogs in heat, that the slightest sexual stimulus will have us copulating in the public square? Where is the dignity of humankind in that?
<sigh> I shouldn’t even bother. Trying to make sense out of religion is about as useful as banging my head against a wall. Seeing that a recent real head-bang left me with a headache for a week, I shall desist.
I fear that Dawkins is, um, preaching to the choir; his show won’t have been watched by those who need it most (and I doubt it will be shown in the US outside of PBS). But at least he is trying to shed a light of science and sanity in a murky world.
One worrying effect of the Danish cartoons rumpus is statements from governments and the UN that “all religions should be respected,” and calls for laws against offenses to religion. WTF? Italy already has such a law, which has been ridiculously applied to a satirical website showing Pope Benedict in a Nazi uniform.
No, religion does not deserve to be protected or respected under law, any more than any other belief does. If I were to state publicly that, oh, say, the moon is made of green cheese, people would feel free to ridicule that belief, to my face. Much of religion seems equally ridiculous to me, but I am supposed to be polite and not trample on people’s beliefs.
In fact I am polite where I respect the person, if not the belief. I count among my friends a number of deeply religious people. We manage to respect each other in spite of a deep divergence of views in some areas. I also have friends with whom I disagree on politics or economics. It is even possible to discuss our differences, while keeping a firm grip on our mutual respect: all that’s required is an open mind and willingness to listen.
But to enshrine such common-sense civility in law is ridiculous. You never know when you may need to be uncivil about something, especially when the other side is far from civil. I hereby declare and defend my right to be as rude as I damn well please, about religion or anything else. If you’re civil to me – and that includes respecting my rights and freedoms as a human being – I will certainly be civil to you. On the other hand, if you try to tell me that I’m going to hell, or that I should cover myself so as not to tempt men, or that I’m not allowed read or write or do certain things – well, you’ll find out just how rude I can be.
Clarification and Amplification
Feb 28, 2006
In case it needs saying: I do not gratuitously insult any person or religion (except sometimes inadvertently, when I don’t realize what set of beliefs I’m dealing with). I don’t seek fights about religion, though sometimes sorely tempted. But when the fight comes to me… For example, I had a sharp exchange with a Jehovah’s Witness who insisted on proselytizing to me while I was peacefully minding my own business one morning at the Lecco railway station. I neither started nor desired that discussion, but anyone who insists that I cannot attribute the glories of the world around me to anything but God is asking for trouble.
She went on to dismiss certain non-Christian origin myths as “less advanced” than her own beliefs, setting herself up for the obvious retort: “Then surely my belief in no god at all is more advanced than your still needing a god.” (I don’t think I actually said that, but definitely thought it.) As Dawkins says: “We are all atheists about most of the gods that humanity has ever believed in. Some of us just go one god further.”
My article said: “…the heart of the problem with religions: they are mostly run by men desperately afraid of, and therefore seeking to control, women’s sexuality.”
David responded:
“I think you should cut the word ‘women’s’ because they indeed want to control SEXUALITY, PERIOD (in fact, anything that has to do with the human body).
It’s pure POLITICAL CHOICE that the Catholic Church (in Italy and America) drones on and on about homosexuality and abortion – thereby supporting the RIGHT WING government – and never drones on and on (as CHRIST did in the gospels) about PEACE and love of neighbor (ie: the application of that philosophy to the current war on terror) – which would thereby support the LEFT WING government.
In reading the New Testament you’d get the impression Jesus really didn’t care what people did sexually…he seemed way ahead of all that, with his focus on bigger and better goals…just as today the Church is WAY BEHIND all that with a focus on tiny worldly goals of money and power that are so antithetical to the higher philosophies upon which it was established.”
David was the first (of many) to respond to this article and, shortly after reading his email, I was highly amused to receive a call from Ross, recounting her day at school. I don’t explicitly instruct my child to follow in my radical atheist footsteps, and I certainly don’t want her to be rude about it, but she is her mother’s daughter, and has a very low bullshit threshhold.
A Franciscan monk had come to speak in religion class. The original intent of his talk wasn’t clear, but he immediately got up Ross’ nose by trying to act cool, saying he liked teenagers, and trying to prove it by swearing the way they do (but would never dare, in front of their teachers – and he even said that theyweren’t allowed to!).
He also claimed that he liked kids to openly discuss issues with him. 99 out of a hundred teenagers would do no such thing in that situation, but… Number 100 was in the classroom. (At Ross’ new school, religion class is required. The person who normally teaches the class likes her, because Ross applies more real thought to the topics at hand than her Catholic classmates do.)
After some stuff about how beautiful the world is, the monk said that the most beautiful thing in the world is love (amore – for which he gave a totally wrong etymology). Ross asked: “If love is such an important concept and we should all love, why are some types of love not accepted by the Church?”
