Around my office today, a lot of co-workers were wearing these:
It’s heartwarming to see Americans showing support and solidarity in the face of horrible tragedy. 33 people are dead as the direct result of senseless violence. It’s truly, deeply awful.
So I appreciate the folks who were wearing a ribbon. But I’m a little confused as to why they weren’t already wearing 21, 212 of them.
I guess 33 senselessly killed Iraqis aren’t worth a ribbon.
Chris Bradley at Deeply Blasphemous has unearthed the Christian answer to all those heathen video diaries and football highlight clips toxifying the internets…
Enter
That’s right, fundamentalist Christianity’s parallel universe has grown a new tumor, but instead of taking the shape of the Virgin Mary, it’s developed into a likeness of YouTube.
The site’s full of everything you’d expect from a fundies-only party — tons of sermon highlights, lots of Xtian Rock videos, and a few lessons on how to be a Christian clown.
That last one isn’t a joke. In just 3 short minutes, you, too, can become a molestation-minded pest to the elderly. Just watch:
I didn’t realize that the Bible taught that all elderly people are to be treated as Jell-O-brained toddlers, but since Jesus died young, I guess he could ony make an educated guess as to what happens to you when those scary-looking grey hairs start popping up. Maybe he thought those were your brain cells reaching for heaven.
At the very least, the Christian clown instructors seemed to take away that lesson, or something similar, from the good book. If you can stomach part 2 of Clown School, please do.
And as part of your preparation for cheering up old folks, make sure to remind yourself of God’s patience and generosity with the fundie version of a highlight reel:
If you ever had any doubt that some fundamentalists take a perverse joy in watching people suffer and die, that clip probably removed it. For whoever made it, each world tragedy is just another pre-party for the Second Coming. Get your wristbands while you can.
For more fun, check out clips of creationism involving naked humans feeding giraffes while elephants and lions leer voyeuristically, the terror of Christian Fear Factor, a creepy Christian drill team dance, and more!
YouTube’s a lot of things, but pornographic isn’t one of them. I can only assume some fundamentalist leaders have decided Daxflame is the antichrist and must be avoided at all costs:
Ever wondered whether Americans actually believe a pair of boobs makes you worse at your job? Well, now we have the answer:
Steve Stanton loved this city he ran for 14 years. This week, he asked the city to love him back – to accept his plans to pursue sex-change operation and let him keep his $140,000 job as city manager.
It didn’t.
Yep, seems now that Steve Stanton wants to become Susan Stanton, 5 of the 7 members of the City Commission of Largo, FL believe Susan will suddenly be unable to carry out Steve’s duties as a high-level bureaucrat.
Not surprisingly, the Lord was invoked as justification for the position, this time as Arnold Schwartzenegger’s sawed-off-toting sidekick:
“If Jesus was here tonight, I can guarantee you he’d want him terminated,” said Pastor Ron Saunders of Largo’s Lighthouse Baptist Church. “Make no mistake about it.”
It’s really too bad Jesus-as-returning-savior is a myth; it’d be deeply satisfying to watch the fundies be cast down into the pits of hell for all the Roman-style oppression done in his name. In this case, methinks Pastor Ron would get sent to the circle where someone lectures him for hours on end about utterly false and completely offensive — yet somehow still inane — horsepucky until his eyes bleed.
Meanwhile, on the irony tip, the leader of a group called the Liberty Counsel busted out this defense of their anti-liberty policy:
“The city hasn’t changed the work environment. He has changed the work environment,” Staver said. “He has to take into consideration the consequences of that personal decision. I think it would be more difficult for the city to retain this person because of how it might undermine the representation of the city in the eyes of the community. It could become very awkward.”
You know, dude has a point. I was actually planning to visit Miami until I discovered Pedro G. Hernandez was their city manager. I’m sure I don’t have to tell you all the things _that_ guy’s done wrong, am I right? YUCK. When will more American cities realize that the personal politics of their civil servants comprise the primary definition of their identities?
Seriously, though, we’re infected with an ugly social sickness when hordes of people show up at a city council meeting to oust a loyal city employee who, by all accounts, has served everyone quite well for over a decade.
This sentence provides a disappointing punctuation mark on the entire embarrassment:
Commissioner Gay Gentry praised Stanton, but supported his firing.
If we can’t count on Commissioner Gay to stand up for LGBT rights, we’ve really got a long way to go.
I want to know where I can get a chip for my shoulder as big as this guy’s.
