The wrong way to argue about abortion

Abortion is one of the most polarized issues in American politics. It's also one of the worst-debated ones. Both sides tend to rely on straw-man arguments that vilify the people on the other side.

• Pro-Life people portray Pro-Choice people as wanting to kill babies. (That is, they hate Life.)
• Pro-Choice people portray Pro-Life people as wanting to control women. (That is, they hate Choice.)

Both of those portrayals are wrong, because in reality the difference between the two groups comes down to the question of when a human life begins. If we could scientifically prove that, the discussion would end.

Here's a version of the issue that's simplified, but not by very much:

Let's say a woman wants to have an operation. Should she be able to?

• If the operation will kill another person, the answer is no.
• If the operation will not affect another person, the answer is yes.

Which of those bullets represents the situation with abortion? Well that's up for debate. In fact, that's the only thing that really needs to be debated to resolve this issue! [Edit: This is not quite true. See comment at the bottom.] But is that what people debate? No, hardly ever. Instead, people talk about how evil the other side is. It feels empowering to be so right! But it's not really empowering at all. It just makes the power swing back and forth based on who's in office (or on the bench) at the moment.

As an example, on the radio this morning I heard a woman explain that abortion rights are a racial issue. He's the gist of what she said:

Black communities (due to a lower average income) have much higher abortion rates. Therefore they have higher needs, and denying access hurts Black people more. 

But when she says that, here's what a Pro-Life person hears: 

Black babies are killed much more often than white babies. Therefore allowing abortion hurts Black people more.

Same data, same concern for racial justice. Opposite conclusion. It's going to be like that every time.

Here's a great idea that will probably never happen: Compromise, so that each side gets the most important things they care about while acknowledging the validity of the other side's concerns.

Like, for example, what if you you amended the Constitution to say something like this?

Abortion is allowed in the first trimester of pregnancy and forbidden in the third. States may decide what to do in-between.

You could tweak the specific week numbers, but you get the point. Pro-Life people would avoid the most heinous abortion scenarios; Pro-Choice people would avoid unwanted pregnancy for the vast majority of women, since presumably most women who get abortions know they want one pretty early. Nobody would be completely happy. But nobody would lose what they have just because political power swung a different direction this year, or this decade.

Could we just... admit that pretty much everybody involved is a good person and just talk?

Dealing with weird stuff in church history

[I wrote this on Election Day 2020 but posted it here later. The original, formatted document is here.]

I should say at the start that I have a strong testimony of the gospel of Jesus Christ, and that Joseph Smith is his prophet. I'm grateful for the peace and perspective the gospel has given me, and the blessings I've received as I have tried to live it. For the most part, the history of the church strengthens my testimony - there have been many miracles that show the hand of God in it, and the church has been a positive influence in the world.

It's also fair to say that some parts of church history aren't great. Some people react to this by just rejecting everything about the church. Others make excuses and may even perpetuate some of the unfortunate cultural issues from the past. I have been thinking lately about how to address the negative aspects of the history, so I figured I'd better write it down. Fair warning - this post is long.

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The church has never claimed its leaders were infallible. It's actually very important to be able to see a prophet's role as distinct from their identity as a person, because prophets make mistakes. Sometimes really big ones. We need to be able to see and acknowledge this without it shaking our faith in God, or in the core doctrines of the gospel.

When I was young, I imagined the prophets and apostles as being in direct personal contact with Jesus Christ all the time. He told them what to do, and they just did it. I imagined something similar with local church leaders, except through the Holy Ghost instead of visions. As a missionary and in interactions with church leadership, I have since learned that most of the time God leaves decisions up to us and guides us in subtle ways, many times through other people. Most of the time he is fine with the direction we choose, and will only "warn us off" if we're headed for something immoral. We can get extra direction when we seek it (study, ponder, pray). But very seldom does God give us course-altering direction when we haven't asked for it. This is true even for prophets. God reveals truth "line upon line, here a little and there a little". (See 2 Nephi 28:30, Isaiah 28:30.)

This is important to understand with regard to church history, both ancient and modern. The clear modern example is the racial distinction on the priesthood, which was started a few decades after the church was created and wasn't lifted until 1978. I'll say more about this later, but for now I'll just point out that the church has disavowed all of the attempts at explaining the reasons for it using scripture. In other words, it was a mistake. A big, harmful one. Why didn't God correct it sooner? We don't have a direct answer, but I think a part of the answer has to be that not enough people were prepared to follow the direction to stop being racist. It was only when enough people were willing to follow that direction that the change came. (And yes, that means that racism was a huge problem in the development of the church.) Some might hear this and think "How could Brigham Young have been a prophet if he believed such racist ideas?" One answer could simply be a matter of existential priories: God needed a church with a strong community. There had to be enough members in Utah and worldwide to hold the church together. If too many people left too early, no amount of truth would have preserved the church long-term. But having a lot of people in strong communities was something God could work with, and fine-tune their moral failings bit by bit, as they were ready. In any case, I think separating Brigham Young's character as a man from his role as a prophet is actually liberating from a faith perspective. You can criticize one without throwing away the other.

Here's another example: Moses and Joshua wiped out a lot of people on their way from Egypt to the promised land. The Book of Exodus suggests that God told them to exterminate entire communities - men, women, and children. Really? Or is it possible that Moses received revelation about moving people, and commandments about how they should behave, and misinterpreted some of the "how"? I think it is. One might ask again, "Why wouldn't God stop him from committing genocide?" Well, he needed a group of people that wouldn't sink into idolatry. He needed people who would believe in him and pass on the covenant he had made. He knew he could work on the "love your neighbor" stuff later, so he gave them just enough to establish the basics. They weren't ready for any more than that. This is speculation, but it makes sense to me.

One more quick example before I get back to Brigham Young. A lot of people instrumental in forming the United States were guilty of atrocities. George Washington owned slaves. And without him, we would not have this country in the first place. He was a hypocritical white supremacist. And he did great things, for which we are indebted to him. We can believe both. Thomas Jefferson: same thing. Christopher Columbus: he did even worse things. And he was instrumental in the hands of God in forming a free country, and by extension, in the restoration of the gospel. I'm not saying I would vote for any of these men if they were running for office today, but we can acknowledge the good they did even while condemning their immoral behavior.

In a lot of ways, Brigham Young was the George Washington of the early church. God needed someone with leadership skills, and a vision of how to build a community. Brigham Young drove the creation of industry all over Utah and other places the church created settlements. He negotiated a peaceful situation with the United States and the Native American communities in the area. Without him, that church of refugees probably would not have survived its first fifty years.

He was also profoundly racist. He wasn't as bad as a lot of people in the South - he didn't advocate all of the atrocities committed against slaves. He didn't even own slaves. But he did believe in slavery. He strongly believed that black people were inherently inferior. And, while some might say that it's not fair to judge him against modern morality, his actions don't even stand up to the morality of the church at the time. The Book of Mormon condemns slavery, as does the Doctrine and Covenants. Joseph Smith wanted to abolish slavery. But Brigham Young upheld it.

