Me.

Day Five: Apologism Means Never Having to Say You're Sorry

I know there are still people reading this--if they haven't defriended me over it--who insist that the real intolerance here is mine, that the real bigotry, hatred, and harm comes from compiling these links and not from the organization whose actions have been reported on. These people are apologists, who will say and do anything to defend their church because that is what they have been taught they must do. Is it loyalty? Is it fear of being cut off from salvation without the church? I don't know, you tell me.

But here's my problem with this sort of apologism. When someone says, "A priest molested me as a child and shamed me into silence," apologists are the ones who say, "Yeah, but not all priests are like that, so try to express your pain in a way that doesn't make Catholics uncomfortable." When someone says, "I was locked in a workhouse and assaulted physically and sexually when I wasn't actively engaged in forced labor," apologists are the ones who say, "That's really sad honey and Imma let you finish, but the church does a lot of charity work and I'd like to derail this conversation to talk about this other thing for a while." When someone says, "Scientific journals have criticized the RCC for their habit of lying to at-risk populations about AIDS," apologists are the ones who say, "Yes, but a condom is just like a cigarette filter! What do doctors know about epidemiology that the College of Cardinals doesn't?"

In short, apologists are the ones who take a conversation that makes them uncomfortable and put their own feelings at the center of it so that rather than talking about the victims of the RCC's wanton callousness, racism, and unvarnished cruelty... we're talking about how sad it is that victims' advocates hurt Catholic people's feelings by pointing these things out. The real problem with apologism is that when you come into this discussion defending the Catholic church, what you are really saying is that you don't like us talking about harsh realities and would rather we discuss a comforting fantasy. Well, you can save that horseshit for church where it belongs. This is the real world.

In the real world, the Catholic Church probably hates you. Stop defending it like a battered wife who's sure her husband really really does love her, he's just got a funny way of showing it and you're sure that if you stay and show the church love and don't make trouble and be everything it asks you to be, it'll understand what it's been doing to you and everything will turn out like the RCC promised you it would be.

It's pathetic. Stop it.

If you missed it, here's Day One: The Church Hates Gays, Day Two: The Church Hates Women, Day Three: The Church Hates Africa, and Day Four: The Church Loves Child Rapists.

Hope you've enjoyed my blog series. This is a topic I've gotten tired of hashing over again and again and again, and now at least I have something I can just link to people when I'm too lazy to deal with the same regurgitated apologism. Feel free to do the same, if you're so inclined. Just link back to me so that I can pat myself on the back and feel useful.

Love, peace, and suchforth,

me.

I don't think it's a good idea to live each day as though it's your last. But I do think it's important to remember that we never have as much time as we think we do.

There's been a death in my religious circle, and while I didn't know her, there is this proximity to mortality that gets you thinking, you know? You get within the blast radius and stuff starts coming to mind.

I don't live each day as though it's my last. If I did, I'd be racking up insane credit card charges to visit everybody I know online before I go, taking time off work to go to Japan to see the Takarazuka Revue, and robbing banks so that I could give all the money to charities I care about (so that I can simultaneously build a legacy on philanthropy and crime!)

I don't like putting things off, though.

I work a job that may or may not have awesome long-term prospects for me, and may or may not actually be stable. But I'm where I want to be right now, and if I knew my time was coming, at least I'd be able to tell myself I wasn't sitting in some veal-pen for wage slaves waiting for the time when I'd have the money and time available to really do something I felt needed to be done. At least I'll know that I didn't waste time putting off what was really important.

As far as my personal life, I live with a wonderful man whom I would marry in a heartbeat if it wouldn't break my heart to have my little straight-pride parade in a state where a woman wouldn't have the recognized right to marry me no matter how right we were together. As it is, I want to have what legal recognition I can get, and I want it now. I can't have it now, and this is the one area of my life where I face insurmountable delays due to external circumstances. He needs to remain a dependent student until the end of the year, and it's only after that that we can get on the same insurance.

It bothers me, though. It bothers me because if something were to happen, I would regret that it had never happened. I don't like leaving room for regret. I want to take every opportunity for happiness that comes my way, and I don't want to miss anything.

