Separating the Powder and the Matches

There are few issues in American life more divisive than that of what constitutes a legitimate marriage. Right on schedule, during the last election campaign, there was a precipitous rise in volume of the national discussions surrounding "gay marriage."  And, like a fish rising to the bait, the American public, both for and against gay marriage, jumped and bit.  I would be uncomfortable making a guess about the extent to which this issue and other social issues affected voters in 2012, but it is clear in the time since the election that this issue is one that is not going away.  It may be considered soon by the Supreme Court, as further proof of the prominence of this discussion nationally.

If it is not going away, it would be worthwhile for people to think clearly about it.  There are lots of different ways to build a case about the merits of gay marriage, from civil rights to religious liberty to questions of definitions of the word marriage itself.  All of those arguments though, it seems to me, come down to questions of priority.  As I listen to the arguments, I can hear compelling points (from their own frames of reference) from both sides.  But in these cases, it seems to me that most of the people who are arguing about this issue aren't hearing each other at all, and that the fears that the two sides have are really not about marriage, per se, but about something else.  Let me elaborate, in hopes that my point will become clear in the process.

Those in favor of gay marriage tend to marshal arguments generally along the lines of human rights.  In other words, it is the right of people to choose who they will marry and love without the government being able to dictate to them whether that relationship is legitimate.  In support of this premise, they have the longstanding tradition of due process, supported by the 4th and 14th amendments to the Constitution, which guarantee that no class of persons may be denied life, liberty, or property without the due process of law.  This principle holds both federally in the states, mandating that states grant the same freedoms as those given by the federal government.  Beyond this legal argument, the other prominent argument is that allowing homosexual marriages does not cause any harm to those who oppose it.

Those not in favor of gay marriage tend to argue that marriage is sacrosanct--that by definition the word entails only heterosexual unions.  The arguments tend to rely on thousands of years of common law practice, rooted ultimately in a combination of religious and secular tradition.  As part of this argument, folks would likely argue that being homosexual should not come with the right to participate in social structures which exclude it by definition, and they would point out that homosexual couples already have the right in many places to civil unions.  The implication here is that there is a construct which is under attack so that it will be redefined in a way that is explicitly contradictory to the thing itself.  There is also a group of religious believers who wish to see their convictions protected before the larger population, if not to propagate those beliefs if given the opportunity.

I have attempted to make these summations of the arguments both fair and general, because I am not trying to rehash all the arguments being made about this topic.  If you look at those arguments carefully, I hope you will see a couple of important things, however.

1.  The arguments being made for and against homosexual marriage are being framed in such a way that they both employ (or could easily be made to employ) constitutional protections to bolster their case.  In the case of those in favor (the pros), they have equal rights.  In the case of those against (the cons), they have religious protections and free speech, as well as precedence of law.

2.  The arguments do not speak, at least as such, about the real presence or sanction of homosexual behavior.  Both sets of arguments seem to assume that homosexuality is a given in our culture.  Neither set of arguments is saying that homosexuality could be either radically encouraged or totally eradicated.  (Admittedly, there are some in both camps who do feel these ways, but those feelings are not necessary to the arguments they offer in support of their position on this particular matter.)

3.  The arguments are not about the domestic realities of a what most would understand as a marriage relationship, up to and including recognition by the state.  Anyone who wishes to be recognized as in a relationship by "the government," at this point in time, can secure recognition of a kind from at least some source.  Likewise, in terms of lived life, no one is saying (as it relates to this argument) people can't live together, or have relationships (including relationships of a sexual nature) with whomever they choose.

4.  The arguments are attempting to prioritize things everyone values, but values differently.  I don't think anyone really questions, for example, equal rights.  There would be significant disagreement about what a right is and what equality is, but in a vacuum, everyone thinks equal rights are important.  It is a core aspect of American life, and to suggest anyone is against human rights is rightly seen as an insult.  Likewise, I don't think anyone is really against the right for people to have their own worldview.  People may think that one worldview is more desirable than another (and everyone does that), but I don't think most people really want to force their worldview on someone else.  They may want someone else to become convinced of their positions, but that is conviction, not tyranny.  A multiplicity of opinions about matters can and should exist in a modern free society.  (As the old proverb says, "A man convinced against his will is of the same opinion still.")

