thank-you.

Good book I’d recommend: The Religious Case Against Belief, which I’ve mentioned in a couple of posts, particularly in connection with our most prominent local Christianist pastor, Jerry Prevo of the Anchorage Baptist Temple. Currently leading the fight against an equal rights ordinance which would prohibit discrimination against lesbian/gay/bi/trans people in Anchorage. He’s a master of Christianist antigay rhetoric which carries many of the same characteristics that Palin has. He’s a true believer & has a following of true believers, who have obediently been getting up in public testimony to spew the same Christianist “Truth is Not Hate” truthiness-inspired hate speech. Prevo’s got some Palin connection too. The book I mentioned has been a great companion to the dynamic involved, which is essentially about people who believe that by virtue of their belief system they have all the answers, & make themselves willfully ignorant about anything new, anything unknown that might possibly contradict their belief system. They seem to feel that their selfhoods will be destroyed if they maintain an openness to the new, or of learning from what is now unknown but could become known. In the opinion of the author, its the very opposite to true “religion”, which recognizes that there are always new mysteries over the horizon, always something new to be learned — & are excited and joyful in that sense of always being open to new knowledge that can refine their existing knowledge… but never, ever perfect knowledge, because none of us can contain the full infinity of the universe. Prevo, Palin, Bush, you could probably name off all manner of others who fit the profile of the true believer who believes he or she knows all, & is in constant enmity with anything/anyone who does not share that same ideology. And you could probably name all kinds of other people who are always eager to learn anew, who are relaxed in the face of the unknown. And who tend not to have “conversion” experiences, b/c conversion is by its nature a setting of one thing up against another: the convert is “right”, everyone else — including the converts unconverted friends, is suddenly “wrong.”

Anyway. Good book. I find it a much more useful guide to how people act in the world, than DSM-IV. Which itself is a somewhat closed-door belief system/idealogy. In my opinion.