Why Men Kill and Women Don't. Part One. by Dave Jaffe.
"Why can't a woman be more like a man? " sang Rex Harrison, playing Professor Henry Higgins in Lerner and Lowe's 1950's musical 'My Fair Lady'. The musical was based on George Bernard Shaw's drama 'Pygmalion'. In the play and the musical, professor Higgins teaches a cockney lass to speak what some call 'Proper English'.
Higgins succeeds in his task but then falls in love with his student. Yet his plea for women to be more like men, maybe should be reversed. Perhaps we should be asking instead, "Why can't a man be more like a woman?" The reason for this is simple: Women don't usually kill other human beings. Men do.
Years ago on Vancouver's Commercial Drive, a feminist of the 1980's told me, "The most dangerous man a woman will meet is an angry former lover." Yet most men who've been rejected by women don't go out and kill women. Yet some do. The recent killer of 10 people in Toronto who also injured 18 people by driving his van into a downtown crowd, did feel rejected by women.
So that feminist's statement is partly true. Men who hate women do sometimes kill women. Women who hate men rarely kill men. Not only that. Men can be dangerous especially if they're young. More than eight in ten murders every year are done by men. Nearly 90 per cent of rapes, violent robberies and assaults in Canada are committed by males. Women can kill and do commit crimes like.shop lifting and fraud. Yet even here, men's proceeds from these crimes .always outrank money that women get.
Men drive more dangerously than women, are far more likely to kill themselves, much more willing to shoot up speed and heroin, snort cocaine and join the armed forces of their country. In Syria right now troops from seven or eight armies are killing, shooting and dying. I'll bet that more than nine out of ten soldiers in these armies are men.
Take the terrible mass murders erupting so often in the United States these days. The really first wave of these murders started in about 1966. Since then mass murders have struck in many places. Who's the person pulling the trigger or sitting behind the wheel of a car ramming into crowds? It's usually a man. In Canada Marc Lepine a young disturbed man killed 14 female engineering students and injured ten others in Montreal in the 1980's. Recently Alexandre Bissonnette, went into a mosque in Quebec and killed six Moslems. The latest mass murderer in Toronto,Canada was a man too. If you want to see someone go on a rampage look for a disturbed young male, especially one who's single.
"Women civilize men," a female therapist once told me. This is true. Young single males, especially sexually frustrated ones can be dangerous.
Thursday, 26 April 2018
Monday, 9 April 2018
Ends and Odds: The Ravings of An Old Man by Dave Jaffe. Chapter Eight. Part Two
An Inspiring Artist: By Dave Jaffe. Part Two.
In 1914 at the start od the First World War, Vassily Kandinsky fled back to Russia. There he saw the Russian revolution of October 1917 sweep away the old order. The Russian Revolution led by Lenin, set up communism and abolished tsarist rule and private property. At first Kandinsky sympathized with the revolution although he lost all his property. He worked for the new government and travelled across the country setting up art museums. Yet the political climate soon hardened and Kandinsky realized that he couldn't live under the new communist regime.
In 1921 Kandinsky moved back to Germany to work at the Bauhaus Institute. Its aim was to merge the work of visual artists, architects and others to create a new world of social justice in Germany. Here Kandinsky met and worked with modern artists like Josef Albers, Paul Klee and others. Yet many Germans didn't like the Bauhaus institute. They found it dangerous and too left leaning. Germany was in very bad shape. It had lost the first world war, saw millions of it citizens killed in the combat, and many of its territories were handed over to other countries. It was also saddled with massive debt that the war's victors like Britain and France forced it to pay as reparations.
The Bauhaus school was forced to move twice. Then came the Great Depression of 1929. Germany was hit hard by the financial collapse. As the jobless rate soared up to 40 per cent, support for the Nazi Party led by Adolf Hitler climbed up too. In 1933, Hitler became Germany's chancellor and the Nazis crushed all dissent. They closed down the Bauhaus and Kandinsky fled to France.
"My roots in Germany are still deep," Kandinsky once said. Yet from the mid-1930's, he lived in France. By now he had split up with Gabrielle Minter and married again. Nina Andrevskaya was a conventional cheerful affectionate woman who loved fashionable clothes and good times. She was much younger than Kandinsky, yet she respected and loved him. In France, most people ignored Kandinsky's art but he kept on painting.
