Blog Against Theocracy & Wingnuts & Religion Posted by spyder, 07 Apr 2007 06:50 am

Give me cognitive liberty or death

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For more than a decade, I have been a proponent, member, supporter, contributor, advocate, and activist for various groups including MAPS (Multidisciplinary Association for Psychedelic Studies), EFF (Electronic Frontier Foundation), and CCLE (Center for Cognitive Liberty and Ethics). At the core of my participation and activities has been my deeply held conviction that human beings share one absolute and essential core liberty: the freedom to think for themselves. Enlightenment philosophers, the “Founding Fathers” of the US, hell even Maslow—all recognized and acknowledged that the one constant in the expression of all human rights and liberties is cognitive freedom.

Among the various historical attacks upon cognitive liberty has been the repression of, and coercive violence against, freethinking by religious authorities. If the Spanish Inquisition doesn’t pop into your head, or the Taliban, then I suppose you are blissfully unaware of exemplars of these sorts of perpetrations and crimes against humanity. Religious leaders in the United States in the latter half of the 1800’s were able to successfully lobby Congress to pass laws prohibiting American Indians from celebrating and participating in their own religious activities. And so it goes on, and on.

Though I am not intentionally channeling Richard Dawkins and Daniel Dennett (both for whom I have deep respect), I propose that we do a grave injustice to the minds of our forthcoming seven generations when we allow, indeed insist, that religious leaders in the US demand that they be free to inculcate their theocratic beliefs in the minds of the children.

Hidden in the beauties of Babylon
The civilized behavioral notoriety
The more evil the empire
The more paranoid the society
Building to the new world order
We’re expected to carry the stone

Emperors and the feeding Class
Human beings being used up fast
The miners keep on mining
Intelligence is the mother-load
Imagination as an energy source
In this predators way of dining

Defining how and what we think
As we’re led to the way to believe
Conditioned reaction
We call thought
Our reality rides
In how we perceive

In the ways of being lost and alone
Who runs from their doubt and fear
In the mask of everything’s normal
Who’s not feeling or seeing too clear

Could be we’re being programmed
Anyway our spirit bleeds
All over our lives.
Our lives become fuel
For predator needs

Hidden in the beauties of Babylon
The civilized behavioral notoriety
The more evil the empire
The more paranoid the society

This John Trudell poem is my daily reminder that we cannot, must not, continue to allow our children’s minds to be mined for power and energy, especially by religions. It is the propagation and perpetuation of sectarian religious ideologies and creeds that are being mined from the minds of our nation’s children. They are fodder in the future battles of theocratically-driven agents whose sole duty and purpose is to expand their congregational flocks to control the destiny and future of the planet. Convert the children and they will become the soldiers of the future wars, guided not by service to their inalienable rights, but rather by their sworn allegiance to religious authority.

Do I really need to mention the Academy Award nominee documentary: JESUS CAMP? Good lordy, the promo enough should freak you out:

At a summer camp for Evangelical Christians, children have their faith reinforced and their ideology honed by the camp’s founder, Becky Fischer, whose stated objective is to “take back America for Christ.” Under Fischer’s tutelage, the children speak in tongues and pray for the appointment of pro-life Supreme Court justices.

This is just one particularly vulgar and obscene perversity in the assault on the minds of the children. It is not, unfortunately, an isolated case. Legal teams encourage religiously misguided youth to stage actions to establish claims against local and regional governmental agencies, particularly schools, hoping to erect protocols and precedents reinforcing the theocratic intentionality. Pastors and corporate ministers shout from their pulpits (bully ones on broadcast and cable networks) inflaming the faithful to push their children towards belief in some rapturous salvation, thereby increasing the willingness of the children to commit acts of violence and hideously-vile intolerance.

The children are being mined. We are allowing these sub-humans to drill into their minds and extract political, social, and economic power from them. And as with any other mining process, we create the waste and tailings. Children intentionally left behind, labeled with various syndromes and disorders simply because they refuse to be drilled to their spiritual and psychological cores by zealots bent on accumulation of power and wealth. I am pretty sure I read once that that guy Jesus said something about protecting and keeping from harm the children. Well his acolytes are doing a really terrible job at that.

