Women's Liberation and the Parable of the Shattered Statue

WOMEN'S LIBERATION AND THE PARABLE OF THE SHATTERED STATUE
Wednesday Oct. 26th, 2022

In the year leading up to my seventy-first birthday, I have a different angle on women's liberation from other people, and also from what I used to feel.  It will take me a couple of paragraphs to explain.  Here we go.

1. The Parable of the Shattered Statue

We say that in earlier generations, men put women on a pedestal.  That means men talked about women in an idealized way, as if half of the human race was a statue on a pedestal.  Now, we are not supposed to talk about women in an idealized way.  One part of this means that we are supposed to talk about women one by one.  Also, if we make two pieces of art with one woman in each piece of art, the two depictions are supposed to be depictions of different women.  One piece of art ought to show one woman, and the other piece of art ought to show a different woman.

In other words, we don't have a statue of woman, or in the plural two statues of woman.  Instead, we have a statue of a woman, and in the plural, two statues of women. 

Taking the metaphor of the pedestal for granted, we can say that the statue of the woman on the pedestal has been shattered.

Now what?

In this parable I am writing, there are several things we can do, and those things are also things which people actually are doing.  Here are three.

a) We can explain why we needed to shatter the statue.
b) We can haul off the pieces of the statue, so that no one will trip over the broken pieces of stone, and they won't block the way.
c) We can deplore the shattering of the statue, and explain why it should not have been shattered.

As I said, all of those things are being done.  We can make a chart, with (a), (b), and (c) down the side, and two columns labeled "Liberals Believe" and "Conservatives Believe," and we can fill in the boxes with either "a worthwhile activity" or "not a worthwhile activity."  The chart comes out looking like this:

	Liberals Believe It Is	Conservatives Believe It Is
a) We can explain why we needed to shatter the statue.	a worthwhile activity.	not a worthwhile activity.
b) We can haul off the pieces of the statue, so that no one will trip over the broken pieces of stone, and they won't block the way.	a worthwhile activity.	a worthwhile activity.
c) We can deplore the shattering of the statue, and explain why it should not have been shattered.	not a worthwhile activity.	a worthwhile activity.

If we follow the metaphor of the shattered statue, the only thing liberals and conservatives agree about is that we need to move out of the way any and all shattered pieces of stone that are blocking people's path.

2. My Fourth Possibility

I believe there is a fourth activity we need to be doing, which no one else that I know believes we need to be doing.

We need to describe what the pieces of the shattered statue look like, lying on the ground.

That is the intellectual equivalent of taking a photograph of the shattered statue.

How can one describe what the shattered statue looks like, lying on the ground?

3. A Description

Here is my description of what the shattered statue looks like lying on the ground.

-- Men used to believe that in a boy's life, his mother would cook for him, and when he grows up, his wife cooks for him.

-- Now we believe that, early in the day, a person needs to purchase a meal cooked by a random person of either sex; and later in the day, a person needs to purchase a second meal cooked by another random person of either sex; and still later in the day, a person needs to purchase a third meal cooked by another random person.

The concept of "cook for" has been largely replaced by the concept of "buy a meal."

That is definitely not all there is to women's liberation, but it is definitely a very important part of women's liberation.

We don't mean to say that nobody cooks for her husband and nobody cooks for his wife nowadays.  But we do mean to say that the women who cook three meals a day for their husbands are a lot less numerous than they used to be; and the men who cook three meals a day for their wives used to be practically zero, and they are still not very numerous.

4. An Aside on a Fairy Tale

I will repeat the "Men used to believe" sentence and comment on it.

Men used to believe that in a boy's life, his mother would cook for him, and when he grows up, his wife cooks for him.

I think this explains a sentence in the story of Rumplestiltskin, which most people attach no meaning to nowadays.  Rumplestiltskin says to himself "Today I bake, tomorrow brew -- what a clever thing I do!"

As I said, I think most people nowadays assume that Rumplestiltskin is singing a meaningless song.  But when the story was first written down, I think that sentence meant "Rumplestiltskin had neither a mother nor a wife to cook for him.  This dude was a total goofball!"

Now when we read the story of Rumplestiltskin, we see nothing wrong with the fact that he is unmarried and he cooks for himself.

5. A More Important Commentary

Now I will talk about what I wrote in part three, when I attempted to describe what the shattered statue looks like.

You can say what I wrote is a parody of women's liberation; you can say that it is making fun of women's liberation.  You can say that it is a reductio ad absurdum (a reduction of somebody else's argument to an absurd conclusion).

But I say I could have written it for parody or for mocking women's liberation, but I actually wrote it as an attempt to describe what the shattered statue looks like lying on the ground.

6. A Final Comment for Divergent Thinkers

I am a divergent thinker.

