The Truth is Out There, Maybe

While delving into the dark recesses of geekdom, I’ve been devouring the X Files for the past few weeks. And while I was hooked, I wasn’t too excited about seeing how the show handled the Church and religion. But it has been surprisingly good. One storyline is based on the stigmata of St. Padre Pio. Scully is normally the skeptic, but she’s also Catholic. She hasn’t been to confession in years, but she keep a cross around her neck, and in her darkest moments, she finds solace in her religion. In contrast, Mulder is the atheist believer of aliens, monsters, and conspiracy theories. His beliefs consume his days, but those beliefs don’t include deities. He sees religion as just another cover story for the powerful. So when the stigmata case seems to confirm legends from Church history, the roles of the agents flip. Scully might not be a devout Catholic, but she is decently catechized, and she defends the Church. She even starts to believe that she was sent there by God to help the boy. Mulder, on the other hand, refuses to entertain the idea that the stigmata and devil are real. There can’t be signs from God because God isn’t real.

This frustrates Scully. Here is the usual doubter opening herself up to the possibility that there is a larger, supernatural work at play, and the usual believer won’t listen to her. At the end of the episode, Scully sees a priest and talks about Mulder’s disbelief. Why is someone who is normally so open to belief dismissing hers? Why is God his line in the sand? Why can’t he see what, to her, is the obvious truth?

This is something I think most people struggle with. We have our worldviews and beliefs, and the core of those seems blatantly obvious and true, yet we daily encounter people who find those views absurd, concocted, and delusional. In turn, we find others’ views hard to believe. While I’ve questioned and struggled with the details, I’ve never doubted that there is a God. His presence is constantly obvious to me. It’s like me saying, “There are clouds in sky,” and having a person respond, “What’s a sky?” Why can’t they see the sky? How can we ever discuss clouds if we can’t agree on a sky?

I have to remember that my frustration is theirs as well. I don’t understand them, and they don’t understand me. I can’t comprehend not innately knowing of a God, gods, force—some presence that creates and sustains the universe. We might have different theories and interpretations. Some proofs might be more logical than others. But we all agree that there is something. Yet the empirical materialist denies this. To him, matter (with observational energy) is all there is. Anything else is fantasy, brought about by misfiring synapses in our primate heads. There can’t be signs from God because God isn’t real because God can’t be real to the materialist. 

It’s an exhausting, frustrating position. How do I convince a skeptic the truth of my claims? How do I do so with the right intention, not out of a defensive need to prove myself right or win an argument? And how do I maintain respect for the person that dismisses my truth? They are not easy questions, and the most frustrating part is that they might not have answers. The answer might be that the tension and arguments and frustration remains, that you will not always be in welcome company, and that not everyone will see truth in the same places.  

To answer Scully’s confusion of Mulder’s skepticism, the priest suggests that maybe the message was only meant for Scully. While there might be comfort in the suggestion that we all believe the truth we’re meant to, it brings on more questions of the nature of truth. Is truth not universal, applicable to all people at all times? While there can be multiple misinterpretations, surely there can only be one truth. And what does that say of truth, God, predestination, or destiny to suggest that some people are not meant to see the truth? Are they fated to be damned, or will they be judged by their response to the truth insomuch as it was revealed to them? 

And what does that mean for the people chosen to see the truth? Can truth be true if it can’t be found?

In school during a discussion of existentialism, I had a professor who kept positing that people create their own truths, that truth is purely subjective. But I objected to the idea that those two ideas are the same. Yes, people create their own truths. Our experiences—cultures, histories, brain chemistries, adopted world views—determine how we understand the world. But that doesn’t make capital-T-truth subjective. We may be blinded by misdirection, confusion, frustration, sin. Truth may not be quantifiable in an empirical test. But unobserved, objective truth is still objective truth.

A resounding mantra in the show is that “the truth is out there.” The statement makes no presumptions of what that truth is, where it can be found, or even if it can be found. Yet it is still a statement of faith. There is the truth; it exists. And the challenge to seek it. Seek it even when it doesn’t match with your skepticism. Seek it even when it is derided by others. Seek it even if it will not bring a tidy, happy ending. Seek it even if it won’t be found. The search is part of the revealing of truth. And it may be the only part we have.  

Not a Wave, but a Million Ripples

Or What I Originally Wanted to Title ‘Suck it, Gloria Steinem’ 

[I wrote the following a few weeks ago. I didn’t publish it because I wrote it from a place of bitterness. But it’s the beginning of Women’s History Month, as well as Super Tuesday election day, so I figured it was apropos.] 

