Rachel’s Musings

Yesterday, two people told me that “people are talking” that there will be an earthquake soon. It scared me. Am I ready for an earthquake? Maybe I should review the meeting spots. Maybe I should… Then it started to puzzle me. We just had an earthquake drill. No, that wasn’t it, one person assured me. It’s the weather. It has been rather humid here lately and that’s what the weather was like before the 1989 earthquake. I didn’t think to ask: How often has the weather been humid between now and 1989 and no earthquake happened? As I continued to reflect, I realized the perils of folk wisdom: It scares people and it gives false hope of control. Reality is that I live in the San Francisco Bay Area. Earthquakes happen here, humid weather or not. And reality is that earthquakes are very difficult to predict. That’s why we have the relatively useless official forecast that a big one will hit sometime between now and the next 30 years – something like that, maybe it’s just 20 years but, still, it doesn’t help me to plan to move to non-earthquake country tomorrow, so that I miss the quake on Tuesday, and can come back a week from Tuesday after the essential services are restored. So, why do people think they can predict earthquakes by the humidity (or how the bells ring)? Well, it probably goes along with the line written on the sidewalk in chalk: “Jesus is coming!” He has been expected for the last 2000 years give or take a few decades. Any guest who is that late, shouldn’t really be welcome anymore. So it is with humid weather: If I say earthquakes come with humid weather, chances are that one day an earthquake does indeed happen when it’s humid. This goes back to the difficulty of predicting earthquakes: There is a very large random element in the prediction, so almost anything is possible.

Bottom line: If you live in an area where earthquakes are likely, you live in an area where earthquakes are likely. Unfortunately, that’s not very useful, so the best thing is to be always prepared, at least a little. Know what to do, know where to go. Have food, water, and medication supplies for at least 72 hours. And then stop worrying about it! If it gets humid, put on a t-shirt. I’ve heard rumors that they sell those even in San Francisco…

A recent op-ed piece in the New York Times is a good example of the dangers of breaking down the wall of separation between religion and state. In their proposal of a compromise on gay marriage, David Blankenhorn and Jonathan Rauch, suggest that civil unions for same-sex couples “should appeal to cooler heads on both sides.” Especially, because they throw in a bizarre religious exemption: Basically, if a church doesn’t want to recognize the civil union, they don’t have to.      Continue reading this post » » »

Obama’s campaign was all about change. Presumably his presidency will be about this as well, if his first few days in office are an indication, there certainly will be quite a few things changing, for the better. But is this change fundamental enough? I suspect not. The financial crisis and the specter of climate change are clear reminders that our way of life is not sustainable. There is a limit to growth no matter what economists are trying to make us believe. We need to rethink our fundamental assumptions instead of calling on each other to defend our way of life. We cannot defend our way of life – against what would we defend it anyway? Reality?

Here are some changes we need to reverse our march toward doomsday:

• Build an economy on the notion of enough, rather than more: We need to abandon the idea that more is better because we’re suffocating in the trash.
• Replace the focus on coupling with rebuilding community ties: The nuclear family has choked out other ties that are important for a fulfilling and meaningful life. Instead of putting all of our eggs into the basket of one other person, we need to (re)learn to connect deeply and intimately with many people.
• Create jobs that are life-affirming rather than mind-numbing: Most jobs address small, often rather irrelevant, parts of the big corporate machine. We could harness the intelligence wasted on these jobs to address the problems we need to confront.
• Face the reality that capitalism is undermining democracy: If the most powerful institutions in our society are run as kingdoms, we cannot expect democracy to flourish.
• Stop ignoring the problem of overpopulation: There are too many people on this planet to live comfortably. The current population size is not sustainable – another example where more is not better. Addressing this issue will be painful and extremely difficult ethically. The longer we wait, though, the worse it is going to get.

I am sure there’s much, much more that needs fundamental change. Obama will not bring this about. He can’t really. He is a politician after all. But we can. All of us can start looking – really looking – at our lives and decide what works and what doesn’t, what is sustainable and what isn’t. And then we can start to make changes, slowly but surely. Will it matter? Maybe. However, rather than pondering our impact (or lack thereof), we could simply decide to act as if our actions matter. If enough of us make that decision, things will change.

Obama and his administration can make these changes easier by enacting things like universal health care, mandatory sick leave, and even by targeting the economic stimulus toward project that build sustainability. These are important foundational blocks onto which we can build real change.

Sustainability must be in the air. Here’s a great post from the Regressive Antidote that touches on similar themes that I covered here.

Did you hear that President Barack Hussein Obama mentioned the unbelievers in his inauguration speech? He said:

For we know that our patchwork heritage is a strength, not a weakness. We are a nation of Christians and Muslims, Jews and Hindus – and non-believers. We are shaped by every language and culture, drawn from every end of this Earth; and because we have tasted the bitter swill of civil war and segregation, and emerged from that dark chapter stronger and more united, we cannot help but believe that the old hatreds shall someday pass; that the lines of tribe shall soon dissolve; that as the world grows smaller, our common humanity shall reveal itself; and that America must play its role in ushering in a new era of peace.

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I’ve been puzzling over the claim that Christmas is now largely a secular holiday ever since I first read it (I can’t recall where but here’s an example). Secular means “denoting attitudes, activities, or other things that have no religious or spiritual basis.” Clearly, Christmas has a religious basis. If it weren’t for the claim of the Catholic Church that Jesus was born on December 25th, there would not be a Christmas (there would be other holidays but not Christmas). It does not matter that they usurped other holidays to do that. It does not matter that Jesus was very likely not born that day if he ever was born at all. I find it absurd to claim that Christmas can be a secular holiday. And “secular Christmas” is an oxymoron.
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On Human Rights Day, December 10, 2008, the Universal Declaration of Human Rights turns 60! This document is a milestone in summarizing our rights as humans in one document that is entirely secular. Unfortunately, as Ken over at Open Parachute points out, it is increasingly under attack, especially freedom of expression is getting curtailed by “religious defamation” claims. By undermining the secular nature of the document, religious wrong proponents try to put religion on a pedestal where it can be neither criticized nor questioned. Clearly they know that upon close scrutiny there’s not much left in religion, so they have to prevent us from looking under the hood. In the process, they make any criticism more difficult, effectively rendering free expression impossible.

In addition to the open attacks on the Declaration, the document itself is dated. As I have pointed out before, I have my doubts about declaring that marriage is a human right. Forming relationships in whatever form with whomever we want to should be a human right. Marriage, however, is just one way of doing that – and a very privileged form to boot. As Michael Warner points out, giving marriage this privileged status creates a hierarchy of relationships that without evidence value some forms more than others. If marriage is a “normal” human right, then – by definition – other forms of relating are not normal, are abnormal, and not a human right. This enshrines matrimanic thinking into one of the world’s most important documents.

So, while the 60th anniversary is certainly grounds for celebration, it will be a bittersweet celebration at best.