Why I Don't Pray

A few explanations and clarifications before I start:

1. I am defining "prayer" as asking "God" (or gods) to do something, provide something, or answer something, either for oneself or others
2. I am aware that there is a category of prayer that involves thanks or praise, that's not the type of prayer that I am discussing
3.  I am also aware that some people insist that #1 is not true prayer, but #2 is. My response to this is that millions of people engage in #2 - that's what I'm talking about. 
4. I have no problem with other people praying. Go for it, knock yourself out, but if you're going to attempt to convince me that it "works", provide evidence

I don't know when I started praying. I know that our family were traditional church-goers and that I was taught to pray. Formulaic, ritual prayers, like "grace" before meals, scripted prayers that were part of  Sunday mass and personal praying - between me and God. I don't remember if this was actually taught, or it was just something that was simply believed, but I remember believing that "sometimes the answer is 'no'" when asking God for something. I don't recall ever being told how we were supposed to know what we were allowed to ask for and what God's standards for answering prayer affirmatively were.

When I was 19 I joined a group that can easily be described as a cult (see my journey in the blog series "So, You Want to Join a Cult"). They taught that when you didn't get the answer you asked for when praying, it wasn't some ephemeral "Sometimes God says no", but that it was one of two main categories. This group pointed to two verses that talked about prayer, one said that God would answer our prayers that were "according to his will". How would we know what God's will was? It was in the Bible! The other verse said that God would provide "whatsoever we asked in prayer, believing...". So, before praying, we needed to know if what we were asking for was something that God said in the Bible we could pray for, and that we had to believe; believe that the promise in the Bible was true, and believe that God would answer our prayer. What it boiled down to was that when we didn't get an answer to prayer, it wasn't some "mysterious ways", it was our own lack of faith. I subscribed to this view for many years.

Over the years I started paying attention to the results that I was receiving (or not receiving) when I prayed. It seemed like the way things were turning out had nothing to do with whether I prayed about it or not. Prayer just didn't seem to be a factor. Now this lack of results could be chalked up to me being an "unbeliever" (I prefer "disbeliever"), or that I wasn't a "real" Christian, or any other number of excuses. But I started then to look at the people around me as they talked about the things that they were praying for and the results that they were receiving and saw a pattern. 

A common logical fallacy is what's called confirmation bias. This is when events that back up, or confirm our pre-existing beliefs or opinions are remembered, or even magnified or exaggerated, while those that contradict those pre-existing positions are forgotten, ignored or explained away. This was something that I observed among people whom I knew believed in the power of prayer. When things went well, when that surgery was successful, when that job came through, well, that was a "praise God" moment, but when the surgery didn't go well, or the person died, or someone else got the job, that's when the excuses and rationalizations came out. The ever-popular "Sometimes God says no" or "God knows what's best for us" or "God doesn't necessarily give us what we want, but what we need". Or sometimes, just silence. 

Some of this just doesn't make sense. If God is just going to override or ignore your prayer in order to give you something better, why pray at all? If praying doesn't get you the desired result all the time, then it doesn't really work, does it? If there's a good chance that your prayer will go unanswered, it's kind of like playing the lottery. 

I look at the evidence, and I see none that there is any efficacy in prayer. It doesn't work. 

To expand upon a previous point, if you want to pray, I'm not trying to talk you out of it. I'm not trying to convince you that it's a bad idea, or even that it's stupid. But if you want to try to rebut or refute what I'm saying, be prepared to offer evidence. What evidence would I accept that might change my mind that praying is effective - that it's perhaps my own stubbornness that is preventing me from seeing the light? How about a prayer log, containing every single thing that is prayed for over a year's time? Log the results, in detail. No excuses. If done honestly it would be quite illuminating....one way or another.

So that's why I don't pray. 

 

I Rise on Invisible Wings

I rise

On invisible wings

The air of the night

lifting me above

the gravity of sin

I float

on an invisible sea

waves of dawn

horizon-ward

I see

the darkness

summoned

inside

 

Offended at Being Offended

 I don't always understand why something offends. A lot of the time I hear some group raising hell about a phrase or a media depiction where I scratch my head and think "What's the big deal?". But the reason I don't understand is that I am not part of the group that feels hurt or disrespected. There's no way that I can truly put myself into someone else's head and heart and feel what they feel. Just because I can imagine that if something similar happened to me I would react differently doesn't negate the very real and valid reaction that someone else might have. 

