If I can be said to have any heroes, the American thinkers of the late 19th century are probably near the top of my list. One man in particular holds a fascination for me; One of the greatest thinkers America has ever produced, Charles Peirce is a man whose work and strange, tragic life proved a tremendous inspiration for me when I got to study just a little bit about him back in my college days. Peirce worked in extreme poverty and obscurity for the majority of his life, scraping together an existence in his home in Milford, PA* and never stopping his work. What I find most romantic about Perice, aside from the importance of his ideas which ranged from developing the initial theory of semiotics (which has had a deep impact on how I see the world, no pun intended) to his discovery of how electrical currents can carry out logical functions (the grandfather of today’s computer processors), is the life he lead; Huddled like a secret in an old house, working like mad to understand the world around him, flourishing in absolute obscurity only to have his ideas rediscovered and validated years after his death. He was deeply dedicated to logic, to science and mathematics and to rational inquiry, and when I read a few of his works in my early twenties, his skepticism and commitment to logical analysis struck a deep chord in me. This passage in particular;
”Above all, let it be considered that what is more wholesome than any particular belief is integrity of belief, and that to avoid looking into the support of any belief from a fear that it may turn out rotten is quite as immoral as it is disadvantageous. The person who confesses that there is such a thing as truth, which is distinguished from falsehood simply by this, that if acted on it should, on full consideration, carry us to the point we aim at and not astray, and then, though convinced of this, dares not know the truth and seeks to avoid it, is in a sorry state of mind indeed.”—Charles Peirce, The Fixation of BeliefPopular Science Monthly 12 (November 1877)
Which, if I may, summarizes perfectly for me the problem with American life today. The truth, the pursuit of truth through the integrity of belief, has become undermined by the inversion of rational thinking; Desire has replaced reason. We are a nation of ideas born of conclusions, where beliefs are inherited and then presented prima facie. An example? The government demands that we go to war and then manufactures the premise. The desire becomes the reason. We call it preemptive war, a secondary inversion that is seen as a natural progression of ideas. Collectively, the nation embraces this decision making process because, to my eyes, it has a fundamental affinity to another brand of reasoning-inversion which still holds this country in its sway; Faith.
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When I was nine years old, my maternal grandmother took me to another in a long line of Sunday services at St. John’s Episcopal church in Mt. Pleasant, MI. I don’t remember when it happened, but I do know that sometime, during one of any number of Holy Eucharist Rite II services at that lovely little church that year, I stopped believing in god. What began in me as serious doubt about the veracity of religion’s claims has, in the intervening years, blossomed into full-blown atheism. I am proud of my atheism, of my refusal to let the conventions of polite company force me to give passes to reason-free thinking, but I have to admit, the 21st century has been a tremendous challenge for me as, day after day, I watch the parade of intellectual dishonesty, emotional pandering and political grandstanding march by without an organized, rational response from free-thinking people in this country. What times are these in which we live? How can it be that when confronted with the insanity of fundamentalist religious extremism, our society responds like for like?
What continues to trouble me about faith in America is the way in which the right to believe is mistaken for veracity of belief itself. Despite some refreshing nastiness on his part, Christopher Hitchens describes the problem quite eloquently in his book god is not Great when he says
”Our belief is not belief. Our principles are not a faith. We do not rely solely upon science and reason, because these are necessary rather than sufficient factors, but we distrust anything that contradicts science or outrages reason… We are not immune to the lure of wonder and mystery and awe: we have music and art and literature… Most important of all, perhaps, we do not need any machinery of reinforcement.”—Hitchens, god is not Great (pgs, 5-6)
and although we do not need “any machinery of enforcement”, we do need some effort to be made to win the war against enforced ignorance. It is truly a strange time to be alive when truth and the pursuit of truth has become negotiable because of the application of rational ‘aping’ to lend superstitions a false sense of rational authority. This is the most jaw-dropping technique that I see in our culture, more so for its audacious ineptitude at actually applying the rules of logic than for the crowd of true believers who accept the bullshit parade. My favorite current example of this Barnum-esque hucksterism is The Creation Museum which, in an attempt to lend credibility to an impossibly false understanding of the world, tries to mimic the tropes of a natural history museum (and apparently, a movie studio theme park) in order to showcase the veracity of the idea that the world is only 6,000 years old. This is America after all, the land where money is proof, and no expense has been spared at The Creation Museum to spend as much as possible in order to prove that the creation myth in the book of Genesis is literal truth. Browsing the museum’s website, I found a lovely testimonial that sums things up with a neat and tidy bow:
”As a result of hearing Ken Ham speak … I decided to quit avoiding the descrepancy (sic) between Genesis and ‘science’, and look into the question(s) head on. Your organization has been a tremendous help—I now completely accept God’s Word in Genesis and feel led/equipped to carry the message of Truth further in my own life, work and church.’ – Supporter from Virginia (USA)
Did you catch that nice little rhetorical move? The supporter feels “led” to “carry the message of truth” after looking into the discrepancy between Genesis and… wait for it… science. The best part? The supporter chose Genesis! I would really love to see what “help” The Creation Museum provided as the supporter “looked into the questions head on.” That inquiry, that “looking into the questions head on” is, of course, the crucial information that is missing from the discourse. No nonsensical rejection of actual logic would be complete without making claims for truth; Co-opting the language of reason is simply another way of undermining reason itself.
