Yet Another Unitarian Universalist
A postmodern heretic's spiritual journey.
My older sister suggested drawing a cartoon about ICE. At first I couldn’t think of anything I wanted to draw (plus it’s a pretty depressing topic). Then she told me about a small town where local law enforcement officers signed up to work with ICE…
(Eventually, this will turn out to be about progressive spirituality — bear with me….)
Scott Adams, the creator of the “Dilbert” cartoon (and the Dilbert merchandise empire) has died of prostate cancer, at age 68. Cancer deaths are often unpleasant, and Adams’s last months sound like they were especially painful and debilitating, not something you would wish on anyone.
Adams left behind a very mixed legacy. His “Dilbert” comic strip was syndicated from 1989 until 2023. For the first few years, the strip often offered a fresh and funny take on what it’s like to be a lower-level white collar worker in corporate America. But Adams’s career went downhill from there.
Although, who am I to judge? I guess I can call myself a cartoonist, insofar as I drew a regular strip for the weekly newspaper of the undergraduate college I attended. My drawings were good enough, but my weakness was writing the strips. I depended on my friend Mike (who’s now a rabbi) to write the strips, and after he graduated I never drew another weekly strip. I manage to write acceptable nonfiction prose, but when it came to writing comic strips, I was a failure.
By contrast, Scott Adams was a wildly successful cartoonist, even though he drew badly. His characters show no particular expression, and he had little understanding of how to represent three dimensional space. But his writing was good, or it was in the first few years of the strip, because in writing for the strip he managed to capture some of the more frustrating aspects of corporate bureaucracy. He came out with a strip that appealed to the white collar cubical worker at a time when there were lots of white collar cubical workers. His success as a cartoonist was probably due more to lucky timing than anything else.
Yet after half a dozen years, in the late 1990s, “Dilbert” was getting repetitive. By the 2000s, none of the characters was likable; or maybe Adams no longer liked any of his characters. And by the 2010s, the strip was just plain boring, as well as mean-spirited. I think what happened was simple. In 1995, Adams quit his white collar cubical job in order to work full-time as a cartoonist; once he stopped working in a cubical, he stopped being funny.
Furthermore, by the 2000s, Adams was becoming an unlikeable person. My take on it is that he let his success go to his head, deluding himself into thinking he was pretty hot stuff even though he couldn’t draw and he wasn’t much of a writer. He became pompous and self-righteous. You can read a brief summary of his online sockpuppetry, trolling, and bad behavior here. His bad behavior kept getting worse, culminating in 2023 when he said in his podcast:
“If nearly half of all Blacks are not okay with white people—according to this poll, not according to me, according to this poll—that’s a hate group. And I don’t want to have anything to do with them. And I would say, based on the current way things are going, the best advice I would give to white people is to get the hell away from Black people. Just get the –– away. Wherever you have to go, just get away. Because there’s no fixing this. This can’t be fixed.” [Expletive deleted by me.]
(Full disclosure: I admit I didn’t listen to the podcast myself; I depended on this transcription.)
In fact, as early as 2000, Adams had turned into one of the least likable characters in his strip. He founded Scott Adams Foods to manufacture a frozen burrito that he called “the blue jeans of food.” What a stupid phrase. It’s a phrase that is classic corporate gobbledy-gook; it is exactly the sort of meaningless utterance made by the Pointy-Haired Boss of the early “Dilbert” cartoons. Adams had become the Pointy-Haired Boss.
I told you that eventually we’d get around to religion. In the last few weeks of his life, when he was in hospice, Adams apparently became a Christian. According to TMZ, in a final episode of his podcast his ex-wife read a letter from him which stated “he’s converting to Christianity because of the ‘risk-reward’ calculation.” (For an in-depth discussion of this philosophical stance, see Pascal’s Wager on the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy; there is little evidence that Adams understood any of the philosophical complexities.) Calling his conversion to Christianity a “‘risk-reward’ calculation” sounds like more corporate gobbledy-gook. Again, it’s the sort of thing the Pointy-Haired Boss would say, which is kind of sad.
