The Irony of Religion’s Self-Fulfilling Prophecy

This entry looks at what may be called the sermon of Bill Maher.  It comes directly from the monologue summing up Maher’s personal religious views stated in the 2008 satirical documentary Religulous, which he produced and served as socratic commentator, roasting numerous unprepared and unfavorably edited personalities and spokesmen of western religion.  (Included in this lineup, Democrat Senator from Arkansas, self-proclaimed Evangelistic Christian, Mark Pryor.  The Senator offers two striking illustrations in the movie.  One, when asked why faith is good, his presented answer: “Faith has a way of softening people.” Interesting, given this comes from one of the few people who really run the country politically.  And his second, most quoted, after talking about why he’s up in the air about evolution of creationism: “you don’t need an IO test to be a Senator.”)

The irony of religion and its self-fulfilling end-day prophesy:

“Because of religion’s power to divert man to destructive courses, the world actually could come to an end.  

The plain fact is, religion must die for mankind to live.

The hour is getting very late to be able to indulge in having key decisions made by religious people, by irrationalists, by those who would steer the ship of state not by a compass, but by the equivalent of reading the entrails of a chicken.

George Bush prayed a lot about Iraq, but he didn’t learn a lot about it.

Faith means making a virtue out of not thinking.  It’s nothing to brag about.  And those who preach faith and enable and elevate it are our intellectual slave holders, keeping mankind in a bondage to fantasy and nonsense that has spawned and justified much lunacy and destruction.

Religion is dangerous because it allows human beings who don’t have all the answers to think that they do.  There are no gods actually talking to us.  That void is filled instead by people with their own corruptions, limitations, and agendas. Anyone who tells you they know what happens when you die, I promise you, doesn’t.

The only appropriate attitude for men to have about the ‘big questions’ is not the arrogant certitude that is the hallmark of religion, but doubt.  Doubt is humble, and that’s what man needs to be, considering that human history is a litany of getting shit dead wrong.

This is why rational people, anti-religionists, must end their timidity and come out of the closet and assert themselves.  Those who consider themselves only moderately religious really need to look in the mirror and realize that the solace and comfort that religion brings comes actually at a terrible price.

If you belong to a political party or social club that was tied to as much bigotry, misogyny, homophobia, violence, and sheer ignorance as religion is, you would resign in protest.  To do otherwise is to be an enabler, a Mafia Wife, with the true devils of extremism drawing their legitimacy from the billions of their fellow travelers.

If the world does come to an end, or if it limps into the future decimated by the effects of a religious-inspired nuclear terrorism, let’s remember what the real problem was:  that we learned how to precipitate mass death before we got past the neuroligical disorder of wishing for it.

That’s it.  Grow up or die.”

That’s it.  That’s how Bill Maher ends his movie.  Without the audio, music pumping a doomsday beat, and without the visual montage of preachers, politicians, zealots, war scenes, and violent images, the words do fall a bit short I have to say at reading them.  Without the the “arrogant certitude” Maher himself carries as he states these words, the impact is less.

However, the meaning and intent is solid.  I am perhaps one of the “great untapped minority in this country” Maher describes earlier in the film.  One of the 16% of Americans not affiliated with any religion but who has no lobby or is even invited to “the debate.”  (Where does this stat come from?  And does it include the new wave of Christian evangelists, especially in the south, who dismiss the term religion in favor of faith?) As part of this minority, I feel impelled to post these words so as to invite debate, to have a different direction in policy and religion.

Though I am uneasy to site Bill Maher, the satirist and popular comedian, as figure head commentator in the debate, here it is nonetheless.

Ride: Life In the Saddle, Black&Red Photography’s new blog

From my blog: http://saddlelife.blogspot.com

My intent with this blog, this documentation of life in the saddle is to explore and learn from the many different riding styles in the west.  Looking at professional riders and enthusiasts, the people who make up riding communities, and businesses helping steer the future of the ride, rather than emphasizing distinction I wish to suggest mutuality. 

Yes, of course being a rodeo star is different than being a Buckaroo pushing cattle across the Great Basin. Yes, being a cowboy is much different than being a free-ride mountain biker.  And, yes, trail riding is not at all BMX stunting at skate parks.  Or is it?  I believe the only question in life is whether or not you are going to answer a hearty ‘YES!’ to your adventure, not what separates people from sharing experiences.

