ponderings of the pococurante

I suppose that BIll Maher’s ego has gotten the best of him and he decided, that he just HAD to make a movie and somehow contribute to the demise of organized religion, which he believes is one of the greatest obstacles to human progress. So he goes around, skewering religious types, ranging from the truck stop evangelicals to your hapless, un-media savvy imam.

Part of the film is autobiographical, in that Maher talks about his own upbringing: his mother is Jewish and his father Catholic, and he was raised a catholic.

Maher’s real beef is with literalists, those whose insistence on various dogma handed down to us from our ancient forebears in the Promised Land impedes the adoption of more liberal and, Maher would say, modern, normal, outlooks and values. Maher knows the Bible fairly well, and of course, he’s a “skilled debater” of sorts, that is, he knows, from being both a standup and TV personality, the art of rhetoric. However, Maher ends up being something less than the Socratic gadfly: He is interested in the truth, yes, but there are greater truths that he is missing out on.

What I mean is this: Nietzsche, for example, was well aware that while organized religion, and in particular the Lutheranism of his father and compatriots, was perhaps a crock of shit, opiates for the many mediocre people of which society is formed, but he knew that humanity’s *religiosity*–was not something that could be so easily jettisoned, replaced by a smirky, Maher-esque Enlightenment reason. How does Maher, for example, think about death: he believes that there is nothing after life, and that at best we ought to remain skeptical about the grand questions. And that attitude is fine, but that begs the question, I think–the religiosity is always going to rear its ugly head, and you can’t expect everyone to just take Maher’s attitude. Not many people, in the history of humanity, have been satisfied with his answers.

Organized religion versus mysticism: this is a theme that i’ve run into a lot recently. I saw a documentary about sufism in Pakistan–a country more known as being, in certain areas at least, a hotbed of militant, retrogressive Islam. And then there was a quote from the French philosopher Henri Bergson, where he said that organized religion was (and here I paraphrase) that which cools what was poured, white-hot, into the soul of man. That is to say, that mysticism is not just a “non-mainstream” type of religion, a la sufism, but is, in fact, the very core of humanity’s religious instinct.

People need to know how to deal with death, and with the issues of meaning.

I don’t mean to entirely negate Maher’s movie just because I think books do a better job of navigating these issues, but hell, they do. And here are the books that I would recommend, having just read or re-read them:

Andre Comte-Sponville: The Little Book of Atheist Spirituality
Henry David Thoreau: Walden
Ernest Becker: The Denial of Death
Christopher Hitchens: God is not Great.

These books run the gamut but, I think, give a good basis for why we ought to be skeptical of organized religions (especially when it becomes the last refuge of charlatans and scoundrels) while remaining, at our core, profoundly religious, mystical, etc.

I suppose that BIll Maher’s ego has gotten the best of him and he decided, that he just HAD to make a movie and somehow contribute to the demise of organized religion, which he believes is one of the greatest obstacles to human progress. So he goes around, skewering religious types, ranging from the truck stop evangelicals to your hapless, un-media savvy imam.

Part of the film is autobiographical, in that Maher talks about his own upbringing: his mother is Jewish and his father Catholic, and he was raised a catholic.

Maher’s real beef is with literalists, those whose insistence on various dogma handed down to us from our ancient forebears in the Promised Land impedes the adoption of more liberal and, Maher would say, modern, normal, outlooks and values. Maher knows the Bible fairly well, and of course, he’s a “skilled debater” of sorts, that is, he knows, from being both a standup and TV personality, the art of rhetoric. However, Maher ends up being something less than the Socratic gadfly: He is interested in the truth, yes, but there are greater truths that he is missing out on.

What I mean is this: Nietzsche, for example, was well aware that while organized religion, and in particular the Lutheranism of his father and compatriots, was perhaps a crock of shit, opiates for the many mediocre people of which society is formed, but he knew that humanity’s *religiosity*–was not something that could be so easily jettisoned, replaced by a smirky, Maher-esque Enlightenment reason. How does Maher, for example, think about death: he believes that there is nothing after life, and that at best we ought to remain skeptical about the grand questions. And that attitude is fine, but that begs the question, I think–the religiosity is always going to rear its ugly head, and you can’t expect everyone to just take Maher’s attitude. Not many people, in the history of humanity, have been satisfied with his answers.