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Responses to “Give me cognitive liberty or death”

  1. on 07 Apr 2007 at 10:11 am 1. christian h. said …

    I agree completely. I know Americans are very skeptical of state interference in their affairs, but I often wonder if the system here in the US doesn’t merely replace state interference - which underlies at least a small degree of democratic control - by interference of non-state actors, like Churches, corporations etc.. Add that to the fact that children’s minds are widely considered to be their parent’s property, and you have a problem.

  2. on 07 Apr 2007 at 11:07 am 2. jimmiraybob said …

    I agree with you but aving just made the following comment to a BAT Post at Hullabaloo (Tritsero Part II) I have to move that the term sub-human be reconsidered. Maybe anti-human would work and not be as eliminationist (of the individual). The comment was in response to another commentor asking how the Christian Right can convert Jesus’ words to the opposite of what most interpret them to be. I in no way endorse the retched teaching as depicted in Jesus Camp but I guess I’m just an old fasioned “take the high road” kinda guy.

    By definition. If you can define freedom to be the absolute submission to the will of God and, by extension, to his holy regents and then define love as complete and unquestioning service to God and his holy regents, then love can become whatever the holy regents say or imply that it is. When the secular masses threaten the freedom of Christians then the Christian obligation is to wage war upon the secular humanists and/or others who seek to destroy God and freedom (as defined above).

    And in war one must seek to marginalize and dehumanize the enemy. To do this the Christianist leaders and their allies, the Christian war council and propogandists, must convince the subjects to consider the enemy as sub-human or non-human in order to facilitate their destruction. So the Christian warrior is taught to wage war where love easily morphs into hatred and the Christian warrior is to use that hate as a sword of God’s wrath and vengence in order to preserve love and destroy the enemies of God - can anybody say, for the love of God we should have slaughtered more Sunnis…dropped more nukes…nuke em all and let God do the sorting. Of course Sunnis is optional. It can just as easliy be the American Indian (or stinkin’ redskin back in the day), the commie, the socialist, the intellectual, the liberal, the Democrat, or any enemy to the authoritarian regime that is the protector and defender of God.

  3. on 07 Apr 2007 at 11:24 am 3. JP Stormcrow said …

    Right to the nub of things per usual spyder.

    Especially relevant when it is so manifestly obvious that the problems facing the species require radically new conceptualizations of ourselves and the world. (I just don’t think we are going to pray our way out of this one.)

  4. on 07 Apr 2007 at 11:30 am 4. spyder said …

    Yes, jimmiraybob, i do have to acknowledge that my use of sub-human was a bit over the top and divisive. I wrote this rant in a pitched fever of preparation for a conference focussed on American Indian youth; and the use of that term by euro-colonizing imperial theocrats to describe we indigenous first peoples got stuck in my proverbial craw.

    And as i was walking to the conference after lunch the other day, i couldn’t help but be reminded of it (and thus failing to properly rephrase it in edit). Minding my own consciousness and gazing at the sudden out popping of the willow tree’s green strands of new leaf buds, i was accosted (no better term) by a woman and nine children between the ages of six and fifteen (i do not know if they were all her relations, probably not).

    “Do you KNOW jesus??” she demanded of me.

    “What?” i stammered, coming out of my beautiful willow reverie.

    “Do you know Jesus, thy Lord and Savior?” she blissfully announced surrounded by the children, all of whom were nodding that they knew jesus, whilst whispering “amens” and “praise the lord.”

    “Yes, i do know something about a historical jesus; but most importantly, i know about people that people say they know jesus. That is something quite different; and that they say that quite often without having a clue about the English language or about the historical person known as jesus.”

    What really irritated me the most though, other than my allowing myself to be distracted from the natural beauty and from my walk to the conference (cursing myself for failing to see that group coming into my path), was the children themselves. These young kids were being trained to walk around and mimic this woman, challenging people in the public commons to stop and listen to them (”suffer the children?”) and know their faith. What happened to play and adventure and exploration; what happened to being a kid?