And then there is polygamy. In some ways this is even weirder than the racism thing - not just because polygamy is messed up, but because the early church had a much easier time backing up the doctrine of polygamy with scripture. But women suffered a lot under the practice. And I'm not going from rumors or anything here - most of what I know about the subject comes from the Church's own publications. It was pretty bad. Did God set it up? Well maybe - the whole thing was wrapped in secrecy at the start, so it's not super clear what Joseph Smith said, or which parts of it were direct revelation from God, versus something that another imperfect man might have misinterpreted. (The section in D&C that mentions it didn't come out until a long time after Joseph Smith was murdered.) But even if we accept the institution as created by revelation, the implementation was not great. Women's rights and wellbeing were not respected as much as they should have been. Again, there were a lot of mortal people running this thing, and we shouldn't be surprised when we learn that they messed it up.

So how should we react? I think there are three important things.

First, I think it's very appropriate to be offended. I am offended. Racism is awful. Slavery is a betrayal of the gospel of Jesus Christ on every level. And hypocrisy makes bad things even worse, maybe because it is so effective at convincing people that they are good. We don't need to make excuses for others' wrong choices. It's okay to be outraged.

Second, we need to have a clear idea of core doctrine versus what I'm going to call "interpreted doctrine", versus practices and policies. (See this talk from General Conference, and this one.) There's a broad spectrum of how directly-from-God the things we believe and do fall into. That's just the nature of living in a mortal world. If we're clear on which things came directly from God, we can hold onto those things without getting thrown off when we realize that a human leader has made a mistake. Or even an atrocity.

And third, once we have that clear distinction about church history, we need to apply it to ourselves. We need to ask ourselves, "What part of my beliefs and practices are susceptible to human weakness? Are there perspectives I have that God would like me to change, if only I'd open myself up to changing?" (See Matthew 19:20)

Sometimes it will be policies that will change. But sometimes the doctrine of the church will be added to or clarified in a way that contradicts what members of the church had come to believe. When black people received the priesthood, a lot of members rejoiced - not just for the blessings of their black brothers and sisters, but because they no longer had to make excuses for a racist policy. They were beyond ready. But other members of the church had a hard time with this. They had been immersed in all of the theological rationalization for the policy. The idea of having a black bishop went against their religious beliefs. Of course, this means these people were racist. But the point is that they sincerely believed that God wanted them to be. At least up until that day. After that day, those who had embraced the racism of the time had a choice to make. Some left the church, or stayed but harbored racism. And others opened their minds and hearts and received a witness from God that white people aren't actually superior. Those people changed, and they're better people now.

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I want to point out one more concept that I think is in flux in the church today - in culture, if not in doctrine. This bit will involve a lot of speculation - this comes from me, not the church, and I could be wrong in either direction. But it's something that I think about.

It has to do with how we approach homosexuality. Now, the church is pretty clear on the law of chastity - no sexual intimacy except between married people, and marriage is between a man and a woman (because the essence of marriage is creating an eternal family). Most people and cultures in the world today don't believe in or support that standard. We can live with that. We don't walk around glaring at our heterosexual neighbors and thinking of them as unclean. And we should not do that with homosexual people either. The church certainly does not advocate looking down on other people based on who they're attracted to. But in the culture among church members, there is a stigma attached to being gay.

Growing up, I feel like I was raised with a relatively open-minded view of people. Racism always seemed and felt evil. But gay people? I have to admit that I felt an "ick" factor attached to that idea. Like, the idea of two dudes kissing still feels wrong to me - although I think this has more to do with bias than it does with morality. Not all of this bias comes from church - this is in the whole world. But let's examine the church bit.

Let's say you have two teenagers, a boy and a girl. The boy asks the girl on a date. They see a movie and eat food, and the boy pays. They hold hands. At the end of the night he kisses her on the cheek, and then they part ways. Nobody would call that a violation of chastity. Why? Because it's not sexual. It's just feelings, and social interaction. But if you change that story and replace the girl with a boy, all of a sudden you've got a problem. If these are BYU students instead of teenagers, you have an Honor Code violation. Why? If the law of chastity is about sexuality, and sexuality is only okay between a married couple, and romantic behavior is okay outside of marriage, then why are we concerned with non-sexual behavior between two men or two women? Why do we even care?

Of course, the perceived problem is that romantic behavior between people of the same gender "gives expression" to feelings that could lead people to break the law of chastity or to make other decisions that will stop eternal progression. That feels super weak to me. For one thing, two dudes on a date are no more likely to break the law of chastity than a heterosexual couple. The hormones are the same; it's just who they're targeting that's different. And if you're not attracted to the opposite gender, then you're not going to get married to them, so a same-gender relationship isn't competing with a potential opposite-gender one. (I mean if you're bisexual, then maybe it is, but that feels like a technicality that doesn't really sway the argument here.)

So the conclusion that I draw is that we should chill out and get off the backs of gay people. We should try really hard to stop feeling that "ick" factor, and acknowledge that it comes from the societal messaging we were raised with, not from God.

"But, But…" that biased voice in my head says, "how does being gay fit into the Plan of Salvation? What happens in the Celestial Kingdom?" To be honest, I do not know the answer to this. Growing up, my impression was that being gay was a birth defect, so it would be "cured" in the resurrection. That is an awfully insulting position to take. That doesn’t make it untrue, but then there isn't any scriptural evidence to back it up, either. Perhaps Brigham Young might have said that gay people are the way they are because of some spiritual deficiency, like he felt about black people. Of course that is even more insulting, and it feels deeply wrong on a spiritual level. I'd have a hard time even respecting someone who claimed that. The only other answer I can think of is that there's a celestial path for gay people, but it hasn't been revealed yet. Why not? Well maybe it's because the church isn't ready for that revelation. Because we have too much bigotry in the membership. Again. Still.

And if that's the case, then we are just like the members back in 1978 before President Kimball removed the restriction on the priesthood. We have a choice. We can hold onto the traditions of the past and be total jerks to our neighbors, damaging the image of the church and causing our descendants to be ashamed of us. Or we can be ready. We can move past the biases we've been fed and do a better job of thinking of everybody as equals. Neighbors. You know, the way Jesus Christ commands us to treat everybody.

Why personal character matters in political offices

I realized that in my recent posts on political offices, I haven't explicitly stated why I think that the character of a political candidate can make them unworthy of an office even if their opponent's policies seem unacceptable. Here's why.

When a person is in a position of power, the way they view power will affect how they use power. And that use will spread to other people in power. A corrupt president will breed more corruption. A leader who is guilty of - or even apathetic about - sexual violence will spawn more sexual violence. A racist leader will encourage more racism. There are very few political issues that can override these sorts of problems. Violence and corruption will ruin any society, no matter how "right" the leaders may be on any particular issue. But more to the point, individuals will suffer at the hands of their leaders if those leaders don't meet a certain bar of morality. So to uphold an immoral leader is to share responsibility for the suffering that they cause. Of course I'm not saying that you're responsible for every action of the people you vote for. But if you know that their world view justifies abuse of some group of people, and you support them anyway, then you are responsible.

I want to share a quote that I think is relevant here. It's from church, so I want to make it clear that I'm not claiming that the church endorses my position exactly. But here it is. It's from a letter from the First Presidency that is read in church (in this form or something very similar) pretty much whenever a major election is near:

...citizens are to seek out and then uphold leaders who will act with integrity and are wise, good, and honest.

Now if you read it in context, the candidate's morality isn't the only thing mentioned. Issues matter too. But to me, the fact that this doesn't say "seek out and then uphold leaders whose views are on the right side of the issues" is significant.

