What About Death Control? (early draft)

 So, What about Death Control? [in progress]

“Thinking about Death” was the title of my Feb. 23 blog post, and it was partly about what I called “death control.” Since that is such an important, and controversial, issue, I am posting this article that deals more with that matter.

Death Control is Not Euthanasia

First, it is important to note that “death control” is not euthanasia, which is illegal in every state in the U.S.

One page on The CompassionAndChoices.org website (see here) states this clearly: “Medical aid in dying is fundamentally different from euthanasia.” Here’s why:

Euthanasia is an intentional act by which another person (not the dying person) administers the medication. By contrast, medical aid in dying requires the patient to be able to take the medication themselves and therefore always remain in control.

Thus, if used soon enough, MAID (medical aid [or assistance] in dying) can be used for people suffering from cancer, ALS, MS, or other progressively debilitating diseases—but not with those suffering from acute dementia. (This latter is a very sticky issue that I will think/write more about later.)

Death Control is Not Suicide

The term “physician assisted suicide” (PAS) has long been used, and terminally ill people who have taken means to end their lives have often been said to have committed suicide. But increasingly, that is seen to be a negative/judgmental term to be avoided.

Citing the same CompassionAndChoices webpage, many leading medical organizations “have all adopted policies opposing the use of the terms ‘suicide’ and ‘assisted suicide’ to describe the medical practice of aid in dying.”

Here are some differences between MAID and suicide (h/t to suicideinfo.ca):

** Suicide is often carried out alone and in secrecy, leaving loved ones with devastating grief; MAID involves decision-making informed by medical personnel and often includes loved ones.

** Suicide is usually due to mental pain: distress, loss of meaning and purpose in life, and psychological burdens considered too heavy to bear any longer; MAID is chosen by those whose death is apparently inevitable in a reasonably short period of time ahead. 

** Suicide is often carried out in violent ways (such as by self-inflicted gunshot); MAID uses non-violent means provided by trained professional.

So, What is Death Control?

Death control is providing terminally ill people with the choice of being able to end their life at the time and place of their choice—and with grace and dignity. Such is the purpose of these organizations in the U.S.:

Compassion & Choices 

Death with Dignity National Center

Final Exit Network

These organizations are seeking among other things to increase the number of states where MAID is legal, and this seems to be a good and important work. Several states are considering legislation at the present time; sadly, neither Missouri or Kansas is. (See this map of the situation in all states.)

Links to articles related to “death with dignity”

Twelve Myths About Physician Assisted Suicide and Medical Aid In Dying | HCPLive - Clinical news for connected physicians (7/7/18)  [questionable]

Ten Facts About Medical Aid in Dying | HCPLive - Clinical news for connected physicians (8/28/18) [good]

FS-Medical-Aid-in-Dying-Is-Not-Suicide-FINAL-3.20.19-Approved-for-Public-Distribution.pdf (compassionandchoices.org) (3/18/19) [good and important]

Chapter 52

The following is Chapter 52 from Transcendent Kingdom, by Yaa Gyasi. 

 Chapter 52

Never again had come back again. After Katherine left I peeked in on my mother. No change. A few days before, I’d had a meeting with my advisor to discuss the possibility of graduating at the end of the quarter rather than waiting another year or more. 

“What are your goals? What do you want?” he asked. I looked at him and thought, How much time do you have? I want money and a house with a pool and a partner who loves me and my own lab filled with only the most brilliant and strong women. I want a dog and a Nobel Prize and to find a cure to addiction and depression and everything else that ails us. I want everything and I want to want less. 

“I’m not sure,” I said. 

“I’ll tell you what, just finish the paper, submit it, and then reassess. There’s no hurry. If you start the postdoc now, if you start it next year, or the next, it really doesn’t make a ton of difference.”

