Author Archives: G.S. Griffin

On the Origins of Capitalism

Posted on by under Socialism

Put simply, capitalism is an economic system characterized by the private ownership of business and industry, where earning a profit by selling a good or service is each owner’s basic and necessary goal. Private firms compete to seize a larger and larger share of a given market, to meet (and, in the modern world of advertising, create) the demands of the greatest possible number of consumers, the ultimate success being driving one’s competitors out by underselling them. The capitalist (the owner) can take a greater piece of the market with each competitor that goes under, resulting in more profits. Profits not only enrich the capitalist personally, they allow the firm to expand into markets in other cities, nations, or continents. They allow a commodity to be sold at a lower price. They provide opportunities for investment in new technologies that reduce the cost of production, the number of hours needed to create a commodity, and the number of workers the capitalist needs to employ.

But to accomplish all these things, the capitalist needs workers. He needs them to produce and sell his product at a rate and on a scale he cannot do himself. The workers need currency to survive, so they sell their labor to the capitalists for a wage. The capitalist exploits the workers, as it is the workers who create the wealth. Workers construct the good or provide the service, thus producing the wealth, which is controlled, and pocketed, by the capitalist. The capitalist awards herself much while keeping worker wages as low as possible–to increase profits. The capitalist holds all decision-making power, making capitalism authoritarian as well as a grand theft from the people who generate wealth. Capitalism is the few growing rich off the labor of the many.

Capitalism was a revolutionary change that brought with it unimaginable advances in technology and living standards. While its negative impacts on human society (exploitation and theft, authoritarianism, environmental destruction, etc.) are clear, it also had a positive impact, and one need not read Marxist literature long to notice many authors give an appreciative nod to its inception and early development, an example of which you will see below. Capitalism is still a young enterprise—it has not existed since the beginning of time. As British socialist Chris Harman writes, “Capitalism as a way of organizing the whole production of a country is barely three or four centuries old. As a way of organizing the whole production of the world, it is at most 150 years old” (How Marxism Works). Competition between private firms that use wage-labor has been the driving force of human economics for but a moment in the lifetime of our race, so those who view capitalism as the zenith of economic progress may one day be disappointed. Modern humans have been on earth for 100,000 years and, as Harman notes, “it would be remarkable indeed if a way of running things that has existed for less than 0.5 percent of our species’ lifespan were to endure for the rest of it.”

Much older than capitalism is the division of society into classes, and it is important to understand the origins and societal effects of this phenomenon in order to understand the rise of capitalism.

For 95,000 years, most human societies were characterized by “primitive communism,” in which labor was cooperative and resources were distributed equally or according to need. Anthropologist Richard Lee writes, “Before the rise of the state and the entrenchment of social inequality, people lived for millennia in small-scale kin-based social groups, in which the core institutions of economic life included collective or common ownership of land and resources, generalised reciprocity in the distribution of food, and relatively egalitarian political relations” (see Harman). People’s survival depended on cooperation, which necessitated a classless form of social organization and political leadership. Sometimes, men and women had equal power, and revered leaders usually worked alongside everyone else. Many Native American nations were structured like this only a century ago, and some isolated aboriginal tribes still are in the Pacific and South America.

Human society started changing when agricultural surpluses during the Urban Revolution of 10,000-5,000 B.C. created the specialization of work, which gave rise to class divisions, the State, and the exploitation of the masses under an economic system called feudalism. New technologies allowed food production (and the human population) to explode, and it became necessary for certain individuals in each community to guard and manage stored food. That fell to leaders who had once worked alongside the people, often religious leaders. When cooperation was no longer required for survival, social structures became divided into upper and lower classes. We see that in the most ancient of nation-states, such as Egypt. Those divisions have characterized the last 5% of human existence.

So most human societies now had a small minority of rulers and a huge majority of laborers, and all the exploitation and inequality that comes with such a structure. Though capitalism has similar characteristics, feudalism dominated human societies from 5,000 B.C. to the 15th century A.D. Workers labored not for capitalists who compete with other firms for more profits and market control, but to provide wealth and luxury to powerful heads of state. Harman explains:

The emergence of civilisation is usually thought of as one of the great steps forward in human history—indeed, as the step that separates history from prehistory. But it was accompanied wherever it happened by other, negative changes: by the development for the first time of class divisions, with a privileged minority living off the labour of everyone else, and by the setting up of bodies of armed men, of soldiers and secret police—in other words, a state machine—so as to enforce this minority’s rule on the rest of society.

Under feudalism, your resources and labor were devoted to pharaoh, the emperor, the king, or to your local feudal lord. The vast majority of people worked in agriculture, and did not sell their labor for a wage (soldiers were a notable exception). Production was limited to self-contained estates, and workers (“serfs”) were stuck in unshakable caste systems. One did not expect his or her lot in life to improve or change in any way before death. Most people exchanged their labor for protection, turning over large portions of their produce to the lord and receiving in return the protection of the lord’s armies from bandits and enemy lords, though of course this “exchange” was usually forced upon the poor through conquest and violence. Serfs were by no means allowed to leave as they chose—that would hurt the rulers. There was widespread oppression of the peasant masses by the rulers and their armies, and by the church as well, which demanded portions of crops as tithes.