    This isn’t “Be Like Mike.” This is be like Dobson, Falwell, Robertson, Haggard, Kennedy, Schuler; or perhaps James Jones and David Koresh??

  5. on 07 Apr 2007 at 5:17 pm 5. spyder said …

    As penance for my careless referent (sub-human), i recommend the reasonableness of Ed Brayton’s BAT post. Even though i pissed him off once, i still read him ‘religiously;’ because he has one of the finest “voices” for crafting the very best arguments, pro & con, for holding views that are very similar to our own (perhaps his vast debate experience??).

    Many prominent blogs, including many people I consider allies and colleagues, are participating this weekend in the Blogswarm Against Theocracy. It’s a worthwhile project, of course, and I applaud the effort in general. However, at the risk of being accused of indulging in a self-aggrandizing iconoclasm, I’m going to take a slightly different tack. I’d like to take the opportunity to deliver a word of caution to people with whom I am generally allied in the fight against theocracy to avoid the kind of simplistic over-generalizing that we fight against and object to when it’s engaged in by our opponents.

    EB

  6. on 07 Apr 2007 at 8:01 pm 6. JP Stormcrow said …

    As a salute to your penance (and because I only very belatedly edited this into this comment to Friday’s BAT announcement) here is Gil Scott-Heron exercising some cognitive liberty.

  7. on 07 Apr 2007 at 9:34 pm 7. James Killus said …

    Let me begin by noting that I believe that this is brilliant writing:

    The children are being mined. We are allowing these sub-humans to drill into their minds and extract political, social, and economic power from them. And as with any other mining process, we create the waste and tailings. Children intentionally left behind, labeled with various syndromes and disorders simply because they refuse to be drilled to their spiritual and psychological cores by zealots bent on accumulation of power and wealth.

    And I also hung on the use of “sub-human.” Part of my reaction is that the phenomenon is “Human, All Too Human,” and part of it is that it feeds into the Social Darwinism as Justification for a Caste System that often fuels both sides of the Culture Wars.

    But I am ambivalent even here. In the same way that male homophobia contains substantial elements of the fear that some men have of being treated like they themselves treat women, those who consider others as sub-human have a terror of being so treated. And those who have been treated in this way often feel that turnabout is fair play, which is a good argument for turnabout, but a poor one for passing around the flask of bad karma.

    In any case, the best argument I can make is that the term “sub-human” lets them off too lightly, because the correct term is “evil men and women,” and their proper punishment is for their true natures to be revealed to a world that comes to understand the nature of that evil.

    An unlikely occurance, of course. I’ll settle for merely putting them in jail, preferably ones of polished metal, with only their own reflected images for company to the end of their years.

  8. on 08 Apr 2007 at 9:08 am 8. spyder said …

    Thank you James. Your comments helped me realize that each of us does indeed have our own row to hoe, so to speak, in terms of becoming the best human being we can truly BE. My dear friend Raymond Reyes, a local tribal elder and Vice President of Gonzaga University, oftens reminds us that, to indigenous people, education is the process of becoming a good relative, the best relation. We do have to work for our enlightened and/or bodhisattva wings of merit. It is so hard sometimes to forgive these bastards, especially when they have zero moral compulsion of exhibit one shred of human decency and compassion.

    That said, the following is for Chris Clarke (named i suppose for that patron saint who carried critters/fellow travelers across the river).

    “Honey, why are we down to just seeds and stems again???”

  9. on 08 Apr 2007 at 11:42 am 9. Sven DiMIlo said …

    OK.
    But could not a case be made that the right to raise one’s children in the context of one’s personal worldview is another kind of cognitive liberty? Those poor kids at Jesus Camp were not there of their own volition; their parents sent ‘em. As queasy as that makes me, those parents would no doubt be equally shocked to learn that I (another Dawkins/Dennett atheist) have never lied to my daughter about my conviction that her friends’ god(s) is/are just pretend.
    Scary ridiculous religious beliefs (be they peyote eating or body-wafer eating) are, and ought to be, fully protected (that’s “liberty,” no?). I don’t see how we retain that important principle while curtailing the brainwashing of children by the deluded.
    Do you?

