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/ Courtney / Writing

finally, a new book announcement!; or: i am the worst businessperson

Recently, because of reasons, I have had occasion to give multiple people my business card (yes, I do actually have business cards! they are very old! but the info on them remains accurate! I think!). That being the case, and in view of the fact that this blog’s address is emblazoned (actually printed demurely) upon said business cards, I guess it doth behoove one to write something here about one’s most recent accomplishments and current activities.

Well, that was unnecessarily mouthful-ish.

ANYWAY, I have a new book out.

ANNOUNCING

APPETITE FOR ANTITHESIS: (DE)KNOWING GOD IN A LENTEN PRACTICE is my first ever non-fiction tome. It’s based on the practice known as “Atheism for Lent,” brainchild of philosopher and radical theologian Dr. Peter Rollins. He kindly has allowed me to pick apart his baby and dress it up in all sorts of mismatched outfits of my choosing, and he also wrote the Foreword. The man is apparently infinitely forgiving.

For a little more detail, here’s an excerpt from my Intro:

In 2023, I participated in Atheism for Lent for the third time. Or maybe the two-and-a-halfth time. This go-’round, I worked through each day’s material by posting my various thoughts and confusions on my blog….

Hoping for conversation and critique, I shared several blog links with fellow AfL participants. The feedback both helped my understanding of the material and encouraged me to keep blogging. And finally, I realized what I was doing: I was popularizing the AfL texts and visuals, making them more accessible not only to myself, but to all of us who didn’t have an extensive philosophical and/or theological background.

…It occurred to me that if it helped me and helped AfL participants of ’23, then maybe it could help AfL participants every year. And if so many AfL people deemed it useful, then maybe Peter Rollins would deem it useful, too.

Hey there, Pete, I had an idea….

And that’s how this book came to be.

It’s worth noting that this Lenten practice of atheism is not offering a new belief system. It’s the farthest thing from such an offer…and if you’re hoping for concrete answers concerning what to do with your existence every day, you will come away from this Rollinsic practice and/or this book disappointed and frustrated, if not angry. Not to mention that you’ll miss a good deal of the meat these writers and thinkers put forward for mastication, ingestion, and digestion, and, in some cases, incorporation (into-body-tion).

Instead of giving us something to hold on to, Atheism for Lent aims to take (some? of) our unexamined safety nets away.

This practice is about articulating things we think we believe—and things we didn’t know we believe. It’s meant to help us look closely at the foundations we’ve considered ever firm, that we might determine just how solid they truly are. It uses a dialectic: presenting a thesis, providing a counter-thesis, and sometimes even wrapping things up in a synthesis of the two. Counter-thesis can become the new thesis—which then, itself, must be countered. And so the conversation goes on.

This dialectical practice of Atheism for Lent critiques and questions our dearest-held beliefs in a way that helps us critically discern whether or not those beliefs are functional in reality. Do they truly work for us? improve our lives? make us better people? Do they fulfill what they promise us for the now? Can they fulfill what they promise for the future?

We cannot find answers to these questions if we don’t allow something to destabilize us. We cannot find answers to these questions if we refuse to doubt.

…Hello darkness, my old friend….

I’ve been calling this book my theo-philosophical doorstop. It’s a honkin’ big book, y’all. In my defense, the bibliography is necessarily massive, because the book showcases 48 different philosophers and theologians throughout history; the writings and/or practices of several different groups of mystics; and a smattering of writers, artists, and musicians. In reading, you’ll move back and forth between theistic and atheistic belief systems, critiques of various faiths and philosophies, despair and hope, comfort and existential dread. You’ll see paintings and read about the heat death of the universe.

Oh, and you’ll read a lot about cats, because who the hell writes a philosophy book without including cats.

This book was a labor of blood. Tears and sweat happened too, but they were made of blood. It’s all blood. There aren’t even any zombies or vampires (at least, I don’t remember putting any in there, but I make no guarantees). But still, it’s all lifeblood in there. I probably need a transfusion.

Well, that was unnecessarily gory. (Maybe.)

If you follow this link, you’ll find a page listing most of the vendors where APPETITE FOR ANTITHESIS is available as an ebook:

  • Kobo
  • Thalia
  • Apple
  • Smashwords
  • Angus & Robertson
  • Vivlio
  • Fable.