During this time, there were small numbers of artisans, merchants, and traders in towns selling goods for individual profit, but they worked alone, as a family, or with an apprentice. There were also those who loaned money. But merchants held no economic power over others. Like peasants, they produced a good or service in order to survive, but their goods had to be exchanged for money so the family could in turn purchase agricultural produce. Money had little significance beyond a lord’s need to pay soldiers for their services or a merchant’s need for a means to put food on the table. True wealth was in land. It gave workers a way to feed themselves, and lords sought land through conquest to gain more resources, workers, and power—to live in greater luxury. So the work output of most people enriched the lives of the nobility, and under such a system there was little means for workers to improve production techniques or technology.

But things slowly changed in the 15th century. In Europe, plague destroyed a huge percentage of the population in the 14th century. The surviving nobles demanded more and more goods from the merchants in the towns. Towns thus became more important and more work opened up there for roaming free laborers and escaped serfs. The surviving peasants seized the best land from the dead, and were able to produce more. As a result, trade networks sprung up, markets grew more important in feudal society than isolated production on estates, and living standards rose. Exploration, conquest, and the enslavement of foreign lands and people led to globalization and international trade that made some merchants rich alongside kings, queens, and men of the church.

The “putting-out system” provided peasants a new way of making a living and thus weakened the economic power of the feudal lord. It was also an infant form of capitalist exploitation. Merchants bought the raw materials needed to make a commodity, and paid poor peasants to carry out production. Thus, “the direct robbery of the products of peasant labour was replaced by a system in which individual workers voluntarily accepted less than the full value of their products in return for being supplied with raw materials or tools” (Harman, A People’s History of the World). The poor had not the resources to buy or own the means of production—the raw materials and technology. To survive they were forced to accept whatever payment the merchant offered. Payment was dismal, as the merchant desired and needed profit—money from the sale of a good left over after all production and labor costs had been paid—to continue and improve his way of life. He kept wages low to keep more money for himself.

Importantly, for the common people wealth could be now be amassed in currency. Survival could be ensured by selling one’s labor for a wage (one who did so Marxists called a proletarian, an employer of wage labor being the bourgeois, the merchant, the capitalist). Over the next four centuries, merchants increasingly supervised production (though it was a very slow change, as until the Industrial Revolution of the late 1700s and early 1800s the vast majority of people still did not work for a wage, were not employees of someone else; see Curl, For All the People). New technologies revolutionized production and garnered huge profits. Markets became global. The merchant class grew larger and richer, and more industries were organized under firms with one person employing a larger and larger labor force. Industrial capitalism was born. Marx observed in The Communist Manifesto in 1848:

Modern industry has converted the little workshop of the patriarchal master into the great factory of the industrial capitalist. Masses of laborers, crowded into the factory, are organized like soldiers. As privates of the industrial army they are placed under the command of a perfect hierarchy of officers and sergeants. Not only are they slaves of the bourgeois class and of the bourgeois State; they are daily and hourly enslaved by the machine, by the overseer and, above all, by the individual bourgeois manufacturer himself. The more openly this despotism proclaims gain to be its end and aim, the more petty, the more hateful and the more embittering it is.

Yet American socialist Michael Harrington called capitalism “the greatest achievement of humankind in history” because “political power no longer had to be authoritarian, for it had ceased to be the principal instrument of economic coercion” (Socialism: Past and Future). Private ownership and competition weakened the power of feudal lords, though “the shifts in social structure opened up possibilities of freedom and justice, not inevitabilities.” In many ways, capitalism helped push the world in that direction. Marx wrote the bourgeoisie “put an end to all feudal, patriarchal, idyllic relations. It has pitilessly torn asunder the motley feudal ties that bound man to his ‘natural superiors.'” Unfortunately, the change only substituted one form of minority rule for another. The power of the church and of ruling dynasties declined, and the power of the capitalist class increased. “In one word,” Marx wrote, “for exploitation, veiled by religious and political illusions, [the capitalist class] has substituted naked, shameless, direct, brutal exploitation.”

He also noted, “Each step in the development of the bourgeoisie was accompanied by a corresponding political advance of that class,” from “an oppressed class under the sway of the feudal nobility” to today, where “the executive of the modern State is but a committee for managing the common affairs of the whole bourgeoisie.” Within each nation, as a capitalist class grew and gained colossal wealth, it gained political power, advancing to the top of the social hierarchy, until it “conquered for itself, in the modern representative State, exclusive political sway.”

Over the centuries, capitalists solidified control of political power, and in many ways this slowed down the development of liberty and democracy. It was no longer the king or feudal lord oppressing the class of businessmen and the class of laborers, it was the class of wealthy ruling businessmen (like George Washington, James Madison, and Alexander Hamilton  in the United States) oppressing the class of laborers. To repeat what Dr. King wrote, “[Capitalism] started out with a noble and high motive, viz., to block the trade monopolies of nobles, but like most human systems it fell victim to the very thing it was revolting against.” New oppressors took over, and like back then the governments of many advanced societies today mostly serve the interests of big business, because politicians are also business leaders or are bought off by them in the form of lobbying, campaign contributions, and so on.

