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The Comment I’m Not Posting

January 21, 2022

Robyn Parnell Uncategorized , , , , , , , , , , 2 Comments

Department Of Why Am I Am Not Writing “Done” In The Comments

Dateline: Tuesday morning.  Moiself  sees in a friend’s Facebook feed one of these kinds of posts – if you’re on Facebook you’ve likely encountered them:

“This is food for thought.  You’re not the same again after cancer and treatments. With the side effects of chemo and radiation, you will never be 100% again because your immune system is weak. Ruins marriages, families, and relationships with friends. Because Ii the hardest moments you know who your real friends are or who the people are who appreciate you. Unfortunately, like with most friendships, Facebook friends will leave you in the middle of a story. They want a post to ‘like’ for the story, but they don’t really read your message when they see it is long. More than half have stopped reading. Someone may have already gone to the next post in their newsfeed….”

 

(There was a lot more, including a request to comment “done” if you read the post all the way through.)

 

Here was my comment.  [1]

OK, here goes: I have read this all the way through, but I am not writing “done” in the comments, nor am I copying and reposting the post.
Here’s why.

Most of us on FB have seen these posts of awareness (for cancer, other diseases/injuries/afflictions, those facing economic hardship, etc.). And while I’ve no doubt that they are well-meant, I consider them to be the emotional equivalent of chain letters.

The writers of the original posts (whom I know is not you) include implied threats and “digs” (against the reader’s character and empathy) in these pleas for “awareness” –  implications that how one responds to these posts is a litmus test of who is a real/true friend.
Here are some of the ones this post includes:

“… A little test, just to see who reads and shares without reading… I would like to know who I can count on and who takes the time to read this… So I’m going to make a bet, without being pessimistic. I know my friends and family will put it on their wall. You just have to copy….”

If the writers of the post truly “know” your friends and family will “put it on their wall,” why do they have to prod them to do so?

Whether or not you can count on someone in times of need has *nothing* to do with what they will or will not copy or post (or even read) on a Facebook feed.  This is just another form of virtue signaling.

And the implication that people will read and not repost – “Unfortunately, like with most friendships, Facebook friends will leave you in the middle of a story. They want a post to “like” for the story, but they don’t really read your message when they see it is long” – is virtue-shaming.

Actually, the awareness post I refer to was mild, in the shaming factor, as compared with others I’ve read, which practically scream, “Oy vey, I’ll just sit here posting in the dark, knowing that few people will actually read all the way through because nobody cares….”

Now, I’ve nothing against someone advocating for cancer (or any other) awareness.  But, why the emotional extortion?  Why not just post whatever info you want to convey?  Then, as with other social media posts that people like and/or find significant  – from cat videos to political screeds – people can repost it if they deem it repost-worthy.

 

 

*   *   *

Department Of What I Did Not Post In The Comments Section

One prays for rain, one prays for sun;
they kneel in church together.
Which of them, do you suppose
will regulate the weather?   [2]

 

 

“I liked/reposted this.”

“I’m praying for you.”

Boys and girls, can you identify which of the above is the least effective action?

 

I knew you could.

 

That’s right; it’s both/either of them.

Pleas for reposts, and their responses (“I reposted this!”) remind me of, “I’ll pray for you!”  Reposting on social media, ala praying for something to happen, may get you to think nice things about yourself (or moiself,  if I say that I’m praying/posting for you), but is ultimately ineffectual.

My learning that you have been diagnosed with cancer and are beginning treatment, and then my responding with, “I’m praying for you,” or “I posted about cancer awareness,” is a way to make us both think that I am doing something when in fact I am doing next to nothing. How’s about actually *doing something* you will need help with –

* organizing a meal delivery service and/or contributing meals for you and your family during your treatment and recovery “downtimes”

* giving your kids rides to school and extracurricular events

* “babysitting” you so that your spouse and/or kids can get out of the house, or hosting a family game/ movie night at their or your house    [3]

* running errands (that you used to be able to do) for your elderly parent(s)

* being a “chemo” buddy (taking you to and from treatment appointments)

* taking you to medical and other appointments, and/or pick up prescriptions

* just sitting and talking with you, and, more importantly, listening…or spending companionate time in supportive silence

* taking you to or meeting you for movies or lunches or park walks or other outings, to get at least a temporary respite from the disease-takes-over-my-life mode

* arranging to mow your lawn/put out your recycling on trash pickup day, walking your dog, performing or helping with other household maintenance tasks

*running interference for you when well-meaning folks are driving you nuts….

