I read your comment and again feel compelled to respond.
First the idea of a state without the compulsion of relligion is enshrined in the original Declaration of Independence of the United States. Regardless of how the equality was only offered to white men (and less wholescale to white women), is moot since whomever they considered human beings at that point in time were bound by the Declaration which offered the freedom of religion and association. The 1st president of the new found Republic himself was a deist and did not prescribe himself to any singular theory of God or religion (although was probably culturally attached to the story of a Christ Saviour). How the hell this disolved into "One Nation Under God" is interesting. It wasn't the pilgrims who wanted a new Republic, it was others who did, but the philosophy of the pilgrims, the evangelical Christianity of the pilgrims has become the almost de-facto informing thought behind much of American thought, politics and international interaction over the last 60 odd years, especially since the 1970's and the end of hippie culture towards a more conservative America.
The reason there are less self-identified Christians in the UK and England specifically is I believe inspired by two very important things:
1. The revolt against religion in much of Europe, as it was the Churches and the authorities of the Churches that played the most central roles in people's lives. It was a revolt against the power the Churches held and the authority they possessed over their constituents. This is most clearly seen in the rejection of the Church in post-revolutionary France and in something closer to home, the rejection of the Church during the Quiet Revolution in Quebec during the 1960's.
2. The above point however is minor. It helped create a mindset, a foundation of thought that leads into the major turning point - acceptance of Science and the demands of Scientific proof. I believe this is clearly and best linked to the publishing of Darwin's Origin of the Species which when published was extraordinary in its blasphemy but as time passed has become accepted as the rule rather than the exception. The wider and mainstream acceptance of evolutionary thought in Europe and in particular in England is perhaps why there aren't as many self-identified Christians. The English have chosen overwhlemingly to accept Evolution as a fact. In America, many more deride, ridicule and steadfastly ignore the idea that Evolution has occured and is continually occuring. Creationism or Intelligent Design is still a matter of fundamental thought to a large segment of the American population and by and large of the Americas themselves.
As for the Stephen Fry Clock, Emily got me a talking Alarm clock in the voice of the inimitable Stephen Fry for Christmas that wakes me up every morning with random series of phrases to get up, random snooze phrases and a sleep meditation should I choose to activate it. He does it in the persona of a butler. By far one the coolest things ever in the Ursa Minor sphere.
-s
Thursday, March 18, 2010
Tuesday, March 16, 2010
Conflicts
My friend Nick has his obssession, not a slight one, but a full hard-on obsession with Craig Ferguson. Ferguson is this Scottish comic and writer who does the late night tv thing and has taken out American citizenship and all that. Nick sometime ago sent me this really intriguing clip of Craig Ferguson and my alarm clock (Stephen Fry) discussing their mutual love of America.
Nick later flushed out this opinion in his e-mail to me about how America is a land of adventurers and Europe lands of settlers and this is what makes America such a fascination, that it is rooted in adventure.
Let me then being by saying I hate America. Let me being again by saying I love America.
This polarity of thought and emotion towards America, informs, colours, biases my outlook on the American state and its people. This seeming incongruity of feeling is the foundation of my rationale on America.
You should know that my favourite band is still an American one. The books that most influenced and informed me growing up, that really fostered my love of literature were mainly American books, American stories and American thoughts. My favourite movies are American movies. To this day the best cinema in the world mainly comes from American hands or at least hands that get washed and shaped in America to some extent. The main parts of my culture growing up were unabashedly American - fast food, consumerism, saturday morning cartoons. The best parts of my childhood were American, - Sesame Street, cartoons, sugar with a side of cereal.
All this I know. and perhaps from some resentment I began as I got older to grit my teeth at America. Of all I had been presented and loved about America, most of it was false, a cover-up, deflections. The band I loved mad a mockery of the American dream and values. The cartoons I adored were either made for kids to buy toys or to promote ideas of violence and American philosophy, specifically Reaganism to young minds. Cereals with sugar we know are like giving kids a bowl of cigarettes, and fast food, well you might as well just have a cigarette.
America was two-faced. Evil.
Then I began to get interested in politics and then America became even more insidious. The foreign policy of the "Empire" was startling. When one says America is a land of adventurits it may be so, but it is often an adventure at the expense of other races, tribes, lands and nations.
It is easy to love America and it is easy to hateAmerica and for the same reasons. The promise of America, the idea of America is perhaps one the most fascinating ideas that ever came about. A revolt for freedom from taxes, from God, from anything but free association. This is the grandest statement of liberty ever concocted. The seeds of this thought come from England but are grown in the Americas and in particular the United States of. The very idea of individual liberty is so threatening and enticing that it still serves as a beacon for the sick, poor, hungry and tired of the world.
The experiment however failed.
