Are you familiar with “The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde”?

If you have not read the book by RLS (Robert Louis Stevenson, not Restless Leg Syndrome) then I dare say you are not.

You may have seen the various adaptations; nay, scratch that, the various corruptions. That they are corruptions I can convince with one example. If you have seen any representation in cinema of Mr. Hyde being a large hulking brute, then know that this is very nearly the opposite of the true Mr. Hyde.

The monstrous nature of Mr. Hyde is slowly developed. Witness his introduction:

“All at once I saw two figures; one a little man who was stumping along eastward at a good walk, and the other a girl of maybe eight or ten who was running as hard as she was able down a cross street. Well, sir, the two ran into one another naturally enough at the corner; and then came the horrible part of the thing; for the man trampled calmly over the child’s body and left her screaming on the ground. It sounds like nothing to hear, but it was hellish to see. It wasn’t like a man; it was like some damned Juggernaut.” (Easton Press ed., 1980, p. 8)

And this:

“But there was one curious circumstance. I had taken a loathing to my gentleman at first sight. So had the child’s family, which was only natural. But the doctor’s case was what struck me. He was the usual cut-and-dry apothecary, of no particular age and color, with a strong Edinburgh accent, and about as emotional as a bagpipe. Well, sir, he was like the rest of us; every time he looked at my prisoner, I saw that Sawbones turn sick and white with the desire to kill him. I knew what was in his mind, just as he knew what was in mine…” (ibid., p. 9)

The indication here is of some sense of danger unnamed, unable to be described or exactly defined, but nevertheless felt strongly in the bones. As the reader, we immediately sense that something is very wrong with Mr. Hyde. We feel it along with the characters. We connect. We do not yet grasp the truly monstrous nature of his existence. But we experience a level of dread. Contrast this with the movie representations. He is often large, hairy, hunched, fanged, or otherwise animalistic.

The difference? The original story explores a moral failing, a study of what lurks inside an otherwise respectable man. The movies turn the story into a science experiment gone wrong. In other words, very different stories with entirely different themes.

What has all this got to do with Snow White?

In the original folk tale of Snow White, variously known as Snow Drop or Sneewittchen, we have a very different tale from what most of us remember.

I will leave aside the original Disney animation, though it departs in key ways. One example: in the fairy tale, Snow White is not awakened by true love’s kiss; no, the piece of poisoned apple is dislodged from her throat during transport, and she awakens. One more example: In the fairy tale, the evil queen is made to dance in red-hot iron shoes until she dies.

The original Disney effort does act as something of a bridge to the latest corruption though. The story was flattened to a degree in the original Disney movie, and then some pieces were simply done away with in the latest effort. It will help to review the original fairy tale.

The original is about real life. As are all fairy tales. “Oh, do tell,” I can hear some saying. Well, OK.

1. The tale tells us of a person in power who is both envious and devious. She disguises herself three times in attempts to kill Snow White, speaking to her obsessive envy. The first time she orders a huntsman to kill her. That this envy is disordered is further heightened by the queen’s desire that the huntsman bring back the slain girl’s lungs and liver. Why? So that the queen can eat them. The huntsman lets Snow White go, and kills a stag or boar (depending on the version), bringing back the lungs and the liver which the queen eats. The queen is more than just an envious person; she commits what she believes is actual cannibalism. She is a monster. And envy is shown to corrupt absolutely, and to hide itself in its pursuits. You’ll be forgiven for seeing any modern day political touchpoints…

2. After Snow White eats the apple and the dwarves find her, they mourn for three days, then place her in a glass coffin where she remains for several months. Yes, months. And she remains as pure and uncorrupted as the day she was placed in the coffin. This is symbolic of her purity and goodness.

3. The glass coffin is also symbolic of a chrysalis. This is a type of rite of passage. Snow White will transition from naive girlhood to womanhood.

4. The prince finds her in the woods, and appeals to the dwarves to take the coffin where it can be safeguarded and so that he can admire her beauty. While the coffin is being transported, it is jostled or dropped and the piece of apple dislodges and she wakes up. Salvation does not come via a prince or kiss. The jostling of life, mundane events, the healing effects of time, and a chance encounter: these are what save her. This just is real life.

5. The evil queen’s fate is not ambiguous. She is made to wear red-hot iron shoes and dance herself to death at Snow White’s wedding. Evil, when found, must be publicly ended that the moral order may be restored.

6. All fairy tales end happily, usually with a dance or a wedding, or, as in this case, both. If they do not end happily, they are not properly called fairy tales, they are instead cautionary tales.1

Much of the above arc was altered in the 1937 movie, and some might say for obvious reasons. But it is clear that the moral, if you want to call it that, was altered to something much simpler and, let’s face it, easier to sell. Especially in 1937. “Don’t worry girls, your prince will come and you will live happily ever after.”

So, oddly, Rachel Zegler had something of a point when she called out the whole prince saving Snow White thing.

Anyway, the latest Disney effort, were it not named Snow White, would be difficult to tie to the original folk tale. There is no glass coffin, heck, there aren’t even dwarves. But that’s not why it fails. The reason is deeper.

I hope that you will be able to see and feel the reason this movie has failed, why it has not resonated with anyone despite the obvious singing talents of Rachel Zegler. The fault lies not with her, but with the whole movie.

The original Snow White is an alchemical or archetypal transformation story. Snow White is an innocent soul. The Queen is an externalized shadow self.2 Dwarves represent subconscious or chthonic (pronounced thawnic, meaning delvers in the earth) knowledge. The apple, you see it right? Temptation. The Fall. The Glass Coffin represents suspension between life and death, stasis. And don’t forget chrysalis, caterpillar to butterfly.

The original tells truths we can all see and identify even today in our modern age. These are all aspects of life. Real life. All of this is missing or twisted in this latest version of Snow White. Hell, even fairest means most equitable, not most beautiful. There aren’t even any dwarves. There is a resonance in the original tale which old and young alike can sense even if they cannot name. And this is why the latest movie has failed.

It does not acknowledge the permanent things. It does not touch the eternal.

Saving movies from themselves is serendipitous work. This article is an example of alchemy in action. While smoking a cigar and drinking some spirits and listening to the Literary Life Podcast on The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, I suddenly had an epiphany regarding Snow White and found it necessary to put fingers to keyboard and hammer out this article. Sub-creation is an interesting thing. If you found this article interesting and entertaining, you could always contribute to my future alchemical productions by smashing that button below.

(For why I started this, and if you want to work through the whole thing, start here.)

I have a confession. I never completed my review of White Fragility the first time around. I got to this chapter and just stopped. I believe DiAngelo should also have stopped. Stopped herself from writing or including this chapter. I will explain.

In the first paragraph, she says, on page 131, “In my work, I consistently encounter these tears in their various forms, and many writers have already provided excellent critiques.” She provides an endnote which I thought might lead to links to these “many writers.” I provide her endnote as a footnote here.1

The footnote provides a link to an article by Stacey Patton, published in Dame, December 15, 2014, and titled, “White Women, Please Don’t Expect Me to Wipe Away Your Tears.”

If you follow that link and read that article, you may be left wondering if DiAngelo read the whole article or just the title. The article is not an excellent critique of white women’s tears. It is a very personal expression of her frustration with Facebook encounters she’s had with white women “crying in her inbox.” It hardly qualifies as “excellent critique.” The article is worth reading, but Stacey Patton’s frustration with Facebook comments is hardly unique. The subject is adjacent to this chapter of White Fragility. But Patton’s article is much more nuanced, and even hopeful. It’s hardly the ringing endorsement that DiAngelo makes it out to be. But read it for yourself.

Later DiAngelo notes that:

Whether intended or not, when a white woman cries over some aspect of racism, all the attention immediately goes to her… when they should be focused on ameliorating racism. p 134

This is followed by a quote from the above Stacey Patton and a second endnote to the same article. So, her comment about “many writers” refers to exactly one. I’m certain there are other articles. But she only references this one. Again, I think she just read the title of Patton’s article.

Later in this chapter DiAngelo cites the horrifying example of Emmett Till, a 14-year-old boy who in 1955 was accused by a white woman of flirting with her. Her husband and his half-brother found the boy, beat him to death, disfigured the body, and threw it in the river. They were acquitted by an all-white jury. DiAngelo states that they later admitted to the murder and that the woman recanted in 2007. This would seem to be an example of how a white woman’s ‘tears’ got a 14-year-old Black child murdered. She specifically says that: “The story of Emmett Till is just one example of… ‘When a white woman cries, a black man gets hurt.’” p 133

That this happened is a reality that forcefully makes a point about the use of tears to cause real physical harm to another. Or is it? This woman lied. I realize that cried and lied rhyme, but they are not synonyms. Still, this is an egregious violent act centered on race.

But that’s not her point. Her point is that white women who hear this story and are moved to tears do so not out of authentic care and concern, but rather are insensitive and manipulative racists.

OK, that’s a strong statement from me. And yes, it is my interpretation.

But, here is what she actually says in the very next paragraph:

Because of its seeming innocence, well-meaning white women crying in cross-racial interactions is one of the most pernicious enactments of white fragility. The reason we cry in these interactions vary. Perhaps we were given feedback on our racism. (Emphasis mine) p 133

Note, “seeming innocence” and “pernicious enactments.” Seeming innocence implies a look of innocence, not actual innocence. Pernicious enactments implies performative, i.e., white women cry as performance. She does not consider that perhaps these tears are tears of empathy.

One other assertion:

Not knowing or being sensitive to this history is another example of white centrality, individualism, and lack of racial humility. p 133

So, if a 20-year-old woman in 2025 learns of this story, hears about the torture and murder in all its grisly detail, and is moved to tears, this is her manipulating the conversation and basking in the protective glow of white fragility. To me, this is what DiAngelo is saying when she calls white women crying an act of seeming innocence and one of the most pernicious enactments of white fragility.

I reject that premise.

I’m not saying that it has never happened. I am saying that not every single display of emotion when learning of the effects of racism is a cynical and deliberate self-defense tactic used simply because all white people are fragile.

It seems clear to me that by this chapter, DiAngelo feels she has made her case beyond all reproach, and so she simply makes a number of sweeping assertions presented as demonstrated facts.

For example, this paragraph:

White men also get to authorize what constitutes pain and whose pain is legitimate. When white men come to the rescue of white women in cross-racial settings, patriarchy is reinforced as they play savior to our damsel in distress. By legitimating white women as the targets of harm, both white men and women accrue social capital. People of color are abandoned and left to bear witness as the resources meted out to white people actually increase—yet again—on their backs. p 136.

What do you do with that paragraph?

I mean this statement alone: “White men also get to authorize what constitutes pain and whose pain is legitimate.” Really? Says who? Is there a council, some sort of governing body? My ability to authorize what constitutes pain and whose pain is legitimate is news to me. Why am I just now finding out about my super powers?

And the resources meted out to white people increase, yet again, on the backs of minorities. On their backs. What does that mean? It’s a rhetorical device evoking hard labor. So, on the backs of black people resources are meted out to white people. That sentence sounds like it has meaning. But, truly, what is the meaning?

It’s a naked call-back to slavery. Rhetorically powerful, but does it track to white women’s tears? If I said anytime a German marries a Jew it is just a reenactment of the Holocaust, would you accept that?

By this chapter, DiAngelo has settled firmly in the premise that the society here in America is just simply racist. Although she defines racism in a manner that most people don't think of when they think “racist”, I feel there is some merit to her position. Any given culture is going to be ordered to the benefit of that culture. That’s kind of the point of a culture. So, a legitimate question is, what should a society do when injustice exists in the cultural norms? This is a serious and valid question and it deserves an answer.

DiAngelo may feel like she is addressing this question, but I don’t think she ever actually gets around to it. Why? I think her infatuation with the phrase ‘White Fragility’ derailed what could have been a serious argument.

This whole chapter is useless and demeaning and probably kept many, like myself, from reading her final chapter, which actually bears some fruit.

Next? “Where do we go from here.”

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For more book reviews: Books

The book becomes repetitive and a bit mind-numbing.

Brief summaries of the next three chapters follow. The previous chapter was White. Triggers. Turns out these triggers result in white fragility. Never mind that white fragility causes the racial triggers…

Chapter 8: “The Result: White Fragility” – DiAngelo argues that the previous seven chapters converge here: white fragility is not a glitch. It’s the system working as designed.

• Racism is a system of oppression with agency.

• White people are indoctrinated into it simply by being white.

• Our unconscious participation in this system causes real harm.

• When we’re confronted with this reality, we resist, and that resistance is white fragility.

In short, white people can't tolerate racial discomfort, can't accept our role in systemic racism, and respond with avoidance, denial, or outrage.

Her conclusion? White fragility manifests as bullying.

Chapter 9: “White Fragility in Action” – much of this chapter focuses on a woman from Germany “…I will refer to as Eva…” who did not accept DiAngelo’s assertion that she was inevitably racist. Eva’s reasons were essentially that she did not grow up around black people, race was not discussed, etc., that she held no racism.

DiAngelo pushed back: “I pushed back on this claim by asking her to reflect on the messages she had received from her childhood about people who lived in Africa.” p 118. When Eva approached DiAngelo at the end of the workshop and said, “You made assumptions about me,” DiAngelo does not apologize for making assumptions, does “apologize” by saying “…I would never want her to feel unseen or invalidated…” but holds to her challenge that Eva’s growing up in Germany did not preclude her from absorbing problematic racial messages. ibid.

Later DiAngelo learns from another workshop attendee that Eva has stated she will never attend another workshop put on by DiAngelo. DiAngelo comments, “Notice that I did not tell Eva she was racist or that her story was racist. But what I did do was challenge her self-image as someone exempt from racism.”