So, why would a good person vote for someone immoral? I'm afraid that one reason is that sometimes an immoral leader will benefit you. Their policies might actually grant you additional wealth, freedom, or (ick!) some special privilege over another group. Sometimes the opponent is even worse, and I understand the desire to vote for the lesser of two evils to prevent the larger one. But I fear that some people stop thinking even that way, and happily uphold leaders who are downright evil, because those leaders are (for the moment) providing some benefit. And of course, if you find yourself in that group, then you are absolutely responsible for the actions and policies that you are supporting.

Election 2020 :|

This election, like the last one, presents an icky choice for conservatives. I mean, if you're a democrat, the choice is easy. If you're moderate, the choice is also pretty easy. If you're a conservative, you have to make a nasty choice. One candidate is on the wrong side of some important issues (abortion, religious freedom, government overreach in various areas). The other candidate could be argued to have made progress in some areas, while grossly violating social justice in many others (racism, sexism, permanently separating children from their parents, etc.). I have seen a lot of vitriolic Facebook discussion about how to go about responding to this. Just like last time, lots of people I know firmly believe that you have to keep the democrats out of office no matter what, while others firmly believe that Trump isn't worthy of the office and must be kicked out, regardless of the cost in other areas. I don't want to wade into the mess of Facebook comments, but I do want to go on record for where I stand on it all. And then I have one final comment about voting in general.

As I said four years ago, Trump's moral failings make him unworthy of the office, and even if I agreed with him on every policy issue (which I don't), I could never vote for someone who is sexually abusive. Never someone who uses racist comments to attack his opponents. Never someone who tries to make national enemies of a religion to rally his voter base. Never someone who takes children from their parents and says it's to protect national security. Never, never Trump.

[Edit] I realized I hadn't said why his personal character matters in the decision to not vote for him. More on that in this post.

But what about Biden? Well if I lived in a swing state, I might be persuaded to hold my nose and vote for him. But I live in Washington State, where all of the electoral votes will go to Biden anyway. So I'm comfortable voting for someone else, someone who has no chance of winning. (I haven't decided who yet.) Hopefully this vote (and those of other voters like me) will send a message to the party system that not all conservative votes can be assumed based on just a few issues, or on the grounds of  "I'm not that other guy". The idea of a major third party might be a crazy dream, but it is where we should go, so I'll take a little step in that direction. Biden is terrible.

Now, about voting - I've also heard a lot of comments to the effect of "my vote doesn't count". Some people say it in frustration, and others say it to explain their intention to not vote. To that I ask, what do you expect your vote to do? Be the one that decides the election? If your vote is always the decisive one, you don't have a democracy or a republic. You have a monarchy. It's a fallacy to think that a vote that doesn't contribute to the win doesn't count. If everybody thought that way, nobody would vote. The whole point of voting is that opinions are expressed in aggregate. You either participate or you don't. I'll admit that I don't vote on every position that ever shows up on my ballot, but I feel like I have a moral obligation to participate when there's a moral issue on the ballot. And the presidency seems to always have moral issues attached to it. So I guess I'd say that even if the voting system makes your vote unlikely to sway the results of the election, if nothing else you can see it as taking a side. You are making it known that one person is standing up for your position. And personally I feel like I'm standing accountable for what I believe in.

And as a final note, if everybody who doesn't like Trump or Biden voted for a third party, that third party would win. Everybody needs to vote.

Wishes

I've said before that time travel is always a bad plot point. Writers can use it for suspense, but as soon as you step back and analyze the logic of a story that uses time travel, you end up seeing major problems, all boiling down to the question of "Why didn't they use it to solve that?" And that's to say nothing about causality loops.

Well I've decided that using wishes are just as bad, if not worse. (And by "wish", I mean that a character gets to specify some nearly-unlimited action as a reward for something they did.) Wishes pretty much guarantee that the viewer/reader/player will come up with a better, obvious wish that the character could have used. And then it's just annoying. I recently finished a game that ended with a wish that made most things better, but had one very obvious and terrible side effect. Why didn't the character just say "except for this thing" at the end? And then there's Aladdin - I'm sure we can all think of more effective ways that Aladdin could have used his wishes. And why didn't Jasmine take a few wishes before Aladdin made his third? Wind Waker is another game that completely botches it.

To be fair, there might be a few exceptions. Wishes might be okay if they have very strict limits, or guaranteed side effects (like a malicious wish-giver who will look for loopholes). And I'm okay with a wish as a plot ender if the wish is just "fix everything", and everything does get fixed, like in A Link to the Past. (In general, I feel like there are some implied restrictions on Triforce wishes.)

 

That said…

 

The idea of wishes does raise an interesting question: if you were given the chance, what would you wish for?

 

Again, there have to be limits. If there aren't, your wish would have to be "maximize overall happiness for me and as many other good people as possible, for the greatest amount of time possible". Of course, if you're looking at the eternal perspective, God will make that happen anyway, so that would sort of be a wasted wish, but you could iterate on the exact wording. But to be interesting, the scenario has to have things scoped down. No asking for multiple wishes of course.

 

I think you'd want to disallow general commands, like "whatever will make me happy" - it has to be specified. Also it should have to be something that can take effect in an instant, and then be over. That would make the wisher think about long-term effects.

 

You'd probably also want to disallow the word "and", and maybe limit the number of words. Someone told me about a character in Dungeons and Dragons who was granted a wish. He presented a list of very specific things. The dungeon master (acting as the wish giver) didn't even read it, they just said "yep". Very effective in that context, but not a very good story element, so if you're designing the question, you'd want to disallow that.

 

One more limitation would be useful, I think: you might want to limit the scope of its effects. See, if you can create world peace, then morally you must do it, right? Like if you're Superman, then you'd feel guilty doing anything other than rushing around saving people. So if you want a character to make a more relatable decision, you sort of need to force them to have a certain amount of self-interest in the request. "No affecting the lives of others in ways that don't directly involve a benefit to you", or something like that.

 

So what would I wish for, given all of those limitations? My gut reaction would be to make me a Plasma Master. (That does have the risk of approaching the Superman problem, but I could set limitations that would reduce the scope of power.) If I had to scope it down even more, I might go for some localized mutant power, like not needing to sleep, or perfect health until the instant I would have died of old age. (But that would have the side effect of making you outlive your kids, which would be lame.) Flight is always a good option. Of course a billion dollars in an unhackable, untaxable bank account would be pretty life changing too, but that's boring. (Plus a well thought-out superpower could make you money - teleportation, for example.) You'd have to use a wish on something that no one could acquire in any other way.

 

But dude, whatever you wish for, don't make it stupid. Don't be like the time travelers.

Funeral traditions

People have all sorts of traditions around funerals. A lot of the time I don’t get them. I imagine that most of the time they’re constructive – by which I mean that they serve to help grieving people deal with their loss and move on. And I’m all for that. (I’ll also admit that I haven’t yet gone through much of this kind of loss, so there could be some perspective that I’m missing here.) But I worry that sometimes the traditions we follow can have the opposite effect: they can end up making people worry more than necessary, in particular about how their actions or lack thereof might affect the deceased. In particular, I think people end up doing more harm than good when they treat funeral services like they are meant for the dead rather than for the living.