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I’ve given a lot of thought as to whether or not I should have posted this bit of thinking, but I am tired of feeling like I should somehow hide my appreciation for reason while deferring to what I consider to be the undermining influence of popular irrationality. We have a national election coming up in the next year, and I know that the campaign trail is going to be littered with pandering and ridiculous situations where we ask our future leaders to respond empathetically to all sorts of irrelevant nonsense. This is perhaps the most troubling issue of all; Instead of a sober examination of the myriad of issues that our next President will inherit, the parade of crazy “what if” scenarios cultivated from television program scripts and skirting of real dialogue in favor of calculated sympathizing with superstitious concerns will continue on, unabated. It feels like a surreal dream, as if the impossible reality of an Orwell novel has somehow begun to bloom in the world around us. It is a long road to reconciliation for our society and the integrity of belief. But it is one we must travel, together.
* One day, when I was out at the MoMA Film Archive visiting a friend who worked there, we drove past Peirce’s house, which has a historical landmark designation. I took a few photos which were lost in my computer’s hard drive crash a few years ago, but it was pretty amazing to stumble upon Peirce’s house like that, driving down a two-lane highway in a small Pennsylvania town. A lovely little moment for me.
Despite my strong opinions and feelings on the subject, I have never written about my own experience on September 11, 2001 on this blog, primarily because my own experience pales in comparison to many of my fellow New Yorkers, the passengers on the planes, and the victims in Washington D.C. who lost their lives. I believe that this experience is something that everyone holds closely; In the days after September 11, individual experience was an issue open for conversation among New Yorkers who, sharing drinks in pubs or conversation on the bustling sidewalks, sought a connection with their fellow citizens. Shortly thereafter, things returned to semi-normal and people justifiably stopped talking about it; The need to try to move on was obvious. I still have a difficult time watching the footage of the day, I have no desire to watch fictionalized accounts of September 11 and I rarely (if ever, I honestly can’t remember) have written anything about the attack. Post-September 11 policies and politics? Sure. Documentaries? Yes, a couple of them. But writing about the experience? Never.
That policy ends right now. Tonight, I was catching up on an episode of HBO’s Real Time With Bill Maher when all of a sudden, this broke out:
Now, while that is good TV, I would like to make it clear that I have had enough of the September 11 “Loose Change” conspiracy crowd and their condescending disrespect for the the reality of what happened on what was the worst day of my life. In the same way that I won’t listen to the nonsense spouted by Holocaust deniers who spew the most outrageous nonsense in their complete dismissal of the experiences of millions of the dead and the thousands of survivors of the Nazi camps, I can’t sit idly by and allow this bullshit to slide knowing full well that thousands of people who lost their lives are being completely misrepresented by this group of liars. I am not going to give a line of my own ink to the idiocy that passes for analysis from these people, so let me just state my own experience so I can deal with this issue honestly and openly.
On September 11, 2001, I took the D Train from Brooklyn into Manhattan to go to work in the Empire State Building. When I arrived in my office on the 24th Floor, a co-worker mentioned that he had heard that an airplane had hit one of the World Trade Center towers. I immediately put on WNYC FM on the internet and listened to the reports from nearby the area and as the reports came in, the host of the show stated that it appeared as though another plane had hit the other tower. Immediately, my colleague and I looked out of the north-facing window of our own building to see if a plane was on its way toward us, because we had no idea what was going on. We mentioned to our boss what was going on and we decided not to wait around and to leave the building. I took the elevator down to the first floor, out the door on 34th street and I ran back to the subway. I caught the last D train back into Brooklyn and as that train crossed over the Manhattan Bridge in absolute silence and stopped there for a good 5 minutes, we watched the Towers burn. When we finally got to my stop, I bolted from the station to find traffic in the Grand Army Plaza area at a stand still, with police turning cars around, sending people back where they came from. I distinctly remember someone screaming at a traffic cop to let her through as she was already late for work and the officer saying “no one is going to work today, ma’am. You have the day off. Now head on home.” By the time I walked into my apartment, the first tower had already fallen. I watched the second one collapse from my couch. I didn’t move for days.