His bright colours and swirling forms now changed into triangular shapes, diagonals and straight lines. These new paintings didn't match the power of Kandinsky's earlier work. Also the theories that he worked out to support his art may have hurt his creativity. Still, he kept on painting. Yet soon more trouble landed near his doorstep.
In 1940 the Germans led by Hitler invaded and occupied France. Like the communist ruler Stalin, but for different reasons, Hitler hated abstract art. Many visual artists and other intellectuals fled to the U.S. and Britain. Yet Kandinsky and Nina stayed in a suburb of Paris throughout the Nazi occupation. No Nazis appeared to hunt Kandinsky. He had not been welcomed by most French artists and critics. And he had remained aloof from all the feuds and controversies that were part of the French art world. So the Nazis probably didn't notice Kandinsky and left him alone.
Kandinsky celebrated his 75th birthday with his wife and some friends. He died in 1944 at the age of 78. "To-day," the British art critic John Berger wrote in 1965, "there are still pockets of exemption anywhere." Kandinsky lived in a pocket of exemptions. He survived while living under two of the most ruthless governments in history, namely Stalin's Soviet Union and Hitler's Nazi regime .Both governments despised modern art. Yet Kandinsky painted abstract art and died peacefully in his bed.
Of course he was lucky. He was born into the richest 1 per cent of Russia. And at each stage of his life he found a woman to love and take care of him. Yet his life illustrates the fact that many people live under terrible governments and yet create beautiful things. In this age of tyranny we should remember this great man and honour him.
In 1914 at the start od the First World War, Vassily Kandinsky fled back to Russia. There he saw the Russian revolution of October 1917 sweep away the old order. The Russian Revolution led by Lenin, set up communism and abolished tsarist rule and private property. At first Kandinsky sympathized with the revolution although he lost all his property. He worked for the new government and travelled across the country setting up art museums. Yet the political climate soon hardened and Kandinsky realized that he couldn't live under the new communist regime.
In 1921 Kandinsky moved back to Germany to work at the Bauhaus Institute. Its aim was to merge the work of visual artists, architects and others to create a new world of social justice in Germany. Here Kandinsky met and worked with modern artists like Josef Albers, Paul Klee and others. Yet many Germans didn't like the Bauhaus institute. They found it dangerous and too left leaning. Germany was in very bad shape. It had lost the first world war, saw millions of it citizens killed in the combat, and many of its territories were handed over to other countries. It was also saddled with massive debt that the war's victors like Britain and France forced it to pay as reparations.
The Bauhaus school was forced to move twice. Then came the Great Depression of 1929. Germany was hit hard by the financial collapse. As the jobless rate soared up to 40 per cent, support for the Nazi Party led by Adolf Hitler climbed up too. In 1933, Hitler became Germany's chancellor and the Nazis crushed all dissent. They closed down the Bauhaus and Kandinsky fled to France.
"My roots in Germany are still deep," Kandinsky once said. Yet from the mid-1930's, he lived in France. By now he had split up with Gabrielle Minter and married again. Nina Andrevskaya was a conventional cheerful affectionate woman who loved fashionable clothes and good times. She was much younger than Kandinsky, yet she respected and loved him. In France, most people ignored Kandinsky's art but he kept on painting.
His bright colours and swirling forms now changed into triangular shapes, diagonals and straight lines. These new paintings didn't match the power of Kandinsky's earlier work. Also the theories that he worked out to support his art may have hurt his creativity. Still, he kept on painting. Yet soon more trouble landed near his doorstep.
In 1940 the Germans led by Hitler invaded and occupied France. Like the communist ruler Stalin, but for different reasons, Hitler hated abstract art. Many visual artists and other intellectuals fled to the U.S. and Britain. Yet Kandinsky and Nina stayed in a suburb of Paris throughout the Nazi occupation. No Nazis appeared to hunt Kandinsky. He had not been welcomed by most French artists and critics. And he had remained aloof from all the feuds and controversies that were part of the French art world. So the Nazis probably didn't notice Kandinsky and left him alone.
