This interview with Michio Kaku is long, but . . . wow! It's kind of like the next step past Hawking in popularizing esoteric science, with the added fun that all sorts of stuff gets tossed in, too - time travel, politics, the Theory of Everything, and the chance that I will, in the next nanosecond, find myself choking out my life on the surface of a different planet (hint: since it would probably occur longer than the life of the Universe, I'm not using sleep over it). He's a terribly exciting speaker.
Make the time - three hours. It will be worth it.
Saturday, October 23, 2010
Outsourcing War Crimes
The title of this post seems to be a nice summary of the Times take on the Wikileaks document dump.
I can't wait until tomorrow's installment on war contractors.
I guess this is a way to make sure all those torture allegations can be disproved. It wasn't us. It was other folks we got to do our dirty work for us.
I can't wait until tomorrow's installment on war contractors.
I guess this is a way to make sure all those torture allegations can be disproved. It wasn't us. It was other folks we got to do our dirty work for us.
Never Let Facts Get In The Way Of The Truth
So I encountered yet another of those "atheists" who insist that atheists are so much more peace-loving, smart, light-hearted, and generally better people than we Christians are. This particular line of argument would be a lot more convincing if it weren't for certain facts that keep intruding. The Stalinist Five Year Plans. The collectivization of the Kulaks. The Chinese Great Leap Forward and Cultural Revolution. Kampuchea. Can I get a witness? Actually, they're hard to come by because most of those who witnessed these events are dead. Dead at the hands of people who were not only atheists, but so adamant that there was no God that any expression of religious belief - what that may have been didn't really matter; Christianity, Islam, Buddhism, what-have-you - had to be met with violent force. When the Chinese invaded Tibet in their push for annexation, they didn't just take over the various government and communication centers. They invaded Buddhist temples and monasteries. They didn't just murder Buddhist priests, monks, and nuns. They tortured them. In the bloody swath that history has carved across the 20th century, this mostly forgotten bit seems relatively minor. More's the pity.
Last week, Bob Somerby noted an interview with physicist Michio Kaku on C-SPAN. Talking on the many themes of his new book, Kaku discussed the whole issue of extra-terrestrial life and the many claims that beings from other worlds have been and continue to visit our little neck of the Universe. Summing up Kaku, Somerby writes:
Back in the mid-1990's, I remember reading a story in the Richmond Times-Dispatch. It concerned a young man dying of a brain tumor. He had gone to his neurologist for a scan to check the progress of the tumor. That was all that was left now. Therapies, surgeries - all off the table. Yet, the young man had passed through the headaches and seizures and other symptoms, which seemed to have stopped.
The tumor was gone.
In the few short weeks between the two scans, the tumor had not simply shrunk in size. It was gone.
They did another scan, and the results were the same.
Now, I am no doctor, but I do know that tumors, for the most part, just grow. That's why they are so deadly. They can be reduced in size by pretty radical chemo-therapy, but it is always a struggle against the hyper-growth of the tumor.
Outside the grotto of Lourdes in France, there is a pile of crutches, canes, and wheelchairs. These have been left by those healed of their afflictions by . . . whatever . . . happens in there. Not everyone who goes there is healed. Yet, there are enough, the pile of no-longer-needed crutches mute testimony to that fundamental reality.
I mention these last two items, in connection with all the others, because what unites them is they exist outside our usual understanding of the way the world is supposed to work. UFOs, miracle cures, even the ideologically-induced mass murder of religious believers - these things defy our neatly-wrapped notions of how things are supposed to be. Yet, they are real. Denying them, any of them, out of hand exposes the denier as someone far more committed to some boxed-up notion of Truth than to the possibility the Universe includes all sorts of things that cannot be explained by our current ways of understanding. They might not even be amenable to the limited but very useful methods of science.
I am not suggesting that I think God cured some but not all the folks who visited Lourdes grotto. I am not suggesting the earth has been visited over the course of its long history by beings from other planets or dimensions. I am saying, however, that devotion to any ideology - be it science, or religion, or the denial of religion, or what have you - is a dangerous thing. Accepting our current ways of understanding the way the Universe works includes accepting that such understanding is limited. Science, religion, political and social ideology - they are committed to Truth. When facts intrude that disrupt our cozy notions of Truth, we human beings react violently. People, sometimes large numbers of people, who don't fit our ways of understanding, get hurt and even die because who they are doesn't fit with our Truth. Being False, therefore, eliminating them isn't so much a crime as it is a necessity.
Last week, Bob Somerby noted an interview with physicist Michio Kaku on C-SPAN. Talking on the many themes of his new book, Kaku discussed the whole issue of extra-terrestrial life and the many claims that beings from other worlds have been and continue to visit our little neck of the Universe. Summing up Kaku, Somerby writes:
By our culture’s conventional standards of evidence, it is clear that we have been visited.I love those four words, "conventional standards of evidence". For oh so many people, venturing off the reservation - expressing the belief that contact with other intelligent life is at least probable; expressing belief in one or another or several deities and abiding by the canons of belief in that deity; accepting the widespread occurrence of events that defy easy categorization by the limited methods of science - is too often met with a rhetorical violence that can be breathtaking. I am not suggesting here that I accept Kaku's argument. As a matter of fact, Im not sure I do.
Back in the mid-1990's, I remember reading a story in the Richmond Times-Dispatch. It concerned a young man dying of a brain tumor. He had gone to his neurologist for a scan to check the progress of the tumor. That was all that was left now. Therapies, surgeries - all off the table. Yet, the young man had passed through the headaches and seizures and other symptoms, which seemed to have stopped.
The tumor was gone.
In the few short weeks between the two scans, the tumor had not simply shrunk in size. It was gone.
They did another scan, and the results were the same.
Now, I am no doctor, but I do know that tumors, for the most part, just grow. That's why they are so deadly. They can be reduced in size by pretty radical chemo-therapy, but it is always a struggle against the hyper-growth of the tumor.
Outside the grotto of Lourdes in France, there is a pile of crutches, canes, and wheelchairs. These have been left by those healed of their afflictions by . . . whatever . . . happens in there. Not everyone who goes there is healed. Yet, there are enough, the pile of no-longer-needed crutches mute testimony to that fundamental reality.
I mention these last two items, in connection with all the others, because what unites them is they exist outside our usual understanding of the way the world is supposed to work. UFOs, miracle cures, even the ideologically-induced mass murder of religious believers - these things defy our neatly-wrapped notions of how things are supposed to be. Yet, they are real. Denying them, any of them, out of hand exposes the denier as someone far more committed to some boxed-up notion of Truth than to the possibility the Universe includes all sorts of things that cannot be explained by our current ways of understanding. They might not even be amenable to the limited but very useful methods of science.
I am not suggesting that I think God cured some but not all the folks who visited Lourdes grotto. I am not suggesting the earth has been visited over the course of its long history by beings from other planets or dimensions. I am saying, however, that devotion to any ideology - be it science, or religion, or the denial of religion, or what have you - is a dangerous thing. Accepting our current ways of understanding the way the Universe works includes accepting that such understanding is limited. Science, religion, political and social ideology - they are committed to Truth. When facts intrude that disrupt our cozy notions of Truth, we human beings react violently. People, sometimes large numbers of people, who don't fit our ways of understanding, get hurt and even die because who they are doesn't fit with our Truth. Being False, therefore, eliminating them isn't so much a crime as it is a necessity.
Wednesday, October 20, 2010
Deadwings And Blank Planets
Like any good love story, this one has the kind of beginning that seems poetic in retrospect. I was standing in line outside the Congress Theater in Chicago one cool March afternoon in 2006, waiting to get in to see my favorite band, Dream Theater. It was a long wait, and I did a whole lot of people watching. One guy, in particular, caught my eye. He had a concert t-shirt from a band called "Porcupine Tree", and I wracked my brain trying to remember where I'd seen it. The next day, I realized where - the liner notes to Dream Theater's Metropolis Live CD. Porcupine Tree had opened for Dream Theater on some of their dates (along with another band I had discovered earlier that winter, Ozric Tentacles).
I ended up at a music store and bought the latest release from Porcupine Tree, entitled Deadwing. I cruised through the liner notes, discovering the album was the result of a failed screenplay the band's leader, Steven Wilson, had written. As I sat and listened, I realized I had discovered something new and different.
In the years since then, I have managed to purchase quite a lot of Porcupine Tree's back catalog as well as keep up with their latest releases. In September of last year, I had the chance to see them live at the Vic Theater in Chicago. Without a doubt it was the best musical experience I have had in a long while.
Wilson is the principle song writer, the arranger, lead singer, producer, and probably leads the mixing team. The band is his baby. Yet, the musicians - keyboardist Richard Barbieri, bassist Colin Edwin, and drummer Gavin Harrison - all contribute their individual styles, as well as combine to form a sound that is as unique as it is powerful. Wilson may be a musical auteur, but even a casual listen to his other projects makes one realize that Porcupine Tree is the product of the four members working together to realize Wilson's vision.
The best thing I can say is there is no "Porcupine Tree Sound". Even a casual perusal of their various releases over nearly two decades and one comes to discover the music ranges from electronica to Pink Floyd-style psychedelia to heavy metal to simple contemporary prog (although I doubt the band would accept such a simplistic label). Just considering their most recent releases, starting with Deadwing, then moving through Fear of a Blank Planet to The Incident (as well as the EP Nil Recurring, which recapitulates lyric themes from Fear) the sheer range of music is breathtaking. Unlike Dream Theater, which has settled for a particular sound that is instantly recognizable, or other "new" progressive bands, Porcupine Tree exemplifies that most hard-sought virtue - the pursuit of mew sounds each and every time they set down a piece of music.
Lyrically, the band follows in a long line of British bands whose outlook is, to put it mildly, gloomy at best. Songs such as "Blackest Eyes" - the tale told from the perspective of a murderous psychopath - and "Heart Attack in a Lay-By" could be considered cheery next to, say, "Don't Hate Me", the thoughts of someone who seems to be the last survivor of some horrid holocaust-like event, or "Let's Sleep Together", a plea for a suicide pact.
