Charles and the Saturday Night Special

I should start by stating that I am armed.

I do not have a stockpile of weapons, and I do not think I would be safer if I walked around strapped, but here in my home, I do have a pistol and ammunition.

We Americans have a thing about guns. Actually we have two things about guns - we love them and we loathe them. Generally, we pick a side, but I imagine that there are those who do both. There are a few of us who do neither, and I am one of those. I love to shoot, but I do not love guns. Firing weapons is exhilarating - owning them is a pain. I’ve fired a number of different guns - military weaponry (M-16, M-60 ), hunting rifles (30.06, some Winchester that was rated to bring down a Kodiak bear with one shot that a friend bought to bring on a trip to Alaska;  after about three shots your shoulder hurt so much that it was difficult to get off an accurate shot - not fun), shotguns of many varieties and sizes, and pistols from .22s to .44 magnums. A lot of people have more experience, but my point is that I know a bit about guns, have played with them some and, frankly, they are fun. Probably not for everybody, but for many. There is something about firing off a round that touches something in me so ancient that it is pre-linguistic. The closest thing to it that I have felt is the sensation I get when I am fishing, and a trout hits the lure or bait, and there is that tug on the pole, followed by the quavering of the line. I suppose the two share a common hunting or dominance theme, so perhaps it is related to that.  Have at it Dr. Freud. In any case, shooting is fun.

And it is dangerous. Bullets kill people. People use guns to kill people. I knew a few people who have been killed with guns. One was killed by his wife, with a gun that I had shot years before. I used it to plink at rocks, she used it to kill a man. I don’t know how that happened - I knew and liked them both, but something bad happened, and she seems to believe that she had to shoot him. She may be right - I really don’t know. I liked them both, and I see no reason to disbelieve what she says. She may be alive today because she had access to the gun - certainly he is dead today because she did  It is not my place or within my abilities to decide if what happened was criminal or was necessary.

In the past month or so there have been two high profile multiple shootings - one in a movie theatre in Colorado, and the other at a Sikh temple. Today there was another shooting in New York, near the Empire State Building. The initial reports indicated that it was another seemingly senseless act by a crazed person. It turned out to be a former employee shooting a former boss. The other casualties were the shooter himself, and the ten or so people injured by ricocheting bullets as two police officers, almost certainly justifiably, fired fourteen shots at the man. The point is that we have become accustomed to the random violence dispensed by a person with a large quantity of ammunition and the means to use it.

Guns are fun, and guns kill people. The same can be said for many drugs or dangerous recreational activities.  The situations are not perfectly analogous. Most recreational deaths happen to people who have assumed the risks involved in their activity - they choose to free-climb, skydive, base jump, or whatever. Drugs mostly kill the persons who actively use them, but frequently they also kill others - passengers in the “other” car, etc.. On the other hand, most people who own or use guns will never be injured themselves, nor will they ever injure another with their weapons. Drugs we regulate or ban, recreational activities we admire. Guns we love and loath. Sort of like the British Monarchy.

The Royal Family and the Second Amendment are beautiful expressions of the power and the living heritage that is the nations. They were started in their nations’ youth, and continue today, manifesting the continuity of the people - their connection with the heroes of their glorious past. They are unique, defining traits of their countries, and the loss of them would be the end of the nations as they know, love, and cherish them. For others, however, they are anachronistic relics of a long-gone past - a past where the rule of law and of the people had not yet been established.  Few British subjects believe that a glorious monarch, chosen by God, provides benevolent protection for the nation, just as few American citizens believe that their assault rifles will help them defeat the combined US military forces, should they decide that the government is tyrannical. They are symbols of a step that we needed, but which we also needed to outgrow. Symbols that are expensive, either in lives or money, and certainly in the loss of a more mature people, a people who, when they were children, thought, spoke, and reasoned as children, but having attained adulthood, had put aside their childish ways.

