Settling in with the new laptop today, making all the fiddly adjustment settings away from the defaults that I’ve lived with for years on my previous device. It’s a decent exercise to re-examine why I made those changes. And to wonder, how have I accumulated so many files that it takes a 1 TB flash drive to back them all up? (Part of the answer: I have complete backups of the locusmag.com site, up until 2017 or so; of sfadb.com; and of markrkelly.com.)
Problems: this new Windows 11 laptop does not recognize the cheap external CD/DVD drive I bought, so I’m still unable to install my old 1996 version of Paint Shop Pro. Another minor irritant: whereas in Windows 10 I could move the Windows taskbar anywhere I wanted — top, left, bottom, right — Windows 11 sticks it across the bottom, while I’ve been used to it across the top. (Why would they *take away* functionality, I wonder.) Also, the new laptop doesn’t recognize its own camera to allow me to log in without typing in my PIN. Hope these and other things will work themselves out eventually. (Apparently the new laptop’s touchscreen allows me to long in with a thumbprint. I’ll have to try that out.)
Just a couple items today.
Paul Krugman, NYT, 7 Sep 2023: ‘I’m OK, but Things Are Terrible’
Yet another piece about how statistics about the economy are good, yet most people think the economy is bad, despite their personal circumstances. Why are people so disconnected from reality? Because community and tribalism trumps reality, I suspect.
When I first began writing about the disconnect between public economic perceptions and what appeared to be economic reality, I got a lot of pushback, of two distinct kinds.
First, there was the argument that there were real economic problems that justified public negativity. People really hate inflation, even if their incomes are keeping up, and a year ago real wages were still somewhat depressed. But at this point inflation is way down and real wages are up.
Second, there was the argument that, in effect, the customer is always right: If people feel that they’re doing badly, you should figure out why, not lecture them that they should be feeling better.
But here’s the funny thing: There’s substantial evidence that people don’t feel that they personally are doing badly. Both surveys and consumer behavior suggest, on the contrary, that while most Americans feel that they’re doing OK, they believe that the economy is doing badly, where “the economy” presumably means other people.
Krugman steps through layers of evidence, but offers no explanation. He ends:
Now Biden administration officials are trying hard to sell their economic accomplishments, as they should — if they don’t, who will? But will public opinion turn around? Nobody knows. We’re living in a world in which what people believe may have little to do with facts, including the facts of their own lives.
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Greta!
AlterNet, Greta Christina, 7 Sep 2023: Opinion | ‘How can you be moral?’: Here are 9 questions you don’t need to ask an atheist
Greta Christina is a relatively aggressive atheist who wrote a book a decade ago that I reviewed here, called Why Are You Atheists So Angry?: 99 Things That Piss Off the Godless. I haven’t seen much of her lately (the photo here is not her; it’s an illustration for the piece), until this piece that I saw today (though it was posted yesterday), with another litany about the naive, even stupid, things the faithful think about those who are not. Beginning with the question in the title — “how can you be moral?”. The answer to that one is the innate morality that has evolved in the human species that survived because it enables groups of humans to live together and cooperate. A subject I’ve discussed many times before, having read about it in my different books. But this is too complicated an explanation for many ordinary people, who suppose that in order to be moral, you need to follow some kind of list, as of commandments; otherwise you wouldn’t know good from bad. This goes also to the hierarchy of morality: the most simplex minded think no one would know good or bad without having a list of rules written down in some holy book.
I’ll quote Greta on this point, at some length. She raises basic questions that the faithful can never answer.
1: “How can you be moral without believing in God?”
The answer: Atheists are moral for the same reasons believers are moral: because we have compassion, and a sense of justice. Humans are social animals, and like other social animals, we evolved with some core moral values wired into our brains: caring about fairness, caring about loyalty, caring when others are harmed.
If you’re a religious believer, and you don’t believe these are the same reasons that believers are moral, ask yourself this: If I could persuade you today, with 100% certainty, that there were no gods and no afterlife… would you suddenly start stealing and murdering and setting fire to buildings? And if not — why not? If you wouldn’t… whatever it is that would keep you from doing those things, that’s the same thing keeping atheists from doing them. (And if you would — remind me not to move in next door to you.)
And ask yourself this as well: If you accept some parts of your holy book and reject others — on what basis are you doing that? Whatever part of you says that stoning adulterers is wrong but helping poor people is good; that planting different crops in the same field is a non-issue but bearing false witness actually is pretty messed-up; that slavery is terrible but it’s a great idea to love your neighbor as yourself… that’s the same thing telling atheists what’s right and wrong. People are good — even if we don’t articulate it this way — because we have an innate grasp of the fundamental underpinnings of morality: the understanding that other people matter to themselves as much as we matter to ourselves, and that there is no objective reason to act as if any of us matters more than any other. And that’s true of atheists and believers alike.
Why you shouldn’t ask it: This is an unbelievably insulting question. Being moral, caring about others and having compassion for them, is a fundamental part of being human. To question whether atheists can be moral, to express bafflement at how we could possibly manage to care about others without believing in a supernatural creator, is to question whether we’re even fully human.
And you know what? This question is also hugely insulting to religious believers. It’s basically saying that the only reason believers are moral is fear of punishment and desire for reward. It’s saying that believers don’t act out of compassion, or a sense of justice. It’s saying that believers’ morality is childish at best, self-serving at worst. I wouldn’t say that about religious believers… and you shouldn’t, either.
She goes on like this. She’s great. She goes on with eight more questions, which I’ll only paraphrase:
- How do you have any meaning in your life?
- Doesn’t it take as much faith to be an atheist as it does to be a believer? (No)
- Isn’t atheism just another religion? (No)
- What’s the point of atheist groups?
- Why do you hate God? (We don’t)
- Haven’t you read the Bible? Heard about my personal religious experience?
- What if you’re wrong? (a version of Pascal’s Wager)
- Why are atheists so angry?
Here answers are good, even if I don’t think they go far enough. Believers always presume that their own personal lives, communities, and traditions, trump all the others in the world, without consideration of all the alternatives that have existed throughout history, or that might exist in the vastness of the universe that humans have perceived to exist. They are essentially egocentric.
But I’ll end with a couple paragraphs from the end of her piece.
The list of questions you shouldn’t ask atheists doesn’t end here. It goes on, at length. “How can you believe in nothing?” “Doesn’t atheism take the mystery out of life?” “Even though you don’t believe, shouldn’t you bring up your children with religion?” “Can you prove there isn’t a god?” “Did something terrible happen to you to turn you away from religion?” “Are you just doing this to rebel?” “Are you just doing this so you don’t have to obey God’s rules?” “If you’re atheist, why do you celebrate Christmas/ say ‘Bless you’ when people sneeze/ spend money with ‘In God We Trust’ on it/ etc.?” “Have you sincerely tried to believe?” “Can’t you see God everywhere around you?” “Do you worship Satan?” “Isn’t atheism awfully arrogant?” “Can you really not conceive of anything bigger than yourself?” “Why do you care what other people believe?”
But for now, I’ll leave these questions as an exercise for the reader. If you understand why all the questions I answered today are offensive and dehumanizing, I hope you’ll understand why these are as well.
