The Wrong Lens

Flying around the LDS bloggernacle is a post written by a woman who calls herself A Well-Behaved Mormon Woman. She claims that Disney's new movie Frozen is "part of the gay agenda to normalize homosexuality."

But as I skimmed through her post, I realized that it may just be that she was watching the film through the wrong lens, and as a result, she missed the fact that she herself is actually an Elsa. My first clue was when she said, "In a liberal culture tenacious at normalizing immorality, stripping those of faith from their ability to speak out in opposition, this needs to be taken seriously."

What if Elsa actually represents not a lesbian, but someone persecuted for their Christianity?

What follows is a summary of the movie in the Well-Behaved Mormon Woman's own words (all errors hers, lol, and too many to sic) along with my revised version of her editorializing in italics (any text I kept from her original editorializing are in quotes).

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Elsa has a great power that she has been taught by her parents, from the time she was a child, is not publicly acceptable and that she must fear its expression, at all cost, thus hide it from people, even her own sister who could be hurt by it - even killed. Shame is at the core of Elsa's feelings about her magical powers: faith in God and Jesus Christ.

As Elsa's power increases, her parents' urge her to learn how to control it, as it would be perceived as evil to others, but Elsa can't - it's impossible. Her parents' make the decision to close the castle to the public, and lock Elsa in her room, so that her power won't be discovered. Not even her sister is allowed to see and play with Elsa: persecution of Christians by society.

Elsa is devastatingly lonely and depressed being force to live a life of isolation, believing her powers to be evil. Her sister, kept from the truth [perhaps as in capital T truth?], and affected by the inflicted secrecy also becomes victim to the dysfunction of her family and experiences equal isolation and confusion: not being able to testify of the things you know to be true "is harmful to the person, family, and society."

The parents are killed in an accident while traveling abroad (off to the next phase of their eternal "progression"), which means that Elsa must take her rightful position among her people, as queen. ("Right to be queen: make what you want out of this one" but I choose to believe it is her divine destiny as a royal daughter of God.) To do so, she faces great fear in going out publicly for her coronation, worrying that her powers might show because she has no control over them: Women have never been taught how to or allowed to exercise their priesthood power. Which, of course, is the way it should be. I'm trying to decide if some rogue progressive Christian sneaked this part in.

While at the same time her sister, Anna, is beyond thrilled at the opportunity to go outside, make friends and perhaps even meet her special someone and have her happily-ever-after: Time to be of the world! Free to party and have crazy amounts of sex!

The gates are opened - Elsa is terrified that people will see through her and that her power will show itself, regardless of what she has done to hide it. (Keep her light under a bushel.) Anna, on the other hand, burst through the gate and experiences joy in being out in the open and meets someone she immediately falls in love with: oh, yes, yes, crazy amounts of sex, "without restriction"!

After only a brief interaction, Anna and Hans decide to marry. Elsa is freaked out that her sister wants to marry someone she only just met: society "dimish[es] marriage, freely given to them without judgment of any kind."

In her anger at her sister's irresponsible behavior, Elsa orders the gates shut, again, and her sister's new fiancé to leave and not return. Anna, is totally confused and begins to oppose Elsa, who becomes even angrier and sees that she is loosing [oh, ugh, ugh I have to sic this one] control of her power. Feeling the need to run and hid, Anna, while trying to discuss the matter with her sister, becomes the cause of Elsa's power to be exposed, in the front of everyone. In shame, she runs away to hide. "Now this is a significant turn-around-message, because [Christians] consider themselves victims, enslaved by the judgments of [atheist] advocates [of secularism] who keep them from what they want and which they believe [persecute believers]. So, in essence, they consider themselves 'frozen,' not able to live their lives out-loud, and freely, however they choose in mainstream society - no moral absolutes."

As expected, the town's people fear Elsa's misunderstood power, and her, and some begin to call her dangerous/evil and want to do away with her. Sister disagrees she is dangerous and sets off to find Elsa, who has gone up into the mountains leaving behind utter destruction in the town, which she's not aware that her power, hidden, has caused. It is a well known religious practice to go to the mountaintop. Jesus, himself, did that. And all that utter destruction? That's what happens when people refuse to repent.

