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Dear Netflix Executives,

I saw recently that you decided to cancel Sense8 because the demand was not as high as you expected. I’d like to take some time, as a viewer of Sense8, to explain two reasons for the low viewership, and to make a plea for you to continue the series.

First, Sense8 has 8 interweaving storylines, frequently done in 8 different locations. This is very well woven together; I could easily follow all eight storylines from episode to episode. That might be the reason for the initially high ratings for Sense8, which, presumably, you thought would result in high ratings for Season 2.

The problem with Season 2 is that, unlike your other shows, the complex intricacy of Season 1 meant I had a hard time, initially, remembering what happened when Season 2 came out an entire 2 years later. I did not have that problem with shows like Orange is the New Black, because although there are several story lines, they all take place in the same location and context, for the most part. And, again, you waited 2 eyears before putting Season 2 online — giving us a lot of time to forget key parts of the full, complex storyline.

I would been ready to watch Season 2 much earlier (like many of my friends) if there had been a deep, 4-7 minute recap before Season 2. Because this was nowhere to be seen, I watched an hour of Season 2 and didn’t have any idea what was going on. So I watched the last episode of Season 1, and 30 minutes in I could tell that wouldn’t help give me a refresher. So after 30 additional minutes of research, I found a source on Wikipedia that gave me an overview, and I invested another 45 minutes reading the overview, clicking on the names to look up pictures, and recalling everything that happened in Season 1. And then I eagerly began Season 2.

Not everyone had that time, and I was not alone in this struggle.  In the single recap video online (which consists solely of brief, uncontextualized cut scenes), there are these comments:

“anyone else loved season 1 and completely f*cking forgot the whole plot by now? No point in watching season 2 since i literally dont know anything,f*ck,now i need to rewach….goddamnit why did they wait for so long between seasons”

“This refresher made me realize I need a more in-depth refresher. I forgot almost everything that happened in season 1 lol.”

One of the items that made a similar show, Game of Thrones, retain its continuity across seasons in spite of multiple story arcs and backgrounds are extremely accessible overviews, like this one (with 5.2 million views — indicating many needed a refresher), this one (with nearly 2 million views), this one (with 4.1 million views), this one (with 1.9 million views)…etc. The thing is, recaps wouldn’t be terribly difficult to do, especially for a show in which you’re already spending millions of dollars; several popular people with proven talent on YouTube, for example, would be honored to do a high-quality, extremely popular recap for around $2000 and thus save a multimillion-dollar show.  It could STILL save the show, and make it accessible to the younger crowd that would be most likely to watch it.

Second, Sense8 shows us that we are connected on a fundamental level, and that’s the most beautiful sentiment I have ever seen in any show. When I watch most shows, I sit and read them straight through from the beginning to the end, hungering for something that doesn’t fulfill me. But Sense8 breaks into my actual life. After I watch an episode, I want to go out and live what I learned in the episode before coming back for more. I want to bask in it a while, and then return for the next one.

I’ve heard from my friends that they feel much the same way. This is why they watch the series slowly.

Mr. Rogers once appealed to Congress to save his show with words that reflect my sentiments:

I’m very much concerned, as I know you are, about what’s being delivered to our children in this country. And I’ve worked in the field of child development for six years now, trying to understand the inner needs of children. We deal with such things as — as the inner drama of childhood. We don’t have to bop somebody over the head to…make drama on the screen. We deal with such things as getting a haircut, or the feelings about brothers and sisters, and the kind of anger that arises in simple family situations. And we speak to it constructively.

And this is what — This is what I give. I give an expression of care every day to each child, to help him realize that he is unique. I end the program by saying, “You’ve made this day a special day, by just your being you. There’s no person in the whole world like you, and I like you, just the way you are.” And I feel that if we in public television can only make it clear that feelings are mentionable and manageable, we will have done a great service for mental health. I think that it’s much more dramatic that two men could be working out their feelings of anger — much more dramatic than showing something of gunfire. I’m constantly concerned about what our children are seeing, and for 15 years I have tried in this country and Canada, to present what I feel is a meaningful expression of care.

We live in such a cruel, intolerant world today here in the United States. Each episode is a badly needed oasis.

Your show tells that kid in us who is insecure, who is afraid of their uniqueness because it is scared that it will keep them from developing relationships with other people, that it’s OK. We can connect, we can accept others, and there are millions of jaw-dropping opportunities discover and recognize the beauty in who we are. And I know you’re concerned about dollars and cents, primarily. But we need this show. Now, more than ever, I need the confidence — we need the confidence — of a vision in which we are profoundly connected by a bond of mutual love, respect, and care. I watch TV shows and movies thirsty for that concept; this show satisfies my thirst…until I need more. It’s not just a show I watch; it’s a show I can live, that sustains it. And I watch it more slowly because I don’t want it to end for another two years.

I’m sorry that I did that now. I’m sorry that many of my friends and many of your patrons did it. But we couldn’t help ourselves; you made a series that was so beautiful we wanted to savor every moment. But we would have watched it; it just would take us awhile, because we wanted to live it, too.

That’s what it feels like. It feels — and I’m not exaggerating — like you took a bit of our lives away from us. And you did it on National Pride Day, a day when we needed that part of our lives most.

I was angry. So angry that, like many of my friends, I thought of ending my subscription. But I still have hope that you’ll give this show another chance. Or at least give it closure so that people will see this meaningful series for generations to come. Because now, with the cliffhanger ending, very few people are going to want to watch it. At least one episode of closure and a recap for season 1 could save the enormous investment you’ve made in the project to date.

I’d like to end by sharing you with the scene that impacted me most in Season 1.

[youtube]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TRJYCW_dCN4[/youtube]

With tears, I want to thank you for that moment.

Please don’t let this end. Save the dream; please don’t let it die.

Thank you for your consideration.

If you want to protest the cancellation, you can (in order of influence):

1. Suggest the show by logging into Netflix, going to “https://help.netflix.com/en/titlerequest” and typing in “Sense8 Season 3.”
2. Tweet to them at “@netflix” — apparently these Tweets are sent to content creators. Also, get the hashtag #sense8season3 trending.
3. Comment on the Facebook page of Netflix.
4. Call the Netflix number at 1-866-579-7172. You may get better access if you log in to your account on a desktop, go to the link https://help.netflix.com/en, scroll to the bottom of the page to the “Want to Contact” bar, and use your access code under “Call Us.”
5. Start a live chat with them (using the same steps as the last sentence above, except press “Start Live Chat” instead of “Call Us”). 

I’ve been thinking somewhat carefully about the myth of God, and I’m wondering if the best path forward for us who are fighting it is not to focus on getting rid of it, but on focusing on the various ways the different concepts based on God or even assuming the absence of God actually enable or disable people to create results that reflect their best intentions.

The best way to start to explain why, I think, is to provide you with the way I view the Bible. This stance is not new; it is one I have held consistently since the day that I left Christianity.

In my view, the books of the Bible were, for the most part, written by people who were trying to figure out the organizing principles for existence, morality, and well-being. Obviously, each of these items are important. We need to keep trying to figure out the nature of existence, we need to keep improving the moral structures that keep us from killing each other, and we need to be able to figure out what “well-being” is in order to ensure it for ourselves and ensure others can access it as well. So the writers of the Bible did not err in their intentions (again, for the most part). They erred in the context they constructed for the expression of those intentions.

I’ll pause here to point out that admitting that the intentions were positive, at least on some level, is not to say that the results of the intentions were positive, or that the intentions were expressed in a context of accurate information. For example, if one intends to make their best friend happy by pushing them off a cliff so they can fly, I can say that the intention was good while clearly stating that the results are negative because the context was inaccurate.

This is very important. If I go to talk to that cliff-pusher and scold them for their intention of making someone happy, they’ll go away thinking (if I’ve succeeded) that it’s wrong to make someone happy…and possibly live a life that’s even worse. And they’ll still make errors, because they’ll still think that pushing people off a cliff makes them fly. So, if at all possible, what I need to do is rely on their good intention to show them how what they’ve done has given them a negative result. Make sense? Awesome. Now let’s go back to religion.