 

 

Ah, but all of these things, and the other Life Stuff a (temporary or otherwise) sick or disabled person may need help with – these things take time and effort, and entail emotional (and possibly financial) involvement.

Posting/praying takes a microsecond of hot air.

Let’s say I get sick, and you mow my lawn…and you also pray for me (in private, thank you very much), asking your deity to heal me, etc.    [4]  As for the latter, please understand that you are doing it for yourself; but, that’s fine – whatever floats your boat.

For anyone who believes in the efficacy of petitionary prayer,    [5]   let’s say that you and I are having lunch in a taqueria, and you begin choking on your chalupa – really choking, as in, you’ve aspirated it into your windpipe.  You cannot dislodge it, and you can’t breathe.

Would you rather I pray for you, or perform the Heimlich Maneuver on you?

 

I’ll pray that you learn to take smaller bites when you eat. Oh, and thanks for mowing my lawn!

 

Cheese and crackers; what a different place the world would be, if prayer “worked” ?!?! People pray for peace and healing all the time.

And when you examine the content of those prayers – particularly the ones for healing – it’s interesting to note the accommodations.  For example, re the child with horrific third degree burns over 90% of his body, no one prays for their god to cause new skin to grow overnight for the child (although they may pray that the skin grafts take). 

 

 

While many people of faith seem convinced that prayer can heal a wide variety of illnesses (despite what the best scientific research indicates), it is curious that prayer is only every believed to work for illnesses and injuries that can be self-limiting.  No one, for instance, ever seriously expects that prayer will cause an amputee to regrow a missing limb.
Why not?  Salamanders manage this routinely, presumable without prayers.
If God answers prayers – ever – why wouldn’t he occasionally heal a deserving amputee?  And why wouldn’t people of faith expect prayer to work in such cases?
(Sam Harris, “Letter to a Christian Nation“)

Why, in all of human history, there is no record of (anyone’s) god ever healing an amputee by regenerating a limb, or changing a Down syndrome child to one with a normal chromosomal profile? If a god is said to have intervened, it is only in situations that can be otherwise explained as natural phenomena.

( For more on this illuminating topic – which you should ponder if you haven’t previously, especially if you think you believe, in some way, that prayer “works” – check out https://whywontgodhealamputees.com/ . It’s a fun site delineating why petitionary prayer is superstition, and also raises other questions about religious tenets. )

Now, I’m not knocking all kinds of practices which come under the category of prayer.  As freethinkers wiser than moiself  have pointed out, if contemplative prayer focuses your mind and helps you establish objectives, then it can be a beneficial practice.  However, meditation is just as good if not superior for those goals; also, it has the added benefit of non-delusion – you don’t have to pretend that some supernatural being is paying attention.   [6]

“If you talked into your hair dryer and said you were communicating with someone in outer space, they’d put you away.
But take away the hair dryer, and you’re praying.”
( Sam Harris )

 

 

Coming back to the thing about petitionary prayer: moiself  thinks it is actually obstructive, in that is that it provides the illusion of having done something when in fact you’ve done next to nothing, other than mumble select phrases or entertain some thoughts.  And what might be called “secular prayer” – liking or posting on social media – can fall under that same category.