Please reread that and think about it a moment. DiAngelo essentially says, “I did not call her racist, I said she needs to examine why she thinks she’s not.”

The remainder of this chapter is spent using Eva’s emotional reaction as an example of white fragility in action. Basically Eva had an emotional reaction to having her assumptions and behaviors challenged.

Her summary, “…the prevailing white racial assumptions and the behaviors they engender project racism.”

My comment: DiAngelo may not have called Eva a racist, but she has stated over and over that all white people are inevitably racist. If she thinks that did not come through in her workshop and that Eva didn’t pick up on that, she is naïve.

Chapter 10: “White Fragility and the Rules of Engagement” – Here DiAngelo gives a list of 11 rules of engagement that white people enforce on anyone wanting to talk about how white people are all racists. If you are white, fasten your seatbelt as you confront these realizations of who you are. Remember, according to DiAngelo, what follows, if you are white, is how you deal with conversations about race.

The first rule is: Do not give me feedback on my racism under any circumstances. p. 123

She then follows up with the 10 rules of engagement that must be followed if you dare to break rule # 1.

2. If you ignore this rule and give me feedback anyway, you are wrong, and I will explain why.
3. If you persist, your tone will be monitored and criticized.
4. If you still don’t stop, your intentions will be questioned.
5. If you continue, you will be accused of making me feel unsafe.
6. If you persist even more, you are being mean and will be criticized for how you delivered the feedback.
7. If you persist further still, you will be told that you are damaging our relationship.
8. If you continue, I will complain to others about you.
9. You will be told that your feedback is not welcome or appropriate.
10. Your feedback has made me feel bad.
11. You are the problem.

I’m guessing many of you are surprised that this is how you unconsciously, yet inevitably, operate whenever someone brings up race in a conversation with you.

Her comment after listing the rules is,

“The contradictions in these rules are irrelevant; their function is to obscure racism, protect white dominance, and regain white equilibrium.” p. 124

I will summarize this chapter with her own closing paragraph.

“I repeat: stopping our racist patterns must be more important than working to convince others that we don’t have them. We do have them, and people of color already know we have them; our efforts to prove otherwise are not convincing. An honest accounting of these patterns is no small task given the power of white fragility and white solidarity, but it is necessary.”

A couple of closing thoughts on these three chapters. DiAngelo is using a rhetorical device that could be called elimination of the exit. She has created a closed rhetorical loop where any disagreement is simply demonstration of her point. While everyone in prison may assert they are not guilty, that assertion is not proof of guilt. DiAngelo treats it as proof.

Lastly, I’m a little disturbed by her scapegoating of Eva. As noted in earlier installments of this book review, DiAngelo has stated that she wrote this book because it was hard to give these talks to groups of people. I think Eva has been sacrificed on the altar of DiAngelo’s need to validate her writing of this book. It struck me as, “See, this is why we can’t have nice seminars. Now I have to write a book.”

In my opinion, she doubles down in the next chapter. I will remind also that I am revisiting this whole thing for an ultimate purpose of demonstrating the bankruptcy of CT and CRT. Her whole book depends on this worldview.

Next: White Women’s Tears

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I juxtapose the title of this post with the quote from Martin Luther King Jr. because there is a tension between what he says above and what DiAngelo says in this chapter.

It is important to note that this chapter, perhaps more overtly than any other so far, depends on a Foucauldian view of power. If you've not heard of this philosopher, Philosophy Talk gives a brief introduction to his theories of power. Elsewhere I have explored some of what I believe to be the underpinnings of this book. I provide that reflection below. 1

The biggest failing in Foucault's power theories is simply that there is no room for love, or worse, love is simply another manifestation of power immanent in a relationship. Hence the counterpoint I offered above from Dr. King.

I posted the title of this chapter, "White Triggers" as "White. Triggers." because, simply, to be white is to be triggered. Why? Well because:

When there is disequilibrium in the habitus - when social cues are unfamiliar and/or when they challenge our capital - we use strategies to regain our balance.

p 103

Scratching your head? First, according to DiAngelo, "Capital is the social value people hold in a particular field; how they perceive themselves and are perceived by others in terms of their power (italics mine) or status." p 102. Basically, if you are made uncomfortable, when you are unsure of your standing in a group or if your power is challenged, you throw a tantrum to restore things to what makes you comfortable.

No, really. Here, in her own words:

...white fragility is a state in which even a minimum amount of racial stress in the habitus becomes intolerable, triggering a range of defensive moves.

ibid.

These defensive moves are emotional displays of "anger, fear and guilt and behaviors such as argumentation, silence, and leaving the stress-inducing situation." ibid. This is followed by a list of white triggers that spans pp 103 and 104.

Spoiler: they involve being white and running across racial things, like black people in positions of power, or people of color talking about being people of color, or people of color being unwilling to talk about being people of color, or people of color choosing not to protect white people's feelings about race, or suggesting that white people do not represent or speak for all of humanity.

Let’s look at two of those contentions:

1. People of color talking about being people of color

2. People of color refusing to talk about being people of color

Under the Foucauldian understanding of power, where power resides in systems, not in individuals, and where these systems operate below our consciousness, and where power is just the interaction between groups, white fragility is simply the unavoidable consequence of interacting in any way with anyone not white. And when we feel our power threatened we restore our sense of normalcy via white fragility. The two examples given above are interpreted as:

1. Challenge to white taboos on speaking openly about race

2. Challenge to the expectation that people of color will serve us

In other words, if we didn't ask them to tell us, they shouldn't. And if we ask them to tell us, they should. I do not understand how anyone can take this view seriously. This understanding only makes sense in a Foucauldian understanding of systems of power.

Further on Foucault: I read and now cannot find an interesting discussion about Michel Foucault that summarized for me the fundamental world view difference between his understanding of human relations and mine. The discussion was about a room with chairs in it. Foucault, who sees everything as an expression of power, would review the chairs, noting if they were high-backed that they were enforcing a sense of being upright, of being a righteous person. The arrangement of the chairs would be analyzed to determine who was in power and who was subordinate. For example, if there is one larger chair about which the others are arranged in a semi-circle, then clearly the one in the larger chair holds sway over the others.

From my viewpoint, an Aristotelian/Thomistic view, since people like to relax when talking or reading, etc., chairs are provided. Since socializing is part of our nature, chairs are arranged to facilitate conversation, or if a lecture, to facilitate the exchange of information.

You can convince yourself that anything you see is in a power relationship of some sort, and this may often be the case. But I question the assertion that these systems of power have taken on a life of their own and that they pervade and undergird all facets of human relationship. That we are unaware of how we participate and instantiate power relationships, I would have to agree with. But, I do not believe we are cogs in a machine and I do believe that "White Fragility" is built on this (misunderstanding) of human nature.

I find this viewpoint bleak.

Next Chapter: The Result: White Fragility

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(CARROLLTON, TEXAS – Cradle of Civilization) – This chapter is much more difficult to review than Chapter 5. It is about how horribly White treats Black, and how the racial systemic guilt all white people feel for their abhorrent treatment of black people causes them to continue their abhorrent treatment of black people.

Feel free to re-read that. Yeah, you read it right. And that is not an overstatement of her circular logic as you will see below. I read a book once where the last sentence was the first sentence. That’s what this chapter feels like.1

I believe the underlying purpose of this chapter is to support the concept of white fragility. I don’t know why she took this approach at this point in the book. While my intent was to simply report the content of each chapter, this chapter is difficult to summarize or review. So this is more of a criticism than the previous chapter reviews.

DiAngelo brings up that different groups experience racism differently, but that she is going to focus on White and Black people exclusively. Why? Note this quote:

However, I believe that in the white mind, black people are the ultimate racial ‘other,’ and we must grapple with this relationship, for it is a foundational aspect of the racial socialization underlying white fragility.”

p. 90

She thinks this idea of the racial “other” supports the very concept of white fragility.

And she thinks whites would not identify as “white people” if there were only Yellow and Brown people. This is a conclusion from Chapter 2, “Racism and White Supremacy” where it was pointed out that in earlier times people didn’t identify as white or black, they simply were, and the whole white/black thing became necessary to justify slavery. See p 16, wherein she says that Jefferson asked scientists to find the difference between races so that their inferiority could be used to justify slavery.

I disagree with this notion on two counts. First, people of all skin colors have been enslaved throughout human history, and enslaved by people of their own skin color as well as others. “To the victor go the spoils” is the only justification that would have been used by enslavers. And I think that the enslaved would have responded, “yeah, and if we had won, you would be our slaves.”

Second, regarding the notion that no one noticed skin color prior to the advent of slavery in the new world, well that’s demonstrably untrue. Skin color was noted in Europe in the 13th century, long before anyone knew the New World existed. Ancient Greeks were aware of Ethiopians and found them exotic primarily because of their skin color. There is also evidence of “pigmentocracy” in Africa, Asia, and South America.

Nevertheless, as noted above, DiAngelo believes that “…in the white mind, black people are the ultimate racial ‘other,’ and… it is a foundational aspect… underlying white fragility.

The rest of the chapter catalogs all the wrongs perpetrated on Blacks by Whites over the centuries and concludes,

“Our need to deny the bewildering manifestations of anti-blackness that reside so close to the surface makes us irrational, and that irrationality is at the heart of white fragility and the pain it causes people of color.”
p 98

Please note what she said here: white people’s need to deny their mistreatment of black people causes them to be irrational, which is what causes them to be fragile, which is what causes them to mistreat people.

She concludes the chapter with this statement:

To put it bluntly, I believe that the white collective fundamentally hates blackness for what it reminds us of: that we are capable and guilty of perpetrating immeasurable harm and that our gains come through the subjugation of others.

p 95

In other words, the entire white collective suffers from self-loathing due to our treatment of “the other.” And this self-loathing serves to reinforce our poor behavior because, because, well, white fragility. It seems the entire white race needs psychotherapy so that we can stop hating ourselves so that we can stop hating “the other.”

Now, without offering any support of slavery in general, I think DiAngelo would have been far better served trying to make her point by comparing the treatment of slaves in America with the treatment of slaves in ancient Rome. In Rome a slave could become a valued member of the family and even be freed and have status and social standing with his or her former owner. I think this could have been very fruitful in her discussion. I even think she could have made a point about white fragility that had some oomph.

But no. As has often been the case when finishing a chapter of this book, I am left scratching my head and wondering, “What am I supposed to do with that?” Well, apparently I am supposed to learn about racial triggers for white people, which is the title of the next chapter.

Previous | Next

CARROLLTON, TEXAS – (GLOB)—I’ve been overlong in picking up bit and byte before continuing this book review. As I read things and tried to comprehend and understand the concepts, I have followed many a thread and learned many things. But such learning will never end, so I return to the task. Also, my effort to review two chapters at a time has failed in this case. There is just too much…

In Lather, Rinse, Repeat, I covered chapters 3 and 4. In chapter 3, DiAngelo expressed that after the Civil Rights movement, racism simply adapted and now successfully perpetuates the outcomes of a formerly openly racist society via means that are not so overtly racist. In chapter 4, she expressed the various underpinnings of white fragility, those things that come from being white that many (most? all?) white people are blissfully unaware of. It’s worth rereading the summary; there’s still more to learn and understand.

I will also ask you to be aware that DiAngelo is ‘framing the debate’—a term I learned from a very successful debate coach. We will return to this concept when this whole series wraps up. In the meantime, on to Chapter 5.

Chapter 5: The Good/Bad Binary

This chapter starts with an interesting assertion:

Prior to the civil rights movement, it was socially acceptable for white people to openly proclaim their belief in their racial superiority. (p. 71)

After white Northerners saw images of violence perpetrated on people of color, they were given an out. Those aren’t her exact words, but the gist is that Northern white people could salve their consciences by noting that they did not participate in this type of abhorrent behavior. Essentially, DiAngelo says, “…racism first needed to be reduced to simple, isolated, and extreme acts of prejudice.” (p. 71) This allowed the idea to flourish that racists are those white people in the South. She provides this table on Pg 72:

| RACIST = BAD     | NOT RACIST = GOOD |
|------------------|-------------------|
| Ignorant         | Progressive       |
| Bigoted          | Educated          |
| Prejudiced       | Open-minded       |
| Mean-spirited    | Well-intentioned  |
| Old              | Young             |
| Southern         | Northern          |

I leave it to the reader as to whether this rings true in your experience. However, her point is that people who think they are good think they are not racist, even though they are. To be clear, all those people in the “NOT RACIST” side of the table? They’re all racists. They just don’t think they are.

And if you are just joining in, she has redefined racism: according to Dr. DiAngelo, racism is a system—not an event—that functions to reinforce aspects of the social construct of race. And as a reminder, if you are white, you simply are part of that system. Oh, and rather abstractly, she has bestowed on racism agency, meaning that racism in some manner deliberately perpetuates itself, weaving and dodging and evolving in response to the changing environment. OK, she does not say that, but it is heavily implied that racism has a life of its own.

In this chapter, DiAngelo argues that people have “…a definition of racism as conscious intolerance (italics hers): a racist is someone who presumably cannot tolerate even the sight of a person of color.” (p. 78)

Now, I don’t know anyone who believes sitting at a football game where Black people were present, without clutching their pearls or wallets, or leaving at half-time because of the scary black people, proves they’re not racist. But DiAngelo bases the rest of this chapter on the invalidity of this exact idea. In other words, remaining at the game is a demonstration of white fragility.

By the way, this is called “framing the debate” and in this particular framing she is building the frame of a scare crow (straw man).

She then runs through all the claims people make that prove they are not racist, and then works to invalidate these claims:

I was taught to treat everyone the same
DiAngelo says this is simply impossible. “As explained above, no one can be taught to treat people equitably…” (p. 81) This is an amazing claim.

