Coping skills
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You may or may not have heard about the new Nativity Scene at Madame Tussaud's Wax Museum in London. The short version of the story is that the display features David Beckham (English Soccer star) as Joseph and Victoria (Posh Spice) Beckham as Mary. Additionally, George W. Bush, Tony Blair and Prince Phillip are the Wise Men and Samuel L. Jackson, Hugh Grant and Graham Norton are the Shepherds. Needless to say, there are a number of religious figures who have expressed a variety of negative opinions about the matter.

From Reuters (via Yahoo) "This is worse than bad taste. It is cheap," an official Vatican source told Reuters in Rome. "You cannot use contemporary personalities as the central figures of the nativity ... And it becomes worse, if that were possible, if the people may be of questionable moral standing," he added.

A spokesman for Archbishop of Canterbury Rowan Williams, spiritual leader of 70 million Anglicans worldwide, reacted with weary resignation to the "Posh and Becks" tableau. "There is a tradition of each generation trying to re-interpret the nativity but, Oh Dear..," he said.

Personally, I am in agreement with the London Times, which called the display "uniquely tasteless."

What caught my eye, however, in the midst of the rather predictable responses, was this from Paul Handley, editor of the Anglican Church Times:

"It is yet another sign that people feel they can play around with sacred things," he told Reuters. "God is not going to worry. He is going to cope -- but it is a bit depressing."

Wait a minute. God is going to cope? God, the omnipotent, omnipresent, omniscient being from the Bible? That God? He's going to COPE?

How badly do you have to need to create God in your own image to imagine that he needs to 'cope' with anything. I've talked over the years with people who have some pretty abstract, watered-down conceptions of God, but how Casper Milktoast do you have to think God is, to have to reassure yourself that he can cope with some tasteless wax statues?

Now that, I find humorous.

by Cziltang 
Posted: Thursday, December 09 2004 06:14:11 PM

Comfort Zone
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We had an incident with a client at work a few nights ago so I got a call from my staff at about 3:30 AM. This isn't all that unusual. I get calls at home fairly regularly and occasionally one in the middle of the night. I don't mind; its part of the job, and given that I was awake anyway nursing the nasty cough and other assorted symptoms I've been trying to ignore for the last two weeks, the call wasn't a problem.

Since then I've been home sick, trying to handle the follow-up by phone and (to paraphrase a line from Eddie Izzard) it all wasn't working very well. A visit to the doctor's office and a prescription for cough syrup and four days rest has improved my outlook on the world a wee bit. The 108 e-mails I found waiting for me when I got to work, I could have done without.

I was pretty happy when I got my new computer up and running and was able to listen to music again while I was working. Except that it isn't working. I've gotten so used to thinking and writing in a quiet room that I'm having a hard time concentrating. I'm finding it very difficult to adjust to having the music on. (OK, I know the obvious solution, but music is really important to me.)

It occurred to me that this process of gradually getting used to things is pretty much the way our lives work. Things happen that we may not really like, but gradually we just get used to them and they become our reality. I know that when I was 20 and weighed 180 pounds I didn't just decide to put on 100 pounds. I got where I am a few pounds at a time over the last 25 years. I was never happy about putting on a little weight here and there, but I got used to it. Now I'm 45 and I have most of the health problems associated with being 45 and being at least 100 pounds overweight.

This is pretty much how it works with my clients, I think. I'm pretty sure that most of my clients didn't wake up one day and say to themselves, "You know, I would really like to spend a lot of my life lying, cheating and stealing from all sorts of people to support a really expensive drug habit." It is a much more gradual process. They get used to a certain amount of disorder and over time it becomes the norm.

This process works in the opposite direction as well. Think about learning any skill, like learning to play an instrument for instance. When you first start you have to think about the mechanics of just making a sound and then you have to start learning to read notes off the page. It is a difficult process in the beginning trying to remember where your fingers go when you see a particular note on a page and then making your fingers do it in time with the music. But eventually you reach a point where you see the note on the page and you don't think about it anymore, your fingers just do it. Gradually you get used to the process and it just seems natural.

Perhaps this is why Cognitive Restructuring programs are often effective with my clients. Un-learning to be comfortable with their current lifestyle is not an instantaneous thing. It is a gradual process and has to be accompanied by the process of learning an alternative. Without an established alternative they tend to fall back into old comfortable patterns.

So, what's the point? Is this just 'Cziltang's feel-good moment' for the day? Not quite.

The point of this little rant is that the process works for societies as well. Societies get used to things, both good and bad. This is why I believe that we should not be in any hurry to get our troops out of Iraq.

I know this is not a popular sentiment, but democracy is a skill just like anything else. In order for a society to get used to it, they have to be able to practice it. We've been at it for over 200 years and still haven't perfected it. It just isn't reasonable to assume that the citizens of Iraq will do so after one national election or that they will be comfortable with the process.

Over the years we have used our financial and military might to prop up any number of tin pot dictators whose only redeeming quality was that they proclaimed (loudly, if they wanted to retain our support) that they were anti-communist. In Iraq we have the opportunity to support the development of a new democracy for the sake of democracy.

I can hear all my left-leaning friends saying, 'but Cziltang, we're really just in Iraq for the oil!' And my response is, 'and your point?' I don't for a minute grant the proposition that it is all about the oil. And I think there is enough evidence to soundly refute that position. After all, the easiest route, if we were really only interested in the oil, would be to install a puppet government. We've done it before and some might say we are reasonably good at it.

But, all that aside, let's assume for a minute that we are really only after the oil, and that we are only doing what we are doing to ensure that we can keep getting the oil. Why is that a bad thing? We are helping them rebuild their infrastructure, we are helping them set up new national institutions and promoting the democratic process. Oil sales are monitored (or in point of fact, scrutinized with a microscope) by the international community and are certainly of more benefit to the Iraqi people that they were under Saddam Hussein. How are they worse off than they were? And more importantly, how would they be better off if we were to remove our support right after their first national election?

Now, I don't buy that whole 'it's just about the oil' thing. I'm not stupid. I recognize that it is part of the equation. (After all, we aren't intervening in the conflicts in Africa, are we? But then again, our alleged European allies who have so much fine altruistic rhetoric don't seem to be doing too much there either, last time I looked.) I believe an Iraqi democracy is in our best interest. I believe a free and prosperous Iraq destabilizing some of the more repressive governments in the area is in our best interest. And, yes, I believe access to Iraqi oil is in our best interest.

Above all, however, I am a pragmatist. Whether you were in favor of us removing Saddam Hussein or not, the simple fact is that we are there, we've spent billions on the effort, and we need to stick around until the Iraqis have had the chance to get comfortable with the democratic process. If we really mean what we say about supporting the democratic process, we should be prepared to stick around for a while. (By the way, what is our exit strategy for getting our troops out of Germany?)

For a perspective on the situation in Iraq that you won't get from the major news organizations (mostly because it isn't bloody enough) please read this article at Iraq The Model.

 

by Cziltang 
Posted: Wednesday, December 08 2004 08:52:53 PM