W. Bloom

The Irony of Prayer

Oct 312016

Mike Huckabee was on Fox News recently and he said he prays that Donald Trump wins the election.

I don’t fault Mr. Huckabee for supporting the candidate whose views are closest to his own, even if I disagree strongly with those views. I don’t fault him or any other religious person for relying on his faith for comfort during a stressful election. But I’m not sure I understand why a Christian who believes in an omniscient deity (Yahweh) would pray for one particular candidate in an election.

What response is Mr. Huckabee expecting from Yahweh?

“Thank you, Mike! I was sitting around up here in Heaven, all bored and omnipotent and looking for appropriate ways to intervene in human affairs, but I had no clue how to proceed. I knew I wanted to manipulate the 2016 USA presidential election but… who to support? Then you came along with your prayer and, in your perfect wisdom, which far surpasses Mine, you chose Donald Trump. Now, on your recommendation, I’ll manipulate the election to make sure Trump wins, thereby undermining American democracy and disregarding the ‘free will’ of my children.”

Mr. Huckabee thinks he knows which candidate is the right one for our country and he wishes to enlist the Almighty in ensuring his favorite candidate wins. What’s wrong with this? Setting aside the fact that Mr. Huckabee is asking his god to commit election fraud, it never seems to occur to Mr. Huckabee that if Yahweh exists and He is omniscient, a better and more sensible prayer would be for Yahweh, not Mr. Huckabee, to determine which candidate is the right one for our country.

But even this would be a waste of time, for Yahweh, if He is perfect, is already intervening in the world in all of the “correct” ways.

There is an inherent irony in prayer. If you truly believe in an all-knowing, all-wise, omni-benevolent deity, why would you waste your breath making pleas to it? The only sort of deity that needs guidance, information, or inspiration from its devotees in order to behave rightly is a highly imperfect one, not the sort of deity worth worshiping. Anyway, your omniscient deity must already know what you want. And if you truly trust in the perfect judgment of your deity, why would you ask it to put the full force of its divine power behind your imperfect judgment?

Kioni Dudley: Hero of the West Side

Hawaii, Politics

Jul 172016

O’ahu is a plutocracy, plain and simple. Perhaps it always has been, at least going back to 1893 and the Committee of Safety, the gang of businessmen who found the rightful Queen of Hawaii inconvenient to their sugar profits and got rid of her. Ostensibly we have a democracy but the candidates who win elections are usually the ones who are the best funded, and the best funded are puppets for special interests. We are still ruled by groups like the Committee of Safety. Bullies. Thugs in suits. Same as before, only now instead of making their money from crops they make it by paving over them.

Kioni Dudley is the rare person with the courage to stand up to the bullies. Here he is fighting Ho’opili at the Land Use Commission:

Dudley is running for City Council against Kymberly Pine, the incumbent. I don’t agree with Dudley on everything. He has made his share of mistakes. For a politician he’s a bit unpolished. But he fights for the right causes for the right reasons. He has guts, his ideas are good, and he sees clearly the problems that everybody else pretends don’t exist. He is a champion for agriculture and food security, and we need a leader like him on these issues badly. And the polished politicians all turn out to be total scumbags; I’ll take a Kioni Dudley over that lot any day.

I don’t know much about Pine other than that she is a Republican and she sided against people in Makakilo who live in townhouses on the issue of garbage collection. She was in favor of us paying for private garbage collection even though we pay taxes that cover public garbage collection, same as single-family home owners. Not cool. And when I scan through her campaign contributions, it appears she has received a hefty sum from DR Horton. How can you trust a politician to regulate and reign in the developers if that politician is funded by those same developers? You can’t.

Luke the Villain? I Think Not.

Science Fiction & Fantasy

Oct 272015

A blogger over at HuffPo has posted his theory that Luke Skywalker actually turned to the Dark Side at the end of Return of the Jedi and will be the villain in the new movie.

It’s a fun read.

The commenters do a good job of ripping his argument to shreds. (It’s the sort of argument that wants to be ripped to shreds.) The movie, after all, was titled Return of the Jedi! If Luke turned to the Dark Side at the end, then the Jedi didn’t return. And if Luke turned evil, why did the ghosts of Yoda and Obi-Wan Kenobi smile at him in the end?

