It is often said that blogging is about the exchange of ideas, the conversations. Even though it is very similar to journalism in most respects, the way that information is conveyed from one source to another is a new and interesting dynamic that cannot be synthesized by the “old media,” which mostly operates in a one-way fashion. All one needs to do to understand how the exchange of ideas has been revolutionized is to click on a link to one blog or another and see where it leads. And so, off we go, with copying and pasting links being sort of like collecting souvenirs…

Surfing from my blogroll, I tuned in to The American Street (because it was at the top of my blogroll, having been the most recently updated blog therein) where Kevin Hayden, in a post called “Lancing with Wolves,” quotes Lance Mannion’s post, “The Big Fix,” which appears to have been inspired, in part, by TMFTML’s April 19, 2005 post entitled, “SHIT MEMO”, which is a rather imaginative stream of consciousness piece about stream of consciousness blogging. I contributed a few comments along the way (follow the links, if you want to see what I said), introducing myself to the locals, as it were…

TMFTML wrote, “Every article you’ve seen in the news lately about bloggers refers specifically to a certain subset of bloggers: Let’s call them polibloggers. These are the angry white guys who crapped their pants in fear when the Twin Towers came down and decided that the new climate of intolerance-masquerading-as-patriotism would allow them to give voice to the blatant racism and hatred of the lower classes that they were previously forced to keep in check due to societal norms and basic politeness.”

To which Mr. Mannion added his thoughts, “It’s a given that the people most terrorized by the terrorist attacks on 9/11 were right wing columnists, pundits, and bloggers. Children who lost parents in the attacks have faced life since that day with more courage, hope, mercy, charity, and forebearance than these cowardly lions who have been scaring themselves witless every day since by pulling their own tails.”

Now if I had just read Mr. Hayden’s post and left it at that, without clicking on the link to Mr. Mannion’s original post, I would have missed that the quotation on The American Street was actually Mr. Mannion’s segue into the shifting politics of liberal, moderate and apolitical people who were scared into the right wing by the terrible events of September 11, 2001, “But it wasn’t just the already yellow-bellied young conservative types who were so frightened by 9/11. Some liberals, many moderates, a whole slew of people who espoused no particular politics on September 10, 2001, became unhinged by fright. Dennis Miller is one example. Roger L. Simon is another.” as well as an interesting, yet sadly accurate, examination of the effects of the lure of easy fame that is often found in the practice of pandering to “frightened, bloodthirsty Right Wing loons,” as Mr. Mannion calls them. I also would not have found out that Mr. Mannion had previously quoted the same TMFTML post in an April 26, 2005 post called, “Morning Gazette–Obligatory blogger navel-gazing edition”, which included a link to the astute observations of Chris Nolan of Politics from Left to Right. And so, I traveled on…

Ms. Nolan’s March 13, 2005 post, Today’s Top Ten is partly a response to Steven Levy’s March 21, 2005 Newsweek article, “Blogging Beyond the Men’s Club”, which purports to answer the question: “Since anyone can write a Weblog, why is the blogosphere dominated by white males?” but doesn’t, really (so much for that little side trip). However, Ms. Nolan’s effort at answering that same question bore some real fruit, even if it was intended as “Reasons why people – er, men – wonder why there are ‘no’ women bloggers.” Let’s take this site in for a moment, shall we? Perhaps we’ll learn something about…

