cant we all just get along?

Reading Obama’s book he talks about how easily the media can spin any event. The media, left, center, and right, sets up a false polarizing battle between “intellectuals” and “anti-intellectuals.”


Let me construct an example for you. Who’s smarter, an east coast atheist who reads books all day and can talk about them, or someone on the bible belt who has profound faith in god because they realize in the grand scheme of things they are quite insignificant and they look to a higher power for meaning? From this example we can see that “smart” is an arbitrary and completely useless term. Coming from the east coast I feel compelled to defend this argument, especially our bible belt person, from potential attacks. One could say that by reading the east coast person is opened up to a whole new world of ideas. To this I would say true, but profound religious faith opens one up to a whole set of ideas as well. Type religion in on Google and you will get 324,000,000 hits. Type in academia and you will only get 32,600,000 hits. The Google measure might not be perfect, but the information superhighway has ten times more about religion than academia, that has to mean something.


Another argument someone might make is that it’s just stupid to believe in god, we don’t need him anymore, we have science. To this I would say you need to be more up to date on your science. Current scientific thinking is struggling to explain the origin of life and existence and struggling very hard. They have theories independent of the God explanation, but the improbability of these theories is so high, so many factors need to line up just so, that the most likely explanation for the creation of the universe right now, in 2008, is God. This doesn’t mean its right or wrong, this is a dialogue people much smarter than myself have been having for many years. From all their discussion and debate God, not necessarily the Judeo-Christian God, some think it might be more of a Platonian God, is the best answer to the difficult question of existence.


So the word “smart” is stupid. I want to replace it with the phrase “makes sense.” If you are lucky enough to live a life of privilege, which I was, then it “makes sense” to read books and get to use big words and play with ideas. If, like the majority of Americans, you didn’t get to live a life of privilege, if instead you were oppressed in some degree by our system that favors the wealthy, then it doesn’t “make sense” for you to read books and all that other jazz. You don’t have the time, you have to worry about surviving, about supporting your family, so much energy is spent fighting for a life that America is reluctant to give you, that you don’t have time for much else. It “makes sense” for someone not to pick up a book for a month if they’re working two jobs trying to support a family and have to live in constant fear that they might lose one or both of those jobs.

Once I meet the other 299,999,999 citizens of America then I have the right to generalize about the cognitive capacities of the rest of my country. Until then I’m going to be positive. I’m going to say Americans are like everybody else, they have their faults, but they’re good people just trying to get by in this crazy world. I can tell Texas, Ohio, Rhode Island, and Vermont what would be smart to do next Tuesday though, and that’s vote for Obama!