Last week it was the campus Republicans' turn on the quad, talking about the fall of the Berlin war. It's funny. Growing up as I did in a family that was both heavily pro-military and largely conservative, I had always thought of any push toward peace as a
(ETA: *blush* meant to type liberal above, but conservative came out instead. Fixed now.)
It's that first concept, democracy, that has been on my mind lately. I really do appreciate the liberties that I have, and recognize the historical role democracy played in getting them. But I find myself wondering increasingly: is democracy really the best way to move from here?
I've been thinking about the recent ballot initiative where Maine voters decided to undo gay marriage. The link I just gave is to a conservative (and religious) blog, and I linked to it in particular because it shows off the attitude that I am finding increasingly distasteful. It's this idea that "the people have spoken" and so the issue should be decided on that basis.
In Maine, 53% of the voters decided that same-gender couples should not be allowed the same rights to marriage that different-gender couples should have access to. The problem is, not everyone has given this issue equal thought. Not everyone is equally educated. Not everyone has experienced all of the factors that weigh on the situation - and not everyone can. As a white woman, I can imagine all too easily what sexism feels like - but I have no real experience of racism or homophobia, and I know each variety of discrimination is difficult in its own way. And so even if I did all the research in the world, I'm not sure I'd be equally qualified to judge on issues regarding those issues as would be someone who was, you know, affected by those things.
And even leaving that aside... I'm not equally educated on all topics. I care very little about money and economics and can't tell you whether a certain government's drive in a certain direction will benefit the economy or whether it is affordable, etc. My roommate, an economics grad student, probably could say much more on that. I on the other hand think a lot more about metaphysics and ethics and am probably more qualified than her to know what is the right thing to do in a certain circumstance.
More to the point - the most basic of points, really - might doesn't make right. It simply doesn't matter if 73%, or 53%, or 3% of the population support a proposition. It wouldn't matter if no one supported it. Truth is truth not because a certain critical mass believe it, but because it's true. Things fell to the earth at 9.8 m/s^2 long before Newton discovered the law of gravity - and they still would, if no one ever discovered it. And if a view is true, then it's true regardless of whether anyone believes it. If abortion is moral (or immoral), or if universal health care is (or isn't) a right, or if marriage should (or shouldn't) be available to all committed partnerships regardless of gender - if any of these claims is true, then it doesn't matter in the slightest whether the majority believes it. It's still true.
I don't have a better suggestion than democracy. History has shown that in most cases when an individual gets too much power, that leads to abuses. I wish I knew a better solution. But democracy has some very serious problems, and it galls me to see it trotted out as the end-all solution. It has some things to recommend it, but that's far from the end of the story. At least for me.
As inappropriate as it is to laugh at this... *snickers*
![[info]](http://l-stat.livejournal.com/img/userinfo.gif){kind=small}
bellatrys has been posting a series of blog posts over at her blog, looking at her experience growing up in the anti-abortion movement. (That's my summary, not hers.) I recommend reading it, not because it supports my politics --I think very few of us completely match each others' views on any issue, let alone one as complicated as this one-- but because it is a good story told with brutal honesty. It is a wonderful window into someone else's experience. For that I applaud Bellatrys; and I think some of you guys might enjoy it, too.So, if you are interested: Confessions of a Would-Be Teenage Clinic Bomber - Part I; Part II; Part III; and Part IV
"Every man takes the limit of his own field of vision for the limits of the world." (Schopenhauer)
What do you think? Do you agree/disagree? What impact does this have on the questuin I was circling around yesterday: if you don't have evidence in some claim, are you still free to believe in it?
(This is my version of escapism these days. RL is ucky, and I am starting to think seriously about dissertation reading lists, (wo unrelated points! But it makes philosophical musing, for its own sake and not some paper, very nice.
What do you think? Is the fact that we don't have evidence of something proof that that something doesn't exist?