A basic principle that I’m quite confident is that once you’re out of this life, your level of happiness only depends on your relationship with God, and not on anything that any other person has done or not done. (You could argue that temple ordinances are an exception to this, but even then I that the timing we experience here is different from what post-mortal people experience so let’s ignore that for the moment.)

This principle is really important. Obviously in this life our happiness is affected by all sorts of things outside our control, from both human and natural causes. The Atonement of Christ gets rid of all that and makes happiness available to everybody And the Resurrection is guaranteed to everyone. If you know (or even believe) this, it is a source of comfort, even though it doesn’t immediately take away the pain of losing someone. That pain is real, which is why it’s important for people to address it, cope with it, and find ways to move on.

I think that one of the ways that people deal with it is through traditions that make them feel like they can do something of value for their departed loved ones. It helps them feel less helpless, more connected. I suspect that’s why people spend quintuple-digit amounts on caskets, flowers, and grave sites. It’s why they keep bringing flowers to graves. If that works for them, great. The problem comes when it becomes difficult or impossible for people to go through these traditions. I fear that they may end up feeling unnecessarily guilty for not having done more – or even worse, that they often spend unnecessary resources to go through with the tradition even when there’s pretty much no benefit for anyone except those getting paid to provide them.

All of this leads me to have a set of views that some might see as jaded or even cheap, but the motivation really is to make sure that all of the traditions we follow are aimed at the grieving family – because the dead are just fine without these efforts. I’m not judging people that believe or choose differently. But here they are, for what they’re worth.

• Burial (or whatever): I think all cultures bury or cremate the remains of people who have died. There’s a good and obvious reason for this: the human body is sacred, and the image of a friend or family member has emotional significance. Eventually that body will become part of the earth and be unrecognizable, but the process that takes it there is essentially a desecration of the human image. Seeing that would only be hurtful. We want it to take place out of sight. Now, people (perhaps naturally) add to that sentiment the idea that the dead person themself needs to have the body buried in a certain way. What if you can’t do that? What if the body is lost at sea or destroyed before the ceremony can be performed? If you think the ceremony constitutes some duty to the dead, you’re going to end up grieving even more – not just for the loss of that person in your life, but for some imagined suffering that the person will go through in the next life. That’s really bad! It’s much better if we just see burial (or cremation or whatever) as a necessary logistical step and move on, knowing that the person we have lost is just fine.

• Graves: Visiting a grave site is a related concept. I get that it’s comforting for a lot of people, and that’s great. There are also a lot of people who can’t visit the grave site of their deceased family, maybe due to having moved away or something. I sure hope such people don’t feel distanced from their family because of that. Post-mortal spirits aren’t attached to their burial sites or even to their former bodies. They’re free from all that. If there’s an attachment to this world, then surely it’s to the living family members themselves.

I guess that covers it, actually. We can’t avoid the pain of losing people to death. But we can make sure that the traditions we follow don’t add to the burden of those who suffer loss and distract from the hope and peace that come from knowing that good people who move beyond this life are okay, and that we will be with them again.

Blaming the victim vs. protection

I recently wrote about those rhetorically dangerous situations where you have two relevant facts, and people focus on the wrong one for the current context. One of those has come up recently with respect to that "me too" thing on Facebook. It deals with an even heavier example than the one I gave in the original post.

On one hand, it is very important to avoid blaming the victim of abuse. It always floors me that anyone would suggest that someone who has been abused is somehow guilty or unclean, yet that's exactly the message that ends up getting sent sometimes. Sometimes it's framed as "you should have prevented it," but in any form, that message is wrong. It's deeply immoral. It's tantamount to colluding with the abuser, since it increases the damage done to an innocent person.

Another true principle is that it is good to avoid dangerous situations. If you don't avoid it, you're not guilty, but still, it's important to teach people to avoid bad situations if they can. If you get mugged in a dark alley while alone at night you're not guilty, but it's still a good idea not to walk down a dark alley alone at night. You don't leave your house unlocked just because it's not your moral responsibility to keep others out of your home.

The problem (well, a problem) is that people who call out that second thing frequently get accused of denying the first thing. That argument about not blaming the victim gets turned into a straw-man argument and thrown at yet another innocent person (ironically), as if any talk about prevention constitutes blame of the victim. That's very unfair, and very untrue. Both principles are important and need to be addressed. And taking an ally and making them look like the enemy so you can have someone to lash out at is counterproductive (and potentially immoral in itself).

So we shouldn't blame the victims. But teaching people to avoid danger is important too. And in doing both, we should be careful not to create enemies out of allies. There are enough bad guys out there as it is.

And one more thing

Speaking of blame: Apparently there are a lot of guys who feel threatened by that whole movement. They hear women saying they don't trust men, and they throw out that "not all men" hashtag and complain, as if they (the men) were somehow wronged by being grouped in with the abusers.

Here's the thing. While it is true that not all men are evil scum, that's not really a super relevant point to the discussion. It's certainly not helpful to a woman who has been the victim of abusive behavior, especially by many men. Women don't owe us their trust. We haven't been wronged if a woman doesn't trust us, even if we really are good people. And even if we are somehow damaged by that lack of trust, that damage is insignificant compared to the level of damage the woman in question has suffered. So if you're feeling threatened by a woman's distrust about men, or even overly-broad accusations against them, then help fix the problem instead of just trying to distance yourself from it.

How can we fix it? Well the obvious way is with your fist or another weapon if you witness an act of abuse. If it's verbal, you can speak up and hold the abuser accountable. At the very least, don't be a part of the problem. Which takes us back to my first point: Don't blame the victim. Stop complaining.

The authority void

People are good at looking at other people and figuring out (right or wrong) what those people should do to fix their problems, or overcome their weaknesses, or just generally become better. We're not always that good at analyzing ourselves. That's not the end of the world, though, because we have other people around us whose opinions we trust, and who can give us that outside perspective.

Usually.

When we're little, we have various adults who we view as authorities on various topics. As we grow up, we might change whose opinions we think are the most reliable. These people could be parents, teachers, religious leaders, or friends. But I think that a lot of adults reach a point where they don't have anyone left who they would listen to if they suggested a change. This might happen because you feel so successful that you don't need anything, or because you've thought your life through so thoroughly that you can't imagine anyone else adding anything to it. Or maybe you just don't respect anyone enough - or trust anyone enough - to believe that their input could benefit you.

In any case, I think that this situation - where there's no one in your life who could convince you to change course. If you're in that position, and if (by some crazy chance) there's some decision you're making or habit you have that is preventing you from getting where you want (or need) to go, and if you haven't already figured out the solution, there's really no way you're going to get there!

I'm speaking in general terms, but this is a situation that drives me crazy when I see it in other people. Back to my first comment, I can see someone I know and care about proverbially heading for a cliff, and it's super obvious to me what they need to change. But I don't have enough of a relationship of trust to give that input. And I can see that nobody else does either. And so disaster happens.

Of course, I'm not in this situation, I hope. For one thing, I'm married to someone very wise. (I highly recommend this.) And I'm pretty sure I'd at least consider the advise of a bishop (for instance) who counseled me to change something. And then there's extended family. So hopefully I'm not driving anyone else crazy over this particular issue.

But the point is (PSA time): If you can't think of anyone whose advice you would listen to even if it seemed wrong at first, FIND SOMEONE! Because otherwise you are betting your happiness in life on your own ability to make perfect decisions, and you're gonna lose. And that's going to drive me crazy.

