The first thing we have to realize is that being gay, lesbian or transsexual is not a lifestyle choice. The Lake Wobegon motto fits: “Sumus Quid Sumus” – we are what we are. Does anyone really think that someone would choose to be gay with all its disadvantages and risks just because it would be fun? How about those gay people in places where it was or is extremely dangerous? In some parts of the world it’s the death penalty if you’re found out! Furthermore, there is evidence of physical differences in the brain associated with homosexuality. Animals have been known to display homosexual behavior (New Scientist, Biological Exuberance). The claims that gay men can be made straight by proper training are nonsense – they merely show that there are circumstances under which we can suppress our true nature – at least for a while – and usually at considerable cost to ourselves!

If we accept God as a loving God then would this God create a whole class of people who are doomed to spend their life suppressing their own God given nature? This hardly is a vision of a loving God!

If we look to Jesus, we see someone who often hung out with assorted marginalized people to the scandal of the proper and respectable citizens. He suggested that one had better be careful before judging someone else. Who did he condemn? It’s summarized in the judgment section of Matthew 25: It’s not gays and lesbians – no, the fire and brimstone are reserved for people who ignored those on the bottom. “I was hungry and you didn’t give me food, thirsty and you didn’t give me drink, a stranger and you didn’t welcome me, sick and in prison …..” Not a word about “you were gay…”

The sanctity of marriage issue also is subject to all sorts of distortions. The view that the “one man one women” marriage is a sort of universal concept is nonsense. Marriage is a social construct that varies with time and place and can have many forms. Marriage evolves – look at the changes in our own society in just the last hundred years. How many people want to go back to the form of marriage in Jesus’ time? One man and possibly many women; the women basically property; different definitions of, and punishments for, adultery applying to husband and wife….

The bit that gay marriage is a threat to traditional marriage also is pure nonsense. Yes, the institution of marriage in our country has major problems – but these problems have nothing to do with civil unions or gay marriage. For children one can see some advantage to having parents of different genders – but the advantage of having two parents instead of one is of much greater importance. Research in this area has been distorted by some on the right. In any case, the difference between individuals far outweighs everything else.

The argument that the purpose of marriage is to have children – be fruitful and multiply – may have had some substance a few thousand years ago. However, we are supporting our present population levels through the unsustainable consumption of resources such as oil, gas and water – all combined with enormous environmental damage. Therefore it is in the best interest of God’s creation that we stop multiplying! (See our blog, The world in transformation, on this subject.)

It should be noted that the problem is not confined to the Episcopal church – or to mainstream churches in general. Other organizations or movements – such as the traditional civil right movement – have similar issues though the causes might be quite different.

The question that needs looking at then is what drives the young. This post is not about providing a how-to-do-it list for motivating generation Y – much less about building new structures to involve them. Rather, it is an attempt to provide some basic understanding of generation Y, and the situation they’re in, so that we can think reasonably clearly about possible approaches.

Just as the world is at a unique point in history so is our social environment – and especially that of young people. Situations vary across the globe but a lot of the fundamental drivers stay the same. Let’s look at three areas for some insight: violence in the Muslim world, the retreat to fantasy worlds, and our society’s disconnect from the world of nature.

First Scott Atran, an anthropologist, just gave a statement to the Senate titled “Pathways to and From Violent Extremism.” Some important points, mostly as summarized by John Robb (blog: Global Guerrillas):

