Grant’s Tomb
Boy I’m tired. What a sissy I am. Just because I woke up before dawn and have been slaving away at revisions all day (except for the times I was walking a very slow exasperating dog I know, which is not exercise but a kind of anti-exercise, a kind of minus exercise) – is that any reason to be tired?! Yes, apparently. Anyway I am. But a reader (an avid reader, in fact, he tells me – my favourite kind) sent me a link to this amusing story, which restored my energy and enthusiasm just enough to jot a note on it. Auckland, Auckland – what are you thinking of? Pull yourself together.
A spiritualist group has been given Auckland ratepayer money so it can teach people to communicate with the dead….When the community development committee met on Wednesday, councillors had some reservations and reduced the amount, said chair Dr Cathy Casey. She said there had been a thorough assessment by council staff, who judged that it met the critera for community assistance funding. Dr Casey said the group did more than communicate with the dead: “There is spriritual communication and healing. We have a vibrant, interesting and colourful community in Auckland city.”
Vibrant, interesting, and colourful. I love that. She means wacked-out, gullible, and loony tunes. Vibrant interesting and colourful indeed. Words like that are great, you know, because they can mean anything. Noisy, time-wasting, deranged, conspicuous, stark staring mad, aggressive, wearing a funny hat – anything. ‘We have a community of absurd people who believe or pretend to believe that it is possible to talk to the dead and that they can teach people how to do it – but it is not quite politic or tactful to say how absurd that is, so what shall we say instead…hmm…we have a community of reality-challenged, gaga, wigged-out imbeciles in Auckland city? No…that’s not quite it…we have a community of brazen con-artists and opportunists in Auckland city? No, that sounds a little too judgmental. I know! They’re vibrant, that’s it! That’s what I say when the neighbours wake me up playing reggae at 3 in the morning, so that’s what I’ll call these nice fruitcakes who want public money to teach people to ‘talk to the dead’ – that’s the ticket!’
And not only are they vibrant and colourful, they’re also celebrating diversity. Good thinking, O ye Auckland spiritualists.
Groups became eligible for funding if they were a proper community organisation, open to the public and contributed to Auckland city’s community vision – in this case it was by celebrating diversity, she said…Dr Casey said her personal views on the foundation’s beliefs and practices should not sway her decision to support grants. “Just because you don’t believe doesn’t mean you should deny other people the right to do so.”
True, true. Very true. When you see them weaving their way down the street believing the colourful vibrant stuff they believe, you shouldn’t leap on them and push them to the ground and smack them in the face until they stop believing that vibrant stuff. Quite right. I couldn’t disagree less. Nor should you tear their clothes or fling stones and small branches at them or ask them where they got that shirt and what they mean by it. No indeed. But does that mean that if they ask you for $4500 you should give it to them? Does it mean that if they ask you for $4500 you should give them $2500? Or $25? Or any money in any currency of any denomination at all? I would say no. My considered judgment would be that it does not. Therefore Dr Casey’s ringing statement on the duty not to deny other people the right to believe bullshit leaves me less moved and transported than you might expect. It simply isn’t all that clear that Dr Casey’s clear duty not to throttle the members of Auckland’s spiritual groups entails an equal obligation to hand out largish sums of public money to said groups, and it is even less clear why Dr Casey thinks (as she seems to) that it does. Or why she thinks that her views of the foundation’s beliefs and practices are merely ‘personal’ as opposed to being the sort of thing she ought to be taking into account before doling out cash to any fool group that shoves its head in the council’s door.
That was fun! I feel ever so chipper now. Chipper enough to make myself something to eat and then drag that wretched dog around some more. It’s like dragging a stalled SUV sometimes, I swear. But at least he’s not colourful.
Give them all the money they want. Keeps them off the street.
As long as they’re sitting together waking up the dead, they’re not bothering me with whacky ideas at the pub or in the train, or irritating me with some weird spiritual tribal dance while I’m trying to listen to an Irish concert.
Far as I am concerned, public authorities should pay for their clubhouse, a lot of space around it, and big locks on the door.
Now, if they’re actually _successful_ at summoning up St. Paul and Hitler and grandpa, it’s a different issue.
Merlijn
PS: I hear you on the dog issue. I once had one that, when I took it for a walk, would sit down and patiently wait at the start of the trail for me to come back from the walk.
If chatting to the departed is as popular as the article says why does it need subsidies anyway? The gullible and batty wouldn’t mind paying a bit more to enable their favourite medium to stick a certificate on his/her wall I’m sure.
