Usually I don't link to stuff

It looks like you've adhered to that here...

Whoops, fixed.

a post up about ... the democratic ideal as Ross Douthat sees it embodied by Sarah Palin,

Are you sure you linked the right post? I didn't see this anywhere in there.

Yeah, Palin's not mentioned by name, but if you've been reading his site, that's what he's talking about.

Look down to the 7/07/09 11:00am post for the lead-in about Palin.

Ah. I haven't been reading his site. So there's, like, a series of posts I'm supposed to read?

This reminds me of Constance Penly's pronouncement on "Beavis and Butthead": "The only people who get to be that stupid and live are white guys."

Constance Penley, fer sure.

Nah, the one I linked is free-standing, but Obama's being contrasted with Palin.

7:Great moment from Being There when Louise, the black maid who has raised Chance (Peter Sellers), sees him on television being feted at the White House:

It's for sure a white man's world in America. I raised that boy since he was the size of a pissant and I'll tell you he never learned to read nor write. No sir. Has no brains at all. Stuffed with rice pudding between the ears. Short-changed by the Lord and dumb as a jackass. Yes sir, all you got to be is white in America to get whatever you want. Gobbledegoop.

6: Brock, if you haven't already tracked it down, the reference is to a Ross Douthat column here.

To me these are the key sentences of the TNC post:

I argue that when we [TNC and his white blog-readers] talk about the "common man" we actually aren't talking about the same thing.

Perhaps if you are white, Barack Obama represents the end of the idea that your next door neighbor could be president. But you should consider that just because Barack Obama isn't your next door neighbor, doesn't mean he isn't mine.

I bet that comes as a fairly astute observation to most of us in the majority [not simply "white"] culture. And it is -- or at least, it's a succinctly phrased explanation that illustrates a point that maybe should be more obvious.

It's kinda depressing that it's 2009 and large swaths of the country can still construct their lives in such a way that it does not become obvious to them.

OT: The Wire studies.

Tangentially related:

Although racism is endemic to neoliberal governmentality, The Wire recognises that anti-racism is hegemonic now. This is no mere superstructural or ideological rhetoric, but present, if unevenly, in the discourses and practices of institutions and society more generally. If in the analysis of race we examine the representations of the black characters in the series we get very quickly get caught in an undecidable bind: arguably the series shows a diverse and complex range of African-American characters, yet the depictions are reducible racial stereotypes (positive or negative). The limitations with an analysis of the politics of representation is that it remains confined to a struggle over media representation. In this approach, television series are analysed as texts that are politically interpreted in isolation of the matrix of social affect, information and desire. 'Realism' and 'authenticity' become the only sites for debates over racial meaning and power. The affective dimension of race in the circuits of knowledge and information across the series and audiences; for instance, in the grain of the voices of the Baltimore accents or in the coded communication of the street corners, need analysis.

What could be explored productively is how the The Wire presents a complex network of 'micropower' relations that transverse the institutions, subjects and technologies of the urban racial milieu.

Douthat's ruminations about Palin have really pissed me off, because a) like you fucking know, trust-fund boy, and b) the reasons Coates gives.

Coates is overthinking things, and/or undeservedly giving Douthat the benefit of the doubt. Douthat's preference for Palin has nothing to do with him relating to a sociopathic grifter straight out of a Mark Twain story better than to Obama and everything to do with Douthat having jumped on the Palin bandwagon and not wanting to get off, and being a Republican hack.

Maybe, but the fact that Douthat's commentary on Palin has any surface plausibility to his audience is, I think, for something like Coates' reasons.

Judging from the Presidential history I'm passingly familiar with (not much!) it seems the Democrats need an exceptional candidate to win. Failing that, any old schmuck the Republicans put forth gets the job.

Why anyone would want the common man to become president elludes me; I'd rather have the most capable person for the job. No doubt that plays to my over-educated biases, in the same way Palin plays to the rednecks'.

I'm finding SP very useful as a bellwether: anyone who takes her remotely seriously, in any way, can simply be written off. It's like a six day creation. If Douthat believes in her, then I don't care what he thinks about any subject.

17 -- It's worse than that. It's not even that we have to have an exceptional candidate; we have to have a crisis of some kind that kneecaps the other side. Bull Moose/Wilson; Great Depression/Roosevelt; Watergate/Carter; Perot/Clinton. The exception is JFK, and while he certainly claimed to be exceptional, it's not immediately obvious that this is more than superficial. More likely, the 'Old Nixon' was just too creepy to get the Third Eisenhower term, and only got in later because of the breakdown in party/country that was 1968.

Why anyone would want the common man to become president elludes me; I'd rather have the most capable person for the job.

Read "Null-P" by William Tenn (Philip Klass). All will be explained.

"the most capable person" is also the wrong answer. Hard to argue that WJC would have been expected, in 1992, to be more "capable" than GHWB,

19: This is completely symmetrical. Carter had to be kneecapped by multiple crises for Reagan to win. Johnson had to be kneecapped by a crisis for Nixon to win.

19: But couldn't a Republican say the same thing? "It looks like the Republicans can only take the White House when there's some huge crisis that kneecaps the Dems. Dotcom collapse and Lewinsky in 2000 - and that was a squeaker - Iran hostage crisis in 1980, Vietnam etc in 1968, the Korean War in 1952, the depression and strikes in 1920..."

I think the point must be either a) WH control only shifts when there's a crisis or b) there are just a lot of crises, some of which happen in or around election years or c) it's sheer coincidence caused by reasoning from a tiny data set.

Note that no huge crisis was required for Clinton to hold on in 1996.

DAMN YOU WALT

Which candidate caused more Americans to reconsider the kind of person who might be elected to the presidency, Barack Obama or Sarah Palin?

Um, hold on. I don't think there's as easy an answer as the rhetorical nature of that question would imply. The election of either one* would have stretched our ideas about "who might be elected to the presidency" pretty thoroughly. And honestly, I think that's probably even more true of Palin than Obama.

*Palin was only a V.P. candidate in 2008, of course, and the election of McCain wouldn't really have made anyone reconsider anything, but that's not what was being discussed here--it's a consideration of an Obama presidency vs. a Palin presidency.

23: If there's no crisis, the incumbent wins.

Don't 19 and 23 together more or less just establish that there's always lots of shit going on in the world, both good and bad, and if the incumbents lose they point to the bad shit and if the incumbents win their opponents piont to the good shit? It's not as if any of these events have much predictive value in themselves.

20: And perhaps you'd like to do that explaining. Some Googling finds a bunch of torrent sites and this:

""Null-P" explores what happens when "normal" and "average" become the new social ideals and are taken to an extreme. When a man who just happens to be the statistical average in all characteristics (IQ, age, height, income, everything) is elected President for just that reason, he sets the world on course to learn a hard lesson: that to give up striving to be the best has some serious consequences"

http://scifistandpoint.wordpress.com/2008/12/23/tenn-again-the-wooden-star/

This doesn't suggest that Null-P is in favour of the average man becoming president.

26: "crisis" here is a pretty damn flimsy term, though. It's less that "If there's no crisis, the incumbent wins" than "If the incumbent loses, the bad shit that was going on at the time is judged to have been a crisis."

28. Read the story. It explores how it would come about, in the context of mid-20th century America. It is also hilarious satire. Tenn was not at all in favour of such a development.

I got an email from a friend this morning reacting to a recent poll showing that something like 70% of Republicans still favor a Palin run in 201e. That frightens me.

Er, 2012.

That easily might just be name recognition -- a committed Republican who can't think of a likelier option is going to favor a Palin run if they're even slightly irresponsible. Remember 2003, when Lieberman was way out of the pack of Democratic primary candidates because all the voters had heard of him? No one liked him, even then, but people knew who he was.

28: Ok, so the basic premise comes from the ideals on which the US was founded, which in some ways are a reaction against the European aristocracy (all men are equal -> anyone can be president -> anyone should be president).

(I liked 201e; e stands for error.)

It's not weak excuse-making to say that the split of votes in 1912, 1968, and 1992 were sufficient to make the difference. Things like the Great Depression aren't going on all the time, and only looking back seem relevant to an election.

To the extent that it looks like I was suggesting that these things operate by rules, I've misspoken. I don't believe that. I do think, though, that the default state of the country is probably what we might now call center-right. I think this state has obtained since 1968 at least.

35: The outcome of US Presidential elections is statistically predictable, and is mainly driven by the state of the economy and war.

You know what will be really funny? In a couple years, many Republicans will blame the liberal media for letting an incompetent, long-since-quit-elected-office figure like Sarah Palin speak for the Republican Party. Clearly the liberal media is trying to discredit conservatives by focusing on such a compromised, inept spokesperson, they will argue, when if they were actually interested in fairness they would be putting (Jindal/Romney/someone who isn't well-known yet) in the spotlight. And all the staunch Republicans who swooned when she winked at them through the TV screen will be forgotten.

Except when it isn't: surely 1972 and 2000 could well have gone the other way with a few nails and shoes. And in 2004 the wartime incumbent needed the October intervention of Osama.

Err... to complete my point, I think people might us this as justification for their voting patterns but I expect by default people just vote for someone like them.

I do think, though, that the default state of the country is probably what we might now call center-right.

Huh. That seems way off to me unless you're defining 'center' in the sort of European terms that leaves someone like me at or slightly right of center. I'd say that a better description would be center left on most issues, with enough one-or-two issue right wing voters to make the country pretty evenly electorally divided.

SP sells soap, you got to give her that.

38: 2000, in fact, did go the other way.

LB, rather than revisit arguments about the wisdom of every successful Dem candidate having run as far right as they can get, I'll just call you "Pauline Kael" and move along with stuff I have to do today.

In the interests of comity, I'll point out how well single payer health care polls among voters generally, rather than among my buddies, and drop it as well.

You don't want a president of average intelligence, but you do want a president who has experienced first hand the lives of average people, or at least several of the important demographic subsets of average people.
No one was denying, but I thought it was worth emphasizing.

Also, Barry O., with his multi-ethnic background and time spent in many different communities, has this in spades. Palin mostly knows the lives of middle class people from the outer suburbs.

42: I assume 38 means Bush could have won in 2000 - if only a few more voters had actually voted for him.

Which is true in most lost elections, but luckily for Bush, he had his daddy's Supreme Court and his brother's state administration fighting his corner against those mean ol' voters.

45 last - But Palin's hunted wolves! Every average American can identify with that! (She reminds me irresistibly of Big Fido in Men At Arms, actually.)

(This is a lie. She actually reminds me of Pinky: all of her unscripted speeches make much more sense if you add in "Poit!" and "Nerf!" )

You guys will never get this thread to 1000 with that kind of attitude.

I am posting and running as well, but here's my two cents: This country lives socially center-left, but thinks center-right.

In practice we like most of the parts of our large federal government; we like Medicare and Social Security and free speech and rights for women; we like freedom of religion and due process and not getting tracked into a career path from the time we are very young; we like being geographically mobile and having lots of choices about just about everything; we basically believe in rights for most minority groups; we are increasingly more liberal [compared to our past selves, not Europe] about sex and reproduction and family structure.

But in rhetoric we prefer self-reliance and bootstraps; we want our politicians to be religiously observant; we like to condemn sin, especially sexual and reproductive and family-structure deviance; we hold tightly to imaginary norms; we think there's something faintly suspicious and weird about urban cosmopolitans; we are resolutely anti-intellectual; we think war is manly and rather desirable.

(Yikes, I'm channeling David Brooks. Let me stipulate that this is extremely broad-brush and I could quibble with every one of my own points.)

"I could quibble with every one of my own points"

You can get arrested if you do that on the bus.

Democrats and republicans have changed places after 8 years in every election since 52 except 80 and and 88. Small data set, but you see the same pattern in many US states and other countries.

48: That's a better way of putting what I wanted to say in 40 -- the country's center left on issues and policies, center right on the rhetoric that appeals to it.

You don't want a president of average intelligence, but you do want a president who has experienced first hand the lives of average people, or at least several of the important demographic subsets of average people.

Take that, Franklin Roosevelt, you big aristo you.

If there's no crisis, the incumbent wins.

And, of course, there are lots of cases where there was a crisis and the incumbent still won. 1948, for example, was not a calm year. Neither was 1972, neither was 1956.

She actually reminds me of Pinky: all of her unscripted speeches make much more sense if you add in "Poit!" and "Nerf!"

Technically, I believe the term is "Narf!"

50: "Democrats and republicans have changed places after 8 years in every election since 52 except 80 and and 88."

Which is 5 out of 7. Or p = .26 by chi-squared.

Or p = .26 by chi-squared

So that's, what, weak but still statistically significant?

I suppose when n=7 it doesn't matter.

Take that, Franklin Roosevelt, you big aristo you.

I said we should want this experience, not require it.

55: Insignificant.

53: When Brain takes over the world, all your vowels will belong to Pinky.

Remarkably on point: Duck for President!

59: I love all the books in that series, especially Click, Clack Moo. The cows get power because they can write! And organize a strike! It lets the kids know where the power really is.

36 gets it exactly right. US Presidential elections are predictable within a few percentage points, and basically determined by the recent state of the economy+incumbency+war. This is something political scientists actually appear to have figured out.