My lab was frigid. I shivered, grabbed my coat from the back of my chair, and put it on. I rolled up my sleeves and started to clear off my workstation, something I should have done the last time I was there. The last time I was there, I had finally finished my experiment, answered the question. I had tested the results enough times to be as certain as was possible that we could get an animal, even that limping mouse, to restrain itself from seeking reward by altering its brain activity. When I observed the limping mouse for the final time, fitted as he was with the fiber-optic implant and patch cord, everything had looked the same. There was the lever, the little metal tube, the manna of Ensure. There was that mouse, that limp. I delivered the light and like that, like that, he stopped pressing the lever. 

I left my workstation, went to my office, and sat down to write my paper, thinking about all of my mice. I should have been ecstatic to be finished, to be writing, with the hope of a new publication and graduation looming before me, but instead I felt bereft. 

The demands of scientific writing are different from the demands of writing in the humanities, different from writing in my journal at night. My papers were dry and direct. They captured the facts of my experiments, but said nothing of what it had felt like to hold a mouse in my hands and feel its entire body thump against my palms as it breathed, as its heart beat. I wanted to say that too. I wanted to say, here it is, the breath of life in it. I wanted to tell someone about the huge wave of relief I felt every time I watched an addicted mouse refuse the lever. That gesture, that refusal, that was the point of the work, the triumph of it, but there was no way to say any of that. Instead, I wrote out the step-by-step process, the order. The reliability, the stability of the work, the impulse to keep plugging, keep trying until I figured a way through, that was the skin of it for me, but the heart of it was that wave of relief, that limping mouse’s tiny, alive body, living still, and still. 

Pastor John used to say, “Stretch out your hand,” before he asked the congregation to pray for a fellow congregant. If you were close enough to the person who needed prayer you would literally touch them, lay your hands on them. You would touch whatever part of their body was accessible to you, a forehead, a shoulder, a back, and that touch, that precious touch, was both the prayer and its conduit. If you were not close enough to reach, if your arm was simply outstretched, brushing air, it was still possible to feel that thing I have often heard called “energy,” that thing I used to call the Holy Spirit, moving through the room, through your very fingers, toward the body of the person in need. The night I was saved, I was touched like this. Pastor John’s hand was on my forehead, the hands of the saints on my body, the hands of the congregants outstretched. Salvation, redemption, it was as intentional as skin touching skin, as holy as that. And I’ve never forgotten it. 

Being saved, I was taught when I was a child, was a way of saying, Sinner that I am, sinner that I will ever be, I relinquish control of my life to He who knows more than I, He who knows everything. It is not a magical moment of becoming sinless, blameless, but rather it’s a way of saying, Walk with me.

When I watched the limping mouse refuse the lever, I was reminded yet again of what it means to be reborn, made new, saved, which is just another way of saying, of needing those outstretched hands of your fellows and the grace of God. That saving grace, amazing grace, is a hand and a touch, a fiber-optic implant and a lever and a refusal, and how sweet, how sweet it is. 

Chapter 25

 The following is Chapter 25 from the book Transcendent Kingdom by Yaa Gyasi. The narrator is a single 28-year-old graduate student in neuroscience living in California, and her mother has moved from Alabama to live with her. 

Chapter 25

Before my mother came to stay with me, I realized that I no longer had a Bible. I knew she was in bad shape and probably wouldn’t notice, but it nagged at me to think of her reaching for one and not being able to find it. I went to the campus bookstore and purchased a New King James Version with the same amount of embarrassment and fear of being caught that one might have when purchasing a pregnancy test. No one batted an eye. 

At first, I kept the Bible on the nightstand, where my mother had always kept our Bibles, but, as far as I could tell, she never touched it. It rested on that nightstand in the same position, day in, day out, gathering dust. After a while, when I came in to sit with her, I would pick it up and start to flip through it, reading passages here and there, quizzing myself to see whether or not I could remember all of those hundreds of Bible verses I had committed to memory over the years. In college, whenever I struggled to remember all of the proteins and nucleic acids I needed to know intimately for my major, I would think about the surfeit of Bible verse knowledge taking up space in my brain and wish that I could empty it all out to make room for other things. People would pay a lot of money to someone who could turn the brain into a sieve, draining out all of that now-useless knowledge—the exact way your ex liked to be kissed, the street names of the places you no longer live—leaving only the essential, the immediate. There are so many things I wish I could forget, but maybe “forget” isn’t quite right. There are so many things I wish I never knew. 