For all that, the band has become far and away my current favorite of any number of groups out there. While I wonder how they will survive their current tour - they have been on tour for The Incident for well over a year, twice through the US alone - my hope is they continue to work together producing their astounding sound.
This is "Time Flies" from The Incident.
I ended up at a music store and bought the latest release from Porcupine Tree, entitled Deadwing. I cruised through the liner notes, discovering the album was the result of a failed screenplay the band's leader, Steven Wilson, had written. As I sat and listened, I realized I had discovered something new and different.
In the years since then, I have managed to purchase quite a lot of Porcupine Tree's back catalog as well as keep up with their latest releases. In September of last year, I had the chance to see them live at the Vic Theater in Chicago. Without a doubt it was the best musical experience I have had in a long while.
Wilson is the principle song writer, the arranger, lead singer, producer, and probably leads the mixing team. The band is his baby. Yet, the musicians - keyboardist Richard Barbieri, bassist Colin Edwin, and drummer Gavin Harrison - all contribute their individual styles, as well as combine to form a sound that is as unique as it is powerful. Wilson may be a musical auteur, but even a casual listen to his other projects makes one realize that Porcupine Tree is the product of the four members working together to realize Wilson's vision.
The best thing I can say is there is no "Porcupine Tree Sound". Even a casual perusal of their various releases over nearly two decades and one comes to discover the music ranges from electronica to Pink Floyd-style psychedelia to heavy metal to simple contemporary prog (although I doubt the band would accept such a simplistic label). Just considering their most recent releases, starting with Deadwing, then moving through Fear of a Blank Planet to The Incident (as well as the EP Nil Recurring, which recapitulates lyric themes from Fear) the sheer range of music is breathtaking. Unlike Dream Theater, which has settled for a particular sound that is instantly recognizable, or other "new" progressive bands, Porcupine Tree exemplifies that most hard-sought virtue - the pursuit of mew sounds each and every time they set down a piece of music.
Lyrically, the band follows in a long line of British bands whose outlook is, to put it mildly, gloomy at best. Songs such as "Blackest Eyes" - the tale told from the perspective of a murderous psychopath - and "Heart Attack in a Lay-By" could be considered cheery next to, say, "Don't Hate Me", the thoughts of someone who seems to be the last survivor of some horrid holocaust-like event, or "Let's Sleep Together", a plea for a suicide pact.
For all that, the band has become far and away my current favorite of any number of groups out there. While I wonder how they will survive their current tour - they have been on tour for The Incident for well over a year, twice through the US alone - my hope is they continue to work together producing their astounding sound.
This is "Time Flies" from The Incident.
Stand By Your Man
There is something, I don't know, endearing about the story of Virginia Thomas calling Anita Hill and asking her, as sweet as can be, to apologize to her husband and explain why she did what she did. I also think there is something precious about Ms. Hill's reaction - she called the cops. These two sides reflect what is, in sum, the very different ways the entire Hill-Thomas episode is seen by those who still sit on opposite sides. Thomas' supporters consider Ms. Hill's accusations lies cooked up by the connivance of liberals and a vindictive staffer to smear him before the nation. Ms. Hill's supporters, on the other hand, consider the entire episode a miscarriage of justice.
I do not have a "side". From the moment in the summer of 1991 when Pres. Bush nominated Clarence Thomas as "the best qualified" candidate to fill the vacancy created by the late Justice Thurgood Marshall's retirement, I saw trouble. Issues of race would swirl around the entire process, and supporters and opponents on all sides would bungle it. That is exactly what happened. Thomas was so adept at playing on issues of guilt, his single three-word phrase - "high-tech lynching" - managed to move many, many people (including an otherwise skeptical African-American professor of mine at Wesley Seminary). The accusations of sexual harassment, I should note, were soaked with white fantasies of black male sexuality (in turn, Ms. Hill's various attackers on the committee also managed to fall in to the trap of white fantasies concerning black women's sexuality).
The entire thing became a ridiculous farce, in which the simple issue of whether or not, in his capacity of director of the office on Civil Rights, Clarence Thomas engaged in practices considered harassment under the law, became impossible.
Once it became clear this was the case, I stopped paying attention. Several years later, though, I came across the best study of the entire affair, Strange Justice. Among the many details the authors managed to reveal - and with an ease that seemed to escape the entire panel of Senators and their staff members - was that Clarence Thomas lied under oath when he claimed not to be a habitue of pornography. Having lied under oath on this peripheral issue makes sense; like Bill Clinton insisting he never had sexual relations with "that woman", why in the world would anyone admit they regularly view pornography?
All the same, this went directly to the whole issue of sexual harassment, and Ms. Hill's claims that Clarence Thomas often referred to pornography in a way that was, to say the least, inappropriate. So, it wasn't just a "private" matter. His denials was more than just a denial rooted in personal embarrassment. It was a lie that undercut a central claim Anita Hill had made. Since the press, and it seems the Senate committee and staffers, seemed to think it impossible to untangle the mess of he said/she said, the expedient matter of actually going to the video rental store in Clarence Thomas' neighborhood was never considered.
The authors did just that. Since such information isn't confidential, it became easy enough to discover that Clarence Thomas did, indeed, rent adult movies.
OK. So. Does that mean that he went on to reference them in ways that created a hostile work environment for Ms. Hill? Did he, in fact, engage in acts that are easily defined as "harassment" under the law? The actual and overwhelming evidence seems to be that yes, he did. It has been set forth in a straightforward matter in an account that should have been nothing more than a transcript of the actual hearing before the Senate committee.
Now, two decades later, Mrs. Thomas - bless her heart - wants Ms. Hill to apologize. She wants Ms. Hill to explain. Ms. Hill, on the other hand, not only refuses to do so, she considers the very notion offensive. As well she should. She did not lie; she was not, in David Brock's infamous phrase, "a little bit nutty, a little bit slutty." On the contrary, a quiet, retiring, devout Christian woman (she attended Oral Roberts University and served in the Reagan Administration; this isn't the cv of a Marxist), Ms. Hill was hesitant about coming forward, not because her story was false, but because the entire episode was embarrassing in any number of ways.
I have no doubt this will become a bit of a cause celebre among the minions of the right who still believe, despite the evidence, that Ms. Hill made the story up, or was perhaps a prop for a secret cabal of lefties who wanted to block Thomas' nomination at all costs. Dragging this particular bit of history in to our current political climate is not a good thing, because if anything the right has become even more unhinged on any number of matters, race, gender, and sex being among them.
When I heard the story on the radio, I thought, "Oh, Lord, here we go." I offered on FB the idea that maybe Hillary Clinton can sit down with Mrs. Thomas and discuss the matter frankly, perhaps over a Vodka Collins or Gin Ricky or something, to help ease the pain. While offered partly in jest, it is also serious. Someone who understands the realities should, indeed, inform Mrs. Thomas that Ms. Hill did not "do" anything to her husband. Clarence Thomas did all of it to himself.
I do not have a "side". From the moment in the summer of 1991 when Pres. Bush nominated Clarence Thomas as "the best qualified" candidate to fill the vacancy created by the late Justice Thurgood Marshall's retirement, I saw trouble. Issues of race would swirl around the entire process, and supporters and opponents on all sides would bungle it. That is exactly what happened. Thomas was so adept at playing on issues of guilt, his single three-word phrase - "high-tech lynching" - managed to move many, many people (including an otherwise skeptical African-American professor of mine at Wesley Seminary). The accusations of sexual harassment, I should note, were soaked with white fantasies of black male sexuality (in turn, Ms. Hill's various attackers on the committee also managed to fall in to the trap of white fantasies concerning black women's sexuality).
The entire thing became a ridiculous farce, in which the simple issue of whether or not, in his capacity of director of the office on Civil Rights, Clarence Thomas engaged in practices considered harassment under the law, became impossible.
Once it became clear this was the case, I stopped paying attention. Several years later, though, I came across the best study of the entire affair, Strange Justice. Among the many details the authors managed to reveal - and with an ease that seemed to escape the entire panel of Senators and their staff members - was that Clarence Thomas lied under oath when he claimed not to be a habitue of pornography. Having lied under oath on this peripheral issue makes sense; like Bill Clinton insisting he never had sexual relations with "that woman", why in the world would anyone admit they regularly view pornography?
All the same, this went directly to the whole issue of sexual harassment, and Ms. Hill's claims that Clarence Thomas often referred to pornography in a way that was, to say the least, inappropriate. So, it wasn't just a "private" matter. His denials was more than just a denial rooted in personal embarrassment. It was a lie that undercut a central claim Anita Hill had made. Since the press, and it seems the Senate committee and staffers, seemed to think it impossible to untangle the mess of he said/she said, the expedient matter of actually going to the video rental store in Clarence Thomas' neighborhood was never considered.
The authors did just that. Since such information isn't confidential, it became easy enough to discover that Clarence Thomas did, indeed, rent adult movies.
OK. So. Does that mean that he went on to reference them in ways that created a hostile work environment for Ms. Hill? Did he, in fact, engage in acts that are easily defined as "harassment" under the law? The actual and overwhelming evidence seems to be that yes, he did. It has been set forth in a straightforward matter in an account that should have been nothing more than a transcript of the actual hearing before the Senate committee.
Now, two decades later, Mrs. Thomas - bless her heart - wants Ms. Hill to apologize. She wants Ms. Hill to explain. Ms. Hill, on the other hand, not only refuses to do so, she considers the very notion offensive. As well she should. She did not lie; she was not, in David Brock's infamous phrase, "a little bit nutty, a little bit slutty." On the contrary, a quiet, retiring, devout Christian woman (she attended Oral Roberts University and served in the Reagan Administration; this isn't the cv of a Marxist), Ms. Hill was hesitant about coming forward, not because her story was false, but because the entire episode was embarrassing in any number of ways.
I have no doubt this will become a bit of a cause celebre among the minions of the right who still believe, despite the evidence, that Ms. Hill made the story up, or was perhaps a prop for a secret cabal of lefties who wanted to block Thomas' nomination at all costs. Dragging this particular bit of history in to our current political climate is not a good thing, because if anything the right has become even more unhinged on any number of matters, race, gender, and sex being among them.
