Guest post at The Big Stick
I have a guest post up at The Big Stick today, on Judge Sonia Sotomayor and her comments about making better decisions as a “wise Latina woman.” Check it out!
In search of culture
Every so often in my life, particularly around major milestone events or holidays, I get kind of wistful and reflective. I’m not personally religious, and I was raised in a mostly secular household. On top of that, my personal heritage is a mixed bag, with many European countries represented, so I’m sort of generically white. (I’ve heard it referred to as “European mutt.”) All this adds up to mean that I don’t feel like I have many traditions or customs, nor do I feel like I have much of a cultural heritage.
A friend commented to me that this was “a typically American problem,” and I think he’s right. I love my country, I love what it stands for, and I love the life I have here. But I think there’s something about the nature of the United States that leaves me and others like me feeling this way. What do we think of when we talk about American culture? Fast food, Hollywood, clothing brands. When we talk about having or experiencing “culture,” we mean French or Italian opera, or Japanese theater. We mean the clothing and music and food traditional for peoples that are hundreds or even thousands of years old. Culture is something they have and we observe.
I think there’s a natural human instinct to characterize the world and one’s own perspective on it in terms of “people like us.” It allows simultaneously for the freedom of individuality (we are not like them, we are different) and for security in the collective (we are all together, living in our way). Obviously, this has had some extremely negative outcomes—hatred, oppression, genocide—but it also has some positive outcomes, such as personal pride and a sense of continuity, of belonging, of togetherness. It’s nice to be able to look back at history and say, “Look what great things my people have done! I come from that greatness!” and also say, “Look what I am doing, to bring honor to my people, and to improve the world our children will live in!”
To some extent, it’s possible to say such things about the United States, just as it’s possible to say some of this about humanity as a whole. But we don’t all look the same, or speak the same language, or believe the same things, or eat the same food, or listen to the same music, or have the same values and aspirations. In fact, this is what we have in common: we are all different. I am proud of that, of coming from a “melting pot” (or, if you will, a patchwork quilt or a beautiful mosaic). I’m glad that we can celebrate and learn from our differences. I’m glad our system of government enshrines rights which allow us to think and act differently from each other. However, that means that when I say, “I am an American,” I don’t feel that sense of “people like us” which I described above.
Part of the problem, I think, is that the customs I do have somehow seem less than adequate, as though they’re not good enough to “count.” I have traditional food and traditional dress! It’s things like turkey sandwiches and T-shirts, but why can’t that be my culture? Even as I protest this, I still have the sense that it’s true.
And maybe this is an inevitable consequence of living in the modern world, of faster and faster technology, of the nuclear family, of the age of reason. Many of the traditions that do “count” actually seem like mystical, ritual performance—hard to believe that anyone actually put (or puts) much stake in them. Still, probably for the same reason I like old typewriters and fountain pens, I find them beautiful.
So, every time I feel wistful for some tradition, I research some nationality or cultural group that makes up a statistically significant part of that long, hyphenated list I call my heritage. It’s always not really me, but just a piece of me… though maybe someday I’ll pick some parts of it to wear as my own.
What do you think? Have you experienced this? Or is this completely foreign to you?
Religion on Facebook
I’m not the biggest fan of Facebook, but I have an account because it’s an effective way to get and keep in touch with people. Like most people I know, I don’t have every field of personal info filled out. Most of those omissions are things like “Favorite TV Shows,” stuff that doesn’t really pertain to me or which would make me feel silly to have taken the time to enter. There is one field which I have a real purpose in leaving blank, though, and that is “Religious Views.”
Facebook thinks that my religious views fall in the category of “Basic Information” about myself. I guess for most people, religion is a very prominent part of their identity. And, I’ll be honest, not being religious is an important part of mine, though I don’t think it’s important in the same way. I like to write about atheist issues on this blog because I don’t think they get enough press, and this feels like my own small contribution to the cause. But I don’t talk about atheism all the time. I don’t wear clothing or jewelry that proclaims my atheism, I’m not a member of atheist clubs or activist groups, I don’t go up to people on the street and ask them if they’ve heard the Good News about atheism.
There was a push a while back for people to list “atheist” as their religious views, as part of a sort of atheist coming-out day. I just feel like that’d be listing “teetotaler” in the “Favorite Alcoholic Beverage” field. That is to say, missing the point.
For me at least, being an atheist isn’t an active thing. It’s a lack of being anything else. Because of that, I don’t feel a need to proclaim it, any more than you feel the need to announce that you haven’t shaved your head. Having a shaved head isn’t a fundamental part of being human, and no one (assuming they couldn’t see you) would assume that your head was shaved. Similarly, I don’t think being religious is something “basic” about all people, and I don’t think religiosity should be presumed. By not filling out the “Religious Views” field, I cause the line not to show up on my profile. That’s a much more accurate description of my religious beliefs than a label could ever be.