The thing is, we don’t need to change our brains at all. Time does so much of the emptying for us. Live long enough and you’ll forget almost everything you thought you’d always remember. I read the Bible as if for the first time. I read at random, the rich and grandiose storytelling of the Old Testament, the intimate love letters of the Gospels, and I enjoyed it in a way that I hadn’t when I was a child, when I had such a hawkish approach to memorizing Scripture that I almost never took the time to think about what I was reading, let alone savor the words. While reading from 1 Corinthians, I found myself moved by the language. “This is actually quite beautiful,” I said to myself, to my mother, to no one. 

— 

Here’s a verse from the book of John: In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. I wrote about this verse in my childhood journal. I wrote about how writing itself made me feel closer to God and how my journal keeping was a particularly holy act, given that it was the Word that was with God, that was God. In those days my journal was my most prized possession and I took my writing very seriously. I took words seriously; I felt like those opening words of John’s were written just for me. I thought of myself as a lost apostle, my journal as a new book of the Bible. I was young when I wrote that entry, maybe seven or eight, and I was so very smug about it. Proud of how well it was written. I was almost tempted to show it to my family or to Pastor John. 

So it was a bit of a shock, years later, when P.T. delivered a sermon, one of his few memorable ones, in which he told us all that the word “Word” was translated from the Greek word Logos, which didn’t really mean “word” at all, but rather something closer to “plea” or even “premise.” It was a small betrayal for my little apostle’s heart to find out that I had gotten my journal entry wrong. Worse still, I felt then, was the betrayal of language in translation. Why didn’t English have a better word than “Word” if “Word” was not precise enough? I started to approach my Bible with suspicion. What else had I missed? 

Even though I felt ambushed, I did like the ambiguity that the revelation introduced into that verse. In the beginning there was an idea, a premise; there was a question. 

— 

My junior year of college, I went to a church service by myself. I wore a simple black dress and a big floppy hat with which I could easily hide my face, though a woman in a hat at a university church service was a strange enough sight that I probably drew more attention to myself, not less. I went to the very last pew, and I hadn’t but bent my knees to sit down before I felt sweat start to bead on my brow. The prodigal daughter returns.

The reverend that day was a woman, a professor in the Harvard Divinity School whose name I’ve forgotten now. She preached on literalism in the church and she began the sermon by asking the congregation to ponder this question: “If the Bible is the infallible word of God, must we approach it literally?” 

When I was a child, I would have said yes, emphatically and without a moment’s thought. What I loved best about the Bible, particularly the outlandish moments in the Old Testament, was that thinking about it literally made me feel the strangeness and dynamism of the world. I can’t tell you how much sleep I lost over Jonah and that whale. I used to pull my covers up all the way over my head and shimmy down into the dark, breath-damp cavern it created, and I would think of Jonah on that ship to Tarshish and I would think of the punitive, awful God who ordered him thrown overboard to be swallowed whole by a giant fish. And I would feel my breath shorten in that confined space and I would be amazed, truly amazed by God, by Jonah, by the whale. The fact that these sorts of things didn’t ever seem to happen in the present did nothing to keep me from believing that they happened in the age of the Bible, when everything was weighted with import. When you’re that young, time already seems to crawl. The distance between ages four and five is forever. The distance between the present and the biblical past is unfathomable. If time was real, then anything at all could be real too. 

The reverend’s sermon that day was beautiful. She approached the Bible with extraordinary acuity, and her interpretation of it was so humane, so thoughtful, that I became ashamed of the fact that I very rarely associated those two things with religion. My entire life would have been different if I’d grown up in this woman’s church instead of in a church that seemed to shun intellectualism as a trap of the secular world, designed to undermine one’s faith. Even Nana’s hypothetical question about villagers in Africa had been treated as a threat instead of as an opportunity. The P.T. who had revealed that in the beginning was the Logos, the idea, the question, was the same P.T. who had refused to think about whether or not those hypothetical villagers could be saved and in so doing refused the premise, the question itself. 