Luke was tempted by the Dark Side. He went right up to the edge. But he didn’t succumb, and in resisting the Emperor, he not only saved his own soul, he saved his father’s. That was the whole point–not just of Return of the Jedi, but of the entire series. Star Wars is about redemption and the power of sacrificial love.

Many people say The Empire Strikes Back is the best film in the series, and those same people complain about all the problems with Return of the Jedi, and they’re probably right. But for me, the most poignant moment in all of Star Wars is this moment in Jedi:

Luke: No, you’re coming with me. I won’t leave you here. I’ve got to save you!
Anakin: You already have, Luke. You were right. You were right about me… Tell your sister… you were right.

That scene reduces me to tears every time.

Luke was able to see the germ of goodness even in the blackest heart in the universe. He risked everything, everything, on the absurd notion that Darth Vader, the poster child for evil, still had goodness in him. And, GODDAMMIT!, he was RIGHT. He walked right into the lion’s den–not to kill or destroy, but to save Anakin. He defied the Emperor. He overcame his hatred and the temptation to use evil to gain power. He threw down his weapon. And he brought his father back from the Dark Side.

Corny? Sappy? Mawkish? No. Not at all. It’s beautiful and powerful and profound.

Lucas set out to create a mythology, and he succeeded. Myths (according to PBS.org) “are sacred tales that explain the world and man’s experience.” Myths aren’t mere escapism. They are fictions, yes, but fictions that tell us greater truths. That’s where Star Wars surpasses most other sci-fi.

I’m sure J.J. Abrams will give us a Star Wars film that’s as gritty and gripping as we want, and that will far surpass Episodes I, II, and III in every measure. But I hope he doesn’t put style before substance. Making Luke the villain might be deliciously dark and gritty, but that shouldn’t be an end in itself. The goal should be to get at those greater truths.

Pharyngula on Animal Rights

Animal Rights, Environmentalism

Sep 122015

Before I delve into this, let me say that MerrilyDancingApe is, after three years online, actually receiving hits. Not a million hits per day or a thousand or even a hundred, but a few, and that ain’t nothing. I find it pretty gratifying. If you’re one of the few, thank you.

A couple of animal rights activists named the MacAskills recently published an astonishingly stupid article called, To truly end animal suffering, the most ethical choice is to kill wild predators (especially Cecil the lion).

PZ Myers over at Pharyngula posted a thorough take-down, here and here. Pharyngula is my favorite blog. PZ makes several great points, and I agree with him.

Below the fold, I’ll give my own response to the article.
Continue reading »

The Shepherd’s Crown

Book Review, Fiction Writing, Science Fiction & Fantasy

Sep 042015

The Shepherd's Crown I’m four chapters in. And I just couldn’t wait to post about it. My early review (no spoilers):

CRIVENS! So far it’s perfect! Fun, funny, beautifully written, impactful. It’s as crisp and solid, at least thus far, as the best of Pratchett’s works. It’s stacking up to be a lovely final note on Pratchett’s career, and I can’t help but be emotional about it. Dorky, I know, to get teary-eyed over a children’s fantasy book.

How come this isn’t a top news story? How come the whole world isn’t rejoicing, publicly and loudly and all together, over the gift of this book?

I’m taking it slowly, savoring the read, stretching out my visit to Discworld.

Windows 10 is AWESOME!

Computer / Info Technology

Aug 132015

I had to struggle a bit to get my Windows 8.1 laptop to upgrade to Windows 10, but it finally worked out, and I’m very pleased.

Windows 10 is the best Windows OS of all time. It’s that good. At least that’s my initial impression. There are little things that could be improved, for sure. But overall it rocks. The new Start Menu is a blend of the best parts of the old Start Menu and the Windows 8 Start Screen (which was a monstrosity).

Good on you, Microsoft. You’ve done something right.

Terry Pratchett’s Raising Steam and The Shepherd’s Crown

Book Review, Fiction Writing, Science Fiction & Fantasy

Aug 102015

I traveled cross-country on a train once and I hoped for a magical sort of experience, but I’m sorry to say—with no offense meant to railfans, whose enthusiasm I applaud—it wasn’t magical, it wasn’t romantic, it was boring.

