Everything by proxy
It’s interesting and frightening how pervasive the thought is, that people can be taken to represent or stand in for something else, in such a way that it’s useful and meaningful and appropriate to attack the former in order to punish or instruct or threaten the latter.
I just read one example in one of the answers to last week’s CIF ‘Belief’ question. Jonathan Romain knew a guy whose daughter was killed in a car crash whose cause was unknown.
But Henry knew why it had happened. God was punishing him for not going to synagogue. I told Henry over and over again that this was ridiculous and God would not punish his daughter for his supposed sin. But Henry was adamant. Suddenly I realised what was going and stopped rebuking Henry. He couldn’t cope with his daughter’s death if it was meaningless…
But he could cope with it by thinking his daughter’s death was about him. He could cope with it by thinking that the way God found to punish him was to kill a different person. It’s not just the obvious moral perversion that’s interesting, it’s the weird egotism. It’s the weird belief that he, Henry, was all-important, while his daughter turned out to be just an instrument for his chastisement. It’s the bizarre belief that his daughter was just some kind of symbol or copy for Him.
Then shortly after reading that I read Norm on anti-semitism in Sweden. The mayor of Malmö said ‘he was opposed to anti-Semitism, but added: “I believe these are anti-Israel attacks, connected to the war in Gaza…”.’ Norm commented:
[H]atred of Jews or attacks on them and their places of worship, schools or other institutions are nothing but anti-Semitism, whether they are linked to passions about Israel or not. For the targets of them are not, in fact, Israel; they are, in this case, Swedish Jews.
Just so. And Swedish Jews, as Norm says, are not Israel, and Americans are not America, and Londoners are not British foreign policy, and so on. People don’t stand in for other people or for abstractions, and random strangers don’t stand in for anything, because they are an unknown quantity. Knowing they are ‘Jews’ or ‘Americans’ or ‘Nigerians’ or whatever it may be is not to know enough. People aren’t proxies, and it’s always stupid and often dangerous to treat them as such.
Well said Ophelia. Your last sentence is terrific. The two cases, though are different. One is egotism, the other is hate by proxy.
Yup – but the background idea is the same. That’s kind of non-obvious, so I thought it was worth pointing out.
Non obvious, but all too common. I’m thinking of “Al Gore’s” global warming, or “Darwin’s” evolution, or “Obama’s” health care. It’s seems much easier to get that gut level, Pavlovian response if you can put a face on the idea you are fighting.
Living in a town with a large Jewish community, I’ve seen antisemitism on the streets rise and fall depending on news reports (or their absence) from the West Bank and Gaza. Stupid and dangerous indeed.
Isn’t that how all wars are fought? Poor and powerless people killing each other as proxies for rich and powerful people’s ideas and ambitions? But then war is nothing if not stupid and dangerous.
Beautifully said, Ophelia!
One of the most hideous examples of this is related by Francis Collins in his book The Language of God. In his book he recounts how his daughter was raped, and how he realised this was part of his god’s plan, so she could become a rape counsellor and help other rape victims.
Also (p46):
So God will put your children through unspeakable torments to teach you philosophical lessons. God is omnipotent, and this is how he CHOOSES to go about things.
This is the same God who punishes whole cities for the transgressions of a few, indeed, who punishes the whole human race for the trivial disobedience of one innocent couple who didn’t even know right from wrong. And this is a good thing, apparently. We’re supposed to WORSHIP this God, who is loving.
But have no fear, he’ll help your sports team win the big game if you pray. Unless you lose, in which case that was part of his plan as well. Just have faith.
Oh that’s right! I’d forgotten the Francis Collins version. Absolutely classic example.
And God is good, remember. That’s the kind of system a good deity would put in place. I’d hate to see what an evil deity would do.
And then there’s the standard apologia about God allowing natural disasters to bring out the best in people (and as a recruiting tool to boot.)
From http://www.gotquestions.org/natural-disasters.html
“We can understand why natural disasters occur. What we do not understand is why God allows them to occur. Why did God allow the tsunami to kill over 225,000 people in Asia? Why did God allow Hurricane Katrina to destroy the homes of thousands of people? For one thing, such events shake our confidence in this life and force us to think about eternity. Churches are usually filled after disasters as people realize how tenuous their lives really are and how life can be taken away in an instant. What we do know is this: God is good! Many amazing miracles occurred during the course of natural disasters that prevented even greater loss of life. Natural disasters cause millions of people to reevaluate their priorities in life. Hundreds of millions of dollars in aid is sent to help the people who are suffering. Christian ministries have the opportunity to help, minister, counsel, pray, and lead people to saving faith in Christ! God can, and does, bring great good out of terrible tragedies (Romans 8:28).”
God is good when he sends disasters because it teaches people courage and charity. He’s also good when he decides to intervene and prevent additional deaths from the very same disasters. There’s just no way for God _not_ to be good.
Quite so – that’s because what we do know is this: God is good! Period. Plato might as well have saved himself the trouble of writing the Euthyphro, because we know that God=good and vice versa and there is nothing we will not say in order to make that equation fit the actual facts.
Not only that, but goodness is impossible without god. We benighted atheists are simply fooling ourselves into thinking that we can possibly be moral, or that any secular basis for morality can ever be articulated.
And some religious people will state baldly that they’d be out killing and maiming, raping the horses and riding off on the women without their god keeping them in check.
It’s just a sick joke – a childish thug of a god who delights in massacres and genocide and blood sacrific. A god who, when he comes to slightly regret his previous actions, is so blinkered that the only solution he can come up with to the ridiculous problems he himself has created is to engage in a slightly different form of blood sacrifice. The sacrifice of himself to himself to save humanity from himself.
I had an argument just the other day with a theist who said that we can’t be moral without his god, we can’t have meaning without his god and we can’t have stable societies without his god.
Never mind that the more religious a society is the more hideous it is, never mind that clerical rule (the natural extension of that argument) has never produced anything but horrors.
Then later on he said religions are man-made, what’s important is a relationship with his god. How are we supposed to run these wonderful god-based societies then? We’re supposed to have been given instructions!
I tell you, I hope if there are intelligent aliens that they’ve taken one good look at our religions and quarantined us indefinitely. WARNING! EARTH – DANGEROUS! DO NOT APPROACH!
We are discussing the same topic over here, guys. (I borrowed quite a bit from you all!) The original post used yet another particularly vile version of this argument, that handicapped children are God’s punishment for aborting the first born (pace a particularly stupid Virginia legislator) http://www.wineloverspage.com/forum/village/viewtopic.php?f=14&t=30578
I’m losing the plot here – is someone saying that pointing out that anti-semites are so stupid that they use Israeli foreign policy as an excuse to be more anti-semitic is itself an anti-semitic act?