The intermediary problem
The problem of knowing what to submit to is connected to the idea that “god” can stand for a kind of person that is better than the human kind and thus a way to focus aspirations. The connection is that both are about knowledge, or transmission. Unless “god” is purely personal and individual, there has to be some way of connecting “god” and humans. There have to be intermediaries.
And there are intermediaries, but what good are they? What do they know that no one else knows? What do clerics know? What is it about them that makes them reliable intermediaries?
What is there? Is there some thing – some bit of esoteric knowledge, some secret ceremony, some garment, that is supposed to transform Mr X into a reliable intermediary? Our friend Eric MacDonald would know, since if there is such a thing, he must have been vouchsafed it at some point.
A few weeks ago, I saw a discussion of Sura 4:34, the usual thing: does “beat” really mean “beat” and all the rest of it. There was a woman who kept saying “Only Allah knows what he meant, we can only interpret.” But in that case, why pay any attention at all? If only Allah knows what Sura 4: 34 means, why should any humans even try to obey it? If someone says to me, “Ooh ooh urrp urrp,” I can’t “obey” that, can I.
The intermediary problem seems to me to be insoluble.
The idea of intermediaries is rather nonsensical in the face of an all powerful, all knowing god. Intermediaries are needed in human hierarchies because one person can’t do everything, and thus delegation is a necessity. Not so with an all powerful, all knowing god, in which case intermediaries make no sense what so ever since such a god can do everything, an know everything and everybody. Intermediaries would only get in the way, not help. So anytime someone claims to be an intermediary for an all powerful, all knowing god I know that there is something fishy on that basis alone.
The “priesthood of all believers” is actually a popular theme in much of fundamentalist Protestantism, ie. the doctrine that we don’t need no steenkin’ intermediary with God except Jesus Himself (and he’s our BFF anyway). Nice in theory, except that (socially-hierarchical apes that we are) certain people still wind up being “spiritual leaders” whose views are accorded a fair bit of authority. Generally speaking, the criteria seem to be: the ability to shout louder, or look solemner, or spout proof-texts faster, or just generally push people’s emotional buttons. Seminary education helps, but is not essential.
“The intermediary problem seems to me to be insoluble.”
It’s only a problem if we accept the premise that religion actually is about submission in the first place.
I think that is false most of the time.
Frequently, a believer’s assertions about the will of God closely reflects their own wishes and prejudices very, very closely.
I find myself smiling whenever a believer refers to this this as ‘submission’.
—————-
As an aside, I can remember a study that went some way to demonstrate this. But I can’t find a link to it at the moment. I fail at Google.
If anyone’s familiar with the study below and could provide a link for my bookmarks folder, I’d be grateful.
There were two parts to the study.
In the first part they asked the participants moral questions with several frames of reference. “How do you feel about abortion? How does the average American feel about abortion? How does God feel about abortion? How does Hitler feel about abortion?”
The participants answered questions while hooked up to neural imaging software. The researchers found that the some unique areas would be lit up in similar ways for the ‘self’ questions and the ‘God’ questions but not for the others.
There was a follow up where the participants were invited back. They were given a leading fake questionnaire that presented leading questions with the intent of skewing the responses of the following questionnaire.
The follow-up was the same series of questions from the original test.
Researchers found that the responses people gave for themselves were skewed predictably based on the proceeding study. Most of the other perspectives – what does the average American think about x, what does Hitler think about x,etc – remained more or less the same.
But the answers subjects gave to the God-related questions were reliably skewed in the same directions as the self-related questions.
It’s an interesting study – and to my mind and interpretation this brings up some serious objections to the notions that religion has anything to do with ‘submission’.
Scote – well intermediaries make sense when the god is supposed to be mysterious, ineffable, hidden, Other, transcendant. It often is supposed to be that, not least because it’s obviously not around the way the people next door are around.
Daniel,
I think Sam Harris mentioned this study in his book The Moral Landscape.
He may have a reference list somewhere.
R
Rhys
Thanks for that. I couldn’t even remember where I read about the study in the first place.
I’ll check when I get home.
@ Daniel Schealler
What about religion as a way of securing the submission of other people?
It’s the community itself that is the thing, not the beliefs. Do people honestly believe in God? I don’t think so, I think they’re deluded, and have lost their critical thinking marbles because the community comes first and foremost. All those priests, clerics, Islamic scholars, theologians, gurus are authority figures and it’s their word that is important, not what the holy scriptures actually say, nor the beliefs that they’re supposed to be adhering too.