As under feudalism, the majority experienced barbaric treatment at the hands of the minority, not just physical mistreatment in deadly working conditions but also the robbery of their wealth, the wealth workers created with their own hands. The capitalist owners exploited the labor of the people, keeping them poor and desperate while enriching themselves, a problem that still exists. To quote The Communist Manifesto:

The history of all past society has consisted in the development of class antagonisms, antagonisms that assumed different forms at different epochs. But whatever forms they may have taken, one fact is common to all past ages, viz., the exploitation of one part of society by the other. No wonder, then, that the social consciousness of past ages, despite all the multiplicity and variety it displays, moves within certain common forms, or general ideas, which cannot completely vanish except with the total disappearance of class antagonisms.

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Which Religion is the Primary Victim of ISIS Genocide?

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In March 2016, Secretary of State John Kerry declared the Islamic State (also called ISIS or Daesh), an Sunni extremist group controlling territory in Syria and Iraq, guilty of genocide.

“In my judgment, Daesh is responsible for genocide against groups in territory under its control, including Yazidis, Christians, and Shia Muslims,” Kerry said in a speech at the State Department. According to NPR, this is the sixth time the United States officially labeled state or group actions abroad in this way, the previous instance being against Sudan in 2004 (Darfur).

Kerry was under pressure from Congress to make such a declaration; Republicans and Democrats joined together in the House of Representatives and voted 393-0 on Monday to call ISIS actions genocidal. Congress set Thursday as the deadline for the State Department to accept or reject the designation, a deadline many expected the Obama administration to miss.

Kerry did not suggest that military action against ISIS would increase, the main objective of many politicians, particularly Republicans, that sought the designation. The U.S. currently targets and bombs both known and suspected ISIS operatives using unmanned drones, a tactic that protects the lives of American servicemen but also kills far more innocent bystanders than it does terrorists, according to multiple sources, and aids in terrorist recruiting efforts, inspiring further violence.

ISIS crimes against humanity include mass public executions, torture and mutilation, crucifixion, rape, kidnapping, sex trafficking, expulsion, destruction of places of worship, and forced conversion. Members have set about “stoning alleged adulterers to death and throwing gay men off buildings to their death and using child executioners,” to quote the International Business Times. Shia Muslims, Christians, and Yazidis (who worship one God, honor seven angels who look over the Earth, and believe in reincarnation) are the main targets of ISIS, whose members wish to subjugate others to Sunni Islam (the “true,” “pure” Islam) and their new caliphate.

Journalist Amy Goodman claimed that “ISIS has killed more Muslims than certainly members of any other religion,” which is likely accurate. Shia Muslims (13% of Syrians, 60-65% of Iraqis) have likely lost the most civilians at the hands of ISIS, followed by Yazidis (less than 1% of Syrians and Iraqis) and Christians (10% of Syrians, less than 1% of Iraqis).

In the first 8 months of 2014, ISIS killed 8,500 civilians in Iraq (a country with very few Christians), according to a U.N. report. From mid-2014 to late 2015, ISIS executed an estimated 10,000 people in Syria and Iraq, including 2,000 civilians in Syria and 3,000 civilians in Iraq. Thousands more people have died in suicide bombings, in battles, and massacres. For example, nearly 1,700 Iraqi Air Force cadets, mostly Shia, were murdered at Camp Speicher in Tikrit, Iraq in June 2014 and up to 5,000 Yazidi were mowed down in August 2014 in Sinjar Province, Iraq. Those events are not included in the 10,000 tally. The Knights of Columbus and In Defense of Christians identified some 1,100 Christians killed by ISIS in the report they sent to Kerry on March 9.

The reports caution these estimates are conservative — the precise number of deaths among all these groups is unknown, but likely higher.

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Who Belongs in Kansas City?

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Three weeks after the election, I found myself sitting between two men: a black man on my right, a white man on my left.

We sat together at the Shoal Creek Police Station in north Kansas City. The black man and I were under arrest for participating in a peaceful act of civil disobedience in support of a higher minimum wage and union rights for Kansas City workers. We’d known each other for a few hours. The white man was a drunk stranger, I believe hauled in for domestic violence.

My companion and I were forced to listen for an extended time to this man’s thoughts, some incoherent, others insensitive, a few overtly racist. We tried to counter some of this, but the man was in no condition to be reasoned with.

Civil disobedience “won’t do anything,” he said, a smug smile on his lips as he readied the punchline. “All you’re doing is disrupting the crack flow in the inner city.”

He explained that Somalis are foolish because they choose to drive taxis instead of finding better work, and how poor Americans in general need to work harder (as hard as he) and get off welfare.

He spoke of how native Africans are poor “because they’re just so stupid,” and how if I ever started a business I should take on my black comrade as a partner because “he looks like he could use a helping hand, if you know what I mean.”

This angered me, but as a white man my indignation was only against attacks on others; it’s not the hotter anger of one who is personally demeaned and defamed. I wondered what my companion was feeling at that moment. When I was able to put aside for a second my embarrassment that a fellow white person, intoxicated or not, would say such things in the presence of a black man, or at all, I saw my companion was stone-faced, eyes observing something far away, something I couldn’t see.

Perhaps it was memories. He’d seen and heard such things before. Perhaps he was simply trying to quell the anger toward this slander against where he lived, his work ethic, his ancestors from another continent, who he was.

I didn’t speak to him about it after our release. But I imagine he didn’t feel like he belonged.