The Old Testament says "My thoughts are not your thoughts, says the LORD."

That Bible verse says two things to me.  Number one -- God is a divergent thinker.  Number two -- if you are a divergent thinker like me, and you are leaving a conversation or a party where you feel like nobody understood what you said, it is okay for you to say to yourself, "My thoughts were not their thoughts."

Frank Newton

Coronavirus Hindsight: My Reply to a Conservative Friend on Facebook

CORONAVIRUS HINDSIGHT: MY REPLY TO A CONSERVATIVE FRIEND ON FACEBOOK
Monday Oct. 24th, 2022

 

The evil was not in the government. The evil was in the virus. We were handed a massive defeat by a creature so small we can't even see it.  It's too bad the children lost two years of education, but there is no use crying over spilt milk. We need to pick up the pieces and move on. The virus was not a plot by evil human beings. It was a tiny creature that we couldn't control. We didn't have the science to control it. But our descendants will have the science to control it, if it tries to come back. We are the strongest species, but sometimes our species loses a battle really badly. The coronavirus was like the battle of Little Big Horn. The virus was in the position of the Dakotas and Cheyennes, and the human beings were in the position of General Custer's soldiers. But I'm not comparing our leaders to General Custer.  Don't get me started on that.  We did the best we could with the knowledge we had.  Dr. Antony Fauci was a saint.  It would have been nicer if he had known some things a couple of months earlier than he knew them, but he was doing the best he could, too. "First impressions mean so much" doesn't mean we should cling to our first impressions come hell or high water. When the authorities finally got around to telling us that we were wearing the masks not to protect ourselves, but to protect each other, we SHOULD HAVE SAID, oh this was one of those times when our first impressions were wrong. We have to be willing to revise our ideas when better information comes along. The virus was not about Democrats versus Republicans. It was about human beings versus the coronavirus creature. We lost badly. We have to learn the bitter lessons which losing a war teaches to the people who lost. We have to respect our scientists even when they don't have all the facts. God gets us into heaven, but scientists figure out what the medical profession can do to help us live longer. Scientists are working with God's blessing. Not every tax dollar invested in science is good value for the money, but choosing what science to invest in is partly a crap shoot, and our American authorities are doing the best they can to invest in good science. When Americans say they don't respect NASA, I simply don't believe them. Deep down, every American is proud of what American scientists have accomplished. But some Americans are so out of touch with their inner common sense that they don't even know they are proud of NASA. What is true for rocket science is true for our germ fighters, too.

Frank Newton

The Relationship Between People Who Did Well in School and People Who Did Not Do Well in School

THE RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN PEOPLE WHO DID WELL IN SCHOOL AND PEOPLE WHO DID NOT DO WELL IN SCHOOL
Sunday Oct. 23rd, 2022

 

I think Jesus changed his mind several times about rich people but He never changed his mind about poor people. I don't count "The poor you will always have with you." I interpret that sentence to mean "There will still be poor people after I am crucified and ascend into Heaven." That's what it means. It does not mean "Give up on helping the poor. You'll never make any progress."

Just as there will always be new children who need to be taught spelling and arithmetic, so likewise there will always be new poor people who need to be helped by more fortunate people who are trying to be like Jesus, at least a little bit.

I think there's a big correlation between children who learn more slowly than average children, and grownups who are poor. I do not know the brain, but broadly speaking, I think it's not a person's fault if they have fewer of those connector nerves in their brain connecting one part of the brain with another. Their processor isn't as fast or as reliable. When they grow up, sometimes they literally miss THE BUS because the bus schedule didn't stick accurately in their brains. They read or were told where the bus schedule said "4:12 p.m." But they misremembered it as "4:37 p.m."

Here's how I look at our species: God is making oodles of human beings using a very unstandardized process that gives highly uneven results. Some people come into the world with a lot more gifts and graces than other people, and those who have more are supposed to share with those who have less.

I don't think of taxes as an evil plot hatched by the government. I think of taxes as a sensible way, in a big country, for me to pool resources with other people who (like me) have more, so that we can help poor people, especially the enormous numbers of poor people that we will never meet in person.

The wickedness of the human heart greatly exceeds the wickedness of the government. We don't have a government problem. We have a problem shared by all the nations in the world: the problem of human beings who have more, and think they deserve to have more. Here's a phrase people used in Victorian England: the deserving poor. We need to start using that phrase again. What "the deserving poor" means is: "You are wrong if you think all poor people are criminals. And you are also wrong if you think none of the poor are criminals."

When a crooked person cheats a good-hearted person, there isn't any shame for the good-hearted person, unless they have consumed all of their substance in their misguided effort to help less fortunate people. When a crooked person cheats a good-hearted person, I think Jesus would say the system is working as intended. Time is a teacher, and we should have time to figure out who the deserving poor are before we die. Being cheated is part of life, but honest people seek each other out, and when honest people work together, they make the distribution of the gifts and graces less lopsided.