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( My thoughts behind the cut - feel free to skip. )
P.S. - There's a YouTube vid that looks at some of these questions. It gets a bit too critical of organized religion for my taste toward the end there, but the first three minutes or so put this all more artfully than I've been able to
Philosophy by NuclearRadio
The Good:
Thank the Forms, the class I am teaching is through with Kant!
Okay, it wasn't that bad - nice discussion on the last day I lectured on him, and I think at least some people found him interesting (or at least troubling in the right ways). But damn, I'm ready to be done with him. He's interesting in his way, but I'm too much of a medievalist (read: Aristotelian) to be convinced on too many points. And he's exhausting to try to explain.
Also, the good #2:
I haven't thanked her enough, but every day when I see MEFA reviews up on my LJ page, I am reminded of how thankful I am that
just_ann_now is posting them. It doesn't matter in the slightest whether I have reviews or not. I just love reading all the complimenting and positive focus, and it is definitely one of the brightest spots of my day lately, even just to be reminded that someone is quietly and consistently doing the legwork to get those posted.*cheers*, Ann!
*cheers*, other MEFA volunteers, who are way too numerous to name one by one.
The Bad:
I have to have a tooth pulled. With no dental insurance. Not cool by any stretch of the imagination. Being a grad student, I don't have much in the way of actual savings, and so I am trying to figure out how to do that. I do have money in Germany (inheritance), but I am really not sure how I feel about touching that. Never mind that getting the banking details will either involve digging through papers I'd rather not dig through or calling family members I'm currently in a bit of a spat with. I am talking to the oral surgeon to see what they do about prorated work, payment plans, etc. (Roh: I checked, there are no dental schools around here that accept outside patients.)
Also: YouTube, what gives? Is it really necessary to force people to actually watch ads before we go to videos? Translucent banner ads at the bottom of the video are bad enough. Not cool.
The Ugly:
McDonnell won for gov. in Virginia. Even with his thesis. Some may point out that this was a long time ago. It was. What irks me isn't so much the particular views - notice "so much"; those do irk me, but other things irk me more - as it is the methodology, the implication that government should be protecting things like what he calls "covenant marriage." And whether this actually makes him a bad governor or not, the fact that he would get elected with those views being well-known is... disheartening, to say the least.
Also: A classmate asked me if I had heard about the murder-suicide in Fayetteville, NC (warning: video) - I guess because all the people in my state know each other? :-S Fayetteville is on the opposite side of the state. Anyway, it's not so extraordinary, the details, but there's something about the language used, the look of the house, the way the people are described... it's truly, truly unnerving.
Finally: What. The. Hell. Commemorating 9/11 by building some of the metal into a military ship just redefines bad taste as far as I'm concerned. You're supposed to beat swords into plowshares, not stronger swords.
Best to close on another good. enjoy Howard Shore's 'Passing of the Elves' song
I was all set to give you a huge diatribe on why this was so true and so important, but then I found that I kept getting angrier and angrier again. F unnythe things that get one upset. For whatever reason, bad epistemology gets me more upset than thing that seem to "matter" in more obvious ways.
Then I was going to retell the prophecy of the three vipers from Deep Space Nine episode "Destiny, which proves this case rather nicely and probably more persuasively than anything more purely philosophical. But I find that I can't be objective and calm enough to want to touch this issue at the moment.
So. Because good use of baseline makes me smile, and because I'm feeling heretical at the moment, and because sharing is caring:
Heaven on Their Minds
Enjoy.
I don't mind funny of any political persuasion. Honestly. But it has to be, you know, funny. What bothers me is the recent onslaught of macros that involve people in military without being funny or even saying much of anything besides being almost propaganda. I am seeing it other places, too, but not as often I guess. But it's there. I guess I'll use a philosophical term that came up in my discussion with a grad school friend who's currently researching aesthetics. Fetishization. I hate this idea that the military is patriotic, or good, or whatever - just because it's the Military, and damn it, they're fighting for truth and God and the American way and can't do any wrong.