Kandinsky celebrated his 75th birthday with his wife and some friends. He died in 1944 at the age of 78. "To-day," the British art critic John Berger wrote in 1965, "there are still pockets of exemption anywhere." Kandinsky lived in a pocket of exemptions. He survived while living under two of the most ruthless governments in history, namely Stalin's Soviet Union and Hitler's Nazi regime .Both governments despised modern art. Yet Kandinsky painted abstract art and died peacefully in his bed.
Of course he was lucky. He was born into the richest 1 per cent of Russia. And at each stage of his life he found a woman to love and take care of him. Yet his life illustrates the fact that many people live under terrible governments and yet create beautiful things. In this age of tyranny we should remember this great man and honour him.
Tuesday, 3 April 2018
Ends and Odds: The Ravings of An Old Man by Dave Jaffe. Chapter Eight: An Inspiring Artist.
An Inspiring Artist by Dave Jaffe. Part One.
Do you like abstract art? Many people don't and some people say when confronted with this type of painting , "Why my five year old son or daughter could do this sort of thing." Yet the life of one of the world's first modern abstract painters, Vassily Kandinsky, can teach us lessons about how to survive and create beautiful things in really tough times. Kandinsky's art by the way,could never have been painted by any five year old or most human beings for that matter.
On one afternoon in Germany in 1911, a tall 45 year-old Russian man came back to his artists's studio. A painting of his leaned against a wall. This painting seemed to Vassily Kandinsky to be the most beautiful painting he'd ever seen. He saw no objects in it. It was totally abstract.
Then suddenly he realized that it was his painting that he was looking at. He'd painted a picture of some objects. Yet the painting was tilted on its side and so looked like an abstract painting. Amazed by this experience, Kandinsky became one of the first modern abstract artists. He stopped painting landscapes and other subjects. From then on, he painted nothing but abstract art.
At this date of 1911, the world was changing more than it ever had before. "All is possible," wrote the French poet Andre Salmon. "Everything is realizable, everywhere and with everything." Pablo Picasso and George Braque were painting cubist pictures, James Joyce was writing his path breaking novel called 'Ulysses' and musical composers were inventing atonal music. Yet it was technology that was re-arranging the world. The car, the phonograph, film, the radio and the airplane had been invented around 1900 or a little later. Human beings now lived in a technological world.
Vassily Kandinsky's life was to be chockfull of upheavals due to technology and politics. Yet he survived these shocks and created beautiful art. Kandinsky was born in Russia in 1866. His family belonged to the richest 1 per cent of the population. By the age of 27 he was a professor of law. Then he saw a painting of a haystack by the great French impressionist artist Claude Monet. It was indeed called 'Haystacks' though Kandinsky had never seen a painting of haystacks like this. Suddenly Kandinsky stopped teaching law and became a painter.
After a few years he moved to Munich in southern Germany. Here he painted, wrote books and left his first wife. He became lovers with the painter, weaver and tapestry maker Gabrielle Munter. "If we were to begin to destroy completely the bonds that ties to nature," Kandinsky said in 1896, "we would create works that would look like a geometric ornament." In the end that's what nearly happened to Kandinsky and his painting. Yet in 1914, world politics erupted into his life. The First World War started. Germany, the Turkish Empire and the empire of Austria Hungary squared off against Britain, France, Russia and their allies. Three years later the United States joined the war on Britain's side. Kandinsky fled Germany which was now an enemy of Russia and moved back to his homeland.
Do you like abstract art? Many people don't and some people say when confronted with this type of painting , "Why my five year old son or daughter could do this sort of thing." Yet the life of one of the world's first modern abstract painters, Vassily Kandinsky, can teach us lessons about how to survive and create beautiful things in really tough times. Kandinsky's art by the way,could never have been painted by any five year old or most human beings for that matter.
On one afternoon in Germany in 1911, a tall 45 year-old Russian man came back to his artists's studio. A painting of his leaned against a wall. This painting seemed to Vassily Kandinsky to be the most beautiful painting he'd ever seen. He saw no objects in it. It was totally abstract.
Then suddenly he realized that it was his painting that he was looking at. He'd painted a picture of some objects. Yet the painting was tilted on its side and so looked like an abstract painting. Amazed by this experience, Kandinsky became one of the first modern abstract artists. He stopped painting landscapes and other subjects. From then on, he painted nothing but abstract art.