The following is from professor, author, educator and speaker Dale McGowan’s  (erstwhile) blog, The Meming of Life   [7]

When someone asked Humanist Rabbi Adam Chalom to pray for a friend who had breast cancer, Adam said, “I have a better idea — give me her phone number and I’ll call her. Talking to her to lift her spirits and make her feel less alone and more cared for will do much more for her than talking to anything else.“

This was from a piece Adam wrote in the Chicago Tribune’s blog (“The Seeker“) a couple of years ago. And he went on to make an especially good point:

“The Humanist world has recently sponsored a counter-program – the National Day of Reason, which celebrates the power of the human mind to understand and improve the world. But I have an even better idea. While reason is certainly a worthy value to celebrate, the secular counterpart to ‘Prayer’ is not ‘Reason’ – it is Action. “

The counterpart to prayer is doing something.

 There are secular equivalents of prayer. Facebook is full of them. I’m sure there are people who “like” 50 humanitarian causes a day, achieving that same illusion of having done something. And like the prayer, I think that self-satisfied illusion often keeps the liker from actually doing something. It relieves the pressure, gives that little shot of dopamine, makes us feel ever so good about ourselves. Of course, there’s a whole neologism for it — slacktivism.

My take-home is that secular prayers, if they go no further, are no better than sacred ones. Action, real action, is still what matters.

 

 

*   *   *

 

*   *   *

Department Of A Really Frustrating Phenomenon

Dateline: Last Friday, driving to the coast.  I press the seek button on my car’s radio, and it lands on an oldies station.  After just a few seconds my brain recognizes the intro to a song moiself  hasn’t heard in *decades*:  Glen Campbell’s “Honey Come Back.”

Now, the late and sometimes great Glen Campbell recorded a lot of fine songs, but that insipid, self-pitying, talk/sing tale of lost love is not one of them.

 

 

See?    [8]

Here’s the thing that drove me bonkers after the song began playing (well, other than the song itself).  A long time ago in a galaxy far, far away (freshman year, UC Davis) I got an A in my calculus class. Today, if you put a gun to my head – and I really hope you wouldn’t – with the idea of forcing me to solve the most basic calculus equation, I could not do so. But I can recognize the opening strains of Honey Come Back.  How pathetic is that?

*   *   *

Punz For The Day
Country Music Edition

Which country music singer’s name do you say
when you’re moving furniture past someone?
Dolly Pardon.

So, why does Keith Urban sing country music?

Why is country music is like a vacuum?
As soon as you turn it off it stops sucking.

Technically, aren’t all national anthems country music?

 

Y’all don’t have to answer that.

 

*   *   *

May your brain store memories of both higher mathematics *and* banal oldies;
May you avoid the temptations of slacktivism;
May you talk into your hairdryer, beseeching it for…whatever…just because you can;
…and may the hijinks ensue.

Thanks for stopping by.  Au Vendredi!

*   *   *

[1] As should be obvious, I have not included all of the post, although I reference certain portions of it which are not included in the beginning excerpt.

[2] Variously attributed to Anonymous.

[3] When one member of a family has cancer or another chronic or debilitating disease, *every* member of the family “has” that disease, to a lesser extent, and they’ll need to get out and have a break from it.

[4] Although, being all-knowing and such, this deity already knows the illness I have and what I need to recover from/deal with it – right? – and shouldn’t need you to beg about it.

[5] “Petitionary prayer is a specific form of prayer aimed at making requests of God….for answers to life’s questions and concerns….also pleas for God to be the sole responsible agent to act on behalf of the one who is praying. Petitionary prayers can be offered on a small and personal scale for oneself or for others, or they may involve requests on a larger scale that concern changing undesirable circumstances within society or, indeed, the world as a whole. ”   (Center for christogenesis)

“Traditional theists believe that there exists an all-knowing, all-powerful, perfectly loving, and perfectly good God. They also believe that God created the world, sustains it in being from moment to moment, and providentially guides all events, in accordance with a plan, towards a good ending. Historically, most traditional theists have believed that God sometimes answers prayers for particular things…..these prayers are referred to as ‘petitionary prayers’…. (Oxford Handbooks online, “Petitionary prayer” abstract introduction.)

