The one with a flip

Like most people, sometimes I'm patient and sometimes I'm not.  There are times when I'm not patient, but I put on a good show to appear patient, and sometimes, oddly enough, I'm actually patient but appear impatient to onlookers.  Go figure.

One of the most striking cultural characteristics of the Koreans is their seemingly total lack of patience.  Their very language gives a hint.  Movement and action almost invariably include the word for "quickly."  "Quickly do!"  "Quickly come!"  Even when there isn't the real need, perceived need, or even hint at urgency in the situation.  When I first came to Korea in 1997, there were no number slips at the bank to determine who got to see a teller next; everybody simply struggled for the teller's attention, pressing against the counter like European soccer fans on game day.  The same was true in the market where you physically had to stand your ground to get your purchases added up and pay the bill against the press of those competing for the clerk's attention.

Most of my close brushes with death in this country have been on account of not my impatience, but that of the natives.  Behind the wheel of a vehicle or sitting on a motorbike, what pretense at patience they might possibly have is disregarded more than ever.  While riding my motorcycle to work, there is a sharp curve in a one-way section of the road.  Behind me today, a taxi appeared, and I could see that he had no fare, but he did his best to try to squeeze by me on my left as we went round this sharp curve in a cramped place in the roadway.  I came to a stop forcing him to stop, too, since there was no room for him to go by me and proceeded to show him with my left hand how I felt about his impatient risk of my life.  For good measure I showed him my right hand, too, as I got ready to pull away.  He was not happy that he had to come to a stop and see such vulgarity, especially from a foreigner and one on a motorcycle no less, nearly the bottom of the social ladder.  Was I impatient?  Obviously not since I was willing to stop.  I was angry, and I consider someone else risking my life because his culture is so treacherous to be worth a little display of anger now and again.  Does it do any good?  Not in the least.  Koreans have this knack of dismissing anything that is not of them, not of their culture, not customary, not "our", as they say.  I'm mindful that my anger is futile, but isn't there some therapeutic value in expressing oneself?  Death and maiming are not pleasant things, I'm sure.  So long as these are possibilities at the hands of the "quickly" culture, I'm all for free expression.

The one about Korean Hierarchy

Korean society is marked by its innate sense of social status. In order to interact with others fluidly, you need to understand what the social status is of others. Over the millennia, the Korean language itself developed levels of speech to indicate the relationship to the people they are talking to and even the people they are talking about in some instances. The structure of language evolves according to the social structure in which it lives, and that explains why two similar societies like Japan and Korea have similar language structures, but whose languages are completely unrelated to each other.

It is unsurprising, therefore, to see the Korean social structure reflected in other aspects of life beyond language. Car ownership here has increased exponentially over the last twenty years. The car driving culture is quite young, but the need for order on the public roads is as pressing as anywhere else. There are traffic laws, of course, and these provide a basic framework in which to operate. Drive on the right hand side of the roadway, turn your lights on at night, and use your wipers when it's raining. However, beyond those fundamentals, most other behavior on the road is dictated by social mores and cultural traditions.

Just as in general society, social status on the road is important to the well-ordered lifestyle of the Korean people. There is a hierarchy of people; and there is a hierarchy of traffic. Not all vehicles are equal, and I'm not talking about emergency vehicles. Emergency vehicles are, unfortunately, not on the top of the social hierarchy of the roadway. Expensive cars indicate a higher social status for the driver and occupants. Therefore, a pricey car takes precedence over a cheaper car. An SUV takes precedence over a sedan as does also a twelve-seater caravan. Taxis and busses are, however, almost the top of the hierarchy on a Korean roadway. Only construction vehicles like cement trucks are higher. Hence, busses and taxis are exempt from most traffic laws and use their status to bully dominance at traffic lights and other intersections where they are not obliged to obey red lights or stop signs. After four, six, and eight-wheeled vehicles come motorcycles. Two-wheeled vehicles are lumped together in one category which means an 1800cc Yamaha Roadliner is no different than a 50cc scooter as far as the Korean roadway hierarchy goes. All two-wheeled vehicles are so low on the social ladder as to be banned on all expressways in the country. The only thing lower in social status are bicycles and pedestrians.

The implications for this are rather predictable for folks who can see more than a couple seconds into the future. Car crashes abound in Korea simply because one person feels he is a higher social status than the other guy and tries to exert his dominance while the other guy is thinking exactly the same thing. Two egos cannot occupy the same piece of road at the same time. When turning into traffic, you don't assess how closely and how quickly the cross traffic is approaching; you assess their social status and pull into traffic or sit still accordingly. A car arriving at a crossroads will see a motorcycle approaching from a distance of thirty meters. Since the motorcycle is a lower social status, the car will pull out in front of the motorcycle obliging the rider to veer out of his lane or make a hard stop to avoid a collision. There is no fault as the car obviously outranks the motorcycle. The same is true up the social ranking system of vehicles with busses and taxis barely stopping at crossroads, if at all, since few other vehicles outrank them.

This system of social hierarchy is the guiding principle for driving in Korea. It affects every driving situation you can imagine, but it seems to remain favorable in the eyes of the Korean public despite its drawbacks.