You can also find the book at:

If you don’t see your preferred vendor, drop me a comment below, and I’ll see what I can do.

I won’t say “happy reading,” because “happy” isn’t what this book is for. So, I’ll just say…thanks.

And I hope I whet your appetite. XOXO

/ Courtney / Language

the Lack in my follow-up

So, when last you left Your Heroine, she’d posted a thing about a McGowan-Engley podcast episode entitled “Euphemism.” If you haven’t read that thing, you should probably go do that now. And maybe even listen to said podcast episode, too. In fact, your best bet at maintaining serenity and sanity is probably just to skip Your Heroine’s scribal meanderings and go crawl straight into the original horses’ mouths. Not that I’m calling Todd and Ryan horses. I’ve never met either of them, but from photos and vids online, I’ve never gained an impression of anything remotely equine about either of them. YMMV, of course, but I think that says more about your need for zoomorphizing people than it does about the two humans in question.

I seem to have disgressed.

Anyway, after my previous post, I listened to more of the episode, and I have a few thoughts to share. They might lack coherence, and they will most certainly lack length. I would apologize profusely, but I suspect that the latter will be of relief to most of you.

I seem to be in self-deprecatory mode today. What a deal.

Something struck me further about Todd’s description of how euphemism blunts trauma. He brings an example from his own life: the struggle of watching his mother succumb to Alzheimer’s disease. (Having lost a great-aunt and a grandmother to this horrific disease, and watching a relatively young aunt degenerate under it year after year for nearly the past decade, I find this example both fitting and a little too apt.) Todd talks about the necessity of giving over his mother’s living situation into the hands of a “memory care facility.” This term is, of course, the euphemism: this is not a facility where memories are cared for. The memories themselves will unavoidably continue to disintegrate; there is neither preservation of them nor prevention of their inevitable dissolution.

A “memory care facility” is, then, a facility for caring for a person in their loss of memory. But we don’t call these institutions “loss of memory — care facility” — because that doesn’t blunt the trauma which people undergo when consigning the loved one to this type of professional care. The designation “memory care facility” is meant to make you feel better about making your person go live among strangers who are professionals in feeding, cleaning, and safeguarding adults with the minds of toddlers — and strangers who suffer the same illness and need the same care. If we called it what it really is, fewer people would put their loved ones there, and these facilities would make a lot less money.

That last part about the money is my thought; I don’t think Todd and Ryan talked about that aspect of it. And maybe I sound jaded — but over the years, in trying to figure out why humans choose one action over another, I’ve found that “follow the money” usually applies. (Upton Sinclair is in play here, as well, but that is another story that shall be ranted another time.)

NOTE: I have zero problem with consigning a loved one to a safe, aboveboard, professional care facility. There comes a point when the health and safety of that loved one depend on 24/7 professional care, and keeping them at home for as long as possible at all cost is not actually loving, but selfish.

One problem with blunting trauma, Todd points out, is that when we do things to soften these blows, all we’re doing is putting off dealing with it. And the longer and more deliberately we put off dealing with it, the longer we use euphemisms around it, the worse the trauma is going to hit us in the long run.

Harking back to my last post: in my own home, I have a definite say in how others in my home comport themselves. Not only do I have a say, I have direct influence. Not only do I have direct influence, I have an explicit responsibility for setting and maintaining certain boundaries. For example, I have a responsibility for making sure my offspring learns — via my example, via her dad’s example, and via natural consequences of her actions — not to stand on the dining room able and scream obscenities. When her friends or our friends are in our home, I carry a responsibility for setting that same boundary with them. (Please note that none of the three of us nor any guest of ours has ever even hinted at wanting to stand on the table and scream obscenities, much less attempted doing it.)

In the public sphere, though, in the commons, I do not have the responsibility for making sure other people don’t stand on tables and scream obscenities. They might do it; but it’s not my job to stop them. By refusing to listen and by walking away, I might be one of the people who allows them to experience the unpleasant consequences of their behavior — because, once again, we all make the rules of the commons together. And one of the rules generally goes something like: “if you stand on a table in public and scream obscenities, people are going to remove themselves from your presence and you will be alone, screaming at clouds or whatever.” Another general follow-up rule might be: “if you keep this up long enough, somebody’s going to get irritated enough to call on people with physical strength and/or weapons to remove you.”

