Allen Brill has a good post up responding to Donald Sensing's post lamenting how society as a whole -- and Christianity in particular -- have become too feminized, leaving no room for aggressive dominating masculinity. Brill's answer is that Sensing's problem is with Jesus himself, who made a virtue of compassion and weakness: "Jesus does not come down from the cross and teach those mockers a lesson, he dies helpless and forsaken."
This exchange is part of the wide variety of commentary that has been spawned by Kim du Toit's self-parodic post about the threat to real manliness. (As an aside, why is it that some commenters take such glee in accusing homophobes of being secretly gay?)
Part of the problem is a confusion of steadfastness with domination. Sensing is right to point out that a real good shepherd would not be as clean and nice as Jesus is often shown in art -- he would be sweaty and dirty, and perhaps wounded from battling lions and wolves. However, I don't see this as necessarily masculine -- think of the archetype of the mother bear defending her cubs. The good shepherd does not go out looking for lions to battle, or try to eradicate wolves. The nature of God's love -- epitomized in the doctrine of turning the other cheek -- is to absorb whatever the world throws at us and remain uncowed, not to project power over the world and our fellow people.
This leads to what I think is a more important element of the problem: Christianity's persecution complex. As J. Colins Fisher writes in a comment to Brill's post: "If you look at Christianity's spread in the Roman Empire, it was those most likely at the receiving end of Roman muscle (pun intended!), who were likely to adopt the new faith (women, slaves, the lower classes, notorious outcasts)." Christianity is designed to appeal to the oppressed. This creates a problem when the faith becomes dominant, as it is in contemporary America. Much of the message of being steadfast in the face of adversity loses its relevance. So Christianity has a tendency to invent enemies, so that Christians can convince themselves that they're under attack. This is why you hear people implying that removing the ten commandments from a courthouse will be a death blow to the faith, and that a few gays getting married will destroy the institution. And it's why femininity, or even non-aggressive models of masculinity, is seen as such a threat.
Another element is the false dilemma of "this particular order, or chaos." I've blogged before about this false dilemma in the case of morality, and I think it applies here in the case of gender roles. Claude Levi-Strauss has written about this phenomenon in the case of sorcery, describing how people cling to the idea of sorcery even when it's proven wrong because they can't imagine any other way of ordering the world.
People in a dominant position are inclined to see their dominance as natural, and to have difficulty imagining another order for the world. One major theme in anti-feminization writing is that aggressive dominating masculinity is just the way that men are, and that if it's suppressed instead of being fostered, it will manifest itself in even more destructive ways down the line. The alternatives become the traditional "natural" order of things, or a warped and demented society. Those in subordinate positions, while they benefit from being able to construct alternate visions, can also suffer from this lack of imagination. When they do, despair sets in. Christianity appeals to people in this position because it helps people refuse to be dominated in their hearts.
I think this kind of thing may be what the Bible is getting at in declaring that Jesus' message would be foolishness as far as this world is concerned. Often when the Bible talks of worldliness, it is opposing not the physical and the spiritual, but the world that is with the world that could be. Jesus seems foolish because he denies the seemingly obvious truths about how society works, and invites us to look beyond these assumptions. The inability of a Christian as dedicated as St. Paul to get beyond his own sexist preconceptions demonstrates how difficult a task this is.
Stentor Danielson, 16:20,
The passage of time had doused the initial rage that engulfed Victorian farmer John "Monty" Skehan when a bushfire destroyed his property in January. But even the cold rain outside Myrtleford court seemed only to dampen - not deaden - his anger.
Skehan, 46, pleaded guilty to charges arising from his post-bushfire chainsaw attack on about 1000 trees in a national park adjoining his property near Beechworth.
... He maintained that more than half the trees he cut down were dead or burnt sticks and that he did it "to protect my property the next time there's a fire".
The federal government will become more actively involved in bushfire management in response to the devastating fires that ripped through Australia last summer, parliament was told.