@Not Bruce
I hedged! I hedged!
^_^
It depends on what you mean by ‘securing the submission’.
When I read that phrase it conjures up images in my mind of women having acid thrown in their faces for the crime of showing their hair in public or pursue a basic standard of education.
It also conjures up images like Itawamba County Agricultural High School cancelling its prom because they were forced to allow a lesbian student to attend – only to then change to an ‘unofficial’ venue and not tell that student.
In which case the answer becomes: It secures the submission of others via the same means of oppression other religions use. Hard threats of violence and social pressure to conform.
However… That might not be what you meant. That reading doesn’t really fit the current context.
Care to elaborate?
Should have read:
In which case the answer becomes: It secures the submission of others via the same means of oppression other ideologies use. Hard threats of violence and social pressure to conform.
It’s all so clear now. All the pieces have fallen into place. “Ooh ooh urrp urrp” indeed. I’ll start on this immediately.
But could you obey “Ooo eee, ooo aaa-aaa, ting-tang, walla-walla bing-bang”?
I’ll have you know Richard that under no circumstances have I ever bing-banged my walla-walla.
I’ve always been very clean in that respect.
“Is there some thing….?”
Yes, there is, it’s the good will of the community of believers that transforms Mr X into a ‘reliable intermediary’ for a non-existent deity.
The problem I’ve always had with the concept of a god is that of description and communication.Namely, I can accept the possibility of a being of infinite power and intelligence (in principle only, just to be clear), but if there is such a being, why are they consistently described in the various religions in terms that are sensible to humans. Our descriptions necessarily limit the power or intelligence of the being, in order to make them comprehensible.
It’s kind of like this, we can’t visualise a four dimensional object, we have to imagine it in only two or three dimensions, because of the limitation of our cognitive experience. So, IF a god existed, then we would necessarily have limited understanding of what that entity was. This leads me to the problem of communication.If a god existed, then it follows that their knowledge or understanding would be so far beyond our own that it would make communication more or less impossible. How could an infinite being restrict their communication so as to be comprehensible to a finite, limited being? It would be, to paraphrase from Frank Herbert, as though we’d immersed our mouth in water and tried to communicate with a single bacterium.This is more or less what makes me go, even if a god existed, there would be no way for us to know anything about them, or experience anything of them, either personally or through intermediaries. If we could, then they could not be an infinite being.Therefore, it makes no sense, even if god existed, there would be no difference. Or put another way: Any attempt at theodicy is actually removing the god part of god, and making an infinite entity finite.So, fundamentally, the question of god’s existence or non-existence is a waste of time, and I feel the sensible approach is to just ignore it (nonsense doesn’t need to be refuted); or, as Hitchens said, “What can be asserted without evidence, can be dismissed without evidence.”
As any fule kno, it is the apostolic succession. Proper priests get banged on the head by people who were banged on the head by people who…..[x1990 years] were banged on the head by Jesus. The effect is obvious.
Of course the intermediary problem is insoluble, and the whole thing is given into the hands of supposed “experts” to solve it. That’s why so many people are ready to listen to imams, rabbis, ministers, priests, popes and what not, supposing them to have more knowledge and therefore be better able to “divine” what the “sources” say. But since the sources (as intermediaries) are as tenuous as any other intermediary, the problem is one that keeps getting passed around — unless, of course, you have someone like the pope who can speak (so it is said) with infallible authority. But why should one believe such a silly thing, that you can stop the regress of interpretations just by naming someone to do it?
Of course, on the other side, where people have tried to fix the parameters of value by saying that values are somehow “out there” in the natural order — like Sam Harris does, I’m afraid — you can just define what you want to be good, and then go on from there. Natural law morality, of the Roman Catholic sort, is always importing values under the smokescreen of “normal function” the places where they want to draw the lines. But why should we take a supposedly normal function of a thing (say sex) as determinative of what we ought to do? That’s why the RCC keeps harping on about condoms and homosexuals, because the normal functioning of the sexual act just is, as Edward Feser says, by putting penis into vagina to get sperm from male into female. Anything else and it’s immoral. And if that’s not laughable, I don’t know what is.