• The threat today is from a Qaeda –inspired viral social and political movement, which is particularly contagious among Muslim youth who are increasingly marginalized — economically, socially, politically — and are in transition stages in their lives, such as immigrants, students, and those in search of friends, mates and jobs.
• Economic globalization, which has led to greater access by humankind to material opportunity, has also led to a crisis, even collapse, of cultures, as people unmoored from millennial traditions flail about in search of a social identity. Today’s most virulent terrorism is rooted in rootlessness and restlessness.
• Individuals now mostly radicalize horizontally with their peers, rather than vertically through institutional leaders or organizational hierarchies. They do so mostly in small groups of friends — from the same neighborhood or social network — or even as loners who find common cause with a virtual internet community.
• Entry into the jihadi brotherhood is from the bottom up: from alienated and marginalized youth seeking out companionship, esteem, and meaning, but also the thrill of action, sense of empowerment, and glory in fighting the world’s most powerful nation and army.
• The boundaries of the newer terrorist networks are very loose and fluid, and the internet now allows anyone who wishes to become a terrorist to become one, anywhere, anytime.
• More and more, terror networks are intertwined with petty criminal networks: drug trafficking, stolen cars, credit card fraud, and the like.
• Although lack of economic opportunity often leads to criminality, it turns out that some criminal youth really don’t want to be criminals after all. Given half a chance to take up a moral cause, they can be even more altruistically prone than others to give up their lives for their comrades and cause.
• This is one indication — and our research reveals others — that economic opportunities alone may not turn people away from the path to political violence. (Indeed, material incentives, whether “carrots” or “sticks,” can even backfire when they threaten core values, as our recent research has shown for Israel, Palestine, Indonesia, and Iran). Rather, youth must be given hopes and dreams of achievement, and plausible means to realize such hopes and dreams.

As our economy stumbles along things may get a little better for a while. Not too many years ago there were good jobs – or perhaps more accurately jobs for people with limited skills – that payed decent wages. Mostly they were the union jobs, the factory jobs. Globalization will make sure that they’re not coming back! As we move further and further into economic disintegration, young people will be faced with an increasingly bleak future, a future that – especially in the US – they have not been prepared for. For them expect tomorrow’s conditions will be more like those in today’s Muslim world.

One response that can be expected is an increase in violence. We already saw flash mobs in Philadelphia, booby traps for the police in Hemet, CA, and then Hutaree came along (“Christian” Warriors building IEDs to kill cops at funeral processions for cops they’ve already killed). Read comments in the Reminder or listen to the tea partyers talk and you’ll find lots of anger. A lot – but not all of the anger and violence — is by an older generation. Given a suitable trigger, that anger can fuel the spread of a great deal more violence.

However, at this time a retreat from reality is the major escape route for many of the world’s young people. Thanks again to Global Guerrillas for some statistics and insightful observations:

“We’re witnessing what amounts to no less than a mass exodus to virtual worlds and online game environments.” Edward Castronova (an economist who studies online games)

• Active online gamers spend 10,000 hours of play by the time they are 21 (almost as much as the time spent in school).
• There are 500 million active online gamers worldwide (that will grow to 1.5 billion in the next 10 years).
• 3 billion hours a week are spent playing online games.

Here’s the big idea. For active online gamers real life is broken. It doesn’t make any sense. Effort isn’t connected to reward. The path forward is confused, convoluted, and contradictory. Worse, there’s a growing sense that the entire game is being corrupted to ensure failure. So, why play it?

They don’t. They retreat to online games. Why? Online games provide an environment that connects what you do (work, problem solving, effort, motivation level, merit) in the game to rewards (status, capabilities, etc.). These games also make it simple to get better (learn, skill up, etc.) through an intuitive just-in-time training system. The problem is that this is virtual fantasy.

John Robb has some ideas:

So the really big idea isn’t figuring out how to USE online gamers for real world purposes (as in the dirty word: crowdsourcing — the act of other people to do work for you for FREE — blech!). Instead, it’s about finding a way to use online games to make real life better for the gamers. In short, turn games into economic darknets that work in parallel and better than the broken status quo systems. As in: economic games that connect effort with reward. n Economic games with transparent rules that tangibly improve the lives of all of the players in the REAL WORLD.

This isn’t tech utopian. It’s reality. The global electronic marketplace and the political system that currently dominates our lives is at root a game but with hidden rule sets. As a result, it’s a game that being run for the benefit of the game designers to the detriment of the players. The reason we keep playing is that we don’t have any choice. Let’s invent something better and compete with it. Let’s provide people with a choice.