When I heard the story on the radio, I thought, "Oh, Lord, here we go." I offered on FB the idea that maybe Hillary Clinton can sit down with Mrs. Thomas and discuss the matter frankly, perhaps over a Vodka Collins or Gin Ricky or something, to help ease the pain. While offered partly in jest, it is also serious. Someone who understands the realities should, indeed, inform Mrs. Thomas that Ms. Hill did not "do" anything to her husband. Clarence Thomas did all of it to himself.
Tuesday, October 19, 2010
Solidarity And Transcendence
Early on in Terry Eagleton's The Ideology of the Aesthetic, he shows how the move from Kantian aesthetics to Friedrich Schiller's theory of "taste" shows the way the rising bourgeoisie treated the aesthetic experience as a force greater than the moral law. Participation in the aesthetic experience becomes the source of solidarity among the bourgeois, where "taste rules", in Schiller's words.
Far too often we surrender to the shallow notion of the aesthetic experience as something far too "subjective" or "personal" to communicate to others. At the beginning of the Enlightenment, Kant insisted that, while individuated, nonetheless we must come to apply our experience of the aesthetic "like a rule" in the way we subsume our lives under the moral law. If the mundane claim of extreme subjectivity were true, not only Kant's view, but any real communication of the beautiful, even the experience of the beautiful itself, would be impossible.
Hans Urs von Balthasar, the late Swiss theologian who was rewarded for certain services at the end of his life by being raised as a Prince of the Roman Church, attempted to use a certain understanding of "beauty" as a hermeneutical key to unpacking the Christian experience of wonder and awe. Through seven volumes entitled The Glory of the Lord, Balthasar examines the history of what had formerly been understood under the heading of "numinous".
At the heart of these two very different ways of understanding the human experience of beauty lies the fundamental reality that, opposed to simple-minded notions of "subjectivity", the aesthetic experience is one that is communal, transporting individuals out of the realm of the personal, and offering a glimpse of something greater. This is the mystery of transcendence - passing beyond the mundane, the imperfect, to those moments when, it seems, we encounter something that in and of and for itself points beyond itself, and yet subsists completely in a way that so much else does not.
My own experience has been musical (well, and also religio-mystical, but that isn't the subject at the moment). They are rare, but with the help of reflections such as these, I understand that they are not just my own experiences. Indeed, if they were just my experiences, not only would I not be able to communicate them; there would be no point for common reference. That is to say, if, as the superficial understanding has it, beauty is something which cannot be understood, only experienced, we are left with the sad fact that, really, it can't even be experienced. If something cannot be shared, if an experience, either of awe or of the sublime or of the beautiful, somehow escapes our ability to communicate to others what it is, it is also quite impossible to communicate that it is. At the heart of the experience of the beautiful we realize it is a shared, communal experience.
The very first time I experienced this in a way that I knew I was in the presence of something powerful, that I was filled with awe before a sound I was hearing, I was fifteen years old. Jeff Beck had just released the song "Star Cycle" which got moderate rotation on my local radio station. In the first chorus after the statement of the melody, Beck turns his guitar up to ten and unloads a fiery solo over Jan Hammer's pulsing synthesizer. There are just a few measures of that solo, where Beck takes the listener up through a quick build-up of tension to a release that made me sit up, jaw gaping. It's been thirty years, and my reaction to that moment is still the same.
Similarly, there is a moment in Spock's Beard's "June", the last move from verse to chorus, where all the elements - instruments and voices, harmony and melody - come together in a swelling tide that suddenly overwhelms the listener. Again, it is that moment of release after the slow build-up of tension that makes the sum of the various parts far greater than simple addition.
The first of Ed Wynne's guitar solos on Ozric Tentacles' "Jurassic Shift". Like the previous two, this is a release - the sheer volume of Wynne's guitar, combined with phase-shifting effects give the guitar a wash across the rest of the music, like waves crashing on a beach - that made me, the first time I heard it, go, "Ahh".
On Friday, I purchased Porcupine Tree's live DVD, Anaesthetize, a film of a show in Tilburg in The Netherlands from 2008. On the second song in the first set, "My Ashes", the chorus vocals are performed by touring guitarist and back-up singer John Wesley (and how could I, a United Methodist, not like that name?), because he has a beautiful, soaring Jon Andersonesque high tenor. I heard it for the first time on Sunday, and still cannot believe that single moment is so beautiful, so perfect.
What is important to note about these is the simple reality that these are not my subjective experiences. My reaction - hearing a moment of transcendent beauty in the midst of these songs - may be unique, or not. Yet, it is a shared experience. There are the musicians who composed and arranged the pieces. The engineers and mixers who took the elements and, along with the performers, ensured they were constructed properly. There is the audience, disparate or gathered, who hear these moments and react to them.
This solidarity in transcendence is the aestethic experience. It is also, as von Balthasar rightly understood, the heart of the religious experience. At its best, these moments are rare, fleeting, hardly encompassing entire compositions or multiple performances; rather, they are momentary - in music a measure or two - yet precisely because they are transcendent, their fleeting existence is belied by that sense that they seem to last forever. The relationship between the aesthetic experience and the religious experience, between the beautiful as being more than simple human creative act and life as more than the mundane run of days, lies in our shared joy together. We turn to one another and say, "Wow!" Whether it is God or just a bunch of musicians, we find ourselves gathered together, basing in the beauty of the moment that lasts forever.
Far too often we surrender to the shallow notion of the aesthetic experience as something far too "subjective" or "personal" to communicate to others. At the beginning of the Enlightenment, Kant insisted that, while individuated, nonetheless we must come to apply our experience of the aesthetic "like a rule" in the way we subsume our lives under the moral law. If the mundane claim of extreme subjectivity were true, not only Kant's view, but any real communication of the beautiful, even the experience of the beautiful itself, would be impossible.
Hans Urs von Balthasar, the late Swiss theologian who was rewarded for certain services at the end of his life by being raised as a Prince of the Roman Church, attempted to use a certain understanding of "beauty" as a hermeneutical key to unpacking the Christian experience of wonder and awe. Through seven volumes entitled The Glory of the Lord, Balthasar examines the history of what had formerly been understood under the heading of "numinous".
At the heart of these two very different ways of understanding the human experience of beauty lies the fundamental reality that, opposed to simple-minded notions of "subjectivity", the aesthetic experience is one that is communal, transporting individuals out of the realm of the personal, and offering a glimpse of something greater. This is the mystery of transcendence - passing beyond the mundane, the imperfect, to those moments when, it seems, we encounter something that in and of and for itself points beyond itself, and yet subsists completely in a way that so much else does not.
My own experience has been musical (well, and also religio-mystical, but that isn't the subject at the moment). They are rare, but with the help of reflections such as these, I understand that they are not just my own experiences. Indeed, if they were just my experiences, not only would I not be able to communicate them; there would be no point for common reference. That is to say, if, as the superficial understanding has it, beauty is something which cannot be understood, only experienced, we are left with the sad fact that, really, it can't even be experienced. If something cannot be shared, if an experience, either of awe or of the sublime or of the beautiful, somehow escapes our ability to communicate to others what it is, it is also quite impossible to communicate that it is. At the heart of the experience of the beautiful we realize it is a shared, communal experience.
The very first time I experienced this in a way that I knew I was in the presence of something powerful, that I was filled with awe before a sound I was hearing, I was fifteen years old. Jeff Beck had just released the song "Star Cycle" which got moderate rotation on my local radio station. In the first chorus after the statement of the melody, Beck turns his guitar up to ten and unloads a fiery solo over Jan Hammer's pulsing synthesizer. There are just a few measures of that solo, where Beck takes the listener up through a quick build-up of tension to a release that made me sit up, jaw gaping. It's been thirty years, and my reaction to that moment is still the same.
Similarly, there is a moment in Spock's Beard's "June", the last move from verse to chorus, where all the elements - instruments and voices, harmony and melody - come together in a swelling tide that suddenly overwhelms the listener. Again, it is that moment of release after the slow build-up of tension that makes the sum of the various parts far greater than simple addition.
The first of Ed Wynne's guitar solos on Ozric Tentacles' "Jurassic Shift". Like the previous two, this is a release - the sheer volume of Wynne's guitar, combined with phase-shifting effects give the guitar a wash across the rest of the music, like waves crashing on a beach - that made me, the first time I heard it, go, "Ahh".
On Friday, I purchased Porcupine Tree's live DVD, Anaesthetize, a film of a show in Tilburg in The Netherlands from 2008. On the second song in the first set, "My Ashes", the chorus vocals are performed by touring guitarist and back-up singer John Wesley (and how could I, a United Methodist, not like that name?), because he has a beautiful, soaring Jon Andersonesque high tenor. I heard it for the first time on Sunday, and still cannot believe that single moment is so beautiful, so perfect.
What is important to note about these is the simple reality that these are not my subjective experiences. My reaction - hearing a moment of transcendent beauty in the midst of these songs - may be unique, or not. Yet, it is a shared experience. There are the musicians who composed and arranged the pieces. The engineers and mixers who took the elements and, along with the performers, ensured they were constructed properly. There is the audience, disparate or gathered, who hear these moments and react to them.
This solidarity in transcendence is the aestethic experience. It is also, as von Balthasar rightly understood, the heart of the religious experience. At its best, these moments are rare, fleeting, hardly encompassing entire compositions or multiple performances; rather, they are momentary - in music a measure or two - yet precisely because they are transcendent, their fleeting existence is belied by that sense that they seem to last forever. The relationship between the aesthetic experience and the religious experience, between the beautiful as being more than simple human creative act and life as more than the mundane run of days, lies in our shared joy together. We turn to one another and say, "Wow!" Whether it is God or just a bunch of musicians, we find ourselves gathered together, basing in the beauty of the moment that lasts forever.
Why Does Michael Gerson Have A Job?
This is horrid. The guy takes credit for a single line in a single speech by the worst President since James Buchanan and he lands a cushy spot on the Post's op-ed page. So he can write slimy crap like this.
Michael Gerson cannot come right out on the op-ed page of a national newspaper and say, "Barack Obama is an uppity nigger." So, instead, he picks apart a single sentence, without context - and without considering the merits, and offers up this kind of craptastic argument.