These pieces above are key, because in the rhetoric surrounding this issue, the pros and cons have deployed arguments which makes it sound like they are the enlightened half of the debate, and the other side is some sort of monster.  In truth, it is not that simple.  Homosexuals are no more or less prone to being monsters than heterosexuals, and there are people on both sides of this ongoing debate behaving monstrously.   It is my opinion that the pros and cons are really arguing for two entirely different things, and then deploy arguments which defame the other side for what they don't say.  Let me give you an example.

The recent case of Louis Giglio, an evangelical Christian, being decried in some quarters for a single sermon he preached 20 years ago, is a good example of the problem with the way this issue is being handled in the public square.  Giglio preached a message where, in context, he read entire sections of the Bible, a religious text which he interprets and believes to be truth.  The texts, without any special work required, seem to indicate that homosexual behaviors (at least in that context) are sinful before God.  Giglio, fully in line with his own convictions, suggests that Jesus is the solution for sin, and therefore the solution for homosexuals.  On a purely constitutional basis, this is protected religious speech--a sermon in a church setting to a congregation of people who chose to be present on a topic which, at the time of the sermon, was not getting the attention it is now.  The majority of people in the country, when the sermon was preached, rightly or wrongly, agreed with his position.  That he employed his own interpretational grid on his religious text is beyond question, regardless of whether you think that interpretation is correct.  When he was contacted by President Obama to pray at the inaugural, he was likely selected his humanitarian work to end slavery in the international sex trade.  A portion of the press dug up the sermon in question, and then attacked Giglio as being a bigot and demonized him--for 20 year old protected religious speech (and especially the part where he directly quotes the Bible itself!).  There was no nuance to the discussion, there was no respect for his religious speech. He was pilloried as an advocate for unequal rights, and under pressure the administration withdrew their request, around the same time he volunteered to pull out.  Not only was their no conversation, but the invective was so harsh on both sides that Evangelicals were circling the wagons for a coming societal persecution, and the portions of the LGBT community (and their allies) were calling for Giglio's head.  The pros and the cons drew up even tighter battle lines, and then looked with even more suspicion on the other side.  Fear reigned.

Evangelical Christians (the label in our culture which probably most accurately describes me, in the interest of full disclosure), have been particularly prominent in this discussion.  The caricature of the evangelical in our day by cultural liberals makes them out to be a self-righteous Pharisees, too blinded by hate to care about the rights of just about anyone who doesn't live in the suburbs (while the bit about hate is most certainly false, if my experience is any guide, there is truth to some of the other criticisms).  Inside the movement, evangelicals see themselves as under attack, and they are preparing to be marched to prisons as hate criminals for what they feel are legitimate, defensible, and constitutionally protected religious ideas.  The caricatures couldn't be any more distinct.  What's worse, they make the discussion which we really need even less likely to happen.

I think, however, there is a clear way forward.  It involves ending one single concept in American government.  Just one.  The rest is simply applying the Constitution equally.

The one step?  Remove the word "marriage" from the list of things which the government does, and make it the sole province of religious groups.  (Including atheist unions, as I am considering the lack of religious beliefs to be a distinguishing religious belief.)  Practically, this would mean that the government would recognize only civil unions--no marriages.  Churches would not be permitted to make recognition before the government, only inside their religious traditions.  The matter of what a marriage is would then be left to the economy of the religious square, and the debates could be held there, where it seems to me they belong.  On the other side of the matter, the government would recognize and provide equal rights to any two people who fit the requirements to be married, regardless of their gender/sexual preferences.  Civil unions would be a distinction for the government to view a corporate entity of a set number of people.  The law and tax codes would handle that reality equitably, with all couples having the same kinds of legal and tax benefits from the unions, providing that the conditions required (education, children, etc) applied.  The government would be neatly out of the business of deciding who was married, handling everything from the corporate perspective.   This protects the constitutional rights of all citizens, while also protecting religious speech and convictions.

