Sorry, but I don't think there's going to be a Sunday comic this week. Bad form, I know, but it can't be helped.

You have to be in a wicked mood to draw comics like mine, but I saw "T'aegeukgi Huinalli-myeo" yesterday, and just can't seem to cheer myself out of The Pit of Despair. While I didn't exit the theater a blubbering mess (my buddy's wife had to borrow my Kleenex-- she was a mess, and even my buddy was a bit misty-eyed), I did leave with a very tight throat. We three stepped out of the cinema, piled into the car, started driving-- and no one said a thing for about 20 minutes. When the silence finally broke, we found we had very little to say.

Cinematically speaking, the movie borrows the visual tricks and storytelling tropes you've seen in American war films like "Saving Private Ryan" and "Platoon." "T'aegeukgi" is a morality play that centers on two brothers. It's arguably more complex than "Platoon," in which Charlie Sheen is faced with a fairly straightforward moral dilemma personified by his two spiritual fathers, Sgt. Elias (Willem Dafoe as the good guy) and Sgt. Barnes (Tom Berrenger as the bad guy).

The symbolism in "T'aegeukgi" (and I have to give Korean filmmakers credit for their talent in making symbol-rich films) often reminded me of the yin-yang symbol at the heart of the South Korean flag. That symbol, the t'aegeuk, or Great Ultimate, shows a cosmos in process, one in which yin and yang intertwine with and imply each other. You see this cosmic tumble in the interaction between the two brothers: the elder brother, already bitter, seeks glory (and perhaps death) in combat. He'd send his younger brother off the battlefield if he could, because despite his gruffness, he loves his younger brother deeply. The younger brother, a gentler and more compassionate soul, simply wants to survive the war and desperately begs his older brother to stop risking his life. This conflict is fairly clear-cut in the first half of the film, but becomes murky and confused-- like war itself-- in the second half.

For me, as the eldest of three brothers, the film was hard to watch because I could put myself in the place of the movie's elder brother. Though I never express this to my younger brothers, I feel very protective of them, and like the older brother in the film, I'd want to send my younger brothers out of harm's way. Sorry if I'm revealing too much, but the elder brother dies to give his younger brother the chance to survive, and I was left hoping that I could be so noble. If anything ever happened to my brothers, I'm not sure what I'd do, though I know I'd feel responsible.

"T'aegeukgi" did a great job of depicting the Korea of half a century ago. It fleshed out, in my mind, many of the stories my mother told me about her own horrifying experience in that war, in which she lost two brothers, and which is still the source of nightmares for her. Mom can't watch "Taegeukgi"; I'd never recommend it to her (though I'm recommending it to Dad).

I suppose what makes this viewing experience different from watching "Saving Private Ryan" or "Platoon" is that World War II and the Vietnam War are over. Here, barely 30 or so miles from where I sit, there's still a DMZ, and technically, there's still a war going on. This isn't over for the Korean people.

Strangely enough, "T'aegeukgi" seems to support my position on Korean brotherhood. Yes, North and South were one people. There's no denying the long and deep historical ties between them. As the movie shows when the older brother loses faith (he thinks the younger brother is dead) and switches sides to fight for the North Koreans, it's possible for those ties to be severed. But if this symbolism is political, then it's also optimistic: the older brother's change of heart, when he rediscovers his younger brother and gives his life to save him, is that brothers, once cruelly separated and devastated by an act of fate, can find and love each other again. That would be my hope for the future as well.

There's a lot more going on in "T'aegeukgi" than I've described. It's a complex film. My buddy's verdict was, "Some things are more important than ideology, communist, capitalist, whatever." I can see where he's coming from. His wife's verdict was, "Sad. So, so sad."

There we are. Now you know why there's no Sunday comic. Am feeling a bit too drained and depressed to stick one up. Much of my weekend has been spent in planning lessons for the upcoming teaching gig, and I think I'll keep doing that this evening.

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The folk understanding of karma is, "What goes around comes around." The Korean Buddhist expression for this is captured by the Sino-Korean phrase "In Gwa Eung Bo." The "in" comes from the word "weon-in," which means "cause." The "gwa" is from "gyeol-gwa," which is "result" or "effect." As a pair, "in-gwa" means "cause and effect." The next pair of syllables, "eung-bo," means something like "retribution."



In this case, I used Korean letters instead of Chinese characters.

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KAPLAN

See my review of Stephen Kaplan's very interesting Different Paths, Different Summits, a book that offers a creative pluralistic hypothesis based largely on the work of David Bohm. I wanted to return to this briefly today to focus on some of the properties of holograms that make Kaplan's hypothesis atypical.

1. Implicate order and explicate order. The changing holographic images you see would constitute the explicate order of the hologram. The implicate order would be the interference patterns inscribed on the surface of the material being used to create the hologram.

2. Multiple images on the same surface. You can inscribe multiple images onto the same holographic surface, thereby producing many different holograms. Religious implication: one implicate order, many explicate orders. However, Kaplan is firm in the conviction that neither order, implicate or explicate, is logically prior to the other.

3. Wholeness in fragmentation. This has to be one of the strangest properties of holograms. Did you know that, if you break a hologram into pieces, each piece will project a smaller version of the entire image? I didn't know this until I read Kaplan's book. So if you start off with a large hologram of an elephant, then cut the hologram into six pieces, you don't get sections of an elephant-- you get six whole elephants! The religious implication is that every part of reality is a reflection of (or contains within itself) the entirety of reality. This dovetails with how some Taoists used to think. It's also an intuition found in a lot of different cultures.

4. Holomovement. This isn't actually a property of current holograms, though it could become so. The concept of holomovement is necessary, however, for Kaplan's pluralistic hypothesis to hold any water. If you enter the discussion by offering up only a typical hologram as an analogy, someone's bound to come along and say, "But reality isn't static and holographic images are." So underlying Kaplan's argument is this notion of holomovement.

As I said in my review, I don't quite buy Kaplan's hypothesis because it, like all other pluralistic hypotheses, still hangs everything on a single unifying element, which makes it subject to S. Mark Heim's "pluralism that isn't really pluralistic" critique.* Kaplan's model is, as he himself freely admits in describing it, multiple ontologies within a single metaphysic. Kaplan's book is a work in progress, though; he's very good about recognizing strong theological and metaphysical objections to his hypothesis, so perhaps we'll see a revised version of the book in the years to come. It's really an intriguing idea.

[*NB: I take some issue with this critique now, partly thanks to my readings in The Philosophical Challenge of Religious Diversity-- perhaps a discussion's in order for next week?]


COBB

A few days ago, Cobb wrote about Donald Sensing's position on gay marriage. Here's the link to that post. I posted the following comment in the thread to Cobb's post:

I'm very much pro-gay marriage, and find the clinging to a specific definition of "what marriage is about" to be futile and foolish. What appeals to me about Donald Sensing's larger argument is that he says, "Look, conservatives-- we already lost this fight long ago. Once people gained the ability to divorce sex from its consequences through birth control, etc., any necessary connection between marriage, sex, love, children, etc. was broken."

Where I disagree with Sensing is on whether this is a good or bad thing. To me, it's perfectly fine. Sensing's a conservative Christian, so naturally, this isn't fine-- it's "against the will of God."

But Sensing's approach gets my respect because it's empirical. He's looking at the situation as it is, not wasting his time pining for how it should be, or making useless declarations about what marriage is or isn't.

My own point of view is very Buddhist on this: marriage is a term describing a reality in flux. You cannot reduce marriage to a so-called set of "essentials." To declare, as Keith Burgess-Jackson does on his philosophy blog, that marriage is "essentially" about children, may reflect past history but says nothing about whether marriage will continue to be this way. Sensing steps in and makes an empirical observation: "Folks, the reality underlying the term 'marriage' HAS MOVED. Deal with that."

I've seen, on your blog, the notion that marriage is "ordained of God." I think that's fine as a religious belief and I wouldn't want to take that from you, even though I disagree because I'm a nontheist. I think what Sensing offers to conservatives is a proper way of viewing the situation: beginning with the empirical and proceeding pragmatically from there, instead of beginning with an indefensible "ought"-stance that has little chance of convincing anyone.

Insistence on what marriage is and isn't is what Buddhists would call "attachment to name and form"-- a classic type of attachment, and debilitating. The best cure is true, direct seeing. I don't think Rev. Sensing is a Zennist in any formal sense (despite his blog's name), but he at least sees this situation directly and truly.

Cobb wrote the following reply:

You cannot be a Buddhist without understanding and conforming to the Buddhist way of seeing things. I've read Karen Armstrong's book on Buddha, does that make me a Buddhist? I see things in a Buddhist way when that way explains things best, but does that make me a Buddhist? No.

When I say 'ordained of God' I mean that in the context of Holy Matrimony, not marriage in the commonly understood way. As well I believe that religions appropriate the value of marriage for their own purposes. I say marriage is ordained of God, just as one could say Relativity is Einstein's idea. It is not really, Einstein merely correctly and properly understood what is right and true of nature. He articulated it in an unambiguous way through the discipline of scientific language and it resulted in the exalted Theory. I am saying this of Holy Matrimony. It is something right and true of nature that various religions have independently verified and they have exalted it through the discipline of theological thought.

What activists for the gay cause are trying to do is overload and/or water down what is meant by marriage, codified in Holy Matrimony, for their own special purposes. I say that it belongs under a separate theory because what is implicit in Marriage is the special responsibilty accorded to the raising of children.

Sensing cops out in an American way I think (if he is copping out at all instead of snidely protesting - certainly he wouldn't disavow his own marriage because of the existence of contraception) because he assumes that the technology changes the value. He accepts the inevitability of contraception in decisions to marry, whereas the Roman Catholic Church does not. This is like bringing a submachine gun to all fights and saying that the value of martial arts and hand to hand combat is meaningless and so are the codes of honor attached to them. What Sensing concedes for conservatives allows hypocrisy. I suggest that the way of the warrior, and similarly the way of traditional Marriage is not dead and remains instructive. I think the burden is on certain feminists in their reconciliation with motherhood to prove how liberating the 'sexual liberation' afforded by the advancing technology of contraception actually is.

Where are the eunuchs in all this?

As for gay couples who adopt children? They fall under the category of foster parents. So what?

I'm not really sure I understand what Cobb's getting at here; his response seems to be all over the place, which isn't usual for him. I've posted this exchange here for Religious Diversity Friday because of the religious tenor of the exchange-- two very different ways of chewing over a problem.

Cobb writes above, "I say marriage is ordained of God, just as one could say Relativity is Einstein's idea." The disanalogy here is that the claim "[the theory of] relativity is Einstein's idea" can be seen as a claim of historical fact: the history books confirm that Einstein did indeed formulate such a theory. Is the claim "marriage is ordained of God" the same kind of empirically verifiable claim? No-- it's a claim rooted in faith and not verifiable in the scientific sense. But Cobb clarifies his position by saying:

It is not really [i.e., relativity is an objective reality, not a subjective formulation], Einstein merely correctly and properly understood what is right and true of nature. He articulated it in an unambiguous way through the discipline of scientific language and it resulted in the exalted Theory. I am saying this of Holy Matrimony. It is something right and true of nature that various religions have independently verified and they have exalted it through the discipline of theological thought.

But this clarification is still disanalogous: whatever the actual reality is, Einstein's theory remains a theory: it's subject to review, verification, and falsification. It could, in principle, be tossed aside in favor of a new, better theory. A theory provides an explanation of reality. When it lacks sufficient explanatory power, a theory is bad. Holy Matrimony, to use Cobb's term, isn't viewed by anyone in this manner. People might see matrimony as a practical reality, or they might see it as infused with religious meaning, but in both of these cases, Holy Matrimony is most assuredly not being viewed as something on par with a scientific theory. Religious notions, as painful history repeatedly demonstrates, are notoriously hard to revise, especially when compared to scientific theories.

But if Cobb is trying to claim that religious notions arise from reality, and those notions are somehow on a par with scientific theory, it should be possible to revise those religious notions, as one does with scientific theories, to reflect an evolving understanding of reality. And this is where Cobb's argument fails: reality does move. As such, religious notions, if they are to retain their robustness, also have to move-- so maybe Cobb is right in spite of himself to equate religious notions and scientific theories! That's how religious notions should be: flexible, revisable, in conformity with changing reality. But at heart, Cobb would like Holy Matrimony to be a fixed a priori reality, something graven in the stone of the cosmos, something containing "essentials"-- why else use "ordained of God" language? But the cosmos isn't unmoving, so nothing can stay graven forever.

VALLICELLA

[MARCH 20 UPDATE: The link to Dr. Vallicella's response has been updated. it now leads you directly to his response, not simply to his weblog.]

Contra Hominid! For those of you who've been waiting and praying for Dr. Vallicella's reply to my critique of his paper, HERE IT IS! The BigHo gets his ten lashes. Follow the link and scroll down a bit, then look for the sea of red ink-- it's just like I'm back in grad school again! Dr. Vallicella emailed to say that he'll be appending a specific permalink to his reply for more direct access to it. When he does, I'll update my own link accordingly.

I'll want to review Dr. Vallicella's response in depth later on this blog, but I need to chew it over a bit. Some very quick & superficial thoughts:

1. I was glad to get a fuller explanation of "relative permanence," but I'm still not convinced this concept addresses the Buddhist perspective, or is in any way meaningful to it.

2. Although Dr. Vallicella ably defends his critique's narrow focus (i.e., concentrating on a specific exchange in the Milindapanha-- you'll recall that I complained about this), I think there are still problems with trying to critique the anatman (no-self) doctrine with only a single Buddhist dialogue as the focal point of critique.

Dr. Vallicella makes pronouncements about Buddhist metaphysics (series of unconnected moments, etc.) that can't have been extracted from the dialogue in question, then uses those concepts (some of which are debatable, as I argued previously) in the service of his critique of the dialogue. Is this proper? I'm not convinced it is. If you're going to bring in extra-textual concepts, you've got to pay more attention to the larger context in which the intra-textual concepts reside.

A good question to ask oneself is how much of a doctrine is being delineated in a given snatch of text before assuming one has enough data on which to base a critique. To conclude on scant evidence that a doctrine is indefensible/unpersuasive is to arrive at a potentially false conclusion. In this case: does the Milinda-Nagasena exchange in question provide the critic with enough information to understand the anatman doctrine in toto? My answer is no, it doesn't. We need to read around more. And the moment we decide to bring in data from outside of that text, we widen the scope of our critique. Fairness would require a lengthier treatment of the issues and problems: as many of the sources of a "doctrine" as possible should be considered. Anatman is a doctrine with many textual sources.

To be fair in this way is to exhibit charity in interpretation, I think. For me to crack open the Bible, read the directive of Deuteronomy 23:1 (NRSV; in Catholic Bibles it's 23:2) completely out of context, and draw negative conclusions about some doctrinal point in Hebrew/Jewish ethics might be "focused," but it would be unwarranted. By the same token, a critique of the anatman doctrine as laid out in this one dialogue strikes me as weak from the beginning. Does the dialogue in fact sufficiently "lay out" the doctrine? It's a pretty short dialogue, so I think this is a legitimate question. While holy men might be able to perform lengthy exegeses spun out of a single word of scripture, philosophers need to be a bit more attentive to issues of context, fairness, and comprehensiveness in their analyses and critiques.

[By that same token, Dr. V might argue, I need to realize that he addresses Buddhist issues in more than one research paper. That's only fair. My critique of Dr. V's paper also requires that I read more of Dr. V to get a feel for the larger context of his thought. More on this as it happens; Dr. V doesn't have many Buddhism-related papers online yet, but they're on the way.]

3. I think Dr. Vallicella has rightfully pointed out some of my own missteps in arguing against his thesis, and he's also right to ask for clarification about some of the terms I use. Part of the problem here, on my end, is a sloppiness born of inexperience. I'm woefully behind when it comes to terms and concepts in Western philosophy, and it's in discussions like these that my ignorance is in full view. This doesn't embarrass me a bit-- I engaged Vallicella because I'm a slob looking for a free education in Western philo, and I'm getting one.

There is, however, a meta-problem in discussions like these: because Buddhism arose and developed in one environment, and Western philo arose and developed in another, very different environment, there will always be the danger that interlocutors from either side of the fence will talk past each other. (I'm referring mainly to philosophical discussions like this one, but what I'm talking about is equally applicable to interreligious discussions.)

More than that, there's always the chance that arguing the Buddhist case entirely on Western philo terms is an unnecessary concession to the Western side (by parity of reasoning, vice versa is also true). Trying to make a Buddhist conceptual square peg fit into a Western conceptual round hole is bound to generate static. My point is that it's possible that one can explain a foreign concept only so well before the strictures of the discussion itself preclude further explanation. (How do you bridge the conceptual gap at that point? What role do intuitive, empathetic, and imaginative leaps play in Western philosophical discourse?)

Consider, for example, a staple of Western philo: the principle of non-contradiction. How, exactly, are you going to apply this principle to an analysis of Zen thought and discourse? You can't, and still expect coherent, useful results. People will try, of course: Mortimer Adler, in Truth in Religion, wrote a very rational but very ignorant passage about paradox in Zen thinking which, to a Zennist, would look like idiocy: Adler obviously didn't "get it." The "getting it" in Zen is nondiscursive, nonrational, and nonlogical (not irrational and illogical). If you're planning on having a meaningful Zen discussion, you're going to have to throw out the principle of non-contradiction. It's the only path to sense in Zen. Adler's approach, relentlessly faithful to his philosophical tradition, brought all the wrong tools to the table, from the Zennist's point of view.

The same is true in the opposite direction, of course, and that's the tone underlying Vallicella's response to me. I freely admit there's plenty I don't "get" about Western philo-- terms I haven't learned, concepts I haven't mastered. My hope is that this exchange, which is already very fruitful, will continue to push me to see things from different perspectives. At the same time, I do have my own perspective, a nondualistic one, that makes me skeptical of concepts and arguments that sound implausible even after a second and third hearing. Such is the case with that notion of "relative permanence," which still sounds like a fancy way of evading the fundamental issues to which the Buddhist thinkers addressed themselves.

Dr. Vallicella might be a Zen master in disguise, however. In his response to my contention that the self is constructed, he asks, "Who constructed it, then?"** That's a very Zen question!

"Who is this typing now?"

"Who is eating this food?"

Of course, the Zen master isn't asking these questions for lofty philosophical reasons. His intention is ethical: to address the issue of suffering and show you where its roots lie, and to bring you back to here and now, where you should always be.

I want to think more about Dr. Vallicella's response, and perhaps next week I'll try to formulate an answer. I begin my heavy teaching schedule next Wednesday, so I can't guarantee how long or substantive any of my future blogs will be. My thanks, in the meantime, to Dr. Vallicella for his reply.

[**NB: You'll note that, for Dr. Vallicella, this question very likely presumes a single, unified, transtemporal "who" (or what) acting as the constructing agent. Why this presumption? To me, it's not a given at all.]

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[NB: This is a paper-- a long paper by blog standards but fairly short by academic standards-- I wrote back in 2000. Skip it if the subject doesn't interest you. In this paper (which could stand some revision; my position on some matters has shifted a bit), I'm evaluating Ray Grigg's contention that Zen is basically Taoism with a superfluous Buddhist cortex. Ultimately, I see some merit in his thesis, but am not convinced that Buddhism is superfluous. To the contrary, I find Buddhism to be quite integral to Zen, and while Grigg makes a clear distinction between "Zen" and "Zen Buddhism," I don't think the distinction holds, except maybe superficially.]

It is a commonplace among scholars and "night-stand Buddhists" alike to summarize Zen's origins with a bumper-sticker aphorism such as "Zen is what happened when Indian Buddhism went north and met Taoism in China." Usually this is uttered along with the caveat that, as in all matters Zen, such is not the full truth. It is not quite so commonplace, however, to read, as Ray Grigg so bluntly puts it in the preface to his The Tao of Zen, that "Zen is Taoism disguised as Buddhism."[1] The immediate implication is that if Buddhism is a disguise, it is not relevant to the question of what comprises the essence of Zen, to the extent that one can speak of essences in Zen.

This, in fact, is the tack Grigg takes through the rest of his book. His thesis is neatly summarized in the preface: Zen is Taoism in Buddhist clothing, and "Buddhism is the historical wedge that has separated Zen from its Taoist source."[2] While acknowledging that Taoism and Buddhism share certain thematic affinities that, together, facilitate the melding of the two into Chinese Ch'an and eventually Japanese Zen, Grigg is far more fascinated by what he perceives to be the deep affinity between "pure Zen" and "original Taoism."[3]

The rest of this discussion will proceed with an overview of the major points of Grigg's argument, passing through an examination of Grigg's possible biases when discussing original Taoism, then moving to a fuller examination of the question of what constitutes "real" Taoism, followed by a brief overview of what other thinkers have had to say on the matter of what Zen is. The discussion will conclude with a direct examination of the plausibility of removing Buddhist elements from Zen while somehow retaining Zen's Zenness.


Overview of Grigg's Argument

Zen is Taoism disguised as Buddhism. When twelve hundred years of Buddhist accretions are removed from Zen, it is revealed to be a direct evolution of the spirit and philosophy of Taoism. Indeed, the literature known as the Lao Tzu and the Chuang Tzu begins a continuous tradition that can be followed through the Ch'an of China to the Zen of present-day Japan. The formative writings of early Taoism are essentially the teachings of Zen.[4]

Thus begins The Tao of Zen. The first step in Grigg's argument is to note that, especially in the West, a curious but very telling distinction in usage has crept in between the terms "Zen" and "Zen Buddhism."[5] Westerners' "nonsectarian sense of Zen" is a "fresh and innocent response" that is "uncomplicated by the traditional interpretations and assumptions which have seen Zen as an inseparable part of Buddhism."[6] Evidence of this separation can be found in the many "Zen [and the X] of" expressions that have come into prominence in English: Zen of tennis, Zen and the art of motorcycle maintenance, Zen and the art of drawing, etc. While populist, this new usage harks back to a very old Zen admonition "about the folly of becoming too attached to any system of understanding-- even Buddhism, and especially the religion of Mahayana Buddhism that has housed Zen in China and Japan for centuries."[7]

It is Grigg's opinion that the "Buddhist accretions" are to blame for Zen's having moved away from its roots. The addition of rituals over the centuries "[has] created a formal practice that is stiff, austere, and monastic, qualities that are the antithesis of Zen's essentially organic identity. Once the trappings are removed, however, Zen returns to its original Taoist character."[8]

Although Taoism and Buddhism share certain similarities, Grigg's most radical assessment excludes any possibility of their equation:

...the similarities between original Taoism and pure Zen are far more striking: the simplicity, the directness, the intuitiveness, the paradoxes, the importance of being natural and the prevalence of natural images, the skepticism about words and explanations, about institutions and dogma. Zen is Taoism.[9]

The Way to which Zen refers is none other than the Way (Tao) to which Taoism refers, an idea supported by many other thinkers. Because the Tao is at heart undefinable, this very vagueness is what affords both Zen and original Taoism their robustness and richness. It is "the source of their wisdom and profundity."[10] The core writings of original Taoism are, as Zennists say of Zen, "nothing special"; they are "descriptive rather than prescriptive, instructive rather than sacred."[11] Whatever religious quality they possess is not so much inherent as imputed.

Grigg concludes his preface by focusing on functional distinctions between Buddhism, Zen, Zen Buddhism, and Taoism. He refuses to use Zen and Zen Buddhism interchangeably. Buddhism, whose original, philosophical form contains "some Zen," more usually refers to the religious tradition such as that exemplified by the Mahayana school, in which the Buddha has been deified and his teachings have become dogma. Therefore:

Zen refers to pure Zen, the practice in Chinese Ch'an and Japanese Zen that is likened to original Taoism but is wholly devoid of Mahayana Buddhism's religious allusions. Zen is also devoid of the inner analysis that is so characteristic of Indian Buddhist philosophy. Zen Buddhism, therefore, is the unlikely combination of Chinese and Indian sources; it began in Ch'an as a mixing of Taoism and Buddhism, and currently exists in Japan in the same combination. Because of the ubiquitous quality of Zen, it can be found in Zen Buddhism, but Zen and Zen Buddhism are not equivalent terms.[12]

By the same token, Grigg's operational definition of Taoism refers very specifically to Taoism in its philosophical or contemplative form as sourced in the Lao Tzu and the Chuang Tzu. "Except for their historical distinctions, Taoism and Zen are terms that can be used interchangeably."[13]

The rest of The Tao of Zen supports the thesis laid out in Grigg's preface with a twofold approach. Part One covers the historical connections between Taoism and Zen, and Part Two is devoted to an examination of their philosophically similar elements.

In Part One, discussing the historical connections between Taoism and Zen, Grigg begins with "biographies" of Lao Tzu and Chuang Tzu. He then briefly covers the history of Taoism and of Buddhism in China, devoting the rest of Part One to the rise of Ch'an and Zen with a nod to great figures like Bodhidharma, Hui-neng, Nonin, and Bankei.

A major theme in this historical exploration is Grigg's repeated assertion that Buddhism (by which he means those Mahayana practitioners with the most commitment to Buddhism as an institution or religion) has engaged in a constant effort over the years either to preserve or manufacture historical links with India in an effort either to justify a kind of "apostolic succession" of patriarchs, or simply to create a stronger link with Zen Buddhism's Indian roots.[14]

In speaking about Bodhidharma and Hui-neng, for example, Grigg notes that very little is actually known about either of these great figures, which made them easy targets for hindsight reinterpretation. About Hui-neng and the historical forces of the time, Grigg says:

Since the operating principles of Taoism could not integrate with either religious beliefs or Buddhist philosophy, they were overwritten by Buddhist ideology and methodology. The result has been a tangle of misrepresentations... There was a Hui-neng. He was thoroughly Chinese. But he was unlikely a Buddhist, although later efforts attempted to make him one. All the evidence suggests he was an archetypal Taoist, or at least he was invented as such by the Chinese need to express its own character through him.[15]

In his subsequent overview of Buddhism in Japan, Grigg notes that Shinto had done much to predispose the Japanese consciousness to the naturalistic themes in Taoism and Ch'an.[16] Like the Chinese, especially the Taoists whom Grigg terms "Quietists" (i.e., Taoist practitioners who remained faithful to philosophical Taoism), the Japanese prize naturalness and simplicity; accepting this new Zen "[flower] in the garden of Buddhism"[17] was, therefore, relatively easy: "It is sufficient to note that Taoism and Shinto, when they met, would have felt comfortable in each other's company."[18]

Two significant chapters conclude Part One: "Zen Without Buddhism" and "Everyday Zen." In "Zen Without Buddhism," Grigg argues that Japanese Zen Buddhism is the result of the long and sometimes uneasy coexistence between Chinese Mahayana Buddhism and Taoism, as they coexisted in Ch'an.[19] Given Taoism's this-worldly orientation and Buddhism's otherworldly alignment, how were the two traditions able to meld as well as they did? Grigg offers two basic reasons: first, the Taoism of Lao Tzu and Chuang Tzu was possessed of both a paradoxical and inclusive spirit, perhaps a reflection of the often syncretic nature of the Chinese mind; second, when Buddhism entered China, "it was reshaped to fit the Chinese mind." Chinese Mahayana thought "was more practical, more earthy, and more immediate."[20]

Despite the ensuing cohabitation of these two thought-systems in Ch'an, it would be incorrect to attempt to trace Zen directly to the original teachings of the Buddha. Grigg offers three reasons why: (1) doctrinally, Chinese Mahayana Buddhism is "not the austere silence of Gautama sitting alone," especially since Gautama was not Buddhist, and his search for truth had an existential motivation as opposed to a religious one; (2) stylistically, the Buddha's teachings are highly systematized, lacking the freewheeling, spontaneous, illogical tenor of Zen; and (3) historically, as mentioned above, pious fabrications have effaced most or all reliably traceable links from the Buddha to the Zen patriarchs to Japanese Zen.[21]

The Buddhism in Zen Buddhism represents all that is structural and institutional, while the Zen is nothing less than Taoism in its original or Quietist form-- the philosophical Taoism sourced in the Lao Tzu and the Chuang Tzu.

The chapter titled "Everyday Zen" is less a historical treatment than a philosophical capstone to Grigg's historical argument. (It is not the final chapter; that chapter spends some time discussing Zen's arrival in the West, initially as Japanese Zen Buddhism, but rapidly evolving-- or reverting?-- into the more originally Taoist "Zen" that has become practically a household word.) "Everyday Zen" is a more focused look at what Grigg perceives to be the Taoist temperament of Zen.

Zen, like Taoism, is natural and intuitive, so ordinary that it is easily missed. This is why Zen without Buddhism seems so close to Taoism. When stripped of formality and returned to its natural shape, Zen is earthy and ordinary, nothing special. [...] ...a total, undivided presence transcends the duality of here or somewhere else. [...] Immersion in the everyday is the essential practice of the Taoist sage."[22]

In Part Two of The Tao of Zen, Grigg systematically notes the philosophical similarities between philosophical Taoism and "pure" Zen. While this discussion occupies fully half of The Tao of Zen, it is easily summarized if one understands Grigg's approach as an explication of the qualities he feels epitomize both original Taoism and pure Zen. Those qualities are wordlessness, selflessness, softness, oneness, emptiness, nothingness, balance, paradox, non-doing, spontaneity, ordinariness, playfulness, and suchness.

Grigg's Biases and the Notion of "Real" Taoism

Grigg quotes extensively from thinkers and scholars such as Alan Watts, Shunryu Suzuki roshi, D.T. Suzuki, Philip Kapleau, Victor Mair, Christmas Humphreys, Thomas Merton, and others. D.T. Suzuki in particular is a cruel favorite; Grigg engages in posthumous debate with Suzuki at several points throughout The Tao of Zen in order to highlight Suzuki's Mahayana biases-- the better for the reader to see Mahayana Buddhist revisionism in action. But Grigg also seizes upon Suzuki passages indicating a grudging admission of Zen's Chinese tenor, so Suzuki is puppeteered into engaging in a morbid debate with himself. Alan Watts, whom Grigg avidly terms a "modern Hui-neng,"[23] is quoted mainly for his "iconoclastic" spirit and for those passages from his The Way of Zen and The Spirit of Zen that explore the temperamental incompatibility of institutional Buddhism with Zen's Taoist bent.