On my blog, which is in many ways more a private arena than a public one, I have the right and the responsibility to make sure no one in comments is standing on my metaphorical tables and screaming obscenities at me or at other commenters. In this context, exercising my right and responsibility takes the form of first warning the screamer, then deleting the screamer’s comments if the screamer persists in ignoring my warnings. This process is an application of what writer John Scalzi calls “the Mallet of Correction.” It is highly effective.

On Mastodon, which is a public arena, I don’t have the right to tell someone not to stand on a fediverse table and scream obscenities. I do have the option of muting and/or blocking them — which allows them to experience the natural consequences of their behavior. If they keep it up long enough, somebody’s going to get irritated enough to call on an instance admin to toss the obscenities-shouting fedizen out of the instance.

Those are all extreme examples, but I think they get the point across.

Now. What if I, Courtney, find the word “fuck” offensive? (I don’t, because of reasons — but that’s yet another epistle for another time.)

If I find the word “fuck” offensive…if it causes me a deeply visceral, unpleasant emotional reaction…then I enjoy the right to ask people within my own home not to use that word. Because that’s my private sphere, and I am one of the persons in that private sphere who owns both the right and the responsibility for setting boundaries.

But even if I find the word “fuck” offensive…even if it causes me a deeply visceral, unpleasant emotional reaction…I still do not have the right to ask people on Mastodon not to use it, because Mastodon is a public space. It is part of the commons.

Can I politely ask someone in an exchange of “toots” (Mastodon posts) not to use that word when in conversation with me? Sure. But I can’t make them not use it, and I can’t ask anyone else to make them not use it. And even if I’m polite in my request, I have no recourse if my conversation partner decides I’m tiresome for asking and blocks me.

So, if I find the word “fuck” offensive, but people on Mastodon — a public space I want to continue engaging with — keep saying “fuck”…what can I do? Well, I can loudly and continually proclaim my aversion to the word and demand people stop using it. I can pin a relevant toot to the top of my profile and link to it every time I encounter the word “fuck” on this social media site. When scrolling through the feed of fellow fedizens I follow, if I see the word “fuck” in someone’s post, I can reply to them and ask them to use hide their post behind a content warning. If they refuse, I can harass them until they give in or block me. Or, if they refuse, I can block them.

All of these actions on my part are a violation of the commons — because apparently, I have some kind of trauma attached to the word “fuck,” and I am trying to make other people respond to it the same way I do.

I am trying to make other people replace the word “fuck” with euphemisms (either a substitute word or a content warning [WHICH IS A TYPE OF EUPHEMISM]) in order for my trauma to be blunted.

And every time I do this, whether the other person submits to my demand or not, I am holding my trauma ever farther at arm’s length instead of facing it. This only allows my trauma to deepen and become stronger, because — as Ryan points out in the Why Theory episode, my use of euphemisms creates in my mind and in my heart an alternate reality in which the ur-cause of my trauma was really not so bad. This alternate reality lets me tell myself the story that “yes it was AWFUL but now I can live with it on a daily basis because other people aren’t confronting me with it all the time.” Ultimately, I come to believe that I am in control. (The feeling that we have control is only ever an illusion.)

I’ll say it as bluntly as I know how: every time you demand that someone in the public stop saying something that triggers your trauma reaction, all you’re doing is fucking yourself up even further by creating for yourself an intellectual and emotional alternate reality.

Equally as bluntly: if someone says something that triggers your trauma response, then your responsibility is to go do the work of facing that trauma and learning to deal with it in a healthy manner.

What it boils down to is the same thing my mom told me about relationships when I was a kid: you cannot change the other person; you can only change yourself, or remove yourself from the relationship.

And finally as bluntly: some of you reading this are feeling offended by what I’m saying. And I want to be clear about what I’m NOT saying: I am NOT saying that all of us have blanket permission to say whatever we want to in public without experiencing negative consequences; I am NOT saying that it’s okay to use currently dehumanizing or historically dehumanizing language; I am NOT saying that you should be able to post images publicly that depict torture, war, cruelty, or a host of other images that people online frequently request be hidden behind a trigger warning.

