RELIGION!

I do not believe in God. I have no reason to. My parents didn't raise me as religious, except going to a church on Christmas Eve, and telling me what they knew about many different beliefs from around the world. In fact, the only one who was raised religiously is my father, who went to Catholic school. The nuns put him in a box because he was distracting the other students in his first-grade class. (He spent the whole time poking holes in the cardboard with his pencil.)

The thing about people is that we are matter, and we like to think we matter. The questions we constantly ask ourselves and each other only serve to make people afraid. Even people who who claim to have the answers. We are all terrified. The Puritans were afraid, and because of that they turned to dislike of those who they felt threatened their beliefs. Winthrop's animosity towards William and Hutchinson was fear, because they were different. Death is an especially frightening concept to many people throughout existence. The idea of having made it as far as possible though this often ruthless world only to have it halt suddenly with... something. Something being something or something being nothing. Either way, it’s hard to make it seem worth anything at all.

Religion is a medicine. Many people saw the questions, and each set about making their own cures for them. Each is different, but they are all aiming to cure the same thing. Some medications have been deemed successful. Others show unfortunate side effects. It even seems as if all of the education we put ourselves through is to try and become knowledgeable enough to start to answer the questions that no worldly facts and ideas can fully encompass. This is perhaps the reason why the Puritans loved to read and write so much. The attempts we make serve to better us, and our understandings of ourselves; that is the first step to getting anywhere at all. We must ask the questions of ourselves, but we shouldn’t expect to find the answers. 

It boils down to acceptance. Acceptance is a synonym of belief. That could be what the Buddha found when he reached enlightenment: Acceptance. His main idea was the cessation of suffering through forsaking desire: accepting what you have. Acceptance is something the early New Englanders did not understand, considering their attitude towards women, Native Americans, and anyone who did not share their beliefs.

In Sufism, a belief is that all religions are equal and do good for humanity. They are all different, but that doesn’t matter because they all strive to make people and the world better. I think that some religions are somewhat better or worse at this than others -- that some medicines are more effective. The thing is, they do all have a common goal for good, which can be difficult to see.

I do not feel that Vowell understood these things. She seemed too caught up in grappling with the petty struggles of Winthrop and his cohorts to understand why they acted the way they did, and what their religion truly meant to them and the nation they began. The shining city on a hill is less important to me than who lives there, and how we can get to visit them.

To me, God is no more than a big placebo. But if it ain't broke, don't fix it. 

Right?

Where My Ladies At?

I view myself as a feminist. Am I a man-hater? Am I lesbian? Am I crazy?!

No! It just means that I believe in equal rights for every single human! Because guess what? Those stereotypes are exactly the reason that it's important to have equality. The things Sarah Vowell taught me about the Puritans who settled America got me thinking about how truly deep-rooted the attitude of not only misogynism, but of native oppression in our country from the very beginning. It's all about the True Entitlement of the Great White Man.

"Fight the patriarchy!" they say. Patriarchy means "the rule of the father", and if pater is Latin for father, and to the Puritans Father was representative of God, then equality is the last thing on their minds. Then again, these Puritans were Pope-hatin' pious folks. If the Pope is the father, then perhaps they could be convinced of the idea in some roundabout manner.

It's clear the Vowell is a fan of the more modern rights that we have, and much less of a fan of the attitude “She is either male property (Mrs.), wannabe male property (Miss), or man-hating harpy (Ms.),” writes Vowell in a spew of I-am-bothered-about-the-state-of-things. Her adoration of Anne Hutchinson, the only strong female in the whole of New England, was annoying at times although it gave me more perspective on the lack of gender equality. Hutchinson was able to attract many people to her ideas even as a mother of twelve children, and she was both smarter and more in the right than her prosecutors at her trial.

Vowell also made it very clear that it was despicable how the New Englanders felt about the Native Americans, and how they treated them. Even the illustration at the very beginning of the Massachusetts Bay Colony seal saying "Come over and help us." Seriously? Seriously? These Puritans, these self-hating, god-loving (or perhaps fearing) people have this feeling that these perfectly happy and self-sufficient people need their help.

Winthrop could certainly have benefitted from a healthy dose of equality. He seemed like the sort of man who, if approached in the right way, could have changed his mind and fought for equality. He considered himself of high moral standing, and perhaps having such a cause would have fed his mind and given him energy. He certainly proved that he could fight for causes. The only problem is that no matter how far we seem to have come from these times of early white America, we still have so far to go.

Title & Style, an Overall Review

It is not difficult to comprehend why Sarah Vowell chose to title her book The Wordy Shipmates. There were a whole lot of people who came over to America on ships together; that's the shipmates part. From the beginning, Vowell stresses their fervor for reading and writing. "Quill-crazy New Englanders," she calls them on page 13. However appropriate the title may be, I found it very off-putting. It gives the impression that the book is going to be dry and boring. A wordy book? God forbid!

I soon found myself to be mistaken. Vowell made her writing as engaging as she possibly could, like one of those wonderful sorts of teachers who can make the most boring of lessons into an adventure. Now, that's not to say that I liked it. I personally do not have an enormous issue with reading things which initially seem boring, because once the first hundred pages are past it's often difficult to put the book down. This book was not like that. While Vowell wrote well, I found myself laying my copy down with a feeling almost like disgust, until about 75 pages in when I began to get used to it. It didn't feel like she was taking herself seriously enough. It was clear that Vowell was an expert on the subject, but her work did not come out scholarly. Not Cadwellian enough. She jumped around too much and made pop culture references that not everyone would get, causing a fairly simple history-line to become confusing. It felt like she was trying too hard, and dumbing things down. 

It's something that a lot of people do these days: make themselves seem a lot less intelligent than they really are in order to be more liked by people. The thing is, the sort of people that you should really want to be liked by are those who would admire that intelligence in its full form. Vowell seems to have written her book in the former style. Who was Vowell even writing this book for, anyway? Was it some weird memoir-slash-history lesson? Was it for adults who feel a dearth of knowledge about the early white settlers and wish to brush up? Was it for history-resistant teens who would be intrigued by outdated pop culture and some lady's opinions? It is hard to say. 

My analysis sounds harsh, but for the most part I did end up getting over my negative feelings towards the book. From some people I've heard that it's terrible, but I fall into the category of people who think it isn't all that bad, especially for a school book.  I would not recommend it, but I do feel like it was worth my time for the most part, and the informational content was eye-opening -- but that's for another post.