At this date of 1911, the world was changing more than it ever had before. "All is possible," wrote the French poet Andre Salmon. "Everything is realizable, everywhere and with everything." Pablo Picasso and George Braque were painting cubist pictures, James Joyce was writing his path breaking novel called 'Ulysses' and musical composers were inventing atonal music. Yet it was technology that was re-arranging the world. The car, the phonograph, film, the radio and the airplane had been invented around 1900 or a little later. Human beings now lived in a technological world.
Vassily Kandinsky's life was to be chockfull of upheavals due to technology and politics. Yet he survived these shocks and created beautiful art. Kandinsky was born in Russia in 1866. His family belonged to the richest 1 per cent of the population. By the age of 27 he was a professor of law. Then he saw a painting of a haystack by the great French impressionist artist Claude Monet. It was indeed called 'Haystacks' though Kandinsky had never seen a painting of haystacks like this. Suddenly Kandinsky stopped teaching law and became a painter.
After a few years he moved to Munich in southern Germany. Here he painted, wrote books and left his first wife. He became lovers with the painter, weaver and tapestry maker Gabrielle Munter. "If we were to begin to destroy completely the bonds that ties to nature," Kandinsky said in 1896, "we would create works that would look like a geometric ornament." In the end that's what nearly happened to Kandinsky and his painting. Yet in 1914, world politics erupted into his life. The First World War started. Germany, the Turkish Empire and the empire of Austria Hungary squared off against Britain, France, Russia and their allies. Three years later the United States joined the war on Britain's side. Kandinsky fled Germany which was now an enemy of Russia and moved back to his homeland.
Wednesday, 14 March 2018
Ends and Odds: The Ravings of An Old Man by Dave Jaffe. Chapter Seven, Part Five.
My Religious Odyssey. Part Five.
The Canadian Memorial United Church contrasts strongly with the Quakers worship house. "This church is a magnet church," a worshipper at the United Church says. "It draws people from all across Metro Vancouver." She herself comes from New Westminster. The budget of the Quaker church stands at about $30,000 a year. The Canadian Memorial Church's budget hit $800,000 in 2017. "Running this church costs lots of money," says one of its main ministers.
I have returned to the Quakers after a three year absence. Yet now when I tire of the Quaker silences and need to hear sermons and a choir, I head off to Canadian Memorial. Here too, I have found happiness and a place to worship.
My religious journey has now I think come to an end. I have left the Jewish religion and most political involvements. When people now ask me what I did in my adult life I usually reply, "I lived on welfare, did telemarketing and was active in the anti-poverty movement. I've also changed my religion and my life a number of times."
And I usually add, "It was all good."
The Canadian Memorial United Church contrasts strongly with the Quakers worship house. "This church is a magnet church," a worshipper at the United Church says. "It draws people from all across Metro Vancouver." She herself comes from New Westminster. The budget of the Quaker church stands at about $30,000 a year. The Canadian Memorial Church's budget hit $800,000 in 2017. "Running this church costs lots of money," says one of its main ministers.
I have returned to the Quakers after a three year absence. Yet now when I tire of the Quaker silences and need to hear sermons and a choir, I head off to Canadian Memorial. Here too, I have found happiness and a place to worship.
My religious journey has now I think come to an end. I have left the Jewish religion and most political involvements. When people now ask me what I did in my adult life I usually reply, "I lived on welfare, did telemarketing and was active in the anti-poverty movement. I've also changed my religion and my life a number of times."
And I usually add, "It was all good."
Tuesday, 13 March 2018
Ends and Odds: Th Ravings of An Old Man by Dave Jaffe: Chapter Seven, Part Four..
My Religious Odyssey by Dave Jaffe. Part Four.
Many Quaker services are simply one hour of silence. Still, sometimes worshippers may be inspired to practice what is called "ministry". Someone speaks about some spiritual or contemporary topic. Then after a period of silence someone else will speak. At the end of the hour of worship the congregants greet each other and then may talk during a ten minute session about their private concerns or more public topics.
When I first came to this worship house I talked often in the usually silent hour. These days I only talk after the hour of silence ends. For me, who often talks far too much, the hour of silence is a profound experience. Also, the religious beliefs of the Quakers are Christian but not heavily so.
For 13 years I went to the Quakers and most of the time I enjoyed it there. Yet then I tired of the silences and dropped out for a while.