An example is the continuing battle over the use of Native American imagery and team names in sports. Many (not all) Native American individuals, groups, tribes, and nations have expressed how insulting it is to use Indians, chiefs, redskins, warriors etc. as their team mascots. A common "rebuttal" to these images being offensive is that American descendants of Irish immigrants (I count myself as one of that group) don't take offense at depictions of leprechauns, like on the box of Lucky Charms. One meme that I saw recently suggested that the reason was that we weren't "over sensitive whiny little bitches". I suggest that a more accurate reason is that although we once were a persecuted minority, we didn't have our culture, including our language and religion, taken away from us, and we were never considered non-persons. We were within a generation or two accepted as White, an integral part of "real" America. Ask yourself whether Native Americans were treated the same way. 

A rhetorical question that often is asked is "Why, all of a sudden is this offensive?". The answer is that it's probably not all that sudden. Persecution and discrimination have been around for a long time, but speaking out against it has often resulted in lethal consequences in past generations. It's finally relatively safe to demand respect and equality. 

Any other persecuted or marginalized group is going to be sensitive to slights and insults that the dominant majority is going to think are not worthy of getting upset about. The dominant majority isn't going to get upset about these slights because they don't apply to them. Attempting to imagine how they would react to the same slights is meaningless because the majority doesn't have the same context in which to interpret these same words and images. And it shouldn't matter; what someone who doesn't understand why something would be offensive should be doing instead of mocking another for being offended is attempting to understand why it's offensive, or at least accepting the validity of the other's being offended. 

Customer Service

I spent much of my adult life working in retail: gas stations, newspaper circulation, grocery stores. For a few years I taught a customer service class for the company I worked for. And as someone who is now out of retail, I am sensitive to the level of service that I receive when interacting with customer service personnel. I was going to write a pair of blog posts, one addressing bad customer service employees, and the other addressing bad customers, but decided to combine the two.

I'm old enough to remember when the phrase "the customer is always right" was not as ubiquitous as it is now. When it was enough for a business to give the customer what it said it was going to give with a minimum of friction. When the goal wasn't to "delight the customer", but to simply to provide the customer what they were paying for. Egregious rudeness was not tolerated, neither from the business nor from the customer. A business transaction was just that, a transaction where both sides treated each other with respect, or at least without disrespect or overt rudeness. When I was a young man I had a weekend job in a full service gas station. The station manager was a surly ex-Marine by the name of Al Kramer. He was in many ways very difficult to work for, but when push came to shove, he didn't allow customers to abuse his employees. One afternoon a customer complained that I had short changed him. In those days gas purchases were not rung up on a register. Everybody who worked the gas pumps was given a "bank" to start his shift and the cash from each transaction was held by the worker until the end of his shift. Each pump had a little counter that kept track of dollars and gallons - these numbers were written down at the beginning and end of every shift and compared with the money that was turned in. If there was question of a customer being shortchanged, that particular pump would be shut down, a reading taken, and the money counted and compared to the difference between beginning and ending readings. In this case, I had the exact amount of money that I should have, therefore, I had not shortchanged the customer. The customer, however, was not satisfied with this answer and accused me of stealing the money, and not including it in what I turned in, and asked Al what he was going to do about it. His response to "what are you going to do about it?" was to tell him that he was going to give him a kick in the ass and threw him out of the station. How common do you think it would be today for a manager to not only stick up for his employee, but to do so in such an emphatic manner? Al Kramer may have been an extreme example, but I can't imagine any retail manager back in those days allowing a customer to verbally abuse an employee. What changed?

As I stated earlier, it used to be that a business person's only goal was to provide their customers with their product at the advertised price. Of course I'm aware that there was a time, before the rise of unions, when employees where viewed as little better than slaves. Low wages, horrible working conditions, no job security. But the interaction between the business and the customer was one of caveat emptor, i.e. "let the buyer beware". Somewhere along the way, "customer service" became as much of a commodity as the product itself. I ask again, what changed? I'm going to blame Walmart as one instigator of the change to "the customer is always right", although there are certainly other causes. Walmart, or giant companies like Walmart, can be viewed as instigators, not because they emphasized customer service, but because of their strategy of driving competitors out of business by offering prices so low that it was almost impossible to compete on the basis of price. If you couldn't compete on price, you had several competitive options open to you: one was quality, the other was service. 

In the scramble to stay in business in the face of the steamroller that is Walmart, retailers tried (and are still trying) numerous ways to keep their customers. The one path that has led to the present-day culture of customers abusing workers with impunity was to give the customer what he or she wanted, usually without question, and to reward the rudest customers for their rudeness. It's no secret that the "Karen" (or her male counterpart) who yells the loudest and is the most insistent usually is given what she wants. When in decades past a customer who yelled at or insulted the teenager ringing up groceries would be escorted out of the store, today the same customer is apologized to and given a gift card for their trouble. Unlike the Al Kramers of days gone by, an abusive customer isn't offered a kick in the ass, with the employee being given the benefit of the doubt, but today's employee is assumed by management to be in the wrong and the customer is courted and begged to forgive. As I used to say when I was a retail manager: we've trained customers to be assholes. 

