Flannery O’Connor, the great Catholic writer, was once quoted as saying “You shall know the truth and the truth shall make you odd.” So be it. I am in good company then.
Now that I am older and wiser (at least according to the aphorism) I am less jostled by every wind of fashion, less captivated by got-cha type of thinking typical of the penny-ante journalists so in vogue today. In more ways than one I have let odd take over.
Some odd thoughts:
A wise old preacher once told me “If it’s new it ain’t true. If it’s true it ain’t new.”
Truth has historical record. Lies, cheap novelty as in “Hope and Change.”
I agree with Wolcott’s assessment (see James Wolcott’s Vanity Fair article “Prime Time’s Graduation”)about the state of today’s movies being rather boorish and sophomoric and that television/cable TV is far outpacing movies with its much higher quality of writing and directing and a greater depth of characters. Yet, I despair of any good thing coming out of either.
Truly, I cannot remember the last time I rented a movie. I don’t remember the title of the movie, either. I haven’t been to theatre in well over two years. For what reason I did attend is forgotten.
TV: I don’t watch The Living Dead, Mad Men, Breaking Bad, The Real Housewives of Chicago’s North Side or all manner of well-written, well-crafted dramatic episodes or all manner of crime investigations, all manner of (fill-in-the-blank) “finely textured” serial programming that Hollywood cranks out. Though superbly crafted these often prurient programs hold nothing of interest or value to me. I am happily odd without them in my head.
You can believe me when I say that I don’t care about dead people who hang around unwanted or that Don Draper is losing himself in his work and the next untapped babe or that Walt is a terminally living drug producer and seller (Breaking Bad, like many cable shows in fact outrage me. That anything like this can of trash is available on TV for kids and adults to view is unthinkably criminal. I’m a mature adult. I don’t care about the show’s supposedly ‘mature themes.” I think the show is substantive abuse.)
Look around. We consume comparison: commercials, magazines, TV programs, the Shahs of Sunset. I could easily imagine that Obama’s class warfare rhetoric would quickly lose its teleprompter zip if our culture didn’t keep promoting keeping up with the Shahs of Sunset and the like.
Contentment has been dislodged from the human psyche and has gone missing. Ubiquitous high-profile bling now holds court. Disparity is highlighted daily. And, as a result, charity (in the form of higher taxes) is demanded in order to make all things equal. Somehow, this equates to social justice.
These days low-income people can dwell on income disparity 24/7. Many now have big screen TVs and microwaves. And, before them now on the big hi-def screen are the ostentatious rich: The Real Housewives of Atlanta. It would be easy for anyone watching to say “The Grass IS greener…” Envy and covetousness are in your face, especially when the bas-relief is provided by HDTV.
Beside this, BHO and other talking heads of the liberal media are telling them that the rich need to do their part. This demand is ludicrous.
With his bully pulpit BHO promotes class warfare. He tells us that the answer to your problems is to take money from someone else! Isn’t this the mentality typically found among Chicago street gang members but is now code-named Social Justice? (BTW: What we need is not a single payer health care system. What we need is single payer taxpayers where every single person does their part and not just 50 % of the nation. Everyone should be invested in our country.)
Am I human? Upon occasion:
I have been known to watch Guy Fieri (I think he’s cute.) on Diners, Drive-ins and Dives hamming it up with restaurant owners. And, sometimes when I’m in a really grisly mood I watch Anthony Bourdain’s No Reservations (Anthony, Paula Deen can cook for me anytime, your blackballing of her cooking style notwithstanding).
Speaking of food, I don’t own a Blackberry, iPhone or other hand-held electronic device which could bleep in a restaurant and interrupt a Crème brûlée with a dear friend. This even though I work in a technical industry and could easily finger pointed barbs with the best of them. I am old school. Pen and paper work well. Spitballs, too. And, if the world is going to end I am prepared. I won’t need an iPad telling me that I’m going to be with the Lord – that’s already been documented.
Without the gizmos I don’t tweet. I don’t send 140 character snippets of pithy self-brined revelation out to chomping-at-the-bit (or byte) followers. Come to think of it I don’t think I have any followers! (This post has enough characters to choke a gaggle of hand-held devices and their indentured slaves.)
‘What does she do?”
I mostly read, talk to myself when no one is around, go to church, dance wildly to the Romantics’ What I Like About You, annoy my family and routinely infuriate people I don’t know on the internet.
How odd. But with a name like Sally Paradise how could I not be the odd woman out or the .
Transgender. The word sounds surreal, mysterious and out-of-the-comfort-zone scary. Transylvania, transubstantiation and transmogrification have similar unsettling effects on the hearer.
In a less frightening usage, “trans”, the Latin prefix “across”, evokes thoughts of crossing a border or a change from one type to another. Consider the words “translate”, “transition”, “transportation”, “transposition” and “transformer.”
The chemical usage of “trans” in describing food may also promote consumer acceptance or rejection based on whether or not a product contains “Trans Fat.”
In personal use I do not use the word “transgender” to describe myself. I find it reproachful and slighting, in fact, due to its connection to the LGBT community and the connotations that this community has engendered for the word.
I realize that there are many in the LGBT community who use the word “Trans” to describe themselves: “I am happy to be a Trannie.” But this was never true for me.
To begin with I am not associated with the LGBT community whatsoever. There are reasons why I am not involved in the LGBT community and I have written about those reasons elsewhere in previous posts. But to mention it briefly my choice not to be involved in that community has to do with the fact that I am a Christian. Because I follow Jesus Christ I do not encourage or promote homosexual or bisexual behavior of any kind. Beyond this I certainly do not base my life or center my life around sexuality as do the members of the LGBT community.