Crucially, he did not say what form of Christianity he converted to. Did he become a Roman Catholic? a Latter Day Saint? Russian Orthodox? an evangelical Protestant? “Dilbert” had grown so mean-spirited in its last couple of decades that it’s hard for me to imagine what form of Christianity finally attracted him. Or maybe he just didn’t know all that much about Christianity, and just called himself a Christian without knowing quite what he meant. However, from my religious point of view, he didn’t have to worry about the afterlife. If he had become almost any form of progressive Christian, he would have understood God as love and forgiveness, and he wouldn’t have had to worry so much about formal conversion. Instead, he seems to have understood God as a sort of deified Pointy-Haired Boss, and Christianity as a corporate bureaucracy. Which is too bad.
But despite all your flaws, thank you Scott Adams, for a half dozen years of a good comic strip. Not a great comic strip — you weren’t a Herriman, or a Mauldin, or a Johnston. And maybe you should have done what Bill Watterson did, refusing to sell related merchandise, then quitting while you were still fresh. Nevertheless, your half dozen good years remain a legacy that surpasses what most people manage to do. So thank you for the good stuff, and we’ll try to forget about the rest of it.
1/14: overall revision for clarity.
In its Dec. 6-12 edition, The Economist has an article has an article in which it proposes its “word of the year.” The article has no byline, and cites no sources — typical for The Economist, and one of the reasons I do not fully trust it — but this particular article is mostly humorous so I guess I don’t need a byline. The anonymous author begins the article by naming words-of-the-year that were runners-up:
“Finance is a good place to look for words of the year because trends move fast, and its denizens like neologisms. TACO is this year’s favorite. Coined by Robert Armstrong, a journalists at the Financial Times, it stands for ‘Trump Always Chickens Out’ and points to the many tariff fights Donald Trump has picked and then backed down from….”
For the record, The Economist’s winning word of the year is “slop,” as in “AI slop.”
The San Francisco Standard recently published an article by Zara Stone titled “How Gifted Is Your 3-year-old? IQ tests for preschoolers become the norm in Silicon Valley: Psychologists have seen a surge in Bay Area parents seeking a leg-up for admissions to elite schools.” Now remember — it’s elite preschools for which they’re seeking a leg up. That’s 3 years olds.
The long title of the article pretty much tells the whole sick story, but some of the quotes are revealing. The author interviews Tsunami Turner, who works as an educational psychologist at a company in San Jose that provides “child-centered therapy” as well as IQ testing services:
“‘Some parents come in with an IQ number in mind. They are really wanting to have their child hit a specific number,’ she said. Their kids are often very accomplished, taking dace, soccer, art, and music — and know they ‘have to get a certain number.’ They show up ‘highly anxious,’ she said. If scores come in lower than expected, Turner gets pushback and requests for retests.
“‘There’s a lot of societal pressure. The family is incredibly busy and wants their kid in a school that challenges their intellect and supports their development,’ she said. It can spiral quickly. ‘The goal is that a child will get into a good primary school, and that will lead them to getting into a good college, which will lead them to getting a good job and doing really well in the world.'”
In my 13 years working as a minister of religious education in Silicon Valley, I saw some of this — not so much among the families in the UU congregation there, because if you’re trying to fast-track your kids in this way, you don’t waste time on things like moral and spiritual education — but I did see it happening. It really is true, some well-to-do Silicon Valley parents start trying to build their child’s resume starting when the child is 2 years old. I feel this phenomenon is bad for children, and tends to result in accomplished but stunted and less-than-fully-human adults.