Like the nation as a whole, Kansas City struggles to be a place where all people feel like they belong. That our city should be such a home is not the unrealistic demand of “sensitive, entitled snowflakes” who “get offended by everything.” It is the basic ideal of the American experiment, that all people are created equal, worthy of the same dignity, respect, and human rights. In a decent American society, that lived up to its principles, every person would feel like he or she belonged.

Clearly, this is not yet the case. The Southern Poverty Law Center recorded nearly 900 hate incidents in the ten days following Donald Trump’s election. Trump supporters were emboldened, validated, and set about verbally and physically attacking the people Trump demeaned and vilified. Women were grabbed by the genitals, homosexuals beaten, hijabs ripped off Muslim girls, blacks called “niggers,” Jews called “kikes,” Hispanics mocked and told to leave the country. Vandalism featured swastikas, nooses, and racial slurs.

Whites and Trump supporters were victims also, to a small degree. 23 incidents, or 2.6%, were anti-Trump, and some included physical violence. All hate crimes are wrong and must be condemned, and all hate crimes make someone feel like he or she does not belong. But we cannot pretend all groups experience hate crimes equally. As The Star noted on January 6, only 10.5% of all hate crimes in 2015 were directed against whites (a typical percentage), even though the U.S. is still nearly 70% white. We also must not pretend hate crimes against one group cannot be a reaction to hate crimes against another. Such things do not always come from the same place.

What was the Kansas City experience? A black Kansas Citian found a swastika and noose spray-painted on his car. Alongside “Hail President Trump,” racial slurs, misogynistic slurs, and swastikas were left inside the Kansas City Public Library downtown. A Muslim business owner received threatening phone calls, and “white power!” was shouted at him in person. A student drew a Klansman saying “Kill all blacks!” at Piper High School. A gay man was beat, had a gun put to his head, and had “fag” spray-painted on his car. “Alt-Right” advertisements appeared saying “America was 90% white in 1950. It is now 60%. Make America Great Again.” A white man shot three people, killing one, while hunting down Arabs — he yelled “Get out of my country!” (The victim’s grieving wife, in a public statement, asked, “Do we belong here? Is this the same country we dreamed of?”) Further, a group of teenagers assaulted a white man they thought was a Trump supporter. Anti-white statements like “Kill Whitey” were scribbled on walls of a UMKC building.

Even before election day, things were getting bad. In 2015, religious hate crimes in KC rose 60%, most against Muslims, while general hate crimes rose 35%.

While there has been a great amount of progress in Kansas City since its Jim Crow era, since the heyday of its anti-immigrant and anti-religious minority hysteria, since its very beginning as a slave society in the early 1800s, there is still much work to do to make this city a place where everyone feels like they belong. But how can this be accomplished?

One way is to ensure local and national laws protect the freedom and equality of all people. Many will ask: if the law does not offer all the same respect, why should the individual? We must push for moral and fair public policy. That must be Kansas City’s response to proposals like mass deportations, the registration of Muslims, the repeal of same-sex marriage, the return of stop-and-frisk, and so on.

This is done through people’s movements, when ordinary people come together to force the government to yield to their demands. Progress always comes on the backs of troublemakers: those who organize, agitate, petition, protest, march, strike, sit-in, and engage in civil disobedience. When the powerful realize the trouble will not stop — only grow — until demands are met, they surrender. If enough people unite, they can shut down a city, a state, or an entire country. From Kansas City’s Valentine’s Day strike of 1918, in which 15,000 workers brought the city to a halt, to India’s 2016 strike of 180 million workers that did the same to a nation, the people have the power to take whatever they want — by simply leaving their workplaces and flooding the streets. This will occur in Kansas City whenever injustice rears its ugly head. We saw it at the inauguration day march from Union Station to City Hall, the Women’s March in Kansas City, and the protest at MCI against the immigration ban.

A second way is to help change the way others think. Make no mistake, the activism described above can make bystanders think differently. But in general, Kansas Citians must encourage each other to hold one another to the same standards — that is, you must offer the same rights, respect, kindness, and dignity to others that you expect. That simple maxim, which almost all profess to believe in, could transform society if actually followed.

Under such a rule, one would think registering Muslims as ludicrous as registering Christians. Immigration bans would be a thing of the past, because ethical societies don’t punish the many for the crimes of the few. Tearing apart families by deporting good men and women who came to the U.S. illegally to escape poverty and violence would be unthinkable, because no one would want that done to their family. Homosexuality would be accepted as a natural human trait, like heterosexuality, with marriage rights protected for all. Discriminatory policing against black folk would be under constant attack by all white Americans, who would not want to be subjected to such mistreatment. All men would likewise be up in arms against the constant sexual harassment against women, light sentences for rapists, and other trademarks of rape culture. Hate crimes and everyday racist comments, no matter who against, would be found only in the history books.

That would be a much better society, a Kansas City where all people lived without fear and with a sense of belonging. Such a society is ours to create.

When my black comrade and I were released, we sat in a warm van with many others who were trickling out of the police station.

“You think we made a difference?” he asked, to no one in particular.

I thought of all the ordinary troublemakers before us who had protested and been arrested: those who fought for decent wages and the 40 hour workweek, the end of child labor, equal rights for women, people of color, religious minorities, and LGBT people, and the end of bloody wars like Vietnam. Those men and women rose up against exploitation, injustice, and bigotry. Surely they asked themselves the same question, and surely there was only one correct answer.