In conversations with others I have often found that if a person says that someone is living a “lifestyle” they are in fact seeking to buttonhole that person into a predefined category. And certainly there are some people who want to be buttonholed. You have probably seen the tee-shirt that says “Out and Proud”. But someone using the word “lifestyle” to define who I am and what I am about would be demeaning to me.
Often, the tag “lifestyle” will be used in a pejorative sense: “Why are you living this lifestyle?” The speaker presumes that he or she has a legitimate life and that in my case I, by cross purposes, have a faux or superfluous life, a life opposed to the “normal” conventions. I find their point to be pointedly dismissive. Thankfully, though, I am not thin-skinned. I don’t let their verbal barbs scratch the surface. And you can’t let others control the narrative of your life by giving them the chalk to draw a box on the ground for you to live in. Especially when you need to make the change that I and others have made, changes that were never as frivolous as a “lifestyle”.
I began living as woman several years ago. Since then I have written only a few posts regarding the topic of my change. To be honest, the whole “change” business bores me to death. And yet there are times when I feel the need to dredge up the words and ‘splain myself to others. I do this because I have learned over the course of many years that people usually fear, dislike and even hate what they don’t understand. So here goes.
Though not born with female body parts, I became woman through a naturalization process. I call the process “a naturalization process” because it is similar to becoming a naturalized US citizen: a person not born in this country can become a ‘naturalized’ citizen by acceptance of its Constitution, its language, its laws and so forth. You get the picture.
The naturalized citizen acquires all of the benefits and responsibilities of their new country. Likewise, as a naturalized woman I have acclimated to my new country: I go to work, I go to church, I go… as woman. If asked (and thankfully I never am), I would say that I am a “naturalized” woman as opposed to saying that I am “trans-gendered.” In doing so I take the conversation out of the gutter to a whole new level.
As a person who was gender “stateless” before my naturalization process I felt I needed to find a place where I could live in one place without segregating the mind from the body. And having always believed in a God-given binary gender – male and female – I knew that I had to be one or the other. And though the out workings of so-called masculinity and femininity are relative only to the opposite gender I could never see myself as an effeminate man or as a butch female. I had to be female and not a bastardized version of one or the other.
The genesis of my gender understanding and the psychological disconnect with my body was most likely genetic and pre-natal hormonal influences on my brain along with a good portion of mystery. It is not exactly clear as to why I desperately needed to make the change. But of course, along the way I have met those who see things “clearly”, who believe that you do not need to make the change. In their words, “”just bear your cross (gender).”
Over the years I have been involved in para-church ministries where the gender dysphoria issue is lumped in with the main issue of homosexuality. These church ministries talk about “trans-genderism” or gender confusion because of its guilt-by-association with homosexuality: the gender dysphoric participants practice homosexuality and they are looking for a way to stop.
Now, every follower of Christ accepts that homosexuality is expressly forbidden by the Lord. But gender dysphoria, on the other hand, is not talked about by the Lord and is not mentioned anywhere in Scripture (no matter how much hermeneutics parse or stretch the Scripture to fit a certain “Bible-ized” social ideology).
The leaders of these ministries will tell you that gender dysphoria comes from a broken place in the person. They will use the word “broken” (along with various psychological terminology ) in their spiritual diagnosis so as to make their underlying assertions: such a change would be morally wrong, a sin; it’s not “normal” because God doesn’t work like that; it doesn’t fit God’s redemptive purposes. But I disagree.
Over the years I have also had Christian psychologists tell me that if I wanted to become a woman that they could not help me with the change. And yet the very same Christian “professionals” told me that I should see a psychiatrist in their clinic to get a mind and mood altering drug prescription to help avoid depression. They were very willing to change the state of my mind but not the state of the rest of me. Why? One remedy is seen as “Biblical, the other remedy is deemed not “Biblical.” One can see where the true disconnect is and how much the subjective, inaccurate and unverifiable field of psychology influences Christian thinking! (I find it ironic to say the least that Christians will whole heartedly accept the unproven theories and conjectures of psychology to guide their lives in tandem with Scripture but they will not accept the theory of evolution, a theory which has overwhelming evidence to support its claims.)
Now I would have to guess that Christian psychologists seek to alter your behavior via mind altering drugs and remedial counseling in order to be in keeping with Scripture’s own prescription: “Let this mind be in you which was also in Christ Jesus.” Translated this means that you change your way of thinking to be in line with what most people think and not your body, at least not in the mysterious gender dysphoria realm where the trollism of homosexuality may be lurking. “If you are obese or anorexic or addicted to mind altering drugs (see above) or whatever else then we will help you change your body.”
At one point in his ministry Jesus spoke this practical polemic: “If your hand causes you to sin, cut it off.” This is a direct and terse statement of transition from one physical state to another and clearly doesn’t come across as a metaphorical mind purging laxative. In this case His path to wholeness was to cut off that which causes you to sin (that which doesn’t make you whole or holy) and not deal with it anymore. He didn’t seek to medicate or to counsel the issue to some undefined conclusion.
J.B. Phillips once wrote a book called “Your God Is Too Small.” I agree with the basic premise of the book that people’s conception of God is most readily based on a projection of their relationship with their parents, with male and female figures authority figures and so on. For Christian counselors, ministers, et al I would amend the title based on my experience with their counseling: “Your God is Too Much Like Sanitized Societal Norms.”
Those in the ministry who do not have gender dysphoria (and that would be most) think that it is something that can be dealt with or overridden with therapy, prayer and redemptive (bear the cross I am handing you) suffering. They will place a diagnostic label on you and curtly denounce you for living a “lifestyle.” This stereotyping happens over and over again in these ministries.
