New Orleans -- First Draft

One of the things I said to Betty Duffy, during one of our thirteen-hour car rides, was that I didn't post often because it takes me so damn long to write anything. "I have to write a finished post, and it takes forever," I said eloquently. And Betty talked about drafts and polishing, but I say, never mind the polishing. What you see is what I'm pouring out -- the first draft.

I am in love with New Orleans. I love the architecture, the huge mansions on St. Charles Ave. which still manage to maintain a dainty Southern charm despite being built on massive foundations of money. I love the cobblestones peeking out from under a threadbare blanket of asphalt. I love the American vernacular of the city: not quite mediterranean, not quite French. Given its age and history, it's one of the few American cities that has never tried to imitate New York City.

We were there, of course, for the Walker Percy Conference at Loyola University, which was just perfect. I have been to but one academic conference, and this was it. I am told that academic conferences can be quite insular, but this one, being in its the first year, in fact), was open to all comers, both attending and speaking. Academics and amateurs spoke on the same panels and hobnobbed most collegially. Darwin and I probably had the most fun of anyone attending: we came with a built-in social set, and we didn't have the stress of presenting a paper. I asked questions and started discussions at panels, and no one told me that I didn't have the standing to comment, or that I didn't know what I was talking about. It was like having all the fun of college with none of the bother.  I discussed some of my areas of interest with the director of the conference, and she urged us to present our own paper at the next conference. Mark your calendars in two years' time, for MrsDarwin's academic debut, entitled (what else?) An Actor Prepares: Binx Bolling channels Stanislavski, complete with staged scenes.

But the fun started with car trip. 5:45 am is a bad time to discover a flat tire, but the drama was minimal. If Betty was agitated, she didn't show it, and the spare was applied with no casualties and little mess. We made it down to Tennessee driving well over the car manual's cautionary estimate of no more than 50 mph while Driving With Spare. In Nashville, while the car sat at the tire shop, we were hosted by Jordana, who has the most gracious bungalow and the bluest eyes, and whose children showed to absolutely best advantage in their mix of erudition and goofing off, and all this on a few short hours' notice.

One of the best elements of the weekend was rediscovering how well online friendship translates into real life. This was a theme repeated all weekend. Betty and Darwin and Jordana and I sat in the living room and talked like people who'd known each other for years. In New Orleans, I embraced Dorian like a lost sister -- we'd met before, which made the reunion even more delightful, but our friendship began online.  Our group was kicked out of the hotel courtyard one night (and given a warning the second night) for being too raucous, a by-product of being too vinous. I'm not sure that any virtual conversation could top navigating down Bourbon Street with Matthew Lickona and his wife on our way to dinner, or toasting each other in the ancient brick-paved courtyard of the prestigious restaurant in the French Quarter, the ambiance of which was only slightly marred by the boldness of the rats who anticipated closing time by making brazen forays out of the foliage. And what could be more memorable, and less comfortable, than jouncing across Lake Pontchartrain in the back of a schoolbus with Potter and Jobe and the other cool kids after a foray to Walker Percy's grave? We didn't drink in the back of the bus (the spirit was willing, but the liquor laws weren't) but that was the exception. In front of the computer you drink alone; in New Orleans you drink with Lickona.

And then it was time to go. Betty noted that we drove thirteen hours with nary a fart between us, but even more notable was that we went thirteen hours without a silence. The talk was varied and ranging, from rearing savvy but innocent children to inside blog baseball. It was like conversational heaven, only in heaven you don't have to bounce for ten miles driving through deepest Mississippi looking for a bathroom. Then we were staggering back into our house at 2am, having delivered Grandma from five days' custody of her energetic grandchildren (who were more than ready to transfer that combined energy force back against their parents). Party was over, and the warmth of New Orleans was only a pleasant memory which fluttered weakly against the Ohio chill.

And I'm not going to sit here with a first draft and shake my brain until some clever bit of summation falls out. I could sit and polish this thing, or I could go to bed and dream of New Orleans. Nighty-night, ya'll.

Too Hot To Handle

There is little more dull than hearing others recite their perceived slights, and so I was at first unsure if I should bother posting about this. Still, it may be very mildly interesting to others, and as a cached browser managed to return to me that which I had strongly believed to have been lost, I thought I might as well get a post out of the situation.