I suppose if I were a six-foot, six-inch tall man with a hateful grin plastered on my face, I might suffer fewer daily reminders of how other people see me. Being a good deal shorter, and having genitals much less prominently displayed, I have to settle for an impotent “Jesus, why you feminazis gotta be so goddamn uptight?” or “Just because I spent the last five blocks leering and catcalling at you doesn’t mean I’m hitting on you, you ugly bitch, so don’t flatter yourself” when the world fails to conform to my desires.
But if I were blessed with perfect oblivion, I could take feminist hostility to people who order random women on the street to feign pleasure as a call to strengthen my crusade against surliness.
A zombie-faced sourpuss glooming up the world is the same no matter what genitals they happen to possess. I say “Smile!” And, having seen the idiocy of some of these responses, I will now be far more militant and mindful about it. It’s a war between those who mope and slouch through life and those who want to spread some love.
Amen, brother. Peace. And it’s not just out on the streets that we’re needed, I say. How many women are causing unneccesary discomfort and suffering to their sexual partners by not faking their orgasms convincingly enough? When did sexual climax become more important to us than happiness?
But we cockeyed optimists realize it may already be too late for the world. Feminists, atheists, and eyeliner-wearing goths have been allowed free reign to spread their misery and gloom far too long. It’s gotten to the point where you can’t even dismiss a woman’s concerns without being asked if you can’t pull your head out of your ass before you suffocate yourself. It’s sexism, is what it is.
If you say “People should relax and be less sensitive,” you’re a patriarch trying to control women. If you say “Abortion shouldn’t be taken lightly,” you’re a patriarch trying to control women. If you take a BREATH, you’re a patriarch trying to control women.
…
On Pandagon, my MALE-ness makes everything I say skewed or damaged or wrong in some way, automatically. Ironically, this is how the true sexists I’ve known in my life view women’s ideas.
“What does she know? She’s just a goddamn mouthy cunt.”
But perhaps that is Pandagon’s aim: to let ME know how it feels to be regarded as just a “mouthy cunt.” It has worked. It hurts and it angers.
The reign of the downtrodden must be stopped. We the cheerful must rise up and demand from the populace the displays of happiness we deserve.
SMILE, SOURPUSS!
Well said, sir. Well said.
Happy Valentine’s Day, Baby!
What, for me? Oh, you shouldn’t have! (*Unwraps elegantly, nay, professionally wrapped, lit and photographed gift*)
Hey, this isn’t flowers, chocolate, jewelry, a stuffed animal, or anything else even remotely approaching a Valentine’s Day gift. It’s just a list of perfectly ordinary things I wear everyday and a bunch of commentary from complete strangers about how it gets their rocks off.
I had it framed. Look, the frame has hearts on it. That’s because I love you. That’s what hearts mean. Don’t you like it?
Ummm….
No, no, really look at it! You see sexy chick with the veil is you, cause you’re hot, right? And the veil is your modesty, which just makes you hotter! To me! And just about everyone else, which is why you need the veil to keep them from being blindsided by lusty thoughts about your hotness! It’s a compliment!
Well, it just seems like maybe you could have put this picture of us at Six Flags in the frame as a sweet gift, instead of a list of all the different ways I’m obligated to modify my already boring behavior to keep ant out of the pants of strangers.
You still don’t get it! Look, a lot of people worked very hard on this and it’s very meaningful! Like, take the format of the results: notice how slick and professional the programming is. That represents your appearance-carefully thought out, probably a little expensive, and very attractive. Then, the lack of instructions on how to read the survey represents the hazy, undefined nature of modesty. You have to figure it out for yourself. So the first thing you think of is to ask someone else, right? And that’s what clicking around for a few minutes until you finally figure out how the results are presented represents? See??
Ummmm….
And then see how you have to click on every statement and wait for the results to load individually, and how there’s no summary? That represents how much of your time and attention would be sucked up by trying to achieve this nebulous, completely arbitrary goal of Christian modesty!
You know….
Wait! I’m not finished! Look at the girl with the veil again! Perfect ivory skin, blatently photoshopped blue eyes, excessively groomed eyebrows. That not only represents how being “modest” does not exempt you from more mainstream beauty standards, but it also draws parallels between the unattainable, time and money sucking goal of youth and beauty as put forth by magazines like Cosmo and the unattainable, time and money sucking goal of being modest enough to guard others from sin. Both put an unnecessary onus on women’s behavior for the benefit of men, and both serve to divert a girls attention from ungirly things.