A theologian at this point may say that such a change is working at cross purposes with God, that the ‘naturalized’ person is not getting their understanding from Scripture (though the New Testament writers desire that people be trans-formed and put on Christ). The theologian may also say that they have ‘bastardized’ what God has created. A Christian psychologist may go further and say that they suffer a neurosis. Others may say things like “God doesn’t make mistakes (implying that they know the mind of God because they have reason on their side.)” I have heard it all.
Now you should know that my gender understanding and change are both coupled with my understanding of God’s grace – God’s elbow room for sinners like me. But, at this point, let me make something clear: I don’t practice homosexuality. I am celibate. I have been given the grace to make the change and to be celibate. This has been a wonderful healing/direction for my life.
Grace and elbow room. Do divorced people receive God’s grace? If you listen to Christian talk radio the answer is yes.
Divorce, not a feature of Adam and Eve’s garden relationship came about because of the hardness of men’s hearts since the garden. Today we have Christian radio personalities who are divorced. Did God, who sanctifies marriage, allow divorce – the One becoming Two? Does God’s grace allow you to divorce your husband because he looked at pornography? Does grace (both God’s and yours) allow and enable you to stay with your sinner of a husband as a salient witness for Christ in the marriage? What’s the appropriate use and measure of grace? Is grace the wherewithal to transition from a broken state into a temple for the Holy Spirit? Is grace the transmogrification of a person’s point of view? (see Flannery O’Connor’s short story, A Temple of the Holy Ghost. )? Is it all of the above? I think so.
God hates divorce but he allows it to take place. His grace works with man’s brokenness. Should I be judged or weighed differently than a divorced person? But let’s not think about the subject of my change in relativistic terms. I don’t. I think about my change in terms of grace, in terms of unction, in terms of personhood, set apart not for sin and the world but for God.
There was no doubt that I was divided or split about my gender since my earliest remembrance. To resolve the matter I spoke to all manner of counselors. And, as mentioned above, psychologists will often use the word “neurotic” to describe someone who is ‘severely’ divided in their thinking. But I have since learned not to accept the unproven ‘science’ of psychology and its “naming” conventions as truth. And since I am not Woody Allen-esque enough to need regurgitation of emo and hypochondria three times a week or even once a week I stay away from counseling. Counseling, for me, has been nothing more than the ebb and flow of mindless goo.
Beyond all this, there will always be people who want to nail down the morality of my change as something bad. Some will seek to nail me down to their own cross but I’m not going there. I have my own cross to bear.
Wholeness, I have understood and accepted, could be achieved through a “naturalization” process where mind and body could coexist in a stable peaceful state – the beginning of the thousand-year reign of Christ in my life. I can live within God’s grace and with God’s blessing. And, I can now concentrate on God’s Kingdom.
It was Abraham Lincoln who said, “A house divided against itself cannot stand.” And, it was James, the brother of my Lord, who said, “A double minded man is unstable in all his ways.” And, it was Carol King who sang, “You make me feel like a natural woman.”
Jesus said, “Come to me all who labor and are heavy laden and I will give you rest.”
Out of fear of creating a post too long and drawn out (as it turned out to be) and one that no one may read I will try and summarize as best I can my take on the video posted below. Please view the video first. (You will need several cups of coffee. Hold the scotch.)
*****
As you will see and hear in the video, Christopher Hitchens’ (Hitch) arguments for atheism (or against theism), after many dead-end asides, were centered on his aversion to having anyone telling anyone what to do. His followers readily know that over the years Hitch has repeatedly taken umbrage on paper or in one-upmanship debates against totalitarianism and against any authoritarian person or religion having a say in his life or in the lives of others. For the record, William Lane Craig (marker 13:59) noted that Hitch despised and hated religion.
Hitch was certainly OK, though, with authoritarian imposition upon others if he felt the cause justified removing other authoritarian figures from the lives of those he thought were oppressed. He, to the horror of the liberal elitists, aligned himself philosophically with G.W. Bush regarding the Iraq war and the war on terror against radical Islamists.
In the February 2012 issue of Vanity Fair, Salman Rushdie penned In Memoriam, Christopher Hitchens: 1949-2011. Rushdie wrote about Hitch’s return to the left:
“Paradoxically, it was God who saved Christopher Hitchens from the right. Nobody who detested God as viscerally, intelligently, originally, and comically as C. Hitchens could stay in the pocket of god-bothered American conservatism for long. When he bared his fangs and went for God’s jugular, just as he had previously fanged Henry Kissinger, Mother Teresa, and Bill Clinton, the resulting book, God is not great, carried Hitch away from the American right and back toward his natural, liberal, ungodly constituency.”
As a way of life Hitch sought to stand juxtaposed to the universal rule of law (his own conscience) in an antinomian position while at the same time declaring moral diatribes against religious and political authorities he considered too over arching in their imposition. He also liked to keep his conscience well inebriated and his roving moralist eye ever looking elsewhere ~ looking outside and not within ~ denial and pretense being typical liberal traits.
With atheistic cowardice and hubris, Hitch attacked Mother Teresa, a little old lady. He apparently wanted to feed his prurient desire to neutralize any authority figure (overt or implied) by trying to bring her down several notches in people’s eyes. Why? He claimed she was pushing her authoritarian teachings onto the helpless. He accused her of hypocrisy in her dealings (an easy, self-serving claim for an atheist to make against any Christian). He may have felt threatened by her devotion to an unseen God and her ability to make things happen for others and doing so as a little old lady.
Why would a grown man verbally attack a helpless woman who indeed went about helping others who themselves were under the totalitarianism of poverty and squalor? Maybe Hitch thought she wasn’t helpless. Maybe it was a direct attack against God. It certainly was an act of unmatched intelligential cowardice. To be sure Mother Teresa fought the unseen authorities of this world (the “powers of darkness”) by physically helping the outcast, the hungry and the hurting with an agape-powered love and not verbal hubris.
