Gettier Gods

I think that I have an OCD. Really. I'm an atheist, but I just can't seem to stop thinking about God. I guess it may be due to, in some part, the fact that I live in a culture that is, whether it practices it or not, Christian. No matter where I go, there is either a "God bless you", "have a blessed day", or someone declaring that they've been blessed. So, no matter how hard I try, God and thinking about God is unavoidable. This would be bad, if not for the fact that I have this blog. At least it gives me something to write about. That said, I was thinking some time ago about my philosophy of religion class (that I had almost a year ago). There was, as I recall (then again, I could be making this up for the sake of making a point), there was some talk about the limits (if any) of the powers of God, namely on the topic of God's omnipotence. The question was, are there things that God can't see? That is, if we say that God knows all (all events that happen in the past, present and future), how can humans have free will? Well, for one, when I was a Christian, I was steadfastly a determinist. I figured that God, being a all-powerful being, had ultimate knowledge. There is no thing that he does not see. And being that he saw any particular event, it has to happen.The events of our lives are not only seen by God, but also actively planned.I thought that, if God even sees all things generally, he also sees what occurs specifically -- including the choices that we make. And since God's knowledge is eternal, he may have seen what I'm doing right now the instant that he created the universe. So, I figured, there is not such thing as free will for people. But my Christianity didn't stay with me for long. I soon shrugged it off in favor of the cold, harsh cynicism of atheism. When I started on the path to Hell (i.e. becoming an atheist), I slid from divine determinism to biological determinism. Instead of God commanding my destiny, my choices were determned by my genes. Anatomy is destiny, as they say. This has always been a problem for me -- not because I don't like the idea of everything I do being beyond my control, but because I fancy myself an existentialist. And that's all free will. I know that, even among non philosophers, the idea of determinism is none too popular. People don't like the idea that the things that they do are out of their control. That makes sense. I hate the idea myself. But, for the life of me, I can't figure how a God that sees all events in all times does not in some way determine my fate. Which made me think of something that I heard on the radio a couple of years ago. Out here in So Cal, there's a radio show that comes on on Sunday mornings called "the Jesus Christ show" (it's on KFI AM 640, for those who want to know). The show is hosted by the Son of Man himself! The format is that callers call in with questions to Jesus and he answers them. I suppose that all of his answers are the correct ones, given the fact that he's Jesus. Better than calling Dr. Laura. Anyway, a couple of Christmases ago, a caller asked Jesus about predestination. She wondered how man can have free will in the same universe with a God that sees and knows all. She said that even if we attempt to do otherwise, God can make you do what he has seen you do, and since we humans cannot defy God (I'm thinking that she meant physically), we are subject to God's will. Therefore, she concluded, we have no free will. Jesus answered that man does in fact have free will. Despite the fact that God is all-seeing, all-knowing, and all-powerful, we humans still determine our own choices in life. Jesus said that the caller was mistaken, and gave an example of what is meant when we say that God sees and knows all. He explained it by way of analogy: Jesus said that our free will and God is like "The Newlywed Game". He said that, during the game, one spouse let's say the husband, is secluded from his wife while she is asked a series of intimate questions (usually something to do with "whoopee"). The husband returns and is asked the same questions. They get points when their questions match. So let's say that the wife is asked "what part of your body does your husband like most?". She answers. "he likes my very shapely rear end". When the husband returns from seclusion, he is asked the same question. He answers, "well, my wife knows that I totally dig her sweet bum!". He got the same answer. Jesus told the caller that God's knowledge is just like that. He said that the fact that the husband answered the same as his wife doesn't mean that he knew what she was going to say. He said that God gets the answer right despite the fact that he doesn't know what we're going to do exactly. But then, all sorts of red, flashing lights went off in my head. The husband guessed the right answer. He really had no clue what she was going to say. A man's knowledge of what goes on in his wife's head is limited. But when we speak of God, this is not the case. God knows what we feel in our hearts. He knows about the sins that we merely think about. So, if God knows all the nasty thoughts (well, to be honest -- in most cases, desires) that I entertain about rock stars, former high school classmates, and college professors, how can he not know what actions that I will undertake during the course of my lifetime? It seemed to me that the God that radio Jesus was describing was a God who only managed to get the right answers by guessing the right ones. He was right, but only gettierally. Besides, that, I know that, given the law of averages, some guesses are bound to be wrong. If there is even a chance that God might ( God forbid) guess wrong, then what does that mean for a God who among his qualities is perfection? I'd say that that would make him not God, wouldn't it? Well, some people out there say that what the deal is, is that God sees all possibilities, that is, among the possible thousands of choices that we could have