Education or Electrolysis

Recently, I've been following the story about an Afghan man who is under arrest for converting to Christianity. As I understand it, he may be put on trial and may face a death sentence for his crimes since the Islamic beliefs that form the basis of Afghan civil law prescribe death for apostasy (abandoning your religion). Of course the US government has weighed in on the side of religious freedom, and thankfully (but slightly surprisingly) the European and Canadian governments have also condemned the trial with varying degrees of severity. I think that Canada is officially "very concerned", while Italy is considering withdrawing its troops from Afghanistan. The Afghan government, which is relatively moderate, seems to understand that their country is 100% dependant on Western economic and military aid, and wants the case to go away. The Afghan judiciary, which is largely filled with conservative Muslim clerics (they do make for terrific judges), is pushing for prosecution and execution by beheading.

These events raise a whole host of issues that we should be openly debating...should we provide miliary and economic aid to a country that flagrantly violates the most basic of human rights? What does it mean when Western Muslim gropus angrily condemn and protest a cartoon, but, through their comparative silence, implicitly condone the practice of executing Christian converts? Would it be a neat experiment to write someone a $13.74 ticket for being Muslim in North America, and then use a millisecond timer to determine how long it takes for the car bombs to start going off? I think what this all comes down to is the huge chasm between Western and conservative Muslim values, a chasm that has probably existed for a long time but which is only coming into focus now due to the increased contact and friction between the two cultures. I also don't think that we'll ever have peace between the cultures unless we reduce the chasm somehow.

So how do we do this? Well, one option that used to be pretty popular south of the 49th parallel went something like "pretend the have the bomb, invade them, take their oil, instantly transform them into freedom-hugging democracies, high-five ourselves, then go back to Texas for some BBQ." Turns out that doesn't work so well (who knew???). A better approach, in my mind, is education...there are certain inescapable conclusions that you come to when you learn about the world in a secular, non-jihad-centric manner. Some of these undeniable realities are that the world is a very complicated and interconnected place, that because of this there are many points of view to every issue, that to truly understand something you need to consider as many points of view as possible, that one of the most valuable human gifts is our ability for free and independant thought, and that authoritarian dogma which supresses that gift usually does so for purely self-serving reasons. I don't know if it's been proven, but I'm pretty sure that the number of hijacked airplane-bombs taking out office towers is inversely proportional to the number of people capable of reasoned thought in the world. I think education might also have a bit of an impact on economic growth, national development, quality of life, and all of those other neat things that Muslim countries might be able to use.

The problem is that the common people living in many Muslim countries don't want to be educated. Or rather, the people that control the countries don't want them to be educated, and the people don't even know enough to KNOW that they don't know enough. Religion is a terrific way to control people, whether you're Christian or Jewish or Muslim, and increased education almsot inevitably makes people less willing to follow their religious leaders blindly. Not that I think education and religion are mutually exclusive...I think that one balances the other, and that you need to have both to really understand the world. But for authoritarian theocratic rulers to stay in power, they need to command with the fear of God since they don't really have much else going for them (like any interest or ability to improve the lives of their citizens). So, keep the people in the dark ages, control them with a twisted interpretation of a religion, and when somebody tries to "leave the compound" by converting to another religion, it's execution time in the town square.

So I think we have two options...Option 1: stick in it for the long run, slowly try to bring knowledge and balance to the parts of the world that need it most, in the process narrowing the value chasm between our cultures, and maybe maybe maybe eventually bringing about some kind of peaceful coexistance. Option 2: develop cheap, reliable hydrogen-based power generation, electrolyze a couple of lakes, power the West for 200 years, withdraw completely from the Middle East and let the people suffer forever. Both options probably involve the same amount of effort, but the first one seems better to me for some reason.