A NY Times piece on web use in China reached rather similar conclusions. For China’s young, the web is their escape and their primary form of entertainment – though games are just a part of the mix.

Another factor to consider is our disconnect from nature and the resulting search for authenticity. The theory here is that our society’s disconnect from nature has left a void that people are trying to bridge via a search for the authentic. [There's a book on the subject (Authenticity: What Consumers Really Want). Lots of 5 star reviews. It seems to mostly be about marketing techniques that convey a sense of authenticity and therefore have lots of customers. The conclusion seems to be that the best way to appear authentic is to be authentic – which actually is not possible for a corporation within a corporate capitalist framework.]

I have no idea on whether this is a stronger or weaker effect among young people but definitely would expect it to be significant. Certainly, by the directions our society has taken, young people today are more disconnected from nature than previous generations were. Rebuilding the connection is critical to any movement towards a just and sustainable future.

Some thoughts on connecting with generation Y:

• Try to catch them at transition stages in their lives, before their troubles get too big, and before they take a plunge into violent or other destructive paths.
• Offer a believable better future – especially to the marginalized or about to be marginalized.
• An approach has to become a viral movement to become widespread (but how do you predict whether an approach has that potential?)
• It has to be bottom up, not top down, and if it works, spread will be in a horizontal not vertical path, with essentially peer to peer connections.
• A strong web component will be necessary and it must be consistent with the way gen Y uses the web (which changes regularly).
• Somehow, somewhere it must include at least the possibility of reconnection to the natural world.
• It should provide:

worthwhile non-material rewards,

some form of community that allows the development of roots,

opportunity for learning/growth/advancement.

• It must be:

transparent

honest

just

non-hierarchal

have a fluid, nonrigid structure

One possible model to look at for inspiration is the open source community: Large, much more powerful than generally acknowledged, growing rapidly. There are lots of different kinds of open source communities ranging from web based to warfare. Obviously, not all of them are good neighbors!

I’m thinking now of the web based open source movement that gives us creativity – eg the Wiki and Wikipedia – as well as powerful alternatives to Microsoft and Apple. This community represent a relatively young demographic. Creativity and hard work are valued as is sharing, openness, support for others. These virtues are rewarded with respect and a chance of making a living doing what you enjoy (but hardly a path to riches).

We humans and our technology always have been hard on the environment. Back about 13,000 years ago, in America, the Clovis people developed a way of making very effective spears for hunting mammoths. In a span of at most 450 years these huge mammoths became extinct.  Whether Clovis hunting was the prime cause can be debated – but it certainly made at least a contribution to the demise of the mammoth – and a number of other species (Wikipedia: “Mammoth is only a small part of the Clovis diet; extinct bison, mastodon, sloths, tapir, palaeolama, horse and a host of smaller animals have also been found in Clovis sites where they were killed and eaten”).  The now useless spear technology was abandoned – as was the Clovis culture.

By now we have grown so powerful, and so numerous, and so unconcerned with the long term implications of our actions that we have become a plague species. No corner of the globe is immune from our trash, pollution, and destruction. Rain forests, coral reefs, and Appalachian mountains gone, fish stocks badly depleted, vanished species, our mark is everywhere. To quote E.O. Wilson, “If current deterioration of the environment by human activity continues unabated, best estimates are that half of Earth’s surviving species of plants and animals will be extinguished or critically endangered by the end of the century.”

There now are over a billion hungry people on the planet – and the number is growing rapidly –  hungry people do not have the health of the environment as their top priority!  Desperation and the need for short term survival provide a recipe for maximum damage.