Enter Exhibit One: Daddy's Little Girl
Honestly, if I was a parent my deepest wish would be that they could get out of grade school (or even into grade school? I'm not around kids enough to ascertain the girl's age) before they have to cope with the fact that daddy is willing to go off and kill people and is willing to die. Even as a non-parent, it is my deepest wish for all the kids and future kids that they not live in a country where war is a constant necessity in our thinking. And I'm beginning to think that the only way that will happen is if I emigrate, and even that wouldn't work totally.
And for what? I have talked to loads of military --nearly every man in my family did a stint in the Marines, and where I grew up this wasn't unique to my family-- and hardly any of them could tell me why they were willing to die. Sure, they could give the general reasons. Our country is under danger from terrorism. Or the Iraqis (or Afghanis, or Vietnamese, or...) were being oppressed and needed our liberation. But I can't remember a single conversation where they were able to explain how what they were doing was going to make the world a better place. I was raised around military, raised to respect it, and I do respect what these individuals are trying to do. But war drives people to the extremes. The people who might be inclined to like democracy and capitalism and whatever, it's hard for them to work to improve their corner of the world by embracing those things (if embracing ==> improvement here...) when the nation-state that most obviously is connected with those ideas is trying to bomb you into the stone age.
Even Tolkien got that, for all that he glorified the warrior much more than I am always comfortable with. Most of us could probably rattle off Faramir’s famous statement, but I will repeat it. Because this is important. “War must be, while we defend our lives against a destroyer who would devour all; but I do not love the bright sword for its sharpness, nor the arrow for its swiftness, nor the warrior for his glory. I love only what they defend.”
I have to remind myself that most people involved in the military probably have the best of the intentions. I know enough of them to know that they do, if my own experience is any indication. And I’m not so naïve to think that war is never necessary. But I know how scared I am when my dad goes into dangerous parts of the world. As a noncombatant. And me speaking as a grown woman. I know what it is like to lose parents, and to be scared to have more people die. And that’s a pretty heavy burden to overcome.
Why is this war necessary, why do you in particular have to fight it, why is there not a better way to make the world a better world for your child? Because if you’re going to put your child through all the fear, or at the least the way that having to kill another man must change even those lucky enough to survive… well, these are answers that you need to be able to answer. In detail, with certainty. And in my experience, they usually aren’t. Instead, we get this assumption that being willing to sacrifice is de facto good. But the more I think about it, the more certain I am: it’s so much better to find a way so you won’t have to sacrifice, to use empathy and intelligence and passion before brute force. To not let things get to the point that the only way to stop a bad situation is with a bullet. Sometimes violence is necessary, but it really should be something we hate to do, and is an absolute last resort – to kill somebody is the only way to stop someone else from getting killed.
I guess stuff like this macro just get to me. :-S
Fatima is an OC, featured in my piece Eating Stones, and in the fourth drabble she recounts a Haradric folk tale about the Runner constellation. ("Borrowed," incidentally, quite shamelessly, from the DS9 'verse.) It asks the question of whether the Runner is running to or running from, and that seems to be the defining question for me at the moment, so it seemed appropriate. Because, you know, Fatima goes everywhere I go, as did Carcharoth, and Aredhel before him.
Even though Fatima isn't an obviously Middle-earthy name, to my mind it most definitely is. :-)
In the living/learning department, I was talking to another more experienced instructor about the problem I was facing. Basically, how to introduce Kant. I mean, Mill is fairly straightforward to "get" on some level. I won't go into him in depth, but most of my students seem to understand him - not perfectly, of course, but enough that they can see why he would say it's right to do one thing, wrong to do another. There are problems, of course, but most of them chalk those problems up to a reason to think there is no such thing as ethics. It's a hard sell to get them to go the other way. I think Kantian ethics has a thing or two to say to those criticisms of utilitarianism, but it's not an easy answer and it's hard to fully explain it in a convincing way without going into way more of Kant's epistemology than they really want to know. Or even than I could explain; I'm only starting to understand all that stuff myself.