made in any situation, God sees every one of them, which includes the one that we eventually choose. So, say there are five possible worlds, and I'm trying to figure out which pair of shoes to wear. In one world, I put on my black Converse high tops. In another, I choose the white Nikes. In another, I wear high heels. In the fourth, I put on flip-flops, and in the fifth, I go barefoot. God sees all of these. (he sees every possible alternative, even the ones that I'm not aware that I have). All of these includes the choice that I make. I choose, since it's such a nice day, to go barefoot. Now, that allows me to choose, since God saw everything and not me specifically. But I still have a problem. If God sees possible worlds, who he saw in those other worlds wasn't me -- as I exist in this particular world. He saw someone who looked like me who put on a pair of Converse high tops, but I, in this world, did not. So, God doesn't know what will happen anywhere, which is really bad for the creator of the universe. Then again, we say that God sees all possibilities. Even if there are a million, God sees them (which leads me to ask, is there a point where we say that all those possibilities of everyone on the earth makes God's task of seeing all possibilities too big of a task for God?). That means that my array of choices is within God's knowledge. God is still setting the boundaries of my choices. Even if he sees all choices, my actual choice is there -- he still saw it. This means to me that God is not only determining what goes on in my particular universe, but since all of those other people in those other possible universes (who look like me) have choices that are seen by God, he knows what they're going to do. God not only determines choices here, but in all of those other worlds as well. Wow.

Hell Is Reality Television People

I was thumbing through my copy of Chuck Klosterman's Sex, Drugs and Cocoa Puffs a few days ago. To start off, I envy people, any person who can write and make a living off of it. Second, I wanted to re-read the chapter on Mr. Klosterman's friend's encounter with a serial killer. I have no idea why. There's, in this chapter, a bit about serial killers John Wayne Gacy and Jeffrey Dahmer. Mr, Klosterman ( I feel like, since I don't know him, I shouldn't call him "Chuck"), wrote about the fame that serial killers achieve as compared to real celebrities. In his book, he used Cameron Diaz. That started me thinking. For awhile, you had to do something like kill a whole bunch of people or blow the president in order to get noticed by the media. But now, it seems like this has totally changed. I noticed that there are a lot of people out there who, I cannot for the life of me, tell anyone why they are famous. I don't think that they killed anyone, since they're not in prison. And I don't think that many of them interned at the White House during the Clinton Administration. But they're there. I know who these people are and why they're important to my life. What really struck me about reading Mr. Klosterman's book, is that, although it was written in 2003 (yeah, eons ago), something he wrote hit me philosophically. It was that he said that he disagreed with the "accuracy of those comparisons" between the fame of celebrities and the fame of serial killers. Mr. Klosterman wrote, " there was nothing inherently special about Cameron Diaz; until she made a movie. She was just an attractive person. At some point, she became Cameron Diaz. But Jeffrey Dahmer didn't become Jeffrey Dahmer the first time he killed somebody. That's always who he was" ( pg. 192. emphasis in original).The fame of the serial killer, he said, is more authentic. Authentic. Now that's a philosophical word. In a way, Mr. Klosterman is correct. A serial killer just does what he is inclined to do. To quote (the fictitious) Mickey Knox, a serial murderer is a "natural born killer". A famous person is mostly known for playing someone else. It would be a little odd to assume that, because David Caruso plays the ultra smooth Horatio Caine on CSI:Miami, that that is the way he truly is. Although he pretty much played the same guy in that movie Jade... Ok. Maybe he was a bad example. The point is, is that celebrities spend their careers playing people who do not exist. They are professional inauthentic players. That is, until the human race was beset upon by the authentic celebrity -- the reality TV show personality. I was listening to the Billy Bush show a while ago. If you don't know, Billy Bush is this dude from Access Hollywood, a show specializing in teling us that, in order to have meaningful lives, the American public must know intimate details about the lives of its famous people. I hate myself for knowing that 1) there is such a thing as a Billy Bush, and 2) I've seen Access Hollywood. Anyway, Billy was interviewing Kim Kardashian. I was torn for a moment. My crap-o-meter had told me to immediately change the channel. But, something was compelling me to listen. I struggled against myself to change the station. *Note* for those who live under rocks and have no idea who this woman is, is recommend Googling her. Have fun, and bring a box of Kleenex.