When Pastor John preached against the ways of the world, he was talking about drugs and alcohol and sex, yes, but he was also asking our church to protect itself against a kind of progressivism that for years now had been encroaching. I don’t mean progressive in a political sense, though that was certainly a part of it. I mean progress in the sense of the natural way in which learning something new requires getting rid of something old, like how discovering that the world is round means that you can no longer hang on to the idea that you might one day fall off the edge of the Earth. And now that you have learned that something you thought was true was never true at all, every idea that you hold firm comes into question. If the Earth is round, then is God real? Literalism is helpful in the fight against change. 

But while it was easy to be literal about some teachings of the Bible, it was much harder to be literal about others. How, for instance, could Pastor John preach literally about the sins of the flesh when his own daughter got pregnant at seventeen? It’s almost too cliché to be believable, but it happened. Mary, as she was ironically named, tried to hide her condition for months with baggy sweatshirts and fake colds, but it wasn’t long before the entire congregation caught on. And soon Pastor John’s sermons about the sins of the flesh took on a different weight. Instead of a punitive God, we were told of a forgiving God. Instead of a judgmental church, we were encouraged to be an open one. The Bible did not change, but the passages he chose did; the way that he preached did as well. By the time Mary’s due date rolled around, she and the baby’s father were married and all was forgiven, but I never forgot. We read the Bible how we want to read it. It doesn’t change, but we do. 

— 

I became deeply interested in the idea of Logos after P.T.’s sermon. I started writing in my journal more often, but the nature of my entries changed. Whereas before, they were simply recordings of my day and the things I wanted God to do, after, they became lists of all the questions that I had, all the things that didn’t quite make sense to me. 

I also started paying more attention to my mother. When she spoke Fante on the phone with her friends, she became like a girl again, giggling and gossiping. When she spoke Twi to me, she was her mother-self, stern and scary, warm. In English, she was meek. She stumbled and was embarrassed, and so to hide it she demurred. Here’s a journal entry from around that time: 

Dear God, The Black Mamba took me and Buzz out to eat today. The waitress came over and asked what we wanted to drink and TBM said water, but the waitress couldn’t hear her and asked her to repeat herself but she didn’t and so Buzz answered for her. Maybe she thought the waitress didn’t understand her? But she was talking so quietly it was like she was talking to herself. 

There were other moments like this, where the woman whom I thought of in my head as fearsome shrank down to someone I could hardly recognize. And I don’t think she did this because she wanted to. I think, rather, that she just never figured out how to translate who she really was into this new language.

Note:

“The Black Mamba” or “TBM” and “Buzz” are code words she uses in her journal for her mother and brother. 

Meaning, Purpose, and Significance. Also Objective and Subjective Meaning

The following is an excerpt from the summary of The Great Courses "Big Questions of Philosophy," Lecture 36, by David K. Johnson.

Meaning, Purpose, and Significance

It is customary to believe that life is meaningful when it has a purpose.

Some think that God’s existence is necessary for life to be meaningful.

Our life can be meaningful only if God caused us to exist for a particular

purpose—because he had a specific plan.

The problem with this conception of meaning, however, is that having

a purpose is not the same as having meaning. What’s more, we cannot

say that whatever goal God has for us is, by definition, good. That

presents us with the same problem as in Plato’s Euthyphro: God would

choose such a goal because he recognizes it as good by some outside

standard. However, if there is a goal that is good by an outside standard,

then our life could be meaningful, regardless of whether God exists.

Some believe that the soul or afterlife makes our life significant, that

is, meaningful. Otherwise, we are but insignificant lumps of matter on

a speck of dust that will be obliterated by the sun in short order—if

we don’t obliterate ourselves first. An objection to this view is that it

doesn't seem that the soul is necessary for this kind of significance, nor

is an afterlife. What’s more, it’s not even clear that significance should

concern us at all.