I don't find the question of whether we're fundamentally a "center left" or "center right" country very enlightening. Lots of polls show that people will say that they support, broadly, liberal policy positions, but that support can be weak and not reflect actual voting patterns. The reality is that most people are deeply misinformed, don't care passionately about politics, and are fairly non-ideological in their political preferences - they want what works, but don't have a very clear vision of what that is.

are fairly non-ideological in their political preferences - they want what works, but don't have a very clear vision of what that is.

"Wanting what works" is an ideology; you could call it pragmatic liberalism. The conservative ideology toward government is that it's a priori incredible that government could do anything that 'works', and that even if government action 'worked', allowing services to be provided by the government would infringe on individual freedom. And that ideology, while it's attractive on a rhetorical level, is very unpopular on a policy level.

Was the job of president fun? Sadly, no. So Duck put his V.P. in charge, returned to the farm and did what many former presidents do-began his autobiography.

Duck sounds a lot like Sarah Palin.

yeah, what LB said. Don't confuse voting reflectively based on your impressions of how well things are going with a commitment to pragmatic liberalism.

63: Duck is way cooler than Palin. When he finds a pencil on the ground, he learns to forge notes from Farmer Brown to Farmer Brown's brother, who is temporarily in charge of the farm. As a result, the animals get pizza, movie night, and hot baths in Farmer Brown's tub.

Also the picture of Duck's head vibrating as he sharpens his pencil in an electric sharpener is priceless.

If Douthat believes in her, then I don't care what he thinks about any subject.

I wouldn't call this belief:

"But Sarah Palin represents the democratic ideal -- that anyone can grow up to be a great success story without graduating from Columbia and Harvard.

This ideal has had a tough 10 months. It's been tarnished by Palin herself, obviously. With her missteps, scandals, dreadful interviews and self-pitying monologues, she's botched an essential democratic role -- the ordinary citizen who takes on the elites, the up-by-your-bootstraps role embodied by politicians from Andrew Jackson down to Harry Truman. "

"But Sarah Palin represents the democratic ideal"

At best she only ever represented a caricature of this ideal. Which is part (most?) of the problem.

I wouldn't call this belief

It's pretty clear that he used to believe in her, though. Or at least in the idea of Sarah Palin, the unpolished unconventional political figure from the last frontier. Her manifest incompetence has made it difficult for even her partisans to defend her, though Bill Kristol is still game.

62 -- Mmmmm, I agree that conservative ideologues are a minority. But being apolitical and voting based on your short-term sense of how things are going doesn't make you a "pragmatic liberal" -- if, for example, it seems like cutting taxes and social services is producing generally good short term results (i.e., Reagan in 84), folks will stick with that.

65 - Does he forge invitations to come get free fried chicken and beer at a campaign rally, or write badly faked letters accusing other barnyard animals of insulting French-Canadians? If not, I think Duck has a lot to learn.

It's pretty clear that he used to believe in her, though. Or at least in the idea of Sarah Palin, the unpolished unconventional political figure from the last frontier. Her manifest incompetence has made it difficult for even her partisans to defend her, though Bill Kristol is still game.

Yeah, I definitely agree. I just think a focus on Palin can obscure what's interesting about the Coates' post, which is the question of whether what Douthat is tendentiously calling "the Democratic ideal" is benign to begin with, irrespective of Palin's failure to embody it. Coates seems to think that "the Democratic ideal" has a surreptitious racial component (i.e., that in practice, the ideal has just functioned as a way of legitimizing the rule of mediocre whites and the mobs they command at the expense of talented blacks and minorities). I'm still not sure what to think of this.

Coates is just a remarkably smart, thoughtful guy.

s/b about the Coates' post

Shorter( 40, 48, 51): issues =left ; values = right.
_________________

Thank you for _Wire_ studies.

Coates seems to think that "the Democratic ideal" has a surreptitious racial component

I think he's pretty much on target here. The pop media version of the american dream skews pretty hard towards white culture, at least. The popularized version of this that involves other ethnicities typically a) involves 1st generation immigrants who b) work very hard to scrabble up from nothing to business/political success but c) along the way throw off most signs of prior ethnic or religious identity.

This country lives socially center-left

center, period, and maybe I buy it.

I'm not sure what happed to my editiong of 75, but it should have ended with:

"throwing off most signs of prior ethnic or religious identity, and replacing them with variants of those coming from `white american' culture"

75: Agree in part. Earlier in my lifetime, the "regular" guy could (and often did) live in Brooklyn or Queens. Not so much now (except for temporarily during 9-11 program-related activities), some of this is racial/non-Western European immigrants and part is big-city/coastal demonization in general.

part is big-city/coastal demonization in general

Coupled with actual depopulation of the cities.

71:Coates, from comments

You're debating whether your friends are racist or not. But that isn't the argument. It's about why a lot of other Americans, who aren't rural or white, see Barack Obama as the Democratic Ideal. Part of that is how race plays out in this country, and how communities differ. The argument isn't that Barack Obama isn't seen as the Democratic Ideal because white people are so racist. It's that black people see him that way because he reminds us of ourselves. Two different points.

What I got from the piece, among other things, was that the little girl next door, even in my blue-collar neighborhood, could become a Harvard grad and President. This changed how I look at Ivyleaguers, just a little bit, because I still believe that there might be a couple Ivy leaguers who come from privilege and even more who buy into privilege after graduation.

Whether or not Obama & Michele have bought into privilege is an important question for me. But maybe not for Coates.

79: True in general, but manifestly not true of New York City which has grown by nearly 20% since its 1980 low. Even Manhattan is growing in population again after dropping to 1.4M from its high in 1910 of 2.3M.

Just below that comment by Coates, at 2:34 July 8, is a long rant by someone who claims to be black attacking Coates for, well, read it if you want. Part of the attack is on Coates for attending an all-black college.

Coates initial reply:"This is a great post. It's almost literary. Thanks for this." /sarcasm?

Mildly interesting exchange with a troll.

Since many don't trawl thru long comment threads like I do, I'll just quote (in part) the guy, because it is very much on topic, and something of an counter to Coates.

At some point in making the decision to go to University, you decided that you did not want to have the experience that a more diverse university would have provided and yet you gaze upon the other side with such longing. Why?

In truth, you do not seem to know how to feel at ease within society without wearing the cloak of your blackness as some sort of albatross about your neck. Because you never escaped being constantly reminded that you are black, it now seems that you focus so much on interpreting society through this very limited, very quaint black filter. ..."FanoftheRadioDept"

I'm not sure if Coates was being sarcastic in calling it a "great post" or not.

71: Coates seems to think that "the Democratic ideal" has a surreptitious racial component

Yes and no? The clarification bob reproduces in 80 is helpful. Coates's point would seem to be that the Democratic Ideal understood in the form "even your neighbor can be President" means something different to whites than to blacks, to wit, that for whites it's (socioeconomic) class-based, while for blacks it's race-based. *Very* roughly. Ergo, Barack Obama is Coates's 'neighbor' (racially) even if he isn't a white person's 'neighbor' (socioeconomically).

This seems a little strained somehow, possibly because I'd rather ditch altogether the distinction between democratic and meritocratic ideals that Douthat has handed us. It doesn't hold up under pressure, plus Douthat is thinking in well-worn grooves that annoy me.

But perhaps what Coates is doing is one welcomed way of putting Douthat's distinction to the test, even though there may be others.

One of the NYC demos that does show how it is in fact "different". (I was aware of the trends, but not how relatively small the Protestant population was.)

New York City, New York State, United States % of Adherents By Group
Catholics:                             62.0% 65.9% 43.9%
Evangelical Protestant:  4.2% 4.9% 28.2%
Mainline Protestant:      6.5% 11.3% 18.5%
Jewish:                            21.9% 14.4% 4.3%
Muslim:                             3.5% 2.0% 1.1%
Eastern Orthodox:         1.4% 1.0% 0.7%
Other Religions:       0.4% 0.5% 3.2%

I wonder what those demographics look like for NY minus NYC.

The city's about half the population of the state, which makes the math pretty easy -- not-NYC is going to be the same distance from the whole state as NYC, in the other direction.

Catholic 68.8%
Ev Prot 5.4%
Main Prot 14.9%
Jewish 8.8%
Muslim 0.9%
Eeast Orth 0.7%

NYC is that heavily Catholic? I had no idea. Weird. I'm losing track of what this has to do with the Democratic Ideal/American Dream for whites involving immigrants bootstrapping and assimilating (per 75).

89: NYC is that heavily Catholic?

Hispanics have brought the Catholic to an already Catholic-heavy population. But not really that germane to the point, it was more just a tangential interesting observation.

90: "Catholic-heavy population"

Religionist. What with Italian food and Irish drinking, how are we supposed to be thin?

87: Right, I didn't have a good feel for the population distribution, and I was too lazy to look it up.

I'm not sure if Coates was being sarcastic in calling it a "great post" or not.

I generally don't read Coates as being glib or sarcastic. From the limited amount that I've seen of him, I'd say his bias is more towards engaging people than dismissing them. Of course, I don't know the man and can't guess his heart.

91: Convert.

IIRC, he banned RadioFan later in the thread, so I think that was sarcasm.

90: Hispanics have brought the Catholic to an already Catholic-heavy population.

Oh, of course. Hadn't thought of that.

96: I live here, and I did the same doubletake. Figured it out, but it took me a moment. It's amazing to me that non-religious doesn't even show up in the statistics, though -- I wonder how they were gathered.

97: Well, those numbers add up to 99.5 percent, so I would guess that they left out the answers like "won't say" and "none." Don't see how the survey couldn't be worthless otherwise.

But still, we're more godless than that, surely. I've been stunned by how religious my students are, but that's an outer borough/Long Island thing, and even among them, there is a statistically significant number of atheists.

But why would you leave out 'none'? That's a serious part of the stats. (If they did that, I'd guess that 'none' accounts for a bunch of the missing Protestants. Irreligious Catholics and Jews seem IME to be much more likely to still identify as Catholic or Jewish than mainline Protestants.)

My sense is that in New York, as probably in the rest of the Northeast as well, people are at least somewhat more likely to indicate religion as a marker of ethnic/tribal membership than in other parts of the country.

99: I think Cyrus is suggesting, and with numbers like 99.5% answering, I think he has to be right, that the methodology of the survey was such that a room with 97 people reporting "Atheist", one Catholic, one Protestant, and one Jew, would show up as one third Catholic, one third Protestant, and one third Jewish. Which is ridiculous, but it has to be what they did.

And then Bill Gates walks in and they're all millionaires!

ARIS report is topical. Cyrus and LB are right, the totals don't make a lot of sense.

101 is my sense, too. I know a lot of self identified Catholics who are functionally atheist/agnostic, and even larger numbers of Jews.

whups, a better link http://www.americanreligionsurvey-aris.org/

It's funny that since moving here, I'm much more likely to say that I'm Baptist, or that Bave is Mormon, even though neither of us are functionally those things, because it's such a common way of identifying group identity. In Ohio, I never even said I was from Kansas--I'd explain how my parents are from places in the South and we moved around a lot. But here there's something comforting about telling people I'm a Baptist Kansan.

But here there's something comforting about telling people I'm a Baptist Kansan.

Is it comforting, or are you just freaking the squares?

102, 104, etc.: Yeah, okay. Because 62% Catholic just seemed weird.

101: My sense is that in New York, as probably in the rest of the Northeast as well, people are at least somewhat more likely to indicate religion as a marker of ethnic/tribal membership than in other parts of the country.

Weird again! I thought youse guys was all cosmopolitan 'n' shit.

102: Yes, that's what I was suggesting.

I wasn't reading the thread carefully; my figure of 99.5 percent was based on 88, but my point stands, the poll shows less than a percent of the population as non-religious which is beyond belief in an American metropolitan area. (I wouldn't expect it to be very high, of course, but less than 1 percent is extremely low.)

The numbers at the link in 81 seem more believable, but that's just for NYC.

108: It actually does explain quite a bit about me that "I'm a rootless atheist liberal" does not. I used to use that angle, but then people were all creeped out that I am not a rabidly liberal anti-gun anti-god Shakespeare-for-everyone person.

111: Shakespeare-for-everyone?

I wouldn't expect it to be very high, of course, but less than 1 percent is extremely low.

One of the interesting things in that ARIS survey is that self-reporting of religious identification really doesn't match up with stated beliefs in this case.

Self identification as atheist or agnostic is only 1.6% or so, whereas estimated numbers of non-religious total at about 15%. If you add the refused to answer and don't nows to that you get roughly 1 in 5 which seems reasonable.

It's, like, the primary plank in the rootless atheist liberal platform.

but what about the rooted atheist liberals?

115: Folk music for everyone?

Well, I self-identify as atheist. I blame AWB for not doing her part. Freethinkers unite!

I don't think 1-2% for self-identified atheist/agnostic is low at all. People may be culturally religious or observantly religious or both, but precious few that I've ever encountered are comfortable being vocally non-religious.

I'm sitting here thinking, and I can come up with one colleague and three family members who have admitted to being atheist or agnostic.

Of course, my neighbors regard me as not religious and my family regards me as disturbingly religious, so it's all relative.

Oh, I definitely tell people I'm an atheist. If more context is required I say I "was raised Mormon."

