Sacrificing Sacred Cows
Discover more from Matthew Moran: Music & Musings
Sacrificing Sacred Cows
It don't help me sleep none but I'm feeling free now...
A few years ago, while on a train, I had a conversation with a local, city politician. We agreed on a few things, disagreed on a few things, and there were a few things I really knew far less about that I cared to admit.
“I think it is a good idea to revisit things we believe from time to time and test them with the greatest scrutiny we can muster.”
The above is a paraphrase of what he told me. He indicated that few people take the above challenge seriously. When presented with information that contradicts our established viewpoint, we look for whatever argument we can find to maintain our position. We are intellectually dishonest - with ourselves and with those we disagree with.
Steven Pinker cites a study in his book, Rationality, that proves that this is universal. It can be distressing.
That is why, in a previous piece, I had mentioned my friend George and the question he wished he asked the politician we met in Pasadena.
“When is the last time you changed your mind on an issue and what prompted that change?”
I took the aforementioned city politician’s challenge seriously. In doing so, my mind changed about a few things. Not immediately… change is painful. It requires you to arrive at a conclusion that you were misled, mistaken, and, the hardest part, willfully ignorant in many cases. It required me to admit I was wrong.
The byproduct is that I am far happier placing scrutiny on everything. On the flipside, it has largely left me without a “team” that I root for. As I indicated in my prior piece on science, the only policies I want to see politicians presenting need to be effective and information-based.
I may share more about where I sit with various cultural and political positions at some future time. But for now, a song.
"Close that door behind me, first morning light
Headed down that highway and opened up my eyes
And it don’t help me sleep none but I’m feeling free now
Left the altar stained with those sacred cows"
I wrote my song, Ordinary Man, reflecting sacrificing my sacred cows. Take a listen… let me know what you think.
Thanks for dropping by.
Matthew Moran
December 4, 2022
Ordinary Man Lyrics
VERSE
Close that door behind me, first morning light
Headed down that highway and opened up my eyes
And it don’t help me sleep none but I’m feeling free now
Left the altar stained with those sacred cows
VERSE
Setting out to find what still remains
Of those fairy tales & fables of my younger days
Maybe they’re just visions of what never was
Maybe they’re the prison, maybe they’re the cause
CHORUS
I’m not a hero making my last stand
I might be fool but I’m not going back again
But I’ll play my song every chance I can
And ode to every lost and lonely soul
From an ordinary man
VERSE
Taking names, taking stock
Making nice until I’m not
And all this bullshit, it fills the air
Smells like anger, tastes like, “I don’t care.”
Sacrificing Sacred Cows
This really hit home.
Your assertion that, "On the flipside, it has largely left me without a “team” that I root for," is, in part, the defining quandary of much of the past 30 years of my life.
I think I do revisit my views on issues (Although my outward adamance and anger sometimes conceals that), and I have slaughtered many sacred cows which once nursed me with the sweetest milk.
I won't go into great detail, but those sacred cows were my blessed, youthful (or should I say childish) dreams of a leftist promised land, a liberated, libertine psycho-sexually perverse Eden, and an endless bacchannal of halucinogens and "tangerine trees with marmalade skies."
As a consequence of revisiting views, my mind is a rather discordant amalgamation of seemingly inconsistent thoughts. Radicals think I am a reactionary, and Right wingers think I am Che Gueverra on Acid.
I like your song. Your voice is very, very good, and your lyrics are pithy and sharp. I take issue with only one assertion in your song: I don't want to sound like a supercilious son of a bitch, but I dont' think the ordinary man revisits and reevaluates his positions.
And, in this age in which extremism is amplified by the algorithims of social media, I think people often become more and more unquestioning, illogical and potentially brutal.