When I was young, like many ex-Christians, I learned that I should love my neighbor as myself. I learned that Love is the most important virtue, I learned to be kind to other people, I learned that it was healthy to empathize and have compassion on other people, I learned that there is a common bond between human beings that should be respected, and I learned that patience is often a virtue. I learned that sticking up for the vulnerable was a good thing, as well.

And I’m not going to lie to you: much of that felt beautiful. It was a beautiful center of purity and love and beauty that completely enthralled and enriched every part of my being the closer that I got to it. If I’m going to be dead honest, it still does.  I think — or strongly suspect — that embracing that beautiful aspect of the intentions behind much of Christian thought was somewhat healthy.

Then there was something else. There was a need for security, an exclusionary aspect, an “us vs. them” gloss that ran consistently through the Bible. God is the ultimate tool of exclusion, the ultimate enforcer of the “us vs. them,” because God puts all of us on the side of “them” and it is only through God, in Christian circles, that we can ever be on the other side. And this God is the gateway to all the attractiveness in Christian thought, which was really the primary goal, anyway.

When I look at this whole scheme, it makes me angry (because people have used God as a bullshit way to exclude me), but there’s a lot right in it. Loving people is where most of the beauty in the world comes from, but we also need to exclude unhealthy activities that will ruin that love. For example, you can love a murderer, but if you want a loving community  to thrive you can’t just let the murderer go around killing people. Both of these features — the sense of security, and the sense that love is important — are important features. So Christianity takes that basic desire for security, and puts it in an inaccurate context.

If we attack religion, I think it’s important to realize that much of religious thought is driven by these elements. The problem, for the most part, is not that people don’t want to love, or that they don’t want to protect their communities.  The problem is that people express these intentions in an inaccurate context that gives them results that run contrary to those original intentions.

It’s complicated. I think that attacking the intentions — the basic intentions of love and security, for example — will be a losing battle. And really, I don’t think we want to win it. We want people to have a lot of those same healthy, natural intentions. The context is difficult to attack in Christianity because the context is often seen as protecting and enabling the the expression of the intentions. Attack the context, and people will think that you’re attacking their sense of love and security, which they aren’t willing to give up.

But there is a way out, I think. Something that tends to give Christians pause.

Let’s go back to the cliff analogy again. Say the guy who pushed his friend over the cliff because he thought it would make his friend fly is about to push someone else off, and it’s your job to convince him it’s a bad idea. You can’t appeal to his intentions; his intentions are positive. It’s hard for you to criticize the context conceptually, because he doesn’t want to believe that he killed his friend, who he loves. He’ll think you’re a monster for even suggesting it.

You have to show him the results. You have to show him his friend on the rocks, bleeding out. He may protest at first, but if you force him to deal with that…then you might make some headway.

Here’s the deal: Although most ex-Christians I talk to eventually left God because the evidence was against his existence, the doubt didn’t start out that way, in most cases. Most of the time, they saw that the results of their belief created results that didn’t match their original intentions, in one way or another. And seeing those results forced them to re-examine the context in which they expressed their intentions.

I think that’s how Christianity has the best shot at dying. Yes, showing why God doesn’t exist can help people who have doubts. But planting those doubts requires a focus on results — a focus on how the intentions of Christians don’t match up to the reality. Yes, they may try to cloak rationales in Christianese, but it’s difficult to deny results important to you when they’re staring you in the face.

That’s partly why I’ve become less interested in getting rid of God, and more interested in making sure that our best intentions are reflected in the results of our actions. Where they are not, I call the discrepancy out — whether it is a social issue or a religious issue. Because, honestly, I don’t really care all that much what language you use to discuss the context — what I’m primarily worried about is making sure our best intentions are reflected in the results we actually create, as consistently as possible.

I think one example of how this works in science is expressed in the Sean Carroll vs. William Lane Craig debate, which I think most would agree Craig lost. Craig focused on playing in the sandbox and talking about how God is a plausible theory. But Carroll argued that God does not provide the results a scientific theory is looking to do, which is to have explanatory power that allows us to predict and effectively affect future events.

[youtube]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wqKObSeim2w[/youtube]

So, anyway, that’s my focus now — on showing when the results of actions don’t necessarily match up to their intentions, more than on going all-out to prove the intentions or the context wrong (although proving the context wrong is important for those who have initial doubts).

No, this does not mean I’m not a “firebrand,” necessarily. Because it’s often not enough to simply mention the results. Sometimes you have to scream them at the top of your lungs, sometimes you have to show it so firmly that people can’t ignore it, and sometimes you have to insist that people look at it. But I think that, all things considered, attacking the fact that the intentions don’t match up to the results is going to naturally — if indirectly — be more effective on changing the context initially than attacking the context, itself.

This also makes atheism, defined strictly as “a lack of belief in God or gods,” a bit uninteresting to me. And I’m not alone than this; almost every atheist YouTuber (with very few exceptions) who went gung-ho against God early in their channels, for example, has realized that saying you don’t believe in God…really doesn’t mean much, by itself. What is far more interesting is your answer to the broader question of how we can better ensure that our best intentions can be reflected in the results of our actions — which is pretty much my focus these days. It just seems like a concrete and meaningful pursuit that mirrors, in many ways, the way I became an atheist, myself.

Thanks for reading.

PS: I have a Patreon, in case you want to support this blog.

[youtube]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YrLk4vdY28Q[/youtube]

Lyrics

On a surface level, of course, the famous Leonard Cohen song above is about the story of David and Bathsheba, and Delilah and Solomon. But these are allegories for the way he, a deeply Jewish Buddhist monk, thought about God. And it actually resonates quite a bit with me, although I’m an atheist.

You can see that his concept of God is different from the traditional concept at the beginning of the fifth verse:

You say I took the name in vain

Leonard Cohen was a deeply spiritual Jew. He was also a Buddhist Monk. Why? If you listen to his Zen Master Eidi Roshi answer the question, “Does God Exist?” you see that this “God” is what most Christians would call an idea…Christians would call its believers “atheists,” most likely:

If you mention God as creator of heaven and earth, or creator of human beings, then Buddhism will not agree with that way of thinking.

However, there is a term called “Dharma,” which is another word for saying “Truth.” So, Buddhism undoubtedly accepts the existence of something unnameable, something greater than…something great. And if that isn’t different from God, I have no objection to calling it God. In fact, I often say “God.” But not as a creator. One of the really serious problems in talking to Western people is this dualism. As long as we are speaking in English, and as long as we are talking about this kind of subject, as long as you use dualistic questions, I’m in trouble. So you say “bigger than,” “stronger than” — but you can say “smaller than,” “weaker than” if you prefer that. But I assume, in your mind, bigger is better, and stronger is better too. And therefore we are small, but something bigger would be more powerful. Something like that is your preconceived idea, right? So the English language itself forces us to use dualistic terms.

[youtube]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wL1V1eURgDI[/youtube]

Leonard Cohen’s story is about seeing this kind of God-concept as the center of his Judaism. But is that corrupting the religion? Is this agnostic/atheistic center at the heart of this God-concept…is calling that “God” misleading? Did he take the name of “God” in vain? He answers:

But I don’t even know the name

It’s honest. What is the “right” way to think of “God”? It’s unclear to him, and what he once called “God” is hard to describe. I feel the same — that feeling I felt as a Christian is not connected to what people told me was “God” and never was — so it’s hard to determine what inspires those feelings. Although I can figure out the psychology of it, it still seems a mystery to me when I feel it; I still, an atheist now, am somewhat in awe of it. Perhaps, to borrow from another part of the song, he, too, did think it was connected to a concrete God (“there was a time you let me know/ what’s real and going on below”) but now, in the light of the beauty of the world that showed him its complexity (“her beauty and the moonlight overthrew you”) he can’t access that “God” or even remotely understand it (“but now you never show it to me do you”). So if he can’t pinpoint the source of that inspiration as a distinct and perfect, Holy Being, how would he begin to respond to the charge that he’s mischaracterizing the god-concept that inspires his feelings?

And then he says:

But if I did, well really, what’s it to ya?

