Small
And another thing about the Akyol piece and all the similar strains of thought. It’s such an impoverished, pinched, narrow, trivial view of what matters, of what morality should be, of what people should fret about.
…soulless, skirt-and-money-chasing men drinking whiskey…selfish, lonely creatures in a soulless society where little is worshipped beyond money and sex…The America that people see is one represented by Hollywood and MTV…extremely hedonistic and degenerate elements that turn life into meaningless profligacy…a lifestyle based on hedonism…the masses live, earn, spend, and have relationships according to this supposition. A popular MTV hit summarizes this presumption bluntly: “You and me baby ain’t nuthin’ but mammals; so let’s do it like they do on the Discovery Channel.
Humping and consumerism, is what it boils down to. Well – I’m not crazy about consumerism myself, but it’s not the worst thing there could be. I’m not crazy about consumerism, but I don’t think it’s nearly as much of an evil as systematic inequality, exploitation, coercion, bullying, deprivation, persecution. Why doesn’t Akyol fret more about that? Why isn’t he more repelled by the way a lot of very godfull societies treat women, people in lower castes, infidels, apostates, poor people from foreign countries, and the like? Why doesn’t he have a better sense of proportion? Why doesn’t he ask himself what is more important than what, and then write accordingly? Why doesn’t he stop to realize that this God who guarantees his moral absolutes is the god cited by people who put women under house arrest for life? Why doesn’t he worry about terrible, stunted, deformed lives under some Islamic regimes at least as much as he worries about sex and whiskey in ‘the West’? Why is his thinking so very small?
Actually, the plug for the Discovery channel is most educational, if you ask me. Surely this is a creative way to plug the science deficit in America. Plus, it is relatively cheap, so the consumerism part is mitigated.
Who sings that charming song? Much better than the dreck about round yon virgin… anybody who sees the Discovery channel knows that virgin stuff is seriously bogus.
Because small is beautiful, no? What is it Daniel Dennett repeats, with variations, all through “Freedom Evolves?” Something like, “if you make yourself small enough, you can externalize everything.” I wouldn’t say personal responsibility is Aykol’s strong point. But then, why would it be? His life revolves around a creed whose name translates as “submission.”
I believe it was The Bloodhound Gang that sings that little ditty.
I find it funny when this kind of thing happens – the supposed similarities in the fundamentalist Muslim and fundamentalist Christian camps. What rot! What do they think will happen when the 92% of Turks find out that America is heading down the path of theocracy?
It’ll be a my-dogma-is-bigger-than-your-dogma pissing war.
Fools.
Frankly if i want to chase skirt and drink Whiskey its none of their frigging business. Thats the problem you see always poking their noses into other peoples business. Hypocritical busybodies.
One thing that gets me is that a lot of people such as Akyol don’t even know that much about Western culture. They take pop culture as a given but don’t look to see whether there is anything else.
Similarly with people who “get religion” of whatever brand. They sample the delights of pop culture but then wonder if there is anything else to life. Religion provides a simplistic answer which doesn’t require too much mental hard work. THey completely miss the deeper parts of Western culture.
You won’t get an Islamist giving an in- depth critique of Shakespeare’s morality or of Wittgenstein’s ideas on mysticism.
I’m with Harry Hutton on this one:
http://chasemeladies.blogspot.com/2004/05/i-agree-with-abu-hamza-up-to-point.html
MKJ “THey completely miss the deeper parts of Western culture.”
.. also including jazz & blues music, two of the greatest achievements of a much-derided ‘American’ culture in the last century..
Harry Hutton thing good.
Pop culture focus is the usual silly tactic of pretending there are only two possibilities, I suppose. It’s either godbothering or triviality and there is no other possibility! Er? Who made that rule?
OB, I expected a more robust defense of pop culture from you. The little ditty from the Bloodhound Gang is positively chaste compared to half of Robert Burns’ production (mandatory reference here to “9 inches will please a lady”). And pop Arabic and Islamic culture, vide Robert Burton’s notes to the Arabian nights, tops the Discovery Channel every time.
This isn’t bad, this is infinitely good, at least from the humanistic perspective. It is a huge advantage of that perspective that it can be sex positive without being hypocritically lecherous. Humanism, here, taps into a long history of popular culture. The poor evangelical ministers who are continually being caught doing amazingly tawdry sexual things to compensate for their miserable lives of repression are witnesses to the deforming effect of religious taboos. And apparently there is a strong, Chaucerian tradition of lecherous mullahs in Islamic culture as well.
I say: long live the Discovery channel and its poets!
Matt: ” What rot! What do they think will happen when the 92% of Turks find out that America is heading down the path of theocracy?”
Compare with
Akyol: “The America that people see is one represented by Hollywood and MTV…extremely hedonistic and degenerate elements that turn life into meaningless profligacy…a lifestyle based on hedonism…the masses live, earn, spend, and have relationships according to this supposition.”
Doesn’t it seem, folks, that the kindest view on both these specimens is that they are rhetorical simplifications and overstatements? Strawman ideas about ideological ‘others’, made true by a raging confirmatory bias.
Recognising depth in culture has always been alien to theocrats. The golden age of Persian poetry and the revical of the Farsi language were in the face of the oppressive climate created by Taliban-style islam centuries ago.