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Why the Women Marched

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Conservative criticism of the Women’s March on Washington seems to be revolving around several poorly considered ideas.

First, the notion that the march was simply a tantrum thrown by sore losers. Second, that women already have all the rights that men do, so why are they bothering? Third, that it is hypocritical to oppose a man who says vile things about and does vile things to women but support a woman who is married to a man who acts in a similar way. There are other criticisms, of course (“Feminists want to emasculate and oppress men!”), too absurd to be worthy of comment.

Let’s consider each point in turn, but first note the obvious: the people who are confused as to what the purpose or motives of the march was probably did not actually bother to read the mission, vision, or principles put forth by the organizers. They likely did not attend the march. They may not have even bothered to ask their friends, male or female, why they personally went. I personally feel that if people were inclined to do such things, the misinformation would not be so egregious. I can’t pretend to speak for every woman that went, but by doing those things I got a fairly informed idea as to what it was all about.

Let’s think through the first point. Was it simply that the Republican candidate won and the Democratic one lost? Is it just liberals being sore losers, without any other context? Well, no thinking person actually believes this. The Women’s March was likely the largest single-day protest in national history, with over 3 million Americans participating. Would we have seen such an event if Marco Rubio had been elected? If Jeb Bush beat Hillary Clinton? Is the victory of every Republican presidential candidate followed by historic-sized protests? Perhaps the protest has more to do with anger over the words and actions of the person elected, rather than the simple fact that he won.

Second, while it is true women have roughly the same legal rights as men, there is a certain right men could never possibly need but women might. That is, the right to an abortion. The Women’s March wasn’t solely about abortion rights (another conservative misconception), but it was a big part of it. The principles included “open access to safe, legal, affordable abortion and birth control for all people, regardless of income, location or education.” Now, staunchly pro-life people won’t agree with that, which is fine. But women (and men) who are pro-choice believe the right to an abortion should be protected and know it is currently under attack, from Texas (which slashed funding for clinics, forcing all but 20 to close in a state with 13 million women) to Ohio (which joined 15 other states in enacting a ban on abortions after 20 weeks). Again, this may sound like good news to you if you are conservative, but the point is that abortion is a right protesters sought to protect. They wanted to voice opposition to anti-abortion policies Trump and Republicans support and will likely move to enact.

Also on the subject of rights is women’s pay. Many conservatives have made it clear they either believe unequal pay for equal work is a myth or don’t even understand what it means (“My man makes more than me because his job is manual labor and mine isn’t”; “Look at how rich this woman is! The idea we’re paid less is stupid”). It’s the radical idea that a woman with comparable education and experience as a man would make the same as him in the same field or industry. Yes, the wage gap is partly explained by men dominating certain high-paying fields (which in turn is partly explained by sexism in schools, which can slowly push girls away from lucrative fields like STEM), but unequal pay for equal work and equal qualifications within the same field is also a real problem. As the Economic Policy Institute put it,

Women are paid less than similarly educated men at every level of education. And the wage gap tends to rise with education level… Women who work in male-dominated occupations are paid significantly less than similarly educated males in those occupations. So even recommending that women choose better-paying occupations does not solve the problem.

Whether or not you trust research into the matter is your business, but just know that protesters do trust this is a problem and wish to voice dissent.

Beyond equal pay, there’s sexism in general. The EPI summarizes:

One famous study found that switching to blind auditions led to a significantly higher proportion of female musicians in orchestras (Goldin and Rouse 1997).

An experimental study of résumés submitted for job openings found bias against women and mothers and a preference for male applicants (Steinpreis, Anders, and Ritzke 1999). Another résumé study showed discrimination against women in the sciences (Moss-Racusin et al. 2012).

Researchers have also found that women are viewed as less competent than men, and that mothers are judged as even less competent than childless women (Ridgeway and Correll 2004).

There are of course other issues, such as the fact that any boy under 18 can buy condoms without a problem, but girls face all kinds of legal barriers to birth control in many states. But abortion, equal hiring practices, and equal pay are the main legal rights women seek to maintain or achieve.

However, this was only part of the event. An equally important matter was standing up to sexual harassment and sexual violence. This protest was not the whine of a losing side in a typical election, it was an outburst of anger against the disrespect and abuse Trump exhibited and the culture that too often excuses, tolerates, or embraces such things — tolerates to the point of voting for a vile man like Trump. Boasting of grabbing women by the vagina, calling women fat, ugly pigs, saying Hillary Clinton couldn’t satisfy her husband, making jokes to women about blow jobs, and going to trial for rape would, in a sensible world, enrage everyone. Most of the speeches, signs, and shirts I saw, and the conversations I heard, were about sexual violence, sometimes Trump’s, sometimes someone else’s. From demeaning catcalls to nasty comments (a government official in New Mexico said women protesting “have the right to be slapped”) to the absurdly light sentences for vicious rapists, feminist liberals wish to build a society where women are safe, treated with respect, and see justice done to the worst of humanity. Surely everyone, regardless of political persuasion, can support what the organizers wrote, that women should be “free of all forms of violence against our bodies.” Days after the march, Oklahoma ruled that oral sex is not rape if the victim is unconscious from drinking.