Blogger David Wheeler has a post the other day over at Vox Nova, in which he talked about the difficulties he had as the liaison between his parish council and the Cincinnati Archdiocese on "green" topics.

I don’t know why, but my parish approached me last year about becoming the parish liaison between our parish council committee and the Archdiocese of Cincinnati’s Task Force on Climate Change. I guess it had something to do with the fact that I drive a Prius and use Buckeye Eco-Care on my lawn. But, honestly, I don’t know…

After a few meetings in Cincinnati, I finally had the opportunity to report back to our parish about what we as a parish are being asked to do about global warming by the hierarchy in the Church.

The gist is that several people on the parish council reacted very negatively to the diocese's suggestion that they become a flagship "green" parish, with solar panels, etc. Wheeler was frustrated that there was so much opposition to this, as he sees the command to be good stewards of the earth as a moral one.

Having spent time on a parish council, and feeling like I was able to give a fair approximation of why more conservative Catholics had trouble with the green=moral line of thinking, I left the following comment, and received the following response:

DarwinCatholic says:

May 26, 2010 at 12:43 pm

David,

FWIW, I would imagine that for many on the parish council who objected to the idea of being a “flagship green parish”, it seemed to them that that recommendation represented a tendency to focus on politics rather than morality. (And yes, I agree that the “how about if we frame greenness as supporting our troops” idea was downright moronic.)

As for why many “conservative” Catholics are not more eager to lead in applying environmentalism and other social teachings — and speaking as something of an insider to the conservative approach in this case — I think it has a lot to do with people finding it hard to envision environmentalism in the sort of moral terms they are used to. What most Catholics active in their parish are concerned about are basics of personal morality: don’t lie, don’t steal, don’t cheat, don’t use violence unjustly, don’t have sex before marriage, don’t get divorced, don’t commit adultery, don’t use porn, don’t use birth control, don’t have an abortion, etc. The moral framing of these rules is simple and clear: Action X is wrong because it violates natural and moral principle Y.

Environmental concerns seem harder to fit into that kind of formulation, especially because they seem so relative. So using rechargeable batteries is “more moral” than using one-use ones. But is it even more moral simply not to use the sound system? Does plugging in and recharging the batteries really use much less resources than buying new ones? Is using a solar panel more moral than using the electric grid? Is just setting the A/C to 80 instead of 76 better than using the solar panels, since after all building solar panels themselves is a messy and energy consuming process, which the panels themselves may not actually prevent enough pollution to justify?

These are all very relative trade-off discussions, and so while I think you would probably get little disagreement from most conservative Catholics that “be good stewards of God’s creation” is a moral law, most would not tend to see the choice between disposeable and rechargeable batteries as a moral choice, with one option being sinful and the other virtuous.

I think also, for political reasons, people are often concerned that there’s something very mee-too-ish about showy “green” measures by churches. Almost as if to say to a segment of society, “Sure, I know you disapprove of what we say about marriage and birth control and abortion — but look, we’ll be pretty quiet about that and talk about solar panels instead! Do we fit in now?”

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drdwheelerreed says:

May 26, 2010 at 1:04 pm

Good thoughts DarwinCatholic… but this brings me back to what my colleague said, “If we Catholic would’ve just obeyed our Scriptural mandate to take care of the earth… then these discussion would be irrelevant… we wouldn’t even be having them…”

David

Later in the day, when I checked back, I saw the above, plus a number of other comments, including several from a conservative commenter questioning whether there was in fact a scientific consensus over global warming, and Wheeler's responses to those comments, which cited Al Gore's writing several times. I left the following reply:

DarwinCatholic says:

May 26, 2010 at 5:16 pm

but this brings me back to what my colleague said, “If we Catholic would’ve just obeyed our Scriptural mandate to take care of the earth… then these discussion would be irrelevant… we wouldn’t even be having them…”

Well, this assumes a couple of things. For instance, I doubt that many people say, “If I thought we had a duty to take care of the earth, I would do so, but since we don’t I’m going to actively work to trash it.” Most people probably argue that they do a moderately good job of taking care of the earth, and it’s not entirely clear that some of the most popular “green” activities (building wind farms, putting up solar panels, driving hybrids) are necessarily less hard on the environment than simply using less. For instance, though China has an absolutely terrible record in regards to pollution (example) the fact that China is overall much poorer than the US means that the average Chinese actually has far less impact on the environment than the average US environmentalist. And similarly, Al Gore’s lifestyle is much more polluting than mine — though he buys “carbon offsets” and I don’t.