I use AI tools for certain tasks. But there are other tasks I would never use them for. Bloomberg News has an article on how AI-generated recipes are taking over both the web and social media. And it’s not going well, neither for the food bloggers, nor for the people trying to use AI-generated recipes. They interview Eb Gargano, who writes the Easy Peasy Foodie blog:
“Instead of sending home cooks to her decade-old, well-tested recipes, Google increasingly inserts AI-generated summaries stitched together from bits of her work and others’ that often get the basics wrong. An AI-assembled version of Gargano’s Christmas cake, for instance, would have people cooking a 6-inch cake for 3 to 4 hours at 320°F (160°C). ‘You’d end up with charcoal!’ she said. Meanwhile, traffic to her turkey recipe is already down 40% year over year….
“All of this, food bloggers say, erodes the simple promise of a recipe: that someone has actually cooked it before you have. To Gargano, this is the core issue. ‘No matter how clever the AI is,’ she said in a recent interview, ‘it can never actually test a recipe in a real kitchen and see how it works.’”
As a follow up to a previous post on tumbaderos — a tumbandero is the washtub bass that’s played in the Caribbean and Central America — tumbandero player Axel D. Rodríguez sent links to some fabulous videos. If you’re interested in tumbanderos or washtub bass, you’ll be fascinated by these videos, both to hear the varied playing styles, and to see helpful visual cues for making your own instrument.
Thank you Axel! (Find Axel and his band on Spotify — and on Youtube.)
Tingo Talango — Cuba 1 — A must-watch video showing a musician building a Cuban version of the earth bow, called a “tingo tualango” or a “tumbandero.” The earth bow was the African instrument from which the washtub bass and the tumbandero are derived. Skip ahead to 2:50 to watch the building of the instrument, and then watch it being played both by plucking the single string, and playing rhythm on the soundboard. The musician frets the string rather than adjusting the tension on the bow.
Tingo Talango — Cuba 2 — A short video with someone playing the tingo talango.
Tumbandera or Kaolin — Cuba 3 — Another traditional Cuban earth bow. These musicians adjust the string tension by moving the bow, and get different notes. In the short demonstration of playing, it seems the instrument sometimes requires two musicians — one to play, and the other to adjust tension to keep the instrument on pitch.
Quijongo Caribeño — Costa Rica — The visuals show some adults showing kids of about middle school age how to build an earth bow-derived instrument out of a wood box, a string, and a neck. (The audio isn’t coordinated with the visuals.)
Marengwen — Haiti — An earth bow-type instrument, but the string tension is fixed, and pitch is altered by fretting. In addition, rather than plucking the string, the musicians strike the string with a stick. A must-watch video.
Tumbandero or Bajo De Palangana — Puerto Rico 1 — A band with a tumbandero made from a plastic five gallon bucket.
Tumbandero or Bajo De Palangana — Puerto Rico 2 — Tumbandero made from a plastic five gallon bucket. One musician playing along to a recording, with a good view of his playing technique.
Tumbandero or Bajo De Palangana — Puerto Rico 3 — The tumbandero player picks up his instrument at 0:15. This instrument appears to be metal and plastic.
Tumbandero or Bajo De Palangana — Pureto Rico 4 — Tumbandero made with a plastic five gallon bucket. Once again, the tumbandero functions more like tuned percussion than a bass. You can hear the tumbandero from 0:00 to 2:45; and from 6:15 to the end.
Tumbandero or Bajo De Palangana — Puerto Rico 5 — A Smithsonian Folkways recording. Great audio, no visuals.
Tumbandero or Bajo De Palangana — Puerto Rico 6 — A tumbandero made out of a metal washtub. The tumbandero player explains his instrument as follows:
“Wherever the African diaspora is, you are going to find some sort of instrument similar to this one. In the case of [the musical genre] la plena, it’s an instrument that is complementary to the traditional panderetas [frame drums] and guiro [hollow gourd played with wire brush]. And it sounds close to a bass [in range]. But the pitch isn’t perfect, so it’s basically another percussive instrument.”
Axel also sent some photos he found online — since I don’t know the source of them, and whether they’re copyrighted, I decided not to include them in this post. But if you do an image search for “tumbandero” you should turn up some interesting images.