Hitch, on the other hand, fought the very public “seen” authorities of this world by aligning rhetorically with causes which he felt were important for him. He should have noted that he and Mother Teresa were fighting the same issue ~ human suffering at the hands of others (whether a dictator or a false religion) -from two different sides. Yet, he chose to denigrate Mother Teresa. I believe he did this because he felt threatened by her belief in the unseen God.
Hitch postures that Christians, especially Christian missionaries like Mother Teresa, are hypocrites who say things they know to be true and good but live disconnected lives apart from such truth – their deeds not matching match their words. This argument (?) against God was replayed in his use the La Rochefoucauld quote “hypocrisy is a tribute vice pays to virtue.” Yet, this hypocrisy argument folds in on itself if one were to hold any moral standard at all. Perhaps Hitch, a polymath, saw moral laws as “many a quaint and curious volume of forgotten lore.” (The Raven, Edgar Allen Poe)
Clearly Hitch’s excessive lifestyle (his immoderate drinking, smoking, etc. have been noted elsewhere) made his salacious attacks against God all the more the more forthcoming and lubricious. His lifestyle had also proved his belief in nihilism – life is nothing if not suffering. So he apparently used a “get it while you can” justification to medicate the blows between verbal jousting contests.
His liquid lifestyle also spoke to the fact of Hitch’s drive for “freedom” from any limitation imposed on his person including by his own person – his physiology. He chose against himself again and again. He did this while throwing the world a bone now and then, choosing willy-nilly causes to deflect away any personal soul-searching which might lead to accountability to any higher authority. (see marker 25: 5, If god does not exist then objective moral standards don’t exist – a self-satisfying argument.)
Hitch detested dictatorships of all kinds and he did so while as a potentate of his own world. He would not bend the knee to anyone or to anything. He would fight, as Salmon Rushdie recalled in the same Vanity Fair article remembering his friend, for anyone who was made to do so. Hitch’s rebellion was against dictatorial authority of any kind and not just in the political and religious realm. And he certainly rebelled against authority stated as codified truth – the Bible and the recorded history of the resurrection of Jesus. His moral relativism, stated above, is characteristic of most atheists (and the “ungodly constituency”) since they affirm that no moral standard exists outside one’s self.
In the video Hitch asks the universal question posed to theism: why would a God who was all powerful and good allow suffering? My answer: suffering comes out of created man’s free-will choices in a fallen world. God has allowed it for a time but not forever. Justice will be meted out and suffering will end.
He continues his disbelief: “Why would God spend eons of time in creating a world that he could set up in a blink of an eye?” He went on to say that Christians are now co-opting evolution theory in accordance with the Creation argument, evolution being a position long held by atheists. He “christens” this “tactic” or “style” of argument as “retrospective evidentialism” or as a “second thought.” (marker 37:40)
As a Christian theist I see no conflict whatsoever with science and creation. I believe in theistic evolution-a finely tuned theistic universe, a personal cause of the universe and a theistic objective morality. As scientific evidence becomes available it should be used and not discarded. Beyond scientific proofs, my own belief in God is vindicated every day because I, a rational human being, know that God exists. I continue to pursue Him actively and I submit to His authority. Hitch, on the other hand, fled from any such authority outside of himself and employed his own existentialist belief system where he felt safe from intrusion.
Also in the video, Hitch uses the Creationist argument of a literal seven days to say that we as Christians are basically lunatics to believe such things. Again, I see no conflict with a Creationist’s position of a literal seven days and the theory of relativity which could make thousands of millennia appear as seven literal days.
Hitch takes another jab at Christian theism by invoking his own god-like view point when questioning why God would do what Christian theists believe He did. He balks (and I’ll paraphrase): “…the eons of time that God has created-evolved ~ that all of this fine tuning, mass extinction and randomness is the will of a Creator God (marker 40:21) and that all of this happened so that one very imperfect race of evolved primates might become Christian ~ all of this was “with us in view” is a curious kind of solipsism, a curious kind of self-centeredness.” Hitch jests that he thought Christians were modest and humble, not self-centered with certain arrogance to the assumption that this “was all about us.” And, “The tremendous wastefulness of it, the tremendous cruelty of it, the tremendous caprice of it, the tremendous tinkering and incompetence of it, never mind at lease we’re here and we can be people of faith.” This projection from one who, with a free will, spoke from a self-centered and solipsistic core!
The Gospel of Jesus Christ, the Creator, was always meant to bypass the wise of this earth: “For the wisdom of this world is foolishness to God. As the Scriptures say, “He traps the wise in the snare of their own cleverness.”” (Apostle Paul’s letter to the Corinthian church). A priori rebellion coded as cleverness is found in the Mitochondrial DNA of man.
Apart from free-wheeling self-directed solipsism, there is a bounty of sound arguments for theism and William Lane Craig (WLC) highlights them artfully: “No good argument that atheism is true, there are good arguments that theism is true ~ not via social questions or ethics (marker 16:00).
WLC philosophical arguments in quick notation:
Cosmological argument: things exist, not nothing; the universe began to exist not infinite, not eternal ~ Big Bang Beginning, ex-nihilo, a cause by an UnCause beyond space and time; David Hillburg ~ The infinite; there must be a cause of creation. This Being must be uncaused, timeless, space unfathomable & personal and not abstract thought or object; The universe has begun to exist and is not infinite, not eternal (astrophysics concur); Past event are real, there must be Personal creator of the universe, transcendent intelligent mind
Teological argument: (marker 20:00) finely tuned universe ~ mathematically constants (e.g., gravity) not determined by the laws of nature & the arbitrary conditions (entropy, balance between matter and antimatter); any change in these would be the end of life itself (the atomic weak force being altered)
Chance? Odds are incomprehensibly great, life prohibiting universes are more probable
It follows logically by Design ~ intelligent argument, intelligent designer
Moral argument (marker 25: 15): if god does not exist then objective moral standards don’t exist; if God exists then valid and binding; the morality that has emerged proves that god exists ~ via moral experience; we understand that there are things that are really wrong.