  10. on 08 Apr 2007 at 12:06 pm 10. spyder said …

    I think the line is indeed extremely thin, but there is one that can be drawn. Cognitive liberty is not carte blanche to force your worldview upon others, especially children. I don’t care what the parents believe, as long as they do not use their children’s minds as energy for their theocratic demands. You are honest with your daughter, but you don’t send her to camps to be fully immersed as a future crusader.

    Respect for the mind of the child has been driven over the abyss by this notion of treating children as the property of the parents. Of course parents have cognitive liberty over their own minds and thoughts; i suggest that they do not have the right of dominion over their children. We as a culture have no problem arresting parents for giving mind-altering drugs to their children, and, more importantly, arresting them for not giving mind-altering drugs to their child (all under the various battle grounds on the war on some drugs). Which is it?? Separation of church and state does not empower parents to exert domination on their (and all of our) futures through controlling and dictating the input into the minds of the children. If we really held that (cognitive liberty allows parents the right to dominion) to be true we certainly would have avoided Thos Jefferson’s insistence that we have public education.

    Why do we not honor and respect the child to become any person that child needs and dreams to become, by nurturing: their creativity, their critical thinking, their wellness and healthy being? Millions of parents around the planet do not force their religious ideology down the spinal cords of their children, turning them into zombies for their own selfish causes and beliefs (and yes millions do do that).

  11. on 08 Apr 2007 at 12:22 pm 11. christian h. said …

    spyder, I largely agree with your analysis, but I’m not sure I’m quite as worried about the current reality, theocracy-wise, as you are - mostly because children naturally reach a stage when they question their parents. There is one caveat, of course: children need to experience some frame that allows them to challenge their parents’ views. If they are completely immersed into an indoctrinating culture all their lives, it will be difficult.
    An example that I find more troublesome than religious extremism is the immersion of almost all children into the consumerist culture that keeps capitalism alive. As far as narrowly constructed religious indoctrination is concerned, I’d think it is fairly hard nowadays to maintain the necessary isolation of your children (though not impossible).

    Personally, I support compulsory public education for at least some time of a child’s life in order to facilitate (well, ok, force0 contact with a more diverse group of peers (this is admittedly far from perfect - public education has its own indoctrination going).

  12. on 08 Apr 2007 at 12:48 pm 12. Oaktown Girl said …

    Great post. I really appreciate you introducing the topic of children into the discussion, and I understand your initial impulse to refer to certain people as “subhuman”. It certainly crosses some line when kids are being taught that people outside of their religious faith are the enemy, and pre-emptive (not merely defensive) violent action is necessary.

    And yes, there are a lot of harmful things to which children become willfully indoctrinated by adults. But religious extremism seems to me one of the most dangerous because of the level of passion (bordering on madness in some cases) it stirs. Literally EVERYTHING - all of existence - is on the line. Tends to get folks a little ancy if they think someone else’s god might seize control and fuck it all up.

  13. on 08 Apr 2007 at 12:51 pm 13. Oaktown Girl said …

    Almost forgot…

    Yea…BUNNIES!

    [Insert: high-pitched girly squeals.]

  14. on 08 Apr 2007 at 1:35 pm 14. The Constructivist said …

    many theists–ok, one–I know insist that free will is God’s gift to humanity, so it seems like it should be easy to peel the Christians away from the Christianists, the faithful from the Dominionists, etc., on just spyder’s central point.

    christian raises a good question, though: which is a greater threat, theocratic ideology or capitalist ideology?

    on the public education issue, I’ve gotten into some pretty interesting debates overat Objectivist v. Constructivist v. Theist.

    enough seriousness for now–I know spyder is watching the Masters; time for me to be, too. gotta have your priorities staight, I say.

  15. on 08 Apr 2007 at 1:48 pm 15. The Constructivist said …

    Oops, I think I just violated the number of links per comment rule–got a comment in limbo–no biggie, just a heads-up to whoever’s not watching the Masters who has administrative authority in these here parts.