Before human times there were five periods of “great dying.” The “greatest dying” was 250 million years ago:  Over 90% of the world’s species lost, 10 million+ years to recover, cause unknown.  We now are in the sixth great dying – and this time we’re the cause.  Besides our direct involvement in species loss, our environmental actions make a major contribution.  Habitat destruction and climate change are happening at a rate far higher than many species can move from or adapt to.  Our tall grass prairies are long gone, mostly in exchange for a mono culture of corn, grain and soy; rain forests with their enormous diversity are exchanged for palm oil plantations, sugar, soy and beef.  The list of lost diversity goes on and on.

An instructive take on our situation, from the perspective of both scientists and evangelicals, is in “An Urgent Call to Action: Scientists and Evangelicals Unite to Protect Creation.”

Shifting to my fire and brimstone preaching mode:  We humans have done serious and irreversible damage to creation. We will continue to do even more and even worse damage until the time comes when we either confess our sins and change our sinful ways – or the power is taken away from us. Expect retribution! There may be forgiveness of sins but there is no release from the consequences of sin. We do not know all of the forms that retribution will take, when and how it will come, but it will come. Violence, hunger, disease are some forms that are happening now. Unfortunately, it’s mostly the poor and vulnerable and the nonhuman sector of creation that are paying the price. That won’t always be the case!

….do I see some strange looking figures coming up behind us? They’re still a ways off but could it be four horsemen?

Wikipedia on Revelation:  “The first horseman to appear is Pestilence, who rides upon a white horse. Pestilence conquers the nations of the world, subjugating them to demonic powers of the world. In the wake of Pestilence comes War, riding a large, wild red horse and wielding a tremendous sword symbolizing continuing war over the domination of the world, killing millions in his path with his sword. In the wake of War, due to immense destruction because of War and Pestilence, is Famine. Famine is portly – riding upon a black, sickly horse – representing gluttony and hunger. And in the wake of Famine, comes the pale rider, Death. His horse is stark pale. He is followed by Hades and carries the remaining souls to their final destinations.”

]]> http://blogs.stpaulswillimantic.org/2009/07/07/us-vs-the-environment/feed/ 0 http://blogs.stpaulswillimantic.org/2009/05/27/reflection-for-sunday-may-24/ http://blogs.stpaulswillimantic.org/2009/05/27/reflection-for-sunday-may-24/#comments Wed, 27 May 2009 23:32:29 +0000 Anne Hayes http://blogs.stpaulswillimantic.org/?p=99

For one in place of Judas
The apostles sought God’s choice
The lot fell to Matthias
For whom we now rejoice.

Today’s reading from the Acts of the Apostles, written by Luke, is puzzling in some respects.  It seems that an important position had to be filled.  The twelve apostles were now only eleven in number.  Yet there were supposed to be twelve of them.  Scholars speculate that the need for twelve stems from God’s use of that number throughout the Bible to represent God’s people: the twelve sons of Jacob leading to the twelve tribes of Israel (Jacob’s other name), the twelve gates of heaven in the Book of Revelation, and so on.  Whatever the reason, today’s story is set in the midst of some pretty stupendous goings-on:  first the witnessing by the apostles of the ascension of Jesus into heaven, followed by a number of days spent in prayer, and the ultimate event, the arrival of the Holy Spirit.

Sensing that the event we now call Pentecost required a full complement of witnesses, during those days of prayer the eleven decided to find someone to fill the place of Judas.  The person selected should be a former follower of John the Baptist, a consistent witness to Jesus’ ministry, and a witness to Jesus’ resurrection.  The apostles selected two individuals, one with a legacy of respectable names:  Joseph called Barsabbas also called Justus, and the second one called Matthias.  Apparently the two men presented excellent credentials, and the apostles were stymied as to the selection they should make.

For the moment put yourself into the sandals of those men.  Although each had followed Jesus from the time Jesus presented himself to John the Baptist through the days of ministry, through the passion and resurrection, neither had been called by Jesus to be one of the twelve apostles.  Did either want to be?  What was the advantage to being a known member of a group of people marked as followers of Jesus, preaching unbelievable happenings to sometimes unbelieving crowds, although Jews by birth and tradition somehow beginning to doubt the restriction of salvation to Jews alone, somehow beginning to suspect that the way things would turn out wasn’t what had always been anticipated?  Those apostles, after all, were not exactly members of an elite country club.  Nor did they sit on boards of powerful corporations.  Yet, apparently, both Justus and Matthias accepted their “nomination” to become an apostle, at the same time knowing that only one would be chosen.  Or to put it another way, knowing that one of them would not be chosen.