My idea of religion as a method of “securing the submission of others” is conformity to some sort of norm supposedly imposed by a deity and enforced in the hereafter. Of course the enforcement in this life (using the whole gamut from peer pressure to physical violence) is done by humans, and of course the original imposition is also by humans. It is probably more impressive and authoritative amongst believers to say that you should do X because a god tells you to rather than because a human does. It does require some degree of acquiescence and submission to start with; the target audience needs to believe there is a god in the first place. They also need to believe that some person can actually speak for this god. One has to have a set of conditions in which the community will accept someone as speaking for a god, rather than that god being able to speak for itself. Having a credible means of enforcing these pronouncements won’t hurt either. I suspect that these conditions will be much more easily met in societies that are religious monocultures, where there is no other choice, no other game in town. Once people see there are others ways of believing, or even the possibility of disbelief and they can vote with their feet, this sort of enforcement is much more difficult.
So, Eric, there was no particular “thing” that turned you from an ordinary human without access to god into a magical human with access to god? No bang on the head, as Dave puts it? Just a process of education or training like any other?
RJW, your proposed thing isn’t the kind I meant. For one thing it just presupposes the kind of “thing” I did mean. Why does the community of believers render up its goodwill? Because of something about the intermediary; the question is what. It could be just “because the intermediary has the job title of intermediary” – convention, in short. The intermediary could be an intermediary the way a red light is a red light. My question is whether there is something more to it, and if so what. What exactly is it about the intermediaries that makes it possible for them to know what god is and what people are supposed to submit to?
Not Bruce
Right. And I want to know why they do believe that. I want to know what exactly they think happens to that some person that makes the speaking for possible.
It’s all very weird, if you think about it. It’s weird that more people don’t get the thing themselves, since it would have to be such a wonderful special item. Just think: a couple of years of training or initiation and you can communicate directly with god! You’d think everybody would do it.
Just think: a couple of years of training or initiation and you can communicate directly with god! You’d think everybody would do it.
Yes, that’s just it. If it were the actual case that the universe was created by an all-powerful being who wanted to have a personal relationship with human beings, I would agree with religionists that this would be one of the most important things that we could know and find out about. But this would have to be a discoverable fact about the world like gravity or plate tectonics. Instead it’s all in books that are obviously human constructs and this “relationship” happens inside your head (or heart?!) and is the combined product of wishful thinking, cultural indoctrination and neurochemistry.
I think the fact that people believe that some particular people speak for a god is testament to how gullible we are as a species. Look at how people, given the correct cultural priming, will flock to “weeping” statues and stains that bring to mind the iconic representations of the local deity. These are pretty sad, low-grade signs and miracles for beings who are supposedly all powerful. I do wish people would know better than to fall for this stuff. If more people would practice critical thinking it might not be so bad, but we now live in an age where uncritical mass media hucksterism seeking out the latest novelty to sell can transmit this sort of canned piety around the world instantaneously. It would all be simply comic if we did not have medievally programmed people actively seeking to kill others who do not share their exact same flavour of irrationality.
We;ll, Ophelia, I had the “bang on the head’ — twice! — but, no, it didn’t give me magic powers. And I should say — though this was certainly uncommon — that I did say, and repeated it often enough so that people got the idea, that when I spoke “this is how things seem to me just now. Can you see things this way too?” That was unnerving for some people, so they left, but I never pretended to be an authority (at least during my last 20 years or so in “ministry”), nor claimed to be an intermediary. Priesthood, to be quite frank, came to seem to me more and more surreal, in a sense, because it really assumed this role, and it was one that I could not fulfil. So, iot was perhaps unsurprising to find myself talking myself out of a job. It was, as you know, the Archibshop of Canterbury’s pretence that he could, in some sense, speak for God that led me finally away from “faith” of any kind, though for the last fifteen to eighteen years I spent in a parish I was moving steadily away — as seems obvious to me now.
I was just talking with my daughter in Ontario, and amongst other things, the status of the pope came up. One thing that is very hard to accept is that there is anyone in the world who is prepared to say that anyone in the wolrd is capable of speaking infallibly on any subject whatever, and yet that is what Catholics must believe. This is simply so absurd that this particular organisation should be laughed off the stage, and yet it are not. What can explain this perversity?
Eric, do clerics ever talk about this to each other? Or would that seem naive? It probably would, and yet it’s the acceptance of the whole elaborate con without talking about it that should seem naive.