Which brings us to the third and final point, the infidelities of Bill Clinton and the rape accusations against him, and how these things affect whether the Women’s March was an event worthy of praise or scorn. Conservatives posit: “This march wouldn’t have taken place if Hillary Clinton had won. You oppose Trump and his nastiness, yet support Hillary, whose husband is a cheater, a liar, and an accused rapist. That’s hypocrisy.”

Well, one might suppose not all of the 3 million American marchers supported or voted for Hillary. How many Bernie Sanders loyalists were there, for instance? Just because one despises Trump’s words and deeds against women does not mean he or she is a fan of Hillary or Bill Clinton. Perhaps some, like me, are critics of both. Regardless, even assuming all attendees voted for Hillary, there are obvious problems with this idea.

Most sensible people would consider Hillary a victim in this regard. She was cheated on countless times, likely lied to. Should she be punished for the crimes of her unfaithful husband? I think not — even if she stayed with him to maintain political power and opportunities. He should be frowned upon for infidelity and thrown in prison if rape charges are determined to be true. But his wife shouldn’t have to wear a badge of shame because of what he did. Hillary is the victim of Bill’s infidelity, and that in no way means people should automatically not support or vote for her. Unless she is staying mum about Bill raping women, which there is no evidence for, she is an innocent bystander to his crimes (if factual). Believe it or not, one could support imprisoning someone for a crime and support his wife, a victim, in her career pursuits. Hillary is not Bill.

In the same way I do not pretend Bill was running for president, I do not yet suppose he and Trump are of the same character. If they are both one day found guilty of rape, they can rot in prison together and we can call them equally awful men. But put aside the accusations against both for a moment; suppose they are all false. At the time of the election, and the march, and today, neither person was tried and convicted of rape. So what is left? Bill is a cheating husband, but not known for demeaning women. Trump still brags of sexual assault, tears down women for their appearance, and makes lewd remarks about contestants on his show, political enemies, etc. So is it hypocrisy to protest Trump but not Bill over how they treat women? Perhaps there is a tinge of hypocrisy, but not much. When it comes down to it, if using what we know at the moment, Donald Trump is more worthy of a protest than Bill Clinton when it comes to the treatment of women. If you add in the other stated principles of the Women’s March (like “Disability Rights” and “Civil Rights”) and consider Trump’s treatment of other groups (disabled Americans, Muslims) compared to Bill’s, this might make the case that Trump deserves a Women’s March more than Bill even stronger. His support for restrictions on abortion and other right-wing policies would make the case stronger still, in the eyes of those on the left.

(Conservatives speaking of hypocrisy should ask themselves: If Bill is worthy of protest and disdain, is not Trump worthy of even more? Those crying hypocrisy shouldn’t be saying the Women’s March, this stand against Trump, was wrong. They should be saying it was right. More specifically, “It was the right thing to do, but you should protest against Bill as well, to avoid hypocrisy.” The alternative is to protest neither. But that does no good for anyone — including Bill’s alleged victims. Liberals must ask ourselves: If Trump is worthy of protest, is Bill? I think Trump is much more worthy of protest than Bill, yet am not opposed to a mass stand against infidelity or worse crimes that he committed. I believe both would be positive things. If conservatives wish to make accusations of hypocrisy, they must also decide if both are right or if both are wrong. Currently, the absence of a theoretical march against injustice is being used to criticize a march against injustice.)

The idea that Trump is more worthy of a protest than Bill (putting aside unconfirmed accusations) when it comes to treatment of women is my view, and you are free to think differently. However, given that view, you can see why I don’t see much hypocrisy between a Women’s March for Trump and none for a theoretical First Man Bill Clinton. Same for opposing Trump’s presidential campaign in general but supporting Hillary’s. For there to be full-blown hypocrisy, different standards must be applied to two things that are essentially the same.

A man running for president is not the same as a man married to a woman running for president. Committing infidelity is not the same as committing sexual assault. A man may be worthy of protest, but a worse man can be even more worthy. And so on.

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The Atheist’s Soul: Hard Times in a Godless World

Posted on by under Religion

This writing should not be viewed as an exploration of how or why I became an atheist. I have written of both those things elsewhere; this is simply a reflection on how it feels to be an atheist compared to a believer. How does it change the way one copes with loss? Thinks about death? Thinks about knowledge or morality? That sort of thing. So no, I did not become an atheist because bad things happen to good people or because I wanted to decide for myself what is right and wrong. The following are thoughts and feelings that came after I decided God was fictional.

I start with some of the ways being an atheist is easier on the soul than being a religious person. Then I will discuss how it can be harder.

As an atheist, you are free to think more independently and make up your own mind. As a believer, knowledge is generally accepted or rejected after being crosschecked with ancient writings of primitive Middle Eastern tribes. The more fundamentalist you are the more consistently this is true. So if the bible indicates the years from Adam to today number about 6,000, a mountain of evidence for humanity’s presence tens of thousands of years ago must be labeled false immediately. If the bible says there was a worldwide flood, it happened, regardless of the fact no actual evidence can be found for it. As a nonbeliever, your mind is free. You don’t need to filter an idea through the bible, the Qu’ran, the Vedas, or any other book. You can weigh it based on its own evidence. You can decide if the evidence is strong or weak, and change your beliefs accordingly. You can change your mind without fear of crossing a deity. You’re free to doubt, to question, to say, without some big crisis of faith, “I don’t know” (even to the question of whether a higher being exists — atheists can believe one doesn’t, yet admit knowing is impossible, something most believers will not do).