Historical fact (marker 27:40): The resurrection of Jesus a historical fact not just a belief; tomb discovered empty eyewitnesses; individuals and groups saw Jesus, appearances to believers and unbelievers; the original disciples believed in the resurrection and Jewish religion believed otherwise about when resurrection occurs; Christian die for the truth of the resurrection (marker 30:26)
Experiential knowledge: The experience of God or claim to know that God exists – properly basic beliefs part of a system of beliefs including the belief of an external world; Context of physical objects; grounded in our experience of God; God immediate reality
Hitch responds (marker 33:16): arguments the same across religions ~ belief in God but differences; presuppositionalists (by faith) and the evidentialists a distinction without a difference.
As you will note Hitch’s arguments are all basically dismissive of Christian belief and are not evidentiary in favor of atheism; note his “rather sweet” dismissal of those who believe ~ that those of faith should have evidence. (Hitch once again conveniently dismisses the facts of the resurrection and the improbability of causation by chance.)
Hitch: “We argue that is no plausible or convincing reason, certainly no evidential one to believe that there is such an entity…all observable phenomena is explicable (marker 42:00); I don’t believe that following the appropriate rituals…
“Even if this deity did exit it doesn’t prove that he cared about us…cared who we had sex with …care whether we lived or died… (marker 42:32)
“Miracles suspend the natural order ~ Christians want it both ways (“promiscuous”) (marker 44:00); The natural order – “It is miraculous without a doubt”
“I have to say that I appear as a skeptic, I doubt these things.” (marker 46:16)
“The theist says it must be true…”Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence.”;
“Too early in the study of biology…to make these claims.”
Perhaps Hitch, the verbal grappler, was as a sound and fury professional wrestler who was successfully agile at avoiding a real match-up with Truth. But now, the fight has ended, the match is over. All that’s left in the empty corner is a book ~ God is Not Great. His last words?
Recently, in my reading of The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo and Philosophy: Everything Is Fire, a book included in the Blackwell Philosophy and Pop Culture Series, I came across the term “McDonaldlization”.
This term, coined by sociologist George Ritzer in his 1993 book The McDonalization of Society, defines how Ritzer sees the dehumanizing affects on society through the use of a fast-food restaurant’s operation methodology in many of our businesses and our institutions. He tells us that the scientific methods affecting us are efficiency, calculability, predictability (standardization), control and irrational rationality.
“Most specifically, irrationality means that rational systems are unreasonable systems. By that I mean that they deny the basic humanity, the human reason, of the people who work within or are served by them.” (Ritzer 1994:154)
As a process characteristic of doing business, whether as providing a service or a good to someone, McDonaldlization makes sense. But it only makes sense up until the point the customer is served and satisfied by such process. If the customer is not satisfied the process would need to adapt in order to satisfy the customer or the provider would likely lose his customer. Within a free market business scenario both the provider and the receiver have choices and they are free to make them. Certainly it is no secret that many people eat at McDonalds or drink Starbucks coffee, receiving the products and service of these companies which embrace process characteristics described above. Others do not seek those products and services. They are free to choose otherwise.
With the Obamacare bureaucratic healthcare franchise coming to a town near you, you the patient will no longer have a choice. Medical providers will no longer have a choice. Both the provider and the patient must now provide and receive respectively what is calculated, predictable, rational and efficient. All of this process will be controlled by the Federal Government. You are being told a lie that things won’t change regarding your health care under Obamacare. They will change dramatically under this newly created centrally planned institution. You should know that Central Planning Officer (CPO), the health-care computer, will not let you “have it your way.”
In another article in the afore-mentioned book titled Kicking the Hornet’s Nest: The Hidden “Section” in Every Institution the writer describes how man-made institutions tend to become corrupt to maintain and protect its own power under the banner of providing a benefit to others. Institutions “trumpet rationality” (scientific management), “boast stability” (inertia to change or to adaptation for individual needs) and “pronounce power” (we need power to protect you) and yet as we look at our U.S. Congress we see that “Institutions cannot simply be swept clean of their corrupt elements; rather, they tend toward corruption in their very being. The injustice of the institution appears necessary for the maintenance of the institution.” Institutions do not care about democracy. They do not care about your vote.
Institutions tend to serve those in power. When this happens you will be subjugated to the rationality of the institution for the protection of the institution. And, the institution will protect itself. Rationality has nothing to do with how you the patient feels. You will then know the irrational rationality of the institution. Do you understand this?
Now, do you also understand that Obamacare is a loss of choice? Do you understand it is loss of liberty and, more importantly, of human dignity? Do you understand that you will now become codified just like medical diagnoses and services are now codified? Do you understand Obamacare is a loss of privacy? And, of protection?
There are people right now who want all of your medical records on tap so as they say “to make things run more efficiently for the doctor/patient relationship.” We are headed to the McDonaldlization of health care via the institution of Obamacare. Wait till the Obamacare franchise hits town. You will be Big Mac’d in thirty seconds or less.
Apartment life. Life ala compressed multiculturalism and noise. People upstairs. People downstairs. People next door. Surround sound, surround smell, surround people 24/7. No man is an apartment unto himself.
Latin oompah music pumps my eardrums at all hours. Asian Techno music throbs somewhere in the water pipes. An unbalanced washing machine in the basement bangs against the wall or is it the churning dance music beat of the sixteen year old listening to Pit Bull in the next apartment? Fights, arguments, door slamming and door knocking. Sounds of silence – No Vacancy here.