I marched in the sixties
DiAngelo says this rests on a definition of racism as conscious intolerance. (p. 82) Does it?

I was the minority at my school so I was the one who experienced racism
DiAngelo says, “…the individual was experiencing race prejudice and discrimination, not racism.” (Italics hers, p. 82) Here is a concrete example of how she has redefined racism. Not the implicit claim that race prejudice and discrimination are not racism.

My parents were not racist, and they taught me not to be racist
DiAngelo says no they didn’t, “…your parents could not have taught you not to be racist, and your parents could not have been free of racism themselves.” (p. 82) Again, a bold claim.

Children today are so much more open
DiAngelo says no, they are not—that “…children showed they did not become less racially biased with age, but that they had learned to hide their racism in front of adults.” (p. 85)

She does provide some support for this. I suspect the data is cherry-picked to fit a narrative. There’s a massive difference between:

• A 6-year-old avoiding racial slurs because they know they’re taboo,
  and

• A 6-year-old harboring deep-seated racial animus and hiding it like a tiny Klansman.

DiAngelo collapses that distinction without argument.

My bigger concern (and we need to be aware of this tendency as well) is that she uses empirical studies to front an ideology. “Well, yeah, of course,” you might say. But that’s precisely the problem: ideologies are notoriously fact-proof. Evidence should inform and refine a worldview, not be retrofitted to validate one.

Race has nothing to do with it
DiAngelo starts this section with, “How often have we heard someone preface a story about race with the statement, 'Race had nothing to do with this but…'” Her argument continues that saying that is a demonstration of racism. (p. 85) Read that sentence again. This is a rhetorical trap dressed as an observational insight. What’s the trap? It is a self-sealing premise. If you say race did matter, you are complicitly racist. If you say it did not matter, you are in denial of your racism, if you mention race to say it didn’t matter, you just proved it did.

Focusing on race is what divides us
DiAngelo says that this “…is rooted in the concept that race doesn’t matter; thus, to talk about it is to give it undeserved weight.” (p. 86)

Now, all of the above rests on two points:

1) a definition of racism that most people don’t share, and

2) the assumption that racism can be divided neatly into a Good/Bad binary.

She wants to take away this Good/Bad binary so that people can learn her definition of racism. For her book to be valid, one has to accept her definition of racism. One has to accept her framework.

She ends with a conclusion that I am not sure follows from this whole chapter, but a conclusion with which I agree. Interesting to me is that it echoes an understanding of Evil derived from Augustine1. She sees everyone on a continuum of racism. She proposes the question, “Am I actively seeking to interrupt racism?…” Good question.

That’s a question worth holding onto as we move into Chapter 6, where DiAngelo narrows the focus and takes aim at something more specific and more volatile: anti-Blackness.

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Continuing this lengthy review of White Fragility by Robin Diangelo.

A friend of mine read the last post and asked, “… are you just going to repost the same thing for chapter 3 and 4, chapter 5 and 6, etc.? Might save you a lot of trouble.”

Well, let’s see. Two side notes: First, I did not provide page references in the previous post. I will remember to do so in this one. Second, I will continue to simply report, without critical comment, summaries of the main points in her chapters. Any comments that I might have will be in italics.

If you want to catch up, you can Start Here

Chapter 3: Racism after the Civil Rights Movement

Racism, to which Robin DiAngelo has assigned agency*, has adapted to the demands of the Civil Rights Movement such that “…modern norms, policies, and practices result in similar racial outcomes as those in the past, while not appearing to be explicitly racist” (p. 39). DiAngelo goes further.

In this chapter, I review various ways that racism has adapted over time to continue to produce racial disparity while it exempts virtually all white people from any involvement in, or benefit from, racism. - White Fragility, p. 40

One of racism’s adaptive responses was to co-opt Dr. King’s I Have a Dream speech. Specifically, the statement that one day he might be judged by the content of his character and not the color of his skin was seen as an “out” by white people. DiAngelo states that color blindness was promoted as the remedy for racism (p. 41).

Color-blind ideology makes it difficult to see the vast underpinnings of racism in our society. These underpinnings are largely unnoticed by whites, and so pretending not to see color makes it difficult to come to grips with the racism in which they unconsciously participate. Racial discrimination is thought of by whites as something that can only be intentional. So, if whites didn’t mean to be racist, then they aren’t—at least in their minds. The discrimination experienced by blacks is nonetheless real, whether or not it was intended.

DiAngelo describes something called “aversive racism,” which is something that well-intentioned, progressive, educated whites exhibit: “…aversive racists enact racism in ways that allow them to maintain a positive self-image (e.g. ‘I have lots of friends of color…’)" (p. 43).

Conversations among white people such as, “I told my friend not to move into that neighborhood, the schools are really sub-par,” are code for, “Don’t move into the black neighborhood.”

Culturally, white children learn at an early age that they are superior to people of all other races. Society sends a constant message that it is better to be white.

White millennials, while professing to be non-racist, are committed to an ideal of colorblindness that leaves them “…uncomfortable with, and confused about, race and opposed to measures to reduce racial inequality” (p. 47). That’s quite a statement. And this is caused by pretending to be color blind? Which somehow works toward the opposition of methods to address racial inequality? I’m trying to think that through, but her reasoning escapes me.

DiAngelo closes this chapter with examples of white college students practicing racism in private with other whites while espousing equality when in mixed groups. She asserts that racism’s adaptations over time are, in some ways, worse than concrete rules such as Jim Crow. Racism’s adaptations produce the same outcome, but whites are unwilling or unable to admit their beliefs.

The final sentence of chapter 3 serves as an introduction to chapter 4: “This intransigence results in another pillar of white fragility: the refusal to know.”

Chapter 4: How Does Race Shape the Lives of White People?

DiAngelo starts by stating that it is difficult to understand why white people can’t talk about race without understanding what it means to be white. She then says that virtually every white person in the United States shares all the things she is about to point out and that no person of color in this context can make the same claims.

These are the underpinnings of White Fragility:

• Belonging – White people tend to be surrounded by other white people and so belong to the group. White people are in all the ads, on TV, lead the country, etc. Whites do not experience racism.

• Freedom from the burden of race – Because whites are not socially conditioned to see themselves in terms of race, they don’t carry the psychic weight of race. Individual whites don’t see themselves as responsible or accountable for the fact that whites have discriminated against non-whites. Whites “…exude a deeply internalized assumption of racial superiority” (p. 55). I am not sure why individual white people should see themselves as responsible for the actions of other white people. Diangelo has a pretty fluid approach to the assignation of cause and effect; because I don’t see myself responsible for what someone else does, I exude a deeply internalized assumption of racial superiority? That’s a non sequitur.

• Freedom of movement – Whites are free to move about the country at will without worrying about being accepted or rejected in any particular area.

• Just people – Not just as in fair, but just as in unremarkable. In books, in conversation, the color of white people is not mentioned—it is assumed. Other races are called out, as when a white person says, “my black friend John.” DiAngelo says, “Virtually any representation of human is based on white people’s norms and images…” (p. 57).

• White solidarity – The unspoken agreement to protect white advantage. Also, the agreement to not embarrass a fellow white person by calling out their racism.

• The good old days – Essentially, any call to return to "the good old days" refers to a return to days of open racism. Also, only white people have "good old days" to reflect upon; non-whites have only repression and violence (p. 59). That is a very broad statement. Non-whites have only repression and violence to look back on? And for all white people, the “good old days” exclusively means when you could be openly racist?

• White racial innocence – I honestly found this section confusing. I am unable to summarize. I was confused by the first sentence, and the confusion simply grew. She says, “Because we are not raised to see ourselves in racial terms or to see white space as racialized space, we position ourselves as innocent of race.” And, “I ask my readers to reflect deeply on the idea that white segregation is racially innocent” (p. 62). The discussion then turns to white privilege and ends with commentary on how wrong whites are to expect non-whites to tell them about racism. I think she was trying to say something about how whites treat racism as something that happens to people of color without white involvement. Perhaps whites see themselves as innocent of practicing racism? I’m still confused.

• Segregated lives – Segregation is physical, social, emotional, and intellectual. White people want to be around other white people and, according to DiAngelo, would not really care if all non-whites disappeared. This is coupled with a sort of re-hash of the book thus far, and a call to action to grapple with how white socialization manifests in daily life and how it shapes our responses when challenged (p. 69).

So, what do you think of Chapters 3 and 4?

To be continued in Good and Bad Racists. However, next up, a digression to discuss Foucault, Critical Theory, and its illegitimate offspring.

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Footnote:
“In very general terms, an agent is a being with the capacity to act, and ‘agency’ denotes the exercise or manifestation of this capacity.” – Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy

I’ve been struggling with how to continue this review of “White Fragility.” I am a hetero-white cis-gender male who is also Catholic – in many minds the very epitome of all that is wrong with the world. If I am critical of this book in any way, why should anyone care?

I also should make note of the subtitle of the book which I put as the subtitle of this post. Diangelo believes that white people have a hard time talking about race, and so, I guess, she wrote this book to address this problem. Her assumption that it is hard for white people to talk about race makes her choose arguments and examples to demonstrate her belief, but to what end? We shall see by the end of this if we can discern why she wrote this book.

I think that perhaps my best approach then is to summarize Diangelo’s main points in each chapter as fairly and accurately as I can. Everything that follows will be my summary of main points in each chapter. If I have a comment to add, I will do so in italics.

I will then close each chapter review with some final comments. This entire book review will necessarily require several installments as a single post would become over long. I will plan on two chapters per post.

Chapter 1: The challenges of talking to white people about racism.

NB: Unless you see italics, what follows is a summary of her views.

Chapter 1 comes out strong: White folks don’t see themselves as white – that is to say they don’t see race as part of who they are. Because of this, white people’s opinions on race are uninformed. White people also don’t understand what socialization is and how it works and so don’t see how they are raised to be racist by default. Additionally whites have a simplistic understanding of what racism is, basically understanding it as ‘bad things done by bad people’. DiAngelo specifically deprecates this understanding and defines racism as the fact of being white in a predominantly white culture. As most people don’t see themselves as bad, white people in general don’t see themselves as racist. Given all this, white people will naturally be made uncomfortable by this book. White people need to take a breath, understand racial humility, and struggle with what it means to be white.

This tone of “take a breath, understand racial humility, and struggle with what it means to be white,” is a theme throughout the book. And I will ask again, “to what end?”

Chapter 2: Racism and white supremacy

After setting up that white people simply see themselves as human and superior, she goes on to explain how and why.

Race is a social construct used to validate the treatment of blacks by whites. It appears to be based on biological differences between “the races” but these biological differences are superficial, and at any rate, there is in fact only one race. Race “science” was driven by social and economic forces. The resultant classification of race based on external appearance gradually became codified into our legal system, Armenians, for example, petitioning to be classed as white, and winning because they are “scientifically Caucasian” and Japanese failing to be classed as white because they were “scientifically Mongoloid.” This is all accurate in my estimation, and I agree with her that race is a social construct based on superficial differences. I will have more to say on this at the end.

Racism is distinct from mere prejudice and discrimination. Racism is basically a collective group’s prejudice and discrimination backed up by legal authority and institutional control. As such, racism is deeply embedded in our society. Being white confers status not enjoyed by non-whites. Even that last sentence makes the point, there is white and then there is everything else. Here is where she begins her argument that racism is a system of oppression, not just individual “bad things done by bad people.” In her mind, it is woven into the fabric of society. Now, I agree with some of this. But not because of whiteness as the single operating principle. I would submit that any dominant culture favors its members and that is simply part of what defines a culture. At some point a culture should ask of itself what of the other? Is there injustice and what should we do about it?

Being white is seen as simply being human and because of this whites do not recognize their privilege and superiority as being unusual or even notable. Jackie Robinson is an example. He is presented as the first black man to break the color line in major-league baseball. He is depicted as an exceptional athlete that was the first to be good enough to play on a white team. I think DiAngelo arrives at that conclusion without sufficient warrant (i.e., without enough evidence to justify it). I don’t think anyone that knew anything about baseball at the time was confused about how good the black baseball players were. Ironically, I think her assertion here harms her argument, which is that Jackie Robinson was allowed to play by the white folks that controlled baseball. So, her argument that white people just needed to see black people as inferior gets in the way of an important message, which is that there were/are systems in place upholding racism.

However, there is some truth here. For example, I have a Mexican co-worker who was mowing his lawn, and was asked how much he charges. I’ve never been asked that question; passers by simply assume I am mowing my own lawn, and I expect them to assume so.

Finally, we are socialized at a young age to be uncomfortable talking about race. The example given is of a child saying, “Look mommy, that man’s skin is black!” and the mother shushing the child and being embarrassed. This shows how children are taught to navigate race at an early age. It also shows how we are conditioned to be uncomfortable talking about racism. Here I think, in a nutshell, is the main problem I have with this book. She is deeply invested in the term White Fragility and the idea that white people are inherently uncomfortable discussing race. Her perception of white discomfort largely stems from her own experiences as a diversity trainer, where she interpreted resistance as fragility rather than skepticism or disagreement. Critics from various ideological perspectives, including scholars like John McWhorter and Glenn Loury, have pointed out that her approach risks alienating people rather than educating them. I suspect this book serves more as a personal manifesto than a genuine attempt to foster productive dialogue. And yet… she has things to say that are worth saying. She just can’t get out of her own way.

Essence and accident - a brief side-bar.

I received the following comment from a reader of the previous article.

… On another note, I would like to suggest the essence of humanity is probably not "to be a rational animal", though I get your contrasting point about accidents. (I call these things "variations on a theme", just a variation within the human biological expression, like tall, short, XY, XXXXXXYY genes, lazy, industrious, etc.)

I think the essence of humanity is BIOCHEMISTRY. WITHOUT WHICH, there is no human emotion and no thought.

