Previews of Coming Attractions

[vovat]

My dad's old printer, which is what I have hooked up to my computer, has stopped working. I hope I don't have to buy a new one. I don't really even know how much they usually cost. Probably cheaper than getting an old one fixed, but more than I can afford.

The Bullshit! episode about Alcoholics Anonymous made a point of explaining how the organization taught alcoholics not to take responsibility for their own actions, instead turning to a higher power (like Hebrew National hot dogs, I guess). Some people insisted that a "higher power" need not be a god, and could be a rock or a tree (one person's actual examples), which is pretty ridiculous. bethje had told me about the religious aspects of AA before, but I have to wonder how many people are aware of them. It isn't something I associated with AA in the past. I guess if I ever become an alcoholic, I'll have to find a different way to sober up.

Beth and I are going to the Monster-Mania Convention this weekend. It sounds like it should be fun. Expect some comments on the convention in the near future, as well as a review of Button-Bright of Oz. (I've made it through eighty out of 123 pages of Button-Bright, so I should be finished reading it pretty soon.)

Comments

[colleenanne.livejournal.com]

Jay and I paid $40 for our new printer, which came with ink cartridges. It didn't come with a USB cable, though. Those can cost a lot in stores, but you can find them for about $4 on eBay.

That episode of Bullshit was interesting. Penn and Teller have such an anti-religious bias. Ok, sure, I think the 12 steps are probably overrated, but if someone can get ANY measure of comfort from the idea, then I say go for it.

[vovat.livejournal.com]

Well, they DID say towards the end that AA might be good for you if you're already religious.

[colleenanne.livejournal.com]

Yeah, they did put that caveat at the end. I also didn't like they way they equated addiction with the guy that lost weight: "Just don't fucking eat so much."

While I agree that with some people willpower can solve things completely, with a lot of people it's stronger than that.For some reason, I can't put spaces after some sentences, it's not letting me. Anyhow, while there is a good deal of personal responsibility involved in becoming an addict, by the point it gets to the state of addiction, I don't think it's so clear-cut.I don't know what my point is here. hehe.

[vovat.livejournal.com]

I agree that drug or alcohol addiction isn't really all that easy and clear-cut. Neither is losing weight, of course, and I guess eating can be an addiction as well. Still, I can see how you could object to the comparison.

I also agree with Penn and Teller that you shouldn't force alcoholics into getting religion, though.

[revme.livejournal.com]

I totally need to see this episode, just because I need to see all of them. As for AA, I'm sort of on the fence. I _am_ pretty skeeved out by the Religious Aspects of it (and, well, also vaguely somethin'd by the fact that you just have to pay lip-service to that part too), but it seems to work[1], so I don't know. David Foster Wallace's Infinite Jest has a LOT on these issues, typically coming down on the side of "It works, so don't knock it" (and for the record, from what I've read, he's at least kinda-sorta speaking from experience, if not not-kinda-sorta -- he's usually pretty vague on his bio type stuff, but he'll talk about how IJ was based in part in his time in a halfway house and also how he was using a lot of drugs/booze for a while, too...). It's a really great book, though, one of my all-time favorites. But... yeah. As a pretty hardcore atheist (like P&T) I'm simultaneously bothered and not bothered by the AA "higher power" thing (but in IJ as you mention here, it doesn't need to be God; in fact, one of the characters tends to use the ceiling and uses the Praying/Speaking To The Ceiling time not as Conversations With God, but rather just a time to get things together in his mind and whatnot[2].).

But yeah, I'm a little annoyed by the comment about "Just don't fucking eat so much" (er, that they said it, presumably, not that colleenanne said it, heh) since... yeah. There's a willpower component, but it's not _everything_. It's really hard to lose weight/other addiction-type-stuff, and with something that's not food, you've got the added thing of no-longer-not-just-feeling-good-but-feeling-at-a-state-of-equilibrium to battle with, considering that a lot of times with drugs/alcohol, your body will get used to those particular chemicals and react accordingly (like how Speed addicts stop releasing on a normal schedule the chemicals that speed releases, since your brain figures you're gonna just do it with the speed anyway, so there's no need to do it automatically). So, uh... yeah. I think part of this might be that P&T are both teetotallers (like I am), so they tend to not realize the thought process that gets someone to want to get fucked up on a regular basis (well, I don't really either, actually, but I think I can kinda imagine some of it, but...), so... yeah. I think they might be just coming from such a different POV that they can't wrap their heads around that particular mindset.

It'd be an interesting episode to see, though, even if I don't necessarily agree with it (er, that should be read as an Up In The Air "even if I don't", not one that's saying I won't agree without seeing it).

[1] Although I've also heard that the success rates aren't nearly as high as AA'd lead you to believe.
[2] Perhaps this is what other folks who aren't in AA do when they're praying, too.

[vovat.livejournal.com]

According to the episode, the success rate of AA is 5%, the same as for people sobering up without AA. I do tend to be skeptical of statistics given on TV, though, because things are often more complex than just a raw number. That's probably a reasonably accurate figure, though.