Those who suggest that life is not meaningful are called nihilists. A

noted nihilist was French author Albert Camus. He agreed that God

was necessary for life to have meaning; only because God gives us an

essence, gives us function or purpose, does life even have a chance

at being meaningful. Because, as Camus suggested, God does not

exist—then life is meaningless.

For Camus, all one can do is realize that the game of life is

absurd and find joy in it anyway. Camus used the example of

the myth of Sisyphus—a man who was cursed by the gods to

endlessly roll a rock up a hill, only to have it always fall down

once he reached the top.

Camus argued that all that Sisyphus can do (and, indeed, what he

should do) is decide to “find meaning” in rock rolling and take joy

in it anyway, despite its absurdity.

Objective and Subjective Meaning

This brings us to the suggestion that life can have a subjective

meaning—a meaning that derives from our own purposes, plans,

attitudes, intentions, and mental states. One can have a meaningful life

by accomplishing goals, fulfilling desires, or attaining and promoting

virtues that one sees as worthwhile or significant.

For example, perhaps you think caring for others is important, and you

involve yourself in charities and organizations that do so. Perhaps you

value family and find meaning in raising your children. Perhaps there is

a political cause that you find worth pursuing and are engaged in that.

The idea is that we can have a meaningful life by accomplishing things

that we see as meaningful. It’s not an objective meaning, but it’s a

meaning all the same.

Why are some Christians also QAnon believers

 Why are some Christians also QAnon believers and joining others storming the Capitol?

Below are some links and quotations addressing this issue:

Book Review by Clif: The Power Worshippers: Inside the Dangerous Rise of Religious Nationalism, by Katherine Stewart.

Blog by Ted Grimsrud: Does Christianity prepare people to be misled by those in power? 
".. I wonder if the willingness to ground Christianity on non-evidential, non-rational, even at times magical thinking and mystification, has also led Christians to accept claims from political leaders that are non-evidential, non-rational, and even magical thinking." (Note: Ted Grimsrud is a retired Seminary Professor at Eastern Mennonite University.)

NPR, Militant Christian Nationalists Remain a Potent Force:

Among the flags at the rally was a big yellow banner that said "JESUS SAVES." The same banner was seen again in the crowd that assaulted the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, among other examples of Christian imagery. One of the leaders of the invasion of the Senate chamber, Jacob Chansley, actually asked the rioters to pause in their rampage and join him for a moment of prayer to God. "Thank you for allowing the United States to be reborn," Chansley said, standing on the dais occupied a few hours earlier by Vice President Pence. "We love you and we thank you. In Christ's holy name, we pray," Chansley said, as recorded in a video by Luke Mogelson, a writer at The New Yorker. The rioters, many of whom had quietly removed their hats, erupted in a cry of "Amen!" …  Inherent in the idea of Christian nationalism is the idea that America is representative of God's truth, and for that reason it needs to be defended. It needs to be protected," says Kristin du Mez, a historian at Calvin University and author of Jesus and John Wayne: How White Evangelicals Corrupted A Faith and Fractured A Nation. "Because the dangers are so great and the stakes are so high, that often will require violence. It's violence for the sake of righteousness, violence to achieve order, violence to bring peace and security," du Mez says. "There's a willingness to do what needs to be done.

Excerpt from Introduction, pg. 4, The Power Worshippers: Inside the Dangerous Rise of Religious Nationalism, by Katherine Stewart 
This is not a book about "evangelicals." The movement I am describing includes many people who identify as evangelical, but it excludes many evangelicals, too, and it includes conservative representatives of other varieties of Protestant and non-Protestant religion. This movement is a form of nationalism because it purports to derive its legitimacy from its claim to represent a specific identity unique to and representative of the American nation."

NPR, How QAnon Conspiracy Is Spreading In Christian Communities Across The U.S.:
The false conspiracy theory known as QAnon is moving from fringe Internet chatrooms into mainstream politics.