America is not free. It has not been free for some time. Granted the policies and spirit are still in place for success under the original principles, but often one needs a certain net worth or claim to be able to exercise the original dream of America. The founding fathers of the United States were mainly atheists or deists, not believers in the predominant Christian thought of the day. How has that evolved in America? If a congressman so much as hints towards agnoticism, they no longer publicly qualify to lead people. God has become such an ingrained thought of the American psyche, that the very notion of American freedom is laughable.
In that clip with Ferguson and Fry, Fry mentions how with exception to the Natives and Blacks, people who chose to come to America did just that, they chose. And this he argues makes it so great, that they one day decided in favour of adventure, decided to leave what they had while others said they were content to settle. The analogy here is misleading. Yes people came to America once because of that dream to adventure. Many now come because the American adventure has forced them from their lives and lands to seek a place for refuge which ironically is the very place that has displaced them. From the drug wars of Central America and the American meddle within it, the puppet governments of Central and South America, the puppet governments of the middle east and so forth, the American state has displaced so many people, they they've become what the British were once when their Empire began to venture outwards. The American people have become settlers. In perhaps less of the way since migration in America is still part of its great story whereas migration within the UK was never really as much of an appeal.
The same advenutre is happening in Europe however. After their disastrous attempts at colonization, immigrants have begun to flood Europe. The displaced souls of the world are gritting their teeth and finding a place to call home within the places that tore their homelands apart. Sure they are choosing to be there (and in Canada as well, especially in the major cities of this country). They are changing the very fabric of the societies that once changed the very fabric of theirs. This is the great adventure, the migration of cultures and the trumping of cultures by either sheer number or homeland legislations.
Once the British were adventurists. They set sail to conquer the world, piece by piece, human heart by human heart, then settled for their lot. America is on the brink of this same collapse. The adventure is no longer worthy of dying for. Soon they will settle and the adventure will pass to another place and nation, perhaps the Chinese, perhaps the Indians, anywhere there are numbers, there are consumers and when one place becomes too crowded, the people in that place want more space to be free. They will venture out to conquer adn re-align once more.
The advenutre itself isn't dead. Nor are the adventurists dead. They just look different now. Even your adventure Nick, outside tis country to the one you are in is similar. It is the transfer of thought and the desire to be free. Wanderlust.
America still has that lust to wander, only they do it through grenades and guns, they know no other way. The promise of that land is dying. Fry said that he can't understand how American cannot still be a land of optimists. Fry only has to look at his own National history to see how optimism, arrogance and cheek can easily over time mold itself into weariness, embarassment and a long sigh.
America was once the greatest experiment in the world, the greatest show on earth.
We will draw the curtain soon.
(yes I have a Stephen Fry alarm clock. That just may be the most important part of this piece)
Nick later flushed out this opinion in his e-mail to me about how America is a land of adventurers and Europe lands of settlers and this is what makes America such a fascination, that it is rooted in adventure.
Let me then being by saying I hate America. Let me being again by saying I love America.
This polarity of thought and emotion towards America, informs, colours, biases my outlook on the American state and its people. This seeming incongruity of feeling is the foundation of my rationale on America.
You should know that my favourite band is still an American one. The books that most influenced and informed me growing up, that really fostered my love of literature were mainly American books, American stories and American thoughts. My favourite movies are American movies. To this day the best cinema in the world mainly comes from American hands or at least hands that get washed and shaped in America to some extent. The main parts of my culture growing up were unabashedly American - fast food, consumerism, saturday morning cartoons. The best parts of my childhood were American, - Sesame Street, cartoons, sugar with a side of cereal.
All this I know. and perhaps from some resentment I began as I got older to grit my teeth at America. Of all I had been presented and loved about America, most of it was false, a cover-up, deflections. The band I loved mad a mockery of the American dream and values. The cartoons I adored were either made for kids to buy toys or to promote ideas of violence and American philosophy, specifically Reaganism to young minds. Cereals with sugar we know are like giving kids a bowl of cigarettes, and fast food, well you might as well just have a cigarette.
America was two-faced. Evil.
Then I began to get interested in politics and then America became even more insidious. The foreign policy of the "Empire" was startling. When one says America is a land of adventurits it may be so, but it is often an adventure at the expense of other races, tribes, lands and nations.
It is easy to love America and it is easy to hateAmerica and for the same reasons. The promise of America, the idea of America is perhaps one the most fascinating ideas that ever came about. A revolt for freedom from taxes, from God, from anything but free association. This is the grandest statement of liberty ever concocted. The seeds of this thought come from England but are grown in the Americas and in particular the United States of. The very idea of individual liberty is so threatening and enticing that it still serves as a beacon for the sick, poor, hungry and tired of the world.
The experiment however failed.