Ungirly things?
Yeah, like education or why women make less and why it’s ok for this survey to exist in the first place and stuff. So you see now? I need you to take these rules to heart. I need you to behave like these other girls, otherwise how am I to know I’m a man?
And what do I get out of this?
The real prize: me!
I don’t think we should see each other anymore.
What a worldy bitch. Is there any among the daughters of Eve who are righteous enough to vie for the prestige of being permitted access to the rights and resources that come with my mighty cock (in holy matrimony, of course)?
Enjoy the results of the modesty survey - I’ll post on the actual substance later. I was really very suprised by how inaccessable the results are, and lack the patience right now to go through it.
Well hello! Long time no see! I’m sure nothing whatsoever has happened in my absence. I have actually been writing here goddamn near every day but fucking Marc has scrubbed the archives in fear of… ellipses and incomplete sentences. I cuss too much, apparently, and somebody had to scrub my dirty, dirty, filthy fucking mouth. Fucking dirty, filthy mouth. Do you like that?
I’m Catholic.
Fap is about right, I thought during our AM meeting last week, when the big cat sauntered into the Big Media Co. conference room and told us how much we have to love our jobs, lest we lose them.
*Bzzrrppt.*
Man-Robot #5451136832 reporting for duty — ready to think, do, and say everything expected from a typical male. Recently, I installed the newest upgrade to my Men’s Health operating system, maximizing my compatibility with the rock-bottom expectations of blabby, crabby Woman-Robots.
My programmer, Men’s Health editor-in-chief David Zinczenko, is the Bill Gates of man software. Thanks to him, 97.9% of all Man-Robots function predictably and identically. And just like Gates’ Windows, we’re also a giant pain in your ass. But what can you do? Zinczenko’s software is pretty much the industry standard, and trying to run something else simply makes you weird or gay (same as Mac users).
It’s fun being a Zinczenko droid. For example, we have a rich database of the all-time most irritating movie quotes that we reproduce when properly stimulated:
You talking to me? He’s not sure you can handle the truth, so it seems like what we’ve got here is a failure to communicate. Frankly, my dear, he doesn’t give a damn that you don’t like that he quotes movies. Why? Because using movie lines means he can convey any emotion at any time without ever having to do it himself. They allow him to be confrontational (“Houston, we have a problem”), angry (“go ahead, make my day”), romantic (“you had me at the … red lingerie”), and anything in between without having to actually break his steely exterior. Hoo-ah!
Thinking takes up a lot of energy. It’s far more efficient for Man-Robots to regurgitate corny sentiments expressed in disposable studio fare than generate original content. Best of all, movie quotes are a commonly understood API on both the Man and Woman platforms, ensuring our output can be processed correctly.
But it isn’t all upgrades and optimization-fests between the Robots. Zinczenko has also programmed Man-Robots to be wary of Woman-Robots’ more powerful memory chips, especially when it comes to the data we output on Woman-Robots with whom we used to interface:
We’re also quite aware of how much better your memory is than ours, and we’re afraid that you’ll remember every little factoid we divulge and one day, long after we’ve forgotten it, find a way to use it against us. (“Oh, of course you know how to get whipped cream out of upholstery, because that trashy ho sprayed Reddi-Wip all over your apartment back in ’98 … and there’s still some of it in your refrigerator!”).
While Man-Robots might be light on memory and communication APIs, at least we’re designed for hard work above all:
The question comes up over and over again in relationships. She says to him: If you gave me the same amount of attention as you give your boss, we’d be topside on the Love Boat rather than ballast in the Titanic.Kinda true, right?
Zinczenko’s OS operates on the simple premise that those quirky Woman-Robots can’t work for shit, and that they’re jealous of our sizable processing power. Clearly, their primary function is to remain at the factory and oversee the assembly of other Robots. And also to annoy the cooling fans off us Man-Robots.
The world can never have too many cheesy, brutish, simple machines overheating and generating blue screens of death out there. Thanks to the vision of David Zinczenko, we may never run out.
*Bleep. Blort.*
When I took journalism classes, I was always told to put the key stuff on top and the throw away stuff at the bottom. Technically, that’s just what the author of this article on a “modesty fashion show” did; however, in my opinion the most revealing detail slipped in at the bottom. (emphasis mine)
Pregnancy Helpline Resource Development Director Ann O’Reilly said the idea is to give girls encouragement to dress modestly despite the pressure from popular culture to wear more revealing clothing….