Thank you.

Flat Earth & the Alt Right

I had a bit of an epiphany today. It involves to seemingly-unrelated topics - one pretty trivial and the other very important. But they share something important in common. I'll start with the trivial one.

Debunking "Flat Earth"

A few days ago, I made the mistake of reading the comments on a Facebook post about some astronomy thing and was painfully reminded that there are a bunch of people who are convinced that the world is flat, and that all the evidence to the contrary is either forged or misunderstood. For some reason, it really, really bugs me to think that there are people who believe this. I find myself wishing that I could sit down with these people and have an honest conversation; I felt like if I could just ask them one or two questions, I could convince them to change their ways.

This begs the question: if you only had their attention for one question, which would you ask? It can't be too complex or rely too much on math, because if you have to rely on something that abstract then you've already lost the argument. I had a progression of questions that came to mind (along with some of the responses I might get):

1. Why hasn't anybody just taken a picture of the edge? That should settle the matter pretty easily. (I guess they believe the South "Pole" is the edge, and it's dangerous to get there, and your navigation gets messed up, so you're not where you think you are.)
2. If you can't get to the edge, then why not just do a trip around the edge of Antarctica, and measure the distance/time? With the globe model, the trip should be the same as a trip at a high northern latitude. But with the flat model, the trip should be much longer than it would be even at the equator.
3. My wife brought up the question of seasons - that doesn't really make sense in a flat world. (I guess a lot of people don't understand the seasons anyway.)
4. Similarly, what about the sun rising in the east? If I see the sun rise on the eastern horizon, shouldn't everyone? (I wondered if maybe they thought that horizon is just as far as you can see, so maybe they'd think that the sun on the horizon just means the sun is really far away but in the sky?)
5. Even simpler: If it's noon for me, the sun is high above. Shouldn't it be high above for everybody? Why is there no sun in the sky at all for some people?

I think question #5 should do it. The fact that some people see the sun to the east, others to the west, some straight up, and others not at all - at the same time - has to mean that the world isn't flat. And it's super simple - it relies only on a phenomenon that we experience every single day.

So, why do I care so much about people not believing this? Hold that thought for just a moment.

Debunking White Supremacy

There are people in the country right now who are convinced that white people are in danger. I'll discuss why this is wrong later, but for just a moment, let's try (I know it hurts) to understand their claims. They see all the good stuff in American history and American culture, and guess what? Most if it involves white people. These people, like all people, have problems. And they look around and see efforts to lift minorities out of what seems like very similar problems. Scholarships. Quotas in schools. Diversity efforts in companies. From these people's perspectives, these efforts can't help but displace white people and supplant their culture.

To be very clear, that's all a distortion of the truth. It's too big a topic to discuss fully, but let me give a quick example of why. Let's say you're a white guy who's applying for a job. There are ten positions open, and twenty people applying - ten white and ten black, all of them qualified. The employer is a white supremacist. Guess what? You have a 100% chance of being hired!

Now change the scenario - let's say that the employer isn't racist, and laws prohibit hiring based on race. Now your chances of getting the job have dropped to 50%! From a purely self-centered, unprincipled point of view, the change in policy has hurt you. It has taken a chance that was once yours and given it away. I guess that's why the "alt right" is worried. But of course we can see that the extra chance you had originally was unfair, and the new system is actually better. It's just not more convenient for you. And if you're a moral person, that distinction matters.

And one more thing: Since before this country was founded, you've had white people who knew that racism was hypocrisy in a nation that believed in freedom. You have also had people who were afraid that if you granted freedom to minorities (particularly black people), then they'd use that freedom to retaliate. And guess what? Those people have been wrong every time. The slaves didn't try to take over the south. When black people could vote, they didn't try to eradicate white people. Sure, you've got the occasional evil person who has advocated violence, but the fact is that white people at large have never been in danger from the people who have managed to get free of the historical oppression that has afflicted them.

Epiphany

The second point has been on my mind in the past few days due to the Charlottesville thing. And today as I was thinking about the flat earth bit, I realized why it bugs me. It's because of the mentality that leads to it - and that it's exactly the same mentality that leads to a belief in white supremacy.

Believing that the world is flat involves limiting your point of view to your own experience, ignoring the multitude of experiences that show that the world is more complex and more interconnected than you can tell from any single point. If you open yourself up to what the world is like to someone on the other side of it, you have to realize that the flat earth model is inadequate. And the same is true of white supremacy. Sure, you can find someone with darker skin who has life a little easier than you. But if you listen to just a few of the stories of this country, you'll see the obvious - that there's this big, ugly stain on American history made of racism. We have come a long way toward removing it, but there are still people suffering from it. A lot of people. We can disagree on the best way to fix it. But pretending that white people are in danger from our dark-skinned neighbors is just as wrong - and even more infuriating - than believing the world is flat.

And that leads to an important distinction: While people's belief in a flat earth doesn't really hurt anyone, the belief that white people are superior and threatened is extremely damaging. It's making that big ugly stain grow even as we're trying to wash it out. People are literally dying because of it.

I'm really not sure what the best way to fix the problem is, especially since I'm pretty much preaching to the choir as I write this. But I hope that someday I get to talk to a white supremacist. Not to yell at them or tell them how embarrassed I am to have them in my country (although that might be the gut reaction), but to sincerely talk and maybe ask them one question in an effort to force them to see the world in a new, broader way. To change their mind. I wonder what question it would take to get them to do it.

Trump's "immigration" ban

I don't normally post a lot on current events (like on Facebook) because I feel like I'm preaching to the choir, given my limited number of contacts. But Trump's ban on people coming into the country from a set of supposedly-dangerous countries keeps coming up. And I made the mistake of reading comments on an article my sister posted. So now I have to yell some stuff to the universe.

First of all, the ban is not protecting anyone. Visa applicants were already being vetted. And there's no evidence that terrorists are leaking through from these countries. Most of the violence in America is caused by Americans. At best, we are inconveniencing innocent people and embarrassing our country. And it's not just inconvenience. Families are being kept apart. Our country has made a commitment to people and then just backed out on it without warning.

Of course, there's also the incompetence of how things have been handled. (Not communicating implementation details, no warning, etc.) But since the whole thing is ill-conceived to begin with, I'll move on. There's also the political agenda. Why not Saudi Arabia? Why not France? But again, the main problem isn't really how you came up with the list.

One thing that really set me off is the repeated comment I've heard that it's "only temporary". Come on. The internment camps in Wold War 2 were only temporary. They were also a blatant violation of people's basic rights. That event happened because people were afraid of what so-called "outsiders" might do, just like the sentiment now. I don't think those internment camps actually protected anyone - those people were American citizens and no less likely to be violent than any other citizen. But even if there was a spy locked up somewhere, it still wouldn't justify the camps, because a threat from a bad person is not an excuse to violate the rights of an innocent person.

And that's the key issue here, I think. Sure, the people involved aren't American citizens, and the magnitude of what's happening is less than in the internment camp example. But I really think the principle is the same: People are scared, and they want someone to hate. They think that if they can just push some people away, they'll feel safer. But by doing that based on where you were born - not what you've done or even what you think - the country is pretty much abandoning the whole created-equal thing. And I can't believe how many people are going along with it.

We are not safer as a result of this. But even if we were, it's an embarrassment to the country.

