Yearly Archives ⇒ 2012

When tolerance loses, on the shooting of Sikhs

August 6, 2012
· Martin Kelley

Anoth­er shoot­ing already? Yes­ter­day’s attack at a Sikh tem­ple in Wis­con­sin is simul­ta­ne­ous less and more scary that the “Jok­er attack” in the Col­orado movie the­ater. The tem­ple is a less uni­ver­sal venue, one where few of us have fre­quent­ed. But the impli­ca­tion of a U.S. Army-trained, known white suprema­cist attack­ing a dis­tinct eth­nic group is less an act of ran­dom crazi­ness than it is a polit­i­cal act. Whether the shoot­er turns out to be deranged or not, he’s a long-term mem­ber of what we might call the right-wing hate com­mu­ni­ty and his actions will be seen in that relationship.

A few links to try to make sense of this. The first is the Sikhism page on my wife’s course web­site. She’s paid to teach world reli­gions at the coun­ty com­mu­ni­ty col­lege, but in real­i­ty she teach­es respect, under­stand­ing, and tol­er­ance. She called up the Sikh coali­tion this morn­ing to offer an apol­o­gy. I’m proud of her work. Don’t miss the first embed­ded video, a humor­ous set of inter­views with Sikhs about their tur​bans​.My sym­pa­thies go out to all the Sikhs, both the imme­di­ate vic­tims of yes­ter­day’s vio­lence and all those who will now wor­ry when a white male wirh tat­toos and a shaved head approaches.

The sec­ond is a dusted-off link to a 1997 essay that askswhy the U.S seems to train all of the ter­ror­ists?” While not every jihadist or home­grown mass-murdering nutjob has a U.S. mil­i­tary con­nec­tion, it’s a lot more com­mon than a ran­dom dis­tri­b­u­tion would predict.

Final­ly, one could argue that mod­ern Amer­i­ca’s recipe of mil­i­tarism and mass mur­der start­ed sixty-seven years ago today. The world’s first (and so far only) nuclear war began when the U.S. dropped a sin­gle atom­ic bomb on a city, incin­er­at­ing and lethal­ly poi­son­ing over 100,000 cit­i­zens. Many activists have argued (con­vinc­ing­ly in my opin­ion) that the deaths were unnec­ces­sary and that the Tru­man admin­is­tra­tion knew the Japan­ese were near sur­ren­der. What­ev­er the stat­ed or secret motives, the U.S. for­ev­er changed the cal­cu­lus of it’s self image as sim­ple, right­eous nation (unearned after cen­turies of slav­ery and the geno­cide of Amer­i­ca’s first inhab­i­tants, but that’s anoth­er tale). Friends Jour­nal has assem­bled recent archives on Hiroshi­ma and Nagasa­ki. May we nev­er forget.

Bonus: anoth­er Sikh video:

Of violence and mental snaps

July 20, 2012
· Martin Kelley

Yet anoth­er hor­rif­ic shoot­ing. It’s hard to keep off the news feeds for each bit of new infor­ma­tion we learn of the per­pe­tra­tor and his vic­tims. It’s nat­ur­al to want to under­stand. If we do final­ly learn of a moti­va­tion behind James Holmes’s actions, it will prob­a­bly be more the trig­ger that set him off — the straw that broke the camel’s back, per­haps, or the dan­ger­ous obses­sion that’s informed his world of late.

A few years ago there was a fel­low from a near­by town who declared him­self the grand wiz­ard of his own branch of the Klu Klux Klan. He would announce plans for a march a local town and instant­ly the media would be rac­ing their news vans there to get reac­tions from politi­cians, police chiefs and ran­dom peo­ple on the street. Head­lines would ensue, blog­gers would go to work, counter-protests would be announced, etc. But the grand wiz­ard turned out to be most­ly an Oz-like appari­tion of smoke. No estab­lished KKK orga­ni­za­tion rec­og­nized him. His ral­lies would attract at most two of his bud­dies. He was in his ear­ly for­ties and liv­ing with his moth­er. He was fired after three weeks work­ing at Wawa, the local con­ve­nience store chain. Yes, he could have been a dan­ger if he had got­ten a hold of a cache of guns but he nev­er did. He was a guy who was a los­er at every­thing except get­ting media atten­tion for out­ra­geous pro­pos­al. Last I looked up he’s got reli­gion, recant­ed his racist ide­ol­o­gy, and apol­o­gized for the KKK talk.

