Pegs and holes, progressives and conservatives
I was reading a few months ago an article published on that Bookface thing about some lad who had attended his school prom in a frock. (He didn't identify as trans, just liked how he looked in a frock).
The responses were really quite polarised and binary. Either very supportive or very negative.
At the time I thought "It's funny how some people just can't cope with others being different."
But then reading through various posts about Epiphanic issues, especially in Religious contexts, I was struck by a different way of looking at this. Holes and Pegs.
A lot of the opposition to diversity in religious spheres went along lines of "God has ordained men to marry women, males to identify as men, females as women". My response is well, if you're gay, or trans, then that model doesn't work for you. So naturally you look for alternative models.
And I realised that the difference is whether, when faced with a square peg and a round hole, you think the peg should become round, or square holes should exist. Reactionaries, convervatives, traditionalists, call them what you will, want to condemn pegs for being square and force them round. Others of us take the view that it doesn't harm us if there are square holes as well, so lets make some.
Bollocks? Insight? Obvious? Dunno
The responses were really quite polarised and binary. Either very supportive or very negative.
At the time I thought "It's funny how some people just can't cope with others being different."
But then reading through various posts about Epiphanic issues, especially in Religious contexts, I was struck by a different way of looking at this. Holes and Pegs.
A lot of the opposition to diversity in religious spheres went along lines of "God has ordained men to marry women, males to identify as men, females as women". My response is well, if you're gay, or trans, then that model doesn't work for you. So naturally you look for alternative models.
And I realised that the difference is whether, when faced with a square peg and a round hole, you think the peg should become round, or square holes should exist. Reactionaries, convervatives, traditionalists, call them what you will, want to condemn pegs for being square and force them round. Others of us take the view that it doesn't harm us if there are square holes as well, so lets make some.
Bollocks? Insight? Obvious? Dunno
Comments
For example I remember talking to someone a long time ago about people working in a local authority answering the phone.
The conversation was about clothing, this particular person wore long dark clothing, jewellery and so on.
So the issue as it was told to me was whether wearing clothing that was so different to everyone else was inappropriate for that workplace.
The union apparently strongly argued that it was nothing to do with the employer or other employees and had no impact on how they did the job.
Sounds ideal for a second hand bookshop!
I think it's somewhat true but also somewhat overcomplicating. A lot of social conservatism is putting intellectual window-dressing on a visceral aversion to things that are atypical or unfamiliar. You can see it with Reform types posting pictures of Green campaigners looking hippyish or gender conforming and they are apparently claiming that if someone looks odd to them they must be deranged/perverted/incompetent etc. The desire to force people back into conformance arises from this sense of disgust, and this manifests at one level as spurious accusations and at a more (pseudo-)intellectual level as waffle about "natural" roles, but the core of it is the visceral reaction to difference.
Aye, you may be right; I may be looking for something more substantial than basic visceral aversion but it may not exist and that aversion might actually be the foundation.
A person starts wearing clothing to church (mosque, temple or synagogue) that flaunts their wealth. It's like they're wearing a big badge declaring that they are much wealthier than everyone else in the room.
Another person might reasonably think that this person hasn't really understood the purpose of the gathering and instead is looking for something else.
A different person is from a cultural group which is not the same as the majority. This person is wearing something that feels normal to them, but feels incredibly uncomfortable when everyone else stares and makes them feel unwelcome.
The 'signalling' part might come in when someone feels like they have a position of strength to determine what is or isn't acceptable in that group. The signal being 'we don't allow that here'.
The problem might be where that signal is implicit rather than explicit and where the person complaining is deluded about their ability to regulate other people's behaviour.
I don't think the two things are that separate - because there's always a rationalization of the latter in terms of something that approximates the former.
Hence the reference to 'blue hair' 'nose rings' etc.
[And sidenote on your initial point -- there was a time a few memes back where these kinds of remarks would be greeted by people posting pictures of FDR as a toddler].
It's quite hard to discuss inherent things in a dispassionate way that doesn't read like one is unfairly attacking someone's identify.
I think using clothing as a metaphor is about the only way the issue can be discussed although I'm open to other suggestions. I can't talk about it using metaphor of shapes.