Organized religion versus mysticism: this is a theme that i’ve run into a lot recently. I saw a documentary about sufism in Pakistan–a country more known as being, in certain areas at least, a hotbed of militant, retrogressive Islam. And then there was a quote from the French philosopher Henri Bergson, where he said that organized religion was (and here I paraphrase) that which cools what was poured, white-hot, into the soul of man. That is to say, that mysticism is not just a “non-mainstream” type of religion, a la sufism, but is, in fact, the very core of humanity’s religious instinct.

People need to know how to deal with death, and with the issues of meaning.

I don’t mean to entirely negate Maher’s movie just because I think books do a better job of navigating these issues, but hell, they do. And here are the books that I would recommend, having just read or re-read them:

Andre Comte-Sponville: The Little Book of Atheist Spirituality
Henry David Thoreau: Walden
Ernest Becker: The Denial of Death
Christopher Hitchens: God is not Great.

These books run the gamut but, I think, give a good basis for why we ought to be skeptical of organized religions (especially when it becomes the last refuge of charlatans and scoundrels) while remaining, at our core, profoundly religious, mystical, etc.

From the AP, via Truthout:

Monday 01 October 2007

Bangkok, Thailand – One hundred shot dead outside a Myanmar school. Activists burned alive at government crematoriums. Buddhist monks floating face down in rivers.

After last week’s brutal crackdown by the military, horror stories are filling Myanmar blogs and dissident sites. But the tight security of the repressive regime makes it impossible to verify just how many people are dead, detained or missing.

“There are huge difficulties. It’s a closed police state,” said David Mathieson, a consultant with Human Rights Watch in Thailand. “Many of the witnesses have been arrested and are being held in areas we don’t have access to. Other eyewitness are too afraid.”

Authorities have acknowledged that government troops shot dead nine demonstrators and a Japanese cameraman in Yangon. But witness accounts range from several dozen deaths to as many as 200.

“We do believe the death toll is higher than acknowledged by the government,” Shari Villarosa, the top U.S. diplomat in Myanmar, told The Associated Press Monday. “We are doing our best to get more precise, more detailed information, not only in terms of deaths but also arrests.”

Villarosa said her staff had visited up to 15 monasteries around Yangon and every single one was empty. She put the number of arrested demonstrators – monks and civilians – in the thousands.

“I know the monks are not in their monasteries,” she said. “Where are they? How many are dead? How many are arrested?”

She said the true death toll may never be known in a Buddhist country where bodies are cremated.
Hmmm, i hadn’t really been following this too closely in the news–hadn’t followed anything in the news recently. Too depressing, even though I know that burying your head in the sand, or finding some philosophical excuse for something akin to it, is a necessity now and again.

Technorati Tags: myanmar, death, buddhism, protest, news, global, dissent, human rights, Asia, Burma, atrocities

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From the AP, via Truthout:

Monday 01 October 2007

Bangkok, Thailand – One hundred shot dead outside a Myanmar school. Activists burned alive at government crematoriums. Buddhist monks floating face down in rivers.

After last week’s brutal crackdown by the military, horror stories are filling Myanmar blogs and dissident sites. But the tight security of the repressive regime makes it impossible to verify just how many people are dead, detained or missing.

“There are huge difficulties. It’s a closed police state,” said David Mathieson, a consultant with Human Rights Watch in Thailand. “Many of the witnesses have been arrested and are being held in areas we don’t have access to. Other eyewitness are too afraid.”

Authorities have acknowledged that government troops shot dead nine demonstrators and a Japanese cameraman in Yangon. But witness accounts range from several dozen deaths to as many as 200.

“We do believe the death toll is higher than acknowledged by the government,” Shari Villarosa, the top U.S. diplomat in Myanmar, told The Associated Press Monday. “We are doing our best to get more precise, more detailed information, not only in terms of deaths but also arrests.”

Villarosa said her staff had visited up to 15 monasteries around Yangon and every single one was empty. She put the number of arrested demonstrators – monks and civilians – in the thousands.

“I know the monks are not in their monasteries,” she said. “Where are they? How many are dead? How many are arrested?”