America is not free. It has not been free for some time. Granted the policies and spirit are still in place for success under the original principles, but often one needs a certain net worth or claim to be able to exercise the original dream of America. The founding fathers of the United States were mainly atheists or deists, not believers in the predominant Christian thought of the day. How has that evolved in America? If a congressman so much as hints towards agnoticism, they no longer publicly qualify to lead people. God has become such an ingrained thought of the American psyche, that the very notion of American freedom is laughable.
In that clip with Ferguson and Fry, Fry mentions how with exception to the Natives and Blacks, people who chose to come to America did just that, they chose. And this he argues makes it so great, that they one day decided in favour of adventure, decided to leave what they had while others said they were content to settle. The analogy here is misleading. Yes people came to America once because of that dream to adventure. Many now come because the American adventure has forced them from their lives and lands to seek a place for refuge which ironically is the very place that has displaced them. From the drug wars of Central America and the American meddle within it, the puppet governments of Central and South America, the puppet governments of the middle east and so forth, the American state has displaced so many people, they they've become what the British were once when their Empire began to venture outwards. The American people have become settlers. In perhaps less of the way since migration in America is still part of its great story whereas migration within the UK was never really as much of an appeal.
The same advenutre is happening in Europe however. After their disastrous attempts at colonization, immigrants have begun to flood Europe. The displaced souls of the world are gritting their teeth and finding a place to call home within the places that tore their homelands apart. Sure they are choosing to be there (and in Canada as well, especially in the major cities of this country). They are changing the very fabric of the societies that once changed the very fabric of theirs. This is the great adventure, the migration of cultures and the trumping of cultures by either sheer number or homeland legislations.
Once the British were adventurists. They set sail to conquer the world, piece by piece, human heart by human heart, then settled for their lot. America is on the brink of this same collapse. The adventure is no longer worthy of dying for. Soon they will settle and the adventure will pass to another place and nation, perhaps the Chinese, perhaps the Indians, anywhere there are numbers, there are consumers and when one place becomes too crowded, the people in that place want more space to be free. They will venture out to conquer adn re-align once more.
The advenutre itself isn't dead. Nor are the adventurists dead. They just look different now. Even your adventure Nick, outside tis country to the one you are in is similar. It is the transfer of thought and the desire to be free. Wanderlust.
America still has that lust to wander, only they do it through grenades and guns, they know no other way. The promise of that land is dying. Fry said that he can't understand how American cannot still be a land of optimists. Fry only has to look at his own National history to see how optimism, arrogance and cheek can easily over time mold itself into weariness, embarassment and a long sigh.
America was once the greatest experiment in the world, the greatest show on earth.
We will draw the curtain soon.
(yes I have a Stephen Fry alarm clock. That just may be the most important part of this piece)
Monday, March 8, 2010
The Weather Report (small differences)
sorry nick, i'm still working on that USA post...give me a few more days and hopefully I can have it up by then...
until then though just a note...
this weekend the weather has been spectacular. Gorgeous. In this part of the world that means plus degree temperatures that approach the 8-10 degree centigrade mark.
Clear, clear skies, full of blue, awash in sunshine. The smell of mud, grass and puddles emerge from their own slumber.
Today, it is 11 degrees with sesame street sunny skies, a medium breeze that continues to encourage jackets, but lighter jackets and a slow shedding of complicated winter layers.
These are the days that remind me of those times when I would skip school for the sake of sunshine and rustling trees.
All I wanted to do today was go home and kiss my wife and take a walk until the sun set down for the evening.
Mornings like today, afternoons like today do everything they can to engender a positive response to our surroundings. More smile, less worry, just happiness at being in a moment that reminds us of being young and reminds us that we still are, that so many more warm sunny days are around the bend.
They call this a false spring. If so, I entreat the lie to hold a little longer, to lie a little more. I wish nothing more than my ignorance in the bliss of this day.
-s
until then though just a note...
this weekend the weather has been spectacular. Gorgeous. In this part of the world that means plus degree temperatures that approach the 8-10 degree centigrade mark.
Clear, clear skies, full of blue, awash in sunshine. The smell of mud, grass and puddles emerge from their own slumber.
Today, it is 11 degrees with sesame street sunny skies, a medium breeze that continues to encourage jackets, but lighter jackets and a slow shedding of complicated winter layers.
These are the days that remind me of those times when I would skip school for the sake of sunshine and rustling trees.
All I wanted to do today was go home and kiss my wife and take a walk until the sun set down for the evening.
Mornings like today, afternoons like today do everything they can to engender a positive response to our surroundings. More smile, less worry, just happiness at being in a moment that reminds us of being young and reminds us that we still are, that so many more warm sunny days are around the bend.
They call this a false spring. If so, I entreat the lie to hold a little longer, to lie a little more. I wish nothing more than my ignorance in the bliss of this day.
-s
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