What is most striking in Grigg's book is his refusal to discuss Taoism's evolutionary history except in the most general of terms.[24] Grigg sniffs at what Taoism has become: namely, the religious, magical, folk Taoism that adds nothing to Grigg's thesis.[25] Implied in this refusal is the assumption that original Taoism, the Quietist, philosophical variety to which Grigg makes repeated reference, is real Taoism.

It is appropriate at this point to examine the question of what makes a thought system "real." What is "real" Christianity? Or "real" Islam? If, for example, Muslim terrorists are featured on the American news to the extent that peaceful Muslim apologists must explain that the fundamentalist strains of Islam do not represent the "real" or "true" spirit of Islam, what then qualifies as the most representative form of Islam?

If it is recognized that a religious tradition acts much as a living organism does-- growing, evolving, multiplying, fighting, dying partially or wholly, changing over time-- can one ever speak of a "real" form of that tradition? The Christianity of today is so diverse that it is no longer safe to speak of Christianity as if it were a monolithic entity. Polymorphic present-day Taoism may have strayed from its philosophical roots, as Grigg contends, but upon what grounds can Grigg treat philosophical Taoism as more "real" than its modern incarnation? By extension, how is it possible to speak of a "true" Zen?

It is perhaps safest to assume that Grigg is positing the original = real premise without seeking any deep justification for his stance. His larger point is, after all, simply to highlight the essentially Taoist character of Zen, and he is obliged to start somewhere. However, his chapter on Zen's entry into Western culture is very telling on this point: the West's egalitarianism, secularism, and individualism have acted as a paring knife to peel off the structured, ritualized, institutional cortex of Japanese Mahayana Buddhism (very hierarchically East Asian in character) and left Zen in a more or less pristine state where it can be examined à l'occidentale.[26]

Much is implied in this argument. The most important implication is that the West in recent decades has arrived at a point where its own religious explorations are at a sort of dead end, and the usual answers no longer suffice. Enter Far Eastern thought which, because it is generally devoid of an overtly (mono)theistic aspect, has been able to penetrate the Western psyche more or less quietly but steadily. Because modern Western thinking has been so profoundly shaped by scientific skepticism, Grigg may well be implying that Zen's being "nothing special" is a virtue in an age of doubt. Karen Armstrong has described the Western experience of God as "traumatic,"[27] filled with intense emotion, drama, and not a little magic. It is entirely possible that turn-of-the-century science-fueled cynicism has made such drama hard to swallow. At every turn, Zen proclaims its ordinariness and commonsense nature; for a Westerner weary of the monotheistic fireworks display, calm profundity might appear as a relief. In France, the best-selling Le moine et le philosophe (The Monk and the Philosopher) serves as an example of the French intellectual hunger for a religious answer other than a staid, moribund Catholicism.[28]

Of course, the West does not lack for a love of magic or superstition, but this love usually stands in diametrical opposition to the scientific impulse that presently occupies a position of increasing prominence in the West's collective psyche. Carl Sagan's The Demon-Haunted World plants itself firmly against what Sagan saw as humanity's continued and disappointing fascination with self-bamboozlement:

The dumbing down of America is most evident in the slow decay of substantive content in the enormously influential media, the 30-second sound bites (now down to 10 seconds or less), lowest common denominator programming, credulous presentations on pseudoscience and superstition, but especially a kind of celebration of ignorance... The plain lesson is that study and learning-- not just of science, but of anything-- are avoidable, even undesirable.[29]

But his book also serves to highlight the starkness of the contrast between religious and scientific thinking that continues to haunt the Western mind. Zen and original Taoism are welcome in the West because they straddle the boundary between religion and science: there is nothing about Grigg's pure Zen or original Taoism that is antithetical to scientific thinking. Religious Taoism will probably never be as welcome in the West as original Taoism for the simple reason that its religiosity bears a recognizably magical odor to a Westerner. In this sense, it is perfectly legitimate to read Grigg as implying that original Taoism is more real... to a Westerner.

Other Thinkers On Zen

Where do other thinkers stand on the issue of Zen's Taoist nature? Do others agree with Grigg's contention that Mahayana Buddhism has done much to obfuscate the truth by forcing a link between Zen and India?

In his An Introduction to Zen Buddhism, D.T. Suzuki says the following:

Buddhism in its course of development has completed a form which distinguishes itself from its so-called primitive or original type-- so greatly, indeed, that we are justified in emphasizing its historical division into two schools... As a matter of fact, the Mahayana, with all its varied formulae, is no more than a developed form of Buddhism and traces back its final authority to its Indian founder, the great Buddha Sakyamuni. When this developed form... was introduced into China and then into Japan, it achieved further development in those countries. ...At present the Mahayana form may be said not to display, superficially at least, those features most conspicuously characteristic of original Buddhism.[30]

This seems to play into Grigg's overall argument, particularly to the idea that Suzuki is a Buddhist apologist intent on defending Zen Buddhism's Indian lineage. Suzuki's remarks also support Grigg's contention that the character of Buddhism was changed when it entered China, thus facilitating the eventual coexistence of Taoism and Mahayana Buddhism in Ch'an. But what Suzuki says next seems to undercut Grigg's thesis:

...there are people who would declare that this branch of Buddhism [i.e., Mahayana] is in reality no Buddhism in the sense that the latter is commonly understood. My contention, however, is this: anything that has life in it is an organism, and it is in the very nature of an organism that it never remains in the same state of existence. An acorn is quite different, even as a young oak with tender leaves just out of its protective shell is quite different from a full-grown tree... But throughout these varying phases of change there is a continuation of growth and unmistakable marks of identity, whence we know that one and the same plant has passed through many stages of becoming.[31]

By this reckoning, Buddhism's acquisition of Chinese qualities (of which a Taoist bent would be one such quality) would reflect an organic process that keeps its Indian traits at the core of what will eventually become Zen Buddhism. Here, Taoism is arguably the cortex and not Buddhism.

If nothing else, Suzuki's writings do not easily lend themselves to Grigg's argumentation, which explains Grigg's understandable ambivalence toward Suzuki. Moreover, what Suzuki is saying is important as a critique of Grigg's reasoning, whose weakest link resides in his repeated implication that pure Zen need include no Buddhism. If Taoism propounds an organic understanding of the world, this understanding should be applicable to a thought system's evolution through history. It is therefore possible to interpret Taoism's "uneasy" coexistence with Buddhism in Ch'an and Zen as perfectly "easy," with the tension ascribable not so much to a concerted Taoist resistance to an imposed Mahayana Buddhist structure as to Taoism's natural "squishiness." Taoism would have bumped gently against any thought system with which it had had to cohabit. Such is its nature.

Wing-Tsit Chan agrees that Buddhist meditative techniques took on a decidedly Chinese cast. In speaking about the use of shouting and beating in Ch'an, Chan says without irony, "This type of mental training is utterly Chinese."[32] Along with other scholars, and consistent with Grigg's thesis, Chan too remarks on the this-worldly character of Chinese thought as opposed to the otherworldly cast of Indian thought.[33] More: "[Ch'an] Meditation was not understood in the Indian sense of concentration but in the Taoist sense of conserving vital energy, breathing, reducing desire, preserving nature, and so forth."[34]

Alan Watts, whose quotes do in fact serve Grigg quite well, does, however, make a distinction between Taoism and Zen when he says in The Spirit of Zen, "... it must be remembered that Zen is not always a gentle breeze, like decadent Taoism; more than often it is a fierce gale which sweeps everything ruthlessly before it, an icy blast which penetrates to the heart of everything and passes right through to the other side!"[35] One senses here an emotional immediacy and urgency quite unlike the almost placid metaphor of Chuang Tzu dragging his tail in the mud like a happy tortoise.

Grigg is in good company when propounding the distinctly Chinese quality of Ch'an and Zen Buddhism, but there is some doubt as to the degree to which other scholars' and thinkers' words can be of service to Grigg's larger argument: that pure Zen is original Taoism, and that Mahayana Buddhism "is not Zen."[36] Both Suzuki and Watts make statements that can be interpreted in ways both friendly and antagonistic to Grigg's thesis, and it is difficult to see whether their writings move beyond an affirmation of Zen's Taoist roots (already acknowledged by scholars) to an active support of the outright equation of Taoism to Zen.

Zen Without Buddhism? A Concluding Critique of The Tao of Zen

Grigg's most compelling argument for Zen's being original Taoism is probably summarized in his chapter on Zen Buddhism's arrival in the West.

When institutionalized Zen Buddhism came to the West, it found itself disconnected from the stabilizing traditions of the Japanese culture. As it interacted with different attitudes and values in its new environment, it began to reconstitute itself. It relaxed its formality, and changed shape and expression. [...] This did not happen dramatically but it did happen quickly. It was evolution accelerated, the consequence of similar but different traditions from the East finding themselves in close proximity to each other in an atmosphere of open and trusting exploration. The similarities between Zen and Taoism became more apparent and their differences were defined more softly.[37]

Along with this, "...things changed because the Japanese system could not sustain itself in its new cultural context. The greatest changes took place in its formal expression: in its hierarchy, its institutional structure, and its Buddhism."[38] Zen is moving from its formalized Mahayana Buddhist incarnation to a practice that might be described as "less structured, a lay form of practice"[39] that still retains the essential Taoist spirit.

Nevertheless, the strongest critique of this view is, ironically, the organically (and perhaps inadvertently) Taoist critique implicitly offered by D.T. Suzuki in his acorn analogy. Zen Buddhism's "historical accretions" are not merely accretions; they are absorbed into and have become part of the essence of Zen. Robert Pirsig offers a brilliant example of how this is so in the idiosyncratic language of his book Lila, in a passage that deserves to be quoted at length:

...you would guess from the literature on Zen and its insistence on discovering "the unwritten dharma" that it would be intensely anti-ritualistic, since ritual is the "written dharma." But that isn't the case. The Zen monk's daily life is nothing but one ritual after another, hour after hour, day after day, all his life. They don't tell him to shatter those static patterns to discover the unwritten dharma. They want him to get those patterns perfect!

The explanation for this contradiction is the belief that you do not free yourself from static patterns by fighting them with other contrary static patterns. That is sometimes called "bad karma chasing its tail." You free yourself from static patterns by putting them to sleep. That is, you master them with such proficiency that they become an unconscious part of your nature. You get so used to them you completely forget them and they are gone. There in the center of the most monotonous boredom of static ritualistic patterns the Dynamic freedom is found.[40]

This reasoning indicates an intimate fusion of Buddhist religious structure with Taoist notions of compliance, and is still readable, without contradiction, in a purely Taoist way. Grigg may be right to claim that a crucial element of Taoism is its spontaneity, but he misses the Zen paradox that, if Zen can truly be found anywhere, it can just as easily be found in ritual practice as in any other activity or phenomenon. Taoism's natural Brownian motion guarantees a bumpy ride for whatever thought system cohabits with it, and there is nothing insurmountably antithetical to Taoism in Buddhist praxis. If anything, Pirsig's passage is an example of how nameless, formless original Taoism can meld with a fellow passenger during a long journey. Along with Suzuki, it is possible for us to affirm that Taoism's addition to and fusion with Mahayana Buddhism is part of a larger, organic, natural evolutionary process.



NOTES

1. Ray Grigg, The Tao of Zen (Boston: Charles E. Tuttle Co., Inc., 1994), xiii.

2. Ibid., xiv.

3. Ibid.

4. Ibid., xiii.

5. Ibid.

6. Ibid.

7. Ibid.

8. Ibid., xiv.

9. Ibid.

10. Ibid., xv.

11. Ibid.

12. Ibid., xvi.

13. Ibid., xvii.

14. Ibid., 9, 109, etc.

15. Ibid., 109-110.

16. Ibid., 119.

17. Thich Nhat Hanh, Living Buddha, Living Christ (New York: Riverhead Books, 1995), 9.

18. Ray Grigg, The Tao of Zen (Boston: Charles E. Tuttle Co., Inc., 1994), 122.

19. Ibid., 128.

20. Ibid., 132.

21. Ibid.

22. Ibid., 167-168.

23. Ibid., 136.

24. Ibid., xvi-xvii.

25. Ibid.

26. Ibid., 173-179.

27. Karen Armstrong, A History of God (New York: Ballantine Books, 1993), xxii

28. Jean-François Revel and Mathieu Ricard, Le moine et le philosophe (Paris: Editions NIL, 1997), 13.

29. Carl Sagan, The Demon-Haunted World (New York: Ballantine Books, 1996), 25-26.

30. D.T. Suzuki, An Introduction to Zen Buddhism (New York: Grove Press, 1964), 31.

31. Ibid.

32. A Source Book in Chinese Philosophy, trans. and ed. Wing-tsit Chan (Princteon: Princeton University Press, 1969), 429.

33. Ibid.

34. Ibid., 425.

35. Alan Watts, The Spirit of Zen (New York: Grove Weidenfeld, 1958), 59-60.

36. Ray Grigg, The Tao of Zen (Boston: Charles E. Tuttle Co., Inc., 1994), 127.

37. Ibid., 173.

38. Ibid., 174.

39. Ibid., 176.

40. Robert Pirsig, Lila (New York: Bantam Books, 1991), 440.





BIBLIOGRAPHY


Armstrong, Karen. A History of God. New York: Ballantine Books, 1993.

Chan, Wing-tsit, trans. and ed. A Source Book in Chinese Philosophy. Princteon: Princeton University Press, 1969.

Grigg, Ray. The Tao of Zen. Boston: Charles E. Tuttle Co., Inc., 1994.

Nhat Hanh, Thich. Living Buddha, Living Christ. New York: Riverhead Books, 1995.

Pirsig, Robert. Lila. New York: Bantam Books, 1991.

Revel, Jean-François and Mathieu Ricard. Le moine et le philosophe. Paris: Editions NIL, 1997.

Sagan, Carl. The Demon-Haunted World. New York: Ballantine Books, 1996.

Suzuki, D.T. An Introduction to Zen Buddhism. New York: Grove Press, 1964.

Watts, Alan. The Spirit of Zen. New York: Grove Weidenfeld, 1958.


_

Like a penis that strays too close to a militant feminist, tonight's blogging has to be cut short. A 10-page document just arrived for proofreading, along with a request to have this done by sometime next morning. It's 10PM on Wednesday night. Guess I'd better get cracking.

Don't you just looooove when shit gets sent to you on short notice?

_

The same lady who did my hair last time was there this time. I got a look at her name tag and saw she was none other than Park Suk Kyung-- the owner of Park Suk Kyung Hair ID! Maybe this explains the extra treatment: I was being done by the Big Boss.

It's the same privilege that's coveted by X-wing pilots: if you're going to be shot down, you want your death to come at the hands of Darth Vader: "Leave him to me. I will deal with him myself." No one wants to be handled by a minion.

As with last time, she gave my brain a shampoo-lubricated deep-tissue massage, and it was all I could do to keep from sprouting a hard-on. How many women do you know who can make professional love to your scalp, eh? I ask you!

I left the place 7000 won poorer, my skull aglow from Miss Park's brutal-yet-disturbingly-sexy ministrations. And I type these words with a huge, shit-eating grin on my blubberous face.

_

Korea's got enough worries, but now, an additional one: people here are assuming that al Qaeda is targeting those who've stood with America. I think there's some merit to this. Koreans are worried. A recent Reuters dispatch says:

South Korea's acting president has ordered boosted security measures, saying the country is a major potential terrorism target because it planned to send more troops to Iraq soon.

There has been no known public threat to South Korea, where there are 37,000 U.S. troops based to deter North Korea, but acting President Goh Kun told security officials that all countries involved in Iraq needed to be wary.

"We need to be very seriously prepared," Goh stressed, his spokesman said by telephone on Wednesday.

Yes, I think caution is called for. But Korea isn't Spain or any other European country, nor is it America. Most Muslims can't blend in here. There aren't many Korean Muslims; most of the Arab/Persian Muslim population, to put it politely, stands out. Just about every non-East Asian race stands out here. So if al Qaeda is planning any shenanigans in South Korea, the hammer is going to fall on these people. Koreans aren't exactly shy about their own racism and xenophobia; unlike in America, there won't be extensive hand-wringing about racial (or religious) profiling. If anything happens here, no one will make any bones about watching the Arabs and Persians closely, as well as tracking East Asian (and other Asian) Muslims. They will all be marked people.

In the meantime, of course, the Spain Effect is likely to happen: should an attack occur (which I doubt), we yang-nom will be objects of resentment, at least in public demonstrations. I'm not too worried, though: during one of the heavily anti-American periods, I got around with no problem and didn't encounter any particularly resentful behavior. One dude at the gym would go on about how much he hated America, but that was about it. My being plump and not having a crewcut might be a saving grace at such times; I don't experience what our servicemen have to go through. So keep your thoughts for the soldiers who are more likely to endure petty and major slights.

And keep your fingers crossed that nothing will happen here. I don't say that selfishly; I genuinely like it in Seoul. Keep your fingers crossed for Korea's sake.

It's March 17th! Happy Saint Pat's, to the people back home!

Long ago, Koreans used to be called "The Irish of the Orient" for all the drinking and brawling. Maybe it's because I don't drink, but I haven't seen much brawling outside of the Chongno bar district (I used to live in a yogwan tucked inside a grungy alley by the Chongno YMCA Building back in '94-95), and I only rarely pop into Itaewon, where I've never stuck around late enough to see any "Fight Club" wannabe action.

I've seen the results of over-drinking, though. You haven't lived until you've watched a gorgeous woman in a leather miniskirt "making a ramyon flower" against an alley wall while her equally-drunk boyfriend pats her back sympathetically. The magical juxtaposition of female beauty and splattering puke is enough to activate even the dullest poet's muse. I feel a haiku coming on...

blooooooooooorrrrrrgh but wait, there's more--
raaaaaauuuuuuugh, oh shit, I see my lunch--
graaaaaaaaaaaggggghh, yup, there's breakfast.

Gotta go get a haircut. Maybe I'll deign to get them all cut. Back in a while.

_

I find myself home earlier than usual today because Mrs. Oh called to cancel classes for the whole week. Her younger daughter's in the hospital, having taken very ill; they have my sympathies and I hope she gets well soon.

Let's go for a general parcours, shall we?

I found this amusing, though I imagine Keith Burgess-Jackson would find it distressing: God hates dogs, but apparently, he loooooves boshin-t'ang. Fry that puppy up-- the grill's already there!

Anticipatory Retaliation's BravoRomeoDelta examines a Steven Den Beste post and chews on the question of whether we're engaged in a "little Cold War" with China. Very meaty post.

Winds of Change's (newly wed) Armed Liberal weighs in on the Spain issue and finds reason to fear.

Dan Darling is, as usual, on top of things. Here's a post on Spain. Read the post below it, too.

Annika takes a long view on the Spain question-- an opinion also espoused by Tacitus.

Douglas at Tacitus with a post on North Korea.

John Moore, Conrad, and others are simultaneously flabbergasted and laughing themselves crazy at France's move to perform joint naval exercises with China.

Lorianne spends approximately 1.25 posts worrying about what to wear to her dissertation defense. She's right: for us men, the sartorial decisions are among the easiest in life. My suggestion for a diss defense ensemble:

spiked Madonna-style metal cone bra
pleather corset
thigh-high boots with spiked heels
bullwhip
nothing else (except maybe a crown-of-thorns wrist tattoo)

Proper conduct: sit slouched in your chair, facing the panel. Lean over and scratch ass. Stare challengingly at each panel member in turn, then stand up ramrod-straight like Frau Farbissina of the Austin Powers series and scream, "If you don't give me the doctorate, this bullwhip is going up somebody's ass! THE WHOLE BULLWHIP!" If panel members are too petrified to respond to this display, switch into Zen master mode and shake the bullwhip in front of their faces, screaming, "WHAT IS THIS? SAY IT'S A BULLWHIP AND YOU ASSERT! SAY IT'S NOT A BULLWHIP AND YOU ALSO ASSERT! SO WHAT-- IS-- THIS, GODDAMMIT!!??"

Then open up a Tantric chapter in your Zen school and promise unholy monkey-sex ("Doin' it Hanuman-style, baby!") to the profs who pass you. I think there's an online store that sells Ganesha-shaped, patchouli-scented dildos. Want me to find it?

The Space Between: Lorianne's most recent post appears to be a down-home riff on Dave Matthews-style liminality.

I should write a post on ass-crack liminality and call it The Space Between My Buttocks.

There's a running dialogue going on at Naked Villainy regarding the rightness or wrongness of current action in Iraq. Start here, then move upward to here, then here.

[NB: The Maximum Leader has moved off Blogspot to his own site and is still moving archives into place. If the above links don't work, simply follow the link to his site on my sidebar, then scroll down until you find the post titled "Quick thoughts, just to show I'm reading." Read that one, then move upward to "Rejoinder to Propaganda Minister," then finally to "I'm not James Webb."]

My own take on this is that pulling out of Iraq at this point is folly. A pullout, and/or a UN takeover, would be one massive cluster-fuck. I was against the war, but I'm not in denial about Iraq/al Qaeda connections, for which documentation has been repeatedly found (and debunkings repeatedly attempted)-- ties that have become, if anything, all the stronger since the war, making the original debate moot. Whatever one's interpretation of the pre-war situation, the fact now is that the connection exists, and it needs to be dealt with.

Mike's interlocutor, the Propaganda Minister, also believes that Libya would have turned even if we hadn't attacked Iraq. I don't agree. While Iraq's own status is debatable (I have lingering doubts about how our project there will turn out), there's been an undeniable ripple effect in the Middle East-- even the fundamentalists' desperate grab for power in the recent Iran elections is a sign of this. The Iranian people continue to agitate, more and more loudly, for democracy. Something's going to give. Syria's current teetering (and domestic strife) is also a sign that things have changed. What liberals don't get is that force is a language these powers understand, and while it's unfortunate that we have to resort to force to make our point, we don't live in a post-historical utopia (link courtesy Analphilosopher).

The PropMin's feeling is that the war should be (or should have been) targeted more specifically against the actual terrorists. But as the MaxLdr has argued repeatedly since even before the start of the war, these organizations get their funding from states. At some point, you're going to have to deal with governments, and this is what people are balking at.

The hesitancy is legitimate. When your terrorism policy (still being formulated, I think, as conditions change) has a preemptive aspect, it already looks bad on the government-level. I had and still have real problems with preemptive policy. When your policy, on top of being preemptive, sets a whole country in its sights, there are reasons to worry about diplomatic capital and what this bodes for us, economically, politically, etc. But while hesitation to step on other people's toes is a valid worry, should it override more crucial considerations, i.e., national self-interest?

The PropMin sees John Kerry as the man to bring us back to our senses regarding Iraq policy. I think it's possible that Kerry might bring us back on track economically (anyone is more fiscally responsible than Bush at this point-- Bush has disappointed his own rank and file with some of his economic decisions), but Kerry has his head firmly up North Korea's ass when it comes to foreign policy: he doesn't even think we're in a war. That, to me, pretty much nullifies anything constructive he might say about foreign policy right there. An inability to see the current situation clearly is not a quality I treasure in a presidential candidate. The same might go for Bush, 'tis true, but that criticism applies more to economic and social policy than to foreign policy.

I've contended several times on this blog that our voting choices will come down to a decision between economics and foreign policy-- which you think is more important is what will decide your vote for Bush or Kerry (unless you're an unthinking party-liner, in which case current events don't really factor into your decision). Like my Dad, I agree that economics and foreign policy are inextricably linked, so of course the reality isn't that simple. But the nature of the two candidates' platforms pretty much forces us to make this choice. Which priority first? My contention was and remains that Americans are clever, hard-working people. We'll figure a way out of an economic mess: we'll live. Consider how fat and well-fed many of our poor are, then compare those poor folks to the real poor out in the world. No-- economic straits in America will mean, for the most part, thinner poor people, not massive death (no matter how operatic the claims of various poor-advocacy organizations) as would be the case in other parts of the world. So I think foreign policy takes priority, and if you put a gun to my head and forced me to vote only for Bush or Kerry, I would, with great reluctance, choose Bush. Bush, at least, realizes we're in a war.

The liberal side asks two contradictory questions simultaneously: (1) are we safer (usually asked mockingly)?, and (2) aren't we just jumping at shadows?

The "are we safer?" question arises from a misunderstanding of what we have and still hope to accomplish. It assumes that our wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, coupled with our constant pursuit of al Qaeda and other terrorist organizations, were somehow supposed to lead automatically to greater security. It's a stupid, useless question, because any observant person can see that we're nowhere near the end of this: it's going to take decades, as Den Beste contends. Whatever my misgivings about Bush, he's been quite clear that we're engaged in a long-term project. It is, effectively speaking, a new kind of war being carried out not only on many fronts, but in many modes. It involves intel, diplomacy, and the military. I'd like to think it also involves dialogue, the main point of which is, these days, to coax out the "moderate Muslims" and get them to speak out against acts which should be called by their true religious names: unholy, sinful, godless-- name your theological epithet.

The "aren't we jumping at shadows?" question isn't usually posed directly, but it's implied in a number of ways: complaints about "unnecessary" encroachment on civil rights, for example. The general feeling that, since attacks haven't happened on US soil since 9/11, they won't happen at all. The thinking that John Kerry will steer us the right way is based very much on this general feeling: we can let our guard down now, reprioritize, elect a president who understands that this isn't a war, it's only a series of police actions-- a bit like the way Vietnam has been "officially" characterized: police action, guys, not war. Besides, Bush is just using 9/11 and terrorism as a cover to push through all sorts of ugly legislation, right? The implication behind all such sentiments is that things are safer now. People who give the economy a higher priority in their thinking have also reached this conclusion.

While there's plenty of cognitive dissonance on the conservative side, liberals need to deal with this internal paradox before they can present a coherent position (and by implication, a viable choice at the polls). Figure out first whether we're safe enough to start focusing intensely on the economy. While the liberals are usually more inclined than conservatives to say, "The situation's more complicated than that" (and I suspect Kerry will be saying that a lot as president), the stark choice in November will come down to what you ultimately consider more important-- defense or the economy. Why? Because Bush is all about defense but seems to run roughshod over the economy, while Kerry might have decent plans for the economy, but keeps debating with his colon polyps about whether we're actually at war.

From where I sit in Korea, Bush looks like the better choice because he makes North Korea angry and nervous. Bush, to the Norks, is unpredictable and unstable. He has staffers like John Bolton who blurt out that North Korea is a "hellhole"-- the type of rhetoric no Democrat-sponsored diplomat would have the brass balls to say. I predict that a Kerry presidency would lead to a "deal" with North Korea in which, once again, NK gives us its assurances of good behavior, we give NK a ton of money, and NK farts in our collective face, reenergized and uppity as ever. We'll turn around, smile like the suckers we are, and call that a victory for our side.

NK is a very good metric for foreign policy. Colin Powell has been quite firm about what NK needs to do if it wants help, and as always the magic word is verification. Will Kerry insist as strongly on this point, or will his staffers let NK get away with murder yet again? Will Kerry bring us back to bilateral negotiations with NK, thereby playing right into NK (and SK) hands? I think he would. I see him completely reversing the Bush doctrine (such as it is)-- espousing radical multilateralism in the Middle East and a bilateral, NK-US approach on the Korean peninsula. (God knows what Kerry wants for Taiwan.)

The PropMin is right to say that we need to take the fight to the terrorists, but that's only one aspect of a much larger war. I don't think Kerry'd have the first clue about honing our intel and signing off on dozens of covert operations per month. I envision him as the Diplomatic President, the Great Negotiator. So long as we can sit down with some old fat guys and sign a piece of paper and shake hands, all will be fine and dandy. And hey-- flip-flopping and post hoc rationalization are just all in a day's work!

Anybody remember Clinton's early-90s "triumph," getting Arafat and Rabin to shake hands? Yeah-- see how that turned out. True: Bush's "roadmap to peace" was a big, fat, steaming turd as well-- but consider the larger picture and see whether Bush's overall priorities skew toward Clintonian diplomacy or Big Stick diplomacy. I think Big Stick is better than Limp Dick. Compare this, too, with Clinton in Somalia, Haiti (good Lord, look how that's going), and even the Balkans, where we still have troops (Clinton's leftover quagmire?). When Bush's roadmap crashed and burned, the flameout was quick and the policy's death was swift. Meantime, I'll bet there are still lefties who think Clinton's 1993 handshake moment was a real coup. Just like the vaunted 1994 Agreed Framework for the Korean peninsula. Yeah, another good one, Bill.

With a leftist reaction against conservatives here in Korea, and a huge leftist backlash in Spain, it's all the more important to make sure we have someone in office who won't lose sight of the larger project. If that means reelecting a stubborn, possibly-stupid, possibly-crazy, inarticulate guy whose main virtue is that he'll pull the hangman's lever to cut short a condemned man's final bullshit speech, then maybe, just maybe, Bush is our guy. Kerry, at that same hangman's lever, would listen raptly and forget to hang the guy. "Slightly wounded three times"-- who cares, if you're just a smarter version of the same idiot?

I'm still no fan of Bush, and since I'll have the option of writing someone in come November, I'm still quite likely to write in Daffy Duck. But you never know. If by some miracle Bush begins to see the light about the economy, backs off his asshole stance on the marriage amendment, and maintains his focus on the Middle East while keeping up the pressure on NK, then I might just be persuaded to vote for him. Kerry, in the meantime, has to prove he's not a jellyfish on all the important issues. And liberals need to answer for themselves the question about whether we're indeed safe enough to reprioritize our thinking. And answer the question that dogs Kerry: whether we're actually at war.