A seven-month inquiry into the bushfires found poor management practices and refusal by some fire control officers to listen to local knowledge hampered fire fighting efforts.
"Fire suppression efforts were hampered by the dismissal of local knowledge by some fire controllers," committee chairman Gary Nairn told parliament.
So the lack of attention to local knowledge will be fixed by centralization and a top-down approach. I'm not saying it's impossible that this will work, but it is counterintuitive.
Being at a university, I get lots of announcements about events. For some reason, people here at Clark have a strong tendency to send them as attachments. This means that 1) my mailbox fills up faster, and 2) I have to sit and open a whole Word file or pdf to see what the announcement is about. This would be ok if for some reason I needed a nicely formatted flier about the event. But I see no reason why the pertinent info can't be pasted into the body of the email. So, to the kiosk with people who send out event announcements as attachments!
Stentor Danielson, 18:54,
Y'all Should Vote Democratic
My cartoon for this week, regarding the Confederate flag flap:
Originally I meant to portray Dean more favorably, as actually reaching out to southern whites in contrast to Kerry's (and Gephardt's) aversion. But then I read comment after comment from southerners offended at how Dean had stereotyped them. So I shifted Dean toward a "trying, awkwardly" sort of image with the poor attempt to speak in a southern accent, and made the southerner rolling his eyes at both candidates.
My commentary was "Senators Come Up Short On Air Quality," which unfortunately ended up being too much about the process of politics and a repeat (with fresh examples) of the Bush administration's penchant for secrecy, and not enough about the substance of the 9/11 air quality controversy. I did, however, take a very strong stance (perhaps too strong) in the accompanying cartoon.
Stentor Danielson, 18:46,
When it comes to fires, we could take a cue from Australia's aborigines. They don't wait decades for brush and debris to build up and start a conflagration. They do an annual burn. This prevents the buildup of combustibles and stimulates the growth of the greens.
I'm glad to see indigenous knowledge get some credit. However, there are a couple of cautions to be made about the way this letter frames the issue.
First, annual burning is not always a good option. Some ecosystems, particularly grasslands, can handle very frequent burning. Others need fire at longer intervals, sometimes decades or centuries long. Burning too often can severely disrupt the ecology of an area. Indeed, some ecosystems prefer an occasional "catastrophic" fire, rather than the smaller and cooler fires that come from frequent prescribed burning.
Second, the Aborigines had one thing that we lack: mobility. While the Aborigines had close connections to their territory and the significant locations (sacred and utilitarian) within it, they were nomadic. Their houses never ammouted to anything more permanent than a bark "humpy" (similar to a wigwam). Thus, they could easily get out of the way when they needed to burn an area. Contemporary suburbanites, on the other hand, have a huge investment in a fixed, built landscape. San Jose couldn't just pack up and move away from the fire. Management strategies must take this issue into account.
Stentor Danielson, 23:05,
4.11.03
Another Bit Of Interesting Fire Info
(Sorry that this is becoming the Fire Blog. But it's a handy way to keep a record of all the interesting bits that turn up so that I have them for future reference.)
In addition, over-building means more trees are competing for less moisture - also in limited supply over the past four years due to drought.
Consequently the trees are unable to produce sufficient quantities of sap to repel the beetles that bore into their bark and eat the tree, leaving behind dead trunks that contribute to the ‘biomass’ - the accumulation of combustible vegetation.
... John Shelley, of the University of California’s Forest Products Laboratory in Virginia, California, says the thinning of biomass has been problematic.
"We don’t have the industry in that part of the state that can harvest trees and get them to market for lumber, paper or any other kind of wood product," he said.
"People move to these kinds of areas to live among the trees, not to see them harvested."
The federal government spent $1.7 billion fighting wildfires that burned 7 million acres in 2002, an average cost of $243 per acre. That compares to $1.4 billion spent in 2000 on fires that burned 8.4 million acres, an average of $167 per acre.
In the past, Congress routinely reimbursed firefighting costs but, since last year the Forest Service and U.S. Bureau of Land Management have had to cover a major portion.