Anoth­er sto­ry I could tell is more per­son­al, of a not-so-distant rel­a­tive who went on a middling-murder spree — five dead in the end (I’ll omit details for rea­sons of fam­i­ly diplo­ma­cy). I only met him once but I’ve come to know the set­ting that shaped him. Some of the issues that shaped him go back gen­er­a­tions and are still active. To tell the sto­ry of his snap would take a nov­el on the order of Jef­frey Eugendies’s Mid­dle­sex. I have an autis­tic son and know that this con­di­tion runs in the fam­i­ly. I try to imag­ine throw­ing him into a main­stream school set­ting with no sup­port and no diag­no­sis, and then bring­ing him up in the fam­i­ly tra­di­tion of alcohol-based self-medication; a stint on the armed forces would just add to the explo­sive mix. Forty years from now my pre­cious lit­tle boy might well be the top sto­ry on Action News. And it would be a tragedy.

If I had a time machine, I think I’d do exper­i­ments to under­stand the nexus of ide­ol­o­gy and indi­vid­ual per­son­al­i­ty. I’d give a 24-year-old Osama bin Laden a desk job in an obscure Sau­di min­istry, and an 18-year-old Adolf Hitler a prize to a pres­ti­gious for­eign art school.

Vio­lent ide­olo­gies are often the per­vert­ed man­i­fes­ta­tion of less-visible per­son­al and fam­i­ly tragedies. I hope we can find a way to step back from the voyeurism of Col­orado details to find ways to extend our­selves in love and care. Tonight, when you feel rage or indig­na­tion, call up a friend or rel­a­tive in pain. Yes, gun con­trol can help les­son the imme­di­ate tragedy. But let’s not for­get the long-term solu­tions. Think about how we lob­by to  widen access to med­ical care (e.g.: uni­ver­sal health­care) and pro­grams for the needy of our youth (hint: fund the schools, expand special-needs pro­grams, bring back after-school pro­grams and enrich­ment oppor­tun­ties). There are three- and six-and eighteen-year-old’s out there tee­ter­ing on cross­roads of alter­nate futures. Let’s hold out our hands and invite them to paths of heal­ing and love.

“Nostromo” by Joseph Conrad

July 12, 2012
· Martin Kelley

After Heart of Dark­ness I thought I’d try anoth­er book by Con­rad. The choice was made easy by the Wikipedia entry for Nos­tro­mo, which quotes F. Scott Fitzger­ald as say­ing “I’d rather have writ­ten Nos­tro­mo than any oth­er novel.”

Six weeks lat­er, and I’m only a quar­ter of the way through. I’m drop­ping this book. I won’t say that the book’s first quar­ter is com­plete­ly unin­ter­est­ing. Its pic­ture of a trou­bled South Amer­i­ca coun­try and the way its internationally-focused upper class tries to act as a reform move­ment drew me in, but only so far. At this point the nov­el is still just a thinly-cloaked his­to­ry les­son with broadly-drawn car­i­ca­tures that have failed to become characters. 

Let me be hon­est: I want some dra­ma. I want some­one to betray the emo­tion­al expec­ta­tions of their assigned role. Can’t some­body (any­body?!) kiss the wrong lips, betray the wrong fight­er, or at least have a cri­sis of faith in their God, life’s work, or politics?

I do believe the action gets sauci­er lat­er on. But I’m too con­fused by the polit­i­cal actors of Costagua­na (“who’s Avel­li­nos again?”) to care. I can check the Wikipedia pages on Venezuela and Colom­bia to see how the polit­cal dra­ma plays out. What­ev­er per­son­al dra­ma there is will have to be Fitzgerald’s.

Have Friends lost their cultural memory?

