Christian Life 31 - On Comments

 According to the Stats page, I've had 80 views so far today (and I'm typing at 3:00 in the afternoon).  This is amazing, as my average daily view count is closer to 1/2.  Further, that means that either I have more than one viewer, or someone has viewed some pages multiple times, since there are only 78 posts on this thing (this will make 79).  So, whoever you are, welcome!  I'm glad you came out to play today!

I'm hoping that, at some point, someone decides to comment, since my original intention in creating this blog was to stimulate conversation.  If that happens, might I make a request that comments be polite, articulate and well intended?  By way of a bad example, let me describe a situation I endured yesterday.

I was attending a staff office party - not my staff, not my office.  I was rather a third wheel.  I'm not even exactly sure why I was invited except that I happened to be in the building on other business when the party commenced.  All of that notwithstanding, I found myself engaged in a rather intriguing conversation with a delightful sister who was waxing philosophically, much to my felicity.  At one point, I mentioned the distinction I have discussed at length on these pages between Eastern and Western philosophies.  In an almost palliative tone, she reminded me of Native American beliefs and how strongly they differ from European ideologies and can hardly be thought of as Western.

Now, her point about Native American beliefs is not wrong.  There is a huge difference between the ideologies of the Iroquois and the Teuton.  However, to use this distinction as a corrective in reference to Western v. Eastern philosophy left me more than a bit puzzled.

The use of the "Eastern" and "Western" labels pre-date Columbus' voyages, so did not originally account for Native American beliefs.  That aside, it can certainly be said that the traditional use of this distinction for ideological idiosyncrasies is an amazing display of Eurocentricity, but so is the supposed corrective.  The redress heavily implies that the Americas are, geographically speaking, west of West, but this is only so when viewed from an Afro-European point of view.  From an Oriental state, the Americas would be east of East.  It rather depends on which ocean one intends to cross.  The earth is, after all, round.  At some point east becomes west and vice versa.  So, the admonishment against Eurocentricity is itself Eurocentric.  As much as I love her, I'm afraid my dear sister sounded rather silly in her correction.

I'm hardly one to cast aspersions in this regard.  I don't have any desire to count how many times I've walked away from a conversation with egg on my own face, a few of them quite recent.  Let my sister's story (and mine), then, serve as a warning to would-be commentators: try your best not to sound silly!  ☺

Pax

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

All Good Things...

When I posted my summary of Hollow Faith , my counter indicated that it was the 99th post I've made on this blog.  A nice, round 100 seems like a good place to stop, so I decided to come up with one more bag of hot air for posterity.  As I type the first draft of this paragraph, I have no idea what I may have left unsaid, so perhaps I should focus on a conspectus of what has gone before. To my non-believing readers: 1. First off, congratulations!  Your skepticism at least implies a certain level of intelligence.  Good for you!  Please go further.  Look inside yourself.  Ferret out any assumptions or biases that may be subconsciously clouding your judgment.  A materialistic or humanistic bias does not represent an improvement over a deistic one.  Don't let it cause you to dismiss the fortuity of a Greater Power out of hand.  Stay open to possibilities.  Even Carl Sagan, quoting Martin Rees and others, famously said that "absence of e...
Read more

Hollow Faith 5 - Meism

I felt a lot of sympathy for Justice and Taylor Swift when their MTV Awards wins were interrupted by Kanye West's impromptu rants designed to upstage their acceptance speeches in 2006 and 2009, respectively.  How rude.  How utterly narcissistic.  My sympathy was somewhat tempered when, in 2014, Swift's "Blank Space" landed on the Rolling Stone's list of "Most Narcissistic Songs of All Time."  Dr. Nathan DeWall, in his paper Tuning in to Psychological Change  (2011), says that narcissism is on the rise in popular music.  However, unlike the PMRC, who attribute the noticeable trends in youth to the influence of popular music, DeWall thinks it's the other way round; that popular music doesn't cause cultural trends in youth but reflects them. Would someone please tell me who the heck Paris Hilton, Nicole Richie, and Kim Kardashian actually are?  These three women are apparently wildly famous for being wildly famous.  None of them sing, dance, act, ow...
Read more

Christian Life 35 - Solving for X

I expect responses to this one.  Don't disappoint me. Imagine this: a mathematician approaches a blackboard covered with an impossibly complex equation; hundreds of numbers, dozens of functions and an array of variables.  The mathematician is to solve for x .  Now imagine that the mathematician determines that the solution to the equation must be x=0 before even picking up the chalk.  If x happens to not equal zero, then they have just doomed themselves to not only spending the rest of their life attempting to manipulate the equation in a vain effort to make x=0 , but also seeing to it that it is a very frustrating life in the effort.  After some time, the most casual observer could see that the project was doomed and would consider the mathematician a fool for persisting in his efforts. I believe this is how so many of us approach life.  When we reach the age at which we feel the need to develop a personal philosophy and examine the various aspects of li...
Read more