Like, why do the different concepts of God matter? We may have different conceptions of “God” but there’s a beauty and light in several conceptions. So why would one care that it was not connected to a distinct and specific definition of “God”? He says this in the next lines.

“There’s a blaze of light in every word
It doesn’t matter which you heard
The holy or the broken Hallelujah.”

The “holy” hallelujah is, in the Hebrew, “set apart” — it’s distinct from the world and above it. Like an ideal of overarching and distinct perfection and purity. And there’s “blaze of light” in it, something that inspires intense devotion.

The “broken” Hallelujah is what happens when the “set apart” hallelujah fails to be separated and distinct. It’s a Hallelujah because it still has that feel, that aura, but the world has “broken” it. Like the beauty of Bathsheba broke into David’s worship of a holy God, and yet it was a beautiful Hallelujah in those moments of connection with her, for him. Same with Samson and Delilah.

This also explains the verse,

Maybe there’s a God above
But all I ever learned from love
Was how to shoot at someone who outdrew you

That’s saying that maybe this holy, “set apart” God exists…but all that he ever learned from loving this God was rituals and meditations aimed at reaching something that was constantly beyond you, because the beauty of your experience juts in and you can’t escape it, you can’t “shoot” beyond it to really touch that ideal. The meditation in religion is the attempt to do that. It’s the look of triumph, at times, and of confident declarations, but it’s all an attempt — at least for Cohen — that is never fully realized.

Which is why the verse continues:

It’s not a cry you can hear at night
It’s not some pilgrim who’s seen the light
It’s a cold and it’s a broken Hallelujah.

The rest of the song seems to clearly play on the concept of this broken Hallelujah after that. It’s what I feel…this reverence, but not segregated from the world, something I’m trying to reach. It’s an awe-inspiring beauty haunting my experience that at the same time feels like something cold, raw, and flesh-and-blood real.

Looking at the first verse:

I heard there was a sacred chord
That David played and it pleased the Lord
But you don’t really care for music, do ya?

That “you” is that set apart “God” — who doesn’t care for music, because He is set apart from His creation. Or, alternatively, it’s the person he’s talking to who created the “brokenness” in the Hallelujah…and maybe, in that broken Hallelujah that is broken by the beauty of your experience, the agents of that experience do care for music and aren’t separated from it. So that doubt is the “ya.”

Well it goes like this:
The fourth, the fifth, the minor fall and the major lift
The baffled king composing Hallelujah

The variety in music — from “minor” to “major” — being composed by the King shows he is having a hard time creating truly Holy Music for a God set apart from everything earthly, supposedly. He’s baffled at how to proceed in his project.

[youtube]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x–yddOolRQ[/youtube]

But more than that: the production of it. You can hear his devotion and haunting sense of worship in every word. It’s a deeply personal song for him.

And the words are so genius that they have been applied to many different situations. It’s not a “holy” song with just one meaning. It’s a “broken Hallelujah” that means something different to everyone who hears it.

For me, it’s pretty much my life story, up to this point, more or less. I came into literature trying to show how all those stories connected to a holy God, but I found that a holy God didn’t make sense; by it’s nature, a set apart God can’t be distinct from its creation. And in that confusion, I left Christianity, and I’ve been singing a broken Hallelujah ever since.

I think that this is what people often don’t understand. I did not leave Christianity in spite of it, but because of it. Like, I went THROUGH the praise of God to reach my atheism on the other side; in falling in love with the people the concrete beauty in the world — which I found because I found because I was searching it for evidence of God — the “Hallelujah” dedicated solely to the Christian God got drawn away from the concept of something “holy” or set apart and distinct from his “creation”…and towards the beautifully broken beauty of the real world. But it was, I think, my belief in God that originally made a lot of it seem beautiful in the first place.

So I’ve been trying, ever since I left, to convince people that I was being as honest and straightforward as I knew how — I was looking for beauty in God, and found its source in the “real world.” I’ve been saying that I was not trying to “trick” people; my love for God was never dishonest. It was, in fact, a yearning for a deeper love for God that was my downfall. Or as the lyrics say, “I told the truth, I didn’t come to fool ya.”

To many — and, in darker moments,even to myself at times — it feels like it all went wrong. I left Christianity. I left a possibly illustrious career in Christendom. I left an Almighty God I felt cared about me who turned out to be a fictional monster, and a happy-ever-after in paradise. And yet…I was still looking for that touch, that hard meeting with reality, that I had been looking for all my life, so I could see its beauty. So even though I failed in a way, I feel that, in a deeper and broader way, I’m finding the source of what caused me to praise God in the reality I experience and embrace in all its confusing, contradictory conceptualizations of a concrete reality.

As the song puts it, “And even though it all went wrong, I’ll stand before the Lord of Song with nothing on my tongue but Hallelujah.”

In other words, if there is beauty, if there is love, if there is that “song” at the center of all our dreams and utopias…It’s a cold and it’s a broken Hallelujah.

 

On an even broader plane…it’s dawned on me, lately, that for most of my life I’ve been trying to locate the ONE opinion all men should have. The ONE right way to think. The ONE perfect God-Concept, be it conservative Christianity, strident anti-theism, Marxism, strong gender norms…a zillion others. I’m not saying that those are wrong, necessarily (although some are). I’m saying that the reality that kept threatening to “break [my] throne” was that I kept seeing glimpses of the cold and broken hallelujah in all of these concepts. And the world got really complex in its beauty. I see the ugliness of conservative Christianity –but, to be honest, I see glimpses of beauty there, too. And even beauty in the ugliness, as disturbing as that might be, from a certain angle. And this can be very confusing.

And this song seems to realize that.

Sure. I still have ideals. I still am against conservative Christianity. But my point is that there is beauty everywhere, in all kinds of unexpected places. Again, it’s why I left God. I entered the field of literature trying to show that there was a God who bound all stories. I left because it was a game of control. I was trying to capture a beauty more complex and problematic and multifaceted and contradictory and confusing and cold and broken and beautiful than I had ever anticipated.

And right now, I guess there are tears running down on my face because I’m realizing that I will never fully find what I looked for all my life. But then again, I think that this cold realization also releases me to see the constantly confusing and mysterious and wavering and conflicting and beautiful and ugly shades of color that have been my life when I was looking for one brilliant white. Like, that realization that I would never find what I was looking for is the realization that I was looking for. And that left me free to dance through the broken beauty that is my life.

Hallelujah…

Thank you for reading.

PS: I have a Patreon, in case you want to support this blog.

Further Reading:

If you want to read more about what I’ve written about my relationship, as an atheist, to religious people, imagery, and questions of beauty/meaning, check out the blog posts below.

The Atheist Version of Total Depravity

A Reaction to Penn Jillette’s Discussion on Atheist Prayer

An Atheist’s Heaven

Atheist Confessions: I Wish There Was A Heaven

4 Ways My Christian Upbringing Helped Me Become The Atheist I Am Today

Advice For Consuming Leftovers (Or, Thoughts On The Words I’ll Leave Behind)

My Religious Dad, His Anti-Theist Son, And The Struggle To Love And Understand

“Everyone In The World Is Christ, And They Are All Crucified”

Is Obama An Atheist?

If you want to keep reading my posts when they come out, click “Subscribe.” Thanks again for visiting.

I want to show you something.

[youtube]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6w34zsEWNys[/youtube]

I’d like to believe this was staged, but unfortunately I’ve seen this all too often. Notice, too, that in the clip above many of those who stopped the white child from getting punched were black.

I think there is a problem here that contributes, partially, to facts like the black-on-black crime murder rate being so high (although that’s not the entire reason — that’s a complex issue that also has to do with a history of police so racist and abusive, black communities had to create their own systems of justice). The way we treat each other, I think, reflects the way society told us to think about ourselves. There is a well-documented history of white America telling us that we are inferior and primal due to the color of our skin. Going all the way back to Thomas Jefferson and beyond. Because that’s what they needed to keep us under control.