A final note: I really want to make the Costa Rican instrument. I like the sound of the wood, I like the looks of it, and it would be fun to make. But we don’t have room for such a large musical instrument in our tiny apartment.
The whole disgusting Epstein saga is really a story about how rich old white guys think they can do whatever they want. Jeffrey Epstein, as you recall, was the billionaire pedophile who died by suicide rather than go on trial for sex trafficking girls. And he had lots of rich old white guys as friends. People like Donny Trump, who up until a couple of days ago resisted releasing the Epstein files with all his political might — even though he had promised to release those files during his campaign. People like Larry Summers, who had a nasty email exchange with Epstein in which Larry asserted that women have lower IQ than men. People like No-longer-prince Andrew, who was photographed with his arm around a 17 year old girl that Epstein was trafficking. People like Peter Thiel, who was glad to have Epstein’s investments — an amount that now totals $170 million, none of which will go to Epstein’s victims — and who apparently got tax advice from Epstein.
In their relationships with Epstein, none of these rich old white guys demonstrated what I’d call a strong sense of morality. And now, they are all doing whatever they can to avoid any consequences for making friends with a billionaire pedophile. Donny Trump claims he was mad at Epstein and ended the friendship before anything bad happened. Andy Winsor denies everything, even as his brother the King of England strips him of all his titles. Larry Summers offers a hollow apology that he’s sorry for what he did — while enjoying his $40 million net worth in a very comfortable retirement. Petey Thiel offers no apology whatsoever for accepting Epstein’s money, because (I guess) his business is a realm where morality need not intrude.
As an old white guy myself, I feel it’s incumbent on people like me to call out other old white guys when they behave badly. Not that it will do any good with these guys; their actions show they don’t care about morality. Nevertheless, their lack of accountability makes me want to try (in my ineffectual way) to puncture their aura of smugness. So here goes nothing:
And please see my earlier post about how the rich old white guys get too much attention.
A comment by Axel D. Rodríguez, a musician and cultural researcher from Puerto Rico (his band on Spotify — Youtube), recently appeared on one of my old posts about the washtub bass. He gives some interesting information about the washtub bass that I wanted to highlight:
“For the past few years [he writes], I’ve been studying a Puerto Rican one-string bass known locally as the tumbandero. It appears historically in the northeast of the island — Loíza, Canóvanas, Río Grande, and Fajardo — and shares a clear lineage with African earth bows and the broader family of one-string, tension-controlled basses found across the Caribbean and the Americas.
“Through workshops, fieldwork, and conversations with older musicians, I’ve documented several Puerto Rican variants — the traditional washtub with stick and string, also a 5-gallon pail version used by plena musicians, and an older earth-bow-type form described in ethnographic literature. I’ve also traced connections with related instruments such as the Haitian mosquito drum (karolín/kalori-n), the Dominican gayumba, the Cuban tingo talango, the Makalapo y Seychells Islands, Gayumba Dominicana in the Dominican Republic….”
Rodríguez also writes that he has played the tumbandero himself on stage for several years. I found very little about the tumbandero on the web, but I did find one video on Youtube where it’s featured. There’s also a video on Facebook showing people making a tumbandero out of a five gallon bucket.
Since the washtub bass derives from the earthbow, an African instrument, it should be no surprise to find related instruments throughout the African diaspora. Nevertheless, I was fascinated to learn about the tumbandero.
This deity is a yipwon figure, from the Yimam people who live along the Karawari River in East Sepik Province, Papua New Guinea. Since I know essentially nothing about the Yimam people and their deities, I’m going to quote from various authorities who claim to know something.