• How blogging was first taken up by “techies,” most of whom are men who apparently prefer to keep linking to like-minded men. Yes, that’s painfully obvious, but it is nonetheless important to keep noting because it raises awareness and could possibly inspire more diversity in the blogosphere, thereby rendering such commentaries obsolete.
• Ana Maria Cox of Wonkette, who has built a big audience in the new media using old-fashioned methodology: S-E-X — well, writing gossip about who’s doing it with whom, at least. And it works because the MSM apparently thinks of Ms. Cox as “…one girl blogger in their rolodex [and] they don’t think they need any more.”
• Big Media’s coverage of the blogosphere is mostly technical and political and most technical and political writers are men who prefer to deal with the “top-tier” bloggers who are mostly men who write about technology and politics.
• With over 9 million blogs — and counting– out there (and that’s just the blogs that are watched by Technorati), the blogosphere is really getting huge and finding an audience is getting increasingly harder. But we must also consider how the audience itself is growing, creating more opportunities. Except for the apparent “Old Boys Network” in which the MSM keeps sending readers to the same prominent blogs, feeding a small, circular system and making it difficult for less well-known bloggers to break into the “Big Leagues.”
• Blogs are a very new medium whose methodologies aren’t quite solidified yet. Apparently, the blogosphere is still evolving into something, but nobody is sure of exactly what that might be.

Well, here’s my hypothesis, a prediction of sorts (maybe I’m right, maybe I’m wrong, only time will tell): Someday, in the not-too-distant future, we will no longer have radios, televisions, telephones, computers, CD/MP3 players, DVRs, etc, as separate components. They will be merged into one interface — a screen, a pair of speakers and input devices for transmitting commands, text, sound and pictures — and The Media will simply be made up of the people who exchange, duplicate and spread information. And if that comes true, then future historians will likely surmise that blogs, bloggers and the blogosphere were the primordial soup from which the new New Media arose.

In the meantime, I think I will just continue to enjoy the conversations and, of course, the debates, which is why I blog in the first place.

Some might say that it is ironic that the same people who condemn single mothers for choosing to have and raise their babies also condemn women who choose abortion. But there is no real irony there, just more evidence that the motives of such people are suspect.

People who truly respect life do not pass judgment when single women choose to keep their babies rather than having abortions, they applaud them for their courage and help them. People who sincerely care about the welfare of children do not question the morals of those children’s’ mothers’ simply because said mothers are not married, they offer assistance and support legislation that helps all single parents to better provide for their children. True charity sees the need, not the cause.

But the people who claim to respect life while at the same time setting up the social consequences of single motherhood and accusing single mothers in need of having a sense of entitlement in spite of having made “bad choices” cannot possibly respect life and care about the welfare of children, so what they really must be after is making procreation into a privilege for which people must qualify. And if that is not the motivation, what else could it possibly be?

Sure, they’re intimidating sometimes, sitting in their ivory towers or riding upon their high horses, pointing fingers, passing judgments and meting out social punishments. But no one should be afraid of them because people who are in the business of judging everyone else’s morals and family values actually have little to no concept of either — and when you keep this in mind, such people are easily dismissed as mere busybodies who have spent so much time and energy worrying about other peoples’ values and morals that they have ceased to reflect upon their own.

However, do not rush to judgment and condemnation as these people deserve pity rather than scorn, for they are truly lost souls. The lashing out at the way that some people live their lives is evidence of the torment such people suffer due to a lack of the true faith that is required to effectively deal with the temptations of freedom in contemporary society.

I would like to share one of my favorite Scriptures because, with all of the controversies surrounding the so-called “Culture War” over social issues and their effect upon the moral fabric of our society, there is a real need for us to remember the basic Judeo-Christian ethics upon which our country was founded:

1 Judge not, that ye be not judged. 2 For with what judgment ye judge, ye shall be judged: and with what measure ye mete, it shall be measured to you again. 3 And why beholdest thou the mote that is in thy brother’s eye, but considerest not the beam that is in thine own eye? 4 Or how wilt thou say to thy brother, Let me pull out the mote out of thine eye; and, behold, a beam is in thine own eye? 5 Thou hypocrite, first cast out the beam out of thine own eye; and then shalt thou see clearly to cast out the mote out of thy brother’s eye. — Matthew 7 (King James Version)

Distinguishing Rules (Ethics) from Conscience (Morality)

The most important among America’s primary founding principles are freedom of religion and the separation of church from state. However, one needn’t be a Christian — or even believe in God — to understand that the profound wisdom in Matthew 7:1-5 is essential to our progress toward the goal of realizing the promise of liberty as it was laid out by the Framers a little over two centuries ago. And as we pursue that goal, we must be careful not to confuse universal truths with religious and other dogma, lest we forget that it is our God-given (or natural) free will that places the onus of seeking truth on human conscience, which is what should allow us to separate church from state without sacrificing our moral clarity.