More than my own experience, which was not that of someone at the scene, the experience of so many of my friends and colleagues, people who had to walk uptown through the dust, people who saw and recorded the event in person; None of them have ever indicated that anything these conspiracy theories want us to believe are true. Sure, there are suckers born every minute, but why do they always seem to be on the side of trying to manufacture a conspiracy where there is none? I’m simply astonished that so many people could fall so hard for something that is so blatantly false; It’s like the whole Protocols of The Elders of Zion hoax, or this “idea” of Creationist “science” or any of the other nonsensical pieces of bullshit floating around the dumbed down American zeitgeist, each lie aping the methodology of science and academic research, but forgetting that the only tenet to which these disciplines subscribe is the truth, not some previously held grudge masquerading as a search for “what really happened.”
And now, a group of loudmouthed cretins tries to bully their way onto a TV show and shout down the host by spreading more of their insane nonsense about the collapse of Building Seven being an inside job by the New York Fire Department working for a Jewish “conspirator.” It’s the same anti-Jewish nonsense that has permeated conspiracy communities for years and more than anything else, these untruths undermine legitimate inquiry into actual governmental misconduct, allowing liars in positions of power to brush aside legitimate questions about their activities. I know I shouldn’t be bothered by yet another group of intellectually irresponsible liars, I shouldn’t let them get to me, but watching that clip on Real Time, I just don’t know why so many Americans laugh it off or brush it aside any more. I have to say, I was proud of Bill Maher for going after them but so troubled by the fact that, with so many other issues plaguing us, this nonsense continues and worried that the further away from the actual events of September 11th we get, the more of an audience these lies will find. More disgusting to me is that someone like Alex Jones, the conspiracy monger and radio host who sells these ideas in his videos and books, is actually profiting from these lies. Only in America.
More than anything, I’m tired of the intellectual dishonesty that finds an audience in this country; People with an agenda trying to hijack the reality of our collective experience and discovery, be it the development of the theory of Natural Selection or the experience of September 11, in order to satisfy their own misunderstanding of the world around them. Really, people; Enough is enough.
This is a re-print of a post written in November of 2004. It is shocking how little has changed in our country in the two years since, but I hope to see you at the polls today!
You live in a representative republic. Your interests are represented by powerful politicians in offices ranging from the local city or town in which you live all the way to the Presidency of the United States. All you have to do is wait on a line and select the individuals who you believe best represent your idea of America and government. Maybe it is not the best system, but it is our system. You have two more years to work for direct change. Today, you only have one job. Get out and Vote.
Food for thought on another Election Day:
“Perhaps the fact that we have seen millions voting themselves into complete dependence on a tyrant has made our generation understand that to choose one’s government is not necessarily to secure freedom.”—Friedrich August Hayek
“Bad officials are elected by good citizens who do not vote.”—George Jean Nathan
“Democracy is the only system that persists in asking the powers that be whether they are the powers that ought to be.”—Sydney J. Harris
“A citizen of America will cross the ocean to fight for democracy, but won’t cross the street to vote in a national election.”—Bill Vaughan
I was watching a little late night television this weekend when I passed by the History Channel, which was re-running their documentary KKK: A Secret History. As the film was winding to a close, the story eventually found its way to one of the most troubling pieces of film footage I know, one that continually haunts me to this day.
I was raised on picket lines; Two of my parents were school teachers in Flint, MI (the home of the modern Union movement in many ways) and in the late-1970’s and early 1980’s, teacher strikes were not at all uncommon. Of course, living in a community that was deeply committed to Union organizing, the safety of the picket was unquestioned; I even had my first kiss on the picket line. It wasn’t until I saw Barbara Kopple’s stunning Harlan County U.S.A, where a company employee fires a gun on a coal miner’s picket line, that I understood the reality of political action like a strike or a picket or protest. That film shook me deeply as a teenager. It’s one of those cinematic moments you always remember and was, for me, a deep political awakening that reached its apotheosis in the footage of The Greensboro Massacre.
