To Drill or Not To Drill September 13, 2008
Posted by Joshua in Car Culture, Society/Culture, Suburbanization, Transportation.1 comment so far
Over at slate.com, I found this Q&A column dealing with the offshore drilling issue and whether such drilling would really affect gas prices at all. The writer concludes what some others have been saying as well: that such drilling ultimately would have very little to no affect on prices and, yes, would, of course, have some negative environmental effects, contrary to all the pro-drilling propaganda about how new, cleaner, and safer technology will now allow us to have it both ways and blah, blah, blah.
The key portion of this particular column, however, is the last paragraph, in which the writer looks past the potential environmental or economic effects to possible affects on behavior and comes pretty close to what I have thought about all this ever since I first started hearing all the calls for drilling:
The bigger danger from the push for drilling—or more exactly, the arguments used on its behalf—may be how it affects our own behavior. If we pretend that offshore drilling is a fail-safe means of lowering oil prices (or even a likely means), we may hold on to rosy and unreasonable expectations for future gas prices… That will in turn change the calculations we make when it comes to long-term decisions like whether to shell out extra cash for a more fuel-efficient car or a home with access to mass transit. As long as we’re counting on gas prices to go down, those green lifestyle choices won’t seem as attractive. We may well be surprised once again that we’re paying so much at the pump, without having done anything about it.
That points to the heart of the matter for me. The call for drilling anywhere and everywhere we can is not only a misleading political canard filled with false hope; more importantly, it entirely dodges central problems in our society which the gas price situation should be helping to bring to everyone’s attention. The whole notion of “oil independence” is a complete distraction from the deeper discussions we should be having. Where we get oil, or how much we pay for it at a given time, is not nearly as important as is the fact we have recklessly and shortsightedly set up life in almost total dependence on it, making all kinds of choices as if taking relative cheapness and easy availability for granted eternally.
A positive way to look at the current situation is it gives many people a very personal incentive to consider making sensible lifestyle changes, if possible, and can get all of us thinking about more sensible shifts in planning and development. And before someone assumes I have one particular issue in mind for desiring such changes, there are plenty of good reasons to think changes are in order; be they environmental, economic, individual, social, local community, longterm sustainability; take your pick. Out of those categories come many valid and connected concerns (beyond the scope of this post) that have grown out of our modern suburban car culture.
But I guess most people would rather not hear that they should consider making some changes. Enter politicians to save the day with seemingly simple solutions, dubiously suggesting no personal or dramatic infrastructural changes are necessary, and the path we have been on for the last few decades is completely fine. As the Slate writer rightly suggested, the problem with those arguing for drilling is they are pushing nothing more than a possible slight and temporary pain reliever and treating it like a real solution that will prevent people from needing to think about any changes for however long it takes to come up with new energies to fuel their cars just as cheaply; in short, they come across as stubbornly resistant to any real change and don’t help us seriously act now to find ways to adjust on every level and ultimately do things better.
Of course, I should clarify that, because some do give lip service to the need to work toward new technologies/find alternative energy sources even while they argue we should drill everywhere we can for the time being. But their argument goes: drilling now is necessary because such energy alternatives are just too far off in the future to count on right now. Never mind that it would also be many, many years before any potential price impact from drilling would be experienced anyway. But what I still find most troubling is the drilling crowd’s apparent refusal to, in any way, call into question the illogical ways we have set things up in the first place. Take, for example, the Newt Gingrich led organization American Solutions and their campaign, “Drill Here, Drill Now, Pay Less.” In their paper titled, “The New Language of Smart Energy”, I noticed this key line about energy efficiency,
…what Americans are looking for is energy efficiency… Automobiles such as the wildly successful Tahoe ‘Hybrid’ are a positive step in the right direction. These innovations prove that we can succeed sans great personal sacrifice in our day to day lives.
Sure, we can probably all agree continuing to work toward more energy efficiency is a good thing. But there are a couple problems with the specific message here. For one thing, that line reads a little bit like a misleading Chevrolet advertisement, because I’m not sure how great the gas savings would really be in the end after you’ve factored in the large sum one must fork over for such a hybrid SUV. But more importantly, the above statement begs the obvious question: just what exactly does “sacrifice” mean to these people? Or, I could also ask, what is their understanding of the word “excess?” Is “sacrifice” for them having to drive at a bare minimum and barely get around because of the cost, or is “sacrifice” Americans having to actually think twice before buying a monster, gas-guzzling SUV they don’t really need anyway? Judging from the aforementioned paper, It seems like “sacrifice” is more of the latter for the people at American Solutions. (Later in the paper, for example, they point out the need to always use the word “efficiency” rather than “conservation” when talking about energy because “conservation” is, in their minds, a dirty word to most Americans in comparison because it means living with “less.” Well, that sums it all up right there. They are basically telling everyone, “Sure, things need to change, but YOU should not FEEL the need to conserve or sacrifice ANYTHING. Technology will take care of it all for YOU and cater to YOUR behavior.”)