Some people just want to control other people. They fall into several categories:

The Truly Powerful Person
People who have real power, whether it is in the political realm, the business world, sports, social status or even being physically intimidating are used to getting their own way. Sometimes it comes from being surrounded by sycophants who cater to their every whim. Sometimes it comes from being used to employing the fear of being beat up or shot to get their way. This type of person, in his or her daily life, sees no benefit to treating others with respect or kindness. That doesn't mean that people in power can't treat others with respect or kindness or that they won't, just that there is no social pressure to do so. In everyday interactions, the Truly Powerful Person (TPP) is habituated to giving orders and having them obeyed without question. So what happens when the TPP is in a situation where no one knows that they are powerful or where there power is irrelevant? When confronted by this indifference to their exalted status, the TPP often responds by saying things like "Do you know who I am?" or "I'll have you fired". They are so flabbergasted by the absence of the deference that they are usually accorded that they lash out. The TPP often knows people. Perhaps they play golf with the company president, or have connections at the mayor's office. There's a good chance that they will get what they want and more, just by suggesting that they're going to talk to their other powerful friends. When encountering retail employees their natural inclination is to see them as just another person to provide them without question, with everything that they ask for.

The Conventionally Powerless
Many people have little to no power in their everyday lives. They are far down the ladder of power and authority in their jobs, socially, politically and economically. They may be a persecuted minority, they may be a low skill worker, they may be poor. They spend most of their time being disregarded and treated badly. So what happens when they encounter someone over whom they may have some small measure of power, even if it's only temporary? The smallest slight becomes cause for retaliation. They act in a manner similar to those who have actual power. In fact, I have seen this type of person become  more abusive and eager to throw their weight around than those who have real power. At one of my previous positions we had a guy that we called "hand basket guy". We called him that because he would enter through the exit door and, not seeing any hand baskets (they were usually by the entrance door), would curtly say "hand basket" to whoever walked by. Not, "where are the hand baskets?" or "can you get me a hand basket?", but simply "hand basket". He was a dick. This man, not only raised hell whenever he had a legitimate complaint, but he seemed to come in looking for something to complain about. He would berate checkers when they didn't respond to him in the way that he thought was "correct", but we noticed that when he was shopping with his wife, he was as meek as a lamb. Possibly she had the real power at home and he came to the store to exercise a little control. People in this category are wont to threaten to sue you if you do not comply with their wishes. However, they generally are the kind of people who can't afford a lawyer and haven't the slightest idea of what is legally actionable.

The Person Who Has Authority in a Teeny, Tiny Area
You sometimes see this with people who have been given a small measure of authority: small town police and government officials come to mind, the clerk at the DMV or the guy checking IDs at a popular night spot. Somebody gave them some power and dammit!, they're going to enjoy it! They may not have a lot of power in the grand scheme of things, but they're going to exercise it in their own narrow sphere. Fortunately, these people usually practice their power grabbing assholeyness in their own circle of authority, and rarely take it out on retail clerks. Watch out if you're speeding in their town though.

The Hybrid
A combination of the truly powerful  and the conventionally powerless, this is a person who comes from a typically powerless group, like a racial minority, or is uneducated, or comes from the "wrong side of the tracks". When this person gains power and prestige, either by education, success in sports, music or business, or maybe even in the realm of criminal activity, "respect" becomes very important. Respect is demanded in all situations. When the fantasized level of respect is not accorded to the hybrid, not only will this type of person lash out, like the first category of person, but accusations of bigotry are thrown around as well. This person probably won't sue you. They probably think that they know powerful people, but actually just routinely annoy powerful people. They'll write letters to the editor and flood social media with their view that you are an idiot.

Whatever category of control-seeker a customer may be in, the knowledge that their behavior will be encouraged emboldens them. 

