So it’s that time of year again.It’s the annual showdown between the
fundamentalist Christians and the Atheist billboards.When conservative TV and radio hosts scream
that we need to put the Christ back in Christmas. Tis’ the season to debate about what the
politically correct way of greeting each other in late December is.
For the vast majority of my life I was in favor of
secularizing Christmas.I had no problem
saying “Merry Christmas” even though I was an outspoken atheist.But this year I have had a change of
heart.I recently read Penn Jillette’s
new book, Everyday is an Atheist holiday
and he makes some very good arguments against atheists who celebrate
Christmas.It made an impression on me
and I feel like I should start changing my attitude towards it.
I have always had fond memories of Christmas.Some of the happiest memories of my life are
those from the Christmas holidays, spending time with family, giving &
getting presents.Only when I was very
young and our family still attended church did we mention the Jesus part of
Christmas.But for the most part,
religion and God never really had a role in the celebration of the
holiday.
But now that I am so outspoken against religion, I’m
starting to feel hypocritical to celebrate the day of the birth of Christ.So I’m trying to find a happy middle ground
where I can still enjoy the benefits of a holiday from work or school with
family without feeling like I’m cheapening the day that many of my friends
consider to be sacred.I feel that’s why I
should personally stop saying “Merry Christmas” and start saying “Happy
Holidays” more. But I have absolutely no
problem with other people saying “merry Christmas” to me.
It’s a tough call for me.I feel like this movement in popular culture and media of saying
“Seasons greetings” or “Happy Holidays” is a euphemism for “We actually want to
say Merry Christmas but we’re afraid that we’ll offend somebody.”People should say “Merry Christmas” if they
mean it and it’s too bad for any politically correct, weak person who decides
to be offended by a word.I haven’t met
a single non-Christian who is bothered by hearing “Christmas”.This also may be hypocrital on my behalf but
personally I can’t say “Merry Christmas” anymore without being dishonest.So when I say “Happy Holidays” I actually do
mean, “Enjoy your time off work or school however you choose to enjoy it!”So out of respect to my friends who are
Christians, we really should put the Christ back in Christmas but enjoy the Holidays
with the people we love without having anyone left out no matter their
religion or lack thereof.
Please listen to this beautiful song by Tim Minchin called White wine in the sun.It sums up my feeling towards Christmas
perfectly.
A defensible limit to individual liberty would be to allow
individuals to do whatever they wish so far as long as they are not harming
other people or interfering with their liberty.This is known as the “harm principle” that John Stuart Mill defended in his
essay, On Liberty.[1]I will defend this position in this paper by
critically examining the oppositions to it, mainly the idea of paternalism and
the forces that justify the use of it.I
will not however, use the utilitarian point of view that Mill used to defend it
but a point of view that is anti-violence.
The opposition to a libertarian style of law that allows for
individual liberty is the concept of Paternalism.It justifies the limitations of personal
freedom by citing that the prohibitions of certain actions are in the best
interests of people and society.It
comes from the idea of a benevolent parent who acts in the best interest of a
child by coercively prohibiting the child from various actions.In a modern liberal democracy, the part of
the benevolent parent is played by the elected government.Which makes the people it governs, the naive
child.
Gerald Dworkin in his essay Morality, Harm and the Law, identifies 2 types of paternalism, pure
and impure.Pure paternalism restricts
the freedom of someone, but it does not restrict the liberty of other people of
whom the paternalistic restrictions were not intended.It only intends to protect the well-being of
an individual whose choice otherwise would have ended up worse off.He gives the example of motorcycle helmet
laws that restrict only those who ride motorcycles.Impure paternalism restricts the liberty of
not only those people that are intended to be protected, but it restricts the
liberty of people who are not involved.An example he uses is the paternalistic restriction of the manufacture
of cigarettes.The intent is to protect
the health of cigarette smokers by cutting off people’s access to them.But consequently, the liberties of
non-smokers are also affected.It
restricts the liberties of peoples’ right to work wherever they choose,
particularly of those who work in the cigarette manufacturing industry for
example.
