Hating Republican

(Photo: http://www.allhatnocattle.net)



I cherish MANY of the lessons I’ve learned from Danny B. Over the years, he has intentionally, and on occasion perhaps accidentally, taught me the basics of virtually everything I know.

Among my favorite lessons is his somewhat idiomatic insistence that it is perfectly acceptable to “know” something. You are well within your rights to BE right about a thing, particularly a thing about which there is dispute. As a human, your opinion is absolutely as viable as any other – even when the opposition comes from an “expert.”

The trick, my old man explained, is to never form an opinion on the fly. Never be afraid to think long and hard about what you think, to consider what’s already been said and written about a topic before you make up your mind. And most importantly—read a book when you have a question. The answers to every theoretical question are already locked in your mind, but the keys to those answers have already been written down somewhere by another person pondering the same dilemma you are facing.

I have since learned on my own that once you settle on that answer, you must accept its rightness as an article of faith. Should legitimate proof arrive that disproves it, you must weigh that evidence as thoroughly as you did the original information that led to YOUR conclusion, and adjust your own opinion to reflect the new knowledge. To ignore new truth is immoral, and silly.

In one of my many college restarts, I found myself sitting in a Humanities class in a Central Florida community college.

The instructor was an older woman; smart, well traveled, and very set in her ways. At her age, she’d earned it. She had more life experience in the smallest section of her little finger than I did at the time, but she was still wrong.

The topic was the origin of the ankh (♀), and I still remember most of that particular lecture as if it were yesterday.

Her discussion was on ancient religions, and she spent more than a few minutes extolling the virtues of this Celtic symbol and its ties to certain theories about Stonehenge, and some of the early Pagan and Pan-Pagan traditions.

I raised my hand. “Excuse me ma’am, but isn’t the ankh Egyptian in origin?”

She actually got a bit angry.

(In her defense, part of that anger might have been a residual of reading my previous paper, which went to great lengths to pillage the very IDEA of ‘missionaries’ as one of the most culturally destructive movements of history. I got a “C” on it, although I believe she would’ve given me an “F” if she thought she could’ve. I stand by the accuracy of both that idea, and the context I presented it in at the time. But she was the professor, and I was the student.)

Her: “No, Mr. Stewart. The Celts were the first to use the ankh, blahblahblah …”

Me: “But, wasn’t the ankh a … hieroglyphic symbol of infinity, symbolizing a marriage of life and death, or something like that?”

Her: “No, Mr. Stewart. I think you have your histories confused. In fact, I’ve been to Egypt, and can assure you that while there may be some ankhs in more modern Egyptian lore, it was the Celts who first brought this particular symbol to civilization. ”

Me: “Oops. My bad. Sorry.”

It bugged me, because I wasn’t guessing. I was right. It wasn’t a question of “knowing” I was right, or needing to “prove” I was right. I was just right. There wasn’t even a debate to be had. This isn’t even a controversial position. It is quite simply, a fact.

I learned a lot from her in that course. She was a very good professor in many ways. She was always well prepared, and did a fantastic job of bringing in objects from her travels to illustrate various parts of history and the advance of civilization from various parts of the world (South America and Asia excluded, of course).

Which brought us some months later to one of the last class activities. As a treat, she was bringing a full-fledged slide show of photos from her trips to Paris, Egypt, and the Holy Land. I like slide shows.

And holy shit if slide 195 wasn’t a close up from an antiquities museum of some sort in Cairo of an artifact from shortly after the reunion of Upper and Lower Egypt. And dammit if she didn’t have a CLOSE UP of an ankh carved out of sandstone or something, which was 6000 years old, if it was a day.

Because I’m a jackass, I didn’t just let it slide.

Me: “Ummm….ma’am?”

(Months had gone by, we’d made our peace, sort of … and I’m sure she’d forgotten all about her dismissive comments earlier in the semester)

Her: “Mr. Stewart. Do you have a question?”

Me: “Of course, ma’am … (engage best attempt at charming, disarming smile…) how’d the Celts sneak one of their ankhs into that Egyptian hieroglyph?”

She actually turned red on me.

Her: “That’s all the time we have. Class dismissed.”

Important notes:
--It was HER slideshow
--It was HER opinion that the Celts originated use of the symbol
--She was in charge

THIS … is why I hate the Republicans.