  16. on 08 Apr 2007 at 1:50 pm 16. spyder said …

    An example that I find more troublesome than religious extremism is the immersion of almost all children into the consumerist culture that keeps capitalism alive.

    Absolutely!!! Pernicious marketing crafted from research more generously funded than that of education, our children are inculcated into consumerism without most adults even being aware of it. And therefore i strongly recommend Ben Barber’s new book: CONSUMED: How Markets Corrupt Children, Infantilize Adults, and Swallow Citizens Whole.

  17. on 08 Apr 2007 at 4:32 pm 17. Sven DiMilo said …

    An example that I find more troublesome than religious extremism is the immersion of almost all children into the consumerist culture that keeps capitalism alive.

    Man, I agree too. Have you seen these horrible slutty Bratz and My Scene dolls? Not to mention the violent nature of just about everything marketed to boys.
    Of course, capitalism…that’s another kind of “liberty.”

  18. on 08 Apr 2007 at 6:38 pm 18. JP Stormcrow said …

    Not to mention the violent nature of just about everything marketed to boys.
    Of course, capitalism…that’s another kind of “liberty.”

    I find the Tracy grammer song Hey Ho to be a very effective framing of the issues of capitalism, war and marekting to children. Cannot find a YouTube or full mp3 online, but here is a sample (to give a feel for the ironic lilting mood of the song) followed by the words.

    tv’s on, the favorite son is
    watchin how the west was won
    daddy, please, a plastic gun
    get brother one for twice the fun

    little camo helmet-heads
    makin brave and playin dead
    missiles made of gingerbread
    dollars on the dime

    chorus
    hey ho, so it goes, the point of sale, the puppet show
    the merchant kings of war and woe have turned their hands to labor
    sound out the trumpet noise, the cannons bark and jump for joy
    someone’s dread and darlin boy has fallen on his saber

    another world across the sea
    home for little busy bees
    sweatin in some factory
    hurry, please, more of these

    action dolls with laser sights
    robot planes that shoot at night
    faster, kid, and get it right
    they’re rollin down the line

    hey ho…

    these days the spin machine
    is always on the silver screen
    secret plots and submarines
    foreign fiends and magazines

    wave the flag, watch the news
    tell us we can count on you
    mom and dad are marchin too
    children, step in time

    hey ho…

    bring your kids and coddled pets
    bouncin babes in bassinets
    we’ll play a game with tanks and jets
    better yet bayonets!

    marchin bands and color guards
    funerals in your own backyard
    don’t forget your credit card
    johnny, hold the line

    hey ho…

  19. on 08 Apr 2007 at 8:05 pm 19. The Constructivist said …

    spyder, do you think religious language can be appropriated and used against either capitalism itself or the most libertarians proponents of it? I’m thinking of the abolitionist movement, for instance, which for all its flaws finally succeeded in driving a wedge between Christianity and pure capitalism (where the right to property, including property in people, trumps all). Two recent books on Emerson, Kris Fresinke’s West of Emerson and Anita Haya Patterson’s From Emerson to King, have got me thinking about this even more than usual.

    Thoreau was a big fan of a 17th C Protestant emblem poet by the name of Francis Quarles–about him, he wrote, “though there is not much straight grain in him, there is plenty of rough crooked timber.” Here’s Quarles from 1635:

    We make art servile, and the trade gentile,
    (Yet both corrupted with ingenious guile,)
    To compas Earth, and with her empty store
    To fill our arms, and grasp one handful more:
    Thus seeking rest, our labors never cease,
    But, as our years, our hot desires increase:
    Thus we, poor little worlds! with blood and sweat,
    In vain attempt to comprehend the great:
    Thus, in our gain, become we gainful losers,
    And what’s enclosed encloses the enclosers.

    That last line could be the motto for Fight Club.

    Last question or point or something: in the poststructuralist traditions I’m familiar with, it’s not just claims to property in land or children that are problematized but also claims to self-possession and self-identity. But these critiques present problems for the Enlightenment project, including classical liberalismand classical marxism. Do you find any poststructuralists interesting/useful in your activism?