My next preaching assignment will be dealing with John 9, the story of the man born blind. Looking at the dynamics of the story, I can see how the Pharisees manufactured outrage over the miracle. The man was healed on a sabbath. Who was this Jesus? He must be a sinner, etc. What happened did not conform to their world view. The tried to pressure the man to get him to declare Jesus a sinner, the man refused. Consequently, they threw him out.
What I am seeing is what the Johannine community was experiencing at the time. The followers of Jesus no longer fit in to the expectation of the synagogues. They were like pegs that could not fit into a round hole so they were being thrown out.
This story has been repeated over and over again throughout history. Recently I read a short article about scientific breakthroughs. Essentially, with many breakthroughs, the scientific community is thinking one way, but a new idea is introduced. The immediate reaction is negative, sometimes even violent, but eventually the idea becomes accepted.
It also helps to explain what is happening in the US politically. Over the last 20 years our society has gone through many changes. People feel threatened, especially when a black man became president. The MAGA movement arises. They want to put everything back to the way it was. Trump is elected twice. Trump blames most of the problems on immigrants, tries to expel them. Americans are saying this is a step too far. Division. Pegs and holes.
Oddly, once I was forced out of a call because one of the elders of the church said I was too much of a peg--my "crime" was associating to much with other denominations (the congregation had strict limits on that). That, and I refused to dress the part of a minister of the cloth.
Point is, one can take any marginalized group and play this pegs and holes game with them.
At the risk of tangling myself up, I'm also wondering about what might be perceived as a 'performative' angle in some of this. For instance, I've noticed my brother adopt an exaggeratedly Welsh accent - either consciously or subconsciously - whenever he engages with someone he considers 'posh' - he is an inveterate inverted snob.
I'm not beyond doing that sort of thing either, but to a milder extent.
Blue hair and nose rings are one thing but vicars who adopt these things in a self-conscious attempt to make themselves appear cool or trendy is surely another.
Authenticity is surely the key to any of this, but is 'authenticity' in the eye of the beholder?
My grandparents were suspicious of anyone with a beard.
They had to be a communist or something equally subversive. A vegetarian perhaps.
My granddad's working class credentials were immaculate.
Yet he was as socially conservative as it was possible to be.
Much depends on the 'intention'.
I have no idea what a sports coat and long white beard are intended to convey though.
I know that choir robes were adopted originally to ensure that nobody 'judged' the singers by how poorly or how wealthily they dressed.
The same rationale was given about school uniforms when I was a kid. You could always 'tell' though.
I'd like to see this discussion move beyond clothing though, as @KarlLB has requested but it may yet prove a seam worth following.
By their fruits or by their suits?
Mind, I think the general gist in the OP fits my experience.
Or they could just believe that’s the way the world/cosmos/metaphysics works. It doesn’t have to be “window dressing“ or “pseudo-intellectual.”
They didn’t allow clergy to associate with members of other denominations??
One could argue: We can be neither male nor female nor any other earthly category in regard to Christ—neither rich nor poor, slave not free, etc.—but as we are earthly creatures as well, it does not mean that those categories go away in every other aspect of our lives, nor that they necessarily should.
Aye, and the question is how people try to resolve it when it clearly isn't how the world works for that individual - do they condemn and/or try to change the individual, or recognise that their general rule doesn't work for this specific?
If someone doesn't like pineapple with their gammon steak, do you insist they're wrong and must have it that way, or just give them the gammon steak without the pineapple?
My point is that as an intrinsically spiritual undertaking, The Church may have done better to have focused on that, instead of, say, which holes were being filled by what pegs.
Are we heading into territory where talk of pegs and holes can carry multiple meanings?
I suspect it's not the example of earthly behaviour you had on mind, and I suspect that we agree that the church should have done less of what you had in mind; but I don't think the reason it should have done less of it is that the Church should have been more spiritual.
In Buddhism too the more dedicated a community is to the spiritual the more it controls its members earthly behaviour. Buddhist monks are I believe like Christian monks quite disciplined and conformist.
The correlation suggests a general rule.