Well, forgive me for thinking that the rethinking of driving big SUVs would not be an incredibly significant sacrifice. And furthermore, I don’t think having greater incentive now as well to take related things like walkability, access to transit, or other alternatives to everyday, all-purpose automobile use into consideration when choosing where to live is much of a sacrifice either. All of these things seem sensible to me.
Granted, such things probably often seem like sacrifice in our culture because of the way we have catered almost exclusively to the car. But it is irresponsible to suggest it is possible to hold on to such development forever without great cost and the sacrifice of something. Everything has costs (not only economic) and relative sacrifices. And living in distant suburbs often comes with a complete, everyday automobile dependence, which, though we often take it as a given now, is a big cost across the board and can even be quite an individual burden. And there is a residual cost to people living in or near central cities in the form of struggling transit services, barely kept afloat, so that there are very limited transportation choices for anyone, even while sprawl has left the great majority in need of some form of motored transportation to subsist.
So, rather than talking about sacrifice, we could flip all this around and argue most of us have had it too easy for some time now with unique conditions, relatively cheap gas, and concomitant policies. And that has caused us to generally not care very much where things are built, how efficiently everything is planned, how dependent we are on cars due to how far we live from the basic necessities of modern living, whether there are sidewalks, bike lanes or transportation diversity, or care about public transit in general for that matter. As a result, we built a largely car-centric world without having to think about the long-term implications, consequences, and costs.
Having said all that, I do want to be sensitive to the broad scope of this issue and the difficulties it brings to all areas of our society as well as all the different styles of life and individual/communal concerns, needs and limited choices our development has left us with. I know my point of view is biased by my own lifestyle, which is not widely shared. I have personally found it enjoyable and quite beneficial (with a comparatively small sacrifice in convenience) to live in a small central city where I can walk, ride my bike, or take the bus nearly anywhere I need to go day-to-day. Consequently, the gas price issue has had very little affect on me. I know, however, not everyone wants to or can share in such a lifestyle, and I am not suggesting that they should. I understand not everyone wants to live in central cities or generally dense areas, and I also can understand why living in smaller, suburban, and exurban areas as well as having car mobility is often desirable.
But I am really trying to suggest two things here: One, our suburban sprawl living now, just as before, entails huge individual and long-term communal costs (the burden of total car dependence being the big individual one) that I don’t think very many people had been calculating as costs because they never perceived a personal interest in doing so. Two, we are all in this thing together, despite the individualistic illusions all around us, fostered by our disjointed car culture, making us think otherwise. The suburbs and exurbs wouldn’t exist without the central cities and vast highways, and the central cities, their residents, and all surrounding ones are affected and indirectly connected in enormous ways by the ongoing sprawl, while most suburbanites and exurbanites can maintain happy illusions that they have no interest in or connection or obligation to the affairs of the central city or surrounding, connected areas; and I doubt they have very much to stake them to their own so-called communities either.
I’m not sure, though, what the ultimate and most reasonable/desirable solution(s) to all this really is in such a large and diverse country as the U.S. But I do think most people can make all kinds of small adjustments for the better right now. And it is in almost everyone’s interest to not only have cleaner, more efficient automobiles and energy and a cleaner environment; but also to have more efficient living locations; shorter commutes; reliable, far-reaching public transit; good, long-term planning/development; and logically/efficiently laid out and tangibly interconnected communities. The more we realize these things and acknowledge our connectedness, inevitable codependency, mutual interests and long-term communal goals, the better.
On the other hand, the “solution” of more drilling (along with any other “solution” that misses the root issues), which really seems like little more than an attempt to provide a psychological justification for the continuation of a deceptively easy, individualistic and unsustainable car-dominated culture, is not really a solution at all. It will only perpetuate our root problems and likely leave us worse off than we were when we started.
To Believe or Not To Believe September 4, 2008
Posted by Joshua in Christianity, Personal.3 comments
Recently, an old friend of mine informed me and another friend that he has been going back to the church where we all met in our teenage years – a church I can’t imagine ever personally stepping foot in again. I and the other jaded friend present questioned him on this, asking why go back there, of all churches, much less any church of the kind really. In sharp contrast to the two of us, he seems to still think highly of this church, which I suppose is perfectly fine if it works for him.
But at one point he said, in so many words, it’s better to be going to church and be a heathen, than to be a heathen and not go to church at all. Of course, I can’t really follow such reasoning or see any point in it at all unless he was trying to make a case that church serves a function of being a positive influence on individuals to somehow keep their worst impulses in check and/or make them better people. But even then, if the individual is coming and going without going through any significant change or feeling the need to seriously adhere to anything, then I would have to say the church would be seriously failing to serve such a function, and the whole point would be defeated anyway.