[6] Nor will you have to deal with the cognitive dissonance which will arise when, despite knowing that Jesus is quoted as declaring (in Matthew 18:19), “Again I say to you, if two of you agree on earth about anything they ask, it will be done for them by my Father in heaven,” and despite you and a friend agreeing that BillyBob should be cured of his Necrotizing Fasciitis and thus y’all consistently and sincerely pray for this to happen, BillyBob continues to suffer horribly, then dies.

[7] As best as I can remember (apologies for any misattributions).

[8] Kudos for those of you who made it past the first verse.

The Friend I’m Not Praying For

November 21, 2014

Robyn Parnell are we having fun yet? (Women & Men & Feminism), current events, extended family, foodie, freethought/humanism, friends, health & wellness, Holy Shit!, Isms (religion), making fun of lawyers and/or doctors, science , , , , , , 2 Comments

“If you talked into your hair dryer and said you were communicating with someone in outer space, they’d put you away.  But take away the hair dryer, and you’re praying.”
–Sam Harris

I seeing miss my sweet, witty, intelligent, compassionate, bawdy, hugs & sloppy kisses friend, HUL.  She gets back here (she used to live in Oregon) to visit when she can, and although it seems like there’s no distance between us when we phone or email or text, she lives 1300 miles away.  And she is having surgery today.  I will be thinking of her, and talking to her after the surgery as I’ve talked to her before and after her cancer diagnosis, commiserating about the shitty situation and brainstorming treatment options, colorfully cursing the brusque and clueless medical personnel she’s encountered and lavishly praising the smart, kind and competent ones.

I will not be praying for HUL. Nor will I be

* burning special incense for her
* anointing her head with oil
* finding a faith healer to perform a laying on of hands
* doing a Wiccan or Tibetan healing chant
* performing a Haipule [1]or smudging ceremony [2]
* sacrificing a child
* using crystals to balance her energy
* casting a voodoo healing spell
* sending her to a Hakim (traditional Muslim healer) for Unani medicine [3]

Or singing her favorite soccer team’s fight song….or performing any of the rituals many human beings once somehow (and, sadly, still) thought might cause the gods/spirits/cosmic energies to look upon them with favor and cure their maladies.

What the heck. I could pick one of those things, or cover the bases and do ’em all, as they have an equal likelihood of affecting the outcome of HUL’s surgery and subsequent prognosis.

HUL, righteously religion-free babe that she is, is not asking me, or anyone, to pray for her.

Not even moi?

Her first surgery will be done in a Catholic-run hospital. HUL told me the only activity resembling praying that she might do is to beseech the friend who’s picking her up after surgery to refrain from vandalizing crucifixes and the like, should said friend spot any Catholibilia [4] in HUL’s room.

HUL will not be posting the news of her illness and surgery on any social media sites.  She wants to control access to this information and maintain a modicum of privacy.  She also wants to avoid the jaw-clenching, energy-sucking vibes produced by People Who Mean Well ® and who express their sentiments, even to those of us whom they know are religion-free, via the hackneyed expression [5] ,  I’ll be praying for you.

She and I – and just about every atheist-agnostic-Bright-humanist-skeptic-freethinker on the planet – have commiserated over this phenomenon.  We realize the expression is a kneejerk, cultural/social, nicety response, and that not everyone who says “I’ll pray for you” literally intends to do so.  It’s similar to the way “How are you?” is used as a greeting – as a substitute or equivalent for Hi or Good morning.   If you take that “How are you?” query/greeting at face value and actually talk about how you are,  [6] you may be surprised by the WTF expression from the one who has greeted you and who now acts like they want to leave skidmarks as they flee from your discourse.

When it comes to being on the receiving end of I will be/I am praying for you, Those Of  Us Who Think About Such Things mostly grin and bear it, with various degrees of enthusiasm and anemia.  Here’s what we’re likely to say (even as this is what we’re likely thinking):

Well-Meaning But Ignorant Person:  “I am so sorry to hear about your upcoming hammertoe surgery! I’ll pray for you.”