A third category might be those who are fine with the concept of square holes in theory, but want all their favourite holes to stay round so that they can keep using them.
Beliefs are rarely accepted in isolation. I suspect that, in cases where people try to force others who don't share those beliefs to conform (rather than just practising them themselves), disgust is a driver to those beliefs.
A lot of non-religious people would not see feeding the hungry (for eg) as an intrinsically spiritual undertaking, but as simply meeting material needs that exist. Yet Jesus emphasises meeting material needs quite strongly in the Gospels; I don't think that the Church needs to solely focus on spiritual undertakings when Jesus didn't.
Interesting that you mention monks. I think that in the case of monks (either kind), the discipline really mostly comes from the practical needs of enabling the community to live together in harmony. Anyone who's ever lived in a shared house knows how easily things can go wrong between housemates! That goes doubly so for a large group of people. Living as a community is hard work and definitely needs firm rules and clear boundaries.
No, I mean that it isn't intrinsically spiritual - it's meeting a material need. I don't mean that it can't be spiritual too, but a non-religious person would still recognise it as a material need for eg. I meant that it exists as a material need outside of spiritual considerations, as opposed to eg ideas about unity in Jesus which would be an intrinsically spiritual matter that a non-religious person wouldn't be considering as an issue.
I think the problem comes when you examine motivation.
A lot of people that do "different things" seem to just do it for attention or shock value. Then it seems lacking in integrity and people pick up on that.
“If you’re not a liberal at 25 you have no heart. If you’re not a conservative at 35 (or 40) you have no brain.”
That was Churchill's excuse for being a party-swapping dilettante rather than a coherent statement of principle. Besides which Churchill (re)joined the tories when the liberals collapsed into irrelevance, not because his views changed substantially.
Utterly ridiculous claim. You think Muslims in western countries practise Islam for attention? Or Latinos in the US speak Spanish for shock value? The only example I can think of where your claim might be true is punk, but punk has always been open about its intent to shock and disrupt norms for the sake of it. Plus, if this was remotely true, the surefire way to combat it would be to... ignore it, right?
(It's like the Church should stay out of politics which one may agree with when it's Pat Robertson but less so when it's Desmond Tutu.)
I read Jesus more in terms of suggesting or encouraging, not as much directing. I'd also say that there's a fair distinction between providing for another's critical needs, and legislating against another's inherent sexuality, as one example.
Sorry for the double post -- I missed the edit window. I don't know much about Buddhism, but I'd only add here that voluntarily, formally entering a more restrictive spiritual order for self-regulated spiritual pursuits differs greatly from overt attempts by religious organizations to supersede secular societies.
I once met a soft-spoken old Methodist preacher who was a freedom rider in his 20s and was beloved mentor to all the 20-something radical leftists when he was in his 70s.
Personally, I'm only getting more radicalized with age. I derive great pleasure from smashing that chestnut with a sledgehammer.
This doesn't land at all anymore, especially here in the US. The strident anti-intellectualism of the right has more than overwhelmed any notion that they are the more rational, thought conscious party. MAGA makes that painfully clear.
I know I have become much more liberal to the point my son would say I would make Karl Marx look like a TEA party member.
I can think of a couple who turn up at poetry open-mics wearing bondage gear and declaiming ranty poems about how people in small towns can't accept their sexuality.
That's as may be, but ... steady on. I'm not in the least bit interested in what they get up to in their bedroom. And hearing their boring, sweary poems isn't going to influence me one way or the other as to the licitness or otherwise of their S&M practices.
I'd say the same if it were someone dressed more conventionally who thought it was cool to regale us with details of their sex life.
I think this is a different issue to Muslims wanting to practice their faith or the kind of issues discussed on the Epiphanies board.
I cited my brother's tendency to exaggerate his South Walian accent when dealing with people he considers 'posh'. I've done that myself before now.
There can be forms of posturing from various directions.
It can take the form of 'virtue signalling' or John Peel cultivating a Liverpool-sounding accent when he came from a private school background, or 'Mockney' or 'Mummerset' accents affected by people who don't have the actual accents they are attempting to replicate.
There are examples right across the board.