Dworkin defines paternalism as “…the use of coercion to achieve a good which is not recognized as such
by those persons for whom the good is intended.”[2]
I tend to agree with Dworkin on most of his response to the notion of
paternalism.He seems to agree that most
instances of government opting to restrict liberty for our best interests have
been unnecessary and failures. The fact
that deadly substances such as alcohol and tobacco are legally sold and much
less harmful substances such as marijuana are prohibited is a clear example that
shows that government is inconsistent and incompetent in acting in paternal
ways that have our best interests in mind.He’s realistic in that he doesn’t say that paternalism is completely
unjustified in all cases.But he says
that “better 10 men ruin themselves than
one man be unjustly deprived of liberty…If there is an alternative way of
accomplishing the desired and without restricting liberty although it may
involve great expense, inconvenience, ect., the society must adopt it.”[3]
The main problem I have with a paternalistic or “nanny
state” government is the question of what makes the government legitimate in
making those decisions for us?No matter
how well intentioned they are, why is the government the default “parental”
authority in a nation?The answer is
simply that the government is simply an organization with a monopoly on
violence and theft.Violence in this
sense is the act of hurting someone or demonstrating physical dominance over
another person that isn’t in self-preservation.Essentially the government is
able to legalize the use of violence on someone who is committing whatever
non-violent act that happens to be prohibited in that area such as sodomy or
possessing or consuming illegal drugs.From a purely moral standpoint there is no way I can justify the
government use of violence to stop a non-violent act.
Our paternalistic behaviors should be demonstrated at an individual
level.Of course we want people to
behave in their best interests but as something similar to what Mill said, we
don’t ever really know about what another’s best interests are or what will
make another person happy.If we want to
talk about behaving “paternally”, we know that parents really can’t coerce
their children into doing anything (at least at an older age.)All that parents can hope to do is to teach
their children the best that they can and trust that they will make the right
choices on their own when they are fully autonomous people. As a civilization, we can only rely on
properly educating each other to teach us about the risks of our choices and we
cannot rely on a higher coercive power to force us to do the best thing.
First I have to say I am a little ignorant on the complete
history of the conflict between the Israelis and the Palestinians. I like to think of myself as someone keeps up to date as much as possible on all the current events of the world but there is an incredible amount to learn about on this issue. you'd have to be a religious and political scholar to have a full informed opinion about the conflict in Israel/Palistine. I also find the current conflict in that
region to be very confusing.But
I want to comment on the way this conflict is being politicised.
The vast majority of
people living in the United States and Canada have no idea what it’s like to
live in such a war torn region.But everyone
in the media who like to fight in the left-right area seems to know who is to
blame for the conflict.Why is it that
that Christian-Conservative right is the first to come to the defence of
Israel?And why is it that it’s always
the Muslims and the left that come to the defence of the Palestinians?While neither side like to talk about the
underlying theological and religious conflict that I think is more relevant
that people like to think.I think
everyone needs to take an agnostic stance to this conflict in the Middle East
and just shake our heads at the needless and tragic loss of life.We know very little about how the people on
each side feel and we cannot empathize with people in such an apocalyptic world
because we live in the most comfortable place on earth.How can we say so confidently who is right or
wrong?There is clearly evil and
wrongdoing on both sides but undeniably, the majority of people affected are innocent
people just trying to live their lives. So before you throw your unconditional support behind either side, do a little reading about history. You'll probably find yourself as sad and confused about this whole mess as I am.
I watched the 2008 US presidential election with great
anticipation.Here was someone who
finally seemed like would bring legitimate change to the United States.Barack Obama.He was an unconventional candidate.He had a foreign sounding name, he was half black, he was young and he
wasn’t born with a silver spoon in his mouth.He ran with the slogan of hope and change.It felt like this election actually meant
something because of the disaster of the Bush administration.If Obama won, maybe the United States would
be a more respected place.Maybe they
wouldn’t be the policeman of the world and invade countries without reason.It seemed like the election actually mattered
to the future of the country.
4 years later and what has changed since the Bush
administration?
Nothing, except gays are now allowed to serve openly in the
military.Good one Barry, now everyone
is allowed to kill innocents by your orders.You don’t have to be a libertarian to be disgusted with the president.Compared to Bush, Obama had been a much more
violent president when it comes to unmanned drone attacks.In his entire 8 year presidency, George W
Bush had 45 ordered drone attacks.Obama
ordered 51 in just 2009 alone.