Us: “Oh, okay. Thanks for thinking of me.” (You’re going to pray…uh…yeah, knock yourself out…but…really…WHY? Am I supposed to thank you for doing…well, nothing…when what I could use is a casserole, or for someone to mow my lawn while my foot is in a cast?)

I know, I know, IKNOWIKNOWIKNOWIKNOW.  People “mean well” (I’m trying to remember that great Lily Tomlin quote, something about thank goodness for kids, they never mean well).  But those of us who are fond of reality don’t just shelve it in times of crisis.  We we know about the efficacy [7] and therefore futility of prayer, to any one’s deities, for anything, and our bafflement at the announcement of the practice is often hard to disguise.

Skeptics more articulate than moiself have pointed out that while many religious people claim to truly believe that prayer can cure a variety of illnesses and injuries, they only pray for maladies that are generally self-limiting (and thus, they can attribute the cure to miraculous intervention).

I’ve never heard of religious believers petitioning their god to cause the boy with 3rd degree burns to grow new skin overnight (or even over the course of a few months), although I have heard them pray that the boy’s skin grafts will take.

An illness that gets better over time (and most do), a mood that improves, believers can and often do attribute these events to a “miracle” or divine intervention.  But hard physical evidence – the burnt, necrotizing flesh, the amputee’s stump– is a slap in the face to the “power” of prayer.

My theory is that deep down inside, even the most fundy believers have reality check neurons (besieged, but not extinct), which occasionally whisper to them, “Now, let’s not get carried away, you know this stuff is just mumbo jumbo.”

How else to explain the fact that, while believers fervently and publicly ask their god to heal the spirit and speed the recovery of the Iraqi war veteran whose leg was blown off by an IED, or of the diabetic who lost a foot to gangrene, they do not pray for their god to regenerate these sufferers’ limbs. In the case of Christian believers, their scriptures are filled with stories of “miraculous” events and healings performed by their god, including restoration of sight to the blind and movement to a paralytic, instantaneous curing of leprosy and healing of a soldier’s amputated ear and so on. Why should the production of new skin or a new leg be so difficult for an omniscient, omnipotent, responsive-to-the-heartfelt-petitions-of-his-flock deity?   Especially considering the fact that several species of our fellow animal inhabitants of our planet, including skinks, sea stars, conchs, and crayfish, can regenerate amputated appendages, and (presumably) do this without prayer.

“Oh great and merciful Poseidon, We beseech thee on behalf of our orange sister, that she be made whole again!”

Check out this site, for a more entertaining (and thought-provoking) examination of…well…of why this question is – or should be, to any sentient being – so important:  Why Won’t God Heal Amputees.

I get it; all of us who smite even the idea of prayer get it:  in times of adversity it’s often hard to know what to do or say.  Bad news makes everyone uncomfortable. You hear about someone’s misfortune, you care, you want to do something…but, think about it.  That “something” you do, if it’s praying (or just saying that you will pray), is more about making you feel better than about what prayer might actually accomplish.  Praying may provide you with the comforting illusion of having done something, but in fact you’ve done Absolutely. Nothing. Of. Substance.

If you really care, do something. Praying, or the secular version –  “holding a good thought for you” – doesn’t count.  Talk (and thought) is cheap; actions speak louder than – oh, don’t make me type it.

When HUL told me about her disease we cried and laughed and raged and cried and laughed some more. Here is what I will do for you, I told her, if you will let me, and if you need me to.[8] The list is a work in progress, based in part upon what other kind friends, neighbors and co-workers have done for me in times of need.  Like all such lists, it will and should be modified to fit the situation.

* Be there before, during and after surgery [9]
* Bring you healthful meals

“Get well soon, or more spam casseroles will be delivered to your  refrigerator.”

* Clean your house, hold your hand, feed your cats (and scoop their litterboxes)
* Donate to reputable, efficacious [10] cancer research funds
* Send you links to really bad jokes and visual puns and baby sloth videos
* Rent you some DVDs for a Daniel Day Lewis film festival [11]
* Encourage you to document what you are going through…

About that last one.  Although not a professional author, HUL is a pithy, articulate and entertaining writer, and I’ve urged her to record not only the logistics of her disease but her attitudes and reactions to it as well.  However, I have promised to refrain from referring to her dealing with cancer as if she’s on some kind of spiritual excursion.

