Battle Lines
By Anthony | September 13th, 2006 | 1:17 amEd Brayton has a great post up at Dispatches From the Culture Wars. It deals with the way people draw unnecessary battle lines based on attributes such as religion, when in reality we often find that many of the truly important issues tend to make those battle lines irrelevant and even harmful. One passage stood out in particular:
I think we spend entirely too much time and energy drawing the lines in the wrong place. Too many people are focused on dividing us up into all the wrong groups. Humans are tribal by nature, I think, but as the world has shrunk we’ve developed the ability to form intentional tribes rather than tribes of necessity (family, village, etc). But we still tend to distinguish Us versus Them based on the most superficial of characteristics. The lines shouldn’t be drawn between Christians and atheists, Jews and Muslims, and so forth; they should be drawn between the decent and intelligent and life-embracing people in every group and the bigoted, ignorant and reactionary people in every group.
Brayton is primarily addressing religious divisions, but I think his reasoning should be extended even to political divisions when possible. It seems to me that the best possible thing would be for reasonable people from both sides of the spectrum to look past political affiliation and push back together against knee-jerk irrationality. Easier said than done, of course, and maybe even impossible with some issues. But it’s good to be reminded to question the layout of our battle lines, and to consider redrawing them from time to time when warranted.
September 13th, 2006 at 1:24 am
i agree 1000%
September 13th, 2006 at 8:10 am
“It seems to me that the best possible thing would be for reasonable people from both sides of the spectrum to look past political affiliation and push back together against knee-jerk irrationality.”
How possible will that be when (and if) the Nutroots cemet their hold over the Democrats?
September 13th, 2006 at 10:30 am
I suspect it will be as possible as it would be if the Religious Right or neocons cement their hold over the Republican party. If you really are interested in robbing irrational liberal elements of any power, then you need to be able to have reasonable conversations with reasonable people who lean towards the liberal end of the spectrum. Lumping together everyone who disagrees with you on some point and labeling them all “Lefties”, “Nutrooters”, or “True Believers” or being pointlessly antagonistic towards liberals isn’t going to let that happen. The point of my post is to say that people need to put away the broad brushes and jerking knees and work towards more reasonable conversations. It doesn’t matter who is cementing their hold over any given party.
September 13th, 2006 at 4:16 pm
“If you really are interested in robbing irrational liberal elements of any power, then you need to be able to have reasonable conversations with reasonable people who lean towards the liberal end of the spectrum.”
I’m looking for someone on the liberal end of the spectrum to have a reasonable conversation, with common sense logic being the prevailing factor, concerning first amendment rights, specifically regarding the placement in a public school of a picture that is some artist’s rendition of someone named Jesus.
Do you know anyone who would be willing to engage in such a conversation?
September 13th, 2006 at 11:04 pm
Heh… good one. 🙂
[Note (9.18): I intended this to simply brush off Bubba’s comment as a joke, but based on some recent comments, he seems to think I actually agree that I wasn’t being reasonable or logical. Just to clarify – no, that’s not what I meant. I have no problem with how I supported my position in our Jesus portrait discussion, and Bubba is more than welcome to hop back into that conversation at any time.]
September 14th, 2006 at 8:03 pm
PotatoStew,
I appreciated your summation and conclusion, but does this guy have any idea how condescending and insulting his quotation is to people, as in most people, who think there is something to their religious views other than lifestyle preferences? This itself is horrobly divisive. It is the divisiveness of the confused post modern man whose idea of the relativity of all religious or philosophical truth is the absolute truth. It is naive and silly. It is an ultimate “us verses them!” Shame on him!
Better is the long history of civility in a secular culture where we must all live together even though we may, religiously speaking, be in disagreement. He is wrong as to the source of the divisions today. We are dealing with immaturity, men acting like pigs, men and women of all types not grown up. Almost all religions, except for the most radical and weirdest forms, would have men act like men, and be gentlemen, and civil, and honor their neighbor. So the problem isn’t religion. It is the utter lack of it. It is the ignorance and immaturity of contemporary western religion that is the problem locally in our country and city. We need more more mature Christians, more more mature Jews, more more mature Muslims, even more more mature atheists. Damn, we’ve just lost our heads and our manners.
And all that just to make sure my link to you was still right!
Go Tigers.
Joel
September 14th, 2006 at 8:45 pm
Joel, thanks for your comments – I appreciate them as always.
I wonder though if you read the entire article – if not, I would strongly recommend that you do so. I think Brayton’s thoughts are in many ways a lot closer to yours than you may be thinking.
He is definitely not saying that religion is the problem. In fact, the first half of your second paragraph echoes much of what he is saying. Compare your statements:
“Better is the long history of civility in a secular culture where we must all live together even though we may, religiously speaking, be in disagreement. … We are dealing with immaturity, men acting like pigs, men and women of all types not grown up.”
With a few other passages from his post:
“[The lines] should be drawn between those who treat others as equal human beings and those who treat others as pawns to be manipulated, commodities to be bought and sold, or objects upon which to inflict their need to make themselves feel stronger.”
and:
“The fact that I do not accept Christianity does not mean that I must think that all Christians are deluding themselves. It also doesn’t mean that it’s my job to harangue them about our differences of opinion. When someone seeks to get their version of Christianity enshrined in the law, I will stand up and oppose them and I will use every means at my disposal to do so. When someone seeks to replace or water down science education in public schools by bringing in their religious views, they have made an enemy of me (in the political sense; I may well like them just fine personally). When someone uses their religious views as a weapon with which to assault the rights, and sometimes even the bodies, of my gay friends, they will find no more fierce an opponent than me.
But you know what? Here is the absolutely key point, so I’m going to put it in bold so no one misses it: In every one of those circumstances, standing by my side in those battles will also be a good many Christians.”
Again, I would recommend reading the entire post before drawing any conclusions.
September 14th, 2006 at 8:50 pm
Thanks. I will do that. I didn’t you’re right, just the excerpt.
Joel