I used to believe the lie. I used to think that I had to be different than all those other black people who had a victim mentality, so my shame prompted me to state that, unlike them, I wasn’t a victim. But the more I study the issue, the more I see that a “victim” mentality, in the sense of black people proclaiming their anger at being American society’s victims, isn’t the problem. Even when there is a type of “victim mentality,” it seems based on a feeling of helplessness and profound inferiority, not from a feeling of pride and a demand for dignity and equal treatment.

Let me use an example.

Say there’s an abuse victim. There are a couple reactions to abuse that show low self-esteem. One is to deny that you’re being treated unfairly, and take the abuse. I think that I saw this mentality in myself, and I suspect I’m not alone. So what if black skin makes you a second-class citizen in the United States? Everyone is telling you that you deserve that status, so you start to accept it. And then that acceptance in yourself leads you to treat other black individuals as second-class citizens, as well.

Another is to admit that you’re being treated unfairly, but think that you’re uncapable of changing the situation. You can’t win. Everyone around you is telling you, in various ways, that black people tend to be inferior, and somewhere along the line, it got under your skin.

[youtube]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3r1ssg1LIt4[/youtube]

And so you, like an abused person, doesn’t ask for help. Because you’re convinced it won’t work, you give up.

And because that, many of us don’t ask for reforms. In both situations — the one where you accept, without protest, your position as a second-class citizen; and the one where you think that there is no way out of being a second-class citizen because the powers that be define you as that to your core — the problem is the same. Low self-esteem.

If we have pride, if we know that we deserve to be treated a certain way, we will be strengthened. We will demand equal treatment and respect from society, and give that respect to each other.

When I hear someone (usually, but not always, a white person) say or imply, for example, that black people are naturally violent because of high murder rates, I see them as perpetuating the problem. The cause of the murder rates, the high child abuse rates, and other crimes against other black people is not because we aren’t hard enough on each other. It’s not because we don’t put enough pressure on each other. It’s not because we treat each other, or society treats us, better than we deserve to be treated. That doesn’t make any sense. If we loved each other, we wouldn’t hurt each other.

We do it because we have been told to hate the color of our skin, and that causes us to project the hatred of our own skin on other people who wear it. It’s a catharsis.

I used to feel this way. Yeah, I grew up in the suburbs, with mostly white friends. But I hated my black skin — especially as it was connected to all those other demeaned black people, always embarrassing us. I wanted to embrace “white” culture as much as possible. And then I read about our history. And I realized that I had been lied to. I realized that my history is full of heroes. I realized that they ways that people had tried to destroy my skin color, and my pride in who I was, was based on a sham, a false story that had been used repeatedly to undermine and steal the lives from millions of people. And I began to see the dignity of black individuals, forged often under horrifying abuse. I read about our history, and as I did, I found pride in my skin, as opposed to shame.

And when that happened, something else happen. I didn’t feel mere sorrow. I didn’t feel helplessness. I didn’t feel inferiority.

I felt anger.

As James Baldwin once said, “”To be a Negro in this country and to be relatively conscious is to be in a rage almost all the time.” I was furious. How dare they treat us as second-class citizens. We had dignity. We had value. We had earned our rights to be full citizens of America, to be equals, to be respected, although it had been clearly denied to use time and time again. We had become victims, yes, but we did not deserve to be victims. We had lost respect, but we deserved respect.

And what happened, then, is that I started to defend and respect other black individuals, too, much more.

I think that this is how we heal. We have to press for equality, for equal treatment, out of a deep sense of pride. And if we look for that pride from white people, I don’t think we’re going to get it. We have to find that pride to fight for equality — for ourselves, our children, and every black person we love — in ourselves. Like they always tell you — when a gas mask is provided, put it on yourself first, and then you can effectively put it on others. You have to save your own sense of dignity and conviction that you deserve nothing less than equality. You have to dig deep in yourself and realize that there is a pride you can have in your heritage, because our children will likely only have that dignity if we can find it in ourselves.

Yes, to any white people, if you’re reading this, you can do plenty to help marginalized races in this country. You can fight for us through calling out racism where you see it and by showing us common decency and respect. But, fellow black people, when it comes to respecting ourselves, and loving ourselves — not in spite of our black skin, but including and even because of it — the truth is that no one else can do THIS for us…although many black people have shown us how it is done. We built this country under the whip with our blood and tears. We fought from slavery to the goddamn Presidency in elections against candidates who were alive when we weren’t even able to go to their schools. We did this because we believed in ourselves, and we weren’t wrong in that belief.  We will fail to the extent that we stop believing in our value. We have nothing, as a race, to be ashamed of, except shame itself.

I’d like to end with some words from Martin Luther King, Jr.

I come here tonight and PLEAD with you:

Believe in yourself and believe that you’re somebody.

Nobody else can do THIS for us.

No document can do THIS for us.

No Lincolnian emancipation proclamation can do THIS for us.

No Johnsonian civil rights bill can do THIS for us.

If the Negro is to be free, he must move down into the inner resources of his own soul and sign with a pen and ink of self-assertive manhood his OWN emancipation proclamation.

Be proud of our heritage. We don’t have anything to be ashamed of.

Somebody told a lie one day.

They couched it in language. They made everything Black ugly and evil. Look in your dictionaries and see the synonyms of the word “Black.” It’s always something degrading and low and sinister. Look at the word “White,” it’s always something pure, high and clean.

But I want to get the language right tonight.

I want to get the language so right that everyone here will cry out: ‘Yes, I’m Black, I’m PROUD of it. I’m Black and I’m beautiful!’”

[youtube]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Suw_CQ3zfTY[/youtube]

Thanks for reading.

PS. I have a Patreon, in case you want to support what I’m doing.

Further Reading:

I talked more about my own personal struggle with this transition here.

I compared the (false) idea that black culture is a “victim cult” to the idea that atheism is a “victim cult” here, to show the common fallacy in each line of thinking.

I documented (with several links to evidence) continuing discrimination against black people here, here, and here, in response to mischaracterizations of black people from TJ Kirk (aka The Amazing Atheist) that were addressed to me.

I responded to Dylann Roof’s accusation (the infamous Charleston church shooter who shot 12 black people, killing 9) that ‘Black people view everything through a racist lens” with an argument that supports several points I’ve made in this blog post, here.

I write about these issues often — the above links are just the most relevant to this particular post. If you want to see future posts first, subscribe. It’ll also support the blog, which receives an additional 10 cents per new subscriber.

Thank you again for reading.

[youtube]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eb_1NNdf_30[/youtube]

Being black, I’ve found, often means being the face white America sees when it looks at its sins. When most white Americans see my skin, they are usually reminded of every dark blot in our history. The problem of slavery, of segregation, of the drug war, of housing discrimination, employment discrimination, union discrimination, sentencing discrimination…I am the reflection of that.

That’s the best way I can interpret all this hand-wringing self consciousness whenever I talk about those events. Even if I am talking about the triumph of my heritage, it is truly startling, every time, how often white people make it about them.

In a way I get it. Blackness is the fear that there will be a reckoning, the guilt, the denial of the scars and of the pus-draining open sores across the body of this nation.

We will never fully move forward, I think, as long as a part of America insists on lily-white purity and refuses to look at this country’s sins.

They have to accept the problem. Dead on.

I think they use “blackness” to distance themselves, and they assign the label to me to localize the concept in a physical space they can distance from more easily.

But it’s a lie.

You have assigned me your problems, your baggage, your creation, with the word, “black.”

I only deal with it because I have to.

But fundamentally, the problem is not mine.

When I look in the mirror, I feel pride. I feel like the challenges today are ones that can be fought, because of the ones who fought against them yesterday.

You see Thomas Jefferson; I see the slaves he did not free. If you can celebrate July 4th, I can celebrate Frederick Douglass’s legendary speech “What to the Slave Is The Fourth Of July?” –check out this excerpt:

What, to the American slave, is your Fourth of July?

I answer: a day that reveals to him, more than all other days in the year, the gross injustice and cruelty to which he is the constant victim. To him, your celebration is a sham; your boasted liberty, an unholy license; your national greatness, swelling vanity; your sounds of rejoicing are empty and heartless; your denunciation of tyrants, brass-fronted impudence; your shouts of liberty and equality, hollow mockery; your prayers and hymns, your sermons and thanksgivings, with all your religious parade and solemnity, are, to Him, mere bombast, fraud, deception, impiety, and hypocrisy-a thin veil to cover up crimes which would disgrace a nation of savages.

