The fallacy of the "independent thinker"

There must have been a time when the expression “Think outside the box” meant something. I’m not quite sure, because many expressions that have passed into and out of corporate-speak seem to have been crafted to obscure, if not drain, meaning from a statement.

From my experience, the cliché once captured the idea of changing one’s perspective or approach to problem-solving as a means to achieving a goal. No matter how fecund a particular style of management or problem-solving normally is for you, occasionally you find a situation where it doesn’t produce results easily, if at all. Or, it may work for a while but lose its effectiveness over time. Or it can lead to a lot of wasted time and resources chasing avenues of approach into blind alleys. As one writer put it (back in the days of the typewriter), “Some days the words won’t come; other days, they can’t get to the wastebasket fast enough.”

A multinational (small) business

The mainstream media seems to have a problem with translations. In his ongoing battle with the press over recent allegations against Pope Benedict XVI, the papal spokesman, Fr. Federico Lombardi, stated, “The Catholic Church is not a multinational corporation.”

At least, that’s what he would have said had he been speaking English. Alas, he was speaking Italian. Impresa—“firm, business”—was translated as “entity”. The resulting phrase made it look as if good Fr. Federico was making the Church something local.

The crucifixion of the Pope

I suppose, given that the furor has been going on for over a week, I should comment on the scandal of the New York Times.

No, I didn’t miswrite that. The scandal I’m addressing is the insane allegations and factual misrepresentations by the Times concerning Pope Benedict's alleged involvement in a Wisconsin case of priestly sexual misconduct. The scandal I’m addressing is the failure of the Times’ editors to impose any kind of substantive journalistic standards of fair, accurate and unbiased reportage. The scandal I’m addressing is the (sadly successful) attempt by reporter Laurie Goodstein to create a cover-up of a scandal out of whole cloth, to charge protection of an abusive priest where none was offered, and to lay the blame for these notional outrages upon Pope Benedict XVI.

Here are the salient facts of the matter:

After twenty-four years of ministry at St. John’s School for the Deaf in Milwaukee, Father Lawrence Murphy was under investigation by the local authorities for sexually assaulting some of the minors in his charge, possibly as many as 200, although Fr. Murphy later only admitted to abusing 19. It should be stressed that there was never any accusation by the district attorney’s office or the police that the Archdiocese of Milwaukee was anything less than cooperative, nor was there  any allegation by victims that they were pressured or bribed into silence by Church officials.

No cover-up there.

Bringing philosophy to a new low

It must be a requirement among the new breed of atheist spokespersons to not know what they’re talking about.

Sam Harris—who is presented as a philosopher, and for all I know may very well have a degree in philosophy—recently told CNN: “We should be talking about real problems, like nuclear proliferation and genocide and poverty and the crisis in education. … These are issues which tremendous swings in human well-being depend on. And it’s not at the center of our moral concern. … Religion has convinced us that there’s something else entirely other than concerns about suffering. There’s concerns about what God wants, there’s concerns about what’s going to happen in the afterlife. And, therefore, we talk about things like gay marriage as if it’s the greatest problem of the 21st century. We even have a liberal president who ostensibly is against gay marriage because his faith tells him it’s an abomination. It’s completely insane.”

On intelligence

I was reading The Anchoress’ recent flaying of House Speaker Nancy Pelosi over the latter’s invocation of St. Joseph onto the side of the pro-health care forces—and a terrific rant it is, worthy of Al Pacino—when, in the comments, I ran across a reference to a recent study presumably showing liberals to have a higher IQ than conservatives.

Even before I found a CNN.com article about the study, I knew three things automatically: 1) The study wouldn’t show anything like a dramatic difference between the two averages; 2) the study would have things to say about intelligence and liberalism/atheism that went counter to the surface appearance; and 3) people who suffer from a particular form of idiocy would only care to know that the difference exists and “favors” them.

Big T, little t

I’ve mentioned my first blog before, which was called, with stunning originality, “In My Humble Opinion”. I was able to update it twice a week for awhile; but then as my financial situation started demanding more overtime work just to stay reasonably poor, updates came with less frequency, until it died out about the end of 2004. (Unfortunately, since it was part of the now-defunct “AOL Hometown”—and since a virus wiped out my main hard drive—I no longer have any copies of the opinions I wrote back then.)

Between then and the first post of this blog, when my friends and I were discussing my starting again, I admitted that IMHO was too common a name or expression to stand out. (I was already considering “Outside the Asylum”, as an ironic reference to the late comedy-fantasy writer Douglas Adams’ wonderful book So Long, and Thanks For All the Fish … the irony enhanced by the fact that Adams himself was an atheist.) One of my friends, Larry, suggested I call the as-yet-unborn blog “Big T little t”. This was a very obscure reference to a long night of coffee and Deep Thinking many years ago, when to distinguish between certain kinds of reality we chose to separate the objective from the subjective by the clumsy verbal distinctions “big-T Truth” and “little-t truth”.

On repentance

 Strangely enough, Ash Wednesday is not a holy day of obligation for Catholics. Even fifty years ago (as far as I can tell), when observation by Mass attendance was near-universal, it wasn’t required although it was strongly urged. Nowadays it seems bearing the Sign as a dark smudge on your forehead sets you apart not just as a Catholic but as that most exotic of birds, a traditionalist (or “trad”) Catholic.

Well, not really, since even Vice-President Joe Biden, held to be a “cafeteria Catholic” because of his pro-choice voting record, sported a thumbprint-like mark on TV this week. And observance isn’t strictly limited to Catholics, though it isn’t common at all among free-church Protestants. But it’s safe to say that Ash Wednesday observance is notably absent to those who have any memory predating the death of Paul VI.

Evangelizing the workplace?

I recently got a text message from a high-school acquaintance I reconnected with on Facebook. I'm not much of a texter myself, as it's often simpler (and cheaper) just to call the person and talk rather than spend the time and money on text messages. But occasionally it serves a purpose, so I prefer to have the function; my new phone has a full QWERTY keyboard, since I don't have the hang of abbreviations.

Kurt is a born-again Evangelical who likes to "thrash Scripture". His message read: how r u coming w/ ur witness @ work?

I didn't have an answer for him.

The closing of the cafeteria

I’ve said before—in fact, I said it last March—that it seems nowadays the only debates religious issues hang on have to do with sex and reproduction. Yes, it gets tiresome. I for one am not so obsessed with abortion, gay marriage and celibacy that I can’t talk about anything else. For instance, I was going to embark on a series of counterarguments to common atheist attacks … until life intervened.

But because the Catholic Church takes such a prominent position against gay marriage, and because that particular issue is cropping up in the news more often, it creates interesting ripples and reflections that bear comment. More to the point, the fact that gay marriage does take up more talking-heads time in the culture factories means that it can springboard sidebar discussions of other topics.

March for Life 2010: How the MSM missed the bus

There’s an interesting YouTube clip on Tom Peter’s American Papist site. The video shows the March for Life 2010 in Washington, DC.

For the most part, you didn’t hear about the March for Life from the mainstream media. So far as any were looking, they were focused on the handful of pro-choice people standing forlornly on the steps of the Supreme Court, holding the blue “Keep Abortion Legal” signs they have been holding for the last 37 years.