Some Andrew Sullivan snippets:

First--

What the Europeans refuse to understand is that there is no proximate cause for this violence. It is structural; it is aimed at the very existence of other faiths; it wishes to purge the entire Muslim world of infidels (which means the annihilation of the Jews), and eventually to reconquer Europe. You can no more negotiate with these people than you could negotiate with Hitler. And by negotiation, I don't just mean direct talks. I mean attempts to placate by occasional withdrawal of troops from, say, Iraq or Afghanistan, or withdrawal of troops from Saudi Arabia or abandonment of Israel. All such tactical shifts are regarded purely as weakness. They are invitations for more massacres. How many more will die in London and Rome and Berlin and Paris before the old continent fights to defend itself?

Replace "Europeans" with "American left" and it reads about the same.

Next--

But there's the real ironic twist: if the appeasement brigade really do believe that the war to depose Saddam is and was utterly unconnected with the war against al Qaeda, then why on earth would al Qaeda respond by targeting Spain? If the two issues are completely unrelated, why has al Qaeda made the connection? The answer is obvious: the removal of the Taliban and the Saddam dictatorship were two major blows to the cause of Islamist terror. They removed an al Qaeda client state and a potential harbor for terrorists and weapons of mass destruction. So it's vital that the Islamist mass murderers target those who backed both wars. It makes total sense. And in yesterday's election victory for the socialists, al Qaeda got even more than it could have dreamed of. It has removed a government intent on fighting terrorism and installed another intent on appeasing it. For good measure, they murdered a couple of hundred infidels.

_

[TUESDAY UPDATE: Two things I couldn't let pass by: (1) Thoroughly disgusted with the fuckwitted service that is Blog-Shitty, Jeff has "gone Marmot" and moved his Ruminations in Korea blog to a new site: http://jeffinkorea.blogs.com/. (2) Oranckay posts a piece that's music to my, uh, eyes-- North Korean defectors, mostly ex-military, are suing former SK President Kim Dae Jung for having made payoffs to North Korea and thereby aiding their nuclear program. HELL, YEAH! SUE ALL APPEASERS! Sunshine Policy, my ass. Stare into my hole-- I'll show you some sunshine. As for appeasers, there'll be plenty of them in the near future: this country's liberal backlash against the conservative-driven impeachment is going to push the national temperament Spain-ward. I blame the young folks who don't give a shit about their own history. I don't blame the young folks who do.]

First, a word of THANKS to all the readers-- friends and strangers alike-- who've expressed concern and/or sent some money to my parents (see previous post if you're wondering what this is about). You have my gratitude, on behalf of the folks.

Insurance assessment is supposed to happen on Monday, DC time. I don't think any of us is looking forward to the bad news.

Brevity is the soul of wit, they say-- a proper caution to us prolix Hominids. Unfortunately, brevity will have to become the order of the day because, as you know, my Real Job starts next Wednesday, the 24th. Yes, I'll have to bring a digital camera along at some point: I'll be teaching at Seoul Women's University, and male readers will want some PE (proof of estrogen).

For the horndogs out there: it's highly unlikely I'll be dating any of these women. First off, I'm 34 and they're barely in their 20s, which makes me Granddad to them, and try as I might, I can't be like Jerry Seinfeld, who thinks nothing of dating much younger women. Second, they're my students, people. I don't think it's a good policy to gain a reputation as a teacher who bangs his own students.

If it turns out, however, that I'm teaching down the hall from some slim and sexy prof who's 29 or older, well... we might have to arrange a private faculty meeting.

The upshot is that, since the blogging must needs be lighter in the coming months, I may as well start now with the self-discipline. So tonight's parcours will be brief. It's about 7:30PM right now; I'll finish this before 8:30.

The Marmot's got the goods on the impeachment aftermath, and presents us with a rather disturbing Photoshopped pic-- the anti-Harisu.

Check out the Yangban and Pythi Master for their impeachment takes as well.

Note to Party Pooper: I bought and ate two Triply bars. Yup. Just like Twix, but smaller. Most Korean-style Western confections are that way: same thing, but smaller. Save your penis jokes, lads, save them. Besides, no one conceives of the dick as a "confection."

KimcheeGI writes in praise of Gongja (Confucius); the Infidel (whose logo I've changed because I was unhappy with my own drawing) wants Gongja impeached.

This looks a lot like the internal (and eternal [sic]) Chinese dialogue between Gongja and Noja/Jangja (Lao-tzu/Chuang-tzu, arguably the two founding fathers of philosophical Taoism). The Infidel sounds a lot like Noja/Jangja when he offers his own conception of leadership:

My ideal leader works infrequently, mostly attending to diplomatic business, because ordinary citizens and other government officers can do most of the work. The more power invested in the leadership, the more despicable the government.

The Confucian point of view, at least early on in the history of Confucianism, didn't necessarily imply strong and powerful leadership. If anything, Confucian values had, to some extent, an interior focus-- ritual propriety, humanity/humaneness, etc., but always with the understanding that this was in the service of harmonizing oneself with Heaven or Tao, with nature, and with human society. The Confucian conception of personhood was that of a work-in-progress: one's life is about becoming human, and not, as in the West, about exploring and/or fulfilling one's personhood or personal potential.

Philosophical Taoism was in many ways a response to the calcification of Confucianist thinking: the Taoists espoused naturalness, harmony, spontaneity, and non-doing (wu wei in Chinese; mu eui in Korean), whereas Confucianists were (at least from the Taoist point of view) obsessed with ritual propriety.

The debate continues even today, I think, between the Taoist and Confucianist conceptions of how to be and act. The debate is also internal to Confucianism, because people have to strike the right balance between li (ritual propriety; yae in Korean) and jen (humanity/humaneness; in in Korean). Korea is considered "more Confucian than China" by many, but I think I see elements of that same Chinese debate going on here. Even in the West, we have our own forms of this debate as in, for example, the differences between literal, dogmatic religion and religion more liberally conceived.

[Side note: KimcheeGI's post shows a round, red dojang (stamp): the character li (yae in Korean), or ritual propriety. The left side of the character is the God/spirit radical; the right side represents some sort of altar and sacrifice-- one of the most primitive formalized conceptions of ritual around. Yae uses the idea of sacrifice to convey the meaning "ritual."]

One of my profs illustrated the battle between yae and in this way: Think of a handshake. This is a ritual gesture; in our Western culture, it's a gesture of greeting and goodbye. It takes place at specific, proper moments of social interaction; as such, it's a rule-bound gesture and very much controlled by yae, ritual propriety. But a handshake can be performed well or poorly and can, as a result, convey a good or poor impression: squeeze too strongly or too limply, and you imply something about yourself or your state of mind. Avoid eye contact while shaking hands, and here again you alter the content of the gesture. The gesture itself is still being used-- i.e., yae is still in play, but the content of the gesture, its humanity (its in), can vary. Yae channels in, but in also affects yae.

In the example of the bad handshake, we see what happens when there's too much yae and not enough in. The result is an empty gesture. Consider the opposite situation: what if I greeted you by bellowing in joy, ripping off my clothes, then running up to you and tackling you? In this case, my joy would be obvious (i.e., lots of in), but that joy, unchannelled by ritual gesture, risks misinterpretation and could even offend people. So we see that too much in and not enough yae also leads to problems.

Philosophical Taoism, as Ray Grigg argues, finds its deepest expression these days not in the magico-religious Taoism found in China, but in the hallowed halls of Zen Buddhism. Here, too, Noja/Jangja and Gongja are at war with each other. The talk with the Zen master requires Taoist naturalness and spontaneity-- ordinary mind. But the talk itself occurs in a ritualized context, so on some level you have to fight the fact that this talk, despite all the Taoist preaching, really isn't that ordinary a moment.

Maybe calling this a "war" is wrong, but in many cases, that's how these polar tendencies express themselves: as conflict, not as harmony. In the ideal, I'd say the best solution is a dynamic tension between ritual and spontaneity, order and chaos, stability and novelty. After all, from the nondualistic standpoint, these things are not-two.

Check Oranckay here and here for a protest update and more on his "find the violation" contest. Looks like some outright lying has been going on. As my Dad said, the whole thing makes Korea look bad on the world scene. Ridiculous.

And that's all, folks. Have a nipple-pinchingly lovely day.

_

My father's been in a car accident-- it happened on Friday. He's uninjured, both airbags having gone off in the minivan (I can only imagine what that must have sounded like). Unfortunately, the van's suffered major damage. Insurance is likely to cover a lot of this (costs might run into the $3000-5000 range), but there's still a $500 deductible to contend with and the increased cost of insurance in the future.

To that end, I'm putting out a humble request to my several dozen readers: if you're willing to donate some money to help my folks out with this, I'd be grateful. I've created a PayPal donation button and set the donation amount at $10. If you feel so moved, please hit the button more than once, but even a single donation will be appreciated.

Here's the ACCIDENT RELIEF donation button:

The above button routes you directly to my FATHER'S PayPal account, not to mine. Also, please note that, once you set up shipping rates on PayPal for non-donation purchases, those shipping rates also seem to apply to donations. For that reason, I lowered the donation amount to $6.00 so that the $4.00 shipping charge brings the amount up to an even $10.00.

There's another way to help my folks out: BUY THEIR RUM CAKES. Their PayPal button is on my sidebar (scroll down a bit; look for the cake image and the PayPal button below it). If you're queasy about giving donations to people you don't know, then order a cake and receive something tangible and tasty for your money. Reviews for the cake are unanimously great, with "Bombtits" being perhaps the highest praise they've received.

Thanks in advance for whatever you can do. Thanks for your constant readership, and my apologies for the inconvenience to your wallet.

_

TOTALITARIAN UPDATE: Your Maximum Leader has moved his Naked Villainy blog to the following URL:

http://nakedvillainy.com

Please update your listings!

ANOTHER UPDATE: Lest we forget-- today, March 14, is White Day in Korea: the mirror image of Korean Valentine's Day. You'll recall that Korea and Japan split the lovey-doveyness into two days to protract the torture for us single folks. On Valentine's Day, the ladies do their thang for the men; on White Day, the men sex it up for the women. A third day, Black Day, was designed for us losers. I think it's April 14th, but am not sure. How apropos that it should nearly coincide with Tax Day in America. On Black Day, we, the unattached, will chow down on jjajang-myeon (Korean-style Chinese pasta in black bean sauce) and ponder our singleness. But today is White Day, the day when yang licks, nibbles, and sucks yin, so I wish all the lovely ladies out there a beautiful, sexually rapturous twenty-four hours. Imagine you're banging Kiefer Sutherland or something. I, in the meantime, will go see what happens when I stick my dick in a red-hot waffle iron.

_

It's with no small amount of perverse pride that I unveil...

A NEW MUG DESIGN!

Here it is, inspired by last week's comic:




Now go and SHOP! Visit my CafePress store, poke around Chewiest Tumors, or buy my book from Amazon.com.

Get ready: the adventure continues tomorrow with COSMIC IMPORT, Episode 2!

By the way, here's what Dr. Larsen is getting as his logo.



_

Today is Friday, which is Religious Diversity Day at the Hairy Chasms (cf. sidebar schedule). Two things dominate the news right now: the horrific train bombings in Madrid (WashPost now requires subscription, but it's free), and the impeachment of South Korean President Noh Mu Hyon (try the Marmot, the Infidel, the Yangban's posts, and Jeff the Ruminator-- also, check out the latest Post article).

I'm not going to bother with the impeachment issue; everyone seems to have it well in hand (Polymath is positively cheering that Noh is taking it up the ass right now, though it may be too early to say goodbye). But since there are tentative signs that the Madrid bombings may have something to do with al Qaeda, I thought I'd do a brief exploration of this from the interreligious dialogue/religious pluralism angle.

There's more going on here than just religion, obviously. You can approach the terrorism question from any number of valid angles-- economic, political, technological/scientific, historical, psychological, and sociological, for example. In fact, it's hard to talk about this question without having recourse to several angles of attack. What do we see when we appraise the situation through the lens of religious pluralism?

From where I sit, the Muslim world as a whole is far, far from pluralist. Even the Muslim "center" is problematic. There's been a huge and lingering question about "moderate Islam," the so-called "silent majority" of Muslims who, we are told, decry the terrorist violence-- but seem to do so mostly in private or at largely unseen venues. The Muslim voice of outrage against the terrorists and the Islam they espouse has yet to be heard, clearly, at the (inter)national level. This fuels an awful suspicion, shared by many, that moderate Islam might not be as moderate as it looks. That, or the Muslim version of "moderation" is apples and oranges when compared to Christian or Buddhist moderation.

A fundamentalist, for me, is anyone who takes their religious doctrines and scriptures literally-- as a scientific skeptic, I use science as my guidepost for determining what "literally" means: to the extent that unverifiable claims are made about physical reality (e.g., "prayer healed my cancer," or "meditation makes you float" or "saints can teleport"), a person making such claims is being a literalist and therefore a fundamentalist. Having said this, I'll admit that there are degrees of fundamentalism, and the problem can't be viewed as black and white. Scholars note repeatedly that Christian fundamentalism in the United States rarely reaches the levels of violence seen in the Muslim world these days, so we have to make some distinctions there. But from a Buddhist perspective, the difference between angry Christian Bible-thumpers and Muhammad Atta is one of degree, not of kind (cf. my post critiquing Islam and monotheism on this point)-- both show the symptoms of upadana, attachment (in this case, the classic "attachment to name and form").

For those of us pluralists who are genuinely interested in interreligious dialogue, terrorists and others with extreme convictions pose a practical problem: whether and how to invite such people to dialogue. For a long time, the pluralist answer has been, in many cases, to write off the fundies as unworthy of sitting at the table. This attitude has come under fire for its arrogance-- and perhaps rightly so. A truly pluralist attitude has to be, paradoxically, open enough to admit even exclusivist perspectives. If religious liberals invite only fellow liberals to the table, isn't this a bit inbred?

But this is where things get murky. If we admit that there are degrees of fundamentalism, then a second practical problem faces the pluralist: how to choose among the fundies to invite to the table of dialogue. What's the metric? If a representative from a group of known murderers comes knocking at your door demanding to be heard, do you tell him to fuck off?

I'm not sure, in the end, how helpful the silent treatment is, but I'm also not sure that an undiscerning, blindly loving attitude toward "our enemies" is the best approach, either. This is one reason why I can never claim to be a pacifist. To the extent that pacifism is a yes/no question, where one is either an absolute pacifist or not, then by that standard, I'm no pacifist. I don't, however, believe that all solutions come at the point of a gun. Violence should always be a last resort.

While people like Steven Den Beste get huffy about "exploring underlying causes" of terrorism, I don't see what the problem is: shouldn't we be exploring causes? I agree with Den Beste that the primary causes currently lie more in the Muslim world than in our own, but once we reach that conclusion, what do we do? Sit back and enjoy our moral high ground? Obviously not: we have to engage. On one level, yes, this means military engagement. But if we operate only on that level, we won't be solving any issues anytime soon.

This is where people interested in interreligious dialogue come in. The current war (and don't fool yourselves: it is a war) has a very religious cast to it. The terms of the war were not of our choosing: I for one have been resisting the whole "clash of civilizations" meme as hard as I can, but it doesn't look like the terrorists will allow us to see matters any other way. While part of this war will involve military engagement, others among us have to do our part to be engaged religiously. I don't know what this means quite yet; I don't know what my own role in the big picture is. Maybe as I think out loud about it on this blog, something will come to me.

Luther said "Hier stehe ich," here I stand. My own stance, as a committed pluralist, is one that condemns the poisonous intolerance and fundamentalism of the terrorists. It also condemns the fundamentalism that seems to cling especially to people raised in monotheistic cultures. It means I affirm those aspects of Islam (and other religions) that embrace love, peace, and harmony, but reject those aspects that foster human brokenness, divisiveness, pettiness, and evil. Because I've been influenced by my studies in Asian spirituality, I also hold to the empirical notion that religions are as they are practiced. It isn't sufficient to attempt a factual claim like, "Islam is a religion of peace." I don't blame people for wanting to make this claim, though, because it does make deontological sense: Islam ought to be a religion of peace. The same applies to Buddhism in Sri Lanka: it ought to be a religion of peace. It applies to the Christianity of abortion clinic bombers in the US: it ought to be a religion of peace. It applies to the Hinduism of the anti-Muslim Hindus in India: it ought to be a religion of peace.

But not an absolutist peace. Not a notion of peace that becomes so idolized, so fetishized, that we lose our powers of discernment and prove unable to respond to the present moment, because we find ourselves so wrapped in an extreme ideal that we, too-- we pluralists or pacifists or whoever-- become, in our turn, fundamentalists.

Shanti.

_

[March 17 UPDATE: To the folks coming here from Winds of Change, welcome and thanks-- there's plenty to see, so feel free to stick around, scroll up and down, and check out the posts I've selected for permalinking on my sidebar (near the bottom, just above the archive links). When you're done, check out the people on my newly-renovated blogroll, now complete with graphics. Just a word about the following post: I'm happy it was selected for the Winds of Change roundup, but in truth, it was very much inspired by a post at Flying Yangban and another post at Overboard. I think those posts should have been linked at WoC as well, but here are the links, fo' yo' big behind: Yangban, Overboard.]

It was an effort to wait until my scheduled Buddhism/Zen day to write about this, but somehow I managed to rein in the impatience.

Over at Flying Yangban, there's a fascinating post about a trend visible on American college campuses: the Buddhist get-togethers are predominantly white, while the on-campus Christian gatherings are overwhelmingly Asian.

Andi at Overboard picked up on this and added some amazingly profound insights of her own, taking the discussion in a very internal direction.

The Yangban's blog post stems from a year-old Washington Post article that characterizes the current demographic trend as a kind of trade. In discussing two Yale students, a white student named Harvell who became Buddhist and an Asian student named Chung who converted to Christianity, the writer remarks:

In a religious sense, Chung and Harvell traded places, each one embracing the faith of the other's forebears. But neither of them noticed the irony because so many other Asian and white students at Yale were doing the very same thing. Indeed, the 120-member Christian fellowship to which Chung belonged was about 85 percent Asian, while the Buddhist meditation meetings at Yale were almost entirely white.

Yale is hardly the only university where this is occurring. Asian Americans are rapidly becoming the face of Christianity on many college campuses across the country, joining evangelical clubs in large numbers and, in some cases, starting their own Christian organizations. The trend is most pronounced at elite private universities, where Asian American enrollment is high, but it also has been evident at public colleges, including the University of Maryland and the University of Virginia. Meanwhile, in smaller numbers, white students are increasingly gravitating toward Buddhism, Taoism and other Eastern religions.

Characterizing the trend this way is disputable. Are we, in fact, seeing a trading of places? On the surface, it may appear that this is what's happening: plenty of American white folks (and not just on college campuses) are indeed coming to know Buddhism, many through the intellectual, book-centered approach known by the amusing term "nightstand Buddhism." Nightstand Buddhism (and Taoism, etc.) are freighted with certain perils, not least of which is the false idea that one is plunging wholeheartedly into a new spiritual tradition, when in fact one is only internalizing new concepts, perhaps reorienting one's metaphysics, but doing little that would be considered actual practice by more traditional adherents. Along with this is the fact that most "converts" to nonessentialist Eastern traditions never truly leave behind their Judeo-Christian essentialism, often adopting a rather evangelical Protestant, in-group/out-group attitude toward other practitioners-- a dualistic dogmatism (e.g., this is "real" Buddhism; this isn't) not often visible in actual Asian practice, where the mentality is, generally speaking, much more syncretic.

Another problem with the "trading places" notion is that America isn't really the place to look for wholesale abandonment of Christianity. The Post article deals primarily with trends on American college campuses, and to its credit, it notes that some dabblers are probably attracted to Eastern religion for faddish reasons. Whether these faddies will go on to deeper practice is another matter; at a guess, most won't. The problem, from a demographic standpoint, is that America is still robustly Christian-- a fact that Andi deals with in her post when she says:

Let me level with you about my perceptions of the majority of "Buddhists" in America as opposed to the majority of "Christians": although there are a fair number of poseurs in both camps, at least "Christians" have the benefit of a dominant culture.

That's the American situation in a nutshell. If you want to see a real wave of white folks throwing off Christianity and filling their "internal void" with Eastern spirituality, look to Europe. Here is where the trend toward Asian spirituality is most striking. There are historical reasons for this, some of which I can sketch superficially, to wit:

Other writers, in a political context, have noted the difference between American and European religiosity. In Europe these days, it's the unassimilated Muslim population that's bringing back that old-time religious fervor. European Catholicism-- European Christianity in general-- has taken major hits, the death blow arguably coming with the advent of World War 2. Sartrean and Camusian post-WW2 French existentialism, which paints a picture of an absurd cosmos in which one builds one's own truth to live authentically, was a brave yet bitter response to the absence of God as the bombs were raining down on major cities. The Europe of 1945 was, among other things, an ironic juxtaposition of cathedrals and craters. Ultimately, existentialism is life-affirming, but it rests on the basic double-conviction of cosmic absurdity and multiple degrees of alienation (from God, nature, others, and self).

So much postmodernist thinking springs from this ambivalent source, and as the European religious temperament was forever changed by the crucible of WW2, a void did appear where Christianity once stood. I remember back in the 1980s that the French statistic was something like 60% catholique non-pratiquant (non-practicing Catholic). Religious satire and irreverence are par for the course in Europe; I have volumes of comic drawings by Claude Serre, many of which involve religious tropes-- one drawing depicts Jesus winning a swimming contest by simply running across the surface of the water. I always admired how relaxed Europeans could be about their religion, especially compared to the froth and thunder of so much American Christianity.

But even before WW2, European Christianity was old. This, too, has probably played a role in the creation of the European religious void-- the mustiness of European faith. Buddhism, which has made huge inroads in France and other European countries, fills that void very neatly and is often a topic of national discussion. One French book in particular, Le moine et le philosophe (The Monk and the Philosopher), became a runaway bestseller and did much to raise French consciousness about Buddhist values, feeding la vague bouddhiste (the Buddhist wave).

The end result is that many Europeans are throwing off the old religion and embracing Asian spirituality. While Zen teachers like Lewis Richmond, disciple of Shunryu Suzuki, believe that the Buddhism wave could still fail, the number of Zen (only Zen; not other forms of Buddhism) adherents in France has tripled from about 200,000 in the 1970s to about 600,000 now. Europe is the place to look for a wider embrace of Eastern spirituality. America, while highly pluralistic, remains strongly Christian in its demographics, and mainstream American Christianity is, arguably, on the wane as evangelicals and fundamentalists pick up the drifters and capitalize on the current national temperament, a resurgent wartime conservatism.

Christian missionary work continues apace, and the Third World is where evangelical Christianity is making the most inroads: parts of Central and South America, countries in Africa and Asia. The converts in these places are the true keepers of religious zeal; many of the converts now at American universities were converted in Asia and took their Christianity to the States.

When you look at the overall demographic trends, then, you're not really seeing symmetrical movement. The motives for conversion are often very different for Christian and Buddhist (etc.) converts, and the moving geographical "footprints" of Christianity and Buddhism are very different, too.

The nature of Christian and Buddhist "evangelism" (term very much in quotes, but there's no denying that Buddhism has always been, historically, a missionary religion) is different as well. South Korea is an obvious example of this. Buddhism enjoyed prosperity for centuries in Korea, especially during the Shilla Dynasty, but eventually neo-Confucianism came to dominate, and Buddhism was pushed backwards and upwards into the mountains. Monasteries lost land, money and influence; Buddhism became less relevant to the lives of the common people. Christianity's arrival in Korea led to conflict, but it was primarily a conflict between Christians and Confucianists, not Christians and Buddhists. The Christian-Buddhist conflict/dialogue is actually a somewhat more recent phenomenon here. Korean Christianity never lost the missionary zeal of the Westerners (and Chinese, and others) who brought the Gospel to its shores. Today, neon crosses dot the nighttime landscape of Seoul; churches can be found all over South Korea. Christianity also associated itself in the Korean mind with modernity and nationalism: Bibles were printed in Hangul whereas Buddhist sutras were (and largely still are) printed in classical Chinese; Christian dissidents were active against the Japanese occupation-- and even today, Christian missionary exclusivism works hard to portray other religions as false, primitive, and superstitious. Buddhism is trying to adapt to modern times in Korea, in many cases even resorting to Christian-sounding music to keep practitioners on their cushions. Korean Buddhist societies like Bul-il Hwae (Buddha Sun Society) help spread and reinforce Buddhist teaching among the laity, grounding the young in the Dharma.

But Korean Buddhism may be losing out. Many Westerners have fallen in love with Korean Buddhism, which shares both deep and superficial traits with Chinese Buddhism, but today's South Koreans often view monks, rightly or wrongly, as lazy and selfish; many modern Koreans also see Buddhism as "a woman's religion" (demographically speaking, Korean women are on the whole more active practitioners than men) and denigrate it as superstitious.

Buddhism has historically taken on different forms depending on the country/culture in which it settles-- borrowing local rituals and cosmologies, changing its shape to suit the needs of its practitioners. Andi's fascinating post deals in some measure with the question of what many Western converts are missing out on. I'd quote her entire post here if I could, but that would be rude. Here's a snippet:

I knew a lot about Buddhism before I went to Nepal. I'd meditated with a couple different groups and I'd read a little, fluffy stuff and scripture both. But none of it lived. I was also deeply skeptical of the American Buddhist community. I'd heard too many times, "I'm not Buddhist, but..." followed by some peace, love 'n' harmony line. I didn't buy it. If there's such a [label] as "Buddhist," I wanted to know what it was before I got too deeply into something.

There is something to the religious aspect of Buddhism, that folk-level stuff. The paintings, the prayers, all the dross that "religions" get. What would [Catholicism] be without its cathedrals?--still faith in the resurrected Jesus, still love and fear of God, still the community--but something would be absent. The uplifting of the spirit, the enthusiastic aestheticism of architecture, art, and ritual... I find these are useful, though not necessary, parts of religion. And they provide a depth, a way for people no matter what level they're at (still praying for good crops or completely cut from the cycle of suffering), to engage and plug into guiding principles and morality.

Several times on my own blog, I've said, "Beware Barnes and Noble Zen!" This warning is especially applicable to people who read the likes of Alan Watts (yours truly included) and feel they've gained some deep insight into "what Zen is." I've also argued strenuously against those "Buddhist essentialists" who take their rarefied, stripped-down, essentialistic Barnes and Noble Buddhism and make declarations, usually against respectful, inquisitive Christians, about what Buddhism is and isn't. These Buddhists don't seem to get Andi's point: most Buddhism is folkloric! Here's how I dealt with the question contra Buddhists on Beliefnet who preached an essentialist gospel:

OK, maybe I do have a real critique of online Western Buddhists: Beliefnet needs some down-home folkloric Taiwanese Pure Landers-- unreconstructed East Asians without a hint of Western pollution in them. People who're Buddhist because their families have been Buddhist since the time when snaggle-toothed cave men were dragging their knuckles and drawing stick figures. People who see ghosts, hobnob with ancestral spirits, think waaaay superstitiously, factor good/bad luck into everyday living. People who, like the Taiwanese lady who sat in on my lecture about Buddhism at my church, said, "I didn't recognize a single thing you talked about," because, like so many Western Buddhists do when discoursing on Buddhism (and Beliefnet's threads provide plenty of confirmation), I reduced Buddhism to a set of rarefied academic concepts and principles, and to a very narrow set of practices that had nothing to do with how millions of people actually live their Buddhism in the Old Country.

I'm not implying that Western converts (or Western "cradle Buddhists") are somehow fake. I am saying, however, that every time I see a Western Buddhist on these boards lecture about how Buddhism "isn't about X or Y," I keep thinking to myself, "Maybe you should ask the folks back home." Not theistic? Depends. Not dualistic? Also depends. No essences? Routinely contradicted whenever the phrase "real Buddhism" pops up.

[NB: the link to the above archived post, "The Question of Religious Pluralism," is unstable. If you have problems, hit the link on my sidebar to "A Critique of a Holographic Model of Religious Pluralism" and scroll down, down, down a ways until you see the proper post.]

I think Andi is making a point that's missed by many Western Buddhists. Perhaps it's a point better appreciated by Catholics than by us Protestants, because it speaks to the organic nature of solid tradition. If Buddhism leaps to America from Asia and magically loses its skin and flesh, landing on Plymouth Rock as nothing but a skeleton of its former self, it is, I think, legitimate to ask whether something-- a bunch of somethings-- might not have been lost in translation during that leap.

To speak of the organic nature of tradition (and practice, and belief, and all the rest) is to speak of continuity. Continuity, as I noted in my critique of Dr. Vallicella's paper, isn't the same thing as permanence. Continuity is that quality we often mistake for permanence or essence. Continuity is what gives phenomena their distinctness and uniqueness, but it's also what prevents phenomena from being somehow fundamental or essential or substantive. A quiet little stream moves through the woods; you point to it, right now, and say, "That's a stream." And sure enough, that's what it is. But come back in a thousand years-- no stream there! Same with people: you see a child running around your living room and you say, "Look at that child!" But come back in fifty years-- no child there! You can do the same thing to the phenomena we call Buddhism and Christianity: zoom forward or backward in time a few billion years-- no Buddhism or Christianity there!

Thien monk Thich Nhat Hanh wrote eloquently about all this in his Living Buddha, Living Christ. He said:

When we look into the heart of a flower, we see clouds, sunshine, minerals, time, the earth, and everything else in the cosmos in it. Without clouds, there could be no rain, and there would be no flower. Without time, the flower could not bloom. In fact, the flower is made entirely of non-flower elements; it has no independent, individual existence. It "inter-is" with everything else in the universe.

[...]

Just as a flower is made only of non-flower elements, Buddhism is made only of non-Buddhist elements, including Christian ones, and Christianity is made of non-Christian elements, including Buddhist ones.

Life is a messy process which our minds are duty-bound by evolution to clean up and clarify. Life is rarely symmetrical, despite all the preaching in the West about justice, and all the preaching in the East about balance. To see the world in terms of cosmic scales is to impose yet more superstitious thinking on natural processes. So I don't view the current religious "trend" on American college campuses as an actual trading of places (and to the Post's credit, the writer notes Dr. Robert [father of Uma] Thurman's remark that Western students who engage in Eastern practice rarely want to go into the ritual aspects of that practice); that's too clean a description. Instead, what we're seeing is what we've always seen in human activity: the simple and natural eros of the human spirit.