Spending a moment more on the religious part of the question for a moment, all any couple would need to do to be married in the eyes of God was find a congregation/mosque/temple/etc who shared their belief about marriage.  The matter of what marriage is would become a protected religious conviction.  Taking the example of Christianity, this would allow both heterosexual and homosexual marriage, leaving to denominations, congregations, and individuals to choose the matter based on their preferred religious texts and interpretations.  This would require one additional step--to remove from religious leaders their ability to serve as justices of the peace.  One of the sticky points of this debate as it currently stands is that religious officials in some states are recognized by the government to perform a legal and civil marriages, in what seems to me to be a clear violation of the principle of separation of church and state.  (States like Colorado, which allow anyone to perform a marriage, may be on to something in this regard.)  Removing that yoke from religious leaders should allow them the freedom to act according to their convictions without any of the prickly ramifications of serving a dual role in the current wedding ceremony.

I do not anticipate that this solution would please everyone, but it is the one that provides, to my way of thinking the clearest way forward.  A few questions might be raised.

Would this mean that the government would recognize any group of people (I am sure there would be some who would want to allow multiple-marriage)  who wanted to be recognized as a corporate group for purposes of law?   In short, the answer to this question is yes.  If the government is out of the marriage business, they have no compelling reason to tell groups of people they cannot incorporate.  It might mean a change in some laws, but those are regularly amended anyways.

But what about that ideology that I find so insidious that it must be stamped out at once?!?  This would allow people who believed that to live like they believed it!  Surely you can't mean that?!?  I do mean exactly that.  The government would remain out of it (agnostic, so to speak), and leave that debate to the people who want to get down and dirty in the marketplace of ideas.  So long as no laws were broken, there would be no need to end the dialogue on the issue.  You think that one or other of the sides on this matter is wrong?  Find a high place, and shout it from there.  Just be prepared for someone to shout back.  For those who don't wish to participate, but want to live in peace, they may occasionally deal with one of the shouters, but it is my belief, that most people, at their core, wish to live and let live.  Even in the midst of disagreement, many people are able to be civil and admit differences without rancor.  Maybe with all the shouting happening in a couple of places, the sane people could have meaningful interaction without feeling the need to choose a side automatically.

Would you classify anti-homosexual opinions as hate-speech which would need to be illegal?  No.  It seems to me that if you're going to protect real free speech and religious conviction, you can't do such a thing.  As long as rights are equal, the marketplace of ideas should be able to bear ideas--even ones which some people think are really bad.  If it is true that the opinion that homosexual marriage should not be allowed is substandard in the marketplace of ideas, that same marketplace will dispense of it without ceremony.  There would be no need to make it illegal.  Going further, I think one definition of tyranny is mandating what kind of speech will be allowed.  Individuals should be allowed to believe as they will, even if their beliefs are odious or terrible, so long as they do not impinge on the life, liberty or property of others.  Happiness is not property, nor is it guaranteed.  If you don't want someone telling you they disagree with you, stay home.   If your happiness is tied up with everyone agreeing with you, you probably don't have much happiness, nor do you deserve it.  Having a belief, in my opinion, entails the conviction that you are right, even in the face of those who would make your life difficult.  If they are stalking you or going out of their way to grief you, that is one thing.  But someone telling you they disagree publicly is the price of a free society.

Why are you taking away the right for people to be married before God and the state?  Put simply, I'm not.  I'm simply requiring that the two things happen separately.  You want to be married in the eyes of the state?  Fill out the paperwork, and wait for the certificate in the mail or go down to the register of deeds and get it handled quicker.  You want to be married in the eyes of your religious tradition?  Then go to them and do what they require.  Simple.

Aren't you saying that marriage isn't a civil right?   Not at all.  I'm simply saying that the government can't adjudicate what marriage is, because the concept is inherently culturally bound in an increasingly complex world.  If the United States is truly to be a robust and multi-cultural society, our government must change to allow for difference of opinion on matters of worldview.  Marriage and family are core to those worldviews in one way or another.  In my proposal, the government leaves those questions aside to protect the core things which all citizens should be afforded regardless of their placement on the worldview spectrum.