I will attempt to describe what is unique about particular riding and lifestyles.  My hope, however, is to suggest the possibility of elements within riding styles that unite diverse communities.  Perhaps, show something about the unity of people regardless of apparent differences.

At the most elemental, this is a story of the single person in the saddle.  It is about movement across a landscape. It’s about self propulsion, (horse) power and muscles, personal motivation, and focused consciousness. It’s the story of experience and strength and knowledge of the immediate surroundings.  And its about communication — communication between a horse and a rider, and between a person confronting the world and his or her place in it.  This is a story using the saddle as a primary symbol from which the foundation of experiences is built.  I will show the lifestyle of barrel racers and single track mountain bikers, the enthusiasm of dirt jumpers and English riders, and the stylistic differences of riders of many sorts whose experiences begin in the saddle.  

Though I don’t know if Joseph Campbell ever rode either a horse or a bike, he did spent a lifetime studying myths and religions, presenting a host of folktales and scripture showing what literary symbols reveal, namely,  a “vast and amazingly constant statement of basic truths.” What he discovered, or at least believed in, was the notion that people are similar regardless of place or history, culture or bias.  He based this on the notion of monomyth, “an archetype, one shapeshifting and bizarre yet marvelously constant similarity all people share.” He begins the “Masks of God” series with this: “the main result for me has been [a] confirmation of a thought I have long and faithfully entertained: of the unity of the race of man, not only in its biology but also in its spiritual history, which has everywhere unfolded in the manner of a single symphony…out of which the next great movement will emerge.”

I have for a long time respected what Campbell sought to do, that is, document cultural experiences by beginning with certain familiar symbols.  The symbol of the saddle, I suspect is a kind of archetype.  My wish is to follow in Campbell’s footsteps — though spending much less time in the dust and grit of trails rather than dust and quiet of libraries.  I hope to engage in spirited conversation with many voices.  And, what ever may come from it, I desire to celebrate brotherhood regardless of division.

 

If nothing more, I wish to take from the writing of this blog and photo essays an opportunity to move across the landscape following riders, learning from them, and sharing their life lessons. Perhaps from this, the next great movement will emerge.

Economic Foundation of American Dream

The economic foundation of the American dream is rooted in home ownership. One works hard, builds a living and a house, then passes ownership to family. In the meantime, communities are born, and a culture is established.

That culture in America today is well established. It’s our middle class, portrayed by suburban growth. It’s our debt based lifestyle.

The images featured in this blog entry are from Washoe County, Nevada, where one in every 124 houses are in foreclosure (Reno-Gazette Journal, 4.17.09). Nevada as a whole has one in every 56 “housing units” in foreclosure.

The heritage of ownership seems more and more alien. Banks own many of our homes, and we are happy to be associated as “units.” The economic crisis today seems to be illuminating. It is reminding us that our culture is driven by a financial authority.

Home ownership has made many people wealthy.  But what is it doing to an American heritage?

Consumo Ergo Sum: The American Consumer Class

Two things strike me about the “economic crisis.”  The first, the subject of this blog, is how well enfranchised the middle class in America is itself as a cash generating asset.  The second, how media forms public opinion about the crisis particularly and cultural expectations in general. (To be discussed in the near future.)

About the first.  It appears to me that the middle class is an artificial social structure developed in the last century and refined since suburban growth in the 50s.  Public economics have seen centuries of dualistic relationships.  There have workers and rulers, slaves and masters, serfs and landlords, buyers and sellers.  Today there is an overwhelming sense of being both at he same time, as I see it, being managers.  The middle class has the appearance of a population of middle men, managing work, performing it, and profiting from it simultaneously.

What is more, the middle class is an economic status, based upon disposable income.  It’s less how much one can spend (dependent on capital, cash-on-hand, physical wealth), but how much is consumed (made possible by credit and debt).  The philosopher Descartes proved he exists by his own process of thinking, “cognito ergo sum” (I think therefore I am).  The American middle class proves its existence by what it consumes, “consumo ergo sum.”  (We have classlessly consumed much, in the form of stuff, and in terms of energy and natural resources.)  The middle class in America is really a consumer class.

I say the middle class, the consumer class in America is an artificial social structure because it has been cleverly developed by those untouchable cultural icons who live beyond suburbia.  They are the towering figures who design debt and those who sell it to us.  Those individuals are, perhaps, those who receive multimillion dollar bonuses even during a recession. Those few people who pull the strings of a market system unregulated but who may not be directly affected by it.  I see them to be investment bankers and media tycoons.  (But what do I know?) 