Anyway, he pointed me to a short story that's both a good read and looks at a lot of these issues. It's called Daniel White for the Greater Good, by Harlen Ellison. The idea is that there's a truly detestable man (who happens to be black), who has just raped a white girl. The white community is wanting to lynch him, and the black community has been convinced of the wisdom of handing him over to be lynched - otherwise it will ignite race tensions in the whole region. However on their way to turn him over the leaders of the black community are jumped, and so afterwards they "do what has to be done" not out of a sense that it needs to happen, but out of anger at this sorry excuse for a man who has caused them to suffer. The question that's suggested is basically this: assuming it was right in some way for them to let the rapist be lynched, why is it now wrong because their motives have changed? What does that add to the picture?
It's a fascinating story, visceral, and actually is a good way to transition. I'll probably use it myself next semester. (And, yeah. I just spent the better part of the afternoon reworking ye olde syllabus. It's an amazingly addictive way of procrastination.) It also strikes me as interesting because it's a story we know all too well in fandom. One of the things I actually liked about the Jackson movies was that realization by Gandalf that he had sent Frodo off to die. Perhaps that was necessary, and certainly it's for the greater good, but there was always a part of me that felt the great and powerful "sacrificed" him in some sense. It's interesting to ask: if it's wrong (or at least questionable) to let a hobbit go off nearly alone into Mordor, is it somehow all right because you had the best of intentions?
(HP fans can tell a similar story, perhaps even more dramatic: because Harry was saved in some sense to be sacrificed, before he could make a choice to be put in that position.)
Interesting food for thought, or so my tired brain is insisting.
That cracks me up. Perhaps more than it should.
*hearts fannish moments*
And yes, I am procrastinating even at the thirteenth hour on grading. Ergo the need for the good tunes. :-)
Let's Get the Party Started by Black-eyed Peas
It is odd that I would like this because I generally dislike both rap and hip-hop (and this song seems to have elements of both. But I just have to say, as a lifelong member of the Pit in marching band and an alto singer... pieces where the base line is the real song rather than the counterpoint, just rock.
I'm still saying rain, rain, go away inside my head, but it least it's to a decent beat. :-)
http://www.fordham.edu/Campus_Resou
It's normally only open 10-2, to both students and the public. I am only ever here at night, but since the night librarian has become used to my *ahem* eclectic book needs, she let me check it out late. Maimonides is not rare, but scholarship on him usually isn't in a Jesuit school's general collection.
Anyway... It's worth seeing if you're in NYC. Don't know if if I'd make a special trip, but if it's just across town and you have the time, check it out. It's just a block or two from the Columbus Circle subway stop.
The Golden Flower by Celeritas
In this movieverse story, Celeritas explores how it was Frodo came to sail west - and indeed how he survived the hurt of the Ring for as long as he did, when the Evenstar had been destroyed (at least in the extended version 'verse). So many ponderables explained, if not definitively (because fanfic can't do that) then at least in a convincing ways. It's a neat story if just for that reason.
But not just for that reason. Given the subject matter, it could have easily descended into angst, possibly even maudlin sentimentalism - but there's really not an ounce of that. Elanor is precocious but believable. Forod is weighed down but believable. Glorfindel is... well, he's as effing ineffable as he needs to be in order to give a glimpse of the impermeability of Iluvatar's wisdom that really falls into the same category where the Undying Lands are concerned. But he's still believable, too. I found this to be a very realistic portrayal of how these events might have happened, which allowed me to get lost in the story. There wasn't a moment that I was pulled out. And that's remarkable.