There is not a nation of savages. There is not a nation on the earth guilty of practices more shocking and bloody than are the people of the United States at this very hour.

Go where you may, search where you will, roam through all the monarchies and despotisms- of the Old World, travel through South America, search out every abuse, and when you have found the last, lay your facts by the side of the everyday practices of this nation, and you will say with me that, for revolting barbarity and shameless hypocrisy, America reigns without a rival.

This came from a black slave who had escaped, a fugitive from the law, who had been badly abused growing up…such rhetoric. Such poise. Such courage, to say those words the day after the 4th of July.

You see Abraham Lincoln, and I respect his efforts…but more than that, I respect people like Harriet Tubman. Check out this badass:
[youtube]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VpTf1GFjCd8[/youtube]

And I’ll celebrate W.E.B. Du Bois, the first black person to earn a PhD from Harvard and one of the key founders of the NAACP. And Langston Hughes, the legendary poet who wrote stuff like this:

I, too, sing America.

I am the darker brother.
They send me to eat in the kitchen
When company comes,
But I laugh,
And eat well,
And grow strong.

Tomorrow,
I’ll be at the table
When company comes.
Nobody’ll dare
Say to me,
“Eat in the kitchen,”
Then.

Besides,
They’ll see how beautiful I am
And be ashamed—

I, too, am America.

Indeed. You can’t send this blackness to the kitchen. You can’t dismiss it. You’ll have to admit it — me, and the entire heritage.

And then Zora Neale Hurston, author of Their Eyes Were Watching God, outstanding historian and anthropologist who partnered with Franz Boas, who debunked the myth that race determines intelligence. And then Martin Luther King, Jr., who brought the US to its knees through economic pressure, as well as the courage and dignity Malcolm X gave us — way over and above Thomas Jefferson. The wisdom of James Baldwin. The bravery of Rosa Parks. The words of Toni Morrison and Cornel West and Anthony Pinn and Barak Obama. And so on. Like…there is a powerful history here, with a lot of heroes. People who defied racism to create an influential voice.

It’s a different tradition than a lot of white America loves to recognize, but it’s deeply, distinctly, profoundly American. I wish more white people saw our legendary history when they saw my skin, because I know that as I studied it…my image of myself changed. I began to feel Proud. I began to feel empowered. And yet, it’s hard to tell most white people, because they automatically think it’s about them and their precious white tears. It’s like Great Britain making July 4th into a big debate as to how guilty they should or shouldn’t feel, or resenting our singing of the “Star Spangled Banner,” without realizing that it’s not all about them; it’s about our heritage.

I am not a Problem, and I knowing the history of blackness in America empowers me to no longer see myself as a Problem when I look in the mirror, even if you or others treat me as if I am. My ancestors were the solutions to the problem of discrimination of American citizens several times over.

I healed my own wounds when I realized it wasn’t about white tears — trying to assuage them, or feeling self-conscious about them, or seeing them in the reflection in the mirror, or being the embodiment of a debate over how “proper” white tears are. My black skin has been worn by a long list of my heroes. It gives me pride. It empowers and informs my view of myself and of American history.

And this scares most white (though #notallwhitepeople, obviously) people deeply. As James Baldwin once warned:

When you look the world in the face like you had a right to be here — when you do that…without knowing it, you have attacked the entire power structure of the white world.

If I, one fine day, discover that I have been lied to all the years of my life, and my mother and farther were being lied to; if I discover that though I was bought bred and sold like a mule, that I never really was a mule; if I discover that I was never really happy picking all that cotton and digging all those mines to make other people rich; and if I discover that those songs the darkies sang and sing were not just the innocent expressions of a primitive people but extremely subtle and difficult and dangerous and tragic expressions of what it felt to be in chains…then by one’s presence, by the attempt to walk from here to there, you’ve begun to frighten the white world.

They’ve always known that you are not a mule.

They’ve always known that no one wishes to be a slave.

They have always known — that the bales of cotton and the textile mills and entire metropolises built on Black labour — that the Black was not doing it out of love.

He was doing it under the whip, the threat of the gun, and the even more desperate and subtle the threat of the bible.

Here’s the side of being black that many white people do not understand and even hate:

We are proud people.

You enslaved us, and thought we should be satisfied with that. Didn’t you feed us? Didn’t you give us housing? Didn’t you give us jobs? Weren’t we like one of your own family?

At a graduation address on Sunday to Notre Dame, Vice President Mike Pence was, for some reason, invited to speak.

[youtube]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9GbCSeVmEPo[/youtube]

As you can see above, several students walked out. About 100 of 1,371 graduates.

It is ironic that, in his speech, Mike Pence goes on at length about the freedom of speech at the campus, and the welcoming of opposing views — in seeming opposition to those who walked out. Free speech does not mean you are owed a captive audience in the environment of your choice — in fact, holding an audience captive is denying the free expression they could show by walking out. Although I would probably disagree with many of my fellow liberals and say that free speech in the classroom is important, and that the university is a place to engage in differing ideas, a graduation ceremony is a different matter altogether, especially when a politician is involved. If your purpose in four long, hard years of education is to go out and make a positive difference in the world, then Trump and Pence may very well be against everything you stand for.

At first, in watching the students walk out, I felt sorry for them. And I think that the fact that Pence was invited to speak was an indictment on the school.

But now, I wonder whether Pence gave these graduates the graduation speech they needed. I’m not saying that it was horrible that he came to speak, and insulting, and the rest.

What I’m saying is this:

I can honestly think of no better time to practice civil disobedience, to stand up in such a bold and public way for your values, than during your college graduation. So much of the time, graduations represent conformity to an established set of ideals, an institutionalized, finger-wagging zenith in which you are told what to do and how to act in your future by authorities. But as these 100 graduates walked out, they left with another realization, and they learned a deeper lesson. They learned that independent thought based on principled virtue is more important than following the rules. They learned to think outside the lines, and to represent what they believe in regardless of repercussions. They learned that the adage “respect authority” does not always apply. Sometimes you have to talk back to authority when it hasn’t earned your respect; sometimes the authority is wrong, and it is up to you to expose why. They learned that if you are bold and stand up for yourself and those you care about, your voice can be a louder one than that of the most powerful people in the most powerful country in the world. They learned how to express free speech on an international stage. And they will learn, as pictures are passed around online (as they likely knew they would be), that sometimes you have to stand up, boldly, and be marked for what you believe in and the values that are healthiest in society, regardless of the long-term consequences. Sometimes it’s up to you to be a leader when the leaders have not lived up to their titles. Sometimes it’s up to you to show the rest of us how to stand up for ourselves and each other.

These 100 graduates are going to go out into the world as independent thinkers, as people who know where they stand and who they represent, as people with unimpeachable values that will not be impaired by authority. And they will look back on this day in the next 25 years or so with pride. I’m not sure I can say the same for the people who stayed in their seats.

I can’t wait to see what this defiance, and what they learn from it, will do to the trajectories of their lives. These are the kind of events that create people determined to change the world.

It’s definitely a lesson I can learn from today. I think that really goes for all of us.

Congratulations, Notre Dame Class of ’17.

And thanks for reading.

PS: I have a Patreon, in case you want to support this blog.

Social Justice: The fair and proper administration of laws conforming to the natural law that all persons, irrespective of ethnic origin, gender, possessions, race, religion, etc., are to be treated equally and without prejudice. See also “civil rights.” — Dictionary Definition

In any argument with someone else, you have to start from some common ground. Before we engage in discourse here, for example, we have to agree to a few things. Fundamentally, we’ll both agree that the English language is suitable for our debate, and we’ll be working from the assumption that we have common knowledge on how to use it. We’ll also likely agree that there is such a thing as cause and effect, although we’ll likely further agree that, as a general rule, correlation does not necessarily mean causation. We’ll agree, most of the time, that some sources are more reliable than others. We’ll agree on basic definitions of most words, and we’ll probably agree that, however relevant or overused Godwin’s argument is, Hitler was a bad person.