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Sorry. The above is a punchline to a French joke I heard from my Swiss "brother" long ago. But it may be applicable here.

Lorianne writes the following:

It's not like Kevin himself isn't prone to such wild juxtapositions: this is the man who writes thoughtful ecumenical musings, insightful analyses of world politics, etc, then mixes them up with wickedly bawdy bits about John Kerry's affection for sheep (?) and Howard Dean's resemblance to a huge erect penis. (Actually, I can't read Kevin's site at school any more: it's just too damn embarrassing trying to explain to a newly-arrived student--or Department Chair--why you have a huge erect penis on your computer.)

We aim to please, so I've redone one of the "Deanis" cartoons as an example of what you can expect from now on. I think this will make my blog work-safe for you. No student need know that you spend your office hours looking at cartoon porn.

Please scroll down to see the proposed tasteful change.





























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News I got while reading Cobb:

Spalding Gray is dead. They found him when he washed ashore. Damn, damn, damn. I'm mighty unhappy.

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Boorish Klingon behavior catches Kirk's attention!

Professor Kirk Larsen writes in to protest the unfairness of the sidebar logo for his very informative blog, It Makes a Difference to the Sheep:

Dear Kevin,

This is an official protest of the unjust treatment my blog has received by way of your sidebar logos. The Marmot gets an evil-eyed but very cool rodent, Oranckay gets Arnold, Flying Yangban gets, well, a Flying Yangban, many others get insightful, artistic or witty (or a combination of all three) logos, and I get . . . bestiality. It was probably naive of me to not expect some to think along those lines even though the name actually came from an innocent Stan Freberg comedy routine. I also thought the name an appropriate metaphor for blogging in general: the sheep (e.g. the masses) writing about what is interesting or important to them rather than what old fashioned big media determines to be interesting or important.

If I promise to never post anything about Hello Kitty ever again, is there any way you could make a new logo, one that I wouldn't be embarrassed to put up on my blog (after all, my mother reads the thing from time to time)?

Cheers,

Kirk W. Larsen

Kirk, to be honest, I thought your blog's title was the punchline of a dirty joke. For me, rolling around in the gutter as I do, it was hard to see your blog's title any other way, which made that image, or something like it, inevitable. The present logo would be even better if I had room for a speech balloon so the sheep could shout, "Thank God! It's RIBBED!" or "Damn, you-- are-- HUGE!"

Wait a second. Your mother reads your blog?

Ohhhh, that's low, Prof. Larsen, bringing your mother into this, laying on the guilt.

I feel like a shit because I promised myself I'd change logos without question if people complained, but I really like the current logo. So here are two possibilities for discussion:

1. I leave my logo on my blog and design a new logo for you to use on your blog. That would be my preferred solution. It presumes that your mother doesn't read my blog; an educated guess since you never blogrolled me, damn your eyes.

2. I scrap the current logo, design a new one, and we both use that one. I'll be more amenable to this solution if your mother also reads my blog.

I imagine there are other possibilities. You could, for example, design your own logo (I highly, highly recommend getting a copy of Adobe Photoshop Elements for this; it's cheap and powerful software). Or you could outsource to someone else, though they'd probably bend you over and demand pay. All I want is a listing under "Foul-mouthed Expats" on your sidebar.

(I need to see a shrink about why I'm always rude to professors.)

A request: please tell me more about that Stan Freberg comedy routine. It'll help me figure out how to redo your logo. The upshot of all this is that you WILL get a new logo for your blog, but I'm hesitant to scrap the image on my own sidebar. If you feel my sidebar needs to be changed, then I will, with much weeping and gnashing of teeth, make the change. Thanks for writing in (heeeeeeeeey, I thought you were in a crunch period and unable to write these days!), and I look forward to hearing from you again soon.


Kevin

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je blogue
tu blogues
il blogue
nous bloguons
vous bloguez
elles bloguent

il bloguait
nous avons blogué
bloguer, c'est méga-chouette
elle n'a aucune intention de cesser de bloguer
on adore bloguer, même en se branlant
tout le monde a son putain de blog
nous sommes tous bloguériens
blogué soit qui mal y pense
l'blog, c'est moi
qui blogue tout pardonne tout

[with sincerest apologies to John Eckard; I had to get the above out of my system]

I hope Richard isn't pissed with his new logo on my sidebar. I found the pic for the world-famous Duck Chang's restaurant, which is the arguable inventor and/or popularizer of Peking Duck. Then I thought to myself, "You know, this photo would look much more exciting if we had Pinhead from the Hellraiser series serving the duck. Along with one of his victims, of course."

Richard notes that hope for China's "new and improved" openness grows dim.

Justin is worth $30.

Spam meditation and scary fuckin' topiary at Justin's brother's blog.

Over at Gweilo Diaries: Bad news for cunnilingus lovers who tongue too many crotch notches. And check out "An Min Goes Ape."

Hat tip to Anticipatory Retaliation, who links to this essay by a woman who's spent many years in France but is now having her doubts about les Français. AR also provides another crotch-related link here.

Ryan explores interesting parallels between gay marriage and Irish divorce. He's also pumped about the upcoming Buddhist Studies conference. I can only envy him.

The very conservative Bird Dog at Tacitus writes on the newly-signed Iraqi Constitution... and the evil that is John Kerry.

Happy Blogiversary, Annika!

one year at your blog
putting up with guys who shout,
"Come on! Flash dem tits!"

Annika rated "Obi-wan Kenobi" when she took the Star Wars test. I rated Qui-gon.

Dan Darling on the hijab question (among other things).

A paper by Dr. Bill Vallicella: "In the Absence of Knowledge, May One Believe?" This is relevant to some of the same epistemological issues I've dealt with (superficially) in my posts on Alvin Plantinga and Philip Quinn.

KBJ receives a letter constructing a case against Christianity. The argument against a God who allows his own son to be brutally murdered is a familiar one; I don't really dispute it because my own problems with our theological imagery-- and the question of how literally to take it-- have led me to become a nontheist (NB: not atheist!). The letter also speaks at length to the issue of the unverifiability of Jesus' existence, but it may be overstating the case. There is indeed a school of thought that forcefully questions whether Jesus existed, and their central argument is a good, scientific one: we have, at present, no direct evidence for the historical Jesus. But in the wider scholarly world, this school of thought isn't that prominent. It might become so; who knows?

But what happens if we find Jesus' body?

Read Tom Robbins's Another Roadside Attraction for the answer.

I'm sure the Maximum Leader has seen this. I saw this a while ago myself, but Jay writes a fun post about the Shakespearean insult generator and lists his three faves:

Thou churlish beef-witted foot-licker!
Thou art so leaky that we must leave thee to thy sinking.
Methinks thou art a general offence, and every man should beat thee.

I love "beef-witted." Quite redolent. But first prize goes to the third quip, which I think would serve well as a Naked Villainy tag line. In my mind, I hear this line being uttered by a thoroughly drunk Peter O'Toole. Try it out in your head:

Methinks thou art a general offence, and every man should beat thee.

The story of Lorianne as laid out in her blog is an interesting one. Having read through her archives from the beginning, I thought for a while that I was seeing a sort of gleeful morphing from Jekyll to Hyde as the "fuck" word count began to spike in more recent blogs. But Lorianne is in the final stages of her doctoral career; at the same time, she's an English teacher, journalist, naturalist, writer, blogger, wife, and of course, Zen teacher-- all these obligations doubtless weigh on her and produce a certain nuttiness during crunch periods. My own academic experience was filled with punchy moments, and I think a blog is the perfect place to give those moments voice. Lorianne gets back to original form in her most recent blog, but check her out in these two posts.

In that last link, Lorianne talks about "Kill Bill," which I have yet to see. I wrote about Tarantino (and David Carradine, and Bjork) here; my own take is very different from Lorianne's. Vive la différence! God bless variety! Variety is what makes my underwear skid marks endlessly fascinating.

Steven Den Beste captures why I can't stand Kerry. I don't love Bush, I don't love Nader... I'm probably going to vote for Daffy Duck-- but Kerry must not be allowed to wrap his moldy dick around the neck of American foreign policy.

We here at the Hairy Chasms like our posts chunky-style, so it was with some regret that we noted the Maximum Leader's new "short blogs" program. The ML's (and his guest posters') long essays on history and politics are some of the main reasons why I visit his blog-- along with the old, cobwebbed Mafia-loyalty that comes from knowing Mike since we were both 8 years old. I'll take this moment to express a fervent wish that, assuming the ML has the time and inclination, he will break away from the new program now and then to publish much lengthier screeds.

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JOB UPDATE: No yang without yin. This morning I received a call from my agency contact telling me that the schedule isn't Monday through Friday but Monday through Thursday. However, the agency head is looking for English tutoring lessons, so this would give me another private class to go along with my already-in-place Friday evening class. Folks, you just have to roll with it. Here in Korea, schedules are subject to change without notice; items in your plan book may have to be scratched out, but other items might well have to be pencilled in. Because I have experience living in both Korea and Switzerland, I can confirm that Koreans and Swiss folks have a lot in common as fellow montagnards, but when it comes to their respective appreciations of the space-time continuum, well... the Koreans have, shall we say, a more fluid conception of space and time. This has its merits and demerits; you just have to be adaptable to the changing terrain, like a skier on a slope full of moguls.

[Note to concerned friends: TAKE NO ACTION, PLEASE. As with the previous job-related blog, this is merely me airing out thoughts-- not a frothing rant, and definitely not a call for mini-jihad. The dominant emotion here isn't anger-- just amusement and some therapeutic cynicism, as with last time. Because this job is going to be a large part of my existence as of March 24, I will be blogging about it regularly. I need to be free to blog about it without worrying about the adverse consequences of well-intentioned "corrective measures." Muchas gracias for your concern and friendship.]

Let's go through my Koreablogroll from the bottom up this time, shall we? Lots going on, as always.

One upshot of the recent 5th International Conference on NK Human Rights and Refugees in Poland was this joint statement, found at the Free North Korea! blog. Chris also wants to hear your opinion about whether Kerry would be tougher than Bush on NK, so leave comments. Chris's own stance seems to be that the hype against Kerry is unfair. I disagree. I don't think Kerry would have had the balls to make NK this nervous to begin with. NK now sweats because it's on a short list called the Axis of Evil-- a truly stupid label, but rhetorically useful, and one that a person like Kerry would be horrified to apply.

I'll grant that Bush's "actions" regarding NK haven't really been all that proactive (and as Kevin at IA recently showed, this administration isn't above coddling NK, either), but that inactivity in itself is a good thing: it's a hell of a lot better than extracting empty promises like the 1994 Agreed Framework, which allowed people to feel good about themselves without actually doing shit for either the NK people or our side. Who are the big losers at every "deal"? We are.

So I'm sorry, Chris-- love your blog, but I think you're dead wrong. Kerry's NK policy will be a massive limp dick, impressively hung but unable to fuck shit up. It'll just dangle there, flaccid, stinky, and veinless, with no more fuck-value than the meat from a can of Spam. The end result of Kerry's policies will be a slew of benefits for NK and nothing for us. John Kerry probably wouldn't allow a loudmouth critic like John Bolton to say, in public, that North Korea is a "hellhole." Kerry would be too worried about NK accusations that he's a "scumsucker." Come live here in SK a while and you'll see why so many of us expats, liberal, conservative, and otherwise, feel this way.

To us, the routinely Spam-fucked, I say: stop dealing with NK at all. Reduce the issue to its security elements and leave humanitarian responsibilities entirely in the hands of the people who claim brotherhood with the North: the South Koreans. Hold NK hostage with a once-and-forever pronouncement: a single NK warhead, a single load of WMDs, found anywhere outside NK will be cause for all-out war. The same policy applies should an American city be hit by a WMD attack, nuclear or otherwise. Then let's sit back and worry about all the other domestic and international problems we need to address.

The Party Pooper follows up his love letter to the Triply chocolate candy with a hilarious piece of "fan fiction" based, it seems, on Dungeons and Dragons and the Baldur's Gate 2 computer game. You might not get all the inside jokes if you never played D&D, but you'll nevertheless thrill to some of the pungent imagery of the Pooper's piece: "meat puppets," a Shocking Grasp spell applied to the balls, and then there's the standard "hobbit bedroom and bathroom invasion procedure," which deserves quoting here:

I do the standard "Hobbit Bedroom and Bathroom Invasion Procedure," which you should know very well if you've ever been burglarized by a halfling. Short-sheet the bed, shit in the slippers, pee in the shampoo bottle and masturbate into one of his clean socks and/or gloves. I’m not sure why we [hobbits] do this, and only this. It's just an ancient tradition that borders on the sacred for us.

The stuff Tolkien never told you...

It snowed rather heavily just before the previous weekend-- the first time in 100 years that Korea has had such weather at this time of year, from what I've heard. Thousands of cars were stuck on the road... and Polymath was in one of them.

At Overboard, we've got bath houses and the movie "T'aegeukgi." Maybe a better way to market this post is "NAKED WHITE CHICKS AND GUNS." G. Gordon Liddy would approve. Andi also has a short post on gay marriage in Korea. And she sports a tattoo... somewhere. Ahem.

Rathbone Press does its own riff on education in Korea: surprise, surprise, it appears that South Koreans don't acquire a love of learning. I think this is largely true, though I've been fortunate enough to meet Koreans who break the stereotype. The RP also registers annoyance at congratulatory Korean articles touting Korean achievements in other countries, the central problem summed up thus:

The final reason articles like those mentioned above annoy me is that the Korean media likes to bash the US and Japan, yet when a Korean does well in these countries it is viewed as a great triumph. If a Korean succeeds in the US or Japan, that is seen as real success. My question is "why"? If the US and Japan are so bad, why give so much attention to Koreans who succeed there?

Two words: subjugation mentality. One part of you wants to resent The Man. One part of you wants to be his friend. South Korea's been through hell, it's true, but it's not going through hell right now compared to the past, and the young folks seem to have forgotten most of that misery, anyway-- plumping up like Americans, listening to American-style rap, gorging themselves on fast food, skating by on the sweat of the previous generation. My older Korean relatives also shake their heads at this. For Korea to move ahead, it has to stop living the lie that it is any longer a helpless victim. A strong economy, a strong place in the field of technology, and a more-than-strong-enough military all give the lie to the notion that this is some third-world backwater. Sure, parts of Korea are still primitive by Seoul standards, but hell, parts of America are rather rusticated, too. SO?

Finally, RP is all over the recent incident in Iraq in which Korean journalists were "manhandled" by American troops during a security procedure. Yes, it's true that a broom handle up the ass isn't the best way to look for a nuclear warhead, but conditions in Iraq are delicate, so I think our troops can be forgiven their thoroughness.

[BTW, that was a JOKE. Please read the linked posts to learn the actual situation.]

The Yangban has the goods on the journalist/troops story, predicting that the Korean media will overreact. A subsequent post informs us that, yes, as predicted, people here are overreacting.

Budae Chigae covers the wrangling going on over some Korean real estate. But what's more important is that the KimcheeGI reveals what the Mars rovers, Spirit and Opportunity, have really encountered on the Red Planet's surface.

The Infidel poo-poos South Korean pseudo-capitalism. On a non-Korea-related note, the Infidel also mentions a major blind spot in our current foreign policy. This is a valid concern: if we're going to argue that the countries surrounding North Korea need to be more mindful of what's going on in their back yard, then the same applies to us and our own back yard.

Over at Oranckay (which, if you can't figure it out from my sidebar, means "barbarian" according to Mr. Schroepfer): a note about the death threats now being received by Hwang Jang Yop, the octogenarian NK defector (and former NK ideologue) whom South Koreans resent for telling the truth about what a shithole NK is. Also not to be missed: this bizarre Noh Mu Hyon impeachment flap, which Mr. Schroepfer claims to be "too !@#%(% angry" to write about coherently right now.

Aside: I have no goddamn clue about the minutiae of Korean politics. As things stand, I'm a political ignoramus when it comes to American politics, despite our relatively easy-to-understand two-party polity. In Korea, the problem is compounded by the Protestant Impulse gone mad: mitotic splits, Frankensteinian fusions, and John-Kerryish realignments. Along with that, you've got deals and dealbreaking... and the whole sordid thing is buried under the fetid ass-dandruff of corruption. I suppose an expert on Korean politics must possess acute powers of discernment-- the same powers that allow crotch fanatics to collect and categorize dingleberries (hey, each one is unique like a snowflake!).

[BTW, the snowflake contention is empirically unprovable, goddammit. The things melt too fast, and you'd have to collect all the snowflakes from the beginning of time and run them through a machine to determine whether there have been any snowflake doppelgängers. Even then, there's always the chance that a future snowflake might match a past one. As Judy Tenuta, that prophetess of stochastic phenomena, knew so well: It could happen!]

Schroepfer also notes that some Koreans-- who claim to work on behalf of human rights-- aren't happy with our North Korean Freedom Act of 2003. Read the usinkorea comment to that post as well. Yep.

Mike Ferrin's granddad passed away recently. Please leave him your condolences, especially if you are, as I am, a devoted reader of his excellent blog.

Via the Marmot: you all know by now that North Korea's government, among other unsavory governments, is eagerly awaiting the arrival of John Kerry in the White House: Oh, goody! Another dupe! And he won't ever embarrass us in public like that Bush sonofabitch and his Bolton-dog!

And quite the flame war is being waged in the comments thread of this post about the plight of female NK refugees. You might want to just stick to the post. The flame war itself doesn't remain interesting for long.

And in just a week's time, on March 15, South Korea will yet again abstain from voting against its North Korean brother at the UN Commission on Human Rights Convention in Geneva. That's moral backbone for you.

On that lovely note, I bid you... fart well. Fart long. Fart accurately.

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In case you missed it, I finally posted that essay on The Philosophical Challenge of Religious Diversity, evaluating the final chapter by Philip L. Quinn, "Towards Thinner Theologies," and adding some overall remarks about the book as a whole and the religio-philosophical discussion in general.

Scroll down to the post titled "'Towards Thinner Theologies'?"

Enjoy.

UPDATE: Dr. Vallicella wrote to say he's seen my post and is formulating a reply, which will eventually appear on his blog, though not right away. Seems like a very nice fellow, though I still suspect I'm in for a royal ass-kicking. Check out his main site as well; parts of it are still under construction, but there are plenty of interesting articles to read.

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You'll notice my sidebar's gotten a lot longer and wider since I started playing with it. The Koreabloggers all have logos now; I just finished Pythi Master's (I assume that's pronounced "pie-thigh," as in the "pyth" from "python" and the "i" from "Jedi," per your specs?). That was the last one-- no logo for the Korean Blog List. I'll be starting on other parts of the blogroll in the coming week-- am very much looking forward to doing Flying Chair's "Beat You Death Like Chicken" logo.

BTW, the logo I'm using for Regnum Crucis is shamelessly stolen from a Peugeot ad I received by email a couple years ago.

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With fond thanks to Digital Pixi who, for no reason at all aside from simple kindness, made me the following tee shirt design:





Now available at my CafePress shop. And shop at the Pixi's while you're at it.

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The Philosophical Challenge of Religious Diversity has proved to be an enriching, difficult, and often frustrating read-- but enjoyable all the same. Although the chapters were written by many contributors with diverse backgrounds and agendas, the book's major focus was on two scholars: John Hick and William P. Alston. Hick is arguably the most famous formulator and defender of the standard "convergent" religious pluralist position (but I'd still place Raimondo Panikkar at the top of the pluralist pantheon, keeping in mind that Panikkar is probably a "nonconvergent" pluralist). Alston, heretofore unknown to me, is apparently a huge defender of religious exclusivism. Alvin Plantinga's chapter defending exclusivism (which I review here), while important in itself, seems to serve, in this book, as something like an introduction to the concepts used by Alston in his defense of exclusivism. Many of the book's other contributors are defenders and/or critics of Hick's and Plantinga/Alston's positions. There's very little discussion of inclusivism (cf. S. Mark Heim for more on this; although Heim offers a "more pluralist" hypothesis than Hick, his own personal stance remains firmly Christian inclusivist).

The final chapter of Philosophical Challenge is by Philip L. Quinn. It's titled "Towards Thinner Theologies"-- a title suggesting that Quinn might be in the same camp I'm in with regard to a "groundless pluralism" that minimizes-- or does away completely with-- philosophical formulations.* The chapter is a fitting end to the book because it examines both Hick's and Alston's positions, finding merits and demerits to both.

[*NB: The link to this post is highly unstable, thanks to Blogspot's awful software. The post's title is "The Question of Religious Pluralism," and is dated July 13, 2003. Please search via my dated archive links if the direct link doesn't work.]

Alston introduces a term that's new to me: doxastic practice. Doxastic practices are, according to Alston in his own chapter (p. 195), "practices of belief-formation," and we employ a plurality of these practices in our daily lives. If different doxastic practices are brought to bear in order to produce similar results, it's possible to compare their relative merits and demerits. Alston uses weather prediction as one example. Some people take a scientific, meteorological approach to this; others use the pain in their joints; still others watch groundhogs. Because these practices all aim at the same goal (weather prediction), it's possible to judge them according to their efficiency.

Alston feels, however, that it is disanalogous to compare religious doxastic practices this way, because there are real questions as to whether religious doxastic practices share enough common ground for firm comparison. This is the grounds on which Alston critiques John Hick, whom Alston sees as engaging in this disanalogy. Alston also feels that Christian religious doxastic practice's justifiability arises from its overall self-consistency and self-support-- an important criterion, according to Alston, for judging the reliability/justifiability of any doxastic practice. Such justifiability runs counter to Hick's and other pluralists' arguments against the justifiability of an exclusivist stance.

[NB: the potential circularity of a self-supporting doxastic practice is discussed in Philosophical Challenge, and the conclusion seems to be that some degree of circularity is inevitable. In the end, one's dependence on a doxastic practice boils down to whether "it works," or more exactly, whether "it works for me."]

As with Plantinga, Alston seems to be fighting a defensive action, giving exclusivism some breathing room without going further to claim that the exclusivist way is, objectively, the right way. While it's true that the reality of religious diversity can be problematic for the sincere religious practitioner, the questions arising from that diversity need not undermine the overall religious practice, to the extent that that practice is able to remain self-consistent and self-supporting. In fact, Alston believes that, in the face of religious diversity, a practitioner's most rational course of action is merely to "sit tight" and continue on with his/her current practice.

Quinn, in his chapter, disagrees that "sitting tight" is the only rational course available: it is also possible to adjust one's stance in accordance to what one learns from interaction with other religious perspectives, i.e., alter one's own religious doxastic practice (see especially pp. 240-242, passim).

Quinn takes Hick to task on the same grounds as George Mavrodes: inconsistencies in Hick's schematization and treatment of absolute reality, which Hick names "the Real." Hick's Real is that toward which religions are aimed, and of which they are imperfect and/or culturally mediated expressions. Following Kant's distinction between noumenon and phenomenon, as well as advaita vedantic Hinduism's distinction between nirguna and saguna brahman (Brahman [Absolute reality] without and with qualities), Hick sees religions as vessels for the phenomenal Real, but what they are really hinting at is the noumenal Real.

At times, Hick seems to attribute no qualities at all (or, at best, certain formal qualities) to this noumenal Real. Quinn's objection to Hick is the classic one, highlighting the dangers of positing something about which nothing can be said: what's to distinguish this "something" from nothing at all?

But that's not the objection that interests me. What interests me more is Quinn's (and Mavrodes's) questioning of Hick's use of Kantian notions, and here I made an interesting discovery about Kantian theory.

There are, according to Quinn and Mavrodes, two primary ways in which to view the relationship between Kantian noumenon and phenomenon. (I'll use Mavrodes's typology here, since Quinn borrows it.) The first and far less popular way is the "disguise model." Mavrodes offers this analogy: suppose a medieval prince wants to move about his father's kingdom undetected so he can see what life is like for the kingdom's subjects. He disguises himself as a monk in one place, as an artisan somewhere else, etc. The people who encounter the prince experience him as a monk, an artisan, etc.-- but not as a prince. However, there is nevertheless an identity between monk and prince, or artisan and prince, because if the monk were to fall into a lake and drown, then the prince would also fall into a lake and drown.

The second, more widely accepted way to understand the noumenon-phenomenon relationship is the "construct model." Here Mavrodes gives us a different image: several abstract artists sit side by side in the outdoors, painting the same landscape. The buildings, the hills, the sheep, the people, the trees, the sky, etc.-- all of these things figure somehow in each artist's painting, but because these are abstract paintings, the various components of the landscape may be difficult or impossible to recognize. What's more, the artists' paintings will all be different from each other. However, if asked, each artist will insist that the actual landscape did indeed play a real role in the creation of the artwork. Had the landscape been different, the paintings would also have been different. Thus the paintings are constructions of the landscape. There is a definite relationship between painting and landscape, but no necessary identity: if I slash one of the paintings, I don't thereby slash the real landscape.

According to Mavrodes and Quinn, there are moments in Hick's writing when he favors the disguise model for understanding the noumenal and phenomenal Real, and other moments when he favors the construct model. To move back and forth between the two models is inconsistent, and both Mavrodes and Quinn provide plenty of Hick-quotes to substantiate their claim that Hick is doing this. I came away convinced that they're onto something, but I've sensed from the beginning that Hick's schema has problems, so their observation comes as no real surprise.

The fundamental confusion in Hick's project may be a product of Hick's "dual career," as some scholars argue: Hick is both a theologian and a philosopher, and his attempts at a philosophical articulation of his religious motives may be self-undermining. I think the dual-career argument is correct, because I too see a division between Hick's ethical/religious and philosophical projects. Ultimately, I side with Hick for ethical reasons (I think pluralism is morally right), but I can't subscribe totally to his philosophical model. However, for those interested in pursuing the philosophical angle, I think Hick's model's rigor comes from the nebulousness of its central concept, the Real. Is the Real numerically singular, or is it more like the advaitic nondualist "one without a second"-- i.e., not countable? The answer seems to depend on which Hick you're reading. This oscillation creates many of the inconsistencies on which scholarly critiques of Hick focus, but it may also be a necessary feature of Hick's model, and one reason why the model remains in use-- and largely intact-- despite constant, often blistering, critique since the mid-1980s.

I thought that Quinn's chapter would lead to a conclusion similar to my own. I thought he would conclude that the pluralist project's best hope is to move toward a "groundless pluralism" that takes the form of a kind of mutual inclusivism, one in which practitioners can, if they choose, remain fully rooted in their own practice, fully justified in viewing others through the lens of that practice, and yet paradoxically (groundlessly) willing to allow themselves to be reinterpreted by the Other. The Rahner-Nishitani dialogue in which Karl Rahner pronounced himself "honored" to be thought an "anonymous Buddhist" is paradigmatic here. This mutual inclusivism can't be willy-nilly; it can and should involve Panikkar's "dialogical dialogue," which occurs both internally and externally. The benefits of such a mutual inclusivism are very practical, in that metaphysical and dogmatic questions are bracketed in favor of addressing immediate ethical-practical issues of external and internal human flourishing. This isn't to say that the speculative, philosophical, and theological aspects of religious practice should simply be closed off; obviously, that's impossible. But a truly "religious view of religion," to borrow Hick's phrase, needs to be sourced in the heart-- not in the textbook, nor even in the holy scriptures.

In the end, Quinn's own conclusion doesn't take this path; he gives no hint of what a "thinner theology" might look like. He simply claims that there is nothing irrational about proceeding in the direction of "thicker phenomenologies and thinner theologies, even if [practitioners] are not yet ready to go all the way to the Hickian view that it is nothing but phenomenology almost all the way down."

A large portion of The Philosophical Challenge of Religious Diversity is focused on the "Plantingan" questions of justification, warrant, and rationality. These issues are in turn intimately interrelated with questions of epistemology. As I argued in my post on Plantinga, I don't find this "justification/rationality" aspect of the larger discussion all that relevant: the issues that concern pluralists are, I think, much more practical in nature (though I know this isn't the case for all pluralists, by any means). Plantinga ends up neutralizing pluralist accusations of arrogance (etc.) against exclusivists on rational/epistemic grounds, but he also neutralizes accusations of arrogance against pluralists (and "liberal arrogance" is a much-loved phrase of conservatives, and often justified!-- do religious conservatives really want this rhetorical weapon taken from them?). Alston's argument seems to be little more than a fancier version of Plantinga's; it too relies on epistemological considerations. Hick's pluralistic hypothesis has been described by Stephen Kaplan as "epistemological pluralism," which I suppose means he views Hick's Real mainly through the "construct model," but this also means that Hick's argument, like the arguments of his critics, has a large epistemological component: how do people know the Real?

So while I might not have much truck with justification/warrant issues, it's a matter of brute fact that questions of epistemology nevertheless arise in current discussions of religious diversity, and perhaps this is as it should be. For a Christian to talk about his own religious experience, or for a Buddhist to talk about what she gains from meditative practice, is necessarily to invite epistemology into the room.

This leads me to one of my greatest frustrations: with so many theorists of religion taking an "epistemological turn" these days, why aren't more scientists involved in this discussion? One of the things that bugs me to death about theories of knowledge is that those theories have been and still are propounded by thinkers who had (and have) little to no notion of how the physical brain and body actually interact with their surroundings. Neuroscience has a lot to offer to the religious discussion; the discipline wasn't born yesterday. Religious thinkers need to be weaned from the abstruse vocabularies of "percepts" and "hyle" and glib Lonerganian formulations like "experience, understand, judge, decide"-- as if these schemata provided the only sound means for analyzing the nature of thought and knowledge. My prediction is that, here as elsewhere, religion will find itself retreating in the face of scientific discovery. The more technologically adept we become, the more it makes sense for us to view ourselves and our surroundings less in an analog manner than in a digital one.