I think there are some folks who are not just incensed that there's a black man in the White House who isn't a butler or cook; angry that there's a Democrat in the White House because, as Republicans, they consider the Democratic Party unfit to serve in the Office of President; I think Gerson, like many in Washington, is enraged that Pres. Obama is far smarter than he is. In fact, for all Pres. Clinton's quite obvious intelligence (I have rarely seen someone who could just turn on a dime and speak in detail on abstruse policy matters the way Clinton still can), it is obvious that Obama is actually far more learned, a thinker of depth, whereas Clinton spread his understanding around.
Rather than admit to it, Gerson does what white folk have done throughout our history. Anytime an African-American displays any virtues in greater depth than they, white folk tend to find ways to put them in "their place". This insulting piece of drivel, this racist garbage, belongs on American Thinker or some racist website, not the Post.
"Part of the reason that our politics seems so tough right now," he recently told a group of Democratic donors in Massachusetts, "and facts and science and argument [do] not seem to be winning the day all the time is because we're hard-wired not to always think clearly when we're scared. And the country is scared."Let's unpack those remarks.
Let's unpack these remarks.
Obama clearly believes that his brand of politics represents "facts and science and argument." His opponents, in disturbing contrast, are using the more fearful, primitive portion of their brains. Obama views himself as the neocortical leader -- the defender, not just of the stimulus package and health-care reform but also of cognitive reasoning. His critics rely on their lizard brains -- the location of reptilian ritual and aggression. Some, presumably Democrats, rise above their evolutionary hard-wiring in times of social stress; others, sadly, do not.
Though there is plenty of competition, these are some of the most arrogant words ever uttered by an American president.
Michael Gerson cannot come right out on the op-ed page of a national newspaper and say, "Barack Obama is an uppity nigger." So, instead, he picks apart a single sentence, without context - and without considering the merits, and offers up this kind of craptastic argument.
I think there are some folks who are not just incensed that there's a black man in the White House who isn't a butler or cook; angry that there's a Democrat in the White House because, as Republicans, they consider the Democratic Party unfit to serve in the Office of President; I think Gerson, like many in Washington, is enraged that Pres. Obama is far smarter than he is. In fact, for all Pres. Clinton's quite obvious intelligence (I have rarely seen someone who could just turn on a dime and speak in detail on abstruse policy matters the way Clinton still can), it is obvious that Obama is actually far more learned, a thinker of depth, whereas Clinton spread his understanding around.
Rather than admit to it, Gerson does what white folk have done throughout our history. Anytime an African-American displays any virtues in greater depth than they, white folk tend to find ways to put them in "their place". This insulting piece of drivel, this racist garbage, belongs on American Thinker or some racist website, not the Post.
Monday, October 18, 2010
Ernst Bloch, N. T. Wright, And The Threat Of Hope
“Hope” is the thing with feathers -In three volumes entitled The Principle of Hope, and a single volume of the religious dimension of the utopian hope, Man On His Own, Marxist Ernst Bloch treats not just with respect, but a kind of reverence, the Judaeo-Christian eschatological hope for the coming Kingdom of God. It is true enough that Bloch takes God out of the equation. All the same, because the root of the promised kingdom Christian's profess was personified in the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus is the promise not of a sweet bye-and-bye (like most contemporary theologians, Bloch understands this later accretion and baptism of pagan notions of the afterlife as serving all sorts of socio-political interests threatened by the far more radical idea of the Kingdom of God) but a very real, tangible realm of justice, equality, where the contradictions of self-abnegation and pride are overcome in mutuality, Bloch quite correctly sees this as nothing more or less than the promised, post-revolutionary situation, once the last structures of domination have been sloughed off.
That perches in the soul -
And sings the tune without the words -
And never stops - at all -
And sweetest - in the Gale - is heard -
And sore must be the storm -
That could abash the little Bird
That kept so many warm -
I’ve heard it in the chillest land -
And on the strangest Sea -
Yet - never - in Extremity,
It asked a crumb - of me.
Emily Dickinson
A thinker as different from Bloch as can be imagined has offered a similar view concerning the Christian hope. Former in-house Scripture scholar and current Anglican Bishop Nicholas Thomas (N. T.) Wright has dedicated a tremendous amount of intellectual energy and faith-filled time offering up entirely new - yet he would insist they are old but lost - ways of reading the Bible and what it says about who Jesus was, what he said and did, why he died, and what his resurrection means. At the heart of Wright's exigetical concern, like that of the Gospel writers, is the passion story, with the resurrection as key. The following passage, quoted by Joel Watts, is the root of Wright's theology:
Resurrection by contrast has always gone with a strong view of God’s justice and God as the good creator. Those twin beliefs give rise not to a meek acquiescence to injustice in the world but a robust determination to oppose it.Wright, like Bloch, surrenders the uniqueness of the Christian hope, only in different ways. Bloch insists that the coming Kingdom needs no God; Wright's stated concern for justice falls short of including sexual minorities. Since being raised to the crimson, he has spent a considerable amount of time in the House of Lords speaking out against any attempt to extend legal and social equality to sexual minorities in the UK. So much for that passion for justice.
All the same, while both Bloch and Wright - one intellectually, one politically - betray the uniqueness of the Christian hope, at the heart of both men's insistence on the radical nature of the Christian message lies this fundamental reality - unless checked institutionally, or compromised from within by social and cultural factors, the real message of the Christian faith is as radical a threat to the existing order as can be imagined. Living one's life with both eyes focused not on some filmy heaven (or, conversely, in fear of the sado-masochistic fantasies of hell) but on the resurrection of Jesus as the inauguration of the New Age that will be fulfilled in God's time casts doubt upon all our ways of life. Our politics, our art, our morals - everything stands before the empty cross, silent even as that same cross demands an answer.
This is who the Church should be: the people gathered as the Body of Christ working to fulfill the petition from The Lord's Prayer - thy kingdom come on earth. Is it any wonder that when the Church really is the Church, the Body of Christ, it is understood as a threat, either to be destroyed or undermined by the addition of alien ideas? There is nothing more tenacious than hope. There is also nothing more dangerous.
Democratic Disaffection, Voter Turnout, And The Enthusiasm Gap
We are just a few weeks away from the Congressional mid-term elections. It seems pretty clear that Republican gains will be substantial, although the prospect of taking over either house grows dimmer. All the same, it is obvious that two things are happening that are effecting the way people plan to vote - many of those who voted for Obama, and previously for Democratic candidates in the previous two national elections will either be voting for Republican candidates, or not voting; many supporters of Obama are less than enthusiastic, to say the least, about his performance in office.
As to the first, related, phenomena, anger at the Congressional wing of the Democratic Party makes sense. When they took over both Houses of Congress in 2006, they not only seemed poised to act on long-standing Democratic legislative initiatives that had been side-lined by the Republican majority, but also to pursue a far-more aggressive agenda toward outside interests that had become increasingly influential over legislative activity. Alas, almost immediately, both the House and Senate signaled their intent to pursue business as usual by putting Steny Hoyer in charge of the House and Harry Reid in charge of the Senate. Political moderates - Harry Reid is pro-life - neither has actively pursued much more than making sure Democrats maintain control of both Houses. While this Congress has been successful at passing some important, even historic legislation, that legislation has been purchased at far too high a price. Health care reform, in particular, was made far more complicated by the refusal, from the outset, to offer a serious public option. Initial regulatory reforms of the financial sector also seem inadequate to the task, and were largely constructed with input from the industry itself.
Other items on the liberal to-do list - in particular the long sought-after reform of labor law known as "card check", allowing for easier organization of previously non-union industries - have simply disappeared from the Congressional radar. Cap-and-trade, after passing the House, died a very painful, public death in the Senate after Republican obstruction became impossible to overcome. With the possibility that they shall hold even more seats in the next Congress, the likelihood of serious legislation regarding energy consumption as it impacts global warming looks even less likely.
For these reasons, as well as the far-too-cozy relationship the President has maintained with the centers of the financial industry (the creators of this mess now tasked with cleaning it up, but without having to pay any serious public price for it), the Democratic Party is losing voters. Either they are switching sides - far better to get corporate whores who acknowledge their pimps than those that pretend a virtue they do not have - or refusing to vote at all. Both are rational responses. At the core of public frustration and anger at Congress is the understanding that neither party has the public interest at heart. At least, with Republicans, voters know they aren't getting a pig in a poke.
The President and First Lady have hit the campaign trail over the past week, and are trying to stir up the same kind of enthusiasm that existed during his Presidential run two years ago. The problem, of course, is that while the President and his wife remain personally popular among Democrats, his record shouts far louder than his calls for continued hope and the possibility of change. While hard-core right-wing voters are certainly motivated by a visceral hatred for the President, Democratic voters are less inclined to consider voting against the possibility of a Republican Congress, since the prospects of actual legislative harm is minimized by the probability that the President will veto anything actively contrary to the public good. So, whether it's a minimized Democratic majority hamstrung by Republican obstruction, or a castrated Republican majority limited by the President's veto pen, the end results are likely to be the same for the next Congress. This is a reality Democratic voters recognize. The result is simple - their votes aren't going to matter that much this time around.
The next two years will result in a legislative holding pattern, no matter the outcome of the elections. Is it any wonder that folks are planning to stay home?
As to the first, related, phenomena, anger at the Congressional wing of the Democratic Party makes sense. When they took over both Houses of Congress in 2006, they not only seemed poised to act on long-standing Democratic legislative initiatives that had been side-lined by the Republican majority, but also to pursue a far-more aggressive agenda toward outside interests that had become increasingly influential over legislative activity. Alas, almost immediately, both the House and Senate signaled their intent to pursue business as usual by putting Steny Hoyer in charge of the House and Harry Reid in charge of the Senate. Political moderates - Harry Reid is pro-life - neither has actively pursued much more than making sure Democrats maintain control of both Houses. While this Congress has been successful at passing some important, even historic legislation, that legislation has been purchased at far too high a price. Health care reform, in particular, was made far more complicated by the refusal, from the outset, to offer a serious public option. Initial regulatory reforms of the financial sector also seem inadequate to the task, and were largely constructed with input from the industry itself.
