Matt W Cook

writer.former fundamentalist.christianly fellow

Month: November, 2013

November 20, 2013

The thing about people who are wrong on the Internet

There’s a voice in my head that doesn’t like it when I ignore people who are wrong.  It pops up a lot, because I tend to do Internet a lot.

I used to feel it was my duty to let people know how wrong they were.  Especially when it seemed like everyone else was applauding their wrongness.  After all, if I don’t tell them that they’re wrong, how will they ever know?  They’ll just keep sitting there, being wrong.  On the Internet!  Out in the open where everyone can see them!

Heaven forbid, after all, someone be wrong about something.

I recently finished watching Silver Linings Playbook.  I thought it was going to be about sports or something.  It’s not.  It’s about about how batshit-crazy we all are.  It’s about how each and every one of us has our ridiculous delusions.  And it’s about about how that might be okay.  And how maybe, instead of trying to rip each other’s delusions away, we should relax, and take note of our own.

As if I had something to teach those wrong people cluttering up the Internet.  Sure, I can point out the logical inconsistencies in this one post, or the incorrect assumptions that prompt this other post.  But what does that teach?  What is the use of winning an argument if it doesn’t help me or others enjoy life more?

So I don’t worry when people on the Internet are wrong.  And I don’t bother challenging them.

Unless, of course, it seems like it would be fun.  Then I jump right in.

2 Comments
November 13, 2013

Tea with the landlord

Kunri, Sindh.  2006

Our landlord lives in the flat below us. He invites me over for tea in the evening, after the nap. His place is nicer than ours. I like ours better, though. We have the roof. It’s one of the biggest buildings in Kunri—three storeys. And the high walls on the roof make it look taller, though they do spoil our view.

I sit with my landlord on the charpai. His English is good, and I’m grateful. I’ve only been in Pakistan a year and Urdu still makes me nervous. We talk about all sorts of things. He asks me about my family. He asks me about Canada. Strange, I don’t seem to ask him much.

He brings up religion. They always do here. I’m eager on this subject. I take control. I make my argument. Tight and powerful. I show the weak spot in his (what shall I call it?) cosmology. Proved. Done. QED.

But he doesn’t get it. He has no answer, but he is unconvinced. Seeing that the stakes are raised, he throws his own attack at me. It’s nothing I haven’t heard before. Nothing I haven’t thought of before. It doesn’t faze me. I have no answer to give him, though. And the look on his face tells me he thinks he’s won something.

The conversation moves on, I suppose. I hardly notice. If only I’d had more time, I could have told him something clearer. Something that would have helped him see what I see. It’s just so obvious from my side, and I can’t understand why he can’t see it. He’s not an idiot, after all. I wonder, as we shake hands and I turn to go home, if he is thinking something similar about me.

I don’t sleep much that night. It’s hot. My bed is on the roof, nuzzled by winds that have been gentled by the high walls. I stare at the stars and ask my silent God to sow a seed in my landlord’s heart. To crack the hard shell of his delusion.

At least as much as he’s cracked mine.

1 Comment
November 7, 2013

Teaching in Kunri

Allah Wala Chowk

My classroom is small.  A second-storey room with an open window looking out to the fields in the nearby Christian district of Josephabad.  I have eight students in my split grade seven / eight class.  I look at them weakly this morning, because I’m in the middle of a malaria resurgence.  Today we’re trying to talk about history.  The history from their textbook is not the history I learned in school.  We aren’t learning about the First Nations people or the French Revolution.  Our histories are full of strange names like Jinnah, Nauru and Emperor Ackbar of the glorious Mughal Empire.  I ask if they know anything about European history.  One student tells me how much he loves Hitler.  It is hard to fight him and the malaria at the same time

.

Leave a comment
November 4, 2013

Soren Kierkegaard on Reality

 

What the philosophers say about Reality is often as disappointing as a sign you see in a shop window, which reads; Pressing Done Here.  If you brought your clothes to be pressed, you would be fooled; for the sign is only for sale.

– Soren Kierkegaard

Leave a comment