So, if the culture has shifted so much that abusive behavior by customers is accepted and mainstreamed, why does it seem like bad customer service is as widespread as it is? Before I answer that, let me tell you what I think good customer service consists of (and what it doesn't):

* It's not acting like you're my best friend. I don't care if you like me. I don't care if you are uninterested in my personal life. If you're a cashier, ring my order up accurately and quickly; if you're a waiter, take my order and bring me what I ordered. I have told several checkers over the years that they were "my favorite" because they didn't pretend to like me

* It's not spouting out clearly insincere phrases like "Welcome to Ralph's Hardware"

* It's not asking me if I found everything that I came in for unless you plan to do something about it

* It's not having every employee run up to me to "greet" me ((I'm looking at you, B&R Five Feet & Greet)

* It is answering any questions I may have about availability or location of products, but not rolling your eyes and sighing if you think I asked a "stupid" question; or correcting my pronunciation of a product

* It's having advertised products on the shelf throughout the life of an ad or giving me a raincheck or making a substitution if the product is not available

* It's focusing on my order and not holding personal conversations with other employees

On occasion I have encountered over-the-top rudeness by retail employees. I have also witnessed numerous examples of just plain poor customer service skills. A few months ago a purchased several dozen folders from a local store. There were two different varieties with a small variance in price between each. I double checked the UPC codes to make sure I was getting the right product. When the cashier was canning them I saw that about half of them were ringing up at a wrong, higher, price. When I pointed this out to the cashier, she replied "Oh you probably got the wrong ones". When I assured her that I had not, she countered with "Sometimes things are different prices". Yes, sometimes customers grab the wrong items and sometimes things are different prices, but leading with a suggestion that the customer is wrong is...wrong. She could have asked someone to do a price check, or asked a manager for input, but she continued arguing with me. Eventually a manger came over. When I attempted to explain the situation, he ignored me. He, seeing the amount of money was relatively small, gave in. In this scenario, no one was overtly rude to me, but neither the cashier, nor the manager, was engaging in basic customer service with a polite customer who had a legitimate complaint. How does this happen.

Poor training. 

How often does a new employee get thrown into her job with insufficient training? How many managers got thrown into their jobs with insufficient training? And now, because they have no idea how to handle customer questions or complaints, or for that matter even the basics of customer interactions, they have participated in a vicious cycle that gives the customer a pretext for escalating into rudeness.

Speaking of vicious cycles, how many rude retail employees are acting that way because they have had enough customer abuse, have had enough of a lack of support from management, are sick of being in a system where you are expected to bow and scrape to people who treat you like dirt? To not only accept abuse, but often be forced to apologize to the abuser for objecting to the abuse? Just because someone is young, is in their first job or is uneducated, doesn't mean that they're stupid. They know that calling them an "associate" or a "teammate" doesn't make them any any better than when they were called simply an "employee". They see that the retail culture devalues them, and it's not going to get better. So they act as if they don't care. 

Because they don't, they know there's some other low-wage job that they can get tomorrow if you fire them today. 

 

Killings: Of Police/By Police

I've never had the kind of job where it was possible that, as part of my job, I would be killed during my shift. I have never served in the military and I have never been a police officer. I would imagine that it would be a priority for a police officer to be diligent and aware in order to come home (alive) at the end of the day, but I really can't imagine the stress that a person is under in those circumstances. And not just the police officer, but the officer's family as well. It's really no comfort to surviving family members to hear that it was a part of the job, or "he knew what he was getting into" after a loved one is killed in the line of duty. 

But it is part of the job that a police officer signs up for. 

I know that sounds harsh, and I don't mean to make light of police being killed, but when an unarmed person, who is complying with an officer's demands, and at worst is accused of a misdemeanor or traffic offense is killed, the reflexive response by law enforcement supporters is to tell us how tough a cop's job is, how they never know when someone might pull a gun on them, or how often police are killed in the line of duty. 

All of that is objectively true, but the subtext seems to be that a police officer is completely justified in proactively killing someone who might be a threat. Does this happen all the time, or even most of the time. Probably not. But the position of most police departments seems to be that the life of the officer is the most important thing in any contact between the police and the public, and if official policy is otherwise, the saying "I'd rather be judged by twelve than carried by six" carries the day. 

There is a fundamental difference, therefore, between a police officer being killed in the line of duty and a civilian being killed  by police. In the first instance, it is by definition being done by a criminal. If caught, the killer will be arrested (if lucky - cops really pull out all the stops for cop killers) and put on trial and likely convicted. Someone killed by the police is usually demonized - if they have ever been arrested, that's brought up - their actions prior to being killed are questioned - and rarely is a police officer tried for killing someone, and even more rarely, convicted. Innocent people have been killed because a cop claims that he "feared for his life" without having to produce any evidence, or even articulate any reasoning, why he thought his life was in danger. The "us vs. them" mindset that paints non-police as enemies is perpetuated by the courts. 