One spring Sunday morning in 2016 I sat in a west side park where I often went to take the sun and breathe in the spring air. I'd lived in this area briefly in the 1970's and had come to this park since about 2009. In the past 40 years a lot of changes had happened in the neighbourhood. Yet the United Church still sat on the corner of 15th Avenue and Burrard Street. I needed to go to a toilet and wandered into the church while it was in session. Soon I went back to this church again and again. It's called the Canadian Memorial United Church. The church has a wonderful choir and two or three very impressive women ministers. Also a very fine set of stained glass windows that tell contemporary and biblical stories line two walls of the church.
"This church was founded after the first world war," a church member told me. "The man who started the church came back from the war and wanted to devote his life to peace." The United Church was formed out of three separate Protestant religions. The United Church is often known as a left leaning church. Yet not all United churches lean to the left. One or two others I've been to were quite conservative.
Still, this Memorial Church was very liberal. "The Anglican Church in England is the Tory Church at prayer," some people used to say about Anglicans. In English Canada, many members of the economic elite in the 1950's and before were Anglican. Yet there were other churches that leaned to the left like the United Church. In Canada, some progressive church ministers helped start the progressive Social Gospel before World War One.
In the end, left wing ministers like James Shaver Woodsworth vanished from the United Church and helped set up the socialist Co-operative Commonwealth Federation political party in the 1930's. Yet progressive elements still linger in some United Churches. In any case, Canadian Memorial church preached a progressive faith. It was the first real Christian church I'd ever been to on a regular basis.
Many Quaker services are simply one hour of silence. Still, sometimes worshippers may be inspired to practice what is called "ministry". Someone speaks about some spiritual or contemporary topic. Then after a period of silence someone else will speak. At the end of the hour of worship the congregants greet each other and then may talk during a ten minute session about their private concerns or more public topics.
When I first came to this worship house I talked often in the usually silent hour. These days I only talk after the hour of silence ends. For me, who often talks far too much, the hour of silence is a profound experience. Also, the religious beliefs of the Quakers are Christian but not heavily so.
For 13 years I went to the Quakers and most of the time I enjoyed it there. Yet then I tired of the silences and dropped out for a while.
One spring Sunday morning in 2016 I sat in a west side park where I often went to take the sun and breathe in the spring air. I'd lived in this area briefly in the 1970's and had come to this park since about 2009. In the past 40 years a lot of changes had happened in the neighbourhood. Yet the United Church still sat on the corner of 15th Avenue and Burrard Street. I needed to go to a toilet and wandered into the church while it was in session. Soon I went back to this church again and again. It's called the Canadian Memorial United Church. The church has a wonderful choir and two or three very impressive women ministers. Also a very fine set of stained glass windows that tell contemporary and biblical stories line two walls of the church.
"This church was founded after the first world war," a church member told me. "The man who started the church came back from the war and wanted to devote his life to peace." The United Church was formed out of three separate Protestant religions. The United Church is often known as a left leaning church. Yet not all United churches lean to the left. One or two others I've been to were quite conservative.
Still, this Memorial Church was very liberal. "The Anglican Church in England is the Tory Church at prayer," some people used to say about Anglicans. In English Canada, many members of the economic elite in the 1950's and before were Anglican. Yet there were other churches that leaned to the left like the United Church. In Canada, some progressive church ministers helped start the progressive Social Gospel before World War One.
In the end, left wing ministers like James Shaver Woodsworth vanished from the United Church and helped set up the socialist Co-operative Commonwealth Federation political party in the 1930's. Yet progressive elements still linger in some United Churches. In any case, Canadian Memorial church preached a progressive faith. It was the first real Christian church I'd ever been to on a regular basis.
Monday, 5 March 2018
Ends and Odds: The Ravings of An Old Man By Dave Jaffe.. Chapter Seven Part Three. My Religious Odyssey.
My Religious Odyssey by Dave Jaffe. Part Three.
When the United States and the British armies invaded Iraq in March 2003 I was going regularly to the Unitarian Church in Vancouver. By this time I'd left the New Democratic Party and no longer called myself a socialist. Still, I remained a progressive and the invasion of Iraq appalled me. Yet in the Unitarian Church the minister didn't mention the invasion at all - or at least didn't say a word about it when I came to church.