Elsa, away from those who witnessed her power, afraid and thinking her evil, is relieved to finally stop the charade and be in a place where she can finally be herself. While away, and alone, she blossoms physically and creatively, and emotionally is happy to be free. She is now able to openly use her power to create new surroundings, which are beyond what she realized her powers could accomplish - and it is stunningly beautiful! She never wants to go back to that prison and things that living a life in isolation, with freedom to be whom she is, is best for her and everyone. In this way, 'she' won't hurt anyone. Two words: Jonah. Whale.

She is found by her sister, but rejects her - even hurts her and orders her away! Anna tells her that she is affecting everyone even though she left and has no intention of going back. Townspeople who sought her out to do away with the evil find her, she resorts to acting out of fear, and her powers come out again, more negatively. Elsa responds by using her powers to hurt those she says she doesn't want to hurt. She is totally confused and again frightened that she can't control the extent of how her power expresses itself. Christians are afraid of what the world is becoming. But it's the sin Christians hate! Not the people who commit sin! They are so misunderstood! They don't want "to hurt those [they] say [they] don't want to hurt."

As the movie comes to a close, love, becomes the healing factor and without false judgment, ignorance and fear, by society, having been made to see themselves as Elsa's problem ("and not Elsa"), she is now able to suddenly control the negative use of her power. In fact, she is actually able to now use it to benefit society - the power of unconditional love. Jesus' key teaching in a nutshell, no?

I Raise You a Game of Monopoly

You know that story that gets passed around on the internet every few months about the professor who creates a socialist experiment in his classroom and all the students end up failing because no one wants to work hard just to get a lower grade than they deserve? Well, I see that apocryphal story and raise you a game of Monopoly.

Thing is, being concerned about full-blown socialism does not require being against social compacts, and being concerned about unfettered capital ≠ anti-capitalism.

A healthy market economy requires a healthy tension and balance between capital and labor and natural resources. If capital continues to call more and more of the shots (including increasing control over government/military/flow of information/education), where does that lead us? I think Adam Smith must be rolling over in his grave. And Pope Francis isn't having it.

From David Simon (creator of The Wire): "I'm utterly committed to the idea that capitalism has to be the way we generate mass wealth in the coming century. That argument's over. But the idea that it's not going to be married to a social compact, that how you distribute the benefits of capitalism isn't going to include everyone in the society to a reasonable extent, that's astonishing to me . . . Capitalism is a remarkable engine again for producing wealth. It's a great tool to have in your toolbox if you're trying to build a society and have that society advance. You wouldn't want to go forward at this point without it. But it's not a blueprint for how to build the just society. There are other metrics besides that quarterly profit report. . . .Are we all in this together or are we all not?"

The Dream

I watched Martin Luther King, Jr.'s I Have a Dream speech twice on its 50th anniversary today, and the part about people being judged by the content of their character, not the color of their skin struck me a little differently.

Usually, I interpret it as people being seen for who they are, especially in terms of positive attributes, rather than being dragged down by negative racial stereotypes.

But it cuts another way, too.

When someone who is white commits a heinous act, I--as a white person--feel the pain the way humanity feels the pain, but I am not expected to feel the guilt or the shame or to bear any responsibility because I share the perpetrator's skin color. In fact, I do not have to worry that his or her actions will reflect on me in any way.

That is my privilege.

This is my dream: that one day all people who commit heinous acts will be judged by the content of their character and not used to judge others who share the color of their skin.

Weaponizing Goodness

A friend posted this article, which tells a lovely story about the new pope making a point of calling in person to cancel his newspaper subscription, along with a snarky political comment. I also noticed that the article itself is followed by some snarky political comments.

It is a beautiful story about human connection and humility. Why can't we just let a story like this wash over us and inspire us? Why do we have to turn the example he sets into a weapon and use it to condemn others?

A Simple Miracle

I stole the following from an anonymous friend, written in 2010.