I perceive the Sermon on the Mount as an enormous miracle, which could never have been produced by a million monkeys typing on typewriters -- it could only have been produced by an incarnate being with an enormous reservoir of goodness inside of them. -- But I do not perceive the Sermon on the Mount as a complete guide to goodness.  As far as I can recall, the Sermon on the Mount does not say anything about forgiving people who cheat you, and forgiving yourself when you are cheated.

But if you want to help people less fortunate than you, or/and if you want to help the deserving poor, then you have to prepare yourself for being cheated.  You have to prepare your heart in advance to forgive people who will cheat you, and to forgive yourself for being cheated.  And that includes forgiving the government when it is cheated by crooked people.  Individual people, and governments, cannot do good, and cannot do the right thing consistently, without risking being duped by crooks. People who spit in the face of good people who have been duped, or spit in the face of well-intentioned governments who have been duped, are part of the problem.  Good people are duty-bound to remind citizens that crooked behavior is so unpatriotic that it is as unpatriotic as desertion on the battlefield.

People complain about how slowly government acts.  But the government acts slowly because of all the procedures that have been put in place after the government was cheated by one crook after another, to prevent the same cheat from working again.  Trying to dupe the government is not a game.  It is a nauseatingly unpatriotic behavior.

Frank Newton

Rude But Not Crude: a Recipe for Better Political Debates

RUDE BUT NOT CRUDE: A RECIPE FOR BETTER POLITICAL DEBATES
Tues. October 11th, 2022

 

This is a suggestion for better political debates.  Consider this situation.  Politician A makes a statement.  Then Politician B (of the other political party) tries to show why Politician A's statement is wrong.  Then politician A repeats their original statement.  Some news commentators seem to believe that Politician B is now in an impossible situation -- in other words, they believe that you can't win a debate against a person who keeps making the same point over and over again.

My counterclaim is that after Politician A has repeated himself, Politician B needs to think like a lawyer.

I've never been to law school -- not even for a small part of a semester -- but my impression is that an important part of lawyer training is on how to discredit witnesses -- how to make witnesses for the other side look bad.

That kind of training should be very helpful in a political debate.  I think the key for a lawyer trying to discredit a witness, or a politician trying to make an opponent look bad, is RUDE BUT NOT CRUDE

Here is my suggested solution for Politician B:

Politician A: [makes a statement].

Politician B: [tries to show why Politician A's statement is wrong].

Politician A: [repeats original statement and ignores Politician B's argument].

Politician B: I'VE ALREADY EXPLAINED WHY YOU'RE WRONG, BUT I''LL EXPLAIN IT AGAIN.

Saying "I've already explained why you're wrong, but I'll explain it again" is extremely rude.

In an ordinary conversation, saying "I've already explained why you're wrong, but I'll explain it again" would be a disaster.  You would immediately lose the support of everybody in the room.

Even if there wasn't anyone in the room except you and the person you were talking to, you've made an enemy for life.

But a political debate is no ordinary conversation!  A lot rides on a political debate.  Each candidate is trying to get a message across to the audience -- causing a general picture of what each candidate believes to dwell in the minds of listeners.  And for best results, an accurate general picture!

In the modern analysis, part of getting a message across is called "creating separation."  That might have started as a football metaphor -- first dodging to get your lead started, and then running faster than the guy who is trying to tackle you.  But in politics, it refers to creating a clear picture in your listeners' minds of how you are different from the other candidate, in terms of what you will vote for, or try to accomplish, if you are elected.

Now I'll try to show why being rude but not crude will help a politician to get their message across, and create separation.

Notice how "I've already explained why you're wrong, but I'll explain it again" is rude but not crude.

1 -- You haven't used any crude words.
2 -- You haven't used an ethnic slur, or an English word commonly used to criticize a specific group of people based on a disability, or based on any other thing  not directly related to your audience's political opinions.
3 -- You have forcefully criticized your opponent's behavior, but you didn't attack their character.

I've already suggested that saying "I've already explained why you're wrong, but I'll explain it again" in almost any other situation is completely useless, and extremely counterproductive.

But it is not useless, and not counterproductive, in a political debate.

In a political debate, saying "I've already explained why you're wrong, but I'll explain it again" means "My opponent doesn't know how to come to grips with other people's ideas."  You're implying: All my opponent can do is to repeat himself.  He doesn't know how to respond to what I've said, and he doesn't know how to strengthen his position by adding supporting arguments.

Here's the really interesting thing: I believe that almost every citizen knows, instinctively, that showing that "My opponent doesn't know how to come to grips with other people's ideas" is an extremely serious criticism, when we are talking about people who want to be leaders.