* Now, we, as a culture, tend to dismiss celebrities like Kim Kardashian and her ilk. These are people that we say have no good resaon to be famous (as if there actuall is a good reason), and therefore, are underving of our attention. In particular, we feel that people like Ms. Kardashian and Paris Hilton are of an even less deserving class of famous people. To most of us, they're cartoons. They appear to be caricature of what a person, even of what a real celebrity is supposed to be. we often use the words "fake" or "plastic" when we describe them. They are people who seem to have no real to them at all. They are inauthentic. But before we go label crazy, it's important to explain what we mean. I've already trotted out the word "authentic" and attached philosophic significance to it. So what do I mean when I say "authentic"? Authenticity, according to the Existentialists, is ( as uncomplicted as possible) living one's life unaccording to the expectations of others. That is, an individual lives life, not according to some supposedly pre-determined set of innate characteristics, but according to the terms that he sets out for himself. According to the Existentialist, we are the masters of our own being. We are our own creations. We are not born naturally shy or hot-tempered, or even naturally inclined to act masculine or feminine. The personalities we assume are assumed by ourselves. For the Existentialist, existence preceedes essence. We exist before we become who we are. Now, I recall that I had mentioned reality TV. Television is, according to some experts, a postmodern medium. There's no need to get into postmodernism other than to say that postmodernism rejects the existentialist's notion of authenticity. For the postmodernist, there is no such thing as "the real". We are, at best, a mix of influences that we assume into what we call our identity. And TV seems to reflect that point of view. Just think of the gritty NYPD: Blue like cop show that is also a murder mystery in the tradition of Murder She Wrote, with a twist of My Three Sons, as a single police detective, who also writes mystery novels tries to raise his three sons, including the adorably precocious 7 year-old Billy, as a single father in the rough streets of Claremont, California. But, somewhere in the postmodern mix, someone decided that it was time for people to stop being polite and start being real. I know that they say that the first reality show was PBS's An American Family, and that the first reality TV star was the late Lance Loud, who appeared on the show. It seems that between the mid 70s and the early 90s, the need to see people being real wasn't big on America's to-do list. But, I remember the first time I saw The Real World. Debuting in 1992 on MTV, The Real World opened up a big can of feculent TMI for all of America to see. It brought what they said could not be brought to television: REALITY. For awhile, the only reality on TV, if one was looking for it, was only on the local news. Car chases, police shoot-outs, the local riot... all for the audience to enjoy with real people in real time. But, reality TV brought something new. The people were people that you wnated to see. They weren't just some hillbilly whose house just got blown away by a tornado. Reality TV brought people that I could identify with -- they were real. When Dominic from Real World: Venice Beach got drunk and passed out on the beach, I totally identified with what he was going through! When Ruthie from Real World: Hawaii totally got drunk, like, every episode, I was so there! There were no scripts, there were no rules. This was life as it unfolded. The camera just sat there and recorded whatever happened. So when Irene got socked in the face when she left Real World: Seattle, the camera showed us what was really going on. NO holds barred. Of course, we all know as they say, what you see isn't what really happened. Let me say something a little bit about TV. What we see on television is not all that goes on to get the show to our eyes. TV shows are a team effort. They require the services of writers, directors, producers, casting directors, and personalities to make it to air. Even a show that calls itself a reality show required a team of producers to cast it and bring it to air. Some shows these days even let us in on this process (American Idol), or let us participate in which cast members stay of leave ( Dancing With the Stars, American Idol, Big Brother, etc). Any reality show producer will tell us that, in order to condense a week's worth of going's on into an hour of television, alot of editing takes place. And as was revealed during the Real World: Reunion show, what took place didn't always happen in the order of actual occurance. Events are arranged for dramatic effect, not in order of how they really happen. Postmodernist writer Jean Baudrillard writes, "the attempt to increase the feel of reality are themselves simulations. Their authenticity is a special effect". Baudrillard states that "images preceed the real". But this doesn't seem right when we think of TV that is supposed to be "real". The notion that images preceed the real violates the idea that reality TV tells us is behind its being. Reality TV is supposed to reflect reality, how things really are. When we look at a show like The Real World or The Simple Life, we believe that we are seeing what really happened. Which brings us back to the idea of authenticity. What is authentic? I thought about this question for at least a good five minutes before I answered, for some famous people, they really do seem to be the real deal. When I look at Kim Kardashian, she seems to be one of these people. She's famous for having a big ass. Nothing more. And she doesn't seem to be inclined to convince us of anything more than that. But when I see someone like Paris Hilton, I see the postmodernist at work. One week, she's a singer, the next, she's a philanthropist, the nest, she's staring in a really crappy movie (see Repo: the Musical, The Hottie and the Nottie, or House of Wax). You can't put a finger on what Paris Hilton is because she doesn't seem to be anything. I'm not saying this about her as a person, since I do not know her, but as something that is marketed as "real", ther appears to be nothing "real" there. Perhaps then, Kim Kardashian is something like Jeffrey Dahmer. She is what she is, rather, she is what her ass is. Paris Hilton, on the other hand, is a Cameron Diaz. The funny thing is, is that, despite what view, existentialist of postmodern, each ultimately concludes that there is no purpose or meaning behind reality, and I guess this covers the world of reality TV as well. You know, Sartre called reality absurd. Exactly.