The Filipino couple across the hall is fighting again. The guy’s stuff is scattered all over the second floor hallway and in front of my door. He knocking, calling and crying. No one answers – for about four hours.
The black girl in apartment C has just came home from work. She’s carrying her one year old son up the stairs. The boy’s father will be over on the weekend. He wishes she lived on the first floor. In a recently and easily overheard argument I heard him say to her “You never see the things I don’t do.” I knew at that point that things would not get better. I turn up Lacrimosa from Mozart’s Requiem.
On the weekends, the Brit school teacher in apartment B gets in his car to pick up his two-year old son. Otherwise, he has satellite TV and the nearby sports bar.
The drunk in apartment C routinely stumbles through the hallway to get his social security check out of the mailbox. He will soon walk over to the same sports bar.
A young Asian couple moved upstairs last weekend. For some reason they roam their bedroom all night long. Their footsteps run across my ceiling putting out my dreams.
Again tonight the hippie couple who live downstairs and two doors over sit outside by their clay chiminea. The smell of pot is becoming heavy in the air. No way to Teach Your Children.
I close my patio door to that dreamland wafting up and to the choking smoke coming from grilling Tecate chicken below me. I had wanted to sit outside on my small porch and enjoy the summer night but there is also a guy fixing his SUV in the parking lot. The SUV rear-end is jacked up and so is Lil Wayne’s She Will. Stille nacht not.
Tik Tok. In case you are wondering, I get up at 3:30 am in the morning and get ready for work. I catch the 5:04 train to the city. So, I go to bed at 8:15 pm. But tonight, like every other night, the Hispanic family downstairs decides to use their bathroom. This is a problem because for the past year the fan, which toggles “On” with the light, makes a “grrrr” sound like its being forced to run against its electrical will. The “grrrr” sound continues through my neighbor’s shower and then some into my angst. Why don’t they get it fixed? No entiendo. Maybe, there is so much other noise they can’t tell there is a problem.
And, oh yeah, I had to stop using the building’s washer and dryer. I think someone uses Sackrete to wash their clothes. I now use a local laundry mat and that is a whole other reality series experience. I tell myself I get to meet new and interesting people.
It’s Friday night and this is all I know: Estoy muy cansado and I am rocking myself to sleep in the free world.
What he asked her for, what he wanted more than anything was to have a cup of coffee in the morning with his wife before the day’s work. There was nothing more.
She: wanted things handled, intangible things, things of the heart. She said, my needs are not met and these are things you should have thought of and you’re a man you should know these things and I don’t feel loved. For the record, there was more: “You didn’t feed the dog.”; “Your son needs changing.”; “The dishes need washing.”; “When are you going to cut the grass?”; “Did you leave the toilet seat down?”; “Did you put seed in the bird feeder?”; “Your son needs a bath.”; “Get your daughter ready for church, I am leaving soon.”; “Take me away for the weekend, I need to relax.”
What he asked for
And nothing more
Mattered little
Because he snored.
For several years now I have lived as woman. And, riding the commuter to Chicago and back I now and then see people who had seen me while I was transitioning. That time of my life was not a pretty sight. When I do recall it the title of a movie comes to mind: The Phantom of the Opera. Well, as it happens, currently there is one guy who rides the same train and he had seen me back in those days. This guy reminds his commuter friends about “what” I am.
Every week day on the 5:04, he and his friends stand in the train’s vestibule drinking beer. When he sees me he points me out with derision to his beer buddies. I am extremely tired of his jejune behavior. I consider him in the same category as those people who make the snide mocking comment “Well, what did you think.” when I relate to them that some of the people closest to me deride me in their own deprecating ways. Now, I don’t live to be noticed and certainly not in a denigrating way. What part of me don’t you understand?
Some things play out differently. This happened last night.
My week at work finished up nicely. I had completed my projects on time and I didn’t have to bring work home with me. Last weekend, I had worked tons of overtime. But last night I was ready for some time off, for some time to kick back.
At the end of day, I left my desk and got on the elevator. There was a man standing at the rear of the elevator. The elevator doors closed and the man then proceeded to pick his nose from the 24th floor to the first floor. Gross! (But, uncannily, I was reminded what a good friend once told me: “You can pick your friends and you can pick your nose, but you can’t pick you friend’s nose!”) Fortunately, I walked away unscathed. lulz.
Off the elevator, I walk over to the train. I get on the train and sit down. Soon, a man who smells like he has bathed in urine sits down near me. Then, another man nearby (probably an attorney) is excitedly making sure his law partner (on the phone) understands how things should be handled. I can hear every word. It’s a type “A” conversation. Sadly, these annoyances during the train ride’s lock down are common place on the commuter, but they don’t usually gang up on me.
After an hour and ten excruciatingly long minutes I get off the train and head for a local restaurant I favor. It is a seafood restaurant (not Red Lobster). I am hoping that Jambalaya is on the menu. I had tried their version (w/mussels) on Fat Tuesday. It was superb.
I sit down at the bar and order a Stella. The bartender who served me on my last visit greets me and says, “Nice to see you.” I smile and think, “Nice to be seen”.
The bartender hands me the menu after he reads the Specials to me. I am only interested in the Jambalaya. The chicken and seafood gumbo on the menu would be an acceptable default finisher in the event of a Jambalaya no-show. But, my food thoughts were interrupted. Someone sat down next to me and said “Hi”.
Glancing sideways, barely looking at this guy, I return his greeting. Immediately I realize that it is my old business partner D-. Eeyow!
I began sipping my beer and digging through my purse trying to find my cell phone. I needed diversion!