117: There's nothing odd about being an atheistic Jew, or atheistic Catholic, so why would it be odd to be an atheistic Baptist?

118: If I remember the study results correctly, the issue they identified was that people were perfectly happy identifying with particular beliefs (or lack thereof), but resistant to self-identifying with the particular labels. I suspect this has less to do with being "culturally religious" and more to do with decades of vocal denigration of atheists and agnostics as part of the political/public discourse.

But you're quite right that there is an observant vs. cultural aspect, and being an atheistic X is informative in context.

115: Good question.

Maybe the "please identify yourself as something or other" question has more urgency in a highly populated urban environment in which people feel the need to sort one another in some effective manner. Ordinarily I encounter this strictly in terms of "Where are you from?", "Do you have siblings?" and so on.

It's very strange to me that people like AWB and Bave, who it seems to me are obviously liberal people of lapsed or rejected religion, would identify themselves nonetheless in religious terms which are a substitute, per 101, for ethnic/tribal affiliations.

This is just to say that I'm really baffled by the religion thing.

123's questions pwned, as I suspected they would be.

117: Surely you mean "Brights Unite!"

I think people would take atheists more seriously if we had some absurd and arbitrary rules that we forced everyone around us to accommodate. Like refusing to wear pants on wednesdays.

I suspect this has less to do with being "culturally religious" and more to do with decades of vocal denigration of atheists and agnostics as part of the political/public discourse.

I think they're two sides of the same coin. The same pressures/forces/comfortableness that lead someone to remain culturally religious long after being (or in lieu of ever having been) observant, are also the forces that push against atheism.

I'm not convinced that there is much judgment or energy directed against agnostics. Most of the hate speech I've heard is directed toward atheists, although admittedly some people are ignorant of the distinction.

It's self-reinforcing too: atheists have a lousy public image, and they don't do a lot to help themselves. I used to have a regular dinner at the same restaurant as a gathering of atheists. Of course they were highly self-selected (how many people really want to go out in public and discuss atheism?) but holy cow, they were a blinking neon "Don't be like us" warning.

I've read that something like 20% of Californians, and 40% of people in LA County, identify as non-religious, but I'm too lazy to dig up the numbers. In general, identifying as non-religious is way more common in the Far West than in other parts of the USA, probably due to our rugged individualism/ lack of traditional community spirit/hardcore sinfulness.

LA was the original home of modern Pentacostalism in the teens and twenties, though, so it's got that going for it.

I think they're two sides of the same coin.

I don't think so. I've met atheists who were brought up atheist who resist the terminology, probably because they've just been exposed to messages that this was something bad for their entire lives. Thing is, it wasn't something they cared much about ... but it's hardly an issue of being culturally religious.

121: I suspect this has less to do with being "culturally religious" and more to do with decades of vocal denigration of atheists and agnostics as part of the political/public discourse.

Yeah. Denigration of the "L" word (liberal, such that people fear one might be rabidly so) has apparently won the day as well.

129: Or even more effectively, "socialism" which has become essentially meaningless in US political discourse, as far as I can see.

130: This has already led to a kind of double-backlash where right-wingers, having seen socialists in full retreat, use that word for anything even vaguely, slightly left-of-center. When sensible moderate compromise proposals get called "socialist" by critics, it makes genuine socialism a lot less scary. "So, Republicans tell us that 'socialism' just means not fiddling while Detroit burns and having a health care system like France? I went to France a few years ago and French people were skinnier than Americans - sign me up!"

Unfortunately, I think the same thing won't happen with atheism, but you never know.

liberal, such that people fear one might be rabidly so

I'm not "afraid" of not being cool or something. I just end up getting into fights with a lot of NYC liberals who expect that everyone who votes they way they do feel the same way about everything they do. Believe me, I'd get along way better in my line of work if I sniffed at those silly working-class people who go to church and whatnot.

Sometimes, if I'm pressed to do so, I identify as "Catholic" which really only means "raised Catholic" which really only means that I went to Mass on Christmas Eve and whenever my grandparents visited. I do have some sentimental attachment to the smells and bells. Were I answering a survey honestly, I'd probably put "agnostic." But even living in the south, it very rarely happens that I'm asked to identify myself religiously.

There's nothing odd about being an atheistic Jew, or atheistic Catholic

I find atheistic Catholic to be odd.

Witt's 126 makes a lot of sense. I think that there is less emphasis on remaining culturally religious in the West than in the Northeast or Midwest.

And, god be praised, so many active atheists really do not do themselves any favors -- I think that lots of people avoid calling themselves" atheist" as opposed to "non-religious" or "agnostic" to avoid association with some really aggressive and annoying folks, much like the Episcopalians will tell you that they're "Episcopalian" and not "Christian" to avoid guilt-by-association-with-the-fundies.

(That is, if I say I am a rootless atheist liberal bisexual grad student and someone asks me where I'm from, what my family's like, etc., I get pity. "Oh, that must have been awful for you." Fuck that.)

I pity you, AWB. Your upbringing must have made you really angry.

But even living in the south, it very rarely happens that I'm asked to identify myself religiously.

I can't remember the last time it ever came up for me, either. But I suppose I also can't think of a friend who attends church anything near regularly.

I do sort of long for the day when it matters as little whether a politician attends church as it seems to have back in the days of our founding.

136: I mean, pity may be over the top, but you're not exactly jonesing to return to Kansas are you? My friends who grew up rural seem pretty happy to be in the city as well.

Then again, these things really matter a lot less when you're a kid. Teenage years can be rough as people start developing their sexual and political identities, but luckily there's only so many of those years before college/adulthood.

128: The "coin" I was thinking of is majority society. Majority society has a vested interest in maintaining the boundaries and keeping people inside them. That manifests as both zillions of little religious touchstones and practices,and cross-religious hostility toward nonbelief.

I agree that any given individual nonbeliever may or may not experience both sets of pressures.

126.2: I'm not convinced that there is much judgment or energy directed against agnostics. Most of the hate speech I've heard is directed toward atheists, although admittedly some people are ignorant of the distinction.

I had a very heated argument with a friend a couple of years ago who felt it was important to convince me that what I call my atheism is actually agnosticism. I couldn't for the life of me figure out what he felt was at stake in this. I mean, really, do you want to talk about proofs of the existence of God?

But it did become heated; I became angry. Don't strip me of my legitimacy in saying I'm atheistic. !!

139: I'd say there are many ways in which I'm more comfortable in the city, but there are also many ways in which I'm more comfortable in the Midwest. There are different kinds of normative social pressures in each, neither of which are very easy for me to adhere to. I probably stick out more here because of my looks (not being feminine enough, not wearing expensive enough clothes, being overweight, having the wrong kind of hair, etc.), but more at home for my behavior and beliefs.

I can never remember what the standards are for atheist and agnostic. I actively don't believe god (or anything supernatural) exists -- I'd bet heavily that way -- but god's nonexistence isn't something that I believe I could prove with evidence. And whenever it's been explained to me, I find the definitions of atheist and agnostic puzzling. I mostly say either not-religious, 'don't believe in god' or 'brought up heathen.'

On my NYC stats. Looking at them I *do* think they are specifically only those reporting a religion. There is another table with 16% Non-affiliated and it looks like the other %s reduced by what looks by eye to be about the correct amount if there were that many "non-affiliated". Sorry for any confusion. I will update. So Catholics become ~51% of total vs 62% of adherents.

"Why anyone would want the common man to become president elludes me"

To properly represent your resentment against elites, whom you blame for keeping you down, of course.

That fact that there are grains of truth in that help.

142: That fits my experience also. Except that in Pittsburgh you can get away with the wrong kind of hair. Or at least I hope you can.

New York ladies are more femme-y than you, AWB?

Article that data is from is here. The Wikipedia link above has table built form the source (but I cannot actually find it in the Gotham Gazette article) that merges the "non-adherent" into the whole. And reading closer there seem to be some methodological questions that could be asked.

135: so many active atheists really do not do themselves any favors

What is an active atheist? Someone who proselytizes in favor of disbelief in god? That's rather silly. Or is it someone who's active in policing, as it were, the separation of church and state? These two may become confused in the popular imagination.

The former sort of person would be obnoxious.

147: Some of them. Then there are us outliers. It's funny, though, I know I'm from here (and that someone devastatingly turned out probably isn't, originally), so I don't feel out of place being schlumfy. Just, you know, like a frump.

147: You are surprised? I think I sort of dressed up when I met you, but most of the time I'm pretty jeans-n-T.

149 -- I meant the former, not the latter. And was thinking in particular of the really aggressive atheists that crop up sometimes online and IRL. Most atheists, of course, are not like this and are not obnoxious at all.

And, of course, plenty of religious non-atheists also firmly believe in a strong boundary between church and state.

137: I am a similar situation, but I like a measure of pity that says, "Wow, that must have sucked. It's good to see you emerged from that environment in such good shape."

It validates my feelings about the environment of my upbringing, but doesn't label me.

152: I think you present as fairly femmy even when I've seen you dressed down, just by being pretty with a big cloud of curly hair. Sort of in the same category as me -- I'm not putting enough effort into grooming and such to be doing the feminine thing properly, but the combination of hair and body-type comes off as femme even in neutral clothes.

I'd say there are many ways in which I'm more comfortable in the city, but there are also many ways in which I'm more comfortable in the Midwest.

Well, part of this may have to do with many LA and NYC scenes serving as rich douche magnets that pull from the entire country. I dunno, it's tough for academics and a couple fields that are super-centralized in those cities, but I'm somewhat amazed at how few people consider moving to any big city other than those two when they have a choice. C'mon people! Sydney's got better weather and the folks are actually nice!

143: I've always figured that sort of thing counts as "agnostic" or "non-religious". At least, that's how I usually count myself. I don't think there's a rigorous definition of "god" applicable to most major religions that can be empirically proven incorrect (seriously, how would one go about proving that the Hindu Brahman can't exist?), so it's a somewhat useless metaphysical exercise to try and be atheist.

Right -- the standards I've seen for 'atheist' seem to imply the sort of strong conviction in the absence of evidence that I can't muster. If I could manage that kind of belief, I'd spend it on something more fun like being a Druid.

143: I can never remember what the standards are for atheist and agnostic. I actively don't believe god (or anything supernatural) exists -- I'd bet heavily that way -- but god's nonexistence isn't something that I believe I could prove with evidence.

That's roughly the shape of the argument in favor of agnosticism as the best (most reasonable) position: we can't prove either the existence or the non-existence of god on the basis of evidence.

That form of argument struck me as absurd, since it's a given that none of this can be proven either way. That does *not* mean that the existence of god is a matter of fact, but we are unfortunately just lacking in the facts needed to discern the matter one way or another. Holy crap, belief in god is a matter of faith, is it not?

I was not willing to say to my friend that I'm agnostic rather than atheistic because I was not willing to grant that the question of the existence of god is a matter of fact.

So quick correction to my numbers in 85 is to reduce the percentages by 1/6 and add a 16% for non-adherents. (Also those numbers broken out by borough are in a table at the Wikipedia article I link in 81. But they give me some pause, since Queens comes in with >30% non-adherent ...)

I was not willing to grant that the question of the existence of god is a matter of fact.

This is the kind of argument that makes Kotsko mad at me, and means that I'm not really set up to understand how actual religious people think about religion, but why isn't it a matter of fact?

I mean, I think of it as a possibility (not one I'm worried about, but, you know, possible) that I could get hit by a bus and find myself standing on a cloud holding an inexplicable lyre, with a guy with a beard explaining to me that I'm forgiven (or not forgiven) for being such a terrible person, and I should go make with the hosannahs (or wander off Pit-ward). At which point I'd think "Huh, I was wrong, as a matter of fact God exists." I could still be hallucinating or something, but it's the sort of evidence I'd use to accept pretty much anything else, so I'd accept the existence of God on that basis.

143
I actively don't believe god (or anything supernatural) exists -- I'd bet heavily that way -- but god's nonexistence isn't something that I believe I could prove with evidence.

I'd call you an atheist, then, based on all of this before the word "but." The agnostic just says "I don't know." This is ex recto of course.

A little surprised. I didn't think a thing about your femme-y-ness, which means I found you in the usual range for me and my girlfriends (same for you, LB). This leads me to think that I would also be less femme-y than New York ladies, which is not an active dilemma in my life.

I am definitely way frumpier and less femmed up than the NY norm, though rather more polished and femmy than your average linguist. But then frumpier again than many segments of the population of literary scholars, and a great deal frumpier than an art historian.

I'm with LB on this one... In what sense can existence of a god really exist outside the realm of facts? I can see it being unverifiable and even nearly impossible to speculate on the probabilities short of a more narrow definition of the sort of god and their potential interaction with the visible universe, but there still seems to be a semi-factual question of: Is there more to the universe and our existence than we can see in this life? Is there something that has a greater power over us, or some part of us that meaningfully exists outside ourselves and human memory? I.e. is there an afterlife of some sort?

How is that not really a question of yes or no, even if it's a very slippery question of what form that afterlife might take?

In conclusion, NY is populated with (a) native new yorkers, (b) art historians, (c) magic pixie dream girls, and (d) outliers.