Why would you take away the right of marriage from heterosexuals?  I don't believe I am.  There is nothing in what I have said above which says that heterosexuals can't be married in the same way they always have.  I would take away the exclusive right of homosexuals to be married.

Aren't you changing the definition of marriage by doing this?  No.  I am leaving the defining of the word to smaller communities to decide for themselves, without compulsion from the government.  I fully expect at the end, that there will be a multiplicity of definitions.  But that is no different than it is now--the various definitions already exist, which is part of the issue.  I am only ending the competition between various groups to have their definition be the one exclusively in use by the government of the United States.

This proposal is an attempt to keep the powder and the matches separate.  Religious freedom, free speech, and equal rights under the law are core elements of the American experiment.  But our history proves that when the issues become mixed, the results can be explosive.  Keeping things in the right categories ensures the maximum amount of freedom that we can have as Americans, while maintaining the robust conversations which make our country great and protecting the rights of all citizens.

Songs I Couldn't Stop Listening To in 2011

This list is not a list of the best or worst songs in 2011. It's not even a list of songs that came out in 2011. It's a list of the songs I couldn't stop listening to this year which entered my playlists in 2011 (songs I listened to frequently before 2011 do not qualify). Some of them are old, some of them are new. That said, here they are:

1. Adele, "Set Fire to the Rain" (from the album 21)

2. Glen Campbell "Wichita Lineman" (it's been on many albums at this point)

3. OneRepublic "All the Right Moves" (from the album "Waking Up")

4. Josh Garrels "The Resistance" (from the album "Love & War & The Sea In Between")

5. Bebo Norman "Here Goes" (from the album "Ocean")

6. Burlap to Cashmere, "Closer to the Edge" (from the self-titled album (2011))

7. Alison Krauss "Restless" (from the album "Lonely Runs Both Ways")

8. 116 Clique (f. Sho Baraka) "This is My Heart" (from the album "13 Letters")

9. Trace Bundy "Dueling Ninjas" (from the album "Adapt")

10. The Script "Breakeven" (from the self-titled album)

11. Pete Yorn "Strange Condition" (from the album "Music for the Morning After")

12. Needtobreathe "Signature of Divine" (from the album "The Heat")

13. Needtobreathe "Washed by the Water" (from the album "The Heat")

14. Jason Aldean "Crazy Town" (from the album "Wide Open")

15. Vince Guaraldi Trio "Cast Your Fate to the Wind" (from the album "Jazz Impressions of Black Orpheus")

16. Coldplay, "Fix You" (from the album "X & Y")

Please don't blame me for the poor quality of some of these videos. I've done the best I can to find a version that is decent, but in some cases good videos aren't possible for a variety of reasons.

And, while I'm thinking of it, if you don't like one or more of these songs, I don't particularly care. If you're one of those people who thinks that is your duty to project your taste in music to the people around you, your favorite band probably sucks, and your opinion, while of some value, is not the reason I have posted this. Have a good 2012.

Thoughts on a New Chapter

I've never been convinced of the arguments that children are born as blank slates (tabula rasa, for the latin speakers in my limited audience) which are then subsequently filled. I think that kids are born with predispositions and abilities which must be brought out of them. If you like, think of it this way: rather than being lumps of clay which can be made into anything, I prefer to think of them as hunks of marble--you don't make anything, you sculpt what is already there. You're not going to add anything to a stone to improve it, your limits are the raw material.

I don't have any particular reasons for this beyond my own theory crafting and my observations of the children in my life. One day soon (like in the next couple of weeks), I'll be testing my theory from as close as a person can test it--my first child is soon-to-be born.

I could talk more about my theories, but one thing has become abundantly clear as I've prepared myself for parenthood: there isn't really much preparation you can do.

Other than simply squaring yourself with the idea that you're going to be a parent, and that your life as you know it is about to change forever, there really isn't much you can do to prepare in that few months between the time you find out you will be a parent and the day you actually have a real child depending on you. I think that most of the work that is done on your parental philosophy is done through your own reflections on your parents and the parents you know, and by your beliefs about human nature and kids. Most of that stuff, at least at this point in my life, has already firmed up.