Election 2016 :(

Curse.
Curse curse curse curse curse.

Here's the deal: I am not a fan of Hillary Clinton; I'm in favor of supporting the constitution and not putting huge amounts of power in the hands of a few people (i.e. executive orders and court rulings that ignore Congress). Not to mention the whole abortion thing, etc. But somehow - I haven't fully figured out how yet - the person running against her is Donald Trump. Like just about everyone else, I thought it was a joke at first. And honestly I didn't know that much about the guy. But at this point it's pretty clear that he doesn't have the moral character to deserve a political office.

That creates an interesting dilemma. (Not for liberals, of course - I'm sure they're loving this.) You don't want to vote for Trump. But you don't want Clinton in power. It seems that most of the Republican leaders are deciding that they have to keep Clinton out of office at any cost, and so they are endorsing Trump, even while they condemn his racist, sexist, and otherwise disrespectful comments. No doubt they hope that they can sway him, to convince him that he needs to tone things down in order to attract a broader voting base. And obviously a lot of voters are behind this.

I can't do it. As much as I don't want Clinton to be president, I can't be a part of someone like Trump getting there either. And that's not to say he wouldn't do less damage - I honestly don't know what he'd do. I kind of doubt that he'd really attempt most of what he has suggested he would. But at this point, I'm not sure it even matters. Even if I agreed with Trump on every issue (which of course I don't), I still wouldn't vote for him, because again, I think that there's a bar you have to set on morality, and he doesn't meet it. In fact, it seems to me that the only value Trump has is that he wants to feel like a winner. If that's the case, then he'd do anything to feel like he's winning. Anything. At least Hillary Clinton is clearly self-centered and cares about her image. That's not respectable, but it's predictable.

So some will accuse me of helping Clinton win. And they are probably right - I am sure that lots of conservatives will feel the same as I do, while most liberals will happily pick Clinton over Trump. But you can't set your priorities such that you will keep a particular person out of office "at any cost". Those costs can become very high. It's too high this time. I'm not sure who I'll vote for, but I'm sure they won't win. But if Trump somehow manages to become president, and if he is as destructive as it seems he could be, I'll be able to say that I had no part in it.

But still, curse.

That bathroom law thing

It's embarrassing that we have to even talk about who should go into which bathroom, but apparently we do. There's a lot of that talk going around, and it seems to me that most of it misses the point. The problem with trying to redefine genders with respect to bathrooms is not with the folks who believe they're of a different gender than they are. (I don't like the term "transgender" because it implies that gender is a changeable thing, which is not true. Even aside from any religious doctrine, science tells us that much. And if you think about it, trying to argue otherwise just ends up propagating a bunch of harmful stereotypes about how men and women should think and feel. But that's a different topic.)

The problem is the other folks, who can very easily pass themselves off as transgender. Here's the thing. Nearly all perpetrators of sexual abuse and harassment are male. (Biologically male.) And nearly all victims are female. Segregating bathrooms and locker rooms by biological gender separates the perpetrators from the victims in situations where abuse is likely to occur. By definition, that has to reduce the number of abuses. If a man can say he's a woman and go into the women's locker room, and if it's not PC (or even legal) for women to boot him out on sight, you have to assume that the dregs of society will do that.

People argue that said segregation shouldn't be required because there are already laws against that kind of abuse. But that misses the point - those laws only provide protection after abuse has already happened. With the "new way", women aren't allowed to protect themselves until they have already been abused. How is that acceptable to anyone?

Of course, proponents of the change point to the feelings of the transgender folks as the point of the new policies. Their feelings are certainly important, and it's certainly important to be respectful. However, the real cause of their discomfort is a lot deeper than which bathroom they are in; it is rooted in gender identity. To use what some might call an extreme example: Imagine that I were to sincerely consider myself a Native American. Let's say I tried to drop in on a ceremony of some tribe. They might look at me strangely. Depending on the situation, they might not even let me in. This would presumably make me feel uncomfortable. But the root cause of my discomfort would be my own incorrect sense of racial identity, not their reaction. I am not a Native American, and believing myself to be one would be guaranteed to cause discomfort. Anyone concerned with helping me feel better would begin by helping me understand the real meaning of the term and that it doesn't apply to me.

I realize that this sounds like it's begging the question, since the definition of gender is part of the issue. But it's really not. Because comfort aside, the issue of protection is very much connected with "gender at birth". And as I see it, as important as it is to respect the feelings of people with gender identity issues, protecting women and girls is far more important.

People's obnoxious questions about children

A while ago my wife and I were leaving a store with some of our kids, and someone commented, "You've got your boy!" I thought that was weird – I mean, why would we leave him behind? But then my wife explained that the lady had probably meant, "You had some girls and then stopped because you had the boy you were hoping for." Apparently my wife gets comments like this all the time. I was shocked. And actually, this is just a slight variation on a whole category of questions, comments, and assumptions that people throw out about other people’s families, none of which I understand. I would think it would be common sense to avoid this kind of thing, but evidently not, so as a public service announcement, here are a few.

1. “Are you pregnant?” Come on people – Weird Al even makes fun of this kind of thing. (See the lyrics of “Tacky”.) If a woman wants you to know, she will tell you. I seriously doubt any woman has ever gone around thinking “Why don’t people ask me about the shape of my abdomen?”
2. “Do you hope it’s a boy or a girl?” This may sound innocuous, but think about it: If you don’t get what you told someone you were hoping for, then that makes it look like you’re disappointed about your child. And if your child ever found out that you had said something like that, (and remember, anything online is there forever,) how are they going to feel?
3. “So are you done?” or “So are you having more after that?” or even “When are you planning to have another one?” This kind of question is wrong for at least two reasons:
1. It’s pretty much the most personal issue you could ask about.
2. Just like the previous example, your response could be incriminating. If you say you’re done, and then you have another child, then that child could end up thinking that he/she was unwanted. And if you say you’re not done but then don’t have more kids, your youngest might end up feeling somehow inadequate. Not that such feelings would make sense, necessarily, but they happen.
4. Then we have the cases where people assume you were waiting for a boy. (This is perhaps the worst of the lot.) If a couple really has this mentality, that’s like viewing daughters as mistaken attempts at a son. It would be a very sick way of family planning, and it amazes me when people imply that I would think that way.

I know it’s natural to be curious, but some issues are just off-limits unless someone volunteers information.

Duh.

Peanut Butter and Jelly/Jam

First of all, watch this skit if you haven’t seen it already:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PDxjcXQjJoU

This has caused me serious doubts about how I make peanut butter and jelly/jam sandwiches. I should state up front that I don’t actually like them; I just eat straight peanut butter on bread. But maybe that’s because I’ve been doing it wrong. I’ve always made them the Whitney way, with peanut butter on one slice and jam/jelly on the other. But Jason’s logic is very strong. I guess as long as my kids aren’t complaining, I’ll just keep doing it the old way though, because it’s easier and seems to have a good balance of ingredients. (Matt’s way gets both ingredients on the knife at the same time and could corrupt the jam jar.)

The Whole “Marriage Definition” Thing

This is probably as politically-incorrect as one can possibly be these days. The usual disclaimers apply – what I’m saying here doesn’t represent any organization, just my opinion.