I just can’t help it: when I heard phrases like, “Tell us what you’ve learned from your journey with pancreatic cancer,” it makes me want to kick Oprah in the ovaries.

 *   *   *

And Now For Something Completely Different

 Department of Making It All Better

When I serve a dish containing Brussels sprouts – to anyone, but mostly to MH and moiself – I also serve champagne.

*   *   *

About Last Week’s Shirt

Receiving slightly less attention than the Rosetta mission’s landing of a probe on a comet was the PR meteor storm created by one of the project scientists.  This scientist dude chose “the most important day in spaceflight since Curiosity landed on Mars” – a day when he was slated to be speaking about the project on a worldwide live-stream – to wear a tacky bowling shirt covered in comic book-style images of half-naked women.

Same dude also went on to describe the difficulty of the Rosetta mission: “She’s sexy, but I never said she was easy.”

Read this, for one of the more coherent takes on this brouhaha, including the dude’s [12] apology, and the (surprise!) internet-troll backlash aimed at those people [13] who called out the dude on his astounding inappropriateness.

“If you think this is just a bunch of prudes, you’re wrong. It’s not about the prurience. It’s about the atmosphere of denigration….. If you think this isn’t a big deal, well, by itself, it’s not a huge one. But it’s not by itself, is it? This event didn’t happen in a vacuum. It comes when there is still a tremendously leaky pipeline for women from undergraduate science classes to professional scientist. It comes when having a female name on a paper makes it less likely to get published, and cited less. It comes when there is still not even close to parity in hiring and retaining women in the sciences.”
 (Phil Plait, Astronomer and “science evangelist,” from his Bad Astronomy blog)

Is that your comet probe or are you just excited to see me?

*   *   *

May your choice of bowling shirts be workplace-appropriate and face-palm-worthy-free, may well-meaning folks have no reason to pray for your recovery, may your cruciferous vegetables always be champagne-escorted, and may the hijinks ensue.

Thanks for stopping by.  Au Vendredi!

*   *   *

 

 

[1] A Hawaiian healing ritual.

[2] A Native American practice involving cleansing a person with the smoke of sacred plants.

[3] The use of food and herbs to reestablish balance, based on a theory of wet/dry, hot/cold humors in the body.

[4] Yeah, I made that word up, but you know what I mean: crucifixes, rosaries, framed pictures of Jesus and saints and John F. Kennedy….

[5] and seemingly obligatory Facebook response to bad news.

[6] Like many a bewildered newcomer to American culture has done, and discovered that the Howareyou supplicant  did not really want to hear about your latest triumphs and travails. Or, as one European traveler put it, “Why do Americans ask how you are when they don’t want to know? Why don’t they just say, ‘Hello’?”

[7] That would be: zero.

[8] Make sure your help is practical and actually wanted, and not yet another task for the afflicted to manage.

[9] HUL has friends lined up to help, and graciously deflected that offer…although she’s made me promise to fly out for her “Yay, I’m all better!” or “I need more treatment, so kiss my hair goodbye!” party – whichever one she throws.

[10] Check out any and all charities to make sure they are legitimate and use funds wisely (Charity Navigator and Givewell are just two of the organizations that provide such evaluations), and fuck the Susan Komen industry ’cause festooning your body with plastic pink crap made in China does not cure breast cancer.

[11] Do not underestimate the power of watching your favorite movies featuring your favorite, fine-looking actors – ’twas repeated showings of Last of the Mohicans, not the antibiotics, that cured my pneumonia, I truly believe, brothers and sisters (somebody say, Amen!).

[12] Nah, I won’t use his name. I don’t think he was evil or even (consciously) misogynistic, just incredibly puerile.

[13] Every sentient being with an IQ larger than their hat size and their heads out of the sand (and not up their asses) – which I assume is an accurate description for y’all.