By “this” I mean the non-appearance of any magical moment or event that unblocks messages from god. I wonder if they express disappointment or frustration or worry – “is that it? I’m a priest now? But I don’t feel any different…”
The pope – it’s the red shoes, isn’t it? No one could doubt the red shoes.
This is only a tiny smidgen of the ‘intermediary problem’, but I find it intriguing and would like to share (it came via both a Roman law tutor and a classics tutor). It provides a cultural explanation for Catholic confession only, however, not for the idea of ‘the priesthood as a whole’.
Pagan Rome was a ‘shame’ culture, not a ‘guilt’ culture. The nicest and simplest discussion of the difference between the two is available here:
http://www.doceo.co.uk/background/shame_guilt.htm
There are also some good discussions in Benedict (re Japan) and Borkowski (re Rome). It is important not to confuse the Japanese or the Romans with many Islamic cultures, which are also often described as ‘shame’ cultures. Rather (as Deepak Lal points out) what you have in much of the Islamic world is a toxic mix of the worst of both guilt and shame cultures. Modern cultures that are ‘pure’ shame cultures are relatively rare: Japan is the best example, although my Taiwanese friends insist that Taiwan has many of the same characteristics, as do some of my Maori friends re their traditional culture in New Zealand.
Now, the big thing with ‘shame’ cultures is that they rely on social pressure to create morally acceptable behaviour. This leads to a situation where (as my classics tutor put it), an awful lot of Romans had what he called the ‘Bart Simpson approach to morality’: ‘I didn’t do it, nobody saw me do it, can’t prove anything’. The only way, then, to get Roman converts to Christianity (in particular) to take its moral strictures seriously was to set up a system where they had to share their transgressions with a third party (the priest, in the confessional). That meant those transgressions ‘came into existence’ and could be the subject of ‘shaming’.
That this process could get very silly is evidenced by contemporary accounts of new converts telling a big group of people what they’d done, but clearly not feeling bad about it, so they were instructed by the earliest evangelists (who were often Jews, and the Jews were a guilt culture in that period) to do things like roll around in the dirt and yell, or to flagellate themselves. Some of these accounts are excerpted in Robin Lane Fox’s Pagans & Christians (1986), where they make really disturbing reading. Getting a Roman to think that there was an omniscient God who was watching him or her all the time was a long, slow process, and I don’t doubt many Romans reacted like one of my karate instructors in Japan in the mid 60s: confronted on her doorstep by some American missionaries who told her that the Christian God was very compassionate and ‘watched over her’ all the time, her horrified response was to ask whether that meant he could see her on the toilet!
Of course, by the time the Reformation rolled around, Europe had transitioned (for the most part) into a guilt culture. The confessional was pointless; God already knew. This shifted the role of the priesthood dramatically, and meant some Protestant groups (Quakers in particular, but there were others) did away with priestly intermediaries entirely.
It’s not the conventional explanation, and it’s certainly not the one that Protestants gave (at the time) for doing away with the confessional, but it certainly makes sense in cultural context.
Daniel, I think the study you’re thinking of is this one: Believers’ estimates of God’s beliefs are more egocentric than estimates of other people’s beliefs (link is to a PDF file, ~600K) whose lead author is Nicholas Epley at the University of Chicago.
The tax department is “around the way the people next door are around”. Bacteria and viruses are also real. But we acknowledge we haven’t the time to cultivate a full knowledge of disease or of tax law and other accounting principles; so we employ professionals to do the job for us.
Why is a religious intermediary any different?
What gives them their status as competent intermediaries can be summed up in one word – or perhaps two – training and dedication. My priest thinks he has been trained to know how to deal with “God” and has the interest and stickability to want to earn a living doing that; my accountant ditto with “money” – both “God” and “money” are conventions/metaphors that only “exist” through a consensus of human belief.
It’s possible that many “diseases” and “cures” work that way too; but that’s another deep topic.
Ophelia, I don’t think they talk about it. I don’t think I ever heard anyone speak about it in those terms. As for it feeling different. Of course not. But there was still a great mystique about it. There as a time when those who cared for the altar and the sanctuary (in an Anglican church that’s the little space at the front with the altar, the chairs for the celebrants, etc.) had to wear something like the things that surgeons put on their feet and wear gloves, just to touch the holy things, and the tabernacle was treated with great reverence, genuflections, and the lot. But that is mostly all passed now. But it was this mystique and the ritual recognition of it, that made all the difference. Why else is Ratzinger bringing back the Latin mass? Because it sounds much more mysterious and exalted, of course. It’s all done with smoke and mirrors. But it can be very powerful, and very misleading too.