On November 3rd, 1979, members of the Maoist Communist Worker’s Party (CWP) were preparing to stage an anti-KKK rally and march in a poor, African-American neighborhood in Greensboro, NC. The CWP was active in the area and trying to organize local textile workers into a union, and as such, were deeply unpopular among local authority figures for their militant actions in the community. As the CWP were preparing thier ‘Death To The Klan’ rally, a caravan of Klansmen and members of the American Nazi Party showed up to heckle and disrupt the march. The members of the CWP began attacking the caravan with heavy lumber until, despite having the ability to drive away safely, members of the Klan reached into the trunk of one of the cars and produced fire arms, opened fire on the demonstrators and killed five people. This tragic encounter is like a ghost for me, a signpost for all of the changes this country has undergone in the last twenty-seven years and this year, stumbling upon the memory once again, it is just one more reminder for me to get my ass to a voting booth this Tuesday and pull the lever with extra vigor.
I have seen the infamous footage several times and I always find it terrifying; Two militant groups, one deeply experienced with violence and terror, the other an extension of 1970’s radicalism that had more bark than bite (in most cases) and not a single police officer, federal agent or public official within a quarter mile of the confrontation. How could this happen?
The more I learn about the tragic violence, the more I understand the context of the clash and the more I see the tragedy as completely preventable. The CWP had disrupted a KKK rally earlier in the summer and had made threatening, violent overtones in the press toward the Klan, a Klan informant for the police department was given a copy of the CWP parade permit, allowing the KKK access to inside information about the staging area, the CWP’s plans and the fact that, in order to receive the permit, the CWP members had to agree to march unarmed. While that point seems obvious to me, I discovered that most marches were populated by many people carrying firearms, which was allowed under North Carolina law (the law has since changed as a result of the massacre). Also, one would imagine that if the police knew about the hostilities between the Klan and the CWP, knew that their informant within the KKK had obtained information about the rally and knew of the Klan’s plans (and had actually organized the group to disrupt the rally), and had granted a permit to the CWP to march (depite the CWP’s virulently anti-police attitude) that the police would show up and defend the rights of the CWP to free speech and at the very least inform the CWP that the Klan was preparing to disrupt the rally. That is, certainly, the responsibility of the police. Instead, law enforcement stayed several blocks away and were not on the scene when the violence broke out. Having several news crews on on hand, clearly capturing what happened that day, juries ultimately acquited all parties in the massacre as acting in self-defense.
In the years following the massacre and the acquittals, outrage and anger remained within Greensboro, culminating in one of the most interesting social projects in recent American history. Taking their lead from South Africa’s post-apartheid Truth and Reconciliation Commission, the citizens of Greensboro formed their own; The Greensboro Truth And Reconciliation Commission was the first Truth and Reconciliation Commission ever established in the United States. Their final report (available on their website and just released on May 25, 2006) is a fascinating document and I encourage those interested in the history of this terrible event to read it. It provides a clear portrait of not only the context of the tragedy, but of the way in which the community responded to the terrible events of that day. Also, there is an interesting film from 2002 about the event and its deeply unsettling legacy, Greensboro’s Child, which aired this weekend on local Greensboro Public Access TV and is available in its entirety on-line. If history is written by the winners, what does the silence and collective ignorance about The Greensboro Massacre mean to us today?
In Memory
Sandy Smith
Dr. James Waller
Bill Sampson
Caesar Cause
Dr. MIchael Nathan
Comments
Tom Hall,
That is a great post about The Greensboro Massacre and I thank you
for adding a comment about my Documentary, “Greensboro’s Child.” It
amazes me how people still look back and have no care at all that 5
people were killed in such a display of conspiracy between the local
government and the KKK. I hope something like this never happens again.
Thanks again,
Andy Coon
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Today’s article in the NY Times regarding Microsoft’s decision to close down the blog of Zhao Jing, a well-known blogger with an online pen name An Ti, at the request of the Chinese government highlights a disturbing trend among American companies who, in order to “comply with local laws”, have been collaborating with regimes around the globe to censor on-line speech.
Of course, blogging (and the internet in general) offer a tremendous tool for individuals and institutions to communicate their opinions and ideas in a free and open environment, crossing the artificial borders erected by nations and governments. This is one of the beauties of film as well, and one of the reasons I find a mutual attraction to film and the internet; The world is boiled down to its essence—the work and experiences of individuals. That American corporations would participate in the act of censorship isn’t that surprising; one need look no further than the NY Times’ own voluntary supression of the Bush White House’s domestic spying tactics at the administration’s behest to see a clear example of corporations censoring themselves. But when companies like Yahoo and Microsoft start to censor individual speech, in clear violation of the spirit and principles upon which their very companies were built, well, it doesn’t inspire much hope.
Apparently, the yuan is mightier than the pen. Shame on them.
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