It's a tragic thing when a police officer is killed, as it is when a firefighter dies in a fire, or a soldier is killed in combat. In a perfect world, it wouldn't happen, but in each case of a police officer being killed, it was done by a "bad guy". But police are supposed to be the "good guys". They're not supposed to kill 12 year-olds with toy guns, or men reaching for their wallets according to police directive after informing the police that they were armed; they're not supposed to restrain suspects until they suffocate; they're not supposed to shoot women in their sleep; they're not supposed to shoot social workers who are on the ground with their hands raised. 

I don't want to see any dead cops. I do want to see cops refrain from killing people who aren't trying to kill them. 

Life Isn't Fair

 

Life Isn't Fair

Bad Things Happen Sometimes

But So Do Good Things

A Lot Is Beyond Our Control

Things Don't Happen "For A Reason"

Or According To A Deity's "Plan"

(Unless That Deity Is A Sadistic Jackass)

Do Your Best

With The Cards You Are Dealt

Bluff If You Have To

Straw Men and Intentional Misunderstanding: Blue Lives

In a perfect world everyone would speak and write using perfect grammar, all their statements will be perfectly consistent, and words would be used according to the accepted Merriam-Webster definitions. In that perfect world no one would ever have to ask "What did you mean by that?".

But we don't live in that best of all possible worlds.

People make imprecise statements. I noted recently how a friend, when coming across incendiary posts in social media, gives the other person a chance to explain himself. If the offending person takes the opportunity to clarify, it may be that the statement wasn't intended to be offensive, or the offended person didn't understand the context or nuance. Of course it could be that no clarification can explain it away and the initial statement really was offensive.

What seems to happen a lot is that people intentionally misunderstand, deploying the straw man fallacy to attack a position that the other person really doesn't hold, not allowing for lack of precision in the choice of words.

The recent protests against police abuses that arose following the murder by police of George Floyd in Minneapolis engendered a lot of slogans, some of which were misunderstood by those who disagreed with the manner of protesting. One of these is related to the slogan "Blue Lives Matter" and a meme that went around that had a picture of some blue cartoon characters (Blue, from Blues Clues was one) and the caption "These Are the Only Blue Lives That Matter To Me". Cops, as well as friends and family of police officers naturally were upset, but let's look at the phrase itself and where it came from.

In 2013, following the acquittal of George Zimmerman in the death of unarmed Black teenager Trayvon Martin, the hashtag #blacklivesmatter began trending on Twitter. It soon became a rallying cry for many people who were fed up with young Black men continually being killed by white people, usually at the hands of the police. An organization with that name also started in 2013. Note that no one was saying that only Black lives matter, or that non-Black lives don't matter, but that in the eyes of the police, as well as many White people, it didn't seem like Black lives did matter. Those using that hashtag, or the phrase in general, were trying to point out that despite the lack of seeming value of Black lives in this country, Black lives mattered.

There was an almost immediate backlash. The phrase "All Lives Matter" started to be heard and seen. It seemed innocuous. Of course all lives mattered. How could anyone argue with that? But the problem with snapping back an answer to "Black Lives Matter" was that it didn't require an answer. Attempting to answer it was a rebuttal. If all lives really did matter, then we wouldn't need to say "Black Lives Matter", would we?

Another common rejoinder was "Blue Lives Matter", obviously a response intended to defend the police, who were a frequent target of Black Lives Matter activists. Similar to "All Lives Matter", not only was this supposed to be a counterpoint to "Black Lives Matters", but was meant to point out the opinion of many police and law enforcement supporters that they were in opposition to "Black Lives Matter" protesters. Again, it's obvious that the lives of police officers matter, but the term "Blue Lives Matter" is a not-so-veiled attempt at a rebuttal of "Black Lives Matter".

Of course, there are no "blue lives".

What?

As I have recently seen pointed out, "blue" is a profession; a cop can take his uniform off at the end of the day, a Black person can't take off his skin. A police officer can retire or leave the force and take up another profession and any animosity toward the police goes away. A Black person is always Black.

When I first lived in Nebraska I experienced a lot of persecution due to my religion. I remember thinking at the time that I could move to the next town, keep my religion quiet, no one would ever know, and the discrimination would end (as it did), but that a Black person did not have that option. It was a turning point for me.

So if you are offended by memes or posts or comments speaking against the slogan "Blue Lives Matter", it doesn't mean that they think the lives of individual police offers don't matter, or that they wish harm on police officers, but that the phrase is meaningless, since there are no "blue lives". In addition, the phrase is nothing more than an attempt to minimize "Black Lives Matter".

Take the time to find out what people really mean when they say what they say. If you disagree with their actual position, then go ahead and argue, but don't rail against a position that you only think they are holding, or have assumed that they hold because that's easier than taking the time to find out.