She said the true death toll may never be known in a Buddhist country where bodies are cremated.
Hmmm, i hadn’t really been following this too closely in the news–hadn’t followed anything in the news recently. Too depressing, even though I know that burying your head in the sand, or finding some philosophical excuse for something akin to it, is a necessity now and again.

Technorati Tags: myanmar, death, buddhism, protest, news, global, dissent, human rights, Asia, Burma, atrocities

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cat

From news.163.com

作者：连岳

人生识字糊涂始，教育由启蒙沦为蒙蔽之时，往往是因为文字里的昏话太多。在中国这样一个许多人读不起书的国家，教育资源相当稀缺，可惜的是，不少人有幸得到这种资源，读成了知识分子和大学校长，反而只把取巧工媚放在第一位，有意忽视本来很简单的常识。批判与启蒙的鲁迅“奶牛”，“吃的是草，挤出的是奶”；而鲁迅之后越来越多的“二奶牛”，喝的是奶，挤出来的是草。

我今天一觉醒来，发现人权已经到了第四代。为了避免自己更新不快失掉人权(因为在许多人权专家的眼里，知识不够多是没资格有人权的)，赶快补了一下课：《新京报》11月23日报道，中国政法大学校长徐显明表示，以和谐精神超越传统三代人权的精神，将化育出新一代人权———和谐权。相关新闻——全国人大常委称和谐权是第四代人权

和谐与人权都是相当好的词语，能把它们合乎逻辑地拧在一起变成“和谐权”，当然是了不得的 “学术成果”，给专款、搞专题似乎都是应该的。但是在短短的时间里，已经有太多人滥用、曲解“和谐”从而将自己的“不和谐”合法化、神圣化。一个城市的主政者粗暴对待主张自己基本权利的市民，可以说是为了和谐；禁止不同意见甚至是善意批评，甚至把流浪汉、小贩们打倒在地，都能说成为了和谐……

在这种风气中，徐显明校长的结论我就不敢轻易接受，在我看来，一个人生来就有的权利，即所谓的“人权”，可能再过一万年也不会变，人权只有一代，不像游戏机，隔几年就推一代。说得朴素一点，一个人生下来，成年了，他就有看到一切的权利、听到一切的权利、有用双脚行走到任何地方的权利、有评论一切发表任何观点的权利、有决定自己行为方式与生活方式的权利、有快乐生活反对任何恐吓力量的权利。这些都做到了，就是完整的先进的人权，做不到，就是人权不够。

徐校长先自行将人权划分为四个阶段，前三个阶段分别是自由权本位的人权，生存权本位的人权和发展权本位的人权。不管他的这种划分法是否科学，也不费事逐条讨论他的论证过程，好在尝一口就知道梨坏了，化繁就简，只说一条吧。徐校长对人权的“第一阶段”有这样的论述：“自由权本位的人权忽略了人与人事实上的不平等，不平等的人权使人权体系难以和谐”。人是生而不平等，比如出生于中国的偏僻乡村、印度的低种姓家庭及世界上一切国家的贫穷地区，人生已经输在射精阶段了。而这种弱势阶层的自由权是最容易被剥夺的，从而固化、加剧不平等，比如不许农村人口自由迁徙进入城市。

所谓的不平等就是把一部分人当人，把一部分人不当人；一部分人有自由，一部分人没有自由。后者争取自由权的过程就是人权的进步史，自由权从来都是消除不平等、构造和谐的最重要工具。在人权史上，自由权一直只有不够，而没有过多，而在人权史上最严重的退步一般都发生在人权专家们认为自由过了头。

徐校长太心急了，太急了，心急吃不了热豆腐，也速成不了当红人权专家。 (作者系专栏作家) 刘彦伟

[tags]China, human rights, theory, politics, society, essay[/tags]

Chinese law-makers meet French law-makers on issue of Tibet
Tibet.net[Friday, November 24, 2006 10:11]
Paris: The President of the Tibet Study Group of the National Assembly of France, Mr Lionnel Luca (UMP party), and four of his colleagues have met this Wednesday a delegation of the Chinese parliamentarians who are on their visit to Paris.

This is the first ever such meeting.