Plans. I am capable of planning things in exhaustive detail, an ability to which anybody who has watched me masterminding various social situations can attest. I just don't like making plans, because making plans means investing time and effort now in a future that isn't guaranteed. I don't want to plan to be happy. I want to be happy.

I don't want to plan to have a life. I want to have a life.

I don't want to plan to make Brian my legal partner. I want to have it now.

I want the world. I want the whole world. I want to lock it all up in my pocket; it's my bar of chocolate! Give it to me now!

You get the idea; I don't want all my joy to be in the future.

Plans are such difficult things, and it's always later than you think.

I don't think it's a good idea to live each day as though it's your last. But I do think it's important to remember that we never have as much time as we think we do.

There's been a death in my religious circle, and while I didn't know her, there is this proximity to mortality that gets you thinking, you know? You get within the blast radius and stuff starts coming to mind.

I don't live each day as though it's my last. If I did, I'd be racking up insane credit card charges to visit everybody I know online before I go, taking time off work to go to Japan to see the Takarazuka Revue, and robbing banks so that I could give all the money to charities I care about (so that I can simultaneously build a legacy on philanthropy and crime!)

I don't like putting things off, though.

I work a job that may or may not have awesome long-term prospects for me, and may or may not actually be stable. But I'm where I want to be right now, and if I knew my time was coming, at least I'd be able to tell myself I wasn't sitting in some veal-pen for wage slaves waiting for the time when I'd have the money and time available to really do something I felt needed to be done. At least I'll know that I didn't waste time putting off what was really important.

As far as my personal life, I live with a wonderful man whom I would marry in a heartbeat if it wouldn't break my heart to have my little straight-pride parade in a state where a woman wouldn't have the recognized right to marry me no matter how right we were together. As it is, I want to have what legal recognition I can get, and I want it now. I can't have it now, and this is the one area of my life where I face insurmountable delays due to external circumstances. He needs to remain a dependent student until the end of the year, and it's only after that that we can get on the same insurance.

It bothers me, though. It bothers me because if something were to happen, I would regret that it had never happened. I don't like leaving room for regret. I want to take every opportunity for happiness that comes my way, and I don't want to miss anything.

Plans. I am capable of planning things in exhaustive detail, an ability to which anybody who has watched me masterminding various social situations can attest. I just don't like making plans, because making plans means investing time and effort now in a future that isn't guaranteed. I don't want to plan to be happy. I want to be happy.

I don't want to plan to have a life. I want to have a life.

I don't want to plan to make Brian my legal partner. I want to have it now.

I want the world. I want the whole world. I want to lock it all up in my pocket; it's my bar of chocolate! Give it to me now!

You get the idea; I don't want all my joy to be in the future.

Plans are such difficult things, and it's always later than you think.

*pick up the phone*

"Hello, is Brian there?"

"May I ask who's calling?"

"This is Brian with Crown Hill Cemetery."

I pause, and almost tell the dude I'm Brian's wife so he'll explain himself. "...May I ask in regards to...?"

"We are offering our war veterans a burial space in our Field of Valor plot. Are you or anyone in your household a veteran?"

"...No," I answer, thinking I'm going to be asked for a donation. Instead, he asked if anyone in our household had made plans for our funeral and burial arrangements. Without thinking, I answered, "Well, I think... that... no one in our house is planning to be buried right now."

This was evidently satisfactory, and the guy thanked me for my time. It wasn't until I hung up the phone and noticed flameraven laughing her ass off that I'd realized what I'd said. I had intended to convey that I think everyone I know is looking at cremation, but what came out is... well, that. Which is also true, but not quite what I'd intended!

It didn't sound nearly so funny in my head.

Read a news article today. I am hesitant to link to the original page, for reasons that you'll understand if you've read this entry of mine. It has a picture of a dead man.

Here is the printer-friendly page.

DETROIT -- This city has not always been a gentle place, but a series of events over the past few, frigid days causes one to wonder how cold the collective heart has grown.

It starts with a phone call made by a man who said his friend found a dead body in the elevator shaft of an abandoned building on the city's west side.

"He's encased in ice, except his legs, which are sticking out like Popsicle sticks," the caller phoned to tell this reporter.

"Why didn't your friend call the police?"