It is also a story with some very interesting and unique character dynamics. Frodo and Elanor have a genuine connection, which I would have thought was impossible; the one child I was really close to didn't start getting interesting until about the time Frodo left the Shire in Elanor's lifestyle - really more like a year older than that. Yet to the extent that she can forge a real link with an adult on equal footing, what Celeritas shows us is age-appropriate, and it's a sign of great maturity on Frodo's heart that he can relate to Elanor as well as he can. And then the whole Frodo-Glorfindel relationship... well, given that this is movieverse, I just have to say my jaw dropped a little at how well this came off.
There were also cultural hints that just tickled me at how deftly they were worked. Dwarven crafts showing up in an odd way... the fauntling tradition... if I told it all I would ruin the surprises. But this is a nuanced and well-executed Shire, and is proof positive that canon can be well used without shackling a story to predictability. Nice work, Celeritas - I really mean that.
PS - In honor of the hobbits, and because I just saw Toy Story this afternoon at the cinemas:
You are Judgement
Happiness, Content, Joy.
Judgment is related to the Hebrew letter Shin, which is fiery and spiritual. A break from the past, going forward.
With Fire as its ruling element, Judgement is about rebirth or ressurection. The idea of Judgement day is that the dead rise, their sins are forgiven, and they move onto heaven. The Judgement card is similar, it asks the resurrection to summon the past, forgive it, and let it go. There are wounds from the past that we never let heal, sins we've committed that we refuse to forgive, bad habits we haven't the courage to lose. Judgement advises us to finally face these, recognize that the past is past, and put them to rest, absolutely and irrevocably. This is also a card of healing, quite literally from an accident or illness, as well as a card signaling great transformation, renewal, change.
What Tarot Card are You?
Take the Test to Find Out.
In other news? The weather is getting cold, and for some reason it is making me miss Cleveland. I miss Agape and branwyn especially and have been thinking about you guys. *sends hugs* I am going to go see the Toy Story/Toy Story 2 showing this afternoon, and may go for desert at Houlihans afterward and think of you. :-)
So December means music to me. While I am no longer involved in the music scene and no longer in practice enough to still perform, I still love hearing music. I also love reading quotes of startling beauty. And I'd like to share.
That's where you come in. I'd like to try to get together an advent calendar of music and words. They do not have to be religious or spiritual, or even in the western tradition. They do not have to be fannish (though I wouldn't mind featuring a few). All they need to have in common is that they are uplifting. I want beauty that will serve as a bright spot as we deal with the hustle of December. Whether it's the added drive to "do" more than you're comfortable with, the commercialization of what for you should be a religious holiday, sad memories associated with the holidays, the stress of shopping and family, or just seasonal depression (I know a few people on my flist are affected by that), I want to offer a bright spot to your day.
If you have a song or a poem or a passage of fiction (fan- or otherwise), post it to the comments. They're screened. I'll use the ones that most appeal to me, and attribute you as the one who pointed it out to me. All I ask is that it be of a reasonable length, and (for the music) that it be available electronically. If it's not online I can post it for you, but I need something I can link to.
And if you have suggestions for something else, go ahead and suggest it. If it's appropriate and I have the space, I'm convinceable.
P.S. - I won't be replying because whenever I do that it unscreens screened comments. But I will look at whatever you suggest.
P.P.S. - To all the wonderful commenters on my last post, I'm not ignoring you. You have some nice insight. I'm just struggling to organize my thoughts enough to reply, I think because I come so close to agreeing with so many of you.
This graph came up on GraphJam (a spin-off site of icanhascheezburger.com, ihasahotdog.com, etc.) and it points to something that bothered me every year around this time when I was living back in North Carolina. It still irks me, but more because of what I hear online than things that are happening in my life. It's the infamous "War on Christmas." The graph above is the first sign of it this year.