As I type
this American drones are flying over Pakistan and bombing targets they suspect
to be enemies of the United States.The
horrifying fact is that 80% of the casualties of these attacks are civilians as
a reported by RT today.
Probably the worst thing the Obama has done in his
presidency is the signing of the National Defence Authorization Act(NDAA).If you don’t know what this is I seriously
advise you to become educated on this.On this past New Year’s Eve(how sneaky) President Obama signed into law
a bill that allows the American military to arrest and detain American citizens
indefinitely without a trial.This takes
away essential rights that have been valued by every civilized nation for
hundreds of years.
Neither of these issues have ever been mentioned in passing
in the mainstream dialog of the upcoming election.They’re too busy throwing around buzzwords
like “middle class”.The mainstream news
coverage is ignoring the things that Obama and Romney fundamentally agree on
like NDAA and drones and instead talk about useless polarizing quotes like
“Bigbird” and “Binders full of Women”.
The debates are a farce.I find more meaning in watching an episode of WWE Monday Night Raw because
at least everyone watching WWE knows it’s fake.People watch the debates think that this actually has an effect on the
future of the country
To think that these are the two men that are the
best choices that Americans have is such an obvious sign that the 2 party
system is completely broken.Republicans
and Democrats no longer represent distinct ideologies but now are just sports
teams with different animal logos
As many of you know, Rush is my all time favorite band. And many of you may have heard my long winded
rants about why they are. Love em or
hate em, I hope this will convince you why they should be considered one of the
all time greatest bands. I
believe this blog entry is an appropriate precursor to the upcoming Rush
concert in Edmonton on the 30th of September, which as you can tell
I am very excited for.
I probably had heard many rush songs on the radio before, but
I guess the first Rush song I could identify as Rush was
Tom Sawyer. Believe it or not, it was
from an episode of Futurama. Fry is
fighting off an invading alien fleet through the video game, Space Invaders and
the famous Tom Sawyer synth riff is played.
“All right. It's Saturday night, I have no date, a two-liter bottle of Shasta and my all-Rush mix-tape... Let's rock.”
-Fry-
The song was very catchy to me, so shortly after I asked my
friend Sarah if I could borrow a Rush CD.
She lent me their debut album, Rush
and a compilation album, Retrospective 1
and I’ve been a fan ever since. But I
didn’t become a super-fan until band until 3 years after.
In the years of 2010 and 2011, Rush was on their Time Machine
world tour. They were playing the entire
Moving Pictures album. This was very
cool for me because it was my favorite Rush album at the time. Unfortunately for me there were no Alberta
gigs on the tour. The closest concert to
me was in Vancouver. But I decided that
it would be worth it to fly out to, see one of my favorite bands. They are getting old and I had no idea when I
would have the chance to see them again.
I didn’t know all of the songs being played at the concert but I knew
that their live show was phenomenal and I could check one more off my concert
bucket list. So in late June of 2011, I
had a whirlwind 24 hour experience of the city of Vancouver. Luckily by chance I met up with a guy in
downtown Vancouver who I had chatted with earlier in line at Tim Hortons at the
Calgary airport, who was also going to the Rush show. We ended up hanging out for most of the day
and he taught me in the ways of the Rush.
He graciously let me crash on the floor of his hotel room as I had drank
too much beer to make it to the airport after the show as I was previously
planning on.
My seat to see Rush in the Rogers Arena, Vancouver
The show itself was incredible and It is the best live music
show I have experienced. It was a full 3
hours with an intermission midway through.
Ever since then I have become obsessed with the great Canadian trio’s
music and here’s why:
Musical skill
I don’t think anyone who takes music seriously can overlook
the musical skill of Rush. You don’t have to like their music to appreciate the
talent of all three musicians. Because one
of the most amazing things about Rush is their ability to make a 3 piece rock
band sound like a huge prog-rock production with five or six members. As individual musicians (bassist/vocalist
Geddy Lee, guitarist Alex Lifeson and drummer Neil Peart), Rush represents the
best of the best in their respective feilds.
Neil Peart is usually listed as the greatest living drummer in the
world. Geddy Lee is often listed in the
top 5 bassists of all time. Alex Lifeson
is often left off the list of greatest guitarists but I think it’s because he
is overshadowed by the genius of Lee and Peart.