The NY femmy thing is mostly not a big deal except when it comes to (a) which boys will allow themselves to be seen in public with you, and (b) what girls will talk about with you. Fashionable boys will be attracted to, but not date, un-femmy girls, and fashionable girls will be friends, but in a sort of condescending way, with un-femmy girls. It's not anything that matters to me, in that I don't judge myself for not being "good enough" for certain people, but it does always surprise me to find out that people I otherwise like are that concerned that I might reflect poorly on their social status.

I actually get a little cranky about discussions of the scary femminess of New York ladies, because while I know who you're talking about, they're really a very small part of the population. There are a lot more rich cutting-edge-fashion types here than most places, but most subway cars I'm on, I'm the closest person to that image just because I'm a thirty-something white woman not wearing jeans, and I'm not close at all to that image.

A man in Pittsburgh can become fashion forward by not wearing a mullet.

In second grad school I was an ungroomed beast in law school but hopelessly sold out to the fashion-industrial complex in ecology classes. The transformation apparently happened in the short walk across campus.

166 more: Cranky as impugning my city as overrun with these people, that is. They exist, but they're not a big part of the population at all.

(In a vaguely connected way, I have a high school friend who I run into very occasionally who's worked in the IT department at Cond´ Nast for quite a while. I asked the last time I saw him if they provided him with a wardrobe so he could be in the building without offense, and he said no, he dresses as badly as ever, but he does at least speak fabulous now.)

For example, I was just invited to hang out with an impossibly beautiful and fashionable woman to do something terribly classy and New Yorky, and I'm all "totally! that would be fun!" but now I'm like, aw crap, I have to be all cool and shit, don't I?

HTML failure.

The agnostic just says "I don't know." and you don't, either.

They exist, but they're not a big part of the population at all.

sure, but just ask them what the important part is.

I understand it being annoying to feel tarred with the same brush, though.

Not so much tarred with the same brush, as erased -- those people live in half of Manhattan and a quarter of Brooklyn, and there's another 4 and a quarter boroughs out there. (Admittedly, from my point of view that's mostly 3 and a quarter. I don't pay a lot of attention to Staten Island.)

159, 163: Maybe we should call Kotsko in, if he can speak in plain terms. I'm not really familiar with his perspective on the matter, but I know him to be a very smart man, and a theologian.

159.2: I mean, I think of it as a possibility ... "Huh, I was wrong, as a matter of fact God exists." I could still be hallucinating or something, but it's the sort of evidence I'd use to accept pretty much anything else, so I'd accept the existence of God on that basis.

Belief in god, in this here life (before we're dead) is not something that admits of evidence one way or another. Pure and simple. To frame your response to this fact as "I'm agnostic, because there are no facts at hand" is as much as to say that you're agnostic over the possibility that we're all brains in a vat. Could be!

I dunno what 'admits of evidence' is there. I haven't seen any evidence, but I can imagine sense-perceptions that I would take as evidence of the existence of God. I disbelieve in the existence of purple swans, because I haven't seen or heard of any evidence of their existence, but I think of the non-existence of purple swans as a matter of fact about which I could be wrong.

Late due to taking too much time writing this (it's something I'm passionate about), but here goes anyway:

143: A Theist believes in the existence of god(s). The absence of this belief is Atheism. The (indulge my irritation a moment) god-botherers regularly tell each other that atheism is the certainty that there is no god, usually accompanied by a little sneering refutation along the lines of "the only way to have certain proof of God's non-existence would be if you actually *were* God and then killed yourself." This is one possible explanation for Parsi's experience in 141 - There's real investment in this line of reasoning among many religious folks. When you tell them "atheist" doesn't mean what they think it means you are directly challenging their religious authorities.

Agnostic is popularly used to mean "not really sure on the whole god thing," but that's not the original (and IMO proper) definition. It is the position that the existence or not of god is inherently unknowable, which is clearly incompatible with theism, making agnostics a subset of atheists. The popular definition is much more theist-friendly, making agnostics into potential low hanging fruit for conversion, or at least placing them in a non-hostile relationship to the views of religious folk.

Many, if not most, religious people are seriously threatened by out atheists who aren't horrible and degenerate. They should be, because it puts the lie to at least some of what their authorities tell them, throwing everything else into question.

That's how I feel when people say that "everyone from Los Angeles is SO PLASTIC." Really? Everyone? To my eye, most people in Los Angeles are not-in-the-least plastic Hispanic people. You'd have to have a pretty racist skewed perception bias to think that most people present themselves as the Hollywood aesthetic.

I suppose I should say as evidence of the existence of something supernatural. I do have a hard time figuring out how there could be evidence of omnipotence, omniscience, and omnibenevolence that I could personally evaluate.

I don't think the femmy-NYC thing is racist. It's not just white New Yorkers who get their hair and nails done, dress to accentuate their femininity, and can't understand why someone wouldn't. There are different manifestations of individual fashions among different classes and communities, but I think the real bigotry implied is ageism, not racism. If you're a NYC woman between 20 and 35 who doesn't do the femmy thing, and especially if you're single, you're not playing the game right. And that's not borough-specific, either. (As I understand it, young Staten Island women have their own list of musts for acceptable femininity. I watched an amazing MTV "reality" thing in which SI women tried to get jobs in Manhattan restaurants or as actors and were turned away for being too tanned, having the wrong kind of highlights in their hair, speaking with the wrong accent, etc. It was interesting.)

178: but megan, clearly all those people are "illegals" and don't count....

To frame your response to this fact as "I'm agnostic, because there are no facts at hand" is as much as to say that you're agnostic over the possibility that we're all brains in a vat.

Eh, I'd say there's reasonable evidence of a shared reality between myself and others. At the same time, I'd say that anything I consider to be coming from within myself would be very hard pressed to explain the more idiosyncratic behaviors of others. I'm not a philosopher, but there seems to be a lot of evidence that suggests the world's still there and getting along just fine when my eyes are close.

I haven't seen similarly strong evidence suggesting an extra-natural existence. Existence of god or something like it seems a fairly unusual level of unknowable to me.

Ooooh, 178 is one of my very favorite things in the world to be annoyed about. Oh, you mean you just moved here from New Jersey to work as an intern in some agency's mailroom and are working 13 hours a day and everyone you meet is really fake and superficial and concerned about their appearance? And that's what LA is like? Thanks for your take.

(Actually, I'd argue that the "Hollywood" stereotype doesn't really even apply to the entertainment industry, if you include the below-the-line folks who make up the bulk of actual employees.)

180: At that point it comes down to 'young single women dress femmy in a variety of ways determined by their socioeconomic background, or if they don't, they're perceived as kind of deviant,' which is true most places, isn't it? I mean, I've always been frumpy, but I didn't suddenly feel as if I'd found the home of my fellow frumps in Boston or Chicago, or when I travel outside of big cities. (Specifically on the MIT campus, I was doing okay, but not in Boston generally.)

Maybe it's just because I moved from Ohio, but I don't remember a single person of my acquaintance getting a pedicure, getting expensive haircuts, or worrying about whether their jeans were still acceptably "in." I had a few startlingly fashionable friends, but they were freaks, and still not into the constant rituals of beautification.

I've spent some time in LA and New York, and a LOT of time talking to people from those places on the phone. In person, the only LA stereotype I've encountered in reality is that some people can be VERY irritatingly laid-back about things. The NYC stereotype of talking too loud is generally true, in my experience, but it's a loud town, whaddya gonna do? On the phone with evil, evil stockbrokers, more of the stereotypes come into play. This is also true of stereotypes of urban Texans (although I've never been to Houston, so perhaps they live up to their phone stereotypes better than the coastal people.)

Certainly, in NYC, if you're looking for extremely fashionable people, esp. femmy women, you can find them easily enough, but as LB points out, they're not really that prevalent most of the time in most places.

184 etc.

You're onto something, but I do think there is a general east-west gradient on this stuff. There is all sorts of class signaling going on all over, but it isn't the same sort of class signaling.

I wonder if some of it (and it exists in Canada too) has to do with the relative age. West coast cities are too young to have had much of a new money/old money thing going, and missed some of the subtle class cues there within predominantly WASPy and Jewish social groups. There are interesting exceptions (i.e. Vancouver had/has an interesting new Hong-Kong money dynamic thing going that obviously existed but was pretty opaque to me as an outsider)

And in the case of NYC an LA, you also have the issue that the cities are somewhat known for this to the outside world. People with no local knowledge about them may associate NYC with its fashion scene, LA with hollywood, etc., in a way that doesn't really tag Chicago or San Francisco at all, say.

getting a pedicure, getting expensive haircuts, or worrying about whether their jeans were still acceptably "in."

Okay, but I know lots of women, including some single women under 35, who live in NY and don't. Most single women in NY under 35 can't afford expensive haircuts, because most people can't. Worrying about jeans being 'in' -- on some level, people do this everywhere, right? I'm not seeing highwaisted pleated women's jeans on anyone because it's not 1986 anymore. But I know lots of people who don't worry about it except that when they need new jeans, they buy ones they think are cute. And the drugstores are full of nail-polish, so someone's doing their nails at home.

I think the people you know in NY include a disproportionate number of rich trendy people. Nothing wrong with that, but it's a really small part of the city.

I also think that the zone of "acceptable" is a lot wider in some areas than others. I feel like an uptight, conservatively dressed Easterner when I visit Seattle, but that doesn't prevent me from admitting that the scope of acceptable clothing there seems wider within any given subgroup than it does in many urban East Coast areas.

185: My sister acts like that a fair amount. I guess she might be just playing a role for the benefit of family, but I think her friends are/were like that too. Vermont, FWIW. On the other hand, you can see plenty of young women going around in jeans and t-shirts and non-femmey stuff too.

190: That sounds a little more familiar to me -- that people, rather than just women, tend to dress more conservatively on the East Coast than in the rest of the country. Offices are more likely to still be suit and tie, people in nice restaurants are more likely to be 'dressed up' -- that I'd buy.

185: whether their jeans were still acceptably "in."

My experience of NYC is more along the lines of people* being more concerned about/conscious of their appearance/clothes signalling than those in Pittsburgh or Ohio, but not necessarily more femme-y or nice or whatever (or even "fashionable"). Just more aware and purposeful in that part of their life than I see around here. Various folks I visited have pointed out that I was noticeably not from New York** by my clothes (and I felt it).

*And yes, selection bias galore.

**And yes they were excluding outer boroughs/'burbs in that assessment.

188: Well, I'm not from the outside world, but surely most educated, media-immersed people in other countries have some received notions about Chi and Frisco? People in Chicago are ethnic, brash, violent and like to hustle deals. People in San Francisco are hip, drug-addled, sexually deviant and ecological. Whereas, look at the next few large metro areas and the stereotypes are much thinner on the ground. What are people from Philly like? I know people from Philly, and I've seen Rocky, but I still don't have much of a constellation of stereotypes to draw from. Same with Atlanta. Miami and Seattle and DC have more of a globally-accessible sense of place, but not much with personal stereotypes. Boston could be the special case here. You've got all the Cheers characters, but they haven't emerged as durable Bostonian stereotypes in the way that the Taxi characters might have done for NYC.

"What are people from Philly like?"

Did you read the thread above?

The thread has moved on, but I want to record that:

177 is excellent, I agree with it completely, and togolosh is a total babe.

178, 183: Well, in my case at least, that's why I specified that the over-made-up jerks really seem to be an unusually large problem for LA and NYC in certain social scenes. Those also tend to be the social scenes where my friends and I run, which makes it a bigger deal for me than most.

I mean, my friends here are people like art students (and some who've had success as professional artists), graphic designers, people who throw club nights, a couple underground DJs of reasonable renown, some boutique fashion people, and various indie music crowds. My main roommate's a fricking image consultant! Yet they're all really nice people who I've generally run into at some point and we've just started talking, dancing, whatever. It's just a fairly friendly place to break into, considering that I knew nearly no one when I first moved back from college.

But people I know from here who've gone to NYC or LA have generally complained about people in the same scenes being, well, jerks. And people who came into Chicago from the coasts tend to be really surprised that we're all nice AND we're not amazed that Linkin Park finally made it to our radios. It's just not sounded very positive, though I'll admit that I haven't experienced much of the New York or LA nightlife for myself.

(also, I'm totally jealous that Boredoms play special shows there, and they get the Philly crews playing there pretty routinely along with the decent NYC DJs)

194: Oh, I wasn't suggesting Ch. and S.F. were neutral in the way somewhere like, say, Atlanta or Phoenix might be --- just that both LA and NYC are in some sense associated with a `scene'.

So maybe I should have used less iconic cities, sure.

195: I meant that in the sense of "from moving around in the world, I have little or no sense of Brotherlylovesville stereotypes". Information received from Unfogged doesn't count as part of my general cultural knowledge.

193: Okay, I've been getting testy at Bear, but this I can see -- I do notice, when I leave NY, that I like people-watching in NY better than other places because more people in NY seem to have put some attention or purpose into what they're wearing than people seem to other places. Not necessarily more money or more compliance with fashion: Buck wanders around in the summers in a tattered straw hat, battered shorts, and a selection of lurid T-shirts, which I think would be more conspicuous in other places in the country than they are here.

But that's men and women both -- it's not exaggerated femminess or fashionability, but more about an expected area of self-expression.