You're probably right about P&T not totally realizing how hard it is to kick an addiction.

As for the religion thing (and this isn't really a direct reply to anything you said, just something I've been thinking about in general), I'm not anti-religion, but I'm not religious myself. I guess I'm more agnostic than totally atheistic, since I don't necessarily think there COULDN'T be a God, but I don't think there's enough evidence for me to become religious. I'm sure some atheists can be just as annoying and overzealous as the hardcore religious types. On the other hand, the United States Government often tends to ignore non-religious people, especially now that it's in the control of fundamentalist zealots like Bush and Ashcroft. When people make arguments like, "We should keep 'under God' in the Pledge of Allegiance, because it doesn't leave out Muslims or Hindus," they're ignoring the fact that it DOES leave out people who don't believe in ANY god, for whatever reason. Hmm, maybe I should make an actual post about this sometime, instead of just leaving it in a comment.

[revme.livejournal.com]

Hm, yeah... I think the number I saw was 10% (but that ways also listed as about equal). The thing that I sorta wonder, though is how many people go to AA with the intent of Sobering Up, and how many go with the intent of Fulfilling A Court Order. (Even though I do wager that a good portion of the Bullshit! ep was that it's sorta weird/creepy for the government to make you go to meetings of a(n at least Quasi-)Religious Organization. Which is kinda creepy, but it often seems that AA is one of the more benign Quasi-Religious Organizations to be forced into.) So, you sort of wonder. Or at least I do. But maybe P&T addressed that during the show, too, so... (Man, I hate not having Showtime. It means that I miss out on P&T, and it also means that I can't really talk about the show as well, just because I haven't seen it, so I've got to make guesses.)

I don't know. I've sorta waffled around myself w/r/t atheism v. agnosticism, but I've pretty much come down on the side of atheism. To me, it's not necessarily that there _isn't_ or _couldn't_ be a god, but rather that there's no compelling evidence thereof, and if forced to make a decision, I'd say "No." To me, agnosticism is a bit more open, that it takes the idea of there actually being a god a little more seriously (not that there's anything necessarily wrong with that or anything).

One of the things that pisses me off about atheism though is it seems that a lot of fundie types think that we're atheists because we _hate_ god. Which is just really silly, since, uh, it's kinda hard to hate something you don't really believe in. I don't hate god, and I don't love god either; I just... don't really think of him. Although, I'm an atheist because I haven't found any compelling evidence (as I mentioned above) -- if presented with some sort of concrete evidence that god exists, I would be _more than willing_ to admit that I was wrong. My atheism does come at least partially out of a love of science, and one of the things in science is that you're always willing to revise hypothesis. (Which is the really sorta baffling thing about the recent wave of apocalypse literature; they'll always have the Rapture or whatever, and _no one is convinced_. I'm sorry, but, uh, Revlations is pretty specific. If the oceans turn to blood after a bunch of people including most/all of the world's children end up just totally disappearing, I apologize to all my atheist brethren, but, uh, I'm gonna be gettin' on my knees and start genuflecting or whatever it is you're supposed to do to get in good with god, since at that point, he's pretty much said "Hey, how's it going? By the way, I'm totally real.")

But... yeah, annoyingness isn't something the religionists have a monopoly on. I'm sorta skeeved by some of the more vocal atheists sometimes, too. Like, uh, I have to admit sorta being all "eeeh" on the Brights. I dig what they're doing and whatnot, but, jeez, they really come off as really smug know-it-all types. I mean, for one, the BRIGHTS? Why don't they just call themselves the "Smartypants Smartguys Who Are Totally Smarter Than You" and be done with it? But... yeah. I tend to be much more sympathetic to them than, say, the folks who say that Christians Are Persecuted in this country because gay people exist or there exist movies for adults. I'm sorry, what did you say, oh, here, why don't you get back to me when an Atheist has a shot at becoming president, or when a candidate for same isn't asked by fucking Newsweek if he's Accepted Jesus Christ As His Lord And Personal Saviour, and it's actually something that people will VOTE ON. (Arr.)

[vovat.livejournal.com]

Yeah, P&T did talk about people being forced to attend meetings of a quasi-religious organization.

I'll probably expand upon my views on the atheism/agnosticism thing in a few days (my Oz book review will most likely come first), but I will say that I lean toward atheism, rather than theism. I guess the thing is that I don't actively believe, which I guess would make me an atheist by some standards. On the other hand, I don't really actively disbelieve, either. It just isn't all that relevant to my life.

And I don't know who the Brights are.

[revme.livejournal.com]

That'll be pretty interesting... I typically like those sorts of things.

As for the Brights; I don't remember a whole lot about them, but it's sort of a movement by Richard Dawkins and some other folks as sort of a new Religious Classification or whatever, for people who are skeptics/atheists who are really into science and things. And he called it The Brights. I think brights.org is their site. It's one of those things where I'd probably _be_ a Bright if I didn't think that, y'know, identifying as such was sorta vaguely lame for the whole "Smartypants Q. Sciencelover" thing mentioned above.