The one thing that would be most helpful, experience, is the one thing you can't get beforehand, no matter how many kids you watch. The reason is simple: the kids you watch aren't your kid. Sure, there are similarities...they all sleep, eat, make bad smells, fill diapers...but your kid is a unique constellation of attributes (borrowed that turn of phrase from a movie--it's not mine) that requires unique parenting acumen which no one but you can have. Every parent talks as though their parental strategies are the obvious ones, and they may be right--for their kid. But when it comes to your kid, you're pretty much on your own. This is the reason that parents make mistakes--the only way to find out what works for your kid is to try stuff until something works. That implies failure, at least some of the time. Hopefully, you don't fail so much that your kid is a wreck who can't function in society, but again, there are no guarantees.

Furthermore, there is no guarantee that you'll ever find something that will work for your kid. I've seen parents do everything I can think of to try and reach their kid, and some kids are just not built to be molded. Unfortunately, that rarely turns out well, and everyone ends up with lots of heartache and misery before the kid comes around--if they ever do.

In a few days, my child will be born. And I'm going to do my level best to take her raw material and help her put it to use while also hoping to sculpt her into a complete human being. How successful I will be remains to be seen. So yeah, I'm nervous. But I'm also excited. This should be an exciting adventure.

I'm simultaneously horrified and amused with parents who mean well and tell you as you wait for your child to be born that you should enjoy the present because your life will never be the same again. Parents who have told me that recently have given me all kinds of similar advice, but to hear them tell it you'd think I was never going to have fun again and that my life was about to be destroyed by a relational nuke. I can't buy that--if it were true, no one would ever become a parent in our times. Certainly things change, but that will happen anyways. I refuse to believe that this is a nightmare from which I will someday wake up. I know there are times when I'll be tired/upset/frustrated/worried. That goes without saying. But it simply can't possibly be as bad as these well-meaning people have described it. I'm prepared to believe that it is life-altering, but that isn't always bad. The adjustment phase might be hard, but I refuse to believe it isn't good. At the very least, the benefits have to at least balance out the negatives, or again, no one would ever willingly have children.

I know people who want nothing more to have children, but they are unable. I think it is borderline insulting to them to treat the kids you choose to have as a burden--I'm sure it is one they would willingly take on if they could, and to stand there and complain is an affront to their pain, whether they hear you say it or not. Children are a gift. I refuse to make them a curse, under any circumstances. I invite you to remind me of that if you hear me complain.

I say bring on the baby girl! Let's do this thing...for the rest of my life....

Choice and Change

Another of the reoccurring themes of my sleeping life is a sort of multiple realities thing. I've basically lived out different versions/subconscious projections of what my life looked like if I had made other decisions than the ones that make up my current life. Different school choices, vocational choices, relationship choices, etc. In one I was a lawyer in Chicago with a wife I didn't recognize. In another I was a small town pastor in the Midwest with a familiar female friend as my wife. In another I was an author and single (and angry), and so the list goes. I live in Chicago, Arizona, Australia, Wisconsin, Europe and elsewhere in my dreams, and strangely, I know my way around pretty well in all those places...you know...in my dreams.

I've mentioned before that I think that our choices fall in a sort of "choice cascade." Each time we make a decision, we close off other paths and lives we might have had and open doors for new things and opportunities in our lives. We choose for one thing and against another, and in so doing, we change our lives each and every time we make a choice. There are no insignificant things in this regard--we have no way of knowing at any given time which choices will open or close the most impacting doors and opportunities in the future. In one sense, our lives are like a huge choose-your-own-adventure book, only infinitely more complicated, because at this moment, there are 6.8 billion of these stories going on concurrently, and all the stories, depending on the choices of the participants, are potentially cooperative/interrelated on different levels. If the scope of the ramifications of that statement don't help you to believe in a sovereign, mighty and powerful God, I can't help you.

(Please note that for the sake of this entry I am bracketing the entire discussion of how much our choices are really the volitions of truly free agents and how much God "causes" the things we label our decisions. I don't have time for that discussion tonight!)