"He was trespassing and didn't want to get in trouble," the caller replied. As it happens, the caller's friend is an urban explorer who gets thrills rummaging through and photographing the ruins of Detroit. It turns out that this explorer last week was playing hockey with a group of other explorers on the frozen waters that had collected in the basement of the building. None of the men called the police, the explorer said. They, in fact, continued their hockey game.

Before calling the police, this reporter went to check on the tip, skeptical of a hoax. Sure enough, in the well of the cargo elevator, two feet jutted out above the ice. Closer inspection revealed that the rest of the body was encased in 2-3 feet of ice, the body prostrate, suspended into the ice like a porpoising walrus.

The hem of a beige jacket could be made out, as could the cuffs of blue jeans. The socks were relatively clean and white. The left shoe was worn at the heel but carried fresh laces. Adding to the macabre and incongruous scene was a pillow that gently propped up the left foot of the corpse. It looked almost peaceful.

What happened to this person, one wonders? Murder in Motown is a definite possibility. Perhaps it was death by alcoholic stupor. Perhaps the person was crawling around in the elevator shaft trying to retrieve some metal that he could sell at a scrap yard. In any event, there the person was. Stone-cold dead.

I think that the reporter, Charlie LeDuff by name, covered this in as sensitive and tasteful a manner as could be hoped. He used it as an opportunity to discuss Detroit's homeless, and the ability of the city to continue functioning unphased no matter what happens to them. If you're homeless, damned near anything can happen to you--anything--and even people who supposedly share your situation will be too busy with their own struggles to worry much about you. LeDuff did an excellent job with that, and I think that including a picture of those feet above a plane of ice that you know hides the rest of a man is part of hammering in that we only care because we don't see, or can pretend we don't see.

But I still have issues with the use of images of the dead. If you don't know what I'm talking about, please check out the entry I linked before. Read it here; this'll make more sense if you do. I think that there I explained it as well as I am likely to do.

Here is my question. Do you feel that, considering a debt that comes with viewing images of the dead, that LeDuff has paid his debt? Or has he just used this homeless man's corpse and his suffering to make a political point of his own? Is he taking up the unnamed corpse's cause, or pursuing his own and using the power created by the stranger's death to fuel his own cause?

And here's the really disturbing question for me. Completely aside from considerations of LeDuff's debt and the repayment thereof, what about me? I've seen this image, and I've been touched by the emotional energy of a man's death. I owe him something, but as I discussed in that previous entry... you cannot always know just what it is you owe the dead. By helping people in Indiana get foodstamps and Medicaid, am I helping to repay a man whose death was caused by disregard? Or is that not what's required at all?

Now that the emotional/spiritual energy created by this man's suffering and this man's death is part of the emotional/spiritual energy of my life, what do I owe him for grokking his death in that way? By observing and considering his death in such a way that it has become part of me and my life (something which cannot be avoided now that the photo of his corpse has been reflected in my eyes), I have taken something from him and made it part of myself.

How can I repay it? I don't know what he wants. You can basically never know what the dead want.

What do you think?

Read a news article today. I am hesitant to link to the original page, for reasons that you'll understand if you've read this entry of mine. It has a picture of a dead man.

Here is the printer-friendly page.

DETROIT -- This city has not always been a gentle place, but a series of events over the past few, frigid days causes one to wonder how cold the collective heart has grown.

It starts with a phone call made by a man who said his friend found a dead body in the elevator shaft of an abandoned building on the city's west side.

"He's encased in ice, except his legs, which are sticking out like Popsicle sticks," the caller phoned to tell this reporter.

"Why didn't your friend call the police?"

"He was trespassing and didn't want to get in trouble," the caller replied. As it happens, the caller's friend is an urban explorer who gets thrills rummaging through and photographing the ruins of Detroit. It turns out that this explorer last week was playing hockey with a group of other explorers on the frozen waters that had collected in the basement of the building. None of the men called the police, the explorer said. They, in fact, continued their hockey game.

Before calling the police, this reporter went to check on the tip, skeptical of a hoax. Sure enough, in the well of the cargo elevator, two feet jutted out above the ice. Closer inspection revealed that the rest of the body was encased in 2-3 feet of ice, the body prostrate, suspended into the ice like a porpoising walrus.