Not only this, many church members supported the invasion. This last fact didn't surprise me. Yet I did expect the minister of the time to say something about the war. "This is far out," I told a woman who taught biology at the University of British Columbia. "Aren't some Unitarians against this war?"
"Dave," this woman replied, "you may have come to the wrong church. Go 20 blocks down Oak Street. to the Quakers. You'll find a lot of people there who're against this war." So I journeyed 20 blocks south along Oak street and ended up at the Quakers of the Society of Friends as they refer to themselves. Here I made the right move.
I was now into my third religion. The Quaker worship space is tiny. You sit in a former Baptist church that really looks like a compact living room. All worshippers sit on benches or rows of chairs that are ranged in a square that surrounds a sacred object placed on a low table. The Quakers or Friends' congregation in Vancouver doesn't total more than 100 members . The meeting house in Vancouver never held more than 30 or so worshippers when I went there.
Unlike all other churches I've been to, there's no hymns, no sermons or any minister in the meeting house. Quakers worship in silence. A service lasts about an hour. " It's like waiting for a dentist's appointment," one observer said about Quaker worship. A young man I met at the worship service liked the silence. "It's cool," he said. "Really cool." In this hour of silence Quakers are worshipping. They're not meditating, though some Buddhists do show up with prayer mats and meditate. Quakers are focusing on God or the divine spirit.
The founder of the Society of Friends was George Fox who lived in England during the Civil War. in the 17th century. He believed that each person carried the light of God within them. Big churches or churches period were unnecessary, Fox said. To worship God all one needed was a small space and a belief in the divine.
When the United States and the British armies invaded Iraq in March 2003 I was going regularly to the Unitarian Church in Vancouver. By this time I'd left the New Democratic Party and no longer called myself a socialist. Still, I remained a progressive and the invasion of Iraq appalled me. Yet in the Unitarian Church the minister didn't mention the invasion at all - or at least didn't say a word about it when I came to church.
Not only this, many church members supported the invasion. This last fact didn't surprise me. Yet I did expect the minister of the time to say something about the war. "This is far out," I told a woman who taught biology at the University of British Columbia. "Aren't some Unitarians against this war?"
"Dave," this woman replied, "you may have come to the wrong church. Go 20 blocks down Oak Street. to the Quakers. You'll find a lot of people there who're against this war." So I journeyed 20 blocks south along Oak street and ended up at the Quakers of the Society of Friends as they refer to themselves. Here I made the right move.
I was now into my third religion. The Quaker worship space is tiny. You sit in a former Baptist church that really looks like a compact living room. All worshippers sit on benches or rows of chairs that are ranged in a square that surrounds a sacred object placed on a low table. The Quakers or Friends' congregation in Vancouver doesn't total more than 100 members . The meeting house in Vancouver never held more than 30 or so worshippers when I went there.
Unlike all other churches I've been to, there's no hymns, no sermons or any minister in the meeting house. Quakers worship in silence. A service lasts about an hour. " It's like waiting for a dentist's appointment," one observer said about Quaker worship. A young man I met at the worship service liked the silence. "It's cool," he said. "Really cool." In this hour of silence Quakers are worshipping. They're not meditating, though some Buddhists do show up with prayer mats and meditate. Quakers are focusing on God or the divine spirit.
The founder of the Society of Friends was George Fox who lived in England during the Civil War. in the 17th century. He believed that each person carried the light of God within them. Big churches or churches period were unnecessary, Fox said. To worship God all one needed was a small space and a belief in the divine.
Wednesday, 28 February 2018
Ends and Odds: THe Ravings of An Old Man by Dave Jaffe: Chapter Seven,Part Two.
My Religious Odyssey. Part Two by Dave Jaffe.
Although I was raised in a very orthodox Jewish family, my religious education exposed me to other religious trends. In my mid teens, I had classes in Bible studies and came across Jesus's wonderful Sermon on the Mount in the Gospel according to Saint Matthew. Parts of it appealed to me in a way that my father's religion never did. Now there were parts of the Sermon that struck me as absurd. For instance the idea that adulterers should be put to death seemed to me then and now as idiotic.