"Reflecting on the story of the loaves and fishes, I realized that the miracle of the story might be as simple as Jesus asking for help and finding one boy who was willing to share. Perhaps heaven didn't need to provide the bread and fish. Perhaps other people, who had food but were keeping it for themselves, watched the boy, felt the spirit and had a change of heart. Perhaps when they all shared--when they all took a moment to think about other's needs--there was more than enough food for everyone. Perhaps the lesson Jesus needed to teach was how we can solve our problems if we work together. With the fear and anger in our communities, perhaps the miracle we need most is the miracle of changing hearts."

Eden

The story of Adam and Eve is to me a metaphor for the development of human consciousness, when we shifted from operating on instinct to becoming sentient beings who began to understand our world on a whole new level. We became aware of our actions and the actions of others. We became aware of the impact of all of those actions, for both good and evil. We became children of God.

I think, to our detriment, we've been trying to create the bubble of protection we sense we had in the Garden of Eden ever since. 

It can manifest itself in different ways for different people. We search out and cling to pat answers. We don't face hard things straight on. We create dogmatic systems of rules that lull us into believing we're doing something good when we follow them. We refuse to listen to people who don't see things the way we do. We whitewash history (of our faith, of our nation, of ourselves) because that is more soothing than owning up to and learning from mistakes. We resist commitment (to people, to ideas, to meaningful work). We use what we earn not just to sustain us, but to make ourselves comfortable. We ignore things that make us uncomfortable. We separate ourselves from people we view as sinners. Or who are different from us.

We fear knowledge, the fruit of the tree.

Instead of following the admonition to live IN the world, but not OF the world, we want the safety of living ON the world, but not IN the world. Engaging is painful and messy and dangerous.

We think we are protecting ourselves, enabling us to get through this life unscathed and on to the next. But instead we miss out on true spiritual growth. We miss out on life.

Another Day, Another Meme

Maybe this sounds good in theory. Maybe. But I can tell you from experience that making such a distinction can get really muddy really quickly in practice. It's not always easy to judge who is needy and who is simply lazy.

For example, hopelessness often presents itself as laziness.

And there's this: when we put so many barriers into place in our attempt to make sure that the undeserving don't get something they don't deserve, we often fail in our goal to help people when they really need it.

Siege Mentality

Nearly every semester I have at least one student who writes about some aspect of gun control. One hundred percent of them have been pro gun ownership.

Last year, shortly after the Utah State Legislature passed a law that made it legal for people with concealed weapons permits to carry guns on public college campuses, a couple of students wanted to focus on that.

A few weeks into their research, one of my students came to me, dismayed.

"I thought I'd turn up more data than not to support my opinion that more guns in the hands of law-abiding citizens will make us more safe," he said. "But I'm finding it's a bit of a draw." (Okay, so that last bit wasn't his exact phrasing, but I'd have laughed at the pun if he said it that way.)

According to his findings, sometimes people are safer if someone has a gun, and sometimes people are in more danger. It can go either way, and there aren't enough instances of public shootings or attempted shootings to make a definitive claim one way or the other.

We talked about what the options could be if the data he was turning up was inconclusive. Ultimately, he proposed a thesis that stated if that is the case, we must err on the side of the Second Amendment. His position was sane and well reasoned, and, because he had learned about situations that flew in the face of his original opinion, he was not afraid to address legitimate safety concerns. While he argued that people with concealed weapons permits should be free to carry a gun on campus, he also argued that the process involved in issuing concealed weapons permits should be wisely regulated.

At the end of the semester, I had to ask him if he ever carried on campus. Turns out he did. Every single day.

Personally, I told him, I would not choose to carry a weapon like that. I would not want to live with an ever present reminder of a threat that would most likely never materialize. It would make me more fearful, less free. I think he felt empowered. I would feel imprisoned. I'd rather take my chances.

On the other hand, now that my students are armed . . .

Fetishizing Self Reliance

I want to start out this post by saying very clearly that I believe in the principle of meeting our own needs whenever possible, especially so we can be in a better position to provide assistance to others. Providing for ourselves, living within our means, all of it. It's personally satisfying, and it's good citizenship. Both of my jobs involve helping people get to a place of self reliance.

But I wonder if the value we place on self reliance is causing us to lose important perspective. Too many voices I hear are becoming more judgmental and less charitable. And they are getting louder.

