Nobody Said That!

I should have included this in my recent list of ways Linux is like theology. You can't criticize Linux because somebody somewhere made their own version of Linux yesterday morning before breakfast which is intended to not have that problem; and they think you're criticizing them. But when I mean Linux, I mean the mainstream. I mean the thousands and thousands of open-source OS devotees and all the things that they really do have in common. Yes, there's variety, but they really do have certain things overwhelmingly in common. So do people of faith, from the Ayatollah to a little old lady down the street. More about that in a moment.

There are a lot of people telling me Linux is ready for everyone to use as a desktop system. But when I describe the experience I end up having which is not ready for the non-expert, and complain that the situation has been misrepresented, some other open-source OS advocates will stand up and say "hey, where are you getting that? Nobody's saying that. I never said that. I never heard any Linux supporter tell you that. Nobody said it was ready for you."

Well here's a link to another one.

The title "Five Reasons Not To Use Linux" is satirical. Mr. Vaughn-Nichols successfully debunks reasons three through five, but the first two are perfectly valid reasons not to use Linux. Yes, the install process is relatively painless with some of the better flavors of Linux, but unless you really know what you're doing you have no idea if your BIOS, hard drive or internet access hardware will set up successfully. Mr. Vaughn-Nichols' rebuttals are hysterical: "with modern Linuxes like Xandros Desktop or SimplyMEPIS, you need to put in a CD or DVD, press the enter button, give your computer a name, and enter a password for the administrator account. Gosh, that's hard." In your dreams, VN. I've used those distros.

He would have us believe the rate at which you use the command line in Windows is commensurate with the likelihood of using it in Linux. This, too, is hysterical. I have never once used the command line in Windows. Two minutes after the install of Linux any non-expert will be asking an expert how to do something and the only way the expert will know how to do it is with the command line.

Don't get me wrong, I support Linux and I can't wait for the day I can recommend it to anyone. What's even better is, I see leaps and bounds of progress in the last few years leading me to believe this day is coming right around the corner. But some folks are so used to doing things the hard way -- the 9 to 5 working on computers way -- the IT professional way -- that I guess they've forgotten what it's like to not be a power user. So it's impossible from that point of view for Linux to not meet a user's needs; because the problem is perceived as being with the user. What they do is not easy or normal and they need to keep that in perspective.

Similarly, a secularist can't criticize faith without immediately being pounced on by religious progressives who made up a new-and-improved religion yesterday before breakfast and now consider it normal. "Hold on," they say, "who said god was authoritarian, or faith and reason aren't compatible? What? When? Huh? What? Nobody said that." Um, how about this: how about almost everybody ever. That's like inventing a new operating system yesterday before breakfast that nobody heard of, and isn't compatible with Debian or RedHat or anything, and makes you start over from scratch.

"I came up with a totally new mental practice and I'm calling it faith. So, don't criticize the mental practices referred to by Christian Supremacists and Iranian clerics as faith! That word is off-limits, or else I couldn't have my own faith! Just oppose their mean and irrational actions!" Where do you think actions come from? Beliefs. If beliefs can't be criticized and weighed and judged, you're fighting the symptoms instead of the disease.

Imagine that I am -- metaphorically -- in armed combat with the Family Research Council or somebody like that. I will never hassle you about your religion or even mention it to you until you run up and pull my weapon out of my hands. If you do that, you know what? If you stand between me and the theocrats, fuck your precious faith. Fuck it in and around the ass region and that vicinity. Do religious progressives have any idea what price they're asking us to pay? Whatever benefit is gained from progressive religion isn't worth leaving unopposed the problems that mainstream religions tend to have in common. That would be a horrific cost. We're playing with grown-ups and the stakes are higher than the games you're playing. When I say "faith" I mean the awful mental sleight of hand and self-delusion that is actually practiced every day by the six billion people who never heard of the progressive religion you made up yesterday. I complain about the shit I have to put up with. If you're not going to help fight that fight, so that you can go on smoking your spiritual weed, at least stop trying to disarm us of the most important weapon: I raise my hand and say "excuse me abortion clinic bombers and terrorists and legislators, faith is make believe."