July 12, 2012
· Martin Kelley

In Amer­i­ca today our sense of spir­i­tu­al fel­low­ship in Lib­er­al meet­ings, the feel­ing of belong­ing to the same tribe, is dimin­ish­ing. We no longer live in the same com­mu­ni­ties, and we come from diverse faith tra­di­tions. Our cul­tur­al val­ues are no longer entwined at the roots, as were those of our founders. As a body we share less genet­ic and cul­tur­al mem­o­ry of what it means to be Quak­ers. Dif­fer­ent view­points often pre­vent us from look­ing in the same direc­tion to find a point of con­ver­gence. We hold beliefs rang­ing from Bud­dhism to non-theism to Chris­tian­i­ty, or we may sim­ply be eth­i­cal human­ists. Just imag­ine a mix­ture of wild seeds cast into a sin­gle plot of land, pro­duc­ing a pro­fu­sion of col­or. A wide vari­ety of plants all bloom­ing togeth­er sym­bol­ize our present con­di­tion in the Reli­gious Soci­ety of Friends. Dis­cern­ing which is a wild­flower and which is a weed is not easy. We are liv­ing a great exper­i­ment of reli­gious diversity.

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Photo of the Day: Dawn of the Web

July 12, 2012
· Martin Kelley


The first pho­to on the web pho­to turns 20 next Wednes­day and its sto­ry is more inter­est­ing that you’d think:

The first pho­to­graph­ic image ever uploaded to the Web was a Pho­to­shop dis­as­ter. It was cre­at­ed to sell some­thing, and fea­tured attrac­tive women in a come-hither pose. In short, photo-uploading was born with some orig­i­nal sins that have nev­er quite washed away.

Bonus Youtube: Les Hor­ri­bles Cer­nettes per­form “Col­lid­er”

In defense of worship spaces

July 11, 2012
· Martin Kelley

Ear­li­er this week I won­dered if it might not be such a bad idea if some of our strug­gling estab­lished meet­ings exper­i­ment­ed with the house church mod­el. An com­menter maps out the dif­fi­cul­ties:

Speak­ing as a “meet­ing planter” (our small Friends meet­ing here was found­ed two years ago by me and one oth­er Friend), I can tell you with­out reser­va­tion that, while we could meet in peo­ple’s homes, it would strict­ly lim­it the abil­i­ty to reach out with our mes­sage and attract oth­ers to par­tic­i­pate. You can pret­ty well be cer­tain that only those who already feel com­fort­able with you will come back to some­one’s home, which may not include the seek­ers who real­ly are look­ing for some­thing they can be part of.

I have seen this with oth­er church­es as well; the local UU fel­low­ship grew from ten to 15 peo­ple in the 5 years that they met in liv­ing rooms; they grew from 30 to 60 in two years when they had their own meetinghouse.

I am try­ing hard to raise the mon­ey to allow us to pur­chase and main­tain an appro­pri­ate build­ing for a meet­ing­house. Until we do, our Meet­ing will con­tin­ue to hide its light under a bushel, despite all our efforts to the con­trary. The desire to have a “home” is deep with­in the human heart, whether it is where we reside or where we worship.

The com­menter was anony­mous (update: no, he’s not, it’s Bruce Arnold of Let­ters from the Street) but I’d love to hear more. I won­der par­tic­u­lar­ly of there’s a zone of dif­fi­cult via­bil­i­ty when the wor­ship com­mu­ni­ty it’s too small to sup­port a build­ing struc­ture and need to pick a bigger-or small­er mod­el for long-term viability.

Religion in the mainstream press

July 10, 2012
· Martin Kelley

They default to the same bor­ing tropes, says Amy Levin at TheRevealer:

Reli­gious wars, reli­gious dress, reli­gious mon­ey – these are the real and yet superbly com­plex ele­ments of our cul­tur­al exis­tence. Scout any crack or cran­ny of pop­u­lar cul­ture and you find reli­gion cre­at­ing a glo­ri­ous maze of top­ics for writ­ers to dis­cov­er and sift and sing to the masses.

But late­ly, I find that a repul­sive plague of rep­e­ti­tion and banal­i­ty has swept over the dis­en­chant­ed cyber­sphere. Each day I begin my reli­gion news search with hope­ful eager­ness, sift­ing close­ly through main­stream and fringe out­lets, hun­gry for signs of a new trend, move­ment, argu­ment, study – any­thing oth­er than what I con­sumed the day before. But I search in vain, and my dol­drums have led me to take action.

(H/T to David Watt on Facebook)