Despite my concerted efforts to stay politically aware while avoiding daily election drama, one particular piece captured my attention. Gloria Steinem and Madeline Albright support Hillary Clinton. (Ok, sure.) And they think all women should support her (again, ok) on account of being women (not so ok anymore). Isn’t that the very definition of sexism, generalizing an entire group based on sex? Shouldn’t people support or oppose Clinton on her political stances and service record? There are plenty of legitimate, political reasons to support Clinton. Voting for her because she’s a woman is as sexist as not voting for her because she’s a woman. This all-girls call isn’t new; in 2008, I had a male professor tell me that I should be supporting Clinton, because she’s a woman too. Not because of her political views, not even because her political views would help women, but on the fact that she and I share the same number of X chromosomes. If Albright is right that “there is a special place in hell for women who don’t help women,” then I should expect her to help Carly Fiorina as much as Hillary Clinton. Unless she just said that to coerce women to do as she wants. Steinem said that young women who support Sanders instead of Clinton are only doing so because “that’s where the boys are.” How flippant and sexist is that? 

Just maybe millennial women see feminism differently than an octogenarian second-waver. Our mothers have always worked. Murphy Brown was their revolutionary, not ours. We had Agent Scully and Ms. Frizzle. Hell, we had Buffy. We grew up in a world of female doctors and astronauts and Secretaries of State (yep, including you, Albright). While there is still old-school sexism (lack of female CEOs, wage gaps, Gamergate, etc.), our starting point is lightyears away from Steinem’s. We don’t want a president that looks like us; we want a president that thinks like us. The Cold War was over before kindergarten started; the 1990s are in our history books. Elizabeth Warren is more of a role model to me than Margaret Thatcher. In fact, why should an ultra-conservative PM from a foreign land be a role model to me at all? On the lone fact she’s a woman? Gender is pretty low on my list of impressive, ambitious qualities. 

Like our entertainment and ads and apps, we millennials expect everything to be custom-built and individualized to our tastes. There is no singular feminist movement. There are women fighting for equality and representation in dozen of issues on dozens of fronts. Various women experience life, including injustice, completely differently from one another. Socio-economic, racial, religious, geographical indicators seem just as, if not more, important than sex. That’s a victory for the old feminists. So don’t expect millennial women to fight battles we think have been won. I was raised to be a strong woman, and that includes dismissing people who think I should or should not do something based on my sex. 

I respect the work that past feminists have done. But I reject the idea that feminism is a monolith, a way to group half the population and have them act as one force. There are lots of feminisms, as nuanced as the men and women who claim the word. I identify with some feminist movements more than others. My feminism values the voice of women—in the workplace, in academia, in government. It treats women as equal to men, and judges a person on their merit, experience, and morals. My feminism abhors abortion and sexual promiscuity, is ok with the theological justification of an all-male priesthood in the Catholic Church, and thinks taking the husband’s name in marriage makes sense. My feminism stems from my mother, grandmother, and aunts. It stems from being raised to naturally assume the sexes were equal. It stems from striving to carry on the legacy of great-grandmothers who voted in every single election since women gained that right. My family’s women comprise of staunch Democrats and staunch Republicans, but both sides agree on my right to hold a staunch opinion and vote accordingly. My feminism is about that right, not about mindlessly doing as Gloria Steinem tells me.

7 Quick Takes Friday (vol. 109) X Files edition

I had lots of plans crammed into the long Presidents’ Day weekend a while back. But snow and ice storms, amongst other things, canceled my plans, leaving me with three days of Netflix binging. I got sucked into X Files. I have a friend who tried to get me into a year ago, and I had been going slowly, an episode here or there. But I really synced with it that weekend and have since blown through several seasons. There are forthcoming blog posts relating my current sci-fi obsession to my faith, so brace yourselves for my latest geekout. 

1. I’m 20 years late to the party, but I’m totally on board the Mulder/Scully ship. Totally. They might simultaneously be my favorite platonic and romantic couple. Never has side-eye and hand-on-shoulder been so sexy. 

2. Scully needs to wear her latex gloves and surgical masks more often. Papers left behind by a killer? Gloves. Gooey body of unidentified humanoid? Bare-handed and uncovered mouth open. This is how all those alien diseases spread! 

3. I’m really glad the government had stopped smallpox vaccinations before I was born. And I can see where anti-vaccers are coming from. In fact, my binges are making me pretty paranoid about several things. I need to get some good detox literature lined up.

4. Family members of FBI agents must have terrible insurance rates. Same for any woman that crosses Skinner’s path.

5. I kind of don’t want to see the new episodes, because I can just go on the internet and see what post-9/11 Mulders are like in real life. That’s depressing. I need the distance. 

6. The show premiered in September 1993. That month is beginning of Eternal September, which refers to when AOL began offering Internet access for many people. Before then, the internet was mainly geeks and college students (with waves of newbies joining each September at the beginning of school, settling into the ways of the net within a few weeks). In Sept. 1993, the waves of new AOL users didn’t stop, forever changing the culture. I think this show is the perfect Eternal September show, in that it perfectly encapsulates 1990s tech. As agents, Mulder and Scully have cellphones and the internet, and both play incredibly large roles in plots. As the seasons progress, more and more common people have the technology too. The show seems to perfectly balance how technology was used in the 90s.

7. This scene. Just, everything about it. #blackandwhite #cher #walkinginmemphis #mutant #jerryspringer #mulderandscullydance #postmodernprometheus