For those who thought the name-calling was just hyperbole, check out the views of Chris Hedges. I find the easy use of the word "fascist" troubling for many reasons: it diminishes the horror of the Holocaust; it is an excuse to pretend that one's personal anger has international meaning; it is an imprecise and generic insult.
But Hedges really means it. This level of frothing never occurs unless someone has a personal issue - it is never intellectually based, however it is covered. Does anyone know what this journalist's issue is?
The age of reason is dead and gone. We’ve entered a season of unreason and irrationality.
ReplyDeleteWith all the background noise going on around us, the only way to rise above the hubbub is to screech and scream. Hop on a polemic and ride it for all it’s worth. It is about getting noticed, because controversy sells. It is not about rationality; it is not reasonable. It is excessive zeal in defending the faith. Think of it as faith squared.
Think of negative numbers. When you square a negative number, the result is always a positive number. Faith can be considered as a number greater than zero. The greater one’s faith in deity, the higher on the number scale one can reach. But the numbers are not singular, they are squared. If my faith is at 1, my faith quotient would be 1 squared, or 1. If my faith is at 2, my faith quotient is 4. And so on.
Those who attack faith retreat down the opposite side of the “zeal” scale. Those who are mildly distressed by faith (say -1) on the scale, actually have a faith quotient of +1. The more zealous they get in their protestations, the higher they score on the faith quotient chart—only it’s a counterfeit faith (counterfaith™). Rabidness never was happiness.
Irrationality is the natural state of human existence. Belief is the foundation for every action, whether that belief is grounded in engineering, physics, metaphysics and religion, capitalism (or other economic factors), social dynamics, etc. If we did not BELIEVE in cause and effect, we would have no cause. I believe I’ve got a headache. I believe I am SOOOO ready for the weekend. -cp
No idea what Hedges' issues are, but his own experience as ... the son of a Presbyterian minister ... studying at Harvard Divinity School seems a good place to start looking.
ReplyDeleteBecoming a career war correspondent after that beginning takes a pretty sharp turn in the road.
It's usually a personal issue that one resents about the church disagreeing with you. It is more likely, for example, for a young person to become sexually active and then decide the church's rules about sex are outmoded than to make that doctrinal decision first and then change behavior.
ReplyDeleteI have since looked up Hedge's history. When I saw that it was really important to he and his father that he start a gay rights group at his college, I wondered if one or the other were gay. Close. His brother is gay, and the father resented the church's rejection of that lifestyle of his son's.
It's nasty of me to be so cynical, but it bears out quite often. The brother's gayness came first. Then all of a sudden the church needed to change its teaching.