Maia Nuku, in the recent book Oceania: The Shape of Time (Metropolitan Museum of Art, 2023), says this about yipwon figures.:
“Depicting ancestral spirits, yipwon figures have long played a central role in hunting and warfare for Yimam people along the Korewori [sic] River in the Middle Sepik. The figures served as vessels into which spirits were summoned before a hunt or raid. The carvings were either large-scale or small enough to be portable, to be carried and deployed by their owners as powerful amulets or charms. Large figures were owned by the group and kept in the ceremonial house, close to the back wall, the most sacred area of the house. Each yipwon bore a name and was paired with one of the senior male members of the clan. Before its assistance was required, the yipwon spirit was summoned into the sculpture by activating it with a mixture of betel nut, ginger root, and a small amount of the blood of the man who was activating it…. On entering the yipwon figure, the spirit could also possess its human counterpart, speaking through him to the assembled men…. Yipwon were not intended to be representative portraits of individuals, but, rather, an activated vision of the exceptional nonhumans with whom the community was in relation….”
Christian Kaufmann, Korewori: Magic Art from the Rain Forest (University of Hawaii Press, 2003), pp. 70-71, gives a version of the myth they say underlies the yipwon figures:
“In 1963 Eike Haberland and Sigfried Seyfarth made a detailed study of the Yimam on the upper Korewori and its tributary the Wogopmeri as well as the hills to the north of them. These people name their hunting helpers yipwon, which Seyfarth and Haberland translate as ‘hunting demon.’ … The yipwon hunting helpers and the somewhat different older hook figures of the Yimam owe their existence to a mythical event which has been described in detail. They were created from the wood chips that were left when Sun, a male being, cared the first slit-gong. They have a human-like life, and enrage Sun by committing a murder. When this deed is discovered by the moon-woman, their shame is such that they transform themselves on the spot into stiff, thin wood figures and press themselves in the dark against the wall of the men’s house. Sun appoints them as hunting helpers at the moment when he takes leave of humans forever.”
The Metropolitan Museu of Art has photographs of several yipwon figures on their web site. On the web page for one of those figures, they give a somewhat different summary of the same myth, probably from the same source (Seyfarth and Haberland):
“…Local oral tradition describes the origin of these distinctive images. When the spirit of the Sun, who formerly inhabited the earth, was carving the first slit gong (a large musical instrument), the pieces of wood chipped from the carving came to life as spirits who lived with the Sun in the men’s ceremonial house. One day these spirits killed one of the Sun’s male relatives and drank his blood, after which they stretched themselves out against the wall of the house and turned back into wood. Angered by their act, the Sun ascended into the sky while the yipwon remained on earth as patron spirits of warfare and hunting….”
I found very little information online about the Yimam people, who are also called the Alamblak people. The Joshua Project, a Christian group that aims to spread their religion to other peoples, claims that there are 3,100 Alamblak people today; they claim that currently 90% of the Alamblak are Christian, and they link to a translation of the Christian Bible into the Alamblak language. The only other references I could find to the Yimam or Alamblak people was in relation to their artworks. It seems that the only value the Alamblak / Yimam people have to the First World is either to provide artworks (which sell for quite high figures), or to provide converts to Christianity. And I wonder how much remains of their old religion and mythology: are the yipwon still active?
Religion News Service reporter Kathryn Post has an interview with William J. Kole about his new book, “In Guns We Trust,” to report on White evangelical gun culture. In the interview, titled “‘In Guns We Trust’ challenges white evangelicals to rethink their alliance with firearms,” Kole says that he was a part of White evangelical churches, but has been “deconstructing” his Christian faith over his perception that gun culture (and its ally, Christian nationalism) has nothing to do with Christianity:
“…I feel like the historical Jesus is objectively nonviolent. I understand that evangelicals will cherry-pick Scripture to find a few verses to help them feel more comfortable with gun culture, but I find it completely unbiblical. The churches that are embracing gun culture now were almost entirely pacifist up until the late ’60s and early ’70s, when a shift began. Even the Assemblies of God, where I served as a lay missionary for three years in Europe, was officially pacifist in its constitution and bylaws. So, they’ve had to pivot, and it’s a perplexing pivot for me. I just don’t see how weapons have anything to do with a faith tradition that is rooted in nonviolence.”
Kole also says that he’s now “reconstructing” his Christian faith, adding:
“I just can’t, in good conscience, continue in the evangelical tradition.”