America’s greatest strength is our diversity, while our pride is our primary weakness. It is this pride that causes us to forget — or in some cases to deliberately ignore — the difference between the laws that are essential to maintaining order in a free, heterogeneous society and the conscience that gives us the forbearance to live harmoniously among the diverse multitudes — or at least the ability to recognize and respect that our right to be who and what we are belongs to all of us, even if we might not all agree on the finer points of the fleeting social conventions of a continuously evolving civilization.

The so called “Christian Right” (may God have mercy upon their poor lost and tormented souls), who appear to be so proud that they believe their own wrath to be virtuous, have been confusing truth with doctrine to the point where they must now engage in the practice of intellectual dishonesty in order to justify the continued politicization of their faith for the purpose of promoting its dogma as the one and only truth. But this dynamic is not exclusive to religious fundamentalists as some secularists also appear to have a difficult time distinguishing ethics from morals. A recent demonstration of this occurred on the April 8, 2005 broadcast of Real Time with Bill Maher, in which former New York governor Mario Cuomo gave the erudite, yet theophobic Mr. Maher a little education in this very subject.

MAHER: If you disagree so much with so many of the rules, why do you need religion at all? I have a lot of trouble understanding why somebody like yourself who is a brilliant man, I have trouble understanding why brilliant people can even be religious. [applause] Quite frankly, I don’t mean that disrespectfully.

CUOMO: [overlapping] Bill—okay. No, Bill, I—

MAHER: [overlapping] But – and it seems like religion is the kind of thing where you either eat the whole wafer or you don’t eat it at all. [laughter] I mean, if you’re going to pick all the raisins out, why buy raisin bread? [laughter] [applause]

CUOMO: Well, I’ll tell you…Well, for the bread, that’s why you buy it. [laughter] [applause] But let me – Bill, let me make that point. Let me make that point again. [laughter] You’re a super – you’re a super-intelligent person.

MAHER: Well, thank you. Finish your thought. [laughter]

CUOMO: I suggest – I suggest to you that what I believe and call religion, you would believe and call it natural law. If you never saw a guy with a beard come down with a tablet, if you never read a book or heard a homily, just as a human being, if you opened your eyes to the reality of your own life and you looked around, you’d have to come to two conclusions, I think. That, number one, you and the rest of the human beings are different from the other animals because you can think, you have consciousness, et cetera. And that there’s a compatibility between you and all those other human beings. There are animals out there you eat for lunch, and there are animals out there that want to eat you for lunch.

And so you would say, look, I ought to get together with these human beings; we have something in common. That’s called, in Hebrew, sedaka, the notion of charity and commonality.

And what would you do with that relationship since nobody was there to instruct you? You’d say, look, the one value I’m sure of is the value of the next breath I draw, the value of my life. And I have this instinct to procreate. And so you’d get together with the other human beings and say, let’s make this life better. The Hebrews call that teekonolom [sp], “let’s repair the universe.” That gives you Christianity. “Love one another as you love yourself, for the love of me,” that’s Jesus. And what do we do? God made the world, didn’t finish it; let’s try to make it better. That’s my religion. That would be yours, as an intelligent man, and I’m sure it is, only you don’t call it religion. You call it raisin bread. [applause]

Tree-lovers, Meet the Forrest

The pursuit of true human freedom is a challenge that requires courage, personal responsibility and charity toward one’s fellow man. And, if we just open our minds to that, the Scriptures in Matthew 7:1-5 reveal universal truths from which we can draw the strength needed for the self-reflection that inspires our endeavor to promote the peace, understanding and tolerance necessary to the viability of our liberty as it applies to the longevity of our civilization.