And so on. In short, there is a long list of assumptions that you and I likely hold to be true before we ever begin to engage in discourse. The goal of argument is to take those assumptions we both hold as true and trace them out to logical conclusions that we both agree on.

Sometimes, as you likely know, accomplishing agreement is rather difficult. Some arguments and decisions may rely on assumptions that, possibly, are not based on the premises that we hold in common, and cannot be.

I say “may” because I’m not sure. There was a time, when I was a Christian who thought there was a basic truth that all people had in their hearts, that I thought there was a way to convince everyone of the truth. I’ve continued to carry this basic assumption as an atheist, as I’ve found myself thinking that if I just find the right way to convince people that God is not real, they’ll abandon belief in God. And though I still deeply think about several social justice issues, I’ve thought there, as well, that there is a clear Truth, and that proof it is true would come from people congregating around it.

To some extent, I think this is a necessary belief, even if it’s not true. I don’t mean that academically. I mean it in the sense of the Jewish woman begging for her family not to be forced into a Nazi Germany gas chamber. Even if it is likely impossible to convince the soldiers to change their minds, her heart for family may make giving up not an option. She will do anything necessary to save her family, up to her dying breath. She’ll argue to the guards, if she has to.

But what if that doesn’t work? Are the guards really going to care about reason?

And if she happens to have a grenade in her hand…at some point she will pull the pin if it means her family is alive. She will fight back, to borrow the words of Malcolm X (who was borrowing the words of Jean Paul Sartre) “By any means necessary.”

That’s where I disagree with my former view. Whether it is possible to convince the other side through reason or not, when the well-being of vulnerable people is at stake, reasoning with people often isn’t good enough, and may be impossible. “Reason” doesn’t work fast enough to help vulnerable people, and sometimes, I suspect, it may not work at all.

If we’re going to talk about the relevance of punching Nazis with whom we cannot engage in discourse, it would be remiss if I did not say that, ever since the Richard Spencer punching episode, I’ve been wondering whether it’s OK to punch Nazis. A big part of me says, “no.” I feel uncomfortable saying it’s OK to use violence to solve social problems. And the idea of doing something illegal like that viscerally goes against my personal, natural moral code.

But remember this…before the Hitler of the gas chambers became a meme, he was just a man. Before the Nazis became infamous, they were just a political party. You couldn’t point to them and say, “They’re just as bad as Hitler,” for example. There wasn’t really a way to figure out what was going on. And everything they did — everything — was legal in their country.

We tend to think that we would have seen what was happening and stopped it. Would we have, though? I mean…Hitler was in office for 12 years, or three Trump terms (as of this writing, we’re almost — but not quite — a third of the way through Trump’s first year, and already our country has drastically changed) before finally committing suicide. When would we have stopped? When would you have punched a Nazi? When Hitler was making nationalistic speeches? When the government demonized Jews like the far right demonizes Muslims? When the movies and the media put on a propaganda campaign that would have put Milo to shame? When the “lying press” was getting shut down? Would you really have spoken up by the time Auschwitz was set up, 7 years in, after being primed to hate that much? Really? Or would you be like the millions who didn’t even put the pieces together to know their were gas chambers and stop what was going on?

I watched an interview recently of one of Hitler’s maids, and as she talked about the prestige she felt, the privilege it was to work for Hitler — who was just a man, remember, and not taken for granted as a monster at the time — I found what she was saying touching, in context. The degree to which she was separated from all the destruction and horror of the Holocaust is unsettling, almost making Hitler seem human. I mean…Hitler even gave her a handwritten “thank you” note for Christmas that she has kept for years.

[youtube]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bqBiu45onyY[/youtube]

And you know what? Hitler’s speeches are STILL popular on YouTube. They’re STILL popular. Every one I go to, the “like” bar is high, and the comments are full of people zealously defending him. Check the “like” bar and comments here. And here. And here. And on just about every Hitler speech video on YouTube.

What good would “free speech” have done?

Nothing.

And the common pushback here is that “free speech” would have allowed us to push back against Hitler — that Hitler’s restriction of free speech was really the problem. Really? Hitler was one of the greatest orators of all time. He was captivating, and charismatic enough to put just about anyone who went toe-to-toe against him to shame.

He won the free speech war, and he was then in control of who spoke and who didn’t. And this is a thing that can happen. Free speech is not “natural.” It’s a made-up concept that is constantly under attack by the same people who take advantage of it. Saying that people should be allowed to say what they want without repercussions is like saying that people should be allowed to punch who they like without repercussions, and if you say it’s not…you CLEARLY have not paid attention in history class, in the slightest, to the disastrous damage words can do.

Have you ever wondered — why do we all think Hitler was evil? How did Hitler become a meme of someone who we all agree is terrible, even Germany? Free speech alone?

No. First, and most obviously, there was a vicious and bloody war.

Then, after the war, there wasy violence and ruthless censorship. The Allies came in and they performed “denazification.” They tore down Nazi symbols. They outlawed — that’s right, OUTLAWED — all Nazi speech. On May 13, 1946, the Allies began confiscating all media that could possibly contribute to Nazism, and they banned — BANNED — 30,000 books, with millions of copies, and the mere POSSESSION of these books became a criminal act. We ripped THOUSANDS of paintings and work off walls without a second thought. Soviets even gunned many Nazis down. And then we started a strong propaganda campaign, unrelenting, against Nazis with expert opinion-makers. The Soviet Union (which, with Stalin, obviously had its own problems) outright shot several Nazis. In 1950, many of these efforts had slowed, but it is still against the law to engage in speech that strongly encourages antisemitism, join the Socialist Reich Party, or use Nazi symbols. Now, Germany is a leader in free speech, but only after the Nazis lost a lot of their influence. For a time, the zero-tolerance standard seemed necessary.

So that should give us pause. We had incompatible assumptions when it came to “debating” Nazis. The Nazis said that the Jews and the disabled and the homosexuals should not be part of society. Were they marginalized? Keep them marginalized. Where Aryans privileged? Bask in the privilege, to the full extent of the law (which you make yourself). When we saw the damage in concentration camps, the results of white privilege being fully indulged and embraced, of bigotry against LGBT individuals coming to its zenith, we realized that this view was incompatible — thoroughly — with our values.

Oh, sure, there was likely the opportunity to negotiate, to keep looking for ways to convince. But why, when people are dying and suffering and tortured and demeaned, and when the threat of Nazism crops up its head again? No, this was not something to play with or negotiate about. We had incompatible premises, and we were going to ensure social justice BY ANY MEANS NECESSARY because we saw it as our responsibility to protect our definition of humanity and human decency, and so that’s what we did.

Here’s the deal: We KNOW that the Nazi message is effective. We know it can spread a cancer through our society, that people will latch onto it, that if you start from certain premises it is a logically sound position that is virtually unassailable from the standpoint of pure reason. We know that science cannot defeat it, and can instead enhance it to come up with more effective, crueler methods for the realization of its darkest capaibilities. We know that the humanities cannot defeat it, but that the artists and the writers and the moviemakers and even the philosophers became part of one of the greatest propaganda campaigns of all time.

The only time we stamped out the virus of Nazism wholly and thoroughly, to the point where most today think it an abomination, was through choking the life out of it.

This reality shows me that there may be some places in society where free speech is not an option, where it is intolerable, where the debate ends — where, indeed, if you allow the debate to continue, you will lose, and humanity will lose, to a crueller, harsher view of who we are.

So…this whole context gives me pause when it comes to Richard Spencer. No, this is NOT false equivalency — Richard Spencer is advocating “peaceful” genocide of other races, and believes in white supremacy. He is a Nazi. And we did not get rid of the likes of him because his views were somehow ridiculous and immature. We got rid of the likes of him through brutal, unrelenting force, the squashing of free speech, and vicious censorship. And if he remotely becomes prominent again, history says that we may have to do that again, or we will repeat history. Perhaps the time is not yet. Perhaps it is premature. But we have to choose. We have to choose whether free speech is more important than human lives.