This whole definition-of-marriage thing is pretty distorted in the media and online “conversation” (to use the term loosely). It’s held up as a step toward civil rights, and maybe that’s understandable, since people with same-gender attraction have definitely been discriminated against historically and even persecuted. I don’t think anyone is happy about that fact. If you look at the country today, most people are all for treating people fairly and with respect. So then people ask, why the objection to re-defining marriage?

What it all comes down to for me is that it’s not about an adult’s right to have his or her lifestyle sanctioned by the government. No one has that right. Of course we can choose our lifestyle, but I don’t get the government to give me special treatment because I like video games or because I serve in my church calling. People who like to skateboard or hunt or smoke or play basketball or party all night don’t get to have laws passed to guarantee them equal exposure in the media or school literature. The law should preserve people’s rights to choose lifestyles, but it shouldn’t institutionalize them.

So what about marriage? Well, that’s not about lifestyles. It’s about brining human beings into the world. Creating a physical body for the children of God. Granted, not everyone believes that last part, but society as a whole considers human life sacred (even most atheists), so we have laws about that. In other words, laws about marriage are not about adults’ rights at all; they are about children’s rights. A child has a right to a mother and father. A child has a right to not be introduced to sexuality in Kindergarten by a government employee. (Having a mom and a dad in a text book doesn’t present a sexual issue because it’s just about families – kids get that. A dad and a dad brings up the notion of why, and how the child got there – subjects kids deserve to hear first from their parents, and when their parents decide they’re ready.)

That is why the law needs to preserve a proper definition of marriage. Children have a right to the kind of family that will give them the best chance at success in life. Of course, marriage isn’t just about children. But the parts that aren’t don’t really need government support. If people want to live together without being married, or if insurance companies want to cover a domestic partner, or even if they want to file taxes jointly, I’m not complaining about that.

And finally, to make sure this is clear: This is not about civil rights! There are already laws to preserve safety and freedom. There are no socially-accepted lynchings or people trying to make separate schools for people who are attracted to the same gender or to restrict votes. Trying to compare this to the civil rights movement diminishes the importance of that movement. And ironically, the people pointing that finger are often themselves the ones making hateful comments at huge groups of people. But that’s fine, they can talk all they want. The point is that no one’s civil rights are being violated here. Except, arguably, the children, whose schools and other government institutions are going to force them do deal with issues they shouldn’t even have to think about. We need to leave them alone and let adults pursue their lifestyles on their own time.

Trust

A couple of situations lately have spawned one of those internal conversations I mentioned in the “about this site” page, this one about trust: what kinds there are, why you need it, and how to get it. It’s not intended as a lecture – more like a reflection on why I can’t deliver all the lectures I’d like to. Or something. So here it is, so I don’t have to mentally explain this again.

Sometimes people assume that they’ve been insulted if someone doesn’t trust them. This might in fact be the case, but the question “don’t you trust me?” may be pretty presumptuous, depending on the context. First of all, there are two different kinds of trust – character trust, where you believe a person will do the right thing in a given situation, and competency trust, where you believe that a person can accomplish a particular task. The concepts are orthogonal; for instance, you might trust your nephew to babysit your kids, but that doesn’t mean you’re going to let him drive your car.

The level of either type of trust that you give someone is based on circumstances and experience. Let’s consider the character type. Some people are more trusting than others by default, but everyone has a certain level of trust that they give random people in a given situation. This trust level could range from trusting someone to not attack you to trusting them with your social security number – or trusting them to help raise your family. (Or, like in the case of God, to override your personal preferences in how you live your life. If we all trusted God that much all the time, most of our problems would go away. But that’s a different topic.) The situation is important, because when you pass a stranger in a dark alley, you might not trust them to not attack you, whereas if you pass the same person in a grocery store, you probably trust them at least enough to not sabotage the groceries in your cart when you turn your back. After you start spending time with someone, the trust level goes up or down as people confirm or deny the assumptions you have made about them, and as you give them a chance to “try out” at a higher level of trust. But the important thing here is that it takes time.

It especially takes time to reverse the effect of broken trust. The gospel teaches that we should forgive everyone, but it doesn’t say that we should withhold consequences, and I think that a lack of trust is a legitimate consequence for some things. Like if someone robs a bank and later repents (and gets out of jail), you may be able to befriend them, but you probably won’t let them housesit for you. It doesn’t mean you hate them or don’t forgive them; it just means that they haven’t earned that level of trust with you. There’s nothing wrong with that. Of course, there’s also nothing wrong with not trusting someone with your home if they haven’t done anything particularly wrong, which again is the point: trust has to be earned – and proven.

So, some implications:

• Delivering constructive criticism: If someone doesn’t trust your motive, you can’t really help them by pointing out something they could improve. If they think you’re just being a jerk (even if you’re trying to be polite), or if they’re so embarrassed that they can’t imagine that you still respect them, they might just end up focusing on being mad or offended or hurt or apologetic instead of making the needed improvement.
• Fake relationships: I’m thinking online stuff and text-messaging-intensive friendships here. If you don’t interact enough to prove reliability (both in what you do and how you react to what others do), you can’t really develop the trust that it takes to form a deep relationship.
• Teasing/Sarcasm/In-jokes: Lots of relationships use this kind of thing as an expression of closeness, but if you try to pull it off with someone who doesn’t feel close to you, it will probably come across as offensive.

… to name a few. I guess the corollary of all this is that it can be important to develop trust broadly, so that you can say what you need to say when the need arises. And that could mean going out of your way to be helpful, compliment people, and just being friendly in general. And of course learning skills and finding ways to use them, so you can have the competency kind of trust too.

Fortune Cookie Morality

For Valentine’s Day at work there was a morale event where they served, among other things, fortune cookies with white frosting and sprinkles. This in itself is a very strange idea, since fortune cookies don’t actually taste good. But what was even more disturbing was the “fortune” I got:

The value lies not within any particular thing, but in the desire placed on that thing.

Okay, first of all, that’s not a fortune. But no fortune cookies have “fortunes” anymore, presumably because they don’t want to get sued by people who follow them. That’s not what’s annoying.

I assume that what they were trying to say was that the amount of value we place on things isn’t necessarily tied to its intrinsic worth – for instance, a diamond ring can’t keep you alive, while food can, but we put more value on the ring.

What we have here is an equivocation – in the literal sense of trying to use two definitions for a word at the same time. The word “value” here carries two different connotations – “perceived value”, or the amount that people value a thing, and “actual value”, the potential benefit a thing can have.

If by “value” the cookie makers mean “perceived value”, then they are not really saying anything at all; they are just stating the definition of “perceived value” – they are saying that perceived value is based on how people perceive something. Duh. That’s so obvious that even fortune cookie designers wouldn’t bother writing it down. So that’s probably not what they meant.

But the only other thing I can imagine they meant was for “value” to mean “actual value”. But then if we use that definition, then what they are actually saying is that perceived value determines actual value. If you believe that, then a car that everyone likes has more worth (actual value) than a person that nobody likes. So with this ostensibly “feel-good” message, you actually end up with an argument that could be used to justify all sorts of horrible acts. And while I don’t think anyone would actually base a moral code on a close inspection of a fortune cookie message, this mentality is actually not that foreign to a lot of modern thinking. You know, the notion that believing something is right makes it right for you.

So who knows – maybe this fortune cookie really is part of a worldwide plot to undermine the moral integrity of humanity. Just in case, please think twice before making a decision based on anything you read in a cheap dessert.