“Oh, you mean why don’t we accept culattoni?” (a rude word for gays)
After further discussion, the best answer he could come up with was: “Sometimes the concept of love is right, but the object is wrong.” But he refused to define what he meant by ‘object’ …and it was all downhill from there.
“Ross is the class non-conformist,” explained one of her classmates helpfully. (I think he had already figured that out for himself.)
I have been accused of being proud of my daughter’s pagan attitudes. Well, yes. If Christian parents can be proud of their child’s Christianity, Hindus of their child’s Hinduism, etc., then I have a right to be proud that my daughter has grown up as atheist as myself and her father. Am I pleased if she’s rude to people about it? No… but an adult talking down to teenagers through a hypocritical veneer of “I’m one of you” is not giving them credit for much intelligence – an insult unworthy of any adult, let alone one who represents both scholastic and religious authority.
In response, again, to “the heart of the problem with religions: they are mostly run by men desperately afraid of, and therefore seeking to control, women’s sexuality,” Julia wrote:
“Indeed; I think that’s the heart of the problem with most cultures and governments, too. I believe that ultimately almost all wars (gloss for a variety of conflicts) are a struggle for control over resources (which is why reproduction and thus women’s sexuality is involved), and at the same time, almost all wars are “justified” (“sold” to the cannon fodder and their families) by religion (which is sometimes masked by nationalism or racism but is nevertheless the underlying rationale, never mind that it perverts the fundamental tenets of the religion).
And one reason that religion — especially fundamentalist religion — is so useful to convince people to act against their own interests is precisely what you say later in the newsletter: ‘Children raised to blindly follow the dictates of another person, or a book, or a way of life, are less likely to have the critical faculties needed to evaluate every opinion that comes their way.’
Fundamentalism in anything is dangerous.
‘I’ve written about this before, but in several more years of thought am no closer to understanding why women put up with it.’
Well, religion is clearly not rational, so rational thought isn’t likely to bring understanding. I’ve asked the same question. I ask myself whyI put up with it, especially at a time when my own religion is headed by Papa Ratzi, the Gland Inquisitor (I wish I had come up with that one, but it’s the title of an article by William Saletan in the current issue — the one with the two punk lesbians kissing on the cover — ofConscience, a pro-choice Catholic newsjournal I subscribe to). I think the answer is that we don’t just put up with it. Sometimes we are marvelously disrespectful. As part of the larger fight against patriarchy, there are many organizations and people who are constantly struggling against the stupidity of many of the Vatican-down decrees and for a faith community based on the example of Jesus (egalitarian, non-violent). Some of my favorites are:
Like the larger fight, this one is a long and incremental struggle. Sometimes real change (i.e., Vatican II) as well as backlash against it (recent and present situation) can be seen within a lifetime. In the meantime, we often just roll our eyes at the leadership while living our lives and practicing our faith as we see fit.”
Stan wrote: “Just one tweak about freedom of speech. I agree mostly but differ on the right to mock and insult. Turkish law, as I understand it, makes a distinction between criticism, permitted, and insult, not permitted. The Orhan Pamuk case hinged on this.
Related is the issue of the absolute freedom of speech. Does one have the right to say anything at any time, or are there limits? I think most everyone would agree that there are limits. So then the problem is one of determining what the limits are. One thing is clear. Mocking someone else’s religion is hardly the way to commend the right of free speech to him, The “Cartoon War” is a case in point. Perhaps mocking own’s own religion would be different, because the mocker knows, and accepts, what the result might be. Criticism, even of the most tabu matters, has to be protected by the right of free speech. So where is the line between that and being insulting? Your thoughts, please.”
Ooh, that’s a hard one… and not one I am likely to solve. My gut feeling is that it’s best treated as a private matter, even in the media.
First, we can never be sure what another person’s intentions are. The now-infamous Danish newspaper may in fact have intended to mock and insult Islam by publishing those cartoons, but we’ll never know that unless the publisher explicitly says so. The same is true in face-to-face conversation: how many times has someone protested: “I was only joking!” when you know they truly intended to hurt?
Even when there is no intent to offend, anyone publishing anything can never be sure who may be offended by whatever they say – something I’m keenly conscious of when I write potentially incendiary articles like that one. Though I was writing about topics that make me very angry indeed, I thought long and hard about that article and revised it several times, because I care about my relationships with my readers, some of whom, as I mentioned, I know to be deeply religious.
Another reason that I don’t want to gratuitously offend anybody is that it’s not conducive to dialog. I remain baffled by the concept of faith, but I am willing to concede that there has been and can be good in religion. The kinds of people who read my newsletter are more likely to practice religion constructively than destructively, so I’m interested to hear what their belief does for them individually, and how they feel it can be a force for good in the world. If we could collectively find a way to bring religions back to their core concepts (e.g., perhaps, the teachings of Jesus before Paul got into the act) I could live at peace with most religions – and, more importantly, so could the world.