The other day I was talking with someone who represents a private religious charity that provides temporary aid for people who have no place to go (a few nights of shelter, a change of clothes, a bus token). He mentioned that they'd discovered a particular client had managed to get help from several of their offices to the tune of hundreds and hundreds of dollars. What should they do with clients like him? Clients who are becoming dependent?

Turns out I've met the particular client he was referring to. He's a man who has brain damage from being shot in the head twice.

He is becoming dependent!? That is the main concern?

When on earth did Jesus ever say to give to the poor unless, of course, you are concerned that they are becoming dependent?

Heaven help us!

We Delude Ourselves

Four years ago I had a student in my freshman composition course who focused his research on answering the question of whether the United States has been justified in its military actions over the past 20 or 30 years.

He looked into some of the major or most well known conflicts (Bosnia, Somalia, the first Gulf War, Afghanistan and Iraq) and concluded that each decision to engage was worth the cost in blood and treasure.

I didn't push back like I might have under other circumstances. In this case, he had enlisted in the military himself and wanted to be sure he was doing something he could believe in. I still wonder if I made the right choice about that.

The truth is I don't believe the U.S. has been justified in all of its military actions over the years. Of course, we should defend ourselves. But we seem to have stretched the meaning of the word defend pretty darn thin.

Preemptive war to stop Iraq from developing weapons of mass destruction. Protecting against the theoretical falling of theoretical communist dominoes. Protecting business interests in the middle east and Latin America.

Killing innocents and risking the lives of soldier surrogates to protect the profits of a small percentage of people is not even remotely the moral equivalent of protecting our homes and families.

Around and Around

I once had a neighbor say to me when her unemployment benefits ran out, “Oh, well, my vacation is over and now I must go find a job."

Because there are people who milk our safety net, does that mean I think the system shouldn’t exist?

No, I don’t.

Of course, we should always seek ways to make the bureaucracy more effective and cost efficient. And we should never lose sight of helping people stand on their own feet whenever possible. But in far more cases than not, the safety net meets real needs--needs that often exist because capitalism has some pretty sharp edges. It’s nice to think that only the people who take the risks with their capital are the ones who will suffer if they miscalculate. But they aren’t.

I once went in to my job at a computer software company an hour late because I had a doctor’s appointment and discovered that my boss and my entire staff of six had been laid off while I was gone.

Because there are companies that fail to plan perfectly and use layoffs as a management tool to make their short-term bottom lines look better to shareholders, do I think we should prevent them from ever laying anyone off?

No, I don’t.

Companies need flexibility to cut their operating costs in order to stay in the game.

I once saw a company that had been in my family for two generations permanently shut down during a recession due in part to union demands that were entrenched and inflexible.

Because unions sometimes fight for a level of worker benefits and protections that ultimately compromise an entire enterprise, do I think we should abolish them?

No, I don’t.

Can you imagine a society in which the right to organize and stand up to tyranny--whether public or private--didn’t exist? It’s not hard. There are plenty of examples.

I once got called into my new boss’s office the day after my old boss and my entire staff had been laid off. She was looking for assurance that I would still be able to meet all of the deadlines the following month. My job was on the line. At first I gave it a shot, but I recognized very quickly that it would break me. I was blessed to have resources that enabled me to walk away. Many people don’t have that luxury. Many people end up broken.

What do I make of all this?

The public sector has strengths and flaws. The private sector has strengths and flaws. Any organization that exists for any reason has strengths and flaws. Every single individual has strengths and flaws.

What we need to do when we problem solve is to find that balancing point at which strengths are relatively maximized and flaws are relatively minimized. But that requires real discourse in which everyone acknowledges not just the strengths but also the weaknesses of their proposed solutions, their ideologies, and the people and organizations they represent.

We could kick some serious problems in the butt if we did that.

Of Good Conscience

A friend of mine posted this on facebook today. She's an unabashed follower of Rush Limbaugh, Andrew Breitbart, etc.

This is what I posted in response. I'm usually not this brave.

"You're right. I need to speak up. You ready? I think Dinesh D'Souza's theories about Obama's 'rage' are based on poor logic, drawing the flimsiest of conclusions from twisted facts. Over the past five years, Obama's opponents have sucked people into believing a thoroughly fabricated version of who Obama is, including far too many people I love and otherwise respect. Frankly, it's disconcerting and bewildering.