Religion News Service by Katelyn Beaty, QAnon: The Alternative Religion That's Coming To Your Church:
Teaching susceptible Christians media literacy won’t counteract their sudden, widespread adherence to conspiracy theories because these Christians thrive on a narrative of media cover-up. 

Politico, It’s Time to Talk About Violent Christian Extremism:
There’s a “strong authoritarian streak” that runs through parts of American evangelicalism, warns Elizabeth Neumann. What should be done about it?
Now, after the dangerous QAnon conspiracy theory helped to motivate the insurrection at the U.S. Capitol, with many participants touting their Christian faith — and as evangelical pastors throughout the country ache over the spread of the conspiracy theory among their flocks, and its very real human toll — it’s worth asking whether the time has come for a new wave of outreach to religious communities, this time aimed at evangelical Christians.

Washington Post, Christian nationalists and QAnon followers tend to be anti-Semitic:

That was seen in the Capitol attack. Our research finds that identification with QAnon, Christian nationalism, Donald Trump and anti-Semitism are tightly linked.

Religion in Public blog, The Anti-Semitism of Christian Nationalists Thanks to QAnon: 
The convergence of QAnon, Christian, and anti-Semitic symbols lead us to ask whether these are discrete elements of Trump supporters opposed to the election results or whether these symbols are related. Are these just random symbols tattooed on the torso of the “QAnon Shaman,” Jake Chansley? Or are Christian nationalists also anti-Semitic, QAnon supporters? Turns out, they are strongly related.

The following is link to an excerpt from The Power Worshippers, by Katherine Stewart. It explains Biblical support for economic deregulation and wealth disparity. 

https://rmcdiscussiontext.blogspot.com/2021/02/biblical-support-for-deregulation-and.html

So, What Is the Meaning of Life?

 The following is a summary description of Lecture 36 from the Great Courses lecture titled “Meaning of Life: Perspectives from the World's Great Intellectual Traditions,” by Jay L. Garfield, Ph.D. 

So, What Is the Meaning of Life?

Lecture 36

Often, one is led to find superficial similarities and to overemphasize

those and, therefore, to lose a lot of the texture and detail that’s

bequeathed to us by the textual traditions that we’ve been examining.

We’ve encountered a great deal of diversity in this course, but we can

still point to certain recurrent themes. For example, almost every

position we've considered has emphasized the importance of a

connection between our own lives and some larger context, of temporality,

of some ideal of human perfection, and of spontaneity. In conjunction with

spontaneity, we’ve seen an emphasis on freedom. We’ve also seen the need

to understand the nature of the world we live in and the nature of our own

lives in order to live an authentic life. In this lecture, we examine each of

these themes to see what general conclusions we might draw.

The larger context required for a meaningful life has sometimes been

conceived as a universal, divine, or cosmic context, as in the Bhagavad Gita, 

the book of Job, and the Stoics. For the Daoists, this larger context is

similar but more impersonal; it’s the context of the dao, the way of things.

Sometimes, this context is a bit more narrow—a global context or a natural

one, Lame Deer, for instance, emphasized that the context of our lives that

matters most is that of nature, and the Dalai Lama, along with Aristotle,

Confucius, and others, emphasizes a social context. In each case, the key to

finding meaning in our lives is to first identify the larger context in which

our small lives make sense, then to understand how we can make our lives

meaningful by connecting them to that context.

With regard to temporality, the Stoics emphasized the eternality of the

universe and the fact that the period of our existence is brief and bounded

by infinite gulfs of our absence. Buddhism also emphasizes a constant

awareness of impermanence, the beauty of impermanence, and the urgency

that impermanence gives to our lives. Tolstoy, Lame Deer, and Nietzsche

pick up on the theme of mindfulness of death: At each moment in our lives,

we need to be aware of our own mortality and finitude.