I finished Raising Steam today. The book takes us on a trip on a train, and unfortunately it’s a boring journey. The novel is the worst I’ve yet read from Pratchett.

The sentence crafting is certainly up to snuff. But the tone is overly triumphant and self-congratulatory. The narrator lets us know at every turn how wonderful and invincible his characters are, and we’re meant to cheer and high-five him the whole way through. I’m not so sure, though, that the characters are that laudable, judging them by their actions, and even worse, the writer loves his characters too much to let them face any real challenges. It’s a given from the start that the good guys will succeed. The plot has a sense of inevitability like, well, trains, and also the monotonous plodding forward of a train. It’s almost as if Pratchett were caricaturizing his own novels or writing his own fan fiction.

So it’s not a great Pratchett novel compared to, say, Going Postal. But though it may have been a bad story, perhaps it was a good goodbye.

Pratchett passed away earlier this year. Raising Steam was his last book published while he lived and the last time Pratchett as an author and we his readers got to romp with Moist and the rest of the crew. So perhaps the celebratory tone is fitting. The good guys kick ass, the bad guys are defeated, and in the end we get to see the characters we love happy and thriving.

But if you’re not yet ready to say bid adieu to Pratchett, you’re in luck. There’s one more chance.

One final Pratchett book will be published posthumously in just a couple of weeks. And then the lights will go down on Discworld permanently. But that book won’t visit Ankh-Morpork. Pratchett’s last book, titled The Shepherd’s Crown, will be a Tiffany Aching book! A children’s book! A book featuring the wee free men!

That’s incredibly exciting.

It will be a children’s book written by a man acutely aware of the cloaked fellow with a scythe standing just there behind him, peering over his shoulder, drumming his bony fingers. I love the Tiffany Aching books, and I yearn to know what sort of Tiffany Aching book Mr. Pratchett would’ve written while staring his own mortality straight in the face.

This is a literary event rivaling (and in my little world far surpassing) Go Set a Watchman in importance.

The UK release date is August 26. We in the USA must wait until September 1. I’ve marked my calendar.

The Next Liberal Rights Movement

Environmentalism, Humanism, Politics

Aug 092015

In the past few decades the USA has made great strides in terms of racial equality, women’s rights, and LGBT rights. We have our first black president. Our next president may just well be a woman. Gay marriage is now legal in all fifty states. Our country is becoming more open, more inclusive, kinder, and freer.

“Great strides” does not mean “problem solved.” Women still get paid less than men, especially women of color. Unarmed black people keep getting shot to death or otherwise mistreated by white cops.

A good barometer of where we’re at with civil rights may be the demographics of Congress. According to Pew Research the 114^th Congress is the most racially diverse in history. But it’s still disproportionately white. Only 17% of Congress is non-white where 38% of the population is non-white. Women make up roughly 50% of the population but only around 20% of Congress. Only six members of Congress identify openly as LGBT, a little over 1%, when according to Gallup 3.8% of the population identifies as LGBT.

So we have room to improve. But this concept of equality for all—this dream of the feminists and the humanists and Martin Luther King—seems to be rolling onward and gaining steam.

Where do we go from here? Our circle of compassion expands ever outward, embracing more and more people in the group we call “us” and fewer in the group we call “them.” Who is next?

I hope that the next cause Liberal America takes up in a big way will be animal rights.

BOOM! I went there! I got talking about statistics and you didn’t know where I was going, and now suddenly I’m talking about animal rights, a subject you hate.

Animal rights! Ohhh here we go. Another sanctimonious, self-righteous vegetarian acting all superior.

Relax! I’m not asking you to stop eating meat. Animals make all sorts of useful and desirable products, and most of us have grown to depend upon these products. I’m not judging you for liking McDonalds. Animal research? It’s fine. Sea world? Go enjoy the show. Horse ranches? Ridem’ cowboy!

But if you’re a secular person, a humanist, a person who believes in making decisions based upon reason versus authority, please consider the following:

The idea that animals have no rights whatsoever is a religious one. In the Bible, Yahweh grants humans “dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the fowl of the air, and over every living thing that moveth upon the earth.” Christians once believed, and many still do, that humans have souls and animals do not. Animals are merely machines made from flesh. Our species is uniquely privileged with personhood. Animals are just things. Any use of animals we can think up is automatically justifiable. We are entitled to keep animals in whatever conditions are convenient to us without regard for their welfare.