What I am saying is that every time you feel a painful, visceral response to something you see or hear in the commons, then that is a signal for you to be doing the work of confronting your trauma. And if, instead of going out and doing the work, you demand euphemisms to cover over the thing that triggers you, then you are not alleviating your own pain. You are, instead, deepening your own trauma and guaranteeing that it’s going to last a much longer time than it would have. In effect, you’re slapping a compression bandage on a broken leg and telling yourself you’ll be able to walk again.

And yes, everything I’m saying requires an answer to the question: “is trauma healable?”

The only answer I can give is: I don’t believe that trauma is ever fully healable…because, when you get right down to the nitty-gritty of being human, that in itself is a trauma we can never get past…and that’s okay. That is existence in this universe. But I do believe that like that broken leg, trauma can be healed to the point where we can walk again. The evidence of the fracture won’t ever vanish into perfect wholeness…but we can heal to a point at which we are thriving again, even though we limp.

(Hint: we are all of us limping.)

What I do know for sure is that if you keep bowing to euphemism, it’s going to enable you to do nothing but deepen your own trauma…and, eventually, inflict it on others.

I didn’t mean to write quite this much on this particular aspect of it all, and I’ve wholly missed delving into another part of the Why Theory episode I wanted to walk about, so CELEBRATE WITH GLADNESS AND TRUMPETS Y’ALL BECAUSE THERE WILL BE A PART THREE heavens help us all.

/ Courtney / Language

the Lack in the Left

I’ve been listening on occasion to the Why Theory podcast by Todd McGowan and Ryan Engley. I don’t always understand what they’re talking about — but at the very least, there’s never a dull moment with these two.

This morning, I started the episode “Euphemism.” Full disclosure: I’ve only gotten about ten minutes in, because their discussion sparked thoughts that I needed to write down. So, without further ado or adon’t….

In this episode, Todd and Ryan posit that “euphemism” is the new politics — not only of the USA, where it perhaps has a lampshade permanently attached to it, but of the entire world. The initial example they give is D.O.G.E (which, for the record, I refuse to refer to as anything but the letters D-O-G-E, because “doge” and the associated pronunciation are a fun but ridiculously silly meme and I am determined to be prescriptivist about how utterly inane and juvenile it is to name a governmental agency after it).

*this* is doge

Anywhich, Ryan and Todd state that the agency name “D.O.G.E.” is a euphemism for the agency’s destruction of the public.

It’s been 30 minutes, so I don’t remember now if the guys use the word “destruction,” but that’s how my Swiss-cheese memory has chosen to retain the information.

I’m connecting this with some of the things I’ve read in Todd’s Embracing Alienation (highly recommend!), in which he defines and discusses “the public” (especially in the book’s final chapter). Basically, in the public, you don’t get to make the rules. I don’t get to make the rules. For better or for worse, we all make the rules together, and none of us gets to escape the consequences of infringing upon or breaking those rules. You don’t get to leave your home, step out onto the public sidewalk, and behave in that space exactly the way you would inside your home. I don’t get to walk into a library and hum loudly to myself as I browse books, the way I hum and sing loudly when I’m at home. When we’re at a city park, we don’t get to fence off an area and refuse to let strangers into it. And so forth.

In the public, we’re constantly confronted with the Otherness of people. We’re constantly confronted with the myriad ways in which the Other

is alienated
is alien and
alienates us.

This highlights to us in a most discomfiting manner the myriad ways in which we ourselves

are alienated from ourselves
are alien to ourselves and
alienate ourselves both from the Other and from our Self.

The public is an uncomfortable space in which to tarry. It’s also a space that’s vital for our ability as humans to live together in this universe and on this planet. We must have a commons in which no one person and no one group of people gets to make all the rules and force everyone else to follow them. For better or for worse, we all make the rules of the commons together — and adhering to those rules by general consent is, paradoxically, one of the only ways we get to live in a society and yet experience freedom.