The hem of a beige jacket could be made out, as could the cuffs of blue jeans. The socks were relatively clean and white. The left shoe was worn at the heel but carried fresh laces. Adding to the macabre and incongruous scene was a pillow that gently propped up the left foot of the corpse. It looked almost peaceful.

What happened to this person, one wonders? Murder in Motown is a definite possibility. Perhaps it was death by alcoholic stupor. Perhaps the person was crawling around in the elevator shaft trying to retrieve some metal that he could sell at a scrap yard. In any event, there the person was. Stone-cold dead.

I think that the reporter, Charlie LeDuff by name, covered this in as sensitive and tasteful a manner as could be hoped. He used it as an opportunity to discuss Detroit's homeless, and the ability of the city to continue functioning unphased no matter what happens to them. If you're homeless, damned near anything can happen to you--anything--and even people who supposedly share your situation will be too busy with their own struggles to worry much about you. LeDuff did an excellent job with that, and I think that including a picture of those feet above a plane of ice that you know hides the rest of a man is part of hammering in that we only care because we don't see, or can pretend we don't see.

But I still have issues with the use of images of the dead. If you don't know what I'm talking about, please check out the entry I linked before. Read it here; this'll make more sense if you do. I think that there I explained it as well as I am likely to do.

Here is my question. Do you feel that, considering a debt that comes with viewing images of the dead, that LeDuff has paid his debt? Or has he just used this homeless man's corpse and his suffering to make a political point of his own? Is he taking up the unnamed corpse's cause, or pursuing his own and using the power created by the stranger's death to fuel his own cause?

And here's the really disturbing question for me. Completely aside from considerations of LeDuff's debt and the repayment thereof, what about me? I've seen this image, and I've been touched by the emotional energy of a man's death. I owe him something, but as I discussed in that previous entry... you cannot always know just what it is you owe the dead. By helping people in Indiana get foodstamps and Medicaid, am I helping to repay a man whose death was caused by disregard? Or is that not what's required at all?

Now that the emotional/spiritual energy created by this man's suffering and this man's death is part of the emotional/spiritual energy of my life, what do I owe him for grokking his death in that way? By observing and considering his death in such a way that it has become part of me and my life (something which cannot be avoided now that the photo of his corpse has been reflected in my eyes), I have taken something from him and made it part of myself.

How can I repay it? I don't know what he wants. You can basically never know what the dead want.

What do you think?

Here's what I believe. This is a religious belief, but one that a reading of The Funeral Casino by Alan Klima has suggested to me. When you invoke the dead, you owe them. When you use the dead for your own benefit, you must pay them back. This is a pseudo-religious, semi-philosophical entry of untrammeled rambling, so I ask you to bear with me while I ramble about stuff I'm sure I'm explaining poorly.


The examples used in The Funeral Casino: Meditation, Massacre, and Exchange with the Dead in Thailand are Thai revolutions. It's frighteningly common in Thailand for protesters (even unarmed students still in uniform) to simply be gunned down by existing government military. Of course this causes an uproar, and a new government arises by climbing up on top of the bodies of those dead students. Unfortunately, these governments don't actually make any of the changes the students cared about (and in fact they paint the students as rabblerousers or simply forget them as soon as possible), they become the kind of government the students were trying to change, and pretty soon you've got another bloody mess on your hands.

The Thai Buddhist angle on this (at least according to Klima) is that you cannot invoke the dead without owing them something. You had best be strictly and carefully commemorating them, or else you'll be profiting from their deaths and suffering. This isn't a bad thing in itself, but at that point you've gotten something and you need to give something, or you're going to get screwed badly. It may come from a seemingly unrelated situation, but Klima's assertion is that from the Thai perspective death imagery holds power.

Across the field of Sanam Luang is another construction from the days of the regicide: the lag muang, the city pillar, built as the magical pole around which a sorcerous power to protect the city would circulate. ... I have been told rumors that before they laid the foundation for the city pillar in stone, they dug trenches in the ground, brought young, pregnant slaves to the site, and there slashed their throats with swords and cast the corpses with their dying fetuses into the earth. It was believed, or so I am told, that the collective force of their murdered spirits would empower the pillar" (Klima 2002: 80).