Divine, Icon of Feminism

Like many women of my generation, I tend to shy away from the moniker "feminist". I think it has something to do do with the successful characterization (some would say smear) of feminists as man-hating, non-shaven pits having, too fat that no guy would date you, so you're resentful and bitter because you sit at home with your cats while the hot chicks get dates, so you're better off dating other women, but not the "lipstick" lesbians but the women who look like truck drivers just like you sort of ladies. By the way, I own a dog, not cats. Anyway, some women feel uncomfortable with the idea of calling themselves feminists because of the stygma associated with the title. It seems to, by it's definition, radiate a certain hostility to men. I think it was Gloria Steinem who said that a woman needed a man like a fish needed a bicycle. But then, she was hot enough to be a Playboy bunny. Some women, on the other hand, feel that the so-called feminist "icons" don't quite fit the type of woman that they feel represents them, either ideologically or physically. I must say that I (think I) fit in the latter. I've been watching the films of John Waters for some time now. Although John Waters is gay, and therefore assumed unable to understand the mindset of the typical heterosexual female, I think that he and the late Glen Milstead created the greatest feminist icon of all time -- Divine. Not only is Divine an icon of feminism, but a sterling example of Existentialist feminism. Before I start my argument as to why I feel that Divine is an example of Existentialist feminism, I'd like to get this one thing straight: I'm not an expert on the history of John Waters' Dreamland studios, nor on the evolution of the character Divine. Nor am I an expert on Existentialism ( This is strange, because I'd most likely say that I am an existentialist. I am an existentialist who hates reading existentialist philosophy. It's boring). But, as a casual observer of popular culture and a part-time philosopher, from the point of view of my half-baked analysis, the persona created by Glen Milstead and feminism, in particular, the Existentialist feminism of Simone de Beauvior, seem to fit. Both challenged our perception femininity itself and demanded that we ask "what is a woman?" In her book The Second Sex, de Beauvior states that women needed to overcome the barriers inposed on women by society and psychology. Women, de Beauvior writes, have always been defined by the male-dominated society as "the other", a role which women accepted, often against their own best interests.. Women were attached to men for their identity, and identified not with other women, but with the social class into which they were assigned by men. According to de Beauvior, our identity, who we are, is a manifestation of the role we are assigned by society. De Beauvior states that the tradtional or classic view of women gave women "no past, no history, no religion of our own". De Beauvior insisted the the differences between men and women were rooted in our sociology, not in our biology. De Beauvior states that we must make a distincton between gender and sex (gender, according to de Beauvior, is a social convention. Sex, on the other hand, is biological), and that the social perception of "gender" dictated the role that women are assigned -- wives, mothers, servants of men. De Beauvior held that the biological distinction between sex, was insignificant so far as our sex should dictate what social roles individuals should or can occupy. De Beauvior's existentialist view held that individuals determine the meaning of their own lives and reality, and that our true potential can only be sought if we are free to choose for ourselves. Assigned social roles such as gender interfere with the individual's ability to choose for their own lives. Because gender is a social construct, de Beauvior says, we are left to ponder the nature of feminity itself. Femininity, according to de Beauvior, is connected to a social construct of what it "means" to be a woman. De Beauvior asks, what, then does it mean to be a woman? If what is feminine is purely socially constructed, de Beauvior asserts, then some females are not women. I hold that, if womanhood is a social construct, then some males are or can be women. As the influence of Postmodernism on popular culture spread during the 1960s, the rise of feminism and growing gay rights movements challenged the conventional notions of gender and sexual identity. The Velvet Underground, the New York Dolls, Iggy Pop and the Stooges, Alice Cooper, and David Bowie all featured male frontmen wearing make-up or dressed completely in women's clothing. Feminists burned their bras, demanded abortion rights and took the pill, thus allowing them the same sexual freedom previously (exclusively) enjoyed by men. As the 1960s came to a close, the lines between male and female social roles began to blur. By the 1980s, it was not uncommon to see moms at work and stay-at-home dads. Now, as the 21st century gets underway, we've seen the emergence of the female equivalents of the "dirty old man", the MILF and the cougar, older women who