Also, as an atheist you are free from worrying about the beliefs of others. As a Christian, I fretted over whether friends and loved ones were saved, because eternal life was on the line. This agitation prompted proselytizing, no doubt annoying at times. As a freethinker, as much as I enjoy deconstructing religious arguments and outlining different ways of thinking, what others believe doesn’t really concern me — whether someone is a person of faith or not is no skin off my nose. With no eternal consequences at play, who cares? It’s wonderful to be unshackled from that mental burden.

Further, you can decide for yourself what is right and wrong. A Christian determines what’s right and wrong using the bible, an atheist creates his or her own guidelines. For instance, suppose one were to say that what’s wrong is what hurts other people. In most places, Christian ethics and nonbeliever ethics would align with this idea, but not in all. Homosexuals who fall in love, have sex, and get married aren’t hurting anyone. Nor are a consenting man and woman having sex out of wedlock.

These things may be awful wrongs in the fundamentalist Christian view. Christians may conjure all sorts of ways they cause harm (“It’ll encourage others to be gay!”; “There’ll be a harm when they’re burning in hell”; “It drives them away from the Lord”; “If it’s just a fling for one of them, the other will be hurt”; “If she gets pregnant and he leaves, the child could grow up without a father or even be aborted”), but these types of reasons either already assume the act is wrong (which is circular reasoning, and therefore doesn’t make any sense when deciding if something is wrong) or is a possible, but in no way inevitable, outcome of the act, which isn’t an argument that the act itself is wrong (if the couple instead falls in love and stays together forever, was the act wrong? If the woman gets pregnant and the man stays and they start a happy family, was the act wrong? If you rescue a child from drowning, and the child grows up to be a serial killer, was your act wrong?). There is simply no way to say homosexuality or extramarital sex hurt people (and are therefore wrong) without relying on your religion or illogical arguments.

As an atheist, you can create your own set of ethics. Now, atheists will say they can create much better moral guidelines than Christians, who will say the reverse (and even spew nonsense like “When atheists choose their morality they’ll all be stealing, raping, and killing; no one can be good without God”). Christians will say morality only came from God in the first place, atheists will point out evolution and societal factors actually explain morality, no deity needed. My point here isn’t to resolve those arguments, only to say, having experienced both, it is liberating to make up my own mind on what’s moral, rather than consult and obey decrees from a book written thousands of years ago. You can think through things, change your mind, build a better code of ethics than you used to have. Just as Christians ignore the most cruel ethical guidelines in the bible (some even found in the New Testament), you can ignore ones that are backwards but still taken seriously. You’re free to base your ethics on, say, what does actual physical or psychological harm to others.

One last uplifting fact about atheism. As a believer, you sometimes struggle with what to make of the hard times, the horrible things that happen to you. Perhaps a loved one dies far too young, perhaps your spouse cheats on you, perhaps you lose your job right after your bank account takes a huge hit. Sometimes it is simple impatience (why have I not found the love of my life yet?), other times serious grievances (why was I born disabled?).

These events often conjure familiar questions: why would a loving God allow this to happen? How could this be included in his Plan? Why couldn’t his Plan not have involved me becoming paralyzed in a car wreck or my husband leaving me? That wouldn’t have been hard for him to leave out.

At times, darker thoughts arise. What did I do to deserve this? Why would God do this to me? Is it a punishment?

It can cause some believers to start to doubt God’s existence, but I have always marveled at how this can be (my own deconversion was a rather different story). Did you not realize horrific things happen to believers before they started happening to you? Were you so caught up in your own little world that you didn’t notice other faithful people losing loved ones to cancer, falling into poverty, being raped, and so on? If a personal tragedy makes you question your belief in a caring deity, why wouldn’t a tragedy that befalls other believers? How exactly are you different than they?

Regardless, the religious tropes in response to your questions are familiar, if varying. You must not be living according to scriptures; God’s teaching you a lesson you won’t forget (this is the most extreme fundamentalist view). Well, the Lord giveth and the Lord taketh away, who are we to question it? In everything give thanks, for this is the will of God! Well, God didn’t do it, he just allows it. He doesn’t want anyone to suffer, but we live in a fallen world. He could intervene, but he won’t, because of Adam and Eve’s original sin. Well, we can’t see God’s Plan; don’t worry, he’ll make some good come out of it. It’ll bring you closer to him. Closer to your family. It’ll change your life path. It’ll help others, maybe even bring them to Jesus. And so on.

When it is all said and done, there remains a puppet master who either allowed something awful to destroy your life for his own purposes or caused it in the first place to punish you.

What a relief atheism is! What an immense mental burden that dissipates and simply never returns. When you believe there is no god who loves you and cares for you, the hard parts of life — from daily annoyances to the most painful real-life nightmares — start making more sense. There is no unseen being pulling the strings, deciding whether or not your daughter will be kidnapped, raped, and killed. There is no caring Father who decided no, you shouldn’t get that raise at work. There is no struggle with the question of why. Bad things happen because of human interactions (and natural disasters like viruses and tornadoes). That’s all. Why isn’t even a question worth asking anymore. No higher power gave a green light to your suffering. It’s just us — we human creatures do everything we can to avoid suffering, but since we cannot control all other people or natural events, there will be pain. Some experience more than others, but few avoid it completely before they die.

