Barb O’Brien of the Mahablog will be on a religion panel at Yearly Kos next month.

Wow — next month?  Tempus is fugiting way too celeriter. Eheu!  (Gesundheit.) 

Marshaling her thoughts in preparation for that panel, the Mahabarb has written a four part series titled the Wisdom of Doubt.  On the surface it’s a collection of reflections on the alarmingly doubt-free thought processes — if you can call them that — of George W. Bush (on display again today  via the Carpetbagger Report:)

“It’s like there’s no adult supervision; he’s oblivious” 

But O’Brien delves far deeper than that.  Her observations are informed by commentary ranging from Reinhold Niebuhr to Christopher Hitchens, from St. Augustine to Glenn Greenwald. 
Be prepared to spend a lot of time with each of these four posts. This is not lightweight bloggedy frippery, my young dears.  This is a heady mix,  rich in insight and enlightenment.  Is it any wonder why we call her our “Mahabarb”? This is greatness of mind; greatness of blog.
For your reading convenience, here are links to all four parts of The Wisdom of Doubt.  Take your time. Small bites.  Chew carefully.

From Part I:

Our culture looks at doubt as something to overcome.  Being without doubt is celebrated as a virtue, and if you do have doubts you are supposed to replace them with certainties as soon as possible.  But I say the ideal is to have faith
and doubt in balance.  This includes faith in and doubt about yourself.  Too much doubt is crippling, but so is not enough doubt, although in a different way.

Our President, for example, is a man without doubt.  This may be the single biggest reason he’s a disaster at his job.

The Wisdom of Doubt, Part I 

From Part II:

Essentially, “moral clarity” is about bullshitting yourself. It’s about not dealing honestly and compassionately with all aspects of a moral issue. Instead, the “morally clear” begin with the position they want to take and work backward to justify it, scamming themselves and others when necessary to achieve the desired outcome. This twisted way of achieving “clarity” is founded in the dualistic thinking Glenn Greenwald writes about. This dualism assumes one side of an issue must be “good” and the other must be “bad.” Thus, in much anti-choice literature embryos can talk and women who choose abortions are either ignored or assumed to have evil or selfish motivations. But real-world moral issues often involve multiple “good” sides. It is actually quite rare for people and facts to so neatly sort themselves into “good” and “bad” boxes as the morally clear want to sort them. And by achieving “clarity” based on lies and false assumptions, the “clarifiers” actually create more pain and complication.

The Wisdom of Doubt, Part II 

From Part III:

Moral absolutism and “valueless relativism” are just mirror images of each other. Ego and desire inflame the religious and nonreligious alike, to much the same result. A person can wear his Jesus T-shirt and holler hallelujah a hundred times a day, and still be an egotistical, desire-driven wretch underneath. And an egotistical, desire-driven wretch with religion is likely to use religion as an excuse to gratify his ego and desires.
[...]
Trust me; when people say “we’re doing this obnoxious thing not for ourselves, but for God” — they’re doing it for themselves. If not for material gain, it’s for ego gratification, or territorial marking, or something else selfish and ugly clanking about in their ids. They’re just bullshitting themselves about the God thing. Count on it.

The Wisdom of Doubt, Part III

From Part IV:

Now, some of you are probably thinking Hitchens is right and that religion is the root of all evil. Religion is, unfortunately, an easy thing to be fanatical about. Religion presents itself as a solution to our deepest pain and fears. It’s a perfect escape route for people running away from themselves. This is particularly true of dogmatic, authoritarian religions.

In Escape From Freedom, Erich Fromm wrote that people who fear personal freedom, who are uncomfortable with their own autonomy, tend to escape into authoritarianism and conformity. Religion that combines passion with absolutism is the perfect medium for fanaticism.
[...]
History shows us that when authoritarian religion gets mixed up with political power, the results can be nasty. The Inquisition — which was as much about political authority as church authority — is a grand example. We should fear for the Middle East; whose residents seem determined to fold themselves into some kind of authoritarian Islamic theocracy. And we should fear for ourselves as long as fundamentalism is affecting the outcome of elections.

The Wisdom of Doubt, Part IV

 

 I wouldn’t miss that panel at YK for anything.  See you in August, Barb!