It seems to me that both are true. What is likely needed is to either find a way to reduce the costs of keeping our talismans or to find another symbol that tells us that we are, in fact, the worthy descendants of our worthy fore bearers. It is, however, as difficult to imagine Prince William and the Duchess living in a two-bedroom flat as it is an America where patriots proudly display paintball guns on their trucks’ rifle racks. I’ll give you my gun when you give me a really cool pellet pistol? Implausible. More likely, I think, is that we will both muddle on as we are, bearing the cost of symbols that we apparently still need. Until we don’t.  In a land far, far away. Pax.

Shit, meet fan...

I am confused, which I tend to think is a good thing.  A wise teacher once told me that confusion is the first step in creating a new understanding – that one needs to dismantle what one believes to be true and truly question it before recognizing a new pattern.  Sometimes I have found this to be true.  Other times I just stay confused until the ADD train comes by to take me somewhere shinier.  So we shall see.

The shiny today is the distinction between the sexes that is, for a man of my generation, a vast stretch of war-torn landscape, hiding dangers both modern and ancient.  Primitive pit traps -  some still well-hidden, some long exposed – lay in wait alongside heat-sensitive airborne drones.  The detritus of battles forgotten or fresh ought shine some light on what we have wrought, but just when one thinks some fair generalizations might be made, another explosion shifts the ground, and what had seemed clear moments ago is lost.

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal.  Yeah – self evident.  When I was young, it seemed self-evident that “men”, in this case, included women.  It was common usage.  When one referred to a group of people that included both men and women, the proper term to use was “men”.   It was just grammar.  Then, around the end of high school, it seemed self-evident that this rule was wrong and wrong-headed.  To simply fold women into “men” was disrespectful and diminishing.  Women were not a mere subset of the larger group of men, but an entity to be evaluated and appreciated on their own and on their own terms.  And so we, and our language, had to change.  The process of altering the language was less than elegant, but we struggled through “personhood” and a somewhat awkward use of plurals until we seemed able to speak to one another again.  But there was still the damn door.

And here we have arrived at the first of the mines.  Even mentioning this invites scorn and judgement for being hopelessly clueless, but there it is.  The door.  Shall I open it for you?

Of course.  I am a man, and I will open the door.  But it will mean nothing other than that I am not a complete clod.  It will mean nothing.  It will not imply that you cannot open your own door, and it will not imply that we are in any way not equal.  Yes, I must open the door.  And no, it means nothing regarding a distinction between the sexes.  Except that it shows the respect that I am to express for the other, equal sex.  It’s a silly thing, but it is a thing, and the reason that it is never mentioned is that men, by the time they reach an age where some women might take them seriously, have learned to not mention it.  But it is not alone.  Our society is loaded with distinctions in how we treat the other sex, and we have not resolved this.  Nor do we need to - at least not on any particular timetable.  My guess is that sometime in the future, people who have come of age in a different time will find a balance.  And, frankly, we can all live with the ambiguity, usually.  It does no harm, and it rarely causes hard feelings, generally.  Until the shit hits the fan.

The shit, in this case, goes by the name of Todd Akin, candidate for the US Senate in Missouri.  Perhaps not Mr. Akin himself, but perhaps his now infamous words: “If it’s a legitimate rape, the female body has ways to try to shut that whole thing down.”  The fan, in this case, is pretty much the whole country.

I’ve seen the anger of women who believe themselves condescended to, ignored, or dismissed.  It is not pretty, and it is not a summer thunderstorm of intense energy but short duration.  Oh no it is not.