Whitebread, Vermont

Jock-O-Rama on the brain,
Redneck-a-Thon drivin' me insane.
The future of America is in their hands,
Watch it roll over Niagara Falls

--Dead Kennedys, "Jock-O-Rama"

Last weekend, Annie and I took a road trip from Boston to northern Vermont and (briefly) Ayer's Cliff, Quebec to get her American work visa. The scenery was beautiful (except for the I90-to-I93 interchange), the conversation was enjoyable, and the border guards on both sides of the imaginary line were quite pleasant. Sure the American guards were heavily armed, but they seemed nice enough and I felt like it was pretty unlikely that they were going to shoot anyone. They were even relatively friendly to the two guys in the car behind us, one of whom was dressed in pyjamas and the other of whom looked like a skinhead, as they claimed that they visited "a couple of spots" in Quebec and were doing "nothing really" in the car that "belonged to this other guy's mom, I think, or something". I bet the border police even warmed up their hands before the cavity search.

For the most part, the trip was totally incident-free...well, unless you count the unplanned detour that took us 3/4 of the way to Hartford instead of back to Boston. Turns out it's a bad idea to fall asleep just before an important Interstate intersection when your girlfriend is driving. :) The only other bad part of this trip was lunch.

So around 12:30, we were getting really close to the border but needed to get gas. Since gas is cheaper in the US and I get paid the equivalent of $10/hour, we decided to stop in a tiny little town just off the highway. Actually "town" probably isn't the right word, since I didn't see any houses, just a couple of gas stations, a Ford dealership, the McDonald's, and a veterinary clinic that shared a building with a diner. We decided to eat at the only restaurant not directly attached to a place where they incinerate dead animals. We parked the car, Annie very happy about the prospects of a McChicken meal with a diet coke, me somewhat nervous about the health laws in a town that lets vet clinics and greasy-spoons cohabitate.

As soon as we walked into the lunch-rush-packed McBuilding, we both felt instantly uncomfortable. For Annie, I think it was because every other person in there was white and a lot of the kids were openly staring at her. For me, it was because a significant fraction of the people (males AND females) were wearing NASCAR jackets and/or NASCAR hats and were talking with what honestly sounded like Alabama accents. Even if I hadn't walked in holding hands with my Korean-Canadian girlfriend, this place would have freaked me out...I think I got almost as many stares for my spikey hair as she did for her straight black hair. Anyway, we both felt incredibly uncomfortable so we slammed down our McFood and got the hell out of there as quickly as possible.

Now, I should say that we didn't really feel any animosity or "we don't serve your kind here" vibes from these people. It was more like we were a spectacle, something that they never see, something different that didn't quite fit. And even though I'd never go back to that town, I think the experience was educational for me because now I think I understand a little bit about what makes a state "red" instead of "blue" (Republican vs. Democratic for the non-politcal-junkies).

I think towns like that one make up the majority of the population in the red states, and I'm sure that towns like that one don't make a lot of use of the Democrat checkbox on their voter registration forms. They're relatively isolated, homogenous, conservative...they know how things have always been, and are maybe a little bit afraid of things changing...ideas that go against their view of the world or how things should be makes them uncomfortable...they go to church (nothing wrong with that), listen to the minister (nothing wrong with that), and probably don't question anything that he or the President tells them (everything wrong with that). And right now in the United States, people like this make up slightly more than 50% of the country's population, so the direction of the country is in their hands.

The problem is that the world is a complicated, interconnected, rapidly changing, shades-of-grey kind of place. People may want things to stay the same forever, or for everyone to share their values or ideas of what's important for a country, but that's simply not possible anymore (if it ever was). Politicians that cater to voters like this may be able to win an election based on demographics, but when they implement policies or start wars that embody this way of thinking it sets the country back years or decades. I think that people in the red states and towns are hard-working, intelligent people who appreciate the truth...they just need leaders to stop treating them like children, and level with them about the future. Things will continue to change, everyone needs to adapt, the solutions aren't simple, and they're going to have to get used to seeing people that don't look like themselves at the McDonalds.

Well I was born in a small town,

And I can breathe in a small town.

Gonna die in this small town,

And that's probably where they'll bury me.

--John Mellencamp, "Small Town"