Organizers also attempted to broaden the appeal of last year’s event by including some male models and having Jason Illian, a former contestant on the TV show “The Bachelorette,” speak about sexual purity. That aspect wasn’t as successful, so this year the focus is back on the girls alone, she said.
Remember girls, if you listen to the Pregnancy Helpline people now while they’re attempting to be fun, you certainly won’t be needing their services later; or at least if you do it won’t be because you’re a filthy hellbound slut who failed in her task to keep the boys off of her.
God, if they had any other sponser for this event, any other at all, I wouldn’t be so snarky. But damn, they’re not even trying anymore, are they?
Ever have an argument about Roe v Wade with someone who is anti-choice but not particularly religious? Everyone knows the rub in R v W; that it doesn’t grant the unqualified right to an abortion. Instead it claims that the right to an abortion is part of a right to privacy which is implicit in the 14th amendment. Unfortunetely the 14th Amendment doesn’t specifically say, “You gots a right to not have the state all in your shit and that includes your uterus” and this drives a certain type of person mad. I’ve had many an argument with literal minded young conservatives who really, sincerely believe that you have no specific right to privacy and that they are largely OK with that. It’s not hard to find people that adorably naive on a college campus.
If there’s anything wonderful about our Dear Leader’s signing statement parties, it’s that they provide almost textbook examples of why this nebulous right is so very, very critical to the proper protection of the explicity stated rights.
Marc’s recent post reminded me of why even those of us with nothing to hide can benefit from a clearly defined right to privacy:
Whenever I talk about privacy, I feel like the curmudgeonly old-timer shaking his stick at the young-uns. “In my day, we valued and protected these things called individual rights! All you kids today, all you care about protecting is your right to myspace and the next season of American Idol. Harrumph.” [shakes cane]
It’s a dead notion, isn’t it? I mean, even if you still care about protecting privacy, do you really still believe it’s possible? If someone wants to find out something about you, they can and will. These days, privacy can only be realized through true anonymity or tremendous wealth. The rest of us are hanging out with the diving guy in the fish bowl, waiting for someone to look at us.
Which reminded me of a book I had gotten at the library a few weeks ago, Applebee’s America, which ties together how business, religious and political interests use the same techniques to convince people that thier large, remote institution cares for them and their neighbors. The authors call it “Applebee’s America” because Applebee’s managed to take a large franchise of quite frankly mediocre food and give it a reputation of being a cozy neighborhood place to meet; a ploy that was incredibly successful until the other faceless crap chains caught on and forced Applebee’s to actually make a palatable menu in order to keep their edge.
Ignoring the fraud, Bush’s 2000 and 2004 campaigns did something so novel in politics that even in 2006 authors Dowd, Fournier, and Sosnik were still drooling over the awesomeness. They turned the art of predicting voter behavior into a science, allowing them to fine-tune their message for smaller and smaller blocks of voters, which at least partially explains that baffling “well, he’s a moron, but he’s a decisive moron who loves me personally, and I like that” bile that the American voter was spewing during the last two presidential campaigns. Those of us who didn’t fall for it shouldn’t dislocate our shoulders patting ourselves on the back – most of us probably just ended up on the list of people who were not worth spending precious campaigning dollars on; we were never supposed to fall for it.
How did they do this, you ask? How did they manage get the art of guessing how you’ll vote (and why) from a success rate of around 50 – 60% to accuracy of over 90%?
Short answer: scads and scads of money; because the companies that compile the ginormous, excessivly detailed consumer profiles that every single one of us who has ever used a credit card or got a loan has are not giving this information to just anyone. You have to buy it.
Previous to Karl Rove, politicians looked at who you’d voted for in the past and where you lived to determine if you were worth campaigning to this time around. This meant that Republicans in heavily Democratic areas who had voted Democrat two or four years ago were largely ignored, and vice versa. Rove cut the checks for a new idea: using people’s consumer profiles to infer their lifestyle, and therefore the issues and messages that would most resonate with them, then niche marketing to those people. It was a freakishly good idea, and probably well worth every penny.
And if you think that names and addresses were omitted from this process, then please allow me to smile and shake my head sadly at your childlike trust.
There is almost no limit to the amount of information a person or company can get on you if they have the money and the staff to slog through the data. There is almost no way for you to opt out of providing this information without your friends and family becoming concerned about your ever-increasing paranoia.