Because the notion that we have to protect human lives is not innately logical; it’s empathetic. It’s in the realm of the heart, not just the mind. And we have to make that choice — what is more important: universal human dignity, or the freedom for people to say what they think?

We’ve already seen that the two aren’t necessarily compatible.

What do you think?

No, I’m not advocating violence at this point in time. But I am saying that I realize we can have a raw, cruel view of the world, or we can fight for a kinder world, and the two may be incompatible.

If you start from the premises that we should not look out for each other, and that those sidelined in society belong there, then maybe we’re incompatible.

Now…about anti-SJWs. The anti-SJWs are full of people who want the right to say cruel things to people without any societal repercussions, even if there are repercussions for people they are cruel to. If someone gets death threats because they say something cruel to them, and they actively seem to encourage cruelty through their hundreds of followers, to the point where they silence the most vulnerable places in society…when is it time to shut them down? When does the value of human life trump their “right” to free speech? Remember, we have answered this question before…

Perhaps censorship is not necessary. Perhaps it’s too early. But now, in the age of Trump, we have to be aware that we are the ones who make history. Hitler would not be a meme if we hadn’t taken strong, strident action against him. He would have been even more intensely popular than he is, and his popularity seems, at the current moment, to be growing. How will we mold the way that people will look back on this moment tomorrow? How valuable do we decide the lives of the most vulnerable in society are?

That’s the choice we have to make. And again, it may not be based on reason. It’s based, fundamentally, on principled empathy, creating a starting point that is absolutely NOT open to negotiation. We can reason from it, but this assumption of the basic dignity of life is one that cannot and will not be denied, and should be protected by any means necessary. If we can agree on that, we can move forward. If we cannot, then eventually we will likely have to fight. Because that idea of human dignity and worth is absolutely non-negotiable.

Thank you for reading.

PS: I have a Patreon, in case you want to support this blog.

Christians:

You are not more “saved” than I am.

Christ is not doing anything to your heart.

Your chances of going to heaven are as good as your (and my) chances of going to hell. Zero.

And I gotta make this clear, because so many Christians come to me with a holier-than-thou attitude and expect me to respect it. As if I should respect the grace given to them by the imaginary friend they call God. As if I am in danger of somehow being too irreverent. As if I should assent that their imaginary friend’s ways are better than my ways. And so on.

But you gotta see it from my perspective if you want to know why I talk the way I do. God is your nonexistent imaginary friend that you created because of your inferiority complex. Now, I get that you feel so deeply inferior that you need an imaginary friend to believe in; I do. As an ex-Christian, I was there for two decades. But God is not real. I mean, you can be pissed off that I call God your imaginary friend, but don’t shoot the messenger. If God doesn’t exist that’s who he is. 

I just have to admit…I’m dumbfounded by people who complain that I talk about their imaginary friend this way…who will then say, sanctimoniously, “You’re just in rebellion against my imaginary friend. Open your heart to my imaginary friend and let him come deep inside you, and you will feel his warming presence…” etc. It just feels really creepy. And it’s annoying because you then seem to see that reaction to creepiness as evidence that I’m being convinced to your position, when I’m really thinking, “ew.”

Now, if you’re in your churches, on your private time, and you wanna engage in your fantasy…I think there are problems, obviously. But I may not make as big a deal about them.

However, when you come to talk to ME…you’re not a saved person talking to someone who is not saved. Your imaginary friend is imaginary. Your heaven and hell don’t exist.

Start there. And everything you need to make up then seems…really, really, just…rude and uncalled for. Those sanctimonious statements sound odiously sanctimonious. Scripture isn’t magic — it’s a bunch of charlatans who got together to create a fundamentally flawed ideology. Like…your status as a Christian doesn’t do anything for me.

I know this may sound harsh. But I’ve had these conversations a lot of times with Christians, and have been aghast at how many of them, (especially the ones who say, “we’re nicer than those OTHER Christians”) think they’re the mythical Moses coming down from Mt. Sinai who are showing me “grace” by saying some of the rudest possible things. And everyone in their life is sugarcoating it and protecting them, saying it’s nice and polite. I know. I’ve been there.

But it’s not. It’s rude to say that someone is rebelling against your imaginary friend. Rude and arrogant. It’s rude to tell your friend, or even hint, that they will be spending eternity in hell while you spend eternity in some kind of fantasy paradise, and that you’ll be happy there while they’re roasting alive forever and ever. It’s rude to say that you’re both sinners, but your imaginary friend has “saved” you, and that I need to believe in your imaginary friend so he can “save” me too.

If you take a step back for two seconds and flip the script and think about it, you’ll see it.

How do Christians not know this? I think it’s because most people — at least in the United States — are Christian. Most of the people you interact with are probably Christian. And going to church makes you feel all good and clean and whole inside, and you can’t imagine how someone who doesn’t have that experience would feel that way, maybe. OK, I get it. Really, I do. I was there.

But if you flip the script and look at things from the other side, or just get a slightly wider perspective, you’ll see that in places where Christianity is not as prominent — like Scandinavian Europe — this attitude that such language is rude is common place and known. In fact, sometimes readers are confused that in America, I even have to make this clear.

You’re not part of a celestial country club. When you’re talking to us, you’re right here in the mud and dirt on a miniscule speck in the universe with the rest of us. You’re not “saved” and we aren’t “unsaved.” We don’t need your imaginary friend, at all, because he doesn’t exist. You know who does exist? Us human beings.

All of us are just human beings. Unsaved, not-in-need of an imaginary friend’s cultlike concept of salvation, human beings.

And if you understand that, maybe we can be better friends. But please don’t be my friend to “save” me. That’s creepy, and you’re bound to make us both disappointed. You’ll be disappointed when all your being nice results in my being as stubborn an atheist as ever, and I’ll be grossed out when I think you’re a genuinely nice person, and you turn out to be “nice” so that you could “save” me the whole time.

Just…forget all that nonsensical fairy tale garbage, and let’s just be people.

Thanks.

And thanks for reading.

PS: I have a Patreon, in case you want to help me keep doing what I’m doing.

No man is an island, entire of itself; every man is a piece of the continent, a part of the main. If a clod be washed away by the sea, Europe is the less, as well as if a promontory were, as well as if a manor of thy friend’s or of thine own were: any man’s death diminishes me, because I am involved in mankind, and therefore never send to know for whom the bells tolls; it tolls for thee. —  John Donne

Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere. We are caught in an inescapable network of mutuality, tied in a single garment of destiny. Whatever affects one directly, affects all indirectly. Never again can we afford to live with the narrow, provincial “outside agitator” idea. Anyone who lives inside the United States can never be considered an outsider anywhere within its bounds. — Martin Luther King, Jr.

Have you heard of Blaire White? She’s a famously trans woman who talks, frequently, about gender on YouTube. Now, I’m not trans; I’m cis. But a lot of my trans friends really hate her. Even some of my anti-SJW trans friends.  And when I watch her, a lot of the stuff she says seems kinda…off.

I’m not really well-equipped to talk about being trans, because I’m not trans. But I do know something about what it means to be marginalized in this country, as I am a black man living in the South. And I have had quite a bit of time to think about what, exactly, it means to be marginalized, and why other people should care. Because, as a black man who blogs about race, I spend a lot of time convincing white people to care about racism.

What I’m about to say is a bit risky. It may sound a bit offensive. But it needs to be said.

Recently, Blaire White made a video saying that she used to be a social justice warrior who blamed other people for her problems, who was confused about her gender identity, and who was fairly poor. Being in social justice groups gave her support. People would validate her concerns, blame society for their problems along with her, say that those who opposed her morality were evil, and so on. Then, she continues, eventually she found out that she was a trans woman, and her transition eased many of her concerns about her gender identity. She knew who she was. She was able to take responsibility for herself instead of depending on the dependent ideology of SJW groups. And in addition to that, she got a job. She wasn’t poor anymore. This gave her a greater degree of independence and sense of self-responsibility, and she separated herself from SJW people who were often blaming themselves for their problems.