Other items on the liberal to-do list - in particular the long sought-after reform of labor law known as "card check", allowing for easier organization of previously non-union industries - have simply disappeared from the Congressional radar. Cap-and-trade, after passing the House, died a very painful, public death in the Senate after Republican obstruction became impossible to overcome. With the possibility that they shall hold even more seats in the next Congress, the likelihood of serious legislation regarding energy consumption as it impacts global warming looks even less likely.
For these reasons, as well as the far-too-cozy relationship the President has maintained with the centers of the financial industry (the creators of this mess now tasked with cleaning it up, but without having to pay any serious public price for it), the Democratic Party is losing voters. Either they are switching sides - far better to get corporate whores who acknowledge their pimps than those that pretend a virtue they do not have - or refusing to vote at all. Both are rational responses. At the core of public frustration and anger at Congress is the understanding that neither party has the public interest at heart. At least, with Republicans, voters know they aren't getting a pig in a poke.
The President and First Lady have hit the campaign trail over the past week, and are trying to stir up the same kind of enthusiasm that existed during his Presidential run two years ago. The problem, of course, is that while the President and his wife remain personally popular among Democrats, his record shouts far louder than his calls for continued hope and the possibility of change. While hard-core right-wing voters are certainly motivated by a visceral hatred for the President, Democratic voters are less inclined to consider voting against the possibility of a Republican Congress, since the prospects of actual legislative harm is minimized by the probability that the President will veto anything actively contrary to the public good. So, whether it's a minimized Democratic majority hamstrung by Republican obstruction, or a castrated Republican majority limited by the President's veto pen, the end results are likely to be the same for the next Congress. This is a reality Democratic voters recognize. The result is simple - their votes aren't going to matter that much this time around.
The next two years will result in a legislative holding pattern, no matter the outcome of the elections. Is it any wonder that folks are planning to stay home?
Saturday, October 16, 2010
Words To Live By
The other day I wrote something highly critical of a piece in First of the Year by Benj DeMott. I was offered a reminder by Scott McLemee, via Facebook, that it is impossible to place in any neat package the editorial or ideological viewpoint of either DeMott or the journal in question.
In a review Scott published (which alerted me to the presence of the journal), he includes a long quote from a letter DeMott received from his father.
In any case, I offer up this view to you, dear readers. Be open to all the possibilities the world has to offer. As my father used to tell me, in a single sentence the summarizes the quoted words above, "You don't know every goddamn thing." It took me a while to learn those words and accept them. Now that I think I have, I consider myself open to all sorts of new things out there in the world.
In a review Scott published (which alerted me to the presence of the journal), he includes a long quote from a letter DeMott received from his father.
Study humiliation. You have nothing ahead of you but that. You survive not by trusting old friends. Or by hoping for love from a child. You survive by realizing you have nothing whatever the world wants, and that therefore the one course open to you is to start over. Recognize your knowledge and experience are valueless. Realize the only possible role for you on earth is that of a student and a learner. Never think that your opinions – unless founded on hard work in a field that is totally new to you – are of interest to anyone. Treat nobody, friend, co-worker, child, whomever, as someone who knows less than you about any subject whatever. You are an Inferior for life. Whatever is left of it....This is the best that life can offer. And it’s better than it soundsThese words summarize my own view of my own life, really. They are harsh, but also quite beautiful. The view offered here resonates with my own refusal to consider of any serious merit the things I do. I do the best I can; I fail as often as I succeed; I have no particular gifts or talents the world desires. Yet, this opens up all sorts of possibilities. I consider myself always growing, always learning, rarely being right. The best I hope for is that I will be known by those most dear to me - my wife and my daughters first and foremost; my closest friends - as someone who tried to live with love and joy, and never assumed the world owed me anything at all. Happy with the life I have, I also work to make sure the world is just a tad bit better for my having lived, without ever thinking this will be the case.
In any case, I offer up this view to you, dear readers. Be open to all the possibilities the world has to offer. As my father used to tell me, in a single sentence the summarizes the quoted words above, "You don't know every goddamn thing." It took me a while to learn those words and accept them. Now that I think I have, I consider myself open to all sorts of new things out there in the world.
The Search For The Primary Text: A Lesson For The Church From Music
Ever since musical notation was standardized, musicologists have privileged the written score over any other form of expression. Even with the advent of more sophisticated folk music forms - jazz, post-Dylan rock, pop, folk, and R&B - there still remains a bias not only for western art musics (a far preferable term to "classical", which actually only denotes a single period), but for the written score. Not only has this bias hindered serious discussion of much popular and folks musics in the west, it has also set to one side any consideration of non-western musical forms. Indian classical music defies easy notation using the western diatonic scale, for example, because of its use of quarter-tones and the open spaces in even the most structured spaces for individual expression. The music created by the Indonesian gamelan - a huge influence on, for example, Robert Fripp - is another case in point where western literary prejudices keep off the table a serious consideration of a wonderful art form.
In the 19th century in America, the publication of sheet music for the expanding middle class created not just a market for all sorts of songs, but a demand that ever-new forms become accessible. First with the rags, and later with even the earliest jazz, the demand that popular musical forms become accessible in a literary form was met by music publishers. As early as the mid-1920's, Louis Armstrong's work with King Oliver and his own recording groups known as the Hot 5's and Hot 7's was annotated for others to learn. Before that, US Army band director James Reese Europe and dance band leaders like Fletcher Henderson created written arrangements that incorporated the new syncopated style, with the accent on the down beat, that were the hallmarks of jazz. Jelly Roll Morton, among his many accomplishments, wrote all his music, and arranged it for recording sessions.
Yet, some of the best jazz was never written down. Count Basie's Orchestra worked from what were called "head arrangements"; he would set out a basic harmonic framework on the piano and his band would then create the melodic and rhythmic structure. These pieces, marvelous examples of group creation, were never intended as anything more than instances for the patrons of the seedy clubs in Kansas City where Basie played to dance to. Yet, they became, due to fame and repetition and even, in the end, notation, actual "songs".
The problem, however, is that not just jazz, but blues, and later R&B and rock and contemporary pop and hip-hop, by and large, incorporate all sorts of room for individual expression - improvisation, "free-from" in Britain - that not only cannot be notated, but changes with each performance. It is right here that the whole question of the primacy of musical literacy arises. Not just for these musical forms, either. Once one raises the issue of performance, it is necessary to include art musics as well as more popular and folk-oriented musical styles as well.
Which is primary? Which is the "real", "true" form of a particular musical composition? For many pieces for the western art traditions, it is easy enough to say the musical score, being the basis for performance, should hold pride of place. In 1990, I watched a film of Leonard Bernstein conducting a performance of Beethoven's 9th Symphony in a newly reunited Berlin. Early on I was stunned to realize, after a close-up on Bernstein, that was doing so without a score. If the musical notation is most basic, primary text from which one works - and a conductor is surely a conductor is as much a performer as the individual musicians - how do we square this with Bernstein's ability to do so without any text at all? Is it just enough, perhaps, to offer up his extraordinary understanding of the entire piece? Yet, doesn't that beg all sorts of questions?
It has been over a century that music has been available to people in recorded form. The addition of a recorded instance of musical performance (enhanced with the visual component since the addition of sound to moving pictures) muddies the water even further. It becomes almost impossible to untangle considering contemporary recording techniques (music is built from individual performances, from the bottom up - the rhythm section records first, with later additions of other parts, usually in multiple takes; finally, at the mixing process, all these pieces come together and are rearranged even more) and the ability to use samples and other pre-recorded sounds to create a composition.
Finally, there are disparate approaches to the recording process. The Beach Boys and the Beatles, in many ways, pioneered the view of the recording studio as a creative space - an instrument to be played and used, in other words. Roger Glover, bassist for the early British heavy metal band Deep Purple, once said in an interview that the band disliked recording immensely. Seeing it as too restricting, the limitations placed upon artists who desire creative space can be a burden. Considering the differences between a jazz recording, say, and a performance of that same piece, it can become almost impossible to recognize the former in the latter, especially in the hands of musicians like John Coltrance or Sony Rollins.
The limitations of the preference for musical literacy when applied outside the confines of western art musics was demonstrated by jazz critic Gary Giddins. In his National Book Critics Circle Award-winning Visions of Jazz, he includes some notated solos from a monograph on Charlie Parker. It should be noted that the monograph's author had to sit and listen to these solos and notated them himself. While musically literate, even gifted in terms of theory, Parker's solos were the product of intense concentration on the harmonic structure playing underneath him. One can, I suppose, take those notations, learn them, and play them note-perfect given enough time. They would not, then, be Parker solos as-played-by. Parker not only had a deep and subtle understanding of musical theory; his intonation, embouchure, tonguing, and phrasing were unique. It is impossible to notate these distinct, Parkeresque realities. Even taking a cue from the recordings along with the notated score leaves me at a loss as to how one could possibly recreate Parker's solos. In fact, since it becomes necessary to combine both musical literacy as well as a gifted ear for subtle distinctions, we have arrived, yet again, at the question that haunts this essay - What if there is no primary musical text?
These questions - abstracted from a musical context - become important for the discussion here on the role and function of the Biblical canon in the life of the Church. While one can point, easily enough, to the growth and final selection of the canon in the early church councils, there is also little doubt that these same writings were considered important precisely because they were seen as having been seminal in the creation of the Christian community. Even the Old Testament writings contained in the Septuagint testify that the experience of God in the community was formative; yet that experience included certain literary forms, including the legend of the law inscribed on stone. Inclusion in the community of the people called out of Egypt was signified by certain acts, in particular circumcision of the men, before it became a matter of accepting the written testimony of the history of the people.
The circle, or spiral, of reflection that insists we can, or should, or even must, point to some instance, some text as primary is belied by the very reality we continue to live. As long as the Christian faith is a going concern, text and community, the word on the page and the on-going life will inform one another, change one another, and change one another.
Friday, October 15, 2010
Some Questions For Benj DeMott
This essay from First of the Month offers a spirited defense of Pres. Obama in the face of left-wing criticism. Not the least of the things I applaud is the casual dismissal of radio host Ed Schulz. Like Rush Limbaugh, Schulz is nothing more than a radio entertainer, to be taken with the same amount of salt - less than a grain, in other words. All the same, starting with a discussion of Shirley Sherrod's magnanimous statement toward her former employer, and building a case for a more broad and patient approach to Pres. Obama's tenure in office misses on several points.