Of course, I am not suggesting churches are to play that role (and they do seem to routinely fail at it anyway). Also, others might make a strong case that that is not what the gospel or the Church is really supposed to be about. But I thought about all this shortly after the conversation and realized, while it may not often be overtly expressed or officially supported, my friend’s thinking here really isn’t all that uncommon. Further, his reasoning is not without philosophical precedent either. Here, I’m thinking of Pascal with his well-known “Faith is a Rational Wager,” wherein he used a cost-benefit analysis to argue that belief in God is, in essence, the more reasonable side of a coin we all have to call in the air so to speak. In other words, Pascal argued, while we are not able to definitively prove God’s existence (or nonexistence) with reason and may not have adequate evidence for it, we still have to make a choice; a wager for or against God’s existence and all that goes along with it.
Pascal concluded it is reasonable to believe, or at least work toward belief, because the believer stands to gain an infinite amount, while practically risking nothing, or at least risking only finite trivialities. He even suggested that those who feel they are unable to believe should simply begin going through the religious motions, “acting as if they believe,” and that by doing so they will gain in this life (by becoming better people) and then likely come to truly believe (or effectively make themselves believe) after they see so much sense and reward in believing, at such little cost.
I’m sure that many can muster (and have mustered) numerous criticisms of Pascal’s Wager. And I imagine even many Christians might criticize it as a misleading, oversimplified picture of faith. But I am not suggesting what Pascal described is what all faith boils down to by any means, or that he even accurately portrayed the Christian faith.
However, I point to Pascal for two reasons. One, his wager can easily be translated into my friend’s reasoning for at least going to church, or, to put it more broadly, into the kind of halfhearted, churchgoing, “good” Christian life identity common to my cultural surroundings. Two, no matter how one approaches faith or determines what really constitutes being a “believer,” it seems, with religion, it is really difficult to escape, as a primary consideration, this kind of self-interested cost-benefit analysis at the heart of Pascal’s Wager.
While many might disagree with the particular way Pascal treated faith, his primary assumption – that considerations of the infinite (afterlife) demand we must make a choice for or against faith – fully lines up with common approach to Christianity. We have all been told things of that sort at one time or another in church. In fact, preachers often paint a much more immediate picture of the situation than Pascal did. Pascal didn’t even focus on what the individual stands to lose (infinitely) for unbelief or not making any choice at all. But how often are people reminded in church of the terrible punishment that awaits them, their family, and their friends in hell if they do not “come to Christ?” In essence, then, many preach the same point – just more intensely – that Pascal was getting at; that not believing or not choosing for faith is a bad wager – it is just not worth the risk in other words.
I am pointing all this out, because, firstly, I think the cost-benefit analysis – or the closely related dichotomy between eternal reward and eternal punishment – is consistently used to compel or even manipulate people into making a choice (or even merely churchgoing). Secondly, that and the following notion that we are stuck without any choice but to convert or infinitely suffer terribly is something I have come to severely struggle with. But just as Pascal argued that belief costs us nothing in comparison to what we can gain, I often hear many preachers praise just how simple and rewarding salvation is and how incredible God is to even offer us grace because we, in our sin, do not deserve it; or, in other words, fully deserve to suffer in hell. To be fair, though, most would deny that actually “living the Christian life” is easy at all, while yet still asserting that becoming a Christian is as easy as A(dmit) B(elieve) C(onfess).
So why is it no longer simple at all, then, for me to believe, much less choose (or go to church at all)? Sometimes I feel like I’m the only one I know who struggles with the choice. I highly doubt that is the case, of course, but most people I know seem to be comfortable with some sort of belief or somewhat content in unbelief. But I feel a bit stuck in this undecided middle ground and have come to resent the notion that I even have to make a choice. And what’s worse, I have come to seriously question God. Of course, whenever I do so, I am stung with the reminder of these words of the Apostle Paul,
But who are you, O man, to talk back to God? “Shall what is formed say to him who formed it, ‘Why did you make me like this?’ “ Does not the potter have the right to make out of the same lump of clay some pottery for noble purposes and some for common use? What if God, choosing to show his wrath and make his power known, bore with great patience the objects of his wrath—prepared for destruction? What if he did this to make the riches of his glory known to the objects of his mercy, whom he prepared in advance for glory. (Romans 9:20-23)
But that is precisely the point. Why would God do such a harsh thing, and why exactly should we be alright with that? Or to put it another way, if God made us with the capacity for reason, intellect, and sense, then why should we be expected to, as Galileo said, “forgo their use,” and simply accept any part of his nature or any of his methods as rightly beyond our comprehension and our own sense of what feels right and wrong?