As someone who’s experienced the loss of family members while both a believer and a unbeliever, it is my personal testimony that it is easier to cope when you’re no longer asking, “Why did God let this happen?” Instead, there is no question. There is no why. It’s just life. It’s what it means to be human. It is sad, but life simply often is.

On the other side of the coin, of course, is the fact there is no God to comfort you when bad things happen. For comfort you must rely on friends, family, and yourself. This is not so bad — and not all that different from when you were a believer, as believers need and want a real shoulder to cry on. Sure, there’s no higher purpose to your little brother dying of Salmonella poisoning and no God to make you feel better, but considering if there was a God he could have prevented such a senseless death it’s really a beneficial trade-off. In the end, you don’t need a deity to cope with grief. It can actually be easier without one.

But what of the burdens on the atheist’s soul? Those things that are harder as an atheist?

First and foremost is the hardest truth any human creature can face: I am going to die. I will cease to exist. My mind will be no more.

If only I could be like Mark Twain, who said, “I do not fear death. I had been dead for billions and billions of years before I was born, and had not suffered the slightest inconvenience from it.” Was this sincere? Was it just bravado? Who knows. But I am afraid of death.

The idea of returning to that state of nothingness — just disappearing forever — as we imagine the birds, the butterflies, our dogs, and all other creatures do is an uncomfortable, frightening, saddening thought. Accepting we are mortal and trying to go through life without fear of it all ending at some moment is a heavy yoke to bear. It is much easier on the soul of the believer, who thinks he or she will live forever, plus in a paradise, plus with all his or her loved ones. While I believe this is wishful thinking (“If something seems too good to be true…”) and is in fact the reason religion persists and will do so for a long time more, it is certainly a more pleasant belief than that in 80 years I’ll be gone forever.

How does one deal with something like this? Well, while the dread of nonexistence is something I haven’t conquered yet, I will say it encourages me to cherish each moment in a way I did not do as a believer. After all, if you have eternity, what is this mere “pit stop” on Earth? Each second just isn’t as valuable. Now I am more mindful of the time. I’m reminded to show more love and do more good in this place, to create a better world for people living now and my future children and grandchildren — should I live long enough to have them. With death, you also must accept that you will never see your loved ones again when they die. That’s hard and sad — but reminds me to spend more quality time with them in the here and now. 

Second, becoming an atheist can do a number on your relationships with those you care about. I consider myself lucky in this regard. Sure, it created a little tension here and there with family members, made some friends avoid me on social media, and a girl I wanted to marry did not appreciate my deconversion and moved on. But overall, I am still so close with many strong Christian friends and my changed beliefs were accepted, if sadly, by family, who still love me as much as before. It goes quite differently for many new atheists. It can destroy people and families. Throw this in with the feeling you’ve said goodbye to a dear old (if imaginary) friend, someone you fell asleep talking to, someone you trusted and knew, someone real and always looking out for you, and becoming an atheist can be a painful experience indeed.

Finally, purpose. Along with wishing to live forever, people tend to want a purpose for their existence. They don’t want to be a creature that only exists by chance, with no ultimate point to their being here. That’s the nature of being an animal, not a human! They would rather be foreseen, designed, existing to serve, love, and be loved by a higher power. Without God, life has no meaning!

The randomness and pointlessness of it all can seem depressing at times, leading to painful existential crises and nihilism. Why bother living? Why bother doing anything at all? Some nonbelievers struggle mightily with this, but to be honest I have not. I have my moments where these thoughts creep in, but mostly I am simply happy that I exist at all. I could have easily not been around to feel depressed about being around! As Richard Dawkins put it,

The potential people who could have been here in my place but who will in fact never see the light of day outnumber the sand grains of Arabia. Certainly those unborn ghosts include greater poets than Keats, scientists greater than Newton. We know this because the set of possible people allowed by our DNA so massively exceeds the set of actual people. In the teeth of these stupefying odds it is you and I, in our ordinariness, that are here.

Because of this (to go back to the topic of death for a moment) he says, “We are going to die, and that makes us the lucky ones. Most people are never going to die because they are never going to be born… We privileged few, who won the lottery of birth against all odds, how dare we whine at our inevitable return to that prior state from which the vast majority have never stirred?”

And since I exist, I can give meaning and purpose to my own life. That’s what’s wonderful about it. No, there is no “ultimate purpose” decreed by an invisible god. Instead, you have to decide what your purpose is and how you will spend the time you have. To give your life meaning, do something meaningful, as Carl Sagan once said — something to help make the lives of other human beings better or to just find inner peace and happiness.

To quote former pastor Dan Barker, “Asking, ‘If there is no God, what is the purpose of life?’ is like asking, ‘If there is no master, whose slave will I be?'”

Elsewhere, he said, “There is indeed no purpose of life. There is purpose in life… Life is its own reward. But as long as there are problems to solve, there will be purpose in life. When there is hunger to lessen, illness to cure, pain to minimize, inequality to eradicate, oppression to resist, knowledge to gain and beauty to create, there is meaning in life.”

Not everyone will choose the same purpose for his or her life. But the point is we all choose — and hopefully, given how short life is, we choose wisely.

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