Comments

paranthropus on Aug. 30, 2005 7:27 PM

Here's a positive twist to your analogy: Religions are self-perpetuating, always evolving and, perhaps regrettably, will be with us for a long, long time to come. Yeah, Linux is like religion. If it shares these traits then the future for Linux and Open Source looks very good.

sarahmichigan on Aug. 30, 2005 7:40 PM

You know what? If you stand between me and the theocrats, fuck your precious faith. Fuck it in and around the ass region and that vicinity.

Why don't you tell us what you really think? ;)

zifferent on Aug. 31, 2005 4:54 AM — Maybe a bit preachy

Your first mistake is in thinking that this is a fight.

Faith or lack thereof (can you lack imaginary things?) is a personal struggle, i.e. what I believe and think my religion is, is totally different than what the next guy thinks, even though we may be sitting in the same church listening to same sermon. This is mostly due to the nature of spiritual enlightenment being a very singular experience and something that can't be easily passed on if at all. Basically, I can't take an epiphany out of my head and hand to another person, and what's more even if I could the other person wouldn't accept it.

There are reasons that all the great spiritual leaders have spoke in either parables or riddles. The first is self preservation mechanism and has to do with not pissing off the outsiders. Sort of like a code passed between the understood.

The second, more important reason has to do with humans not believing that which is handed to them blatantly, because our pride insists on discovering everything anew, usually the hard way. A riddle hides the truth in a seed that when the time is right grows to enlightenment.

I've swayed far enough from the original topic that you're probably wondering, about now, where this ride is headed. Well in order to get this roller coaster back on track, let me just state that it dove-tails nicely with why I don't get pissed when someone attacks my beliefs.

Everyone carries around their own idea of what their world is, and it doesn't matter that most don't know that their understanding of the world is separate from at all from reality. All anyone has is a symbol of the world. In fact, everything that we perceive in this world, everything we interact with and everyone we know, we can only interface through the imperfect lens of our internal symbols.

What this means in relation to my first statement is that the conflict you perceive arises only within you. You create both sides to the issue. You pit your symbols against each other. The only violence you're inflicting is on yourself.

To a believer, their faith, however unprovable or unobservable it is, is just as real to them as your disbelief is to you. You are absolutely certain that God doesn't exist. Then there is nothing even left to consider. No conflict has arisen just because someone has contradicted you, unless of course a seed of doubt lies within your chest.

I'd like to conclude with a synopsis of a parable in which two men build houses. The foolish man builds his on sand, and the house sinks. While the wise man builds his on a rock and the house can endure almost anything.

Matt build your house on a rock. Be unshakable in your disbelief, and they can't take anything away from you.

matt-arnold on Aug. 31, 2005 2:01 PM — Re: Maybe a bit preachy

I like a lot of what you've said, and I think it's some of your points are the very same points I tell people all the time. I want my mental map to more closely match the terrain in reality which it's meant to represent, but of course it can never be 100% accurate. This is why I leave it open to correction and improvement. Are you suggesting I should despair of ever getting my symbols to a close representation? How close is close enough? I just need them to be usefully close. I think they are. The struggles over the Supreme Court, and gay rights, and abortion, and pseudoscience in schools, are a real fight. That struggle is not an illusion in my head. I didn't create Focus on the Family or the Christian Coalition or the administration of Pensacola Christian College or Bob Jones University in my head. My view of them, while incomplete, is usefully close to reality, especially since I know them from within from personal experience. In a sense, it's very true that I fight against myself, because my past self was a member and supporter of these institutions. Of course it's not a fight with you or with my neighbors, but the fight against powerful organizations starts with changing the minds of our neighbors.

matt-arnold on Aug. 31, 2005 2:58 PM — Re: Maybe a bit preachy

Hey, I've been mulling over your comments some more and it occured to me that this LJ post really has to do with what is considered normal. But normality is one of the most relative of all relative measurements, so that's how these can be considered fights between symbols in our minds. Would you agree? Look at the examples. When does the problem truly really exist between keyboard and chair, and when is the problem that the software is too demanding? That depends on what level of demanding is considered "normal." In the same way, if everyone compiles their own open source build of religion, are the proprietary codes of the Bible and the Koran and the Torah the "normal" mainstream religions against which all others are compared?