But in my opinion Lifeson has the greatest solo of any instrument of any
rush song in their instrumental masterpiece La Villa Strangiato
Rush’s fearlessness to experiment with different types of
music is also one of their best qualities.
Their career has ranged from early heavy metal in their debut album to
strange psychedelic progressive rock in Caress
of Steel. They have become new wave-ish
when they experimented with heavy use of synth keyboards in the mid 80s. They have never really cared for making music
to top the charts. The only thing that
has mattered to them is their love of making their music no matter how weird it
may be.
Lyrics
“His mind is not for rent to any god or government. Always hopeful, yet discontent. He knows
changes aren’t permanent but change is.”
From Tom Sawyer,
Moving Pictures 1981
Another thing that I really like about Rush is their lyrical
themes. The ideology that is expressed in
the music, especially in their later albums speaks to me in ways other bands
never have. Although Neil’s writing isn’t
especially poetic, his intellect is expressed beautifully. These themes range from science fiction &
fantasy, politics, religion, love & sex.
Their songs are observations about the world around us and songs that ask
what it means to be a human. Their
latest album, Clockwork Angels is a science fictional concept album but most of
the songs seem like life lessons written mostly from Neil’s perspective. There are many atheist themed songs
throughout their catalogue of music: BU2B,
Freewill, Roll the Bones, Ghost Of A Chance, Faithless, Sweet Miracle.
A screen capture from the Rush documentary Beyond the Lighted Stage. Alex Lifeson is reading God is Not Great by the famed atheist, Christopher Hitchens.
Neil Peart also includes some libertarian ideas in his
earlier works. The band’s unofficial
logo is the image that appears on the flipside of the 2112 album cover. The image has become to be known as the “Starman”. It is supposed to represent the individual against
the collective.
The star representing the star of Communism
The song Anthem is based off the Ayn Rand novel
of the same name. Also the album 2112 is
dedicated to “the genius of Ayn Rand”.
Rand was probably the most influential thinker in the libertarian movement.
Live show
Rush is renowned for their amazing live show
performances. I consider the ability to
put on a great live show to be a huge factor for the music I listen to. I find that I get into a band’s music much
more if I think I can eventually see them concert. The Rush show in Vancouver was certainly the
best show I’ve ever seen and I expect no less from them next week in Edmonton.
Canadian
Let’s face it there is a lot of crappy Canadian music out
there. Ok that’s a little unfair but at least
most the stuff that is popular and Canadian is crap. Nickelback, Justin Beiber, Celine Dion, ect. But the fact that Rush is Canadian makes up
for all of that. I admit I have lost a
lot of my nationalism since finding my libertarian and humanist ideologies, but
it does feel good to have such a great band from my homeland.
Longevity
Rush was formed in 1968.
The very same year that Led Zeppelin, Black Sabbath, Yes and Deep purple
were formed. These are all great and
influential bands and they are all probably more popular and better known than
Rush. But none have been as continuously
prolific as Rush has been for as long as they have. Rush
continues to innovate, improve and create new music into their 60s. In fact their newest albums(Clockwork Angels and Snakes & Arrows) is in my opinion some
of their best work.
Their single, "Headlong Flight" from their 2012 album Clockwork Angels
Genuine friends
Probably the reason for their legendary
longevity is their genuine friendship with each other. Unlike many popular bands that break up because
of infighting, drinking, drugs and whatnot, Rush seems to be in a rare
situation for a rock band where they are legitimate friends outside of the band.
Here is an out-take from the Rush documentary Beyond the Lighted Stage where Rush is having dinner with each other. its an example of their goofy & genuine friendship that still lasts even after 40+ years as a band.
I have been thinking a lot about what kind of a legacy of
our civilization will leave. I’m not a
cynical person but even I have to admit that this big party can’t last forever. I like to think that one of the greatest
qualities of human beings is our ambition to discover and know as much as we
can. And as destructive as some of our
technologies and discoveries have been, I think science and technology is our
greatest achievement and our most important legacy.
I came up with an idea several months ago about what I would
do with a shitload of money. As far as
we know, Wikipedia is the single largest collection of knowledge on the
planet. Sure, it’s not what to use when
researching for academic papers but it has a good general overview of pretty
much anything we need to know about. And
the amazing thing about Wikipedia is that it can be edited by anyone so it’s a
good anonymous representation of our collective knowledge.