I cannot speak to the diminution of rape in this comment.  I have never been raped, and I am not attempting to advance an opinion on what rape victims have experienced or what they feel.  I am offended by the comment, but it is my own response, and I leave it for others better qualified to respond to him.  This is the best response that I have seen from that perspective.  I have no desire to enter into the abortion debate.  I have my opinion.  I know what facts and what values I bring to the discussion, and I believe that they are irrelevant to the phenomena we are seeing.  Akin is opposed to abortion, for his own reasons, but his basic ignorance, wilful or not, of female biology is terrifying.  This man wants to tell women what they can and cannot do regarding procreation, but either has never bothered to study how procreation works, or he has been willing to believe a patently silly idea supported by no evidence and refuted by academics and medical doctors.  All  in order to give his ideas authority.  And he believes that this will be sufficient to rally the true believers to his cause.  He wants to have the government decide intimate details of a woman’s life, using a cartoon of an idea that most high school juniors can dissect.  He is a fool, and he will come to a fool’s end.

But look a the anger, look at the rage.  And look at those who are nodding and agreeing, but who believe that this is being blown out of proportion.  Here is the danger.  We know that things are wrong, but we don’t really know if we agree on what those things are.  We want a world where we respect, care for, and love each other, but we live in a world where we really do not see and cannot safely comment on certain basic realities in our lives, and the seeming contradictions in our accommodations.  The doors.  And as long as we live like this, we will step on long hidden trip wires or, like Mr. Akin, throw ourselves on grenades of our own making.

Just over a month ago, a crazed man shot and killed a dozen people in Colorado.  The reporting of the incident detailed the weapons used, the background of the murderer, and the booby-traps he had set in his apartment.  The reporting also included stories of people desperately throwing their bodies between the killer and their loved ones -  adults shielding children, friends shielding each other, husbands and boyfriends shielding their wives and girlfriends.  But I heard not one story of a wife or girlfriend, in the panic and mayhem of the moment, offering herself up to protect her man.  Until we can also recognize this, just notice and talk about it, we are a long way from resolution.  Pax.

Religion and vilolence.

The idea that a person or a nation's predominant religion may be the cause of wars - that religious differences are such that it is understandable that religions conflict may lead to violence or even war - seems to be making a resurgence.  With our last three wars taking place in areas where the majority of people hold different religious views than do the majority of Americans, with violence in America against mosques, Jewish and Sikh temples, and southern Black churches, it certainly seems that violence does at least seem attracted to religions institutions.  But to what extent ought one think that religion "causes" violence or war?

 This question is tricky.  Fortunately, we are trickier.  For the essential tricksy nature of this type of question, I’ll refer you to Richard Feynman’s soliloquy on magnets - he’s far smarter and more interesting than I am, so read this first, and then go there.  Suffice to say that the word “cause” is going to give us some problems.

Is religion involved in some wars?  Oh yeah.  Do people explain their violent actions in  terms of religion?  Often.  Do people believe that their religions sometimes compel them to go to war?  Yup.  Do these truths make religion a cause of violence and war?  Depends.  I believe that if one is careful in one’s thinking, one will think not.

Let’s start with “war”.  Here is a fairly good definition, from dictionary.com:

          “a conflict carried on by force of arms, as between
          nations or between parties within a nation”

Assuming this is correct, we need a conflict, arms, and at least two parties in order to have a war.  Religion cannot directly create arms (in a conventional sense), so we’ll set that aside.  Can a religion create a conflict?  Perhaps.  Can religion create separate parties?  Maybe.  It depends a bit on what you believe a religion IS.

OK - now how about “religion”?  What exactly is a religion?  Here we will likely get a rich variety of possible definitions, so let’s start with some distinctions.  First, religion is not God.  Not even god.  If, in this context, we meant God, then the question would be “Does God cause wars?”, and I think we can agree that that is a different question.  So if a religion is not God, then I think we are safe in believing that a religion is created - that is, it is not the source of life or substance.  Religion, in the sense in which it is used in this context, seems to be something that is not divine, but very well may be believed by its adherents to be a path to or from the divine.  This is an important, if perhaps self-evident distinction.  Again, from dictionary.com regarding religion:

          “a set of beliefs concerning the cause, nature, and
          purpose of the universe, especially when
          considered as the creation of a superhuman agency
          or agencies, usually involving devotional and ritual
          observances, and often containing a moral code
          governing the conduct of human affairs.”