In the meantime, the fact of religious diversity will present plenty of grist for religious (and scientific, political, etc.) discussion, speculation, and praxis. The Philosophical Challenge of Religious Diversity is one highlight of that discussion. If you're not afraid of often-dense material and have some hankering for philosophical and religious questions, I highly recommend this volume. My only real disappointment with it is that it takes no consideration of Raimondo Panikkar's enormous contribution to religious pluralism, and says nothing about S. Mark Heim's Rescherian orientational pluralism.

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I was introduced to Dr. William Vallicella's interesting website, IndependentPhilosopher, by Dr. Horace Jeffery Hodges, who sent me an email with Dr. Vallicella's URL.

Dr. Vallicella's self-intro describes his personal stance thus:

My philosophical position may be described as onto-theological personalism: I defend the view that individual persons form an irreducible and ultimate ontological category, and that within this category self-subsistent existence is the prime person. This is the theme that unifies my seemingly disparate investigations. Thus my critique of the anatta doctrine of Pali Buddhism subserves this end, as does my rethinking of themes from the great but now neglected native Californian philosopher, Josiah Royce. The same goes for my critique of Heidegger's phenomenological approach to Being, as well as my critique of the logical approach to existence found in Frege, Russell, and Quine.

This immediately caught my interest, because his stance is the polar opposite of my own. I certainly don't see persons or personhood as "an irreducible and ultimate ontological category" because I agree with the Buddhist contention that people, like all phenomena, are dependently co-arisen-- or to borrow Thich Nhat Hanh's "interbeing" terminology, people inter-are with all of reality.

Today is Thursday-- Buddhism/Zen Day on my new schedule, so I wanted to devote this blog to critiquing Dr. Vallicella's interesting paper on Buddhist metaphysics, found on his site here. Dr. Vallicella's paper is titled "Can the Chariot Take Us to the Land of No Self?" The "chariot" is a reference to a dialogue between a Buddhist monk, Nagasena, and a Greek (many say "Indo-Bactrian") king, Milinda (or Menander), as recorded in the Milindapanha. As the dialogue between the monk and the king progresses, the monk demonstrates (or Dr. Vallicela might say "demonstrates") that the chariot contains no inherent chariotness. By extension, the monk contends, people contain no inherent personness (personhood, selfhood, etc.). A transcript of the classic dialogue can be found here, with some typos.

Dr. Vallicella describes his paper's thesis:

The [chariot] argument [by Bhante Nagasena] aims to show that no (samsaric) being is a self, or has self-nature, or is a substance. My thesis will be that, successful as this argument may be when applied to things other than ourselves, it fails when applied to ourselves.

Here is how Dr. Vallicella sums up the dialogue early on in his paper:

The issue dividing the interlocutors [i.e., the king Milinda and the monk Nagasena] seems to be this. Although both agree that there is a reality independent of mind and language, they disagree about its nature. Milinda claims that it contains unitary and self-same individuals corresponding to such proper names as 'Nagasena.' It is this claim that Nagasena denies. For the latter, reality consists of radically impermanent and insubstantial momentary entities that we, wielding words and concepts, group together into unities for our purposes. Thus the issue is whether in reality there is an ontological unity corresponding to the linguistic unity of the name 'Nagasena,' or whether there is no such ontological unity but only disconnected momentary entities that we collect for conventional purposes under the name 'Nagasena.'

Dr. Vallicella then lays out how he will critique Nagasena's position:

It is no part of Milinda's position as I shall reconstruct it that the individuals denoted by proper names be absolutely permanent entities: they could well be relatively permanent. Thus one is not forced to choose between saying that 'Nagasena' has no referent in reality and saying that it has an absolutely permanent referent. Charitably construed, Milinda's position is that the unitary and self-same individuals corresponding to names like 'Nagasena' are relatively permanent entities possessing relative self-nature. If Milinda's position so construed were correct, then of course Nagasena's would collapse.

I'm still a tyro when it comes to Western philosophical terminology, so I had to wonder what "relative permanence" meant. Luckily, Dr. Vallicella provides a definition in his footnotes:

An absolutely permanent entity is one that exists at all times, while a relatively permanent entity is one that exists at some, but not all, times. An absolutely impermanent entity is one that exists in a radically momentary fashion.

Unfortunately, this sounds like a bogus notion to me: permanence strikes me as a yes/no proposition: things either are or aren't permanent. This is certainly the frame of reference from which the Buddhist makes the claim that all phenomena are impermanent. I don't know who first introduced the notion of "relative permanence," but it seems to be a convenient redefinition that allows one to claim permanence where no permanence is to be found.

Dr. Vallicella (or whoever) is free to redefine permanence as he sees fit, but the question then becomes whether his critique of the Buddhist position is still aimed at the actual Buddhist position. On the assumption that the strongest critique of a position is one that employs that position's own terms, I don't think Dr. Vallicella has started well.

I also think that quite a few Buddhists would take issue with Dr. Vallicella's phrase, "radically impermanent and insubstantial momentary entities." There have indeed been Buddhist philosophers who speak in these terms (corresponding, perhaps, to the process theological notion of "concrescence"-- discernible phenomena arising and falling in the larger process of things), but in general the entire Buddhist metaphysic is a critique of the term "entity." The Buddhist thinker Nagarjuna introduced the idea of "two truths," conventional and ultimate, to allow us to understand how to deal with just this problem: on a conventional, practical level, I can distinguish discrete entities like cats and cars-- a necessary skill that allows me to avoid taking the cat in for new brakes and an oil change. But at the ultimate level, we see that, because of the dependently co-arisen nature of all phenomena, the distinction between apparently discrete entities doesn't hold-- and this ultimate truth is operating at the same time as the conventional truth. The very doctrine of "two truths," as Nagarjuna himself would probably agree, is itself simply a construction for helping us deal with reality. The ethical purpose of Nagarjuna's formulation is to keep us from positing exactly the kind of radical ontological differences advocated by people who, like Dr. Vallicella, view the world through the prism of onto-theology. These differences are seen, from the Buddhist perspective, as poisonous for how they affect our behavior toward ourselves, others, and the world.

Dr. Vallicella writes:

So has Nagasena won the debate? Has he established the doctrine of no-self? I can’t see that he has.

The underlying argument seems to be as follows.

P1. No concrete partite thing is identical to any one of its proper parts.
P2. No concrete partite thing is identical to the mere(ological) sum of its proper parts.
P3. No concrete partite thing is identical to something wholly distinct from each of its parts.

Therefore

C. Singular terms denoting concrete partite things, useful as they are for counting and classifying, do not refer to anything real.

The premises of this argument are exceedingly plausible. Thus it is surely obvious that the king’s chariot is not identical to its right wheel, or to any other proper part, or to any two proper parts, etc. It is also obvious that the chariot is not identical to the mere sum of its parts: the sum of the chariot’s parts can exist even if the chariot does not exist, as when the chariot is disassembled. It is the same sum whether the chariot is assembled or disassembled. As for the third premise, it also seems quite clear that there is not, in addition to the parts, some further physical or metaphysical entity that is the ‘real chariot’ or essence or substratum of the chariot which could subsist in splendid isolation from the parts. That is no more the case than that there is a little man – a homunculus – inside my head looking through my eyes, and hearing through my ears, etc.

Then Dr. Vallicella lets fly:

The premises, then, seem to be true; but does the conclusion follow? One obvious response is that the argument is a non sequitur since it ignores a fourth possibility: that terms like ‘Nagasena’ and ‘this chariot’ refer to wholes of parts in a definite arrangement, where this arrangement is a feature of reality and is not introduced by our use of such terms as ‘Nagasena’ and ‘chariot.’ Thus a chariot is neither a sum of disconnected chariot-parts, nor something wholly distinct from the parts, but a sum of parts connected in the right way.

And perhaps this gives us some insight into where Dr. Vallicella is coming from.

I think we're looking at a form of Platonism here. The definition of "chariot" implies the arrangement of the chariot's component parts. In other words, there's a cosmic category called "chariot" that's waiting for material reality to arrange itself in a manner corresponding to the dictates of that category.

In simpler language: think of the cosmic category as something like a cookie cutter, with reality as squishy cookie dough. You don't get a "cookie man" until the dough is in conformity with the cookie cutter's shape. The cutter has to be there already (a priori) for this to occur; the dough's conformity with the cutter's shape is what allows us to see the "cookie man."

By the same token, squishy physical reality, when it coalesces into the chariot shape, gives us a glimpse of the cosmic category (cookie cutter) of chariot-ness. This is pure Plato. Or, hell-- it could also be Aristotelian "formal cause" (think: the blueprint of a house and not the house itself). A physical chariot is an instantiation (i.e., a realized instance) of the formal chariot.

To a Buddhist, such thinking is ass-backward because it ignores the mind's role in producing these categories. The move Dr. Vallicella makes here is simply one of postulation, not argument. However, Dr. Vallicella is aware of this objection (and I won't quote him here; he actually surveys a couple possible objections, but it's a lengthy survey). What's more, he provides a fair summary at the end of his paper's first section:

Thus one can see that the Chariot is an intriguing argument that cannot be easily dismissed. We want to say, with King Milinda and with common sense, that a whole of parts is more than a mere sum of parts, and that this something more -- the unity of the parts -- is something real as opposed to something introduced by our conceptual or linguistic activities, or by our craving for permanence. But since we cannot find this ‘something more’ by analysis, the pressure is on to write it off as illusory.

At some point, people who want to argue on behalf of permanence or self-existence (aseity) have to posit the "something more" referenced above. It's a bit like positing a soul to explain the continuity of selfhood. Dr. Vallicella's argument is about to move in a similar direction.

Section II of his paper begins:

But even if the Chariot succeeds in showing that nonpersons lack self-nature, does it also show that persons lack self-nature? It may be that to argue by analogy as Nagasena does, applying to persons what is true of nonpersons, is a mistaken procedure. Indeed, I will now argue that the analogy is mistaken, and that a person is a whole of parts in an importantly different sense than that in which a chariot is a whole of parts.

Vallicella argues that we have successive mental states (moving from pleasure to pain, or perceiving a series of musical notes, or hearing two musical chords), but that we are also conscious of this succession, implying that something must "perdure" as we pass from one mental state to another-- something that allows us to be conscious of how previous mental states relate to each other. To wit:

...since there is consciousness of mental change, mental change is alteration and thus requires a substratum that is numerically identical across the change. The point was appreciated by Kant, who wrote that “A coming to be or a ceasing to be . . . can never be a possible [object of] perception.”

Vallicella is here positing the "I" that remains throughout the succession of mental states, but here again, I think he has severely misinterpreted the Buddhist position. By mistakenly viewing the Buddhist notion of process as one in which successive states are both radically impermanent and unrelated, Vallicella passes by the notion of continuity (cf. my essay on emptiness here for a fuller explanation). For any given phenomenon (from the Buddhist perspective), so-called "successive moments" are, first, not discrete moments, and second, they are connected by causation, each "moment" leading to the next. The momentum driving this continuity is what Buddhists name karma.

For a Buddhist, the "I" is itself a construction, and because it's a construction it's a contingent phenomenon-- no different, therefore, from all other phenomena in its contingency, its dependently co-arisen status. The "ultimate" truth, then, accords this "I" no greater (or more fundamental) ontological weight than would be accorded to any other phenomenon-- say, a daisy or a chariot or my present desire for some Doritos (I may have to hit the local 24-hour mart after I finish this essay).

Dr. Vallicella thinks, then, that he's established the self as something ontologically significant:

What [this argument] shows is that there is direct awareness of the self as that in which the two distinct states are united. The fact of experienced mental change refutes the anatta [Pali, no-self] doctrine. There is not just an awareness of one state followed by an awareness of a second; I am aware of myself as the transtemporal unity of the two states. Unity, of course, is not identity: so talk of the unity of the pleasurable and painful states is consistent with their numerical distinctness. The self, therefore, is directly given in the experience of mental change; but it is of course not given as a separate object wholly distinct from its states. It is given in and through these states as their transtemporal unity. The self is not one of its states, nor the sum of all of them, nor something wholly distinct from all of them; the self is their self-unifying unity. Thus one must not think of the substratum of mental change as wholly distinct from its states. It is not like a pin cushion into which pins are stuck. A pin cushion without pins is conceivable; a self without conscious states is not. The self is not an unconscious something that supports consciousness; it itself has the nature of consciousness. Consciousness/self-consciousness is a sui generis reality that cannot be understood in terms of crude models from the physical world.

So what he's saying is: the "I" is not reducible to the mental states of which it is conscious. It is, instead, the ground of such states-- their "transtemporal unity," having coherent existence over time.

You know, I don't really see anything wrong with the idea that the above argument is conventionally true, but Dr. Vallicella has provided no convincing reasons to believe that selfhood has any ultimacy-- the best we can do is fall back on the problematic notion of "relative permanence," a notion I find fishy.

Overall, Dr. Vallicella seems to have made the circular mistake of defining "self" or "personhood" a certain way, then "discovering" it in an examination of human consciousness and positing it as a rebuttal to a Buddhist argument. But because of the notions he employs, I'm not convinced he's responded directly to the Buddhist argument. Instead, he's simply laid out his own position, not so different from staring at the color black and declaring, "This I call black." The same thing is happening when we look at the difference between a car's components strewn about the ground, and a fully assembled parked car. We look at the pieces and declare/define: "Those are pieces (of a car)." We look at pieces assembled in a way that conforms to our preconceptions and declare/define, "That's a car." The fact that the difference between "car" and "not-car" is a function of our preconceptions is what keeps the car's car-ness from having any fundamental significance, from the Buddhist perspective. What applies to the car also applies to people, who are also contingent, impermanent, and dependently co-arisen.

Further along, in his paper's third section, Dr. Vallicella writes:

Now if there is the unity of the chariot, but this unity derives from the unifying power of the mind, then minds must be self-unifying unities. In other words, if the unity of the chariot derives from the unity of a concept which subsumes a manifold of data, and this concept expresses the unity of a conceiving which is itself a synthesizing of a manifold of data, then the synthesizer or unifier must be a self-unifier: it must be the ground of its own unity. How then could minds lack self-nature?

You'd think the answer to this question would be obvious: human brains and bodies (I say this to avoid unnecessary debate about where a mind is "located") are material and therefore contingent. This funnels directly into the larger Buddhist argument that applies to all phenomena, with "mind," "brain," and "bodies" all being subsets of the supercategory "all phenomena."

On his website, Dr. Vallicella calls his own position onto-theological, i.e., he wants eventually to come to rest on a firm ontological ground-- preferably God, I assume, since this is onto-theology. I get the feeling, while reading this paper, that Dr. Vallicella would very much like to posit a soul, because ultimately, that's the only way to confront the Buddhist directly: as long as Dr. Vallicella is unable to de-link his notion of "I" or "consciousness" from materiality, then his "I" will always be subject to the Buddhist charge of contingency, impermanence, and no-self. As far as I can tell, the only way to agree with Dr. Vallicella's argument is to take seriously the notion of "relative permanence." If you can't take that notion seriously, the rest of his argument is completely unpersuasive.

Does Dr. Vallicella posit a soul in this paper? No, but he sure seems to move in the same direction as St. Thomas Aquinas' cosmological proofs:

If, in reality, Nagasena’s mind -- call it M1 -- were just a bunch of disconnected momentary data, then its unity would have to derive from some other mind, call it M2. (Don’t forget: the difference between a complex entity and the sum of its constituents is real and must be accounted for on pain of nihilism; this principle applies to minds and non-minds alike.) The unity of M2's mind, in turn, would require for its unification M3, and so on into a regress both infinite and vicious. To avoid this regress, we must say that at least one mind possesses an intrinsic principle of unity. We must say that at least one mind is a self-unifying unity of consciousness and self-consciousness.

In the above we again see the insistence on mischaracterizing Buddhist process ontology as disconnected moments (keep in mind that not all Buddhist thinkers take this approach, though some arguably do). I'm not sure Dr. Vallicella has any understanding of what karma is. His own notion of the transtemporal "I" actually fits rather nicely into the Buddhist outlook, because such an "I" would indeed possess a certain unicity and distinctness-- just not on a fundamental level. Vallicella's "I" would also be transtemporal from the Buddhist point of view, because like all dependently co-arisen phenomena subject to the law of karma, that "I" would be continuous over time. But continuity is not the same thing as permanence, and as mentioned before, the only way out of the Buddhist argument is to take seriously the notion of "relative permanence."

Vallicella's paper makes a bizarre move toward its end: a critique of both David Hume and the Buddhists-- both of whom find no discrete self at the end of the day. I'm not quite sure why Hume suddenly got brought into this; Vallicella spends most of his paper confined to the specific question of Buddhist metaphysics as laid out in the Milinda-Nagasena dialogue. Hume seems to be here to provide a comparison between the Buddhist "mistake" and a similar "mistake" being made by a Westerner, but when Vallicella concedes that the Buddhist mistake isn't as grievous as Hume's (I encourage you to read the paper to see what I'm talking about), he doesn't turn back to the Milinda-Nagasena dialogue: he turns instead to the no-self discourse found in the Anattalakkhana Sutta of the Samyutta Nikaya, which isn't discussed anywhere else in the paper.

I mention this because it shows that Dr. Vallicela's argument employs a rather dubious strategy: since the Milinda-Nagasena dialogue doesn't go into the nitty-gritty of Buddhist notions like karma, and doesn't cover other aspects of Buddhist process ontology such as continuity, Dr. Vallicella may have felt free to construct a Buddhist straw man based almost entirely on the limited scope of the Milinda-Nagasena dialogue. This obviously isn't going to work, because to critique the anatman (Skt. "no-self") doctrine, you'd have to consider more than just this one dialogue. I think Dr. Vallicella knows this, which explains why his paper suddenly expands in scope toward the end.

So the inconsistency is this: Dr. Vallicella conveniently miscontrues Buddhist process ontology as a series of disconnected moments with no thought to karma and continuity, because this particular Milinda-Nagasena dialogue doesn't deal with karma, continuity, etc. Much of his argument then proceeds from this misunderstanding, deliberate or not-- but by the end of his paper, Dr. Vallicella ropes in more Buddhists than just Nagasena because he recognizes that, for his critique to have any weight, he does indeed have to consider more than just this one Buddhist dialogue.

And finally, I don't think Dr. Vallicella has convincingly stated his case for a self or "I" whose ontological status is not dependently co-arisen. His argument has weight only if we take "relative permanence" seriously, and if we take "relative permanence" seriously, we're no longer seeing things from the Buddhist perspective. If we fail to take this perspective into account, then any critique of that perspective will also fail, because the critique will have falsely reconstructed matters-- i.e., produced a straw man. Further, the Buddhist metaphysic, which Dr. Vallicella rightly points out is very empirical, will take material reality into consideration when discussing phenomena. Because human brains and bodies lack permanence and exist in a dynamic of processual interbeing or dependent co-arising, then whatever epiphenomenal "self" or "I" arises from that karmic swirl will itself be dependently co-arisen. While I find Dr. Vallicella's argument fascinating (and to be honest, I'll need to re-read parts of it and perhaps revise this essay according to what I learn), I don't find it cogent.

[NB: check out this reference to the Anattalakkhana Sutta, where the commenter writes: "Thus Buddhism does not teach that "you" are "soul" which is "reborn" (although certain forms of Hindu teaching may be understood in this way). Rather, Buddhism teaches [that] "Mind" and "Mindfulness" exist, and that there is a karmic continuity between incarnations of mind. The link then is karmic, not essential." The part in boldface is what Dr. Vallicella is glossing over.]

UPDATE: Dr. Vallicella sent me an email in recognition of my linkage to his site... but I don't think he'd had a chance to read this critique of his paper yet. Heh. I expect to be thoroughly flayed in reply, but my feeling is, if you're going to test yourself philosophically, you may as well test yourself against the big guns: it's a better learning experience, and you find out your many weaknesses faster. For what it's worth, while I doubt I'll ever agree with Dr. Vallicella's basic position, I'll continue to visit his very educational site for the same reason I keep going back to AnalPhilosopher: great writing, lots to learn, and a different perspective.

UPDATE 2: Sperwer's blog offers incisive comments and critiques.

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Your Maximum Leader received this link from the AirMarshal this morning. It is a clear statement of that which has been said time and time again in this space and throughout the blogosphere. Islam must defeat their militant strains. Your Maximum Leader hopes that Iraq will show the way for other Islamic states.

Carry on.

I can't do the Marmot's Chosun job because a small pamphlet like this takes me about eight hours to translate, and there's no guarantee I'm doing it right. Yeah, yeah-- call me a dumb shit. I already said my reading skills were poor. Anyway, I now present to you this pamphlet, which comes to us courtesy of the Jehovah's Witnesses (you don't find out who these people are until the fourth page out of six-- but you get suspicious around page 2 or 3). I've tried to translate it as best I can. As far as I can tell, I've inadvertently done a reverse translation of an English-language original, because this sounds exactly like the literature the JWs pass out in America.

Jehovah, it turns out, is "Yeo-ho-wah" in Korean. You learn something new every day. What follows is translated entirely from the Korean text you see on your monitor. The pamphlet was folded in thirds, and thus is composed of six small pages. I start at the title page and work forward to the fill-me-out address form.



Do you want to know MORE about the BIBLE?



WHY SHOULD YOU READ THE BIBLE?

The Bible is different from other books. It contains teaching about God's love. (1 Thessalonians 2:13) If you apply the Bible's teachings (to your life), you'll benefit. If you attain God's love, "All good and perfect gifts" will come to you. (James 1:17) You can approach God through prayer. When you find yourself in a time of difficulty, you can experience God's help. If you live up to the principles found in the Bible, God will grant you eternal life. (Romans 6:23)

The Bible contains illuminating truth. In coming to know the Bible, many people find direction in their lives, and are released from incorrect thoughts. For example, when we find out the truth about what happens after we die, we are released from harmful fear on behalf of our dead relatives and friends, however they may have suffered. In the Bible's teaching about resurrection, these loved ones, and the ones they leave behind, will be uplifted. (John 11:25)

[NB: In the last sentence, the phrase in question is "wi-ro ga dwaemnida." "Wi-ro" seems to mean something like "consolation, comfort, solace." I've chosen the deliberately vague "uplifted," because this is in connection with resurrection (cf. the Son of Man will be "lifted up," OT reference as well as crucifixion/resurrection image), along with the emotional "uplifting" implied by solace, comfort, etc. Bad translation, I know... write in with a better way to handle this, especially if I've misunderstood the entire paragraph, which I suspect I have.]



When you learn the truth about demons (ak-han ch'eon-sa = wicked angels), you become aware of the danger and you come to understand why there is such trouble here below.

[NB: I've chosen "here below" because it's a hymnic reference to our terrestrial existence. The Korean word "ddang" literally means "ground" or "soil" or "land."]

The fundamental rules God gave us in the Bible are a formula for healthy living. For example, "moderate habits" are conducive to good health. (1 Timothy 3:2) We avoid harming our bodies when "flesh and spirit are made clean." (2 Corinthians 7:1) What's more, if you follow God's counsel, as found in the Bible, your married life becomes happier, and your self-love is greater. (1 Corinthians 6:18)

When you live according to God's word, you become a happier person. Knowing the Bible brings inner peace and contentment; it gives us hope. This knowledge helps us cultivate a heart full of compassion, love, happiness, peace, kindness, and faith. (Galatians 5:22,23; Ephesians 4:24,32) These special qualities make us better husbands and wives, fathers and mothers, sons and daughters.





Have you ever worried about the future? The biblical prophets, speaking (to us) from deep within the stream of history, tell us of profoundly meaningful times. These prophets weren't talking only about today's world, but about the paradise into which the world will be transformed. (Revelation 21:3,4)

THE HELP WE NEED TO UNDERSTAND THE BIBLE

Maybe you've tried reading the Bible and found it difficult to understand. Maybe, even though you have questions, you don't quite know where in the Bible to look for answers. You should know that you're not the only one who's felt this way. We all need help to understand God's word. Jehovah's Witnesses in 235 countries and territories offer free Bible education, and these people will gladly assist you.

Generally, it's most desirable to start from basic teachings and move gradually into Bible study. (Hebrews 6:1) Continuous study provides "solid nourishment," i.e., you will come to internalize deeper truths. (Hebrews 5:14) The Bible is our guide, but using the (JW) "What does God ask of us?" pamphlets and other Bible-based publications will also be helpful to you in finding and understanding Bible passages about various topics.




WILL YOU VOLUNTARILY SET ASIDE TIME EACH WEEK FOR (STUDYING AND) UNDERSTANDING THE BIBLE?

[NB: the verb "study" doesn't appear in the title, but it seems silly to translate the above as "setting aside time to understand the Bible," because that's not how anglophones usually phrase that.]

You can arrange to study the Bible (with us) at a time and place that are usually convenient for you. Many people do this comfortably at home. There are also people who do their Bible study over the phone. Study courses can be arranged to occur not in a class environment, but in a private setting where lessons are paced according to a person's knowledge and educational level. There won't be any tests or confusing work to do. Your questions about the Bible will be answered, and you'll learn the way to get closer to God.

You don't need to pay anything for this kind of study. (Matthew 10:8) This arrangement is a free offer for all religious people, as well as for people who don't have a religion but sincerely desire to improve their knowledge of God's word.

Who can participate in these discussions? Your whole family can. If you'd like to invite friends along, they can participate, too. And if you prefer, you can also start your progress alone.

Many people willingly devote one hour a week to Bible study. Whether you can devote more than this amount of time, or less, Jehovah's Witnesses can set up a program to fit your situation.



YOUR INVITATION TO LEARN

We would like you to meet with the Jehovah's Witnesses. One way to do this is to fill out the form below and send it to one of the listed addresses. When you do this, one of us will make arrangements for free home Bible study with you.

[NB: The word I translated "one of us" is "nu-gun-ga," which I suppose should be rendered as "someone" or "some people." But the phrase "someone/some people will make arrangements for Bible study with you" sounds either sloppy or sinister. "One of us" also sounds sinister in a drone-like way, but maybe that's unavoidable, given how the JWs operate from the hive-mind of Jesus.]

So that's it. I'm not translating the address form. This has already taken way the hell too long. Korean-literate people are encouraged to write in with corrections, suggestions, and invective about my puny translating skills. The above rendering sucks ass-- this was nothing like translating French, which is a hell of a lot easier for a former French teacher. I can render printed French into spoken English at almost normal talking speed, plus some strategic "uh"s and "er"s.

_

Jay has put his Kensho Godchaser blog on hiatus, but he's blogging away at The Zero Boss. Choice quote from a recent post, regarding how few actual active bloggers there are:

News for Bloggers: you're more special than you think. A new report from the Pew Internet and American Life Project argues that only a small minority of Internet users blog - and an ever smaller group actually keep their blogs up-to-date.

Given what I've seen while cruising the Web, that's not surprising. There's a lot of dead wood out there. Blogging consistently takes time, patience, and no small degree of talent. Not to mention a high degree of megalomania and self-importance.

Did I just write that?

This is consistent with Glenn's "blogging is narcissism" theme. Yep.

It's Wednesday. Anything goes. I'll be slapping up some poor Korean translations much later this evening. When the Marmot says his translations might not be perfect, he's just being modest-- the guy's a beast with the language, really spot-on, at least from where I sit as an advanced-intermediate-level speaker and low-level reader/listener. When I say my translation is bad, however, I'm just being honest.

In that spirit, I invite correction from any and all Koreabloggers. Stick comments in Vile Vituperation on the sidebar, or email me. And give thorough explanations for your corrections, please; the object of the game is to learn. I can't afford Korean class right now, so I've decided to work on reading and translating skills this way. In fact... I'm wondering whether I shouldn't change Anything Goes Wednesdays into Korean Translation Wednesdays. The discipline would do me a lot of good.

Hmmmm. Yes, it's certainly a thought.

_

Brief one this evening... I'm working on a translation project for the Wednesday Anything Goes blog (a Christian leaflet, in case you're wondering).

Top billing goes to the Maximum Leader, who caught Keith Burgess-Jackson's attention by remarking that Christopher Hitchens calls everyone names, and that women can flaunt their bodies for a cause if they like (at least provisionally... and since when has the ML been "troubled by pornography"?? That sounds more like something Bill Bennett would say!). The ML managed to slip in a professed love of meat-eating, too. Ouch, KBJ, that's gotta hurt.

Also check out two posts re: Leni Riefenstahl at Naked Villainy.

The ML leans pretty strongly rightward, but he also hosts a few left-leaning bloggers as well, along with megafreaks who don't quite fit the whole left/right paradigm. The resultant mix of opinions is very Tacitus-like. Check out Naked Villainy and make it your second home. Buy some Maximum Leader products while you're at it.

People who saw my Gweilo Diaries tittie link may have noticed a slight change: I had to correct an embarrassing misspelling: the tittie link originally read "Gweilo Diairies." I think the picture may have caused me to combine "diary" with "dairy." Sorry 'bout that, Conrad. Boy, I'm milking this...

Peking Duck has the roundup about the pro-independence human chain in Taiwan that may have been composed of as many as 1-2 million people. Some say this is the next looming crisis. I say China's displeasure is evidence of longstanding imperialism-- the vintage kind, before people began to reunderstand "imperialism" as "only what America does, whatever it may be doing right now and always." One of the blogs to which Richard links, A Better Tomorrow, is more than a little circumspect about the pro-independence event and the "Taiwan yes! China no!" rhetoric. Check out the post and the ensuing comments.

Go read Ryan's looong post on gay marriage (that's how he describes it), and here again, be sure to look over the comments thread.

Bravo Romeo Delta of Anticipatory Retaliation thinks out loud. Also of note is an interesting exchange on AR about the merits of brutality. Start with this post by CVE and work your way forward in time, up the blog. Along the way, you'll encounter an essay on gay marriage that I think will be worth your while.

Annika tells her fellows whom to vote for and presents a very thoughtful review of "The Passion of the Christ."

Keith Burgess-Jackson offers an example of an English class writing assignment gone wrong. I laughed my ass off, mainly because I've done tandem writing before, years ago and on a lark-- and this looked awfully familiar. Trust me, ladies: in tandem writing, a guy will try to "lead" as if he's dancing with you. If you introduce new characters or situations he finds uninteresting, he'll be sure to undo your entire storyline when it's his turn. Why? Because as Howard Dean can attest, men are dicks. KBJ also posts a list of amazing anagrams.

