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Jul. 8th, 2006 12:59 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
taratemimaI find a weird connection between these three articles: the response to fear by becoming more restrictive in who you hang around with, what you believe, and whether you examine what you believe, is worse for your spiritual life than you think.
An Orthodox Jewish man wonders when did not wearing t-shirts and voting Republican became 'the One Twu Way' to be Orthodox.
I can attest to the fact that modern Orthodoxy--what Heilman refers to as the “contrapuntalist” mode of Orthodoxy, which seeks to balance the religious and secular worlds--has increasingly ceded ground to what Heilman calls “enclavist,” right-wing Judaism.
A woman who used to write about New Age topics writes about rethinking a lot of her beliefs, appreciating the work of skeptics, and what took her so long.
In my culture, you can't openly attack anyone or their character, and you can't use truly focused skepticism. In my culture, personal attacks are considered an example of emotional imbalance (where your emotions control you), while deep skepticism is considered a form of mental imbalance (where your intellect controls you). Both behaviors are serious cultural no-nos, because both the emotions and the intellect are considered troublesome areas of the psyche that do very little but keep one away from the (supposedly) true and meaningful realm of spirit.
(It sounds weird to say it, considering how woo-woo some of my beliefs are, but a good BS detector and enough grounding in the scientific method can save you a lot of time, money, and energy in following beliefs that can hurt you and others)
This is America and I am a liberal and as a liberal American I believe that everyone is free to choose whatever idiosyncratic alternative lifestyle they like.
But here is where the PMs cross the line, and what makes the Muffins worth remarking on. This is from our PM friend's blog:
"I would remove women’s suffrage, and I might even consider making voting rights tied to property ownership."
Our friend is utterly free to choose to disenfranchise herself, but advocating the disenfranchisement of others is intolerable.
(In other news, I had evil thoughts of rising to right-wing stardom by proposing that no one who rents can vote. Woo-hoo, entire cities legally disenfranchised! No more voting for Democrats, biatchs!)
Other things that come up in my head:
1) It amazes me when people criticize stuff like the Taliban, and let this crap go. Yeah, they're not stoning people, but come on.
2) A couple of my acquaintances were arguing about whether Judaism was elitist. More on point, they were arguing over news that different dispersed groups had genetic material similar to Jewish groups (Cohenim, Spanish and Portuguese Jewish people who hid their religion, etc), coupled with the long long and hard process of conversion.
Oddly enough, I disagree. Maybe if people--Jewish and not--get used to the idea that Jewish people aren't all white, Ashekenazi, and American (and I wish I had the patience for getting those links), they can consider expand their definition further. Maybe less of this alienation of, say, single people, people without children, and interfaith families, will happen.
(The link is satire, and somehow, I think they got a point)
An Orthodox Jewish man wonders when did not wearing t-shirts and voting Republican became 'the One Twu Way' to be Orthodox.
I can attest to the fact that modern Orthodoxy--what Heilman refers to as the “contrapuntalist” mode of Orthodoxy, which seeks to balance the religious and secular worlds--has increasingly ceded ground to what Heilman calls “enclavist,” right-wing Judaism.
A woman who used to write about New Age topics writes about rethinking a lot of her beliefs, appreciating the work of skeptics, and what took her so long.
In my culture, you can't openly attack anyone or their character, and you can't use truly focused skepticism. In my culture, personal attacks are considered an example of emotional imbalance (where your emotions control you), while deep skepticism is considered a form of mental imbalance (where your intellect controls you). Both behaviors are serious cultural no-nos, because both the emotions and the intellect are considered troublesome areas of the psyche that do very little but keep one away from the (supposedly) true and meaningful realm of spirit.
(It sounds weird to say it, considering how woo-woo some of my beliefs are, but a good BS detector and enough grounding in the scientific method can save you a lot of time, money, and energy in following beliefs that can hurt you and others)
This is America and I am a liberal and as a liberal American I believe that everyone is free to choose whatever idiosyncratic alternative lifestyle they like.
But here is where the PMs cross the line, and what makes the Muffins worth remarking on. This is from our PM friend's blog:
"I would remove women’s suffrage, and I might even consider making voting rights tied to property ownership."
Our friend is utterly free to choose to disenfranchise herself, but advocating the disenfranchisement of others is intolerable.
(In other news, I had evil thoughts of rising to right-wing stardom by proposing that no one who rents can vote. Woo-hoo, entire cities legally disenfranchised! No more voting for Democrats, biatchs!)
Other things that come up in my head:
1) It amazes me when people criticize stuff like the Taliban, and let this crap go. Yeah, they're not stoning people, but come on.
2) A couple of my acquaintances were arguing about whether Judaism was elitist. More on point, they were arguing over news that different dispersed groups had genetic material similar to Jewish groups (Cohenim, Spanish and Portuguese Jewish people who hid their religion, etc), coupled with the long long and hard process of conversion.
Oddly enough, I disagree. Maybe if people--Jewish and not--get used to the idea that Jewish people aren't all white, Ashekenazi, and American (and I wish I had the patience for getting those links), they can consider expand their definition further. Maybe less of this alienation of, say, single people, people without children, and interfaith families, will happen.
(The link is satire, and somehow, I think they got a point)