Secular, not atheist
For the third post of Atheist Week, I want to talk about a common complaint I hear and read with regard to rules that restrict things like teaching creationism (or “the controversy”) in science classrooms, or singing Christmas carols at school assemblies in December, or including an invocation at government events. Some people argue that failing to mention or include religion is equivalent to teaching children to be atheist or enforcing atheism upon the nation. Steven Novella’s recent post rebutting Michael Egnor includes an example of this. (Responding to a blogger, Egnor writes, “Perhaps Mr. Sandefur desires to indoctrinate children in atheism, perhaps he doesn’t.”)
This complaint is incredibly misguided. I think it’s fairly obvious why, so this post will be relatively short. It’s not an explanation I usually see given, though, so I think it’s still worth putting out there.
A lack of prayer or a lack of Christmas carols is not equivalent to forcing everyone to chant together, “There is no God.” It’s merely an omission of something which applies to the beliefs of some but not all. Very few people actually incorporate religion into every moment of their lives. Even people who would describe themselves as devout don’t continually sing hymns or thank God aloud in a speech before every action. Ten more minutes of the day spent not praying or not singing hymns or not talking about how awesome God is doesn’t actually make much difference.
The fact is, “secular” does not mean “atheist.” From Merriam-Webster’s:
1 a: of or relating to the worldly or temporal <secular concerns> b: not overtly or specifically religious <secular music> c: not ecclesiastical or clerical <secular courts> <secular landowners>
While it may be true that atheists aren’t interested in an alternative or supplement to the secular aspect of life, it’s clearly also the case that religious people’s lives do involve the secular aspect too. The secular is what we all have in common. Because of that, common events we all share in such as public schools and government functions should be restricted to secular activities.
Surprising as it may seem, religious values and secular values do not have to contradict each other. In the vast majority of cases, religion teaches, “X is good because God says so,” and secular reasoning says “X is good because it promotes general welfare and is socially expedient.” Secular values aren’t the negation or antithesis of religious values. Unless proponents of religion really want to argue that they absolutely don’t care at all about their (or anyone else’s) well-being in the here-and-now, they have secular concerns. Secular events allow the religious and nonreligious to be represented, but once you include religion, you make your event exclusive.
Violent fundies
We never wanted this to be an “atheist blog” or a “skeptical blog” or a “political blog,” or anything in particular like that. But I tend to go through phases in what I read and get excited about, and holding out for an assortment of post ideas sometimes means that I don’t post anything. In an effort to get back into the swing of things, I’m declaring this week Atheist Week here at It’s the Thought that Counts, and I’ll have one post on atheism and associated issues every day until I get it out of my system.
Let’s begin with a discussion of this ad from Answers in Genesis. (Thanks, Hemant… I think.)
Complete transcript of the voiceover: “If you don’t matter to God, you don’t matter to anyone.” Yep, that’s the word on the street from Answers in Genesis. (Motto: “believing it. defending it. proclaiming it.”) It’s not a new ad, but I guess it’s cropped up again.
I want to believe that the point of the ad is something like, if you don’t realize how much God loves you, you’ll feel unloved by the world and lash out with violence. I mean, I object to that message, but it’s a lot less horrible than the alternative, the easier interpretation: God hates you, so we have no problem with telling this child to shoot you in the face. (Crusades, anyone?)
I don’t take comfort in the idea that a man was gruesomely killed, in some sense by his own father, thousands of years ago in order to save me from eternal punishment and torment which his father set up for us in the first place. There’s no part of that that makes me feel particularly loved. I also resent the implication that I should be grateful and worship the people or entities responsible for such a monstrous plan, executed well before my birth and without my consent or even interest. But I thought that, at the very least, the explanation we’d associated with it was that God loves everyone, and that all you have to do to be saved is to acknowledge the love God already has for you. A weird explanation, to be sure; an emotionally scarring explanation, I think. But it was at least, at the end of the day, a desperate and sad attempt to reach out and be kind to others.
Answers in Genesis betrays the real message when they make this ad. That gun isn’t aimed at a vague someone; the child isn’t committing random acts of violence. Your impulse when viewing the ad isn’t to reach out to that boy and maybe tell him about Christ’s love so he doesn’t hurt a stranger. That gun is pointed at you. Your impulse is to be frightened for your life. AiG is saying that their God only cares about people who already worship him in the right ways, and that if God doesn’t care about you, you don’t deserve even the most basic of human courtesies from anyone else.
