Chronicles of a danger-addict.

California Wine.

A year and half ago, I had planned on rooting myself deep into MooseJaw SK. Now that’s all in the air, or will take a bit of time, and God is asking me into darkness, into the unknown, into adventure and wandering, when I’ve wanted to be locked down and left alone. But no, I’ve past the complaining stage and am here, in California, ready for whatever it is and wherever it may lead (asking for it to take me back to Moose Jaw sooner than later).

I stayed with my pops in Fontana (Southern California, outside LA) from Nov- Dec (besides a few weeks in Hawaii, with my mom), then January back in Sask. Now I’ve spent a week in Utah, visiting family, A couple days in Arizona outside Phoenix, then Fontana for a week, and Now I’m up in Fairfield (Northern California), for a stint, and wondering where exactly to spend this next little bit.

A lot could be said about the last few months.

Today I’ll start with the fact that I’m trying some California wines. Its been a while since I’ve had them, spoiled with great wines brought from around the world to Saskatchewan from Doug Reichel himself.

Tonight I’m having a glass of Kendall-Jackson Sauvignon Blanc, 2006.

It’s OK, I guess, a bit unbalanced and thin, for my taste. We’ll see how it progresses.

At least i'm listing to Alan Jackson's Chattahoochee.

A little Card Trick. one of many.

summary of me: by you

Jenna:  "My summary of Tony, 'he just has bad jokes'"

We Are All Oppressed: part 1 of my Review of Richard Dawkins' The God Delusion

I'm on the fence right now.   I'm reading a bunch of books and thought i'd offer some thoughts on them.  Let's start with Richard Dawkins'  The God Delusion, since it's such huge hit.

I'll do a number of these, so this is just the start.

1.  We are all oppressed.

Richie Dawkins has made a name for himself, but so far it’s not in valid reasoning per se.  Distinguished philosophers shake their heads at his poplar “The God Delusion,” which contributes nothing to the Philosophy of Religion, the question of God, and seems to be unaware of the last 50 years or so of philosophy on the subject. 

But, I’ll get to that later, today is about his first chapters.

His early chapters only prove the hypothesis I’ve wondered on before: everyone thinks of themselves as oppressed. 

Growing up in a number of different groups, I saw how each group saw themselves as oppressed. When I became a christian, all we saw was how the large atheistic liberal agenda machine was slamming us around and oppressing our rights and our faith. Dawkins sees the tables as turned, and begs us to hear his weak cries through a large and horribly powerful Religious Agenda Machine that threatens the sane existence of intellectuals like himself.

If I hadn’t grown up as I did, I might be inclined to believe him.

Who is right - The oppressed atheists (who DO have to put up with a LOT), or the oppressed Christians (who DO have to put up with a LOT) ?

Sadly, religion does have that military-driven Islam on its side, which somehow finds men is suits to continue to appear on TV and claim it as a religion of peace - as if one man on TV (who is obviously quite westernized) counts more than the thousands holding signs threatening the murder of the entire western world; in downtown London even.

SideNote: Islam lived at peace with Christianity in many countries for many years... as long as they were in charge. But the point is that Christians were once quite safe within the borders of Istanbul, and today they are not.

Dawkins builds a series of Straw-men for his argument on God, beginning by attempting to paint his opponents as dangerous powerful idiots who must be stopped. The first stage is to set-up a situation where atheists, or those closet-creatures who are afraid to admit their doubt, are under the looming thumb of irrational religionists.  

It’s always good to be the underdog.

Atheists claim Religious people are privileged, and Religious people claim that the atheists are privileged.

Faith is a blinding, dangerous thing, I think. Whether you believe in God or your belief is that there is no God, and no meaning to life.

Either way you are likely to see yourself as oppressed. It’s part of our Post-Modern era. 

One of our key Post-Modern themes is that of suspicion, whether Gays are suspicious of being unjustly treated, or Women (look at the feminist Interpretations of the Bible), or the Atheists, or the Religious Right, or Blacks, or Middle-aged White Men, or Asian Women, or Mexican illegals, all Immigrants, the Rich, the Poor, all you need to do is to name a group and they all can read the same copy of Time magazine and find that their particular group or enclave is being maligned (they can all read the Bible the same way).  We are all quite suspicious... not just the feminists who see marriage as a way of man dominating women and imposing ‘traditional’ gender roles.

So... Who is right? Who is really oppressed?

Maybe we all are...       ...and in our fear of being oppressed, become oppressors. 

Toys and Interpretation Part 2

     An article in the Chronicle of Higher Education relates well to this thinking through of Toys and Interpretation.

The article was written by a sociology professor who applied for a job in a toy store. She wrote about her interview for the job as follows. The professor--a white, middle-aged woman--was interviewed by Olive, an African-American woman: 

"Olive told me that she wanted to hire motivated sellers who could provide excellent customer service. Although I didn't have any retail experience, I told her I thought I could do the job. Olive put three toys in front of me: a CD cartridge of a Lara Croft Tomb Raiders video game, a white Barbie in a bikini packaged inside a sand pail to take to the beach, and a black Barbie dressed in a 1970s outfit. Olive said, 'Pick one and sell it to me.' 
"I took a deep breath. In my other life I am a professor of sociology who specializes in gender and sexuality studies. Barbie has become a symbol of the postmodernist turn in gender studies; her cultural meaning has been deconstructed and reconstructed by a number of feminist theories. I devote an entire section of my course on sexuality to unpacking Barbie's cultural significance. But far from being helpful, those arguments paralyzed me. The complex race and gender politics of the situaltion--me, a white woman selling a black or a white Barbie to Olive--were simply overwhelming. 
"I said, 'Well, you don't have to sell Barbie: girls always want her (mentioning that I had read that the average 10-year-old girl owns eight of the dolls), so I will sell you the CD.' Lara Croft is not exactly a wholesome or apolitical alternative to Barbie. One of the earliest female icons of computer gaming, her long flowing hair, enormous breasts, and crack fighting skills set the standard for the dozens of imitators that followed. I said tha if we assumed Olive had a PlayStation she needed the game because it was the basis for a movie that had just opened. I also said that it was important for girls to be computer literate; as long as their parents approved of the content, girls should be exposed to the same computer games as boys so they could compete in the real world. 
"Olive shook my hand and told me I had the job!"

 --Christine Williams, Professor of Sociology at the University of Texas at Austin: an excerpt from her book "Inside Toyland: Working, Shopping, and Social Inequality," published by University of California Press

"you don't have to sell Barbie" 

I also wondered if you have to sell Tomb Raider, i mean boys don't mind playing an action game where there is a woman with enormous breasts, and girls love the empowerment of the "Action-Star Woman". 

I wonder what it means, that you don't have to sell Barbie. Besides the point that Barbie has achieved a high-enough popularity that it sells itself, i wonder why. Are their certain toys that capture an important part of every human's needs as they grow up. Do dolls help serve a certain purpose for little girls, of idenification, of longing to grow into something, of idolizing? 

Like toy guns, which, if you don't buy, boys will make (and make anyways) out of a fallen tree branch, or anything that can be held as a gun (like a banana) - Dolls can be a home-made device, and i'll bet were often made in the last 2 centuries. I'll bet there is a vast history of dolls on wikipedia somewhere, waiting for interested people to look up. 

Interesting how certain toys and games we play as kids act as a sort of preparation for later experiences in life.  I wonder how they can help/hurt our encounters in life, and how important it is to look ahead to experiences that will come later (like falling in Love, marriage, huge Kung-Fu fights) when we are kids playing with toys.   I wonder......