quite contrary
There is a tendency I want to discuss which for lack of a better name I would call "asshole contrarianism." I have written in this space about the issues that arrise when freedom is treated as if it were the only virtue in the world. I am torn between the notion that this kind of contrariness stems from reason being turned into an end rather than a means or more from the lack of reason.
In UU communties, the devils advocate, naysayer or "asshole contrarian" is stereotypically seen as a cranky humanist, but sadly it is a syndrome that affects UUs of all theological (and atheological) stripes.
Most of my UU blogger colleagues feel a certain derision towards people who might be described as "true believers." I am at a stage in my life where I have been idealistic and optimistic. But I am also at a stage in my life where I am done being jaded and cynical, with everything kept at a protective, ironic distance.
I remember when I was younger I sometimes had friends who quit listening to certain bands once they became popular (REM and U2 were both common in my generation) as attempt to demonstrate their uber-hipness.
Sometimes I feel like people, in an attempt to protect themselves from vulnerability, the pain of caring or the numberous risks of intimacy feel the urgent need to deflate anything that other people are starting to believe in.
Recently I have seen this on the UU Theology listserv as people attack conceptions of gnosticism, presumably just because it is popular among some segment of UUs. Politically I have seen it in attempts to knock Cindy Sheehan down a notch after she became popular.
On some level, I think the tendency towards group think often generates a tendency towards oppositional group think. I will admit that I am a fan and admirer of both UUA president Bill Sinkford and Starr King School for the Ministry president Rebecca Parker (who preached an amazing sermon for SKSM chapel yesterday). It is a necessary corrective to have some degree of skepticism towards leaders like this. But I think there is no need to knock them down a notch just because they influence people or to knock people who are influenced by them.
Too many people it seems, especially among a wide swath of UUs, want to feel wholly self-invented.(I especially see this as a marriage of Manifesto humanist supersessionism and Reaganite bourgeois rugged individualism) For me, I am happy to recognize my influences.
My political thinking is influenced by the anarchism of Peter Kropotikin, Leo Tolstoy, Emma Goldman and Alexander Berkman, as well as the marxism of Rosa Luxembourg, Bertell Ollman and Harry Braverman. The socialist ideas of Michael Harrington are also a key inluence.
Theologically I am influenced especially by Jacques Ellul (a Barthian conservative Christian anarchist) and Paul Tillich (a theological liberal who courted with socialism). If the whole Bible were the Gospels and Romans 8, I would be a great Christian too. Mahayana Buddhism also shapes my thought, especially sutra passages about Avalokitsvara, the Bodhisattva of compassion.
Intellectually, I am influenced especially by the Frankfurt School and some of the more reasonable and socially engaged postmodernists.
posted by jfield @ 7:01 AM
5 comments
5 Comments:
Greetings...Thanks J, for your frank claiming of influence, I am always intrigued to follow the ripples of influence to the present.
I am a fourth year at Meadville and just wanted to let you know that I have a different opinion of the status of our school being reflected in "our offering a class taught by the janitor" and push back a little at Matthew. I will in no way disagree that Meadville is ripe with conflict, but dismissing our custodian as unworthy and a litmus test of our plight felt like a personal attack rather than insight to the well-being of our school.
Just to let everyone know, Dr. Jon Rice, our custodian happens to have a Ph.D in History. The locus of his work is in History/American Studies/Black Studies. His doctoral work was centered on the history of Chicago and has taught courses at several local colleges. He is not only gifted but a delightful soul.
I understand Matthew's frustration and share similar concerns about the lack of communication around the proposed merger (and in general frankly)..I will miss Dean and Thandeka deeply and do feel that it will affect my returning experience to Meadville.
All is not as it should be..
AND Jon Rice is not the problem.
Tamara: I am not to interested in getting into M-L politics. I know that both schools have their problems but I am disinclined to discuss them in public blogging at this point. I didn't find Matthew's comment inflammatory enough to warrant deletion even if it was off topic. I did contact him directly via email and also made inquiries with other contacts at the school to verify that the situation was about what I had heard at GA.
It is not unusual for Starr King school to have some of its staffers end up in the adjunct faculty because of their own backgrounds. I assumed that was the case with the reference MG made.
On my real point of posting, I picked my more extreme influences, that other UUs might not have heard of and left out a lot of influences that are quite important to me but are more commonplace (like liberation theology, the Catholic Worker movement, feminist and womanist theology and others).
I definitely see this phenomenon of 'asshole contrarianism' as you describe it. I also see it as influencing some of the more 'activist' political campaigning within the UU church. I think that the Patriot Act skit CC has referred to a few times falls in that category. It's reacting to something as BAD, screw the facts, we don't need to worry about them, just BAD.
Again, I do see what you're referring to, and that is an unfortunate tendency. I see a lot of similarity with what the 'majority opinion' does at times, and feel it's important to note that. My discomfort with a politically active church runs much deeper than this - but it sure doesn't help when so many UUs seem to have knee-jerk contrarian (to the percieved 'mainstream') politics. I'm talking about the people who percieve that their pet issue is important *because* no one else cares about it. The thought that maybe no one else cares because it _isn't important_ doesn't seem to cross their mind. And that does drive me even further away from politics in a UU context, when it becomes obvious that reason is NOT being used in considering those positions.
If you insist on injecting politics into the UU church, or seeing political activism/social action/whatever you want to call it as an integral and essential part of our mission, at least apply the same standards of rational inquiry and intellectual honesty to your political positions as you would to a religious one.
And if you don't apply rational inquiry and intellectual honesty to your religious positions, I think you're a bad UU. I know that we as UUs are reluctant to use that phrase, but I will in that case. I see those qualities, those principles, as essential.
Thanks for the glimpses of the demise of two struggling schools.
Just a note, be sure to google to get the books: The Asshole Trilogy--I think they were published by Enthea Press and the pseudonym under which the writer pens his insights is: Dr. X Crement.
It's a little too soon to call it a demise.
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