The middle class is created as a money generating system.  Earn money thru personal effort and education, save, invest, spend.  America became fond of this ethos early last century.  Wealth can be achieved on an individual’s own terms, regardless of birth, sex, race.  Upward social mobility became the American dream, sold lock stock and barrel to an optimistic public after the Great Depression.  After WWII, it was sold overseas.  

During the last few generations with the omnipresence of personal credit cards and electric communication (radio, TV, internet…) the American dream has subtly been modified simply to become property.  Dream of home ownership of course, and cars, and novelties. The dream has become bling at the expense of all else.  

As the middle class has been allowed to grow with accessible credit, social mobility has become less important, and its associated individual character.  (Wisdom, desire, ability, perseverance…)  If consumo ergo sum, then I am my shoes, my cloths, my stuff.  My identity is based on what I buy.  What I buy is all important, not how much wealth I have or how I’m able to buy, or even my personal character.  (Here, one can say Walt Disney and 50Cent are the same franchise.)

The people who have created the ability for a large population to spend and spend and spend have profited.  The middle class, and most Americans see themselves as middle class, is an asset to those people.  The middle class is not a human characteristic, growing from natural emotions or an organic process.  It grows from the algorithms of cultural icons.  The middle class itself is an art.

More than debt and the selling of debt, the icons propagate themselves and their own wealth by something ingeniously spiced: obsolescence. Obsolescence guarantees prolonged spending, prolonged consumption, prolonged wealth, and prolonged waste.  This is what the American middle class is based upon.

Today’s crisis is testing the foundation of the middle class.  It’s weaknesses are exposing themselves every day.  We are seeing that greed on the icon’s side of things predominate.  And we are seeing that the middle class has happily jumped aboard a dubious vessel not of its own building.

Emerging Photographers Fund Grant

Baby steps into the grant world, but nonetheless.  

Today I met the deadline for submitting to the Burn Magazine/Magnum Photos grant program.  It’s time to begin doing what I have only dreamt about for years, becoming funded to tell important stories with photography.

The $10,000 would help subsidize my on-going work in the field, documenting the cowboy ethos in the western states.  A document telling of the enduring presence of strong individuals roaming a modern landscape of sage brush and city streets.  A document of the open road, mortality, and the human condition.

Go to PhotoShelter to view gallery of 25 images,

http://tinyurl.com/cd3xx5

Wish me luck.

Black and Red Photography? Because life is more than black and white

Documentary photography is an evolving medium.  Like fine art photography, it tends to maintain its monochrome traditions.  If it’s good, many viewers as well as art buyers believe, it is probably black and white.

There is time for monochrome and there is time for saturation.  Color adds to the composition just as shading and texture.  

Fortunately, digital is now old enough to be passing its awkward years, where colors were tweaked and manipulated to unfathomable  depths.  Even a simple portrait had to be manipulated for the only reason:  because it can be.

Documentary photography can come to the maturity of digital without fear of exaggeration in post production.  

This is where my idea of black and red photography comes in.  It’s documentary photography in (digital) color. 

Ok, so why black and red?  Why not white and yellow, pink and beige…?   Because I like black and red, the sound of it, and the color scheme of it.

Blue and Green I’m interested in as well.  I hope to do a project with this scheme in mind.  I think of the earth from space.  To me, that image is perfectly “black and blue.”  

For now, my project is black and red.  A life in the western states, contrast, struggle, endurance, blood, and death.

Demand More From Your Photographers People: Beware the franchise

So, I have never been a fan of studio portrait photography.  I see it as the old smile-and-pretend.  Props, dramatic lighting, painted backdrops, in addition to staged poses and families in matching colors are not my taste.  From senior portraits to boudoir, this environment makes me (biased, opinionated me) uneasy.  Central Oregon has many talented portrait photographers working in studio and the field whose work is inspiring and prove my biases wrong on a daily basis.

Recently I had the opportunity to train in a franchise portrait studio, hoping to get a job as a line-shooter, making money in difficult economic times.  I sought to make money and learn something fundamental about a business I am self-taught in.

To begin with, I didn’t get the job.  The bitterness in my voice in this posting perhaps is fueled by that fact. The corporate office, based in the midwest, many miles from this mall franchise in Bend, Oregon, supposedly didn’t like the fact I have had photography experience beyond point-and-shoot.  Though I’m disappointed by the experience, I’m here to report resultant thoughts.