197: The Boredoms have played special shows in/near Montreal, too.

What are people from Philly like? I know people from Philly, and I've seen Rocky, but I still don't have much of a constellation of stereotypes to draw from. Same with Atlanta. Miami and Seattle and DC have more of a globally-accessible sense of place, but not much with personal stereotypes

Here's the stereotypes I've detected.
People in DC are black and poor.
People in Atlanta are black and may not be poor.
People in Seattle are white.
People in Miami are Cuban and/or gangsters.

194 -- Mmmm, probably pretty location dependent. My sense is that folks (in LA, at least) have no stereotype whatsoever for Chicago, other than "it's cold there." We have plenty of stereotypes about San Franciscans -- "Hippies who live in a nice place and mysteriously hate us"; "Giants Fans" -- but that's different.

People in Seattle are white. damp.

199: I know. But, one Brotherlylovesville stereotype that I have learned is that they look down on Pittsburgh like we look down on West Virginia.

And often the Manhattan "look aware" people are right (or at least "ahead"). Before my wedding in New York my one future BIL bluntly observed that my sideburns were too long. My mental rejoinder was that he could take his Tribeca cool and shove it up his ass. Now when I look at my wedding photos I think, "Gee, my sideburns were too long".

202: Yeah, but that doesn't say much about their characters, in the way that the obnoxious, toidy-toid and toid-accented, screaming stockbroker does for NYC.

197 -- So, your group of insufferable, annoying hipsters hates our group of insufferable, annoying hipsters. Got it.

(Kidding)

some people can be VERY irritatingly laid-back about things

I would move to LA, but, eh, ... it's pretty chill in Chicago, if you hang with the right crowd. Also: people hate the winter, and I love that and it.

AND we're not amazed that Linkin Park finally made it to our radios.

Huh?

The last couple of times I've been in LA I have been asked, "Are you from NYC?" I . . . have no idea what this means. My accent is pretty neutral (well, I say are-inge and not ornge, but) and I'm not walking around in a suit or something. Maybe it's because I am short and black-haired!

201: I'm thinking specifically of the two Boadrum concerts. But after the one time I've seen them in concerts, I'll admit that any show would be quite welcome.

Geez, we used to have the two best indie music festivals out there. But then one shut down after two years of running and the other one has become steadily bigger and more expensive to the point where it's no longer so damn fun. I'm nursing some wounds, I tell ya.

Do you walk fast, or suggest walking implausible distances (whatever an LA person would think implausible)?

Were you wearing all black and talking really fast? Those are the usual signs out here.

213: I walk fast and I talk fast, but I think on both occasions I was sitting on a bar stool. And in at least one case it wasn't a come on. Talking with my hands, maybe?

214: Ah haha. Probably.

208: Well... Yeah, sort of. But our insufferable hipsters are really nice to outsiders! I know because I was one!

210: I just meant that lots of the people I know from the coasts who were somewhat into current art and music scenes (so they're looking for interesting stuff while here) but aren't super into it (so they aren't already familiar with the lesser-known Chicago artists/musicians/DJs) seemed surprised to find out there's good stuff here.

seemed surprised to find out there's good stuff here.

I'm more confused than ever. Weren't you talking about Linkin Park?

200: but more about an expected area of self-expression.

Yes, and your description of Buck accords with my observations. I looked like a tourist because my shorts and t-shirts and shoes were just "blah" not because I was specifically over or under-dressed. Several of my wife's family were/are in the shmata business (not high-end stuff, mostly casual, but usually distinctive in some way or more "European"-styled) and they would express frustration that so much of the US did not seem to really care how they looked as a personal expression, even if it just meant spending a couple of bucks more on a garment or looking a bit harder for a distrinctive item. And of course it was a self-interested argument. I recall Montreal being mentioned as a place where they got more traction and, somewhat humorously, at the Sturgis rally.

219: Another good example of the difference between NYC and the rest of the country is the percentage of people who have to google 'shmata'.

177 is good.

I looked like a tourist because my shorts and t-shirts and shoes were just "blah" not because I was specifically over or under-dressed.

Yes, this is exactly right. There is a subtle but perceptible difference between "I don't care what I walk out of the house in" and "I don't care what I walk out of the house in, so fuck off."

220: Their term, not mine, but I used it to show that I'm down with the homeys in the west upper 30s.

Wish D2 was here to question meritocracy.

224: I'm not a big believe in meritocracy. If we had one, I think I'd be poorer.

I'm more confused than ever. Weren't you talking about Linkin Park?

I think the idea is that if Chicago were a cultural backwater, people would think that Linkin Park is good music. But it's not, so they don't. In fact, if queried, they might even say that it's bad music. But IANPMP.

Normally, this is the point in an Unfogged thread where someone would normally come in with a contrarian defense of the derided object of cultural scorn -- in this case Linkin Park -- and accuse the nay-sayers of being excessively SWPL.

But I'll bet it doesn't happen this time. Linkin Park just sucks that much.

I'm not satisfied with my explication. I think what PMP is saying is, imagine a town with residents that not only have such poor taste that they think Linkin Park is good music, but also are so behind the times--so lacking in access to the vanguard of the culture--that they think LP is the latest and greatest thing.

I don't believe I've ever heard any Linkin Park. I will go off to investigate.

Anyway, anyone who thought that Chicago was a musical backwater would have indicted him- or herself, ipsa sententia, of belonging in a backwater.

Linkin Park is Coldplay for bros.

229: Because of the Blue Brothers.

230: Wait, what does that mean if I like Coldplay?

Nothing good.

I'm willing to accept that I'm fairly boring and I'd thought that was the worst of liking Coldplay.

229: True, but if your cosmopolitan credentials are sufficiently up to snuff (e.g., if you're from certain large coastal cities), you can get away with a certain amount of a provincialism, as long as that provincialism directed towards those from the provinces. A NYer with, say, an ignorance of the basic geography of flyover country still gets to be a cosmopolite; he or she doesn't suddenly come from a backwater.

Sorry. Residual bitterness from the first year of college. I'll get over it someday.

Or rather, as long as the province which your provincialism concerns is a cosmopolis. You still have the narrow mind of a provincial, you just lucked into a high-density wedge.

re: 224

Well, quite. I've pointed out more than once, as have others, that Young's book is both scathing and prescient.

238: I have enough merit to have not needed a book to figure it out.

228 pretty much nails what I was thinking.

229: I mean, I don't like it when it happens, but I would rather convert and educate than reject. I'm just a shameless promoter of this fair burg, because we're not yet at a size where growth really hurts and I always like more like-minded pleasant folks in town. Whoo, Chicago!

re: 239

The book is well worth a read, since it seems to nail some of the rhetoric of present-day politicians on 'meritocracy' despite being written 50 years ago.

220: Hey, I watched "Miller's Crossing". It means "weaselly Jew".

177: so the word "atheist" means what everyone thinks the word "agnostic" means. Does the word "agnostic" mean something else?

I looked like a tourist because my shorts and t-shirts and shoes were just "blah"

Then again, maybe it was the funny hat with the inscription, "I Love My Wife, But O You Kid!"

243: 177 also explains "agnostic".

"Agnostic" means you're a member of the Vienna Circle.

I fully endorse togolosh's 177. I don't believe there is a god, so I'm an atheist. It isn't complicated.

And to correct the record, while AWB sometimes introduces me as Mormon, I refer to myself by that term only tongue-in-cheek, or when it's absolutely clear we're speaking in a purely cultural sense.

On the theism and atheism thing: are there any other atheists out there who find the latest wave of militant secularism, and its standard bearers, as underwhelming as I do?

And to correct the record, while AWB sometimes introduces me as Mormon, I refer to myself by that term only tongue-in-cheek, or when it's absolutely clear we're speaking in a purely cultural sense.

If only there were a term out there that described exactly this.

248: Everyone with a grain of sense.

I'll be interested to see how people in New Jersey react to me describing myself as Jewish from New Mexico.

Well, I'm not an atheist, but I really find Hitchens and Dawkins to be unbearable (haven't read Dennett). And I don't really get their project -- what is the point of creating giant strawmen arguments against religion that fail to engage with any of the reasons anyone is actually religious? Who is persuaded by this to change their mind?

The word agnostic was coined by Darwin's Bulldog, T.H. Huxley. By it, he meant that he neither affirmed nor denied spiritual and religious doctrines, like the existence of an afterlife.

I think this squares pretty well with contemporary popular usage.

I'll be interested to see how people in New Jersey react to me describing myself as Jewish from New Mexico

Slip a few Navajo words into casual conversation and explain them to NJites as the southwestern Jewish equivalent of Yiddishisms. It will heighten your mystique.

I don't really get their project --

They want atheism to be publicly respectable in the U.S., and they want atheists to "say it loud, I don't believe in God and I'm proud."

There are three competing definitions for "agnostic", all widely used: (a) someone who isn't sure whether or not she believes in a god, and (b) someone who believes the existence of god is unknowable. It's not clear to me that one or the other of these is "correct", although they're obviously quite different.

There also seem to be two competing definitions of "atheist": (a) someone who does not affirmatively believe in the existence of a god, and (b) someone who believes the non-existence of god is demonstrable/provable. (Definition (b) only makes sense, and so far as I know is only used, in reference to a god possessing western characteristics of omniscience and omnipotence, and usually also benevolence.)

In order to lump all "nonbelievers" under either one label or the other, it's common for people to pair definition (a) of 'agnostic' with definition (b) of atheist (usually loosening defition (a) of 'agnostic' somewhat to cover people like LB, who really strongly don't believe that any god exists, but are open to the theoretical possibility that they could be wrong), or to pair definition (b) of 'agnostic' with definition (a) of atheist. The first set of definitions obviously gives you lots of agnostics and very few atheists; the second set of definitions gives you lots of atheists and comparatively few agnostics.

(Incidentally, for any reasonable definition of "know", I think most thinking people--even religious people--are "agnostic" by definition (b), though few people seem to think of it that way. Personally, although I believe there's a bald man in the sky, I certainly don't think there's any objective way for anyone to know that for sure, at least not in this life. Aquinus is unconvincing. So I'm an agnostic theist. Perhaps this very possiblity makes definition (b) somewhat unsatisfactory, since I think one of the major original goals here was to divide the world into theists, atheists and agnostics.)

247: And to correct the record, while AWB sometimes introduces me as Mormon, I refer to myself by that term only tongue-in-cheek

That may be to me in 123, and I apologize for sweeping you up in AWB's earlier remark. Shouldn't have.

238, 241: I've pointed out more than once, as have others, that Young's book is both scathing and prescient.

Forgive me -- who's Young? I didn't see a reference upthread, though it's true I skipped over the discussion of the femminess of New Yorkers, which turned into Chicago and LA and cosmopolites and Linkin Park, but ... who's Young, who apparently has something to say about meritocracy? Sorry if I'm being dense or have missed something obvious.

Presumably this Young.

Um, no--There are threetwo competing definitions for "agnostic", allboth widely used

Not sure what happened there.

So I'm an agnostic theist. Perhaps this very possiblity makes definition (b) somewhat unsatisfactory, since I think one of the major original goals here was to divide the world into theists, atheists and agnostics.

I think the heart of agnosticism is suspending belief one way or the other. Our inherent inability to know whether or not God exists would simply be the reason to suspend belief, but it need not necessarily entail it.

255: "say it loud, I don't believe in God and I'm proud."

Which ironically is harder to do since their campaign started.

Or I guess easier to do for those who're comfortable with polemical atheism given a thin varnish of "public intellectualism." But yeah, it's absolutely nails on a chalkboard for me.

he meant that he neither affirmed nor denied spiritual and religious doctrines

I haven't read your link, but what the fuck does that mean? Why did he neither affirm nor deny them? He simply stubbornly refused to take a position? He thought no position could rationally be taken? He just hadn't made up his mind?

Depending on what he meant, this could be compatible with either definition (a) or (b) from 256. (Although, again without reading your link, but if I had to guess what he meant, I bet he just meant that he was an atheist, but was looking for a novel, gentler way to state that in a society in which labelling oneself an atheist could be controversial.)

An agnostic theist

Yes, I'd describe myself as something like this.

I think one of the major original goals here was to divide the world into theists, atheists and agnostics.

Perhaps, but it may make more sense (depending on the definitions used) to posit two dimensions, orthogonal to each other: atheism v. theism and agnosticism v., um, gnosticism.

Personally, although I believe there's a bald man in the sky, I certainly don't think there's any objective way for anyone to know that for sure

This is making me laugh. Thanks, Brock.

My dad always described himself as agnostic. I'm not sure exactly how he defined it. Probably not too relevant to the discussion of atheism and agnosticism, but a data point in favor of Halford's argument upthread that an openly non-religious attitude is more widespread and accepted in the west than in the east.

264: I like that -- atheism/theism defining which way you'd bet, and a/gnosticism describing your sense of the strength of the basis for that belief.

since I think one of the major original goals here was to divide the world into theists, atheists and agnostics.

Or to ensure the question is defined epistemelogically, rather than theological.