People know, instinctively, that a person who doesn't know how to say why their ideas are better than the other candidate's ideas cannot be an effective leader.

Leadership is partly about applying force, and using good tactics.  But when leaders are elected, leadership is also about using words to explain why your ideas are better than your opponent's ideas.  If citizens have a choice between a candidate who is forceful but also good at telling you why their way is the best way -- on the one hand -- and a candidate who is forceful, but not good at telling you why their way is the best way -- on the other hand -- then citizens  will vote for the first candidate, the one who is forceful but also good at "building consensus" as people put it.

If you are one of the candidates, your job, as a debater, is to trigger that impression in your listeners -- the impression "My opponent doesn't know how to come to grips with other people's ideas."  In the little scenario described above, a lot is riding on Politician B's second turn in the debate.  In Politician B's second turn, the best strategy is to be rude but not crude.  Don't say "My opponent doesn't know how to come to grips with other people's ideas."  Instead say, "I've already explained why you're wrong, but I'll explain it again."  Explaining why the other guy is wrong is an important leadership skill.  If you can show people you have it, they will say you were rude but not crude, and they will support you enthusiastically.  Citizens can use newspapers and television to diagnose that you will not be rude to ordinary citizens -- you will only be rude to your opponents in a debate, and even then rude but not crude.

But you have to get the message across yourself.  If you are a candidate in an election, you cannot pay someone else to do it for you.  Paying other people to express your opinions -- especially angry voice-actors!! -- is not a leadership skill.

Frank Newton

Matthaean

MATTHAEAN

Mon. October 10th, 2022

I like the phrases in the left-hand column.  I do not like the phrases in the right-hand column.

            I  LIKE                                               I  DON'T  LIKE

            Matthew's story                                  the Matthaean story

            Mark's story                                        the Marcan story

            Luke's story                                        the Lucan story

            John's story                                         the Johannine story

            Paul's story                                          the Pauline story

The words in the right-hand column ending in -an and -ine are borrowed (taken) from Latin and Greek.  I do not object to words borrowed from Latin and Greek.  But . . . I'll try to explain.

Somewhat similar words are derived from the names of some other famous people.  Newtonian physics is a set of principles first expressed by Sir Isaac Newton.  Jeffersonian democracy is democracy as President Thomas Jefferson defined it.  The Elizabethan Age is the time when Queen Elizabeth the First was queen of England.  The Augustan Age is the time when Augustus was the emperor of the Roman Empire.

All of these words are derived from the names of people by adding suffixes, which turn the name into an adjective.  And they imply that the person, although dead in most cases, is important.

The way I see it, though, there is an important difference with the words derived from the New Testament writers and the words derived from the other people's names, in the examples given above.  The difference is this: no one is trying to explain Newtonian physics to children.  No one is trying to explain Jeffer­sonian democracy to children.  No one is trying to explain the Elizabethan Age to children; although many people are involved in explaining the Elizabethan Age to teenagers.

But people are trying to introduce children to Matthew, Mark, Luke, John, and Paul.

The best I can figure out, the reason I don't like Matthaean, Marcan, Lucan, Johannine, and Pauline is that, when adult Christians are talking to each other and using these words, they are using learned ways of talking which are quite sensibly avoided by Sunday School teachers when they are talking to children.

What stands out for me, is the question of whether adult Christian beliefs about the New Testament writers, and aspects of Christian religion in general, are a deeper and maturer version of the teaching which children receive about Christianity, or a mutation of the teaching which children receive about Christianity.

To me, there is a feeling or connotation which attaches to the words Matthaean, Marcan, Lucan, Johannine, and Pauline -- a feeling or connotation that the users of these longer words have experienced a mutation, rather than a deepening, of their faith.

My own instinct and hope is that there is a continuity and connectedness and cooperation be­tween the work of Sunday School teachers on the one hand, and the work of theologians on the other hand.  That is, perhaps, a leap of faith on my part.

Conclusion.  It seems to me that using phrases like the ones in the left-hand column above are a way for adult Christians who are not teaching Sunday School to children to express solidarity with Sunday School teachers.

Chasing a Rabbit.  I cut out a few paragraphs, but I decided to keep one point I made in them.  I observed that when people use the word Pauline in writing -- meaning of, by, from, or pertaining to Saint Paul -- they usually don't tell you how they pronounce it.  Do they make it rhyme with machine, so it is pronounced like the woman's name Pauline, or do they make it rhyme with canine?  I will say that if I did decide to make an exception and use one of these words, I would make Matthaean rhyme with Ian, and make Pauline rhyme with canine.  (I like to be ready to pronounce rare words, even if the chances of me using them are slim.)

Frank Newton