So, as a preface, I follow an Aristotelian-Thomistic world view which includes being a moderate realist. The distinction I was making between essence and accident comes from Aristotle and Aquinas, but it’s a useful tool for thinking about identity more broadly.

At its core, the idea is about what makes something what it is versus what can change about it without altering its fundamental nature. A chair can be made of wood, metal, or plastic, but if it doesn’t function as a chair, it’s no longer a chair. Likewise, humans vary in height, skin color, or even cognitive ability, but those are accidental properties—they don’t change what it means to be human. What defines humanity at its core? That’s where Aristotle identified rationality as key, because even though we’re biological beings, we’re also uniquely capable of abstract thought, moral reflection, and complex reasoning.

Your point about biochemistry being foundational to human thought is definitely true in the sense that without biochemistry, there is no mechanism for thought. But does that mean biochemistry is thought? If human essence is just biochemistry, then the difference between a human and an ape is merely a matter of degree, not kind. And yet, we see a stark difference: humans write symphonies, develop philosophical systems, and contemplate their own mortality. Apes are intelligent, but they don’t seem to be spending their time worrying about the meaning of life or whether they ought to eat a banana instead of just wanting to eat it.

This is where I think there’s a category mistake in equating biochemistry with essence. Biochemistry explains the physical conditions necessary for thought, but it doesn’t tell us what thinking is or why it differs so radically between humans and other animals. Saying "human essence is biochemistry" is like saying "the essence of a book is ink and paper." Ink and paper are necessary for a book to exist in physical form, but they don’t explain why a book contains meaning or how the same paper and ink could hold Shakespeare or a grocery list. Similarly, biochemistry is a material cause of human life, but it doesn’t fully account for the qualitative leap between human rationality and animal cognition.

Now, some people might push back and say, “Well, how do you know animals don’t engage in abstract reasoning? Just because we can’t prove it doesn’t mean it’s not happening.” That’s technically true—but it’s also not an argument for animal reasoning. If there’s no actual evidence that a fish is doing calculus, I don’t feel compelled to believe it is. The burden of proof should be on the person claiming that animals engage in abstract reasoning, not on those who find no evidence for it.

Of course, different philosophies approach this question in different ways. Some materialists argue that consciousness and thought are purely emergent properties of biochemistry, while others reduce the mind to mechanical processes. But that runs into tricky territory—if mind is reducible to chemistry, does that mean free will, morality, and reason itself are illusions? Or is there something about being human that transcends chemistry alone?

I think there is, which is why I adhere to an Aristotelian-Thomistic world view and embrace the concept of the Four Causes (Formal, Material, Efficient, and Final - all things which cause a thing to be what it is.)

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Reading “White Fragility is Hard! Buy me a cigar!

Introduction & Purpose

Yeah, ok, this is going to take a bit. It has taken me two posts to actually begin. You can see intro 1.0 here. This is the actual start of my promised review of “White Fragility” by Robin DiAngelo, PhD. (All quotes and page references are from the paperback published by Beacon Press, copyright 2018, ISBN 978-0-8070-4741-5) I will start by saying that Dr. DiAngelo is very invested in the term “white fragility.” I think her investment in this term gets in the way of some important things she has to say, and I think her investment in this term causes a large blind spot in her analysis.

Should You Buy This Book?

For those wondering if they should buy this book, I would suggest that you go to your local book store, pull the book off the shelf, find a chair and read the foreword by Michael Dyson and then go to the final chapter titled “Where Do We Go From Here.” You will have the gist of the book and save yourself a lot of frustration. Note that she would assert that this frustration is entirely due to your fragility. The possibility that my frustration stems from her logical inconsistencies, equivocation, and apparent inability to recognize when she contradicts herself—even within the same paragraph—would likely be taken as proof of her argument.

But, she makes some valid points. If you want to be alarmed, Google “chart of all the human races.” You will scratch your head in wonder. Well, I did anyway. Dr. DiAngelo makes the point that “race” is a construct, and she is correct. She also makes the statement that we all operate from within a framework, and this also is correct. That we are quite often blissfully unaware of our frameworks is also true.

The Validity of Race as a Social Construct

Let’s start with race. Chapter 2 is titled “Racism and White Supremacy.” In the first paragraph of this chapter she says,

Many of us have been taught to believe that there are distinct biological and genetic differences between races.

White Fragility, Pg 15

If you read that and thought, “Well, yeah,” then you are wrong. Because race is a social construct based on actual genetic differences noted among members of the single human race. These genetic differences do not create different races. There is only the human race.

Essence vs. Accidents: Understanding Race as a Construct

The essence of something is what fundamentally defines it—without it, the thing would cease to be what it is.

Accidents, on the other hand, are characteristics that can change without altering the essence. Consider a ball: its defining feature is roundness. A football may not be a perfect sphere, but it retains a fundamental roundness. The ball's material, size, and color—whether rubber, plastic, red, or blue—are accidental. If it were a cube, it would no longer be a ball.

Similarly, the essence of a human is to be a rational animal. Accidental traits include height, skin color, and eye color, bone structure and density, etc. However, historically, many have mistakenly treated race as an essence rather than an accident. Pseudoscientific racial classifications attempted to assign inherent, immutable characteristics to different groups, reinforcing social divisions. This misconception persists in some forms today, making discussions on race contentious.

To understand Dr. DiAngelo’s argument, one must recognize that race is indeed a social construct. It is deeply embedded in society, shaping perceptions and interactions. Without acknowledging this, meaningful conversations about racism become difficult. According to Dr. DiAngelo, racism is not merely an isolated act but a systemic force that reinforces and perpetuates the constructed divisions of race.

DiAngelo’s Core Argument: Racism as a System, Not an Event

In my last post, titled Redefining Racism, I commented that she essentially states that if you are white, you are racist. But that is just part of it. In the next installment, we will explore her claim that racism is a system where white people are not just participants but embedded within the system itself. It’s a nuanced claim—but does it track? Are there systems actively sustaining “white supremacy”? Like I noted above, this is going to take a while.

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Previously on The Glob I promised to buy the book, “White Fragility”, read it, and report on it. I’ve only read the dust cover art on the back of the book, the glowing reviews on the inner flaps, scanned the introduction and forward, and read the first chapter titled, “You Can’t Get There From Here.”

First the back cover – it is an image of shattered glass, a white pane against a black background, and each shard has some words. The one that caught my eye and triggered (heh heh) this article was the one that said, “How can you call me racist? You don’t even know me.” Just to clearly paint the picture, this is one of the shards representing white fragility.

Regarding the first chapter – I remember in my youth sometimes people would ask for directions, and some wag would say, “You can’t get there from here.” I remember thinking, Yes you can! and so I started saying, “You can’t get there from here, you have to go somewhere else first.” I’m going to guess that is the point of this chapter. To move forward, we have to leave where we are. Well and good.

However, in this chapter she addresses the shard that caught my eye. She comments that most people have this idea that racism is a bad thing done by bad people, and most white people do not believe they themselves are racist. She goes on to say that if that is what you think racism is, then you are right to be offended if she calls you a bad person doing bad things.

I find myself agreeing with her. I realize that many people, including myself, have racist mindsets or tendencies even if they don’t act on them. And many people are in denial about these thoughts and feelings.

But, that’s not what she means by racism. DiAngelo doesn’t just redefine racism; she collapses it entirely into whiteness itself. Under her framework, racism isn’t something one does—it’s something one is. If you’re white, you’re racist. Full stop.

It’s a bait and switch in my mind. She says she is going to talk about racism, but what she means by that is she is going to talk about white people. She also asserts that she has every right to paint with a broad brush and generalize, because, well, because all her time giving seminars has taught her that she is right. Basically, the above cartoon represents all, and she does mean all, white people:

All white people in the United States are freaked out if someone wants to discuss race. All of them. How does she know this? From her seminars.

This is the classic 'heads I win, tails you lose' argument. If her audience agrees with her, she’s right. If they push back, she’s even more right. Either way, her conclusions remain unchallenged—by design.

Somewhere in these first few pages she acknowledges that she realized that she needed to get her message out via book, because in an audience it was just too hard.

For an outsider looking in, it raises a question: why does she struggle to get her ideas across? Instead of reconsidering her approach, she assumes the problem is the audience. I think she should consider the possibility that her approach is the problem since she is the common denominator. She may simply be a poor speaker.

So, these are my first impressions of this book. She makes a lot of assertions as if they are demonstrated fact with precious little to support her opinion. What support she does give amounts to her personal experience in a charged environment (seminars that tell people they are racists because they are white), and other people’s opinions.

Do you hear the echo?

Rather than think through how she is presenting her information, she doubles down, counting it a good that she’s pissing people off.

I am interested to see where she goes with this. Not sure how often I’ll report in, but I suspect my white fragility will dictate my pace. If I disappear entirely, assume I’ve been shattered like the book cover.

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About 4 years ago a friend asked me to read “White Fragility” by Robin DiAngelo. He was being required to read it at his work. Bear in mind this person is an out gay man, Catholic, and a “ceremony” person - think of the movie, “A Man Called Horse” with the sun-ceremony around a pole where you have bits of bone tied to lengthy leather straps the other end of which are tied to the pole. You lean back until the bone pulls out through your skin. So, Intersection much?

Why did he want me to read this book? He was angry. He wanted my opinion. I told him I would read and blog about it.

Why do I want to talk about it again, 4 or 5 years after I read the book?

The pendulum seems to have reached its zenith on the far left “woke” side, and is beginning the swing back. I fear a backlash which some may feel is warranted. However, I ask us to consider the following from Sun Tzu, in the “Art of War”, chapter 31:

Peace is his highest value.
If the peace has been shattered,
how can he be content?
His enemies are not demons,
but human beings like himself.
He doesn’t wish them personal harm.
Nor does he rejoice in victory.
How could he rejoice in victory
and delight in the slaughter of men?
He enters a battle gravely,
with sorrow and with great compassion,
as if he were attending a funeral."

This has a different feel than, “To the victor go the spoils”, right?

I think we need to engage with the ideas that frankly have been bent out of shape, reassess the theories behind the ideas and the reasons for their bending, and understand that poor or wrong-headed implementation of even good ideas has long term negative repercussions.

For me, “White Fragility” is a clear and obvious example of taking a theory with a lofty goal, commonly called Critical Theory (CT), and having it bent into a tool for goals beyond it’s original stated purpose. Note I said “stated” purpose. It can be argued that it has been used exactly as planned, but I don’t know how to support or refute that, so I choose to engage with the stated purpose. Regardless, the offspring, and in the case of this book the primary offspring, is Critical Race Theory. I think a revisit of how CRT was suffused with an “Oppressor/Oppressed” dynamic may prove useful. And we should understand how this paradigm may have helped create the environment for an anti-woke backlash.

The pace of this will be one article per week, starting now:

White Fragility

Was this another Y2K book?

A friend of mine was required to read “White Fragility” where he works. He was struggling with coming up with any kind of charitable response. Ok, he was angry. He asked me to read it and let me know if he was off base or justified in being angry.

I went on Amazon to order the book, and read the reviews. I also dug around and found the following article on the Huffington Post. It’s an interesting article in that I don’t really think I understand the point the author was making. Which happens to me a lot at that website. It did point me to a quote from Robin DiAngelo, the person who coined the phrase “white fragility” and wrote the book:

White people in North America live in a social environment that protects and insulates them from race-based stress. This insulated environment of racial protection builds white expectations for racial comfort while at the same time lowering the ability to tolerate racial stress, leading to what I refer to as White Fragility. White Fragility is a state in which even a minimum amount of racial stress becomes intolerable, triggering a range of defensive moves. These moves include the outward display of emotions such as anger, fear, and guilt, and behaviors such as argumentation, silence, and leaving the stress-inducing situation. (Emphasis mine) These behaviors, in turn, function to reinstate white racial equilibrium. This paper explicates the dynamics of White Fragility.

http://libjournal.uncg.edu/index.php/ijcp/article/view/249

The part about the inability to tolerate racial stress is interesting, because as far as I can see from comments and reviews about this book, racial stress only happens to white people when they are confronted with the fact of their racism. It’s an interesting take on a complex topic. Except, what again, exactly, is racial stress?

Whatever it is, it would appear the only appropriate emotional response when called a racist is calm acceptance and agreement. The only proper behavior is… is — well, I’m not sure. You can’t argue to support your position, you can’t be silent, you can’t leave.

The reason why this is the case is simple. If you are white, you are racist, you just didn’t know it, and shame on you.

I’m not really sure what I’m supposed to do with that. I can’t even talk about what racism means, because that is whitesplaining.

But here I go:

Racism is the belief that groups of humans possess different behavioral traits corresponding to physical appearance and can be divided based on the superiority of one race over another. It may also mean prejudice, discrimination, or antagonism directed against other people because they are of a different race or ethnicity.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Racism

Now my response to that, speaking only for me, is that I know that groups of humans possess different behavioral traits, but that those traits are primarily cultural. Meaning that white people in the coal mines of Arkansas have different behavioral traits than white people in San Diego. This is demonstrable in dialect, clothing, nutrition, music, etc. When I was a manager in a Wendy’s hamburger joint (at night I was the only white person in the place, including the customers), I learned a new dialect, and became familiar with a completely different style of music. Based on all this, I know and believe that there are differences between groups of people. I also know and believe that discrimination against a group due to perceptions of superiority based on cultural differences is wrong.

But I also know it happens. And now I’ve just whitesplained and nothing I said has any value because Fragility.

My take at the moment is that Robin has pulled off the perfect illusion, she has created a situation where she can accuse me of racism or fragility, and any, and I mean any, response to that accusation is simply proof that the accusation is correct. But then, since I am a racist, I just proved her point.