Food Texture

Some foods have a gross texture; that’s just a fact. Once in a while I’ll hear someone deny this fact, usually in condemnation of someone else who doesn’t want to eat a particular dish based on its texture. “It all ends up the same once you swallow it,” the complainer might say. Or at the very least, they point out that it has the same ingredients as some other food. I must say I’m a little surprised about this argument. To anyone who finds himself or herself raising such a complaint, I offer the following challenge: The next time you are about to eat your favorite meal, put it through the blender first. If you enjoy it just as much, you have clearance to complain about others’ pickiness about texture all you want. But if you don’t, or if you can’t bring yourself to do it, then I think you’ll be forced to agree that it is perfectly legitimate to hate food based on how it feels.

Being -ist

I get the impression that a lot of people today want to feel persecuted. They draw comparisons between themselves and groups of people historically who really were killed, enslaved, or otherwise mistreated because of various differences – race, religion, etc. And I’m not saying that people aren’t persecuted today, but, in this country, there’s really nothing that compares to what you would have seen even fifty years ago. That is to say, you don’t see widespread prejudice that is socially or politically acceptable. People who want to persecute other people tend to have to keep it within a closed group, or hide it altogether. So the country isn’t where it should be, but it’s a lot farther along than a lot of people make it out to be.

One bit of evidence of this is the fact that “racist” (or any other kind if “-ist”) is one of the worst things you can call someone. I think most of us are properly ashamed of what has gone on in the country’s past, and we won’t stand for people trying to make that our present as well. But if that’s the case, then why are the -isms such a big deal in the media?

I think that one reason is a blurring of the definition. People don’t see as much genuine racism as they used to, so they go and apply it to the next-worst thing, and the next-worst after that. After all, being able to call yourself persecuted lets you elevate yourself to the status of… actually I can’t finish the thought, even sarcastically. As Pinky once said, “no no, it’s too stupid.”

So once again I think it’s important to settle on some reasonable definitions:

• -ism: hatred or outright disrespect. Using race as an example, firing someone from a job or insulting someone because of their race is racist.
• insensitivity: not making the effort to think about how your words or actions will affect other people. Pointing out someone’s race in a context where it’s not relevant may be racially insensitive, as would be using terms with an obvious negative connotation just because they are part of culture. (What kind a “giver?” What kind of a fire drill?) In this situation, you’re not thinking something negative about someone; you’re not thinking about them at all.
• ignorance: saying or doing something that is unflattering to a group of people because you’re honestly unaware of the effect. A lot of stereotypes stem from ignorance. I saw this painting of a teepee in a forest, apparently in the Pacific Northwest. Really? ‘Cause I’m pretty sure (and Wikipedia confirms this) that teepees are more of Great Plains thing. I’m sure the artist wasn’t trying to be insulting. (After all, what insult could possibly be meant?) But a little research may have shown a bit more respect for the culture being depicted – whichever one that was. So that would seem to be an example of racial ignorance. Or cultural ignorance. Or something.

It’s dramatic to call something a more severe term than it deserves. But that drama comes at the cost of communication. For instance, if you start calling people who punch other people “murderers,” then pretty soon calling someone a murderer won’t sound quite so bad. And if the word doesn’t sound so bad, there are people out there who will decide the act isn’t so bad either. Likewise, if you tell every person you date that you love them, what do you say to the person you decide you want to marry? Similarly, it doesn’t do anyone any good to throw the label “-ism” around so freely that people lose track of how bad the real thing really is.

The other problem with the way people label things as -ist comes when they apply the term to inanimate things, like grammatical constructs. You can say that people should say “firefighter” instead of “fireman”, or “remotely piloted” instead of “unmanned”, but you can’t call the language sexist; a language can’t hate anyone. And you can’t say that people who use those terms are sexist, unless you seriously think that people walk around thinking of ways to exclude women from their word choice. And if you think English is “hateful,” then what about Spanish, where adjectives have a masculine suffix when applied to mixed groups, and where inanimate objects have gender attached? Do you think that all Spanish speakers are sexist? Because that would clearly be some kind of -ist. (Not exactly racist, since not all Spanish speakers are the same race. Languageist?)

Gambling vs. Stock Trading

I think it’s pretty easy to make the case that gambling is immoral. And I’ve heard lotteries referred to as a tax on people who are bad at math. I’ve had this repeated discussion about what exactly gambling is, and in particular whether trading stocks falls into that category. So here’s my output from that line of discussion.

Defining “Gambling”

It’s trickier than expected to define what gambling is, especially if you start the the premise that it is categorically immoral. It’s more complex than just taking risks – after all, getting in your car and driving to work involves a risk. And it’s not just getting something based on chance – after all, if you buy a candy bar and “instantly win” a million dollars, I wouldn’t consider that gambling. (Except maybe if you bought the candy bar for that purpose.)

I’ll skip the discussion here and give you what I think is a good definition for gambling:

Gambling is an effort to gain money which involves (1) an element of risk AND either (2a) results based on chance OR (2b) a motive to get something from someone else without providing something of value in return.

So a sweepstakes is not gambling because you aren’t risking anything. Same for a contest with a prize for the winner, assuming that you don’t pay to enter it. But poker and betting on sports are gambling, because even though they are not based totally on chance, the goal is to take money away from other people. And buying a raffle ticket is gambling, because even though you’re not necessarily trying to take money away from people, you’re investing in pure luck. I guess the same goes for Russian roulette, although that’s wrong for more reasons than that.

Stocks

So that brings us to the question of whether trading stocks is gambling. I think that the answer is a proverbial “definite maybe.” When you buy stock, you definitely hope that you are going to sell it for more than the person sold it for, but that’s just standard business practice, the same as any merchant does. And there is some actual value associated with a stock share, even though it’s pretty abstract. So I wouldn’t claim that it’s fundamentally wrong.

On the other hand, I do think a lot of people approach stock trading the way they’d approach a poker game. For instance, if you sell stock because you’re convinced it’s about to plummet in price, then that’s arguably like trying to trick someone into taking the loss instead of you. And making decisions based on what you think the market will do isn’t all that different from trading Ultimate Football players based on what you think the teams will do.

A thought experiment

In order to consider the value of a transaction, it’s interesting to ask whether the world would benefit if everyone in the world were to spend a day doing it. Consider these:

• Farming: Definitely.
• Fixing plumbing: Yes.
• Passing laws: Hopefully, yes.
• Playing poker: Definitely not.
• Playing baseball: Not much, other than some physical exercise and entertainment for the people watching. (Going to a baseball game isn’t gambling because you pay the same regardless of the outcome – no risk. But it does make you wonder why you can make a career out of playing sports.)
• Painting, playing music, writing books: Sure. Not a lot of practical value, but artistic expression does have value.
• Trading stocks: I don’t see how. This would be essentially like passing dollar bills around. Some people would end up with more and some with less, but overall there would be no value created.

Conclusion

To reiterate, I’m not claiming that stock trading is immoral. But I definitely think that if you approach it with the attitude of getting rich quick instead of investing in actual companies, that you’re likely to get a lot of the bad side-effects that you’d get from actual gambling, like a compromised work ethic, obsessive involvement, and a high potential for losing money that could have been spent on something of concrete value. So there’s my two shares. (Get it?)