It is very much the modern day Library of Alexandria. But the only catch about it is that it is all
digital. And just as the Library of
Alexandria was written on flammable paper, Wikipedia could be just as easily be
wiped out. Say in some civilization
ending disaster all the servers that Wikipedia is hosted crash. Aside from all the people that die in this
disaster, I think losing a thing like Wikipedia would be a great tragedy. Yes, believe it or not this is what concerns
me when I think of the end of the world.
So if I were a billionaire I would look to find a way to
preserve all this information so that future civilizations or possible alien
civilizations are able to inherit as much of our knowledge of the universe and
history of life on Earth. Essentially this
is passing on our civilization’s legacy.
I’m thinking of something similar to the Svalbard global seed vault in
Norway. This is a vault which holds and
preserves over 750,000 different types of seeds from around the world in case
of a global catastrophe.
entrance to the Svalbard global seed vault
My idea would be to print every single page on Wikipedia in
every single language on some sort of permanent medium such as stone or
concrete. Then store these documents in
an abandoned mine or inside of a mountain.
As a person who values knowledge over many things in the world, I think
this would be a worthwhile investment.
To stop and think about it for a little while, it’s a little
embarrassing how much time, money and thought we as a society spend on
following professional sports. Billions
of dollars are taken in by professional sports organizations globally and we
willingly and gladly give it to them. Professional
athletes are rewarded with multimillion dollar contracts that make the
paycheques of doctors and lawyers look like the sum of my weekly allowance as a
child. But why do these facts make it seem
like something is wrong with civilization? Perhaps it is the fact that sports seem
so tribal and an expression of our primitive ape within us. But this is the precise reason I will give
for my justification for enjoying it so much.
As a species by nature we are drawn together to belong to a
group. We are a tribal species who, for
the majority of the time that the human species have existed, have lived their
entire lives in small hunter gatherer bands (usually 10-50 people). By necessity, we developed an extremely co-operative
and benevolent relationship with the people we lived with. We created unique identities for our bands
and tribes by way of cultural practices to signify the difference. We marked ourselves with tattoos and wore different
colours. We began circumcising our young
boys, (occasionally girls) stretched our lips, ears and other gruesome body
modifications. We were proud of our tribe to the extent that we physically
fought other human tribes over territory, resources, religion and probably just
bragging rights as well.
As humans began living in larger groups and the global
population began rapidly increasing. This
attitude would always lead to violence throughout human history. It becomes incredibly more tragic when our
tribal attitudes create racist identities that lead to genocide and slavery. And our religious sects that have caused crusades,
terrorism and holy wars. And our
nationalistic pride that has sent countless of millions of young people to
their death in pointless international and world wars.
Now compared to the damage that our primitive collective,
tribal attitudes have done to the progress of human beings, sports seem rather
harmless. In fact I believe it’s a
healthy expression of what it means to be a human being. Yes we are tribal, but it can be expressed in
non-violent ways that bring more people together than divide them. Sure there are exceptions when sporting
events end in violent acts.
....cough...cough... I’m looking at you Vancouver!
But for the most part
people get a great amount of peaceful enjoyment out of watching their home city
team beat their rival team. So you shouldn’t
feel guilty about coughing up money for a ticket to a Calgary Flames game or
enjoying a drink or five at your buddies’ house while watching the Superbowl. And those meatheads who make 27 million a year
to smack a ball with a bat? Well they
are providing an essential service to society. Sure sports are silly when viewed objectively but
so is most other things we enjoy.
For months I have wanted to start writing a blog. Mostly because I always have crazy ideas bouncing around in my head that I want to write down or express in some way. Otherwise I will probably forget about them. And with school beginning again, I think this will be a great platform to get the ideas flowing for the many philosophy papers I will have to write this semester.
As the title implies, the blog may mostly be regarding my passion for the study political ideologies and religion. But I have only written one entry so far so the focus of the blog may change as time goes by. Anyway if you have read this far, thank you for your interest and I hope you enjoy it. Also, if I'm just wrong or if you disagree with something, feedback is greatly appreciated.