I also found this interesting quote in an article in the Washington Post:

Even as it introduces a memorable concept, “White Fragility” presents oversimplified arguments that are self-fulfilling, even self-serving. The book flattens people of any ancestry into two-dimensional beings fitting predetermined narratives. And reading DiAngelo offers little insight into how a national reckoning such as the one we’re experiencing today could have come about. In a “White Fragility” world, nothing ever changes, because change would violate its premise.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/outlook/2020/06/18/white-fragility-is-real-white-fragility-is-flawed/

What am I supposed to do with all this? The Huffington Post article offers the helpful hint that I need to put in some work. “Do the work.” So, I’ll start with reading the book. But then what?

Meanwhile, back in 1999, if you wanted a quick publish and easy money, you just wrote about the coming inevitable apocalypse known as Y2K. Everyone knew that come the stroke of midnight, water would stop running, planes would fall from the sky, all your money would disappear in a puff of electronic blue smoke as the world was thrown into a new Dark Age. You couldn’t swing a dead cat without hitting a Y2K book.

“White Fragility” feels like a Y2K book to me. But, I haven’t read it, so I will.

Over the next series of articles, I’ll be tackling what White Fragility claims, why it seems to provoke such strong reactions, and what it says about race and privilege in modern society. Along the way, I’ll give space for both those who defend DiAngelo’s work and those who are critical of the book. If you’re looking for nuanced exploration and maybe a little bit of sparring with the ideas, you’ve come to the right place.

Over the course of working on this project, I’ve come to realize that much of White Fragility’s claims are rooted in Critical Race Theory (CRT), which itself evolved out of Critical Theory (CT). Both frameworks center on analyzing societal power dynamics, often through the lens of an oppressor/oppressed dichotomy. This perspective profoundly shapes the book’s approach to race and privilege, framing them as inextricable from structures of power and historical inequities. Whether one agrees or disagrees with this foundation, understanding its influence is essential to engaging with DiAngelo’s arguments critically. I will add that in her case, being white seems to be a de facto structure of power.

So, let’s get to it. Whether you’ve already read White Fragility and have an opinion locked and loaded, or you’re like me, just figuring out where you stand, I invite you to join me as we unpack this cultural lightning rod together.

Next: Redefining Racism

The Glob’s patented De-Crapinator™ was activated by the following:

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Kamasutra Harris

Please type in what you would like De-Crapinated. If it will help, please include a link to the article.:
I watched President Biden talk about historic job growth in his term. Something about that seems wrong. Please advise.

https://www.nytimes.com/2025/01/15/us/politics/full-transcript-of-president-bidens-farewell-address.html?smid=url-share

Dear Kamasutra Harris,

The Global Exclaimer’s patented De-Crapinator™ took 0.05 milliseconds to return the result:

The quote you are referring to is:

“At home, we have created nearly 17 million new jobs, more than any other single administration in a single term.” —Biden in his farewell address.

De-crapination:

1. During the country’s Covid lockdown, nearly 22 million jobs were lost. 12.5 million had already returned by the start of Biden’s administration. 9.5 million returned during the first 2 years of Biden’s administration. The remaining 7.5 million “new” jobs necessary to meet Biden’s claim of 17 million new jobs are fabricated. The largest piece of this fabrication is projected future jobs based on infrastructure spending, but this in fact is informed conjecture and by no means guaranteed. Could be higher, could be lower. The rest is creative accounting. In other words, bullshit.

2. Biden inexplicably believes he can in fact fool all of the people all of the time.

What is the De-Crapinator™? Well, you read something, you scratch your head, and you think, “Something’s off here. But I can’t quite put a finger on it.” Enter the De-Crapinator™ Just enter the offending text and send it off. We will pour it into the De-Crapinator™ and your answer will arrive in a post on The Glob!

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If you don’t know who David Foster Wallace is, then I recommend this Rolling Stone article. And his book, now on my “to be read” list, Infinite Jest, considered one of the most important works of the 20th century. Pretty tall praise.

David Foster Wallace gave a commencement address in 2005 titled “This is Water.” It’s fantastic, and has been studied and commented on over the years. If you want to know how the people who heard the commencement feel about it, I invite you to read, “He Was Water” by Kevin Hartnett.

Gabe S.: My reaction immediately after the speech was “Holy crap that was awesome.” But what hit me the hardest about his speech was that it contained zero crap, zero preaching or ideology or politics or really anything at all that could even be taking as a suggestion. He stood there in front of us as one of the most humble people I’ve ever seen in front of an audience, and talked about life. The fact that he prepared this speech for us made me feel incredibly honored.

Three years later Wallace committed suicide by hanging himself on his back porch. His wife found him when she came home. He left behind a two page letter to his wife which remains private to this day.

I learned this when researching him after reading his speech. I was a little bit stunned and a lot a bit saddened.

He joins a pantheon of creative types that have ended their own lives. I had our resident internist* scrounge a list from the Web, and retained only those with which I am familiar:

1. Virginia Woolf (1882–1941)

• Famous Works: Mrs. Dalloway, To the Lighthouse, A Room of One's Own.

• Woolf dealt with lifelong mental health issues, including severe depression and possible bipolar disorder. She ended her life by drowning in the River Ouse.

2. Ernest Hemingway (1899–1961)

• Famous Works: The Old Man and the Sea, A Farewell to Arms, For Whom the Bell Tolls.

• Hemingway experienced severe depression and physical health issues, exacerbated by alcoholism. He died by suicide with a shotgun.

3. David Foster Wallace (1962–2008)

• Famous Works: Infinite Jest, Consider the Lobster.

• Wallace grappled with depression and side effects from antidepressant medications. He hanged himself at his home in California.

4. Hunter S. Thompson (1937–2005)

• Famous Works: Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas, Hell's Angels.

• Thompson, known for his gonzo journalism style, suffered from chronic pain and depression in his later years. He died by a self-inflicted gunshot wound.

5. Richard Brautigan (1935–1984)

• Famous Works: Trout Fishing in America, In Watermelon Sugar.

• Brautigan struggled with depression and alcoholism. He died by suicide, likely from a self-inflicted gunshot wound.

There are others of course, and a similar list of people in the entertainment industry could be compiled. But, I’m not a musician or movie star, so I focused on the writers.

I had our intern do some further research which leads afield from here and will be explored later. I will summarize briefly that they all suffered from depression, they either were medicated professionally or on their own, most were in some sort of physical pain, and while they generally were interested and pursued the “deep questions” they seemed to be on the sidelines when it came to meaningful relationships and communal service to the common good. I am not judging, I am looking for themes. I will dig into this in a future article.

Meanwhile I will comment that I was looking for a common denominator based on one line in his address.

… the constant gnawing sense of having had, and lost, some infinite thing.

I had asked our intern if the above authors had any sort of “religion” in their lives, whether organized religion of the type most think of when they hear the word, or secular in nature as in organizations that foster community and service to the common good.

I put religion in quotes because I want to emphasize that the term at its root means “that which binds together.” In this context, the Sunday ritual of going to a large communal building, wearing your Sunday best, sharing ritualized meals and stories of past glories and hopes for the future, in other words tailgating at your favorite football stadium, is a religious experience.

We are drawn to this type of communion, and I believe it is important for our mental health.

BUT - as noted, I want to focus on one part of his speech that struck me.

“That is real freedom. That is being educated, and understanding how to think. The alternative is unconsciousness, the default setting, the rat race, the constant gnawing sense of having had, and lost, some infinite thing.”

I was caught by this: “the constant gnawing sense of having had, and lost, some infinite thing.” The idea that this sense of loss was opposed to freedom just felt wrong.

For context, this came at the end of a focus on freedom:

But of course there are all different kinds of freedom, and the kind that is most precious you will not hear much talk about much in the great outside world of wanting and achieving…. The really important kind of freedom involves attention and awareness and discipline, and being able truly to care about other people and to sacrifice for them over and over in myriad petty, unsexy ways every day.

That is real freedom. That is being educated, and understanding how to think. The alternative is unconsciousness, the default setting, the rat race, the constant gnawing sense of having had, and lost, some infinite thing.

I could not escape the strong feeling that while the “gnawing sense” may be unconscious in us, it is necessary for us to understand and appreciate real freedom.

JRR Tolkien has some thoughts on this topic of loss. In a letter to Milton Waldman

After all, I believe that legends and myths are largely made of ‘truth’, and indeed present aspects of it that can only be received in this mode; and long ago certain truths and modes of this kind were discovered and must always reappear. There cannot be any ‘story’ without a fall—all stories are ultimately about the fall—at least not for human minds as we know them and have them. (Emphasis mine.)

He also brings this up in his1947 essay, On Fairy-Stories.

"The human mind and imagination, which have their origin in a world of suffering, could not avoid dealing with death and loss. [...] The supreme sub-creator would be an immortal, but the mortal sub-creator creates because he is aware of death and of his own mortality."

Lest you think Tolkien is just idly sitting in some leather chair waxing whimsical about fairy stories, please know that he survived trench warfare during WWI where most of his battle companions were destroyed. He understands loss.

What he is calling the sub-creator is nothing less than the story tellers who create stories and myths to reflect deeper truths about the world. I would go so far as to say essential truths.

This loss, this fall, this “gnawing sense of having had, and lost, some infinite thing,” is a common touchpoint for all of us because it is REAL. It is the cosmic reverberation of the Fall of Man. But rather than being some default setting where we stumble through life unconscious and enslaved, this recognition of a core human truth can be a starting point for reaching out and connecting. A starting point for sanity and real freedom.

Wallace wanted his audience to recognize that this, this, is water. I would add that we recognize that Loss is a shared human experience and in that shared human experience lie the keys to our freedom.

*Research for this article was handled by our intern, CHarles Alexander Tomas Gregorious PTolemy the 4th.

I asked ChatGPT to tell me about The Global Exclaimer. Here is the response:

The Global Exclaimer is a newsletter hosted on Substack, created by Mark Connolly. It is described as a mix of opinion pieces, speculative fiction, and cultural commentary, often presented with a blend of humor and philosophical insights. The publication covers a wide range of topics, from local news in Carrollton (referred to as the "Cradle of Civilization") to global issues and serialized fiction stories.

The tone of the newsletter is eclectic, featuring both serious and satirical takes on current events, philosophical musings, and creative writing. Connolly aims to provide a unique perspective that resonates with readers long after they've engaged with the content. While the newsletter is free to subscribe to, readers can choose to support it financially.

For those interested in exploring its content further or subscribing, you can visit The Global Exclaimer on Substack​​​​.

I’ll take it!

This movie was not well received by devout religious types in the 70’s. Given the state of things in the 1970s, that is hardly surprising. The hippie drug/love/rock milieu was something that was emerging from counter-culture status into the mainstream, and so anything associated with it was viewed with dread and suspicion by the “establishment.” The driving music, the VERY 70s clothing style, the dancing featuring rhythmic pelvic thrusting – it was no surprise that it was viewed as disrespectful at best and downright sacrilegious at worst.

Especially disturbing at that time was the implication that Jesus and Mary Magdalene were doing the horizontal hokey-pokey. Most people simply assumed that was the meaning of such verses as “I don’t know how to love him” – since love and sex had become divorced or at least seen as not necessarily belonging together. With sex being a recreational (no pun intended) activity, it was assumed by many that “of course they were having sex.”

Also “…And I’ve had so many Men before, In very many ways, He’s just one more…” implied that he was simply one more John. It should be noted that the idea that Mary Magdalene was a prostitute is a later addition to the whole understanding of who she was. Suffice to say, there were many Mary’s (Miriam’s more likely) as that was a popular name at that time, and Mary Magdalene seems to have been conflated with another Mary. From the earliest times she was seen as one of the most prominent followers of Christ, and owing to the fact she was the first person to whom Jesus appeared after the Resurrection, she brought the good news to the other apostles, gaining her the title of Apostle to the Apostles.

However, at the time of this movie it was generally thought she was a repentant prostitute, and so we will deal with what we have in front of us. Just keep the above lightly in the back of your mind as we consider the rest of this scene.

If you watch the YouTube I have thoughtfully embedded, I think you may find the intervening years have removed some of the shock value and this particular scene can be revisited to our advantage.

Let’s look at some lyrics.

I don’t know how to love him
What to do, how to move him
I’ve been changed, yes really changed
In these past few days
When I’ve seen myself
I seem like someone else

These are not the words of some worldly-wise hooker trying to figure out what turns on this new customer. Something is different. In the next verse she comments that he’s just a man, and she’s had so many men before and ends with “He’s just one more.” But that clearly is not true – else she would not have this reaction:

Should I bring him down
Should I scream and shout
Should I speak of love
Let my feelings out?
I never thought I’d come to this
What’s it all about?

What’s it all about? Clearly, and Yvonne Elliman beautifully puts the emotions on display, clearly her world has been thoroughly rocked. She does not know what to do. This is not “just one more.” In defense of self, should she destroy him? Or, should she surrender herself and declare her love, maybe destroying herself, losing herself into him? What is it all about? That’s question we would all do well to ask ourselves at some point or another in our lives.

In the next verse she reflects on how she was always so calm and in control in previous relationships –

So calm so cool
No lover’s fool
Running every show

This reflection on how she usually is the one holding the cards, the person with the power, who, after all, has what others want, what others are willing to pay for, ends suddenly in complete honesty –

He scares me so

And that is what it’s all about. Fear of The Lord.

Now, Fear of The Lord is a phrase many people don’t like. It is also a phrase I suspect many people simply don’t understand. “Why should I be afraid of a supposedly kind and loving merciful God?” Why indeed?