Yet other sections of the Sermon glowed with a tolerance and a compassion that impressed me no end. In any case I filed the sermon away in my mind and only came back to it thirty years or so later. By that time in the late 1980's I was a full blown socialist and a member of the New Democratic Party. In fact now looking back at my journey from Judaism to socialism, it all seems logical.
"Religion when pushed to the extreme generalization," writes Randall Collins, "turns into political ideals. The modern doctrines of conservatism, liberalism and socialism emerge out of the declining belief in religion." These creeds, Collins says continue concerns "in a new form."
I ditched Judaism in my late teens and replaced it soon after with another religion, namely socialism. Yet in the late 1980's, life threw me some new curve balls. I developed neurofibromas or non-cancerous tumours all over my body. The doctors I went to couldn't find a cure for these tumours and hesitated to cut them out of my body for fear of hurt my breathing and muscle use. In the end, I started to go to the Unitarians Church in Vancouver for spiritual sustenance. Here in this church on Vancouver's west side, I met many fine people and had some good times. Yet I found the church week in the spiritual sense.
Most Unitarians didn't believe in God. I did. I also found that the political views of many Unitarians leaned to the right. "People here are socially progressive," Barbara, a long time congregant said. "Yet they're not politically progressive." In other words, Unitarians support same sex marriage, a woman's right to abortion and gay and lesbian worshippers. and ministers. Yet many Unitarians I met supported a strong Canadian military, weak social programs and low taxes for the rich. "Unitarians say nice things," a former Unitarian told me. "But they don't do nice things."
The turning point for me came in early 2003 when U.S. president George W. Bush started the second Iraqi war. He launched a U.S. invasion of Iraq along with British and some other troops. By this time I'd left the N.D.P. and my political commitments had tapered off to very little. Yet I still remained a progressive. I thought that the Unitarian minister, who was an American like many other Unitarian ministers at the church, would denounce this invasion. Yet as far as I can recall he said nothing about it. I also met people in the church who supported the war. This did disturb me.
Although I was raised in a very orthodox Jewish family, my religious education exposed me to other religious trends. In my mid teens, I had classes in Bible studies and came across Jesus's wonderful Sermon on the Mount in the Gospel according to Saint Matthew. Parts of it appealed to me in a way that my father's religion never did. Now there were parts of the Sermon that struck me as absurd. For instance the idea that adulterers should be put to death seemed to me then and now as idiotic.
Yet other sections of the Sermon glowed with a tolerance and a compassion that impressed me no end. In any case I filed the sermon away in my mind and only came back to it thirty years or so later. By that time in the late 1980's I was a full blown socialist and a member of the New Democratic Party. In fact now looking back at my journey from Judaism to socialism, it all seems logical.
"Religion when pushed to the extreme generalization," writes Randall Collins, "turns into political ideals. The modern doctrines of conservatism, liberalism and socialism emerge out of the declining belief in religion." These creeds, Collins says continue concerns "in a new form."
I ditched Judaism in my late teens and replaced it soon after with another religion, namely socialism. Yet in the late 1980's, life threw me some new curve balls. I developed neurofibromas or non-cancerous tumours all over my body. The doctors I went to couldn't find a cure for these tumours and hesitated to cut them out of my body for fear of hurt my breathing and muscle use. In the end, I started to go to the Unitarians Church in Vancouver for spiritual sustenance. Here in this church on Vancouver's west side, I met many fine people and had some good times. Yet I found the church week in the spiritual sense.
Most Unitarians didn't believe in God. I did. I also found that the political views of many Unitarians leaned to the right. "People here are socially progressive," Barbara, a long time congregant said. "Yet they're not politically progressive." In other words, Unitarians support same sex marriage, a woman's right to abortion and gay and lesbian worshippers. and ministers. Yet many Unitarians I met supported a strong Canadian military, weak social programs and low taxes for the rich. "Unitarians say nice things," a former Unitarian told me. "But they don't do nice things."
The turning point for me came in early 2003 when U.S. president George W. Bush started the second Iraqi war. He launched a U.S. invasion of Iraq along with British and some other troops. By this time I'd left the N.D.P. and my political commitments had tapered off to very little. Yet I still remained a progressive. I thought that the Unitarian minister, who was an American like many other Unitarian ministers at the church, would denounce this invasion. Yet as far as I can recall he said nothing about it. I also met people in the church who supported the war. This did disturb me.
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