All the more reason for me to talk about it in those terms, then, Eric. I’m sure you agree!
I didn’t know that about the surgical booties. That’s very good.
Steve Bell – the value of money is a convention, but money itself really exists, and everybody can see it and touch it. Not so with god.
@Steve
Also: I can take a microscope and with a bit of tinkering observe bacteria directly.
It doesn’t take any special training to do this. Sneeze on slide, insert slide in microscope, twiddle focus and lighting knobs until a clear image is formed, done. Yay highschool biology!
Obviously <em>understanding</em> what I am looking at takes a bit more time and effort. But I can at least duplicate a basic observation with very little fuss
Not so with God.
Also also: Training and dedication alone are not enough. They are useful indicators of ability, yes. But it remains possible for someone to be trained, dedicated, and also incompetent.
An accountant can <em>demonstrate</em> their ability to work with money by going out and actually balancing the damn accounts – or at the very least, squirreling out the inconsistencies and presenting them to management in an accessible format. This work can then be checked up on by others for verification and potential disproof.
A biologist can <em>demonstrate</em> their ability to work with bacteria by publishing their methodology in a peer-reviewed journal for other researchers to replicate and potentially disprove.
How exactly does a priest or a parson <em>demonstrate</em> their ability to be an intermediary with the divine? How exactly does a priest open themselves up to disproof?
You’re comparing apples and Tuesdays.
Sounds like the “but air is invisible, too!” defense.
I have always been baffled by that one. I cannot remember a time when I could not touch and feel the air with my own hand.
well, G!D Is not *purely* personal and individual, although that is part of it. yes, you are right, there has to be some way of connecting the Divine and humans. however, in judaism, there is a famous Talmudic passage (bava metzia 59b) in which the sages, arguing whether a particular oven is to be considered kosher or not, basically tell G!D to “butt out”, using “G!D’s own words” as expressed in the Torah, namely the phrase “it [referring to the Torah] is not in heaven” – this is interpreted by the sages concerned as signifying that “we do not wait for a Voice from heaven to rule on earthly decisions, but instead must find a human interpretation”; G!D Is then described as “laughing” that “My children have defeated Me”. so, here, this is our basis for establishing intermediaries as part of this, but not the entire thing. the very next question is, of course:
a vast amount of discussion goes into this subject – which embraces many of these things. now, technically we don’t have “clergy” in the sense that christians do, a rabbi is just someone who is acclaimed by examination by an assessment panel of his or her peers, you are not agreed to have special powers, only to be licensed to rule on certain decisions or conduct certain ceremonies by virtue of knowing how to do so properly. we used to have, at the time of the second Temple, an official “laying on of hands” which was considered to confer special authority, but this is not currently operative, although some people are looking for ways to resurrect it. it’s also not entirely clear what extra authority this gives you. the peer assessment is supposed to confer reliability, but obviously the different streams of judaism increasingly fail to recognise the reliability of other streams in all cases, largely because competence in jewish law is a slippery beast; one person’s expert in, say, lesions on the lungs of correctly slaughtered animals is another person’s unreasonably strict maniac or lenient hippy in, say, correct wording of a marriage document; because this is about law, there has to be a certain amount of organic latitude and, of course, with this goes the ability to work the system.
the only people who maintain this kind of authority are the mequbalim, or kabbalistic adepts, who may (or may not) be rabbis as well. it should not have that much bearing on any legal rulings they make, because opinions derived from that form of authority are far easier to challenge.
we get around similar problems in judaism by the belief that you get the religious equivalent of “course credits” for the sincere attempt to try and obey, say, a Torah commandment where it’s not clear how to do so. some, such as the commandment to exterminate girgashites, have been universally ruled as officially impossible to carry out any more and are hence in technical abeyance; this is done by the consensus of scholarly opinion.
[edited for length]
B’brain, this is way too long for one comment. Do you have a copy? Please make one if you don’t, because I want to trim this one radically.
It isn’t good blog manners to answer all questions in a thread in one comment.