"Disagree with his center-left policies. Fine. Criticize him because our economy isn't growing fast enough for our taste, ignoring the fact that by the end of 2008 we were in free fall and our economy is now stabilized and moving in the right direction (while many other developed economies are still reeling). Fine. Don't vote for him. Fine.

"But he is not even remotely a far-left radical with an anti-business, anti-American agenda. Trust me. I know a surprising number of far-left radicals and they don't believe he is one of them. Hell, even the health care reform he pushed for had its genesis in proposals made by Republicans during the Clinton years and the conservative Heritage Foundation (both the mandate and the exchanges).

"I sure hope if he is re-elected, our good citizens will take a deep breath. But I'm afraid the hatred of a man that doesn't even exist runs too deep for that."

I get Orwell on a whole new and frightening level.

Hollowing Out

One of the things I've been observing about our society is that we are hollowing ourselves out. It's more than just a matter of prioritizing appearance over substance, though that is a big part of it. I may explore this idea more in future posts because I see this happening in so many facets of our lives--communication, problem solving, product design, education, religion, architecture. Everywhere, really.

Here's a piece of it related to the hollowing out of our economy that I came across in this article adapted from Joseph Steiglitz' The Price of Inequality.

The word "rent" was originally used, and still is, to describe what someone received for the use of a piece of his land . . . The term "rent" was eventually extended to include monopoly profits . . . In time, the meaning was expanded still further to include the returns on other kinds of ownership claims. If the government gave a company the exclusive right to import a certain amount of a certain good, such as sugar, then the extra return was called a "quota rent." The acquisition of rights ot mine or drill produces a form of rent. So does preferential tax treatment for special interests . . .

The magnitude of "rent seeking" in our economy, while hard to quantify, is clearly enormous. Individuals and corporations that excel at rent seeking are handsomely rewarded. The financial industry, which now largely functions as a market in speculation rather than a tool for promoting economic productivity, is the rent-seeking sector par excellence. Rent seeking goes beyond speculation. The financial sector also gets rents out of its domination of the means of payment--the exorbitant credit- and debit-card fees and also the less well-known fees charged to merchants and passed on, eventually, to consumers . . . 

In recent years, the financial sector has accounted for some 40 percent of all corporate profits. This does not mean that its social contribution sneaks into the plus column, or comes even close. The crisis showed how it could wreak havoc on the economy. In a rent-seeking economy such as ours has become, private returns and social returns are badly out of whack . . .Rent seeking makes nothing grow. Efforts are directed toward getting a larger share of the pie rather than increasing the size of the pie. But it's worse than that: rent seeking distorts resource allocations and makes the economy weaker. It is a centripetal force: the rewards of rent seeking become so outsize that more and more energy is directed toward it, at the expense of everything else.

Later in the article, Steiglitz actually refers to a hollowing out, referring to issues with the wage structure in the Soviet economy before it collapsed and what we can learn from it.

The widespread sense by workers in the Soviet Union that they were being mistreated in exactly this way--exploited by managers who lived high on the hog--played a major role in the hollowing out of the Soviet economy, and in its ultimate collapse. As the old Soviet joke had it, "They pretend to pay us, and we pretend to work."

Patriotism?

It does feel this way sometimes. A lot of times.

Reinventing Robin Hood

My son and I have been reading the original Robin Hood from time to time (it's a bit of a rough read aloud for a variety of reasons, not the least of which is the level of bawdiness!).

Early in the book I discovered that the whole "taking from the rich to give to the poor" sense of Robin Hood that we all grew up with has been seriously distorted. Robin Hood was really all about returning to the poor who had been exploited what was rightfully theirs.

So, in all that year, fivescore or more good stout yoemen gathered about Robin Hood, and chose him to be their leader and their chief. Then they vowed that even as they themselves had been despoiled they would despoil their oppressors, whether baron, abbot, knight, or squire, and that from each they would take that which had been wrung from the poor by unjust taxes, or land rents, or wrongful fines; but to the poor folk they would give a helping hand in need or trouble, and would return to them that which had been unjustly taken from them.