“Judge not, that ye be not judged.”

Whether or not one believes that Christ was the immaculately conceived Son of God who performed miracles and rose from the dead is not relevant to the universal truth that it is not within the purview of humanity to judge its own sins. We are simply not qualified. Even though we are sentient beings, capable of reason and invention, we are ultimately ruled by our passions and prejudices, sometimes barely able to hold onto the the self-evident truth that all people are created equally. Of course all of that begs the question of who or what actually is endowed with the competence to judge our sins, but that’s not the forest, it’s just one of the trees. Suffice it to say that whomever or whatever it is, it is certainly not us.

This is more than sufficient justification for the separation of church from state because the state is run by fallible human beings who measure virtue and sin via the science of public relations, arrogantly presuming themselves to be unequivocal arbiters of conscience as they change, create and enforce laws according to the whims of a bunch of other fallible human beings (some of whom really ought to know better than to expect that deliverance and grace will be forthcoming due to the policies and actions of the earthly institution of government).

“For with what judgment ye judge, ye shall be judged: and with what measure ye mete, it shall be measured to you again.”

We are supposed to avoid judging our fellow man because of the universal truth that judgments beget more judgments without producing any results that make a better world. All of that judging is nothing more than a competition in self-righteousness in which hypocrites of every stripe proudly assert that their self-assumed superiority is justification for their wrath that stems from their lack of faith in their fellow man — and sometimes even themselves. Such contests do not make a better life for anybody, especially when they escalate into internecine conflicts like our current “Culture War,” which is unlikely to ever have a real victor — if it ever has a real end.

“And why beholdest thou the mote that is in thy brother’s eye, but considerest not the beam that is in thine own eye?”

But we really cannot help ourselves because none of us are beyond reproach. It is in our nature to examine the sins of our brothers and sisters when we, as mere flesh, often have a difficult time finding the fortitude to look inward and contemplate our own misdeeds. This is yet more evidence of our inadequacy to judge one another’s sins and good reason to err on the side of caution when we are tempted to legislate conscience, which falls within the purview of faith, not governments.

The recognition of religious freedom is what secures and guarantees our right to choose our own way from amongst the almost endless number of paths to the same basic objective truth that if we love God (or nature or life or whatever manifestation of being inspires our faith) and love one another as we do ourselves that everything else will take care of itself and we will have peace — in theory, at least.

Realistically, of course, we are limited in practice by our own nature and mortality, but we do have the quality of faith to help us to seek the wisdom that can help us to distinguish transient social conventions from the unchanging, unalterable truths of conscience so that there is no blurring of the line that is supposed to separate the organizations of mortal humans we elect to protect, serve and bring order to society from the various spiritual institutions, traditions and ceremonies in which we celebrate our faith in the mysterious natural and/or supernatural forces of creation from which we draw our moral clarity.

“Or how wilt thou say to thy brother, Let me pull out the mote out of thine eye; and, behold, a beam is in thine own eye?”

While we are busily engaged in the practice of evaluating and judging one another’s alleged sins, we comfortably avoid reflecting upon our own the detriment of truth and justice. We do not create an harmonious society by attempting to dictate that other people live by some subjective code of ethics, but rather by seeking the truth and justice in our own actions and deeds.

Courage is the human virtue that inspires our natural need for liberty, while our fear of liberty as it applies to human nature imprisons us and impedes our progress toward the goal of achieving the promise of freedom. And there is much to fear at the prospect of living in a truly free and open society — especially one whose people are so diverse — because a free people must be possessed of the self-discipline to deal with the unavoidable temptations of a free society, not the least of which is the temptation to limit those temptations via the legislation of conscience.

We must be brave and refuse to succumb to fears of our nature because such legislation only serves to defer personal responsibility to the same degree that it curtails liberty without ever actually affecting the availability if the offending temptation. This is the trap in the seemingly simple and well-intended attempts to mandate our morality and it is the source of much of the consternation within the misguided people who believe that social and cultural matters should fall into the purview of the state rather than a higher power.

