Relativism, Authoritarianism, and the Rhetoric of the Religious Right

The religious right, and in current days, the hierarchy of the Catholic Church, as its pleader of the moment, complain of the dangers of the decline of civilization into relativism. The new pope has been especially noisy about this. Their use of the term "relativism" is clever and deceptive. It crudely appeals to people's desire for increased certainty in life. This is one of the central claims by religion, a certain path to truth, meaning and salvation.

There is nothing absolute or fixed about the teachings of the Catholic church or the Baptists, or any other organized religion. The Bible, Torah, and Koran, among the most prominent revealed texts, are filled with contradictory stories. The history of these religions is replete with shifts of interpretations even on fundamental issues like abortion, celibacy for priests, to point out just a couple. These revealed texts are not coherent statements of ethics or religion. The only thing that is coherent about religion is that a small group of men, organized in a hierarchy, make interpretations of the revealed texts and seek to enforce those rulings on their members and anyone else they can lay hands on.

The so-called relativist position really just reflects the fact that there are no absolutes except those determined at the moment by an authoritarian group of men organized as the priesthood who rule over the laity, whether, Catholic, Protestant, Jewish, or Muslim. There is a continuum of this authoritarianism within the organized religions. The more moderate or modernist religious orgnaizations are more democratic, but when push comes to shove the ministers, mullahs, rabbis, and priests all believe they know what is best.

But, best for whom?

Everywhere around the world we see continuing examples of various religious hierarchies claiming that their version of relgion is the only right way and attempting to suppress opposition to this vision. So-called relativists, secularists, need to start calling the religious right by its real name, authoritarian rule by the self-selected few.

How are the mullahs in Rome, or the White House, different from the ones in Iran? Different texts, different head gear, same results, oppression by authoritarians.

The Complexity of Human Intelligence: the larry summers case

President Larry Summers of Harvard has been much in the news over the last couple of months for his comments about women in science. He has had to publicly eat crow. Now the revelations in the last week that he said things that insulted many in the audience at a Native American studies conference last fall. This brings to mind that intelligence is a many splendored thing.

Here we have the sight of a man renowned for his "smarts", youngest tenured professor in Harvard history, fast runner in the heady circles of Washington, and generally well-known for being a very bright guy, stumbling about on the campus.

As many of us untenured, unPhDed average shmoos know, intelligence is not a singular feature of the human physiognomy, resident in some particular region of the brain and reducible to a single measure or even a couple. Intelligence is not simply about the power to manipulate symbols, mathematical or verbal. Human intelligence is a bundle of skills and attributes.

One feature of well-rounded intelligence is knowing that it is good to keep your mouth shut and listen. Listening has many wonderful attributes. Among them are: you might learn something new; you might learn something about those around you that will inform about how to say whatever it is you feel compelled to say when you open your mouth; and, it expresses respect for others around you. Being quiet says, "I want to hear and understand your point of view, I may not know everything, quite yet."

Those of us in the groundling section of life also know that leaders should invoke not more than two or three initiatives at a time. For all of the blather about multi-tasking, we are really limited in our abilities, physical and emotional, to focusing on two or three things at once. More than that and we get confused or worse. So, good leaders know to only talk about the two or three things they feel are really important. This doesn't mean that they only have two or three sound bites to share, that is the media version of life, but every opportunity to speak should, in the end, revolve back around to the central few objectives. That is how leaders build coherence, momentum, get things done.

Perhaps, Larry, in the end, is what we general managers refer to as "individual contributor". These are folks who have enormous skills and experience in a compelling field, but lack the social skills to work effectively in organizational settings. Managers know very well that "individual contributors" may be necessary to a project because you just have to have their talent to get the job done. But, you pay extra attention to when, where, and how they interface with the rest of the organization.

Might be a little late to apply this to Larry Summers!

Finally, Bush Appears In Public...in Rome

President Bush appeared in public today at the Pope's funeral. When his image appeared on large TV screens set up for those who couldn't fit into St. Peter's Square, he was booed.

His handlers must have been surprised. Bush had made lots of "public" appearances during his campaign last fall and more recently during his social security privatization campaign. But, here in the US, he only appears before a hand-picked "public" who have signed an oath of allegiance. Or, when he occasionally speaks with the press, he faces either hired flacks or the otherwise docile, no, servile, White House Press corp that sometimes passes for the attack dog liberal press. Oh, I am being too cynical.

Wonder what would happen if Bush came to Boston?? Wanna talk about the economy, health care, housing, education, the war, the Federal government deciding how we spend our last days....??? A hand-picked "public" here could easily fit into a Beacon Hill townhouse or a Dover McMansion. Be kind-a intimate.

Who Is Going To Stand Up For The Rest Of Us?

The recent Schiavo event has brought into sharper relief than ever that the rest of us, the rest of us Americans who are not part of the religious right nor conservatives who are cycnically abandoning their conservative principles to feast in the pyres of power, have no representation in most parts of the the Federal and many state governments.

Evangelical Protestants are about 25% of the whole population. A somewhat smaller percentage of these are politcal active.

So, we have a situation in which a well-organized, well-funded, highly motivated minority are now running the show.

Where are the old mainline Republicans and, above all, what has happened to the Democrats?? The complete absence of real opposition to the predations of the religious fantatics now in charge seems especially worrisome given the obvious limits the American people have shown in regards to the actions taken during the Schiavo events(see my 3/23/5 entry below).

Here is some data from John Green, a political scientist and director of the Bliss Institute at the University of Akron, examined the views of evangelical Christians, along with those of mainline Protestants and Catholics, in a survey for the Pew Forum titled "The American Religious Landscape and Political Attitudes: A Baseline for 2004."

The table really is here, just scroll down. I can't figure out why the blog machinery is putting all the white space in.... not worth the effort to figure out. Just take a look at the data.

Population	% of Total Population	% Republican	% Independent	% Democratic
ALL	100	38	20	42
Evangelical Protestant	26.3	56	17	27
Traditionalist Evangelical	12.6	70	10	20
Centrist Evangelical	10.8	47	22	31
Modernist Evangelical	2.9	30	26	44
Mainline Protestant	16.0	44	18	38
Traditionalist Mainline	4.3	59	10	31
Centrist Mainline	7.0	46	21	33
Modernist Mainline	4.7	26	20	54
Latino Protestants	2.8	37	20	43
Black Protestants	9.6	11	18	71
Catholic	17.5	41	15	44
Traditionalist Catholic	4.4	57	13	30
Centrist Catholic	8.1	34	19	47
Modernist Catholic	5.0	38	11	51
Latino Catholic	4.5	15	24	61
Other Christian	2.7	42	36	22
Other Faiths	2.7	12	33	55
Jewish	1.9	21	11	68
Unaffiliated	16.0	27	30	43
Unaffiliated Believers	5.3	28	37	35
Secular	7.5	29	27	44
Atheist/ Agnostic	3.2	19	27	54

(This table is from page three)