I recently heard a preacher, who is rather adept at standing up straw men, mention people who complain about Christian doctrine asserting that good people will have to go to hell simply for not ever knowing or calling on the name of Jesus. The preacher’s counter to this was that it was not the proper perspective. He said, instead, of course, that every one of us is destined for hell because of our sin, and we deserve nothing better. And, he concluded, it is only because of Jesus that we can be saved at all. But, for me, that is just a rewording of the same problem and doesn’t really make it sound any better. The troubling element of that whole doctrine goes all the way back to the initial idea that God created all of us and everything else, and this sovereign God seemingly chose to allow sin to enter the world at a supposedly terrible price; so that we are now here, born into this mess, presumably forced to choose (or be chosen for) one side of the coin or face the unthinkable consequence on the other side, whether we like it or not.
All I’m really saying is, contrary to what I was constantly told growing up, that is a very hard message with difficult implications, and it only gets worse the deeper one tries to go into constructing a systematic, biblical doctrine. But maybe Pascal had a point that it is a seemingly simple choice with so little to lose, or maybe Paul was right that we can’t fully comprehend what God is all about, but I am just not satisfied with those options. And if anyone is going to start questioning this whole thing, then I think they have to question the fear of impending judgment/desire for eternal reward that gives many cause to believe in the first place and keeps them coming back. Perhaps it is the common assumption that everyone must want to go to heaven – because the alternative must be an eternity of unbearable torment, while heaven, on the other hand, must be the greatest place imaginable – that should be questioned. Perhaps some see it, instead, as a matter less of the eternal self-interest consideration and more of simply either coming to genuinely want God or reject God (or not believe) and all that we’re told goes with or without him. In that case, my problem may just be not being sure if I really do want God after all – at least the God I have always been shown. I guess I just don’t know for sure, though there must be myriad ways to perceive all this.
But at any rate, I do know I am not satisfied to try to have and retain faith simply because people have attempted to foster an intense fear of hell in me; nor am I satisfied to continue going to church or foster a personal religion simply because people have tried to make me feel scared and ashamed of my own humanity. That is not to say I think terribly highly of my humanity, of course, but, rather, I just have no desire to be manipulated through shame, guilt, and fear.
What He Saw in America September 13, 2008
Posted by Joshua in Christianity, Reading Commentary.2 comments
I had been meaning to respond kindly to my friend Caleb’s comment on the last post, but, in typical fashion, I haven’t gotten around it. This is just as well, however; because, while reading Tocqueville’s Democracy in America for one of my classes this week, I came across a remarkably relevant portion which really would have fit right into and added to my last post.
(As an aside, it is pretty incredible to read Tocqueville today and see how closely much of what he saw and wrote fittingly describes contemporary America. It is pretty easy to see and tempting to talk about how much things have changed in the last 100-150 years, so it is all the more amazing to read what Tocqueville wrote in the early 1830s and find that the attitudes he described and the concerns he raised are in many ways still fully relevant today. Much of what he saw or foresaw – particularly that which concerned and/or stood out to him about individualism and other supposedly democratic instincts – is eerily similar to much of what I see around me and struggle with day-to-day.)
Anyway, the excerpt I want to share is from chapter 9 of volume two, part two. In this short chapter, Tocqueville considered how religion in America was affected by self-interest. I won’t get into too much detail of this section at the moment, because, to fully understand what he was getting at, it is probably necessary to read the full chapter as well as the preceding chapter on how self-interest in general in America is perceived as linked with the common interest (I plan to come back to look at that specific topic in depth at some point later down the road). Still, the following excerpt could use a little set-up. So suffice it to say, Tocqueville believed that Americans didn’t turn to religion only with reward in the next life in mind, and that insofar as self-interest did play a role in religion, it wasn’t only out of concern for goodness in the next life, but for goodness in this life as well – much in the way Pascal also described it. The following two paragraphs I found particularly noteworthy:
The first paragraph above seems to point more to the sort of deeper mystery within us, connecting us to a grand and great truth, that Caleb referred to. And I think there is certainly something to be said for that idea. It is a beautiful notion, and I believe I have felt it before as well and been drawn in by it in the face of everything else. But the second paragraph really seems to sum up what I was trying to get at. Just as Tocqueville was, I’m sure that faith is often driven by more than just self-interest or betting on rewards. But, yes, the marketability and mass popularity of it seems largely rooted in and anchored on those very things. I used to be able to see and feel that certain deeper something flowing beyond all that, though – something inexplicable that drew me in and held me there.
The key point now is that it has become much more difficult for me to see or feel that anymore. And I now wonder if such deeper notions, that I once thought were ripples of a great inexplicable truth, hadn’t simply led me to craft a god and a christ in my mind that suited my own attitudes and sensibilities. As a consequence, I feel less and less drawn in and more likely to linger on my doubts and only see that other questionable side that looks like manipulative marketing – like a dubious yet nearly irresistible, limited-time offer being sold to people wanting some meaning and to be comforted by feelings of surety and security.