In simplest terms, the so-called Department of Government Efficiency has the task of eliminating wasteful spending. According to Todd and Ryan (and me, ftr and fwiw), what’s happening is that this group of people with no experience in these matters is looking at things of the public they do not understand; seeing that these things are expensive, and doing away with them. The D.O.G.E. disruptions of Social Security, as well as D.O.G.E.’s plans for Social Security, are good examples.

The question, I think, is why? Of what possible benefit can all of this be? I know very little of economic theory, but even I can see that in the long run, this targeted erosion of the commons, of the public, will cost the US-American public an unimaginable amount more than any current “waste” costs us. (And it will cost us in more that just financial means.) I mean, if we’re to eliminate waste in governmental spending, can we please start with the disproportionately huge salaries drawn by politicians and their various staff organizations? Nobody should be able to become wealthy as a result of their job in government — not senators, not governors, not presidents.

The highest yearly salary in the senate currently nears US$200,000.00.
You cannot tell me that the value of that person’s work is greater than the value of the work of a schoolteacher in Oklahoma.
I’m not going to debate that.

Don’t even get me started on the president’s annual salary of US$400,000.00.

So. Before we go slashing things like museums and Medicaid, science and social programs, can we please eliminate the cash cow that all of our politicians are milking to our collective detriment?

But back to the why of it all. If even an uneducated layperson can see the looming disaster smeared in human feces on the wall, then what the hell is the because?

Well, it goes back to Lack. It goes back to alienation and self-alienation.

If you’re the kind of person who

categorically refuses to engage in honest introspection
feels irrationally angry at the thought of making yourself vulnerable to others
— which is an irrational anger that covers over fear of anyone’s seeing your failings —
despises and rejects the Otherness you perceive in someone who’s different from you
(and let’s be honest — what you despise in another person is usually something you despise about yourself)
and, therefore, despises and rejects the Other,

then of course you’re going to do everything you can to destroy and eliminate any spaces where the Other has the freedom to move, to speak, to act. Of course.

Of course.

And what we’re seeing is the Right’s radical, ultimate response to their own terror of the alien Other.
Which is, really, the Right’s radical, ultimate response to their terror of the Lack in themselves.

Now for the Left’s responsibility concerning all of this.

And feel free to sit with that statement, that idea, for a minute. Doesn’t feel great, does it? Nope, not to me, either.

I’ve never claimed the label “Left” any more than I’ve claimed the label “Right.” There’s a lot of personal history informing where I stand and where I’ve stood, but I’m not going to get into that right now. For my current purposes, suffice it to say that these days, if you’re wanting a neat drawer to put me in, you can use the one labeled “Left” — just keep in the front pocket of your brain the fact that no human is all one thing, and nuance is important.

Ideas and concepts that involve care and concern for the most vulnerable, no matter who they are — these are ideas and concepts we generally? find in that same “Left”-hand drawer. (“But Courtney — what of that nuance you were just talking about?” –Yes, I know. But this is a blog post, not a book chapter, so you’re going to have to bear with some of my generalizations and shorthand.) Elon Musk, a right-wing South African billionaire obsessed with the letter “x” and whose business career began with his father’s money, said, ““The fundamental weakness of western civilization is empathy.”

That statement, y’all — anathema to any civilized human, correct?

Well, sort of. And maybe not.

It all depends on how you define “empathy.”

I’m not going to speak to how anyone else defines it. Me, I consider the word’s etymology and the fact that it was coined in English in 1909 as a translation of the German word Einfühlung (see Keywords for Today: A 21st Century Vocabulary, ed. McCabe and Yanacek). It means a “feeling into” another person’s emotions or “feeling into” a situation. There’s a connotation of deliberately, intentionally trying our damnedest to

see something from the Other’s perspective
understand where they’re coming from
name the emotions they feel as a result (which requires checking with them to see if they agree with the names) and
feel those emotions with them.

Here, empathy goes far deeper than sympathy ever can, and it leads inevitably to compassionate action (in word and/or in deed).

Back in my day — nineteen-hunnert-an’-none-o’-yer-bidness — I interacted regularly with a lot of people who complained about “political correctness.” It was “politically incorrect” to say the word “retarded”; we had to say “disabled” instead. It was “politically incorrect” to say “stewardess”; we had to use the term “flight attendant.” Pretty soon, we couldn’t say “African-American” or “Indian” anymore; now it had to be “Black” and “Native American.” And even though nobody used this term back then, these people in my circles complaining about “political correctness” were annoyed at having their language “policed.”