At this point, I am desperate, anxiously looking for the bartender so that I could order food To Go. I want to get out of the stew I’m in. My bartender, though, is down at the end of a rather long bar. He’s creating frou-frou drinks. So, I began quickly swigging my beer while going through the menu on my cell phone. I check out the Emoticons.
Now, I had known D-. for a long time. D-. reminds me of Alec Baldwin’s Blake in David Mamet’s film version of Glengarry Glen Ross. He is completely self-possessed, obnoxious and arrogant. He could quickly become vulgar and he would verbally abuse you if you get on his wrong side. I know. I worked with him for sixteen years and I was a business partner with him for fourteen years. That was until the day I decided I had had enough. I had enough of him and his angry, demeaning ways.
As a partner with D-. in an S corporation I received a six figure income and plenty of perks including a company car. But I also had an incredible work load. I was the VP of Engineering for our small corporation (roughly $17-20m/yr in sales) and I was on call 24/7.
In those days customers were given my cell phone number to call if there ever was a problem. If the machine we had provided a customer had an issue, the customer would call me. Beyond this, I was flying to different parts of the world such as Poland, South Korea, Saudi Arabia, Mexico, most of the Canadian provinces and almost all of the States to provide support for the equipment we sold. I, in fact, had designed and built major portions of our corporation: I set up the accounting and the computer network and CAD stations, I designed the electrical engineering portion for the equipment we manufactured including the schematics and wiring design. I programmed P.L.C.s and SCADA systems. I managed a group of engineers (16) and dozens of customers. I welded, painted and wired machines. But, this wasn’t good enough for D. Somehow I was lacking in his eyes and this lack usually happened when the bottom line of the P & L took a hit and this due to a stagnant economy. It was then that D-. would often turn his verbal rants onto me.
Now, because I was married at the time of my business relationship, my relationships outside of work suffered: I was either on the phone with a customer or gone somewhere with a customer or simply brain dead after receiving the brunt of D-.’s economic panic attacks. After fourteen years of this I needed out. I didn’t care about the money or perks. I needed relief. So, I gave my notice.
After my decision, D-. came to my house begging me to stay on. I refused. I had had enough. I cut my ties with him and his abuse and the excessive workload strapped to my back. It took months to return to close to an even keel. (The sad irony for me: I had the exact same marital relationship as my business relationship with D. After leaving the egregious business situation for my spouse and kids (and for myself) and being out of work for some time, my spouse decides to separate and later divorce me. Even though I did everything for this person except bear children it still wasn’t enough. During our own tough economic times, the bottom line of our marriage P & L was written in red ink, in my spouse’s view.)
Well last night D-. was sitting next to me, nine years after my divorce from the partnership. I don’t know if he knew that I had re-gendered after my own divorce. He didn’t recognize me, it appeared. But, just in case, I turned and faced the entrance to the restaurant hoping to see a phantom friend enter the door.
The bartender never came back. I halted a passing waitress and told her that I needed to pay and go. She took the money, gave me the change and I was out the door. Whew!
I didn’t get the Jambalaya I wanted so badly. It wasn’t on the menu. And, I didn’t want to stick around for the seafood gumbo. I sought food elsewhere (fish and chips to be exact) at the local Irish pub. A Green solution!
Presently, I have a job I love and a quiet, peaceful life. My loved ones still avoid, ignore and shun me because of my re-gendering and because I have left over anger from the whole terrible time of the business and the marriage. I am still recovering.
I hope to never, ever see D-. again. I became nauseous while he was sitting next to me last night. I certainly wouldn’t accept any payment to be around him, as before. I would, though, buy everyone at the pub a beer. A Green solution, all around!
“We have entered, as I see it, a spiritual limbo. Our educational institutions are no longer the bearers of high culture, and public life has been deliberately moronised. But here and there, sheltered from the noise and glare of the media, the old spiritual forces are at work” Roger Scruton
*****
“When a common culture declines, the ethical life can be sustained and renewed only by a work of the imagination.”-Roger Scruton
*****
“Jesus prayed, “This is eternal life, that they may know You . . .” (John 17:3). The real meaning of eternal life is a life that can face anything it has to face without wavering. If we will take this view, life will become one great romance— a glorious opportunity of seeing wonderful things all the time. God is disciplining us to get us into this central place of power.” Oswald Chambers
*****
“No power on earth or in hell can conquer the Spirit of God in a human spirit, it is an inner unconquerableness.” Oswald Chambers
*****
To those who have had no agony Jesus says, “I have nothing for you; stand on your own feet, square your own shoulders. I have come for the man who knows he has a bigger handful than he can cope with, who knows there are forces he cannot touch; I will do everything for him if he will let Me. Only let a man grant he needs it, and I will do it for him.” The Shadow of an Agony,Oswald Chambers
*****
“If we wish to erect new structures, we must have a definite knowledge of the old foundations.” John Calvin Coolidge
*****
Atheism is a post-Christian phenomenon.
*****
If social justice looks like your hand in someone else’s pocket then you are stealing.
*****
“In Sweden, giving to charity, absurdly, came to be considered a lack of solidarity, since it undermined the need for the welfare state.” – Roland Martinsson
*****
“…to love democracy well, it is necessary to love it moderately.” Alexis de Tocqueville
*****
Capitalism seeks to help others through a servce or product it provides. Free Market Capitalism is the most moral and fair economic system available to man. Capitalism augments personal growth, responsibility and ownership. Charity flourishes under capitalism. Charity dies under subjective “fair share” government confiscatory policies. Socialism redistributes ambivalence and greed.
*****
“We are to regard existence as a raid or great adventure; it is to be judged, therefore, not by what calamities it encounters, but by what flag it follows and what high town it assaults. The most dangerous thing in the world is to be alive; one is always in danger of one’s life. But anyone who shrinks from that is a traitor to the great scheme and experiment of being.” G.K. Chesterton
*****
Any intelligent fool can make things bigger, more complex, and more violent.