First of all, not all the animus directed at the President from the left is rooted in racial animus (even unrecognized). Indeed, it seems to me much of the criticism of the President, particularly his inept approach toward the current mid-term election cycle, is rooted in specific instances that are easy enough to point out. His famed reticence in the face of the constant barrage of right-wing attacks upon him, his Administration, his policies, and the Congressional wing of his party have only hurt. While I for one still doubt a Republican takeover of either chamber of Congress is likely, even the erosion of current majorities spells the end of any serious Obama-endorsed legislation in the next Congress. Far too many Democrats, never failing to learn the wrong lesson, will have discovered that supporting the President is political poison.
Second, and more to the central thesis of DeMott's article, it seems to me that the so-called "grassroots" insistence on patient support for the President ignores certain facts that are all too clear. Once in office, and after some overtures to certain interests on the left, the President has consistently pursued policies that favor large, monied interests over the far more pertinent interests of the coalition that elected him in the first place. The stimulus package made law early on was deemed by those who know the subject well far too small, by about half, and the subsequent financial breakdown in the states has negated any gains from the stimulus. Because of the success of right-wing messaging on the stimulus, a second chance is just not possible, despite the obvious necessity for such.
Second, placing Larry Summers and Tim Geithner in positions of prominence in his economic team sent the signal that, first and foremost, propping up the large banks would override and all other concerns, not the least of them being holding the banks accountable through serious oversights and regulatory reform. With the recent revelation that the large banks, in an effort to rid their books of questionable assets, may have foreclosed on properties without even a glance at legal procedures, now renders any question of the success of TARP moot.
Recently, most of the large banks have made final payments on their Troubled Asset Relief Program loans floated in the first weeks of the crisis at the very end of Pres. Bush's term. TARP managed to earn a relatively modest profit, and many in the financial community not only heaved a sigh of relief but made this out to be a sign of stability-to-come in the financial services industry. Except, hot on the heels of this good news, was the revelation that the cost of this success was wide-spread, systematic fraud, not the least of which was simply ignoring that most basic right-wing right - recognizing the right to and observance of property rights and laws.
Finally, in a day and time when the right in America has a nearly bottomless supply of financial support for flinging poo at the President, Democrats in Congress, Democrats in general, without any compunction concerning issues of accuracy or even sanity, a plea from "the grassroots" seems not just quaint, but almost sweet. Also, quite irrelevant. The President does, indeed, still enjoy broad support among many liberals and those on the left. I have to wonder, however, if this is a case of "still hoping", rather than dealing with the simple reality that Obama has, in large measure, and despite many specific instances of success and follow-through on any number of campaign promises, been exposed as that most feared political caricature - the hollow man.
The fact is that, despite a history of grassroots, community organizing, Barack Obama's political career has been one long sprint away from this history as he moved further up the ladder of political success. Embracing the notion that being "too liberal", whatever that may mean, is political suicide, Obama has embraced all sorts of measures and political practices that have rendered him weak and, heading in to the midterms, increasingly marginal.
The first year of his Presidency, I was surprised at how well he seemed to do, even as some of the things he did raised red flags. His performance as party leader and supporter of his own Administration's initiatives (health care, specifically) was dismal. The result is the spectacle we see unfolding before us, weeks before midterms that may well not only be a sea-change politically, but offer the spectacle of numerous Nero's fiddling while Rome burns.
First of all, not all the animus directed at the President from the left is rooted in racial animus (even unrecognized). Indeed, it seems to me much of the criticism of the President, particularly his inept approach toward the current mid-term election cycle, is rooted in specific instances that are easy enough to point out. His famed reticence in the face of the constant barrage of right-wing attacks upon him, his Administration, his policies, and the Congressional wing of his party have only hurt. While I for one still doubt a Republican takeover of either chamber of Congress is likely, even the erosion of current majorities spells the end of any serious Obama-endorsed legislation in the next Congress. Far too many Democrats, never failing to learn the wrong lesson, will have discovered that supporting the President is political poison.
Second, and more to the central thesis of DeMott's article, it seems to me that the so-called "grassroots" insistence on patient support for the President ignores certain facts that are all too clear. Once in office, and after some overtures to certain interests on the left, the President has consistently pursued policies that favor large, monied interests over the far more pertinent interests of the coalition that elected him in the first place. The stimulus package made law early on was deemed by those who know the subject well far too small, by about half, and the subsequent financial breakdown in the states has negated any gains from the stimulus. Because of the success of right-wing messaging on the stimulus, a second chance is just not possible, despite the obvious necessity for such.
Second, placing Larry Summers and Tim Geithner in positions of prominence in his economic team sent the signal that, first and foremost, propping up the large banks would override and all other concerns, not the least of them being holding the banks accountable through serious oversights and regulatory reform. With the recent revelation that the large banks, in an effort to rid their books of questionable assets, may have foreclosed on properties without even a glance at legal procedures, now renders any question of the success of TARP moot.
Recently, most of the large banks have made final payments on their Troubled Asset Relief Program loans floated in the first weeks of the crisis at the very end of Pres. Bush's term. TARP managed to earn a relatively modest profit, and many in the financial community not only heaved a sigh of relief but made this out to be a sign of stability-to-come in the financial services industry. Except, hot on the heels of this good news, was the revelation that the cost of this success was wide-spread, systematic fraud, not the least of which was simply ignoring that most basic right-wing right - recognizing the right to and observance of property rights and laws.
Finally, in a day and time when the right in America has a nearly bottomless supply of financial support for flinging poo at the President, Democrats in Congress, Democrats in general, without any compunction concerning issues of accuracy or even sanity, a plea from "the grassroots" seems not just quaint, but almost sweet. Also, quite irrelevant. The President does, indeed, still enjoy broad support among many liberals and those on the left. I have to wonder, however, if this is a case of "still hoping", rather than dealing with the simple reality that Obama has, in large measure, and despite many specific instances of success and follow-through on any number of campaign promises, been exposed as that most feared political caricature - the hollow man.
The fact is that, despite a history of grassroots, community organizing, Barack Obama's political career has been one long sprint away from this history as he moved further up the ladder of political success. Embracing the notion that being "too liberal", whatever that may mean, is political suicide, Obama has embraced all sorts of measures and political practices that have rendered him weak and, heading in to the midterms, increasingly marginal.
The first year of his Presidency, I was surprised at how well he seemed to do, even as some of the things he did raised red flags. His performance as party leader and supporter of his own Administration's initiatives (health care, specifically) was dismal. The result is the spectacle we see unfolding before us, weeks before midterms that may well not only be a sea-change politically, but offer the spectacle of numerous Nero's fiddling while Rome burns.
Thursday, October 14, 2010
Authority And The Christian Tradition
My undergraduate academic advisor, Robert Heineman, was a fairly conservative guy. A student of Kirkian conservatism, Heineman was not the kind of normal reactionary one thinks of when the word "conservative" is bandied about. Like Kirk, he took his starting point from Burke's observations on the nature of human society, as an organic reality that impacts our lives in various and sundry ways. His major work, revised twice, is entitled Authority and the Liberal Tradition. Its central thesis is simple enough. Liberalism undermines itself as a social philosophy precisely because two of its central tenets render the necessity of authority untenable. The false notion of the atomized individual, sovereign in reason, being both judge and jury upon any claims upon the individual result in even the most beneficent liberal authority being questioned as a source of social and political authority.
We non-Roman Christians inherited a similar disposition from the Lutheran Reformation, which became ensconced in much Enlightenment thought on religion. It has become almost a caricature in American religious life, with the proliferation of denominations whose claim to authority all too often rests upon differences that are either of minute dogmatic concern, or deeply rooted social anima, mostly racial. Churches in the Wesleyan tradition, for example, are numerous. The largest are the interracial United Methodist Church, and three large historically-black denominations, The African Methodist Episcopal Church, The African Methodist Episcopal Zion Church, and the Colored Methodist Episcopal Church. There is also the Wesleyan Church, Free Methodists, and the CME Zion Churches. Finally, there are off-shoots from the holiness revivals of the 19th century, the most prominent of which is the Church of the Nazarene. There were even more Methodist-related denominations, the result of pre-Civil War regional tensions and anti-Epsicopal feeling (The Methodist Protestant Church, which spawned Westminster Theological Seminary, which was moved to Washington, DC in 1965 to become Wesley Theological Seminary, my alma mater) that only ceased to exist at the so-called "Uniting Conference" of 1939, which also created the now-defunct, racially segregated Central Conference system (these were done away with at another "Uniting Conference" in 1968).
That's just one tradition.
These initial thoughts are prompted by this discussion begun by ER. At the heart of this discussion rests, I think, some assumptions concerning authority, how it is constituted, and how we and it interrelate. The multivalent tensions - between the individual and the community; between our contemporary needs and the ancient nature of our foundational texts; the various claims of authority - individual, communal, historical/traditional, and modern - seem to have surfaced in this discussion in various ways.
We early-21st century Christians cannot escape the conundrum, and I for one would never insist we surrender that part of the tradition that calls for questioning "authority" as it rests either in denominational structure or deeper doctrinal claims of Scriptural authority. For both good and ill we must each come to terms with what way and how far we are willing to grant to these ancient writings and their accumulated layers of interpretation any role in shaping our own experience of faith. Such questions must always exist, plaguing our sense of ease and rest in having reached satisfactory conclusions.
Because, you see, the texts themselves insist they are not so much authoritative as pointers toward the only truly sovereign authority - the God whose interactions with creation are given voice and narrative shape within their pages. Precisely for this reason, the texts offer up an opportunity to delve in to them and their claims of authority. Not just on an individual, but communal, level we must always be ready to post that most dangerous, frightening question - Why should I accept this word about the Word?
From this, Calvin's notion of a church always in need of reformation should open up our too often stale and limited devotion to tradition to all sorts of ideas and thoughts. It is this impetus that gives the Christian tradition its liveliness. It is in this way that the tradition becomes authoritative for us in each generation, precisely by raising the question of whether or not it should be an authority.