But the reason I'm not always keen on KBJ is that he also posts silliness like this:

Marriage always has been, is, and always will be a childrearing institution. It is too important to be monkeyed with. Most Americans, thank goodness, understand that.

This is an essentialist position I've watched KBJ formulate on his blog. His larger argument isn't the most empirically-based one, either, which immediately loses it my sympathy. The above contention comes from history, but with little acknowledgement of the perfectly empirical fact that times change, and no phenomenon remains static. As I've contended on this blog a gazillion times, marriage is a term applied to a reality in flux. KBJ can ignore what's happening in society if he wants to; the changes will occur with or without his consent because, well, reality moves.

If people need a refresher on my own position, which has evolved somewhat thanks to the blogs I read at KBJ and elsewhere, my sidebar has plenty of links to essays on pluralism, gay marriage, and Buddhist process ontology. Such an ontology, coupled with the nondualistic position laid out in my "right and wrong" post, makes KBJ's assertions about the "definition" of marriage untenable to me. Marriage isn't a reality graven in the universe; it's what we make of it, and it's how we practice it.

So in terms of KBJ's statement above: I agree that marriage "has been, is, and always will be" about children, because that, at least, conforms to empirical and biological fact. But what KBJ conveniently ignores here is the simple question being asked these days: is this all marriage is? i.e., Is this all marriage has to be? And here again, homosexual marriages are already being performed at many liberal churches (temples, etc.), so the term is being redefined, slowly but surely, on a religious level. Since religions are incarnated in people, then as this meme spreads through people's religious consciousness, it will manifest itself as political will-- as we see already happening.

Given this wider context, KBJ's protests about what marriage "has been, is and will be" make little sense. There's more going on here. Blink and you'll miss it.

So some crotchety folks cry, "Where does it all stop, then? Will people be marrying their dogs and sisters and cacti next?" To which my nondualist answer is: let's deal with these questions calmly as they become relevant to the national consciousness, and let's stop pretending we can set absolutes into a reality that moves.

[For those who at this point think I'm advocating some sort of anarchy or the willful ignoring of rules/laws, I again refer you to numerous essays on my sidebar that lay out where I stand on the subject of rules, laws, absolutes, and all the rest. Cf. especially the "right and wrong" essay. If you still don't get where I'm coming from, please email me.]

Think about this: the field of bioethics is way behind actual technology. Sexuality is already a highly complex phenomenon, not neatly described by the hetero/homo dichotomy. No fixed typologies of human sexuality are possible given not only this complexity, but the constantly evolving character of the phenomenon. Technology may very well move human sexuality into wildly unexpected directions. Donald Sensing's own essays bemoan the divorcing of the sexual act from its natural consequences (while rightfully acknowledging that this is only going to continue), but Sensing's hinting at the tip of the iceberg: in a century or two, there will be radically new and different sexual mores, sexual subcultures-- and in a few centuries after that, who knows? Perhaps even different biological sexes as humans get inventive and impatient (yes, it's only speculation; calm down).

Will all this spell doom for humanity? I doubt it. Will it mean the dissolution of old paradigms? Well, of course. And while all this is happening, human societies will find their own answers to the questions posed by rapidly mutating (bio- and nano-) technology and culture-- no one's going to wait around for pronouncements from stodgy academe. South Koreans apparently didn't wait around to start cloning humans, and it's a sure bet that private interests are working on their own bioengineering projects.

There's a kong-an for the evening: what will sex look like in 300 years? Anyone got a camera?

_

Some Hominid notes first: Today, the teacher placement agency with which I now work decided to pull a fast one on me by assigning me a 9AM class after I'd put my pawprint on a contract stating that teaching hours were to be 11AM to 5PM. A few years back, a situation like this might have stressed me: as Westerners, we tend to expect the contract's conditions to be honored. But all it takes is a few experiences in Korea to teach you that not everyone approaches contracts the same way. In a situation where it looks like you might be getting shafted, you just hold firm. No need to kick and scream (though I've seen plenty of foreigners who get results this way, at the cost of their own dignity)-- just politely keep to the literal wording of the contract, and if the bosses think you're being unfairly inflexible, just remember: it's not your fuckin' problem. Go home and sleep well. Luckily for me, my new boss seems a very friendly sort who immediately said the 9AM class was her mistake and she'd erase it from the schedule. But know that, if I'd been willing to teach that class, she'd have found students for it, because money for me means money for her. I'm now on my guard.

The second bit of Hominidal news is something you may have already noticed: the sidebar is being prettified (or uglified, depending on your point of view). I've already taken care of several of the Koreabloggers and will be placing even more pics up. The graphics load is hell on people with dialup connections, and I apologize (sorry, Dad), but I think dialup's on its way out, and broadband allows us a lot more graphical freedom. So here, as with the gay marriage issue, I'll ride the wave of progress into the sweaty, heaving cleavage of the future. Yes, even if it means leaving my poor Dad back in dialup hell. Heh.

Speaking of cleavage, you may have noticed that the new logo for Gweilo Diaries is a tittie pic. In fact, it's the very tittie pic I mentioned earlier: the "Heineken tits" lady. I've placed this pic on my sidebar on the assumption that (1) the people who visit my site regularly are all grown-ups, and (2) they are all grown-ups with a sense of humor. If you seriously believe that the Heineken tittie pic is titillating, then I submit you've got a problem. In my opinion, the Heineken lady is stare-worthy for the same reason that a man with a 20-pound tumor hanging off his face is stare-worthy. Freakish dimensions earn stares-- ask any foreigner in a Korean subway. In the meantime, just to show I put in some effort at Muslim modesty, I tried to create the effect of lazily-applied "censorship bars." They don't quite cover the lady's boobaliciousness, But Oh Well.

And finally, to Americans who've never lived in Europe and have trouble with exposed titties: relax. This kind of pic can be seen on huge billboards in some European countries, or on TV-- in commercials. Kids in these countries grow up with a blasé attitude about sexuality; they stop reproducing and allow unassimilated Muslims to move in. These Muslims in turn make up the population deficit and write angry rap songs about how ugly Whitey is, thereby reinforcing the Old Country Whitey urge not to reproduce. But my point is that Europeans don't form puritanical complexes about mammaries. Neither should you, iguana. So stop licking and cursing your monitor, you confused, conflicted soul.

And now-- on with the parcours.

I'd normally want to start off with something from the Marmot, but this fantastic Goldbrick post gets top billing because the message for all expats is loud and clear:

Don't do drugs. If you do them, don't come to Korea and do drugs here. Wait until you're back in Canada, or the Netherlands, San Francisco, Seattle, or wherever it is that trained you to think there are no consequences to violating drug laws. Combating drugs is a big deal to the Korean government, and picking on relatively defenseless and isolated potsmoking teachers is a lot easier than catching violent criminals. We understand that college campuses, dance clubs and gay bathhouses (not that there's anything wrong with that) are full of hip Korean people who are carefree about their drug use, but don't let that lull you into a false sense of security. For most of our criminal clients, $10,000 is about all they could save in a year of cup ramyeon lunches. And although we'll try like hell to keep you out of jail, it's possible that the effort will be for nought. Don't throw away your future over a momentary high.

I don't do drugs or smoke or drink alcohol-- my vice is food, and there's plenty of food to be had in South Korea. Luckily, self-indulgence is only a crime in the karmic sense, and from the point of view of Buddhist (and Christian) moderation. For the rest of you fuckers with your drug habits: listen to Mr. Carr's advice, lay off the weed, and no one'll have to charge your lame ass $10,000 to keep you out of jail. And lay off the weed because it's assholes like you who confirm to Koreans everything that's bad about us Flying Yang-nom.

Kevin at IA gives me the shout-out for the new logo and seals his fate: I imagine he'll be getting even more hate-filled comments from some of his regular parasites, now that he's stuck the logo on his blog.

The Marmot fisks a speech by SK President Noh Mu Hyon, who uses the occasion, stupidly, to slam Japan. March 1st is a national holiday, commemorating the March 1, 1919 speech in which oppressed Koreans declared their independence from their Japanese occupiers (go to Google and do a search on "March First Movement" or "Samil Undong"). It was a ballsy speech that immediately resulted in more than a few deaths. The most recent Japanese occupation ran for 36 years, from 1910 to 1945, ending with the end of World War II and the postwar division of the Korean peninsula. President Noh, in the meantime, is just being a bitch.

See also the Marmot's take on the "brown-shirt" PRO-American demonstration, and his view of the recently-concluded six-way talks.

The Vulture is the best place to go for "snarky comments" about this whole "hot patriotic wind" blowing out of South Korea's crack.

Seeing Eye Blog on the trendy dangers of half-body bathing (a.k.a. sitz baths).

The Infidel on SK's crazy prez:

The more ROK President Roh Moo-hyun tries to sound tough, the more he sounds like Granny on The Beverly Hillbillies.

This cracked me up. Also check out the Infidel on the March First Movement.

Historians take note: Budae Chigae has the goods on March First, as well as an excellent post on "Pungsu, Power, Glory, and Gulbi." Pungsu (poong-soo) is the Korean pronunciation of "feng shui" (which, in case you didn't know, is pronounced, roughly, "fung shway," not "feng shooee" or "feng shwee"), a type of geomancy. Gulbi is that humble-looking fish that gets strung together in chains (see photo in the KimcheeGI's post) and can be massively expensive. It's got another meaning, too, which Charlie covers in his post.

The Flying Yangban kicks Bruce Cumings in the nuts and reluctantly advocates voting for the corrupt, conservative, but still redeemable GNP.

Kirk notes that South Korean saegyehwa (globalization) isn't working out too well.

Polymath has a different take from the Marmot on today's pro-America demonstration, and writes an interesting post on military guys and their Korean wives.

Mingi on Korean racism (cf. the "typical black man" phrase) and the question of whether it was "worth it" for Americans to shed their blood on Korean soil. In a word: no, given how ungrateful South Korea now is.

At Brian's behest, I read the Party Pooper's recent post, in which the Pooper waxes rhaspodic about a Korean's newest confectionary creation: the Triply. Go and read. The sarcasm is rich and creamy, yet surprisingly crunchy in the middle.

Ian posts his last entry from Korea. Buddhist statues-- how apropos. Bon retour au Canada, vieille branche. Ian doesn't know me, but I feel a certain solidarity because he's a fellow cartoonist-- but unlike me, he's doing it as a métier, for a living.

Next week, for the Korea roundup, I'm going to have to find something about Korean reactions to Mel Gibson's "The Passion of the Christ." I honestly have no clue what people are saying about it now, and don't know when it's going to be released here. I was pissed off to see that many (if not most) French theaters are refusing to show the film, for fear of spurring antisemitism. This is wrong on so many levels... maybe I'll comment further tomorrow when I do the Otherblogger roundup.

UPDATE: Peter Schroepfer writes in to tell me (and others) that he's FINALLY posted on what an "oranckay" is. Go read! I now know exactly what's going on the sidebar as a logo. Heh. Heh heh.

UPDATE 2: I'm such a shit. How could I have neglected this one!? Jeff in Pusan has a great post using Richard Feynman to illustrate the problems endemic to the Korean educational system. A must-read.

_

Atrios, the very liberal blogger, says:

In a related note, are conservative [sic] all idiots or liars? Sometimes I can't tell.

Meanwhile, Dr. Keith Burgess-Jackson, a conservative atheist philo prof, writes a post with the following title:

Are the Democrat Candidates Stupid, or Just Dishonest?

Deep thinking there, fellas. You may have more in common than you realize. Interpretive charity, my ass.

And FYI: This marks the last of my unscheduled posts. We now leave the realm of spontaneity and plunge headlong into scheduled existence.

Next up: a Koreablogger roundup.

_

This time we've got two possible logos for Cathartidae, and one for Incestuous Amplification.

The two Vulture logos are:


and

I know Brian's an avid Bush-hater, so I thought the eye-pecking would appeal to him, but to be frank, I find the second vulture (which is from a sketch based on a photo) much cooler. Brian? Was denkst du? Que pienses? Oddokgae saeng-gak heyo? Qu'est-ce que tu en penses?

The Incestuous Amplification logo caused me no end of trouble, because the concept is abstract, rooted in language and communication. My first thought in crafting any logo is to keep dialogue out of it, if at all possible. So I racked my brains for days but couldn't come up with anything.

Eventually, I thought about skirting the issue entirely by drawing "bombtits," but those turned out gross: one sketch shows a woman with huge bombs hanging off her chest; in another draft, I've got falling bombs with nipples on them. Very Terry Gilliam. And in yet another draft, a woman with huge tits and a bomb wedged between them (somewhere on my hard drive is a picture of a real woman doing this with a can of Heineken... and NO, I did NOT go searching for this pic, dammit-- it was GIVEN to me as a GIFT!). All of my IA scenarios are overpoweringly sexy, of course, but I didn't want to hypnotize the masses with mammary allure. The object is to get people to click the logo, not stare longingly at it.

So my thoughts turned to compromise: how to portray "incestuous amplification" with just a little bit of dialogue. My very first idea in this vein was sheep doing a flash-mob thingie, all baaa-ing together. But the "sheep in a flash mob" image is kind of redundant; incestuous amplification makes more sense if you understand it as apparently different people who end up singing the same tune, each reinforcing the other, but baselessly and/or ironically (cf. the term's definition on Kevin's site). And so, finally, I decided to pair up a wolf and a sheep, each growling or bleating the same false meme: "One people!" Maybe if we all say it together enough, it'll become true.

Unless Kevin suggests otherwise (and I'll always entertain suggestions), I'm sticking with the following image:


(technically, it says "same people,"
not "one people," but I've heard
this expression, too)

The only real problem I foresee is that some nationalist Koreans might not take too kindly to this image. I'm a relaxed, pluralistic American and can deal with George Bush's eye being pecked out; many Koreans can't deal so maturely with symbols (I keep thinking of Carlin saying "I leave symbols for the symbol-minded").

One way or the other, I'm going to stick these on the sidebar for now. For Cathartidae, I plan on using the crueler-looking vulture, but if you think the Bush-eye-pluck pic is better, Brian, I'll switch to that one. Or maybe... just maybe... I can try to create my very first ANIMATED GIF and have these flash alternately. That won't happen until Wednesday, though, what with my new blogging schedule.

OK... enjoy.

_

Now appearing in a North Korean kitchen near you:



As you might have guessed, this is being turned into a mug design.

Bon appétit.

"Oh, that this too too solid flesh should melt..."

_

Yes, I think this is what's going on the sidebar. It took a lot less time to create than a cartoon, and I neatly avoid any questions about what the animal is.




I suppose I should feel guilty about changing "hole" to "hell," but in German, the word for "hell" is "Hölle," which looks a lot like "hole." What's more, the old Hebrew concept of Sheol wasn't all that hellish; it was more like a subterranean "land of the dead," perhaps along the lines of certain Greek conceptions of Hades. In fact, most old concepts of hell are underworld-ish (cf. the "hell" entry in this etymological dictionary), implying something like a hole or cavern or underground realm.

And in any case, evil is usually considered cool in a subversive way. So why not a marmot who looks like he could explode your brain with a mere thought?

Et oui-- this is going on the sidebar. Heh.

MF, did you see the Seeing Eye Blog image?

_

As the Real Job, which starts later in March, looms near, it occurs to me that I'll have to prioritize the blog-reading and posting. I've been lucky, with my private English teaching schedule, to have a fair amount of time on my hands, but this won't be the case in 25 days, when I'll be teaching at the university and still teaching privately. In an effort to keep blogging time down, I've decided to institute a schedule. The benefit to you, the reader, is that you'll now have an idea of what to expect here at the Hairy Chasms from day to day. And so will I!

The schedule will provide discipline and structure, and while this may mean a certain loss of spontaneity, I find that my best work often comes about when there are clear and confining parameters. So:

MONDAYS: Koreablogger roundup (le parcours coréen)
TUESDAYS: Maximum Leader, Asiablogger, and Otherblogger Roundup (le parcours des blogueurs)
WEDNESDAYS: Anything goes
THURSDAYS: Buddhism/Zen day; mainly to force me to write about this topic, to present you with new information on it, to induce me to review my old notes, learn new things, and share the knowledge
FRIDAYS: Religious diversity day-- matters of religious pluralism, philosophy of religion, interreligious dialogue, comparative religion, etc.
SATURDAYS: Saturday Swag. Since I won't be making any money as a gigolo, I'll be devoting this day to promoting my mental spilth-- my book, my CafePress products, etc. It's not simply that a Hominid has to eat: a Hominid has to pay off enormous college loans. So unlike Mel Gibson, I don't worry that I'm going to be burdened by moral questions arising from wealth. We at the Hairy Chasms are far, far too deep in the negative regions for those questions to bother us anytime soon.
SUNDAYS: Yes, I've decided. Sunday will be devoted to one thing only: a weekly SUNDAY COMIC. I haven't decided on a format yet; it might be single-panel, might be multi-panel, might have a storyline, might not. I'm not starting this Sunday, so I still have some time to finalize this.

I do have an e-commerce question for Paypal-savvy people: how do you set up a PayPal button to sell a SINGLE (i.e., UNIQUE-- no copies) item? I've been through the PayPal button selection, and there is indeed a button for selling "single items," but as I read more deeply into what the button was about, it doesn't seem to fit my needs.

Here's what I mean. Let's say I create a soap sculpture or brush painting of Bodhidharma, and I want to sell this via PayPal. How do I prevent two people from buying the same item at roughly the same time? I don't think PayPal offers a button that "closes itself off" to the rest of the public once a purchase has been made-- i.e., a button that reads, "Sorry, no more in stock!" when the item's been purchased. The problem I want to avoid is that of time-wasting refunds. The best solution I can think of right now is to have people email me first, then establish a PayPal button just for the first person whose email I receive (or send them the button through the mail, which I think PayPal allows). Surely there's a better, more hands-off way to deal with e-commerce for limited stock!

OK... that's it for now. The new schedule starts Monday. As Kevin Bacon said in "Apollo 13"...

"See you on the flip side."

_

The Maximum Leader didn't immediately get that my earlier cartoon was supposed to represent The Marmot's Hole, and I can think of a couple reasons why.

1. A cartoon marmot doesn't really look all that different from a cartoon squirrel (cartoon animals aren't always drawn representatively, either: Stimpy doesn't look much like a cat!). Marmots are generally much larger than squirrels, but certain varieties of marmots, such as the so-called "yellow-bellied marmot" found out in the western states of the US, have puffy cheeks, fat asses, and long tails-- a bit like cartoon squirrels. I can see how this would throw a person off. A marmot's snout, however, is a bit longer and tapering, proportionately, than a typical gray squirrel's, so I probably introduced some confusion by drawing this marmot's face looking almost directly at the viewer, thereby foreshortening the facial features. Then again, not all marmots have long snouts. Behold!

2. The ML, in looking at the previous drawing, didn't see the marmot's hole-- which means, further, that he didn't perceive the picture had a foreground and a background; I'd intended the hole to be in the background. This is my fault for not introducing proper shading, but when you switch your Photoshop to "Web-friendly colors only" mode, you lose all the nuances, especially if you then save as a GIF, which I think I did. The ML saw the hole and thought it was a nut or something. As I looked at the pic through the ML's eyes, I realized that, yes, the hole could indeed look like a nut or something, sitting on the ground.

So a redrawing was obviously in order.

One solution to the "hole" problem is to frame the marmot inside his hole. But framing him too perfectly dead-center is no good; we need the aesthetic to be a bit wabi-sabi. I also decided that this marmot, with his razor-sharp Hoya intellect (SFS like a muthafuckaaaaaaa'), deserved better than a flimsy Chinese broadsword. Hence the lightsaber. And while red lightsabers may be cooler, blue seemed a better choice because the surroundings are all varying shades of brown.

Et voilà-- here's the new marmot and his hole.



So, Robert, can this go on my sidebar?

By the way... if you're interested, I've got a mug design fo' yo' honky ass. If you or other Koreabloggers would like me to design a mug & set up a CafePress store for you (or something)... let's talk bidness!

UPDATE: The Marmot's wife also thinks this looks too much like a squirrel. So... back to da drawing board!

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My buddy Carpemundi has a lovely half-Korean wife who works as a graphic designer. She's just opened up her very own CafePress/CafeShops cyberstore, and I'm proud to pimp her wares on this blog. Unlike yours truly, Luisa's an actual designer, which means she produces actual designs. They look great, too. Her shop has plenty of men's wear, women's wear, and other swag like mugs and mousepads and lunch boxes (check out the "evil pixie"), as well as items for pets and new parents (I don't know if these latter items are interchangeable). One gorgeous design is based on pets all done up in rainbow colors and moving around each other in a dynamic circle-- very cool, and it's on mugs and other products. Look for beautiful poppies and slogans like "ucked fup."

Luisa's designs also have the virtue of being blood- and excrement-free, so those of my readers who have a hard time looking at broomstick impalements, mutilated frogs, and flying bodily fluids will find her shop a pleasure.

And finally, let us praise our Lord Jesus Christ that not a single one of Luisa's creative designs strays even a little bit toward the Hello Kitty end of the spectrum. I don't know about you, but my balls are relieved.

Here are some samples of Luisa's work:



"Und vhat do you zee on zis lunchbox?"
"I see... I think it's... OH, SWEET JESUS, IT'S JOHN KERRY! No! Take it away! It burns my eyes! Oh, it burns!"



"Und on zis tote bag? Vhat do you zee here?"
"My God... it's like a vision of hell. People flailing in agony... three-headed angels shredding old ladies... monsters with farm implements doing horrible things to high school students... I get a very scandalous, Teletubbie vibe from this image. It unsettles me. Doctor, why do you keep showing me these things? What in God's name is wrong with you? Have you no shame? Week after week, you do this to me."



"Ah, vell... ahem. Und-- how about zis tile coaster? Vhat do you sink you zee?"
"Doc, this isn't even a Rorschach blot. Come on, look at it-- if that's not Regan MacNeill spewing green vomit all over Father Karras, I don't know what it is."



"Sigh... und anozzer picture. Vhat is zis?"
"I see chickens."
"Chickens?"
"Yes, chickens."
"Und vhat are zee chickens doing?"
"They're in a rock band."
"Really. Und vhat are zey singingk?"
"Some Mariah Carey cover. Doc, I need to stop. This is too horrible for words."



"Und finally, zis piece of women's wear..."
"I'm not sure why you're calling this women's wear, Doc. I wear these all the time."


Damn, does this thong give me ideas for where the Howard Dean-penis might appear next. And another thong design comes to mind, too: a drawing of me smirking, and the words, "Too late! I've already been here!" Heh.


Luisa's shop is called DigitalPixi Designs. Go forth and shop-shop-shop until your ass crack is positively squirting blood! THEN SHOP SOME MORE!

[PS: A link to her site is on my sidebar. Look for the flower tile.]

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In case you're wondering what I've given up for Lent... it's poverty. This isn't as easy as it sounds. Ever since Smallholder (who guest posts on the Maximum Leader's blog and has written a post or two here at the Hairy Chasms) made a private comment about how the PayPal "donation" button was little more than begging, I've taken it off my blog and tried my best to earn your moolah. As Janet Jackson said, "Tit for tat!"

So during this Lenten time of contemplation and probity, please aid me, Dear Reader, in my quest to acquire spiritual discipline through profit, to boil in the soul-searing, character-building cauldron of prosperity, to liberate myself from the mortal sin of penury, and know the virtuous humility of those blessed with mountains of filthy lucre. Oh, to endure such a burden!

Click the screaming alien on the sidebar and take a trip through my CafePress products. And behold the newest in a slew of mug designs:




If you want to purchase the mug, here are direct links to the standard and large sizes.


Go thou and shop!

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It's nice that we planted our flag on the Moon all those years ago, but you haven't truly claimed the Moon for your country until you've taken a shit on its surface.

Will we be the first?

I admit it: the Chinese have me worried.

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The Infidel writes a meditation that, despite his infidel status, is very reminiscent of Psalm 22. Great reading.

Andi at Overboard writes a great post on meditation, strange dreams, practice, and what Seung Sahn daeseonsa-nim would call "just go straight-- don't know!"

Because Andi's post deals in some measure with the hangups of Western Buddhists, I feel free to link once again to an old essay I wrote about essentialism in Western Buddhism and the prevalence of the Jesus meme in Western Buddhist consciousness. A lot of Western Buddhists are former Christians. A lot. The essay will also serve as a reminder of those heady days when this blog was less artsy-fartsy. Heh.

Critiques/discussion always welcome.

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Here at the Hairy Chasms, I toil to bring you only the best in nasty drawings, writings, and products. In keeping with our already-established "harmony with nature" theme, I offer you this latest mug design:





If you want to buy a standard-size "Cup of Pain" mug, click this link. If you want a larger mug, click this link. Remember we've also got those cute tiger mugs, here and here-- as well as the more ball-crunching "Squirrels Find Nuts" mugs, here and here.

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The test of a good logo (and these aren't really completed, but they're almost there) is whether they're meaningful and recognizable. These two happen to have been the easiest to create, since the blog names conjure up very concrete images.

If you can't figure out who these people are based on the images, write me. If you think the images suck, write me. Or bite me. One or the other.









And while I'm at it, here's a new mousepad I've designed for my Cafepress shop:



(actual dimensions, 8"x9.5")


Would you like to buy it? Then click this link, baby.



We hope you've enjoyed today's display. Thank you for flying Hominid. Ride us again anytime.

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Kendo and komdo are Japanese and Korean pronunciations of the same two Chinese characters, "sword" and "way," but as with aikido and hapkido (harmony + energy + way), the terms describe somewhat different martial arts.

For a fascinating read, go visit Overboard and take a gander at Andi's latest post, dealing with the differences between Japanese kendo, Korean haedong-komdo, and Korean daehan-komdo. This is Part One of I-don't-know-how-many parts, but that's the way I like it: Charles Dickens also wrote episodically.

Andi covers some of the same internal/external issues in martial arts that I covered in this post on "de-linking Zen from artistic appreciation."

Speaking of Japanese/Korean differences, if Lorianne and/or Andi would care to expound on differences between Japanese and Korean approaches to Zen/Seon, I'd love to slap those posts on this blog (I know you're both extremely busy, so no rush). I've gone over some differences on this blog, but since I'm not an active practitioner, a "view from the inside" is always welcome.

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Years ago, I went with BH and two other friends from High School to see "The Last Temptation of Christ" in downtown DC amidst all the controversy. Oddly enough the one thing I remember most about that night was driving by the Chinese embassy in the midst of the Tienannmen Square protests going on. I think I remmeber the right night. Maybe that was the night went to see HenryV.

In any event, BH got into a biblical debate with some Born Again Types protesting the film. The one thing that I came away with from after viewing that debate was how ignorant the Born Again Fundies were compared to BH. And how gleefully and intentionally ignorant they were of the world outside their particular interpretation of scripture.

For the record, I liked "Last Temptation." A little boring, and long winded, but in general it was an interesting exploration of the filmmakers faith. It was a very personal film in that respect. Definitely not worth the controversy.

Why the hell am I Fric? I wanted to be Frac!

NB: What follows is the somewhat-edited text of an email I sent two friends, who shall remain unnamed, regarding some issues related to Mel Gibson's "The Passion of the Christ," now showing in a couple thousand cinemas across America as of Ash Wednesday. (I should've given up blogging for Lent. Instead, it appears I've given up sleep.)


Fric & Frac,

Unsurprising that a German nun would have "holy" visions implicating the Jews in Jesus' death, eh?

As for Gibson...

I mistrust all big-money spirituality. Gibson's apparently spoken in interviews about his own "walk through the wilderness," if you will; how he was near suicide, then rediscovered his faith (etc., etc.). I don't doubt this is at least partially true, if for no other reason than that most of the reviews of the "Passion," good and bad, leave little doubt that Gibson's giving us a real piece of himself.

But "Passion" trucker caps, "cross nail" replicas, and other merchandise?? Just how deep does Gibson's spirituality run? Why would he permit these things to be sold? One pissed-off Christian blogger reminded us of Jesus' scourging of the Temple when it was filled with money-changers. Is Gibson so different from the money-changers?

Fric: Gibson's lack of comprehension or blatant disregard of the historical context of the Gospels, and his lack of comprehension or blatant disregard of the Passion and its historical context.

On one level I can, without intending to defend Gibson, point out that this is an artistic choice. On another level, though, I admit this is absolutely problematic if the movie is being passed off as "true" in some sense other than the vaguely artistic. If "true" means "historically true," then no.

Fric: Gibson's use of non-Biblical source material while publicizing his film as being the purely Gospel version of the last 12 hours.

And there we go: this is the problem, isn't it.

Fric: Aside: last 12 hours... 12 disciples... Coincidence?

There could be something going on here. A lot of reviewers are noting how Catholicism-saturated the film is; symbols that Catholics are more likely to see than other people will, Protestant or otherwise. "12" has symbolic meaning for Jews and Christians alike.

Fric: Gibson's obsession with violence and pain.

I think it's pretty well-established by other critics that Gibson's acting & directing history together form a martyrdom-arc. I'd go with that; the man does seem intent on peering closely at agony and gore and sacrifice and Big Ideas like freedom ("Braveheart") and faith ("Signs," "Passion").

Fric: An article by the president of CUA, while praising the film, did claim that Gibson may have misread the Gospels. If two gospels depicted a particular torture scene differently, Gibson interprets that to mean two distinct torture scenes, and he depicts both taking place in tandem. The author (A. read the article) asserts that it's now believed that they would both be representations of the same event. The author seemed to think Gibson was obsessed by blood and violence, but the author didn't seem to have a problem with it. He gave the film his blessing, so to speak.