My dear friend Soren K. of course never claimed there wasn't any useful evidence or reasonable argument to support belief in God, only that claiming that evidence or rational argument could be determinative of or sufficient or necessary belief in God was in itself irrational and contradictory; confused, irresolute, and irresponsible;inauthentic and self-denying; a crime against one's own human nature; the willful cardinal sin of pride that would cause one to burn in the Fires of Hell Forever.

But feel free to fee free.

Slip a few Navajo words into casual conversation and explain them to NJites as the southwestern Jewish equivalent of Yiddishisms. It will heighten your mystique.

I could easily do this. Hmmm...

Feel free to feel free.

SuD fucked me up forever. Book should be banned.

But feel free to fee free.

Next weekend!

248: I can't stand to read the comments on that roundtable; I wish there were a transcript of the discussion itself. Dawkins and Hitchens in their recent publications have been cringe-making. Dennett is Daniel Dennett? I didn't realize he was an activist atheist.

267: You have such a strange way of thinking about things, LB.

272: The roundtable itself is pretty cringeworthy, too, unfortunately. Metric tonnes of self-satisfaction on display.

I haven't read your link, but what the fuck does that mean? Why did he neither affirm nor deny them?

As this thread is illustrating, neither atheism nor agnosticism exist in a vacuum. At least in my experience, some agnostics are at pains to set themselves apart from the belligerant brand of atheism. I.e., my agnosicism is no threat or judgment of your faith (as opposed to the Dawkinses of the world, who will happily march right over to your table and tell you how stupid and gullible and wrong you are).

It's not unlike the vegetarian/meat-eater conversations. The few loudmouths on both sides are merciless in their attacks, and everybody else gets gunshy.

274: Urk. Hadn't seen that. Yes generally underwhelmed.

273 wins the Pot of the Year award.

Parsimon has pot? And she's been holding out? For shame.

275: well, yeah--that was my parenthetical last sentence.

By contemporary common use, would most people count atheistic Buddhists and Hindus as atheists? I think not.

Dennett's book in this area that I know is Breaking the Spell: Religion as a Natural Phenomenon (he may have others). I found it to be more closely reasoned than the others with less polemics, but there were a couple of places that I thought he needlessly undermined his attempt at a"detached" perspective (cannot remember the points exactly). I like his writing on Darwinism better.

I'd be an agnostic atheist if I cared.

278: There are laws, DS.

About Dennett, yeah, I'd tend to take him a bit more seriously than the others, based simply on reputation for intellectual seriousness (!), leaving aside that the philosophical writing of his I've read I found teeth-grittingly painful/awkward. That might just be me, but Dennett's writing was hell. I don't know who Harris is.

By contemporary common use, would most people count atheistic Buddhists and Hindus as atheists? I think not.

Well I don't think you could be an atheist Hindu really. You don't believe, but you perform the rites anyway? I suppose, but it'd seem kind of pointless. But any actual Hindus please contradict me.

As for athiest Buddhists, I think I'd call them atheist if they were seriously puritanly atheist `the Buddha was a very clever man who lived a long time ago and attained a certain state that we can also achieve' types, but not if they'd believed in pure-lands and the Bodhisattvas come to save us all in 10.000 years or whatever.

I'd call the atheist Hindus religious, but I'm not sure abut the puritan Buddhists.

(The agnosticism debate did give us philosophy's most absurdly-daft-in-that-hyper-normal-English-way idea: Russell's Teapot.)

One of the good things Dennett has done in this discussion is introduce the idea of "belief in belief in God." People who believe in the belief in God believe that it is extremely important morally to believe in God, although they themselves might have trouble mustering up the belief they think they should have.

Part of the argument of *Breaking the Spelll* is that belief in the belief in God is actually much more prevalent than the belief in God, so that if we can actually dissuade people of the notion that they are supposed to believe in God, there would be much more room for nontheistic attitudes.

Well I don't think you could be an atheist Hindu really. You don't believe, but you perform the rites anyway?

The text I use to teach Indian religion and philosophy spends a lot of time discussing the question "Is Hinduism polytheist, monotheist, or atheist." The final answer the book gives is "Yes, all of those. Also pantheist, panentheist, and henotheist."

There are three questions, which are related as they pertain to this topic but possibly no other: is there a god? What degree of knowability is sufficient to believe something in your own head? And what degree of knowability is sufficient to treat as certainty in public discourse, preferred social policy, etc.?

For some people, a preference for and the lack of evidence against a hypothesis is enough to say they believe something. Fine, fair enough. For others, a preference for a belief is sufficient to say they believe something despite evidence against it - Last Tuesdayism, for example. I think less of the intellectual capacity, honesty and/or rigor of such people, but who am I to judge? I spend a significant amount of my time pretending to be an elf in a computer game. When they make that jump from belief in their own heads to certainty in public discourse and preferred social policy, though, fuck them. The only reason not to ridicule people like that is if it's counterproductive. So, is it? DS says he is embarrassed to associate himself with the likes of Dawkins, but even if that viewpoint is representative, there may be value in pulling the Overton Window our way.

Growing up, from when I was say 14 to 24, I called myself a deist when it came up in conversation. I had no problem believing in some creative force behind the universe which could be called "god" as easily as be called anything else and more easily than many things, but I doubted and rejected the idea that he/she/it/they cared what people thought of him/her/it/them, or the idea that he/she/it/they was a conscious, active force in the world. By calling myself deist I could associate myself with the luminaries of the Enlightenment era and, a benefit probably even more important, feel superior to Christians who had never heard the term before, like Mormon missionaries at the door. Why do I no longer call myself a deist? Partly because I no longer need/want to inflate my sense of superiority, partly because calling that creative force "god" seems too vague for how the term is generally used. Usage matters for meaning, and how "god" is used now (how it was always used except when Deism was an influential school of thought, I guess) is more specific than that.

Again, this is ex recto, and by now, at least a bit Becks-style.

275
my agnosicism is no threat or judgment of your faith (as opposed to the Dawkinses of the world, who will happily march right over to your table and tell you how stupid and gullible and wrong you are).

Is this true? Online metaphorically, sure, and in print and on book tours, sure. But would Dawkins literally do this?

I doubt it. And I think it matters. I have different (lower, to simplify, although I hope not oversimplify) standards for civility between public fora such as online discussions and professional public appearances on the one hand, and in personal life and restaurants for example on the other. If the Dawkinses of the world would literally march right over to your table, I join DS in distancing myself from them, but probably not if they would only march over to your table in the sense of adopting a more-sardonic-than-usual-Q-and-A persona.

I'd call the atheist Hindus religious, but I'm not sure abut the puritan Buddhists.

By puritan Buddhist, do you mean Therevada?

The Theravadin are more likely to be regarded as atheist than other branches. It is easy enough to say that in majority Theravada countries, atheism is the norm.

Mahayanist Buddhism has really been majorly altered by its encounter with the Chinese folk religion. China was the main source for all the Mahayanist lines of Buddhism that are still around, and the general Chinese attitude towards divinity is stronger in it, arguably, than any Indian roots. In particular, a strong sense of impersonal theism can always be felt. There is a real god/gods/godhead/buddha spirit, but it is completely impersonal and beyond human qualities.

It is easy enough to say that in majority Theravada countries, atheism is the norm.

I think even in Theravada-dominant countries you see distinctions between the monastic and folk practice of Buddhism. You see a lot of ancestor and spirit worship in Thailand, for example.

By puritan Buddhist, do you mean Therevada?

Well, sort-of. The Western psychological sort of religion is what I was aiming for --- you know, non-asian PhDs who can't take seriously the supernatural stuff, but are quite happy with the Noble Truths & the Eightfold Path.

I don't know enough about Asian Therevada to say one way or the other, and the thought of talking about Ancient Indian non-Thervada non-Mahayan Buddhist philosophy makes my head hurt.

I've met a couple of people who know Dawkins well. He is reputed to be an ass.

(I probably should have said practice in place of religion above.)

Is this true? Online metaphorically, sure, and in print and on book tours, sure. But would Dawkins literally do this? I doubt it. And I think it matters.

Eh, I was being sloppy. I have no opinion on whether Dawkins himself would do it or not.

However, I have personally witnessed some really uncalled-for hostility on this topic (again, from a minority of folks on both sides -- you've also got to love the trope that an atheist can't be moral or ethical). So it does happen.

285: One of the good things Dennett has done in this discussion is introduce the idea of "belief in belief in God." People who believe in the belief in God believe that it is extremely important morally to believe in God, although they themselves might have trouble mustering up the belief they think they should have.

This is good, thanks. I mean, good on Dennett, and also good for shifting the discussion about the viability of atheism from "would you bet on it / do you have evidence" to "what weight does this have."

I had not been familiar with Therevada before, and thank you for this as well.

So, how does everyone feel about medicine men?

And to correct the record, while AWB sometimes introduces me as Mormon, I refer to myself by that term only tongue-in-cheek, or when it's absolutely clear we're speaking in a purely cultural sense.

If only there were a term out there that described exactly this.

Well, there's not.* "Jack Mormon" isn't it at all, really,** and nobody on the East Coast knows what it means anyway, and "cultural Mormon" is too strong for my situation -- or at least my self image is of someone with many cultural influences other than Mormonism, having spent more than ten years on the East Coast as a gay atheist half-assed philosopher who has been dabbling in Buddhism lately.

/humorless

*A friend of mine ably reviewed the available alternatives in "Recovering the Signifier: New Jack Mormons." Dialogue 30 (1) Spring 1997: 47-50.

**Properly speaking, a jack Mormon lives within the Mormon cultural area and maintains close ties to Mormon life, even participating in the congregation from time to time. Jack Mormons certainly believe a fair amount of the doctrine. They just take it less seriously than good Mormons. The typical jack Mormon lives in a trailer and drinks a lot of Coors, so there's a class aspect as well.

"Everyone" is a loaded term, teo.

So, how does everyone feel about medicine men?

As with doctors, I tolerate their crazy beliefs if they're willing to part with some of their drugs.

Well, there's not.

Fair enough. I am of course looking at this from the outside, and was unaware of the nuances carried by the term "Jack Mormon" (which in my gentile family is generally used in a more general sense than it seems to carry in a specifically LDS context). The point about no one on the east coast being familiar with it is important as well, of course.

"Everyone" is a loaded term, teo.

Okay, how do we feel about medicine men?

296: I'm not all that fond of them at the moment. We just consulted yet another one. Out here, in El Pueblo de Nuestra Señora la Reina de los Angeles del Río de Porciúncula, parking in the hogans they inhabit costs $1.25 every 15 minutes.

I tolerate their crazy beliefs if they're willing to part with some of their drugs.

I don't think you're going to want any of these drugs. My cousin once told me a story about a friend of his who got some herbal remedy from a medicine man that cured whatever was ailing him but also made him impotent for a year.

There are so-called medicine men in many cultures, and I can't really generalize. There are shamans, there are shenanigans. Generally, medicine people are to be respected as elders who hold wisdom.

Okay, how do we feel about medicine men?

What do you mean we, New Mexican Jewish man?

By "we" I mean "you."

Okay, how do wedenizens of the Unfogged weblog community who are willing to opine feel about medicine men?

Otto gets it.

Saying "we" to mean "you" may be irritating, but it's not as bad as the common op-ed technique of saying "we" to mean "everyone but me". As in sentences like "Somehow, we became obsessed with celebrity culture", or "When will we reconnect with the natural world we used to love?".

308, 309: What's in it for me?

I don't think you're going to want any of these drugs.

Just the private stash of hallucinogens.

314 to 313

Okay, how do we denizens of the Unfogged weblog community who are willing to opine feel about medicine men?

Okay, I think this is getting really close. Could you maybe, you know, problematize the subject a little bit more?

Somehow, we became obsessed with using "we" to mean "everyone but me".

306: Spoken like someone who has never actually met an elder.

Just the private stash of hallucinogens.

Can't help you there. Try the tipi next door.

Could you maybe, you know, problematize the subject a little bit more?

In accordance with 254, I could replace the term "medicine men" with hataalii.

318: I beg your pardon. ?

In truth, I do not feel enough cultural connection or understanding to any group that traditionally has medicine men or shamans to really assess. From the outside, it appears that they generally played a constructive roles in those cultures, but that opinion is simultaneously founded on quicksand and is probably deeply patronizing to the peoples in question so I repudiate it and its holder.

I could replace the term "medicine men" with hataalii

Nu, that's like a rebbe, isn't it?

323: In other words, if I may be so bold: it's not my place to say, and I'm not remotely willing to say "hogwash," if that's what's invited.

Recovering the Signifier: New Jack Mormons

Like Boyz II Men or something?

Nu, that's like a rebbe, isn't it?

More or less.

Like Boyz II Men or something?

Or more like New Wet Kojack?

re: 257

Sorry, I should have made that clear. The term 'meritocracy' was coined by Michael Young. His book, The Rise of the Meritocracy is a sort of dystopian satire on meritocratic society. I think, for me, I found it particular amusing/prescient when I read it (which was only a couple of years back) because so much of the stuff that Young presents as satire has been said, sometimes in almost exactly the same terms, by the Blairites/New Labour government.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Meritocracy#Origin_of_term

re: Dawkins

He had a TV show in the UK recently in which he went around essentially being a prick to religious people.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Root_of_All_Evil%3F

I only saw a few clips, but my wife watched the whole thing and was heartily amused by his (stupidly) confrontational style.

