Crossing oceans, faiths and languages
Wednesday, 20. June 2007, 23:51:18
Yet more books. And admitting that I had a week where I didn't read a book at all.
Number 37 (I think - I may have forgotten one): The End of Faith, by Sam Harris.
This seems to have been a pretty popular book. And whenever I read reviews or excerpts, it annoyed me. It is about how religious faith, in general, is a bad idea that is always bad whether it is extremist or moderate, but then it does go on to paint Islam as a particularly dangerous religion.
It seems Sam Harris is one of the few people who hasn't got the humourous spam entitled "why can't I buy a Canadian" - which looks at the Bible in the way that Harris looks at the Koran, and makes it look ridiculous as well as demonstrating that people simply ignore a lot of what is there in order to develop a modern christian theology.
I am not a religious person, in the traditional sense. If I were, I would be more fundamentalist than many, since either a religion is right, and if it is a religion of the book like Islam, Christianity or Judaism, that means you have to work out how to believe in the book, or it is wrong, in which case it is nothing more than an interesting social phenomenon.
I have nothing against people having a faith, whatever I think of the particular faith. I even have no problem with people trying to impose their faith on others - that's actually a requirement of many faiths. But I don't want to live in a country that is taken over by religion - and the US, despite its constitutional seperation of church and state is a relatively religious society, while Norway with its state church is not so religious, and Australia whose head of state is the head of the major church is mostly even less so.
Ultimately, I found Harris' book a bit of a disappointment - better than I had expected from what I had read about it, but not as good as I had hoped it might actually turn out to be.
After reading it, I had a week where I did not read a single book - or even begin reading one. THat's a first for this year...
Number 38 - Tomas Fs siste nedtegnelser til Almenheten, by Kjell Askildsen.
This is the third book I have read in Norwegian. It is pretty short, and actually has two stories in it. One is a story about a guy who is being questioned by the police, and the other, the title story, is a collection of essays in the first person, by Tomas F, an old man almost at the stage of waiting to die.
I still sometimes fail to understand words (the title beng a case in point) as I am reading them. But rather than look them up, I tend to simply go on reading. When I am listening to people, I often mis-hear or just miss words they say, and yet mostly I manage to understand (occasionally of course I do need to ask someone to repeat something, but there is a lot of redundancy in much of our communication). So it seems a reasonable approach to reading, too.
Anyway, I thought this was a good book. And being pretty thin was a bonus. (I actually bought it at the train station because it was thin and cheap, matching the handful of coins I had in my pocket...)
Number 39: The tipping point, by Malcolm Gladwell
Joen recommended this to me, and lent it to me. It's quite a well-known book already. While interesting, I had already heard or read most of the ideas (often in discussions of the book), so I don't have anything much interesting to add. It is about how sometimes, the things that make a difference to how something happens is a relatively mundane thing - and how looking at the spread of disease epidemics provides a good way to understand the spread of ideas, or memes.
So number 40 looks like it might be about Genghis Khan...
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you say "- and the US, despite its constitutional seperation of church and state is a relatively religious society" . no, I don't agree with that. it is far from where you think, and it is because "probably" your mind hasn't given the right notion to the word "religious".
By themeno, # 23. June 2007, 20:56:33
well, by religious what *I* mean (because others probably mean different stuff) is that there is a relatively high participation in religion - organised and privately - and a higher degree of respect for it, and of expectation that it is normal, than in the other places I have lived or spent much time (Australia, France, UK, Norway, Spain). That's according to my experience - and I tend to hang out with relatively irreligious people.
There are, of course, very religious people all over the world, and there are agnostics and atheists everywhere I have been too. But the only countries I can think of that are clearly more religious than the US are the Vatican and Israel - and both of those are places where religion is a key reason for the state to exist. Even Ireland and Spain, which reportedly were very religious places up until a generation or so ago seem more secular to me.
On the other hand, Australia, and more so Spain and Norway, seem to have religion running through the fabric of the society still - even if people are not religious enough to actually recognise it.
And since all this is just my personal observation, it could be very very inaccurate, of course
By chaals, # 25. June 2007, 03:07:36
(quick side note: ever notice how in near-death stories, people talk about seeing a faint point of light and an urge to move forward to it? sounds like the inverse of the phenomenon that occurs when a television set is switched off.)
what is strange about being an apatheist and atheist or agnostic in the united states is that persons -- especially of the orthodox or evangelical persuasions -- cannot understand how, when god or organized religion is taken out of the picture, one doesn't run riot in the street, flauting all laws of god and man, doing whatever tickles one's fancy, such as marrying a goat (i don't know why that particular example keeps recurring), committing murder, stealing, embezzelling (sp?), and fornicating with whatever and whomever one encounters, simply because the stern old man isn't looking over your shoulder anymore... this, i believe, reveals a lot about the nature of religion in the united states -- it's something that people tend to cling to in order to provide structure, support and hope, a refuge from fears, anxieties, and inevitabilities (the main one being death), and the relief of following rules and routines that tend to take one's mind off the one question for which no one has a verifiable answer...
i think the veneer of religiosity is what you are perceiving -- the lowest common denomenator and the most ridiculous false prophets get plenty of airtime, but that's all it is -- hot air... most americans you've met simply haven't had their baloon burst, or been near someone dear to them when that person's bubble burst...
the problem with americans isn't that they are too religious (didn't australia's prime minister recently call for a day of national prayer to break the devestating drought down under?) -- it's that they would rather live lives of willful ignorance and unquestioning belief than excercise their inherent freedoms... why else do people consistently vote against their own interests? why are there only political parties? why is there still an electoral college? why does over seventy-five percent of americans when polled consistently identify themselves as "middle class" -- even when confronted with statistics to the contrary?
in the end, it all comes back to DEVO:
freedom of choice,
is what you got;
freedom from choice,
is what you want;
DEVO, by the way, sometimes used to appear as their own opening act -- DOVE, an anagram of DEVO -- and introduce themselves as "Dove, the band of Love" and then play bizarrely arranged original devo-esque religious songs, replete with four part harmonies...
but what do i know? i'm just a simple jerseyman, and to quote a quote you know all too well, you know what old Ambrose had to say on the subject:
HANGMAN, n. An officer of the law charged with duties of the
highest dignity and utmost gravity, and held in hereditary
disesteem by a populace having a criminal ancestry. In some of
the American States his functions are now performed by an
electrician, as in New Jersey, where executions by electricity
have recently been ordered--the first instance known to this
lexicographer of anybody questioning the expediency of hanging
Jerseymen.
now THERE's something we can ALL agree upon!
By oedipus, # 26. June 2007, 06:09:43