Mr Luca was accompanied by Mr Dominique Tian, Mr Jean Marc Roubaud and Mr Jacques Remiller of UMP party, and Mr Philippe Folliot of UDF party, and Mr Marcel Dehoux of PS Socialist party.

They were able to meet the Chinese MPs through the good offices of Mr Guy Drut, who presides over the France-China group at the French National Assembly.

According to Mr Luca, Mr Drut made the request to the Chinese ambassador in Paris who allowed this meeting to take place.

Mr Luca expressed to the Chinese delegation about the concerns of his Group over the situation in Tibet and raised the recent issue of video film of Romanian TV on the shooting in September by the Chinese on the Tibetan refugees fleeing into Nepal.

On this issue, Mr Luca after the meeting, stated that the Chinese delegation led by the President of China-France group, Shi Guangsheng, said “not being aware of this matter”, while insisting that “to speak about Tibet, one should know well its history”. The Chinese also assured that ” all is going well in Tibet and that Tibetans are happy”.

Mr Luca transmitted a message of “the attachment of France over the human rights issue in China” and also the concern of the French parliamentarians who want to see “a dialogue between China and the Dalai Lama”. He also indicated the desire of the parliamentarians of Tibet Group of France to visit Tibet.

During the meeting which lasted for half an hour, the French parliamentarians have put on their coat a pin of Tibet flag bearing this slogan: “Long live Free Tibet”.

Translated from the original French into English by Bureau du Tibet, Paris.

(www.tibet.net is the official website of the Central Tibetan Administration of His Holiness the Dalai Lama.)

From Reuters:

BANGKOK (Reuters) – A Thai Buddhist monk cut off his penis with a machete because he had an erection during meditation and declined to have it reattached, saying he had renounced all earthly cares, a doctor and a newspaper said on Wednesday.

[tags]Buddhism, buddhist, Thai, monk, penis, news, weird, odd[/tags]

Christian residents in Communist China’s eastern Zhejiang province clashed with police after authorities sought to demolish a church they said was unlawful, a human rights group and police said.

Xiaoshan, a booming industrial suburb of the province capital Hangzhou, is home to many hundreds of Protestant Christians who reject state administration of religion.

In recent years, they have waged struggles with government authorities over building churches, said the Information Center for Human Rights and Democracy, a Hong Kong-based group.

On Saturday, Christian residents there clashed with police seeking to enforce the demolition of a church, it reported.

The original link is here
[tags]China, religion, rights, human rights, freedom of religion, freedom, Christianity, church, underground, Protestant, Chinese, Communist Party, politics[/tags]

Christian residents in Communist China’s eastern Zhejiang province clashed with police after authorities sought to demolish a church they said was unlawful, a human rights group and police said.

Xiaoshan, a booming industrial suburb of the province capital Hangzhou, is home to many hundreds of Protestant Christians who reject state administration of religion.

In recent years, they have waged struggles with government authorities over building churches, said the Information Center for Human Rights and Democracy, a Hong Kong-based group.

On Saturday, Christian residents there clashed with police seeking to enforce the demolition of a church, it reported.

The original link is here
[tags]China, religion, rights, human rights, freedom of religion, freedom, Christianity, church, underground, Protestant, Chinese, Communist Party, politics[/tags]

I was ready for this movie to be depressing and it was. But it was good, i would say. I liked the cinematography — nothing special, but nice and crisp, the colors and the dustiness, the sheer pulchritude of Mediterranean light was just as I remembered or it. The colors were deep and saturated, the blue in the houses, the red of Said’s mothers scarf and clothing. The latter, in particular, was striking, because it tended to, by this color scheme, throw the mother into sharp relief morally if not in terms of screen time or plot development. The red tends to accentuate the lines on her face and the sense we get the burden she has, of being the collaborator’s wife and having to raise her children — and then watch her son become a suicide bomber.

I was saddened by the fact that Said was not the one that changed his mind and aborted the mission — though i thought it strange that Khaled should change his mind after one heated conversation with Suha in the car, esp. when it didn’t seem as if he were swayed by her arguments. Said seems so mild-mannered and then there’s this reversal, where Khaled in fact becomes the one that disagrees — and yet he goes with his friend to Tel Aviv for the second attempt. Perhaps he has no choice, though he does decide to abort. Read the rest of this entry »