Nor is human impact on the environment a result only of technology. Humans were pretty clearly responsible for the extinction of a large number of species in Europe, America and Australia in the period 20-40 thousand years ago, and the combination of deforestation and soil exhaustion is believed to be a major cause of the “dark age” at the end of the Bronze Age around 1000 BC.

“And Global warming IS the scientific consensus.”

False.

That has not been proven beyond a reasonable doubt, beyond scientific scrutiny.

I think, Theresa, one can certainly argue about how much of global warming is actually caused by human activity (rather than natural cycles), to what extent continuing emissions trends will actually impact the climate (or whether natural dampening factors will kick in), and to what extent the amounts of change that we are likely, as a society, to be able to achieve would make any difference in the trend. However, I don’t think we can really deny that there is a scientific consensus, at this time, among those in the field, that global warming is real.

That said, scientific consensus and reality do not have a one to one correlation by any stretch, and many environmental advocates (Al Gore very much an offender in this regard) tend to distort the scientific consensus in order to make it more exciting and serve their own ends.

As you can clearly see, something is going on… something is causing the snow and ice to melt.

This is DATA, what used to be accepted among critical thinkers as FACTS! Today, opinion has become God, and facts, well… I guess we don’t use Reason anymore… maybe we don’t even use Faith…

The point is… you can disagree with global warming, but you’ve got to come up with an alternative to why glaciers are melting… and you’ve got to come up with an alternative as to what we’re going to do about it!

While your passion is admirable, it is at times the argument of amateurs that gives a movement a bad name. For instance, in regards to questions like “Why are the glaciers melting” someone can simply point out that through the majority of the history of life on earth there have not been glaciers. We are, still, at a period of abnormally high glaciation compared to Earth’s overall norm — an interglacial period in an ice age. And Earth has, at times, sustained CO2 levels significantly higher than what we currently have, with no damage to it as a planet. Compared to other disasters that have afflicted life on this planet (Permian/Triassic extinctions, KT impact, etc.) the effects of human civilization on this planet are as nothing.

Further, some popular environmentalists (such as Al Gore) tend to make statements about weather effects and speed of climate change which are drastically out of keeping with anything the IPCC puts out. For instance, claims that “catastrophic weather” has gotten worse because of global warming are very, very hard to sustain by any real data.

What should, however, concern people is not that we will destroy “the planet” but that our civilization as currently organized relies on the earth’s climate patterns not changing very much, regardless of whether than change is natural or anthropocentric. Comparatively sudden changes could result in widespread displacement or hunger, if they came, regardless of their origin. But the planet, qua planet, will be just fine.

Several hours later, both of those comments of mine had been deleted, and the thread closed, though oddly enough his reply to me remains in place. I'm not really sure why the comments suddenly were perceived to cross that threshold over which blog owners feel they cannot allow people to tread. But if nothing else it does certainly seem to be an example of how touchy people can become once they start demanding that people "look at the facts" and explain them.

The renewal of your minds

Do not conform yourselves to this age but be transformed by the renewal of your mind, that you may discern what is the will of God, what is good and pleasing and perfect. --Romans 12:2

I wish I could remember where I read about the Muslim converts to Christianity who, when asked what inspired them to convert, said that they had fallen in love with the person of Jesus. His gentleness and patience, His erudition and intelligence, His love -- Jesus Himself was the force that led them to break with Islam and take the dangerous step of converting. In Great Books, David Denby (who describes himself as a not that observant Jew) reads the Gospels and is struck by his first real encounter with Jesus. He is amazed at His vivid personality, His quick wit and self-possession, and how easy it is to love Him. Although he encounters other Christian thought in his re-reading of the Great Books of western civilization, they don't strike him with the same force as a direct encounter with Jesus.