“Thou hypocrite, first cast out the beam out of thine own eye; and then shalt thou see clearly to cast out the mote out of thy brother’s eye. “

This is the universal truth that none of us ever really gets to the point where we become so morally superior that we can effectively judge our fellow man’s sins, even if our pride might sometimes fool us into believing it. True freedom requires that we manifest a great deal of tolerance, which is not so much about the acceptance of differences as it is a matter of having faith in our fellow man’s ability to deal with liberty.

Among the many questions to which I have never received a satisfactory answer is why a woman’s chest is considered to be something “dirty” that must be hidden while a man’s chest is not given a second thought — well, at least not in this particular context.

Shirtless men appear in G-rated films, while a certain number of frames worth of topless women will get a film an “R” rating, even if said film contains only the “PG” level of sex, violence, profanity or other “adult” subject matter.

At the beach or pool, we expect to see topless men, but if a woman removes the little triangles covering her “dirtypillows,” she will be arrested for indecent exposure to the sound of much tsk tsking about traumatizing children and how such displays of immodesty are contributing to society’s long ride to hell that old proverbial handbasket.

What sort of attitude is this in the land of the free and the home of the brave in the the 21st century? In other parts of the world, the female breast appears without fanfare on the beaches and near the pools and even in some clever television commercials. But here in America, the people get up in arms over a “wardrobe malfunction” which caused a part of a breast to be exposed on television for a few seconds.

Of course the really annoying aspect of all of this is not so much the Puritanism as it is the hypocrisy — case in point: that infamous “wardrobe malfunction” was one of the most often recoreded and viewed events in TiVO history — of a good number of Americans who will publicly denounce such “smut,” while enjoying it immensely in private.

So, here I am, with my drawer full of little triangles, wondering why I still have to wear them to the beach in order to keep myself out of jail.

Do we choose our attractions, orientations, kinks and fetishes? Or are they all involuntary, waiting to take over our hearts, minds and bodies when those “special sombodies” (or somethings) who suit our inborn requirements enter our lives?

In the course of debating same-sex marriage there is this one strange question that keeps coming up: the question of whether homosexuality is inborn or a conscious choice. But the matter of orientation really isn’t yet another interesting conundrum in the ancient, but still unresolved, “nature versus nurture” debate. We are asking the wrong question.

I submit that the problem isn’t a lack of a definitive answer to the question of orientation being the result of heredity or environment, but with the question itself, which assumes that our base needs and desires have something to do with our character and temperament, when they are actually a part of our primal instincts.

By definition, all heterosexuals are attracted to members of the opposite sex and we call this orientation. However, attraction is not a simple matter of gender because each of us has a unique set of — and, for some people, very specific — archetypes which we find attractive. But wait, it doesn’t stop there because both within and outside of the realm of archtypes we also have our various kinks and fetishes.

Of course, some people think that they have no kinks or fetishes, but it doesn’t mean that they do not actually have any, only that their kinks and fetishes are so common as to not be recognized in terms whose definitions are often perceived to describe only those fetishes and kinks which are uncommon.

Since all of this is true of heterosexuals it is only logical to deduct that, among homosexuals, each has his or her own unique set of attractions and subset of kinks and fetishes. Therefore, sexual orientation is the broader part of the primal instinct of attraction, which is not a matter of choice.

It is difficult for many people to admit, even to themselves, that sexual orientations and attractions are instinctual and that free will only comes into the picture after the fact, when we make a conscious choice to act or not act upon our desires (this is the point at which character and temperament come into play). People who feel uncomfortable with this reality often use the common defense mechanism of oversimplification to convince themselves that unconscious instinct and subsequent conscious choice are one and the same, which is all well and fine until such people selfishly expect others to form the same mental constructs with regard to instinct and choice.