Simply, fear is the correct word to describe the emotion one would experience when coming face to face with something wholly other and which completely surpasses you. The reverence and awe you would experience in your very marrow would bring  you to your knees. It is an experience most people don’t really want to have – and yet, we are drawn. The last verse of this song is simply beautiful in its honesty. So, I will not copy the lyrics here, and hope that you will instead watch the embedded video.

This is a magnificent expression of someone trying to understand their encounter with God. It is beautiful.

As a lad (the movie came out in 1973 ) I remember the nuns in my grade school briefly discussing this movie. I believe the word ‘blasphemy’ was thrown around. Naturally, I watched it as soon as I could. Now, as a teenager, it did not make much of an impression on me, except I remember the music.

The song of the same name had become somewhat popular on the radio, and I remember being struck by certain lyrics. I wrote a lot of this from memory - the music was catchy and the lyrics fluid and easy to remember. But I did verify and make some corrections from a transcript of the lyrics:

Jesus Christ, Superstar, who are you what have you sacrificed? - If someone really isn't sure what Jesus was all about, this is a very legitimate question and deserves an answer. I think the nuns didn't like it because the movie does not give any answers.

Every time I look at you
I don't understand
Why you let the things you did
Get so out of hand - This is sung by Judas. Hey, nobody understood Jesus. Not Peter, not James and John, nobody. Certainly they did not fully understand until after the resurrection.

You'd have managed better
If you'd had it planned
Now why'd you choose such a backward time
And such a strange land? - This to me was always a legitimate question. Why then? Of course, whenever it was, that would always be the question. But why then?

I thought about this a lot. I was an odd kid.

One has to recall that time period. This was during Pax Romana, the Roman Peace. Understand that while the Romans went around conquering territory, the aftermath was generally peace. Under the Roman version of Manifest Destiny, they saw their mission as bringing peace to the world. Areas under Roman Rule were not warring with one another.

If you'd come today
You could have reached the whole nation
Israel in 4 BC had no mass communication - I remember as a kid thinking "Yeah, really! What a strange time to come!" But, in view of my above comments, in reality, this was a perfect time. Rome built roads. Roman citizens, such as Paul of Tarsus, had free passage to large parts of the world. In earlier times, or in later times, Christianity probably would not have spread like it did. I'm not saying it couldn't, I'm just saying I think I know why then.

Jesus Christ
Jesus Christ
Who are you? What have you sacrificed?
Jesus Christ
Jesus Christ
Who are you? What have you sacrificed?
Jesus Christ
Superstar
Do you think you're what they say you are?
Jesus Christ
Superstar
Do you think you're what they say you are? - These are legitimate questions. It would have served the nuns well to pose these questions and have discussion about the answers to them, as the answers are known.

But Wait! There's More!

Tell me what you think
About your friends at the top
Now who d'you think besides yourself
Was the pick of the crop?
Buddha was he where it's at?
Is he where you are?
Could Muhammed move a mountain
Or was that just PR?
Did you mean to die like that?
Was that a mistake or
Did you know your messy death
Would be a record breaker? - These are very real questions, especially from the standpoint of someone who knows nothing about Christ. Solid legitimate questions, they go unanswered in the movie.

Other issues revolve around the tragic figure of Judas and the sympathy shown him. Again, as a lad, I was quite curious about Judas. Question arose like, did he choose to betray Christ? Was he fated to? How is that fair? The title song presents him as a guy that just wants to know - trying to grasp something he can’t understand. It is a solid authentic cry for understanding.

Meanwhile, it is worth the time to listen to the song and the fantastic performance by Carl Anderson. The emotion and the genuine need to understand comes through. I hope you can look past the rhythmic wriggling angels(?) - it was the 70’s.

So, take a gander:

There are doctrinal issues with the movie especially concerning the Last Supper. And many were scandalized by the sexual overtones in the portrayal of Mary Magdalene. I will follow this up next post with a discussion of Mary Magdalene and the raw beauty of the song sung by Yvonne Elliman, and attempt to defend the lyrics.

I just like science fiction; I love science fiction books, magazines, TV shows and movies. I am very forgiving of any well produced, credibly acted, science fiction effort.

Not surprisingly, I like The Fifth Element. Whenever I am channel surfing, if it is on, I watch. It is one of those movies that is called a cult classic. As there are any number of Trekkers or Star Wars fans that will drive some dollars to any space movie, it is not surprising it gets a lot of viewings. But, this movie attracts people that are decidedly not Trekkers. Folks that run away from the likes of Aliens or Blade Runner will sit and watch this movie over and over.

My experience is that anyone that sits for the first 5 minutes sits for the whole movie.

Why? Some would point to Milla Jovovich (Leeloo) and her introductory scene which features titillating partial nudity, and much wriggling about.

Others would say Bruce Willis (Korben Dallas) is just watchable. And it is hard to ignore the larger than life portrayal of Ruby Rhod (can you say innuendo?) by Chris Tucker.

But the opening scene in the Egyptian desert really captures the imagination, and the abrupt switch from 1914 Egypt to a confrontation with Evil by a battle cruiser out amongst the Gas Giants of our solar system just hooks you. Strap in, for you are along for the ride.

Along the way the movie presents vistas and vignettes that leave lasting impressions. One scene, which appears ludicrous at start is ultimately mesmerizing. The Diva Plavalaguna is the worst sort of alien in plastic garb I’ve ever seen, complete with superfluous tentacles or sinewy ropes or god knows what protruding from her head. My initial impression was, “this is silly.” Then she starts her show. It is a haunting interlude. The last thing I would have thought I would be writing about that scene when it started was that it was beautiful. It is beautifully mesmerizing.

This is done with light and sound and just good cinematography. I would never have expected to look forward to this part of the movie, but it has a grandeur that grabs your imagination.

So, this movie has all this cool stuff: Alien races, drama, mythos, interesting characters, cool visuals and special effects; and it is basically a comedy. No wonder it is so watchable. But as I said earlier, people that you would not expect to like this movie have watched it numerous times. Why?

The movie succeeds attracting such a wide audience because it is about Life and Love, Good and Evil. You know, the stuff of great movies. But is is presented in this comic book style. One may not think comic books can be subtle, but the messages here are deftly presented in an understated manner. When the movie is over, you are left with a strangely positive feeling.

This is an interestingly life affirming movie. The basic presentation of Evil here is as a blight that destroys life. Life and Love, however, smother Evil. In a scene between the priest Vito Cornelius and Zorg, the amoral self absorbed villain of the movie, Zorg attempts to convince Cornelius that destruction creates life. That Chaos is Good. He breaks a glass and lots of automated widgets spring into action to clean up the mess. Zorg presents this as a Good. He is in reality merely rationalizing his own self serving beliefs, and the priest knows this is a lie.

Zorg then chokes on a cherry and the priest demonstrates that Good is to be found in life giving service to your fellow man. Destruction does not create life. Life overcomes Destruction.

The relationship between Leeloo and Korben illuminates this message. Leeloo is the Fifth Element, the force that stops Evil. In conjunction with Earth, Air, Fire and Water, she becomes the ultimate weapon. Yet at the final moment, when it is time to fire the weapon, the firing pin is missing. The spark is gone from the flint. The weapon will not fire.

Earth, Air, Fire and Water are not alive. From ancient times these four things were thought to be elemental, foundational. From these things, all the Universe is made. But, what good is a Universe full of nothing but Earth, Air, Fire and Water? Lifeless matter must of needs be animated by something. By something more than just elements or chaos. There is a spiritual component. There is a Fifth Element.

Leeloo is alive. A living spiritual existence. A Being. Leeloo needs help from others. To become a life giving force that prevents Death, Leeloo needs Love. Very basically, very essentially, when she is loved by Korben, Life issues forth.

The Fifth Element is Love.

CARROLLTON, Texas - Cradle of Civilization, (Feb 26, 2024) - If you are curious about Stoic Philosophy and want to see what it might look like in practice, I recommend you start with the movie, “Pollyanna.”

Pollyanna? “How so?” you may ask. After all it’s a Disney movie based on a book about some child that, well, is a “Pollyanna.”

Now, it’s generally not a compliment to call someone a Pollyanna. Witness this definition ripped from the internets:

Pol·ly·an·na

[ˌpälēˈanə]

NOUN

1. an excessively cheerful or optimistic person:

   "what I am saying makes me sound like some aging Pollyanna who just wants to pretend that all is sweetness and light"

But, is Pollyanna a “Pollyanna”?

At the beginning of the movie there are people that think that. Spoiler alert - plot points are revealed from here on out.

At the start of the movie, Pollyanna, who has been orphaned, is going to live with her aunt Polly. Polly and her sister have been estranged ever since Pollyanna’s mother chose to marry a poor minister instead of a rich man the family had endeavored to pair her with. (Pollyanna had been named after two of her aunts, Polly, and Anna.)

Aunt Polly takes in Pollyanna from both a sense of duty, and a sense of making sure the townspeople see her as a righteous and upstanding example of virtue. You know, what with the sacrifice of taking in her sister’s kid and all.

Aunt Polly’s maid, Nancy goes to pick up Pollyanna from the train station. Pollyanna is jubilant to meet Nancy, which surprises her greatly until she realizes that Pollyanna believes her to be her aunt Polly. When Pollyanna learns of her misunderstanding, she is at first disappointed, and you can see her thinking through the disappointment and finally saying, (paraphrased) “I’m glad of that. Now I still can look forward to seeing Aunt Polly, and I have met you as well!”

Maid Nancy doesn’t know what to think of this, and finds it a bit strange. This type of thing keeps happening, and we finally learn, after one too many exclamations of “I’m glad of that,” of how her father taught Pollyanna “the glad game.”

Her father being a missionary was in South Africa with his family, and dependent on charitable donations. They request something for Pollyanna, I believe a doll, and when they get the barrel, for apparently things were shipped in barrels, they find crutches and not a doll. Pollyanna is disappointed, but her father suggests they play the glad game and find a reason to be glad. They finally agree that they are glad they don’t need the crutches.

Banal? Maybe. The thing is throughout the movie Pollyanna doesn’t just immediately decide she’s glad about everything. She deliberately considers her situation and thinks through the possible responses, and chooses to find something to be glad about rather than sad. It is, as I said, a deliberate choice following a true effort to assess the events or circumstances.

And therein lies the connection to Stoic philosophy.

Some things are in our control and others not. Things in our control are opinion, pursuit, desire, aversion, and, in a word, whatever are our own actions. Things not in our control are body, property, reputation, command, and, in one word, whatever are not our own actions. - Epictetus

Pollyanna’s father understood this, and taught the glad game to Pollyanna as a tool to exercise her will over the things she could control.

Throughout the movie, we see Pollyanna get angry, and make decisions that appear decidedly un-pollyannaish. For example, she befriends an old woman, Mrs. Snow, who is obsessed with her impending death. She spends her life lying in bed and planning her funeral.

This is an example of a misapplication of the Stoic principle of memento mori. Memento mori is Latin and is usually translated as “Remember you must die.” Here is the term defined with some application to boot:

“You could leave life right now. Let that determine what you do and say and think.” - Marcus Aurelius

The Pollyanna application, “My father used to say, ‘a person should think about living.’” She then explains the glad game, and the undertaker, sensing a potential delay in making a sale, tries to chase off Pollyanna. She gets angry and shouts, “I just thought she could play the game. You could be glad you don’t need this horrid old coffin. You could help others, by making a patchwork quilt for the orphans, if you wanted. You ought to forget about dying, and be glad you’re living.”

Now, you may be thinking, “But she said don’t think about death.” That’s just the thing. “Remember you must die,” is meaningless if there is not a reason for remembering it. “Remember you must die” is not intended to be merely a morbid focus on death to the exclusion of anything else. No, quite the opposite.

If you are going to remember something, let it be for a reason! Remember you must die, therefore go out and live! And how shall we live?

I am reminded of the Iron Coin of the Faceless Man that Jaqen H'ghar gave Arya Stark.

“All men must die, all men must serve.” Pollyanna says something similar to Mrs. Snow. “You could help others, by making a patchwork quilt for the orphans, if you wanted. You ought to forget about dying, and be glad you’re living.”

Couple of things:

1. Pollyanna knows that Mrs. Snow is not dying. She’s just obsessed with it for some reason.

2. Pollyanna makes another Stoic decision. After her outburst, she says, “Oh, I don’t care what you do.” But then, she stops and thinks for a bit, and arrives at a conclusion. “I’m not gonna come and see you anymore.”

Is this a childish and empty retort, the response of someone with hurt feelings striking back? Maybe. But, I don’t think so. There is no meanness in her when she says she won’t be back. It’s a decision and a statement.

There is in Stoic thought the idea that we should change what we can, and endure what we cannot. You may be reminded of the Serenity Prayer which asks God to grant the serenity to accept the things you cannot change, and the courage to change the things you can. What can we change? In Stoic thought, only ourselves; to put a fine point on it, only our reactions to the things that happen.

Pollyanna, frustrated with Mrs. Snow, decides to leave the situation. She cannot make Mrs. Snow choose life and living and service. And so she makes the difficult yet wise decision to distance herself from a toxic influence. The acting by Haley Mills is pretty good here. She was angry, she stops, considers, and decides to let go of a bad relationship. Harsh? Maybe.

But Mrs. Snow, saddened by Pollyanna’s departure, takes up the patchwork that Pollyanna had brought, and decides to make a quilt. She decides to change herself. Influenced by Pollyanna for sure, but not made to do so by Pollyanna.

Near the end of the movie, Pollyanna endures a tragedy, and loses herself. Someone suggests the Glad Game, and she says she is sick of the game. This is a realistic response. And yet, she eventually recognizes that things are what they are, and finds herself again.

Some critics of the movie refer to Pollyanna and the Glad Game as Toxic Positivity.