Fundamentalist Christians (as well as many not-so-fundamentalist ones) ask how it is possible to be moral without the rules given to you by a supernatural being and without the threat of eternal damnation as well as the promise of eternal reward. The typical atheist response is to point out that it’s the Christians who admit that without religion, they would be unable to stop themselves from stealing, raping, and murdering, yet somehow atheists manage without a problem. That’s troubling enough. But here, AiG is admitting that even their fabulous religion that teaches them to love their neighbors and turn the other cheek wouldn’t stop them from murdering us.
Do you see now why I have such a problem with the term apologetic?
Carnival of the Elitist Bastards XI
Welcome to the eleventh edition of the Carnival of the Elitist Bastards. CEB is a monthly blog carnival that celebrates the intelligent and the exceptional, and decries willful ignorance and uniformity. Some may call us elitist bastards, but we prefer the term “awesome.” I thought the submissions this time fell into three general categories: politics/policy issues, science and other fact-related pursuits, and everyday life stuff. Let’s dig in:
Elitist law, politics, and policy
Stephanie Zvan at Almost Diamonds explains the Employee Free Choice Act. Not content to listen to generalizations from the Wall Street Journal and others reporting on the proposed legislation, she read it herself in order to break down what it really says and does.
Mike at The Big Stick discusses why a revolving door for teachers isn’t so bad. He argues that alternative certification procedures would allow more qualified and excited individuals to become teachers, and that’s better than the status quo for students even if these new teachers leave after a few years for other jobs.
Cujo359 at Slobber and Spittle writes about what history can teach us, specifically regarding the Obama administration’s public statements compared to the outcomes of Obama’s policies as president. King John didn’t write the Magna Carta on a whim alone one day; the British aristocracy held him accountable and pushed for the type of government they wanted.
Just the elitist facts, ma’am
John Pieret at Thoughts in a Haystack deconstructs statements from the Discovery Institute’s Michael Egnor, who argued that intelligent design ought to be taught as science since most Americans are creationists. John points out that this reveals not only that the real agenda behind ID is creationism, but also that ID proponents seem to think science is merely a popularity contest.
Dana Hunter at En Tequila Es Verdad recommends two books by Richard Dawkins on understanding evolution. The Blind Watchmaker and Climbing Mount Improbable deal with the somewhat non-intuitive idea that complex beings could have “randomly” evolved. Understanding what the word “random” really means is one of the most interesting parts.
Blake Stacey at Science after Sunclipse mourns the death of the Boston Globe’s Health/Science section. They’re going to push a few science-related articles into the business and lifestyle sections if they fit, both space-wise and content-wise it seems.
Two people sent in links about Jon Stewart’s takedown of financial reporter Jim Cramer on The Daily Show. After a week-long feud between the two (Stewart mocked CNBC in a brief segment and Cramer took it upon himself to defend his show “Mad Money” and the station as a whole), Cramer came to Stewart for an interview. It’s pretty painful. Dana Hunter walks you through the gory details. Cujo359 turns it into a case study about how being ignorant of the facts and encouraging ignorance in others spells disaster for anyone, whether you’re a TV personality or not.
Living the elitist life
George at Decrepit Old Fool suggests that we do one impossible thing every year — not literally impossible, but seemingly impossible, something we can’t do yet and maybe never imagined we’d try. He’s learning to ride a unicycle. What will you do?
Blake Stacey also alerts us of the coining of the word TeXgefühl. If you’ve ever written in the typesetting system LaTeX or its variants, you’ll appreciate the notion that it takes a particular instinctive sense to get it right. My TeXgefühl has been gathering a bit of dust lately, but I think the existence of a word is motivating me to get it back in gear.
Here at It’s the Thought that Counts, I wrote about the Spread the Word to End the Word campaign (against the word “retarded”) and why it’s misguided. Respect for others is important, but I think we shouldn’t confuse respect with blind political correctness.
That wraps up CEB XI. Thanks for stopping by! It’s been an honor and a pleasure to host. See you next month!
More on words
As it happens, I’ve been rereading Flowers for Algernon by Daniel Keyes, and I thought this paragraph was worth quoting after yesterday’s post. If you don’t know the story, it’s about a mentally retarded man who receives experimental brain surgery to drastically increase his IQ.
Am I a genius? I don’t think so. Not yet anyway. As Burt would put it, mocking the euphemisms of educational jargon, I’m exceptional—a democratic term used to avoid the damning labels of gifted and deprived (which used to mean bright and retarded) and as soon as exceptional begins to mean anything to anyone they’ll change it. The idea seems to be: use an expression only as long as it doesn’t mean anything to anybody. Exceptional refers to both ends of the spectrum, so all my life I’ve been exceptional.