In the texts we’ve examined, we’ve often seen the question of the meaning

of life addressed in terms of an account of human perfection. Aristotle

offered us an ideal of the perfect human life in the concept of eudaimonea,

flourishing, and tells us that this ideal can be achieved through a life of

activity in accordance with virtue, through moral strength — and practical 

wisdom, and through friendship. The Daoists and Zen Buddhists give us the 

sage as the ideal of perfection, one who pays attention to the empty spaces

and who lives spontaneously, effortlessly. Santideva and the Dalai Lama 

extend this account of perfection to encompass the cultivation of a certain 

kind of compassion, a commitment to altruistic action on behalf of others. For 

Kant and Mill, human life is focused on reason, discourse, and participation in 

liberal democratic societies. That ideal was challenged by Nietzsche, who 

emphasized that what makes our lives beautiful is our artistry and spontaneity, 

our ability to re-evaluate the values we’re taught and lead our lives in harmony 

with values we ourselves create.

Many of the philosophers and theologians we’ve examined have urged us

to cultivate spontaneity in our lives. This spontaneity is motivated by the

idea that our actions and values don’t need to be brought together artificially.

For Aristotle and Confucius, the model here is that of the artist, one who

practices endlessly to achieve a second nature. For Daoism and Zen, the

emphasis is on the need to pare away the artificial second nature and return

to naturalness, Ultimately, Lame Deer tells us that we need to understand

that we are fundamentally part of the biological world, a world of circles

rather than squares,

For the thinkers we’ve explored, a meaningful life necessarily entails

freedom. The Gita emphasized the fact that freedom emerges from discipline,

while the Daoists urged us to free ourselves from social standards. Hume and

Kant emphasized the need to attain freedom from authority, an idea that Mill

extended to an insistence on absolute freedom of thought. Nietzsche was

concerned with freedom from philosophical ideas and from an intellectual

tradition that makes creativity impossible. Gandhi emphasized self-

mastery similar to that in the Gita, the kind of discipline that frees us from

consumerism and other external constraints.

The answer to our original question is deeply complex and conflicted;

it requires us to cultivate an awareness of reality in all its complexity and

adversity, to understand that our lives are finite, and to develop a commitment

to achieving individual excellence and to creating meaning in the lives of

others. Perhaps the first step in finding meaning is to ask the question, then

to engage, as we have done in this course, with the wide diversity of answers

that have been given throughout history and around the world. 

Study Questions

1. What are the major dimensions along which accounts of the meaning

of life differ from one another? How would one go about choosing one

approach over another?

2. What common insights survive these differences? Why do these

ideas transcend the different approaches? Are they consistent with

one another?

Biblical Support for Deregulation and Wealth Disparity

 Explanation of how the Bible supports deregulation and increased disparity in wealth.

Source:

Stewart, Katherine. The Power Worshippers, Chapter 2 Ministering to Power (p. 47-48)

(Bold font added by CVH for emphasis)

What is the difference between Bible study and policy advocacy? In the curriculum that Drollinger offers to powerful officials through Capitol Ministries, it isn’t clear that there is much difference at all. He lays it all out in Rebuilding America: The Biblical Blueprint, and he fills in many of the details in publicly available manuals for his weekly Bible study sessions. Copies of his book are available here in Tulare, and Drollinger helpfully touches upon some of the main themes at his dinner speech. 

The expansiveness of Drollinger’s positions on domestic, economic, and foreign policy hits home the fact that Christian nationalism is a political movement, not merely a stance in the “culture war.” Like his fellow radicals at the forefront, Drollinger strives for an ever-widening domain of control. According to Peter Montgomery, a senior fellow at People for the American Way who has been studying and writing about the religious right and right-wing movements for two decades, Drollinger instructs public officials “that the Bible mandates adherence to right-wing policy positions on a wide range of issues, including environmental regulation, the death penalty, abortion, LGBTQ equality and more.” The Bible, for example, has a very clear message on United States fiscal policy. Just a few weeks prior to the Tulare event, Drollinger published a Bible study titled “Solomon’s Advice on How to Eliminate a $20.5 Trillion Debt.” The study guide makes clear that God believes in deregulation. “Leaders must incentivize individuals and industries (which includes unencumbering them from the unnecessary burdens of government regulations),” Drollinger writes. 