But I say again, that Pollyanna is not a “Pollyanna.” She does not engage in toxic positivity, she is displaying a proper stoic response to the realities and vagaries of life.

And I think we could all benefit from the Glad Game in our own lives.

My Rating: Recommended.

"I call it the law of the instrument, and it may be formulated as follows: Give a small boy a hammer, and he will find that everything he encounters needs pounding." - Abraham Kaplan

(CARROLLTON, TX - Cradle of Civilization) The above is one version of a quote that reportedly originated in a speech given by Professor of Philosophy at UCLA, Abraham Kaplan. The occasion was a banquet speech given at a conference of the American Educational Research Association. It was reported in the Journal of Medical Education in June of 1962; I provide a quote from that report below:

The highlight of the 3-day meeting, however, was to be found in Kaplan’s comment on the choice of methods for research. He urged that scientists exercise good judgment in the selection of appropriate methods for their research. Because certain methods happen to be handy, or a given individual has been trained to use a specific method, is no assurance that the method is appropriate for all problems. He cited Kaplan’s Law of the Instrument: “Give a boy a hammer and everything he meets has to be pounded.”

I start with this because it is evident from The God Delusion that Richard Dawkins has a school girl crush on Natural Selection. Natural Selection is the be-all and end-all for Dawkins, and he imbues it with powers and abilities that transcend biology and enter into, well, everything. He sees the hand of Natural Selection, or some non-biological analog of it, literally everywhere.

The second thing I want to point out is that his love affair with Natural Selection leads him into confirmation bias, resulting in a particular misquote that bears some serious scrutiny as it speaks to his willingness to rely on an outrageous and false-to-facts quote as support for his position. The particular quote I will scrutinize is an egregious example of "quote mining".

We see quote mining all the time in advertisements for movies, where words are taken out of context from a review of a movie, and used as if it was high praise. Here is an example.

Live Free or Die Hard. Blurb: "Hysterically...entertaining."
—Jack Mathews, New York Daily News

Actual written line: "The action in this fast-paced, hysterically overproduced and surprisingly entertaining film is as realistic as a Road Runner cartoon."

Note the ellipses in the above, between "hysterically" and "entertaining." At least they had the integrity to let on that the quote was edited. But the words “overproduced and surprisingly” change the overarching sentiment of the quote.

However, in Chapter 4 of The God Delusion, in a section titled The Worship of Gaps Dawkins introduces, in his words, an imaginary "intelligent design theorist" into whose mouth he puts all manner of nonsense, such as "if you don't understand how something works, never mind: just give up and say God did it." (p 159.)

This is followed by the below quote, with no ellipses:

St Augustine said it quite openly: ‘There is another form of temptation, even more fraught with danger. This is the disease of curiosity. It is this which drives us to try and discover the secrets of nature, those secrets which are beyond our understanding, which can avail us nothing and which man should not wish to learn.’ (quoted in Freeman 2002) from (p 159.)

It's pretty powerful statement, right? He describes an imaginary person saying something idiotic, then backs it up with a Doctor of the Church.

Now, I've actually read some St. Augustine, and studied his thought a bit. And that quote simply smelled bad. So, I did some checking. In approximately 3 seconds, I found this post, from an article on a website titled “Proslogian”. Sadly, the writer refers to a post which sadly no longer exists. Nevertheless, following the link and reading what the author wrote is worth your time.

What Augustine actually wrote is in The Confessions, Book X, Chapter 35.

Allow me to summarize. Between inaccurately quoted "fraught with danger" and the also inaccurately quoted "this is the disease of curiosity" there are between 347 and 447 words missing depending on the translation. The translation I am looking at has 375 missing words.

375 words.

Quote mining is sometimes called "contextomy", meaning, like with an appendectomy, where an appendix has been cut out, that in quote mining, the context has been cut out. Suffice to say, excising approximately 375 words effectively removes the context. As one of the links I provided above notes at the end of his post, the dishonesty in this misquote is Freeman's, the intellectual laziness and shoddy scholarship is Dawkins. But, as a reminder, Dawkins has canonized shoddy scholarship. Remember, he needn't read or understand the arguments in opposition to his, since, "nanny nanny boo bobby." Ok, that's my translation of him saying he needn't read tracts on Leprechauns to refute the existence of same, or Pastafariansim to refute the Spaghetti God Monster, therefore, he needn't actually be conversant with, say, Augustine, to refute what he has to say.

As to what Augustine is saying, he is saying that idle curiosity is bad for the same reason that a steady diet of Cheetos is bad. He is not saying that studying nature is bad anymore than eating healthy food is bad. But don't take my word for it. Read The Confessions of St. Augustine. It is a free Kindle download from Amazon. It is also in the public domain and can found in the Internet Archive.

Meanwhile, back at the ranch... this misquote of St. Augustine says nothing about the probability of God’s existence. Why he included it in this chapter is unclear.

Suffice to say, this bit of fact checking has me looking at everything that Dawkins says about anything with a raised eyebrow. Can we  trust his scholarship? Can we trust his conclusions? More to the point, is he addressing actual arguments, or are they all the type of argument with which he introduced his Augustine misquote? That is to say, how many times will we see him present for our consideration an imagined apologist for God, have that person say things that no one says, and then tie it in with a misrepresentation of the position of someone that does exist?

I have no idea. But, let's briefly look at why there is almost certainly no God.

This entire chapter is a pitting of Intelligent Design (ID) against Natural Selection. Now, a problem here, for me, is simply this. I am not an ID guy. I don't find the argument compelling, I almost see it as special pleading. And, Dawkins, being a materialist, isn't going to see anywhere an argument regarding the supernatural that is immaterial, and he is clearly (blissfully?) unaware (based on his laughable treatment of Aquinas) of the concept of simplicity as it would apply to an immaterial All. Instead, he sees any hope of a defensible argument of God being one that deals with a highly complex being.

Clearly we have terminology issues. But this is why, on page 151, Dawkins concludes that the idea of Irreducible Complexity, while it would wreck Natural Selection, would also necessarily wreck God, since God is necessarily irreducibly complex. Here, look at this paragraph:

In any case, even though genuinely irreducible complexity would wreck Darwin's theory, if it were ever found, who is to say that it wouldn't wreck the intelligent design theory as well? Indeed, it already has wrecked the intelligent design theory, for, as I keep saying and will say again, however little we know about God, the one thing we can be sure of is that he would have to be very very complex and presumably irreducibly so!

As a quick aside, note that Natural Selection is the god that Dawkins prefers.

Because Dawkins is a materialist he simply can't or won't see this idea: God, being immaterial is necessarily simple. For God to be complex, even irreducibly complex, would require that God be material. It would also require that God be made by an Intelligent Designer, or perhaps, Natural Selection. Complexity requires matter, discrete matter, parts, if you will, working together in some way. To be immaterial is to be simple. No parts. This is not part of Dawkins's God Hypothesis, and so it doesn't factor in to any of his arguments. And it gives rise to the snarky, "Oh yeah, so who made God? In your face Bozo!" retorts that are thought to be so, umm, smart?

Here is another misunderstanding (or misrepresentation, it is hard to know which) regarding the concept of mystery. "Mystics exult in mystery and want it to stay mysterious" (p 152) meaning the earlier noted idea that if we don't understand it, just say God did it. Like that was ever an actual argument for the existence of God.

Now, there may be some folks that hold that position. But, it isn't an authentic position. Mystery is the subject of knowledge. Mystery refers to a reality so large, and so intelligible (yes, intelligible), that we will never exhaust it, though there is no theoretical end to how much we can understand. Let that sink in a bit.

So, lets look at the sections in this chapter, keeping all of the above in mind.

In the section titled Irreducible Complexity, he gives us the parable of Mount Improbable. This is an argument about probabilities, the linchpin of the whole chapter, hence the title of the chapter. Another way of saying "Why there almost certainly is no God" is "Why there is probably no God." So, he's taking a scientific approach. Based on probability. Like his approach, based on probability, where he concluded that "very probably" advanced alien civilizations exist (p. 98.)

So, Mount Improbable is this mountain with a sheer cliff face on one side, that is all but insurmountable. The ID folks say, "You just can't get from the floor of the valley up that sheer wall in one leap. Therefore Intelligent Design." (Insert caveat regarding taking anything Dawkins represents as an argument from his opposition being at least questionable in its accuracy, viz. Augustine misquote above.) Anyway, natural selection doesn't climb the sheer face. See, on the other side of the mountain, which ID proponents are too stupid to see, is a gently sloping path along which Dawkins invites us to wend our leisurely way up the mountain to the summit, be it an eye, or wing, or some other supposedly irreducibly complex thing. We have replaced a virtual impossibility with a series of only mildly improbable changes brought on by natural selection. No intelligent design necessary. Dawkins seems to think these probabilities are simply cumulative and lead to certainty.

Now, I am no mathematician, but I don’t think this line of reasoning helps his position at all. Because you don’t just add probabilities together. Surely he understands that, right?1 Bear in mind the variables involved in creating an eye are far greater than pulling a specific combination of cards from a deck of 52.

The section on irreducible complexity ends with the quote from p. 151 reproduced above. This then led into The Worship Of Gaps, which includes the astonishing misquote of Augustine.

He gives an interesting example of a Penn and Teller magic trick where they apparently shoot each other, and each catches the bullet in their teeth. He says that, rather than think, "A miracle!" we should think, "Wow, they are world class illusionists, and I just can't figure it out." This he says should be the proper way we respond to apparent irreducible complexity. I don't think he intended it this way, but he kind of said we should shout "Wonder workers!" instead of "Miracle workers!" I would hope what he really meant was "We should admire their skill and ask ourselves, 'How did they do it?'"

He then spends most of the rest of this section on irreducible complexity and intelligent design and why natural selection solves every problem he can think to throw at it. There is also a lot of talk about consciousness raising. We should embrace natural selection because it will open our minds to heretofore unimaginable vistas of rationality.

How this demonstrates why there is almost certainly no God is unclear to me. So far he has mounted an argument against ID, supposing it to be the strongest argument for the existence of God, or at least that is my assumption. So, if you take out the strongest argument, well, you've taken out the strongest argument. You have failed to demonstrate why probability precludes God.

So, then we go to the section titled Anthropic Principle: Planetary Version. Here he gets at a more interesting question. Set aside all the development of life, how did life begin? Fasten your seat-belts.

He starts here:

The root of evolution in non-biological chemistry somehow seems to present a bigger gap than any particular transition during subsequent evolution. And in one sense it is a bigger gap. That one sense is quite specific, and it offers no comfort to the religious apologist. The origin of life only had to happen once. We therefore can allow it to have been an extremely improbable event, many orders of magnitude more improbable than most people realize, as I shall show. (p 162).

Dawkins then goes into the anthropic principle. I will paraphrase briefly. It seems that things are incredibly fine-tuned, even at the atomic level, such that even a slight variance would preclude the laws of nature as we know them today, and conceivably, life, or even existence, itself. In other words, things have to be just like they are in order for us to exist. Well, that just kind of seems self-evident to me. Yes it is true that things have to be just like they are for us to exist. But my own almost gut response to the question, "What would happen if something were different?" is:

1. If things were different but we still existed, then we would be correspondingly different. Maybe silicon based instead of carbon based, for example. But would I still be me? How can I know? Things are as they are and we cannot test differences in say, how the fundamental forces work at the atomic level. Does the question have any meaning?

2. Or, we wouldn't exist at all, and so we wouldn't be asking about it.

I have always been basically uninterested in the argument. Now, Dawkins believes that the anthropic principle works against ID, since he sees it as an alternative theory. I guess that depends. I can see an ID supporter saying, "It had to be designed this way" and maybe throwing in irreducible complexity to boot as support. Nevertheless, Dawkins has simply decided that ID folks can't use the anthropic principle, I guess because it is too scientific and they're just not allowed. Because, you see, the anthropic approach "is very different, and it has a faintly Darwinian feel" (p 163.) Faintly Darwinian feel. Not surprising. When all you have is a hammer, everything looks like it needs pounding.

He then intends to show why they are mutually exclusive. He provides two views, using the so-called Goldilocks Zone (This orbit is too far out, this orbit is too close in, but this orbit is just right) as an example. ID says that God made the universe and put the earth in the Goldilocks Zone so that life could be supported. The anthropic principle says, no, no design involved, that's just how it worked out, because, statistics.

He then actually says, on page 165, "Scientists invoke the magic of large numbers." He picks one in a billion as the chance that life arises on a given planet in the Goldilocks Zone, and states that there are a billion billion planets in the Goldilocks Zone. He concludes that "If the odds of life originating spontaneously on a planet were a billion to one against, nevertheless that stupefyingly improbable event would still happen on a billion planets."

He then states that his statistical argument "completely demolishes" any suggestion that we should postulate design to fill the gap (p 166.)

Alrighty then. He has proposed an arbitrary equation of billion to one that life starts on a given planet. He then proceeds as if that ratio is a demonstrated fact, and then pronounces, “See, life had to happen.” It’s an opinion based on a billion being sufficiently big. Is it? I don’t know, and neither does he.

As I have already noted, I am not an ID guy, but, Dawkins's statistical argument is a farce because he just can't look at someone and say, "you can't use this as part of your design argument." Of course they can use the anthropic principle as part of an ID argument. He has not demonstrated that the anthropic principle is simply off limits for ID theorists. What a stupid conclusion.

Here is the richest part of his scientific and statistical tour de force regarding the anthropic principle:

The origin of life, by contrast, lies outside the reach of that crane (he refers to Darwinian Evolution as a "crane" that lifts our consciences - The Glob), because natural selection cannot proceed without it.

Here I agree, natural selection presumes life, it does not explain why there is any life. But, wait, there's more:

Here the anthropic principle comes into its own. We can deal with the unique origin of life by postulating a very large number of planetary opportunities. Once that initial stroke of luck has been granted - and the anthropic principle most decisively grants it to us - natural selection takes over: and natural selection is emphatically not a matter of luck (p 168.)