Each time I go through one of these dreams and experience another instantiation of what my life could've been, I wake feeling strangely good about my own life. For years and years, I assumed that this meant that I was pretty comfortable with the choices I'd made. I was right. I am comfortable with my life, and compared to the projections in my dreams, my current life, even with all its foibles and struggles, beats those "could-have-beens" by a substantial margin. But I'd only gone half way with the concept.

I don't think anyone would argue the logic of the choice cascade I mentioned above. I don't think that anyone would argue that if you imagine all the possible scenarios for what your life could've been, and you're happy with it the way it is, that you're probably a pretty contented person (I am.) But there's something else. These two things are intimately related: choice and change. Each choice we make causes a change in the world around us--in other people, in our circumstances, in our attitude. We choose, and the world around us changes. But that's not all: Our choices change us. You are (or soon will be) what you choose. It should come as no surprise at all that the person I've become as a result of my choices prefers my current life to the other options. The choices that led to this point are based on premises and values that prove this life was the one I wanted. The choices we make throughout our lives are first and foremost statements of ultimate value, apart from what we might hope to claim about ourselves. They are the proof of what we really are and what we really believe. Those choices subsequently lead to a life: relationships, hobbies, values, attitudes, and so on, which reflect those values. The choices themselves, whether we make them knowingly or unwittingly, change our view of the world we live in. It shouldn't shock anyone that this version of me--the one who made the choices that led to this life--is happy with the life he's chosen. It would be an unhappy world (and unfortunately is for so many people) where they don't like the life they've chosen, tantamount to saying, "I hate the truest parts of myself--the parts that made this life mine."

Listening to advocates for the poor gives us proof of the validity this concept: they frequently talk about a culture or mindset of poverty which makes poverty in future generations more difficult to overcome. In other words, the choices that people are forced to make because of poverty change people so that they value things differently than those who are not faced with poverty. This mindset/attitude changes those who adopt it so that even if their socio-economic status changes, they are still predisposed to poverty. Money trouble creates poverty. But money alone won't solve the problem for people who only know poverty.

There is another prominent example in America today. All you need do is find a survivor of the Great Depression. People who lived through that period have a unique view of the longterm usefulness of things. My two paternal grandparents, neither still living, kept everything because, I suspect, they wished during the Depression they hadn't treated their pre-Depression possessions so frivolously. When we cleaned out their house after my grandmother passed, we found buckets of rusty nails--pulled from projects after they were done being used. My grandfather straightened them and wouldn't let my grandma throw them away because "they were perfectly good." Their circumstances and the choices they were forced to make changed them for their future. My grandparents weren't bad off--they just remembered not having and the choices it forced them to make and they wished to not be in that position again, which necessitated other choices for them about what was trash and what wasn't. Holocaust survivors are another group whose decisions have changed them. Other examples are everywhere.

I'm sure some people think this thing I've just spilled all these words writing about is pretty obvious. Sure, we make decisions, but those decisions also change our lives and our attitudes. Duh.

Not so fast.

If it is so obvious, why don't we give greater importance to the way we make decisions? I know many people who make huge life decisions with no more thought than just doing it in the spur of the moment. That's a frivolous and irresponsible way to live a life. I know I get criticized for not being spontaneous enough, but there are some things which should NOT be done spontaneously. I think often times this "free spirit" mentality is just another label for a far less good sounding word: sloth. We're simply too lazy or too daunted to take our decisions for what they really are. Fear gains us nothing here. We need to know what we are, and, knowing that, we choose based on what we believe. This knowledge should then give us boldness and confidence to act.

The first step in having a life you'll love tomorrow, or next week, or next year, or in thirty years is to figure out what is truest about you. What do you believe about the world? How did you come to those beliefs? Why do you choose the things you do? In this step, it is important to recognize that you don't gain any points for deluding yourself. If you keep making a choice that is against what you think you want, you need to ask yourself some hard questions. If you're shortcircuiting what you think you value, you have to either change your physical behavior to match your intellectual values, or vice versa.