This is where each of us can identify with Justus and Matthias.  How many times have you put yourself into a situation in which you could come out the apparent loser?  Did you apply to a college, not sure you would get in?  Did you apply for a job not knowing what the odds were?  Did you run for class office?  Did you apply for an apartment, or a mortgage?  Did you seek membership in a club or civic group?  Did you try out for a sports team?  In general, did you ever put yourself on the line to reach a goal?  But of course you did.

Now here comes the interesting part:  the phrase “they cast lots for them.”  The casting of lots is an event appearing frequently throughout the Bible.  The process was used to make decisions falling into certain categories:  those involving the making of a just decision, a resolution of a dispute between two strong parties to avoid strife, and the seeking of Divine guidance for an appointment of a person to some office or the selection of an entity for some part of a ceremony.  So the apostles were familiar with the process as a means of seeking God’s help when faced with a difficult decision, one for which no apparent solution was evident.

The casting of lots was not a matter of voting.  Rather it was more akin to tossing a coin, heads Justus becomes the new twelfth apostle, tails Matthias does.  As we know, the coin came up tails, and Matthias became the “winner.”  The advantage to the process was the certainty on the part of all that God indeed had chosen Matthias.  From another standpoint, the advantage to the process was the certainty on the part of all, including Justus, that God had not chosen Justus.

Some questions arise.  The first is—what became of Justus?  We don’t know, because there are no further references to him in the Bible as we know it.  For that matter, though, there is no further mention of Matthias.  Apparently the point of this story in Acts is not to introduce us to the new Apostle, Matthias, whose adventures we will follow in the stories ahead, nor is it to introduce us to Justus so that we might profit from his example in stories to follow.  Neither man merits further attention.

Then why the story?  Some scholars argue that the purpose of the story is the process that is outlined for making the selection.  Criteria are set for certain roles in the new church, and a process is outlined that implies that even though candidates may be equal in their qualifications, God’s choice can be divined by prayer and the casting of lots. Today the latter has taken the form of actual voting, supposedly inspired by the Spirit whose help has been sought in prayer.  As our diocese moves forward in the process of electing a new bishop, we will hear more about the role of prayer and discernment in the selection of that person.

Finally, what about the rest of us?  Are we not the Justuses of the world?   We have not been called to ordained ministry, yet we are faithful witnesses to the ministry, passion, resurrection, ascension of Jesus, and we proclaim the coming of the Holy Spirit. We take risks in this witnessing, risks that at times don’t lead us in the direction anticipated.  We look for the good in whatever outcomes we experience.  Sometimes the college we didn’t get into resulted in our experiencing a much better education in another institution of higher learning.  Sometimes the job we didn’t get led to employment in an area more suited to us.  Sometimes the mortgage we were denied led us to another choice of residence in which we lived very happily.

Right.  But what about the other times?  This is where it helps to realize that just as Matthias could take comfort in the fact that God and not humans has chosen him as the replacement for Judas, so Justus could take comfort in the fact that God had not chosen him.  Having lived so intensely as a Christian during the past three years, that certainty and comfort probably came easy to Justus.  Sometimes that comfort and certainty doesn’t come easily to us.  Those are the times when we need to reaffirm our credentials as apostles:  witnesses to and participants in the ministry of Jesus, the passion, resurrection, ascension of Jesus, and receivers of the Holy Spirit.  As we rejoice in the selection of Matthias, we also rejoice in the non-selection of Justus, knowing that we are protected in Jesus’s name, through the word of God and the coming of the Spirit.