It takes a touch of genius – and a lot of courage – to move in the opposite direction. Albert Einstein
*****
“You shall know the truth and the truth shall make you odd.” Flannery O’Connor
*****
“There is but one good; that is God. Everything else is good when it looks to Him and bad when it turns from Him.” C.S. Lewis, The Great Divorce
*****
“Though He slay me, yet will I trust Him” (Job 13:15).
*****
God’s grace is not about the allowance for sin. God’s grace is about the conversation God allows regarding sin.
*****
From the book of Proverbs: We are not to favor the rich or the poor. We are to pursue justice.
*****
“Always keep in contact with those books and those people that enlarge your horizon and make it possible for you to stretch yourself mentally.” Oswald Chambers
*****
One goldfish says to another, “If there is no God who keeps changing the water?”
*****
“The truth is always there in the morning.”
From Cat On A Hot Tin Roof script – playwright Tennessee Williams
*****
God blesses those who hunger and thirst for justice, for they will be satisfied.
*****
“America’s greatness has been the greatness of a free people who shared certain moral commitments. Freedom without moral commitment is aimless and promptly self-destructive.” John W. Gardner
**
“Men of integrity, by their very existence, rekindle the belief that as a people we can live above the level of moral squalor. We need that belief; a cynical community is a corrupt community.” John W. Gardner
*****
“In the world it is called Tolerance, but in hell it is called Despair, the sin that believes in nothing, cares for nothing, seeks to know nothing, interferes with nothing, enjoys nothing, hates nothing, finds purpose in nothing, lives for nothing, and remains alive because there is nothing for which it will die.” Dorothy L. Sayers
*****
“Art, like morality, consists of drawing the line somewhere.”
G. K. Chesterton
*****
“The battle line between good and evil runs through the heart of every man.” Alexander Solzhenitsyn
*****
This is what the LORD says:
“Stand at the crossroads and look;
ask for the ancient paths,
ask where the good way is, and walk in it,
and you will find rest for your souls.
But you said, ‘We will not walk in it.’
-The prophet Jeremiah, 6:16
*****
“…our common task is not so much discovering a truth hiding among contrary viewpoints as it is coming to possess a selfhood that no longer evades and eludes the truth with which it is importunately confronted.” James McClendon, Ethics: Systematic Theology, Vol. 1
*****
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Cindy Wity 
Have it Their Way: Obamacare
December 10, 2011 Leave a comment
Recently, in my reading of The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo and Philosophy: Everything Is Fire, a book included in the Blackwell Philosophy and Pop Culture Series, I came across the term “McDonaldlization”.
This term, coined by sociologist George Ritzer in his 1993 book The McDonalization of Society, defines how Ritzer sees the dehumanizing affects on society through the use of a fast-food restaurant’s operation methodology in many of our businesses and our institutions. He tells us that the scientific methods affecting us are efficiency, calculability, predictability (standardization), control and irrational rationality.
As a process characteristic of doing business, whether as providing a service or a good to someone, McDonaldlization makes sense. But it only makes sense up until the point the customer is served and satisfied by such process. If the customer is not satisfied the process would need to adapt in order to satisfy the customer or the provider would likely lose his customer. Within a free market business scenario both the provider and the receiver have choices and they are free to make them. Certainly it is no secret that many people eat at McDonalds or drink Starbucks coffee, receiving the products and service of these companies which embrace process characteristics described above. Others do not seek those products and services. They are free to choose otherwise.
With the Obamacare bureaucratic healthcare franchise coming to a town near you, you the patient will no longer have a choice. Medical providers will no longer have a choice. Both the provider and the patient must now provide and receive respectively what is calculated, predictable, rational and efficient. All of this process will be controlled by the Federal Government. You are being told a lie that things won’t change regarding your health care under Obamacare. They will change dramatically under this newly created centrally planned institution. You should know that Central Planning Officer (CPO), the health-care computer, will not let you “have it your way.”
In another article in the afore-mentioned book titled Kicking the Hornet’s Nest: The Hidden “Section” in Every Institution the writer describes how man-made institutions tend to become corrupt to maintain and protect its own power under the banner of providing a benefit to others. Institutions “trumpet rationality” (scientific management), “boast stability” (inertia to change or to adaptation for individual needs) and “pronounce power” (we need power to protect you) and yet as we look at our U.S. Congress we see that “Institutions cannot simply be swept clean of their corrupt elements; rather, they tend toward corruption in their very being. The injustice of the institution appears necessary for the maintenance of the institution.” Institutions do not care about democracy. They do not care about your vote.
Institutions tend to serve those in power. When this happens you will be subjugated to the rationality of the institution for the protection of the institution. And, the institution will protect itself. Rationality has nothing to do with how you the patient feels. You will then know the irrational rationality of the institution. Do you understand this?
Now, do you also understand that Obamacare is a loss of choice? Do you understand it is loss of liberty and, more importantly, of human dignity? Do you understand that you will now become codified just like medical diagnoses and services are now codified? Do you understand Obamacare is a loss of privacy? And, of protection?
There are people right now who want all of your medical records on tap so as they say “to make things run more efficiently for the doctor/patient relationship.” We are headed to the McDonaldlization of health care via the institution of Obamacare. Wait till the Obamacare franchise hits town. You will be Big Mac’d in thirty seconds or less.
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Filed under Economics, essay, Health Care, Life As I See It, Non-fiction, Philosophy, Political Commentary, Politics, Short Piece, Writing Tagged with central planning, Economics, freed om of choice, freemarket system, healthcare mandate, institutions, McDonaldlization of society, Obamacare, politics, sociology, The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo and Philosophy