The second step in having a life you'll love is to handle every decision in your life in a way that is consistent with your beliefs. Once you know what you think, evaluate the options you have for choices, and then pick the one that is the closest to what you actually think. This is so obvious it should be vaguely insulting, but I'm consistently flabbergasted by people who claim to believe something, and then either ignore their beliefs at the moment when they would demonstrate them or act in a way that is contrary to what they say they believe. Let me break the secret: if you repeatedly ignore or violate your beliefs, you're wrong about what you think you believe. Your actions will always tell the truth about what you really think.

So here's the question we all need to ask ourselves on a regular basis: In light of what I really believe, which is proven by what I repeatedly choose, what do I do in this moment or situation that most honors my most deeply held convictions?

When we answer that question, the rest is simple: just do that thing.

We're all changing. What are you changing into?

The War of the Words

I'm sitting in a theology class right now engaging in a discussion about the nature of death. The professor said something which reminded me about the importance of semantics.

In conversation, and especially in conversation on specific topics, we often minimize the importance of semantic arguments. Semantics is the study of the meaning of words. In particular, we revolt in conversation against people who make careful use of words. We think that such care is a violation of one of the common rules of discourse, namely, that we make an attempt to understand communicators on their own terms, trying to discern what they mean by what they say. In other words, people who nitpick definitions often frustrate us because we feel like they're not trying to understand what we're saying, or, if you prefer, that they are belaboring something when they know full well what we mean.

That said, however, I'd like to suggest to you something along the lines of an apology for semantics in everyday conversation. It is critically important. He who makes the definition controls the discussion. A few years ago, I made a list of ways to cheat in an argument. Nearly all of the ways to cheat and turn a conversation have to do with some sort of twisting of the meaning of words. Using the same word multiple ways is a classic way to cheat in a discussion, and in fact, if you're one of those people who constantly loses arguments when you know you're right (there are few things more frustrating), you're probably giving too much ground on the meaning of words.

Philosophers of language have made much of these types of choices. Wittgenstein, for example and his "ordinary language theory" suggests that language has no innate meaning and means only what its user intends and/or what the receiver understands from what is said. In other words, to most modern philosophers, words don't have any meaning--they simply mean what people mean when they use them. There is a common usage for words, and they hold meaning only as they are used: Wittgenstein calls this a "language game." This is a rejection of the idea of Platonic forms and "ideal language" where a word has a meaning, and people can stray from the meaning of it. Any abstraction in word use, at any level, will necessarily be confusing, according to Wittgenstein, because people have no immediate frame of reference for its use. As an example, take modern conceptions and arguments about love or justice. Ordinary language theorists maintain that these words don't "mean" anything other than how they are used. So, people use the words to get what they want or say what they mean, the words themselves hold no inherent meaning.

If you hold to these modern linguistic theories, all conversations become a game, or a means of saying whatever you want, and definitions are dynamic--they change all the time. It then becomes extremely simple to move the way language is used: all you have to do is just use the word in a different way and redefine it, and for you, the word no longer means what it just did. If you can convince anyone else to use your definition (even if it happens only as people talk to you), you have succeeded in redefining the term. At that point, so far as you can get someone to agree with you, you can redefine anything to mean anything. There are benefits to the conscious if you can convince yourself to believe your own definition as well.

If you maintain the ideal theory of language or the correspondence theory of language, namely that words correspond to reality, and the correct usage of the word is the one that reflects the actual state of reality. In this view, ANY departure from this actual reflection of reality is a violation of the language, no matter what we mean when we say it. As it relates to the situation in the paragraph above, the ideal language folks would say that you can call something whatever you want, but it doesn't change the definition. First, they would say you're using the word wrong, and secondly, they'd say that you're deluding yourself and that your doing violence to the language.

There is a war on between these two schools. In short, the "ideal language" people are trying to make a standard definition for words, while the "ordinary language" folks are saying that language is inherently subjective. How you fall on this matter will say much about how you talk and how you expect others to use the language. I tend to be of the opinion that for language to mean anything, we must have at least some common understanding of what the words mean. If language is a game, then every time we sit down, we have to make our own definitions and have out the war of words each time we want to have a meaningful discussion. I think it's easier to simply admit that whether we like it or not, words have meaning assigned to them by society (or perhaps by a force beyond it) and that we should endeavor to use them correctly.