These changes, she claims, were only possible because she bucked against the gospel of dependence and the “it’s society’s fault” narrative, and took ownership of herself and her own destiny. Today, she continues, she’s upset that people are trapped in SJW groups that keep preaching powerlessness, insulating themselves with a morality that blames society and the sense of an exclusive, almost cult-like community. Her message now is self-empowerment, as opposed to dependence, powerlessness, and helpless entitlement. Don’t sit back and cry and expect people to give something to you, she says. Take it.

That realization, she said, was part of growing up. In order to mature, she had to move out of her “victim complex.”

OK.

So, first, I think Blaire White is failing to realize the extent to which social justice is social. I’ll admit that yes, there are some people who don’t really care about the groups they claim to support and use social justice concepts to further marginalize groups through pitying them, and to insulate marginalized groups by determinedly demonizing anyone who interferes with their attempts to control communities. I’ve seen it happen, to the detriment of many of my friends. So I’ll admit that yes, this is a thing, and I’d be doing a disservice if I didn’t mention that.

However…

Ideally, social justice isn’t just about seeing individuals as victims. It’s about realizing that there’s a capacity in individuals to realize their potential. I think even most of the coldest-blooded anti-SJWs will generally agree (with some exceptions) that we shouldn’t kill every member of a marginalized or underserved group. If we can’t do that, we’re stuck with them, and we should figure out how to take away any barriers to helping them reach their full potential in society. Racism, sexism, classism, cissexim, and all those other prejudices are not bad just because they hurt marginalized “victims” — they are also bad for us all because they fail to empower people to reach their potential in society. To the extent that we don’t see the value in a group of people, that group carries untapped value in our culture. As Martin Luther King, Jr. said, “Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere. We are caught in an inescapable network of mutuality, tied in a single garment of destiny.”

I think that Blaire White, like many of us, used her social justice group at a time when she was trying to figure out how to navigate life in spite of marginalization and uncertainty. And it’s good that people were there to validate her concerns. We have a short life, and it doesn’t necessarily get better for everyone; we need to nurture people where they are. And sometimes you are where you are due to circumstances beyond your control, especially if you are in a marginalized group. But realizing the truth of the forces holding you back is not an excuse to be trapped in a victimhood mentality; it’s a way to draw a map so that you can cope with the reality of the situation. When you are marginalized, you have to be aware of the way other people perceive you when you want to get ahead.

However, when people like Blaire White start getting ahead they may forget what realizations got them there. My concern is that Blaire White, in fighting against social justice, is protecting a status quo that disproportionately benefits her and ignores the valid experiences of those that social justice concepts are meant to protect.  Every member of society got to where they are because someone gave us a step up, in one way or another, and if we want people to be as successful as we are (if you are successful in some way), then it will help to give other people a step up, as well — not out of a sense of obligation, but simply because you want to live in a better society.  That means being on their side, being their cheerleader, and fighting against ways they are marginalized instead of insisting that they be satisfied with the status quo.

Here’s a more controversial bit:

In the book Man’s Search For Meaning,  Viktor Frankl states that in the Nazi concentration camps the Jews who survived were crueller, often, than the German guards. These were Jews who became “Capos” thatwere put in charge of groups of men or women and expected to keep them in line. They looked out for themselves and for the Germans who they worked with. They could eat the guards’ food and had better quarters. They had superiority over the rest of the Jews, and that superiority gave them pride and a sense of specialness. They hated the image of themselves that they saw in the Jews they oversaw, and that hate came out in their cruelty and their haughty superiority.

Malcolm X talked about the House Negro and the Field Negro in a way that illuminates this dynamic. It’s worth quoting at length:

[youtube]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OFXXNzim1Y0[/youtube]

There were two kinds of slaves, the house Negro and the field Negro. The house Negroes – they lived in the house with master, they dressed pretty good, they ate good because they ate his food – what he left. They lived in the attic or the basement, but still they lived near the master; and they loved the master more than the master loved himself. They would give their life to save the master’s house – quicker than the master would. If the master said, “We got a good house here,” the house Negro would say, “Yeah, we got a good house here.” Whenever the master said “we,” he said “we.” That’s how you can tell a house Negro.

If the master’s house caught on fire, the house Negro would fight harder to put the blaze out than the master would. If the master got sick, the house Negro would say, “What’s the matter, boss, we sick?” We sick! He identified himself with his master, more than his master identified with himself. And if you came to the house Negro and said, “Let’s run away, let’s escape, let’s separate,” the house Negro would look at you and say, “Man, you crazy. What you mean, separate? Where is there a better house than this? Where can I wear better clothes than this? Where can I eat better food than this?” That was that house Negro. In those days he was called a “house nigger.” And that’s what we call them today, because we’ve still got some house niggers running around here.

This modern house Negro loves his master. He wants to live near him. He’ll pay three times as much as the house is worth just to live near his master, and then brag about “I’m the only Negro out here.” “I’m the only one on my job.” “I’m the only one in this school.” You’re nothing but a house Negro. And if someone comes to you right now and says, “Let’s separate,” you say the same thing that the house Negro said on the plantation. “What you mean, separate? From America, this good white man? Where you going to get a better job than you get here?” I mean, this is what you say. “I ain’t left nothing in Africa,” that’s what you say. Why, you left your mind in Africa.

On that same plantation, there was the field Negro. The field Negroes – those were the masses. There were always more Negroes in the field than there were Negroes in the house. The Negro in the field caught hell. He ate leftovers. In the house they ate high up on the hog. The Negro in the field didn’t get anything but what was left of the insides of the hog.

The field Negro was beaten from morning to night; he lived in a shack, in a hut; he wore old, castoff clothes. He hated his master. I say he hated his master. He was intelligent. That house Negro loved his master, but that field Negro – remember, they were in the majority, and they hated the master. When the house caught on fire, he didn’t try to put it out; that field Negro prayed for a wind, for a breeze. When the master got sick, the field Negro prayed that he’d die. If someone came to the field Negro and said, “Let’s separate, let’s run,” he didn’t say, “Where we going?” He’d say, “Any place is better than here.”

Here is the dynamic:

For the most part, trans people, black people, poor people, etc. … we are marginalized. The majority of these marginalize groups are marginalized; they’re at a tremendous disadvantage, and in many cases abuse. That’s untapped potential.

Now, when you’re experiencing this disadvantage  as a member of a marginalized group, you want the situation to change. If you are empathetic or simply care about good economics and want to make sure that untapped potential is realized, you want the situation to change. You are not satisfied with the status quo; you want to transform it. You’re the starving Jew in the concentration camp, the sunburned slave in the field.

But if you have risen above to be the darling of the dominant group, to be “special” — you don’t want things to change. You will berate the marginalized groups even more than the dominant class does. You will rub in your superiority and preach that things don’t need to change. Things are fine the way they are. And in some ways, possibly, that beration may be a reflection of your resentment at having ever been in that position yourself (which is important to keep in mind — if you are part of a marginalized group and your fortunes change, realize that you will likely forget the difficulty and needs many of those marginalized groups experienced, very quickly).

I think this is important for those in and outside the marginalized groups to realize. We want people to be in atmospheres that will fuel their success — not just for their good, but for the sake of society’s full potential. What this means is that we have to make sure that we are hearing from marginalized people who are truly marginalized — not to merely have pity on them, but to figure out the landscape of their situation and thus strive to construct a society that will nurture them.  And we have to realize when there’s an House Negro or a Capo who is keeping that marginalized group in its place for the sake of its own benefit and glorification.

This distinction is difficult to make, especially if you are not part of the marginalized group you are discoursing with. But if you notice a voice that seems to be a minority in the marginalized group saying things that confirm all your biases and preaching the gospel of the status quo, that’s a good sign that they are not the right voice to hear.

At the same, this dichotomy condemns the dominant class. There is nothing proprietary about their position. There is nothing about them that the people they marginalized, if given the right opportunity, could not also do, and do even more cruelly, possibly. What keeps the dominant group dominant is prejudice, not real inferiority among the marginalized.

A sobering thought, but a necessary one that shows the ridiculousness of systems of prejudice, and sheds some light, possibly, on how we should view Blaire White.

Thank you for reading.

PS: I have a Patreon, in case you want to help me keep writing.