The one with the Amish

I saw a sign on the news being held by someone demonstrating against the Islamic Center in New York: "Ground Zero Mosque: Religion Preying on Freedom."  Of course, adherents of Islam would disagree, but that's to be expected.  Religion does something to the mind that alters its perceptions.  The English word 'religion' evolved more than likely from a Latin word that indicated obligation, dependence, and binding.  Islamic cultists themselves describe their faith as one of submission, a suitable synonym for dependence and binding.  But the concept is not foreign to the christian cult:  "God opposes the proud, but gives grace to the humble. Submit yourselves therefore to God." (Letter of James).  I will not elaborate on the humbleness of today's modern mega-preachers (or even the humbleness of small-time pastors in Gainesville, Florida) or the humbleness of the politicians being spewed up from among the christ cultists around the country, only to say that a wry grin often crosses my face, and sometimes a slow shake of the head.

"Religion preying on Freedom."  Someone asked me once why I don't support independence for Tibet, and my response was, I oppose any attempt of a religion to establish a state.  Religion is dangerous enough without giving it such immense power over the lives of millions of people and reserving the halls of law and justice for only those who adopt an orthodox religious point of view, whatever that religion is.  Yes, religion preys on freedom.  The religious concede that a believer sacrifices his or her freedom, but the sacrifice is to a beneficent being of ultimate wisdom and power.  How could you turn that down?  It's the perfect freedom, they say.  Yet, my observation is that God does not personally direct the affairs of the world.  Just a cursory view will show that if anyone is in charge, he or she is a complete incompetent.  The usual counter by believers is that the world is in chaos because we haven't all submitted to God's grace and peace.  But the chaos I see is among devout religious people, not unbelievers!  How can you explain that?  It seems, just looking at the observable world around me, that submission to God increases agitation.  It provokes hateful words.  It incites angry outbursts.

About the only religious people I can find that are not filled with simmering rage and malcontent are the Amish.  If all religious people were like the Amish, you would probably never hear a peep from us atheists!  The Amish live their own lives not bothering others, not infused with the need to change the world and impose the Old Testament on everyone.  They choose to live according to their faith, and if others don't choose that route, so be it.  It doesn't affect their faith in the least to have non-believers for neighbors, senators, governors, judges, sheriffs, and so forth.  Their faith does not depend on making sure it is dominant in the world or even in the nation.  Their faith is strong even without the force of congress behind it, probably because they believe that their God is actually all powerful and in control, quite unlike the new God of the modern Islamic or Christ cults Who just can't get enough people to pray in public without having to pass laws forcing it on them.  Just looking around, I get the impression that the overtly religious, those politicians and mega-pastors who want to make their religion the law of the land, they probably harbor fears which impel them to enslave others so as to make themselves feel better, creating the camaraderie of the damned, so to speak.  If these rising religious politicians and mega-pastors had a faith that matched in strength that of the Amish, they would run for office and preach positively instead of the negative attempts to bring unbelievers under the yoke of christ no matter what.  I don't care what your religion is, if you have one at all; I do care whether you are competent to lead.  Your single issue stances, be it immigration, gay rights, medical abortion, or tax breaks for billionaires do not make you qualified to lead.  I'd rather have a person I don't agree with on my pet issue, if that person is competent, than to have a sycophant in congress or the state capitol who has to make all his or her decisions based on which way the winds of religion are blowing that day.  Your faith is irrelevant to my life just so long as you make sure it is irrelevant.  The moment you start insisting that your cult's little view of the world should be enshrined in law that affects me, then we have a problem.

Yeah, religion preys on freedom, and that's why any candidate in these midterms who touts his or her faith will not get my vote.  I love my freedom, and I'm not about to hand it over to a bunch of spirit-filled bootlickers.

The one with the Recovery Act

Someone posted an Ann Coulter article on Facebook in which she was chastising the radical far right for calling the President a Muslim. “He's not a Muslim; he's an atheist” was basically her article. I got the biggest kick out of that, mainly because she really intended to be insulting to the President, but to me, I only wish he were atheist. We haven't had an atheist president as far as I know, at least not one who was honest about it. So I made a video about the word “atheist.” 

Ann Coulter is not stupid, but she says deliberately stupid things mainly to whip up her crowd into a mindless frenzy.  Now Saint Glenn Beck is jumping on the bandwagon. Did you hear about his rally in the capital? “Restoring Honor” he called it. Of course, the only way you can say that is if you believe America has lost its honor. And the only way I can see in the last decade that America has lost its honor would be the unprovoked invasion and conquest of a (near) third-world country under false pretenses after lying to the U.N. about intelligence on said country.  

Attempting to get medical insurance for more Americans, however, seems to be Beck's idea of losing honor. Asking the rich to sacrifice for the nation by returning to the former tax rates also seems to be our loss of honor. Keeping the states from defaulting by means of the Recovery Act must also be a loss of honor, since he rants against that, too. My county in Michigan received 669,000 dollars from the Recovery, and that meant the difference between a complete meltdown of police, sheriff, fire, schools, and emergency services and giving the local councils some breathing space to reorganize.  Of course, we all know that the economy started tanking because Bush was dumping trillions of borrowed dollars into his phony war in Iraq, and that “war” in Afghanistan that he kept simmering on the back burner sending up billions of dollars in smoke every month because he's... an idiot? … malicious? … unconcerned with our military? … more interested in punishing Sadam than Bin Laden?  Bush's policy caused this Great Recession and it's high time the radical right faced up to it.   Screaming slogans and waving signs is not patriotism as much as giving more in taxes to pay for the war effort you so loudly acclaim. Actions speak louder than words, and these anti-tax buffoons are demonstrating on a daily basis by their unwillingness to shell out bucks for the war (that they supported) that they don't really give a shit about the war, the country, our soldiers, or our national solvency.  Tea Party?  No, just another bunch of spoiled white entitlement crybaby hypocrites.

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