Here in the land of opportunity, someone can become a public intellectual and have a movie in which he goes around essentially being a prick to religious people without having an academic appointment or even a graduate degree.

how many people really want to go out in public and discuss atheism?

How would this work?

"So, found any evidence yet?"

"Nah."

...

...

"Shall we go?"

"We can't."

"Why not?"

"We're not believing in God."

"Oh, right."

FWIW, most of the more intelligent Anglican clergy I've met have been prepared to say that they're agnostics, for some value of "agnostic". That is, the existence of god isn't something you can know on the basis of evidence; if you believe, you believe on the basis of faith, whatever that is.

I'm the reverse. I don't believe in god, because I'm uninterested in "faith", although I recognise it can be valuable to some people in some circumstances. I describe myself as a Functional Atheist, because I don't have a bunch of clever arguments for the non-existence of god, I just can't be bothered to go there. I don't do theology like I don't do soduku.

Functional Atheist

Like what I've been calling an "irrelevantist"? Faith/religion/god stuff is something other people think/worry about.

Yeah, like that.

In this less religion obsessed country, most forms you fill in which have a slot for religion, e.g. hospital admittance forms, in case you want to talk to a chaplain, include an option for "None" (not "Atheist", Agnostic", "Humanist", etc.). I find entirely appropriate.

It's intensely amusing to see people accusing Dawkins and Dennett of being smug and self-satisfied, when the other side of the discussion includes people like the Pope.

It is, but I still think it's bad tactics to respond at their level.

336: well, is it? It's not like a billion people are looking at the Pope and thinking "I can't stand the way he's so superior and smug all the time". They're thinking "This man is the inheritor of the Throne of Peter and the only true spiritual authority in the world". Similarly, your average basij is not thinking "Well, I'm sure the Ayatollah has some good points, but why does he have to be so confrontational and aggressive?"

People generally like smug and aggressive and self-satisfied. They confuse it with leadership.

The problem with much of the 'new atheism' is that it wants to contrast science and 'Enlightenment' thought on the one hand, with religious dogma on the other. However, most of the 'new atheists' exhibit profound ignorance both about science and about the 'Enlightenment'.

They want to contrast the scientific method with faith, but show little sign of having actually thought much about the scientific method and/or the epistemology and sociology of science. It's like the past 100 years of 'metascientific' thought haven't happened.

337. People generally like smug and aggressive and self-satisfied. They confuse it with leadership.

Yes, but I don't. What are you suggesting, that we should defer to a self appointed atheist supreme leader? Fuck that. And even if I thought the idea was acceptable, I wouldn't regard any of Dawkins, Hitchens or Dennett as remotely qualified for the job.

ttaM, I've wondered about this: Dawkins at least was a respectable practicing scientist before he got distracted into being a professional tub thumper. But he never testifies (word selected deliberately) about his experience as a biologist, or what he actually did.

I have to say, if I met a Pope who wasn't a wee bit smug and satisfied, I'd feel ripped off. I mean, he's Patriarch of an Apostolic See, holds a title of the Roman Emperors, sits on the oldest throne outside Japan, with the keys of binding and loosing the gates of heaven. and is the living Anti-Christ. He's got cause, if you believe.

But even if you believe in what Dawkins says, he's nothing specially personally, is he?

(Dawkins: bringing late Victorian philosophy of science & etc to a bookshop near you.)

re: 339

FWIW, scientists often don't think much at all about the nature of science. I've taught philosophy of science to scientists and, if they've thought about it at all, they tend to be fairly unreflective scientific realists with a bit of Popper mixed in. Dawkins also seems, in general, to be someone who doesn't do nuance or reflection. A certain inflexibility has, as far as I can tell, always been a hallmark going right back to The Selfish Gene.

Dawkins also seems, in general, to be someone who doesn't do nuance or reflection. A certain inflexibility has, as far as I can tell, always been a hallmark going right back to The Selfish Gene.

Agreed. But not perhaps the ideal mind set for somebody who until lately has been on a professorial screw to enhance public understanding of science.

re: 342

Yes, quite.

339: I'm suggesting that smug etc. may not be as tactically counterproductive as you think. A lot of the criticism seems to come from people who are fairly sure D et al are right, but don't like the implications for emotional reasons and would rather not have to think about them quite so much.

Dawkins at least was a respectable practicing scientist before he got distracted into being a professional tub thumper. But he never testifies (word selected deliberately) about his experience as a biologist, or what he actually did.

Apart from writing books about it.

A lot of the criticism seems to come from people who are fairly sure D et al are right, but don't like the implications for emotional reasons and would rather not have to think about them quite so much.

Not necessarily, though. I just find Dawkins to be a smug dogmatic prick who doesn't actually know anything like as much about his chosen subject(s) as he professes too.

I wouldn't level that charge against Dennett.

No, he writes books about his hypotheses, his evidence, his results, and (much more) about other results in the literature. He doesn't write books about methodology or what ttaM felicitously describes as "Metascience". I see no reason to suppose he cares about them.

It's not like a billion people are looking at the Pope and thinking "I can't stand the way he's so superior and smug all the time". They're thinking "This man is the inheritor of the Throne of Peter and the only true spiritual authority in the world".

I understand some American Catholics, at least, have room for both of these thoughts.

But he tends to treat science as a body of stuff, not an activity.

And when he does, it tends to be from a triumphalist `here's how science's awesome' perspective -- touching anecdotes about old professors thanking the brash American who disproves their pet theory, etc etc. Compared to some one like Ian Hacking, he's just kind of boring.

(On preview, yet again pwned by OFE.)

345: his chosen subject is evolutionary biology.

scientists often don't think much at all about the nature of science. I've taught philosophy of science to scientists and, if they've thought about it at all, they tend to be fairly unreflective scientific realists with a bit of Popper mixed in.

I can imagine it's quite dispiriting to find that other people don't think your chosen field is as important as you do :)

That's not what his Chair was in, though. And that's not what a lot of his writings are, either.

his chosen subject is evolutionary biology.

Wow, really? But Charles Simonyi endowed a Chair in the Public Understanding of Science, and Dawkins sat in it. If he isn't interested in the nature of science, beyond its being "a body of stuff", then why did he take the job?

Pwned by Keit this time.

351: six out of nine books (and large parts of two of the others), and 23 out of 27 published papers, are about evolutionary biology. And his chair wasn't in the philosophy of science, or religion, or metascience or methodology - it was in the public understanding of science.

re: 349

No it's not. He is writing extensively about religion, and the nature of scientific inquiry among other things. He has been Professor for the Public Understanding of Science, not Professor of Evolutionary Biology. He hasn't been a working biologist for decades and his best-known published works aren't works of biological research, they are largely (well-crafted and engaging) re-presentations of the work of others.

The key thing here being that for a guy tasked with the Public Understanding of Science, he doesn't exhibit much understanding of science.

re: 350

I don't especially care whether they think it's important. I'm just pointing out that to the extent that scientists do philosophy of science -- that is, think metascientifically about the practice of science -- they are often not very good at it.

I'd expect that that is because 99.99% of the time it's entirely irrelevant to their work as practicing scientists, so I'm not exactly affronted by their lack of concern for the philosophy of science. It's perfectly reasonable that working scientists can't be bother to invest much time in the philosophical side of things. But, if they do choose to stick their toes in that water, they ought to make the effort to learn a bit about it.

354. So if somebody proposed a TV series on basic cookery in which the whole thing consisted of them producing dishes out of the oven ("here's one I prepared earlier") and waxing lyrical about how good the ingredients tasted in that combination, you'd think that met the spec, would you?

The job of the Simonyi professor is to promote the public understanding of science. It's not to study the philosophy or sociology of science.

He hasn't been a working biologist for decades

Last publication in a peer-reviewed biology journal, 2004.

and his best-known published works aren't works of biological research, they are largely (well-crafted and engaging) re-presentations of the work of others.

Best-known by whom? It's hardly surprising that non-biologists are more familiar with his general-audience work. Stephen Hawking's best-known published work could suffer from the same criticism.
But among actual working scientists, he's (still) definitely best known for the Selfish Gene, which is certainly not just a re-presentation of the work of others.

356: yes. No. Whatever.

re: 357

The gene-centred view of evolution presented in the Selfish Gene isn't original to Dawkins.

The job of the Simonyi professor is to promote the public understanding of science. It's not to study the philosophy or sociology of science.

No, but the understanding of science is not knowing stuff, it is knowing process, and Dawkins is not good at teaching process.

359: no, it's not.
360: Charles Simonyi disagrees with you, and it's his chair. Note, too, that it was pretty much designed for Dawkins to fill.

Simonyi is wrong then. Feynmann & the motto of the Royal Society say so.

Science is not just a list of facts; if anything, that's the opposite of what it is.

Look, there's a couple of ways in which one can promote the understanding of science. You can produce books like The Selfish Gene or A Brief History of Time which take a particular piece or area of scientific research and write about it in an engaging way that is true to the science, and which is accessible to the interested lay reader. That, essentially, is promoting the understanding of science through examplars.

However, you can also talk about science: about the nature of the scientific method, about the nature of theories and evidence, about 'truth', falsification, verification, the history of science, the relationship between science and culture, and so on.

Dawkins has engaged in both of these practices. His writing on evolutionary biology are pretty good examples of the 'promote science through the presentation of examples' approach, and in his writing on religion he appeals specifically to the differences between the scientific method and religious dogma and wants to make both general claims about the nature of science and value-judgements about the superiority of one method over the other.

I am saying that he isn't very good at this latter aspect of promoting the public understanding of science, in part because he shows very little sign of really understanding or engaging with this sort of metascience at all. It's not that science and the scientific method doesn't need advocates: it does. It's that doing this latter type of advocacy or 'promotion of the public understanding of science' requires more than what Dawkins has been doing.

Whenever Dawkins faced off with Gould, they both had to get meta-scientific pretty quickly. Basically, any position the other side took was Unscientific and Against the Basic Canons of Method.

Thing is, I can't, off the top of my head, think of any methodological principles that actually got appealed to in these debates. There was a general sense in Dawkins that if it wasn't reductionistic, it wasn't science. And sometimes that seemed to be backed by a sense that science can only deal with one cause at a time. Except that couldn't be it, because that is stupid.

Oh, another principle at work in Dawkins' methodology: saying "shit happens" is never scientific. The whole debate about adaptationism boiled down to Gould being willing to say "sometimes the world is the way it is because of some completely random event millions of years ago that we will never be able to reconstruct." Dawkins, on the other hand, said it wasn't science unless you could come up with an explanation, specifically an adaptive one.

While you're here, rob, could you recommend any good books on indian philosophy/theology?

I'm still at a beginning level investigating this stuff myself. I've been teaching from John Koller, The Indian Way: Philosophies and Religions of India. It is good for what I do, because it is comprehensive, accessible, and not stupid.

Dawkins, on the other hand, said it wasn't science unless you could come up with an explanation, specifically an adaptive one.

This is an attractive point of view, certainly, but it contains the Achilles' heel that speculative adaptative explanations may be accepted because they're adaptive, rather than remaining in the realm of interesting hypotheses because they're speculative. This is the core of Buller's critique of evolutionary psychology, and I've seen similar said of some of Dawkins' popular stuff.

Actually, I don't think it is an attractive view at all, in part for the reason you give, and in part because it so so hubristic (We can understand everything!) and in part because it seems so religious (everything has a purpose!).

I'm settling on the idea that Dawkins does have a detailed and thought out view of the scientific method. He's just systematically wrong.

re: 369

Yeah, there may be something to that.

I think that 'need for certainty' is something that's orthogonal to the religious/atheist axis. Some people are incredibly threatened by all forms of scepticism or even just anti-realism in some domain or other, and by the absence of explanations and/or the presence of the random. Other people are totally fine with it.

When I say it's an attractive point of view, I don't mean it shouldn't be rejected, I mean that it has some of the comfort and cosiness that vulgar religious thought depends on. It re-scopes the universe to a more manageable size. It occurs to me that it's actually thereby inadvertantly anthropocentric.

Dawkins, on the other hand, said it wasn't science unless you could come up with an explanation, specifically an adaptive one.

No, that's actually a view he specifically caricatured as being ridiculous in "The Blind Watchmaker" (the "angels and birds" passage).

372: Ok, that is a point in his favor, then.

I haven't read any of this stuff for years, and I'm just going on my impressionistic memories. Distance caricatures everything.

362, 363: Charles Simonyi (with advice from Dawkins!) wrote the job description for the Simonyi Professor. He can't be wrong about what the job of the Simonyi Professor is. Now, you and Feynman (or even Feynmann) may think that it's more important to teach the public about process; you may even be right; but that's not what the Simonyi Professor is supposed to do.

373 deserves respect and recognition.

330 is even funnier if you imagine Eddie Izzard saying it.

But yes, that was kind of my internal reaction at first. I never eavesdropped too closely (demographics being what they are, I didn't want them to misunderstand my interest), but I think the meetings were a mixture of social support and some degree of activism (a la Americans United for Separation of Church and State).

In this less religion obsessed country, most forms you fill in which have a slot for religion, e.g. hospital admittance forms, in case you want to talk to a chaplain, include an option for "None" (not "Atheist", Agnostic", "Humanist", etc.). I find entirely appropriate.