As for literal interpretation: a chuckle is warranted. How much of this actually happened as related in the gospels? We don't know. Period.

re: the issue of torture, gore, viscerality

Frac [who's Catholic; I'm Presbyterian] might want to chime in here, but my understanding of Catholic sacramentality is that it is very much the opposite of what you find in Christian Science or Jehovah's Witnesses: for Catholics, sacramental reality implies the nonduality of the divine and the material. This is what makes such phenomena as transsubstantiation plausible. There is no dichotomy. There's no clear distinction between spirit and flesh; earthly agony isn't merely an analogue for spiritual agony: it is spiritual agony! Gibson's focus on gore will be understood by Catholics in this sense. Non-Christians might look at it and see only an "obsession with violence."

I'm not in total disagreement with the Catholic idea (which, BTW, does have some scriptural justification), if for no other reason than that it seems odd to posit "supernature." Catholic sacramentality is ancient and earthy and, in a real way, brutal: to participate in the eucharist is to participate in more than a merely "symbolic" feast: that is the blood of Christ; that is the body. Sacramental reality affects the Catholic notion of "symbol" as a result: a symbol, for Catholics, participates fully in the event; it's not merely a sign pointing elsewhere or standing in for something. To take part in the liturgy is to enter an organic, divine/material/unitary reality.

I don't know whether any of that makes sense [NB: Fric isn't Christian]; I hope it does, because it makes a lot of things clearer: for example, the whole deal about carrying around rotten "holy relics"-- body parts of saints, usually things like bone or hair. Even for Protestants, it's a bit weird to think of the spiritual as tangible, but for devout Catholics, that's not the case. Those relics have meaning because the divine and material realms are unified within them.

So when you look at gore & suffering & all the rest, and you realize it's a Catholic filmmaker's vision of what happened to Jesus, it becomes clear that Gibson's vision does make sense from a certain point of view (said he, Kenobi-like)-- that of Catholic sacramentality.

Fric: The first point above is a very sensitive topic for non Christians living here. It's something that many Christians don't seem to understand. And in the hands of a talented, and popular filmmaker, it can be dangerous.

Yes, I agree it can be, though I think there's merit to the idea that people already predisposed to bigotry are the ones whose bigotry will be inflamed by what they see. In the case of both bigots and non-bigots, we'll take from the film what we bring into it. If we're predisposed to Jew-bashing, then we'll be happy to see Gibson confirming this. If, however, we come in with the more metaphorical attitude that, in a sense, we all crucify the Christ (and keep in mind that the Christ isn't exactly synonymous with the historical Jesus), then we're more likely to see the guilt that lies inside our own hearts-- i.e., the film becomes a humbling lesson. I imagine that Gibson would prefer that we all watch his film this way, but even he has to know that that's not going to happen... and that's why groups like the ADL are justifiably alarmed.

On the other side of the fence, critics rightly point out that the Jewish retelling and celebration of stories about thousands of Egyptians being drowned in the Re(e)d Sea present some of the same problems as the gospel stories: celebration is occurring at some other people's expense (in this case, the Egyptians'), and this has been codified into religious ritual.

One possible reply to that is the same one made by blacks when talking about who "owns" the word "nigger": it's OK for blacks to use this word because of the asymmetrical structure of the power dynamic. If you view yourself as an oppressed minority, you can't pretend to be color-blind. For a white to say "nigger" is far more dangerous than for a black to do it. I'm somewhat (somewhat) sympathetic to this argument, and I think it's applicable in the Jewish situation: yes, there are Jewish ritual moments that commemorate biblical events where one people suffered (usually the Hebrews' enemies) while another prospered, BUT because the Hebrews, and by extension the Jews, have been a long-persecuted minority all over the world, it's somewhat disanalogous to accuse the Jews of practicing the same kind of bigotry (?) as Christians who participate in gospel readings where the Jews come off as the bad guys.

That, by the way, is an ongoing debate. I report; you decide. Heh.

Fric: Gibson's dishonesty in the second point above puzzles me. He's either trying to take a non-mainstream view and make it mainstream, or he's trying to hide his motivation. Either way, it doesn't paint him in a very good light. Liar at best IMHO.

I don't know how much of this is outright lying, though if you pair Gibson with his dad, they're a scary duo. Maybe Gibson is quite sincere in what he believes (i.e., if he's lying, maybe he doesn't realize it); maybe his artistic motivation is sincere. But because this is Hollywood, and because this is big money, and because we're dealing with touchy scriptural questions and power relationships, yes, there's definite cause to worry.

For myself, I guess I'm insulated from some of this because the imagery in Gibson's film will be brutal, but won't be unfamiliar. Christians all know the story of the suffering of Jesus (or Jesus' Passion, as Catholics call it). I'd like to think that most modern, mainstream Christians know better than to take too literalist a tack regarding the gospel accounts, but...

...BUT, we're dealing with an event that many consider the essence of the Christian faith: that "Christ died for our sins in accordance with the scriptures" and was raised again on the third day. I.e., literal death, literal resurrection. Easter is the most important event on the Christian liturgical calendar, bar none. It's strange, but even Christians who're willing to grant that other miracles (e.g., Old Testament miracles like God stopping the sun for three days, or NT miracles like Jesus walking on water) might not have happened, will claim that Jesus really rose again from the dead. Somehow, they find it necessary to believe this literally, even in the mainstream.

I don't want to devote this email to an explanation of resurrection theology, which is a very muddled business, but I hope I've provided a bit of Christian background for why Gibson might be doing what he's doing.

The problem, of course, is judging the film sight unseen. That's prejudicial, too. I'm going to see the movie, try to view it both critically and uncritically (is that possible? I dunno), and will definitely want to talk w/you all about it afterwards. I don't know when it's going to hit Korea, and have no clue what kind of stink it's going to make here.

I doubt I satisfactorily answered any of your questions, Fric, re: what makes non-Christians nervous, so I ask forgiveness in advance for that. I tend to think the main politico-religious issue is that Gibson may have created a "rallying point" for frothing fundies, who will go out into the world reassured of the rightness of their vision. In other words, what's worrisome is not so much the film as the fervent masses' reactions to it. The film is only a text. We, in our freedom, respond to it in various ways.

Tentative prediction: "The Passion" will cause a big stir while it's out, but the furor will die down pretty quickly as the election approaches (summer movies, too) and other matters reassert themselves in the public mind. Not so different from the national climate during the showing of Scorsese's "Last Temptation of Christ," which turned out not to be that big of a deal in the larger scale.

Might be interesting to go back and read old IMDB reviews of "Last Temptation."


Kevin

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Check out Ryan Overbey's review of "The Passion." Ryan also provides a link to GetReligion's take. See also Andrew Sullivan's review, in which he says "The Passion" is a kind of pornography.

"Passion" reviews and speculation abound, but one thing is clear: not many people like the musical score. Chalk up a point for Peter Gabriel and his inspired work on Scorsese's film-- Gabriel's album was, of course, titled Passion.

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Click the huge, screaming Alien on the sidebar and go buy yourself a BigHominid mug or five.

Two new designs are out:



The "Squirrels Find Nuts" mug design...




And the "Tiger and Butterfly" mug design.



[NB: There won't be any border on the actual mug image. ALSO: I might be changing the wording on the tiger one. It's supposed to be cute, but the people who go for "cute" are bizarrely averse to the word "dung." PLUS: Image resolution and quality on the actual mug will be better than what you're seeing on the screen right now.]

Go visit my CafePress site. Buy some swag. More's on the way, but there's already a pretty impressive range of items: tees, sweats, frisbees, mugs, greeting cards-- you name it. Check out all the different designs. Or if you want to go directly to the mug designs, here's the link.

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If you're going to chant, "Vietnam, Vietnam, Vietnam," then you're going to have to deal with reporter Sydney H. Schanberg, of "The Killing Fields" fame.

This is pretty riveting stuff.

And Kerry on a lighter note (via Satan's Anus).

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As readers of the Second Chronicles of Thomas Covenant the Unbeliever know, Thomas Covenant is dead, leaving two material corpses-- one at Haven Farm, another in the heart of Mount Thunder, in the Land. Covenant's spirit lives on in the Land as one of the Dead; his revenant speaks to Linden Avery both while she's in Kiril Threndor and during her transit back to "our" world.

So... how do you bring Covenant back for a Third Chronicles?

Let him be the "primary viewpoint character," that's how. Not only that, but play with temporality. Thus saith a Covenant-hound who was part of the audience at a reading by Donaldson:

[Donaldson] said that the 1st Chronicles were the "muscle" books where Lord Foul is akin to Hitler forging armies and A-bombs to ruin his enemies and break his prison. In the 2nd Chronicles Foul's method is an attack on the natural order of things. But in the 3rd Chronicles Foul's final means of escape will consist of a massive attack on and corruption of time itself! [breathless emphasis removed]

The first book in what is likely to be a humongous four-book series, The Runes of Earth, is due out either later this year or sometime next year.

If you clicked the first link, you saw Donaldson's emailed responses to the guy who runs the KevinsWatch.com fan site. Donaldson separates himself from Tolkien right away:

3) are there any races or characters that I would like to write about outside the "Chronicles"? In a word, no. My mind doesn't work that way. I think in stories, not in races or characters (or in themes or belief-systems).

Compare this to Tolkien's delicate, meticulous construction of every aspect of Middle Earth's land, peoples, cultures, history, and cosmology. Donaldson's remark explains much.

And Donaldson at his most tersely philosophical:

6) the importance of contradiction? the nature of evil? I can't answer such questions--by which I mean that I can't think of anything to say that would be more clear than what is already in my books. But on the subject of contradiction, consider this: every human being is by his/her very nature a contradiction between material flesh and unquantifiable consciousness. That's hard to think about. Understanding ourselves isn't easy. Personally, I don't know any other way to process the dilemma of being a walking, talking contradiction except through story-telling. Certainly the fundamental postulate of traditional Western religions--dualism--doesn't do it for me. As for evil, all I can say is: consider what Lord Foul, Kasreyn of the Gyre, Master Eremis, Nick Succorso, and Holt Fasner have in common.

(Pssst: lemme spoil it for you: attachment.)

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As I examine other members of my blogroll, I can see that it's pretty much a gay marriage roundup we're in for, so let's forget about gay marriage a second and start off with Lorianne's post on my least favorite subject, clothes shopping. I hated clothes shopping as a kid, being dragged all over the mall when all I wanted to do was play arcade games or hang out in the bookstore.

While I was working at APIC in the late 90s and early 00s, I'd be given APIC Annual Conference shirts to wear. I now have five such shirts-- blue faded heavy cotton weave, button-down, ranging from 3XL to 4XL. To people I meet, it must appear that I wear the same shirt and pants every day (I have three pairs of very similar black pants, you see). I don't give a rat's ass. What matters is that I wear these shirts untucked and mostly-unbuttoned: that's Hominid Style for you. I hate suits, jackets, slacks, loafers, formal wear. Hate 'em all. Gimme my damn freedom of movement.

OK-- onward to gay marriage. Once more unto my bitch, dear friends...

Ryan Overbey takes Andrew Sullivan's side in this debate, which many are calling the latest culture war. He says:

This is familiar rhetoric. Appeals to nature, to societal stability, the lambasting of "activist judges", the frequent usage of the verb "to protect". But what does the rhetoric mean?

I have not heard a single argument in this whole debate which is opposed to same-sex marriage and simultaneously empty of misleading rhetoric. Try to argue with an amendment supporter: ask him or her what they mean by "activist judges." Ask if they have read the Massachusetts Supreme Court decision, and whether they agree that there is a compelling parallel in Brown v. Board of Education. If they don't agree, ask them why not. Ask them what they mean by "weakening the good influence of society." Does legalizing gay marriage effectively remove the rights of heterosexual couples to marry? Of course it doesn't. But what then is meant by the verb "to protect"? If the answer is "sanctity", ask for a precise definition of sanctity. Ask how sanctity is relevant to the functioning of a democracy. Ask why loving homosexual relationships cannot be sacred.

This entire debate is grounded on a very limited set of vocabulary, a narrow range of concepts and assumptions which beg to be challenged. So many people are simply repeating the rhetoric, and I'm not always sure they have a firm grasp on what exactly the underlying principles are. Or perhaps some do understand the underlying principles—those of hatred and bigotry—but they understand that they cannot utter their true thoughts in the arena of public discourse. These are the sorts who are worse than our dear friends at God Hates Fags: they share the same horrific ideology but are burdened with the additional vices of dishonesty and cowardice.

So I issue a challenge. Do any of you, my dear readers, support a marriage amendment? And if so, why? Feel free to comment below. But this game will have rules. You are not allowed to say "Because I want to protect marriage", or "Because I want to defend the sanctity of marriage." If you do attempt these meaningless lines of argument, then give them meaning. Define them. Tell us why allowing gay people to marry will damage the institution itself, will dilute the meaning of union for other couples. If you sincerely believe that permitting gay marriage will lead to the collapse of our social institutions and family structures, do us the favor of telling us why you believe it is so. And try not to be like the Baptist protester in Boston, who stated frankly and unironically that God would destroy the state in the same way He destroyed Sodom and Gomorrah. You can do better than that.

By the way, further down his blog, Ryan links to a French-language post re: the pleasures of cunnilingus on a blog by someone with the pseudonym Beuzl. I congratulate Beuzl in my rusty French in the comments section. "Mysterious carnal machinery" indeed.

Another explosion of commenter activity over at Bird Dog's gay marriage thread on Tacitus. Very lively.

Cobb (whose granddad just passed away this past Friday) opines on gay marriage and takes a pretty solid religious and political conservative position. He doesn't want to grant the use of the term "marriage" to gay unions (I say "What's the big deal, though?"), he views marriage as ordained by God, but he's also somewhere close to Donald Sensing's position, in which we separate the legal and the spiritual aspects of marriage and let the proper authorities have their own proper purview. Check Cobb out here and here and here. Search around for other posts; he's got a few more.

Annika is for gay marriage, but thanks President Bush for his principled stance, which puts the big decisions back in the hands of the people. I imagine she agrees with Keith Burgess-Jackson that Bush made this decision freely, but I'm not so sure. I think there's plenty of reelection pandering going on, and Bush is beholden to his own Religious Right special interests. That said, I'm over the initial emotions and think that, yes, Bush's action shouldn't be viewed either as surprising or as all that threatening. Why? Because like Annika and others point out, there's really no way this amendment will go through.

Kensho Godchaser writes a post on the "Tyranny of the Majority," however, and brings up my own and others' concern (cf. Bill Maher in Smallholder's post): sometimes the majority has its head up its ass. Of course such an assessment is countered by the accusation of liberal arrogance: "Once again, you judge everyone else as stupid." I think it's a charge worth considering, but this brings us back to Plantinga-related issues: which is more arrogant, the liberal stance or, say, a "WHITES ONLY" sign?

Kensho writes:

"We can't have gay marriage," they cry - "the majority of Americans are opposed to it."

"The people," they pronounce, "should have the right to decide whether homosexual couples can participate in marriage."

How idiotic would these arguments sound if you replaced "marriage" with "free speech"? Or "owning property"? But conservatives ignore the screaming contradiction of their position in their quest to defend the "ancient tradition of heterosexual marriage". (News flash, folks: slavery used to be an ancient tradition until we outlawed it.) These are the same conservatives who are quick to remind you (rightly!) that rights are inalienable, that America is a democratic Republic, not a democracy, and that the Bill of Rights was created to protect the sanctity of the individual against the tyranny of the majority. This argument serves their needs when the issue is gun control or the capital gains tax - but bring up marriage equality, and suddenly, the sanctity of the individual is up for vote.

Kensho, by invoking free speech and property, also ends up talking about basic (civil) rights.

[NB: Over at Cobb, there is no tolerance for dragging race analogies into a sexuality issue. He says: "What the justices of the peace (who are actually disturbing it) in SF are trying to do is to paint blacks white." I'll respectfully disagree with Cobb on this because I see this as a civil rights issue.]

Glenn also issues a challenge to amendment advocates:

I'd like one person who opposes gay marriage (whose opinion actually matters, so 99% of you bloggers don't count) to come up with a credible argument for not allowing homosexual marriages that DOESN'T INVOLVE a religious reason. Why that stipulation? Because the last time I checked church & state were seperate, and if you're going to use the secular law system then GODDAMMIT you better have a better reason than "It's in the Bible so I'm against it."

News flash: DESPITE GW BUSH & THE CHRISTIAN RIGHT'S BEST ATTEMPT THE UNITED STATES IS NOT A THEOCRACY.

I dare anyone to come up with a reason that isn't rooted in the religious. To leave the *INSERT HOLY BOOK HERE* out of it. Because if you can't, then you need to shut the fuck up.

Also, if you try to use the argument that "marraige was intended to form families for the purpose of child bearing and creating families" I'll fully be expecting you to rail against the evils of old people getting married, infertile couples being allowed to remain married, and the consciously childless being allowed to remain married. Because those marriages ain't havin' no kids. But why allow them to remain married?

Please, someone. I dare you.

At Amritas, Dr. Miyake may skew fairly conservative, but he also comes out strongly against Bush on this.

People like Keith Burgess-Jackson will do their damnedest to paper over bigotry issues and try to keep the focus on the purely legal aspects of the overall debate (KBJ's latest tactic is to paint the pro-gay marriage side as hysterical). It's a shame, because life happens around us no matter what the musty law books say. Donald Sensing recognizes this, even if he views the situation with sadness. I admire his empiricism and pragmatism, even if I disagree with his theology.

Previous civil rights battles also involved a huge extralegal component. It's the constant push-pull of chaos and order, novelty and stasis; boundaries have to be crossed, rules have to be broken, and points have to be made by deeds, not words. So maybe the folks in San Fran are holding bogus marriage licenses. Maybe. But they've made a statement, these gay folks, as have the judges in Massachusetts. Both sides need to remember that the opposing position, however repugnant it may seem, does not signal the end of the world. The story doesn't end; the dialogue continues; the universe moves.

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As always, my blogroll proves itself way too interesting.

Over the past 24 hours, the Maximum Leader and I have been going over this question of single-issue voting, which I suppose was prompted by my "it's official" post. The ML wrote this post in response, and I responded on his blog (where I'm one of several guest bloggers) here. At this point the ML clarified his own stance, granting that I'm not a single-issue voter but that my post was reminiscent of single-issue thinking. Here's what he wrote in a subsequent post:

Your Maximum Leader would like to ask the Poet Laureate for whom would he vote if it was a Kerry v. Bush election? (Which it is very likely to be.) On the issues that the Hominid lists, one would appear to get a split decision. Bush over Kerry on Defence. A push on managing the economy. And Kerry over Bush on social issues. Does that make the Hominid likely to cast his (hypothetical) vote for Bush or Kerry? Perhaps it does come down to one issue. Gay marriage? Korea policy? Or does the plot thicken? Does the Hominid cast his vote for Nader? For Daffy Duck? For Opus the Penguin? (Or does he do the sensible thing and write in his Maximum Leader?) (emphasis added)

The ML is suggesting that it's possible to "become" a single-issue voter when presented with candidates who are appealing in some aspects but not in others, such that a decision may indeed boil down to the One Issue to Rule Them All.

Hm.

This isn't my impression of what "single-issue voting" is (hereinafter SIV for short). SIV, as far as I can tell, is a behavior/tendency that manifests itself over time, election after election: e.g., a person whose sole criterion for choosing candidates is, say, their stance on homosexuality. Or, similarly, an SIVer might also be someone who shows this kind of stubborn, blindered focus over the course of a single election cycle-- perhaps because Topic X has been the Issue of the Year. By implication, the SIVer's focus on this issue is so intense that s/he actively ignores the candidates' stances on all other issues.

More succinctly: the constitutive element of SIV is voluntarily exclusive focus on a single issue.

My own shift away from Bush (and even in the posts where I mentioned I might vote Bush, I wasn't at all enthusiastic) doesn't reflect any of the above traits because I'm not focused on a single issue. As I laid out on the ML's blog, I'm worried about the holy trinity of defense, social issues (which include but aren't limited to gay marriage), and the economy. More to the point, the ML's hypothetical doesn't necessarily produce SIVers: it merely produces voters who've been presented with narrowed choices-- i.e., we're no longer talking about voluntarily exclusive focus.

So I don't think the ML has provided a proper model for the SIV question. If you want to find out who the SIVers are among us, you have to watch their thinking over time and see whether they remain focused on a single issue.

To answer the ML's question, at least partially: if I were faced with a Bush/Kerry choice, and absolutely no other option ("CAKE OR DEATH!"), I'd choose Bush because in the hierarchy of issues, defense is on top for me. Further: since the ML's question allows for other selections, like Daffy Duck... to be honest, in a Bush/Kerry/Daffy election, I'd have to choose Daffy.

At the risk of over-repetition: Having a hierarchy of concerns isn't the same as having a single, voluntarily exclusive, focused concern. If our presidential "menu" (yes, probably Kerry vs. Bush) forces us into a choice between defense and the economy (as I've argued on this blog), then the choices we make are by no means necessarily a function of SIV.

My own point of view is premised on a particular definition of SIV, to be sure (though I'm pretty sure my definition is the conventional understanding of the term). If the ML's own conception of SIV is something more general, such as "making a choice/vote based a single issue"-- period-- then obviously ANYONE forced into the situation the ML describes does indeed "become" a single-issue voter: the scenario and terminological definitions together produce circular results.

To pull another KBJ:

1. A single-issue voter is someone who chooses/votes based on a single issue. Period. No further qualification.
2. You find yourself in a situation where your choice of candidate A or B ultimately boils down to a single issue and those candidates' respective stances on it.
3. If you vote for A (or B) while in circumstance (2), you're a single-issue voter. QED.

Circular, thanks to both the definition and the scenario. You almost don't even need (3). But:

1. A single-issue voter is someone who chooses/votes due to a voluntarily exclusive focus on a single issue.
2. You find yourself in a situation where your choice of candidate A or B ultimately boils down to a single issue and those candidates' respective stances on it.
3. If you vote for A (or B) while in circumstance (2), you're a single-issue voter. QED?

No, not QED. Why? Because it's less clear that we've established voluntarily exclusive focus on a single issue. This would require getting inside the person's head, observing their behavior over time, etc.

Then again, the ML may have an even different definition of SIV, something not covered by the above two alternatives. ML?


Moving on to the Korean blogosphere...


Kevin at IA fuels my political cynicism by noting that the Bush Administration will still be appeasing NK by funneling aid through South Korea instead of giving it to NK directly. If true, this bites, sucks, and swallows. I suppose that what differentiates a Democrat from a Republican when it comes to NK is a matter of degree, not kind: it's all appeasement in some measure.

Does this also mean that the Bush Administration's admirably undiplomatic language (and attitude) toward NK is a sham? I'd like to think it isn't, but articles like this don't give me hope. All the same, when you've got NK positively rooting for John Kerry to be elected, you have to wonder. My hope is that the Bush Administration doesn't give away the store. They will, as Kevin notes in another post, very likely try to pass off some half-measure as a "victory" in an election year, but if they revert to a less-accommodating stance after Bush is reelected (as I'm still pretty sure he will be), that works for me.

The Marmot does a roundup of Koreablogger pre-talk thoughts. He also expresses doubts about the NK "unofficial agreement" to have inspections of Yongbyon. I have a feeling that Yongbyon is, at this point (if it wasn't already before this), little more than a front for whatever Uruk-hai factory the Norks have built in their mountain fastnesses and deep underground.

NK Zone, which I need to stick on the blogroll, quotes an article questioning the effectiveness of sanctions. After all the work I did on Natsios, I can understand where the article writers (not NK Zone) are coming from. But Rebecca McKinnon, who runs NK Zone, is right to ask:

But we still have a serious problem. We still need to know how an agreement by North Korea to scrap its nuclear weapons programs (plural) and to stop proliferating would be reliably enforced, and how cheating would be truly prevented. Without the "trust, but verify" piece, the engagers could still potentially wind up supporting activities that threaten themselves.

And how do you get to the point where you can "trust and verify", when you can't even monitor food aid properly?

This has always been the heart of the NK problem: verification. It's not enough to obtain a mere promise from NK about future conduct. What we need is access-- something NK isn't willing to give as they protest and bluster about sovereignty and the right of self-defense.

McKinnon also has an amusing post, referred to above, about NK support for Kerry.

The Vulture has something nice to say about his patrons. He's also counting the days until Bush leaves office. I imagine a Bush supporter could re-tool the counter so that it's a countdown to reelection. I'm still working on that Vulture logo.

Seeing Eye Blog has further remarks on NK Zone's Kerry post:

Kerry has called Bush's truth-exposing NK strategy "reckless," and said, "I'll talk to North Korea, and solve the nuclear crisis peacefully."

To Pyeongyang's dictator this means he would get back all the goodies he was getting under the '94 deal, along with the world's blind eye to his clandestine nuke program.

Naturally, if I were Kim Jong-il, I'd whip up visible evidence to strengthen Kerry's argument that the Bush strategy is reckless. I'd create signs that the crisis is worsening, getting more dangerous - in hopes that the perception of impending danger and policy failure will hurt Bush in November.

This would be a lose-lose situation for the U.S., for South Korea, for Northeast Asia, for everybody in the world but North Korea. If Kerry cared more about solving the crisis than winning in November, he would stump that he'd be even sterner with Pyeongyang than Bush has been. That would undermine Pyeongyang's brinksmanship tactics, and engender chances, however slim, and however risky, for real, productive changes.

That's what I hope Kerry does. And he'd be more likely to get my vote if he did so.

Mike also notes something a commenter on his blog (Slim) said:

You're being unfair to Kerry. He resolutely opposes North Korea's nuclear ambitions -- on Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays. On Tuesdays and Thursdays he backs the atomic programme, arguing that the Bush administration is lying about it. On weekends, he goes with the prevailing poll sentiment.

SEB also gives us a glmpse of the cutest criminal ever.

An article at Oranckay about shooting ranges at Lotte World ($30 for only TEN FUCKING ROUNDS!? Kim du Toit's head would burst!). Most disturbing tidbit: the place is a hangout for lonely NK defector-youths. Memories of home, eh? Jesus.

Words of wisdom over at the Infidel's:

Seoul, like Beijing and Tokyo, lacks the political will to end the cradle-to-grave socialism which has served the region through the respite provided by the American military umbrella. But, facing remilitarization and global economic competition, South Korea needs to revitalize a moribund culture radically. The contract, too, which saw every generation do better than the one before it, is also in peril. Where America's woes are [predominantly] cyclical, South Korea faces a structural crisis. Resisting the attractions of an ugly isolationist nationalism will take a little luck and the good graces of South Korea's neighbors, [on] which Seoul depends for its continued prosperity.

Over at Flying Yangban: what do Americans think of other countries? It's a relief to see that question, as opposed to the usual "What do Koreans think of America?"-- which usually leads to depressing answers.

A reminder to people in the States: America is talked about all the damn time. I found this to be true while living in France and Switzerland as well. There's no escaping the fact that people pay attention to us. Message to American isolationists: it's too late. Isolation ain't gonna happen. We're way too plugged in to the rest of the world. Let it go.

I'm very slow on the uptake, but check out Owen Rathbone's post on the NK/Canada connection.

For those who've been following the Lee Seung-yeon flap (an actress who made the very tasteless mistake of posing for pictures as a scantily-clad and beat-up-looking comfort woman), Jeff at Ruminations in Korea has the goods on the latest twist in the soap opera: Lee is going to America for a while, ostensibly because her lower back needs treatment (from all the apologetic bowing to the real comfort women?), but Jeff thinks otherwise:

So, does this mean the story is finally over now that she has subjected herself to voluntary exile? Not hardly. According to news reports (in Korean) Ms. Lee had signed a one-year modeling contract with "H" company. However, according to the company, because of Ms. Lee's actions, any product with her image associated with it is completely unusable, and as a result of their association with Ms. Lee, their company's reputation and marketability has suffered enormous damages. They are prepare to file a lawsut seeking damages from Ms. Lee. The amount is likely to be more that USD 1,000,000.

As the punk-biker-dude shouted in "The Road Warrior," YOU CAN RUN, BUT YOU CAN'T HIDE!

Then again, I hear Osama's on dialysis and he's been running and hiding. Miss Lee's younger than Osama-- smaller, faster; she has a fictional lower-back problem, and can disappear for years in LA's huge Koreatown. Be careful, Miss Lee-- if you stray too close to those Hollywood surgeons, you might resurface in the public eye as a man! Hairy Soo!

Guess who works at a bar in South Korea these days? Go to Kirk for the answer.

A weekend of rain, temples, migraines, coffee (always coffee), queers, and many other things besides over at Overboard. Oh, and Andi's gi-ding p'aet ah-roun dah heep.

Polymath provides a great survey of South Korean opinions about America and North Korea, laced with his perceptive commentary. One quote from an old Korean gent struck me:

"Can anyone believe everything North Korea says? If it doesn't work out again, then I guess we'll just have to fight it out, I'm old but I can still pick up a gun and go to war. I've done it before, I can do it again." - Retired teacher and Korean War vet, Kim Hak-jun, 76.

Wow.

Drambuie Man hosts a GOP Korea gathering and remarks:

One of the things in my experience that has always amazed me is how grassroots the GOP really is. I know all the rhetoric about the GOP being in big business' pocket. However in all my experience I have seen that to be opposite. Contrasted to some Dem meetings and functions I have been privileged to attend, yesterday's meeting (despite the aforementioned differences), as far as I can tell, was made up entirely of people with humble middle to lower class backgrounds.

Why? Simple, getting a fifty dollar tax cut means more to scrappers like me than making sure that the guy in charge of the "Blind Midnight Basketball Diversity Awareness Feasibility Study Blue Ribbon Commission" gets a comfy chair for his desk.

Of more interest is his lengthy post about MREs, Meals Ready to Eat. You can buy them all over Seoul, where you'll find old ladies selling piles of them on flatbed carts along with other canned and wrapped foreign products.

Kathreb observes that, in China, they don't fuck around with corrupt officials: they simply dispose of them. I doubt they dispose of them fast enough: my impression from reading the other Chinabloggers is that China's got plenty of political and business corruption to spare.

A pissed-off Party Pooper writes in defense of most American soldiers-- and rightly so, since most of them don't commit crimes.

And you know what? I'd planned to continue on through the blogroll, but this is taking way too much time, so I'll stop here. More later.