And if you’re kind of queasy, take a moment to recall that neither the persons being profiled, the persons doing the profiling, or anyone else is particularly concerned about the security of all this information or the potential for mischief that a large, tantalizing pile of unsecured data presents for the mischevious. Most people are only kind of aware that all of this data on them is floating around; as more organizations begin to tap into it, the questions about who owns it and what they can do with it and whether or not they need your permission to release it or if you even have any right to see it are all going to fall under the umbrella of our “privacy.”
Just some stuff to keep in mind if you’re ever talking to a person who claims that they don’t mind if Bush reads thier mail. Your right to privacy covers far more than your right to recieve a letter that didn’t get it’s wax seal broken by panty-sniffing government agents or not have NSA agents tapping your calls, so don’t let that shit slide past you without comment. These are the easiest privacy battles to win and we shouldn’t let apathy or hopelessness prevent us from getting angry and encouraging others to be angry, too.
It’s finals week starting tomorrow, so rather than do anything insightful I thought I’d just make fun some chick I found on the internets for a bit. I got her from the same place that Marc got Amanda Sopasto. Lindsey Russell caught my eye with her bold essay, As Arrogant as He May Be, Bill O’Reilly is Right Regarding the Culture War: The War on Christmas. I can’t resist me some war on Christmas mocking.
First off, I want to clarify a couple of things:
1. I agree with Bill O’Reilly’s statements regarding the culture wars and the war on Christmas.
Just to clarify, do you really mean all his statements? Like, including the batshit paranoid ones? And the blatent lies? Or the batshit paranoid lies?
3. I am a Christian.
4. I believe that everyone in the United States has the right to express his or her own religion. We should not be a homogeneous country made up entirely of Christians.
And why not? Do you not appreciate the astonishing diversity of Christian thought? We could be 100% Christian and still have enough to bicker about until Jesus returns to tell us which Christian denomination was the most rightest. In fact, having to battle against the twin evils of tolerance and other religions is sucking up valuable time splitting Christian hairs, which is just one more reason we need Xmas up front and center this holiday season.
5. No religion should receive preferential treatment in the public sphere.
Except mine, that is. You know, the right one. No, I won’t tell you which one. It’s my salvation! Get your own!
Now that that’s out of the way, I will define the problem. I believe that there has been a concerted effort to thwart the public display of the Christian religion in recent years. It is no longer politically correct to say “Merry Christmas” or to display a nativity scene in front of city hall.
I believe that Lindsey lives under a very strictly athiest rock in a far away mountain right next to the last person on earth who had never heard of Coca-Cola. It makes more sense to me than her theory, which predicts that Cleveland’s Soft Rock WDOK declared itself “Cleveland’s Continuous Christmas station” and began playing exclusively holiday (holiday = 98.9% Christmas, 1.1% other) music begining the day after Thanksgiving in order to lead the battle against the forces of political correctness. Mayhaps when they did this last year (and the year before and so on) it was profitable? As for nativity scenes in front of city hall, perhaps Lindsey should read what she just wrote before writing more.
1. There has been a backlash against the politically correct “Happy Holidays.” Recently Wal-Mart announced that their greeters and cashiers will no longer say “Happy Holidays,” but will now say “Merry Christmas.”
*cough* Among other holiday greetings *cough*. Indeed, thank god those fearless FOX supported Christmas warriors were able to persuade WalMart to switch from one convenient all-inclusive greeting to a hodgepodge of greetings. Hopefully they’ll remember to supply cashiers with a list just incase they start falling back on “Happy holidays” after they you know, stop caring.
Personally, I think people have had enough of the generic, meaningless “Happy Holidays.” Let’s be honest, this country is still predominately Christian. That doesn’t mean that people who practice other religions or belief systems feel excluded. It simply means that ALL Americans should be free to express their religious beliefs in the public sphere. Separation of Church and State should not mean a complete ban on all public displays of religion.
“Happy holidays” is no less meaningful than any of the other meaningless crap Americans bandy about to display the minimum requisite acknowledgement of each other’s existence. For example, when I ask you “what’s up” I don’t really care what’s up with you. And when that nice Ukranian scientist from the lab downstairs asks me how I am, I assume that’s just something they told him to say in English class way back whenever, and I respond “hello” and keep walking. This might drive him nuts, but I can’t tell because I’m already walking away. Similarly, happy holidays means “it’s the season to be polite and friendly. So here’s some friendly politeness.” If you ever want “merry christmas” to slide back into that kind of use, then you need to stop spending every year tainting it with the unspoken “screw you, Jew! (Muslim, Pagan, whatever)” by bitching about how oppressed Christmas is.