We non-Roman Christians inherited a similar disposition from the Lutheran Reformation, which became ensconced in much Enlightenment thought on religion. It has become almost a caricature in American religious life, with the proliferation of denominations whose claim to authority all too often rests upon differences that are either of minute dogmatic concern, or deeply rooted social anima, mostly racial. Churches in the Wesleyan tradition, for example, are numerous. The largest are the interracial United Methodist Church, and three large historically-black denominations, The African Methodist Episcopal Church, The African Methodist Episcopal Zion Church, and the Colored Methodist Episcopal Church. There is also the Wesleyan Church, Free Methodists, and the CME Zion Churches. Finally, there are off-shoots from the holiness revivals of the 19th century, the most prominent of which is the Church of the Nazarene. There were even more Methodist-related denominations, the result of pre-Civil War regional tensions and anti-Epsicopal feeling (The Methodist Protestant Church, which spawned Westminster Theological Seminary, which was moved to Washington, DC in 1965 to become Wesley Theological Seminary, my alma mater) that only ceased to exist at the so-called "Uniting Conference" of 1939, which also created the now-defunct, racially segregated Central Conference system (these were done away with at another "Uniting Conference" in 1968).
That's just one tradition.
These initial thoughts are prompted by this discussion begun by ER. At the heart of this discussion rests, I think, some assumptions concerning authority, how it is constituted, and how we and it interrelate. The multivalent tensions - between the individual and the community; between our contemporary needs and the ancient nature of our foundational texts; the various claims of authority - individual, communal, historical/traditional, and modern - seem to have surfaced in this discussion in various ways.
We early-21st century Christians cannot escape the conundrum, and I for one would never insist we surrender that part of the tradition that calls for questioning "authority" as it rests either in denominational structure or deeper doctrinal claims of Scriptural authority. For both good and ill we must each come to terms with what way and how far we are willing to grant to these ancient writings and their accumulated layers of interpretation any role in shaping our own experience of faith. Such questions must always exist, plaguing our sense of ease and rest in having reached satisfactory conclusions.
Because, you see, the texts themselves insist they are not so much authoritative as pointers toward the only truly sovereign authority - the God whose interactions with creation are given voice and narrative shape within their pages. Precisely for this reason, the texts offer up an opportunity to delve in to them and their claims of authority. Not just on an individual, but communal, level we must always be ready to post that most dangerous, frightening question - Why should I accept this word about the Word?
From this, Calvin's notion of a church always in need of reformation should open up our too often stale and limited devotion to tradition to all sorts of ideas and thoughts. It is this impetus that gives the Christian tradition its liveliness. It is in this way that the tradition becomes authoritative for us in each generation, precisely by raising the question of whether or not it should be an authority.
Wednesday, October 13, 2010
The Washington Post Figures That Balance Includes Hatred (UPDATE)
For the second year in a row, I had in the back of my mind the possibility of entering The Washington Post's "Next Great Pundit" contest. As soon as I saw the announcement it was on, however, there were some op-eds that made me realize even entering the contest would present a compromise on my part. It was mindless, thoughtless ambition, and the lure of filthy lucre for doing something I love, that made me sit and consider the possibility. Considering the stable of writers they employ - using Mad magazine's old by-line for their editors, "The Usual Gang of Idiots", seems fitting to describe Broder, Parker, Will, Cohen, and the rest - I figured that being known by the company one keeps would leave me with few shreds of dignity left.
More evidence that I dodged a bullet arrived today. Even by entering the contest (I am just confident and egotistical enough to believe that I could have been competitive), the following report from Media Matters for America would have left me feeling dirty:
UPDATE: It's actually much worse than Tony Perkins.
More evidence that I dodged a bullet arrived today. Even by entering the contest (I am just confident and egotistical enough to believe that I could have been competitive), the following report from Media Matters for America would have left me feeling dirty:
Via Pam's House Blend, I learn that the Washington Post's remarkably poor decision to post Tony Perkins's falsehood laden, anti-gay screed on their On Faith blog (on National Coming Out Day nonetheless) was because they felt they needed to "cover both sides" of "bullying and gay suicide." No, really, they're serious. Apparently they hosted a Live Q & A chat with Dan Savage to discuss "bullying and gay suicide" and his "It Gets Better Project," which is a You Tube channel Savage created in order to reach out to gay youths to prevent suicide. So, to balance Savage, the Post turned to Perkins to respond. Apparently to the Post, gay suicide is a two-sided issue.Savage has a pithy response to the Post:
GLAAD and the Washington Post had an exchange over Twitter, in which the Post responded to criticism over publishing Perkins' column, by saying, "[W]e're working to cover both sides. Earlier, we hosted Dan Savage of It Gets Better in a live chat." GLAAD rightly replied, "There are not 'both sides' to this issue. Teen suicide isn't a debate-it's a tragedy."
...if you had told me that my doing a live chat with your readers about the It Gets Better Project was going to be used as an excuse to publish the hateful, bigoted lies of Tony Perkins, I wouldn't have done your fucking live chat.I feel bad for Savage, because he probably saw this as an opportunity to take his message to a platform with a broader audience. In the process, the Post managed to completely undermine him, his message, and its own moral authority.
UPDATE: It's actually much worse than Tony Perkins.
Diaries, Journals, The Internet, And Identity
There are two reviews in the latest New York Review of Books on diaries and journals. One concerns Jimmy Carter's release of his diaries from his White House years. The other is the publication by the Library of America of an edition in two volumes of Ralph Waldo Emerson's massive private journals (the actual journals, according to the reviewer, comprise 40 thick volumes; the two under review, covering a span of 57 years, come out combining the two volumes, to around 2,000 pages). Carter's diaries, despite the headline-grabbing "revelation" that he and the late-Sen. Edward Kennedy clashed over health care reform, is revealing not just of this particular dispute. Carter had pretty solid, yet succinct, opinions on all sorts of people, from German Chancellor Helmut Schmidt to the late Sens. Scoop Jackson and Frank Church. Mining the wealth of detail, the reviewer concludes that, in many ways, Carter has become his own worst enemy, not least by publishing these diaries. He also recently shot himself in the foot (which was embedded in his mouth, no mean feat) by declaring that his was the best post-Presidency career of all. That this has often been remarked upon is true enough; that he was un-humble enough to agree with this assessment says much about the character of the man.
Emerson's journals in many ways appear similar to Carter's. Rich in detail, precise and unflagging in his opinions on people and events (the young Emerson dismisses a small group of English Romantics, including Coleridge, even as one is hard pressed to discover differences between Romanticism and much of Emerson's pantheistic, individualist notions of human possibility), reveals both the sorrow at a series of deaths that occurred in a span of a few short years - his young wife's, two brothers, his son - and the ensuing heroic, monumental efforts to overcome that grief and continue to affirm the basic goodness not just of humanity, but the entire Universe. One can speculate on whether this was an act of self-delusion, an example of a powerful will and intellect integrating the events of his life with his vision of an ordered, loving universe, or the maundering thoughts of a borderline sociopath Yet, the sheer volume of his private thoughts makes any simplistic reduction of this complex individual impossible.
I used to keep a journal. I started the summer after my freshman year in college, as an attempt to come to terms with a relationship gone horribly wrong. I also took the opportunity to reflect on events in the larger world. I have kept these journals, written in spiral notebooks, but am now thinking again about whether or not they should be kept around. In the case of Carter, it seems that publishing his detailed account of his far-too hands-approach to the Presidency reveals him to be an individual capable of an interpersonal pettiness that emerged in his public life in his far-too-revealing 1979 speech scolding the American people for a failure of spirit, known for a word - "malaise" - that never actually appeared in the speech. It is possible to reveal far too much of oneself, particularly if one is still around to hear critics gasp in wonder at one's faults.
The original "blogs", or web logs, were little more than on-line journals. Some of the best I still read are exactly that. Even my own is little more than that, and considering the limitations of the genre it is surprise that anyone thinks they can be much more than that. It is this more than anything that lends a certain credence to critical dismissal of even the best political blogs as nothing more than the muddled musings of persons ill-equipped to do serious analytical reflection on our current events.
We now come to the crux of the issue at the heart of the whole journaling/blogging enterprise. Even the most impersonal writings open up critics to the question of identity. "Who are you that we should heed your words?" is the most basic question posed to any authority. Even those bog writers who admit their identity in public (more common now than in the past) find themselves facing this critical question, usually countered by demanding an attention to the substance of their work. Yet, no writing gains authority apart from the acceptance of the authority of the person who wrote it. On the one hand, it is possible to consider any piece of writing "on the merits". Doing so, however, makes of any writing something unreal. A person wrote this or that. A person with a point of view, a background, educated or not, informed or not, that lends credibility to that writing, or detracts from it.
Until recently, journaling was an attempt by individuals to forge an identity, to question their identity, so they could then move out in to public without needing to reveal their inner struggle. Now, that sphere of privacy has been eradicated. Identity is no longer forged in the precinct of the private. On the contrary, it is becoming part of our larger culture of public display. Whether it is the antics of "reality TV" - which is no more "real" than scripted television - or the proliferation of blogs dealing with an individual's sex life, drinking consumption, relationships with family, we no longer even consider it necessary to keep parts of our lives from public scrutiny. Getting input from people on how we live our lives is part of our culture now. Even an octogenarian like Carter has succumbed, seeing in the publication a possibility for public vindication (which has gone very badly wrong). Emerson's journals, on the other hand, reveal that the man behind the essays and sermons and pamphlets and occasional writings struggled to live out his own creed, could be both magnanimous and petty, and rounds out an understanding of him as a human being who understood that part of being human, being an individual, is best forged in fires behind closed doors.
Emerson's journals in many ways appear similar to Carter's. Rich in detail, precise and unflagging in his opinions on people and events (the young Emerson dismisses a small group of English Romantics, including Coleridge, even as one is hard pressed to discover differences between Romanticism and much of Emerson's pantheistic, individualist notions of human possibility), reveals both the sorrow at a series of deaths that occurred in a span of a few short years - his young wife's, two brothers, his son - and the ensuing heroic, monumental efforts to overcome that grief and continue to affirm the basic goodness not just of humanity, but the entire Universe. One can speculate on whether this was an act of self-delusion, an example of a powerful will and intellect integrating the events of his life with his vision of an ordered, loving universe, or the maundering thoughts of a borderline sociopath Yet, the sheer volume of his private thoughts makes any simplistic reduction of this complex individual impossible.