I’ve been thinking about this. I shouldn’t have, but I did. We can’t assume that the dead are in a place exactly synchronous to our own, can we? They must be lumenescent energy beings in some other spacetime entirely. So, chances seem to be that at some point, I’ll die. Therefore, it should be possible to summon up oneself and have a chat. I’m sure I’d have some questions to ask Myself.
Postmodern reflexiveness is getting to me.
The jokes are potentially endless (George Burns had a nice one about Gracie Allen’s silence when he went to her grave to talk to her), but, ever curious, I found the beneficiary of the New Zealand taxpayers’ unintended largesse listed on a site called Cults.co.nz, which not only monitors such groups but rates them on a scale that runs from “OK” to “Danger.” Guess what the “Foundation of Spiritualist Mediums” gets? Their definition of the “danger” rating reads: “The group/person or belief/practice is considered dangerous due to mind control or particularly bad doctrine. These groups (or people) have a strong tendency to damage their members/followers.”
Cults.co.nz is up-front that “[t]he list is written from a Christian perspective and is primarily intended as a resource for New Zealand Christians.”
One other thing: according to the New Zealand Herald piece “Ms Huggard said the money would be put in the foundation’s trust account and would fund its application to the New Zealand Qualifications Authority for recognition as a recognised training body.” Did anyone happen to glance at the sidebar on the same page and see “NZQA chief executive quits”? That story begins ‘Chief executive of the New Zealand Qualifications Authority Karen Van Rooyen has resigned – the second high-profile casualty at the NZQA in just 10 days.
Ms Van Rooyen has been under fire since the scholarship debacle in January and has faced increasing pressure following a damning report into the exam system.
She said today that she had been under “strain” and accepted she was accountable.’
The story ends with ‘Ms Van Rooyen said she hoped her resignation would “act as a catalyst” for the issues to be resolved so NZQA could get on with its job.’
Anyone out there thinking what I’m thinking?
Oh, mustn’t forget, the New Zealand Herald horoscope tells me that “Communication skills are at a peak and you will give wise counsel to people who are unhappy, in trouble or need guidance. More idealistic than usual, you will also go out on a limb for your own beliefs.”
Or lack of same.
Is the next NZQA chief exec. listening?
It may have been appropriate to the circumstances, but pasting in a horoscope prediction in a B&W Comment makes me feel like throwing up. OB, please expunge if necessary. Pardon me while I go to wash out my hard drive with soap and water…
I actually do have better things to do with my time and it’s really off-topic, except it’s funny in the context of OB’s original note. It seems that one of the biggest controversies Dr. Cathy Casey got herself involved in before the handover of said cash to said dangerous loonies had to with – walking one’s dog…
shriek
No, Stewart, you don’t have better things to do with your time. Making me laugh is the best use you could possibly make of your time!
Not to worry about the soap and nausea thing though. B&W has a special force-field to deal with that kind of thing. It has to, because of items like Nonsense Files, and the ‘With a Twist’ half of Quotations, and the occasional loony item I link to in News – not to mention all the bat-loony stuff I quote from in N&Cs. I mean, if the woolly items were able to contaminate, how could I have quoted so much from that Halberstam article and still be alive to talk about it days later?
Hilarious about dog, Merlijn. This one I sometimes walk would love that option. I once took him to an off-leash park on a very rainy day. I trudged off under a huge umbrella and after awhile turned to see how he was faring – and he was trotting away in the opposite direction, heading back to the car.
LOL. Of course, thanks to the recent Virginia Court Decision regarding Wiccan prayers, Americans can rest assured that only the “proper” “judeo-Christian” religious cults will receive government funds.
(More on the off topic: I own (or am owned by??) an Afircan basenji, a notoriously hydrophobic dog. She has simply refused to leave the house many times-or at best will do her “business” very, very quickly and insist on returning home forthwith, thank you very much)
Positive review of your Dictionary of Fashionable Nonsense in the latest issue of the Skeptical Inquirer.
Perhaps you could send a few copies to New Zealand.
This is not an occult science. This is not one of those crazy systems of divination and astrology. That stuff is hooey and you’ve got to have a screw loose to go in for that. Humankind is simply materialized color operating on the 49th vibration. You’d make that conclusion walking down the street or going to the store.
OB,
It having been ages since I looked at Quotations, I went in again after your mention and saw that With a Twist actually has been contaminated. Or, rather, it seems the pope has hacked B&W in order to create deniability for what he said about women (“Me? Never! Where?”). You will instantly see what I mean and of course take action to restore guilt to the proper party…
Glad the D.O.G. item gave you a good laugh.
Well duh, Stewart! Thanks! Nothing like spelling people’s names wrong, is there, especially when you’re holding them up to ridicule. Of course, that when he was merely the obscure head of the inquisition…so naturally I didn’t bother taking pains.