This is an old-fashioned concept. It’s not scientific. We now know that we share a great deal of DNA with other animals, particularly mammals. We share similar nervous systems, similar brains. There’s no logical reason to grant members of our own species complete moral consideration but animals none whatsoever.

So the way we treat animals doesn’t make sense anymore. But people reflexively defend orthodoxy, whether it’s theism or racism or sexism or any other ism, and that’s never truer than with speciesism. We’re defensive about our dominion over animals.

There’s an argument to be made that humans have as much right to eat animals as animals have to eat each other. If lions eat gazelles why can’t humans eat cows and pigs and chickens and turkeys and, hell, gazelles?

I don’t have a response to that. I don’t think it’s my place to tell you you’re wrong for using animal products. We all express compassion toward animals in our own way, and it’s a personal choice.

But I do think the moment has arisen in human history when we can start to ask this much of each other: While the animals are alive, treat them humanely. That’s all animal rights is about. It’s just about asking our industries to treat animals as nicely as the average person treats animals in their daily lives.

Animals will continue to die for human benefit. I’m under no illusion that this will stop any time soon. But there’s no reason they must suffer. The way animals in our custody live and the way they die is important. Modern factory farming has got to change its ways.

The issue of gay rights was once fringe and is now mainstream. In the same way, I believe our society is ready to start taking animal rights seriously.

Roger Friedman Loves Phylicia Rashad, Phylicia Rashad Loves Bill Cosby, Rape Swept Under Rug

Uncategorized

Jan 072015

A guy I never heard of before named Roger Friedman wrote an article, here, in which he adoringly defends Phylicia Rashad’s adoring defense of Bill Cosby.

“Someone is determined to keep Bill Cosby off TV,” said Rashad, according to Friedman. “And it’s worked. All his contracts have been cancelled.”

Phylicia Rashad seems like a neat person, and I don’t blame this Friedman guy for being enamored of her. And I don’t blame Rashad, for that matter, for being enamored of Cosby. But the conspiracy theory stuff is complete crap. The time for hero worship is over. Now is the time for a reality check. The person who orchestrated Cosby’s troubles is Cosby himself, by raping at least twenty women.

“Forget these women,” Rashad said…

Rashad dismisses claims from both Beverly Johnson and Janice Dickinson. “Oh, please,” she said when their names came up.

For Rashad to be so dismissive of the victims is cruel, not to mention deeply anti-feminist. The idea that women commonly accuse men of rape falsely is a myth. Only around 2% of rape accusations turn out to be false. The statistical probability of twenty women falsely claiming rape against the same man is, for all practical purposes, zero.

Cosby selected his victims carefully. He chose women he thought wouldn’t dare report him, or who wouldn’t be believed if they did. This is common behavior for serial rapists. They target “party girls” because they assume (correctly, as it turns out) people won’t listen to them.

Other interesting statistics: Around 68% of rapes are never reported. And only about 2% of men who commit rapes ever serve time in jail.

People who bash or dismiss the victims (like Rashad, and like Friedman, who chose to report Rashad’s opinions in an unbalanced way) are adding to the problem. As long as we’re willing to let guys like Cosby off the hook, we’ll continue to have a misogynistic, rape-friendly culture.

Happiness Meditation Poem: “An Undisturbed Mind”

Poem

Jun 252014

Sky Time for poetry! This is the second in my series of poems inspired by the Tao Te Ching. (The first one is here.)

Happiness Meditation Poem – An Undisturbed Mind

Evil cannot disturb me.
I can only disturb myself.

Rejection cannot disturb me.
Abandonment cannot.
Aloneness cannot.
I can only disturb myself.

Setbacks cannot disturb me.
Traffic jams cannot.
Hurdles cannot.
I can only disturb myself.

This the sage knows:
Happiness is a flower that blossoms naturally
    in the fertile soil
    of an undisturbed mind.

I have decided that

I shall not disturb myself
Ever again,

And, then, I shall watch what grows.

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