This is reminding me of a hospital chaplain that apparently had no idea what the word "agnostic" meant, and plowed ahead with a religious conversation that the patient manifestly did not want to have. Ugh.

I find the opposite view, the "shit happens, we can't explain it" view equally annoying.

I've been told by multiple Hindus that atheism and Hinduism are completely compatible. Philosophically, Hinduism is pretty pantheistic.

Fuck Charles Simonyi.

I'm really glad I missed the last part of this thread, as it's really good on topics I'm passionate about, and had I been participating more actively I might well have Farburgislac'ed it.

This: "Generally, medicine people are to be respected as elders who hold wisdom" is my view as well. There's layers of crap wrapped around that wisdom, but I think part of the purpose of the layers of crap is to serve as a way of structuring and ordering knowledge that is learned from hard experience and passed down over generations. Some of that wisdom is irrelevant, but there are enough nuggets in there to be worth at least taking them seriously. But, and it's a big but, they are worth taking seriously in order to get at that wisdom in part because they are relatively powerless - widespread adoption of tribal folk beliefs and the associated social structures would suck very badly indeed, IMO. The same can be said of many thinkers on religions within my own culture, incidentally.

A friend of mine from HS, and his sister (a friend of my sister) as well as his older brother are all Sangomas (pejoratively "Witch Doctor"). The funny thing is that their parents are very observant Scottish Presbyterians. My sister, a Baptist, had her house tied by her Sangoma friend. Tying is a ritual that places a zone of protection around the home, keeping out malevolent spirits and beings such as the Tokoloshe.

Incidentally, in googling for the above link I found many references to Cherlize Theron's belief in them.

My culture respects witch doctors, but many of us feel that they are too prone to regard spirit medicine as simply a body of knowledge, rather than a process of inquiry into the ways of the unseen world in which the souls of our ancestors live. We also start to suspect them when they write books explaining spirit medicine to the general public. The current holder of the Chief Fire Jaguar Chair for the Public Understanding of the Ways of our Ancestors is a particular offender in this regard.

I understand some American Catholics, at least, have room for both of these thoughts.

Sure, but everybody knows they're all going to hell...

I've been told by multiple Hindus that atheism and Hinduism are completely compatible. Philosophically, Hinduism is pretty pantheistic.

The issue with Hinduism is that, because it does not have centralized authorities or even a fine-pointed historical foundation (as with the Buddha, his life, and his teachings), it is basically just a set of overlapping traditions, each of which have very different theologies associated with them.

379 is funny.

||

Seventy released sex offenders live under a bridge in Miami because they can't find any place else that complies with the local ordinance that forbids them from living within 2,500 feet of a place where children gather.

|>

383: On the plus side, they are among the few people in Florida who haven't lost money in real estate.

Fucking sex offender laws. I hate America.

Shrub just killed her chances of ever being elected president.

383 sounds like a Witt batsignal. We know by now that numerous people are sidelined by regulations and requirements that prove to be nearly impossible for them to fulfill: welfare recipients who are required to attend weeks of classes in job training, or some such, which classes are held far enough away that getting to them proves difficult if not impossible. Lots of examples of such things.

Sex offenders don't garner much public sympathy, of course.

I'd rather kill my chances of being elected president the Appalachian Trail way.

386: Shrub?

389, of the redfoxtail type, I presume.

Sooner or later some nice white UMC boy from a powerful family and with a sympathetic story will get caught up in this and the law will be rectified.

Oh right, duh.

391: Maybe even a Duke lacrosse player.

||
I like that Google is doing the Nikolai Tesla birthday tribute thing. Because I hate AC.
|>

391: Does it have to be a boy? How about Paris Hilton? She can be convicted of ... something or other ... and later find herself forced to live under a bridge!

The tabloids will explode! The outrage will be palpable! She was just, well, you know, it's kind of weird what she did, but hey! Paris Hilton, for god fucking sake! I mean, really!

(There is a problem with this -- why didn't she just move to Bahrain or something?)

Because I hate AC

WTF? Why? How can you feel strongly about a current?

If you hate AC, why would you like a tribute to Tesla? Do you like being reminded of Tesla's downfall at the hands of DC's exponents?

What game are you playing here?

Probably what you need is someone (white, rich, handsome, with a powerful family) with a sympathetic statutory rape conviction. He was eighteen, she was sixteen, they're still in love but her religious (perhaps non-Christian) parents pressed charges, now he's living under a bridge.

396: Here, hold these leads.....

398: How about: "I never thought I'd be writing you, especially from underneath a bridge. It all started one day when I went to the Dairy Queen and saw the queen of my dreams behind the counter."

399. Here, rtfm first.

396, 397, 399: Oops, I reversed the leads. Because I hate DC (filthy tax freeloaders). And Edison killed my dog.

344: A lot of the criticism seems to come from people who are fairly sure D et al are right, but don't like the implications for emotional reasons and would rather not have to think about them quite so much.

Speaking for myself, at least (and I don't think I'm alone) the criticism is coming from someone who prefers intellectually competent atheism and finds them wanting. Of course, the really nifty thing here is that you can basically go to near-infinite regress in claiming this must be some kind of repressed response to their total correctness -- sort of an Intellectual Credibility of the Gaps routine. That's nicely ironic.

It is true that they stir unwelcome emotions for me, though, and that I would rather not have to think about them quite so much. Those things are totally true.

400 isn't very "Florida" now that I think about it. I'll move it to the beach.

402: I have noticed that I am becoming increasingly prone to mixing up binary choices as I get older. No, younger. Older. One of the two, anyway.

Will you give me $100, JP?

Maybe!

403: Oh, was ajay saying, in effect, "You're only quibbling because you're seekritly uncomfortable with how right they are about god's nonexistence"?

I hadn't realized that.

405: "increasingly prone to mixing up binary choices"

Then I'll give your e-mail to the Ralph Nader people.

I don't do theology like I don't do soduku.

Perhaps I could interest you in this book. It changed my life, and it could change yours.

I don't know what ajay was saying. Dawkins has a large following, but I've never liked him much. Even on topic (evolutionary biology), although I'm not qualified to judge his presentation of data, I often find his associated rhetoric specious.

My feelings about him remind me of how I felt about an organisation called the Spartacus League when I was an activist. But I recognise that the analogy will be incomprehensible to everybody here.

408: As I read it, anyway.

There were many spartacists at Chicago, IIRC.

413. And they were parasites and spoilers, right? But utterly convinced of their own superior rectitude.

411: I'm assuming the Spartacus League isn't a BDSM club with an ancient Rome theme. But it should be.

Completely OT: Can someone point me toward a beginner-level explanation of how to use Ning?

I've been online for going on twenty years but I've never used any kind of social networking software and my usual poke-around-and-see-what-I-can-find technique is not working. I am getting pretty exasperated.

They're a Trot group which operates by picking the most extreme, uncompromising position imaginable on every issue and then heckling everybody who's actually trying to organise some effective action about it for selling out.

412: Mm-hm, that would seem to have been the idea. There should be a name for that sort of argument, in any case.

The Sparts are another cult-like communist group that hangs around college campuses and demonstrations. Like a B-list Revolutionary Communist Party.

Actually, I think the A list for this sort of group is the ANSWER coalition. That would make the Sparts C-list.

417: oh, wait, that's the reverse of the RCP strategy. The RCP does things that look like they accomplish stuff, but only do so to lure young people into their weird worldview.

406: Maybe!

407: Pwned! ... (one of us)

417, 419: So if they dressed up like gladiators and did degrading things to each other for pleasure it'd be a big step up, eh?

From the sound of it they could stand to have their shindigs crashed by Leathermen. Or at least pranksters dressed like gladiators.

423. The vision is entrancing. A friend got sucked into the Sparts and didn't speak to me or anybody on the left she'd known before (there's a pattern here, believe me), but she escaped/came to her senses, and I remember talking to her about the experience.

Apparently they're obliged to go everywhere in pairs, like a certain kind of missionary, to ensure they adhere to the party line. My friend realised she'd had enough the time she needed to go to the toilet and her partner insisted in coming in with her (presumably in case there was some Marcyite deviationist waiting in the stall to lure her away).

No time to look through this entire comment thread, and someone else was probably there first, but the brilliant Chris Rock bit on affirmative action and mediocrity seems to be very relevant.

Re: Spartacists et al., I've lived in France, but man, I'm still not used to seeing or hearing about different varieties of the far left arguing with each other. Don't they have bigger worries, like the right-of-center leadership of the more left-wing major party??? Crazy. They don't know how lucky they are.

Maybe her partner just wanted to get up to some hanky-panky.

And they were parasites and spoilers, right? But utterly convinced of their own superior rectitude.

The latter is right but I can't speak to the former, never having really interacted with them. I grouped them with the LaRouchies, basically.

427. Had that been the case, I assure you she would have been relieved, or possibly delighted. But no. I don't think the Sparts do hanky-panky. Petty-bourgeois, it is, your hanky-panky.

Cyrus. Well, exactly. Which is why "new atheist" purists, to return to our sheep, get on my wick with their emphasis on trying to ridicule "accommodationist" secularists and theistic scientists. There's a bigger problem out there, guys.

426: This is the major criticism of the ANSWER coalition: people, you are alienating your natural allies. Cut it out. I actually have no idea whether ANSWER has mellowed out in the last couple of years.

ANSWER is interesting -- they're much more effective than other groups at staging events, so they get out in front at organizing anti-war rallies. They're also not terribly effective at promoting their ideological discipline, so during the run-up to the Iraq war they very effectively organized rallies thousands strong, while only alienating people who pay close attention to their ideological positions. There was some schmuckiness between them and Rabbi Michael Lerner, but otherwise I seem to remember them doing a pretty good job.

431: I don't remember the details, and am about to head out for a while, but the anti-war rallies they organized wound up with several groups essentially left out, if not actually boycotting, the events. If I remember correctly, their platform included a position on Israel/Palestine that quite a few people were uncomfortable with. They could easily have dropped that, but wouldn't.

Basically, they refused to let the anti-war rallies be single-issue: anti-war. Nobody has a problem with ending racism, either, obviously, but Israel/Palestine is a separate issue.

431,432: Yeah, I was pretty resentful that if I wanted to be part of the only thousands-of-people-strong rallies in my area, I had to be publicly photographed* as part of an event that included speakers on the I/P issue that I was completely, utterly not on board with.

OTOH, I never lost a job or an opportunity because of it, so things could be worse.

*There were a million people with cameras around; it's not like you could politely go up to each one of them and say "Please don't take my picture."

You could wear a mask.

If you were sponsered by Nike, they would do it for you.

You could wear a mask.

Good point. But I didn't feel cowardly or playful, which is what masks suggest to me.

Interestingly, I did get an e-mail after one of the protests from a man who had taken my picture as part of a group. He had found me through another picture on another blog (which was linked to my name). It was a cordial exchange and he seemed reasonably likeminded, but it was a strange reminder of how completely non-private even a crowd of thousands can be.

432: This was the price you paid for thoughtfulness and attention. It was amply clear that the crowd was there against the war.

I am a fan of message discipline, and I agree that a narrower message would have been more effective. The requirement for that is a stronger non-ideological anti-war group. The people who care the most and are the most effective at organizing against the war carry some baggage around with them. If you don't have the time and the friends to outmuscle the ideologues, I think the smart money is always on going where the crowd is without worrying too much that you're endorsing a complicated message. I mean it's ammo for Fox News etc. but they'll always find some guy with a sign and you can't stop that.

437. Dead right. In my conscious lifetime there have been three spectacularly good mobilisations in Britain: against against nuclear weapons proliferation, against British involvement in Vietnam, and against the rise of Fascism in the 1970/80s. The heavy lifting was done by the Communist Party in the first case, and two different Trot groups in the others. They were successful because on each occasion the outfit in question downplayed its own views and made common cause with liberals, Quakers and anybody who wanted in.

But of course there were always the people who wanted to prove the connection to their pet cause. If they brought enough people to the party, they got on the platform. That's politics. And malicious people could always misreport the events. But you still had to be there, because everybody at home really understood what the issue was.

(And then there were the Sparts.)

I'd be an agnostic atheist if I cared.

Yeah, this. Whether God exists or not just isn't an interesting or useful question.

439 HURTS MY FEELINGS

I'm slightly uncomfortable with the "scientists don't think about how science works" bit, but the thread seems to be dead. Hooray!

re: 441

[somewhat Beck's style]

In my experience, having taught philosophy of science to scientists, they don't, not really.

Views about particular aspects of scientific methodology, yes; often very sophisticated metascientific views about those concrete/specific debates about methodology that are 'live' in their discipline. But, broader more general thinking? Not so much. [Contentiously] that's not to say that they don't think they do but it's relative. It also, and I have only the crudest anecdotal evidence for this, seems to vary a bit across disciplines.

I know this thread has gone to join the putative choirs invisible, but the these two current posts on Werdna's blog are great and relevant to the later parts of it.

re: 443

Wow. I actually read that thing with Grayling in the paper, it was pretty embarassing. All the more so because his book on Berkeley is, I think, one of the best works of that type I've ever read.