Drollinger has words of wisdom for laborers, too. In a Bible study titled “Toward a Better Biblical Understanding of Lawmaking,” he cites 1 Peter 2:18-21, “Servants, be submissive to your masters with all respect, not only to those who are good and gentle, but also to those who are unreasonable.” Here Drollinger explains, “The economy of Rome at the time of Peter’s writing was one of slave and master. The principle however, of submitting to one’s boss carries over to today.”

This is all music to the ears of agribusiness leaders. Major issues confront managers of agricultural concerns these days, among them government policy with respect to labor, foreign trade, water access, subsidies and other regulation. It is not surprising that industry leaders may look to a certain kind of religion for answers—not in the sense of praying for rain (although speaker Sonny Perdue, the secretary of agriculture, has done that, too) but in the sense of working with religious nationalists to elevate the policies and politicians that work to their benefit. 

Of course, those policies, which favor low regulation and minimal workers’ rights, may exacerbate existing wealth inequalities in the Central Valley. But this is a feature of the system, not a bug. That’s the way inequality works. On the one hand, it creates concentrations of wealth whose beneficiaries are determined to manipulate manipulate the political process to hold on to and enhance their privileges. On the other hand, it generates a sense of instability and anxiety among broad sectors of the wider public, which is then ripe for conversion to a religion that promises authority and order. Drollinger is just one particularly successful example of the kind of religious entrepreneur that such times invariably call forth. 

Quest for Deeper Meaning—An Outline of Speech by David Brooks

 Link to video of speech by David Brooks: The Quest for Deeper Meaning

Outline of Video with Time Locations

0:00 —> 5:00 Opening jokes etc.

5:00 —> 7:33 Reference to data Brook's Social Animal.

See this link for Clif's review of Social Animal

7:33 —> 12:58 Needs of the conscious brain

Intimacy and connection with others (most important)

Soul—part of self seeking dignity and righteousness, yearning for justice

Logical rational mind—is only there to help navigate

12:58 —> 13:54 Hatchet, Ratchet, Pivot

This is how history moves forward

We are currently in a "hatchet time"

See this review for explanation of hatchet, ratchet, pivot

13:54 —> 26:17 Thee Cultural Shifts (described in Putnam's Upswing )

1932 to 1962 Was era of communal feelings

Society was group oriented

Post-1962 era emphasized individualism and personal freedom

Three overlapping crises created

Isolation

Alienation

Lack of meaning

People reverted to tribalism and populism 

If a culture that doesn't give a healthy set of relationships, unhealthy relationships will be found

Today's cultural shift (next below)

26:17 —>  28:37 Today's cultural shift

Stirring of people who don't want tribalism

Want to bridge divides

Six parts to this cultural shift

Civic action—why we love democracy

Social capital  building—community

Social mobility—healing the class divide

Depolarization—get people to talk to each other

Secular discernment—where are the philosophers

Global world order evaluation

28:37 —> 30:04 Progressive era of the 1890s

Today's stirrings are similar

Movement toward healing

30:04 —> 33:34 Commitments

Big commitments in personal life

Spouse and family

Vocation

Philosophy & faith

Community & friends

Success and fulfillment in our lives depends on how well we chose these commitments

Commitment and community must be motivated by love

33:34 —> 38:01 Gallop Poll, Meaning of Life in various countries.

Emily Esfahani Smith's Power of Meaning refers to this poll

Liberia had the highest level of meaning 

Netherlands had the lowest

Sense of meaning was inversely proportional to wealth

38:01 —> 40:20 Sense of joy

40:20 —> 41:00 Faith in ability of America to move away from social isolation

Questions and Answers

41:38 — Good tribalism versus bad tribalism?

See this link for review of Tribe: On Homecoming and Belonging, by Sebastian Junger

44:59 — Where and how do Millennials fit into this?

49:39 — Media technology moves population into separate realities? 

54:46 — Can unity be developed without a major crisis?

58:53 — Importance of Social Studies in education?

1:04:00 — Are changes cyclical or are we living in a profoundly unique time?