 

 

  
 

Posted: July 3rd, 2007 under George W Bush, Good vs. Evil, Religion.
Comments: none

The facts of Iraq are not in dispute. But the truth is that facts don’t matter anyway to this administration, and that’s what makes this whole N.I.E. debate beside the point. From the start, honest information has never figured into the prosecution of this war. The White House doesn’t care about intelligence, good or bad, classified or unclassified, because it believes it knows best, regardless of what anyone else has to say. The debate over the latest N.I.E. or any yet to leak will not alter that fundamental and self-destructive operating principle. That’s the truly bad news.

Frank Rich in the NY Times, via the Wege-ster (yes Mister G, two can play that game)

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So, yes, if we leave Iraq the terrorists will clap their hands and mock us as a pathetic paper tiger. It will be a very bad situation. We will enter into an uncertain, intimidating new world. But—and here’s the crucial point—we are already plunging blindly into that world. And we’re plunging into it with one hand tied behind our backs. As the situation now stands, there can be no “victory” in Iraq. Because what kind of victory depends on a permanent occupation? What kind of victory is contingent all our various enemies deciding not to attack us anymore? What kind of victory can we muster when there’s no state left to surrender to us, no ground for us to conquer, no declarations for us to sign and yet our soldiers and their civilians still die by the dozens every day? The question shouldn’t be decided as a matter of national pride—of “sticking it out” and proving America’s greatness—the question should be decided on the basis of what’s best for our country, their country, the region and the world. We are an economic giant, a military giant, and a free society. They are crazy theocrats. We disgrace ourselves by even suggesting that we need to save face in front of such people.

Insomnia Report, “The biggest scandal of them all…”

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It seems to be a textbook case: a pedophile in a position of power exploits underage minions, while hiding behind a cloak of virtue. In fact, it seems that truth here is stranger than fiction. It would take a literary hack, many would say, to write a lurid Washington novel about a Republican chair of the Missing and Exploited Children Caucus, himself sexually propositioning underage male pages.
“What blatant hypocrisy!” come the shouts from the left and the right. “What a scumbag!” they all say.
“Above all,” come the protestations from the right, “don’t politicize this one case of sheer hypocrisy.” “This matter is beyond politics,” they say.
But it’s NOT hypocrisy. It’s PAR FOR THE COURSE. And it’s not above politics, either–because what Mark Foley has done is the perfect example of what “conservatism” is all about.
“A bold claim,” you may say. “Can you back it up, spoon?”
Yes, I can.
The fundamental difference, you see, between conservatives and liberals in the social sphere goes far beyond the petty points that make up modern politics. Abortion, gay marriage, and the rest are but stars in the overall constellation of a philosophy that rests on the difference between openness and a false sense of propriety.

thereisnospoon(via Diary Rescue at dKos)

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This weekend’s movie at Chez Tild:

NIGHT OF THE HUNTER

Part melodrama, part horror movie, part fairy tale, NIGHT OF THE HUNTER unfolds like a fever dream in an American landscape both nightmarish and magical. This almost unbearably suspenseful tale — the only solo screenplay that critic James Agee ever wrote and the only film that actor Charles Laughton (RUGGLES OF REDGAP) ever directed — is a cinematic experience unlike any other. Robert Mitchum gives his most indelible performance here as a psychotic preacher with “love” and “hate” tattooed on each of his hands. After charming a small-town widow into marrying him, he proceeds to terrorize her children in order to get hold of the money left to them by their dead father. The peerless Lillian Gish is moving and magnificent as the elderly woman who becomes the children’s physical and spiritual guardian. Photographed by Stanley Cortez (THE MAGNIFICENT AMBERSONS) with shimmering light and deep shadows that eloquently express the story’s themes of good and evil, sin and redemption, NIGHT OF THE HUNTER is a beautiful, startling, and unforgettable film.

–a review by Kryssa Schemmerling, at bn.com

 

Rev. Harry Powell (Robert Mitchum): I can hear you whisperin’ children, so I know you’re down there. I can feel myself gettin’ awful mad. I’m out of patience children. I’m coming to find you now.

Rachel Cooper (Lillian Gish): I’m a strong tree with branches for many birds. I’m good for something in this world and I know it too.

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Posted: October 1st, 2006 under Cinema, Evil made visible, General, Good vs. Evil, Politics.
Comments: none