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I just wanted to show the world that it is indeed possible for Man and God's creatures to live in harmony.



Either that, or this is a picture of me suffering the Maximum Leader's wrath at the hands (or jaws) of his most trusted attack squirrel.

Seriously, I'm thinking this is going to be a new mug design, though the final background color scheme might be a bit different.

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My choices have pretty much narrowed to John Edwards and Daffy Duck. Just a couple weeks ago, it used to be "Bush or Daffy" until (1) I found out more about Edwards, and (2) Bush went ahead and did this, which has pushed me over the edge. No, not into rage-- just into finding a new competitor for Daffy Duck.

By the way, Edwards doesn't seem too keen on gay marriage, but here's what he has to say:

"As I have long said, I believe gay and lesbian Americans are entitled to equal respect and dignity under our laws. While I personally do not support gay marriage, I recognize that different states will address this in different ways, and I will oppose any effort to pass an amendment to the United States Constitution in response to the Massachusetts decision.

"We are a nation comprised of men and women from all walks of life. It is in our national character to provide equal opportunity to all, and this is what unites our country, in laws and in shared purpose. That is why today, we must also reach out to those individuals who will try to exploit this decision to further divide our nation, and ask them to refrain from that effort."

Edwards takes a federalist-sounding position, which is no longer my position, but it's a damn sight better than the bullshit emanating from La Casablanca debajo Bush.

Turns out, though, that Ralph Nader is very pro-gay marriage, and Keith Burgess-Jackson, who spares no effort to marshal arguments against gay marriage, has been going on about voting for Nader this time around. I love it.

UPDATE: Check out some Smallholder posts over at the Maximum Leader's blog re: gay marriage.

And a comment about backlash: conservatives have been predicting this for a while, it's true. And it's quite possible that the country's mood will become much less accommodating if the shriller elements of the pro-gay marriage movement are given too much air time. I don't expect any simple resolutions to this question anytime soon, but as the ML himself pointed out long ago (and as Donald Sensing also pointed out recently), the overall tide is turning in favor of this form of marriage.

I highly recommend that you track down and read through the Tacitus thread on this subject. The thread brings up a lot of what's being discussed these days re: the separation of the civil and religious aspects of committed union. While I've become an advocate of adding a Constitutional amendment that makes civil marriage available to consenting adults no matter their gay/hetero sexual preference, another equally palatable option is the one advocated by Sensing and others: leave holy matrimony to the churches, and leave civil marriage, hetero and gay, to the state(s)-- the state doesn't get to define marriage as strictly "between a man and a woman," but the churches are free to handle this as they will, with neither tromping on the other's purview. Specifically, Sensing says:

...my rough solution to the present controversy on both coasts has two parts:

1. Have states issue only "Civil Interpersonal Contract" registrations that may be used by any two adults of legal age. CICs (remember, I'm retired Army and I love acronyms) would accomplish the same thing as marriage licences do now regarding property rights from local to federal level, and other matters relegated now exclusively to spouses, such as the right to make certain medical decisions for the other in emergencies, etc. What they would not do is continue to involve the secular state in deciding what marriage is - apart from the legal aspect, this is a metaphysical question the state has no business even attempting to answer.

2. Certificates of marriage, having no additional legal effect, would be issued by churches, synagogues or mosques, not by the state. Holders of CICs who also wanted to be married - with all the social and religious implications thereof - would find their desire unencumbered by state burdens, and churches would be freed of the pressure to unite couples in matrimony for reasons often having little to do with religious nurture.

From my perspective as a pastor, separating the civil-legal aspects and the religious aspects would have some salutary effects.

*It would allow more time for me to work with couples who have a religious interest in their interpersonal relationship without the deadline pressure of the wedding date. Of the gazillion things on the mind of the bride and her family to get the wedding done well and on time, religious reflection and counseling usually rank about last. The couple usually perceives, correctly, that there is time for that after the wedding.

*It would permit me and the engaged couple to go forward with less sexual hypocrisy. Well more than half of men and women betting married today are already living together, living as husband and wife in every way except the legal certification. For a large number of the men - and most of the women - the spouse they will take is not the first they have cohabited with. The historical teaching of the Church, of course, is that sexual relations should follow, not precede, the wedding.

My personal policy in this is "don't ask, don't tell." I have not asked couples whether they live together, but when they both report the same mailing address it sort of gives the game away. By far the majority of couples I marry these days are already cohabiting. That means that the contractual nature of the wedding is more prominent than ever; they are certainly not looking for the Church's sanction of their relationship. They really seek legal, not religious, recognition of their troth and all the legal benefits it entails. For them, the signature on the license is far more important than the words of the litany. The ceremony changes essentially nothing about their lives, except often to make the in-laws on both sides more accepting of the state of affairs. Reconciliation is certainly a role for clergy, but frankly, I sometimes feel like I'm being used for essentially selfish concerns on their part.

If a couple wants a marriage, not merely a partnership, then I'd rather it be because they have genuine impulses toward spiritual union with one another and God, under God's grace and the care of the Church, not because it simplifies other parts of their lives.

Homosexual partners who want to share the same legal rights as traditional married couples would be able to do so under this arrangement. It would not entail the state defining them as married, nor require anyone else to recognize them as married. There are denominations that would issue them marriage certificates, though, the Metropolitan Community Church being one (they already do, but the state doesn't recognize them as contractual documents). But Catholics, Baptists and Methodists, et. al. would be able to maintain their orthodoxy of what marriage is and devote their attentions away from the legal-political arena to where it belongs: the care and nurture of souls.

If Sensing means what I think he means, then this might actually work for me. Sensing's basic view of gay marriage, unlike mine, is negative: the moment humanity was able to separate marriage from certain previously-ironclad biological realities, Pandora's box opened up. But like me, Sensing simply acknowledges this to be the fact of the matter. This throws arguments from history/tradition and biology into jeopardy, because the idea that "humanity has always been this way," while a factual claim, is now faced with the equally empirical fact that "humanity doesn't have to continue this way." (And on a possibly-related note, Kensho Godchaser also urges people to realize that the engineering of humanity is an inevitability. Yep, I agree.)

If we adopt Sensing's solution, we avoid a lot of the messiness that my own position would entail re: the legislation of love and marriage. Just so you know, I'm hinging my own view on the idea that marriage in American society is (or should be!) a basic civil right-- something about which Andrew Sullivan did perhaps too good a job of persuading me. This being the case, if it's going to be leglislated at all, it shouldn't be done piecemeal, state by state. It should instead be enshrined in the Constitution in the same manner that voting is: i.e., by making factors X, Y, and, Z nonissues.

I'm willing to grant that my perspective (1) isn't popular even among gays, and (2) probably isn't where we want to go if, as Sullivan also argues, the Constitution should be viewed as a "sacred document" (don't get me started on the whole "sacred" business), something to be tweaked only rarely and for very, very good reason. So after I read more about Sensing's position (which is also appealing for how it continues the spirit of "separation of church and state"), I'll get back to you about whether I've actually found a stance better than my own.

Sensing does a roundup of his own gay marriage posts here.

Final note: You can see the difference between Sensing's and Keith Burgess-Jackson's positions. Both see the marriage issue in terms of dichotomy, but whereas Sensing's categorical split is spiritual/legal, KBJ's is moral/legal-- a split I reject because I believe all legislation has, at its base, a moral impetus: the promotion and sustenance of a maximally stable, harmonious, and flourishing society (with the acknowledgement that stability, harmony, and flourishing are usually but not always complementary). Only a lawyer would think to separate the legal from the moral. Sensing's dichotomy, that of a soldier-turned-clergyman, is pragmatic and has the virtue of being better-rooted in reality, I think.

YET ANOTHER UPDATE: The Maximum Leader ignores pretty much my entire blog opus and professes amusement at what he perceives to be single-issue thinking. Let's make this clear: Bush just made an important speech, and this post's focus was primarily on the issues in that speech (ah, yes-- a link to the text of that speech here). Focus on a single issue in a single blog post doesn't constitute single-issue thinking. The ML knows me better than that.

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Via The Revealer, I learn about director (and star) Kim Ki-duk's movie, "Spring, Summer, Autumn, Winter... and Spring," which was shown at the Sundance Film Festival. Sounds like an amazing flick.

Later that afternoon, Sundance held the world premiere of Korean director Kim Ki-duk’s new film, “Spring, Summer, Autumn, Winter . . . and Spring.” Set on a floating monastery in a lush, unnamed valley, “Spring, Summer” is the story of a Buddhist monk and his young protégé and the cycles that bind and loose their lives.

In the opening segment, “Spring,” the boy explores his mischievous side by tying small stones to a fish, a frog, and a snake and watching them struggle to carry the weight. He laughs with cruel pleasure, the just-past-innocent pleasure of a boy learning how he can manipulate the world. The monk watches secretly, disappointedly.

The next morning, the boy awakens under the weight of a large stone. When he cries to be released, the monk tells him to first go release the animals. “But if any of them have died,” he warns, “you will carry that stone in your heart for the rest of your life.”

Spoken like a koan, those words become a prophecy. As the seasons change, the boy grows by a decade or more, and by the time we arrive at “Winter” he has learned about the cycles of love and hate, birth and death, bondage and freedom.

Ki-duk depicts Buddhism as a blessing and a curse, a force for evil and redemption. We are constantly reminded of the role of the Buddha statue, which, in this monastery, is made sacred only to haunt its worshippers. Both the master and his pupil are forced to confront the reality that freedom from the self may finally mean self-obliteration.

Much of what is interesting about Sundance is what happens after the screenings, when there is usually a Q&A session with directors/actors, and then an extended period of milling about. “Spring, Summer” had no representation, but audience members were yet eager to chat with each other. As the lights came up after the movie, I turned to get the reactions of the four guys sitting behind me. Hollywood screenwriters all, they were buzzing with the lessons they learned from Ki-duk’s precise, methodical storytelling. They didn’t know anything about Buddhism, they said, but the movie had awakened dormant curiosities.

Not having seen the film, I'm not sure how to take the reviewer's contention that, "Both the master and his pupil are forced to confront the reality that freedom from the self may finally mean self-obliteration." In Buddhism, there's no self-obliteration because, well, there's no self. Is the writer referring to something tragic that happens in the movie? A monk crushed under a Buddha statue, for example? I don't know. But to describe Buddhist practice as "confronting" this reality isn't quite right. Realizing jae beop gong sang, all things (lit. "all dharmas") have the character of emptiness, isn't somehow negative or horrifying or disturbing. The reviewer sounds a little too much like many Westerners who mistakenly equate Buddhist emptiness with the French existentialist's Void or Nonbeing.

This film was also being offered for consideration for the Academy Awards, in the Best Foreign Film category (see here for another interesting writeup).

I don't know the Korean title (at a guess, "Bom, Yeoreum, Ga-eul, Gyeo-ul... Bom"), but I'm going to look this film up. If it's already available as a DVD in the States, I might nab it through Amazon.

Back in 1989, while I was living in Fribourg, Switzerland, I saw Bae Yong-kyun's "Why Has Bodhidharma Left for the East?", a fascinating and Zen-saturated film (WARNING: not for people who need fast-paced action). "Spring" sounds like a film in a very similar vein.

UPDATE: I found the AllMovie.com listing for "Spring," with a romaja transliteration of the Korean title.

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I haven't had a Coke in a few days. I want one. Fucking Coke addict. I don't know what's keeping me from getting one. Perhaps it's the weight of my enormous ass, trapping me in this seat.

I don't like either Bush or Kerry. I suspect Bush will be firmer on defense matters (and though I understand Kevin at IA's point about Bush being wussy on NK, I tend to think his administration is making NK more nervous than Clinton's did. It's certainly making South Korea more nervous!), but he's running the economy into the toilet, his head is up his ass on social issues, and as the Air Marshal points out, we've got corruption, secrecy, and other integrity issues. I suspect Kerry will be somewhat better for the economy, maybe a bit better on social issues, but he's plagued by this strange, lifelong cycle of "be gung ho, then regret-- repeat as necessary," and his internationalism worries me. At this point, I have almost zero faith in the UN and get the feeling that Kerry would gladly fellate Kim Jong Il to placate "world opinion." Ditto for Chirac, with whom he can banter in French while slurping away. Alors, mon vieux... (slurp-slurp)... et que dirais-tu si je te cédais (slurp-slurp) tout l'Israël? I'm surprised more Republicans haven't satirized Kerry on this point. Maybe too many Republicans also speak French? Heh.

[UPDATE: A brief post from NK Zone relates North Korean praise for John Kerry. Another reason not to vote for him.]

Six-headed angels no longer visit me while I'm crapping. I can't seem to bring myself to care.

And greasy Joan doth keel the pot!

Whatever the hell that means. Shakespeare can eat me.

I think I'm going to go take a walk. Maybe buy a Coke.

Oh, yeah-- among other pieces of (f)art, I'm drawing some logos for various Koreablogs. I'm not quite sure what works best for Incestuous Amplification... I keep getting images of a guy diddling a woman from behind while she screams through a bullhorn, "Big brother is MY DADDY!" But that's just wrong. Maybe I'll do a visual representation of "bombtits." Or Kevin's classic "Gotta be fuckin' kidding me."

The Marmot's logo was fairly easy to figure out (no brainer: a marmot and a hole); the question now is the details.

I'm pretty sure Cathartidae is going to show a vulture plucking out Bush's eyes or pecking his brain or something.

Seeing Eye Blog was also fairly easy, though as I stare at the logo, it occurs to me that it doesn't quite make sense. Might have to redo.

The Infidel's logo is either Jesus on the cross shouting, "IS THAT ALL YOU GOT!?" or a robed Arab sporting a cross, a Magen David, and a huge, toothy grin.

SINCE I DON'T KNOW WHAT THE FUCK AN "ORANCKAY" IS, I HAVE NO GODDAMN CLUE HOW TO DRAW ONE. Is it a monkey??? Please write in, Mr. Schroepfer, and enlighten me.

Only a newbie to this blog would be unaware of what logo I plan on drawing for It Makes a Difference to the Sheep.

Still working on others. Please write in if you have preferences, or don't really want me to logo-ize your blog. I'm thinking of sprucing up the sidebar by turning the links into tiny images.

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North Korea once again has its own preconditions for the six-way talks, and they're the same as ever: you pay, we play.

Your source for this pungent glop of oral caca: Yahoo! News.

Thou shalt chew upon my leprous, leathery, loathsome nads, Kim Jong Il! Now and forever!

Sorry, folks, but whatever progress you're hoping for ain't gonna happen this time around. It's just like the Pope said about North Korea: "It is as it was." I suspect NK's sending a delegation to Libya with only one question: "How the fuck did you guys back down from the US and still retain your balls?"

Anybody remember Gadaffi's "line of death"?

We need to be thinking about driving a very firm wedge between NK and Libya right now. We also need to be thinking about the accusations (quite possibly justified) of dictator-coddling that will accompany a warming (thawing?) relationship with Libya. Gadaffi may have to go. I don't know how this might happen, but it may have to happen if the US is going to strive for some internal consistency.

(Granted: Now that Libya's capitulated-- somewhat-- it might not be our most pressing concern. However, in light of the intelligence failures that allowed Libya to get as far along in its weapons program as it did, I think it deserves more than a little of our attention.)

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I think the country would be better served by Young John than Old John. Kerry's got way too many inconsistencies, and while I think people may be going too far in digging up shit about Kerry's military past, the man did invite inspection with his repeated mantra, "Vietnam, Vietnam, Vietnam."

Here's a cute little animation on John Moore's site that lays out some of Kerry's inconsistencies. Enjoy.

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"This guy makes you look like a North Korean sympathizer," writes Smallholder in an email. Here's the link to what he's talking about. You decide: is this writer a bit over the top?

Some quotables:

During all these years, one thing stands out clearly: The North Koreans never backed down, never yielded to pressure, never blinked. While the North Koreans had a very large standing army, the U.S. and S. Korean forces had overwhelmingly superior technology backed by tactical nuclear weapons that had the undeniable ability to even out North Korea's numerical battlefield superiority. Despite this, North Korea remained belligerent and bellicose.

We now know what was going on behind the scenes. While the United States was wringing its hands, wondering what to do every time the North Koreans pushed or prodded, North Korea was building up its stockpiles of biological and chemical weapons, and working hard on its nuclear weapons program.

Shortly after President Clinton took office, North Korea threatened to pull out of the non-proliferation treaty, interrupting international inspections of nuclear facilities. This came as a big surprise to the Clinton administration, which had been operating on the presumption that the North Koreans were abiding by this treaty, and were not pursuing nuclear weapons.

[...]

North Korea received active and enthusiastic help and support from Pakistan in exchange for several of its potent missiles. Pakistan, of course, had already invented the wheel, and so could point the North Koreans in the right direction with their own bomb development. Add sufficient smuggled Soviet-era plutonium for two or three bombs, and you have a nuclear-armed North Korea with the ability to strike at least two or three targets almost anywhere.

On Oct. 16, 2002, that's exactly what the Bush administration revealed. The North Koreans have had an ongoing nuclear development program all along, and have - for certain - at least two to four bombs in their arsenal, with the capability of creating another dozen or so in the next few weeks, and up to 30 per year thereafter.

Now you know why President Bush is so eager to install an anti-missile missile system in Alaska as soon as possible - even yesterday - if we could do it.

The U.S. reaction to this revelation has been quiet, but firm. True to its history, North Korea has pushed right back. On Christmas Eve, North Korea warned of an "uncontrollable catastrophe" unless the United States agrees to negotiate new terms in a revised agreement on its nuclear energy and weapons programs.

On its face, such a threat is frightening, since North Korea now has the teeth to back up its boasts. Nevertheless, I am reluctant to believe that North Korea really can successfully launch and hit any U.S. targets with its nuclear-armed missiles. In fact, even launching them against South Korea or Japan carries a big risk, because North Korea has no depth to its nuclear arsenal. American retaliation would be swift and sure, with only one reasonable outcome.

So what is the actual threat?

I undertook an investigation over Christmas to discover what North Korea had available in its chemical and biological weapons arsenal.

According to information I gleaned from many sources across the Internet, North Korea currently has approximately 5,000 tons of chemical agents specifically manufactured for weapons use. The chemicals fall into two categories: blistering agents (mostly a mix of Lewisite and Mustard gas) and the nerve agents Sarin and VX. Because of their persistence, the blistering agents and VX can be used to deny further use of an area to the opposition, and they all can be used to incapacitate a troop concentration or destroy the population of a city.

North Korea has limited its biological weapons stockpile primarily to Anthrax and Smallpox, although it is known to have investigated Botulinum Toxin, Cholera, Hemorrhagic Fever, Plague, Typhoid, Typhus and Yellow Fever, and has accused the U.S. of employing each of these against North Korea at one or more times during the Korean Conflict.

North Korean Anthrax is the same weaponized strain developed by the Soviets during the Cold War.

Until recently, the world believed that the only stocks of Smallpox virus were safely held at secure locations in the U.S. and the old Soviet Union. On Nov. 4, 2002, however, the Weapons Intelligence, Nonproliferation, and Arms Control division of the CIA announced that four countries - France, Iraq, North Korea, and Russia - probably possess undeclared samples of smallpox.

Not only does North Korea have a significant stockpile of chemical and biological weapons, but South Korean authorities identified six chemical weapons storage areas, three chemical production facilities, and eight chemical research centers scattered across the northern half of the peninsula.

In light of this developing information, it seems much more likely that North Korea could launch an all-out biological and chemical offensive against the United States, Japan and South Korea, while holding its nukes in reserve for a follow-on strike, while we scramble to protect ourselves and recover from the initial attack.

I can see only one way to prevent this scenario from taking place. Unless we pre-emptively destroy North Korea's ability to strike first with biologics and chemicals, and unless we simultaneously take out its nuclear capability and its overwhelming troop strength, we will likely be in for a long, drawn-out conflict with heavy casualties on our side.

The only way we can accomplish these simultaneous goals is to strike all known North Korean biological, chemical and nuclear centers with air-burst nukes of sufficient capacity to wipe them out, and simultaneously to hit all their known troop concentrations with tactical neutron devices, which are specifically designed to kill living things without destroying the surrounding infrastructure or leaving any residual radiological contamination.

Woo-hoo!

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You will be sucked dry by a leech. I'd stay away
from swimming holes, and stick to good old
cement. Even if it does hurt like hell when
your toe scrapes the bottom.


What horrible Edward Gorey Death will you die?
brought to you by Quizilla

With thanks to Zen teacher Lorianne Schaub, who got the same results, which makes me enlightened by association. Now that I'm able to float three feet off the ground, breathe fire from my ass, mentally implode a moose's head from fifty yards out, and do all the other cool things that enlightened people routinely do... I say, gimme my damn ingka!

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As I continue my current cyber-plunge into autoerotic irrelevancy, I find I'm no longer all that excited about what the Big Bloggers are thinking and saying. The blogging movement has burgeoned and diversified-- further evidence that the Protestant Principle is a sociological fact. My attention turns more and more these days to what friends and co-bloggers are blogging (apologies for the lack of shout-outs in recent days; I've been going nuts with my scanner and drawing Freudian cartoons).

But today's quick once-over of Satan's Anus brought me up short. It's a brief post, but one brimming with exciting potential. The post in full:

JUAN COLE is starting a project to translate American political thought into Arabic. As one Cranky Professor observes:

I can't imagine a better thing for intellectuals to do than pay semi-employed Iraquis [sic] with good English to translate (the translator should indeed be a native speaker of the destination language).

Cole has more on his project here.

This had me practically jumping for joy, and I hope more people get involved with this.

Dialogue doesn't have to be about agreement, but at the very least, it's about presence and engagement. It's vitally important for the ideas to get out to the people-- specifically, for Muslims to educate themselves about Western thought, culture, politics-- the whole shebang. At the same time, we Westerners need to continue raiding the Barnes & Nobles, reading up on Muslim culture and history, balancing our Karen Armstrongs with our Bernard Lewises, and returning to the intellectual and spiritual fray.

In the end, the war on terrorism is a war of the mind and heart, and for people to poo-poo dialogue and rest all their hopes in military solutions is simply stupid. I don't view dialogue as a catch-all solution; nothing can be so. By extension, I can't view war as a catch-all solution either, because in both cases, with dialogue and with war, the story never ends. The process is itself dialogical. No definitive "The End," no "once and for all." Reality moves, and solutions consistent with a moving reality will also move. People who seek cosmic firmness or absolute stasis are doing no more than driving short pegs into shifting sands. And that's vanity, as the Tao Te Ching and Ecclesiastes both agree.

So at the risk of pissing off a lot of Muslims who probably won't like what they see, we should indeed open our discourse up to them. The fastest way is through this type of translation project, because we can't wait for (or realistically expect) the entire Muslim world to learn English.

Ideally, this translation project needs to grow huge and variegated-- allow itself to fall victim to the Protestant Principle, so that Muslims will have choices about where to go, whom to read (and how to read around). Perhaps the more level-headed among them will "diversify their blogroll" and scan many and varied opinions (if a blogging metaphor isn't too precious), perhaps coming to the realization that the world is indeed wide and Allah paints in many unexpected colors. It wouldn't be wrong for us Westerners to remember this as well, as we sit comfortably at our keyboards.

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Thus I have heard:

Sariputra put aside his hash pipe and asked the Venerable Lord,
"What is good shitting?"
and the Venerable Lord responded:

O Sariputra, there is no good or evil in shitting
for shit may serve as compost
or be flung at your enemies in agitation.

The twenty gazillion Buddhas of the trichilicosm
have been known even to fling dung for fun
and shit for shitting's sake!
There have even been
intramural ping-pong shit contests
between Eastern and Western Paradise
(I usually root for Amitabha's team, the Western Lotus-Sniffers)
is this good? is this evil?

Good and evil arise and fall away.
As the shit builds inside you,
there is discomfort, gas, pain,
and you think to yourself,
"I am uncomfortable. Soon I must dump!"
Then!
When the blessed moment arrives,
and you squat compassionately over your least favorite
political candidate, your feeling changes:
"Ahhh, this is good!"

But be not fooled: this moment of self-emptying is not emptiness!

Learn from your bowels, Sariputra,
that there is only movement--
but within the Great Movement,
there lies the Great Stillness,
the "Ahhh" that rivals "Om."

What is your colon, after all?
Sometimes it is a fighting spirit;
sometimes a hungry ghost;
sometimes your colon is a god,
the terrible, glorious Tushita Heaven for gerbils.

And what is shit?
Is it the river of pus and excrement?
Is it the turbulent Ganges?
Is it godly ambrosia?
You shit out the heavens!
You shit out the 84,000 hells!

You say, "This is my colon,"
but your colon belongs not to you,
for its reality is ever in flux--
the Great Movement!
And its reality manifests emptiness--
the Great Stillness!

No shitting, no end to shitting!
No farts, no end to farts!
When you realize these things,
O Sariputra,
then your shitting will be truly good.

Now get out of the way. I need to hit the john.

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No one seems to care that John Kerry's using his military record for political gain, but the worst accusation of all from the Kerry camp is that Bush never saw combat.

Staunch Republican Frank J at IMAO provides definitive proof that our sitting president has indeed killed over 100 people in a series of intense firefights-- on the White House grounds, no less.

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Polymath makes the blogroll, even though he's leaving Korea soon. I noticed he's also been dealing with resident trolls, and with more maturity and civility than I have. In the meantime, I really have to thank my troll-benefactors for jacking up my SiteMeter numbers. Before the trolls connected me to porn links, I was already getting hits from people searching for porn, so now, thanks to lux bearer (or whoever it is), I'm simply getting more of the same! It's like watery diarrhea off a duck's back!

Muchas gracias, hijo de puta! Chupa la pinga de tu padre! Y sus cojones tambien!

Also, a warm welcome to Higo Blog, run by the brother of Cosmic Buddha. Interesting to note that "higo blog" is a scatological anagram for "BigHo Log."

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My buddy Jang-woong had a good laugh at me: I'd gotten Saturday tickets for the Korean movie "T'aegeukgi Huinallimyeo" ("And Our* Flag Waves"), and had told Jang-woong and his wife Bo-hyun that it was a 6:40PM showing. WRONG! While I was waiting by the ticket counter around 6PM, convinced I was early, I glanced up at the movie charts and saw a showing for 4:40PM, then whipped out my tickets (which I'd bought on Friday) and saw they too said 16:40.

Shit. 21,000 won down the drain.

So Jang-woong had a good laugh, I got called "school boy" several times for my stupidity, and we ended up eating a Western-style dinner in Itaewon. We first went to a spot called The Gecko's Terrace, which was noisy, smoky, and full of 20-something white folks. It reminded me of a noisier version of the Tombs at Georgetown University, which can get pretty raucous after 10PM. The Gecko's Terrace was deemed Hominid-unfriendly by Jang-woong's wife (my friends know I prefer quiet spots), so we old farts ended up at a calmer joint called Helios, after Jang-woong vetoed the Indian cuisine of Ashoka (which had been my suggestion).

While we chowed down on quesadillas, burgers, and spaghetti, I asked Jang-woong and Bo-hyun what day we could next try seeing "T'aegeukgi." We won't have another opportunity for over a week: Jang-woong, as it turns out, is going away for company "training" for 20 days, but not just any training. This won't be like motivational workshops at your typical American company: no, this promises to be boot camp all over again. Very physical. The most gruelling task is a three-day, 40-kilometer hike through the mountains. Many of the workers on this trip are in their 30s, 40s, and 50s. They've fattened up and forgotten their military training, and are better drinkers and smokers than mountaineers. Jang-woong himself, while still healthy in terms of body fat, is a drinker and smoker, so he's very worried about getting winded too easily. I can sympathize. The sudden jolt into hyper-physical activity isn't going to be pleasant for the unconditioned.

The hike is designed to bring you to the brink of exhaustion: not only are you hiking almost 15 kilometers a day (about 8-9 miles) along steep mountainous terrain, but you're only allowed one hour of sleep each day. Lord knows what you're forced to do while at camp.

I can't imagine what purpose all this serves... maybe it's one drill sergeant's version of generating what in Zen is called "the great doubt"-- that crucible-period in your meditative training where the mind is aboil and a breakthrough is imminent. Or maybe this is simply corporate sadism. All I know is that Jang-woong sure isn't looking forward to the next few days. I can only hope that his seniors and superiors have been putting him on about the training, and it'll turn out to be a cake walk.

Unlike the military, Jang-woong said, you're allowed to drop out of this training at any point, pack your bags and go home. The price of going home, though, is blacklisting-- your failure goes on your employee records, and what's worse is that you are automatically signed up to do the course over from the beginning. This isn't stopping some of the higher-ups in Jang-woong's company from conjuring up various excuses not to participate. Knee problems are appearing everywhere in the office.

Oy. Jang-woong leaves for Kumi tomorrow; I think the hiking actually occurs sometime this week. This kind of training is one-time-only, so I told Jang-woong just to get the shit over with. He's young and tough and he'll survive just fine.

I hope.

Damn, I'm glad I'm not a Korean "salaryman." The crap you have to go through...

*TRANSLATION NOTE: The word "t'aegeukgi" would literally translate as "flag of the Great Ultimate" because the t'aegeuk is the T'ai Ch'i, the yin-yang symbol representing the Great Ultimate (or more nastily, the Great Pole, since geuk can mean "pole" or "antipode"). The South Korean flag sports a t'aegeuk at the center of a white field, surrounded by four i-jing trigrams (heaven, earth, fire, water). It's a beautiful and very philosophical emblem-- sure beats the hell out of a hammer and sickle. South Koreans all refer to their own flag as the "t'aegeukgi," and this is why I've chosen to translate the expression as "our flag," because to name the film "And the Flag of the Great Ultimate Waves" doesn't make much sense or have any viscerality. It's a soldier's movie, so "our flag" will resonate with an American audience, and this makes the title reminiscent of "...O say does that Star-spangled Banner yet wave..." I'll be curious to see what the "official" English title will be, though at a guess from the promo flyers, it's simply "Taegukgi."

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