(Emphasis is original.) That was written in 1966.
Am I a jerk?
I’m perplexed by the recent campaign against the “r-word” (retard, retarded, etc.). In the interest of not being a total jerk I’m going to include their promotional banner here, but then I’m going to do a bit of the critical thinking thing and ask whether their campaign actually makes sense. To cut to the chase: I agree with the conclusion, but not the means of getting there. Hopefully that doesn’t make me a bad person.
I want to make it clear that I don’t think calling anyone names is acceptable. I would never say, “You’re such a retard” to a person, or even say “He’s such a retard” behind someone’s back, whether or not that person was actually mentally retarded. I admit that I have occasionally used the adjective “retarded” to refer to plans or situations that I think result from people not understanding what’s going on or not being able to think through the complexities of an issue. When the campaign refers to “everyday” use of the word, I assume they mean this latter case. I do think I should stop doing it, but not for the reason the campaign suggests. (I’ll get to my reason later.)
The first thing I think the Spread the Word campaign is forgetting is that no matter what word is used to describe people with severe and broad learning disabilities, that word is going to be used as an insult that means someone is stupid. “Mental retardation” was at one point the kinder, euphemistic term replacing previous terms like “idiot,” “imbecile,” and “moron.” Seriously, those were the scientific terms for different ranges of IQ scores. This commenter on a disability advocacy blog pointed out that “special needs” is already resulting in the playground insult, “You’re special.” You can’t stop this phenomenon by eliminating one word at a time.
People described as “mentally retarded” are described that way because they learn slower and comprehend less than other people. Guess what? That means they are less intelligent. That doesn’t mean they’re not good people or that they’re not a valued part of society. It also doesn’t mean that they’re not skilled at anything. But you can’t say that random things count as intelligence (like “bodily-kinesthetic intelligence” and “naturalist intelligence”) and then declare everybody to be equally intelligent.
The thing is, using the “r-word” for the most part evokes qualities that are actually related to the term “mental retardation.” Because of this, I don’t think of it as such a grave insult the way that the Spread the Word campaign is characterizing it. The “r-word” isn’t being used as a synonym for “bad” or “uncool” just arbitrarily, to be mean. It’s not like seeing a boy try out for the school musical and saying, “That’s so gay!” It’s more like seeing two men kissing and saying that. Like… yeah. It sort of is.
The problem is — and this is the problem I recognize — it isn’t really. It’s actually more like poking your slightly pudgy stomach while you look in the mirror and saying, “I’m obese.” Or, in a more real-life example, leaving that difficult exam and exclaiming, “I was raped!” Using the word “retarded” to describe someone who merely disagrees with your understanding or to describe a situation which was simply sub-optimally planned trivializes the reality of mental retardation. It’s a complicated condition, a real challenge for people who have it. It’s disrespectful to those people to describe your everyday inconveniences using this serious medical term. Imagine if your friend dropped something accidentally and you said, “Jeez, it’s like you have cerebral palsy or something.” Or if he stumbled over his words while thinking of what to say next, and you said, “What is it, do you have Parkinson’s?” People do commonly exaggerate in everyday speech (It’s like a million degrees outside today! or, It took a thousand years to download that song!) but I can certainly see the argument that exaggeration downplays the significance of these serious conditions.
The Spread the Word campaign is based around the idea that the “r-word” insults people by implying that they are less capable, while in reality they have so many abilities. (Just look at the Special Olympics!) But the fact is that mentally retarded people are less capable in this specific set of situations involving comprehension and learning. That’s why we call it a disability. It seems to me that it would be more appropriate and effective to acknowledge this, and combat everyday use of the “r-word” on the grounds that it is a trivialization of a serious challenge that many good, respectable people have to face.
Ada Lovelace Day
Perhaps you recall my pledge a couple months back to participate in Ada Lovelace Day, a blogging celebration of women in technology. (Lovelace was the first computer programmer, even before there were computers. She wrote code for Babbage’s analytical engine before it was built.) The pledge needed 1,000 signers to go into effect, and as of right now it has nearly twice that: 1,980. Nearly two thousand people are writing today about a woman in technology they admire. Too cool!
I’ve chosen to write about Stephanie Kwolek, the DuPont chemist who is best known for having invented Kevlar (poly-paraphenylene terephtalamide) in 1964. Five times as strong as steel, Kevlar has found many applications, from sports equipment to synthetic woodwind reeds to bulletproof vests. Kwolek worked on many other synthetic materials, including Lycra and Spandex (probably pretty familiar to you), Nomex (flame-resistant and used by firefighters and race car drivers), and Kapton (used in flexible electronics and space suits).