I probably complained too, but I honestly don’t remember. I spent most of my days amongst German kids, who were more concerned about pronouncing their “th”s correctly than they were worried about US-American language foibles. But I won’t claim full innocence in anything, because I just can’t remember (see: Swiss cheese).

As I look back, though, I believe that this “enforced political correctness” was fundamentally a call to practice sympathy and, going deeper, empathy and compassion.

The call was to stop using words to hurt others. The call was to listen when others claimed that certain words caused pain. My parents taught me not to call my friend an “asshole” when he made me mad. Granted, their given reason was that “bad language” didn’t please God, and we didn’t really get into why it displeased God. But eventually, I understood that this God I was meant to please (and, Gentle Constant Reader, I do encourage you to check out my latest book for further thoughts on “God”) didn’t like the word “asshole” because it is language that dehumanizes.

And anytime we use language that dehumanizes, we come one step closer to seeing that other person no longer as a fellow human — German: “Mitmensch,” a “with-human” — but as an object we can either use or eliminate on a whim.

The call to “political correctness” was a call to stop using language that ignored the other person’s humanity. It was a call to respect the Other as a human eking out a human experience in this universe.

Today, in this Winter Year of Our Discontent 2025, we don’t call it political correctness anymore. We call it “triggering language.” We give content warnings. We make sure that no matter what we say in public, we don’t offend anyone. We tread carefully. We tiptoe around the pieces of eggshell that might be somebody’s unpleasant experiences, we know not whose, but we know that person is out there and might end up having a bad week because of something we said.

Y’all.

This is a fucking CULTURE OF TABOO AND EUPHEMISM, and it is ensconced firmly in that nifty Left-hand drawer.

This is no way to run a railroad.

Why?

Because euphemism creates an ungodly number of rules and regulations that erode the public.

WE — those of us futzing around in that Left drawer, even we who are the most well-meaning — we are destroying the commons with our Incessant Euphemism, and we started doing it a long time before South-African-emerald-mine-X-D.O.G.E.r Musk showed up as shadow-VP of the USA.

“Please put trigger warnings on your posts about _____________________.”

“How many times have I asked for content warnings about _______________? I don’t want to see this shit!”

Honestly, sometimes it sounds exactly like my deceased, super-conservative grandmother who couldn’t stand the sight of blood or any mention of sex in her presence. Minus the four-letter word, natch.

Again: in the commons, in the public, you don’t make the rules. I don’t make the rules. Nobody is in charge of the rules. Nobody is in charge of enforcing the rules. Plenty of people will gladly put themselves in charge of public rule enforcement, but they are trying to cover over their own Lack by functioning as control freaks, and all while probably breaking the rules themselves (either in the act of policing others’ language or in unrelated ways).

What it boils down to is:

you do not get to behave in public the way you do at home
you do not get to make public spaces conform to the rules you follow inside your home
you do not get to do what you want in public without consequences you don’t like
you do not get to tell people what words to use in a space that is not inside-your-home

you do not get to demand that the commons adopt your preferred euphemism

you do not get to use dehumanizing language in the commons without uncomfortable-to-you results
you do not get to project your fears onto others in the public and force them to do and say what you would do and say.

Simply put: in the public, in the commons, you don’t get to pretend that you’re inside your safe zone.

Because you’re not.

The public is a dangerous space, people. It’s full of people. It’s full of inherent, Lacking, horrific Otherness. You don’t get to pretend otherwise. And if you try to pretend otherwise — by inviting others to bully the person you’re trying to police, or by using dehumanizing language with the intent to cause suffering, or by taking a barely-metaphorical chainsaw to public service after public service — then all you’re doing is destroying our commons and their associated freedoms one after the other.

That’s all for now. I’ll write a follow-up if the next ten minutes of the Why Theory episode inspire as many ruminations.

You’ve been (content) warned.

P.S. Just ftr, a blog is not a public space. It’s the blog writer’s invitation for you to peek into a select window of their home. Comment fittingly.