I used to keep a journal. I started the summer after my freshman year in college, as an attempt to come to terms with a relationship gone horribly wrong. I also took the opportunity to reflect on events in the larger world. I have kept these journals, written in spiral notebooks, but am now thinking again about whether or not they should be kept around. In the case of Carter, it seems that publishing his detailed account of his far-too hands-approach to the Presidency reveals him to be an individual capable of an interpersonal pettiness that emerged in his public life in his far-too-revealing 1979 speech scolding the American people for a failure of spirit, known for a word - "malaise" - that never actually appeared in the speech. It is possible to reveal far too much of oneself, particularly if one is still around to hear critics gasp in wonder at one's faults.
The original "blogs", or web logs, were little more than on-line journals. Some of the best I still read are exactly that. Even my own is little more than that, and considering the limitations of the genre it is surprise that anyone thinks they can be much more than that. It is this more than anything that lends a certain credence to critical dismissal of even the best political blogs as nothing more than the muddled musings of persons ill-equipped to do serious analytical reflection on our current events.
We now come to the crux of the issue at the heart of the whole journaling/blogging enterprise. Even the most impersonal writings open up critics to the question of identity. "Who are you that we should heed your words?" is the most basic question posed to any authority. Even those bog writers who admit their identity in public (more common now than in the past) find themselves facing this critical question, usually countered by demanding an attention to the substance of their work. Yet, no writing gains authority apart from the acceptance of the authority of the person who wrote it. On the one hand, it is possible to consider any piece of writing "on the merits". Doing so, however, makes of any writing something unreal. A person wrote this or that. A person with a point of view, a background, educated or not, informed or not, that lends credibility to that writing, or detracts from it.
Until recently, journaling was an attempt by individuals to forge an identity, to question their identity, so they could then move out in to public without needing to reveal their inner struggle. Now, that sphere of privacy has been eradicated. Identity is no longer forged in the precinct of the private. On the contrary, it is becoming part of our larger culture of public display. Whether it is the antics of "reality TV" - which is no more "real" than scripted television - or the proliferation of blogs dealing with an individual's sex life, drinking consumption, relationships with family, we no longer even consider it necessary to keep parts of our lives from public scrutiny. Getting input from people on how we live our lives is part of our culture now. Even an octogenarian like Carter has succumbed, seeing in the publication a possibility for public vindication (which has gone very badly wrong). Emerson's journals, on the other hand, reveal that the man behind the essays and sermons and pamphlets and occasional writings struggled to live out his own creed, could be both magnanimous and petty, and rounds out an understanding of him as a human being who understood that part of being human, being an individual, is best forged in fires behind closed doors.
Tuesday, October 12, 2010
A Boring And Irrelevant Family Story
A discussion on a Friend's Facebook page got me thinking about how some life-lessons I got from my home are tinged with bittersweet. If you know my parents, or their relatives, please don't repeat this. It's just been on my mind.
My mother has always been unfailingly polite to her children's significant others. Yet, at least for me, she has also been polite enough not to mention a prior lady-friend in the presence of a later one. My own sense of this was this came from her own family opening up their home to wayward children, as well as having a couple wayward children of their own. A large amount of tolerance was necessary in a home that housed Tom Johnston.
My mother told me a story, though, that changed my mind about some thing. Before she and my father started dating in the late 1940's, Dad had been in a long-term relationship with another woman, whose name was Darlene. My understanding is that, one day, she was just gone. No note, no message, no forwarding address. Nothing. Just . . . gone.
The first time my mother met my father's family, all of them - his parents, his brother, his sister - spent the entire time raving about how wonderful Darlene was. How beautiful. To say that my mother's feelings were hurt would be an understatement. When she told me this story, she said that she promised herself that she would never do the same thing to her own children.
This is not an indictment of the callousness of my father's family. It is rather, a story that, to me, illustrates how the things we learn as we come of age, the things we hope to carry with us to make us better people, are far too often rooted in pain and sadness. It would be much better is we just knew how to treat one another, how to live with consideration for others as the root of our interactions. Unfortunately, we have to learn the hard way.
My mother has always been unfailingly polite to her children's significant others. Yet, at least for me, she has also been polite enough not to mention a prior lady-friend in the presence of a later one. My own sense of this was this came from her own family opening up their home to wayward children, as well as having a couple wayward children of their own. A large amount of tolerance was necessary in a home that housed Tom Johnston.
My mother told me a story, though, that changed my mind about some thing. Before she and my father started dating in the late 1940's, Dad had been in a long-term relationship with another woman, whose name was Darlene. My understanding is that, one day, she was just gone. No note, no message, no forwarding address. Nothing. Just . . . gone.
The first time my mother met my father's family, all of them - his parents, his brother, his sister - spent the entire time raving about how wonderful Darlene was. How beautiful. To say that my mother's feelings were hurt would be an understatement. When she told me this story, she said that she promised herself that she would never do the same thing to her own children.
This is not an indictment of the callousness of my father's family. It is rather, a story that, to me, illustrates how the things we learn as we come of age, the things we hope to carry with us to make us better people, are far too often rooted in pain and sadness. It would be much better is we just knew how to treat one another, how to live with consideration for others as the root of our interactions. Unfortunately, we have to learn the hard way.
Ernst Bloch On The Possibility Of The Church
Because of his style of writing and the vagaries of translation, Ernst Bloch is not eminently or pithily quotable. All the same, the following from "The Nationalized God and the Right to Community" in Man On His Own is in need of quoting.
The gates to hell will not overwhelm the Church; it has opened its own gates to hell too often. But it is one thing for the power Church to pass, the Church of superstitions, and would be quite another thing if a power-free force of conscience should be on guards, should undertake to stand guard and to teach whitehr and why. In the future ship of state (said Bebel), the teacher, not the officer, will be Number One; and the same could be case in a Church embarked on a voyage without superstititions. It could be thoroughly religious, but not in the sense of a re-ligion or reconnection with the cominion and its mythologies, but as the forward reconnection of a whole dream with our deficient make-shifts.This juxtaposition between what the Church could be (the first quoted paragraph) and what the Church, too often, is (the second) offers a view of the possibility of the Church living out of its yet-to-be-realized future, that lies as the kernel buried in the sterile soil of the present. At the very least, it should be noted that Bloch's insight and prophetic criticism should be given a fair hearing.
Now to get back to our given Church: it lives almost entirely for modesty and moneyed piety. It zealously inveights agaisnt the harm done to Joseph and the sheep, but it has made its arrangements with the upper classes and serves as their spiritual defender. It bristles at see-through blouses, but not at slums in which half-naked children starve, and not, above all, at the conditions that keep three quarters of mankind in misery. It condemns desperate girls who abort a foetus, but it consecrates war, which aborts millions. It has nationalized its God, nationalized him into ecclesiatic organization, and has inherited the Roman empire under the mask of the Crucified. It preserves misery and injustice, having first tolerated and the approved the class power that causes them; it prevents any seriousness about deliverance by postponing it to St. Never-Ever's Day or shifting it to the beyond.
Monday, October 11, 2010
A Lesson From Lost
So I'm watching the entire series, straight through. In the third episode of Season 2, when Jack and Locke and Kate encounter Desmond in the Hatch for the first time, Jack's reaction is almost violently reactive. He refuses to accept anything that is told him, not the least the order to put down his gun or Locke dies.
Jack's obstinate refusal to accept the oddities of the island - his insistence on keeping everything on the level of the mundane, despite multiple evidences that there is something far more happening - is in many ways the predicament so many of us moderns face. We are put in situations that defy easy explanation. We face events that seem to defy any rational understanding, or understanding based on our previous experience. Jack's violence, his insistence that reality conform to his own blinkered, limited understanding of reality is too often the reaction we see in people who cannot, will not seek to understand what is really happening. They refuse to accept what should be quite clear and plain because it falls outside their accepted canons of understanding.
Jack, in other words, is a Tea Partier. He is also, in these episodes (and in many others) quite an asshole. Were I on the island, I would quite quickly tire of him.
Jack's obstinate refusal to accept the oddities of the island - his insistence on keeping everything on the level of the mundane, despite multiple evidences that there is something far more happening - is in many ways the predicament so many of us moderns face. We are put in situations that defy easy explanation. We face events that seem to defy any rational understanding, or understanding based on our previous experience. Jack's violence, his insistence that reality conform to his own blinkered, limited understanding of reality is too often the reaction we see in people who cannot, will not seek to understand what is really happening. They refuse to accept what should be quite clear and plain because it falls outside their accepted canons of understanding.
Jack, in other words, is a Tea Partier. He is also, in these episodes (and in many others) quite an asshole. Were I on the island, I would quite quickly tire of him.
Another Day, Another Gay Suicide
This time, it's Norman, OK.
A 19-year old gay man committed suicide following a heated Norman city council meeting that focused on homosexuality, the teen's family said.Please note, the lack of acceptance wasn't from his family. It was the general lack of acceptance in the larger world.
--snip--
"I also think it's not dark thinking or bigoted thinking to have an opposition to this...But it's clear thinking," said one Norman resident during the meeting.
"Recruiting children into these lifestyles will be very easy with this kind of open format," said another resident during the city council meeting.
--snip--
Zach's father said his son was a very private person who came out during high school. He said the Norman North graduate was bullied and harassed at school for being gay. Van Harrington said he feels a lack of acceptance from society and what he calls a "toxic meeting" last month is what finally pushed Zach over the edge.
In Other News - The Sun Rises In The East
A report that a Republican said something both stupid and hateful about gays is about as newsworthy as reports of the eastern horizon brightening in the early morning hours. The only reason to report it is to shine a light on such ugliness.
Beyond that, the only thing shocking about it is what took Carl Paladino so long.
Beyond that, the only thing shocking about it is what took Carl Paladino so long.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
Virtual Tin Cup