Stephanie Kwolek graduated in 1946 with a B.S. in chemistry from Margaret Morrison Carnegie College, the now-closed women’s college associated with Carnegie Mellon University. She wanted to go on to medical school but couldn’t afford it, and interviewed for a research position at DuPont. I love this story about her interview:
After [W. Hale] Charch indicated that he would let her know in about two weeks whether she would be offered a job, Kwolek asked him if he could possibly make a decision sooner since she had to reply shortly to another offer. Charch called in his secretary and in Kwolek’s presence dictated a job offer letter. In later years, reflecting upon this bold request for a woman to make in 1946, she suspected that her assertiveness influenced his decision in her favor.
Kwolek holds 28 patents and has won many awards recognizing her contributions to the polymers industry. In 1995 she was inducted into the National Inventors Hall of Fame. In 1996 she won the National Medal of Technology “for her contributions to the discovery, development and liquid [crystal] processing of high-performance aramid fibers which provide new products worldwide to save lives and benefit humankind.” She also won the Lemelson-MIT Lifetime Acheivement Award in 1999.
Kwolek’s biography in the “Winner’s Circle” on the Lemelson-MIT Program’s website catalogues her many contributions, and also notes that she began her education and career in chemistry
during a time when women were encouraged to be homemakers instead of going to school. Inspired and supported by her parents to pursue this route, Kwolek comments, “I recommend that parents encourage their daughters to pursue scientific careers, if they are so inclined, in the same way they would their sons. The opportunities for both sexes are far more equal now.” Though she faced gender discrimination as she rose to the top, she paved the way for other aspiring female scientists and now serves as a mentor to many.
I found this profile of Kwolek, originally broadcast on public radio as part of a series on women in science. It sounds like she’d be an amazing mentor. She’s certainly an inspiration:
“I discovered over the years,” she said, “that I seemed to see things that other people did not see. Generally, if things don’t work out, I don’t just throw them out, I struggle over them, to try to see if there’s something there. You have to be inquisitive about things. You have to have an open mind.”
That same program notes that as a child, Kwolek had dreamed of being a fashion designer. It makes a nice story, to have wanted to be a fashion designer or a doctor, and end up using chemistry to design fabrics that save lives. I think it’s also interesting in terms of our preconceptions about what being a scientist means and what scientists ought to care about. It’s another reminder that liking traditionally feminine things is not mutually exclusive with being a successful scientist. Additionally, it underscores the fact that the messages we send children matter. Kwolek’s parents could have fostered only her interest in sewing, but they encouraged her to study science. If they hadn’t, the world would really be missing out.
Entertainment, meet science
Although I felt a little guilty at the time for not sitting in technical talks at every opportunity, I’m really glad I stopped in at the Physics and Culture session at the APS March Meeting. (Professor Natelson, I agree with your student — it’s too bad you missed it!) There were several talks that discussed the (typically low) accuracy of science in popular movies and television, and how scientists ought to feel about it. The general consensus among the speakers was that, though we should try for greater accuracy, even bad science was all right because it got people interested in science and it provided a springboard from which we could begin conversations about how to do it right.
One of these speakers was Jennifer Ouellette from the National Academy of Sciences, explaining the NAS’s Science and Entertainment Exchange program. Basically, they match up directors and producers with scientific experts, so that whatever they’re directing and producing can be informed by the scientist’s expertise. This isn’t just about sci-fi flicks. Any time you have special effects, you have to make decisions about how you represent physics on-screen. (Of course, even when you live in a fantasy universe, there are some things we have trouble suspending our disbelief about.) Maybe you just want someone lecturing on math or science in the background of a scene, and you want to make sure what they’re saying is at all coherent. There are many contexts in which the Exchange can make, and has been making, valuable contributions.
I was really excited to hear about this program, and I think it’s great that the NAS is coordinating it. As Ivan Schuller (who spoke later) pointed out, people get bored if you tell them you’re going to “educate” them, but they can’t wait to be “entertained.” It’s good for scientists to make friends with Hollywood, because they can help us teach people things without making them feel like they’re being taught… but it’s next to impossible to do alone. An organization to act as an interface is a brilliant idea.
If you want to be in SEE’s database of scientists they can contact, let them know! (Contact information is on their website.) Jennifer told us that they’re actually looking for more condensed matter / materials science experts… but maybe she was just catering to the March Meeting crowd.
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