This is a continuation of my interview of Mark Tiedemann, who is both an established science fiction writer and an author here at Dangerous Intersection.
In the first video in this post, Part IV, Mark discusses science, religion and morality. In the second video in this post, Part V, he discusses sex.
I had an extensive discussion with Mark, and I will actually have one more post featuring video of our conversation. I expect that those will be published tomorrow night.
Andrew Sullivan sees Mel Gibson as a prototype, not an aberration:
Yes, the man who viewed John Paul II as too liberal is actually a lefty. But what we see in this dialogue is deeply revealing, it seems to me, about Gibson's mindset and the fundamentalist psyche that is undergirding politics and culture the world over.
He is a deeply disturbed man whose "spirituality" is wrapped up in extreme violence and fascist imagery. What motivates him is clearly power - heterosexual white male power - imposed on others by raw violence or the threat of violence. He is a fascist in temperament - which is why racism and anti-Semitism and murderous hatred of gay people come naturally to him. And this is how he sees himself as a Christian.
Mark and I have been friends for 20 years. I've celebrated his many successes as a science fiction writer, and I was delighted when he showed interest in being one of the authors for Dangerous Intersection. I just checked the stats here, and I see that over the years, Mark has contributed 187 posts to DI. I've read every one of them, and I am repeated struck by the fact that there isn't a "cheap" post among them. They are all well-crafted and carefully considered.
Every one of Mark's posts is still available at this site. Click on his name on the bottom right corner list of authors to see them. But perhaps you are not in the mood to read substantive posts tonight. If that is the case, you are in luck.
About a year ago, I sat down with Mark at his St. Louis home and videotaped a long conversation with him. We covered many topics, which I am in the process of breaking into individual YouTube videos. I'm including the first three as part of this post. In Part I, Mark discusses his personal goals and the importance of art. In Part II, he discusses reading, heroes and censorship. In Part III, Mark discusses the blogosphere, including his impression of what goes on here at Dangerous Intersection. I know you'll enjoy getting to know Mark through his spoken words, at least as much as you've appreciated his written work. Without further ado . . .
I'll be posting several more Mark Tiedemann videos later this week.
As part of the biggest Fourth of July celebration in St. Louis, Missouri, one could see corporate flags waving on the same staffs as American flags, which is apparently exactly where they belong. To me, this arrangement symbolizes the almost complete corporate take-over of the United States.
We’re in an ominous environment right now. We have a thoroughly corrupt Congress (Dick Durbin: “The banks frankly own the place”) and a Supreme Court filled with corporation-idolizing free market fundamentalists. If you think it’s already bad, here’s what’s about to happen. This upcoming ruling by the United States Supreme Court will make clean money legislation unworkable. Citizens United was apparently just the beginning of a terrible trend.
There are relatively few politicians speaking up with passion. Sheldon Whitehouse is one of the few. We need massive marches across America. We need millions of people to turn off their damned TVs and iPods and get up and march, but I don't see it happening. Most of the people I talk with don't care that money buys elections, even while they go to Fourth of July celebrations and give lip service to "America is the world's greatest country."
This post contains the final section (Part V) of Mending Fences, my attempt to grapple with how to handle religious differences (here is Part I of this series).
Where do we go from here?
It doesn’t take a genius to see that religion is deeply important to believers. You can see it in their eyes when a skeptic questions their tenets of “faith.” To me, that “look” is as though the skeptic is trying to tempt them to abandon the safety of a pre-modern community, which would cause them to get eaten by wolves in the forest. That's the look I often get (or perhaps I'm projecting).
Even if the crazy things believers say aren’t true, they seem important to believers. When skeptics start to circle believers and display their skeptical questions, it seems to believers that we are tying to destroy something that is vitally important to them. Most good-hearted believers change the topic or run away. Other believers become aggressive or even violent. This puzzle some atheists, but wouldn’t you become violent if someone tried to destroy something you believed to be critically important? How, for example, would you feel if someone defaced your mother’s grave? Would you stay calm? Or would become angry? Maybe we don’t understand why believers believe their far-fetched religious stories, but certainly should be able to understand their emotional reactions when skeptics seem to take delight defacing and destroying aspects of religion that (somehow) have value for a believer.
Still, where does this bizarre stand-off leave us?
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