Now, many people will complain that a “set of beliefs” is too restrictive.  Their religion is more than a mere set of beliefs.  It is a way of life.  It is a relationship.  It is a transcendent experience of the oneness of all.  These may all be true, but the error is in the (often unspoken) word “mere”.  These beliefs aren’t “mere”.  They are anything but “mere”.  The beliefs by which one directs one’s life, beliefs involving, perhaps, the greatest secrets, blessings and curses of the universe have no taint of “mere” on them.  But they are beliefs - they are not facts.  They may be wonderful beliefs, they may include charity, love, vengeance, justice, forgiveness, grace, nothingness, and they may, ironically, disparage “belief” itself.  But it is, I think, what we are talking about when we consider religions causing wars.

Cause.  Oo boy.  This is the hardest of them all.  The rational among us believe that there is cause and there is effect.  Ultimately, for the most rational of us, there is an Ultimate Cause (Primum movens).  Aristotle argued for this, which only encouraged Aquinas.  Fortunately, Kant came along and argued that they were both in error, and for this I will forever be in Kant’s debt.  However if we were to accept the Ultimate Cause position, then we, ultimately, would be back talking about how God is the cause of war, and that is not helpful.

Back to the trusty dictionary.com, only this time with feeling:

          cause   [kawz] noun, verb, caused, causing.
          noun
          1. a person or thing that acts, happens, or exists in such
          a way that some specific thing happens as a result; the
          producer of an effect: You have been the cause of      
          much anxiety. What was the cause of the accident?
          2. the reason or motive for some human action: The
          good news was a cause for rejoicing.

Again, we have the problem of chain of causation or, as it has become known in popular culture, the “Butterfly Effect”.  So let’s get real here.  The butterfly cannot reasonably be thought to have caused the hurricane.  Not really.  That sort of distant, disinterested chain of events is not useful for us, other than to have a bit of an “everything is everything in the cosmic interconnected web” moment.  Fun as those are, they are not really helpful in assigning blame, which is essentially what this question presupposes to exist.  “Does religion cause violence and wars” is really asking “Can we blame religion for the violence and wars?”  If our only interest is if religion is one link in the chain of events, then the answer was obvious from the beginning - of course religion causes violence and wars.  If, however, we are attempting to assign responsibility, that is another matter, and that is, I think, is the real nature of the question. 

And the answer is “No”.  Remarkably simply, the answer is “no”. 

Religions are created by people to explain, and perhaps contain, the human condition and its relationship to the universe.  Whether or not a deity is behind it (and I do believe that there is such a deity), the religion and its tenants, regulations, proscriptions and permissions are the embodiment of a peoples’ questions and conclusions regarding reality.  The religion does not exist separate from the people - it a manifestation of aspects of the people themselves.  A deity may exist without the people, but without the people, there is no religion.

If religion is the work of the people, if people create, nurture, change, and harvest the fruits of their religion, is it fair to say that it was the religion that has caused a war?  I think not.  If two people are in a relationship that turns abusive, can one person say that it was not his or her fault that he or she killed the partner - it was the relationship’s fault?  They created the relationship, poured themselves into it and made decisions based on the relationship, but the responsibility rests with the persons themselves - the real moral agents.  Likewise, we cannot excuse our actions or the actions of others by labeling them as "religious". We cannot invest our creations with the responsibility for our own actions.

It is not my place to say whether the violence or war is justified or not.  Only that it is sloppy and dangerous to blame it on “religion”.  One may believe that it was the will of the people, or believe that it is the will of God, but religion has no will of its own - it is a reflection of the will of God or of the people.  If we are satisfied with a war, credit the people, or credit their God.  If we are not, then assign the blame to the people or to their God.  Struggling with this may yield important information about the nature of both of them.  Blaming religion is a shortcut that allows us to avoid examining ourselves and questioning our Gods, and history has shown us that this well-worn path rarely leads to enlightenment or to honor.  That way lie monsters.  Pax.