It isn’t? Good to know.
ophelia,
thank you for sending me a copy of the entire post, although i had retained one; the courtesy is appreciated. i would point out, however, that this question requires detailed discussion and this is the first i have heard of comprehensive answers being somehow “bad manners”! who defines such things? certainly it’s not the case in discussion fora such http://www.interfaith.org where i myself moderate. with that said, it’s your blog, so you are entitled to enforce your rules.
should i post the rest in chunks?
b’shalom
bananabrain
I’m notoriously prone to long comments myself, but it’s not the house style here.
I hate long batch-mode comments that respond to various people without making it clear who said what, and whether you think they’re defending the same or different views, or whether you’re strongly implying a connection between consecutive quotes. (IIRC the post in question seemed like that, and I therefore skim-skipped it, but I may not RC.)
It’s usually possible and IMO preferable to respond to a very few closely related quotes from one or at most two people at a time, and if you shift from quoting one person to quoting another, it should not only be clear that you’re doing it, but fairly clear why. (Do you think the quotes are elaborating essentially the same position, or interestingly contrasting ones?)
If you post a big bag of unclearly related comments as one comment, it comes across weirdly. Sometimes it comes across as conceited, as though you can’t be bothered to respond to individuals and just want to sweep away a bunch of rubbish or toot your own horn. Often it doesn’t, but still comes across as non-conversational.
Many people such as myself like to be able to respond to specific, relatively coherent comments, referring to the commenter and the comment, so that others can look back and see the bits we quote in context, e.g., to more fully understand the intended significance of the quote, and to make sure I’m not quote-mining it in some way relevant to the point I’m making in response.
If you just concatenate a bunch of comments together into one long spew, that makes it harder to go back and identify the implicit threads of the conversation—you find a great big knot, and give up on separating out (and understanding) the distinct themes and viewpoints.
The style here is generally meant to be conversational, so it’s good to preserve a roughly conversation-like structure even if you’re actually operating in batch mode—break long comments up into thematic chunks, more or less as you would have if you’d been conversing in something closer to real time. That allows people responding to you to do the same—e.g., saying that they basically agree with the main point of your comment 20, but disagreed with where you took it in comment 22, or where someone else took it in comment 29, and how points up a confusing oversimplification in 16, or whatever.
Clearly attributing and localizing quotes is especially good if you’re operating in batch mode, responding after some delay. Other people who read and understood what you’re responding to, but whose memory of it is not fresh, may be reminded of how they understood what was being said when they read it before, and have a clearer sense of whether you’re being unfair to the person quoted, or are making them aware of some subtlety they missed the first time around, or whatever.
A lot of us like to keep mental track of who is saying what, and where we suspect they’re really coming from, even if it isn’t obvious. We like to have a general idea of the personalities and the kinds of positions people are prone to taking—we’re basically hanging out in Ophelia’s salon, talking to interesting people that we’ve mostly met before and will hear from again. That’s harder to manage in text than in person, because we don’t have concrete reminders like faces and voices that help us remember individuals as individuals. Preserving a conversation-like structure with clear individual attributions helps.
B’brain – what Paul said, to start with. (And it’s true that he’s famously given to long comments, and even true that I’ve asked him to try to rein them in once or twice, but overall they’re so good that he’s an exception.)
A comment that’s ten times as long as the post (as yours was) is out of proportion. Maybe “not good manners” is too sweeping, given that the rules vary, but it seems to me at least somewhat oblivious to post something that out of proportion with the rest of the page.
Of course the subject is a large one; it could occupy a massive book, let alone a long blog comment. That doesn’t mean you have to do an omnibus reply.
And no thanks on the chunks offer. You could always do your own post and then link to it.
Anyway, b’brain, what you did wasn’t actually a “comprehensive answer” to the questions I asked in the post – it was more like a comprehensive answer to everything anyone said in the thread, which is quite a different thing, and (as Paul explained) not really interesting.
Your whole reply was mostly tangential to the questions I asked. It answered in a somewhat rote, rehearsed way, instead of in a thoughtful inquiring way. It was more like apologetics than inquiry; an official answer than a thoughtful one.
Which is just what the point isn’t. I already know there are familiar answers that can be given so that everyone can go back to sleep. I want to ask the questions as if they’re real questions, and get answers that treat them as such.
I don’t mean to pick on you. I wanted more of a discussion, is all.