Not that I'd recommend we go about dealing with things the way Robin Hood and his band of men did, but we've got companies making record profits, productivity levels are at all time highs, and wages are stagnating. The average worker is losing ground in our society, and a society that has the kind of extreme inequality we've been trending toward ends up ripe for unrest or worse.

I certainly don't advocate for equal outcomes--some inequality can be motivating. But I do advocate for a more balanced economy and a fairer playing field--extreme inequality is demoralizing and destabilizing.

We've got large and growing segments of our society that work their fingers to the bone and have very little to show for it (in some cases, why wouldn't they opt for welfare?). In the meantime, our cost of living goes up and up (cities have minimum lot sizes and minimum square foot requirements for homes, access to technology is increasingly essential, etc.), pushing more and more people to the margins. They have to take on two or three jobs just to make ends meet, never mind get ahead!

Something's got to change. And we're either going to be ahead of it--making conscious, constructive choices--or we're going to be paying for it in painful ways. Far more painful ways than dealing with union negotiations or with a measly 3.5% marginal tax increase, up from the lowest tax rates in my lifetime.

Broken Stones

Came across this article the other day: "Debtors' Prison for Failure to Pay for Your Own Trial." The key quote:

Criminal justice debt drags people further away from reintegration with civil society. A person's life can spiral out of their control when interest, late fees, revocation of a driver's license and ineligibility for public assistance, mean that unpaid criminal justice debt snowballs. You can't get blood from a stone but if you try, you can break the stone.

In the past year and a half I've met many broken stones.

I've been surprised to learn how many inmates at the county jail are there for failure to pay fines and how many of them have lost their jobs due to incarceration for failure to pay fines. I was also surprised to learn that people who are serving sentences for misdemeanor charges are required to pay to stay. Many of them are thousands of dollars in debt to the community when they are released.

Part of the thinking behind our local pay-to-stay program is that it will encourage people to stop committing crimes. I get that, and it may be true for some. But based on my experience, I suspect that it is a predominantly counterproductive idea.

Sure inmates are in a pickle because of their own choices. I do believe we all need to face the consequences of our choices. But most of them are already paying for their choices in a multitude of ways. And they will be paying for their choices long after they've served their sentences. If we want them to choose a legitimate path, it doesn't make sense to me to marginalize them even more by pushing them further into debt.

What does make sense--from both a public safety standpoint (politically feasible) and a humanitarian standpoint (which is apparently no longer as politically feasible because, you see, "we are a Christian nation" and so no one should be forced to be charitable through taxation)--is to do what we can to draw people in from the margins of society.

In Vain

Another photo that has been making the rounds on facebook that feels like a punch in the gut. Not in a "truth hurts" kind of way (which is what people who post it would argue), but in a battering-souls-in-the-name-of-God kind of way. If the loving God people claim exists, I'm quite certain this is not a message he'd embrace. In fact, I think this is exactly the kind of thing he meant when he asked us not to take his name in vain.

I have great respect for people who stand up for their beliefs, especially when it makes them vulnerable to derision and scorn. I think there's an important difference, though, between standing up for yourself (and your God) and wielding your faith like a weapon.

Pulse Uno de Inglés

This picture of John Wayne with the caption "Now just why in the hell do I have to press '1' for English?" has been making the rounds on facebook lately. Sigh.

I'm reminded of a conversation I had with a high school student a few years ago who was complaining that the instructions on a box of macaroni and cheese were in Spanish as well as English.

I asked him if he thought private companies, who are responding to the demands of a free market, should be restricted from or penalized for providing services in languages other than English. And who says their markets stop at our borders? "Oh," he said. "I hadn't thought about it that way."

The Beginning

Yes, I'm starting another blog. This one is going to be focused on ideas that I want to think through, sometimes in bits and pieces, sometimes in longer more cohesive posts.

I'm driven by two things. One is my frustration with binary thinking in our culture (nationally and locally). The other is my belief that pretty much anything can be a double-edged sword. Water is essential to life. But too much water can kill us.

Exploring complexity and finding balance. That's what I'm striving for.