actively pursue younger men. But what does this have to do with Divine? Divine, like de Beauvior, sought to deconstruct the traditional role (and expectation) of womanhood. Each suggests that we ask ourselves to challenge and abandon our own perceptions of femininity and womanhood. Like de Beauvior, Divine challenges what is socially, aesthetically ( and even biologically) acceptable of women, and once again leads us to ask, what is a woman? John Waters said that before Divine, drag queens were "squares" who were trying to imitate the "traditional" image of womanhood and femininity. "They were trying to be their mothers or Miss America", Waters said. Waters stated that he wanted Divine to defy the notion of what a drag queen was supposed to look like. Waters stated that he wanted Divine to be the "Godzilla of drag queens" and that he wanted other drag queens to "run in tears". Like the heterosexual community, the gay community, including drag queens, were suject to the same gender role expectations. Despite the fact that they were not women, drag queens, even as they defied what was expected of men, were still bound by what they believed was expected of women. They wanted to conform to what a "real" woman was supposed to look like -- namely, that, despite the fact that they were men, they were expected to look like beauty queens and act with grace and femininity. Beauty queens , by convention, are not fat. The late Van Smith, who created the look for Divine most notably in the film Pink Flamingos, stated that the style he created for Divine was "aggressive, in your face" and that he was not interested in having Divine pass for a pretty girl. Just as feminists of the late 60s and early 70s were defying the tradtional perceptions of womanly beauty by refusing to shave their underarms and legs, taking on male-dominated occupations, and wearing unisex clothing, Divine not only challenged traditional heterosexual standards of beauty, but drag queen perceptions as well. What Smith created instead, was a woman who, despite her weight, despite the fact that she would never be mistaken for a real woman, flaunted her body with tight-fitting clothes, peek-a-boo dresses, and eventually, according to Waters, scars. "Rather than consealing fat, there it is", Smith stated. According to Smith, Divine's fat was sexy, "depending how you look at it". In Waters' movies, Divine is unapologetically sexual; she knows that she is sexy and is unhindered by either her non-feminine looks or her weight. Divine lives by her own rules on her own terms, whether she commits crime for beauty, lives in a trailer with her mentally infirm mother (proudly proclaiming that she is the filthiest person alive), or is sexually ravished by a giant lobster. Freud states that all women are motivated by a want to have a penis of their own. Freud's theory of female "penis envy" creates a strange question when thinking about Divine. I feel that it through the removal of a penis (not Divine's but another character), that Divine becomes de Beauvior's vision of feminism. First, Divine is biologically male. But, the characters Divine plays in Waters' films are undoubtedly female. His characters Babs Johnson, Dawn Davenport, Francine Fishpaw, and Edna Turnblad are all mothers (in fact, we see Dawn Davenport give birth to her daughter "Taffy" in Female Trouble). Yet, in Pink Flamingos, Divine participates in the castration of a male character, and gleefully laughs at his cries of pain when he is emasculated. I wonder, could this be interpreted as Divine's total rejection of his own masculinity? (not Glen Milstead, mind you, but Divine). It seems to me that the emasculation scene in Pink Flamingos was, perhaps inintentionally, a declaration that Divine is female. No man in his right mind, would ever participate in the removal of another man's sexual organs. As the butler, "Channing" pleads for mercy, Divine shows him no mercy. There is no sly wink at the camera. No suggestion that Divine is in reality a man. In the film, Divine sides with the two female prisoners in the pit, not with the butler. She allows the two prisoners to remove the butler's penis as an act of solidarity with her fellow women. Through this act, I believe, Divine not only assumes the mantle of a full woman ( a truly existential act) but also commits an act of true feminist defiance, striking a man down at his source. She allows the emasculation not because she wants a penis of her own (and not because she already has one of her own), but because the butler deserved that particular punishment. Like many feminists, Divine has no need for a penis herself, she is completely at peace with herself and her womanhood ( that she defines on her own terms). She is a woman, criminal, a mother, and as Dawn Davenport describes herself, a "shitkicker". Whether she is wearing a tight hot pink fishtail dress or mystic heel pumps, or scars on her face, Divine is a real woman, undefined by what is is expected to be. As she declares in Pink Flamingos, she will be queen one day, and her coronation will be celebrated all over the world. And that she is, in a single word, Divine. And that, is what every woman is.