But I've been thinking... has anyone ever heard of a student getting in trouble for wishing another student Merry Christmas? I don't mean in a manipulative sense. I unfortunately knew one kid who would go around to the few non-Christians at our school and try to get them to say "Merry Christmas" back, as if by acknowledging his holiday they were giving him some kind of power. He got in trouble, but because he was being a jerk. He was a bit of jerk, and also being your typical thirteen-year-old. The fact that he was using the words "merry Christmas" to accomplish his manipulation, that was almost incidental.
But aside from situations like that, I've never heard of any individual student getting in trouble for wishing someone a merry Christmas. If that happened, I'd say it was wrong (for a student to be punished). Would we punish a Muslim student who wished his classmates a good Ramadan, or a Jewish students who had greeted his non-Jewish classmates with shana tova on the appropriate day? Or to take a less religious example, would an African-American student be wrong to wish his classmates a happy Kwanzaa? Personally, in those situations I'd assume the person making the greeting just wanted to wish me well on a day that was personally meaningful to them. And I don't see how it's at all reasonable for me to take offense at that.
With Christmas, there is a shade of difference because in some areas of the country it's assumed that everyone is a Christian. Interestingly, I'm less bothered by being wished merry Christmas here in New York, or in Ohio (where I lived for two years before moving here), or when I'm over in Germany, than I ever was in North Carolina. Growing up, it did make me a little uncomfortable. Not so much when a classmate said it, but when I was greeted that way as a group, for instance by my teacher to our whole class. There seemed to be more of an assumption that it was normal to fit in the group that celebrated Christmas, and if you couldn't honestly return the greeting it meant you weren't part of the dominant group.
I was relatively unaffected by peer pressure, but I knew of some people who did come to dislike those greetings. I had one friend whose family was Christian (his mother was actually a church secretary), and he was beginning to suspect he was gay, which in small-town North Carolina in the early nineties was something that didn't fit very well with what a Christian was supposed to be. He later told me that whenever the choir practiced Christmas carols or he was wished "Merry Christmas" as part of a group he felt like a fraud - like everyone assumed that he and the majority of the group was a Christian, and that he was lying by "passing himself off." Luckily, this friend went off to school in DC and found that there were Christians who did think homosexuality was compatible with that religion. But as someone who also had latent insecurities growing up that I wasn't "really Christian" (though for different reasons), I totally understood his discomfort on this issue. If I had felt more drive to be part of the "in" crowd I probably would have felt it myself.
That said, I only see that kind of problem when we're talking about an authority figure wishing Merry Christmas to a crowd of people under his or her authority, or otherwise acting like they were all or mostly Christians. When it comes to one individual wishing merry Christmas to another, I don't see a thing in the world wrong with that. I welcome it, because it shows me someone wants to wish me well.
I usually opt for "happy holy days" myself - and leave it up to people to work out exactly what I mean by that. Honestly, I mean different things in different contexts, but it's proven to be quite a conversation starter.
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The story behind said poem, for the interested (totally unnecessary to read it):
Back in 2003 I did a semester abroad at Keele University, in England. There was a building where I had all my classes, and I'd come out of the second-floor classes (exhausted!) and look down at this statue. I think it was supposed to be of Icarus. I was reading Lord of the Rings for the first time then, and it struck me when I read about Merry and Eowyn slaying the Witch-king, that this was exactly how I imagined Merry looking in that scene. Except for obviously this statue had wings and Merry does not. But that statue actually inspired some of my earliest fanfic (freeverse poetry).
I was reminded of that statue this morning, which got me thinking back on what my life was like then as opposed to now. And so I decided to turn my reflection into another freeverse poem. I haven't written poetry in ages, certainly not freeverse, but it felt appropriate since in many ways this is tied (in my mind, not in the content of the poems!) to that first freeverse poem.
I hope you enjoy Contrapposto. Which, in spite of the title, and in spite of the subject matter, really does not require a lot of knowledge about art history! :-)
I was working in the community garden today, which is next door to a mosque where I sometimes change out of teaching clothes. The imam came out and asked if he could pick my brain for a bit, because he’d seen a Maimonides reader on top of my jacket. Anyway, he had mentioned Maimonides in a study group he’s leading on the subject of miracles in the three major Islamic text. This being a college neighborhood they really got into it. One guy was even talking about what Hume said on miracles. (I think that was Hume?) Rather well-known philosophical debate, about which I only knew that this was discussed there – I don’t really know the specifics.