  20. on 09 Apr 2007 at 9:10 am 20. spyder said …

    But these critiques present problems for the Enlightenment project, including classical liberalism and classical marxism. Do you find any poststructuralists interesting/useful in your activism?

    This is a great comment/question; one that reflects some of the deeper discussions many of us had on the Chairman-for-Life’s weblog (particularly with Rich P) under its temporary tutelage by John McGowan. Rather than re-engage it here, i will wrap it into a post about my own educational philosophy, particularly as it regards my higher-education, academic training during that crucial period in the ’60s and ’70s (and taking even that back to the latter 1800s).

    Here for now i will just mention the development of the legal canon entwined with capitalism. When i was barely a teen (1959) my father (the rocket scientist who tried his damnedest to turn his children into good little randian objectivists; he got 2 out of 3 but not me) said that if i learned nothing about economics, i needed to understand that for capitalism to survive (but not thrive) it required across the board growth of no less than 2%, and that wasn’t taking into account the growth of population.

    He, with surprising patience unusual given his common demeanor, explained how each little chunk of a dollar was taken out by this or that strand of the system:
    ~this bit for public infrastructure that goes to private corporations;
    ~another bit for public education that goes 50/50 to people and corporations who are contracted to provide the materials, buildings, etc.;
    ~this bit over here goes to public safety services and the corporate contracts that facilitate those systems;
    ~a chunk goes to corporations for supplying the essential and basic needs of living~ food, water, sewage, trash removal, vehicles, energy, etc.;
    ~another chunk gets snipped off as savings accounts to increase the financial capabilities of corporations to further develop the system;
    ~and so forth and so on.

    His point was quite simple, if you only have so much of the dollar, then none of these systems grow. If they don’t grow, they end up having to cannibalize one another in order to exert their need for their 2% to survive. What we have, he said, is a nationwide set of laws and codes that protect and facilitate a schema in which no one entity is freed from its pursuit to increase its profitability. Those corporations that service governments (and ultimately every single dollar of tax revenue makes its way to corporations either through contracts for services or from purchases by employees) pressure governments to grow; seen most dramatically in the desperation of state and local govenments to increase their property and sales tax populations. Those corporations that provide essential needs pressure governments to free up salaries and other funding (to those other corporations) so that more can be spent on the needs (and presently huge sums need be freed up for the senseless yet necessary waste of consumer discretionary spending). And so this goes on.

    Should any one aspect of this schema start to fall behind (think your little corner market or other family-owned business) it must be removed as one would remove a cancer. It becomes a drain on the profits of others. Problems lie when large corporations discover that they have extended themselves well beyond needing that 2% (and for the BAT sake of it all, churches are financial corporations who have a desperate need for cash all the time–10% tithe my ass), and they then layoff employees or close up shop altogether. The waves of this shut down smash down first against the local infrastructure and companies; loss of tax revenues deflate the local economy which loses its carrying capacity to hold other jobs and services, and so forth. And i am not even going to mention (well this is a mention) the defrauding of people by large corporations. My dad’s overall point, to a 13 years old, was that i needed to look for a job that would be needed in the long run; one that would not experience wholesale cutbacks or layoffs. {My brother and sister always took his advice. Me, i preferred to study religion and philosophy.}

    Governmental systems throughout the US are fighting against this loss of revenue. It matters because that revenue goes to corporations to keep them viable. If we cut this or that govenment service, especially employees and resource materials, we are removing funds from the community’s businesses and corporations. Citicorp announced a month ago that it was laying off up to 15000; today it announces it is buying a Taipei Bank?? Go figure how that impacts US communities. The other pressing issue can be summarized by Coke/Pepsi (never one to promote one against the other) and Levis. The US officially exports Coke and Levis (and thousands upon thousands of other products), but the US does not manufacture these products for export. In fact, the US imports much of the materials and resources for these products (we actual import Levis). No, we export ideas, licenses, copyrights, patents. How long can the exporting of intellectual property be supported by intellectual production (mining the minds of the children to the very end)??