In addition, please take a moment to familiarize yourself with the difference between you as a private person going to the park and screaming about how Christian you are and then erecting a life-size backlit nativity in your yard, and your councilman spending city dollars on a holiday display that has significance to only one portion of the city’s residents. Or the difference between WalMart encouraging the use of “Happy Holidays” over or under “Merry Christmas” as a company policy, and say an elementary school keeping the holiday pagent blandly secular in order to prevent the appearance of a state-run institution endorsing a specific holiday. The differences are there, just keep looking.
But hey, why not just accept that the best way to maximize profits, avoid hurt feelings and skip over costly 1st Amendment lawsuits is to just be bland and civil? You get the lights, the sales, and pretty although non-specific decorations in your stores and public buildings and all the nativity scenes or god help us, blow up santa clauses that your yard can contain.
Or you could suggest a completely insane solution.
In my opinion, there is a simple solution to all of this mess. Why not allow public religious displays from EVERY religion?
Umm, is Lindsey aware that there are more than three religions? And that some of the others are kind of wierd? And that that kind of civic policy encourages people like me to threaten to take the city to court if my religious beliefs are not respected by placing my BDSM nativity somewhere on the village green, not too far from the sweet spot occupied by the more boring nativity and the giant menorah? Someone hasn’t thought this one through.
It would be appropriate for a city such as New York City to have both a Christian and a Jewish holiday display.
My mistake, Lindsey apparently believes that there are only two religions.
I simply don’t see how you could go wrong with such a simple system.
Then you’re not being creative enough, sweetie. I can think of a few hilarious results right off the top of my head.
Getting rid of religion in the public sphere is a dangerous step towards losing religious freedom.
Riiiiigggggghhhhhhhhtttttttttt. I like how she ends the essay with that statement, as though it is self-evident. Come back, Lindsey, keep typing. We beg you to expand on that.
Linsdey, who is quite a prolific writer, had posted a “Girls Guide to Google v Yahoo!” on the very day that she wrote her Christmas schtick. I’m not sure what made this guide specifically for girls, unless she meant to make the background pink but couldn’t figure it out. She might not be that computer literate, as it’s two-thousand-fucking-six and she JUST FOUND GOOGLE LABS. But found it she has and she’s ditching yahoo! and because everyone on the internets needs and wants exactly what she needs and wants, maybe you should switch to google too. Of course, it’s not perfect:
As for Yahoo! Local, I haven’t come across a Google alternative yet. Yahoo! Local provides information and reviews for local business – based upon your zip code. It is handy – and you can provide your own feedback as well.
I guess she hasn’t gotten to the L’s in google labs yet. Don’t tell her that you can make any search local by entering your search terms and your zip code.
PZ links Twisty and extends (one of) her point(s) that ritualism is primitive and unnecessarily celebrated in our culture. He adds:
I’ve heard that so often: that people need ritual, that there’s something beautiful and comforting about the predictable and stately. Why? I get along fine without it, and find it a nuisance when I’m subjected to it, so it’s clearly not a universal human need, like food or love. If you’re brought up with it, if it’s dunned into your head that you must attend Sunday services or you will go to hell, I can understand how the relief from an artificial anxiety might feel good…but why not cut the problem off at the roots and raise kids who aren’t instilled with those foolish fears?
Ritualism is usually tied to religion, and in that sense, I wholly agree with PZ. But assuming you allow the word ritual to apply to other areas of life, anywhere you might establish “a prescribed or established rite, ceremony, proceeding, or service,” then however primitive the need for it, I’d wager most humans find great comfort in ritual. And I doubt PZ can claim to be wholly ritual-free. Surely there’s _some_ pattern of behavior recurring at regular intervals in his life that he has established and enjoys, no?
In theory, I’m made uncomfortable by ritualism and try to avoid it. In truth, I still willingly participate in it. For example, I host a Thursday night card game. People arrive and leave at the same time, we have a pattern for who orders food, we play the games in a certain way, and I feel bummed when we have to skip a week. It’s pretty much an established proceeding, which makes it kinda ritualistic, and, frankly, it’s comforting.
Twisty rightly identifies the undertones of ritualism as “conformity, obeisance, and orthodoxy.” It’s definitely nothing to celebrate, and might be a need humans should strive to overcome.
But does anyone out there avoid ritualism entirely?
I love nothing more than my weekly trip to the Olive Garden.
Recently