Training was illustrative.  I had the pleasure to look at a well organized process for documenting paperwork, orders, dialogue with clients, and daily activities.  A weakness of mine professionally has been documentation.  I have been as orderly as a street riot at times, and have let clients slip out of my fingers because of it.  The photographer should be a multi-tasker, able to shoot (of course) but also sell himself, his product, his ability to satisfy clients’ needs, as well as suggest what those needs are in the first place.  (“He” means “me”).  The training allowed me the opportunity to see efficient business management.

I believe the proven value of corporations — sorry for being so general — is that they are well structured to generate money.  Money is the goal, it is the motivation, it is the spark that fuels its practices, and it is the innovation stimulus.  Corporate excellence is portrayed on assembly lines, in the office, within suburbs, at the mall.   

A corporate portrait studio can produce money.  Money becomes the result.  Even in today’s economy, such a studio can make a lot of money while underpaying the shooters and associates.  It is the money, rather than the picture, which the franchise shoots for.  The document for posterity about you, you the art buyer, the client is not a priority.  This franchise I trained at seemingly promised only a few things to its customers, including cheap siting fees, an hour session, and two-week processing time. Its greater promise was to the corporation, namely, to “make daily,” that is, $450 gross per day.

I suspect this corporate portrait studio is an example of mislead photography.

The innovation good photographers have spent a career developing, including composition, staging, and business management are exploited by the franchise.  The funny thing is that the innovation at this particular franchise seems not to have progressed in the last 20 years.  The marketing images within the store are age faded and framed in colorful plastic.  They depict smiling babies, teens, mothers.  They are awkward smiles of pretty people with stylish but out of fashion hair and cloths.  Awkwardness overwhelms the photos. 

Photo gimmicks achieved in digital postproduction catch consumers’ attention.  ”Look,” they seem to quote digital photography catalogues in the 1990s.  ”Look, isn’t desaturation and selective coloring creative! Wow, aren’t collage manipulations just so modern!  Yea-ha, don’t you just love soft-focus babies riding barebacked fathers! Had I gotten the job I would have worked hard to put new images on the walls, new, modern — that is if the corporation would have allowed it.

It’s a mall franchise, what can you expect?  People think of sitting fee price point and go in.  If the shots are generic, who cares?

If you want photos that make you look like your neighbor did in the 90s, this is a perfect place to get your snap.  However, be warned about two things.  First, you WILL look like your neighbor did a decade ago.  Second, the cheap sitting fee that invited you in to the store will be well eclipsed by the exceptionally marked up print package prices.

Print packages are how portrait photographer make money.  Clients probably understand that, but oh my oh my, it seems that at this franchise, it’s how they furnish outsourced office buildings.

An independent portrait photographer could fairly easily invoice a client $500 for a sitting and package.  Their independence can indicate creativity and personality.  (Independence, though, doesn’t guarantee anything.)  In Central Oregon where there are many talented independent portrait photographers, $500 you can get a customized session, catering to your personality and desires.  Yes, as a client, you will be respected for the revenue you provide for the photographer.  You should also be respected for your humanity.  You are part of the photographer’s community, and this is a small town.  

 For $500 you should have a custom family sitting and a good number of prints of the highest quality.  For $500, you should not subject yourself to the compartmentalized aesthetics of the franchise.  And for $500 you should demand more from your photographers than a 5MP digital camera shooting in Auto at a cotton backdrop.  Finally, for $500 you should expect prints of a quality much greater than what is offered by the bulk printers dying ink in an uncertain (out)source.  The  lab reportedly often sends out incomplete orders and oddly cropped photos on dull, generic paper.

Yes, this sounds pretentious.  But, I wish to warn.   That hispanic family who paid $500 for a questionable quality package was taken advantage of.  I would tell them to enjoy of the cheap sitting fee.  Get standard poses that will make your family happy.  Then buy the CD-Rom.  Literally you would save more than $300, and be able to order prints of the sizes you prefer from the print service of your choice.  Don’t be scammed to think you need pink vignetting and collages popular, maybe, years ago!  Don’t get ripped of at 12 frames per hour.

Demand more from your photographers people.  Photographers, including portrait photographers have important things to say, take advantage of independent photographers’ skills.  Don’t be taken advantage of by corporate franchises.