A few months ago a dear friend observed to me, about the Catholic blogsphere, that she rarely saw any mention of Jesus. Plenty of internal doctrinal baseball; plenty of liturgical spats; some devotional stuff; some Marian reflections; but not much meditation on Jesus Himself. I don't know if anyone reading my writing would feel that he'd just had an encounter with Jesus. I feel certain that Joe Citizen, surfing the 'net, stumbling across Catholics arguing amongst themselves about politics or economics or liturgy, would not recognize that Jesus was there in their midst. Where is the "renewal of your minds"? Where is the sharp wit without cruelty or self-absorption? Where is Jesus?

I think there is a place for snark: writing without wit is thick porridge, and Jesus himself showed up the Pharisees on more than one occasion. Too often, though, snark devolves into fisking and point-scoring and one-upsmanship that ceases to serve any purpose than to salve the ego of the snarker. Without underlying charity, snark is no more than a "resounding gong or a clashing cymbal" (1 Cor. 13:1), pure noise.

I particularly enjoyed the recent exchange between Pentimento, responding to a post about single mothers with charity and mercy, and Embrethelil, who illuminates her original posting without defensiveness or rancor. This kind of discussion, in which the principals enlarge and examine their positions with neither biting personal jabs nor mutual saccharine soppiness, is refreshing.

Another post I can't stop thinking about is Eric Brown's wrenching conversion story, in which he is drawn into the Church by Jesus Himself: "My focal interest was with the figure of our Lord, with Christology and soteriology—ecclesiology became an interest much later. I was obsessed with the Lord and I wanted to know everything about Him." Although he comes to accept the Church's authority to rule on matters of sexual morality and women's ordination, he writes that:

Strikingly, my comfort with dissent and the choice of others to dissent from church teaching not only assisted my conversion, it helped me to convert and ultimately become orthodox. If I had an inkling of suspicion that such matters were more than mere prevalent Christian opinions in a slowly evolving human world, but rather unchangeable teachings, I would not have been so content to focus my energies on other teachings—the ones that drew me in, which basically allowed me to come across everything I would need to know, so that when the time came, the teachings I did not want to accept, were acceptable because I would be able to see the relevance and the deep harmony of all the teachings with one another.

What drew him in was Love -- not the sharp, self-satisfied apologetics practiced on the internet.

Some American Catholic Highlights

If you haven't yet become a regular of The American Catholic, but enjoy a bit of Darwin political commentary every so often, you might want to check out:

"Preferential Option for the Middle Class?", on how both political parties strive to buy elections by pouring benefits on the middle class.

"Abortion Will Not Go Away", on how outlawing abortion would not end it -- and why we should outlaw it anyway.

and

"The Scary Thing Is, We Really Mean It" on the growing rift between beltway and flyover conservatives.

Also strongly recommended is:

"Humanity Without Limits" by Zach on the dangers of a society where every form of "progress" is seen as not only possible a very nearly a right.

"Tom Cruise, First-Rate Philosopher" by Chris Burgwald -- you'll have to click through to see what lies behind that delightful title.

And a heartwarming story about a Protestant and a rosary by Donald McClarey.

Faceless Conversations

Kyle of Postmodern Papist has a post about the facelessness of blogging, and how the sense that one is not talking to a "real person" with a face seems inevitably to lead some people to behave much more beligerantly in the blogsphere than they would in real life.

It was occurring to me the other day that my online activities tend to fill gaps that I experience, from time to time, in my face-to-face existence.

I'd spent a fair amount of time on the early text-only forums and in long term email discussions back in the early-to-mid-nineties, when I was in high school -- to a great extent because my closest friends (those I could have intellectual conversations with) had moved away. During college, I pretty much completely abandoned the internet. But then afterwards, I gradually found myself slipping back into the habit, first on various forums, and later in the blogsphere. MrsDarwin and I, of course, talk all the time, about many of the same topics that end up gracing these "pages". But as our growing family and that of our friends results in our often not getting the chance to get together with other adult friends for a couple weeks at a time, the desire to find other means of conversation is strong.

In this regard, the faceless medium can (with the moral discipline to avoid flamewars) be a benefit in that one is able to toss out subjects for discussion which would be considered rude or threatening among any but the most intimate friends in real life. And indeed, there is a pleasant real-life follow through to such discussions, in that on the occasions that we have had the chance to get together with other bloggers in person, conversation tends to be easy and free even for those who write frequently about their introversion.