The anthropic principle decisively grants us luck. Decisively.

A moment of reverential awe may be inserted here. May I suggest we all listen to the opening bars of Also sprach Zarathustra?

Another stupid conclusion near the end of this section: "...design certainly does not work as an explanation for life, because design is ultimately not cumulative and it therefore raises bigger questions that it answers..." (Please note this supports my thought that he thinks probabilities are cumulative in the case of Natural Selection.) But what a slap in the face of anyone that does design work.

So, all you designers out there, as you work on things, and build models, and then adjust your design to account for heretofore unknown variables revealed by your models, just remember, all those design changes you made to make your project perform as you have envisioned, well, they’re not cumulative.

So, it goes on an on. His chapter on The Anthropic Principle: Cosmological Version is especially rich. He says things like

A God capable  of calculating the Goldilocks values for the six numbers (Martin Rees, in a book titled "Just Six Numbers", has come up with six fundamental constants required for life as we know it - The Glob) would have to be at least as improbable as the finely tuned combination of numbers itself, and that's very improbable indeed. This is exactly the premise of the whole discussion at hand.

This appears to be Dawkins's explanation as to why there almost certainly is not God. Because God is at least as improbable as the fine tuning necessary to have life in the first place.

What?

Dawkins explanation of why the universe is the way it is, is much more scientific. It involves the multi-verse. Seriously, see page 173. The multi-verse. In the multi-verse, those universes with the six numbers dialed to life will... will... will mean that we are in one of them. The Effing Multi-verse.

The multi-verse demonstrates that God probably does not exist.

Lastly, on page 177, Dawkins addresses the idea of a simple God. He says that someone named Swinburne asserts, "without justification" that God is a single substance. Dawkins simply asserts on page 178 that a God capable of controlling the individual status of every particle in the universe cannot be simple.

Therefore, almost certainly, no God.

That's his argument. God is too complicated to have been evolved, therefore, he probably does not exist. That's the summation. It is based on his God Hypothesis, which I noted does not include the attribute of being immaterial, and then works from there. The rest of the book is about why, since God probably does not exist, we should dispense with religion.

Dawkins’s whole chapter on the probability of God amounts to mere opinion. He prefers luck.

If you find his arguments compelling, let me know.

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In the end we decided to continue on, if for no reason than to be able to respond in the affirmative if ever asked, "Have you even read it?" But we were left wondering, "Why is this so bad? Why do people think it 'fine literature'?"

As I was writing this and rereading what I was writing, and continuing to wonder why we found it so bad, and why others found it so good, I think I finally figured it out. Dawkins is a materialist. This is generally opposed to being an idealist. The linked article discusses both materialism and idealism and I offer this short excerpt for those not familiar and who may be curious:

Despite the large number of philosophical schools and subtle nuances between many,^[1][2][3]all philosophies are said to fall into two primary categories, which are defined in contrast to each other: Idealism, and materialism.^[a] The basic proposition of these two categories pertains to the nature of reality, and the primary distinction between them is the way they answer two fundamental questions: "what does reality consist of and how does it originate?" To idealists, spirit or mind is primary, and created matter secondary. To materialists, matter is primary and mind or spirit is secondary, a product of matter acting upon matter.^[3]

What MOB and Dawkins have then is a fundamental difference in world view.

                       I asked AI for a representation of Materialism vs Idealism; 
                                         I'm not exactly sure what to make of this.

There is a third view - realism.

I and my fellow MOB Glob members are moderate realists, a third option not mentioned in the above quote, but briefly discussed in the linked article. These are all philosophical positions, not theological positions. The God Delusion is therefore not actually attacking a theology, it is espousing a philosophy, but Dawkins seems unaware of this difference, at least as presented in the first four chapters.

What this further means is that we would need a whole series of posts tracing the philosophical roots of these different world views, and attempting to show where we believe Dawkins is wrong and why we think materialism is untenable. (Since he hasn't really addressed idealism neither will I.) I have to wonder how many following along here would be interested in pursuing such a discussion. But the intent in this examination of The God Delusion isn't to promote one world view over another, it is to evaluate the arguments that Dawkins has for asserting that there is no God.

However, the fact that we have different world views means that most of what will follow regarding The God Delusion will derive from the fact that in our opinion his God Hypothesis just isn't a hypothesis shared by any Christians, or quite possibly any other major religion. His God Hypothesis is missing something fundamental:

...there exists a superhuman, supernatural intelligence who deliberately designed and created the universe and everything in it, including us.

What is missing? The word 'immaterial'.

Because Dawkins is a materialist, he will fundamentally (and necessarily) miss the argument being made by theologians coming from a world view that admits of both the material and the immaterial--he simply won't see the actual argument or will misunderstand it because the premise is either alien to him, or has been rejected by him a priori. Sadly, this means his presentation of many of the theological arguments are in fact misrepresentations.

He has missed possibly the most fundamental aspect of God as understood by most who believe in such a being - the being is immaterial. Consequently, the idea, for example, of God being simple rather than complex makes no sense to Dawkins, as, being a materialist, higher order functioning only comes with complexity.

So, with that caveat, let's run through his treatment of the arguments. He starts with Aquinas and his "five proofs". He lumps the first three together and dispenses with them by saying that it is an unwarranted assumption that God is immune to the regress, and besides "Even if we allow the dubious luxury of arbitrarily conjuring up a terminator to an infinite regress and giving it a name... there is absolutely no reason to endow that terminator with any of the properties normally ascribed to God..." (p 101). This is a very nearly inarticulate presentation of Aquinas's first three ways.

I will just briefly comment on his dismissal of the First Way. Those who have been following along in this series of posts won't be shocked to learn that Dawkins simply misrepresents the argument from the first sentence:

1. The Unmoved Mover. Nothing moves without a prior mover. (p 100)

What Aquinas actually said:

The first and more manifest way is the argument from motion. It is certain, and evident to our senses, that in the world some things are in motion. Now whatever is in motion is put in motion by another, for nothing can be in motion except it is in potentiality to that towards which it is in motion; whereas a thing moves inasmuch as it is in act.

Yes, that is a mouthful, and does require some unpacking. I am going to be overly brief. The first thing to note is that by "move" is meant "change". The second thing to note is that this change is from potency to act. The third thing to note, from Aquinas's conclusion, is that this is more about causality than it is about infinite regress:

But this cannot go on to infinity, because then there would be no first mover, and, consequently, no other mover; seeing that subsequent movers move only inasmuch as they are put in motion by the first mover; as the staff moves only because it is put in motion by the hand.

Dawkins mis-focuses on the infinite regress, rather than the actual argument concerning essentially ordered causation. I think he misunderstands. I think he believes that this argument concerns temporally ordered causation. But, it does not. Briefly, and incompletely, think about the difference like this:

• For temporally ordered causation picture a line of dominoes. The first domino (call it the prime mover) falls and hits the next, and so on. After the first domino falls, it (the prime mover) can be removed from the scene, and the line of dominoes will continue to fall. The prime mover started a chain of events, but now is unnecessary to the continuation of the chain of events. And, if you think for a bit, you will see that no issue arises regarding infinite regress.

• For essentially ordered causation, think hand moving a staff which is moving a brick. Take the hand away, and the brick stops moving, even if the staff and brick are still there. In this case, the hand is the prime mover. Take away the prime mover and the motion ends. The prime mover is essential to the movement (or change) and once it is gone, so is the change. In this case, prime does not refer to first in a temporal ordering. Prime mover in this case speaks to something that is essentially bound up, right here, right now, with a given change (or movement) from potential to actual.

• This is where the infinite regress comes in that Dawkins seems to think is the point of the argument. In this case of essentially ordered causation, you could extend the chain for a mile, adding bricks, sticks, cars, etc. You could have a chain of 10 miles, or of 1,000 light years. But, there has to be a first or prime mover or none of the chain moves. The hand, unlike the prime domino, has to stay in contact and keep pushing. Take away the hand, and everything stops.

• I think Dawkins also misunderstands infinity. If there was an infinite amount of time between “the beginning” and now - well, we wouldn’t have gotten to now yet, would we, because an infinite amount of time has not passed.

• All this would have been covered in the early chapters of Pastafarianism For Dummies.

Pardon that cheap shot, but the Five Ways given by Aquinas are summaries of longer arguments and presume a knowledge of metaphysics that his students would have been taught prior to engaging in theology. They would have understood the concepts of act and potency and what is involved in moving something from potential to act.

In Dawkins' caricature of The Unmoved Mover he appears innocent of any understanding regarding act and potency as understood by Aquinas (or his students). So, for him to say that the first three ways all have to do with a regress from which the only way to escape is to invoke God is simply not accurate. In essentially ordered change, the existence of pure act, that is, something that is in no way potential, is required. If something is in no way potential, but is actuality itself, then it cannot be put into motion by some other outside principle. Hence the term, unmoved mover.

Simply, Dawkins does not understand the argument, and his dismissal of it is silly. And I do mean silly. It is on the order of someone saying, “I watched the movie Airplane so I could land a jetliner if I had to.”

Speaking of silly, he then asserts that logicians have noticed that omniscience and omnipotence are mutually incompatible. I have to assume his presentation of what "logicians" say is as off the mark as his presentation of what Aquinas says, otherwise, he should find some new logicians. But here is what "they" say from page 101:

If God is omniscient, he must already know how he is going to intervene to change the course of history using his omnipotence. But that means he can't change his mind about his intervention, which means he is not omnipotent.

He calls this a witty little paradox.

The problem is it is not a paradox as the word is commonly used, i.e., a literary paradox, such as “Youth is wasted on the young.” It is not even a logical paradox along the lines of “This statement is a lie.”

Paradoxes have genuine use. They can point to something that is difficult to state outright. They can show where an argument needs to be refined or more rigorously defined. Many apparent paradoxes resolve with a change of perspective, or a broader framework. The value of an apparent paradox in general is that it can make clear where definitions thought to be rigorous are not.

But this “witty little paradox” is simply a content-less statement masquerading as having meaning. It’s not a paradox by either sense of the word.

If the above is actually what “logicians” say, then Dawkins is overly impressed by his logicians. Under what possible scenario would an all-knowing, all-powerful being ever want or need to change his mind?

The answer is “no possible scenario.”

If a being is all-knowing, by definition, he knows all. To change his mind, among other things, would indicate that this faux omniscient being became aware of something of which he was previously unaware. Since that cannot happen with an actual all-knowing being, the all-powerful part is irrelevant. For a being to change his mind does not require it be all-powerful. Rather, it requires the being to not be all-knowing.

An all-knowing being would never need to change his mind. Saying he can’t change his mind because he never would have a need to, isn’t even correct. It isn’t that he can’t– it’s not about “can” or “can’t”–it is that he will never want to change his mind. More to the point, he will never change his mind.

If you are all-knowing and all-powerful then you have already set everything up as it should be and a complete lack of any need to alter anything you have set up is a demonstration of power, not weakness.

But Dawkins thinks this “paradox” is clever.

What it has to do with Aquinas's proofs is not stated. I see it as the equivalent of Dawkins taking another admiring selfie in the bathroom mirror. He's just so pleased with himself that he has to have digressions that serve only to further his intellectual preening.

I shake my head in wonderment.

After taking about three pages to dismiss Aquinas, he takes roughly six pages to muddle around Anselm's Ontological Proof. Now, since I personally do not understand Anselm's argument, I have nothing I can say for or against Dawkins' presentation or refutation of it.

Next we have the Argument from Beauty. Dawkins basically says, things are beautiful and they don't need God to be so. Since he doesn't have much else to say on the matter, he then takes a few stabs at the Catholic Church and how it brutalized artists in the middle ages and forced art out of them. Which has nothing to do with the argument from beauty. What Dawkins does here is basically say that "the argument from beauty says beauty indicates there is a God. I say it doesn't. I win."

Next we have the Argument from Personal Experience. Dawkins response to this argument is that you probably hallucinated or at least you are just seeing what you want to see, and anyway, don't expect your belief to be compelling evidence. Now, I've never in my studies run across the Proof from Personal Experience, so all I can say to this particular section is "so what?" as I don't really recognize it as a general argument for the existence of God anyway.

Next we have the Argument from Admired Religious Scientists. Basically in this section he asserts that there aren't that many believing scientists, and that they are all suspect anyway. For example, Mendel, an Augustinian Monk, was from the 19th century and knew that being a monk was the easiest route to time for studies. Being a monk was "the equivalent of a research grant" (p 125).

I've never run across the "argument from admired religious scientists." I do have to ask, quite seriously, “Where the hell did you come up with that?” He presents it as if serious theologians base their arguments on "Newton was religious." So, if God is good enough for Newton, He should be good enough for you and me. No one makes such a silly argument, so I think the whole purpose of this section was just to point out that religious people are stupid and that real scientists today are atheists, and if we could bring all the supposedly religious scientists forward into our enlightened age, they would come out of the closet and be atheists also. Yawn.

Then we have Pascal's Wager. Pascal's Wager is not an argument for the existence of God. It is an argument regarding belief in God. Not the same thing. I have to wonder aloud, does Dawkins actually think Pascal’s wager is a “proof” of God’s existence? Because Pascal did not think it was a proof. So why would Dawkins? Not worth discussing further.

I've never heard of the Bayesian argument, but have no reason to think that Dawkins's treatment of it is any more accurate than his treatment of Aquinas. I really think he just added it in because it involves probability, and probability is the basis of Chapter 4, "Why There Almost Certainly Is No God."

So, we'll talk about that chapter, and Dawkins' school girl crush on Natural Selection, in the next post.

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