The reason Maimonides came up was because of Cordoba. For those who don’t know, Cordoba was a cultural center in the Muslim word around Maimonides’ lifetime (12th century AD). Jews had been tolerated there as “people of the book” – basically they paid a special tax and were in some senses second-class citizens (okay, not great) but weren’t required to convert or anything. But in Maimonides’ childhood all the Jews were expelled if they wouldn’t convert.
I’ll spare you the full list of Maimonides’ accomplishments, but they were remarkable. He was not only one of the best known Jewish philosophers but a medical doctor famous in his own time as well. My friend said that he did not believe in miracles because that implied a history that God could choose to violate (which he doesn’t believe in for various reasons). But he jokingly told his group that the miracle was Maimonides’s mind – that such a man could be educated in what was essentially wilderness. He didn’t just create his own work but he was an archivist in the true sense (he basically put together an encyclopedia of what decisions were actually in the Talmud, which is a fascinating but very convoluted book if you don’t know). It wasn’t just that he was smart. There were skills he developed that really are amazing when you consider he didn’t grow up in a cultural center.
When I think about this story, it reminds me of canon (what doesn’t these days), because the Muslims who drove the Jews out of Spain, they were taking the Quran very seriously. So were the Jews who permitted them to stay as people of the Book. It was disagreements over certain lines, how they were to be read. In a way this is very similar to the canon wars you sometimes see, people fighting oer how a certain snippet of JRRT’s text is to be interpreted. I wonder how many great stories were lost because their authors were told *Good GOD*, Faramir isn’t gay or some such thing. This doesn’t just apply to slash. For every awful cliché, there is a well-written story for it that is written well.
My feeling? When two people who both respect a text and are trying to be faithful to it disagree, I say let them go for it. Sometimes I think we owe it to good stories and potential good stories not to paint in such broad sweeps. Otherwise we run the very real risk of running Maimonides out of Cordoba once again, and this time we might not be so lucky.
I want to say more, but today has been a pretty rough day. And I want to get the feelings out before I lose my nerve. This is a tpic I like to discuss, but always end up deleting any posts I’m considering making.
dreamflower02 posted a link (off-LJ) to the Hobbit Meals blog. The idea is that someone showed the three Lord of the Rings movies and served seven hobbity meals, and as the "price of admission" they grought a bag of food per person to donate to a local food bank. Not to bust the idea, because I'm always for people trying to do good for the world, and I'm always for meeting other Ringers... but am I the only one irritated by stuff like this? I like giving to charity that I believe fills a need. Food banks are one of them. I'm involved with an organic garden here in the Bronx, that either gives the food away to local poor people or sells it and donates the proceeds to food banks. It gets me outside and also works for a cause I think is important: access to no-pesticide healthy food for those who couldn't afford it otherwise. So it's not that I'm against charity, or food banks, or anything of the kind.
What bothers me is the thought that to raise food for the poor they gave away seven meals to those who could afford to feed the poor. Probably better meals than they were giving away (though less quantity, obviously), if the trilogy-viewing + hobbity food events I've been to are any indications. It bothers me that we make charity-giving such a game sometimes. I mean if you want to get people together to enjoy the movies and meet new fans... sure, that's fine. That's good. But should we really need to be tricked into giving to charity? If there is a real need (and I think there is), we should give as much as we can afford to without being prompted.
I feel like such a scrooge for having this reaction. But yeah, it does irritate me mightily. It feels vaguely manipulative, and also not very efficient. I know stuff like this works if only to raise awareness. I just wish more people would give like this regularly, without the need for some movies and all to get them to give.