The White House Office of Management and Budget is also demanding more fiscal accountability.
One of the biggest factors driving up costs is the increasing number of homes in the woods, making firefighting more complex and expensive, said Watson.
I've been pretty hard on Gregg Easterbrook lately, so I suppose it's only fair (as well as helpful in getting me out of my "all fire, all the time" rut) to point out that I approve of his takedown of Judge Roy "Ten Commandments" Moore.
Stentor Danielson, 12:25,
... The post-mortem on the fires should lead to the most brutal review of the federal Endangered Species Act in its 30 year history. Nowhere more so than in southern California has more time and money has been invested in the idea that government bureaucrats (working with environmental activists, using the money scalped from landowners) can build a better nature than local governments and the market would otherwise deliver. The stubborn fact is California has never had fires of this magnitude. Now that the federal government is running a huge portion of land use, disaster strikes.
... The key recognition: The species that live close to humans are the ones that are faring the best. When the chips are down, we are species-centric, and rush to save the lives and property of human beings. Habitat conservation planners would be well advised to remember that the proximity of human housing to species preserves isn't a threat to those preserves, it is a guarantee of active and species-saving management.
First, the agreement: There are cases in which endangered species protection has compromised fire management. The cause, though, is taking a short-term biocentric perspective -- in which the lives of individual organisms are paramount -- over a long-term ecocentric perspective -- in which the health of the environment is maintained, even if it involves the death of some individuals now. One of the most interesting presentations at last spring's AAG Annual Meeting was about how this played out for a certain species of snake in the southwest. The EPA refused permission to burn snake habitat on the US side of the border because they didn't want to risk killing these extremely rare snakes. Meanwhile, on the Mexican side of the border, the snakes were common because their habitat had been allowed to burn periodically. The return of Kirtland's Warbler to the Upper Peninsula of Michigan is a recent success story for reversing this kind of mismanagement.
However, Hewitt's prescription -- less federal control over land and more people living close to protected areas -- is off the mark. First, note that he doesn't have much actual evidence for the harm done by government non-management. His beliefs about the benefits of private property lead him to presume that such evidence will be found (not an unreasonable thing to do), then he bases his argument for the benefits of private property on that hypothetical evidence. (I recall seeing data that demonstrated the opposite conclusion -- that fire management is done poorly on private land as compared to public -- but I can't locate it at the moment.)
One important factor that he (like Gregg Easterbrook) overlooks is the geographic patterning of development and wildlands. His last paragraph seems to be praise for the increasing penetration of human habitation into wild areas. This fragmentation of the landscape creates an endangered species problem. Much is made of the adaptations that some plants, like lodgepole pine and banksia, have to fire. But for many plants and pretty much all animals, the main mechanism for recovery after a fire is to spread from unburned patches of land back into the burned ones. This kind of regeneration is stymied when the burned areas are cut off from refuge areas by lawns and golf courses with impoverished biodiversity and many exotic species. This same process occurs with any event that could cause a local drop in a species' population.
The conservation measures that Hewitt decries can be a method of slowing development, and thus preserving more contiguous habitats. This is good for the environment if such areas are managed well. The kind of fire control policies carried out around settled areas are second-best -- and sometimes even worse from an ecological standpoint than a fire that gets out of hand and burns both the forest and someone's house.
Stentor Danielson, 12:24,
Avast, ye scurvy geeks!
Yo ho ho and a bottle of ROM.
Stentor Danielson, 11:58,
2.11.03
I'm Such A Geography Dork
I was looking at the band information for The High Road, a Celtic/Folk band that includes two members of Woods Tea Co.'s classic lineup (Howard Wooden and Tom MacKenzie). Anther member is Iain MacHarg. Upon seeing that name, my first thought was "isn't that the guy who invented GIS?" But it turns out I was thinking of Ian McHarg. Alas.
Stentor Danielson, 20:09,
debitage 
A Manly Jesus?
