Excellent article. Our European allies are probably justifiably scared of a president who believes he is capable of sorting out who is evil and who isn't, here on Earth. Not only does Bush constantly mix up the secular and the religious, but he also has a very unsophisticated understanding of his religion (hardly surprising, given that he has an unsophisticated view of everything).
Americans need to develop a greatness of mind that they do not, at present, have. The educations of most people in this country are sadly lacking, because the people are averse to becoming educated. We have a deep underlying distrust of "intellectuals". You'll see it all the time on SI. Since education frequently makes people more liberal (and if you look up the definition of liberal you'll see some clues as to why that is so) those who oppose liberality in thinking see education as an evil. That's an ugly thread that runs through out society. Our citizens also place little value on proven ways to expand the mind- for example most of our citizens speak only one language (and many do not even have a mastery of English). We know that the brains of bilingual and multilingual people are more sophisticated in how they process information- thus there may actually be better thinking going on in "Old Europe". Until Americans value education, though, they won't become educated. Education is not something school can do to you, it is something you do for yourself, and school is just one tool which help you achieve the goal. American people, "religious" thought they may be, seem to value sex, beauty. money and fame- if you look at our popular culture, and our advertising, and every other clue to our cultural "values". Perhaps our countrymen are "religious" because it's an easy way to believe they can salvage themselves from their own shallowness. One day a week in church makes up for the sin and ignorance of the rest of the week? I begin to think this. Religion is a short cut for shallow people who do not actually wish to put forth the effort to become intelligent and compassionate- both of which take work, imo. ( Religion can be other things to bigger minded people- but let's face it- those people are few and far between. It's much more common to find people who want to use their religion as a club (either in terms of an exclusionary club, or in terms of a weapon), than who want to use it to truly become a more humane human being. I guess we have to blame religions a little for this, since they really were never designed to make people more humane, kinder, better people.) |