For more on the philosophy of language: see the Wikipedia article here.

Know Your History!

Everything happens in a time and place.
Everything happens in a context.
Everything happens for a reason (whether we argue there is an "ultimate meaning" for the world, it seems to be the case that the law of cause and effect applies. I would argue there are relatively few things that happen "for no reason." There are things that happen for no apparent reason, but everything happens for a reason. The question of whether or not we can rightly ascertain the reasons that things happen is an open question which I am making no attempt to address here.)

The world didn't begin yesterday. All of us have been staked to a heritage (however you want to describe it.) This heritage effects the way we think, the things we enjoy and the conventions of social life. In other words, history matters. What happened yesterday has a bearing on what happens today, and what happens tomorrow. All of us, whether we like it or not, is grounded in something bigger than ourselves.

There is something unfolding. Some would argue that this unfolding is the process of humanity learning to perfect itself. Some would argue that this unfolding is the progressive revelation of the plan of a deity (or deities). Still others would argue that though the law of cause and effect applies, there is no explicit or implicit goal of any kind in the unfolding. Through all of these explanations, there is still an unfolding. One thing happens. Something happens after that which reflects, reacts, responds or otherwise handles the thing previous.

I would go further. I would argue that history is a complex system of action and reaction--that no occurance is totally disconnected from what precedes it or what follows it. If this view is true (and because it's my blog I'm going to assume for the moment that it is, whatever the underlying reason for why it is so), then history is very important because it gives insight into the way things have gone and what a period of time is staked to in terms of heritage. Especially in the realm of ideas, systems interact and respond to one another. The reaction against a system of ideas creates a countermovement. The reaction for a system often leads to an even more strenuous version of the system, where the presuppositions and activities of that system are carried all the way to their logical end. Often times, this hyperapplication of an idea system leads to a messy end, at which time those present for the meltdown of the system salvage what they can from the disaster and start again. Humanity has been in this system of action and reaction, the system of reformulating the same ideas over and over again in the laboratory we call the world, for a very long time. If we want to claim to know anything about the world we live in, therefore, we MUST know something about how we've arrived where we are now.

There will be entries on the nature of history in specific areas added to the end of this entry as they become necessary.

Concepts and Definitions.

If you look around the ideosphere right now, there isn't much clarity or disclosure in the way that people describe and explain the way they think. As such, there's lots of confusion. Different worldviews (idea systems) use the same term different ways. As just one example, I'd like to offer up the word 'tolerance.' Without going into a long diatribe about the newer ways in which the word is being employed, it will suffice to say that in many cases now people don't mean what the dictionary says when they use the word 'tolerance.' No matter what you think of that development, asking someone to define their terms (or asking good questions that will give you a hint about how they're using it) is a fundamental part of any serious discussion.

This might sound like a waste of time. To others it might sound like a sort of arcane pursuit, totally removed from useful conversation. If everyone used the same words the same way, both of these criticisms would be exactly true. But the way things are now, those who don't ask careful questions are setting themselves up for trouble.

In addition, many current philosophical/theological positions make assumptions from previous schools and then carefully relabel an old idea with a newer, hipper name. If we can get down to the ideas that comprise a view and compare them to older ideas with a longer history, that can also be a helpful pursuit. This blog is going to explore the kinds of definitions and concepts which are prevalent in these types of discussion in an effort to provide some kind of basic grounds on which to build.

Here's a partial list of some of the ideas and concepts (building blocks) which will need to be tackled:

Three Pursuits of Philosophy:

1. Metaphysics
2. Ethics
3. Epistemology

Philosophical Systems: (aka the "-isms")

• Rationalism
• Empiricism
• Utilitarianism
• Pragmatism
• Skepticism
• Stoicism
• Deism
• Theism
• Existentialism
• Nihilism
• Logical Positivism
• Monism
• Dualism
• Hedonism

Philosophical Concepts & Laws

• a priori
• reductio ad absurdum
• ad hoc
• ad hominem
• Law of Identity
• Law of the Excluded Middle (Bivalence)
• Law of Contradiction (a.k.a Law of Non-Contradiction)