The usual argument for the first is that it is necessary to prevent some potential major attack and loss of life.  Even if this were true – and in the real world it’s not – the use of torture is still immoral.  Actually, it’s been shown quite conclusively that torture is not an effective technique for obtaining information.  Lots of info, some good and useful, some bad, and no way to tell the difference; lots of innocent people tortured; lots more people hate you.  At one time Israel engaged in torture – but then gave it up as not effective.  Israel is pretty efficient in this sort of thing and isn’t particularly concerned with what the rest of the world thinks so this is a pretty good indication of tortures lack of utility.

This of course brings up the question of WHY?  Why did Cheney and Bush and the CIA people go this way?  The ineffectiveness of torture as a means for gathering information has been widely acknowledged for a good long time so why do it?  What  do you expect to gain?  Are you just looking for statements to justify a course of action that can’t be justified by honest and rational means?

The second use of torture (and some of the specific techniques) has a long history.  It seems the Romans had a rule that you couldn’t execute someone for a crime unless they confessed….  Later, during the Inquisition, the church used some very brutal techniques (including a variation on waterboarding) to get confessions from witches and Jews (some history here).  In more recent times the Soviets used techniques such as sleep deprivation to get people to confess to “crimes.”  With these techniques you can break any person so that they’ll confess to anything – even if they know that their confession is a death sentence;  implicate anyone; in the end even believe in their own guilt.

Subtle forms of these techniques are not unknown in our enlightened society.  For example, police have been known to make up their mind that a person is guilty of a crime and then work very hard at obtaining a confession.  For example, here in Connecticut Richard Lapointe has been in prison since 1989 for a murder he probably did not commit.  Lapointe has mental issues, is gullible and wants to please authority; in a 9 hour unrecorded interrogation he gave the police and prosecutors the confession they wanted.  Unfortunately, police and prosecutors do not like to admit their mistakes….

If conditions designed to destroy someone mentally break someone’s mind are considered torture then add Supermax prisons to the list of instruments of torture.

What got me thinking about this dismal subject was a depressing piece by David Ignatius, “How Obama’s Decision Hurt the CIA.”  The main point seems to be that the poor CIA guys can’t do their job effectively because they’re too busy trying to cover their butts.   Stuff like

“One former officer told me he declined the job, not because he thought the program was wrong, but because he knew it would blow up. “We all knew the political wind would change eventually,” he recalled. Other officers who didn’t make that cynical but correct calculation are now “broken and bewildered,” says the former operative.”

Ignatius is even worried that our allies in torture, Egypt and Jordan, won’t want to handle our torture outsourcing anymore,

“risk is too high to do the things with America they’ve done in the past.”

The comments that go along with the piece mostly are as bad or worse.

Depressing.  The moral issues seem to be considered too irrelevant to even mention.  But morality does matter and it does have some very clear commandments – one of them is thou shalt not torture!  International law also is very clear – torture is illegal;  the order to torture is an illegal order.  Both are subject to prosecution.  The Nuremberg Defense – “I was only following orders” – is not a valid defense.

Morality certainly is an issues in the Muslim world and the perceived immorality of the West is a major driving force in Muslim anger.  That the US both practiced and outsourced torture is not exactly news to most of the world.  The question now is what next?  Should there be prosecution – after all serious crimes usually are punished?  Or should we just forget the whole thing and promise that we’ll play nice from now on?  Perhaps the “truth and reconciliation” approach?  However, that requires the admission of guilt and the desire for forgiveness;  hard to picture Cheney in that role!

John Robb just posted “TORTURE AND MORAL ISOLATION” on his in Global Guerrillas blog.  He makes the point that morality is important for very practical reasons.

“In short, a primary objective of US grand strategy should be to increase its connectivity within the moral sphere. The embrace of torture does exactly the opposite.  It self-inflicts moral isolation on the US by violating codes of conduct we profess to uphold.  This moral isolation creates an internal dialogue plagued by mistrust, menace, and uncertainty.”